Student group to go to court over Facebook privacy policy

VIENNA (Reuters) – An Austrian student group plans to go to court in a bid to make Facebook Inc, the world’s biggest social network, do more to protect the privacy of its hundreds of millions of members.

Campaign group europe-v-facebook, which has been lobbying for better data protection by Facebook for over a year, said on Tuesday it planned to go to court to appeal against decisions by the data protection regulator in Ireland, where Facebook has its international headquarters.

The move is one of a number of campaigns against the giants of the internet, which are under pressure from investors to generate more revenue from their huge user bases but which also face criticism for storing and sharing personal information.

Internet search engine Google, for example, has been told by the European Union to make changes to its new privacy policy, which pools data collected on individual users across its services including YouTube, gmail and social network Google+, and from which users cannot opt out.

Europe-v-facebook has won some concessions from Facebook, notably pushing it to switch off its facial recognition feature in Europe.

But the group said on Tuesday the changes did not go far enough and it was disappointed with the response of the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC), which had carried out an audit after the campaign group filed numerous complaints.

Facebook, due to hold a conference call later on Tuesday to answer customer concerns about its privacy policy, said its data protection policies exceeded European requirements.

“The latest Data Protection report demonstrates not only how Facebook adheres to European data protection law but also how we go beyond it, in achieving best practice,” a Facebook spokesman said in an emailed comment.

“Nonetheless we have some vocal critics who will never be happy whatever we do and whatever the DPC concludes.”

LOSING PATIENCE

Europe-v-facebook founder Max Schrems, who has filed 22 complaints with the Irish regulator, said more than 40,000 Facebook users who had requested a copy of the data Facebook was holding on them had not received anything several months after making a request.

“The Irish obviously have no great political interest in going up against these companies because they’re so dependent on the jobs they create,” Schrems told Reuters.

Gary Davies, Ireland’s deputy data protection commissioner, denied Facebook’s investment in Ireland had influenced regulation of the company.

“We have handled this in a highly professional and focused way and we have brought about huge changes in the way Facebook handles personal data,” he told Reuters.

Schrems also questioned why Facebook had only switched off facial recognition for users in the European Union, even though Ireland is the headquarters for all of Facebook’s users outside the United States and Canada.

Facebook is under pressure to reverse a trend of slowing revenue growth by selling more valuable advertising, which requires better profiling of its users.

Investors are losing patience with the social network, whose shares have dropped 40 percent in value since the company’s record-breaking $ 104 billion initial public offering in May.

Last month, Facebook proposed to combine its user data with that of its recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram, loosen restrictions on emails between its members and share data with other businesses and affiliates that it owns.

Facebook is also facing a class-action lawsuit in the United States, where it is charged with violating privacy rights by publicizing users’ “likes” without giving them a way to opt out.

A U.S. judge late on Monday gave his preliminary approval to a second attempt to settle the case by paying users up to $ 10 each out of a settlement fund of $ 20 million.

Europe-v-facebook said it believed its Irish battle had the potential to become a test case for data protection law and had a good chance of landing up in the European Court of Justice.

Schrems said the case could cost the group around 100,000 euros ($ 130,000), which it hoped to raise via crowd-funding – money provided by a collection of individuals – on the Internet.

(Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in Dublin; Editing by Mark Potter)

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“Boardwalk Empire” creator on legalizing drugs and making Nucky likeable again

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – The prohibition drama “Boardwalk Empire” wrapped its spectacular third season Sunday night just weeks after the states of Colorado and Washington voted to legalize marijuana.

To “Boardwalk” creator Terence Winter, who has immersed himself in the history of prohibition to research his gangster epic, the votes feel like a move in the right direction.

“It’s great. I think they should legalize drugs in general,” Winter told TheWrap. “The war on drugs is clearly not working, and I think they should take the profit motive out of being a drug dealer. And maybe kids will go to college and do something else.”

Winter, who reassembled his writers a few weeks ago to begin work on the show’s fourth season, talked to us about whether they ever go out of their way to slow down the action, making Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi) likable again, and whether things are worse today than they were in the 1920s.

