Azealia Banks Calls Fashion Industry 'Fickle,' Warns Artists They 'Will Get Let Down'

fashionista.com:

Azealia Banks might be one of fashion's newest music obsessions-but the feeling is not mutual.

Speaking to online music magazine HYPETRAK in a video segment, Banks said, "If you place your faith in the fashion world you will get let down as an artist. You absolutely will get let down."

Read the whole story at fashionista.com

"; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/02/azealia-banks-calls-fashi_n_2396110.html

revenge once upon a time once upon a time adam shulman adam shulman peanut butter recall jason aldean

Gyno Gab: New Year, New Pills? What has Changed?

More Birth Control pills are on the market today than ever before, and mew ones are coming. In fact at Women's Health Practice we are recruiting for a birth control study, if you are interested call 217-356-3736. So what do you think, is the contraception revolution is back? We can think back to the start of the revolution. Russell E. Marker, one of the five principal founders of oral contraceptives, worked on the problem of making cheap progesterone. At the time of his research at Pennsylvania State University in 1935, it required 2500 pregnant pigs to produce 1 mg of progesterone. He then discovered that Beth?s root in North Carolina, then a popular herbal remedy for menstrual pains, also a species of Trillium the wild Mexican Yam, contained a plant steroid disogenin that could be manufactured into progesterone. The first birth control pill that was approved in the United States was Enovid-10? in 1960. By 1988 63 million women were using oral contraceptives worldwide.

So how far have we come exactly? In the 1950s we had five methods of contraception that were used in the US these were condoms, douches, withdrawal, rhythm and diaphragms. Generally, not very effective. Fifty years later the top five methods are in order of use: female sterilization, male sterilization, oral contraceptives, condoms and withdrawal. Family size by the 1950s had dropped dramatically over the last turn of the century with over 40% of families having less than two children, and almost 20% of families with less than one child but behind the data were the dramatic impact of illegal unsafe abortions, and rising rates of hysterectomy. For almost five decades the unplanned pregnancy rates remain stuck at about ? of all conceptions yearly.

?The contraceptive revolution awakened in the 1970s which is more remembered for the tunes that we associate with the summer of love than the remarkable gains in public health brought to us by The Pill. But then the revolution stalled. Reasons for the lack of progress includes: tort reform, biased media reporting, withdrawal of companies from R and D. Hundreds of methods were being studied around the world in the 1990s, but why were only three new methods approved in the US in the past decade? Finally I can report seeing the glimmer of the newest dawn of contraception revolution, but lack of funding is still glaring. In 15 minutes we spend more money on the pentagon than on all of contraception research each year. And though a handful of companies have stayed in contraceptive R and D the gains are slow. The process too costly, and both the real costs of litigation against methods and the fears of the economic impact of litigation plagues us and is often sited as the reason more companies don?t jump in. My industrial engineering colleges say that if you have something that is 98-99% effective for the job it is supposed to do, that is not what you typically look to replace. Sterilizations are in the 98% effective range. And in fact, in spite of the removal of 98% of the hormone dose since the initial 1962 formulation of the oral contraceptive (OC) pill in an effort to enhance the safety of the medication, perfect use contraceptive effectiveness of the pill remains at about 99%. I still argue we need another contraception revolution. Yet the United States still has the highest rates of unplanned pregnancy in the industrialized world. More alternatives are still needed, because typical use of contraception doesn?t offer American couples that 99% degree of success we?d assume from reading the package labels of the methods. We now have many generic pills, that complicates taking the birth?control pills as their colors in sequence doesn't always copy the exact color scheme of your branded pills according to a new study.

Not only are OCs effective, they are safe, and they confer dramatic non-contraceptive benefits like less anemia and less PMS. OC works by mimicking pregnancy, and thus the women enjoy the protection against things they would be protected against if they would have had multiple pregnancies including protection against ovarian cancer and uterine lining cancer (endometrial), and rates of these diseases have dramatically fallen. Those same protections are offered to the users of vaginal rings called NuvaRing, and birth control patches. Currently only one patch is on the US market, but other patches are coming. ?IUDs, unlike sterilization, are reversible and effective contraception but they don?t make our top 5 list because of faulty epidemiology that has led to the erroneous American public perception that they lack safety.

