“Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius To Be Released On Bail
“Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius To Be Released On Bail Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News
Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/02/blade-runner-oscar-pistorius-to-be-released-on-bail/
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Accused Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will "suffer" alone if he is lying, the father of his slain girlfriend said in an interview with a South African newspaper. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.
By Berenice Garcia, Writer, NBC News
Accused Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will ?suffer? alone if he is lying, the father of his slain girlfriend said in an interview with a South African newspaper.
Barry and June Steenkamp, mother and father of deceased 29-year-old model and law school graduate Reeva Steenkamp, told the Afrikaans-language paper Beeld that they were grief-stricken by the loss of their daughter.
?It doesn?t matter how much money he has and how good his legal team is, he will have to live with his conscience if he allows his legal team to lie for him,? Barry Steenkamp told Beeld.
?But if he is telling the truth, then perhaps I can forgive him one day,? he told the paper. ?If it didn?t happen the way he said it did, he must suffer, and he will suffer ? only he knows.?
June Steenkamp said she was sent a flower bouquet and card by Pistorius? relatives.
?Yes, but what does it mean? Nothing,? she told Beeld. She said the Pistorius family was ?not to blame? for her daughter?s death.
Pistorius? family said that they felt ?relief? to have the accused athlete home in a statement on Saturday.
?This constitutes a moment of relief under these otherwise very grave circumstances,? Arnold Pistorius, Oscar?s uncle, said in a statement. ?We are extremely thankful that Oscar is now home.?
?We are acutely aware of the fact that this is only the beginning of a long road to prove that, as we know, Oscar never intended to harm Reeva, let alone cause her death,? the uncle said. ?We realize that the law must run its course, and would not have it any other way.?
The family announced on Saturday that it was canceling all social media sites for Carl and Aimee Pistorius, Oscar?s brother and sister. Janine Hills, a spokesperson for the family, said that Carl Pistorius? Twitter account had been hacked.
?It is most unfortunate that during this sensitive time, someone would choose to hack into Oscar Pistorius older brother, Carl Pistorius? Twitter handle,? Hill said in a statement. ?Carl did not tweet this afternoon, out of respect to Oscar and Reeva.?
There was no hint that the romance between Steenkamp and Pistorius would come to such a tragic end, the model?s uncle told Rock Center with Brian Williams.
?Nobody ever saw it coming,? Mike Steenkamp said. ?Never forewarned.?
Pistorius, 26, is charged with premeditated murder in the Valentine?s Day shooting death of Steenkamp. Pistorius has said that the shooting was an accident, and that he thought he was shooting at an intruder in his Pretoria home. He was freed on bail Friday.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related:
'Nobody saw it coming,' Reeva Steenkamp's uncle says
Oscar Pistorius granted bail ahead of murder trial
Pistorius' uncle: Olympian in shock, 'will bounce back'
This story was originally published on Sat Feb 23, 2013 8:35 AM EST
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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) ? When he first took over as Orlando's general manager this past summer, Rob Hennigan was adamant that it would take a deliberate process to rebuild the team following the decision to trade All-Star center Dwight Howard.
Hennigan said that process took its next step via another tough decision he made in the final minutes of the Thursday's trade deadline.
The Magic traded veteran shooting guard and fan favorite J.J. Redick, along with center Gustavo Ayon and reserve point guard Ish Smith to the Milwaukee Bucks in exchange for guards Doron Lamb and Beno Udrih, as well as forward Tobias Harris.
In a separate trade, Orlando also acquired forward Hakim Warrick and cash considerations from the Charlotte Bobcats in exchange for forward Josh McRoberts. The team said it intends to waive Warrick.
"As we evaluated all our options leading up to the deadline...We made the deliberate decision to go ahead and make this move because we feel like it sets us in a direction that we're trying to go, which is to create something that is sustainable," Hennigan said. "At the end of the day we liked the Milwaukee deal because we felt we were able to get back some players that addressed some needs for us. We got some players we feel fit the timeline we're trying to put together to create a competitive window."
Hennigan said the Magic talked to about a dozen teams about various trades. He said the decision to take Milwaukee's deal was made about four minutes before the deadline because the consensus was the pieces they picked up helped them long-term.
He acknowledged Orlando was also setting itself up for the future and he is looking to make his roster younger and build through future drafts.
Hennigan said he does that by acquiring two young players in the rookie Lamb, and second-year Harris. The Magic also pick up a true backup point guard in Udrih to play behind veteran Jameer Nelson.
