More minority babies than whites in U.S.: Census Bureau - Yahoo! News

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the first time, there are more black, Hispanic and other minority babies being born in the United States than white babies, according to government data released on Thursday that officially confirm what has been a long-growing trend. U.S. Census Bureau data show the United States is on its way to becoming "majority minority," with almost half of all young children currently from minority groups, including Hispanic, black and Asian. As of July 1, 2011, 50.4 percent of babies younger than age 1 were minorities or of more than one race, up from 49.5 percent in 2010, the data showed. For children younger than age 5, 49.7 percent were a minority or mixed race last year, up from 49.0 percent in 2010, according to the agency, which tracks the U.S. population. While the country has long been on course to see whites lose their majority, the latest figures make it clear that the next generations of Americans will look far different than today. The figures are also likely to reignite debate over what it means to be an American in an election year where race, poverty and immigration are hot-button campaign issues. More than half of all residents in Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Texas and Washington, D.C. were minorities as of last year, the agency found. Overall, 36.6 percent of the U.S. population were minorities in 2011 compared to 36.1 percent in 2010. The 197.5 million whites still made up nearly two-thirds of the nation, the Census Bureau said. The largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States last year remained Hispanics at 52 million, or nearly 17 percent of the nation's population. The black population was 43.9 million. Asians were the second-fastest growing population, growing 3 percent to 18 million. There were 6.3 million American Indian and Alaska Native residents and 1.4 million Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. Some experts on race and ethnicity say current immigrants are far less likely to "melt" into U.S. culture, while others say today's minorities may soon see their heritage blend as whites did. Generations ago there were not "whites" but European groups that were identified as Irish, German, Italian and Greek, among others. The growing Hispanic population and related immigration concerns, particularly in southern states that border Mexico, are expected to be major issues in November's presidential and congressional elections. (Reporting By Susan Heavey; Editing by Vicki Allen)

 

 

 

Key witness in Clemens' trial faces more questioning - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The former trainer to Roger Clemens will undergo more key cross-examination in the baseball star's perjury trial on Thursday, with the defense expected to attack inconsistencies in the trainer's story. Clemens' former trainer Brian McNamee underwent sharp questioning from the pitching great's defense lawyer on Wednesday as he probed for holes in McNamee's testimony about Clemens' alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. McNamee's cross-examination is perhaps the core part of the trial in U.S. District Court. He is the only person with first-hand knowledge about the former pitcher's alleged use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. Under cross-examination from defense attorney Rusty Hardin on Wednesday, McNamee, 45, said he had made mistakes, been forgetful or lied about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. McNamee will be in his third day of cross-examination after being questioned about 10 hours by prosecutors. Clemens' lawyers also are expected to explore McNamee's alleged problems with alcohol and scrapes with law enforcement. Clemens, 49, is being tried for a second time on federal charges of lying in 2008 to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which was investigating drug use in Major League Baseball. His first trial ended in a mistrial last year. McNamee worked with Clemens when the right-hander pitched for the Toronto Blue Jays and later with the New York Yankees. He also was employed as Clemens' personal trainer. McNamee has testified he injected Clemens with anabolic steroids in 1998, 2000 and 2001 and with human growth hormone in 2000. Clemens was known as "The Rocket" during a career that ran from 1984 to 2007. He won the Cy Young Award seven times and is among the biggest names implicated in drug use in baseball. (Reporting By Ian Simpson; Editing by Vicki Allen)

 

 

Big Ten surrenders fight to bring college football playoff to the Midwest, just to help the Rose Bowl - Yahoo! Sports

 