?Over 80 million women in China currently safely use the IUD which is a method effective at preventing pregnancy as surgical sterilization and do not increase infection (a very slight risk of infection right with insertion) or fertility. IUDs do protect against endometrial cancer as well. If it weren?t for the not for profit Population Counsel bringing back IUDs when all US companies had abandoned this method due siting litigation costs as the reasons. Serele lost more money defining the product than they were able to make in marketing the IUDs The minimally invasive technique of endoscopic sterilization ?belly button tubals? revolutionized female sterilization. Prior to the advent of this technique in the 70s tubal ligation procedures were a 5 day inpatient affair. The method is now the number one method used in the US and tubal sterilization is double the rate of vasectomies, although 1/5 women sterilized experiences significant regret about her decision, a preventable issue if she were to use an IUD instead. In the US sterilization can now be done in the office setting with the newly available Essure tubal coils, which take a mere few minutes under local to insert, and can be performed with the menses eliminating NovaSure operation. Injectable steroids have enjoyed incredible successes in pregnancy prevention.

In fact the progesterone injection called Depo Provera affords the same pregnancy prevention as tubal sterilization. With only 4 injections needed per year, compliance is fairly easy. Market penetration for this method has begun to shrink after a report questioning the bone impact of the method which very effectively suppresses both estrogen levels and ovulation. No actual cases of osteoporosis or bone fractures occurred in the users, but many women are being refused more than two years of Depo Provera use. The makers of Depo Provera briefly rolled out Lunelle, a similar product with less progesterone, and some estrogen, but when packaging glitches pulled the product off the shelf the new pharmacy owners never sought to re-market. In the US for each 1% less effectiveness because of incorrect or inconsistent use represents about 100,000 unplanned pregnancies. And this accounts for the literally three million unplanned pregnancies in the US per year, of which 1.2 million still end in abortion. Compliance counts for a lot! Not that the makers of contraceptive steroids haven?t tried actually there?s a spearmint version of the pill you can chew. The patch, essentially the hormones of the pill delivered through the skin, allows for more consistency. This is due to fewer health behaviors (to constantly use pills over 5 years you have to swallow almost 1800 pills, patches are changed three time a month, so only 39 behaviors a year) and studies back up that patch users are about 10% more consistent than pill users, and that improved compliance is the same across all age groups. Patients and physicians stall the rebirth of the contraception revolution as well. Women will consult a physician on method initiation but half of all women who stop their method of birth control do it without consultation.

Furthermore, about one in 5 will stop their method without any plan for any replacement method. The inconsistent use is not all blamed on leaving the package on the shelf. Medical providers need to shoulder some blame, studies indicate that they have misconceptions regarding medical contraindications and confusion regarding age, how many pregnancies a woman has had and marital status. Clinicians for instance may not prescribe OCs to women with medical conditions such as diabetes despite the fact that we are without any studies to show that steroid contraception use worsens the medical condition. In fact, recent studies have shown decreasing risks of stroke, breast and ovarian cancer, heart attack and blood clots with second- and third-generation oral contraceptives. We could prevent 80% of ovarian cancer cases if all women used the pill for at least 20 yeas (we can?t all of course). Rational use and the most updated information reported by the WHO working group in 2004, and updated by our CDC in 2010 and can be easily accessed on their web site? There is a lack of understanding regarding what is necessary for safe use of a method.

Pap smears are good preventative care, but they do not contribute to the safety of use of contraceptive methods, women need access to methods whether or not they have gotten a pap smear. Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists say that we should consider making birth control pill available over the counter, because protection against, or planning for, pregnancy should be a woman's most important consideration in her overall health. Thus medical provider requirements of certain tests, and scheduling frequent follow up visits, are merely barriers to continuation of effective contraception.

