MIAMI (AP) ? NASA chief Charles Bolden says the agency is committed to working out ownership issues for artifacts that flew in space aboard Apollo moon shots and other missions.
Bolden met Monday in Washington with Apollo 13 commander James Lovell and other former astronauts. NASA has questioned whether Lovell has the right to sell a checklist from the mission that received a bid of more than $388,000 at auction. The agency also sued a former astronaut over an attempt to sell a camera from the Apollo 14 moon mission.
Bolden's statement calls Lovell and the others heroes. He says there have been fundamental misunderstandings and unclear policies about items from missions dating to the original Mercury manned space program.
Bolden says the agency and astronauts will explore how to resolve those issues.
(Reuters) ? It's up to the consumer to drive the U.S. economy and lift world growth in 2012, and the outlook is far from encouraging.
Over the past three and half years, growth in U.S. consumer spending has averaged a paltry 0.2 percent adjusted for inflation, the weakest in the post-World War II period, Morgan Stanley says.
While the employment picture is gradually brightening, wage growth is going in the opposite direction, keeping a lid on consumer behavior. Over the past year, pay for blue-collar workers adjusted for inflation fell 12 cents from the previous year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was the steepest decline since the stagflationary days of 1980.
Pay for all workers has fallen 16 cents this year in real terms.
Consumer buying power, modest over the holiday season, remains constrained by heavy debt loads. Total U.S. household debt as a percentage of disposable personal income is down from its 2007 peak at 130 percent, but it remains well above its 1970-2000 average of 75 percent.
As a result, Stephen Roach, non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley, sees U.S. consumption remaining anemic for years to come. That will place a drag on global growth, especially in Asia, a big manufacturer of U.S. consumer goods.
"With retrenchment and balance-sheet repair only in its early stages, the zombie-like behavior of American consumers should persist," Roach said.
Consumer spending rose 1.7 percent in the third quarter, far below the 3.6 percent it averaged in the decade before the 2007-2008 recession. So it is hard to see world growth accelerating significantly until the U.S. consumer, who drives over 70 percent of U.S. GDP growth, revives.
There are other factors holding Americans' spending in check. The Federal Reserve last week reported early signs of tightening credit conditions, and government stimulus spending dries up this year. At the same time, uncertainty persists over the payroll tax cut and jobless benefits, which currently add 0.50-0.75 percentage point to GDP but are set to expire in February.
On top of that, businesses are pulling back on capital expenditure as tax breaks expire, while exports wane as a growth driver amid the upheavals from Europe. Most economists expect at best only modest U.S. economic growth around 2 percent in 2012 despite a recent batch of encouraging data.
"The year ahead is fraught with risks," said Tom Porcelli at RBC Capital Markets. "In fact, consumer fundamentals are decidedly weaker than this time last year."
If the U.S. employment report, due on Friday, shows marked improvement, it would lift optimism. But most economists expect only gradual gains of 150,000 new jobs added in December, up from 120,000 the prior month.
Although the average pace of job growth has nearly doubled over the past three months compared with the prior period, it remains well below the 200,000-250,000 mark viewed as healthy labor market conditions.
Wages may rise too. They are forecast to have climbed 0.2 percent in December after a drop in November. But buying intentions remain weak. The Conference Board reported in its U.S. consumer confidence survey for December that even though overall sentiment has improved, those in the market for big-ticket items like cars or houses mostly plan to buy used, not new -- a sign of extremely cautious attitudes.
That would explain why analysts forecast no acceleration in new car and truck sales data for the United States, due on Wednesday. They are seen holding steady at a 13.6 million annualized rate in December. Likewise, the ISM manufacturing index is expected to have ticked up only a slightly, to 53.2 from 52.7 in November.
"Still muddling through," is how Macroeconomic Advisers summarized the economic outlook for 2012.
A recent growth spurt might have given the U.S. economy some resiliency to withstand a euro-zone recession, weakening stock prices, rising credit costs, fiscal drag and a higher dollar. But the United States, and with it the world economy, remain vulnerable to shocks in the year ahead.
(Reporting By Stella Dawson; Editing by Dan Grebler)
LONDON (Reuters) - Bunga Bunga, Zenga Zenga, a tweeting cobra and other wacky news capped a year that saw the capture of America's most wanted man and the overthrow of dictators.
2011 was filled with animal antics that began with the introduction of Heidi, the cross-eyed opossum, as the latest feral German celebrity to capture hearts around the world.
