via NY TIMES 

PRACTICAL TRAVELER

Including More in All-Inclusives

Brett Affrunti

By MICHELLE HIGGINS

Published: March 7, 2012

MENTION the words “all-inclusive resort” and thoughts of bad buffets, watered-down drinks and wristband-wearing guests doing the conga may come to mind. But all-inclusive resorts, which have traditionally included basic accommodations and meals, are reinventing themselves with chic rooms, sophisticated restaurants, butlers and activities all wrapped into one price.

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Many hotel brands are also offering all-inclusive options for travelers who want to know exactly what their vacation will cost. For example, the Fairmont Mayakoba, an upscale resort just south of Cancún, recently introduced its first inclusive meal plan with the “appetite for luxury package,” which starts at $499 a night, per couple, and covers the room, two children five years or younger, bike rentals and unlimited food and beverages.

In the last year, at least two Starwood resorts, the Westin Resort & Spa, Playa Conchal in Costa Rica and the Sheraton Bijao Beach Resort in Panama, have gone completely all-inclusive with meals, accommodations and children’s club all covered under one price — a first for the company. The pricing direction was largely “a response to demand for more vacation packages from our customers,” said Trip Barrett, a vice-president for Starwood’s Latin America properties.

The new breed of all-inclusive resorts can be particularly attractive to travelers looking for one-sum vacations in these uncertain economic times. “There’s a psychological effect here,” said Scott D. Berman, head of the hospitality and leisure division at PricewaterhouseCoopers, “to know your vacation is already paid for and you’re not going to be opening your wallet every five minutes à la carte.”

But travelers need to do their research. While most all-inclusive resort offerings are covered in the price, expect to pay extra for special services and amenities like spa treatments, premium drinks and late-night baby-sitting. And while practically every place claims to have something for everyone, you can still end up feeling out of place if your travel style clashes with other guests. “I’ve been to several cheap all-inclusives that cater to ‘everyone’ — not just families — and I can’t count the number of inebriated pool-goers, partying-all-night-in-the-room neighbors and lap-dancing waitresses I have encountered,” Kyle McCarthy, editor at FamilyTravelForum.com, wrote in an e-mail.

To help you figure out if an all-inclusive might be right for you, here is a sampling of new or recently redone resorts that go beyond the usual buffet spreads and bland accommodations.

FOR FAMILIES

Club Med Sandpiper Bay, Port St. Lucie, Fla.

Standout Features Thirty new rooms designed for families with two bedrooms and one and a half baths, a children’s art studio created with the Pop artist Romero Britto and a Le Petit Sports program, which introduces young children to sports through storytelling and games on pint-size tennis and golf courses.

Beyond the Basics In addition to the usual meals and water sports, you get children’s programs for ages 4 months to 17 years, including a “baby restaurant” and teenagers’ hangout.

What’s Not Included Evening child care; spa treatments at the Club Med Spa by L’Occitane; excursions like airboat rides on Lake Okeechobe.

Cost From $1,064 a person a week to $2,135 a person a week. Children (2 to 16) pay half rate.

FOR THE SPA-OBSESSED

The BodyHoliday, Saint Lucia

Standout Features A recently renovated skin-care clinic, featuring Thalgo products and a couple’s treatment room, and a newly expanded water-sports center, which offers water-skiing, sailing, tubing, snorkeling and windsurfing. There is also a dive shop with a training center.

Beyond the Basics A daily 50-minute spa treatment, farm-to-table meals, fitness classes and wellness and weight-loss programs ranging from archery to “cellulite flushing.”

What’s Not Included Premium drinks, restaurant specials, scuba diving sessions, specialty spa treatments and appointments on day of arrival or departure and off-site adventures like mountain biking.

Cost From $450 a person a night.