Although training for physicians in the provision of OCs is common, provider training in newer methods, like the newest IUD, or the newest form of sterilization, is still spotty nation wide where many gynos are trained in facilities that do not perform sterilizations or offer contraception. So keeping methods available may be more of an issue than you think. In 1965, a mere 40 years ago 30 states had laws prohibiting or restricting the sales and or use of contraceptives. New contraceptive alternatives are slowly coming, and we are now get access to the Implanon single rod implantable method, actually a two implant rod system was approved in 1996, but never rolled out for public use. ?And we do have the Nexplanon, a newer version of the Implanon. In the studies of Implanon rods there wasn?t a single pregnancy. I can hear the humming again: ?be sure to wear some flowers in your hair?.

?Adapted from News Gazette Health Article Submission.

Source: http://gynogab.blogspot.com/2013/01/new-year-new-pills-what-has-changed.html

julio cesar chavez jr Topless Kate university of texas UT Austin Lizzie Velasquez NFL Network att

A new fish species from Lake Victoria named in honor of the author of Darwin's Dreampond

Jan. 2, 2013 ? Two new species of cichlid fish from Lake Victoria are described by biologists from Naturalis Biodiversity Center (Research Department Marine Zoology) and the Institute of Biology Leiden (Section Integrative Zoology), the Netherlands. One of these species is named in honour of Tijs Goldschmidt, author of Darwin's Dreampond. This book, published in nine languages, describes the dramatic extinction of hundreds of cichlid species in Lake Victoria in the 1980s due to the introduced Nile perch and other human induced environmental changes.

In 1985, Leiden biologists made a survey in the Tanzanian part of the lake, with an old ferry as floating lab, to establish the status of the rapidly declining cichlids. During this expedition Tijs studied the egg spots on the anal fin of cichlids for their possible role in the rapid speciation of these fish. In the Emin Pasha Gulf, among a species nicknamed Haplochromis "argens," individuals were found with aberrant egg dummies and lacking red in the fins. Just the kind of example Tijs was looking for to test his theory of speciation by sexual selection. The aberrant individuals were provisionally named H. "dusky argens."

Both "species" play a part in Tijs' PhD thesis and in other studies. However, a taxonomic description was never made and whether H. "dusky argens" was a separate species or a colour morph remained unclear. In 1987, most cichlid species from the offshore waters of the lake had disappeared, and with them the urge of taxonomic descriptions.

Now, 25 years later, about a quarter of the cichlid species have recovered in the "Nile perch desert," some of them became even more abundant than in the past, but the former common H. "argens" is still extremely rare. The status of H. "dusky-argens" is unknown as it was only caught in the remote Emin Pasha Gulf, which is not sampled nowadays. Research on successfully resurgent species shows that they were able to adapt morphologically to the new environmental conditions. Their body shape, for instance, changed, so that burst swimming to escape predators improved. Preliminary results suggest that such a response is not found in H. "argens."

The above observations triggered the present taxonomic study as a baseline for further research. It shows that several taxonomic characters differ more between the co-occurring populations of H. "argens" and H. "dusky argens" in the Emin Pasha Gulf, than between populations from different locations. This suggests that they are indeed two species, which are morphologically driven apart at places where they co-occur. In case of H. "argens" the nickname was upgraded to the formal name, while H. "dusky-argens" is now named H. goldschmidti.

Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:

Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:

---

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Pensoft Publishers, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. Marnix de Zeeuw, Irene Westbroek, Martien van Oijen, Frans Witte. Two new species of zooplanktivorous haplochromine cichlids from Lake Victoria, Tanzania. ZooKeys, 2013; 256 (0): 1 DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.256.3871

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

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/f0eIpakDCGA/130102111620.htm

Texas A&m katy perry Chad Johnson Twitter Helen Gurley Brown Kathi Goertzen Johnny Pesky spice girls

Al-Jazeera acquires Current TV

15 hrs.

