Feedbag: Why Does My Cooking Suck? Your Questions, Answered

Welcome to the Feedbag, where all the dumb questions about food, drink, cooking, eating, and accidental finger removal you've been embarrassed to ask can finally receive the berating they goddamn deserve. Also: answers. Send all your even-vaguely-food-related questions to albertburneko@gmail.com. All of them.

Christopher:

I'm trying to improve my cooking - basically just get a recipe from somewhere and give it a go.

What I don't know how to figure out is when I think to myself "This needs something" - how do I learn to figure out what that something is?

I realize people train for years cooking and building a refined palate and all that crap.

Or they watch the Cooking Channel for three hours and decide to become internet food columnists!

I'm sorry. You were saying?

But where does a novice begin other than just throwing spices into whatever is being cooked?

For example, I made the foodspin chili a few weeks ago. It was tasty, but I felt like it needed something - that might have just been salt, but I don't want to just throw salt at everything all the time.

Basically is there a method, thought process to determine - this needs acid, or salt, or fat etc?

I don't think there's any foolproof method for this. That is to say, nothing is going to magically perfect your ability to add exactly the right touch to each dish, short of years and years and years of cooking many different dishes using a wide assortment of ingredients and techniques. If you watch Chopped a couple of times like I did that one night when I received literally all the cooking training I will ever have, you'll know that even experienced, professional, highly accomplished chefs still get hit, from time to time, with the dread criticism that their dish lacks flavor. And then Scott Conant is all I hate red onions! and then he jumps in a Ferrari with Tubbs and they screech off to arrest some drug lords or whatever.

And, really, that's what you're saying when you say that a dish "needs something," isn't it? It's that you've trimmed and chopped and seasoned and cooked and combined all this different good-tasting shit, and then you taste the combination of all this different good-tasting shit, and somehow it doesn't taste like anything, even though all its constituent parts taste like things, which doesn't make any sense and is kind of infuriating.

There are a couple of things you can do to help yourself. The first, ridiculous as it may seem, is to taste your food and, as you're gnashing it between your jagged snaggleteeth, go through a mental checklist of all the different taste qualities you're detecting. So, like, take a spoonful of the chili, put it in your mouth, and as you're chewing it and tasting it, literally scream out loud, at the top of your lungs and to the tune of "Ride Like the Wind" by Christopher Cross, "Hmm, OK, so it's salty, it's hot, it's fatty, it's meaty, it's burning the roof of my mouth, oh God that hurts..." and so on. If you're thinking in terms of the basic adjectives you'd use to describe food?salty, tart, bitter, sweet, and so on?you might occasionally find that the process of elimination helps you hit on what your dish is lacking. Which will almost always be acid.

Which brings us to the second thing you can do to help yourself figure out what your dish needs, which is just to add some acid to it, because that is what it needs, unless it is a beaker of sulfuric acid, in which case it probably needs some salt. Home cooks tend to go light on acid, and you're likely no exception. Yeah, sure, there are probably recipes where the missing something is salt, or heat, or some fatty richness, or some bitterness or crunch or some sliced hot dogs or whatever, but the likeliest thing your food is lacking if, when you taste it, it just isn't exciting your palate, is acid. You can get this from tomatoes, citrus fruits, or even a splash or two of vinegar. Play around with it. I bet I'm right.

Alex:

I?m currently living in a condo building with a small-ish patio on the 32nd floor in Chicago. Looking for the best grill I can safely use in this situation. Can?t use charcoal for sure nor can we use propane (I think), are there any outdoor electric grills out there that standout from the rest?

Thanks!

The 32nd floor? Christ, Alex, you don't need a grill, you need a goddamn spacesuit. Put a plate on the sidewalk out front, drop a steak from your patio, and it'll cook as it re-enters the atmosphere. Or, if that sounds like too much work, just stand on your patio, hold your meat up above your head, and sear it against the surface of the Sun.

But seriously (use the Sun). The merits of grilling are:

• 1) That grilling enables you to cook things at temperatures which would tend to produce too much smoke indoors;
• 2) That, if you are grilling over charcoal or wood fire, these will impart a pleasant taste to the food cooked above them; and
• 3) That cooking outdoors is a fun thing to do.

That last one doesn't apply to you, since going out on your patio puts you at risk for fatal hypoxia, cerebral and pulmonary edema, and just kind of floating off into outer space. And, the middle one doesn't apply either, since you're disallowed from using charcoal or wood fire (presumably because the smoke could damage passing telecommunications satellites). So, really, you're thinking you need a grill so that you can put sexy grill-lines on your food and make it all caramelized on the outside without smoking up and possibly igniting the artificial pure-oxygen environment inside your Space Station.

That's a fair concern, but I think my recommendation here is that, rather than looking for an electric grill which, even in the best-case scenario, will still not replicate the flavor benefits of cooking over charcoal, you invest in a sturdy cast iron skillet (and/or a stovetop griddle) and some high-smoke-point fat (canola oil, for example, or ghee), turn on your ventilation fan, open a couple of windows, and get comfortable sear-roasting (and just regular old roasting) things in your kitchen instead.

Your stovetop can produce high enough temperatures to pretty well nuke damn near anything you're likely to cook on it, and a cast iron skillet can handle that heat without turning anything cooked on it into a giant ball of cancer, as nonstick pans do. Likewise, at its highest settings your oven can put a serious hurting on, for example, bell peppers, which you might typically slap on a hot grill to burn their skins off. Yeah, this might occasionally entail some (lots of) (all of the) smoke, but not as often as you might expect, if you get the ventilation fan started beforehand and make generous use of that sturdy fat.

Or, hell, if you absolutely must purchase a grill, I've read and been told that infrared electric grills get hot enough to sear beef, which is really as hot as you'd ever need them to be. Thankfully (or, well, it sucks for you, I guess) I've never had to use one, but I figure even in the worst-case scenario, an infrared electric grill is a better outdoor cooking option than, say, rubbing your chicken breasts along the patio floor to heat them with friction. Give it a shot.

Shit, man, this hasn't been helpful at all. The important thing is, I got to make fun of your home.

Blue Raja:

I do the majority of the cooking for my girlfriend and me, and find myself cooking for larger groups of people fairly often as well. I also love meat because, you know, meat. So I am constantly paranoid about bacteria and disease and killing my friends. I have a fairly decent grasp of cooking times and temp so no issue there, but I always end up washing everything constantly and going through a million utensils every time I make a meal. Any quick food handling advice as far as various proteins are concerned? Any suggestions for places to find that kind information? Thanks for the help.

Raja, I sympathize. I also handle a lot of raw meat in my kitchen, and the cleanup afterward can be a big pain in the ass. The best food-handling advice I can give you is to think of the absolute best meal you ever ate in a restaurant in your life, and then wrack your brain to see if you can remember whether that meal caused you to die of dysentery. Probably not, right? OK. Now consider that that restaurant's kitchen was considerably filthier than your average hospital cleanroom. You're worrying too much.

