New BlackBerry to Be ‘Most Comprehensive in Mobile History’

RIM is finally ready with its answer to Apple’s iPhone and the many Android smartphones. After months of delays, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, along with others from the company, will take the stage Wednesday in New York to unveil the final version of BlackBerry 10, the next version of RIM’s phone software, and the phones that will run it.

“We expect tomorrow to really be the kickoff for the introduction of Blackberry 10,” RIM’s Chief Marketing Officer Frank Boulben told ABC News in a phone interview. “We have been engaged for quite a period of time with the two main constituents — the carriers and the developers — and we’ve already said we are in the labs of more than 150 carriers around the world.”

Column: BlackBerry Burden: What RIM Must Do to Come Back

With more than 150 wireless carriers around the world planning to offer the latest BlackBerry, Boulben says it will be the most “comprehensive launch,” not only for the company, but in the history of the mobile industry.

“This makes it the most comprehensive launch in mobile history. There has never been a platform launching with that many carriers,” he said. When the iPhone 5 made its debut in September it actually had more — Apple said there would be 240 carriers by December. But Boulben points out that BlackBerry 10 is an entirely new operating system that doesn’t share a single line of code with previous BlackBerry software; the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, by contrast, was essentially an upgrade.

At Wednesday’s event the company will show its new handsets in detail. RIM is expected to release a touch-screen device called the Z10 and another with a physical keyboard. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon have said they will carry devices that run the new software. Boulben also said RIM will highlight major differences between BlackBerry 10 and the other leading mobile phone platforms.

“We are highly differentiated in four areas,” Boulben said. The first is with communications — RIM has designed the software around a messaging hub and new multitasking features. The second: the touch keyboard, which predicts words as you are typing them. Lastly, RIM says its BlackBerry Messenger and its BlackBerry Balance feature, which separates work from personal uses on the phone, set it apart.

Boulben would not address specifically how much market share RIM is hoping to gain back in the U.S., having lost the lead it had in the last decade. According to Kantar Worldpane ComTech’s data released in November 2012, the BlackBerry brand only had 1.6 percent of the American smartphone market. The iPhone had 48.1 percent of the market and Android had 46.7.

“It’s a change in smartphone experience — the dominant paradigm, introduced six years ago, was great and revolutionary at the time. But six years is a long time for a technology cycle, with a new user experience with a clear focus we have the opportunity to take market share back,” Boulben said.

RIM CMO: BlackBerry 10 Will Make Others Look Outdated

While RIM is of course bullish about its new products, it faces one big challenge it might not be able to control: apps. While the platform might be innovative, it will trail behind the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in variety of apps. Boulben says the momentum around apps is strong and that Wednesday the BlackBerry World store will launch with 70,000 new apps.

RIM BlackBerry 10 Launch

Apps that worked on previous BlackBerry 7 devices won’t work on the BlackBerry 10 platform, since it is completely new. Analysts say that apps are bound to be the pain point for the platform, but it’s not too late to rule out RIM from taking back at least some of what it has lost.

“Given the speed that the market is moving, it’s hard to be dismissive of RIM given the strength of their brand and continued loyalty of many users,” Michael Gartenberg, Gartner Research Director, told ABC News. “It will be important for RIM to show tomorrow how they’ve evolved the BlackBerry to meet the challenges of other platforms and at the same time show positive differentiation.”

And that seems to be exactly RIM’s plan. “The time was right to switch to a new platform, one that will allow us to continue true to our DNA but also take it to the next level,” Boulben said. “It is a major undertaking for the company. It has been two years in the making, but we are ready.”

RIM’s BlackBerry 10 event begins at 10:00 a.m. ET on Jan. 30, 2013. ABC News will be reporting on the news throughout the day.

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Ashley Judd Splits from Husband Dario Franchitti

01/29/2013 at 08:05 PM EST

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti

Robin Marchant/Wireimage

Ashley Judd and Dario Franchitti are splitting after more than a decade of marriage.

"We have mutually decided to end our marriage. We'll always be family and continue to cherish our relationship based on the special love, integrity, and respect we have always enjoyed," Judd, 44, and Franchitti, 39, tell PEOPLE exclusively in a statement on Tuesday.

After being engaged for about two years, the Missing star and the racecar driver tied the knot in a highly private ceremony in Scotland in 2001.

