Member of Winans Family Going To Prison

DETROIT — A judge sentenced a member of gospel music's Winans family to nearly 14 years in prison Wednesday for an $8 million financial scam that was promoted in church pulpits.

Two of Michael Winans Jr.'s victims spoke in federal court, telling a judge that the scheme to sell Saudi Arabian oil bonds robbed some people of their life savings, caused divorces and fractured many families.

"I want to apologize to everyone. ... These were decisions that were negligent and irresponsible," said Winans, of Jessup, Md.

He said he had no "malicious intent" but acknowledged that he continued to collectmoney even after he learned that the bonds were bogus.

Winans attracted more than 1,000 investors in 2007 and 2008, although he didn't know them all because many were recruited by others through word of mouth. He promised 100 percent returns in two months, then used the money for personal expenses or to pay off earlier investors. About 600 people are still owed $4.7 million.

Winans, 30, is a third-generation member of one of gospel music's first families. He's the grandson of Delores "Mom" Winans and David "Pop" Winans Sr., and the son of Michael Winans Sr., a member of The Winans, a quartet of brothers. His uncle, Marvin Winans, gave the eulogy at Whitney Houston's funeral.

Winans has performed with his cousins as Winans Phase II. He released his own album in 2011, "My Own Genre."

Winans relied on unwitting friends to round up investors, a trait of a classic Ponzi scheme. When the bonds turned out to phony, investors angrily turned on the people who recruited them.

"There are lots of marriages that have been destroyed. I know family members who aren't speaking to each other," Tara Hurt told the judge. The Detroit-area resident declined further comment outside court.

U.S. District Judge Sean Cox read from some of the 50 letters written by victims. He said a young woman joined the Army because her family had lost money that was intended for her college education. He noted that Winans made his pitch from church pulpits.

"Fraud on good, decent church-going people – that was very, very troubling to me," Cox said.

Cox chose a sentence that was in the guideline range of 12 1/2 years to 15 1/2 years in prison.

"Investor fraud schemes like this one are just a fancy way to steal other people's money," U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said.

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John Boehner Is A Liar

The crazy thing is that I am a registered republican but when John Boehner says that the House has already passed its form of sequester spending cut relief, that is a balls out lie. The old House passed it last year but the newly elected House turned that baby down in '13 so what the heck is Boehner talking about? My wife is a teacher, so my house is worried about all the teachers that are going to get let go if the sequester goes on for more than a month. Funny, how you care about all the bull crap in congress when it hits home. I don't think anybody thinks that congress term limits are a bad idea, but for such a great idea, it has certainly gone nowhere in the DC metro. How long has Boehner been in Congress? Just my thoughts.

                                                                                                                              TG

Britney Spears Escorted Out Of Target

Britney Spears is not a criminal ... just uber-famous.

The 31-year-old pop star, who recently went from blonde to brunette, was escorted out of a local Target store by police security after buying some gum. The thing is, we're not sure people would even recognize Brit with her new dye job, considering shejust debuted her dark hair at Elton John's Oscars party on Sunday.

Still, we don't think Spears' female escort did the singer any favors when it comes to going unnoticed -- Spears' bodyguard accompanied her the rest of the day as she did some shopping in Los Angeles.

Jennifer Aniston News

It looks like Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux may beat Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to the aisle.

People magazine reports that Aniston and Theroux are getting ready to wed. The actress is allegedly well underway with her wedding plans and already has the date, the dress and the rings picked out.

"It will be a small affair with their closest friends," a source close to Aniston told People. The wedding will likely take place shortly after the 44-year-old star wraps filming on her latest flick on March 8. "Jen seems more confident than ever," the source added.

Are wedding plans being pushed along because a baby is on the way?

The "We're the Millers" star and her screenwriter-actor fiance attended the Oscars together on Sunday and rumors flared that Aniston might be pregnant after photogs snapped shots of Theroux with his hand placed strategically on her stomach.

Of course, this could have just been a loving, candid gesture. Plus, there was no visible bump whatsoever.

Pregnant or not, she is taking things seriously these days.

Earlier this month, reports circulated that Aniston and Theroux were enrolled in a sort of "marriage bootcamp" -- a three-day therapy session in Santa Monica, Calif., for engaged couples. "Jen and Justin are super excited about their big day," a source told HollyScoop, "but she thought it would be a good idea to start married life rid of any problems."

