NBA players move legal fight to Minnesota (AP)

NEW YORK ? After filing two separate antitrust lawsuits against the league in two different states, NBA players are consolidating their efforts and have turned to the courts in Minnesota as their chosen venue.

A group of named plaintiffs including Carmelo Anthony, Steve Nash, Kevin Durant and Chauncey Billups filed an amended federal lawsuit against the league in Minnesota on Monday, hoping the courts there will be as favorable to them as they have been to NFL players in the past.

The locked-out players filed class-action antitrust suits against the league last Tuesday in California and Minnesota. But the California complaint was withdrawn Monday. Players' lawyer David Boies said he believes the combined case will move more quickly in Minnesota.

"The docket is less congested and they have a good track record of handling cases like this," Boies said.

Federal court in Minnesota was the venue for all NFL labor disputes that reached the courts for the past two decades. The NFL players enjoyed several victories over the owners there, most recently when U.S. District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a temporary injunction this summer that the lifted the NFL's owner-imposed lockout. That decision was stayed and eventually overturned on appeal by the 8th Circuit in St. Louis.

NBA owners locked out the players July 1 and the labor strife between the two sides has forced games to be canceled through Dec. 15.

"We assume that Mr. Boies was not happy with either the reassignment of the case from Oakland to San Francisco or the fact that the new judge scheduled the first conference for March 2012," said Rick Buchanan, NBA executive vice president and general counsel. "This is consistent with Mr Boies' inappropriate shopping for a forum that he can only hope will be friendlier to his baseless legal claims."

The players have offered nearly $3 billion in concessions by essentially agreeing to a 50-50 split of basketball-related income, but after being unable to reach an accord on certain system issues, the players disbanded the union last week. That set the stage for the increasingly bitter labor dispute to move from the negotiating table to the courtroom, which could jeopardize the entire 2011-12 season.

Disbanding the union allowed the players to file an antitrust lawsuit against the league, a move the NFL players used as well. Rajon Rondo, Caron Butler, Baron Davis, Ben Gordon, Kawhi Leonard, Leon Powe, Anthony Randolph, Sebastian Telfair, Anthony Tolliver and Derrick Williams are the other named plaintiffs in the Minnesota lawsuit.

"Although the NBPA made concession after concession, including concessions that would cost its members more than one billion dollars over a six-year period, the NBA essentially refused to negotiate its basic 2007 demands, refusing to back off its demand for large salary reductions and harsh player restraints," the lawsuit alleged.

Boies said consolidating the two lawsuits saves the players weeks of court time that would have otherwise been devoted to deciding a venue.

"If we had not done it, at some point, the courts would have done it," Boies said.

And with the first month and a half of the season already canceled, time is of the essence.

The owners have already filed a lawsuit of their own in the Southern District of New York, a venue that has issued several NBA-friendly rulings over the years. The owners could file a motion to have the Minnesota case moved to New York because of that.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111122/ap_on_sp_bk_ne/bkn_nba_labor

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Giuliana Rancic Says 'I'm Good' After Cancer Surgery | Radar Online

Flynet

By Alexis Tereszcuk - Radar Senior Reporter

Giuliana Rancic is bravely battling breast cancer in the public eye and she?s speaking out now to assure fans that she?s doing well.

"I'm good. I'm hanging in there. I have good days and bad days, but so far so good,? the E! News host told Parade magazine in a new interview.

Diagnosed in August, she quickly had a double lumpectomy and returned to work just a week after the surgery.

PHOTOS: Celebs Stand Up To Cancer

?I'm very optimistic and I'm just happy to have caught it early,? Giuliana said.? ?I think that's really the most important thing. Early detection means so much. I want women to make sure they're taking care of their health and being proactive."

The positive feedback Giuliana received when she announced the news was a shock to her she said.

PHOTOS: Guiliana And Bill Tour Italy

"When I went public, I thought, 'OK, I guess a couple of people are going to talk about this,' but I couldn't believe it. The outpouring and the love and support was just beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I really relied on a lot of those messages I was receiving through Twitter and email and through blogs right before the surgery and the week I was recovering.

?I know it sounds so clich?, but I think it helped me recover quicker and it got me in better spirits. The word I kept seeing over and over again was 'strong.' 'Be strong, you're strong.' That word has never meant so much to me as it has this past month. I owe that all to the people behind me."

