Box Office Preview: Listen for 'Joyful Noise' (AP)

LOS ANGELES ? Warner Bros.' musical comedy "Joyful Noise," starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton, should come out singing this Martin Luther King holiday weekend, with a likely debut pushing $20 million by Monday night.

A story of two spirited women battling for creative control of their church choir should harmonize well with family audiences looking for an uplifting experience.

But fellow-newcomer "Contraband" from Universal, starring Mark Wahlberg as a reformed smuggler in yet another one-last-job movie, is also making a run for the high-teens during the four-day period.

And Disney's 3-D re-release of 1991's "Beauty and the Beast" is chasing the same high-teen dream, too, following last year's widely successful 3-D conversion of another animated classic, "The Lion King."

Paramount's "Mission: Impossible ? Ghost Protocol" continues to thrill audiences, climbing back to the top of the box office chart during the midweek period. A likely gross in the mid-teens this weekend will power the action blockbuster toward a $200 million North American total by Monday night.

"Found-footage" phenomenon "The Devil Inside" from Paramount Insurge, which surprised everyone with its massive $33.7 million No. 1 debut last weekend, will likely see a steep drop and wind up with a gross of just over $10 million this weekend. No matter, though, since the micro-budget, R-rated film has already made a huge profit for the studio and should have nearly $50 million scared up by the end of the weekend.

?___

Paul Dergarabedian is president of the Box Office Division of Hollywood.com and provides box office analysis for The Associated Press.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/movies/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_en_mo/us_box_office_preview

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Citizens Property Insurance president resigning

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Citizens Property Insurance Corporation President Scott Wallace is leaving the state-backed property insurer after serving more than five years as its leader.

Wallace, 59, turned in his resignation to Board Chairman Carlos Lacasa on Friday. Wallace will remain at Citizens into early April to assist with a transition to new leadership.

Lacasa credited Wallace for improvements in Citizens' service levels, risk transference initiatives, and professionalism towards its policyholders, agents, legislative leaders and stakeholders.

"Scott has led the company through a complex ramp up of the infrastructure needed for Citizens to provide the services and possess the claims payment ability that is so essential to our state's housing industry," Lacasa said Monday.

The company has grown rapidly in recent years despite legislative efforts to reduce its size and liabilities.

While Citizens was designed as a last-resort backup, the shrinking of the private market in recent years in hurricane-prone Florida has made it the largest home insurer in the state with roughly 1.5 million policies now in force.

Wallace, who previously served as a vice president at Citizens, was the second CEO of the insurer, which was created by the Legislature in 2002 to provide insurance to homeowners in high-risk areas and those unable to find coverage in the private market. He replaced Bob Ricker on an interim basis in November of 2006 and was named to the job permanently on Jan. 10, 2007 at a salary of $220,000.

The company's operations have come under increased scrutiny in recent months with Lacasa becoming the board chair and Gov. Rick Scott pushing for the company to be downsized if not sold outright to a private entity.

The not-for-profit public corporation has come in for criticism for paying many of its executives lucrative salaries, including Wallace whose salary jumped dramatically just two years after becoming the company's fulltime president. He was paid a base wage of $343,608 in 2009

Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/01/09/2581387/citizens-property-insurance-president.html

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FOR KIDS: Water, water, not everywhere

Satellites show a drop in Earth?s groundwater levels

Web edition : 3:41 pm

Keeping track of water makes for tricky science. It drains through soil, slips through cracks in rocks and refills underwater reserves. It bubbles up through springs and runs in rivers. Water evaporates and forms clouds; rain brings it back to earth, where it keeps plants alive and drains into the soil again.?

Scientists who study water?s movements recently reported that levels of groundwater ? water found in soil or pooled in underground reservoirs ? have been dropping for the last nine years in many places.? And that's potentially quite troubling.?

Visit the new?Science News for Kids?website?and read the full story:?Water, water, not everywhere

Found in: Science News For Kids

Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337493/title/FOR_KIDS_Water,_water,_not_everywhere

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Latest Iraq attacks kill 10, including schoolboys (AP)

BAGHDAD ? Three schoolboys were among at least 10 people killed in Iraq on Tuesday, extending a wave of bloody attacks that have rocked the country since American troops pulled out.

Several of the Tuesday attacks struck predominantly Sunni areas north of Baghdad, though an evening blast in the capital appeared to target Shiite pilgrims commemorating a holy period known as Arbaeen.

The violence followed deadly car bomb blasts the evening before, and pushed to more than 100 the number of Iraqis killed in less than a week.

Many of attacks in recent days have targeted Iraq's Shiite majority, raising fears of a serious outbreak of sectarian violence following the withdrawal of U.S. troops last month.

Large-scale sectarian fighting pushed the country to the brink of civil war in 2006-7. Well-armed Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias continue to operate in the country.

The increase in violence comes as Iraq's leaders remain locked in a political crisis that is stoking tensions between the Shiite majority now in power and the country's Sunnis, who benefited most from ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's rule.

Tuesday's youngest victims were the three boys, nine and 10 years old. They were hit by a roadside bomb on their way to school near Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 80 miles (130 kilometers) north of Baghdad, police and hospital officials said.

Northwest of the capital, two agriculture ministry workers were killed and a third was wounded when a bomb stuck to their car exploded in Shurqat, about 155 miles (250 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad.

In the evening, gunmen ambushed an Iraqi army checkpoint in the former al-Qaida stronghold of Mosul, killing two soldiers. Attackers elsewhere in the city shot and killed a policeman from a speeding car, officials said.

A roadside bomb in western Baghdad late Tuesday killed two Shiite pilgrims. They were walking to the city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the capital, for Arbaeen, which marks the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, a revered Shiite figure.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The leaders of Iraq's rival sects have been locked in a standoff since last month, when the Shiite-dominated government called for Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi's arrest on terrorism charges, just as the last American troops were completing their withdrawal from the country.

