Rare penny fetches more than $1 million, sold at auction

Rare one cent of U.S.A.

One of the first pennies ever produced by the U.S. Mint was put up for auction Thursday night and reportedly sold for more than $1 million.

Bids for the 1792 Silver Center penny reached $1.15 million Thursday night, according to Heritage Auctions, which conducted the sale. The U.S. Mint itself was founded in April, 1792.

If you don't have $1.15 million on hand, there are more affordable rare coins available. The Canadian Mint recently began selling a limited-edition glow-in-the-dark quarter featuring a dinosaur skeleton for around $30.

And the website ThinkGeek offers electromagnetically shrunk quarters for $25, or 100 times their actual value as currency.

ABC News reports that the rare penny is made of copper with a small silver plug at its center. It was an experiment by the then-fledgling U.S. Mint, which shelved the penny before it could go into mass circulation. The U.S. Mint determined the penny was too large and heavy for practical use.

Todd Imhof at Heritage Auctions told ABC that unlike today's legal tender which bears the inscription, "In God We Trust," the copper-silver penny reads "Liberty Parent of Science & Industry."

"At the time, industry and science reflected an enlightenment mindset," Imhof said. "People believed freedom of thought and industrial growth would bind and unify the new country, not religion or God."

An anonymous collector who has owned the coin for 10 years sold the penny. "With collectible items, for an item to sell for over a million dollars it is an unusual event," Imhof said.

However, Imhof also said a coin of the same type sold for close to $3 million over a year ago. Still, the $1.15 million sale is one of only 30 $1 million-plus coin sales in history.

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Motorways in the sky set to become science fact as aerospace engineers map out possible routes

 The future shows a flying PAL-V car whizzing above the lines of traffic stuck

    * Regular sky travel could only be 20-30 years away
    * New design can fly 300 miles on one fuel tank

It may seem like science fiction, but experts have started creating a road network in the sky that could accommodate thousands of flying cars.

Scientists say that land vehicles that can convert into flying machines are now close enough to becoming a reality that there is a real practical need to develop a digital network in the clouds.

The complex interlinking skyways will allow the commuters of tomorrow to jet propel their way to and from work safely.

The complex aerial grid would allow workers to step out of their house straight into their own personal plane and reach work in half the time.

Aerospace Engineers hope the innovation would finally solve the huge congestion problem which regularly cripple Britain's road network and cause a huge headache for drivers.

The team at Liverpool University plan to use GPS technology combined with hi-tech detection and avoidance systems to avoid collisions.

It is hoped that the equipment would enable thousands of machines, known as Personal Air and Land Vehicles (PAL-Vs), to take to the skies at any one time.

One recently revealed James Bond-style prototype car plane features rotary blades which along with the propeller can be electronically packed away to create a land vehicle in just ten minutes.

This can then be driven like a car which, according to the Dutch company behind the concept, can hit a speed of 60mph in eight seconds.

Although it could cut a journey time from Liverpool to London to just an hour, at a current asking price of £150,000 and costly flying lessons required it is only affordable to society's high fliers.

However, flying taxis like the one in Fifth Element could be available for hire at a fraction of the cost.

According to Mike Jump who is heading up the digital mapping scheme says the possibility of regular sky travel is only 20-30 years away.

In an attempt to reduce the risk of crashes, the new flight paths will avoid big airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick.

The PAL-V planes will also fly much lower than modern passenger jets - a height of between 1,000ft and 1,500ft, to reduce the risk even more.

Scientists at Lausanne in Switzerland have also been assisting in the project and have tested 10 prototype machines flying in the air simultaneously.

Nasa is developing its own project in the U.S. to rival the British / European effort.

HIGH FLIER: HOW DOES THE FLYING CAR MEASURE UP?

This design for the futuristic flying car that could whizz through the skies at lightning speeds will certainly get speed junkies excited.

It is claimed the aircraft 'drives like a sports car' on the road and within a few minutes is ready for take-off.

When it is in the air, the PAL-V works in the same fashion as a gyrocopter - using lift generated by a rotor and forward speed produced by a foldable push propeller on the back.

PAL-V claim its 'roadable aircraft' will be able to accelerate from 0-60mph in eight seconds as a car and have a top airborne and road speed of 112mph.

Capacity: It might be a tight squeeze, but the three wheel flying machine can fit two people inside. It can carry a cargo of up to 230kgs - well above the average weight of two adults. On the road, with the rotors tucked away it measures four metres in length and it's width and height are just 1.6 metres - slimmer than most current road cars.

Road Performance: On land it can reach a maximum speed of 112mph and goes from 0-60 in just eight seconds. It can do 12km to the litre and has a range of 750 miles.

Flight Performance: In the air the PAL-V can also hit 112mph and needs to be going at a minimum speed of 50mph to stay in the sky. It needs just 165 metres to take off and 30 metres to land. It is not as fuel efficient in the air mode compared to the car mode, using 36 litres per hour. When it is floating above the land it has a range of up to 315 miles. It takes just 10 minutes to convert the £150,000 plane into a car.

The prototype of the PAL-V gyrocopter which could be a common sight in the skies

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'Evidence of Prostitution' Seen in Secret Service Scandal

Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, Columbia

Eleven U.S. Secret Service agents and five military service members are under investigation and facing possible reprimand for allegedly cavorting with prostitutes and drinking excessively at a Colombian hotel ahead of President Obama's visit.

A heated argument between at least one of the alleged prostitutes and at least one of the Secret Service agents on Thursday first alerted local authorities to the alleged behavior at the Hotel Caribe in Cartagena, officials told ABC News.

"My understanding is that 11 secret service agents did bring women to their room and there was a dispute the next morning when one of the women did not leave there room," House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Peter King told ABC News. "One did not leave, police came and she refused to leave until she was paid for her services. So that is what started all this."

Adult prostitution is legal in designated "tolerance zones" in Colombia, though restricting the sex trade to those zones has been difficult, according to the U.S. State Department. "Sexual tourism" is reportedly widespread in Cartagena and other coastal cities.

After the argument in the room, hotel authorities went down to the reception desk to see who else of the American guests may have signed in female guests -- alleged prostitutes -- for the evening, a senior Obama administration official told ABC News.

Initially, that inspection led the hotel authorities to have questions about 22 Americans -- 17 Secret Service agents and five special operations soldiers who were there to assist the Secret Service, the official said. Their names were reported to the lead U.S. military official on the ground.

U.S. officials have stressed that some of those about whom the hotel raised questions may merely have been attending a party and violating curfew. But Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan made a prompt decision to relieve the entire detail of duty and have them return to Washington for questioning.

"I don't think inspector Sullivan would have all of them leave if there was not evidence of prostitution," King said.

Sources familiar with the situation also said the allegations against the agents include excessive drinking.

The group included special agents, Uniformed Division officers and two supervisors, sources said. None were assigned to the Presidential Protective Division.

The Defense Department also announced today that five personnel who were assigned to assist the Secret Service have been restricted to quarters for alleged inappropriate conduct and will return to the United States for questioning at the conclusion of the mission.

"The nature of the allegations, coupled with a zero tolerance policy on personal misconduct, resulted in the Secret Service taking the decisive action to relieve these individuals of their assignment, return them to their place of duty and replace them with additional Secret Service personnel," Assistant Secret Service Director Paul S. Morrissey said in a statement.

