Billionaire investors square off on live TV

This photo combo of file photos shows Bill Ackman, left, of Pershing Square Capital Management, on Feb. 6, 2012, in Toronto, and financier Carl Icahn, on Feb. 7, 2006, in New York. A long-simmering spat between billionaire investors Icahn and Ackman boiled over publicly on Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. The two Wall Street titans, interviewed by phone simultaneously on CNBC, traded barbs about an old investment deal and on Ackman?s investment position in nutritional supplements distributor Herbalife Inc. (AP Photo/Pawel Dwulit, Shiho Fukada)

This photo combo of file photos shows Bill Ackman, left, of Pershing Square Capital Management, on Feb. 6, 2012, in Toronto, and financier Carl Icahn, on Feb. 7, 2006, in New York. A long-simmering spat between billionaire investors Icahn and Ackman boiled over publicly on Friday, Jan. 25, 2013. The two Wall Street titans, interviewed by phone simultaneously on CNBC, traded barbs about an old investment deal and on Ackman?s investment position in nutritional supplements distributor Herbalife Inc. (AP Photo/Pawel Dwulit, Shiho Fukada)

NEW YORK (AP) ? A long-simmering spat between billionaire investors Carl Icahn and Bill Ackman boiled over into a shouting match on live television Friday.

The two Wall Street titans, interviewed by phone simultaneously on CNBC, traded barbs about an old investment deal and on Ackman's position in the nutritional supplements distributor Herbalife Inc.

Ackman was being interviewed by CNBC host Scott Wapner a day after Icahn made disparaging comments about him on Bloomberg Television. After Ackman had spoken about some of his current investment positions, Wapner interrupted the conversation to say that Icahn had called in and had a few points to make.

"I've really sort of had it with this guy Ackman," Icahn told CNBC. "He's like the crybaby in the school yard."

The two men then spent the best part of thirty minutes telling Wapner why they didn't much care for each other.

"This is not an honest guy, this is not a guy who keeps his word," Ackman said. "This is a guy who takes advantage of little people."

The animosity between the two men dates back to at least 2003, when Icahn bought a stake in Hallwood Realty Partners from Ackman's former fund Gotham Partners. Icahn paid $80 a share for that investment and, according to Ackman, agreed to pay a portion of any future profit to Ackman's fund.

Icahn referred to the clause as "schmuck insurance," and refused to pay up when Hallwood was acquired a year later for $136 a share, according to Ackman's version of events.

Ackman then sued Icahn on behalf of his investors and won. He says that Icahn then called him, congratulated him on winning his claim and said he wanted to be his friend. Ackman declined the invitation.

"Carl Icahn does not have a good reputation for being a handshake guy," said Ackman.

That version of events, in particular the claim that he wanted to be Ackman's friend, is disputed by Icahn. He also said that he had helped Icahn "out of a jam," when he bought the stake in Hallwood.

"To get the record straight, I never asked Ackman to be my friend," Icahn told CNBC. "Quite to the contrary, Ackman has stated to me on more than one occasion that it's a shame we are not friends because then he could have invested with me."

One of Ackman's recent big bets is on Herbalife.

In December, the hedge fund manager said that the nutritional supplements distributor was a pyramid scheme and that he was taking a short position in the stock. Short-sellers make money when the stock they're betting against declines.

In an interview with Bloomberg Television Thursday, Icahn had said it was no secret that he neither liked nor respected Ackman and he didn't like how he had approached his short position in Herbalife, "getting a room full of people to bad mouth the company."

Icahn refused to comment on whether he held a position in Herbalife, but speculation is rife that he bought a stake in a bet against his old adversary.

Despite the ongoing fight with his rival, Icahn has reason to be cheerful this week.

Less than five months ago, the investor decided to go against the grain and make a big investment in the Internet video service Netflix, at a time when most investors were spurning the company.

Icahn bought a stake of almost 10 percent in Netflix for $324 million. The value of that stake has already almost tripled to $941 million after Netflix's stock surged this week, when the company reported an unexpected profit and an influx of 2 million U.S. subscribers to its service.

