Mourinho won't punish Pepe for Messi hand stamp

Lionel Messi

updated 10:18 a.m. ET Jan. 21, 2012

MADRID - Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho will not punish Pepe for stomping on the hand of Barcelona's Lionel Messi, saying that the defender's apology was sufficient.

The Portuguese manager said Saturday "the player has spoken and that is enough" after including Pepe in his squad for Sunday's home game against Athletic Bilbao.

Real Madrid lost 2-1 Wednesday to Barcelona in the first leg of their Copa del Rey quarterfinal. Mourinho said after the game if Pepe had stepped on Messi's hand intentionally it would be "punishable."

The following day Pepe issued a statement on Madrid's website saying the stomp was "unintentional."

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Balotelli lifts Man City

??Mario Balotelli scored a stoppage-time penalty kick Sunday to give first-place Manchester City a 3-2 victory over Premier League title rival Tottenham.

Hat trick

Clint Dempsey became the first American to score a hat trick in England's Premier League, helping Fulham rally from a halftime deficit to rout Newcastle 5-2 Saturday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/46081974/ns/sports-soccer/

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Federer through to Australian Open quarterfinals

Roger Federer of Switzerland serves to Australia's Bernard Tomic during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Roger Federer of Switzerland serves to Australia's Bernard Tomic during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Australia's Bernard Tomic makes a forehand return to Switzerland's Roger Federer during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

Roger Federer of Switzerland chases down a ball as he plays Australia's Bernard Tomic during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/John Donegan)

Australia's Bernard Tomic makes a forehand return to Roger Federer of Switzerland during their fourth round match at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne, Australia, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Andrew Brownbill)

(AP) ? Roger Federer put on a tennis clinic against Bernard Tomic, using deft drops, lobs, booming backhands and 13 aces to beat the 19-year-old Australian 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 and advance to the Australian Open quarterfinals for the eighth straight year.

Tomic came into the match following an upset third-round win over 13th-seeded Alexandr Dolgopolov, using slices and a variety of offbeat shots from the back of the court to beat the Ukrainian player.

But four-time Australian champion Federer was having none of that on Sunday night before a packed house of 15,000 at Rod Laver Arena. He stepped up his game when he needed to, breaking the Australian at 4-4 in the opening set and again to open the third.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2012-01-22-TEN-Australian-Open-Federer/id-1d3e140ecebd4aff8701c1d5405221a0

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Libya had undeclared chemical weapon stockpile (AP)

AMSTERDAM ? International inspectors have confirmed that late Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi had an undeclared stockpile of chemical weapons, the organization that oversees a global ban on such armaments announced Friday.

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said inspectors who visited Libya this week found sulfur mustard and artillery shells "which they determined are chemical munitions," meaning the shells were not filled with chemicals, but were designed specifically to be loaded with chemical weapons.

"They are not ready to use, because they are not loaded with agents," OPCW spokesman Michael Luhan said.

He would not divulge the amounts of chemicals in the previously unknown stockpile, except to call it "a fraction" of what Gadhafi disclosed in the past.

Libya's new rulers told the Hague-based organization about the chemicals last year after toppling Gadhafi from power. The longtime Libyan strongman was killed in October after being captured by rebel fighters.

The newly confirmed chemical armaments are stored at the Ruwagha depot in southeastern Libya together with chemical weapons that Gadhafi had declared to international authorities in 2004 as he tried to shake off his image as an international pariah and rebuild relations with the West.

He declared his regime had 25 metric tons (27.6 tons) of sulfur mustard and 1,400 metric tons (1,543 tons) of precursor chemicals used to make chemical weapons. His regime also declared more than 3,500 unfilled aerial bombs designed for use with chemical warfare agents such as sulfur mustard, and three chemical weapons production facilities.

Those stockpiles were being destroyed until a technical problem halted destruction last year at the same time as the popular uprising began that led to Gadhafi's ouster and death.

