With time, money running out, SC often turns nasty

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney meets supporters at Cherokee Trike and More in Greer, S.C., Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Michael Justus)

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney meets supporters at Cherokee Trike and More in Greer, S.C., Thursday, Jan. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Spartanburg Herald-Journal, Michael Justus)

FILE - In this July 24, 1988 file photo, Lee Atwater, then-campaign manager for Vice President George Bush is seen prior to the taping of CBS-TV's "Face The Nation" in Washington. While attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina's reputation for electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned. Why there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always picked the GOP's eventual nominee since the primary's inception in 1980. And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading challengers to go for the jugular. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 18, 2008 file photo, then-Republican Presidential hopeful, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. waves on the eve of the South Carolina Republican Presidential Primary, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. While attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina's reputation for electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned. Why there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always picked the GOP's eventual nominee since the primary's inception in 1980. And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading challengers to go for the jugular. (AP Photo/Mary Ann Chastain, File)

(AP) ? In mailboxes across South Carolina in 2007, likely Republican voters received a Christmas card signed by "The Romney Family" with a quotation from a 19th century Mormon leader suggesting God had several wives.

Mitt Romney's campaign, just a few weeks away from the 2008 presidential primary in a state where evangelicals look skeptically on the former Massachusetts governor's Mormon faith, condemned the bogus card as politics at its worst. The sender never took credit. And it was just another anonymous shot in the endless volleys of nasty campaigning in South Carolina.

While attack politics happen in every state, South Carolina's reputation for electoral mudslinging and bare-knuckled brawling is well-earned.

Why there? Largely because of the high stakes. South Carolina has always picked the GOP's eventual nominee since the primary's inception in 1980. And money, nerves and time are usually running out for almost everyone but the front-runner after Iowa and New Hampshire, often leading challengers to go for the jugular.

"The ghost of Lee Atwater hangs over South Carolina like a morning fog and permeates every part of the state's politics," says Scott Huffmon, a Winthrop University political science professor. Atwater, who died 20 years ago, was South Carolina's most famous political operative and a master of slash-and-burn politics.

Given the dynamics of this year's Republican presidential race, it's safe to expect under-the-radar attacks over the next week as challengers work to derail front-runner Romney before the Jan. 21 primary. The rise of super PACs ? outside groups aligned with but independent from the candidates ? means some of the attacks could be more public this time, but still nasty.

"You've got four guys that are make or break,' said Warren Tompkins, a veteran South Carolina political consultant advising Romney. "Desperate men do desperate things."

Romney says he's ready for whatever comes his way.

"Politics ain't beanbags, and I know it's going to get tough," the GOP front-runner said as he headed south after his New Hampshire victory. "But I know that is sometimes part of the underbelly of politics."

The lore of negative attacks here includes a whisper campaign against Republican John McCain in 2000 that included rumors that the daughter his family adopted from Bangladesh was the Arizona senator's illegitimate black child.

Those were desperate times for George W. Bush's campaign. McCain had just stunned the establishment's choice with a blowout win in New Hampshire, and Bush had just 18 days to turn the momentum around in South Carolina. Publicly, Bush took a few shots at McCain, but mostly stressed he was the true conservative. But plenty of ugliness was happening behind the scenes.

People who attended rallies or debates found flyers on their car windshields with the accusations about McCain's daughter and raising questions about his mental stability. Callers, pretending to be pollsters, would ask loaded questions of voters about whether they could support a man who had homosexual experiences or a Vietnam hero who was really was a traitor. The sponsors of the false attacks were careful to leave no trail.

Alone, none of the charges was all that believable. But their combined weight dragged McCain down.

How careful were the folks attacking McCain? Exit polls after Bush won the 2000 primary with 53 percent of the vote found that nearly half of South Carolina voters felt that McCain had made unfair attacks, compared to only about a third who felt Bush was unfair.

McCain learned a lesson, and in 2008 responded quickly to almost every negative attack, winning the state's primary.

That was the same year that the bogus Mormon holiday card was sent to GOP activists and that the web site PhonyFred.org sprang up during the GOP primary to anonymously attack Republican candidate Fred Thompson. There also were automated phone calls raising doubts about one candidate or another. And, of course, whisper campaigns crop up every four years.

South Carolina's Democratic primary didn't begin until 1992, and doesn't have the same must-win reputation as does the GOP primary, but it does still tend to get nasty. ?In 2008, former president Bill Clinton spent several days in the state campaigning for his wife and making the point that Barack Obama was unelectable in part because of his race. Even as an Obama win in the primary seemed inevitable, Clinton kept reminding reporters that Jesse Jackson won the state caucuses in 1984 and 1988 and went nowhere.

