Silence, ringing of bells to honor Newtown shooting victims

NEWTOWN, Conn./WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many Americans will remember the victims of the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre with a moment of silence on Friday, just before a powerful U.S. gun rights lobbying group plunges into the national debate over gun control.

Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy called for residents of his state to observe the moment at 9:30 a.m. EST (1430 GMT) to mark a week since a 20-year-old gunman killed his mother and then stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where he shot to death 20 children and six adults before killing himself.

Malloy's fellow governors in Maine, Illinois, Michigan and several other states called on residents to follow suit with a moment of silence and to ring bells to remember the dead. The National Cathedral in Washington plans to ring its bell 28 times as part of an interfaith memorial.

"We have the moral obligation to stand for and with the victims of gun violence and to work to end it," said Reverend Gary Hall, dean of Washington National Cathedral, who called on Americans to pray "that we may have courage to act, so that the murderous violence done on Friday may never be repeated."

The company that operates the Nasdaq stock exchange said its operations would observe a moment of silence at 9:30 a.m., although market will open trading at that time as usual.

The observances will be held not long before the National Rifle Association, the largest U.S. gun rights group and one with powerful ties to Washington politicians, begins a media campaign to become part of the gun control debate prompted by the stunning slaughter of 20 children, all 6 or 7 years old.

Laws restricting gun ownership are controversial in the United States, a nation with a strong culture of individual gun ownership. Hundreds of millions of weapons are in private hands.

About 11,100 Americans died in gun-related killings in 2011, not including suicides, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The NRA remained quiet for four days after the Newtown slaughter, citing "common decency." It released a short statement on Tuesday saying it was "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again."

The group scheduled a news conference for 10:45 a.m. (1545 GMT) on Friday in Washington. NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre planned to appear on the NBC television talk show "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Some U.S. lawmakers called for swift passage of an assault weapons ban.

Vice President Joe Biden convened a new White House task force on Thursday charged by President Barack Obama with finding ways to quell violence.

"We have to have a comprehensive way in which to respond to the mass murder of our children that we saw in Connecticut," Biden told the group, which included Attorney General Eric Holder, Thomas Nee, president of the National Association of Police Organizations, and other officials.

The gunman, Adam Lanza, used a military-style assault rifle and police said he carried hundreds of bullets in high-capacity magazines, as well as two handguns. The weapons were legally purchased and registered to his mother, Nancy, his first victim.

By Thursday, funeral services had been held for more than half of the 27 people Lanza killed last week.

Newtown school officials said that Friday would be a shortened day for students heading into the Christmas break.

Reflecting a heightened state of alert at schools across the United States, a school district near Boise, Idaho, canceled planned assemblies at a number of its 50 schools after receiving a rash of threats that suggested "something bad" would happen on Friday, Meridian school spokesman Eric Exline said.

"The event last Friday in Connecticut has unnerved people in a lot of ways," he said.

The New Milford school district, near Newtown, canceled Friday classes "on the advice of the New Milford Police Department" but did not offer any further explanation.

In Florida, a 13-year-old student was arrested on Thursday after he allegedly posted a Facebook message threatening to "bring a gun to school tomorrow and shoot everyone," said the St. Lucie County Sheriff's office on Florida's east coast.

Police said the teen did not have any weapons and posed no threat to local schools. He was charged with making a written threat and is being held at a local Juvenile Detention Center.

(Reporting by Edith Honan and Patrica Zengerle; Writing by Jim Loney; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.

Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave “pending further action.”

An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited “leadership and management” deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and “real confusion” in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.

“The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs,” Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.

Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.

PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON

The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.

“We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks,” retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel’s chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton’s office.

“We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where – if you like – the rubber hits the road,” Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

The panel’s report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.

Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.

Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.

Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.

“It was very thorough,” said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: “It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels.” Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.

Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.

“The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad,” Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.

The report concluded that there was no such protest.

Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama’s top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Best Practice Institute Introduces New Social Network that Promises ‘Future of 360′

A new social network, skillrater.com launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.

West Palm Beach, Fla. (PRWEB) December 20, 2012

Skillrater.com, an online social network that launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.

“This is the future of 360-degree assessment and social learning,” said the network’s creator, Louis Carter, CEO of Best Practice Institute.

“Get rated. Get better. Get noticed,” says Skillrater.com’s website, which describes the new social network as “the world’s first rating, networking and feedback tool on a social platform.”

Executives, employees and entrepreneurs who have already been friended, linked and tweeted can now get feedback and rating on their skill sets and work at Skillrater.com. Individuals may join the Skillrater social network at no cost; corporations may purchase a premium or enterprise membership to use Skillrater as an in-house platform for feedback, talent management and social networking.

