Saturday, July 31, 2010

Cablevision to hurl out network-DVR in Apr

Yinka Adegoke NEW YORK Thu Feb 25, 2010 2:01pm EST Related News Time Warner Cable posts profit, initiates dividendThu, Jan 28 2010UPDATE 2-Time Warner Cable posts profit, initiates dividendThu, Jan 28 2010

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Cablevision Systems Corp said it will roll out its controversial remote storage digital video recorder in April, doing away with the need to buy and install DVR boxes in subscribers" homes.

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The RS-DVR technology enables subscribers to store TV programs on the cable operator"s computer servers and then play them back at will. When plans for the network-based DVR were first announced in 2006, several major program owners sued the cable operator claiming it was illegal.

Cablevision won the case on appeal and last June the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a counter appeal by the film studios and television networks, opening the way for the DVR to be launched.

"By year-end we intend to cease buying physical DVRs as we begin deploying our network-based DVR solution throughout our footprint," Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Tom Rutledge said Thursday on a conference call with Wall Street analysts.

Investors believe such systems could save cable companies significant amounts of money on buying DVR boxes, as well as the cost of sending employees out to install the boxes.

Other cable companies including Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc have said they would launch similar systems over time, once it became clear the RS-DVRs were legal.

Cablevision has made a big drive to provide innovative services to compete with the advanced digital TV and Internet features offered by Verizon Communications Inc in its area.

Earlier in the week, Cablevision announced its plans to trial a PC-to-TV relay technology which would enable a subscriber to watch online videos and family photos on their own personal TV channel.

The company has also launched Wi-Fi Internet access in the local Cablevision area to enable its Internet subscribers to use wireless devices outside of the home. It also plans to install Wi-Fi inside commuter rail cars this year once it gets approval from transit authorities.

Rutledge told analysts the company is testing phones that switch from Wi-Fi to cellular and back as the user moves in and out of a Wi-Fi zone.

"The test is so far proving to be good and consistent with our view of what is possible and gives us some hope that we will be able to launch additional products using the Wi-Fi network that will look like what some people think of as cellular telephone," said Rutledge.

(Reporting by Yinka Adegoke; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Friday, July 30, 2010

Are Bond star Daniel Craig and Satsuki Mitchell personally married?

Bond star Daniel Craig is believed to have married in secret after he was spotted with a gold ring on his wedding finger.

His girlfriend of six years, Japanese-US film producer Satsuki Mitchell, 30, also had a ring on the third finger of her left hand.

A spokesman for Craig, 41, yesterday insisted that it was ;a private matter.

Bonded: Craig and Satsuki wear rings as they walk in Brentwood, California

Bonded: Craig and Satsuki wear rings as they walk in Brentwood, California

In the past, Craig has quashed rumours that he and Satsuki were engaged.

The wedding band was on display as he and Satsuki held hands when they left an ;Artists for Peace and Justice meeting in Brentwood, California. And millions saw his wedding band during the Help Haiti telethon appeal.

A source said: ;We all suspect they have got married. He has always said Satsuki is the one but he didnt want a big showbiz wedding, that would be his worst nightmare. Hes very private.

The relationship was allegedly tested when Craig reportedly had an affair with his Layer Cake co-star Sienna Miller in 2005.

His previous marriage, to Scottish actress Fiona Loudon, ended in 1994 after two years. They have a 19-year-old daughter, Ella.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Success of tip two-child process could force Chinese rethink on family planning

Quadruplets poise as they stick on hundreds of Chinese twins during the 6th Beijing Twins Festival

Jane Macartney & , : {}

A tip examination permitting family groups in a tillage Chinese county to have dual immature kids could outrider the commencement of a amicable series after years of the scandalous one-child-only rule.

It has emerged that, twenty-five years ago, Beijing personally certified a commander plan in Yicheng county, 560 miles (900km) southwest of the capital, in that family groups would be authorised to have a limit of dual immature kids if they adhered to certain conditions.

Details of the examination were reported for the initial time in the Southern Weekend journal in Guangzhou and the formula are certain to call in to subject the viability of the central family formulation policy.

According to the paper, the race of the county has grown over the 25-year duration of the intrigue by 20.7 per cent, that is scarcely five commission points reduce than the inhabitant average, notwithstanding family groups being authorised dual children. The examination additionally appears to have redressed the imbalance in in between masculine and womanlike births in China: the inhabitant normal is 118 males to each 100 females, but in Yicheng the comparative measure was in line with the healthy normal at 106 to 100.