TheWrap: Is ‘Boardwalk’ making a case for drug legalization?

Winter: Well, I think history made it for us with prohibition. We’re just reflecting the reality of how it went down. I’m not trying to bend the reality or the truth of what happened. It clearly didn’t work. I don’t think people were more disposed to drink when alcohol was legal.

Actually, it had the opposite effect. Women didn’t start drinking until prohibition was enacted and college students didn’t start drinking until prohibition was enacted. Leaving the mystery aside might have had a better impact on the country – keeping it legal. In my personal opinion I don’t think making drugs legal would make anybody more likely to become a heroin addict, for example.

This is going to sound strange, but I mean it as a compliment. “Boardwalk” has a way of lulling you into looking at the costumes, and listening to the dialogue, and marveling at how pretty everything is. There are times when I almost want to nod off, it’s so comforting – and then suddenly someone gets set on fire. I feel you’re making a conscious effort to use boredom to really shock us at other times. Do you ever put in a scene that’s deliberately slow?

No, we don’t. I would disagree and say – slow or boring – there is dialogue that needs to be attended to and I think you need to pay attention to what’s going on. The pacing can sometimes be slower than certainly an action scene or a scene with incredible violence. Because we have such wide-ranging characters and such wide-ranging circumstances, some things might seem slower by comparison.

Obviously a scene involving a political figure or Margaret’s storyline, as opposed to something Al Capone is doing, is just by the very nature of it going to feel slow. But no, none of it is done by design.

I mean it in a good way. If you think things are slowing down, they’re not. It’s almost a trick.

The audience is so wide-ranging, too. We have people who can’t stand the violence and they’re much more entertained by the family stuff. One person’s slow is another person’s fascinating.

With the final episodes we got to see Nucky become really likable again. He’s always been generous, but at times he seemed a little too caught up in himself to care about the people around him. Was there an effort to make him a good guy again?

One of the points of this season is that he does get caught up in himself. That all comes home to visit in a big way in episode 11. He doesn’t know anything about Eddie Kessler the guy who works really closely with him. He doesn’t know if he has a family. He doesn’t know Chalky White’s phone number. It becomes apparent that he’s spent way too much time concerned with himself and his own affairs.

If you depict any character honestly, and show all of their colors, you’re going to find something relatable or likeable with anybody. And that’s certainly the truth with Al Capone or Luciano or Tony Soprano or any other famous character.

And certainly Steve Buscemi has an inherent likable quality to him. So when you add that to the mix you can’t help but like the guy.

Imagery is so important to the show, and I feel like at one point this season you did something just because it was gorgeous. When Billie changes her hair color to blonde, was there any reason to do that besides how incredible it looked in the explosion?

Well, she was sort of finally coming to terms with who she really was. That was the episode where she dropped the façade of Billie Kent and told Nucky her real name. She was going through a metamorphosis and that sort of illustrated that a little bit. They were sort of not pretending with each other any more.

Is Billie a natural blonde?

That color wasn’t natural. She wasn’t being Billie Kent that night. She was being the real person underneath. … But I agree it did look great in the explosion. Meg Chambers Steedle, who plays Billie Kent, is absolutely one of those people the camera just falls in love with. Unfortunately the context was terrible. But it was extremely cinematic.

Harrow kind of became the hero of the show this season. His scene of taking down the entire house full of gangsters: Wow. We’ve always been fascinated with the character and for me this season I was more interested in seeing who he is as a person and seeing him take that journey and fall in love and really explore that side of him. Given the way the story was, we knew it would end in violence.

But following the trajectory from the end of season 2, we knew this guy was very loyal to Jimmy and Angela and we knew he would stick around and take care of that kid. And of course Gillian being who she is, it wasn’t going to end well.

Is Gillian kaput at this point? The last time we saw her she was in a heroin daze, and she’s kind of lost everything.

She will be back on the show. She’s certainly still alive.

