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Saturday, December 31, 2011
Friday, December 30, 2011
Android App for Mobile Users Gives Peek into Hollywood Celebrity Locales Across USA
?
December 30, 2011 --
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) December 30, 2011
Star Struck, an Android Market App released by 78x36 Productions for movie celebrity fans located throughout the USA including Miami, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Texas and more. Twilight fans take note, listed amongst the Popular Search, are all the stops in the Portland area where filming took place.
While in LA or NYC, users can immediately locate new and noteworthy Hollywood Celebrity hangouts and upcoming popular new locales by accessing this apps Hot Spot Guide.
Following 78x36 Productions release on the App Store for the iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad, the star map celebrity tour favorite is now available to users of the Android operating system, with over a billion downloads and counting.
Search by entering movie name, actor name, or by location, and users are rewarded with a plethora of information about what scenes were filmed and where. "Users are often surprised how close they are to movie set locations used to film, even in their hometowns." "They have no idea how close they are standing near sacred ground!" Star Struck - Hollywood Celebrity Tour makes it easy to find and actually get to these places.
%2Carts+(general)%2Carts%2C+culture+and+entertainment%2Csociety%2Cinternet%2Ccomputing+and+information+technology%2Csatellite+technology%2Cwireless+technology%2Cscience+and+technology%2Ctechnology+(general)%2Cidentification+technology%2Cagricultural+research+and+technology%2Ccomputer+crime%2Clifestyle+and+leisure%2Clifestyle+(house+and+home)%2Ceconomy%2C+business+and+finance%2Cfinancial+and+business+service%2Cbusiness+enterprises%2Cbusiness+(general)&position=1)
Now Available:
On Android Market:
https://market.android.com/search?q=star+struck+hollywood&c=apps
On the App Store:
Star Struck - Hollywood Celebrity Tour can be found at http://itunes.com/apps/starstruckhollywoodcelebritytourusa
78x36 Productions is an independent developer of applications targeting platforms on iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and now on Android. Specializing in gaming, reference, lifestyle, entertainment, and travel mobile device applications, our popular titles include- casual gaming MEDINA - WARNING Highly Addictive, tennis reference 10S REF, and entertaining STAR STRUCK Hollywood Celebrity Tour USA.
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Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/12/prweb9069949.htm.
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Source:PRWEB.COM Newswire. All Rights Reserved
Source: http://www.consumerelectronicsnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=1818612
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Sweden Turns Its Twitter Account Over to the Great Unwashed
Sweden has surrendered its official Twitter account, @sweden, to the hoi polloi. The project, Curators of Sweden, signs up Swedes to tweet a week at a time. It started December 10 with Jack Wermer, a writer and marketing specialist. The second tweeter was Hasan Ramic, a Bosnian immigrant
Currently, the position is filled by the moose-hunting, oral tobacco product enthusiast Anders Dalenius.
According to psfk, "The campaign was conceived by the Stockholm agency Volontaire for the tourism group Visit Sweden and then green lit by the government."
The idea seems to be that normal Swedes will do a better job at representing their country to the outside world (the tweets are in English... or variants thereof) than either their government or an advertising campaign.
However, the "curation" is hardly random. Upcoming participants include a teacher, a priest and a lady truck driver. No doubt an attempt is being made to show a wide-spectrum picture of the country. (Most Swedes are neither Bosnian nor non-traditional laborers.)
So it might be more accurate to say the experiment is to use social media to present a picture of Sweden at its best and most diverse. There's nothing wrong with that - social media allows us to present a picture of ourselves of our own choosing. It has the immediacy of voice, but that doesn't mean it has unmediated authenticity.
Still, the dude is tweeting about moose hunting. That strikes me as full-bore whole-cloth Swedish weirdness. So, mission accomplished.
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Thursday, December 29, 2011
Diana Meyer submitted this photo of a mountain pond as part of the newspaper?s Your Community Snapsh
Diana Meyer submitted this photo of a mountain pond as part of the newspaper?s Your Community Snapshots photo submission series. Submit your favorite photos ? of any subject matter ? to Your Community Snapshots by bringing your submission to the newspaper office at 466 Yampa Ave., or submitting online at www.craigdailypress.com/submit/photo. Be sure to include caption information.
Source: http://www2.craigdailypress.com/photos/2011/dec/28/46105/
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TV producer won't fight extradition to Mexico
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A reality show producer charged with murdering his wife during a Mexican vacation is dropping his extradition fight and will stand trial in Cancun, his lawyer said Tuesday.
Bruce Beresford-Redman's attorney said the onetime "Survivor" producer has decided not to appeal a Los Angeles federal court ruling upholding his extradition to Mexico.
"He feels he is not going to prevail on appeal and he'd like to get moving on proving his innocence," said attorney Richard Hirsch.
He said the producer could be sent to Mexico within 60 days following review of the extradition request by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Beresford-Redman, 40, is being held in a Los Angeles federal prison.
Monica Beresford-Redman, 42, disappeared from a Cancun resort where the couple was vacationing with their two children last year. Her body was found stuffed in a sewer cistern.
"He is innocent and it is his hope that the court in Mexico will assure that he receives a fair trial in which, he is confident, he will be exonerated," Hirsch said.
The family of Monica Beresford-Redman has said the couple went to Cancun to try to save their marriage. They claim Bruce Beresford-Redman, who is also the co-creator of the series "Pimp My Ride," was having a long-term affair with another woman. His wife, originally from Brazil, owned and operated a restaurant in Los Angeles.
U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez upheld an extradition order earlier this month, saying that there are many pages of competent evidence supporting prosecution claims that the producer killed his wife.
"All of this evidence points to homicide committed by the fugitive," said the judge's ruling.
Prosecutors presented statements from hotel guests who said they heard loud arguing and cries of distress coming from the couple's room on the night Monica Beresford-Redman went missing.
The producer's attorneys have claimed the noises came from Beresford-Redman and his children playing loud games throughout the night. They introduced statements from the couple's 6-year-old daughter to corroborate the claim, but judges who have reviewed the case were not swayed.
Beresford-Redman had been ordered to stay in Mexico after his wife's body was found but he left and returned to his home in Los Angeles. He voluntarily surrendered to U.S. authorities after a warrant was issued in Mexico for his arrest.
