Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Americans losing addiction to "CrackBerrys" - Yahoo! Finance

By Alistair Barr and Sinead Carew

SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - To understand what ails BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd in the U.S. market, just ask eBay Inc Chief Executive John Donahoe.

The world's biggest online auction site had about a hundred engineers developing new iterations of eBay's shopping app for Apple Inc's iPhone a few months ago, and another hundred engineers working on Google Inc's Android mobile platform.

EBay even had 50 people developing apps for Microsoft's Windows phones, but the e-commerce giant only had "one or two" working on RIM's BlackBerry, according to Donahoe.

"I still use the BlackBerry, but it's not the most developer-friendly platform," he told a group of chief technology officers at an event at Stanford University in June, when the subject of RIM came up.

By early November, it seemed Donahoe wasn't even using his BlackBerry much any more. When he met with reporters to talk about plans for the holiday shopping season, the CEO whipped out his iPhone to show how eBay's apps ran on the device. When Reuters asked Donahue about his BlackBerry, he said he still had it but didn't bother to bring it into the room.

Such stories are commonly found among RIM's once-loyal corporate and consumer customers, who are deserting the Canadian company after it has struggled to keep up with competitors' innovations.

RIM on Thursday posted a sharply lower quarterly profit, offered a dismal forecast for BlackBerry shipments this holiday season, and delayed the arrival of new phones using a make-or-break operating system in development, QNX.

"It's frustrating because I haven't heard anything good from them in a long time," said long-time BlackBerry user Kevin Nichols, the head of KLN Consulting Group, who was looking at Android and Windows phones at a Sprint Nextel Corp store in downtown San Francisco on Friday.

"They need to come out with new products soon, otherwise it looks like RIM may become the next Palm," he said, in reference to the collapse of the smartphone pioneer Palm Inc. Nichols ignored the latest BlackBerry Torch in a display case nearby, saying the device wasn't "new enough" for him to upgrade.

Even on Wall Street, where users once joked about their addiction to their "crackberries," loyalty is waning.

"The QNX delay is a concern," said Rob Romero, head of hedge fund firm Connective Capital. "Consumers like new products and vendors want something new to sell in their stores."

The chief technology officer of a Connecticut-based hedge fund said that when a top hedge fund manager wants to use an iPhone instead of a BlackBerry they can now switch, even though he prefers RIM security. "When they say I want an iPhone or an iPad configured, they get it," said the CTO, who declined to be identified.

RIM shares fell 11 percent on Nasdaq on Friday and hit their lowest level in nearly eight years.

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Research firm Strategy Analytics forecast RIM's share of the U.S. smartphone market to fall to 12 percent this year, a sharp drop from 2007, when RIM had a 44 percent share. By comparison, Apple, which just started selling smartphones in 2007, is expected to grab a 24 percent U.S. market share this year.

To be sure, BlackBerry still has its defenders. Robert Laikin, CEO of cellphone distributor Brightpoint, said that RIM represents between 5 percent to 10 percent of the 110 million phones his company handles globally every year.

"I still have a BlackBerry. When I talk to my friends who are business professionals, most of them still have a BlackBerry. Some of them have bought an additional device too," he told Reuters.

"All manufacturers I've worked with in the last 25 years have product delays. What RIM is going through isn't different," he said. "I believe RIM will survive because their product is very sticky."

There are still many companies who prefer their employees use BlackBerrys because they feel that RIM offers the best security features to protect corporate data. But these enterprise customers are shrinking, analysts said.

Gary Curtis, chief technology strategist at global technology consulting giant Accenture, pointed to improvements in security from Apple and Google mobile software in recent years.

"Choice and leveling of the playing field is the fundamental enabling factor for companies being able to say to employees, use the device you like," he said. "It's not a headlong rush ... but they're opening the door to more devices and people make their own choices."

Interviews with other consumers at phone stores on Friday illustrated why the former bastion of corporate smart phones faces tough competition.

"I'm a BlackBerry user but my company makes me use it," said a shopper called John who was playing with a BlackBerry Torch at an AT&T store in San Francisco. He declined to give his last name.

"Anyone who is anyone at my company has an iPhone, but they make us use BlackBerry still," he added. "I think I might break mine and buy an iPhone. The touch screen on this Torch works pretty well, but the iPhone is just easier to use."

A Sprint store manager said BlackBerry phones would sell better if they had more apps. But some app developers aren't interested in the BlackBerry platform, partly because the technology is difficult to work with.

"Of the companies that pitch to us, I can't think of any that are starting out by developing an app for the BlackBerry," said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta of venture capital firm Accel Partners, which invests in mobile app developers.

Hotel Tonight, a start-up backed by Accel's Ranzetta, has developed apps for the iPhone, Android phones and an HTML5 version for its last-minute hotel booking service.

"Will they make a dedicated BlackBerry app? Not on the roadmap," she said.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Tiffany Wu, Gary Hill)

Monday, December 19, 2011

AP Enterprise: Russia oil spills wreak devastation - Yahoo! Finance

USINSK, Russia (AP) -- On the bright yellow tundra outside this oil town near the Arctic Circle, a pitch-black pool of crude stretches toward the horizon. The source: a decommissioned well whose rusty screws ooze with oil, viscous like jam.

This is the face of Russia's oil country, a sprawling, inhospitable zone that experts say represents the world's worst ecological oil catastrophe.

Environmentalists estimate at least 1 percent of Russia's annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year. That is equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months. Crumbling infrastructure and a harsh climate combine to spell disaster in the world's largest oil producer, responsible for 13 percent of global output.

Oil, stubbornly seeping through rusty pipelines and old wells, contaminates soil, kills all plants that grow on it and destroys habitats for mammals and birds. Half a million tons every year get into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, the government says, upsetting the delicate environmental balance in those waters.

It's part of a legacy of environmental tragedy that has plagued Russia and the countries of its former Soviet empire for decades, from the nuclear horrors of Chernobyl in Ukraine to lethal chemical waste in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk and paper mill pollution seeping into Siberia's Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world's supply of fresh water.

