House to consider national concealed carry gun bill Tuesday (Daily Caller)

The House of Representatives will consider a bill on Tuesday allowing concealed carry permit holders to carry handguns across state lines.

A floor vote is expected on the National Right to Carry Reciprocity Act, a bill introduced by Florida Republican Cliff Stearns and North Carolina Democrat Heath Shuler.

The legislation would allow those with permits to carry a concealed handgun in any state where concealed carry is not restricted. Forty nine states currently allow some form of concealed carry, but the training and requirements for obtaining a permit vary.

The bill is poised to pass the Republican-controlled House: It has more than 245 co-sponsors, and it survived the markup process intact, despite numerous attempts by?Democrats to amend it.

Proponents of the bill say it would create reciprocity agreements among various states, similar to drivers licenses.

?[S]ome states allow visiting permit holders from other states to exercise their right to carry, and some states do not,? wrote National Rifle Association legislative lobbyist Chris Cox in an op-ed. ?As you can imagine, this presents a nightmare for interstate travel, as many Americans are forced to check their Second Amendment rights, and their fundamental right to self-defense, at the state line.?

The reciprocity act, Cox argued, ?would solve this problem by simply requiring states that allow concealed carry to recognize each others? permits.?

But gun control advocates such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Mayors Against Illegal Guns say the legislation will erode the laws of states with stricter gun controls.

The Brady Campaign said the bill should be called the ?packing heat on your street bill,? and Mayors Against Illegal Guns called it ?a race to the bottom.?

?The relatively stringent conceal-and-carry laws of California, Illinois and New York, for example, would be rendered obsolete,? Mayors Against Illegal Guns wrote in an op-ed. ?So-called shall-issue states, where authorities have little discretion over permits (and thus ?shall issue? them to anyone who meets the criteria), would become the new norm. The state with the most lax laws would establish a lowest common denominator for the nation.?

However, states? laws governing where concealed firearms may be carried would apply within their respective borders. The law would also not apply in jurisdictions that prohibit concealed carry, most notably Illinois and the District of Columbia.

?If you come into a state, you must abide by the state?s restrictions, and so I don?t understand the complaints,? said Rep. Stearns in an interview on NRA News. ?It seems like states? rights are being honored.?

Stearns said the legislation simply guarantees citizens? constitutional rights as affirmed by two recent Supreme Court cases, D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago, which affirmed the Second Amendment as an individual right.

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Obama calls waterboarding 'torture'

(AP) ? President Barack Obama says the interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torturing, disputing Republican presidential candidates who say they would reinstate the practice.

Obama called waterboarding "torture" and said it was "contrary to America's traditions" during a news conference at the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

Republicans Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann said during a Republican debate on Saturday that they would reinstate the technique that former President George W. Bush authorized and Obama banned.

The practice simulates drowning and is viewed as torture by many.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-13-Obama-Waterboarding/id-dd67969ce572468e950dc4d4fe31db7c

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Federer wins Paris Masters for 69th career title (AP)

PARIS ? Roger Federer's tough season is ending on a high note after the Swiss star beat Jo-Wilfried Tsonga 6-1, 7-6 (3) on Sunday to win his first Paris Masters title and the 69th of a glittering career.

The 16-time Grand Slam champion had never previously reached the Paris final, but gave the sixth-seeded Frenchman limited opportunities after saving two break points in his opening service game.

"I'm just ecstatic to have played so well this week," Federer said. "I have had many attempts to win Paris and for some reason I wasn't able to. It's a special victory."

The former No. 1 will end the season without a Grand Slam title for the first time since 2002, and his ranking has dropped to No. 4. But Federer has bounced back of late, winning the Swiss Indoors last week before arriving in Paris.

"I have had some really tough losses this year, but I kept believing the year wasn't over," said Federer. "I'm not playing to prove anything to anybody. I play for myself, I play for Switzerland (and) just to enjoy myself."

Federer took six weeks off after the Davis Cup playoff against Australia in mid-September and feels it paid off.

"I always plan in the long term," Federer said. "I know how grueling it is out there. Even I need my time away."

His 18th Masters title puts him one ahead of Andre Agassi and one behind all-time leader Rafael Nadal. The 30-year-old heads into the eight-man ATP World Tour Finals in London next week on a 12-match winning streak.

"I can still finish this year on a high," he said. "Now I have a massive highlight coming up in a week's time."

