Belgium's government to be sworn in after 541 days

In this combo photo of Radio personality Koen Fillet is pictured at left with his 327-days-old beard, and at right, after he was shaved, at the national TV and radio broadcaster VRT, in Brussels, Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. Top negotiator Elio Di Rupo can fill all the ministerial posts Monday, the Belgian governmental crisis will stop at 540 days, an unofficial world record. In anticipation, radio presenter Koen Fillet had his famous protest beard that was grown for almost a year to highlight the length of negotiations ceremoniously cut in anticipation of a possible full government agreement later Monday.(AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

In this combo photo of Radio personality Koen Fillet is pictured at left with his 327-days-old beard, and at right, after he was shaved, at the national TV and radio broadcaster VRT, in Brussels, Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. Top negotiator Elio Di Rupo can fill all the ministerial posts Monday, the Belgian governmental crisis will stop at 540 days, an unofficial world record. In anticipation, radio presenter Koen Fillet had his famous protest beard that was grown for almost a year to highlight the length of negotiations ceremoniously cut in anticipation of a possible full government agreement later Monday.(AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 file photo, Belgium's chief government negotiator Elio Di Rupo speaks during a media conference at the Belgian Federal Parliament in Brussels. Belgium's top negotiator Elio Di Rupo on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 broke a 540 day deadlock and filled all ministerial positions to form a government . A grand coalition of Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals, each split in Dutch- and French-speaking parties, is expected to name Di Rupo as the first Francophone prime minister in almost 40 years. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 file photo, Belgium's chief government negotiator Elio Di Rupo speaks during a media conference at the Belgian Federal Parliament in Brussels. Belgium's top negotiator Elio Di Rupo on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 broke a 540 day deadlock and filled all ministerial positions to form a government . A grand coalition of Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals, each split in Dutch- and French-speaking parties, is expected to name Di Rupo as the first Francophone prime minister in almost 40 years. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

FILE - In this Sunday, Nov. 27, 2011 file photo, Belgium's chief government negotiator Elio Di Rupo speaks during a media conference at the Belgian Federal Parliament in Brussels. Belgium's top negotiator Elio Di Rupo on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011 broke a 540 day deadlock and filled all ministerial positions to form a government . A grand coalition of Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals, each split in Dutch- and French-speaking parties, is expected to name Di Rupo as the first Francophone prime minister in almost 40 years. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File)

A barber cuts the 327-days-old beard of Radio personality Koen Fillet, right, at the national TV and radio broadcaster VRT, in Brussels, Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. If top negotiator Elio Di Rupo can fill all the ministerial posts Monday, the Belgian governmental crisis will stop at 540 days, an unofficial world record. In anticipation, radio presenter Koen Fillet had his famous protest beard that was grown for almost a year to highlight the length of negotiations ceremoniously cut in anticipation of a possible full government agreement later Monday.(AP Photo/Yves Logghe)

BRUSSELS (AP) ? King Albert II named Elio Di Rupo as the first French-speaking prime minister in nearly 40 years late Monday in one of the final steps before his team formally ends the record 541 days the country has gone without a government.

The swearing-in on Tuesday will be a long-awaited relief to the entire nation of 6.5 million Dutch speakers and 4.5 million French speakers who long ago grew frustrated with the deadlock between politicians over linguistic differences.

One radio presenter finally shaved off the beard he has grown for almost a year to protest the drawn-out coalition negotiations, an unofficial world record.

"I won't do it again, never again," Koen Fillet said after he was soaped, shaved and splashed with after-shave in a show webcast live.

A royal statement late Monday said "the King received Elio Di Rupo at Belvedere castle and named him prime minister."

The 60-year-old son of Italian immigrants thus completed a remarkable journey from childhood poverty to become the Belgium leader. He will lead a grand coalition of Socialists, Christian Democrats and Liberals, each split in Dutch- and French-speaking parties.

Among his leading ministers, outgoing finance minister Francophone liberal Didier Reynders became foreign minister and Dutch-speaking Christian Democrat Steven Vanackere made the reverse move.

Dutch-speaking socialist Johan Vande Lanotte ? experienced in finance and budgetary issues ? was named economics minister.

