End of the line for Cain? Announcement Saturday

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to supporters at The Magnolia Room at Laurel Creek, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, in Rock Hill , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to supporters at The Magnolia Room at Laurel Creek, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, in Rock Hill , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to supporters at The Magnolia Room at Laurel Creek, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, in Rock Hill , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain speaks to supporters at The Magnolia Room at Laurel Creek, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, in Rock Hill , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain hugs a supporter at The Magnolia Room at Laurel Creek, Friday, Dec. 2, 2011, in Rock Hill , S.C. (AP Photo/ Richard Shiro)

ATLANTA (AP) ? Rapidly becoming a mere footnote in the presidential race, Herman Cain sent mixed signals Friday on whether he would abandon his beleaguered White House bid on Saturday after a woman's allegation of an extramarital affair.

He said he would make a "major announcement" on whether he would press on ? at an event still being billed as the grand opening of a new headquarters.

It is the latest ? and perhaps final ? twist in a campaign saga that has taken the Georgia businessman from unknown longshot to surprise frontrunner to embattled tabloid subject.

He arrived at his suburban Atlanta home on Friday afternoon to talk with his wife of 42 years, Gloria, about whether to press on after his campaign was rocked by multiple sexual harassment allegations and this week's claim that he had a 13-year affair. He denies wrongdoing. It was their first face-to-face meeting since the allegation was made public.

As night fell, campaign aides who were optimistic earlier Friday that Cain would press on said privately they expected that he would exit the race.

Earlier, in a speech in Rock Hill, S.C., Cain wouldn't disclose whether he would drop out but told supporters to stay tuned. He said he would clarify the next steps of the campaign and assured backers the affair claim was "garbage." But he also said he needed to consider what he would do with campaign donations already banked if he dropped out of the race.

"Nobody's going to make me make that prematurely," Cain told a crowd of about 100 people. "That's all there is to it."

"My wife and family comes first. I've got to take that into consideration," Cain added. "I don't doubt the support that I have. Just look at the people who are here."

Cain had not seen his wife since Ginger White, 46, came forward and said she had a sexual affair with Cain that lasted more than a decade. He has said they were only friends but acknowledged that he helped pay her monthly bills and expenses. His wife, Cain said, did not know of the friendship with White.

The former Godfather's pizza executive said he is reassessing whether his presidential bid is still viable.

But it was difficult to imagine a path forward with just a month until the lead-off Iowa caucuses.

Polls suggest his popularity has taken a deep hit.

A Des Moines Register poll released Friday showed Cain's support plummeting, with backing from 8 percent of Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, down from 23 percent a month ago.

Fundraising has also fallen off. He issued an email appeal to supporters on Friday asking for donations, in an attempt to gauge whether his financial support has dried up.

"I need to know that you are behind me 100 percent," Cain told backers. "In today's political environment, the only way we can gauge true support is by the willingness of our supporters to invest in this effort.

A political novice, Cain leveraged strong tea party support to hurtle to the front of the Republican pack in October casting himself as an anti-establishment outsider. His catchy 9-9-9 tax overhaul proposal helped his rise. But his effort soon lost altitude.

He fumbled policy questions, and his campaign has been reeling since it was revealed a little more than a month ago that the National Restaurant Association paid settlements to two women who claimed Cain sexually harassed them while he was president of the organization. A third woman told The Associated Press that Cain made inappropriate sexual advances but that she didn't file a complaint. A fourth woman also stepped forward to accuse Cain of groping her in a car in 1997.

Cain has denied wrongdoing in all cases. And his campaign was taking some steps to blunt the drumbeat of allegations.

It unveiled a "Women for Herman Cain" webpage with testimonials from female backers, some urging him to stay in the race. It was led by Gloria Cain.

The candidate's wife ? who's not been on the campaign trail ? has drawn her own support as the allegations against her husband have piled up.

A Facebook page "I Stand With Gloria Cain" had attracted more than 400 supporters by Friday afternoon.

On Friday, Cain urged backers in South Carolina to look past the allegations.

"There's a lot of garbage on the Internet. There's a lot of garbage out there on the TV. There's a lot of garbage out there about me, don't you know? There's a lot of misinformation out there. You have to stay informed and check out the facts for yourself," Cain said.