Aniston and Theroux got engaged back in August, after dating for a little over a year. She and Pitt split in 2005 after five years of marriage.

The Greedometer

Jeff Seymour, a former engineer turned money manager has developed a model to measure stock market bubbles. 

For the last seven years he’s been studying the math behind a stock market crash. (There’s more to it than that, but that’s the elevator summary). He figured that if you looked at the right indicators, you ought to have a good chance of knowing what was coming. You should, at least, get an edge.

What were the indicators which were flashing red in 1999-2000, just before the collapse, he wondered? What were they showing in 2006-7?

Seymour’s conclusion: There are nine indicators you need to watch. 

They range from the Volatility Index or “VIX,” a measure in the options market, to the Weekly Leading Index (WLI) of the Economic Cycle Research Institute (ECRI), to the amount of stock that insiders are dumping on the market.

He put them all together in a doomsday machine he calls “the Greedometer.” It tells you just how dangerously complacent and carefree the market has become at any moment.

U.S. Army Offers Citizen Track For Needed Skills

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SPARTANBURG, S.C. — While Congress debates immigration policy, the Army is offering a fast path to U.S. citizenship for some legal immigrants if they can fill certain critical jobs.

One of them is 23-year-old Carolyne Chelulei (cheh-LU-lei) from Kenya, who went to the University of South Carolina Upstate on a student visa and joined the Army as a medical worker.

She is one of several hundred immigrants with temporary visas whose specialized skills make them eligible for a Pentagon program that repays service in uniform with an accelerated path to citizenship.

The Army began the program on a trial basis in 2009. Maj. Carol Stahl, the program's manager, said it reopened in September 2012 and since then has enlisted 451 linguists with 28 different languages, 19 dentists and three physicians.

Bernanke: 6% Unemployment Rate Still 3 Years Away

Unemployment probably won't reach the 6 percent level until 2016, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday.

Bernanke who is delivering a second day of testimony on Capitol Hill continued to defend the central bank's easy monetary policy and warned Congress against letting looming spending cuts take place.

"There still seems to be quite a bit of unused resources, people that could be working, capital that could be used and is not being used," Bernanke said of the economy. "We believe the monetary policies that we've conducted have helped get stronger recovery and more jobs than we otherwise would have had."

Bernanke said that based on Fed estimates, "we've helped create many private sector jobs, government jobs to support the economy quite significantly."

With the jobless rate in January at 7.9 percent, Bernanke said his "reasonable guess" would be that it will take three more years before the unemployment rate reaches 6 percent. Late last year, the Federal Reserve said it would keep interest rates low until unemployment reached about 6.5 percent.

Bernanke also sees little risk of a spike in interest rates in the near term but did warn of the potential economic damage from the automatic spending cuts that go into effect on Friday.

Married Couple Wanted For Journey To Mars

Wanted: A man and a woman in their early to mid-50s, preferably married. Must enjoy adventure, spending long periods of time together, and sharing space—as in 501 days in a 33-cubic-foot (0.93-cubic-meter) capsule and habitat. Interest in the planet Mars also a prerequisite.

Warning to applicants: You will be exposed to unprecedented risks and your long-term health could be compromised. But if the effort goes ahead and succeeds as planned, you will become the first humans in history to journey into deep space and see Mars up close.

Multimillionaire Dennis Tito, the world's first space tourist, announced today in Washington, D.C., that his newly formed nonprofit organization has taken up the challenge of sending the first humans to Mars.

"We've not sent humans beyond the moon in 40 years," Tito said at a press conference. "... And I think it's time to put an end to that lapse."

Tito argued that it is time for human space travel to catch up to the significant progress made in robotic and remote instrument exploration of space, from the Hubble Space Telescope to the Mars rover Curiosity.

"We have not made nearly the same progress in human spaceflight, particularly with respect to deep space," he said.

The Inspiration Mars Foundation aims to launch the mission in January 2018, when Mars and Earth are at an especially close point in their 15-year cycle. The plan is to send a man and a woman in a capsule around Mars for a flyby mission similar to the one that surveyed the moon before the Apollo landings.

