Lockheed wins $1 billion UK MoD contract (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) said on Tuesday it had won a 642 million pound ($1 billion) contract to upgrade Britain's fleet of Warrior armored vehicles, supporting around 600 British jobs.

Lockheed Martin said, under the Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme (WCSP), it would be responsible for upgrades and enhancements extending the vehicles' service life to beyond 2040.

"The WCSP will provide a highly capable vehicle to fulfill the British Army's current and future requirements. It will also bring significant job opportunities for our team of suppliers based here in the UK," Alan McCormick, managing director in Lockheed Martin UK's Ampthill business, said.

The total cost of the upgrade is around 1 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) of which Lockheed Martin can expect to book about two-thirds with the remainder going to other contractors.

Reuters had reported earlier on Tuesday that the deal would be confirmed when British Prime Minister David Cameron and the new Defense Secretary Philip Hammond visited Lockheed Martin's plant in Bedford, north of London.

"The upgraded Warriors will give commanders and their soldiers greater flexibility and firepower," Hammond said. "It also represents a great boost to British industry - sustaining jobs, skills and capability within the UK's armored vehicle sector."

Only Lockheed was left in the running to carry out the work after British defense group BAE Systems (BAES.L) was eliminated earlier this year by the Ministry of Defense.

($1 = 0.627 British Pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones, Mohammed Abbas and Neil Maidment; editing by Paul Hoskins and Matt Scuffham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111025/bs_nm/us_lockheed_uk_warrior

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Obama tells students of plans to ease loan burden (Reuters)

DENVER (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to take steps to ease the burden of student loans, potentially helping cash-strapped college graduates in a tough U.S. economy.

"I want America to have the most highly skilled workers doing the most advanced work. I want us to win the future," Obama told an audience of about 4,000 students at the University of Colorado-Denver.

"So that means we should be doing everything we can to put a college education within reach for every American."

In line with an announcement on Tuesday, Obama said he planned to speed up a plan to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income, bringing it forward to start in 2012 instead of 2014.

The White House estimates the loan changes could cut monthly payments for 1.6 million graduates.

Americans owe more on student loans than on outstanding credit card debt, and total loans outstanding are slated to exceed $1 trillion this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The rise in private student lending and growing debt defaults have also been highlighted by Occupy Wall Street protesters.

Under the plan, student debt will also be forgiven after 20 years, compared with 25 years under current law.

More than 36 million Americans have federal student loan debt, but only 450,000 have taken advantage of the existing income-based repayment program.

Obama will also make changes to allow 6 million students to bundle together certain federal loans to allow a single monthly payment. The move would reduce the risk of default caused by juggling several debts.

The option will be open from January. Those that take it up will also get a 0.5 percentage point cut in the interest rate on some of their loans, lowering monthly payments and potentially saving them hundreds of dollars in interest.

The loans initiative was the third such move by Obama in as many days, following action to aid homeowners and boost hiring of military veterans. The White House wants to show Obama is an activist president battling a "do-nothing" Congress.

The loan changes do not require approval by Congress.

Republican lawmakers blocked a $447 billion jobs plan put forward by Obama last month, citing among other reasons its increases in some taxes.

Students helped push Obama into the White House in 2008. As he campaigns for re-election in 2012, Obama's public approval ratings have fallen near 40 percent, the low of his presidency, largely because of discontent with his economic stewardship.

Obama was wrapping up a swing through western states that will be vital to his re-election campaign in 2012.

(Writing by Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/economy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111026/pl_nm/us_obama_students

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Rina strengthens, aims at Mexico coastal resorts

Fishermen secure their boat in anticipation of Hurricane Rina's arrival in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday Oct. 25, 2011. Mexican authorities set up emergency shelters and cruise ships shifted course on Tuesday as Rina strengthened off the Caribbean coast on a projected track that would carry it whirling through Cancun and the resort-filled Mayan Riviera, Mexico's most popular tourist destination. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

Fishermen secure their boat in anticipation of Hurricane Rina's arrival in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday Oct. 25, 2011. Mexican authorities set up emergency shelters and cruise ships shifted course on Tuesday as Rina strengthened off the Caribbean coast on a projected track that would carry it whirling through Cancun and the resort-filled Mayan Riviera, Mexico's most popular tourist destination. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

Fishermen secure their boat in anticipation of Hurricane Rina's arrival in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday Oct. 25, 2011. Mexican authorities set up emergency shelters and cruise ships shifted course on Tuesday as Rina strengthened off the Caribbean coast on a projected track that would carry it whirling through Cancun and the resort-filled Mayan Riviera, Mexico's most popular tourist destination. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