Hirsch said that Beresford-Redman's family has been in contact with a Mexican lawyer who will represent him at trial. Mexican courts do not have juries, and the producer will be tried by the same judge who issued the warrant for his arrest, Hirsch said.
If he is convicted of aggravated homicide in Mexico, he faces 12 years to 30 years in a Mexican prison.
His two small children have been placed in the custody of Beresford-Redman's parents with visitation by their mother's sisters.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Survey: Home prices down in most major US cities (AP)
WASHINGTON ? U.S. home prices fell in most major cities for the second straight month, further evidence that the housing recovery will be bumpy and weigh on the broader economy in 2012.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller index released Tuesday showed prices dropped in October from September in 19 of the 20 cities tracked.
The decline reflects the typical fall slowdown after the peak buying season. Prices had risen modestly in April through August in at least half of the cities tracked.
Still, home prices have fallen roughly 32 percent nationwide since the housing bubble burst five years ago and are back to 2003 levels, according to the index.
Prices are even lower in hard-hit areas, such as Atlanta, Cleveland, Detroit, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Washington, New York, Los Angeles and San Diego have seen the smallest declines.
Home values remain depressed despite some modest progress in the housing market.
Residential construction is likely to add to U.S. economic growth in 2011, the first time that has happened in four years. That's mainly because apartments are being built almost twice as fast as two years ago ? reflecting a surge in renting and weaker home sales.
The Case-Shiller index measures prices for roughly half of all U.S. homes. Prices are compared with those in January 2000 and the index is based on a three-month moving average. The monthly data are not seasonally adjusted.
Atlanta, Detroit and Minneapolis posted the biggest monthly declines. Prices in Atlanta and Las Vegas fell to their lowest points since the housing crisis began. Prices rose in Phoenix after three straight monthly declines.
David M. Blitzer, chairman of S&P's index committee, said steep price drops in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Minneapolis were particularly worrisome because their gains earlier this season were so strong.
"Atlanta and the Midwest are regions that really stand out in terms of recent relative weakness," Blitzer said. "These markets were some of the strongest during the spring/summer buying season."
Americans are reluctant to purchase a home more than two years after the recession officially ended. High unemployment and weak job growth have deterred many would-be buyers. Even the lowest mortgage rates in history haven't been enough to lift sales.
Some people can't qualify for loans or meet higher down payment requirements. Many with good credit and stable jobs are holding off because they fear that prices will keep falling.
Sales of previously occupied homes are barely ahead of 2008's dismal figures ? the worst in 13 years. And sales of new homes this year will likely be the worst since the government began keeping records a half century ago.
Prices are likely to fall further once banks resume millions of foreclosures. They have been delayed because of a yearlong government investigation into mortgage lending practices.
Foreclosures and short sales ? when a lender accepts less for a home than what is owed on a mortgage ? are selling at an average discount of 20 percent.
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New Earth-like planets: How did astronomers find them?
NASA's Kepler?spacecraft?has spotted a pair of rocky Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star. How do you find a new planet??
Since 2009, NASA's Kepler spacecraft has been sitting in space, pointing its telescope at a patch of the sky near the constellations Cygnus and Lyrae. Its field of view, a region of the Milky Way galaxy about the size of two open hands raised to the cosmos, contains roughly 160,000 stars. Scientists on the Kepler team are interested not in these stars themselves, but in the planets that may orbit them.
Skip to next paragraph"The goal of the Kepler mission is to find planets like Earth in the habitable zones of their parent stars," said Guillermo Torres, a member of the Kepler team based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They are looking for?Earth twins, because these are the likeliest candidates for worlds that could host extraterrestrial life.
To find these alien Earths, the Kepler team uses a technique called the "transit method." They scour the data collected by the Kepler telescope looking for slight drops in the intensity of light coming from any of the stars in its line of sight. About 90 percent of the time, these dips in brightness signify that a planet "has passed in front of its star, essentially?eclipsing the light," Torres told Life's Little Mysteries.
Planets the size of Earth passing in front of a star typically cause it to dim by only one-hundredth of a percent ? akin to the drop in brightness of a car's headlight when a fly crosses in front of it, the scientists say. To detect these faint and faraway eclipses, the Kepler telescope must be extremely sensitive and it must be stationed in space, away from the glare and turbulence of Earth's atmosphere.
Using the transit method, Kepler has detected 2,326 "candidate planets" so far, Torres said. Those are dips detected in starlight that are probably caused by passing planets, but for which other alternative explanations haven't yet been ruled out.? [Could There Be Life on the New Earth-Size Planets?]
"The signals are an indication that something is crossing in front of the star and then you have to confirm it's a planet, not something else," he said. "Roughly 90 percent of the signals that Kepler detects are true planets. The other 10 percent of the cases are false positives. We're not happy with leaving the probability at 90 percent ? we've set a higher bar ? so, even though a priori we know a signal is 90-percent sure [to be a planet], we do more work."
To confirm that a candidate is a true?exoplanet?? a planet outside our solar system ? the Kepler scientists use the world's largest ground-based telescopes to study the star in question, looking for alternative explanations for the transit signal. "One example is an eclipsing binary in the background of the star. There could be two stars behind the star [of interest] that are orbiting each other and eclipsing each other, but because they're in the background they're much fainter. So their light is diluted by the brighter star," he said.
With today's (Dec. 20) announcement of?five new confirmed exoplanets?orbiting a star called Kepler-20 located 950 light-years away, including two that are Earth-size, the number of confirmed exoplanets has moved up to 33.
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover.?Follow Life's Little Mysteries on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on?Facebook.
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Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Ferguson won't be swayed by demands to spend
By ROB HARRIS
AP Sports Writer
Associated Press Sports
updated 7:00 a.m. ET Dec. 25, 2011
MANCHESTER, England (AP) -Despite the threat posed by Manchester City, Alex Ferguson insists he will resist calls for Manchester United to go on a spending spree in the January transfer window.
Going into Monday's Boxing Day matches, the defending champions are two points behind City, which has considerably outspent its neighbor in recent years and is now reaping the rewards as it sits at the top at Christmas for the first time since 1929.
Even though United has debts of around 460 million pounds ($718 million), Ferguson maintains that cash will be made available by the Glazer family, which owns the club.
"Contrary to what some people seem to be fixated about, money for a transfer is not a problem if I deem it necessary," Ferguson said.
