According to the environmentalist group, which uses the bear as its logo, there are only 1,600 giant pandas left worldwide, making it one of the most striking examples of biodiversity in danger.

"Through this symbol we want to show our attachment to the whole of the living world," said Serge Orru, head of WWF France.

"Of course, the panda is the most touching, the most tender. But worms are just as important as pandas."

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one in four mammals, one in eight birds, a third of all amphibians and 70 percent of plants are under threat from global warming, deforestation and pollution.

The hand-painted Paris pandas, around 40 centimetres (one and a half feet) tall, are to travel around the capital's monuments in the coming weeks before setting off for sites across France.

From: us.rd.yahoo.com

In an effort to garner a large chunk of the white, working-class vote, Sen. John McCain once again brought up Sen. Barack Obama’s "bitter" comment.

Speaking to a closed fundraiser in San Francisco, California, in early April, Obama said decades of lost jobs and unfulfilled promises from Washington have left some Pennsylvanians "bitter" and clinging "to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

McCain, campaigning in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, told reporters that his campaign is "going to go into the small towns in the state of Pennsylvania. And we’re going to tell them that we don’t agree when Sen. Obama said that they cling to guns and religion because they’re bitter about the economy."

The "bitter" controversy erupted less than two weeks before Pennsylvania’s presidential primary. At the time, Sen. Hillary Clinton blasted Obama as "elitist"

Clinton,Obama’s primary opponent at the time, called him on April 13 an "elitist, out of touch and frankly, patronizing." A day later she said "People don’t need a president who looks down on them."

Obama countered Clinton’s attacks saying she "knows better" than to attack him as elitist and out of touch.
From: rss.cnn.com

The Whistle

by Benjamin Franklin

To Madame Brillon

I received my dear friend’s two letters, one for Wednesday and one for Saturday. This is again Wednesday. I do not deserve one for to-day, because I have not answered the former. But, indolent as I am, and averse to writing, the fear of having no more of your pleasing epistles, if I do not contribute to the correspondence, obliges me to take up my pen; and as Mr. B. has kindly sent me word that he sets out to-morrow to see you, instead of spending this Wednesday evening, as I have done its namesakes, in your delightful company, I sit down to spend it in thinking of you, in writing to you, and in reading over and over again your letters.

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, and with your plan of living there; and I approve much of your conclusion, that, in the meantime, we should draw all the good we can from this world. In my opinion we might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer less evil, if we would take care not to give too much for whistles. For to me it seems that most of the unhappy people we meet with are become so by neglect of that caution.

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will excuse my telling one of myself.

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys for children; and being charmed with the sound of a whistle, that I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all over the house, much pleased with my whistle, but disturbing all the family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was worth; put me in mind what good things I might have bought with the rest of the money; and laughed at me so much for my folly, that I cried with vexation; and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle gave me pleasure.

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing on my mind; so that often, when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, I said to myself, Don’t give too much for the whistle; and I saved my money.

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very many, who gave too much for the whistle.

When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing his time in attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his virtue, and perhaps his friends, to attain it, I have said to myself, this man gives too much for his whistle.

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employing himself in political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and ruining them by that neglect, "He pays, indeed," said I, "too much for his whistle."

If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating wealth, "Poor man," said I, "you pay too much for your whistle."

When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable improvement of the mind, or of his fortune, to mere corporeal sensations, and ruining his health in their pursuit, "Mistaken man," said I, "you are providing pain for yourself, instead of pleasure; you give too much for your whistle."

If I see one fond of appearance, or fine clothes, fine houses, fine furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which he contracts debts, and ends his career in a prison, "Alas!" say I, "he has paid dear, very dear, for his whistle."

When I see a beautiful sweet-tempered girl married to an ill-natured brute of a husband, "What a pity," say I, "that she should pay so much for a whistle!"

In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider that, with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain things in the world so tempting, for example, the apples of King John, which happily are not to be bought; for if they were put to sale by auction, I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and find that I had once more given too much for the whistle.

Adieu, my dear friend, and believe me ever yours very sincerely and with unalterable affection.

