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Hey Everyone, a loyal PopCrunch Lovely needs our help. Ellie is hoping to be crowned the most beautiful co-ed in the country in College Humor’s 2010 America’s Hottest College Girl competition. She’s an 18-year-old broadcast journalism major and former beauty queen from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, who was stripped of her Miss Teen United States title (Not to be confused with Miss Teen USA) after pageant organizers learned of her participation in the College Humor contest. Since it would be a shame for Ellie to have lost her tiara in vain, we’re hoping you’ll take a minute and help a very nice young lady out with a few votes.

You can do that here….

Now on to our nightly links:

-Genesis legend Phil Collins is working on a new cover album of Motown soul classics. Didn’t both Michael McDonald and Seal do this already?

-Courtney Love says there’s no way she’d allow Robert Pattinson to play her late husband, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, on the big screen…

-The editors at Rolling Stone Magazine have offered their “40 Reasons To Be Excited About Music…..”

–Twitter is donating its archives of Tweets to the Library of Congress, going back to the first one posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006. We wonder how the millions of folks who post their private beeswax on the social network site will feel about that…

-Keri Hilson is Avon’s newest celebrity ambassador….

-Departing American Idol bandleader Rickey Minor chats about replacing Kevin Eubanks on The Tonight Show….

-The creators of Comedy Central’s South Park are taking their act to Broadway…

-Kate Gosselin “has learned to watch what she says….”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

-Barking Man is an internet sensation! An Australian man goes bonkers describing the dogs he says are destroying his neighborhood….

–Out Magazine’s Power 50 List 2010….

-In other Gosselin news: Pennsylvania lawmakers will not pursue charges of child labor against the producers of TLC’s now-defunct series, Jon & Kate Plus 8….

-Cambridge University has an interesting way of helping students relax ahead of finals: pole-dancing…..

–Brandy wants bloggers to be a little nicer. Good luck with that, Sista….

-America’s parents have a bone to pick with Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight books….

–Comedy Central and the The Onion join forces for an original scripted series based on The Onion Sports Network!

-An X-ray that once belonged to film legend Marilyn Monroe is for sale on eBay….

-The daughter of supermodel Iman opens up about weight struggles and gastric bypass…

-Queens, NY comes out for American Idol’s Big Mike….

-Jewel’s back. The singing star will release the follow-up to her 2007 debut country album on June 8 — the same day Christina Aguilera drops her Bionic album…

-Men proceed with caution: The Kardashians are talking menstrution.

-Neil Patrick Harris is lending his famous voice to a great cause: The How I Met Your Mother star will narrate Through a Dog’s Eyes, a documentary about service dogs and the people who love then. The special airs on PBS April 21. Check your local listings for showtimes….

Chances are what you learned in school about the causes of the Great Depression and the effects of the New Deal and Word War II on the American economy are all wrong. If you were taught to believe the free market caused the Great Depression and the New Deal and World War II got us out of it, reading The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Great Depression and The New Deal will set you straight.

Murphy earned his Ph.D. in economics at New York University and served as a professor at Hillsdale College. He is now an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a senior fellow in business and economic studies at the Pacific Research Institute and economist with both the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Institute for Energy Research. In The Politically Incorrect Guide, Murphy provides irrefutable evidence that the not only did government interference with the market cause the Great Depression, but the big government policies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt made it last longer and become more severe than necessary.

Murphy deals with the three main explanations of the Great Depression: 1) The wildcat free market caused the Great Depression and the New Deal pulled us out of it; 2) A Market economy goes through natural ups and downs, but the Federal Reserve let the money supply collapse in the early 1930s, turning a normal downturn in the Great Depression; and 3) The Federal Reserve fueled the stock market boom of the 1920 with its easy money policies. After the crash, the Fed did the wrong thing by cutting rates and propping up unsound institutions. Hoover’s and FDR’s interventions in the economy only made things worse.

He dissects each argument and provides evidence that the third explanation is the most plausible.

Austrian school economists believe FDR’s New Deal was terrible for small business in America, with its wage and price control policies, restrictions and higher taxes hindering innovation and expansion. It also resulted in long-term high unemployment. And Murphy makes a strong case that this is so. He also shows how FDR’s banking holiday and the ensuing “safeguards” placed on the banking industry created many more problems than they solved.

