Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/187264685?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
White House casts doubt over anti-piracy legislation (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? White House officials raised concerns on Saturday about online piracy legislation pending in Congress that Google and Facebook have decried as heavy-handed and Hollywood studios and music labels say is needed to save U.S. jobs.
In a blog posting, three advisers to President Barack Obama said they believed the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and other bills could make businesses on the Internet vulnerable to litigation and harm legal activity and free speech.
"Any effort to combat online piracy must guard against the risk of online censorship of lawful activity and must not inhibit innovation by our dynamic businesses large and small," said the officials, including White House cyber-security czar Howard Schmidt.
The House of Representatives' SOPA bill aims to crack down on online sales of pirated American movies, music or other goods by forcing Internet companies to block access to foreign sites offering material that violates U.S. copyright laws.
U.S. advertising networks could also be required to stop online ads and search engines would be barred from directly linking to websites found to be distributing pirated goods.
The search engine Google has repeatedly said the bill goes too far and could hurt investment. Along with other Internet firms such as Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter and eBay, it has run advertisements in major newspapers urging Washington lawmakers to rethink their approach.
STEALING JOBS
Proponents of stricter piracy rules reacted strongly to Saturday's White House statement, which darkened prospects for legislation already expected to struggle to clear Congress in an election year.
"It is not censorship to enforce the law against foreign thieves," said Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican who chairs the House judiciary committee. He estimated intellectual property industries provide 19 million high-paying U.S. jobs and account for more than 60 percent of American exports.
"Congress cannot stand by and do nothing while some of America's most profitable and productive industries are under attack," he said in a statement responding to the White House.
Smith, in an interview with Reuters on Thursday, had vowed to press ahead with the bill in spite of criticism from Google and others and said he thought it would pass the House, where Republicans have a majority.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it strongly supported the House legislation as well as the "Protect IP Act" in the Democrat-controlled Senate, calling both "narrowly targeted bills designed to target the worst of the worst offenders."
"Given the broad consensus that this issue needs to be addressed, it is time to come together and adopt strong legislation that ends the ability of foreign criminals to prey on innocent consumers and steal American jobs," it said.
The Motion Picture Association of America said while the White House statement raised significant points, "protecting American jobs is important too, particularly in these difficult economic times for our nation."
And the Recording Industry Association of America, noting the United States is the world's top exporter of creative works, said it was intolerable for Internet companies to be allowed "to direct law-abiding consumers to unlawful and dangerous sites."
"Hyperbole, hysteria and hypotheticals cannot change the fact that stealing is wrong, costing jobs and must be contained," it said.
PUBLIC OPPOSITION
Schmidt and the other advisers said the Obama administration was ready to work with lawmakers on a narrower, more targeted approach to online piracy to ensure that legitimate businesses - including start-up firms - would not be harmed.
They also said online firms and Internet providers should adopt voluntary standards to clamp down on piracy, an approach Republicans in Congress and many companies have said lacks the teeth to have an impact.
Saturday's statement did not make clear whether Obama would veto the piracy legislation if it reaches his desk, something the White House would likely spell out more formally ahead of any votes in Congress.
Sherwin Siy, deputy legal director of the consumer rights group Public Knowledge, called on lawmakers to set aside the existing bills and get to work on a new "consensus bill" responding to the White House concerns.
"The messages being sent by the public in opposition to this bill are finally getting through to Washington," Siy said.
(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz, Jim Finkle and Tom Ferraro; Editing by John O'Callaghan and Todd Eastham)
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Man gives up 94 hamsters
LAWRENCE, Mass.?? A Massachusetts man has turned over 94 hamsters to a local animal shelter, telling officials he was running out of room in his apartment.
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C'mon ? what's not to like?
Hoof it over to Facebook to join the weird news herd.
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C'mon ? what's not to like?
The director of the shelter says the rodents were well cared for and will make nice pets.
Shelter director Mike Keiley tells the Eagle-Tribune that the hamsters' owner, whom he didn't identify, stopped by this month and said he had a lot of hamsters to surrender.
"There are just many, many of them. He ran out of space for them and that's when he came in."
A Lawrence animal control officer says the man was "overwhelmed" when officials came to get the hamsters Friday, and initially wanted to keep a few. But she says he changed his mind.
