Obama Vows HealthCare.gov Problems Will Be Fixed 'ASAP'

President Obama speaks Wednesday at Boston's Faneuil Hall about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

President Obama speaks Wednesday at Boston's Faneuil Hall about the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

Darren McCollester/Getty Images

President Obama on Wednesday said he takes full responsibility for the troubled HealthCare.gov website and is determined to make sure it gets fixed "ASAP."

"The website hasn't worked the way it's supposed to in these past few weeks," he told an audience in Boston. "There's no denying it. The website is too slow ... and I'm not happy about it."

His remarks followed testimony on Wednesday morning in which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took blame for the botched website and told Americans during testimony at a congressional hearing: "You deserve better. ... I apologize. ... I'm accountable to you."

The president compared the problems to the rollout of the health care overhaul in Massachusetts that occurred under then-Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006.

"Health care reform in this state was a success," he said. "But there were problems at the start. There were changes that needed to be made."

Even so, the president said, the "parade of horribles" predicted for what's been dubbed "Romneycare" never materialized.

Today, he said, the "vast majority" of Massachusetts citizens are happy with their coverage.

He pointed to popular aspects of the 3-year-old federal law, including an end to discrimination against children with pre-existing conditions and the ability of parents to keep children on their plans until age 26.

As The Associated Press reports:

"Underscoring the president's challenge, the healthcare.gov website was down, because of technical difficulties, during his remarks."

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/30/241923064/obama-vows-healthcare-gov-problems-will-be-fixed-asap?ft=1&f=1001
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Facebook 3Q results fly past expectations

NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook's latest quarterly results showed continued strength in mobile advertising, which spurred a 60 percent revenue increase in the July-September quarter.

The numbers beat Wall Street's expectations for the second consecutive quarter, but after an initial after-hours trading spike, Facebook's stock took a downturn during the company's conference call with analysts.

Investors may have been spooked by a remark by Facebook finance chief David Ebersman, who said the company saw a decrease in daily use among younger teenagers, an important but fickle demographic.

After soaring as much as 18 percent to $57.98 after the quarterly results came out, shares of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook slid to $48.44 in extended trading during the company's conference call. The stock had closed Wednesday's regular trading day down 39 cents at $49.01.

The stock's fluctuations overshadowed a stellar quarter. The world's largest social network said Wednesday that it earned $425 million, or 17 cents per share, in the third quarter. That's up from a loss of $59 million, or 2 cents per share, in the same period a year ago.

Adjusted earnings were $621 million, or 25 cents per share, in the latest quarter. That's 6 cents better than analysts expected. This figure excludes special items, mainly stock compensation expenses.

Revenue grew 60 percent to $2.02 billion from $1.26 billion, helped by increasing mobile advertising revenue.

Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue of $1.91 billion, according to FactSet.

"The strong results we achieved this quarter show that we're prepared for the next phase of our company, as we work to bring the next five billion people online and into the knowledge economy," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Facebook's advertising revenue was $1.8 billion, up 66 percent from a year ago. Mobile ads accounted for 49 percent of the company's total ad revenue during the quarter. In the second quarter, mobile ads amounted to 41 percent of the total. The increase shows Facebook's strategy to become a "mobile-first" company is paying off.

At the same time, Facebook is growing its share of the mobile advertising market. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Facebook will grab 15.8 percent of the world's mobile ad spending this year, up from 5.4 percent last year. Google Inc., meanwhile, is expected to capture 53.2 percent this year, up slightly from a 52.4 percent share in 2012.

There were 1.19 billion Facebook users as of the end of September, up 18 percent from a year ago. Of these, an average of 728 million users logged in every day during the month of September, up 25 percent from a year ago.

Facebook had 874 million monthly mobile users at the end of the quarter, up 45 percent year-over-year. In a conference call with analysts, though, Ebersman said that the company saw a decrease in daily use among younger teenagers. That's been a concern for some analysts who fear young people are migrating to newer sites. Luckily for Facebook, this includes the photo-sharing service it owns, Instagram.

As expected, the quarter's operating expenses increased as Facebook continued to invest in growing its staff and enhancing its technical infrastructure. Total costs were $1.28 billion in the latest quarter, up 45 percent from $885 million a year ago. The company ended the quarter with nearly 5,800 employees, up 34 percent from a year earlier.

Facebook went public in May 2012 at $38 per share. It took the stock more than a year to surpass that price as the company worked to prove that it could grow mobile advertising revenue at a time when an increasing number of its users were accessing it on cellphones and tablet computers. Facebook didn't start showing advertisements on its mobile applications until last spring. In the first quarter of this year, the mobile category accounted for 30 percent of total ad revenue.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2013-10-30-Earns-Facebook/id-178caed087004d0487e5c52c10d55da1
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It's Not a Broken Promise If You Never Meant It

Here’s the ObamaCare rollout in two sentences: Millions of Americans are losing their health insurance policies because of the law. And many of the soon to be uninsured can’t sign up for the new federal benefits because the Obama administration screwed up its Web site.

 

Yikes.

Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/30/it039s_not_a_broken_promise_if_you_never_meant_it_318917.html
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Bellator 106: Pat Curran vs. Daniel Straus Video Preview

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Source: http://mmafrenzy.com/95569/bellator-106-pat-curran-vs-daniel-straus-video-preview/
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We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa): Morelia Review

The Bottom Line

A rough-and-tumble, enjoyable yarn about a group of 16-year-old punk-rock wannabes from Guadalajara.

