Whitley blog

Snoop Dogg, Warren G attend service for Nate Dogg

Rappers Snoop Dogg, Warren G and The Game joined family, friends and about 1,000 fans of Nate Dogg to remember the hip-hop singer, who died this month of complications from multiple strokes.

The family of Nate Dogg — whose real name was Nathaniel Dwayne Hale — decided that the ceremony at the Queen Mary Dome would not be open to the public as they previously wanted, but they made 1,000 tickets and shuttles available to fans.

The dome in Hale's hometown of Long Beach is adjacent to the historic ship the Queen Mary and was the former home of Howard Hughes' airplane folly, the Spruce Goose.

Organizers had sought a more central location for the funeral, but none proved large enough for the numbers of expected mourners. A private dinner was planned after the service.

Hale started out singing in church choirs, then formed a group with Snoop Dogg and Warren G while the trio was in high school in Long Beach.

His almost monotone vocal stylings anchored some of rap's most seminal songs and helped define the sound of West Coast hip-hop on tracks usually produced by Dr. Dre and performed by rappers like Snoop Dogg, Tha Dogg Pound and Warren G. He remained sought after as a singer more than a decade after his original success, supplying vocals to more recent tracks by 50 Cent and Ludacris.

Hale dropped out of high school, was dishonorably discharged from the Marines and dabbled in the drug trade before finding success as Nate Dogg on Dr. Dre's classic 1992 album "The Chronic."

Late in life, he was plagued by legal and health problems, including at least two strokes in 2008.

Round 4 of Baylor-Texas A&M for Final Four berth

If Baylor is going to get to the NCAA Final Four for the second year in a row, Brittney Griner and the top-seeded Lady Bears are going to have to figure out how to beat Texas A&M for the fourth time this season.

While Baylor (34-2) has won eight games in a row against its Big 12 rival, the three games this season have been by a combined 15 points.

So, Aggies coach Gary Blair, is it better to be the team trying to win for the fourth time or the one trying to break through for the first time when it matters the most?

"Shoot, what would some of the big-timers do with that question? I can just hear Bobby Knight. But I like my chances," Blair said. "We didn't struggle against Baylor, we had three damn good ball games."

The much-anticipated matchup when the NCAA brackets came out three weeks ago is here. The Big 12's top two teams play in the Dallas Regional championship Tuesday night.

Baylor coach Kim Mulkey cringed when her Big 12 champion Lady Bears and Texas A&M were made the top two seeds in the same bracket.

"It was a shock to me that they would do that to us. It was a shock. And Gary knows it was a shock to him," Mulkey said Monday. "When we shook hands at the Big 12 tournament, we were like we can get there, we're telling each other we'll see you in the Final Four. That's basically the conversations that were taking place between me and him and the players."

Except the familiar foes are now in each other's way. Baylor is trying to get to its third Final Four in seven seasons, and the Aggies (30-5) are trying to get there for the first time.

The Lady Bears had to overcome a nine-point deficit midway through the second half at home last month to beat Texas A&M. They then had to come back from Texas A&M's 12-0 start in the Big 12 tournament championship game three weeks ago.

"You just have to have a lot of respect for A&M. Every time we've played them it's just been close," Bears senior guard Melissa Jones said. "Every game has been a battle. And that's what we'll expect again this time around."

Since their 61-58 loss in the Big 12 championship, the Aggies have won their three NCAA tournament games by an average margin of 34 points. They had a 79-38 rout against Georgia on Sunday, just before Baylor had to hold off feisty Green Bay 86-76 in a game when Griner had a career-high 40 points with 10 rebounds and six blocked shots.

And now the Aggies have the matchup they were hoping for with another chance against Baylor.

"We've looked for this opportunity since we lost to them in the Big 12 championship," Aggies leading scorer Danielle Adams said. "I mean, the first three times we played them, we weren't quite there, and we played them close."

Adams certainly hasn't been herself against Baylor.

While Adams averages 22.7 points a game and is shooting 49 percent from the field for the season, those figures are cut in half for the three games against Griner and Co. The 6-foot-1 senior is 12 of 50 (24 percent) from the field and had three of her four lowest-scoring games of the season — 13, nine and 12 points — against Baylor.

"A lot of it is Danielle has rushed her shots, even though 90 percent of the time she's been guarded by Destiny Williams or Brooklyn Pope. But Griner is nearby," Blair said. "Just like in the men's game, when you would have Chamberlain or Alcindor, they would influence the game because in the corner of your eye you see them coming."

