Small Business Saturday | BlueNC

In a consumer-based economy, you have more power than you think:

Today?s the day - Small Business Saturday! You did a fantastic job spreading the word in support of small businesses everywhere. Now, let?s get out there to support the businesses we love. If millions of people Shop Small it will be HUGE!

And while you're at it, put away that mega-corp charge card and pay in cash, baby!

Source: http://www.bluenc.com/small-business-saturday

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View Facebook Timeline on iPad with This App

So last month we came across the hoopla of the?Facebook Timeline?- undoubtedly, one of the greatest things Facebook ever did to itself, a feature that is yet to be rolled out to most of the normal users. In case you do not know, Facebook Timeline compiles a biography style timelapse of a user, in the chronological order, as they happened and got archived on Facebook.

While the Facebook Timeline is still in beta phase and only available to Facebook?app?developers, many geekier folks have tried the workarounds and thus, activated the Facebook Timeline on their profiles. Taking the same approach forward, famous iOS app company Loytr, mostly known for?MyPad for Facebook, has now come up with yet another Facebook-related app called?Facebook for Timelines, letting you use Facebook on?your?iPad?in the Timeline style, as compared to the boring conventional profiles.

But only when you use the app, you find out this app is way ahead of the Facebook Timeline on your desktop itself! It has the major iPad touch that you need in every biography you read though your iPad! You can flick through the transitions on your Facebook friend's profiles or just simply choose to go to any friend's profile straightaway, using the list compiled on the basis of alphabetical order. The flick, the animated transitions, is what the desktop versions of Facebook Timeline do not have - very much like iBooks or other reader apps on your iPad.

The home feed very much looks like the desktop browser version of Facebook being displayed on your iPad. Since the app is free of cost, the app sports iAds for revenue, though looking at the experience it offers, the ads do not affect much of the experience. The app is 5.9 MB in size and has a restriction to be compatible with?iOS?4.0 or higher only.

The app gives you the option to create a Facebook Timeline in case you do not have one already. This is a cool feature for all those who haven't activated the Timeline on their?Facebook?profiles?as yet.

Since Facebook for iPad contains many bugs which are depicted in the user comments on iTunes as well, this can be a great third party?Facebook?app, especially if you like using your iPad more like a slate/e-book reading sort of a gadget. You can?download?Timelines for Facebook?here for free.

The original post was published on Simon Blog.?

Source: http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/256617/20111127/ipad-app-facebook-timeline.htm

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NYT: Conservatives mount air assault on Obama

Inside the debate halls, the clash may be Republican versus Republican. But offstage, conservatives are mounting a unified and expensive air assault on the candidates? common opponent: President Obama.

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Nearly a year before Election Day, Republican presidential candidates and conservative action groups are already spending heavily on television advertising aimed at casting Mr. Obama as a failure.

Their tactics, the aggressive and sometimes misleading kind not typically used until much further along in a campaign season, have led to a spat with Democrats in what is shaping up to be the most costly election advertising war yet.

In an advertisement from Gov. Rick Perry of Texas that is now running on national cable television, Mr. Perry looks directly into the camera and declares: ?Obama?s socialist policies are bankrupting America. We must stop him now.?

A new commercial from Mitt Romney that ran last week in New Hampshire displays a litany of depressing assertions about the economy. ?Greatest jobs crisis since Great Depression. Record home foreclosures. Record national debt.? And it renders judgment on Mr. Obama?s presidency: ?He promised he would fix the economy. He failed.?

In the past six months, conservative groups like those affiliated with Karl Rove and the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, and, increasingly, Republican candidates themselves, have spent more than $13 million on advertisements carrying a negative message about Mr. Obama, according to an analysis by Kantar Media?s Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising.

And it is only going to grow more intense.

?These dollar figures we?re talking about now are going to seem quaint in a few months,? said Kenneth M. Goldstein, president of the analysis group. ?And they?ll seem really quaint in eight or nine months.?

$3 billion outlay?
Total television advertising spending on the 2012 election cycle could top $3 billion, up from $2.1 billion four years ago, Kantar estimates, fueled in part by the rise of independent groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns.

Candidates have previously tended to use their early advertising to introduce themselves to voters in gauzy terms. But this time around, Mr. Obama?s opponents are betting they can employ early attacks to define an image of him at the very beginning of the election season, before Democrats fully unleash the hundreds of millions of dollars being raised by the president. Their perceived advantage: airwaves not yet clogged with competing political messages.

But going negative so early also carries substantial risks. One is that many voters are not yet paying much attention to the campaign and will not do so until much closer to next November, meaning the advertising expenditures could be largely wasted. And negative messages now could alienate moderate and independent voters who blame excessive partisanship for Washington?s troubles in addressing the nation?s big problems.

Still, the Republican candidates seem eager to escalate the fight. Mr. Romney and Mr. Perry have both brushed off criticism that they deliberately distorted Mr. Obama?s words in their most recent commercials ? controversies that only brought them additional attention.

Mr. Perry took remarks by the president about the need to do more to lure foreign investment out of context to suggest that Mr. Obama believes Americans are lazy. And Mr. Romney edited a video clip to put in Mr. Obama?s mouth a thought actually expressed by a supporter of Senator John McCain in the 2008 presidential race, misleadingly suggesting that Mr. Obama believes he cannot win if he talks about the economy.

Democrats responding
The White House and its allies have hardly been shy about going after the Republicans. Democrats have already run advertisements in Arizona, Iowa and South Carolina against Mr. Romney, who, if he wins the nomination, will be the subject of an intense Democratic effort to show him as an unprincipled flip-flopper.

Priorities USA Action, a pro-Obama group founded with the help of Bill Burton, a former White House spokesman, has spent almost a million dollars on television advertisements.

Although Mr. Obama is all but certain to have a substantial fund-raising advantage over his eventual Republican rival, Mr. Burton said that in the early going, when outside groups are playing a particularly prominent role in laying out the arguments on both sides, conservatives have a big lead over their liberal counterparts.

?This is asymmetric warfare,? he said, ?but we?re pretty confident that we?ll be more effective and more strategic in how we spend our money.?

