Jay Z Covers GQ?s Man Of The Year

Jay-Z, on the cover of GQ magazine?s upcoming Men of the Year issue, wants to be a better pop than his absentee dad. The hip-hop mogul, who?s expecting a baby girl with wife Beyonc?, said losing his dad hurt more than never having him. ?If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts [...]

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2 deaths at Occupy protests in Calif. and Vermont (AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. ? Police are investigating a fatal shooting just outside the Occupy Oakland encampment in Northern California and the apparent suicide of a military veteran at an Occupy encampment in Vermont's largest city.

The Oakland killing is further straining relations between local officials and anti-Wall Street protesters. A preliminary investigation into the gunfire Thursday that left a man dead suggests it resulted from a fight between two groups of men at or near the camp on a plaza in front of Oakland's City Hall, police Chief Howard Jordan said.

Investigators do not yet know if the men in the fight were associated with Occupy Oakland, but they are looking into reports that some protest participants tried to break up the altercation, Jordan said.

Burlington, Vt., police said preliminary investigations show a 35-year-old military veteran fatally shot himself in the head Thursday at an Occupy Wall Street encampment. The name of the Chittenden County man is being withheld because not all of his family has been notified.

He shot himself inside a tent in City Hall Park. Mike Noble, a spokesman for the Fletcher Allen Health Care hospital in Burlington, confirmed that the man had died. Noble said he could provide no other details.

Deputy Chief Andi Higbee in Burlington told reporters the shooting raised questions about whether the protest would be allowed to continue.

"Our responsibility is to keep the public safe. When there is a discharge of a firearm in a public place like this it's good cause to be concerned, greatly concerned," Higbee said.

That's also the feeling with some people in Oakland.

With opinions about the ongoing demonstration and its effect on the city becoming more divided in recent days, supporters and opponents immediately reacted to the homicide ? the city's 101st this year.

Camp organizers said the attack was unrelated to their activities, while city and business leaders cited the death as proof that the camp itself either bred crime or drained law enforcement resources.

Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized by residents on both sides for issuing mixed signals about the local government's willingness to tolerate the camp, issued a statement Thursday calling for the camp to shut down.

"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great," Quan said. "We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution."

For their part, protest leaders said the shooting involved outsiders and was only connected to their ongoing protest of U.S. financial institutions to the extent that poverty breeds violence.

"This one heinous immoral crime should not overshadow all of the good deeds, positive energy and the overall goals that the movement is attempting to establish," Khalid Shakur, 43, who has a tent in the encampment, said.

Before the shooting, protesters were planning to have a party to commemorate the encampment's one-month anniversary with music, dancing, a slide show and donated cakes. Instead, they opened a microphone for participants to talk about where the movement is headed.

"It's not a celebration anymore, but a period of reflection," said Leo Ritz-Barr, a member of Occupy Oakland's events committee.

John Lucas, 52, part of an Occupy Oakland medic team, said a fistfight involving several men preceded the gunfire.

"Several people went after one guy, and the group got larger, and they beat him and he ran," Lucas said. "There were six or seven shots. Everyone starts running ... and there was another shot."

Lucas said he and other medics rushed to the wounded man and tried to tend to him until paramedics arrived.

"He was not breathing and there was no heartbeat," he said. "We started CPR."

Jordan said the victim was hit by one bullet and he was pronounced dead at a hospital.

No suspects have been identified, said Jordan, who asked people participating in the protest who may have taken photographs or video that captured the shooting to contact authorities.

The violence came a day after a group of Oakland city and business leaders held a news conference demanding the removal of the encampment, saying it has hurt downtown businesses and has continued to pose safety concerns.

Councilman Larry Reid said that even if the men involved in the slaying were not regular participants in Occupy Oakland, the large crowds and attention the protest has drawn also has invited weapons and brawls. The camp, which has about 180 tents, sits in the middle of the plaza and is ringed by a transit station and ground-floor shops.

"We did have a shooting (near the plaza) once before, a couple shootings around some nightclubs but not right here in front of City Hall because this is attracting a totally different element to our downtown area," Reid said. "This is a public space, and people have a right to enjoy it."

Shake Anderson, an Occupy Oakland organizer who has slept at the camp since it was erected exactly a month ago, said the man who was shot could not be associated with the protest because he did not recognize him. Just before the shooting, a group of strangers ran into the encampment as if they were looking for someone, Anderson said.

"The person on the ground was not part of the occupation," Anderson said.