Of all the love stories ever told, there may be none purer than the Big Ten's undying devotion, commitment and pure heart-throbbing lust to the Rose Bowl. True love always. Best friends forever. A Romeo and Juliet for the modern ages, complete with suicidal second-guessing because a rose by any other name apparently wouldn't smell as sweet. Big Ten players and fans can forget seeing a playoff game in their stadium, or even in the Midwest (Getty Imag … It's wrong to criticize someone for who they choose to love. Instead, just marvel at the depth of the relationship. The Big Ten has abandoned its smart, savvy push for a playoff that featured on-campus semifinal sites and a title game open to bid by cities across the country, including the Midwest, because it just couldn't bear the thought of cheating on a bowl game. There are still details to be hashed out on how college football is going to stage its postseason. There are still plenty of sober voices out there who think outsourcing hundreds of millions in postseason games is at best illogical and at worst corrupt. Many more think playoff games on campus would be glorious. But forget it. If the Big Ten, which has the most to gain on the issue yet is trying to lose, then campus playoff games aren't happening. In an effort to help the Rose Bowl, the conference is willing for a playoff to also be staged in Miami Gardens and Glendale, and so on, rather than Columbus and Ann Arbor. A playoff will be great no matter where the games are played. It'd just be better on campus. But the bowl lobby has won, and a select few of them are about to become even more fabulously wealthy off the labors of student-athletes. Leave it to the inevitable congressional investigation to sort out how the no-bid deals were reached. At this point, it's still a romance novel because the Big Ten really, really loves the Rose Bowl … no, I love you more … text me when you wake up … no, you hang up first. "For us it's critical to keep the Rose Bowl in the equation," Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis told reporters Tuesday after Big Ten meetings hashed out the conference's likely preferred plan. How critical? Well, so critical that they're willing to make business decisions based on emotion, willing to give up on competitive advantages, logistical ease and monetary benefits. Possible home-field advantage for Big Ten teams? We love the Rose Bowl. Making the elements, which Big Ten teams are presumably better equipped to handle, a factor in the playoffs? We love the Rose Bowl. Showcasing the incredible game-day environment of Camp Randall, Happy Valley or the Big House? We love the Rose Bowl. Mark Hollis and his fellow ADs remain steadfast in their support for a broken bowl system. (AP) Not requiring fans, students and players' families to continue to make lengthy postseason trips? We love the Rose Bowl. Creating economic impact in the league's hometowns? We love the Rose Bowl. Not taking discretionary spending out of the region and into California or Florida? We love the Rose Bowl. Not playing games in opponents' home regions, states, cities or even stadiums? We love the Rose Bowl. If you hate campus so much, how about compromising and staging neutral-site semifinal games in Indianapolis or Detroit, where the money would be so welcome? Sorry, we love the Rose Bowl. Other than loving the Rose Bowl there isn't a single reason for the Big Ten to support this plan. Of course, what they love is what the Rose Bowl was (Big Ten champ vs. Pac-10 champ), which is not what it is or certainly will be. This is a playoff blueprint in sepia tones. It's lunacy. But then again, love's crazy, right? Somewhere Mike Slive of the SEC and Larry Scott of the Pac-12 are kicking back with a cackle of delight. These guys are angling for every possible edge while the Big Ten and the Rose Bowl sit in adjacent bathtubs, holding hands and waiting for the moment to be right. Wait, the rest of college football has to be asking, you're not even going to fight and try to make us look like wimps for arguing against football in the cold? Wait, you seriously are going to ask the same fan base to travel three times in a month – Big Ten title game, semifinals and championship game, the last two at least via airplane? And you think we won't end up with the majority of the crowd? [Related: Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany doesn't think much of Alabama] The Rose Bowl's power over the Big Ten is something to behold. It makes normally intelligent men say ridiculous things. "It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields … but the bowls have been good to us," Nebraska AD Tom Osborne said. If rampant profiteering, indictments charging corruption and millions in unnecessary expenses passed onto the schools counts as "been good to us" than the Big Ten may be the battered spouse here. Even so, exactly how good would a bowl have to have been to be better than a Nebraska playoff game in Memorial Stadium? "If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system," Osborne said. Ah, no, it wouldn't pretty much destroy the bowl system. In fact, it wouldn't destroy it at all. But, hey, love is blind. So blind apparently that no one can be bothered to actually look at the financial statements and business models of how bowl games operate and realize that line is complete garbage. "From kids' perspective, the bowl experience is the one thing they want to keep," Hollis argued. The Big Ten is so committed to the Rose Bowl it ceded playoff venues to the SEC and Pac-12. (Getty Images) Yes, the vaunted bowl experience must be protected for the players. It's cool. Bowls are fun. Except in the same meeting the Big Ten proposed moving bowl eligibility from 6-6 to 7-5, which means maybe half a dozen smaller bowls will, indeed, be destroyed and the experience of those players apparently isn't worth protecting. If only those games were as loveable as the Rose Bowl. [Wetzel podcast: Hammering out the playoff details] The athletic directors talk about trying to maintain or improve the meaning of the regular season, but then they want to take out the incentive of home-field advantage so it really doesn't matter whether you finish first or fourth. And do players really value the chance to engage in some pie-eating contest more than potentially getting any edge on winning the biggest game of their life, getting one more chance to run on the field of their own stadium or, even playing on the road in one of the nation's other spectacular campuses? Playing at Bryant-Denny, even as the road team, is also a pretty sweet experience. And what about the chance for the Big Ten to finally stop playing games in SEC/Pac 12 country, maybe see if one of those sunshine programs can handle a few flakes of Midwest snow? Yes, it sure sounds good, but did they mention they love the Rose Bowl? "There's a part of me that wants to play a team from the Southwest or the Southeast in five-degree weather," Ohio State's Gene Smith told the Sporting News. "But is it really right for the game?" The NFL thinks all weather is football weather and adheres to the crazy idea of playing games in places like Lambeau and Solider Fields. If only they had something like a Rose Bowl to love. Then Roger Goodell would immediately get smart and try to move the NFC title game to the Alamodome or something. There's no question Big Ten fans love the Rose Bowl, although not as much as they once did. They also like to win, also would like to shut the SEC up and also really like showing off their legendary stadiums and great cities, fighting against the idea that they live in some inhospitable, rusted-out region. Plenty of them could use the economic impact of staging these massive events in the Midwest too. But you can't put a price on love. And all these years later, that old Rose Bowl sure can cause the Big Ten's heart to flutter. Kind of like Juliet once did.