Finally, Murphy makes the case that today’s recession is much like the Great Depression in cause and effect, and that because President Obama’s economic policies mirror FDR’s in so many ways, the result will be a recession that is deeper and lasts longer than is necessary.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to The Great Depression and The New Deal is an easy and quick read that is written in such a way as to give a good history lesson—without being too technical—for those seeking a better understanding of that dark period in America’s history. It also provides the reader with a better understanding of how our country got into its current financial mess.

How to Protect Your Wealth against the Soaring Tax Every American Will Have to Pay

As the contentious debate over the bailout package continues, the great central issue is, who should be taxed and how much should they pay?

In his first Federal budget proposal, President Barack Obama pointed to the dire economic plight of working Americans and argued that their taxes should be lowered, while businesses and the wealthy should pay more. Republicans, pointing to the economic boost provided by the Reagan tax cut in 1981 and the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2002, adamantly maintain that the way to boost the economy out of the depression and really help working Americans is to lower taxes on business and on capital gains.

In truth, both liberals and conservatives are tilting at windmills. Neither plan lowers taxes for either the rich or the poor. The liberals’ plan to shift more of the income tax burden to the rich does not lower overall taxes for the working classes. The conservatives’ plan to cut income and capital gains taxes for businesses and investors does not lower overall taxes for either. As for the argument over the Reagan and Bush cut taxes, they didn’t. There has not been a reduction in the rising level of taxes for either rich or poor at any time in the past 50 years.

While these statements seem to fly in the face of the evidence, let us look at it through the lens of common sense.

What is the overall tax burden on the American people? Do you believe, as most do, that it is the total of tax receipts collected by the Treasury? It is not. The actual tax is total government spending.

To grasp this critical point, ask yourself, what is a tax?

It’s money collected by government to cover its expenditures.

Government has two ways get money. The first is by force. Government demands that individuals and businesses pay a percentage of their income to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). If they refuse, they are faced with fines, imprisonment or both.

Face it, taking property by force or threat of force is stealing. Lysander Spooner, one of the great free market advocates on the 19th century, pointed out the absurdity of thinking otherwise: “What can be more absurd in nature and contrary to all common sense,” he wrote, “than to call him Thief and kill him that comes alone or with a few to rob me; and to call him Lord Protector and obey him that robs me with regiments and troops?”

Robbery, however, does not need to be done at gunpoint. It can also be done through fraud. If you lend someone money and that person has no intention to repay the loan, you have been robbed just as surely as if the money had been taken at gunpoint.

Just ask any of Mr. Madoff’s victims if they feel they’ve been robbed.

The government takes as much as politically possible by force through taxes, but if politicians try to raise taxes too high, they get tossed out of office. They have learned that what they can’t get by taxes, they can borrow.

Robbery By Any Other Name
It should be obvious that when the United States government borrows, there is no chance at all that it will ever repay. The history of government borrowing in the U.S. over the past century confirms it. From a debt of less than $2 billion a century ago, there are now more than $8 trillion in outstanding Treasury IOUs. (That figure, of course, does not count more than $60 trillion in pension and medical care promises.)

These government IOUs cannot and will not ever be redeemed.

How do we suffer the tax loss when governments borrow? Through price inflation. As the government borrows, interest rates rise and the central bank lowers those rates by monetizing the Federal IOUs. More money in circulation causes money to lose purchasing power. It has been going on for a century.

In 1910 a $20 bill could purchase an ounce of gold. Today, it would take 47 $20 bills to buy that ounce of gold. (That means, the Feds “taxed” away 46 of them through the fraud of government borrowing!)

The tax proposals in the stimulus package purport to lower taxes for all whose incomes are below $250,000. Thus the implication is that the bailout will help the working class, and the costs will fall on the rich. This is the opposite of the truth.

Lower income workers, retirees and the poor pay only a small portion of their income to the IRS. As they tend to spend most of their income on daily living, they are inflation’s biggest victims.

The more affluent members of society, on the other hand, spend a smaller percentage of their income on daily living, and through adroit investing have the opportunity to profit from rising prices.

