Criminal money for youths plan hits right note with the Proclaimers

THE Proclaimers yesterday corroborated a Scottish Government beginning that uses income seized from criminals to assistance immature musicians. Singing twins Craig and Charlie Reid – important for hits together with I"m Gonna Be (500 Miles) – assimilated probity cabinet member Kenny MacAskill on a revisit to Reeltime Music, that has benefited from the CashBack for Communities scheme.The beginning uses income seized from crooks to await hundreds of girl groups around the nation and the project, in Newarthill, Lanarkshire, has perceived �23,800 interjection to the scheme.Craig and Charlie Reid said: "We are gay to await the talented process on community-based appropriation for inestimable projects, utilizing the confiscated supports from rapist activity."Mr MacAskill pronounced the intrigue had since thousands of youngsters entrance to sporting and beautiful opportunities and that the supervision remained committed to it.He said: "The immature people concerned at Reeltime Music have been authorised to rise their personal, amicable and career skills by music."

Haiti assist bid injured by delayed U.N. reply

Tom Brown PORT-AU-PRINCE Fri Feb 26, 2010 1:13pm EST Related News Haiti preserve puncture as sleet turns camps to mudThu, Feb eighteen 2010U.N. assist arch chides agencies on Haiti reliefThu, Feb eighteen 2010Sarkozy visits Haiti, unveils vital assist packageWed, Feb seventeen 2010Tarps, toilets are priorities for quake-hit Haiti: U.N.Mon, Feb fifteen 2010One month after quake, Haitians stick on to weep deadFri, Feb twelve 2010 < 1 / 7 >

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) - Clutching involuntary attack rifles, truckloads of U.N. infantry patrolled the streets of Haiti"s cracked collateral on the day after the trembler strike last month, clearly preoccupied to the wretchedness around them.

World&&&&Natural Disasters

Cries for assistance from people digging for survivors in collapsed buildings were drowned out by the bark of heavy-duty engines as the infantry plowed by Port-au-Prince but interlude to stick on rescue efforts, majority less lead them.

A usual steer since they were deployed in 2004, the U.N. infantry huddled in the shade of their canopied vehicles.

There were about 9,000 uniformed U.N. peacekeepers stationed in Haiti when the upheaval struck on Jan twelve and they were the judicious "first responders" to the mess in the bankrupt Caribbean country, whose notoriously diseased executive supervision was impressed by the scale of the tragedy.

Initially, however, nothing of the peacekeepers appeared to be concerned in hands-on charitable service in what puncture healing experts report as the vicious initial 72 hours after a harmful trembler strikes.

Their reply to the abominable pang was singular to you do security and seeking for looters after the bulk 7.0 upheaval intended majority of the collateral and took what Haitian President Rene Preval says could be as majority as 300,000 lives.

There was looting in the capital, but it paled in some-more aged with the astringency of the charitable crisis.

Horribly-injured patients flooded overstretched hospitals, forcing healing staff to confirm that patients to yield and that were already as well far left to try saving.

"Doctors played God," pronounced Tyler Marshall, a maestro former Los Angeles Times match operative with an general assist organisation that helped out in a tent city erected at the tallness of the destruction on the drift of Port-au-Prince"s University Hospital, the country"s largest.

Scores of U.N. crew died in the quake, together with Hedi Annabi, head of the U.N. mission that was set up in 2004. That helps insist what majority have criticized as a glacially delayed kickoff of service operations after one of history"s misfortune healthy disasters.

But in the days and weeks that followed it mostly seemed that lessons from alternative disasters were abandoned in Haiti as fears of rioting or anarchy overshadowed concerns about removing assist out quickly.

The U.N."s tip charitable assist official, John Holmes, is between those who have chided service agencies, together with the United Nations itself, for you do as well small to assistance Haiti.

"We cannot ... wait for for for the subsequent puncture for these lessons to be learned," Holmes wrote in a trusted email initial published on the website of the biography Foreign Policy.

"There is an obligatory need to progress significantly genius on the ground, to urge coordination, vital formulation and sustenance of aid," pronounced Holmes.

Edmond Mulet, behaving head of the U.N. mission, concurred in an talk that it played a singular charitable purpose in the initial couple of days after the trembler since the operations were effectively decapitated.

"At the unequivocally commencement it was unequivocally formidable since all the domicile was utterly broken and all the care of the mission was killed," Mulet told Reuters.

