Sony a (alpha) DSLR-A290 14.2 MP Digital SLR Camera - Black (Body Only)
Sony a (alpha) DSLR-A290 14.2 MP Digital SLR Camera?In a perfect working order and please note this auction is for used camera and ?might have few signs of use, NO original packaging OR buy it now price. Images displayed are accurate photo representation of product please examine them before bidding and ?feel free to ask questions quite happy to answer. This auction includes the following :
Sony a (alpha) DSLR-A290 14.2 MP Digital SLR Camera
Li-ion rechargeable battery
2GB Memory Card
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A Second Take on Meeting the Press: From an up-close look at Rachel Maddow's sneakers to an in-depth look at Jon Krakauer's latest book ? it's all fair game in our "Meet the Press: Take Two" web extra. Log on Sundays to see David Gregory's post-show conversations with leading newsmakers, authors and roundtable guests. Videos are available on-demand by 12 p.m. ET on Sundays.
On October 24th, ITC Judge Thomas Pender ruled that Samsung infringed on several Apple patents. But it wasn't until the release of? the full-length version of Pender's ruling on Friday, that it became apparent how damaging the decision could be to Samsung's U.S. business. If the ITC goes along and affirms Judge Pender's ruling, which the staff agrees with, Samsung could find some of its devices banned during a 60 day Presidential review period that would follow a final ITC decision. Pender's decision must be voted on by the six-member commission.
Samsung also could face at the same time, a cease and desist order that would prevent the company from selling large quantities of infringing products in the U.S. At the same time, Samsung could be required to post a bond equal to 88% of? the value of all mobile phones, 32.5% of the value of mobile players and 37.6% of the value of all tablets that were ruled to have infringed on Apple's patents, during the Presidential review period. Samsung argued that a royalty rate of 4.9% was more appropriate.
Thankfully for Samsung, Judge Pender did approve design changes made by the Korean manufacturer that worksaround the claims made by Apple. These designarounds allow Samsung to continue to sell certain products in the U.S. even in the face of the October decision. And one of the patents involved in this case, the so-called "Steve Jobs" patent, has been ruled invalid by the USPTO. Despite the designarounds, Samsung could still be required to post a bond on the devices that no longer infringe on Apple's patents. Even worse, customs could still hold up shipments of these products until the agency is 100% sure that an exclusion order doesn't apply to the re-designed devices.
These are just some of the remedies that could be used against Samsung. The commission still needs to vote on Pender's ruling, and the designarounds seem to mean that it is still business as usual in the states for Samsung, at least for now.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? U.S. Sen. Michael Crapo, the Idaho Republican arrested on suspicion of drunken driving, doesn't plan to fight the charges when he appears in court in January, a spokesman said Friday.
Meanwhile, results from a secondary blood alcohol test performed at the jail show the conservative three-term senator registered a higher level about an hour after being arrested than when he was first tested by the police officer who stopped him.
Police have said Crapo registered a blood alcohol level of 0.11 percent when he was pulled over early Sunday in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, Va., after running a red light. But a secondary test performed after Crapo was brought to the jailhouse ? the one that will be used in court ? registered at 0.14, nearly twice the legal limit, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the arrest. The official wasn't authorized to release information publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
"He does not plan to contest the charges," said Crapo spokesman Lindsay Nothern, adding that Crapo has consulted with a local Virginia attorney ahead of his Jan. 4 court hearing.
Nothern confirmed there had been a discrepancy in the blood alcohol tests, but said he was uncertain why they differed.
A blood alcohol level of 0.14 means Crapo tested 1/100 of a percentage point below the level that would have mandated jail time under Virginia law. The legal limit in Virginia, which has strict drunken driving laws, is 0.08 percent.
Crapo has apologized and taken responsibility for the incident in a statement, but he hasn't spoken publicly about the arrest. Crapo returned to Washington from Idaho on Wednesday as lawmakers pursue a solution to the looming fiscal cliff, but he wasn't immediately available to comment Friday.
