Stars, family, fans to mourn Whitney Houston

Mel Evans / AP

Candles burn at a memorial to Whitney Houston outside New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, N.J., early Saturday.

By msnbc.com news services

Update, 10:05 a.m. ET: Hearse carrying Whitney Houston's casket has arrived at New Hope Baptist Church in Newark, a church where Houston sung as a child. Watch live video from the New Hope Baptist Church here.

Update, 9:45 a.m. ET: Whitney Houston's casket has departed Whigham Funeral Home in a gold hearse, escorted by a police motorcade, NBC News reports.

Soul, gospel and pop music greats from the past and present are set to mourn Whitney Houston Saturday, a week after the sudden death of the singer whose spectacular voice and best-selling albums made her one of biggest pop stars of her era.

Houston, who died in a Beverly Hills hotel room last week, recorded stirring love songs and vibrant, dance tunes during a 30-year career that peaked with her 1992 signature hit "I Will Always Love You."

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She was due to be honored by family and friends at a funeral service in her native Newark, New Jersey. While the world knew her as one of the greatest artists of her generation, to her family and friends, she was just "Nippy."

A nickname given to Houston when she was a child, it stuck with her through adulthood and, later, would become the name of one of her companies.

In this TODAY exclusive, singer Aretha Franklin talks with TODAY's Al Roker about her reaction to the death of Whitney Houston, her close friend.

There was a heavy police presence outside the invitation-only funeral on Saturday and streets were cordoned off.

Houston's body was expected to leave a nearby funeral home under tight security en route to the church. Fans have been urged to stay home and watch the funeral on the Internet or television.

Keys, Wonder, Franklin, Warwick
The funeral is for invited guests only. Houston is scheduled to be buried next to her father, John Houston, in nearby Westfield, N.J.

Alicia Keys, Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and Houston's cousin Dionne Warwick will sing and speak at the New Hope Baptist Church, where Houston sang as a child in the choir with her mother, Cissy Houston, who was a backup singer for Franklin.

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts talks with MSNBC contributor Toure and Access Hollywood's Shaun Robinson about pop singer Whitney Houston's Saturday invitation-only funeral service in Newark, New Jersey.

Hollywood stars Kevin Costner and Tyler Perry and Houston's mentor, record producer Clive Davis, were also scheduled to speak. Oprah Winfrey, Elton John, Beyonce and Bill Cosby were expected to attend the service.

Houston's family decided against a public memorial, but fans were expected to crowd the streets around the church and nearby cemetery where she is due to be buried.

Many have left flowers, cards and balloons dedicated to the singer who became a global star with her 1985 debut album that included the hits "Saving All My Love For You," "How Will I Know" and "Greatest Love Of All."

Houston was among the greatest singers of the 1980s and 1990s, but her personal life and marriage to singer Bobby Brown was tumultuous. She admitted to heavy use of cocaine, marijuana, alcohol and prescription pills.

Read more on Houston's death:

Franklin jumped out of bed at Houston news

Source: Houston was under 24/7 supervision

Inside Houston's last recording session

Her death at age 48 shocked her family, fans and the music industry. Houston was found underwater in a hotel bathtub on the eve of the music industry's Grammy Awards. A cause of death has yet to be determined.

Houston grew up surrounded by gospel and soul music legends like Franklin and Warwick. She later forged new territory for a black, female artist who brought R&B and gospel touches into pop music's mainstream.

After her debut, her popularity grew exponentially with her second album, "Whitney" (1987), with all four singles -- "Didn't We Almost Have It All", "So Emotional", "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" and "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)" -- hitting No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Coping with fame
Her music videos featuring her 1980s style and innocent, fun-loving image made her wildly popular around the world. In the 1992 movie "The Bodyguard," co-starring Costner, Houston played a character not far removed from her real self: an international singing sensation coping with fame.

She made other films including "The Preacher's Wife," but the 15-year period when she was married to singer Brown coincided with a decline in the quality and frequency of her albums. The couple, who have an 18-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, divorced in 2007.

Houston's powerful voice suffered in recent years. On her last world tour in 2010, she struggled to hit high notes.

She spoke publicly about her struggles with addiction.

In a 2002 interview, TV journalist Diane Sawyer asked Houston what was the "biggest devil" among her failings. Houston answered: "Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. So the bigger devil is me, I am either my best friend or my worst enemy."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/18/10442130-stars-family-fans-to-mourn-whitney-houston

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Clients Are Starting to See Outsourcing's Yoga Benefit

Saving money continues to be the top reason many businesses outsource IT services and business processes. It might not be the smartest reason ? in fact, if that's the sole motivator for a Nearshore project, it could mean nothing but trouble ahead ? but it still pops up at the top of many executive surveys.

But there's another benefit that more decision-makers are now citing more frequently: Flexibility. Yes, just like practitioners of yoga, they see value in being more bendy.

Nearly 70% of the executives questioned for the 2011 Corporate Client Survey said moving work offshore allows them to be more flexible and better poised to adapt to business conditions.

The survey is conducted by the Center for International Business Education (CIBER) and the International Offshoring Research Network Project at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

According to Arie Lewin, CIBER director and international business professor at Fuqua, "For companies that are engaged in offshoring, we've seen a significant jump in the number of respondents who say offshoring activities have led to improved organizational flexibility, from 48 percent in 2009 to 66 percent in 2011."

