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  TAMPA — Seems like every week Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn is thinking out loud about the future of the Tampa Bay Rays in ways that raise people's eyebrows. Buckhorn said in a radio interview Tuesday that he believes the team will leave St. Petersburg. "The Rays and the city of St. Petersburg are going to have to resolve their issues," Buckhorn told J.P. Peterson on WQYK-AM 1010. "There is a contract. And there are ways out of contracts. And there are prices to be paid for breaking contracts. "But that's got to be between the city of St. Pete and the Rays," he added. "My personal opinion is that they will come. I think the Rays have made it clear that that is not a stadium they want to continue to play in." If the Rays do leave St. Petersburg, Buckhorn said, and not for the first time, he thinks the best place for them to land would be downtown Tampa. But asked whether he thinks the Rays will move to Tampa, Buckhorn said, ...

  Microsoft has officially launched Office 365--the new cloud-based subscription productivity suite. Inevitably, there are a myriad of head-to-head comparisons and face-offs with the rival Google Apps platform, but those are only valuable for an individual or company that is seriously considering a choice between the two. For an organization that has no intention of dropping Microsoft Office, the question becomes one of which path provides the better value. Let me start with a caveat. The math behind determining the value of Office 365 vs. simply implementing and managing your own servers and Microsoft Office infrastructure internally are subjective. A lot varies by the number of users involved, or the how spread out offices or workers are geographically. And, you have to say Bill Gates backwards three times, and sacrifice a chicken to understand the voodoo math that goes into Microsoft licensing--so my math may be sWhat would it take for you to build your own 'Office 3...

SACRAMENTO - Although, no one hit the MEGA Millions jackpot last night, one lucky California Lottery player who bought their ticket in Los Angeles matched five of six numbers and won $701,316. The lucky ticket was sold at the Grande's Mini Market at 4350 Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. The ticket matched the numbers 47, 27, 12, 48 and 17, missing only the Mega number of 33. The California Lottery reminds winners to sign the back of their ticket, keep tickets in a safe place and contact Lottery officials or visit their local Lottery District Office as soon as possible. Winners have 180 days from the date of the draw to claim prizes. MEGA Millions is a multistate game, played in California and 41 other states. Players pick five numbers from 1 to 56 plus a Mega number from 1 to 46. Draw times are Tuesdays and Fridays at 8 p.m. PST. Tickets are $1 and can be purchased from any of the more than 21,000 California Lottery retailers.

CHICAGO—Corn prices jumped amid worries that upcoming estimates from the U.S. will show that grain supplies remain tight. The Department of Agriculture is expected to say Thursday that U.S. corn inventories were 23% lower as of June 1 compared with this time last year. Two separate reports are set to be released, with estimates for grain plantings as well as stockpiles. Grain crops around the world have struggled with patchy rains and the kind of weather that results in poor yields, deepening worries about global food prices. The corn markets, in particular, are being watched closely because inventories are the tightest among major crops and a bumper harvest is needed just to keep pace with demand. Corn futures had rebounded 12% over the past five trading sessions after getting caught up in a broad commodity selloff spurred by concerns about Europe's debt woes. Lower grains prices weren't sustainable even though investors see commodities generally as risky and ...

Amber Rose denies allegations that she tried to steal Nicki Minaj ‘s boyfriend via a series of nude cell phone pics. Mediatakeout claims photos of the model  which leave absolutely zero to the imagination, were sent to Minaj’s boyfriend, Safaree last year. Sounds like some nasty revenge. “These blogs do nothing but try to ruin ppls lives I DID NOT send pics to anyones boyfriend pls stop with the lies. Its so ridiculous. smh,” tweeted Amber Rose. She continued, “Yall been doing this to me for 3 years now it shld be illegal to write fake stories about ppl the media never wants to see anyone happy.” I’d like to be able to tell you if the photos are real or not, but I can’t hang around long enough to study them.

  BOSTON, June 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Carbonite®, a leading provider of online backup solutions which provide customers with "anytime, anywhere access" to their stored files, has been honored by the Boston Business Journal as the areas' ninth best midsized employer. The ranking was announced during the Best Places to Work awards breakfast, held June 9 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Peter Lamson, senior vice president and general manager of the Small Business Group at Carbonite, accepted the award on the company's behalf. The annual awards recognize a total of 75 local businesses, with 25 in each of three categories - small (20-100 employees), midsized (101-500 employees) and large (more than 500 employees). Rankings were determined by employee responses generated through surveys conducted by the Boston Business Journal and Quantum Workplace during April 2011. "Carbonite aims to cultivate a culture that our employees are proud of ...