The star of Leipzig Zoo made an appearance on U.S. television in February predicting Oscar winners, had her own merchandise, a song written about her and gained more than 330,000 fans on Facebook before dying in September to join Paul the oracle octopus and Knut the polar bear in the hereafter.
"The cross-eyed opossum Heidi has closed her eyes forever," the zoo wrote on its website.
PHOTOS: ANIMALS IN THE NEWS
This orphaned cat -- named Kitler -- couldn't get adopted in July because the dark fur under her nose resembled the moustache of Nazi tyrant Adolf Hitler. Finding felines that bear a striking similarity to Der Fuhrer became a semi-popular internet meme with websites like "Cats That Look Like Hitler" popping up.
MORE SLIDESHOWSNEXT?>??|??<?PREV
Heil Kitler!
CURRENT TOP 5 SLIDES
USERS WHO VOTED ON THIS SLIDE
But Heidi wasn't the only news story about the animal world which saw New Zealanders rescue, set free and then lose track of "Happy Feet," the wrong-way Emperor penguin. A fox also escaped from a Belarus hunter by shooting his would-be killer with his own rifle and a flying bear killed two people in Canada.
And who could forget Mia, the cobra who escaped from New York's Bronx zoo? She became a Twitter sensation when an anonymous Twitter user began posting tweets from @bronxzooscobra, which followed the snake's progress visiting New York landmarks and a popular cafe for morning coffee.
"Getting my morning coffee at the Mudtruck. Don't even talk to me until I've had my morning coffee. Seriously, don't. I'm venomous," one Twitter message read.
Twitter gained followers and broke news, including the musings of Osama bin Laden's unwitting neighbor who tweeted about the "unusual" noises in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad during the raid to capture America's most wanted man in May.
"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who live blogged the Osama raid without knowing it," IT consultant Sohaib Athar said on Twitter a few hours after reporting a loud bang rattling his windows.
Video-sharing website YouTube delighted millions with hit videos showing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev parking a car and then trying to hold it back from ploughing into a crowd. It also showed the U.S. Presidential Cadillac marooned on a Dublin ramp and a music video entitled "Zenga Zenga," which lampooned embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi, who is flanked by gyrating female dancers in the video, was later captured and killed -- one of four dictators overthrown in an Arab Spring which also swept through Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.
Other less authoritarian leaders also fell in 2011.
In seven tumultuous days in November Italy went, as one cartoonist put it, "from Bunga Bunga to Banca Banca." The first refers to the name that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi bestowed on the wild parties he allegedly held at his villas.
The second, Italian for bank, refers to the financial world that will dominate much of new Prime Minister Mario Monti's term as he tries to reign in Italy's profligate spending and tackle a major debt crisis threatening the entire euro zone.
The flamboyant Berlusconi, who is accused of sleeping with a teenage prostitute and hosting parties where girls dressed up in sexy nun or nurse outfits, said he had no regrets.
"I have a high regard for myself and I have nothing to reprimand myself for when I look at myself in the mirror," he said. "Perhaps at times I've exaggerated with irony, but never with brutal offences like those directed towards me."
Berlusconi once described U.S. President Barack Obama as "suntanned," suggested that he seduced Finnish President Tarja Halonen and held up two fingers behind a Spanish minister's head in an EU summit photograph.
British royalty enjoyed a surge of global popularity, with the marriage of Prince William to Kate Middleton in April, which sparked celebrations across Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and a horse-racing victory on the day for the aptly named Royal Wedding at odds of 4/1.
Irish leprechauns, tea-sipping Britons, Australian ABBA impersonators and the oldest yoga teacher on the planet were just some of the people who set records on Guinness World Records Day in November.
In Ireland, 262 people in Dublin set the record for the largest gathering of people dressed as leprechauns.
>"We believe that a record for leprechauns belongs to its native soil and we're really pleased to bring it back to Ireland," Derek Mooney from Ireland's RTE Radio One said.
Charlie Sheen wasn't the only celebrity to top odd stories with his "winning" ways.
Three Polish police commandos were sacked from an elite anti-terrorist unit for serving as bodyguards for Paris Hilton and singer Lady Gaga threatened to sue a London ice cream shop for its "Baby Gaga" ice cream made from breast milk.
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner was jilted in June by prospective wife number three and French actor Gerard Depardieu apologized to fellow passengers for urinating during takeoff on an Air France flight.
