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Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to a crowd at a town-hall style campaign event in, Madison, Wis., Sunday, April 1, 2012. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich speaks to the Hood College Republicans during a campaign stop at Hood College in Frederick, Md., Monday, April 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Ann Heisenfelt)

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, accompanied by his wife Karen, holds a cheese head hat at Simon's Specialty Cheese in Appleton, Wis., Monday, April 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Mitt Romney is halfway to clinching the Republican nomination for president.

The former Massachusetts governor inched up to 572 delegates on Monday ? exactly half the 1,144 needed ? after the Tennessee Republican Party finalized delegate totals from its March 6 primary. Results in several congressional districts were too close to call on election night, leaving three delegates unallocated.

Romney got all three delegates. He also picked up an endorsement from a New Hampshire delegate who had been awarded to former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman. Huntsman dropped out of the race in January and endorsed Romney.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, meanwhile, won a Minnesota delegate over the weekend that had been allocated to former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum won two delegates and Paul won one at Minnesota's 7th Congressional District convention.

Santorum had been projected to win all three delegates, based on the results of local caucuses in February.

Romney and Santorum have been sparring over the delegate count for weeks. Romney's campaign says there is no way for Santorum to reach the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, portraying the race as all but over. Santorum's campaign says Romney's numbers are inflated, raising the prospect of a contested convention in August.

According to the Associated Press tally, Romney has more than twice as many delegates as Santorum. Santorum has 272 delegates, followed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich with 135 and Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 51.

Romney has won 54 percent of the primary and caucus delegates so far, putting him on pace to clinch the nomination in June. Romney could substantially add to his lead Tuesday, when 95 delegates will be at stake in three primaries, in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Tuesday's contests mark the midway point in the race for delegates.

A total of 2,286 delegates are slated to attend the party's national convention in Tampa, Fla. ? 2,169 will be selected through primaries, caucuses and state conventions, while 117 are members of the Republican National Committee, free to support any candidate they choose.

Santorum, who has won 27 percent of the primary and caucus delegates so far, would need 74 percent of the remaining delegates to clinch the nomination before the national convention. Gingrich would need 86 percent and Paul would have to win nearly all of them, which won't happen because most states award delegates proportionally.

Associated Press

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April 3rd, 2012

This economy has made it almost impossible to retire unless you?ve got a plan for the future. Financial retirement planning should not be feared but it should be taken seriously. Financial retirement planning will ensure that the vision you have for your retirement becomes reality.

It?s never too late to begin saving, but begin early if you can. You?re going to have much more security in retirement if you begin at 35 rather than 65. By creating a financial retirement, you?ll realize what needs to be done in order to have a successful future. Future issues will become murky and confusing if you don?t have a plan.

When you create a strategy for retirement, it will include where you?re investments will be placed and for what period of time. You should set monetary goals with three strategies in mind short term investments, medium-term investments and long term investments.

You can choose poised investments to appreciate in the long term with long term investments which are usually five or more years. Volatile stocks or CDs are short term investments and they?re usually less than a year.

When it comes to financial retirement planning, taking the word of an investment analyst as gold is no longer something you can do. What you need to do is take the bull by the horns and know what?s going on with your money.

If financial matters seem intimidating to you, there are many well-written books that explain the difference, for example, between stocks and bonds and other financial matters. To set financial goals for your retirement, there are short-term classes that are abound with information you can use.

In order for you not to find yourself short of funds when you retire, you must gain an understanding of what?s going on with your money. Investments like real estates, stocks from companies, and available cash like money market and savings account are the things that should be included in the plan you chose.

Taken into consideration when you plan to retire is financial retirement planning. More funds should be placed in readily available cash if your retirement is one to five years away. If you?ve placed most of your funds in the stock market and there?s another downturn, then a big portion would disappear.

Stocks and real estate is a good idea if you have ample amount of time to invest. This strategy will increase your wealth while avoiding some of the taxes and inflation that?s sure to happen on a long term basis. Try adjusting your portfolio accordingly as goes on and retirement date looms closer.

Remember that financial retirement planning is mostly common sense. Make knowledgeable decisions and then review them on a yearly basis. If you?re on a long term plan and a stock goes down in value, don?t flip out because it will even out in the long run.

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Categories: general | Tags: finance, financial planning, investing, personal finance, retirement

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) ? Supporters of California's ambitious high-speed rail project began their hard sell with lawmakers and the public Monday after releasing an updated business plan that scales back the scope of the project and speeds up construction to save money, but still relies heavily on speculative funding sources that might never materialize.

