Lindsay Lohan Threatens Legal Action Over Dubai Party Reports ...

Lindsay Lohan is threatening to take legal action against a party planning company over allegations her name has been used to promote a New Year's Eve bash in Dubai.

Lohan's representatives are to send a cease and desist letter to the unnamed firm to clear up false reports suggesting she will ring in 2012 at a massive party on a cruise ship in the United Arab Emirates, according to TMZ.com.

The actress' spokesman Steve Honig is adamant the story is untrue as Lohan plans to ring in the new year in California.

He tells the website, "Lindsay is not going to Dubai, nor had she ever considered doing so. She will be spending New Year's Eve in Los Angeles with a few close friends and family."

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Source: http://www.starpulse.com/news/index.php/2011/12/30/lindsay_lohan_threatens_legal_action_o

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Cable companies to resell Verizon Wireless service

NEW YORK (AP) ? Cable companies Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and Bright House Networks are giving up on their dreams of creating their own wireless network, opting instead to resell Verizon Wireless service.

The companies said Friday that they have agreed to sell their wireless licenses ? which they haven't been using ? to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 billion.

The deal "amounts to a partnership between formerly mortal enemies," said analyst Craig Moffett at Sanford Bernstein. The cable companies compete with Verizon Communications Inc., Verizon Wireless' parent company, for phone and cable-TV customers. Now, Verizon Wireless stores will be selling cable service.

Cable companies have long had ambitions to open a second front against AT&T Inc. and Verizon by setting up their own wireless networks. In the meantime, some of them have partnered with Sprint Nextel Corp. and Clearwire Corp. to offer wireless service.

Lately, there had been speculation that the cable companies would try for a deeper beachhead in wireless by investing in ailing No. 3 and 4 carriers Sprint or T-Mobile USA. That talk had gained currency as it's become clear that AT&T's deal to buy T-Mobile USA is firmly opposed by regulators.

The link-up with No. 1 carrier Verizon Wireless and the sale of the spectrum appears to preclude a deal between a cable consortium and one of the weaker players in wireless. Instead, the biggest cellphone company will strengthen its hand, if the spectrum sale is approved by regulators.

"Pity poor T-Mobile. Verizon just ran off with the last pretty girl in the bar," Moffett said.

U.S.-listed shares of Deutsche Telekom AG, the parent of T-Mobile USA, were down 53 cents, or 4.2 percent, at $12.25 in midday trading. Sprint shares were down 3 cents, or 1.1 percent, at $2.67.

"It's really hard for a cable company to expect to compete in a highly competitive wireless market," said Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley. He pointed to Cox Communications, another cable company, which this year shut down its plans to build out a wireless network.

"We got a good price for the spectrum," Dudley said. "An arrangement like this makes a lot of sense."

The cable companies paid $2.2 billion for the spectrum in 2006, so they're getting a 64 percent gain on a five-year investment. The spectrum covers about 85 percent of the country's population, and would have been sufficient to start up an independent wireless network.

Shares of Philadelphia-based Comcast rose 97 cents, or 4.3 percent, to $23.53. New York-based Time Warner Cable shares rose $1.90, or 3.1 percent, to $62.82. Orlando, Fla.-based Bright House Networks is privately held.

Time Warner Cable currently resells access to Clearwire's wireless data network as "4G" service. Dudley said it could continue to provide service to existing subscribers, but the arrangement with Verizon Wireless is exclusive, so it will stop selling to new subscribers.

Neil Smit, the head of Comcast's cable operations, said its Clearwire service, marketed as "Xfinity 2Go," will be shut down within six months. It has about 30,000 customers.

Clearwire shares were unchanged at $2.03.

Comcast, the country's largest cable company, owned the majority of the spectrum holding company, and will get $2.3 billion from the sale. Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable company, will get $1.1 billion. Bright House, the sixth-largest, will get $189 million.

Verizon Wireless CEO Dan Mead said the company will combine the spectrum with some of its own unused holdings and launch service using the latest wireless data technology, dubbed LTE for Long-Term Evolution. The acquisition roughly doubles the number of airwaves Verizon Wireless would have available for LTE.

Mead said he expected the deal to close in the middle of next year, but didn't say when the spectrum would be put to use.

Moffett, the analyst, said the Federal Communications Commission would probably rather see the spectrum go to T-Mobile USA. One of the reasons its German parent company wants to sell it to AT&T is that T-Mobile USA doesn't have a lot of room on the airwaves, and can't keep up with Verizon and AT&T when it comes to expanding wireless data capacity.

But Deutsche Telekom is unwilling to plow more money into the U.S., so an outright purchase of the cable-company spectrum has not been in the cards.

The sale to Verizon does solve one problem for the FCC, Moffett said: that the cable spectrum holdings have not been put to use yet.

Under the agreement, the cable companies and Verizon Wireless will market each others' services. Billing will be separate, but the cable companies have the option to start selling Verizon Wireless service under their own brand in four years. Cox had a similar arrangement with Sprint, but gave it up last month, saying it was too small to compete with the big cellphone companies.

Verizon Communications, the New York-based phone company that owns 55 percent of Verizon Wireless, runs its own, competing cable-TV service called FiOS in some areas. In the rest of its local-phone territory, it resells satellite TV service from DirecTV Group Inc. based in El Segundo, Calif.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-12-02-Verizon%20Wireless-Cable/id-ecfb3a04a6224ea1a6952ce8ac22d3bc

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Wall St up but warning on Europe chills rally (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters) ? Socks gained on Monday, but the day's rally was dampened by news that Germany and other top-rated European nations could see their credit ratings cut.

Stocks have tied their fortunes to a hoped-for resolution of the European debt crisis. Optimistic investors bought shares in the morning after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Germany and France had come to an agreement on tighter fiscal controls for the euro zone, to be voted on Friday.

