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Spelling counts, kids. Especially on "Jeopardy!" it seems. And that's the hard lesson one young player learned this week on the "Kids Week" version of the long-running game show.
Newtown, Conn.'s Thomas Hurley had to know his chances of taking home first place were slim: He went into Final Jeopardy with just $9,600 ? a nice second place, but compared to the first-place leader Skyler Hornback, of Sonora, Ky., who had $36,600, it was a pittance. It was going to take a big bet on Hurley's part and/or a big loss on Skyler's part to pull this one off.
Then host Alex Trebek read the question: "Abraham Lincoln called this document, which took effect in 1863, 'a fit and necessary war measure.'"?
The good news: Hurley had the right answer. Well, mostly. When the answers were revealed (third placer Shuli Jones of Toronto, Ont. wrote "the second amendment," which was wrong), Hurley's answer came up: "What is the Emanciptation Proclamation." Right answer, wrong spelling of "Emancipation."
And while the "Jeopardy!" judges have been known to let small spelling errors go, that was not the case in this instance. Hurley lost, and can clearly be seen mouthing the word "What?!" before hanging his head in disappointment.
Even worse, he then had to watch as Hornback ? who had already been mentioned as a big Civil War buff ? not only got the answer right, he spelled it right and bet big: $30,000. He ended up with $66,600 ("almost a one-day record for 'Jeopardy!'" gushed Trebek).
For anyone who's ever tried, becoming a contestant on "Jeopardy!" is no cakewalk. To make it onto "Jeopardy!" and get to second place in the final round and lose ? even in part ? based on a single letter, well, that's heartbreaking.?
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After months of anticipation, teases, and leaks, Motorola is finally preparing to answer the question: Will X mark the spot?
On Thursday afternoon Motorola officially unveiled the Moto X, the company's first smartphone conceived of, created and sold completely after it was acquired by Google. After a string of duds in the marketplace, Motorola is banking on a few features for its Moto X to help it thrive in the post-Googorola world: voice control, an ultra-fast camera and the strangest color combinations you've ever seen on a smartphone.
Generally, according to Motorola VP of Product Management Lior Ron, the aim of the Moto X is similar to that of the stated purpose of Google Glass: to get out of the way, and to make interaction with your smartphone more human, more natural.
SPEAK UP
The most gee-whiz feature of the Moto X is what Motorola calls "Touchless Control." Also available on Motorola's recent Droid phones for Verizon, this allows X owners to awaken and operate their smartphone without touching it. Say "OK, Google Now" and the screen unlocks, the display powers on and you are able to instruct the smartphone to complete a number of actions, among them: Making a phone call, sending a text message, searching Google (duh), getting navigation directions, changing the music, checking the weather, setting a reminder and essentially anything else Google's Siri competitor, Google Now, can accomplish.
You don't need to be connected to Wi-Fi or the mobile network for Touchless Control to work. And to prevent pranksters from activating the assistant by saying "OK Google Now" in your vicinity, the phone learns your voice so that it only responds to you.
There are some obvious flaws, of course: It would be nice if it can learn one more person's voice (your wife's, for example), so that someone else could borrow your phone or take control if your mouth is otherwise indisposed. And during a meeting with Motorola, the function was accidentally triggered when a Motorola exec said "OK" without the Google Now. In my brief tests with the Moto X, however, I could only get it to power on when I said "OK Google," and none of my colleagues were able to launch my assistant by speaking the magic words.
(Speaking of touchless: The Moto X also features something called "Active Display," which basically pulses your notification on the screen every few seconds when the phone is asleep. This is done so that you don't have to press the sleep button on your phone to view your notifications; you can also swipe up from that screen to peek at the content of a text message or email without unlocking the phone.)
But back to Touchless Control: If anything, the great obstacle for Motorola's voice feature is Google's speech recognition. Though still far better than Apple's, it still occasionally muddles words and occasionally hears speech when it shouldn't. For this to truly be a killer feature, Google will have to continue tweaking its software until it can flawlessly recognize speech.
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Like HTC, Apple and Nokia, Motorola is also heavily promoting its camera. The most distinguishing feature of the Moto X is probably the speed with which you can go from locked display to captured photo; Motorola execs said in a meeting with press that the aim was to get that time down to 2 seconds, from pocket to shutter, versus times of 8 to 10 seconds with other, unnamed phones.
To do so, Motorola has simplified the process as much as possible. First, they've created a gesture that automatically wakes the phone up to camera mode. If you quickly twist the phone over once or twice, you activate the camera; pressing anywhere on the screen when the camera is on will take a photo. (The Moto X uses some fancy auto-focus technology to do away with the need to tap to focus; if you miss that function, you can turn it on in the settings.)