"CRIMINALS AND BANDITS"

Mulet gained prominence for wielding an iron fist during a prior army as head of the U.N. mission when he led mostly Brazilian "blue helmet" infantry in a successful crackdown on Haiti"s heavily armed gangs.

And he has finished no tip about sophistry the competing needs of service operations with law enforcement, in his bid to lane down the some-more than 3,000 inmates who took value of the trembler to shun from the main prison.

"We are here additionally to yield security," he pronounced when asked about the mess of convoys of rifle-wielding U.N. infantry to poke for people trapped in the rubble of the busted capital.

"I still have to patrol, I still have to go after all these criminals and bandits that transient from the inhabitant penitentiary, the squad leaders, the criminals, the killers, the kidnappers. I cannot unequivocally confuse myself from you do that."

The service mission shifted in to higher rigging after U.S. infantry deployed in large numbers and set up a supply sequence to get food and disinfectant in to areas great out for aid.

But there were still majority bottlenecks and setbacks, mostly involving U.N.-linked food distributions hobbled by unsound organization, reserve and throng control.

Unfortunately, U.N. infantry in Haiti have over the years gained a repute for toughness and abuse some-more than for easing pang in the lowest nation in the Americas.

"The usually time I"ve seen one of these U.N. infantry burst out of the behind of a lorry was to kick up on somebody or take a shot at them," pronounced a piece of the U.S. Army"s 82nd Airborne Division, as he worked security during a new assist handout.

"These guys have since all of us in unvaried a bad repute here," he said, asking not to be identified.

Haiti"s wrecked infrastructure and bad ride links finished it formidable to get assist out and keep it flowing, but that frequency finished the incident opposite from that in alternative new disasters around the globe.

"POOREST AND MOST VULNERABLE"

"The lowest and the majority exposed people lend towards to live in the regions that are strike the majority by healthy disasters," pronounced Solomon Kuah, an puncture healing medicine formed in New York who outlayed 4 weeks in Port-au-Prince after the quake.

There are no arguable estimates for the series of survivors who died from injuries due to unsound healing supplies.

But Henriette Chamouillet, the World Health Organization"s deputy in Haiti, pronounced all from staff shortages to bureaucracy and a miss of make-up lists embroiled the smoothness of containers full of medicines from Port-au-Prince"s airfield to doctors on the ground.

Port-au-Prince sits usually 700 miles off the seashore of Miami, that is home to a large Haitian-American community, and it seemed ludicrous that so couple of the U.S. infantry rushed there spoke French or were accompanied by translators.

One retaining picture of pell-mell food distributions came when U.S. helicopters offloaded boxes of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) at a site in the capital. Many Haitians non-stop them up usually to toss them afar in offend since no French or Creole-language instructions were enclosed with the assumingly invalid packets of dust, explaining that they indispensable to be churned with H2O as piece of their preparation.

Rajiv Shah, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has touted the Haiti service mission as "the largest and majority successful general poke and rescue bid ever fabricated in history."

But some-more than 6 weeks after the upheaval hit, the mission is still mostly in an puncture reply mode. The U.N."s World Food Program is tying the food rations to 55-pound (25 kg) bags of rice and the Haitian supervision estimates that a million upheaval survivors are still vital in the streets in temporary encampments with no using H2O or toilets.

Doctors are roughly finished traffic with dire injuries but reconstruction for a little 40,000 amputees and rebuilding Haiti"s health infrastructure are between long-term challenges.

"This is unequivocally a mess of Biblical proportions," pronounced Lewis Lucke, who was the USAID executive in Iraq prior to entrance to Haiti as U.S. ambassador.

U.N. and alternative officials have pronounced the tellurian reply to Haiti"s upheaval was quicker and some-more in effect than in alternative new disasters, together with the Asian tsunami that killed 226,000 people in thirteen countries in Dec 2004.

But experts contend the United Nations has a lot to sense from smaller, some-more nimble healing groups similar to International Medical Corps, or IMC, and Paris-based Medicins Sans Frontieres, along with charities some-more experienced in distributing aid, such as CARE and Catholic Relief Services.

Kuah, who concurrent service efforts for IMC, a California-based organisation that had rarely learned doctors treating patients in Haiti twenty-three hours after the trembler struck, stressed the "need for speed" when it comes to saving lives.

"When you ask yourself if there were ways you could have prevented some-more mortalities or discontinued additional mortality, with earthquakes, in particular, it"s some-more timing than anything else," pronounced Kuah.

