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Review: iPad Mini charms, but screen is a letdown

NEW YORK (AP) — I bet the iPad Mini is going to be on a lot of wish lists this holiday season. I also bet that for a lot of people, it’s not going to be the best choice. It’s beautiful and light, but Apple made a big compromise in the design, one that means that buyers should look closely at the competition before deciding.

Starting at $ 329, the iPad Mini is the cheapest iPad. The screen is a third smaller than the regular iPads, and it sits in an exquisitely machined aluminum body. It weighs just 11 ounces — half as much as a full-size iPad — making it easier to hold in one hand. It’s just under 8 inches long and less than a third of an inch thick, so it fits easily into a handbag.

The issue is the screen quality. Apple has been on the forefront of a move toward sharper, more colorful screens. It calls them “Retina” displays because the pixels — the little light-emitting squares that make up the screen — are so small that they blend together almost seamlessly in our eyes, removing the impression that we’re watching a grid of discrete elements.

The iPad Mini doesn’t have a Retina screen. By the standards of last year, it’s a good screen, with the same number of pixels as the first iPad and the iPad 2. The latest full-size iPad has four times as many pixels, and it really shows. By comparison, the iPad Mini’s screen looks coarse. It looks dull, too, because it doesn’t have the same color-boosting technology that the full-size model has.

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as the full-size iPad starts at $ 499 and weighs twice as much. The real issue is that this year, there are other tablets that are cheaper than the iPad Mini, weigh only slightly more and still have better screens.

Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire HD costs $ 199 and has about the same overall size as the Mini. While the Kindle’s screen is somewhat smaller (leaving a bigger frame around the edges), it is also sharper, with 30 percent more pixels than the Mini. Colors are slightly brighter, too.

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD costs $ 229 for a comparable model with 16 gigabytes of storage and has a screen that’s even sharper than the Kindle HD’s. It’s got 65 percent more pixels than the iPad Mini. (There’s a $ 199 model with half the memory, and the storage space can be expanded with inexpensive memory cards.)

Why do tablets from two companies chiefly known as book stores beat Apple’s latest for screen quality?

Sharper screens are darker, requiring a more powerful backlight to appear bright. That, in turn, would have forced an increase in the battery size. That’s the reason the first iPad with a Retina display was thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. So to keep the iPad Mini thin while matching the 10-hour battery life of the bigger iPads, Apple had to compromise on the display.

This can’t last, though. By next year, it will likely be even more obvious that Apple is seriously behind in screen quality on its small tablet, and it will have to upgrade to a Retina display somehow. That means this first-generation iPad Mini will look old pretty fast.

The display causes a few other problems, too. One is that when you run iPhone apps on the Mini, it uses the coarsest version of the graphics for that app — the version designed for iPhones up to the 2009 model, the 3GS. You can blow the app up to fill more of the screen, but it looks pretty ugly. The full-size iPad uses the higher-quality Retina graphics when running iPhone apps, and it looks much better.

Some apps adapted for the iPad screen don’t display that well on the Mini screen, either, because of the smaller size. Buttons can be too small to hit accurately, bringing to mind Steve Jobs’ 2010 comments about smaller tablets. The late Apple founder was of the vociferous opinion that the regular iPad was the smallest size that was also friendly to use.

In some apps, text on the Mini is too small to be comfortably read — the section fronts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal apps are examples of this.

Of course, in some other respects, the iPad Mini outdoes the Fire and the Nook, so it isn’t just the tablet for the buyer who needs the prettiest and the thinnest. In particular, the Mini is a $ 329 entry ticket to the wonderful world of iPad and iPhone apps. For quality and quantity, it beats all the other app stores. (Oddly, there’s an inverse relationship between screen quality and app availability in this category — the Nook HD has the best screen and the fewest apps, while the second-best Kindle Fire HD has middling access to apps.)

The Mini also has front- and back-facing cameras, for taking still photos and video and for videoconferencing. The Kindle Fire HD only has a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The Nook HD doesn’t have a camera at all.

In short, the iPad Mini is more versatile than the competition, and I’m sure it will please a lot of people. But take a look at the competition first, and figure that by next year, we’ll see something from Apple that looks a lot better.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

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About the iPad Mini:

The base model of the iPad Mini costs $ 329 and comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. A 32 GB model goes for $ 429 and 64 GB for $ 529. Soon, you’ll be able to get versions that can connect through cellular networks, not just Wi-Fi. Add $ 130 to the price.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

China leadership transition formally edges forward

Label: World

BEIJING (AP) — China's leadership transition has formally edged ahead, with the executive body of the Communist Party Congress forwarding a list of names to congress delegates for review.

State media reported that the congress's presidium, 41 current and former members of the leadership, approved the candidate list for the Central Committee and sent it to the delegates on Saturday. The delegates will cast votes before the congress closes Wednesday to choose the Central Committee, a roughly 350-member body.

The Central Committee, in turn, will select the top leadership.

The move is largely a formality, as is the congress itself. Deciding the lineup of leading bodies falls to a small group of power brokers.

Vice President Xi Jinping has been all but formally announced to replace President Hu Jintao as party chief and president.

China Central Television showed Hu addressing the meeting of the presidium, which was presided over by Xi.

Candidates for the Central Committee outnumber seats by only a small portion, giving the 2,268 congress delegates little choice except on the margins.

In addition to the name list for Central Committee members, the meeting also forwarded candidate lists for the party's internal watchdog agency, state media reported.

War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum

Label: Lifestyle

HOUSTON (AP) — It was a moment Nina Berman did not expect to capture when she entered an Illinois wedding studio in 2006. She knew Tyler Ziegel had been horribly injured, his face mutilated beyond recognition by a suicide bombing in the Iraq War. She knew he was marrying his pretty high school sweetheart, perfect in a white, voluminous dress.

It was their expressions that were surprising.

"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.

"This was even more shocking because we're used to this kind of over-the-top joy that feels a little put on, and then you see this picture where they look like survivors of something really serious," Berman added.

The photograph that won a first place prize in the World Press Photos Award contest will stand out from other battlefield images in an exhibit "WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath" that debuts Sunday — Veterans Day — in the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. From there, the exhibit will travel to The Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, N.Y.