The new players are expected to get physicals on Friday and could be ready to suit up as early as Saturday when Orlando hosts Cleveland.
But Hennigan's first call Thursday was to the departing Redick, who had said handled the news as a "professional" and was "a class act." But he dismissed the notion that the move was at all inevitable because of the possible asking price for Redick as he enters free agency this summer.
A former first-round pick in his seventh season, Redick was a coveted name on the trade market. A 2006 Orlando draft selection, he is averaging career highs in points (15.1) and field goal percentage (45.0).
Now in the final year of a three-year $19 million contract and is likely to seek a long-term deal this summer. By comparison Ayon, who was acquired this summer in a sign-and-trade deal, is making about $1.5 in his second season. Smith was a preseason free-agent signing and is making less than $1 million.
"It was not an easy decision for us by any means," Hennigan said. "It was a hard decision, and I'll be honest with you guys. But when you look at it, you take all the different parts and you analyze what was available, we felt like this was a move we had to do to further the process of trying to create competitive team that's gonna be competitive for a long time."
Redick said this week that he was pleased with Hennigan's candidness throughout the season and remained open to the idea of staying in Orlando to finish the season.
He also told reporters after the Magic's loss to Dallas on Wednesday night that he recognized he could also be dealt.
"I can sit here and say I don't want to come back, I can sit here and say I do want to come back. Ultimately, it's their decision," Redick said.
Redick was a restricted free agent when he signed an offer sheet with Chicago in the summer of 2010, but Orlando matched his deal. With no restrictions after this season, the Magic had no guarantee that he would re-sign.
Still, the decision to deal Redick was not an unexpected move for a Magic team that has parted ways with a franchise player in Howard and last season's NBA Most Improved Player in Ryan Anderson.
Having been a part of all three decisions, the 30-year-old Hennigan joked that "I started dying my hair two months ago." He said knows fans will begin looking for results from the moves sooner than later.
"What I can tell you is this is a pressure business," he said. "It is what it is. We feel that pressure. We embrace that pressure. It's something that you really have to look at from, I think, a bigger picture and bigger perspective and understand that there are decisions you make because you believe in the process.
"And we believe in what we're doing. We believe in the way we make decisions. We believe in the research we do. It's our hope that our fans believe in that with us."
___
Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightower.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/magic-trade-redick-2-others-bucks-040456683--spt.html
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Global flavors of LTE bands can be a hassle for travelers and firms making multiple versions of the same device, but Qualcomm says its solved that quandary with a new radio chipset. Dubbed the RF360, the silicon is hailed as the world's first mobile chip that packs support for global LTE, which translates to connectivity for LTE-FDD, LTE-TDD, WCDMA, EV-DO, CDMA 1x, TD-SCDMA and GSM / EDGE -- breaking down the barriers separating roughly 40 different LTE bands. Not only does it lend globetrotters a hand, but Qualcomm claims the component carries a few other "world's first" features that allow manufacturers to build thinner products with improved antenna performance, battery life and connection reliability. The outfit also unveiled the WTR1625L chip, which stakes claim to an industry first by sporting carrier aggregation alongside international LTE compatibility. Hardware made with the RF360 isn't expected to arrive on shelves until the latter half of 2013, but for now you can mosey past the break for the nitty gritty details and a video to walk you through them.
Filed under: Cellphones, Tablets, Networking, Mobile
Source: Qualcomm
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/22/qualcomm-first-global-lte-chip/
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SALEM, Ore. (AP) -- Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber will brief other state leaders this weekend on his plan to lower Medicaid costs, touting an overhaul that President Barack Obama highlighted in his State of the Union address for its potential to lower the deficit even as health care expenses climb.
The Oregon Democrat leaves for Washington, D.C., on Friday to pitch his plan that changes the way doctors and hospitals are paid and improves health care coordination for low income residents so that treatable medical problems don't grow in severity or expense.
Kitzhaber says his goal is to win over a handful of other governors from each party.
"I think the politics have been dialed down a couple of notches, and now people are willing to sit down and talk about how we can solve the problem" of rising health care costs, Kitzhaber told The Associated Press in a recent interview.
Kitzhaber introduced the plan in 2011 in the face of a severe state budget deficit, and he's been talking for two years about expanding the initiative beyond his state. Now, it seems he's found people ready to listen.
Hospital executives from Alabama visited Oregon last month to learn about the effort. And the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it's giving Oregon a $45 million grant to help spread the changes beyond the Medicaid population and share information with other states, making it one of only six states to earn a State Innovation Model grant.
