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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

DC police identify students involved with drug lab - Washington Post

District police have identified two students and a campus visitor who were arrested Saturday on charges that they maintained a drug lab in a Georgetown University freshman dorm. Georgetown students Charles Smith and John Romano, who live on the ninth floor of Harbin Hall, and John Perrone, a visitor and friend of one of the students, were arrested and charged with manufacturing a controlled substance. Police said the three had a lab set up to produce the hallucinogenic drug DMT in the campus dorm room. District police did not release the ages or the home towns of the three. Police also did not say how much, if any, of the drug was found, although officials said chemicals used in the production of the drug were discovered in the room. Police were alerted to the room early Saturday when people reported a chemical odor in the building, later prompting a series of evacuations. District officials said that a few people were treated for exposure to the chemicals but that they posed no further threat to other dorm residents.

- Josh WhiteD.C. Water sued by Cafritz on fire losses

Peggy Cooper Cafritz, whose Northwest mansion and collection of African and African American art were lost in a fire last year, is suing D.C. Water for failing to maintain proper water pressure in her neighborhood along Chain Bridge Road. The lawsuit alleges that a lack of water pressure to area hydrants led firefighters to lose control of the July 29, 2009, blaze, and that testing showed that the water pressure was about one-third of the acceptable minimum for firefighting. A District report in August 2009 said that the water flow was low but that whether the extensive damage to the home and its artifacts could have been prevented is "debatable" because the blaze was so intense and fast. The fire started on a porch and consumed the civic leader's home and its irreplacable contents. The damage to the home, artwork and a rare book collection was officially estimated at $15 million, although the lawsuit says Cafritz's losses were $30 million. Cafritz's lawsuit, filed in D.C. Superior Court, seeks $30 million in punitive damages against D.C. Water, formerly known as WASA, to "ensure that the dangerous conditions caused by WASA's misconduct do not result in similar harm to other D.C. residents."D.C. Water officials have not commented specifically on the lawsuit, which was filed last week. "We recognize the very real tragedy in this situation and empathize with the loss Ms. Cafritz and her family experienced in the summer of 2009," George Hawkins, D.C. Water's general manager, said in a written statement. "While we have not yet reviewed her complaint, we look forward to reading it and taking whatever action is necessary at that time."

- Josh WhiteMARYLANDMan is arrested inburning of woman

A man accused of setting a woman on fire was arrested Saturday night by Howard County police.Police have not confirmed the identity of the man, who is believed to be homeless. The woman, who also might be homeless, was taken to Johns Hopkins Burn Center with severe burns.Howard police said the incident occurred in a wooded area near Gorman Road about 2:45 p.m. Saturday. A woman who is also thought to be homeless called the police from a nearby store.After a search, police found a man on Greenwood Place about 5 p.m. and took him into custody.

- Ovetta Wiggins


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Whitman, Fiorina and McMahon: Spending big, failing bigger - Washington Post

All sharp, successful businesswomen who made millions as executives in the private sector, they identified 2010 as an apt historical moment for a Republican candidate with no political experience to break into politics. In pursuit of higher office, each committed considerable resources - more than $200 million combined - to challenge seemingly vulnerable Democrats.

Each risk-taker came up far short of her goal.

Whitman, the 54-year-old former chief executive of eBay, burned through more than $140 million of her own money in a colossal loss in the California governor's race to Attorney General Jerry Brown. Also in California, Fiorina, 56, the former Hewlett-Packard leader, spent about $7 million of her own luchre in a bitter Senate loss to the incumbent, Barbara Boxer. And McMahon, 62, who with her husband built the smack-down empire called World Wrestling Entertainment in Connecticut, spent $50 million in seeking an open Senate seat, losing to Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

The question isn't so much why three savvy businesswomen threw so much good money after bad in losing ventures to win political office. In a year when voters overwhelmingly registered their dissatisfaction with Democrats and the unemployment-riddled economy, the candidates had every reason to consider the millions a sound investment. Instead, the question is how they failed so resoundingly.

"It's in some ways like a highly underdeveloped country that suddenly strikes oil and they don't know what to do with the money and start spending it unwisely," said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University. Baker said that money is a threshold requirement in politics, "but above a certain amount you don't get a dividend for every extra dollar."

"And when it's your own money, you cast aside some of the restraints and keep spending, to the point where you cast aside certain other aspects of the campaign that might be deficient."

Whitman was the shakiest campaign presence of the three, and a colossal ad campaign could not correct that. Awkward on the trail and hounded by embarrassing reports that she had failed to vote most of her adult life and that her housekeeper was an illegal immigrant, she hired expensive media consultants, including chief strategist Mike Murphy, who made hundreds of thousands of dollars of Whitman's money and financed an onslaught of on-air ads that targeted women, Latinos and other traditionally Democratic constituencies. But the millions she spent to boost her appeal seemed to have the opposite result, as her likeability dropped below where it had been when she started.

Both Whitman and Fiorina waited an exceptionally long time to concede to their rivals, the former expressing pride in her campaign as she called it quits in the middle of the night, the latter waiting until a Wednesday morning conference call to admit defeat.

"We had an exceptional campaign," Fiorina said, blaming the loss on an inability to "overcome the registration advantage" Democrats enjoy in population centers like Los Angeles. Ultimately, she refused to "engage in a game of coulda, woulda, shouda."

But there was plenty to second-guess in Fiorina's inability to drift back to the center after her sharp tack right in the primary. In contrast to most centrist California candidates, Fiorina stuck to her opposition to abortion except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother's life; touted the benefits of offshore drilling; and championed gun rights.

Boxer pounced on Fiorina's positions on social issues and constantly linked the Republican to former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who endorsed the GOP challenger.


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HP, RIM Tablets Duel for Enterprise Customers - eWeek

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By: Wayne Rash
2010-10-24
Article Rating:starstarstarstarstar / 2

There are 4 user comments on this Enterprise Mobility story.



HP, RIM Tablets Duel for Enterprise Customers
( Page 1 of 2 )

Hewlett Packard and Research in Motion demonstrated at the Gartner Symposium/IT Expo in Orlando that there is more than one way to slice the tablet market.  

Both companies highlighted their tablets, both aimed at the enterprise market, and both tablets were completely different from the Apple iPad and from each other. Could this mean a fragmentation of the tablet market or simply a market that is too broad for one device to satisfy? 

HP is the first out of the gate with an enterprise tablet. The Slate 500 went on sale just after midnight on October 22 on the HP Web site. Chris Preimesberger, who examined the device, describes it as being narrower and lighter than the iPad. More significantly, the device runs Windows 7 Professional. 

According to HP?s press materials, this tablet is designed as a business machine rather than a consumer electronics item. This means that it comes with Microsoft Office 2010, it has a stylus for entering handwritten notes and for writing e-mails. The Slate 500 includes a docking station with additional USB ports, a video port, and it includes two cameras, one facing to the front and one to the rear for video conferencing and for taking photos of things. The four-finger multi-touch screen also means that you aren?t dependant on the stylus to use the Slate. 

What?s less well-known is that tablet computers aren?t new at HP. I used the first one well over a decade ago. In those days the device was more like a laptop with a detachable screen. On the bottom was the keyboard. Enclosed in the screen section were a battery, the hard disk and the WiFi radio, and a socket for holding the electronic stylus. You needed to use the stylus or a USB mouse and keyboard to use the computer. Over the years HP has updated its line of tablet computers, and the Slate 500 is a logical evolution of that product line. 

RIM?s tablet, meanwhile, may be aimed at the enterprise, but it has little in common with the HP Slate. The RIM device is designed to be used in conjunction with a BlackBerry smart phone. Like the HP, the PlayBook has support for WiFi and Bluetooth. Also like the HP, it does not have a 3G or 4G radio. The PlayBook is designed to sync with BlackBerry devices, and it?s designed to tether to them for access to high speed wireless Internet access. 

RIM claims the PlayBook is also not competing with the Apple iPad for consumer dollars. While about half of all BlackBerries are sold to consumers, it?s hard to imagine a large number of consumers wanting their tablet tethered to their phones. 


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Suspect package found at airport - BBC News

3 November 2010 Last updated at 18:44 ET Part of Glasgow Airport has been evacuated after a suspicious package was found.

The package was discovered in the departures security area at about 1955 GMT.

A Strathclyde Police spokeswoman said security staff had become aware of an item "deemed to be suspicious in nature".

Passengers who had already passed through departures security were allowed to travel.

It is not clear whether the bag had already been screened in the search area of the airport.

A spokesman for Glasgow Airport said: "A suspect package was found in the search area. Because it is in the search area we can no longer process passengers for their departures.

"We are still accepting flights as normal. We are not closed but we have cordoned off that area until the police say it is safe."

He added: "We have had to evacuate the search area and the adjacent road at the front of the terminal. The terminal is still accessible.

"The suspect package was found by one of the staff."

The last two flights due to leave from Glasgow Airport were delayed.

They are Easyjet's 2055 to Gatwick and British Midland's 2125 flight to Heathrow.


