News Corp, Time Warner Play to DC Not The Viewers

Was there ever any doubt that News Corp. and Time Warner would come to an agreement that would allow Time Warner’s cable unit to continue showing News Corp’s cable or broadcast properties on its system? The announcement on Jan. 1 that the two sides had averted a showdown that would have kept the BCS football game on the sidelines for 11 million folks is, well, a yawner.

It’s become almost an annual kabuki dance among cable or satellite operators and content providers to show which side – content or distribution – has the most muscle when it comes to such talks. Guess what fellas? Neither of you really have what it takes any longer to force your will on the other.

The last time we had a showdown anywhere near this size was back in 2000, when Time Warner, in the midst of a similar showdown with ABC, allowed Regis Philbin and his then-hit show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” to go dark for some 3.5 million homes. The cries from Washington were deafening. Hearings were held, fingers slapped.

So when the chorus started again in Washington on Dec. 30 on the current impasse you knew that Fox and Time Warner were destined to do whatever they could to avoid having DC on their backs. First, Sen. John Kerry urged the sides toward arbitration, and then FCC commissioners started encouraging peace. If there is anything that a media company wants less than a shutdown in the ad markets, it’s to have the feds on their backs. So Time Warner and News Corp. wisely extended the Dec. 30 deadline, then scurried to cut a deal that you know is less than the monthly $1 per subscriber fee that News Corp. had all but insisted was their right to get from cable operators.

One thing News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch, who owns TV stations, newspapers and internet sites, understands is that he sure as heck doesn’t want an angry FCC looking over his shoulder. In the past, he’s done back flips to keep them happy, whether it was striking a deal that allowed him to own the New York Post and New York area TV stations, or to get his deal to buy DirecTV passed a few years back. As for Time Warner, do you think they want the feds thinking bad thoughts about them when the FCC is still contemplating rules on such things as “net neutrality” – that is, whether Time Warner’s online offerings are to be regulated? Uh, no.

Sure, it was good theater. News Corp. told America that it might not get the NFL, American Idol or Glee. Time Warner said it was fighting to keep consumer prices from zooming if Fox high jacked higher fees from them. Yeah, yeah. A good show boys. It sure played in Washington.


Source:businessweek.com/

The Miracle Of Marijuana

In Washington DC, there's considerable anticipation of the medical marijuana initiative finally being allowed to take effect. DC voters backed Initiative 59 with 69 percent support in 1998, but, of course, American citizens have less self-rule in Washington than Iraqis have in Baghdad, and so a bunch of congressmen from far far away decided that we needed their rule rather than democracy and voided the whole thing. But that ended last month with an appropriations bill and a Congressional majority that believes in democracy at home as well as abroad.

Good timing. New research suggests that marijuana acts in the opposite fashion to legal and taxed alcohol and nicotine, and fr from destroying brain cells, actually helps them re-grow:


Xia Zhang, an associate professor in the U of S neuropsychiatry research unit, led the team that tested the effects of HU-210, a potent synthetic cannabinoid similar to a group of compounds found in marijuana. The synthetic version is about 100 times as powerful as THC, the compound responsible for the high experienced by recreational users.

The team found that rats treated with HU-210 on a regular basis showed neurogenesis – the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. This region of the brain is associated with learning and memory, as well as anxiety and depression.

The effect is the opposite of most legal and illicit drugs such as alcohol, nicotine, heroin, and cocaine.

“Most ‘drugs of abuse’ suppress neurogenesis,” Zhang says. “Only marijuana promotes neurogenesis.”

Of course these tests need to be done in humans. Maybe soon America will be sufficiently adult to start following reason rather than fear.

Source:andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/

Man wanted in Pavilions robbery is arrested in Washington, D.C.

A 28-year-old man was arrested Wednesday in Washington, D.C., on charges that he robbed a credit union on Hanes Mall Boulevard last month, the Winston-Salem Police Department said in a news release.

Kelvin James Crosby of 409 Taylor St. in High Point was charged with common law robbery. The robbery happened at 10:51 a.m. Nov. 12. Police said that a man came to the Piedmont Advantage Credit Union in the Pavilions Shopping Center on Hanes Mall Boulevard that morning and gave the teller a note demanding money.

He left the bank with an undisclosed amount of cash.

Police in Washington arrested Crosby at 9 p.m. Wednesday. He did not resist arrest and he did not have any weapons.

Crosby is awaiting extradition back to North Carolina.


Two charged in November robbery

THOMASVILLE -- Police charged two men this week with robbing a man at his house at gunpoint last month and taking his money.

Investigators said that on Nov. 19, two men broke into a house at 808 Douglas Drive, pointed a gun at the resident and demanded money.

The men and the resident struggled, according to the Thomasville Police Department, and the resident was hit with a small-caliber handgun. The men took the resident's wallet, which had money and personal identification.

Stevie Ray Horne, 19, of 813-A Doak Court and MarQuise Mclean, 21, were charged with breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, robbery with a firearm and possession of a firearm by a felon. Horne is in the Davidson County Jail with bond set at $500,000.

Police are still looking for Mclean, whose address is unknown. Anyone with information about the robbery or Mclean should call Thomasville's Criminal Investigations Division at 475-5540 or Thomasville Crime Stoppers at 476-8477.


Operator broke rules, police says

FAYETTEVILLE -- Fayetteville police say that a 911 operator violated protocol by failing to swiftly dispatch police to a home where a man killed himself after shooting his wife and two children.

Theresa Chance, a spokeswoman for the Fayetteville police, said yesterday that the investigation into the Nov. 2 slayings was nearing completion but any repercussions would be confidential.

The call from the house contained the sound of a person moaning, followed by a gunshot.

Officials believe that Billy Maxwell Jr. killed his family and himself.

Chance said that an operator did not follow rules requiring a response to a dropped 911 call within 20 minutes.

Police did not get to the house for more than an hour.


Woman injured by deer on sidewalk

TARBORO -- A North Carolina business owner is recovering from injuries she suffered Saturday when she encountered a herd of deer on a downtown Tarboro sidewalk.

Michelle Brewer was opening the jewelry store she co-owns with her husband when one deer passed by. Then she said that so many deer appeared that she couldn't move.

Brewer doesn't remember the deer stepping on her. But she does recall being eye-level with them before she hit the sidewalk. A witness told her that one deer kicked her several feet in the air before the rest trampled her.

Her injuries included two bruises on the right side of her face and a hoof print on her leg. She did not require treatment at a hospital.

"The stampede didn't hit us on Black Friday, it came the day after," she quipped.


Spring Lake fills police chief's job

SPRING LAKE -- A North Carolina town has a new police chief after about six months without a permanent one.

Troy McDuffie, the police chief for Red Springs, has been named the new chief in Spring Lake. He was introduced to the town yesterday at a news conference and is scheduled to take command Dec. 14.

The department has been unable to make arrests or obtain warrants since earlier this year, when a Cumberland County judge effectively stripped the town of those powers. That came after a State Bureau of Investigation probe led to the arrest of two supervising officers.

Former chief A.C. Brown resigned after the arrests in May. Former Chapel Hill police Chief Gregg Jarvies served as interim chief until early November.

Source: journalnow.com/