German unemployment dropped more than economists forecast to a two-decade low in January, bolstering economic growth as the euro region
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Nintendo Co.’s upcoming Wii U game console will come with a controller that has a big, touch-enabled screen. At first glance, that seems like an obstacle to the kind of casual multiplayer gaming that made the first Wii console such a breakout hit.
But in demonstrations Tuesday, the company emphasized that the Wii U will work with the cheaper, stick-like Wii controllers as well, making family multiplayer games feasible.
The Japanese company is giving some journalists hands-on time with the console on the sidelines of the International Consumer Electronics Show, which started Tuesday in Las Vegas.
It’s the second time the U.S. media is getting a glimpse of the device, which was first shown in June. Nintendo said the device will go on sale after the next Electronic Entertainment Expo gaming trade show in Los Angeles in June.
Nintendo went against conventional wisdom with the original Wii in 2006. The quirky, cheap game console relied not on high-end graphics and complex buttons to lure in hardcore players, but on simple motion controls to lure in everyone.
Although the company successfully courted casual gamers with the Wii, it is now facing increased competition from Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other devices that offer simple games. It had hoped to win new gamers through a 3-D handheld device. But sales were slow, and Nintendo slashed prices on the 3DS within six months.
The Wii U will be sold as a bundle with one touch-screen controller, which is almost as big as the game console itself. Nintendo hasn’t said what the package or an extra controller will cost. Touch screens are expensive, often accounting for nearly half of the cost of a phone or a tablet computer.
Nintendo’s demonstrations reveal that the touch-screen controller is designed to work with older controllers free credit report and score. For example, in one of Nintendo’s demonstration games, four players with Wii remotes chase a fifth, who uses the touch controller. The fifth player uses the screen on the controller to guide his movements, which are thus kept secret from the other players. The other players keep track of their own movements on the TV screen.
In another demonstration game, two players with Wii remotes collaborate to fight a third, who zooms around in a spaceship, controlled through the touch controller.
The integration of the older remotes and the touch controller goes even further. The existing Wii console is able to keep track of where the old-style Wii remotes are with the help of a “sensor bar” that attaches to the TV set. That’s how the Wii remote can be used to “point” to things on the screen. The new Wii U controller has its own sensor bar, so the Wii U can figure out where a Wii remote is in relation to the controller, not just the TV set.
This sounds complicated, but it enables simple, unexpected forms of game play. For instance, Nintendo showed in a video how the Wii U controller could be placed on the floor for a golf game. The screen of the controller shows a teed-up golf ball. Swinging a Wii remote like a golf club above the controller gets the ball flying.
While the ability to use older remotes will appeal to consumers, supporting multiple remotes could pose a challenge for game developers, who might decide to drop support for older hardware. To make things more complicated, there are two versions of the Wii remote, with differing motion-sensing abilities, and an accessory “Nunchuck” controller.
The Italian government has won a confidence vote over its package of anti-crisis austerity measures in the lower chamber of Parliament.
Premier Mario Monti called the vote, held Friday in the Chamber of Deputies, to speed passage of the measures he says are vital to save Italy from financial disaster. The package was approved by a vote of 495 in favor and 88 against. The Senate is expected to vote on the measures in the next few days.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
ROME (AP) _ The Italian government faces a confidence vote over a package of austerity measures while a transport strike to protest the cuts is causing havoc for commuters across the country.
Premier Mario Monti is putting his package of new and higher taxes and pension reforms to a confidence vote in the lower Chamber of Deputies to speed up its passage cash advance payday loan.
The vote, which is expected by early evening Friday, will likely clear the measures, paving the way for final approval in the Senate within days.
The main political parties have said they would back the package despite disagreeing on some measures.
Monti says austerity is needed to save Italy from financial disaster, but unions are furious. Public transport workers idled buses and subways Friday. State railways were also on strike.
Except for his time in the military, James Coplin, 53, has lived his entire life in a modest brick house much like those of his neighbors in the 3600 block of Hickory Street.
Across the street is a stretch recently cleared of similar dwellings owned by St. Louis University. In their place is vacant ground, behind which looms St. Louis University Hospital.
