jaglers: July 2012

Thursday 26 July 2012

Branding Your Small Biz | twelveoaksgroup.net

Big-businesses can offer product or service with a ?take it or leave it? attitude ?small businesses however, are not afforded this luxury. The little guys ?in an effort to stay in the game or grow?are often left to tweak the image of their product or service in different situations so that meaningful messages are conveyed to potential customers at all times. This creates a tricky situation for branding consistency. Below are a few things to keep in mind as you strive to brand and grow your business.

1) Potential customers need to have a clear understanding of what and who your business is before they will buy anything.

If your business is not self-explanatory, it?s important that you convey clear and concise messages about what you have to offer and the application of it ?think elevator speech, and then where you?re going to publicize that info. If your business is self-explanatory, think about the image you?d like to convey to people and how you might set yourself apart from other businesses like yours.

2) Keep everyone on the same page.

It?s Important that businesses strive for consistency and cohesion with all publicized info. The way information is presented on Twitter, Facebook, and websites varies greatly, but because each of these platforms is so effective at relating to the customer on different levels, there is immense opportunity to enhance the image of your business. That being said, it?s important the customer doesn?t receive conflicting ideas. Social media admin need to have a clear understanding of what the short-term and long-term marketing objectives are and an overall understanding of how to put forth info and respond to comments in a way that aligns with the priorities and values of the business.

3) Maintain consistent logos, colors, and fonts.

While you may be a long way from the widely-recognized Swoosh, it?s important to remain consistent with these nuances. Some brand recognition is better than none. Brochures, business cards, website headers, etc. should all maintain the same look and color scheme.

Small-business is full of compromise. Next time you find yourself at a crossroads, weigh your options and stay mindful of your business branding. Would you like some hands-on assistance? See what Twelve Oaks Group has to offer.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth McPhail grew up learning about the trials, tribulations, and perks of small family-owned business. She creates and maintains websites and blogs, and in her spare time can be found on the water boating!

Source: http://www.twelveoaksgroup.net/blog/branding-your-small-biz/

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Wednesday 25 July 2012

IRS Tax Relief

IRS Tax Relief
IRS Tax Relief is a service that aims to provide assistance to people who have serious tax problems. This site is run by licensed Enrolled Agents (EA?s), CPA?s and/or tax attorneys, ensuring the public that the information they receive is legitimate and accurate.

Visual Aesthetics ? 9
The blog has a simple and clean look, making sure that readers do not get distracted by unnecessary elements. Each blog post has a relevant image as well, to add to the visual experience. The only issue I had was that the images do not seem to load in the blog?s home page.

User Friendliness ? 9
Navigation is a breeze. Whether you are browsing the main site or the blog, you will have an easy time. One thing that can be improved is the video that plays automatically upon entering IRS Tax Relief. It does slow down things, and can be a pain if your connection is not that fast.

Reading Enjoyment ? 10
Anyone seeking tax relief will probably not enjoy reading about taxes, but the site does provide help that works, so if you are the target audience, you will enjoy this site.

Useful Info ? 10
IRS Tax Relief?s main goal is to help, and they do so wonderfully with the information presented in the site.

Overall Experience - 9
Facing serious tax problems? Know someone who is? You will be doing yourself a favor by finding tax relief via this web site.

Source: http://www.bloggyaward.com/business/irs-tax-relief/

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Tuesday 3 July 2012

Stocks mixed as American manufacturing slows

Specialists Frank Masello, left, and John T. O'Hara work on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York shortly before the closing bell on Friday, June 29, 2012. Financial markets around the world stormed higher Friday after European leaders came up with a breakthrough plan to rescue banks, relieve debt-burdened governments and restore investor confidence. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 277 points, and the Standard & Poor's 500 index had its best day of the year. Stocks advanced even further in Europe, in strong and weak countries alike. (AP Photo/David Karp)

NEW YORK (AP) ? Investors rejoiced over Europe last week. On Monday, they got back to worrying about the United States.

Stocks struggled to stay out of the red in quiet holiday-week trading after a trade group said American manufacturing shrank in June for the first time in almost three years.