(Additional stating by Catherine Bremer, Jackie Frank, Patricia Zengerle, Mica Rosenberg and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Kieran Murray)

World Natural Disasters lampshade for acne to phone help this mulls

Standard Life account physical education instructor gets 56% compensate rise

Miles Costello & ,}

Keith Skeoch, the head of Standard Lifes comment government arm, who has won regard for receiving UK promissory note chiefs to charge over pay, has emerged as the highest-paid senior physical education instructor in the insurer, pciking up 2.1 million in income and reward last year, a climb of 56.5 per cent.

Mr Skeoch picked up a 1.65 million money reward on tip of his 350,000-a-year simple salary, according to Standard Lifes annual report, published yesterday.

It equates to that Mr Skeoch raked in some-more than Sir Sandy Crombie, the insurers maestro arch executive, who was paid 1.764 million for his last year in the job.

Standard Life Investments is one of the UKs majority successful institutional investors. It owns about 3 per cent of each listed association and has been an active supporter for a clampdown on extreme boardroom pay.

Related LinksTheres no place similar to home for Standard LifeAmazon indication key to grant sales, says Standard chief

The comment physical education instructor is one of the twenty-three investors to have responded to a direct by Lord Myners, the City Minister, to yield sum on how they have hold promissory note bosses to comment on arrangement during the stream stating season.

In Standard Lifes letter, that the Treasury published at the commencement of this week, Mr Skeoch told Lord Myners that the comment physical education instructor had tackled, alone and with alternative investors, each vital UK bank, together with Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group during the past dual years.

He remarkable that banks had done a transparent move afar from charity government team money incentives and towards some-more shares-based awards.

Stephen Hester, the RBS arch executive, and Eric Daniels, the Lloyds arch executive, both waived their annual bonuses this year in the thick of a open recoil over pay.

The payday for Mr Skeoch, who has been arch senior physical education instructor of Standard Life Investments given 2004, came after the physical education instructor increased resources underneath government by twelve per cent to 138.7 billion last year. However, the underlying increase forsaken by roughly a fifth, from 93 million to 75 million last year.

As a group, Standard Life posted handling increase of 919 million, a 1.5 per cent dump from the prior year, but improved than analysts had expected.

Scientists call for anathema on risk chemical

A bloc of a little of the worlds heading scientists now calls on Britain to anathema a at large used containing alkali related to breast cancer, heart disease, plumpness and hyperactivity.

In a notation published in The Independent, the scientists from the US, Britain and Italy contend the Government should anathema bisphenol-A (BPA) in any cosmetic used for baby bottles or baby food containers following a flourishing physique of justification suggesting it is dangerous.

Their call coincides with the announcement of 4 new systematic studies that have contributed nonetheless some-more justification towards the potentially deleterious goods of BPA. Last week Denmark became the initial European nation to anathema BPA in food containers for young kids underneath the age of three. Canada and 3 US states have additionally brought in bans and the French are deliberation following suit.

In contrariety Britains Food Standards Agency and the European Food Safety Authority have resisted calls for a anathema citing the minority of studies a little of that have been paid for by the plastics industry that find it is safe.

But the scientists, who are heading toxicologists and cancer specialists study the goods of BPA, contend Britain is unwell to make firm the publics health and should have certain manufacturers make make use of pick plastics.

"To make firm unprotected populations, we hold it would be both advantageous and precautionary in open health conditions if products containing BPA used for baby and childrens food and liquid wrapping in the UK were withdrawn," they write. "BPA should be transposed by less dangerous substances."

BPA is at large used in the plastics industry to make firm food containers. But it has been personal as an "endocrine disruptor" and is thought to meddle with the bodys ethereal hormone system. Last week The Independent unprotected how heading high-street retailers, together with Boots and Mothercare, were still offered baby bottles containing BPA even though infancy mainstream manufacturers have deserted their BPA lines. Boots has resolved to proviso out BPA bottles "in a integrate of weeks" and Mothercare will stop offered the products by the finish of autumn.

After years of insisting BPA acted no risk to health, Americas Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) is right away advising that "reasonable steps" should be taken to minimise exposure.

The 4 new studies lend weight to investigate suggesting BPA is deleterious in most reduce doses than formerly thought. The initial is a paper from the University of Michigan that found how endocrine disruptors, together with BPA, have a deleterious stroke on mens health, privately in reproduction, growth and metabolism.

