MILAN (AP) -AC Milan has brought back German midfielder Alexander Merkel on loan after losing Kevin-Prince Boateng for a month with a torn left thigh muscle.
Milan made the announcement on its website on Wednesday, saying the move is a temporary loan since Merkel's rights are jointly shared by Milan and Genoa.
The 19-year-old Merkel made 10 appearances and scored one goal in all competitions for Milan last season. During the first half of this season, he played 14 times for Genoa.
Milan announced Boateng's injury late Tuesday, adding that goalkeeper Christian Abbiati has a slight left calf problem.
Milan trails Serie A leader Juventus by one point.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Angelina Joliemay be considered one of the Best Dressed stunners at the 2012 Golden Globes, but in her mind, her handsome partner Brad Pitt is even worthier of praise.
GMO is not about making plants that produce more, or are resistant to cold or heat or drought.
Presently they are about resistance to insects, better weed management practices, and virus resistance, and they work.
It is the control of the food supply, that is what it is about.
You have no idea what genetic engineering is, do you? It is a technique. It doesn't want to do anything. Sure, you could say that a company wants to get larger market share, but that would be like saying that cooking is all about control because McDonald's does it.
Ask any Biologist, and they will tell you, genetically creating strains of identical plant lines to maximize a trait is a truly dangerous thing to do.
Funny, because that's exactly what many biologists working in plant science are trying to do with particular traits. That's what we've been doing for years with conventional breeding, or did you think all those plump grains and fat fruits were natural? This is not intrinsically different than altering traits via GE. And as a matter of fact, I have asked biologists about this very subject. University professors in genetics, biochemistry, plant biology, and agriculture. Guess how many of them opposed genetic engineering? None.
Whenever you take and engineer biological entities such as plants, that are gentically identical and create entire artificial eco systems that have low diversity, or in the case of GMO, _NO_ diversity, all sorts of catastrophic destruction can happen to the population.
That doesn't even make sense. Yes, lack of biodiversity is bad. Genetic engineering however is a way of improving a plant, not a system of agriculture. What you are saying is like saying that modifying cars with spinning rims means that there will only be one car on the market. Furthermore, even with GE crops, they breed the trait into numerous different lines of the crop.
Whether it be a GERM, a BUG or BAD WEATHER, having a food supply that is genetically diverse and NOT engineered is the safest and will produce the most food, consistently over a wide variety of environmental conditions.
Biodiversity is what you grow. genetic engineering is a way to improve it. That's a false dichotomy that makes absolutely no sense and could just as easily be applied to conventional breeding.
GMO has got to be the worst possible idea of all time.
Tell that to the papaya farmers in Hawaii who would no longer be papaya farmers without the GE Rainbow papaya. Tell that to the farmers in India who stole Bt cotton seeds from test fields. Tell that to the farmers all across America, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina who willingly choose to buy GE seed every year.
It isn't by accident you know, they will not put GMO labels on food. They know it is not safe, and they do not want you to know about it.
They?
GMO also is causing massive extinction rates in our grain crops from gene contamination. If this isn't stopped, there won't be any grain species left that are safe to eat.
Really? Care to explain in detail how a single new transgene could possibly do that? Because it sounds like you just made that up.
It sounds like you know nothing about biology or agriculture, but you've got conspiracies down.
>>>things are heating up down south in the campaign trail where there is an all-out effort to derail
mitt romney
in
south carolina
. well,
romney
spent the day
behind closed doors
, his rivals were crisscrossing the state, hoping to stop his momentum before it is too late. nbc's
ron
mott is on the trail tonight in
myrtle beach
.
ron
, good evening.
>> reporter: hey, lester. good evening to you. this was a rare day of rest for
mitt romney
as the rest of the field tried to take advantage, calling on
south carolina
conservative voters to keep this race from running out of options.
>>let us
all fight for that --
>> reporter: with
republican front
-runner
mitt romney
taking sunday off the campaign trail, his opponents were busy stumping today, rallying conservative support in an effort to slow
romney
's momentum.
>>i hope each of you will peer into your heart and find that individual with the record, with the values that represent your heart.