The Dow Jones industrial average was higher in early trading but fell after the manufacturing report came out at 10 a.m. EDT and never recovered. It finished down 8.70 points at 12,871.39.

The Standard & Poor's 500 and the Nasdaq composite index both finished slightly higher after hopping between small gains and losses. The S&P rose 3.35 to 1,365.51. The Nasdaq rose 16.18 to 2,951.23.

Chemical company DuPont fell the most in the Dow. It lost $1.14, or 2.3 percent, to $49.43. Caterpillar, General Electric, Alcoa, Exxon Mobil, Boeing and other companies tied to manufacturing were also down.

It was a tepid performance compared with Europe's. Stock indexes in France, Britain and Germany rose more than 1 percent, still riding the euphoria from Friday's announcement that European leaders will make it easier for banks to get bailout loans. That news pushed the Dow up 277 points Friday.

The government did report a sliver of good news about the U.S. economy Monday, though investors seemed underwhelmed: Construction spending rose in May by 0.9 percent, the most in five months.

Monday was the first day of trading for the second half of the year. In the first half, the S&P gained more than 8 percent. Several financial analysts said they expected volatile markets, at least through the November presidential election.

"We don't know who it will be," said Benjamin Segal, portfolio manager for global equities at Neuberger Berman. "And even if we did, we don't know the particular policies they'd pursue."

Analysts also cited tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect in January ? the so-called fiscal cliff.

Derrick Irwin, portfolio manager for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, said the U.S. market would "muddle through the foreseeable future." Leo Grohowski, chief investment officer of Bank of New York Mellon's wealth management division, said the market would "continue to move from hope to despair."

Investors hope for some clarity later this week. U.S. car companies report monthly sales Tuesday, retailers like Target and Macy's report monthly sales on Thursday, and a closely watched report on U.S. jobs comes out Friday.

And though stocks rose in Europe, some analysts wondered how long those gains would last. Previous steps to ease the debt crisis have been met by market gains that quickly disappeared.

"The eurozone is really uncharted territory for a generation of investors," Irwin said. "I think anybody who thinks they really know what is happening there is, at best, guessing."

The day also brought reminders of how badly Europe needs help: Unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro hit the highest level since the euro was launched in 1999.

In France, auditors warned that the country still has a big budget hole to plug. In Cyprus, leaders prepared for talks on its own bailout. And in Germany, the highest court announced it would hear arguments from people who want to block the rescue.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 1.59 percent on Monday, down from 1.63 on Friday. The price of crude oil fell $1.21 to end the day at $83.75 per barrel.

In corporate news:

? Best Buy jumped $1.24, or 5.9 percent, to $22.20 after reports that its founder was nearing an offer to buy the company and take it private. Best Buy, an electronics store, has struggled to keep up with online-only competitors like Amazon.

? Groupon fell $1.12, or 10.5 percent, to $9.51 after analysts at Susquehanna cut their price target for the company, noting higher marketing expenses.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-07-02-Wall%20Street/id-54e1d50a825148828095b468bf633ce1

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Monday 2 July 2012

Mass extinctions reset the long-term pace of evolution

ScienceDaily (July 2, 2012) ? A new study indicates that mass extinctions affect the pace of evolution, not just in the immediate aftermath of catastrophe, but for millions of years to follow. The study's authors, University of Chicago's Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski, will publish their findings in the August issue of the journal Geology.

Scientists expected to see an evolutionary explosion immediately following a mass extinction, but Krug and Jablonski's findings go far beyond that.

"There's some general sense that the event happens, there's some aftermath and then things return to normal," said Krug, a research scientist in geophysical sciences at UChicago. But in reality, Krug said, "Things don't return to what they were before. They operate at a different pace, sometimes more rapidly, other times more slowly. Evolutionary rates shift, and that shift is permanent until the next mass extinction."

Krug and Jablonski's suggestion that the potential for rapid speciation and expansion of survivors and new groups of organisms in the "emptier" world following a mass extinction "is a reasonable possibility as one source of rate change," said paleontologist Richard Bambach of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, who was not directly involved in the UChicago study.