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Kinect Dashboard: The beginning of the end? - Computerandvideogames.com

Is it wrong to let a Dashboard worry me? Should I really let a superficial, skin-deep tweak play on my mind?

I've always been an over thinker, maybe it's just me, but my beloved Xbox has changed.

Why have, bright, solid, green and yellow ribbons replaced the orbiting of a newly born, Planet Xbox eclipse on start-up, for example?

Where are her subtle curves? What's happened to the attention to detail and the way menus slide neatly behind each other and stretch back to the horizon?

Instead of a sleek, sexy, inviting welcome, now when I boot up my 360 I get bright but sharp-edged, straight, shallow hello. Something's up.

I know, I know, it's still the same machine it was yesterday. Today's Dashboard update doesn't change the fact that it can still play Gears - and in a couple of weeks I'll be hitting Black Ops with the rest of the world - but don't tell me it's just a backend. It's not.

It's the first thing I see when I boot up my console and it sets my gaming mood. Ok, up until now it was probably a subconscious thing, but you know what they say about not knowing what you've got 'til it's gone.

I'm not saying Microsoft has paved paradise exactly, but the Dashboard re-design has bigger implications than you might realise.

A console's boot-up menu is its shop floor, its front garden. That green gallery is the hotel reception of the 360. It reflects a brand; it's symbolic of the experience you can expect as an Xbox owner.

It's the same for the other two consoles. I can remember touching my PS3 to life for the first time and being intrigued by the operatic swell, the wave of light, flowing like a ribbon across the screen and a sophisticated, logo-less "Sony Computer Entertainment" fading in on the right of the screen.

I thought I was being lead into some sort of Hollywood movie but no, that's just the entrance to the XMB.

At first it struck me as odd but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. The PS3 is pitched at that slightly older section of gamers as more than a video games console. It wants to make the leap from the kids' bedroom to the living room as multimedia hub.

The PS3 XMB backdrop, with its standard jet black set-up, looks more like a Jaguar advert than a gaming portal.

The Wii dash is the exact opposite; pristine, solid white surfaces, baby blue trim, a nice big round button for mail. Every option is spread out in front of you across a wall of mini-screens for simplicity.

You don't need me to tell you that the Wii is going for a different type of gamer to the PS3 but look how the Dashboard reflects it. It's clean, friendly and Gran doesn't have to worry herself with tricky sub-menus.

The Xbox 360 has always sat in between the PS3 and the Wii. Of course, as a hardcore console its snuggled right up against the PS3, but where Sony's console might play more Blu-rays in some households than it does games, the 360, by and large, stays with the gamer.

It's one for the FPS lover, the racing nut, the football fanatic. The 360 is about the lads and lasses who gather round to compete. Sweeping generalisation? Maybe, but the 360 Dash of old pitched itself at gamers.

It was shiny and slick but it didn't take itself quite so seriously as the PS3. It was sophisticated but grounded in fun.

Of course, back when the dashboard I'm currently sticking up for was first unleashed, I did do a mini-sick in my mouth when I saw what were essentially Miis jumping about my screen.

I got over that, but this latest update seems like phase two of the move towards Wiiville. It's just too stark and simple.

And that start-up tutorial video, the one that tells us how to use the analogue sticks to scroll through the menu. Please.

And that's the problem. This isn't just a case of the Xbox sticking on a bland sweatshirt - with its flat, grey boxes - it's the dumbing down of a console in preparation for the casual gamer.

Granted it's only a visual dumbing down, and Microsoft would call it streamlining in preparation for Kinect users, who'll be swiping around the menu screens, but in a way that's worse.

With Kinect's starting line-up, bar a few potentials, it hasn't done a lot to convince me that it's going to cater for the hardcore sufficiently. I want the 360 to drag Kinect to the core, at the moment it looks like Kinect is going to push the console to the casual.

I'm sure that the 360 will provide more than enough for real gamers for a long time, but today it feels like my console is trying to impress someone - and that someone isn't me.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I feel like I'm losing my Xbox 360.


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Monday, November 29, 2010

Facebook Developers Sold User IDs to Data Brokers - PC Magazine

In the wake of a controversy surrounding the security of Facebook user IDs, the social-networking site on Friday admitted that several of its developers sold UIDs to data brokers.

"As we examined the circumstances of inadvertent UID transfers, we discovered some instances where a data broker was paying developers for UIDs," Facebook engineer Mike Vernal wrote in a blog post.

Private user data was not sold, Vernal said. Facebook has since suspended the developers for six months. If they wish to return to the Facebook developer community, they will have "to submit their data practices to an audit in the future to confirm that they are in compliance with our policies," he wrote.

Facebook did not reveal the names of the developers in question except to say that they are about a "dozen, mostly smaller" developers that are not among the top 10 applications on the site. Facebook also reached a deal with data broker Rapleaf whereby the company will delete all Facebook UIDs and stop conducting any activities on Facebook Platform going forward.

"In taking these steps, we believe we are taking the appropriate measures to ensure people stay in control of their information, while providing developers the tools they need to create engaging social experiences," Vernal wrote.

The issue over Facebook UIDs made headlines several weeks ago when the Wall Street Journal published a story that said Facebook apps share users' personal information with advertising networks and other Internet-tracking companies. That, apparently, did include the top 10 apps on Facebook, as well as Rapleaf. Facebook later said it would encrypt UIDs going forward.

On Friday, Facebook further clarified its app privacy policy to "state that UIDs cannot leave your application or any of the infrastructure, code, and services you need to build and run your application," Vernal wrote.

Services like Akamai, Amazon Web Services, and other analytics options are allowed "as long as those services keep UIDs confidential to your application." This week, Facebook will also release a way to share identifiers anonymously with third parties like content partners, advertisers, or other service providers. Developers will be required to use this mechanism by January 1.


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High court rejects campaign finance appeal - Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court is passing up an election eve chance to weigh in on campaign finance disclosure rules for groups that raise and spend money independently of candidates.

The justices on Monday rejected an appeal from the conservative group SpeechNow.org, which want wants to limit what it has to tell the Federal Election Commission about its activities.

The court's action a day before the 2010 midterm elections leaves in place a federal appeals court decision that struck down limits on contributions to SpeechNow and similar independent groups, but upheld disclosure requirements.

Outside groups have so far spent more than $264 million, more than four times as much as they did four years ago.


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Sarkozy, embassies in far-left letter bomb plot - ABC Online

Posted November 2, 2010 01:27:00

Police in Athens said they had arrested four people on Monday after uncovering a plot to send parcel bombs to French president Nicolas Sarkozy and three foreign embassies in the Greek capital.

Police said one of the four people arrested was a suspected member of an obscure group that specialises in arson attacks on offices and homes of politicians, Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei.

One of the packages, addressed to Mexico's embassy in Athens, ignited as it was being sorted in the headquarters of the courier company, slightly injuring a female employee.

"There was no explosion but we saw smoke coming out and heard a woman shouting," a neighbour told state television NET.

"I took a fire extinguisher into the room. It was full of smoke and smelled of gunpowder, you needed a mask to go in there."

The two men, aged 22 and 24, were arrested in the central district of Pangrati.

Police said in a statement that they were intending to mail a total of four parcel bombs, adding that they were both armed with Glock handguns. One of the men wore a bullet-proof vest and a wig.

From a postal slip found on the suspects, the police tracked down and exploded a second parcel at a neighbouring courier company, addressed to the Dutch embassy.

Two more devices found on the detainees were intended for French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the Belgian embassy, the police said.

The Dutch foreign ministry said it had been informed by the Greek authorities "and remain in close contact with them."

Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei had also planted a small explosive device in a garbage bin outside the Greek parliament in January, after police claimed to have arrested several of the group's members in raids around the capital.

Attacks on government and police targets are relatively frequent in Greece and are commonly attributed to left-wing extremists, though they are usually designed to avoid causing injury.

Parcel bombs are rare, but a similar device fatally injured the then police minister's security chief in June after being smuggled into the heavily-guarded ministry building.

Police have not linked any known group to that attack.

Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei appeared in early 2008, and has continued operating despite the arrest of nine of its purported members last year.

- AFP

Tags: world-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, france, greece


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Republicans, Democrats Make Final Push For Votes - Voice of America

  01 November 2010

Former President Bill Clinton holds up four-month old Natalie Fontana of Washingtonville, N.Y. while making a campaign stop for Rep. John Hall in Harriman, N.Y. (far left) 30 Oct 2010 Former President Bill Clinton holds up four-month old Natalie Fontana of Washingtonville, N.Y. while making a campaign stop for Rep. John Hall in Harriman, N.Y. (far left) 30 Oct 2010

Republicans and Democrats are making a final push for votes, on the eve of U.S. elections that experts say could give the minority Republicans control of at least one chamber of Congress.   

A new poll indicates that Republicans have a more commanding lead than either party has had in decades before a midterm vote.  The USA Today/Gallup survey says 55 percent of the 1,500 people asked say they plan to support Republicans in the elections, the widest margin since 1974.

Analysts are expecting Republicans to make enough gains to take control of the House of Representatives, but to fall short of winning a majority in the Senate.  Democrats currently control both houses of Congress.

