WASHINGTON ? President Barack Obama's re-election campaign identified its top fundraisers on Tuesday, including 61 people who each raised at least half a million dollars. Altogether, the more than 440 fundraisers collected at least $75 million to help Obama win a second term.
Among them are embattled former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Obama's campaign and the Democratic National Committee late last year returned $70,000 in contributions from Corzine and his wife following questions about the collapse of MF Global, the financial firm Corzine ran.
Corzine is no longer raising money for the re-election, campaign officials said.
The campaign divided the list into four groups based on how much money donors raised: $50,000-$100,000, $100,000-$200,000, $200,000 to $500,000 and those who raised more than $500,000 apiece.
The donors represent a broad network of contributors, many of them longtime Democratic Party stalwarts.
The list includes two fundraisers linked to Solyndra LLC, the California solar company that received a $528 million federal loan and then later declared bankruptcy, prompting a federal investigation. Steve Spinner, an Energy Department adviser, raised at least $500,000 and Steve Westly, a venture capitalist who was an unpaid adviser to the department, raised between $200,000 and $500,000.
Though Obama rejects contributions from lobbyists, his top fundraisers include individuals involved in the business of influencing government.
Michael Kempner, among those who raised more than $500,000, is president and CEO of MWW Group, a public relations firm with a large lobbying business. Kempner himself is not a registered lobbyist.
Sally Susman, another fundraiser in the $500,000-plus category, is executive vice president for policy, external affairs and communications at Pfizer Inc., a job that includes directing the pharmaceutical giant's government relations operations.
California figured most prominently on Obama's roster of big money "bundlers." Sixteen are from California and 13 are from New York.
Top fundraisers include movie producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. Actress Eva Longoria was in the second highest tier, bundling $200,000 to $500,000 for Obama's re-election.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) ? Confidence in the euro zone's economy strengthened in January for the first time since early 2011, EU data showed on Monday, but a recovery in Germany masked a deterioration in France and Italy, highlighting the bloc's diverging fortunes.
Germany has shown more resilience to the euro zone's troubles than many of its neighbors, helped by fiscal prudence, a competitive edge and good demand for its high quality goods.
France and Italy have struggled to keep up, facing questions about the sustainability of their own finances as Greece tries to agree a debt restructuring and Portugal comes under fresh scrutiny in financial markets.
The divergence complicates the task of EU leaders who are meeting in Brussels on Monday to try and sketch a path out of the economic slump.
The European Commission's economic sentiment indicator rose by 0.6 points in the euro zone to 93.4, the first improvement in sentiment since March last year as some confidence returned to services, consumers and construction.
"We're seeing a slight stabilization and we expect the recession the euro zone will end in the spring," said Christoph Weil, an economist at Commerzbank.
"But we can also see that the divergence in the euro zone is increasing and that is of great concern," he said.
The European Central Bank's decision in December to provide 3-year loans to banks averted a credit freeze, while the U.S. economy expanded strongly in the last quarter of 2011 and China has remained robust, maintaining demand for Europe's goods.
But budget austerity and political divisions over how to solve the two-year debt crisis continue to depress business in the euro zone and the wider European Union, with non-euro zone country Britain heading for a recession in early 2011.
The rising optimism is still tempered by EU leaders' inability to resolve the euro zone debt crisis and the sentiment indicator was slightly lower than forecast by economists polled by Reuters.
Following last week's surprisingly positive purchasing managers' indices, or PMIs, business climate rose for the second month in a row to -0.21, in line with economists' expectations.
But factory managers saw a deterioration in the view of their order books and although this was offset by a positive assessment of stocks, it confirmed the mixed economic picture.
Industrial confidence remained at the lowest level since April 2010 while confidence in services rebounded by 2 points in the euro zone and construction was up 0.6 points.
The European Commission forecasts 2012 economic growth of just 0.5 percent for the 17 nations in the euro zone, which generates 16 percent of global economic output.
The International Monetary Fund is more pessimistic, forecasting a 0.5 percent contraction in 2012 that it says could drag the world into recession.
EU leaders face a tough task at Monday's summit as they try and bridge the divergence in economic performance among the 27-nation bloc's economies and reconcile austerity with growth.
Recent data suggests Germany will avoid a recession, while non-euro zone member Britain, as well as euro states Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal, are likely to see their economies contract in 2012. Belgium and the Netherlands, also members of the single currency, will struggle to grow at all.
The Commission's data also supported that view, as economic sentiment improved in Germany by 2.3 points, the second consecutive monthly rise, but fell in France, Italy and the Netherlands.
While large economies such as France and the Netherlands will likely benefit from Germany's recovery, Italy and Greece must confront falling productivity and high debts to avoid years of stagnation.
"Weakened domestic economic activity, intensified fiscal tightening in many countries and still serious uncertainties and concerns over the euro zone sovereign debt crisis continue to limit an improvement in sentiment," said Howard Archer, chief European economist at IHS Global Insight.
(Reporting By Robin Emmott; editing by Rex Merrifield/Anna Willard)
In just a little over an hour the SAG Awards will begin but before the winners names are announced I figured I should really share my predictions with you. As I sit here watching E! Live From The Red Carpet, yes I want to watch it all, I am thinking about not only whom I want to win but also whom I think realistically will win. Sometimes those two things are not the same. That being said I give to you my predictions for who will go home a winter at the 2012 SAG Awards, you will find my choices in bold. FILM? Best Picture? Bridesmaids? The Artist?, even though I am secretly rooting for Bridesmaids The Descendants? The Help? Midnight in Paris Best Actor ? George Clooney ? The Descendants, it is Clooney?s year again Demian Bichir ? A Better Life? Leonardo DiCaprio ? J. Edgar? Jean Dujardin ? The Artist? Brad Pitt ? Moneyball Best Actress ? Michelle Williams ? My Week With Marilyn, she is going to clean up this awards season. Glenn Close ? Albert Nobbs? Viola Davis ? The Help? Meryl Streep ? The Iron Lady? Tilda Swinton ? We Need to Talk About Kevin [...]
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. ? On the weekend before the pivotal Florida primary, Newt Gingrich vowed Saturday to stay in the race for the Republican presidential nomination until the national convention this summer even if he loses Tuesday's vote. Front-runner Mitt Romney poured on the criticism of his rival in television ads airing across the state.
Gingrich's pledge, in a race defined by unpredictability, raised the prospect of an extended struggle inside the party as Republicans work to defeat President Barack Obama in the fall. "You just had two national polls that show me ahead," he said. "Why don't you ask Gov. Romney what he will do if he loses" in Florida.
The former Massachusetts governor countered a few hours later while in Panama City. "I think we are going to win here, I sure hope so," he said.
As the two rivals made their appeals to Hispanic, Jewish and tea party voters, veterans of the armed forces and others, all known indicators pointed to a good day for Romney in the primary.
He and his allies held a 3-1 advantage in money spent on television advertising in the race's final days. Robust early vote and absentee ballot totals followed a pre-primary turnout operation by his campaign. Even the schedules the two men kept underscored the shape of the race ? moderate for Romney, heavy for Gingrich.
Campaigning like a front-runner, Romney made few references to Gingrich. Instead, he criticized Obama's plans to cut the size of the armed forces. "He's detached from reality," the former Massachusetts governor said.