>> reporter: harry and
rick santorum
hoping to leverage his endorsement this week from a national group of evangelical leaders into a
south carolina
surge appealed to a christian audience at a prayer breakfast.
>>we need a candidate who has accountability to god and accountability to an eternal truth and understanding of our role in the world.
>> reporter: since
1980
, voters here have chosen the republican candidate who ultimately advanced to the
general election
.
ronald reagan
,
george h.w. bush
,
bob dole
,
george w. bush
, and
john mccain
four years ago. so if the former
massachusetts governor
who leads in the polls wins an unprecedented three in a row, will his challengers call it quits?
>>if
romney
wins
south carolina
, i think the game's over. this is the last stand for many candidates.
>> reporter: but
newt gingrich
, who continued to challenge
romney
's record on the sunday morning talk circuit, didn't sound quite ready to concede.
>>if
romney
wins here, he has an enormous advantage going forward. i hope every conservative will reach the conclusion that to vote for anybody but gingrich is in fact, to help
romney
win the nomination.
>> reporter: meanwhile,
jon huntsman
trumpeted the endorsement of the state's largest newspaper, looking to turn his long odds into a strong enough finish to keep going.
>>i think it is a
big deal
anytime you get the largest paper in the state to come out and endorse you, that's a
big deal
.
>> reporter: as for
ron paul
, he picked up the key endorsement tonight from a
tea party
back state senator,
ron paul
and other candidates are expected to speak tomorrow at the
tea party
convention here in
myrtle beach
. lester?
NEW YORK (Reuters) ? The top credit rating of Europe's bailout fund depends on additional financial backing from Germany and the other three remaining AAA-rated euro zone countries, Standard & Poor's said on Friday.
The fund, also known as European Financial Stability Facility, has its AAA rating at risk after S&P stripped two of its guarantors, France and Austria, of their top credit ratings.
If downgraded, the EFSF could face higher borrowing costs, reducing its firepower to rescue troubled countries in the region.
"If you have a greater commitment from the other countries, then the EFSF could retain its AAA rating," John Chambers, the chairman of S&P's sovereign rating committee, told Reuters Insider in an interview.
"If you've lost two of the six AAA guarantors, either they need to increase the backing from the four remaining AAA guarantors or they need to raise some cash buffers," Chambers said.
Another option would be that the fund raises collateral to cover its outstanding obligations.
Germany and France, the two largest euro zone economies, are the main guarantors of the EFSF.
Chambers also said the European Central Bank's recent measures to increase liquidity to banks promoted a substantial monetary easing in the euro zone, which was "good news" for the ratings.
Some banks may have used the low-cost money from the ECB to invest in government bonds, he added.
Euro zone banks received almost half a trillion euros in the ECB's first-ever injection of 3-year liquidity last month. Analysts have been watching for signs that banks would use this to buy bonds, especially those issued by fiscally troubled euro zone countries.
A stellar Spanish bond auction earlier this week led some to believe that some of that money had indeed made its way into the sovereign debt.
Chambers' comments contrast with recent comments from Fitch Ratings, which said this week the euro-zone debt crisis will not be solved without more active engagement of the ECB.
(Reporting By Walter Brandimarte and Burton Frierson; Editing by Jan Paschal; editing by Carol Bishopric)
As the Iowa caucuses wound down, Dustin Gold began to panic. Suddenly Rick Santorum was the man of the moment, and Gold wasn't prepared.
Gold is no political operative. His company, William Gold Entertainment, specializes in booking presidential impersonators around the country, including Reggie Brown, by many accounts the most successful working impersonator of Barack Obama.
Gold already has a Mitt Romney doppelganger in the fold and is working with a Newt Gingrich guy, but until Santorum's strong showing in the Hawkeye State, he didn't feel the need to find a lookalike for the former Pennsylvania senator.
"I really had no intention of getting a Santorum until I woke up at 2:30 a.m., the morning after the Iowa caucus," Gold told HuffPost Weird News. "Now I'm looking for one, but it depends on how he does in the next few primaries."
Such is the world of presidential impersonators, where an election can four more years of hefty paychecks.
