Swimming boss stands down over remark allegations

SYDNEY (AP) ? Swimming Australia president Barclay Nettlefold has temporarily stood down following accusations of inappropriate behavior toward a female team consultant.

SA board director Nicole Livingstone announced Saturday that Nettlefold would be the subject of an investigation into an alleged inappropriate remark he made to an unidentified woman during last month's national championships.

Livingstone, a former Olympian, says "the board takes these allegations of inappropriate comments seriously and, as such, has made the decision that the president steps down to enable a full and independent review to be undertaken."

Nettlefold was elected in October in a shakeup following Australia's poor performance at the London Olympics in which it failed to win a single individual gold medal. An independent review after the games included allegations of bullying and other misbehavior by Australian swimmers.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/swimming-boss-stands-down-over-remark-allegations-091914614.html

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Ariz. woman released in Mexico back in US

NOGALES, Mexico (AP) ? An Arizona woman held in a Mexico jail for a week on a drug-smuggling charge was freed and traveled back to the U.S. after a court reviewed her case, including key security footage, and dismissed the allegations.

Yanira Maldonado, 42, walked out of the prison on the outskirts of Nogales, Mexico and into her husband's arms late Thursday. She and her family members could be seen crossing through the Nogales port of entry into Arizona in a small sedan shortly after midnight, The Arizona Republic reported.

Maldonado spoke briefly after her release, thanking U.S. state department officials, her husband, her lawyers and prison workers who made her stay comfortable.

"Many thanks to everyone, especially my God who let me go free, my family, my children, who with their help, I was able to survive this test," she said.

Maldonado also said at a news conference later that she still loves Mexico, and the experience will not stop her from returning in the future to visit family there.

"It's not Mexico's fault. It's a few people who did this to me and probably other people, who knows?" Maldonado said in comments aired on KSAZ-TV. "I'm still going to go back."

The family's lawyer in Nogales, Jose Francisco Benitez Paz, said a judge determined Thursday that she was no longer a suspect and all allegations against her were dropped.

"She lived through a nightmare," he said after her release.

Maldonado's release came hours after court officials reviewed security footage that showed the couple boarding a commercial bus traveling from Mexico to Phoenix with only blankets, bottles of water and her purse in hand.

U.S. politicians portrayed her as a victim of a corrupt judicial system and demanded her release with Arizona congressmen saying they were working closely with Mexican authorities. The office of Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., earlier said that he "has had multiple conversations with the deputy Mexican ambassador."

The judge had until late Friday to decide whether to free her or send her to another prison in Mexico while state officials continued to build their case. Prosecutors could appeal the ruling.

Maldonado was arrested by the Mexican military last week after they found nearly 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of pot under her seat during a security checkpoint.

Benitez noted that it was a fairly sophisticated smuggling effort that included packets of drugs attached to the seat bottoms with metal hooks ? a task that would have been impossible for a passenger. He said witness testimony and the surveillance video showed Yanira Maldonado was innocent.

"There is justice in this country," he said.

Gary Maldonado said he was originally arrested after the pot was found under his wife's bus seat, but after Yanira Maldonado begged the soldiers to allow her to come along to serve as a translator, the military officials decided to release him and arrest her instead. He said authorities originally demanded $5,000 for his wife's release, but the bribe fell through.

"Here, we are guilty until you are proven innocent," he said after the court hearing.

The Maldonados were traveling home to the Phoenix suburb of Goodyear after attending her aunt's funeral in the city of Los Mochis when they were arrested.

The bus passed through at least two checkpoints on the way to the border without incident. In the town of Querobabi in the border state of Sonora, all the passengers were ordered off the bus and a soldier searched the interior as they waited. The soldier exited and told his superiors that packets of drugs had been found under seat 39, Yanira Maldonado's, and another seat, number 42. Her husband was in seat 40.

Gary Maldonado said a man sitting behind them on the bus fled during the inspection. He said the man might have been the true owner of the drugs.

About 40 people were on the bus before the inspection, but Gary Maldonado said he was the only passenger who appeared American.

Mexican officials provided local media with photos that they said were of the packages Maldonado is accused of smuggling. Each was about 5 inches high and 20 inches wide, roughly the width of a bus seat. The marijuana was packed into plastic bags and wrapped in tan packing tape.

The couple had previously traveled on commercial buses through Mexico because they felt it was safer than driving a personal vehicle.