"These actions have had no impact on the Secret Service's ability to execute a comprehensive security plan for the President's visit to Cartagena," he said.

All 11 Secret Service members were interviewed today in Washington and have been placed on administrative leave. If the allegations are proven true, they could face reprimands and firing potentially.

Commander Gen. Douglas Fraser, who heads the U.S. Southern Command, said he is "disappointed by the entire incident and that this behavior is not in keeping with the professional standards expected of members of the United States military."

He also pledged a thorough investigation of the military members who may have participated in the incident, and punishment, if appropriate, in accordance with established policies and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said President Obama was made aware of the allegations but said it "would not be appropriate for the President to characterize something that's being looked into by the Secret Service at this time."

Carney insisted, however, that the incident has not been a distraction for Obama, who is participating in the two-day Summit of the Americas with other Western Hemisphere leaders.

Officials said the investigation of the agents' behavior would center less on moral or legal aspects of the alleged behavior and more on whether Secret Service and U.S. military protocols were violated -- and whether the security of the president could have been compromised.

"If all this happened, this compromised the agents themselves," King said. "It left [the agents] open to be threatened and blackmailed in the future. ... They could have been threatened or blackmailed secondly to bring prostitutes in an area that's a secured zone. It just violates a basic code of conduct."

The Secret Service most recently faced public embarrassment and intense scrutiny in November 2009 when several agents allowed two uninvited guests onto White House grounds for a state dinner and photo line with the president. The so-called "Gate-crasher" incident resulted in three agents later being placed on administrative leave.

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2 students from China fatally shot near Los Angeles campus

Students bring flowers to the site of the slayings of their friends in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES –  Gunfire shattered the window of the BMW near the University of Southern California campus just after midnight, striking two Chinese graduate students inside.

The driver was able to make it from the car, through the rain, to a house where he pounded on the door pleading for help.

Ying Wu and Ming Qu, who police say were believed to have been dating, were dead by the time they got to the hospital Wednesday morning as police spread out looking for a killer suspected of bungling a carjacking.

The slayings shook the campus, which has a large international student population, and laid bare a parent's worst nightmare: having their child harmed in a faraway place.

Hundreds gathered Wednesday night on campus for a candlelight vigil in memory of Wu and Qu.

"The hearts of the Trojan family are broken," said Dean of Religious Life Varun Soni who opened the ceremony.

Votive candles in the shape of a heart and white roses and lilies sat at the foot of the Tommy Trojan statue, the university's collegiate symbol, where grieving students dressed mainly in black and faculty gathered for the vigil.

Clay Dube, executive director of the USC-China Institute told the crowd that Wu and Qu were brave, serious and diligent and they had traveled a long way to study here.

"The families have invested so much in these children, so much love, so much hope, and the children know that. They know the expectation is they will come here and succeed," Dube said.

At USC, the international student presence is enormous -- it has the largest number of any university in the U.S. Roughly 19 percent of the school's 38,000 students are from overseas, including 2,500 from China.

And some students said the shooting could be a cautionary tale for others who want to study overseas.

"If parents hear about this in China, it might affect their decision," said Chrissy Yao, a Chinese-American who moved to the U.S. when she was 10 and is a senior engineering student. "Since two lives were lost, I think concerns will remain for quite a while."

Police said the shooting occurred around 1 a.m. and may have been a robbery or a carjacking attempt. Witnesses said the car was in the roadway, not at the curb, at the time of the shooting.

Later Wednesday, bouquets of roses, daisies, gladiolas and calla lilies sat next to a small table on the walkway of the home to which Qu ran for help. On the table was a remembrance book with a sign that read: "We will give this book to the parents of Ying Wu and Ming Qu. Write here in English or Chinese if you would like to share your thoughts with them."

Gloria Tigolo lives on the tree-lined street of two-story homes and apartment buildings and said she heard a gunshot. She said she went downstairs but didn't go outside because it was raining.

Investigators said earlier that several shots were fired at the couple.

Four people have been killed this year in the area, police said, but violent crime in the area is down 20 percent this year. Neighborhood watch signs are posted along the street and police were trying to determine if there are any surveillance cameras in the area.

Tigolo said she would often see Wu, 23, in the neighborhood, wearing dark sunglasses but rarely saw her drive.

Qu managed to get out of the car and run to a nearby home, where he pounded on the door, police Cmdr. Andrew Smith said. It wasn't known if anyone answered the door before the man collapsed. Qu would have celebrated his 24th birthday on Thursday.

The gunman fled on foot, and no description has been yet released by authorities.

Jiewen Zhu, a 24-year-old financial engineering graduate student from northern China, said she called her mother after hearing the news of the shooting.

"I just left a message to tell her I am fine, I'm OK -- I just don't want them to worry," she said. "This is really bad that it happened to us and our students, but I didn't feel so threatened."

Jessie Cai, 21, is an undergraduate student in electrical engineering and an international student from China who lives in the West Adams neighborhood. Cai said she is shaken over the shooting and is thinking of moving out of the area as a result.

"I do worry because we get a lot of crime alerts but we never actually catch the criminals," she said. She said she hasn't told her parents about the shooting yet, but she is sure "they will be freaking out" about it.

USC is in an urban center within a mile of gang-infested neighborhoods that have been plagued by high crime. The last time a USC student was killed was in September 2008 when Bryan Frost, 23, of Eagle, Idaho, was fatally stabbed by a former usher at USC football games.

Travion Ford was sentenced to 16 years to life after being convicted of second-degree murder. The two men were involved in an off-campus altercation.

Nearly 35 percent of the school's 7,226 international students are Chinese, according to the university's 2011 figures. In addition to China, 17.5 percent of USC's international students are from India, 10 percent from South Korea, 5.5 percent from Taiwan, 4.4 percent from Canada, 2.3 percent from Iran and just above 2 percent each from Hong Kong and Indonesia.

Just as Chinese students are the largest segment at USC, they comprise nearly one-fourth of the nearly 724,000 international students attending colleges and universities in the U.S.

In recent years, they have helped fuel record international student enrollment on U.S. campuses.

The types of students who come from abroad tend to skew wealthier because they often have less access to financial aid and must foot more of the bill themselves. With China's economic boom, more families can now afford to send their children overseas.

Both victims were graduate students studying electrical engineering. Their hometowns were not immediately released and messages left for the Chinese consulate were not immediately returned.

Yao, the senior engineering student, said she hopes that campus police could expand their patrol areas near the campus to provide better safety for students.

The West Adams district, where the shooting took place, has seen some revitalization.

Beatriz Moreno, who lives across the street with her family from where the shooting occurred, said the neighborhood has been cleaned up. She said the last shooting she could remember on her street was in 2003.

"We used to see this every day," she said. "There are mostly families here. This is not normal."

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China's ZTE planned U.S. computer sale to Iran

ZTE Corporation

(Reuters) - China's ZTE Corp, which recently sold Iran's largest telecommunications firm a powerful surveillance system, later agreed to ship to Iran millions of dollars worth of embargoed U.S. computer equipment, documents show.

The American components were part of an 8 million euro ($10.5 million) equipment-supply contract, dated June 30, 2011, between ZTE, a Chinese trading firm and a unit of the consortium that controls the Iranian telecom, Telecommunication Co. of Iran, according to documents reviewed by Reuters. ZTE is China's second-largest telecommunications equipment maker.