"The foreign policy of `pretty please' is not working terribly well," he added. Romney said he wants to add 100,000 troops, not cut them.
If his personal rhetoric was directed Obama's way, the television commercials were trained on Gingrich, whose victory in last Saturday's South Carolina primary upended the race for the nomination. A new ad released as the weekend began is devoted to the day in 1997 when Gingrich received an ethics reprimand from the House while serving as speaker and was ordered to pay a $300,000 fine.
Nearly the entire 30-second ad consists of NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw's nationally broadcast description of the events on the evening news. "By an overwhelming vote, they found him guilty of ethics violations; they charged him a very large financial penalty, and they raised ? several of them ? raised serious questions about his future effectiveness," Brokaw said that night, and now again on televisions across Florida.
Both NBC and the former newsman registered objections. The network called on the campaign to stop using the footage and Brokaw said in a statement, "I do not want my role as a journalist compromised for political gain by any campaign."
A Romney adviser, Eric Fehrnstrom, said the campaign wasn't likely to stop running the ad. "We believe it falls within fair use," he said. "We didn't take the entire broadcast; we just took the first 30 seconds."
Whatever its impact, the ad represented part of a barrage that Gingrich could not match.
A second Romney ad said Gingrich had "cashed in" as a Washington insider while the housing crisis was hitting Florida particularly hard.
Figures made available to The Associated Press showed Romney was spending $2.8 million to air television commercials in the final week of the Florida campaign. In addition, a group supporting him, Restore Our Future, was spending $4 million more, for a combined total of $6.8 million.
By contrast, Gingrich was spending about $700,000, and Winning Our Future, a group backing him, an additional $1.5 million. That was about one-third the amount for the pro-Romney tandem.
Officials said the total of absentee and early vote cast approached 500,000, about 200,000 of them before Gingrich won in South Carolina last weekend.
Gingrich seemed in good humor during the day, despite the obstacles in his way. He joked with reporters that they had missed an example of his grandiosity ? a charge that one rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, had used in a recent debate ? when they didn't see him hold a golf trophy on display at the PGA Library.
Gingrich also turned aside one opportunity to criticize Romney, answering a question by saying, `I want to talk about defeating Obama."
But his tone seemed to change after he said he wasn't happy with his performances in a pair of debates during the week, and was asked to explain.
"You cannot debate somebody who is dishonest. You just can't," he said, referring to Romney.
Referring to one answer the former Massachusetts governor had given, Gingrich said it was not true that Romney had always voted for a Republican when one was on the ballot.
"That in fact he could have voted for George H.W. Bush or Pat Buchanan the same day and he chose the Democratic primary, he voted Paul Tsongas, the most liberal candidate. The same year he gave money to three Democrats for Congress," he added, referring to the 1992 campaign.
"Now there's no practical way in a civil debate to deal with somebody who is that willing to say something that is just totally dishonest."
Romney poked fun at Gingrich's debate performances.
"This last one Speaker Gingrich said he didn't do so well because the audience was so loud. The one before he said he didn't do so well because the audience was too quiet. This is like Goldilocks, you know, you've got to have it just right.
"When I debate the president, I'm not going to worry about the audience, I'm going to make sure that we take down Barack Obama and take back the White House."
The two other contenders, Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, have conceded Florida and did not campaign in the state during the day.
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Associated Press reporter Steve Peoples in Panama City contributed to this report.
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, center, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, left, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, center, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, left, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai arrives prior to laying a wreath on the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc de Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, second from right, France's Defence and Veterans Minister Gerard Longuet, third from right, and French General and Paris military governor Bruno Dary, fourth from right, pay tribute to the Unknown soldier's tomb, at the Arc of Triomphe, in Paris, Friday Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure, Pool)
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy, front right, and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, second from left, sign a friendship and cooperation treaty at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Philippe Wojazer, Pool)
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? France's plans to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan a year early drew harsh words Saturday in the Afghan capital, with critics accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of putting domestic politics ahead of Afghans' safety.
A wider proposal by Sarkozy for NATO to hand over all security to Afghans by the end of next year also came under fire, with one Afghan lawmaker saying it would be "a big mistake" that would leave security forces unprepared to fight the Taliban insurgency and threaten a new descent into violence in the 10-year-old war.
Sarkozy's decision, which came a week after four French troops were shot dead by an Afghan army trainee suspected of being a Taliban infiltrator, raises new questions about the unity of the U.S.-led military coalition.
It also reopens the debate over whether setting a deadline for troop withdrawals will allow the Taliban to run out the clock and seize more territory once foreign forces are gone.
"Afghan forces are not self-sufficient yet. They still need more training, more equipment and they need to be stronger," said military analyst Abdul Hadi Khalid, Afghanistan's former interior minister.
Khalid said the decision by Sarkozy was clearly political. Sarkozy's conservative party faces a tough election this year, and the French public's already deep discontent with the Afghan war only intensified when unarmed French troops were gunned down by an Afghan trainee Jan. 20 at a joint base in the eastern province of Kapisa.
Sarkozy announced France's new timetable on Friday alongside Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was in Paris for a previously planned visit. He also said Karzai had agreed with him to ask for all international forces to hand security over to the Afghan army and police in 2013, a plan he would present at a Feb. 2-3 meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels. He said he would call President Barack Obama about his plan on Saturday.
Afghan lawmaker Tahira Mujadedi said Afghan security forces will not be ready in time for any early NATO withdrawal, saying the current timetable already is rushing the training of national forces.
"That would be a big mistake by the Afghan government if they accept it," Mujadedi said of Sarkozy's plan. "In my view, they should extend 2014 by more years instead of cutting it short to 2013."
She said she sympathizes in the matter of the French soldiers' deaths, but argued that they present no logical reason for France to deviate from the U.S. timetable for NATO to hand over security by 2014.
"When military forces are present in a war zone, anything can happen," Mujadedi said. The French troops "are not here for a holiday."
France now has about 3,600 soldiers in the international force, which is mostly made up of American troops.
Afghan forces started taking the lead for security in certain areas of the country last year and the plan has been to add more areas, as Afghan police and soldiers were deemed ready to take over from foreign troops.
According to drawdown plans already announced by the U.S. and more than a dozen other nations, the foreign military footprint in Afghanistan will shrink by an estimated 40,000 troops at the close of this year. Washington is pulling out the most ? 33,000 by the end of the year. That's one-third of 101,000 U.S. troops that were in Afghanistan in June, the peak of the U.S. military presence in the war, Pentagon figures show.
Sarkozy also said France would hand over authority in the province of Kapisa, where the French troops were killed this month, by the end of March. Karzai's office confirmed that decision Saturday, saying it was made at the French president's request.
The NATO coalition has started to hand over security in several areas of Afghanistan, aiming to transfer about half of the country in the coming months. But Kapisa was not one of the provinces earmarked for handover, according to U.S. Navy Lt. James McCue, a coalition spokesman.
Mujadedi, a lawmaker who represents Kapisa, argued that Afghan forces in her province are not ready to go it alone in fighting the Taliban insurgency, which is especially strong in several of the province's districts. She warned that if NATO forces do pull back from Kapisa, it could also destabilize nearby Kabul.
"We have had so many attacks, ambushes and also suicide attacks in Kapisa," Mujadedi said. "Unfortunately, our national police and army, while present in Kapisa, are unable to provide good security for people."