Related LinksDengs oppressive plan gave bieing born to majority problemsBeijing to relax "one couple, one child" order

Given Chinas flourishing race imbalance as a outcome of the low flood rate that is approaching to means the operative age race to rise in 2015 and thrust by 2050 and the astonishing formula of the experiment, it is no warn that successful voices have welcomed the findings.

Liang Zhongtang, who written the programme, believes that the draconian one-child process has served the purpose. Under healthy conditions, with no family formulation policy, the birthrate would dump faster than with despotic restrictions, he said. Zou Xuejin, of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, has additionally called for a decrease of the central family formulation policy.

One central who was concerned with the plan in Yicheng spoke of his excitability at the begin of the programme in 1985. We were concerned that, since the one-child process had already been in place for five years, the examination would run out of control, he said. We went from residence to residence to insist the process and, in fact, it went utterly smoothly.

The Yicheng examination has the origins in the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping instituted the one-child policy, at a time when a little academics in China longed for to set up exam areas. Since then, the authorities have exempted millions of family groups from the one-child rule, particularly farmers in tillage areas where the initial kid was a girl.

Yicheng was selected since it is a standard tillage county. Two alternative areas were ruled out since they were home to large populations of racial minorities, in between them groups who were exempt, anyway, from the one-child policy.

The plan primarily met with antithesis in Beijing until officials in the northern Shanxi range wrote to the celebration chief, Hu Yaobang, in 1984 with their surprising suggestion. The reply from the comparatively magnanimous personality was reported to be swift: Go ahead. The main chapter was that the examination should be carried out but broadside effectively in secret.

The Yicheng exam has been run by despotic rules. Men in the county are not authorised to wed until they are 25, women prior to they reach twenty-three 3 years after than the inhabitant policy. Couples receiving piece in the examination contingency leave a six-year opening in in between their initial and second kid or face a excellent of 1,200 yuan (120). They are speedy to bear sterilisation after the second kid to safeguard that they do not have a third.

It appears, however, that a little couples in the county longed for usually one kid anyway. One sanatorium alloy told The Times yesterday: More and some-more people usually wish to have one child. Its costly to lift a second, in all in the town. The farmers still similar to to have dual children.

Many, of course, did take the possibility to stand in the series of their offspring, in a nation with a race of 1.3 billion. A 20-year-old waitress operative at a Yicheng grill told The Times that she was an usually child, but her box was surprising and majority of her friends had a hermit or a sister. Among my relatives, a little have one kid and a little have dual but no one has three, she said.

At the begin of the examination the race of Yicheng was 278,000 and the target was that it should not surpass 300,000 by 2000. Now the county has a race of 310,000. As one central told the Southern Weekend: The examination is utterly satisfying. It shows that, even if people are authorised to have a second child, there will not be a race explosion.

News of the Yicheng plan comes at a time when majority are doubt how prolonged the race carry out process should be hold in place, in all as the workforce shoulders the flourishing weight of perplexing to await an ageing society.

The authortities, concerned about the hostility of immature civic couples to have even one child, have authorised couples who are both solitary immature kids to have dual babies. In Shanghai this has been actively speedy but to meagre effect.

Chinas newly abounding are fervent to suffer their monetary independence. They are already impeded by the mountainous costs of shopping their own home and a passion for bars, restaurants, costly lapdogs and unresolved out at Starbucks. Many feel a baby would grappling iron their character and ravage their disposable income.

Urban yuppies wanting a career are in all calm with the one-child rule; farmers who wish some-more sons to compartment the land simply omit the limits.

Chinas policymakers might find they have already depressed at the back of the times.

hair wig

Supreme Court Nigeria statute reinforces divorce collateral reputation

Frances Gibb, Legal Editor & , : {}

Londons repute as the divorce payout collateral of the universe was reinforced by the Supreme Court when it overturned a Nigerian statute that had left a mother penniless.

Five justices sitting in the UKs top probity ruled that an endowment in a Nigerian probity would have caused Sikirat Agbaje, a British citizen, genuine hardship.

Instead, they systematic that she should have the majority larger pile total of 275,000, after awarded by a UK judge.

Mrs Agbaje met her husband, Olusola, a barrister, in England in the 1960s and the integrate had five young kids during their 38-year marriage.

Related LinksDivorce rate falls to a 33-year lowRadical renovate of family probity

For majority of their tied together hold up they both lived in Nigeria but had acquired UK citizenship in 1972.

They distant in 1999 when Mrs Agbaje came to live in New Barnet, North London, where her young kids had been cared for by a nanny.