The documents shed further light on how Iran obtains sophisticated American tech products despite U.S. sanctions on Iran. China is a major conduit. Reuters in March revealed an earlier deal between ZTE and TCI, which centered on non-American surveillance equipment but also included some U.S. tech goods. The latest deal, though smaller in scale, was much more reliant on U.S. products.

Beijing and Moscow have vetoed Western attempts to strengthen sanctions against Iran over its nuclear-development program. ZTE, based in the city of Shenzhen, is publicly traded but its largest shareholder is a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

According to the contract's parts list, the equipment to be delivered from China included IBM servers; switches made by Cisco Systems Inc and Brocade Communications Systems Inc; database software from Oracle Corp and a unit of EMC Corp; Symantec back-up and ant-virus software; and a Juniper Networks firewall. The parts were intended for business-support services, including a ZTE billing system.

A spokesman for ZTE said last week in an email that "as far as we know" the company had not yet shipped any of the products. Asked if ZTE intended to do so, he emailed a new statement Monday that said: "We have no intention to implement this contract or ship the products."

He also said ZTE decided "to abandon" the agreement after "we realized that the contract involved some U.S. embargoed products."

The contract had made clear the American provenance of the goods: Its accompanying parts list, signed by ZTE, lists more than 20 different computer products from U.S. companies. Washington has banned the sale of such goods to Iran for years.

U.S. companies that responded to requests for comment said they were not aware of the Iranian contract; several said they were investigating the matter.

A spokesman for IBM said: "Our agreements with ZTE specifically prohibit ZTE from the transfer of IBM products to Iran. If any of IBM's business partners are breaching our export compliance agreements, then IBM will take appropriate actions."

A Brocade spokesman said the company doesn't sell any products to Iran "and we certainly have not shipped these products to" ZTE. A spokesman for Greenplum, the EMC unit, said: "We have no knowledge of the contract described, but are actively researching this matter." A Cisco spokesman said: "We continue to investigate this matter, as any violation of U.S. export controls is a very serious matter."

According to the U.S. Treasury Dept., a U.S. company would violate sanctions if it shipped products requiring an export license to a third party knowing the goods would end up in Iran.

The United States, Europe and the United Nations have been imposing increasingly tough economic sanctions on Iran to pressure it to refrain from developing nuclear weapons, which Iran denies it is doing. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - the U.S., China, Russia, Britain and France - plus Germany are scheduled to hold talks with Iran Saturday in Istanbul over its nuclear program, which it maintains is peaceful.

Reuters reported on March 22 that ZTE had sold Iran's TCI a surveillance system capable of monitoring landline, mobile and internet communications. The system was part of a 98.6 million euro ($128.9 million) contract for networking equipment signed in December 2010.

The article reported that despite a longtime U.S. sales ban on tech products to Iran, ZTE's "Packing List" for the contract, dated July 24, 2011, also included numerous American hardware and software products, although they were not part of the surveillance system.

The U.S. product makers - which included Microsoft Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co and Dell Inc, among others - all said they were not aware of the Iranian contract, and several said they were investigating the matter.

The day after the article was published, a ZTE spokesman said the company would "curtail" its business in Iran. The company later issued a statement saying, "ZTE no longer seeks new customers in Iran and limits business activities with existing customers."

Three other telecommunications equipment makers - Ericsson, Nokia Siemens Networks and China-based Huawei Technologies - previously have said they would reduce their business in Iran. Huawei and ZTE have emerged as the largest equipment suppliers to Iran, according to people involved with the country's telecom industry.

The parts list for the June 2011 contract was much more dominated by U.S. products than the earlier equipment contract. The earlier pact was between TCI, ZTE and a Chinese trading company called Beijing 8-Star International Co. The latest contract was between ZTE, Beijing 8-Star and an Iranian company called Aryacell.

Aryacell is a unit of Iran Mobin Electronic Development Co., part of a consortium that controls TCI along with the Iranian government. According to the contract, Beijing 8-Star was required to provide "third-party equipments," while ZTE was responsible for supplying equipment and collecting payment. The contract was to last until December 31, 2015.

Officials at Aryacell and TCI did not respond to requests for comment. A representative of Beijing 8-Star, reached in China, declined to answer questions, saying: "Concerning my business matters, it's not necessary for me to tell you anything."

The contract's parts list included products made by manufacturers from several countries. But most were from the U.S., with IBM items accounting for the bulk of them. The IBM parts included 30 servers and other computer equipment with a total cost of more than 6.8 million euros ($8.9 million), minus about a 30 percent discount.

Several of the IBM server models, though new, were discontinued shortly before the contract was signed. It called for a 12-month warranty on all equipment.

It is not clear how ZTE will get out of the contract. According to the terms, the contract only can be terminated if Aryacell breaches it, becomes bankrupt or can't pay its debts.

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Isner powers to victory as U.S. draw level with France in Davis Cup

John Isner (right) beat Gilles Simon in straight sets to tie the Davis Cup

(CNN) -- The United States are tied 1-1 with France after the first day of the Davis Cup World Group quarterfinal at the Monte Carlo Country Club in Roquebrune, France.

France's Jo-Wilfried Tsonga gave the hosts the initiative with a four-set 7-5 6-2 2-6 6-2 win over Ryan Harrison in the opening rubber.

But the United States hit back to level the tie as big-serving John Isner fired nine aces in a straight-set 6-3 6-2 7-5 win over Gilles Simon.

"I took the court very confident," Isner said, DavisCup.com reported.

"To me no matter who I was going to play today, I was going to feel confident no matter what. So that was the case today," he added.

"I went out there and I played very well, simple as that. I was very happy with how I played and I am happy that I was able to help the team out."

The U.S., who are without Andy Roddick or Mardy Fish, will look to the Bryan brothers (Bob and Mike) to edge them into the lead tomorrow as they face Michael Llodra and Julien Benneteau.

Meanwhile in Castellon, Spain took a firm hold on their tie against Austria as Nicolas Almagro and David Ferrer recorded straight set wins over Jurgen Melzer and Andreas Haider-Maurer respectively.

The five-time champions, who are without the services of an injured Rafael Nadal, can now clinch the tie on Saturday with victory in the doubles.

Almagro was on court for just under two hours in his 6-2 6-2 6-4 win over Melzer while world No.5 Ferrer demolished Haider-Maurer 6-1 6-3 6-1 to continue his unbeaten status in Davis Cup singles matches.

"I won relatively easily and am happy with my game. Maybe the opponent played a little bit bad and made many mistakes but I played very solid and consistent," Ferrer said, DavisCup.com reported.

Over In Prague, Serbia, who are without the services of World No.1Novak Djokovic, got off to a bad start against the Czech Republic as Tomas Berdych cruised to a straight-set win over Victor Troicki 6-2 6-1 6-2.

But Janko Tipsarevic overcame Radek Stepanek in a five-set thriller 5-7 6-4 6-4 4-6 9-7 to level the tie.

The winners will face either Argentina or Croatia who are battling it out in Buenos Aires.

That tie is nicely poised after Croatian No.1 Marin Cilic beat David Nalbandian 5-7 6-4 4-6 7-6 6-3 before Juan Martin del Potro hit back leveling the match with a straight sets victory over Ivo Karlovic 6-2 7-6 6-1.