The exhibit was painstakingly built by co-curators Anne Wilkes Tucker and Will Michels after the museum purchased a print of the famous picture of the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, taken Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. The curators decided the museum didn't have enough conflict photos, Tucker said, and in 2004, the pair began traveling around the country and the world in search of pictures.

Over nearly eight years and after viewing more than 1 million pictures, Tucker and Michels created an exhibit that includes 480 objects, including photo albums, original magazines and old cameras, by 280 photographers from 26 countries.

Some are well-known — such as the Rosenthal's picture and another AP photograph, of a naked girl running from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War taken in 1972 by Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut. Others, such as the Incinerated Iraqi, of a man's burned body seen through the shattered windshield of his car, will be new to most viewers.

"The point of all the photographs is that when a conflict occurs, it lingers," Tucker said.

The pictures hang on stark gray walls, and some are in small rooms with warning signs at the entrance designed to allow visitors to decide whether they want to view images that can be brutal in their honesty.

"It's something that we did to that man. Americans did it, we did it intentionally and it's a haunting picture," Michels said of the image of the burned Iraqi that hangs inside one of the rooms.

In some images, such as Don McCullin's picture of a U.S. Marine throwing a grenade at a North Vietnamese soldier in Hue, it is clear the photographer was in danger when immortalizing the moment. Looking at his image, McCullin recalled deciding to travel to Hue instead of Khe Sahn, as he had initially planned.

"It was the best decision I ever made," he said, smiling slightly as he looked at the picture, explaining that he took a risk by standing behind the Marine.

"This hand took a bullet, shattered it. It looked like a cauliflower," he said, pointing to the still-upraised hand that threw the grenade. "So the people he was trying to kill were trying to kill him."

McCullin, who worked at that time for The Sunday Times in London, has covered conflicts all over the world, from Lebanon and Israel to Biafra. Now 77, McCullin says he wonders, still, whether the hundreds of photos he's taken have been worthwhile. At times, he said, he lost faith in what he was doing because when one war ends, another begins.

Yet he believes journalists and photographers must never stop telling about the "waste of man in war."

"After seeing so much of it, I'm tired of thinking, 'Why aren't the people who rule our lives ... getting it?' " McCullin said, adding that he'd like to drag them all into the exhibit for an hour.

Berman didn't see the conflicts unfold. Instead, she waited for the wounded to come home, seeking to tell a story about war's aftermath.

Her project on the wounded developed in 2003. The Iraq War was at its height, and there was still no database, she said, to find names of wounded warriors returning home. So she scoured local newspapers on the Internet.

In 2004 she published a book called "Purple Hearts" that includes photographs taken over nine months of 20 different people. All were photographed at home, not in hospitals where, she said, "there's this expectation that this will all work out fine."

The curators, meanwhile, chose to tell the story objectively — refusing through the images they chose or the exhibit they prepared to take a pro- or anti-war stance, a decision that has invited criticism and sparked debate.

And maybe, that is the point.

___

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP

Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

Label: Health

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn't get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

"Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children," said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

"The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later," said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

"If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale," said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. "We're all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine," she said. "The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it."

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

FBI probe of Petraeus began with 'suspicious emails'

Label: Business

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The FBI investigation that led to the discovery of CIA Director David Petraeus' affair with author Paula Broadwell was sparked by "suspicious emails" that initially did not contain any connection to Petraeus, U.S. law enforcement and security officials told Reuters on Saturday.

But the CIA director's name unexpectedly turned up in the course of the investigation, two officials and two other sources briefed on the matter said.

It was "an issue with two women and they stumbled across the affair with Petraeus," a U.S. government security source said.

The Washington Post reported on Saturday that the FBI probe was triggered when Broadwell sent threatening emails to an unidentified woman close to the CIA director.

The woman went to the FBI, which traced the threats to Broadwell and then uncovered explicit emails between Petraeus and Broadwell, the Post said.

Attempts by Reuters and other news media to reach Broadwell, an Army reserve offer and author of a biography of Petraeus, have not been successful.

The FBI and CIA declined comment on Saturday.

Many questions in the case remain unanswered publicly, including the identity of the second woman; the precise nature of the emails that launched the FBI investigation; and whether U.S. security was compromised in any way.

Nor is it clear why the FBI waited until Election Day to tell U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who oversees the CIA and other intelligence agencies, about its investigation involving Petraeus.

The CIA director announced his resignation suddenly on Friday, acknowledging an extramarital affair and saying he showed "extremely poor judgment.

The developments likely ended the public career of one of the United States' most highly regarded generals, who was credited with helping pull Iraq out of civil war and led U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, new details emerged on Saturday about developments in the final days leading to Petraeus' departure from atop the CIA.

Clapper was notified by the FBI on Tuesday evening about 5 p.m. - just as returns in the U.S. presidential election were about to come in - about "the situation involving Director Petraeus," a senior intelligence official said. Clapper and Petraeus then spoke that evening and the following morning.

WHITE HOUSE NOTIFIED WEDNESDAY

"Director Clapper, as a friend and a colleague and a fellow general officer, advised Director Petraeus that he should do the right thing and he should step down," the official said.

Clapper is a retired Air Force lieutenant general; Petraeus served nearly four decades in the U.S. Army.

On Wednesday, Clapper notified the National Security Council at the White House that Petraeus was considering resigning and President Barack Obama should be informed, the official said.

U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials agreed to discuss the Petraeus matter only on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity and because it is the subject of a law enforcement investigation.

Once Petraeus' name turned up in the investigation, the importance of the FBI inquiry was immediately escalated, as investigators became concerned the CIA chief somehow might have been compromised, the law enforcement official said.

However, the official and two sources briefed on the matter said no evidence has turned up suggesting Petraeus had become vulnerable to espionage or blackmail. At this point, it appears unlikely that anyone will be charged with a crime as a result of the investigation, the official said.

The FBI investigation began fairly recently - months ago rather than years ago, when Petraeus would still have been in uniform as one of the U.S. Army's top field commanders, the official said.

Representative Peter King, Republican chairman of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview on MSNBC the FBI was "investigating or monitoring ... the director of the CIA for four or five months."