The final stretch to name the ministers was drawn-out, in keeping with entire process: An all-night negotiating session to decide which party would claim what post ended Monday afternoon.

From now on, the government has a lot of catching up to do, especially when it comes to the economy.

Just ten days ago the credit rating of Belgium was downgraded, when high debt caught up with extended indecision on the government makeup. One day later, Di Rupo and his partners had agreed on a budget meant to meet the demands of the European Union and calm nervous markets.

The EU welcomed the breakthrough and said EU officials would soon review the budget text to see if it meets the recommendations of fiscal rigor and increased competitiveness.

Di Rupo said that next year's budget will have a deficit of 2.8 percent of GDP to remain within the EU target. He called the euro11.3 billion ($14.95 billion) in austerity measures a step toward assuring a balanced budget in 2015 and the toughest measures taken by the nation in some 70 years.

Belgium has had only a caretaker government since June 13, 2010, as a series of negotiators tried and failed to bridge the divide between the country's linguistic groups.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-05-EU-Belgium-Government/id-3826f7e1bedf4297b5e0043f4bbc4668

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Christopher Lane: Doing Justice to Agnosticism

"I was raised among people who knew -- who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts... In their creed there was no guess -- no perhaps." These words by Robert G. Ingersoll, the celebrated American orator and political thinker, appear in his 1896 essay "Why I Am an Agnostic," and they help remind us that in the 19th century the word agnostic had a much-stronger meaning than it does today. At a time when the term infidel (or unbeliever) was still the accusation of choice, the rejoinder that one was a-gnostic -- literally, "against gnosis" -- meant that he or she was taking a principled stand against ancient systems of belief.

To Ingersoll, a Republican freethinker justly dubbed "The Great Agnostic," his parents' and relatives' certainty sparked anguish and contention in him. "I examined maps of the heavens," he recalls in the essay, a searing account of lost faith, and "found that, compared with the great stars, our earth was but a grain of sand -- an atom." On turning from Calvin to Thomas Paine and other freethinkers, he adds, "the old belief that all the hosts of heaven had been created for the benefit of man" came to seem "infinitely absurd."

Today, with Republican freethinkers more of a rarity and agnosticism often derided as timid fence-sitting, Ingersoll's vigorous defense of both makes clear that agnosticism was conceived as a form of healthy skepticism that questions everything, including itself. Standing capably and forcefully for the benefit and necessity of doubt, it dealt a blow to dogma and certainty, whether about faith or unbelief.

Rereading Ingersoll and other 19th century doubters today suggests that our assumptions about them have become caricatures, based on a misunderstanding of what in fact they doubted. Ingersoll's "Why I Am an Agnostic" does more than refute those caricatures: In recapturing the term's original meaning as a-gnostic, it underlines how far we've drifted from that earlier, 19th century focus. His essay also prompts us to wonder whether there's enough room for doubt in cultures such as ours that are increasingly polarized between belief and unbelief. When people are expected to stake a position regarding their belief (or lack of it) and defend it to the letter, is agnosticism of the kind that Ingersoll imagined possible? If not, is it not therefore all the more necessary?

Anyone who assumes that Ingersoll's agnostic stance implied a tepid handling of religious controversy is in for a big surprise. He was scathing about zeal and sanctimony, calling biblical accounts of hell not just "frightful dogma," but also an "infinite lie" that was, he thought, tied to a sadistic "belief in eternal pain." Nor did he concede any high ground to the devout. Instead, he railed at the presumption that they had attained one. He saw life in terms of integrity and civitas (citizenship), without religion. Yet "to live a moral and honest life -- to keep your contracts, to take care of wife and child -- to make a happy home -- to be a good citizen, a patriot, a just and thoughtful man, was," he wrote, about those presuming to judge and caricature him, "simply a respectable way of going to hell."

Still, Ingersoll did not embrace atheism, or belief in no God, and he was quick to explain why. "I do not deny," he writes in the essay, published three years before his death at age 66. "I do not know." Despite vehemently rejecting Christianity, then, he did not close the door on religious belief. Instead, like many other agnostics at the time -- including Leslie Stephen, George Eliot, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley (who coined the term agnostic three decades earlier, in 1869) -- he thought belief should rest on evidence, not faith, but also that evidence itself was in some key instances wanting.