Yanira Maldonado is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Mexico, her family said. The couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary while she was jailed.

Drug traffickers have increasingly been using passenger buses to move U.S.-bound drugs through Mexico. Federal agents and soldiers have set up checkpoints along Mexico's main highways and have routinely seized cocaine, marijuana, heroin and more from buses.

Mexico's justice system is carried out largely in secret, with proceedings done almost entirely in writing.

Four years ago, Mexico decriminalized the possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and heroin, but it still has stiff penalties for drug trafficking.

Mexican law doesn't specify a minimum or maximum sentence in drug crimes and leaves it up to the judge to decide how long the sentence should be, said Jose Luis Manjarrez, a spokesman for federal prosecutors in Mexico.

On Wednesday, an army lieutenant, a private and another sergeant were supposed to appear in court but they did not show up. The army did not explain why, the couple's lawyer said.

A search of court records in Arizona didn't turn up any drug-related charges against Yanira or Gary Maldonado.

The Maldonados said they will likely avoid future trips to Mexico.

"Maybe in time," she said.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Weissenstein in Mexico City and Luis Castillo in Nogales contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ariz-woman-released-mexico-back-us-133300453.html

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Topless Women Protest Heidi Klum on Germany's Next Top Model

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/05/topless-women-protest-heidi-klum-on-germanys-next-top-model/

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Analysis: As hurricanes loom, Florida insurance lives on borrowed time

By David Adams

MIAMI (Reuters) - Mother Nature has been kind to Florida's coastline lately with a record run of seven years without a hurricane making landfall, allowing property insurers time to re-stock their depleted coffers.

As a result, when the new six-month hurricane season gets underway on Saturday, state insurance officials say the industry is ready to withstand a major storm. "We are better positioned today than I have seen in 10 years," Kevin McCarty, who heads the state's Office of Insurance Regulation, told Reuters.

Still, industry experts question whether Florida's state-controlled insurance system is able to cope in the long term.

"It's very fortunate for Florida that is has been able to build up its reserves, but the fact of the matter is that Florida is living on borrowed time," said Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute.

Just this week, Republican Governor Rick Scott signed a new property insurance law designed to reduce the state's exposure to hurricane losses by gradually steering homeowners towards private insurers. The new law also slashes the value of homes that the state-run Citizens Property Insurance can cover, down from $2 million to $700,000.

Because of its size and geographical position, with 1,200 miles of coastline on a peninsula sticking out into the warm waters where the Caribbean meets the Atlantic, Florida is a uniquely risky insurance market. Most of its insured residential and commercial property - 79 per cent - lies in coastal areas vulnerable to both wind damage and flooding.

Coastal property is valued at just under $3 trillion, according to a report due to be released next week by AIR Worldwide, a global leader in catastrophe risk modeling. Florida accounts for almost 30 percent of the nation's entire $10 trillion coastal exposure, AIR found.

Only New York has as much exposure, with $3 trillion in coastal property, and that compares to $239 billion in South Carolina and $107 billion in Georgia.

Florida is peculiar in other ways too. Unlike most other states where private companies dominate the market, Florida's insurance system is tightly controlled by the state, and requires all companies to pay into a state-run Hurricane Catastrophe Fund which acts as a safety net. Louisiana has a similar system for its state property insurer, also called Citizens, and California has its own safety net for earthquakes.

Florida's private insurance industry was ravaged in 1992 by Hurricane Andrew, which caused $26 billion in damages in Miami-Dade county. The state was badly hit again when a series of storms hit south Florida in 2004 and 2005.

Designed as a state-run insurer of last resort, Citizens has been left holding more than 1.3 million policies, making it the state's largest property insurer, with about 21 percent of the entire residential market. Due to the lack of recent storms, Citizens has managed to build up a cash surplus of about $6.6 billion, plus another $1.8 billion in reinsurance.

Citizens has tried to manage its exposure by issuing catastrophe bonds, which allow insurance companies to transfer risk to private investors. Buyers of so-called cat bonds receive enhanced returns in exchange for the risk that their principal could be wiped out in the event of disasters of a certain kind or size.

By the end of this year cat bonds will provide well over $10 billion in coverage to the south-east and Florida, according to John Seo, co-founder at cat bond investor Fermat Capital Management.