Crossroads GPS, a conservative advocacy group founded by Mr. Rove and other Republican strategists, has placed the biggest bet so far on negative messages. By its own count, it has spent about $20 million this year on political advertising. Much of it was broadcast during the debt-ceiling debate this summer, when it singled out members of Congress with advertisements that portrayed Democrats and Mr. Obama as fiscally irresponsible and unable to fix the economy.

In recent weeks, the group has taken on Mr. Obama and his economic agenda, spending $2.6 million on a commercial that criticizes his support for an upper-income tax increase and suggests a split on the issue between Mr. Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

It ends with a nod to the Republican line of attack that Democrats are inciting class warfare: ?President Obama, it?s time to attack problems, not people.?

Crossroads has been accused of not portraying Mr. Clinton?s words accurately. While he did express doubt that raising taxes in a sluggish economy could be effective, he said he supported the general principle of higher taxes for the wealthy.

Focus on swing states
Many of the Crossroads advertisements have been running in swing states like Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania and have been timed to coincide with presidential trips.

?It creates a scenario where the president?s visit is greeted with a strong counterpoint to the argument he?s making,? said Jonathan Collegio, communications director for Crossroads GPS.

?And in battleground states where the issue framing is going to impact 2012, it?s critical to be making your point there early and often,? Mr. Collegio said. ?There may be some value in advertising now that will be impossible to achieve toward the end of the campaign, when virtually all of the advertising on television and radio is political.?

Crossroads is hardly the only conservative group that is spending heavily on anti-Obama advertising, thanks in large part to court decisions that have allowed independent organizations to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money. Americans for Prosperity, the organization founded with the backing of David H. and Charles G. Koch, is also playing a busy early role.

The Americans for Prosperity approach has been slightly different, portraying the Obama administration as not just fiscally imprudent but also corrupt. In its latest advertisement, a 60-second spot that has been running heavily in places across Florida, Michigan, Nevada and Virginia, an announcer repeatedly names Solyndra, the government-backed solar power company that went bankrupt and has become a focus of conservative anger over wasteful spending.

Then it suggests that Solyndra?s political ties to Democrats played a role in its winning a government loan guarantee: ?Is this the change we?re supposed to believe in? Tell President Obama you shouldn?t use taxpayer dollars for political favors.?

An analysis from Kantar Media showed that in recent weeks Americans for Prosperity has already spent $2.4 million buying airtime for the advertisement, which has been broadcast nearly 4,000 times.

This article, "TV Attack Ads Aim at Obama Early and Often," first appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright ? 2011 The New York Times

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45450961/ns/politics-the_new_york_times/

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NASA launches $2.5 billion rover to Red Planet

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.?? NASA has launched its next Mars rover, kicking off a long-awaited mission to investigate whether the Red Planet could ever have hosted microbial life.

The car-size Curiosity rover blasted off atop its Atlas 5 rocket at 10:02 a.m. ET Saturday, streaking into a cloudy sky above Cape Canaveral Air Force Station here. The huge robot's next stop is Mars, though the 354-million-mile (570-million-kilometer) journey will take eight and a half months.

Joy Crisp a deputy project scientist for the rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., called the liftoff "spectacular."

"This feels great," she said as she watched the rocket lift off from Cape Canaveral.

Pamela Conrad, deputy principal investigator for the mission at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said, "Every milestone feels like such a relief. It's a beautiful day. The sun's out, and all these people came out to watch."

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The work Curiosity does when it finally arrives should revolutionize our understanding of the Red Planet and pave the way for future efforts to hunt for potential Martian life, researchers said.

"It is absolutely a feat of engineering, and it will bring science like nobody's ever expected," Doug McCuistion, head of NASA's Mars exploration program, said of Curiosity. "I can't even imagine the discoveries that we're going to come up with." [Photos: Last Look at Curiosity Rover]

Long road to launch
Curiosity's cruise to Mars may be less challenging than its long and bumpy trek to the launch pad, which took nearly a decade.

NASA began planning Curiosity's mission ? which is officially known as the Mars Science Laboratory, or MSL ? back in 2003. The rover was originally scheduled to blast off in 2009, but it wasn't ready in time.

Launch windows for Mars-bound spacecraft are based on favorable alignments between Earth and the Red Planet, and they open up just once every two years. So the MSL team had to wait until 2011.

That two-year slip helped boost the mission's overall cost by 56 percent, to its current $2.5 billion. But Saturday's successful launch likely chased away a lot of the bad feelings still lingering after the delay and the cost overruns.

"I think you could visibly see the team morale improve ? the team grinned more, the team smiled more ? as the rover and the vehicle came closer, and more and more together here when we were at Kennedy [Space Center]" preparing for liftoff, MSL project manager Pete Theisinger of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said a few days before launch.

A rover behemoth
Curiosity is a beast of a rover. Weighing in at 1 ton, it's five times more massive than either of the last two rovers NASA sent to Mars, the golf-cart-size twins Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004 to search for signs of past water activity.

While Spirit and Opportunity each carried five science instruments, Curiosity sports 10, including a rock-zapping laser and equipment designed to identify organic compounds ? carbon-based molecules that are the building blocks of life as we know it.

Some of these instruments sit at the end of Curiosity's five-jointed, 7-foot-long (2.1-meter) robotic arm, which by itself is nearly half as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity.

The arm also wields a 2-inch (5-centimeter) drill, allowing Curiosity to take samples from deep inside Martian rocks. No previous Red Planet rover has been able to do this, researchers say.

"We have an incredible rover," said MSL deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "It's the biggest and most capable scientific explorer we've ever sent to the surface of another planet."

Learn more about Curiosity's mission (800kb PDF)

Curiosity is due to arrive at Mars in early August 2012, touching down in a 100-mile-wide (160-km) crater called Gale.

While the rover's launch was dramatic, its landing will be one for the record books, if all goes well. A rocket-powered sky crane will lower the huge robot down on cables ? a maneuver never tried before in the history of planetary exploration. [Video: Curiosity's Peculiar Landing]

A giant mound of sediment rises 3 miles (5 kilometers) into the Martian air from Gale Crater's center. The layers in this mountain appear to preserve about 1 billion years of Martian history. Curiosity will study these different layers, gaining an in-depth understanding of past and present Martian environments and their potential to harbor life.