In addition to money from voter-approved bonds and startup funds from the federal government, the plan hinges on receiving billions more from a skeptical Congress, fees from an untested cap-and-trade system that is at the heart of California's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and unnamed private investors to jump aboard and risk their own money once construction begins.

The updated proposal speeds completion of the nation's first true high-speed rail system to 2028, about five years earlier and $30 billion less than projected in a draft plan released last fall by the California High-Speed Rail Authority. But the $68.4 billion price tag is still $23.4 billion higher than the plan voters approved four years ago.

Without concrete sources of future financing, the project could receive a rocky reception in the Legislature, which will consider allocating the initial bond money later this year.

The revised plan would save money by merging the bullet train with existing commuter rail lines in the San Francisco Bay area and Los Angeles basin, where tracks would be electrified. Nearly $1 billion in voter-approved bonds is available for upgrades to existing tracks, which officials say would speed up rail service and possibly generate more riders.

When the first phase is completed, the system will stretch 520 miles from San Francisco to Anaheim, with trains hitting speeds of 220 mph in the sparsely populated Central Valley.

"This project, like the state highway system or the water project, will transform the California economy and help it remain one of the most innovative in the world," Michael Rossi, a member of the rail authority's board and a senior adviser on jobs and business for Gov. Jerry Brown, said during a Fresno news conference.

Brown, a Democrat, has asked the rail authority to revamp its earlier proposal and make construction quicker and cheaper after the earlier draft plan said the project's cost had more than doubled to $98 billion. Voters were told the entire system would cost about $45 billion when they authorized the bonds in 2008.

Yet the latest plan still appears to rely heavily on highly questionable federal financing and private-sector investment, said Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto.

"We've seen numbers in the $30 billion, $40 billion, the $90 billion range, and now we're back in the $60 billion range," Simitian said. "I think there is understandably both some confusion and skepticism about what is the system going to cost, and then there's the question of where is the money going to come from?"

The revised plan released Monday said the rail system is projected to operate without a public subsidy and be economically viable even at the lowest projected ridership.

In all, only about $12.5 billion in financing has been secured for one of the largest public works programs in decades ? the $9 billion in construction bonds approved by voters in 2008 and $3.5 billion in money from the federal stimulus program.

The new plan also assumes an additional $4 billion from the federal government over the next 10 years, despite significant congressional opposition.

The bulk of the remaining cost would come from fares and private financing, with any shortfall filled by tapping into California's new industrial "cap-and-trade" program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Environmentalists who supported that program and critics of high-speed rail have questioned whether that money can be used for such projects.

Dan Richard, chairman of the high-speed rail board, said the governor and Department of Finance believe the cap-and-trade fees are a legally viable funding source.

Sen. Doug LaMalfa, R-Willows, a critic of the high-speed rail plan, called the latest proposal a "bait-and-switch" with a $55 billion funding gap. He is promoting a ballot petition seeking to repeal the 2008 ballot measure.

Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, said the chance of significant funding materializing is slim, with Republicans in Congress lined up against the rail project and no identified private investors.

"It is clear that this project is not the project that was presented to voters in 2008, and if it is to be pursued it needs to go back on the ballot," said Coupal, who co-authored the ballot arguments against the bonds in 2008.

The plan says that although taxpayers will foot the bill for much of the initial construction, private operators eventually will take over. Some profits from operating the system's initial sections will be used to pay for building new ones.

"The private sector has expressed a lot of interest already," Richard said. "But they needed to see the ridership and once they do, at that point they will be much more interested."

The initial phase will link the Central Valley city of Merced and the San Fernando Valley by 2022, expanding on what originally had been proposed as a 130-mile Madera-to-Bakersfield section that critics had lampooned as a "train to nowhere."

Brown ordered the board to rethink its previous proposal as polls showed a majority of voters wanted to reconsider the $9 billion in startup funding they authorized four years ago.

The latest plan will go before the full high-speed rail board on April 12 and, if approved, to the state Legislature. Brown is expected to ask lawmakers to appropriate $2.3 billion in rail bonds to begin construction of the first phase next year.

___

Associated Press writers Don Thompson in Sacramento and Gosia Wozniacka in Fresno also contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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After a 47-year search, mathematicians Fernando C. Marques and Andr? Neves have found the best doughnut, or at least the best geometric shape for a doughnut, pictured in Figure 1, with the narrow hole only about 17 percent (3-2?2) of the width of the doughnut. "Best" for mathematicians means the least bent out of shape, minimizing a physically natural elastic bending energy like certain cell membranes (defined mathematically as the integral of the mean curvature squared).