Wash your hands whenever you're going to transition from handling raw meat to handling anything else; be smart about organizing your tasks so that you do as much of your raw-meat-handling as possible in one go; if you're doing any butchering or carving, do it on a dedicated cutting board, and sock that fucker in the dishwasher as soon as you're done using it. Buy a spray bottle of a kitchen cleaner with bleach in it and spritz the countertop after you've finished working with the raw stuff. And, above all else, try to relax a little bit. You're not going to kill your friends and family just because you don't have an autoclave in your kitchen. No, you're going to kill them for entirely different, as-yet-unrevealed reasons.

Ned:

What are your tips for eating well in a college setting? I love Ramen noodles as much as the next guy butttttt I'd like to see if there's anyway for me to step my college food game up.

Ned, I'm never going to have anything better to say about this than Tom Ley's guide to enjoyable ramen, not only because it's ingenious, but because I don't know anything at all about eating well in a college setting. There's, like, a cafeteria or some shit, right? And, like, do you eat Funyuns with your binge drinking or something? In my imagination, the diet of a collegian consists entirely of Funyuns, ramen, Pop-Tarts, and, like, beer mixed with vodka mixed with melted popsicles. Which, I dunno, does that really need to be improved upon? Buy a bottle of sriracha, and see what kind of trouble you can get into with it. It goes great* in melted popsicle juice.

*Probably.

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Send your Feedbag questions to albertburneko@gmail.com, and follow Foodspin here. Image by Jim Cooke.

It's weird that we fight about chili.Read?The first step is accepting that your kitchen is going to be quite literally as smoky as hell,? Read?I am currently a 24-year-old male living in New York (well, Hoboken) and working an unpaid? Read?

Source: http://deadspin.com/feedbag-why-does-my-cooking-suck-your-questions-answ-477584829

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French protest against gay marriage turns violent

PARIS (AP) ? Clashes have broken out between protesters and riot police near France's National Assembly building hours after the country legalized gay marriage.

Some protesters opposed to the measure legalizing same-sex marriage hurled glass bottles, cans and metal bars, and riot police responded with tear gas at the Invalides memorial and museum complex, near the National Assembly.

Hours earlier, French lawmakers legalized gay marriage after a wrenching national debate that exposed deep conservatism in the nation's heartland and tapped into intense discontent with the Socialist government.

The measure passed easily in the Socialist-majority Assembly, 331-225.

Following the vote, members of the gay and lesbian community flocked to a square in central Paris, just behind City Hall, to celebrate.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/french-protest-against-gay-marriage-turns-violent-222932179.html

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Go figure: 25% of Twin Cities home buyers paid in cash | MinnPost

When I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, my fellow volunteers and I developed a meteorological theory of underdevelopment. The Mayan people we worked with had become resigned to their lot ? poverty, disease and injustice ? not for lack of ambition but because of the climate. "You'd be fatalistic too, if you knew you were going to be rained on for six months," we used to tell each other.

So given our recent weather, you can understand why I was about as enthusiastic about city planning today as suffering a two-hour dental appointment, which, alas, is on my schedule for tomorrow.

But I got all hepped up when I read a story in the Washington Post about how Wall Street investors are buying large lots of single-family houses across the nation. Nobody knows exactly why. Maybe it's that Warren Buffett happened to remark last year that single-family houses were a singularly attractive investment. A big buyer, he suggested, could snap them up at distressed prices, get a mortgage (so he'd be using his investors' dough to do the deal), rent the houses out and then, when the housing market recovers, sell them at a nifty profit. In some cities, such buyers comprise 50 percent or more of the market.

In the Twin Cities, houses have been moving briskly in the last year, and sellers are in short supply. According to the Minneapolis Area Board of Realtors, the median price of a house two weeks ago was $176,000, up nearly 18 percent, and buyers are getting 95 percent of their asking prices. At the same time, inventories have decreased by more than 25 percent. My own real estate agent was breathing heavily. "Things have been good," she said. "Really good."

Wall Street investors?

I wondered, however: Could all this wonderful stuff be happening in the Twin Cities because hedge funds and other avatars of the 1 percent had come to town to scoop up lots of houses? If so, they could be bidding up the prices of houses to the point where ordinary people couldn't afford them. Such folks would then be consigned to renting, which might explain why so many developers were putting up apartment complexes all over the metro and particularly downtown.

If that were all true, I'd have a helluva story. Bad news, true, but a helluva story. For a few moments, it looked as though the sun were coming out.

Some calls later, things were as bleak as ever. Local folks said that they hadn't seen any evidence of Wall Street activity here. Mark Willis, research fellow for the Furman Center for Real Estate at New York University, observed: "It's mostly happening in states with the biggest collapse in housing prices." That's where investors can find the best bargains. The Twin Cities saw prices drop in the Great Recession, but nothing like what happened in Phoenix or Las Vegas. Investors are flocking to those places, he said.

Willis did point out, however, that an increasing number of homes across the nation were changing hands in all-cash sales. And that is true in the Twin Cities. According to the Board of Realtors, which covers a 13-county area, 25.1 percent of buyers in March paid in cash. In fact, that share has held steady for the last two years, up from about 5 percent in 2006.

Interpreting what that means is difficult. Some have suggested that baby boomers and others of my generation are buying houses for their adult kids who are too strapped by student loans to purchase on their own. But, knowing boomers as I do, I suspect most are too cash-strapped to let go of so much moolah (which they might need for themselves in their future senescence). Another possibility: We are being flooded by drug kingpins, mobsters and other disreputable types who can't qualify for financing because they don't want to report their incomes to a bank -- and have IRS agents swoop down on them like hungry eagles.

Likely scenario

A more likely scenario is that individual investors (rather than hedge funds), having heard Buffett's call to arms, have decided to take their 401(k) dough or the money grandma left them to try to become real estate moguls. These days banks are skittish about lending to investors in single-family properties; so they have to buy in cash.

This would an on-one-hand-on-the-other-hand phenomenon. On the one hand, investor money may bolster prices enough so that people who were underwater on their mortgages (owed more than their houses were worth) could now sell and escape with a little profit. On the other hand, investors could be pricing people who want to occupy a house out of the market, creating an entire generation of permanent renters. And, while not everybody is cut out to be a homeowner, having communities dominated by a large class of landlords who want nothing more than to keep their expenses low might doom school-bond issues and other costly local improvements.

Finally, with a ton of investors aiming to lease houses and developers dropping apartment buildings all over the landscape, there could come a day when rents drop. Then investors would want out, and housing prices could collapse once again.

So for anybody entering the market, either as a buyer or investor -- or builder, for that matter -- the byword should be caution. History has shown that we can be fooled again.

Source: http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2013/04/go-figure-25-twin-cities-home-buyers-paid-cash

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How can you help Boston? One Fund sets up rules to help victims.

One Fund Boston, the focal point of charitable giving after the bombings, already has $20 million on hand. Now it has set up a structure for how and when the money will be paid out.