Oil spills in Russia are less dramatic than disasters in the Gulf of Mexico or the North Sea, more the result of a drip-drip of leaked crude than a sudden explosion. But they're more numerous than in any other oil-producing nation including insurgency-hit Nigeria, and combined they spill far more than anywhere else in the world, scientists say.

"Oil and oil products get spilled literally every day," said Dr. Grigory Barenboim, senior researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Water Problems.

No hard figures on the scope of oil spills in Russia are available, but Greenpeace estimates that at least 5 million tons leak every year in a country producing about 500 million tons a year.

Dr. Irina Ivshina, of the government-financed Institute of the Environment and Genetics of Microorganisms, supports the 5 million ton estimate, as does the World Wildlife Fund.

The figure is derived from two sources: Russian state-funded research that shows 10-15 percent of Russian oil leakage enters rivers; and a 2010 report commissioned by the Natural Resources Ministry that shows nearly 500,000 tons slips into northern Russian rivers every year and flow into the Arctic.

The estimate is considered conservative: The Russian Economic Development Ministry in a report last year estimated spills at up to 20 million tons per year.

That astonishing number, for which the ministry offered no elaboration, appears to be based partly on the fact most small leaks in Russia go unreported. Under Russian law, leaks of less than 8 tons are classified only as "incidents" and carry no penalties.

Russian oil spills also elude detection because most happen in the vast swaths of unpopulated tundra and conifer forestin the north, caused either by ruptured pipes or leakage from decommissioned wells.

Weather conditions in most oil provinces are brutal, with temperatures routinely dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in winter. That makes pipelines brittle and prone to rupture unless they are regularly replaced and their condition monitored.

Asked by The Associated Press to comment, the Natural Resources Ministry and the Energy Ministry said they have no data on oil spills and referred to the other ministry for further inquiries.

Even counting only the 500,000 tons officially reported to be leaking into northern rivers every year, Russia is by far the worst oil polluter in the world.

—Nigeria, which produces one-fifth as much oil as Russia, logged 110,000 tons spilled in 2009, much of that due to rebel attacks on pipelines.

—The U.S., the world's third-largest oil producer, logged 341 pipeline ruptures in 2010 — compared to Russia's 18,000 — with 17,600 tons of oil leaking as a result, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Spills have averaged 14,900 tons a year between 2001 and 2010.

—Canada, which produces oil in weather conditions as harsh as Russia's, does not see anything near Russia's scale of disaster. Eleven pipeline accidents were reported to Canada's Transport Safety Board last year, while media reports of leaks, ranging from sizable spills to a tiny leak in a farmer's backyard, come to a total of 7,700 tons a year.

—In Norway, Russia's northwestern oil neighbor, spills amounted to some 3,000 tons a year in the past few years, said Hanne Marie Oeren, head of the oil and gas section at Norway's Climate and Pollution Agency.

Now that Russian companies are moving to the Arctic to tap vast but hard-to-get oil and gas riches, scientists voice concerns that Russia's outdated technologies and shoddy safety record make for a potential environmental calamity there.

Gazpromneft, an oil subsidiary of the gas giant Gazprom, is preparing to drill for oil in the Arctic's Pechora Sea, even as environmentalists complain that the drilling platform is outdated and the company is not ready to deal with potential accidents.

Government scientists acknowledge that Russia does not currently have the required technology to develop Arctic fields but say it will be years before the country actually starts drilling.

"We must start the work now, do the exploration and develop the technology so that we would be able to ... start pumping oil from the Arctic in the middle of this century," Alexei Kontorovich, chairman of the council on geology, oil and gas fields at the Russian Academy of Sciences, told a recent news conference.

The same academy's Barenboim said, however, that Russian technology is developing too slowly to make it a safe bet for Arctic exploration.

"Over the past years, environmental risks have increased more sharply compared to how far our technologies, funds, equipment and skills to deal with them have advanced," he said.

In 1994, the republic of Komi, where Usinsk lies 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of the Arctic Circle, became the scene of Russia's largest oil spill when an estimated 100,000 tons splashed from an aging pipeline.

It killed plants and animals, and polluted up to 40 kilometers (25 miles) of two local rivers, killing thousands of fish. In villages most affected, respiratory diseases rose by some 28 percent in the year following the leak.

Seen from a helicopter, the oil production area is dotted with pitch-black ponds. Fresh leaks are easy to find once you step into the tundra north of Usinsk. To spot a leak, find a dying tree. Fir trees with drooping gray, dry branches look as though scorched by a wildfire. They are growing insoil polluted by oil.

Usinsk spokeswoman Tatyana Khimichuk said the city administration had no powers to influence oil company operations.

"Everything that happens at the oil fields is Lukoil's responsibility," she said, referring to Russia's second largest oil company, which owns a network of pipelines in the region.

Komi's environmental protection officials also blamed oil companies. The local prosecutor's office said in a report this year that the main problem is "that companies that extract hydrocarbons focus on making profits rather than how to use the resources rationally."

Valery Bratenkov works as a foreman at oil fields outside Usinsk.

After hours, he is with a local environmental group. Bratenkov used to point out to his Lukoil bosses that oil spills routinely happen under their noses and asked them to repair the pipelines. "They were offended and said that costs too much money," he said.

Activists like Bratenkov find it hard if not impossible to hold authorities to account in the area since some 90 percent of the local population comprises oil workers and their families who have moved from other regions of Russia, and depend on the industry for their livelihood.

Representatives of Lukoil denied claims that they try to conceal spills and leaks, and said that no more than 2.7 tons leaked last year from its production areas in Komi.

Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia, who studies oil spills, said the situation in Komi is replicated across Russia's oil-producing regions, which stretch from the Black Sea in the southwest to the Chinese border in Russia's Far East.

"It is happening everywhere," Blokov said. "It's typical of any oil field in Russia. The system is old and it is not being replaced in time by any oil company in the country."

What also worries scientists and environmentalists is that oil spills are not confined to abandoned or aging fields. Alarmingly, accidents happen at brand new pipelines, said Barenboim.