A number of factors could explain the discrepancy between the preliminary breathalyzer test, performed on the street when Crapo was pulled over shortly after midnight, and the jailhouse test, conducted just before 2 a.m. The higher level at the jailhouse could indicate Crapo was drinking shortly before getting behind the wheel and his body was still absorbing the alcohol. But another possible explanation is that blood alcohol testing simply isn't a perfect science, said Michael Hlastala, a breath testing expert and former physiology professor at the University of Washington.
"It could be consistent with rising blood alcohol levels," Hlastala said. "But it just depends on the way the person was breathing, and other factors."
Alexandria police say Crapo was alone in his vehicle when he ran a red light, was pulled over and failed field sobriety tests. He was taken to the Alexandria jail and released on an unsecured $1,000 bond about 5 a.m. Sunday. Crapo is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 4 ? the day after the start of the next Congress. Crapo was handily re-elected in 2010 and won't have to run again until 2016.
It's still not clear where Crapo was coming from when he was arrested, and the senator hasn't explained the circumstances of the arrest. Court records show Crapo residing in Southeast Washington, a short drive over the Potomac River from the historic suburb where he was arrested.
The 61-year-old's arrest two days before Christmas stunned colleagues and constituents alike, not only because of his squeaky-clean image but also because the senator, a Mormon, had said previously he abstains from alcohol, in accordance with his church's practices.
Many of Crapo's Republican colleagues, including Sen. Jim Risch, Idaho's junior senator, have come to his defense, suggesting Crapo can overcome the indiscretion and remain a viable leader. Crapo's home-state newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, ran an editorial with the headline: "We can all learn from Sen. Crapo's mistake."
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Miller reported from Boise, Idaho.
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Reach Josh Lederman on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joshledermanAP
Reach John Miller on Twitter: http://twitter.com/idahojohn69
President Barack Obama speaks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington after meeting with Congressional leaders regarding the fiscal cliff, Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
President Barack Obama speaks to reporters in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House in Washington after meeting with Congressional leaders regarding the fiscal cliff, Friday, Dec. 28, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Confused about the federal budget struggle? So are doctors, hospital administrators and other medical professionals who serve the 100 million Americans covered by Medicare and Medicaid.
Rarely has the government sent so many conflicting signals in so short a time about the bottom line for the health care industry.
Cuts are coming, says Washington, and some could be really big. Yet more government spending is also being promised as President Barack Obama's health care overhaul advances and millions of uninsured people move closer to getting government-subsidized coverage.
"Imagine a person being told they are going to get a raise, but their taxes are also going to go up and they are going to be paying more for gas," said Thornton Kirby, president of the South Carolina Hospital Association. "They don't know if they are going to be taking home more or less. That's the uncertainty when there are so many variables in play."
Real money is at stake for big hospitals and small medical practices alike. Government at all levels pays nearly half the nation's health care tab, with federal funds accounting for most of that.
It's widely assumed that a budget deal will mean cuts for Medicare service providers. But which ones? How much? And will Medicaid and subsidies to help people get coverage under the health care law also be cut?
As House Speaker John Boehner famously said: "God only knows." The Ohio Republican was referring to the overall chances of getting a budget deal, but the same can be said of how health care ? one-sixth of the economy ? will fare.
"There is no political consensus to do anything significant," said Dan Mendelson, president of Avalere Health, a market analysis firm. "There is a collective walking away from things that matter. All the stuff on the lists of options becomes impossible, because there is no give-and-take."
As if things weren't complicated enough, doctors keep facing their own recurring fiscal cliff, separate from the bigger budget battle but embroiled in it nonetheless.
Come Jan. 1, doctors and certain other medical professionals face a 26.5 percent cut in their Medicare payments, the consequence of a 1990s deficit-reduction law gone awry. Lawmakers failed to repeal or replace that law even after it became obvious that it wasn't working. Instead, Congress usually passes a "doc fix" each year to waive the cuts.
This year, the fix got hung up in larger budget politics. Although a reprieve is expected sooner or later, doctors don't like being told to sit in the congressional waiting room.