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AP Business Writer Michelle Chapman contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-01-25-Billionaire%20Battle/id-2c4aa6e03b514b02914cce66ff1a2a40

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In Germany, internet service providers pay you! (for loss of service)

Ever lost your internet connection? Do the loathsome words "executive customer service" resonate with you? They shouldn't if you live in Deutschland -- at least, not after today. While that course of customer service whinging can occasionally yield some form of restitution stateside (we're being generous), for Germans it's now almost unnecessary. In a ruling issued today, a federal court in Karlsruhe has determined interruption of internet service to be grounds for compensation, as it can be categorized as an "essential material item," Reuters reports. The decision, which allows impacted users to file compensatory claims, stems from a 2008 - 2009 incident in which a private German citizen incurred a loss of phone, fax and internet service over a two month period. Apparently, the man had already been partially reimbursed for having to rely on mobile phone service, but decided to take things a little further. In other news, Americans can just threaten to switch to FiOS. Worked for us.

Filed under: Internet

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Source: Reuters

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/24/in-germany-internet-service-providers-pay-you-for-loss-of-service/

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From Coach to Awakener | Self Help in You

Coaching is the process of helping people and teams to perform at the peak of their abillities. It involves drawing out people?s strengths, helping them to bypass personal barriers and limits in order to achieve their personal bests, and facilitating them to function more effectively as members of a team.
Historically, coaching has been focused toward achieving improvement with respect to a specific behavioral performance. This involves promoting the development of that person?s behavioral competence through careful observation and feedback.
In recent years, the notion of coaching has taken on a more generalized and expanded meaning. Personal coaching, executive coaching and life coaching provide support on a number of different levels: behaviors, capabilities, beliefs, values, identity and even spirtual. These new and more comprehensive forms of coaching-executive coaching and life coaching-can be referred to as capital-C- Coaching. Large C Coaching involves helping people effectively achieve out comes on a range of levels. We guide people to learn about new environments, for instance; coach them to improve specific behavioral competencies; teach them new cognitive capabilities; mentor empowering eliefs and values; sponsor growth at the identity level; and awaken people?s awareness of the larger system or field.
This book defines the types of contexts and situations which require the capital C Coach to focus on one of these roles ? caretaker, guide, coach, teacher, mentor, sponsor, awakener ? and provides a specific toolbox for each role. In other words, it provides a comprehensive tool set to be used by an effective coach to manage the entire scope of large C Coaching activities- from caretaking to awakening.

Source: http://selfhelpinyou.com/2013/01/from-coach-to-awakener/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=from-coach-to-awakener

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NRA lobbyist criticizes ad referring to Obama's kids

Fulfilling a promise made in Newtown one month ago, President Obama is set to reveal proposals to curb gun violence, which will reportedly include universal background checks, a crackdown on gun trafficking, and a renewed assault weapons ban. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

By Susan Cornwell, Reuters

WASHINGTON - One of the National Rifle Association's senior lobbyists said an ad by the nation's leading gun-rights group after a school shooting in Connecticut that refers to President Barack Obama's children was "ill-advised."

Jim Baker, head of the federal affairs division at the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action, said he had made his views known to others at the powerful gun-rights organization.

The ad, which cast Obama as hypocritical for having expressed skepticism about putting armed guards in schools, when "his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools," drew widespread criticism when it first became public on Jan. 15.

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Nationwide outrage over the shooting of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14 moved gun violence and gun control to the center of the U.S. political debate.

"I don't think it was particularly helpful, that ad," Baker told Reuters in a telephone interview. "I thought it ill-advised."

"I think the ad could have made a good point, if it talked about the need for increased school security, without making the point using the president's children," he said. The NRA has advocated putting armed guards in schools.

Baker was the NRA's representative at a meeting with Vice President Joseph Biden on Jan. 10 to discuss the administration's plans to reduce gun violence in the wake of the school shooting.

He said he was not involved in creating the ad, and once it appeared, he had let others at the NRA know what he thought. "I got to say my piece," he said.

Baker gave no details of their response to him, but said, "Believe it or not, there are occasionally differences of opinion in this building."

In the ad, a narrator asks, "Are the president's kids more important than yours?" Obama's daughters, 14-year-old Malia and 11-year-old Sasha, attend private school in Washington and receive Secret Service protection, as is routine for children of presidents.