Is there anybody on the show you think you can’t kill?

Nope. Everybody’s up for grabs and that’s from the top on down. Anything can happen.

We hear so much about how much trouble our country is in. Do you think things are worse than they were in the 1920s?

No, and if anything, reading about how bad things were in the 1920s is strangely comforting in terms of how we think about things today. The level of corruption and the whole idea of going to hell in a hand basket is certainly nothing new. You look back and think, this pales in comparison. I think the more things change the more they stay the same.

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Soccer-Paraguayan player dies of viral infection in Indonesia

JAKARTA, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Paraguayan soccer player Diego Mendieta, who played for Indonesian club Persis Solo last year, has died of a viral infection, local media reported.

The 32-year-old striker died late on Monday in a hospital in Solo, Central Java, the Jakarta Globe reported.

The paper said Mendieta had wanted to return home but had been unable to do so as the club owed him four months’ wages which totalled 120 million rupiahs ($ 12,500).

“He always complained of being lonely,” Guntur Hernawan, the head of the internal medicine division at Moewardi Hospital in Solo, told reporters on Tuesday.

“He said he wanted to go home because all of his relatives were in Paraguay.”

Former Persis manager Totok Supriyanto was quoted by the paper as saying the outstanding debt would be paid to Mendieta’s family.

Solo mayor Hadi Rudyatmo said would he personally pay the player’s outstanding hospital bills and other expenses but called on others to help.

“To return him (to Paraguay), it should be handled by the Indonesian Football Association,” Hadi was quoted as saying by Detik.com. (Reporting by Patrick Johnston in Singapore; Editing by Clare Fallon)

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A Gambling Parlor on Your Smartphone

Speaking at his first casino conference in Copenhagen two years ago, Christopher Griffin wondered why every demonstration of online gambling looked like casino games that have been played for decades in Las Vegas. Casino executives, he realized, were unprepared for the threat posed by Zynga (ZNGA) and other social game developers intent on bringing elements of online games to gambling and putting their products on smartphones and tablets. “No one was talking about the social aspects of gambling, or the devices in everyone’s pockets,” says Griffin. “It struck me that this is an industry ripe to get its lunch eaten.”

Griffin decided to provide social game developers with tools to create betting games that can be played on mobile devices or a PC. His company, Betable, now lets game companies offer online gambling wherever it’s legal. He’s teamed up with game makers to produce online versions of poker, blackjack, and roulette, and is in the process of adding wagering to social media games.

Depending on the game, players compete with each other or against the game maker. Betable provides a platform for developers to create games in which players bet with real money, and handles the infrastructure, payment, licenses, antifraud procedures, and verification needed to prove a customer is located where online gambling is legal. When first-time players click to indicate they want to wager money, the game prompts them to create a Betable account, and the company’s U.K.-based servers handle all monetary transactions. Because the transactions take place on those servers, Betable’s license isn’t restricted to a physical location, allowing the company to provide a legal gambling platform in countries where gaming isn’t outlawed. Companies split proceeds 50/50 with Betable, say executives at the companies who declined to be identified because the contracts are private.

A Department of Justice opinion last year opened the door for states to legalize most forms of online gambling except sports betting. Many are scrambling to do so. Nevada has begun granting licenses for online poker, and Delaware and New Jersey are on track to follow next year, according to the American Gaming Association. Cowen analyst Doug Creutz says it could take five years before online wagering becomes legal nationwide.

The mobile-gambling business will grow to $ 100 billion worldwide by 2017, according to Juniper Research. With interest in social games showing signs of waning—the number of video game players in the U.S. declined by 5 percent in the last year, according to researcher NPD Group—Zynga and other developers don’t want to wait. Betable, funded by Greylock Partners, Founders Fund, and other venture capitalists, has signed with nearly a dozen companies to offer gambling on mobile devices in the U.K. and other markets. “The European market is fairly well-established, and it’s a market where there’s not been a lot of money invested,” Creutz says.