The economy remains the main source of trouble for Democrats this year.  Republican leaders say the political energy and momentum is on their side this year, just as it was with the Democrats in 2006 and 2008.

At stake Tuesday are all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 37 of the 100 seats in the Senate.  A number of states also are holding votes for governorships, local officials and ballot measures.

President Barack Obama recently wound up a four-state campaign tour in which he sought to rally fellow Democrats, to limit the expected opposition gains.

During an appearance in Cleveland, Ohio Sunday, Mr. Obama blamed the current economic sluggishness and high unemployment rate on mistakes made by the previous Republican administration.  But Republicans have been blaming Mr. Obama.

Republican gains likely would make it more difficult for the president to win approval for his legislative initiatives.


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Japan summons Russian ambassador over Kuril islands visit - Telegraph.co.uk

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits a young family during his visit to Kunashir one of the Kuril islands: Russia and Japan in dispute over Kuril Islands Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits a young family during his visit to Kunashir one of the Kuril islands Photo: EPA

Mr Medvedev ignored Japanese pleas to stay away and became the first Russian leader since the fall of the Soviet Union to visit the disputed territory that the Russians call the Kuril Islands and the Japanese the Northern Territories.

The question of who owns the islands, which were seized by Soviet troops at the end of the Second World War, is so bitter that Russia and Japan have yet to formally sign a post-war peace treaty sixty five years after hostilities ended.

Japan reacted with fury and said it still wanted the islands back. Naoto Kan, the Japanese prime minister, said the visit was "very regrettable".

In a measure of how seriously Tokyo was taking the matter, it summoned Russia's ambassador to Japan for an explanation.

The Kremlin in response summoned Japan's ambassador to Moscow in retaliation, professing itself baffled by such a strong Japanese reaction.

"The reaction of the Japanese side to President Medvedev's visit to the Kurils is unacceptable," said Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. "This is our land, and the Russian President is visiting Russian land," he added, signalling there was no room for compromise.

Mr Medvedev spent four hours on one of the four islands that Tokyo wants back visiting a power plant, a kindergarten and a fish processing plant. But the diplomatic fallout from his visit is likely to reverberate for much longer.

The row comes as Mr Medvedev prepares to attend a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organisation in Japan later this month.

The timing of his historic visit to the contested islands was particularly sensitive for Japan. Tokyo is only just recovering from a diplomatic spat with China over a group of disputed islands in the East China Sea that saw Japan detain and then release the captain of a Chinese fishing boat under massive pressure from Beijing.


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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Apple's iPhone tops US smartphone shipments, but Android devices take 44% - Apple Insider

Apple's iPhone tops US smartphone shipments, but Android devices take 44%

By Neil Hughes

Published: 09:45 AM EST

Apple's iPhone was the best-selling smartphone in the third quarter of 2010, taking 26.2 percent of the market, but the wide variety of handsets running Google's Android represented a commanding 43.6 percent.

New data from Canalys released on Monday shows that Apple took the top spot in the U.S. as the best-selling smartphone vendor in the country. Apple's 26.2 percent share edged Research in Motion's 24.2 percent, giving Apple the greatest shipments of any vendor in the U.S., which is the largest smartphone market in the world.

However, Canalys also found that devices running Google's Android mobile operating system represented 43.6 percent of U.S.shipments in the third quarter of 2010. Worldwide, Android grew 1,309 percent from the same period a year ago, from 1.4 million shipments in the third quarter of 2009 to more than 20 million units during the three-month span this year.

"With Samsung, HTC, Motorola and Sony Ericsson all delivering large numbers of Android devices, and with focused efforts from many other vendors, such as LG, Huawei and Acer, yielding promising volumes, the platform continues to gather momentum in markets around the world," said Canalys Senior Analyst Pete Cunningham.

"Android has been well received by the market and in some geographies it is becoming a sought-after consumer brand. It has rapidly become the platform to watch, and its growing volumes will help to entice developers, ensuring consumers have access to an increasingly rich and vibrant mobile content and application ecosystem."

The numbers show a total of 9.1 million smartphones running Android from the Open Handset Alliance being shipped in the third quarter of 2010. That was ahead of the estimated 5.5 million iPhones sold in the three-month frame. Research in Motion's BlackBerry came in third in the mobile operating system race, shipping an estimated 5.1 million, followed by Microsoft with 600,000.

Canalys

Recent studies have repeatedly shown that Android-based smartphone shipments have eclipsed Apple's iPhone in 2010. Some have shown that Android's growth was not slowed by the launch of the iPhone 4 this summer.

Apple and Android have publicly disputed one another over new device activation numbers throughout 2010. But on last month, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs admitted that Android outsold the iPhone in the June quarter, citing numbers from Gartner which he said he believes are "pretty accurate."

Jobs said during his company's quarterly earnings call that in the June quarter, many customers were waiting to buy the iPhone 4. He said his company is waiting to find out what happened in the September quarter, but it's hard to track because there is no "solid data" on how many Android devices are shipped each quarter.

Apple just had its best quarter ever, selling a record 14.1 million iPhones. That helped the company achieve 70 percent growth in profits to $4.31 billion.







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Brazil Stocks Advance on Commodity Rise, Rousseff Election Win - BusinessWeek

November 01, 2010, 10:04 AM EDT By Alexander Ragir

Nov. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s Bovespa stock index rose for a second day as commodities advanced and traders reduced bets interest rates would increase after President-elect Dilma Rousseff vowed to restrain spending after yesterday’s election.

Vale SA, the world’s biggest iron ore producer, rose as metals prices advanced. MRV Engenharia e Participacoes SA and Rossi Residencial SA gained on Rousseff’s victory. Cosan SA Industria & Comercio, the world’s biggest sugar-cane processor, climbed after saying its unit, Cosan Overseas Ltd., sold $300 million of perpetual bonds to yield 8.25 percent.

“This election was somewhat of an overhang on the Bovespa,” said Ed Kuczma, an emerging markets analyst at Van Eck Associates in New York, which manages $21 billion. “As long as Brazil continues on the fundamentals Lula enacted, Brazil should be fine.”

The Bovespa stock index rose 0.7 percent to 71,137.14 at 9:44 a.m. New York time. The Bovespa stock index advanced on Oct. 29, capping a second monthly gain, as homebuilders and retailers rallied on easing concern policy makers will raise borrowing costs to cool the economy.

The real was little changed at 1.6996 per dollar today.

Yields on interest-rate futures contracts due in January 2012 fell 3 basis points, or 0.03 percentage point, to 11.31 percent.

Copper rose in London as manufacturing accelerated in China, the world’s biggest consumer of the metal.

Vale rose 0.6 percent to 48.03 reais. Cosan gained 2.2 percent to 27.44 reais.

Rousseff’s Promises

Rousseff won 56 percent of the vote yesterday compared with 44 percent for Jose Serra, the former governor of Sao Paulo state. The Brazilian people won’t accept governments that spend at “unsustainable levels,” Rousseff told supporters in Brasilia after the election results were announced.

Rossi climbed 1.9 percent to 16.97 reais. MRV advanced 1.4 percent to 16.83 reais.

Rousseff won by promising continuity with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, whose policies lifted 21 million Brazilians out of poverty since 2003 and created a record 15 million jobs.

Maintaining Lula’s economic policies may be insufficient to allow Rousseff to match his successes, which include winning Brazil’s first investment-grade credit rating in 2008. Traders are pushing up borrowing costs for Brazil, which has $957 billion in public debt, on bets that Rousseff will fail to curb spending, forcing policy makers to raise interest rates in 2011.

--Editors: Glenn J. Kalinoski, Brendan Walsh

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexander Ragir in Rio de Janeiro at aragir@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Papadopoulos at papadopoulos@bloomberg.net


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Iraqi forces storm church to end standoff; 58 killed - CNN

58 dead in Iraqi hostage situationNEW: Seven-five others wounded at Catholic church in Baghdad NEW: Most of the casualties were women and children, officials sayThe Islamic State of Iraq claims responsibility for the attackGunmen entered the church Sunday, taking as many as 120 hostage

Baghdad, Iraq (CNN) -- The death toll from a hostage standoff at a Catholic church in Baghdad has risen to 58, police officials with the Iraqi Interior Ministry said Monday.

Seventy-five others were wounded in the attack by armed gunmen Sunday, the officials said, adding that most of the casualties were women and children. Two priests were also among the dead as well as 17 security officers and five gunmen.

The hours-long standoff ended Sunday after Iraqi security forces stormed the Sayidat al-Nejat church. Eight suspects were arrested.

"All the marks point out that this incident carries the fingerprints of al Qaeda," Iraqi Defense Minister Abdul Qader Obeidi said on state television Sunday.

He said that most of the hostages were killed or wounded when the kidnappers set off explosives inside the church.

At least two of the attackers were wearing explosive vests, which they detonated just minutes before security forces raided the church, the police officials said.

The Islamic State of Iraq later claimed responsibility for the attack through a statement posted on a radical Islamic website. The umbrella group includes a number of Sunni extremist organizations and has ties to al Qaeda in Iraq.

