We Salute the First Baby Senator

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For

Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.

RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot

RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette

Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 

RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark

RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House

The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:

And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: We Salute the First Baby Senator
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/we-salute-the-first-baby-senator/
Link To Post : We Salute the First Baby Senator
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Bethenny Frankel Divorcing Jason Hoppy

By Sarah Michaud

01/05/2013 at 05:00 PM EST

Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy

Albert Michael/Startraks

It's official – Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy's marriage is over.

Having announced a separation over the holidays, the reality star began the divorce process by filing earlier this week in New York, TMZ reports.

"It brings me great sadness to say that Jason and I are separating," Frankel, 42, had said in a statement Dec. 23. "This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family."

The split comes after months of rumors that the pair – who married in 2010 and are parents to daughter Bryn, 2½ – were on the rocks.

"Bethenny is devastated," a friend tells PEOPLE.

Read More..

FDA: New rules will make food safer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.

The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.

Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

Exports of U.S. Gas May Fall Short of High Hopes

Michael Stravato for The New York Times

Cheniere Energy is building a facility for liquefied natural gas in Cameron Parish, La. It is the first to secure an export license.

HOUSTON — Only five years ago, several giant natural gas import terminals were built to satisfy the energy needs of a country hungry for fuels. But the billion-dollar terminals were obsolete even before the concrete was dry as an unexpected drilling boom in new shale fields from Pennsylvania to Texas produced a glut of cheap domestic natural gas.

Now, the same companies that had such high hopes for imports are proposing to salvage those white elephants by spending billions more to convert them into terminals to export some of the nation’s extra gas to Asia and Europe, where gas is roughly triple the American price.

Just like last time, some of the costly ventures could turn out to be poor investments.

Countries around the world are importing drilling expertise and equipment in hopes of cracking open their own gas reserves through the same techniques of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling that unleashed shale gas production in the United States. Demand for American gas — which would be shipped in a condensed form called liquefied natural gas, or L.N.G. — could easily taper off by the time the new export terminals really get going, some energy specialists say.

“It will be easier to export the technology for extracting shale gas than exporting actual gas,” said Jay Hakes, former administrator of the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration. “I know the pitch about our price differentials will justify the high costs of L.N.G. We will see. Gas by pipeline is a good deal. L.N.G.?  Not so clear.” 

Even the terminal operators acknowledge that probably only a lucky few companies will export gas because it can cost $7 billion or more to build a terminal, and then only after a rigorous federal regulatory permitting process. The exploratory process to find a suitable site for a new terminal alone can take a year and cost $100 million, operators say, and financing can be secured only once long-term purchase agreements — 20 years or more — are reached with foreign buyers.

“It’s a monumental effort to put a deal together like this, and you need well-heeled partners,” said Mark A. Snell, president of Sempra Energy, which is based in San Diego and is applying for permits to turn around a Hackberry, La., import terminal for export. “There are only a handful of people who can do this kind of thing.”

At least 15 proposed terminal projects have filed regulatory applications to export gas, and if all were approved, they could export more than 25 billion cubic feet a day, equivalent to more than a third of domestically consumed natural gas.

Environmental advocates say that kind of surge in demand would produce a frenzy of shale drilling dependent on hydraulic fracturing of hard rocks, an industrial method they say endangers local water supplies and pollutes the air. Dow Chemical, a big user of natural gas, and some other manufacturers express concerns that an export boom could threaten to raise natural gas prices for factories and consumers and, ultimately, kill jobs.

Opponents are already lobbying the Obama administration to reject most of the planned terminals, and protests have already occurred. Sempra, Exxon Mobil, Cheniere Energy and others have already built import terminals on the Gulf of Mexico. With docking facilities and giant gas tanks already built on land they had acquired and received permits for, they have a huge advantage over companies that have not yet built terminals. Cheniere, the only company to secure an export license, already has entered long-term purchase agreements for its L.N.G., and several other companies are only a few steps behind.