Figure 1. Mathematicians prove that the best doughnut has a small hole (top image courtesy of geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff, thanks to Tom Banchoff, all rights reserved; bottom image courtesy of Wikipedia creative commons).

The 47-year-old puzzle is called the Willmore Conjecture. It is named after the English geometer Thomas J. Willmore.

Willmore guessed the best shape in a 1965 paper. He died February 20, 2005, seven years, almost to the day, before its solution. The solvers hail from a premier mathematics institute (IMPA) in R?o de Janiero and Imperial College, London. They posted a preprint of their 96-page proof on the arXiv on Feb. 27, 2012.

A key to the proof is moving the problem from ordinary, three-dimensional space to a three-dimensional spherical universe that closes back on itself, a three-dimensional analog of the Earth's surface, where you don't have to worry about things disappearing off to infinity. There they consider the closely related problem of minimizing area, a contest in which our best doughnut is distinguished only as a sixth-class competitor (with a five-dimensional space of instabilities). The theory of such hybrid "mini-maxima" was developed by my own late thesis advisor Fred Almgren, of Princeton University, and his Ph.D. student Jon Pitts, now of Texas A&M.

Actually there is not just one optimal shape; there are infinitely many equally good shapes, all related by certain "conformal" symmetries, as in Figure 2. Such "Dupin cyclides" are being used in modeling and architecture, where they piece together to design beautiful structures. Maybe Dunkin' Donuts will be interested.

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Ryan Newman crosses the finish line to win the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race Sunday, April 1, 2012, in Martinsville, Va. (AP Photo/Don Petersen)

Ryan Newman celebrates in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race Sunday, April 1, 2012, in Martinsville, Va. (AP Photo/Don Petersen)

Clint Bowyer (15), Jeff Gordon (24) and Jimmie Johnson (48) get sideways during the closing laps of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Va., Sunday, April 1, 2012. (AP Photo/LAT, Scott LePage)

Jimmie Johnson (48) ends up backward against the wall after an incident involving Clint Bowyer (15) and Jeff Gordon (24), as Ryan Newman (39) takes the lead during the closing laps of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Martinsville Speedway in Martinsville, Va., Sunday, April 1, 2012. Newman won the race. (AP Photo/LAT, Scott LePage)

Clint Bowyer (15), Jeff Gordon (24) and Jimmie Johnson (48) get sideways while racing for the lead with just laps to go in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at Martinsville Speedway on Sunday, April 1, 2012, in Martinsville, Va. Ryan Newman (39) won the race. (AP Photo/Steve Sheppard)

MARTINSVILLE, Va. (AP) ? Ryan Newman needed help and was running out of time. Finally, Clint Bowyer provided an opening with two laps to go at Martinsville Speedway.

Bowyer's aggressive move took out race leaders Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson entering the first turn, allowing Newman to slide into the lead, and he held off A.J. Allmendinger and Dale Earnhardt Jr. on another restart for his first win in 23 races.

"We were not a dominate race car," Newman said. "Clint kind of cleared out Turn One for us and we were fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time."

The reverse was true for Gordon, who led 328 laps, and Johnson, who led 112. The Hendrick Motorsports teammates seemed poised to battle it out to see which one would give owner Rick Hendrick his 200th Sprint Cup victory, and neither had a chance in the end.

"Jeff and I had been the class of the field so I really thought it was going to be a race between the two of us, and it certainly didn't turn out that way," Johnson said.

He wound up 12th, and Gordon was 14th.

Of the restart, Johnson said: "That inside lane is awfully inviting at times to dive-bomb on people. The No. 15 (Bowyer) threw a dive-bomb in there. I'm sure once he got in there, he realized it wasn't the best idea. It turned me around. It turned the No. 24 around."

Gordon angrily sought out Bowyer after the race, and heard the whole story.

"He said he got hit from behind by the 39 (Newman)," Gordon said. "I had nowhere to go. Jimmie had nowhere to go. It was pretty unfortunate. ... I didn't want to see that last caution. We had such a great battle with (Johnson). ... It was going to be an interesting race.

"That's just the way our year's been going. It can't go on like this forever."

Gordon improved three spots in the points standings, but is still just 22nd.

Newman's performance drew praise from car owner Tony Stewart.

"I'm ecstatic for Ryan," the defending series champion said. "I got to see it on the replay during the caution after all the havoc broke loose. Ryan made an awesome move to the bottom. He was heads up to get in the gas and through that hole before it closed up."

Allmendinger was second, followed by Earnhardt, Matt Kenseth and Martin Truex Jr.