Coplin, who works for a cleaning company, says he believes that SLU is now interested in houses on his side of the street. He said that two or three times in recent months a real estate agent has dropped by to ask if he is interested in selling.
“I told him to make an offer, but he never did,” Coplin said.
SLU’s purchases on Hickory are among dozens it has made in recent years near the medical school, city records show. As it did on Hickory, SLU often demolishes the homes and other structures it buys, then plants the sites with grass. As for the school’s plans for the future with its accumulated real estate, details are scarce.
The real estate agent who knocked on Coplin’s door declined to identify who he was representing but referred a reporter to SLU. University officials did not respond to numerous requests for information about the school’s development plans.
Within the past two years, SLU has bought houses across the street from Coplin’s lifelong residence, he said. Leases on the street’s rental properties were not renewed, he added. As tenants moved out, crews moved in to board up the houses.
“A couple of months later, they started tearing them down,” he said.
SLU has largely consolidated its property holdings in the approximately 60-block area bounded by Chouteau Avenue, South Compton Avenue, Park Avenue and 39th Street. Within the area of recently purchased parcels is SLU’s new track and recreation field, but much of the recently purchased property is vacant. The university also has bought some industrial tracts north of Chouteau between South Compton and South Spring Avenue.
SLU’s president, the Rev. Lawrence Biondi, did not respond to a request for information about long-range campus development.
In a statement provided Friday, a university spokesman said SLU generally did not discuss real estate matters, including plans for acquiring property. But the spokesman said that like many urban universities, SLU has bought property near or adjacent to its campus for potential expansion.
The purchase attracting the most attention is that of the Pevely Dairy complex at Chouteau and South Grand Boulevard. SLU disclosed in August that it had bought the historic buildings from developer Rick Yackey, who had planned to convert the vacant structures into apartments and commercial space.
At the time, the university said it had no specific plan for the site. Only after SLU’s intent to demolish the buildings was publicized this month did the university say it planned to replace the structures with a building for its SLUCare physician’ practice.
Clayton Berry, SLU’s spokesman, said Friday that the university studied the Pevely buildings extensively and determined they did not meet the needs of a modern health care facility.
“SLU is planning to construct a multimillion-dollar outpatient ambulatory health center that will provide a wide variety of health care services and procedures for hundreds of thousands of adult and child patients,” he said. “This significant investment isn’t just essential for the university, but also will benefit the neighborhood, the city and the region.”
The city’s Preservation Board is scheduled to consider at its meeting Nov. 28 SLU’s application filed Oct. 26 for permits to tear down the Pevely complex. The city’s Cultural Resources Office has denied the university’s application. Mayor Francis Slay tweeted on Tuesday that the office would not approve an application to demolish the buildings.
SLU’s move to raze the Pevely buildings, which are on the National Register of Historic Places, prompted formation of the Pevely Preservation Coalition and a Facebook page, “Save the Historic Pevely Dairy.”
Many of the coalition’s members also led the effort this year to save the 1960s “flying saucer” building on South Grand near SLU’s main campus. Yackey, the saucer building’s owner, eventually agreed to preserve the unusual structure and incorporate it into a new retail development.
Randy Vines, a participant in both preservation efforts, said destruction of historic buildings made no sense when SLU owned plenty of vacant property suitable for its SLUCare expansion.
He and other coalition members want SLU to preserve at least the four-story main building and smokestack at the Pevely complex, which dates to about 1913 and sits prominently south of the university’s main campus.
“The greater result we’re hoping for is to force SLU to change its vision for that part of its campus,” Vines said.
Another coalition member, architect Paul Hohmann, said university officials might have a dozen better locations to expand SLUCare.
“SLU has acres and acres and acres of land all over the place to build their medical office buildings,” he said. “You’ve got to think they have a 20-year master plan on what to do with all that property. After all, they’re buying it. But if they have such a plan, they’re not showing it.”
Master plan or not, SLU officials may be smart to continue to buy as much property as possible near campus, said Bob Lewis, president of Development Strategies, a consulting firm.
“They’re protecting themselves, if nothing else,” he said. “Don’t wait around. If it becomes available, grab it.”