___

Associated Press writer Dave Gram in Burlington, Vt., contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111111/ap_on_re_us/us_occupy_oakland_shooting

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Video: Rising unemployment numbers await veterans

Romo red-hot in Cowboys' blowout of Bills

??Tony Romo guided touchdown drives on his first four possessions, throwing for the score on three of them, and Terence Newman returned one of his two interceptions for a touchdown, leading the Dallas Cowboys to a 44-7 victory over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45262286#45262286

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Who invented the light bulb?

Tiffany O?Callaghan, CultureLab editor

108038580.jpg(Image: GaryGay/StockImage/Getty)

When you tap a pile of papers against your desk before pinning them together, you probably don?t consider the ingenuity that first propelled the lowly paperclip into production. Or when nestling an egg carton among groceries at the checkout counter, you may not routinely wonder how you would have juggled the eggs in jostling bags without the aid of a pressed fibre box.

The exhibition Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things draws your attention to the indispensable doodads we take for granted each day. Created by the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, and now showing at the Science Museum in London, the exhibition puts the spotlight on adhesive tape and Lego building blocks, telescoping umbrellas and jam jars, corkscrews and condoms.

The simple ingenuity of the items is mirrored in the plain layout of the exhibition, with each object on display inside a brightly-coloured wooden box. The collection of 36 objects, whittled down from a total of 44 included in an online gallery, have a range of very briefly noted origin stories - some were brought into being as the result of overlapping efforts across the years, others born from one or two individuals? brilliant ideas, and still others the results of opportunity forged from failure.

rexfeatures_1417466l.jpg(Image: Ray Tang/Rex Features)

The birth of Post-It notes is a now fairly well known tale of fortuitous failure. In the late 1960s, materials scientist Spencer Silver was working on a project to create a powerful adhesive for 3M corporation. Instead, he wound up with a seemingly feeble variation - sticky, but only just. Enduring another kind of disappointment, fellow 3M scientist Arthur Fry was frustrated that he kept losing his bookmarks in his hymnal during choir rehearsals. It occurred to him that if he could apply his colleague?s only slightly sticky adhesive to paper? and, you know the rest.

That today offices are papered with the colourful squares is exactly what made Post-It notes perfect candidates for the exhibition. All of the items included were chosen because they are simple, mass produced, and have a design that has varied little since they were introduced.

The paperclip is another example. In the summary that accompanies a display of heaped silver paperclips and several whimsical variations - clips shaped like bicycles, for example - you learn that this humble convenience was introduced in the late 1800s when machines were developed that could bend and cut steel wire, and that the underlying physics of elasticity that makes them work was first articulated by British scientist Robert Hooke in 1678: Ut tensio sic vis, the extension of a spring is directly proportional to the load added to it. Perhaps keeping the explanations succinct was a deliberate strategy, but at times you?re left longing for a bit more information. Paperclips are ingenious - but what did people use before? Did someone dream them up as a solution to unwieldy stacks of documents, or did the idea first spring from a different need? A little online digging suggests that perhaps they weren?t actually first designed for paper, but instead to hold tickets to bits of fabric.

The story of the birth of the rubber band is also disappointingly brief: The introduction of vulcanisation in rubber production in the 1840s yielded a more pliable and durable material. In 1845, the now ubiquitous rubber band was first patented. Ta-da!

Unfortunately, the exhibition, like its online version, too often emphasizes style over substance, and moments of intellectual tussling and the vagaries of bringing inventions to life are glossed over in brief write-ups that too often do little to satisfy any deeper curiosity for the back story. Underneath the display of lightbulbs - fitted with wings to seem as though they are flitting about the colourful box - you learn that Thomas Edison and Sir Joseph Swan were simultaneously developing the technology on both sides of the Atlantic. In fact, the two eventually joined forces to form the Ediswan company in the UK.

So, why is Edison so often considered the inventor of the light bulb? You?ll have to look that up yourself when you get home.

(The answer is fascinating: though Swan developed a bulb that worked well in demonstrations, for longer-term use it was impractical. The carbon rod he used for a filament inside the vacuum sealed glass bulb burned out quickly and also emitted soot when the light was turned on, dirtying the interior of the glass. Edison introduced a long, thin copper filament, which required less current and was far more practical. The National Museum of American History provides the caveat: ?Edison is generally credited with inventing the first practical incandescent lamp.?)

