Ireland opens new probe into death of woman denied abortion

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland has opened a new investigation into the death of a woman denied an abortion of her dying fetus, as the government scrambled to stem criticism of its handling of an incident that polarized the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist, was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors said her baby would not survive, according to husband Praveen, but in a country with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws, surgeons would not remove the fetus until its heartbeat stopped days later.

Husband Praveen Halappanavar, who believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed his wife on October 28, has said he would not cooperate with an investigation already launched by the country’s health service because he did not believe it would be neutral.

On Friday, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) watchdog, which is government-funded but independent of the state health service, said it had also launched an investigation after receiving information from the health service and University Hospital Galway, where Halappanavar died.

A solicitor acting on behalf of the husband said the new inquiry was unlikely to be enough to satisfy his client.

“My client has always made his position very clear … He wants a public inquiry. He has made it clear he wants to get to the truth of the matter, so I don’t think that the framework of HIQA will suffice,” Gerard O’Donnell, told RTE radio.

He added that the next step would be to consider an application to the European Court of Human Rights, which criticized Ireland’s abortion ban in 2010.

Halappanavar’s death has reopened a decades-long debate over whether the government should legislate to explicitly allow abortion when the life of the mother is at risk.

Irish law does not specify exactly when the threat to the life of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide. Critics say this means doctors’ personal beliefs can play a role.

Though the influence of the Catholic Church over Irish politics has waned since the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

CALL TO CLARIFY

Ireland’s abortion stance is enshrined in a 1983 constitutional amendment that intended to ban abortion in all circumstances. In 1992, when challenged in the “X-case” involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted when the woman’s life was at risk, including from suicide.

But successive governments refused to make clear the circumstances under which a threat would make an abortion legal. After several challenges, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2010 that Ireland must clarify its position.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, whose ruling Fine Gael party made an election pledge not to introduce new laws allowing abortion, said last week he would not be rushed into a decision on the issue.

The government was forced into an embarrassing u-turn this week when it removed three Galway-based consultants from the health service inquiry following criticism from Praveen Halappanavar.

The issue has raised tensions between Fine Gael and the more socially liberal Labour Party, its junior coalition partner, which has campaigned for a clarification of the country’s abortion rules.

The country’s president, Michael D. Higgins, a former member of the Labour Party, weighed into the debate this week when he said an investigation was needed that satisfied the dead woman’s family.

Opposition party Sinn Fein introduced a motion to parliament on Wednesday calling for parliament to legislate on abortion, but it was rejected.

“Successive governments over the past 20 years have failed in respect of legislation. That failure is in large measure due to fear or cowardice,” said Mary Lou McDonald, vice president of Sinn Fein.

(Editing by Will Waterman)

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Health Care’s Epidemic of Insider Trading

On April 14, 2011, James Fan, 39, stood on a parking garage landing at Newark Liberty International Airport, a letter from his young son in his pants pocket, about to jump four stories to his death. Fan had been charged a day earlier with insider trading based on his knowledge of confidential test results at Seattle Genetics (SGEN), a health-care company where he was manager of clinical programming. Also charged: his younger brother, Zishen, who was scheduled to take the oath of U.S. citizenship a month later. The total take, a judge later determined, was about $ 200,000. James Fan was trying to help his brother, who had found himself deep under water after the California real estate market collapsed in 2008, prosecutors said later. “The Fan case is such a cautionary tale,” says Jenny Durkan, the U.S. attorney in Seattle. “Both brothers were promising.”

The markets are awash in insider trading, and the health-care industry has been particularly hard-hit. Health-care businesses offer illegal traders abundant opportunities to profit from unpublicized data about earnings and deals. Pharmaceutical companies can live or die on the results of drug trials. And the industry has undergone significant consolidation, leading to several multibillion-dollar mergers. “Health care is particularly attractive to criminals because so much turns on the government regulatory approval,” says Rod Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland. “If you have a pending application for a new drug, the difference between yes and no on approvals can be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The Fans are among at least 83 people who have been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or charged since 2008 with passing or receiving insider-trading tips involving pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or other health-care stocks. On Nov. 20, federal prosecutors charged Mathew Martoma, a former portfolio manager for Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors, with trading on insider tips about clinical trials of bapineuzumab, a drug to treat Alzheimer’s disease. They said the scheme netted as much as $ 276 million for the hedge fund. Martoma’s lawyer said his client would be exonerated. An SAC spokesman said, “Mr. Cohen and SAC are confident that they have acted appropriately and will continue to cooperate with the government’s inquiry.”

