If a vehicle outfitted with Audi Connect has found its way into your garage, T-Mobile has a pair of new data plans for you to consider. Dropping $450 nets car owners 30 months of "full data services" to power the infotainment system, which packs features including Google Earth, real-time Sirius XM Traffic info and even WiFi for up to eight devices. Drivers who aren't in the market for such a long term commitment can pony up $30 every month instead. Hit the jump for the full press release from Audi and the UnCarrier.
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- Casino mogul and GOP super-donor Sheldon Adelson spent a rare afternoon in the public eye Thursday defending his decision to turn his back on a Hong Kong businessman who says he is owed $328 million.
The 79 year-old multibillionaire testified as the lead witness in a breach of contract case playing out for the second time in a Las Vegas court.
Adelson blazed a trail of casino riches in Asia after doing the same thing in Sin City as CEO of Las Vegas Sands.
In recent years, a series of former business associates have sued Sands for a portion of the geyser of profits from the Chinese gambling enclave of Macau.
One such businessman, Richard Suen, claims he made it possible for the casino company to win a license in Macau by arranging meetings between executives and Beijing officials in 2001.
On Thursday, Adelson said those meetings didn't help the company and noted that licenses are distributed by officials in Macau, not on the mainland.
Less than an hour after he took the stand, Adelson pulled out a handful of pamphlets put together by his convention business in the 1980s to illustrate his qualifications to enter the gambling enclave.
That prompted a call from Suen's attorneys for a mistrial.
"We have a witness who is attempting to take over this courtroom," Suen attorney James Pisanelli said.
He said Adelson had stacked the multicolored brochures in a "dramatic fashion" that made an unforgettable impression on the jury.
Judge Rob Bare said the while the evidence was improperly introduced, none of the lawyers appeared to be at fault, and he would not declare a mistrial.
Adelson arrived at the Las Vegas courthouse wearing a suit and white shirt with his initials SGA embroidered on the cuff. The longtime supporter of Israel and the Republican Party made headlines last year when he became made the biggest political donation ever ? nearly $100 million with his wife to help GOP candidates.
His wife, Miriam, led him into the courtroom but he approached the witness stand using a marble-handled cane. Suen's legal team had argued allowing a family member to take him to the stand would sow undue sympathy among the jury.
Sands' lawyers sought to limit media access to the mogul's testimony. They argued unsuccessfully to bar video and still photography from the proceedings, and later complained about the clicking noise made by a camera shutter.
Adelson's testimony was expected to last at least two days.
It's the second time Suen and Sands have faced off in court over the contract issue. In 2008, a jury awarded $58.6 million to Suen, but the Nevada Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2010.
That court said the district judge shouldn't have allowed hearsay statements during the trial, and should have told the jury to assume Chinese officials were following local laws.
Buoyed in large part by his successes in Macau, Adelson has become the ninth-richest person in America, worth an estimated $26.5 billion, according to Forbes.
Asked on Thursday how many casinos he owns, Adelson paused and counted eight on his fingers. He later amended that to nine. When he met Suen, he owned just one casino ? The Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip.
Suen, a former business partner of Adelson's brother, now seeks more than three times the amount he demanded in 2008.
He said he and his company were promised a $5 million success fee and 2 percent of net casino profits in exchange for helping Sands open its first casino in Macau, now the world's biggest gambling market.
On Thursday, Adelson agreed that those were the terms but said Suen never fulfilled his part of the deal: to deliver a gambling license.
The case hinges on the role that personal relationships, or "guanxi," play in Chinese culture.
Suen's team argues that Sands needed to cultivate influence. But the casino countered that Suen is demanding a success fee for setting up a single 40-minute meeting with the mayor of Beijing.
On the stand, Adelson frequently pleaded memory loss when asked about executive decisions, business strategy and meetings.
"I'm not very good at Chinese names. I'm not always so good at English names," he said.
He also offered that he plans to come back in his next life as a Chinese person because "the Chinese always look 20 years younger than they are."
The trial judge twice asked Adelson to focus his answers.
Among other things, Suen claims that Adelson used his influence over Republican members of Congress to reassure Beijing's mayor that a nonbinding resolution denouncing Beijing's bid for the 2008 Olympics would be killed. Suen says he set up that meeting.
Adelson ? who joked about his short stature, confessed to being a "hotdog fiend" and described himself as a "kid from the slums" ? said he was too humble of a man to have pulled off such a stunt.