In a decision reserved only for complex cases, the Calvert County Board of License Commissioners, or Liquor Board, deferred a ruling Thursday night on whether to allow the wine and beer license holders of Woodburns Beverages to transfer the license from the closed Woodburns of Solomons to the Lusby Food Lion supermarket chain store. “It’s been our policy to make a decision immediately following a hearing,” Chairman J. Allen Swann said after hearing almost three hours worth of support and opposition for the transfer. “I think there’s a very good chance of appeal no matter which way it goes. We want to make the best, the properest decision.” At the start of the hearing, Swann addressed the full house, admitting a decision would not be easy because Maryland’s liquor laws are not always clear-cut. “A lot of things are left up to the discretion of the board. If it was black and white on paper we wouldn’t be here,” he said, adding that Thursday’s hearing was one of the larges...

Equatorial Guinea, one of the most obscure countries to qualify for a major international soccer tournament, put on a show in a bizarre but entertaining game Wednesday, winning over the fans who ventured to a stadium that will soon host its first men's Bundesliga games. The crowd didn't care that Equatorial Guinea had three of its best players removed from the Women's World Cup, two due to persistent gender questions, one to nationality issues. They didn't care that the country's government was recently ranked among the 12 most corrupt in the world by watchdog Transparency International. They didn't care that many of the remaining players, though naturalized citizens, were born elsewhere, often in Brazil. They didn't even care that most of the team's shots seemed as likely to hit a tunnel or even the roof of the steeply pitched Augsburg stadium as they were to hit the net. Equatorial Guinea played with the reckless abandon of an MLS or WPS ...

  The Data Liberation Front (DLF), a left-wing guerrilla group of Googlers, has finally launched its first service: Google Takeout. Just sign in, select which Google services you want to back up, and then click Creative Archive. Each of the services will be tidily backed up to a zip file in open formats that can be imported into other, non-Google web services. To start with, Takeout only supports the easy exporting of Buzz, Picasa, your Google Profile, Contacts, and Circles — Google’s recently-launched Facebook competitor — but the eventual plan is to provide easy exporting for every Google service. If you haven’t heard of them before, the DLF is a group and a website that helps you extract your data from Google’s web services into open, easily-transferable file formats. You can then take your email or docs or RSS feeds and import them into an installed program, or Microsoft or Yahoo’s equivalent web service. Curiously enough, though, the DLF is an engineering team ...

  Google +1, the social recommendation feature that lets users indicate their favorite pages, is picking up steam. Google is continuing to push the feature – in both its webmaster button form and the social search results connected to +1s – by releasing the feature in numerous additional countries. +1's Increasing Momentum The thought that Google +1 was part of a larger social construct has gained both more weight and some contradictory evidence with the release of Google+ – the actual Google social site that we've been bleeding for over the last year (editor's note: check back for more coverage on Google+ later today on Search Engine Watch). While +1s are likely to get an integration with the Google social network, much in the same way that Facebook Likes are integrated with the Facebook news stream, the +1 feature is also meant to stand alone. The +1 experiment started in March, webmasters got the button to add to their site earlier this month, Google has ...

HONG KONG (Dow Jones)--Shanghai-based, U.S.-listed Spreadtrum Communications Inc. (SPRD) has become the latest target of Muddy Waters LLC, after the broker declared a short position in the shares, citing a "high risk of material misstatement" in the chip designer's 2010 and 2011 financial accounts. Muddy Waters posted on its website Tuesday a copy of the nine-item letter sent to the Spreadtrum's chairman. The document focused on the key management changes, including the resignation of the company's founder and chief executive, as well as its chief financial officer, both of whom stepped down in the span of a few months in the first half of 2009. In a statement released in Shanghai on Wednesday, Spreadtrum said it would hold a conference call shortly before the start of U.S. trading hours. No reasons or topics were specified for the call, which was scheduled for 8 a.m., EDT. Spreadtrum's shares fell as much as 34% mid-session on Tuesday after new...

Remember way back in February of 2010, when Google introduced a social media service called Google Buzz, and all the bloggers marveled that Google was so boldly taking on Facebook? Well, that didn't work out so well. Now Google is really taking on Facebook, and not just in a half-hearted kind of way. Witness the unveiling of Google+, a full-featured social network that aims to "bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software." "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online," Google executive Vic Gundotra wrote in a statement announcing Google+. "Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it. We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software." RELATED: With Office 365, Microsoft says, hey, Google, get off of my 'cloud'  Check the vid...