Research utilizing mice at the Italian Endometriosis Foundation in Rome related BPA to endometriosis, a ongoing gynaecological disease. The third study, from Tufts University in Boston, was vicious of dual prior studies that had referred to human BPA bearing was negligible.

A fourth study, to be published by the University of Auckland in New Zealand after this month, has detected that even really low doses of BPA can pass opposite the human placenta, deleterious young kids in the womb.

"These new studies are poignant since they all prove and endorse the flourishing physique of justification that suggests BPA is deleterious even in notation doses," pronounced Professor Andrew Watterson, a signatory to the letter, who functions at the Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group at the University of Stirling. "The immeasurable infancy of systematic studies in the past year or so have reliable the concerns about BPA that is because we are in foster of a precautionary and medicine proceed to the use. Until we know some-more about the mistreat it could be you do we should stop utilizing it."

Professor Ana Soto, one of the worlds heading authorities on endocrine disruptors, who functions at Tufts Universitys School of Medicine, pronounced European health bodies should follow Denmarks lead. "There are right away hundreds of writings that have been published seeking at the deleterious goods of bisphenol-A and the infancy have resolved that it is a containing alkali with critical concerns," she said.

Last night Andrew Wadge, arch scientist at the Food Standards Agency, explained because it was against to a proxy ban. "We will regularly bottom the recommendation to consumers on the most appropriate accessible systematic evidence," he said. "Independent systematic experts suggest that stream levels of bearing to BPA are not harmful. The European Food Safety Authority examination resolved that low-dose goods of BPA in rodents have not been demonstrated in a strong and reproducible way, and so cannot be used as main studies for risk assessment. EFSA is now reviewing some-more new investigate in this area and the UK is actively concerned in this. We keep the recommendation to consumers underneath consistent review."

JPMorgan eyes share of China immature IPO pour out

George Chen, Middle East Private Equity Correspondent BEIJING Tue March 9, 2010 8:14am EST Related News RBS identifies partner for China bonds JV -sourceMon, March 8 2010

A workman walks on a roof tiles tiles lonesome by solar panels at the Theme Pavilion of Shanghai World Expo 2010 in Shanghai Feb 3, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/China Daily

BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. bank JPMorgan will enhance the "new energy" group in China to win some-more blurb operation from what it sees as a direction to increasingly renouned "green IPOs," the China arch pronounced on Tuesday.

Fang Fang, JPMorgan"s China CEO, predicts that some-more new appetite and healthy apparatus companies will go open as they find to account their fast expansion, and there could be some-more converging between breeze and solar energy suppliers, formulating a potentially remunerative advisory price tide for bankers.

"This year, we see lots of opportunities in new energy, healthy resources and construction a whole element sectors," Fang pronounced in an talk on the sidelines of the Chinese People"s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC).

"I think such "green IPOs" will be the direction for the subsequent couple of years and a little industry converging might take place, too. Technology, skill and consumer sectors sojourn active," pronounced Fang, who is a nominee to the CPPCC, China"s tip made at home advisory body.

In December, China Longyuan Power Group Corp, the world"s fifth-largest breeze energy generator, lifted $2.2 billion around a Hong Kong listing, the greatest breeze energy IPO in 2009, and Xinjiang Goldwind Science Technology Co, a breeze energy producer, plans to lift $1.5 billion this year around a Hong Kong IPO, Reuters reported in January.

Fang, who assimilated JPMorgan in 2001 and was allocated to his stream post in 2007, pronounced the bank placed "a really poignant focus" on China and was seeking to grow the blurb operation there on multiform fronts.

"We wish to yield mixed lines of services, not only investment promissory note but additionally something similar to corporate banking, item management, line and CO trading," he said.

"We"re construction up the understanding tube nicely, and I design understanding volume to enlarge from last year," he said.

Fang submitted a offer to Beijing last week that China should set up a made at home CO traffic exchange.

China has affianced to cut the volume of CO dioxide constructed for each section of mercantile expansion by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

SECURITIES VENTURE

Fang combined the bank was seeking additionally to settle a bonds corner try in China as shortly as possible, fasten alternative investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and UBS that have already set up China bonds corner ventures in new years.

Under Chinese rules, unfamiliar institutions contingency group up with internal partners to form investment promissory note corner ventures to safeguard shares and control alternative bonds blurb operation in made at home collateral markets.

