VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) ? Canadian silver minerhigh tension electrostatic drum separator Aurcana expects to begin work on its second mine, the Shafter project in Texas, next year, and will likely start production at the operation early in 2012, CEO Lenic Rodriguez said on Thursday.
The company has started putting out feelers for the $40-million that it needs to fund the project, and Rodriguez is confident the money will be in place in the early part of next year, he said in an interview at the company?s Vancouver headquarters.
If Shafter was in production today it would be the twelve-largest pure silver mine in the world and, once in operation, the mine is expected to boost the US from number-eight silver producer up to sixth place and increase the country?s silver output by 10%.
For Aurcana, it will mean production surges to more than five-million ounces of silver a year, as Shafter adds to expanding output at the company?s already-producing La Negra mine, in Mexico.
Rodriguez plans to raise $40-million to finance the project, mostly in debt, although it could include an equity component, possibly in the form of warrants.
?But we want to keep dilution as low as possible,? he said.
Aurcana had a very good reception from fund managers and investors on a recent road show trip to New York and Boston, and is planning to do the rounds in Europe soon too.
?So, the markets are opening up and I feel confident that we will be able to get this financing in place.?
Based on a June 2009 prefeasibility study, Shafter could produce an average of 3,2-million ounces a year of silver, with cash costs forecast at $7,50/oz.
Once the financing is in place the company plans to start work towards development right away, and expects production should follow within 18 to 24 months.
Aurcana bought the past producing mine in 2008 from Silver Standard Resources. The asset currently has an NI 43-101 silver resource of 24,6-million ounces measured and indicated, plus 22,8 million ounces in the inferred category.
The operation will produce silver dore bars on site, and Rodriguez said there is also a possibility the company could mint the silver and brand it as ?Texas silver?, which would create an additional profit margin. LA NEGRA
Aurcana is also expanding its La Negra operation, in Queretaro state, Mexico, from the current 1 000 t/d throughput to 1 500 t/d.
The expansion should be completed in the first quarter of next year, and will increase metal output to 1,25-million ounces of silver, five-million pounds of copper, five-million pounds of zinc and 1,5-million pounds of lead.
The firm is adding a new circuit for the lead, which will mean it not only escapes smelter penalties, but will also start realising revenue for the metal.
The company is putting cash flow towards the expansion, and plans to raise about $3-million in a small private placement later this year.
In June, Aurcana announced it would remove the contractor at La Negra and took over the operations itself.
Besides the savings it achieved simply by not paying a contractor every month, the company also tackled what it saw as costly supplier contracts and trimmed some surplus personnel.
?And we have really started turning that mine around,? Rodriguez said.
?It?s cash-flow positive and we expect it to be very profitable once the expansion is completed.?
All told, the operation is expected to generate more than a million dollars a month in net profit once the expansion is completed.
The La Negra mine was developed by Penoles and operated from 1970 to 2000.
When Aurcana bought it the mine had 1,2-million tons of proven and probable reserves.
After mining for two years, and without much effort in the way of exploration, those reserves now stand at 2,1-million tons.
The company will, however, start an exploration programme in November.
There are 23 known orebodies at La Negra, and many of the zones are open at depth.
?The mine?s already been producing for 30 years and we expect it to produce for us for the next ten years or more.?
Beyond the two current operations, Aurcana is also looking at some additional opportunities, both in Canada and Mexico, to ensure that it maintains a pipeline of projects.
Certain potential targets already have significant NI 43-101 compliant resources, but the firm is also considering some more grassroots opportunities, Rodriguez said.
He is hoping to see a rerating in the company?s share price as the La Negra mine ramps up and Shafter moves towards production.
Aurcana?s stock trades at just around C$0,20 apiece on the TSX Venture Exchange (C$0,23 close on Thursday).
While art may be in the eye of the beholder, a computer algorithm has been developed that can classify paintings as well as distinguished human art historians.
The task is a breakthrough for the field of artificial intelligence, showing that futuristic computers won?t just be trivia-answering champs such as IBM?s Watson or math nerds such as the Todai Robot, but trusty companions in fashionable art circles as well.
The algorithm computes from each painting 4,027 numbers that reflect the content of the image such as color, texture and shapes and then uses pattern-recognition and statistical methods to analyze similarities and differences between painting styles.
In an experiment, Lior Shamir and Jane Tarakhovsky of Lawrence Technological University used their algorithm to analyze about 1,000 paintings from 34 well-known artists. The computer provided a network of similarities between painters that agrees with the perception of art historians.
For example, it was able to distinguish between classical realism and modern artistic styles and then identified sub groups of painters that were part of the same artistic movements, such as grouping the painters Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo close to each other.
?These results demonstrate that machine vision and pattern recognition algorithms are able to mimic the complex cognitive task of the human perception of visual art,? the researchers conclude in a recent paper on their work published in the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.
This skill, they add, ?can be used to measure and quantify visual similarities between paintings, painters and schools of art.??
John Roach is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. To learn more about him, check out his website. For more of our Future of Technology series, watch the featured video below.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama warned Democrats about becoming too complacent with six weeks left before the election. He joked that Democrats tend to believe that the "sky is falling" or that "everything is great."
"This is going to be a close race right down to the wire," he told about 90 donors gathered Friday evening at the Washington home of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat.
The president's remarks came amid public polls that show him gaining advantages in some key battleground states. It also came months after anxious Democrats worried that Obama would not be able to keep up with Republican rival Mitt Romney's fundraising.
In a day partly devoted to a fundraising blitz for himself and other Democrats, Obama also offered themes of political unity, telling another group of donors that the nation is "not as divided as the pundits make it seem."
"I don't know how many folks will vote for me this time around," Obama told an afternoon audience of donors at a hotel near the White House. "But I say the same thing to them (as in 2008): I will be your president, too."
"I'm not fighting to create Democrat or Republican jobs," he added. "I'm fighting to create American jobs."
Obama continued to seize on a leaked video in which Romney said that 47 percent of people "will vote for the president no matter what." Romney described them as people who pay no federal income tax and "believe that they are victims."
Obama spoke at the first of three fundraisers after another Friday afternoon of debate prep at Democratic National Committee headquarters. He will face off against Romney in Denver on Wednesday.