Similarly, the invention of the safety match has potential to be a riveting tale. In the exhibition, you learn that in 1848 German chemist Rudolf Christian Boettger created the now common match by replacing poisonous white phosphorous on its tip with less toxic red phosphorous on the side of the matchbox. Until then, matches could rub up against one another and self light - quite a dangerous prospect. Once again though, it seems there is a lack of consensus over who first dreamed up the better safer version - something the exhibition does not mention.

In an era where a roiling economy has encouraged many of us to tighten purse strings, celebrate simple pleasures and repair and make better use of the objects we already own, an exhibition that prompts you to consider the many clever innovations we make use of everyday is well timed. You just have to hope that it was by design that you leave it with more questions than insights.

Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things is running at the Science Museum in London through June 2012. It will be on display at the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts from September to December 2012.

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The wages of typos ? in pounds and pence

Surveying the range of typographical error around her, the Monitor's language columnist is tempted to despair; but hope springs eternal.

Dear Reader, my subject this week is errors ? typographical sins of all sorts, and how they can take over if we are not vigilant.

Skip to next paragraph

Grammar Monkeys, a blog by The Wichita Eagle copy desk, set forth a veritable taxonomy of typos recently. Titled "When spell-check won't help: How typos sneak into writing," the post cited "the one-letter-off typo," e.g., "The pops concert, canon launch and fireworks show." The single-"n" "canon" for "cannon" made me picture a clergyman flying through the air like a circus performer.

Another category was "the wrong word" ? problems with homophones, or sound-alikes: "Police taser man after he fleas" (flees). There's the "one-letter-off 'facto,' " an error committed by those who miss the factual forest for the technical trees: "troops killed in the wars in Iran and Afghanistan." Oops, make that "Iraq."

And then "the Cupertino effect": typos introduced by the very "autocorrect" software intended to save us from error. Ah, the typographical treason of these invisible servants! Why "Cupertino"? The autocorrect feature of some Apple software seems to construe just about any long word beginning with "c" as an attempt to write the name of the California city that is Apple's headquarters.

As the Language Log pointed out a few years ago, this is a particular issue within the European Union and NATO. So many civil servants there keep needing to write the word "cooperation." But since so many of them are not native speakers of English, they misspell it ? "coperation," perhaps. Then boom! ? suddenly it's "Cupertino."

As in this NATO press release from 2001: "[T]hat Secretary General Robertson is going to join this session this afternoon in the European Union headquarters gives you already an idea of how close and co-ordinated this Cupertino is and this action will be."

A few months ago, Copyediting, the language newsletter, ran a heartfelt column on how to convince Those Who Pay the Bills within a publishing organization that typos matter to the credibility of the product, and that time and money spent to prevent them are well spent. The concern is not that editors don't know better; it's that they're having to work too fast. The challenge, of course, is quantifying the monetary cost of editing errors.

But the column included a link to a BBC News report citing an online entrepreneur named Charles Duncombe who purportedly has figured out how to do just that:

"He says he measured the revenue per visitor to the tightsplease.co.uk website," which sells pantyhose and stockings online, "and found that the revenue was twice as high after an error was corrected."

Like many employers, he has trouble finding job candidates with good language skills. He's not a part of the copy-editing fraternity, but he makes an important point: The Web is still very much about writing, and there's value in getting it right.

As we all know, the Web has made it possible for anyone to reach, with just a few keystrokes, an audience once accessible only to those with printing presses. But this progress has not been error-free.

Just as I keep hoping, though, that journalism will find new economic models that acknowledge the value of independent reporting, the larger world of publishing may yet figure out new workflow models that balance the values of timeliness and accuracy.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/bPJBA9KoZFw/The-wages-of-typos-in-pounds-and-pence

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Good Luck With That: A Super-Cheap Phone Challenges Big Mobile Companies (The Atlantic Wire)

Republic Wireless is unveiling a super-duper cheap, $19-a-month, no-contract, unlimited-talk, data-and-text cell phone plan meant to "disrupt" the mobile market.

Related: Why You Might Want an Unlocked iPhone

Good luck with that.

Related: The Pros and Cons of Switching to Google's New iPhone App

Disrupt, is tech speak for "compete with the big carriers." With a $19/month price tag, the tech-blogger masses have decided that this phone will be the one to lure cell phone users away from overpriced Verizon and AT&T contracts. "This really could be disruptive, and while I think it might take some time to pick up steam, the $20 monthly price point has a very broad appeal," writes TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid.

Related: Forward-Looking Senator Saxby Chambliss Launches iPhone App

But the attractive price point comes with lots of caveats.

