Best Bets: Stephanie Plum hits big screen

Lionsgate Films

Katherine Heigl plays Stephanie Plum in "One For the Money."

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

At last, the movies are starting to get ... if not good, at least interesting. And last year's movies are starting to hit DVD and Blu-ray, so if you're snowed in, stock up on films for home viewing.

Movies
Look around the next airport you're in and you'll see dozens of folks?engrossed in?books?from the Stephanie Plum series. Plum is author Janet Evanovich's lingerie-saleswoman-turned-bounty-hunter, and the heroine of her numerically titled books. Now the first in that series, "One For the Money," is coming to the big screen, with the sometimes controversial Katherine Heigl as Plum. Book fans have high hopes, but we'll have to see if Heigl and the cast live up to the characters so many have already imagined in their heads. (Jan. 27.)

Does Liam Neeson really punch a wolf in the snout??In "The Grey," Neeson plays the leader of a group of plane crash survivors who are determined to make it out of the Alaskan wilderness alive. The trailer reveals that even those tiny liquor bottles they put on planes can be a weapon if you really need them to be. (Jan. 27.)

TV
The third "Spartacus" series, "Spartacus: Vengeance,"?comes to TV?this week.?If you watched "Spartacus: Blood and Sand," you know the gladiators have killed their master and escaped his brutal school. But are the Romans going to let them get away without a fight? Don't bet on it. (Jan. 27, 10 p.m., Starz.)

DVD
That poor family in the "Paranormal Activity" series! Apparently they've been cursed for decades, and in "Paranormal Activity 3," hitting DVD this week, we learn about how Katie and Kristi's growing up was more "Addams Family" than "Brady Bunch." The Bloody Mary sequence, where the girls stare into a bathroom mirror and try to summon the supernatural with that old slumber-party game, is jump-out-of-your-seat scary.?(On DVD Jan. 27)

"Real Steel" also hits DVD this week, and it was a bit of a surprise hit at the box office. Sure, it looked like two hours of giant robots pounding each other, "Battlebots" style, but really it was a sweet family film. Hugh Jackman plays the dad and washed-up boxing promoter who gets to know the son he never really cared about as they try to fight their way up the rankings. (On DVD Jan. 27)

Source: http://entertainment.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/19/10191370-best-bets-stephanie-plum-hits-big-screen

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RolePlayGateway?

Beware all ye who enter this thread--for herein lies a high school roleplay.

Not just a high school roleplay--but a romance high school roleplay.

God have mercy on our souls.

In all seriousness, I acknowledge that RPs of this kind are looked down on as lacking substance, purpose, plot, and they often attract...suffice to say, less than prodigal roleplayers who generate less than complex, deep, interesting characters. BUT--this isn't a place to trash on that kind of RP. Because let's face it, sometimes you don't want to get into a roleplay whose storyline summary alone would take up every page of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy and whose plot is so well thought out that everything is planned right up to the finish. Sometimes, you just want a roleplay that's...well, put plainly, fun. Where storyline depth and plot originality takes a backseat to just having a good time with interesting characters; where you could care less if the premise is absolute, original, self-created genius which the likes of JRR Tolkien and HP Lovecraft would live in envy of--or if it's something that's been done a billion times over before, albeit...not as well, or with less than preferable RPers and characters. Sometimes you just want a roleplay where you can have a bit of light-hearted amusement and fun.

Well, here is my idea.

It takes place in a high school (and I warned you of that right from the start, so if you're still reading, you're obviously okay with the fact). Four guys have been given the ultimate dare by their friends--if they don't do it, they're gonna be shunned, vilified, laughed at, mocked, jeered, for the rest of their high school years. And as anyone who's ever been a high school student knows, spending those years being the laughingstock of the school might as well be eternity in hell. So they take up the dare. They might be total jerks who find the dare amusing, they might be nice guys being forced into it by upperclassmen who know they can make life living hell for said nice guy, they might be the shy type being pressured into it by their friends--whatever the cause, they're in on it.

What's the dare?

Well, each of these four guys has got to get a girl to fall for them.

Not too hard, you might think. They're charming lads, maybe, couldn't be that hard for them to get a girl to--

Ah yes, I may have left out a vital rule to this little game.