Why a man and a woman? Tito and his team say the spacecraft they envision would accommodate only two astronauts. Once that was decided, they committed to having both sexes represented as the Earth's first ambassadors to deep space, saying that to do otherwise would misrepresent humanity.

A Daring Idea

Unlike any NASA human space mission, there will be no backup plan to rescue the astronauts if something goes wrong. The sobering reality is that even when it's close to Earth, Mars is more than 75 million miles away.

"Many people have told us this is the kind of daring idea that America used to excel at, but they say we don't do it anymore because of the risk," said Taber MacCallum, the chief technical officer for Inspiration Mars. He is CEO and co-founder of Paragon Space Development Corporation, which specializes in creating life-support systems for extreme environments.

"We are going to make the capsule and mission as safe as humanly possible, but it will undeniably carry more risk than what's come before," he said.  "As we see it, this is the way forward."

In addition to the inevitable risks of launching into space and returning to Earth, the astronauts would be exposed to potentially harmful levels of both cosmic radiation and solar radiation.

Consequently, one of the foundation's highest research and development priorities will be developing methods of blocking as much radiation as possible—shielding the capsule with water-filled bladders, a special aluminum skin, and possibly the upper stage of the launch rocket.  Inspiration Mars will also assess pharmaceuticals that might mitigate the health effects of the radiation.

Jonathan Clark, chief medical officer for the mission, added at the press conference that genotyping crew members to better tailor medications and radiation countermeasures was also a possibility.

Nonetheless, significant risk remains. MacCallum said that's partly why the Inspiration Mars group will be looking for experienced astronauts in their early 50s: An older man or woman would have statistically fewer years to live after their return than a young person, and so would be less likely to develop the cancers that radiation could bring.

MacCallum is also well aware of the psychological stress of being in such a tiny environment with only one other person. He lived in the Biosphere 2, a closed environment outside Tucson, for two years in the 1990s. Much of that time was spent with the woman who later became his wife and co-founder of Paragon,Jane Poynter, who will lead in developing the crew and life-support systems for Inspiration Mars. (Related: "Psychological Challenges of a Manned Mission to Mars.")

If the 501-day trip does take place and succeeds, it would constitute the longest time any person has been in space, and by quite a bit. Not surprisingly, one of the prerequisites for applicants is having lived in an isolated, confined environment for at least six months.

"In conditions like those going to Mars, you have to have a colleague who is also a companion of some kind, or else the pressure gets too great," MacCallum said. "We think a married couple would be ideal, but we haven't ruled out people who aren't a couple."

Can It Really Be Done?

The Mars project is extremely ambitious, but it is at least plausible because it is simple—at least in terms of rocket science.

According to a paper Tito will present this weekend at an aerospace conference in Montana, if the launch is on target, then the spaceship will need only one rocket burn to change course. With the right trajectory, it will fly to Mars, will pass within a few hundred miles of the surface, and then will be pulled around the planet and given a gravity-assisted fling back toward Earth.

Under the current flight trajectory, the capsule would spend about ten hours within 65,000 miles of Mars.

"In terms of the sophistication of what we want to do, it is absolutely nothing compared with the Curiosity landing on Mars," MacCallum said.  "We have different risks because we'll be carrying two people, but the flight architecture is pretty simple—which makes it appealing."

The First Space Tourist

The man behind the private Mars push is no stranger to the red planet.

In 2001 Tito paid $20 million to become the first "tourist" to rocket into space. He spent six days on the International Space Station. (Related: "7 Ways You Could Blast Off by 2023.")

Though Tito made his fortune in finance, he has a master's degree in engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for eight years.

While at JPL, Tito worked on trajectory and flight issues for Mariner 4 and 9, which flew to Mars in the 1960s and '70s, respectively. Mariner 4 was the first successful flyby of the planet, and in 1965 it sent back the first pictures of another planet from deep space.

"I will not be one of the crew members on this mission," said Tito, now 72. Even if he were 30 years younger, he insisted at the press conference that he still wouldn't be on this mission because the criteria for selecting crew members will be so high.