FOR PARTIERS

ME Cancun, Mexico

Standout Feature s Five restaurants, seven bars, including the refurbished Rose Bar, which features Bali beds (day beds with white linen roof coverings) and misting fans, and the Beach Club, with an Infinity pool and D.J. jam sessions. The resort, which became an all-inclusive property last year, hosted the MTV series “Real World” in 2009 and features the Real World Suite with a pool table and removable stripper pole. A corner of the resort was recently designated the Chill Out Zone, a music-free area with large daybeds for guests who simply want to relax.

Beyond the Basic s Live D.J. performances are held each weekend. This spring, popular D.J.’s will periodically host day and night pool parties and D.J. Labs for guests who want to learn the art of spinning.

What’s Not Included Premium coffee and most premium liquors; private beach dinners; beachside Bali beds; off-property excursions like visits to nearby archaeological sites; and with few exceptions (guests staying in suites get a treatment) the spa, which features a coed hydrotherapy zone with whirlpools and showers that shoot water from various angles.

Cost From $298 a night for two people.

FOR ECO-MINDED FAMILIES

Sandos Caracol Eco-Resort & Spa, Playa del Carmen, Mexico

Standout Feature s Last year the resort overhauled most guest rooms, installing water recycling systems, solar water heating, low-energy air-conditioning, and wooden furniture made from forests certified as responsibly harvested. A water park with 17 slides uses rain capture and filtration systems to help conserve water.

Beyond the Basic s From May to October guests can participate in a sea-turtle release program. There is also an on-site freshwater swimming hole, mangrove swamps and Mayan ruins to explore just steps from the resort.

What’s Not Included Spa treatments, scuba diving, premium liquor, and off-site excursions like deep-sea fishing.

Cost From $188 a night for two people sharing a room, including all taxes, fees and tips.

FOR COUPLES

Sandals Emerald Bay, Great Exuma, Bahamas

Standout Features After a multimillion dollar renovation in 2010, this property — which was formerly a Four Seasons — offers a milelong private cove beach, seven à la carte restaurants, an 18-hole Greg Norman championship golf course and a 17-acre marina in case you want to bring your yacht.

Beyond the Basics Seaside villas come with private butlers.

What’s Not Included Treatments at the 29,000-square-foot spa, private cabanas, off-site excursions, greens fees and marina slips.

Cost From $770 a person a night.

via NY POST

She ferried her kids to band practice, attended parent-teacher conferences and cared for the family’s menagerie of rescued dogs and pot-bellied pigs.

But unlike other suburban housewives, Anna Gristina, 44, also allegedly worked as a high-end Upper East Side madam.

The stay-at-home mom of four catered to clientele with no less than $1 million in the bank while raking in piles of cash in more than 15 years in the industry, prosecutors charge.

CALL GIRL SAYS ‘MADAM’S’ LAW-ENFORCEMENT SOURCES TIPPED HER OFF ABOUT BUSTS

A drawn-looking Gristina yesterday was ordered held at Rikers on $2 million bond after prosecutors told a Manhattan Supreme Court judge that she was an extreme flight risk — and it surfaced that she had an alleged female hooker-booker partner, who is now on the lam.

STEVEN HIRSCH

HOW TIMES CHANGE: Accused madam Anna Gristina strikes a more dowdy pose in courtyesterday (above) than in the sexy Facebook picture of her and husband Kelvin Gorr (below).

In a day of explosive developments:

* An NYPD sergeant, Richard Wall, was ordered to appear today before the Internal Affairs Bureau with his memo book logging his work for the past five years after being seen making repeated trips in and out of the East 78th Street building that allegedly housed Gristina’s brothel.

* It was revealed that Gristina had a partner-in-crime, Manhattan “matchmaker” Jaynie Baker, who flew the coop before the two were indicted, sources said. The strawberry-blond Baker, 30, claimed to work for a legitimate Union Square dating service.

* A source said Gristina employed “Penthouse and Playboy models’’ to service clients who “were all millionaires except two billionaires — hedge-funders, CEOs and real-estate moguls.”

