Downton Abbey-Inspired Cocktail Is Perfect Way to Toast the Crawleys






Celebrity Diners Club










02/17/2013 at 05:00 PM EST







The Crawley Classic


Courtesy Nick Van Tiel; Inset: Matthew Lloyd


Here's to Downton!

Season 3 of Downton Abbey is coming to a close on Sunday – and in case you need something to soothe your soul while you watch the final episode alone in the dark next to a box of tissues, we've got the perfect drink.

Then again, this fruity and bubbly concoction packs a punch, making it a delicious refreshment to serve at a festive viewing party. Just designate a guest your head butler, hand him the recipe and call out, "Carson, bring me another Crawley Classic!"

The gin cocktail – created by Nick Van Tiel, U.S. brand ambassador for Plymouth and Beefeater in honor of the PBS's award-winning drama – is something Lady Mary might sip upon whilst picking out the perfect pair of gloves for dinner. It's also fit for Thomas to enjoy on his day off or while he seethes behind close doors, plotting against O'Brien.

However you wish to enjoy the drink, do so in good company whether upstairs or down.

The Crawley Classic:

1 part gin
½ part sloe gin
½ part fresh grapefruit juice
½ part fresh lemon juice
½ part Turbinado simple syrup
Drizzle of black raspberry liqueur (float on top)
Splash soda/seltzer water

Shake and strain the first 5 ingredients into a long sling glass over fresh ice. Top with a little cracked ice, add a splash of soda and a drizzle of raspberry liqueur.

Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


Read More..

G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.


Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.


Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.


"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."


After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.


A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.


"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.


As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.


As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.


"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.


"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."


Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.


NO FISCAL TARGETS


The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.


The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.


"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.


A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.


The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.


"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."


The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.


Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.


QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.


A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.


"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.


Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.


On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".


It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.


(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)



Read More..

IHT Rendezvous: Taming the Runaway U.S. Budget

WASHINGTON — If Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on a deficit reduction plan, in two weeks automatic budget cuts will kick in that could severely weaken the U.S. economy and the American military.

As I write in my latest Letter From Washington, there are sensible ways to avoid this, though it is far from certain dysfunctional Washington can achieve them.

One reason is that so much of spending is now hard-wired into the system.

Representative John Dingell of Michigan is the only current member of Congress who served in 1962. Yet he would hard-pressed to recall the federal budget of a half century ago.
In those days, more than two-thirds, 67.5 percent, of spending was discretionary, meaning it had had to be appropriated annually. Almost half the budget went to defense and about 18 percent went to discretionary domestic programs.
Mandatory spending, or entitlements, was only a little more than a quarter of the budget, and more than half of that went for Social Security.
That picture is turned upside down in the current fiscal year. Almost 60 percent of the budget is mandatory spending with one $1 of every $5 going to Social Security and $1 in $7 to Medicare and Medicaid. Defense is almost 19 percent, a fraction of what it was in 1962, and domestic discretionary programs, at a little more than 16 percent, takes a smaller proportional bite out of the federal budget than they did a half century ago despite the creation of so many new initiatives.
This isn’t going to change. “Regardless of who is president, what will be spent in any given year will be determined by laws that are already set, some decades earlier,” says Stan Collender, an expert on the federal budget.
Despite the large budget deficits in recent years, interest on the debt payments, at 6.5 percent this year, is almost precisely what it was a half century ago. These payments, however, are expected to climb steadily over the next 50 years. Under current projections, Mr. Collender says, they are on track to become the fastest-growing area of the federal budget.

Read More..

Oscar Pistorius's Shocking Fall from Grace in 5 Clicks





After an inspiring ascension to stardom, the Olympic athlete faces murder charges in a baffling turn of events








Credit: Eddie Mulholland/REX USA



Updated: Friday Feb 15, 2013 | 10:00 AM EST
By: Kiran Hefa




Subscribe Now




Read More..

UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


Read More..

G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan


MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.


Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.


Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.


"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."


After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.


A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.


"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.


As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.


As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.


"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.


"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."


Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.


NO FISCAL TARGETS


The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.


The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.


"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.


A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.


The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.


"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."


