London overtakes New York as top fashion capital

According to a new survey by internet tracking company, the Global Language Monitor, the British capital takes the reign thanks to fashion's most prominent pairing in years: Princess Kate and Alexander McQueen.

Based on a ranking that tracks mentions on the internet, New York had ruled supreme in past years, but 2011 seems to be the end of the "Sex and the City" era, making room for the Duchess of Cambridge's royal style, which first came to the world's attention thanks to her McQueen wedding dress.

"We are seeing what the impact of two genuine media stars, Princess Kate and Alexander McQueen can have upon a global ranking. Our numbers show that it was their presence that tipped the victory to London over New York," said Bekka Payack, the Manhattan-based fashion correspondent of the Global Language Monitor. "

London and New York are followed by Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, and Hong Kong. Barcelona, Singapore, Tokyo and Berlin are also featured in the top ten.

Jennifer Lopez returning to 'Idol'

If there was ever any doubt, it's gone now. Jennifer Lopez will be back at the judge's panel for the 11th season of "American Idol."

The Fox network has made Lopez's return official, along with her fellow judges, Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler and record producer Randy Jackson. In addition, Fox said Wednesday that Ryan Seacrest will be back as host.

Singer-actress Lopez debuted as a judge this past season. But in recent weeks, she had publicly been coy about whether she would stay with the hit musical competition.

Any lingering skepticism was dispelled last week by "Idol" executive producer Nigel Lythgoe. He declared, unofficially, that Lopez would be back while interviewed on Seacrest's radio program.

"American Idol" begins its new season Jan. 22.

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Fringe musical mocks Julie Taymor and 'Spider-Man'

To see how far Julie Taymor has fallen over the past year, look no further than the New York International Fringe Festival.

That's where the visionary director and choreographer behind the stunning "The Lion King" has become an object of sniggering and outright goofing during a lively musical that rips her and everyone associated with the Broadway spectacle "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark."

"The Legend of Julie Taymor, or the Musical That Killed Everybody!" — with book and lyrics by Travis Ferguson and music and lyrics by Dave Ogrin — is a spirited behind-the-scenes fictional look at the messy birth of Broadway's most expensive show. It is wicked and rollicking.

Julie Taymor — sorry, make that "Julie Paymore" — is portrayed as a crazed, ego-driven maniac who vows to save Broadway with a show about "Spider-Dude" that blends Greek myth with wind machines and 16 golden confetti cannons. She's so driven that she sleeps with the theater owner to keep the show open and at one point kills a man with her bare hands. She also may or may not have burned down the theater on opening night.

"For the scene where Spider-Dude is battling the Gods on Mount Olympus, I need the clouds to come down around the audience with hail and lightning, and I want an actual tornado to form in the middle of the house. Got that!?" Paymore, played by Jennifer Barnhart, asks her minions.

Paymore isn't the only one lambasted by this show. U2's Bono — one half of the "Spider-Man" songwriters — is transformed into a guy named Bruno (Clint Carter), complete with leather jacket, sunglasses and an Irish accent; The New York Post's Michael Riedel becomes Lionel Weasel, determined to destroy the musical; and Johnie Moore plays producer Michael Cohl as an aging hippie with a bong.

The show is one of 194 productions at the festival, which also includes the hot "Yeast Nation," a new musical by the Tony Award-winning team behind the Broadway hit "Urinetown"; "Jersey Shoresical: A Frickin' Rock Opera"; "Facebook Me"; and "Bella and the Pool Boy."

The nine-member cast of "The Legend of Julie Taymor," under the direction and choreography of Joe Barros, is funny and energetic, making up for unevenness in vocal ability. The songs are far better than you might expect, with the best being "Broadway's Burning," ''Boy Falls From The Rafters" — a play on the actual Broadway musical's "The Boy Falls From the Sky" — and "Tweet, Tweet, Tweet!" as the ensemble leaks that the Broadway musical is terrible.

There's a word for this kind of show: impudent. And another one: delicious. A bunch of twentysomethings in jeans and T-shirts are mocking Taymor, Bono and the hubris of "Spider-Man," but they're also asking where art goes when spectacle is all that anyone wants to see.

In that way, the jokey musical is more interesting than the one it's mocking.