It was his third title of the season and his only Masters. Top-ranked Novak Djokovic has won five Masters this year, No. 3 Andy Murray two and the second-ranked Nadal one.

But with Djokovic troubled by a nagging shoulder injury, Federer will be confident of defending his title in London.

Tsonga improved his serve in the second set, but Federer was simply too strong in the tiebreaker, taking victory on his third match point when Tsonga's return landed out.

"I felt good today but Roger was just better than me today," Tsonga said. "I knew I needed to play a great match if wanted to win today and I was not able to."

Tsonga won the tournament in 2008 but was let down by too many unforced errors on his forehand as he tried to find a way to pressure Federer in their sixth meeting this year.

"I just wish I could have competed more," said Tsonga, who this year beat Federer in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, but lost at the same stage to the Swiss star at the U.S. Open. Overall, Federer now leads Tsonga 6-3.

Federer took only 80 minutes to beat Tomas Berdych in straight sets in Saturday's semifinals, while Tsonga labored for three hours and saved three match points before getting the better of unseeded American John Isner.

Federer's sharpness showed as he mercilessly attacked Tsonga's weak second serve in the first set. He opened a 4-0 lead after Tsonga, visibly frustrated over too many loose forehands, double-faulted.

The opening set lasted only 30 minutes, Federer clinching it with a whipped winner into the open court after Tsonga returned a strong second serve to Federer's forehand.

"On this kind of surface, Roger has always been among the best players," Tsonga said.

Tsonga had to raise his game in the second set or risk a thrashing, and he dug out a crosscourt winner with a booming forehand in the fourth game to set up break point. With Federer on second serve, Tsonga missed his chance when his hurried forehand went out.

With Federer's seemingly impregnable serve dipping for the first time in the match, the Frenchman missed another opportunity at 30-40 in the eighth game when he sent a forehand long.

Federer hardly had to dig deep, but he did thrill the crowd at the Bercy arena with one moment of brilliance in the next game.

A closely contested rally saw Tsonga send Federer scampering to the back of the court to retrieve a lob. Federer waited for the ball to sit up nicely, span around and hit a devastating backhand pass without even looking to see where Tsonga was.

Tsonga appeared nervous in the tiebreaker, netting a forehand long and a backhand into the net ? either side of Federer's forehand winner and service winner ? to trail 0-4.

Federer raced to a 6-1 lead, and though Tsonga saved two match points with a neat drop shot and a service winner, it was a brief reprieve from an inevitable ending.

Having won the Swiss indoors and Paris Masters back-to-back, taking his total career wins to 802, Federer heads to London in fine form.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111113/ap_on_sp_te_ga_su/ten_paris_masters

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Berkshire buys 5 pct of IBM, takes other stakes (AP)

OMAHA, Neb. ? Warren Buffett said Monday that his company has spent $10.7 billion to buy more than 5 percent of IBM's stock this year, a surprising move by the billionaire investor who has long shied away from investing in high technology companies.

Berkshire Hathaway also revealed several other new investments made during the turmoil of the third quarter. Besides the new IBM investment, Berkshire added much smaller stakes in Intel Corp., DirecTV, General Dynamics Corp. and CVS Caremark Corp.

Most of the details emerged from the quarterly update Berkshire filed with regulators on its $59 billion U.S. stock portfolio. Buffett disclosed some details in interviews earlier in the day.

Monday's filing doesn't offer a full picture of Berkshire's holdings, however, because the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed the Omaha-based company to keep some of its investments confidential.

Buffett has long refused to invest in high-tech companies because he has said it's too difficult to predict which technology businesses will prosper in the long run.

But he said he recently realized his view of IBM was wrong based on what he read in the company's annual reports and what he learned by talking to information-technology departments at Berkshire subsidiaries. He said he should have realized years sooner that hardware is no longer the heart of IBM's business.

"Now they're very much a services company, and they're very intertwined with their customers," Buffett said. And he said IBM's customers are reluctant to change once they start working with IBM.

So Berkshire has bought about 64 million shares since March, or about 5.5 percent of IBM. Buffett says he believes IBM has a sound plan for the future.

Andy Kilpatrick, the stockbroker-author of "Of Permanent Value, the Story of Warren Buffett," said it's surprising to see Buffett invest in a high-tech company, but the investment appears to be an example of Buffett spotting something in plain sight that he had previously overlooked.

