TOKYO: Tokyo stocks soared 1.62 per cent at the open on Monday after Japan's conservative opposition swept to victory in national polls, with promises from its leader to press for more central bank easing.
The benchmark Nikkei 225 index added 158.12 points to 9,895.68 at the start of trade, as the yen plunged in the wake of the Liberal Democratic Party's landslide win over the ruling Democratic Party of Japan.
- AFP/fa
Bobby Petrino was named head coach at Western Kentucky, months after being embroiled in scandal at University of Arkansas
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Editor's note: Jeff Pearlman is the author of 'Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton.' He blogs at jeffpearlman.com. Follow him on Twitter.
(CNN) -- I have a dog named Norma.
She is a small beige cockapoo who barks at the mailman.
I would not trust Bobby Petrino to watch her.
Jeff Pearlman
I also would not trust Bobby Petrino to take my car in for a tire change. I would not trust Bobby Petrino to deposit my Aunt Ruth's Social Security check. I wouldn't trust him to clean my bowling ball, shop for a Christmas ham, change a twenty for two tens, tell me the time or recite the proper lyrics to Blind Melon's "No Rain."
This is not because I am a particularly untrusting person.
No, it's because I think Bobby Petrino is slime.
In case you missed the news, two days ago Western Kentucky University held a press conference to announce that Petrino, undeniably one of the nation's elite football minds, had agreed to a four-year, $850,000 per year deal to take over the Hilltoppers.
With nearly 400 giddy sports fanatics in attendance, Petrino, standing alongside Todd Stewart, the school's athletic director, spoke of honor and loyalty and love and redemption. The ensuing press release, issued by Western Kentucky's sports information department, was straight out of Disney: 101. It made Petrino sound like a cross between Vince Lombardi, Martin Luther King and Gandhi; God's gift to young men seeking to better themselves.
Petrino fired as Arkansas head football coach
What it failed to mention—and what the school desperately wants everyone to fail to mention—is that Petrino may well be the least ethically whole man in the, ahem, ethically whole-deprived world of Division I collegiate sports.
Why, it was only seven months ago that Petrino, at the time the University of Arkansas' head coach, was riding his motorcycle when he crashed along Highway 16 near Crosses, Arkansas.
When asked by school officials to explain what had happened, he failed to mention that, eh, also on the bike was Jessica Dorrell, a 26-year-old former Razorbacks volleyball player who worked as the student-athlete development coordinator for the football program. It turned out that Petrino, a married father of four, was not only having an affair with Dorrell (who was engaged at the time), but was a key voice on the board that hired her for the position when she wasn't even remotely qualified.
During an ensuing university investigation, it was determined that Petrino made a previously undisclosed $20,000 cash gift to Dorrell as a Christmas present.
Ho, ho, ho.
To his credit, Jeff Long, the school's athletic director, defied the wishes of every pigskin-blinded Razorback fan and fired Petrino. In a statement, he rightly wrote that, "all of these facts, individually and collectively, are clearly contrary to character and responsibilities of the person occupying the position of the Head Football Coach—an individual who should serve as a role model and a leader for our student-athlete."
Now, ethics and morals and character be damned, Bobby Petrino has returned, spewing off nonsense about second chances (Ever notice how garbage men and bus drivers rarely get the second chances we are all—according to fallen athletic figures—rightly afforded as Americans?) and learning from mistakes and making things right.
Western Kentucky, a school with mediocre athletics and apparently, sub-mediocre standards, has turned to a person who lied to his last employer about the nature of an accident involving the mistress he allegedly hired to a university position she was unqualified to hold. Please, if you must, take a second to read that again. And again. And again.
Bobby Petrino, holder of a Ph.D. in the Deceptive Arts (he also ditched the University of Louisville shortly after signing a long-term extension in 2007, and quit as coach of the Atlanta Falcons 13 game into his first season later that year. He informed his players via a note atop their lockers), will be the one charged with teaching the 17- and 18-year-old boys who decide to come to Bowling Green about not merely football, but life. He will be their guide. Their compass. Their role model.
Bobby Petrino and social media prove a bad mix
Sadly, in the world of Division I sports, such is far from surprising. This has been a year unlike any other; one where the virtues of greed and the color of green don't merely cloak big-time college athletics, but control them. In case you haven't noticed, we are in the midst of a dizzying, nauseating game of Conference Jump, where colleges and universities—once determined to maintain geographic rivals in order to limit student travel—have lost their collective minds.
