Boehner says he 'absolutely' trusts Obama_
WASHINGTON (AP) House Speaker John Boehner says he "absolutely" trusts President Barack Obama not that they don't have their differences.
Boehner tells ABC's "This Week" that the two have a good relationship and that they're "open with each other ... honest with each other." But the Ohio lawmaker says they're trying to bridge some big differences.
One issue they agree on: The U.S,cheap nike blazers. doesn't have an immediate crisis in terms of debt.
Some conservatives criticized Obama when he said last week that the country doesn't have an immediate debt crisis.
Boehner says a debt crisis does loom in the years ahead because entitlement programs are not sustainable if they aren't changed.
He says balancing the budget will help the economy.
Related Articles：Arrested "rogue financier" led colorful
BERLIN (Reuters) - The Uffizi Gallery in Florence provided a fittingly lavish backdrop for the arrest on fraud charges of Florian Homm, a flamboyant German financier who has spent more than five years in hiding.
U.S. authorities accuse the former hedge fund manager of orchestrating a market manipulation scheme to artificially improve the performance of his funds, a fraud that led to at least $200 million in losses to investors.
Homm, now 53, disappeared in 2007 from his luxury villa on the Mediterranean island of Majorca after, according to U.S. authorities, dumping tens of millions of dollars' worth of his own shares in his company Absolute Capital Management Holdings Ltd and causing huge losses to investors.
The story of his arrest by Italian police on Friday, like so much else in Homm's life, reads like a thriller. Acting on a tipoff from the FBI, the police followed his ex-wife and son to their rendezvous with the elusive Homm at the Uffizi.
There, as the three were admiring classical Greek sculptures, police said they arrested him "very discreetly".
"Even the museum guards didn't notice anything," said the director of the Uffizi,cheap nike blazers, Antonio Natali.
Everything about the cigar-chomping Homm, who stands over two meters (6 feet 7 inches) tall and is nicknamed the "steamroller", seems larger than life.
In his native Germany, Homm is viewed by some as a symbol of the hubristic greed that helped trigger the global financial crisis of 2008-09,nike blazers high.
But he is also remembered for saving one of the country's most revered soccer teams, Borussia Dortmund, from bankruptcy and has more recently established a charity, Maximum Impact Medicine, that aims to save lives by providing cheap vaccines.
"Homm was definitely what you would call a colorful figure," said Klaus Nieding, a lawyer and head of the German shareholders' association DSW which has had dealings with Homm.
"Back in 2005-2007, he clearly fancied himself in the role of a tycoon who carried out a whole range of diverse investments. But, to put it mildly, there are numerous investors who feel their interests haven't been served in the best possible way," Nieding told Reuters.
UNDERGROUND
In a recent autobiography that bears the English title "The Rogue Financier: Adventures of an Estranged Capitalist", Homm tells of how he boarded his private plane in 2007 with cash stuffed into his underwear and cigar case and fled to Colombia.
In German his book is entitled "Kopf Geld Jagd" (Headhunt for Money), a reference to a $1.5 million reward offered by a German private detective last year for information on his whereabouts. Homm said he saw this as an effective contract on his life.
"I had a long list of enemies," he said.
Homm, who went to the United States as a young man to play basketball and ended up graduating from Harvard Business School, said he wanted to make amends for his past misdeeds by devoting himself to good causes.
"I used to be filthy rich, I had everything such a person has - villas, planes, a private zoo, yachts, everything. But I didn't know what to do with it," he said in a rare interview published last November in the now-defunct Financial Times Deutschland newspaper.
His book, dedicated to the two children he said he regretted having neglected as a father, was intended to discourage young people from giving in to "blind greed" as he had done, he said.
In the interview, Homm compared himself to Saint Paul in the Bible who sees the light and repents of his former life.
The paper described him as fit and tanned and said he was a keen skier and fly-fisherman, but added that the fugitive life - he said he had spent 18 months moving around the world and staying in cheap hotels - had left him nervous and suspicious.
The reporter who conducted the FTD interview wrote of having to follow elaborate instructions - ending in a metal detector scan - before finally interviewing him in a Paris hotel. Homm allowed no photographs or tape recordings.
The criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles alleges that Homm directed hedge funds to buy billions of shares of U.S.-based penny stocks and trade them among themselves to inflate their prices and the funds' asset values while generating additional fees for him and his company.
There has been no indication from Homm as to how he will plead.
Italy is now expected to extradite him to the United States.
(Additional reporting by Andreas Cremer in Berlin and Gavin Jones in Rome,women nike blazers; Editing by Jason Webb)
Related Articles：Ancient Mummies Had Clogged Arteries, Too_5
'Enforcer' sentenced to prison in Vegas sl
LAS VEGAS (AP) A 26-year-old Chinese immigrant convicted of being an enforcer for a Taiwan-based criminal gang will spend the rest of his life in a Nevada prison for killing one person and wounding two others in a bloody knife attack in a Las Vegas karaoke bar in July 2009,nike blazers high.
Xiao Ye Bai sobbed and apologized Tuesday for crimes including murder, attempted murder,cheap Nike Trainer, kidnapping, conspiracy and extortion.
He knew he'd get life behind bars without parole, after a jury in December spared him from the death penalty.
A Nevada judge sentenced Bai to 32 to 85 additional years after a prosecutor urged him to make sure Bai never is freed,nike blazers vintage.
Bai still faces prosecution in California in a separate shooting that killed one person and wounded another outside a Los Angeles-area karaoke bar.
Related Articles：Author Odeen Ishmael Pens Guyana History and its R
New book follows the Guyana history from the period of European colonization to its attainment of independence,Air Griffey on sale.
BOSTON, Mass. (PRWEB) March 18, 2013
The book examines the period of early European exploration leading to Dutch colonization and the forcible introduction of African slaves to work on cotton and sugar plantations. It also scrutinizes the effects of European wars, and the final ceding of the territory to the British who ruled it as their colony until they finally granted it independence in 1966. It includes the Indian, Chinese, and Portuguese indentured immigration,nike blazers high, showing how the cultural interrelationships among the various ethnic groups introduced newer forms of conflict but at the same time, brought about cooperation in the struggles of the workers for better working and living conditions.
The final part describes the roles of the political leaders who arose from among these ethnic groups from the late 1940s and began the political struggle against colonialism and the demand for independence. This struggle led to political turbulence in the 1950s and early 1960s when the country was caught in the crosshairs of the cold war resulting in joint British-American devious actions that undermined a democratically elected pro-socialist government and deliberately delayed independence for the country until a government friendly to their international interests came to power.
Educational and highly enlightening, The Guyana Story is a collection of short essays attempting to relate the story of the Guyanese people in a generally chronological order. These will give the readers a wonderful insight into the rich heritage of the country, and will continue to encourage others to conduct and document further research into various aspects of Guyanese history.
For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to http://www.Xlibris.com.
About the Author
Odeen Ishmael, a veteran Guyanese diplomat, is currently Guyana’s ambassador to the State of Kuwait,nike blazers for women. He previously served as ambassador to Venezuela (20032011) and to the United States of America (19932003), where he was also his country’s permanent representative to the Organization of American States. He has written extensively on Guyanese history, education, and culture as well as political developments in Latin America and the Caribbean and particularly on the political integration movement in South America. His country decorated him with the Cacique Crown of Honor in 1997, and in the USA in 2002, he was honored with the Martin Luther King Legacy Award for international service.
The Guyana Story* by Odeen Ishmael
From Earliest Times to Independence
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As Groupon Preps IPO, Google And Startups Grab Mer
This story appears in the Nov. 21, 2011 edition of Forbes magazine.
Steve Chen owns 5A5, one of San Francisco’s better steak houses. He’s been contacted by 100 daily-deal companies over the past year to sell happy hour and porterhouse discounts. He thought about going with the leader of the pack, Groupon, but went with a startup called Bloomspot. It provides some things Groupon does not. Bloomspot guarantees a certain check size and gives Chen the ability to target more frequent diners and limit the deal to just Sunday through Thursday nights.
