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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Cities where jobs will (and won't) be in 2012

Though Florida was hard hit by the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, and unemployment in the state sits 1.5 percent above the national average at 10.1 percent, in the first quarter of 2012, employers in two of Florida?s metropolitan areas are planning to increase their workforces at a rate that outpaces every other metro area in the country, according to employment services firm Manpower Group?s latest employment outlook survey, released earlier this month. In Cape Coral-Fort Myers, and in Lakeland-Winter Haven, a net 17 percent of employers plan to add employees in the first quarter of next year. Two other Florida metro areas, Bradenton-Sarasota-Venice and Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, make it into Manpower?s top 15, both with a 12 percent net hiring outlook.

To gauge companies? plans going forward, Manpower surveyed 18,000 employers in 100 metro areas. Manpower used a research firm that questioned hiring managers and human resource professionals by phone and email. Over the first two weeks in October, the firm asked four questions about companies? plans for the first quarter of 2012: do you plan to add to your staff, do you plan to reduce your staff, keep your staff at the same level, or are you unsure. Then Manpower crunched the numbers and came up with a ?net employment outlook.? The Manpower survey is by definition a rough measure, since it doesn?t count the number of jobs employers plan to add or subtract, but simply asks whether they plan to hire or fire.

Forbes.com slideshow: Where the jobs will (and won?t) be in 2012

In Lakeland-Winter Haven, employment has gotten a big boost from Legoland Florida, the 150-acre theme park that opened in mid-October and employs 1,100 people, according to Bob Gernert, head of the Winter Haven chamber of commerce. The city has several other job engines. One is a downtown technology hub housed in hurricane-resistant buildings that contain servers and fiber optic cables and a business accelerator that supports start-up technology ventures. Gernert estimates the hub has created 350 jobs. One more job creator: construction of a new rail freight logistics center planned for Winter Haven. The project is slated to start next year and will hire some 600 construction workers, according to Gernert.

Nearby Lakeland is home to several corporate headquarters that have been in hiring mode, including Publix Supermarkets, which has 2,600 employees, a regional office of car insurer Geico, which employs 1,900, and WellDyne RX, a pharmaceutical company that moved to Lakeland two years ago and plans to hire a total of more than 600 workers.

Des Moines, Iowa comes in third on the list of metro areas with the best hiring outlook, with a net increase of 14 percent. Houston, Texas and Phoenix, Az. also have a net hiring outlook of 14 percent.

Forbes.com: America?s worst cities for finding a job

At the other end of the spectrum, Spokane, Wash., Fresno, Calif. and Dayton, Ohio, all have negative hiring outlooks of -4 percent. In Spokane, for instance, 12 percent of employers say they plan to increase hiring, but 16 percent project they will be cutting staff early next year.

Nationwide, Manpower calculates net hiring growth at 9 percent, up from 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and a tiny bit better than a year ago, when the outlook was 8 percent. Melanie Holmes, a vice president at Manpower Group, says, ?the growth is not as robust as we?d like to see it.? Adds Holmes, ?we?ve had a positive outlook for nine straight quarters, but these numbers are pretty small. They?re not where we need to be to get us out of this unemployment hole we?re in.?

Manpower has been running its quarterly employment outlook survey since 1962. During prosperous times, the nationwide number has been in the double digits, hitting 20 percent in 2000, the last year the national unemployment rate dipped below 4 percent.

For Holmes, another telling number in the Q1 2012 survey is the percentage, of employers, 7 percent, who said they were unsure about hiring plans, up from just 3 percent last quarter. ?That?s the most significant increase we?ve seen since 1977, and the highest percentage since 2005,? says Holmes. ?There continues to be uncertainty about the marketplace so employers are reluctant to make the investment in a permanent hire.?

Forbes.com: Who?s getting hired right now
Forbes.com: America?s most promising companies??
Forbes.com: The best states for jobs
Forbes.com: Where the 1 percent live

? 2011 Forbes.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45758413/ns/business-forbes_com/

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Egypt charge 2 Israelis with smuggling weapons (AP)

CAIRO ? Egypt's state prosecutor on Monday charged two Israelis and a Ukrainian with smuggling weapons and trying to implicate Egyptian security, the first case of its kind against foreigners since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February.

A statement from the prosecutor's office said the three would be tried in an emergency state security court, usually reserved for terrorism cases. No date for the trial has been set.

The charges are the first case of bringing foreigners to trial in connection with the turmoil in Egypt since the ousting of longtime President Hosni Mubarak in February.

Although not directly holding the suspects responsible for any of the violence, the statement said the smuggled weapons were to be used in "illegal" operations aimed to implicate Egyptian security. No further details were given in the statement.

More than 100 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces since Mubarak was ousted.

The country's rulers have often blamed "hidden hands" and foreign funding in the violence.