Several officials briefed on the matter said senior officials at the Pentagon, CIA and Congress knew nothing of the FBI's investigation of Petraeus until Thursday afternoon at the earliest, and some key officials were not briefed on the details until Friday.

There is no evidence at this time that anyone at the White House had knowledge of the situation involving Petraeus prior to the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday, which saw Obama elected to a second four-year term.

Another U.S. government security source said it was not until Friday afternoon that some members of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees were notified about Petraeus' resignation by Clapper's office.

The congressional committees were told that it was a personal issue that Petraeus had to discuss with his wife. When pressed, a representative of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said it involved another woman.

(Writing by Warren Strobel; Additional reporting by Doug Palmer and Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Todd Eastham)

Jimmy Kimmel’s Family Members Are Apparently Fair Game

Label: Technology

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: The Roots Take on ‘Call Me Maybe’ (and Win)

Watch this video, bookmark it, and watch it the next time you think you’d rather go home than wait in a long line to vote. Seriously, Time‘s look at the Rockaways on the election night hits the matrix where heart-break and optimism meet and it makes you really appreciate a right we shouldn’t take for granted:

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RELATED: Behold the Power of ‘Gangnam Style’

The best part of Louis C.K.’s SNL appearance was his “Lincoln” skit. Six days later, here we are with a new video: the director’s cut of the Lincoln-Louie parody—it’s funnier, dirtier, and one really awesome look at what NBC think is too offensive for network television.

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Children, we’ve learned, are not safe from the pranks of Jimmy Kimmel. Neither is Jimmy Kimmel‘s aunt.

And finally, the weekend is here. We’re talking like one hour away. This baby elephant video is clear evidence of that:

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Transgender Pakistanis face society's scorn

Label: World

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — Dressed up in elaborate, feminine outfits and artfully applied makeup, they are showered with money while dancing at all-male wedding parties. But the lives of transgender people in Pakistan are also marked by harassment, rejection and poverty.

Transgender people live in a tenuous position in conservative Pakistan, where the roles of the sexes are traditionally starkly drawn. Families often push them out of the home when they're young, forcing many to prostitute themselves to earn a living.

One role where they are tolerated is as dancers at weddings and other celebrations at which men and women are strictly segregated. In between the dancing and showers of rupee notes, they must fend off groping from drunken guests.

"I don't understand why people feel it is their duty to tease and taunt us," said one transgender Pakistani who goes by the name Symbal. Many in the transgender community pick a name for themselves and do not use their last name to protect their family.

Others beg on the streets or earn money by blessing newborn babies. The blessings reflect a widespread belief in Pakistan and other South Asian nations that God answers the prayers of someone who was born underprivileged, said Iqbal Hussain, a Pakistani researcher who has studied the transgender community. But he cautioned that didn't mean people were ready to give them equal rights.

In recent years the community has gained some government protection. A Supreme Court ruling in 2011 allowed them to get national identity cards recognizing them as a separate identity — neither male or female — and allowing them to vote. In neighboring India, the election commission ruled in 2009 that transgender people could register to vote as "other," rather than male or female.

In other parts of the region and Muslim world, the attitude toward transgenders is also complex. In Thailand, the community is very visible and broadly tolerated. Transgender people are regularly seen on TV soap operas, working at department store cosmetics counters or popular restaurants and walking the runways in numerous transgender beauty pageants.

Many transgender Indonesians publicly wear women's clothes and makeup and work as singers. But societal disdain still runs deep. They have taken a much lower profile in recent years, following a series of attacks by Muslim hard-liners.

In Malaysia, Muslim men who wear women's clothes can be prosecuted in Islamic courts.

In the Arab world, there is little opportunity for transgender people to openly show their identity in public. In 2007, Kuwait made "imitating members of the opposite sex" a crime, leading to the arrest of hundreds of transgender women, Human Rights Watch said. In Iraq, extremists have targeted and killed people perceived of being gay or effeminate.

Philip Roth says he's done writing

Label: Lifestyle

NEW YORK (AP) — Exit, Philip Roth? Having conceived everything from turning into a breast to a polio epidemic in his native New Jersey, Roth has apparently given his imagination a rest.

The 79-year-old novelist recently told a French publication, Les inRocks, that his 2010 release "Nemesis" would be his last. Spokeswoman Lori Glazer of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt said Friday that she had spoken with Roth and that he confirmed his remarks. Roth's literary agent, Andrew Wylie, declined comment.

Roth certainly produced, completing more than 20 novels over half a century and often turning out one a year. He won virtually every prize short of the Nobel and wrote such classics as "American Pastoral" and "Portnoy's Complaint."

His name will remain on new releases, if only because the Library of America has been issuing hardcover volumes of his work. Roth also is cooperating with award-winning biographer Blake Bailey on a book about his life.

The author chose an unexpected forum to break the news, but he has been hinting at his departure for years. He has said that he no longer reads fiction and seemed to say goodbye to his fictional alterego, Nathan Zuckerman, in the 2007 novel "Exit Ghost."

Retirement is rarely the preferred option for writers, for whom the ability to tell stories or at least set down words is often synonymous with life itself. Poor health, discouragement and even madness are the more likely ways literary careers end. Roth apparently is fit and his recent novels had been received respectfully, if not with the awe of his most celebrated work.

"I don't believe it," Roth's friend and fellow writer Cynthia Ozick said upon learning the news. "A writer who stops writing while still breathing has already declared herself posthumous."

His parting words from "Nemesis": "He seemed to us invincible."

Roth's interview appeared in French and has been translated, roughly, by The Associated Press. He tells Les inRocks that "Nemesis" was "mon dernier livre" ("My last book") and refers to "Howard's End" author E.M. Forster, and how he quit fiction in his 40s. Roth said he doesn't plan to write a memoir, but will instead go through his archives and help ensure that Bailey's biography comes out in his lifetime.

Explaining why he stopped, Roth said that at age 74 he became aware his time was limited and that he started re-reading his books of the past 20-30 years, in reverse order. He decided that he agreed with what the boxer Joe Louis had said late in life, that he had done the best he could with what he had.

Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

Label: Health

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

CIA chief admits affair, resigns

Label: Business

CIA Director David Petraeus resigned his post on Friday, confessing to having shown "extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair." The former Army general rocketed to global prominence as the man in charge of the "surge" in Iraq and later the commander of American forces in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said Petraeus had led the Central Intelligence Agency "with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication and patriotism."

"I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission, and I have the utmost confidence in Acting Director Michael Morell and the men and women of the CIA who work every day to keep our nation safe," the president said in a written statement.

"Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time," Obama continued.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement that did not specify a reason for Petraeus' departure but praised his colleague extensively.

"From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one's country," said Clapper.

Petraeus went to work as CIA chief in September 2011 after heading up the war in Afghanistan. He had drawn fire in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. His departure comes barely a week before he was scheduled to testify about the assault in closed-door sessions with the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives. Morell was expected to take his place, congressional aides said.

Petraeus' resignation letter, quoted by several news outlets, centered on his personal behavior.

"Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," he said. "This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation."

Petraeus, 60, has been described as the father of the military's counterinsurgency doctrine. The charismatic officer had been cited as a possible future presidential or vice presidential prospect.

His wife, Holly, has worked inside the Obama administration, serving at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Petraeus' most outspoken admirers, said the general "will stand in the ranks of America's greatest military heroes."

"His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible—after years of failure—for the success of the surge in Iraq," McCain said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family."

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said, "I very much regret the resignation of David Petraeus. This is an enormous loss for our nation's intelligence community and for our country.

"I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision," Feinstein added.

Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

Label: Technology

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

Label: World

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama's election to a second term.

Obama's administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar's previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama's ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar's generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar's point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein's government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi's dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

Marilyn Monroe photos on auction in Poland

Label: Lifestyle

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Who doesn't want a picture of Marilyn Monroe?

Hundreds of photographs of the blonde bombshell and other celebrities, including famous ones of Monroe in bed and as a ballerina, were being sold Thursday evening at an auction house in Poland.

Bidders and spectators packed the Desa Unicum house in Warsaw, where 238 pictures by the late American fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene were up for sale.

Most of these pictures of Monroe were taken from 1953 to 1957 when Greene was her advisor and business partner. He made many of the prints during Monroe's lifetime and they are highly valued by collectors. They include series of refined black-and-white studio photos and shots taken in natural surroundings, sometime in provocative poses.

As the bidding began, a black-and-white photo of a reclining Monroe in black stockings sold for 50,000 zlotys ($16,000), and another of her in a ballerina's dress sold for almost $20,000. A picture of her in bed sold for 26,000 zlotys.

The auction also offered Greene's pictures of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and Liza Minnelli. Other greats in the vast portrait collection, which was estimated at $680,000, included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock and Marlon Brando.

The photos come from a collection of some 4,000 Greene pictures that Poland obtained from Chicago businessman Dino Matingas in the mid-1990s as the result of a complex communist-era embezzlement scandal linked to the buy-out of Poland's state debt. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Polish government.

Some of the images have never been published before, according to Marta Maciazek, the Polish official in charge of cleaning up the mess from the corruption affair.

Obama's health care overhaul turns into a sprint

Label: Health

WASHINGTON (AP) — The long slog has turned into a sprint. President Barack Obama's health care law survived the Supreme Court and the election; now the uninsured can sign up for coverage in about 11 months.

Even the government's top-ranking Republican, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, said Thursday that "Obamacare is the law of the land." But not all hurdles have been cleared.

Republican governors who opposed the law have to decide whether it's better for their states to now help carry it out. The administration could stumble carrying out the complex legislation, or get tripped up if budget talks with Congress lead to scaling back the plan.

"We are out of the political gamesmanship and into the reality," said Sandy Praeger, Kansas' Republican insurance commissioner. Next week, states have to say if they're committed to building the framework for delivering health insurance to millions.

"We are still going to be struggling through the politics, and there are important policy hurdles and logistical challenges," said Andrew Hyman of the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, helping states carry out the law. "But we are on a very positive trajectory."

Instead of being dismantled by a Republican president and Congress, Obama's law is now on track to take its place alongside Medicare and Medicaid. The action starts right away.

A week from Friday, states must notify Washington if they'll be setting up new health insurance markets, called exchanges, in which millions of households and small businesses will shop for private coverage. The Health and Human Services Department will run the exchanges in states that aren't ready or willing.

Open enrollment for exchange plans is scheduled to start Oct. 1, 2013, and coverage will be effective Jan. 1, 2014.

In all, more than 30 million uninsured people are expected to gain coverage under the law. About half will get private insurance through the exchanges, with most receiving government help to pay premiums.

The rest, mainly low-income adults without children at home, will be covered through an expansion of Medicaid. While the federal government will pay virtually all the additional Medicaid costs, the Supreme Court gave states the leeway to opt out of the expansion. That adds to the uncertainty over how the law will be carried out.

A steadying force within the administration is likely to be HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The former Kansas governor has said she wants to stay until the law is fully enacted.

Governors will be the main counterparts to Sebelius, and Republicans are leading more than half the states.

Some, like Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, have drawn a line against helping carry out Obama's law. In other states, voters have endorsed a hard stance. Missouri voters passed a ballot measure Tuesday that would prohibit establishment of a health insurance exchange unless the Legislature approves. State-level challenges to the federal law will continue to percolate.

Other GOP governors have been on the fence, awaiting the outcome of the election. All eyes will be on pragmatists like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia, whose states have done considerable planning to set up exchanges.

"Republican governors are at the center of the health care universe right now," said Michael Ramlet, health policy director at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. "They do not have a uniform position."

Virginia's McDonnell, in a rebuff to the administration, said in an interview published Thursday his state would not set up its own exchange, defaulting to a federally run one. McDonnell left open the possibility Virginia might later change course.

Some governors whose states aren't ready to run exchanges are considering the administration's fallback offer to run the new markets through a partnership.

"The real question for Republican governors is: 'Are you going to let the feds come into your state?'" Ramlet said. "The question for the Obama administration is whether they are going to have more flexibility."

Major regulations are due shortly covering such issues as exchange operations, benefits and protections for people with pre-existing health problems. That could signal the administration's willingness to compromise.

