Indy battens down hatches for Super Bowl security (AP)

INDIANAPOLIS ? From pickpockets and prostitutes to dirty bombs and exploding manhole covers, authorities are bracing for whatever threat the first Super Bowl in downtown Indianapolis might bring.

Some ? nuclear terrorism, for instance ? are likely to remain just hypothetical. But others, like thieves and wayward manhole covers, are all too real.

Though Indianapolis has ample experience hosting large sporting events ? the Indianapolis 500 attracts more than 200,000 fans each year, and the NCAA's men's Final Four basketball tournament has been held here six times since 1980_ the city's first Super Bowl poses some unique challenges.

Unlike the Final Four, which is compressed into a weekend, the Super Bowl offers crowd, travel and other logistical challenges over 10 days leading up to the Feb. 5 game. And unlike the 500, where events are largely concentrated at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway about seven miles from Lucas Oil Stadium, the NFL's showcase event will consume 44 blocks ? about a mile square ? in the heart of the city, closing off streets and forcing an anticipated 150,000 or more NFL fans to jockey with downtown workers for space much of the week.

"This is clearly bigger in terms of the amount of people who will be downtown over an extended period of time," city Public Safety Director Frank Straub said.

Under a security risk rating system used by the federal government, the Super Bowl ranks just below national security events involving the president and the Secret Service, said Indianapolis Chief of Homeland Security Gary Coons. The ratings are based on factors including international attention, media coverage, the number of people the event attracts and visits by celebrities and foreign dignitaries, he said. The Indianapolis 500 ranks two levels below the Super Bowl.

The city has invested millions of dollars and worked with local, state and federal agencies to try to keep all those people safe. Up to 1,000 city police officers will be in the stadium and on the street, carrying smartphones and other electronic hand-held devices that will enable them to feed photos and video to a new state-of-the-art operations center on the city's east side or to cruisers driven by officers providing backup, Straub said. Hundreds of officers from other agencies, including the state police and the FBI, will be scanning the crowd for signs of pickpocketing, prostitution or other trouble.

One concern has been a series of explosions in Indianapolis Power & Light's underground network of utility cables. A dozen underground explosions have occurred since 2005, sending manhole covers flying.

Eight explosions have occurred since 2010. The latest, on Nov. 19, turned a manhole cover into a projectile that heavily damaged a parked car and raised concerns about the safety of Super Bowl visitors walking on streets and soaring above the Super Bowl village on four zip lines installed for the festivities.

Since December, IPL has spent about $180,000 to install 150 new locking manhole covers, primarily in the Super Bowl village and other areas expected to see high pre-game traffic.

IPL officials say the new Swiveloc manhole covers can be locked for security reasons during the Super Bowl. In case of an explosion, the covers lift a couple of inches off the ground ? enough to vent gas out without feeding in oxygen to make an explosion bigger ? before falling back into place.

An Atlanta consultant hired by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission last summer to audit IPL's underground network of cables for a cause of the explosions says the new covers are merely a Band-Aid.

"We've argued it's better to prevent," said Dan O'Neill of O'Neill Management Consulting, which filed its report in December.

O'Neill's team couldn't pinpoint an exact cause for the explosions but said a flawed inspection process contributed, noting that IPL workers missed warning signs such as road salt corroding an old cable or leaks in nearby steam pipes. In a report filed Jan. 19 with Indiana utility regulators, the power company said it had overhauled its inspection process.

IPL will dispatch extra crews to the area around the stadium in case of power-related problems, such as a recent breaker fire that left 10,000 customers in homes south of downtown without power. Spokeswoman Crystal Livers-Powers said the company doesn't anticipate any power issues.

Straub, the public safety director, said he's confident the city is prepared and notes that Indianapolis hosts major events "pretty regularly."

Special teams from the Department of Energy will sweep Lucas Oil Stadium and the surrounding area for nuclear terror threats, and a new $18 million high-tech communications center that opened in time for the lead-up to the game will tie it all together.

"We're using more technology, and state of the art technology, than has been used in any Super Bowl before this one," Straub said.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_sp_fo_ne/fbn_super_bowl_security

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DMARC Promises A World Of Less Phishing

Some 15 companies, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, PayPal plan to jointly work on a standard for blocking phishing e-mails by verifying that they come from legitimate companies. It seems obvious that trusted, legitimate companies could come together to do this, but it's only started happening in the last 18 months. DMARC.org - or the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance - is a new white-list system will be available for use across the Internet.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/G7pyDcYtd0g/

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Wall Street led lower as banks extend losses (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Stocks extended losses on Monday, with all three major indexes falling more than 1 percent.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was down 125.79 points, or 0.99 percent, at 12,534.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was down 15.20 points, or 1.15 percent, at 1,301.13. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was down 32.14 points, or 1.14 percent, at 2,784.41.