The long-term evolutionary patterns of species diversification following mass extinctions are poorly understood. Paleontologists have extensively debated whether diversity has increased over the last 251 million years, which followed the most devastating mass extinction in Earth history, Bambach said

Inconsistent classifications

Scientists have been putting Latin names on fossils since 1758, often inconsistently. Methods and tools have changed with the times, but old names often remain. The UChicago paleontologists have combed through seemingly endless volumes of research papers and countless museum drawers in an ongoing attempt to standardize these classifications.

For their Geology study, Krug and Jablonski analyzed contemporary groups of organisms from the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, which ended approximately 10,000 years ago, to the Jurassic Period, which began approximately 200 million years ago. The availability of globally abundant data on bivalves, a group that includes clams, oysters and scallops, set the study's time boundaries.

"With some groups, like sea urchins or corals, you just couldn't do it because the numbers aren't big enough," said Jablonski, the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Service Professor in Geophysical Sciences. When he and Krug statistically plotted the origination rate of new bivalve species at 50 million-year intervals, they found that all the species evolved at a fairly steady rate for millions of years. Then the bivalve groups show a sudden increase or decrease in the rates at which new species evolved. These sudden shifts marked the occurrence of a mass extinction. "They settle back down to a different rate from what was before, and they do it multiple times, corresponding to each mass extinction," Jablonski said.

Theoretically, the origination rates of the organisms might have "been all over the map," with evolutionary rates varying in a random or chaotic style, but they didn't. "It's surprising how organized the pattern is," he said.

Krug and Jablonski's perspective of the data is somewhat different from Bambach's. These perspectives are "not contradictory, but complementary, ways of looking at the data," Bambach said. "One of the valuable things about their work is that they record the pattern and pattern change during intervals that I lump together."

Bambach bases his work on older data compilations that include the animal kingdom as a whole, while Krug and Jablonski use their new, carefully vetted data from bivalve mollusks.

Setting a new pace

"There's been a lot of talk about the evolutionary role of mass extinctions, but it's like the weather. Everyone talks about it, but no one does much about it," Jablonski joked.

"No one has really thought about it in terms of these downstream dynamics, once the smoke has cleared and ecosystems have found a new equilibrium, for want of a better word. But the wonderful thing is that when they find a new equilibrium, it's a different evolutionary pace from the one that prevailed for the preceding 50 million years. The survivors of the mass extinction, or the world they inherited, is so different from what went before that the rate of evolution is permanently changed."

Krug and Jablonski's research builds upon the work of UChicago's David Raup, the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Geophysical Sciences, and Michael Foote, professor in Geophysical Sciences.

In 1978, Raup published a method for determining the extinction rate of organisms. His method involved monitoring the survivorship of a group of organisms that had all originated during a specific time period and quantifying when they disappeared. It would be like collecting census data for all individuals born on Jan. 1, 1899, tracking their longevity, then finding that the 1918 influenza epidemic had produced a spike in this group's mortality.

Foote followed up in 2001, showing that Raup's method worked equally well for determining origination rates as it did for extinction rates. One simply needed to use the method in reverse, tracking the time since origination of a group of co-occurring lineages as opposed to the time until extinction. Now comes Krug and Jablonski's latest study, finding that the evolutionary "birth rate" was also reset at major catastrophes. "It's very Chicago-esque," Jablonski said.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Chicago, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Andrew Z. Krug and David Jablonski. Long-term origination rates are re-set only at mass extinctions. Geology, June 29, 2012

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/9SLeSvpYIFU/120702134826.htm

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Leo W. Gerard: Romney's Independence Day Advice: Buy Foreign

America commemorates its Independence Day this week with food, festivity and fireworks. To supply these events, Mitt Romney recommends: Buy foreign.

Americans naturally think the patriotic choice would be to buy American. But for Romney, capitalism trumps patriotism. Romney goes where the money is. He made big bucks as CEO of Bain Capital by investing in a series of companies that specialized in shipping American jobs off shore. For him, it's fine to kill an American job as long as he can make a buck on it.