A day earlier, three executives at health-care companies Celgene (CELG), Sanofi (SNY), and Stryker (SYK) were among six people charged for their roles in an insider-trading ring that prosecutors said generated $ 1.48 million in illicit profit. Lawyers for the six men declined to comment.

The lineup of accused health industry inside traders illustrates how widespread the problem is: CEOs, hedge fund traders, bankers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, baseball players, a retired pilot, and a film producer have been charged or sued by regulators. Martha Stewart went to prison in 2004 for obstructing justice and false statements about her sale of shares of health-care company ImClone Systems (LLY), whose founder Sam Waksal was ordered to spend 87 months in jail for insider trading.

While the number of insider-trading cases in the technology industry has been roughly the same since 2008, many of those were intertwined with Raj Rajaratnam, the billionaire hedge fund manager appealing his conviction while serving an 11-year prison sentence. What’s notable about health-care corruption is its breadth. The cases include husbands stealing information from wives, fraternity brothers conspiring, and an attorney making trades on information he overheard from his daughter. (She was a lawyer visiting home for the holidays while working on Abbott Laboratories’ (ABT) acquisition of Advanced Medical Optics.) A health-care inside trader turned confidential informant on another case said he was once on a golf course with three doctors whose beepers all went off at the same moment with the same inside tip, according to an FBI agent’s interview summary obtained by Bloomberg.

James Fan, originally named Zizhong Fan, was born in 1971 in Beijing, a year before his brother. Their parents later divorced. James and his wife trained as physicians in China, where doctors’ pay was low, says his attorney in Los Angeles, Adam Braun, a former federal prosecutor. James never practiced medicine and moved to the U.S. in 1999, a year after Zishen.

In July 2008, James began work at Seattle Genetics in Bothell, Wash., as a senior statistical programmer. His job was to convert raw data from clinical trials into statistics measuring the effectiveness of drugs. In 2010 he was leading a group of programmers who analyzed the data from a pair of clinical trials on the company’s flagship drug, SGN-35, for patients with Hodgkin’s lymphoma. James learned in July 2010 that the raw data showed progress for a large majority of the patients.

Because of the drug trials, Seattle Genetics began a blackout period on employees trading company securities starting on June 22. Soon after, James wired money to China, and the money ended up in an account in his father’s name at TD Ameritrade (AMTD). On Aug. 24, Zishen Fan began using the TD Ameritrade account to buy Seattle Genetics shares and options. Over a month, the brothers spent $ 514,314 on Seattle Genetics stock and options. On Sept. 27, Seattle Genetics announced that SGN-35 cut tumor size by at least half for 75 percent of the patients in a group of 102. Shares rose almost 18 percent. Zishen Fan began exercising the options and selling shares.

The activity aroused suspicions at TD Ameritrade, which filed a complaint about possible insider trading on Oct. 27 with federal regulators. “TD Ameritrade utilizes a variety of risk management tools and surveillance methodologies to identify potentially problematic activity,” says Kristin Petrick, a company spokeswoman. The Options Regulatory Surveillance Authority, or ORSA, which monitors trading for the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) and other exchanges, also flagged the account and alerted the SEC on Dec. 13.

SEC lawyers in San Francisco, who also cover Seattle, sued, filing a complaint in January against James and Zishen Fan that laid out the insider-trading scheme. Prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against the brothers in federal court in Seattle on April 13. The next morning, FBI agents went to arrest James Fan at his home in Mill Creek, Wash. James, who had been fired by Seattle Genetics, was then working in New Jersey. His distraught wife called Braun, who phoned a prosecutor and promised to bring his client to court the next day for his initial appearance and bail hearing.

When Braun spoke with James at his job in New Jersey, James told him he would reserve a flight out of Newark. James spoke that afternoon with a friend who grew alarmed and went to the airport to find him, Braun says. The friend contacted the police, saying James was suicidal and at a parking garage. When police arrived, they found his body beside the garage.