Judd's sister, Wynonna Judd, served as maid of honor, while the groom's brother Mario was the best man. – Julie Jordan

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.

Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.

Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.

"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.

"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."

Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.

Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."

Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.

Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.

Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.

For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.

The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.

Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.

The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.

"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."

Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.

A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.

"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.

He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.

Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.

And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.

"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.

Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.

Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.

His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."

"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."

___

Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.

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Chesapeake CEO McClendon steps down after year of tumult

(Reuters) - Chesapeake Energy Corp said on Tuesday that Aubrey McClendon will step down as chief executive after a tumultuous year in which a series of Reuters investigations triggered civil and criminal probes of the second-largest U.S. natural gas producer.

News of the executive's plan to depart on April 1 boosted the company's shares by 9 percent. The stock has made a partial recovery since losing almost half its value last spring after a Reuters report opened the company and its co-founder up to intense scrutiny.

Federal regulators and Chesapeake's board are both looking into whether McClendon, 53, blurred the line between his personal dealings and that of the company, and into possible antitrust violations. Big shareholders took control of the board in June after he was stripped of his title as chairman of the company he co-founded in 1989.

The internal deliberations that led to McClendon's departure remain unclear. The findings of the board's probe will be released next month, but Chesapeake said in a statement that the review has "to date found no improper conduct."

"I think that the controversy, governance and other issues that have been pulled up have caused lots of questions about him," said David Larcker, professor of accounting at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. "This was just sucking up so much time, it had to be a reasonable decision to change management."

Chairman Archie Dunham was not available to comment late on Tuesday. The former head of ConocoPhillips was brought in to quell the shareholder revolt.

In an email to employees, McClendon put his departure down to "philosophical differences" with the board, but assured them: "The separation will be amicable and smooth."

Despite a history of McClendon's perks and corporate benefits creating controversy among shareholders, he will leave Chesapeake with a lavish package. The company said he "will receive his full compensation and other benefits to which he is entitled."

A person familiar with the terms of McClendon's departure said it was being treated as "termination without cause," entitling the CEO to some of the most generous benefits laid out in an employment contract that details a wide range of severance scenarios.

A chart presented to shareholders before Chesapeake's annual meeting last year showed that termination without cause could entitle McClendon to as much as $53 million in total benefits over five years, including up to $2.5 million related to his use of company aircraft. It was not clear whether McClendon's package would conform to that chart, which was based on past compensation levels. Chesapeake's board recently cut McClendon's pay package and gave him no bonus for 2012.

The same chart presented to shareholders showed that, if McClendon had retired without the backing of the board, he could have been on the hook for millions in "claw-back" payments related to a $75 million award from the company in 2008.

A Chesapeake spokesman declined comment.

FRACK KING

As head of a company that bet big on natural gas, McClendon played a key role in promoting the hydraulic fracturing technology that unlocked the huge U.S. supplies in shale formations that are now depressing prices.

News of his departure comes just over two weeks after Encana Corp CEO Randy Eresman said he would step down immediately.

Last June, Reuters reported that Chesapeake plotted with Encana, its top competitor, to suppress land prices in the Collingwood shale in Northern Michigan, a matter that is the subject of investigation by both the state of Michigan and the Department of Justice.

That followed a Reuters investigation in April which found McClendon had arranged to personally borrow more than $1 billion from EIG Global Energy Partners, a firm that also is a big investor in Chesapeake.

The loans, arranged through McClendon's personal shell companies, were secured by his interest in company wells. McClendon is allowed to take up to 2.5 percent stake in every well Chesapeake drills under a controversial program called the Founders Well Participation Program (FWPP).

"The empire that he built was based on far higher gas prices, both for Chesapeake and for him through the Founder Well Participation Program. So given that outlook, it's not a surprise he is stepping down," said Mark Hanson, an oil and gas analyst at Morningstar Inc in Chicago.

"At the end of the day, it's no longer the company that it once was. The board is really not with him these days. If you have done things a certain way for 23 years and then all of a sudden things change as radically as they have in the last six months, it's hard to get used to."

In early May, after another Reuters investigation revealed that McClendon had partially owned and helped run a secretive $200 million hedge fund to trade in the same commodities Chesapeake produces, Florida Senator Bill Nelson urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate potential market manipulation or fraud by the CEO.