(1779)

From: grammar.about.com

NEW YORK (AP) — Women may not earn as much as men or fly up the corporate ladder as quickly, but they get the last laugh since they live longer. Right?

As it turns out, women probably aren’t saving enough to bankroll those extra years in style. They invest more conservatively, start saving later and are more likely to be in and out of the work force, according to a study released Wednesday by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm.

Suddenly, retirement isn’t looking so rosy.

Women live an average of 22 years after retirement versus 19 years for men and medical costs are rising, so women will need to save 2% more than men every year over 30 years to maintain their standard of living upon retirement, the study found.

The importance of saving didn’t dawn on Jerre Laughlin until she was in her 40s and started working in human resources.

"I was looking at pensions all day and was seeing what happens to employees who don’t save. That’s when reality set in," said Laughlin, now 63 and a resident of Kansas City, Kan. She’s been playing catch-up since and doesn’t plan to retire until she’s 67.

Laughlin isn’t the only one who’s learning her lesson the hard way. The Hewitt study found women today still do worse by every measure: they start saving later (by two to four years), invest less (7.3% versus 8.1%) and are in and out of the work force more often for family reasons - gaps that can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars in missed earnings, raises and benefits.

The study looked at the projected retirement levels of nearly 2 million current workers of varying ages at 72 large U.S. companies and used actual employee balances.

"Women tend to be a little more risk averse, more fearful of losing money," said Alison Borland, an author of the study.

Women’s saving habits haven’t improved significantly over the past several years, either, Borland said.

The study also found a quarter of women didn’t contribute at a high enough level to take advantage of the company match, which is typically 50 cents for every dollar up to 6% of pay. On average, women earned $57,000 versus $84,000 for men.

Yet women will have longer retirements than men by an average of three years. Socking away more now can improve the quality of those extra years.

If a woman who earns $57,000 a year boosts her contribution from 2%to 4% - an extra $95 a month - she can save an extra $81,000 by the time she retires, according to the study. That doesn’t include her employer’s matching contribution.

Delaying retirement can have a big impact too; every additional year is more time earning and less time sapping savings.

One of the biggest missteps people make is cashing out plans when switching jobs; that wipes out 30% or more of the account’s value in taxes and penalties.

Not surprisingly, the study states 90% of women were unsure about managing their finances. It also found that more companies are offering investment guidance, however.

Overall, four out of five men and women aren’t saving enough to keep up the same lifestyle after they stop working. Because of inflation and rising medical costs, Hewitt estimates workers will need to replace 126% of their salary after retirement to maintain their lifestyle. Both men and women are on track to replace an average of just 67% of that amount.

But with a longer retirement stretching before them, women may want to think about closing the savings gap fast. 

From: money.cnn.com

(Money Magazine) — Remember the last time you left the house late for an event and figured you could make up for it by driving a little faster?

But you were late anyway. It’s tough to make up lost time. Leaving 15 minutes late for a drive that ordinarily takes an hour at 55 miles per hour would require you to fly along at 73 mph to arrive on time. In most parts that’s just reckless.

A similar kind of math applies to your retirement savings, and lately you’ve been losing big chunks of time just when you can least afford it.

Now is when we boomers have the most skin in the game, and with only a few years of peak earning power left, we’d really benefit from a market surge. Instead, we’re getting market sag. Stocks have been in turmoil all year.

Of course, a few months or even a year or two of poor returns shouldn’t be enough to derail anyone’s long-term plan. But this mess has actually been with us for close to a decade. Over the past eight years, the stock market has been producing just a fifth of its historical rate of return.

Meanwhile, for the first time in 25 years, rising inflation is a genuine threat that could keep stocks growing slowly for many years into the future. Then too, you can no longer count on further big gains in your home’s value to bail you out once you’re ready to retire.

Yet hope is not lost. Here are some strategies for coping with today’s turbulent financial markets:

Get some perspective

You may not think you have time to ride out the market’s troubles, but you probably do. Even if you’re within five years of retirement, your time horizon isn’t five years. It’s probably 20, 30 or more. After all, you’re not going to liquidate your entire portfolio on Day One; odds are you will be holding some stocks for the rest of your life.