Libya was to have completed destruction of its chemical weapons by April 29 of this year, but can no longer meet the deadline after the turmoil that roiled the country last year. The country's new government now has until that date to file a plan and proposed completion date for destroying its entire chemical weapon stockpile.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_re_eu/eu_libya_chemical_weapons

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New Genetic Clues to Breast Cancer? (HealthDay)

SUNDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified three new genomic regions they believe are linked with breast cancer that may help explain why some women develop the disease.

All three newly identified areas "contain interesting genes that open up new avenues for biological and clinical research," said researcher Douglas Easton, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge in England.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with about 1 million new cases annually worldwide and more than 400,000 deaths a year.

Scientists conducting genome-wide association studies -- research that looks at the association between genetic factors and disease to pinpoint possible causes -- had already identified 22 breast cancer susceptibility loci. Locus is the physical location of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.

"The three [newly identified] loci take the number of common susceptibility loci from 22 to 25," said Easton.

However, the three new susceptibility loci might explain only about 0.7 percent of the familial risks of breast cancer, bringing the total contribution to about 9 percent, the researchers said.

Michael Melner, scientific program director for the American Cancer Society, said this current research adds some important new clues to existing evidence, but he agreed that the number of cases likely associated with these three variants is probably low.

"So the total impact in terms of patients would be fairly small," Melner said.

The study is published online Jan. 22 in Nature Genetics.

To find the new clues, Easton's team worked with genetic information on about 57,000 breast cancer patients and 58,000 healthy women obtained from two genome-wide association studies.

The investigators zeroed in on 72 different single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP -- pronounced "snip" -- is a change in which a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base. The human genome has millions of SNPs, some linked with disease, while others are normal variations.

The researchers focused on three SNPs -- on chromosomes 12p11, 12q24 and 21q21.

Easton's team found that the variant on the 12p11 chromosome is linked with both estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (which needs estrogen to grow) and estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. The other two variants are only linked with ER-positive cancers, they said.

One of the newly identified variants is in an area with a gene that has a role in the development of mammary glands and bones. Easton said it was already known that mammary gland development in puberty is an important period in terms of determining later cancer risk. "But these are the first susceptibility genes to be shown to be involved in this process," he said.

One of the other SNPs is in an area that can affect estrogen receptor signaling, the researchers found.

Melner, noting some of the research is "fine tuning" of other work, said in his view the new understanding of the signaling pathways and their genetic links is the most important finding.

"When you delineate a pathway, you bring up new potential targets for therapy," he said. "The more targets you have, you open up the potential for having multiple drugs and attacking a cancer more easily, without it becoming more resistant."

Overall, Melner added, the results underscore the complexity of the different mechanisms involved in breast cancer development.

More information

For more about the genetics of breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/diseases/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20120122/hl_hsn/newgeneticcluestobreastcancer

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Rights group says Iraq becoming 'police state' (AP)

BAGHDAD ? Iraq's Shiite-led government cracked down harshly on dissent during the past year of Arab Spring uprisings, turning the country into a "budding police state" as autocratic regimes crumbled elsewhere in the region, an international rights groups said Sunday.

Iraqi security forces routinely abuse protesters, harass journalists, torture detainees and intimidate activists, Human Rights Watch said in the Iraq chapter of its annual report.

"Iraq is quickly slipping back into authoritarianism," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director for the New York-based group. "Despite U.S. government assurances that it helped create a stable democracy (in Iraq), the reality is that it left behind a budding police state."

Iraqi officials could not be immediately reached for comment.

Protests against Iraq's U.S.-backed and democratically elected government erupted around the country in February 2011, partly inspired by demonstrations elsewhere in the Arab world.

While protests in other countries demanded the downfall of autocratic regimes, most of the demonstrations in Iraq pushed for improved services like reliable electricity and water, and an end to corruption.

The government clamped down, sometimes leading to bloodshed ? 14 people were killed in clashes between security forces and civilians across the country during the Feb. 25 protests billed as the "Day of Rage."