France's early withdrawal announcement could step up pressure on other European governments like Britain, Italy and Germany, which also have important roles in Afghanistan.
Karzai, who praised the role of France and other NATO allies, didn't object at Friday's joint news conference when Sarkozy said the 2013 NATO withdrawal timetable was sought by both France and Afghanistan.
However, the Afghan leader appeared to suggest that it was a high-end target.
"We hope to finish the transition ... by the end of 2013 at the earliest ? or by the latest as has been agreed upon ? by the end of 2014," Karzai said.
Nick Witney, a senior policy fellow at the Paris-based European Council on Foreign Relations, said public support of the war in Europe started sliding fast after the coalition agreed to end the combat mission in 2014.
"It has become more and more difficult to justify every single casualty, since it's now clear that these are wasted lives," said Witney, a former head of the European Defense Agency.
"Most European policymakers realize that on a purely cost-benefit assessment, we would all leave Afghanistan tomorrow," Witney said.
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Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks in Delray Beach, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks in Delray Beach, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, campaigns at Lanco Paint Company in Orlando, Fla., Friday, Jan. 27, 2012. Romney and Gingrich square off over immigration and other issues as they look to woo Hispanics a day after a feisty, final debate before Tuesday?s Florida primary. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
SARASOTA, Fla. (AP) ? Newt Gingrich has staked his presidential bid on one idea: that he is best positioned to defeat President Barack Obama. Even some of his supporters seem to be struggling to buy the former House speaker's claim, an indication that chief rival Mitt Romney's efforts to undercut him may be working.
"Beating Obama is more important than everything else," Patrick Roehl, a 51-year-old computer software engineer, said in the midst of a packed Gingrich rally inside a Sarasota airport hangar this week. "Can Newt win? I'm not sure. He's got a lot of high negatives. The elections are won and lost in the middle. I'm not sure he appeals to the middle."
John Grainger, a 44-year-old assistant golf pro, doesn't like Romney. But he's having trouble shaking skepticism about Gingrich.
"I want to be a Newt supporter," he said. "This guy's going to have the guts to stand up and speak his piece ? no holds barred." But Grainger said he wasn't quite ready to back the former House speaker.
Interviews with more than a dozen Republican voters at Gingrich's overflowing rallies this week suggest that while many Florida voters love his brash style as they look for someone to take it to Obama, they also have lingering doubts about whether the Republican's intellectual bomb-throwing alone will make him the strongest Obama opponent.
Romney and his allies have spent a week working to stoke those doubts with Florida Republicans ahead of Tuesday's primary. And the GOP's establishment wing has started to help the former Massachusetts governor make that case by castigating Gingrich at every turn.
On television and on the campaign trail, Romney and his allies have steadily highlighted Gingrich's liabilities ? consulting contracts and ethics investigations among them. And they've suggested that more baggage could emerge in the fall, when the Republican nominee would be at the height of a general election battle against Obama.
"In the case of the speaker, he's got some records which could represent an October surprise," Romney said this week, referring to Gingrich's consulting work and ethics allegations when he was in the House. "We could see an October surprise a day from Newt Gingrich."
An outside group dedicated to helping Romney has spent almost $9 million on Florida television advertising, including a massive $4 million investment this week alone, to make the case even more explicitly.
"Newt Gingrich's tough talk sounds good, but Newt has tons of baggage. How will he ever beat Obama?" says the new ad from the so-called super PAC, Restore Our Future.
Gingrich, to be sure, is not letting such criticism go unanswered. He's telling everyone ? on the trail, in television interviews, on conference calls and in fundraising messages ? that he alone can defeat Obama. He points to his 12 percentage point victory in the South Carolina primary as proof.
Exit polling there showed that the majority of Republican voters, 51 percent, said that Gingrich was better suited to defeat the Democratic president.
"Their highest value was beating Obama," Gingrich told evangelical voters this week. "And if they thought Romney was the only person who could beat Obama, then they would swallow a lie. But the minute they thought there were two people who could beat Obama, they suddenly turned and said, Well, you know, maybe we should be for Newt."
Polls suggest that Gingrich could defeat Romney in Florida, a surge fueled partly by growing support from the tea party movement and continued anti-Romney sentiment. Gingrich drew massive crowds at venues across Florida this week.
But in those swelling crowds were conservatives who said they were drawn less by Gingrich's electability than his fiery rhetoric.
"He's a fighter. Mitt, I think, is too wishy-washy," said Dominique Boscia, a 43-year-old unemployed woman from Lakewood Ranch. "I like feisty people. I like people who have spunk."
That's certainly Gingrich. For months, he has used aggressive debate performances to fuel his underdog candidacy. He has consistently thrilled conservatives by promising to take the fight directly to Obama in a series of free-form debates modeled after the 1860 meetings between Illinois Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas.
Should Obama refuse, Gingrich says he'll follow the president on the campaign trail until he agrees.
That gets good applause lines at rallies. But a closer look at polling suggests that a debate beat down doesn't necessarily mean Gingrich can beat the president in an election that will include independents and Democrats.
Gingrich struggled among independents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News national poll, in which 53 percent gave him unfavorable marks and just 22 percent had a favorable opinion of the former House speaker. While Romney has typically polled better among independents, the poll ? conducted between Jan. 18 and 22 ? found virtually no difference: 51 percent of independents viewed him unfavorably, compared with 23 with favorable views.
But when all Florida voters, including independents and Democrats, are asked to weigh in, Romney appears to have a strong advantage over Gingrich, according to a poll conducted by Suffolk University-WSVN-TV Miami. Romney would defeat Obama here 47 percent to 42 percent; Gingrich would lose, earning just 40 percent to Obama's 49 percent of likely Florida general election voters.
WASHINGTON ? A weak year for the economy likely ended on a hopeful note.
The economy likely grew at annual rate of 3 percent in the October-December quarter, according to a survey by FactSet. The Commerce Department will release the actual figure Friday.
The gain would represent modest improvement from this summer, when the economy grew just 1.8 percent. However, even with the strong finish, economists believe the economy expanded just 1.7 percent for the whole year ? roughly half the growth in 2010.
And growth is expected to slow in the first three months of this year. A key reason is wages have failed to keep pace with inflation. That will likely force many consumers to pull back on spending after splurging over the holidays.
Consumer spending is important because it makes up 70 percent of economic activity.
Businesses are also expected to reduce spending in the first quarter after building up their stockpiles in the final months of 2011.
Richard DeKaiser, a senior economist at Parthenon Group, expects just 2 percent annual growth in the January-March quarter. But Kaiser says that should be the weakest quarter. He expects the economy to gain strength in each quarter and grow 2.6 percent for the entire year.
The year is off to a good start. Companies invested more in equipment and machinery in December. The unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent last month ? the lowest level in nearly three years ? after the sixth straight month of solid hiring.
People are buying more cars, and consumer confidence is rising. Even the depressed housing market has shown enough improvement to make some economists predict a turnaround has begun.
Still, many economists worry that a recession in Europe could dampen demand for U.S. manufactured goods, which would slow growth. And without more jobs and better pay, consumer spending is likely to stagnate.
The Federal Reserve signaled this week that a full recovery could take at least three more years. In response, it said it would probably not increase its benchmark interest rate until late 2014 at the earliest ? a year and a half later than it had previously said.
