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COMMENTARY | Mitt Romney drilled into President Barack Obama for rejecting the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline during last night's CNN Southern Republican Debate.
The former Massachusetts Governor accused Obama of having "to bow to the most extreme members of the environmental movement."
"He turns down the Keystone Pipeline, which would bring energy and jobs to America," Romney said, according to the official debate transcript posted by CNN.
In a statement released on his campaign website Wednesday, Romney made similar comments.
"By declaring that the Keystone pipeline is not in the 'national interest,' the President demonstrates a lack of seriousness about bringing down unemployment, restoring economic growth, and achieving energy independence," he said. "He seems to have confused the national interest with his own interest in pleasing the environmentalists in his political base."
In his jobs plan, Romney promises to "ensure rapid progress on the Keystone XL Pipeline," and to "pave the way for the construction of additional pipelines that can accommodate the expected growth in Canadian supply of oil and natural gas in the coming years."
But Romney's support for the proposed oil pipeline contradicts his answer to a question posed by John Distaso, a veteran political reporter for the Union Leader, at a debate last summer in New Hampshire.
"Should governments at any level be able to use eminent domain for major projects that will reduce America's dependence on foreign oil?" Distaso queried.
"Well, I don't believe that land should be taken -- the power of government to give to a private corporation," Romney responded. "And so, the right of eminent domain is a right which is used to foster a public purpose and public ownership for a road, highways, and so forth. And so my view is, if land is going to be taken for purposes of a private enterprise, that's the wrong way to go."
Beyond the bright lights and shallow rhetoric of the campaign trail, opposition to Keystone XL is hardly limited to radical environmentalists. Even the conservative National Review Online has acknowledged that eminent domain is "an issue brewing that could derail the pipeline."
A report published by the New York Times last fall found that TransCanada, the foreign company behind the Keystone XL project, had already filed eminent domain lawsuits against 56 landowners in Texas and South Dakota.
It's something Mitt Romney should consider before he continues to attack President Obama and environmentalists for opposing the project.
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LOS ANGELES, Jan 29 (TheWrap.com) ? "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" will not be hitting theaters in India.
The film was to be released on February 10, but India's Central Board of Film Certification insisted that several scenes be edited.
Director David Fincher refused to cut two love-making scenes and a rape and torture scene from his R-rated adaptation of Stieg Larsson's best-selling book.
Sony acknowledged that it would not be opening the film in India and released a statement, which read in part, "While we are committed to maintaining and protecting the vision of the director, we will, as always, respect the guidelines set by the Board."
The film has already made nearly $100 million in the U.S. and more than $165 million at the overseas box office, and appears on its way to more than $200 globally, with much of Asia still ahead.
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By Miranda Leitsingermsnbc.com
The Food and Drug Administration electronically spied on whistleblowers who alerted the Obama administration and Congress of alleged misconduct in the agency, particularly relating to what they claim was the push to approve unsafe and ineffective medical devices, according to a complaint filed in federal court.
The complaint, filed on behalf of six former and current employees, alleges that the FDA and a number of others violated a host of the plaintiff's rights, including freedom of speech, association and due process; unreasonable search and seizure; and the right to petition Congress. Named as defendants are the FDA and several of its employees, the Surgeon General, the Health and Human Services Secretary, among others.
?The heart of it is an injunction prohibiting the government from targeting whistleblowers or anyone who engages in First Amendment protected speech for surveillance. You know, routine monitoring or monitoring done to everybody on an equal basis is fine, but you can?t select people because of their whistleblowing for this type of instrusive, over-the-top surveillance, which is done without a warrant, without any limitations whatsoever," said Stephen Kohn, executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center and lead attorney on the case.
The FDA said Monday it would not comment on ongoing litigation.
Known originally as the ?FDA nine,? the employees -- some still current, other former --?alerted the House and Energy Committee in a letter dated Nov. 17, 2008, that the administration?s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) ?had ?ordered, intimidated, and coerced FDA experts to modify their scientific reviews, conclusions and recommendations in violation of the law,? according to? the lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.
In a second letter to the Obama transition team,?dated Jan. 7, 2009, the scientists ?raised issues of public concern, including, but not limited to, corruption within the FDA device review process, managerial misconduct, dangers to public health, welfare and safety, and retaliation against whistleblowers,? the lawsuit said.