Al-Hashemi, Iraq's highest ranking Sunni politician, remains holed up in the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north, out of reach of state security forces.

The prime minister of neighboring Turkey urged Iraq's leaders Tuesday to ease sectarian tensions. Recep Tayyip Erdogan said they would be held responsible for bloodshed in the event of a civil war.

Erdogan said Iraqi leaders who pave the way for a sectarian conflict would be "condemned to be remembered as the devil."

___

Associated Press writers Bushra Juhi and Adam Schreck contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120110/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq

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Euro, stocks down as debt jitters trump U.S. data

By Alex Richardson

SINGAPORE | Mon Jan 9, 2012 6:16am GMT

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The euro sank against the dollar and the yen on Monday and Asian stocks fell as renewed worries about the fallout from the European sovereign debt crisis overshadowed signs of vigour in the U.S. economy.

The rising dollar dragged on commodity prices, with oil, copper and gold all falling, while mixed signals on the global economy kept Asian credit markets subdued.

Data on Friday showed that while U.S. employment growth accelerated last month, euro zone retail sales fell and economic sentiment soured at the end of 2011, pointing to recession in the currency bloc.

"If we didn't have Europe, this market would be rallying on the back of the U.S. numbers," said Jamie Elgar, dealer at stockbrokers Burrell & Co in Brisbane.

European shares were expected to open lower, with financial bookmakers calling the FTSE 100 .FTSE, Paris's CAC-40 .FCHI and Frankfurt's DAX .GDAXI down 0.4-0.8 percent.

Worries over Europe intensified with a debt rating downgrade to junk status for Hungary -- a member of the European Union but not part of the euro zone -- and a report in German magazine Der Spiegel that the International Monetary Fund was losing confidence in Greece's ability to clean up its public finances.

The euro fell to a 16-month low below $1.2670, before steadying just above $1.27, and dropped as far as an 11-year low at 97.47 yen. The dollar, currently favoured by investors seeking a safe haven, rose as much as 0.2 percent against a basket of major currencies .DXY.

Rob Ryan, FX strategist for BNP Paribas in Singapore, said the single currency was unlikely to see a sustained rebound unless the euro zone's economic outlook improved, adding that the euro could fall to $1.25 in coming months.

"We need to see the economic data halt its slide and I think we need to see banks start to lend to each other. Neither of those are going to happen overnight," he said.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy were due to meet on Monday to finalise details of a deal to increase fiscal coordination in the euro zone.

Market expectations for the meeting were not high, however, with most investors looking further forward towards debt auctions in Spain and Italy, seen as the bloc's most vulnerable big economies, on Thursday and Friday.

BORROWING COSTS

With markets focused on concerns about rising borrowing costs in Europe, Friday's upbeat jobs data failed to perk up U.S. stocks, and the weakness continued in Asia on Monday.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan .MIAPJ0000PUS fell 0.8 percent. The index had finished the first week of 2012 slightly higher, after shedding 18 percent in 2011. Tokyo markets were closed for a holiday.

China's stocks bucked the trend, with Shanghai's main index .SSEC rising 1.9 percent after Premier Wen Jiabao said that Beijing would improve market regulation and protect investor rights.

S&P 500 index futures fell 0.4 percent, pointing to a weaker start later on Wall Street, where the U.S. corporate earnings season will kick off when aluminium producer Alcoa (AA.N) reports after the closing bell.

A stronger dollar tends to weigh on commodities that are priced in the U.S. currency, and both precious and industrial metals lost ground.

Copper slipped more than 1 percent to around $7,485 a tonne, while gold fell 0.4 percent, getting close to the $1,600 an ounce level.

"There is a somewhat weaker trend across the commodities, as the strength of the dollar is playing a role in limiting appetite," said Nick Trevethan, senior commodity strategist at ANZ in Singapore.

U.S. crude oil fell 0.6 percent to below $101, after climbing above $100 a barrel last week as rising tensions between Iran and the West raised fears of supply disruptions. Brent crude was steady around $113 a barrel.

(Additional reporting by Victoria Thieberger in Melbourne and Masayuki Kitano and Rujun Shen in Singapore; Editing by Kim Coghill)

Source: http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/Reuters/UKBusinessNews/~3/M-qcfQKskA8/uk-markets-global-idUKTRE80801D20120109

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2011 registers fall in growth rate of foreign tourist arrivals to India over 2010

2011 saw a drop in the growth rate of foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) to India with just an 8.9 per cent increase over 2010 figures, as compared to 2010?s 11.8 per cent growth over 2009. However, inbound traffic to India fared better than other countries in the Asia Pacific with 6.29 million visitors recorded in 2011. In a statement today, the Tourism Ministry said FTAs to India during 2011 were 6.29 million compared to 5.78 million FTAs the previous year.

The growth rate of 8.9 per cent for India is better than the United Nations World Tourism Organisation's projected growth rate of four to five percent for the world in 2011 and seven to nine percent for the Asia Pacific.

The statement also said that the month of December, 2011 had been good for the tourism industry. FTAs during December, 2011 were 7.15 lakh as compared to FTAs of 6.80 lakh during December, 2010 and 6.16 lakh in December, 2009 ? a growth of 5.2 per cent in December, 2011 over December, 2010 as compared to a growth of 10.4 percent in December 2010 over December, 2009. The growth rate in December 2011 was higher than the 4.7 per cent growth rate observed in November 2011, according to a report by PTI.

Source: http://www.travelbizmonitor.com/2011-registers-fall-in-growth-rate-of-foreign-tourist-arrivals-to-india-over-2010-15368

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Beware of Investing In Gold | Bryon Gross, Esq. - JDSupra

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