Below-the-belt political attacks have a long tradition in the state, curried by political operatives like Atwater who during the 1980s essentially built the Republican Party from scratch in South Carolina.

In 1980, Texas Gov. John Connally was strongly challenging Ronald Reagan, who had won the New Hampshire primary, when there were anonymous charges that Connally was "trying to buy the black vote." Reagan won the state and the nomination. Later, it leaked out that Atwater was behind the racial accusations against Connally.

The rough-and-tumble politics go even further back.

Opponents of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, who served from 1954 to 2003, sometimes challenged him to fistfights after speeches early in his career because his attacks were so personal. The only assault ever to happen on the floor of the U.S. Senate occurred in 1856 when South Carolina Rep. Preston Brooks beat Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane so severely it took Sumner three years to recover. The beating happened after Sumner gave a speech condemning slavery in the years before the Civil War.

To be sure, negative attacks don't always work.

Just two years ago in the GOP's gubernatorial primary, Nikki Haley survived allegations she had an extramarital affair and won the race. The now-governor's accuser presented cellphone records that showed they enjoyed late-night chats but no proof they had an intimate relationship.

Of course, in the world of dirty South Carolina politics, there's a conspiracy theory: Some observers suggest the allegations were planted to get Haley sympathy and make her look stronger as she fought back.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-13-Nasty%20Politics-South%20Carolina/id-815ba07b8cbb4ca49400f8f41cb8378a

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SpareOne: a cellphone that can run for 15 years

If your car's broken down, nursing your smartphone's short battery life can be a real nightmare when waiting for rescue. Of course, that might not be much of a problem if Xpal Power (the company behind Energizer and PowerSkin) has anything to do with it. It's developed the SpareOne, a super-cheap phone that runs from a single AA Battery and will reputedly maintain its charge for up to fifteen years. The dual-band GSM phone is designed for emergencies, transmitting its location alongside its call ID, or as a loaner phone for big corporate events. You'll get an Energizer AA battery and a microSIM in the bundle which will set you back $49.99 when it arrives at some point this quarter. At that price, we can imagine throwing a few in the trunk for breakdowns, when we're doing our Bear Grylls routine, or during the Robopocalypse.

Continue reading SpareOne: a cellphone that can run for 15 years

SpareOne: a cellphone that can run for 15 years originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Siri Creators Nuance Communications Create Dragon Go! For ...

Android users have been clamoring for a premium?Siri-type program to grace Android devices. Sure we?ve seen an alternative here and another one there, but it seems as though users have wished for the minds behind Siri to come out and develop something for Android officially, not just any developer. Users? wishes and prayers have been answered as Nuance Communications? the same developers behind Siri? have created a personal assistant app exclusively for Android users called Dragon Go!?Nuance Communications outlined it best when it comes to the purpose of Dragon Go!:

?With Dragon Go! you can do more in less time like buy movie tickets as you walk into the theater, go shopping at local boutiques while you wait for your nails to dry, settle a bet at the breakfast table on the square root of Pi, or plan and invite guests to that night?s happy hour ? all with just one ask of Dragon Go!?

It?s pretty straightforward too. Just ask it a question and the app will use its servers to provide a solution. Heck Dragon Go!?will direct you to services that provide streaming media, social networking, shopping and other online content such as Spotify, Wolfram|Alpha, Yelp, YouTube, AccuWeather, Ask.com, Dictionary.com, ESPN, Facebook, Fandango, Last.fm, Pandora and Twitter.

The app is available for free?for owners of any Android 2.1+ device. If you want to see the app in action before you download it, checkout the video below and then scoot over to the Android Market link or use the QR code to be on your way to having more productivity after the break.

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Source: http://www.talkandroid.com/83057-siri-creators-nuance-communications-create-dragon-go-for-android-devices/

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Guitar apprentice hands-on (video)

You know the whole "why don't you learn to play a real guitar" backlash that comes with the release of every Guitar Hero title? Multiply that by a hundred, and you're about ready to get down with Guitar Apprentice. The iPad add-on from the folks who brought you the similarly named Piano Apprentice turns your Apple tablet into something roughly the shape of a Gibson SG. From afar, it does look like a guitar. It's a fair bit lighter though, the wood swapped out for plastic, which feels pretty hollow.

