How to Install Windows on Google's Chrome OS Notebook

The fact that the Google CR-48 Notebook runs on an Intel processor implies that it can run Windows or some other full blown operating system. But how would you install Windows in the first place? That's not exactly clear. But we have the answer, or at least part of it. Apparently, every Cr-48 notebook is equipped with a developer's mode, which, when activated, can potentially wipe and restore the partition back to factory condition, or break your current Chrome OS setup.

That's no big deal, since all the Web Store apps and browser settings reside in the cloud and syncing it all back into your notebook shouldn't take long. The actual point of this exercise is to show you that if you ever decide to hack your Chrome-equipped notebook and install another operating system, switching to developer's mode is the way to do it.
First off, before you make the switch, Google recommends turning off the system. It also warns you that switching to this mode exposes the system to malware and virus attacks, since what you're doing is turning off verified boot (the ROM chip) on the motherboard. The rest is pretty simple: Look for the piece of black tape underneath the battery, next to the power connector, and remove it to reveal a white switch. Flip the switch the other way, and voila, you're in developer's mode. Then start up the notebook.

Boot up to a USB thumbdrive; we tried plugging in this USB drive, but nothing happened. At any point, if you f, you're presented with two options: You can hit the space bar and proceed to recovery mode. This will allow you to restore the notebook back to its original condition, provided you download the recovery software. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, you can flip the switch back and resume where you left off in Chrome OS. If you let the system sit in the "sad face" mode for too long, the system will automatically erase and repartition your drive.

It takes about five to 10 minutes to prep for this mode, and during this time, the system repartitions the solid state drive by deleting the current one, or what the console refers to as "erasing the stateful partition." I presume that the partition it's creating is the one where Windows or any other operating system will reside, but that's all I can gather at this point. The thing is, the USB port isn't recognizing any of my peripherals or a network, so how one would install Windows on this laptop is unclear and most likely a work in progress. One thing's for sure, though: the mere existence of a developer's switch means that Google isn't averse to outside development of programs for Chrome-equipped systems, say, one that can dual-boot Windows and Chrome OS.

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Mark Madoff, son of Bernie Madoff, had it all before dad's billion-dollar Ponzi scheme was exposed

Mark Madoff, the handsome prince of Bernie Madoff's ill-gotten kingdom, lived the sweet life before his father's $65 billion scam imploded.

During one three-month period in 2008, he racked up more than $77,000 chartering private jets to hopscotch around the country.

He vacationed at his $6.5 million, 3.3 acre retreat in Nantucket and a stately farmhouse in tony Greenwich, Conn. The seasoned fly fishermen also frequently planned outdoor excursions.

"Mark loved his lifestyle, loved the fact he could fly on a private jet or walk into Dunhill and spend $200 on an umbrella," a trader told Vanity Fair in 2009.

His family life seemed just as enviable.

The 46-year-old had been happily married since 2003 to his second wife, Stephanie, a stunning blonde who was a rising star in the fashion industry. The couple had two young children and raised them in an exclusive SoHo building that rocker Jon Bon Jovi also called home.

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Selena Gomez Talks Justin Bieber Pancake Outing

Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber have been pals for a while, but rumors that the teen stars are more than friends ramped up when the pair were recently spotted getting pancakes arm-in-arm.

Despite the mild PDA, Gomez denied there were any romantic overtones to the outing, saying instead that the duo were just getting a quick bite eat while they both had some free time in Philadelphia.

"It was pancakes. Who doesn't like pancakes?" Gomez told MTV News at the Z100 Jingle Ball 2010 in New York Friday, where she and the Biebs both hit the stage. "We were both performing in the same place so we went and had pancakes together. That's all it is. All innocent."

In fact, Gomez has said the Canadian teen idol is more a brother and than a lover, explaining in February that she started looking out for Bieber as he started his journey toward superstardom.

"I love Justin. When he first started to come over from Canada his manager contacted me and he just said that he would like to meet me and he was just such a good kid," she explained. "And I feel like a big sister now, 'cause I want to protect him. So I'm always very cautious with him, but he is so talented and he's so sweet, so that just started us wanting to work together. Now he's just become one of my good friends."