"How does one little guy from a poor family in Boston have some influence to affect the Chinese government's lobbying with other governments for the International Olympic committee?" he said.
___
Hannah Dreier can be reached at http://twitter.com/hannahdreier
Michael Weatherly and his wife are expecting! Weatherly, who is best known for playing special agent “Tony DiNozzo” on the television series, revealed that he and his internist wife Bojanga are expecting a second child together in early fall. The couple welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Olivia in April of 2012. The ...
Real Estate Investing can be very lucrative when dealing with ?MOTIVATED SELLERS?. Working with Motivated Sellers opens up more creative investing possibilities, increases the number real estate investment deals you do, keeps more money in your pockets in terms of upfront costs and profit potential and its just simply easier to work with sellers who are emotionally committed to off loading their real estate property by any means necessary.
Some of the methods listed below for real estate investors are tried & proven, creative and free or low-cost. As real estate investors, some of the leads or lists below may have a small cost or commission? associated with them or a ?pay for a successful referral? quid-pro-quo type of situation if you close on a real estate deal obtained from one of these sources.
50 Ways For Real Estate Investors To Find Motivated Sellers
Section 8 Landlords: Each county maintains a list
TV and Radio: Local stations & cable companies have free/low-cost spots
Title Companies: First ones to know when a closing does not pan out.
Tax Deed Sale Properties: Easy to get a list from county and state.
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram
Small Home Builders: Often buyers are trading up and may have trouble selling current home
Retirees: Excellent prospects for seller financing and homes with equity.
Rental Agents & Property Managers: Has a list of non-owner occupied owners and can identify landlords eager to get rid of cash-flow property.
Nursing & Retirement Homes: Frequently residents and family members need to sell a house or don?t want to deal with tenants.
Networking: Connect with Investors online, Call We Buy Houses ads & signs, Investment Associations & ?Clubs
Mobile Homes: Get to know park managers. Sellers have hard time dealing with banks.
Funeral Homes: Good source for inherited property or upcoming sales
FSBO Signs: for sale by owner
Flyers: ?Think Shopping Centers, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Malls. Put on car windshields or pay someone to do it for you. Use quarter or half pages and print on both sides.
Insurance Brokers: Policy changes from owner occupant to landlord or vacant house coverage.
Farm & Drive for Dollars: Study a local neighborhood and establish yourself as the go-to problem solver for distressed owners and distressed property
Military Bases: Great market for ?those needing to sell quickly
Expired MLS Listings: Get automated email list from a real estate agent.
Eviction Court: great place to find landlords
Estate Sales ? sometimes tied to probate and chances are the real estate will also be available soon or be transferred to an unwanting relative
Door Knocking: Distribute flyers and go door-to-door asking residents if they know of anyone planning to move because you?d like to buy a house in their neighborhood!
Door Hangers: You can also use pre-printed post-it notes to leave messages at target properties. Be sure to advertise on both sides, you can even sell the back side and recover your advertising cost!
Direct Mail: Pre-Foreclosure Letters, Probate Letters, Out of Town Owners, Bankruptcies, Divorce, Delinquent Taxes, Military Owners
Delivery Carriers: Think Postmen, Newspaper, Fed-EX, UPS, water delivery, Swanson guy. They can let you know who is moving, vacant houses, financial trouble, about to sell
Credit Repair Agencies & Counselors: Many times the only way someone can get their spending under control is to sell a house they can no longer afford.
Personal Finance & Car Lot Finance Companies: ?Good lead source for people who are in financial difficulty and used to dealing with ?terms?
Condemned Houses: Many counties will provide you a free list.
Classified Ads: Look for specific keywords that could possibly mean the seller is motivated such as: ?transferred, motivated, divorce, owner financing, must sell, etc.
City & County Inspectors: Code violations and red tags. If you develop a reputation of buying distressed properties and improving them, you become an asset to the community.
Car Repos: Signs of financial trouble. Get a list from repo specialist or wreckers.
Price Reduced MLS Listings: Get automated email list from a real estate agent.
Business Cards: different types: one for sellers, one for buyers, and one for professionals. Word of advice ? you have to remember to pass them out.
Bird Dogs: These people can be very valuable to your business. It is important to know your local laws about compensating unlicensed people, however, so do your homework first!
Auctions: Often times, you can catch a good deal in a tax sale by beating the Auction deadline. List provides property address so you can contact owner.
Attorneys: Think probate, real estate attorneys, family law, and divorce.