The FDA then embarked upon a "covert and secret search and seizure operation," including intercepting private communications sent by the plaintiffs to congressional representatives, emails sent from private accounts to other private accounts under "circumstances in which the plaintiffs had a reasonable expectation of privacy," and secretly "installed or activated spyware on all of the government-owned computers, electronic hardware, and networks used by the plaintiffs," the lawsuit alleged.
"This spyware allowed defendants to secretly conduct additional surveillance of the plaintiffs, including ... real-time pictures or 'screen shots' of the computer screens opened by the plaintiffs," the complaint read. "These screen shots enabled defendants to secretly view information on each of the plaintiffs? computer screens, even if the information was not saved by plaintiffs."
Kohn said the center had learned about the surveillance through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, personnel actions and responses from the Department of Health and Human Services' Inspector General to an unsuccessful request by the FDA to investigate the whistleblowers.
"I have never seen this level of monitoring. I was never even aware that they could go in and to do the Gmail-to-Gmail," he said, noting the FDA could also ?figure out who?s giving information ? therefore any employee who associates with a whistleblower could find themself the target of a surveillance.?
The plaintiffs had permission to use their government-issued computers for personal purposes, the lawsuit said. Four of the original "FDA nine" chose to pursue the lawsuit.
The number of whistleblowers grew over time, and the FDA, through the alleged spying over two years, learned of the group's strategy to alert the Inspector General, among others.
"These numerous attempts by defendants to have the whistleblowers prosecuted for so-called unauthorized disclosures of confidential or agency information were continuously rejected by appropriate law enforcement officials," the complaint said. "Defendants completely ignored the warnings that the disclosures were authorized and protected by law. Instead, defendants continued to conduct their surveillance activities and continued to try to convince law enforcement agencies to charge one or more of the plaintiffs with a crime."
Eventually, two of the whistleblowers, including one acting as counsel for the group, did not have their contracts renewed by the FDA, creating a "chilling effect on all similarly situated employees/contractors/officers of the defendants," the lawsuit said. Two more of the whistleblowers are no longer with the FDA: one was allegedly fired related to the whistleblowing and another was essentially removed from their post, Kohn said.
The lawsuit highlighted areas that had raised the concerns of the FDA whistleblowers: In the 2009 letter, the group had warned that in the past, "computer-aided detection devices (?CAD?) to be used with breast mammograms were not safe or effective, but the FDA approved the devices anyway in a flawed process that ignored the science" and noted that this "type of behavior had not changed, was ongoing, and that FDA managers were still trying to approve similarly flawed CAD devices."
In another example, a doctor had determined in early 2009 that a CT colonography device was neither safe nor effective for population screening due to a high radiation dose -- thereby raising the risk of induced cancer -- but "FDA managers indicated that they would clear the device anyway," the complaint alleged.
"They?re very upset but they're primarily concerned as physicians to the harm that patients are suffering," Kohn said of the whistleblowers. "They?re looking at ... the dosages of radiation that people get from some of these devices or how some of the devices fail to detect cancers.?
The doctors were being treated like "CIA agents," Kohn added. "They?re acting as if medical information is the same as ? classified information on terrorism and it?s not ? it?s information that patients need.?
The FDA has?60 days to respond to the lawsuit.
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 30, 2012) ? Trying to resist that late-night tweet or checking your work email again? The bad news is that desires for work and entertainment often win out in the daily struggle for self-control, according to a new study that measures various desires and their regulation in daily life.
"Modern life is a welter of assorted desires marked by frequent conflict and resistance, the latter with uneven success," says Wilhelm Hofmann of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Determining how to best resist desires is not as easy as it seems, according to personality and social psychologists who recently presented new research in San Diego about willpower and food psychology.
Resisting desires
In the new study of desire regulation, 205 adults wore devices that recorded a total of 7,827 reports about their daily desires. Desires for sleep and sex were the strongest, while desires for media and work proved the hardest to resist. Even though tobacco and alcohol are thought of as addictive, desires associated with them were the weakest, according to the study. Surprisingly to the researchers, sleep and leisure were the most problematic desires, suggesting "pervasive tension between natural inclinations to rest and relax and the multitude of work and other obligations," says Hofmann, the lead author of the study forthcoming in Psychological Science.
Moreover, the study supported past research that the more frequently and recently people have resisted a desire, the less successful they will be at resisting any subsequent desire. Therefore as a day wears on, willpower becomes lower and self-control efforts are more likely to fail, says Hofmann, who co-authored the paper with Roy Baumeister of Florida State University and Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota.
