Obama to attend Senate GOP lunch next week

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, left, and Majority Leader Harry Reid in Washington, Feb. 27, 2013. (Kevin??A new era of outreach? President Barack Obama will join Senate Republicans at their weekly behind-closed-doors lunch next week, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on Wednesday. Obama requested the March 14 meeting on Tuesday through his chief of staff.

?Senate Republicans welcome the president to the Capitol. And I appreciate he took my recommendation to hear from all of my members,? McConnell said in a statement.

?We promised the American people that we would cut Washington spending, and the president signed those cuts into law. We have numerous challenges facing the country, and Republicans have offered the president serious solutions to shrink Washington spending and grow the economy," the Kentucky Republican said. "And we will have an opportunity to discuss them with the president at the lunch.?

Obama last attended a Senate Republican luncheon on May 25, 2010, according to McConnell's office.

On Friday, the president met with McConnell, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican House Speaker John Boehner and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Republicans broadly dismissed that discussion as an 11th-hour photo op. The two sides have been at war over painful automatic spending cuts hitting federal agencies across the board, reductions known in Washington as "sequestration."

Obama also said Friday that he would keep reaching out to Republicans in a bid to forge a "caucus of common sense" that might work to replace sequestration, which hits agencies across the board rather than making considered reductions to bloated or wasteful programs. House Republicans have charged that the White House had 18 months between the time when Obama signed the cuts into law to come up with a plan to replace them and failed to do so. That claim is untrue.

Obama has also requested a meeting with House Republicans next week, but that has yet to be scheduled, Boehner chief of staff, Mike Sommers, said in an email message to GOP lawmakers on Wednesday.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-attend-senate-gop-lunch-next-week-143007963--politics.html

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Here are JPMorgan's best trading ideas for stock investors | Trading ...

J.P. Morgan released its list of best stock investing ideas on Tuesday, outlining how investors should position themselves for the next few months.

?The?big picture remains favorable and we want to overweight equities in 2013,? said?Thomas Lee, chief U.S. equity strategist at JPMorgan.

JPMorgan has a specific index which tracks its top picks for the first half of 2013, and includes over three dozen companies. Many are blue chip names, such as Bank of America, Walt Disney, Starbucks and Canadian Pacific.

?We see the risk/reward in equity markets as balanced,? said Mr. Lee. ?We believe investors should focus only on high-quality ideas, with strong management teams, visibility or a history of execution, valuations that are attractive and a chart that does not require major inflections to work.?

Mr. Lee, who has been known for his bullish market forecasts in the past, has a year-end target of 1,580 for the S&P 500, compared with the index?s current level of about 1,541.

?The underlying elements to support the secular bull market remain in place,? he said. ?A durable goods spending recovery is becoming more visible?(capex, housing, autos, and construction), leading to eventual re-acceleration of?corporate profits.?

JPMorgan?s top picks for 2013 have actually outperformed the S&P 500 as a group in the last three years. The top picks, which are all included in JPMorgan U.S. Best Ideas for 1H-213 Basket Index (<JPUS1H13> on Bloomberg), have posted an annualized return of 9.9% during that time period. The S&P 500 by contrast has posted an annualized return of 9.5% during that same time period.

For those interested, here is a list of stocks in the basket:

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Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2013/03/05/here-are-jpmorgans-best-trading-ideas-for-stock-investors/

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Sen. Menendez says he looks forward to vindication

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Sen. Robert Menendez, who has maintained all along that he never paid prostitutes for sex, said he is looking forward to whatever evidence emerges from courts in the Dominican Republic to vindicate him.

A Dominican lawyer on Monday released an affidavit from a 23-year-old woman saying she fabricated a story about Menendez paying her for sex.

"I've always said that these are false, they're smears," Menendez, D-N.J., told reporters at the Capitol, referring to published reports that he paid prostitutes for sex in the Dominican Republic. "And, so, I look forward to seeing whatever the Dominican courts have that prove what I've said all along."

Vincio Castillo Seman, a Dominican lawyer, told reporters at a news conference Monday in the Dominican Republic that a woman identified as Nexis de los Santos now claims both that she "never went to bed with" Menendez and never actually met him.

Castillo, the son of a Dominican presidential adviser and the brother of a member of the country's Congress, has been entwined in the scandal himself, accused of hosting outings on his yacht in which Menendez used the services of prostitutes.

