New Orleans Saints Take The Trophy Home

From ESPN

MIAMI — Who Dat won the Super Bowl? The New Orleans Saints, that’s who.

Ain’t kidding.Put away those paper bags forever: Drew Brees and the Saints are NFL champions, rallying to upset Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 Sunday night in one of pro football’s most thrilling title games.Brees tied a Super Bowl record with 32 completions, the last a 2-yard slant to Jeremy Shockey for the winning points with 5:42 remaining. The Pro Bowl quarterback was chosen Super Bowl MVP.”We just believed in ourselves and we knew that we had an entire city and maybe an entire country behind us,” Brees said. “What can I say? I tried to imagine what this moment would be like for a long time and it’s better than expected.”A surprise onside kick sparked the Saints’ second-half comeback. Their 25th-ranked defense made several key stops, and Tracy Porter’s 74-yard interception return on a pass from Manning, of all people, clinched it.Manning gave futile chase, but was blocked by a New Orleans defender and fell awkwardly as the cornerback raced by. The four-time NFL MVP forlornly walked to the sideline as the Big Easy celebrations began. Who would have thought the biggest mistake of the game would have come from Manning?”It’s time for the Saints to celebrate,” he said. “It’s their field and it’s their championship.”An NFL embarrassment for much of their 43 years, the Saints’ football renaissance, led by Brees and coach Sean Payton, climaxed with Shockey’s touchdown and Lance Moore’s 2-point conversion catch. The conversion pass originally was ruled incomplete, but Payton challenged the call and won.Porter’s pick, just as dramatic as his interception of Brett Favre’s pass to force overtime in the NFC title game, was the game’s only turnover. It’s one Manning will forever regret.The Saints (16-3) won three postseason games this winter after winning only two in the previous 42 years. They beat Arizona, Minnesota and Indianapolis (16-3) — all division winners — for their first title, scoring 107 points and allowing only 59.The championship came 4 1/2 years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, making the Saints nomads for the 2005 season. There even was some doubt they would return, but the NFL refused to abandon the Big Easy. The Superdome was rebuilt and the Saints won the NFC South in ‘06, their first season with Brees and Payton.

Rihanna and Chris: One year later

(CNN) — It’s been 12 months since the private lives of Chris Brown and Rihanna spilled out into the Los Angeles streets following a violent argument while driving home from a pre-Grammy party.

According to a sworn statement by Los Angeles Police Detective DeShon Andrews, Brown punched her in the face numerous times, put her in a headlock, bit her fingers and ear and threatened to kill her.

Brown pleaded guilty to felony assault in June and lost several public endorsements. In August, he was sentenced to five years’ probation in addition to 1,400 labor-oriented community service hours.

One leaked photo, a few soul-baring interviews and two questionable album covers later, both of the young singers now find themselves at uniquely different points in their careers.

Rihanna steered clear of the spotlight for several months, re-emerging in New York City last spring, boldly walking the red carpet at the Costume Institute Ball, with a new look and a new album to begin promoting.

“There’s no restriction on Rihanna, but he [likely] can’t go anywhere without his judge’s permission,” said RollingStone.com deputy editor Caryn Ganz. “He has to appear for court appearances to prove that he’s doing his community service,” noting that the legal issues don’t make it any easier for the star to move forward with his career.

Brown did release a pop-inflected album, “Graffiti,” on December 7, which has sold a little more than 250,000 copies. He also sold out stops on his fans’ appreciation tour, but those performances were in smaller venues than he’d played previously.

“In the immediate aftermath of the incident, there was all of this ‘dead’ talk — nobody will work with him, he’ll never be able to sell another record — and that’s turned out to not be true,” she said. But, Ganz noted, “Rihanna is clearly doing better than he is, both in sales figures and public reception.”

To date, Rihanna’s literal take on being “Rated R” has sold more than a half-million since it dropped November 23. She’s also taken to the stage again, performing everywhere from NBC’s “New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly” to the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon. “Rated R” is her fourth studio release; it entered the Billboard Hot 200 chart at No. 4, and sold more in its first week than “Good Girl Gone Bad.”

Brown’s last album, “Evolution,” sold more in its first week at 294,000 than “Graffiti” has in its seven weeks on the shelves, Ganz said.

New Orleans New Mayor Is Not Black: First Time In 32 Years

Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu has been elected mayor of New Orleans, replacing term-limited Ray Nagin and becoming the majority-black city’s first white mayor since 1979.

Landrieu is a 49-year-old moderate Democrat who won Saturday in a landslide over a field of 10 opponents in a campaign that focused on the city’s slow recovery from Hurricane Katrina, violent crime and slumping city finances. The city’s last white mayor was Landrieu’s father, Moon Landrieu.

Voting came amid Carnival celebrations and preparations for Sunday’s New Orleans Saints’ appearance in the Super Bowl.

