Deep freeze: Home sales to barely budge this spring

Diana Olick , CNBC.com ? ? ? 23 hrs.

The U.S. housing market will see no surge at the start of spring, as fewer buyers signed contracts to purchase existing homes in February. An industry index of so-called pending home sales fell 0.4 percent from January but is up 8.4 percent from February of 2012.

While the number of for-sale listings increased more than the seasonal norm, realtors still say a lack of supply is keeping many potential buyers from desired deals. Pending home sales are a one to two month forward indicator of closed sales.

"Only new home construction can genuinely help relieve the inventory shortage, and housing starts need to rise at least 50 percent from current levels," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors in a release. "Most local home builders are small businesses and simply don't have access to capital on Wall Street. Clearer regulatory rules, applied to construction loans for smaller community banks and credit unions, could bring many small-sized builders back into the market."

Sales of newly built homes fell nearly five percent in February, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. Inventories did rise, but only slightly, as the nation's home builders struggle with labor and land shortages, as well as higher costs for materials.

Pending home sales fell 2.5 percent month-to-month in the Northeast, rose 0.4 percent in the Midwest, fell 0.3 percent in the South and rose 0.1 percent in the West, according to the Realtors.

"The volume of home sales appears to be leveling off with the constrained inventory conditions, and the leveling of the index means little change is likely in the pace of sales over the next couple months," Yun added.

A better sign for March, after two weeks of declines, mortgage applications to purchase a home jumped 7 percent during the past week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. This as interest rates fell slightly, due to concerns over the banking crisis in Cyprus.

"The rebound in mortgage applications is a small piece of a brighter housing outlook," says Bob Walters, chief economist for Quicken Loans. "Interest rates are still at record lows despite their upward trend, and consumers are taking advantage of record home affordability. Look for more buyers to enter the market this spring and a more robust housing recovery to occur."

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653351/s/2a0e46eb/l/0L0Snbcnews0N0Cbusiness0Ceconomywatch0Cdeep0Efreeze0Ehome0Esales0Ebarely0Ebudge0Espring0E2B910A4579/story01.htm

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Ooyala Launches Discovery Guide For Personalized Channels, Hook Plugin For Android Mobile Video Viewing

Video distribution platform Ooyala wants to get more people watching more video on more devices. That's its job, right? Well, ahead of NAB, the company is launching a couple of features that will help do just that. That includes a new discovery engine that its clients can use to extend the amount of time people spend watching their videos.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Zi1fPg4w_mA/

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Who really shot Bin Laden?

Despite renewed controversy over who actually killed Osama bin Laden, the one member of SEAL Team Six who could settle the whole thing -- and the man who may have actually pulled the trigger that fateful night -- may never speak out, according to new reports and a former member of the elite unit.

"You're never going to hear from him," the ex-SEAL Team Six member told ABC News. "I've spoken to him. He's just the type that doesn't care about it... [He] doesn't think he did anything special. He simply pulled the trigger when he was supposed to. That's why he'll never go public."

The al Qaeda leader was killed almost two years ago, but questions over who exactly took him down reignited this week after a pair of reports -- first out of the special operations website SOFREP.com and then from CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen -- cited anonymous SEAL Team Six members who claimed that the account of "the Shooter" featured in a recent Esquire magazine article was, to quote SOFREP's source, "complete bulls**t."

Both CNN's and SOFREP's reports cite a single anonymous SEAL Team Six member each, and both point out apparent inconsistencies in the Esquire account.

In the Esquire article, an ex-SEAL, who the magazine only calls "the Shooter," claims he and another SEAL, the "point man," were alone on the stairs heading up to the third floor of bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Before they reached the third floor, the point man saw a man poke his head out of the bedroom doorway on the third floor so the point man unleashed a few shots in his direction. The shots missed, however, and when the pair reached the third floor, the point man peeled off to tackle two women who were in the hallway -- a move meant to protect his teammates from possible suicide bombs. The Shooter, then, was the first to enter the bedroom where he came face-to-face with bin Laden, standing just inches away, and was the one who shot him three times in the head before he could get to a nearby AK-47.