Related: Consensus: New Curves Aren't Good Enough to Save BlackBerry

The phone really is as cheap as it sounds. It is $19 a month for everything (not including a $199 phone). Republic Wireless only has one cellular option,?The LG Optimus, running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), which, Kincaid assures, is a "solid low-end device."

Related: How to Watch Apple's Big iPhone Announcement

But what Republic has in price, it may lack in reliability. The upstart company?can afford to offer a rate of less than $20 because it feeds off of wireless connections. Instead of automatically performing most tasks on a data network, the phone hops onto wireless networks for data and calls. This special "Hybrid Calling" system means the phone requires less data, which is often expensive. But as a commenter on Kincaid's post noted, WiFi isn't everywhere. And some WiFi requires a log-in every few minutes. It's just inconvenient.

There's another potential problem. When the phone can't access wireless, it hops onto a data network. And where does this data come from? Sprint. "The company is going to buy wholesale minutes from third-party carriers such as Sprint," writes GigaOm's Om Malik. "The company says the monthly plan would include unlimited 3G data without any bandwidth caps."

So it would seem that Republic Wireless?ultimately?answers to Sprint, which probably does not want to allow a cheapo phone to disrupt anything. ?The potential disrupter is apparently reaching out to other data gatekeepers, but, again, there's no real incentive for Verizon or AT&T to play along.

Of course, for some, reliability isn't everything. Another commenter on Kincaid's post says the phone would be perfect for her young daughter: "This would be perfect for me to finally get a price I can afford for my daughter who's in elementary still but feel safer with her having a phone, but not the large bill that comes with it. I'm going to try it!"

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20111108/tc_atlantic/goodluckwiththatasupercheapphonechallenges44688

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Iran worked on nuclear bomb design: U.N. watchdog (Reuters)

VIENNA (Reuters) ? Iran appears to have worked on designing an atomic bomb and may still be conducting secret research, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a report likely to raise tensions in the Middle East.

Citing what it called "credible" information from member states and elsewhere, the agency listed a series of activities applicable to developing nuclear weapons, such as high explosives testing and development of an atomic bomb trigger.

The report immediately exposed splits among the big powers about how best to handle the row over Iran's nuclear aims: the United States signaled tougher sanctions on Tehran but Russia said the report could hurt chances for diplomacy.

It was preceded by Israeli media speculation that the Jewish state may strike against its arch foe's nuclear sites. But Defense Minister Ehud Barak said on Tuesday no decision had been made on embarking on a military operation.

Iran, which denies it wants nuclear weapons, condemned the findings of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "unbalanced" and "politically motivated."

IAEA chief Yukiya Amano is "playing a very dangerous game," Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the agency, told Reuters Television.

Tehran's history of hiding sensitive nuclear activity from the IAEA, continued restrictions on IAEA access and its refusal to suspend enrichment, which can yield fuel for atom bombs, have drawn four rounds of U.N. sanctions and separate punitive steps by the United States and European Union.

The report detailed evidence apparently showing concerted, covert efforts to acquire the capability to make atomic bombs.

Some of the cited research and development work by Iran have both civilian and military applications, but "others are specific to nuclear weapons," said the report, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday ahead of an IAEA board of governors meeting.

Oil prices briefly rose after it was issued, with Brent crude trading up 11 cents to $114.67 a barrel at 1:33 p.m. EDT.

"I think the facts lay out a pretty overwhelming case that this was a pretty sophisticated nuclear weapons effort aimed at miniaturizing a warhead for a ballistic missile," said prominent U.S. proliferation expert David Albright.

"It's overwhelming in the amount of details, it is a pretty convincing case," he told Reuters.

Western powers have pressured the major oil producer, which says its nuclear program is aimed at increasing electricity generation, over its record of hiding sensitive nuclear activity and lack of full cooperation with U.N. inspectors.

The United States will look to put more pressure on Iran if it fails to answer questions raised by the IAEA report, a senior U.S. official said in Washington.

"That could include additional sanctions by the United States. It could also include steps that we take together with other nations," the official told reporters.

Russia criticized the report, saying it would dim hopes for dialogue with Tehran on its nuclear ambitions and suggesting it was meant to scuttle chances for a diplomatic solution.

"We have serious doubts about the justification for steps to reveal contents of the report to a broad public, primarily because it is precisely now that certain chances for the renewal of dialogue between the 'sextet' of international mediators and Tehran have begun to appear," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

Russia and the United States are among the six big powers -- also including China, Britain, France and Germany -- which have been involved in stalled attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute with Iran.