Gomez is also rooting for her good friend at the 2011 Grammys where the pop sensation is up for two trophies, including Best New Artist. When asked who she thinks would take home the hardware between Bieber and fellow Canadian heartthrob Drake, Gomez put her money on the "Baby" crooner.

"I would have to say Bieber just because I know how hard he works," she told MTV News earlier this week. "I hope he wins, but I love Drake as well. It's a really hard category so I don't know who's going to win, but of course I have to say Bieber."

What do you think Selena Gomez' comments about Justin Bieber? Let us know in the comments!

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Vatican was “angry” over abuse inquiry, say cables

The Vatican was so angry at what it regarded as politically-driven attempts to draw it into the Irish child abuse scandal involving Catholic bishops that it refused to cooperate with investigations putting the Irish government in an awkward position, according to secret American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks.


Requests from the Murphy Commission investigating the scandal reportedly infuriated the Vatican which saw the move as an “affront'' to its sovereignty.


“The Murphy Commission's requests offended many in the Vatican…because they saw them as an affront to Vatican sovereignty,'' one cable , published by The Guardian on Saturday, says adding Vatican officials were also “angered'' over being approached by the Commission directly instead of coming through diplomatic channels .


Ultimately, after much behind-the-scenes diplomacy, the Irish Government gave into “pressure'' from the Vatican and granted its officials immunity from testifying. Later, the Irish cardinal Sean Brady and the Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin went to Rome and met the Pope.


After the meeting which was also attended by a group of senior cardinals, the Vatican issued a statement expressing the Pope's “outrage, betrayal and shame'' over the conduct of Irish Catholic priests who had abused children in their care.


In one cable, Irish Ambassador to the Vatican Noel Fahey is reported telling an American diplomat Julieta Valls Noyes that the child sex abuse case was the most difficult crisis he had handled.


The cables also show that there was concern in the Vatican over how the issue would play out politically.


“Adding insult to injury, Vatican officials also believed some Irish opposition politicians were making political hay with the situation by calling publicly on the government to demand that the Vatican reply,” says one cables.


In its report in 2009, the Murphy Commission upheld many of the allegations of abuse and cover-up of by Church authorities over three decades.

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If Bill Clinton Were President

Equally riveting and astonishing, Mr. Clinton’s blast-from-the-past performance in the White House briefing room on Friday afternoon reinforced the impression of political déjà vu, the sense that once again a Democratic president humbled by midterm elections was pivoting to the center at the expense of his own supporters.

But as no less an authority than Mr. Clinton reminded us, the comparison is incomplete and imperfect. “The story line is how well we worked with the Republicans and all that,” he said during his brief West Wing comeback. “But you know, we played political kabuki for a year.”

Indeed, the real history of his response to the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 was more complicated than the reductionist version. And so far, Mr. Obama’s response to the November elections has been more complicated as well. The current president’s uncomfortable tax compromise with Republicans harked back to only one aspect of Mr. Clinton’s recovery strategy in 1995 and 1996, although the howls of protest from the left must have sounded familiar to the visiting former chief executive. Mr. Clinton’s approach involved as much confrontation as conciliation, and most of all, improvisation.

Even in the few weeks since the Republican election victory, Mr. Obama has already sampled from the full menu of options. On the tax cuts, he concluded that he had little choice but to cut a deal with Republicans, conceding to them one of their core priorities and angering his own supporters even as he squeezed out of the opposition as many concessions as he could to balance the agreement.

But faced with Republican resistance to his New Start arms control treaty, Mr. Obama took a different tack, refusing to back down and wait until next year. Instead, he organized a sustained, high-profile campaign to pressure Republican senators into approving the pact before year’s end and now appears to have the votes if the Senate can schedule enough time to debate.

“Sometimes you’re going to tack this way or that way,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “Sometimes that means that the best way to get to that North Star is working with the other party and looking for compromise, and other times it’s going to require confrontation.”

It’s worth remembering that Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama are strikingly different figures. Mr. Clinton was a Southern governor who had defined his political identity in part as an apostle of moving his party to the political middle, while Mr. Obama is from the urban north and came to office presenting himself as a pragmatist, but not necessarily a centrist, and has ushered in the most sweeping liberal policy initiatives in years.

