Sunday Evening Dog Blogging: Reader Dogs (Theagitator)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

festivus zeno melanie amaro new air jordans jeff dunham young guns concord

Octomom at crossroads, broke and considering porn

FILE - In this May 19, 2010 file photo, "Octomom" Nadya Suleman poses for photos outside her La Habra, Calif., home. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - In this May 19, 2010 file photo, "Octomom" Nadya Suleman poses for photos outside her La Habra, Calif., home. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - A March 11, 2009 file photo shows Nadya Suleman raising her hand as she tries to elude paparazzi outside her home in La Habra, Calif. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)

FILE - This Sept. 25, 2010 file photo shows "Octomom" Nadya Suleman, holding 20-month-old daughter, Nariah Solomon as she talks to media about her yard sale and auction to raise money at her home in La Habra, Calif. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond, File)

FILE - This May 19, 2010 file photo shows Octomom, Nadya Suleman speaking to media outside her home in La Habra, Calif. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

FILE - A March 17, 2009 file photo shows photographers attempting to get photos while hanging onto a moving vehicle carrying octuplets mother Nadya Suleman as she returns to her home in La Habra, Calif. Suleman has filied for bankruptcy and her home is scheduled to be auctioned on Monday, May 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Jason Redmond, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? From Miracle Mom to Octomom and now, perhaps soon, Homeless Mom, the bizarre life of Nadya Suleman and her 14 children has been a subject that rarely fails to hit a nerve among those who have followed her personal soap opera.

With Suleman on the verge of losing her home and declaring bankruptcy this week with total debts as high as $1 million to everyone from her parents to her baby sitters to the water company, the Octomom Odyssey seems headed for darker days.

Beyond the fascination with her public foibles, such as posing topless in an obscure British magazine and talk of a solo porn film, is the very real concern about the welfare of her octuplets and six older children ? all borne from her zeal for in vitro fertilization.

Three of her six older children have disabilities for which she receives government financial support, Suleman has said. One is autistic, another has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and the third a speech impediment. The older children range in age from 5 to 10.

Soon, they could all be out of a home. The house where they have lived the past two years in the suburbs of Los Angeles is going on the auction block Monday

One thing that keeps driving interest in her is whether authorities should step in and take the children.

Child welfare officials visited the La Habra home last week following a complaint that her children were living in squalor. They took no action, and Orange County Social Services spokeswoman Terry Lynn Fisher said Thursday the law prevents her from even confirming or denying the visit.

Speaking in general terms, however, Fisher said it's not illegal for families to be homeless, to live in dirty homes or even in their cars, as long as that doesn't place their children in danger.

University of Southern California sociologist Dorian Traube said that given Suleman's notoriety, it would be surprising if the welfare agency hasn't been monitoring her and her children for some time.

"Here you have 14 children whose mom is living on welfare, who has now declared bankruptcy, who is going in the media and posing topless and who most recently said she would be willing to do porn films if it meant that she could provide for her children," said Traube, who has studied and written extensively about parent-child relationships.

If the Suleman saga is wrapping up, it would mark a sad end to something that, if only briefly, once seemed to some like the feel-good story of the year.

That was on Jan. 26, 2009, when Suleman's octuplets were born at a Southern California hospital and made medical history when they all survived. In the days that followed, she was reportedly showered with offers for book and movie deals, reality TV shows and a mountain of free baby stuff.

Things changed quickly, however, after it was learned that Octomom was also Single Mom and Welfare Mom. And that she already had six children under the age of 8 and was living on a combination of welfare checks, food stamps, student loans and her parents' largesse.

The movie, book and TV deals faded, and Suleman, now 36, turned to increasingly bizarre means of making money.

She endorsed birth control, but only for dogs and cats. That earned her $5,000 and a month's supply of vegetarian hot dogs and burgers from the animal rights group People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

She once told Oprah Winfrey that she hated the term "Octomom" but then had it emblazoned on the back of the robe she wore into a boxing ring last year for a "celebrity" match against Amy Fisher, who gained fame in the 1990s as the "Long Island Lolita" when she shot the wife of her much older lover in the face.

Over the years numerous people tried to help and offer advice to Suleman, including such TV personalities as "Dr. Phil" and money guru Suze Orman.