The iPad sits in the body of the Guitar Apprentice. Right now, it just works with Garage Band, though the company tells us that its working on a proprietary app, so don't let the fact that the neck doesn't line up right now throw you too much. The neck is covered with small buttons, which light up and play as notes from their corresponding placement on the fretboard through a small speaker on the bottom of the guitar's body -- hold multiple down simultaneously and you'll get chord.

The speaker on the thing is pretty quiet -- that can be adjusted with the single volume knob, though that, like a lot about the Guitar Apprentice, isn't quite ready. The company tells us that the device is still a ways off, which means that, at present, you still can't strum the thing. Still, it's actually kind of neat, if totally ridiculous. This could be a solid educational devices for parents who aren't quite ready to plunk down the cash for a guitar and amp. When it's released, the Guitar Apprentice will run around $100 -- plus the price of an iPad, naturally.

Continue reading Guitar apprentice hands-on (video)

Guitar apprentice hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 09 Jan 2012 00:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Israeli football chief questioned in fixing probe

Associated Press Sports

updated 10:35 a.m. ET Jan. 9, 2012

JERUSALEM (AP) -Israeli police have questioned the country's top football official in connection with a brewing match-fixing scandal.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Monday that fraud investigators questioned Israel Football Association Chairman Avi Luzon for eight hours on Sunday. He said Luzon is suspected of fraud, breach of trust and abuse of power.

Police are looking into whether referees were assigned to certain games in order to influence results. Dozens of executives, players, coaches and referees have already been questioned.

Luzon denies all the charges. In a statement, the association says he is cooperating fully with the ongoing investigation. It asked police to act sensitively "to prevent needless public damage."

Luzon is a member of governing bodies FIFA and UEFA.

? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Player left in tears by racial taunts

Off the Bench: Oldham defender Tom Adeyemi was reduced to tears after someone in the stands shouted racial abuse during its match with Liverpool FC on Friday.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45927630/ns/sports-soccer/

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Low-Fat Apple Swirl Loaf

Sunday usually involves some sort of baking for me, to get some snacks ready for the beginning of the school week. ?I feel like I've been making some of the same things over and over (baking rut!), and so wanted to do something different today.I turned to my first book, The Everyday Vegan, and baked up this Apple Swirl Loaf. ?It's really quite easy to make, but looks kinda' impressive with the streusel effect. ?

Let's take a closer look at that cinnamon-apple swirl, shall we...

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Pretty, huh? ?The smell (and taste!) of the cinnamon/apple mixture is divine, I wish you could smell the aroma that I did when taking the photos! ?This quick bread uses whole-grain flours and just one tablespoon of oil in the entire loaf, so it makes for a low-fat snack.

For those of you that don't have TEV, I will post this recipe in the next couple of days. ?I'd do so today, but am up to my eyebrows with house chores. ?You can wait a day or two, right? Wish you could smell it right now though... ?:)

Source: http://vivelevegan.blogspot.com/2012/01/low-fat-apple-swirl-loaf.html

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US redefines rape; adds men, others as victims

(AP) ? The Obama administration on Friday expanded the FBI's more than eight-decade-old definition of rape to count men as victims for the first time and to drop the requirement that victims must have physically resisted their attackers.

The new definition will increase the number of people counted as rape victims in FBI statistics, but it will not change federal or state laws or alter charges or prosecutions. It's an important shift because lawmakers and policymakers use crime statistics to allocate money and other resources for prevention and victim assistance.

The White House said the change was not motivated by the recent Penn State child sex-abuse scandal. Indeed, the expanded definition has been long awaited as many states and research groups made similar changes in their definitions of rape over recent decades.

Senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett called the change a "very, very important step." The issue got top-level White House attention starting last July, when Vice President Joe Biden raised it at a Cabinet meeting.

Biden, author of the Violence Against Women Act when he was in the Senate, said the new definition is a victory for women and men "whose suffering has gone unaccounted for over 80 years." Calling rape a "devastating crime," the vice president said, "We can't solve it unless we know the full extent of it."

Since 1929, the FBI has defined rape as the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will. The revised definition covers any gender of victim or attacker and includes instances in which the victim is incapable of giving consent because of the influence of drugs or alcohol or because of age. Physical resistance is not required. The Justice Department said the new definition mirrors the majority of state rape statutes now on the books.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said all rape victims "should have access to the comprehensive services that will help them rebuild their lives."

In November, Leahy introduced legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and provide an increased emphasis on efforts to stop sexual assault.