Carradine's widow settles wrongful death suit

Court records show David Carradine's widow has reached a settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a French company handling the actor's final film.

An attorney for Anne Carradine filed a notice Monday in Los Angeles indicating the parties had reached a conditional settlement. Exact terms were not disclosed.

The 72-year-old "Kung Fu" star was found dead in a Bangkok hotel room in 2009 while working on a film called "Stretch."

Anne Carradine sued MK2 S.A. in June 2010, claiming the company promised to provide David Carradine with an assistant to help him navigate Bangkok but the assistant left him behind for dinner on the night before the actor was found dead.

MK2 denied wrongdoing in court filings.

'Fright Night' a cheeky comic remake

Yes, "Fright Night" is a remake of the 1985 horror comedy. No, there is no originality left in Hollywood.

But at least this new version stays true to its origins by having a bit of cheeky fun, and the way it contemporizes the story is really rather clever.

Once again, a vaguely nerdy teenager named Charlie (Anton Yelchin) thinks his mysterious and seductive new next-door neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), is a vampire. No one else believes him except for his even nerdier childhood pal, Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse). Come on, the guy's name is Jerry — how dangerous can he be?

But the setting makes this premise make sense. Director Craig Gillespie's film, based on Marti Noxon's script, takes place in the overly developed suburban sprawl outside Las Vegas, where people come and go and those who do live there often sleep all day and work all night. The barren wasteland of abandoned houses — if they were ever inhabited in the first place — is the perfect place for a bloodsucker to lay low.

And so as the bodies continue to pile up and Charlie continues to investigate, Jerry continues to charm everyone around him. That includes the beautiful Amy (Imogen Poots), the girlfriend Charlie always thought was out of his league. (And that's another way in which this "Fright Night" has been updated: The actors got conspicuously better looking.)

Farrell is clearly thriving doing showy comic parts lately, between this and "Horrible Bosses." But Gillespie, whose "Lars and the Real Girl" featured a more subtle and surreal kind of comedy, also shows a deft hand at creating tension with Farrell. A scene in which Jerry is standing outside Charlie's house, teetering at the kitchen door but not entering — because he hasn't been invited in — offers a masterful little slice of suspense.

The strong supporting cast includes Toni Collette as Yelchin's skeptical single mom and David Tennant in a scene-stealing turn as a supposed master of the supernatural. Roddy McDowell played the Peter Vincent role in the original; it's expanded here and provides the film's biggest laughs, with Tennant playing the character as a flamboyant but self-loathing fraud who peddles his illusions to the masses on the Strip. You wouldn't mind seeing an entire movie about him.

It all works well enough that it makes you wish it weren't in 3-D. Gillespie recognizes the benefit of the gimmickry in this sort of genre, sending arrows, crosses and spurts of blood in our direction. But the 3-D also adds a suffocating layer of dimness, as it is wont to do. That doesn't exactly help engage us given that so much of the film takes place in the dark, at night. Because, you know, it's about a vampire.

In 2-D, though, "Fright Night" could have been a great, late-summer surprise.

"Fright Night," a DreamWorks release, is rated R for bloody horror violence and language, including some sexual references. Running time: 101 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

Student plotted attack on anti-Pope crowd

A chemistry student working as a volunteer for the pope's visit to Madrid was arrested on suspicion of planning a gas attack targeting protesters opposed to the pontiff's stay, officials said Wednesday.

Pope Benedict XVI is due to arrive Thursday for a nearly four-day visit to celebrate World Youth Day, and thousands of protesters railing against his visit staged their march Wednesday night to Madrid's central Sol plaza where they have held months of demonstrations against Spanish politicians and the government's anti-austerity policies.

A police official said the suspect arrested in Madrid Tuesday is a 24-year-old Mexican student specializing in organic chemistry. She would not say whether investigators believe the man was actually capable of carrying out a gas attack, and did not know if he actually had chemicals that could have been used to assault the protesters.

The detainee was identified by the Mexican Embassy in Madrid as Jose Perez Bautista, which said he was from Puebla state, near Mexico City.

He was arrested at a Madrid convention center where the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims coming to town for the papal visit are supposed to pick up their accreditation, the police official said on condition of anonymity in line with the department's rules.