Zishen Fan pleaded guilty in July 2011, admitting his brother gave him material, nonpublic information about SGN-35. Three months later, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman sentenced Fan to 18 months in prison. He is serving his term at a facility in Taft, Calif. Fan declined an interview request. His lawyer, Allen Ressler, has spoken with Fan in prison. “He says he’s enduring it,” says Ressler.

The bottom line: The Fans are among at least 83 people charged with insider trading in health-care stocks since 2008.

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Canada wants to balance budget in 2015, may invest to grow economy

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Thursday he is aiming to wipe out the federal budget deficit by 2015, in time for the next election, but cautioned the Conservative government would be flexible with that target if the economy soured.

Canada’s fiscal shortfall of 1.4 percent of gross domestic product is tiny compared to that of the United States and some other major economies. But it is a sore point for policy makers in a country that ran an 11-year string of surpluses prior to the global financial crisis.

“It remains our intention to balance the budget during this session of Parliament,” Flaherty said in the prepared text of a speech he was delivering in Toronto.

“Although we are prepared to be flexible and pragmatic should circumstances warrant — our plan is to stick to our plan: balanced budgets and low taxes,” he said.

The parliamentary session is due to end in October 2015, the same month a federal election is scheduled.

Last week, Flaherty presented a fiscal update that showed a return to balanced budgets in 2016-17, including a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion in case the global economy worsens.

Three days later, amid criticism, both he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.

Flaherty said on Thursday the next budget in early 2013 would continue with what he called “pro-growth initiatives” of the past year, giving as examples previously-announced initiatives to strengthen the venture capital system and to provide skills training for the work force.

He hinted there would be “much more,” without giving details.

The plan will not include tax hikes and the government will continue to look for ways to cut spending, he said.

“From the experience of Greece and beyond, Canadians know that the consequences of unsustainable finances are all too painful,” he said.

($ 1 = $ 1 Canadian)

(Writing by Louise Egan; editing by Andrew Hay)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Black Friday Fiscal Cliff Twitter Guide

With the dirty dishes cleared and leftovers safely in the fridge, Americans across the country start looking ahead to the winter holidays the day after Thanksgiving.

But for Congress, there’s a pretty big hurdle to handle before the House and Senate can abscond to presents and plum pudding. It’s called the fiscal cliff, and according to a recent Pew Research Poll , more Americans are paying attention to it than the scandal surrounding Gen. David Petraeus‘ resignation.

While talks and deals on budget cuts and tax increases are currently on hold, once the holiday weekend ends, it’s time to take to Twitter and follow these folks to learn what’s at stake, where each party stands and whether to expect a bipartisan deal for the new year.

Subscribe to the list on @OtusNews here.

Follow Tweeters in the House

These partisan tweeters should give a good idea of where things stand on the House side of Capitol Hill.

@SpeakerBoehner - The official Twitter account for the speaker of the House commends Republican representatives for their work on the fiscal cliff negotiations and retweets relevant articles with a GOP slant. Last Friday, a tweet from the account said, “Survey shows Americans favor GOP approach to averting #fiscalcliff http://j.mp/SsmYJT ” To see more of Boehner’s opinions on the issue and read about his meetings with key players, follow his personal account: @ JohnBoehner .

@NancyPelosi – While the House minority leader has kept her thoughts on the fiscal cliff away from Twitter for now, Pelosi expressed strong sentiments on the need for higher taxation of wealthy Americans in her interview with ABC’s Martha Raddatz Sunday. Pelosi will be a tweeter to watch as options come on and off the table – she’s a good gauge for how the rest of the party will vote.

@RepPaulRyan – The budget hawk has stayed out of the spotlight since losing the vice presidency earlier this month, but as chairman of the House Budget Committee, it’s unlikely Ryan will resist for long when spending cuts are in sight. The former VP nominee’s other Twitter account, @PaulRyanVP , spent a lot of time tweeting about the need for pro-growth policies and the reduction of government debt. Keep an eye on Ryan’s congressional account to see if those positions will factor into the negotiations this time around.

@ChrisVanHollen – As a ranking member on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Van Hollen, D-Md., has tweeted a photo of him discussing the fiscal cliff, a video of his interview on it and vitriolic attacks with the hashtag #DoNothingGOP.