A year later, with U.S. troops withdrawn and Iraq's government mired in a political crisis, anti-government protests have all but died out. The few demonstrators who still gather in Baghdad's central Tahrir Square on Fridays are usually outnumbered by the security forces watching over them.

"Iraqis are quickly losing ground on the most basic of rights, including the right to free speech and assembly," said Samer Muscati, an Iraq researcher for the group. "Nowadays, every time someone attends a peaceful protest, they put themselves at risk of attack and abuse by security forces or their proxies."

Prison brutality, including torture in detention facilities, was a major problem throughout the year, the group's report said.

In February 2011, Human Rights Watch uncovered a secret detention center controlled by elite forces who reported to the prime minister's military office.

The group claimed authorities transferred more than 280 detainees to the facility since the beginning of 2010 and charged detainees were tortured there with impunity. Government officials denied the facility's existence and alleged abuses.

Just days before the U.S. military withdrew its last troops from the country last month, authorities rounded up hundreds of Iraqis suspected of having links to the deposed Baath Party, the group said in its report. It added that at least 600 of those detained in the sweep remain in custody without being charged.

Since the U.S. withdrawal, Iraq has plunged into a worsening political crisis that pits the country's majority Shiites against the minority Sunnis.

The escalating political battle erupted after the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, issued an arrest warrant against the Sunni vice president, Tareq al-Hashemi, on terrorism charges. Al-Hashemi denies the charges and has fled to the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq, out of reach from Baghdad authorities.

Two other top Sunni officials were detained on terrorism charges earlier this week, prompting Ayad Allawi, the leader of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc to accuse al-Maliki of unfairly targeting Sunni politicians and deliberately triggering a political crisis to cement his own grip on power.

Allawi, who is a Shiite, said on Wednesday that Iraq needs a new prime minister or new elections to prevent the country from disintegrating along sectarian lines.

An aide to Allawi told The Associated Press that 89 Iraqiya members have been detained in the past three months by security forces on terrorism-related charges. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

The political crisis has been coupled with a surge in violence that has killed more than 160 people since the beginning of the year.

On Sunday, gunmen attacked a checkpoint near Baqouba, a former al-Qaida stronghold north of Baghdad, killing three members of the security forces, police officials in Diyala province said.

The officials said that two of dead were members of the pro-government Sunni militia known as the Awakening Council. Hospital staff in Baqouba confirmed the death toll.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

___

Associated Press writer Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120122/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

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Video: Quick-thinking girl, 9, escapes captor

>>> first, there's a very happy ending to the story of 59-year-old girl who was abducted in pueblo, colorado. from sheer spunk he got away from her kidnapper by running to gas station , called 911, and then standing her ground. nbc 's george lewis has the story.

>> reporter: 9-year-old callista cordova showed amazing grit in getting away from the man who kidnapped her. her mom first reported her ms.ing when she failed to come home from school thursday afternoon.

>> this is everyone's worst nightmare to have a child an ducted, never knowing if it's going to be bad news.

>> reporter: an amber alert went out. then a break in the case. police say calista and her alleged abductor were picked up in colorado springs by a motorist at the scene of an aparjts traffic accident. he dropped them off at this convenience store . she ran inside and dialed 911.

>> it was when she was on the phone that he came in looking for her.

>> witnesses say then the little girl stood her ground.

>> she looked at me, pointed in my eyes and said i'm not going nowhere . i'm waiting for my mama.

>> reporter: police identified him as jose garcia , a suspect in an alleged molestation of another girl. when she refused to go with him, he fled.

>> the guy looked at me, spun around and spun it out of there.

>> reporter: calista 's mom was overjoyed when she found her daughter was alive. calista was taken to the hospital with two black eyes , a cut on her lip and a bruise on her face and a short time later police took the suspected kidnapper garcia into custody. he has not yet been charged. police are praising calista for her courage and her smarts.

>> for her to have done whatever she did to stay alive was wonderful. and then today to seek help, save heard life.

>> reporter: and the whole community is thankful that she's back safe with her family. for "today," george lewis , nbc new, los angeles .