Funding and Approval

While the journey will not be sponsored or controlled by NASA, MacCallum said officials from that agency have shown great interest in the project and have already provided substantial support regarding how to select the astronauts and how to make the spacecraft a livable place. The Inspiration Mars group has also entered into a Space Act agreement with NASA's Ames Research Center to come up with an Earth re-entry plan for the end of the mission.

"We would be fools to not use the unparalleled expertise of NASA when we can, and we see all our work as part of the agency's—and the nation's—effort to land humans on Mars in the future," MacCallum said. "NASA will pay nothing, but can get a lot out of this plan if it all comes together."

NASA is currently building a heavy-lift rocket and capsule system dubbed the Orion for future deep space exploration. But limited funding and a resulting change in development plans during President Obama's first term have left the agency without any immediate options for human space flight.

The only federal agency that would have to formally approve the Inspiration Mars flight is the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates all spacecraft launches and returns.

But MacCallum said that the foundation's board of experts—headed by Joseph Rothenberg, formerly a top human spaceflight manager with NASA—will have the final word on whether the Mars flyby plans are technically sound. If not, Tito's vision will have to wait until 2032, when the two planets align again.

Tito, who has declined to estimate what the effort will cost, has promised to personally supply the funds for its first two years. But he and others are already fundraising with what colleagues say is considerable success—especially in the past few weeks as word of the plan began to leak out on the Internet.

Senate GOP Ponders Ceding Power To Obama

Mitch McConnell is trying to unite his conference behind an idea. | John Shinkle/POLITICO

By MANU RAJU and DAVID ROGERS | 2/26/13 8:36 PM EST Updated: 2/27/13 1:44 PM EST

Days before the March 1 deadline, Senate Republicans are circulating a draft bill that would cancel $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts and instead turn over authority to President Barack Obama to achieve the same level of savings under a plan to be filed by March 8.

The five- page document, which has the tacit support of Senate GOP leaders, represents a remarkable shift for the party. Having railed against Senate Democrats for not passing a budget, Republicans are now proposing that Congress surrender an important piece of its Constitutional “power of the purse” for the last seven months of this fiscal year.

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The proposal would require — like the sequester — that no more than $42.6 billion of the cuts come at the expense of defense programs. But the elaborate, almost Rube Goldberg construct is already provoking sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike and reflects a political scramble to escape the fallout from the sequester.As proposed, lawmakers would retain the power to overturn the president’s spending plan by March 22, but only under a resolution of disapproval that would demand two-thirds majorities in both the House and Senate to prevail over an Obama veto.

The sweep of the first GOP option is striking. If Congress were to follow this course, significant power would be shifted to the president, an unusual maneuver that even Obama himself and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) have scoffed at. But the plan appears to have the backing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and is being advanced by conservative Republicans who don’t want the White House to continue using the sequester as a public relations hammer.

“Let’s be clear about the goal here,” McConnell said, somewhat defensively on the Senate floor Wednesday. “The goal isn’t to hand over congressional authority. It’s to make sure these cuts actually happen.”

Reid has said he will allow Republicans one shot at offering a sequester solution this week, but the GOP has been divided about a way forward. Even if Republicans unite behind this latest approach, it is unlikely to clear the Senate, ensuring that the sequestration cuts will take effect Friday.

The internal GOP jostling comes as top Democratic senators openly acknowledge they lack the 60 votes to get their plan out of the Senate with their alternative to forestall the cuts for 10 months with alternative savings and new taxes on millionaires. With no resolution in sight by week’s end, Congress’s next best hope to adjust to the sequester’s blow falls to House and Senate appropriators, who must next replace the continuing resolution set to expire March 27.

Asked Tuesday if Democrats expected to get any GOP support to exceed the 60-vote threshold later this week, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) laughed and said bluntly: “No.”

Both parties want to avoid a government shutdown by March 27, but the same replacement bill for the expiring CR could also be used to mitigate the damage of the cuts by adjusting the underlying agency appropriations.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) is pressing her caucus to extend government funding with a more detailed package that would make it easier for agencies to cope with the lower funding levels. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) has had some early discussions with Mikulski, but so far he wants to push forward with a narrower plan that would focus most of the relief on the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs.

Oscar Pistorius begins his new life on bail

Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was today adjusting to his new life: free, but as one of the world's most famous criminal suspects.