Their circumstances were different as well — the 1990s ultimately were a decade of relative peace and prosperity, while so far Mr. Obama’s tenure has been marked by two persistent wars and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The Republican sweep in 1994 was more of a shock to Democrats, who had held the House for 40 years. Mr. Obama saw this year’s defeat coming and appears less off balance than did Mr. Clinton. And Newt Gingrich was the driving force behind the successful Republican insurgency, while today’s Congressional leaders are mainly the beneficiaries of it.

After the 1994 election, Mr. Clinton flailed for months, secretly bringing in the Republican adviser, Dick Morris, without telling his current advisers as he searched for a way forward.

“He was lost, he was completely lost,” recalled Robert Reich, a longtime Clinton friend who served as labor secretary. “He just didn’t know what to do. It was a real crisis.”

Douglas B. Sosnik, who was Mr. Clinton’s White House political director, said the first phase of recovery was mainly about dealing with shock. “It took us six months to regain our internal footing,” he said.

Mr. Clinton’s lowest postelection moment arguably came less than 24 hours before he began his comeback. In April 1995, he was reduced to arguing at a news conference that “the president is relevant.” The next day, bombers blew up an Oklahoma City federal building, and Mr. Clinton’s steady, reassuring and empathetic response made him more of a national leader.

Mr. Sosnik identified two other phases that followed. Phase 2, he said, was spent “getting our theory of the case on how we were going to deal with this new reality,” and really started when Mr. Clinton proposed balancing the budget in hopes of outflanking the Republicans. Phase 3, he said, came in the fall of 1995, when Mr. Clinton engaged Republicans over the role of government, ultimately refusing to agree to deeper spending cuts and winning the spin battle over who was responsible for government shutdowns.

Mr. Clinton had coopted Republican issues but on his own terms, picking selective fights that left them looking extreme. Even one of his most memorable compromises with Republicans, legislation overhauling the welfare system, came only after he vetoed the first two versions, saying they went too far.

The shorthand more than a decade later boils this down to “triangulation,” Mr. Morris’s term for separating from the ideological wings of both parties to recapture the middle. That left a bad taste among Democrats that persists to this day, helping to explain the visceral outrage over the tax cut deal.

Mr. Obama’s advisers insist that that is not what he is up to. “A lot of people say, ‘Aha, he’s triangulating,’ which is absolutely not what he’s doing,” said Mr. Pfeiffer. “There’s a lot to learn from what the Clinton White House did in 1994 forward with a similar situation. But it’s also important to understand we’re not in the exact same situation.”

Still, it’s a measure of Mr. Obama’s uncertainty in this moment of peril that he would summon not only the spirit but also the person of Mr. Clinton, whom he disparaged during the 2008 campaign for small-ball politics that made him less of a transformational president than Ronald Reagan. Lately, Mr. Obama has been reading accounts of Mr. Clinton’s presidency.

In applying the lessons, Mr. Obama might find areas for cooperation and conflict. The president and Congressional Republicans could find common ground on issues like education reform and alternative energy. They could clash on spending, environmental regulation and any attempt to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care program.

Whether he can turn that into a formula for political resurrection in an era of 9.8 percent unemployment is unclear. Mr. Pfeiffer speculated on what it would be like to find in his West Wing desk George Stephanopoulos’s old playbook. “It would be a mistake to take it out and run all the same plays,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “It would also be a mistake to throw it away.”

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Tirades Against Nobel Aim at Audience in China

As much of the world on Friday focused their eyes on the empty seat in Oslo that starkly represented the absence of the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, a lone Chinese blogger posted the image of a chair on the country’s most popular microblogging site.
Within minutes, it had been deleted by a censor’s unseen hand.

That small gesture of solidarity with Mr. Liu, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence for “subversion of state power,” is largely emblematic of China’s sweeping effort to quash any expression of sympathy for a man whose plight has captivated the world.

All mentions of the pageantry at the award ceremony on Friday were scrubbed from the Chinese Internet, and the relatively small number of people who have access to overseas news outlets such as BBC and CNN saw their television screens go black in the days leading up the ceremony. On Friday night, the most discussed topics on Sina, the largest news portal, included plunging temperatures and flight delays at Beijing’s airport.