Advertising: Daily, Monthly, Simple: Quick Closing, All Cash etc., We Buy Houses Ads, Newspapers, Flyers, Online
Make Ready & Carpet Cleaners: Many of their customers are preparing a house for sale.
Accountants and CPA Firms: They have clients that might need to get find of assets (houses) for tax purposes and can identify clients that have unwanted property or rentals. Also great place for getting a list of retirees with free and clear homes open to seller financing.
?We Buy Houses? Bandit Signs: Check your local sign ordinances.
Damaged/Distressed Houses: Looks for blue tarps on roofs, boarded up windows, overgrown yards, etc Contact the owner to see if they want to sell the property.
Withdrawn MLS Listings ? Get automated email list from a real estate agent.
Real Estate Investing can help you achieve your financial dreams and give you the freedom that you want to enjoy your life. It does require some effort on your part to find real estate investment deals and sellers who are highly motivated to creative real estate investing buying and selling strategies. This list just touches the tip of the iceberg but if you only used three of any of the ?50 Easy Ways For Real Estate Investors To Find Motivated Sellers?? listed above you will have a much better chance at achieving your investing success.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below or contact me.
Breitbart.com has come up with a justification for its ill-advised, standards-defying story on the vacation plans of the president's daughters: The trip cost more than zero dollars. The feeble rationalization shouldn't surprise anyone. It's by Matthew Boyle, the Murrow-wannabe at the center of nearly every recent embarrassment in the conservative media.
RELATED: This Time We Actually Believe the Daily Caller
Earlier this week, Breitbart ran a story ??an "exclusive" ??that the president's daughters are on vacation in the Bahamas. There's a reason why it's so easy to get an exclusive on the Obama daughters: every other media organization has agreed to the request by the Obama White House ? like the Bush and Clinton White Houses before it ? ?to not report on the locations and activities of the President's children. There are two general exceptions: if the children are with their parents, or if there is something newsworthy about what they're doing. There's no formal agreement to which media outlets acquiesce but it is a spoken arrangement. And it's a rational, customary effort both to protect both the safety and privacy of children.
RELATED: Hackers Slap Porn on The Daily Caller
Still, it's hard to believe Breitbart was too worried about drawing the ire of this White House for breaking the policy. Still, just to cover his flank, Boyle whipped up a highly strained news hook in keeping with the newsworthy exception: The White House, you see, disappointed DC tourists by canceling tours because of the sequester, yet the president's daughters go on some fancy trip? Are you not outraged?
RELATED: Conservative Blogs Think New Yorkers Can't Read, Are Not Reading Actual Data
While Boyle's initial post gave that idea short shrift, focusing instead on social media from the resort and details about its amenities, today's follow-up gets back to the ostensible newsworthiness. He notes that a conservative group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to figure out how much the trip to the "ritzy" resort cost taxpayers. There's your breaking news update: Conservative group reads stupid story, piles on. Oh, also: a former Secret Service agent says that the White House tours could have continued and that Obama is "not telling the truth."
RELATED: Tucker Carlson Was Against Reporting on Senators and Prostitutes Before He Was Obsessed with It
The whole thing is this weird melange of insinuation, bizarre appeals to class resentment, and guilt by association. But that's what the world should expect from Matt Boyle, a journalist of the "see what sticks" school. The Daily Caller's debunked story about Sen. Bob Menendez and hookers? That was Matt Boyle's fine work, too. The guy who decided that being ignored by a member of Congress meant she opposed Attorney General Eric Holder? Boyle. And now we add: The best way to discuss fiscal policy is to delve into the lives of teenagers.
RELATED: Olbermann to Debut 'FOK News' Website
There's something almost admirable about the way in which Boyle refuses let scruples affect his work. There's a purity to it, a tenacity, like a boxer that keeps swinging after his opponent has already dropped to his knees.?
Granted, it's unavoidable that some news about the girls' vacation should seep out. Last year, the White House made an exception to its usual silence to confirm that Malia Obama was spending her spring break in Mexico to confirm that she was uninjured after a strong earthquake struck.?TheWashington Post noted at the time that in?a world choked with portable cameras meant protecting that privacy was nearly impossible. It's a theme that was repeated at The Times' Bits blog yesterday. Mobile, internet-connected cameras are putting paparazzi out of business.