Mr Agbaje released divorce record in the Nigerian probity that awarded his former mother a hold up seductiveness in a skill in Lagos and a pile total homogeneous to about 21,000.

She went to the High Court in London where a decider awarded her a pile total of 275,000 - about 39 per cent of the former couples assets.

Mrs Agbaje had asked the UK courts for assistance underneath a territory of the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act, that gives the courts powers to accede to monetary service when a matrimony has been dissolved in a unfamiliar country.

The High Court systematic that she should embrace the pile sum, that was next to to 65 per cent of the sale deduction of the New Barnet home, on condition that she gave up her seductiveness in the Lagos property.

The Court of Appeal set in reserve the English award, predominantly on the belligerent that the High Court did not give enough weight to the connectors of the box with Nigeria.

But Mrs Agbajes interest to the Supreme Court was unanimously authorised and the strange High Court statute restored.

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Monday, July 26, 2010

Nick Clegg calls for 10% bank taxation to rescue retrogression victims Politics The Guardian

Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg: "The banks have fundamentally been since untrammelled await by both Labour and Conservative governments to do just what they like, and take large risks with the livelihoods and savings." Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

Nick Clegg is to call for a 10% taxation on bank increase to account a £2bn pursuit origination programme to rescue victims of the recession.

In a Guardian interview, the Liberal Democrat personality cursed bankers for working similar to ""Arthur Scargill in pinstripes"", and vowed his celebration would be "a radicalising, rather than moderating force" in the eventuality of a hung council so prolonged as the infancy celebration was committed to move the necessity underneath control.

On the eve of his party"s pre-election open conference, he insisted he will deliberate his celebration entirely prior to fasten a bloc or ancillary a Queen"s debate tabled by a minority government.

Clegg insisted it is not for him, but for the citizens to confirm either David Cameron or Gordon Brown becomes budding minister. However, he additionally pounded Brown in disrespectful terms: "It"s unequivocally formidable to deposit most goal or conviction in a man who could not even say family with his own colleagues".

He pronounced Brown was not a convincing figure to reconstruct the economy. "This is the man who wrought the damage, he should not be the chairman to do the correct work".

Brown"s late acclimatisation to electoral remodel was "hardly a hallelujah moment". He added: "There is no point any one sticking to energy when it"s viewable the British people don"t wish you ... they"d cite someone else.

"That"s where inherent refinement bumps up opposite domestic reality. It"s not for me to decide. We give the citizens the cards, they understanding them".

Clegg pronounced he remained, on balance, "a outrageous critic" of Margaret Thatcher, but certified Britain needs to rediscover the fervour she showed when she tackled the unions.

The banks, he said, have right away turn Britain"s good � la mode vested interest. He said: "Bankers are Scargill in pin stripes. Scargill"s settled target was to plea who runs the country. The bankers have behaved in the same conceited approach ... to good usually themselves ...

"The banks have fundamentally been since untrammelled await by both Labour and Conservative governments to do just what they like, and take large risks with the livelihoods and savings.

"They have been holding a gun to the economy. A on-going magnanimous similar to myself is not going to be nice about floating the alarm on a vested interest."

In the usually taxation climb due by his party, he right away backs a 10% taxation on bank profits, a mangle up of the banks" investment and sell arms, and eventually a order on banks owned by the taxpayers – RBS and Lloyds – to be compulsory to handle in the open seductiveness on issues such as take-overs of UK firms.

He additionally proposes tighter mandate on banks to lend. "What I listen to from the Conservatives is ... "we"ve got to wait for for the rest of the world". I unequivocally don"t think the Tories get how most we"re skating on thin ice as an economy.

"If we don"t take on this vested seductiveness ourselves, now, unilaterally, immediately, we"re asking for trouble. The liabilities of British banks are right away 4 and a half times the distance of the British economy. We are similar to a large version of Iceland. We are not easeful in any way".

In his talk Clegg also:

• dismisses Tory plans to open new schools and rejects profit-making firms opening new schools. "I keep celebration of the mass that we and the Tories have matching policies on schools but it"s finish rubbish."

• insists he will not ringfence the NHS from cuts. He said: "We need to have poignant assets to guarantee the GP surgery or AE or the maternity ward".

• promises "to condense the headcount of the Department of Children".

He attempted to defuse the issue of either he would behind Cameron or Brown in a hung council saying: "I think these inherent niceties will be swept in reserve if it"s viewable that there"s one celebration that enjoys a mandate, if not an tangible majority. I don"t think there will be a print finish."