Tehran has for years dismissed allegations of atomic bomb research, based largely on Western intelligence funneled to the IAEA, as fabricated and baseless, and more recently sought to discredit Amano as a tool of Washington.

The IAEA said it had carefully assessed intelligence passed on from member states and found it consistent in terms of technical content, individuals and organizations cited and time frames. It said it had gathered its own supportive details.

"The Agency is concerned because some of the activities undertaken after 2003 would be highly relevant to a nuclear weapon program," it said.

"STRONG INDICATORS OF POSSIBLE WEAPONS DEVELOPMENT"

The IAEA "has serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear program," the U.N body said in the report, which included an unusual 13-page annex with technical descriptions of research with explosives and computer simulations applicable to nuclear detonations.

It added: "The information also indicates that prior to the end of 2003, these activities took place under a structured program, and that some activities may still be ongoing."

U.S. spy services estimated in 2007 that Iran had halted outright "weaponisation" research four years previously, but also that the Islamic Republic was continuing efforts to master technology usable in nuclear explosives.

The IAEA report included information from both before and after 2003. It voiced "particular concern" about information given by two member states that Iran had carried out computer modeling studies relevant to nuclear weapons in 2008-09.

"The application of such studies to anything other than a nuclear explosive is unclear to the agency," the IAEA said.

The information also indicated that Iran had built a large explosives vessel at the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments, which are "strong indicators of possible weapon development."

Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the IAEA report, which was big news in a Jewish state that feels uniquely threatened by Iran. Israel is widely believed to harbor the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal.

For several years the IAEA has been investigating Western intelligence reports indicating that Iran has coordinated efforts to process uranium, test high explosives and revamp a ballistic missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead.

Iran, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, insists that its work to enrich uranium is for a future network of nuclear power plants to provide electricity for a rapidly growing population.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Arshad Mohammed in Washington, Steve Gutterman in Moscow and Zahra Hosseinian and Parisa Hafezi in Tehran; Editing by Robert Woodward)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111108/wl_nm/us_nuclear_iran_iaea

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Activision 3Q earnings soar, 2011 outlook raised

This video game image released by Activision, shows a scene from "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure." Activision releases quarterly financial results Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011, after the market close. (AP Photo/Activision)

This video game image released by Activision, shows a scene from "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure." Activision releases quarterly financial results Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011, after the market close. (AP Photo/Activision)

(AP) ? Activision Blizzard Inc. reported strong results for the latest quarter and raised its outlook for the full year on Tuesday as it began selling its latest "Call of Duty" game ahead of the holidays.

Long lines formed outside retail stores to buy "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," which went on sale at midnight Monday. The game is expected to break industry records set by its predecessor a year ago for metrics such as first-day sales and overall dollar sales. Last year's "Call of Duty: Black Ops" sold more than 25 million copies.

Investors, though, seemed to focus on Activision's other big game, "World of Warcraft," as the company's stock fell after the results came out. That's because the game ended the quarter with 10.3 million active subscribers, down from 11.1 million from the previous quarter.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said the 7 percent drop "freaked people out."

Activision gets much of its revenue and profit from "Call of Duty" and "World of Warcraft," Pachter said, so "if either is threatened, it makes people wonder about future profit growth."

The company hasn't given day-one sales figures for "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3," though it said pre-launch orders shattered prior records. The game's predecessor earned more than $1 billion in sales.

Blockbuster disc sales aside, Activision is also focusing on the game's long-term future ? its online components that let people download add-on chapters, challenge other players online and keep playing long after the game's initial story ends.

On Tuesday, the company officially launched "Call of Duty: Elite," an online service for the game that's part social network and part organized sports with competitions, stats and a slew of other offerings.

CEO Bobby Kotick said the company is trying to deliver game content more regularly ? like TV. This gets players treating games as a service they return to week after week, month after month, rather than a box they buy around Christmas and play for a few hours until they are done.

Activision earned $148 million, or 13 cents per share, in the July-September period. That's up from $51 million, or 4 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 1 percent to $754 million from $745 million.

Adjusted earnings were $87 million, or 7 cents per share, in the latest quarter ? above the 2 cents per share that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting. Adjusted revenue was $627 million, above analysts' expectations of $565 million.

These figures exclude special items and account for the effects of deferring revenue and the related cost of sales for games with online components. Like other video game companies, Activision spreads these out over time, while the game is played, rather than all at once.