The presenters of British motoring TV show "Top Gear" described Mexicans as "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight" and didn't fear complaints from Mexico's UK envoy. Ambassador Eduardo Medina Mora described the comments as "vulgar," "inexcusable" and "xenophobic" in a letter to the BBC.
Apple's iPhone edged past pop stars and celebrities as the top searched term on the Web in 2011, despite the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
"10 years ago we had Steve Jobs, Bob Hope and Johnny Cash. Now we have no Jobs, no Hope and no Cash," according to a joke lamenting the dire straits of the current U.S. economy.
The world of comedy also lost one of its favorite figures with the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il in December.
Although he was a brutal dictator reviled by human rights groups for jailing or starving hundreds of thousands of North Koreans and abhorred for his proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Kim was comedy gold to satirists.
The late leader with his elevator shoes and bouffant hairstyle was immortalized in the 2004 U.S. film "Team America: World Police" in which a foul-mouthed Kim drops U.N. nuclear inspector Hans Blix into a shark aquarium and sings a heartfelt ballad about the burden of leadership in politically incorrect accented English: "I'm so Ronery" (I'm so Lonely).
The last laugh fell to The Economist magazine, which put a waving Kim on its cover in 2000 under the headline "Greetings, earthlings" as the world's most reclusive nation began cautiously opening up to South Korea.
Eleven years later, the British magazine's Asia blog noted Kim's death with another photo of Kim waving under the caption "Farewell, earthlings.
HONOLULU ? President Barack Obama is spending New Year's Day remembering his family's history in Hawaii.
Obama took his wife and daughters to visit his grandfather's grave Sunday morning. The president's grandfather, Stanley Dunham, is buried at Punchbowl National Cemetery.
The Obamas then headed to the East-West Center, a research and exhibition center that is featuring a display on the anthropological work of the president's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham.
The center says the exhibition includes photographs taken during Dunham's years of field research in Indonesia, as well as her personal art and artifact collection.
Obama was born and mostly raised in Honolulu, though he spent a few years as a boy living in Indonesia with his mother.
Source: www.artdaily.org --- Friday, December 30, 2011 PALO ALTO, CA. (AP).- In the interview, Steve Wozniak and the late Steve Jobs recall a seminal moment in Silicon Valley history ? how they named their upstart computer company some 35 years ago. "I remember driving down Highway 85," Wozniak says. "We're on the freeway, and Steve mentions, 'I've got a name: Apple Computer.' We kept thinking of other alternatives to that name, and we couldn't think of anything better." Adds Jobs: "And also remember that I worked at Atari, and it got us ahead of Atari in the phonebook." The interview, recorded for an in-house video for company employees in the mid-1980s, was among a storehouse of materials Apple had been collecting for a company museum. But in 1997, soon after Jobs returned to the company, Apple officials contacted Stanford University and offered to ...
- LAWTON, Oka. -- Army Pvt. Shalon K. Marshall, daughter of Tonya and Jet Reid, Greencastle, has graduated from Basic Combat Training at Fort Sill, Lawton, Okla.
During the nine weeks of training, the soldier studied the Army mission and received instruction and training exercises in drill and ceremonies, Army history, core values and traditions, military courtesy, military justice, physical fitness, first aid, rifle marksmanship, weapons use, map reading and land navigation, foot marches, armed and unarmed combat, and field maneuvers and tactics. She is a 2011 graduate of Greencastle-Antrim High School. - Army Reserve Pvt. Jarvis K. Prather, son of Anice Myers, Greencastle, recently graduated from basic combat training at Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. During the nine weeks of training he studied the Army mission, history, tradition and core values, physical fitness and received instruction and practice in basic combat skills, military weapons, chemical warfare and bayonet training, drill and ceremony, marching, rifle marksmanship, armed and unarmed combat, map reading, field tactics, military courtesy, military justice system, basic first aid, foot marches, and field training exercises. Prather is a 2011 graduate of Greencastle-Antrim High School.
- Air Force Airman Ryan L. Wertz, son of Harold Wertz, Needmore, and Loretta Temple, Dover, graduated from basic military training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas.
The airman completed
an intensive, eight-week program that included training in military discipline and studies, Air Force core values, physical fitness,and basic warfare principles and skills. Airmen who complete basic training earn four credits toward an associate in applied science degree through the Community College of the Air Force.
He is a 2009 graduate of York County School of Technology.
UnlockAppiPhone