Scientists who study the complex interplay between desires and self control say that passing up on temptation is made ever more difficult by the idea that there is no single or clear feeling that alerts us to when our willpower is low. "But we find that when willpower is low, everything is felt more intensely," says Baumeister, author of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. "Low willpower seems to turn up the volume on life."
In a series of experiments, Baumeister and his colleagues found that people with low willpower reported more distress in response to an upsetting film and rated cold water as more painful during a cold-water immersion test. They also had stronger desires to open a gift and to keep eating cookies.
Postponing a snack
The effects of willpower depletion explain why so many people have trouble resisting unhealthy food -- the more they resist the food, the more they crave it. That's why one group of researchers is looking at ways people can alter their physical cravings. Nicole Mead of Catolica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics and her colleagues tested the notion that postponing consumption of a unhealthy snack to an unspecified future time would reduce the desire for, and therefore consumption of, that snack.
In one experiment, Mead's team gave 105 high school students in the Netherlands a bag of potato chips. Some participants received instructions to either postpone, restrain, or consume the potato chips, while others could choose among the three eating strategies. Over the course of one week, students who initially postponed eating the chips subsequently ate the least amount of the chips, regardless of whether they chose or were given the strategy. They ate even more than those who were instructed to not eat them at all.
"Postponing consumption is an effective strategy that consumers can use for controlling unwanted food-related desires," Mead says. "In modern society, people are absolutely inundated with opportunities to consume, and this strategy may be particularly helpful because it primarily works through desire reduction rather than willpower enhancement." Future research will examine whether the strategy works for other transient impulses, such as spending and sexual desires.
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Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120130094353.htm
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NASHVILLE, Tenn. ? It's time for a new stage at Ryman Auditorium, a significant moment in the history of a building known for its significant moments.
Scuffed by the heels of "The King," `'The Queen of Soul" and thousands of singers in cowboy boots, scarred by an uncountable stream of road cases and worn by six decades of music history, the Ryman's oak floorboards have reached the end of a very long, very successful run.
"That stage has had a wonderful life," said Steve Buchanan, senior vice president of media and entertainment for Gaylord Entertainment, owners of the Ryman.
The current stage is just the second in the 120-year history of the "Mother Church" after the original was installed in 1901 for a performance of the Metropolitan Opera. It was laid down in 1951 and has lasted far longer than expected. The stage was refinished during a renovation in 1993-94 and even then officials knew it would be the last resurfacing. Today it's heavily scuffed and scarred, its age easily visible from the Ryman's balcony.
The Ryman is still the building most associated with The Grand Ole Opry, though it moved to the Opry House in 1974, and has hosted a number of significant moments in American culture.
Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash stood together on those boards and changed music. Cultures clashed there too when the boo birds took on country rockers The Byrds. Today the Ryman is a much sought-after destination point for musicians of all genres and many shows take on a unique aura.
Dylan recently returned, more than 40 years after "Nashville Skyline." Taylor Swift sang there recently with her good friends, The Civil Wars. Even the heaviest of rockers get a little nostalgic, like Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, who said it was an honor to get drunk while performing in the building last year.
Keith Urban, making his return from vocal surgery, will be among the last performers on the stage when the Opry plays its final winter date Friday at The Ryman. Dierks Bentley will play the last standalone concert Thursday.
As a young, aspiring performer in Nashville more than a decade ago, Bentley would run his fingers along the building's brickwork late at night as he walked home from performing on Lower Broadway, daydreaming of playing on that stage. He calls it "one of the most precious places in Nashville and in country music to me."
"The significance of that stage and who played there before me will definitely be in the back of my head all night," Bentley said in an email. "As a member of the Grand Ole Opry, I couldn't be any prouder."
That a busy venue needs a new stage is not necessarily news. The stage at the Opry's permanent home, for instance, has been changed multiple times over the years with little comment. But when the Ryman stage is replaced, officials in some sense are altering an icon that is closely watched by sometimes vocal guardians of its cultural significance.
Officials are prepared for questions. They point out the building has gone through many upgrades over the years and that each step was vital to preserving the building. Most recently the roof was replaced in 2009.
"We're not in the business of getting rid of old things just to get rid of them," Ryman general manager Sally Williams said.