Activision is forecasting fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 55 cents per share on revenue of $2.17 billion. Analysts had expected earnings of 53 cents per share on revenue of $2.11 billion on that basis.

The fourth quarter is usually the most important one for video game companies because it includes holiday sales. Activision, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif., tends to give conservative guidance. Besides "Call of Duty," the company said its kids' game, "Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure," which launched in October, is also doing well.

For the full year, the company now expects adjusted earnings of 85 cents per share on revenue of $4.25 billion. Its prior forecast was for adjusted earnings of 77 cents per share on revenue of $4.05 billion.

On this basis, analysts had predicted earnings of 79 cents per share on revenue of $4.12 billion.

The company's stock fell 45 cents, or 3.2 percent, to $13.48 in extended trading after the results came out. Earlier, the stock closed up 19 cents, or 1.4 percent, at $13.93. The stock also hit a 52-week high of $14.40 earlier on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, Take-Two Interactive Software Inc., which develops and sells video games including the top-selling "Grand Theft Auto" and "Red Dead Redemption" series, reported a net loss for its fiscal second quarter.

Its revenue fell 56 percent from a year earlier because of a dearth of big product launches.

The New York-based video game publisher also forecast lower earnings for the current quarter than analysts expected but reaffirmed its outlook for the full fiscal year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-11-08-Earns-Activision%20Blizzard/id-babf9b960b4640b2886b3e3f294a45ae

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Angela Meade honored at star-studded concert (AP)

NEW YORK ? As gala concerts go, this one had enough star power for a whole galaxy.

With such guests on hand as tenor Jonas Kaufmann, bass-baritone Bryn Terfel and powerhouse mezzo-sopranos Stephanie Blythe and Dolora Zajick, the excitement level was up several notches Sunday night for this year's benefit for the Richard Tucker Music Foundation.

It helped that the 2011 honoree (and $30,000 prize winner), soprano Angela Meade, is already an accomplished artist who can hold her own in such high-powered company.

Meade's opening number, an aria from Verdi's "Attila," showed off her large voice, resplendent high notes and technical agility. Later, joined by Zajick and tenor Frank Porretta, she was equally impressive in the Act 1 finale to Bellini's "Norma." She returned once more at the end (sheet music in hand) as Alice Ford in the rollicking ensemble that concludes Verdi's "Falstaff."

Terfel, always a marvelous showman in addition to being a great singer, threatened to steal the evening early on with his comedic turn as the lovable huckster Doctor Dulcamara in Donizetti's "L'Elisir d'Amore." Pulling out bottles of fake elixir from every conceivable pocket as he rattled off its praises, Terfel offered them to members of the audience and finally took a long swig from one himself.

It was a special treat to hear him display his lighter side just one day after singing the strenuous role of the Wanderer in Wagner's "Siegfried" at the Metropolitan Opera.

Kaufmann followed with an impassioned account of Turridu's farewell to his mother from Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana." Later, the two men joined for a rousing Friendship Duet from Verdi's "Don Carlo" and each returned once more ? Kaufmann for the final scene from Bizet's "Carmen" with mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili, and Terfel for the Falstaff finale.

Blythe treated the audience to the aria "Connais-tu le pays" from Thomas' "Mignon," lavishing her prodigious, shining voice on the wistful melody.

It was a mistake, after that virtuoso display, to have Zajick follow immediately with a number for soloist and chorus from Tchaikovsky's "The Maid of Orleans." There was just no way it could match the impact of what had preceded.

But Zajick came into her own as the betrayed Santuzza in a searing duet from "Cavalleria Rusticana." Joined by the terrific young tenor Yonghoon Lee, she captured every nuance of the character's anguish, pleading and rage.

Lee also made a strong impression with his bright voice and potent high notes in the aria "O Souverain" from Massenet's "Le Cid."

Baritone Zeljko Lucic contributed a stirring rendition of "Eri tu" from Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera," and soprano Maria Guleghina gave a restrained and moving performance of "Vissi d'arte" from Puccini's "Tosca."

The concert at Avery Fisher Hall was conducted by Emmanuel Villaume, who opened by leading members of the Met orchestra in a rousing "Bacchanale" from Saint-Saens' "Samson et Dalila." The New York Chorale Society joined in several numbers.

The gala and a dinner that followed raises money for the Tucker foundation, which is dedicated to keeping alive the memory of the great tenor and supporting young American singers.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111107/ap_en_mu/us_opera_review_tucker_gala

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