The Next Thing in 360 Assessment and Corporate Social Networking

“I want to bring a revolution to 360 so that organizations become more open and transparent, and driven by the desire for employees to request feedback on their competencies/skills and activities they execute on a daily basis” said Carter, BPI’s founder and a social-organizational psychologist.

The world of work is becoming more open and transparent. “A new IBM study of 1709 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterized the modern corporation for more than a century.”

Employees using skillrater engage in conversations and threaded discussions around improving their activities at work. Instead of hiding feedback from employees, employees may receive immediate correction of negatively reinforcing workplace habits directly from their bosses, peers, and customers. Employees may continue the feedback process in a threaded discussion to receive deeper advice and help from executive coaches or other members of the team. Repeating this process will show measurable changes in behavior and actions over time for your organization, as well as show patterns for the changes that need to me made on an individual, team, and organization level. The employee requests feedback of others directly, so that a culture of accountability and feedback is encouraged. Instead of “big brother/sister” HR forcing feedback of competencies and workplace performance, employees take ownership for creating their own culture of transparency so they may show their progress toward growth.

One study found that as many as 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies use 360-degree feedback with their employees. In a 360 assessment, feedback is sought from all directions of an employee’s circle: overseers, peers, direct reports, and sometimes even external sources, such as customers and suppliers.

Skillrater brings several innovations to the 360-degree process to make the technique easier to use and to increase the tool’s beneficial results. Features include:

“Skillrater is a great tool. Leaders and managers are going to fall in love with it,” said the world’s leading executive coach and bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith. “There is no better way for organizational leaders to track talent data. Skillrater gives you a simple way to request receive feedback on what you are doing, while building an in-house social network to discuss the feedback. The ability to customize Skillrater around the desired competencies of your organization is brilliant.”"

Focus on Leadership Development in Globally Dispersed Workforces

Most importantly, Carter said, Skillrater provides a social network through which members can springboard from quantitative ratings to qualitative discussions that make the feedback truly transformative. This is especially beneficial for dispersed workforces where consistent face-to-face communication is costly to accomplish.”

“Our goal is to create a social network within an organization that is focused on helping employees improve their skills and improve performance,” Carter said. “Skillrater is not primarily about promotion and pay decisions, it’s about leadership development and positive behavioral change throughout a national or global workforce.”

Studies have shown 360-degree feedback is an effective way to help workers identify their strengths and weaknesses, including blind spots in which they need further development. Skillrater’s convenient online platform, along with the addition of a social networking dimension, makes Skillrater a powerful leadership development for dispersed or collective learning environments.

After corporate clients learn their way around all the bells and whistles of Skillrater’s multi-rater feedback tool, Carter said, they will move on to appreciate the richness of the in-house social network, creating a dispersed learning environment in which ongoing leadership development and action learning is cultivated within domestic or global workforces.

Skillrater Benefits for Individual Users

Individuals may join Skillrater.com for free and choose up to five skills upon which to be rated. Top executives, mid-level rising stars and lower-level workers with an eye on advancement may all use Skillrater to request feedback and map their own course of development. Requesting a Skillrater rating is an excellent way for an individual to confirm satisfaction with a completed project or identify additional steps needed to achieve satisfaction. Using Skillrater, a worker can demonstrate to higher-ups one’s desire to perform well and also document tangible improvement.

An individual who has acquired several ratings on one’s Skillrater profile and has made those ratings public may catch the attention of employers on the search for talent. Skillrater will become a go-to destination for talent recruitment. Other social networks provide an individual’s name, personal background and employment history, but Skillrater provides rubber-meets-the-road details of how an individual has been evaluated by co-workers, clients and customers on actual projects.

Skillrater Benefits for Corporate Users

Companies may purchase an enterprise membership, giving executives an unparalleled tool for talent management and leadership development. Enterprise membership enables companies to enroll 1,000 users and place them in 20 groups or divisions.

For senior talent management executives, Skillrater provides a remarkable way to track the job performance, skill sets and leadership development of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of employees spread out across a national or global workforce. For years, connecting the right employees with the right tasks has been the elusive aim of talent management. With Skillrater, when a particular skill set is needed for a particular task, a manager can search on those specific skills, and then read fresh feedback on recent projects, including not only numerical ratings but subsequent comments and discussion. That is rich, valuable talent data, which Skillrater puts at executives’ fingertips.