At least 400 tons leaked from a new pipeline in two separate accidents in Russia's Far East last year, according to media reports and oil companies. Transneft's pipeline that brings Russian oil from Eastern Siberia to China was put into operation just months before the two spills happened.

The oil industry in Komi has been sapping nature for decades, killing or forcing out reindeer and fish. Locals like the 63-year-old Bratenkov are afraid that when big oil leaves, there will be only poisoned terrain left in its wake.

"Fishing, hunting — it's all gone," Bratenkov said.

___

Bjoern H. Amland contributed to this report from Oslo, Norway.

___

Nataliya Vasilyeva can be reached at http://twitter.com/natvasilyevaap

Fashion Faceoff: Eva Longoria vs. Katie Cassidy vs. Katharine McPhee | The Thread on omg! - Yahoo! omg!

Friday, December 9, 2011

Pa. liquor board pulls ad on heavy drinking, rape - Yahoo! News

PITTSBURGH (AP) — An ad meant to warn young adults about the links between heavy drinking and rape has been pulled by Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board.

Critics said it was another example of suggesting victims are to blame for rape.

The ad featured an image of a woman's legs on a bathroom floor with her underwear pulled down to her ankles, and the words: "She didn't want to do it, but she couldn't say no."

Stacey Witalec, a spokeswoman for the Liquor Control Board, said the online ad was part of a broader campaign that began a few months ago on the website ControlTonight.com. She said there was both criticism and support for the ad, but the board decided to pull it Wednesday evening.

Witalec said the campaign was trying to bring attention to a serious problem, not suggest rape victims are to blame.

"On an annual basis more than 97,000 people between the ages of 18 and 24 are the victims of alcohol-fueled sexual assaults," Witalec said, "and those statistics are staggering."

One expert defended the ad.

Jennifer Storm, Executive Director of the Victim/Witness Assistance Program in Harrisburg, noted that one sequence in the interactive ad stated very clearly that rape isn't the victim's fault.

"I feel strongly that we need to be having very frank conversations about prevention. Otherwise, all we're doing is intervening after the fact," Storm said.

"Alcohol is the number one drug used to facilitate rape. You lose your capacity to make sound decisions," Storm said, adding that "we need to empower people with every tool and piece of knowledge we have."

One blogger on the website Jezebel didn't agree.

"Rape is not just a bad thing that happens to someone after drinking too much," wrote Erin Gloria Ryan. "It's a deliberate act on the part of the rapist, a violation of another person committed solely because the rapist wanted to rape. The sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we'll be rid of stupid, finger wagging ads like these."

Ryan also said that the portion of the ad reading "See what could happen when your friends drink too much" was "just shifting blame away from the rapist and onto the victim and, oddly, the victim's friends."

Several other ads in the campaign warning about the dangers of heavy drinking are still being used. Those subjects include excessive drinking and alcohol poisoning, drunk driving, and drunken arguments.

___

Online:

http://controltonight.com/

Eye-Popping Sidewalk Paintings Photos | Eye-Popping Sidewalk Paintings Pictures - Yahoo! Games

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

'New Year's Eve' LA Premiere - Photo Gallery on Yahoo! Movies

Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele: A master class in the art of red carpet mugging

Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele are among the 872 (number approximate) romantic leads in the movie “ New Year’s Eve ,” which opens Friday. And as such, they really, really played up the flirtatious angle on the red carpet at Monday’s Hollywood premiere of the ensemble rom-com. Us magazine ran an item that coyly notes that last night marked Kutcher’s first red-carpet walk since his official split ...

www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/ashton-kutcher-and-lea-michele-a-master-class-in-the-art-of-red-carpet-mugging/2011/12/06/gIQAG5RUZO_blog.html?wprss=celebritology

Video: Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele Flirt at NYE Premiere - Is Real-Life Love in the Air?

Ashton Kutcher and Lea Michele looked pretty smitten with each other at last night's New Year's Eve premiere in LA , but is it purely costar admiration, or could they be getting cozy in real life? Watch today's PopSugar Rush, and tell us what you think!

www.popsugar.com/Lea-Michele-Ashton-Kutcher-New-Years-Eve-Premiere-Video-20747674

Lea Michele Gets Her Flirt on With Ashton Kutcher at 'New Year's Eve' Premiere

Actors Lea Michele and Ashton Kutcher arrive to the Premiere Of Warner Bros. Pictures' "New Year's Eve" at Grauman's Chinese Theatre on December 5, 2011 in Hollywood, California. (Getty Images) more pics » Lea Michele (Getty Images) Ashton Kutcher is apparently not too worried about how he's coming off in the wake of his split from wife Demi Moore, as he made a big show of flirting his face off ...

www.zimbio.com/Lea+Michele/articles/CpeV7BoBZCN/Lea+Michele+Gets+Flirt+Ashton+Kutcher+New

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Monday, December 5, 2011

NASA Telescope Confirms Alien Planet in Habitable Zone - Yahoo! News

This story was updated at 12:15 p.m. ET.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft has confirmed the discovery of its first alien world in its host star's habitable zone — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist — and found more than 1,000 new explanet candidates, researchers announced today (Dec. 5).

The new finds bring the Kepler space telescope's total haul to 2,326 potential planets in its first 16 months of operation.These discoveries, if confirmed, would quadruple the current tally of worlds known to exist beyond our solar system, which recently topped 700.

The potentially habitable alien world, a first for Kepler, orbits a star very much like our own sun. The discovery brings scientists one step closer to finding a planet like our own — one which could conceivably harbor life, scientists said.

"We're getting closer and closer to discovering the so-called 'Goldilocks planet,'" Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said during a press conference today. [Gallery: The Strangest Alien Planets]

The newfound planet in the habitable zone is called Kepler-22b. It is located about 600 light-years away, orbiting a sun-like star.

Kepler-22b's radius is 2.4 times that of Earth, and the two planets have roughly similar temperatures. If the greenhouse effect operates there similarly to how it does on Earth, the average surface temperature on Kepler-22b would be 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius). 