Tweeters in the Senate

Ranking senators on the fiscal cliff aren’t as inclined to tweet as their House counterparts, but here is a couple to keep in your newsfeed.

@ChuckGrassley - The Republican senator from Iowa doesn’t tweet many links or videos, but he is outspoken in his digital opinions. “PresObama meets w Congressional leaders tomorrow. I hope it is a serious attempt by PresO to reach bipartisan agreement not a photo op 4tax,” Grassley tweeted Nov. 15. In addition to 140-character diatribes on the fiscal cliff, use Grassley’s feed to learn about deer hunting, the History Channel and University of Northern Iowa football.

@SenJohnMcCain – The outspoken former presidential candidate will be one to watch throughout these negotiations. In addition to offering news on foreign affairs and the state of the nation’s finances, McCain adds humor, tweeting a little pre-emptively last weekend , “Twinkies maker Hostess closes – what will we do without deep fried Twinkies at the #Iowa State Fair?”

Organizations and Think Tanks

@BudgetHawks – The handle for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget gives you an idea of what they’re all about. They tweet ideas, articles and commentary on how to balance the federal budget.

@CenterOnBudget – The somewhat-left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities focuses on analyzing national data to predict how possible solutions could affect Americans.

@Heritage – The Heritage Foundation brings a conservative perspective on the financial issues at stake. On Monday it tweeted a chart showing how its plan for lowering the debt stacked up against those of four other think tanks.

@AARP – A number of Democratic senators have pledged to oppose a deal that would hurt seniors, but nevertheless, Medicare and Social Security cuts could be on the table. Follow AARP to see how congressional compromises could affect older Americans.

@CSPAN­_Classroom – This account offers civics lessons for educators, but the guide to the fiscal cliff they tweeted this week has background information and interviews with lawmakers that could be helpful for anyone trying to understand the complex talks on Capitol Hill.

Observers at ABC

ABC’s @JakeTapper, @DevinDwyer and @MaryKBruce will bring the view from the White House. @RickKlein, @AmyEWalter and @ JonKarl will have analysis of the issues (most likely with sports metaphors to boot). Turn to @GStephanopoulos for the big picture. @JParkABC report on the ground from the House of Representatives and @SunlenMiller will cover the Senate.

The Instigators, 2016ers and Others

@JimDemint – U.S. Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., draws a hard line and likes to stir up the conversation, though the Romney backer has been unusually quiet since President Obama‘s win. We’re hoping this budget battle will be enough to rile him up again.

@TedCruz - The senator-elect from Texas will undoubtedly raise some eyebrows with his fired-up rhetoric during this showdown. As an example of his spunk, the Republican rising star essentially issued a challenge to President Obama about working together on the fiscal cliff.

@MarcoRubio – With his attendance at the Iowa governor’s birthday bash last week, it seems Sen. Rubio, R-Fla., is already preparing to court a 2016 electorate. He’ll want to command a memorable presence in this historic fiscal fight.

@GovernorOMalley – The Maryland governor is rumored to be a Democratic favorite for 2016. He’s garnered praise for reining in costs to the state.

@djheakin - Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO director and current president of the American Action Forum, offers educational tweets, including an e-book with the need-to-know on the fiscal cliff.

@econjared – Jared Bernstein is a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities fellow and the former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden who made some of the original predictions about the stimulus package.

For a Laugh

If talk of impending economic doom becomes a little too heavy to take, turn to @PourMeCoffee , @MrFiscalCliff and @TheOnion for tweets from the lighter side of the fiscal cliff.

And of course … @BarackObama – If the fiscal cliff fight is anything like the battle to raise the debt ceiling, President Obama will likely take to Twitter to encourage Americans to get involved and contact their representatives. You’ll know tweets that come directly from the president (and not his communications team) if they have “-BO” at the end.

Did we miss someone? Tweet your suggestions to @WordsOfSarah!

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Serious About Free Markets? Prove It

On Friday the Republican Study Committee, a policy shop for congressional Republicans, published a memo on how to fix copyright law. By Saturday afternoon the group’s executive director had pulled the memo, which had evidently failed to approach the subject with “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” This is Washington’s way of saying that an interest group hit the roof, and indeed, Ars Technica reports that lobbyists from the “content industry”—Hollywood and recording companies—pressured the group to renounce the memo.