A check by The Associated Press found 17 states and the District of Columbia on track to setting up their own exchanges, while 10 have decided not to do so. The federal government could end up running the show in half or more of the states.

The states on track include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

Not setting up exchanges are Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Missouri and others are likely to join the list.

A recent AP poll found that 63 percent of Americans want states to run the exchanges, with 32 percent favoring federal control.

GOP governors are also seeking flexibility on expanding Medicaid. They are pressing Sebelius on whether the administration will approve partial, less costly expansions, more attractive to cash-pressed states.

As far as Medicaid, 11 states and the District of Columbia have indicated they will expand their programs, while six have said they will not. That leaves more than 30 undecided.

The states definitely expanding Medicaid include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington. Those declining include Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans say if a budget deal is going to include tax increases, it must also come with cuts to the health care law, or money-saving delays in its implementation.

While major changes can't be ruled out, they don't seem very likely to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who is close to the administration.

"I think Democrats are increasingly emboldened about the health care act," Daschle said. "The president won re-election partly by defending it. There is a new dynamic around the health care effort."

Republican attempts to amend the law will continue, he said, but outright repeal is no longer a possibility.

Speaker Boehner seemed to second that in an interview with ABC News. Asked if he will make another attempt to fully repeal Obama's law, he responded, "Well, I think the election changes that."

But he added that parts of the health care law are very expensive and difficult to carry out and "everything has to be on the table" in budget negotiations. Later, spokesman Kevin Smith said that Boehner is "still committed to full repeal."

Giffords to shooter: 'Done thinking about you'

Label: Business

Former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords looked in the eyes of the man who shot her today and, through her husband, said she is now "done thinking about you."

Giffords was sitting in the second row of the courtroom with her husband, ex-astronaut Mark Kelly and she stretched to get a better view of Jared Loughner when he entered the courtroom.

She later stood alongside her husband astronaut Mark Kelly to deliver a victim impact statement. She was one of several of Loughner's victims who spoke about the day when he opened fire at one of Giffords street corner meetings, killing six and injuring 13.

Speaking on her behalf, Kelly addressed Loughner and both and he and his wife, known as Gabby, faced Loughner. The formrer congresswoman has difficulty speaking and is partially paralyzed because of her head wound.

To learn more about this story, including exclusive interviews with Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, Click HERE.

"You may have put a bullet through her head, but you haven't put a dent in her spirit," Kelly told Loughner.

Kelly kept telling Loughner, "Jared, pay attention to this" during his statement.

"You tried to create for all of us a world as dark and evil as your own. But know this, and remember it always: You failed," Kelly said.

Following the sentencing hearing, Kelly gave an exclusive interview to ABC's Diane Sawyer, in which he said he and Giffords now had "some sense of resolution. Not exactly closure, but it is resolution."

Loughner, he said, was "a little defiant in the way looking at us and looking at Gabby. I got the sense he was trying to intimidate us, especially my wife."

Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo

Gabby Giffords Resigns, Revisits Shooting Site Watch Video

Gabrielle Giffords' Pledge of Allegiance Moves DNC Watch Video

Jared Loughner Pleads Guilty: Gabby Giffords Weigh In Watch Video

Giffords stared into Loughner's eyes while her husband addressed the court.

"She stared into his eyes the entire time. I saw a person [Loughner] who certainly has major mental illness, but who knew where he was and why he was there," Kelly said.

Loughner, 24, was given seven life prison sentences without parole plus 140 years. He pleaded guilty in a deal that allowed him to avoid the possibility of a death sentence.

Click HERE, for Mark Kelly's full statement.

Kelly saved some of his ire for Arizona's politicians calling their leadership "lacking" and Gov. Jan Brewer "feckless," for their refusal to address gun control. The state legislature, he said, named an official state hand gun just weeks after the shooting.

Before concluding his statement in court, Kelly also said to Loughner, "Know this, Gabby and I are done thinking about you."

Several other of Loughner's victims also gave emotional statements in court this morning about how Loughner's shooting spree impacted their lives.

"You pointed a weapon at me and shot me," Susie Hidelman, who was shot three times while trying to save her 9-year-old neighbor, told Loughner in court this morning. "I will walk out of this courtroom and into my life and I will not think of you again," she said.

Mavy Stoddard, who was shot three times and whose husband collapsed on top of her after being shot, said: "When you shot my precious husband Dorwans Stoddard, you ruined my life."

"Somehow, when you shot him, I got out from under him. ... I was screaming, 'Oh God, oh God, help me,'" she said. "I said to him, 'Breathe deeply,' and he did. Therefore, I believe that he heard me say, 'I love you.'"

"You took away my life my love my reason for living," she told a rapt courtroom.

Loughner chose not to speak at today's hearing. When asked by Judge Larry Burn if he understood he has a right to make a statement, Loughner responded "Yes, sir" in a long monotone.

Following the shooting, Loughner was diagnosed with schizophrenia and is under orders to forcibly receive anti-psychotic medication.

Many of the victims welcomed his decision to accept a federal plea bargain and avoid a lengthy trial. It remains unknown whether state prosecutors will try him anyway and seek the death penalty.

Loughner is currently being held at a prison medical facility in Missouri.

Apple slides to five-month low, uncertainty grows

Label: Technology

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China's power transfer: infighting and spectacle

Label: World

BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist Party opens a congress Thursday to usher in a new group of younger leaders faced with the challenging tasks of righting a flagging economy and meeting public calls for better government.

The weeklong congress is the start of a carefully choreographed but still fraught power transfer in which President Hu Jintao and most of the senior leadership will begin to relinquish office. Vice President Xi Jinping, the anointed heir for the past five years, came a step closer to power Wednesday, being named the congress' secretary-general at a preparatory meeting.

Meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the congress seems drawn from another time. It's a public gathering of 2,268 delegates drawn from the 82 million-member party where the real deal-making is done by a few dozen power-brokers behind the scenes, even as China is ever more connected to the world through trade and the Internet.

Coming so soon after the U.S. presidential election climaxed with President Barack Obama's re-election, the congress has drawn unfavorable comparisons from politically minded Chinese.