NBC News staff and wire reports

Arab television network Al-Jazeera?said on Wednesday it will buy Current TV, the cable channel founded by Al Gore and business partner Joel Hyatt in 2005, for undisclosed terms.

The acquisition?could give Al-Jazeera access to a broader range of U.S. television viewers. Although its programming is available in some large metropolitan areas, the network's executives have long been frustrated in their efforts to secure carriage deals with TV distributors.

Current TV,??which has battled low viewership,?is available in 60 million U.S. homes.

"We are proud and pleased that Al Jazeera, the award-winning international news organization, has bought Current TV," said?Gore and Hyatt?in a statement sent to NBC News. "Current Media was built based on a few key goals: To give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.? Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us." ?

News of the deal was earlier reported by The New York Times.?

?They really want to be able to compete for American viewers, and they have to find some way to get on,? Philip Seib, the director of the center on public diplomacy at the University of Southern California and the author of ?The Al Jazeera Effect,? told The New York Times.

Information from the Associated Press?and Reuters?was included in this report.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/al-jazeera-acquires-current-tv-1C7805700

chili recipes carlos condit diaz vs condit super bowl 2012 kickoff time football score ron paul nevada buffalo chicken dip

Moments of silence around NFL for shooting victims

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) ? The New England Patriots silenced their "End Zone Militia" on Sunday night, paying tribute to the victims of the Connecticut school shooting by canceling the traditional scoring celebration in which men dressed as Revolutionary War soldiers fire muskets into the air.

Two days after 20 children and six adults were shot to death at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., the Patriots joined teams across the NFL that honored the victims' memory by asking for a moment of silence and darkening their scoreboards.

New York Giants receiver Victor Cruz, after learning that he was the favorite player of one 6-year-old victim, wrote "R.I.P. Jack Pinto," ''Jack Pinto, my hero" and "This one is for you" on his shoes for the Giants game against the Falcons in Atlanta. Cruz said he called the boy's family after hearing he was a Giants fan and was told they planned to bury him in one of Cruz's No. 80 jerseys.

"I don't even know how to put it into words," Cruz said. "There are no words that can describe the type of feeling that you get when a kid idolizes you so much that unfortunately they want to put him in the casket with your jersey on. I can't even explain it."

The Patriots, the closest team to Newtown that was home on Sunday, wore a helmet sticker with the city seal and a black ribbon on it. The Giants, another popular team in southwestern Connecticut, affixed a decal with the school's initials ? "SHES" ? on their helmets. Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt wrote "Newtown, CT" on one of the gloves he wore in warmups and on both of his shoes for the game.

"We're playing football, and there's something much bigger going on in this world," Watt said. "I just wanted them to know, and I wanted everyone to know, that our thoughts are with them. Nothing is bigger than that. We played our game today, but honestly our thoughts are with them, the families, the teachers, the friends, the first responders, who had to go see that. My dad is a first responder. They were just kids."

Giants coach Tom Coughlin said the fact that the town was only about 90 minutes from New York City made the loss hit even harder.

"Being close to home, the players were greatly upset about it," he said. "Many of the players have young children so they can empathize with the parents who had young children killed. There was no one that escaped the effect of it, but that's not an excuse for why we played the way we played today."

In St. Louis, the players who wear No. 26 ? Rams running back Daryl Richardson and Vikings cornerback Antoine Winfield ? joined hands in a circle with their coaches at midfield before their game, surrounded by dozens of children wearing jerseys.

"I have a son that's in kindergarten. It choked me up because I would hate to be one of those parents," Rams running back Steven Jackson said. "You drop your kid off at school and he or she wants to go there and learn and better themselves, and to then go to the school and find that your child will no longer be with you. I couldn't imagine that thing."

The U.S. flag was at half-staff at Gillette Stadium, and a spokeswoman said the team planned to fire 26 flares into the air in a pregame ceremony before New England's night game against the San Francisco 49ers. Flags were also at half-staff in Baltimore, where the scoreboards went black as the public address announcer asked the crowd at the game between the Ravens and Denver Broncos to observe "silent reflection" in the wake of Friday's "horrific tragedy."

