Just a week after the Jonas Brotherscalled off their tour, the drama isn’t over inside the family. Are we witnessing the dissolution not just of the band, but of a family?
On October 9, the band’s spokesperson canceled their 19-date fall tour, saying that “There is a deep rift within the band. There was a big a disagreement over their music direction.” That’s a pretty direct way of letting fans know that the brothers aren’t getting along so great. Last night, they took another decisive step towards disbanding when they deleted the Twitter account for the band. Each brother maintains his own feed (@kevinjonas, @joejonas, @nickjonas).
Even stranger, Joe Jonas was spotted out with a sober coach yesterday. The founder and CEO of Cast Recovery in Santa Monica, CA, Mike Bayer is a pretty recognizable figure because he was also employed by Joe’s ex, Demi Lovato, while she had her own struggles with mental illness and addiction. If Joe is dealing with addiction, he hasn’t made any moves to discuss it publicly at this time.
What do you think is going on with the Jonas Brothers? Why do you think they’re fighting so much? Do you think Joe could be struggling with addiction? Tell us in the comments below or tweet us @OKMagazine.
(Reuters) - Former Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tom Foley, who spent 30 years in Congress before a conservative mood shift made him one of the few speakers ever defeated for re-election, died on Friday at age 84, his wife said.
Foley, the son of a judge and a native of Spokane, Washington, passed away at his home in Washington, D.C., of complications from a stroke, his wife Heather Foley said in an email.
Foley was first elected to Congress in 1964 from eastern Washington state as part of the Democratic landslide behind President Lyndon Johnson, ousting an 11-term Republican incumbent.
He worked his way up from chairman of the Agriculture Committee to Democratic whip, the No. 3 spot in the House, in 1981 and then to party leader in 1986. When U.S. Representative Jim Wright of Texas stepped down as speaker in 1989 in the midst of an ethics scandal, Foley was elevated to the top job.
Washington state Democratic Governor Jay Inslee on Friday called Foley "a giant at a time when bipartisan cooperation for the good of the country was the norm, not the exception."
"A true statesman knows how to unite people around their mutual, shared interests, while still respecting the differences among individuals," Inslee said in a statement. "That's the example Tom set, and it's something all public servants should strive to emulate."
Foley's district had long been conservative but it kept sending him back. By the 1990s, however, the largely rural district had become increasingly conservative and many voters were upset with his support of gun control legislation.
Foley lost his congressional re-election campaign in 1994 during the so-called Republican Revolution led by then-U.S. Representative Newt Gingrich, who was elevated to the position of House speaker after his resurgent party won majorities in the House and the Senate.
In the mid-term election, Foley became the first speaker to be voted out of office since Republican William Pennington of New Jersey in 1860. His Republican opponent, political novice George Nethercutt, ran on a platform of limiting terms to three but when his third term expired he decided to stay in the House for four more years.
After Foley left Congress, President Bill Clinton rewarded his long Democratic work by naming him ambassador to Japan, where he served from 1997 to 2001.
Before his political career, Foley was a lawyer who worked in the Spokane County prosecutor's office and for the Washington state attorney general. He went to Washington, D.C, as a U.S. Senate staffer. From there he ran for Congress in 1964.
Silver-haired and standing 6 feet and 3 inches tall, Foley had a ready smile and a smooth speaking style well suited to television.
His political viewpoints were moderate to liberal. He opposed the death penalty and favored abortion rights.
As speaker, Foley was less partisan than his predecessor. But some Democrats griped they wanted a more forceful leader, especially after he was unsuccessful in getting Clinton's health care proposals through Congress.
"I think I am a little cursed with seeing the other point of view and trying to understand it," Foley once said.
(Editing by Cynthia Johnston, Tim Dobbyn and Bernard Orr)
The words that exploded onto Twitter came in the soft, strained voice that Larry Page has made a fixture of Google’s quarterly calls:
“I wanted to let you know that going forward, I won’t be joining every earnings call,” the Google co-founder and CEO said after introducing Google’s third-quarter results yesterday. Future calls, he said, would be left in the hands of CFO Patrick Pichette and Chief Business Officer Nikesh Arora. “I know you all would love to have me on,” Page said, “but you are also depending on me to ruthlessly prioritize my time for the benefit of the business.”
Instead of worrying about a Page-less future, investors sent Google’s stock soaring more than 13 percent today to top $1,000 a share for the first time. The boost came after Google’s profits jumped dramatically on an increase in paid clicks, which came even as the “cost per click” of the company’s ads continued to fall — in the past, a red flag for Wall Street.
The paid-click increase suggests that Google is getting better at what it already does best: crunching its vast trove of data to target people with links they will click. Ad prices haven’t turned around to catch up with that increased engagement from users because Google — just like everyone else — has yet to solve the clickability problem of mobile ads. They’re everywhere, but they’re just tiny and dull. One way to sidestep those issues would seem to be making the ads irresistibly relevant, which the company appears to be doing quite well.
Google’s impressive results suggest that Page’s decision to step back from at least one aspect of his public role doesn’t reflect that he is having any problem running the company effectively. Little more than a year ago, both Google and Apple shares were hitting their stride in the $700 range. Since then, the archrivals’ share prices have traveled nearly mirror-opposite trajectories as Apple has struggled to convince investors that it hasn’t lost its innovation mojo.
Underlying the loss of confidence in Apple is the fear that without Steve Jobs, it’s just not the same company. But it’s hard to imagine the same concern around Google, were Page to not just step back but step down.
Jobs was known for his showmanship, but underlying the theater was the sense of magic generated by the products themselves. People marveled at these new wonders they held in their hands — the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad — and were more than willing to elevate Jobs to mythical status as the provider of the creative spark.
Search, Google’s core product, is itself wondrous. Unlike shiny new gadgets, however, Google search has become such an expected part of the internet’s fabric that it has become mundane. The only time most of us would likely think much about search at all is if it stopped working. With search as well as other wildly successful products such as Gmail and Android deeply enmeshed in global digital culture, Google’s key function as a business is to figure out how to leverage those platforms to get people to click on more ads. In other words, Google has to keep crunching data to achieve incremental algorithmic improvements that bolster its ad business.