Dominion Power, which operates a nearly idle import terminal near Cove Point on Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, is also expected to proceed with a conversion to exports, since it is strategically located near the mid-Atlantic gas fields of the Marcellus Shale.

“You have got to be able to change, adapt as changes take place in the world,” said Michael E. Gardner, manager of the Cove Point plant.

The companies with import terminals now wanting to export won a victory in December when an Energy Department report said exports of L.N.G. could produce $30 billion a year in export earnings without driving up domestic gas prices significantly.

Many energy specialists expect the Obama administration to approve several export license applications in the next couple of years, and exports could begin as soon as 2015.

The plans for a gas export boom are based on the theory that cheap American gas will remain cheap for decades while Asian and European gas supplies remain tight and expensive. Global demand for natural gas is expected to expand for decades as nations seek a replacement for coal, nuclear energy and increasingly expensive oil, energy specialists say.

Eric Lipton contributed reporting from Washington.

Read More..

The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault

So there’s a reading gadget and a reading gadget with Angry Birds Star Wars. Which do you pick? Well, you, cultured person that you are, would select the dedicated e-reader, of course, just like you would rather watch Frontline instead of Honey Boo Boo, or pick up Vanity Fair instead of Us Weekly on the checkout line. Or at least that’s what the ideal version of yourself would do. But as Amazon and Barnes & Noble are quickly discovering this year, the highbrow ideal all too often gives way to the mass-market realities. Sales of the Kindle and especially the Nook fell this holiday season, despite lower prices than more fully functioning tablets, which are distinctly on the rise. And market researchers estimate that these divergent paths will continue — The Wall Street Journal reports that e-readers sales will be cut in half, from 14.9 million per year to just 7.8 million, by 2015. But the death of the e-reader has less to do with the iPad than what’s inside of it: from tablets to TV shows and everything in between, the most high-minded of ideas for cultural consumption always seem to devolve toward mindless entertainment.

RELATED: Gordon Brown Predicts the Future; Cormac McCarthy Doesn’t Tweet

Take Bravo, the once completely enlightened — and completely failing — network that, like Arts & Entertainment and The Learning Channel before they became A&E and TLC, once devoted itself to being a slightly less boring knockoff of PBS. In 1985, five years after its founding, The New York Times‘s Steve Schneider described Bravo’s success, measured then by its 350,000 subscribers, as follows: 

What has kept things afloat for the past five years has been an evolving mix of cultural programming. Nowadays, a spokesman said, approximately 70 percent of the premium service’s schedule is devoted to films, nearly all of which are either from abroad, from the fringes of American production or from times past. The remainder of the schedule is given over to the performing arts -jazz concerts, ballet, opera, modern dance and the like. From Woody Allen films to documentaries about Latin America to performances by the Pina Bausch dance troupe, the offerings range from the challenging to the downright esoteric.

All that changed when NBC bought Bravo in 2002 and gave it a makeover almost completely motivated by ratings. It started with Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, which in its first year delivered 3.3 million viewers per episode. Then came the much acclaimed era of Top Chef and Project Runway, which are still considered highbrow in their own way, but only in the context of their fellow reality shows like The Real Housewives. And let’s face it: Bravo is pretty much all Housewives all the time. Well, that and a show about Silicon Valley that features no computer programming at all.

RELATED: Barnes & Noble CEO Is Done with Books; 43 Famous Writers Walk into a Cafe

And remember The Learning Channel? It was founded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, along with NASA. Really! Then in came Discovery as the new boss, and with it American Chopper and, eventually, TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras, which birthed Honey Boo Boo — not to mention major ratings. Arts & Entertainment has long been a corporate entity, but it gave way from highbrow post-Nickelodeon fare and devolved into, you know, Dog the Bounty Hunter and whatever Gene Simmons is up to these days.

RELATED: The New Kindles We’ll Probably See at Today’s Amazon Event

It’s all a little reminiscent of the days when Us magazine was actually a glossy movie magazine that Hollywood stars loved to pose for. The New York Times started it! Then came a partnership with Disney, and J.Lo, and on and on to the supermarket tabloid you now know as Us Weekly, one of the most successful print publications on Earth.