That stance irks absolutists on either side who have come to consider agnosticism as spineless and wishy-washy, and agnostics as people who can't or won't make up their minds. According to Quentin de la B?doy?re, science editor of the Catholic Herald, for example, the Catholic historian Hugh Ross Williamson respected firm religious belief and certain unbelief, but "reserved his contempt for the wishy-washy boneless mediocrities who flapped around in the middle." Richard Dawkins not only repeats the same line in his recent book, The God Delusion, but prefaces it with similar invective from a "robust Muscular Christian" preacher of his schooldays, for whom agnostics were "namby-pamby, mushy pap, weak tea, weedy, pallid fence-sitters."

Open Ingersoll's "Why I Am an Agnostic" at almost any page, however, or trace the vast literature it cites. Over and again the same biting criticism of theology appears right alongside an urging that humanity not replace one form of dogmatism with another. "Man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute," Stephen warns similarly in "An Agnostic's Apology" (1876), with "apology" meaning justification or formal defense rather than being an expression of regret. "Knowing nothing, he had better not be dogmatic about his ignorance." He was using the phrase "knowing nothing" in a broadly metaphysical sense, not as a way of discrediting science and scientific evidence, which he unequivocally supported.

Like Ingersoll, Stephen was the son of an influential Evangelical, carefully schooled in its intricate theology. His essay, appearing in England's Fortnightly Review, is distinguished by its being the first on agnosticism by someone who applied the term to himself. He did so, moreover, after solemnly renouncing holy orders as a deacon -- an act grave enough at the time to push him to the brink of suicide.

"Whilst you trumpet forth officially your contempt for our skepticism," he writes of orthodox critics, "we will at least try to believe that you are imposed upon by your own bluster."
Heated? Indeed. "Weak tea, weedy, pallid fence-sitting"? Hardly. Like Ingersoll's essay, Stephen's is a bracing polemic -- a powerful stand against certainty and what had come to seem to him credulity.

We need more, not less, discussion about such doubts. A sense that agnosticism can be entertained and vigorously defended as a serious expression of such doubts, rather than endlessly demeaned and dismissed as an expression of weakness. As Ingersoll, Stephen, Huxley, and so many others have shown us, agnosticism is both a powerful critique of religion and a principled way of acknowledging when one doesn't have all the answers.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-lane/doing-justice-to-agnostic_b_1116320.html

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Senate Democrats to try again with scaled-back payroll tax holiday (Washington Post)

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Clinton, Suu Kyi promote closer US-Burma ties (AP)

YANGON, Myanmar ? In a striking display of solidarity and sisterhood between two of the world's most recognizable women, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi vowed on Friday to work together to promote democratic reforms in Suu Kyi's long-isolated and authoritarian homeland.

Wrapping up a historic three-day visit to Myanmar, the first by a secretary of state to the Southeast Asian nation in more than 50 years, Clinton and Suu Kyi held hands on the porch of the lakeside home where the Nobel peace laureate spent much of the past two decades under house arrest. Clinton thanked her for her "steadfast and very clear leadership."

Suu Kyi has welcomed Clinton's visit and tentatively embraced reforms enacted by Myanmar's new civilian government. She thanked the secretary and U.S. President Barack Obama for their "careful and calibrated" engagement that has seen the United States take some modest steps to improve ties.

"If we move forward together I am confident there will be no turning back on the road to democracy," Suu Kyi said, referring to her opposition National League for Democracy party, the government, the United States and other countries, including Myanmar's giant neighbor China. "We are not on that road yet, but we hope to get there as soon as possible with the help and understanding of our friends."

"We are happy with the way in which the United States is engaging with us," she added. "It is through engagement that we hope to promote the process of democratization. Because of this engagement, I think our way ahead will be clearer and we will be able to trust that the process of democratization will go forward."