By Dan Newling, Cape Town

Despite his lawyers' attempts to keep it secret, journalists and photographers quickly established the athlete's bail address in Pretoria.

The 26-year-old is likely to have to endure near constant attention as he waits for trial, which may happen this year, but could take longer.

News that Mr Pistorius won bail at the Pretoria Magistrates' Court was greeted by cheers from his family and supporters in court on Saturday, after four days of high drama in the courtroom.

Critics of the decision, however, have already voiced concern that it sends the wrong message about how seriously South Africa tackles its high rate of violence against women.

Mr Pistorius has been accused of murdering his model girlfriend of four months, Reeva Steenkamp, by shooting her in the head, leg, hip and hand while she cowered on his toilet.

The athlete – nicknamed Blade Runner – insists it was an accident and a result of mistaken identity.

Following the decision to grant bail, the athlete's PR team released a statement on Saturday from the sportsman's uncle Arnold, saying: "We are grateful that the magistrate recognised the validity and strength of our application.

"As the family, we are convinced that Oscar's version of what happened on that terrible night will prove to be true."

However, South Africa's criminal prosecution agency hit back at speculation that he bail decision had damaged its case against Mr Pistorius.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Medupe Simasiku said: "We are confident of the case which we have been handling."

Mr Simasiku went on: "Being a bail application, it [the court's decision] doesn't mean an acquittal. We still have a case to deal with, and we respect the ruling of the court so far.

"We still believe we have the evidence to convict Oscar Pistorius, but I cannot give details regarding what it is."

The prosecution has been stung by strong criticism for the way the police handled the initial investigation.

But Mr Simasiku said: "That criticism doesn't mean we should lose hope."

Oscar Pistorius: Heading Toward A Plea Deal

Last week ushered in tons of courtroom drama for Oscar Pistorius and his team of attorneys. Unfortunately, for the news blogs, that's likely the last public drama were going to see. This case is pointing clearly toward a plea bargain, thus ending the dramatic legal standoff.

The case, it seems, hinges on Oscar's mental state that evening and whether or not he can sell his viewpoint that he was haunted by the demons of domestic break-ins.  After a four-day hearing last week, Pistorius was released on a bail of a million rand, or about $140,000.

Like the United States, South Africa has a deeply rooted foundation of plea bargaining. The Pistorius case will probably end the same way. For Oscar, he knows fully well the life sentence staring at him if he cannot sell the altered state of mind that fateful evening. A plea might, the key word here being 'might', bring a relatively short sentence. Kind of like a manslaughter conviction in the U.S. 5-7 years kind of range. 

Oscar's team fully knows they have a defensible case given the highly violent residential culture dominating South Africa. So that's maybe why the government may want to deal. Also, the government knows that domestic violence cases don't end up convictions often and also that it will have a terrible time proving motive given that no public spats are on record nor are any complaints filed by Steenkamp.

So, one thing in this case is crystal clear: it could go either way. With the risk of uncertainty too intolerable, both sides would welcome a plea deal.

How Russia Hopes to Win Big—In Syria

Mother Russia is back, or so it seems. President Putin wants the entire globe to see that Russia is still  a global power with which to reckon. Except, it seems that he's using Syria as his leading hand.

TheTardus Naval Port in Syria was bought by the USSR in 1971 with no stated intention given their Naval presence in more strategic locations. And when the Soviet Union fell, Russia found that it didn't have the money to invest in Tardus. 

When Gaddafi fell, leaving long time Russia supporter, Lybia, no longer friendly to Putin, Tardus became Russia's only presence in the region The discovery of vast gas deposits just offshore have transformed the once insignificant Tardus port into a strategic necessity.

Since Putin's time as a KGB officer, over half the population of the Soviet Empire has left as has a quarter of its land mass, and most of its world power. Putin has described the Soviet Union's fall as a "geopolitical catastrophe."

The growing trend among the Western Powers to remove disapproved administrations in other sovereign countries and a program to isolate Russia has Putin looking to for any possible way to assert himself with influence. That influence rests with Tardus

With the US directing military operations in Syria with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia at a control center in Adana about 60 miles from the Syrian border, which is also home to the American air base in Incirlik, the Russians are keen to remind the Americans and Europeans that their dealings with the various Moslem extremists can bring grave danger.