Lewis noted that the effort to redo the Pevely complex as apartments never got going. That plan took a hit in 2009 when a fire destroyed one of the three main buildings. SLU’s decision to buy properties near its medical center complex could bolster two growing economic sectors
Firing tear gas and rubber bullets, Egyptian riot police on Sunday clashed for a second day with thousands of rock-throwing protesters demanding that the ruling military quickly announce a date to hand over power to an elected government.
The police battled an estimated 5,000 protesters in and around central Cairo’s Tahrir Square, birthplace of the 18-day uprising that toppled authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak in February. Tear gas filled the air as protesters, many chanting “freedom, freedom,” pelted the police with rocks.
Sunday’s clashes, which come a day after two people were killed and hundreds wounded in similar violence in the capital and other cities, are stoking tensions eight days before the start of the country’s first post-Mubarak parliamentary elections. Public anger has risen over the slow pace of reforms and apparent attempts by Egypt’s ruling generals to retain power over a future civilian government.
“We have a single demand: The marshal must step down and be replaced by a civilian council,” said protester Ahmed Hani, referring Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s military ruler and Mubarak’s longtime defense minister.
“The violence yesterday showed us that Mubarak is still in power,” said Hani, who was wounded in the forehead by a rubber bullet. He spoke over chants of “freedom, freedom” by hundreds of protesters around him.
Rocks, shattered glass and trash covered most of the ground in and around Tahrir early Sunday, while a cloud of white smoke caused by the use of dozens of tear gas shells hung in the air. Several hundred protesters were camping out on the lawn of the square’s traffic island, and protesters manning barricades into the square checked the IDs of anyone entering the plaza.
The windows of the main campus of the American University in Cairo, which overlooks the square, were shattered and stores were shuttered. “The marshal is Mubarak’s dog,” said one of a fresh crop of graffiti in the square.
Yahya el-Sawi, a 21-year-old university student, said he was enraged by the sight of riot police beating up protesters already hurt in an earlier attack by the security forces. “I did not support the sit-in at the beginning, but when I saw this brutality I had to come back to be with my brothers,” he said.
Many of the protesters had red eyes and coughed incessantly. Some wore surgical masks to fend off against the tear gas. A few fainted, overwhelmed by the gas.
Sunday’s clashes, which were mostly on a road leading from Tahrir to the Interior Ministry, appeared likely to grow.
Protesters were using social networking sites on the Internet to call on Egyptians to join them, and there were reports of several demonstrations headed to the square, including one from Cairo University guaranteed approval cash advance loans.
The military, which took over from Mubarak, has repeatedly pledged to hand over power to an elected government but it has yet to set a specific date. According to one timetable floated by the military, the handover will take place after presidential elections are held late next year or early in 2013. The protesters say this is too late and accuse the military of dragging its feet. They want a handover to take place immediately after the end of parliamentary elections in March.
On Saturday, police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and beat protesters with batons, clearing the square at one point and pushing the fighting into surrounding side streets of downtown Cairo.
A 23-year-old protester died from a gunshot, said Health Ministry official Mohammed el-Sherbeni. At least 676 people were injured, he said. Another protester was killed in Alexandria, where clashes also took place, said a security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists.
After nightfall, protesters swarmed back into Tahrir in the thousands, and running battles with the police in the streets took place throughout the night. Acrid smoke of tires set ablaze mixed with the stinging white smoke of tear gas.
The government urged protesters to clear the square.
A member of the military council, Maj. Gen. Mohsen el-Fangari, said protesters’ calls for change ahead of the election were a threat to the state.
“What is the point of being in Tahrir?” he asked, speaking by phone to a private TV channel. “What is the point of this strike, of the million marches? Aren’t there legal channels to pursue demands in a way that won’t impact Egypt … internationally?”
“The aim of what is going on is to shake the backbone of the state, which is the armed forces.”
In a warning, he said, “If security is not applied, we will implement the rule of law. Anyone who does wrong will pay for it.”
Saturday’s confrontation was one of the few since the uprising to involve the police, which have largely stayed in the background while the military took charge of security. There was no military presence in and around the square on Saturday or on Sunday. The black-clad police were a hated symbol of Mubarak’s regime.