Copyright being in fact broken, you can still read copies of the memo online. It lays out what copyright reform advocates have been saying for years. Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. This, along with punitive laws on copyright violation, hinders creativity and innovation. These facts aren’t new. What’s new is the tone. Derek Khanna, the memo’s author, writes like an unashamed free marketeer, and in doing so manages to latch on to a larger point: Laws that help businesses often harm markets. From the memo:

Today’s legal regime of copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value. We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system. (Emphasis in the original.)

Radical stuff. There’s no one in Washington to lobby for industries that don’t exist yet, and ever so briefly, Khanna and the Republican Study Committee stepped into that breach. Then they stepped back, to gather more facts and viewpoints. Here’s one: Pro-business and pro-market are not the same thing. The most pleasant place for a business is not elbows-out in the middle of a free market, but sitting alone, atop a fat monopoly. Ask your local cable provider. The larger a business gets, the more it has to protect from the companies and industries that might follow it with something better or cheaper. And the best way to protect what you have is to have it written into law.

Real markets, with real competition, are most helpful to newcomers. Small businesses and new industries create new value. Once created, they, too, move to Washington to protect it. Witness the growth of Google (GOOG) and Facebook’s (FB) lobbying operations in the Capitol. Khanna describes extended copyright protection as rent-seeking—in his words, “non-productive behavior that sucks economic productivity and potential from the overall economy.” What’s true of Hollywood and the recording industry could be said of any established industry.

Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View, points out that larger companies can lobby for special exemptions in the tax code. This creates complexity in the tax code, which punishes smaller businesses that can’t pay for tax lawyers and don’t have anyone’s buttonhole on Capitol Hill. Zingales prefers simple regulations and simple taxes, which are harder for lobbyists to game and easier for democracies to understand. He sees this as a bipartisan problem. The left is inclined toward more regulation, and the right is pro-business, rather than pro-markets.

The direction Khanna was headed—a defense of open, competitive markets at the expense of existing businesses—is still wide open space, claimed by no party. This summer, conservatives such as Timothy Carney at the Examiner and Yuval Levin at National Review urged Mitt Romney to back markets, not businesses. But he chose not to, even though he, in his day, disrupted existing markets of his own. Some enterprising Republican can still do it. Derek Khanna in 2016! He’s young. Maybe VP.

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Former Ivory Coast leader’s wife wanted by ICC

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court unsealed an indictment Thursday against former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo‘s wife on charges including murder, rape and persecution. It was the first time in the court’s 10-year history it has charged a woman.

The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal said the arrest warrant was issued on Feb. 29 for former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity.

Her husband, Laurent Gbagbo, is already in custody at the court’s detention unit in The Hague facing similar charges stemming from his fight to retain power after losing a 2010 presidential election. If his wife is extradited, they could face justice together in an unprecedented husband-wife trial.

But a senior member of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara‘s government, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said Ivory Coast has already informed the ICC that the nation will not let her go.

“We informed them of this a long time ago,” he said.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged Ivory Coast to extradite Gbagbo.

“The type of crimes committed in the aftermath of the 2010 elections did not happen by chance — they were planned and coordinated at the highest political and military levels and all those bearing the greatest responsibility must be held to account,” Bensouda said in a statement.

She said prosecutors continue to investigate crimes committed by both sides in Ivory Coast’s bloody power struggle and expect to issue further arrest warrants in the future.

“The investigations are objective, impartial and independent, and are conducted in strict accordance with the law,” she said.

Ivory Coast officials are holding the 63 year old under house arrest in the northwest town of Odienne. Last week, Ivorian prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau said lawyers had questioned Simone Gbagbo there for two days and that the domestic charges against her remained the same: genocide, blood crimes and economic crimes.

Unsealing the ICC arrest warrant issued nearly nine months ago appears to be a tactic by the court to put pressure on Ouattara’s administration to hand over Ms. Gbagbo.

If authorities in Ivory Coast want to prosecute her, they have to convince judges at The Hague tribunal that their case involves the same crimes she is charged with at the ICC. It is a court of last resort, meaning it only takes cases from countries unwilling or unable to prosecute them.

The international court said in the warrant that there is evidence pro-Gbagbo forces deliberately attacked perceived supporters of Ouattara in the aftermath of the election.