Kitzhaber will address his counterparts at a meeting of the National Governors Association. His talk isn't scheduled on the official agenda, but a spokeswoman confirmed that Kitzhaber is expected to present.
"The governors love what they call stealing from one another ? taking the good ideas and the successes of their colleagues and trying to figure out how to apply that in their home state," said Matt Salo, director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors.
There's been "huge interest" among other states in Oregon's health overhaul, Salo said, not because the concepts are brand new, but because the state managed to avoid pitfalls that often block health system changes.
Kitzhaber persuaded state lawmakers to redesign the system of delivering and paying for health care under Medicaid, creating incentives for providers to coordinate patient care and prevent avoidable emergency room visits. He has long complained that the current financial incentives encourage volume over quality, driving costs up without making people healthier.
Obama, in his State of the Union address this month, suggested that changes such as Oregon's could be part of a long-term strategy to lower the federal debt by reigning in the growing cost of federally funded health care.
"We'll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare, because our medical bills shouldn't be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital ? they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive," Obama said.
The Obama administration has invested in the program, putting up $1.9 billion to keep Oregon's Medicaid program afloat over the next five years while providers make the transition to new business models and incorporate new staff and technology.
In exchange, though, the state has agreed to lower per-capita health care cost inflation by 2 percentage points without affecting quality.
The Medicaid system is unique in each state, and Kitzhaber isn't suggesting that other states should adopt Oregon's specific approach, said Mike Bonetto, Kitzhaber's health care policy adviser. Rather, he wants governors to buy into the broad concept that the delivery system and payment models need to change.
That's not a new theory. But Oregon has shown that under the right circumstances massive changes to deeply entrenched business models can gain wide support.
What Oregon can't yet show is proof the idea is working ? that it's lowering costs without squeezing on the quality or availability of care. The state is just finishing compiling baseline data that will be used as a basis of comparison.
One factor driving the Obama administration's interest in Oregon's success is the president's health care overhaul. Under the Affordable Care Act, millions more Americans will join the Medicaid rolls after Jan. 1, and the health care system will have to be able to absorb the influx of patients in a logistically and financially sustainable way.
The federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for those additional patients in the first three years before scaling back to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond.
"There are a lot of governors who are facing the same challenges we're facing in Oregon," Kitzhaber said. "They recognize that the cost of health care is something they're going to have to get their arms around."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-govs-hear-oregon-health-000929321.html
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In this Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2012, photo, Eva Cevallos with her eleven-month daughter, Quinn, shop during the Thanksgiving Pre-Black Friday event at the Walmart Supercenter store in Rosemead, Calif. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. offered a weak business outlook Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, as new economic challenges for its low-income U.S. shoppers start to take a toll. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
In this Wednesday, Nov. 22, 2012, photo, Eva Cevallos with her eleven-month daughter, Quinn, shop during the Thanksgiving Pre-Black Friday event at the Walmart Supercenter store in Rosemead, Calif. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. offered a weak business outlook Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, as new economic challenges for its low-income U.S. shoppers start to take a toll. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
NEW YORK (AP) ? As the fortunes of many Americans go, so goes Wal-Mart, so goes the economy.
Even as the world's largest retailer on Thursday reported an 8.6 percent rise in fourth quarter profit during the busy holiday shopping season, it offered a weaker forecast for the coming months. The problem? The poor and middle-class Americans Wal-Mart caters to ? and who are big drivers of spending in the U.S. ? are struggling with rising gas prices, delayed income tax refunds and higher payroll taxes.
Melanie M. Burkhardt, a mother of two teenagers who shops at Wal-Mart, is one of those people. Burkhardt, a Waycross, Ga., resident, said she's been hit with a double whammy: the payroll tax hike, which has cut her household monthly income by $260, and higher gas prices.
"We had to do a flip on our budget," said Burkhardt, a legal assistant who plans to cut back on her trips to Wal-Mart. "This is money we used for things like going to a movie or splurging at Olive Garden. Not anymore."
It's widely known that Americans in the lower income brackets continue to struggle even as higher earners benefit from improved housing and stock markets, but Wal-Mart's results signal that matters may be getting worse for the nation's poor and middle-class. Wal-Mart is the latest in a string of big-name companies from Burger King to Zale to say those Americans are being squeezed by new challenges. But since Wal-Mart accounts for nearly 10 percent of nonautomotive retail spending in the U.S., it is a bellwether for the economy.
"Wal-Mart moms are the barometer of the U.S. household," said Brian Sozzi, chief equities analyst at NBG Productions who follows Wal-Mart. "Right now, they're afraid of higher taxes and inflation."