An aide to Senator Nelson said he was not immediately available for comment on McClendon's pending departure.

Major investors Carl Icahn, who now has a Chesapeake stake of nearly 9 percent, and Mason Hawkins, with 13.5 percent, took control of the nine-member board last June.

In a statement issued about a half-hour after the news of the departure, Icahn said he believed history would prove McClendon was right about the ultimate value of natural gas and praised the assets assembled by the former CEO.

"While it is known that some of these assets will be sold by the company in due course, I do not believe that this will in any way effect the ultimate realization of Chesapeake's potential," Icahn said.

Chesapeake has been forced to sell billions of dollars worth of acreage, but Dunham said in a memo to employees on Tuesday that "the company is not for sale."

Chesapeake shares rose to $20.69 in post market trading, up from a New York Stock Exchange close of $18.97. The stock is down from highs just above $26 last March, which came before natural gas prices tumbled to decade lows and McClendon became an object of so much bad publicity.

(Reporting by Anna Driver and Brian Grow, with additional reporting by Joshua Schneyer and David Sheppard.; Writing by Braden Reddall; editing by Carol Bishopric, Phil Berlowitz and Andre Grenon)

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World Briefing | Africa: Civilians in South Sudan Seek Refuge After Rebel Clash

A clash in the middle of a market town between rebels and South Sudan’s military over the weekend left four civilians dead, officials said, and the fighting forced about 2,000 people to seek refuge at United Nations base in Pibor, a United Nations spokesman, Kouider Zerrouk, said Monday.

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His cat, his lunch and a high five: Harper’s day chronicled on Twitter

OTTAWA – One of the cardinal rules of social media: no one cares what you had for lunch. Unless, perhaps, you’re the prime minister.

The people behind Stephen Harper‘s Twitter account are using the first day of Parliament’s winter sitting to provide an intimate look at how the prime minister spends his day.

The posts include a video of Harper’s ride to work, photos of breakfast with his cat Stanley and a lunch that included fruit and a Diet Coke at his desk.

The behind-the-scenes look is the latest move by Harper’s team to bolster his presence on social media platforms.

Digital public affairs analyst Mark Blevis says it’s likely an effort to rebrand Harper in the lead-up to the next election, where he’ll face off against politicians far more adept online.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Soldier who lost 4 limbs has double-arm transplant

On Facebook, he describes himself as a "wounded warrior...very wounded."

Brendan Marrocco was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, and doctors revealed Monday that he's received a double-arm transplant.

Those new arms "already move a little," he tweeted a month after the operation.

Marrocco, a 26-year-old New Yorker, was injured by a roadside bomb in 2009. He had the transplant Dec. 18 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, his father said Monday.

Alex Marrocco said his son does not want to talk with reporters until a news conference Tuesday at the hospital, but the younger Marrocco has repeatedly mentioned the transplant on Twitter and posted photos.

"Ohh yeah today has been one month since my surgery and they already move a little," Brendan Marrocco tweeted Jan. 18.

Responding to a tweet from NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski, he wrote: "dude I can't tell you how exciting this is for me. I feel like I finally get to start over."

The infantryman also received bone marrow from the same dead donor who supplied his new arms. That novel approach is aimed at helping his body accept the new limbs with minimal medication to prevent rejection.

The military sponsors operations like these to help wounded troops. About 300 have lost arms or hands in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Unlike a life-saving heart or liver transplant, limb transplants are aimed at improving quality of life, not extending it. Quality of life is a key concern for people missing arms and hands — prosthetics for those limbs are not as advanced as those for feet and legs.

"He was the first quad amputee to survive," and there have been four others since then, Alex Marrocco said.

The Marroccos want to thank the donor's family for "making a selfless decision ... making a difference in Brendan's life," the father said.

Brendan Marrocco has been in public many times. During a July 4 visit last year to the Sept. 11 Memorial with other disabled soldiers, he said he had no regrets about his military service.

"I wouldn't change it in any way. ... I feel great. I'm still the same person," he said.

The 13-hour operation was led by Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, plastic surgery chief at Johns Hopkins. It was the seventh double-hand or double-arm transplant done in the United States.

Lee led three of those earlier operations when he worked at the University of Pittsburgh, including the only above-elbow transplant that had been done at the time, in 2010.