The central bank also slightly reduced its outlook for growth this year, from as much as 2.9 percent forecast in November down to 2.7 percent. The Fed sees unemployment falling as low as 8.2 percent this year.
DeKaiser said part of his optimism stems from a view that housing sales and prices will rise moderately this year. That should lift the battered construction industry, which ended last year with three months of gains in single-family home construction.
At the moment, housing remains the weakest part of the economy. New-home sales fell last month, and total sales for 2011 were the lowest on records dating back to 1963.
"I think the clouds will gradually lift over housing. Rising home prices will make consumers feel wealthier and this will translate into stronger consumer spending," DeKaiser said.
Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
Novices guided to follow expert's scanpath
In 2011 -- to the consternation of women everywhere a systematic review of randomized clinical trials showed that routine mammography was of little value to younger women at average or low risk of breast cancer.
The review showed, for example, that for every 50-year-old woman whose life is prolonged by mammography, dozens are treated unnecessarily some with harmful consequences or treated without benefit. Hundreds are told they have breast cancer when they do not.
Cindy M. Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, was not surprised by the review, a prestigious Cochrane review of the scientific evidence for a medical treatment.
"It's not just the mammogram that's the problem," she says, "it's accurately interpreting the mammogram.
"People aren't good at it. Even expert radiologists aren't good at it. Results vary widely from person to person, even when people have gone through the same training."
But Grimm thought a perceptual trick she and colleagues had invented, called subtle gaze direction, might be used to improve training.
An experiment showed that a novice could be subtly guided to follow an expert's scanpath across a mammogram and that this subtle nudging improved the novice's accuracy.
The experimental results will be presented at the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium this March.
Grimm and her colleagues say the technique, should it prove durable, is widely applicable to visual search tasks. Not only might it improve the reading of mammograms and other types of medical images, such as MRIs and PET scans, but it might also be used to improve the accuracy of airport screening and learning in virtual environments.
Directing the gaze
Grimm invented subtle gaze direction together with colleagues Reynold Bailey, PhD, then her graduate student, and Ann McNamara, PhD, then of Saint Louis University, a conference acquaintance.
"I had double-majored in art and computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley," Grimm says. "So I was aware that artists have all sorts of tricks for guiding viewers to look at particular areas in a painting, sometimes, in the case of narrative art, in a particular sequence.
"They might make an area brighter than the background, increase the contrast or have strong edges (borders) that attract the eye.
"Movie producers do the same thing in post processing," Grimm says. "For example, when one actor is talking and others are listening, the audience tends to watch the talker. But the producer can direct attention to a listener's reaction instead by changing the color or brightness of that part of the image."
Subtle gaze direction is a high-tech version of this time-honored craft. It works, says Grimm, by exploiting the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.
"We use a small area in the central part of our retina called the fovea to see detail," she says. "But foveal vision doesn't actually cover much of our field of view.
"If you hold out your thumb, your foveal vision the part of your surroundings you're actually seeing in detail covers about the same area as your thumbnail.
"We use our foveal vision to read or drive or for other detail-oriented tasks. At the same time, we are monitoring the rest of our environment with our peripheral vision, which has lower resolution but responds faster than our foveal vision.
"When our peripheral vision picks up a stimulus, our eyes move to focus our foveal vision on it so that we can see it clearly.
"During those quick eye movements, called saccades, vision is suppressed, or masked, so that the motion of the eye, the motion blur of the image and the gap in visual perception are not noticeable to the viewer. We lose an astonishing 40 minutes of vision a day to saccadic masking."
To direct the gaze, Grimm and her colleagues changed the brightness or "warmth" of an area in the peripheral field of view to draw the novice's focus to this area.
The stimulus remained subtle, however, because the viewer's gaze is monitored in real-time by an eye-tracking device and the modulations to the peripheral vision are terminated before the eye fixates on them.
"The idea," says Grimm "is to get someone to look in a particular direction while altering their experience of viewing the image as little as possible."
"In the case of mammograms," for example, "you want to get a learner to look at the tumor region but you don't want to do anything that makes the tumor region look different than it does on the mammogram itself."
The mammography study
Reading mammograms is a good target for computer assistance because training is time-consuming and expensive, typically requiring a four-year residency and a two-year fellowship.
Despite advances in technology, novices are still trained by working as an apprentice to an expert.
The mammography study, led by Bailey, now an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, brought together the same group of scientists as the subtle gaze direction experiment. McNamara is now assistant professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.
For the study, Grimm and her colleagues used a database of images provided by the Mammographic Image Analysis Society that includes both images and text files that contains coordinates of abnormalities and their size.
"Expert diagnostic radiologists have a particular search pattern that is not the same as that of a novice," Grimm says. "We don't know exactly what they're doing, but they tend to do a fairly broad scan and then fixate on parts of the image that have a tumor-like texture. A novice might instead attend to brighter spots in the image or fail to scan all of it."
Bailey hired an expert radiologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology to view and mark 65 images from the database. The expert's scanpath was recorded during this process by an eye-tracking system.
During the experiment, subtle gaze direction was used to guide a group of novices along the expert scanpath. A control group viewed the mammograms without gaze manipulation.
Novices who were guided were significantly more accurate than the control group or a third group guided along a random path. Moreover, even though the training session was brief, the effect lingered even after gaze manipulation was disabled.
Grimm says more work must be done to show that more extensive training will stick long-term. In the meantime, she can think of many ways gaze manipulation could be used to improve performance on visual search tasks.
"One simple use of the technology would be to make sure readers look at every part of the image. If you're using eye tracking," she says, "you know where people are looking, so you can make sure they don't skip part of the image."
Gaze manipulation might also be used to assist tumor-recognition software. "Suppose you had a software program that was reasonably good at spotting possible tumor areas but, erring on the side of caution, flagged too many areas as suspicious.
"Such software might be paired with gaze direction to ensure the radiologist looked at all of the flagged areas," she says. "That wouldn't necessarily be a training application; it could be a routine element of reading mammograms."
The mammogram study is widely applicable, Grimm says, because there are so many visual search tasks. She mentions airport scanners, but they are just at the top of a long list.
"I work with someone who identifies pollen species," she says. "Apparently, it takes a novice a year to learn, and they spend hours and hours looking through a microscope at these pollen grains. Again, some people are good at it and others struggle for competence.
"Perhaps in that case, as well, gaze direction could be used to train novice pollen identifiers."
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Contact: Diana Lutz dlutz@wustl.edu 314-935-5272 Washington University in St. Louis
Novices guided to follow expert's scanpath
In 2011 -- to the consternation of women everywhere a systematic review of randomized clinical trials showed that routine mammography was of little value to younger women at average or low risk of breast cancer.
The review showed, for example, that for every 50-year-old woman whose life is prolonged by mammography, dozens are treated unnecessarily some with harmful consequences or treated without benefit. Hundreds are told they have breast cancer when they do not.
Cindy M. Grimm, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, was not surprised by the review, a prestigious Cochrane review of the scientific evidence for a medical treatment.
"It's not just the mammogram that's the problem," she says, "it's accurately interpreting the mammogram.
"People aren't good at it. Even expert radiologists aren't good at it. Results vary widely from person to person, even when people have gone through the same training."