"It seems like there is a presumption that physicians and patients can basically tolerate this kind of uncertainty while the Congress goes through whatever political machinations they are going through," said Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, president of the American Medical Association. "Our concern is that physician uncertainty and anxiety about being able to pay the bills will have an impact on taking care of patients."
A recent government survey indicates that Medicare beneficiaries are having more problems when trying to find a new primary care doctor, and Lazarus said that will only get worse.
Adding to their unease, doctors also face an additional reduction if automatic spending cuts go through. Those would be triggered if Obama and congressional leaders are unable to bridge partisan differences and strike a deal. They are part of the combination of tax increases and spending cuts dubbed the "fiscal cliff."
Medicare service providers would get hit with a 2 percent across-the-board cut, but Medicaid and subsidies for the uninsured under Obama's health care overhaul would be spared. The Medicare cut adds up to about $120 billion over ten years, with 40 percent falling on hospitals, according to Avalare's analysis. Nursing homes, Medicare Advantage plans and home health agencies also get hit.
The American Hospital Association says that would lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of hospital jobs in a labor intensive industry that also generates employment for other businesses in local communities.
"It's very difficult to believe hospitals can absorb the kinds of numbers they are talking about without reducing service or workforce," said Kirby, the hospital association head. "You may decide that a service a hospital provides is not affordable ? for example, obstetrics in a rural community ? if you're making a little bit of money or losing a little bit of money by continuing to deliver babies in a rural community."
Independent analysts like Mendelson doubt that a 2 percent Medicare cut to hospitals would be catastrophic, but say it will cost jobs somewhere.
Even if there is a budget deal, the squeeze will be on.
The administration has proposed $400 billion in health care cuts so far in the budget talks, coming mainly from Medicare spending. That's only a starting point as far as Republicans are concerned. They also want to pare back Medicaid and Obama's health care law, and have also sought an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare.
Authored by Michael Pettis, originally posted at China Financial Markets,
The IMF?s Il Houng Lee, Murtaza Syed, and Liu Xueyan have published a very interesting and widely noticed?study?called ?Is China Over-Investing and Does it Matter?? In it they argue that there is strong evidence that China is overinvesting significantly. According to the abstract:
Now close to 50 percent of GDP, this paper assesses the appropriateness of China?s current investment levels. It finds that China?s capital-to-output ratio is within the range of other emerging markets, but its economic growth rates stand out, partly due to a surge in investment over the last decade. Moreover, its investment is significantly higher than suggested by cross-country panel estimation.
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This deviation has been accumulating over the last decade, and at nearly 10 percent of GDP is now larger and more persistent than experienced by other Asian economies leading up to the Asian crisis. However, because its investment is predominantly financed by domestic savings, a crisis appears unlikely when assessed against dependency on external funding. But this does not mean that the cost is absent. Rather, it is distributed to other sectors of the economy through a hidden transfer of resources, estimated at an average of 4 percent of GDP per year.
The article is well worth reading because it makes a very strong case, perhaps a little late, for what many of us have been arguing for the past seven or eight years. China?s investment rate is so high, we have argued, that even ignoring the tremendous evidence of misallocated investment, unless we can confidently propose that Beijing has uncovered a secret formula that allows it (and the tens of thousands of minor government officials and SOE heads who can unleash investment without much oversight) to identify high quality investment in a way that no other country in history has been able, there is likely to be a systematic tendency to wasted investment.
Interestingly enough, while two of the authors of the study work for the IMF, Liu Xueyan, the third, is a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Economic Research at the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China. I don?t know how much we should read into this, but it is worth noting that both the World Bank report in March and this IMF study have involved input from important mainland think tanks.
This is noteworthy because both the World Bank report and this study have come out very strongly in the direction that the China ?skeptics? have been arguing for many years. They identify the urgent need for adjustment and suggest ? very delicately ? how difficult it will be. I assume that this is all part of the tough debate that is taking place within policy-making circles over the need to implement the very difficult political reforms that will be a necessary part of the economic rebalancing, and I guess the reformers are eager to recruit the World Bank and the IMF to their points of view.