"As a parent you drop your kids off at school many times," said Miami Dolphins coach Joe Philbin, whose 21-year-old son Michael fell into a Wisconsin river and drowned in January. "It's hard to put into words what that community and those families must feel like. We obviously kept them in our prayers."

A moment of silence was observed at all 14 NFL games on Sunday; in Houston and in Arlington, Texas, the scoreboard went black. Members of the Buffalo Bills and Seattle Seahawks stood quietly with their heads down on their sideline while fans stood silently at the Rogers Centre in Toronto.

The Bills did continue their pregame habit of playing U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which they've played before every home game this season. The song is in reference to British troops shooting and killing unarmed protesters in Derry, Northern Ireland in January 1972.

In Chicago, Green Bay wide receiver Donald Driver retweeted the names of the victims. St. Louis defensive end Chris Long said after the 36-22 loss the Vikings that it was hard to feel sorry for himself.

"As we sit here and feel sorry for ourselves after losing a football game, it really helps put things in perspective," he said. "I was watching TV last night and saw a victim's parent and I was really moved by that, the strength that they were showing up there. If we can all show that strength, we'll be all right as a team and as people. "

___

AP Sports Writers R.B. Fallstrom in St. Louis, David Ginsburg in Baltimore, Nancy Armour in Chicago, Paul Newberry in Atlanta, John Wawrow in Toronto, Kristie Rieken in Houston and Brett Martel in New Orleans contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/moments-silence-around-nfl-shooting-victims-185844782--nfl.html

deep impact usssa baseball alex o loughlin the godfather cape breton bowling green marysville

With Chavez stricken, elections become crucial

A banner that reads in Spanish "Now more than ever with Chavez" on a street pole in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. Hugo Chavez's cancer has upended politics in Venezuela, transforming Sunday's nationwide elections for state governors and legislators into a test of his legacy that could chart the country's future in the uncertain months ahead. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A banner that reads in Spanish "Now more than ever with Chavez" on a street pole in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. Hugo Chavez's cancer has upended politics in Venezuela, transforming Sunday's nationwide elections for state governors and legislators into a test of his legacy that could chart the country's future in the uncertain months ahead. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

A worker weighs a bag of government subsidized food for a customer at a state-run market, one day before state elections for governors and legislators, in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. If candidates who support Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gain or even hold steady Sunday, the executive branch could strengthen its hold on the grass roots, as communal councils decide, often based on loyalty, such questions as who gets a new roof, or who receives vocational training, distributing the funds directly. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez create a poster with his image alongside an outline of their country in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Dec. 14, 2012. Chavez's most influential allies are projecting an image of unity while the president recovers from cancer surgery in Cuba, standing side-by-side and pledging to uphold his socialist movement no matter what happens. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

People release sky lanterns during a vigil in support of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012. Chavez is recovering favorably despite suffering complications during cancer surgery in Cuba, his vice president Nicolas Maduro said Thursday amid uncertainty over the Venezuelan leader's health crisis and the country's political future. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

People hold candles during a vigil in support of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Dec. 13, 2012. Chavez is recovering favorably despite suffering complications during cancer surgery in Cuba, his vice president Nicolas Maduro said Thursday amid uncertainty over the Venezuelan leader's health crisis and the country's political future. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Hugo Chavez's cancer has upended politics in Venezuela, transforming Sunday's nationwide elections for state governors and legislators into a test of his legacy that could chart the country's future in the uncertain months ahead.

For the first time in his nearly 14 years in power, the charismatic, voluble Venezuelan president has been unable to actively participate in such a campaign.

The question now hovering over the vote: Will his illness help or hurt the ruling apparatus he has built almost singlehandedly and strengthen his leftist agenda?