* The investment bank Morgan Stanley searched records of visitors at its New York offices to try to track down which of its bankers met with Gristina before her bust last month to allegedly discuss setting up an online prostitution service.

Today, Gristina’s attorney said he never asked her about a so-called black book.

Peter J. Gleason told “Good Day New York” that “as far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t exist.”

He says if the mom of four is found guilty of the charges, “it’s irrelevant to me if there’s a black book or note.”

Gleason says the prosecution has not shared with the defense team information about its allegations that the Monroe, woman peddled underage girls and had police protection.

He says the allegation she promoted sex with children was “a ploy” the police sometimes use “if they have a hostile client that they want to break.”

Sources said the petite, green-eyed Gristina spent years juggling her illicit work with a quiet, unassuming life in the ’burbs.
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PEYTON MANNINGYOU’RE CUT(First Thing in the Morning)

Jury convicts Texas financier R Allen Stanford on 13 of 14 charges in $7 billion Ponzi scheme – @AP

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(Reuters) – China will boost military spending by 11.2 percent this year, the government said on Sunday, unveiling Beijing’s first defense budget since President Barack Obama launched a “pivot” to reinforce U.S. influence across the Asia-Pacific.

The rise was announced by Li Zhaoxing, the spokesman for China’s parliament, and will bring official spending on the People’s Liberation Army to 670.2 billion yuan ($110 billion) for 2012, after a 12.7 percent increase last year and a nearly unbroken string of double-digit rises across over two decades.

“China is committed to the path of peaceful development and follows a defensive national defense policy,” Li told a news conference ahead of the annual session of the National People’s Congress, the Communist Party-controlled parliament that will approve the budget.

“China has 1.3 billion people, we have a large territory and a long coast line but our defense spending is relatively low compared with other major countries,” he added, in comments carried live on state television.

Beijing’s public budget is widely thought to undercount real spending on its rapid military modernization, which has unnerved Asian neighbors and drawn repeated calls from Washington for China to share more about its intentions.

The Pentagon’s budget, however, still far exceeds the PLA’s, something China likes to point out.

“China’s defense spending as a share of GDP in 2011 was only 1.28 percent. For the United States, Britain and other countries the figures all exceeded two percent,” Li said.

“China’s limited military strength is aimed at safeguarding sovereignty, national security and territorial integrity. It will not pose a threat at all to other countries.”

Obama has sought to reassure Asian allies that the United States will stay a key player in the area, and the Pentagon has said it will “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.”

China has sought to balance long-standing wariness about U.S. moves with a desire for steady relations with Washington, especially as both governments focus on domestic politics this year, when Obama faces a re-election fight and China’s ruling Communist Party undergoes a leadership handover.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.(CBSDC) – For many Americans, the lamentation of rising gas costs is nothing new. It’s an everyday reality to see prices at the pump going up.

But now, those looking to get away from it all may encounter further troubles doing so, thanks to gas price hikes that have the potential to curb holiday travel and drive up the cost of plane tickets.

Travel buffs are just beginning to solidify their spring break and summer vacation plans. As they do, comparison shopping may show that such hikes have already started to take their toll on the cost of airfare.

“[R]ising jet fuel costs put significant cost pressure on the airline industry,” Steve Lott, vice present of communications for Airlines for America told CBSDC. “Regarding fuel, it was the airline industry’s largest expense in 2011, representing 35 percent of total costs. In 2011, the price of jet fuel reached a record high of $3.00 per gallon for the year.”

He continued, “It is even higher for the first two months of 2012.”

Cynthia Brough, director of public relations for AAA, said that as jet fuel costs go up in tandem with gas prices, the consumer could expect to pay more for their flight.

“As with any business, if [an airline] pays more for fuel and operational costs, they need to pass that cost on to the consumer,” she told CBSDC. “There have been [similar] effects in the past.”