How much overinvestment?
One of the implications of the study is that households and SMEs have been forced to subsidize growth at a cost to them of well over 4% of GDP annually. My own back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the cost to households is actually 5-8% of GDP ? perhaps because I also include the implicit subsidy to recapitalize the banks in the form of the excess spread between the lending and deposit rates ? but certainly I agree with the IMF study that this has been a massive transfer to subsidize growth.
This subsidy also explains most of the collapse in the household share of GDP over the past twelve years. With household income only 50% of GDP, a transfer every year of 4% of GDP requires ferocious growth in household income for it just to keep pace with GDP, something it has never done until, possibly, this year.
The size of the transfer makes it very clear that without eliminating this subsidy ? which basically means abandoning the growth model ? it will be almost impossible to get the household and consumption shares of GDP to rise if China still hopes to maintain high GDP growth. The transfer of wealth from the household sector to maintain high levels of investment is simply too great, and this will be made all the more clear as the growth impact per unit of investment declines.
Another implication of the IMF study is that to get into line with other equivalent countries at this stage of its economic takeoff, China would have to reduce the investment share of GDP by at least ten percentage points and perhaps as much as twenty. Aside from pointing out that the sectors of the economy that have benefitted from such extraordinarily high investments are unlikely to celebrate such a finding, I have three comments. First, after many years in which China has invested far more than other countries at its stage of development, one could presumably argue that in order to get back to the ?correct? ratio, investment should be lower than the peer group, not equal to the peer group. In that case investment has to drop by a lot more than ten percentage points.
After all if China?s deviation from the experience of other countries is meaningful, then after a few years of substantial deviation, it cannot be enough for China simply to return to the mean. It must come in lower than the mean for a few years so that on average the deviation is eliminated.
Second, even if China had kept investment at the ?correct? level, as measured by the peer group, this would not imply that China has not overinvested. I haven?t been able to dig deeply into the comparison countries, but the study does list them, and a very quick glance suggests that many of these countries, after years of very high investment, themselves experienced deep crises or ?lost decades?.
This implies to me that these countries themselves overinvested, and so even if Chinese investment levels were not much higher than that of the peer group (and it was mainly in the past decade that Chinese investment rose to much higher levels than that of the peer group, and not in the 1990s, exactly as we have been suggesting using more qualitative measures), this could nonetheless be worrying. China would still have a difficult adjustment for the same reasons that many if not most of the peer group countries also had difficult adjustments.
The average number driven by the peer group sample, in other words, is not in itself an ?optimal? level of investment. It might already be too high. That Chinese investment levels have been so much higher than theirs is all the more worrying.
How much would growth have to slow?
My third point is more technical. If Chinese investment levels are much higher than optimal (assuming the peer group average is indeed optimal), of course the best solution for China is immediately to reduce investment until it reaches the right level. The longer investment rates are too high, the greater the impact of losses that have eventually to be amortized, and the worse off China is likely to be.
But it will be very hard for China to bring investment down as a share of GDP by ten full percentage points very quickly. Let us assume instead that China has five years to bring investment levels down to the ?correct? level, and let us assume further that the ?correct? level is indeed ten percentage points below where it is today. Both assumptions are, I think, dangerous because I am not convinced that an investment level of 40% of GDP is the ?correct? level for China going forward (I think it must be much lower) and I don?t think China has five years to make the necessary adjustment without running a serious risk of a financial crisis.
But let us ignore both objections and give China five years to bring investment down to 40% of GDP from its current level of 50%. Chinese investment must grow at a much lower rate than GDP for this to happen. How much lower? The arithmetic is simple. It depends on what we assume GDP growth will be over the next five years, but investment has to grow by roughly 4.5 percentage points or more below the GDP growth rate for this condition to be met.
If Chinese GDP grows at 7%, in other words, Chinese investment must grow at 2.3%.??If China grows at 5%, investment must grow at 0.4%. And if China grows at 3%, which is much closer to my ten-year view, investment growth must actually contract by 1.5%. Only in this way will investment drop by ten percentage points as a share of GDP in the next five years.
