Local small-business leaders cheer White House talks ...

When Ulysses Turner left the White House on Friday, he was eager to explore new investment in Hampton Roads.

The CEO of Atlantic Apartment Rentals and Development Co., which builds multifamily housing primarily in Norfolk, spent the day with 27 other Hampton Roads business leaders who met with the Obama administration to discuss ways to help small businesses grow. The visit convinced Turner that the economy would head in a positive direction this year.

"I came away feeling that the president's policies are very pro-small business," he said. "It was a very inspirational day."

Gary McCollum, senior vice president and general manager of Cox Communications Inc.'s operations in Virginia, agreed that the meetings showed the administration's belief in small business "as a key driver in this economy."

During a series of afternoon workshops, McCollum said, he heard encouraging ideas about the use of technology to improve productivity and about opportunities for small- and medium-size defense contractors. Despite reductions in defense spending, administration officials assured the local companies that money is available and that the process to get it would become more efficient, McCollum said.

Among those who attended the White House meetings were Mike Petters, president and CEO of Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News; Gilbert Bland, president and CEO of Tymark Enterprises Inc., the Norfolk-based owner of several Burger King franchises; and Tom Walker, president of Chesapeake technology development firm Web Teks. The meetings were set up by Business Forward, which organizes businesses to inform government decision-making on economic issues.

Some in the group attended President Barack Obama's news conference earlier in the day, when he suggested shrinking the number of federal agencies that deal with business.

The simplification of government regulations arose as a common theme, Turner and McCollum said. So did the need to nurture an educated workforce, from kindergarten through college, McCollum said.

"So we're producing the talent that can not only get a job but can create a job."?

Carolyn Shapiro, (757) 446-2270, carolyn.shapiro@pilotonline.com

Source: http://hamptonroads.com/2012/01/local-smallbusiness-leaders-cheer-white-house-talks

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Video: Business Inventories Data

CNBC's Rick Santelli has the data from November; with Jens Larsen, RBC Capital Markets and CNBC's Steve Liesman.

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Jim Iuorio, TJM Institutional Services; Don Luskin, Trend Macro; and Jim LaCamp, Macroportfolio Advisors, discuss the impact of the S&P downgrade and whether there's reason to be bullish. As long as Germany is strong, they say, we'll get through this.

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Space station moves to avoid space junk in orbit

The International Space Station had to make a slight adjustment Friday to dodge a piece of a satellite, caused by an orbital collision over two years ago.

The International Space Station dodged a piece of space junk today (Jan. 13) to avoid a potentially dangerous collision.

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The orbiting laboratory, currently home to six astronauts from three countries, burned its thrusters at 11:10 a.m. EST, boosting its orbit slightly to take it out of range of a piece of broken satellite that was due to pass between 0.6 and 15 miles (1 and 24 km) of the station today.

"At this point indications are that the debris avoidance maneuver was carried out as planned and carried out successfully," NASA commentator Pat Ryan said on NASA TV. "The crewmembers continued their work onboard while the burn happened this morning."

The space junk was part of the Iridium 33 communications satellite, which collided with a defunct Russian Cosmos spacecraft in 2009, creating a cloud of thousands of bits of debris that now orbit Earth and sometimes pose a collision hazard to working spacecraft.

The particular bit of space junk the station dodged today was only about 4 inches (10 cm) in diameter, but could have been catastrophic to the $100 billion outpost if the two had collided at their high orbital speeds.

Potential space debris conjunctions are not uncommon for the space station. In November 2011 NASA was considering sending the three station crewmembers at the time into their Russian Soyuz spacecraft lifeboats to wait out a close pass by a piece of orbital trash. However, a subsequent analysis showed that the debris would stay far enough away to render the precaution unnecessary.

NASA astronaut Dan Burbank is currently leading the space station's Expedition 30 mission, which includes flight engineers Don Pettit of NASA, Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency, and Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov, Anatoly Ivanishin and Oleg Kononenko.

The crewmembers spent today working on scientific research and routine maintenance on their football field-size home in orbit.

Today's maneuver comes coincidentally timed with two other space junk events: the release of Space Junk 3D, a new IMAX film chronicling the growing danger of space debris in orbit, and the looming crash of the failed Russian Mars probe Phobos Grunt, which is expected to fall back to Earth in the next few days.

You can follow SPACE.com assistant managing editor Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz.?Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom?and on Facebook.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/Aua_8W2Yn9c/Space-station-moves-to-avoid-space-junk-in-orbit

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Money and Hoops (TIME)

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Why You Should Do a Football Sponsorship

NEW YORK (MainStreet) -- NFL quarterback Tim Tebow led the Denver Broncos to a huge upset over the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday in the wild-card round of playoff games, but the real winners of the game were likely the ad sponsors featured during the well-viewed game.

CBS(CBS) scored huge in television ratings because of the media hype surrounding Tebow. Between his tendencies to express his Christian faith on the field and secure late-game victories throughout the season -- including the Sunday night game -- it was the most watched Wild Card game in 24 years, the network says. Yet it was Berkshire Hathaway's(BRK.A) Geico, Ford(F), Anheuser-Busch InBev's(BUD) Bud Light, Weight Watchers(WW) and PepsiCo.'s(PEP) Doritos -- even Republican candidate Mitt Romney, among other advertisers -- that probably scored highest, given the large audience viewing Tebow's performance. But what does this mean to small businesses? Football sponsorships and advertising can be a good way to promote brand awareness and Web traffic, as well as increase customer and franchisee acquisitions, but a small business can't just agree to promote itself through any old football game; unless they secure a spot as one of the local cable ads, a pro football game is more than likely not the most effective place for small businesses to spend their advertising dollars. There are other football championships that could be beneficial to a smaller company, though, if a business decides a football sponsorship hits the right targets and goals at all. Smaller clients must be sure a sponsorship plays in a territory they either own in terms of brand awareness or a territory they plan to expand into, says Bernhard Schroeder, a marketing and advertising veteran and the director of the Entrepreneurial Management Center at San Diego State University. He emphasizes that smaller companies should be prepared to implement an integrated marketing campaign that complements the sponsorship. "If you just show up once, that has almost no impact. You have to follow it up with some type of sustained program," Schroeder says.

Source: http://feeds.thestreet.com/~r/tsc/feeds/rss/latest-stories/~3/W2M8y6fA9F8/why-you-should-do-a-football-sponsorship.html

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