"I think the president earns $450,000 a year, but Reggie Brown, our Obama, earns more than that," Gold said. "However, Obama will probably make more when he leaves office than Reggie will."
PHOTOS: POLITICAL IMPERSONATORS (Story Continues Below)
Reggie Brown is an actor from Chicago, currently based in Los Angeles, who decided to work up a Barack Obama act on the night of the 2008 election. His biggest claim to fame was when he appeared at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, and delivered jokes that criticized several of the Republican Party's 2012 and was pulled from the stage by convention organizers.
Reggie Brown is an actor from Chicago, currently based in Los Angeles, who decided to work up a Barack Obama act on the night of the 2008 election. His biggest claim to fame was when he appeared at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, and delivered jokes that criticized several of the Republican Party's 2012 and was pulled from the stage by convention organizers.
MORE SLIDESHOWSNEXT?>??|??<?PREV
Reggie Brown
Reggie Brown is an actor from Chicago, currently based in Los Angeles, who decided to work up a Barack Obama act on the night of the 2008 election. His biggest claim to fame was when he appeared at the 2011 Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, and delivered jokes that criticized several of the Republican Party's 2012 and was pulled from the stage by convention organizers.
Mike Cote, a standup comic and drywall installer from southern Maine, wants to play Romney.
Cote, 56, discovered his resemblance to Romney in 2008 when some fellow comics pointed it out to him. Within weeks, he was on David Letterman's late-night show.
But Cote admits he still has some work ahead of him if he wants to be a really good fake Romney.
"I need to get the voice down," he admitted with a thick New England accent. "The voice is a challenge, because I'm not an impersonator."
Both Cote and Gold said Romney's button-down personality presents a daunting challenge for any impersonator -- unlike Bill Clinton, who has personality quirks that Gold says are "the gift that keeps on giving."
Cote said he has a handle on the Romney character, though.
"He's like a Ken doll," he said. "You just pull the string."
WATCH: HOW TO IMPERSONATE PRESIDENT OBAMA (STORY CONTINUES BELOW
While presidential impersonators once saw their gigs dry up when the subject left office, Gold is trying to extend the masquerade of Clinton copycats and bogus Bushes with a bevy of multi-character shows.
For his part, Brown said he think an Obama impression will remain relevant long after the president has left office.
"I am confident Obama will win," Brown said in an interview, "but if he doesn't, he's still a historical figure and I believe I will be able to do him, either comedically or seriously, for the rest of my life."
Gold says it takes about a year after a new president gets elected for an impersonator to establish himself professionally.
"It took a little bit longer for Reggie, in part, because people liked Obama at first and being the first African-American president, people weren't sure how to spoof him."
Brown says his career really took off this past June, when he was ushered off the stage at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans after ribbing various GOP contenders as well as Obama.
"It took a long time to build up a business, but, since then, I've been on the road constantly," Brown said, adding that he started working on his act the night of Obama's election.
"The key to him is confidence. You have to act like you know how to engage the room," he said, going on to divide the president's persona into discrete fragments, including "Campaign Obama," "Sincere Obama" and, when he's speaking to a large audience, "Martin Luther Obama."
Although being a presidential impersonator can bring fame and fortune, Damian Mason -- who has portrayed Clinton professionally since 1994 -- said he remains regularly surprised by how often people believe they are actually talking to a former president. Occasionally, he said, that can get scary.
"I had a little dude at an Indiana Republican event come unglued and scream at me that I was 'stirring s*** that didn't need stirring,'" Mason said. "That event was early in my career and it taught me of the passion people bring to political stuff. These were people who probably knew I was not really Clinton but decided they hated Clinton and they would be angry at me because of it."
Brown feels mixed reactions at the passion Obama evokes from haters as well.
"Regardless of politics, I want you to like me," he said. "I've performed in front of people who hated the president and, therefore, hated me."
Still, Brown said he remains grateful for his recent career swing, owing to Obama's rise in tandem with his growth and training. "A good presidential impersonator needs to be ready for this and have the talent," he said.
As for kindred spirits looking to make Gold's callback list, however, Brown offered a word of warning. "If you're hoping to become a Rick Santorum impersonator," he laughed, "I suggest you keep looking for another job."