They will retain an 18-inch lip of the blonde oak at the front of the stage, similar to the way the Ryman stage was commemorated in a circle of wood at the new Opry House. The rest of the stage will be stored and replaced with a medium brown Brazilian teak that will be far more durable and camera friendly.
Beneath the stage, the original hickory support beams will be kept and reinforced with concrete foundations, crossbeams and joist work that will help triple the stage's load capacity.
Work will begin Feb. 4 and continue seven days a week until Feb. 20, when rising country stars The Band Perry will make its Ryman debut with a sold-out show. Tours will continue throughout the work, allowing members of the public to watch.
Williams says she's gotten no negative feedback as word has spread because everyone understands the importance of the project.
"I think it will be interesting because I think it's obvious we're doing something ensuring that people will be coming here and having those Ryman moments in 120 years," she said.
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LUTZ, Fla. ? Newt Gingrich on Sunday called GOP president rival Mitt Romney a "pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase liberal."
Gingrich made the comments outside a megachurch in Lutz, Fla., two days before the pivotal presidential primary.
Gingrich is trailing Romney in Florida and has been labeling the former governor a Massachusetts moderate. Now Gingrich is moving his 2012 rival even further left.
He also criticized Romney's campaign tactics during two television interviews Sunday morning, decrying his opponent's "basic policy of carpet-bombing his opponent."
One of the ads being run by Romney suggests that Gingrich is exaggerating his ties to Ronald Reagan. Gingrich chafed at that, noting that the former president's son Michael was joining him on the campaign trail Monday "to prove to everybody that I am the heir to the Reagan movement, not some liberal from Massachusetts."
Former GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain, a tea party favorite, will also appear with Gingrich on Monday.
At a large rally Sunday at The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in central Florida, Gingrich accused Democratic President Barack Obama of coddling foreign leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"I believe we need to be stronger than our potential enemies," Gingrich told the crowd. "The president lives in a fantasy world where there are no enemies, there are just misguided people with whom he has not yet had coffee."
He said Chavez "deliberately, cynically and insultingly gave him an anti-American book and Obama didn't have a clue that he'd been insulted."
He said the Obama administration should be focused on Ahmadinejad's "pledge to wipe out Israel and drive America out of the Middle East."
"But if I were a left-wing Harvard law graduate surrounded by really clever left-wing academics I would know that this was really a sign that (Ahmadinejad) probably had a bad childhood," Gingrich said.
He described Obama's approach to Ahmadinejad as, "If only we could unblock him we could be closer to him and we could be friends together."
Gingrich, who served in the House for two decades, also made a populist pitch as a Washington outsider. He said the GOP's "old establishment" is trying to block his path to nomination.
"It's time that someone stood up for hard-working, taxpaying Americans and said, `Enough,'" Gingrich said. "And if that makes the old order uncomfortable, my answer is, `Good.'"
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KINGSTON, Ontario ? A jury on Sunday found three members of an Afghan family guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor," ending a case that shocked and riveted Canadians.
Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet.
The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.
After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.
Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said the evidence clearly supported the conviction.
"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honorless crime," Maranger said. "The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor ... that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."
In a statement following the verdict, Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson called honor killings a practice that is "barbaric and unacceptable in Canada."
Defense lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father's first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn't call police from the scene.
After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust."
His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."
Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."
Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.
But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.
"This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances," Laarhuis said outside court.
"This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," he said to cheers of approval from onlookers.
The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.
Shafia's first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.
The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.
The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.
The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar's room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.
Shafia's first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and "made life a torture," while his second wife called her a servant.
The prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honor killing allegation. The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.
"There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this," Shafia said on one recording. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows ... nothing is more dear to me than my honor."
Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.
Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.
"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said."
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A small asteroid the size of a city bus zoomed between Earth and the moon's orbit Friday, just days after its discovery, but it never posed a threat to our planet, NASA says.
The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth when it made its closest approach at 10:30 a.m. ET. The space rock is about 37 feet (11 meters) wide and would have broken apart in Earth's atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said.
"Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small," astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a Twitter message. "It wouldn't get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try."
The space rock passed Earth at a distance that is only about 0.17 times that between Earth and the moon. For comparison, the moon typically orbits Earth at a distance of about 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers).