"I am doing nothing but staring at the television before Obama gets re-elected. As for China's party congress, there is no need for me to worry. On the contrary, it would be a waste of my time," Xu Xiaoping, a celebrity entrepreneur who co-founded a successful chain of English cram schools, said on a Chinese version of Twitter where he has 6 million followers.

To many Chinese, China is at an inflection point. Its old model of heavily state-directed growth that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made China an economic powerhouse is sputtering in the face of rising domestic debt and a weak global economy. Meanwhile, the government has to contend with the public's continued expectations of higher living standards and for less corruption and greater accountability, if not outright democracy.

Whether the new leaders want to move China in a new direction is not known. Xi and other top candidates for the new leadership have forged their careers as capable administrators in provinces and bureaucracies, not as policy trail-blazers. Should ambitious change be on their agenda, they will have to confront vested interests within their ranks: cosseted state industries and conservative officials grown prosperous and powerful under the current system.

One thing the party appears to be ruling out is a major shift toward a more open, democratic political system, despite appeals in recent months from commentators, retired party members and government think tanks.

"The leading position of the Communist Party in China is a decision made by history and by the people," congress spokesman Cai Mingzhao told reporters on Wednesday. He pointed to China's rise as an economic power and said, "It speaks fully to the strong leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the fact that the political system suits China's national reality."

The congress itself is unlikely to give Xi and his colleagues a mandate for sweeping reform. They have been engaged with Hu, retired party elders and influential senior politicians and military commanders in divisive bargaining, made worse by a pair of scandals. Politburo member Bo Xilai was purged after an aide disclosed that Bo's wife had murdered a British businessman. One of Hu's top lieutenants was also sidelined after his son died crashing a Ferrari, a sign of corruption.

A likely result of the back-and-forth is a leadership that balances interest groups, and over the past decade that has been a recipe for plodding, incremental policy.

The centerpiece of the congress opening, a lengthy speech by Hu, is an uncertain indicator of where the new leadership wants to take China. In the early decades of reform, such speeches provided ideological cover as the party tried to break away from the dogma of central planning and experiment with freer markets. More recently, the documents have become ways for past leaders to constrain their heirs by stressing continuity.

In a preview of the speech given to senior officials in July and excerpted and analyzed in state media, Hu stressed the economy remains key. He said getting growth back to a relatively high rate remained crucial to meeting demands from the public — most clearly evidenced by large-scale strikes and protests, or what he called "contradictions."

Cai, the congress spokesman, ticked off a list of what Hu's team had accomplished — wider access to state-supported education through the ninth grade, an expanded social safety net and the start of a nationwide low-cost housing sector.

"The past decade has witnessed the greatest improvement in people's livelihoods in the history of China's development," Cui said. "We will make guaranteeing and improving the people's well-being the guide and aim of what we do."

___

Associated Press writers Gillian Wong, Christopher Bodeen and Didi Tang contributed to this report.

Mom of 'Modern Family' teen star accused of abuse

Label: Lifestyle

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The mother of "Modern Family" star Ariel Winter has temporarily lost custody of the actress amid allegations she's been abusive to the teenager.

Court records claim Winter's mother, Chrisoula Workman, has been physically and emotionally abusive to her 14-year-old daughter, who plays Alex Dunphy on the hit ABC comedy.

The October order, first reported Wednesday by celebrity website TMZ, requires Workman to stay away from Winter until a Nov. 20 hearing. Records show Winter's sister filed for guardianship and was appointed her temporary guardian, but will not have access to her earnings.

The records describe Workman's abuse as consisting of slapping and name-calling.

Reached by phone, Workman said she was in the process of hiring an attorney.

Winter has appeared in films and TV shows since she was 7.

Experts raise concerns over superhuman workplace

Label: Health

LONDON (AP) — Performance-boosting drugs, powered prostheses and wearable computers are coming to an office near you — but experts warned in a new report Wednesday that too little thought has been given to the implications of a superhuman workplace.

Academics from Britain's leading institutions say attention needs to be focused on the consequences of technology which may one day allow — or compel — humans to work better, longer and harder. Here's their list of upgrades that might make their way to campuses and cubicles in the next decade:

BRAIN BOOSTERS

Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge neuropsychology professor, cited research suggesting that 16 percent of U.S. students already use "cognitive enhancers" such as Ritalin to help them handle their course loads. Pilots have long used amphetamines to stay alert. And at least one study has suggested that the drug modafinil could help reduce the number of accidents experienced by shift workers.

But bioethicist Jackie Leach Scully of northern England's Newcastle University worries that the use of such drugs might focus on worker productivity over personal well-being.

"Being more alert for longer doesn't mean that you'll be less stressed by the job," she said. "It means that you'll be exposed to that stress for longer and be more awake while doing it."

WEARABLE COMPUTERS

The researchers also noted so-called "life-logging" devices like Nike Inc.'s distance-tracking shoes or wearable computers such as the eyeglasses being developed by Google Inc. The shoes can record your every step; the eyeglasses everything you see. Nigel Shadbolt, an expert in artificial Intelligence at southern England's University of Southampton, said such devices were as little as 15 years away from being able to record every sight, noise and movement over an entire human life.

So do you accept if your boss gives you one?

"What does that mean for employee accountability?" Shadbolt asked.

BIONIC LIMBS — AND BEYOND

The report also noted bionic limbs like the one used this week by amputee Zac Vawter to climb Chicago's Willis Tower or exoskeletons like the one used earlier this year by partially paralyzed London Marathon participant Claire Lomas. It also touched on the development of therapies aimed at sharpening eyesight or cochlear implants meant to enhance hearing.

Scully said any technology that could help disabled people re-enter the workforce should be welcomed but society needs to keep an eye out for unintended consequences.

"One of the things that we know about technology hitting society is that most of the consequences were not predicted ahead of time and a lot of things that we worry about ahead of time turn out not to be problems at all," she said. "We have very little idea of how these technologies will pan out."

THE PRESSURIZED WORKPLACE

The report was drawn up by scientists from The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.

"We're not talking science fiction here," said Genevra Richardson, the King's College law professor who oversaw the report. "These technologies could influence our ability to learn or perform tasks, they could influence our motivation, they could enable us to work in more extreme conditions or in old age, or they could facilitate our return to work after illness or disability .... Their use at work also raises serious ethical, political and economic questions."