One final point regarding the great tax-cut debate is important: Taxation through devaluation Is the politically expedient course; but it is also more damaging.

The fraud of secretly taxing through borrowing (deficit spending) is far more socially and economically destructive than it is to cover the full cost of government by raising taxes to the level that would balance the budget.

Price inflation makes it difficult if not impossible for both consumers and businesses to plan ahead.

It impedes growth and progress in every society in which it occurs. If citizens were forced to pay for all government expenditures up front through direct taxation, voters would be shocked into the realization that the free lunch politicians promised is no free lunch at all.

If every dollar spent by government came immediately out of taxpayers’ wallets, politicians would find it impossible to fund their vast pork-barrel spending programs.

We’d all be able to plan for our future, confident that the purchasing power of our savings would be there when we’re ready to use it. Unfortunately, there is zero chance that the fraud of deficit spending will be exposed and eliminated. The stimulus package will go forward, and the deficits will soar to the stratosphere. It is as inevitable as… well… death and taxes.

And don’t buy the argument that these exploding deficits mean that you are laying the burden of debt on your children and grandchildren. No, you’ll be paying the fraud tax yourself in the months ahead as price inflation soars.

What should a sovereign individual do in the face of this incredibly destructive bailout now underway? Prepare yourself for the consequences that history shows always follow an explosion of irredeemable debt.

• Stay away from long-term bonds that promise to repay you in the distant future.
• Invest in hard assets, and the companies that produce them.
• Diversify out of depreciating dollars and into those currencies and tangible, useable assets that will rise in value as the dollar falls.
• Internationalize your assets.

P.S. The Great Taxation debate is just the beginning. When you start to peel back the layers, you’ll realize the U.S. is coming closer and closer to a tipping point, where a 212-year-old secret could devastate the fortunes of millions, while a tiny clutch of prepared investors reach a new level of wealth. It’s all in my FREE report, which you can read here…

—John Pugsley

I’m a huge fan of Evernote. It was one of the first apps I installed for my iPhone, and has been a lifesaver on more than one occasion. Tonight Evernote is announcing a couple of major feature enhancements for premium users: increased note sizes and notebook history.

Historically, no single note sent to Evernote could exceed 25MB. Now premium users are getting a bump from 25MB to 50MB. This is particularly handy for premium users since they can attach any type of file to a note: audio, video, PDF, etc. With this update, premium users will be able to attach larger files to their notes.

The other big feature is notebook history. Premium users can now access and export any version of any note they’ve made. Whether used as a simple “undo” function, or used to gain insight into the evolution of a note over time, this is a pretty neat new feature. It might be particularly useful for shared notes, where multiple people are contributing to a collection of notes for a project.

Evernote premium is still $5/month, or $45 a year. Not too shabby for such a useful product. And the free version works just fine, too, for folks who don’t need all the bells and whistles.

That’s the gist of this A1 story in the New York Times.

EDITOR’S NOTE: City Clerk’s office said today Perry and Parks voted against the Rule 23 procedure to take up DWP rate hikes. Parks, Perry, Zine, LaBonge and Krekorian voted against approving the rate hike.

Roughly 24 hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went before an emergency joint session of Congress and delivered his famous speech declaring Dec. 7, 1941 “a date which will live in infamy.”

Los Angeles now has its own date that will live in infamy — April 14, 2010.

It is the date that the City Council, in a back room conspiracy among themselves and with the mayor, blatantly trashed the rule of law.

In violation of the spirit and intend of the Brown Open Meeting Law, their own rules and the advice of their own attorney, the City Council under the direction and leadership of President Eric Garcetti took up a matter that was not on their agenda without public notice, declared a public emergency and then approved an electricity rate hike before the DWP Board had even acted, an increase that doesn’t even take effect until July 1.

They did so without even making public who voted for and against.

It was all rigged in a back room deal. There was utterly no point to it other than to give the mayor a fig leaf to conceal the shame of his humiliating missteps and defeats in recent weeks. It showed the Council is just a bunch of toadies after all and their brief stand as elected representatives of the people was just a sham.

The action occurred after 3 p.m. when nearly every ordinary citizen had left the Chamber. Only one person, a man named Wayne Spindler, had lingered long enough to speak out in protest against this outrage. He ought to be honored as a folk hero, the lone voice of the people..