An official with the pope visit's organizing committee said the Mexican was a volunteer helping to deal with the massive flow of people flooding Madrid. She would not give her name, citing the church-run committee's policy.

A total of 30,000 people from around the world are taking part in that organizing effort, 10,000 police are providing security in Madrid and organizers say they expect more than 1 million young pilgrims for World Youth Day, which started Tuesday and runs through Sunday.

The march he allegedly wanted to disrupt happened relatively peacefully, with some shouting between protesters and pope supporters. But it ended with police ousting protesters from the plaza, with at least one arrest of a demonstrator. Riot police monitored the plaza after the demonstrators were cleared out.

Police have 72 hours from the time of the arrest to bring the detainee before a judge at the National Court for questioning or to release him. A court official said he would appear before the judge Thursday at the earliest.

The official — speaking on condition of anonymity in line with court policy — said the detainee had been making threats over the Internet against people in Spain opposed to the pope's visit, and police who'd been monitoring his online activity ultimately decided to arrest him as the visit approached.

Police said in a statement released Tuesday night that officers who searched the detainee's apartment in a wealthy district of Madrid seized an external hard-drive and two notebooks with chemical equations that had nothing to do with his studies.

It said he tried to recruit people via the Internet to help him, and that a computer allegedly used for this purpose was among objects seized by police.

The man had planned to attack anti-Pope protesters with "suffocating gases" and other chemicals, the statement said. But it did not mention police having confiscated chemicals that could be used in an attack.

Mexican Embassy spokesman Bernardo Graue said consular officials had visited Perez Bautista in prison and described him as "relaxed" and in good physical condition as he waits to go before a judge. The Mexican officials did not ask him if he had in fact planned a gas attack, because interrogating him is up to Spanish authorities, Graue said.

Without knowing what chemicals and delivery system the man may have had, it is impossible to know what harm he could have caused on protesters marching in open air through the streets of Madrid, as will happen Wednesday evening, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defence College in Stockholm.

The suspect was in Madrid studying with Spain's top government research body, the Spanish National Research Council, and his office there was searched, the police statement said. The council confirmed the arrest but gave no immediate details on the Mexican.

Mexico's Autonomous University of Puebla confirmed that a man with the same name had completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry in 2009 and had expressed interest in doing graduate work in Spain.

"Both the name and the academic background match," said Rafael Hernandez Oropeza, the university's director of international relations. He said Perez Bautista had an 8.6 grade average out of 10, "which is pretty high."

Gloria Leon Tello, the academic director of the university's school of chemistry, said Perez Bautista was a quiet, well-mannered, hardworking student. She had contact with him as an administrator, but did not have him in class.

"He was a very dedicated student, calm, very well-mannered," said Leon Tello, who said his age roughly matched that of the Madrid suspect. "He had very deep values ... like discipline, responsibility." Leon Tello said she did not hear him express political or religious views.

Mexico has some history of conservative religious extremism.

In 1926, tensions over Mexico's harsh anti-clerical laws broke into armed conflict between the government and Catholic rebels in the bloody, three-year Cristero War in which tens of thousands died.

In 1928, a young conservative Catholic activist, Jose de Leon Toral, assassinated President-elect Alvaro Obregon.

In the 1960s and 1970s a number of conservative Catholic youth groups grew up at universities in Mexico, including Puebla, and sometimes scuffled with left-wing student activists of the time.

Church organizers say the papal visit will cost about euro50 million ($72 million). Protesters claim the government is essentially spending taxpayers' money on the visit by granting tax breaks to corporate sponsors and perks such as discount subway and bus tickets for pilgrims.

Pope arrives in Spain in time of economic turmoil

When the pope arrives in Spain on Thursday it's not just sweltering heat he'll be stepping into. The economy's in a shambles. Jobless youths are filled with rage and frustration. Politicians are gearing up for early elections that will be dominated by these hard times.

Benedict XVI arrives for a four-day visit to greet up to a million or more young pilgrims from around the planet for the Catholic Church's World Youth Day.

The pope's attendance shows how much a priority he places on this economically troubled country, which has departed sharply from its Catholic traditions and embraced hedonism and secularism. In the economic bust, he may be hoping to lure back some of his straying flock.

This will be the third time the pontiff visits Spain since his papacy began in 2005, and the second in less than a year.