There is, however, a difference between the vacationing Twitter users who took pictures of Sasha and Malia and a website that styles itself as a news outlet reporting on their behavior. Mike Dell'anno's tweet, quoted by Boyle, was meant to share with friends that he was having dinner at the same restaurant as the girls. Boyle's story was meant to disparage their father and sell ads for Breitbart.com. Motive ??and audience size ? matter.
Incidentally, Dell'anno's tweet has since been deleted. Both of Matt Boyle's articles are still up, as are his tweets defending his stories.
Mate choice in mice is heavily influenced by paternal cuesPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Diethard Tautz tautz@evolbio.mpg.de 49-452-276-3390 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Hybrid offspring of different house mice populations show a preference for mating with individuals from their father's original population
This press release is available in German.
Mate choice is a key factor in the evolution of new animal species. The choice of a specific mate can decisively influence the evolutionary development of a species. In mice, the attractiveness of a potential mate is conveyed by scent cues and ultrasonic vocalizations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Pln investigated whether house mice (Mus musculus) would mate with each other even if they were from two populations which had been separated from each other for a long time period. To do this, the researchers brought together mice from a German population and mice from a French population. Although to begin with all the mice mated with one another randomly, the hybrid offspring of French and German parents were distinctly more choosy: they showed a definite preference for mating with individuals from their father's original population. According to the researchers, this paternal imprinting accelerates the divergence of two house mouse populations and thus promotes speciation.
In allopatric speciation, individuals of a species become geographically isolated from each other by external factors such as mountains or estuaries. Over time, this geographic separation leads to the sub-populations undergoing various mutations, and thus diverging genetically. Animals from the two different sub-populations can no longer successfully reproduce, so two new species evolve.
To find out what role partner selection plays in such speciation processes, Diethard Tautz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and his colleagues conducted a comprehensive study on house mice the classic model organisms of biology. "To investigate whether there are differences in the mating behaviour of the mice in the early stages of speciation, we caught wild house mice in southern France and western Germany. The two populations have been geographically separate for around 3,000 years, which equates to some 18,000 generations," says Diethard Tautz. Due to this geographical separation, the French and German mice were genetically different.
The Pln-based researchers created a semi-natural environment for their investigations a sort of "Playboy Mansion" for mice. The research enclosure was several square meters in size and was divided up using wooden walls, "nests" made out of plastic cylinders, and plastic tubes. It also featured an escape tube with several entrances, which led into a cage system nearby. "We constructed the enclosure in such a way that all animals had unimpeded access to all areas, but thanks to the structural divisions were also able to create their own territories or retreat into nests," explains Tautz. "The escape tube was a control element. If the mice retreated to it only very seldom as was the case in our experiment then we could be sure there was no overpopulation in the central enclosure."
In this central enclosure, the French and German mice had both time and space to mate with each other and reproduce. "At first, all the mice mated with each other quite randomly. But with the first-generation offspring, a surprising pattern emerged," says Tautz. When the first-generation hybrid offspring of mixed French and German parentage mated, they showed a specific preference for pure-bred mates whose "nationality" was that of their father only. "There must be some kind of paternal influence that prompts the hybrid mice to choose a mate from a specific population, namely that of their father," concludes the biologist, based on the results of his study. "This imprinting must be learned, however, meaning that the animals must grow up in the presence of their fathers. This was not the case for the original mice, which were kept in cages for a time after being caught."
"We know that mice use ultrasonic vocalizations to communicate with each other and that particularly in the case of male mice these vocalizations can reveal signals of individuality and kinship. We believe that, like birdsong, the vocalizations of the males have a learned component and a genetic component," says Tautz. Therefore, French and German mice really could "speak" different languages, partly learned from their fathers, partly inherited from them. Individual mice thus have a mating preference for mice that speak the same language as they do.
The French and German mouse populations had evidently been geographically separated long enough for preliminary signs of species differentiation to be apparent as regards mating preferences. In addition, another aspect of mating behavior also sped up the speciation process.
Although mice have multiple mates, the researchers found evidence of partner fidelity and inbreeding. The tendency to mate with relatives fosters the creation of genetically uniform groups. When both occur together, this accelerates the speciation process.
In a next step, Diethard Tautz wants to find out whether the vocalizations of the mice play the decisive role in paternal imprinting, or if scent cues are also involved. Furthermore, the biologist wants to identify the genes that are involved in mate selection.