The conclusion should be obvious, but to many analysts, especially on the sell side, it probably needs nonetheless to be spelled out. Any meaningful rebalancing in China?s extraordinary rate of overinvestment is only consistent with a very sharp reduction in the growth rate of investment, and perhaps even a contraction in investment growth.
In fact I think over the next few years China will indeed undergo a sharp contraction in investment growth, but my point here is simply to suggest that even under the most optimistic of scenarios it will be very hard to keep investment growth high. Either Beijing moves quickly to bring investment growth down sharply, or overinvestment will contribute to further financial fragility leading, ultimately, to the point where credit cannot expand quickly enough and investment will collapse anyway.
This is just arithmetic. The extent of Chinese overinvestment ? even if we assume that it has not already caused significant fragility in the banking system and enormous hidden losses yet to be amortized ? requires a very sharp contraction just to get back to a ?normal? which, in the past, was anyway associated with difficult economic adjustments. It is hard to imagine how such a sharp contraction in investment will itself not lead to a sharp drop in GDP growth, and the IMF paper recognizes this:
To the extent that elevated levels of investment during the post-crisis period in China were somehow abnormal and necessitated by the sharp external slowdown, the challenge now is how to return to a more ?normal? level of investment without compromising growth and macroeconomic stability.
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) ? Twenty-one tribal policemen believed to have been kidnapped by the Taliban were found shot dead in Pakistan's troubled northwest tribal region early Sunday, government officials said.
Officials found the bodies shortly after midnight in the Jabai area of Frontier Region Peshawar after being notified by one policeman who escaped, said Naveed Akbar Khan, a top political official in the area. Another policeman was found seriously wounded, said Khan.
The 23 policemen went missing before dawn Thursday when militants armed with rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons attacked two posts in Frontier Region Peshawar. Two policemen were also killed in the attacks.
Militants lined the policemen up on a cricket pitch late Saturday night and gunned them down, said another local official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on the Pakistani Taliban, who have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government for the past few years. The tribal region is the main sanctuary for the Taliban in Pakistan.
On Saturday, an explosion ripped through a passenger bus at a terminal in the southern city of Karachi, killing six people and wounding 52 others, some of whom were in critical condition, said Seemi Jamali, a doctor at the hospital where the victims were being treated.
Police were trying to determine whether the blast, which reduced the bus to a charred skeleton, was caused by a bomb or a gas canister that exploded, said police spokesman Imran Shaukat. Many buses in Pakistan run on natural gas.
Karachi has a long history of political, ethnic and sectarian violence. It is also believed to be home to many Taliban militants who have fled U.S. drone attacks and Pakistani army operations in the country's northwest.
Also Saturday, a government official said authorities are investigating allegations that cough syrup has killed 33 people over the past three days in eastern Pakistan, the second time in recent months medicine is suspected of causing multiple deaths.
The deaths occurred in the city of Gujranwala and nearby villages, said local official Abdul Jabbar Shaheen. Another 54 people thought to have consumed the syrup are also being treated at city hospitals. Officials believe the victims drank the syrup to get high, he added.
Tests show the victims' stomachs contained dextromethorphan, a synthetic morphine derivative used in cough syrup that can have mind-altering effects if consumed in large quantities, said Shaheen. Investigators are trying to determine if the victims drank too much syrup, or whether there was a problem with the medicine itself, he said.
Twenty-three people died in the nearby city of Lahore in November after drinking bad cough syrup sold under the brand name Tyno. They were also described at the time as people who consumed the drug to get high.
Shaheen said the cough syrup involved in the incidents in and around Gujranwala was not sold under a single brand. He said some people in the city make cough syrup to sell specifically to drug addicts, and officials are trying to arrest them.
Officials temporarily closed one Lahore-based pharmaceutical company whose cough syrup was found in the possession of some affected in Gujranwala. They are investigating whether it caused any of the deaths, said Shaheen.
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Associated Press writers Adil Jawad in Karachi, Pakistan, and Zaheer Babar in Lahore, Pakistan, contributed to this report.