But many Spaniards take issue with the hoopla and hefty cost.

The euro50 million ($72 million) tab for staging the visit — setting up everything from giant screen TVs to portable toilets and confession stalls — has hit a raw nerve even among some churchgoing Catholics and priests.

The visit also comes as Spain gets ready for early elections in November. And while the church officially keeps out of politics, it will be sure to be watching closely — as the outcome could affect Spain's direction on hot-button ethical issues.

The election will pit the ruling Socialists, who irked the Vatican with social reforms including gay marriage and a law allowing 16-year-olds to get abortions without parental consent, against conservatives who tend to back church thinking on such issues and are heavily favored to win.

Spain's economy is sputtering as it seeks to overcome recession, Madrid's stock market has been a roller-coaster of late, the government is saddled with debt woes, and young Spaniards feel doomed and angry over their grim prospects amid a nearly 21 percent unemployment rate.

This bitter cocktail, or ingredients of it, is being served up in much of Europe and elsewhere.

"This is a time of uncertainty for young people. The pope is coming to Spain for World Youth Day, bringing a positive and challenging message from young people from all over the world," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, chief Vatican spokesman, said last week.

Pilgrims echoed that need for solace and inspiration.

"The message is about hope, about the future, to move from the current situation — whatever it is, and now it is kind of devastating — but move forward toward the future and hope that things will be better," said the Rev. Father Stanley Gomes, a chaplain at Seton Hall University who is accompanying 15 students from the school near New York City.

Organizers say about 450,000 young people from 193 countries — some from as far away as Vietnam and Pakistan — have registered to take part. But signing up beforehand is not mandatory and from past experience the total will be about three times those who register.

Two-thirds are expected to be Spaniards; among the rest Italy, France, the United States, Germany and Poland are sending the largest delegations.

The main events are a prayer vigil with the 84-year-old Pope and outdoor sleepover for pilgrims Saturday night at a sprawling air base, and Mass there the next morning.

Except for a trip Friday to a historic monastery in El Escorial, 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Madrid, the Pope will spend the whole visit in Madrid, meeting with young people, hearing confession from some of them, riding through the city in his pope-mobile and greeting young nuns, seminarians and university professors, among other activities.

In Spain the church faces a congregation for whom being Catholic is more a birthmark than a way of life. A poll released in July says that while 72 percent of Spaniards identify themselves as Catholic, 60 percent say they "almost never" go to Mass and only 13 percent every Sunday.

Church organizers insist the papal visit involves zero cost for Spanish taxpayers because the money is coming from corporate sponsors, private donations and fees paid by some of the pilgrims, among other sources.

Pilgrims who buy the premium package get vouchers to eat at nearly 1,500 restaurants which have signed up to take part in the papal visit — from fast-food hamburger chains to others offering traditional Spanish tapas. And organizers have made created an iPad and smartphone application that will tell pilgrims where the closest participating eatery is and let them communicate with each other in their own social network.

Critics are complaining of the cost of providing extra police security, tax breaks being granted to the corporate sponsors, discount subway and bus tickets for the visitors, and the price tag of opening up school gyms and sports facilities in a vacation month to set up makeshift digs for so many pilgrims.

Even some progressive Catholics joined a protest march Wednesday night to denounce taxpayer money spent for World Youth Day, a globe-trotting meeting held every three years. The last was in Sydney, Australia, and the next will be in Rio de Janeiro.

"At a time of crisis, and with so many people in need, we feel this visit should not be so massive and attention-drawing, so spectacular, but rather something more simple and closer to the grassroots of the church," said Raquel Mallavibarrena, a spokeswoman for a progressive Catholic group called Redes Cristianas, or Christian Networks.

Yago de la Cierva, head of the World Youth Day organizing committee, insisted providing extra police for major, crowd-drawing events is the government's responsibility — as it was when Spaniards flocked to the streets last summer to welcome home the national football team that won World Cup in South Africa.

Pope Benedict will be received and sent off by King Juan Carlos Queen Sofia and during his stay will meet separately with Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and conservative opposition leader Marian Rajoy, the man likely to be Spain's next prime minister.

However, the Vatican insists Zapatero and Rajoy meetings are not about politics. It notes the visit was scheduled long before Spain called early elections and is a pastoral one, rather than a state visit.