He added: "I'm on this journey for a reason. I don't look back."

Word of a pending announcement took some aides by surprise.

"I am learning this as you're learning it," said Cain's Iowa campaign chairman, Steve Grubbs, who met Thursday with campaign manager Mark Block.

The two outlined a December travel schedule for Cain, who began advertising on television again in Iowa on Friday.

As of Friday afternoon, Cain was scheduled to participate in the two Iowa debates this month, hold a media announcement in Iowa on Dec. 12 and tour the state at the end of the month.

"That's sort of the plan, very tentatively," Grubbs said. "All that could change."

Georgia supporters set to attend the Saturday event in Atlanta ? billed as a headquarters celebration ? were taken aback by the news that an announcement was coming.

"I have heard nothing," said state Sen. Josh McKoon, a prominent Cain backer who will stand with him Saturday.

___

Philip Elliott reported from Rock Hill, S.C. Associated Press writers Ray Henry in Atlanta, Thomas Beaumont in Iowa and Steve Peoples in New Hampshire contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-02-Cain/id-5ff62e46fd7a44f68f6a8b086b599fc7

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Jennifer Love Hewitt, Emma Watson Beat Jennifer Aniston for Most-Wanted Hair (omg!)

It looks like Jennifer Aniston has lost some real estate in the hot celeb hairstyles market since trading her relic 'do for a much shorter cut in February.

PHOTOS: Jennifer Aniston's hair evolution

In Yahoo!'s year-end trend report, users searching for Jennifer Love Hewitt and Emma Watson's hairstyles outnumbered those looking for Aniston's? new 'do in the search engine's Top Celebrity Hairstyle Searches on Yahoo! in 2011.

VOTE: Which star has the best hair in Hollywood?

Hewitt, who landed the number one spot on the list, underwent three hair changes this year: after cutting her hair into a shoulder-length 'do with full, blunt bangs in September, she lengthened her locks with 12-inch hair extensions a month later. And just last week, the Can't Hardly Wait actress made the switch from a rich brunette color to a deep red hue.

VOTE: What's her best hair color?

Watson may have chopped off her hair into a cool pixie cut in 2010, but the Harry Potter star's chic crop still managed to help her nab the number 2 spot on Yahoo!'s list.

The rest includes Kate Gosselin, Olivia Wilde, Justin Bieber (who cut his hair in February), Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi (who's rocked extensions in every color under the rainbow), Ashlee Simpson (who went platinum blonde in January), Reese Witherspoon and Rumer Willis (ranked in order listed).

Get more Us! Follow us on Twitter, Friend us on Facebook, Subscribe to Us Weekly

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Stock futures little changed a day after big gains (AP)

NEW YORK ? U.S. stock futures are little changed Thursday, a day after the Dow Jones industrial average had it biggest gain in more than two years.

The euphoria over Wednesday's move by major central banks to cut borrowing costs has worn off a bit. In Europe most stock markets are slightly lower. Investors are once again seeking signs that European leaders can find a solution to the debt crisis there.

On Wednesday, the central banks' move sent the Dow soaring 490 points, or 4.2 percent, the largest gain since March 2009 and the seventh-largest of all time. The Standard & Poor's 500 closed up 4.3 percent.

Less than two hours before U.S. markets open, Dow futures are up 11 to 12,045. Futures for the broader S&P 500 are down 1 to 1,245.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111201/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/us_wall_street

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Researchers demonstrate earthquake friction effect at the nanoscale

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Earthquakes are some of the most daunting natural disasters that scientists try to analyze. Though the earth's major fault lines are well known, there is little scientists can do to predict when an earthquake will occur or how strong it will be. And, though earthquakes involve millions of tons of rock, a team of University of Pennsylvania and Brown University researchers has helped discover an aspect of friction on the nanoscale that may lead to a better understanding of the disasters.

Robert Carpick, a professor who chairs the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, led the research in collaboration with Terry Tullis and David Goldsby, professors of geological science at Brown. The experimental and modeling work was conducted by first author Qunyang Li, a postdoctoral researcher in Carpick's group, who has recently been appointed an associate professor in the School of Aerospace at Tsinghua University, China.