Like Menendez, he has strongly denied the allegations. Castillo said he would seek a criminal probe into the source of the reports. On Monday, Castillo distributed copies of the woman's sworn statement to reporters. The woman did not attend.

Castillo said de los Santos claims she and a friend were approached by another Dominican lawyer, Melanio Figueroa. The two women recited the accusations on a video that was recorded without their consent, he said.

In an interview with The Miami Herald, Figueroa denied orchestrating the accusations against Menendez. "It was a case that I handled for these women and faithfully represented them for what they said," he said.

Just before Menendez's successful re-election in November, The Daily Caller, a conservative website, published a story that included a video interview with two women who claimed to be prostitutes. The women ? whose faces were blurred in the video ? said Menendez paid them $100 for sex after agreeing to a fee of $500.

On its website early Tuesday, The Daily Caller said neither of the women in the video identified herself as Nexis de los Santos. The website also said both women consented to the presence of a video webcam.

In the video released last year, the two women also claimed they had sex with Castillo and Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Florida eye doctor of Dominican descent who is a prominent Democratic campaign contributor and a major supporter of Menendez. De los Santos claims those allegations are also fabricated.

Melgen said in a statement that he is pleased Dominican authorities are investigating the prostitution claims, which he says are false.

Menendez's ties to Melgen have come under close scrutiny after an FBI raid last month at the doctor's West Palm Beach, Fla., offices. Menendez has acknowledged flying on Melgen's private jet to the Dominican Republic twice and was compelled to reimburse $58,000 for the two flights that he had previously failed to report.

A watchdog group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has said it had received emails starting in April 2012 alleging that Menendez used the services of prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. The emails came from someone identified as "Peter Williams," though that may be a pseudonym.

___

Associated Press writers Ezequiel Abiu Lopez in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sen-menendez-says-looks-forward-vindication-121717237--politics.html

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K-12 student database jazzes tech startups, spooks parents

(Reuters) - An education technology conference this week in Austin, Texas, will clang with bells and whistles as startups eagerly show off their latest wares.

But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

In operation just three months, the database already holds files on millions of children identified by name, address and sometimes social security number. Learning disabilities are documented, test scores recorded, attendance noted. In some cases, the database tracks student hobbies, career goals, attitudes toward school - even homework completion.

Local education officials retain legal control over their students' information. But federal law allows them to share files in their portion of the database with private companies selling educational products and services.

Entrepreneurs can't wait.

"This is going to be a huge win for us," said Jeffrey Olen, a product manager at CompassLearning, which sells education software.

CompassLearning will join two dozen technology companies at this week's SXSWedu conference in demonstrating how they might mine the database to create custom products - educational games for students, lesson plans for teachers, progress reports for principals.

The database is a joint project of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which provided most of the funding, the Carnegie Corporation of New York and school officials from several states. Amplify Education, a division of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, built the infrastructure over the past 18 months. When it was ready, the Gates Foundation turned the database over to a newly created nonprofit, inBloom Inc, which will run it.

States and school districts can choose whether they want to input their student records into the system; the service is free for now, though inBloom officials say they will likely start to charge fees in 2015. So far, seven states - Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Massachusetts - have committed to enter data from select school districts. Louisiana and New York will be entering nearly all student records statewide.

"We look at personalized learning as the next big leap forward in education," said Brandon Williams, a director at the Illinois State Board of Education.

IF DATA LEAKS, WHAT REMEDIES?

Federal officials say the database project complies with privacy laws. Schools do not need parental consent to share student records with any "school official" who has a "legitimate educational interest," according to the Department of Education. The department defines "school official" to include private companies hired by the school, so long as they use the data only for the purposes spelled out in their contracts.

The database also gives school administrators full control over student files, so they could choose to share test scores with a vendor but withhold social security numbers or disability records.

That's hardly reassuring to many parents.

"Once this information gets out there, it's going to be abused. There's no doubt in my mind," said Jason France, a father of two in Louisiana.

While inBloom pledges to guard the data tightly, its own privacy policy states that it "cannot guarantee the security of the information stored ... or that the information will not be intercepted when it is being transmitted."

Parents from New York and Louisiana have written state officials in protest. So have the Massachusetts chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and Parent-Teacher Association. If student records leak, are hacked or abused, "What are the remedies for parents?" asked Norman Siegel, a civil liberties attorney in New York who has been working with the protestors. "It's very troubling."