Judges who reviewed evidence supporting the charges against Ms. Gbagbo said they found “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms. Gbagbo bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes … as ‘an indirect co-perpetrator.’”

The warrant called Gbagbo an “alter ego for her husband” with the power to make state decisions. It said there is evidence to suggest she “instructed the pro-Gbagbo forces to commit crimes against individuals who posed a threat to her husband’s power.”

Her husband was the first former head of state to be taken into custody by the court when he was extradited to The Hague by the Ivory Coast government last year.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede defeat following the election. Ouattara finally took power in April 2011 with the help of French and U.N. forces.

Ivory Coast is not a member state of the court, but has voluntarily accepted its jurisdiction.

It is very rare for a woman to be charged by an international war crimes court. In the past, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic of persecution and sentenced her to 11 years imprisonment.

The announcement of the arrest warrant and Ivory Coast’s refusal to hand over Gbagbo appeared likely to raise tensions between supporters of her husband and those who back Ouattara.

Moussa Toure Zeguen, a leader of the Gbagbo allies in exile in Ghana, said by phone from Accra that the former president’s supporters had no faith in the Ivorian authorities to give Simone Gbagbo a fair trial.

“We don’t trust them. The only thing that Ouattara is doing is revenge,” Zeguen said. “He wants to try us without trying any of the fighters from his side who also committed crimes. It is not fair, and this cannot bring reconciliation.”

____

Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, and Robbie Corey-Boulet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, contributed to this report.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]

Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]

That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Elmo left behind on ‘Sesame Street’ as actor exits

NEW YORK (AP) — Even on “Sesame Street,” where everything is famously A-OK, problems can arise for its residents.

And that includes the Muppets. Cookie Monster grapples with an eating disorder. Oscar the Grouch gets cranky. Mr. Snuffleupagus gets the blues.

But Elmo seemed immune to any of that. Since enjoying his breakout success more than two decades ago, the 3 1/2-year-old red monster has radiated good cheer, love and trilling giggles. No wonder everyone — adults as well as children — adores him.

The key to Elmo is “his innocence, his positiveness and his sweetness,” according to Kevin Clash, the man who created him and once told The Associated Press, “I would love to be totally like Elmo.”

Now Clash has been scandalously separated from Elmo and from “Sesame Street,” the TV series where he reigned behind the scenes for 28 years.

Clash spoke of “personal matters” as the cause of his resignation Tuesday after an unthinkable nine-day stretch that began with an unnamed man in his 20s claiming he had sex with Clash at age 16. That allegation was quickly recanted. But then came another accusation of sexual abuse, and a lawsuit.

That second accuser, a 24-year-old college student named Cecil Singleton, said the actor had engaged in sexual behavior with him when he was 15. He is suing Clash for $ 5 million.

“I am deeply sorry to be leaving,” said Clash in his parting statement, “and am looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately.”

But privacy may no longer be possible for Clash, the 52-year-old divorced father of a grown daughter who acknowledged last week that he is gay. Singleton’s lawyer, Jeff Herman, said he has been contacted by two other potential victims of Clash and expects additional legal action.

At a news conference Tuesday, Singleton said he and Clash met on a gay chat line and then, for a two-week period, they engaged in sexual contact, though not intercourse. Sex with a person under 17 is a felony in New York if the perpetrator is 21 or older.

Singleton said he didn’t know Clash’s profession until years later, when he Googled the man’s name.

“I was shocked when I found out what he did for a living,” said Singleton.

Now that career has ended for Clash, who, in his dream job as a puppeteer for “Sesame Street,” was assigned a little-used puppet now known as Elmo, then turned him into a star. In the process, Clash won 23 daytime Emmy awards and one prime-time Emmy. He published his 2006 autobiography, “My Life as a Furry Red Monster,” and was the subject of the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey.”

Elmo overshadowed Big Bird and other “Sesame” Muppets in popularity and screen time, while marginalizing the cast of live actors. Since 1998, he has had his own show-within-a-show on “Sesame Street” in addition to appearances elsewhere in the hour.

He is also a major moneymaker for Sesame Workshop, the New York-based company that produces the show, and for licensees. At his merchandising height in 1996, he inspired the Tickle Me Elmo doll, which became a cultural phenomenon and that Christmas season’s hottest toy.