New label to help people pick health insurance

Insurers and employers will have to spell out plainly the costs and benefits of the health plans they offer starting next year.

The rule announced by U.S. health officials on Wednesday is designed to better inform people about health insurance choices with a standard label, which the Department of Health and Human Services likens to the kind on a cereal box.

Among other things, the label will tell customers their premium, deductible and out-of-pocket costs, and the costs associated with medical events and procedures, such as doctor visits and breast cancer treatments. Insurers must provide the information before a customer purchases a plan and when there are any changes.

"Today, many consumers don't have easy access to information in plain English to help them understand the differences in the coverage and benefits provided by different health plans," said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The rule, part of President Barack Obama's 2010 health care overhaul, pleases consumer groups, who have complained that the pages of fine print accompanying insurance plans are often confusing.

"By making the terms of health insurance plans easier to understand, consumers are less likely to find themselves in health plans that don't meet their needs," said Consumer Union senior health policy analyst Lynn Quincy.

Insurers are concerned that the administrative costs associated with the new label will raise the price of the plans themselves.

"The benefits of providing a new summary of coverage document must be balanced against the increased administrative burden and higher costs to consumers and employers," said Robert Zirkelbach, the spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group.

Kim Holland, executive director of state affairs at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said insurers support people knowing what they are getting, but echoed that concern.

"The concern is we already have a body of law that tells us what we need to have," Holland said before the rule's release.

The six-page label follows the recommendations of a group formed by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that included insurance companies, consumer groups and academics.

"At the end of the day, what NAIC recommended wasn't what everybody wanted, but it was as close to a consensus as possible," said Sabrina Corlette, an NAIC consumer representative and Georgetown University research professor.

"You wouldn't be comparing apples to oranges anymore," she said. "So it would make it much easier for families to make those decisions."

Boston is first U.S. airport to test new security technique

Along with luggage scans and removing shoes, getting through the security line in Boston's Logan International Airport may now include a brief conversation with a specially trained agent.

Beginning this week, all passengers in Logan's Terminal A will be peppered with questions by a Behavior Detection Officer just after they have their identification verified at the security checkpoint.

Officers will chat with passengers in what the Transportation Security Administration has dubbed a "casual greeting" conversation.

Based on physical cues or answers to questions during the dialogue, specially trained officers may detect suspicious behavior, said TSA spokesman Greg Soule.

This analysis will help determine if a passenger should go through additional screening at the security checkpoint and identify "potentially high-risk travelers," according to the

TSA.

Soule declined to elaborate on any of the questions or responses that would warrant further action.

Looking nervous and averting eye contact, however, are not the tell-tale signs of deception, said Richard Bloom, an aviation security expert and professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

He, too, declined to give away the cues he believed detection officers will analyze.

Experts often credit Israeli security specialists with doing much of the initial work on behavioral detection, said Bloom.

The expanded behavior detection program now underway at Logan is based on other international and domestic programs, said Soule, and will be tested over the next 60 days.

The TSA will consider the pilot program's results and wait times at security check points in order to determine if and how to expand the program more broadly, Soule said.

In Boston, Terminal A is home to Continental and Delta airlines. It's one of about a half dozen terminals at the airport, said Logan spokesman Phil Orlandella. Logan serves up to 50,000 passengers daily, he said.

Critics have said screening methods like this one could promote discriminatory profiling, but TSA's Soule said it would actually be prevented by having conversations with every single passenger in Terminal A and taking action based solely on reactions and answers.

"This program in no way is profiling passengers by race or ethnicity," he said.

Logan was the first airport to implement an observational screening technique in 2003. In those cases, a trained officer would look for passenger behavior that was suspicious. Then, based on a quick conversation, the officer might administer further security checks.

That program has rolled out to more than 160 airports and resulted in more than 2,000 arrests nationwide, Soule said.

U.S. sees growing losses from extreme weather

The United States has already tied its yearly record for billion-dollar weather disasters and the cumulative tab from floods, tornadoes and heat waves has hit $35 billion, the National Weather Service said on Wednesday.

And it's only August, with the bulk of the hurricane season still ahead.

"I don't think it takes a wizard to predict 2011 is likely to go down as one of the more extreme years for weather in history," National Weather Service Director Jack Hayes told journalists on a conference call.