PHOTOS: LeAnn Rimes Leaves Nobu After Peace Talks With Giuliana Rancic

Giuliana?s struggle with infertility has been the focus of her reality show with her husband Bill Rancic, and she says she doesn?t have any regrets about airing all the details of her personal life.

"We just felt like with every trial and tribulation we've put on this show, people have told us how much they learned from it and how it made them feel less alone. We thought that was a pretty incredible opportunity. The fact that we can help people through our show is an honor. We're happy to do it and it's something that we continue to do. We really are like open books. It's worth it to kind of sacrifice some of my personal life to help others."

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Source: http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2011/11/giuliana-rancic-cancer-surgery-doing-well

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Egyptians converge for 'million-man march'

CAIRO?? Egyptians converged on Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Tuesday in response to a call for a so-called "million-man march" as protests against the country's military rulers entered a fourth day.

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Thousands of Egyptian protesters have been camping out on the square and clashing with police trying to force them to leave.

NBC's Richard Engel said Egyptian television was reporting three American citizens were arrested after being seen throwing fire bombs from the roof of a building belonging to the American University near Tahrir Square.

An Interior Ministry official confirmed three people had been arrested at the location but declined to confirm their nationality.

An airport official also said a U.S. citizen who had been arrested while allegedly filming security forces at Tahrir Square was deported Tuesday to the United Arab Emirates from which he had arrived.

In Tahrir Square, crowds hoisted a giant Egyptian flag and chanted slogans on Tuesday, evidence that an offer of resignation by the civilian Cabinet the day before has failed to quell the spreading unrest.

Egyptian state television said the country's military rulers were in a crisis meeting with leaders of political parties across the spectrum and that the head of Egypt's ruling army council, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, would address the nation later on Tuesday.

Trading was halted on the Egyptian stock exchange after its broader index plunged over 5 percent on Tuesday as escalating protests and deadly violence in the capital thrust the nation into its worst political crisis since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt's state TV reported that three people were killed overnight in the eastern city of Ismailia, raising the overall death toll from the protests to at least 29.

Video: Crowds, violent clashes return to Cairo (on this page)

Egypt 'not for sale'
Some 5,000 people surrounded a security headquarters in the northern coastal city of Alexandria and police responded by firing live ammunition, witnesses said. The state news agency MENA said 40 security officers were injured in the clashes.

Some 20,000 people defiantly demonstrated in Tahrir Square overnight. However, the protests have yet to attract the hundreds of thousands who toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.

"The people want the fall of the marshal," protesters chanted, referring to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Mubarak's defense minister for two decades and head of the army council.

"This land belongs to Egyptians. It is not for sale and does not need any guardians," one banner read. "All Egyptians demand an Egypt run by civilians," another said.

Egyptian activists called for a huge turnout in protests on Tuesday to put an end to rule by the military.

Slideshow: Violent clashes in Egypt (on this page)

The resignation of the Cabinet, in office since March, was another blow to the military council's authority and casts further doubt on Egypt's first free parliamentary elections in decades, which are due to start next Monday.

The United States, which gives Egypt's military $1.3 billion a year in aid, has called for restraint on all sides and urged Egypt to proceed with elections due to start on Monday despite the violence, a stance broadly echoed by many European leaders.

Some Egyptians, including Islamists who expect to do well in the vote, say the ruling army council may be stirring insecurity to prolong its rule, a charge the military denies.

Political uncertainty has gripped Egypt since Mubarak's fall, while sectarian clashes, labor unrest, gas pipeline sabotage and a gaping absence of tourists have paralyzed the economy and prompted a widespread yearning for stability.

Meanwhile, rights group Amnesty International accused Egypt's rulers on Tuesday of brutality sometimes exceeding that of Mubarak, saying the hopes of protesters had been "crushed."

The group said Egypt's Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) ? which assumed control after an 18-day uprising toppled Mubarak in February ? had made only empty promises to improve human rights.

'Repressive rule'
In a report, Amnesty said military courts had tried thousands of civilians and emergency law had been extended. Torture had continued in army custody, and there were consistent reports of security forces employing armed "thugs" to attack protesters, it added.

"The SCAF has continued the tradition of repressive rule which the January 25 demonstrators fought so hard to get rid of," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa acting director.