This year’s Elmo dolls, “LOL Elmo,” which giggles, and “Let’s Rock! Elmo,” which sings and comes with a microphone and drum set, haven’t made any of this year’s hot toy lists. Even so, Elmo toys probably account for one-half to two-thirds of the $ 75 million in annual sales the “Sesame Street” toy line generates for toy maker Hasbro, estimates BMO Capital Markets analyst Gerrick Johnson.

Johnson said he wasn’t sure how this week’s news might affect sales of Elmo toys this holiday.

“How many people are going to want to explain to their kid why they’re not getting an Elmo?” he asked.

On Tuesday, Hasbro issued a statement saying “We are confident that Elmo will remain an integral part of Sesame Street and that Sesame Street toys will continue to delight children for years to come.”

Despite his resignation, Clash will remain an integral part of “Sesame Street” for the foreseeable future. Taping of season No. 44 will wrap by mid-December and will begin airing next September, according to someone close to the show who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to publicly discuss details of its production. That means new episodes with Clash performing as Elmo will presumably continue well into 2014.

As for who might take over as Elmo, other “Sesame Street” puppeteers were already being trained to serve as Clash’s stand-in, Sesame Workshop said. It’s part of an understudy policy being adopted for all the major Muppet characters.

But no one knows how Elmo will fare going forward. Will the jokes spurred by Clash’s downfall leave a lasting mark on Elmo’s image? Will there be parents who see him tainted by association with the man who brought him to life?

In the wake of a personal tragedy that may still be unfolding, Elmo’s innocence, positiveness and sweetness will be put to the test.

___

AP Television Writer David Bauder and AP Retail Writer Mae Anderson contributed to this report.

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UK public sector borrowing rises

21 November 2012 Last updated at 06:39 ET

The government borrowed much more than expected in October, reducing the chances that the UK will hit its deficit reduction target in 2012-13.

UK public sector net borrowing, excluding financial interventions, hit £8.6bn in October, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

That marked a sharp rise from the £5.9bn borrowed in October 2011.

This is the last set of borrowing figures before the chancellor’s Autumn Statement on 5 December.

The headline figure was worse than expected – analysts had forecast borrowing of £6bn.

Corporation tax receipts fell nearly 10% in October, a month when there is usually a heavy inflow to boost the public coffers.

A rise in day-to-day departmental spending also contributed to the higher borrowing.

For the seven months of the financial year so far, borrowing has reached £73.3bn, excluding the one-off effects from the transfer of Royal Mail pension assets.

That is £5bn higher than the same time last year.

A spokesperson for the Treasury said: “The economy is healing, but it still faces many challenges.

“These numbers illustrate that, but also show the government’s plans to bring spending under control are on track for the year.”

But Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, said the chancellor was borrowing billions more to pay for the cost of his economic failure.

“Having failed on jobs and growth, the government is now failing on the deficit too,” she said.

‘Wrong direction’ Continue reading the main story

AAA-rating

The best credit rating that can be given to a borrower’s debts, indicating that the risk of borrowing defaulting is minuscule.

Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, said the low tax receipts reflected the disappointing performance of the economy, which is experiencing weak growth and weak consumer spending.

He told the BBC that he could see no chance of the government now hitting its deficit target of £120bn for 2012-13. Current projections suggest this year’s deficit would come in closer to £130bn.

“So it’s moving totally in the wrong direction,” he said.

“The longer-term prospects are looking much more disappointing than the Office for Budget Responsibility and the government were hoping when they first set these targets out back in March.”

He added that Chancellor George Osborne was likely to announce increases in taxes, further cuts in spending, or a combination of the two, when he delivers his Autumn Statement.

Chris Williamson, Chief Economist at Markit

However, analysts at Credit Suisse said the figures were disappointing but not disastrous.

“To some extent, this poor reading was mitigated by improvements in last month’s figure, which was around £0.8bn lower (less borrowing) than previously thought.

“In addition, the good news is that the poor figure appears to have been driven by expenditure rather than receipts data. This suggests that the weakness in the numbers may not be due to weaker GDP performance feeding into weaker tax receipts.”

They also pointed out that, overall, central government receipts were up 1.8% on the year to October, while expenditure was up 7.4%.

BBC News – Business

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