The finish overshadowed what had been a stirring duel between Gordon, a seven-time winner on the 0.526-mile oval, and Johnson, a six-time winner.

Johnson first took the lead when he passed Gordon on the 356th lap. He lost it on pit road, then passed Denny Hamlin to lead again on lap 393. He held off a modest challenge by Gordon with about 30 laps to go and then dueled side-by-side with his teammate until the caution, which came when David Reutimann ran out of gas near the entrance to turn one.

Gordon, who had just nudged in front of Johnson before the yellow flag came out, was the leader, with Johnson second and everyone behind them heading to pit road for tires.

What had been an atypically clean raced turned into mayhem on the restart.

Earnhardt, who was in position to give Hendrick a sweep of the top three spots before the caution, said everyone being on fresh tires played a factor in the crash.

"We all took off and ran into the back of the leaders, all of us," he said.

Earnhardt had no issue with Bowyer for trying to take the inside line, saying that's how you approach a two-lap sprint, but was at a loss to explain Reutimann's actions.

"I would like an explanation on why that happened," he said of Reutimann stopping where he did after having made several troubled laps without going to the pits. "There doesn't seem like there could be a logical reason for him to have to stop on the track."

Reutimann said his motor just died.

"I would not have stopped on the freaking racetrack. I would have limped it around there and come to pit road, which is what I was trying to do," he said. "The thing quit going down the back straightaway, and it shut off. I just didn't stop there intentionally."

Greg Biffle, who finished 13th, remained the points leader by six over Earnhardt.

Associated Press

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In recent years, online shop as an emerging industry, with its convenient, fashion features to attract more and more consumers, to seize the real market transactions in a considerable share, and presented the vigorous development, the increasingly fierce potential. As the product of the Internet age, online shop has many new characteristics, these characteristics make it full of vitality, so that it became a powerful challenger to traditional commercial retailing, triggered the third commercial revolution.

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On one hand, the potential consumers grow. According to the China Internet network information to provide information, at the end of 2006, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 137000000, compared to 2005 increased 26000000, the growth rate of 23.4%, over the years is the netizen grows up to a year.

While our country netizen relative volume is still low, the popularity rate, 2003, the United States has reached 63.2%, the number of users in third bit to seventh day, Germany, Britain, South Korea, law in 50%, and by 2006 China user penetration rate of only 10.5%, which means the development of space is also great.

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On the other hand, the rapid growth of Internet transactions. According to the investment firm Cowen and Co report, in 2006 the United States Internet sales of $108000000000, is expected to 2011, online sales will increase to $225000000000; new world circulation industry at present the Institute published a report to forecast, shopping in Korea scale in 2009 will go beyond the traditional department stores.

From the" INTERNET GUIDE" findings report of 2007 China Internet data, in 2006 China's Internet users personal Internet consumption total market size of about 276746000000 yuan, a 187653000000 yuan in 2005 year-on-year growth of 47%.

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A study of Chinese small and medium-sized enterprise circumstance investigation shows, individuals in the network boot sales company average costs at least 50000 yuan, according to eBay gift categories of person in charge, the set up shop on the net shop cost is very small. In general, for an online shop with very little investment, do not need to handle business license, do not have to hire appearance, not hoarding of goods, funds required but 1500 yuan; online shop than a comparably sized ground shop" rent" is much lower, at the same time the rent not because the business area increased, investors not to prolong business hours and additional cost.

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For example, in the city at present small gift shop meet the eye everywhere, competition is intense with each passing day. According to a survey commissioned by the zero display, at a domestic level city metro mall as the representative, about 38% small shopkeepers balance, 22% small gift shop in surplus, 37% at risk of failing. A small gift shop operators difficult, primarily because of the expensive shops rent. In addition, the shop most afraid of and" crash" -- on the guests so much, no personality characteristics of products can sell? Also, even if there are good stuff, and no money for advertising. At present, many small gift shops have to move up the development of online business ideas. " On the Internet gift categories on rent a storefront without spending a dime. Advertisement price is cheap, have classified search engine to ensure that customers in 10 seconds to search you. As online shopping mall of the ' flow ' how many -- light gifts and jewelry categories of daily total visits amounts to 500000 person-time, equivalent to 3 medium downtown sections of small commodities market scale." A ZIPPO lighter business Mr. Qin said.

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Romney halfway to clinching GOP nomination

Planning For Financial Retirement? Tips On Where To Begin ...

Financing still murky for revamped $68B rail plan

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Frank Morgan: Math Finds the Best Doughnut

Newman wins wild finish at Martinsville Speedway

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The successful development of China online shop

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