The statement said the first suspect, an Israeli-Arab resident of Eilat, Moaz Zahalka, arrived at the Israel-Egypt border crossing at Taba, carrying a large wooden box shaped like a cross. Upon inspection, the statement said officials found an automatic rifle and ammunition in the box.

The statement said that during interrogation, Zahalka, a tour agent, confessed he had two accomplices_ a Ukrainian living in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, who had asked another Israeli-Arab to send him the weapon. Zahalka frequently visits Egypt's Red Sea resorts, the statement said.

The Ukrainian and one Israeli-Arab are in custody, while the other Israeli has not been apprehended, the prosecution said.

In June, Egypt accused an Israeli of spying during the uprising. He was freed without being charged. Also, an Iranian diplomat was accused of spying and asked to leave the country.

Also Monday, a security official said late Monday a militant was arrested in northern Sinai. He said the militant had instructions on making explosives and statements denouncing the Egyptian military and police. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

___

Additional reporting by Ashraf Sweilam in el-Arish, Egypt.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111226/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt

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U-M Psychiatrist: 'Holiday Blues' Common Around Christmas

shelby-utica.patch.com:

As Christmas draws closer, we're bombarded with the final days of holiday parties, shopping for gifts and preparing for guests.

Commercials promising love in exchange for the latest gadget or jewelry bombard us 24 hours a day. The actors in the ads are always happy and smiling. Nobody ever seems to be disappointed.

Read the whole story: shelby-utica.patch.com

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/25/u-m-psychiatrist-holiday-_n_1169159.html

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Ogunquit Playhouse Wins Award For Finding Three Trombones For Their Big Parade

Monday, December 26, 2011

Cartel builds own radio system across Mexico

MEXICO CITY ? When convoys of soldiers or federal police move through the scrubland of northern Mexico, the Zetas drug cartel knows they are coming.

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a "halcon," or hawk.

The radio signal travels deep into the countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There the branches of the 8-foot-tall rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles across Mexico, a shadow communications system that lets the cartel coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a military or law-enforcement agency.

The Mexican army and marines have begun attacking the system, seizing hundreds of pieces of communications equipment in at least three operations since September that offer a firsthand look at a far-ranging and sophisticated infrastructure.

Current and former U.S. law-enforcement officials say the equipment, ranging from professional-grade towers to handheld radios, was part of a network that extended until recently from the U.S. border down Mexico's Gulf coast and into Guatemala.

The network let Zetas operatives conduct encrypted conversations without depending on the official cellphone network, which is relatively easy for authorities to tap into, and in many cases does not reach far into the countryside.

The Mexican army said on Dec. 4 that it had seized at least 167 antennas, 155 repeaters, 166 power sources, 71 pieces of computer equipment and 1,446 radios. The equipment has been taken down in several cities in the Gulf coast state of Veracruz and the northern states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, San Luis Potosi and Tamaulipas.

The network was built around 2006 by the Gulf cartel, a narcotics-trafficking gang that employed a group of enforcers known as the Zetas, who had defected from Mexican army special forces. The Zetas split from the Gulf cartel in 2010 and have since become one of the nation's most dominant drug cartels.

The network's mastermind was Jose Luis Del Toro Estrada, a communications expert known as Tecnico who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute cocaine in federal court in Houston, Texas, two years ago.

Using millions of dollars worth of legally available equipment, Del Toro established the system in most of Mexico's 31 states and parts of northern Guatemala under the orders of the top leaders in the Gulf cartel and the Zetas. The Gulf cartel boss in each drug-smuggling territory was responsible for buying towers and repeaters as well as equipping underlings with radios, according to Del Toro's plea agreement.

Del Toro employed specialists to run the system and research new technology, according to the agreement.

Mexican authorities, however, presented a different picture of the cartel radio infrastructure, saying it was less monolithic than the one described by U.S. authorities.

In recent years, reporters traveling with the Mexican military have heard cartels using radio equipment to broadcast threats on soldiers' frequencies. The military official told the AP the signals are now encrypted, but cartels still try to break in.

At least until recently, the cartel's system was controlled by computers that enabled complex control of the radio signals, allowing the cartel to direct its communications to specific radios while bypassing others, according to Grupo Savant, an intelligence and security consulting firm in Washington.

The radio system appears to be a "low-cost, highly extendable and maintainable network" that shows the Zetas' sophistication, said Gordon Housworth, managing director of Intellectual Capital Group, LLC, a risk- and technology-consulting firm that has studied the structure and operations of Mexican cartels and criminal groups.

Other Mexican criminal organizations maintain similar radio networks, including the Sinaloa cartel, based in the Pacific coast state of the same name, and the Barrios Azteca street gang, which operates in Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, a U.S. law-enforcement official said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, saidid the Zetas' system is the largest.

The cartel has had little difficulty in replacing radio gear and other equipment seized in smaller operations in recent years. Contacts among highest-ranking Zetas operatives tend to take place in highly encrypted communications over the Internet, according to Grupo Savant.