>>> clint van zandt is a former fbi criminal profiler and an nbc analyst. hi, clint .

>> hi, amy . great story, isn't it?

>> it is. it's a rare one. when you talk about child kidnapping cases this is rarely the outcome, correct?

>> it is correct. when we have these cases statistics unfortunately show that one in five children get back. we lose a child about every three days in the united states to kidnap, assault, and murder. so in a case like this, you've got to do what you've got to do to survive.

>> and the alleged kidnapper jose garcia is currently in custody. what will investigators be doing next and what possible charges could he be facing?

>> one of the things is this womt woent be the first time this guy has done stuff like this. he's going have situations in the past. the authorities will obviously put their case together concerned the current victim. he'll look at him as a suspect in any other similar- type case that's happened across the entire state. this is a guy when you have a predator like this, you want to make sure you've about got a good case and that he doesn't have a chance to get out and reoh fend.

>> we know the police reported he may have been a suspect in specifically another alleged molestation case involving a different girl, but i think they all went to the same school. what do police know? how do they connect the dots?

>> they're going to be working with this particular witness, they're going to be working with the vehicle. again, this is an amazing story. 20 hours she's back again. but she's back because she was brave. as you say, just the tenacity that she exhibited because even though she was victimized, she wasn't going to be a victim.

>> right. and, clint , it's interesting. calista really chose her moment. she was picked up by another motorist. she didn't say anything then. when she ran into the convenience store , she asked the store clerk to call her uncle and then she called 911. she was really smart in choosing her moment.

>> sometimes in these cases, amy , you get one chance to survive, and at 9 years old to have the wisdom to look for the opportunity, you know, there are things that children can do to escape a predator, but many times you get that a deer in the headlight look. this little girl didn't do it. she used her head. she's alive today.

>> parents at home, i know, watching the story could be a good jumping off point to talk to my kids about what to do if this were to ever happen and how to avoid this happening in the first place. what would you say to therm in terms of vice?

>> a number of quick points. never lehtonen take youlingly. always fight. always yell. number two, when somebody pulls up in a car and they're trying to get you to get in the car, if the car's pointing left, you run right. that makes that car turn around 180 degrees to go after you. number, 3, if somebody's got you in the custody and control, don't yell. don't yell and scream. yell, this is not my father, this is not my mother. if you're in a grocery store or convenience store and the subjects are there, start knocking things off the shelf. draw as much attention as you can. don't let yourself be a willing victim. amy , even on a website live request secure.org we give away a free dvd proaffecting children from predators. every children need to know what to share with our children so when that terrible time might come, they know what to do. they're not frozen in fear, but you and i have taught our children how to react. and as long as they're able to do that, as long as they're able to react like this little girl did, choose the right moment, we're going to get our children back, and we're going to have success stories instead of the ones that you and lester and i talk about so many times where we don't get a child back.

>> clint , great tips. thank you so much. we appreciate it.

Source: http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/46081658/

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Battle for control of Asia's seas goes underwater (AP)

YOKOSUKA, Japan ? It's getting a bit more crowded under the sea in Asia, where Andrew Peterson commands one of the world's mightiest weapons: a $2 billion nuclear submarine with unrivaled stealth and missiles that can devastate targets hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.

Super high-tech submarines like Cmdr. Peterson's USS Oklahoma City have long been the envy of navies all over the globe ? and a key component of U.S. military strategy.

"We really have no peer," Peterson told The Associated Press during a recent port call in Japan.

But America's submarine dominance in the Pacific is facing its biggest challenge since the Cold War. Nearly every Asian country with a coastline is fortifying its submarine fleet amid territorial disputes stirred up by an increasingly assertive China and the promise of bountiful natural resources.

Submarines are difficult to find and hard to destroy. Even fairly crude submarine forces can attack surface ships or other targets with a great deal of stealth, making them perfect for countries with limited resources. The threat of such an attack is a powerful deterrent in Asia, where coastal defenses are vital.