"I don't think it moves things very far from what he's always done," Kilpatrick said.

IBM joins several other American business icons in Berkshire's stock portfolio. Buffett's company already holds stakes in Coca-Cola Co., American Express Co., Wells Fargo & Co., among others.

IBM officials declined to comment Monday on Buffett's investment.

International Business Machines Corp., which marked its 100-year anniversary in June, has proven resilient even in a downturn because of hard decisions it made in the 1990s, when it tapped an outsider as CEO to help with a turnaround.

At the time, IBM was slipping with the rise of cheap microprocessors and rapid changes in the industry. Although it helped make the personal computer a mainstream product, it quickly found itself outmatched in a market it helped create. PCs also began to perform many of the functions of mainframes computer, throwing IBM's main moneymaking business into disarray.

The company decided then to focus on the high-margin areas of software and technology services and move away from computer hardware. That intensified with IBM's $3.5 billion purchase of PricewaterhouseCoopers' consulting business in 2002 and the sale of its PC business to Lenovo for $1.75 billion in 2005. Today, IBM is the world's biggest technology services provider.

The shift is important because it has allowed IBM to ride two recessions. When times are tough, businesses pay IBM to help them find ways to cut costs and handle technology chores that would be more expensive to perform in-house.

IBM's stock has more than doubled since the depth of the recession in 2008. IBM shares gained as much as $2.46 Monday to trade near its 52-week high of $190.53 before slipping to close at $187.35, down 3 cents.

Buffett said Berkshire paid an average of about $170 per share for the IBM stock.

IBM executives insist the company's focus on long-term contracts insulates it from economic swings. The company has said it is ahead of its own aggressive forecasts. IBM has disclosed a goal of hitting $20 per share in adjusted earnings by 2015, a rare example of a long-term earnings target made public by a major company. IBM, which is based in Armonk, N.Y., says it plans to continue growing its software business and invest about $20 billion in acquisitions from 2011 to 2015.

The third-quarter report filed Monday doesn't include all of Berkshire's new IBM stake because Buffett said some of the shares were bought in the fourth quarter.

A couple of the other new investments revealed Monday are tech companies. At the end of September, Berkshire held 9.3 million Intel shares, 4.2 million DirecTV shares, 3.1 million General Dynamics shares and 5.7 million CVS Caremark shares.

But those other new investments, besides IBM, were worth less than $200 million at the end of September. That dollar figure suggests those investments were made by Berkshire's new investment manager Todd Combs, who manages between $1 billion and $3 billion.

It's not clear who picked the investments because the filing doesn't differentiate between investments Berkshire makes, investments any of roughly 80 subsidiaries make, or investments made by Buffett himself.

Besides the new investments, Berkshire also reported changes in some of its other holdings, including:

? Increasing its sizeable stake in Wells Fargo to 361.4 million shares from 352.3 million in June.

? Reducing its holdings of Kraft Foods to 89.7 million shares from 99.5 million.

? Boosting its Dollar General stake to 4.5 million shares from 1.5 million.

? Increasing its stake in insurer Torchmark Corp. to 4.2 million shares from 2.8 million.

Berkshire's investments are closely watched in the market because of Buffett's successful record. Buffett has said that Berkshire has been buying aggressively during the recent market turmoil.

Berkshire occasionally receives permission from the SEC to delay disclosing some stock purchases to prevent others from driving up the price of those stocks before Berkshire completes its purchases. Berkshire then discloses the purchases or sales in a subsequent quarter and issues amended reports for previous quarters.

The SEC says it grants such confidentiality to investment managers only when they can show they would be harmed substantially by immediate disclosure.

___

Online:

Berkshire Hathaway Inc.: http://www.berkshirehathaway.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111114/ap_on_hi_te/us_berkshire_investments

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Rescued baseball player Ramos thankful to be alive

Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, left, shakes hands with Venezuela's Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami at the end of a news conference at Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire. El Aissami said Saturday that authorities had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos, left, shakes hands with Venezuela's Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami at the end of a news conference at Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire. El Aissami said Saturday that authorities had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos attends a news conference at Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire Friday night. Authorities said they had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Venezuela's Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami, left, shows a picture of the SUV that Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was forced into at gunpoint, right, during a news conference at Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire Friday night. El Aissami said they had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos attends a news conference at Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire Friday night. Authorities said they had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

The alleged kidnappers of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos are presented to the media in the parking lot of the Venezuela's Judicial Police headquarters in Valencia, Venezuela, Saturday Nov. 12, 2011. Ramos' kidnapping ordeal ended after two days when police commandos rescued him in a flurry of gunfire Friday night. Authorities said they had arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and 74-year-old man were also arrested for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)

(AP) ? His eyes tearing up with emotion, Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos embraced his rescuers Saturday and said he had wondered whether he would survive a two-day kidnapping ordeal that ended when commandos swept into his captors' mountain hideout.