The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.


Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.


QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.


A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.


"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.


Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.


On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".


It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.


(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)



Read More..

Vast Throng in Bangladesh Protests Killing of Activist


Pavel Rahman/Associated Press


Mourners in Bangladesh on Saturday carried the coffin containing the body of Rajib Haider, an organizer who was killed.







NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of people resumed mass demonstrations in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday, intensifying their demands for more severe punishment for war criminals from the country’s 1971 liberation war, while also demanding justice for the slaying of a blogger who had been a leading organizer of the protests.




The coffin bearing the body of Rajib Haider, an architect and blogger, was carried through the crowd in a public funeral at Shahbagh, a major intersection in Dhaka, the national capital. Bangladeshi television showed thousands of people kneeling in prayer, chanting slogans or waving banners bearing Mr. Haider’s image. The crowd were estimated at more than 100,000 people.


Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Mr. Haider’s family on Saturday to express her condolences. Mr. Haider’s body was discovered Friday night near his home, after he had been savagely stabbed. His family has told the Bangladeshi news media that they believed that he was killed for his role in the protests and his outspoken criticism of the fundamentalist Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami.


“Haider’s killing occurred at a time when the youngsters have awakened and united the whole nation,” the prime minister told Bangladeshi reporters during her visit to the family’s home. “Let me promise that we will not spare the killers.”


Saturday was the 12th consecutive day in which crowds of protesters have poured into the Shahbagh site for demonstrations. The movement began Feb. 5, when a coalition of bloggers called for protests against a verdict by the special tribunal prosecuting people accused of committing atrocities during Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.


The tribunal had handed down a life sentence to Abdul Quader Mollah, a Jamaat leader, after convicting him of murder, rape and torture. Protesters, however, demanded that he be sentenced to death, given the severity of his crimes. Many suspected that some sort of political deal had been reached to spare Mr. Mollah’s life.


The bloody legacy of the 1971 war continues to cast a shadow over Bangladesh: an estimated three million people were killed and many of those suspected of committing atrocities have never been prosecuted. Besides the protests in Dhaka, demonstrations have spread to other major cities and towns across the country.


By the weekend, protest organizers had agreed to reduce their round-the-clock demonstrations to only seven hours a day. But they reversed that decision after the killing of Mr. Haider, and the crowds quickly swelled with college students, workers and other citizens.


Meanwhile, followers of Jamaat-e-Islami have staged often violent protests against the government, which the party has accused of manipulating the tribunal as a way to go after political rivals.


The presiding justice of the tribunal has resigned over irregularities that arose over its proceedings.


Read More..

Samsung to reportedly take on BlackBerry with new enterprise platform









Title Post: Samsung to reportedly take on BlackBerry with new enterprise platform
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/samsung-to-reportedly-take-on-blackberry-with-new-enterprise-platform/
Link To Post : Samsung to reportedly take on BlackBerry with new enterprise platform
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

The Bachelor's Chris Harrison Believes Tierra Is 'Sincere'






The Bachelor










02/15/2013 at 04:55 PM EST







Tierra LiCausi and Sean Lowe


Rick Rowell/ABC


She was the villain of The Bachelor – and one of the biggest lightning rods in the ABC franchise's history – but the host of the show thinks Tierra LiCausi was genuine on the show ... for better or worse.

"She's sincere," Chris Harrison told PEOPLE Thursday. "People will think [the way she acts is] fake or it's made up. It's not. This is how she goes about finding a man. Once you shine a light on it and put a camera on it, it's not attractive, but that's how she does it."

And apparently she's found one! (Just not Bachelor Sean Lowe.)

"I can't wait to talk to her next week at the Women Tell All," Harrison said of LiCausi's engagement while attending the Club SI Swimsuit party at Vegas's 1 OAK. "It's not to back the bus over her. I kind of want to know what she sees."

Harrison is well aware of the public perception of LiCausi, but he can't rank her in terms of "all time Bachelor villains".

"She was her own character so I don't think I can rank them," he said. "I think it's the way she went out put the cherry on top when she said, 'No one's gonna take my sparkle away'. You just can't top that."

Read More..