Typically it takes a minimum of 18 months to get licensed in each country a company wants to operate in and costs millions of dollars to navigate Byzantine rules. Paul Thelen, chief executive officer of Seattle-based game developer Big Fish Games, figures signing with Betable helped shave months off the company’s plan to deliver Big Fish’s slots app in the U.K. The game debuted on mobile devices in October.

Casino operators say they will roll out their own mobile games when they’re legal in the U.S., and some already accept real-money wagers on their websites elsewhere. The social game makers say they have a built-in customer base for real-money wagering. Sixty percent of people who play social games such as Bingo Blingo and Big Fish Casino live outside the U.S., says Josh Yguado, president of Social Gaming Network, a gaming company owned by the founders of Myspace, which announced a partnership with Betable on Nov. 29. “There’s a real art to making a great game that has all the social features around it,” Yguado says. “That’s what we’re good at.”

Big Fish’s Thelen also likes his chances against the incumbents. With Betable’s technology, he can devote resources to delivering features that many land-based casinos offer when they have a captive audience surrounded by bright lights and throngs of customers. A poker game could come with such options as letting players buy a round of virtual drinks for the table, he says. “We can build an experience around the games, with great casual twists that casino makers don’t understand,” he says.

Griffin says casino games are only the beginning for social game developers. At a recent hackathon, designers showed titles that included raising a horse in a fashion similar to FarmVille-type games, and then paying to enter a race against other players’ horses. “Real money resets everything and creates a level playing field,” Griffin says. “This is not an incremental change. This is really a tectonic shift.”

The bottom line: Developers of social games are trying to counter declining interest by bringing casino-style gambling to mobile devices

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Gunmen assassinate peasant leader in Paraguay

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo‘s presidency last June.

Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguaty.

A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.

Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.

He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.

By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firefight during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.

Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.

Vega was expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders who weren’t killed in the clash or jailed afterward.

He wasn’t charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted at the settlement erected by the peasants inside Riquelme’s ranch, the Naranjaty Commission’s secretary, Martina Paredes, told the AP.

“We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don’t know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken by Riquelme,” she said.

Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use.

A local court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme’s claim to the land years later. Lugo’s government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.

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Hands-On With the World-Changing $40 Tablet

Aakash2

The Aakash2 is available for $ 40.41 (2,263 rupees), but the government of India will subsidize half the cost for schoolchildren. The tablet is conceived as a tool to help end India‘s rampant illiteracy. Aakash2 will bring school-age children connectivity and unprecidented access to books.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Zynga Holiday Campaign Turns Virtual Goods Into Real-World Donations]

The Aakash2, the second generation of the monumental, ultra-cheap tablet from Indian manufacturer DataWind, arrived in the U.S. Wednesday, with a welcome at the U.N. Headquarters in New York.

DataWind is hoping to prove to the tech and development communities that the $ 40 Aakash2 is faster than its predecessor, the original Aakash, which was much-criticized for its glacial processor.

[More from Mashable: The Top 5 Gadget Innovations of 2012]

You may be wondering what exactly you can put in a tablet that sells for just $ 40.41. The 7-inch Android-powered device has 512 MB of RAM, a 1 Ghz processor, 4 GB of flash memory, a multi-touch capacitative screen, front-facing camera, an internal microphone and speakers. The Aakash2 includes a USB hub, an adapter cable, a wall charger and a 12-month warranty.

Sunseet Singh Tuli, DataWind’s CEO and the visionary behind the tablet, points out that Aakash2 wasn’t conceived for the same demographic as the iPad. It’s developed out of the requisite “frugal innovation” that guides India and the developing world.

“Frugal innovation isn’t about creating an iPad killer, it’s about creating an iPad for him,” said Tuli, pointing to a presentation slide of a lower-class man who’s primary motivation is to receive an education. “This is not a straight commerce effort — it’s an educational effort.”

Even the tablet’s name — Aakash, which means sky in Hindi — references that it was created to awaken students’ potential. The government of India has committed to subsidize 50% of the cost of the device for students, making it available for roughly $ 20.