Indeed, while wealthier households have seen their stock portfolios grow, poor and middle-class Americans have struggled to regain their financial footing since the recession ended more than 3 ? years ago.
Stocks have roughly doubled since June 2009. Dividends and capital gains from stocks, which disproportionately benefit higher-income Americans, are taxed at lower rates compared with ordinary income
And while incomes for most Americans have failed to keep pace with inflation since the recession, that's been particularly true for middle and lower-income earners.
Median household income, adjusted for inflation, fell 1.5 percent to $50,054 in 2011 compared with 2010, the latest periods for which figures are available, according to the Census Bureau. That was down 8.1 percent from 2007, just before the recession began. (The median is the point halfway between the highest and lowest levels.)
But lower and middle-income households fared worse: The share of overall income earned by the bottom 80 percent of households shrank in 2011, while the income for the top 20 percent grew. And in 2012, inflation-adjusted hourly pay barely rose, inching up 0.3 percent.
Another hurdle for lower- and middle-income Americans has been the jump in gas prices since mid-January. The average price for a gallon of gas rose 47 cents in the past month to $3.78 on Thursday, according to AAA.
Tax changes also have hit the nation's lowest earners especially hard. On Jan. 1, Social Security payroll taxes rose 2 percentage points after a temporary tax cut expired. That sliced about $1,000 from the take-home pay of a household earning $50,000. Since the Social Security tax is levied against income only up to $114,000, it disproportionately affects middle- and lower-income households.
An even larger challenge for many lower-income Americans has been the government's delay in processing income taxes and paying refunds. That's because income tax rates weren't set until a last-minute deal between the White House and Congress on Jan. 1. So the IRS pushed back the start of tax-filing season to Jan. 30, two weeks later than usual.
As a result, by Feb. 14 the government had paid only $55 billion in refunds, down from $77 billion at the same time last year, according to an estimate by UBS. That drop of $22 billion is more than twice the impact of the higher payroll tax. Refunds have accelerated recently and will eventually be paid out, but the impact still can be felt by many taxpayers: About 78 percent of taxpayers receive refunds, and the figure rises to 82 percent for those reporting income below $50,000.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., said while its business has been volatile since December, the month of February, in particular, has been "slower than planned" largely due to the tax refund delay. The company said that resulted in Wal-Mart customers cashing about $1.7 billion in income tax refunds year to date, compared with $3 billion for the same period a year ago.
Bill Simon, president of Wal-Mart's U.S. namesake division, said shoppers used their refund money last year to buy TVs ahead of the Super Bowl. This year, the retailer said it isn't sure how customers will use the additional money when they get it, but some analysts say the most likely scenario is that they'll save it.
Wal-Mart said it's also unclear how the payroll tax will affect customers' spending habits, although Simon said shoppers are "talking about it." JP Morgan estimates that the payroll tax increase will equate to $70 a month less in take home pay for Wal-Mart shoppers, assuming an average annual income of $42,500. As a result, Wal-Mart is offering smaller packaging and less expensive products.
Wal-Mart earned $5.6 billion, or $1.67 per share, during the fourth quarter that ended Jan. 31, up from $5.16 billion, or $1.50 per share, a year earlier. Results were helped by a lower tax rate, which was 27.7 percent, compared with the rate of 30.9 percent a year ago. Net sales rose 3.9 percent to $127.1 billion.
Earnings topped Wall Street estimates of $1.57 per share, but sales fell short of the $127.8 billion analysts were expecting.
During the current quarter, Wal-Mart says it expects earnings to range from $1.11 to $1.16 per share, below the $1.18 per share analysts polled by FactSet are expecting. For its namesake U.S. business, Wal-Mart expects first-quarter revenue at stores open at least a year, a measure of a retailer's health, to be unchanged from a year ago. The pace of revenue growth has slowed in recent quarters, and some analysts believe Wal-Mart's forecast could be too optimistic.
For the year, Wal-Mart expects earnings of between $5.20 and $5.40 per share, while analysts expect $5.38 per share.
Despite the subdued forecast, investors were bracing for a weaker report after Bloomberg published a story Friday that leaked an email from an executive characterizing the first two weeks of February as "a total disaster." Shares fell that day, but investors appeared to be relieved on Thursday that Wal-Mart's outlook wasn't worse. Shares rose about 1 percent, or $1.05 per share, on Thursday to close at $70.26.
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D'Innocenzio reported from New York. Rugaber reported from Washington, D.C.
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