Managers from different divisions may customize their own groups to have specific skills or competencies that are important for success on-the-job. Users can select these group skills when requesting ratings to get targeted feedback that meets the need of the department head or head of leadership development. The ability to customize skills is critical to an organization’s success, making this a key feature of Skillrater’s enterprise membership level.

VPs of leadership development have the ability to set up action learning groups with specific action items. Group members work together online to achieve goals and get ratings on the skills that will make them most successful on the action learning project. Changes in behavior and actual project results may be tracked over time, proving the ROI of the leadership development program.

How Does Skillrater Work?

Joining Skillrater is easy and painless. An individual can create a Skillrater profile in a few moments or import one’s profile and skill set from LinkedIn.

A Skillrater member may request a rating from anybody on anything. It really is that simple. The user simply clicks the “Request Rating” button, specifies the task or activity for which one seeks a rating and the specific skills on which feedback is desired.

Then the member sends off the rating requests. If the desired rater is already a Skillrater.com member, requesting a rating is just one additional click. If not, the user enters the desired rater’s email address, and a message is sent requesting the rating and providing the necessary link.

After feedback has been received, Skillrater notifies the user. Results include a spider chart, an easy-to-understand graphical interpretation of how the feedback lines up with one’s self-assessment. Users continue to share advice and further clarification via a discussion thread to continue the social learning and coaching experience online.

ABOUT BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE

Best Practice Institute is an award-winning leadership development center, think tank, peer network, research institute and online learning portal with more than 10,000 corporate and individual members around the world. Corporate members include Walmart, Bank of America, Pfizer, Hilton Hotels Worldwide, Scripps and many more of the world’s top corporations. BPI is based in West Palm Beach, FL, and is on the web at http://www.bestpracticeinstitute.org. BPI is ranked as one of the top ten “Best in Leadership Development” by Leadership Excellence Magazine.

Louis Carter is the founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute. Carter is a social-organizational psychologist, concept innovator, entrepreneur and a highly regarded authority on learning, talent, leadership development and change. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and a regular contributor to Fast Company, Chief Learning Officer, Talent Management, and Training Magazine.

For More Information or to schedule an interview, please contact Louis Carter: 800-718-4274; lou(at)bestpracticeinstitute.org

Louis Carter
Best Practice Institute
800-718-4274
Email Information

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China’s airing of ‘V for Vendetta’ stuns viewers

BEIJING (AP) — Television audiences across China watched an anarchist antihero rebel against a totalitarian government and persuade the people to rule themselves. Soon the Internet was crackling with quotes of “V for Vendetta‘s” famous line: “People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

The airing of the movie Friday night on China Central Television stunned viewers and raised hopes that China is loosening censorship.

“V for Vendetta” never appeared in Chinese theaters, but it is unclear whether it was ever banned. An article on the Communist Party’s People’s Daily website says it was previously prohibited from broadcast, but the spokesman for the agency that approves movies said he was not aware of any ban.

Some commentators and bloggers think the broadcast could be CCTV producers pushing the envelope of censorship, or another sign that the ruling Communist Party‘s newly installed leader, Xi Jinping, is serious about reform.

“Oh God, CCTV unexpectedly put out ‘V for Vendetta.’ I had always believed that film was banned in China!” media commentator Shen Chen wrote on the popular Twitter-like Sina Weibo service, where he has over 350,000 followers.

Zhang Ming, a supervisor at a real estate company, asked on Weibo: “For the first time CCTV-6 aired ‘V for Vendetta,’ what to think, is the reform being deepened?”

The 2005 movie, based on a comic book, is set in an imagined future Britain with a fascist government. The protagonist wears a mask of Guy Fawkes, the 17th-century English rebel who tried to blow up Parliament. The mask has become a revolutionary symbol for young protesters in mostly Western countries, and it also has a cult-like status in China as pirated DVDs are widely available. Some people have used the image of the mask as their profile pictures on Chinese social media sites.

Beijing-based rights activist Hu Jia wrote on Twitter, which is not accessible to most Chinese because of government Internet controls: “This great film couldn’t be any more appropriate for our current situation. Dictators, prisons, secret police, media control, riots, getting rid of ‘heretics’ … fear, evasion, challenging lies, overcoming fear, resistance, overthrowing tyranny … China’s dictators and its citizens also have this relationship.”

China’s authoritarian government strictly controls print media, television and radio. Censors also monitor social media sites including Weibo. Programs have to be approved by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, but people with knowledge of the industry say CCTV, the only company with a nationwide broadcast license, is entitled to make its own censorship decisions when showing a foreign movie.