READ: Bin Laden Shooter Reportedly Speaks: 'That's Him, Boom, Done'

That account is markedly different from the first SEAL account of the raid, as written by the pseudonymous Mark Owen in the book "No Easy Day," which came out last fall.

In Owen's account, Owen, the point man and a third SEAL -- since identified as Esquire's "the Shooter" -- all went up to the third floor together after the point man's shots from the stairway. But when they entered bin Laden's room together, they found the al Qaeda leader already down and bleeding from the head. The point man's earlier shots had apparently connected.

The two women were inside the bedroom when the point man, having deemed the downed bin Laden was not a threat, tackled them into the corner. Owen and the Shooter then fired a few more bullets into bin Laden's dying body. Only later did the SEALs realize who they had killed, Owen said.

READ: Former SEAL on Why We Shot Bin Laden on Sight

Clouding the events further is another account written by "Black Hawk Down" author Mark Bowden called "The Finish" based on interviews with higher-level military officials up the chain of command all the way to President Obama. In that account, three SEALs ascended the steps together but bin Laden was alive and standing in the bedroom when the point man entered. The point man tackled the two women in the room and the second SEAL through the door, who Bowden did not identify, was the one that shot bin Laden first in the chest and then in the head.

Bowden's book, which was still in press when "No Easy Day" hit bookshelves, later carried an insert deferring to Owen's version of events.

Esquire Author: Claims 'Extraordinarily Speculative'

The unidentified SEALs who spoke recently to CNN and SOFREP said certain parts of Esquire's Shooter account don't add up, such as the idea the Shooter knew bin Laden was a threat because he had a weapon nearby. They said that none of the SEALs knew that an AK-47 was nearby until minutes after bin Laden was killed when they found it during a search of the compound. It was stashed above the bedroom doorway, where the Shooter would not have seen it as he entered, they said.

In addition, the Shooter's detractors claimed the men on the mission had been told to try not shoot bin Laden in the head for identification purposes, meaning the Shooter either ignored that directive when he was just feet from his target, or, in their opinion, it was more likely the point man's shots were the ones that killed bin Laden well before the SEALs knew who it was they had hit.

Phil Bronstein, the executive chairman of the Center for Investigative Reporting and author of the Esquire article, told ABC News Wednesday he "absolutely" stands by his original story and said arguments like those made by the other SEALs are "extraordinarily speculative... about what they would've done, what they shouldn't have done."

Bronstein also referred ABC News to Wednesday's statement from Esquire's Editor in Chief, David Granger, which defended the Esquire story, saying that facts of the original article had been vetted by SEAL Team Six members.

"Multiple members of SEAL Team Six confirmed the Shooter was one of those two [first on the top floor] and reported to us that it was known within the unit that the Shooter had fired the fatal shots," Granger wrote. "Other individuals briefed on the mission confirmed this to us."

A spokesperson for the U.S. Special Operations Command, which oversees the Joint Special Operations Command that launched the raid, told ABC News the command wouldn't be the one to settle the controversy anytime soon. He declined to comment on operations and said the official version of events probably wouldn't be declassified for more than two decades.

That leaves the point man, the only person in the room when bin Laden breathed his last who hasn't spoken publicly, to throw his hat in the ring. And according to the CNN and SOFREP reports and the ex-SEAL with whom ABC News spoke, he's not the type to trade the special warfare shadows for the media spotlight. Not "in a million years," the CNN report said.

One thing every account does agree on is that the point man was one of the heroes of that night for risking his life to tackle the two women closest to bin Laden.

"If either woman had on a suicide vest, he probably saved our lives, but it would've cost him his," Owen wrote in "No Easy Day." "It was a selfless decision made in a split second."

"He thought he was going to absorb the blast of suicide vests; he was going to kill himself so I could get the shot. It was the most heroic thing I've ever seen," the Shooter said in Esquire.