At Apple, incremental change rather than the expectation of near-annual revolutions is exactly what has gotten the company into trouble. And it’s hard to imagine how Apple can change the perception that its innovative spirit has diminished without a new charismatic figure to lead the public charge.
At Google, on the other hand, Page has since the beginning helped solidify a culture where geekiness is prized above all, a place where a few quiet engineers can tweak a little code and send millions more dollars pouring into company coffers. Unlike Apple, whose business depends on thrilling the gadget-consuming masses a few times a year, most of the changes that truly impact Google’s bottom line happen behind the scenes with little or no fanfare at all.
Perhaps one day, Google will hit a wall where its ads can’t get any better and it will have to seek new paths to growth. In the meantime, however, the engine that Page helped jumpstart a decade-and-a-half ago is humming and will likely continue to do so, even if he’s no longer at the wheel.
The Poets of Rhythm were a group of young retro-soul musicians from Germany. An anthology of their work was recently released.
Julian Rosefeldt/Courtesy of the artist
The Poets of Rhythm were a group of young retro-soul musicians from Germany. An anthology of their work was recently released.
Julian Rosefeldt/Courtesy of the artist
Long before Amy Winehouse or Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, there were the Poets of Rhythm: A group of young, 20-something musicians out of Munich, Germany. In the early 1990s, they perfected the sounds and rhythms of '60s and '70s American funk. In the process, they became one of first and most influential practitioners of what's now known as retro-soul. While the band began by imitating James Brown, the musicians eventually carved out a sound all their own, evident in the recently released record, The Poets of Rhythm Anthology: 1992-2003.
In one sense, funk had never left pop music; even by the 1990s, you could clearly hear it in hip-hop samples and the elastic snap of dance records. But the Poets weren't interested in the modern, chicka-wow-wow versions of funk. They were still under the sway of early Kool & the Gang, The Meters of New Orleans and, of course, late '60s James Brown. In those early years, the Poets experimented with these styles on a slew of singles, often released under such fanciful names as Bus People Express, the Pan-Atlantics and the Excursionists of Perception.
Members of the group supposedly came to the U.S. and left copies of their 7-inch records in music stores, hoping that people would assume the singles were obscure, long-forgotten tracks from the past. Their ruse actually worked with a few collectors, a testament to how accurately this German band had mastered recreating the deep funk sound of yore.
The new anthology catalogs the Poets' recordings from 1992 through 2003. Though that's barely a decade's worth of music, it traces an evolution away from their reputation as obsessively authentic funk reanimators. By mid-career, jazz and West African influences began to wind their way in.
By the early 2000s, the Poets had all but shed their old, purely revivalist sound. They were still dabbling in a melange of past styles — including psychedelic rock — but their approach became more syncretic and imaginative, resulting in some of the best music of their career.
I had forgotten that the band broke up 10 years ago, partially because their influence is still widely heard today. That's especially true at Daptone Records, which is releasing the anthology. Daptone's house band, the Dap-Kings, more or less began where the Poets left off.
Even though the Poets of Rhythm stopped putting out records long ago, that hasn't stopped me from looking for their 7-inch records in countless dusty bins, hoping to find one of the funky easter eggs they buried so long ago.
A view of the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 in Washington. The partial government shutdown is in its third week and less than two days before the Treasury Department says it will be unable to borrow and will rely on a cash cushion to pay the country's bills. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
A view of the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 in Washington. The partial government shutdown is in its third week and less than two days before the Treasury Department says it will be unable to borrow and will rely on a cash cushion to pay the country's bills. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hold the champagne.
Even after lawmakers complete their pending deal to avert a federal default and fully reopen the government, they are likely to return to their grinding brand of brinkmanship — perhaps repeatedly.
Wednesday's self-congratulations notwithstanding, congressional talks are barely touching the underlying causes of debt-and-spending stalemates that pushed the country close to economic crises in 2011, last December and again this month.
At best, lawmakers and the White House will agree to fund the government and raise the debt limit for only a few months. They also will call for yet another bipartisan effort to address the federal debt's major causes, including restricted revenue growth and entitlement benefits that rise automatically.
And yet, top advocates say they've seen virtually no change in the political dynamics that stymied past efforts for a compromise to end the cycle of brinksmanship and threats to harm the economy.
Republicans still adamantly oppose tax increases. Powerful interest groups and many Democrats still fiercely oppose cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits. And congressional rules still tempt lawmakers to threaten economic havoc — by sending the nation into default — if the opposing party doesn't yield to their demands.
"We're probably going to have to go through this a few more times," said Bob Bixby of the bipartisan Concord Coalition, which advocates budget reforms. Even if a compromise plan this month wins House, Senate and White House approval, Bixby said, it will leave fundamental problems that "they haven't done anything to address."
Henry J. Aaron, a Brookings Institution scholar who supports unprecedented legal action to avert future debt showdowns, agreed that three or four months of breathing room is a small victory. "If all we achieve is a repetition of this charade," Aaron said, "we will not have achieved much."
The political landscape is littered with once-hopeful bipartisan efforts to reach a "grand bargain" — or even a modest bargain — to slow the growth of the nation's $16.7 trillion debt and to make spending and revenue trends more sustainable.
There was the Simpson-Bowles plan, first issued in 2010, and revised early this year. The revised version called for about $1.3 trillion in new revenues over 10 years, from various sources (about half the original plan's target). It would slow the growth rate of Social Security benefits and raise the eligibility age. It would limit popular tax deductions such as those for charitable gifts and mortgage interest.
The Simpson-Bowles plan remains widely praised nationwide, and largely ignored in Congress.
Then there were the 2011 secret talks between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Boehner suggested $800 billion in new revenues over 10 years — less than Obama wanted — in exchange for widespread spending cuts, including curbs on Medicare and Social Security.
It was never clear whether Obama could have pushed the plan through the Democratic-controlled Senate. It didn't matter, because Boehner's GOP colleagues vehemently objected when details leaked, and the talks collapsed. Efforts last year to revive negotiations also failed.