Marrocco's "was the most complicated one" so far, Lee said in an interview Monday. It will take more than a year to know how fully Marrocco will be able to use the new arms.

"The maximum speed is an inch a month for nerve regeneration," he explained. "We're easily looking at a couple years" until the full extent of recovery is known.

While at Pittsburgh, Lee pioneered the immune-suppression approach used for Marrocco. The surgeon led hand-transplant operations on five patients, giving them marrow from their donors in addition to the new limbs. All five recipients have done well, and four have been able to take just one anti-rejection drug instead of combination treatments most transplant patients receive.

Minimizing anti-rejection drugs is important because they have side effects and raise the risk of cancer over the long term. Those risks have limited the willingness of surgeons and patients to do more hand, arm and even face transplants.

Lee has received funding for his work from AFIRM, the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine, a cooperative research network of top hospitals and universities around the country that the government formed about five years ago. With government money, he and several other plastic surgeons around the country are preparing to do more face transplants, possibly using the new immune-suppression approach.

Marrocco expects to spend three to four months at Hopkins, then return to a military hospital to continue physical therapy, his father said. Before the operation, he had been fitted with prosthetic legs and had learned to walk on his own.

He had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

Despite being in a lot of pain for some time after the operation, Marrocco showed a sense of humor, his father said. He had a hoarse voice from the tube that was in his throat during the long surgery and decided he sounded like Al Pacino. He soon started doing movie lines.

"He was making the nurses laugh," Alex Marrocco said.

___

Associated Press Writer Stephanie Nano in New York contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Army regenerative medicine:

http://www.afirm.mil/index.cfm?pageid=home

and http://www.afirm.mil/assets/documents/annual_report_2011.pdf

___

Follow Marilynn Marchione at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP .

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Asian shares rise, cautious before Fed, U.S. data

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Tuesday as recent selling drew bargain hunters, but investors were cautious ahead of more U.S. economic reports and a Federal Reserve policy decision later in the week that may offer clues to the Fed's stimulus plans.

The MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> advanced 0.7 percent to snap a four-day losing streak, led by a 1.1 percent jump in Australian shares <.axjo> to a fresh 21-month high on gains in financials shares.

South Korean shares <.ks11>, which slumped to an 8-week low on Monday, rebounded 0.8 percent.

Japan's Nikkei stock average <.n225> reversed earlier declines and rose 0.6 percent, buoyed by optimism over earnings of major banks. It briefly touched a fresh 32-month high above 11,000 on Monday. <.t/>

The benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> eased slightly on Monday after an eight-day winning run but held above 1,500 points, after closing above that level on Friday for the first time in more than five years.

Risk appetite has been improving overall with U.S. earnings generally solid. A rise in a gauge of planned U.S. business spending in December added to a recent run of positive global economic data, along with signs of easing financial stress in the euro zone. Euro zone blue chips touched fresh 18-month peaks on Monday.

More solid U.S. growth indicators would, however, fuel speculation the Fed may consider pulling back on aggressive easing stimulus. The Fed ends a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday. The first estimate of U.S. fourth-quarter gross domestic product also will be released on Wednesday, followed by non-farm payrolls on Friday.

"Ahead of key events, markets are likely to stay in ranges. But with yields on U.S. Treasury and German government bonds inching higher, one might say investors may be shifting funds to riskier assets from safe-havens," said Yuji Saito, director of foreign exchange at Credit Agricole in Tokyo.

"That's part of the reason why the euro has stayed firm," he said.

Saito said while a rise in U.S. yields underpins the dollar against the yen, they were likely to be capped with end-month selling from exporters and options lined up between 90.50 and 91.50 yen.

The benchmark U.S. 10-year note yield briefly pierced 2 percent on Monday for the first time since last April, and inched up 1 basis point (bps) in Asia from New York close. The 10-year Japanese government bond yield also rose.

Naka Matsuzawa, fixed income strategist at Nomura Securities, said in a research that 5-year Treasuries have sold off about 10 bps over the last two days and breached 0.80 percent that has served as a support since April 2012, a sell-off which "would not have occurred unless expectations of an economic recovery have gained ground to the extent that the monetary policy outlook begins to change."