According to DataWind, the technological breakthrough of the Aakash2, which is why the device can be made so inexpensively, is twofold. First, much of its memory and processing power is transfered to backend servers. Second, the parallel processing environment speeds the user experience in remote areas and congested networks.

The Aakash2 also eliminates hardware features deemed unnecessary for the target audience, such as bluetooth and the HDMI interface. It uses open source software to cut costs, as well.

“This tablet seeks to empower the world’s neediest and bridges the digital divide within our society,” said Hardeep Singh Puri, India’s permanent representative to the U.N. at the launch event. “To us, Aakash2 is the epitome of such high end innovation and excellence.”

The Aakash to was designed and developed in Canada, though it was conceived, assembled and programmed in India. DataWind and the Indian government have received criticism because the process is not entirely domestic, though both said they are committed to moving more of the production process to India when cost allows.

The Indian government has committed to equipping all 220 million students in the country with low-cost computing devices and Internet access over the next five years. To put that number in perspective, just 250,000 tablets were sold in India in 2011. It will cost $ 1.6 billion per year at the rate of equipping 40 million students for each of the next five years. The national government has committed to covering half the cost — $ 800 million per year — and will count on state governments and institutions to cover the remaining 50% of costs. Though it sounds like a daunting figure, $ 800 million is only 5% of India’s annual education budget.

“More and more schools in some of the most impoverished areas are using technology, text messaging and mobile applications to enhance the quality of education and open new doors,” said U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday. “Our challenge is to leverage the power of technology and bridge the digital divide.”

During Wednesday’s event at the U.N., Tuli presented Ki-moon with an Aakash2 tablet for each of the U.N. ambassadors.

Not surprisingly, other countries throughout the developing world have noticed the Aakash tablet’s potential. Thailand, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Brazil and Panama have all expressed interest in bringing the low-cost tablet to their students.

“The next arms race is to equip our children with knowledge and information,” Tuli said.

If you’re wondering when you can get your hands on an Aakash2 in the U.S., DataWind plans to begin selling the device in the U.S. in early 2013.

Do you think this low-cost tablet has the power to bridge the digital divide and combat illiteracy? Let us know in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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“Searching for Sugar Man” wins Producers Guild documentary nomination

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Searching for Sugar Man” is the best-known of the five films whose producers have been nominated for documentary motion pictures by Producers Guild of America, which announced its nominations on Friday.

Malik Bendjelloul’s film about the rediscovery of ’70s recording artist Rodriguez joined a slate of nominees that also includes Jon Shenk’s doc about the ousted president of the Maldives, “The Island President”; Marius A. Merkevicius‘ story of the 1992 Lithuanian Olympic basketball team, “The Other Dream Team”; Dror Moreh’s chronicle of some members of the Israeli intelligence services, “The Gatekeepers”; and Aaron Yeger’s film about the Roma (gypsies) in Europe, “A People Uncounted.”

The PGA bypassed number of the year’s high-profile docs, including “Bully,” “The Queen of Versailles,” “The Imposter,” “Samsara,” “West of Memphis” and “The Invisible War.”

Of the guild’s choices, only “Sugar Man” was also nominated in the top category at the IDA Awards and the Cinema Eye Honors, the two major awards in the documentary field.

The PGA release:

LOS ANGELES, CA (November 30, 2012) – The Producers Guild of America (PGA) announced today the Documentary Motion Picture nominees that will advance in the voting process for the 24th Annual Producers Guild Awards.

The nominated films, listed below in alphabetical order, are:

A PEOPLE UNCOUNTED

THE GATEKEEPERS

THE ISLAND PRESIDENT

THE OTHER DREAM TEAM

SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN

All other nominations for the 2013 Producers Guild Award categories will be announced on January 3, 2013, along with the individual producers.

All 2013 Producers Guild Award winners will be announced on January 26, 2013 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. This year, the Producers Guild will also award special honors to Bob and Harvey Weinstein, J.J. Abrams, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner and Russell Simmons, among others. The 2013 Producers Guild Awards Chair is Michael De Luca.