A bipartisan congressional "supercommittee" fared no better. Both parties had agreed to supposedly unbearable "sequester" spending cuts to goad each other into big compromises to find a better way. But negotiations faltered and the clumsy-by-design sequester cuts — automatic and across the board — became law this year.
All these efforts failed for the same basic reasons. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, would have had to swallow painful concessions that they don't believe are warranted. The lure of the "common good" couldn't match the power of sharply partisan regions and districts whose voters vow to punish lawmakers who compromise.
Republicans oppose higher taxes, even though today's taxation levels are relatively low, historically. Democrats oppose curbs in the growth of Medicare and Social Security, even though analysts for years have said the automatic growth of these "entitlement" programs is unsustainable long-term.
Americans are accustomed to relatively high levels of government service at relatively low levels of taxation. Millions are unwilling to undo that arrangement in pursuit of deficit reduction.
That makes it easier for powerful, well-financed groups to resist almost any change in government programs or taxes that favor them.
"We've been extremely adamant that Social Security shouldn't be part of this discussion at all," said David Certner, legislative counsel for AARP, the big lobbying group for seniors. Social Security has its own funding source — a payroll tax — Certner said, and it must not "become a piggybank for other programs."
As for Medicare, Certner said, he has never seen so many AARP members loudly declaring, "these are my benefits, I've paid into them over the years," and they must not be reduced.
Countless other interest groups take similarly unyielding stands, say lawmakers and advocates on all sides of the debate. Bixby said such groups "will never be part of a solution."
The bipartisan budget conferees envisioned in the tentative congressional agreement may start with fairly small ambitions, such as looking for ways to replace some of the more painful "sequester" cuts with spending reductions elsewhere. It's not clear whether that would avert another government shutdown and default threat in a few months.
The best hope, Bixby said, is to somehow find "a centrist coalition to pass something" that includes new revenues and curbs to entitlements. But so far, he said, "the consensus has been to shut down rather than compromise."
With a bipartisan accord so hard to reach, some advocates say the president and the courts must find a way to stop congressional factions from extracting concessions from the president's party by threatening a default on U.S. obligations. Aaron said it's legally contradictory to empower Congress to enact spending laws and then threaten to block the higher borrowing cap needed to pay the bills lawmakers incurred.
Aaron wrote in The New York Times, "Failure to raise the debt will force the president to break a law — the only question is which one." The Constitution, he said, requires the president to spend what Congress tells him to spend, collect only those taxes Congress approves "and to borrow no more than Congress authorizes."
Aaron says Obama should ignore the debt ceiling if Congress refuses to lift it in time. The White House rejects that idea, and even Aaron concedes it probably would trigger an impeachment and massive court challenge.
Rep. John Fleming, R-La., summed up the challenge any new bipartisan conferees will face. Asked how the two parties might reach an accord, Fleming suggested Democrats must cave.
"America is catching on to the fact that we have a president who seems unlikely to solve America's problems," he said. "We have two totally different visions of America."
___
Follow Charles Babington on Twitter at https://twitter.com/cbabington
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
By Erin McClam, Staff Writer, NBC News
Let Washington worry about the details and the political intrigue. If you want to know how the debt ceiling drama is going to end, watch Wall Street — and Wall Street seems to think it’s a done deal.
The stock market staged a robust rally Wednesday, even after a credit rating agency threatened to downgrade the United States for inching too close to a default on its bond payments. The Dow Jones industrial average surged 200 points, and other stock indexes approached record highs.
Investors seemed to be betting that the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans announced a deal to reopen the federal government and extend the country’s ability to borrow money, would carry the day.
Sources told NBC News that John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, was prepared to rely on Democratic votes and pass a deal sent over by the other chamber.
“Investors are looking at that and saying: 'We’re not expecting these guys to collectively jump off a cliff. We think this ultimately will be resolved,'” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of BMO Private Bank, said on CNBC.
Equally optimistic but considerably more colorful language came from the best-known investor in America, Warren Buffett — who said on “Squawk Box” that he did not expect the United States to damage its 237-year reputation for paying the bills. Doing otherwise would be a “pure act of idiocy,” he said.
“Credit-worthiness is like virginity: It can be preserved but not restored very easily, so it is crazy to play around with it,” he said.
The market set aside the apparent chaos among Republicans in the House a day earlier. Conservatives wanted to curtail the health law known as Obamacare, and Boehner failed to rally his members behind any proposal.
The rally in stocks Wednesday was broad — the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, watched more closely than the Dow by market experts, climbed more than 1 percent and was close to an all-time high.
“Investors have generally been of the belief that an agreement would be reached before there was a calamity,” said Dan Greenhaus, chief global strategist for the brokerage BTIG. “If recent reporting is any indication, this subdued concern seems justified as a bill may be signed by Saturday.”
In another sign that investors were drawing optimism from Washington, the market’s so-called fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index, fell by 10 percent.
And bond investors — the people most directly affected by the credit of the United States — were hesitant at first, but by afternoon, when the Senate appeared closer to announcing a deal, even they appeared relieved.
Yields on short-term government debt, even Treasury bills coming due a week from now, fell sharply. Yields on bonds fall when investors are more confident that they will get their money back.
If Boehner allows the House to vote on it, and presumably pass it with broad support from Democrats, the Senate plan would avert a potential default on American debt. Economists have warned that such a default would be catastrophic.
The rally in stocks was triggered by a Twitter post by Robert Costa, Washington editor for the National Review and a CNBC contributor, who reported that Boehner would take up the Senate plan and allow it to pass with Democratic votes.
“There’s no way the Senate moves forward unless they have that guarantee from Boehner,” Costa said on CNBC.
A vote could come as early as later Wednesday, he reported.
Related:
Warren Buffett: It would be asinine if US defaults
Senate scrambles to seal risky, last-minute deal
Kelly O’Donnell of NBC News contributed to this report. Alex Crippen and Patti Dom of CNBC also contributed.
Jewel Samad / AFP - Getty Images
The impact of the first government shutdown in 17 years was felt across America as offices were shuttered and workers were sent home after lawmakers failed to come to a deal.
This story was originally published on Wed Oct 16, 2013 10:37 AM EDT
A close look at Apple's iMessage system shows the company could easily intercept communications on the service despite its assurances to the contrary, researchers claimed Thursday at a security conference.
