Golden Globes 2012 Predictions: Best Actor

Brad Pitt and 'The Artist' star Jean Dujardin are our picks for Drama and Comedy prizes.
By Kara Warner


Brad Pitt in "Moneyball"
Photo: Columbia TriStar

We only have a couple of days until the madness of Sunday's Golden Globes is upon us and we (hopefully) get unpredictable acceptance speeches, winners and wardrobe choices. Until that big day, we can only make predictions as to who will take home the coveted trophies.

Here are our thoughts on the categories of Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama and Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy or Musical.

Best Actor - Drama
This category pits a pair of attractive, buzz-worthy superstars-in-the-making against three classically handsome and universally beloved leading men. Because these awards are handed out by the Hollywood Foreign Press, which is a small group of seasoned international journalists, they tend to award old favorites versus new blood.

Who Will Win: Brad Pitt for "Moneyball," not only because he is a critical and collective favorite, but because he hasn't attended the show or been nominated since 2009 for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Who Should Win: Pitt or George Clooney for "The Descendants." Ryan Gosling ("The Ides of March") and Michael Fassbender ("Shame") definitely deserve to win at some point, and they will — just not this year. Leonardo DiCaprio is also in the mix for "J. Edgar."

Best Actor - Comedy or Musical
One thing we appreciate most about the Globes is the recognition of films in the Comedy or Musical genre; too often these types of films get overlooked by other awards shows when they deserve as much attention as the dramatic pieces. And while the nominated performances in the category this year cannot be categorized as full-on comedies or musicals, they are decidedly lighter films, with dramatic elements woven in. An eclectic bunch, to say the least.

Who Will Win: Jean Dujardin for "The Artist." Remember this is the Hollywood Foreign Press we're talking about, and "The Artist" is a wonderfully well-received foreign film. In black-and-white. With no dialogue. It is artsy cinematic goodness, the HFPA's favorite. Dujardin is a slam-dunk.

Who Should Win: Dujardin, followed very, very closely by Joseph Gordon-Levitt for his wonderful warm and moving portrayal of a young cancer survivor in "50/50." Similar to what was mentioned about Gosling and Fassbender in the Drama categories, Gordon-Levitt definitely has a Globe win in his future.

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677242/golden-globes-best-actor-predictions-brad-pitt.jhtml

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SEC wants banks to say more on European debt exposure (Reuters)

Jan 9 (Reuters) ? The Securities and Exchange Commission has urged banks to publish more details about their exposure to European sovereign debt, a factor in the recent bankruptcy of the futures brokerage MF Global Holdings Ltd (MFGLQ.PK).

In guidance issued on Friday, the regulator's Division of Corporation Finance said disclosures by publicly-traded financial institutions have been "inconsistent in both substance and presentation."

It said this could make it harder for investors to discern how much risk the banks are taking, both individually and relative to each other, and how the exposures will affect operating results or financial health.

The SEC urged that banks reveal direct and indirect exposures "separately by country, segregated between sovereign and non-sovereign exposures."

It said they should also provide more details on hedging, through such instruments as credit default swaps, and sums they might need to raise if forced to close out their positions.

"In determining which countries are covered by this guidance, registrants should focus on those experiencing significant economic, fiscal and/or political strains such that the likelihood of default would be higher than would be anticipated when such factors do not exist," the SEC said.

The non-binding guidance was issued about two months after MF Global filed for bankruptcy protection, amid a liquidity crunch spurred by investor and customer worries about its $6.3 billion bet on sovereign debt from Belgium, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

MF Global had revealed that exposure in the prior week.

Worries about European debt exposure have also weighed on the stocks of Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and the investment bank Jefferies Group Inc (JEF.N).

The SEC is trying to learn more about some of the more opaque means that banks use to reduce the risk of credit losses, including derivatives and off-balance-sheet financings. This could reduce the threat of further liquidity shortfalls.

An SEC spokesman declined to comment.

Another regulator, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, has stepped up oversight of leverage at brokerages after concluding that MF Global had not been fully candid in disclosing its European debt exposure as little as one month prior to the bankruptcy.

Jon Corzine, a former New Jersey governor, stepped down as MF Global's chief executive on November 4, four days after the New York-based company's bankruptcy filing. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Additional reporting by Carrick Mollenkamp in New York and Sarah N. Lynch in Washington, D.C.; editing by Carol Bishopric)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/business/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120110/bs_nm/us_sec_banks_europeandebt

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UK spies won't face criminal charges for torture (AP)

LONDON ? British spies escaped immediate criminal charges over torture complicity Thursday, but the country's top prosecutor ordered a new investigation into claims that intelligence shared with Moammar Gadhafi's regime led to the torture or rendition of Libyans.

Prosecutors have been investigating claims of mistreatment by detainees who were eventually sent to the United States prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. Most of the torture allegations come from terror suspects who were either initially held in Pakistan and Afghanistan, or sent to other countries such as Morocco for interrogation.

Although the investigation into specific claims of collusion has ended, authorities said new evidence could force criminal investigations to be reopened. Civil actions may also emerge.