The urgency of this matter, the emergency, was not a riot in the streets or some crisis that could not wait a day, a week, even 10 weeks.

It was simply that the mayor and Council, with Herb Wesson of all people acting as go-between, had cut a deal to impose a 5 per cent rate increase on DWP’s electricity charges, .6 cents per kilowatt hour for one quarter.

It was the same rate hike they approved previously, only to have it rejected by the mayor and his lackeys on the DWP Commission who demanded .1 of a cent more — $6 million a quarter.

But it puts an end to the war between the mayor and the Council — a battle that exposed just how dishonest and incompetent they all are.

It has been orchestrated all week to salvage their careers no matter what it costs the public, no matter how unjustified their actions are. Just get it off the front pages of the newspapers, off the TV news off the blogs, off the thousands of emails flashing around the city and off the table talk conversation of growing numbers of people.

They didn’t like the conversation so they changed the conversation.

The conversation today will be the mayor’s announcement of new leadership for the discredited Department of Water and Power, revived efforts to make LA the greenest city in America and find news to bilk the residents and businesses out of every dollar they can to feed the environmental and union profiteers.

Then, at 5 p.m., the DWP Board will convene at its own “emergency” meeting to actually approve the .6 cent rate hike they rejected two weeks ago when it could have taken effect on April 1 instead of July 1.

This would the stuff of farce if it didn’t show just how tragically flawed our leaders are.

Watch how the smug Garcetti (as if he didn’t know it was going to happen) reveals the DWP Board had suddenly called its meeting with only 24 hours notice on a matter that had no urgency. See how he twists the truth to invoke Council Rule 23 that allows for action on a matter of urgency “on an item not posted on its Agenda for the meeting if it determines by a two-thirds vote that the need for such action arose after the posting of the Agenda.”

Even as she objects, Perry clearly knows the votes have been lined up in advance — itself a violation of the Brown Act, the state open meeting law.

She appeals to the Council’s attorney, Dion Connell, about whether Rule 16 should apply instead allowing for a new matter to be brought up during a meeting and referred to committee or set for the next agenda.
 
Connell, who does his best day after day to protect and serve his Council masters, squirms uncomfortably and declares there is nothing urgent about the issue so Perry is right, it should be brought up for a vote.

No matter. Presiding officer Dennis Zine, who started growing a beard the day he decided to cross the line and become a totally corrupt politician, ignores the legal advice and proceeds to a vote on invoking Rule 23, which passes 11-2 — one vote more than was needed.

Who voted with Perry? We don’t know because Zine turned off the tally box that appears whenever the Council votes. He keeps it off for the 8-5 vote on backing the rate hike so we don’t know who was for it and who against as they got a bare majority. The video shows Bil Rosendahl and others looking up at the Council TV screens to see the vote breakdown but it never appears.

Just before the rigged vote, the clerk reminds Zine that state law requires the public be given its two minutes to speak its mind even when nothing but the pretense of democracy still exists.

That’s when Wayne Spindler gets his moment of glory.

What’s so pathetic about this whole episode is Garcetti’s despicable gambit is meaningless, a symbolic act of surrender to the mayor’s will, a symbol of our leaders utter contempt for the people, for rational processes, for robust public debate of important issues.

It was simply the price they paid to get the mayor to order the DWP to transfer the $73.5 million it promised to turn over to the general fund from surplus power revenue, and maybe $20 million more as well.

It was nothing but blackmail, and the Council paid it to free the hostage money.

DWP’s financial troubles are a myth invented to raise rates 20 to 30 percent on the road to doubling and tripling them in the years ahead.

.
This is DWP’s third trip to the well of public money so the IBEW, the greenwashers and the green profiteers in the mayor’s inner circle can get their hands on billions of dollars of the public’s money.

Measure B was defeated at the polls despite Garcetti’s best effort to keep secret the damaging consultant’s report on the DWP.

The second effort in recent weeks also failed because there is no plan for anything except to steal the public’s money, there is no transparency, no credibility.

We may not remember the date of this disgrace. But we should never forget the betrayal by our elected officials. They do it to us every day and if we let them get away with it, we become complicit in their crimes..