CLICK HERE to return to The Investigative Unit homepage.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-seal-could-settle-bin-154506551.html

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Griner has 3 dunks in final Baylor home game

Baylor center Brittney Griner (42) blocks a shot attempt by Florida State's Leonor Rodriguez (10) in the first half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor center Brittney Griner (42) blocks a shot attempt by Florida State's Leonor Rodriguez (10) in the first half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor's Brittney Griner (42) dunks over Florida State's Natasha Howard (33) in the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Florida State head coach Sue Semrau, bottom left, and the rest of the bench watch the final seconds of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament against Baylor, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey, left, is lifted off her feet by Brittney Griner as Griner leaves the court in the second half of a second-round game in the women's NCAA college basketball tournament against Florida State, Tuesday, March 26, 2013, in Waco, Texas. Baylor won 85-47. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

WACO, Texas (AP) ? Brittney Griner caught the pass going toward the basket, took one more step without a dribble and finished with a one-handed slam dunk.

As impressive as that play was, it was only the first of three dunks for Griner in her final home game for Baylor.

In a farewell to remember for Griner and four other Lady Bears seniors, before a partisan crowd that included former President George W. Bush, the 6-foot-8 senior star also had 33 points and a career-high 22 rebounds. The defending national champions beat Florida State 85-47 Tuesday night to advance to the NCAA round of 16 for the fourth year in a row.

"Tonight felt like senior night. Tonight was better," Griner said. "The three dunks. Just going out the way we did. Not everybody's lucky, and we were. We gave the crowd a good game."

After the first dunk, with about 4 minutes left in the first half for a 43-18 lead in a game that was quickly lopsided, Griner ran down the court with her mouth open while bobbing her head back and forth, and clearing enjoying the moment.

The former president may wish he had stayed in his seats behind the Baylor bench a little longer. Griner wasn't finished after that highlight play, dunking twice in a 79-second span before coming out of the game for good after Bush had already left.

Freshman guard Niya Johnson had her second assist of a Griner dunk with 7:46 left. Then with 6:27 left, moments after an assist of her own, Griner grabbed the rebound of a missed 3-pointer between several defenders and went back up with a reverse slam.

Griner, the first woman ever with three dunks in a game, came out during a timeout less than a half-minute later.

When Griner got to the bench, she wrapped her arms around coach Kim Mulkey and the two shared an extended hug. Griner even picked her coach up off the ground.

"You just hope she doesn't squeeze the air out of you so you don't pass out," Mulkey said. "Brittney just has a personality about her where she just enjoys life. She's a hugger. She's a people pleaser.

"You'll never see the likes of her again. You just won't," she said. "Not here, I don't think anywhere, ever will you see another Brittney Griner. You'll see great players and you'll see All-Americans, but I'm not sure we'll ever see it in my lifetime."

Mulkey fought back tears after they broke their embrace as the crowd of 9,652 continued to give Griner a loud and lengthy ovation.

Griner is the NCAA career blocks leader, the Big 12's top scorer and her 18 dunks are three more than the combined total of the other six women who have dunked in college.

The Lady Bears (34-1) won their nation's-best 57th home game in a row. They play Louisville (26-8) on Sunday night in Oklahoma City.

When the game was over, Griner thrust both arms into the air. She took a couple of laps around the arena floor, then jumped onto the back of Shanay Washington for a piggy-back ride before returning the favor to her close friend and former teammate, whose career ended early because of multiple knee injuries.

Since the senior trio of Griner, Kimetria Hayden and Jordan Madden got to Waco as freshmen together, Baylor is 71-2 at home. Griner has played in only one loss since she didn't participate in the last home loss, against Texas in the 2009-10 regular-season finale.

The Lady Bears have won every home game the past three seasons ? since point guard Odyssey Sims arrived and when transfers Destiny Williams and Brooklyn Pope, the other seniors, started playing.

Pope had 12 points against Florida State, while Sims had 11 and Hayden 10.

Leonor Rodriguez had 11 points and was the only player in double figures for Florida State (23-10), which at the end of the regular season was the only squad of the 343 Division I teams with five players averaging in double figures.