Officials say the man started keeping the hamsters about five years ago.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45998436/ns/us_news-weird_news/
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Monday, January 16, 2012
Motorola Droid Razr Maxx hands-on (video)
Its showing wasn't as noteworthy as it was last year, but Motorola still at least brought a few new goodies to put on display. The latest major addition to Verizon's Droid Razr family, the Razr Maxx, was on hand, as were the white and purple variants of the original version. So what makes the $300 subsidized Maxx so different from its predecessor? Simply enough, the name is a direct reflection of the phone's battery life, as it sports a thicker (translating to a thickness of 8.99mm, a couple millimeters thicker than the original) 3,300 mAh juicepack that promises an out-of-this-world 21 hour talk time. Sadly, we didn't have 21 full hours to dedicate to testing this claim, but we did have enough time to get a few pictures and a video of the entire Droid Razr family together at last below the break.
Continue reading Motorola Droid Razr Maxx hands-on (video)
Motorola Droid Razr Maxx hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Jan 2012 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Panetta assures Afghans of full probe into video (AP)
WASHINGTON ? Pentagon leaders scrambled Thursday to contain damage from an Internet video purporting to show four Marines urinating on Taliban corpses ? an act that appears to violate international laws of warfare and further strains U.S.-Afghan relations.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called Afghan President Hamid Karzai to offer assurances of a full investigation and the top Marine general promised an internal probe as well as a criminal one. Investigators moved quickly to identify and interview at least two of the four Marines. They were members of a battalion that fought for seven months in former Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan.
Their unit, the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, returned from Helmand province to its home base at Camp Lejeune, N.C., last September. Marine officials said that a battalion officer confirmed to investigators on Thursday, based on his examination of the video, that the four men depicted urinating had been members of the battalion. Two have since moved on to other units.
As the video spread across the Internet in postings and re-postings, U.S. officials joined with Afghans in calling it shocking, deplorable, inhumane and a breach of military standards of conduct. It shows men in Marine combat gear standing in a semicircle urinating on the bodies of three men in standard Afghan clothing, one whose chest was covered in blood.
It's not certain whether the dead were Taliban fighters, civilians or someone else.
The incident will likely further hurt ties with Karzai's government and complicate negotiations over a strategic partnership arrangement meant to govern the presence of U.S. troops and advisers in Afghanistan after most international combat troops withdraw by the end of 2014.
Panetta said the incident could endanger U.S.-Afghan-Taliban peace talks.
"The danger is that this kind of video can be misused in many ways to undermine what we are trying to do in Afghanistan and the possibility of reconciliation," Panetta said at Fort Bliss, Texas, adding it's important for the U.S. to move quickly to "send a clear signal to the world that the U.S. will not tolerate this kind of behavior and that is not what the U.S. is all about."
The emergence of the video comes at a delicate time in relations among the United States, Afghanistan's elected government and the Taliban insurgency fighting for both territorial control and cultural and religious preeminence in Afghanistan. The U.S. is trying to foster peace talks between the Karzai government and the Pakistan-based Taliban high command, and has made unprecedented offers to build trust with the insurgents, including the planned opening of a Taliban political office to oversee talks.
Anti-American sentiment is already on the rise in Afghanistan, especially among Afghans who have not seen improvements to their daily lives despite billions of dollars in international aid. They also have deplored the accidental killing of civilians during NATO airstrikes and argue that foreign troops have culturally offended the Afghan people, mostly when it comes to activities involving women and the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Pentagon officials said the criminal investigation would likely look into whether the Marines violated laws of war, which include prohibitions against photographing or mishandling bodies and detainees. It also appeared to violate the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs conduct. Thus, some or all of the four Marines could face a military court-martial or other disciplinary action.
Karzai called the video "completely inhumane." The Afghan Defense Ministry called it "shocking." And the Taliban issued a statement accusing U.S. forces of committing numerous "indignities" against the Afghan people.
U.S. officials said a military criminal investigation was being led by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the law enforcement arm of the Navy. The Marines will do their own internal investigation.
Panetta said the actions depicted in the brief video were inexcusable.
"I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," Panetta's statement said. "Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent."
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, said he was deeply disturbed by the video and worried that it would erode the reputation of the entire military, not just the Marine Corps.