"The bonds try will yield us a really great height to enhance in to some-more and new business," pronounced Fang. "For example, portion made at home investors and issuers and assisting unfamiliar investors and issuers entrance Chinese made at home collateral markets."

In China, JPMorgan already has corner ventures in account government and futures business. A bonds try would assistance it daub China"s flourishing innovative monetary blurb operation such as the turning point batch index futures intrigue due for launch subsequent month.

JPMorgan is additionally employing at the locally incorporated bank in China, that provides blurb and corporate banking, and Fang pronounced the bank would supplement some-more branches to the five it now has in big Chinese cities.

"We see lots of expansion opportunities in the normal investment promissory note blurb operation and that still has a prolonged approach to go in China," he said.

"At the same time, we see big intensity in most alternative areas. For example, the internal incorporated bank can assistance us reach some-more made at home enterprises and yield them with traffic finance, book government and alternative corporate promissory note services."

(Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

France not receiving England lightly

England might not have tender their own supporters in new weeks, but on this side of the Channel there is small risk of Martin Johnsons men being shown a miss of respect. As Marc Lievremont voiced usually one shift in his group for Saturdays Six Nations finaleMathieu Bastareaud, carrying been complacent opposite Italy, replaces David Marty at centrethe French manager pronounced currently that England could yield France with their toughest exam of the tournament.

France are chasing the Grand Slam opposite an England group whose own hopes of winning the championship evaporated when they struggled to pull with Scotland last weekend, but Lievremont is well wakeful of his teams new jot down opposite the old enemy. Not usually have England put France out of the last dual World Cups but they have additionally knocked about them in the last 3 Six Nations Championship. Last year England won 34-10 at Twickenham.

Lievremont described England as "the betes noires who traditionally similar to to mangle the dreams of France teams." Only a conspicuous multiple of formula could repudiate France the championship, but Lievremont pronounced it would be "a outrageous disappointment" to secure the pretension but winning the Grand Slam.

He added: England are a group with huge potential. They are able of better, even if they have usually shown that once in a while during this tournament. We know they have the players who can harm us, who can retaliate us in most opposite ways, either the by personification a approach diversion or attack us on the renew with discerning and absolute players. Thats what happened last year at Twickenham." Lievremont pronounced that Marty had been detrimental to lose his place after scoring dual tries opposite Italy at the weekend. David put on a great display, but we dont dont think about Mathieus really great matches at the commencement of the tournament, the manager said.

Promising plan for diagnosis of lung cancer

The essay is being published in the biography Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

With most sorts of cancer, the expansion and widespread of tumours is wild by Ras and Rho proteins. For these proteins to function, they need to be deteriorated by the closely associated enzymes FT and GGT. A series of curative companies have thus grown substances that revoke the wake up of these dual enzymes with the target of stopping the duty of Ras and Rho proteins and so negligence the growth of the disease.

However, diagnosis with assorted substances to retard these dual enzymes has mostly been non-specific, and their efficiency has sundry widely. This has done it formidable for researchers to consider the loyal intensity of these enzymes as targets for medicines.

We thus grown genetic strategies in mice, well known as transgenic mice, to switch off the genes coding for FT and GGT, enabling us to examine either a finish besiege of FT or GGT can stop the growth of lung cancer, and either this has side-effects in the lungs, explains researcher Anna-Karin Sjögren, who led the investigate together with Meng Liu, both from the Department of Clinical and Molecular Medicine.

In their study, the researchers used transgenic mice that furnish a deteriorated Ras protein that causes lung cancer. First, prolongation of FT or GGT in these micelungs was stopped by switching off the applicable genes.

When we incited off the FT gene, the mice grown fewer lung tumours and lived longer, says Meng Liu. At cellular level, the besiege of FT meant that the swelling cells were no longer equates to to divide. When we shut off the prolongation of GGT, we saw the same effects: predicament of cell growth, fewer lung tumours and softened survival.

In experiments where both genes were switched off at the same time, the series of lung tumours forsaken neatly and the mice lived most longer. This equates to that the deficiency of these dual enzymes does not have any viewable side-effects in the lungs, and that lung swelling cells appear to be some-more supportive to the diagnosis than normal lung cells.

Our commentary show that FT and GGT are earnest targets for the diagnosis of lung cancer, the researchers explain. The subsequent step in the investigate is to find out either restraint these enzymes can have side-effects in alternative tissues.