They can't pursue just any girl, no. Now what would the fun in that be? They?ve been tasked with snagging the hearts of the four girls who are, frankly, the most difficult in the entire school. They could range from the snappy, queen-bee type bitch of the school, or the profanity-ridden, violent delinquent of a loner, or maybe the perpetually silent gamer geek no one can seem to get a word out of. Whatever they are, these four girls, for their respective reasons, seem utterly impossible to charm?hell, some of ?em might not seem like they have a heart to win over at all. But that?s the challenge these four unlucky young men face. They?ve got to get one of those four girls to fall for them?what happens afterwards is of no concern. Obviously the feelings of the girls themselves are hardly of concern to the guys setting the dare. The dare?s the game, the four girls are the objective?and the reward? Well, that could play out just about any which way...

That?s my little plot. If it doesn?t seem utterly repulsive to you?in fact, if, though I am loathe to presume, it even appeals to you?then maybe we can take this RP somewhere. I honestly believe that with good RPers and compelling characters, a plot that may seem as generic and clich? as this can come out as truly entertaining and fun to write for. However, it is essential that I emphasise good RPers. I?m sorry, but I?ve seen way too many of this RPs filled with people who write one line of such broken, execrable English I all but lose hope for humanity. So if you?re one of those people, please don?t sign up for this RP. I don?t like having to reject people because of the quality of their writing?it makes me feel like an ass?and I?m sure you don?t like being rejected. Y?know. For any reason. But especially for that one.

In terms of the characters themselves, for the most part, it?s open season. If you?re interested in creating a dude, he can be a total jerkass who looks forward to winning the girl?s heart and then breaking it, or he can be the shy type who?d rather die than actually talk to a girl, much less try to get one to fall in love with him. As far as the girls themselves, it?s more or less the same, as long as they?re...well, not all that easy to get along with. You could have a snippy, bitchy sort who treats everyone like trash, or a meek, nerdy sort of girl who fears being bullied for who she is and therefore never speaks up for fear of drawing attention to herself. The only rule here is that they develop over the storyline through their interactions with their ?significant other??for better or for worse. Maybe that total jerkass, in his efforts to get the girl to fall for him, realises that he?s gone and fallen heads over heels for her, and maybe that meek, nerdy girl starts to come out of her shell because she realises she?s found someone who cares about her for who she is?or maybe she becomes even more withdrawn and afraid when the guy she thought cared about her completely dumps her because it was nothing more than a dare to him. Only time will tell. I can say with certainty I?m probably gonna go for a girl who?s kind of a rough-around-the-edges delinquent, so that?s one girl spot gone, but the others are wide open.

So...anyone interested? :P

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RolePlayGateway

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GOP Candidates Debate Veteran Aid (ContributorNetwork)

American veterans have the daunting task of overcoming the physical and psychological traumas of war and integrating into a society with an ailing economy and unwelcoming job market. In fact, according to CNN's John King, a startling 22 percent of post-9/11 veterans aged 18 to 24 are currently unemployed.

The candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination were asked during the South Carolina GOP debate what they would do to facilitate veterans' transition back home.

Here is what they said, according to a debate transcript provided by the Chicago Sun-Times:

* Ron Paul: "We can create a healthy economic environment if we did the right things. But where the veterans really deserve help, both as a physician and as a congressman, is the people who've come back and aren't doing well health-wise. They need a lot more help. We have an epidemic now of suicide of our military coming back. So they need a lot of medical help, and I think they come up shortchanged. They came up shortchanged after Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War and even now. They don't get care from the Veterans Administration."

* Rick Santorum: "I grew up on VA grounds ? and I saw the impact of the Vietnam War on those veterans who came back. And they came back very damaged, not just with physical wounds but a lot of psychological wounds. And that's a very big part of the high unemployment rate that we're dealing with. And we need to be much, much more aggressive. We have a president of the United States who said he is going to cut veterans' benefits, cut our military, at a time when these folks are four, five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs, sacrificing everything for this country, and the president of the United States can't cut one penny out of the social welfare system and he wants to cut a trillion dollars out of our military and hit our veterans. That's disgusting."