The afternoon fundraiser at the Capital Hilton drew an estimated 700 guests with tickets starting at $250.
Tickets for the event at Rockefeller's home cost $20,000 per person.
The final fundraiser, back at the Hilton, drew an estimated 200 people who paid $2,500 or more to attend. The money was set for Obama's campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state Democratic parties.
"If you guys have written all the checks you can," Obama told donors at the final event, "go find some friends."
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Hundreds of shops were burning in the ancient covered market in Aleppo on Saturday as fighting between rebels and state forces in Syria's largest city threatened to destroy a UNESCO world heritage site.
The uprising-turned-civil war that is now raging across Syria has killed more than 30,000 people, according to activist groups such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
But beyond the dramatic human cost, many of Syria's historic treasures have also fallen victim to an 18-month-old conflict that has reduced parts of some cities to ruins.
Rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad announced a new offensive in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub of 2.5 million people, on Thursday, but neither side has appeared to make significant gains.
In Aleppo, activists speaking via Skype said army snipers were making it difficult to approach the Souk al-Madina, the medieval market of vaulted stone alleyways and carved wooden facades in the Old City, once a major tourist attraction.
Videos uploaded to YouTube showed dark black clouds hanging over the city skyline.
Activists said the fire might have been started by shelling and gunfire on Friday and estimated that between 700 and 1,000 shops had been destroyed so far. The accounts were difficult to verify because of government restricts on foreign media.
Aleppo's Old City is one of several locations in Syria declared world heritage sites by UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, that are now at risk from the fighting.
UNESCO believes five of Syria's six heritage sites - which also include the ancient desert city of Palmyra, the Crac des Chevaliers crusader fortress and parts of old Damascus - have been affected.
The British-based Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists across Syria, said Assad's forces and rebels blamed each other for the blaze.
NO ONE MAKING GAINS
Heavy clashes erupted outside several military sites in Aleppo on Saturday evening. Activists said rebels were battling government forces outside the Neirab military air base.
The Observatory said clashes outside a base used for artillery training had set a nearby building alight and killed three people.
Fighting was also reported outside Bab Antakya, a stone gateway to Aleppo's Old City, which sits on ancient trade routes and survived a parade of rulers throughout its construction between the 12th and 17th century.
Rebels said they had taken the gate, but some activists said the fighting continued and neither side was truly in control.
"No one is actually making gains here, it is just fighting and more fighting, and terrified people are fleeing," said an activist contacted by telephone who declined to be identified.
He said in some districts, bodies were lying in the streets and residents would not collect them, fearing snipers.
More than 40 people had been killed in fighting across Syria, according to the Observatory.
Syria's military deadlock is also reflected diplomatically, with foreign powers stalemated over how to act. Western states and Gulf Arab countries back the opposition but most seem reluctant to interfere, while Russia, China and Iran back Assad.
The revolt against four decades of Assad family, which began in March 2011 as peaceful protests, has become an armed insurgency, with rebels holding ground in Aleppo and rural towns of northern Syria.
The fighting has crept closer to Syria's border zones, and some bullets and rockets have hit neighboring Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey. Ankara warned it would take action if its territory was again hit - a mortar bomb hit a town on its southeastern frontier on Friday.
GOVERNMENT VICTORY "CERTAIN"
An advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said he was confident Syria's government would beat the rebels.
"The victory of the government of Syria against internal opponents, America, and their other Western and Arab supporters, is counted as a victory of the Islamic Republic of Iran," said Ali Akbar Velayati, according to state news agency IRNA.
"The victory of the Syrian government is certain.
Activists reported fresh clashes in the capital Damascus and its suburbs and said security forces were torching homes as helicopters buzzed overhead.
The bloodied bodies of at least 12 men were found in Damascus's northwestern suburb of Qudsaya. A video published by showed rows of men, some of them apparently shot, laid in a room whose walls were spattered with blood.
Some Damascus residents have accused government forces of summary executions in rebel districts.
"They can't arrest everyone, so they are using elimination tactics. They enter area that was held by rebels, look for people that are wanted and kill them all," one activist said.
Assad has long defended the fierce crackdown, arguing that he has been fighting Islamist militants funded from abroad.
Text messages attributed to the army were sent to all Syrian mobiles since Aleppo rebels announced their new offensive.
"To those who have implicated themselves against the state: Those who have offered you money have left you with two options: You will be killed fighting the state or it will kill you to get rid of you," one message read.
"The state is more merciful than you. Think and decide. The Syrian Army."
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Situation: Fire devastated family business and home of divorced woman
Strategy: Get insurance settlement and a job, invest for retirement
Solution: Retirement income two-thirds more than pre-fire salary
Trouble, it is said, comes in threes. The case of a woman we?ll call Judy, 50, appears to prove the rule. Recently divorced, she found her home destroyed by fire and her source of income terminated.
Judy owned, lived in and ran a ski lodge in Alberta until it was burned to the ground in an electrical fire in late 2010.
A seasonal operation with 15 rooms, it barely broke even after paying Judy a $48,000 annual pre-tax salary. She had insurance, of course, but it was a low-cost package that did not cover loss of business or provide for full replacement cost of the lodge.
So instead of paying out potentially millions it would take to rebuild at today?s prices, she will be left with an insurance settlement of $400,000 and the lot where the lodge used to be, which is worth about $75,000.
Investing everything scares the heck out of me. I need a plan but don?t know where to start. I am still frightened by what happened and I have planning paralysis
There is no money to rebuild the lodge. Judy has moved to a rental apartment in Vancouver and is looking for a new job. There won?t be any payment for loss of business, which was a break-even operation to begin with.
So far she has received $200,000, which she is using to supplement the $1,212 she gets every month from employment insurance. In the expensive Vancouver housing market, her settlement may not even be enough to buy her a new home.
With twin sons in university and her own retirement to consider, she is nervous.
?What do I do now?? Judy asks. ?I could buy another home, but that is impossible in Vancouver. Investing everything scares the heck out of me. I need a plan but don?t know where to start. I am still frightened by what happened and I have planning paralysis.?