The camera screen on the Moto X.That's a neat gimmick, but I'm not sure how often I'd use it; and for the first few uses, it was kind of tricky to get the gesture just right. More welcome is the totally clean camera interface: All of the settings have been moved off the screen; they can be fetched by swiping in from the left of the screen, so that almost all you're seeing when you're shooting a photo is the scene in front of you. Zooming in and out is also neat: You just run your finger up or down anywhere on the screen to activate the digital zoom, rather than the scroll bar favored by most smartphone cameras. This is much more intuitive, and easier to use, especially with one hand.
The software is neat, if occasionally uninspiring; it's the hardware where it seems like Motorola could really pick up some customers. Motorola will allow buyers to go to a website and completely customize the look of their Moto X. At Moto Maker, you can choose from 18 different back colors, two front colors and about a dozen colors for the volume buttons and camera lens rim; you can also choose to emboss a signature on the back of the phone (like you can with the iPod) and choose a wallpaper that ships with your phone.
Motorola also announced that, by the end of the year, you will also be able to get a back made of wood. Yes, wood. Real wood. The company claims that this will make it the first wooden smartphone ever.
Motorola promises that, because the smartphone is (you may have heard, thanks to an aggressive PR blitz) built in the United States, you'll have your customized smartphone in your hand 4 days after you order it online.
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McALLEN, Texas (AP) ? A South Texas business that helps the government recruit foreigners seeking U.S. visas in exchange for $500,000 job-creating investments is being investigated for running a possible Ponzi scheme, according to court documents shedding light on an industry that has boomed in recent years.
Search warrants indicate the FBI has been investigating USA Now Regional Center since at least early last year on suspicion of wire fraud, money laundering and transportation of stolen property. Federal agents searched the company's office and the owners' home in McAllen earlier this month.
USA Now is among hundreds of private businesses designated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to recruit foreign investors to the "EB-5" investor visa program. The so-called regional centers ? which have proliferated amid the nation's economic downturn, but also attracted controversy ? offer investment opportunities to foreigners and then pool their money for development projects ranging from hotels to a Vermont ski resort.
The government's objective is to attract foreign capital and create jobs. But the investors are primarily interested in getting permanent U.S. residency for themselves and their families, and any financial gain from the investment is generally considered a bonus.
No charges have been filed in the McAllen case. The FBI declined comment, citing its ongoing investigation.
The company's attorney, Tony Canales, told The Associated Press that the FBI doesn't understand the business. "We think the government's wrong. We think we can explain it," he said Wednesday, declining to go into details.
Bank records obtained by the FBI show that on the same days investors transferred their $500,000 payments to USA Now, the money was routed through other bank accounts. Those accounts were used to buy a new Mercedes for the company's owner, pay off the owner's civil lawsuit settlement and at least once to repay an investor who wanted out, according to court documents filed this month in federal court in McAllen.
The FBI seized the Mercedes and a pickup truck that it said was purchased with an investor's money, the court records show.
The FBI agent leading the case wrote in his request for the search warrants that he believed it was "a scheme executed by employees of USA Now Regional Center to defraud foreign investors by using investors' funds for personal gain and other illegitimate manners without the investors' knowledge or approval." The agent labeled it a "Ponzi scheme," showing how money from one investor was used to make interest payments to others.
The investigation was first reported by The Monitor newspaper in McAllen.
Congress created the EB-5 program in 1990, and regional centers were added as a pilot program in 1992. Now, more than 90 percent of EB-5 applications are made through regional centers rather than through direct investment.
The advantage to using a regional center is that investors become limited partners without responsibility for managing the business, yet they receive credit for the jobs it creates. That means their investments could be in McAllen while they live in Miami.
There were only 11 of these government-sanctioned businesses nationwide in 2007; now, there are more than 300. The centers became popular sources of investment income for U.S. developers when traditional credit markets tightened during the economic downturn.
Each investment ? $500,000 in economically depressed areas, $1 million elsewhere ? must create at least 10 jobs. But the investment alone does not guarantee the visa.
The government traces the source of the funds to ensure they're legal and requires the money be at risk. Once the investment is made, the investor is eligible for two years of temporary residency. After that period, if the jobs are created and everything else checks out they can apply for permanent residency. The program is capped at 10,000 visas annually.
If the project isn't built and the jobs aren't created in the required time frame, investors will not get a green card. Depending on how the deal was structured, they may not get their money back. Plus, investors are on their own to judge the prospective projects.
There have been EB-5 debacles in California with a proposed sewage treatment plant, in a South Dakota dairy and a plant in Missouri to produce an artificial sweetener.
There are other investor-type visas, but not all offer permanent residency. Experts say the residency bonus is the primary draw, noting that other routes toward green cards can take many years.
