UPDATE 1-NBA-Timberwolves overcome lost Love to clip Hawks

* Rubio returns for Timberwolves
* Hawks lose third straight
Jan 8 (Reuters) - The Minnesota Timberwolves coped with the absence of head coach Rick Adelman and All Star forward Kevin Love to beat Atlanta 108-103 on Tuesday, ending a near seven-year winless run against the Hawks.
Timberwolves coach Adelman missed the game for personal reasons, while Love is out indefinitely after reinjuring his right hand last week, but the home team still had enough beat the Hawks for the first time since April 2006.
Nikola Pekovic scored 25 points and had 18 rebounds, Andrei Kirilenko added 21 for Minnesota (16-15), who had lost 11 straight to the Hawks before Tuesday's game.
"We were really motivated," Pekovic told reporters. "I think everyone wants to step up and show more."
Minnesota led 100-89 with four minutes remaining but Atlanta managed to cut the deficit to one in the final minute. Minnesota's Dante Cunningham made a crucial jump shot with 15 seconds left and the Timberwolves added free throws to put the game away.
Minnesota's Ricky Rubio returned from a four-game absence with back spasms and had eight assists in just 19 minutes of action.
Josh Smith and Louis Williams each scored 21 for the Hawks (20-13), who have lost three straight.
"If this doesn't change there's going to have to be some changes, that's plain and simple," said Hawks coach Larry Drew.
"(To) come out and not be energized to play, that's totally unacceptable."
Atlanta fell behind early, trailing by as much as 17 in the second, but they sprang to life late in the fourth, with Kyle Korver making two straight three-pointers. Al Horford had 19 and 11 rebounds in the defeat.

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Timberwolves overcome lost Love to clip Hawks

(Reuters) - The Minnesota Timberwolves coped with the absence of head coach Rick Adelman and All Star forward Kevin Love to beat Atlanta 108-103 on Tuesday, ending a near seven-year winless run against the Hawks.
Timberwolves coach Adelman missed the game for personal reasons, while Love is out indefinitely after reinjuring his right hand last week, but the home team still had enough beat the Hawks for the first time since April 2006.
Nikola Pekovic scored 25 points and had 18 rebounds, Andrei Kirilenko added 21 for Minnesota (16-15), who had lost 11 straight to the Hawks before Tuesday's game.
"We were really motivated," Pekovic told reporters. "I think everyone wants to step up and show more."
Minnesota led 100-89 with four minutes remaining but Atlanta managed to cut the deficit to one in the final minute. Minnesota's Dante Cunningham made a crucial jump shot with 15 seconds left and the Timberwolves added free throws to put the game away.
Minnesota's Ricky Rubio returned from a four-game absence with back spasms and had eight assists in just 19 minutes of action.
Josh Smith and Louis Williams each scored 21 for the Hawks (20-13), who have lost three straight.
"If this doesn't change there's going to have to be some changes, that's plain and simple," said Hawks coach Larry Drew.
"(To) come out and not be energized to play, that's totally unacceptable."
Atlanta fell behind early, trailing by as much as 17 in the second, but they sprang to life late in the fourth, with Kyle Korver making two straight three-pointers. Al Horford had 19 and 11 rebounds in the defeat.

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Microsoft's Ballmer, group to pay $500 mln for NBA's Kings-report

SEATTLE, Jan 9 (Reuters) - A group of investors including Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer and hedge fund manager Chris Hansen is close to a deal to buy the Sacramento Kings professional basketball team for $500 million and move the National Basketball Association franchise to Seattle, Yahoo Sports reported on Wednesday.
The Maloof family is close to agreeing to sell the Kings to the Ballmer group, which hopes to move the franchise to Seattle in time for the 2013-14 season, Yahoo Sports cited league sources as saying. Reuters could not immediately confirm the accuracy of the report.
As part of the proposed deal, the Kings would play for two seasons in KeyArena - the former stomping grounds of the Seattle Supersonics - before moving into a new facility built with the help of a public financing deal already in place, Yahoo reported.
Ballmer, the NBA and representatives for Hansen all declined to comment.
The Sacramento Kings did not immediately respond to phone calls or emails seeking comment. Seattle city officials told Reuters they were aware of the rumors, but were not in a position to comment.
Seattle lost the SuperSonics franchise in 2008 when it moved to Oklahoma City and was renamed the Thunder. At the time, its owner faulted Seattle officials for not coming up with a plan to build a new arena.
Then last October, officials from Seattle - a stone's throw from Microsoft's corporate base in Redmond - signed off on a pact to bankroll a new NBA arena. That was built on an earlier agreement struck between would-be franchise owner Hansen, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and King County Executive Dow Constantine.
But McGinn was coy when asked about the report on Wednesday.
"I know as much as you do about the Sonics," McGinn told reporters at a re-election news conference on Wednesday. "But if it's true, ain't it cool?"
Industry observers said there remained a welter of factors that could undermine any potential agreement.
Hansen has spent millions of dollars on land south of downtown Seattle to house a new arena, though locating it there is contingent upon the outcome of an environmental assessment and a review of other potential sites.
"It's not a done deal. There are discussions, I'm told," said Marc Ganis, president of consultancy SportsCorp Ltd in Chicago, who is not involved in the deal. "There are lots of unknowns. I think $500 million sounds like the right range."
Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, himself a former NBA star, also weighed in on the widespread reports on Wednesday.