The agents have been accused of passing on information about detainees to their foreign captors but not of direct abuse.

The criminal investigation began in 2008 after former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohammed alleged that Britain was aware of his torture.

Mohamed, an Ethiopian who moved to Britain as a teenager and initially held in Pakistan, says he was also sent by the U.S. to Morocco where he was interrogated and brutally tortured. He alleges that he told an MI5 officer of his mistreatment in 2002.

Scotland Yard and the Crown Prosecution Service said that while they found that British intelligence agents provided information to U.S. officials about Mohammed and supplied questions for interrogators, there was insufficient evidence to suggest individuals knew there was a real risk or ill treatment or torture.

Prosecutors investigating a separate allegation of complicity also say they failed to find sufficient evidence ? mostly because they lacked access to a witnesses and the detainee who had been held by U.S. authorities at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Some 3,000 terror suspects are being held at the secretive detention facility where detainees lack access to lawyers. Human rights organizations have criticized U.S. authorities for a lack of transparency and legal protection for the detainees.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of MI5, has said she believes the U.S. deliberately misled its allies over its handling of detainees during the so-called war on terror.

Britain has already made payouts to 16 former detainees at Guantanamo. Among those alleged to have been part of the settlements were Mohamed, Bishar Al Rawi, Jamil El Banna, Richard Belmar, Omar Deghayes, Moazzam Begg and Martin Mubanga

British prosecutors and police said that while there was insufficient evidence to bring criminal charges now, cases could be reopened if new evidence emerges.

While the brunt of the investigation looks into claims of torture complicity brought by former Guantanamo detainees, it also looked at claims by two Libyans.

The two men allege that Britain shared intelligence information with the Gadhafi regime ? and because of that information ? they were sent back to Libya and tortured.

One of those men is Tripoli's military council commander Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, a former fighter in the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group which had opposed Gadhafi.

He claims both British and U.S. intelligence may have played a role in his 2004 detention in the Thai capital Bangkok and transfer to Tripoli. Documents uncovered during the fall of Tripoli disclosed the close working ties between Gadhafi's spies and Western intelligence officials.

"The Metropolitan Police Service has decided that the allegations raised in the two specific cases concerning the alleged rendition of named individuals to Libya and the alleged mistreatment of them in Libya are so serious that it is in the public interest for them to be investigated now," police and prosecutors said in their statement.

A separate government inquiry into intelligence sharing, complicity and rendition is expected to begin this year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120112/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_torture_charges

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Slippery when stacked: theorists quantify the friction of graphene

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Similar to the way pavement, softened by a hot sun, will slow down a car, graphene?a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon with wondrous properties?slows down an object sliding across its surface. But stack the sheets and graphene gets more slippery, say theorists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who developed new software to quantify the material's friction.

"I don't think anyone expects graphene to behave like a surface of a three-dimensional material, but our simulation for the first time explains the differences at an atomic scale," says NIST postdoctoral researcher Alex Smolyanitsky, who wrote the modeling program and co-authored a new paper* about the study. "If people want to use graphene as a solid-state lubricant or even as a part of flexible electrodes, this is important work."

With the capacity to be folded, rolled or stacked, graphene is super-strong and has unusual electronic and optical properties. The material might be used in applications ranging from electronic circuits to solar cells to "greasing" moving parts in nanoscale devices.

Friction is the force that resists the sliding of two surfaces against each other. Studying friction at the atomic scale is a challenge, surmountable in only the past few years. The NIST software simulates atomic force microscopy (AFM) using a molecular dynamics technique. The program was used to measure what happens when a simulated AFM tip moves across a stack of one to four graphene sheets (see image) at different scanning rates.

The researchers found that graphene deflects under and around the AFM tip. The localized, temporary warping creates rolling friction or resistance, the force that exerts drag on a circular object rolling along a surface. Smolyanitsky compares the effect to the sun melting and softening pavement in the state where he got his doctoral degree, Arizona, causing car tires to sink in slightly and slow down. The NIST results are consistent with those of recent graphene experiments by other research groups but provide new quantitative data.

Most significantly, the NIST study shows why friction falls with each sheet of graphene added to the stack (fast scanning also has an effect on the friction). With fewer layers, the top layer deflects more, and the friction per unit of AFM contact force rises. The top surface of the stack becomes less yielding and more slippery as graphene layers are added. By contrast, the friction of three-dimensional graphite-like material is virtually unaffected by deformation and rolling friction, and is due instead to heat created by the moving tip.

###

* A. Smolyanitsky, J.P. Killgore and V.K. Tewary. Effect of elastic deformation on frictional properties of few-layer graphene. Physical Review B. Posted online Jan. 9.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): http://www.nist.gov

Thanks to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116639/Slippery_when_stacked__theorists_quantify_the_friction_of_graphene

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AT&T's Watson coming to cars: won't mind if you ask it if you're there yet

AT&T aren't holding back on the news here at CES, today it's announced that it's leaping into bed with Panasonic and QNX to bring it's Watson speech-recognition technology to cars. Any cloud-connected car (it's happening, folks) that'll include the tech will respond to your voice commands to control your GPS or change channel when Rebecca Black starts playing on the radio. Initial testing of the tech is happening right now in Peachtree City, Georgia -- with Ma Bell providing the network and the others supplying the hardware. There's not too much more detail than that, but we can expect to see more of this in the coming months -- and we've got PR for you after the break.