"This is shaping up as an intense arms race," said Lyle Goldstein, an associate professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute of the U.S. Naval War College. "This arms race is not simply China versus the rest ? though that explains much of it ? because there are other rivalries here as well."

China is pouring money into enlarging and modernizing its fleet, and India is planning to get a nuclear-powered attack submarine ? the INS Chakra ? on a 10-year lease from Russia as early as this month.

Australia is debating its most-expensive defense project ever ? a submarine upgrade that could cost more than 36 billion dollars.

Japan is adding another eight to its 16-boat fleet. South Korea is selling them to Indonesia. Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and even Bangladesh either now have or are planning to acquire subs.

North Korea, which has a large fleet of mini-subs, allegedly put them to deadly use in 2010 ? killing 46 South Korean sailors in the worst clash since their war ended in 1953.

The trend has a momentum of its own ? once one country gets submarines, its neighbors are under pressure to follow suit, lest they give up a strategic advantage. But the rush to build up submarine forces also underscores a growing awareness of the region's potential riches.

Roughly half of the goods transported between continents by ship go through the South China Sea, accounting for $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade annually. The area has vast, largely untapped natural resources ? including oil reserves of seven billion barrels and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

"The geostrategic significance of the South China Sea is difficult to overstate," said a report this month by the Center for a New American Security, a private think tank based in Washington DC. "To the extent that the world economy has a geographical center, it is in the South China Sea."

With the decline of Russia, the U.S. remains the top nation with a significant capability to operate submarines in the open seas ? a crucial advantage if Washington wants to maintain its role in keeping key sea lanes and chokepoints like the Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific, free for commercial trade.

The U.S. Navy's blue water superiority is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Peterson, the Oklahoma City skipper, said the Navy's workhorse Los Angeles-class subs remain a cut above the rest. "The beauty is that they are still the state of the art."

But, closer to shore, China is challenging the status quo.

"China has put a major emphasis on submarines, with the result that the PLA Navy submarine force is now, along with the Chinese missile forces, one of the sharpest arrows in China's quiver of military capabilities," Goldstein said.

China now has more than 60 subs in its navy, including nine that are nuclear-powered, according to the Pentagon's annual overview last year.

Its mainstay boats are diesel-powered Song-class vessels, but it also is developing more advanced nuclear-powered attack and ballistic submarines, including the Jin class that would carry missiles with a range of 4,600 miles (7,400 kilometers). Nuclear-powered subs can operate longer submerged than their diesel counterparts.

China has a long way to go to match the U.S. Navy ? the advanced Jin subs, for example, would have to be well into the Japan Sea for the continental United States to be within their range ? and Goldstein said that Beijing's threat has been overblown.

To keep its edge, however, the United States now has more submarines in the Pacific than in the Atlantic. With the military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan wrapping up, the Obama administration has also announced a "pivot to the Pacific" strategy that will likely further boost U.S. naval resources in the region.

Even so, China is just one player in an increasingly complicated game.

"Everybody's buying subs, but not for the same reasons," said Owen Cote, associate director of MIT's Security Studies Program.

The Pacific is dotted by scores of disputed islands, and who controls what part of the seas is a potentially explosive question. Japan has rival claims with China, South Korea and Russia. A half dozen countries claim rights to the remote Spratly Islands.

"Vietnam and the other states abutting the South China Sea want to have the option to contest a Chinese decision to resolve the various boundary issues that divide them by force," Cote said. "The Chinese have an interest in using submarines in preventing U.S. surface ships from intervening on behalf of one of these neighbors in such a conflict."

As regional navies get stronger, so does the potential for armed clashes.

"It poses the prospect of changing the balance of power across the Asia-Pacific ? in fact it already has," said Hugh White, Australian National University's professor of strategic and defense studies. "This is a very maritime part of the world. Anyone with a submarine has a clear capability of disrupting commercial shipping."

White said the development of submarine forces by multiple Asian nations is already inhibiting the ability of China and the United States to project their naval power, and posing new issues for smaller navies caught in the middle.