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NBA-Knicks' Anthony banned one game for approaching Garnett

Jan 9 (Reuters) - New York Knicks All-Star forward Carmelo Anthony has been suspended one game by the National Basketball Association (NBA) for approaching an opposing player on multiple occasions after a recent game, the league said on Wednesday.
Anthony confronted Boston Celtics forward Kevin Garnett in the arena tunnel near the players' locker rooms and again in the parking garage following New York's 102-96 home loss on Monday.
The incidents occurred after a game in which Anthony and Garnett jawed at each other, including one exchange during the fourth quarter that lead to technical fouls for both players.
"There are no circumstances in which it is acceptable for a player to confront an opponent after a game," Stu Jackson, the NBA's executive vice president of basketball operations, said in a statement.
"Carmelo Anthony attempted to engage with Kevin Garnett multiple times after Monday's game and therefore a suspension was warranted."
Anthony, second in the league in scoring behind Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers with a 29.0 average, will serve his suspension on Jan. 10 when the Atlantic division-leading Knicks play at the Indiana Pacers.

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Huawei unveils two new quad-core Android phablets

Huawei (002502) on Monday took the wraps off its colossal Ascend Mate and Ascend D2 smartphones at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Ascend Mate is the larger of the two and is equipped with a 6.1-inch 720p display, a 1.5GHz in-house quad-core processor, an 8-megapixel rear camera and a massive 4,050 mAh battery. The smaller Ascend D2 features a 5-inch 1080p display with a class leading pixel density of 443 pixels-per-inch. The smartphone is equipped with the same 1.5GHz quad-core processor as its larger sibling, and includes a 3,000 mAh battery and a 13-megapixel rear camera.
[More from BGR: Smooth sailing is over for Apple]
The Ascend Mate also includes a “Magic Touch” feature, which provides enhanced screen responsiveness even when wearing gloves, and the Ascend D2 is dust and water resistant. Both devices run Huawei’s Emotion user interface atop Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and also feature on-screen navigational keys.
[More from BGR: New ‘higher-end’ iPhone reportedly launching by June, low-end model could be coming as well]
No pricing or North American launch details were announced.

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Diminishing Returns: The Cold, Hard Truth for CES Smartphones

Sony has a new flagship phone at CES called the Xperia Z, and it is pretty decent. The company has another one, called the Xperia ZL, that’s also fairly nice. They’re both roughly as okay as the flagship Ascend D2 phone that Huawei was showing off in another part of the room.
If my descriptors seem lacking, that’s intentional. The truth is that none of these phones seem markedly better than last year’s holiday handsets. They’ve got a few perks that some older phones don’t, like 1080p displays and quad-core processors, but in real world use it’s hard to see the added benefit.
When I sampled another new phone this morning, Pantech’s Discover, the experience seemed practically as solid as Sony’s and Huawei’s flagship devices, despite a mere 720p display and a dual-core chip. The biggest difference is that Pantech’s phone will sell for $50 on AT&T, starting this Friday. Huawei’s and Sony’s phones will likely be more expensive if they ever reach the United States.
This is the bitter reality for Android phone makers right now. The improvements in the latest, most premium phones aren’t really that big of a deal. A 1080p display doesn’t look much different from a 720p display at normal viewing distances. A quad-core processor doesn’t provide much of a real-world benefit over a dual-core one. Photos from a 13-megapixel camera don’t look significantly better than photos from an 8-megapixel one, and shutter lag on most good smartphone cameras dropped to near zero a year ago.
As a result my brain feels a bit mushy as I look at the latest phones from CES. In the context of quick hands-on demos, there aren’t a lot of remarkable things to relay about the cream of the crop. At a glance, they’re all just pretty good phones. (Okay, let’s give the Xperia Z credit for one cool trick: It can survive up to 30 minutes dunked in water.)
Jared Newman / TIME.com
Google is partly to thank–or to blame–for this situation. Ever since Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich, Android phones have become a lot smoother and more polished. It’s now hard to tell the difference between a phone with a top-of-the-line processor and one with the next-best thing. Software, for that matter, tends to be the source of most innovation in smartphones nowadays, and while Android phone makers tend to add some of their own software bells and whistles to their phones, I’ve yet to see any innovations from them on par with, say, Google Now.
This isn’t only the case with Android. As I wrote last March, diminishing returns seems to have hit Apple’s latest products as well. In general, spec boosts in mobile devices just don’t have the same wow factor as they did a couple years ago, when an increase in display resolution or processing power produced noticeable differences to the average user.
There’s a chance that some real innovation will happen at Mobile World Congress next month, where big shots like Samsung, LG and HTC may announce new phones. But I’m willing to wager the story will be a lot like it is here: A bunch of incremental improvements in tech specs that don’t make much of a difference. That’s not so tragic–there are worse things, after all, than a really solid smartphone with no defining traits. It’s just kind of boring.