"The Mujahedeens raided a filthy nest of the nests of polytheism, which has been long taken by the Christians of Iraq as a headquarter for a war against the religion of Islam and they were able by the grace of God and His glory to capture those were gathered in and to take full control of all its entrances," the group said on the website.

Pope Benedict XVI said Monday that he was praying "for the victims of this absurd violence -- all the more ferocious in that it hit defenseless people gathered in the house of the Lord, which is home to reconciliation and love."

Survivors of the ordeal said they were about to begin Sunday night services when the gunmen entered the church, according to Martin Chulov, a journalist for the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper who was on the scene. A priest ushered the congregants into a backroom, Chulov reported that survivors said.

At one point, one of the gunmen entered the room and threw an unidentified explosive device inside, causing casualties, Chulov said.

The U.S. military spokesman said that as many as 120 people were taken hostage.

The gunmen seized the hostages after attacking the Baghdad Stock Market in the central part of the Iraqi capital earlier Sunday, police said. Four armed men entered the nearby Sayidat al-Nejat church after clashing with Iraqi security forces trying to repel the stock market attack.

Iraq's Interior Ministry told CNN that gunmen attacked the stock market to distract Iraqi security forces who were outside the church to protect it.

The gunmen were demanding that the Iraqi government release a number of detainees and prisoners inside Iraqi prisons, saying the Christian hostages would be freed in return, according to the police officials. Iraq's defense minister later said on state television that the kidnappers had demanded the release of a number of prisoners in both Iraq and Egypt.

Iraqi security forces sealed off the area surrounding the church, the officials said, and buildings were evacuated of civilians as a precautionary measure. At least 13 hostages, including two children, managed to escape ahead of the rescue operation, police said.

The Iraqi authorities ordered the attackers to release the hostages and to turn themselves in, warning that they would storm the church if they do not comply. A few hours passed quietly as military units took up positions outside the church, including several American units, said Chulov.

"Then all hell broke loose," he said. A firefight erupted, and Chulov said he heard three to four large explosions. Later, he saw about 20 ambulances race away from the scene.

The American military spokesman minimized the role that U.S. troops played in the operation.

"The U.S. only provided UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] support with video imagery. As always we have advisers with the ISF [Iraqi security forces] command teams," Bloom said.

While the U.S. combat mission in Iraq officially ended earlier this year, some 50,000 American troops are expected to remain in the country until the end of 2011 to train, assist and advise Iraqi troops.

CNN's Hada Messia contributed to this report.


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Shuttle Discovery's final crew is experienced bunch - msnbc.com

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A tight-knit crew of six veteran astronauts are gearing up to ride the space shuttle Discovery on her last voyage beyond Earth this week.

The space flyers are due to launch on Discovery on Wednesday at 3:52 p.m. EDT (1952 GMT), from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

The five men and one woman slated to lift off on the shuttle are not just crewmates, but friends as well. In fact, five of the six crewmembers were selected into the same astronaut training class. They are flying on the final mission for shuttle Discovery STS-133 as NASA prepares to retire its shuttle fleet next year.

But just who are the people behind the orange spacesuits? Here's a glimpse at each member of the last crew of space shuttle Discovery:

The commander
Steve Lindsey, 50, is the commander of the mission. A native of Temple City, Calif., Lindsey is a retired colonel in the United States Air Force. He was selected as an astronaut candidate by NASA in 1995, and has made four spaceflights, two of those on shuttle Discovery.

"Discovery is a workhorse fleet leader in number of flights," Lindsey said in a preflight briefing. "It's a privilege to be able to fly the last flight of Discovery." [ Gallery: Building Space Shuttle Discovery ]

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The strong but soft-spoken Lindsey said he is excited to lead his fellow crewmembers on the 11-day expedition to the International Space Station.

"Personally, I'm really excited to be flying with this crew," Lindsey said. "They're a fantastic group of people to fly with. Somebody once told me, you'll find as you get more experience, it's less about what you do on a mission, and more about who you get to fly it with. And I think that's really true in this case."

Lindsey is married and has three children.

The pilot
Eric Boe will serve as the pilot of STS-133, Discovery's 39th flight. The 46-year old native of Atlanta, Ga. is a colonel in the United States Air Force, and was selected to join NASA as a pilot in July 2000.

Boe completed his first spaceflight on NASA's STS-126 mission, on the space shuttle Endeavour. At a preflight briefing, Boe reflected on the significance of being part of one of the final flights of NASA's space shuttle program.

"I think all of us are happy to be on another flight," Boe said. "It's a little bittersweet when something comes to an end, but it's a privilege to be able to fly the vehicle."

For the upcoming mission, Boe said he is most looking forward to gaining new experiences and working as a team with his other crewmembers.

"When you're up there, things go pretty quick," he said. "I think I'll have a little more time to look around and pay attention to the small details. The biggest overall thing I hope to get out of this is to really absorb some of the small details I might have missed on the first flight."

Boe is married and has two children.

The astronaut dreamer
Discovery's Mission Specialist 1 is Alvin Drew, a recently retired colonel in the U.S. Air Force. During the crew's stay at the space station, Drew will participate in the mission's two spacewalks.

In addition to commemorating the legacy of the space shuttle Discovery, Drew will have another important milestone to celebrate while in space on Nov. 5, he will turn 48-yearsold.

Drew, who was born in Washington, D.C., was selected as a mission specialist by NASA in July 2000, and made his first spaceflight aboard the shuttle Endeavour for STS-118 in 2007. Having grown up dreaming of becoming an astronaut, Drew admitted that his spaceflying career seems almost surreal at times.

"[Becoming an astronaut] was one of the things that was in the back of my mind during my Air Force career, but nothing that I really took that seriously," he explained. "I think depending your career on becoming an astronaut is like planning your pension around winning the lottery. It's something that you can go pursue, but you should have a 'Plan B' in place. I did everything to stack the deck in my favor, but never really expected it would happen."

Drew's spacewalks on Discovery's STS-133 flight will be the first of his career, and he said he's proud to contribute to the future of the orbiting laboratory.

"Hopefully I can come back in 2020 and see the station working and think, I had a small part in keeping it going this long," he said.

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The Army's spacewalker
U.S. Army Col. Tim Kopra will serve as a mission specialist for Discovery's STS-133 spaceflight. The 47-year old native of Austin, Texas, is Discovery's Mission Specialist 2 and will lead the two spacewalks outside the station during the mission.

Kopra was selected to become an astronaut in July 2000 and completed his first spaceflight in 2009. He launched with the STS-127 crew aboard the space shuttle Endeavour in 2009 and logged two months aboard the space station. During his stay, Kopra performed one spacewalk and completed robotic operations and numerous science experiments.

For the upcoming mission, Kopra is especially excited to be reunited with so many of his classmates from the astronaut corps.

"What's really special about this flight is the fact that all the Class of 2000 folks are on it," he said. "We started together, and here it is 10 years later and now we're going to have this opportunity all of us with some spaceflight experience, and being able to share that together. We started out knowing very little to nothing about spaceflight, and all of us have grown in different ways over the years."

As NASA's space shuttle program draws to a close, Kopra and his crewmates recognize the contributions of the many people across the nation that work tirelessly to ensure the safety of the astronauts and the success of the mission.

"We really feel honored to be doing what we're doing," Kopra said. "The vehicle is a representation of a lot of hard work and a group of people who have been working toward a safe flight every single time."

Kopra is married and has two children.

Discovery's space doctor
Michael Barratt joined NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston as a project physician in May 1991 and was subsequently selected for astronaut training in July 2000. Now, the doctor-turned-astronaut will perform duties as Mission Specialist 3 on Discovery's last spaceflight.

In March 2009, Barratt embarked on his first spaceflight, launching on a Russian Soyuz TMA-14 rocket to the International Space Station. During the long-duration mission aboard the orbiting outpost, he logged 199 days in space.

"I was surprised how little free time we had on our station mission," Barratt said in a preflight interview. "After six and a half months, we were still working very long days. I wouldn't call a station mission leisurely in any way, shape or form."

In light of Discovery's final mission, Barratt maintains that a lot of the glory belongs to the people who, over the years, maintained the shuttle between flights.

"The orbiters look great. If you just landed and didn't know the political landscape, you'd never know the program was coming to an end, because the birds are so pristine," Barratt said. "Everybody is incredibly dedicated. They're doing what they're doing for all the same reasons they signed on for years ago."

Barratt, 51, calls Camas, Wash. his hometown. He is married and has five children.

Home again on space station
Nicole Stott is the Mission Specialist 4 for Discovery's upcoming flight. She began working at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in 1988 as an operations engineer in the Orbiter Processing Facility.

Stott, 47, was selected for astronaut training in July 2000 and launched on  her first spaceflight to the International Space Station in 2009, also aboard Discovery. The mission also marked Stott's first long-duration tour of duty on the orbiting station. While living and working on the space station, Stott completed one spacewalk and spent a total of 91 days in space.