By Mark Trumbull,?Staff writer / April 23, 2013

Kenneth Feinberg, an attorney who managed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, speaks at a news conference in Boston, Tuesday. Feinberg will design and be administrator of One Fund Boston, which will help people affected by the Boston Marathon bombing.

Elise Amendola/AP

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A fund to help the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings announced details about how payouts will be handled, setting a process for distributions to begin by June 30.

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The One Fund Boston already has $20 million on hand, after an outpouring of giving in the week since twin explosions rocked the marathon?s finish line, killing three and injuring more than 200 others.

The amount collected so far ?cannot begin to make all these victims whole,? said Kenneth Feinberg, the attorney tapped by fund organizers to administer the payouts.

Mr. Feinberg, who also managed the victims compensation fund after the much larger 9/11 terrorist attacks, said he?ll set a process for victims to apply for help.

He said two town hall meetings will be scheduled to provide feedback on a draft protocol. Then claim forms will be made available on the fund?s website by May 15, and people will have a month to register.

The One Fund Boston, backed by local businesses and publicized by state and city leaders, represents the focal point of charitable giving after the bombings. But it?s not the only effort at victim relief.

Feinberg noted that in some cases victims? families have organized their own charitable funds.

Unlike the 9/11 fund, the One Fund represents donated gifts rather than taxpayer money. For that reason, payouts wouldn?t come with any strings attached, such as restrictions on victims who might want to consider lawsuits related to the tragedy.

He said eligibility would not depend on where the victims live, whether they are American citizens, or whether they are also eligible for insurance payments or Social Security Disability benefits. He said the purpose to help those affected by physical injuries, not affected local businesses.

?What?s important is a link to this terrible tragedy,? he said. ?I doubt very much that we?ll have a major problem of fraud,? he added, but ?we will take steps to make sure that all of the claims, every one of them, is legitimate.?

The latest estimate is that 282 people were injured in the explosions. According to early reports from local hospitals, at least 17 people were in critical condition after the blasts, many because they lost limbs.

Feinberg said determining how to allocate the money would inevitably involve judgment calls, and that ?the buck stops with me?. I?ll take the heat.?

When the Boston Red Sox held their first home game after the bombings, the players wore special jerseys, which the team said would be auctioned off to support the fund. Online bidding for the jersey of David Ortiz, who gave a pregame speech, has already topped $10,000.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/PteyTvMfpgc/How-can-you-help-Boston-One-Fund-sets-up-rules-to-help-victims

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Close Your Menu for a More Satisfying Meal

If you agonize over your entree choice at a restaurant until the moment the waiter takes your order, you might not enjoy your meal as much as you should.

Recent research details an experiment that asked participants to choose a piece a chocolate from a variety platter. Participants who closed the platter immediately after choosing a candy expressed greater satisfaction with their choice versus those who left the platter open. The effect was more pronounced as the number of choices increased.

The lesson to take away from this is to make a choice at dinner, and then put the menu away. Spending extra time contemplating your other options will only make you second guess your decision once your food arrives. This is especially true at restaurants with big menus and lots of potential choices. As someone who asks to choose his meal last at the table to get a few more moments to choose a meal, I'll definitely take this advice to heart.

Closing Your Menu After You Order Could Make Your Meal More Satisfying | The Consumerist

Photo by ssuaphotos (Shutterstock).

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/WukvTsk7kR4/close-your-menu-for-a-more-satisfying-meal-476544615

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Understanding and prevention of side effects caused by drugs

Apr. 19, 2013 ? Yellow vision, pseudo-pulmonary obstruction, involuntary body movements, respiratory paralysis. These are some of the 1,600 known side effects (SEs) produced by drugs. Adverse effects are one of the main causes of hospital admission in the west. These effects are difficult to predict, and in practice specific assays are required to test the safety of agents in pre-clinical phases, thus these effects are often not discovered until the drug has been launched. A study published by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) seeks to fill this information gap.

The objective of the study is to shed light on the molecular bases of SEs and provide medical chemists with the tools to design safer drugs and to predict their effects. The study collects and proposes molecular hypotheses for 1,162 side effects. This information, which is about to be tested experimentally, is now available to the scientific community through the most recent issue of the specialized journal Chemistry and Biology, part of the Cell group.

The researchers Miquel Duran and Patrick Aloy collated all the drugs that cause each known SE. Next, they studied the proteins with which they interact and their chemical structure. "For most of the side effects we have a biological hypothesis, and for many of these cases we also have chemical information about the drug, which may be useful to predict a specific secondary effect," explains ICREA researcher Patrick Aloy, head of the "Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology" at IRB Barcelona. Of the 1,162 SEs for which they have found a molecular description, 446 can be explained solely on the basis of biology and 68 only on the basis of chemistry, while for 648 (56%) both biological and chemical considerations are required.

Some examples: Xanthopsia and Buccoglossal Syndrome

One of the SEs described is Buccoglossal Syndrome, a disorder involving involuntary movements of the body and caused by six different drugs. The researchers propose that drugs whose structures include a piperazine ring and, in addition, interact with the receptors 5-HT2A and/or DRD2 are more likely to cause this syndrome. "This is one of the examples where we need a biological and chemical explanation," says Miquel Duran, a chemist doing his PhD in Aloy's lab, and first author of the paper. "Another interesting case is Xanthopsia, a predominance of yellow in the vision, a condition supposedly experienced by Van Gogh," explain the researchers. "In this case we do not suspect any related protein but observe that there are chemical structures that can cause this disorder, which we have annotated in 12 drugs that include this condition as a possible side effect" .

"We are providing the scientific community with lists of proteins and the chemical features associated with SEs. We refer to these as "alerts": they can be used by drug design experts to try to avoid certain interactions and/or structures in order to develop safer drugs," says Aloy.

For these scientists, it is necessary to combine biology and chemistry in order to determine what may be causing a given SE. "In practice, and for each unwanted effect, there is a biological part that we know, but this part does not offer a complete picture of the mechanism and perhaps we will be able to fill this gap by "looking at" the chemical structure," upholds Duran. "The multidisciplinarity provided by IRB Barcelona allows us to start studies with these characteristics, which require the convergence of several fields to achieve a more complete understanding," says Dr. Aloy, an expert in systems biology.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Institute for Research in Biomedicine-IRB.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Miquel Duran-Frigola, Patrick Aloy. Analysis of Chemical and Biological Features Yields Mechanistic Insights into Drug Side Effects. Chemistry & Biology, 2013; 20 (4): 594 DOI: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2013.03.017

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/health_medicine/genes/~3/FmK0JDips-Q/130419075920.htm

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Tips On Business Blogs Made Simple | Content for Reprint

Author: Martie McCabe | Total views: 83 Comments: 1
Word Count: 932 Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 6:01 PM

Many businesses today use Website marketing as a reliable means of promoting their goods and services. A few of the top ways to sell through Internet promotion include search engine optimization, pop-up ads and articles. Take a look at this article's marketing advice if increasing your customer base and making more online sales sounds good to you.