Still, critics say the state's consumer-wary politicians have allowed Citizens to charge below-market rates, leaving the insurer under-funded. They note that its total insured exposure has more than doubled since 2005, and it faces a potential $21 billion payout in the event of a once in a 100 years storm.

"With the risk transfer we have really narrowed the gap. We haven't closed the gap but we have narrowed the gap significantly," Sharon Binnun, Citizens' chief financial officer, told Reuters.

VULNERABLE TO A ONE-TWO PUNCH

Property insurance typically does not cover hurricane-related flood damage, which has to be insured separately. Private insurers don't cover many coastal homes in Florida which are insured instead by the federal flood insurance program.

The state's 'Cat Fund', created to back up private insurers after Andrew, has also managed to build a large surplus, amassing almost $12 billion to pay potential claims in the event of a major storm, according to its director, Jack Nicholson.

Although he denied it was under-funded, Nicholson said the fund was vulnerable to volatility in the municipal bond market, which it relies on to meet a $17 billion obligation mandated by the state.

A.M. Best, the main credit ratings agency for the insurance industry, said Friday it recognized the Cat Fund's position had improved of late.

The recent run of weather luck may have saved the state from bankruptcy, said Hartwig of the Insurance Information Institute, noting that if a major storm had hit Florida in the midst of the recession, the state would likely have been turned away by the bond market.

Nicholson worries that unless the Cat Fund increases its cash reserve, one big storm could leave it empty, exposing insurers to the next big storm.

If it has to borrow money to meet claims, the Fund is required to place an "assessment" on almost all insurance policies in the state, from homes to cars, no matter if they live in inland areas not prone to hurricanes. Such assessments are decried by some as a tax that provides "welfare" for wealthy beachfront homeowners. Policy holders are still paying off an assessment from the last hurricane, Wilma in 2005.

The bill signed by Governor Scott on Wednesday aims to steer homeowners away from Citizens and cap the value of homes that can be insured by the state-run company. The legislature rejected a tougher bill that would have accelerated that process by charging new Citizens enrollees much higher premiums.

"Citizens has gotten way too big...There was no way in a significant hurricane that Citizens was going to be able to pay," Scott told emergency officials in Miami on Thursday.

(Additional reporting by Sarah Mortimer in London, Harriet McLeod in South Carolina and Kevin Gray in Miami; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/analysis-hurricanes-loom-florida-insurance-lives-borrowed-time-121045974.html

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Dutch authorities to cull poultry after avian influenza outbreak

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Health authorities will cull 11,000 chickens at a farm in the Netherlands after an outbreak of a mild form of avian influenza, the Dutch Economic Affairs Ministry said on Saturday.

The chickens were believed to have the low pathogenic H7 strain, the ministry said in a statement. They would be culled as a precaution because the strain can mutate into a form that is fatal for poultry.

Authorities imposed a one-kilometer safety perimeter around the farm banning transports of poultry, eggs and other farm products. Testing would also be carried at 11 other farms in the area, it said.

In recent years several cases of the low pathogenic bird flu strain have been reported in the Netherlands.

The most devastating outbreak of H7N7 avian flu in the country was in 2003 and led to the culling of 30 million birds, about a third of the nation's poultry flock.

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/dutch-authorities-cull-poultry-avian-influenza-outbreak-122024003.html

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Pandora Hearts: The B-Rabbit

May I also reserve Break?

"You think you know hate, misery, sorrow, loneliness and anger? Take all of these emotions you'd feel in your lifetime and times them by 100, then you know me." - Me

"People will hurt you in life, but when they do, just shrug it off, tell em to get f**ked and keep your head high, soldier" - My Grandad

"You know me? Do you really? I'm like a poisoned lolly, nice out the outside, but on the inside I could kill you easily." - Me

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/5d4l-UBZhNo/viewtopic.php

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News Corp to delist from London Stock Exchange

REUTERS - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp said it will cancel its listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) , citing low levels of trading volume.

The company said the volume of its stock traded on the LSE was less than 1 percent of the total globally. The effective date of the delisting will be June 28.

The New York-based company is separating its cable channels, movie studio and other entertainment assets from its newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal. The new publishing company, which will retain the News Corp name, officially kicks off on June 28.

The entertainment assets, including the Fox broadcasting network, will be known as 21st Century Fox. (Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Bangalore; Editing by David Holmes)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/news-corp-delist-london-stock-exchange-070113654.html

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