Venue

Morelia Film Festival (Competition)

Director

Samuel Kishi Leopo

Cast

Alejandro Gallardo, Arnold Ramirez, Rafael Andrade Munoz, Moises Galindo, Jaime Miranda, Petra Iniguez Robles

MORELIA -- The teenage members of a Mexican punk-rock band with a single-song repertoire struggle to come up with a second tune so they can compete in a battle of the bands in We Are Mari Pepa (Somos Mari Pepa), the feature debut of 29-year-old director Samuel Kishi Leopo, who expands his eponymous 2011 short into an appropriately rough-and-tumble yet finally very enjoyable yarn.

Though Mari Pepa can’t quite decide whether it’s really the story of the band’s 16-year-old guitar player or, as the title seems to suggest, the story of all of the band members, who all still live all home, Kishi Leopo demonstrates a good eye for youth culture and the foibles of adolescence and manages to imbue his characters with an infectious and youthful spirit that the young actors, all encoring, unaffectedly get across in their characterizations.

This Morelia competition title’s international bow will take place at AFI and the film should pursue a successful world festival tour, with an outside chance of niche pickups, especially in the Hispanosphere. 

Alex (Alejandro Gallardo) is the long-locked guitarist of the Guadalajara-based band Mari Pepa (“‘Mari’ stands for marijuana, ‘Pepa’ refers to the female genitals,” Alex explains). The makeshift group further consists of the slightly awkward Rafa (Rafael Andrade Munoz), with a green baseball cap on backwards, behind the drums; the charismatic Bolter (Arnold Ramirez) on vocals and curly-haired Moy (Moises Galindo), the only proud owner of an actual girlfriend, on bass.

Their signature (and only) song is a punk-rock piece whose shouty refrain simply repeats the line “I wanna cum in your face, Natasha,” in English, though it’s made abundantly clear that perhaps only Moy ever got beyond second base. One of the film’s best scenes is a beautifully observed, rather uncomfortable moment when Moy brings his girlfriend along to a rehearsal, with the other boys simultaneously annoyed and intimidated by her presence and in awe and slightly jealous of Moy.

Leopo and co-screenwriter Sofia Gomez Cordova cap off the moment with some tension-defusing humor, when the alien presence in the boys’ midst cluelessly asks if they “know any One Direction songs?” Leopo supplies all his characters with varying reactions that are translated into body language that evolves throughout the sequence, not just when someone has a line of dialog, ensuring the moment feels just right both in the fore- and background.    

Though individual scenes feel authentic, the overall structure’s rather loose and there’s not a single narrative throughline. This has several advantages, including the notable absence of an utterly clichéd, battle of the bands-set finale. But it also somewhat diffuses the film’s focus, with Alex clearly the main protagonist but the agile camera also present in the homes of his peers, who have their parents nagging them about college applications and the like.

There’s an surprising scene in which Alex, looking to make some cash after his guitar’s stolen, attends a HerbaLife sales-pitch meeting and he unexpectedly runs into the unemployed father of one of his bandmates, whom he later sees sitting alone in his car in front of his home in what feels like the moment Alex realizes that adult life isn’t necessarily all that it’s made out to be. That said, the film’s portrait of the Mexican middle class mostly lacks any Y tu mama tambien-like social commentary that would put these boys’ adolescent struggles in a larger societal context.

Though Gallardo has great chemistry with his peers, it’s his character’s relationships with adults that provide the most poignant drama, including the scenes with his ailing grandmother (Petra Iniguez Robles,also from the short). This storyline has the most traditional resolution, though Leopo manages to give it its own twist by introducing Alex’s half-brother, a plucky kid who apes his older sibling but who’s clearly still got a lot of growing up to do to get to where Alex is at the film’s end.

Technically, Mari Pepa’s also got a punky vibe and footage includes some low-grade images shot by Alex on his beloved, if battered, digital camera. The music, written by the director’s brother, Kenji Kishi, is perfect punk-rock wannabe material.

Venue: Morelia Film Festival (Competition)
Production companies: Teonanacatl Audiovisual, Cebolla Films
Cast: Alejandro Gallardo, Arnold Ramirez, Rafael Andrade Munoz, Moises Galindo, Jaime Miranda, Petra Iniguez Robles
Director: Samuel Kishi Leopo
Screenwriters: Samuel Kiski Leopo, Sofia Gomez Cordova
Producers: Toiz Rodriquez
Director of photography: Octavio Arauz
Production designer: Rebeca del Real
Music: Kenji Kishi
Costume designer: Clara del Real Aguiler
Editor: Yordi Capo, Carlo Espinoza
Sales: Figa Films
No rating, 95 minutes

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thr/reviews/film/~3/pByJQ8gTTg8/we-are-mari-pepa-somos-651778
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The roundup: Nexus 5 leaks all over the place ahead of anticipated launch

It's coming; here's a last-minute look at everywhere the Nexus 5 has cropped up in the past 24 hours

In case you hadn't been paying attention, there's a new Nexus phone due to arrive very soon, and this week has seen the LG-made device make its way out to all corners of the world ahead of its anticipated release. There's evidence that devices are already in the hands of carrier and retailer reps, so naturally this has led to an acceleration in the pace of online leaks. Join us after the break for a rundown of some newly-unearthed images of this still unannounced handset.

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/pBnFTUi-Er0/story01.htm
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Why 'Wolf Of Wall Street' Is Giving Us 'GoodFellas' Flashbacks

Trailer for Martin Scorsese's corporate greed flick bears more than a passing resemblance to the crime classic.


By Kevin P. Sullivan

Source:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1716513/wolf-of-wall-street-second-trailer.jhtml

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