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Iranian Bank Hackers, the Fate of the Dreamliner, and a Poetic Inauguration

Behind the New York Times pay wall, you only get 10 free clicks a month. For those worried about hitting their limit, we're taking a look through the paper each morning to find the stories that can make your clicks count.
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Top Stories: Recent online attacks on U.S. banks, which were responsible for "transforming the online equivalent of a few yapping Chihuahuas into a pack of fire-breathing Godzillas," are said to have originated in Iran.
RELATED: Afghanistan Casualties, 'Call Me Maybe,' and Michael J. Fox
World: In the now peaceful Helmand Province, where the battle against the Taliban raged two years ago, there are worries about "the ability of the Afghan government and security forces to maintain the security gains won by the huge American and British military effort here."
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U.S.: Nashville, with trendiness that gave it clout in 2012, would be the place "on a Venn diagram...where conservative Christians and hipsters overlap."
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New York: Asian-Americans are a growing power in philanthropy.
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Business: Though there are high hopes for the Boeing 787, a fuel leak was only one of many recent setbacks.
Sports: The Baseball Hall of Fame now weighs including players connected to steroids but has a history of letting stars of the game with personal histories of bad behavior join its ranks.
Opinion: Ted Gup writes that the C.I.A. "invokes secrecy to serve its interests but abandons it to burnish its image and discredit critics."
Art & Design: Michael Kimmelman writes an appraisal of Ada Louise Huxtable.
Books: The inaugural poet, Richard Blanco, felt a "spiritual connection" with Obama.
Dining & Wine: The post-inauguration lunch will feature "sustainable, artisanal and local ingredients" and the menu will include lobster and bison.

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Rosa Rodriguez Pens New Book Helping Parents and Daughters Plan for the Important Celebration

The Quintessential Guide to Planning a Sweet 16.

Brooklyn, NY (PRWEB) January 10, 2013
Party planning can be quite overwhelming, especially when it’s in preparation for something as important as a Sweet 16 birthday party. The popularity of MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16” has raised not only the excitement for the celebration, but also expectations. To help plan for one’s Sweet 16, Rosa Rodriguez has penned the new book, “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen: A practical guide for planning and celebrating a Sweet Sixteen” (published by AuthorHouse).
“Teenage girls and their mothers will no longer have to look at wedding books or types of party books and adjust what they read for the Sweet 16 party,” Rodriguez explains. “This book is practical, with short to the point chapters, and doesn’t assume the parents can afford to spend $20,000 or more on a Sweet 16 party. In fact, it actually discourages parents from over spending.”
Rodriguez has practical experience planning and celebrating Sweet 16s and Quinceañeras, having planned several herself. Now she takes her wealth of knowledge and helps other parents and their daughters plan for their own celebrations.
“Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” shows the benefits of planning with attention to detail through to the party itself, showcasing how proper planning can lead to a successful and stress-free party for both parents and children. In addition, it is colorfully illustrated by artist Alana Lively, whimsically leading readers through the book.
About the Author