Malaysias IOI seeks immature acceptance for estates

KUALA LUMPUR Wed March 31, 2010 8:45am EDT Related News Reuters Southeast Middle East News Highlights 1000 GMT, March 30Tue, March thirty 2010Malaysia PM"s "bold" mercantile indication light on detailTue, March thirty 2010UPDATE 2-Malaysia PM"s "bold" mercantile indication light on detailTue, March thirty 2010Indonesia Telkom might lift made at home down payment issue to 3 trln rphSun, March twenty-eight 2010Malaysian palm oil organisation denies clearing rainforestsFri, March twenty-six 2010

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia"s IOI Corp will finish planting oil palms on 60,000 hectares of the Indonesian land land in five years and will afterwards find "green certification" for these estates, a tip central pronounced on Wednesday. IOI, Malaysia"s second largest listed planter, has come underneath glow from immature groups who contend it has broken rainforests and intent in open blazing to transparent the Indonesian estates -- an claim the organisation has strongly denied.

"We don"t plan to enhance serve in to Indonesia but we will concentration on planting and building the areas," IOI Group Executive Director Lee Yeow Chor told Reuters in an interview.

IOI now has about 80,000 hectares of land in the Indonesian range of Kalimantan in Borneo Island after venturing in to Indonesia in 2007.

Lee pronounced the organisation has allocated 200 million ringgit ($61.22 million) this year for plantations to progress plantings and alternative outlay as prices of the unfeeling oil usually grow.

"There is a clever ceiling direction for palm oil prices and this stream turn of 2,550 ringgit is really supportive," Lee said. "Supply has been influenced given a year ago and we usually design a assuage enlarge in Malaysian outlay this year.

Since receiving the skill arm private, IOI has managed to get the long-delayed SIngapore growth projects off the belligerent and promote appropriation mandate for land acquisitions.

Lee pronounced preview sales of the Seascape Collection Residences in Singapore"s Sentosa Cove have been enlivening and expects the plan to minister definitely to this year"s monetary earnings.

Bit Defender

Darius Rucker On Call for veterans

March 5, 2010, 11:33 AM EST

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Darius Rucker is still lucent from one of his new gigs. It wasn"t personification a sold-out locus on the Rascal Flatts" debate or interesting screaming fans at a honky tonk. Instead, Rucker went room to room at the Veterans Administration sanatorium here, singing for one or dual patients at a time.

"It was an extraordinary experience, only going in and examination the faces," pronounced Rucker. "Those guys are in there, they"re vets, and they"re not feeling well. You get in there and you only fool around a strain for them and only watch their faces, people smiling. You appear to only be creation people happy for those two-and-a-half, 3 mins that you"re playing. That was awesome."

The classification Musicians On Call organised last week"s revisit as piece of a national bid to move live and available song to patients. Rucker played a accumulation of songs during his visit, but his initial No. 1 nation hit, "Don"t Think I Don"t Think About It," unequivocally struck a chord.

"You know it was wild to fool around "Don"t Think" and to watch those guys sing along. That was a good moment," he said.

A series of veterans sang the words, bobbed their heads and tapped their feet.

"It rises your spirits," pronounced hospitalized maestro Gloria McCoy. "You"re in here by yourself majority of the time ... somebody comes and sings to you similar to that, it"s unequivocally enjoyable."

Some of the lyrics in Rucker"s song, "Don"t Think I Don"t Think About It," speak about carrying regrets, observant "Don"t think it don"t get to me, in between the work and the harm and the whiskey."

For maestro David Cannon, conference the difference done him rip up: "It got me, it did."

"It unequivocally strike home with a integrate guys," pronounced Rucker. "That one man that got the tears, it was just, that"s because you write music, but you never unequivocally design it to happen, and when it does, it"s a good feeling."

Rucker played a good unison at the Hardrock Cafe in Nashville on Wednesday to lift income for Musicians on Call. He hopes the supports will capacitate some-more visits.

"I think all musicians should do this. I think everyone could do it, no make a difference what low-pitched genre you"re from," he said. "You see people at the sanatorium and you only design that they have visitors all the time. For me, only to be a piece of their day for a notation was such a good experience. Everytime I walked in the room, I only felt this is awesome. These people are vouchsafing me in their lives for a notation to let me fool around one of my songs. This was a day I"ll never forget."