Family Finance asked Derek Moran, head of Smarter Financial Planning Ltd. in Kelowna, B.C., to work with Judy. In his view, she can solve her problems if she can get a new job, perhaps in hotel management, and make sensible investments. It will take a series of steps, he says.
Cash management
Mr. Moran suggests a couple of first steps: Put $10,000 of her $175,670 cash ? what?s left after paying some of her transitional living costs and replacing clothing and other goods ? into her tax-free savings account.
Second, pay off a $5,000 line of credit with a 7.5% interest rate.
Third, sell a $40,000 building lot to her ex-husband via a vendor-take-back mortgage. If he misses a payment, she gets the lot back. The deal is not without risk, for if the market price of the lot were to drop and he missed payments, she would be left with an asset of reduced value.
A sale is pending of the $75,000 lot where the lodge once stood.
Judy can make several economies. She allocates $450 a month to her sons? educations on top of income from their $38,000 trust accounts. Yet each son can make $225 a month with part-time work. Her $650-a-month spending for clothing covers replacement of her wardrobe, which was lost in the fire. It will be reduced over time.
Judy can apply the skills she used in many years of ski lodge management to running a conventional hotel or another lodge. She expects to replicate the $48,000 annual salary when, soon, she expects to have full-time work.
She can eliminate $200 a month for the cost of her line of credit, $450 for university costs, $253 for property taxes on the lots, $650 for clothing expenses, and $350 a month for keeping her horse (due to be sold).
Remaining expenses, including a normalized budget of $200 a month for clothing and grooming, would add up to $3,535 a month. If her retirement income after tax can produce that amount, her retirement would be adequately financed and, with a bit of financial engineering, some capital would be preserved for her sons to inherit.
Retirement
If she invests in high-quality corporate bonds or dividend-paying stocks that generate a conservative return of 2% after inflation and income taxes, her assets of $527,670 (including her insurance settlement) would grow to $739,000 in 17 years when, at 67, her Old Age Security begins. In retirement, that capital could generate 3% or $22,170 after average 10% income tax. All figures are in 2012 dollars.
If Judy is prepared to exhaust her capital in 25 years to age 90, her financial assets could generate $47,000 a year to age 90, Mr. Moran estimates. Judy is on track to earn full Canada Pension Plan benefits at 65 of $11,840 a year. She will also receive $6,540 in Old Age Security at age 67. Her gross income at age 67, assuming capital exhaustion by age 90, would total $65,380. or $4,900 a month, after 10% income tax.
If Judy gets a job and is able to save $10,000 a year out of salary and investment income until she is 67 and her OAS begins, she could grow $204,000 additional capital by 65. In retirement, that money could generate $6,120 a year at 3% before tax. If this capital is not exhausted, it could be a legacy for her children. In this case, Judy?s total pre-tax annual income would rise to nearly $71,500 a year, or $5,363 a month, after 10% tax.
In spite of the fire and its destruction of her way of life, her after-tax retirement income in 2012 dollars would be 1.7 times more than her annual salary before the blaze. She could easily cover expenses less the cost of stabling and feeding her horse, which is due to be sold, debt service and university expenses for her sons.
There are a lot of ifs in these projections, Mr. Moran admits. Judy should be able to get a job in hotel management. The final insurance settlement of $200,000 is probable, but at the moment, the money is just a contingent asset.
She could also choose to use some of the insurance money for a down payment on another house where she finds permanent work. In that case, her $1,400 monthly rent payments could be spent on mortgage payments. Utilities and upkeep would add to that, but it?s her future choice.
Nevertheless, Judy is, as Mr. Moran says, by nature a saver. ?If she can invest wisely and work to cover living expenses and to provide a margin for saving, she should be able to have a comfortable retirement,? he says.
Need help getting out of a financial fix? Email andrewallentuck@mts.net for a free Family Finance analysis.
The left talks about community a great deal, but their vision of community is a giant till where everyone is forced to put their money and their bureaucracy decides how many people get to keep what percent of their money and how many get to keep other people's money.
Published: September 27th, 2012
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Some nights ago I sat in an emergency room while a 19-year-old heroin addict was brought in. It was after midnight, the witching hour, on a weekend when the zombies and ghosts of the city?s party circuit begin drifting in dressed in their best clothes, escorted by police officers, clutching bloodied rags to their faces or lying on stretchers and always at their articulate best.
The girl came from a wealthy background and was articulate enough to hurriedly assemble her story. An addict since her teenage years, she had been clean for a while and never used anything but heroin, except occasionally cocaine. The drug use was just a single slip, one mistake, and then she would be clean again.
Anyone who hasn?t worked with addicts doesn?t know how charming and persuasive they can be. The addict is the distilled ego focused on a single burning need. All the cleverness and intelligence of the human being, the attributes that we would ordinarily use to work, create, befriend and empathize, become tools for protecting the addiction and the supply.
Addicts are intense because they are among the few people in this world who know exactly what they want. They can be charming, but their routines are mechanical. They retain only enough of their humanity to charm us into giving them more of what they want. It is their only reason for interacting with us. The addict is pure ego and the drug is the only focus of their ego. The addict needs so badly that he or she becomes an incarnation of need. Their humanity is slowly or rapidly burned away leaving behind nothing but the animal need, their outer characteristics consumed by their ego and then their ego consumed by the id.
The girl was no friend or family member of mine. I had seen many like her and as our civilization unwinds into its own night of the soul, there will be many more like her. Having all the advantages of life, she was desperately unhappy and like so much of the modern world that tunes in to Oprah for tips on how to be happy or browses self-help sections on a desperate quest for happiness, she was still trying to be happy. Her cry was the cry of a country addicted to emptiness and losing its soul.
I do not come to judge or to moralize about how people live their lives. Even the best of us are flawed and even the worst of us have their moments of redemption. Many are addicts of one kind or another, becoming tethered to the thing that assures us happiness, even as it seems to drain us of something vital. Many such addictions can be harmless, but when an addiction becomes unsustainable, then it becomes a death sentence. A death of the soul followed by the death of the body.
While I sat there, trying to ignore the noises, the shrieks of pain, the pleas for help and the mumbles, the Republican Convention was beginning to recede. My fingers tapped out the essay on a 3?5 inch screen that would become, ?How to Write About the Republican Convention.? Ahead of me lay the Democratic Convention, the addicts convention, the festival of that corner of America that was not so slowly losing its soul.