"Those who have challenged or criticize the military council ? like demonstrators, journalists, bloggers, striking workers ? have been ruthlessly suppressed in an attempt at silencing their voices ... The brutal and heavy-handed response to protests in the last few days bears all the hallmarks of the Mubarak era."

By August, Amnesty said the military council admitted about 12,000 civilians had been tried by military courts and at least 13 sentenced to death. The trials were "grossly unfair", said the rights group.

NBC News, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45398123/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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Painted bodies transformed into art in Venezuela (AP)

CARACAS, Venezuela ? Artists are using paint, ornaments and glitter to transform the human body into artwork at a festival in Venezuela.

The annual World Meeting of Body Art involves body painting, tattoo art, performances and workshops. Participants from 18 countries are sharing their creations at the festival in Caracas.

Participants had their bodies painted in bright hues from orange to lime green. Vines appeared to wind down the shoulders of one woman, and a man posed as a statue with his skin painted to look like marble.

Venezuelan artist Ivan Hernandez Rojas says the "body is a canvas with infinite possibilities."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111120/ap_en_ot/lt_venezuela_body_art_photo_pkg

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US, Britain, Canada team up on new Iran sanctions (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Thwarted internationally, the Obama administration cobbled together a new set of best-available sanctions against Iran on Monday that underlined its limited capacity to force Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons program.

The U.S. action was coordinated with Britain and Canada, but not with countries such as Russia and China that have far greater economic investments in the Islamic republic.

The American sanctions target Iran's oil and petrochemicals industry and Iranian companies involved in nuclear procurement or enrichment activity. The U.S. also declared Iran's banking system a center for money laundering ? designed as a stern warning to financial institutions around the world to think twice before doing business with Tehran.

President Barack Obama said Iran had a choice: come clean on its nuclear program and reap the benefits of closer economic cooperation with the world, or face even more pressure.

"Iran has chosen the path of international isolation," Obama said in a statement. "As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime."

The new restrictions essentially amount to a piecemeal addition to dozens of American measures already in place to isolate Iran's economy, partly reflecting the need for a quick response to a U.N. nuclear agency report suggesting Iranian work toward the development of atomic weapons. Release of the report two weeks ago sparked frenzied international diplomacy over how to halt the Iranian threat, including speculation in the U.S., Europe and Israel on the merits of a military intervention.

The larger American dilemma is twofold: After three decades of economic estrangement and escalating pressure on Tehran for its dismal human rights record and alleged support for terrorism, the United States has few tools left to coerce or penalize the Iranian regime. And Washington is unlikely to authorize a military strike anytime soon, conscious that an attack may delay but not stop Iran from developing the bomb and fearful of the political fallout at a time when the U.S. is flailing in debt and trying to transition from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For the Obama administration, even the sanctions route is constrained. The United Nations has passed four rounds of global sanctions against Iran since 2006, but veto-wielding nations Russia and China stand in the way of any further action. And even unilaterally, American officials have held back from blanketing all of Iran's fuel-related exports and its central bank with sanctions, for fear of spiking world oil prices and hampering the American economic recovery.

A little more than a week ago, President Barack Obama pressed Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao to join the U.S. and its partners in taking action ? to no avail.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced the new American sanctions, which tighten restrictions on individuals and companies doing business in the Iranian oil and gas industries, and update an already lengthy list of blacklisted Iranian firms. Geithner stressed the value of the coordinated action by the U.S. and its two close allies, and urged more countries to cut off Iran from their financial sectors.

"If you are a financial institution and you engage in any transaction involving Iran's central bank or any other Iranian bank operating inside or outside Iran, you are at risk of supporting Iran's illicit activities: its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its support for terrorism and its efforts to deceive responsible financial institutions and evade sanctions," Geithner said.

Britain's new restrictions included an order that its financial institutions cease doing business with all Iranian banks, including the central bank and extending to all branches and subsidiaries. It amounted to what was termed an unprecedented British attempt to cut off an entire country's banking industry off from the U.K. financial sector.

The sanctions are aimed at "preventing the Iranian regime from acquiring nuclear weapons," British Treasury chief George Osborne said. Canada took similar actions as the U.S., while France urged fellow European countries and Japan to stop buying Iranian oil and to freeze any assets belonging to Iran's central bank.