Jonathan Umbel suffered the Groupon experience Chen was trying to avoid. Umbel is the owner of the Tackle Box, a seafood restaurant in Georgetown that bills itself as Washington, D.C.’s “first and only lobster shack.” He lured thousands of customers by offering bargain-priced lobster rolls and fresh oysters on both Groupon and LivingSocial, the other big local-deals player (now backed by Amazon). That goosed his revenue but hurt his margins. He has no hard data to indicate if diners made return visits, which was the whole point, and now he thinks that the steep discounts hurt his brand,cheap Nike Trainer. Umbel isn’t planning any more deals.
Groupon went from being the fastest-growing, greatest tech startup of 2010 to a deflated bubble with merchant fatigue on the side. It will try again to go public in the coming month, but an IPO that was supposed to yield a $25 billion to $30 billion market capitalization is now likely to xyzxyz37xyzxyzyield $11 billion. That’s still big for a company that didn’t exist four years ago, but concerns about large losses, a run-in with the SEC over disclosure of non-GAAP metrics that exclude marketing costs, growing competition and worries about consumer deal fatigue have raised the question about the viability of the local-deal business model.
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A passel of startups is looking to prove there’s a good business here, just not the way Groupon does it. San Francisco’s Bloomspot can guarantee merchants that, with a deal offering $40 for an $80 meal at a restaurant, the average check size will be at least $120. It does this by targeting customers likely to spend larger amounts. Bloomspot also guarantees a certain percentage of customers will return after using a deal, and it takes its commission, typically 40%, only if it meets these numbers. To attract loyal and high-quality customers Bloomspot gives customers a credit of 25% of their bill toward their next visit to the merchant. “Consumers only get the best deals if they demonstrate they’re good patrons,” says Jasper Malcolmson, Bloomspot’s CEO.
xyzxyz46xyzxyzWomply, a startup cofounded by former LivingSocial general manager and head of sales Brandt Squires, offers a simple proposition for consumers. They can buy deals on Womply.com with any credit or debit card; then they just pay at the merchant using the same card and get a credit sent back to their card. As with Bloomspot, no coupons or phones are required.
“My friends would be giving me sh-- for months if I pulled out a Groupon in the middle of a nice dinner,” says Womply cofounder and CEO Toby Scammell. Womply doesn’t send a mass e-mail each day to its members,xyzxyz50xyzxyznike blazers sale. It only pings customers who have shown a preference for that business. Womply also seeks out longer-term marketing deals, rather than quick ones that bring a crush of customers. “It’s much less of a get-rich-quick idea and more of a sustainable marketing plan over the long run,” says Scammell.
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Groupon generated xyzxyz57xyzxyz$1.12 billion in the first nine months of 2011 but did so with massive spending on marketing, $613 million over the same span,xyzxyz50xyzxyznike blazers vintage. Groupon has begun trimming its marketing, but that isn’t likely to reverse what may be diminishing returns. Data from results in Boston show that the number of coupons sold per 1,000 subscribers dropped from 541 in the third quarter of 2010 to 357 in the same period this year. A recent xyzxyz61xyzxyzstudy by researchers at Harvard and Boston University found that Yelp ratings of merchants using Groupons declined soon after a deal. Tony Lucca, who owns the Washington restaurant xyzxyz63xyzxyz1905, says customers tend to redeem their deals in the first six weeks of eligibilityand then again in the last two weeks. “It’s the last two weeks that make everyone on my staff, including myself, so miserable we want to burn the restaurant down,” Lucca says.
Groupon is taking steps to address the holes in its model. It recently launched xyzxyz67xyzxyzGroupon Now, a mobile app that lets merchants near a customer’s location push out deals at specific times. Groupon also recently started a loyalty program, xyzxyz69xyzxyzGroupon Rewards, so that customers who opt in and buy more than once at a store can be tracked and get extra deals once they spend, say, $50 or $100 at a specific business.
Groupon’s bigger headache may be xyzxyz73xyzxyzGoogle, which reportedly tried to buy Groupon for $6 billion last year. Its xyzxyz75xyzxyzGoogle Offers program is live in 17 cities with plans to add 23 more soon. Google is testing putting deals in place of regular text ads on search results. It’s also building its own sales force but may turn to self-service sales for merchants looking to post deals, something Eric Rosenblum, director of product management at Google Offers, doesn’t dismiss. That strikes at the heart of Groupon’s expensive direct-sales model. “We are very willing to invest in this,” says Rosenblum. “It’s a very high-level priority.”