RELATED: Ebook Juggernaut John Locke Coming Soon to a Bookstore Near You

So, in the slowly dwindling technological world of the e-reader and its advanced brethren, Amazon‘s Kindle is like old-school TLC and the B&N Nook is maybe a little younger and cooler, like Bravo, but still failing; the iPad, however, has Here Comes Honey Boo Boo written all over it. Not that there’s anything wrong with what Amazon and Barnes & Noble were trying to do — a small audience might enjoy a device that has novels and long biographies and maybe some newspapers and little more. But the majority of people these days want to spend their downtime with HBO Go and Netflix apps, with games and email and other ways to relax their entire brains… not just the fancy parts of it. With tablet prices falling to more affordable levels — Amazon sells a Kindle Fire for $ 159 and a Kindle Paperwhite for $ 119 — of course today’s readers are going to choose the thing that helps them go beyond boring old reading. It might not have that easy-on-the eyes screen, but the majority of time spent on tablets isn’t spent reading books but answering emails, reading the news (a shorter reading experience than an entire book), and playing games, according to Pew. Plus, the iPad has its own Kindle app, for those times when you do, after all, feel like indulging in something a bit more highbrow. Because people do, still read a lot of books. They just like doing everything else a lot more. If the death of the e-reader is nigh, maybe the age of the straight-and-narrow, undistracted smartypants isn’t far from ending, either.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/the-death-of-e-readers-is-all-your-fault/
Link To Post : The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Courteney Cox: I'll 'Show My Boobs' on the New Season of Cougar Town

TV Watch

01/04/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Courteney Cox is taking the term "boob tube" literally.

The Cougar Town star, 48, whose show moves from ABC to TBS on Jan. 8, eagerly anticipates more um, revealing scenes once the program makes its way to the cable network.

"You will not see one scene that I don't show my boobs," Cox joked to reporters Friday at the Television Critics Association winter tour, according to Access Hollywood.

"You know what? I'm getting older, so I've decided at this point I'm taking less focus [on] the face, and focusing here," she added, pointing to her chest. "By the time I'm much older, I will just be absolutely nude. I think it's [going to] work for me, I hope."

The show's executive producer, Bill Lawrence, backed up Cox's comments. "There is one difference [with the show going to cable]," he said Friday. "I think I'm allowed to say … Courteney did declare this the year of her cleavage."

Still, the star isn't exactly baring it all. Although there is an episode themed "naked day" for Cox's character Jules and her on-camera hubby Grayson (Josh Hopkins), there will be no actual nudity on the show.

Read More..

FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.

The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.

The FDA's proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.

Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.

In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.

Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.

"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.

The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.

The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.

The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.

Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.

In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."

The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.

FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.

The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.

Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.

"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Read More..

S&P 500 finishes at 5-year high on economic data

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index ended at a five-year high on Friday, lifted by reports showing employers kept up a steady pace of hiring workers and the vast services sector expanded at a brisk rate.

The gains on the S&P 500 pushed the index to its highest close since December 2007 and its biggest weekly gain since December 2011.

Most of the gains came early in the holiday-shortened week, including the largest one-day rise for the index in more than a year on Wednesday after politicians struck a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 43.85 points, or 0.33 percent, to 13,435.21. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 7.10 points, or 0.49 percent, to 1,466.47. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> edged up 1.09 points, or 0.04 percent, to 3,101.66.

For the week, the S&P gained 4.6 percent, the Dow rose 3.8 percent and the Nasdaq jumped 4.8 percent to post their largest weekly percentage gains in more than a year.

The CBOE Volatility index <.vix>, a measure of investor anxiety, dropped for a fourth straight session, giving the index a weekly decline of nearly 40 percent, its biggest weekly fall ever. The close of 13.83 on the VIX marks its lowest level since August.

In Friday's economic reports, the Labor Department said non-farm payrolls grew by 155,000 jobs last month, slightly below November's level. Gains were distributed broadly throughout the economy, from manufacturing and construction to healthcare.