Ramos said that he was happy and thankful to be alive a day after his rescue, saying that his final moments as a prisoner were hair-raising as police and the kidnappers exchanged heavy gunfire in the remote area where he was being held. He said his kidnappers had carefully planned the abduction and told him they were going to demand a large ransom.

"I didn't know if I was going to get out of it alive," Ramos told reporters at a police station in his hometown of Valencia, flanked by police investigators, National Guard commanders and Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami. "It was very hard for me. It was very hard for my family."

El Aissami said authorities arrested four of the captors, all of them Venezuelan men in their 20s. A 60-year-old woman and a 74-year-old man were also arrested as accomplices for supplying the kidnappers with food from their home in the area, he said. The six suspects were led past journalists at the police station with black hoods over their heads.

Authorities were still searching for four Colombian men who escaped during the rescue, El Aissami said. He didn't say whether anyone was wounded in the gunbattle.

Ramos, 24, was seized at gunpoint outside his family's home Wednesday night and whisked away in an SUV. It was the first known kidnapping of a Major League Baseball player in Venezuela, and the abduction set off an outpouring of candlelight vigils and public prayers at stadiums as well as outside Ramos' house.

El Aissami said investigators' first break in the case came when they found the kidnappers' stolen SUV, a bronze-colored Chevrolet, abandoned in the town of Bejuma alongside the mountains of central Carabobo state. With that location pinpointed, he said, they studied past crimes in the area and ended up checking on a rural house that authorities believed had been used in a previous kidnapping.

An SUV parked outside had mud on it even though there was no mud in the area, El Aissami said. Investigators suspected that SUV was being used to shuttle food to another spot nearby, and eventually determined the house was probably being used by the kidnappers as a support base while holding Ramos elsewhere, he said.

El Aissami said authorities took over the house and detained the couple who had been cooking for the abductors.

Once investigators thought they had found the general area where Ramos might be, President Hugo Chavez personally authorized an aerial search mission and teams also set out on foot in the mountainous area, El Aissami said. He said the teams searched most of the day on Friday and finally came upon the remote house where Ramos was being held.

Chavez followed the operation "minute by minute," the justice minister said.

Ramos had recently returned to his homeland after his rookie year with the Nationals to play during the offseason in the Venezuelan league.

When he was abducted, he was standing with his father and two brothers just outside the front door of his family home in a working-class neighborhood of Valencia, about 90 miles (150 kilometers) west of Caracas.

Ramos said his captors drove him for five or six hours, and once changed from one SUV to another. He said they bound his hands at first, but later allowed him not to be tied up. The kidnappers didn't cover their faces and they spoke little to him, he said.

"They demanded only money," he said.

Ramos said some of his abductors spoke with Colombian accents and revealed they had studied his movements before carrying out the abduction.

"They told me many things they knew of my private life," he said. "They knew a lot about me. They had very good information, an informant who told them all that."

Asked more about that informant, Ramos said he didn't have further details but that "they themselves told me."

El Aissami said one of the Colombians wanted by authorities lives in the area, and investigators believed he planned the kidnapping and studied Ramos' daily routine.

"This person is the one who gives the information to a criminal group," which in turn carried out the kidnapping, El Aissami said.

He said the investigation also pointed in part to "Colombian paramilitary groups that could be involved in the kidnapping."

Ramos said he was kept in a room and passed the time lying on a bed. When the gunfire erupted Friday as his rescuers arrived, "I was on the bed and I threw myself directly to the floor."

"It was like 15 minutes of shots until the officials arrived and saw me in the room," said Ramos, who hugged the justice minister as well as police and National Guard officers at the news conference.

Ramos said he was enjoying being back with his family, and planned to start training Monday to play with his Venezuelan team, the Aragua Tigres, on Wednesday.