The White House has called the NRA ad "repugnant and cowardly," while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said it was "reprehensible" and undermined the NRA's credibility by bringing the president's children into the debate. Christie is considered a possible Republican presidential contender in 2016.

Susan Eisenhower, the daughter of the late President Dwight Eisenhower who had Secret Service protection as a child, wrote in the Washington Post that she was "disgusted" by the ad.

The NRA's president, David Keene, objected to the White House criticism earlier this month, saying "We didn't name the president's daughters ... What we said is that these are people who think that their families deserve protection that yours don't."

The president's critics also have noted that when Obama announced his plan to respond to the gun violence, he was flanked by four children. Obama proposed renewing a U.S. assault weapons ban, as well as banning high-capacity magazines and more stringent background checks for gun purchasers.?

Related stories

David Keene, president of the National Rifle Association, responds to the Obama administration's proposed gun safety measures, saying law-abiding gun owners "have a good deal to fear" from the proposals and defending the NRA's controversial new ad.

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Source: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/25/16700937-nra-lobbyist-pro-gun-ad-referring-to-obamas-children-ill-advised?lite

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Pope on social networking: the virtual is real

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Benedict XVI put church leaders on notice Thursday, saying social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter aren't a virtual world they can ignore, but rather a very real world they must engage if they want to spread the faith to the next generation.

The 85-year-old Benedict, who tweets in nine languages, used his annual message on social communications to stress the potential of social media for the church as it struggles to keep followers and attract new ones amid religious apathy, competition from other churches and scandals that have driven the faithful away.

Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, head of the Vatican's communications office, cited a 2012 study commissioned by U.S. bishops that found that 53 percent of Americans were unaware of any significant presence of the Catholic Church online.

Other studies, Celli said, made clear that the "millennial generation" of people born after 1982 use Facebook, Twitter and YouTube far more than their parents as primary sources of information, entertainment and sharing political views and community issues.

"The digital environment is not a parallel or purely virtual world, but is part of the daily experience of many people, especially the young," Benedict said in his message. "Social networks are the result of human interaction, but for their part they also reshape the dynamics of communication which builds relationships: a considered understanding of this environment is therefore the prerequisite for a significant presence there."

Benedict himself still writes longhand, but he is a superstar online, with 2.5 million Twitter followers, nearly 11,000 of them following his Latin tweets alone. And under his pontificate, the Holy See has greatly increased its presence online, with YouTube channels, papal apps and an online news portal www.news.va that gathers all Vatican information in one place.

But the digital exposure hasn't come without risk or criticism: In the days after the Vatican announced that Benedict would respond to questions about faith on his first tweets from his (at)Pontifex handle last month, the Vatican was bombarded with threats of "Twitter bombs" from critics trying to scare the pope away from the online social forum.

"Leaving would've been a mistake," said Monsignor Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican's social communications office. "It wouldn't have been fair to abandon all the people who joyfully welcomed the pope's message."

Celli acknowledged that much of the pope's message this year repeated exhortations from previous years about the need for respectful dialogue online, for users to present themselves authentically and to listen, not just preach.

"At first look it could look like reheated soup," Celli conceded. But he said that sometimes messages need repeating, particularly in the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church. "I don't want to make any particular revelations here, but don't believe that everything that is said is absorbed at the ecclesial level."

Celli noted, for example, that at a recent Vatican meeting of the world's bishops on spreading the faith, the recommendations for the church's social communications strategy "could have been written 30 years ago."

"That means that he who is intervening doesn't have the perception of what is happening today, in the sphere of social networking," Celli said. "That's a problem for us."

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-social-networking-virtual-real-110519061.html

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France sees no sign Syria's Assad will be toppled soon

PARIS/BEIRUT (Reuters) - France said on Thursday there were no signs that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is about to be overthrown, something Paris has been saying for months was just over the horizon.

The uprising against Assad's rule is now almost two years old. 60,000 Syrians have been killed and another 650,000 are now refugees abroad, according to the United Nations.

France, a former colonial ruler of Syria, has been one of the most vocal backers of the rebels trying to topple Assad and was the first to recognize the opposition coalition.