As she did in the capital of Naypyidaw on Thursday, Clinton said more significant incentives will be offered, but only if the government releases all political prisoners, ends brutal campaigns against ethnic minorities, respects the rule of law and improves human rights conditions.

"We are prepared to go further if reforms maintain momentum," Clinton said. "But history teaches us to be cautious. We know that there have been serious setbacks and grave disappointments over the past decades."

Clinton's meetings with Suu Kyi were the highlight of the U.S. secretary of state's visit to the long-isolated country also known as Burma and forcefully underscored a U.S. challenge to Myanmar's leaders.

In addition to the modest incentives Clinton announced Thursday for the government, she said Friday that the U.S. would spend about $1.2 million for preliminary projects aimed at helping the people of Myanmar. The money will go to microcredit and health care initiatives and assistance to land-mine victims, particularly in rural areas.

Suu Kyi, whose party won 1990 elections that were ignored by the then-military junta but now plans to run in upcoming parliamentary elections, endorsed that approach and called for the immediate release of all political prisoners and cease-fires to end the ethnic conflicts..

Suu Kyi, a heroine for pro-democracy advocates around the world, said Clinton's visit represented "a historical moment for both our countries."

With U.S. assistance and pressure on the government, which is still backed by the military, she said she believed change was on the horizon for Myanmar.

The meeting was the second in as many days for the pair who bonded deeply at a three-hour, one-on-one dinner in Yangon on Thursday, according to U.S. officials. One senior official said the dinner marked the beginning of what appeared to be a "very warm friendship" between the former first lady, New York senator and presidential hopeful and Suu Kyi, who plans to re-enter the political arena in upcoming parliamentary elections.

"We have been inspired by her fearlessness in the face of intimidation and her serenity through decades of isolation, but most of all through her devotion to her country and to the freedom and dignity of her fellow citizens," Clinton told reporters after the meeting Suu Kyi.

Clinton said the two had discussed the "ups and downs and slings and arrows of political participation" at dinner and that Suu Kyi would be an "excellent member" of Myanmar's parliament but declined to discuss any electoral advice she may have given here.

___

Associated Press writer Aye Aye Win in Yangon contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_as/as_clinton_myanmar

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Napster uses up another one of its lives, now fully merged with Rhapsody

The last dozen years have been quite the roller coaster ride for the Napster crew. The service, which became synonymous with music piracy not all that long after its launch in 1999, made more than its share of high profile enemies, ranging from the RIAA to Metallica. It would soon shut its doors for a first time, thanks to a number of legal challengers. Napster was later reborn as a legit music streaming service, but the beginning of the end for that incarnation was marked earlier this year when Rhapsody, one of the company's chief competitors, announced plans to acquire the service. Yesterday marked the end of the road for Napster again -- the service now fully merged with Rhapsody. Why not pay your respects by breaking out some of the mislabeled, decade-old MP3s that are no doubt lurking on an unused hard drive in the back of your closet?

Continue reading Napster uses up another one of its lives, now fully merged with Rhapsody

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Publishers warm to e-books on their own terms (Reuters)

PARIS (Reuters) ? Book publishers have survived the first stage of a digital revolution in better shape than the music industry and are now embracing the shift to e-books in their search for new revenue streams and lower costs.

The industry has been battered this year by a significant shift from physical books to e-books that has transferred power to Internet retailers led by Amazon and helped put some high-street chains like Borders out of business.

Publishers have fought and won for now a key battle to keep pricing control over their titles, unlike the music industry, which a decade ago allowed Apple to impose a flat rate of $0.99 on music tracks in its iTunes store.

Penguin and Hachette told Reuters this week they were quite optimistic that e-books would help them increase profitability and reach bigger audiences, although they had not yet figured out how to sell digital extras to readers.

"The consumer sort of slightly shrugs his shoulders and says: 'Well, that's marvelous but that's not something I'm going to pay for very much,'" Penguin Chief Executive John Makinson told the Reuters Global Media Summit.

As an example, he said Penguin had created an e-book of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice enhanced with clips from the Hollywood movie with Keira Knightley, as well as recipes and dance moves from the period, to no avail.