* Mitt Romney: "In our state we found a way to help our veterans by saying, look, if you're going to come back, particularly if you're in the National Guard, we'll pay for your education, college degree, both the fees and tuition -- we'd give you a full ride. And we also had a plan that said, if you come back and you've been out of work for a year or more, we're going to put a bonus on your back, which, if anyone hires you, that bonus goes to them to pay for your training. So we can encourage that to occur. But let's do it at the state level. Let's not have the federal government continue to extend its tentacles into everything that goes on in this country."

* Newt Gingrich: "The U.S. government did two dramatic things after World War II. They created a GI Bill which enabled literally millions of returning veterans to go to college for the very first time. ? So there was an enormous expansion of opportunity that enabled them to integrate into a new, emerging society. The second thing they did is, they dramatically cut taxes, and the economy took off and grew dramatically, and it absorbed the workforce."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/pl_ac/10864389_gop_candidates_debate_veteran_aid

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Multiple partners not the only way for corals to stay cool

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Recent experiments conducted at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) produced striking results, showing for the first time that corals hosting a single type of "zooxanthellae" can have different levels of thermal tolerance ? a feature that was only known previously for corals with a mix of zooxanthellae.

Zooxanthellae are algal cells that live within the tissue of living coral and provide the coral host with energy; the relationship is crucial for the coral's survival. Rising ocean temperatures can lead to the loss of zooxanthellae from the coral host, as a consequence the coral loses its tissue colour and its primary source of energy, a process known as 'coral bleaching'. Globally, coral bleaching has led to significant loss of coral, and with rising ocean temperatures, poses a major threat to coral reefs.

It was previously known that corals hosting more than one type of zooxanthellae could better cope with temperature changes by favouring types of zooxanthellae that have greater thermal tolerance. However, until now it was not known if corals hosting a single type of zooxanthellae could have different levels of thermal tolerance.

Results recently published in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature Climate Change, showed corals that only host a single type of zooxanthellae may in fact differ in their thermal tolerance. This finding is important because many species of coral are dominated by a single type of zooxanthellae.

PhD student, Ms Emily Howells from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) at James Cook University, Townsville, together with scientists from AIMS and CoECRS, collected two populations of a single type of zooxanthellae (known as C1) from two locations on the Great Barrier Reef. The population collected from Magnetic Island near Townsville experiences average ocean temperatures 2?C higher than the population collected from the Whitsunday Islands. In experiments at AIMS, young corals were treated with one or other of the two different populations of zooxanthellae, and exposed to elevated water temperatures, as might occur during bleaching events.

The results were striking. Corals with zooxanthellae from the warmer region coped well with higher temperatures, staying healthy and growing rapidly, whilst corals with zooxanthellae from the cooler region suffered severe bleaching (loss of the zooxanthellae) and actually reduced in size as they partly died off.

Madeleine van Oppen, ARC Future Fellow at AIMS, says the research results will likely have a major impact on the field, as until now corals associating with the same type of zooxanthellae have been viewed as physiologically similar, irrespective of their geographical location.

"Our research suggests that populations of a single type of zooxanthellae have adapted to local conditions as can be seen from the remarkably different results of the two populations used in this study. If zooxanthellae populations are able to further adapt to increases in temperature at the pace at which oceans warm, they may assist corals to increase their thermal tolerance and survive into the future." says Emily Howells.

"However, we do not yet know how fast zooxanthellae can adapt, highlighting an important area of future research", says Bette Willis, Professor from the CoECRS at James Cook University.

Research at AIMS is therefore currently assessing whether zooxanthellae can continue to adapt to increasing temperatures and at what rate. This work in progress will provide insights into the capacity of zooxanthellae to adapt to future climate change.

###

ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies: http://www.coralcoe.org.au/

Thanks to ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 102 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116912/Multiple_partners_not_the_only_way_for_corals_to_stay_cool_

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Video: 'The big ask is to listen to cities more and do more for our cities'

South Carolina Analysis

High stakes in South Carolina, where Republicans there have picked the party?s eventual nominee for the last 32 years. We?ll have complete analysis of the crucial contest and breakdown the results, including what they will mean for the road ahead. Joining us: Host of MSNBC?s ?Morning Joe,? Joe Scarborough, Republican strategist Mike Murphy, the BBC?s Katty Kay, and NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/vp/46064404#46064404

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Zombie IC Thread (Open RP)

(Ok, so I have been wanting to make this thread for a long time, now. Zombies, have been a huge thing in my life, and I figured, I would pay my respects.)