If Chavez's camp can maintain dominance in the country's 23 governorships, all but eight of which it holds, it can forge ahead with plans to solidify his "socialist revolution" by fortifying grass-roots citizen councils that are directly funded by the central government.

Chavez's backers have framed the election as a referendum on his legacy, angling for the sympathy vote.

For the opposition, the elections are apt to determine the fate of its leadership. The most pivotal race involves Henrique Capriles, who gave Chavez his stiffest challenge yet in the Oct. 7 presidential election by winning 44 percent of the votes.

If Capriles, 40, can win re-election as governor of Miranda state, which includes parts of the capital, the grandson of a Polish Holocaust survivor would be the opposition's most likely choice in the event of a presidential election that would need to be called within 30 days if Chavez died. Even before Chavez's mortality became a factor, the Miranda race was considered crucial for the opposition with Capriles facing Elias Jaua, Chavez's former vice president.

Chavez has virtually monopolized power in his person, painting much of the country red, the color of his leftist movement, as he nationalized key industries and expropriated private land.

The man he designated to succeed him before flying to Cuba last Sunday for cancer surgery, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, is a political lightweight by comparison. Capriles is widely seen as having a far better chance against Maduro than against Chavez.

Another key race is in Zulia state, Venezuela's most populous, where opposition Gov. Pablo Perez is running for re-election.

David Smilde, a University of Georgia sociologist and analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America think tank, believes Capriles will hold on to Miranda's governorship. But he expects an unusually high turnout Sunday that he believes will favor the Chavistas, even among voters fed up with high-level corruption in the president's inner circle.

Many Chavistas have been moved by the president's plight, and some pro-Chavez candidates have been calling for people to vote for them in a show of support and solidarity.

"It is now about Chavez and his legacy," said Smilde. "And there is a lot of sympathy."

Smilde said the woman who cleans his Caracas apartment complains about Chavez but, after news suggesting his cancer was incurable, "she was talking to me with her eyes moist about Chavez and how she's going to vote for Elias Jaua, and that kind of surprised me and I tend to think it's not isolated."

Gladys Espinel, who recently completed studies at the free, state-run Bolivarian University to be a schoolteacher, was also voting for Jaua.

"The (electoral) map is going to be filled with red because that's the best gift we can give our president," she said in a downtown Caracas bakery.

Chavez's health has become such a factor in the vote that pocketbook issues like growing public debt and a scarcity of dollars that's pushing up the prices of foreign goods are falling to the side.

In the past, the opposition has fared better in regional elections than in presidential votes because it could hone in on nuts-and-bolts issues such as the plethora of unfinished public works projects under Chavez or citizen insecurity.

Smilde noted the big popularity boost that followed Chavez's re-election to another six-year term: 68 percent approval in an early November poll by the Datanalisis firm.

And that's before he announced he would need a fourth surgery for a cancer first diagnosed in mid-2011.

Candidates of the governing Unity Socialist Party of Venezuela have campaigned on strengthening communes, which are grass-roots citizen councils that receive their funding directly from the central government.

It's a mechanism that has allowed Chavez to bypass state and municipal control and build loyalty, or dependency, opponents say, among the working poor through government goods and services they never had before. Free health care, subsidized food and access to free education have proliferated under the system.

If the Chavistas gain or even hold steady Sunday, the executive branch could strengthen its hold on the grass roots, as communal councils decide, often based on loyalty, such questions as who gets a new roof, or who receives vocational training, distributing the funds directly.

"The idea is a gigantic state that controls everything," said Angel Alvarez, a political scientist at Venezuela's Central University.

Chavez, 58, underwent six hours of surgery in Havana on Tuesday that government officials said involved bleeding, which was stanched, and would mean a difficult recovery.

Analysts say his absence during campaigning could hurt Chavista candidates in Sunday's elections, especially relative newcomers who in the past could count on the president accompanying them on the hustings.

Government officials have been doing their best to compensate.

They have been holding vigils for Chavez all week, hanging banners in tribute and broadcasting elegiac footage on state TV of the former army lieutenant colonel who first gained celebrity by leading a failed 1992 coup.