Life as we know it depends on liquid water. So the rover will likely spend a lot of time poking around near the mound's base, where Mars-orbiting spacecraft have spotted minerals that form in the presence of water, such as clays and sulfates.

"Going layer by layer, we can do the main goal of this mission, which is to search for habitable environments, " Vasavada said. "Were any of those time periods in early Mars history time periods that could have supported microbial life?"

If Curiosity climbs higher, its observations could shed light on Mars' shift from relatively warm and wet long ago to cold, dry and dusty today, researchers said.

"We want to understand those transitions, so that's why we're headed there [to Gale]," said Bethany Ehlmann of JPL and Caltech in Pasadena.

Setting the stage for life detection
Curiosity isn't designed to search for Martian life. In fact, if the red dirt of Gale Crater does harbor microbes, the rover will almost certainly drive right over them unawares.

But MSL is a key bridge to future efforts that could actively hunt down possible Martian life forms, researchers said. Curiosity's work should help later missions determine where ? and when ? to look.

"We don't really detect life per se," Vasavada said. "We set the stage for that life detection by figuring out which time periods in early Mars history were the most likely to have supported life and even preserved evidence of that for us today."

You can follow Space.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter: @michaeldwall. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

? 2011 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45444246/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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3 American students arrested in Cairo back in US

Derrik Sweeney, center, gets hugs from his father Kevin Sweeney, left, and sister Ashley, right, as arms from his mother, Joy Sweeney, wrap around from behind after Derrik arrived at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, in St. Louis. Sweeney and two other American students were arrested on the roof of a university building near Tahrir Square in Cairo last Sunday, accused of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. On Thursday, a court ordered the three to be released. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Derrik Sweeney, center, gets hugs from his father Kevin Sweeney, left, and sister Ashley, right, as arms from his mother, Joy Sweeney, wrap around from behind after Derrik arrived at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, in St. Louis. Sweeney and two other American students were arrested on the roof of a university building near Tahrir Square in Cairo last Sunday, accused of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. On Thursday, a court ordered the three to be released. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Derrik Sweeney, center, gets hugs from his father Kevin Sweeney, left, and sister Ashley, right, after Derrik arrived at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, in St. Louis. Sweeney and two other American students were arrested on the roof of a university building near Tahrir Square in Cairo last Sunday, accused of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. On Thursday, a court ordered the three to be released. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Derrik Sweeney, center, gets hugs from his father Kevin Sweeney, left, and sister Ashley, right, as arms from his mother, Joy Sweeney, wrap around from behind after Derrik arrived at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, in St. Louis. Sweeney and two other American students were arrested on the roof of a university building near Tahrir Square in Cairo last Sunday, accused of throwing firebombs at security forces fighting with protesters. On Thursday, a court ordered the three to be released. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

Gregory Porter, center, one of three U.S. students arrested during a demonstration in Cairo, walks with his mother Nancy Hansen, left, upon arriving at Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, on Saturday Nov. 26, 2011, after an Egyptian court ordered the release of Porter and two other U.S. students who were arrested for throwing firebombs at security forces said Egyptian officials. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek)

Gregory Porter, left, one of three U.S. students arrested during a demonstration in Cairo, and his attorney Theodore Simon, second from right, speak to members of the news media after arriving at Philadelphia International Airport, in Philadelphia, on Saturday Nov. 26, 2011, after an Egyptian court ordered the release of Porter and two other U.S. students who were arrested for throwing firebombs at security forces said Egyptian officials. (AP Photo/ Joseph Kaczmarek)

ST. LOUIS (AP) ? The last of the three American students to arrive home after being arrested amid Cairo's tumultuous protests described his first hours in custody as "probably the scariest night of my life ever," saying the youths were hit, forced to lay for hours in the dark nearly in a fetal position and threatened with guns.

Derrik Sweeney, 19, spoke with The Associated Press shortly after arriving at St. Louis' international airport late Saturday night, greeted with joyful shouts of anxious parents who tightly hugged him as dozens of others in a crowd of supporters and relatives held up signs reading, "We love you Derrik" and "Welcome home, Derrik."

"The first night was probably the scariest night of my life ever. I was not sure I was going to live. They said if we moved at all, even an inch, they would shoot us. They were behind us with guns," Sweeney told the AP in a brief phone interview, adding the three had spent about six hours curled up uncomfortably with their hands behind their backs.

Egyptian authorities said they had arrested Sweeney a week earlier along with 19-year-old Gregory Porter and 21-year-old Luke Gates on the rooftop of a university building near Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square amid violent protests engulfing the streets below.

Officials accused the young men of throwing firebombs at Egyptian security forces fighting with the protesters, but Sweeney said he and the other Americans "never did anything to hurt anyone" and never were on the rooftop nor handled or threw any explosives. He called those accusations "very clearly just lies, 100 percent."

But he said conditions in custody markedly improved after the opening night's ordeal when they three were taken to some "legitimate" prison or jail. He didn't elaborate on who he believed was holding him the opening night but he called the treatment humane in the ensuing days.

? "There was really marked treatment between the first night and the next three nights or however long it was. The first night, it was kind of rough. They were hitting us; they were saying they were going to shoot us and they were putting us in really uncomfortable positions. But after that first night, we were treated in a just manner ? as a prisoner ? we were given food when we needed and it was OK after that first night."

At his airport arrival, he also said things became much better in subsequent days when he was allowed to speak with U.S. consular official "and then my mom."

An Egyptian court ordered the students' release Thursday, and they were on flights out of Cairo two days later. Porter and Gates also arrived back in their home states late Saturday, all greeted by relieved family members.

"I'm not going to take this as a negative experience. It's still a great country," Gates, his parents wrapping their arms around him, said shortly after getting off a flight in Indianapolis.

The protests had flared starting Nov. 19, in anticipation of the landmark parliamentary elections in Egypt due to start Monday. On Friday, the crowd grew to more than 100,000 people and on Saturday fresh clashes erupted between security forces and the Egyptian protesters demanding the military step down. The protests Saturday left one man dead as the violence threatened to overshadow the looming elections.

Porter also was met by his parents and other relatives earlier Saturday evening when he landed at Philadelphia International Airport. Porter took no questions, but said he was thankful for the help he and the other American students received from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, administrators at the university they were attending, and attorneys in Egypt and the U.S.

