Attractions In Santa Clarita - Another Bidder Joins Fray For Dell

Source - http://www.bdlive.co.za/
By - Serena Saitto and David Carey
Category - Attractions In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Attractions In Santa Clarita

NEW YORK — Blackstone Group is weighing a bid for Dell, the computer maker seeking offers to rival the proposed $24.4bn buyout by founder Michael Dell and Silver Lake Management, said people with knowledge of the matter.

Blackstone may bid as part of a group including other investors, said one of the people, who asked not to be named.

The private-equity firm has not made a decision, another person said.

Under the go-shop provision of the Silver Lake merger agreement, Dell’s board has until March 22 to seek superior proposals, and can negotiate beyond that date if it receives an offer it deems serious.

An offer from Blackstone would increase the pressure on Michael Dell and Silver Lake to raise their $13.65-a-share bid after Dell’s two biggest outside shareholders already opposed what would be the largest leveraged buyout of a technology company since the financial crisis.

Billionaire Carl Icahn has also amassed a stake and is pressing for a special dividend over a buyout. Still, it may be difficult for new bidders to turn Dell around without the CEO’s buy-in as PC business slumps, said Bloomberg Industries analyst Anand Srinivasan.

"It’s very hard to put a value on a business that’s in structural decline," he said. "Going private is all about how much value you can create."

Blackstone, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo have inspected Dell’s books after signing nondisclosure agreements, people familiar with the matter said this month. Michael Dell is trying to take the PC maker private after a quarter century as a publicly traded company, as business has shifted toward cloud computing, where storage and software are delivered at low cost over the internet.

Dell spokesman David Frink declined to comment. Blackstone spokesman Peter Rose was not immediately available.

Dell’s shares climbed as high as $14.69 in after-hours trading on Tuesday, or 7.6% above the bid from Michael Dell and Silver Lake, signalling that investors are betting the price tag will ultimately exceed the $24.4bn offer. In German trading on Tuesday, the stock traded at the equivalent of $14.52 as of 9.30am in Frankfurt.

Mr Icahn this month asked Dell’s directors to pledge they will implement his $9-a-share special dividend proposal if shareholders reject the Michael Dell-led offer. Otherwise, Mr Icahn said, he will start a proxy fight and seek to replace the board with his own slate.

At least five analysts this month said a bid for Dell could reach as high as $15 a share.

Hotel In California - Obama To Nominate Justice Aide For Labor Post

Source - http://www.nytimes.com/

By - PETER BAKER

Category - Hotel In California

Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel In California

WASHINGTON – President Obama plans to announce Monday that he will nominate Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, to be the next secretary of labor, a choice that promises to provoke a debate with Republicans about voting rights and discrimination.

Mr. Perez would replace Hilda L. Solis, who stepped down in January after four years running the Labor Department. Word of his possible selection has been circulating in Washington for days, and a White House official informed reporters that the president would make it official on Monday.

The announcement comes just days after a Justice Department inspector general’s report found that the voting rights section has been torn by “deep ideological polarization” with liberal and conservative factions in sharp conflict. The divisions date back to the George W. Bush administration, and most occurred before Mr. Perez was confirmed in October 2009. He portrayed the report as largely clearing the section on his watch.

But the report also raised questions about testimony he gave, and Republicans made clear that they would take issue with his handling of some cases over the last three and a half years. His critics question, for example, whether he acted inappropriately in persuading the City of St. Paul to drop a lawsuit seeking to limit fair housing claims when there is no intentional bias.

Liberals and labor leaders have hailed Mr. Perez, calling him a strong champion for workers and those who have faced discrimination. While at the Justice Department, he has pursued a record number of discrimination or brutality claims against local police and sheriff’s departments, including that of Joe Arpaio, the outspoken sheriff in Maricopa County, Ariz., who was accused of “a pattern of unlawful discrimination” against Latinos.

Mr. Perez also challenged voter identification requirements imposed by South Carolina and Texas, and his division reached the three largest residential fair lending settlements in the history of the Fair Housing Act. Under him, the voting section participated in the most new litigation in the last fiscal year than in any previous year.

Mr. Perez, 51, who would be the only Hispanic in the cabinet if confirmed, is the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. His father died when he was 12, but his family pressed the value of education so much that all four of his siblings became doctors. Mr. Perez graduated from Brown University and Harvard Law School.

He has spent a career fighting discrimination cases as a federal prosecutor, then, under President Bill Clinton, as deputy chief of the civil rights division that he now heads, and finally as head of civil rights enforcement at the Health and Human Services Department. He also served as an elected council member in Montgomery County, Md., and as the state’s secretary of labor, licensing and regulation.

The timing of the inspector general’s report on the voting section seems to ensure that it will come up during Mr. Perez’s confirmation hearings. The report found a toxic environment in which conservatives and liberals fought and maligned one another through the Bush administration and into the Obama administration.