The 69-year-old Scot delivered the message to fans in the matchday magazine for Monday's game against Wigan just weeks after United's surprise exit from the Champions League in the group stage.
"I am perfectly happy with the strength of our squad in terms of depth, quality and age range," Ferguson said. "I will not be swayed by the endless tweets and blogs urging the club to get busy in the transfer market next month. As far as I am concerned I am marching perfectly in step, true to my beliefs and principles.
"While recruiting some of the world's leading players can lift you into contention for honors, it doesn't necessarily take you all the way."
Winger Ashley Young this week joined an extensive injury list that includes center back Nemanja Vidic, midfielders Anderson and Tom Cleverley, and striker Michael Owen. Midfielder Darren Fletcher is also sidelined with a serious bowel disease with no date set for his return.
Any further injuries could yet persuade Ferguson to search for additions next month.
"Fortunes can fluctuate wildly - that's the football world," Ferguson said. "If a really top-class player became available, then we would go for him, or if we picked up any further serious injuries, it might be important to add to our squad."
City needs to shed players from its bloated squad - and payroll - in January to help the club comply with UEFA's new financial restrictions, so a repeat of the summer spending that included the 38 million pound (then $62 million) signing of Sergio Aguero is unlikely.
With 15 goals already this season, the Argentina striker has quickly established himself as City's most potent force.
"He is not tall but his strength is amazing," City manager Roberto Mancini said ahead of Monday's trip to West Bromwich Albion. "What is important at the moment is that he has improved our team."
Only Robin van Persie has scored more than Aguero in the Premier League this season, with the Arsenal striker on 16 goals compared to 13 for the City forward.
The Dutchman's goals have helped to haul Arsenal away from the relegation zone and back to within a point of the Champions League places.
Van Persie's goal in Wednesday's 2-1 win over Aston Villa saw him equal Thierry Henry's Arsenal record of 34 goals in a calendar year. The striker needs three goals in the remaining two games of 2011 to beat Alan Shearer's Premier League record of 36.
"He's an exceptional player, but what is very important for us is that over Christmas we win our games," manager Arsene Wenger said.
Arsenal hosts Wolverhampton Wanderers on Tuesday and Queens Park Rangers on Saturday.
With Arsenal just a point behind and Tottenham two points ahead, Chelsea will be looking to avoid a third consecutive draw on Monday when it hosts London neighbor Fulham, which was routed 5-0 by Manchester United on Wednesday.
"I'm not going to be thinking that because they lost to Man United it will be easy for us," Chelsea striker Daniel Sturridge said. "Derbies are always difficult and they will want to bounce back against us."
Chelsea was held to a 1-1 draw on Thursday by Tottenham, which remains above its west London rival in third - its highest placing at Christmas since 1984 - ahead of Tuesday's match at Norwich.
Norwich is well clear of the relegation zone unlike the two other promoted sides - Swansea and QPR, who meet on Monday just four and two points clear from danger, respectively.
The bottom three is made up of teams from Lancashire. On Monday, bottom-place Blackburn is at Liverpool, 19th-place Bolton hosts Newcastle and Wigan is at Manchester United.
Also Monday, Everton goes to Sunderland and Stoke takes on Aston Villa.
---
Rob Harris can be reached at http://twitter.com/RobHarrisUK
? 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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??Manchester United flourished as Manchester City floundered on Monday to wipe out its neighbor's lead in the Premier League title race.
FANatics
Chandler: What demons possess men to rush the playing field and attack athletes? And lately athlete-fan field interaction has taken a darker turn.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/44031201/ns/sports-soccer/
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Monday, December 26, 2011
Forces Loyal to Yemeni President Fire on Protesters
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Source: internal.du.nytimes.com --- Saturday, December 24, 2011
At least eight protesters were killed in Sana, the worst violence in the capital since President Ali Abdullah Saleh agreed to give up his post more than a month ago. ...
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Sunday, December 25, 2011
Twonky Beam Browser hands-on
Showing your friends the latest viral video traditionally requires huddling around a smartphone or tablet, which is odd when you're sat in a room with a 40-inch flat-screen. Web connected TVs or media units like the Apple TV will let you watch YouTube as long as you spend five minutes tediously inputting the search term on your remote. For those of us who can't afford a unified Airplay setup, there's PacketVideo's Twonky Beam Browser, which lets you push mobile content to your TV as fast as your wireless router can handle it. Does it work as well as advertised? Is it the answer to your prayers? Read on to find out, dear reader, read on.
Continue reading Twonky Beam Browser hands-on
Twonky Beam Browser hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | CommentsSource: http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/23/twonky-beam-browser-hands-on/
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Hornets coach: May take awhile for Ayon to adjust
Published: Saturday, December 24, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, December 23, 2011 at 6:34 p.m.
WESTWEGO ? The Hornets signed forward Gustavo Ayon on Friday, beefing up the team's interior three days before the regular season begins.
Coach Monty Williams, however, isn't sure exactly what the 6-foot-10, 245-pound player from Mexico will bring from his time playing in Spain's top division.
Ayon, 26, will become only the third Mexican-born player in NBA history, but because he speaks very little English, Williams said it might take awhile to acclimate to league's language.
"Being real about it, anytime you don't speak English well, you're certainly going to have a problem with basketball jargon," Williams said. "If I said three or four things about our team in our language, Trevor (Ariza) and (Jarrett) Jack know exactly what I'm talking about. He may look at me like, ?OK coach.' I think it's going to take awhile to start to pick up basketball NBA language."
Ayon's agent Emilio Duran agreed, speaking for and translating to English for the newly-acquired player.
"It's going to take time," Duran said for Ayon. "Obviously it's a big change for him. It's going to take a period of adaptation to the league, to the culture, to everything. Once he's settled, eventually he's going to try to improve every day and do the best for the team."
Ayon worked out with the Hornets during a June free-agent camp and said he chose New Orleans because of the relationship he had built with general manager Dell Demps over the past few months.
In 10 games this season with Fuenlabrada in Spain, Ayon averaged 15.9 points on 65.7 percent shooting to go with 8.2 rebounds. He earned the league's MVP award for November.
Williams believes Ayon to be a versatile player who can pass, but because he hasn't seen him against NBA-caliber players, he's unsure how he'll fit in.
Through Duran, Ayon said basketball in Spain is "rich tactically," which stands is different to basketball in the NBA.