"I'm just so thankful to be back, to be in Philadelphia right now," said Porter, who is from nearby Glenside, Pa., and attends Drexel University in Philadelphia.

All three left the Egyptian capital Saturday morning on separate connecting flights to Frankfurt, Germany, an airport official in Cairo said. The three were studying at American University in Cairo.

Joy Sweeney said staff at the school packed her son's bags because he wasn't allowed to return to his dorm room. Waiting for her son had been grueling, she said shortly before he arrived, but she was grateful he would be home before the holiday weekend was over.

"He still hasn't processed what a big deal this is," she told the AP shortly before her son arrived at the airport.

She said she was trying not to dwell on the events of the last week and was ecstatic that her son, a student at Georgetown University in Washington, was coming home. The family is from Jefferson City, Mo., about 130 miles west of St. Louis.

Earlier in the week, she talked about how she put a Thanksgiving celebration on hold because the idea seemed "absolutely irrelevant" while her son still was being held.

"It's been an emotional rollercoaster. I mean, I don't know how to describe it other than that," she said Saturday night. "But I never looked at the worst-case scenario."

___

Matheson reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press photographer Michael Conroy contributed to this report from Indianapolis and AP writers Bill Cormier in Atlanta; Maggie Michael in Cairo; Andale Gross and Erin Gartner in Chicago; Sandy Kozel in Washington; Rick Callahan in Indianapolis; and Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia also contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-11-27-Egypt-American%20Students/id-2010efd1159c42bf8fbf1013307970fb

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Clean energy market: China promises open access

Clean energy companies in other countries will have equal access to China's burgeoning clean energy market, US envoy says after talks.

U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson said Chinese officials promised foreign technology suppliers equal access to their booming?clean?energy?industry in trade talks amid pressure to revive global growth.

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Bryson said the officials told him Monday the country will invest $1.7 trillion over the next five years inclean?energy?and other emerging technologies. He said they pledged a "level playing field" for U.S. and other foreign suppliers.

Beijing is spending heavily to develop wind, solar and other?clean?energy, both to curb demand for imported oil and gas and to create profitable industries. But business groups complain it is improperly supporting Chinese technology suppliers in violation of free-trade pledges and trying to limit foreign access to promising fields.

Chinese officials said foreign producers of new?energy?vehicles will be eligible for subsidies on an equal basis with local rivals, the U.S. Trade Representative's office said in a statement. It said Beijing promised not to require them to help Chinese partners set up new brands or hand over technology ? two conditions automakers worried might be imposed as a condition of being allowed to make or sell cars in China.

Access to China's markets for high-tech goods is especially sensitive for the United States and other Western economies that want technology exports to shore up flagging economic growth and cut high unemployment.

"They intend to provide a fair and level playing field in those industries," Bryson said after the two-day meeting of the U.S.-Chinese Joint Committee on Commerce and Trade in the southwestern city of Chengdu.

The top Chinese envoy, Vice Premier Wang Qishan, "said there would be significant opportunities to Chinese and U.S. and other foreign companies," Bryson said.

That pledge also covers high-end equipment manufacturing, energy-saving and environmental technologies, biotechnology, information technology, alternative?energy?and advanced materials, according to the U.S. Trade Representative.

The U.S.-Chinese committee aims to defuse trade tensions by focusing on individual policy disputes. Previous meetings have produced pledges by Beijing to lower barriers to imports of American beef and to fight rampant Chinese software piracy.

This week's meeting came amid mounting demands by some American lawmakers for punitive tariffs on Chinese goods if Beijing fails to ease exchange-rate controls. They say China's yuan is kept undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair trade advantage and wiping out jobs in the United States.

Also Monday, the two governments announced agreements to improve cooperation on intellectual property, technology,?energy, trade statistics and business relations.

Beijing promised to take more steps to combat rampant software piracy by promoting use of legal software by local governments and companies, the U.S. statement said. It said they would launch a joint effort next year to stop online sales of counterfeit goods.

Earlier Monday, Wang appealed to U.S. envoys for cooperation to revive the global economy, emphasizing shared goals instead of disputes over currency and other irritants.

"We are facing a very serious global economic crisis," Wang said. "Ensuring economic health is the responsibility of every nation. Unbalanced progress is better than balanced decline."

Leaders of the world's biggest and second-biggest economies have pledged to work together to shore up global growth but ties have been strained by complaints about China's exchange-rate controls and access to its markets. Beijing is uneasy about Washington's moves to expand its political and military presence in Asia.

Bryson warned earlier Monday that American lawmakers and businesspeople "are moving toward a more negative view" of U.S.-Chinese trade ties.

President Barack Obama pressed Premier Wen Jiabao, China's top economic official, over Beijing's currency controls in a meeting last week on the sidelines of an Asian economic regional gathering in Indonesia.

The U.S. trade deficit with China hit a monthly high of $29 billion in August and is on track to surpass last year's $273 billion, the highest ever recorded with a single country.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/WkZvbWcDymo/Clean-energy-market-China-promises-open-access

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EU to urge member states to accept Iranian exiles (AP)

BRUSSELS ? An official says the EU's foreign policy chief will urge the member countries to accept some of the Iranians living in a refugee settlement in Iraq.

Iraq's government has said it will close Camp Ashraf, where more than 3,000 Iranian exiles are living, by the end of the year. The U.N. says at least 34 people were killed when Iraqi security forces raided the camp in April.

The refugees, many of whom seek to overthrow Iran's clerical rulers, were taken in at the camp by Saddam Hussein's regime decades ago.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will appeal to all 27 members of the bloc next week, asking countries to take in Ashraf residents with ties to them, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Thursday.

Others may return to Iran.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iraq/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111124/ap_on_re_eu/eu_eu_iraq_camp_ashraf

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Will Penn State be pariah at postseason football party? (Reuters)

BOSTON (Reuters) ? Penn State's football team will end a winning season this weekend but the university's sex abuse scandal could yet make the Nittany Lions a pariah at the postseason college football bowl party.

With nine wins and only two losses going into the final game of the season against Wisconsin, and with legions of fans traditionally eager to travel to a warm spot to celebrate the New Year, Penn State would be poised in a normal year for a plumb invitation.

