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Another Day, Another Pervert Teacher Arrested

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L.A. teacher charged with lewd acts on 23 children

Mark_BerndtA teacher who taught for three decades at Miramonte Elementary School in South L.A. has been arrested and charged with lewd acts on 23 children for allegedly tying them up, placing giant cockroaches on their faces and possibly feeding them his semen from a spoon.

Mark Berndt, 61, was taken into custody Monday after a nearly yearlong investigation by the L.A. County sheriff’s special victims unit that began when a photo processor turned over pictures of some of the alleged acts to authorities.

Capt. Mike Parker of the Los Angeles Police Department said the victims identified so far are 23 boys and girls aged 7 to 10 who had contact with Berndt between 2008 and 2010.

Investigators recovered photos from the processor and Berndt’s home that allegedly showed the young students bound and blindfolded and some with large Madagascar cockroaches crawling on them inside the school setting.

Some girls were allegedly photographed with a blue spoon holding a white substance near their mouths.”Early in the investigation, special victims bureau detectives recovered a blue plastic spoon and an empty container from the trash within the suspect’s classroom,” Parker said. “The recovered items tested positive for semen.”

Through further investigation, the suspect’s DNA was obtained and tested, and officials said it matched that of the DNA found on the spoon and container.

Parker said that, so far, 10 children in the photos recovered have not been identified. More than 80 children and staff have been in interviewed. Miramonte Elementary is in the Florence Firestone unincorporated area of Los Angeles.

Berndt was fired in March and was being held Tuesday in lieu of $2.3 million bail.

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THE COMING TWITTER SURGE AS FACEBOOK FADES

(via)

Teens, after being friended by parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles on Facebook, have moved to Twitter to get a little more privacy.

Until recently, Twitter was thought of as mainly for those promoting their business or themselves, but a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study showed that teens 12 to 17 doubled their presence on Twitter in the last two years. While still relatively small, jumping from 8 to 16 percent, it shows a growing trend.

 “I love twitter, it’s the only thing I have to myself … cause my parents don’t have one,” Britteny Praznik, a 17-year-old from just outside Milwaukee, tweeted.

 She joined last summer, after several people at her high school started tweeting. “It just sort of caught on,” she told the Associated Press. Many teens don’t use real names or even have locked accounts, so only friends have access.
After the rampant dissatisfaction with Facebook’s Timeline and privacy concerns, the move to Twitter may seem long overdue. For teens, who are now being monitored by older relatives joining Facebook, thw social network probably hasn’t been a private place for a while.
However, there are significant problems with Twitter — mainly that it sometimes just doesn’t work. Facebook may not be someone’s cup of tea, but doesn’t have a legendary “Fail Whale” like Twitter does. Twitter also had to purchase Tweetdeck to get a decent user interface — but the company seems uninterested in keeping it in good working order (I’ve tried to send a scheduled tweet for the last six months, and I’ve succeeded about twice.)
Twitter isn’t the easy answer to Facebook or Facebook Timeline, but it is becoming a much more attractive alternative.

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NBC Puts the Super Bowl on the Web Because It Thinks You’ll Watch It on TV

(via Peter Kafka at AllThingsD.com)

The Super Bowl is the most valuable show on TV. Which is why NBC can charge a reported $3.5 million for a 30-second spot during the Giants-Patriots game this Sunday.

But if you watch the game on the Web, your eyeballs are worth a whole lot less. NBC, which is streaming the entire thing for the first time ever, will be lucky to get anything near a million dollars for that same ad when it runs online.

So why is Comcast’s broadcast network putting the game on the Web, period? Isn’t this the classic analog-dollars-to-digital-dimes trade that Big Media strives so hard to avoid?

Nope, says Rick Cordella, who runs digital for NBC Sports. The network assumes that nearly every eyeball — and every ad dollar — that it gets from the Web this week will be a bonus, because whoever watches online is simultaneously watching on a big TV, the way football is supposed to be watched.

This is supposed to be the classic “second screen” experience that Twitter’s Dick Costoloand so many other digital folks are excited about.

And that makes plenty of sense to me. Many TV guys have gotten plenty comfortable with the idea of streaming their most valuable live sports events online, for free. In most of those cases, the general assumption is that anyone who’s watching on the Web is someone who can’t watch the game on a TV to begin with — see the CBS/Turner Sports livestreams of the NCAA March Madness tournament.

And in NBC’s case, it is packing the Webcast full of extra camera angles and other goodies, including a feature that will let you rewatch every Super Bowl commercial once it’s aired. The assumption is that you’re holding the TV remote in one hand, and controlling your laptop with another.