Bernanke: 'QE' benefits clear, risks manageable

That is huge news for stocks because the whole downward movement of stocks the past week was due to the fed official from Dallas saying that QE was ending. Now Bernanke says otherwise. Confusing? Indeed. But Big Ben always gets his way with the Fed Committee, so QE is back on the table. This combined with a positive US consumer sentiment figure this morning (which flies in the face of the higher payroll tax and spiking fuel prices) provided a huge head fake for the markets which were heading lower this am. Housing sales was also a good figure. Sure, we have the exogenous events of Friday's Congress spending cuts and the Italy mess but the US economy keeps moving higher and stocks have QE. That's my take for today, anyway.

Oscar Pistorius: Judge Tied To Killing Spree

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Last week, the judge who granted bail to Oscar Pistorius was in the international spotlight, presiding over dramatic hearings in a courtroom as the Olympic athlete sat in the dock charged with murdering his girlfriend. This week, the judge is in private mourning.

Desmond Nair, chief magistrate of the Pretoria Magistrate's Court, confirmed Tuesday that he is related to a woman suspected of killing her two children and committing suicide on the weekend.

The revelation was the latest twist in the saga of Pistorius and prominent figures linked to the case against the double-amputee athlete, who faces a charge of premeditated murder in the Feb. 14 shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model who appeared in a television reality show.

The bodies of a woman and her two sons were found Sunday evening at their Johannesburg home by her ex-husband, police Warrant Officer Balan Muthan said. Authorities suspect the woman administered a substance that killed her children, and took her own life by ingesting it as well.

"I can confirm the deceased is my first cousin," Nair told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The woman's brother, Vishal Maharaj, identified her as Anusha Maharaj. Police said Maharaj was her family name before she married. South African media identified her as Anusha Mooljee.

Muthan said police suspect "she took her own life by ingesting a substance that killed her," and that she "most probably" gave the same substance to her children. Autopsies were conducted Monday and toxicologists were analyzing the substance believed to have killed the three family members.

Suicide notes were found and a murder investigation was underway, Muthan said. He said copies of the notes were admitted as evidence in the probe and declined to comment on the contents.

Eyewitness News, a South African media outlet, said the boys who died were 12 and 17 years old and cited neighbor Claire Osment as saying she rushed outside after hearing screams coming from the townhouse where they lived.

"We asked what happened. The dad just said, 'She has killed my boys.' He was just crying," Eyewitness News quoted her as saying. "He couldn't believe it, he couldn't believe that his sons are gone."

Nair, 44, has presided over a number of high-profile cases, including the 2008 conviction on fraud charges of Sydney Maree, a South African who took American citizenship and became a track star in the United States; a 2011 plea agreement in which rugby player Bees Roux received a five-year suspended prison sentence for the beating death of a policeman; and inquiries into alleged misconduct by magistrates around South Africa.

On Friday, Nair delivered a lengthy discourse on why he was granting bail to Pistorius, including an assertion that prosecutors had not argued persuasively that the Paralympian was a flight risk. Nair criticized shortcomings in the state's investigation, but he also said aspects of Pistorius' account of what happened were not convincing.

Pistorius says he killed Steenkamp accidentally, opening fire after mistaking her for an intruder in his home. Prosecutors alleged he intentionally shot her after the couple had an argument.

Last week, the chief investigator in the case against Pistorius, Hilton Botha, was removed from the inquiry after it was revealed that attempted murder charges against him had been reinstated in early February. The charges relate to a 2011 incident in which Botha and two other police officers allegedly fired on a minibus.

In another surprise, a lawyer for the Pistorius family said Sunday that Oscar's brother, Carl, faces a charge of unlawful, negligent killing for a 2008 road death. That charge had also been dropped and later reinstated.

Expect Shaky US Stocks This Week

Italian gridlock may halt the much needed austerity programs while Japanese stocks were dragged down by the Yen's sudden rise over the European instability fears. Asia down is down .65%. This combined with the HUGE spending cuts hitting the US budget this Friday offers a dim outlook for the DOW and S&P. If congress doesn't kick the cost cutting can down the road, serious concerns about the direction of the U.S. economy are going to soar to new heights.