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xyzxyz79xyzxyzxyzxyz84xyzxyzBipartisan immigration reform bill takes shape in House_0xyzxyz82xyzxyz
xyzxyz79xyzxyzxyzxyz88xyzxyzAP NewsBreak- Dylan voted into elite arts academy_1xyzxyz82xyzxyz
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Apple’s next-gen iPhones to usher in new manufact
Apple iPhone 5Apple (AAPL) has historically relied on one Eastern manufacturing giant to assemble its iPhone lineup, but the next generation of Apple handsets will reportedly see that change. According to well-connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple plans todiversifyits iPhone manufacturing plans and split orders between Foxconn and Pegatron. While Foxconn has historically assembled all iPhone models, Pegatron will reportedly build 75% of the FDD-LTE version of Apple’s upcoming entry-level iPhone model and 55% of legacy iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 models. In his research note,Air Griffey on sale, which was picked up by AppleInsider, Ming-Chi also estimates that Apple will ship 35.8 million iPhone 5S handsets in 2013 and 53,cheap nike blazers.4 million new entry-level iPhones,nike blazers vintage.
[More from BGR: Galaxy S IV reportedly won’t have eye-scrolling technology or an eight-core processor in the U.S.]
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Related Articles：Arizona woman reviled for son's murder may go
PHOENIX (AP) Debra Milke was once one of the most reviled mothers around, convicted of dressing her 4-year-old son in his favorite outfit and sending him off to visit a mall Santa Claus with two men who shot the boy execution-style in the Arizona desert.
Milke said she had nothing to do with Christopher's death, but a detective testified at her 1990 trial that she had confessed to him and him alone in a closed interrogation room. Prosecutors said she had her son killed to collect on a $5,000 insurance policy.
Now, Milke could walk free, leaving death row behind after a federal appeals court threw out her conviction Thursday because prosecutors had not turned over evidence of the detective's history of misconduct, including lying under oath in other cases.
The 9th U.S,nike blazers vintage. Circuit Court of Appeals panel concluded that prosecutors' failure to turn over the evidence deprived Milke's attorneys of the chance to question Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate Jr.'s credibility before jurors.
And because it was the only direct evidence tying her to the killing, that fact could have swayed the jury, the panel ruled.
"No civilized system of justice should have to depend on such flimsy evidence, quite possibly tainted by dishonesty or overzealousness, to decide whether to take someone's life or liberty,cheap nike blazers," according to the opinion by Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.
Barring a successful appeal of Thursday's ruling, prosecutors will have to decide if they have enough evidence to retry Milke. The ruling doesn't toss out the supposed confession. It just allows defense lawyers to have all of the detective's police files.
The ruling has raised questions about other cases in which the now-retired Saldate gave testimony.
The court noted four cases where judges threw out confessions or indictments because Saldate lied under oath and four instances where cases were tossed or confessions excluded because Saldate violated the suspect's constitutional rights.
He was also suspended for accepting sexual favors from a female motorist he stopped and then lying about the encounter, it said.
Saldate, who was elected to a county constable post after retiring in 1990 but has now left that job, could not be reached for comment Friday.
Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said he intends to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and will argue it himself if they accept the case, saying the decision was the first to raise the issue after decades of court hearings.
"This is an outrageous crime," Horne said. "Ms. Milke was convicted of arranging for the death of her own child to improve her social life, and I hope to be able to convince the U.S. Supreme court to reverse this 9th Circuit decision."
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, who will be charged with deciding whether to retry Milke if the ruling stands, said Friday that he will have to review the available evidence and Saldate's credibility himself before deciding how to proceed. He said there may be more evidence that wasn't used at the 1990 trial.
"I want to know what the hell happened, after reading the opinion," Montgomery said. "I want to be able to review the available information and understand for myself,Air Griffey on sale."