Stott's second journey on Discovery will also be the orbiter's last, and in a preflight briefing, she spoke about the prolific shuttle's storied career.

"It's a historic thing that we have such a special vehicle to fly," she said. "The hope, in addition to having a successful mission, is that we'll be celebrating the real significance of the vehicle itself. We have to look at this as a celebration of just how wonderful Discovery has performed."

Additionally, having grown up in Clearwater, Fla., Stott knows firsthand the impact and enduring legacy that NASA's space shuttle program has had on the country.

"There's nothing negative that you can say about it," Stott said. "There are only positives and encouraging things that have come from this program."

Stott is married and has one child.

Follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow as she covers Discovery's final space voyage from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Click here for mission updates, new stories and a link to NASA's live webcast coverage.

© 2010 Space.com. All rights reserved. More from Space.com.


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Microsoft's Head Is in the Clouds - TechNewsWorld

It was pretty much all about the cloud at Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) Professional Developers Conference, held last week at its Redmond, Wash., corporate campus.

CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives spoke about how the software giant's latest developments span the PC, the mobile phone and the cloud.

They also highlighted the revamp of Windows Azure as a PaaS (Platform as a Service) offering, pushing it as a next-generation operating system.

Microsoft further used the occasion to unveil major changes in its browser with the release of IE9 Platform Preview 6 for developers.

It's not clear, however, what effect its ramped-up push into the cloud will have on the software giant's competitive position in the short term.

At PDC 2010, Microsoft positioned Windows Azure as a PaaS. A PaaS lets users set up the platform they heed - -- the hardware, operating systems, IT infrastructure and tools -- automatically on the cloud, instead of having to physically source some or all of these components.

Microsoft announced Virtual Machine Role, as well as Server Application Virtualization -- two new Windows Azure capabilities that will make it a PaaS.

Virtual Machine Role lets users run an instance of Windows Server 2008 R2 on Microsoft's cloud. This lets developers move their apps to the cloud more easily.

Server Application Virtualization lets devs transfer app images to Windows Azure.

Microsoft also announced Windows Azure services, which let developers create rich cloud apps. One is the Windows Azure AppFabric Composition Model. The model provides critical application deployment and management capabilities that help devs assemble services more quickly.

Another service is the Windows Azure Marketplace. This includes DataMarket, previously codenamed "Project Dallas." The Windows Azure Marketplace offers premium (for-pay) and public content, including demographic, financial, mapping and entertainment data. It was launched Friday and has more than 35 content providers offering data subscriptions.

Microsoft also introduced the Extra Small Widows Azure Instance for developers. This is priced at 5 US cents per compute hour.

"This emphasis on the cloud is likely Ray Ozzie's signature contribution to Microsoft, and it looks like he actually did an impressive job of getting a lot of folks who don't normally work together to cooperate," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld.

"I think the impact is going to be positive for Azure," John Barnes, chief technology officer at Model Metrics, told TechNewsWorld. "We're going to evaluate it because we're hearing more and more positive things about it."

However, Microsoft may find the going tougher than expected. "Depending on the enterprise, there's still some skepticism about the cloud," Barnes said.

It will be five to 10 years before people fully accept moving everything to the cloud, he added.

Microsoft did not respond to TechNewsWorld's requests for comment by press time.

As for IE9, the next version of Microsoft's browser, the focus is strongly on HTML5. The company is working on interoperability, committing to the W3C and the standards process. The IE9 beta has been downloaded 10 million times since it was launched about six weeks ago, Microsoft said.

Microsoft on Friday made IE9 Platform Preview 6 available for developers at IETestDrive.com. This preview offers better performance and quality, as wel as increased standards support.

For example, IE9 now supports CSS3 2D transforms. It also supports full hardware acceleration.

"IE9 is the only browser in the market that is 100 percent hardware accelerated," Enderle said. "The others haven't been able to pull this off yet, and it's a huge improvement over IE8 as a result."

Although Microsoft's pushing of hardware performance will slow down adoption of IE9 at first, it will appeal to those who buy new hardware and are most likely to buy other devices, Enderle pointed out. "It's called going where the money is, and this practice is more consistent with Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) practice than it is with Microsoft's," he added.

"Microsoft's seen what happened with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) Chrome and has tried to make its browser much faster and tighter," Model Metrics' Barnes remarked.

Still, this may not be enough to stem the growing popularity of Google's Chrome browser, which been making inroads into the browser market at Microsoft's expense, of late.

"Whether people will go back to IE after having used Chrome or Firefox remains to be seen," Barnes said.

Why the heavy play on HTML5? Is Microsoft tired of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash?

"Flash has issues, and, while Microsoft will continue to support it, Flash is somewhat of an embarrassment because it should have been Microsoft's technology," Enderle said.

"Flash has its roots in 'Chrome Effects,' a project that was killed because of internal politics. Microsoft probably would just as soon see Flash go away," he added.

"Flash, HTML5 and Silverlight all have their places," Model Metrics' Barnes suggested. "I think HTML5 is great for cross-platform and cross-browser compatibility."

Flash and Silverlight have a place in the short term, and they'll probably coexist with HTML5 for the next three to five years, Barnes said. "I know Adobe's doing a lot with Flash, and it talks a lot about how HTML5 and Flash can coexist -- and the same can be said for Silverlight."

Apple, too, is pushing for HTML5 instead of Flash, which it describes as old technology and prone to malware attacks.

Talk of a move toward mobile computing has been gaining traction for some time. Apple seems to have taken this to heart, revamping its MacBook Air family's user interface with features formerly only seen in mobile devices.

Is Microsoft missing the boat here? There's almost nothing heard about a mobile version of IE9.

Perhaps not. At PDC 2010, Microsoft demonstrated using Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone to develop apps. VSE is the free version of Visual Studio.

Devs can use a variety of ways to get data with WinPho7. These include REST, JSON and Web services, and Microsoft on Friday announced it's shipping a new OData library devs can use. This provides standards-based OData to consume and query data on the Web.

"The Windows Phone 7 offering has the best browser Microsoft has ever put in a phone," said Enderle. "It's just that Microsoft had issues with Flash initially."


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Alternative Search Engine Blekko Launches to Eliminate Spam in Search - ABC News

Blekko's alternative search engine — a $24 million venture-backed project that's been three years in the making — is today launching its public beta. With the official rollout, Blekko is also releasing several new features designed for both mainstream and the site's super users.

As you may recall, Blekko is designed to eliminate spam search results, allowing users to search just a subset of the web through its proprietary slashtag technology.

The most significant upgrade to Blekko's search engine is the addition of slashtags that auto-fire for queries that fall into one of seven categories: health, colleges, autos, personal finance, lyrics, recipes and hotels. Every time a Blekko user's query is determined to be in one of these categories, Blekko will automatically append the associated slashtag to the query and limit results to just the subset of URLs that fall under that slashtag.

The auto-fire functionality is designed with passive searchers in mind and aims to eliminate friction for first-time users. The technology that powers these auto-slashtags was developed through an extensive research and development phase that involved analyzing the relationship between queries and the type of spam results they typically generate.

Blekko plans to introduce auto-slashing for additional categories moving forward, but selected to launch with ones that represent a high volume of search traffic and are typically laden with spammy results. Health, lyric and financial queries on Google or Bing, for instance, will return results dominated by poor quality content farms or malware-hosting sites. Those same searches on Blekko yield results only from high quality sites.

Blekko's slashtag formula works because of passionate users who take the time to add and edit URLs for category slashtags. As such, the company has released new features to enable users to apply to be editors for slashtags as well as share their comments and feedback on individual slashtags. Think of this as the Wikipedia formula but applied to search, so a small percentage of users will work together to build out slashtags for the majority of Blekko searchers.


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Saturday, November 27, 2010

Fox News Polls: Republicans Finish Strong in Key States on Eve of Election - Fox News

Published November 01, 2010 | FoxNews.com

On election eve, Republicans are finishing strong in key states.

The final round of Fox News battleground state polls shows Democratic incumbents in trouble across the country.

The latest surveys were conducted on Oct. 30 by Pulse Opinion Research for Fox News. Each survey included 1,000 likely voters and has a margin of error of 3 points.

Nevada Poll Shows Angle with Momentum

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid heads into Election Day in dire shape for holding on to his Nevada Senate seat.

The latest Fox News Battleground state poll shows Republican Sharron Angle now leading Reid by 3 points, 48 percent to 45 percent among likely voters. Reid dropped two points from the last Fox poll of the Silver State two weeks ago.

It's yet another sign that the Oct. 21 debate in the race may have been a tipping point for Angle, whom Reid's campaign had attacked as "extreme," "nuts" and "crazy" for months. By outperforming expectations in the debate, and with her "Man up, Harry Reid" zinger, Angle seems to have gone a long way in closing the deal in this race.

Favorable views of Angle shot up from 36 percent to 43 percent and unfavorable views of the former state senator dropped from 58 percent to 52 percent.

Voters turned just as sharply against Reid as they became more approving of Angle. Unfavorable views of Reid climbed 4 points to a toxic 60 percent.

But Nevada voters are generally unhappy with Democrats, including President Obama.