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SEC probes exchanges' disclosure in broad inquiry

New York stock exchange

(Reuters) - Regulators are closely scrutinizing stock exchanges for failure to disclose material changes to their businesses, part of some 20 different areas of inquiry by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission into how the electronic marketplace works. The SEC is interested in everything from the type of orders that the exchanges have devised to allow their clients to execute trades, to whether they are properly self-policing their markets, according to people familiar with the matter.

The stepped-up inquiries, which center on a marketplace where trades are now executed at speeds far faster than a blink of the eye, were sparked by the "flash crash" in May 2010, which one official called a "game changer."

The agency is concerned the electronic exchanges may be conducting their business in a way that could provide certain clients preferential treatment.

The inquiries also coincide with an embarrassing technical glitch in March that derailed the much-anticipated initial public offering of one of the fastest-growing electronic exchanges, BATS Global Markets Inc. Failure to disclose could lead to enforcement actions by the SEC, although fraud or illicit conduct have not been a major focus, these people told Reuters. Exchanges need to disclose rule changes and get the SEC's approval. Disclosure issues tripped up exchange operator Direct Edge, which the SEC sanctioned in October after an affiliated routing broker engaged in proprietary trading, even though the exchange's rules forbade such transactions. It is also one element of the SEC's probe into BATS, which said in February that regulators sought information about certain order types and its communications with market participants. One person familiar with the matter said that the SEC is looking at whether BATS should have filed certain rules disclosing how its order types work, and also whether those order types may give some market participants an advantage over others.

BATS declined to comment. Exchanges act as self-regulatory organizations, which means they must police their own markets for abuse. The exchanges are called SROs because of that distinction. Exchanges must file SRO rules with the SEC any time a material change is made. Those rules are vetted through a public comment process, and the SEC can also intervene if it feels the proposed rule violates certain legal provisions, such as an anti-discrimination clause that prevents exchanges from favoring one group of clients over another. But over the years, as more exchanges have gone from member-owned organizations to profit-driven public companies, regulators say that the quest for profit has at times trumped self-regulatory responsibilities. Moreover, in today's world of multiple trading venues and trades measured in microseconds, the way things actually work on an exchange is not always properly communicated in an SRO's own rules. Historically, there have always been problems with exchanges at times failing to make the proper rule filings. However, after the flash crash the SEC stepped up its scrutiny of exchange oversight and started to discover repeated failures in this area. Now, the SEC has also become much more willing to recommend enforcement action for technical violations that in the past might have flown under the radar.

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How the 'Crackberry' makers lost their way

BlackBerry

New York (CNN) – When I interviewed Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis two years ago at the launch of the Blackberry Torch, he was convinced the product would revive Blackberry’s fortunes because, “People don’t want to carry around two devices, they just want to carry one.”

He was right about that, but wrong about the device people wanted.

Thursday RIM announced a 23% drop in sales in the fourth quarter.  A recent Nielsen survey found only 5% of U.S. consumers buying a new smart phone chose a Blackberry.  It is a spectacular fall from grace for a company that pioneered push email and made their devices so indispensible they were nicknamed ‘Crackberrys.’

What happened?

For one thing, competition.  Workers who were issued Blackberry devices back in 2003-2005 didn’t just use them for work, they used them all the time and it didn’t take long for the likes of Apple and Google to catch on.  By 2007 both companies hit the market with phones that could not only deliver email and web access on the go, but had cool designs and access to app stores – something Blackberry did not.

But it wasn’t the competition that ultimately killed RIM’s edge.  The company suffered from “founder syndrome.” Mike Lazaridis and co-CEO Jim Balsillie created a brilliant product, but there were ultimately engineers that were blind to changes that were taking place.

In 2005, I went to Waterloo, Ontario to interview both men.  In lab coats and sanitized shoe booties, we toured the facilities and talked a lot about security and I.T. departments - not very much the user experience. It is something I have thought about often as I watched RIM’s stock and market share plummet.

It is often said that Steve Jobs was one of the few founders who was able to cannibalize his own products over and over.  Maybe it was Apple’s near death experience that enabled him to do that.  Is this finally RIM’s “a-ha” moment?  Maybe.

New CEO Thorsten Heins, who seemed in denial himself two months ago, has now announced a management shake-up, said he is open to selling or licensing part of the business. He vowed the company will turn its main focus back to the corporate market.  As one analyst told me, “it was the first RIM conference call in a long time where I didn’t roll my eyes.”

It may be too little, too late. Many of my friends and colleagues have gotten their I.T. departments to support their iPhones or Android phones. I can’t see them turning back.  And let’s not even mention tablets, which RIM has to practically give away to attract customers.

But RIM still had $4 billion in revenue. Their brand, though hurt, still carries weight – especially in developing countries.  And Matt Thornton, Avian Research in Boston says that if they do decide to license their operating system, and pare back from the hardware business, they have a shot.

“It will be a smaller company, but the gross margins on software companies can be 70-80% versus hardware companies which are closer to 40%,” he said.  Who might partner with Blackberry in a licensing deal?  Thornton thinks Samsung would make an interesting alliance.

Any Blackberry fans out there with advice for Thorsten Heins?  He’s gonna need it.

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Obama to China: Help rein in North Korea

Barack Obama looks through binoculars to see North Korea

SEOUL (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama urged China on Sunday to use its influence to rein in North Korea instead of "turning a blind eye" to its nuclear defiance, and warned of tighter sanctions if the reclusive state goes ahead with a rocket launch next month.

"North Korea will achieve nothing by threats or provocations," a stern-faced Obama said after a tour of the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas resonant with echoes of the Cold War.

Such a launch would only lead to further isolation of the impoverished North, which much show its sincerity if on-again-off-again six-party aid-for-disarmament talks are to restart, Obama told a news conference in the South Korean capital.

Seoul and Washington say the launch will be a disguised test of a ballistic missile that violates Pyongyang's latest international commitments. North Korea says it merely wants to put a satellite into orbit.

Even as Obama warned North Korea of the consequences of its actions, he spoke bluntly to China, the closest thing Pyongyang has to an ally, of its international obligations.

Obama said Beijing's actions of "rewarding bad behavior (and) turning a blind eye to deliberate provocations" were obviously not working, and he promised to raise the matter at a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao in Seoul on Monday.

"I believe that China is very sincere that it does not want to see North Korea with a nuclear weapon," he told a news conference in Seoul before a global summit on nuclear security. "But it is going to have to act on that interest in a sustained way."

It was Obama's sharpest message yet to China to use its clout with North Korea in a nuclear standoff with the West, and dovetails with recent calls for Beijing to meet its responsibilities as a rising world power.

In an election year when Republicans have accused Obama of not being strong enough with Beijing, talking tough on China is seen as a potential vote-winner after three years of troubled diplomacy in dealings with Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

China is host to the six-party talks, which involve Japan and Russia as well as the two Koreas and the United States.

DMZ TOUR

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) poses for a photo after his speech

Obama earlier visited a U.S. base on the edge of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) as a solemn North Korea came to a halt to mark the 100th day after "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il's death.

"You guys are at freedom's frontier," Obama, wearing an Air Force One bomber jacket, told about 50 troops crammed into the Camp Bonifas mess hall at one of the world's most heavily fortified frontiers.

He spent about 10 minutes on a camouflaged viewing platform at the DMZ, talking with some of the soldiers on guard and peering with binoculars across the border into North Korea as flags flapped loudly in the brisk, cold wind.