Their work will be published in the journal Nature.

The team's research was spurred by an unusual phenomenon that has been observed in both natural and laboratory-simulated faults: materials become more resistant to sliding the longer they are in contact with one another. This trait is actually fundamental to why earthquakes happen at all. The longer materials are in contact, the stronger the resistance between them and the more violent and unstable the subsequent sliding is. Energy is stored over the time the materials are in contact and is then catastrophically released as an earthquake.

While geologists, physicists and mechanics researchers have studied this phenomenon for decades, the mechanism behind this increase of friction over time has only been hypothesized. There are two main theories as to why this "frictional aging" occurs.

"One hypothesis is that points of contact deform and grow over time ? that contact quantity increases," Carpick said. "The other is that bonding at the points of contact strengthens over time ? that contact quality increases."

The difficulty in proving that either theory holds true lies in the fact that points of contact are necessarily embedded at the juncture of two materials and are therefore hard to observe. One of the original breakthrough experiments on these theories projected light through transparent materials held together to measure the growth of apparent contact points. While this lent credence to the contact quantity theory, there was not yet a way to assess the bond strengths at those individual points of contacts or to be sure that the observations were of single points of contacts or clusters of even smaller nanoscale contacts.

It was not until Carpick and Tullis met at a conference designed to bring physicists and mechanics researchers together with geologists that they realized that the tools of the former group could resolve the latter group's contact quality theory. The solution came from moving from the massive scale of earthquakes to the smallest scales imaginable.

"We want to simplify the case," Li said. "So in our experiment we look at only one point of contact: the tip of an atomic force microscope."

An atomic force microscope is an ideal tool for investigating bonding strength where two surfaces meet. Instead of using light, atomic force microscopes measure nanoscale details using an extremely sharp probe tip that is sensitive to the push and pull of individual atoms.

The researchers simulated rock-on-rock contact with silica, a major component in most geological materials. They pressed a silica tip against a silica surface for different lengths of time and then dragged it to measure the amount of friction it experienced. They repeated these experiments with surfaces made out of different materials: diamond and graphite. Critically, both diamond and graphite are chemically inert. As they don't easily form chemical bonds with silica, any frictional aging that occurred with them would necessarily be due to changing contact area and not increased bond strength.

The results showed a stark difference in the frictional aging between the materials.

"We saw a huge amount of aging with silica on silica. But with silica on diamond or graphite, even though the tip is experiencing about the same stress levels, we see almost no aging," Li said. "If the increasing contact area was responsible for the increase in frictional aging, you would see similar amounts in these cases. You might even see more aging with diamond because it is stiffer, leading to a slightly higher stress level in the silica, and this would cause more deformation on the tip."

The frictional aging seen in the silica-on-silica experiment was so intense that the researchers had another mystery on their hands: how to reconcile strong aging on the nanoscale with the weaker level seen on the macroscale where earthquakes actually occur.

The solution to that puzzle stems from the fact that not all contact points are created equal. Two different contact points on the same surface that are close to one another will sense each other's presence. This "elastic coupling," as it is known, means that only a few of the contact points within an area will be resisting the sliding motion at their full capacity; some will have started to slide earlier, and others will slide later. It is too difficult to make them all slide at once.

So, the overall level of resistance relies not only on the maximum resistance any contact point can provide, but also on the small fraction of contact points able to provide this resistance.

"When you take a lot of contact points,"Carpick said, "all of them could have this large amount of aging. But when you try to shear them, you see only a small fraction reach that very high value of friction at any given time. So, you need a very large effect on the level of a single contact point to get even a very modest effect on the macroscopic scale."

While showing that nansocale experiment can provide useful data for these kinds of applications was in itself an important finding for the research team, the ability to reconcile the laboratory data with geologists' observations will have a lasting effect on the field.

"If we can understand the fundamental physics," Tullis said, "then theories and equations based on that physics would have the capability of being extrapolated beyond the laboratory scale. Therefore we could use them with more confidence in all the earthquake modeling that's already being done."

"We're not ruling out the quantity argument, we're just ruling in the quality argument," Carpick said. "Future research will go to higher stress levels, where maybe contact quantity could start to come into play. We'd also like to look at different temperatures, which matter in the geological context, and do experiments where we can actually watch the contact in real time, using an electron microscope."