I did not, I could not anticipate the full insane spectacle of it at the time. No one could have. But I sensed that it would sound a lot like the heroin addict in the bed, shrieking at her parents, changing emotional pitches in a moment from hysteria to sweetness, turning on the momentary charm with the nurses, innocently assuring the staff that she was not a user. And it did. It was a lunatic addict festival with designs by LSD and math by cocaine addicts fresh from Wall Street and social programs from potheads.
All that outrage over Mitt Romney?s 47 percent hits home because we are all users. Some of that usage is more legitimate. Some of us are using money that we put in there as insurance and some of us are using money that we didn?t. But that?s not the real story. The real story is that our social safety net was supposed to be like one of those, ?Take a Penny, Leave a Penny? tills that depend on the honor and neighborliness of a community. And we don?t have that community. What we have is a fragmented mess of givers and takers who are not the same people.
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About the Author:Daniel Greenfield is an Israeli born blogger and columnist, and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. His work covers American, European and Israeli politics as well as the War on Terror. His writing can be found at http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/.
The views expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent the views of The Jewish Press.
MySpace was huge. The social network had millions of users before Facebook shoved it aside. But now, Justin Timberlake and two investors have announced big plans for a rebuilt MySpace.
By Pamela Cyran / September 25, 2012
Justin Timberlake poses at the premiere of "Trouble with the Curve." The musician and actor has purchased MySpace with two business partners.
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Enlarge
A "new MySpace" waits just around the corner, says Justin Timberlake, who purchased the once-massive social network with two investors.
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When media titan News Corp. first purchased MySpace in July, 2005, for $580 million, the thought of selling it just six years later for $35 million was unthinkable. But it happened. Now, a year later, plans for MySpace's next evolution are finally revealed.
Over the last three years, MySpace lost hundreds of millions in revenue and went through extensive layoffs, cutting over half their employees. Currently the MySpace audience is only?54 million.?Compared to Facebook's nearly 1 billion members,?many consider MySpace to be extinct.
On June 30, News Corp. sold?MySpace to singer-turned-actor Justin Timberlake and Chris and Tim Vanderhook. Their plan is to completely rebuild the site from scratch.
The redesigned MySpace now puts music at its center. It's a place for artists to connect with their fans.
?In a single sentence, it?s a social network for the creative community to connect to their fans,? Tim Vanderhook told The Hollywood Reporter. ?We?re going after artists, right after this we?ll be talking to various artists to come on the platform. We want to give them a chance to help build it with us. We?re really far along, but we really want that last twenty percent to really be crafted by more people like Justin that actually know the tools and things that they need.?
The Hollywood Reporter also notes that Timberlake?s role is obvious when it comes to promoting and recruiting, however, he won?t reveal who will be his first targets. Eventually, the site will reach out to undiscovered talent and their fans.
?So it?s not about just the established, it?s also about the unsigned,? Chris Vanderhook said in The Hollywood Reporter article.
A new feature will allow fans to be profiled on their favorite artists? page. In other words, Timberlake admirers may one day see their picture on his page with the caption ?#1 fan.? The new co-owners believe that this method of connecting fans and artists will be a big attention-grabber for potential users.
Recently, Timberlake posted a teaser video on Twitter?revealing the new MySpace. According to MTV News, the interface looks ?a bit like Facebook-meets-Instagram, with hints of Pinterest and Windows 8.?
Among other things, users can peruse not only their friends? photos, but playlists as well. The new ?trending? tab shows everything from schedules of bands performing on late-night shows to magazine profiles of artists. For easy sharing and connecting, the new design features a drag-and-drop method.
However, even with all the new attractive bells and whistles, MySpace will still have to compete with the social network that wounded MySpace in the first place: Facebook.
Central Florida employer partners with ICE to ensure legal workforce and prevent fraud
TAMPA, Fla. ? A Florida distributor of fresh produce is the latest employer to be certified with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) employment compliance program, IMAGE, or "ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers."
Florida Potato & Onion LLC has pledged and been officially certified by ICE to protect the integrity of its workforce. The certification was marked by a ceremony Sept. 26 at ICE?s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in Tampa. IMAGE is a voluntary program that helps employers comply with the law by equipping them with the knowledge and tools needed to ensure a legal, authorized workforce.
?In today?s world, employers have a responsibility to protect the integrity of their labor force by ensuring that their employees are who they represent themselves to be and that they are legally authorized to work in this country,? said Susan McCormick, special agent in charge of HSI Tampa.
Florida Potato & Onion LLC is headquartered in Plant City, Fla., and employs 61 people. The company began operations in 2004 and distributes multiple varieties of potatoes and onions to Florida markets.
With the addition of Florida Potato & Onion LLC, 13 Florida employers with more than 17,000 employees participate in the IMAGE program. Tampa Electric, TECO Energy Inc., Avant Healthcare Professionals LLC, Naples Hilton, CHEP USA, The Tampa Banking Company, Sarasota Manatee Airport Authority, Cutrale Citrus Juices USA Inc., as well as the boards of commissioners for Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando, and Citrus County have been certified by the IMAGE program.
Certified businesses pledge to maintain a secure and stable workforce and curtail the employment of unauthorized workers through outreach and education. To qualify for IMAGE certification, companies must meet the following requirements:
Enroll in the E-Verify program within 60 days,
Establish a written hiring and employment eligibility verification policy that includes internal Form I-9 audits at least once per year, and
Submit to a Form I-9 inspection.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) E-Verify employment eligibility verification program enables employers to verify that newly hired employees are eligible to work in the United States. This Internet-based system is available throughout the nation and is free to employers. It provides an automated link to the Social Security Administration database and DHS immigration records.
Companies interested in more information about the IMAGE program can call 813-357-7000 or visit ICE.gov/image.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE is a 21st century law enforcement agency with broad responsibilities for a number of key homeland security priorities. For more information, visit www.ICE.gov. To report suspicious activity, call 1-866-347-2423 or complete our tip form.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Builder Tutor Perini Corp has won a $9.6 million contract to repair earthquake damage to the Washington Monument, the National Park Service said on Wednesday.