Character sheet:

First Name:

Last Name:

Profession:

Weapon Skill:

Appearance:

Personality:

(It's a very simple character sheet. If you'd like, you can add more. Like, a bio etc.)

Mine:

First Name: Jessica

Last Name: Sprise

Profession: Singer at a local bar

Weapon skill: Light-Medium Melee Weapons. (Crowbars, axes, swords)

Appearance:

Personality: Calm, sometimes a little chatty, sharp, smart.

Bio: Jessica was just a singer, on the Hawaiian island of Lanai at a local bar. The island was one of the smaller ones, and it was the least populated island of the group. There were only three to six towns on this island, but that's how Jess liked it. Quiet, not very populated, friendly neighbors, great views, great beaches. Her kind of place.

(So, that's my character, let's talk about rules
1: If you decide your character is bitten, the fellow survivor(s) will be able to kill off that character. (Simple rule of zombies)
2: Being scratched does not get you infected!
3: Be respectful (if your character is a jerk, that's fine. But still, respect the others, please. )
4: Have fun!! (#1 rule of any RP.)

The war on Iraq, and Afghanistan is still going on. A nuke, sent from Iraq, hits the center island of Molokai, sending large amounts of radiation across all of the islands. (The RP will start right before the nuke about, a day. So, we will not be massacring zambies just yet.)

Ok, this is something I'd like, but you don't have to do. (My first post in the RP will be a party.) I'd love to have some of you be Jess' friends.

So, that's it!

Here is my post:
Jessica, had gotten home, from a long day at work, and flopped down on the couch, greeted by her two golden retriever's, Nerf, and Mittens. Jess, lived in a comfy little place, it wasn't huge, but it was fit enough for two dogs, and a female. She had a patio, which is where her party would take place, and a nice front view of the ocean. She hated her job, but the pay was good, so she continued to do it. She had totally spaced the party she said she was throwing for New Year's Eve, for 2012. Luckily, she knew she would forget, and set a small alarm on her phone, warning her, she had about 30 minutes until the party. She quickly, told the dogs to fetch her their leashes, so she could go to the grocery store, and buy whatever she needed. All the stores let Nerf, and Mittens come in, because they were always so well behaved, and kind. Never once, had they growled at a stranger, never once, did they bite, scratch, or hurt someone, without the person doing something bad to them. Everyone, knew each other here, because her town, only had 3-500 people in it, for a tourist hot spot, that is extremely low. But, they were on the smallest island, and not a lot of people showed up there, unless they had family, or friends here. She grabbed her keys, leashed the dogs, and went outside. Ever since her husband's death, Mrs. Norris, had been sitting on her porch, all day. A lot of her neighbors, would help her out, and comfort her, by cooking her meals, massaging her, and just taking care of her. On this night, she seemed very excited for something.

"Hey, there, Mrs. Norris!" Jess said to Mrs. Norris.

"Oh, hello, dear!" Mrs. Norris replied.

"Beautiful night, am I right?" Jess asked.

"Oh, yes! Very beautiful!" Mrs Norris said, looking up at the sky, admiring the stars.

"Well, have a good one!" Jess said, as she started to walk away.

"Goodbye, Jess, dear!" Mrs. Norris hollered back.

Jess, picked up her groceries, said hello to a few people, and went back to her condo. "5 minutes 'till the party" she said to herself, and the dogs. She put up, what littls decorations she had, admiring them. She layed out the food, the snacks, and started the barbecue. Her party started at 8, it wasn't to far from most people dinner schedule, so it was perfect. She put the burgers, onto the grill, along with hot-dogs, and Brautwurts. She looked at her watch "any minute now" she said to herself.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/Zs8FVKBTfjo/viewtopic.php

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'Hobbit' Brings 'Impending Doom' To Middle-Earth, Elijah Wood Says

'There is gravity, but there's a lot of fun as well,' actor tells MTV News of Peter Jackson's latest Tolkien adaptation.
By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz


Elijah Wood
Photo: MTV News

PARK CITY, Utah — Despite all odds, Frodo Baggins is back in the Shire ... or was back, rather.