The White House cast Obama's first visit to the DMZ, which has bisected the peninsula since the end of the Korean War in 1953, as a way to showcase the strength of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and thank some of the nearly 30,000 American troops still deployed in South Korea.

The 4-km (2.5-mile) wide DMZ was drawn up at the end of the 1950-53 civil conflict, which ended in a truce that has yet to be finalized with a permanent peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas in effect still at war.

ROCKET LAUNCH CONDEMNED

Washington has condemned next month's planned rocket launch as a violation of North Korea's promise to halt long-range missile firings, nuclear tests and uranium enrichment in return for a resumption of food aid.

Obama said that if the North goes ahead with the rocket launch, a February food aid deal could fall apart and Pyonygang could face a tightening of international sanctions.

Obama said he was sympathetic to China's concerns that too much pressure on North Korea could create a refugee crisis on its borders, but insisted Beijing's approach over the decades had failed to achieve a "fundamental shift" in Pyongyang's behavior.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted a military official on Sunday as saying the main body of the rocket had been moved to the launch site on North Korea's west coast. The launch will coincide with big celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of the state's founder, Kim Il-sung.

North Korea's defiance is clouding Obama's much-touted nuclear disarmament agenda, which is also being challenged by Iran's persistence with nuclear research in the face of sanctions and international criticism.

Obama will join more than 50 other world leaders on Monday for a follow-up to the inaugural nuclear security summit he organized in Washington in 2010 to help combat the threat of nuclear terrorism.

While North Korea and Iran are not on the guest list or the official agenda, they are expected to be the main focus of Obama's array of bilateral meetings on the sidelines.

NORTH KOREA MOURNS

Obama's visit coincided with the end of the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il, who died in December. Tens of thousands of people crammed into Kim Il-sung Square in central Pyongyang to mark the occasion.

The state's new young leader, Kim Jong-un, the third member of the Kim family to rule the state, bowed before a portrait of his father at the palace where he lies in state. He was joined by his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, and military chief Ri Yong-ho.

Standing alongside South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Obama told reporters it was difficult to get an accurate impression of how the succession process was going because it was not clear who was "calling the shots" in the North.

The young Kim himself made a surprise trip to the DMZ in early March. He looked across the border through binoculars and told troops to "maintain the maximum alertness since (they) stand in confrontation with the enemy at all times".

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James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive

James Cameron emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep

At noon, local time (10 p.m. ET), James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.

The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.

After a faster-than-expected, roughly 70-minute ascent, Cameron's sub, bobbing in the open ocean, was spotted by helicopter and would soon be plucked from the Pacific by a research ship's crane. Earlier, the descent to Challenger Deep had taken 2 hours and 36 minutes.

Expedition member Kevin Hand called the timing of the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER sub's ascent "perfect."

"Jim came up in what must have been the best weather conditions we've seen, and it looks like there’s a squall on the horizon," said Hand, a NASA astrobiologist and National Geographic emerging explorer.

Before surfacing about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Guam, Cameron spent hours hovering over Challenger Deep's desert-like seafloor and gliding along its cliff walls, the whole time collecting samples and video.

Among the 2.5-story-tall sub's tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small seacreatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. (See pictures of Cameron's sub.)

Now "the science team is getting ready for the returned samples," said NASA's Hand.

Cameron—best known for creating fictional worlds on film (Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)—is expected to announce his initial findings later today. After analysis, full results are to be published in a future edition of National Geographic magazine.

"The Ultimate Test"

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, who descended to Challenger Deep in 1960, said he was pleased to hear that Cameron had reached the underwater valley safely.

"That was a grand moment, to welcome him to the club," Walsh, said in a telephone interview from the sub-support ship.

"There're only three of us in it, and one of them—late Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard—"is dead. Now it's just Jim and myself."

Expedition physician Joe MacInnis called Cameron’s successful descent today "the ultimate test of a man and his machine."

After breaching the ocean surface, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER was first spotted by a helicopter owned by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, a longtime Cameron friend. Allen was on the scene for the historic dive and posted live updates of the event on Twitter from aboard his yacht, the Octopus, which is providing backup support for the mission.

Science in Three Dimensions

Throughout the Mariana Trench dive, 3-D video cameras were kept whirring, and not just for the benefit of future audiences of planned documentaries.

"There is scientific value in getting stereo images because ... you can determine the scale and distance of objects from stereo pairs that you can't from 2-D images," Cameron told National Geographic News before the dive.

But "it's not just the video. The sub's lighting of deepwater scenes—mainly by an 8-foot (2.5-meter) tower of LEDs—is "so, so beautiful," said Doug Bartlett, a marine biologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California.

"It's unlike anything that you'll have seen from other subs or other remotely operated vehicles," said Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE project, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. (The Society owns National Geographic News.)

Medical, Psychological Rigors

As the 57-year-old explorer emerged from the sub's coffin—tight 43-inch-wide (109-centimeter-wide) cockpit, a medical team stood at the ready.

But if recent test dives—including one to more than five miles (eight kilometers meters) down—are any indication, Cameron should be physically fine, despite having been unable to extend his arms and legs for hours, expedition physician Joe MacInnis told National Geographic News before the dive.

"Jim is going to be a little bit stiff and sore from the cramped position, but he's in really good shape for his age, so I don't expect any problems at all," said MacInnis, a long-time Cameron friend.

In addition, the sub's "pilot sphere" has a handlebar, which Cameron could use to pull himself occasionally up during the dive. "Usually, shifting position is all that's required to buy yourself another few hours," he said.

Because Cameron had prepared extensively for the dive, he should be in good psychological health, said Walter Sipes, an aeronautics psychologist at NASA's Johnson Space Center.

"He's got prior experience doing this, not just in the simulator but also training dives ... and he's an adventurer, so I really don't think they'll have any issues to worry about," said Sipes, who is not part of the expedition.

Still, if Cameron plans to conduct more dives—which the team has indicated he will—Sipes recommends he get plenty of rest in between or risk mental fatigue.

"When you start to get fatigued, you start making mistakes," he added. "And since he's down there solo, he can't afford that. He's a [potential] single-point failure."

It should be at least a few weeks before any further DEEPSEA CHALLENGE dives, as the director's next breakneck mission will take him from the middle of the Pacific to London, where he's due at a premiere of his Titanic 3-D Wednesday.

"A Turning Point"

By returning humans to the so-called hadal zone—the ocean's deepest level, below 20,000 feet (6,000 meters)—the Challenger Deep expedition may represent a renaissance in deep-sea exploration.

While remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs, are much less expensive than manned subs, "the critical thing is to be able to take the human mind down into that environment," expedition member Patricia Fryer said, "to be able to turn your head and look around to see what the relationships are between organisms in a community and to see how they're behaving—to turn off all the lights and just sit there and watch and not frighten the animals, so that they behave normally.

"That is almost impossible to do with an ROV," said Fryer, a marine geologist at the Hawai'i Institute of Geophysics & Planetology.

Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of the Nereus, an ROV that explored Challenger Deep in 2009, said a manned mission also has the potential to inspire public imagination in a way a robot can't.

"It's difficult to anthropomorphize machines in a way that engages everyone's imagination—not in the same way that having boots on the ground, so to speak, can do," said Bowen, who's not an expedition member.

Biological oceanographer Lisa Levin, also at Scripps, said that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE program's potential for generating public interest in deep-ocean science is as important as any new species Cameron might have discovered.