In 1990, the Producers Guild held the first-ever Golden Laurel Awards, which were renamed the Producers Guild Awards in 2002. Richard Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck took home the award for Best Produced Motion Picture for DRIVING MISS DAISY, establishing the Guild’s awards as a bellwether for the Oscars. Last year, the PGA awarded THE ARTIST with its Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures, marking the fifth consecutive year the Producers Guild has presaged the Academy of Motion Picture’s choice.

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Holiday fitness gifts trend from high-tech to basic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Looking for the perfect holiday present for a fitness fan? Gift offerings this year range from apps that can store a run in the country to be viewed later to gadgets so sophisticated they measure quality of sleep as well as calories burned.

There is also the revival of the humble foam roller, which experts say, like old-time push-ups, squats and planks, has never been more popular.

Anita Golden, fitness manager at a Crunch gym in New York City, said she’ll be giving clients a foam roller called the GRID.

“We’ve always had foam rollers in the club but now more people are using them as a way to ease post-workout muscles, prevent injuries and exercise the core,” Golden said.

When it comes to big-ticket items, Colleen Logan of Icon Health and Fitness, which manufactures a number of fitness brands, said the treadmill remains the most popular gift.

“Treadmills continue to lead the industry in terms of home fitness purchases,” said Logan.

They account for about 57 percent of fitness purchases, while elliptical trainers and stationary bicycles are a distant second and third place at about 8 percent each.

The average home treadmill costs about $ 700, said Logan, but the technology revolution has transformed even this stalwart at the high end.

The ultimate splurge, at $ 4,000, she said, is the Boston Marathon Treadmill, which allows users to adjust speed in 1/10 of a mile per hour increments without touching the console. It also lets users run a virtual Boston Marathon.

For people on a smaller budget, there is the iFit app that lets the iPhone capture a favorite vacation run or bike ride in Hawaii, store it in data centers all over the world which collectively are referred to as the “cloud,” and download it to an iFit-enabled treadmill at home.

“You’ll view the exact route and experience the same terrain again,” Logan explained.

Devices, gadgets and apps proliferate as tech-savvy fitness becomes more accessible, according to Jessica Matthews of the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

“There’s a lot of interest in on-body monitoring devices as ways to motivate and track progress,” she said. “They run the gamut from basic devices to track hours, steps, and caloric expenditure to full-body tracking.”

Nike+ Sportsband has a series of small lights on the wrist band that change from red to green as the runner nears his goal, while the BodyMedia FIT Armband tracks everything from the number of calories burned to the quality and quantity of sleep.

ACE also studied fitness DVDs released for the holidays.

“We evaluated them for quality of instruction, safety, effectiveness and design of workout,” Matthews said.

Among the best were “Amy Dixon’s Breathless Body Vol.2: The Edge.” Matthews called it a challenging cardio workout best suited to those on your list with “an established base of fitness.”

“Jessica Smith’s 10 Pounds Down Better Body Blast” also got a thumbs up for its well-rounded routine and clarity of instruction.

For people seeking a mind-body approach, Matthews praised “STOTT Pilates Intense Body Blast: Pilates Interval Training: Level I,” which she said is accessible for someone new to fitness.

“They do a great job queuing movements and creating flow,” she said.

Richard Cotton of the American College of Sports Medicine suggests giving the fitness novice the gift of a personal trainer.

“The best is human assistance,” he said. “Another way is a beginner group exercise class.”

He also suggests a gift certificate for shoes at a running store equipped with a treadmill.

“You need shoes that fit your gait,” he said. “People should always get their gait analyzed.”

Golden likes to cite the law of reciprocity to the personal trainers she manages.

“I always tell them to get their clients something,” she said.

And what does the personal trainer want for Christmas?

“I like the roller, or a new jump rope,” she said. “Fitness people aren’t hard to please. Get me a new yoga mat and I’m happy.”