But Montgomery said changes in the way rogue officers are monitored had changed greatly since 1990. Now, officers with credibility problems are tracked in a database so that those issues are caught early and disclosed to defense lawyers when necessary.
"The basic concerns that are raised in the 9th Circuit opinion, I do not believe that is anywhere near a systemic issue today," Montgomery said. "This is an instance where I need to make sure what we do is what's right rather than what's expedient."
Phoenix police declined to comment.
Milke's appellate lawyers, Mike Kimerer and Lori Voepel, said the appeals court's decision sends a clear message to police and prosecutors who don't reveal evidence that could help people accused of crimes defend themselves.
"It's one of the most scathing opinions I've ever seen the 9th Circuit write, in terms of talking about the credibility of a police officer or a law enforcement official," Kimerer said. "It almost sets the standard in terms of what we need to expect from law enforcement."
For Milke, who has always maintained her innocence, the ruling after 23 years on death row came as a shock, Voepel said.
"I said, 'Debra, we have good news. We won,'" Voepel said, recalling a phone call Thursday. "And she said, 'you're kidding, you're kidding," and I tried to explain it to her and she said just 'give me a minute here to feel this.' She's elated, to say the least."
Milke, 48, is one of three women on death row in the state.
The two men convicted in the Milke case, Roger Scott and former Milke roommate James Styers, are also on death row. Scott confessed during a police interrogation and led detectives to the boy's body. Neither Scott nor Styers testified against Milke.
The county attorney at the time, Rick Romley, was not so happy. "If she walks, it's a travesty of justice," Romley told KPHO-TV.
Christopher Milke's father, Arizona Mark Milke, was just as adamant, saying he was convinced his ex-wife killed their son.
"Why do you think two guys would just take off and kill my kid," he asked Friday. "Now, if she walks and those two get put to death, that's why this country has gone to hell, brother."
Milke criticized the 9th Circuit for overturning the case after so many other courts upheld his ex-wife's conviction. And he wasn't shy about voicing his views of Saldate.
"There's lot of cops that did good work on this case, but this lead detective, he should never been put on the case," Milke said. "Everything he did was screwed up."
___
Associated Press writers Paul Davenport and Amanda Lee Myers contributed to this report.
Related Articles：Bombardier to pay 460 million Swiss francs to Swis
ZURICH (Reuters) - Canada's Bombardier
According to a source with knowledge of the matter quoted by "Der Sonntag", the world's largest train maker Bombardier would have to pay 7,Nike Trainer sale.8 million francs for each train it delivers with a delay of a year, adding up to a total of 460.2 million Swiss francs.
Spokespeople for Bombardier did not return calls seeking comment.
SBB spokesman Reto Schaerli said the company could not give any details on the contract with Bombardier.
"Der Sonntag" also quoted other unnamed sources saying the double-deck trains might be ready even later than previously announced, possibly not before 2017.
This would also push the penalties to be paid up further, the maximum contract penalty being 708 million francs, "Der Sonntag" said.
Schaerli said the SBB had no information regarding any further delay.
The SBB had ordered 59 double-deck trains for a total of 1.9 billion Swiss francs from Bombardier in May 2010, the biggest order in the company's history.
The new trains should have taken up service from December 2013,Air Griffey on sale, but the SBB said last year they would be up to two years late, partly due to adjustments of the trains to better suit handicapped travellers.
Construction problems encountered by Bombardier also caused a delay of at least 12 months, SBB said at the time, adding negotiations about the costs arising from the delay and who would have to bear them were ongoing between SBB and Bombardier,nike blazers vintage.
(Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Diane Craft)
Related Articles：Al-Qaida-linked group claims deadly Syria blast
BEIRUT (AP) An al-Qaida-linked group fighting alongside Syrian rebels claimed responsibility Monday for a suicide car bombing that reportedly killed dozens of President Bashar Assad's loyalists last week.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius pleaded for countries to honor their pledges of funding and other aid to the Syrian opposition to keep the country out of the hands of Islamist militant groups.
"If we don't give the means to the Syrian people to go achieve their freedom, there is a risk, and we all know it exists, that massacres and antagonisms amplify, and that extremism and terrorism prevail.