Americans must decide. Do they pledge allegiance to money-grubbing? Or do they pledge allegiance to the United States of America? If it's the United States, then on this Independence Day, demonstrate patriotic pride by deliberately buying American. Search for that "Made in USA" label. Pick the product that will create American jobs, the one that is an investment in an American company and the American economy.

Romney's decisions over his business and political career clearly illustrate that for him the most important symbol isn't the American flag. It's the almighty dollar. As the CEO of Bain Capital, he could have invested in any sort of company. He chose several that helped corporations move or expand off shore. In fact, Romney was, as the Washington Post put it, a pioneer in this area.

Romney took that "buy foreign" philosophy with him to the Massachusetts governor's mansion. There he specifically permitted state contractors to move work overseas. He vetoed legislation to forbid the practice. Romney thwarted lawmakers' attempt to stop a contractor from using state tax dollars to move work from America to India and Bangladesh. As a result, unemployed Massachusetts residents who called the state government for information on food stamps got connected to foreign nationals performing jobs that unemployed Americans could have had.

Some American CEOs deliberately do the opposite of Romney. They find ways to buy American. Iconic American companies Starbucks and Google are examples. Last week, Google released a wireless home media player, the Nexus Q, that is made in America. The New York Times said "the most intriguing feature" of the player is the inscription on the bottom: "Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A." It's fascinating, the Times explained, because:

It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States.

Google, always an innovator, decided that accepted wasn't wise. Starbucks did too.

Starbucks stopped buying its mugs overseas. It located a tiny pottery manufacturer in Ohio and gave the business to that firm -- American Mug and Stein Co. As a result, American Mug added eight workers. That's how American jobs are created: one American Mug at a time.

The mugs are part of Starbucks' Indivisible project. The sale of Indivisible merchandise supports the Starbucks "Create Jobs for USA Fund," which helps small businesses.

Similarly, last month, Starbucks decided to build a factory in Augusta, Ga., to make its Via instant coffee and ingredients for its Frappuccino drinks. That will create 140 American jobs.

Later this month, Congress is scheduled to vote on two measures that would, like Starbucks and Google, create American jobs. One is the Bring Jobs Home Act, which would end tax loopholes that, inexplicably, reward companies for firing Americans and moving their jobs overseas. At the same time, the Bring Jobs Home Act would give tax credits to companies that shift work from overseas back to the United States.

The other measure is the United States Call Center Worker and Consumer Protection Act. It would prohibit federal grants and tax breaks to companies that send call center jobs overseas. It also would require those firms to tell customers where their calls are being directed and provide the option of a U.S. call center. This would prevent companies from getting millions in tax subsidies based on promises of U.S. call center employment that are quickly broken when the centers lay off the American workers and move their jobs overseas.

Romney does not approve of the Bring Jobs Home Act. That's clear from the pledge he signed with Washington lobbyist Grover Norquist to protect tax loopholes. In fact, Romney would go further to encourage companies to offshore manufacturing and jobs. He promised to eliminate all taxes on foreign profits.

But then, Romney's a quarter billionaire who owns a $100,000 horse and installed a car elevator in one of his mansions. To him, it's all about profit and not at all about patriotism.

To working people, however, the Bring Jobs Home Act and the Call Center Act make sense. Working Americans don't want to pay corporations to move jobs overseas. American taxpayers don't want to subsidize call centers that quickly close American operations and offshore the jobs

So on this July 4, tell your Congressman to vote for these two proposed laws, then buy American-made American flags; red, white and blue American-made pinwheels, and American-made baseball bats for the backyard game.

ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer makes buying American easy by listing American-made products by state.

And, of course, buy American-made sparklers to celebrate. There's still one company manufacturing them in the United States. It's Diamond Sparklers in Youngstown, Ohio. Phantom Fireworks stores stock them.

America just isn't independent if it's dependent on foreign manufacturers for its Independence Day celebrations.

Follow Leo W. Gerard on Twitter: www.twitter.com/uswblogger

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leo-w-gerard/mitt-romney-outsourcing_b_1641470.html

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Sunday 1 July 2012

Entrepreneurs Grow Coral In Overtown For Research And Art

www.miamiherald.com:

To Colin Foord, corals are a metaphor for life in Miami. He speaks lyrically about the parallel between the living underwater urban structures and the city.