Apple asserted in June, following disclosures about the NSA's data collection programs, that iMessage, which lets users send texts over Wi-Fi for free, is protected by end-to-end encryption that makes it impossible for Apple or anyone else to descramble the messages.
But researchers at the Hack in the Box conference in Kuala Lumpur showed it would be possible for someone inside Apple, of their own volition or because they were forced to by a government, to intercept messages.
The company's claim that iMessage is protected by unbreakable encryption is "just basically lies," said Cyril Cattiaux, who has developed iOS jailbreak software and works for Quarkslab, a penetration testing and reverse engineering company in Paris.
The researchers emphasized they have no indication that Apple or the government is reading iMessages, only that it would be possible to do so.
Asked to comment, Apple didn't directly address the claims about iMessage and pointed instead to a statement it issued in June after the disclosures about the NSA's Prism data collection program.
The statement says in part that Apple first heard about Prism only when it was asked about it by news organizations. "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer content must get a court order," the statement says.
One document revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden indicated Apple became part of Prism in October 2012.
Apple uses public key cryptography to encrypt iMessages between the sender and the recipient. But its system for managing public keys is opaque, the researchers said, making it impossible to know if iMessages are being sent to a third party such as the NSA.
When someone sends an iMessage, the iOS device pulls the recipient's public key from Apple's non-public key server to create the ciphertext, or encrypted message. The iMessage is decrypted by the recipient using their private key.
The problem is "Apple has full control over this public key directory," Cattiaux said.
Trust has always been an issue with public keys. To send an encrypted message, the sender frequently has to trust that the key listed on the key server used to relay the message actually belongs to the recipient.
Mayor Cory Booker talks to supporters during a Senate election night victory party Wednesday in Newark, N.J.
Julio Cortez/AP
Cory Booker's victory Wednesday in New Jersey's special Senate election didn't surprise anyone.
From the moment he captured the Democratic nomination in the reliably blue state, the Newark mayor was the heavy favorite to defeat Republican Steve Lonegan.
With his media savvy and national celebrity, the senator-elect is already a recognizable figure outside his home state.
But here are a few things you might not have known about Booker's election:
An Historic Election
When Booker is officially sworn in, he will become the ninth African-American in history to serve in the U.S. Senate, and just the fourth to have been popularly elected.
The last African-American elected to the Senate? Barack Obama, out of Illinois in 2004. The other two were Massachusetts Republican Edward Brooke in 1966 and Illinois Democrat Carol Moseley Braun in 1992.
The only current African-American senator is Tim Scott, the South Carolina Republican appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley last December after Jim DeMint resigned to head the Heritage Foundation.
New Jersey, A Republican-Free Zone
Counting Booker's victory, Democrats have now won 14 straight U.S. Senate races in New Jersey — the party's third-longest winning streak in the nation.
The last Republican Senate victory in the Garden State came in 1972, when Sen. Clifford Case won his third term (other Republicans were appointed to the Senate during this period, but not elected).
Hawaii and West Virginia are the only states with a longer GOP drought. A Republican Senate candidate hasn't won in Hawaii since 1970 or in West Virginia since 1956.
Booker vs. Obama
Booker won fairly comfortably Wednesday night, earning about 55 percent of the vote to Lonegan's 44 percent. Still, the score was closer than many expected — and Booker even lagged behind President Obama's state performance in 2012 when he won 58 percent to Mitt Romney's 41 percent.
Of course, it isn't a perfect comparison. Off-year or special Senate races garner far less attention than presidential contests, meaning dramatically lower turnout. And on top that, the election occurred on a Wednesday, rather than the traditional Tuesday.
The Never-Ending Campaign
Booker supporters shouldn't even bother to take down their yard signs: He's back on the ballot again in about a year.
While senators typically have a six-year respite between elections, Booker only gets a short breather — he won a special election to serve out the remainder of the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg's term, which ends in January 2015.
That means Booker will be back on the campaign trail in no time, and that Democrats can expect more fundraising pleas from him in the coming weeks.
For a glimpse of how financial markets may view the deal by Congress to reopen the federal government and raise the debt ceiling, Renee Montagne speaks to HSBC's chief U.S. economist Kevin Logan.
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
And I'm Renee Montagne.
The last-minute move by Congress that reopened the federal government and raised the debt ceiling has brought some relief to the markets. Stocks are mixed in Asia, but some investors are already worrying about the prospects of another fiscal showdown in Washington early next year, saying Congress is merely kicking the can down the road.
Joining us now is Kevin Logan. He is the chief U.S. economist at the banking giant HSBC. Good morning.
KEVIN LOGAN: Good morning.
MONTAGNE: How relieved are investors with the deal that was made, after all, at the 11th hour?
LOGAN: Well, they're quite relieved, particularly investors in the Treasury market. That's where all the risk was, whether or not the U.S. Treasury would actually default or delay payment on some of its obligations. I think away from the Treasury market, it wasn't quite as much an anxiety. We saw that in the stock market, for example. Gains slowed down, but by and large the market held in. And then there was a small relief rally once the deal was struck.
But the big relief, the big change within the Treasury market, were particularly the short-term securities that were due to mature in the next month or so. Those, which had sold off severely, rallied once the deal was made.
MONTAGNE: Well, when you talk about that market - in fact, you are talking about, in a way, the whole world, certainly world leaders were urging the U.S. Congress and the president to make some kind of deal, you know, saying that the U.S. cannot, if it came to that, default on its debt. And China - now China holds something like $1.3 trillion in American public debt. How has this whole thing affected China?
LOGAN: Well, it certainly made them start to think about the safety and security of their international reserve holdings. China has, over the last two decades, been driven by their economic growth, they've been driven by exports to a large extent. They've run current account surpluses that have piled up quite a treasure trove of international reserves. The place they invest most of those are in U.S. government securities, the deepest, most liquid and most easily transacted market in the world. Now they have to think a little bit more about the risk of that market in a way that they hadn't before.
MONTAGNE: Which, of course, would not necessarily be good for the U.S. I mean, China - there was a point at which coming out of China were calls for the international community to move away from the dollar.