But the Financial Times and other reports of potential downgrades for every euro-zone nation hit markets hard by late afternoon, erasing part of the day's gains.

After the market's close, Standard & Poor's placed the sovereign ratings of Germany, France and other euro zone nations on "credit watch negative," the step that precedes a downgrade. Stock index futures edged lower after the news.

"The market felt in some ways it was past these worries for the time being, and now they'll have to revisit them, or at least churn them over in their minds," said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.

Markets have struggled with the euro zone's crisis for months. Hope that European policymakers were entering an endgame sent the S&P 500 to its best week in almost three years last week with a rise of 7.4 percent.

The S&P financial sector (.GSPF), up 2.1 percent, still led gains for the day. Shares of Citigroup (C.N) rose 5.9 percent to $29.83, while shares of Morgan Stanley (MS.N) gained 6.8 percent to $16.57.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) was up 78.41 points, or 0.65 percent, at 12,097.83. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index (.SPX) was up 12.80 points, or 1.03 percent, at 1,257.08. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) was up 28.83 points, or 1.10 percent, at 2,655.76.

All three indexes were trading well above 1 percent around midday.

After the close, stocks futures inched lower with the announcement of the possible downgrades euro zone nations. S&P 500 futures slipped 0.5 point and were about even with fair value.

"At this point I can't say anybody would be surprised. All of these governments have fairly significant debt as a percentage of their GDPs," said Fred Dickson, chief market strategist at the Davidson Cos. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.

Still, investors are hoping the EU agreement will pave the way for the European Central Bank to buy large amounts of government bonds.

Among other gainers, MetLife Inc's (MET.N) stock advanced 3.7 percent to $32.92 after the largest U.S. life insurer forecast 2012 earnings growth of as much as 7 percent, though its fourth-quarter outlook was below expectations.

Shares of SuccessFactors (SFSF.N) surged 51 percent to $39.75 after Germany's SAP (SAPG.DE) announced a $3.4 billion cash deal to buy the Web-based software company.

About 7.18 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Amex and Nasdaq, below the current daily average of 7.96 billion shares traded per day.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a ratio of about 4 to 1 and on the Nasdaq by about 9 to 4.

(Reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111205/bs_nm/us_markets_stocks

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Obama urges public help pushing payroll tax cuts (AP)

WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama wants voters to get involved in the debate over extending the reduced payroll tax and he's asking them to tell members of Congress to keep the cut in place.

"Let your members of Congress know where you stand," Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. "Tell them not to vote to raise taxes on working Americans during the holidays. Tell them to put country before party. Put money back in the pockets of working Americans. Pass these tax cuts."

Obama's address directs listeners to the whitehouse.gov website, where an online calculator lets them determine how much money it's worth to them to continue the 2 percent reduction in the payroll tax that took effect this year. A family with income of $50,000 a year would pay $1,000 more in payroll taxes if Congress does not act by the end of this year to extend that reduction.

Democrats want to expand the reduction in addition to extending it. Republican leaders say they're committed to passing an extension, fearing political fallout if payroll taxes rise on Jan. 1 on 160 million wage-earners. The GOP rank-and-file appears divided, with many Republican senators voting against an extension supported by their leadership this week.

There's also disagreement about how or whether to pay for any extension. Democrats favor a new tax on millionaires; Republicans prefer to cut federal spending.

"We're going to keep pushing Congress to make this happen. They shouldn't go home for the holidays until they get this done," Obama said in his address. "And if you agree with me, I could use your help."

Obama also took note of a new monthly jobs report out Friday that showed the economy added 120,000 jobs in November, a positive number. "We need to keep this growth going and strengthen it," the president said.

Republicans devoted their weekly address to promoting a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, which is headed for a vote in the Senate after failing in the House last month.

Democratic leaders worked aggressively to defeat the measure in the House, saying that such a requirement could force Congress to cut billions from social programs during times of economic downturn and that disputes over what to cut could result in Congress ceding its power of the purse to the courts. The result was that the amendment got majority support but fell short of the two-thirds needed to advance a constitutional amendment.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said "the impending vote to amend the Constitution represents a choice between changing business as usual in Washington or embracing the status quo that we can no longer afford."

"The real reason many lawmakers don't want a balanced budget amendment is the exact reason why it's so essential," Snowe said. "They don't want their hands tied; they want to continue to spend without restraint."

Like Obama, she asked listeners to make their views known.

"Contact your senators and urge them to support our balanced budget amendment," Snowe said, "so that we finally seize the fiscal reins and reclaim our future for our children and our grandchildren."

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111204/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama

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Teacher who said Santa not real apologizes

By NBC New York

?The Rockland County elementary school teacher who drew outrage when she reportedly told a classroom of second-graders that Santa didn't exist is apologizing.

The New York Post reports Leatrice Ann Eng, 58, has been calling each of the students' parents to apologize for telling their children Santa Claus wasn't real.

Read the original story on NBC New York

Eng, a teacher at Nanuet's George W. Miller Elementary School, was holding a geography lesson last Tuesday when the 7-year-old students?said they knew about the North Pole because that's where Santa resided, LoHud.com reported.

She responded by telling them that Santa did not exist and that Christmas presents were bought by their parents.

School officials didn't immediately respond to questions about the matter, but the incident made national headlines and sparked heated discussion over the teacher's place in breaking a popular childhood fantasy.

"It's sad; she was wrong," Irene Hoffman, a mother of three students at the school, told the New York Post. "The whole thing is being blown out of proportion. I think we should focus on our children's education, and just move on."?

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/04/9204729-teacher-who-said-santa-not-real-apologizes

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