Instead, she went through one publicist and attorney after another. At one point she even spurned six months of free child care by the group Angels in Waiting that had been arranged by celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred. The group's co-founder, Linda Conforti-West, said at the time that Suleman seemed more interested in lining up a reality TV show than caring for the kids.

"Clients have to be willing to accept advice from those who have the experience and expertise to provide for them," Joann Killeen, Suleman's first publicist, said Wednesday. "I think it's obvious why she's gone through so many managers and attorneys and professional staff in the three years she's been Octomom. Clients who don't listen don't make good clients."

Suleman declined to be interviewed for this story.

"She is not interested in having any filming or doing any interviews of any sort, especially entering her home and filming her kids for no compensation," said her current spokeswoman Gina Rodriguez, whose other clients have included Tiger Woods mistress Joslyn James, reality TV star Tila Tequila and Lindsay Lohan's mother, Dina.

Rodriguez didn't say where Suleman plans to move after the house is auctioned but said she is looking forward to the next chapter of her life.

"She is excited about moving. She has been preparing," she said in an email to The Associated Press.

Documents filed in court Monday for Suleman's bankruptcy case list assets of no more than $50,000 and debts of $500,000 to $1 million. Her creditors include her parents, her gardener, a babysitting company, private school, pest control company, mortgage holder and state Department of Motor Vehicles, among others.

Orange County businessman Amer Haddadin, who sold Suleman's father the four-bedroom home that's about to be auctioned, said he's owed $483,000, including 11 months of unpaid rent and a $450,000 note that Suleman never paid off. He says he has no sympathy for her, adding her actions led his mortgage holder to foreclose on him and destroyed his credit.

"She's not only using the system, she's abusing the system," Haddadin said.

Lately, Suleman has made money posing topless for the British magazine and has a possible porn deal in the works, although the latter comes with a catch. She had said she'll only do it if, to put it delicately, she is the only one being filmed. It would be what the industry calls a solo tape.

That led Vivid Entertainment Group co-founder Steven Hirsch, who once offered Suleman $1 million to do a porn film, to say he doubts his company would be interested in working with her in the future.

"I'm not sure that after that's released that it would make sense," he said.

Associated Press

game change own stacy francis tournament brackets 2012 ncaa basketball tournament walt what time is it

Facebook IPO poised to be America's biggest ever

Yesterday Facebook estimated it would sell shares of the company for between $28 to $35 ? enough for a valuation of between $77 billion and $96 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. To put that in perspective, Facebook is about to be the most valuable US company ever to go public: United Parcel Service, by comparison, heretofore the record holder,?went public in 1999 with a valuation of $60.2 billion.?

Skip to next paragraph

"Many people want to own this unique company, and it has the momentum,"?Kathy Smith of?Renaissance Capital told USA Today. She's right: Facebook has grown at an astonishingly rapid clip since it launched in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room ? first to a quarter million users, then a half million, and now, in 2012, to 900 million. Smart money is on the site cresting a billion users before the year is out.?

So is it all smooth sailing for Facebook? Well, not necessarily. As the Wall Street Journal points out, there is some reason to be skeptical about the IPO: revenue at Facebook is down six percent from the past quarter. And CEO Mark Zuckerberg must demonstrate that his business model will be effective in the longterm.?"There's still no good understanding for what advertisers are paying for,"?Morningstar analyst Rick Summer told the Journal today.?

In order to help gin up excitement, and to convince investors that Facebook deserves the high valuation, Facebook exec are meeting with analysts and bankers at institutions such as JP Morgan, which is helping to underwrite the IPO, MSNBC reports. Facebook has also released a long pitch video, featuring a litany of Facebook execs, including Zuckerberg.?In the video, COO Sheryl Sandberg stresses the reach of Facebook.?

Every day on Facebook is like the season finale of American Idol, "times two," Sandberg trumpets in the video.?

For more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut.?

dr dog ke$ha earl csco big bend national park leon russell meredith vieira

France worries that unsavory presidential campaign has divided country

Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to play to the far right for votes in the presidential election has changed the French political landscape in a way many consider damaging.

Creating a small sensation on the eve of French presidential elections, Francois Bayrou ? a candidate himself until a few weeks ago ? announced he would vote for Socialist Francois Hollande in elections tomorrow.?The "centrist" said that although he?disagrees with Mr. Hollande?s economic platform, the national unity that the frontrunner stresses is more important.?