###
Original publication:
Inka Montero, Meike Tesche and Diethard Tautz: "Paternal imprinting of mating preferences between natural populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)", Molecular Ecology (2013), doi: 10.111/mec.122271;
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Mate choice in mice is heavily influenced by paternal cuesPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Dr. Diethard Tautz tautz@evolbio.mpg.de 49-452-276-3390 Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
Hybrid offspring of different house mice populations show a preference for mating with individuals from their father's original population
This press release is available in German.
Mate choice is a key factor in the evolution of new animal species. The choice of a specific mate can decisively influence the evolutionary development of a species. In mice, the attractiveness of a potential mate is conveyed by scent cues and ultrasonic vocalizations. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Pln investigated whether house mice (Mus musculus) would mate with each other even if they were from two populations which had been separated from each other for a long time period. To do this, the researchers brought together mice from a German population and mice from a French population. Although to begin with all the mice mated with one another randomly, the hybrid offspring of French and German parents were distinctly more choosy: they showed a definite preference for mating with individuals from their father's original population. According to the researchers, this paternal imprinting accelerates the divergence of two house mouse populations and thus promotes speciation.
In allopatric speciation, individuals of a species become geographically isolated from each other by external factors such as mountains or estuaries. Over time, this geographic separation leads to the sub-populations undergoing various mutations, and thus diverging genetically. Animals from the two different sub-populations can no longer successfully reproduce, so two new species evolve.
To find out what role partner selection plays in such speciation processes, Diethard Tautz from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and his colleagues conducted a comprehensive study on house mice the classic model organisms of biology. "To investigate whether there are differences in the mating behaviour of the mice in the early stages of speciation, we caught wild house mice in southern France and western Germany. The two populations have been geographically separate for around 3,000 years, which equates to some 18,000 generations," says Diethard Tautz. Due to this geographical separation, the French and German mice were genetically different.
The Pln-based researchers created a semi-natural environment for their investigations a sort of "Playboy Mansion" for mice. The research enclosure was several square meters in size and was divided up using wooden walls, "nests" made out of plastic cylinders, and plastic tubes. It also featured an escape tube with several entrances, which led into a cage system nearby. "We constructed the enclosure in such a way that all animals had unimpeded access to all areas, but thanks to the structural divisions were also able to create their own territories or retreat into nests," explains Tautz. "The escape tube was a control element. If the mice retreated to it only very seldom as was the case in our experiment then we could be sure there was no overpopulation in the central enclosure."
In this central enclosure, the French and German mice had both time and space to mate with each other and reproduce. "At first, all the mice mated with each other quite randomly. But with the first-generation offspring, a surprising pattern emerged," says Tautz. When the first-generation hybrid offspring of mixed French and German parentage mated, they showed a specific preference for pure-bred mates whose "nationality" was that of their father only. "There must be some kind of paternal influence that prompts the hybrid mice to choose a mate from a specific population, namely that of their father," concludes the biologist, based on the results of his study. "This imprinting must be learned, however, meaning that the animals must grow up in the presence of their fathers. This was not the case for the original mice, which were kept in cages for a time after being caught."
"We know that mice use ultrasonic vocalizations to communicate with each other and that particularly in the case of male mice these vocalizations can reveal signals of individuality and kinship. We believe that, like birdsong, the vocalizations of the males have a learned component and a genetic component," says Tautz. Therefore, French and German mice really could "speak" different languages, partly learned from their fathers, partly inherited from them. Individual mice thus have a mating preference for mice that speak the same language as they do.
The French and German mouse populations had evidently been geographically separated long enough for preliminary signs of species differentiation to be apparent as regards mating preferences. In addition, another aspect of mating behavior also sped up the speciation process.
Although mice have multiple mates, the researchers found evidence of partner fidelity and inbreeding. The tendency to mate with relatives fosters the creation of genetically uniform groups. When both occur together, this accelerates the speciation process.
In a next step, Diethard Tautz wants to find out whether the vocalizations of the mice play the decisive role in paternal imprinting, or if scent cues are also involved. Furthermore, the biologist wants to identify the genes that are involved in mate selection.
###
Original publication:
Inka Montero, Meike Tesche and Diethard Tautz: "Paternal imprinting of mating preferences between natural populations of house mice (Mus musculus domesticus)", Molecular Ecology (2013), doi: 10.111/mec.122271;
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Michael Weatherly and his wife are expecting! Weatherly, who is best known for playing special agent “Tony DiNozzo” on the television series, revealed that he and his internist wife Bojanga are expecting a second child together in early fall. The couple welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Olivia in April of 2012. The ...
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Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
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