"Things are not moving. The solution that we had hoped for, and by that I mean the fall of Bashar and the arrival of the (opposition) coalition to power, has not happened," Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in his annual New Year's address to the press.

Fabius told RFI radio in December "the end is nearing" for Assad. But on Thursday, he said international mediation and discussions about the crisis that began in March 2011 were not getting anywhere. "There are no recent positive signs," he said.

He said Syrian opposition leaders and representatives of some 50 nations and organizations would meet in Paris on January 28 to discuss how to fulfill previous commitments.

Assad has resisted all attempts at forcing him to step down and has led a ruthless crackdown on what he calls a foreign-backed terrorists.

The president was shown on Syrian state television on Thursday visiting a mosque to celebrate the birth of Prophet Mohammad. Assad shook hands with government members and smiled but did not make a speech.

Meanwhile, Syrian army forces bombarded opposition-held areas of the country with artillery and air strikes and insurgents clashes with infantry, opposition activist said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors violence in Syria, said that six civilians, including a woman and two children, were killed in Homs on Thursday when a plane bombed their house.

On the southwestern edge of the capital, artillery hit the rebel-held district of Daraya, residents in Damascus said.

"There was very loud shelling overnight from the mountain onto Daraya," said a resident of central Damascus. Assad's army has used the Qasioun mountain range to the west of Damascus as high ground to shell opposition districts.

"(The explosions) sounded like huge trucks falling from the sky, one huge truck at a time," the resident said on condition of anonymity. "I felt my windows shake."

The army and insurgents have been stuck in a military stalemate for weeks, but rebels have been able to capture some military bases.

This week, rebels took control of a missile base in the country's north, according to opposition footage, potentially gaining access to powerful long-range weapons.

Video posted on the Internet on Wednesday showed images of fuel tanks and at least 17 trucks with mounts for several-meters-long missiles, although they appeared to have had the missiles removed.

"(There are) fuel tanks in addition to missiles and the whole battalion was taken over by the rebels," said a voice off camera. Text accompanying the video said that the Battalion 599 base, 12 miles (20km) south of Aleppo, was overrun on Tuesday.

But the army has fortified positions in the capital and in major military bases and it is rare that either side makes a significant advance.

While France has ruled out sending the rebels weapons, it has pushed the European Union to review its arms embargo.

Paris and other Western allies have so far failed to convince Russia and China, who have continued to block stronger U.N. action against Assad, to change their stance.

"France continues, like others, to try find a solution so that Bashar is replaced and that a united Syria that respects all communities is achieved. However, we are far from it," Fabius said.

(Additional reporting by Reuters TV; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/france-sees-no-sign-syrias-assad-toppled-soon-155606330.html

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Gay marriage faces struggle in Democratic bastion Rhode Island

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A bill to make gay marriage legal in Rhode Island, one of the most Democratic states, was expected to be passed by the state's House of Representatives on Thursday but faces an uphill battle in the state Senate.

The legislation, supported by Governor Lincoln Chafee, aims to make Rhode Island the 10th state in the nation and the last in New England to legalize gay weddings.

Democratic Representative Arthur Handy, lead sponsor of the bill, said he expected "a very solid majority" to vote for the legislation after a debate late Thursday afternoon.

"I think the momentum in Rhode Island is indicative of what we're seeing across the country," he said, noting that President Barack Obama had mentioned same-sex marriage in his inaugural address on Monday.

Handy has introduced the legislation every year since 2003, following efforts by another lawmaker who began putting it forward in 1997.

Rhode Island was left as the last of New England's six states without a law allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed after Maine legalized same-sex marriage late last year.

Nine of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage. Maryland was the most recent, with gay marriage becoming legal there on January 1.

Another 31 states have passed constitutional amendments restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

In Rhode Island, it was unclear how the legislation would fare in the Senate, though Handy said in the last election cycle both houses had elected more "pro-equality" candidates than ever before.

The state Senate president, Teresa Paiva Weed, opposes gay marriage, but has said she will allow a Senate judiciary committee vote on the bill if it passes in the House.

Senate spokesman Greg Pare said predictions that a Senate vote on the bill would be close had not changed.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Dan Grebler)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gay-marriage-faces-struggle-democratic-bastion-rhode-island-201745137.html

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