Look for ways to determine what types of emails are best-suited to your customer base. A popular testing option is A/B testing. Develop an email campaign, then change one thing in the email itself. These could include two different sets of subject lines, intro paragraphs, or calls to action. Send the versions to your equal groupings of your customers to find out which one is more popular. The version that brings in the most results is the one you should make use of in the future.

Web marketing businesses can benefit from an effective email marketing campaign. Keep your emails clean and keep them protected. Stay away from any free webmail service that deletes old messages; access to your old emails can be absolutely essential. You may handle arrangements for archiving messages yourself.

Post video advertisements on business blogs, to show customers how your product will improve their lives. By doing this, customers can watch you literally trying the product out. Show all the benefits of the product and other features that may not be advertised. Post this video to your blog or other sites like Youtube.

In order to get the right content on your website, you need to have a target audience in mind and to understand their preferences. Figuring out who you want to attract with your content will make designing that content much easier.

Advertisements can almost always benefit from the addition of descriptions or adjectives that better indicate the speed of the product's benefits. Tell your customers about how quickly your items can reach them, how short the order process is, or when they will start to see results. This can help with quicker download speeds, a safer checkout or quicker order confirmations.

Establishing your credibility among your customers is essential on how to blog effectively. Only use facts when creating marketing plans and selling products to customers. Be sure any claims that you make and testimonials you provide can be backed up by facts.

Make sure you are very knowledgeable about the content on your site. This will give you credibility and a good reputation.

Consider using well thought out phrases, such as special or limited edition, when choosing to advertise your items online. People generally want to own items which are exclusive, so using these phrases in your marketing materiel can tempt people to purchase your product quickly.

You could give a part of your profit to a charity if you believe your audience will be interested in helping out a good cause. Make it clear to potential customers that part of the profits are going to charity. The percentage of your profits doesn't need to be huge to help your marketing.

Try to make people on your mailing list feel as though they are getting a thoughtful, personal email from you. Customers get frustrated when they receive lots of impersonal, bulk email. Think about it: aren't you tired of getting bulk e-mail from people? If you personalize your emails, you will stick out from others like you.

A press release might help you to increase traffic, and it is a fantastic way to market your brand. Develop a powerful and persuasive press release, then reach out to one of the many websites that will publish your release for free. You can boost your presence in this way.

Services that provide email marketing are easily available and can assist you with internet marketing, but it's always a good idea to try to learn the process yourself. Auto responders, creating mailing lists, and mass mailers are all easy steps once you familiarize yourself with the basics. Besides that, the experience gleaned through the learning process will come in handy down the road.

Make sure you try incorporating prizes in a unique way. For example, you can try disguising certain words into your articles and asking your customers to locate them. Try offering them a discount or prize if they do. By involving customers with your website, you will help them feel comfortable and begin to trust your site and products.

It's essential that you find the right niche for marketing your wares. You wouldn't be successful marketing your mint Star Wars action figures to collectors of baseball cards. People have specific interests, and if they are looking for baseball cards, there a limited number of places they are likely to look. So always use your marketing efforts wisely and gear it towards your target audience.

This business may be one of the exceptions to the commonly held belief that you should not mix business and pleasure. This is mainly because this sort of work is low-pressure and is almost like a hobby. Involve your significant other, and make a go of it together.

In conclusion, many businesses use Website marketing to sell products and services. Internet marketing uses methods such as search engine optimization and advertising to generate sales interest. If you remember the advice in this article, you can use Online marketing to seriously boost interest in your own products and services.

Martie McCabe writes articles on internet marketing to help you succeed with your business blogs. Do you want to learn more about how bloggers make money? To read more articles on marketing tips for business blogs, click here.

Related to: blog writing service - bloggers make money - business blogs - how to blog effectively - marketing tips blog - promoting your blog

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1: Article Marketing Strategy: Putting Together a "Class Schedule" For Your Article Topics

Businesses go to so much trouble when there is one sure-fire, simple, very inexpensive way to attract new clients to a business: Teach a free class. That is what article marketing is like. Your articles are just like free classes. You teach your target readers something helpful in your article. Your resource box then says, "If you enjoyed this article you can visit my website and apply what you have learned."

by: Steve Shaw on: Sat, 23 Apr 2011

2: Why You Need To Build Multiple Streams of Income For Yourself

Being an entrepreneur and earning multiple streams of income is a dream that many have, but in reality it does take some initial hard work to achieve this. Earning multiple streams of income is the wave of the future, and here are some tips and advice for you when you are looking for ways in which to do this for yourself.

by: Michel Maling on: Sat, 29 Sep 2012

3: Understanding Online Business Success

Starting a home based business to earn income online takes a significant amount of time and energy upfront to get things going. Not seeing results immediately can be discouraging and cause people to give up too early. In this article, we look at the process of starting a home based business and working through the frustrations to be there when the sales come flowing in.

by: Mike Christie on: Sat, 29 Sep 2012

4: What is Cyber Marketing And Why It Is So Important For The Success Of Your Website

Cyber marketing has now become an indispensable segment of e-commerce as well as the internet and World Wide Web related topics. Cyber marketing simply refers to a technique of attracting potential customers by advertising your products or services through such means as websites, emails, and banners.

by: WJaegel on: Tue, 18 Dec 2007

5: The Best Way To Optimise Your Website SEO For Google Panda

If you want your SEO to work you now need to concentrate on appeasing Google Panda, and to do this you need to know what Google Panda's spiders/bots will be looking for. Find out here how to search engine optimise your website for the latest Google Panda algorithm, and achieve the success you deserve.

by: K Damian Qualter on: Mon, 26 Mar 2012

Source: http://www.content4reprint.com/internet-marketing/tips-on-business-blogs-made-simple.htm

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Quake kills at least 46 along Iran-Pakistan border

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) ? A major earthquake described as the strongest to hit Iran in more than half a century flattened homes and offices Tuesday on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border, killing at least 46 people in the sparsely populated region and swaying skyscrapers and buildings as far away as New Delhi.

Iran's Red Crescent said it was facing a "complicated emergency situation" in the area with villages scattered over desolate hills and valleys.

Iran's semiofficial ISNA news agency and others described the quake, measured at least magnitude 7.7, as the strongest quake in more than 50 years. State-run Press TV called it a "massive quake."

It also was the second deadly quake to hit Iran in less than a week after a magnitude 6.1 temblor struck near Bushehr, on Iran's Persian Gulf coast, killing at least 37 people and raising calls for greater international safety inspectors at Iran's lone nuclear reactor nearby.

Press TV said the quake was centered near Saravan, about 50 kilometers (26 miles) from the Pakistani border. A previous report citing the country's seismological center placed the strength at magnitude 7.5, but it was apparently revised upward. The U.S. Geological Survey put the preliminary magnitude at 7.8 and at a depth of 15.2 kilometers (nine miles).

Press TV said least 40 people were killed, but gave no other immediate details on the extent of damage or casualties. State-run Pakistan Television, meanwhile, said at least six people were killed on its side of the border and at least 47 others were injured. Up to 1,000 mud homes were damaged, it added.