"In contrast, here the biggest difference is the physicality of the players and the athleticism," Ayon said.
Said Williams, "I think he can do a number of things but we don't know if he can do against this caliber of player. That's what we're anxious to see."
For now, the Hornets are set at center with Chris Kaman (7-0) and Emeka Okafor (6-10) and at power forward with Carl Landry (6-9) and Jason Smith (7-0).
But even before New Orleans fell to the Lakers in the first-round of the Western Conference playoffs, Williams said the front office realized the team need to bulk up near the basket.
"Playing Emeka and David (West) high minutes last year showed us that we needed some more beef down low," Williams said. "Dell has addressed those issues for sure. Now, whether or not we can compete at a high level with the bigs we have, we'll have to wait and see.
Ayon joins Horacio Llamas and current Charlotte Bobcat Eduardo Najera as the only Mexican-born players in the NBA says it might take awhile to acclimate to league's language.
Source: http://www.houmatoday.com/article/20111224/wire/111229830
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Saturday, December 24, 2011
Medvedev warns against upsetting stability (AP)
MOSCOW ? President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday responded to the wave of protests over fraud-tainted election, proposing a set of reforms to liberalize Russia's political system, but sternly warning that the government won't allow "provocateurs and extremists" to threaten stability.
Medvedev said in his state-of-the nation address that Russia "needs democracy, not chaos" and that the government would strongly resist foreign pressure.
The statement follows massive rallies against fraud in the Dec. 4 vote, in which the main Kremlin party, United Russia, lost a quarter of its seats. Opposition leaders and independent election monitors said United Russia only managed to retain its majority by fraud.
A rally in Moscow drew tens of thousands demanding a repeat vote and punishment for the officials involved in fraud, the largest show of discontent since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Another massive rally is set for this weekend.
The protests dented the power of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and signaled that his bid to reclaim the presidency in next March's election may not be as trouble-free as had been thought.
Both Putin and Medvedev, who has been his loyal placeholder, firmly rejected the calls for a rerun, saying the vote reflected the people's will. Putin has accused the United States of fomenting the protests in order to weaken Russia, and Medvedev has rejected U.S. criticism of the vote.
"We won't allow provocateurs and extremists to drag society into their adventures, and we won't allow any outside interference into our domestic affairs," Medvedev said Thursday.
While defending the vote results, Putin has suggested easing the tight controls on Russia's political life he introduced during his two presidential terms in 2000-2008.
He said last week he would support easing the draconian rules of registration for political parties and restoring the direct elections of governors he abolished years ago. Putin added, however, that the president would retain the power to approve gubernatorial candidates, a provision that would make the election token.
Medvedev repeated the pledge to return to direct elections of governors and spelled out Putin's promise to ease registration rules for political parties. He said that a group of 500 people representing more than half of Russia's provinces would be allowed to register a party ? a significant simplification of the current arcane procedure that requires a party to have at least 45,000 members and makes it easy for authorities to deny registration to opposition groups.
Medvedev also proposed reducing the number of signatures a candidate must collect to get on the presidential ballot from 2 million to 300,000.
The opposition, however, would only be able to take advantage of the new procedures in the next election cycle.
"Medvedev's address is like an injection in an artificial limb," tweeted Oleg Kashin, a columnist at the Kommersant daily.
Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, said that Medvedev's proposals were welcome but insufficient, adding that Saturday's rally will continue to push for a repeat election.
"We wouldn't have heard any of these proposals if there hadn't been protests," Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
On the Internet, many argued for keeping pressure on the government to bring more democratic changes. Over 39,000 already have signed up on Facebook for Saturday's rally.
"Well, they threw some bones to us," Elena Panfilova, head of Transparency International in Russia, said on Twitter. "Now we can either try to build something good out of them or demand the rest of the skeleton."
____
Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed to this report.
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Will 'Sister Wives' stars beat Utah's bigamy law?
The Kody Brown Bunch is hoping to rewrite the rule books in Utah.
The polygamous clan made famous on the TLC hit reality series "Sister Wives" has asked a federal judge in Utah to continue to let them challenge the state's bigamy laws.
Here's what went down today.
MORE: Sister Wives' Polygamy Clan: We Live in Fear Because of Utah's Bigamy Law
Lawyers for Brown and his four wives ? Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn ? offered oral arguments this morning for an hour-and-a-half before U.S. District Judge Clark Waddoups, who, according to his clerk, took the case "under advisement" and plans to rule on the matter at an unspecified future date.
"The court gave us a fair hearing and we will await his decision," Brown's attorney and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley tells E! News. "We are committed to pursuing these claims on behalf of the Brown family wherever they take us in the legal system."
The family filed a lawsuit in Salt Lake City District Court back in July claiming Utah's bigamy law is unconstitutional because it criminalizes their private sexual relationships and prohibits them from living together. They've told the court they fear being punished by the statute, which they say has caused them irreprable harm and forced them to temporarily move to Nevada.
"The Brown's remain subject to potential persecution due to their status as a plural family," reads the complaint. "The family used their savings and moved their 17 children to Nevada in January after the state of Utah opened up a bigamy investigation on them."
(Kody is legally married only to Meri and the other three "sister wives" are so-called "commitments.")
The ever-expanding family belongs to the Apostolic United Brethren Church, which is centered in Salt Lake City, but per court docs, "due to the low of AUB members in Nevada, the Brown's cannot fully perform their religious practices outside of Utah and must return to Utah to engage in certain religious practices."
MORE: Sister Wives Take Their Big Love to the Silver State
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Part of the suit's aim is to make it safe for the Brown's and their 21-strong brood to move back to Utah.
"This family is asking no more than any family deserves: to be heard in the courts," says Turley. "This challenge was brought to benefit not just polygamists but all citizens who wish to live their lives according to their own values ? even if those values run counter to those of the majority in the state."
The Utah Attorney General's Office has asked Waddoups to toss the suit on the grounds that because it's unlikely prosecutors will go after the clan and the family failed to show how they've been injured by the state.
AG Mark Shurtleff has previously said his staff does not have the resources to prosecute polygamists unless they discovered more serious offenses, such as incest , statutory rape or abuse.
None of the Browns attended today's proceeding, prefering to let their attorneys do the talking on behalf of their privacy rights.
"While the state has asked for the courthouse doors to be shut to this family," says Turley, "we believe they have a right to be heard on the unconstitutionality of this law."