Asteroid Survey: NASA Says 4,700 Space Rocks 'Possibly Hazardous

 

Know that space rock that wreaked havoc on the world in the 1998 action movie Armageddon? Well, that might have been fiction--but a new NASA study identifies about 4,700 “potentially hazardous” asteroids near Earth. Deja vu? The asteroids are on astronomers’ radar because they are headed dangerously close to Earth—within five million miles—and are big enough to pass through our planet’s atmosphere and cause major damage. In the image above, the bright space rocks have diameters of more than about 330 feet (100 meters). The study of potentially hazardous asteroids is part of NASA’s wide-field infrared survey explorer mission, or WISE for short. "We've made a good start at finding those objects that truly represent an impact hazard to Earth," Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's near-Earth object observation program, said in a written statement. "But we've many more to find, and it will take a concerted effort during the next couple of decades to find all of them that could do serious damage or be a mission destination in the future."

JPMorgan's trading debacle: why $2 billion is just the start - The Term Sheet: Fortune's deals blog Term Sheet

The bank's bad bet could curtail profits for years to come. FORTUNE -- For years, JPMorgan Chase (JPM), perhaps the riskiest bank in the world, got a pass. Sure there were minor hiccups along the way. But basically investors had the attitude with the bank run by Jamie Dimon that they were going to be hands off. Sub-prime mortgage loans: You've proved you can handle them. Foreclosure problems: We're sure you've got your best people on it. A derivative portfolio roughly the size of the GDP of India: We trust that you have covered your bets. In fact, despite its huge size and complexity and risk, investors have allowed Dimon and JPMorgan to skate by on one of the smallest capital cushions, which is how much equity you have to protect against losses, on Wall Street. When you sort JPMorgan's loans and investments by riskiness, a dubious calculation, but used by Wall Street nonetheless, the bank holds an equivalent of just 10% of that as capital. That compares to 13% at Citigroup (C) and 15% at Goldman Sachs (GS). That shortfall, though, didn't seem to bother investors. JPMorgan's shares were rewarded with one of the richest valuations on Wall Street. Until recently, it was one of the few big banks to trade above book value, meaning Wall Street believed it was worth what it said. Citigroup's shares trade at a price-to-book of 0.5.

Chris ‘Birdman’ Andersen under investigation by Internet child pornography unit

Chris Andersen exchanges words with Rex Chapman (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Thursday night, the Denver Nuggets beat the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 to tie their first-round playoff series, and did so without Chris "Birdman" Andersen, who is dealing with an issue greater than basketball. Thursday afternoon, Douglas County sheriff's deputies entered and searched Andersen's home in an investigation related to their Internet Crimes Against Children unit. The Nuggets, in turn, have excused Andersen indefinitely from all team functions. P. Solomon Banda of the Associated Press has more details:

The Nuggets will not necessarily miss Andersen on the court — he had yet to play a minute in the Lakers series and has seen his role diminished as JaVale McGee, Kenneth Faried, Timofey Mozgov and Kosta Koufos have earned more minutes in Denver's big-man rotation. Nevertheless, this incident could be a distraction for the entire franchise.

Andersen has been a controversial figure before and was suspended from the NBA for two seasons due to several failed drug tests for unspecified "drugs of abuse," but this investigation is an entirely different kind of serious. We'll continue to update you as more details emerge, but for now we're going to look at what's known and not draw too many conclusions in either direction.

The Boston Celtics missed an opportunity to close out the Atlanta Hawks

 

The Boston Celtics missed an opportunity to close out the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday night, dropping an 87-86 road affair that gives Atlanta the chance to knot their first-round series in Boston on Thursday night. Near misses like the one Boston had at Philips Arena tend to stick in a player's craw, especially when the player singlehandedly got his flagging team back into the game and conjured a chance to win it out of thin air, only to see it end in a trap, a turnover and a loss, extending a series that player felt his team already had won. So, yeah, Rajon Rondo — whom NBA fans know to be a quiet, reserved and occasionally volatile sort as it is — was a little bit salty when he spotted a cameraman filming him after Boston's Tuesday night