The agency's parent organization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA, launched a campaign on Wednesday to better prepare Americans for violent weather.

There have so far been nine separate disasters this year that caused an economic loss of $1 billion or more in the United States, tying the record set in 2008, NOAA said. The most recent was the summer flooding along the Missouri and Souris rivers in the upper Midwest.

The "new reality" is that both the frequency and the cost of extreme weather are rising, making the nation more economically vulnerable and putting more lives and livelihoods at risk, Hayes said.

The number of U.S. natural disasters has tripled in the last 20 years and 2010 was a record breaker with about 250, according to property and casualty reinsurer Munich Reinsurance America.

Average thunderstorm losses have increased five-fold since 1980. For the first half of 2011 there have been $20 billion in thunderstorm losses, up from the previous three-year average of $10 billion, NOAA said.

The rising costs are due partly to demographics, Hayes said. The population is rising and there are more people and more buildings in environmentally vulnerable areas, such as coastal regions.

CLIMATE CHANGE?

Asked if global warming was to blame for the rising frequency of wild weather, Hayes said that was "a research question" and that it would be difficult to link any one severe season to overall climate change.

NOAA's effort to make America "weather-ready" is aimed at producing earlier, more precise warnings and helping people understand what to do to protect themselves, Hayes said.

In the current fiscal climate, it mainly focuses on already-budgeted items such as upgrading the weather radar system and on better coordination among existing agencies.

For example, one program aims to have rainfall forecasters work more closely with the agencies that build and maintain levees and operate flood-control canals.

Other steps include:

-Helping communities stage disaster preparedness drills.

-Dispatching specially trained meteorologists to emergency response centers during disasters such as wildfires.

-Asking behavioral scientists for advice on how to improve the wording of advisories so that the general public understands them, and how to deter risky behavior such as driving onto flooded roads.

-Expanding the use of social media such as Facebook, Twitter and chatrooms to help spread weather warnings.

NOAA's warning was timed with the advent of what is traditionally the busiest part of the June-through-November Atlantic hurricane season. The United States has not been hit by a hurricane in three years.

"Those are the types of things that lull people to sleep. We want people vigilant," Hayes said.

NOAA has predicted there will be as many as 19 tropical storms this year. So far there have been seven, but none have strengthened into hurricanes. Only one, Tropical Storm Don, came ashore in the United States but it quickly fizzled over the Texas coast without delivering the rain that is badly needed in the parched state.

Democrats hold seats in Wisconsin recall elections

Two Wisconsin Democratic state senators beat back Republican challengers on Tuesday in the last of a series of recall elections triggered by a fight over collective bargaining rights for public sector workers.

Both Democrats and Republicans were claiming victory on Tuesday in a series of nine summer recall votes in which Democrats unseated two incumbent Republicans but fell short of winning control of the state legislature.

Democrats had hoped to win a majority in the state senate following a fierce battle with Governor Scott Walker and his Republican allies earlier this year over public workers' union powers that involved mass protests, legislative maneuvering and court challenges.

"This was a political Rorschach test in that anyone can read anything into the result," said Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee governmental affairs professor and former Democratic lawmaker. "Politically, it was a draw."

He expected the results would embolden Democrats to try to recall Walker, which would require a half a million signatures just to schedule an election. "By November, we'll know if they're pursuing it seriously or not."

The Democrats who successfully defended their seats on Tuesday, Robert Wirch and Jim Holperin, were among 14 Wisconsin state senators who left the state in an attempt to prevent passage of an anti-union measure earlier this year.

Holperin beat political novice and Tea Party activist Kim Simac by 54 percent to 46 percent, according to WisPolitics.com. Wirch beat Republican lawyer Jonathan Steitz by 58 percent to 42 percent.

Overall in the recall elections, a total of three Democrats and four Republican incumbents kept their seats, while two Republicans were unseated.

CONTROL OF SENATE

Republicans managed to keep control of the state senate -- 17 to 16. But state Democrats point out that one Republican state senator, Dale Schultz, voted against Walker's curbs on public sector unions. They argue that the balance of power actually shifted away from the conservatives.

"The state Senate as now constituted would NOT have approved Walker's extreme, divisive assault on the middle class and working people," Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate said in a statement.