The award of the contract to Perini Management Services Inc, a Tutor Perini unit, allows repair work on the Washington landmark to begin, the agency said in a statement.
Repairs are expected to take 12 to 18 months to complete. Scaffolding will sheathe the 555-foot-high (169.2-meter-high) structure during the work.
The marble and granite monument to George Washington, the first U.S. president, was widely damaged by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake on August 23, 2011.
The structure sustained cracks and loosened pieces of stone and lost mortar when it was shaken. The monument has been closed since the quake.
Repairs have been completed on the monument's elevator, which was severely damaged, the statement said.
Congress has appropriated $7.5 million for the work. The amount was matched by David Rubenstein, the billionaire co-founder of Washington's Carlyle Group, a private equity firm.
The rest of the $15 million will go toward a completed damage assessment, construction management, a contingency fund and overhead, among other things, the statement said.
(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
Mobile marketing is a proven way to access an enormous and potentially untapped audience, for your products and services. There are very few people that do not have some sort of mobile phone, tablet, etc.
Text abbreviations are not for mobile marketing campaigns, as not every customer will be familiar with their meanings. If your marketing communications are not easily understood by recipients, the message is not likely to win you any sales.
If you want your mobile marketing campaign to be successful, then you need to make sure that your offers are of value to your customers. You don?t want to discourage your customers by bugging them all the time with messages, you want visibility so don?t be shy but manage your messaging as well.
TIP! Do not randomly message your clients. Always make sure that what you?re messaging them about is relevant and important.
If you have a big mobile marketing list and are planning to have a big company event or maybe a sale send a reminder a little before it starts, unless it?s an early morning sale. Some customers need reminders and will appreciate the heads up.
Mobile Devices
You will need to test the mobile version of your website and your mobile advertisements using a variety of mobile devices. Different mobile devices run on a variety of browsers, with different resolutions and screen sizes. Your ads and site may not look the same on one device as they do on another. At least check how your content looks on the most popular devices.
TIP! Do not bombard your customers with offers. Studies indicate that people are more likely to redeem offers that only come in once a week or or 3 times a month.
Instead of using shared short codes, purchase dedicated ones. It can be expensive, up to 2k, but they will be yours. Sooner or later people will recognize your short code and link it to your company. This is much smaller of a price than encountering legal problems. You can get in trouble if the company that you are sharing codes with takes advantage of the system.
If it is easy for a recipient to resend your ad, they probably will. Ease of forwarding as well as incentives for doing so are great ways to ensure that your ad is packing all of the punch that it is capable of.
Make sure that any mobile apps your company releases deliver a service your customers want. Potential or existing customers are going to pay little attention to the app if it doesn?t provide them with any practical benefits.
TIP! You have to offer your consumer something in return for them purchasing from you. You need to offer incentives in your mobile marketing campaign.
Search Engine
Your mobile website will need to incorporate some search engine optimization rules to be more successful. Google is the most widely used search engine through mobile devices and a great starting point for SEO.
Have a telephone number database to assist your mobile marketing efforts. You need more than just cell phone numbers in the mobile marketing database. Allowing users to opt into your database will provide you with a level of legitimacy as you continue forward. You can use a form from the internet or they can text you a code.
TIP! Planning is the the key to success for any new mobile marketing campaign. It?s important to take the long view and measure success by how long your campaign lasts, rather than just looking at the results in terms of sales.
Sometimes, changes in the marketplace can affect your customer base. Always stay current with the newest technology out there or your business may suffer. Customers are always looking for the next best thing.
Allow message recipients to leave feedback about your mobile marketing communications. This offers an excellent opportunity to connect more effectively and interact with your customers. Customer input is valuable, regardless of whether it?s positive or negative. You should seek out customer feedback at every opportunity.
Recruit friends to test your marketing methods before trying them on the public. To get a truly unbiased opinion, you could pay an outside firm to test out your campaign.
TIP! Remember that the audience you are targeting are people and they are busy, just like you. Realize that is an issue and act accordingly.
Mobile Marketing
Mobile marketing should focus on retaining existing customers instead of gaining new ones. People who have never done business with you are unlikely to respond to, or even appreciate, your text messages and special offers. Be mindful about how you use mobile marketing. Unsolicited marketing to new customer leads is often considered a spamming technique.
A helpful hint to help you get started with your mobile marketing plan is to do a test run before putting your plan into effect. Sending out ineffective messages will be a complete waste of time. Also, send it to coworkers first and see what their impression of it is before going live.
TIP! Include maps designed for mobile devices on your site to bring in local customers. Customers searching for a real location will be able to quickly and easily access your store information and address.
Take the time to conduct a usability test. If your customers cannot see your message, then you are wasting your time and theirs. Solicit help from friends and family before launching your mobile marketing campaign to test the for usability issues.
Mobile Device
Your mobile website should include maps and directions that are easy to use with a mobile device. There are a lot of people that rely on mobile devices for getting navigational directions. Create an easy way for consumers to reach your store front. Make sure your content is able to be viewed on a mobile device. Create a link on your mobile site that has a link to Google maps making it easier for your visitors to find your exact location.
TIP! Research about your audience. Instead of assuming what your audience wants to hear, take the time and find out what their likes and dislikes are.
Mobile marketing will expand to keep pace with the insatiable demand for all manner of mobile devices. Soon the vast majority of people will own a phone and mobile marketing will be one of the most efficient ways of reaching them. These tips will help you stay ahead of your competition and allow you to stay in contact your clients. Happy marketing
What can the water monster teach us about tissue regeneration in humans?Public release date: 25-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Hoang ahoang@salk.edu 619-861-5811 Salk Institute
Understanding how salamanders grow new limbs provides insights into the potential of human regenerative medicine
LA JOLLA, CA---- Based on two new studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, regeneration of a new limb or organ in a human will be much more difficult than the mad scientist and supervillain, Dr. Curt Connors, made it seem in the Amazing Spider-man comics and films.
As those who saw the recent "The Amazing Spiderman" movie will know, Dr. Connors injected himself with a serum made from lizard DNA to successfully regrow his missing lower right arm - that is, before the formula transformed him into a reptilian humanoid.