Russia, China, India and other nations maintain larger-scale trade with Iran, whose energy exports have helped it shrug off serious harm from the U.N. sanctions and other penalties applied by individual countries or the European Union.

The recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency alleges Iran has been seeking to acquire equipment and weapons design information, testing high explosives and detonators and developing computer models of a warhead's core. It is the strongest evidence yet that the Iranian program ranges far beyond enriching uranium for use in energy and medical research, as Iran's government insists.

The Obama administration has sought to use the evidence as leverage in making its case to other countries that sanctions against Iran should be expanded and tightened. It has argued that further isolating Iran's economy is the best strategy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while insisting that the option of using force will not be taken off the table.

The president's strategy is being carried out amid partisan clamor for tougher action against Iran. Leading Republican presidential candidates present themselves as hawkish alternatives to Obama ready to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. They've also tried to strip away Obama's support among Jewish and some evangelical voters by pledging stronger solidarity with Israel, which sees Iran and its nuclear program as a mortal threat.

Mitt Romney spoke openly at the GOP's Nov. 12 foreign policy debate about working with insurgents to try to overthrow Iran's government, while rival Newt Gingrich demanded increased covert action to foil its uranium enrichment activity. The program has been hindered in recent years by the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, a computer virus and other possible interference ? which may or may not have been the result of covert American or Israeli activity.

The new penalties were announced one day ahead of another GOP debate focused on foreign policy.

In Congress, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell proposed an amendment last week to the U.S. defense budget to go after Iran's central bank beyond existing U.S. sanctions. That might be difficult because it would also penalize European, Asian and other companies conducting business with the bank and operating as well in the United States. Some fear the approach could drive up oil prices and cause havoc to world markets.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111121/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_iran_sanctions

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Karl Giberson, Ph.D: Creationists Drive Young People out of the Church

Survey results recently reported by Christianity Today clarify once again the sober truth that evangelicals are not making much progress in accepting well-established mainstream scientific ideas about origins. Particularly disturbing is the finding that only 27 percent of evangelical pastors "strongly disagree" with the statement that the earth is 6,000 years old. A higher number "strongly agree" that the earth is just 6,000 years old, a conclusion supported by mountains of evidence. Seven in 10 evangelical pastors "strongly disagree" that "God used evolution to create people."

Also out this fall is a survey by the Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, explaining why most evangelical Christians "disconnect either permanently or for an extended period of time from church life after age 15." It turns out that science is a major factor. Barna identified six reasons for the disconnection:

1. Churches seem overprotective.
2. Teens and 20-somethings' experience of Christianity is shallow.
3. Churches come across as antagonistic to science.
4. Young Christians' church experiences related to sexuality are often simplistic, judgmental.
5).They wrestle with the exclusive nature of Christianity.
6. The church feels unfriendly to those who doubt.

Barna elaborates on item three -- Churches come across as antagonistic to science -- as follows:

One of the reasons young adults feel disconnected from church or from faith is the tension they feel between Christianity and science. The most common of the perceptions in this arena is "Christians are too confident they know all the answers" (35%). Three out of ten young adults with a Christian background feel that "churches are out of step with the scientific world we live in" (29%). Another one-quarter embrace the perception that "Christianity is anti-science" (25%). And nearly the same proportion (23%) said they have "been turned off by the creation-versus-evolution debate." Furthermore, the research shows that many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.

I have been teaching science to evangelical college students for more than 25 years, and all this rings true. The students in my classes have had hundreds of hours of religious education growing up before they came to college. Most of them attended Sunday School regularly, listened to sermons at least once a week, spent time at summer Bible camps and weekends away with their youth groups. They read religious books, watched religious videos and subscribed to religious magazines (or, as is more likely, were given gift subscriptions by relatives).

Many evangelicals grow up in a sort of "parallel culture," running alongside and often at odds with the larger, secular culture. The educational component of this parallel culture, which Randall Stephens and I describe in detail in "The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age," contains strategies and techniques for undermining and even challenging secular culture, particularly science. Young earth creationist Ken Ham is the best and most influential example of this. In videos and writings that are widely consumed by evangelicals, he encourages students to ask their science teachers "Were you there?" when they talk about the past. The biology teacher says "Life first appeared on earth about 4 billion years ago," and the student is to ask "Were you there?" The physics teacher says "The universe originated in a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago" and the students is to ask "Were you there?"