Fishermen work in their boats as hurricane Rina approaches the area in Cancun, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011. Mexican authorities set up emergency shelters and cruise ships shifted course on Tuesday as Hurricane Rina strengthened off the Caribbean coast on a projected track that would carry it whirling through Cancun and the Mayan Riviera. (AP Photo/Israel Leal)

This image provided by NASA show Hurrican Rina, bottom center, acquired at 12:31 a.m. EDT Wednesday Oct. 26, 2011. Rina's maximum sustained winds remained steady at about 110 mph (175 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, making it a Category 2 storm. Forecasters predict it will strengthen as it nears the Mexican coast Wednesday night before rolling over the island of Cozumel, a popular dive spot and cruise-ship port, then along the coast to Cancun. (AP Photo/NASA)

CANCUN, Mexico (AP) ? Authorities evacuated fishing communities on Mexico's resort-studded Caribbean coast and some tourists began to leave, as Hurricane Rina took aim at Cancun and the island of Cozumel on Wednesday.

Hundreds of residents from the fishing town of Punta Allen, south of Tulum, were taken to emergency shelters and a smaller group was evacuated from the low-lying hamlet of Banco Chinchorro Tuesday, and cruise ships shifted their routes in the face of expected storm surges, waves and heavy rains from Rina.

Rina's maximum sustained winds remained steady at about 110 mph (175 kph) early Wednesday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami, making it a Category 2 storm. Forecasters predict it will strengthen as it nears the Mexican coast Wednesday night before rolling over the island of Cozumel, a popular dive spot and cruise-ship port, then along the coast to Cancun.

Soldiers, marines and state police arrived with vehicles in Punta Allen on Tuesday to evacuate about 275 residents and take them to a storm shelter at a middle school; about 500 people are expected to be evacuated there in total, according to Quintana Roo state Civil Defense Director Luis Carlos Rodriguez.

The coastal area around Tulum is dotted with Mayan ruins, and further north is Playa del Carmen, another popular spot for international tourists and the departure point for ferries serving Cozumel.

State Tourism Director Juan Carlos Gonzalez Hernandez said there were about 83,000 tourists in the state, with about 45,000 of those on a stretch of coast south of Cancun that includes Tulum and Playa de Carmen, and almost 28,000 in Cancun.

There were only about 1,719 tourists in Cozumel, and many of them were leaving, Gonzalez Hernandez said.

"In the case of Cozumel, which could be hit hardest, people are leaving of their own accord and are cutting their reservations short," said Gonzalez Hernandez.

But some were planning to ride out Rina.

Douglas Baird, 40, of Glasgow, Scotland, said he had been in Playa del Carmen for 11 days on a tour with 10 other people. He plans to stay for the five remaining days of his vacation.

"I'll go to the bar," he said about his plans for waiting out his first hurricane. "It won't be a problem."

But Wendy Powers, a 49-year-old from Louisiana who was taking a stroll at a shopping mall with two other friends, said she hadn't heard anything about the storm until a reporter told her about it. Still, she said she wasn't worried.

"We had Katrina and we survived it," Powers said. "If the one coming here is a category 1 or 2, we could have a beach party."

In Cancun's hotel zone, a string of pickup trucks hauled small boats and jet skis away from marinas, while workers at shopping malls began boarding up windows.

At least eight cruise ships were changing itineraries away from the storm's path, said Carnival Cruise Lines spokesman Vance Gulliksen.

Three cruise ships from the company Norwegian Cruise Line and one from Royal Caribbean have canceled their Friday port of call in the area, said Hiram Toledo, Quintana Roo port administrator.

The area was badly damaged by Hurricane Wilma in 2005, when Cancun's famous white-sand beaches were largely washed away. Insurance officials estimated total damage at $3 billion.

State officials said they were readying more than 1,100 shelters that could handle nearly 200,000 people, though so far there was no word of any planned evacuations.

The hurricane was centered about 235 miles (380 kilometers) south-southeast of Cozumel early Wednesday and was moving west at near 5 mph (7 kph), the Hurricane Center said. A hurricane warning is in effect for the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from north of Punta Gruesa to Cancun.

Forecasters said Rina was likely to strengthen into a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of about 115 mph (185 kph) later Wednesday.