The examples it cited generally preceded Mr. Perez, and he wrote the inspector general that he had made a point of correcting the situation. “Since 2009, the Civil Rights Division and the Voting Section have undertaken a number of steps to improve the professionalism of our workplace and to ensure that we enforce the civil rights laws in an independent, evenhanded fashion,” Mr. Perez wrote.

The inspector general, however, raised questions regarding Mr. Perez’s testimony about a case that preceded his time. Mr. Perez told the Civil Rights Commission in 2010 that no senior department officials were involved in a 2009 decision not to pursue further a case of voter intimidation involving the New Black Panthers. But the report noted that in fact senior officials did participate in discussions about the case, although the final decision was made by career lawyers as Mr. Perez had testified.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said the report showed that Mr. Perez was “woefully unprepared to answer questions” about a matter that he expected to be asked about. “This is troubling as it suggests a failure to also prepare for hearings before Congress, including the Senate Judiciary Committee, when questioned on this same topic,” he said in a statement.

Accommodation In Santa Clarita - Review: Tech In Galaxy S 4 Doesn't Come Together

Source - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

By - PETER SVENSSON

Category - Accommodation In Santa Clarita

Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Accommodation In Santa Clarita

The Galaxy S 4, Samsung's latest and greatest, has a cute feature we'll probably see in a lot of phones soon: You can shoot both yourself and your surroundings at the same time, using the front- and back-mounted cameras. It's a bit like having a two-camera film crew follow you around.

But other than that, it's hard to point to anything that will set the world on fire in the new phone, revealed Thursday at an event in New York. The S 4 has what you'd expect from a new smartphone: a bigger screen and a faster processor. It may prove to be unfortunate that didn't stop there when it presented the successor to its hit Galaxy S III, because the phone has a grab-bag of features that don't come together as a pleasing whole.

The phone will go on sometime between late April and the end of June period, from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, US Cellular and Cricket, Samsung says. If history is any guide, even smaller phone companies will get it, if not right away. The phone companies will set the prices; expect this phone to start at $200 with a two-year contract.

Samsung provided reporters with some hands-on time with pre-production units, which revealed the S 4 to be, in terms of hardware, a solid successor to the III. The screen is slightly larger, at 5 inches on the diagonal compared to 4.8 inches for the III and 4 inches for the iPhone 5. It sports a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, as much as you'd find on a high-definition TV set. This should mean that the resolution chase is over in the smartphone area: the eyes just can't discern any more pixels on these small screens. Competing top-line Android phones already have the same resolution, so Samsung isn't breaking new ground here.

The bigger screen is crammed into a chassis that's actually a hair narrower and thinner than the S III's. This is quite a feat. Samsung shrank the frame surrounding the screen to make room. Shrinking other internal components allowed it to make the battery 20 percent larger than III's, but Samsung isn't saying whether that translates into longer battery life – the added battery power could be eaten up by software and hardware changes.

The body is still dominated by softly molded plastic, and the S 4 doesn't really advance the aesthetics of its predecessor the way competitors Apple, Sony and HTC have done with their latest phones. Apple and HTC, in particular, have put a lot of sweat into machining metal into jewel-like enclosures; Samsung doesn't seem to care all that much about looks.

Samsung does care about trying to push the envelope on what the phone does, but it may have poked through the envelope, tearing a hole or two in it. It's probably not a disaster, because most of its features can be turned off, but first-time users could be confused.

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita - South Korea Central Bank Holds Rates

Source - http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
By - Press Release
Category - Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotel Reservations In Santa Clarita

South Korea's central bank kept its benchmark interest rate unchanged for a fifth straight month Thursday, despite concerns over whether growth in Asia's fourth-largest economy is back on track.

The Bank of Korea's (BOK) decision to leave the inter-bank lending rate at 2.75 percent -- after two cuts in July and October last year -- was in line with most analysts' expectations.

South Korea's export-driven economy grew 2.0 percent in 2012 -- the slowest pace in three years -- compared with 3.6 percent growth in the previous year.

The deceleration was largely blamed on sagging demand due to the eurozone debt crisis and a slowdown in China.

The central bank recently slashed its forecast for economic growth for this year to 2.8 percent from 3.2 percent estimated last October.

The economy has shown signs of picking up since the third quarter of last year, but analysts say slowing manufacturing activity in recent months suggests weak underlying conditions.

With inflation running at just 1.4 percent -- well below the BOK's target range of 2.5-3.5 percent -- the bank is expected to consider a rate cut by the end of the second quarter if the economy is still struggling.

Korean exporters complain that business has been hit by the weakness of the yen that has given a market edge to Japanese automobiles and electronics over their own products.