NBC already does a version of this with its Sunday Night Football broadcasts during the regular season, and the network says it draws between 200,000 and 300,000 unique viewers per game (that’s the source of that Vikings-Saints screenshot, above).

Meanwhile, those broadcasts are the networks’ best-performing shows by a long shot, so it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down. The NFL, meanwhile, reports that Web companion streams of the Thursday night games it shows on its own channel averaged 450,000 uniques.

So Cordella argues that putting the biggest TV show of the year online, for free, is really no big deal. But I’m pretty sure that this attitude isn’t shared by everyone in the TV business, and we might hear a bit about that today at the D: Dive Into Mediaconference. Curious to see what ESPN boss John Skipper thinks, for starters.

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A Busy IPO Year

Eight companies are expected to go public this week alone, including two technology companies and four in the energy sector. “Barring a market selloff and or geopolitical events, 2012 is shaping up to busy year, and in my opinion should easily surpass last year’s IPO quantity,” according to Scott Sweet of IPO Boutique.

Facebook reportedly plans to file IPO documents on Wednesday, in what’s bound to be the biggest deals in years. Read more about Facebook’s potential filing and valuation.

The 2012 pipeline itself is filling up fast, with 17 new U.S. IPO filings so far since the beginning of the year — the busiest since 2005, according to Renaissance Capital.

Full Story

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Global Warming Great Boon For German Beer Brewers

By Alice Baghdjian | Reuters

BERLIN (Reuters) – A steady slide in beer consumption in Germany was stopped cold last year thanks to warmer weather, the federal statistics office said on Monday.

German brewers sold 98.2 million hectoliters of beer last year, down by just 0.1 percent in 2011 after dropping by an average of two percent every year since 2006. Beer consumption in Germany had fallen in all but two of the last 10 years.

Despite Germany’s reputation as a nation of beer lovers, young people are turning away from the national beverage in favour of other non-alcoholic beverages, brewers say.

The warmer weather last year as well as the World Cup soccer tournament in 2006 helped to put a floor beneath what is still the country’s most famous beverage. Germans still drink more than 100 liters of beer per capita each year.

“Beer sales depend on the weather. In the first half of 2011 — in April and May — we had a lot of warm weather, and the figures were up by 1.0 percent,” Juergen Hammer, an official at the Federal Statistics Agency, told Reuters.

“This is why this year’s results aren’t so bad. So I guess the old adage is true that when it’s warm people drink beer.”

Consumption of German beer, which has been subject to a purity law since 1516, has been in slow decline for decades.

The World Cup football tournament helped German beer consumption rise by 1.4 percent in 2006, the strongest increase in 12 years, the federal statistics office said on Monday.

Source

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Tom Brokaw Pronounces His “L”‘s Well Enough to Slam Mitt Romney for Ads

Via POLITICO’s Reid Epstein, NBC News and Tom Brokaw are loudly objecting to the Mitt Romney campaign’s use of footage from the 1990s in an ad blasting Newt Gingrich over his House ethics charges.

Brokaw, whose statement noted he was speaking on his behalf, said, “I am extremely uncomfortable with the extended use of my personal image in this political ad.  I do no want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign.”

“The NBC Legal Department has written a letter to the campaign asking for the removal of all NBC News material from their campaign ads,” NBC News said in a statement, which added, “Similar requests have gone out to other campaigns that have inappropriately used Nightly News, Meet the Press, Today and MSNBC material.”

Romney aides said they hadn’t yet heard from NBC News.

On a basic level, the flap around the spot simply calls more attention to it, which is presumably part of Team Romney’s calculus.

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Guess the Coin Toss & Eat for Free on Super Bowl Sunday $PZZA

(via BusinessWire.com)

Papa John’s to Give Free Pizza to America If Fans Correctly ‘Call’ Super Bowl XLVI Coin Toss 

No National Football League sponsor knows a quality “toss” like Papa John’s founder, Chairman and CEO John Schnatter, but he’s counting on America to call the coin toss for Super Bowl XLVI so that the country can flip over free pizza.

Papa John’s, the Official Pizza Sponsor of the NFL, today unveiled its Super Bowl XLVI Coin Toss Experience, which includes a free large one-topping pizza and 2-liter Pepsi MAX for the millions of fans enrolled in Papa John’s Papa Rewards program … if America correctly “calls” the Super Bowl coin toss. No matter which team wins the Super Bowl, Papa John’s fans have skin in the game.