But Grimm thought a perceptual trick she and colleagues had invented, called subtle gaze direction, might be used to improve training.
An experiment showed that a novice could be subtly guided to follow an expert's scanpath across a mammogram and that this subtle nudging improved the novice's accuracy.
The experimental results will be presented at the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium this March.
Grimm and her colleagues say the technique, should it prove durable, is widely applicable to visual search tasks. Not only might it improve the reading of mammograms and other types of medical images, such as MRIs and PET scans, but it might also be used to improve the accuracy of airport screening and learning in virtual environments.
Directing the gaze
Grimm invented subtle gaze direction together with colleagues Reynold Bailey, PhD, then her graduate student, and Ann McNamara, PhD, then of Saint Louis University, a conference acquaintance.
"I had double-majored in art and computer science as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley," Grimm says. "So I was aware that artists have all sorts of tricks for guiding viewers to look at particular areas in a painting, sometimes, in the case of narrative art, in a particular sequence.
"They might make an area brighter than the background, increase the contrast or have strong edges (borders) that attract the eye.
"Movie producers do the same thing in post processing," Grimm says. "For example, when one actor is talking and others are listening, the audience tends to watch the talker. But the producer can direct attention to a listener's reaction instead by changing the color or brightness of that part of the image."
Subtle gaze direction is a high-tech version of this time-honored craft. It works, says Grimm, by exploiting the difference between peripheral and central (foveal) vision.
"We use a small area in the central part of our retina called the fovea to see detail," she says. "But foveal vision doesn't actually cover much of our field of view.
"If you hold out your thumb, your foveal vision the part of your surroundings you're actually seeing in detail covers about the same area as your thumbnail.
"We use our foveal vision to read or drive or for other detail-oriented tasks. At the same time, we are monitoring the rest of our environment with our peripheral vision, which has lower resolution but responds faster than our foveal vision.
"When our peripheral vision picks up a stimulus, our eyes move to focus our foveal vision on it so that we can see it clearly.
"During those quick eye movements, called saccades, vision is suppressed, or masked, so that the motion of the eye, the motion blur of the image and the gap in visual perception are not noticeable to the viewer. We lose an astonishing 40 minutes of vision a day to saccadic masking."
To direct the gaze, Grimm and her colleagues changed the brightness or "warmth" of an area in the peripheral field of view to draw the novice's focus to this area.
The stimulus remained subtle, however, because the viewer's gaze is monitored in real-time by an eye-tracking device and the modulations to the peripheral vision are terminated before the eye fixates on them.
"The idea," says Grimm "is to get someone to look in a particular direction while altering their experience of viewing the image as little as possible."
"In the case of mammograms," for example, "you want to get a learner to look at the tumor region but you don't want to do anything that makes the tumor region look different than it does on the mammogram itself."
The mammography study
Reading mammograms is a good target for computer assistance because training is time-consuming and expensive, typically requiring a four-year residency and a two-year fellowship.
Despite advances in technology, novices are still trained by working as an apprentice to an expert.
The mammography study, led by Bailey, now an assistant professor of computer science at the Rochester Institute of Technology, brought together the same group of scientists as the subtle gaze direction experiment. McNamara is now assistant professor of visualization at Texas A&M University.
For the study, Grimm and her colleagues used a database of images provided by the Mammographic Image Analysis Society that includes both images and text files that contains coordinates of abnormalities and their size.
"Expert diagnostic radiologists have a particular search pattern that is not the same as that of a novice," Grimm says. "We don't know exactly what they're doing, but they tend to do a fairly broad scan and then fixate on parts of the image that have a tumor-like texture. A novice might instead attend to brighter spots in the image or fail to scan all of it."
Bailey hired an expert radiologist at the Rochester Institute of Technology to view and mark 65 images from the database. The expert's scanpath was recorded during this process by an eye-tracking system.
During the experiment, subtle gaze direction was used to guide a group of novices along the expert scanpath. A control group viewed the mammograms without gaze manipulation.
Novices who were guided were significantly more accurate than the control group or a third group guided along a random path. Moreover, even though the training session was brief, the effect lingered even after gaze manipulation was disabled.
Grimm says more work must be done to show that more extensive training will stick long-term. In the meantime, she can think of many ways gaze manipulation could be used to improve performance on visual search tasks.
"One simple use of the technology would be to make sure readers look at every part of the image. If you're using eye tracking," she says, "you know where people are looking, so you can make sure they don't skip part of the image."
Gaze manipulation might also be used to assist tumor-recognition software. "Suppose you had a software program that was reasonably good at spotting possible tumor areas but, erring on the side of caution, flagged too many areas as suspicious.
"Such software might be paired with gaze direction to ensure the radiologist looked at all of the flagged areas," she says. "That wouldn't necessarily be a training application; it could be a routine element of reading mammograms."
The mammogram study is widely applicable, Grimm says, because there are so many visual search tasks. She mentions airport scanners, but they are just at the top of a long list.
"I work with someone who identifies pollen species," she says. "Apparently, it takes a novice a year to learn, and they spend hours and hours looking through a microscope at these pollen grains. Again, some people are good at it and others struggle for competence.
"Perhaps in that case, as well, gaze direction could be used to train novice pollen identifiers."
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WASHINGTON -- Arlington National Cemetery is a lot more full than anyone knew.
At a Senate hearing Wednesday, cemetery Executive Director Kathryn Condon estimated that more than 400,000 people are now interred there. That's 20 percent more than previous estimates of about 330,000.
The new estimate comes as a meticulous grave-by-grave review is under way at the cemetery following reports in 2010 of misplaced remains and mismanagement that led the Army to oust the cemetery's top leadership and install Condon to lead an overhaul.
Condon expects to have an exact count later this year. A formal count had never been done before.
Officials have been looking for ways to maximize Arlington's capacity for new burials as available space dwindles.
The gravesite review process currently under way is likely to extend the cemetery's capacity, as the geospatial mapping technology has found scattered plots that were assumed full but actually are vacant.
More than 7,000 people are buried there in a typical year.
Counting the graves and urns at Arlington proved to be a complicated task, made more difficult by the varied methods of recordkeeping dating back over the cemetery's nearly 150-year history.
In many cases, husbands and wives are buried in the same plot, but during the course of the ongoing review workers discovered that for much of the early 20th century, the cemetery did not bother to etch the wife's name into the headstone.
In other cases, partial remains from multiple people who died in the same battle are contained in a single grave, and not all the remains can be positively identified as belonging to a specific service member.
Condon said the gravesite review is expected to be completed this summer, and should yield an exact count of those interred. The cemetery also plans to have an interactive map that will allow people to go to the cemetery's website and search for the names of loved ones, or click on an individual gravesite and see who is buried there.
A status report last month found that thousands of headstones and other markers may need to be replaced or added to accurately account for the dead. While the review has so far uncovered no further evidence of individuals being buried in the wrong place, it has found thousands of discrepancies between the information on headstones and what is in the cemetery's internal records, including misspelled names and discrepancies on dates of birth and death.
Part of the ongoing review is a case-by-case check to see in those instances which is correct, the headstone or the internal paperwork.
At Tuesday's hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and others praised the cemetery's efforts to correct past mismanagement.
"The corrections made ... constitute a sea change from what we saw under the cemetery's prior leadership," she said.