"There are questions about whether the U.S. will continue to assume its security role," he said. "This is a big debate in Australia right now. Do we aim to be able to act independently of the U.S.? To what extent do we want to be able to operate against a major player like China, or more locally against Indonesia?"

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_re_as/as_asia_s_submarine_race

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Angel Investing Jumps with Tax Credits :: Launch America

It?s not clear yet whether Connecticut?s 18-month-old angel investor tax credit will be the job creator its authors envisioned, but loosening the eligibility two months ago has surely been popular.

The Connecticut legislature?s jobs package bill passed in May 2010 allowed angel investors who put at least $100,000 into a young, small Connecticut company in certain technology and science fields to deduct a quarter of that investment from their state income taxes. If their income tax liability isn?t large enough to use up $25,000 ? you?d need to earn nearly $400,000 a year to owe that much ? they can carry the balance forward for several years.

Connecticut Innovations, a quasi-public agency that helps administer the investment program, has certified 37 companies that may receive the investments, from software firms to drug companies to companies that have designed consumer products, such as a hospital bed that can transfer its occupant to a chair, or an automatic shutoff for a boat if its driver goes overboard.

Thirty companies have gotten investments since the law first took effect, with about one-third of the companies only closing a round of investments once the threshold for the tax credit was lowered to $25,000. That change took effect two months ago.

?There is an explosion in entrepreneurship and people want to get in on it,? said Matthew Nemerson, president of the Connecticut Technology Council, which started lobbying for a tax credit for angel investors more than five years ago. ?The legislation came at the right time to throw fuel on the fire. Because of the $100,000 limit, the fuel [was] a little bit watered down.?

In the two months since the credit was expanded, 21 Connecticut taxpayers have applied for the program, and together invested $2.1 million in nine companies, a much faster pace than during the first 16 months. Some doubt that pace will continue, however.

In all, 66 angel investors have qualified for the credit since it began. Investors must have at least $200,000 in income and $1 million in net worth to qualify for the credit.

Anthony Viggiano, who founded Autotether in 2007 and began contracting with Connecticut manufacturers to build the automatic boat-engine shutoff device two years ago, said he had been traveling around the East Coast pitching his company as a good investment to angels for more than a year with only three bites.

?You get like $50,000, $25,000 there, it?s a tough road, it?s a lot of work,? Viggiano said.

But once the threshold for the tax credit dropped, he found another seven investors in the state. Between the two groups, they invested $550,000 in Autotether, with a round that closed just before Christmas.

Viggiano will use the money for marketing. He and four others work for Autotether. ?Within three or four months we?re hoping to have enough cash flow to pay ourselves a reasonable salary,? he said. Autotether hopes to break even by the end of the year.

When six Connecticut angel investors put $600,000 into Farmington?s Innovatient Solutions, immediately after the tax credit began, that money and a match of $500,000 from Connecticut Innovations allowed CEO Jolinda Lambert to hire two people, for a total of six. Innovatient?s software sends information to hospital patients about their treatment through the TVs in their rooms.

The company expects to sell more than $1 million in software this year, making it too large to qualify for tax credits in its next $2 million round of angel and venture capital.

?It made all the difference; without the funding and the contribution of individuals like CI and the angel investors, we would not be in existence,? Lambert said. ?We wouldn?t have had the runway necessary to build the company.?

Advocates for startups say that creating an incentive for more angel investing is important because venture capital firms have become less likely to nurture brand-new, unproven firms. Angel investors in Connecticut, by contrast, have put money into companies that are less than 6 months old ? Lambert?s company was 5 months old when it was funded, and didn?t have a product yet.

?Venture capital keeps moving up and doing bigger deals and later deals,? Nemerson said.

Peter Longo, president of Connecticut Innovations, said his organization has been moving toward new companies for four years. It started a pre-seed fund for micro investments in brand new companies in 2010. Of 37 CI investments in the fiscal year that ended in 2011, 15 were pre-seed.

Spurring more angel investing helps CI, because the state is sending it $25 million more a year for the next five years. Not all of that will be poured directly into companies, but given that CI only invested $9 million last fiscal year, it needs to find more companies deserving of its capital. ?We think this [fiscal] year we?ll close on $20 million,? Longo said.