"Chaos is not tomorrow, it is today, and we need to end it. We need to end it in a peaceful way and that means increased and concrete support to the Syrian National Coalition."
Islamic militants have been the most organized fighters battling government troops in the 22-month-old conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed. Their growing prominence has fueled fears that Muslim radicals might try to hijack the revolt, and has contributed to the West's hesitance to equip the opposition with sophisticated weapons.
In Beirut, U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said the situation in Syria was getting worse that entire neighborhoods are being destroyed by the fighting.
Amos, who just returned from Syria, also reported human rights abuses.
"I listen to the women who talk about what happened to them, to their families, the sexual abuse they have faced," Amos said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"The indiscriminate shelling. The indiscriminate killing of people. This is a conflict that is happening essentially in towns and cities," she said.
Amos said she went last year to the once rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr in the central city of Homs. She said the entire neighborhood was destroyed and more than 70,000 people had left, but no one knew where they had gone.
"There was not a single building left standing," she said. "This is being repeated across Syria,women nike blazers. It's a terrible thing."
Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. says has ties to al-Qaida and has declared a terrorist organization, said in a statement posted online that one of its suicide bombers detonated a car bomb last Monday at the headquarters of a pro-government militia in the central province of Hama. It said the bomber drove a truck packed with explosives to the militia's complex in the town of Salamiya and blew himself up "to give the tyrannical regime a taste" of violence it has been inflicting on the Syrian people.
Activists said at least 42 people, mostly pro-Assad militiamen, were killed in the blast. The government did not say how many people were killed, although state-run SANA news agency published photographs of what it said was a funeral procession for the blast's victims on Wednesday. In one of the photographs, a dozen men are seen standing behind 11 caskets, wrapped into a Syrian flag.
Jabhat al-Nusra has previously targeted government institutions in Damascus with suicide bombers and has led successful attacks on military bases and strategic territory in the country's north.
The suicide bombings are part of relentless violence that has engulfed Syria since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011.
On Monday, activists said troops battled rebels in several towns and villages around Damascus, including in Daraya, Arbeen and Zabadani. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the regime's forces also shelled several of the capital's suburbs.
The areas outside Damascus have been rebel strongholds since the uprising began. In recent months, the rebels have used them as a base from which they have been trying to push into central Damascus, the seat of Assad's power.
In the north, troops clashed with rebels in al-Hasaka province along Syria's border with Turkey, the Observatory said, adding that at least 10 rebels were killed in the fighting that erupted Sunday after the opposition fighters attacked a government checkpoint.
International efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria have repeatedly failed and both sides fighting in the civil war are convinced they can defeat the other on the battlefield.
In France, Fabius pleaded for countries to keep their promises of financial aid to the Syrian opposition or risk compromising the legitimacy of the Syrian National Coalition in the eyes of the people fighting the Assad regime.
The opposition coalition was formed in November,nike blazers womens. More than 100 countries have back the umbrella group, decreeing it the sole legitimate representative of the Syrian people. France was the first to confer such recognition.
"We have to give the Syrian people a clear signal: We are at your side," Fabius told representatives of some 50 nations.
Not all the promises of funding and other aid made at the Friends of Syria group's conference in December in Marrakech, Morocco, have materialized,nike blazers for women. France, which has spearheaded the formation of a viable opposition in exile, wants to make sure that backing that has been promised actually comes through.
More than $100 million was promised in Marrakech, but it's unclear how much has been sent.
Three Syrian National Coalition's vice-presidents attended the Paris gathering, which comes two days before a donor conference in Kuwait.
Amos, the U.N. official, said she went to Syria from Lebanon by land on Sunday because of insecurity around the Damascus International Airport that has witnessed fighting and air raids for weeks.
In recent months, several officials, including special U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, have flown to Beirut and then traveled by land to Damascus because of the fighting.
Amos hoped that Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq or Jordan don't close their borders with Syria. She said funds are needed to help refugees and those countries that are receiving them.
Amos spoke two days ahead of a donor conference for Syria that will be held in Kuwait. More than half a million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries and there are hundreds of thousands who are internally displaced.