Scully said workers may come under pressure to try a new memory-boosting drug or buy the latest wearable computer.

"In the context of a highly pressurized work environment, how free is the choice not to adopt such technologies?" she said.

Union representatives appeared taken aback by some of the experts' predictions. One expressed particular disquiet at the possibility raised by the report that long-distance truck drivers might be asked to take alertness drugs for safety reasons.

"We would be very, very against anything like that," said James Bower, a spokesman for Britain's United Road Transport Union. "We can't have a situation where a driver is told by his boss that he needs to put something in his body."

___

Online:

The report: http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/human-enhancement

Raphael Satter can be reached on: http://raphae.li/twitter

Latino groups to Obama: You owe us

Label: Business

Voters in a polling place in East Los Angeles on Tuesday (David McNew/Getty Images)

In initially off-the-record comments to the Des Moines Register's editors in October, President Barack Obama said that if he won re-election, he would owe it to Latinos.

"Should I win a second term," Obama said, "a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community."

Exit polls show the president's prediction was on the mark.

The national exit poll estimated that about 10 percent of those who voted in the presidential election identified as Hispanic, marking Latinos' highest-ever share of the electorate. Latinos backed Obama over challenger Mitt Romney a resounding 71 to 27 percent.

Gary Segura, a pollster for Latino Decisions and a professor at Stanford University, told reporters on Wednesday that he believes the exit poll understated Latinos' support for Obama by 4 points, and that the president actually won 75 percent of their vote.

Segura estimates that Latinos gave Obama an extra 2.3 percentage points in the popular vote. If Romney had managed to nab just 35 percent of Latinos, he would have won the popular vote, Segura said. (President George W. Bush captured at least that share of Latinos in 2000 and 2004, showing Republicans are backsliding with the group.)

Leaders of immigrant rights and Latino groups told reporters in a conference call on Wednesday that Obama owes his second term to Latino voters, and should repay them by passing comprehensive immigration reform. Obama promised to pass a law legalizing many of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country while he campaigned four years ago, and he's been chastised by Latino leaders for breaking his promise.

"Obama is going to return to the White House more energized to take these issues seriously," said Ben Monterroso, the director of Mi Familia Vota, a national organization that encourages Latinos to vote.

Eliseo Medina, secretary-treasurer of the Service Employees International Union, said Latino voters had sent a message to Obama. "We expect leadership on comprehensive immigration reform in 2013," he said. "To both sides we say: 'No more excuses.'"

The heavy pro-Obama Latino vote also sends a message to the Republican Party, which needs to make inroads in the fast-growing Hispanic community to survive. Ana Navarro, a Miami-based Republican political strategist who had warned Republicans to take a softer tone on immigration if they wanted to win the election, wrote on Twitter that gaining only 27 percent of the Latino vote is a "disgrace."

Most Latino voters said in the Latino Decisions poll that the most important issues to them in this election were the economy and jobs. Thirty-five percent of the voters listed immigration reform as their key issue.

"Our party needs to realize that it's too old and too white and too male, and it needs to figure out how to catch up with the demographics of the country before it's too late," Al Cardenas, the head of the American Conservative Union, told Politico. "Our party needs a lot of work to do if we expect to be competitive in the near future."

Exclusive - Amazon to win EU e-book pricing tussle with Apple

Label: Technology

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union regulators are to end an antitrust probe into e-book prices by accepting an offer by Apple and four publishers to ease price restrictions on Amazon, two sources said on Tuesday.

That decision would hand online retailer Amazon a victory in its attempt to sell e-books cheaper than rivals in the fast-growing market publishers hope will boost revenue and increase customer numbers.

"Faced with years of court battles and uncertainty I can understand why some of these guys decided to fold their cards and take the whipping," said Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, an ebook publisher and distributor that works with Apple.

"It's certainly another win for Amazon," he added. "I have not seen the terms of the final settlement, but my initial reaction is that it places restrictions on what publishers can do, slowing them down just when they need to be more nimble."

A spokesman at the EU Commission said its investigation was not yet finished. Amazon and Apple declined to comment.

In September, Apple and the publishers offered to let retailers set prices or discounts for a period of two years, and also to suspend "most-favored nation" contracts for five years.

Such clauses bar Simon & Schuster, News Corp. unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA's Hachette Livre and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of German company Macmillan, from making deals with rival retailers to sell e-books more cheaply than Apple.

The agreements, which critics say prevent Amazon and other retailers from undercutting Apple's charges, sparked an investigation by the European Commission in December last year.

Pearson Plc's Penguin group, which is also under investigation, did not take part in the offer.

The EU antitrust authority, which in September asked for feedback from rivals and consumers about the proposal, has not asked for more concessions, said one of sources.

"The Commission is likely to accept the offer and announce its decision next month," the source said on Tuesday.

Antoine Colombani, spokesman for competition policy at the European Commission, said: "We have launched a market test in September and our investigation is still ongoing."

Amazon declined to comment, while Apple did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Companies found guilty of breaching EU rules could be fined up to 10 percent of their global sales, which in Apple's case could reach $15.6 billion, based on its 2012 fiscal year.

AGGREGATE PRICING

UBS analysts estimate that e-books account for about 30 percent of the U.S. book market and 20 percent of sales in Britain but are minuscule elsewhere. When Amazon launched its Kindle e-reader, it charged $9.99 per book.

Apple's agency model let publishers set prices in return for a 30 percent cut to the maker of iPhone and iPad.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating e-book prices. HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette have settled, but Apple, Pengin Group and Macmillan have not.

The DOJ settlement required that retailers must at least break even selling all ebooks from a publisher's available list, according to Coker and Joe Wikert, general manager and publisher at O'Reilly Media Inc.

It was not clear if EU regulators will include a similar requirement, which would prohibit Amazon from pricing all ebooks at a loss, said Wikert, a former publishing executive.

In the United States, Amazon will likely price popular titles at a loss and try to make up the difference on a publisher's other ebooks, he said.

Coker said any such rule could be dangerous in Europe, which still has distinct markets.

"It could allow a single retailer to charge full price in a large market like the U.K., and then sell below cost or for free in multiple smaller markets as a strategy to kill regional ebook retailing upstarts before they take root," Coker said.