Elijah Wood reprises his iconic role as the ring-bearing Frodo in "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," serving as a book-ending character in scenes that bridge the gap between director Peter Jackson's latest trip to Middle-earth and his previous one in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Wood's role is a less prominent one in "The Hobbit," so much so that with 100 days left of filming, his work on the film is finished.

"I had my revisitation rights, and now they've been revoked," he joked when MTV News caught up with him at the Sundance Film Festival.

Though Wood's return to the realm of dwarves, elves and men has reached its conclusion, the actor spent enough time on the New Zealand set to get a real sense of what "The Hobbit" is going for. Specifically, he spoke to the fact that Jackson's latest adaptation stays true to the lighter tone of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel, largely because "the stakes aren't as high" as they were in "Lord of the Rings." "It's more whimsical, magical, and a little bit more comedic," Wood said. "The dwarves are funny and they're kind of bumbling, and they're really playing a lot of that aspect up."

But even if the situation in "The Hobbit" isn't as dangerous as the world-ending scenario posed in "Rings," Wood said Jackson has managed to weave a sense of "impending doom ... into the construct of the piece."

"There is gravity," he insisted, "but there's a lot of fun as well." For his own part, Wood is just grateful that he got a chance to step back into Frodo's furry feet one last time, an experience he likened to time travel.

"It felt like stepping back into time," he said of reprising Frodo. "We shot some stuff in Hobbiton, and the last time I was in Hobbiton, I was 19 ... and I'm 30 now. It was a very bizarre step through a portal into time. But it was beautiful. It was great to be a part of it."

The 2012 Sundance Film Festival is officially under way, and the MTV Movies team is on the ground reporting on the hottest stars and the movies everyone will be talking about in the year to come. Keep it locked with MTV Movies for everything there is to know about Sundance.

Related Videos Related Photos

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1677680/sundance-hobbit-elijah-wood.jhtml

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US drone kills senior al-Qaida militant

A militant who acted as a senior operations organizer for al-Qaida was targeted and killed in one of two U.S. drone strikes launched against targets inside Pakistan last week, a U.S. official said.

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U.S. and Pakistani sources told Reuters that the target of the attack was Aslam Awan, a Pakistani national from Abbottabad, the same town where Osama bin Laden was killed last May by a U.S. commando team. They said he was targeted in a strike by a U.S.-operated drone on Jan. 10 directed at what news reports said was a compound near the town of Miranshah in the border province of North Waziristan.

That strike broke an undeclared eight-week hiatus in attacks by the armed, unmanned drones that patrol Pakistan's tribal areas and are a key weapon in President Barack Obama's counter-terrorism strategy.

The sources described Awan, who also was known by the nom-de-guerre Abdullah Khorasani, as a significant figure in the remaining core leadership of al-Qaida, which U.S. officials say has been sharply reduced by the drone campaign. Most of the drone attacks are conducted as part of a clandestine CIA operation.

Pakistani officials could not confirm that Awan was killed in the drone attack, but the U.S. official said he was.

Suspected US drone kills 4 militants in Pakistan

One of the sources described Awan as an associate of al-Qaida's current chief of external operations, whose identity is known to intelligence officials but not to the general public.

"Aslam Awan was a senior al-Qaida external operations planner who was working on attacks against the West. His death reduces al-Qaida's thinning bench of another operative devoted to plotting the death of innocent civilians," a U.S. official told NBC News.

Several previous alleged chiefs of external operations for al-Qaida have been caught or killed in drone attacks or counter-terrorism operations, the most notorious being Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington D.C. Mohammed was captured and is being held by U.S. authorities in the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility.

Because their role in arranging operations involves interacting with militants in the field, external operations chiefs of al-Qaida have found themselves more vulnerable to exposure and counter-attacks by security forces than the movement's most senior leaders, who until bin Laden's demise last year appeared to be able to move about the region and issue provocative audio and video messages with near-impunity.

A Pakistani security source based in the country's border region said that Awan was the remaining member of an al-Qaida cell Pakistani authorities have been trying to roll up since 2008.

"We thought he was very close to Ayman al-Zawahiri," the source said, referring to al-Qaida's current leader and bin Laden's long-time deputy, a former Egyptian doctor.

However, a U.S. source said that American experts did not believe that Awan was particularly close to al-Zawahiri.