USA Now operates from a suite of offices in downtown McAllen just a few miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said Wednesday that applications could be temporarily held or processed during ongoing investigations, depending on the specifics of the case.
The company's director of operations, Marco Ramirez, was named in the search warrants and did not return a call for comment on Wednesday. But in a July 2011 interview with The Associated Press, he said the company was focusing on Mexican investors because of their proximity and the deteriorating security situation across the border.
"The biggest reason is security, 60 percent of the families that come through here have had a situation" such as extortion or kidnapping by organized crime, Ramirez said.
At the time of that interview, Ramirez said USA Now had nearly 200 investors and almost $100 million ? just four months after the company had been approved as a regional center by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The government does not release any information about the number of applications filed through individual regional centers nor the number of their clients who successfully obtain visas.
In October 2011, an AP reporter attended a seminar in Mexico City on investment opportunities presented by USA Now. About 45 Mexicans gathered at a luxury tower hotel in an upscale neighborhood to hear Ramirez pitch investment opportunities in South Texas that could earn them permanent residency.
Some wore suits, others were stylishly casual and toting hints of wealth such as iPads and iPhones. One young man asked if money from a trust fund could be used to make the $500,000 investment. Some of the attendees cited security concerns for wanting to both live and invest their money in U.S. rather than Mexico.
Ramirez pitched several opportunities that day including a high-rise condo project, a hospital and a retirement home. He said they charged $40,000 for the application process. When he asked the crowd how many were there "just for the investment," only one person raised a hand.
__
Associated Press writer Larry Kaplow contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Source: http://www.wfaa.com/news/business/217787881.html
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This video frame grab, Mack Turner, left, Boston Stokes, and Stryker Hoffman are shown Tuesday, July 30, 2013 in Layton, Utah. Three sisters from Layton gave birth to three baby boys in the month of July, including two who were born about an hour apart. The cousins were all born in July. Mack and Stryker were born 65 minutes apart on July 27. Boston was born July 3. (AP Photo/Eric Betts, KSL-TV via Deseret News)
This video frame grab, Mack Turner, left, Boston Stokes, and Stryker Hoffman are shown Tuesday, July 30, 2013 in Layton, Utah. Three sisters from Layton gave birth to three baby boys in the month of July, including two who were born about an hour apart. The cousins were all born in July. Mack and Stryker were born 65 minutes apart on July 27. Boston was born July 3. (AP Photo/Eric Betts, KSL-TV via Deseret News)
LAYTON, Utah (AP) ? July is full-fledged baby season for one Utah family.
Three sisters from Layton gave birth to three baby boys in the month of July, including two who were born about an hour apart, The Deseret News reports (http://bit.ly/1co677m ).
Even in baby-centric Utah, that's pretty remarkable.
The trio says they didn't plan on getting pregnant at the same time. Misti Stokes, 24, said she found out first. Her younger sister, Courtnee Hoffman, 21, later asked her if she had a pregnancy test to spare. It was positive.
The sisters told their older sister, Kristal Turner, 25, then asked if she was sad she wasn't expecting, but she said no ? because she was also pregnant.
Stokes gave birth to her baby, Boston, on July 3. Hoffman had her son, Stryker, early Saturday, and Turner's baby, Mack, was born 65 minutes later in the same hospital.
At one point before the birth, Turner passed her mother in the hallways of the Circle of Life Women's Center, part of the Ogden Regional Medical Center. She was on her way to see Hoffman.
"She's like, 'What are you doing? Are you going to see Courtnee?'" Turner said. "And I'm like, 'No, I'm going to have my baby.'"
The sisters were in rooms across the hall from each other, both feeling bad they couldn't be with the other to provide support. Nurses helped by keeping each up-to-date on the other's contractions and the babies' heart rates.
"We couldn't go really into each other's room very much, but we would send pictures back and forth and text and ask how each other is doing," Hoffman told the Deseret News.
Their mother was bouncing back and forth between the rooms as each went through the stages of labor, said Dr. Darren Housel, who delivered both babies.
The fact that both babies came naturally, rather than being induced, made it even more remarkable, he said. It was something he hadn't seen before in his 20 years as a doctor.
"We are all kind of baffled that such a coincidental thing would occur," Housel said. "Over 5,000 babies, I can safely say that I've never delivered sisters on the same day. It was cool, a fun experience to be part of."
The three sisters say their bond is now stronger than ever.
"It's been fun to go through it together," Hoffman said.
The three baby cousins were together for the first time Tuesday.
"I really think that there's a reason why all three are born together," Turner said. "They are going to have a great support system for each other."
Utah had the highest birth rate in the country in 2009, U.S. Census data shows. Utah had 19.4 births per 1,000 people. The 3-year-old data is the latest available comparing state's birth rates.
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Information from: Deseret News, http://www.deseretnews.com
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