PICS: Check out some slightly less complicated famous families
? 2011 E! Entertainment Television, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Source: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/45703754/ns/today-entertainment/
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Saturday, December 17, 2011
Case of accused US Army leaker carries high stakes
FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007, file photo, shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md., during a visit by President Bush. The military intelligence complex an hour outside Washington where the WikiLeaks case goes to court this week is known as a cloak-and-dagger sanctum off-limits to the rest of the world. That reputation is only partly true. In many ways, Maryland?s Fort Meade is an ordinary Army post, albeit one with a 5,000-acre complex and a golf course. It?s also home to the super secure compound of the code-breaking National Security Agency. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)
FILE - This Sept. 19, 2007, file photo, shows the National Security Agency building at Fort Meade, Md., during a visit by President Bush. The military intelligence complex an hour outside Washington where the WikiLeaks case goes to court this week is known as a cloak-and-dagger sanctum off-limits to the rest of the world. That reputation is only partly true. In many ways, Maryland?s Fort Meade is an ordinary Army post, albeit one with a 5,000-acre complex and a golf course. It?s also home to the super secure compound of the code-breaking National Security Agency. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file)
FILE - This undated file photo obtained by The Associated Press shows Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private suspected of being the source of some of the unauthorized classified information disclosed on the WikiLeaks website. As the suspected source for the biggest leak of intelligence material in American history faces his first hearing Friday Dec. 15, 2011, U.S. prosecutors have their eye on another prize: The man who disclosed the documents to the world. When WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets exploded onto the scene last year, much of Washington's anger coalesced around Julian Assange, the silver-haired globe-trotting figure whose outspoken defiance of the Pentagon and the State Department riled politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pfc. Manning, long under lock and key, hasn't attracted the same level of ire. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - This is a Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011 file photo of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he talks during a news conference in central London. As the suspected source for the biggest leak of intelligence material in American history faces his first hearing Friday Dec. 15 ,2011, U.S. prosecutors have their eye on another prize: The man who disclosed the documents to the world. When WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets exploded onto the scene last year, much of Washington's anger coalesced around Julian Assange, the silver-haired globe-trotting figure whose outspoken defiance of the Pentagon and the State Department riled politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pfc. Bradley Manning, long under lock and key, hasn't attracted the same level of ire. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)
FORT MEADE, Maryland. (AP) ? The U.S. military is making its case for why Army Pfc. Bradley Manning should be court-martialed on charges of endangering national security by stealing and leaking an enormous trove of government secrets.
Manning, 23, was to make his first public appearance Friday at the opening of his pretrial hearing at Fort Meade in Maryland. The Army post near Washington is, ironically, home to U.S. Cyber Command, the organization whose mission includes protecting computer networks like the one Manning allegedly breached by illegally downloading huge numbers of classified documents in Iraq.
He is suspected of giving the documents to WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy website that last year began publishing the materials.
The hearing was expected to last through the weekend and possibly beyond. Manning's lawyer asserts that the documents' release did little actual harm.
The case has spawned an international movement in support of Manning, who is seen by anti-war activists as a hero who helped expose American mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan. To others he is a villain, even a traitor, who betrayed his oath of loyalty by deliberately spilling his government's secrets.
Manning's supporters planned to maintain a vigil during the hearing and were organizing a rally for Saturday.
The hearing at Meade is intended to yield a recommendation to Army Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, on whether Manning should be court-martialed. Linnington could choose other courses, including applying an administrative punishment or dismissing some or all of the 22 counts against Manning.
If his case goes to trial and he is convicted, Manning could face life in prison. The government has said it would not seek the death penalty.
On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Manning's alleged actions damaging and unfortunate.
"I think that in an age where so much information is flying through cyberspace, we all have to be aware of the fact that some information which is sensitive, which does affect the security of individuals and relationships, deserves to be protected and we will continue to take necessary steps to do so," Clinton told reporters at the State Department.
The Manning case has led to a debate over the broader issue of whether the government's system for classifying and shielding information has grown so unwieldy that it is increasingly vulnerable to intrusions.
Absent from the Meade proceedings will be Julian Assange, who runs WikiLeaks from England. He is fighting in British courts to block a Swedish request that he be extradited to face trial over rape allegations.
A U.S. grand jury is weighing whether to indict Assange on espionage charges, and WikiLeaks is straining under an American financial embargo that Assange says has starved it of revenue.
The materials Manning is accused of leaking include hundreds of thousands of sensitive items: Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.
At the time, Manning, a native of Crescent, Oklahoma, was a low-level intelligence analyst in Baghdad.
Manning, who turns 24 on Saturday, was detained in Iraq in May 2010 and moved to a Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia, in July. Nine months later, the Army sent him to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, after a series of claims by Manning of unlawful pretrial punishment.
When it filed formal charges against Manning in March 2011, the Army accused him of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."
The first large publication of the documents by WikiLeaks in July 2010, some 77,000 military records on the war in Afghanistan, made global headlines. But the material provided only limited revelations, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures.
In October 2010, WikiLeaks published a batch of nearly 400,000 documents that dated from early 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010. They were written mostly by low-ranking officers in the field cataloging thousands of battles with insurgents and roadside bomb attacks, plus equipment failures and shootings by civilian contractors. The documents did not alter the basic outlines of how the war was fought.
A month later, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of State Department documents that revealed a hidden world of backstage international diplomacy. They divulged candid comments from world leaders and detailed occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea.
Last month, 54 members of the European Parliament signed a letter to the U.S. government raising concerns about Manning's lengthy detention. They questioned whether his right to due process has been violated by keeping him in pretrial confinement for 18 months.
It took months for the Army to reach the conclusion that Manning was competent to stand trial. In the meantime Manning's civilian lawyer, David E. Coombs, has sought to build a case that appears to rest in part on an assertion that the government's own reviews of the leaks concluded that little damage was done.
Indeed, the Pentagon determined in August 2010 that the initial leaks had not compromised intelligence sources or practices, although it said the disclosures could still cause significant damage to U.S. security interests.
___
Associated Press writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.
___
Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP
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Senate passes new rules on detainees, sends to Obama (Reuters)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Congress on Thursday approved a defense bill requiring the military to handle suspected foreign militants allied with al Qaeda, sending it to President Barack Obama for his expected signature into law.
