Ethics Committee appoints panel in Berkley case

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2011 file photo, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. speaks during a jobs rally in North Las Vegas, Nev. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday, July 9, 2012 that it had appointed a panel to investigate whether Berkley used her position to protect her family's financial interests, giving Republicans additional fodder to question her conduct leading up to November's election for a Senate seat in a critical swing state. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 16, 2011 file photo, Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev. speaks during a jobs rally in North Las Vegas, Nev. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday, July 9, 2012 that it had appointed a panel to investigate whether Berkley used her position to protect her family's financial interests, giving Republicans additional fodder to question her conduct leading up to November's election for a Senate seat in a critical swing state. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it had appointed a panel to investigate whether Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley used her position to benefit her family's financial interests, giving Republicans additional fodder to question her conduct leading up to November's election for a Senate seat in a critical swing state.

The Nevada Republican Party filed a complaint last year saying that Berkley's efforts to keep a kidney transplant program open at University Medical Center in Las Vegas constituted a conflict of interest because her husband, Dr. Larry Lehrner, is a managing partner of a company that contracted with the hospital to provide kidney care.

The Ethics Committee had earlier said it was reviewing the matter and would announce its course of action by Monday. The committee could have dismissed the complaint outright, but its unanimous decision to conduct a formal investigation gives critics more opportunity to raise the specter of impropriety by Berkley, who has said she was merely looking out for kidney patients who would have had to travel out-of-state to get transplants.

Berkley's campaign said it was pleased with the committee's decision "to conduct a full and fair investigation."

"We are confident that, ultimately, it will be clear that Congresswoman Berkley's one and only concern was for the health and well-being of Nevada's patients," said Jessica Mackler, Berkley's campaign manager. "That's why she joined then-Republican Congressman Dean Heller to prevent Nevada's only kidney transplant program from being shut down by Washington bureaucrats."

Heller and Berkley are running for a hotly contested U.S. Senate seat that has the potential to determine which party controls the Senate next year. Heller has stayed out of the fray, likely reflecting that he also worked to keep the transplant program running. His campaign declined to comment on the Ethics Committee's announcement. But other GOP-aligned groups are keying on the investigation. Crossroads GPS recently took out ads portraying Berkley as a politician who "makes the system work ? for herself."

In October 2008, federal regulators issued an order that ended Medicare financing for the hospital's kidney transplant program, essentially draining it of the resources necessary to keep operating. Berkley worked to reverse the order, as did other members of Nevada's congressional delegation, and eventually they succeeded.

Republicans are saying that her work and other steps she has taken to expand federal assistance for kidney care is a conflict of interest. Besides seeking to save the transplant program, she also warned in a letter to a colleague that he should move carefully in considering changes in compensating doctors who provide dialysis treatments. Her husband is a kidney specialist.

The Ethics Committee issued a four-paragraph statement on Monday saying that it was establishing an investigative subcommittee that would review whether Berkley violated any law or House rules in her activities on behalf of business entities where her husband had a financial interest.

The committee said that Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, will serve as the investigative panel's chairman and that Rep. Donna Edwards, D-Md., will serve as the lead Democratic member. The other two members of the subcommittee are Rep. Robert Latta, R-Ohio, and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.

Rob Jesmer, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that the unanimous vote to move forward with the investigation "speaks volumes." The committee is evenly split, with five Republicans and five Democrats.

Meanwhile, his counterpart with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Guy Cecil, said Berkley is a proven fighter for her constituents.

"Voters will certainly recognize that Shelley always puts the needs of Nevadans first whether she was working to create jobs or to save the only kidney transplant center in the state," Cecil said.

Monday was the deadline for lawmakers to respond to a referral from the Office of Congressional Ethics. If the committee had opted to drop the matter, then it would have been required to release a report detailing what led to the referral. The office has forwarded 13 complaints to lawmakers during the current congressional session, and this was the first one that has led to the formation of an investigative panel.

The original complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics was filed by the Nevada Republican Party, which relied on a report from The New York Times to question Berkley's advocacy for the Las Vegas hospital and dialysis providers in general.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-07-09-House%20Ethics-Berkley/id-9293301eac1f434aae372f9280d2f4de

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Video: RNC Chair: A vote for Obama is a vote against liberty

CDC anticipates record year for whooping cough

The U.S. is on course for a record year for whooping cough, health officials said this week. And while vaccinating kids is clearly the most important defense, health experts say adults may not realize they?re supposed to be getting regular shots, too.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/48126477#48126477

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The Hot Chinese Phone Maker You've Never Heard Of That's Already Worth More Than Half as Much as Nokia

Xiaomi is an ultrahot contender to become China's biggest smartphone player.

Xiaomi's Mi-One smartphone, released last year.

In March of 2010, the Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi didn't exist. In the summer of 2010, it received $41 million in venture capital at a valuation of $250 million. In September of 2011, the company debuted its first phone. The next month, it picked up another $90 million in venture money at a valuation of $1 billion. And in June of 2012, the company took in a massive $216 million round of financing, which pegged the company's market value at $4 billion. Nokia, which sells tens of millions of phones, is valued at $7 billion.

With growth like that -- detailed today in Caixin -- it doesn't seem crazy to ask, is this China's Apple? Could it be?

It is early days for Xiaomi and there is substantial controversy over the company's valuation. Under certain rosy projections for the company's per-phone profit, it makes a lot of sense, particularly given the growth that the company has enjoyed. Here's how one executive in the Caixin story explained it:

[I]f the net profit of each smartphone was 500 yuan and Xiaomi can sell 5 million handsets by the end of the year, then the total net profit will be 2.5 billion yuan. The price-earnings ratio was 10, according to the formula for calculating the valuation of a hardware company, meaning the estimated value of the firm was 25 billion yuan, or US$ 4 billion.