Skip to next paragraph

Bayrou's move underscores what has become a central issue in French elections: the divisive atmosphere of the campaign and the rise of speech that often stigmatizes minorities.? And his support is not insignificant, as he scored 9 percent of votes in the first round.

The rise of the far right has forced President Nicolas Sarkozy to fish ardently in waters previously considered forbidden in polite society for a chance at re-election. He needs the voters of Marine Le Pen, the anti-Islam anti-Europe, nationalist, far-right candidate who defied expectations in the first round, scoring 18 percent of the vote.

At his May 1 rally in Paris, Sarkozy spoke as the champion of ?real labor? ? veiled words of approbation for those on welfare, or without jobs. His team earlier leaked a false rumor that challenger Francois Hollande was the favorite of ?700 mosques? in France. He has described someone in public as ?someone who looks like a Muslim? and has legitimized the far-right by encouraging their vote.

Much has been made in this election campaign about the personal dislike French feel for Sarkozy's flamboyant style. But the longer term issue for France, now being raised by figures on both the left and the traditional right, is his ongoing appeal to base instincts and voters' fears.

Articulating his reason for backing Hollande, which has caused outrage among some in his camp,?Bayrou said today, "The line that Nicholas Sarkozy chose is violent. It is in contradiction to our values and Gaullist values as well as those of the republicans and the social right.?

Unsurprisingly, the left has been critical as well, coining the term ?Sarkozyism? to describe antagonizing techniques that create divisions among different sections of society. It is a ?technique which consists of pitting the French against one another,? as Paul Quil?s, a former Socialist minister, has said.

nfl scores nfl scores gene hackman pineda john edwards heart condition mena suvari joyful noise

Stock Market Investing ? Where Do You Start?

I?ve been on the investment recreation for some time now and I?ve reached the stage the place I prefer to invest in the stock market by way of individual stocks reasonably than collective investment autos like unit or investment trusts. The primary cause for this is that I might favor not to pay different folks to do one thing that I know I can do higher myself.

Of course, it wasn?t always this way. It?s taken me 1 / 4 of a century of expertise enjoying the markets to evolve my very own worthwhile funding strategy. When I first started out although, like most individuals, I did not have the arrogance to take my own decisions. More necessary than that, I didn?t have a large lump sum to play with to be able to diversify my holdings sufficiently and build in a measure of safety. I suspect that?s the place that most newcomers to the world of stock market investing find themselves in.

So I am not ashamed to admit that my first foray into the markets all these years in the past was by way of one of many common financial savings schemes run by the large investment trusts. Twenty-5 years on I?d need to say that if I were simply starting out on my investment journey now, I might do precisely the identical thing.

Why Funding Trusts?

Observe that I selected funding trusts, not unit trusts. Although these two investment vehicles both permit buyers to access a diversified portfolio of stocks with relatively small quantities of money, in my view, funding trusts have three clear benefits over their unit trust rivals:

1. Their management costs are lower.

2. Their long run performance is mostly far better.

3. They can usually be bought at a discount to their web asset value.

So should you?re now scratching your head and questioning why, regardless of all these advantages, you have by no means heard of funding trusts, you are in very good company. Although issues are slowly changing, funding trusts stay a closed e book to most buyers because, not like their unit belief cousins, they don?t pay commission to financial advisors. Consequently, they?re nearly ignored by the financial press. Let?s face it, excessive commissions equal excessive advertising budgets and because the Sunday papers depend on promoting to spice up sales, they?re going to happily present beneficial coverage in their cash dietary supplements to merchandise promoted by high-spending advertisers. That feels like a pleasant cosy relationship between the massive funding homes and the monetary media, but it leaves the small investor out in the chilly as traditional ? deprived of information about considered one of in the present day?s best-kept funding secrets. Hopefully, I am about to assist change all that.