He said he didn't plan to travel to Washington for now. "I want to stay here to give them that, to the Venezuelan people ... so that they can see me play here."

After his rescue was announced Friday night, Ramos' mother, Maria Campos de Ramos, celebrated, exclaiming on television: "Thanks to God!"

Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo also celebrated the news.

"He asked me to thank all who played a role in his rescue, and all those who kept him and his family in their thoughts and prayers," Rizzo said in a statement. "I join Wilson in thanking the many law enforcement officials in Venezuela and investigators with Major League Baseball who worked tirelessly to ensure a positive ending to what has been a frightening ordeal."

A baseball official said Major League Baseball's local security agents worked with Venezuelan law enforcement on the case. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.

Security has increasingly become a concern for Venezuelan players and their families as a swelling wave of kidnappings has hit the country's wealthy and middle class in recent years. Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in Latin America, and the vast majority of crimes go unsolved.

Major League Baseball officials said it was the first kidnapping of a major leaguer that they could recall. But relatives of several players in Venezuela have previously been kidnapped for ransom, and in two cases have been killed.

Bodyguards typically shadow major leaguers when they return to their homeland to play in Venezuela's baseball league.

"They didn't physically harm me, but psychologically I underwent very great harm," Ramos said. "I was always praying to God, and thanks to God he gave me the miracle of sending me these wonderful people."

He saluted his rescuers, saying: "I'm alive thanks to them."

___

Associated Press writer Jorge Rueda in Caracas and AP sports writers Howard Fendrich in Washington and Ron Blum in New York contributed to this report. Rueda reported from Caracas.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-12-BBN-Venezuela-Ramos-Abducted/id-be7faa370bf446c796c4ddb00d35b091

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Android App Review: Minimal Reader Pro

Minimal Reader Pro

As we wait for the impending update to the Google Reader app, I took to looking for other cool ways to consume everything on my Reader feed. Through my journey in the Market, I discovered not an app, but a widget called Minimal Reader Pro.

Minimal Reader Pro is awesome because not only does it save you the hassle of opening an app (precious seconds are lost when opening apps!), it looks absolutely incredible while doing it.

Setting Minimal Reader Pro up is easy as π. Do your long-press, choose Minimal Reader Pro, and you'll be prompted to attach a Google Reader account. If you don't feel like syncing a Reader account, you can still use a custom feed URL, but it's suggested you go the Reader route.

Once you've got an account linked and synced, you can pick which particular feeds you want to view. If you want to see everything, you can do that. If not, you can cherry pick your most entertaining feeds from the Manage menu.

The Settings menu gives you some nifty options, like setting an age filter (when to stop showing something because it's too old), the ability to filter read news, turning off image loading, and setting your refresh rate, total entries on the widget, and maximum items per label. If it sounds like a lot, it's not overwhelming in the slightest and is pretty damn easy to work through, really.

The last panel (Display) is where you really get to make Minimal Reader Pro your own. There's three themes to pick from (Classic White, Dark Glass, and Ice Cream Sandwich), each with their own look. You can also turn the background on and off (a great option depending on the kind of wallpaper you have), turn on square corners, or mark items read while reading them.

You can also set the text size and alignment (nothing groundbreaking here), but it's nice that the developer thought to include it.

Now that your settings are all set up and your widget is on the screen, you can scroll up and down like in any menu, and tapping on a story opens it up to read. Unread stories are bolded, while storeis you've read are displayed with a regular font. You can mark all stories read by tapping the check mark on the far right, and if you touch the heart icon, you'll be shown a list of only your favorite articles.

The settings gear and refresh icon are obvious in their function, as is the "____ new" reading in the center of the widget.

All in all, Minimal Reader Pro is a really gorgeous way to consume any RSS feeds on your device. If you're keen on using widgets, are an avid Reader or RSS user, and want to use something that both looks great and gets the job done, look no farther than Minimal Reader Pro.

Minimal Reader Pro is $1.09 in the Android Market.

We've got download links and more pictures after the break.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/d2ZaA-hRaQk/story01.htm

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Zoe Saldana and Longtime Fiancé Split (omg!)

Zoe Saldana and her longtime fianc? have split, People repots.

Saldana, 33, and entrepreneur Keith Britton, 35, "have amicably separated after 11 years," a rep for the actress said in a statement. "Saldana and Britton remain committed business partners as co-founders of fashion resource MyFBD.com."