###

University of Pennsylvania: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews

Thanks to University of Pennsylvania for this article.

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Filipino police arrest 4 suspected AT&T hackers (AP)

Four people have been arrested in the Philippines for allegedly hacking into AT&T customers' phones as part of a plan to funnel money to a Saudi-based terror group, according to police.

The Philippine Criminal Investigation and Detection Group said it worked with the FBI to arrest the suspects last week. The hackers, according to investigators, worked for a group that helped finance a deadly 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai, India.

AT&T's systems weren't compromised but some of its customers were targeted, spokeswoman Jan Rasmussen said Saturday. AT&T cooperated in the investigation with the FBI, she said.

AT&T wrote off some fraudulent charges on customers' bills, but Rasmussen wouldn't say how much. Philippine police put the alleged hacking cost AT&T $2 million.

Last Tuesday, AT&T said that hackers unsuccessfully attempted to link mobile numbers with online customer account, but it wouldn't say on Saturday if that incident was linked to the arrests of the four people in the Philippines.

The hackers were working on commission for a terrorist group linked to Muhammad Zamir, according to the Philippine police. Zamir, a Pakistani, was arrested in Italy in 2007, where he was running a call center that collected money from callers but then routed the calls through hacked phone lines. He also allegedly sold international access codes for long distance calls that were gathered by Filipino hackers.

Since then, police said, Zamir's group has been taken over by a Saudi national. Philippine police didn't name the group, but India has blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistan-based militant organization, for the Mumbai attacks. Three years ago Saturday, 10 Pakistan-based gunmen laid siege to India's financial hub, killing 166 people.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111126/ap_on_bi_ge/us_at_t_hacking

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NBA owners, players reach tentative deal (AP)

NEW YORK ? After nearly two years of bickering, NBA players and owners are back on the same side.

"We want to play basketball," Commissioner David Stern said.

Come Christmas Day, they should be.

The sides reached a tentative agreement early Saturday to end the 149-day lockout and hope to begin the delayed season with a marquee tripleheader Dec. 25. Most of a season that seemed in jeopardy of being lost entirely will be salvaged if both sides approve the handshake deal.

Barring a change in scheduling, the 2011-12 season will open with the Boston Celtics at New York Knicks, followed by Miami at Dallas in an NBA finals rematch before MVP Derrick Rose and Chicago visiting Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.

Neither side provided many specifics about the deal, and there are still legal hurdles that must be cleared before gymnasiums are open again.

"We thought it was in both of our interest to try to reach a resolution and save the game," union executive director Billy Hunter said.

After a secret meeting earlier this week that got the broken process back on track, the sides met for more than 15 hours Friday, working to save the season. Stern said the agreement was "subject to a variety of approvals and very complex machinations, but we're optimistic that will all come to pass and that the NBA season will begin Dec. 25."

President Barack Obama gave a thumbs-up when told about the tentative settlement after he finished playing basketball at Fort McNair in Washington on Saturday morning.

The league plans a 66-game season and aims to open training camps Dec. 9, with free agency opening at the same time. Stern has said it would take about 30 days from an agreement to playing the first game.

"All I feel right now is `finally,'" Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade told The Associated Press.

Just 12 days after talks broke down and Stern declared the NBA could be headed to a "nuclear winter," he sat next to Hunter to announce the 10-year deal, with either side able to opt out after the sixth year.

"For myself, it's great to be a part of this particular moment in terms of giving our fans what they wanted and wanted to see," said Derek Fisher, the president of the players' association.

A majority on each side is needed to approve the agreement, first reported by CBSSports.com. The NBA needs votes from 15 of 29 owners. (The league owns the New Orleans Hornets.) Stern said the labor committee plans to discuss the agreement later Saturday and expects them to endorse it and recommend to the full board.

The union needs a simple majority of its 430-plus members. That process is a bit more complicated after the players dissolved the union Nov. 14. Now, they must drop their antitrust lawsuit in Minnesota and reform the union before voting on the deal.