"I consider Cameron to be doing for the trenches what Jacques Cousteau did for the ocean many decades ago," said Levin, who's part of the team but did not participate in the seagoing expedition.

At a time of fast-shrinking funds for undersea research, "what scientists need is the public support to be able to continue exploration and research of the deep ocean," Levin said.

Perhaps referring to his friend's most recent movie, expedition physician MacInnis called Cameron a real-world "avatar."

"He's down there on behalf of everybody else on this planet," he said. "There are seven billion people who can’t go, and he can. And he’s aware of that."

For his part, Cameron seems sure that the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER will be exploring the depths for a long time to come. In fact, he's so confident in his star vehicle, he started mulling sequels even before today's trench dive.

Phase two might include adding a thin fiber-optic tether to the ship, which "would allow science observers at the surface to see the images in real time," said Cameron, a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence.

"And phase three might be taking this vehicle and creating a second-generation vehicle."

DEEPSEA CHALLENGE, then, may be anything but a one-hit wonder. To expedition chief scientist Bartlett, the Mariana Trench dive could "represent a turning point in how we approach ocean science.

"I absolutely think that what you're seeing is the start of a program, not just one grand expedition."

News by  National Geographic

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Afghan gun massacre families paid compensation

U.S. armoured vehicles are parked outside a U.S. base in Panjwai district Kandahar

(Reuters) - U.S. authorities have given cash compensation to the families of Afghans killed in a shooting rampage allegedly carried out by an American soldier in Kandahar province, a family member and a tribal elder said on Sunday.

The families received around $50,000 for each person killed and about $10,000 for each wounded in the shootings in two villages in Panjwai district earlier this month. Afghan officials say 16 people, including nine children and women, were killed in the attacks.

"We were invited by the foreign and Afghan officials in Panjwai yesterday and they said this money is an assistance from Obama," Haji Jan Agha, who said he lost his cousins, told Reuters, referring to U.S. President Barack Obama.

The U.S. embassy directed all questions to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which is fighting the war in Afghanistan.

An ISAF spokesman said he was in not in a position to either confirm or deny whether compensation was given, and if so how much.

Lieutenant Commander Brian Badura said that as a matter of policy ISAF does not make restitution for losses resulting from combat, combat-related activities or operational necessity.

"Individual troop contributing nations may participate in some form of restitution consistent with the cultural norms of Afghanistan," he said. "Settlement can come in a number of forms which may (be) but is not always financial."

"As a settlement of claims in most cases is a sensitive topic for those who have suffered loss it is usually a matter of agreement that terms of settlement remain confidential."

On Friday, U.S. authorities investigating the killings charged Staff Sergeant Robert Bales with 17 counts of premeditated murder. Initial reports from Afghanistan put the death toll at 16 people, and it was not immediately clear where the extra count came from.

The killings have further damaged U.S.-Afghan relations that were already under severe strain, and come at a time when foreign forces are preparing to hand over security responsibilities to Afghan forces ahead of a planned withdrawal by the end of 2014.

"The Americans came to Panjwai and handed over compensation to the families," said Haji Agha Lalai, an influential tribal elder and member of the provincial council.

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7.4 magnitude earthquake rattles Mexican resorts, capital

People run to safety on the streets of Mexico City after a strong quake hits Mexico

A strong, long 7.4 earthquake with an epicenter in Guerrero state shook central southern Mexico on Tuesday, swaying buildings in Mexico City and sending frightened workers and residents into the streets.

More than 60 homes were damaged near the epicenter in Ometepec in southern Guerrero state, though there were no reports of death or serious injury. Fear and panic spread as a less powerful, magnitude-5.1 aftershock was also felt in the capital, where there were also no reports of deaths.

Other aftershocks were felt around the borders of Oaxaca and Guerrero states close to the epicenter.

"It was very strong, very substantial," Campos Benitez, hospital director in Ometepec.

Police radio operator Marcos Marroquin said there were preliminary reports of 60 houses damaged in the municipality but only a report of a broken arm.

Telephone service was down in the city and throughout the area where the quake was felt, and some neighborhoods were without power, according to Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, who set up a hotline for people to report damage.

About 40 passengers were stranded for a short time on the Mexico City airport air train, but later released. The airport closed for a time but officials said there was no runway damage and they resumed operations.

"I swear I never felt one so strong, I thought the building was going to collapse,'' said Sebastian Herrera, 42, a businessman from a neighborhood hit hard in Mexico's devastating 1985 earthquake, which killed thousands.

a collapsed bridge that had fallen on a bus in Mexico City

Groups of women hugged and cried at Mexico City's Angel of Independence monument, where hundreds of people evacuated from office buildings said they never had felt such a strong earthquake.

Others typed ferociously on their Blackberries. Samantha Rodriguez, a 37-year old environmental consultant, was evacuated from the 11th floor on the Angel Tower office building.

"I thought it was going to pass rapidly but the walls began to thunder and we decided to get out," she said.

Mexico City, built on a lakebed, was badly damaged in 1985 when an 8.0 earthquake killed at least 10,000 people. In past years, Guerrero has suffered several severe earthquakes, including a 7.9 in 1957 which killed an estimated 68 people, and a 7.4 in 1995 which left three dead.

Tuesday's quake was the strongest shaking felt in the capital since a magnitude-6.5 earthquake struck also in Guerrero in December. Officials said at least three people died in Guerrero, but there were no reports of widespread damage.

A magnitude-8.0 quake near Manzanillo on Mexico's central Pacific coast killed 51 people in 1995 and a magintude-7.5 quake killed at least 20 people in the southern state of Oaxaca in 1999.

Victor Flores, an official at the Guerrero emergency management agency, told msnbc.com that initial reports from teams near the epicenter were of damage only to homes built of adobe or other weak construction material.

Aerial teams will follow up,” he added, “but so far no deaths or injuries.”

A person at Acapulco City Hall told NBC News that they felt the quake had no immediate reports of injuries or damages.

No damage was reported in Oaxaca, about 100 miles west-southwest of the epicenter, according to local television. The front desk at the Hotel Real Oaxaca told NBC that the temblor scared residents but there was no damage.

A worker at Rica Pizza in Ometepec, one of the towns nearest to the epicenter, told NBC News that there was no damage to his business but he heard of damage to some other buildings in the area. He said electricity had gone out at his location -- and many of his business neighbors had lost theirs. His phone was working -- though he said there were some businesses without phone service. He also said he had heard lots of ambulance sirens but doesn't have any specifics on injuries.

The quake was followed by several aftershocks, he said.

"It was very strong, but we didn't see anything fall," said Irma Ortiz, who runs a guesthouse in Oaxaca. She said that their telephones are down and that the quake shook them side-to-side.

Celia Galicia, who works at the U.S. consular office in Oaxaca, had just flown in from Mexico City when it hit.

She said there was panic in the airport, and a dash for the doors. But she said that she saw no damage at the airport and no one was hurt. She says one building in downtown Oaxaca appears to be damaged and has been evacuated.

She added that they've had two strong aftershocks, and that in downtown Oaxaca most people are out on the street at this point.

"It started shaking badly," she said.

The White House said President Barack Obama's oldest daughter, Malia, is safe and never was in danger during  the quake. Malia, 13, is on vacation with a school group in southwestern Mexico, according to reports from the region.

Earlier the quake had been reported at 7.9 magnitude. No tsunami was expected.