Brad Courtney, chair of the state's Republican Party, congratulated Simac and Steitz for mounting what he described as well-fought challenges.

"Wisconsin now emerges from this recall election season with a united Republican majority who has beaten off an attack from national unions and special interests and emerged steadfastly committed to carrying forward a bold job creation agenda," Courtney said in a statement.

Holperin told supporters in Rhinelander that he hoped the recall results would signal a change in Wisconsin politics.

"I do hope (these recalls) signal a new era of what I hope is a more moderate approach to public policy in the state, starting with the governor," he added.

Governor Walker fought for the union curbs, which restrict the bargaining rights of public workers and also make them pay more for health care and pensions, saying they were needed to help Wisconsin close a $3.6 billion budget deficit.

Democrats cried foul, saying public workers had already agreed to steep benefit cuts. They called the effort union-busting, designed to hobble organized labor -- a major source of Democratic Party financing -- ahead of the 2012 elections.

The fight thrust Wisconsin into the national spotlight, igniting massive pro-union protests and political fights that led to the recall efforts against six Republicans who backed the union curbs and three Democrats who opposed them.

Until this summer, there had been only 20 state-level recall elections in U.S. history, and the money poured into the recall campaigns has been something for the record books.

Mike Buelow, research director for the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, estimates that candidates and outside groups spent as much as $37 million on the recalls.

With the recalls acting as somewhat of a rehearsal for 2012, experts say the spending could be a harbinger of record outlays next year.

Army says improperly tested $2.5 billion body armor is safe

Body armor worth $2.5 billion that the Department of Defense's Inspector General found had been improperly tested poses no hazard to troops, according to the Army.

The Army cut corners and skipped tests altogether on seven body armor contracts, a DoD IG report released August 1 said.

Army spokesman Matthew Hickman said on Wednesday that the report never concluded that safety of soldiers wearing the body armor was at issue.

"I think when you first hear about it you think, holy moley, the Army's providing body armor to soldiers that can't even stop a bullet. And that's just not the case," Hickman said.

"If you read it it says this isn't an issue of safety it's more of an issue of testing procedures -- the report never actually questions the safety of the body armor," he said.

Congress requested the DoD IG's investigation of seven Army contracts worth a total of $2.5 billion dollars and awarded between 2004 and 2006.

"The Army cannot be sure that the appropriate level of protection has been achieved," Deputy Assistant Inspector General Bruce Burton stated.

The results showed that ballistic testing and quality assurance for some 5 million body armor inserts did not have proper controls to ensure the inserts met the contract requirements.

The inserts are part of Interceptor Body Armor (IBA), a system of body armor that consists of an outer vest, ballistic inserts, and other parts that increase area of coverage, according to the DoD IG.

"IBA increases survivability by stopping or slowing bullets and fragments and reducing the number and severity of wounds," the report states.

Problems such as accepting invalid test results or failing to enforce humidity and temperature requirements, critical to troops using body armor in the deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq, were found with testing on all seven contracts.

But the DoD IG also noted that it could not conclude that the body armor's performance had been negatively impacted.

"Because we did not conduct any additional testing, we could not conclude that ballistic performance was adversely affected by inadequate testing and quality assurance," the report said.

The Army had already implemented recommended testing changes by the time the report was published, according to Hickman.

"The testing procedures are an ever-growing process, when the army identifies better ways to test body armor, changes are made," he said.

The report is the fourth in a series issued after Democratic Congressman Louise Slaughter of New York directly requested investigation into the Army's policy on body armor.

In 2008 the DoD IG concluded 13 body armor contracts did not have proper documentation. In response, the Army recalled 100 percent of the body armor identified by the DoD IG to put it through more rigorous testing, said Hickman.

Of the recalled equipment, 100 percent has passed with "maximum protection rates," he said.

The Army has spent roughly $10 million in recent years to upgrade existing facilities for research, development and testing for body armor, according to the DoD IG.

Six of the 13 body armor contracts were addressed in a DoD IG report in January, and the August report addresses the remaining seven.

Police find stolen tombstones at California home

Deputies searching a suspected California meth house found some two dozen granite tombstones stolen from local cemeteries in the backyard, a San Bernardino County Sheriff's spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

The grave markers found at the home in the Inland Empire community of Loma Linda on Tuesday all had custom inscriptions and had apparently been ripped from the ground, spokeswoman Jodi Miller said.