Hunting down alien planets

The $600 million Kepler observatory launched in March 2009 to hunt for Earth-size alien planets in the habitable zone of their parent stars, where liquid water, and perhaps even life, might be able to exist.

Kepler detects alien planets using what's called the "transit method." It searches for tiny, telltale dips in a star's brightness caused when a planet transits — or crosses in front of — the star from Earth's perspective, blocking a fraction of the star's light.

The finds graduate from "candidates" to full-fledged planets after follow-up observations confirm that they're not false alarms. This process, which is usually done with large, ground-based telescopes, can take about a year.

The Kepler team released data from its first 13 months of operation back in February, announcing that the instrument had detected 1,235 planet candidates, including 54 in the habitable zone and 68 that are roughly Earth-size.

Of the total 2,326 candidate planets that Kepler has found to date, 207 are approximately Earth-size. More of them, 680, are a bit larger than our planet, falling into the "super-Earth" category. The total number of candidate planets in the habitable zones of their stars is now 48.

To date, just over two dozen of these potential exoplanets have been confirmed, but Kepler scientists have estimated that at least 80 percent of the instrument's discoveries should end up being the real deal.

More discoveries to come

The newfound 1,094 planet candidates are the fruit of Kepler's labors during its first 16 months of science work, from May 2009 to September 2010. And they won't be the last of the prolific instrument's discoveries.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement.

Mission scientists still need to analyze data from the last two years and on into the future. Kepler will be making observations for a while yet to come; its nominal mission is set to end in November 2012, but the Kepler team is preparing a proposal to extend the instrument's operations for another year or more.

Kepler's finds should only get more exciting as time goes on, researchers say.

"We're pushing down to smaller planets and longer orbital periods," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at Ames.

To flag a potential planet, the instrument generally needs to witness three transits. Planets that make three transits in just a few months must be pretty close to their parent stars; as a result, many of the alien worlds Kepler spotted early on have been blisteringly hot places that aren't great candidates for harboring life as we know it.

Given more time, however, a wealth of more distantly orbiting — and perhaps more Earth-like — exoplanets should open up to Kepler. If intelligent aliens were studying our solar system with their own version of Kepler, after all, it would take them three years to detect our home planet.

"We are getting very close," Batalha said. "We are homing in on the truly Earth-size, habitable planets."

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcomand on Facebook.

Postal cuts to slow delivery of first-class mail - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing bankruptcy, the U.S. Postal Service is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts to first-class mail next spring that will slow delivery and, for the first time in 40 years, eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.

The estimated $3 billion in reductions, to be announced in broader detail on Monday, are part of a wide-ranging effort by the cash-strapped Postal Service to quickly trim costs, seeing no immediate help from Congress.

The changes would provide short-term relief, but ultimately could prove counterproductive, pushing more of America's business onto the Internet. They could slow everything from check payments to Netflix's DVDs-by-mail, add costs to mail-order prescription drugs, and threaten the existence of newspapers and time-sensitive magazines delivered by postal carrier to far-flung suburban and rural communities.

That birthday card mailed first-class to Mom also could arrive a day or two late, if people don't plan ahead.

"It's a potentially major change, but I don't think consumers are focused on it and it won't register until the service goes away," said Jim Corridore, analyst with S&P Capital IQ, who tracks the shipping industry. "Over time, to the extent the customer service experience gets worse, it will only increase the shift away from mail to alternatives. There's almost nothing you can't do online that you can do by mail."

The cuts, now being finalized, would close roughly 250 of the nearly 500 mail processing centers across the country as early as next March. Because the consolidations typically would lengthen the distance mail travels from post office to processing center, the agency also would lower delivery standards for first-class mail that have been in place since 1971.

Currently, first-class mail is supposed to be delivered to homes and businesses within the continental U.S. in one day to three days. That will lengthen to two days to three days, meaning mailers no longer could expect next-day delivery in surrounding communities. Periodicals could take between two days and nine days.

About 42 percent of first-class mail is now delivered the following day. An additional 27 percent arrives in two days, about 31 percent in three days and less than 1 percent in four days to five days. Following the change next spring, about 51 percent of all first-class mail is expected to arrive in two days, with most of the remainder delivered in three days.

The consolidation of mail processing centers is in addition to the planned closing of about 3,700 local post offices. In all, roughly 100,000 postal employees could be cut as a result of the various closures, resulting in savings of up to $6.5 billion a year.

Expressing urgency to reduce costs, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an interview that the agency has to act while waiting for Congress to grant it authority to reduce delivery to five days a week, raise stamp prices and reduce health care and other labor costs.

The Postal Service, an independent agency of government, does not receive tax money, but is subject to congressional control on large aspects of its operations. The changes in first-class mail delivery can go into place without permission from Congress.

After five years in the red, the post office faces imminent default this month on a $5.5 billion annual payment to the Treasury for retiree health benefits. It is projected to have a record loss of $14.1 billion next year amid steady declines in first-class mail volume. Donahoe has said the agency must make cuts of $20 billion by 2015 to be profitable.

It already has announced a 1-cent increase in first-class mail to 45 cents beginning Jan. 22.

"We have a business model that is failing. You can't continue to run red ink and not make changes," Donahoe said. "We know our business, and we listen to our customers. Customers are looking for affordable and consistent mail service, and they do not want us to take tax money."

Separate bills that have passed House and Senate committees would give the Postal Service more authority and liquidity to stave off immediate bankruptcy. But prospects are somewhat dim for final congressional action on those bills anytime soon, especially if the measures are seen in an election year as promoting layoffs and cuts to neighborhood post offices.

Technically, the Postal Service must await an advisory opinion from the independent Postal Regulatory Commission before it can begin closing local post offices and processing centers. But such opinions are nonbinding, and Donahoe is making clear the agency will proceed with reductions once the opinion is released next March.

"The things I have control over here at the Postal Service, we have to do," he said, describing the cuts as a necessary business decision. "If we do nothing, we will have a death spiral."

The Postal Service initially announced in September it was studying the possibility of closing the processing centers and published a notice in the Federal Register seeking comments. Within 30 days, the plan elicited nearly 4,400 public comments, mostly in opposition.