In recent weeks, Oracle has taken two premier open source technologies gained through the company's 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems -- the OpenOffice.org productivity suite and the Project Hudson continuous integration server -- and donated them to the Apache Software Foundation and Eclipse Foundation, respectively. As the world's second-largest commercial software vendor (behind Microsoft), Oracle was not surprisingly eager to find another home for some of these open source technologies, which by definition lack the potential to bring in the boatloads of licensing revenue Oracle seeks. [ Read InfoWorld's special report: "A year later: Did Oracle ruin or save Sun?" | Stay abreast of open source trends and news with the Technology: Open Source newsletter, only from InfoWorld. ] Oracle still has other prominent open source properties from Sun, including the NetBeans IDE and My...

(CBS/AP) On the cover of Newsweek this week, Princess Diana is alive, well and walking with her daughter-in-law, Catherine, Duchess of Cornwall. It's an interesting idea but the computer-generated image is creepy. The article inside was written by Diana biographer and longtime provocateur Tina Brown. She's also Newsweek's editor-in-chief, having taken over after her online publication, the Daily Beast, merged late last year with the decades-old publication. "What would she have been like?" Brown writes of Diana, who would have turned 50 on Friday, nearly 14 years after her death in a Paris car crash. "Still great-looking: that's a given." The magazine's new issue also features an imagined Diana Facebook page and a slideshow comparing the fashion styles of Diana and Middleton, who married Diana's oldest child, Prince William, in April. About the cover, a Los Angeles Times headline asked, "Shocking, brilliant or just pla...

  With Google+, it looks like the search giant may have finally built a social product that people will use. Shortly after Google announced the new social networking service, executives Bradley Horowitz and Vic Gundotra (who are leading the company's social efforts) spoke with Adweek about the lessons they've learned from past failures, both inside and outside Google. The company's most infamous social fumble was its product Google Buzz, which many users saw as a violation of their privacy—as did the Federal Trade Commission. Horowitz said that's symptomatic of of larger problem that he called "overfriending": When you're friends with too many people on a service like Facebook, then you don't want to share anything private. Google+, on the other hand, introduces the idea of Circles. Users divide their connections into categories like "friends" and ...

American singer Katharine Hope McPhee, who finished as runner-up in American Idol Season 5 , made an appearance at NBC's The Voice to promote her upcoming new musical drama Smash . McPhee talked about NBC’s new show where she will appear alongside FlashForward star Jack Davenport and Will & Grace ’s Debra Messing. McPhee also said she would be performing her own version of one of Coach’s several hits. McPhee said she would also be performing her own version of Christina Aguilera's Beautiful on the new show, according to the Hollywood Reporter . Smash , which is a musical drama, revolves around a group of characters who come together to put on a Broadway musical based on the life of Marilyn Monroe. But before that can happen, the people who will try to bring it all together must deal with their own personal acts. The series will feature original music by composers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. NBC opted to hold the show for mid-season in order to ...

Cambridge basked in sizzling temperatures yesterday – as health chiefs issued hot weather warnings. With 90F (30C) almost reached in the city, the lido on Jesus Green was packed with people looking to cool off. But the heat proved too much for animals and birds at Shepreth Wildlife Park. Rebecca Willers, animal care manager, said: “To keep the animals cool in this extreme heat, we have been freezing bloodsicles for the tigers, showering the emus with cool water and freezing fruit into blocks of ice for the primates to play with.” Health chiefs at NHS East of England urged people to look after themselves – and others – during the hot spell after the Met Office issued a Level 2 heatwave alert. Dr Anne McConville, acting regional director of public health with NHS East of England, said: “Dehydration is one of the biggest causes of illness during hot conditions so it is essential to make sure you drink plenty of water, wear a sun hat and T-shirt and avoid lon...

There’s never a Tardis around to whisk a girl away when she needs one. Doctor Who star Karen Gillan could have done with just that when she reportedly got stranded naked in a hotel corridor at 7am after a night partying. The flame-haired beauty, 23, who plays the Time Lord’s assistant Amy Pond, was allegedly found trying another guest’s door while she was on the week-long promotional junket. One claimed Karen was “whimpering” at his door. He said: “I went to the peephole then I saw this woman naked, trying to wrap towels around her and not having much luck. She started to whimper and knock on my door. “Seeing that she wasn’t getting anywhere, she lay down with the towels covering her.” Suzanne Leonara, another resident at New York’s Ace Hotel, said: “She looked as though she hadn’t been to bed.” Show boss Stephen Moffatt and Matt Smith, who plays the Doctor, were also on the trip. Last night, a spokesman for BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, said: ...