The entertainment industry has been pushing really hard for greater secondary liability for third parties, lately — hoping to roll back some of the vastly important safe harbors found in both the DMCA and Section 230 of the CDA. Both of those safe harbors (though, they work in different ways) are designed to make sure that liability is properly applied towards the party that actually broke the law. Secondary liability is a dangerous concept that applies the liability to a third party because it’s difficult to find the actual perpetrator. But, in what world does it make sense for you to blame an innocent bystander just because it’s hard to find the actual person responsible?

The consequences of secondary liability (both intended and unintended) are incredibly dangerous for both free speech and for the ability to create new and useful services online. We’ve already seen how the Chinese have taken secondary liability to a new level by using it as the core mechanism for censorship. But still the entertainment industry pushes forward.

They should be careful what they wish for. An article in the Times Online highlights the situation in Ireland, where there aren’t safe harbors against secondary liability for defamation — and it’s leading internet companies to blatantly censor or to avoid doing business in Ireland out of fear for the liability. Now, some in the entertainment industry seem to think this is just fine — because they think that the internet should be a broadcast medium for the big “professional” producers of content, and all these internet companies and user-generated content things should really all fade away.

But for people who recognize that freedom of communication online is important, and who recognize that third parties who create services should not be blamed for their misuse by users, this should be quite troubling. Trying to increase secondary liability on service providers through things like ACTA is an attempt to strip away basic legal common sense in the proper application of liability, in an effort to crowd out new online services, in favor of old school broadcast entertainment firms.

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by Kenneth Anderson

Adam Serwer, a journalist and blogger at the American Prospect, makes this observation in a very interesting post (linked in Robert Wright’s NYT Opinionator column) at the American Prospect Tapped blog (via The Progressive Realist).  (My apologies for interrupting the symposium also; I’ll take a backseat now!):

State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh’s speech to the American Society of International Law has mostly been read as a justification of the administration’s use of drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda targets. With the news that the Obama administration has targetedAmerican-born extremist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki for death, I went back to Koh’s explanation for why the drone strikes are legal. It seems to me that his arguments could possibly double as a justification of the government’s authority to kill al-Awlaki without due process.

Serwer then walks back through the text of Legal Adviser Koh’s speech, applying the language about drones to the targeting of Anwar al-Awlaki.  He concludes that it could be seen as a justification for that as well.  I think that’s right, and a good observation.  

Of course, I think also that targeting al-Awlaki is a good idea, legally justified, and moreover think this a persuasive basis for so concluding.

My dear friend Sandy Levinson posts briefly on this over at Balkinization, and comments on a speech by Jack Goldsmith at University of Texas:

I note that Jack Goldsmith gave an excellent talk at the University of Texas last week making the argument that in almost all fundamental respects the Obama Administration is continuing the “anti– and counter-terrorism” policies of the “second Bush Administration,” i.e., the second-term Bush presidency that freed itself, to at least some extent, from the mad-dog unilaterlism identified with Dick Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo. It is difficult to disagree with Goldsmith’s argument, empirically. Whether we should be cheered or dejected is, of course, another matter entirely.

Curiously, this is one of the few matters on which I think that the Obama administration is not actually continuing the Bush administration policies — at least if policies includes legal justification as well as surface actions.  Legal Adviser Koh’s statement on drones and its explicit appeal to legitimate self-defense apart from armed conflict, as a basis for targeting (and agreeing here with Serwer, including targeting Americans), is simultaneously a break with Bush administration policy (even while, in one sense, broadening it), and a re-affirmation of a legal policy going back to the Reagan-Bush years.

The self-defense assertion is important, and intellectually engaging, precisely because it is not the ground on which the Bush administration claimed its ability to target people.  For the Bush administration, it was always armed conflict, global and plenary; for the Obama administration, it allows for two strikingly different legal rationales.  And yet the self-defense rationale has the further characteristic of being a break with the Bush administration — while also being a return to a longer, and deeper tradition in the use of force by the United States.