If I?ve satisfied you that funding trusts are value investigating further, and you?re able to put your foot on that first rung of the investment ladder, then I?ve dug out just a few choices below which I believe would make perfect options for first-time investors like you. I?ve chosen a variety of vintage trusts with impeccable pedigrees from the broad world progress sector. These trusts offer a really low-cost strategy to access a broad, globally diversified portfolio. Rest assured that all of them provide a regular monthly financial savings option for investors of more modest means:

Foreign & Colonial Investment Belief

1. First up is a trust that was my first selection once I started investing a quarter of a century ago and it is nonetheless going strong. It?s the Foreign and Colonial Funding Trust, it allows minimum monthly savings of ?50 per month and it is presently trading at a discount of 9.6% to web assets ? which implies that for every ?90.forty invested, you are getting ?100 price of shares. Now these reductions can fluctuate a bit. It may be that subsequent month the discount widens to eleven% or 12% ? which simply means that in the event you?re an everyday monthly investor, you get even more discounted shares on your money. Alternatively, the low cost might slim or even slip over right into a premium as sometimes occurs if a belief is particularly fashionable with traders ? thus giving your investments a lift in case you purchased at a discount. Over the long term, nevertheless, whether or not you are a lump sum investor or a regular saver, it might be onerous to go mistaken with this trust as, during the last three years, your funding would have increased by 52.7% ? not bad, although past returns are not any assure of a similar performance in future.

Witan

2. A substitute for the Foreign and Colonial Belief, however one which does nearly the same job, is a belief referred to as Witan. It is carried out even higher than the Foreign and Colonial Belief with a return of 64.2% to investors during the last three years. It is also barely cheaper, trading at a 10.14% low cost to NAV (Internet Asset Value). On paper then, a barely better bet. Once more, you can begin saving from simply ?50 per month.

SAINTS

3. Finally, you can check out another outdated and properly established stalwart, this time from the worldwide development and income category, and that is SAINTS, or the Scottish American Funding Trust. This too permits minimum month-to-month investments of ?50 monthly by way of its mum or dad company, Baillie Gifford, and has carried out outstandingly during the last 3 years, returning 107.6% to its lucky investors. The draw back is that this efficiency did not go unnoticed and the belief now stands at a premium to web assets of 4.1%. Should you?re looking for earnings although, this trust presently yields over four%, so not a foul alternative to a constructing society offered you?re ready to threat your capital.

Whichever option you choose, offered you are in the markets for the long term, as you need to be if you want to make first rate returns, I believe it might be very tough to lose cash with any of those trusts. That is doubly true when you?re making regular month-to-month investments as you get the advantage of pound value averaging, which implies you purchase extra shares when prices dip, thus growing your returns when shares subsequently rise. A number of years down the road, once you are feeling you have gathered enough in these effectively-diversified, low price trusts, you can begin dabbling in individual shares like I did.

So for those who have been pondering of dipping a toe in as we speak?s somewhat choppy funding waters, however either do not yet have a large sufficient lump sum, or are too scared to dive in and commit it proper now, then I don?t suppose you can do worse than observe my instance: play it protected and set up an funding belief month-to-month financial savings scheme.

Until Subsequent Time, Completely satisfied Investing

jennifer lawrence black panthers mauritania mark sanchez obama open mic jefferson county colorado extenze

Samsung Galaxy S III specs

As Samsung announces its latest flagship smartphone, take a quick look under the hood and see what's powering the new Galaxy S III --

• Quad-core Samsung Exynos chip @ 1.4 GHz, as previously announced
• HSPA+21 and LTE versions
• 4.8-inch HD SuperAMOLED 720x1280 screen
• 8MP / Front 1.9MP camera (720p video recording)
• 2100mAh battery
• 1GB RAM
• Wifi Channel Bonding
• Bluetooth 4.0(LE)
• Accelerometer, Notification light, Digital compass, Proximity sensor, Gyro, NFC, Barometer
• 1080p video playback
• Various multimedia codecs supported
• MHL/DLNA
• Dimensions: 136.6 x 70.6 x 8.6mm
• Weight: 133 grams
• Available in blue and white.

san diego chargers j.r. martinez lance ball lance ball kansas city chiefs chiefs kc chiefs

Post iPhone ergo propter iPhone

"Post hoc ergo propter hoc" is Latin for "after it, therefore because of it". That it comes from Latin should indicate how far back that particular fallacy can be traced. Yet ever since Apple launched the original iPhone in 2007, it has been the point of comparison for every flagship phone, from every manufacturer, on every carrier, that's followed. Just like "post hoc ergo propter hoc" isn't often true, "post iPhone ergo propter iPhone" isn't always true. Yet time after time, phone after phone, everything from hardware design to software features is taken as derived from, or as being a response to, the iPhone.

kony kony 2012 jim irsay the new ipad apple announcement indianapolis colts joseph kony