Jobs Report Shows Improvement in Virginia, D.C., Decline in Maryland

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Winderman: Turns out Heat can handle NBA Finals pressure

It wasn't pretty, but LeBron & Co. did enough to steal a crucial victory in OKC

Image: LeBronReuters

LeBron James scored 32 points in the Heat's Game 2 win on Thursday.

OPINION

By Ira Winderman

NBCSports.com

updated 3:17 a.m. ET June 15, 2012

OKLAHOMA CITY - For months, we've heard the prattle.

LeBron James again had found his love for the game. The Heat would heed the lessons of their first Big Three season together and emerge stronger for the journey. The subtle free-agency addition of Shane Battier would make more than a subtle difference.

And yet they still couldn't push past the Bulls for the top seed in the East during the regular season, even with Derrick Rose often out.

Then Miami managed to fall behind the Pacers in the second round, and twice had to stave off elimination against the last-leg Celtics in the third round.

So yes, the Heat again arrived at the Finals one step from salvation, this time with James in possession of a third Most Valuable Player trophy.

But what we didn't know was what they would do in the ultimate moment, what they would do when a team just as talented would push back, and do it greater than Carmelo Anthony in the first round, David West in the second or Kevin Garnett in the third.

The initial Finals sample hardly was heartening, Tuesday's 105-94 series-opening loss making it already look like another wait-for-next-year year for James.

Then came Thursday.

And then came the Thunder, a team too impetuous to know better than to give up, a team that four times this postseason already had overcome deficits of 13 points or more. Down 17 in the first half, down 15 in the third quarter, they did what they did to the Spurs. They went all Durant. And all Westbrook. And all Harden on the Heat.

The lead was dwindling. James was gassed. Dwyane Wade was committing one particularly horrifying turnover at midcourt, Chris Bosh fumbling a pass in the post.

Suddenly, this was 2011 and the Mavericks and AmericanAirlines Arena all over again.

No, it wasn't quite Wade standing with arm exaggeratingly outstretched in front of the Mavericks' bench with the Heat up 15 in the fourth quarter of Game 2 of last year's Finals, but it was a 13-point lead early in this fourth quarter at the Thunder's dome.

A year ago, the Heat melted against the Mavericks in that Game 2 and in that series. It was a game that exposed the Heat's Big Three as a team not up to the moment or the challenge. A week later, they were finished, banished to an offseason of lockout purgatory and then these past six months of lingering doubt.

But then flash back to Thursday, when the lead kept dwindling, the doubts kept rising, a season quite possibly about to slip away, considering only three teams have ever overcome 0-2 deficits in the Finals.


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Turns out Miami can handle heat

??Winderman: Last year's Finals ended with James exiting as villain, mocking Nowitzki's flu before one loss. But this LeBron and these Heat and this series look different.

Heat hot early, hang on to get even with Thunder

LeBron James scored 32 points and hit the clinching free throws with 7 seconds left, Dwyane Wade added 24 points and the Miami Heat claimed home-court advantage in the NBA Finals by beating the Oklahoma City Thunder 100-96 in Game 2 on Thursday.

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9-Year-Old's Blog, Which Showed Questionable ... - Business Insider

Nine-year-old Martha Payne took pictures of her school's cafeteria food and blogged about it on Never Seconds. There, the UK elementary school student would rate the meals on a scale of one to ten.

Before long, local media found the photos. It ran one of them with a headline, "Time to fire the dinner ladies."

The article left the lunch ladies "in tears," says Payne's home town, Argyll. It decided to ban her blog to protect the school caterers' jobs.

In a post titled "Goodbye," Payne wrote: "This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today."

When the Internet found out about Payne's ban, it got angry.? Celebrities tweeted in fury at Argyll, telling Payne to "stay strong."

Since the uproar on Twitter, Argyll has rethought the ban. It's allowing Payne to resume blogging. What's better: Payne was blogging to raise money for charity.? All of the press attention surrounding Never Seconds led to ?30,000+ in donations, up from ?2,000 late last week.

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Twitter index: Yvette Wilson, 10 songs I love, Martha Payne

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Russia forms special group to protect cos interest in India

Moscow, June 14, 2012, PTI:

With conglomerate Sistema facing an uncertain future following cancellation of its telecom licences, Russia has set up a Parliamentary working group to protect interests of its companies working in India.

A Special Working Group will be established under Lower House of Russian Parliament (Duma) that ?will develop necessary mechanisms for protection of the interests of the Russian companies working in India,? Russian news agency Interfac reported.