"As U.S. firms increase the scale and scope of their global sourcing, they are laying the foundation for achieving far-reaching organizational flexibility," Lewin says in a press statement. "They say that with these capabilities, they can redesign processes, enhance efficiencies, improve service quality and enable more effective access to new markets and promoting innovation."

Lewin also says "cost savings are no longer the primary driver" of sourcing strategies.

An earlier survey by Capgemini found similar results, where 60% of executives said outsourcing can make a business more agile. This is not really surprising. What is surprising is that in the Fuqua survey of just two years earlier, only 48% said offshoring had increased their company's flexibility.

You might wonder what was going on with the outsourcing relationships of those clients who did not feel more flexible. Did they manage them poorly? Did the provider cause so many problems that the client spent too much time fighting fires? Either of those is possible. There's no lack of experts who say offshoring can backfire and result in less flexibility to respond to market changes. But I want to talk to some of these clients who've said operations were stiffened rather than made more nimble by outsourcing and find out why they feel that way.

Did the company outsource work only to enhance the bottom line and in the process cut the innovative talent needed at home to respond to business conditions? Did management not even think about flexibility when defining its reasons for outsourcing? Is the company run by a bunch of inflexible penny-pinching bureaucrats? More on all this after further investigation.

One other result from the Corporate Client Survey that's important to highlight: US businesses are still preferring to keep their sourcing relationships at a distance. Says Duke's summary of the survey: "Latin America is emerging as a favored global sourcing site, but U.S. companies have yet to find operational or financial advantages in moving well-established and high-performing far-shore operations to near-shore locations."

That "have yet to find" part is also something that deserves further investigation.

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Source: http://nearshore.com/2012/02/clients-are-starting-to-see-outsourcings-yoga-benefit.html

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How Important Are Autoresponders?

Published by witter | February 17, 2012 | | 25

An auto-responder and successful Internet marketing strategy generally are two things that go hand in hand. As an Internet Marketer, this is your communication gateway. You would have a very hard time at having a successful Internet marketing strategy without the use of a handy auto-responder, for this tool is used with great success to achieve many of the marketing duties which are essential for a successful online business.

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A must have Internet Marketing strategy.

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Keep in mind always that you must be building your list constantly. Some of the best Internet marketers say this list is their gold. This Internet Marketing strategy in a must have if you want to be a success online guru.

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Source: http://transitionboulder.org/?p=615

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High-level drug meeting focuses on Afghanistan (AP)

VIENNA ? U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon spoke Thursday of a losing battle against the fight to eradicate drugs in Afghanistan, noting that opium production there has grown by 61 percent in the past year and warning that "time is not on our side."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also urged the Afghan government to do more to combat drug trade and smuggling, declaring it is up to the government and international troops based in the country "to destroy the opium fields and the laboratories where heroin is produced."

Afghanistan's minister for counter-narcotics, however, suggested that drugs can only be eradicated if security in his country is improved.

The three are among senior officials from more than 50 countries attending a conference dedicated to work on ways to reduce the production and flow of drugs from Afghanistan, and Ban, in an opening statement to the meeting, warned that the problem extends beyond those who abuse drugs and is threatening Afghanistan itself.

"Drug trafficking and transnational organized crime undermine the health of fragile states, (and) weaken the rule of law," he told delegates. "Above all, the Afghan government must prioritize the issue of narcotics."

Lavrov, speaking ahead of the meeting, also urged "the Afghanistan leaders to commit to this ... to destroy the opium fields and the laboratories where the heroin is produced."

Named for the agreement that created it nine years ago, the Paris Pact meeting is meant to review steps taken to reduce production and trafficking of opiates from Afghanistan. It will look at ways to block financial flows from the illicit drug trade, choke the flow of chemicals used to make heroin and strengthen local initiatives to help combat drug abuse by Afghans.

But the meeting has no enforcing powers, and international attempts to reduce the Afghan drug problem have had little success.

A January report by the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said revenue from opium production in Afghanistan soared by 133 percent last year to about $1.4 billion, or about one-tenth of the country's GDP, after the crop recovered from a 2010 blight and returned to previous levels.

A copy of the Vienna meeting's final declaration obtained in advance by The Associated Press reflects realities, saying that Afghanistan's drug problem "continues to be a serious concern."

"Illicit traffic in opiates, including heroin, is a growing problem," says the document, adding that revenues it generates fuel "corruption, organized crime and in some cases ... terrorist activities and insurgency."

Ban, in his opening comments, cited a 2011 U.N. survey, saying that poppy cultivation has increased by 7 percent and opium production by 61 percent in the past year.

"Export earnings from Afghan opiates may be worth as much as $2.4 billion" annually, he said. "We cannot expect stability when 15 percent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product comes from the drug trade."

Zarar Ahmad Muqbel Osmani, the Afghan minister, said his country understands international concerns but noted that "95 percent of poppy cultivation takes place in nine insecure provinces." He urged the international community to work hard in interdicting the components needed to turn opium into heroin that enter Afghanistan from neighboring countries."

While the meeting formally focuses on drugs, some of the powerful foreign ministers attending have already announced that they will use the conference to discuss Syria on the sidelines.

Lavrov told reporters Wednesday that he will meet with French counterpart Alain Juppe to be briefed on a French plan to set up humanitarian corridors in Syria that are free of violence. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is also attending the conference, along with government ministers from Iran and Afghanistan.

The United States will be represented by Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120216/ap_on_re_eu/eu_austria_drug_conference

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