Obama’s approval rating dropped to a new low in the Fox News battleground state poll of 38 percent and a new high of 53 percent said that Obama’s policies had hurt Nevada’s economy.

Women seem to be more uneasy about Angle as evidenced by a giant gender gap. While Angle has the edge among male voters 53 percent to 37 percent, among women, the Republican is down 53 percent to 43 percent.

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Republican Buck Widens Lead in Colorado Senate

Colorado Republican Ken Buck is closing strong in his bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.

Buck gained 4 points from the Fox News battleground state poll taken two weeks ago and now leads Bennet 50 percent to 46 percent among likely voters. For a Senate challenger to be leading so late and be above 50 percent is a serious sign that Bennet may be headed for defeat.

The race for Colorado governor also continues to show American Constitution Party nominee Tom Tancredo closing in on Democrat John Hickenlooper, now trailing by a scant 3 points. Republican Dan Maes has largely been abandoned by members of his party for Tancredo, a former five-term Republican member of the House.

Hickenlooper now takes 47 percent of the vote to Tancredo’s 44 percent. Maes drew just 6 percent support, down from 10 percent two weeks ago. Seventy three percent of Republicans backed Tancredo over their party’s nominee.

President Obama's agenda continues to be unpopular in Colorado. His job approval in the state is steady at 40 percent and a consistent 48 percent believe his policies have hurt Colorado’s economy.

In the Senate race, Bennet has attacked Buck over and over again on hot button social issues like abortion and gay rights. But more voters seem to have reconciling themselves to Buck’s stances. A dangerously high 49 percent agreed that Buck was "too extreme" two weeks ago. That number dropped to 47 percent this week.

The percentage of voters, though, who believe that Bennet is too closely allied with Obama remained steady at 51 percent.

Much of Buck’s strength comes from his 8-point advantage among independent voters.

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Obama’s Senate Seat Leaning GOP

Republican chances to capture the Senate seat formerly held by President Obama are improving markedly in final days of the election.

Rep. Mark Kirk doubled his 2-point lead in last week’s Fox News battleground state poll of likely voters, and now leads Democratic candidate Alexi Giannoulias 46 percent to 42 percent.

Giannoulias continues to suffer from Democratic defections to Green Party candidate LeAlan Jones, who drew 6 percent support, including 8 percent of Democrats.

In the state’s gubernatorial election, Republican state Sen. Bill Brady added a point to his margin over incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn from last week’s poll. Brady now leads Quinn by 6 points, 44 percent to 38 percent. In this race, the Democrat is suffering at the hands of two minor candidates, the Green Party’s Rich Whitney and independent Scott Lee Cohen.

Whitney and Cohen are taking a combined 10 percent of the vote, largely from Democrats or liberal-leaning voters. Cohen, a successful pawnbroker, won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor but was chased out of the race by Quinn and others after allegations of domestic violence emerged.

Kirk’s improving performance in the Senate race may spring from greater voter confidence in his character. Kirk, who was found to have embellished the list of military citations he received, was seen as honest and trustworthy by only 18 percent a month ago. That number has nearly doubled and is now at 34 percent, even with the percent who don’t trust him.

Giannoulias, meanwhile, has gone the other direction. Amid persistent questions about his family’s failed bank and its connections to organized crime, the percentage of voters who distrust Giannoulias raised 11 points in a month to 45 percent.

President Obama’s job approval rating in his home state remained steady at 46 percent, and his policies are viewed negatively. Sixty percent favor scrapping all (42 percent) or some (18 percent) of Obama’s national health insurance law.

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Murray and Rossi Down to the Wire in Washington

Incumbent Sen. Patty Murray has grabbed a narrow lead in the final Fox News battleground poll in Washington State.

Murray leads Republican challenger Dino Rossi by 2 points, 49 percent to 47 percent, in the poll of likely voters. Three weeks ago, Rossi led by 1 point and Murray led by 1 percent in late September. The race seems certain to head down to the wire.

The survey found voters with their minds made up – there was less than 1 percent still undecided and 95 percent of the supporters of each candidates said they were certain about their choice.

With her vanishingly small lead, Murray has reason to be concerned about how the leader of her party is faring her state. Forty percent of respondents approve of the job President Obama is doing, down from 44 percent two weeks ago.

The reason for the drop seems clear. Voters increasingly think that Obama’s policies have damaged the state’s economy. In September, 39 percent said Obama’s agenda had hurt the state’s economy. Three weeks ago the number was 42 percent. This week, it’s 45 percent.

Fifty-eight percent favored repealing all (40 percent) or parts (18) of the president’s national health insurance law.

Neither of the candidates in the Senate race is proving to be very well liked by voters. About half of voters had unfavorable views of both of them.

Murray has attacked Rossi on divisive cultural issues like abortion in an effort to lock up female voters, but so far, Rossi has held his own in that demographic group. He only trails Murray by 6 points among women, a fairly typical spread for a Republican.

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Kasich Holding on in Ohio

Democratic Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland has been unable to close the gap between him and his Republican challenger, former Rep. John Kasich.

Strickland needed to see a breakthrough in this last Fox News Battleground state poll of likely Ohio voters, but instead still trails by 4 points, 48 percent to 44 percent.

And while President Obama paid yet another visit to try to help Strickland on Sunday, the poll, taken before Obama’s arrival, shows that the president is largely unpopular in the state.

Only 39 percent of respondents said they approved of the job Obama was doing and 48 percent though Obama’s policies had hurt the state’s already battered economy.

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URL

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/11/01/fox-news-polls-republicans-finish-strong-key-states-eve-election/


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Airports tighten security after bomb plot - CNN

Airliners sit on the tarmac at Dubai airport Oct. 31, a day after a parcel bomb was intercepted in Dubai originating in Yemen.Airliners sit on the tarmac at Dubai airport Oct. 31, a day after a parcel bomb was intercepted in Dubai originating in Yemen.NEW: Yemen needs help to fight al Qaeda, a top official saysNEW: A Yemeni student arrested and released over the plot says she is innocentNEW: South Korea boosts airport controls ahead of a summit of world leaders next weekSuspected al Qaeda bomber Hassan al-Asiri is connected to the plot, an official says

(CNN) -- Yemen is tightening security at all of its airports in the aftermath of a plot to send bombs from Yemen to the United States, the country's National Civil Aviation Security Committee said Monday.

"Every piece of cargo and luggage will go through extensive searching" at all of its airports, the agency said.

Cargo companies such as DHL, FedEx and UPS will be required to make more stringent checks before accepting any package, according to the committee.

But Yemen needs "a lot of help" to fight al Qaeda, an aide to the country's prime minister told CNN Monday.

"Al Qaeda has got a global sort of agenda, so you need global collaboration and regional collaboration," Mohammed Qubaty said.

"We need a lot of help as regards security information, logistics," and new ways to confront them, he said, even as he emphasized that Yemen does not want foreign troops on it soil.

"We have got our security and our armed forces on the ground there," he said, saying the country does not want to become another Iraq, presumably referring to the 2003 U.S. invasion.

The U.S. military commander credited with helping reduce violence in Iraq said Washington had been concerned about Yemen for some time.

"When I was the commander in Iraq we already saw the problems starting to loom in Yemen," Gen. David Petraeus told CNN.

He said that when he was in charge of all U.S. military forces in the region, "We did focus a great deal of additional attention on helping our Yemeni partners there and the events of recent days have shown why that was valid."

On Friday, authorities in the United Arab Emirates and Britain found two packages with explosives that were destined for synagogues in Chicago, Illinois.

The explosive found in the United Arab Emirates Friday may have traveled on passenger planes to get there, airline officials said Sunday.

Both explosives appear to have been designed to detonate on their own, without someone having to set them off, the top White House counterterrorism official told CNN.

"It is my understanding that these devices did not need somebody to detonate them," said John Brennan, President Barack Obama's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.

South Korea is also stepping up security ahead of a summit of world leaders next week, it announced Monday.

Anybody who's associated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a subject of concern.
--John Brennan

Incheon International Airport will inspect all air cargo coming from destinations on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism, South Korean customs said Monday.

U.S. investigators believe al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, 28, is linked to that package and another one found on the airplane in Britain's East Midlands Airport on Friday, a federal official, who was briefed by authorities, told CNN Sunday.

Al-Asiri, who is thought to be in Yemen, is a Saudi who was high on Saudi Arabia's list of most wanted published in February 2009. He is also believed to be the bomber who designed last year's failed Christmas Day underwear bomb.

Separately, an engineering student arrested in Yemen was released Sunday, along with her mother, according to her father, Mohammed Al-Samawi.

Human rights attorney Abdul-Rahman Barman earlier identified her as Hanan Al-Samawi, a fifth-year student at Sanaa University in the Yemeni capital.

A high-level source in the United Arab Emirates said Hanan Al-Samawi's name was found on the cargo manifest of the device found in Dubai.

She said Monday she was not guilty.

"I am totally innocent and there is no proof against me, and that's why I have been released," she said.

Authorities do not have any American suspects at this time, a U.S. official said.