In the state of Tamaulipas, across the border from Texas, many antennas are concealed in the foliage of the rockrose, an invasive shrub that's spread across much of the state's open land. Even from a few feet away it's hard to see the towers or power cables.

In Nuevo Laredo, the Zetas' first stronghold, antennas sprout from rooftops and empty lots. One soldier told the AP that even when authorities took down an antenna there, it was swiftly replaced.

Source: http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r5666144762

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Japan probe finds nuclear disaster response failed (AP)

TOKYO ? A Japanese government report has found that the response to the nuclear crisis that followed the March 11 tsunami was confused and filled with errors.

The report submitted Monday outlined a government investigation into the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The investigation will be finished by mid-2012.

The report found workers at Tokyo Electric Power Co. were untrained to handle emergencies like the power shutdown that struck when the tsunami destroyed backup generators ? setting off the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

It also found that workers had mistakenly assumed an emergency cooling system had been working.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111226/ap_on_re_as/as_japan_nuclear

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Sony to sell LCD venture stake to Samsung for $940 million

By Reiji Murai and Hyunjoo Jin

TOKYO/SEOUL | Mon Dec 26, 2011 4:13am EST

TOKYO/SEOUL (Reuters) - Sony Corp has agreed to sell its nearly 50 percent stake in an LCD joint venture with Samsung Electronics to the South Korean company for $940 million, as it struggles to reduce huge losses at its TV business.

The seven-year-old venture cut its capital by 15 percent in July and industry sources had said Sony was negotiating an exit, aiming to switch to cheaper outsourcing for flat screens for its TVs while Samsung pushes ahead with next-generation displays.

"In terms of direction it is a positive (for Sony)," said Keita Wakabayashi, an analyst at Mito Securities in Tokyo, about the deal. "But if they are making a loss on the sale, one could ask why they didn't make this decision sooner."

"Their biggest problem is that they are not making a profit even though they don't have many plants," he said.

In November, Sony, the world's third largest flat panel TV maker, warned of a fourth straight year of net losses for the financial year to next March, with its TV unit alone set to lose $2.2 billion on tumbling demand and a surging yen.

The company said on Monday it would review its earnings forecast to reflect 66 billion yen in impairment losses from the transaction, as well as expected future cost savings.

While the sale is seen as a move in the right direction for Sony, it will not be good for Samsung, analysts said.

"Sony may shift to Taiwanese LCD makers should they offer cheaper prices," Song Myung-sup, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities, said in Seoul.

Shares in Sony ended 1.6 percent higher, compared with a 1 percent gain in Tokyo's benchmark Nikkei average, while Samsung Electronics shares fell 0.2 percent.

Sony's panel venture with Samsung, S-LCD, was established to secure stable supplies for Sony's flat-screen TVs at a time of shortages.

AILING BUSINESS

Once a symbol of Japan's high-tech might, Sony has sold off TV factories in Spain, Slovakia and Mexico in the past few years and outsources more than half of its production to companies including Hon Hai Precision Industry, the contract electronics maker that also counts iPhone maker Apple Inc as a key customer.

Sony retains four TV plants of its own -- in Japan, Brazil, China and Malaysia.

Some analysts say the $100 billion LCD TV market peaked last year and forecast it will shrink 3 to 4 percent annually, as consumers in advanced countries have already traded in their bulky cathode-ray tube TV sets for flat screens, while the LCD market has been in a glut since last summer.

Global TV manufacturers are restructuring their businesses and outsourcing production as cut-throat competition and weak demand squeeze margins.

Analysts have criticized Sony for failing to aggressively take on the competition in the TV market from South Korean rivals Samsung and LG Electronics Inc, the largest and second-largest players, respectively.

In November, Sony cut its TV unit sales forecast for the second time this year and dropped a plan to boost its TV sales to 40 million sets a year in the fiscal year ending March 2013, effectively conceding defeat to Samsung, the world's largest flat-panel TV maker.

Samsung has said it expects the flat-panel TV market to grow 10 percent next year, and aims to outperform the market.

Sony said in April it would not raise its stake in a separate LCD venture with Sharp Corp for at least a year, and in August said it would merge its loss-making small-panel business with the government-backed Japan Display.

In October, it signaled a stepped-up push into the smartphone market by announcing it would take control of its mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson for $1.5 billion.

The company is hoping to exploit its music and video content and compatibility with its other devices like TVs and tablet computers to help it catch up with smartphone leaders such as Apple.

($1 = 1,155 won; 77.99 yen)

(Additional reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Michael Watson and Editing by Vinu Pilakkott)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/businessNews/~3/bDD0LjELPQA/us-sony-samsung-idUSTRE7BP03N20111226

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Tuesday, December 27, 2011

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Monday, December 26, 2011