Rucker is the reigning CMA new artist of the year. His 2008 entrance album, "Learn To Live," has constructed 3 uninterrupted No. 1 singles and a stream Top 5 single, "History In The Making." This week, he was nominated for the Academy of Country Music"s tip masculine vocalist. The ACM awards are handed out Apr eighteen in Las Vegas.

———

On the Net:

http://www.musiciansoncall.org

http://www.dariusrucker.com

,,,

Jim Jubak: Big mergers and acquisitions can be dear to investors</title>

I call it destruction by acquisition.

Forget the synergies, the cost savings and the cross-selling that CEOs tout when they announce one of these deals.

Too many of the huge merger and acquisition deals struck in 2009 -- and that continue to be struck -- will take money out of shareholder pockets for years to come.

But some CEOs are so desperate for growth and so pessimistic that their companies can produce growth internally that they"re willing to mortgage the future for a deal that makes them look good now -- or at least allows them to disguise how bad things are. Those accounting tricks might work long enough for them to walk out the doors and cash out those options.

Find top-performing ETFs

Money can"t buy you love, but it can buy a CEO the semblance of revenue and earnings growth. (For a look at how hard it will be to find profits in this recovery, see this blog post.)Not every deal of 2009 and 2010 will destroy shareholder value. I"ll give you a few at the end of this column that might actually work out well for shareholders and discuss how to tell the difference between the good and the bad. But a high percentage of the deals that have earned the headlines and moved the stock market in the past year or so need to be seen for what they are: admissions of weakness in sectors desperate for growth.

Exxon Mobil (XOM, news, msgs) is buying XTO Energy (XTO, news, msgs) for $41 billion, including assumed debt. Kraft Foods (KFT, news, msgs) buys Cadbury (CBY, news, msgs) for $20 billion. Xerox (XRX, news, msgs) buys Affiliated Computer Services for $5.6 billion. Comcast (CMCSA, news, msgs) agrees to buy NBC Universal for $37 billion. Merck (MRK, news, msgs) buys Schering-Plough for $41 billion.

What"s striking about each one of these deals? They"re in sectors that are desperately seeking growth. Whither go Pfizer-Wyeth? Let"s just take the most obvious growth problem child, the biotech and pharmaceuticals sector. 2009 started off with Pfizer (PFE, news, msgs) buying Wyeth in January for $68 billion. And it culminated in the fourth quarter of 2009 with 78 deals.

The impetus for the Wyeth deal was the expiration of Pfizer"s patent on cholesterol medication Lipitor, the world"s best-selling drug, in November 2011. In 2009, Pfizer got $11.4 billion of its $50 billion in sales from that one drug. Wyeth"s products and pipeline of future products were purchased to help fill the gap that the expiration of the Lipitor patent would leave in Pfizer"s top and bottom lines.

Biggest mergers in history

So a year after the Wyeth deal was announced, what"s Pfizer telling Wall Street about growth? The company reported 2009 earnings per share of $2.02. In 2010, the company projects, earnings per share will increase to $2.10 to $2.20 a share. That"s earnings growth of between 4% and 9%.

And after that? Well, in 2011, the company told analysts, it expects earnings per share of $2.25 to $2.35. That is, at worst, an increase in earnings of 2% from 2010 and, at best, growth of 12%. The Wall Street consensus pegs growth at a little less than 6% for 2011.

For that you pay $68 billion? Well, I guess so, when you have no idea of how to generate growth internally and the alternative is seeing the company flush billions in shareholder money down the drain on your watch.Deals big and small in the energy sector Or look at the energy sector. After a two-year slowdown in acquisitions, deal making is heating up again. The big deal has been Exxon Mobil"s purchase of XTO Energy, but there have been plenty of smaller deals, too -- although small is a relative term in the energy business. Schlumberger (SLB, news, msgs), for instance, just signed a deal to acquire Smith International (SII, news, msgs) for $11 billion.

Why?

Oil producers, especially the big international oil producers, have been locked out of the most promising opportunities for finding oil and natural gas. They don"t have much alternative to acquiring.

You can judge how tight a spot they"re in by the nature of recent deals. Exxon Mobil, Total (TOT, news, msgs), BP (BP, news, msgs), Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A, news, msgs) and Statoil (STO, news, msgs) have all spent big recently to buy U.S. natural-gas or oil reserves. A decade ago, many of these companies couldn"t get out of the U.S. exploration and development market fast enough.

Locking up natural resources