  A Moscow district military court has handed down a 25-year sentence in absentia to Alexander Poteyev, the Russian double agent who fled to the US after betraying the espionage ring which included Anna Chapman. Poteyev, a former Afghan war veteran and long-serving officer in Russia's foreign intelligence service (SVR), who is still believed to be hiding in the US, was found guilty of state treason and desertion, The Guardian reports. Chapman and Poteyev's wife, Marina, appeared as witnesses during the trial, and in its judgment the Moscow district military court revealed that he had sent a text message to the latter after leaving Russia, saying: "Mari, try to take this calmly. I'm not going away for a while, I'm going away forever. I did not want to, but I had to. I will start a new life. I'll try to help the children." 29-year old Chapman and nine other sleeper agents known as "illegals" were captured in June 2010 in America af...

When actress and cancer survivor Lisa Ray, 39, was a young girl growing up in Etobicoke, Ont., her Bengalese dad would take her every weekend to an Indian grocer in Rexdale to pick up the ingredients for a traditional South Asian feast. There, Ray and her mother would peruse the shelves stocked-to-overflowing with the gaudily packaged Bollywood films that were an intriguing mystery to the Toronto-born girl and her Polish mother. The women of the Ray household started renting the flicks –that her father disliked, but her mother, who couldn’t understand a word of Hindi, was entranced by, primarily because of the sheer spectacle of song, dance and pageantry. Ten years later, at the tender age of 16, Ray found herself in Bombay (now Mumbai), where she fast became one of India’s most sought-after models. Soon, the offers from Bollywood poured in. But she was hesitant about a career in an industry that seemed to an Indo-Canadian girl – particularly then – so kitschy. Eventually...

The magnificent Aprilia RSV4 Factory APRC SE Italian superbike is a new generation of fast bikes that are packed with electronic systems which are supposed to make the most of the engine’s output and enhance the overall performance. Aprilia claims their RSV4 has the most sophisticated set ever fitted to a road legal bike. So to test it out, they’ve devised a race between the bike and a car that is also stuffed with electronic controls, Nissan GTR . Both vehicles are completely stock. So, which one do you reckon will win the battle ?

With new games, there are great applications to assist them, for Call of Duty Black Ops we have five apps to look through and let you know our views. The popular Call of Duty games will always have extra information for you to discover, and various information that you might find a great help through apps. Black Ops Ultimate Utility lite for iOS iPhone is a free application, which is always the best to start with. This app contains a K/D calculator that will help you divide your Kill/Death rate to see how many more you need to move your K/D higher. Using this free app you will also be able to rate yourself in comparison to other players. Keep your values saved in the app and chat with other participants. Each week you will get updated polls and news, so you can find out what is the best weapon and lots more. Next up is Duty Black Ops Guide also for iOS iPhone, this one is £0.59 and comes with cheats, hints, tips, secrets, specials, achievements and more. This app is des...

(WILDLIFE — WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND) After attracting tons of media attention due to the rarity of his arrival and scaring animal lovers everywhere with his fast spiral into ill health, New Zealand’s visiting penguin Happy Feet is recovering from surgery. While all are happy to see the stoic bird healing well, many are confused at the curious lack of information on the penguin. Even after an operation and much care, scientists are not yet able to identify the age or even sex of the penguin. In the meantime, all hope for a quick and painless recovery and return home for the wayward bird. — Global Animal Associated Press New Zealand’s favourite penguin visitor is more lively and eating fish after undergoing endoscopic surgery to remove some of the sand and twigs it apparently mistook for snow and swallowed. Full recovery for the young emperor penguin – nicknamed Happy Feet – may take months. Officials are unsure when or how it could return home to the Antarctic, a...

  There are no known immediate threats to Earth when it comes to an asteroid impact, but our planet seems to be receiving a number of flybys lately. In February of this year, the Earth recorded its closest near miss when asteroid 2011 CQ1 avoided an impact with the planet by only 3,405 miles. Now, another close shave today is expected to come within 7,500 miles, which will put the asteroid closer to the Earth than the Moon (32x closer in fact) and in the same area as some communications and television satellites. What is a bit scary about this latest asteroid is that it was only discovered late last week. The asteroid has been designated 2011 MD and was discovered by a pair of robotic telescopes which are a part of MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR). It’s still unclear, but 2011 MD is thought to be between 8 and 18 meters in diameter, or roughly as big as a large house. LINEAR, funded by the United States Air Force and NASA, is applying technology...