FROWNING ON ONLINE TRADE CURBS

Antitrust regulators tend to frown on restrictions on online trade and the case is a good example, said Mark Tricker, a partner at Brussels-based law firm Norton Rose.

"This case shows the online world continues to be a major focus for the Commission," he said.

"These markets change very quickly and if you don't stamp down on potential infringements of competition rules, you can have significant consequences."

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Rex Merrifield, David Goodman and David Gregorio)

China hauls away activists in congress crackdown

Label: World

BEIJING (AP) — During her 30-hour train journey to Beijing, Wang Xiulan ducked into bathrooms whenever the conductors checked IDs. Later, as she lay low in the outskirts of the capital, unidentified men caught her in a nighttime raid and hauled her to a police station. She assumed a fake identity to get away, and is now in hiding again.

Wang's not a criminal. She's a petitioner.

She's among many people attempting to bring local complaints directly to the central government in an age-old Chinese tradition that has continued during the Communist Party era. But police never make that easy, and this week, as an all-important leadership transition begins, a dragnet is aimed at keeping anyone perceived as a threat or a troublemaker out of Beijing.

"There is no law in China, especially for us petitioners and ordinary folk," Wang, 50, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even common gangsters and hoodlums get to leave after they serve time for crimes, but for us, if we get locked up, we never know when we might be freed."

Authorities want no surprises as the handover of power begins in the capital Thursday. The transition already has been rocked by the party's messiest scandal in decades, involving a former high-flying politician now accused of engaging in graft and obstructing the investigation into his wife's murder of a British businessman.

Rights groups say the wide-ranging crackdown on critics bodes poorly for those who hope the incoming generation of leaders will loosen restrictions on activism.

"China's top political leaders are very nervous, as they have since early this year been consumed by one of the most destabilizing and disharmonious power struggles in decades," said Renee Xia, international director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders. The group estimates that hundreds or thousands of people have come under some kind of restriction in preparation for the party congress.

Lawyers have been held under illegal house arrest, dissidents sent back to their hometowns and activists questioned. Internet users report difficulties accessing many websites and the failure of software meant to bypass Internet filters.

Veteran activist Huang Qi, who runs a website on petitioners like Wang, said nearly 1,000 people have contacted him over the past few weeks to complain that authorities have hired thugs to harass and beat them.

"I hope that the Chinese authorities will face up to the social problems," Huang said in an interview. "Using violence will only escalate the resistance."

The crackdown reflects the leadership's nervousness as slowing economic growth exacerbates public outrage over corruption, social injustice, pollution and favoritism toward state-run agencies and the elite at the expense of ordinary people.

Under normal circumstances, petitioners are relatively safe once they reach Beijing's outskirts, though in their home provinces they are almost perpetually on the run from hostile local officials or thugs-for-hire who want to nab them before they can get an audience with central government agencies.

Now, however, even the capital's fringes are off limits.

Wang, a petite woman with shoulder-length hair neatly tied back, has been trying for two decades to draw central government attention to what she says was police mishandling of a serious assault she suffered in her native Harbin. Not only did her attacker go unpunished, but Wang ended up getting dismissed from her job years later.

Wang arrived in late October in Lu Village in Beijing's southwest, where petitioners have sought refuge for years. A police post guards the road into the village, and residents say officers have lately blocked petitioners from entering.

Wang had rented a bed — a wooden plank on bricks — in a tiny concrete room shared with two others. A gang of two dozen men barged in one night at 11 p.m., demanded to see her ID, searched her belongings and grabbed her cellphone.

"I was scared to death when they suddenly barged in here," Wang said, pointing at the door, where the lock had just been replaced.

The men refused to identify themselves and bundled her into a minivan with other petitioners. At another stop, she saw a couple dragged into the vans in their pajamas, the woman wearing only one shoe.

All were taken to a police station in nearby Jiujingzhuang village, where many petitioners say police process them for return to their hometowns. Using someone else's identity, Wang was able to evade police suspicion and was released. Many of the others were sent back, she said.

The raids are having an effect. The compound that houses her room and others now has only a handful of residents, down from about 30.

"They've all been chased away, caught or scared home," said Liu Zhifa, a 67-year-old petitioner from Henan province and one of the holdouts. Liu confirmed Wang's description of the Oct. 31 raid and described his own encounter with thugs breaking his lock and entering his room three times in one night in mid-October.

"I asked them to show their identifications, and they yelled at me, saying 'What right do you have to see our identification? Who do you think you are?" said Liu. "They were ruthless. The authorities and the police are working with people in the underworld."

A police officer who would only give his surname, Wei, answered the phone at a Jiujingzhuang police station (not 'the' because the police station has another name) and denied that authorities were raiding petitioners' villages. "We only act according to the law," Wei said. Questions about the broader crackdown were referred to the Beijing public security bureau, which did not respond to faxed questions.

The crackdown has extended to lawyers such as Xu Zhiyong. He said Beijing authorities have held him under informal house arrest since mid-October, stationing four or five guards outside his apartment in Beijing around the clock.

Xu has campaigned for years against Chinese authorities' use of "black jails," or unofficial detention centers run by local governments to hold petitioners. The government has denied the existence of such facilities, but even the tightly controlled state media have reported on them.

"The illegal restriction of a citizen's personal freedom for a long period of time is criminal behavior," Xu wrote in an email. "In an authoritarian state, this type of crime takes place everywhere."

Authorities in Shanghai also have ratcheted up pressure on critics, sentencing veteran women's rights activist Mao Hengfeng to a year and a half of labor camp. Mao, accused of disturbing social order, had been detained in Beijing in late September, said her husband, Wu Xuewei, who indicated she was being put away to silence her before the party congress.

Even dissidents' relatives have come under pressure. Beijing activist Hu Jia said he was warned by police to leave town, and that even his parents told him that police had told them to escort him to his hometown.

"My parents said to me: 'Hu Jia, you don't know what kind of danger you are in, but we know,'" he recounted in a phone interview from his parents' home in eastern Anhui province. "They said: 'Beijing is a cruel battlefield. If you stay here, you will be the first to be sacrificed. Don't do this.'"

___

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at twitter.com/gillianwong

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