Final action came when the Senate approved the bill in an 86-13 vote, a day after Obama retreated from a veto threat on the legislation. The administration was unhappy with the intrusion into its authority over counterterrorism matters but relented when some of its flexibility was restored.
Other critics complained the measure allowed the indefinite military detention of terrorism suspects, including Americans.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation on Thursday that she said would seek to clarify that indefinite detention could not happen to Americans or anyone apprehended inside the United States.
"I strongly believe U.S. citizens apprehended in the U.S. should never be held in indefinite detention," Feinstein told the Senate just before the vote.
The House of Representatives agreed to the defense bill on Wednesday. The measure also imposes sanctions against Iran's central bank and pre-emptively freezes some aid to Pakistan.
The legislation was the latest battle in a long struggle between Obama, a Democrat, and some lawmakers over whether terror suspects should be prosecuted as "enemy combatants" before military commissions and held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or treated as criminal suspects in the U.S. court and prison system.
Republicans and some Democrats have urged that military custody and military courts should be used as a rule. The administration has sought to keep its flexibility in interrogating and detaining terrorism suspects, arguing that many had been successfully prosecuted in federal courts.
Senior members of Obama's national security team had expressed deep reservations about the section that broadens the armed forces' powers by requiring that foreigners allied with al Qaeda be held in military custody even if they are captured in the United States.
Senator John McCain, a Republican, said on Thursday that the Obama administration had "fought these provisions every step of the way," repeatedly trying to have them stripped out.
But the White House said the revisions of recent days gave it more discretion over implementation of the law.
Lawmakers gave the president authority to waive some provisions and took out a ban on using civilian courts to prosecute al Qaeda suspects.
The Obama administration also had misgivings about the bill's requirement for sanctions on foreign financial institutions that deal with Iran's central bank, the main conduit for Tehran's oil revenues.
But the White House never issued a veto threat on that part of the bill.
The measure also would place a pre-emptive freeze on hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan until Congress gets assurances from the U.S. secretary of defense that Islamabad is helping fight the spread of homemade bombs in the region.
The defense legislation authorizes U.S. defense programs from war fighting to weapons building.
It authorizes $662 billion for defense in fiscal 2012, including the Pentagon's base budget and the war in Afghanistan, although appropriators must still approve the numbers before money is spent.
(Reporting By Susan Cornwell; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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Friday, December 16, 2011
Madonna Confirms Interscope Deal, New Single
Singer will drop official version of 'Gimme All Your Luvin' in late January.
By Jocelyn Vena
Madonna
Photo: Getty Images
After rumors hit the Net on Wednesday that Madonna had signed with Interscope, fans waited to see if the ink had really dried on the contract. On Thursday (December 15), a rep for the singer confirmed the industry chatter to MTV News. In addition to signing with the label, Madge will drop her still-untitled album by the end of March.
Madonna has already completed work on the LP and her single "Gimme All Your Luvin" will be released by the end of January, according to a press release. A demo version of the song, featuring rappers M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj, leaked back in November. The three ladies recently shot a video for the track and made headlines when Nicki tweeted about a kiss she shared with Madonna on set.
The three-album deal with Interscope marks the latest chapter in the Queen of Pop's career. She'll now be labelmates with the likes of Lady Gaga and Eminem. She'll also stay in her 10-year 360 deal, signed back in 2007, with Live Nation for all merchandising and tour-related matters.
"We couldn't be happier to work with [Interscope's] Jimmy Iovine, [Chairman & CEO, Universal Music Group] Lucian Grainge and the entire Interscope team," Madonna's longtime manager Guy Oseary said in a statement. "We anticipate a very bright future at our new home."
On Thursday, the newly signed Interscope Records artist became a Golden Globe nominee for her "W.E" track "Masterpiece." "W.E" is Madonna's directorial effort, and her tune made the cut for Best Original Song — Motion Picture.
Related ArtistsSource: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1676052/madonna-gimme-all-your-luvin-single.jhtml
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Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Ireland unveils new taxes to trim 2012 deficit (AP)
DUBLIN ? Ireland's government announced Tuesday it will impose euro1 billion ($1.35 billion) in new taxes to help the bailed-out country reduce its deficits as international donors expect.
Finance Minister Michael Noonan said he would increase charges on Irish drivers, home owners, savers, smokers and many others in hopes of rolling back the 2012 deficit to below 8.6 percent of GDP, the next goal set by Ireland's European and International Monetary Fund financiers.
"Personal wealth has been destroyed, thousands of people are sinking into poverty, emigration has returned and unemployment is far too high," Noonan told a somber parliamentary chamber. "The task of this government is to regain control over Ireland's fiscal and economic policies, to grow the economy again and to get people back to work."
Noonan's biggest tax-raising measure will increase sales tax by 2 points to an Irish-record 23 percent. Opposition lawmakers and business chiefs decried the move as likely to stoke inflation and make Ireland less competitive.
But Noonan said Ireland's commitment to austerity was paying dividends, with this year's deficit expected to decline to 10.1 percent of GDP versus previous estimates of 10.6 percent, a target set in Ireland's November 2010 bailout deal with the EU and IMF.
Ireland's 2012 budget includes euro2.2 billion in spending cuts and euro600 million in additional taxes that were imposed in the current budget. Combined with Tuesday's tax hikes, the total impact on reducing the 2012 deficit should be euro3.8 billion.
The Irish still face at least three more years of austerity budgets to get their deficit back within the eurozone limit of 3 percent of GDP. Ireland this year is spending euro57 billion ? including more than euro10 billion in aid to nationalized banks ? but collecting barely euro34 billion in taxes.
Ireland last year recorded a modern European record deficit of 32 percent because of the exceptional cost of bailing out five Dublin banks on the brink of default. Those bailout efforts, begun in late 2008 as the country's long property boom collapsed, could end up costing more than euro70 billion.
Noonan said the key to Irish recovery rested with its approximately 1,000 foreign multinationals that account for barely 5 percent of jobs but 18 percent of GDP. He didn't touch Ireland's 12.5 percent tax rate on corporate profits, a major magnet for foreign investment that draws regular criticism from high-tax France and Germany.
He also took about 330,000 of Ireland's most poorly paid workers out of the net for income taxes, raising the entry point from euro4,000 to euro10,000 ($13,500). He didn't otherwise touch income-tax rates or bands following three years of salary hits on Ireland's dwindling work force.