On the other hand, Nokia sold more than 100 million smartphones and has all the infrastructure and intellectual property of a global giant. The truth is that only Apple has mastered consistently high profit margins on smart phones with Samsung a distant but strong second.

With a huge and growing domestic market, a huge and growing manufacturing base, and the advantages that seem to accrue to homegrown Chinese companies, my working hypothesis is that a Chinese smartphone giant will emerge, consolidate the fractured market there, and go on to become the largest phonemaker in the world. Will that company be Xiaomi or ZTE or someone else?

In any case, if you're an investor, maybe you place some risky bets on Xiaomi because the payoff could be that you own a stake in the world's next great tech giant.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AtlanticScienceAndTechnology/~3/DcQ5w9xU-Xo/story01.htm

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The Writer By Jaquet Droz: Getting to Know an Over 200 Year Old Android

Europe in the mid to late 18th century was not as backwards as some people may believe. In fact, much of the developed world was at a point of incredible intellectual advancement. In Switzerland, for example, a man named Jaquet Droz and his team were building real, honest-to-HAL robots. They didn't call them that back then, but these automaton androids were incredibly advanced even by today's standards.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eTi1dVTpiuk/

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Community: One Photoset per Episode ?Season 2 Episode 4

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Democrats want Romney to explain offshore accounts

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. (AP) ? Mitt Romney privately raised millions of dollars from New York's elite on Sunday, as Democrats launched coordinated attacks against the likely Republican presidential nominee, intensifying calls for him to explain offshore bank accounts and release several years of tax returns.

The line of attack, dismissed by the Romney campaign as an "unfounded character assault," follows new reports that raise questions about Romney's personal wealth, which could exceed $250 million. President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is expected to push the strategy throughout the coming week, underscoring their desire to portray Romney as disconnected from the middle-class voters he needs to win the presidency.

"He's the first and only candidate for the president of the United States with a Swiss bank account, with tax shelters, with tax avoidance schemes that involve so many foreign countries," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said on CBS' "Face the Nation." He's one of several high-profile Democrats who spoke out on the Sunday morning news shows.

Romney may have unintentionally helped the Obama campaign.

Republican donors driving Mercedes, Bentleys ? and in one case a candy red 2013 Ferrari Spider ? crowded into a series of closed-door Romney fundraisers in the Hamptons, New York's exclusive string of waterfront communities on Long Island's South Shore. Wall Street bankers and brokerage house chiefs, among others, make the area their weekend playground. Romney's Hamptons swing follows a weeklong vacation at his lakeside vacation home in New Hampshire.

Voters are split on whether they trust Romney or Obama more to run the nation's economy, but a majority says that Obama better understands their concerns.

The Hamptons crowd, however, saw things differently.

"I think he's a plain talking guy," Peter Cohen said, referring to Romney. Cohen, the former Shearson Lehman Brothers chief who now heads his own investment banking firm, made the comment as he chewed a cigar in his black Range Rover outside a Romney fundraiser expected to generate $3 million.

Romney's day concluded at the Southampton estate of billionaire industrialist David Koch, where donors were asked to give $50,000 per person or $75,000 per couple. The event attracted protesters like Robert Shainwald, a 65-year-old retired teacher.

"Romney has no idea what the working person's daily concerns are. How could he?" Shainwald said as he waved a sign offering free vegetables to anyone who wasn't a billionaire.

Romney would be among the nation's richest presidents if elected. He made his fortune at Bain Capital, a Boston-based private equity firm that has become a key part of the argument for his White House bid. He hasn't drawn a regular paycheck in more than a decade, however, and has instead lived off a series of investments.

But Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns that would outline those investments, breaking from a precedent set by his father, former Michigan Gov. George Romney, who released 12 years of his tax returns when he sought the presidency a generation ago. And an Associated Press report recently raised questions about a previously undisclosed Bermuda-based company included in Romney's portfolio until the day before he became Massachusetts governor.

Obama adviser Robert Gibbs said Romney could easily clear up questions about his personal finances if he simply released "a series of years" of returns.

"Mitt Romney's father was the pioneer for releasing a series of tax returns," Gibbs said on CNN's "State of the Union." ''The best way to figure out if Mitt Romney is complying with American tax law is to have him release more of his tax returns."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, considered to be in the running for Romney's vice presidential hunt, struggled to defend the offshore financial activity on ABC's "This Week," dismissing the criticism as "a distraction from the Obama campaign." And a Romney spokesman suggested the new attack was inappropriate.

"The Obama campaign's latest unfounded character assault on Mitt Romney is unseemly and disgusting," spokesman Andrea Saul said. "Mitt Romney had a successful career in the private sector, pays every dime of taxes he owes, has given generously to charitable organizations and served numerous causes greater than himself."

The new push by Obama and his allies comes two days after the release of a lackluster jobs report that said the nation's unemployment rate was stuck at 8.2 percent. Romney has been largely focused on the economy throughout his campaign, an issue that voters overwhelmingly report will be on the top of their minds come Election Day.

Some high-profile Republicans have recently criticized Romney for not being specific enough on his economic plans. And some fear that the Republican campaign is not being aggressive enough in defending his business career and personal wealth.

But Romney didn't have to defend his background in the Hamptons.

"This country is about business," said Cohen, the investment banker. "Mitt Romney understands business."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/democrats-want-romney-explain-offshore-accounts-212438884.html

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Sensex falls; earnings in focus

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/sensex-falls-earnings-focus-050012842--sector.html

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