Two schools in Yemen were being looked at in connection with the plot and had been on the radar of U.S. officials before, the official said.

The explosive device found in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, was contained in a Hewlett-Packard printer, and had a motherboard originating from a mobile phone, but did not have a SIM card in it, the high-level source told CNN.

The device was professionally assembled, the source said. The motherboard was connected by a striker to the printer head and then to the cartridge, which was filled with explosives.

Authorities have the serial number of the motherboard and the printer, and are searching to see where it was sold, how it was paid for and what information they can glean about the people who performed those transactions, according to the source.

Authorities believe an explosive device found at the United Kingdom's East Midlands airport flew from Yemen to a Persian Gulf state, then to Cologne, Germany, the official said. The device was then transferred onto a UPS plane.

Investigators are still attempting to retrace the route of the Dubai device, according to the high-level official. Some believe it went to Doha, Qatar, on Qatar Airways, where it spent the night before traveling to Dubai the following day. However, it does appear the devices did fly on commercial passenger planes, the high-level official said.

Screening the devices would have been difficult, since printers normally contain computer parts and wires, according to Richard Quest, CNN's aviation correspondent.

The two devices found Friday look like they were put together by the same bomber who designed last year's failed Christmas Day underwear bomb, a U.S. government official told CNN.

"The thinking is it's the same person or group of people that built the underwear bomb, because of the way it's put together," said the official, who had been briefed by multiple U.S. authorities and law enforcement sources. "But this one is about four times as powerful."

American authorities are now endorsing British Prime Minister David Cameron's position that the explosives were designed to take down an airplane, the official said. However, a U.S. official said Sunday the United States has not drawn any conclusions on the intent of the bombs and whether they were intended to explode in flight, at the synagogues or somewhere else.

American and British authorities think al Qaeda's branch in Yemen is linked to the plot.

A key figure in the group is the American-born Yemeni militant cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, whom U.S. authorities have linked to Fort Hood shooting suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan and the man accused in the Christmas Day bomb attempt.

Brennan on Friday declined to name al-Awlaki specifically as a suspect.

"Anybody who's associated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is a subject of concern," he said.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration is sending six inspectors to Yemen to help improve cargo security, an official with the agency said Sunday.

"Even before this incident, 100 percent of identified high-risk cargo on inbound passenger planes was being screened," TSA Administrator John S. Pistole said in a statement Sunday, noting that security procedures will evolve based on the latest intelligence information.

Over the past several months, Yemen, which wants to be seen as a committed partner in the fight against terrorism, has launched several offensives against al Qaeda in its country, but has not captured al-Awlaki.

CNN's Caroline Faraj, Bharati Naik, Caroline Paterson, Jeanne Meserve, Mohammed Jamjoom, Susan Candiotti and Carol Cratty contributed to this report.


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4G WiMAX in the NYC Area: 10 Things You Need to Know - PC Magazine

Clearwire and Sprint just launched their "4G" WiMAX network in the New York metro area, along with Hartford and New Haven, CT and Tampa, FL. I've been testing WiMAX for more than two years now since its first launch in Baltimore, and I've been following Sprint and Clearwire as they cover the country. Here are 10 things you might not know about their launch.

Sprint, Clear, Time Warner, and Comcast 4G are all the same thing, so shop around. You'll see ads for Sprint, Clear, and Time Warner around New York City. They're all partners in one network, and you're getting the exact same 4G service from each company. They have different prices and contract terms. So shop around for the best deal if you're interested.

Expect speeds from 3-8 Mbits/sec down in good conditions. That's as fast as a middling home DSL or cable connection, and faster than many of Verizon's home DSL packages. Latency is longer than on DSL, so WiMAX isn't as good for gaming as wired Internet. But WiMAX is great for watching Web video, as long as you have a strong connection.

This is for home Internet, too. The 4G partners will also be selling home PC modems: big units that sit in your window, mobile Wi-Fi hotspots, and little USB sticks that attach to laptops. They're especially good for college students, subletters, and other people who move a lot. "But Time Warner already sells home Internet," you say. Yes, and this lets Time Warner sell home Internet into Cablevision's territories around New York.

There are no limits. Unlike other wireless Internet systems, the WiMAX carriers don't put a limit on how much data you can download a month. It's all you can eat. Go crazy.

Sprint 4G phones are ready to go. If you own an HTC EVO 4G or Samsung Epic 4G from Sprint, you've already been paying for 4G service. Now just pop down the "windowshade" on your phone's screen and turn on 4G. It'll work fine. Don't keep it on all the time, though, as it will kill your phone's battery. Use it when you need extra speed.

Clearwire and cable companies may start selling mobile phones, too. All of the WiMAX partners have said they want to sell mobile phones and Internet tablets in the future. So there may be even more shopping around to do.

Phone calls? That's complicated. There's no official way to make mobile phone calls over 4G, and 4G mobile phones just drop back to 3G to make calls. But Clearwire sells home voice-over-IP phone bundles that work on 4G in other cities.

Watch out for coverage holes. Clearwire is known for swiss-cheese coverage, and if you look at its official coverage map, it's much less than the entire New York metro area. And in our experience, even in some areas with coverage, weak connections mean slow speeds inside many buildings. Coverage will grow with time, of course, but make sure this works where you want it.

This isn't really 4G, but then again nothing is. Last week the ITU, the international body that decides which G is which, declared that no "4G" service being sold this or next year will actually be 4G. So 4G as we know it right now is a meaningless marketing term that anyone can apply to anything - it doesn't really mean anything.

T-Mobile's 3G can be as fast as Sprint's 4G. T-Mobile's HSPA+ system may be 3G, but in our tests last April, it was often as fast as Sprint's 4G. So if you're looking for the fastest mobile Internet connection, consider T-Mobile's G2 and myTouch 4G phones as well as the Sprint devices.


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US, Japan Seek Calm With China on Island Dispute - BusinessWeek

October 30, 2010, 4:32 PM EDT By Daniel Ten Kate and Nicole Gaouette

(Adds Clinton meeting with Dai in the sixth through 10th paragraphs.)

Oct. 31 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. and Japan sought to ease tensions with China fueled by territorial disputes in waters off its coast that have hindered talks on currency and trade policies before a Group of 20 summit next month.

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan told reporters he met for 10 minutes yesterday with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao after a spat over a disputed island chain in the East China Sea scuttled more formal talks. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered to host a meeting to mediate between the two sides while repeating a U.S. obligation legally to defend Japan’s claims.

“We’ve encouraged both Japan and China to seek a peaceful resolution of any disagreement,” Clinton said in a speech in Hanoi yesterday, where she attended a regional summit with Wen, Kan and 15 other Asia-Pacific leaders. “It’s in all of our interests to have stable, peaceful relations” between China and Japan, she said.

The conflict has distracted Asian leaders as they prepare to iron out a global deal on currency policy for the G-20 meeting in Seoul. Clinton “made very clear we want the temperature to go down,” a U.S. official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said after Clinton met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. “The stakes are so high.”

Return to Talks

Hours after her remarks in Hanoi and a meeting there with Japan’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, Clinton landed on China’s Hainan Island for talks with State Councilor Dai Binguo, who outranks Yang.

In the course of a two-hour meeting, Clinton touched on tensions over the island chain, North Korea and the U.S.-China relationship. She encouraged Dai to get North Korea to return to talks about dismantling its nuclear program and reviving ties with South Korea, according to a U.S. official.

Clinton also told Dai that the U.S. expects China to ensure that North Korea in no way takes provocative steps during the G- 20 that South Korea will host next month.

In her talks with Dai, Clinton stressed the U.S. desire to see tensions between Japan and China ease. The two leaders also discussed a “roadmap” for the U.S.-China relationship, including steps that will lead to the resumption of military-to- military ties and a possible visit to China by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the official said.

Disputed Islands

While the frequency and level of U.S.-China meetings have increased, Clinton also suggested that U.S. and Chinese officials meet informally more often, a proposal Dai agreed with.

Japan ruined the atmosphere for talks between Wen and Kan by giving “untrue” media statements, the state-run Xinhua News Agency cited Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue as saying Oct. 29. China’s foreign ministry also expressed “deep dissatisfaction” with Clinton for saying the disputed islands, known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, fall within the Japan-U.S. security alliance, Xinhua said in a separate report.

Yang told Clinton yesterday that the U.S. should respect China’s sovereignty and not make any “irresponsible remarks,” Xinhua reported.

A sea collision between a Chinese fishing boat and Japanese Coast Guard vessels near the disputed islands last month soured relations and reportedly prompted Beijing to cut exports of rare-earth minerals. Wen pledged a steady supply of the minerals during an Oct. 28 meeting with Kan and South Korean President Lee Myung Bak. Both Yang and Dai repeated those vows to Clinton yesterday.

National Interest

The U.S., Japan and several countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations continued to push China to agree to a set of rules at sea at the three days of meetings in Hanoi. Clinton said yesterday she was “encouraged” that another round of working-level talks on a sea code involving Asean and China, which have been stalled since 2002, will take place in December.