"The market is aware that risks are toward more hawkish FOMC statements in the future rather than dovish ones," considering a pick-up in the U.S. economic recovery and stock market rally, as well as the underlying global risk-on trend, he said.

YEN SELLING PAUSES

Yen selling paused, helping to bolster the benchmark South Korean stock index which is vulnerable to exchange rate swings as exporters lead market capitalization.

The dollar fell 0.1 percent to 90.78 yen after touching 91.32 on Monday, its highest level since June 2010, while the euro recouped earlier losses against the yen to steady around 122.14 yen after hitting 122.91 on Monday, its highest point since April.

The euro steadied against the dollar at $1.3456.

The pound fell to $1.5687 GBP=D4, near its lowest since August, in part because of comments from incoming Bank of England Governor Mark Carney that there was still scope for monetary policy to do more in the developed world.

"The prospect of more activist monetary policy is not exactly an encouraging one for GBP, certainly not as it comes on top of a host of other negative developments - an economy that is triple-dipping, a government that is struggling to cut its deficit, and soul-searching about the UK's role within the EU," wrote analysts at JPMorgan in a note.

But a more positive global growth outlook underpinned commodities.

U.S. crude rose 0.2 percent to $96.67 a barrel and Brent inched up 0.1 percent to $113.54.

London copper gained 0.2 percent to $8,065.50 a tonne.

Gold inched up 0.3 percent to $1,659.66 an ounce but was capped by receding investor appetite for safe-haven assets.

(Editing by Eric Meijer & Kim Coghill)

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Korean Artifact Bought Online Leads to Arrest

The video says it shows a man named Won Young Youn, in a dark polo shirt, sitting casually at a table in Flushing, Queens. In his left hand he holds a recent purchase from an online auction, a small metal tablet that, he explains, is a plate that was used for printing currency in Korea during the tumultuous period before that country became a colony of imperial Japan.

As to how the century-old artifact got from Seoul to an auction house in Michigan, Mr. Youn is frank: During the Korean War, an American Marine simply took it from the royal palace. He adds: “When I saw that, it really caught my attention.”

Now, Mr. Youn is in a federal detention center in Detroit, where he was taken after his arrest this month on charges of possessing and transporting stolen goods, felonies that each carry a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The arrest came about as a result of a multiagency investigation that was aided by the South Korean government.

The arrest was also a result of Mr. Youn’s boasting. Though he received warnings, including one from the South Korean Embassy, that his purchase was illegal, he eagerly told Korean-language newspapers and radio and television stations of his acquisition.

The plate is perhaps the only survivor of a small number that were created in the 1890s, when a republic briefly existed between the decline of the Korean monarchy and the start of Japanese rule in 1910, according to Joshua Van Lieu, a professor of Korean history at LaGrange College in Georgia. Dr. Van Lieu, whose research on the plate’s significance was used in the investigation, added that given the plate’s rarity, “it would be priceless.”

Mr. Youn, 54, paid $35,000 for it in an April 2010 auction held by Midwest Auction Galleries, a company in Oxford, Mich.

The plate was among the items it was selling on behalf of a Michigan woman named Kathy Vogt; according to the criminal complaint, Ms. Vogt said she knew little about their provenance other than that they had been handed down by a relative who had been a Marine during the Korean War.

Reached by telephone, her husband, Robert Vogt, would not answer questions about the plate or the case. “The way things are, I would rather not discuss it right now,” he said.

Shortly before the 2010 sale, a State Department official as well as Jong Cheol Lee, the Korean Embassy’s counselor for legal affairs, warned the auction house that the plate was believed to have been looted, and that selling it would be a violation of the National Stolen Property Act, according to the criminal complaint.

A man who answered the telephone at Midwest Auctions last week said James Amato, the auction house’s owner, was not available to speak to a reporter. The man, who identified himself only as Jim, expressed surprise that Mr. Youn had been arrested.

No one associated with the auction house has been charged with a crime, said Gina Balaya, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department in Washington, who added that the investigation was continuing.

Mr. Youn, who lives in Fort Lee, N.J., bought the plate while using a friend’s computer in Flushing, the authorities said.

Mr. Lee said in an interview that when he called Mr. Youn after the sale and told him the item was stolen and should be returned, Mr. Youn said that as a Korean, he was proud to have reclaimed it. In the spate of coverage that ensued in the Korean media, Mr. Youn seemed to present himself as a sort of Indiana Jones figure, saving Korean artifacts from obscurity in the United States.