Asteroids this small are hard to spot, and luckily they pose the least concern," Asteroid Watch scientists explained. "Our goal is to find the bigger ones." [Video and image of asteroid 2012 BX34's orbit]
In September, NASA announced that it has spotted about 90 percent of the largest asteroids (the size of a mountain or bigger) that can come near Earth. About 911 such giant space rocks have been confirmed. Astronomers estimate there are about 981 big near-Earth objects that occasionally creep close to our planet.
Asteroid 2012 BX34 was the second space rock to fly relatively close by Earth this week, Asteroid Watch scientists said. On Jan. 23, another small asteroid ? called 2012 BS1 ? passed by the planet at a range of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers), which is about 3.1 times the Earth-moon distance.
"Asteroid 2012 BS1 is so small (about 7 meters) it would disintegrate in our atmosphere if it were to come close to Earth," the Asteroid Watch team wrote.
Astronomers with NASA and other science teams routinely scan the skies in search of near-Earth asteroids that could pose a danger to the planet. Experts estimate that asteroids about 460 feet (140 meters) across and bigger can cause widespread devastation near their impact sites, though a larger space rock would be required to cause destruction on a global scale.
More space news from msnbc.com
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: Scientists with NASA?s Kepler planet-hunting mission announce the discovery of 26 distant worlds, nearly doubling the mission?s haul so far.
This week, scientists from around the world are also discussing how Earth should respond to the threat of an asteroid impact. The so-called NEOShield project is a European commission led by the German Aerospace Center and includes scientists from universities and industrial partners in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States and Russia.
You can follow Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
? 2012 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46155814/ns/technology_and_science-space/
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BEIJING ? A young man posts his photo with a leaflet demanding freedom for Tibet and telling Chinese police, come and get me. Protesters rise up to defend him, and demonstrations break out in two other Tibetan areas of western China to support the same cause.
Each time, police respond with bullets.
The three clashes, all in the past week, killed several Tibetans and injured dozens. They mark an escalation of a protest movement that for months expressed itself mainly through scattered individual self-immolations.
It's the result of growing desperation among Tibetans and a harsh crackdown by security forces that scholars and pro-Tibet activists contend only breeds more rage and despair.
That leaves authorities with the stark choice of either cracking down even harder or meeting Tibetan demands for greater freedom and a return of their Buddhist spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama ? something Beijing has shown zero willingness to do.
"By not responding constructively when it was faced with peaceful one-person protests, the (Communist) party has created the conditions for violent, large-scale protests," said Robbie Barnett, head of modern Tibetan studies at New York's Columbia University.
This is the region's most violent period since 2008, when deadly rioting in Tibet's capital Lhasa spread to Tibetan areas in adjoining provinces. China responded by flooding the area with troops and closing Tibetan regions entirely to foreigners for about a year. Special permission is still required for non-Chinese visitors to Tibet, and the Himalayan region remains closed off entirely for the weeks surrounding the March 14 anniversary of the riots that left 22 people dead.
Video smuggled out by activists shows paramilitary troops equipped with assault rifles and armored cars making pre-dawn arrests. Huge convoys of heavily armored troops are seen driving along mountain roads and monks accused of sedition being frog-marched to waiting trucks.
For the past year, self-immolations have become a striking form of protest in the region. At least 16 monks, nuns and former clergy set themselves on fire after chanting for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.
China, fiercely critical of the Dalai Lama, says Tibet has been under its rule for centuries, but many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for most of that time.
In a change from the individual protests, several thousand Tibetans marched to government offices Monday in Ganzi prefecture in Sichuan province. Police opened fire into the crowd, killing up to three people, witnesses and activist groups said.
On Tuesday, security forces opened fire on a crowd of protesters in another area of Ganzi, killing two Tibetans and wounding several more, according to the group Free Tibet.
On Thursday in southwestern Sichuan province's Aba prefecture, a youth named Tarpa posted a leaflet saying that self-immolations wouldn't stop until Tibet is free, the London-based International Campaign for Tibet said. He wrote his name on the leaflet and included a photo of himself, saying that Chinese authorities could come and arrest him if they wished, group spokeswoman Kate Saunders said in an email.
Security forces did so about two hours later. Area residents blocked their way, shouting slogans and warning of bigger protests if Tarpa wasn't released, Saunders said. Police then fired into the crowd, killing a a 20-year-old friend of Tarpa's, a student named Urgen, and wounding several others.
The incident, as with most reported clashes in Tibetan areas, could not be independently verified and exact numbers of casualties were unclear because of the heavy security presence and lack of access. The topic is so sensitive that even government-backed scholars claim ignorance of it and refuse to comment.