VENTURE CAPITAL MAGNET

Fans of the project respond that the files are safer in the database than scattered about school districts. Plus, they say, the potential upside is enormous, with the power to transform classrooms across the U.S.

Does Johnny have trouble converting decimals to fractions? The database will have recorded that - and may have recorded as well that he finds textbooks boring, adores animation and plays baseball after school. Personalized learning software can use that data to serve up a tailor-made math lesson, perhaps an animated game that uses baseball statistics to teach decimals.

Johnny's teacher can watch his development on a "dashboard" that uses bright graphics to map each of her students' progress on dozens, even hundreds, of discrete skills.

"You can start to see what's effective for each particular student," said Adria Moersen, a high school teacher in Colorado who has tested some of the new products.

The sector is undeniably hot; technology startups aimed at K-12 schools attracted more than $425 million in venture capital last year, according to the NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit that focuses on the sector. The investment company GSV Advisors tracked 84 deals in the sector last year, up from 15 in 2007.

In addition to its $100 million investment in the database, the Gates Foundation has pledged $70 million in grants to schools and companies to develop personalized learning tools.

New products regularly come to market, but both educators and entrepreneurs say adoption has been slow because of technical hurdles.

WARNING SYSTEMS TO FORESTALL DROPOUTS?

Schools tend to store different bits of student information in different databases, often with different operating systems. That makes it clunky to integrate new learning apps into classrooms.

At the Rocketship chain of charter schools, for instance, administrators must manually update at least five databases to keep their education software running smoothly when a child transfers from one teacher to another, said Charlie Bufalino, a Rocketship executive.

The extra steps add expense, which limits how many apps a school can buy. And because the data is so fragmented, the private companies don't always get a robust picture of each student's academic performance, much less their personal characteristics.

The new database aims to wipe away those obstacles by integrating all student information - including data that may previously have been stored in paper files or teacher gradebooks - in a single, flexible platform.

Education technology companies can use the same platform to design their software, so their programs will hook into a rich trove of student data if a district or state authorizes access.

That prospect has some companies dreaming big.

Larry Berger, an executive at Amplify Education, says the data could be mined to develop "early warning systems." Perhaps it will turn out, for instance, that most high school dropouts began to struggle with math at age 8. If so, all future 8-year-olds fitting that pattern could be identified and given extra help.

Companies with access to the database will also be able to identify struggling teachers and pinpoint which concepts their students are failing to master. One startup that could benefit: BloomBoard, which sells schools professional development plans customized to each teacher.

The new database "is a godsend for us," said Jason Lange, the chief executive of BloomBoard. "It allows us to collect more data faster, quicker and cheaper."

Whether all this data, and all the programs that use it, will transform education is another question. Most data-driven software has only been tested on a small scale; results are often mixed.

Though he is bullish on the sector, Michael Moe, the chief investment officer at GSV Capital, cautions that there is as yet no proof the new technology will produce "game-changing outcomes" for students - or, for that matter, sterling profits for investors.

Others are more skeptical still.

"The hype in the tech press is that education is an engineering problem that can be fixed by technology," said Frank Catalano of Intrinsic Strategy, a consulting firm focused on education and technology. "To my mind, that's a very naive and destructive view."

(Reporting by Stephanie Simon; editing by Prudence Crowther)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/k-12-student-database-jazzes-tech-startups-spooks-171240089.html

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Victims raise legal questions about retired pope

FILE - In this Tuesday, May 11, 2010 file photo, Pope Benedict XVI, center, is saluted by military guards upon his arrival at Portela Airport in Lisbon at the start of a four day visit to Portugal. Attorneys who have tried unsuccessfully for years to sue the Vatican over failures to stop clergy sex abuse are looking into whether former Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down on Feb. 28, 2013, is more legally vulnerable in retirement, especially when he travels beyond the Vatican walls. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

FILE - In this Tuesday, May 11, 2010 file photo, Pope Benedict XVI, center, is saluted by military guards upon his arrival at Portela Airport in Lisbon at the start of a four day visit to Portugal. Attorneys who have tried unsuccessfully for years to sue the Vatican over failures to stop clergy sex abuse are looking into whether former Pope Benedict XVI, who stepped down on Feb. 28, 2013, is more legally vulnerable in retirement, especially when he travels beyond the Vatican walls. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Attorneys who have tried unsuccessfully for years to sue the Vatican over failures to stop clergy sex abuse are looking into whether former Pope Benedict XVI is more legally vulnerable in retirement, especially if he travels beyond the Vatican walls.