“It is already broadcast. It is no big deal,” said a woman who answered the phone at movie channel CCTV-6. “We also didn’t anticipate such a big reaction.”

The woman, who only gave her surname, Yang, said she would pass on questions to her supervisor, which weren’t answered.

The spokesman for the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television said he had noticed the online reaction to the broadcast. “I’ve not heard of any ban on this movie,” Wu Baoan said Thursday.

The film is available on video-on-demand platforms in China, where movie content also needs to be approved by authorities.

A political scientist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who used to work for CCTV said the film might have approval, or it could have been CCTV’s own decision to broadcast it.

“Every media outlet knows there is a ceiling above their head,” said Liu Shanying. “Sometimes we will work under the ceiling and avoid touching it. But sometimes we have a few brave ones who want to reach that ceiling and even express their discontent over the censor system.

“It is very possible that CCTV decided by itself” to broadcast the film, Liu said. If so, he added, it would have been “due to a gut feeling that China’s film censorship will be loosened or reformed.”

“V for Vendetta” was released in the United States in 2005 and around the world in 2006. China has a yearly quota on the numbers of foreign movies that can be imported on a revenue share basis, making it tough to get distribution approval. Other movies that failed to reach Chinese screens in 2006 include “Brokeback Mountain” and “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest.” Chinese moviegoers that year were able to see “Mission: Impossible III” with Tom Cruise and “The Painted Veil,” which was filmed in China and set in a Chinese village.

Warner Brothers, which produced and distributed “V for Vendetta,” declined to comment.

China doesn’t have a classification system, so all movies shown at its cinemas are open to adults and children of any age. A filmmaker and Beijing Film Academy professor, Xie Fei, published an open letter on Sina Weibo on Saturday calling for authorities to replace the movie censorship system that dates from the 1950s with a ratings system.

The airing of “V for Vendetta” raised some hopes about possible changes under Xi, who was publicly named China’s new leader last month. He has already announced a trimmed-down style of leadership, calling on officials to reduce waste and unnecessary meetings and pomp. His reforms are aimed at pleasing a public long frustrated by local corruption.

State media say they have reduced reports on officials’ trips as part of this drive. The official Xinhua News Agency warned this week that media outlets should “learn to play professionally in today’s information age as an increasingly picky audience is constantly” putting them under scrutiny.

An American business consultant and author with high-level Chinese contacts said there is no less commitment to one-party rule in China, so any media reforms will only go so far.

“You can’t have a totally free media as we would have in the West and still maintain the integrity of a one-party system,” said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, who wrote the book “How China’s Leaders Think.” He said he thinks restrictions are being eased, “but it has to be limited.”

The new leadership has to tread carefully, Kuhn said, because in the age of the Internet, talk about reforms won’t be forgotten.

“High expectations, if they are not fulfilled, will create a worse situation,” he said.

___

AP researchers Flora Ji and Henry Hou contributed to this report.

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Research and Markets: Sexual Health Partnering Terms and Agreements

DUBLIN–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v5b7pw/sexual_health) has announced the addition of the “Sexual Health Partnering Terms and Agreements” company profile to their offering.

The Sexual Health Partnering Terms and Agreements report provides comprehensive understanding and unprecedented access to the sexual health partnering deals and agreements entered into by the worlds leading healthcare companies.

The report provides a detailed understanding and analysis of how and why companies enter sexual health partnering deals. The majority of deals are discovery or development stage whereby the licensee obtains a right or an option right to license the licensors sexual health technology. These deals tend to be multicomponent, starting with collaborative R&D, and commercialization of outcomes.

Understanding the flexibility of a prospective partner’s negotiated deals terms provides critical insight into the negotiation process in terms of what you can expect to achieve during the negotiation of terms. Whilst many smaller companies will be seeking details of the payments clauses, the devil is in the detail in terms of how payments are triggered – contract documents provide this insight where press releases do not.

This report contains over 500 links to online copies of actual sexual health deals and contract documents as submitted to the Securities Exchange Commission by companies and their partners. Contract documents provide the answers to numerous questions about a prospective partner’s flexibility on a wide range of important issues, many of which will have a significant impact on each party’s ability to derive value from the deal.

In addition, a comprehensive appendix is provided with each report of all sexual health partnering deals signed and announced since 2007. The appendices are organized by company A-Z, stage of development at signing, deal type (collaborative R&D, co-promotion, licensing etc) and technology type. Each deal title links via Weblink to an online version of the deal record and where available, the contract document, providing easy access to each contract document on demand.

The report also includes numerous tables and figures that illustrate the trends and activities in sexual health partnering and dealmaking since 2007.