Children, he added, had taken more quickly to extra features, especially on touch screens like Apple's iPad. Many classic kids' books such as Alice in Wonderland and the Cat in the Hat have been rejuvenated in the digital form with added animation and games.

Hachette CEO Arnaud Nourry agreed that readers of e-books had proven conservative so far.

"Customers do not want these enriched things that we are talking about all day," he said. "I don't think we would have sold more Dan Brown books with recipes."

The shift to e-books, which is most advanced in the United States where Amazon catalyzed the market with its Kindle device and store four years ago, has already touched off changes to publishers' business models, distribution systems and costs.

While e-book prices are on average 20-30 percent lower than those of physical books, they save publishers the cost of storing and moving books around, and reduce the working capital tied up in inventory.

In markets where book prices are not regulated by law, including the United States and Britain, this has already made e-books more profitable for publishers than print books.

In regulated markets like France and Germany where laws prevent book stores and supermarkets from discounting in an effort to protect local culture and prevent the book from being a commodity like any other, print books are still more profitable.

In the United States, e-books account for about 25 percent of book sales by volume and 20 percent by revenue. In Britain, the figure is about 10 percent by volume, while the rest of Europe and Asia excluding Japan are just getting off the ground.

Germany, the world's second-biggest book market after the United States, was the first in continental Europe to get the Kindle and local language titles in April. Amazon launched the Kindle in France in October, and in Spain and Italy this week.

"We're just at the beginning of the curve," Nourry said.

Publishers have reached a kind of peace for now in their often stormy relationships with Internet giants like Amazon and Google, who were largely responsible for bringing the digital revolution to the world of books.

Google enraged publishers and authors in 2004 with a controversial book-scanning project it billed as an effort to make the content of the world's libraries available to all but was seen by opponents as intellectual property theft.

U.S. publishers and authors took Google to court over the matter in 2005. The parties have since tried to settle the case but the issue has meantime escalated and a U.S. judge rejected it in March.

Google has meanwhile scanned more than 13 million books and reached a pragmatic compromise with publishers and authors in many countries.

With Amazon, publishers fought an intense battle over how e-book prices would be set, opposing the Internet retailer's effort to impose $9.99 as a standard for new titles on the Kindle, Apple iTunes-style.

Ironically, it was only the emergence last year of Apple with its iPad as a counterweight to Amazon that allowed the so-called "Big Six" publishers to win back control of pricing.

In what was a major shift for the industry, the publishers, determined to avoid the mistakes made by the music industry, imposed an "agency model" in which they set their own prices.

In the traditional "wholesale model" prevalent in non-regulated book markets like the United States, publishers set a recommended retail price but the seller is then free to offer deep discounts.

With these fights behind them, Penguin and Hachette seemed to have mellowed in their attitude to their one-time foes.

"We had to bring Amazon into line and eventually we did," said Makinson. "The results have been good."

He said there was now a very competitive market in the U.S. with Google's eBookstore, Apple's iBookstore and Barnes & Noble's Nook -- to the advantage of publishers.

Hachette's Nourry, once one of Google's fiercest opponents during the book scanning row, is today rooting for the search engine company to sell more books: "I would love to see Google be a stronger animal," he said.

The evolution of the book market is still in its early days, however, and issues like piracy are re-emerging as digital booksellers try to replicate features popular with book-lovers, such as lending, in the digital world.

A new front has recently opened over Amazon's new Kindle lending library, which allows members of the website's loyalty program known as Prime to borrow a book every month for free.

The Big Six -- Hachette, HarperCollins, MacMillan, Penguin, Random House and Simon & Schuster -- have all refused to join the lending library, arguing that it devalues books in the eyes of customers.

Nourry said Hachette would not join the program even if Amazon offered it a slice of revenue from the lending.

"It's not that I am against libraries, or a book being sold and then read by 10 different people, but it's clearly a way invented by retailers to change the balance of power."

Makinson said Penguin would continue to talk with Amazon about the lending library concept, but that the issue was as much about the risk of piracy as pricing.

"Amazon is embarking on new initiatives that could put file security at risk and that would be not good for anyone."