The government, however, acknowledged Tuesday's unrest, saying that a "mob" charged a police station and injured 14 officers, forcing police to open fire on them. The official Xinhua News Agency said police killed one rioter and injured another.
"The Chinese government will, as always, fight all crimes and be resolute in maintaining social order," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in comments on the incident.
The harsh response points to a deep anxiety about the self-immolations, said Youdon Aukatsang, a New Delhi-based member of the Tibetan parliament-in-exile.
"They're worried that there is an underground movement in Tibet that is coming to the surface," she said.
Tibetan desperation has been fed both by the harsh crackdown ? security agents reportedly outnumber monks in some monasteries ? along with a deep fear that the Dalai Lama, probably the most potent symbol of Tibet's separate identity, will never return.
The 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate handed his political powers to an elected assembly last year. That was intended to ensure the Tibetan cause would live on after him, but was met with considerable anxiety among many Tibetans who saw it as a sign he was giving up his role as leader of their struggle.
Dibyesh Anand, a Tibet expert at London's University of Westminster, said resistance to Chinese rule is likely to grow more fierce.
"Protests will get more radicalized since the Tibetans in the region see no concession, no offer of compromise, no flexibility coming from the government," he said.
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ROME ? Costa Crociere SpA has offered passengers euro11,000 ($14,460) apiece to compensate them for their lost baggage and psychological trauma after its cruise ship ran aground and capsized off Tuscany when the captain deviated from his route.
Costa, a unit of the world's biggest cruise operator Carnival Corp., will also reimburse passengers the full costs of their cruise, travel expenses and any medical expenses sustained after the grounding.
The agreement was announced Friday after a day of negotiations between Costa representatives and Italian consumer groups representing 3,206 people from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the Costa Concordia hit a reef on Jan. 13.
Passengers and crew are free to pursue legal action if they aren't satisfied with the deal.
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DAVOS, Switzerland ? Chinese investors are trying to follow the rules when spending money abroad, the head of one of China's biggest private equity firms said Thursday, as global leaders increasingly look to the country to prop up the world economy.
Worries that Europe's slowdown would hurt stronger economies are overshadowing discussions at this week's World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. Attention turned Thursday to how China can help, even as some remain wary about its growing dominance.
John Zhao, CEO of Hony Capital, said foreign prejudice about Chinese investments is unfair, but acknowledged that some companies are still learning a game that much of the world has been playing for decades.
Chinese companies and government funds have been using vast reserves of cash to buy up foreign companies and invest in foreign government bonds in recent years. But with billions of dollars in Chinese investments pouring into their countries, some governments have accused China of seeking to exploit the economic weakness of others to grab valuable natural and technological resources at rock bottom prices.
The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama has also repeatedly accused China of breaking global trade rules by giving unfair protection to its companies and domestic workers.
"The vast majority of Chinese companies are trying to follow the rules as they understand it," said Zhao, whose company controls PC maker Lenovo, which bought IBM's computer division in 2005. "But many Chinese companies are still trying to learn the rules."
The director general of the World Trade Organization, Pascal Lamy, said China will continue to face "public perception problems" from its investments abroad.
"We will see in the years to come, as China's investments grow and grow. ... We will have the same sort of political turbulences as we have had on trade for the last 10 years," he said.
One way for China to ease the rest of the world's fears about its extravagant corporate shopping sprees is be more open about its vast poverty problem at home, said Lamy.
"In order for this to result in a win-win game a number of public perception issues have to be addressed," he said.
Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld reminded listeners that China's companies aren't the only ones with a reputation problem.
"We in the Western world have had a long tradition of corporate misdeeds," he said, citing Enron in the United States and Parmalat of Italy ? both of which collapsed after years of hiding massive holes in their accounts.
Yale President Richard C. Levin suggested the rest of the world could be grateful for China's investment interest, as eventually the country of over 1 billion people will have to start spending more of its cash on problems at home, including the lack of proper social security for an aging population.
"Some fraction of these trillions could be used domestically," he said.
The head of the Asian Development Bank said Asia has already been affected by the ongoing European financial crisis in two ways ? through the withdrawal of credit in Asia by many European banks and financial institutions and a drop in trade, which will impact China because Europe is its largest export market.