Sistema has a joint venture with India?s Shyam Group, SSTL, in which the Russian government also has a stake of 17.14 per cent. Operating under the MTS brand name, SSTL has a user-base of over 15 million but its 21 licences were among the 122 cancelled by the Supreme Court in February this year.
?The need to organise such working group is stipulated by the fact that implementation of some major investment projects in India is currently facing serious hurdles,? Committee Chairman Sergey Gavrilov said in the course of its session.

Apart from SSTL the joint venture Kamaz Vectra Motors Ltd, where JSC Kamaz owns 51 per cent of shares is also facing problem. Sistema claims to have invested over $2.5 billion from 2007, including $ 630 million for securing licences in 2008. It will demand compensation of all incurred losses in case it is forced to leave the Indian market.

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Muslim, Buddhist mob violence threatens new Myanmar image

SITTWE, Myanmar (Reuters) - Northwest Myanmar was tense on Monday after sectarian violence engulfed its largest city at the weekend, with Reuters witnessing rival mobs of Muslims and Buddhists torching houses and police firing into the air to disperse crowds.

At least seven people have been killed and many hurt, authorities say, in the worst communal violence since a reformist government replaced a military junta last year and vowed to forge unity in one of Asia's most ethnically diverse countries.

The fighting erupted on Friday in the Rakhine State town of Maungdaw, but has spread to the capital Sittwe and nearby villages, prompting the government to declare a state of emergency late on Sunday and impose a dawn-to-dusk curfew.

"We have now ordered troops to protect the airport and the Rakhine villages under attack in Sittwe," Zaw Htay, director of the President's Office, told Reuters. "Arrangements are under way to impose a curfew in some other towns."

The unrest undermines the image of ethnic unity and stability that helped persuade the United States and Europe to suspend economic sanctions this year, while increasing curfews could threaten tourism and foreign investment - rewards for emerging from nearly half a century of army rule.

It might also force reformist President Thein Sein, a former general, to confront an issue that human rights groups have criticized for years: the plight of thousands of stateless Rohingya Muslims who live along Myanmar's border with Bangladesh in abject conditions and are despised by many ethnic Rakhine, members of Myanmar's predominantly Buddhist majority.

The violence could jeopardize the country's transition to democracy if it spreads further, Thein Sein said in a hastily arranged televised address on Sunday.

Rohingya activists have long demanded recognition as an indigenous ethnic group with full citizenship by birthright, claiming a centuries-old lineage in Rakhine. But the government regards them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh and denies them citizenship.

In recent days, they have been described as "invaders" or "terrorists" by some Burmese using their newfound freedom of expression and easier access to the Internet to vent their anger on social networking sites and express anti-Rohingya sentiments that have simmered for decades.

The authorities have blamed Rohingya mobs for the violence. Witnesses from Maungdaw on Saturday described Rohingya attacking Buddhist homes. "It's just like a living hell. I wonder how long we will have to live like this?" said Mya Khin, a housewife.

Rohingya activists and residents accuse ethnic Rakhine of terrorizing their communities. Witnesses in Sittwe said homes were torched on Sunday in at least four places.

By late Sunday, tensions appeared to be spreading. State-run MRTV announced curfews in three other Rakhine towns, including Thandwe, the gateway to Myanmar's tourist beaches, and Kyaukphyu, where China is building a giant port complex.

PLANELOADS OF SOLDIERS

Reuters saw residents of a mainly Rakhine village near Sittwe on Sunday set ablaze houses they said were Muslim-owned.

"We are burning Rohingyas' houses because they live near our village and they gather at night and try to attack us," said an unidentified ethnic Rakhine man.

Planeloads of soldiers arrived in Sittwe on Saturday but locals said the security forces were ineffectual.

"A Rohingya mob just set fire to some Rakhine houses just behind Infantry Battalion 357. The soldiers just watched, without doing anything," one local said, declining to be named.

An elderly Muslim man living with his family reported that Buddhist vigilantes armed with "swords and sticks" were roaming the streets on motorbikes.

"The security forces are helping them destroy Muslim houses," the man, a retired government official who also requested anonymity, said by telephone from his house near Sittwe airport.

A gang of Buddhists tried to burn his house down, but were dissuaded with help from a Buddhist neighbor, he said.

Reuters also saw Muslims setting alight houses and Buddhists preparing to defend their communities with sharpened bamboo stakes, machetes and sling-shots.