Though the illegality of price signaling prevents airlines from discussing numbers, Allison Steinberg, senior media analyst for JetBlue Airways, told CBSDC that there are steps taken to try to stave off the potential effects of rising gas prices.

“We continue to believe the best tools for managing the impact of fuel expense are operating a fuel-efficient fleet and using efficient operating procedures, such as single engine taxi,” she said in an email. “In addition, we continue to manage our fuel hedge portfolio as a form of insurance to help mitigate price volatility and protect JetBlue against severe spikes in oil prices.”

It may take more extreme measures for airlines to keep up, though. Lott added that, from the year 2000 to the middle of 2011, jet fuel prices rose 268 percent. In that same time period, domestic airfare costs reportedly rose 10 percent.

“Fares over the past decade have not kept pace with costs or the price of fuel,” he noted.

According to information provided by the AAA National Office to CBSDC, some airlines have already taken such action, replacing larger jets with smaller, regional aircrafts that are more fuel-efficient in nature.

Travel website Expedia.com confirmed that prices have gone up for flights in recent history. However, they additionally stated that ticket sales have increased as well.

“Despite the recent rise in gas prices, Expedia sees people still taking to the skies,” Jeremy Boore, travel analyst for Expedia.com, said to CBSDC. “With regards to flights, on some of the most popular routes, Expedia sees ticket growth outpacing average ticket price growth.”

According to their collected data, tickets between Los Angeles International and John F. Kennedy International Airports in the past 28 days have gone up in price by 1.7%, with sales up 14.1% in comparison with the previous 28-day period.

Other popular routes saw similar rises in both cost and consumption.

“[T]here is still demand for travel, all things considered,” Boore added.

All the same, consumer surveys and data collected last year indicate that some travelers did make the decision to avoid air travel, instead opting to go by car.

American drivers will still have to pay more to vacation, however, statistics offered by the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that, for the week starting Feb. 27, gasoline prices per gallon averaged out at $3.71.

That amount reflects a rise of 13 cents from the previous week, and 33 cents from the same week in 2011.

The past month has also been statistically more expensive at the pump than last February, according to numbers collected by AAA. The data collected and presented by their Daily Fuel Gauge Report shows that on March 1, 2012, the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.74. The same time last year, Americans paid just $3.39 per gallon.

The increase in cost can be attributed to a number of things, including dwindling supplies and increasing demand as summer ticks closer and the politics surrounding crude oil acquisition, especially in the Middle East.

Avery Ash, manager of regulatory affairs for AAA, said that gas prices do tend to rise slightly as March begins and winter draws to a close. But the rise seen recently is atypical in size, due to geopolitical influences.

“Last year … we saw escalating tensions in Libya and northern Africa, and that uncertainty impacted the market – most specifically, the removal of Libyan crude from the market,” he told CBSDC, adding that this year’s recent tensions in Iran have taken their toll as well. “This time of year we do see some upward movement, but the last two years have broken the historical norm in the magnitude of the increases.”

A combination of pent-up vacation desires and years of experience with balancing personal budgets has helped American travelers enjoy some time away all the same, even if they had to change their approach.

“[Travelers] did … budget more wisely, by perhaps visiting national parks for free as opposed to another venue of higher cost,” Brough said. “They changed the type of travel, but they still traveled.”

But as Nancy White, who also directs AAA public relations, observed in their end-of-year holiday travel forecasts from 2011, many Americans will prioritize travel over other expenses, especially if family and friends are involved in the trip.

“The heartstrings outweigh the purse strings,” she said, quoting a colleague. “People will do whatever they need to do to spend time with loved ones, making cuts in other areas of spending to accommodate travel plans.”

Mitt Romney cruised to a projected victory in the Washington state caucuses Saturday night, notching his fourth win in a row in the final contest before Super Tuesday.