In case you need more reason to go see "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" this week, in addition to crazy amped-up action and a new lovely leading lady, the third robot-tastic installment is in 3-D. And it wasn't converted in postproduction, like a few of the recent 3-D films out there. Director Michael Bay insisted that his first foray into the three-dimensional medium be as authentic and technologically advanced as possible. Lately there has definitely been a bit of 3-D fatigue in the air. When MTV News caught up with Rosie Huntington-Whiteley at the film's worldwide premiere in Moscow recently, we asked for her thoughts on the 3-D element of "Dark of the Moon." "I will be the judge of that after I see this film, because I have never seen a movie in 3-D," she revealed. "When Michael told me it was going to be in 3-D, I said, 'Right, I'm going to wait,' and now we're here, we're at the premiere stage and I'm g...

A photograph of Billy the Kid  sold for $2.3 million in Denver at the weekend, smashing the pre-auction expected price of $400,000. It is one of the most expensive pieces ever sold from the old West. Billy the Kid’s mother, Catherine McCarty, came from Ireland as likely did his father . The tintype was taken in 1879 or 1880 in New Mexico and shows Billy posing with a s hotgun. It is the only authenticated picture of him. When Pat Garrett finally tracked down and killed Billy the Kid in 1881 a subtext of the killing was the Irish identity of the two famous protagonists. Pat Garrett was the grandson of Irish immigrants while Billy the Kid was really William McCarty, both of whose parents came from Ireland. As Wikipedia notes Little is known about McCarty's origins, but many reputable scholars of western history "contend that he was born on the eve of the Civil War in the bowels of an Irish neighborhood in New York City at 70 Allen Street)." While his...

Celebrity Rehab for season 5 premiered Sunday night. The VH1 show has pulled together a collection of diverse personalities for its 2011 cast, all of whom are battling demons of various addictive kinds. Consider Jeremy Jackson, most recognizable as Hobie Buchannon on the former network hit, Baywatch . Eleven years ago, Jackson was arrested for methamphetamine manufacturing, but he cleaned up and carried on until he discovered he was having a new problem. These days this actor, who enjoyed plenty of success early in his career, is addicted to steroids of all types, some of which are normally given to cattle that are about to go to slaughter. Dr. Drew recognizes the seriousness of Jeremy's situation and indicates he has plenty of work to do at Celebrity Rehab , which started June 25 on the premises of the Pasadena Recovery Center. Joining Jackson on the VH1 show called Celebrity Rehab is Amy Fisher, also known as the Long Island Lolita because when she was 16, the te...

The Homewood Police Department is investigating three incidents at
 Homewood businesses where employees' cars were stripped of their
 catalytic converters, police said. The metal thief or thieves struck Wednesday at Menards, 17545 Halsted
 St.; Kmart Supercenter, 17550 Halsted St.; and Home Depot, 17845 Halsted
 St., in each case targeting employee vehicles parked in outlying lots,
 according to the report. In the theft at Menards, a woman discovered that someone had used a 
cutting tool to remove the catalytic converter from her vehicle parked 
in an outer lot sometime between 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., police said. The
 replacement cost was estimated at $500. At Kmart, a parking lot security camera captured the image of a
 dark-colored van parking near an employee's car at 8:37 a.m. and leaving just eight minutes later. The
employee, a Chicago Heights resident, discovered numerous wires
 dangling from the undercarriage of his vehicle and his catalytic
 converter ...

If there's one major thing to take away from the first season of Mob Wives , it's that as much bravado and swagger as these women may try to give off, they're human just like the rest of us and eventually the toll of an unusual lifestyle is bound to start affecting them. In past episodes, we've seen Karen deal with crushing press, Renee find the strength to leave her ex once and for all, and even typically tough Carla struggle with just how to tell her kids where their father had been for the past 6 years. The season one finale was all about the unraveling of Drita D'avanzo and it was both a tough and captivating watch. Drita's volatile relationship with Lee may have finally reached its breaking point with a shocking revelation of his infidelity during his short stay home (my notes: "SHUT UP. SHUT. UP." and about 500 underlines) and that stress, frustration, and anger bubbled over when it came time to discuss the issue of Karen's appa...

After spending most of last season chasing Moreau what bigger challenges could the Leverage team could face this year? In "The Long Way Down Job," we got an answer: the feelings they've developed for each other. Remember, the team memebers all used to work solo. Spending the last three years together, they've grown to trust, depend and even love each other; this is new ground for each of them. It's just as dangerous as the mountain on which they were working. I watched this episode with two other people and all three of us had tears in our eyes multiple times. It started when Parker showed frustration with Eliot when she wanted to do the right thing and bring Alan's body back. She ached over how bad she wants to think of herself as a good guy. Then, you could see a glimpse of how scared she was that to think this might not be the case, as Parker explained that they can do things the others cannot. That remorse alone tells me that you're not b...