Also serving to boost equities was data from the Institute for Supply Management showing U.S. service sector activity expanding the most in 10 months.

With the S&P 500 index at a five-year closing high, analysts said any gains above the index's intraday high near 1,475 in September may be harder to come by.

"We are getting to a point where we need a strong catalyst, which could be earnings, it could be three months of good economic data, it could be a variety of things," said Adam Thurgood, managing director at HighTower Advisors in Las Vegas, Nevada.

"What is going on right now is this conflicting view of fundamentals look pretty good and improving, and then you've got these negative tail risks that could blow everything up," Thurgood said.

He referred to "a fiscal superstorm brewing" of issues still left unresolved in Washington, including tough federal budget cuts and the need to raise the government's debt ceiling all within a couple of months.

The rise in payrolls shown by the jobs data did not make a dent in the U.S. unemployment rate still at 7.8 percent.

A Reuters poll on Friday of economists at Wall Street's top financial institutions showed that most expect the Fed in 2013 to end the program with which it bought Treasury debt in an effort to stimulate the economy.

A drop in Apple Inc shares of 2.6 percent to $528.36 kept pressure on the Nasdaq.

Adding to concerns about Apple's ability to produce more innovative products, rival Samsung Electronics Co Ltd is expected to widen its lead over Apple in global smartphone sales this year with growth of 35 percent. Market researcher Strategy Analytics said Samsung had a broad product lineup.

Eli Lilly and Co was among the biggest boost's to the S&P, up 3.7 percent to $51.56 after the pharmaceuticals maker said it expects its 2013 earnings to increase to $3.75 to $3.90 per share, excluding items, from $3.30 to $3.40 per share in 2012.

Fellow drugmaker Johnson & Johnson rose 1.2 percent to $71.55 after Deutsche Bank upgraded the Dow component to a "Buy" from a "Hold" rating. The NYSEArca pharmaceutical index <.drg> climbed 0.6 percent.

Shares of Mosaic Co gained 3.3 percent to $58.62. Excluding items, the fertilizer producer's quarterly earnings beat analysts' expectations, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Volume was modest with about 6.07 billion shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq, slightly below the 2012 daily average of 6.42 billion.

Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,287 to 701, while on the Nasdaq, advancers beat decliners 1,599 to 866.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)

Read More..

5 in New Delhi Rape Case Face Murder Charges

Sajjad Hussain/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Indian lawyers protested on Thursday outside a court in New Delhi where charges were filed in a gang rape case.

NEW DELHI — Rape, murder and other charges were filed on Thursday against five men suspected of carrying out the gang rape of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student who later died of her injuries in a case that has prompted outrage and protests across India.

A court official announced that beyond rape and murder, the charges include destruction of evidence and the attempted murder of the woman’s companion, a list of crimes that could result in the rare imposition of the death penalty. A court official said the charges would be made public on Saturday. A sixth suspect is a juvenile, and his case will be handled separately for now.

The case against the five men will be referred almost immediately to a new fast-track court set up in recent days to handle cases involving crimes against women, officials said. That court is expected to hold a trial soon in stark contrast to the apathy and years of delay that Indian rape victims often face when seeking justice.

The five are accused of luring the woman and her friend onto a bus in South Delhi, beating them and abusing her so brutally with a metal rod during the rape that she sustained fatal internal injuries. The woman clung to life for two weeks but died Saturday in a Singapore hospital, where she had been transferred for special care.

Gang rapes have become common in India, a country that some surveys suggest has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world. Rape complaints increased 25 percent between 2006 and 2011, although it is impossible to know whether this represents a real increase in crime or simply an increased willingness by victims to file charges and by the police to accept them.

But something about the recent crime caught the public’s attention. Among the reasons could be the randomness of the crime (most rape victims know their abusers), its brutality and the sympathetic profile of the victim.

The outpouring of anger at the crime caught the government by surprise, and there has been widespread criticism of its aggressive response to protesters, which included tear gas, water cannons and beatings by truncheon-wielding riot police officers. The government invoked a terrorism law that prohibits even small gatherings, and it closed a huge portion of the capital to vehicular and pedestrian traffic.