Yahoo CEO Ends Telecommuting Option For Workers

Marissa Mayer brought free food and shiny new iPhones to Yahoo. Now she's making a change that's a lot less fun, instituting a policy that says Yahoos can no longer work from home.

The message officially came from human resources head Jackie Reses, whose memo was obtained by tech blog All Things D.3

"To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side," the memo said. "That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices."

This is the next step in Mayer's campaign to turn around the ailing Yahoo . Overall, she wants the company to devote itself to personalizing the Web for its users, and Mayer apparently deems working from home to be a detriment to those plans.

Poll: Do you agree with Marissa Mayer's decision?

Mayer has said she wants Yahoo to move more quickly, with teams focusing on collaboration and communication. Clearly, Mayer thinks it's hard to make those connections when working remotely.

The memo appears squarely aimed at employees who work remotely full time, stating that by June, those employees will have to report to a Yahoo office. Reading between the lines, it looks like some long-distance employees will have to either relocate or resign. It's unclear how many of Yahoo's 11,500 employees fall into this category, as a Yahoo rep said simply that the company doesn't comment on "internal matters."

But even occasional teleworkers have also been put on notice: "[F]or the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration," the memo added.

The change is sure to shock remote workers, as well as irk office attendees who take the occasional telework day. The Yahoo memo sparked a work/life balance debate about the benefits and risks of working from home; Mayer's ex-employer Google  views it as a productivity killer.

As a female CEO and new mother, Mayer faces increased scrutiny of her approach to juggling family life with career.

In November, her first public interview after taking the reins at Yahoo, Mayer laid out her three priorities. "For me, it's God, family and Yahoo -- in that order," she said. (She was referencing Vince Lombardi's quote about God, family and the Green Bay Packers.)

But a few months before that, some pundits criticized Mayer for returning back to work soon after giving birth. Baby Macallister arrived on September 30, and Mayer was back to work two weeks later.

While Mayer may not demand that type of superhuman action from her underlings, it's clear she does expect dedication -- and to Mayer, that means showing up every day. 

WHY I'M QUITTING FACEBOOK

Editor's note: Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff writes a regular column for CNN.com. He is a media theorist and the author of the upcoming book "Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now."

(CNN) -- I used to be able to justify using Facebook as a cost of doing business. As a writer and sometime activist who needs to promote my books and articles and occasionally rally people to one cause or another, I found Facebook fast and convenient. Though I never really used it to socialize, I figured it was OK to let other people do that, and I benefited from their behavior.

I can no longer justify this arrangement.

Today, I am surrendering my Facebook account, because my participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work. In my upcoming book "Present Shock," I chronicle some of what happens when we can no longer manage our many online presences. I have always argued for engaging with technology as conscious human beings and dispensing with technologies that take that agency away.

Facebook is just such a technology. It does things on our behalfwhen we're not even there. It actively misrepresents us to our friends, and worse misrepresents those who have befriended us to still others. To enable this dysfunctional situation -- I call it "digiphrenia" -- would be at the very least hypocritical. But toparticipate on Facebook as an author, in a way specifically intended to draw out the "likes" and resulting vulnerability of others, is untenable.

Facebook does not exist to help us make friends, but to turn our network of connections, brand preferences and activities over time -- our "social graphs" -- into money for others.Facebook has never been merely a social platform. Rather, it exploits our social interactions the way a Tupperware party does.

We Facebook users have been building a treasure lode of big data that government and corporate researchers have been mining to predict and influence what we buy and for whom we vote. We have been handing over to them vast quantities of information about ourselves and our friends, loved ones and acquaintances. With this information, Facebook and the "big data" research firms purchasing their data predict still more things about us -- from our future product purchases or sexual orientation to our likelihood for civil disobedience or even terrorism.

The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we -- and the young, particularly -- spend on our profiles are the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation.

The efforts of a few thousand employees at Facebook's Menlo Park campus pale in comparison to those of the hundreds of millions of users meticulously tweaking their pages. Corporations used to have to do research to assemble our consumer profiles; now we do it for them.

** 

The information collected about you by Facebook through my Facebook page isn't even shared with me. Thanks to my page, Facebook knows the demographics of my readership, their e-mails, what else they like, who else they know and, perhaps most significant, who they trust. And Facebook is taking pains not to share any of this, going so far as to limit the ability of third-party applications to utilize any of this data.