Continue reading AT&T's Watson coming to cars: won't mind if you ask it if you're there yet

AT&T's Watson coming to cars: won't mind if you ask it if you're there yet originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/09/atandt-watson-for-cars-announced/

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Square Expands Retail Partnerships; Now Sold At OfficeMax And UPS Store Locations

SquareFor disruptive mobile payments startup Square, 2011 was a year of massive growth on many levels. The startup ended the year with over 1 million merchants using the mobile payments platform to accept credit cards (there are only 8 million merchants who accept credit cards in the US). In November, Square announced it was processing $11 million in payments per day (up from $4 million a day in July). Sir Richard Branson, Kleiner Perkins, Visa, and other investors poured over $100 million over the course of the year into Square, with the company's latest valuation pegged at $1 billion. And Square announced a number of new product innovations, including Card Case, a new iPad app and more. Not to mention the unveiling of ?retail deals with Apple, Wal-mart, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and Target. It's hard to imagine how Square could top such an eventful year. But according to COO Keith Rabois, 2012 will prove to be even more monumental for the mobile payments company. Square is kicking of 2012 with two new retail deals, OfficeMax and select UPS Store locations. With these new retailer partnerships, Square is now being sold at 10,000 retail locations, up from 9,000 at the end of last year. Square's credit card readers sell for $9.99 in stores but each purchaser can redeem a $10 credit to their bank account. According to Rabois, retail sales of Square has been a large driver of adoption. In fact, currently 80 percent of U.S. population is within 15 minutes of a Square device sold at a retail location.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/hD1oHO78Evs/

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Sharp 8K Super Hi-Vision LCD, 4K TV and Freestyle wireless LCD HDTV hands-on

We got a hint of Sharp's plans during its CES 2012 press conference two days ago, but really nothing can prepare you for the sight of the company's 7,680x4,320 resolution 85-inch Super Hi-Vision 8K LCD. No matter how close we got, we still couldn't see the pixels, and the video reels being demonstrated showed an almost unimaginable level of detail. The worst part of it was, seeing that first almost ruined the experience of checking out the ICC 4K demo at the other end of the booth. We can say this -- after seeing Super Hi-Vision there's really no going back. Make an appointment to see those 33MP broadcasts from the London Olympics now. Also a concept, but packed in a more conventional design, were Sharp's Aquos Freestyle LCDs. These featherweight flat-screens were also featured in the press conference, and pack wireless HD streaming inside capable of extending up to 98 feet. The 20-incher in the video above even has a battery good enough for two hours of completely wireless 1080p viewing. While Sharp called them concepts, the displays seemed incredibly polished, so check them out in the gallery below because you may see them on shelves someday.

Sharp 8K Super Hi-Vision LCD, 4K TV and Freestyle wireless LCD HDTV hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/11/sharp-8k-super-hi-vision-lcd-4k-tv-and-freestyle-wireless-lcd-h/

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threadnz: Whangarei Art Museum is holding a Fashionista exhibition opening with a local fashion parade next month.

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US expels Venezuelan diplomat (AP)

WASHINGTON ? The Obama administration is expelling Venezuela's consul general in Miami after allegations surfaced that she discussed possible cyber-attacks on U.S. soil while she was stationed at her country's embassy in Mexico.

The State Department said Sunday that it had declared the diplomat, Livia Acosta Noguera, persona non grata and given her until Tuesday to leave the country. Spokesman Mark Toner said the Venezuelan government was notified of the decision on Friday, giving her 72 hours to depart under standard diplomatic procedure,

There was no immediate reaction from the Venezuelan government.

Toner would not discuss the reason for the expulsion, but said it was done in accordance with Article 23 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. That article does not require the expelling state to explain its decision.

The move follows an FBI investigation into allegations contained in a documentary aired by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision last month. According to the documentary, "The Iranian Threat," Acosta discussed a possible cyber-attack against the U.S. government when she was previously assigned as a diplomat in the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico.

The documentary was based on recordings of conversations with her and other officials, and also alleged that Cuban and Iranian diplomatic missions were involved. Citing audio and video obtained by the students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Univision said Acosta was seeking information about the servers of nuclear power plants in the U.S.

After the documentary aired, the State Department said the allegations were "very disturbing" and officials said the FBI had opened an investigation into the matter.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said, "This is the appropriate step to take against the Venezuelan General Consul in Miami and highlights the threat posed by Iranian influence in Latin America."

In a statement issued Sunday, Ros-Lehtinen added, "This administration must be more proactive and engaged against the serious threat of Iranian activity in the region and this is a first step in that direction."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120109/ap_on_el_pr/us_us_venezuela

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