In a recent piece titled "Nine Year Old Challenges Nasa," Ham blogged proudly about "Emma B" who, when told that a NASA moon rock was 3.75 billion years old, asked "Were you there?"

The suggestion that scientists cannot speak about the past unless "they were there" is a strange claim. The implication is that we cannot do something as simple as count tree rings and confidently declare "This great pine was standing here 2,000 years ago." As a philosophy of science, such a restriction would completely rule out the scientific study of the past. This, of course, is precisely what the creationists want.

Many bright evangelical young people are, fortunately, not impressed with the suggestion that only "eyewitnesses" can speak about the past. Just this past spring I taught an honors seminar on science and religion at an evangelical college. The class included a couple of bright students who had grown up in fundamentalist churches that showed Ken Ham videos in their Sunday School class. Both of them recalled the encouragement to ask their teachers "Were you there?" And both of them, a few years older and wiser than "Emma B," thought this suggestion was ridiculous and wondered what kind of ideas required the embrace of such nonsense on their behalf. These students -- in fact, most of the students I have had over the years -- will graduate from college accepting contemporary science and its various explanations for what has happened in the past. But unless the leadership in their churches does a better job with its teaching ministry, such students will have a hard time returning to their home churches.

The dismissive and even hostile approach to science taken by evangelical leaders like Ken Ham accounts for the Barna finding above. In the name of protecting Christianity from a secularism perceived as corrosive to the faith, the creationists are unwittingly driving the best and brightest evangelicals out of the church -- or at least into the arms of the compromising Episcopalians, whom they despise. What remains after their exodus is an even more intellectually impoverished parallel culture, with even fewer resources to think about complex issues.

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Follow Karl Giberson, Ph.D on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gibersok

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karl-giberson-phd/creationists-and-young-christians_b_1096839.html

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US budget woes could hit European missile defense

WASHINGTON (AP) ? A breakdown in high-stakes budget talks in Congress could threaten plans for a missile defense shield in Europe.

Negotiators have shown little sign they will be able to meet next week's deadline for reducing the deficit by $1.2 trillion. If they fail to agree, a new law mandates cuts throughout the federal government, including a big slice of the defense budget.

While it is not known what military spending would be cut, an expensive program aimed primarily at defending Europe is unlikely to be spared.

The U.S. sees the missile defense system, aimed at countering a threat from Iran, as part of its contribution to the NATO military alliance. With the United States often complaining that it makes a disproportionately large contribution to NATO, missile defense could be especially vulnerable to budget-cutters.

"A missile defense system for NATO? It's going to be hard to keep people committed if they think the U.S. is picking up the tab for Europe," says Kurt Volker, who was ambassador to NATO at the end of the George W. Bush administration.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned that the European missile defense program could be threatened if the special negotiating panel, known as the supercommittee, should fail to work out a deal. That suggestion, though, may have been intended mostly to nudge lawmakers to resolve their differences and avoid the automatic cuts to one of their favorite programs.

It is still possible that supercommittee members could set aside intense partisan differences and reach a deal by Wednesday. And if they do not, Congress might find a way to cancel the cuts before they take effect in 2013.

That may only delay the scaling back of the U.S. military role in Europe. A decade-long expansion of military spending appears to be coming to an end, and the Obama administration has indicated it is shifting its foreign policy toward Asia, where it sees the greatest opportunities and threats of coming decades.

"Where does that leave Europe? Lower down the list," says Todd Harrison, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Beyond missile defense, the automatic cuts could prompt the U.S. to save money by shifting some warships away from Europe but probably would not lead to fewer U.S. troops there.

The United States has already reduced its presence in Europe from more than 200,000 in 1989 to slightly more than 40,000 today. It has plans for a further pullback by 2015 but is unlikely to accelerate that simply because there are no short-term savings to be had from moving troops out of their European bases.

"We can't take the remaining bases with us," says Christopher Wiley, an analyst with the Transatlantic relations program at the Bertelsmann Foundation who is preparing a report on the impact of budget cuts on U.S. policy in Europe. "It's not a good place to save cash."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-19-US-Europe-Military%20Spending/id-0ee227bc89454b09b3de9872a5e8a6bc

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