Given that this was the foundation for Facebook's business plan from the start, perhaps more recent developments in the company's ever-evolving user agreement shouldn't have been so disheartening.

Still, we bridle at the notion that any of our updates might be converted into "sponsored stories" by whatever business or brand we may have mentioned. That innocent mention of cup of coffee at Starbucks, in the Facebook universe, quickly becomes an attributed endorsement of their brand. Remember, the only way to connect with something or someone is to "like" them. This means if you want to find out what a politician or company you don't like is up to, you still have to endorse them publicly.

More recently, users -- particularly those with larger sets of friends, followers and likes -- learned that their updates were no longer reaching all of the people who had signed up to get them. Now, we are supposed to pay to "promote" our posts to our friends and, if we pay even more, to their friends.

Yes, Facebook is entitled to be paid for promoting us and our interests -- but this wasn't the deal going in, particularly not for companies who paid Facebook for extra followers in the first place. Neither should users who "friend" my page automatically become the passive conduits for any of my messages to all their friends just because I paid for it.

That brings me to Facebook's most recent shift, and the one that pushed me over the edge.

Through a new variation of the Sponsored Stories feature called Related Posts, users who "like" something can be unwittingly associated with pretty much anything an advertiser pays for. Like e-mail spam with a spoofed identity, the Related Post shows up in a newsfeed right under the user's name and picture. If you like me, you can be shown implicitly recommending me or something I like -- something you've never heard of -- to others without your consent.

For now, as long as I don't like anything myself, I have some measure of control over what those who follow me receive in my name or, worse, are made to appear to be endorsing, themselves. But I feel that control slipping away, and cannot remain part of a system where liking me or my work can be used against you.

The promotional leverage that Facebook affords me is not worth the price. Besides, how can I ask you to like me, when I myself must refuse to like you or anything else?

I have always appreciated that agreeing to become publicly linked to me and my work online involves trust. It is a trust I value, but -- as it is dependent on the good graces of Facebook -- it is a trust I can live up to only by unfriending this particularly anti-social social network.

Maybe in doing so I'll help people remember that Facebook is not the Internet. It's just one website, and it comes with a price.

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Three Magic Numbers That Could Derail the Stock Market

What do a $3.80 gasoline price, a 2.15 percent 10-year Treasury yield and a 20 reading on the CBOE Volatility Index have in common? They're all levels that could ring the bell on this rally.
Gas prices have been chugging higher for the past month, with the current national average at $3.78, according to AAA. That's just two cents from the magic $3.80 and a traditionally dangerous level for the stock market, according to Barry Knapp of Barclays and other strategists.

(Read More: Pro: Gas Won't Hit $5 This Year)

In fact, Knapp has a chart in one of his latest strategy reports that shows $3.80 a gallon for gas has historically been where the forward multiple of the S&P 500 index tops out. In other words, investors start paying less for future earnings in anticipation higher gas prices will hit company profits.

"A rise in gasoline was followed by a deceleration in consumption in the following quarter" in February 2011 and 2012, Knapp said in a note to clients.

Meanwhile, ten-year Treasury yields have jumped to around 2 percent this year amid concern that the Federal Reserve may end its quantitative easing plan sooner than planned. If this yield hits 2.15 percent — the average dividend yield for stocks in the S&P 500 — bonds suddenly look very attractive again to income seekers who have flooded into stocks.

"The fact that stocks have been yielding more than the 10-year has been a major argument in favor of equities over the past nine months or so," the strategists at Bespoke Investment Group wrote in a note pointing out these metrics colliding toward each other.

Why take the risk of owning a stock for its yield, when you can get the same comfort without that risk in a Treasury security?

The last number — the VIX — was thrust into the equation today as the so-called fear gauge jumped more than 20 percent to above the 19 level. The metric measures the price of puts (market protection) to the price of calls on the S&P 500.

A rise above 20 in the VIX in April 2012 and July 2011 signaled a jump in investor fear and presaged pullbacks in the market.

"If we got above 20 and held it for a couple days, then market would go a lot lower," predicted Jon Najarian of TradeMonster.com.