The University of Maryland, a charter member of the ACC, is headed for the Big Ten. The Big East—formerly a power conference featuring the likes of Syracuse, Georgetown, St. John's and Connecticut—has added Boise State, San Diego State, Memphis, Houston, Southern Methodist and Navy. Idaho moved from the WAC to the Big Sky, Middle Tennessee State and Florida Atlantic went to Conference USA, the University of Denver—a member of the WAC for approximately 27 minutes—joined the Summit League. Which, to be honest, I didn't even know existed.
Rest assured, none of these moves (literally, nary a one) were conducted with the best interests of so-called student-athletes in mind. New conferences tend to offer increased payouts, increased merchandising opportunities, increased exposure and increased opportunities to build a new stadium—one with 80,000 seats, 100 luxury boxes, $20 million naming rights, $9 hot dogs and the perfect spot for ESPN to broadcast its Home Depot pregame show.
Why, within 24 hours of quarterback Johnny Manziel winning the Heisman Trophy, Texas A&M was hawking Heisman T-shirts for $24 on its website (Or, for a mere $54.98, one can purchase his No. 2 jersey).
Percentage of the dough that winds up in Manziel's pocket? Zero.
After another spectacular exit, Petrino eyes football return
That, really, is the rub of it all; of Petrino's crabgrass-like revival; of coaches bounding from one job for another (even as players can only do so after sitting out a year); of Rutgers moving west and San Diego State moving east and athletic department officials moving on up (to a penthouse apartment in the sky); of $54.98 jerseys.
It's the athletes ultimately getting screwed.
Sure, for the 0.5% of Division I football players who wind up in the NFL, the deal is a sweet one. The other 99.5%, however, are mere pawns, sold a dizzying narrative of glory and fame and lifelong achievement, but, more often than not, left uneducated, unfulfilled and physically battered.
They are told a coach will be with them for four years—then watch as said figure takes a $2 million gig elsewhere but, hey, only because it was right for him and his family.
They are told they will receive a great education, then find themselves stuck on a six-hour flight from California to Newark, New Jersey. They are told that these will be the greatest years of their life, that the college experience is a special one, that only the highest of standards exist.
Then they meet their new coach: Bobby Petrino.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Jeff Pearlman.
NEWTOWN, Conn. Connecticut authorities complained Sunday that false information about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school is being promulgated online by social media tricksters. And they warned that such misinformation is prosecutable under the law.
"Misinformation is being posted on social media. People posing as the shooter, mimicking this crime and crime scene and criminal activity, some things in a threatening manner," said Conn. State Police spokesman Paul Vance.
In addition to people pretending to be the shooter or other principals in the investigation, Vance said other posters are putting up information purported to be from the Newtown city police or the Connecticut state police. Neither of those agencies are posting information via twitter or other social media, he said.
"All info related to this case is coming from these microphones," he told reporters at a press briefing in Newtown Sunday morning.
Vance said he considered the misinformation a "violation of federal law and warrants an investigation."
"These issues are crimes, they will be examined in state and federally."
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');PERHAPS the little fish embryo shown here is dancing a jig because it has just discovered that it has legs instead of fins. Fossils show that limbs evolved from fins, but a new study shows how it may have happened, live in the lab.
Fernando Casares of the Spanish National Research Council and his colleagues injected zebrafish with the hoxd13 gene from a mouse. The protein that the gene codes for controls the development of autopods, a precursor to hands, feet and paws.
Zebrafish naturally carry hoxd13 but produce less of the protein than tetrapods - all four-limbed vertebrates and birds - do. Casares and his colleagues hoped that by injecting extra copies of the gene into the zebrafish embryos, some of their cells would make more of the protein.
One full day later, all of those fish whose cells had taken up the gene began to develop autopods instead of fins. They carried on growing for four days but then died (Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.devcel.2012.10.015).
"Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," says Casares. He speculates that hundreds of millions of years ago, the ancestors of tetrapods began expressing more hoxd13 for some reason and that this could have allowed them to evolve autopods.
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WASHINGTON: The latest mass shooting in the United States - this time with 20 children among the dead - is triggering a deluge of calls for President Barack Obama to address gun control, a politically sensitive issue which he avoided during his first term in the White House.