But former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was charged this month with sexually abusing eight young boys over a 15-year period, including incidents before and after his retirement from the team in 1999, and some within the team's training complex.

Joe Paterno, 84, the most successful coach in major college football, was fired for failing to tell police about allegations of abuse by Sandusky in the football locker rooms.

Acting head coach Tom Bradley said this week that he doubted the team would be kept out of a postseason game.

"I have not heard that from anybody," Bradley said. "Our administration has assured us ... that's not the case,"

More likely, according to some college football prognosticators, is that Penn State could be passed over by the major bowls and end up in the postseason minor leagues.

Stewart Mandel, a college football analyst with the Sports Illustrated website SI.com, said Penn State could fall all the way to the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Houston, which pays out to the participants' league only about half the money of top bowls.

"Bowl committees will likely steer clear of Penn State in the wake of its ongoing scandal. Yes, their fans will travel, but it won't be worth the week of negative publicity," he wrote.

Bowl invitations will be announced on December 4.

Executives of top bowls are being careful not to disparage Penn State publicly.

"Never in my 15 years have I seen or even heard of anything like this (Penn State scandal)," said Steve Hogan, CEO of Florida Citrus Sports, which sponsors the Capital One Bowl in Orlando on New Year's Day. He added that he hoped the scandal would not end up hurting the players who had nothing to do with it.

The Capital One Bowl gets the second pick among Big Ten teams, after any Bowl Championship Series selections, and Hogan said the bowl would welcome Penn State.

Penn State could save itself the suspense by beating Wisconsin on Saturday and then winning the Big Ten championship game. This would guarantee the team a spot in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, the oldest bowl game in the nation.

But the Nittany Lions start as an underdog against Wisconsin, according to bookmakers. If the team loses, Penn State's postseason fate is out of the team's hands.

One bowl executive hinted recently at how he might view Penn State. Richard Catlett, chief executive of the Gator Bowl, told The Florida Times-Union newspaper that the Gator Bowl historically shied away from teams that have fired coaches or had coaches resign under less than favorable circumstances.

"Fans in those situations tend not to be very enthusiastic about buying tickets," Catlett was quoted as saying. (Additional reporting by David Schwartz in Phoenix, Barbara Liston in Orlando and Kathy Finn in New Orleans; Editing By Greg McCune)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111124/us_nm/us_usa_crime_coah_bowl

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On the Iowa Trail with Rick Santorum (ABC News)

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Heidi Klum & Husband Seal Want To Adopt A Child In The Future

Heidi Klum & Husband Seal Want To Adopt A Child In The Future

Singer Seal and supermodel Heidi Klum have revealed they would like to adopt. The couple raise four kids together. The model has a seven-year-old daughter,Leni, [...]

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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2011/11/23/heidi-klum-husband-seal-want-to-adopt/

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Android remains top target for malware: report

The Android operating system is under assault. By comparison, Apple's iOS is in pretty good shape.?

It is very hard to escape Android phones this year. While Apple's iPhone remains the most coveted phone this Christmas, and RIM's BlackBerry handsets sink into early retirement, Google's Android operating system continues to gobble up shares of the mobile market. According to the most recent Nielsen report, Android phones currently account for 43 percent of the US market, compared to 39 percent in the quarter before.?

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In June, Google said it was logging a half million Android activations everyday, worldwide. Meanwhile,?Android has also reportedly become the leader in app downloads ? an arena once dominated by?Apple?and its online?App Store. But hey, you know what else Android is doing? Attracting an extremely large amount of malware.

In a report published this week, McAfee experts?said the amount of malware aimed at Android devices has jumped almost 37 percent since the second quarter of this year ? and a several-fold increase over this time last year. In fact, almost all malware created in the third quarter of 2011 was directed right at Android.

"Last quarter the Android mobile operating system (OS) became the most 'popular' platform for new?malware," McAfee Labs wrote in the report (PDF). "This quarter Android became the exclusive platform for all new mobile malware. The Symbian?OS (for Nokia handsets) remains the platform with the all-time greatest number of malware, but Android?is clearly today?s target."

So what's driving the malware deluge? Well, Android is an open-source platform, and over at ZDNet, Rachel King theorizes that "whatever amount of open source qualities there are to Android is what is leaving the door open to mobile malware." Moreover, Google doesn't vet additions to its Android Market as religiously as, say, Apple. Although Apple has its own problems.

Android phone laid low with malware? Drop us a line.?

And in the meantime, for more tech news, sign up for the?BizTech newsletter, which ships via e-mail each Wednesday.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/RqP2Y1Ofq9c/Android-remains-top-target-for-malware-report

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Is Russia's malfunctioning Martian moon probe dangerous? [VIDEO]

If controllers are unable to repair Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe, which was intended to fly to a moon of Mars but is instead stranded in Earth's orbit, it will eventually crash back to Earth. The probe contains toxic flues as well as a small amount of radioactive material.?

Russia raced on Thursday to salvage a spacecraft bound for a moon of Mars that is stranded in the Earth's orbit, with just days left before the window closes on its first interplanetary mission in 15 years.

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So far Russian controllers have failed to establish contact with the $163-million, unmanned probe, leaving little hope of recovering the ambitious mission that was to reassert Russia's place at the front lines of space exploration.

Following the launch from Russia's Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan early on Wednesday, the Phobos-Grunt probe is stuck in a dangerously low orbit, creating a drag that could eventually send it crashing back to Earth.

Russia's space agency said it had at least three days to try to fix the problem and steer the craft on to its correct path, and will make another attempt when it passes over Baikonur later today, a spokesman said.

Failure so soon after lift off in the three-year mission to bring back soil -- "grunt" in Russian -- from the Martian moon Phobos would be a major blow to the pride of the Russian space industry, adding to a humiliating series of setbacks.

"So far all efforts to communicate with the craft have been unsuccessful," lead mission scientist Alexander Zakharov of Moscow's Space Research Institute told Reuters.

"They are trying everything including visual methods to try to assess what is wrong with it, but of course the situation doesn't inspire much hope."

Experts say the post-launch problems are linked to the craft's on board flight computer, which failed to fire two engine burns to send it on its trajectory toward Mars.