Baylor will be trying to accomplish something rarely done in men's or women's basketball.

Since 1996-97, the only time a women's team defeated another four times in the same season was Oral Roberts over Missouri-Kansas City in 2004-05, according to STATS LLC. The only time it's happened on the men's side during that span was Michigan State over Wisconsin in 1999-2000.

Don't expect any trickery from Mulkey or Blair, who was an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech when Mulkey was the point guard and they won two national championships in the early 1980s.

"Well, the challenge is what are either of us going to do differently. He's not going to change what got him here. I'm not going to change what got us here," Mulkey said. "The players aren't going to change. You might tweak an inbounds or tweak a way you're going to guard Griner or throw a zone out there. You're going to do what you do best."

Blair expects a fun and entertaining game, predicting already that "it will be the best basketball game, women's game, that's ever been played in Dallas or maybe in Texas. ... It's going to be something special."

Only one of them gets to go to Indianapolis, which is where Baylor won its national championship six years ago.

"We've gone five times against (Baylor with Griner) now. I've lost all five," Blair said. "But I keep knocking on that door and I'm getting closer and closer. And if it doesn't happen this year, it's going to happen next year and we're going to keep going."

BHP in $10 billion share buyback

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – BHP Billiton (BHP.AX), the world's biggest miner, bowed to investors with plans to hand back $10 billion and pour money into expansions rather than chase ambitious takeovers, after nearly doubling its first-half profit to a record.

The Anglo-Australian giant, flush with cash, said it plans to spend $80 billion on development and expansion projects over the next five years, playing down the near term chances of a major acquisition.

"The biggest surprise is the commitment to spend $80 billion over the next five years," said James Bruce, portfolio manager at Perpetual Investments, one of BHP's top 10 Australian shareholders.

"We think that this demonstrates the challenges that the industry is having satisfying rising demand, while replacing declining production from mature operations," he said.

BHP Chief Executive Marius Kloppers said the company's acquisitions sights remained focused on snaring long-life, low-cost, expandable assets.

But he said in light of the difficulties it faced on the three big deals it had to ditch over the past three years and the high price of potential targets, acquisitions may be too hard.

"While I can't rule out anything... if you put those couple of things together, you have a clear takeaway of our priorities, particularly in the light of the emphasis of the capital investment program today," he told reporters on Wednesday.

BHP forecast a strong outlook for commodities markets, due to tight supplies, but like its rival Rio Tinto (RIO.AX) (RIO.L), it warned that prices could be volatile.

"While we expect a slowdown in the growth rate of global commodity demand in calendar year 2011, the economic environment still underpins a robust near term outlook for our products," Kloppers said.

Kloppers said industry observers had long overestimated supplies, and he predicted that over the next one to two years supplies would remain tight, with few new large expansions or projects coming on line.

BIG BUYBACK

Investors had high hopes for a big share buyback as the miner is nearly debt free, its cashflow is booming and its failure to complete major takeovers limit its expansion options.

In the two weeks leading up to the result, its shares rallied 9 percent to a 33-month high in expectations of a buyback, and as expected, its shares retreated once the buyback was announced.

BHP shares last traded down 1.8 percent at A$46.50, lagging a 0.3 percent fall in the broader market.

Despite the recent rally, BHP shares are trading on a cheap forward earnings multiple of 11.9, which has 13 out of 16 analysts rating it a buy or strong buy.

The $10 billion buyback follows Rio Tinto's plan to return $5 billion to shareholders over the next two years, which some investors considered too little.

Kloppers said the company was most likely to follow the pattern it has for previous buybacks, buying its UK shares on market and buying its Australian shares off-market, but said no decisions had been made yet.

It is already in the midst of conducting a $4.2 billion buyback of its UK shares.

BHP's (BLT.L) attributable profit before exceptional items soared to $10.7 billion for July-December from $5.7 billion a year ago, beating an average forecast of $10.3 billion from 14 analysts.

"It looks to be a pretty robust set of numbers. I think it's ahead of market expectations and I think the $10 billion capital management initiative will be well received," said Neil Boyd-Clark, portfolio manager at Arnhem Investment Management, another BHP shareholder.

BHP stepped up its interim dividend by 10 percent to 46 cents a share, compared with broker forecasts of around 49 cents.