"We're all trying to figure out why," Miller said. "There's no monetary value to these. They are made out of stone, so they are very, very heavy."

Several of the tombstones were traced to cemeteries in the nearby community of Colton, and family members of deceased individuals buried there have contacted the sheriff's department, she said.

Miller said a few of the gravestones had small amounts of metal or brass attached but there was no indication the thieves were stealing them for those materials.

Also discovered at the home were two firearms and evidence that its residents were selling methamphetamine, Miller said.

A man found at the house, 50-year-old John Bleuer, was arrested on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance while armed and sales of a controlled substance, she said. Deputies were still seeking three other suspects.

Miller said it was not yet clear how the tombstones, which have been valued at about $48,000, were removed from the ground or transported to the home in Loma Linda, about 70 miles east of Los Angeles.

Biggest jump in Midwest farmland prices in 34 years

Prices for farmland in the heart of the U.S. grain belt were up 17 percent in the second quarter compared to a year ago, the biggest jump since 1977, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said on Wednesday.

The rising values were driven by strong crop, livestock and milk prices which spurred farmers and investors to buy land, the bank said. Low interest rates have also boosted demand.

"The combination of higher revenues for crop and livestock production has been an impetus for the significant increases in agricultural land values seen this year in the district," the Fed said in its quarterly newsletter, adding "demand for farmland remained strong from both farmers and investors."

Farmland values are closely monitored by economists at the Fed and commercial banks, both for U.S. banking asset values and as a benchmark for agricultural balance sheets.

Farmland strength in the last year has caused concerns about another farmland "bubble" like the one seen in the 1980s U.S. farm crisis, when overextended farmers lost their land. But bankers say most farmers are much less debt-laden than they were at that time thanks to boom crop prices in recent years.

The Kansas City Fed released its own banker survey Monday, showing similar results with farmland values up more than 20 percent from a year ago. But the KC Fed farm income was also down in the southern Plains as a devastating drought had hurt crop yields and thus farmers' incomes.

The Chicago Fed surveyed 226 bankers in its district which stretches across the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt -- Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Indiana and Iowa led the Midwest district with farmland up 20 percent or more. Illinois was close behind, up 19 percent.

Compared to the first quarter of 2011, values for prime farm land rose 4 percent in the second quarter. Most bankers surveyed forecast farmland values to stabilize in the third quarter, "yet about one-third still expected farmland values to move higher," the Chicago Fed said.

HIGHER CROP, LIVESTOCK PRICES SUPPORT

Corn, soybean, livestock and milk prices are well above year ago levels. In July, corn prices were 85 percent higher and soybeans up 37 percent, the Fed said. Additionally, USDA is projecting corn harvest in the district to be 7 percent larger than 2010 while soybean output is seen down 8 percent.

"Prices for hogs, cattle, and milk were 23 percent, 20 percent, and 39 percent higher this July than last July, respectively," it said. "The livestock sector has experienced higher revenues, but higher feed costs have limited the rise in income for the sector."

Higher farm incomes aided agricultural credit conditions.

Quarterly repayment rates for non-real-estate farm loans improved and the index of non-real-estate agricultural loan demand fell to its lowest level since 1987.

Farm interest rates dropped below the previous record lows reported in the fourth quarter of 2010.

The average interest rate on July 1 for new operating loans was 5.75 percent, over 300 basis points below the most recent peak of five years ago, the Fed said.

Agricultural mortgage rates averaged 5.62 percent, about 220 basis points lower than five years earlier.

"These record low mortgage rates contributed to the surge this year in district farmland values," the survey said.

Bankers expect non-real-estate agricultural loan demand to fall in the coming quarter while machinery and grain storage construction loans were seen rising, compared to the third quarter of 2010.

Inspiration: {Noteworthy Cover}

* Vogue Turkey, August 2011.



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Inspiration Board: {Serene}

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Editorial Inspiration: {All This and Heaven Too}

{... hello everyone! I hope your week has been wonderful so far... I for one am extremely happy, even a bit silly... no more headaches, worries or immediate goals to attain... have a great day, xo}

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