But, Longo said, the pace of investing by smaller angel investors is unlikely to continue in 2012. ?A lot of it was pent-up demand,? he said.

Mary Anne Rooke, president and managing director of Connecticut?s Angel Investor Forum, said the legislation is too new to say what its effect will be. Even before the limit was lowered, some $25,000 and $50,000 investors got the credit by setting up corporate structures that combined their investments with others; and even now, some who don?t want to put in $25,000 do the same.

But the credit does convince others to put in more, she said, including one man in December who was planning to invest $10,000 or $15,000, ?and this pushed him up to $25,000,? she said.

But will those decisions make up for those who might have put in $100,000 when the floor was higher, and now will put in $75,000 or $50,000?

David Cohen, co-owner of Standard Oil of Connecticut, stumbled into angel investing by accident with the son of a friend of a friend who was a founder of Higher One, Connecticut?s poster-child for dorm-room startups. Cohen invested $25,000 at first, and kept putting money in each time the company asked again. When Higher One went public, he cashed out half his stake, and made roughly 60 times what he put in.

That?s not typical, he?s quick to say, but he?s used the proceeds to keep investing ? he?s now put money in seven Connecticut startups and five outside the state.

Angel Investor Forum puts about 70 percent of its money into companies outside the state, mostly in the Boston to New Jersey corridor. In seven years, only one company has provided an investment exit for the group, at a six-fold return.

Cohen always puts in at least $100,000, so the lower floor doesn?t matter for him, but he said being able to save on his state income taxes does put a thumb on the scale for Connecticut firms.

Viggiano, the Autotether founder, says the credit makes him think that Connecticut?s business climate is changing. In decades as a manufacturing executive, he thought it was a difficult state to do business in.

?I think that lower amount is going to open up a huge opportunity for a lot of people,? he said. ?It?ll make a big difference for my company, and it will make a big difference for a lot of companies. No matter how good your idea is, you can?t do it without capital.?

With a lower investment threshold and a broader spectrum of companies that could be invested in, as proposed by the Launch America Initiative, a big wave of investments could go into startups and small businesses creating new jobs and an economic resurgence.

Source: http://launchamerica.org/2012/01/angel-investing-jumps-with-tax-credits/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=angel-investing-jumps-with-tax-credits

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Repurpose an Over-the-Door Shoe Holder into a Cleaning Products Organizer [Organization]

Repurpose an Over-the-Door Shoe Holder into a Cleaning Products OrganizerOver-the-door shoe holders are wonderful for organizing lots of household items in addition to their normal function. We've previously covered how to use them to store pantry items, cable storage, and gadgets. Now, household weblog Whine & Cheez shares how these versatile holders can help organize your cleaning products.

In this case all you need to is hang the shoe organizer from a door in your laundry room or linen closet and all of your sponges, sprays, and other cleaning gear in the shoe pockets. Keeping it handy and visible will encourage you to use the right cleaning tool for the right job.

Git er done! | Whine & Cheez

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/LZBywYKLJzw/repurpose-an-over+the+door-shoe-holder-into-a-cleaning-products-organizer

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Amnesty was set to recognize late Cuba dissident (AP)

HAVANA ? Amnesty International said Friday that it was on the eve of designating a Cuban dissident as a prisoner of conscience when he died following a hunger strike.

It later named three other jailed Cubans as prisoners of conscience, in the first such recognition of inmates on the island since the last of 75 government opponents jailed in a 2003 crackdown were freed last spring.

The human rights watchdog had planned to send a worldwide call to action Friday morning demanding the immediate release of Wilman Villar, Amnesty Caribbean campaign officer James Burke told The Associated Press by phone from London. But Villar died Thursday night from complications of pneumonia after a 50-day hunger strike. He had been hospitalized since Jan. 14 and was in a coma.

"We were going to launch an urgent action on his case today ... but unfortunately we came to the office today with the tragic news that he had passed," Burke said.