But practically everything else faces higher charges in a country where unemployment sits near an 18-year high of 14.5 percent. Noonan estimated that the hike in sales tax taking effect Jan. 1 would raise euro670 million ($900 million) extra next year.
A few tax hikes took effect immediately. Tax on a packet of cigarettes rose euro0.25, while tax on motor fuel ? which currently costs around euro1.50 per liter ($7.70 a gallon) ? increased 1.5 cents (2 U.S. cents).
Car owners faced much tougher taxes in the new year, particularly those who operate relatively new, environmentally friendly cars.
Ireland's previous government, which included the environmentalist Green Party, introduced a new system of annual car taxes that imposed punitive charges on operators of older gas guzzlers and offered tax breaks to those who used new, low-emission cars.
Noonan announced hikes to all categories of cars in the hope of raising an extra euro47 million next year. Those in the cheapest band of "green" cars will see their annual tax rise 54 percent to euro160 ($215), while those operating the worst-polluting, big-engined vehicles would see the annual charge rise 7 percent to euro2,258 ($3,045).
Noonan announced measures designed to raise Ireland's housing market from the dead. New home purchasers were offered the chance to receive tax rebates on their mortgage-payment interest ? but only if they buy in 2012.
___
Online:
Budget 2012, http://budget.gov.ie/Budgets/2012/2012.aspx
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Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Afghanistan's allies pledge to stay for long haul (Reuters)
BONN (Reuters) ? The West used an Afghanistan meeting on Monday to signal enduring support for Kabul as allied troops go home, but economic downturn in Europe and crises with Pakistan and Iran could stir doubts about Western resolve.
The goal is to leave behind an Afghan government strong enough to escape the fate of its Soviet-era predecessor, which collapsed in 1992 in a civil war. The country's allies are preparing increasingly for a scenario in which there is no peace settlement with the Taliban before most foreign combat troops leave in 2014.
"The United States intends to stay the course with our friends in Afghanistan," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the conference. "We will be there with you as you make the hard decisions that are necessary for your future."
Hosts Germany sought to signal Western staying power as the gathering of dozens of foreign ministers opened in the German city of Bonn.
"We send a clear message to the people of Afghanistan: We will not leave you on your own. We will not leave you in the lurch," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle.
Ten years after a similar conference held to rebuild Afghanistan following the September 11 attacks, Western countries are under pressure to spend money reviving flagging economies at home rather than propping up a government in Kabul widely criticized for being corrupt and ineffective.
Brewing confrontations pitting Washington against Pakistan and Iran, two of Afghanistan's most influential neighbors, have added to despondency over the outlook for the war.
Pakistan boycotted the meeting after NATO aircraft killed 24 of its soldiers on the border with Afghanistan in a November 26 attack the alliance called a "tragic" accident.
Some in the West are still hoping Pakistan will use its influence to deliver the Afghan Taliban, whose leadership Washington says is based in Pakistan, to peace talks.
But foreign governments, while regretting Pakistan's absence, made clear they would press ahead in building up the Kabul government's ability to survive after 2014 even if Islamabad fails to bring insurgents into a political settlement.
"It may take a longer time to bring about our objectives but we should not be deterred at all by Taliban reluctance to come to the table," British Foreign Secretary William Hague told the BBC.
FEARS OF CIVIL WAR
Embryonic contacts with the Taliban have so far yielded little, and with the government in Kabul unable to provide security and economic development, the risk is that the withdrawal of foreign troops will plunge Afghanistan back into civil war. Renewed strife might also stir more violence over the border in Pakistan, fighting its own Islamist insurgency.
Iran's growing confrontation with the West over its nuclear program could also bleed into the war in Afghanistan.
Tehran said on Sunday it shot down a U.S. spy drone in its airspace and threatened to respond. International forces in Kabul said the drone may have been one lost last week while flying over western Afghanistan.
Iran has been accused in the past of providing low-level backing to the Taliban insurgency, and diplomats and analysts have suggested Tehran could ratchet up this support if it wanted to put serious pressure on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Monday reiterated Iran's opposition to the United States keeping some forces in Afghanistan after 2014.
"Certain Western countries seek to extend their military presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014 by maintaining their military bases there. We deem such an approach to be contradictory to efforts to sustain stability and security in Afghanistan," he told the conference.
"LAND OF OPPORTUNITY"
Foreign governments however were determined to try to dispel at least some of the pessimism seeping into the Afghan project.
Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna, whose country became the first to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan - much to the irritation of Pakistan - pledged India would keep up its heavy investment in a country whose mineral wealth and trade routes made it "a land of opportunity".
In a rare positive development, Clinton said the United States would resume paying into a World Bank-administered trust fund for Afghanistan, a decision that U.S. officials said would allow for the disbursement of roughly $650 million to $700 million in suspended U.S. aid.
The United States and other big donors stopped paying into the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund in June, when the International Monetary Fund suspended its program with Afghanistan because of concerns about Afghanistan's troubled Kabul Bank.
The conference is not expected to produce new aid pledges; instead, U.S. officials say they hope it will mark a start to a process outlining future support to be pledged by mid-2012.
The Taliban condemned the conference in a November 30 statement which reiterated a call for foreign occupation of the country.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the conference that reconciliation -- a term used to refer to talks among different Afghan groups as well as with insurgents -- remained an important part of efforts to stabilize Afghanistan.
"The political process will have great importance in future, this is the place where the questions of reconciliation and power sharing must be solved in a way that includes all parts and ethnic groups of the society," she said.
"We can help Afghanistan in this process, we can provide our experience, but we can't solve the problem, it is only the Afghans who can do this."
Britain's Hague reiterated that any settlement with insurgents would require them to renounce violence, sever ties with al Qaeda and respect the Afghan constitution -- "end conditions" which some argue effectively close the door to talks by determining the outcome in advance.
Afghanistan has blamed Pakistan for hindering peace talks. Pakistan says it is being used as a scapegoat for the failure of the United States and its allies to bring Afghan stability. (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi, Arshad Mohammed, Sabine Siebold, Myra MacDonald, Missy Ryan and Hamid Khalizi; Writing by Myra MacDonald; Editing by William Maclean)
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Monday, December 5, 2011
German finance minister details debt fund plan before EU summit (International Business Times)
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Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_pk/stories/business/finance/169393425?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Sharp Launches World?s Smallest Image-Stabilized Cellphone Camera
12 Megapixels in a smartphone camera? That sounds like a bad idea. But an image-stabilized sensor in a smartphone camera? That sounds ideal.