The former Massachusetts governor is expected to carry the state by a double-digit margin. The performance helps Romney further reassert his frontrunner status following a string of defeats to Rick Santorum last month. Every bump of added momentum counts with all four candidates competing fiercely for the 419 delegates up for grabs this Tuesday across the 10 states holding primaries and caucuses.

“The voters of Washington have sent a signal that they do not want a Washington insider in the White House,” Romney said in a statement. “They want a conservative businessman who understands the private sector and knows how to get the federal government out of the way so that the economy can once again grow vigorously.”

With 60 percent of precincts reporting in Washington, Romney was well ahead with 37 percent.

Ron Paul and Santorum, each with 24 percent, were battling for second. Newt Gingrich had 11 percent.

The Washington caucuses, usually a sleepy and sparsely attended party affair, were both elevated and overshadowed by the Super Tuesday battle. Only Paul, who poured campaign resources into the state in search of his first win, was actually in Washington on Saturday. The rest of the candidates spent the day in Ohio, considered Tuesday’s biggest prize.

Still, Washington’s position on the calendar, wedged between the contest in Romney’s home of Michigan and Super Tuesday, gave it rare sway in the GOP presidential primary season. All the candidates campaigned there at least once. The state offers a total haul of 43 delegates. Though delegates will not be allocated directly out of Saturday’s nonbinding straw poll, the contest still gives the winner bragging rights going into Tuesday.

Romney’s victory follows wins in Michigan and Arizona this past Tuesday, and before that in the low-key Maine caucuses.

Looking ahead to Ohio, Romney got a boost there Saturday when the influential Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed the former Massachusetts governor. Romney also has been ripping Santorum for a paperwork problem that left his campaign ineligible for 18 of Ohio’s 66 delegates.

“Delegates is what it’s all about,” Romney said.

Santorum, though, said he’s “not worried” about such organizational issues.

“It’s David and Goliath. I get that,” he told Fox News. “And you know what? I know who wins in the end.”

Santorum, later at a campaign stop in Ohio, cautioned the GOP against nominating “the moderate” to lead the party into November. “Moderates do not have the best chance of winning,” Santorum claimed.

Though Romney has the momentum, it won’t be a walk for the delegate frontrunner this coming week.

Gingrich has made delegate-heavy Georgia, which he used to represent in Congress, his firewall state, and recent polls continue to show the former House speaker leading the pack there.

Santorum continues to lead in Ohio polling, though Romney is catching up. Those two states are the biggest delegate prizes on Tuesday. Ohio has the added bonus of being a crucial swing state in the general election with a reputation as the mother of all bellwethers.

Paul, at his post-caucus rally, also assured supporters that his campaign is excelling at the grueling work of attaining delegates over the long run — though so far he trails in delegates.

“The good news is we’re doing very, very well in getting delegates,” Paul said. As for his support, Paul said: “The enthusiasm for the cause of liberty continues to grow exponentially.”

Gingrich, meanwhile, has started to join Paul in appealing to the frustration among voters with the war in Afghanistan, as protests over the accidental burning of the Koran at a U.S. base coincide with attacks by Afghans which so far have claimed the lives of six U.S. troops.

On Friday, Gingrich uncharacteristically declared “there are limits to American power.”

“It’s time to face the facts. The period where the United States went out and tried to change a civilization which is rejecting that change is over,” Gingrich said.

The statement elicited cheers from the audience, though Gingrich stressed that he wasn’t talking about “isolationism” — something the candidates accuse Paul of advocating.

Ahead of the Washington contest, Romney led in the overall delegate count with 173. Santorum had 87, followed by Gingrich with 33. Paul had 20.

It takes 1,144 delegates to clinch the nomination.
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Lihue, HI (KITV) — A Hawaiian mom says she was humiliated when asked to prove her breast pump was real at an airport.

The woman says she was flagged for additional screening at the Lihue Airport Wednesday because of her electric breast feeding pump.

She claims agents told her she couldn’t take the pump on the plane because the bottles in her carry-on were empty.