To those outside China, the government’s response to the Norwegian committee’s decision to give Mr. Liu the Nobel Peace Prize was remarkable for its bombast and audacity.

Beijing dispatched its diplomats to warn countries against sending envoys to the ceremony, while the Foreign Ministry and state media issued a steady drumbeat of invective, describing the prize as a Western plot to hold back a rising China and branding the award’s supporters as “clowns.” On Friday, Global Times, a populist tabloid affiliated with the party-owned People’s Daily, called the event a “political farce” and Oslo a “cult center.”

But while such outbursts may have provoked snickers around the world, the stern-faced men who run China’s government may have the last laugh. Minxin Pei, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna College in California, said those who focus solely on the damage done to Beijing’s global image are missing the point. In the end, he said, the only opinions that matter are those held by China’s 1.3 billion citizens.

“After Tiananmen, China suffered three years of international isolation, but it recovered,” he said, referring to the violent crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in 1989. “The regime’s approach to the Nobel was strategic. They know the world will come calling again because China and its economy cannot be ignored for long.”

After the prize was announced, China’s censors promptly took measures to stymie the spread of the news via the Internet and text messaging, while police agents began detaining and harassing liberal colleagues and supporters.

But once they realized they could not control the debate beyond their nation’s borders from seeping into China, Mr. Pei and other analysts say, senior leaders decided to tailor their message to the domestic audience. Although the Chinese government has become increasingly adept at controlling information available to its 440 million Internet users, several people with knowledge of the government’s deliberations said the Nobel Prize presented propaganda officials with a daunting challenge: how to smear what many ordinary Chinese see as honor without fanning interest in Mr. Liu.

Within a few days of the announcement, China’s Politburo met to complete a game plan: Mr. Liu would be painted as a traitor and the Nobel committee’s decision would be officially labeled a “plot by Western enemy forces, headed by the United States,” according to a veteran journalist at a party-run media outlet who had knowledge of the deliberations.

Wielding rhetoric redolent of the Maoist era, a succession of commentaries soon appeared that played on nationalistic sentiment by highlighting Mr. Liu’s affiliation with an American pro-democracy group. Others pulled quotes from an interview he gave to a Hong Kong magazine in 1988 in which he described colonialism as the antidote to China’s problems. (Supporters say his remarks were incendiary to make a point about China’s dysfunction.)

In every article about him, Mr. Liu was described as a criminal who had been tried and convicted by the nation’s justice system.

At the same time, the censors assiduously removed information about Mr. Liu not approved by the propaganda ministry, including any mention at all of Charter 08, the pro-democracy manifesto that he helped shape and that led to his conviction.

The intense media controls appear to have had the desired effect. According to the veteran party journalist, an official survey of university students taken since the prize was awarded found that 85 percent said they knew nothing about Mr. Liu and Charter 08.

Although it is not clear exactly when the survey was taken, that figure was partly borne out Friday in conversations with more than three dozen people across the capital, many of them students at two of the country’s top universities. One student said she thought the Nobel recipient was the Dalai Lama (he won in 1989) and another insisted that the award ceremony had long since taken place. Most said they had no idea who Mr. Liu was, but a handful quietly voiced support for him and his ideas.

Even if they did not know his name, those who were aware that a Chinese citizen was the recipient said they agreed with the government that his selection was a plot to embarrass China.

Xiao Feng, 27, said she thought the recipient had probably done something to harm the nation. “I think this year’s prize is a little bit unfair,” she said. “From what I can tell, its purpose is to humiliate China.”

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Add-ons turn tax cut bill into 'Christmas tree'

In the spirit of the holiday season, President Barack Obama's tax-cut deal with Republicans is becoming a Christmas tree tinseled with gifts for lobbyists and lawmakers. But that hardly stopped the squabbling on Friday, with Bill Clinton even back at the White House pleading the president's case.

While Republicans sat back quietly, mostly pleased, Democrats and other liberals were going at each other ever so publicly. As Clinton lectured on Obama's behalf, Vermont independent Bernie Sanders castigated the agreement for the TV cameras in the mostly empty Senate chamber.