Among them:

—Small-town mayors and legislators in states including Illinois, Missouri, Ohio and Pennsylvania cited the economic harm if postal offices were to close, eliminating jobs and reducing service. Small-business owners in many other states also were worried.

"It's kind of a lifeline," said William C. Snodgrass, who owns a USave Pharmacy in North Platte, Neb., referring to next-day first-class delivery. His store mails hundreds of prescriptions a week to residents in mostly rural areas of the state that lack local pharmacies. If first-class delivery were lengthened to three days and Saturday mail service also were suspended, a resident might not get a shipment mailed on Wednesday until the following week.

"A lot of people in these communities are 65 or 70 years old, and transportation is an issue for them," said Snodgrass, who hasn't decided whether he will have to switch to a private carrier such as UPS for one-day delivery. That would mean passing along higher shipping costs to customers. "It's impossible for many of my customers to drive 100 miles, especially in the winter, to get the medications they need."

—ESPN The Magazine and Crain Communications, which prints some 27 trade and consumer publications, said delays to first-class delivery could ruin the value of their news. Their magazines are typically printed at week's end with mail arrival timed for weekend sports events or the Monday start of the work week. Newspapers, already struggling in the Internet age, also could suffer.

"No one wants to receive Tuesday's issue, containing news of Monday's events, on Wednesday," said Paul Boyle, a senior vice president of the Newspaper Association of America, which represents nearly 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. "Especially in rural areas where there might not be broadband access for Internet news, it will hurt the ability of newspapers to reach customers who pretty much rely on the printed newspaper to stay connected to their communities."

—AT&T, which mails approximately 55 million customer billing statements each month, wants assurances that the Postal Service will widely publicize and educate the public about changes to avoid confusion over delivery that might lead to delinquent payments. The company is also concerned that after extensive cuts the Postal Service might realize it cannot meet a relaxed standard of two-to-three day delivery.

Other companies standing to lose include Netflix, which offers monthly pricing plans for unlimited DVDs by mail, sent one disc or two at a time. Longer delivery times would mean fewer opportunities to receive discs each month, effectively a price increase. Netflix in recent months has been vigorously promoting its video streaming service as an alternative.

"DVD by mail may not last forever, but we want it to last as long as possible," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said this year.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, the top Republican on the Senate committee that oversees the post office, believes the agency is taking the wrong approach. She says service cuts will only push more consumers to online bill payment or private carriers such as UPS or FedEx, leading to lower revenue in the future.

"Time and time again in the face of more red ink, the Postal Service puts forward ideas that could well accelerate its death spiral," she said, urging passage of a bill that would refund nearly $7 billion the Postal Service overpaid into a federal retirement fund, encourage a restructuring of health benefits and reduce the agency's annual payments into a retiree health account.

That measure would postpone a move to five-day-a-week mail delivery for at least two years and require additional layers of review before the agency closed postal branches and mail processing centers.

"The solution to the Postal Service's financial crisis is not easy but must involve tackling more significant expenses that do not drive customers," Collins said.

In the event of a shutdown due to bankruptcy, private companies such as FedEx and UPS could handle a small portion of the material the post office moves, but they do not go everywhere. No business has shown interest in delivering letters everywhere in the country for a set rate of 44 cents or 45 cents for a first-class letter.

Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, said the planned cuts could test the limits of the Postal Service's legal obligation to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality. "It will have substantial cost savings, but it really does have the potential to change what the postal service is and its role in providing fast and efficient delivery of mail," she said.

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Online:

Postal Service: https://www.usps.com

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Sunday, December 4, 2011

The Best and Worst Reasons to Go Back to School - Yahoo! Education

The Best and Worst Reasons to Go Back to School

The Best and Worst Reasons to Go Back to School
The Best and Worst Reasons to Go Back to School
The Best and Worst Reasons to Go Back to School

Is higher education right for you? Before you decide, check out our list of best and worst reasons to go back to school.

By Terence Loose      

Thinking of going back to school to advance your education? That could be a great move if it's done for the right reason. If done for the wrong reason...well, not so much.

Meredith Haberfeld, New York-based career and executive coach, says potential students need to carefully consider what they want their future to look like before returning to school.

"It's about figuring out what you love doing, how much you are committed to earning, and what careers and degrees match back to that," says Haberfeld.

Are you going back to school for the right reasons? Read on to see what experts say are some of the best and worst reasons to go back to school.

Worst Reason #1 - You Are Being Pushed by Someone to Do It

Going back to school should be a decision you make for yourself, not a decision someone makes for you.

"Personally, I think it's better for those students to, like that great quote in 'Pulp Fiction' says, 'Walk the earth like Kane in Kung-Fu' and figure out what they want," says Schneiderman.

In other words, he thinks letting someone else push you back to school is a terrible idea.

 "What happens," he says, "is they end up being unsuccessful for their first couple semesters and once they have those poor grades on their transcripts, it's with them forever. Then, in a few years when they're ready and motivated to go back to school, they have those poor grades stuck with them."

So, make sure that you're going back to school because you want to, not because someone is pushing you to do it.

Still Think Going Back to School is Right for You? Click to Find the Right Degree Program.

Worst Reason #2 - You're Doing It Solely to Get a Job

Going back to school to help you reach your career goals is a terrific idea. But, if you're going back to school to earn a degree solely for a job - that's a problem.

A lot of people are desperate for a job right now, and as so many studies have shown, earning a college degree is linked to better employment rates. But remember, life is about more than a paycheck. Enjoying what you do is also vital to your health and happiness.

"Is business a great degree to have? Yes. But if you hate business it's a terrible degree to pursue," says Schneiderman. He's even seen students trying to earn a nursing degree who hate people and faint at the sight of blood. That's desperate - and a bad life choice.

Worst Reason #3 - You Don't Know What Else to Do

Not knowing what you're going to do in terms of your career can be tough. But that doesn't mean that going back to school is the best solution.