California Vacation Packages - L.A. Archdiocese To Pay $10M In Priest Abuse Cases

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Michael Winter
Category - California Vacation Packages
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

California Vacation Packages

The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has agreed to pay four men almost $10 million to settle allegations of sexual abuse by a former priest who more than a quarter century ago had confessed to molesting children, attorneys said Tuesday.

Two brothers will receive $4 million each, and the other two men will get nearly $1 million apiece, said John Manly, a plaintiff's attorney.

The settlement is the first since the Catholic Church released thousands of internal records detailing the actions of the defrocked priest, Michael Baker, and how church officials responded. Baker was convicted in 2007 of child molestation and paroled in 2011.

In January, as the files were about to be made public, a California judge ordered the archdiocese to identify all priests and church officials named in the documents.

STORY: L.A. Diocese told to identify officials in abuse cases

The confidential files -- medical and psychiatric records, abuse reports, church memos and letters with the Vatican -- revealed that in 1986, Baker told Cardinal Roger Mahony that he had abused boys beginning in 1974. Mahony removed Baker from ministry and sent him to New Mexico for psychological treatment.

A year later, however, he returned with a doctor's recommendation that he not spend any time with minors and that he should be defrocked immediately if he did. Nonetheless, the abuse continued until 2000, when Baker was finally removed.

Mahony retired as Los Angeles archbishop in 2011. Last month, his successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez, stripped him of his official duties.

Mahony is in Rome participating in the conclave selecting the next pope. He was aware of the settlement, J. Michael Hennigan, an archdiocese attorney, told the Associated Press.

"We have for a long, long time said that we made serious mistakes with Michael Baker, and we had always taken the position in these cases that whatever Baker did we were responsible for," he said. "That was never an issue."

Two cases were scheduled for civil trial in April.

Another plaintiff attorney, Vince Finaldi, told the Los Angeles Times that he believed that the release of the files was a major factor in the settlement.

"Once we got the files it confirmed everything we had argued for years and years," Finaldi said. "Cardinal Mahony's fingerprints were all over the case."

Hotels In Northern California - U.S. Stock Futures Trade With Losses

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/
By - Kim Hjelmgaard
Category - Hotels In Northern California
Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Hotels In Northern California

The Dow Jones industrial average stock index was trading with slight losses ahead of the market open on Tuesday.

In early-morning activity, the Dow was down 0.04% to 14,438. The Standard & Poor's 500 index gained 0.56% to 1,556.50 in premarket trade and the Nasdaq-100 index fell 0.19% at 2,804.50.

On Monday, the Dow rose 0.3% to 14,447. The S&P 500 index edged up 0.3% to close at 1,556. The Nasdaq added 0.3% to 3,252.87.

STOCKS ON MONDAY: Dow keeps climbing

Asian stock markets dropped Tuesday, dragged down by new worries about China's recovery and Europe's doldrums. Japan's Nikkei 225 index declined 0.28% at 12,314.81. China's Shanghai Composite index lost 1.09% to 2,285.31.

Benchmark crude for April delivery was down 16 cents to $91.90 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 11 cents to end at $92.06 a barrel on the Nymex on Monday.

Vacations In Santa Clarita - DeAndre Jordan Puts In Bid For NBA Dunk Of The Year

Source - http://www.usatoday.com/

By - Michael Middlehurst-Schwartz

Category - Vacations In Santa Clarita

Posted By - Hampton Inn Santa Clarita

Vacations In Santa Clarita

DeAndre Jordan might have taken the Los Angeles Clippers' dunking crown, if only for a moment.

With a comfortable lead in the second quarter Sunday against the Pistons, Chris Paul set up the center with an alley-oop pass normally reserved for Blake Griffin. Then Jordan, already rolling to the basket at full speed, rises up and extends over Pistons guard Brandon Knight, who gets knocked to the floor.

And as an exclamation point, Jordan steps over Knight as Paul gives him a congratulatory shove. The Clippers went on to win 129-97, and Jordan finished with 13 points and seven rebounds.

Staples Center featured so many great reactions, but here are power rankings of the most notable responses:

1. Children celebrating at :20. It's as if they've been transported into the second half of any given Harlem Shake video. Everyone should have something in their lives that makes them this happy.

2. DeAndre Jordan's face at :26. Someone has been studying McKayla Maroney. 

3. Blake Griffin and the Clippers' bench at :27. If Griffin has dunker's envy, he's hiding it well.

4. Vinnie Del Negro. Ugh. Not even a smirk as he attempts to brush Griffin back and move the game along. It's as though he thinks there's still another half left.

The move is one Knight will hear about for some time, as the second-year pro had his Wikipedia page vandalized shortly after the game.

As for dunk of the year? Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Jennings says Jordan's move deserves the title -- and he's not alone.