Legal Adviser Koh alluded to the importance and, within the executive branch and the State Department, the independent weight of that traditional jurisprudence in the beginning of his speech, in which he made some important — but by the press largely not-understood as being important — prefatory framing remarks about the internal jurisprudence of the executive branch.  Those methodological remarks were at once a response to Koh’s critics on his right, but also a warning (not enthusiastically received, to be sure) to the academic audience at ASIL to his left.

But drones and done targeting constitutes the exception rather than the rule of Obama administration counterterrorism policies and their continuity with the Bush second term; and overall, I quite agree with Jack and Sandy’s assessment.  (Cross posted from Volokh.)

Actress, Jackie Appiah continues to be on the rise following her recent ‘Best Actress in a Leading Role’ honours at the 2010 African Movie Academy Awards (AMAA) for her role in ‘Perfect Picture’. Jackie, who played the role of a flustered wife battling with sexual incompatible with her new husband, has described her new achievement as exciting and a beautiful feeling.

The young and beautiful actress is not new to the AMA Awards; in 2007 she won the nod for ‘Best Actress in a Supporting Role’ for ‘Beyonce’ and was nominated the following year for ‘Best Actress in a Leading role’ for ‘Princess Tyra’. So winning the award this year brings a good sense of achievement and growth for her. “It was a beautiful feeling and I am just so happy. It shows that God is on my side and people are out there watching my works and appreciating what I do”, she comments.

According to the star actress, winning the best actress nod means she now has to screen the scripts that come her way and make sure she always goes in for the best. She was particularly impressed with Shirley Frimpong-Manso’s script for the ‘Perfect Picture’ and she comments: “The first time I got the script for perfect picture, I fell in love with it. I just knew that it was a good and beautiful script. And look at how far it has brought me now”.

Winning the coveted award holds great prospects for Jackie Appiah and she hopes that this achievement would take her career to the next level. When asked whether this means her fees or rates would go up, she answered: “Being the queen for the African Movie Academy Awards in 2010 as best actress comes with a lot. Yea, probably the fees will go higher a little; let’s see. But I will choose good scripts, good movies, good directors, and good crews. I will ask for good cast; I will make sure I know whom I am working with”.

She also believes that the recent achievements of Ghanaian movies and actors at the African Movie Academy Awards are strong indications of the improvements and growth in the Ghanaian movie industry. “This goes to show that Ghanaian movies are moving in the right path, we are sitting up right now. We are bringing in different kinds of cameras, better scripts, better locations, and better costumes. It goes to show that people are sitting up and are trying to get serious with the business right now; it’s not a joke anymore. We are really happy because we have had a lot of nominations and wins in the past three years. It goes to show that we are on the right path and I thank God for that”.

Jackie can soon be seen in the new movie, ‘Foreplay’. She also recently finished shooting a production alongside Nigerian sensation, Yemi Blaq in which she plays the role of a female rapper. There is certainly a lot more to come from the reigning queen of African cinema.

Full list of winners for African Movie Academy Awards 2010

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Bariga Boys(Nigeria)

BEST SHORT FILM

The Abbys Boys (South Africa)

BEST ANIMATION

Hanayns Shoe (Egypt)

BEST FILM BY AN AFRICAN FILMMAKER IN DIASPORA

Soul Diaspora

BEST FILM IN AFRICAN LANGUAGE

Imani (Uganda)

HEART OF AFRICA AWARD FOR BEST FILM FROM NIGERIA

Figurine by Kunle Afolayan

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND

I sing of a well

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN EDITING

The Child

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN ART DIRECTION

Fulani

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKE-UP

The Child

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN COSTUME

I sing of a well

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN VISUAL EFFECT

Figurine

BEST ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

A sting in a tale

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A CHILD ACTOR

Teddy Onyago and Bill Oloo- Togetherness Supreme

MOST PROMISING ACTRESS

Rahema Nanfuka – Imani

MOST PROMISING ACTOR

Wilson Maina – Togetherness Supreme (Kenya)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Adjetey Anang – The Perfect Picture

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Tapiwa Gwaza – Seasons of a life

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Jackie Appiah – The Perfect Picture

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Ramsey Noah – The Figurine

AMAA ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMATOGRAPHY

Figurine

BEST PICTURE

The Figurine (Nigeria)

BEST DIRECTOR

Shirley Frimpong-Manso- The Perfect Picture

Ryan McBride wrote:

The trick to beating cancer could be a single test that shows all known genetic traits in each person’s tumor, and that also matches those results to the best treatments. Boston-based Foundation Medicine reports today that it has raised the first part of a planned $25 million round of Series A venture funding to make comprehensive genomic analyses of tumors a standard tool in the fight against cancer.