But by studying a real lizard-like amphibian, which can regenerate missing limbs, the Salk researchers discovered that it isn't enough to activate genes that kick start the regenerative process. In fact, one of the first steps is to halt the activity of so-called jumping genes.
In research published August 23 in Development, Growth & Differentiation, and July 27 in Developmental Biology, the researchers show that in the Mexican axolotl, jumping genes have to be shackled or they might move around in the genomes of cells in the tissue destined to become a new limb, and disrupt the process of regeneration.
They found that two proteins, piwi-like 1 (PL1) and piwi-like 2 (PL2), perform the job of quieting down jumping genes in this immature tadpole-like form of a salamander, known as an axolotl - a creature whose name means water monster and who can regenerate everything from parts of its brain to eyes, spinal cord, and tail.
"What our work suggests is that jumping genes would be an issue in any situation where you wanted to turn on regeneration," says the studies' senior author, Tony Hunter, a professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and director of the Salk Institute Cancer Center.
"As complex as it already seems, it might seem a hopeless task to try to regenerate a limb or body part in humans, especially since we don't know if humans even have all the genes necessary for regeneration," says Hunter. "For this reason, it is important to understand how regeneration works at a molecular level in a vertebrate that can regenerate as a first step. What we learn may eventually lead to new methods for treating human conditions, such as wound healing and regeneration of simple tissues."
The research team, which included investigators from other universities around the country, sought to characterize the transcriptional fingerprint emerging from the early phase of axolotl regeneration. They specifically looked at the blastema, a structure that forms at a limb's stump.
There the scientists found transcriptional activation of some genes, usually found only in germlime cells, which indicated cellular reprogramming of differentiated cells into a germline state.
In the Development, Growth & Differentiation study, the research team, led by Wei Zhu, then a postdoctoral researcher in Hunter's laboratory, focused on one of these genes, the long interspersed nucleotide element-1 (LINE-1) retrotransposon.
LINE-1 elements are jumping genes that arose early in vertebrate evolution. They are pieces of DNA that copy themselves in two stages - first from DNA to RNA by transcription, and then from RNA to DNA by reverse transcription. These DNA copies can then insert themselves into the cell's genome at new positions.
A few years ago, Fred Gage, professor in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute, discovered that LINE-1 elements move around during neuronal development, and may program the identities of individual neurons.
"Most of these copies appear to be 'junk' DNA, because they are defective and can never jump again," says Hunter. But all mammals, including humans, still have active LINE-1 genes, and the salamander, whose genome is 10 times larger than a human's, contains many more.
Active LINE-1 retrotransposons can keep jumping, and that was true in the developing blastema where LINE-1 jumping was dramatically switched on. But in the researchers' companion study, in Developmental Biology, they found that PL1 and PL2 switch off transcription of repeat elements, such as LINE-1. "The idea is that in the development of germ cells, you definitely don't want these things hopping around," says Hunter. "The mobilization of these jumping genes can introduce harmful genomic rearrangements or even abort the regeneration process."
In fact, when the researchers inhibited PL1 and PL2 activity in the axoloti limb blastema, regeneration was significantly slowed down.
"The need to switch on one set of genes to stop other genes from jumping just illustrates how amazingly difficult it would be to regenerate something as complex as a limb in humans," Hunter says. "But that doesn't mean we won't learn valuable lessons about how to treat degenerative diseases."
###
The work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Public Health Service, and an Innovation Grant from the Salk Institute.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
What can the water monster teach us about tissue regeneration in humans?Public release date: 25-Sep-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andy Hoang ahoang@salk.edu 619-861-5811 Salk Institute
Understanding how salamanders grow new limbs provides insights into the potential of human regenerative medicine
LA JOLLA, CA---- Based on two new studies by researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, regeneration of a new limb or organ in a human will be much more difficult than the mad scientist and supervillain, Dr. Curt Connors, made it seem in the Amazing Spider-man comics and films.
As those who saw the recent "The Amazing Spiderman" movie will know, Dr. Connors injected himself with a serum made from lizard DNA to successfully regrow his missing lower right arm - that is, before the formula transformed him into a reptilian humanoid.
But by studying a real lizard-like amphibian, which can regenerate missing limbs, the Salk researchers discovered that it isn't enough to activate genes that kick start the regenerative process. In fact, one of the first steps is to halt the activity of so-called jumping genes.
In research published August 23 in Development, Growth & Differentiation, and July 27 in Developmental Biology, the researchers show that in the Mexican axolotl, jumping genes have to be shackled or they might move around in the genomes of cells in the tissue destined to become a new limb, and disrupt the process of regeneration.
They found that two proteins, piwi-like 1 (PL1) and piwi-like 2 (PL2), perform the job of quieting down jumping genes in this immature tadpole-like form of a salamander, known as an axolotl - a creature whose name means water monster and who can regenerate everything from parts of its brain to eyes, spinal cord, and tail.
"What our work suggests is that jumping genes would be an issue in any situation where you wanted to turn on regeneration," says the studies' senior author, Tony Hunter, a professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory and director of the Salk Institute Cancer Center.
"As complex as it already seems, it might seem a hopeless task to try to regenerate a limb or body part in humans, especially since we don't know if humans even have all the genes necessary for regeneration," says Hunter. "For this reason, it is important to understand how regeneration works at a molecular level in a vertebrate that can regenerate as a first step. What we learn may eventually lead to new methods for treating human conditions, such as wound healing and regeneration of simple tissues."
The research team, which included investigators from other universities around the country, sought to characterize the transcriptional fingerprint emerging from the early phase of axolotl regeneration. They specifically looked at the blastema, a structure that forms at a limb's stump.
There the scientists found transcriptional activation of some genes, usually found only in germlime cells, which indicated cellular reprogramming of differentiated cells into a germline state.
In the Development, Growth & Differentiation study, the research team, led by Wei Zhu, then a postdoctoral researcher in Hunter's laboratory, focused on one of these genes, the long interspersed nucleotide element-1 (LINE-1) retrotransposon.