A U.S. lawyer for the Vatican argues that, like any former head of state, Benedict retains legal immunity regardless of whether he is in or out of office. But advocates for victims say immunity in this case should be tested, since modern-day courts have never before dealt with an emeritus pope.

"So much of this is unprecedented," said Pamela Spees, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which is pressing the International Criminal Court to investigate the Vatican's response to abusive priests as a crime against humanity. "There's nothing set in stone about it."

Benedict stepped down last week, becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to do so. Before he became head of the Roman Catholic Church in 2005, he spent more than two decades in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that over the years gained authority to oversee abuse claims against clergy worldwide.

Still, his record on trying to end abuse stands above that of many other church officials.

Benedict spoke openly of ridding the church of "filth" and was the first pontiff to meet directly with victims, during a 2008 visit to the U.S.

He instructed the Rev. Marcial Maciel, founder of the conservative Legion of Christ religious order, who was favored by Pope John Paul II, to leave the ministry and lead a life of prayer and penance. Maciel had been accused for years of abusing young men.

Benedict also ordered bishops worldwide to craft guidelines on protecting children and keeping abusers out of the priesthood. Jeffrey Lena, a U.S. attorney for the Vatican, said that Benedict deserves "tremendous credit" for "recognizing the problem and helping to change the church's approach."

However, advocates for victims have criticized his reforms as half-steps.

As evidence, they point to the Maciel case. The pope never disclosed what the influential priest had done wrong. Only later was it confirmed that Maciel had molested seminarians and fathered at least three children. In Ireland, where church leaders had shielded guilty clerics from prosecution for decades, the Vatican during Benedict's pontificate refused or ignored repeated requests from state investigators for access to its case files.

Benedict's lengthy record dealing with the scandal before he was pope plays a part in the complaint against the church with the International Criminal Court. The court prosecutor, who can decide whether to open an inquiry, has not said whether he will act. Lena has called the effort, which was first filed in 2011, "ludicrous."

Spees said Benedict's resignation would play no role in the longshot case before the International Criminal Court. The world's only permanent war crimes tribunal, its prosecutor does not take into account traditional immunity claims.

However, she and others argue that at a minimum Benedict's resignation could help reduce resistance by prosecutors or other officials to take action against him.

Advocates point to how attitudes changed in the United States, where police and prosecutors once allowed local church officials to deal privately with priests' misconduct. After thousands of civil lawsuits revealed the scope of the abuse scandal, some American civil authorities began aggressively investigating whether Catholic leaders did enough to protect children.

And in staunchly Catholic Ireland, revelations by state investigators about abuse there led to an unprecedented dressing down of the Vatican in 2011 by Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

"They reframed the question," said Timothy Lytton, an Albany Law School professor and author of the book "Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sex Abuse."

"Before 1984, nobody talked about it. Police wouldn't investigate it. Now, books are being written on the responsibility of the pope. All over Europe there are questions about the Vatican's role in all this and that is largely the results of lawsuits," he said.

Still, no lawsuit against the Vatican has come anywhere near a trial stage, and it's unclear whether Benedict will now be any easier to reach.

Of the thousands of abuse lawsuits filed against church officials, only a small number have named the Vatican as a defendant. They have come mostly from the United States, with a few from Ireland. In 2005, just months after the conclave that elected Benedict, a U.S. judge in Texas dismissed a lawsuit, ruling the pope had immunity as a head of state. The U.S. Justice Department had filed a motion arguing that allowing the suit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."

Many other lawsuits never got off the ground for a more mundane reason: No suit can proceed until the targeted person is officially notified.

Notes Lytton: "You can't hire a county sheriff to fly to Rome to knock on a door." Jeff Anderson, a Minnesota attorney who has represented thousands of clergy abuse victims over three decades, including in lawsuits against the Vatican, said in one case the Holy See returned the notification he sent stamped, "Do Not Want. Not Welcome."

Anderson says the lawsuits he has filed target the office of the papacy, not the man who served in it, so Benedict's resignation has no significance for any future U.S. civil suits.