FRANKFURT (Reuters) ? Insider Thorsten Heins, the new chief executive at BlackBerry maker RIM, is a surprise choice for those looking for a "transformational" leader from outside to turn around the Canadian group's fortunes.
Tall, soft-spoken and bespectacled, the Gifhorn-born Heins, 54, spent most of his working life at German engineering giant Siemens, where he oversaw a mobile telephone business which faced fierce pricing pressure and quality issues.
An avid fan of NBA basketball team the Miami Heat after having lived in Florida for four years, Heins rides a BMW motorbike when he is not road cycling or embarking on long-distance charity rides.
"We will take this to new heights," said Heins after taking over at Research in Motion from co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who finally bowed to investor pressure and resigned. "Innovation is endless, we will have a lot of fun."
Heins spent more than 20 years at Siemens, having joined straight from university in 1984 where he met his wife Petra, a mathematician and physicist. The couple have a 21-year-old son and a 23-year-old daughter.
Heins' German roots were evident when he was asked about his choice of motorcycle. "Of course it's a BMW, I'm German."
By the mid-2000s, he had worked his way up to the helm of Siemens's mobile phone business, so he was no stranger to mobiles when he joined RIM.
The business was sold to Taiwan's BenQ in 2005, after Heins was promoted to the management board of the new Communications business, which was dismantled a year later.
"Unfortunately, it was too late to turn mobile devices because this division was already in a difficult situation, and therefore missed its opportunity to accelerate and improve itself," said Thomas Ganswindt, who was Heins's boss on the Communications board.
Heins was a "very strong" leader and someone "able to recognize what is needed by an ailing business", he said.
In his career at Siemens, Heins worked in R&D, customer service, sales and product management, ending as chief technology officer. He joined RIM in December 2007.
BATTLING APPLE
By the end of a mid-2011 restructuring, Heins was one of two chief operating officers, responsible for sales and for both hardware and software product engineering. "He played key roles in the creation of RIM's product portfolio," the company said.
Activist investors have clamored in recent months for a new, "transformational" leader to compete with Apple's iPhone and iPad and the slew of large-screen and powerful devices from Samsung and others using Google's Android operating system.
RIM marked Heins's ascent to the top role with a seven-minute YouTube video in which the 6 foot 6 inches CEO gave his vision for success with a noticeable German accent.
"He is not very well known outside of the company. He has been working in both Balsillie's and Lazaridis' shadow," said Alexandre Peterc, analyst at Exane BNP Paribas.
"He does strike me as someone who knows the industry very well given his background at Siemens. On the plus side he is a veteran of the industry and he knows his stuff, but that said, his background is very much tech and process orientated as opposed to strategic vision orientated.
"You don't say 'this is the next Steve Jobs' because a Steve Jobs is hard to come by," Peterc said.
"In our view, a CEO with a strong consumer electronics and supply chain background would have been ideal," Shaw Wu, Senior Technology Analyst at Sterne Agee, said.
Most who knew him paid tribute to his leadership skills.
"It is not a job that many people would have taken," said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi.
"Thorsten is highly respected in terms of his knowledge of the industry and given that this appears to be a rather sudden turn of events, they needed someone who can quickly takeover the helm," said CCS Insight's Ben Wood.
RIM has been at pains to underline the orderly nature of the handover.
However, one analyst, who asked not to be named because of his relationship with the group, said it was astounding that the COO at a company of this size should have been so invisible to the market and investor community.
He said he had heard previously from executives within RIM that Heins was very highly regarded and that he was very much on top of his brief. "His name came up repeatedly, with regards to people at RIM who really rate him."
As takeover talk swirled and the financial world pondered whether Heins had been appointed to lead a turnaround or prepare RIM for sale, he clearly now is going to have to communicate quickly, get to know investors and raise his public profile.
(Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Additional reporting by Marilyn Gerlach, Nicola Leske, Kate Holton and Paul Sandle)
This story update corrects city of birth to Gifhorn, not Munich
This week, NASA is paying tribute to fallen astronauts who lost their lives in the pursuit of space exploration by holding a remembrance ceremony today (Jan. 26) at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Today's Day of Remembrance will honor the 45th anniversary Friday (Jan. 27) of the three astronauts who died in a fire at the launch pad while training for the Apollo 1 mission. The tribute ceremony also marks 26 years since the fatal shuttle Challenger accident on Jan. 28, and nine years since the loss of shuttle Columbia and its crew on Feb. 1.
"NASA's Day of Remembrance was actually started after the Columbia accident," agency spokesman Allard Beutel told SPACE.com. "By pure happenstance, the three high-profile accidents at NASA related to astronauts happened at relatively the same time of the year, separated by years, but all within a few days of each other. It was decided that NASA would put aside the last Thursday of January ? whatever that date happens to be ? to pay tribute."
And while the Day of Remembrance is a solemn event, it also serves as a reminder to remain vigilant and careful in the pursuit of space exploration, he added.
"It's obviously somber, but it's also a time when people seem to renew their commitment to doing their personal best to make sure that there isn't another accident," Beutel said. "Spaceflight, by its very nature, is inherently risky. It always will be, but you do your personal best. There's a story that goes around NASA that says, 'it won't fail because of me.' Everyone takes that attitude." [The Apollo 1 Fire: NASA's First Disaster]
During the ceremony at the Florida spaceport, NASA officials, including Kennedy Space Center director and former astronaut Bob Cabana, will participate in a wreath-laying at 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) at the Space Mirror Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.
"It's open to the general public and to all Kennedy employees throughout the day," Allard said. "Typically, during the ceremony itself, there could be in the neighbourhood of 50 to 60 people gathered around, but NASA employees can stop by the Space Mirror Memorial any time to pay tribute to NASA's fallen."
Apollo astronauts Virgil I. "Gus" Grisson, Edward H. White II and Roger B. Chaffee perished in NASA's first major tragedy on Jan. 27, 1967. A fire broke out in the Apollo 1 module during a ground test at the launch pad about a month before the scheduled launch.
An accident review board was unable to conclusively determine the cause for the fire, but design flaws were blamed for the module's flammability. The tragedy prompted redesigns of the Apollo capsule and agency-wide procedural changes.
Almost 20 years later, NASA lost seven more astronauts when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch on Jan. 28, 1986.
Francis "Dick" Scobee, Ron McNair, Mike Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnik, Greg Jarvis and NASA's first educator astronaut, Christa McAuliffe, were killed in the tragic accident.
An investigation into the disaster showed that exceptionally cold weather had caused a seal, called an O-ring, on the shuttle's right solid rocket booster to fail at liftoff. This allowed pressurized hot gas to escape from inside the booster, which damaged the attachment between the booster and the orbiter.
Seventy-three seconds into Challenger's 10th flight, the external fuel tank exploded and the orbiter broke apart. The seven astronauts were killed when their crew cabin hit the Atlantic Ocean.
On Feb. 1, 2003, NASA suffered another space tragedy when the space shuttle Columbia broke up over Texas on its return home at the end of the STS-107 mission.
Following the accident, studies showed that a piece of foam insulation from Columbia's fuel tank broke off during launch and hit the orbiter's left wing, damaging the heat shield.
Commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, payload commander Michael Anderson and Illan Ramon, Israel's first astronaut, were lost when the orbiter's heat shield failed to protect the vehicle from the intense heat upon re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
In addition to NASA's fallen astronauts, the Day of Remembrance was designed to honor the deaths of others in the agency as well.