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Dozens arrested at Wall Street Occupy's 6-month anniversary rally in New York

 Dozens arrested at Wall Street Occupy's 6-month

(Reuters) - Police arrested dozens of Occupy Wall Street protesters on Saturday night during a protest marking the movement's six-month anniversary at its birthplace in New York's Zuccotti Park.

The sweep of the park by police just before midnight capped a day of demonstrations and marching in lower Manhattan. There was no official word on the number of arrests but dozens of people were handcuffed and led out of the park.

Earlier in the day, 15 people were arrested and three officers suffered injuries, police said.

Protesters reconvened at the park after the afternoon marches petered out, and by 11 p.m. roughly 300 had gathered there.

"This is our spring offensive," said Michael Premo, 30, of New York, who identified himself as a spokesman for the movement. "People think the Occupy movement has gone away. It's important for people to see we're back."

Inspired by the pro-democracy Arab Spring, the Wall Street protesters targeted U.S. financial policies they blamed for the yawning income gap between rich and poor in the country, between the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The demonstrators set up camp in Zuccotti Park on September 17 and sparked a wave of protests across the United States.

On Saturday evening, several dozen police ringed the park and watched the crowd. Detective Brian Sessa said no action would be taken as long as the activists made no move to establish a camp.

Shortly after 11:30 p.m., however, some protesters began to erect tents near the center of the park, according to protester Cari Machet. She said that's when police moved in.

"They came in to shut it down," Machet said. "They told us we had to leave because the park was closed."

When about 100 officers entered the park, dozens of protesters sat on the ground and refused orders to leave. They were then carried out in plastic handcuffs and put in police buses and vans.

The park was cleared within 20 minutes, and by midnight no protesters remained in its boundaries.

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Afghanistan's Karzai slams United States over massacre

Afghan President Hamid Karzai

(Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday lashed out at the United States for failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a U.S. staff sergeant and questioned whether only one soldier could have been involved.

A series of blunders by the United States, including the killings in Kandahar province on Sunday and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a NATO base last month, has further strained already tense relations between the countries.

"This has been going on for too long. You have heard me before. It is by all means the end of the rope here," Karzai told reporters at the heavily fortified presidential palace.

Flanked by senior officials, a tired and sometimes angry Karzai listened to village elders and the families of victims of the massacre, and dressed somberly in black for the start of an expected two days of talks to discuss the killings.

Some at the meeting shouted, some demanded answers, but all said they wanted any soldiers involved punished.

"I don't want any compensation. I don't want money, I don't want a trip to Mecca, I don't want a house. I want nothing. But what I absolutely want is the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand," said one villager, whose brother was killed in the nighttime slaughter.

Furious Afghans and lawmakers have demanded that the soldier responsible be tried in Afghanistan, but despite those calls, the U.S. staff sergeant was flown out on Wednesday.

"The army chief has just reported that the Afghan investigation team did not receive the cooperation that they expected from the United States. Therefore these are all questions that we'll be raising, and raising very loudly, and raising very clearly," Karzai said.

Karzai appeared to back the belief of the villagers, and many other Afghans including the country's parliament, that one gunman acting alone could not have killed so many people, and in different locations some distance apart.

"They believe it's not possible for one person to do that. In (one) family, in four rooms people were killed, women and children were killed, and they were all brought together in one room and then put on fire. That one man cannot do," Karzai said.

TWIN INVESTIGATIONS

With twin investigations still underway by both U.S. and Afghan officials, any discovery of more than one soldier involved in the massacre would be a disaster for NATO, with Western leaders needing to win over Afghans ahead of a withdrawal by most foreign combat troops in 2014.

Civilian casualties caused by NATO forces hunting insurgents are a major source of friction between the Afghan government and its Western backers, and have damaged efforts to win the "hearts and minds" of locals in the decade-old war.

"Our families are finished and our houses are destroyed," said a furious Hajji Abdul Samad Aka, who lost 11 members of his family in the killings in two villages of Panjwayi district.

An unnamed U.S. official told The New York Times the attack by the accused soldier was a result of "a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues - he just snapped."

The lawyer for the soldier said the staff sergeant was upset at having to do a fourth tour of duty in a war zone and was likely suffering from stress after seeing colleagues wounded.

Anger over the massacre spilled into weekly Friday prayers at a major mosques in central Kabul with one cleric calling the shooting "unforgivable" and questioning how a soldier with alleged mental problems could be in the U.S. military.

"Revenge for the blood of these victims will be taken either today, tomorrow, in 10 years or the next 100 years," said Mullah Ayaz Niazi at Wazir Akhbar Khan mosque in Kabul's diplomatic enclave, which is also home to NATO headquarters.

The soldier accused of the shooting was attached to a small special forces compound similar to others around the country which underpin NATO's anti-insurgent strategy.

On Thursday, Karzai called for NATO troops to leave Afghan villages and confine themselves to major bases, underscoring fury over the massacre and clouding U.S. exit plans.

He also demanded the handover of security to Afghan police and soldiers by 2013, a year ahead of schedule.

Such a move could undercut U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy for Afghanistan and hamper efforts to mentor Afghan police and help with local governance.

In a further blow to NATO hopes of a negotiated end to the decade-old war, the Afghan Taliban said they were suspending nascent peace talks with the United States, following the massacre and ahead of the traditional summer fighting months.

The United States said it was committed to political reconciliation involving talks with the Taliban but progress would require agreement between Kabul and the insurgents.

"The Taliban leadership were and may still be serious about talks, but instead of discussing how to end the war, they will now be persuading the rank and file to go out again this year and fight," Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network said.

"That another round of fighting and killing is now on the agenda is a difficult prospect to face," she wrote in a blog.

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Skydiver Felix Baumgartner on track for super jump

Skydiver Felix Baumgartner

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner is well on the way to setting a world record for the highest free-fall jump.

On Thursday, the adventurer leapt from a balloon-borne capsule 71,500ft (22km) above New Mexico, landing safely eight minutes later.

The dive was intended to test all his equipment before he tries to free-fall from 120,000ft later this year.

In doing so, he would better the mark of 102,800ft set by US Air Force Colonel Joe Kittinger in 1960.

Even just Thursday's jump puts Baumgartner in a select group as only Kittinger and Russian Eugene Andreev have descended from higher.

Baumgartner, who is famous for stunts such as jumping off the Petronas Towers, is seen in the special pressure suit he must wear to stay alive in the thin air and extreme cold of the stratosphere.

His Red Bull Stratos team estimates he reached 364mph (586km/h) during the descent, and was in free fall for three minutes and 43 seconds before opening his parachute. From capsule to ground, the entire jump lasted eight minutes and eight seconds.

The 42-year-old was quoted afterwards as saying that the cold was hard to handle.

"I could hardly move my hands. We're going to have to do some work on that aspect," he said.

The Austrian also said the extraordinary dimensions of the high atmosphere took some getting used to: "I wanted to open the parachute after descending for a while but I noticed that I was still at an altitude of 50,000ft."

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President Obama Wants A Yemeni Journalist To Be Stuck In Prison For Embarrassing The US Government

Journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye

According to a report by Jeremy Scahill in The Nation, on February 2 of this year, President Obama called Yemeni President Abdullah to "express concern" about the potential release of journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye from prison.