As returns came in, jubilation spread through the Landrieu headquarters in a hotel ballroom — festooned with black and gold balloons in a nod to the Saints. A brass band played Mardi Gras music and meandered through the room.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Politics competed with Carnival parades and Super Bowl party preparations Saturday as New Orleans voters made their choice to succeed term-limited Mayor Ray Nagin.

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, who lost to Nagin in a runoff four years ago, was widely seen as the front-runner in an 11-candidate field. Were he to win an outright majority, he would become the majority black city’s first white mayor since his father, Moon Landrieu, left the post in 1979. Other candidates were hoping to force a March 6 runoff.

Among them was businessman John Georges, also white, who pumped $3.4 million of his own money into his campaign. Polls have also shown business consultant Troy Henry, an African-American making his first political run, as a contender.

With 10 percent of the precincts reporting, Landrieu took the early lead with 65 percent of the vote compared with Henry’s 17 percent.

Some voters were ready for a change from Nagin. Little known outside New Orleans before Katrina, he became a central, and sometimes controversial figure, in the city’s struggle to recover. Polls showed his popularity fell sharply in the years after the storm as the rebuilding process dragged on.

The End of Health Care Reform?

From the Associated Press:

After insisting for a year that failure was not an option, President Barack Obama is now acknowledging his health care overhaul may die in Congress.

His remarks at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser Thursday night sounded contradictory at times, complicating congressional leaders’ effort to revive health care legislation as Democrats hunger for guidance from the White House. Even while saying he still wanted to get the job done, Obama counseled going slow, and bowed to new political realities. Democrats no longer command a filibuster-proof Senate majority, and voters and lawmakers are far more concerned with jobs and the economy than with enacting sweeping and expensive changes to the health system.

“I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision,” Obama said Thursday night.

“And it may be that … if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not,” the president said. “And that’s how democracy works. There will be elections coming up and they’ll be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or the other during election time.”

It seemed to be a shift in tone for the issue Obama campaigned on and made the centerpiece of his domestic agenda last year.

“Here’s the key, is to not let the moment slip away,” Obama also said.

Sweeping health legislation to extend medical coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans passed both chambers of Congress last year and was on the verge of completion before Republican Scott Brown’s upset victory in a Massachusetts special U.S. Senate election last month. Brown was sworn in Thursday, giving Republicans 41 votes, enough to block the initiatives of the Democratic majority.

Now the health legislation hangs in limbo. Lawmakers are looking to Obama for a path forward, but he has not publicly offered specifics. His signals have been mixed. At the DNC event he said Republicans should be part of the process — something they’ve shown little interest in and that would doubtlessly drag out a legislative effort that many rank-and-file Democrats want to end quickly. The health care bill has become unpopular with the public and a political drag for lawmakers.

“The next step is what I announced at the State of the Union, which is to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas. What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I’m sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts, and let’s just go through these bills. … And then I think that we’ve got to go ahead and move forward on a vote,” Obama said Thursday.

“But as I said at the State of the Union, I think we should be very deliberate, take our time. We’re going to be moving a jobs package forward over the next several weeks; that’s the thing that’s most urgent right now in the minds of Americans all across the country.”

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday that there is no meeting set yet for the president to talk over health care strategy with Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

“There’s nothing on the block on this right now,” he said. “But I think this just goes to the president continuing to want to hear ideas.”

Bipartisan congressional leaders are planning to join Obama at the White House on Tuesday, but Gibbs reiterated that the meeting will be centered on how to create jobs and boost the economy.

Obama had also said Thursday night that “we’ve got to move forward on a vote” on health care. When asked what the president meant by that, Gibbs said only that White House officials are “still working with Capitol Hill on the best way forward.”

Obama’s comments came just hours after he met Thursday afternoon with Democratic congressional leaders, but the discussion focused mostly on jobs, and the leaders emerged with no announcement about a path ahead for health care. Rank-and-file Democrats are eager for them to settle on one by the end of next week, after which lawmakers will return to their states and districts for a weeklong recess where they’ll likely face questions from voters on the issue.

Don Stewart, spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said Friday that the White House has not requested a sit-down on health care with Republicans.

“The president wants to start over on health care? Sen. McConnell’s been saying that for months,” said Stewart.

Gypsy Flesh Gives Us More

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Hiring On The Rise

From npr

The country’s unemployment rate still hovers at 10 percent, and a new report says job cuts in January were at a five-month high. But a few recent announcements may give job searchers some hope.

CarMax, Ford Motor Co., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide and Oracle Corp. said last month that they plan to hire hundreds — or even thousands — of workers. Some industry analysts said it is a good sign about hiring this year.

John Challenger, CEO of Chicago employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said conditions are right for hiring. “Productivity numbers went way up in this recession,” he said, despite the fact that companies needed to make their workforces leaner. But there’s only so far a company can stretch a taut, productive staff.

Challenger’s firm reported Wednesday that employers had announced plans to reduce payrolls by 71,482 workers last month. That’s the highest job-cut number in five months, but 70 percent less than a year earlier.

Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is due to release employment figures for January on Friday. Reuters projects that nonfarm payrolls grew by 5,000 last month.

More Business Equals More Travel

The entertainment and leisure industry leads among companies who plan to hire, according to the Challenger report. Included in that tally is Starwood Hotels.

The hotel giant that owns the Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis chains announced it would create more than 12,000 jobs this year. Half of those jobs would be located in the United States, and most of the new jobs are a result of 80 to 100 new hotels that Starwood is opening.

Avatar Tops Titanic

From CNN

It was only a matter of time – 47 days, to be precise.

According to the box office tally site Boxofficemojo.com, “Avatar” is now the highest-grossing movie of all time domestically. The James Cameron film’s business now stands at $601.1 million, ahead of the $600.8 million Cameron’s “Titanic” did back in 1997-98.

Moreover, “Titanic” took 252 days to top out; “Avatar,” which has been the biggest movie in the country since its mid-December release, is still No. 1 and shows little sign of flagging (and those nine Oscar nominations won’t hurt).

The film is already the global box office leader, having topped “Titanic’s” $1.8 billion-plus last week.

Haitians In New York City

From NYT

After a week of watching news coverage of the Haiti earthquake, Nadege Fleurimond, a Haitian-American event planner in New York, fired off an e-mail message to about three dozen friends and associates. Though she was moved by the outpouring of help from local Haitians, she was frustrated that the effort had not coalesced into something larger and more visible.

“No major press conferences, no major vigils, no major anything with a statement,” she wrote. “Nothing being written about us besides the fact that we were sad and shocked.”

The problem, she suggested, was that Haitians, for all their history and achievements in New York, had not emerged as a discernible entity, with prominent leaders, a united presence, a public face.

The e-mail message provoked a spirited debate in Ms. Fleurimond’s circle. And as the initial shock of the earthquake begins to fade, the disaster has touched off similar discussions among Haitians all over New York.

As awful as the news has been, they say, it has given them an opening to talk about the shape and direction of their community. In the long term, many hope, the magnitude of the emergency will bring them more coherence and clout, and deepen an involvement with their homeland that has weakened with each new generation.

“A conversation defining who we are as a community has been needed for a long time,” said Carolle Charles, a Haitian-American sociologist at Baruch College.

Toyota’s Problems Continue

Toyota acknowledged design problems with the brakes in its prized Prius, adding to the catalog of woes for the Japanese automaker still reeling from massive gas-pedal recalls in the U.S.

Toyota Motor Corp. said Thursday it found there were design problems with the antilock brake system and corrected them for Prius models sold since late January, including those being shipped overseas.

But the company said it was still investigating how to inform people who had bought them earlier. Nothing was decided on that front for Prius gas-electric hybrids sold overseas, according to Toyota.

Complaints about braking problems in the Prius — the world’s top-selling hybrid — have been reported in the U.S. and Japan, combining to some 180, and come amid a global recall of nearly 4.5 million vehicles for faulty gas pedals.

“We are investigating whether there are defects in the Prius,” Toyota executive Hiroyuki Yokoyama told reporters at the automaker’s Tokyo headquarters.

Paul Nolasco, a company spokesman, said the time lag for brakes kicking in felt by drivers stem from the two systems in a gas-electric hybrid — the gas engine and the electric motor.

When the car moves on a bumpy or slippery surface, a driver can feel a pause in the braking when the vehicle switches between the traditional hydraulic brakes and the electronically operated braking system, he said.

The brakes start to work if the driver keeps pushing the pedal, but the driver may momentarily feel they aren’t working, he said. Fixing that included a software programming change, he said.

From npr

50% Decrease In Music Sales In Last Decade

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night, it would appear all is well in the recording industry. But at the end of last year, the music business was worth half of what it was ten years ago and the decline doesn’t look like it will be slowing anytime soon.

Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion.

Although the Recording Industry Association of America will report its official figures in the early spring, the trend has been very clear: RIAA has reported declining revenue in nine of the past 10 years, with album sales falling an average of 8% each year. Last decade was the first ever in which sales were lower going out than coming in.

“There have been a lot of changes over the past 10 years,” said Joshua Friedlander, vice president of research at RIAA. “The industry is adapting to consumer’s demands of how they listen to music, when and where, and we’ve had some growing pains in terms of monetizing those changes.”

The two recessions during the decade certainly didn’t help music sales. It’s also a bit unfair to compare the 2000s with the 1990s, since the ’90s enjoyed an unnatural sales boost when consumers replaced their cassette tapes and vinyl records en masse with CDs.

But industry insiders and experts argue that the main culprit for the industry’s massive decline was the growing popularity of digital music.

“The digital music business has been a war of attrition that nobody seems to be winning,” said David Goldberg, the former head of Yahoo music. “The CD is still disappearing, and nothing is replacing it in entirety as a revenue generator.”

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