The quake was felt over a vast area from New Delhi to Gulf cities that have some of the world's tallest skyscrapers, including the record 828-meter (2,717 -foot) Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Officials ordered temporary evacuations from some high-rises as a precaution.

A resident in the quake zone, Manouchehr Karimi, told The Associated Press by phone that "the quake period was long" and occurred "when many people were at home to take a midday nap."

Pakistani news channels showed buildings shaking in the southern city of Karachi, where people in panic came out from offices and homes.

In a message posted on Twitter, British Foreign Secretary William Hague sent condolences to families of those lost in the Iran earthquake.

In 2003, some 26,000 people were killed by a magnitude 6.6 quake that flattened the historic southeastern Iranian city of Bam.

___

Associated Press writer Abdul Sattar in Quetta, Pakistan, contributed to this story.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/quake-kills-least-46-along-iran-pakistan-border-132849716.html

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Dwellable for iPhone and iPad review: find rentals at all the top vacation spots in the US

Dwellable for iPhone and iPad is a vacation rental app that aggregates rentals from several different sources and companies to give you a comprehensive list of what's available at many popular vacation destinations. The usual suspects are included such as Hawaii and Florida as well as many more.

If you're looking to book a vacation and hotels just aren't your thing, Dwellable for iPhone and iPad may be able to help.

Once you've downloaded Dwellable to your iPhone or iPad, launching it will take you to the Where are you going? screen that allows you to choose from different vacation spots. These include places such as several areas in Hawaii, Disney/Orlando, Cape Cod, Lake Tahoe, Palm Springs, San Diego, Vail, and more. After you've selected an area you can normally narrow them down by more specific locations if you'd like or choose to view all rentals together.

The general search result screen will show you one photo, the title of the rental, how many bedrooms and baths, and what rental company or resort it belongs to if applicable. Dwellable also allows you to favorite rentals by adding a star next to the listing for easy access later. Tapping into a vacation listing will give you even more information including contact information for booking, a full feature listing, and in most cases, lots of photos to browse through.

After you are within search results in Dwellable, you'll notice that you will now see a bottom navigation menu that includes a few different views. The list view is the default view and shows the names of properties and a brief description of each. The next option is photos which gives you one large picture with information overlaid. You can then swipe left and right through search results and tap into any that interest you. Map view does exactly what you would expect it to do and gives you a map view of where each property is located.

The date board is an especially cool feature and allows you to view when properties are available. You can filter and set date ranges accordingly. This is nice if you know exactly when you'd like to travel but don't want to get your heart set on a property that may or may not be available for that specified time frame.

The good

• Gorgeous interface with tons of high quality imagery
• A large amount of rentals for all areas supported
• The date board feature makes it easy to see what properties are available at a quick glance

The bad

• Not an actual booking system so you'll need to do that by calling the property owner
• The app seems dependent on owners updating their booking information and blocked out dates on their own, this could cause inaccuracies in availability if owners don't do this regularly

The bottom line

For anyone who plans on traveling to any of the supported vacation destinations and doesn't fancy staying in hotels, Dwellable for iPhone and iPad is a great way to find rentals you may have not even known about otherwise. Everything from the imagery to the features lists make it easy to browse properties and narrow down options.

Before booking your next trip through one of the typical travel websites, I'd highly recommend checking out Dwellable and you may be surprised at what you find.

• Free - Download Now

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/ZTkE0ya9NJk/story01.htm

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As U.S. talks up diplomacy, N. Korea takes hard line

TOKYO (AP) ? The United States and Japan opened the door Sunday to new nuclear talks with North Korea if the saber-rattling country lowered tensions and honored past agreements, even as it rejected South Korea's latest offer of dialogue as a "crafty trick."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Tokyo that North Korea would find "ready partners" in the United States if it began abandoning its nuclear program.

Japan's foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, also demanded a resolution to a dispute concerning Japanese citizens abducted decades ago by North Korean officials.

The diplomats seemed to point the way for a possible revival of the six-nation talks that have been suspended for four years.

China long pushed has for the process to resume without conditions. But the U.S. and allies South Korea and Japan fear rewarding North Korea for its belligerence and endless repetition of a cycle of tensions and failed talks that have prolonged the crisis.

Kerry's message of openness to diplomacy was clear, however unlikely the chances appeared that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's government would meet the American's conditions.

"I'm not going to be so stuck in the mud that an opportunity to actually get something done is flagrantly wasted because of a kind of predetermined stubbornness," he told U.S.-based journalists.

"You have to keep your mind open. But fundamentally, the concept is they're going to have to show some kind of good faith here so we're not going to around and around in the same-old, same-old," he said.

Tensions have run high on the Korean Peninsula for months, with North Korea testing a nuclear device and its intercontinental ballistic missile technology.

The reclusive communist state hasn't stopped there. It has issued almost daily threats that have included possible nuclear strikes against the United States. Analysts and foreign officials say that is still beyond the North Koreans' capability.

While many threats have been dismissed as bluster, U.S. and South Korean say they believe the North in the coming days may test a mid-range missile designed to reach as far as Guam, the U.S. territory in the Pacific where the Pentagon is deploying a land-based missile-defense system.

Japan is the last stop on a 10-day trip overseas for Kerry, who visited Seoul and Beijing as well in recent days.

In South Korea, he strongly warned North Korea not to launch a missile and he reaffirmed U.S. defense of its allies in the region. In China, he secured a public pledge from Beijing, the lone government with significant influence over North Korea, to rid the North of nuclear weapons.

Before returning to the United States, Kerry planned a speech Monday in Japan on the Obama administration's Asia policy.

So far, Republican lawmakers in the U.S. have largely backed the administration's efforts on North Korea.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CBS' "Face the Nation" that he was encouraged by Kerry's China visit and that he hoped "we can get the Chinese to care more about this issue.

U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona suggested on CNN's "State of the Union" that the U.S. make a counter-threat by using missile interceptors to hit any North Korean missile that is test-fired.

At each stop along his trip, Kerry stressed that the United States wanted a peaceful resolution of the North Korea situation six decades after a cease-fire ended the Korean War.

But North Korea on Sunday served a reminder of the difficult task ahead. Its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea said the government had no intention of talking with Seoul unless the South abandons its confrontational posture, as the North called it.

Seoul had pressed North Korea to discuss restarting operations at a joint factory park on the border and President Park Geun-hye has stressed peace opportunities after taking power from her more hard-line predecessor, Lee Myung-bak. The presidency expressed regret with North Korea's rebuttal Sunday.

At a news conference in Tokyo, Kerry stressed that gaining China's commitment to a denuclearized North Korea was no small matter given its historically strong military and economic ties to North Korea.

But he refused to say what the Chinese were offering to do concretely to pressure the North into abiding by some of the conditions it agreed to in a 2005 deal that required it to abandon its nuclear program.