Check out the rest of today's news

The actress, best known for her roles in Star Trek and Avatar, and Britton announced their engagement in 2010.

Related Articles on TVGuide.com

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Cain seeks advantage in media attention

Republican presidential candidate Herman?Cain is escorted by security as he leaves the back door of the Russian Tea Room after a fundraiser, Friday, Nov. 11, 2011, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Republican presidential candidate Herman?Cain is escorted by security as he leaves the back door of the Russian Tea Room after a fundraiser, Friday, Nov. 11, 2011, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

(AP) ? Herman Cain has decried the media firestorm surrounding claims he sexually harassed former employees. But the Republican presidential hopeful has also eagerly milked the limelight, even as he casts himself the victim of a journalistic smear.

"A lot of people who have been writing stories from their cubicles don't get it," Cain said in a radio interview Friday, maintaining an anti-media theme he's stuck with since the story first broke.

Allegations that the Georgia businessman sexually harassed subordinates as head of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s have been catnip to political reporters, blending issues of power, sex, race and money and pitting Cain's word against that of at least four accusers. The story has led news broadcasts, made headlines in major papers and driven reporters to track the candidate's every move.

Cain himself has been a constant media presence since the claims first surfaced, appearing frequently on Fox News, visiting late-night talk shows and calling in to radio hosts. As he takes advantage of its many platforms, he also criticizes the media for its interest in the controversy.

The attention has given Cain unrivaled exposure since Oct. 30, when the Politico website first broke the story. But it's also allowed the former pizza chain executive and his allies to malign the media, currying favor with many conservatives who believe news coverage is biased in favor of Democrats.

"It's fun for the right to bash the press. It plays to the victimhood strain, the aggrieved aspect of being a conservative in an allegedly liberal, elitist media world," said Marty Kaplan, a professor of media and politics at the University of Southern California. "Cain has played into that ? he gets the benefits of attention, and for his conservative supporters it proves what a grand antagonist toward the media he can be."

Audience members booed at a nationally televised debate this week when CNBC's Maria Bartiromo questioned Cain about the harassment claims. And they cheered when Cain pushed back.

"The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion," Cain said to applause.

At first, Cain and his backers could blame press scrutiny with ease. The early stories from Politico and other news organizations, including The Associated Press, did not include the names of Cain's accusers or many specific details of what he was alleged to have done.

Fox News personality Sean Hannity referred to the reporting as "journalistic malpractice," while Donald Trump dismissed it as a witch hunt.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter revived the term "high-tech lynching," which is how Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas described the media scrutiny he received during his confirmation hearings in 1991 when allegations he sexually harassed a coworker, Anita Hill, surfaced. Thomas and Cain are both African-American.

Cain even got an assist from a GOP primary rival, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who said the press focused on scandal at the expense of the interests of ordinary voters.

But it got harder for Cain to target reporters Monday, when one of his accusers went public.

Sharon Bialek told her story at a packed news conference in New York. She appeared with celebrity attorney Gloria Allred, and the two women then sat for several TV interviews.

Cain and many other conservatives jumped on Bialek's association with Allred, who has contributed to many Democratic candidates.

Another Cain accuser, Karen Kraushaar, identified herself Tuesday.

Cain held a news conference Tuesday in Arizona, where he took questions only after he and his lawyer, Lin Wood, gave lengthy opening remarks.

Wood has warned other women who might come forward with allegations against Cain that they would be aggressively scrutinized and should give the matter careful consideration before going public.

Cain also sat for an interview with ABC News, where he suggested reporters had menaced members of his family, including his wife, Gloria, who has stayed out of the spotlight thus far.

Cain is also making the rounds of late-night talk shows.

"The voice of the people is stronger than the voice of the media," Cain told ABC's Jimmy Kimmel. "They're not going to be easily swayed by what the media hype is."

The media frenzy surrounding the Cain story ? and Cain's strategy to take advantage of it ? speaks to the often unhealthy symbiotic relationship between media and politicians, according to Robert McClure, a professor of media and politics at Syracuse University.

"In no other country would Herman Cain be taken seriously in a way that would take up the time and the attention of serious decision-makers," McClure said. "What Cain traffics in is that he's glib and he loves attention. The media also traffics in glibness, so it's a match made in hell."

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Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bfouhy

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-12-Cain-Media/id-6248b0cc8f0b4e239704732af2b39f6f

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