"We typically do not see a lot of drawdown of assets right away," says Francis Kinniry, a principal in the Vanguard Investment Strategy Group. "People tend to live off the income from their savings and from other sources."

Plus, even if your investments don’t do as well as the historical averages, they’re still likely to grow over 10 years or longer. But don’t kid yourself: There is a big difference between earning 6% a year and the 10% to 12% that we’ve enjoyed for much of our adulthood.

Over 10 years, stocks worth $100,000 would grow to $259,374 at 10% but to just $179,085 at 6%. This means, of course, that you’ll need to find new ways to make up the gap.

You can still drive 55

That may be why nearly a quarter of affluent boomers in a recent Bell Investment Advisors survey said they intended to change their investment strategy in response to current economic conditions and more than half cited higher returns as a goal for the next five years.

The latter suggests they intend to ratchet up risk by increasing investments in equities. But in fact, only one in five planned to buy more stock, while nearly 70% favored putting more money in fixed-income investments.

Both are bad ideas. Pumping up your commitment to bonds and cash practically guarantees inferior returns in the long run, if history is any guide. But this is no time to put the pedal to the metal in your portfolio either. When you reach for bigger short-term returns through aggressive investments, you risk setting yourself back even further.

Maintaining a mix of 50% stocks, 40% bonds and 10% cash, in good times and bad, is a decent target for most boomers. You can refine that with our asset allocation calculator. Whatever you do, stay diversified and keep practicing sound, time-tested strategies like dollar-cost averaging and yearly rebalancing.

Focus on what you can control

You can’t influence the market or decide when you turn 62 or 65. But you can choose how much to save and spend, and whether to downsize your lifestyle. Small adjustments add up.

"There’s no turning back the clock," says Gary Williams, a financial planner at Williams Asset Management in Columbia, Md. "It always comes down to basics."

So contribute enough to your 401(k) to get the full company match; better yet, fund it to the max, including taking advantage of the $5,000 "catch-up" provision for those over age 50.

Concerned about how to come up with the extra cash? Find additional resources by saving - not spending - the full amount of any raise, bonus or tax refund or, this year, the federal stimulus check.

Get in the habit of squeezing more out of your savings and investment returns wherever you can. Trimming your mutual fund expenses is guaranteed to boost your returns without additional risk, notes Dallas financial planner Clark Randall.

Shifting to an index fund that charges as little as 0.2% from an actively managed stock fund that charges 1.2%, for instance, gives you a full percentage point more in return, all else being equal. Money-market yields are hovering around 2%, but you can get 3% at an online bank like ING Direct.

In your cash accounts, aim to build a safety net big enough to get you through at least the first year of retirement without your having to sell stocks. Short of illness, nothing ravages your plans in retirement like the double whammy of drawing down your stock funds in a declining market.

Work a little longer

With just a few years to go before you retire, you may not be able to completely offset the effects of recent subpar returns, no matter what eleventh-hour adjustments you make to your portfolio. That’s why one in 10 boomers in the Bell survey say they are postponing their exit from the work force.

If there is a silver bullet, working longer is it. Say you have $1 million in a tax-deferred account, split evenly between stocks and bonds, when you retire at age 65. If you withdraw 4% plus an inflation adjustment every year, in 30 years you will likely still have $636,200 left after taxes.

But if the market happens to tank early in that withdrawal period, the outlook gets riskier - there’s a one-in-four chance that you’ll run out of money before year 30.

If you work just one year longer, though, the projections are far better, and by working three years longer you’d typically end up with $1.2 million after 30 years and have just a one-in-20 chance of running out of money. I’ll take those odds any day.

Thinking of retiring early? Money Magazine is looking to speak with people who would like to leave the workforce in the next few years but don’t yet know what they’ll do for health insurance (before they get to Medicare age). If that sounds like you, send your name, age, occupation, a brief description of your retirement savings and a photo to makeover@moneymail.com. 