"I can't tell you how many lawyers I work with who are three to 20 years out of law school and hate what they do, but went to law school thinking 'Well, I don't know what else to do,'" says Haberfeld. "They never really wanted to be a lawyer. Their thought process was 'What's something that will forward my future?'"

Before you decide to go back to school, do some research and see if the degree you're considering is really for you.

Haberfeld suggests talking to people who actually do the job you are thinking about pursuing. "Find out what they love about their job, what they hate about their job, what they actually do all day, what the culture of the industry is like, and then assess whether it's a match for you."

SCHOOL FINDER:  Find local & online degrees now!

Best Reason #1 - You Want to Pursue a High-Growth Career

Being jobless is no fun, as 14 million Americans can attest. And with unemployment at 9.1 percent as of August 2011, doing what you can to get a job, and secure it, is important.

One way you could prepare to pursue a high-growth career is by going back to school to earn a relevant degree. At least, that's what the correlation between educational attainment and unemployment rates suggests.

Are You Ready to Go Back to School? Click to Find the Right Degree Program for You.

As of August 2011, the U.S. Department of Labor notes that high school grads with no college had an unemployment rate of 9.6 percent. Compare that to bachelor's degree holders, whose unemployment was at 4.3 percent, and pursuing higher education looks like a smart option.

What's more, a recent report by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce projects that by 2018, "about two-thirds of all employment will require some college education or better."

Best Reason #2 - You're Pushing for a Promotion

Have you watched as the guy who couldn't sell TVs to a couch potato get a promotion instead of you, just because he finished college? You're not alone, according to Rob Schneiderman, a counselor at Southern California's Orange Coast College.

Schneiderman says that one of the most common reasons people go back to school is because they were passed over for a promotion due to their lack of degree.

Click to Find the Right School for You.

"And nowadays, with the bad economy, it's even worse," Schneiderman says."People with better skills than their colleagues are getting laid off because they don't have a degree."

So, if you're hoping to advance in your career, going back to school to upgrade your degree could be a great idea.

Best Reason #3 - You've Got Your Sights Set on a Better-Paying Career

While there are many factors that go into finding - and qualifying for - a better-paying career, recent studies show that a college degree could greatly improve your chances.

Start Your Education. Find the Right School for You.

According to a 2011 second quarter survey of earnings by the U.S. Department of Labor, the median weekly income of a full-time worker with a high school diploma was $643. Compare that to the median weekly income of bachelor's degree holders - $1,141 - and you're talking almost $26,000 more per year.

As they say on the golf course, that's a lot of green in-between.

SCHOOL FINDER:  Find local & online degrees now!

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Monday, November 28, 2011

Vt. artist: I'll fight Chick-fil-A for my kale - Yahoo! Finance

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- A folk artist expanding his home business built around the words "eat more kale" says he's ready to fight root-to-feather to protect his phrase from what he sees as an assault by Chick-fil-A, which holds the trademark to the phrase "eat mor chikin."

Bo Muller-Moore uses a hand silkscreen machine to apply his phrase, which he calls an expression of the benefits of local agriculture, on T- and sweat shirts. But his effort to protect his business from copycats drew the attention of Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast-food chain that uses ads with images of cows that can't spell displaying their own phrase on message boards.

In a letter, a lawyer for Chick-fil-A said Muller-Moore's effort to expand the use of his "eat more kale" message "is likely to cause confusion of the public and dilutes the distinctiveness of Chick-fil-A's intellectual property and diminishes its value."

Chick-fil-A, which trails only Louisville, Ky.-based KFC in market share in the chicken restaurant chain industry, has a long history of guarding its trademark, and the letter listed 30 examples of attempts by others to co-op the use of the "eat more" phrase that were withdrawn after Chick-fil-A protested. The Oct. 4 letter ordered Muller-Moore to stop using the phrase and turn over his website, eatmorekale.com, to Chick-fil-A.

Muller-Moore, 38, of Montpelier, says he won't do that.

"Our plan is to not back down. This feels like David versus Goliath. I know what it's like to protect what's yours in business," he said.

So he has enlisted the help of Montpelier lawyer Daniel Richardson and the intellectual property clinic at the University of New Hampshire School of Law's Intellectual Property and Transaction Clinic.

"Bo's is a very different statement. It's more of a philosophical statement about local agriculture and community-supported farmers markets," Richardson said. "At the end of the day, I don't think anyone will step forward and say they brought an 'eat more kale' shirt thinking it was a Chick-fil-A product."

Chick-fil-A spokesman Don Perry said the company does not comment on pending legal matters.

Muller-Moore, who describes himself as a folk artist who earns a living working as a foster parent for an adult with special needs, said he started using the phrase "eat more kale" in 2000. A farmer friend who grows kale, a leafy vegetable that grows well in Vermont and is known for its nutritional value, asked Muller-Moore to make three T-shirts containing the phrase for his family for $10 each.

A few weeks later, the friend told Muller-Moore that people kept asking for the shirts. The phrase helped him get his silkscreen business going, which he later expanded through the Internet. Now, he prints "eat more kale" on hooded sweatshirts too. And he has the words printed on bumper stickers that are common throughout Central Vermont.

Five years ago, Muller-Moore said, he received a similar cease-and-desist letter from Chick-fil-A, telling him to stop using the phase. A pro bono lawyer traded a handful of letters with Chick-fil-A on his behalf. After the letters stopped, Muller-Moore assumed the issue had been decided in his favor and kept making the products.

But as his business grew, Muller-Moore decided to protect the phrase that became his unofficial trademark. He filed an application last summer with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to protect "eat more kale." The application is pending.

Vermont Law School professor Oliver Goodenough, who specializes in intellectual and property law, said the kale versus chikin fight reminded him of a case two years ago when a Morrisville micro brewer that makes a beer called "Vermonster" ran afoul of the Monster energy drink company. That case was settled when the makers of Vermonster agreed never to go into the energy drink business.

Goodenough said there was little likelihood consumers would confuse kale with chicken.

"This looks a bit like an example of over-enthusiasm for brand protection," he said. "There are (law) firms in the United States that take this over-enthusiasm for brand protection seriously and believe the more they can scare away the better. If folks aren't deeply committed to this and it's a funny byproduct, maybe they won't fight it."