"I really hope that the European financial crisis can be overcome," Haruhiko Kuroda said in an interview with The Associated Press.
The Davos forum, where business and political leaders gather every year in an invitation-only event, is under growing criticism by those who feel it's too removed from the real world.
Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and other leaders brought any sense of euphoria crashing back down to earth, appealing for the millions of people who do not have enough food to eat.
"The world can feed itself. Africa can feed itself. The problem is we have vulnerable populations who do not have access," Okonjo-Iweala said.
Malnourished people, particularly kids, are more susceptible to dying from malaria and other diseases in Africa, said Microsoft founder Bill Gates, whose philanthropy has mainly focused on promoting health.
Gates also rode to the rescue of a beleaguered health fund by pledging $750 million to fight three of world's killer diseases. A donor backlash over losses at the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria forced it to cancel more than $1 billion in new spending last year. The fund's executive director said Tuesday he is resigning.
Leaders at the Davos forum are looking later Thursday at challenges to democratic institutions around the world, including protest movements such as Occupy Wall Street.
Activists from Occupy Davos are camping out in igloos and yurts to call attention to income inequality.
"With 50 million people going below the poverty line, and over 200 million becoming unemployed with the recent crisis, it's stopped being a question of hardship and starting to become an issue of human rights violations," said Salil Shetty, the secretary-general of Amnesty International.
"This is a man-made crisis and the people who have caused the crisis, many of whom are in Davos, should be held to account," he told The Associated Press.
___
John Heilprin and Edith M. Lederer in Davos contributed to this story.
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SEOUL, South Korea ? Samsung Electronics Co. reported a 17 percent jump in fourth quarter profit on the strength of smartphone sales even as the company battled claims it had copied Apple's iPhone.
Samsung said Friday in a regulatory filing that its net profit reached 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) in the three months that ended in December. The company earned 3.4 trillion won in the same quarter a year earlier.
The Suwon, South Korea-based company said its operating profit jumped 75.8 percent to 5.3 trillion won in the fourth quarter. The figure was closely in line with the company's estimate earlier this month of a 73 percent rise.
The company, however, posted an operating loss of 220 billion won in its display division in the fourth quarter despite a sales increase of 19 percent from the previous year.
"If profit in handsets continues to stream in, this year will also likely be a solid one for Samsung," said Jae Lee, an analyst at Daiwa Securities in Seoul. "The biggest threat would be if the global economy worsens."
Samsung, the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips and liquid crystal displays, said demand for semiconductors in mobile products and servers remained solid despite weakness in personal computers, which face stiff competition from the rising popularity of tablets.
Samsung has over the decades grown into a key global manufacturer of components that let PCs, digital music players and handsets store data and display it on flat, high-resolution screens. The company has recently been stepping up its challenge against Apple Inc. in the global smartphone business, releasing models such as the Galaxy S II.
Cupertino, California-based Apple, which spurred the smartphone boom with the launch of its iPhone in 2007, has accused Samsung of "slavishly" copying its smartphone and iPad in design, user interface and packaging. Apple sued Samsung in April last year in the United States.
The legal battle has now spilled into 10 countries, according to Samsung officials. Court rulings so far have tended to side with Apple.
Lee said legal battles with Apple would start weighing less on Samsung this year as the South Korean company is expected to release models with new designs.
The quarterly profit brought 2011 net profit to 13.7 trillion won, down 15 percent from the previous year.
Samsung shares rose 0.4 percent to 116,000 won in Seoul.
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SwitchMe brings makeshift guest account to Android root users originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink |Android Market | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/26/switchme-brings-makeshift-guest-account-to-android-root-users/
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 25, 2012) ? Coastal storms are known to cause serious damage along the shoreline, but they also cause significant disruption of the deep-sea ecosystem as well, according to a study of extreme coastal storms in the Western Mediterranean published in the Jan. 25 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE.
The researchers, led by Anna Sanchez-Vidal of the University of Barcelona in Spain, identified a storm in Dec. 2008 as the most extreme storm in the area over the last 25 years, and found that it resulted in major redistribution of marine organic carbon associated with clay particles from shallow to deep water. This injection of carbon helps support life in the deeper water and boosts carbon sequestration, the authors write.
Despite the importance of such events for deep-sea ecosystems, however, the severe damage to coastal environments must also be taken into account, and both of these factors must be considered when considering how human-induced climate change might alter the overall ocean ecosystem.
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