The tax deal, reached behind the scenes and still informal, now includes ethanol subsidies for rural folks, commuter tax breaks for their cousins in the cities and suburbs and wind and solar grants for the environmentalists — all aimed at winning votes, particularly from reluctant Democrats.

The holiday additions are being hung on the big bill that was Congress' main reason for spending December in Washington, long after the elections that will give Republicans new power in January. The measure will extend Bush-era tax cuts, averting big tax increases for nearly all Americans, and keep jobless benefits flowing.

Republicans generally liked that agreement, worked out by Obama and GOP leaders. Democrats generally didn't, hence the add-ons.

It's all expected to come to a decisive vote next week, total cost by the latest congressional estimate: $857.8 billion.

On Friday, there were contrasting events for public consumption.

On Capitol Hill, Sanders spoke vigorously for 8 1/2 hours in a virtually empty chamber, urging defeat of a measure he said would give "tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who don't need it." He finally ended his speech, conceding "It has been a long day."

At the White House, Obama turned over the briefing room microphone to former President Clinton who declared, "I don't believe there is a better deal out there." All sides, he said, "are going to have to eat some things they don't like."

The add-ons were being attached behind the scenes.

Almost $5 billion in subsidies for corn-based ethanol and a continuing tariff to protect against ethanol imports were wrapped up and placed on the tree Thursday night for farm-state lawmakers and agribusiness lobbyists. Environmentalists won more grants for developers of renewable energy, like wind and solar.

For urban lawmakers, there's a continuation of about-to-expire tax breaks that could save commuters who use mass transit about $1,000 a year. Other popular tax provisions aimed at increasing production of hybrid automobiles, biodiesel fuel, coal and energy-efficient household appliances would be extended through the end of 2011 under the new add-ons.

The package also includes an extension of two Gulf Coast tax incentive programs enacted after Hurricane Katrina to spur economic development in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

The ethanol money was added despite a growing congressional opposition to subsidizing the fuel after decades of government support. Last month, 17 Republican and Democratic senators wrote to leaders calling the tax breaks "fiscally indefensible," since there's already a law in place that requires ethanol be blended into gasoline.

"Historically the government has helped a product compete in one of three ways: Subsidize it, protect it from competition or require its use. We understand that ethanol may be the only product receiving all three forms of support from the U.S. government at this time," the senators wrote.

But ethanol still has powerful supporters on Capitol Hill, including Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a key negotiator on the Senate tax bill. Adding the ethanol tax breaks was designed to help shore up the votes of many rural Democratic as well as Republican senators.

But while the add-ons may have won more votes for the Obama-GOP deal the Senate, their potential impact is less clear in the House, where Democrats have criticized the package as a tax giveaway to the rich.

Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson, a conservative Democrat who steps downs as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in January, says he would have voted against the bill if it had contained some of the clean energy tax incentives and nothing for ethanol.

"I know this will help some members in the House, different parts of this will help different members," he said.

Still, Peterson said the credits for the corn-based fuel probably won't last forever. He said Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, the House's No. 3 Democrat, told the caucus it was important to include ethanol in the bill, and some members booed him. That wouldn't have happened a few years ago, Peterson said.

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., who lost re-election in November, sponsored the House version of legislation extending the ethanol tax breaks. But he says he still can't support the bill because of his opposition to provisions cutting estate taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

"There may be some that vote for the package that otherwise hate it because of the ethanol provision, but my sense is that ethanol alone isn't going to be something that puts us over the top," he said.

A spokesman for Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., a leader in the effort to win tax credits for wind and solar energy, said his boss still hasn't been won over yet on the package. He said the extension was necessary but not sufficient for Blumenauer's support. "His vote will depend on what the final version looks like," said spokesman Derek Schlickeisen.

Rep. Jay Inslee, a Washington Democrat, also was not won over by the renewable energy extension, despite being a big supporter of the program.

"It's one of the best things we have in the federal government for job creation. It is incredibly important. And it's nuts not to finance it by simply letting the upper-income tax brackets expire," he said. "I think there's a better deal out there potentially available and we ought to fight for it."