(Reporting by Dorene Internicola; editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Global firms’ tax pay ‘an insult’

3 December 2012 Last updated at 05:44 ET

Global firms in the UK that pay little or no tax are an “insult” to British businesses, a committee of MPs says.

Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needed to be “more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance”.

Multinationals such as Starbucks and Amazon have come under fire for paying little or no tax.

They generate UK sales of hundreds of millions of pounds.

Starbucks, for example, sold nearly £400m worth of goods in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all, because much of the money it earns in this country is transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands in the form of royalty payments.

HMRC said it already ensured that international companies paid the tax due “in accordance with UK tax law”.

UK-based companies pay corporation tax on their taxable profits wherever they are made. Companies based outside the UK must pay tax on profits made in this country.

Continue reading the main story

Multinationals in the tax spotlight

Starbucks’ UK sales last year were £400m but much of its earnings are paid as royalties to another part of the company.

Amazon generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the UK last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits, and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Apple paid less than 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, paying $ 713m (£445m) on foreign pre-tax profits of $ 36.8bn.

Google’s UK unit paid £6m to the Treasury in 2011 on UK turnover of £395m, according to the Telegraph newspaper.

Source: Various

The influential committee’s report comes after it took evidence in November from executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon about the amount of corporation tax the companies have paid in the UK.

‘Evasive evidence’

Margaret Hodge told the BBC that there was a danger corporation tax was becoming “voluntary” and that this had to change.

“These global companies are making money in the UK. All we are saying is that if you have economic activities in the UK you are making profits and tax is payable on that,” she said.

It emerged on Sunday that coffee shop chain Starbucks is in talks with HMRC about the amount of tax it pays.

Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne will unveil later details of £154m of funding to help tackle tax avoidance and evasion, amid public concern over the tax affairs of major international companies and wealthy individuals.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Although they employ many thousands of people in Britain, it is unclear whether collectively they are net creators or destroyers of employment”

End Quote

The money will be used to take on extra staff to investigate high earners who aggressively avoid or evade paying tax and global firms that use legal loopholes to move profits out of the UK.

The funding is expected to help bring in about £2bn a year for HMRC.

In the report, Mrs Hodge said the level of tax taken from multinational firms with large UK operations was, “outrageous and an insult to British businesses and individuals who pay their fair share”.

Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge: “It is time for HMRC to get a grip”.

“The inescapable conclusion is that multinationals are using structures and exploiting current tax legislation to move offshore profits that are clearly generated from economic activity in the UK.

“HMRC should be challenging this, but its response so far to these big businesses and their aggressive tax planning has lacked determination and looks way too lenient. Policing the tax system must be at the heart of what HMRC does.

An HMRC spokesman said: “We relentlessly challenge those that persist in avoiding tax and have recovered £29bn additional revenues from large businesses in the last six years, including £4.1bn in the last four years from transfer pricing enquiries alone.”

‘Breathtaking hypocrisy’

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Analysis

Jonty Bloom Business correspondent, BBC News

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It is worth remembering that corporation tax is not the only tax that companies pay. Corporation tax does raise £50bn in the UK, but other taxes that cannot be avoided so easily include VAT; then there is the business rate, which raises some £25bn a year. The Institute for Economic Affairs says that is enough to pay for the secondary education system and the police and the fire service.

Also, companies pay National Insurance contributions for every worker they hire and fuel duty and vehicle excise duty which are one of the biggest revenue earners for the government.

That doesn’t mean that foreign companies aren’t doing their best to avoid paying corporation tax on the profits they make here, but then UK companies operating in France, China or the US are probably doing much the same there.

Laws on corporate taxation are extremely complex and often part of internationally negotiated treaties, one reason they are difficult to change and why companies have become very good at exploiting every legitimate and legal loophole that they can.

In a statement to coincide with the committee’s report, Amazon said it paid all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operated in: “We have a single European headquarters in Luxembourg with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation.”

Starbucks said in a statement: “We have listened to feedback from our customers and employees, and understand that to maintain and further build public trust we need to do more.