Rosa Rodriguez has a certificate in travel and tourism from New York University which included learning how to plan and celebrate parties and events. She has practical experience planning and celebrating Sweet 16s and Quinceañeras. As an administrative assistant to high level executives, she planned business breakfasts and lunches, and while working at the public relations department of a large New York law firm she learned the behind-the-scenes aspects of planning a big event, assisting in pre-event activities, during the event and with post-event activities.
Alana Lively is an illustrator, painter, writer and stay-at-home mom. She grew up in Denver and attended the University of Kansas where she studied art and majored in English creative writing. She lives in Denver with her husband, Peter, and her two beautiful red-headed daughters, Katie and Ellie. She is currently taking film acting classes and co-producing short films with her husband. Lively enjoys running, going out for coffee and organic gardening.
AuthorHouse, an Author Solutions, Inc. self-publishing imprint, is a leading provider of book publishing, marketing, and bookselling services for authors around the globe and offers the industry’s only suite of Hollywood book-to-film services. Committed to providing the highest level of customer service, AuthorHouse assigns each author personal publishing and marketing consultants who provide guidance throughout the process. Headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, AuthorHouse celebrated 15 years of service to authors in Sept. 2011.For more information or to publish a book visit authorhouse.com or call 1-888-519-5121. For the latest, follow @authorhouse on Twitter.

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Hollywood's 'Golden Age Theater' Arrives in Las Vegas for One Performance Only

Performance of L. Ron Hubbard’s science fiction thriller “Tough Old Man” taking place at Church of Scientology Las Vegas on Saturday, January 12 at 1:00 PM

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) January 10, 2013
The Golden Age Theater located in Hollywood, California has sent a team of popular actors to perform the science fiction thriller written by master storyteller L. Ron Hubbard. It is called “Tough Old Man”— Moffat is sent for final training under the senior constable of the Frontier Patrol in interplanetary service—Old Keno. Moffat searches to discover why Old Keno doesn’t feel extreme cold or heat, and never seems to eat, and what he finds provides a totally unexpected ending.
The performance of “Tough Old Man” features Skip Harris, Ryann London and Gino Montesinos.
Gino Montesinos has starred at such premiere American theaters as The Mark Taper Forum, Lincoln Center and the New York Shakespeare Festival. His film work includes supporting roles in Collateral, Cellular and Bruce Almighty. In television, he has guest-starred on CSI:NY, 24 and ER.
Skip Harris is a veteran Broadway stage actor and a talented and versatile singer. His stage performances include appearances in the original Sweeney Todd, Cats and Beauty and the Beast.
Ryann London began her acting career in theater at the age of 13 with a role in Steel Magnolias. She’s shared the screen with such performers as John Travolta, Dennis Farina, Tori Spelling and Zachary Quinto.
It will take place at the Church of Scientology Las Vegas, 2761 Emerson Avenue, on Saturday, January 12. Doors open at noon and the show starts at 1:00PM. The performance is free. All are invited.
The Golden Age Theater has received CBS Radio’s highest four-star rating giving the shows “FOUR STARS (Highest Rating) [for] Southern California’s most refreshingly unique entertainment experience.”
Stories from the Golden Age contains 153 stories all written by Hubbard during the 1930s and 1940s—in genres ranging from Mystery to Thriller, Science Fiction and Fantasy to Adventure and Western, using his own and fifteen pen names—widely considered America’s Golden Age of Fiction. The print version of each work includes the pulp fiction artwork that originally accompanied the story in magazine publication.

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JazzMyApp.com - Pinterest for Mobile Apps

The team behind mobile9 launched JazzMyApp.com to be the Pinterest for mobile applications. It is designed for users to share and discover trending apps with a click of a button.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (PRWEB) January 10, 2013
JazzMyApp (http://www.jazzmyapp.com/) - the Pinterest for mobile applications - lets users easily share and discover awesome apps with a click of a button.
With over a million apps available, finding good apps remains a challenge for consumers. JazzMyApp aims to solve the app discovery problem by highlighting trending apps with help from bookmarklet, a little browser tool popularized by Pinterest.
"JazzMyApp users can 'pin' apps from any articles on the Internet using our bookmarklet. On top of that, we automatically pull in recommendations from over 100 blogs including TechCrunch, The Next Web, Mashable and many others. With the two combined, we hope to help users discover the most talked about apps and app deals. Our users are able to discover trending apps even before the native app store lists them." said Patrick Ooi, founder of JazzMyApp and mobile9.com.
To get started, users have to connect their Facebook account with JazzMyApp. Once done, install the "Jazz App" bookmarklet by dragging and dropping the button onto the bookmark bar. When users jazz from an app store or website, JazzMyApp automatically grabs app and features it on jazzmyapp.com for other users to follow, re-jazz and comment on. As users start jazzing, the apps will go to their personal jazz board, making it easy for them to organize all their favorite apps in one place. Users can also browse through other users' collections and add to their own jazz board. It builds an enjoyable journey through sharing, exchanging and discovering awesome apps.

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