"They have to take some actions," Kerry said of North Korea. "How many or how much? I'd have to talk to folks back in Washington about that. But if the Chinese came to us and said, 'Look, here's what we have cooking,' I'm not going to tell you I'm shutting the door today to something that's logical and might have a chance of success."

In remarks to U.S. journalists, Kerry said that under the right circumstances, he even would consider making a grand overture to North Korea's leader, such as an offer of direct talks with the U.S.

"We're prepared to reach out," he said. Diplomacy, he added, required risk-taking and secrecy such as when President Richard Nixon engaged China in the 1970s or U.S. back-channel talks were able to end the Cuban missile crisis a decade earlier.

Given their proximity and decades of hostility and distrust, Japan and South Korea have the most to fear from the North's unpredictable actions.

Kerry clarified a statement he made Saturday in Beijing, when he told reporters the U.S. could scale back its missile-defense posture in the region if North Korea goes nuclear-free.

It appeared to be a sweetener to coax tougher action from a Chinese government which has eyed the increased U.S. military presence in its backyard warily, but which has done little over the years to snuff out funding and support for North Korea's weapons of mass destruction program.

Kerry said America's basic force posture wasn't up to debate. "There is no discussion that I know of to change that," he said.

But he said it was logical that additional missile-defense elements, deployed specifically in response to the Korean threat, could be reversed if that threat no longer existed.

"I was simply making an observation about the rationale for that particular deployment, which is to protect the United States' interests that are directly threatened by North Korea," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-talks-diplomacy-nkorea-takes-hard-line-160454630--politics.html

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'The Avengers' takes top prize at MTV Movie Awards

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? With a cast of superheroes and villains, "The Avengers" beat out its competitors to become the big winner at the MTV Movie Awards.

The action romp won three awards Sunday, including the top prize, movie of the year.

"What's the opposite of humbled? We're Biebered to be standing here," said "Avengers" writer-director Joss Whedon as he accepted the final golden popcorn trophy. "This is the award that means the most to me. I am so grateful and very excited for 2015; we're going to bring you 'Avengers 2.'"

"The Avengers" also won best fight and best villain for actor Tom Hiddleston.

Bradley Cooper and show host Rebel Wilson were each double winners at the ceremony at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, Calif. Cooper won the first prize of the night for his performance in "Silver Linings Playbook" and returned to the stage to accept best kiss honors for his smooch with co-star Jennifer Lawrence in that film.

Lawrence, who won the Oscar for her role in "Playbook," was also a double winner, though she wasn't on hand Sunday. In addition to the kiss award, she won the golden popcorn for her performance, but the prize wasn't presented on camera.

Wilson, who opened and closed the show wearing Iron Man-style armor, won breakthrough performance for her work in "Pitch Perfect" and shared in the film's award for best musical moment. Its stars, including Brittany Snow and Skylar Astin, opened the show with a mash-up medley.

Other musical acts were Macklemore & Ryan Lewis and Selena Gomez, who debuted her new song, "Come and Get It," with a Bollywood-inspired performance.

The MTV Movie Awards are as much about the anticipated movies of the upcoming summer season as they are about the finest films of last year. Fans vote online for the winners in traditional and irreverent categories such as best fight, best kiss and best shirtless performance.

"Twilight" heartthrob Taylor Lautner won the shirtless award.

The show also included new footage from next month's "Iron Man 3" and the world premiere of "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" trailer, introduced by one of its stars, Liam Hemsworth.

Stars from other summer films? including Chris Pine, Zoe Saldana and Zachary Quinto from the "Star Trek" sequel and Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez from the "Fast & Furious" franchise ? appeared as presenters during the ceremony.

Other presenters included Brad Pitt, Chris Rock, Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Snoop Dogg/Lion and Kim Kardashian.

Hollywood has increasingly used the fan-driven MTV Movie Awards as a platform to promote its summer product. This year, the show was moved up from June to April to incorporate the entire blockbuster season, which begins in early May.

Honorees and presenters represent upcoming movies, and the ceremony is typically peppered with commercials for forthcoming films and DVD releases.

Emma Watson, a star of this summer's "The Bling Ring," received the Trailblazer Award.

Will Ferrell wore a three-piece suit covered in dollar bills to accept the Comedic Genius Award from "Game of Thrones" star Peter Dinklage.

"For those of you sitting here tonight who don't think I'm funny, I'll be happy to fight you in the parking lot after the show," said Ferrell, who is currently at work on "Anchorman 2," slated for release later this year.

Jamie Foxx was a double winner, too. He shared the best WTF moment award with Samuel L. Jackson for their scenes together in "Django Unchained," and later thanked his daughter, parents and siblings in the audience as he accepted the Generation Award for his career in film.

Foxx stars in June's "White House Down."

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .

___

Online:

http://www.mtv.com/ontv/movieawards/2013/

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-04-15-MTV%20Movie%20Awards/id-51ce4d54817d4e0496f71f117344f233

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Anti-euro party a wildcard in German elections

BERLIN (AP) ? It's a spectacle that Germans are getting tired of: southern European protesters burning their flags and waving placards comparing Chancellor Angela Merkel to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, all in reaction to Berlin's insistence on reforms and austerity in return for bailout funds.

And it's enough to make people such as Berlin businessman Horst Freiberg, who never felt much love for the euro currency, pine more than ever for the return of the German mark.

"I'd immediately vote for a party that wants to abolish the euro," said Freiberg, who has run a small business selling ink stamps in central Berlin for more than 40 years. "How can you have one currency with banana republics like Cyprus and Greece? And they always accuse us of being Nazis. It's sick."

Such sentiments are still the exception in Germany, where a sense of obligation to help fellow Europeans in distress is rooted in shame for the crimes of the Third Reich. But a new political party hopes to capitalize on simmering fears that the euro crisis could deepen and drag down Europe's biggest economy. It aims to garner enough votes from people like Freiberg in September elections to reach the 5 percent minimum needed for seats in Parliament.

Called Alternative for Germany, the main goal of the party founded by academics and economists is the "orderly dissolution" of the euro, said Frauke Petry, a business owner and party spokeswoman.

The stance puts the party in sharp opposition to Merkel's position that there can be no Europe without the preservation of the single currency, with her repeated insistence that "if the euro fails, Europe will fail." While still a fledgling movement, the new party could hurt Merkel by sapping support from her main coalition partner ? which she has relied on for a stable government.

"For us, the euro is at the heart of many problems," Petry told The Associated Press. "The way decisions are being made in Europe right now shows that many democratic mechanisms don't work anymore," she said. Alternative for Germany wants to introduce Swiss-style national referendums so voters can have a say on important matters ? including economic rescue packages.

On Sunday, Alternative for Germany held its founding congress to adopt a program and vote for a party board. More than 1,500 members filled two spacious halls at the city's upscale Intercontinental Hotel in Berlin, most of them elderly men.

Many expressed anger about what they said have been unfair money transfers from German taxpayers to help bail out countries such as Cyprus and Greece.

"This party has good ideas," said Andreas Fluegge, 49, a software specialist from Limburgerhof in the country's southwest. "The euro is a big problem for us. Since we have had the euro I'm making less money and paying more taxes for things I don't understand. I hope these politicians will change this."