“The United States has a national interest in the freedom of navigation and unimpeded lawful commerce,” Clinton told the summit. “When disputes arise over maritime territory, we are committed to resolving them peacefully based on customary international law.”

In July, Yang said Clinton’s assertion that the U.S. had a “national interest” in the South China Sea was “virtually an attack on China.” U.S. Defense Secretary Gates said Oct. 12 that China’s actions in the seas are “clearly on everybody’s mind” and fall within the sphere of maritime security.

A Rising China

The issue came up at the East Asia Summit, a forum of 16 nations that the U.S. and Russia joined for the first time yesterday. Rocky outcrops in the South China Sea that may contain oil and gas reserves are claimed in whole or in part by China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

“The region fears being dominated by a rising China,” said Ernest Bower, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The solution? Invite the Americans to join. This gives the rest of Asia the balance they want.”

China has aimed to keep its territorial disputes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines off the agenda at regional meetings, preferring one-on-one negotiations.

U.S. allies in the region include Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand and Australia. Washington has boosted its naval presence in Singapore and is increasing cooperation with the Indian navy in the Pacific Ocean, Clinton said on Oct. 28.

She denied that increased military ties with Asian countries were aimed at containing China, saying the U.S. supports the country’s growth. Last night she visited China’s Hainan Island, home to a naval base with quick access to the South China Sea.

--With assistance from Bomi Lim and Giang Nguyen in Hanoi. Editors: Sylvia Wier, Mark Rohner

To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Hanoi at dtenkate@bloomberg.net Nicole Gaouette on Hainan Island, China at ngaouette@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net; Paul Tighe at ptioghe@bloomberg.net


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Friday, November 26, 2010

'Sanity' rally draws tens of thousands - USA Today

By Douglas Stanglin and Jessica Durando, USA TODAYWASHINGTON — Tens of thousands of people turned out on the sun-splashed National Mall on Saturday to hear comedian Jon Stewart proclaim "reasonableness" as the norm in American life and to jab the cable news media for being purveyors of fear and division."The country's 24-hour politico-pundit-perpetual-panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder," said Stewart in a speech that wrapped up the event.

The three-hour "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" mixed comedy and music with a message that was non-partisan, yet deeply political.

Stewart, using the Capitol behind him as a physical and rhetorical backdrop, hammered home a simple message — that most people go about their lives trying to solve their day-to-day problems, even in the worst of conditions.

"The truth is, we work together to get things done every damn day," he said. "The only place we don't is here, or on cable TV — but Americans don't live here or on cable TV."

The host of The Daily Show spoke directly to the audience at the close of the program, noting that as a comedian he may well be breaking some unwritten rules of the punditocracy. "I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow how I violated them," he said, in a reference to commentators who have questioned his place on the political landscape.

Later, Stewart underscored his disdain for how some of the media operates when he was asked how he thought they would react to his barbs: "Don't care."

"Our currency is not this town's currency," he said to reporters at the National Press Club after the rally. "We're not running for anything. We don't have a constituency. We do television shows for people who like them."

Still, Stewart said, "We're proud of ourselves" for actually pulling off the rally and putting on a good show.

Crowd sizes are notoriously hard to judge, but Comedy Central, which broadcasts The Daily Show, estimated the crowd at 250,000.

The rally started out as a response to the "Restoring Honor" rally by conservative commentator Glenn Beck at the Lincoln Memorial this summer.

Katie Tackett, 32, of Washington, D.C., attended the rally because she saw it as a cultural phenomenon, rather than a way to send America a message. "I don't think having a rally by a satirical comedian is the best way to get out a message," she said.

At the end of the event, Stewart took the stage, somewhat puzzled by what it all meant.

"So what exactly was this?" he asked as the rally wound down. "I can't control what people think this was, I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and we have nothing to fear. They are and we do."

The rally's purpose, he said, was to show that there is more that unites Americans than divides them, and that the nation should not let others use fear and bombast to undermine that.

"I'm a little bit choked up after listening to Jon Stewart talk," said Hy Alvarah, 28, who works for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest U.S. gay civil rights organization. "He covered all the things we're missing in life, not just sanity and reasonableness. I was moved to tears. You expect that from politicians and preachers, not a comedian."

While the remarks were sometimes pointed and stinging, the rally was notable for its lack of partisanship. No one noted from the stage that midterm elections will be held on Tuesday.

The tone struck an important chord with many in the audience. Pat Reynolds, 76, said she came from Florida for the opportunity to "get some reasonableness."

"I was tired of the yelling and the screaming. I believe sanity is reality," Reynolds said. "We've got to put the best men in government that can compromise and that work for the American people."

That theme played out during the three-hour rally as Stewart, using fellow comedian Stephen Colbert's bombastic character as a foil, handed out awards for "reasonableness" to Colbert's awards for "fear."

To counter Colbert's call that Muslims should be feared, Stewart said, "There are a lot of Muslim people who you might like."

He then brought out basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was way too tall for the two to high-five.

Abdul-Jabbar made the point, "No matter whatever religious position someone plays, we're all on the same team."

The audience came prepared to play along. Many brought signs to underscore the message of reasonableness, or just to be funny.

Among them:

•"I'm somewhat irritated about extreme outrage."

•"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — and spiders"

•"Stand united against signs"

"I'm really glad this is an optimistic rally. All the other ones are serious. We can just laugh and realize that things aren't so bad," said Brian Steele, 19, a student at George Washington University.

Onstage, the comedy was both high and low. At one point, Stewart gave an award to CNN anchor Anderson Cooper's tight, black T-shirt, which Cooper has worn covering natural disasters.

Kid Rock performed, as did Sheryl Crow, Jeff Tweedy and Mavis Staples. Ozzy Osbourne got in a mock dispute with mellow folk singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens.

Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, arranged for buses to transport about 10,000 rally-goers from New York for free. She took issue with news organizations that wouldn't allow their employees to participate in the rally because they considered it political.

"It doesn't make any sense to be agnostic about sanity," said Huffington. "The rally is not political. It's not partisan. Contrived objectivity does not serve journalism."

Huffington also said the rally "helps us recognize we can have big disagreements as a country without demonizing opponents."

Contributing: Lindsay Deutsch, Marisa Kendall, Sara Newman, Bruce Schwartz

Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more.

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Australian Security Will Screen All Cargo Coming From Yemen, Gillard Says - Bloomberg

Australia will screen all cargo coming from Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Doha, the three transit points for passengers flying from Yemen, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said, after an attempt to send parcel bombs from Yemen to the U.S. was foiled.

Police in Yemen yesterday arrested a woman suspected of attempting to send two parcel bombs to synagogues in Chicago via air-cargo services, after authorities in Dubai and the U.K. intercepted the packages on Oct. 29. Authorities are investigating whether the shipments were staged as rehearsals for a future attacks, a U.S. official said.

“There are no direct flights from Yemen to Australia, so any cargo that originated in Yemen would come through one of those three locations and there will be 100 percent screening as a response,” Gillard said in Hanoi yesterday, according to a transcript of her comments e-mailed today.

Gillard said she will take any “further advice arising from this incident” when it becomes available.

The prime minister, who is in the Vietnamese capital for the East Asia Summit, said she has been pushing hard to formalize the participation of the U.S. and Russia in future gatherings.

The two nations, which will join the summit from 2011, attended as special guests this year.

Regional Forum

“Prior to this there was no regional forum that brought together the U.S., China, the countries of our region, working comprehensively across the economic, strategic, political and defense relationships,” Gillard said. Such a forum “is important for our future, for the future of China and its role in our world.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will visit Melbourne for the Austrialia- United States Ministerial meeting, a forum between the two nations, on Nov. 8.

Gillard said she plans to visit China next year after Premier Wen Jiabao invited her when they met in Hanoi yesterday.

The Australian prime minister, who also met with leaders of India, Laos and the Philippines, will travel to Indonesia and Malaysia from Hanoi, according to local media reports.

Stock Exchange Merger

Gillard, who also met with Singapore Prime Minister Hsien Loong Lee during her trip, said her counterpart had raised Singapore Exchange Ltd.’s bid for ASX Ltd.

“We both agreed there’s a clear process to be gone through,” Gillard told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. in an interview. “From the Australian point of view, from the Foreign Investment Review Board, and that process will be gone through.”

Singapore Exchange, part-owned by the city-state’s central bank, on Oct. 25 offered to buy the owner of Australia’s stock exchange for cash and shares in a deal worth A$8.1 billion ($8 billion), according to Bloomberg’s calculations based on Singapore Exchange’s closing price of S$8.80 on Oct. 29.

The transaction requires an amendment to Australia’s Corporations Act, approved by parliament, which prohibits anyone from owning more than 15 percent of ASX. Singapore Exchange needs the support of the minority Labor government, which hasn’t decided its stance on the deal, and at least four other legislators in the lower house of parliament to approve the bid.

Australian lawmakers including two Greens party members, opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey and two independents said they oppose Singapore Exchange’s bid, saying it’s unlikely to be in the best interests of Australians.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nichola Saminather in Sydney at nsaminather1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net


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