The forecast track shows it curving east toward Cuba by the weekend, but senior hurricane specialist Michael Brennan at the hurricane center said it could also move toward southern Florida.

___

Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Mexico City contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-10-26-Tropical-Weather/id-353e1d438fd2419da9d96c278f7bbaa3

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IPhone 4S first phone for low-power Bluetooth

NEW YORK (AP) ? The iPhone 4S has a little-heralded feature that makes it unique among phones, at least for a while: It can talk to a new class of wireless devices, such as watches and heart-rate monitors.

The phone, which went on sale Oct. 14, is the first to have a new type of Bluetooth chip that can connect using very little power. The chip uses so little power that it can go into devices that are powered only by a standard "button cell" battery common in watches. The battery can last for years.

Bluetooth Special Interest Group, the industry group behind Bluetooth, on Monday said these small devices will be labeled "Bluetooth Smart." More fully featured devices such as the iPhone that can communicate with them and with other, standard Bluetooth devices will be labeled "Bluetooth Smart Ready."

Casio of Japan has said it will introduce a watch in late December that's Bluetooth Smart. It will be able to link to a smartphone and alert the wearer to incoming emails and text messages by beeping and vibrating.

Sony Ericsson had a watch five years ago that used regular Bluetooth to do the same things the Casio watch will be able to do. But the Sony Ericsson watch weighed nearly half a pound because of its big, rechargeable battery, and it lasted only three weeks on a charge.

Nordic Semiconductor, a Norwegian company, has said that one of its Bluetooth Smart chips will go into a belt that measures its wearer's heart rate and relays it to a smartphone.

Other possible Bluetooth Smart devices include glucose sensors for diabetics and home-automation sensors that could, for instance, tell a phone if all the windows in the home are closed, said Suke Jawanda, chief marketing officer of the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

Besides the iPhone, the soon-to-be-released Razr from Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. will also be Bluetooth Smart Ready, Jawanda said. It's a touchscreen smartphone that doesn't have much in common with the old clamshell Razrs.

A few laptops already are already Bluetooth Smart Ready.

Bluetooth Smart was developed by Nokia Corp., which called it "Wibree." It yielded the technology to the Bluetooth SIG in 2007 to spread its adoption.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-10-24-US-TEC-TechBit-Smart-Bluetooth/id-b820126fc499468090d16e19af230ab7

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UK lawmakers say they'll defy gov't over Europe (AP)

LONDON ? Prime Minister David Cameron pleaded with Conservative Party lawmakers on Monday to drop their support for a national referendum on Britain leaving the European Union, comparing the bloc and its economic crisis to a house on fire that needs everyone's help.

Some 60 legislators in Cameron's Conservative Party have signed a motion calling for a referendum on whether Britain should remain in the EU, leave it, or renegotiate membership, but the government has ordered its lawmakers to vote against it or face disciplinary action.

Cameron urged his party's lawmakers not to vote for a referendum, saying the "timing is wrong," given the economic crisis in the euro zone.

"When your neighbor's house is on fire, your first impulse should be to help them to put out the flames ? not least to stop the flames reaching your own house," Cameron told the House of Commons. "This is not the time to argue about walking away, not just for their sakes, but for ours."

Underscoring the emotion of the issue, after several hours of debate in the House of Commons, Conservative lawmaker Adam Holloway resigned his unpaid post as an aide to Europe minister David Lidington so he could vote for a referendum.

Monday's vote, which was triggered by a 100,000-signature public petition on the prime minister's website, is nonbinding. It will fail anyway because the other main parties oppose it, but any rebellion would be an embarrassment for Cameron.

The issue of Europe has long divided his Conservative Party, and also split Britain's governing coalition. Its junior partners, the Liberal Democrats, are strongly pro-Europe.

Britain is a member of the 27-nation EU, but is not among the 17 countries that use the euro single currency, and are struggling to hammer out a bailout for indebted member Greece.

Conservative lawmaker Bernard Jenkin, one of those backing a referendum, said most British people want a vote on EU membership.

"David Cameron is not just taking on the Conservative Party, he's taking on the whole of public opinion. The vast majority think it's time we had a say on our membership."

Cameron said he agrees with the need for fundamental EU reform and is committed to "bringing back more powers" from Brussels. But he said it is in Britain's national interest to remain part of the EU.

"Those who are supporting today's motion, but don't actually want to leave the EU, I say to you this: I respect your views, we disagree about ends, not about means, I support your aims," the prime minister told lawmakers. "Like you, I want fundamental reform, like you I want to refashion our membership of the EU so that it better serves our nation's interests. The time for reform is coming, that is the prize, let us not be distracted from seizing it."