LOGAN: Well, yes. Right now we have international monetary arrangements that are based on the relative strength and the quality of the financial markets in different economies. And over time it's shifted. We know that early in the last century it was U.K. with sterling. More recently, the evolution and development of the euro provided a substitute for the dollar and sterling. Things will keep changing over time. Certainly the emergence of China as a strong and potentially dominant economic power will eventually lead to changes in global monetary arrangements. This little episode we've just been through is probably just one more step on the way of making people think about how these changes will take place in the future.
MONTAGNE: Let's get back to regular folks here in the United States. The housing market took a hit momentarily. What do you think this deal will do for that and just largely such things as interest rates?
LOGAN: Well, the main thing is the end of the government shutdown. Housing was bothered by all of this because the processing of loans was slowed down. A lot of loans depend upon FHA approvals or paperwork that might go through to forming the mortgage pools that are backed by Fannie May or Freddie Mac, and all the uncertainty about the government shutdown delayed all of that processing and so held up mortgages that people might get. Hopefully the backlog will be cleared quickly, and the housing market will return to normal.
MONTAGNE: Kevin Logan is chief U.S. economist at HSBC. Thank you very much for joining us.
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File - in this file photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006 gangs of illegal miners dig for diamonds in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe. The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The Marange deposit is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, estimated to be worth some billions of dollars, but as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, questions are being asked about where all the money went and who benefited. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, FILE)
File - in this file photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006 gangs of illegal miners dig for diamonds in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe. The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The Marange deposit is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, estimated to be worth some billions of dollars, but as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, questions are being asked about where all the money went and who benefited. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, FILE)
FILE - in this file photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006, illegal miners dig for diamonds in Marange, Zimbabwe. The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The Marange deposit is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, estimated to be worth some billions of dollars, but as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, questions are being asked about where all the money went and who benefited. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, FILE)
File - in this file photo taken Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2006, gangs of illegal miners dig for diamonds in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe. The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The Marange deposit is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, estimated to be worth some billions of dollars, but as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, questions are being asked about where all the money went and who benefited. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi, FILE)
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Despite living in an impoverished country under sanctions, some in Zimbabwe seem awash in money, judging by the Mercedes-Benzes parked at a country club and the private woodland estate with artificial lake and mansion built by the nation's police chief.
The wealth enjoyed by just a few comes, at least in part, from the vast Marange diamond field that was exposed by an earth tremor in 2006. The deposit in eastern Zimbabwe is the biggest diamond field found in Africa for a century, worth billions of dollars.
Now, as most Zimbabweans remain mired in poverty, with government coffers short on funds to build and maintain the nation's roads, clinics, utility services and schools, questions are being asked as to where all the money went and who benefited.
A recent bipartisan parliamentary investigation concluded that tens of millions of dollars in diamond earnings are missing from 2012 alone. The lawmakers who wrote the unprecedented and unusually candid report said their "worst fears were confirmed" by evidence of "underhand dealings" and diamond smuggling since 2009.
In a speech opening parliament on Sept. 17, President Robert Mugabe took the rare step of accusing one top mining official and ruling party loyalist of accepting a $6 million bribe from Ghanaian investors to obtain diamond mining rights in Marange. Mugabe said Godwills Masimirembwa took the bribe when he was head of the state Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation which is in charge of mining concessions.
Masimirembwa quit that post to contest the July 31 national election as a candidate for Mugabe's ZANU-PF party but failed to win a parliament seat. Masimirembwa denies any wrongdoing.
The parliamentary report and a human rights group say diamond mining has led to serious human rights abuses and that diamond concessions were awarded by government officials to enrich top members of the ZANU-PF party, of the security forces and Chinese allies.
In declaring his innocence, Masimirembwa said the purported deal with the Ghanaian investors was discussed with national Police Chief Augustine Chihuri and then Mines Minister Obert Mpofu, a longtime business associate of Masimirembwa who is also one of the nation's wealthiest businessmen.
Chihuri and Mpofu have frequently insisted in the state media that their wealth comes from legitimate business empires to make up for poor salaries paid for full-time government duties.
Expected revenues from the Marange diamond fields have scarcely materialized.
Former Zimbabwe Finance Minister Tendai Biti says he was promised $600 million for economic and development projects from diamond revenues last year but only received $41 million. Nothing was paid into the national treasury up to the disputed July elections that the ZANU-PF won, a vote result that caused the end of a coalition government with the MDC party that Biti belonged to, and the loss of his Cabinet seat.
Some $2 billion in Zimbabwe's diamond revenues have been unaccounted for since 2008, according to Global Witness, which campaigns against natural resource-related conflict and corruption and associated environmental and human rights abuses. Zimbabwe is the world's fourth-largest diamond miner, producing an estimated 17 million carats this year, according to the Kimberley Process which is charged with ensuring that gems reaching world markets don't bear the taint of being "blood diamonds." Marange diamonds have been declared conflict free.
But controversy and secrecy have swirled around Marange since the earth opened up and exposed its riches.
The discovery lured thousands of impoverished Zimbabweans to dig in the alluvial deposit. In 2008, the Zimbabwean army sealed off the 60,000 hectare (130,000 acre) area to take control of the mining. At least 200 people died in a mass expulsion of people living in the closed area, Global Witness and other rights groups have alleged.
Chinese construction contractors built an airfield at the Marange diamond fields. Executive planes arrive there and at a bonded warehouse alongside the runway at Harare's main airport, without traceable flight plans or having to go through customs and immigration formalities, say commercial pilots who say they have complained of the irregularities to aviation authorities. They insisted on anonymity because of fears for their safety.
Some are living high from diamond deals.
As children begged in the street a block away, Zimbabwean diamond company executives accompanied by elegant young women arrived at a popular Harare nightclub last year, ordered drinks for about 120 patrons and picked up the $ 4,000 tab, said a person who witnessed the scene and who demanded anonymity to prevent reprisals.
The identities of owners, directors and shareholders in diamond enterprises have never been officially disclosed, though the Zimbabwe Republic Police Trust, a business enterprise of the police force, is publicly listed as holding a 20 percent stake in the Ghanaian diamond investment project.