(Reporting By Angela Moon)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120130/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Japan population to shrink by one-third by 2060 (AP)

TOKYO ? Japan's rapid aging means the national population of 128 million will shrink by one-third by 2060 and seniors will account for 40 percent of people, placing a greater burden on the shrinking work force population to support the social security and tax systems.

The population estimate released Monday by the Health and Welfare Ministry paints a grim future.

In year 2060, Japan will have 87 million people. The number of people 65 or older will nearly double to 40 percent, while the national work force of people between ages 15 and 65 will shrink to about half of the total population, according to the estimate, made by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

The total fertility rate, or the expected number of children born per woman during lifetime, in 2060 is estimated at 1.35, down from 1.39 in 2010 ? well below more than 2 needed to keep the country's population from declining. But the average Japanese will continue to live longer. The average life expectancy for 2060 is projected at 90.93 for women, up from 86.39 in 2010, and 84.19 years for men, up from 79.64 years.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has pledged to push for social security and tax reforms this year. A bill he promised to submit by the end of March would raise the 5 percent sales tax in two stages to 8 percent in 2014 and 10 percent by 2015, although opposition lawmakers and the public pose challenges to its approval.

Experts say that Japan's population will keep losing 1 million every year in coming decades and the country urgently needs to overhaul its social security and tax system to reflect the demographic shift.

"Pension programs, employment and labor policy and social security system in this country is not designed to reflect such rapidly progressing population decline or aging," Noriko Tsuya, a demography expert at Keio University, said on public broadcaster NHK. "The government needs to urgently revise the system and implement new measures based on the estimate."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120130/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_population

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PFT: Colts' decision on Manning made 'weeks ago'?

Getty Images

For many younger football fans, the name ?Joe Namath? doesn?t conjure memories of Broadway Joe or Super Bowl III but a drunken pass at ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber during a December 2003 edition of Sunday Night Football.? His ?I wanna kiss you? moment became the stuff of TV legend, even making its way into an epic auto-tune mash-up from D.J. Steve Porter, who coincidentally now crafts similar projects for the four-letter network.

In an HBO documentary on Namath?s life, which debuted at 9:00 p.m. ET on Saturday, Kolber addresses the incident for the first time.? Without saying ?don?t blame us, we didn?t know Joe was drunk,? she seems to try a little too hard to offer up not-so-subtle excuses for not knowing Joe was drunk, even though perhaps everyone involved should have known, or at least suspected, that Joe was drunk.

Especially once he started talking.

?Joe was escorted onto the field by a number of Jets personnel,? Kolber says of the subject of her eventual interview.? ?And what I recall is that he and I never really had a chance to chat, because he wouldn?t stand still.?

Kolber creates the impression that she didn?t have any opportunity to observe his behavior (Namath admits that he?d been drinking all day and night) until the interview started.? ?When we were really getting to close to when our producer wanted to have him on, I took his arm because I just didn?t want him to walk away,? Kolber says.

And even when the interview began, Kolber explains (with her trademark perky nonchalance) that no one thought anything was amiss as he gave a stumbling, incomprehensible answer to the first question:? ?What impresses you about Chad [Pennington]??

?I believe that anything anyone else has watched Chad play impresses me the same thing impresses them,? Namath said at the time, clumsily and awkwardly.

She attributed his off-kilter behavior to, yes, the weather.? ?When we first started talking and he was slow and deliberate in his speech,? Kolber says, ?what was going through my head was, ?Maybe it?s just really cold.??

But here?s the kicker from Kolber, the thing that made me think for the first time that ESPN adroitly has been able to avoid for more than eight years the question of how they put him on the air in the first place, and why they didn?t kill the interview after his initial rambling response.? ?None of the executives in the truck were alarmed either, because nobody said, ?Stop,?? Kolber says.? ?The direction in my ear was, ?Keep going.??

None of this changes the fact that Namath was at fault for drinking too much and agreeing to go on camera and then acting like a jerk by saying ?I wanna kiss you,? not once but twice.? But I?ve been involved in the TV side of this business long enough now to realize that there are (or at least should be) layers of folks who when trouble pops up can make good decisions in the blink of an eye, or even faster.? Still, until seeing Kolber?s roundabout effort to help ESPN continue to sidestep shrapnel for allowing the ?I wanna kiss you? moment to happen by not ending the interview (or by never doing it in the first place), I never made the connection.? Joe was always the bad guy, and ESPN and Kolber were always without blame of any kind.