A veterans group, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, noted the video was the act of a small number of Marines and said it did not reflect the behavior of the millions who have served honorably.
"Our troops and veterans are already facing enormous challenges and stereotypes both overseas and at home, and we encourage the public and media worldwide to refrain from rushing to stereotypes," the group said in a statement.
Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, the top civilian executive of the Marines and Navy, said it was "appalling and outrageously offensive," and Marine Commandant James Amos called it "wholly inconsistent with the high standards of conduct and warrior ethos" demanded in the Corps.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Barack Obama was aware of the story but may not have seen the video.
Asked how she thought the development might affect the Afghanistan peace efforts, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not directly reply.
"The United States remains strongly committed to helping build a secure, peaceful, prosperous, democratic future for the people of Afghanistan," she said. "And we will continue to support efforts that will be Afghan-led and Afghan-owned to pursue the possibility of reconciliation and peace."
On the streets of Afghanistan, the reaction was cool.
"If these actions continue, people will not like them (the Americans) anymore and there will be uprising against them," Mohammad Qayum, said while watching a television news story about the video that was airing in a local restaurant in Kabul.
Ahmad Naweed, a shopkeeper in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban insurgency, said, "On the one hand, the Americans present themselves as friends of Afghanistan and ... they also try to have peace talks with the Taliban. So we don't know what kind of political game they are playing in Afghanistan."
This kind of embarrassment dispersed over the Internet is not new for the Pentagon.
Over the years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, officials periodically have been stunned by the troops' penchant for taking photos or videos of themselves in acts ranging from criminal to simply stupid.
Outrage spread instantly across the globe in 2004 over the release of photos taken by a group of U.S. military police abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The troops were grinning and posing beside naked detainees stacked in a pyramid, held on a leash and so on.
In 2008, a Marine was kicked out of the service after being videotaped throwing a puppy off a cliff while on patrol in Iraq and joking about it as the animal yelped.
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Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic and Deb Riechmann in Kabul, Afghanistan, Juan Carlos Llorca in Fort Bliss, Texas and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.
Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/robertburnsAP
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Skype for Mac Beta update adds revamped call UI, incoming video calls
Skype's Mac Beta software was anointed with another update this morning, adding an "improved" user interface and new voice call support. With version 5.5, users will be able to accept incoming calls with or without video, while taking advantage of the program's streamlined layout, which has apparently made it easier for them to mute, transmit videos, share screens and add others on to their calls. Skype is currently asking for feedback on the new build, so if you wanna give it a spin for yourself, check out the source link below.
Continue reading Skype for Mac Beta update adds revamped call UI, incoming video calls
Skype for Mac Beta update adds revamped call UI, incoming video calls originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Saturday, January 14, 2012
Peru court sentences Van der Sloot to 28 years (AP)
LIMA, Peru ? Joran van der Sloot knew his guilty plea in the strangulation death of a young woman he met at a Lima casino was a big gamble as he tried to get a reduced sentence. On Friday, the poker-loving Dutchman lost.
A three-judge panel sentenced him to 28 years in prison, discarding his claims of contrition in a killing his lawyer said was triggered by trauma from being the prime suspect in the unsolved 2005 disappearance of U.S. teen Natalee Holloway.
Asked if he accepted the sentence, Van der Sloot, standing in a green T-shirt and faded jeans in a hot Lima courtroom, said he would appeal.
The sentencing marked the latest chapter in the tabloid-sustaining saga and came a day after a judge in Alabama declared Holloway legally dead as her parents try to bring Van der Sloot, 24, to the U.S. for a related crime.
"I believe he is beyond rehabilitation," Dave Holloway in Birmingham, Ala., after that hearing.
The Peruvian judges said Friday that due to time already served, van der Sloot's sentence would end in June 2038.
While the parents of Holloway and Flores want him to experience the greater deprivation of a U.S. prison, they will have to wait for him to serve his time before any extradition on U.S. charges related to his alleged extortion of Holloway's mother, a Peruvian legal expert said.
Late Friday, prison authorities told the AP that Van der Sloot had been transferred to the high-security Piedras Gordas prison in northern Lima in response to reports that he had enjoyed privileges like television, internet access and a cell phone in Castro Castro prison. Piedras Gordas holds local crime bosses and terrorism convicts, including Shining Path guerrillas.