Capriles complained this week of the government using Chavez's failing health for political leverage, citing Jaua's statement that "people should vote Sunday for the president's recuperation."

"The leadership of a single person is not transferrable," Capriles told reporters.

Smilde, for one, expects whomever the Chavistas choose as their candidate to win any presidential election that would be called if Chavez, who is due to be inaugurated Jan. 10, dies in the next few months.

After that, many analysts believe the country could slide into economic turmoil as a fiscal hangover bites from Chavez's huge social spending last year. By law, presidential elections must be called if Chavez dies in the first four years of his six-year term.

Opposition congressman Julio Borges, who leads the Primero Justicia party, called Sunday's elections "just another piece on the chessboard of a country that is going to suffer very profound changes in the coming months."

He predicted a split electoral map, which he called the beginning of the end of Chavismo as "the president is going to be disappearing from the scene little by little."

In addition to choosing state governors, voters will also be selecting 229 members of state legislative councils.

Francisco Sanchez, a 45-year-old refrigerator salesman, said he hoped the opposition would have an edge Sunday as Chavez's one-man rule ebbs. But he fears divisions within it.

"We must remember that the only thing that unites the opposition parties is their desire to get rid of Chavez," he said.

___

Associated Press writers Chris Toothaker and Ian James in Caracas and Frank Bajak in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-12-15-Venezuela-Elections/id-655cf683e9344778a2b96c629a8154b1

unitarian new black panther party lost in space elizabeth banks battle royale key largo arnold palmer invitational

The Ins And Outs Of Pay-Per-Click Advertising | Internet and ...

Generating traffic is one of the key procedures associated with internet marketing. One of, if not the most captivating web traffic technique available at the moment is Pay-Per-Click advertising or PPC for short.

Essentially, PPC is an in internet advertising model, where advertisers pay the website owner when the ad on their site is clicked.

Most businesses locate their pay-per-click advertisement campaigns on search engine pages, online directories and popular social network sites. Sites such as these generate millions of internet user daily, therefore it increases the possibility of more potential customers viewing your advertisement.

Additionally, it is important that the PPC advertisement is located on pages that embody closely related content and keywords, otherwise the advert is hugely unlikely to reach the types of customer that are likely to purchase. Being placed amongst closely related content allows a process called sponsored match to take place. Sponsored is when a business can efficiently target potential customers searching for their niche, these types of customer are more likely to purchase also.

PPC advertising can be set up very quickly and provides a great deal of information to measure campaign performance. You only pay for ?click-throughs? so it can be a highly cost-effective form of advertising when implemented correctly. In order for your PPC Campaign to be successful, it requires strategic thinking, cutting-edge analysis and persistent management throughout. A business will be able to maximize their return on investment, as long as the PPC campaign is regularly assessed and kept up-to-date.

When it comes to writing your PPC advert, you need to be on-point, as this is probably the most critical stage in your PPC campaign. The key aim of the advert is attract viewers to your website and potentially purchase, however, most PPC?s only allow a maximum of 100 characters, therefore your message needs to be short and compelling in order for it to achieve results.

Below are 4 key points that will help you write a great PPC advert:

??? ?Try to keep your content as clear and simple as possible.
??? ?Include only the best keywords.
??? ?If you are targeting a specific geographical location e.g. Paris, then make sure that you specify this.
??? ?If you have a time-related benefit, ensure that you mention it. This will form a sense of pressure on the viewer to buy.

However, a potential threat does arise, when conducting a PPC campaign.

The primary determinant when it comes to the costing of your PPC advert? is based on the popularity of the key word that you are trying to use. Evidentially, the more the key word is sought after, the higher the cost of using it will be. If this is the case, it is basically impossible for a business to utilize the targeted keywords that would yield the best results for their business.

Source: http://busionline.vacau.com/?p=1411

yelp huntsville al channel 2 news adrienne bailon yelp stock honda classic news channel 5