The government’s reaction fed longtime criticism that India’s police are too often used to guard the powerful from the people rather than to protect the people from predators. India’s police are generally poorly trained, deeply corrupt and often viewed by women as predators rather than protectors.

The case has also led to a continuing discussion about the conflict between the aspirations of India’s rising middle class and a deeply conservative and patriarchal culture that views the recent educational and economic successes of Indian women with unease and even alarm.

Kishwar Desai, an author, wrote an opinion article in The Indian Express on Thursday that said the gang rape illustrated to some that “a certain class of men is deeply uncomfortable with women displaying their independence, receiving education and joining the work force. The gang rape becomes a form of subduing the women, collectively, and establishing their male superiority.”

Because of the intense interest prompted by the case, a crowd of television cameras and reporters jostled inside and outside of the courthouse for much of Thursday. And with officials refusing to provide routine information about whether the suspects would arrive at the courthouse, rumors about the day’s events ricocheted around the media scrum like a drop of water on a hot frying pan.

Niharika Mandhana contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 3, 2013

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article erroneously reported that the charges had been filed earlier on Thursday.

Read More..

Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has settled a U.S. government probe into its business practices without making any major concessions on how the company runs its Internet search engine, the world’s most influential gateway to digital information and commerce.

Thursday’s agreement with the Federal Trade Commission covers only some of the issues raised in a wide-ranging antitrust investigation that could have culminated in a regulatory crackdown that re-shapes Internet search, advertising and mobile computing.

But the FTC didn’t find any reason to impose radical changes, to the relief of Google and technology trade groups worried about overzealous regulation discouraging future innovation. The resolution disappointed consumer rights groups and Google rivals such as Microsoft Corp., which had lodged complaints with regulators in hopes of legal action that would split up or at least hobble the Internet’s most powerful company.

Google is still trying to settle a similar antitrust probe in Europe. A resolution to that case is expected to come within the next few weeks.

After a 19-month investigation, Google Inc. placated the FTC by agreeing to a consent decree that will require the company to charge “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” prices to license hundreds of patents deemed essential to the operations of mobile phones, tablet computers, laptops and video game players.

The requirement is meant to ensure that Google doesn’t use patents acquired in last year’s $ 12.4 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility to thwart competition from mobile devices running on software other than Google‘s Android system. The products vying against Android include Apple Inc.’s iPhone and iPad, Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry and Microsoft‘s Windows software.

Google also promised to exclude, upon request, snippets copied from other websites in capsules of key information shown in response to search requests. The company had insisted the practice is legal under the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law. Nonetheless, even before the settlement, Google already had scaled back on the amount of cribbing, or “scraping,” of online content after business review site Yelp Inc. lodged one of the complaints that triggered the FTC investigation in 2011.

In another concession, Google pledged to adjust the online advertising system that generates most of its revenue so marketing campaigns can be more easily managed on rival networks.

Google, though, prevailed in the pivotal part of the investigation, which delved into complaints that the Internet search leader has been highlighting its own services on its influential results page while burying links to competing sites. For instance, requests for directions may turn up Google Maps first, queries for video might point to the company’s own site, YouTube, and searches for merchandise might route users to Google Shopping.

Although the FTC said it uncovered some obvious instances of bias in Google‘s results during the investigation, the agency’s five commissioners unanimously concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to take legal action.

“Undoubtedly, Google took aggressive actions to gain advantage over rival search providers,” said Beth Wilkinson, a former federal prosecutor that the FTC hired to help steer the investigation. “However, the FTC’s mission is to protect competition, and not individual competitors.”

Two consumer rights groups lashed out at the FTC for letting Google off too easily.

“The FTC had a long list of grievances against Google to choose from when deciding if they unfairly used their dominance to crush their competitors, yet they failed to use their authority for the betterment of the marketplace,” said Steve Pociask, president of the American Consumer Institute.

John Simpson of frequent Google critic Consumer Watchdog asserted: “The FTC rolled over for Google.”