With the nation in shock over the carnage on Friday, Obama went on television and wiped away tears as he mourned the slain, which included six adults killed at the Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school and another elsewhere.
The president stressed he was particularly saddened as a parent. He and wife Michelle have two young daughters.
"We have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this," Obama said in his weekly radio address on Saturday. "Regardless of the politics."
He did not go into details, however, and proponents of gun control are getting impatient.
"The country needs (Obama) to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem," said New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. "Calling for 'meaningful action' is not enough. We need immediate action. We have heard all the rhetoric before."
White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Friday it was too early to address the issue. "There is I'm sure - will be, rather, a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates, but I don't think today is that day," Carney said.
People reacted quickly. "Today is the day," read banners held by activists outside the White House in a vigil within hours of the school shooting.
A petition for tougher gun control legislation had more than 80,000 signatures on the White House website Saturday.
The Connecticut killings are unspeakably gruesome because such small children were involved.
But they are not the first such massacre under Obama's watch.
In January 2011 in Arizona six people died at the hands of a shooter targeting Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who took a bullet in the head but survived.
This summer 12 people were shot in Colorado during a midnight screening of a Batman movie.
Obama visited both cities and spoke of the need to crack down on gun violence. He promised to work with Congress and achieve a consensus.
But that is all. His timidity on the issue has been attributed to wariness of alienating voters who believe their constitutional right to bear arms is sacred, deserves a broad interpretation and is not to be touched.
The gun buff and manufacturers lobby, the National Rifle Association, is very critical of Obama even though he has done little that goes against its platform. Its pockets are deep, and it tries to influence local elections. Both Democrats and Republicans are wary of tangling with it.
But after winning re-election in November, Obama will not face the voters again and Jonathan Lowy, director of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project, said the NRA is nothing to fear.
"President Obama and other Democrats have really misread and overestimated the strength of the gun lobby," said Lowy, whose organisation is named for James Brady, the White House press secretary who was shot and left disabled in an assassination attempt on then president Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"The fact is they have very loud bark, but they have very little bite," he told AFP on Saturday.
"In the past election, they (the gun lobby) spent a lot of money - 99 percent of it was towards losing candidates, and that holds true in virtually every election cycle," Lowy said. "They spend a lot of money, they make a lot of noise and their candidates lose, so they really are not a force to be afraid of."
Left-leaning or moderate news outlets also urged the president to take action.
"Obama told the nation that he reacted to the shootings in Newtown 'as a parent,' and that is understandable, but what we need most is for him to act as a President, liberated at last from the constraints of elections and their dirty compromises - a president who dares to change the national debate and the legislative agenda on guns," David Remnick wrote in The New Yorker.
- AFP/de
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: World reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
Newtown school shooting: world reacts
NEWTOWN, Conn. Fighting back tears and struggling to catch his breath, the father of a 6-year-old gunned down in Friday's school shooting in Connecticut told the world about a little girl who loved to draw and was always smiling, and he also reserved surprising words of sympathy for the gunman.
Robbie Parker's daughter Emilie was among the 20 children who died in the one of the worst attacks on schoolchildren in U.S. history. He was one of the first parents to speak publicly about their loss.
"She was beautiful. She was blond. She was always smiling," he said.
Parker spoke to reporters not long after police released the names and ages of the victims, a simple document that told a horrifying story of loss.
He expressed no animosity, said he was not mad and offered sympathy for family of the man who killed 26 people and himself.
To the man's family, he said, "I can't imagine how hard this experience must be for you."
He said he struggled to explain the death to Emilie's two siblings, 3 and 4.
"They seem to get the fact that they have somebody they're going to miss very much," he said.
Parker said his daughter loved to try new things — except for new food. And she was quick to cheer up those in need.
"She never missed an opportunity to draw a picture or make a card for those she around her," he said.
The world is a better place because Emilie was in it, he said.
"I'm so blessed to be her dad," he said.
(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
Emilie Parker, the little girl with the blond hair and bright blue eyes, would have been one of the first to comfort her classmates at Sandy Hook Elementary School, had a gunman’s bullets not claimed her life, her father said.