Those previous sentences describe Sharp’s new super-thin 1/3.2-inch CMOS sensor which, at 0.31-inches on the diagonal, is the same size as that found in the iPhone 4. The stabilization works by shifting the [...]
Those previous sentences describe Sharp’s new super-thin 1/3.2-inch CMOS sensor which, at 0.31-inches on the diagonal, is the same size as that found in the iPhone 4. The stabilization works by shifting the [...]
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/GearFactor/~3/2I7aS3A-9LU/
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Jailed Afghan rape victim ordered freed
KABUL, Afghanistan?? Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday pardoned and ordered the release of an Afghan woman serving a prison sentence for having sex out of wedlock after she was raped by a relative.
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Karzai's office also said the woman and her attacker agreed to marry. That would reverse an earlier decision by the woman, who had previously refused a judge's offer of freedom if she agreed to wed the rapist.
Thursday's statement said Karzai decided to forgive the rest of the woman's sentence after hearing from judicial officials. It's not clear how much time the woman has served.
The plight of the woman, identified as Gulnaz, was highlighted in a documentary blocked by the European Union because it feared the women profiled would be endangered by its release.
Thousands of people signed a petition urging Karzai to release her.
Gulnaz's lawyer, Kimberly Motley, told the BBC she hoped the government would now allow Gulnaz the freedom to choose who to marry.
"In my conversations with Gulnaz she told me that if she had the free choice she would not marry the man who raped her," Motley said.
Sesame Street arrives in AfghanistanThe woman, now 21, was jailed two years ago for adultery after she was raped by her cousin's husband. She became pregnant following the attack in 2009 and her baby daughter was born behind bars. When her pregnancy brought the crime to light, she was, like her attacker, convicted and jailed for the crime of adultery by force.
She was initially sentenced to two years' imprisonment, but on appeal, this was increased to 12 years. A further appeal last week saw that cut back again to three years.
Gulnaz's attacker received a 12-year prison term, later reduced on appeal to seven years.
Her case has drawn attention to the challenges still faced by Afghan women, 10 years after the overthrow of the Taliban regime that banned women from almost all work and education.
With foreign combat troops set to return home by the end of 2014, some activists inside and outside Afghanistan fear that women's rights may be sacrificed in the scramble to ensure the West leaves behind a relatively stable state.
Human rights campaigners have condemned her conviction, and the court's decision that she could go free if she married her attacker, which she later agreed to. He is still married to her cousin, but under Afghan law can take a second wife.
This requirement for her release has now been lifted, said her lawyer Kimberley Motley, of law firm Motley Legal, although she could not comment on whether Gulnaz would reconsider her decision to marry him.
"The fact that the court eliminated the portion of the sentence that says she has to marry this man is definitely something that supports the Elimination of Violence against Women law which was signed by the government," Motley said earlier this week.
"Once President Karzai chooses to grant her clemency, which I am very confident of, that will... set precedent and will show his support for the Elimination of Violence against Women act and his support for Afghan women."
That law was passed more than two years ago, but the United Nations warned last week that there was still a "long way to go" in implementing it, and only a small number of cases have been prosecuted under the Act.
Moral crimes
Female victims of rape and abuse can find themselves accused of "moral crimes," and like Gulnaz, face heavy sentences, the United Nations found.
Some such offenses, such as running away from home, are not technically crimes under Afghan law, but judges can interpret the law to cover them, Motley said.
Slideshow: Afghanistan: Nation at a crossroads (on this page)
Motley said she believed Gulnaz's appeal was already setting a precedent for some moral crimes cases.
"Hopefully they can use this case... as an example to argue their particular cases in court," she said of defense lawyers.
Motley delivered a petition with nearly 5,000 signatures, collected in less than a week, to Kabul's Presidential Palace on Sunday, demanding Gulnaz's immediate release.
Hundreds more signatures had been added by early Monday, some with strong words of condemnation attached.
"The whole world is watching and every decent person would be disgusted by this and other gross injustices, when the victims are punished instead of the perpetrators just because they are female," one signatory to the petition wrote.
Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this story.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45512700/ns/world_news-south_and_central_asia/
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Mayans never predicted world to end in 2012: experts (Reuters)
PALENQUE, Mexico (Reuters) ? If you are worried the world will end next year based on the Mayan calendar, relax: the end of time is still far off.
So say Mayan experts who want to dispel any belief that the ancient Mayans predicted a world apocalypse next year.
The Mayan calendar marks the end of a 5,126 year old cycle around December 12, 2012 which should bring the return of Bolon Yokte, a Mayan god associated with war and creation.
Author Jose Arguelles called the date "the ending of time as we know it" in a 1987 book that spawned an army of Mayan theorists, whose speculations on a cataclysmic end abound online. But specialists meeting at this ancient Mayan city in southern Mexico say it merely marks the termination of one period of creation and the beginning of another.
"We have to be clear about this. There is no prophecy for 2012," said Erik Velasquez, an etchings specialist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). "It's a marketing fallacy."
The National Institute of Anthropological History in Mexico has been trying to quell the barrage of forecasters predicting the apocalypse. "The West's messianic thinking has distorted the world view of ancient civilizations like the Mayans," the institute said in a statement.
In the Mayan calendar, the long calendar count begins in 3,114 BC and is divided into roughly 394-year periods called Baktuns. Mayans held the number 13 sacred and the 13th Baktun ends next year.
Sven Gronemeyer, a researcher of Mayan codes from La Trobe University in Australia, who has been trying to decode the calendar, said the so-called end day reflects a transition from one era to the next in which Bolon Yokte returns.
"Because Bolon Yokte was already present at the day of creation ... it just seemed natural for the Mayan that Bolon Yokte will again be present," he said.
Of the approximately 15,000 registered glyphic texts found in different parts of what was then the Mayan empire, only two mention 2012, the Institute said.
"The Maya did not think about humanity, global warming or predict the poles would fuse together," said Alfonso Ladena, a professor from the Complutense University of Madrid. "We project our worries on them."
(Reporting by Pepe Cortes; editing by Anthony Boadle)
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