Shaye is a Yemeni journalist who has done a lot of reporting on America's War on Terror, and on Al Qaeda itself. He has interviewed Al Qaeda leaders, even some that America had been hunting.

And his reporting has embarrassed the United States.

Glenn Greenwald explains the background story:

[O]n December 17, 2009, President Obama ordered an air attack — using Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs — on the village of al Majala in Yemen’s southern Abyan province; the strike ended the lives of 14 women and 21 children. At the time, the Yemeni government outright lied about the attack, falsely claiming that it was Yemen’s air force which was responsible.

Shaye was the first journalist to go to the site of the attack. According to Scahill, it was Shaye who took photographs proving that it was the United States, not Yemen that conducted the assault. And it was Shaye's work that proved that it wasn't "34 militants" who were killed, as the New York Times reported, but women and children.

The truth of Shaye's reporting was confirmed when WikiLeaks' released diplomatic cables showing U.S. and Yemeni officials joking about Yemen taking responsibility for the attack.

Shaye was harassed by Yemeni Intelligence the next year and eventually arrested in a raid.

Here are the details from Scahill's report:

 He was accused of being the “media man” for Al Qaeda, recruiting new operatives for the group and providing Al Qaeda with photos of Yemeni bases and foreign embassies for potential targeting. “The government filed many charges against him,” says Barman. “Some of these charges were: joining an armed group aiming to target the stability and security of the country, inciting Al Qaeda members to assassinate President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his son, recruiting new Al Qaeda members, working as propagandist for Al Qaeda and Anwar Al-Awlaki in particular. Most of these charges carry the death sentence under Yemeni law.” As the charges against him were read, according to journalist Iona Craig, a longtime foreign correspondent based in Yemen who reports regularly for the Times of London, Shaye “paced slowly around the white cell, smiling and shaking his head in disbelief.”

Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Journalists have variously condemned Shaye's subsequent trial as a sham, and demanded his release Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison and two years of monitored surveillance afterward.

Lots of prominent tribal leaders in Yemen have pressured the government for his release. But Obama personally put a stop to that, according to Scahill.

Word of the impending pardon leaked in the Yemeni press. “That same day,” Barman says, “the president [Saleh] received a phone call from Obama expressing US concerns over the release of Abdulelah Haider.” Saleh rescinded the pardon.

There you have it. The White House refused to give Scahill any evidence that Shaye represented a danger.

Without that is is impossible to conclude anything other than that Shaye's journalistic exploits, which revealed the embarrassing truth about an American attack in Yemen, are the sole reason for his continued imprisonment.

News by Businessinsider

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U.S. soldier flown out of Afghanistan

U.S. Army soldiers from 2nd Batallion, 35th Infantry Division leave Afganistan

(Reuters) - A U.S. soldier accused of shooting dead 16 Afghan civilians has been flown out of Afghanistan, officials said, as Washington attempted to calm seething anger over a massacre that raised serious questions about the West's war strategy.

Underscoring the instability in Afghanistan, an Afghan man in a stolen pickup truck sped onto the tarmac as a plane carrying U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was about to land on Wednesday, an extraordinary security breach in a southern province next to where Sunday's massacre took place.

No one on board the military plane carrying Panetta was hurt when it landed at a British base in Helmand province. Defence officials played down the incident, saying the Pentagon chief was never in danger.

The pickup truck crashed into a ditch after it sped across the runway ramp and the driver, whose motives were unclear, emerged from the vehicle in flames.

He was being treated for burns, a Pentagon spokesman said, and a member of the NATO-led coalition was also hurt when the vehicle was stolen.

Panetta arrived for his unannounced visit three days after the massacre in neighboring Kandahar province. Although Panetta's trip was planned before the shooting, it comes as Afghan civilians and lawmakers alike demand answers.

Foremost among those demands is that the soldier responsible be tried in Afghanistan over the shooting, one of the worst of its kind since U.S.-backed Afghan forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for harboring the al Qaeda masterminds of the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Despite those calls, the U.S. staff sergeant who gave himself up after the villagers, including nine children and three women, were killed has been flown out of Afghanistan, the Pentagon said on Wednesday.

The New York Times, citing an unidentified senior U.S. official, said the soldier had been flown to Kuwait. CNN also reported the sergeant had been taken there.

The commander of U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, made the decision based on a legal recommendation, a U.S. official said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office was understood to have accepted that the soldier be tried in a U.S. court, provided the process was transparent and open to media.

Panetta, the most senior U.S. official to visit Afghanistan since the massacre, told U.S. troops it must not deter them from their mission to secure the country ahead of the 2014 NATO deadline for the withdrawal of foreign combat troops.

"We'll be challenged by our enemy. We'll be challenged by ourselves. We'll be challenged by the hell of war itself. But none of that, none of that, must ever deter us from the mission that we must achieve," Panetta told soldiers at Camp Leatherneck, the main U.S. Marine base in Helmand.

U.S. and other foreign soldiers listening to Panetta had been asked to leave their weapons outside, a highly unusual move that was downplayed as a gesture to Afghan troops who were unarmed during the address.

Tensions have risen sharply across Afghanistan since the attack and the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at the main NATO base last month, adding urgency to Panetta's visit. Panetta was to hold talks with Karzai and other Afghan leaders.

The Afghan Taliban threatened to retaliate for Sunday's shooting by beheading U.S. personnel, while insurgents also attacked investigating Afghan officials on Tuesday.

BOMB ATTACKS, PROTEST

U.S. soldiers are likely to be among those targeted, although other Westerners have also been attacked after similar incidents and Afghan civilians invariably bear the brunt of any upsurge in violence.

Earlier on Wednesday, a motorcycle bomb blast in Kandahar city -- the capital of Kandahar province, where the Panjwai village shootings happened -- killed an Afghan intelligence soldier.

A roadside bomb also killed eight civilians in Helmand.

On Tuesday, some 2,000 demonstrators chanting "Death to America" demanded Karzai reject a planned strategic pact that would allow U.S. advisers and possibly special forces to remain beyond 2014.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron he did not anticipate any sudden change in plans for the pace of withdrawing troops.

Obama described the Kandahar massacre as tragic but emphasized at a briefing with Cameron that both nations remained committed to completing the Afghan mission "responsibly".

"In terms of pace, I don't anticipate at this stage that we're going to be making any sudden additional changes to the plan that we currently have," Obama said.

NATO leaders gathering in Obama's home city of Chicago on May 20-21 will decide the next phase of the planned transition to Afghan forces, which is already under way.

The United States and Britain have the largest contingents of foreign troops in Afghanistan, but domestic support for the war has flagged, posing a challenge to Obama as he campaigns for re-election on November 6.

Obama acknowledged that people wanted the war over, but argued they still back the reason for troops being there.

In a Reuters/Ipsos poll, 40 percent of Americans said the shooting had weakened their support for the war.

Sixty-one percent of Americans surveyed in the March 12-13 poll said remaining U.S. troops should be brought home immediately, down slightly from the 66 percent with that opinion in an earlier March poll. Seventeen percent disagreed.

The U.S. military hopes to withdraw about 23,000 soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of the coming summer fighting season, leaving about 68,000.

In the two Panjwai district villages where the massacre took place, U.S. troops remain confined to the compound where the accused soldier was based.

With its mission facing growing protests, NATO said on Wednesday it planned to boost security measures for its troops, measures reached in part after the January killing of four French soldiers by a rogue Afghan soldier.

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