For all the talk about what it doesn't like, however, the party has been short on what it does like, and its leaders were slammed in an editorial this week in the top-selling Bild newspaper as "political amateurs."

The conservative tabloid has never shied away from accusing southern Europeans of being lazy, nor has it stopped deploring the cost Germany shoulders to bail out other nations, but turning against the euro itself remains unthinkable.

"They can craftily explain what is wrong with rescuing the euro, but they have no concept on how the future of Europe should look," Bild wrote.

Experts believe the party has little chance of garnering enough of the protest vote to reach the 5 percent threshold. But it could draw enough voters away from Merkel's center-right coalition to force her into an alliance with the opposition or give the opposition an outright majority.

"There is space for an anti-euro party in Germany," said Oskar Niedermayer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. "So far this position hasn't really been represented in the German party system."

Underlining the potential appeal, a recent poll showed that even though 69 percent of Germans now back the euro ? up from about 50 percent last year ? a significant minority of 27 percent said they'd like to see a return to the mark. The survey of 1,003 people was conducted April 2-3 for the business daily Handelsblatt. The poll had an estimated margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Abandoning the euro currency would have significant costs, especially for Germany as a heavily export-oriented economy. According to analysts' estimates, it could easily knock down the country's annual output by a double digit percentage figure.

"I think the Germans know, and to some extent accept, that they have to pay the bill for saving the euro," said Ursula Weidenfeld, an economist and author. "They just want to make sure that they aren't paying more than necessary."

Other nations such as the Netherlands, Austria and Finland have also insisted on the same austerity measures that Germany has demanded in exchange for European bailouts, but as the bloc's largest economy and the largest single contributor to the funds, most of the anger has been directed at Germany and Merkel.

Some of Merkel's voters are now beginning to wonder whether their country ? and their savings ? should be tied to the struggling euro project, and Weidenfeld said support for the euro "could quickly change if a new rescue package has to be negotiated."

Should the eurozone's woes spread to fully engulf Italy or Spain ? the bloc's third- and fourth-largest economies ? and require them to ask for a bailout, German voters could panic, said Niedermayer.

In Germany's election in September, the issue poses the greatest threat to the Free Democratic Party, Merkel's junior coalition partner which has a pro-business platform. Because the party has polled only slightly above five percent, even the loss of a few thousand voters could mean disaster.

"It's not impossible that this new party could sap half a percent from the FDP and thereby kick them out of parliament," said Niedermayer. That could create a huge headache for Merkel, who may find it hard to form a workable majority in parliament without the FDP.

Merkel's own party, too, could suffer if conservative voters see Alternative for Germany as a credible way to express their frustration about her leadership.

Economist Rudolf Hickel told Germany's Deutsche Welle, however, that even though there is anti-euro sentiment out there, Alternative for Germany doesn't have broad enough appeal to effectively tap it.

"They are professors and frustrated economists," he said. "If the party were headed by a populist, I'd consider them dangerous."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/anti-euro-party-wildcard-german-elections-060420112.html

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CA-BUSINESS Summary

TSX falls sharply as gold leads broad selloff

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada's main stock index fell more than 1 percent on Friday, as weak U.S. economic data dulled hopes for the Canada's export sector, while a sharp drop in gold prices pulled mining stocks to multi-year lows. The mining-heavy TSX materials sector dropped 4.21 percent to its lowest level since 2009, fueled by a 4 percent drop in gold prices and sliding copper, while weak oil prices yanked energy stocks down by 1.95 percent.

FAA sees lessons from Boeing 787 battery woes

NEW YORK/COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - U.S. regulators are discussing whether the batteries that burned on Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner hold any lessons for other aircraft or vehicles. George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the Federal Aviation Administration, said a dialogue is taking place about whether the overheating of two lithium-ion batteries on the 787 could have broader implications.

Exclusive: G20 to consider cutting debt to well below 90 percent/GDP: document

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Financial leaders of the world's 20 biggest economies will consider next week in Washington a proposal to cut their public debt over the longer term to well below 90 percent of gross domestic product, a document prepared for the meeting showed. The proposal, prepared by the co-chairs of the G20 Working Group on the Framework for Growth, follows agreement of the leaders of G20 countries in June last year to set ambitious debt reduction targets beyond 2016, when, under an earlier agreement from Toronto in 2010, debt was to stop growing.

Troika concludes Greek bailout review, next aid tranche soon: source

DUBLIN/ATHENS (Reuters) - An inspection team of international lenders has finished its review of Greece's austerity program, paving the way for another 10 billion euros aid payment, a source with knowledge of the talks said on Saturday. The deal reached on Friday, concludes the first review by the so-called "troika" of the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank since they unlocked fresh aid in December, staving off a chaotic bankruptcy.

Analysis: JPMorgan's lukewarm results put Dimon under more pressure

NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, who came through the financial crisis relatively unscathed, is suddenly looking a little less secure. The top U.S. bank by assets reported tepid first-quarter results on Friday. Income in its biggest businesses - investment banking and consumer lending - fell, excluding accounting adjustments. Outstanding loans grew by just 1 percent, and profit margins on lending narrowed. Stock and bond trading revenue fell.

Greek PM says deposits are safe, banks shielded: paper

ATHENS (Reuters) - Greek bank deposits are safe and the country's lenders are protected due to a recapitalization scheme which will be completed by the end of April, Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said on Saturday. In an interview with Imerisia, Samaras ruled out a tax on deposits over 100,000 euros ($131,000) allaying fears of austerity-hit Greeks that their savings may be at risk after a raid on Cyprus depositors as part of the island's bailout.

Italy's Salini eyes foreign growth after Impregilo merger: report

MILAN (Reuters) - Italian builder Salini, taking over larger rival Impregilo , expects the merged group to double revenues over the next three years helped by expansion in the Americas and Australia, its head said in a newspaper interview. Family-owned Salini, which has built a stake of 86.5 percent in Italy's biggest builder after a takeover bid ended on Friday, told Il Corriere della Sera on Saturday he may consider listing the future merged group on more stock markets.

Austria defies mounting pressure to end bank secrecy

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Austria defied growing pressure to follow Luxembourg in ending bank secrecy, after a group led by Europe's six biggest countries pledged to work together to tackle tax havens. Late on Friday, the finance ministers of Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland announced their desire to jointly push for more bank transparency, a message they will take to the meeting of the Group of 20 top global economies in Washington next week.

Canada says April "optimal" for naming next Bank of Canada chief

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's government would ideally like to name a new Bank of Canada governor this month to replace Mark Carney, who will step down on June 1 to take the helm at the Bank of England, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Friday. "Part of the process is my interviews of the short-listed candidates," Flaherty told reporters on a conference call during an official visit to Bermuda.