_____
Associated Press writer Elaine Ganley in Paris and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
Related Articles：Apple's iPad to fall behind Android as tablet
By Noel Randewich
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Shipments of tablets running Google Inc's Android will overtake the iPad this year for the first time, research house IDC predicted on Tuesday, as Apple Inc cedes more mobile market share to hard-charging rivals around the globe.
A growing variety of smaller and cheaper Android tablets from Google to Amazon.com Inc will catch on this year with more consumers and chip away at Apple's dominance since the first iPad launched in 2010, International Data Corp said.
iPad and iPhone shipments are expected to keep growing at enviable rates, but arch-rival Samsung Electronics and others have hurt Apple with a combination of savvy marketing, greater variety and rapid technology adoption.
On Thursday, Samsung takes the wraps off the fourth generation of its flagship Galaxy, the smartphone that helped the South Korean giant knock the iPhone off its top ranking for part of last year.
A growing perception that the company co-founded by Steve Jobs may be losing its competitive edge has weighed on its shares, which have lost more than a third of their value since hitting a high in September.
IPHONE COULD GO WAY OF BLACKBERRY?
In the latest criticism from Wall Street,nike blazers for women, Jefferies analyst Peter Misek on Tuesday compared Apple to Blackberry saying the iPhone is now on the defensive against Samsung's devices.
"Historically when handset makers fall out of favor (e.g., the Razr, Blackberry, HTC) they fall faster/further than expected," Misek said.
Now, IDC says Apple may begin losing some its lead on tablets as well, though it remains the top seller among manufacturers.
iPad shipments are expected to account for 46 percent of the tablet market in 2013, down from 51 percent last year, IDC said. Devices running Android are expected to grow their market share to 49 percent this year from 42 percent last year.
Google's Nexus 7 tablet and Amazon.com Inc's Kindle, which uses its own customization of Android, made major inroads with consumers last year. In November, Apple launched its own foray into smaller-sized tablets with the iPad mini.
"One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below 8 inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets to continue growing in 2013 and beyond," IDC said in a press release.
APPLE REVS GROWTH SLOWS
Last month, Hewlett-Packard Co announced the launch of the Slate 7 tablet powered by Android, a centerpiece of that company's effort to expand from the shrinking personal market into mobile.
Apple is expected to grow its revenue by $26 billion in its fiscal year ending in September,nike blazers vintage, just over half of the $48 billion increase in revenue it saw the year before, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
A group of suppliers that depend on Apple for more than half of their business saw its sales slump 31 percent in February compared to January, according to Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White, who does not identify the companies in the group.
Shares of Cirrus Logic,cheap nike Griffey, which gets three quarters of its revenue from selling audio chips to Apple, have fallen 23 percent this year, including a 2.89 percent drop on Tuesday.
Many component suppliers to Apple, like Qualcomm and Toshiba, also do significant business with Android device manufacturers.
"The open ecosystem at Android has allowed there to be more suppliers. As a chip guy, I always want to have as many irons in the fire as possible because the ride at the top tends to only last five years," said RBC analyst Doug Freedman.
Underscoring the increasing opportunity in mobile for Apple and its competitors, IDC also raised its 2013 tablet shipment forecast to 190.9 million units, up from its previous forecast of 172.4 million units.
Last year, global tablet shipments grew to 128.3 million units, up from 72 million in 2011, according to IDC.
In the smartphone market, which reached 545 million units shipped last year, Apple has already fallen behind Samsung.
Samsung is likely to sell 290 million smartphones this year, up 35 percent from 2012, according to Strategy Analytics. Apple's smartphone sales are projected to reach 180 million this year, up 33 percent.
IDC said tablets running Microsoft's Windows 8 platform would grow their market share from 1 percent last year to 7.4 percent in 2017.
Tablets running the Windows RT operating system, which is not compatible with older software that runs on Windows, will see their market share stay below 3 percent through 2017, IDC said.
"Consumers aren't buying Windows RT's value proposition, and long term we think Microsoft and its partners would be better served by focusing their attention on improving Windows 8," IDC said.
(Editing by Andrea Ricci and Andrew Hay)
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