Photos document alleged US drone strike victims in Pakistan

The drone strike that targeted Awan was one of two such attacks last week, in what U.S. sources indicated was a resumption of the U.S. drone campaign following the eight-week pause. In the other drone strike, also in North Waziristan, a group of "foreign fighters" sympathetic to the Taliban and al-Qaida, some of Uzbek ethnicity, were targeted on January 12.

The targeted militants were believed to be travelling, possibly in preparation for an operation near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan, and some were injured or killed in the attack, the U.S. source said.

U.S. officials said they could not confirm news reports, based on claims from Pakistani sources, that Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the TTP, Pakistan's most potent domestic affiliate of the Taliban movement, was also killed in the June 12 attack. Pakistani and U.S. sources said that Mehsud was not targeted in the drone strike, and one Pakistani source said: "He is alive. Hakimullah is alive."

Story: Pakistan crisis: PM appears before top court in contempt case

U.S. officials insisted that the drone strike lull did not represent an official moratorium on such operations by the Obama administration. The officials maintained that any fall-off in the pace of such operations was related to the availability of intelligence and operating conditions, such as weather.

However, some officials did privately acknowledge that the drone lull was at least in part calculated to try to improve strained relations between Washington and Islamabad, which had been on a downswing for much of last year in the wake of Pakistan's detention of a CIA operative and the secret U.S. commando raid on bin Laden's Pakistani hideout.

Relations plummeted to a new low following a late November incident in which 24 Pakistani troops were killed accidentally in a NATO aerial attack on border outposts.

Some U.S. and Pakistani officials say that both governments are making efforts to improve relations. As part of this process, a U.S. official said, it is possible that some permanent tweaks could be made in the U.S. drone program which could slow the pace of attacks.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46063325/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/

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Union Pacific 4Q profit up 24 pct on higher prices (AP)

OMAHA, Neb. ? Union Pacific Corp. said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit jumped 24 percent as the nation's largest freight railroad operator increased prices and hauled more cargo.

CEO Jim Young said he expects the economy and the railroad's revenue will continue growing in 2012.

"Looking ahead, we expect continued slow but steady economic growth in 2012," Young said. "The diversity of our unique railroad franchise will continue to provide growth opportunities in various markets."

Union Pacific shares rose almost 4 percent in premarket trading.

The Omaha-based railroad company said that its net income rose to $964 million, or $1.99 per share, during the last three months of 2011, up from $775 million, or $1.56 per share, a year ago.

Its revenue grew 16 percent to $5.1 billion from $4.41 billion a year ago.

Union Pacific said the carloads it carried grew about 3 percent overall during the quarter with strong growth in chemical, automotive, energy and industrial shipping.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected Union Pacific to report earnings of $1.82 per share on revenue of $5.05 billion.

Union Pacific's results offer insight into the nation's economic health because of the variety of cars, crops, chemicals, lumber and containers of imported goods the railroad carries.

Fuel costs soared 36 percent to $935 million from $687 million for Union Pacific during the fourth quarter as the price the railroad paid for diesel fuel grew to an average of $3.16 per gallon.

But Union Pacific was able to limit growth in other major costs. The railroad said compensation costs grew only 4 percent to $1.2 billion as it continued to recall furloughed employees.

UP had 1,030 employees furloughed at the end of 2011 and about 600 locomotives stored. A year ago, about 1,500 employees remained furloughed, down from 4,200 at the end of 2009.

Union Pacific is the nation's largest railroad with more than 32,400 miles of track in 23 states between the West, the Midwest and the Gulf coast.

___

Online:

Union Pacific Corp.: http://www.up.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_bi_ge/us_earns_union_pacific

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Summary Box: Strong bank earnings drive stocks up (AP)

STRONG BANK EARNINGS: Bank of America rose 2.4 percent and Morgan Stanley rose 5 percent after both banks reported results that were better than analysts were expecting.

GOOD START TO 2012: The stock market is building up a strong start to the year after a tumultuous 2011. The Dow Jones industrial average is up 3.3 percent, and other indexes are up even more: The S&P is already up 4.5 percent and the Nasdaq is up 7 percent.

STEADY AS SHE GOES: The gains have been small, but consistent. The S&P 500 has risen on 10 of the 12 trading days so far this year. It has moved more than one percent on only two of those days.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/earnings/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_bi_ge/us_wall_street_summary_box

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