Where the pope's novel status as a retiree could come into play, Anderson says, is if a government decides to take action against him.

Benedict has said he will retreat to a life of prayer in a monastery behind Vatican walls, leading victims groups to wonder whether preserving the former pope's legal immunity played a role in his choice of where to live out the rest of his days.

Lena insists immunity played no role in Benedict's decision. If the former pope does travel to another country, Lena said, he will be afforded the same dignities and protections given to any former high-ranking official. While the Vatican prepares the monastery for Benedict, he is staying in the town of Castel Gandolfo in the papal summer retreat which is technically part of the Holy See. The Vatican also has legal treaties that govern relations with Italy and many other countries and could provide additional protection from any legal action.

Still, some attorneys who fear Benedict will be targeted say they worry about the broad powers European magistrates hold to take legal action on behalf of their own citizens.

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and professor at Duquesne Law School in Pittsburgh, who has worked with American bishops on abuse prevention, noted that in Europe, magistrates can, among other actions, arrest and detain officials before any trial. Next month, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which has been a leading critical voice against bishops in the United States, plans a conference in Dublin for victims of abuse worldwide.

"Americans don't appreciate the vast powers that investigating magistrates have in Europe," Cafardi said. "It only takes one who wants to make a name for him or herself to issue an arrest warrant for the former pope."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-05-Pope-Immunity/id-c95d1a803ee94d3fad6db51a19ff6c6e

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Trial starts in UAE for 94 charged in coup plot

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) ? Ninety four people have gone on trial in the United Arab Emirates on charges of trying to overthrow the state as authorities barred international media and several rights groups from the proceedings.

The trial marks is the culmination of a crackdown that started last year on Islamist groups in the Emirates with suspected links to the Muslim Brotherhood. Rights groups have criticized the crackdown and it has also raised tensions with Egypt, which is governed by the Islamist group.

Monday's hearing was attended by about 200 relatives of the defendants who were bussed to the security court in the capital, Abu Dhabi.

Khalid al-Roken, whose brother Mohammed is on trial, said before boarding a bus that the charges were baseless but that he remains hopeful his brother would be freed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/trial-starts-uae-94-charged-coup-plot-070534659.html

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100% 56 Up

All Critics (52) | Top Critics (20) | Fresh (52) | Rotten (0)

What ultimately is so compelling about 56 Up is the universality of the experiences. We were all once children. And we all will die. And in between, there is everything else.

We feel good, refreshed and depressed in watching these people get older, also embarrassed in moments and cautioned about the passage of time.

Apted, himself now in his early 70s, says he hopes to continue the series further. Long may it live.

Watching "56 Up" gives you the wonderful feeling of seeing a sociological experiment blossom into something novelistically rich and humane.

Time has been neither kind nor cruel to the 13 men and women profiled in "56 UP." It has just been time, which is what this groundbreaking series is about.

We are all older now, and this series proves it in a most deeply moving way.

What started as a crafty way of looking at the U.K.'s rigid class structure has grown into a portrait of melancholy middle age, with its heartbreaks and minor-key triumphs.

Those British kids are now 56

Watching the eighth film is intriguing but, in a way, disappointing. At this point in the game, it feels as if all the characters have determined their lots in life and are simply plodding through their interviews.

Quite simply one of the great documentary projects in the history of cinema, an engrossing sociological experiment on film; and though this mostly mellow installment isn't as revelatory as some earlier ones, it's still a remarkable document.

... feels like a retrospective and summation of the whole series, with ample quotation from the previous films, an approach that makes it interesting even for viewers who haven't seen the previous installments.

A completely unique and remarkable documentary project.

Apted skillfully weaves old footage with the new, and we become poignantly aware of another factor shaping their lives (and our own): biology, as the we watch the once-cute kids grow gray and heavy.

Perhaps the boldest and probably longest running sociological experiment on film.

I think the best thing about this movie (and the entire series) is that it forces the viewer to think about their own lives. It's kind of an awakening experience.

Once again, Apted assembles a captivating documentary that's profoundly educational, essential viewing to aid the understanding of the human experience.

"56 Up" is well worth seeing.

56 Up is still moving and philosophic, though not as exciting as earlier episodes, which had more drama.

The running time is over two hours, but the lives here are richly revealed and vastly rewarding.

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Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/56_up/

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