That posture did not make him hard to find. While Dr. Van Lieu was doing his research, he saw the video on YouTube of Mr. Youn sitting at the table in Flushing and holding the plate, according to the criminal complaint. Mr. Youn was arrested in Palisades Park, N.J., on Jan. 9. He is awaiting a detention hearing scheduled for this week.

Patrick J. McIlwain, a lawyer at Rha & Kim of Bayside, Queens, which represents Mr. Youn, said the firm was “committed to defending him.” He declined to comment further on the case.

The printing plate has been confiscated, a spokesman for United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement said. It is likely to be returned to South Korea. The situation was not what Mr. Lee, the embassy official, had hoped for. “The goal is not for a person of Korean origin to be convicted,” he said. “The goal is to retake a precious cultural asset.”

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Vine Has a Porn Problem Because Of Course It Does

It’s actually pretty surprising that it took everyone three days to figure out that Twitter’s new cell phone camera-powered video sharing app, Vine, is perfect for porn. Vine has it all. It can record reasonably high quality videos of anything you want, on-the-go, and post it publicly for all the Internet to see. You add hashtags so that people can easily find special interest content. There’s even a little comments section so that you can share your thoughts about the distinctively addictive six-second loops. Heck, we’d be surprised if people didn’t immediately start to post pictures of their genitals doing what genitals do. They probably did, actually. Everyone else was just too busy watching pictures of their friends pets and children to notice.

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But alas, by Sunday everyone had noticed. Although it had already been mentioned on smaller tech blogs, the Vine porn problem started to become widely known after New York Times reporter Nick Bilton tweeted, “Friend: ‘So are people using Vine for porn yet?’ Me: “‘Nah, I don’t think so.’ Friend: ‘Check the hashtag #porn.” Both: “Holy ****!’” And the thing is, he’s totally right. TechCrunch published a post on the NSFW trick — #NSFW works for porn seekers, too, by the way — broaching the topic of Apple‘s App Store coming down hard on the adult-only content. It’s against the rules, see, and Apple has a history of yanking apps that become magnets for all things naughty. The Verge followed up a few minutes later with the headline, “Apple has a porn problem, and it’s about the get worse.”

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This got us thinking: These App Store restrictions on pornographic content have been around as long as the App Store. Surely in the past five or so years, the moderators know a porn magnet when they see one. Vine is hardly the first video-sharing app to make it through the approval process, not to mention the many photo-sharing apps. (And Apple’s certainly not afraid of enforcing those rules, as we learned when it yanked the 500px app after it started to become home to “pornographic images and material.”) It’s no anomaly that Vine made through, though. As virtually every new video- or photo-sharing service has shown us since the dawn of the Internet, from Flickr to ChatRoulette, it’s very difficult to keep these sites or apps G-rated. So the companies either learn how to police it well, like Flickr does, or they wither and die, as ChatRoulette did.

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So it’s hard to believe that the App Store didn’t consider the fact that people might upload pictures of their penises to Vine. It’s more likely that they did and decided to see how Twitter would deal with it, when it became a problem. After all, Vine is not going to be the last video-sharing app to be built and it certainly won’t be the last porn-friendly app to be built either. So Twitter gets to play guinea pig and navigate the tricky terrain of moderating user-generated content in real time. It’s a good thing they already have a boatload of experience doing that on Twitter! See, look how fast they came up with a solution. A company statement reads:

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Users can report videos as inappropriate within the product if they believe the content to be sensitive or inappropriate (e.g. nudity, violence, or medical procedures). Videos that have been reported as inappropriate have a warning message that a viewer must click through before viewing the video.

Uploaded videos that are reported and determined to violate our guidelines will be removed from the site, and the user that posted the video may be terminated.

Twitter being Twitter — that is, big proponents of the free flow of information — they stop short of defining “inappropriate” in Vine’s terms and conditions. Unlike Twitter, which has been free to operate on the whole of the Internet, however, Vine lives in Apple’s house now. If Twitter’s hands off policy doesn’t do enough to keep smut off the iPhone, Apple will surely pull the plug, and then, well — then we’ll be back to where we were last week.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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