“As part of this we are looking at our tax approach in the UK. The company has been in discussions with HMRC for some time and is also in talks with the Treasury.”

‘Small fry’

The War on Want charity, which is campaigning for more to be done to tackle tax avoidance, accused the government of “breathtaking hypocrisy”.

It said: “Osborne and Cameron are happy to talk tough on tax. But, in reality, their plans will only go after the small fry on the fringes, while giving a green light to multinationals like Amazon, Google and Starbucks to continue avoiding billions in tax.”

Heather Self, a tax expert, told the BBC assessing tax for major companies was not simple.

“If you buy a book from Amazon you are actually buying from a Luxembourg company,” she said. “It decides how many books to buy and at what price they sell them for. All you have in the UK is a warehouse, a very big warehouse that employs a lot of people but that is all it does. The risk is taken in Luxembourg.

“Profits paid here are for the activities it undertakes here and that is not highly profitable. It is not as simple a situation as the Public Accounts Committee likes to make out sometimes.”

BBC News – Business

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Italy votes for center-left candidate for premier

ROME (AP) — Italians are choosing a center-left candidate for premier for elections early next year, an important primary runoff given the main party is ahead in the polls against a center-right camp in utter chaos over whether Silvio Berlusconi will run again.

Sunday’s runoff pits a veteran center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who has campaigned on an Obama-style “Let’s change Italy now” mantra.

Nearly all polls show Bersani winning the primary, after he won the first round of balloting Nov. 25 with 44.9 percent of the vote. Since he didn’t get an absolute majority, he was forced into a runoff with Renzi, who garnered 35.5 percent.

After battling all week to get more voters to the polling stations for round two, Renzi seemed almost resigned to a Bersani win by Sunday, saying he hoped that by Monday “we can all work together.”

Bersani, a former transport and industry minister, seemed confident of victory as well, joking about Berlusconi’s flip-flopping political ambitions by asking “What time did he say it?” when told that the media mogul had purportedly decided against running.

Next year’s general election will largely decide how and whether Italy continues on the path to financial health charted by Premier Mario Monti, appointed last year to save Italy from a Greek-style debt crisis.

The former European commissioner was named to head a technical government after international markets lost confidence in then-Premier Berlusconi’s ability to reign in Italy’s public debt and push through sorely needed structural reforms.

Berlusconi has largely stayed out of the public spotlight for the past year, but he returned with force in recent weeks, announcing he was thinking about running again, then changing his mind, then threatening to bring down Monti’s government, and most recently staying silent about his political plans.

His waffling has thrown his People of Freedom party into disarray and disrupted its own plans for a primary — all of which has only seemed to bolster the impression of order, stability and organization within the center-left camp.

A poll published Friday gave the Democratic Party 30 percent of the vote if the election were held now, compared with some 19.5 percent for the upstart populist movement of comic Beppe Grillo, and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in third with 14.3 percent. The poll, by the SWG firm for state-run RAI 3, surveyed 5,000 voting-age adults by telephone between Nov. 26 and 28. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.36 percentage points.

It’s quite a turnabout for Berlusconi’s once-dominant movement, and a similarly remarkable shift in fortunes for the Democratic Party, which had been in shambles for years, unable to capitalize on Berlusconi’s professional and personal failings while he was premier.

But Berlusconi’s 2011 downfall and a series of recent political party funding scandals that have targeted mostly center-right politicians have contributed to the party’s rise as Italy struggles through a grinding recession and near-record high unemployment.

Angelino Alfano, Berlusconi’s hand-picked political heir, seemed again exasperated Sunday after a long meeting with his patron over Berlusconi’s plans. News reports have suggested Berlusconi might split the party in two and re-launch the Forza Italia party that brought him to political power for the first time in 1994.

“We have to work to reconstruct the center-right, and reconstructing it means having a big center-right party,” not a divided one, Alfano said.

He added that Berlusconi didn’t say one way or another if he would run himself. “It’s his choice,” he said. “If there are any decisions in this regard, he’ll be the one to say so.”

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Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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