A crack team of cancer, genetics, and industry veterans from the Boston area has assembled around the startup. Boston-based Third Rock Ventures, founded by former executives of the cancer drugmaker Millennium Pharmaceuticals, has incubated the company and led the first-round financing. Alexis Borisy, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Third Rock and the former CEO of Cambridge-based CombinatoRx (NASDAQ:CRXX), is the startup’s founding chief executive (something we were the first to report back in February). And Eric Lander, a pioneer of genomics research and an advisor to President Barack Obama on science and technology policy, is headlining the group of scientists and physicians who are advising the startup.

Foundation Medicine, which was formed in 2009, has come into being as high-speed DNA sequencing and a slew of academic studies help to uncover new genetic mutations that, say, protect tumors from certain therapies, or help cancer cells grow out of control. Drug companies are developing cancer drugs for patients who have specific genes that make them likely to respond well to the treatments, building on Roche-Genentech’s success in marketing the breast cancer drug trastuzumab (Herceptin) for women with the HER2 gene. Also, a growing number of startups are focusing on providing new genetic tests that help guide physicians in treating cancer patients.

Foundation Medicine is taking its own approach to personalizing cancer treatments. While many previous firms have focused on developing tests to detect specific genes linked to likely outcomes of cancer treatments, Foundation Medicine is planning to use high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies to expose the plethora of genes and genetic variants in cancer genomes, according to Borisy. Borisy and Third Rock are betting that the future of cancer treatment will involve a single analysis of cancer DNA in guiding treatments, rather than multiple tests that screen for individual genes or groups of genes.

Today DNA sequencing is done primarily in research settings, with extremely limited clinical use. Borisy, however, says that it’s time to put this technology to work for people with cancer. “If many patients would benefit from this deep understanding, then there needs to be a way to take this from being a research tool to something that would be useful and meaningful and work in the routine practice of clinical oncology,” he says. “That has been the driving motivation and inspiration behind Foundation, and it’s quite clear that this is the way the world is going.”

The company’s exact strategy is evolving, according to Borisy, yet some details are clear. The firm plans to set up a central lab in the …Next Page »

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20×200 is a great site to get limited-edition art prints for cheap, with new works coming out every few days. Today’s print? The saddest, most adorable lil GBA-playing Vader ever. Awwww. [20×200] More »

Ghana’s fastest rapper, Sarkodie made history at the 2010 Ghana Music Awards when he became the first artiste to ever win the Artiste of the Year nod with a debut album. The most outstanding artiste of the year also topped the ceremony with 4 other awards on a night filled with excitement, anxiety, rollicking performances and some surprises.View Gallery 

The star-studded event which was hosted by Chris Attoh and Doreen Andoh saw appearances by musicians, radio, sports, film and television personalities with a streak of star performances. Among those that performed were Wande Coal (Nigeria), Jozi (South Africa), Donaeo (UK), Sarkodie, Obrafour, 4×4, Tinny, VIP, Ohemea Mercy, Ruff and Smooth, Nana Boro, Efyah, Amakye Dede, Becca and Wutah.

Here is the full list of winners:
Artist of the Year
Sarkodie

Sarkodie

Most popular song of the year
Simple by Bradez

Discovery of the year
Sarkodie

Hip hop /hiplife song of the year
‘You dey craze’ by Ayigbe Edem

Hip hop/hiplife artist of the year
Sarkodie

Gospel Song of the year
‘Ayeyi Ndwom’ by DSP Kofi Sarpong

Gospel Artist of the year
Ohemaa Mercy

Highlife song of the year
‘Kotosa’ by Wutah.

Highlife artist of the year
Kofi B

Afro-pop Song of the year
World Trade Centre by 4×4

Reggae Song of the year
Jah will by Wutah

Best Collaboration of the year
‘Kasiebo’ by Obrafour & Guru.