"Certainly, it's not an easy task to come into this environment and ask your kids to be able to block it all out," Seminoles coach Sue Semrau said.

Baylor needed less than 3? minutes to score the game's first 11 points, and led 51-20 by halftime.

As for Semrau's impression of Griner: "She is better in person. You've got to credit her development and growth."

While hard to imagine, Griner could have had more dunks.

Griner looked like she was going for another slam when she was fouled by feisty 5-foot-2 guard Yashira Delgado before getting off a shot. Right after that, the Lady Bears had three layups in a 37-second span.

There was also a pass from Pope that sailed over Griner's head when she was headed alone toward the basket with just over 11 minutes left in the game.

"Well, she could have had four (dunks), but I was stronger than I thought and I overthrew it," Pope said. "BG knew I wanted to pass it, but by the time I looked down and dribbled and looked up and threw it, she was further down than I thought."

The fans let out a huge collective moan as the ball went out of bounds.

They were cheering wildly only a few minutes later with a double dose of dunks.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-27-BKW-NCAA-Florida-St-Baylor-Folo/id-f47f2de06b9b42b7a8f9587ae9718120

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Malala Yousafzai, shot for defying Taliban, to write book

LONDON (AP) ? Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban as she returned home from school, is writing a book about the traumatic event and her long-running campaign to promote children's education.

Publisher Weidenfeld and Nicolson announced that it would release "I am Malala" in Britain and Commonwealth countries this fall. Little, Brown and Co. will publish the 15-year-old's memoir in the United States and much of the rest of the world.

"Malala is already an inspiration to millions around the world. Reading her story of courage and survival will open minds, enlarge hearts, and eventually allow more girls and boys to receive the education they hunger for," said Michael Pietsch, executive vice president and publisher of Little, Brown.

A Taliban gunman shot Malala on Oct. 9 in northwestern Pakistan. The militant group said it targeted her because she promoted "Western thinking" and, through a blog, had been an outspoken critic of the Taliban's opposition to educating girls.

The shooting sparked outrage in Pakistan and many other countries, and her story drew global attention to the struggle for women's rights in Malala's homeland. The teen even made the shortlist for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" in 2012.

Malala was brought to the U.K. for treatment and spent several months in a hospital undergoing skull reconstruction and cochlear implant surgeries. She was released last month and has started attending school in Britain.

Malala said in a statement Wednesday that she hoped telling her story would be "part of the campaign to give every boy and girl the right to go to school.

"I hope the book will reach people around the world, so they realize how difficult it is for some children to get access to education," she said. "I want to tell my story, but it will also be the story of 61 million children who can't get education."

Publishers did not reveal the price tag for the book deal.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/shot-pakistani-teen-malala-yousafzai-writing-book-100913748.html

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Register a Trademark in Brazil - The Brazil Business

26/03/13 - 18h02

Background

Trademarks began to be registered in Brazil in 19th century, due to a case of plagiarism and legal dispute that occurred in 1873. There was a tobacco company from Bahia named M?uron & Cia. It was the first one in this sector and had a product called Rap? Area Preta. After some time, a company from Pernambuco, named Moreira & Cia, launched a product named Rap? Area Parda, clearly alluding to the product of M?uron & Cia. Due to this situation, and trying to avoid that cases like that happened again, in 1875 there were created Juntas Comerciais, where, among other things, registered trademarks.

Companies and Trademarks

There are a lot of things that should be considered when starting a business. One of them is its trademark; besides having a plan to take care of the image of your company, it is also important to invest in the trademark registration.

The concept of trademark, according to the legislation, is a ?visually perceptible sign that identifies and distinguishes products and services?. Registering a trademark is simpler than getting a patent, and both of them must be done at INPI, the National Institute of Industrial Property. The trademark registered will be valid nationwide, and will be exclusive for the first person or company that registers it.