Among the dead on Friday, when the violence broke out, were an elderly man and a doctor, both Buddhists, who were killed by multiple stab wounds.

The western region has been tense for more than a week after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman blamed on Muslims and the reprisal killing by a Buddhist mob a week ago of 10 Muslims. [ID:nL3E8H44AN] State media said three men had gone on trial on Friday for the rape and murder.

The authorities said hundreds of Rohingya went on the rampage in Maungdaw, where around 500 buildings were said to have been destroyed and a nighttime curfew was imposed.

Police and soldiers successfully restored "peace and stability" to Muangdaw and neighboring Buthidaung district, the state-run New Light of Myanmar reported on Sunday.

In its editorial, the usually staid newspaper made an impassioned plea for calm, warning that "democracy cannot flourish" where there is "anarchy, stagnation and lawlessness."

ABUSES, ONLINE ANGER

The Rohingya are descended from South Asians and speak a regional dialect of Bengali. Most are stateless, recognized as citizens neither by Myanmar nor neighboring Bangladesh.

The U.N.'s refugee agency estimates there are about 800,000 of them in three districts of Rakhine state bordering Bangladesh. They are subject to many forms of "persecution, discrimination and exploitation," says the United Nations, including forced labor, restrictions on travel and marriage, and limited access to education.

Decades of systematic persecution by the Burmese authorities has made sectarian violence inevitable, said Elaine Pearson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division.

"All those years of discrimination, abuses and neglect are bound to bubble up at some point, and that's what we are seeing now," she said.

Like their government, many Burmese refuse to recognize the term "Rohingya", referring to them as "Bengalis".

"The underlying perception of many Burmese is that Rohingya are illegal migrant terrorists," said Pearson.

Sectarian hatred in towns and villages in Rakhine State is mirrored online. "They should shoot at least one (to) make them shut up," read a comment on Facebook under a photo purporting to show rioting Muslims.

Twitter users are railing against "Rohingya terrorists," one under the hashtag "#OneThingWeAllHate".

These sentiments were echoed by nationalistic blogs such as Won Thar Nu, which ran gruesome photos of what it said were Buddhist victims. It accused the Rohingya of staging a "foreign invasion."

Such comments are "propaganda designed to prevent the resolution of the Rohingya issue," said Abu Tahay of the National Democratic Party for Development, a Rohingya party which contested the 2010 elections that brought Myanmar's current reformist government to power.

"They have been calling us terrorists for 60 years."

A news agency set up by Rohingya exiles in the Bangladesh city of Chittagong also printed photos of purportedly Muslims victims. The Kaladan Press blamed the deaths on "Rakhine racists and security personnel."

(Reporting by Reuters reporters in Sittwe. Writing by Andrew R.C. Marshall. Editing by Jason Szep and Dean Yates)

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Spain: Bank bailout decision could come soon

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, adjust his glasses before a meeting with Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Moncloa Palace, in Madrid, Thursday, June 7, 2012. Spain's Prime Minister appeared Thursday to have abandoned his insistence that the country's troubled banking sector will not need an external bailout, as for the first time he avoided ruling out such an option.(AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, adjust his glasses before a meeting with Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Moncloa Palace, in Madrid, Thursday, June 7, 2012. Spain's Prime Minister appeared Thursday to have abandoned his insistence that the country's troubled banking sector will not need an external bailout, as for the first time he avoided ruling out such an option.(AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

A homeless person sleeps in the doorway of a bank in Madrid Thursday June 7, 2012. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy pleaded with European leaders "to support those that are in difficulty" and push toward greater fiscal unity - a step that might allow its troubled banks to get direct financial help. The call comes although Spain insists it doesn't need outside aid. (AP Photo/Paul White)

Spain's Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, speaks during a press conference after a meeting with Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte at the Moncloa Palace, in Madrid, Thursday, June 7, 2012. Spain's Prime Minister appeared Thursday to have abandoned his insistence that the country's troubled banking sector will not need an external bailout, as for the first time he avoided ruling out such an option.(AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

A woman uses an ATM cash point machine at a branch of the Bankia bank in Madrid, Wednesday, June 6, 2012. The Spanish economy is in recession for the second time in three years as the damage from a housing bust persists. Foreclosures are rising, Spain's banks are in worse financial shape and the government's deficit is hitting worrisome levels. The impact of the budget cuts has been brutal and unemployment has swelled to nearly 25 percent. Among people under age 25 it is a staggering 52 percent . (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

(AP) ? Spain could decide within days or weeks to ask for a bailout for its troubled banking sector, a step that would make it the fourth country in the 17-member eurozone to seek help since the EU debt crisis broke out.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said the government would not act until it receives a raft of reports on how much money Spain needs to save its banks from collapsing under the weight of soured real estate investments.