In conclusion, this report provides everything a prospective dealmaker needs to know about partnering in the research, development and commercialization of sexual health technologies and products.

Company profiles:

- Abbott

- Bayer

- GlaxoSmithKline

- Menarini

- Merck & Co

- Mylan

- Pfizer

- Roche

- Teva

- Valeant

- Warner Chilcott

- Watson

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/v5b7pw/sexual_health

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Manhunt for two escaped bank robbers intensifies in Chicago

The manhunt for two bank robbers who escaped from a downtown Chicago
prison this week intensified overnight, with police chasing multiple
leads as new footage shows the men getting into a taxi minutes after
their brazen escape.

Investigators say surveillance cameras captured Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, and Kenneth Conley, 38,
getting into a taxi minutes after their early Tuesday escape. They entered the taxi at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, just blocks away from the jail.

The FBI considers them "armed and dangerous."

The men then showed up five hours later at the home of Sandy Conley, Kenneth Conley's mother, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, Ill.

"He was in the house for two minutes," Sandy Conley said. "I can't tell you if he was armed. I made him get out."

Thomas Trautmann of the Chicago FBI said the clock is ticking on finding the men.

"[As] each hour goes by, our chances get longer and longer," he said. "However, we do have several viable leads that we are running down."

He did not specify the information.

Banks and Conley were last seen Monday at 10 p.m. during a prison head count at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago's Loop district. The two borrowed a move from the film "Escape From Alcatraz" by stuffing their beds with clothes in the shape of bodies.

They men then broke the window of their cell at the federal prison, shimmying out a hole only inches wide, and scaled down the side of the building 17 stories, all the while holding onto a rope of sheets and towels taken from the prison. The rope was strong enough to support the two, one weighing 165 pounds the other 185 pounds.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, as employees arrived at work, they noticed the sheets left dangling from the building and at jailers discovered that Conley and Banks were missing.

While the men have had plenty of time to leave the area, there's no indication that they have, ABC 7 TV's public-safety expert Jody Weis said.

"There's a likelihood that they're going to stay here," Weis, a former Chicago police superintendent, said. "They'll have people they can trust. They can have people they can work with. There are going to be people that might be able to hide them out."

Banks, nicknamed "the second-hand bandit" because of the used clothing disguises he wore in several robberies, was convicted of armed robbery last week. His parting words to his judge, Rebecca Pallmeyer, were, "I'll be seeking retribution as well as damages ... you'll hear from me."

Conley had been in jail for several years.

Pallmeyer and others who presided over the men's cases have reportedly been offered protection.

"If they're willing to go down a sheet 17 floors, they're willing to take a chance," Weis said. "And I think you can draw your own conclusion as to what that might mean."

The FBI and U.S. Marshals are offering a combined reward of $60,000 to find the inmates and bring them back into custody.

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Best Practice Institute Introduces New Social Network that Promises ‘Future of 360′

A new social network, skillrater.com launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.

West Palm Beach, Fla. (PRWEB) December 20, 2012

Skillrater.com, an online social network that launched today, makes it easy for members to request work performance ratings from overseers, co-workers and direct reports across a domestic and global workforce.

“This is the future of 360-degree assessment and social learning,” said the network’s creator, Louis Carter, CEO of Best Practice Institute.

“Get rated. Get better. Get noticed,” says Skillrater.com’s website, which describes the new social network as “the world’s first rating, networking and feedback tool on a social platform.”

Executives, employees and entrepreneurs who have already been friended, linked and tweeted can now get feedback and rating on their skill sets and work at Skillrater.com. Individuals may join the Skillrater social network at no cost; corporations may purchase a premium or enterprise membership to use Skillrater as an in-house platform for feedback, talent management and social networking.

The Next Thing in 360 Assessment and Corporate Social Networking

“I want to bring a revolution to 360 so that organizations become more open and transparent, and driven by the desire for employees to request feedback on their competencies/skills and activities they execute on a daily basis” said Carter, BPI’s founder and a social-organizational psychologist.

The world of work is becoming more open and transparent. “A new IBM study of 1709 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterized the modern corporation for more than a century.”

Employees using skillrater engage in conversations and threaded discussions around improving their activities at work. Instead of hiding feedback from employees, employees may receive immediate correction of negatively reinforcing workplace habits directly from their bosses, peers, and customers. Employees may continue the feedback process in a threaded discussion to receive deeper advice and help from executive coaches or other members of the team. Repeating this process will show measurable changes in behavior and actions over time for your organization, as well as show patterns for the changes that need to me made on an individual, team, and organization level. The employee requests feedback of others directly, so that a culture of accountability and feedback is encouraged. Instead of “big brother/sister” HR forcing feedback of competencies and workplace performance, employees take ownership for creating their own culture of transparency so they may show their progress toward growth.