LINE-1 elements are jumping genes that arose early in vertebrate evolution. They are pieces of DNA that copy themselves in two stages - first from DNA to RNA by transcription, and then from RNA to DNA by reverse transcription. These DNA copies can then insert themselves into the cell's genome at new positions.
A few years ago, Fred Gage, professor in the Laboratory of Genetics at the Salk Institute, discovered that LINE-1 elements move around during neuronal development, and may program the identities of individual neurons.
"Most of these copies appear to be 'junk' DNA, because they are defective and can never jump again," says Hunter. But all mammals, including humans, still have active LINE-1 genes, and the salamander, whose genome is 10 times larger than a human's, contains many more.
Active LINE-1 retrotransposons can keep jumping, and that was true in the developing blastema where LINE-1 jumping was dramatically switched on. But in the researchers' companion study, in Developmental Biology, they found that PL1 and PL2 switch off transcription of repeat elements, such as LINE-1. "The idea is that in the development of germ cells, you definitely don't want these things hopping around," says Hunter. "The mobilization of these jumping genes can introduce harmful genomic rearrangements or even abort the regeneration process."
In fact, when the researchers inhibited PL1 and PL2 activity in the axoloti limb blastema, regeneration was significantly slowed down.
"The need to switch on one set of genes to stop other genes from jumping just illustrates how amazingly difficult it would be to regenerate something as complex as a limb in humans," Hunter says. "But that doesn't mean we won't learn valuable lessons about how to treat degenerative diseases."
###
The work was supported by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Public Health Service, and an Innovation Grant from the Salk Institute.
About the Salk Institute for Biological Studies:
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is one of the world's preeminent basic research institutions, where internationally renowned faculty probe fundamental life science questions in a unique, collaborative, and creative environment. Focused both on discovery and on mentoring future generations of researchers, Salk scientists make groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of cancer, aging, Alzheimer's, diabetes and infectious diseases by studying neuroscience, genetics, cell and plant biology, and related disciplines.
Faculty achievements have been recognized with numerous honors, including Nobel Prizes and memberships in the National Academy of Sciences. Founded in 1960 by polio vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk, M.D., the Institute is an independent nonprofit organization and architectural landmark.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
A just-released study by Bankrate.com finds that checking account fees have hit unprecedented highs. At the same time, it?s becoming harder to get a truly free checking account, one with no strings attached.
Here are the key findings from the Bankrate 2012 Checking Survey:
The average monthly maintenance fee for a non-interest checking account is now at a record high of $5.48. That?s a 25 percent jump from last year.
Overdraft fees are also at a record high. The average NSF or nonsufficient funds fee is $31.26, up from $30.83 last year.?
The cost to get cash from an out-of-network ATM is up dramatically. Expect to pay an average fee of $2.50 to the owner of the ATM, a new record and up 4 percent from last year. Plus your bank will charge you another $1.57 on average, an increase of 11 percent.?
As fees go up, ?free? checking ? with no minimum balance requirement and no monthly fee ? continues its march toward extinction.?
?And that?s going to continue over the next few years,? said Bankrate?s senior financial analyst Greg McBride. ?I don?t expect it to reverse anytime soon.??
The Bankrate survey shows that only 39 percent of the major banks in the U.S. offer non-interest checking accounts that have no fee. That?s down from a peak of 76 percent just three years ago and 45 percent in 2011.?
Why is this happening?? Bankers are responding to new federal regulations that have reduced their revenue from both overdraft fees and debit card swipe fees.?
?Free checking accounts have become the casualty of those regulatory changes,? McBride said. ?Rather than handing out that free checking to everybody who walks through the door, you typically have to have some other relationship or business with the bank.?
You can avoid the fees Bankrate found that with most non-interest checking accounts ? about 95 percent ? there are ways to avoid the fees.
?The easiest way to get your account for free is to sign up for direct deposit,? McBride said. ?That?s the most common string attached and it?s a pretty low hurdle to clear.?
Some banks require a minimum balance to waive the fee and that amount continues to rise. In some cases, it can be thousands of dollars. According to the Bankrate survey, the average minimum balance to avoid a fee now stands at $723, an increase of 23 percent from last year.
There is another option: move your money. Look for a financial institution ? a credit union, community bank or online bank ? that offers totally free checking with no requirements to qualify. Bankrate found that 72 percent of the largest credit unions still offer free checking.
Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, has prepared a tip sheet on how to move your money to a new checking account.?
Skip most interest-bearing checking accounts Bankrate found that these accounts have become even less attractive in the last year.
They have higher fees than non-interest accounts and require a larger balance to have those fees waived.?
The minimum balance required to avoid a monthly maintenance fee now sits at a whopping $6,118. That minimum has nearly double in the last two years.
Miss the minimum threshold and you?ll get hit with a monthly maintenance fee that averages $14.75.
More importantly, the yields are ridiculously low. The average interest-bearing checking account in the U.S. right now pays a paltry 0.05 percent. If you had $250,000 in that account for a year, you?d only earn $125.?
?This is not an efficient use of cash,? McBride said. The interest earnings you receive are a pittance and really don?t justify tying up that amount of money at very low and uncompetitive rates of return.??
Beat the banks Most bank penalty fees can be avoided and it?s not all that difficult to do. You just need to remember what triggers a fee and act accordingly.?
Plan ahead if you need cash? Only use your bank?s ATM or one that is in-network. In a pinch, make a purchase with your credit or debit card and get some cash back. That way, there?s no fee.?
Avoid overdraft fees? We all make mistakes, but you?ll get clobbered if you overdraw your account. Monitor your account: keep track of automatic bill payments, debit card charges and cash withdrawals. It?s easy to check your balance online or on the phone. See if you bank offers email or text alerts that let you know when your checking account balance drops below a level you set.?
Link your checking account to a savings account that can be tapped if you overdraw. That service is a lot cheaper than paying an overdraft fee.?
If you want to prevent overdraws with a debit card (and avoid NSF fees) don?t opt-in to the bank?s overdraft protection program. Sign up for this ?courtesy? service and you will be able to overdraw your checking account when you make a purchase with your debit card ? and you?ll pay a hefty fee if you do. Without debit card overdraft protection the transaction will be declined at the register if you?re about to trigger an overdraft.?