An International Monetary Fund report was released late Friday, and two independent auditor surveys were due by June 21. She said no decision on a bailout had been made at Friday's Cabinet meeting.

"Once the estimates of the numbers are known with regard to what the financial sector might need, the government will state its position," she said.

"But in any case, I am telling you that no decision has been made either way," she added.

Saenz de Santamaria declined to say how much the sector, hit by the collapse of the country's real estate bubble, might need. Estimates of the cost of bailing out Spain's banks vary greatly, from ?40 billion ($49.87 billion) to as much as ?100 billon.

The International Monetary Fund said it estimated that Spanish banks need at least a ?40 billion ($49.87 billion) capital injection following a stress test it performed on the country's financial sector.

Commenting on reports that 17 eurozone finance ministers will hold a conference call the Saturday on Spain, Saenz de Santamaria said that "no meeting is planned" but would not confirm or deny whether some kind of communication would take place.

The Spanish government appears to have resigned itself to the fact that it needs a bailout with money pumped in from Europe to prop up its struggling banks, and can't handle the job on its own.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has moved on from firmly stating that "there will be no rescue of the Spanish banking sector" 10 days ago to avoiding ruling out seeking external help for the banking sector of the eurozone's fourth largest economy.

Spain has been criticized for being too slow to set out a roadmap to resolve its problem. European business leaders and analysts have stressed that Spain must find a solution quickly so that it is not caught up in any market turmoil sparked by the Greek elections on June 17. There are concerns that anti-bailout left-wing party Syriza could become the largest party in the Greek parliament, putting the country's membership of the 17-nation eurozone at risk.

"What we now crucially need is transparency and trust," said Andreas Schmitz, the head of Germany's banking association. "Any further uncertainty, any speculation how the situation could develop is poisonous for the markets."

But others said it's more important for Spain to correctly assess how to shore up its banking system than it is to hurry into a bailout ahead of the Greek elections. The audits that Spain's government is waiting for are crucial to determining precisely how much capital the nation's troubled banks need, said Mark Miller, an analyst with Capital Economics in London.

"Any notion of rushing, that would be very unwise, in fact I think it could make things much worse," he said. "I think it's important to get it right rather than simply say that there is a rather appealing idea of a one-week window of opportunity, relative to getting a solution ahead of Greek elections."

If Spain doesn't get a request for outside help right the first time, "then you are in second bailout territory," Miller said.

Working in Spain's favor is the fact that its public debt is actually quite low, at 68.5 percent of its gross domestic product at the end of 2011.

Its debt is predicted to hit 78 percent by the end of the year, but even that figure would be below the debt-to-GDP ratios of Europe's strongest economy, Germany.

"The one thing Spain has in its favor is that its debt to GDP ratio is lower than it is in Greece, Ireland and Portugal, the other bailout countries," Miller said. "From a debt sustainability point of view this buys Spain more time even though Spain's borrowing costs are very, very high at the moment."

But Spain's economy is in terrible condition. It is in its second recession in three years, unemployment is nearly 25 percent and there is little hope for improvement this year. Rajoy's government has imposed a wave of austerity measures since he took office in December that have raised taxes, made it cheaper to hire and fire workers and cut government funding for education and health care.

If Spain asks for a bailout and taps the Europe's rescue facility, the European Financial Stability Facility, the move could raise larger questions about the Spanish government's ability to keep refinancing its debts in the bond market, analyst Ralph Solveen at Commerzbank wrote in a note to investors.

"After all, Spain would be admitting by such a request for support to banks that it can no longer finance itself for all purposes on the market," Solveen said.

Investor doubts about a country's ability to maintain its debts can lead to higher borrowing costs, which in turn undermine the government's ability to finance itself. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have all fallen victim to such market doubts and were forced to take bailouts from the other eurozone countries.

A Spanish bank bailout could also turn market focus to Italy, which has the second-highest debt load in the eurozone after Greece at some 120 percent of gross domestic product. Italy's budget is in better shape but its growth prospects have sagged and the willingness of Italian politicians to tackle the country's long-standing problems with choking bureaucracy, taxes and regulation remains in doubt.

____

Harold Heckle, David McHugh and Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Madrid, Frankfurt and Berlin.

Associated Press

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Photos: A roundup of best pictures

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