The parliamentary panel's report said powerful officials, politicians and police and army commanders repeatedly tried to thwart the probe into diamond dealings. The chairman of the 22-member panel, Edward Chindori-Chininga, a former Mugabe mines minister, died in a car crash just days after he signed the report in June.
Police said Chindori-Chininga's death was accidental and that his car had veered off the highway and slammed into trees.
Car wrecks or mysterious accidents have taken the lives of 12 senior politicians, all of whom were believed to have bucked official policy, in the past two decades, according to local press reports.
The parliamentary committee's report said several officials lied while giving evidence under subpoena and that diamond earnings are not only shielded from scrutiny but are not channeled into the state coffers. It said the Marange fields in particular are a no-go area, shrouded in secrecy and deception. The mining companies don't even buy food or services from surrounding communities, the report said.
Mugabe's government and ZANU-PF have repeatedly denied diamond revenues have been siphoned off.
But Global Witness says otherwise.
"Our research has exposed links between Zimbabwe's two largest diamond mining companies and the Zimbabwean military and other ZANU-PF insiders," said Emily Armistead, senior campaigner for Global Witness.
"It is not clear where the money is going," she added. "It appears there is a mixture of corruption enriching specific individuals and some funds going to security operations. Our concern is that it could be used to fund repression and human rights abuses."
The difficulty with monitoring diamond earnings lies in the "opaque" way the mining enterprises were formed and financed, said Zimbabwean economist John Robertson. Information on their expenditure, profits and staff levels have not been divulged, he said.
"You are not allowed to know what is going on and if you need to know that amounts to attempted espionage," Robertson said.
So far, no legal action has been taken against Masimirembwa, the man accused by Mugabe.
And despite widespread reports since September in the Zimbabwean press that other top political and military figures would likely be exposed, so far none has.
Amazon just announced its latest tablets are available for pre-order in the UK and Canada. While the updated Kindle Fire HD will begin shipping in both countries on October 24th, Canadian customers will have to wait until November 26th, almost two weeks later than their UK counterparts, to get their ...
People look at what scientists believe to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor, recovered from Chebarkul Lake near Chelyabinsk, about 930 miles east of Moscow.
Alexander Firsov/AP
People look at what scientists believe to be a chunk of the Chelyabinsk meteor, recovered from Chebarkul Lake near Chelyabinsk, about 930 miles east of Moscow.
"Live footage showed a team pull out a 1.5-metre-long (five-foot-long) rock from the lake after first wrapping it in a special covering and placing it on a metal sheet while it was still underwater.
"The fragment was then pulled ashore and placed on top of a scale for weighing, an operation that quickly went wrong.
"The rock broke up into at least three large pieces as it was lifted from the ground with the help of levers and ropes.
"Then the scale itself broke, the moment it hit the 570kg (1,255lb) mark."
It may take a while for the rock to be certified as coming from space but the curator of meteorites at London's Natural History Museum tells the BBC, the rock has all the markings of a meteorite.
RIA Novosti, the official state news agency of Russia, quotes Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences' meteorite commission, which examined other fragments, as saying: "It's a typical meteorite, judging by its appearance – [I'm] 105 percent [sure]. There's no doubt about that, [it has] a thick melted crust, while dents reveal typical structures of the Chelyabinsk meteorite."
Blood pressure drugs shown to decrease risk of Alzheimer's disease dementia
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: John Lazarou jlazaro1@jhmi.edu 410-502-8902 Johns Hopkins Medicine
A Johns Hopkins-led analysis of data previously gathered on more than 3,000 elderly Americans strongly suggests that taking certain blood pressure medications to control blood pressure may reduce the risk of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD).
In a report published in a recent edition of the journal Neurology, a team of researchers found that people over the age of 75 with normal cognition who used diuretics, angiotensin-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors showed a reduced risk of AD dementia by at least 50 percent. In addition, diuretics were associated with 50 percent reduced risk in those in the group with mild cognitive impairment.
Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers did not show a link to reduced risk, the scientists reported.
"Identifying new pharmacological treatments to prevent or delay the onset of AD dementia is critical given the dearth of effective interventions to date," says the author, Sevil Yasar, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our study was able to replicate previous findings, however, we were also able to show that the beneficial effect of these blood pressure medications are maybe in addition to blood pressure control, and could help clinicians in selecting an antihypertensive medication based not only on blood pressure control, but also on additional benefits."
Alzheimer's disease is a rapidly increasing clinical and public health issue in the United States' aging population, and the most common cause of intellectual and social decline.
Yasar and her colleagues conducted a "post-hoc" analysis of information gathered originally in the so-called Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory Study (GEMS) study, a six-year effort to determine if use of the herb ginkgo biloba reduced AD risk. That study , a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial of 3,069 adults without dementia, aged between 75 and 96 years, began in 2000 and recruited participants from four U.S. cities: Hagerstown, Md.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Winston-Salem/Greensboro, N.C.; and Sacramento, Calif.
Yasar said that while the GEMS trial showed no benefit of ginkgo biloba in reducing incidence of dementia, information was also available among the study participants related to their use of several classes of antihypertensive drugs. Extensive studies suggest that high blood pressure is a major risk factor for dementias including AD, and there had been suggestions that drugs used to control blood pressure conferred a protective effect on the brain in addition to controlling blood pressure.
The question, she said, was which ones were associated with reduced AD dementia risk, and which were not.
Yasar and colleagues looked at 2,248 of the GEMS subjects, of them 351 reported use of a diuretic, 140 use of ARBs, 324 use of ACE inhibitors, 333 use of calcium channel blockers and 457 use of beta blockers. The average age of this group was 78.7 years, and 47 percent were women.
"We were able to confirm previous suggestions of a protective effect of some of these medicines not only in participants with normal cognition, but also in those with mild cognitive impairment," says Yasar.
"Additionally, we were also able to assess the possible role of elevated systolic blood pressure in AD dementia by placing those within each medication group in categories above and below systolic blood pressures of 140 mmHg, the standard cut-off reading for a diagnosis of hypertension," she said.