There is a small chance the software could be reprogrammed, if controllers can link with the craft. But if the troubles are hardware related, the mission is likely lost, Zakharov and other industry sources said.

Russia is relying on a single ground site to try to reach the craft once every few hours along its orbit.

"In my opinion Phobos-Grunt is lost," Vladimir Uvarov, a former chief Russian military expert on space, told the state-run Rossiiskaya Gazeta.

China also could be disappointed after entrusting its first interplanetary Mars satellite, Yinghuo-1, to piggyback on the mission.

Phobos-Grunt is also carrying bacteria, plant seeds and tiny animals known as water bears, part of a U.S. study to see if they could survive beyond the Earth's protective bubble.

The plan was for Phobos-Grunt to reach Mars' orbit next year, touch down on the larger of its two tiny moons in 2013, collect a sample from the surface and fly back to Earth in 2014.

Dust from Phobos, scientist say, would shed light on the genesis of the solar system and Mars' enduring mysteries.

If it is lost, it will join a long string of over a dozen Soviet and Russian missions to fail en route to Mars, while U.S. rovers have logged hundreds of hours on the Red Planet.

When the first post-Soviet Mars-96 probe broke up over the Pacific, it was seen as a proof of the industry's deterioration after a generation of brain drain and crimped budgets.

NASA will launch a $2.5 billion rover designed to assess the planet's suitability for life later this month, toward the end of a launch window for Mars flights that comes every 780 days.

If Phobos-Grunt cannot be bounced out of orbit, the massive craft will eventually crash back to Earth with a full payload of toxic hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide fuel and small cargo of radioactive cobalt-57.

It is unclear how much of it will survive the fiery plunge through the atmosphere.

(Editing by Rosalind Russell)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/kqvu4k61GFc/Is-Russia-s-malfunctioning-Martian-moon-probe-dangerous-VIDEO

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Queen : Don't Stop Me Now [Video]

As Queen's front-man, Freddie Mercury's overpowering vocals, four-octave range, and thundering stage presence couldn't be ignored. As a high-profile victim of the AIDS epidemic, his death on Thanksgiving Day, 1991 couldn't be ignored either. Tonight's Soundtrack honors Mr. Fahrenheit and marks the 20th anniversary of his passing. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/5bRYDodEdwY/queen--dont-stop-me-now

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Video: Countdown to Black Friday

Insight on this year's holiday shopping season just four days ahead of Black Friday, with CNBC's Courtney Reagan, and Liz Dunn, Macquarie Group.

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Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com

Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/45390367/

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Gates testifies in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft

Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates leaves the Frank E. Moss federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Gates testified in a $1 billion anti-trust lawsuit brought by Novell Inc. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates leaves the Frank E. Moss federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Gates testified in a $1 billion anti-trust lawsuit brought by Novell Inc. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

Microsoft founder Bill Gates arrives at the Frank E. Moss federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Gates was scheduled to testify in a one billion dollar antitrust lawsuit brought by Novell Inc. Gates, wearing a gray suit and a yellow tie, was the first witness to testify as Microsoft lawyers presented their case in the trial that's been ongoing in federal court in Salt Lake City for about a month.(AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

John Pinette, left, and Microsoft founder Bill Gates arrives at the Frank E. Moss federal courthouse in Salt Lake City, Monday, Nov. 21, 2011. Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the creator of WordPerfect. (AP Photo/Jim Urquhart)

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) ? Microsoft's Windows 95 rollout presented the most challenges in the company's history, leading to several last-minute changes to technical features that would no longer support a rival software maker's word processor, Bill Gates testified Monday in a $1 billion antitrust lawsuit filed by the former owner of WordPerfect.

"We worked super hard," the Microsoft co-founder said. "It was the most challenging, trying project we had ever done."

Gates was the first witness to testify Monday as Microsoft lawyers presented their case in the trial that's been ongoing in federal court in Salt Lake City for about a month. He is set to resume testimony Tuesday morning.

Utah-based Novell Inc. sued Microsoft Corp. in 2004, claiming the Redmond, Washington, company violated U.S. antitrust laws through its arrangements with other software makers when it launched Windows 95. Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss. Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Gates said Novell just couldn't deliver a Windows 95 compatible WordPerfect program in time for its rollout, and its own Word program was actually better. He said that by 1994, Microsoft's Word writing program was ranked No. 1 in the market above WordPerfect.

Gates called it an "important win."

He testified later that Microsoft had to dump a technical feature that would have supported WordPerfect because he feared it would crash the operating system.

"We were making trade-offs," he said.

Novell argues that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for computer writing programs, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own office programs took hold.

Microsoft lawyers say Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a Windows compatible WordPerfect program until months after the operating system's rollout.

Novell attorney Jeff Johnson has conceded that Microsoft was under no legal obligation to provide advance access to Windows 95 so Novell could prepare a compatible version. Microsoft, however, enticed Novell to work on a version, only to withdraw support months before Windows 95 hit the market, he said.

Microsoft lawyer David Tulchin said Gates decided against installing WordPerfect because it couldn't be made compatible in time for the rollout. He argued that Novell's missed opportunity was its own fault, and that Microsoft had no obligation to give a competitor a leg up.

"Novell never complained to Microsoft," Tulchin said during arguments Friday. "There's nothing in the evidence, no documents."

Johnson maintains Novell was tricked in violation of federal antitrust laws so Microsoft could monopolize the market.

"We got stabbed in the back," he said.

U.S. District Judge Frederick Motz on Monday denied a motion from Microsoft attorneys to dismiss the case as groundless.

Gates, a billionaire, began by testifying about Microsoft's history. He was just 19 when he helped found the company. Today, Microsoft is one of the world's largest software makers, with a market value of more than $210 billion.

"We thought everybody would have a personal computer on every desk and in every home," Gates said. "We wanted to be there and be the first."

___

Associated Press writer Jennifer Dobner contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-11-21-Antitrust%20Lawsuit-Microsoft/id-650acff762434a9683dccabec51d0333

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New culprit found in Lou Gehrig's disease

ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) ? Following a major Northwestern Medicine breakthrough that identified a common converging point for all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS and Lou Gehrig's disease), a new finding from the same scientists further broadens the understanding of why cells in the brain and spinal cord degenerate in the fatal disease.