How to Register

The first thing that must be done is to check if your trademark can be registered, since there are some symbols that are very generic or usual and cannot be appropriated by only one person or company. Another advice given is that the motto of the company or the service is not included in the trademark.

Then it is necessary to see if your trademark has already been registered, since two trademarks can't be equal. Sometimes it is possible to register a trademark that is similar to another one already registered, but only in cases when the sectors of both companies are very different from each other.

The next step is to define what type of trademark yours will be. It is possible to choose between three options:

• Denominative: when there are only letters or words in the trademark
• Figurative: when there are only images in the trademark
• Combined: when there are both images and letters or words in the same trademark.

When choosing the category, it is necessary to define what types of products or services the trademark will protect. INPI uses the International Classification of Goods and Services, also known as Nice Classification, which has a list of 45 categories, each one with information about the different types of products and services. Categories from 1 to 34 cover products and from 35 to 45 cover services; there are also complementary lists, in an attempt to encompass the largest amount of products and services possible.

The register of the trademark can be made via internet, using INPI's website, through e-Marcas. There will be a fee of BRL 355 charged in the beginning of the process ? which can be lowered to BRL 140 when the request is made by a private person ? and there are other charges during the register. For instance, if there is wrong data in the documents of the process, BRL 70 are charged in order to correct it; or, to make a note telling that there's been a modification in the name of the company or in its address, BRL 35 are charged. The complete list of fees along the registration is available, in Portuguese, here.

Who Can Register the Trademark?

It is possible for the own authors, inventors or creators to register their trademarks and get their patents, as long as they have time to monitor the whole process. If that is not the case, it's advised to hire someone with knowledge of the bureaucracy of the system to represent you and initiate the process. There are different companies that offer this type of service at good prices.

The advantage of requesting your own register is the cost, that is lower. In terms of safety, though, it is better to hire a company that will have plenty of time to look carefully to the whole process.

About the author:

Ana Gabriela Verotti is a Journalism student at Faculdade C?sper L?bero. Her main interests are the relocation of the foreigners who come to Brazil and the legal procedures of the country.

Source: http://thebrazilbusiness.com/article/register-a-trademark-in-brazil?utm_medium=rss

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News in Brief: Impending death alters crickets? standards for mates

With a short time to live, parasite-infested females lose their preference for fast-chirping males

With a short time to live, parasite-infested females lose their preference for fast-chirping males

By Meghan Rosen

Web edition: March 26, 2013

Enlarge

UNWANTED WINGMAN

A parasitic fly sits next to a variable field cricket. To increase their chances of reproducing, fly-infested females may seek out and mate with less-desirable male crickets.

Credit: Courtesy of Oliver Beckers

With parasitic flies gorging on her guts and the end approaching, a variable field cricket may have only one thing to do: Find a mate.

Usually, female Gryllus lineaticeps prefer males with fast chirps. But when being eaten alive by fly larvae, female crickets don?t wait around for a snappy tune. Instead, they settle for slow-chirping sexual partners, evolutionary biologists Oliver Beckers of?Indiana University in Bloomington?and William Wagner Jr. of the?University of Nebraska-Lincoln?report in the April Animal Behaviour.

Parasitic flies seek out crickets as potential homes (and meal tickets) for their young. Before the fly larvae chew through crickets? bellies, female crickets have about a week to find a mate and lay eggs before dying.

To find out whether infestation lowered females? mating standards, Beckers and Wagner placed fly larvae on female crickets and then played slow and fast chirp recordings from loudspeakers set in separate corners of a square chamber. Healthy females walked toward the fast chirping sound about 80 percent of the time, while infested females split their devotion about equally.

?They don?t invest a lot of time and energy finding the super sexy guy,? says Becker. ?They?ll go for the average Joe.?

---

Suggested Reading

R. Cheung. Tree cricket song has note of variability. Science News. Vol.181, June 2, 2012, p.13. Available online: [Go to]

S. Milius. Sex, crickets and videotape. Science News Online, June 4, 2010. [Go to]

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/349221/title/News_in_Brief_Impending_death_alters_crickets_standards_for_mates

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