Yasar cautioned that the analysis had its limitations, owing mostly to the fact that the data collected by the GEMS trial were not gathered to directly measure the effect of the drugs, and by the fact that it was impossible to tell with certainty how well each group of participants complied with their drug treatments. Nor did the research team have information on subjects' use of drugs prior to the study period.
But, she said, "the consistent pattern we saw of reduced risk of AD dementia associated with these medications warrants further studies, including the use of brain imaging, to better understand the biologic basis of these associations." Such studies, she added, "could lead to identification of new pharmacologic targets for preventive interventions to slow cognitive decline and possibly delay progression of AD dementia."
###
Other Johns Hopkins investigators who authored the study include Jin Xia, M.S.; Wenliang Yao, Ph.D.; Qian-Li Xue, Ph.D.; and Michelle C. Carlson, Ph.D. Additional researchers include Curt D. Furberg, M.D., Ph.D.; Carla I. Mercado, Ph.D.; Annette L. Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.; Linda P. Fried, M.D.; Claudia H. Kawas, M.D.; Kaycee M. Sink, M.D.; Jeff D. Williamson, M.D.; and Steven T. DeKosky, M.D. The research team included scientists from Wake Forest School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, N.C.), University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.), Columbia University (New York, N.Y.), University of California, Irvine (Irvine, Calif.), University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.) and University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.).
The study was supported by the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEM) Study; the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM); the Office of Dietary Supplements; the National Institute on Aging; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Yasar has been funded by NIH and received research support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Nathan Shock Memorial Fund, the drug company Sanofi and families of grateful patients. She served as a consultant for the Charles River Company.
On the Web:
Johns Hopkins Department of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is a $6.7 billion integrated global health enterprise and one of the leading health care systems in the United States. JHM unites physicians and scientists of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with the organizations, health professionals and facilities of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. JHM's vision, "Together, we will deliver the promise of medicine," is supported by its mission to improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care. Diverse and inclusive, JHM educates medical students, scientists, health care professionals and the public; conducts biomedical research; and provides patient-centered medicine to prevent, diagnose and treat human illness. JHM operates six academic and community hospitals, four suburban health care and surgery centers, and more than 30 primary health care outpatient sites. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in 1889, was ranked number one in the nation for 21 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Blood pressure drugs shown to decrease risk of Alzheimer's disease dementia
Public release date: 16-Oct-2013 [
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| Share
]
Contact: John Lazarou jlazaro1@jhmi.edu 410-502-8902 Johns Hopkins Medicine
A Johns Hopkins-led analysis of data previously gathered on more than 3,000 elderly Americans strongly suggests that taking certain blood pressure medications to control blood pressure may reduce the risk of dementia due to Alzheimer's disease (AD).
In a report published in a recent edition of the journal Neurology, a team of researchers found that people over the age of 75 with normal cognition who used diuretics, angiotensin-1 receptor blockers (ARBs) and angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors showed a reduced risk of AD dementia by at least 50 percent. In addition, diuretics were associated with 50 percent reduced risk in those in the group with mild cognitive impairment.
Beta blockers and calcium channel blockers did not show a link to reduced risk, the scientists reported.
"Identifying new pharmacological treatments to prevent or delay the onset of AD dementia is critical given the dearth of effective interventions to date," says the author, Sevil Yasar, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our study was able to replicate previous findings, however, we were also able to show that the beneficial effect of these blood pressure medications are maybe in addition to blood pressure control, and could help clinicians in selecting an antihypertensive medication based not only on blood pressure control, but also on additional benefits."
Alzheimer's disease is a rapidly increasing clinical and public health issue in the United States' aging population, and the most common cause of intellectual and social decline.
Yasar and her colleagues conducted a "post-hoc" analysis of information gathered originally in the so-called Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory Study (GEMS) study, a six-year effort to determine if use of the herb ginkgo biloba reduced AD risk. That study , a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial of 3,069 adults without dementia, aged between 75 and 96 years, began in 2000 and recruited participants from four U.S. cities: Hagerstown, Md.; Pittsburgh, Pa.; Winston-Salem/Greensboro, N.C.; and Sacramento, Calif.
Yasar said that while the GEMS trial showed no benefit of ginkgo biloba in reducing incidence of dementia, information was also available among the study participants related to their use of several classes of antihypertensive drugs. Extensive studies suggest that high blood pressure is a major risk factor for dementias including AD, and there had been suggestions that drugs used to control blood pressure conferred a protective effect on the brain in addition to controlling blood pressure.
The question, she said, was which ones were associated with reduced AD dementia risk, and which were not.
Yasar and colleagues looked at 2,248 of the GEMS subjects, of them 351 reported use of a diuretic, 140 use of ARBs, 324 use of ACE inhibitors, 333 use of calcium channel blockers and 457 use of beta blockers. The average age of this group was 78.7 years, and 47 percent were women.
"We were able to confirm previous suggestions of a protective effect of some of these medicines not only in participants with normal cognition, but also in those with mild cognitive impairment," says Yasar.
"Additionally, we were also able to assess the possible role of elevated systolic blood pressure in AD dementia by placing those within each medication group in categories above and below systolic blood pressures of 140 mmHg, the standard cut-off reading for a diagnosis of hypertension," she said.
Yasar cautioned that the analysis had its limitations, owing mostly to the fact that the data collected by the GEMS trial were not gathered to directly measure the effect of the drugs, and by the fact that it was impossible to tell with certainty how well each group of participants complied with their drug treatments. Nor did the research team have information on subjects' use of drugs prior to the study period.
But, she said, "the consistent pattern we saw of reduced risk of AD dementia associated with these medications warrants further studies, including the use of brain imaging, to better understand the biologic basis of these associations." Such studies, she added, "could lead to identification of new pharmacologic targets for preventive interventions to slow cognitive decline and possibly delay progression of AD dementia."