“My daughter Emilie would be one of the first ones to be standing and giving support to all the victims because that’s the kind of kid she is,” her father, Robbie Parker said as he fought back tears, telling the world about his “bright, creative and loving” daughter” who was one of the 20 young victims in the Newtown, Conn., shooting.
“She always had something kind to say about anybody,” her father said. ”We find comfort reflecting on the incredible person Emilie was and how many lives she was able to touch.”
Emilie, 6, was helping teach her younger sisters to read and make things, and she was the little girls would go to for comfort, he said.
“They looked up to her,” Parker said.
READ: Complete List of Sandy Hook Victims
Parker moved his wife and three daughters to Newtown eight months ago after accepting a job as a physician’s assistant at Danbury Hospital. He said Emilie, his oldest daughter, seemed to have adjusted well to her new school, and he was very happy with the school, too.
“I love the people at the school. I love Emilie’s teacher and the classmates we were able to get to know,” he said.
(Image Credit: Alex von Kleydorff/AP Photo)
The family dealt with another tragic loss in October when Emilie lost her grandfather in an accident.
“[This] has been a topic that has been discussed in our family in the past couple of months,” Parker said. “[My daughters ages 3 and 4] seem to get the that there’s somebody who they will miss very much.”
Emilie, a budding artist who carried her markers and pencils everywhere, paid tribute to her grandfather by slipping a special card she had drawn into his casket, Parker said. It was something she frequently did to lift the spirits of others.
“I can’t count the number of times Emilie would find someone feeling sad or frustrated and would make people a card,” Parker said. “She was an exceptional artist.”
The girl who was remembered as “always willing to try new things, other than food” was learning Portuguese from her father, who speaks the language.
(Image Credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
On Friday morning, Emilie woke up before her father left for his job and exchanged a few sentences with him in the language.
“She told me good morning and asked how I was doing,” Parker said. “She said she loved me, I gave her a kiss and I was out the door.”
Parker found out about the shooting while on lockdown in Danbury Hospital and found a television for the latest news.
“I didn’t think it was that big of deal at first,” he said. “With the first reports coming in, it didn’t sound like it was going to be as tragic as it was. That’s kind of what it was like for us.”
CLICK HERE for full coverage of the Sandy Hook shooting.
Parker said he knows that God can’t take away free will and would have been unable to stop the Sandy Hook shooting. While gunman Adam Lanza used his free agency to take innocent lives, Parker said he plans to use his in a positive way.
“I’m not mad because I have my [free] agency to use this event to do whatever I can to make sure my family and my wife and my daughters are taken care [of],” he said “And if there’s anything I can do to help to anyone at any time at anywhere, I’m free to do that.”
(Image credit: Emilie Parker Fund/Facebook)
Friday night, hours after he learned of his daughter’s death, Parker said he spoke at his church.
“I don’t know how to get through something like this. My wife and I don’t understand how to process all of this,” he said today. “We find strength in our religion and in our faith and in our family. ”
“It’s a horrific tragedy and I want everyone to know our hearts and prayers go out to them. This includes the family of the shooter. I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you and I want you to know our family … love and support goes out to you as well.”
Lisa Grossman, physical sciences reporter
(Image: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras)
If CERN observes the proceedings of the United Nations, will it change the outcome?
The international particle physics laboratory, based near Geneva, Switzerland, has been granted observer status in the General Assembly of the United Nations, CERN officials announced today.
The lab joins environmental groups and public health agencies as the first physical sciences research organization in the ranks of UN observers. Observer status grants the right to speak at meetings, participate in procedural votes, and sign and sponsor resolutions, but not to vote on resolutions.
In some ways, CERN's addition seems a natural move - and a long time coming.
The facility was founded in 1954 under the auspices of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Its initial mission was to provide collaborative projects for researchers from Allied countries and former Axis countries after the second World War.
Arguably the lab's most high-profile project, the Large Hadron Collider, made headlines worldwide this year when it revealed detection of a new particle that appears to be the elusive Higgs boson.
"Through its projects, which bring together scientists from all over the world, CERN also promotes dialogue between nations and has become a model for international cooperation," CERN states in a press release. The lab says it may use its new status with the UN to help shore up scientific education and technological capabilities in developing countries, particularly in Africa.
But just as observing a quantum particle can change its state, can CERN's involvement truly collapse the UN's wavefunction and trigger better global science and technology policies? Only time will tell.
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