Foreign Secretary William Hague, a longtime euroskeptic, said that with the EU mired in a debt crisis and Britain's economy fragile, a referendum "would create additional economic uncertainty in this country at a difficult economic time."

"Europe is undergoing a process of change and in an in-out referendum people would want to know where the change was going to finish up before they voted," Hague told the BBC. "Clearly an in/out referendum is not the right idea."

____

Associated Press Writer Jill Lawless contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111024/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_europe

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Eric Payne: The Unexpected Joys of Fatherhood (Huffington post)

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Successful screenwriter works temp gigs to pay the bills (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) ? The writer was on top of the world.

His first movie had grossed more than $80 million, and he had sold another. Want a Hollywood dream? He had it.

At least, that's what he figured.

Today, the 40-year-old screen scribe -- who fears notoriety from this article will exacerbate his employment situation should he be identified -- is working a two-week temporary job in sales.

"I didn't have any backend points and I knew that the residuals wouldn't last forever," he told TheWrap. "But you assume that once you have a hit movie out, more work will fall into place."

The economy changed that.

"I was doing fine for a while, and then it seemed like after the writers strike, studios and production companies used that as an excuse to cut in-house deals and use that as an excuse not to pay writers for anything."

He suddenly found himself competing with A-list writers for B-list jobs.

"A lot of the jobs I used to go up for, A-list, like super A-list writers are going for those jobs right now," he said. "In the past, they wouldn't have. There was enough of every level to go around."

Now, he said, with studios cutting back on the number of movies they make, it's a tougher world.

"They used to make films in the 5-to-10 million dollar range," he said. "Now everybody wants to do either the super micro-budget stuff, they want to make remakes or sequels, or they want to make tentpoles. A lot of those middle-ground movies that filled the marketplace, those assignments are gone now."

And he said studios have used the economy as a justification for their own greed.

"The studios aren't hurting," he said. "They're just trying to keep as much money as possible."

In addition, he said, "Studios used to buy and develop projects a lot more. Now, you almost have to have the project developed and packaged to get it picked up."

He said that when he was writing full time, "there were a lot more meetings, there were a lot more projects in development, there were a lot more deals being done."

But with the slowing economy, there were fewer projects.

And then, he said, "the residuals shrunk up, some projects didn't turn out like we had hoped they would, a couple of projects went direct to DVD."

He still has a manager and an agent, and he tries not to be discouraged.

Yet he finds that studios and production companies "basically want us to develop a project with them for free, and spec it out in the hopes that they're going to buy it down the road."

And while it's hard to do that while also working temp gigs to scrape enough money by to pay the bills, he does it. Still, he's afraid to let many people know how bad his situation is.

"Most people don't know, because obviously it's a business of perception," he said.

Even his family and old friends don't know how tight things have become. They figure he made a fortune.

"But when you only get a payment for your script and some residuals on DVDs -- which are dropping -- that's not going to last you long," he said. "This obviously isn't where I'd hoped to be at this point in my life, but I'm not depressed about it, or bent out of shape."

Instead, he copes by modifying his expectations.

"I adjusted to being 'As long as I'm living comfortably, I'll be happy.' And now it's down to, 'I gotta' pay my bills.' And I certainly think this will be just a temporary situation. I was kind of in denial for a little while, about how dire the situation was getting."

So, like newbie writers, he works his temp job in the day and writes at night. And he's finding that writing has lost its drudgery.

"Because I don't have a lot of time now to write, when I do get to write, it's really exciting," he said.

He has remained optimistic about his future. He has a few projects in the works, and is looking at directing, perhaps producing.

One thing he won't do is give up.

"I love movies and I love writing," he said. "That's one of the slings and arrows that we have. We don't have the stability of a full-time job with a steady income. But you make that sacrifice to do what you love.

"I'm still obviously fighting the good fight and have some projects that are moving forward, but I don't know if any triggers are going to be pulled," he said. "In the meantime, I'm having to do some temp work just to pay the bills."

While he's trying to stay upbeat, it's difficult.

He's thinking about approaching a temporary agency to look for more work.

"Luckily I have good office skills," he says.

But he won't work at an entertainment company. It'd just be too weird ... too uncomfortable.

"You don't want to answer phones in an office you've pitched to in the past," he said. "It's a little humiliating."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111024/media_nm/us_jobs_screenwriter

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