Less than three months ago, Northwestern research found that the crucial recycling system for cells in the brain and spinal cord was broken in people with ALS. And one mutated gene had a key role. Like a loafing worker, it wasn't doing its job to recycle damaged cells.

Now, scientists have discovered a second faulty gene -- a new loafing worker -- in the same recycling pathway. The finding is reported in Archives of Neurology.

"Now that we have two bad players, it shines more light on this broken pathway," said senior author Teepu Siddique, M.D., the Les Turner ALS Foundation/Herbert C. Wenske Professor of the Davee Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurosciences at Northwestern's Feinberg School and a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. "This gives us a clear target to develop drug therapies to try to fix this problem. It strengthens our belief that this broken system is at the heart of ALS."

The new "bad player" is called sequestosome1. The previously identified mutated gene is ubiquilin2. Because these two genes aren't doing their jobs to recycle damaged proteins, those proteins -- as well as sequestosome1 and ubiquilin2 -- accumulate abnormally in the motor neurons in the spinal cord and cortical and hippocampal neurons in the brain. The protein accumulations resemble twisted skeins of yarn -- characteristic of ALS -- and cause the degeneration of the neurons.

In the new study, sequestosome1 genetic mutations were identified in 546 ALS patients; 340 with an inherited form of the disease, called familial, and 206 with a non-inherited form of the disease, called sporadic.

About 90 percent of ALS is sporadic and 10 percent is familial. To date, mutations in about 10 genes, several of which were discovered at Northwestern, including SOD1 and ALSIN, account for about 30 percent of classic familial ALS, noted Faisal Fecto, M.D., study lead author and a PhD candidate in neuroscience at Feinberg.

ALS affects an estimated 350,000 people worldwide, including children and adults, with about 50 percent of people dying within three years of its onset. In the motor disease, people progressively lose muscle strength until they become paralyzed and can no longer move, speak, swallow and breathe. ALS/dementia targets the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain, affecting patients' judgment, the ability to understand language and to perform basic tasks like planning what to wear or organizing their day.

The discovery of the breakdown in protein recycling may also have a wider role in other neurodegenerative diseases, particularly the dementias. These include Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia as well as Parkinson's disease, all of which are characterized by aggregations of proteins, Siddique said. The removal of damaged or misfolded proteins is critical for optimal cell functioning, he noted.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Les Turner ALS Foundation, the Herbert and Florence C. Wenske Foundation and other sources.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Northwestern University. The original article was written by Marla Paul.

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

---

Journal Reference:

1. F. Fecto, J. Yan, S. P. Vemula, E. Liu, Y. Yang, W. Chen, J. G. Zheng, Y. Shi, N. Siddique, H. Arrat, S. Donkervoort, S. Ajroud-Driss, R. L. Sufit, S. L. Heller, H.-X. Deng, T. Siddique. SQSTM1 Mutations in Familial and Sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. Archives of Neurology, 2011; 68 (11): 1440 DOI: 10.1001/archneurol.2011.250

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

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/YscvijKx5tU/111121194039.htm

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Sound of Music comes to Salzburg (AP)

SALZBURG, Austria ? Move over Mozart. Toes in Salzburg are tapping to a new beat as residents finally embrace the Hollywood musical that put them on the map nearly half a century ago.

Playing for the first time in this haughty town of opera lovers, "The Sound of Music," has been met with surprisingly positive reactions in what is commonly considered a last bulwark of resistance to the iconic show.

"A wonderful performance," enthused Johann Fink as he waited at the coat check at the end of a recent performance at the ornate Salzburg State Theater.

Such a reception in Salzburg is hardly a given despite the global popularity of the musical that was based on a true story and immortalized by the 1965 multiple Academy Award winning movie.

Fans around the world may know every word of every song performed by Julie Andrews as the governess of seven children who charms ? then weds ? their widowed father Baron von Trapp, before the singing family flees the Nazis.

But this city resonates to another sound of music ? the music of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms.

And it has a different concept of culture.

While residents earn millions each year from the tourists who come for sing-along tours of sites featured in the film, they traditionally view the visitors with benign disdain ? and occasionally as pests.

Residents of the upscale Salzburg neighborhood where the von Trapp home is located tried ? and failed ? to block attempts to turn the edifice into a hotel, fearing tourists would tie up traffic and make a nuisance of themselves. A museum dedicated to the film is still looking for a home after more than 600 residents in another neighborhood signed a petition three years ago against it, telling the city council they feared that local streets would be jammed with tour buses.

Resistance persists even though the city would literally be poorer without the musical's magnet effect.

Peter Proetzner, who guides daily bus-fulls of tourists on pilgrimages of the sites immortalized by the film, cites a poll showing the Sound of Music as the city's second biggest draw ? right after the dozens of classical music events that resonate through its cobblestoned alleys.

"The Sound of Music is better known than Mozart worldwide," he asserts.

South Koreans learn the songs as part of their English lessons. Some foreigners think "Edelweiss" ? composed for the musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein ? is Austria's national anthem. And Austrian tourism surveys show that three out of four American visitors to Salzburg come because of the musical.

Australian Dianne Cole says she knows "absolutely nothing" about Austria ? and will probably go home still ignorant of the country's cultural, scenic and culinary delights.

"This is why I came to Austria," she said recently, as her Sound of Music tour bus set out for its first stop ? Leopoldskron Lake (where Maria and the children capsized their boat). "The sole reason is to do this tour."

In contrast, most Salzburgers don't even know the musical. In a city that traditionally raps American culture as trashy, residents prefer to be associated with Mozart, Salzburg's favorite son, instead of a film many write off as Hollywood kitsch.

And then there is the troubling Nazi component of The Sound of Music ? a reminder, reinforced by the Swastika flag and storm troopers on stage, that not only Mozart, but Hitler, too, was Austrian.

Austria has long shed its self-fabricated myth that it was a victim of Nazi atrocities instead of one of its most fervent supporters. Restitution panels have returned homes and precious artworks. Millions of euros (dollars) have been doled out to Holocaust victims and their descendants, and schoolbooks now deal in depth with this nation's complicity in the crimes of the Nazi dictator, born just 50 kilometers (30 miles) north of Salzburg.