"It's for the astronauts, but it's also intended to be for all members of the NASA family who lost their lives supporting space exploration," Beutel said. "These are the people who died supporting the cause of spaceflight," Beutel said. "It's a time to reflect and reinforce that this is dangerous and difficult, but it's worth doing. If everyone does their personal best to not let things fail because of them, then it makes the entire cause of space exploration a little safer and a little better."
You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
DORAL, Fla. ? Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich on Wednesday ridiculed rival Mitt Romney's call for self-deportation of illegal immigrants as an "Obama-level fantasy" that would be inhumane to long-established families living in America. Romney, for his part, accused Gingrich of pandering to a Hispanic audience and said Gingrich himself had supported self-deportation in the past.
Discussing immigration in state where 13 percent of registered voters are Hispanic, the former House speaker criticized Romney's immigration policy during a forum with the Spanish-language television network Univision, saying the idea of self-deportation would never work. Romney snapped back at him later in the day at the same forum.
During a debate earlier this week, Romney said he favors self-deportation over policies that would require the federal government to round up millions of illegal immigrants and send them back to their home countries. Advocates of Romney's approach argue that illegal immigration can be curbed by denying public benefits to them, prompting them to leave the United States on their own.
"You have to live in a world of Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts and automatically $20 million income for no work to have some fantasy this far from reality," Gingrich said, alluding to details in Romney's income tax returns made public Tuesday. "For Romney to believe that somebody's grandmother is going to be so cut off that she is going to self-deport, I mean this is an Obama-level fantasy."
But Gingrich's campaign has spoken of the self-deportation policy he ridiculed Wednesday.
"I recognize that it's very tempting to come out to an audience like this and pander to the audience," Romney said, pointing out that Gingrich has previously made comments supporting the idea of self-deportation. "I think that was a mistake on his part."
In debates, Gingrich has defended a proposal to allow some illegal immigrants to stay in the U.S. if they've lived here for more than 25 years and have a local sponsor.
Romney's campaign directed reporters to past comments by Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond, who said that only a small percent of illegal immigrants would likely be allowed to stay in the U.S. under Gingrich's plan. Hammond went on to say that the vast majority of them would likely "self-deport."
Gingrich also ran into trouble over a radio ad calling Romney "anti-immigrant." Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called the ad "inaccurate" and "inflammatory." Romney's campaign also asked Gingrich in a letter to pull the ad. Gingrich's campaign had no immediate comment on whether it would comply with the request to pull the ad. The Miami Herald reported that the campaign planned to remove the ad based on Rubio's comments.
Romney called the anti-immigrant label an "epithet" and "inappropriate."
At the forum, Gingrich spoke instead about other elements of his immigration plan, including controlling the border and establishing a guest-worker program to better manage the influx of immigrants. Gingrich said he favors a path to citizenship for illegal immigrant children who serve in the military but not for simply completing college.
Romney defended his opposition to allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition at American universities. He said there are inexpensive options that will allow them to go to college.
Gingrich told Univision he believes states should charge in-state tuition rates for students who were born in the U.S. to illegal immigrant parents, but that he favors charging out-of-state tuition for children who were brought to this country illegally.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry's support of a Texas policy to allow children of illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition proved to be problematic with conservatives nationwide. Perry dropped out of the race last week.
Gingrich began the interview by speaking a few halting phrases of welcome in Spanish ? "Buenos Dias estudiantes" ? but begged off when moderator Jorge Ramos pressed him to go further. Romney did not speak any Spanish during his interview.
Romney was asked about family members he has living in Mexico. Romney's father, George Romney, was born in Mexico but moved back to the U.S. as a young child.
Ramos asked Romney if he had a claim to being Mexican American.
"I don't think people would think I was being honest with them if I said I was Mexican American but I'd appreciate it if you'd get that word out," Romney said, smiling.
Florida is home to many Hispanics of Puerto Rican or Cuban descent who don't view immigration as a priority but are more interested in the issue than the general public.
After the interview, Romney railed against Fidel Castro's Cuba in a speech before several hundred Cuban-American democracy activists. Romney has significant support from the Cuban-American political establishment in Miami.
"It is time for us to strive for freedom in Cuba, and I will do so as president," he said. "We must be prepared to support the voices for democracy in Cuba."
While the interview questions asked of both candidates were mostly about Hispanic concerns, Ramos asked Gingrich whether it was hypocritical for him to criticize then-President Bill Clinton and pursue his impeachment in the 1990s when Gingrich was being unfaithful to his second wife.
Gingrich snapped at the premise of the question and said it was Clinton's false testimony under oath that bothered him the most.
"The fact is I've been through two divorces. I've been deposed both times under oath. Both times I told the truth in the deposition," Gingrich said. "I have never lied under oath. I have never committed perjury."
Ramos asked Romney to declare his wealth, to which Romney replied that he's worth between $150 million and "200-and-some-odd million dollars."
LONDON ? The British government is proposing giving shareholders of major companies a binding vote on executive pay.
U.K. Business Secretary Vince Cable said Monday that the new regulations could require pay arrangements to be supported by 75 percent of shareholders. At the moment, these votes are advisory and not binding.
Executive pay has been a sensitive issue in the U.K., especially when it comes to leading banks backed by the taxpayer, either through bailouts or the implicit guarantee that big banks will not be allowed to fail.
Cable says the government would also this year propose legislation requiring companies to publish their pay policy, how it was implemented, and to what extent that reflected the views of employees.
"The evidence is very clear that business and investors recognize that there is a disconnect between top pay and company performance and that something must be done, Cable said in the House of Commons.
"We cannot continue to see chief executives' pay rising at 13 percent a year while the performance of companies on the Stock Exchange languishes well behind."
The High Pay Commission, an independent body, reported last year that executive pay in Britain's top 100 corporations had risen had risen far faster than overall pay.
At oil company BP, for instance, the top executive was paid 63 times the company's average pay in 2009-2011. At Barclays bank the multiple was 75 times, as was bailed-out Lloyds Banking Group.
Cable said the government would also look at ways of promoting greater diversity on boards of directors.
"Within the FTSE 350 (share index), around 6 percent of remuneration committee members are executives in other companies," he said.
"There's a perceived conflict of interest here, as these individuals have a personal interest in maintaining the status quo in pay-setting culture and pay levels."
ZAGREB (Reuters) ? Croatia voted on Sunday on joining the European Union, a move the government says offers the former Yugoslav republic its only chance of economic recovery despite turmoil in the 27-state bloc.
Opinion polls suggest the binding national referendum should pass, but opponents have appealed to many by playing up fears that membership would end 20 years of Croatia's sovereignty and result in a selloff of its assets and national resources.
Supporters say a 'No' vote will leave Croatia stuck with its struggling fellow ex-Yugoslav republics in the western Balkans, which was ravaged by war in the 1990s.
"This is a big day for Croatia and 2013 will be a turning point in our history. I look forward to the whole of Europe becoming my home," President Ivo Josipovic said after voting.
The EU has said Croatia can become its 28th member on July 1, 2013, after completing seven years of tough entry talks in June last year. It would become the second former Yugoslav republic to join, following Slovenia in 2004.