“I asked him if there was a private place I could pump and he said no, you can go in the women’s bathroom. I had to stand in front of the mirrors and the sinks and pump my breast in front of every tourist that walked into that bathroom. I was embarrassed and humiliated and then angry that I was treated this way.

When the bottles were full, she was allowed back on the plane.

The TSA is apologizing, saying the agent made a mistake.

The agency released a statement, saying in part: “We accept responsibility for the apparent misunderstanding and any inconvenience or embarrassment this incident may have caused her.”

The TSA recently changed screening procedures to allow women to carry breast milk onto planes without testing it.
However, breast pumps may require additional screening.

KITV

SOURCE 

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Andrew Breitbart didn’t invent the new media universe. It was already safely in place when he emerged as a potent force in the conservative blogosphere several years ago. But no one exploited the immediacy and subversive force of new media like Breitbart, who died Thursday of an apparent heart attack at age 43.

Breitbart was a revolutionary eager to overthrow a media establishment that he viewed as a front for left-wing social causes. Always brimming with righteous indignation — before he died, his final tweet offered an explanation for why he’d called an adversary a “putz” — he had contempt for anything that smacked of liberal do-gooderism or hypocrisy.

As much as Breitbart loathed his liberal adversaries, he shared many of their beliefs — not the political ones but the ones rooted in an adversarial approach to the establishment. Like many on the left, such as Christopher Hitchens and Jon Stewart, Breitbart had a sly wit, a knack for courting controversy and a disdain for the insular, self-important Washington press corps.

A savvy provocateur, Breitbart knew that the best defense was a good offense. Even though “Game Change,” HBO’s film about how Sarah Palin became John McCain’s 2008 running mate, doesn’t debut until later this month, one of his websites, BigHollywood, has been attacking the film’s credibility for weeks. A typical headline: “‘Game Change’: Meet the Leftists Who Turned HBO Into a Pro-Obama SuperPAC.”

When it came to liberals, it took one to know one. Breitbart was born in the cradle of modern progressivism, growing up in a Jewish liberal household in Brentwood. Largely apolitical through his college years, Breitbart embraced the conservative cause in the early 1990s, only after he became outraged at what he viewed as an insidious liberal attack on Clarence Thomas during the Supreme Court justice’s confirmation hearing. From then on, outrage was Breitbart’s chosen weapon. After apprenticing with Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington (even after she’d emerged as a full-blown liberal), Breitbart began launching a variety of his own websites, including BigGovernment, BigJournalism and BigHollywood, each one dedicated to the destruction of the old media guard.

Because I write about pop culture, I kept a close eye on BigHollywood, a site especially close to Breitbart’s heart, since it gave him a platform to bash the most visible form of liberal hegemony — the pampered, self-absorbed denizens of show business. Breitbart viewed Hollywood as an industry of sellouts who disguised their careerism by embracing silly social causes. As he once memorably put it: “People come out to Hollywood not to do Shakespeare in the Park, but to get rich and to be able to have sex with the best looking people in the world.”

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

According to BigHollywood, the movie industry was ridiculously out of touch and often contemptuous toward regular Americans, slipping left-wing messages into virtually every aspect of entertainment, even “Muppets” films. To hear Breitbart’s bloggers tell it, there was a blacklist against conservatives in Hollywood, forcing them to avoid ever revealing their true beliefs. No one avoided the lash — after I took issue with Breitbart on that last issue, BigHollywood’s lead writer, John Nolte, took to calling me Hollywood’s “left-wing enforcer.”

Breitbart would’ve been a marginal figure if he had simply been a media gadfly. His genius was rooted in the realization that in the new media universe, being outrageous often gets far more attention than being authoritative. After Ted Kennedy died in 2009, when everyone else was lionizing the great liberal crusader, Breitbart ripped him as a “duplicitous bastard.”