And there's the possibility the added goodies will have opposite the intended effect for some lawmakers. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said the add-ons could turn his fiscally conservative colleagues against the bill.

"You don't want to be accused out there of supporting stimulus three," he said. "It will knock some votes off in the House, but more than anything it will show the voters out there that things haven't changed with Republicans."

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Julia Roberts Protects Family

Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, which grossed $464 million worldwide. After receiving Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias in 1990 and Pretty Woman in 1991, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2001 for her performance in Erin Brockovich.

Julia Roberts is making news today after a paparazzi member was getting too close to Julia Roberts and her family on an afternoon out in Los Angeles on December 6th. Julia Roberts was seen walking with her family - including her husband Danny Moder and their three children.

Radar Online obtained a phoograph that shows Julia Robertswithin inches of the paparazzi members face.

Radar Online reports more on a previous incident that shows Julia's commitment to protect her family:

In 2007, she famously chased a paparazzo in her car -- wildly honking her horn at him -- until he pulled over. The usually zen Eat Pray Love star then chewed him out. As she told him to shut off his camera, she said: "I want to talk to you about the fact that you're at a school where children go. Turn it off!"
Julia Fiona Roberts (born October 28, 1967) is an American actress. She became a Hollywood star after headlining the 1990 romantic comedy Pretty Woman, which grossed $464 million worldwide. After receiving Academy Award nominations for Steel Magnolias in 1990 and Pretty Woman in 1991, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2001 for her performance in Erin Brockovich. Her films My Best Friend's Wedding, Mystic Pizza, Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, Valentine's Day, The Pelican Brief, Ocean's Eleven and Twelve have collectively brought box office receipts of over $2.4 billion, making her one of the most successful actors in terms of box office receipts.

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Ivory Coast Faces Higher Prices, Shortages Amid Election Crisis

Since Ivory Coast’s disputed presidential election on Nov. 28, prices have soared at Abidjan’s Treichville market, fuel has been in short supply and an evening curfew has damped business at clubs and restaurants.

“Everything has become more expensive,” said Mariam Kone, a food seller at Treichville.

The economic cost of the crisis is mounting, with no end in sight to the political deadlock that has seen two rival candidates sworn in as president. Cocoa farmers have slowed delivery to processing plants because of safety fears, while Newcrest Mining Ltd., Australia’s largest gold mining company, said on Dec. 6 that it had suspended operations at its Bonikro mine.

Opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara was named winner of the vote with 54.1 percent by the country’s electoral commission on Dec. 2. A day later, the Constitutional Council annulled the win by canceling votes in some northern regions over allegations of irregularities, and named incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo the victor.

“We need to know who our new president is so prices can go down again,” Kone said.

The United Nations, the European Union, the U.S. and the African Union have all called on Gbagbo to cede power to Ouattara. The Economic Community of West African States and the African Union suspended Ivory Coast from their regional blocs this week.

Growing Discontent

“The medium-term risk for Gbagbo is growing socio-economic discontent if shortages become protracted, inflation accelerates and economic stagnation returns,” said Rolake Akinola, principal consultant for sub-Saharan Africa with VoxFrontier Consulting, based in London.

Companies have closed their doors or reduced their hours because of a nighttime curfew, according to a statement from the Confederation Generale des Entreprises de Cote d’Ivoire, an Abidjan-based business association.

“I haven’t increased my own prices, because otherwise I won’t have any more customers,” said Kouraogo Savane, a cafe owner in Abidjan. If the crisis continues, “I won’t have any other option.”

Transporting food to markets has been hindered by concerns over security on the roads of the West African nation, a fear that is also keeping cocoa from leaving the farms of the world’s top producer.

“Truck owners are refusing to rent their trucks,” said Blanchard Allo, an accountant at a farmers’ cooperative in the central town of Gagnoa, the hometown of Gbagbo, who has ruled the country for a decade. “There is a lot of cocoa right now, but we can’t move it to Abidjan,” he said by phone yesterday.

First Shipments

Another cooperative in the coastal town of Grand-Lahou made its first cocoa shipment since the election on Dec. 7 -- some 20 metric tons of beans -- Theodore Konan, the head of the group, said by phone on Dec. 8.