One study found that as many as 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies use 360-degree feedback with their employees. In a 360 assessment, feedback is sought from all directions of an employee’s circle: overseers, peers, direct reports, and sometimes even external sources, such as customers and suppliers.

Skillrater brings several innovations to the 360-degree process to make the technique easier to use and to increase the tool’s beneficial results. Features include:

“Skillrater is a great tool. Leaders and managers are going to fall in love with it,” said the world’s leading executive coach and bestselling author Marshall Goldsmith. “There is no better way for organizational leaders to track talent data. Skillrater gives you a simple way to request receive feedback on what you are doing, while building an in-house social network to discuss the feedback. The ability to customize Skillrater around the desired competencies of your organization is brilliant.”"

Focus on Leadership Development in Globally Dispersed Workforces

Most importantly, Carter said, Skillrater provides a social network through which members can springboard from quantitative ratings to qualitative discussions that make the feedback truly transformative. This is especially beneficial for dispersed workforces where consistent face-to-face communication is costly to accomplish.”

“Our goal is to create a social network within an organization that is focused on helping employees improve their skills and improve performance,” Carter said. “Skillrater is not primarily about promotion and pay decisions, it’s about leadership development and positive behavioral change throughout a national or global workforce.”

Studies have shown 360-degree feedback is an effective way to help workers identify their strengths and weaknesses, including blind spots in which they need further development. Skillrater’s convenient online platform, along with the addition of a social networking dimension, makes Skillrater a powerful leadership development for dispersed or collective learning environments.

After corporate clients learn their way around all the bells and whistles of Skillrater’s multi-rater feedback tool, Carter said, they will move on to appreciate the richness of the in-house social network, creating a dispersed learning environment in which ongoing leadership development and action learning is cultivated within domestic or global workforces.

Skillrater Benefits for Individual Users

Individuals may join Skillrater.com for free and choose up to five skills upon which to be rated. Top executives, mid-level rising stars and lower-level workers with an eye on advancement may all use Skillrater to request feedback and map their own course of development. Requesting a Skillrater rating is an excellent way for an individual to confirm satisfaction with a completed project or identify additional steps needed to achieve satisfaction. Using Skillrater, a worker can demonstrate to higher-ups one’s desire to perform well and also document tangible improvement.

An individual who has acquired several ratings on one’s Skillrater profile and has made those ratings public may catch the attention of employers on the search for talent. Skillrater will become a go-to destination for talent recruitment. Other social networks provide an individual’s name, personal background and employment history, but Skillrater provides rubber-meets-the-road details of how an individual has been evaluated by co-workers, clients and customers on actual projects.

Skillrater Benefits for Corporate Users

Companies may purchase an enterprise membership, giving executives an unparalleled tool for talent management and leadership development. Enterprise membership enables companies to enroll 1,000 users and place them in 20 groups or divisions.

For senior talent management executives, Skillrater provides a remarkable way to track the job performance, skill sets and leadership development of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of employees spread out across a national or global workforce. For years, connecting the right employees with the right tasks has been the elusive aim of talent management. With Skillrater, when a particular skill set is needed for a particular task, a manager can search on those specific skills, and then read fresh feedback on recent projects, including not only numerical ratings but subsequent comments and discussion. That is rich, valuable talent data, which Skillrater puts at executives’ fingertips.

Managers from different divisions may customize their own groups to have specific skills or competencies that are important for success on-the-job. Users can select these group skills when requesting ratings to get targeted feedback that meets the need of the department head or head of leadership development. The ability to customize skills is critical to an organization’s success, making this a key feature of Skillrater’s enterprise membership level.

VPs of leadership development have the ability to set up action learning groups with specific action items. Group members work together online to achieve goals and get ratings on the skills that will make them most successful on the action learning project. Changes in behavior and actual project results may be tracked over time, proving the ROI of the leadership development program.

How Does Skillrater Work?

Joining Skillrater is easy and painless. An individual can create a Skillrater profile in a few moments or import one’s profile and skill set from LinkedIn.

A Skillrater member may request a rating from anybody on anything. It really is that simple. The user simply clicks the “Request Rating” button, specifies the task or activity for which one seeks a rating and the specific skills on which feedback is desired.