In many ways, Breitbart was a throwback to the subversive media manipulators of the 1960s, especially counterculture provocateurs like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. They courted the media with bizarre antics. Breitbart often did the same. One of his most potent weapons was the hidden camera. In 2009, his confederates posed as a prostitute and her boyfriend, seeking assistance from the staff of the community group ACORN. The stunt attracted nationwide controversy when ACORN staffers offered advice on a scheme designed to skirt federal law to obtain housing that could be used for illegal activities.

A Government Accountability Office report cleared ACORN of criminal activities, but the explosion of news coverage put Breitbart’s BigGovernment site on the map. Other exposés weren’t as successful. Breitbart posted video excerpts of an agriculture department employee, Shirley Sherrod, supposedly making a racist remark but had to backtrack when a longer version of the tape showed Sherrod discussing bridging racial differences.

Last year, Breitbart was at the heart of the scandal involving New York Rep. Anthony Weiner, an outspoken supporter of liberal causes. Breitbart posted a sexually explicit photo on his BigJournalism site that he obtained from Weiner’s Twitter account. After Breitbart leaked other graphic photos that Weiner had sent to young women, Weiner resigned, but not before Breitbart hijacked a Weiner press conference, taking control of the podium and holding court with reporters before Weiner could take the stage.

If Breitbart had a psychic twin it was Michael Moore, someone he loathed but someone who shared Breitbart’s gift for self-promotion and agit-prop exposés. Love him or hate him, Breitbart was a bracing breath of fresh air who brought an entrepreneurial zeal to his combative style of journalism. Breitbart once said, “I have two speeds — humor and righteous indignation.” It was his true gift — putting pedal to the metal. That may not qualify him as a hall of fame journalist, but in today’s shoot-from-the-hip media universe, it makes him irreplaceable.

Japanese stocks rally at open; Nikkei up 0.9% –@MarketWatch

via TMZ.com

The bomb squad is currently sweeping through Rush Limbaugh‘s Palm Beach home after a suspicious package was discovered on scene.

According to local reports, Limbaugh’s security team discovered the package and notified authorities.

Story developing …

SOURCE

A prominent U.S. college football coach has been accused of malfeasance at his second job as a hedge fund owner.

Tommy Tuberville, the head football coach at Texas Tech University, his partner and his hedge fund were sued by several investors—whom Tuberville said were also employees—who allege that they were misled and that Tuberville and his partner, John David Stroud, used TS Capital Partners as something of a personal piggy bank.

According to the lawsuit, Tuberville and Stroud gave clients false information, while lying by omission at other times. It also accuses the two men of commingling their own assets with those of the hedge fund, and of failing to register the fund with regulators.

Tuberville denied the allegations.

Tuberville “has never even met or spoken with most of the plaintiffs and he is acquainted minimally with the few other plaintiffs only because they were employees at TS Capital Partners, LLC,” his lawyer said in a statement. “Coach Tuberville absolutely never solicited any investment from any of these or other individuals. It is important to note that Coach Tuberville himself invested significant funds and has never received any return from his own investment. Accordingly, he is hopeful the plaintiffs, who were employees, can help to provide answers as to what transpired. Coach Tuberville has cooperated with every regulatory inquiry and not a single one has asserted that he was involved in any wrongdoing. He intends to vigorously defend the allegations made against him and is confident he will be exonerated.”

Stroud backed his partner up.

“Given Coach Tuberville’s lack of involvement with the day-to-day operations of the company, as well as the fact that he did not solicit the plaintiffs, Mr. Stroud can only surmise that he was named in this lawsuit to garner unwarranted media attention, which has apparently succeeded,” Stroud’s lawyer said in a statement.

The lawsuit, filed in Alabama federal court—TS is based in Auburn, where Tuberville coached for Auburn University for 10 years—indicates that the plaintiffs are afraid they’ll lose all of the $1.76 million they invested from 2008 until last year, noting they have no “credible information regarding the current location and amounts of their invested funds.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=W8Nkn_HnZcc

via wired.com

The Earth has a roughly 12 percent chance of experiencing an enormous megaflare erupting from the sun in the next decade. This event could potentially cause trillions of dollars’ worth of damage and take up to a decade to recover from.