First-half earnings from iron ore nearly tripled, while earnings from base metals, including copper, jumped 45 percent.

Petroleum earnings, which set BHP apart from its mining peers, rose 23 percent.

BHP added that sharp cost increases cut its earnings by $521 million.

Kloppers said while materials cost increases were offset by price increases on BHP's key products, labor shortages were starting to bite, particularly in engineering jobs in Western Australia where billions of dollars of iron ore and oil and gas projects are competing for manpower.

(Editing by Ed Davies and Balazs Koranyi)

NATO says new headquarters to cost $1.3 billion

BRUSSELS – This is not a time of austerity for NATO, at least where its headquarters are concerned. The military alliance says its new complex will cost euro1 billion ($1.3 billion), a sum critics are calling unnecessary in a time of international belt-tightening.

NATO officials defended the project Tuesday, saying maintenance costs for the "temporary" complex into which NATO moved in 1966 were excessive.

"We're not spending more, we're actually spending less," spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said. "This is a project that's been decided on years ago, way before the financial crisis."

"We even have concrete rot, some parts don't even comply with Belgian safety regulations," Lungescu said.

Construction, scheduled to be finished in 2015, will cost about euro460 million ($600 million), nearly 30 percent less than the original price, Lungescu said.

The rest of the money will be spent to demolish an old Belgian air force base on the site, clear the terrain of bombs left over from World War II, and to pay for new security systems, equipment and furniture as well as the architectural costs.

NATO was formed in 1949 at the height of the Cold War. Its political headquarters was initially in London, but moved to Paris in 1951.

In 1966, French President Charles De Gaulle kicked the alliance out, complaining it was dominated by the United States, and NATO relocated to Brussels, the Belgian capital. It was offered the site of a former airfield just east of the city, from which Nazi bombers had struck at London during World War II.

In more than 60 years of existence, NATO has never had a headquarters built specifically for its use, although it has expanded from 15 members, when it relocated to Brussels, to 28 today.

But the move comes as member governments are cutting defense spending and as the alliance is struggling in the Afghan war, its most ambitious mission yet. Over the past two years, defense spending by NATO's European members has shrunk by about $45 billion.

It also comes as questions are being raised about the continuing relevance of the Cold War alliance, and when NATO's ties with Russia are growing increasingly close.

"The new headquarters is not going to be vacant, but it certainly won't be the nerve center of European defense and security policy that the old building used to be," said Marko Papic, senior analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence analysis firm from Austin, Texas.

NATO says new headquarters to cost $1.3 billion

BRUSSELS – This is not a time of austerity for NATO, at least where its headquarters are concerned. The military alliance says its new complex will cost euro1 billion ($1.3 billion), a sum critics are calling unnecessary in a time of international belt-tightening.

NATO officials defended the project Tuesday, saying maintenance costs for the "temporary" complex into which NATO moved in 1966 were excessive.

"We're not spending more, we're actually spending less," spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said. "This is a project that's been decided on years ago, way before the financial crisis."

"We even have concrete rot, some parts don't even comply with Belgian safety regulations," Lungescu said.

Construction, scheduled to be finished in 2015, will cost about euro460 million ($600 million), nearly 30 percent less than the original price, Lungescu said.

The rest of the money will be spent to demolish an old Belgian air force base on the site, clear the terrain of bombs left over from World War II, and to pay for new security systems, equipment and furniture as well as the architectural costs.

NATO was formed in 1949 at the height of the Cold War. Its political headquarters was initially in London, but moved to Paris in 1951.

In 1966, French President Charles De Gaulle kicked the alliance out, complaining it was dominated by the United States, and NATO relocated to Brussels, the Belgian capital. It was offered the site of a former airfield just east of the city, from which Nazi bombers had struck at London during World War II.

In more than 60 years of existence, NATO has never had a headquarters built specifically for its use, although it has expanded from 15 members, when it relocated to Brussels, to 28 today.

But the move comes as member governments are cutting defense spending and as the alliance is struggling in the Afghan war, its most ambitious mission yet. Over the past two years, defense spending by NATO's European members has shrunk by about $45 billion.

It also comes as questions are being raised about the continuing relevance of the Cold War alliance, and when NATO's ties with Russia are growing increasingly close.

"The new headquarters is not going to be vacant, but it certainly won't be the nerve center of European defense and security policy that the old building used to be," said Marko Papic, senior analyst at Stratfor, a global intelligence analysis firm from Austin, Texas.