“Papa” John Schnatter, who started Papa John’s in 1984 out of the back of his father’s tavern in Jeffersonville, Ind., has recruited Super Bowl champions Peyton Manning and Jerome “The Bus” Bettis to help spread the word and “coach” America on the coin toss vote.

Bringing this powerful threesome together is the crescendo of Papa John’s NFL season-long marketing strategy that has surprised and delighted millions of Papa John’s customers. Papa John’s, the only national pizza chain with a system-wide rewards program, will continue this blitz the next two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl XLVI coin toss. The integrated campaign includes a national television commercial featuring Manning and Bettis that first aired during yesterday’s NFC and AFC Championship games, digital media advertising, social media (#freepapajohns), and interactive, video-rich Web pages at www.papajohns.com.

America will make its “heads” or “tails” call for the Super Bowl XLVI coin toss by voting at www.papajohns.com today through Feb. 1. Schnatter will announce the result of America’s vote Feb. 2 on the NFL Network in Indianapolis and via social media and at www.papajohns.com.

If America’s call is correct, everyone enrolled in Papa Rewards as of 6 p.m. ET Super Bowl Sunday will receive an email the following day with instructions on how to claim their pizza and Pepsi MAX prize.

“This won’t be an easy call for America, but as the Official Pizza Sponsor of the NFL, it’s an easy call for Papa John’s to offer a promotion like this to our loyal customers,” Schnatter said. “The Super Bowl is the largest stage in all of sports, and it’s the biggest sales day of the year for us. We’re going all out with quality players like Peyton Manning and The Bus to make sure our customers have a great experience with the highest-quality pizza.”

“I’m thrilled to be part of the Papa John’s team and this exciting promotion that revolves around the biggest day of the year – the Super Bowl,” said Manning, who won Super Bowl XLI. “I really didn’t expect to be a referee this year, but – like I said in the commercial — ’a man’s gotta work.’”

“The pressure is on, America,” said Bettis, who is a finalist this year for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. “It’s hard to believe there could be an NFL coin toss with bigger stakes than what I experienced Thanksgiving Day 1998 … but with free Papa John’s and Pepsi MAX on the line for millions of fans in Super Bowl XLVI, this certainly is huge!”

Occurring between the singing of the National Anthem and kickoff, the Super Bowl coin toss puts viewers on the edge of their seats … and players and coaches simply on edge. In fact, the NFC is on an incredible 14-year winning streak with Super Bowl coin tosses (Super Bowl XXXII – Super Bowl XLV). Some additional interesting Super Bowl coin toss statistics:

  • In 45 Super Bowls, heads has been called 23 times and tails 22
  • 24 of the 45 tosses have come up heads, and 21 tails
  • The NFC has 24 Super Bowl wins, with a dominating 31 coin toss wins
  • The AFC has 21 Super Bowl wins, compared to only 14 coin toss wins

Last year for Super Bowl XLV, Papa John’s set a single-day sales record by selling more than one million pizzas, driven in part by offering a free large pizza to everyone in America if the game went into overtime. In the fourth quarter, the teams were separated by only 3 points, but the game did not go into overtime. In fact, no Super Bowl has ever gone into overtime.

This year, America’s odds of winning free Papa John’s are much better … on the toss of a coin.

Papa John’s is in the second year of a multi-year sponsorship with the NFL.

Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, Papa John’s International, Inc. (NASDAQ: PZZA) is the world’s third largest pizza company. For 10 of the past 12 years, consumers have rated Papa John’s No. 1 in customer satisfaction among all national pizza chains in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Papa John’s also was honored by Restaurants & Institutions Magazine (R&I) with the 2009 Gold Award for Consumers’ Choice in Chains in the pizza segment. Papa John’s is the Official Pizza Sponsor of the National Football League and Super Bowl XLVI and XLVII. For more information about the company or to order pizza online, visit Papa John’s at www.papajohns.com.

© 2012 NFL Properties LLC. All NFL-related trademarks are trademarks of the National Football League.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. ONLY PAPA REWARDS MEMBERS AS OF 6 PM ET ON 2/5/12 WHO ARE LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE 50 UNITED STATES (D.C.) 13 AND OLDER MAY BE ELIGIBLE TO RECEIVE A PRIZE. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED. Voting takes place from 1/22/12 to 2/1/12. For Official Rules, visit www.papajohns.com.

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Donald Trump Considering Run as Independent

via BreakingNews.com

Donald Trump tells ‘Face the Nation’s’ Bob Schieffer he would run as an independent if he runs for US president – from broadcast

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