"We've always had a broad definition of who is eligible for services, and the change could result in additional resources being made available for survivors of rape," said Linda McFarlane, deputy executive director of Just Detention International. The nonprofit human rights organization works to eliminate sexual abuse in prisons and other detention settings.

Congress approved $592 million this year to address violence against women, including sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence and stalking, under the Violence Against Women Act and Family Violence Prevention and Services Act. Of that amount, $23 million goes to a sexual assault services program and $39 million to a rape prevention and education program administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Obama administration had sought $777 million to combat violence against women.

The change likely will result in big increases in the number of reported rapes, but it was not immediately clear how big. To take just one example of how the FBI totals will change, Chicago didn't report any rapes to the FBI for 2010 because its broad definition of the crime didn't match the FBI's narrow definition.

The change has been sought by women's groups for more than a decade.

The Women's Law Project, on behalf of more than 80 sexual assault coalitions and national organizations concerned about violence against women, wrote FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2001 that the narrow definition was based on gender-based stereotypes and requested it be changed then.

Using the old definition, a total of 84,767 rapes were reported nationwide in 2010, according to the FBI's uniform crime report based on data from 18,000 law enforcement agencies.

Nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men in the U.S. have been raped at some time in their lives, according to a 2010 survey by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used a broader definition.

Those figures were what framed much of the discussion, said Lynn Rosenthal, the White House adviser on violence against women.

Rosenthal said discussions were under way long before the Penn State child sex-abuse scandal became public and that the scandal did not drive the policy change. Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is charged with more than 50 counts of child sex abuse; Sandusky says he is innocent.

Trust between police and the public is a vital ingredient in lower crime rates, and undercounting a crime like rape can undermine that trust, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group that represents police departments across the country.

The revised FBI definition says that rape is "the penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object," without the consent of the victim. Also constituting rape under the new definition is "oral penetration by a sex organ of another person" without consent.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-06-Counting%20Rapes/id-e32ecaaf926f4c688bb6024c8349342d

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IRS says audit rates have grown for the wealthy

(AP) ? If you earn less than $200,000 a year, there's a strong chance you don't have to worry about an Internal Revenue Service audit. But if you make more than $1 million annually, the odds have been rising that you'll be hearing from the tax man.

The IRS released figures Thursday showing that 12 percent of millionaire earners were audited last year. That's up from 8 percent in 2010 and 6 percent in 2009.

The data shows that for those making under $200,000, the rate has stayed steady at around 1 percent in recent years.

IRS officials said the growing audit rate for high earners is aimed at demonstrating that the tax code is being enforced fairly and is unrelated to President Barack Obama's recent proposals to boost taxes on the rich. The White House and congressional Democrats are expected to continue taking similar populist stances with the approach of this November's presidential and congressional elections.

Steven Miller, deputy IRS commissioner for services and enforcement, said in an interview that the higher audit rates for the highest earning individuals are designed to "assure that those at the lower end of the spectrum know that those at the higher end of the spectrum are subject to the same rules and enforcement as everyone else."

"We base our audit decisions on tax issues, nothing else," said IRS spokeswoman Michelle Eldridge. "We don't play politics here."

Four percent of individuals earning $200,000 and up were audited in 2011, up from around 3 percent the previous five years.

The IRS only provided data for three categories of individuals' income: those earning under $200,000 annually, those making $200,000 and up and those earning $1 million and up.

Overall, the agency says, it audited nearly 1.6 million of 141 million individual returns in 2011, or just over 1 percent. That rate has been growing gradually and is almost double the 0.6 percent audited in 2001, the IRS said.

Only about a quarter of IRS' audits involve dreaded meetings between taxpayers and agency officials. The rest are carried out using letters.

In 2010 ? the most recent year available ? more than 8 in 10 individuals audited ended up paying additional taxes.

Altogether, IRS enforcement efforts ? including audits, legal action and other tactics ? resulted in an extra $55 billion being collected. That's down almost $3 billion from 2010, which Miller blamed on a falloff in estate taxes and corporations writing off their losses.

That $55 billion was a small part of the $2.3 trillion the agency collected in revenue last year.

The IRS also audited a greater proportion of large corporations than smaller ones, the data shows.

Last year, 1 percent of corporations with assets under $10 million were audited. Among corporations with assets of $250 million and up, 28 percent were audited.

The IRS figures also showed that:

? In 2011, the agency garnisheed wages or seized money from bank accounts 3.7 million times, put liens on property 1 million times and seized 776 pieces of property.