Fashion Faceoff: Gwyneth Paltrow vs. Nicole Kidman | Runway - Yahoo! OMG!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Archaeologist traces Pocahontas wedding site - Yahoo! News

Archaeologist William Kelso is certain he's discovered the remains of the oldest Protestant church in the United States, standing between two holes he insists once held wooden posts.

In 1614, Pocahontas was "married right here, I guarantee," Kelso told AFP at the Jamestown, Virginia archeological site southeast of the nation's capital.

Near the James River, on May 14, 1607, a group of about a hundred men landed on commission from England to form the first colony in the Americas.

"It's fantastically exciting and significant because Jamestown is usually depicted -- the whole early settlement depicted -- as it was carried out by lazy gentlemen who wanted to get rich quick, and go right back to England."

The area was carefully excavated to reveal several large post holes 6.5 feet (two meters) deep and the trace remnants of four graves.

Two other Protestant churches are thought to have been built before, but left no trace, and remains of a Catholic church were also found in Florida -- but Kelso is sure this one is the oldest left.

"Religion played a big role" in the community, Kelso said as he stood near the river where small fluttering flags marked the building's outline. Settlers "put a lot of work in the building of this big church, and that became very important for the colony."

Noting the size of the wood post's holes, Kelso said the church would have been able to support the mud and stud building's heavy roof.

According to surviving records describing the church kept by the secretary of the colony, what was built matches what can be seen today at the site. "I'm convinced because it's the right size," said Kelso.

The four graves also match with the four important members of the colony who would have been buried so close to the church. Kelso said there were a knight, two captains and Reverend Robert Hunt, the first cleric to come to the site.

Pointing out where Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's favorite daughter, would have stood when she married an Englishman, Kelso marveled at the event's place in colonial history, allowing further settlements in what was then foreign, hostile territory for the European settlers.

"With that wedding, the Indians backed off and there was no more fighting," Kelso recalled.

The Indian princess, well known to American children, was popularized through an animated Walt Disney romance.

Renamed Rebecca, she was later to marry another Englishman, John Rolfe, before dying in England at the tender age of 21.

The next tasks for archeologists in the coming months will be to dig up the graves.

"We know the ages, we have baptism records," Kelso said, excited at the tantalizing possibility of confirming their identities with the study of bones, teeth and possibly markings from injuries still traced to the bones.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

How much crazier can Black Friday get? - Yahoo! News

NEW YORK (AP) — Pepper-sprayed customers, smash-and-grab looters and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. How did Black Friday devolve into this?

As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels. With stores opening earlier, bargain-obsessed shoppers often are sleep-deprived and short-tempered. Arriving in darkness, they also find themselves vulnerable to savvy parking-lot muggers.

Add in the online-coupon phenomenon, which feeds the psychological hunger for finding impossible bargains, and you've got a recipe for trouble, said Theresa Williams, a marketing professor at Indiana University.

"These are people who should know better and have enough stuff already," Williams said. "What's going to be next year, everybody getting Tasered?"

Across the country on Thursday and Friday, there were signs that tensions had ratcheted up a notch or two, with violence resulting in several instances.

A woman turned herself in to police after allegedly pepper-spraying 20 other customers at a Los Angeles-area Walmart on Thursday in what investigators said was an attempt to get at a crate of Xbox video game consoles. In Kinston, N.C., a security guard also pepper-sprayed customers seeking electronics before the start of a midnight sale.

In New York, crowds reportedly looted a clothing store in Soho. At a Walmart near Phoenix, a man was bloodied while being subdued by police officer on suspicion of shoplifting a video game. There was a shooting outside a store in San Leandro, Calif., shots fired at a mall in Fayetteville, N.C. and a stabbing outside a store in Sacramento, N.Y.

"The difference this year is that instead of a nice sweater you need a bullet proof vest and goggles," said Betty Thomas, 52, who was shopping Saturday with her sisters and a niece at Crabtree Valley Mall in Raleigh, N.C.

The wave of violence revived memories of the 2008 Black Friday stampede that killed an employee and put a pregnant woman in the hospital at a Walmart on New York's Long Island. Walmart spokesman Greg Rossiter said Black Friday 2011 was safe at most of its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores despite "a few unfortunate incidents."

Black Friday — named that because it puts retailers "in the black" — has become more intense as companies compete for customers in a weak economy, said Jacob Jacoby, an expert on consumer behavior at New York University.

The idea of luring in customers with a few "doorbuster" deals has long been a staple of the post-Thanksgiving sales. But now stores are opening earlier, and those deals are getting more extreme, he said.

"There's an awful lot of psychology going on here," Jacoby said. "There's the notion of scarcity — when something's scarce it's more valued. And a resource that can be very scarce is time: If you don't get there in time, it's going to be gone."

There's also a new factor, Williams said: the rise of coupon websites like Groupon and LivingSocial, the online equivalents of doorbusters that usually deliver a single, one-day offer with savings of up to 80 percent on museum tickets, photo portraits, yoga classes and the like.

The services encourage impulse buying and an obsession with bargains, Williams said, while also getting businesses hooked on quick infusions of customers.

"The whole notion of getting a deal, that's all we've seen for the last two years," Williams said. "It's about stimulating consumers' quick reactions. How do we get their attention quickly? How do we create cash flow for today?"

To grab customers first, some stores are opening late on Thanksgiving Day, turning bargain-hunting from an early-morning activity into an all-night slog, said Ed Fox, a marketing professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Midnight shopping puts everyone on edge and also makes shoppers targets for muggers, he said.

In fact, robbery appeared to be the motive behind the shooting in San Leandro, about 15 miles east of San Francisco. Police said robbers shot a victim as he was walking to a car with his purchases around 1:45 a.m. on Friday.

"There are so many hours now where people are shopping in the darkness that it provides cover for people who are going to try to steal or rob those who are out in numbers," Fox said.

The violence has prompted some analysts to wonder if the sales are worth it, and what solutions might work.