Nourry said he would like to one day find a way for readers to lend each other e-books, but said copyright protection was currently more important as the industry's new business models were still fragile.

"My business consists of selling books," he said. "People who buy Kindles every 18 months and iPads for $600 -- they don't need our help."

(Reporting by Gwenaelle Barzic, Kate Holton, and Marie Mawad; Editing by Erica Billingham)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enindustry/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/media_nm/us_media_summit_ebooks

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DeMarco: Expect Cubs to make big splash

With trimmed-down payroll and weak lineup, Theo and Co. want big bat

Matt Slocum / AP

Prince Fielder has up to five seasons of major production ahead and should be a big target for the Cubs, NBCSports.com contributor Tony DeMarco writes.

OPINION

updated 4:52 p.m. ET Dec. 1, 2011

Tony DeMarco

The winter meetings begin Sunday in Dallas, and although the general manager and manager shuffling is complete, so much needs to happen player-wise, led by the destinations of free-agents Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, Jose Reyes, Mark Buehrle and C.J. Wilson.

So who's going where? Here are a handful of teams primed for action on which to focus:

Chicago Cubs
Add it up: Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer are the new guys in charge, they've already changed managers, and $40 million has come off the payroll from Aramis Ramirez, Kosuke Fukudome and Carlos Pena. Think things are about to change on the north side? You bet.

Although the new front office will put major emphasis on procuring and developing young talent, and are certain to bring their brand of statistical analysis/roster building with them from Boston, the trimmed-down payroll and lineup needs dictate the signing of an impact free-agent bat.

After all, Ramirez and Pena tied for the club home-run lead, and Ramirez led in RBIs. And you know that Epstein and Co. also will try to unload Alfonso Soriano, the antithesis of their type of player.

So somebody will have to pick that power slack, and that's why the reported interest in Fielder fits. Body-type notwithstanding, there should be little argument that at 27, Fielder has up to five seasons of major production ahead. And you'll just have to live with an expected decline in defense in that period.

Plus, the Fielder market might not be as crowded as originally thought, as only other non-contenders such as the Nationals seem to be involved at this point. Meanwhile, Pujols is at least four years older, and is more valuable to the Cardinals than to anyone else, and offers are likely to reflect that.

The other option is signing neither, and instead taking a course of a slower rebuilding and implementation of a new way of doing things. Not the worst way to go, although maybe not a sellable idea to the Wrigley faithful.

The next major need lies in the rotation, where only Ryan Dempster can be counted on, while Carlos Zambrano can't, but will return anyway. This makes speculation about trading arbitration-eligible Matt Garza (the staff's top pitcher) a bit out of whack.

Look for more subtle moves like the signing of free agent David DeJesus, who probably will play right field. One possibility: A change of scene is a must for Colorado third baseman Ian Stewart.

Tigers
After getting to the ALCS, there's even more urgency to take the next step. And when you consider that both the Yankees and Red Sox find themselves in ? by their standards ? slightly vulnerable positions, there might be no more opportune time for the Tigers than in 2012.

There also is $23 million to spare with Magglio Ordonez and Carlos Guillen coming off the books. Third base must be addressed, and there are several options. Signing Reyes and moving Jhonny Peralta to third sounds sexy, but taking the longer-term risk on the mercurial Reyes doesn't seem like a Dave Dombrowski move.

Signing Aramis Ramirez for two years does, and the Tigers could use another power bat. That also could lead them to making the biggest offer to Cuban-defector outfielder Yoennis Cespedes ? especially if they can put Delmon Young in a deal for either a third baseman or even a top-of-the-order type such as Coco Crisp. Maicer Izturis at third/top of the order is another way to go that fits manager Jim Leyland's style, as Austin Jackson has to move to the bottom third of the order for good.

One more quality starting pitcher ? Buehrle, Wilson ? would put them a very enviable position rotation-wise. But adding another quality reliever would be the more cost-efficient way to go.

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'It's more than a special day'

??Bobby Valentine took over as manager of the Boston Red Sox on Thursday, promising to be hard-working, open-minded and even humble.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45514517/ns/sports-baseball/

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