After hearing Kolber?s explanation, I?m starting to think that maybe a few tougher questions should have been asked back in late 2003.? It?ll be interesting to see if any of those questions are asked now.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/01/28/report-decision-on-peyton-mannings-future-made-weeks-ago/related/

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Obama bypasses Senate to fill labor board posts (The Arizona Republic)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

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Codecademy?s CodeYear Attracts 100,000 Aspiring Programmers In 48 Hours

Talk about starting your year off on the right foot. Two days ago, Codecademy ??a startup that's looking to bring programming to the masses ??launched a nifty initiative called Code Year. It's pretty straightforward: sign up, and each week you'll receive some programming lessons in your email inbox. And apparently, there are a lot of people who want to learn how to code. Code Year?just had its 100,000th user sign up ??a remarkable milestone given that the site has only been up for 48 hours. And that number continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/91VMBYkigzI/

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Woman takes unique road to sue Honda over mileage (AP)

TORRANCE, Calif. ? A woman who expected her 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid to be her dream car wants Honda to pay for not delivering the high mileage it promised. But rather than joining other owners in a class-action lawsuit, she is going solo in small claims court, an unusual move that could offer a bigger payout if it doesn't backfire.

A trial is set for Tuesday afternoon in Torrance, where American Honda Motor Co. has its West Coast headquarters.

Heather Peters says her car never came close to getting the promised 50 miles per gallon, and as its battery deteriorated, it was getting only 30 mpg. She wants Honda to pay for her trouble and the extra money she spent on gas.

Peters, a former lawyer who long ago gave up her bar card, has devised a unique legal vehicle to drive Honda into court ? a small claims suit that could cost the company up to $10,000 in her case and every other individual case filed in the same manner.

If other claimants follow her lead, she estimates Honda could be forced to pay $2 billion in damages. No high-priced lawyers are involved and the process is streamlined.

"I would not be surprised if she won," said Richard Cupp Jr., who teaches product liability law at Pepperdine University. "The judge will have a lot of discretion and the evidentiary standards are relaxed in small claims court."

A win for Peters could encourage others to take this simplified route, he said.

"There's an old saying among lawyers," Cupp said. "If you want real justice, go to small claims court."

But he questioned whether her move, supported by publicity on the Internet and elsewhere, would start a groundswell of such suits. He suggested that few people would want to expend the time and energy that Peters has put into her suit when the potential payoff is as little as a few thousand dollars.

Peters opted out of a series of class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of similar Honda hybrid owners when she saw a proposed settlement would give owners no more than $200 cash and a rebate of $500 or $1,000 to purchase a new Honda.

The settlement would give trial lawyers $8.5 million, Peters said.

"I was shocked," she said. "I wrote to Honda and said I would take $7,500, which was then the limit on small claims in California. It is going up to $10,000 in 2012."

She said she also offered to trade her hybrid for a comparable car with a manual transmission, the only thing she trusted at that point.

"I wrote the letter and I said, `If you don't respond, I will file a suit in small claims court.' I gave them my phone number," she said. "They never called, and I filed the suit."

She said she also sent emails to top executives at Honda with no response.

Aaron Jacoby, a Los Angeles attorney who heads the automotive industry group at the Arent Fox law firm, said Peters' strategy, while intriguing, is unlikely to change the course of class-action litigation.

"In the class-action, the potential claimants don't have to do anything," Jacoby said. "It's designed to be an efficient way for a court to handle multiple claims of the same type."

He also questioned her criticism of class-action lawyers for the fees they receive. Jacoby, who handles such cases, said lawyers who take on the multiple clients involved do extensive work ? sometimes spanning years ? and are not in it just for money.

"They're representing the underdog and they believe they are performing a public duty," he said. "Many of these people could not get lawyers to represent them individually."

American Honda's offices were closed for the holidays and no one could be reached for comment. Peters said the company has tried five times to delay the trial but each effort was rebuffed.

The upside of Peters' unusual move, she says, is that litigants are not allowed to have lawyers argue in small claims court in California. This means any award will not be diluted by attorney's fees. Honda would have to appoint a non-lawyer employee to argue its side in court.

"If I prevail and get $10,000, they have 200,000 of these cars out there. That's a potential payout of $2 billion," she said.

While she doubts that all other owners will take the same route, she suggests the penalty could be substantial for the company if a large percentage of the owners file individually.

A judge in San Diego County is due to rule in March on whether to approve Honda's latest class action settlement offer. Members of the class have until Feb. 11 to accept or decline the settlement.

Peters has launched a website, DontSettleWithHonda.org, urging others to take the small claims route.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120103/ap_on_re_us/us_honda_hybrid_suit

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