"I think that this is truly the right moment in time, when Austrians are actually ready to deal with their past," says Andreas Gergen, who directed the German-language production.

Still, anti-Semitic sentiment remains. A survey of 1,070 Austrians conducted earlier this year showed that 12 percent want their country "free of Jews." Backed by the country's neo-Nazi fringe, the country's rightist FPO party is the second-strongest in the country ? although it now exploits Islamophobia instead of anti-Jewish sentiment.

And the sight of Nazis on stage may remind some older audience members of uncomfortable historical facts. Over 99 percent of Austrians voted in favor of their country becoming part of the Third Reich in 1938; proportionally more Austrians than Germans were Nazi party members, and many of Hitler's closest henchmen were Austrians.

Like the Salzburg version, the first full Austrian showing in Vienna in 2005 featured actors dressed as Nazi storm troopers standing guard at exits and a theater box filled with mock Nazi dignitaries ? clearly too painful for some. Back then, some elderly audience members who last witnessed brown-shirted men wearing swastika arm bands as children were so troubled they hastily left the theater without watching the performance.

Six years later, reactions to the Nazi theme are mixed.

"Of course it's not so pleasant for us Salzburgers to be confronted with it," said Judith Herbst. But the smartly dressed woman in her mid 60s said that as far as she was concerned the role of Austria in Hitler's crimes was no longer debatable.

For others, though, the sight of men in forbidden Nazi garb entering the theater remains traumatic.

"It was horrible for a moment ? almost unbelievable," said theatergoer Fink. "Thank God this era is in the past!"

But there were no gasps of dismay regarding the rest of the show.

Some hummed its ear-candy melodies at the coat check after the performance.

"Kitsch? I was afraid that would be the case," said Helmi Popeter. "But once you see it, you realize that's not so."

___

George Jahn can be reached at http://twitter.com/georgejahn

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/music/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111122/ap_en_mu/eu_austria_sound_of_music

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Officers in pepper spray incident placed on leave (AP)

SAN FRANCISCO ? Two University of California, Davis police officers involved in the pepper spraying of seated protesters were placed on administrative leave Sunday, as the school's chancellor accelerated an investigation of the incident and made plans to meet with protesters amid calls for her resignation.

UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said she has been inundated with reaction from alumni, staff, students and faculty over the incident Friday in which a riot gear-clad officer fires pepper spray on a line of sitting demonstrators. The protesters flinch and cover their faces but remain passive with their arms interlocked as onlookers shriek and scream out for the officer to stop.

The officers placed on leave have not been identified. In a news release, the university said, "Videos taken during Friday's arrests showed that the two officers used pepper spray on peacefully seated students."

The faculty association on Saturday called for Katehi's resignation after video of the incident was circulated widely on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter on Saturday, saying in a letter there had been a "gross failure of leadership."

Katehi has resisted calls for her to quit, vowing instead to rigorously investigate the incident during which 10 protesters were arrested.

"I am deeply saddened that this happened on our campus, and as chancellor, I take full responsibility for the incident," Katehi said in a statement Sunday. "However, I pledge to take the actions needed to ensure that this does not happen again. I feel very sorry for the harm our students were subjected to and I vow to work tirelessly to make the campus a more welcoming and safe place."

Katehi also set a 30-day deadline for a task force investigating the incident to issue its report. The task force will be comprised of students, staff and faculty, Katehi said, and will be chosen this week.

She plans to meet with demonstrators Monday at their general assembly, said her spokeswoman, Claudia Morain.

The protest was held in support of the overall Occupy Wall Street movement and in solidarity with protesters at the University of California, Berkeley who were jabbed by police with batons on Nov. 9.

As the video spread online and on television of an officer blasting pepper spray into the faces of seated protesters, outrage came quickly ? followed almost as quickly by defense from police.

However, a law enforcement official who watched the clip called the use of force "fairly standard police procedure."

Charles J. Kelly, a former Baltimore Police Department lieutenant who wrote the department's use of force guidelines, said pepper spray is a "compliance tool" that can be used on subjects who do not resist, and is preferable to simply lifting protesters.

"When you start picking up human bodies, you risk hurting them," Kelly said. "Bodies don't have handles on them."

After reviewing the video, Kelly said he observed at least two cases of "active resistance" from protesters. In one instance, a woman pulls her arm back from an officer. In the second instance, a protester curls into a ball. Each of those actions could have warranted more force, including baton strikes and pressure-point techniques.

"What I'm looking at is fairly standard police procedure," Kelly said.

Images of police actions have served to galvanize support during the Occupy Wall Street movement, from the clash between protesters and police in Oakland last month that left an Iraq War veteran with serious injuries to more recent skirmishes in New York City, San Diego, Denver and Portland, Ore.

Some of the most notorious instances went viral online, including the use of pepper spray on an 84-year-old activist in Seattle and a group of women in New York. Seattle's mayor apologized to the activist, and the New York Police Department official shown using pepper spray on the group of women lost 10 vacation days after an internal review.

In the video of the UC Davis protest, the officer, a member of the university police force, displays a bottle before spraying its contents in a sweeping motion while walking back and forth in front of the demonstrators. Most of the protesters have their heads down, but several were hit directly in the face.

Some members of a crowd gathered at the scene scream and cry out. The crowd then chants, "Shame on You," as the protesters on the ground are led away. The officers retreat minutes later with helmets on and batons drawn.

Nine students hit by pepper spray were treated at the scene, two were taken to hospitals and later released, university officials said.

UC Davis Police Chief Annette Spicuzza has said the decision to use pepper spray was made at the scene.

"The students had encircled the officers," she said Saturday. "They needed to exit. They were looking to leave but were unable to get out."

Katehi said the university is challenged by its capacity to balance freedom of expression with the need to feel safe.

"These past few days our campus has been confronted with serious questions which will challenge us for many months and years to come," Katehi said.

___

Associated Press reporters Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco, Nigel Duara in Portland, Ore., and Meghan Barr in New York City contributed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111120/ap_on_re_us/us_occupy_pepper_spray

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Rahm Emanuel Focuses Fire on Romney (ABC News)

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