From: money.cnn.com

Oct 21 2004 VIZ and America Online Announce Alliance to Add Exclusive Content and Features to the RED Service for Teens

San Francisco, CA, October 21, 2004 – VIZ, LLC, one of the leading publishers and distributors of manga and anime for North American audiences, and America Online, the world’s leading interactive services company, today announced a collaboration that will give teens on AOL’s RED service access to thirteen flash manga episodes of SHONEN JUMP’S popular DRAGON BALL manga series.

Each Friday for the next thirteen weeks, AOL’s RED service for teens will offer an exclusive premiere of a new episode of the popular fantasy action series at 3:00pm EST. Teens on the RED service will have exclusive access to the episode for a period of 48 hours, before it becomes available to all Internet users at www.shonenjump.com. The compelling flash manga takes storylines from the pages of Akira Toriyama’s famed graphic novel series and combines unique, full color and movement provided by Macromedia flash technology. The original incarnation of the DRAGON BALL flash manga began on Jumpland, a Japanese website featuring the most popular characters from the Japanese version of Weekly Shonen Jump, maintained by Shueisha, Inc., one of the largest publishers in Japan and a parent company of VIZ.

Now in its second year, SHONEN JUMP is the most popular monthly manga magazine in North America, with a current circulation of 175,000. It features serialized versions of many popular manga series including ONE PIECE, NARUTO, SHAMAN KING, YU-GI-OH! and DRAGON BALL Z. The domestic appeal and continued success of SHONEN JUMP has helped to drive the tremendous popularity the manga genre now enjoys. DRAGON BALL and the series’ various related spin-offs remain among the magazine’s most read titles. SHONEN JUMP has attracted the support of major mainstream advertisers like Dr Pepper and Clearasil and also created unique marketing partnerships with Scholastic Book Clubs and Reading Is Fundamental.

“This is a special opportunity for America Online users and fans of DRAGON BALL to see stories with favorite and familiar characters in a captivating new way,” says Yumi Hoashi, vice president of SHONEN JUMP. “AOL’s RED service offers unique original programming which makes it a perfect location to bring SHONEN JUMP’s manga to fans. VIZ looks forward to cultivating this partnership with America Online and hopes that manga fans everywhere will embrace this format.”

“The alliance with VIZ is a great addition to the Comics & Anime department on the RED service,” said Malcolm Bird, Executive Vice President and General Manager Kids and Teens, America Online. “This is one of the fastest growing areas on the RED service, and we are thrilled to give teens an exclusive premiere of a new episode of the incredibly popular DRAGON BALL manga series before anyone else, which we know they will love.”

You can view the first episode of the new Dragon Ball Flash manga at http://www.shonenjump.com/unedited/flashmanga/.

From: anime.about.com

Peter Griffin thinks something stinks on “Family Guy.”PrevNextGallery IndexImage 13 of 27Twentieth Century Fox.Peter Griffin thinks something stinks on “Family Guy.”Copyright Twentieth Century Fox.PrevNext

From: animatedtv.about.com

(Fortune Small Business) — When the Massachusetts passed its much-delayed state budget last week, it included an obscure tax-law change that could be crucial for small-business owners concerned about unfair competition. By becoming the 22nd state to adopt "combined reporting" legislation, Massachusetts lawmakers are hoping to put a stop to a longstanding practice that, they say, gives large corporate chains an unfair advantage over their smaller competitors at tax time.

The maneuver in question has been dubbed the "Geoffrey Loophole," after the ubiquitous giraffe mascot of Toys R Us, one of the first firms to exploit it. Though the tax dodge in question has existed for decades, companies only first started taking utilizing it en masse in the early ’90s, as large retail chains began expanding nationwide.

It works like this: First, a company sets up a subsidiary in a state such as Delaware that doesn’t tax profits from intangible assets. It then assigns the rights to corporate trademarks to the subsidiary, and pays exorbitant licensing fees to use them. Since the subsidiary is fully owned by the company, the money just goes from one corporate pocket to another - but as the new pocket is tax-free, it can save a savvy company tens of millions in tax costs.