In a New York Times column this week, economist Robert Frank proposed slapping a 6 percent sales tax on purchases between 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving and 6 a.m. on Friday in an attempt to stop the "arms race" of earlier and earlier sales.

Small retailers, meanwhile, are pushing so-called Small Business Saturday to woo customers who are turned off by the Black Friday crush. President Barack Obama even joined in, going book shopping on Saturday at a small bookstore a few blocks from the White House.

"A lot of retailers, independent retailers, are making the conscious decision to not work those crazy hours," said Patricia Norins, a retail consultant for American Express.

Next up is Cyber Monday, when online retailers put their wares on sale. But on Saturday many shoppers said they still prefer buying at the big stores, despite the frenzy.

Thomas said she likes the time with her sisters and the hustle of the mall too much to stay home and just shop online.

To her, the more pressing problem was that the Thanksgiving weekend sales didn't seem very good.

"If I'm going to get shot, at least let me get a good deal," Thomas said.

___

Associated Press Writers Julie Walker in New York, Christina Rexrode in Raleigh, N.C., John C. Rogers in Los Angeles and Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore Tweet Their Thanks - Yahoo! TV

Friday, November 25, 2011

5 Reasons to Skip Black Friday Sales - Yahoo! Finance

This year's Black Friday deals are impressive: The coupon site Brad's Deals reports that at Best Buy, you can get a 42-inch LCD television for $200, a Blu-ray player for $40, and a Lenovo laptop for $180. But do those discounts really justify standing in line, in the cold, for hours on Thanksgiving evening, when you could be home watching a movie instead? (This year, many stores plan to open at midnight or earlier on Thanksgiving instead of in the early morning hours on Friday.)

[In Pictures: 10 Ways to Start Earning Extra Money Now]

Telling shoppers to avoid sales might sound hypocritical coming from someone who has reported on the best deals and discounts out there. But there are some very good reasons why you should turn and walk the other way rather than let yourself be sucked into holiday sale mania. Here are five of them:

Many discounts will continue long after Black Friday is over. While certain so-called "doorbusters" are available for a limited time only (and in limited quantities), many deals will continue throughout the holiday season. (And, in fact, some, such as free shipping at online stories, are often available throughout the year.)

The best deals are only available to a few people. Those doorbusters aren't available in endless supply, which is why people line up so early in the hopes of being among the lucky few to snag one. While stores vary in how many doorbusters they keep in stock, Best Buy's ad specifies that stores will sell a minimum of 10 Lenovos for $180, for example. Circulars featuring Black Friday ads often contain information on the number of doorbusters, which helps shoppers gauge how competitive the day will be.

When you do score a discount, it often just leads to more spending. If you've ever impulsively bought a muffin to go with your coffee, or surprised yourself by buying a whole new outfit when you meant to get only a shirt, then you will understand why research shows that shopping leads to more shopping.

Shopping can be broken into two phases, researchers say. In the first stage, people question whether they want to make a purchase. When they decide that the pros outweigh the cons, the "buying phase" takes over. "Once that happens, a roller coaster of shopping can begin," says Uzma Khan, assistant professor of marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and one of the study's authors. The researchers call the phenomenon "shopping momentum."

That means shopping sales can have the unintended consequence of leading to even more purchases, including ones that aren't on sale. Plus, many of the items that aren't doorbusters aren't even good deals, which is one reason shoppers should bring their smartphones and use them to compare prices on products before making purchases. (Certain apps, such as Pricegrabber's, make it easy to scan barcodes and see if a better deal is available elsewhere.)

[In Pictures: 10 Ways to Save on Food Costs]

Sales that get you to buy something you wouldn't have purchased otherwise are not good deals. It's just like the old joke: A woman brags to her husband about how much money she saved on a pair of shoes, and then he points out that she didn't save any money, she spent it, because she really doesn't need the shoes. The bottom line: Only take advantage of discounts when they're on items you would be purchasing anyway, even without the deal.

Frenzied buying almost never leads to smart shopping. One-day sales, midnight madness, and other sales techniques that spur quick decision-making tend to be disorienting and lead to over spending, says Kit Yarrow, consumer psychologist and author of coauthor of Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens, and Twenty-Somethings Are Revolutionizing Retail. "They're training [consumers] to purchase even though they may not be ready," she says. "If people are buying for fear or anxiety that it won't be available, then they're less likely to make good purchasing decisions."

Here are some alternative ways to spend your Black Friday: Giving back or volunteering, eating turkey leftovers, and getting an early start on Christmas movies. Most of the discounts will still be there when you're ready to hit the stores.

Twitter: @alphaconsumer

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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

How I Happily Spent Over $5,000 in a Futile Attempt to Save my Dog - Associated Content from Yahoo!

My pug Drea was a petite 18-pound, feisty pug that made me laugh for 13 happy years until cancer consumed her. From diagnosis to saying goodbye, she lived seven months. This is her story.

Learning the Horrible Truth

Giving Drea a belly rub one night, I felt a hard substance. It wasn't there before and I was immediately concerned.

Our first visit to the vet was tearful. Upon examination, he told us Drea had something in her mammary glands and needed X-rays. I didn't have a good feeling about it, although Drea didn't seem concerned. She trotted off to the lab to show them what a movie star she could be.

The X-rays revealed small masses. A sonogram was needed for greater clarity. The initial visit was $125, X-rays were $285 and the sonogram was $420. The total was $830.

Scheduling the Surgery

Our vet was patient and kind to explain the options. He said that, although there were no guarantees, the tumors appeared to be small and self-contained. Therefore, Drea had a good shot at recovery - if everything could be successfully removed. It was not a hard decision; she was scheduled for surgery the next day at a cost of $1,182.

The vet was happy - the tumors were easily removed and not embedded in tissue. He hoped he got it all - but reminded us there were no guarantees. It was just a matter of seeing what happened in the next few months.

Making Hard Emotional and Financial Decisions

Unfortunately, we didn't get months. The pathology report came back as cancer and within five weeks, the tumors grew back - this time bigger and harder than the original ones. It was difficult to believe it could happen that fast - but, it did.