The group has strict criteria for what constitutes a prisoner of conscience, including a history of nonviolence.

Cuba denies holding any political prisoners and characterizes dissidents as mercenaries bent on toppling the Communist Party government at the behest of Washington. The state-run website Cubadebate carried a message calling Villar a common criminal and denying that he was truly a dissident, or even on a hunger strike.

Until recently Villar, 31, was little known even among fellow dissidents, who said he apparently began taking part in anti-government actions only last fall. Authorities arrested him in November during a protest in the eastern city of Santiago and threatened to punish him for a prior domestic violence case if he did not stop making trouble, Amnesty International and island dissidents said.

Villar was convicted of assault, disrespecting authority and resisting arrest, and sentenced in November to four years in prison. He protested by refusing to wear a prisoner's uniform and turning down food.

Villar's health worsened until finally he was hospitalized, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which monitors detentions of dissidents in Cuba.

Amnesty International said it held Cuban authorities responsible for Villar's death and said the charges against him were related to the protest. The government denied that, calling him a "common criminal" who was convicted of 0spousal battery.

The message on Cubadebate alleged that Villar got involved with dissidents only after the domestic violence case in an attempt to evade justice by linking himself to them, and it warned of an international conspiracy to defame the island's government.

"Cuba regrets the death of any human being; it energetically condemns the crude manipulations of our enemies," it read.

Villar's funeral was held Friday outside Santiago, where multiple phone calls to his widow rang unanswered. In Havana, dissidents gathered at the headquarters of the Ladies in White opposition group to sign a book of condolences dedicated to Villar.

"Unfortunately he trusted that this stance of confrontation ... would lead Cuban authorities to reevaluate his case," said Hector Maseda, a dissident and former inmate. "But we who have been political prisoners over these five decades know that nothing softens the hearts of tyrants."

Villar's death set off a flurry of news articles, blogs, tweets and recriminations from rights groups, dissidents and U.S. politicians, everyone from Cuban-American legislators and GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney to President Barack Obama.

"Villar's senseless death highlights the ongoing repression of the Cuban people and the plight faced by brave individuals standing up for the universal rights of all Cubans," Obama said in a statement.

The government of Spain also expressed concern and called for the Cuban government to release "all political prisoners."

Meanwhile, defenders of President Raul Castro's government scoffed at the lionization of a man they called a common criminal, saying his death was being used for political ends.

"The death of a human being is always painful, but it seems some suffer more than others ... The death of an individual convicted by a court for acts of violence is converted into a weapon to be hurled at the Cuban Revolution," Iroel Sanchez wrote on the pro-government blog La Pupila Insomne.

"This man who is presented today as a peaceful fighter for human rights on the island was nothing more than a violent citizen, a proven danger to society," read a tweet from another pro-government blogger, Yohandry Fontana.

Villar is the second jailed dissident to die on hunger strike in two years. In February 2010, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, also considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, died after refusing food for months.

Zapata had been pressing for the release of prisoners from the 2003 crackdown, and a few months after his death the government began freeing them under a deal brokered by the Roman Catholic Church. Many went into exile with their families.

After the last of them walked free in April 2011, Amnesty said it no longer recognized any prisoners of conscience in Cuban jails.

In the months since, rights watchers say, authorities changed tack and would hold dissidents for a few hours or a couple of days before releasing them without charge.

But on Friday, Amnesty expressed concern about the Nov. 30 detentions of Ivonne Malleza Galano and her husband, Ignacio Martinez Montejo, picked up while staging a peaceful anti-government protest in Havana, and of Isabel Haydee Alvarez, an onlooker who objected to their arrest. It said all three were told they were arrested for "public disorder" but have been held without charge.

"Amnesty International considers them to be prisoners of conscience, detained solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," it said, "and is calling for their immediate and unconditional release."

___

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Jorge Sainz in Madrid contributed to this report.

___

Peter Orsi on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Peter(underscore)Orsi

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120121/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_dissident_dies

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