Then the member sends off the rating requests. If the desired rater is already a Skillrater.com member, requesting a rating is just one additional click. If not, the user enters the desired rater’s email address, and a message is sent requesting the rating and providing the necessary link.

After feedback has been received, Skillrater notifies the user. Results include a spider chart, an easy-to-understand graphical interpretation of how the feedback lines up with one’s self-assessment. Users continue to share advice and further clarification via a discussion thread to continue the social learning and coaching experience online.

ABOUT BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE

Best Practice Institute is an award-winning leadership development center, think tank, peer network, research institute and online learning portal with more than 10,000 corporate and individual members around the world. Corporate members include Walmart, Bank of America, Pfizer, Hilton Hotels Worldwide, Scripps and many more of the world’s top corporations. BPI is based in West Palm Beach, FL, and is on the web at http://www.bestpracticeinstitute.org. BPI is ranked as one of the top ten “Best in Leadership Development” by Leadership Excellence Magazine.

Louis Carter is the founder and CEO of Best Practice Institute. Carter is a social-organizational psychologist, concept innovator, entrepreneur and a highly regarded authority on learning, talent, leadership development and change. He is the author or co-author of 11 books and a regular contributor to Fast Company, Chief Learning Officer, Talent Management, and Training Magazine.

For More Information or to schedule an interview, please contact Louis Carter: 800-718-4274; lou(at)bestpracticeinstitute.org

Louis Carter
Best Practice Institute
800-718-4274
Email Information

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State Department security chief leaves post over Benghazi

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.

Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.

Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave “pending further action.”

An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited “leadership and management” deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and “real confusion” in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.

“The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs,” Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.

Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.

PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON

The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.

“We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks,” retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.

The panel’s chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton’s office.

“We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where – if you like – the rubber hits the road,” Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.

The panel’s report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.

Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.

Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.

Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.

The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.

Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.

“It was very thorough,” said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: “It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels.” Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.

Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.

“The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad,” Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.

Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.

The report concluded that there was no such protest.

Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama’s top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)

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Liquid Nutrition Retains CHF Investor Relations

TORONTO, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Dec 20, 2012) – Liquid Nutrition Group Inc. (“Liquid Nutrition” or “Company”) (TSX VENTURE:LQD)(TSX VENTURE:LQD.WT) today announced that it has engaged CHF Investor Relations, a highly regarded Canadian investor relations firm headquartered in Toronto, as its IR partner.

“We are eager to share Liquid Nutrition”s story with a broader investor audience. CHF was selected to provide a solid broker outreach program and ongoing investor relations support that will showcase the Company”s growth and investment opportunity,” commented Glenn Young, President and CEO, Liquid Nutrition Group Inc.

Effective immediately, the services agreement for investor relations and market-making is for a term of twelve months to December 31^st 2013, and may be extended for up to one year. Under the terms of the services agreement, which is subject to TSX Venture Exchange approval, CHF will receive up to $ 7,500 per month in fees and reimbursement of expenses. CHF has been granted a total of 78,000 LQD stock options at an exercise price of $ 0.90 per share. The options vest quarterly over twelve months and have a five-year term. Upon termination of the services agreement, any vested options will be cancelled after 30 days, as is required for TSX Venture”s Tier 2 Issuers. 

The market-making activity will be conducted using a registered broker in compliance with Policy 3.4 of the TSX Venture Exchange Corporate Finance Manual (the “Manual”), IIROC”s Universal Market Integrity Rules & Policies (2010) and other relevant policies, so that trading orders in Liquid Nutrition”s shares are made to manage share price volatility and imbalances of orders in order to improve trading liquidity on the exchange. In accordance with Policy 3.4, section 2.8 of the Manual that states in part “an Issuer may not use its own funds, or provide direct or indirect compensation to other parties to undertake a market-making function in its securities,” the Company and CHF confirm that capital for the purposes of market-making has not and will not be provided from the Company”s treasury.

Prior to the grant of options outlined above, CHF had no direct or indirect interest in the Company or its securities.

About CHF Investor Relations

CHF”s effective role is acting as the public company”s outsourced, low-cost equivalent to an internal investor relations department. CHF serves an international portfolio of TSX/TSX Venture and CNSX listed companies that operate in a broad range of industries including niche products and business solutions, mining exploration and producers, oil & gas, industrial products and services, biotech and high-tech. The depth of capital market experience at CHF is formidable dating back to the late 1970”s.

About Liquid Nutrition Group Inc.