Do you know if you have overdraft protection on your debit card account? If you?re not sure, call your bank.
ConsumerMan: Customers still confused about overdraft protection?
Herb Weisbaum is The ConsumerMan. Follow him on Facebook or visit The ConsumerMan website.
>>vegas. tell us what you know regarding the romney campaign releasing within the hour his
2011tax returns
. obviously, friday,
late in the evening
. this all brings suspicion as to the timing.
>> reporter: tamron,
mitt romney
just arrived here touching down with us on the back of plane a few minutes ago, and he will be doing in
las vegas
what a lot of americans do, which is lay his cards on the table. we already are getting early indications of exactly what we will learn from these returns. of course, this is happening at the end of what has frankly been perhaps the worst week of
mitt romney
's entire campaign season that began with the release of that secretly recorded video, which led to the remarks about 47% of americans that he referred to as victims being government depend entsdependents. what we will see in the newly filed
2011tax return
, the romneys paid $1.9 million in taxes on roughly $13.7 million in what was mostly investment income. their
effective tax rate
for
2011
was 14.1%. the romneys, the campaign notes donated more than $4 million to charity in the year
2011
. that's $4 million to charity, which they say amounts to about 30% of their income. you'll remember a while back the romney campaign insisted
mitt romney
himself insisted that he never paid less than 13% in taxes. in fact, over the entire 20-year period the campaign is telling us know as we see for ourselves that the average annual
effective tax rate
, what he paid as an average over 20 years was roughly 20%. they say the lowest annual federal
tax rate
he never paid was 13.6%. of course, tamron, as he comes here to
las vegas
, this is his first trip to nevada, which is viewed as a key battle
ground state
in seven weeks. a trip last weekend was canceled because of some problems -- excuse me. it's his first trip in seven weeks to colorado, which is taking place on monday. he
DETROIT (AP) - The Oakland Athletics avoided a three-game sweep, yet still came out on the losing end.
Seth Smith homered, doubled and drove in four runs, and the Athletics beat the Detroit Tigers 12-4 in a matchup of AL playoff contenders. But the wild-card co-leaders also learned they would be minus starter Brett Anderson for the remainder of the regular season.
An MRI revealed Anderson sustained a Grade 2 strain of his right oblique muscle on Wednesday night, when the left-hander awkwardly fell off the mound and exited after two-plus innings.
Anderson was 4-2 with a 2.57 ERA after six games while coming off Tommy John surgery. The A's revealed the extent of his latest injury after their victory.
"He's a guy that's got ace-type of stuff. It hurts to lose a starting pitcher," Athletics manager Bob Melvin said. "But we've lost a lot of starters in the last month and a half, three."
Melvin said he doesn't know about Anderson's availability for the postseason.
The team also is without Brandon McCarthy, who was hit in the head by a line drive, and Bartolo Colon, who was suspended for using a performance-enhancing drug.
Both clubs are in second place in their divisions, and Oakland is even with Baltimore for the wild-card spot.
The Tigers are two games behind the Central-leading Chicago White Sox.
Outscored 18-4 in the first two games, Oakland held down Miguel Cabrera to win the finale. Cabrera singled in four at-bats, and tops the AL in batting at .333.
Josh Donaldson hit a go-ahead single in a four-run sixth inning that made it 6-3, then had an RBI double to cap a six-run ninth that included Smith's three-run double.
"We're not the type of team to score a run here, a run there, two runs here. We're more of a big-inning team, more often than not," Smith said.
Pat Neshek (2-1) retired the only batter he faced and got the win.
Anibal Sanchez (3-6), who held Cleveland hitless for 6 2-3 innings in his last start, gave up six runs on six hits and two walks in 5 2-3 innings.
Smith hit his 14th homer, a solo shot in the fifth that made it 2-all. The Tigers retook the lead in the bottom half when Cabrera singled and scored on Prince Fielder's double.
The A's went ahead for good in the sixth. Brandon Moss hit a tying double with one out and after Chris Carter struck out and Smith was walked intentionally, Donaldson singled.
Phil Coke relieved and George Kottaras hit a liner that center fielder Austin Jackson misjudged, the ball sailing over his head for a two-run triple.
"It kind of knuckled. I was right there. It just took a left turn on me," Jackson said.
Kottaras felt fortunate.
"I knew I hit it good. I saw him coming in. I thought, `Oh no, he's going to catch it,"' Kottaras said. "Then when I saw it go over his glove. I was like `Great!' But then I thought, `I've got to keep running."'
Andy Dirks led off the Detroit sixth with a home run off Jerry Blevins.
Yoenis Cespedes hit a bases-loaded sacrifice fly to start Oakland's scoring in the ninth.
The Tigers threatened in the first against Tommy Milone, loading the bases before Delmon Young grounded into an inning-ending double play.
"We missed a couple opportunities," Tigers manager Jim Leyland said. "Delmon hit a ball right on the button in the first inning, double-play ball, he hit it right on the nose. We had a couple other opportunities. We had some chances."
Detroit broke through in the second to take a 2-0 lead on Gerald Laird's RBI single and Jackson's sacrifice fly.
Second baseman Omar Infante's throwing error on an attempted double play gave the A's a run in the third. It was his 10th error in 51 games since being acquired from Miami, along with Sanchez, on July 24.
NOTE: Detroit C Alex Avila is no longer having headaches, according to Leyland. Avila sprained his jaw when he collided with Fielder chasing a foul ball on Sunday. ... Cespedes was the designated hitter because of a bone bruise on the bottom of the outfielder's foot that has lingered for the last few days. ... Oakland OF Coco Crisp missed his second game because of an eye allergy. ... The Athletics travel to New York for a three-game weekend series. Jarrod Parker faces CC Sabathia on Friday night. ... Rick Porcello and the Tigers host Sam Dedundo and Minnesota on Friday night.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Nationals secure playoff berth
The Washington Nationals brought postseason baseball back to the nation's capital for the first time since 1933, clinching a playoff spot Thursday night with a 4-1 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Mr. Moran suggests a couple of first steps: Put $10,000 of her $175,670 cash ? what?s left after paying some of her transitional living costs and replacing clothing and other goods ? into her tax-free savings account.
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Public release date: 25-Sep-2012
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