Read the whole story at www.miamiherald.com

Contribute to this Story:

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/30/entrepreneurs-grow-coral-_n_1639782.html

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Video: Major storm pummels DC area

>>> pick your adjective. more than a third of the country is under a heat advisory or warning, and tonight virginia, west virginia , and ohio as well as the nation's capital are under states of emergency after a freak storm swept through the region. at least 13 people have died as a result of that storm. more than 3 million homes are in the dark and without air-conditioning amid sweltering temperatures. this week alone more than 1600 heat records have been shattered. in the meantime out west those massive wildfires continue to burn out of control. we've got all of it covered tonight, and we begin with nbc's mike va khaira in washington. good evening.

>> reporter: kate f-that wasn't enough, this heat is expected to last well into next week in this region as well as the midwest and the south. the local utility company is making robocalls this afternoon telling residents they may not have power until late next week. it could be a week before the power comes back on, kate . the violent storms struck just before midnight . by morning its power and devastation were clear. homes and cars destroyed, power lines downed, millions in the washington, d.c. region without power .

>> the word that comes to mind is horrific.

>> reporter: triggered by record heat, the storms moved from illinois to the mid-atlantic in a phenomenon the experts call a wind storm with a fast-moving band of severe thunderstorms packing winds as high as 91 miles per hour, well above hurricane force, leaving a wide swath of destruction. crews worked throughout the day to restore power as homeowners banlded together to clean up debris and assess the damage. in virginia he called it the largest non-hurricane power outage in the state history.

>> 2.5 million people without power . that's almost in the ballpark of the last hurricane that we had.

>> reporter: in fairfax county 911 services were knocked out and residents had to report emergencies in person at police and fire stations . in maryland residents were asked not to lose water after treatment centers went offline overnight. in bethesda a pga tour event hosted by tiger woods turned away spectators due to concerns on over fallen and weakened trees. popular websites netflix, pent grist were down. no power means no air-conditioning in record setting heat. cooling centers were opened and the heat shows no signs of letting up. temperatures are expected to top 100 degrees in parts of 25 states today after hitting triple-digits across much of the nation yesterday, including a statewide record in south carolina of 113 degrees.

>> like an oven. just brutal.

>> reporter: in atlanta today, organizers at a youth football camp were taking no chances. for every ten minutes of play --

>> we have a five minute water break .

>> reporter: a five-minute water break and the city opened the pool to the public free of charge.

>> we know that the temperatures were getting this high this weekend, we couldn't wait to get to the pool.

>> reporter: and kate , p if all that weren't enough, this heat is expected to last well into next week, and the local utility this afternoon is making robocalls to residents who don't have power warning them it could be a full week before the lights come back on. kate .

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/48028548/

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Mood pessimistic on Syria peace plans

Kofi Annan, Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria arrives for a meeting of the Action Group for Syria at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, June 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

British Foreign Minister William Hague, right, talks to media representatives upon his arrival for a meeting of the Action Group for Syria at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, June 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Keystone, Martial Trezzini)

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton waves as she arrives for a meeting of the Action Group for Syria at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, June 30, 2012. The United States and Russia failed on Friday to bridge differences over a plan to ease Syrian President Bashar Assad out of power, end violence and create a new government, setting the stage for the potential collapse of a key multinational conference that was to have endorsed the proposal. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)

The Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby arrives for a meeting of the Action Group for Syria at the European headquarters of the United Nations, UN, in Geneva, Switzerland, Saturday, June 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Keystone, Laurent Gillieron)

GENEVA (AP) ? A conference called by special envoy Kofi Annan to end the Syria crisis appeared on the brink of failure as it opened Saturday, with the U.S. and Russia still divided over a role for President Bashar Assad in a transition government.

Annan seemed confident of his plan a few days ago, but Russia has refused to back a provision that would call for Assad to step down to make way for a unity government, a stance that could scuttle the entire deal.

The envoy warned the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council ? Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States ? that if they fail to act at the talks hosted by the United Nations at its European headquarters in Geneva they face an international crisis of "grave severity" that could spark violence across the region and provide a new front for terrorism.