###
Other Johns Hopkins investigators who authored the study include Jin Xia, M.S.; Wenliang Yao, Ph.D.; Qian-Li Xue, Ph.D.; and Michelle C. Carlson, Ph.D. Additional researchers include Curt D. Furberg, M.D., Ph.D.; Carla I. Mercado, Ph.D.; Annette L. Fitzpatrick, Ph.D.; Linda P. Fried, M.D.; Claudia H. Kawas, M.D.; Kaycee M. Sink, M.D.; Jeff D. Williamson, M.D.; and Steven T. DeKosky, M.D. The research team included scientists from Wake Forest School of Medicine (Winston-Salem, N.C.), University of Washington (Seattle, Wash.), Columbia University (New York, N.Y.), University of California, Irvine (Irvine, Calif.), University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh, Pa.) and University of Virginia (Charlottesville, Va.).
The study was supported by the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEM) Study; the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM); the Office of Dietary Supplements; the National Institute on Aging; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer's Disease Research Center; and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Yasar has been funded by NIH and received research support from the John A. Hartford Foundation, the Nathan Shock Memorial Fund, the drug company Sanofi and families of grateful patients. She served as a consultant for the Charles River Company.
On the Web:
Johns Hopkins Department of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology
Johns Hopkins Medicine (JHM), headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, is a $6.7 billion integrated global health enterprise and one of the leading health care systems in the United States. JHM unites physicians and scientists of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine with the organizations, health professionals and facilities of The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. JHM's vision, "Together, we will deliver the promise of medicine," is supported by its mission to improve the health of the community and the world by setting the standard of excellence in medical education, research and clinical care. Diverse and inclusive, JHM educates medical students, scientists, health care professionals and the public; conducts biomedical research; and provides patient-centered medicine to prevent, diagnose and treat human illness. JHM operates six academic and community hospitals, four suburban health care and surgery centers, and more than 30 primary health care outpatient sites. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, opened in 1889, was ranked number one in the nation for 21 years in a row by U.S. News & World Report.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Like Zac Efron in the trailer for That Awkward Moment, there are a handful of legendary rock stars rockin' out with their c**ks out tonight!
Today Cleveland's Rock Hall nominated 16 talented bands and artists, including Nirvana & LL Cool J, and five of them will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014!
Oooh, what an honor! Fans can apparently vote online to choose their favorites!!!
Other AH-Mazing talents nominated include KISS, Hall & Oates, Linda Ronstadt, Peter Gabriel, N.W.A., Deep Purple, & The Replacements!
OMG!!! Rappers, rockers, John Oates' amazeballz mustache — what a wonderfully diverse group!!
Hillary Clinton accepted the Elton John AIDS Foundation's first-ever Founder's Award at the organization's annual benefit in New York on Tuesday night.
Although she was honored by the accolade, Clinton echoed a theme expressed by many of the stars in attendance: that there's much more work to be done to combat the disease.
"We still have so far to go," the former secretary of state said in her acceptance speech. "There are so many challenges that confront us. If we are to continue to build on the progress, and yes, there has been progress, then we have to continue to advocate and demand for governments, international organizations, foundations, all of us, to be persistent…and ensure that we don't falter."
"If we're going to beat AIDS, we have to reach out to everyone," she added.
Elton John also received an award at Tuesday's gala, from the Harvard AIDS Initiative.
"I really hope that all of you will join me in being equally stubborn when it comes to ending AIDS because that is what will be required to end this epidemic," he told the well-heeled crowd at Cipriani Wall Street in lower Manhattan. "We're going to have to stubbornly insist on full funding for all proven methods of preventing HIV infection…Treatment for everyone. Treatment for all…We're going to have to keep yelling and screaming about the way our country treats racial and sexual minorities and, of course, the poor. We're going to have to be downright stubborn, not just this year, not next year, not the next, but for many years to come."
Indeed, John vowed to be stubborn about AIDS for the next 20 years if necessary, but he said he doesn't think it will take that long to achieve an AIDS-free generation and world.
Nevertheless, John added, "We have so much more work to do and we'll be there until the bitter end."
Other honorees at the event, which raised $3.45 million, included Food Network star Sandra Lee, John's longtime agent Howard Rose and mogul Ron Perelman, who prompted cheers from the crowd when he referred to Clinton as "the next president of the United States." Clinton looked nonchalant when the camera cut to her, but after Perelman continued to sing her praises and said the highly rumored candidate has his vote, Clinton could be seen mouthing "Oh my God," as if she couldn't believe all of the attention.
Matt Lauer was a last-minute substitute host at the event after Anderson Cooper had to go to Washington to cover the debt-ceiling crisis, which Lauer joked "sounded like a lame-ass excuse."
Earlier, The Hollywood Reporter asked Lauer what the entertainment industry could do to continue to raise awareness of AIDS and combat the disease.
"Talk, talk, talk, spread the word, get out there, come to events like this and raise money," Lauer said. "I mean, when you stop and think about what Elton has done in 20 years…a lot of it is something you can't put a price tag on, it's just a discussion and getting out there and putting his reputation on line and spreading the word that way."
Tony-winning actress Judith Light echoed Lauer's call for a continued dialogue on the issue.
"We did and we do so much in terms of the awareness, and I don't think it's just the entertainment industry that has to do something, I think it's about those of us who are committed to this issue and have been committed to this issue for a long time, talking to other people and finding ways, just like Elton has, to make it a prominent issue again, to say to people, 'This is not over,' " she said.
The former Who's the Boss star, who's performed on Broadway for the past few years, told us that she recently starred in a pilot for Amazon, making her just the latest actor to join the Internet revolution.
Meanwhile, fellow Broadway alum Jeremy Jordan, who left his starring role in Newsies after he joined the second-season cast of NBC's now-canceled Smash, said he misses the stage and hopes to "come back as soon as possible." In fact, he's doing a weeklong Stephen Sondheim show in November called A Bed and a Chair.
"It's only a week, and it's not Broadway, but it will be nice to come back to New York for a hot sec," he said.
Other celebs in attendance included Billy Joel, Alec Baldwin, Allison Williams, Courtney Love, Lisa Marie Presley and rock band Heart, who performed at the end of the night.
Amazon just announced its latest tablets are available for pre-order in the UK and Canada. While the updated Kindle Fire HD will begin shipping in both countries on October 24th, Canadian customers will have to wait until November 26th, almost two weeks later than their UK counterparts, to get their ...
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