Liquid Nutrition Group Inc. (LNGI) (TSX VENTURE:LQD)(TSX VENTURE:LQD.WT) is a rapidly growing functional beverage, vitamin and supplement store brand committed to bringing healthy and delicious eating to communities around the world. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Liquid Nutrition Franchising Corporation, LNGI has signed franchise agreements for over 80 stores across Canada, as well as license agreement in the Caribbean and the Middle East. For store locations, business opportunities or more information visit www.liquidnutrition.com. Please join Liquid Nutrition on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @liquidnutrition.

About Team Liquid

Comprised of pro-athletes and experts in the world of sports, fitness and nutrition, members of Team Liquid were selected based on their personal and professional dedication to healthy active living. Members of the Team Liquid include: Steve Nash; Matt Ryan; Suzann Pettersen; Russell Martin; Vincent Lecavallier; Tora Bright; Elaine Hastings, RD, LD/N, CSSD, Nutritionist; Trish Stratus, seven times WWE World Champion, Yoga Master and Arlene Dickinson, Dragon”s Den CEO. To see what the Team Liquid has to say about Liquid Nutrition, please visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=da785AGWQqk.

To receive Company news via email, contact [email protected] and mention “Liquid Nutrition” in the subject line.

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Why “Les Misérables” Looks Like a Holiday Box-Office Smash

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Moviegoers are storming online ticketing sites in advance of the Christmas release of “Les Misérables,” and the big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical has all the makings of a holiday smash.

With a cast that includes Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman, expectations are enormous, but based on advance tracking, so is the box-office potential.

The film, made for a reported $ 61 million, is poised to gross as much as $ 26 million over its opening weekend, according to BoxOffice.com.

The site predicts that the movie should pick up multiple Oscar nominations and that awards attention combined with a rabid fan base of musical theater lovers will have it beguiling moviegoers well into the new year.

Ultimately, it estimates that “Les Misérables” will rack up as much as $ 136 million at the domestic box office.

It’s well on its way. Early ticket sales at Fandango indicate that “Les Misérables” has the potential to be this holiday’s breakout smash, despite stiff competition from the likes of Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained,” both of which open over the next seven days.

Fandango also reports that the film has smashed records to become the company’s top advance-ticket seller among all Christmas Day releases, surpassing its previous record-holder, 2009′s “Sherlock Holmes”

It is also the largest advance-ticket seller among movie musicals in its history, supplanting 2006′s “Dreamgirls.” By mid-day Wednesday, “Les Misérables” was outpacing all other films, even current releases like “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” and was responsible for 40 percent of ticket sales at Fandango.

“There’s such a history and good will surrounding the stage musical and this is a film version people have been anticipating for such a long time, that it has turned into the movie event of the holiday season,” Dave Karger, Fandango’s chief correspondent, told TheWrap.

“We’re bullish on it,” added Phil Contrino, editor of BoxOffice.com. “Based on all the early reviews, this sounds like a crowd-pleaser. When a musical hits, it becomes a beast at the box office.”

He noted that “Mamma Mia!,” which arrived with less awards pedigree and was derived from a more dimly known stage show, grossed $ 609.8 million globally, because audiences loved the music.

Movietickets.com did not release any pre-sales information for holiday releases. However, recent surveys it performed of more than 4,000 customers indicate that there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the musical.

Of the major holiday releases, 52 percent of those polled said they were most excited to see “Les Misérables.” That was followed by 24 percent for “Django Unchained,” 16.5 percent for “Jack Reacher” and 7.5 percent for “The Guilt Trip.”

To be sure, not all of the “Les Misérables” reviews have been kind. In TheWrap, Alonso Duralde faulted the wobbly vocal talents of the leads and the director’s penchant for close-ups of his emoting stars.

“Director Tom Hooper (‘The King’s Speech’) piles one terrible decision upon another, with the result being a movie so overbearingly maudlin and distorted that it’s one of 2012′s most excruciating film experiences,” Duralde wrote.

Yet, audiences at screenings have been nearly rapturous in their response. Fandango’s Karger notes that at a recent screening for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that he attended, the crowd broke into applause at four different points during the film and gave Jackman and Hooper lusty ovations.

Given that “Les Misérables” tackles such topics as revolution, poverty and prostitution it seems like dark fare for the season, but Karger argues that the film provides enough uplift to appeal to moviegoers looking to get into the yuletide spirit.

“There are scenes of such intense suffering and despair in the movie, but at the end you are left with a profound feeling of love and that gives it a holiday feel,” Karger said. “It’s a slog through the mud to get there, but when the movie’s over you leave the theater with a wonderful sense of hope.”

If Karger is right then Universal, which is distributing “Les Misérables,” will be feeling very festive when Christmas rolls around next week.

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