Wells Fargo profit beats, but mortgage business slows

(Reuters) - Wells Fargo & Co reported a higher-than-expected 23 percent rise in first-quarter profit on Friday, but its mortgage business showed further signs of slowing and net interest margins continued to shrink. The fourth-largest U.S. bank by assets has emerged from the financial crisis as the leading U.S. home lender as other banks have pulled back from a business that burned them during the housing bust. But the bank has now seen a decline in home loans for two consecutive quarters as fewer borrowers refinance at low interest rates.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ca-business-summary-034500857--finance.html

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Telus reportedly in talks to buy Mobilicity, spectrum likely to be the prize

Canadians have been enjoying a minor renaissance in wireless competition since its AWS auction allowed a slew of smaller carriers to join the fray. Unfortunately, that diversity might be shrinking soon. The Globe and Mail reportedly has documents showing that Telus has been in active talks to buy Mobilicity through a share buyout deal. While the apparent leak doesn't mention the exact motivations, it's thought to be a spectrum grab when LTE on major Canadian carriers primarily leans on the very AWS frequencies that Mobilicity also uses for its 3G service. Neither Telus nor Mobilicity is commenting, although we'd note that there may be a few roadblocks (however temporary) if the scoop is accurate. Rules meant to preserve competition will prevent Telus from buying any newcomers' spectrum until early 2014, and Mobilicity left the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association just this week while accusing the industry group of being a puppet for bigger networks like Telus. If negotiations are real and still in progress, there could be some very awkward meetings ahead.

[Image credit: Andrew Currie, Flickr]

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Source: The Globe and Mail

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Rick Ross 'Rape' Backlash Not 'Fair,' Rocko Argues

'It was a cardinal sin to wear Reebok before Ross started promoting 'em,' rapper tells MTV News after company severs ties over controversial lyrics.
By Rob Markman

Rick Ross
Photo: Alexander Tamargo

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1705555/rick-ross-rape-lyric-backlash-rocko.jhtml

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Merkel, Cameron to bring families together in castle outside Berlin

By Stephen Brown

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host David Cameron and his wife and children at a castle outside Berlin at the weekend in a rare family get-together that she may hope will create the right mood to heal a growing rift between Britain and Europe.

Cameron, who warned this week that British support for the EU was "wafer thin", will spend the weekend with Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer at Schloss Meseburg northwest of Berlin accompanied by his wife Samantha and their three children.

Spokesman Steffen Seibert was unable to recall any previous time that Merkel has hosted a leader's children. She and Sauer have no children of their own and are both serious scientists who like listening to Wagner operas and hiking.

"Don't worry, it will be an interesting experience for all those present," Seibert said. "You need have no concerns about the plans. Adults and children alike will have a lovely time."

Merkel, 58, tends to keep her personal life private, rarely appearing with Sauer in public, though they were photographed in bathing suits on an Easter break in Italy and papers ran shots of her playing with her nieces and nephews.

Asked why Merkel had turned the talks into a family gathering, Seibert said she and her husband had got to know the Camerons when they stayed at the British prime minister's official country residence, Chequers, in 2011.

The gathering "demonstrates how tight our friendship and partnership with Britain is", said Seibert.

The Camerons will arrive on Friday and Merkel and Cameron will hold wide-ranging talks early on Saturday that will naturally include Europe, he said.

Cameron's desire to roll back European Union powers and his plans for a referendum on Britain staying in the bloc if he wins a new term in 2015 were "no surprise" to Berlin, said Seibert.

Cameron said in an interview for several European media this week there was little support in Britain for an EU bureaucracy that he said "sometimes overreached itself" and needed reform.

Merkel's reaction to Cameron's speech in January setting out his plans on Europe was more restrained than that of some other EU leaders and she has been careful to stress that Britain is an important German ally, especially on free trade issues.

German lawmakers have long expressed frustration with Britain's semi-detached relationship with the EU, including Cameron's decision in 2009 to pull his Conservatives out of the centre-right bloc in the European Parliament to which Merkel's Christian Democrats belong.

(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller; Editing by Gareth Jones and Sonya Hepinstall)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/merkel-cameron-bring-families-together-castle-outside-berlin-143320632.html

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Ways To Pass The Speaking Component Of The IELTS Exam ...

Author: James Jordan | Total views: 71 Comments: 0
Word Count: 655 Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 6:18 AM

IELTS speaking is a one on one interaction between the candidate and the examiner. It is made up of three parts. The three parts are namely introduction and interview, individual long turn and two way discussions. The exam will assess your fluency and coherence, vocabulary, range of grammar and accuracy and also on pronunciation.

The introduction and interview will take about forty five minutes. The examiner will be seeking to know you more. The examiner will take around four minutes to cover the individual long turn section. In this section you will be expected to prepare and give a short presentation on a given topic. Prepare to spend around five minutes in the two way discussion section. In this section, the examiner will initiate a small discussion on the subject you presented in part two. Each student would like to pass all the exams they have. If you want to pass your exam, you need to prepare adequately. The following tips will make it easy to prepare and pass your IELTS speaking exam.

The first and most important tip is to practice speaking English as much as possible. It is good to know which skills will be tested on each section so as to practice on the right skills. The importance of practicing is that it will ensure that the appropriate skills are automatic. Be bold enough to speak in English every time you have an opportunity.

Listen keenly to the question before answering. The advantage of understanding the question is that you will give appropriate answers. In an exam situation the student may find it hard to concentrate due to nervousness.

In case you don't understand the question, ask for clarification. Remember, there is no penalty for seeking clarification. The benefit of seeking clarification is that you become coherent.

One more tip is to speak English before the exam. When thinking, moving from the native language is a common problem for most people seeking to pass the IELTS speaking exam. You will be able to overcome this challenge by speaking English before you go into the exam.

Always try to use a wide range of vocabulary. By extending your answers appropriately, you will be able to use a wide range of vocabulary. Some of the ways of improving your vocabulary are, speaking English to others, listening to the radio and reading newspapers and magazine.

Maintain eye contact with the examiner but don't stare. It is important to note a large part of the interview is non verbal thus it will work in your favor to maintain eye contact with the examiner.

Answers should not be crammed. It is the easiest way to sound false and come across as someone who is making a speech. It is advisable to sound as natural as possible throughout the test.

Having time to think will work to your advantage. A trick you can use to ensure you speak immediately and have time to think while answering a question is; you can repeat or reformulate the question An example is as follows: which is your most memorable holiday destination? My most memorable holiday was when I visited Hawaii and learnt swimming.

Correct any error you make immediately as long as you are able to do it. The examiner will be able to gauge your control of the language as you correct yourself. Only correct yourself when you are sure of the correct way to go about it. The examiner will definitely take note of a mistake repeated twice.

The last tip is to avoid relaxing too much. Excessive relaxation will make your English suffer while moderate relaxation will calm your nerves. Remember you are in the interview to pass thus every effort should be made to bring up your best side of spoken English.

Would you like to register yourself for very best IELTS Courses? So rush and get yourself signed up for limited seats by visiting Best Ielts Training.

Related to: ielts - international english language testing system - ielts speaking - speaking - english - english as a second language - english exam - examination - language

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