Croatia was left out of the EU's expansion to ex-communist eastern Europe in 2004 and 2007.
The last opinion poll, released on Saturday, put support for accession at 61 percent. The 'Yes' camp this week won the endorsement of Croatia's powerful Roman Catholic church.
Residents were out in force on the streets of the capital Zagreb on Sunday, enjoying the sparse winter sun. Most of those interviewed by Reuters seemed to be in favor.
"We cannot stay out of the EU, we'll get a lot of good things out of it. Of course, there are downsides as well, but that is something we must get used to," said Josip Zavrski, a retired engineer and one of the first who cast his vote.
OPPONENTS SAY NO RUSH
The 'No' camp says the timing is all wrong because the EU is not what it once was given the debt crisis threatening the single currency. Others complain they are unsure what membership will mean for the country of 4.3 million people.
"The EU is politically and economically unstable. We should vote against and then have a public debate about the pros and cons and inform the citizens properly before holding a next referendum," one of the right-wing parties, the Party of Rights (HSP), said in a statement on the eve of the referendum.
Danijela Rozic, 40, who sells cheese at Zagreb's market, said she did not know how accession might affect farming.
"I am against. I've heard many people say the EU is not all that great, that prices will rise if we join," she said.
Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia in a 1991-95 war, and saw strong growth on the back of foreign lending and waves of tourists to its Adriatic coast.
But its economy has been hit hard by the global economic crisis. Analysts and government officials say a rejection of EU accession on Sunday would bring down the country's credit rating, deter investors and further dampen any prospect of a quick economic recovery.
If the referendum passes, all EU member states must ratify Croatia's accession before it can join, and then it will take several more years before it adopts the euro.
Its current GDP per capita is 61 percent of the EU average. It expects millions of euros from EU funds for infrastructure and regional development.
Voting ends at 7 p.m. (1800 GMT) and first results are expected around an hour after polls close.
An Egyptian couple passes a security checkpoint on the road leading to the People's Assembly building during the opening session in Cairo, Egypt Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Egyptian couple passes a security checkpoint on the road leading to the People's Assembly building during the opening session in Cairo, Egypt Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Egyptian police stand guard at a checkpoint on the road leading to the to the People's Assembly building during the opening session in Cairo, Egypt Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Egyptian protesters chant anti government slogans outside the People's Assembly building during the opening session in Cairo, Egypt Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Egyptian woman passes a security checkpoint on the road leading to the People's Assembly building during the opening session in Cairo, Egypt Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
An Egyptian protester carries a banner that reads in Arabic, "freedom for the political prisoners," outside of the People's Assembly building during the opening session of parliament in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Jan. 23, 2012. The parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday, with Islamists dominating the 498-seat chamber that will oversee the drafting of a new constitution. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
CAIRO (AP) ? With Islamists comprising the overwhelming majority of its lawmakers, the parliament elected in Egypt's first legislative vote after Hosni Mubarak's ouster nearly a year ago held its inaugural session on Monday.
The convening of the new parliament is a significant benchmark in the timetable provided by the generals who took over from Mubarak for the handover of power to a civilian administration.
It is also a step forward for Islamist groups on the road to becoming the strongest political force in the nations that experienced Arab Spring revolts. Islamists dominated elections first in Tunisia and then in Egypt, and Libya's Islamists are also expected to do well in parliamentary voting later this year.
The Egyptian chamber's top priority is to elect a 100-member panel to draft a new constitution, which will have to be put to a vote in a nationwide referendum.
The next major step in the transition will be presidential elections, scheduled to be held before the end of June, when the generals are due to step down.
"The era of political exclusion is over," said Saad el-Katatni, an Islamist lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest and best organized political group. He was expected to win the position of speaker.
The Brotherhood has been banned for most of its 84-year history, legalized only after the 18-day popular uprising in early 2011 that ousted Mubarak.
Elections which started on Nov. 28 and ran into January were the freest in Egypt's modern history. Elections for parliament's upper chamber, a largely toothless body known as the Shura Council, will begin later this month.
The outcome of the elections reflect the strength of the Islamists in Egypt, a mainly Muslim nation of some 85 million people that has grown steadily more religiously conservative over the past 40 years.
The Brotherhood spearheaded the Islamist victory in Egypt, winning just under half of all the seats.
In second place to the Brotherhood came another Islamist group, the ultraconservative Salafis, with nearly a quarter of the seats.
The liberal and left-leaning groups that organized the anti-Mubarak uprising garnered less than 10 percent of the seats. Many of them were not as well prepared for the vote as the Islamists, particularly the Brotherhood, whose members have over years of underground work acquired a high degree of discipline and loyalty.
Several of these lawmakers wore yellow scarves saying, "No to military trials for civilians," a reference to the hauling of at least 12,000 civilians before military tribunals since the generals took over power in February last year.
The Islamists' dominance was obvious in Monday's session, where many lawmakers sported long beards, clerical turbans or flowing robes.
"We are here because the People's Assembly (parliament) is all Islamists," said Mina Samir, a protester in his early 20s who was among several thousand demonstrators near the parliament building calling for an end to military rule. "Now we have a military power supporting a conservative power. That's why I am here."
Some of the protesters wore masks made out of photographs of those killed or wounded by security forces during the anti-Mubarak uprising, or in subsequent protests against the generals. "Down, down with military rule!" they chanted, and, "No military and no Brotherhood."
What was supposed to be a quiet procedural session turned briefly chaotic when some lawmakers improvised additions to the text of the oath they were taking in turn, provoking angry protests from the interim speaker, Mahmoud El-Saqqah of the liberal Wafd party.
The oath ends with a pledge to respect the constitution and the law, but several Islamist lawmaker added "God's law" or "as long as there are no contradictions with God's law." Pro-reform lawmakers also improvised, with two of them pledging to "continue the revolution" and "be loyal to its martyrs."
The convening of parliament is a moment of triumph for the Brotherhood, whose members endured arrests and intimidation by Mubarak's feared security agencies.
The Brotherhood has contested parliamentary elections since the 1980s, circumventing the ban on the group by fielding candidates as independents. They won 20 percent of parliament's seats in 2005, but could not win a single seat in elections held in November and December 2010, thought to be the most fraudulent since army officers seized power in a 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy.
On Monday, Brotherhood volunteers escorted their lawmakers into the parliament building.
"I want to make sure that my representatives are safe. I want to celebrate and make sure that no one ruins this atmosphere. There are many who want to ruin it," said Fathy el-Sayed, a 35-year-old Brotherhood supporter outside parliament.
Others waited outside parliament with flowers they said they planned to give to their lawmakers. They chanted religious songs to the beat of drums.
"Democracy brought the people (who are) inside the building now. They were elected by the people," said Adel Musbah, a supporter of the Salafi el-Nour party.
He questioned planned protests by pro-democracy groups marking the first anniversary of the start of the uprising. "Why are they coming to object?" he said.
Security was tight in the area around the parliament building, scene of recent deadly clashes between troops and protesters demanding that the generals immediately step down. The building is also a short distance away from Tahrir Square, birthplace of the uprising that topped Mubarak's 29-year regime.
Monday's session was chaired by el-Saqqah because he was the oldest lawmaker.
He began the proceedings by ordering lawmakers to stand in silence for a minute in memory of the hundreds of protesters killed during the protests.
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Public release date: 26-Jan-2012
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