Some of the wounded had blood streaming down their faces and many had to be carried out of the square by fellow protesters to waiting ambulances. Human rights activists accused police of using excessive force.
Police arrested 18 people, state TV reported, describing the protesters as rioters.
President Barack Obama said Monday the U.S. Postal Service should be allowed to reduce mail delivery to five-days-a-week to help cut its massive losses.
The Postal Service lost $8.5 billion last year and is facing even more red ink this year as the Internet siphons off large amounts of first-class mail and the weak economy reduces advertising mail.
While the post office has cut more than 100,000 workers in the last few years it needs to cut more, close offices and find other ways to reduce costs to keep operating.
In his economic growth and debt reduction plan unveiled Monday, Obama endorsed the idea of dropping one day of mail delivery _ it is expected to be Saturday _ and urged other changes in postal operations
He agreed that nearly $7 billion the post office has overpaid into the federal retirement system should be refunded to the agency, urged that its payments for advance funding of retiree medical benefits be restructured, and said the post office should be allowed to sell non-postal products and raise postage rates.
Currently the post office cannot raise rates more than the amount of inflation.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said the president “has offered helpful recommendations to stabilize the Postal Service’s financial crisis.”
Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del personal loan for poor credit., who has proposed a bill including many of the same suggestions, welcomed the president’s statement.
“I have been saying for some time now that Congress and the administration need to come together on a plan that can save the Postal Service and protect the more than seven million jobs that rely on it,” he said in a statement.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has his own postal reform bill in the House, responded that “the president’s proposal is not what taxpayers or the Postal Service needs.”
He asserted that Obama’s plan “will certainly cost taxpayers money.” Currently the post office does not receive tax funds for its operations.
Meanwhile, 75 members of Congress led by Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., and Don Young, R-Alaska, called on the independent Postal Regulatory Commission to block the post office’s plans to close as many as 3,700 local offices across the country.
The proposed closures, most in rural locations that do little business, are currently under review.
The letter called for establishment of a new business model for the post office without closing offices and cutting its work force.
Acknowledging the severity of the global economic storm, the Bank of Canada signalled no likely increases in interest rates any time soon while Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Ottawa might need to step in with another round of stimulus spending if conditions get worse.
Mark Carney, governor of the central bank, told a Commons committee Canada’s economy may show little growth or negative growth when the statistics are finalized for the April-through-June period because of the economic troubles in the United States and Europe. But he said growth will pick up a bit in the second half of 2011.
As expected, given the gloomy state of financial markets and world business conditions, Carney made it clear that the Bank of Canada would be hesitant to increase its trend-setting interest rate above the current 1 per cent in the near future. Lower rates spur business and consumer borrowing and add momentum to the economy.
“Since the crisis erupted, the Bank has demonstrated its flexibility and nimbleness in the conduct of monetary policy,” he told a special session of the Commons finance committee studying the economic crisis. “As the Canadian recovery has progressed, we have emphasized that we would be prudent with respect to the possible withdrawal of any degree of monetary stimulus,” he said.
Under questioning from opposition MPs, Flaherty said for the first time that the Conservative government would move in with another round of stimulus spending if the world economy suffers a double-dip recession.
“We would obviously do what is needed” if there was a “dramatic deterioration” in the economies of the United States and Europe, he told the committee.
But for now, Flaherty said, the government is not changing its budget plan despite the turmoil on financial markets and debt crises in the United States and Europe. The plan calls for spending cuts of $4 billion a year to eliminate the annual federal budget deficit — now $32-billion annually — in a few years.
Pressed by opposition MPs about how Ottawa would react to a renewed global slowdown, Flaherty said he would change course and develop a pro-growth spending plan as the Conservatives did during the recent recession.
There is no need yet to move away from the government’s deficit-reduction strategy, however, he told MPs. Canada’s economy is still growing, if modestly, Flaherty said.
NDP finance critic Peggy Nash said later that she was disappointed that Flaherty didn’t show more flexibility. Her party would like to see the government embark on a round of infrastructure spending to spur economic growth, improve job-creation and prepare Canada for the future. Liberal MP Scott Brison said Flaherty failed to offer Canadians the assurances needed at a time of extreme economic uncertainty.
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