"History is a somber judge and it will judge us all harshly if we prove incapable of taking the right path today," he said.

He appeared to specifically aim his words at Russia, Syria's most important ally, protector and arms supplier, which insists that outsiders cannot order a political solution for Syria. The U.S. is adamant that Assad should not be allowed to remain in power at the top of the transitional government and there is little chance that the fragmented Syrian opposition would go along with any plan that does not explicitly say Bashar must go.

"While many spoke of united support for one ... some simultaneously took national or collective initiatives of their own, undermining the process. This has fueled uncertainty in Syria, in turn fueling the flames of violence," Annan said. "By being here today, you suggest the intention to show that leadership. But can you, can we follow through?"

He said that "the way things have been going thus far ? we are not helping anyone. Let us break this trend and start being of some use."

Foreign ministers were rushed from luxury sedans into the elegant and sprawling Palais des Nations along with their legions of diplomats and aides and envoys from Europe, Turkey and three Arab countries representing groups within the Arab League.

A senior U.S. official ? speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing negotiations ? said the "discussions remain challenging. We're continuing to work this today, but we need a plan that is strong and credible. We may get there, we may not."

The question is still whether Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton can rescue Annan's plan.

Russia and China, which has followed Russia's lead on Syria, have twice used their council veto to shield Syria from U.N. sanctions.

Major regional players Iran and Saudi Arabia were not invited. The Russians objected to the Saudis, who support the Syrian opposition. The U.S. objected to Iran, which supports Assad's regime. Lavrov predicted the meeting had a "good chance" of finding a way forward, despite the grim conditions on the ground.

Syria, verging on a full-blown civil war, has endured a particularly bloody week, with up to 125 people reported killed nationwide on Thursday alone. Since March of last year, the uprising in in one of the world's most unstable regions has killed some 14,000 people.

International tensions also heightened last week after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane, leading to Turkey setting up anti-aircraft guns on its border with its neighbor.

Without agreement among the major powers on how to form a transitional government for the country, Assad's regime ? Iran's closest ally ? would be emboldened to try to remain in power indefinitely, and that would also complicate the U.S. aim of halting Iran's nuclear goals.

At talks Friday night, top U.S. and Russian diplomats remained deadlocked over the negotiating text to agree on guidelines and principles for "a Syria-led transition."

British Foreign Secretary William Hague urged Russia and China, which is following the Russian lead, to join Western nations in speaking with one voice on Syria, though he acknowledged that will be a stiff challenge.

"We haven't reached agreement in advance with Russia and China ? that remains very difficult. I don't know if it will be possible to do so. In the interest of saving thousands of lives of our international responsibilities, we will try to do so," Hague told reporters. "It's been always been our view, of course, that a stable future for Syria, a real political process, means Assad leaving power."

He tweeted that "President Assad and his closest associates cannot credibly lead the process of transition in Syria.

The negotiating text for the multinational conference calls for establishing a transitional government of national unity, with full executive powers, that could include members of Assad's government and the opposition and other groups. It would oversee the drafting of a new constitution and elections.

But the text that would serve as the framework for Annan's peace efforts also would "exclude from government those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation."

"Ultimately, we want to stop the bloodshed in Syria. If that comes through political dialogue, we are willing to do that," said Khalid Saleh, a spokesman for the Syrian National Council, a coalition of Syrian opposition groups based in Istanbul, Turkey. "We are not willing to negotiate (with) Mr. Assad and those who have murdered Syrians. We are not going to negotiate unless they leave Syria."

Clinton said Thursday in Riga, Latvia, that all participants in the Geneva meeting, including Russia, were on board with the transition plan. She told reporters that the invitations made clear that representatives "were coming on the basis of (Annan's) transition plan."

The United Nations says violence in the country has worsened since a cease-fire deal in April, and the bloodshed appears to be taking on dangerous sectarian overtones, with growing numbers of Syrians targeted on account of their religion. The increasing militarization of both sides in the conflict has Syria heading toward civil war.

______

Matthew Lee contributed to this report.