? Seventy-seven percent of individual returns were filed electronically last year, up from 69 percent in 2010.

? Seventy percent of callers to IRS taxpayer information telephone lines got through, slightly less than the 74 percent who reached someone in 2010. Miller attributed that to budget cuts to the agency.

?? The information IRS officials dispensed over the phone to taxpayers was accurate 93 percent of the time, the same as the previous year.

?? The IRS website, http://www.irs.gov, was visited 319 million times in 2011, a slight increase.

The data was presented by federal fiscal years, which begin on the previous Oct. 1.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-06-IRS%20Enforcement/id-6cff0c552cd44ba299c11b4f32abead5

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Gunmen kill 6 in Nigeria church attack (Reuters)

KANO, Nigeria (Reuters) ? Gunmen opened fire on a church service in Nigeria on Thursday, killing six people and wounding 10, the church's pastor said, the latest in a string of attacks that has raised fears of sectarian conflict in Africa's most populous nation.

"The attackers started shooting sporadically. They shot through the window of the church, and many people were killed including my wife," Pastor Johnson Jauro told Reuters by telephone from his Deeper Life church in Nasarawa, Gombe state in northern Nigeria.

"Many of my members who attended the church service were also injured," he said.

The gun attack followed a warning from violent Islamist sect Boko Haram published in local newspapers on Tuesday that Christians had three days to leave majority Muslim northern Nigeria or they would be killed.

Analysts say it looks increasingly likely the group - or factions within it - wants to trigger reprisals from Christians against Muslims to bring on a full religious conflict.

The nation of 160 million is split roughly evenly between the two faiths.

The militant group also claimed responsibility for a series of bomb attacks across Nigeria on Christmas Day, including one at a church near the capital Abuja that killed at least 37 people and wounded 57.

Most Christians live in the south and most Muslims in the north, but many communities are mixed, and they usually live side by side in peace.

Gombe state's police commissioner was not immediately available to comment on the violence.

President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast and two other regions in Nigeria on December 31, in a bid to contain a growing insurgency by Boko Haram, which says it wants to apply Islamic sharia law across Nigeria.

Heavily armed troops and tanks have been patrolling parts of northeast Nigeria since Jonathan made the announcement.

DIVISIONS STRAINED

The attacks targeting Christian houses of worship have strained Nigeria's increasingly fractious north-south divide.

Christian associations have accused Jonathan of not doing enough to contain the Islamist threat and said violence could provoke a sectarian civil war.

Two suspected Nigerian Islamist sect members were arrested on Thursday after an attack which killed two people, the military said, as authorities stepped up a crackdown on the increasingly violent group.

"We have arrested two of the Boko Haram members who killed a man and his son in Dala on Wednesday night. They left behind their handsets through which we were able to trace them," said Colonel Victor Ebhemele, operations officer of the joint task force operating in Borno state.

Dala is a ward in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, a remote dusty region which sits on borders with Cameroon, Niger and Chad which is at the heart of the Boko Haram insurgency. These borders were closed as part of Jonathan's emergency measures.

At least two bomb blasts shook Maiduguri on Wednesday, and a gun battle in another town killed at least one civilian, police said.

(Writing by Tim Cocks; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120106/wl_nm/us_nigeria_church_attack

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Debut authors dominate Costa Book Awards (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? Three of the five 2011 Costa Book Award categories were won by debut authors Tuesday, while Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes lost out to Andrew Miller for the best novel honor.

Poet and first-time biographer Matthew Hollis scooped the Costa biography award for "Now All Roads Leads to France: The Last Years of Edward Thomas" about the war poet who died in action during World War One.

Christie Watson, a children's nurse, was named 2011 debut novelist for "Tiny Sunbirds Far Away" about a Nigerian family forced to leave a comfortable urban life for poverty in the countryside.

And Moira Young won the children's book category for her first novel "Blood Red Road" set in a lawless future land where Saba sets out to find her missing twin brother.

In the novel category, Andrew Miller won with his sixth novel "Pure," beating Barnes whose "The Sense of an Ending" was the Booker Prize winner in October.

And poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy picked up the poetry prize with her latest collection "The Bees."

The winner of each category receives a cheque for 5,000 pounds ($7,800). The overall winner, who earns a further 30,000 pounds, is announced on January 24.

Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won nine times by a novel, four times by a debut novel, five times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and once by a children's book.

The 2010 Costa Book of the Year winner was "Of Mutability" by poet Jo Shapcott.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120103/stage_nm/us_books_costa_awards

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