"He will be in an individual cell at Piedras Gordas to give authorities greater control of him and cut off some of the facilities he has had in Castro Castro," said prison service spokeswoman Janeth Sanchez.
Earlier Friday, the three female judges showed no sign of believing his contrition for the May 2010 killing of Stephany Flores. Their sentence, which took a clerk nearly two hours to read as Van der Sloot repeatedly wiped sweat from his brow, said he was guilty of "first-degree murder with aggravating factors of ferocity and great cruelty."
Van der Sloot stood passively as the clerk detailed how he elbowed Flores, a 21-year-old business student, in the face, beat her repeatedly, then strangled her with his bloodied shirt.
Van der Sloot's expression didn't change when the sentence was rendered, including the judges' order to pay $75,000 in reparations to the victim's family. No members of Van der Sloot's family attended the trial.
It is the first sentence ever imposed on Van der Sloot despite repeated efforts to prove he was involved in Holloway's apparent death on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba where he grew up. She was last seen leaving a nightclub with him.
The Peruvian victim's father, Ricardo Flores, complained after the sentencing that Van der Sloot was living well in a Lima prison, where he has been segregated from the general population.
"A jail isn't a five-star hotel," Ricardo Flores told reporters. "Since the first day, we've been complaining about the excessive privileges" Van der Sloot allegedly enjoyed in jail.
Unconfirmed news reports, denied by penal authorities, say Van der Sloot has had a cell phone, television, a video gaming console and Internet access in his cell. A Peruvian TV station published a photo Friday it says was taken by Van der Sloot himself of his prison cell that shows a 42-inch LCD television, a Blu-ray player and an Internet modem.
Flores said that "everything they showed on the TV has been proven" but that he would not have documentation of it to present to the news media until Monday.
Van der Sloot's attorney, Jose Jimenez, said he is not familiar with his client's prison cell.
As in many developing nations, foreigners with money can buy superior treatment in Peru's prisons, including decent food, while the vast majority of inmates suffer overcrowding and constant peril from criminal gangs.
Under Peru's penal system, Van der Sloot could become eligible for parole after serving half the sentence with good behavior, including work and study. The judges specified that Van der Sloot, as a foreigner, be expelled from Peru after serving his sentence.
Peruvian criminal law expert Luis Lamas said Peru's legal code specifies that Van der Sloot serve his time before he can be extradited.
But Ken Randall, dean of University of Alabama law school, said he believes Peru's extradition treaty with the United States would allow for Van der Sloot to be extradited to the U.S. to stand trial on the extortion and fraud charges before his sentence ends.
"In this extraordinary case of Natalee Holloway, Peru would be well advised to do so," he said.
There is no indication U.S. officials have moved to seek to extradite Van der Sloot.
Van der Sloot was indicted on those charges in Alabama the same day he was arrested for the Flores murder. He is accused of accepting $25,000 in return for a promise to lead a lawyer for Holloway's mother to her daughter's remains.
Van der Sloot didn't deliver on the offer, and U.S. authorities say he may have used some of the money to fly to Peru two weeks before the Flores murder. After killing the Lima woman, he took nearly $300 in cash from Flores as well as credit cards, and was captured four days later in Chile.
Van der Sloot told police he flew into a rage when she discovered his connection to Holloway while they were playing online poker in his hotel room. He had received an instant message from someone about the case.
Police forensic experts disputed that story, and the judges who sentenced him noted that Van der Sloot later recanted the confession, claiming it was exacted under duress and without an official translator. The victim's family contends Van der Sloot killed Flores so he could rob her.
The imposing young man raised on a tourist island has been a staple of tabloids and true crime TV, as well as the subject of several books about Holloway.
The 18-year-old from a wealthy Birmingham suburb disappeared on May 30, 2005, during a high school graduation trip. Her body was never found and repeated searches turned up nothing even as the case garnered worldwide attention.
Van der Sloot said he was involved in her disappearance in a videotape clandestinely made by a Dutch journalist. He later denied it, however, and has told several interviewers that he is a pathological liar. A homicide investigation into her death remains open in Aruba though there has been no recent activity, officials said.
___
Associated Press Writers Martin Villena, Carla Salazar and Franklin Briceno contributed to this report.
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Online:
AP interactive: http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/natalee-holloway
___
Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak
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