Because the union disbanded, a new collective bargaining agreement can only be completed once the union has reformed. Drug testing and other issues still must be negotiated between the players and the league, which also must dismiss its lawsuit filed in New York.

"We're very pleased we've come this far," Stern said. "There's still a lot of work to be done."

The sides will quickly return to work later Saturday, speaking with attorneys and their own committees to keep the process moving.

When the NBA returns, owners hope to find the type of parity that exists in the NFL, where the small-market Green Bay Packers are the current champions. The NBA has been dominated in recent years by the biggest spenders, with Boston, Los Angeles and Dallas winning the last four titles.

"I think it will largely prevent the high-spending teams from competing in the free-agent market the way they've been able to in the past. It's not the system we sought out to get in terms of a harder cap, but the luxury tax is harsher than it was. We hope it's effective," deputy commissioner Adam Silver said.

"We feel ultimately it will give fans in every community hope that their team can compete for championships."

The league hopes fans come right back, despite their anger over a work stoppage that followed such a successful season. But owners wanted more of the league's $4 billion in annual revenues after players were guaranteed 57 percent of basketball-related income in the old deal.

Participating in the talks for the league were Stern, Silver, Spurs owner Peter Holt, the chairman of the labor relations committee, and attorneys Rick Buchanan and Dan Rube. The players were represented by executive director Billy Hunter, president Derek Fisher, vice president Maurice Evans, attorney Ron Klempner and economist Kevin Murphy.

Owners locked out the players July 1, and the sides spent most of the summer and fall battling over the division of revenues and other changes owners wanted in a new collective bargaining agreement. They said they lost hundreds of millions of dollars in each year of the former deal, ratified in 2005, and they wanted a system where the big-market teams wouldn't have the ability to outspend their smaller counterparts.

Players fought against those changes, not wanting to see any teams taken out of the market when they became free agents.

"This was not an easy agreement for anyone. The owners came in having suffered substantial losses and feeling the system wasn't working fairly across all teams," Silver said. "I certainly know the players had strong views about expectations in terms of what they should be getting from the system. It required a lot of compromise from both parties' part, and I think that's what we saw today."

Even the final day had turbulent patches. It required multiple calls with the owners' labor relations committee, all the while knowing another breakdown in talks would mean not only the loss of the Christmas schedule but possibly even the entire season.

"We resolved, despite some even bumps this evening, that the greater good required us to knock ourselves out and come to this tentative understanding," Stern said.

He denied the litigation was a factor in accelerating a deal, but things happened relatively quickly after the players filed a suit that could have won them some $6 billion in damages.

"For us the litigation is something that just has to be dealt with," Stern said. "It was not the reason for the settlement. The reason for the settlement was we've got fans, we've got players who would like to play and we've got others who are dependent on us. And it's always been our goal to reach a deal that was fair to both sides and get us playing as soon as possible, but that took a little time."

It finally yielded the second shortened season in NBA history, joining the 1998-99 lockout that reduced the schedule to 50 games. This time the league will miss 16 games off the normal schedule.

Though the deal's expected to be approved, it may not be unanimous as there are factions of hard-liners in both camps who will be unhappy with substantive portions of the deal.

"Let's all pray this turns out well," Pacers forward Danny Granger wrote on Twitter.

But getting what the owners wanted took a toll. Stern, after more than 27 years as the league's commissioner, hoped to close a deal much sooner but was committed for fighting for the owners' wishes even at the risk of damaging his legacy. Hunter dealt with anger from agents and even questions from his own players about his strategy, wondering why it could so long for the players to use the threat of litigation to give them leverage that had otherwise eluded them.

The sides met just twice in the first two months of the lockout before stepping up the pace in September, when it was already too late to open camps on time. The sides tried meeting in small groups, large groups and even mediation, but nothing sparked compromise.

Things changed this week with the entrance of Jim Quinn, a former NBPA counsel who had good relationships on both sides. The meeting Friday was held at the office of his law firm, though he did not take part.

Hunter said the terms of the deal would come out shortly, preferring to keep them private until they could be shared with the players. They might not like the deal, but it will be better than what many of them feared. Resigned to possibly missing the season, some had signed deals overseas so they would have some paycheck.

Instead, they're a step closer to returning home.

___

AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami and White House reporter Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

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