Such an extreme event is considered to be relatively rare. The last gigantic solar storm, known as the Carrington Event, occurred more than 150 years ago and was the most powerful such event in recorded history.

That a rival to this event might have a greater than 10 percent chance of happening in the next 10 years was surprising to space physicist Pete Riley, senior scientist at Predictive Science in San Diego, California, who published the estimate in Space Weather on Feb. 23.

“Even if it’s off by a factor of two, that’s a much larger number than I thought,” he said.

Earth’s sun goes through an 11-year cycle of increased and decreased activity. During solar maximum, it’s dotted with many sunspots and enormous magnetic whirlwinds erupt from its surface. Occasionally, these flares burst outward from the sun, spewing a mass of charged particles out into space.

Small solar flares happen quite often whereas very large ones are infrequent, a mathematical distribution known as a power law. Riley was able to estimate the chance of an enormous solar flare by looking at historical databases and calculating the relation between the size and occurrence of solar flares.

The biggest solar event ever seen was the Carrington Event, which occurred on Sept. 1, 1859. That morning, astronomer Richard Carrington watched an enormous solar flare erupt from the sun’s surface, emitting a particle stream at the Earth traveling more than 4 million miles per hour.

When they hit the Earth’s atmosphere, those particles generated the intense ghostly ribbons of light known as auroras. Though typically relegated to the most northerly and southerly parts of the planet, the atmospheric phenomenon reached as far as Cuba, Hawaii, and northern Chile. People in New York City gathered on sidewalks and rooftops to watch “the heavens … arrayed in a drapery more gorgeous than they have been for years,” as The New York Times described it.

Auroras may be beautiful, but the charged particles can wreak havoc on electrical systems. At the time of the Carrington Event, telegraph stations caught on fire, their networks experienced major outages and magnetic observatories recorded disturbances in the Earth’s field that were literally off the scale.

In today’s electrically dependent modern world, a similar scale solar storm could have catastrophic consequences. Auroras damage electrical power grids and may contribute to the erosion of oil and gas pipelines. They can disrupt GPS satellites and disturb or even completely black out radio communication on Earth.

During a geomagnetic storm in 1989, for instance, Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid collapsed within 90 seconds, leaving millions without power for up to nine hours.

The potential collateral damage in the U.S. of a Carrington-type solar storm might be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion in the first year alone, with full recovery taking an estimated four to 10 years, according to a 2008 report from the National Research Council.

“A longer-term outage would likely include, for example, disruption of the transportation, communication, banking, and finance systems, and government services; the breakdown of the distribution of potable water owing to pump failure; and the loss of perishable foods and medications because of lack of refrigeration,” the NRC report said.

But such possibilities likely represent only the worst-case scenario, said Robert Rutledge, lead of the forecast office at the NOAA/National Weather Service Space Weather Prediction Center. The potential dangers might be significantly less, since power companies are aware of such problems and can take action to mitigate them.

For instance, companies may store power in areas where little damage is expected or bring on additional lines to help with power overloads. This is assuming, of course, that they are given enough warning as to the time and location of a solar storm’s impact on the Earth. Satellites relatively close to Earth are required to measure the exact strength and orientation of a storm.

“It’s like being able to see a cyclone coming but not knowing the wind speed until it hits your boat 50 miles off the coast,” Rutledge said.

Image: NASA

via hollywoodreporter.com

Ted Turner

The “Mouth of the South” is no longer as he devotes his time (and $1 billion) to the U.N., jets between 28 homes and four girlfriends, misses Jane Fonda and opens up to THR about Rupert, Jerry and his abuse as a child. Says a friend: “He’s definitely changed.”