David Wales, who was the FTC’s antitrust enforcement chief in 2008 and early 2009, said the agency had to balance its desire to prevent a powerful company from trampling the competition against the difficulty of proving wrongdoing in a rapidly changing Internet search market.

“This is a product of the FTC wanting to push the envelope of antitrust enforcement without risking the danger of losing a case in in court,” said Wales, who wasn’t involved with the case and is now a partner at the law firm Jones Day.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the outcome “is good for consumers, it is good for competition, it is good for innovation and it is the right thing to do.” Before reaching its conclusion, the FTC reviewed more than 9 million pages of documents submitted by Google and its rivals and grilled top Internet industry executives during sworn depositions.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, a technology trade group, applauded the FTC for its handling of the high-profile case.

“This was a prudent decision by the FTC that shows that antitrust enforcement, in the hands of responsible regulators, is sufficiently adaptable to the realities of the Internet age,” said Ed Black, the group’s president.

The FTC has previously been criticized for not doing more to curb Google‘s power. Most notably, the FTC signed off on Google‘s $ 3.2 billion purchase of online advertising service DoubleClick in 2008 and its $ 681 million acquisition of mobile ad service AdMob in 2010. Google critics contend those deals gave the company too much control over the pricing of digital ads, which account for the bulk of Google‘s revenue.

If Google breaks any part of the agreement, Leibowitz said the FTC can fine the company up to $ 16,000 per violation. Last year, the FTC determined that Google broke an agreement governing Internet privacy, resulting in a $ 22.5 million fine, though the company didn’t acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Google‘s ability to protect its search recipe from government-imposed changes represents a major victory for a company that has always tried to portray itself as force for good. The Mountain View, Calif., company has portrayed its dominant search engine as a free service that is constantly tweaking its formula so that people get the information they desire more quickly and concisely.

“The conclusion is clear: Google‘s services are good for users and good for competition,” David Drummond, Google‘s top lawyer, wrote in a Thursday blog post.

Google‘s tactics also have been extremely lucrative. Although Google has branched into smartphones and many other fields since its founding in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998, Internet search and advertising remains its financial backbone. The intertwined services still generate more than 90 percent of Google‘s revenue, which now exceeds $ 50 billion annually.

Throughout the FTC investigation, Google executives also sought to debunk the notion that the company’s recommendations are the final word on the Internet. They pointed out that consumers easily could go to Microsoft‘s Bing, Yahoo or other services to search for information. “Competition is just a click away,” became as much of a Google mantra as the company’s official motto: “Don’t be evil.”

Microsoft cast the FTC’s investigation as a missed opportunity.

“The FTC’s overall resolution of this matter is weak and — frankly —unusual,” Dave Heiner, Microsoft‘s deputy general counsel, wrote on the company’s blog. “We are concerned that the FTC may not have obtained adequate relief even on the few subjects that Google has agreed to address.”

FairSearch, a group whose membership includes Microsoft, called the FTC’s settlement “disappointing and premature,” given that European regulators might be able to force Google to make more extensive changes.

“The FTC’s inaction on the core question of search bias will only embolden Google to act more aggressively to misuse its monopoly power to harm other innovators,” FairSearch asserted.

Yelp also criticized the FTC’s handling of the case, calling “it a missed opportunity to protect innovation in the Internet economy, and the consumers and businesses that rely upon it.”

Investors had already been anticipating Google would emerge from the inquiry relatively unscathed.

Google‘s stock rose 42 cents Thursday to close at $ 723.67. Microsoft, which is based in Redmond, Wash., shed 37 cents, or 1.3 percent, to finish at $ 27.25.

In a research note Thursday, Macquarie Securities analyst Benjamin Schachter described the settlement as “the best possible outcome” for Google. “We believe that the terms of the agreement will have very limited negative financial or strategic implications for the company.” Schachter wrote.

___

AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this story.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/google-emerges-from-ftc-probe-relatively-unscathed/
Link To Post : Google emerges from FTC probe relatively unscathed
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..