In addition to Toys R Us, which offloaded its trademarked giraffe to a Delaware subsidiary, other large chains using the trick includeHome Depot (HD, Fortune 500), Kmart, and Staples (SPLS, Fortune 500); Wal-Mart (WMT, Fortune 500) uses a similar strategy, directing each of its stores to pay "rent" to a company-owned real estate investment trust headquartered in Delaware, saving itself nearly $90 million a year.

For small businesses without interstate operations, though, the Geoffrey Loophole remains off-limits. Not only does this give big companies an unfair advantage, say critics of the tax device, it forces small business to shoulder a bigger share of the state tax burden. In Pennsylvania, the state revenue department estimates that multistate businesses save $493 million a year in taxes - more than a third of the entire sum paid out in state business taxes.

"Who ends up taking it the neck is probably that small- to medium-sized C corporation that doesn’t have a big tax accounting and legal staff, or they don’t want to engage in the shell game of having a board meeting in Delaware once a year," says Pennsylvania state assembly finance chair David Levdansky.

Levdansky and others have proposed eliminating the tax maneuver via "combined reporting," a procedure where companies are required to report earnings from all out-of-state subsidiaries on each state tax form. Massachusetts becomes the sixth state - joining Michigan, New York, Texas, Vermont, and West Virginia - to have switched to combined reporting in recent years. (Sixteen other states have always used combined reporting.)

In other states, though, including Pennsylvania, combined reporting bills have faltered - in large part thanks to the work of business groups such as state chambers of commerce and local chapters of the National Federation of Independent Business, which have opposed combined reporting as an unnecessary business-tax hike.

"I would say the ‘loopholes’ are legitimate transactions in today’s marketplace," says Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry tax policy expert John Callahan, adding that states with combined reporting end up with more litigation over tax bills.

Mostly, though, he says it would hurt the local economy by giving the state a reputation as a bad place to do business.

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center counters that five of the seven states with the fastest employment growth use combined reporting. And Levdansky notes that when Gov. Ed Rendell’s business-tax commission proposed imposing combined reporting, it proposed simultaneously cutting the state business tax from 9.99% to 7.9%.

This, he argues, would be good not just for the majority of businesses that can’t avail themselves of the Delaware dodge, but for the state economy as a whole: "There’s a lot of opportunities that are missed simply because companies look at that 9.9% and have sticker shock."

"What’s intriguing to me is that there’s this rift opening up in the business community," says Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher with the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and author of Big Box Swindle, a look at how large retailers work to quash independent competition.

When Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley introduced a combined reporting bill last year, Mitchell says, "the Maryland Chamber of Commerce made it a top priority to defeat that - even though they claim to represent a lot of small businesses in that state who are undoubtedly having to compete against companies that have an advantage by virtue of the fact that they’re not having to pay their full share of state income taxes."

State chapters of the nominally small-biz-focused National Federation of Independent Business have likewise fought against combined reporting bills in Pennsylvania, Iowa, and other states. Nationally, NFIB doesn’t have a position on combined reporting, says its spokesperson Melissa Sharp: "This is an issue that really doesn’t impact our members because the vast majority are too small to set up subsidiaries."

Small-business owners who feel they are impacted by the increased competition from tax-free rivals that the Geoffrey Loophole allows are increasingly banding together to buck the big lobbying groups: In Massachussetts, says Mitchell, more than 100 local business owners signed on in support of that state’s combined-reporting bill.

"We wanted to really start putting out the education that this is not a level playing field in the state of New Mexico," says Vicki Pozzebon, director of the Santa Fe Independent Business Alliance, a group of about 600 area businesses that joined with local labor and advocacy groups to get a bill out of committee for the first time in New Mexico, though it has yet to pass the full legislature. "Why should our local businesses be paying the cost while these large corporations are not?"  First Published: July 7, 2008: 12:01 PM EDT

From: money.cnn.com

PrevNextGallery IndexImage 6 of 15Walt Disney PicturesTrumpkin and Nikabrik (Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis)PrevNext

From: scifi.about.com