Best Rapper of the year
Sarkodie

African artiste of the year
Wande Coal

Record of the year
Daa Ke Daa by Becca

Album of the Year
‘Ma Kye’ by Sarkodie

Song writer of the year
Kwabena Akwaboah for ‘Daa Ke Da’ performed by Becca

Best Male Vocal performance
PV (Wutah)

Best Female Vocal Performance
Becca

Producer of the Year
Richie of Lynx Enetertainment

World Bank Music for Development Award
School Dey Be by Asem

Instrumentalist of the year
Kwame Yeboah

Traditional artist of the year
John Osei Korankye

MUSIGA Merit award
Abinfour Nana Yeboah (KK Number 2)

It’s all your money. So should it be spent on costly shuttle flights or on a military aircraft that even the military decided it doesn’t need?

President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget would end funding for the Constellation Systems program, initiated by NASA in 2005 to return astronauts to the Moon by 2020 and later to Mars. The administration says the program is behind schedule and cannot achieve its goals without budget increases.

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In fiscal 2010, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion to procure 10 C-17 transport planes even though the initiative has been opposed by both the Bush and Obama administrations and the Department of Defense decided to cease C-17 production in 2007.

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Where on one hand, Yelp is pushing augmented reality over mobile search, Google is planning to take its Goggles platform to the next level.

Yelp is an augmented search tool. It takes any picture and analyzes it over social networks to give business suggestions and street information. Google has a similar product, the Goggles. Google has made itself clear on the non-availability of Augmented Search. Instead, it will have support for the Visual Search through Goggles.

Goggles product manager Shailesh Nalawadi said,

80% of information is consumed visually, and not through any of the other senses. Why is it you have to translate and transcribe what you see into words?

Almost 80% of data in this whole world is sent through images. Shailesh Nalawadi has also said,

Goggles is not just an app – it’s a platform. Yes, we do plan to open up the platform as an API but we are not sure what the platform should be.

Goggles is not just an app. it is a full-fledged platform now, just like Java. Google has speculated that it could soon release the API for this feature. (Via: Techradar)

Don’t miss these Related Posts:

• Google Goggles: Search the Web with Pictures
• Google Planning on TV Search?
• Yelp Says ‘No’ To Google Deal

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Feel like you need to get (re)introduced to Split/Second? This primer video should do the trick for you. But in case you still need words to sum it up for you, you get to race around a

Twitter held a conference called chirp earlier today and Evan Williams announced they will launch their own Android app. Details of the app has not been mentioned, they could take over an existing app or develop their own. Since the beginning of Android, Twitter apps have been among the most popular apps available.

TwidRoid Pro is one of the best Twitter apps available and its one of the most popular Android apps on the market. There are a few others that have some nice features, the Twitter widget that comes with HTC Sense is also a great Twitter client. They have some tough competition in the third party apps but, last Saturday Twitter released very popular and highly polished Twitter application for the iPhone. This should be a free app whenever it does come to Android and from the looks of things, we may not have to wait long.

Thanks for the tip, constellanation

[via tech crunch]

Luke Timmerman wrote:

Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ), the Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant, has agreed to add activist investor Ralph Whitworth to its board of directors immediately, according to a report this evening on the Wall Street Journal’s website, which cited a person familiar with the matter. Adding Whitworth could make things more difficult for another activist shareholder, billionaire Carl Icahn, who is calling for significant change at Genzyme in the wake of its manufacturing troubles of the past year. Relational Investors, Whitworth’s firm, has a 4 percent stake in Genzyme.

Whitworth reached a “mutual cooperation” agreement with the company in January. That deal said he would support the biotech’s nominees for the board at the 2010 annual meeting scheduled for June 16, but if Whitworth wasn’t satisfied with the nominees, Genzyme would name him to the board in the fall. Whitworth, who is based in San Diego, talked about his goals for fixing things at Genzyme in this interview in January with my colleague in San Diego, Bruce Bigelow.

A Genzyme spokesman didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment late Wednesday night.

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Earlier today, Twitter CEO Evan Williams confirmed that an official Twitter app will be made available for Android devices. No word on whether it’ll be a brand new app or a ported version of recently acquired Tweetie. [Android Police] More »