“Now everybody is working again, but not at full speed,” he said. “The country is in bad shape.”

Concern over supply shortages, which have pushed cocoa for March delivery up 7 percent since the election, have abated with prices of the beans falling 55 pounds, or 2.8 percent, to 1,937 pounds per ton by 10:49 a.m. on the NYSE Liffe in London, the fourth consecutive decline.

Economic growth in cocoa-dependent Ivory Coast has averaged 1.1 percent in the eight years since a military uprising in 2002 left the country divided between a rebel-held north and government-controlled south. During this time, the country missed out on the wave of foreign investment in Africa from such nations as China.

The current crisis has put a $3 billion debt cancellation plan “under threat,” said Akinola. Ivory Coast was due to complete the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Heavily Indebted Poor Countries’ debt-relief program next year, she said.

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The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Pevensie siblings return to Narnia, where they are enlisted to once again help ward off an evil king and restore the rightful heir to the land's throne, Prince Caspian.

"The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" is the third installment in the C.S. Lewis "Narnia" series, and I'd rank it above the second but below the first. "Narnia" completists may not care. "Narnia" naysayers won't go anyway.
The four Pevensie children return to Narnia, only to discover that hundreds of years have passed since they ruled there, and the evil King Miraz has taken charge. With the help of a heroic mouse called Reepicheep, and the exiled heir to the throne, Prince Caspian, they set out to overthrow the King, once again with Aslan's help

 
In this sequel, the Pevensie children (Georgie Henley and Skandar Keynes), along with their snooty cousin Eustace (Will Poulter) meet up with Prince Caspian (Ben Barnes) in search of the seven swords that will release into the Narnian ozone the innocent spirits captured within the Lost Islands.

The 3-D effects are standard, the children and the prince are a bit bland, and Michael Apted's direction veers into listlessness, but there is, at times, a pleasing elegance to the production, too. It doesn't assault you. Small favors are better than none. Grade: B- (Rated PG for some frightening images and sequences of fantasy action.)

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Iran condemned for filmed 'confession'

Iran was criticised after saying it intended to show another filmed confession by Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, the woman condemned to death by stoning, as part of a documentary reconstruction of her case. 

Mrs Ashtiani and her son Sajjad Asgharzadeh, who is also under arrest, were returned to their home for the programme, which was due to be broadcast in Iran on Friday night.
She is accused of adultery and participating with her lover in the 2005 killing of her husband.The announcement by state-run Press TV dashed earlier hopes that photographs of the two at home indicated they had been released.
Human rights groups attacked the decision by the judiciary to allow the programme to be made while her case remained under review.
"If reports are accurate that there will be another televised 'confession' from Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani tonight," said Clare Bracey, death penalty campaigner for Amnesty UK, "Its impact on the judicial process should not be underestimated.

"To organise a televised 'confession' midway through a judicial review of a serious case – where a woman's life hangs in the balance – makes a mockery of Iran's legal system."

Mrs Ashtiani was originally convicted of adultery in 2006 and given 99 lashes.

She was later additionally accused of playing a role in the death of her husband, and sentenced to hang for the murder and to be stoned for adultery.

The hanging was commuted to 10 years' jail after her son exercised his right to reprieve the lover who killed his father.

Following an international outcry after the stoning sentence came to light, Iran announced that it was reviewing her case.

But it also showed her confessing to the cameras that she had been involved in her husband's killing.

The reports that she had been released on Thursday night – and the vivid new photographs the television station published – led to worldwide celebrations from supporters.
A news story on Press TV's website blamed the misunderstanding on a "vast publicity campaign by Western media" and said the station merely intended to "to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene".
However, the story made no mention of the adultery charge, the death sentence or how she might be executed if at all.
Last month the head of Iran's Council of Human Rights said he thought there was "a good chance that her life could be saved".
The use of stoning is currently under review, and has been excluded from a new draft justice code, although 10 people remain on death row with stoning as the specified means of execution, and the most recent such killing was of a man in March 2009, according to Amnesty International.

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'full force of the law' after violent protests British PM promises

British Prime Minister David Cameron said Friday protesters who resorted to violence Thursday night will "feel the full force of the law," and blamed them for wreaking havoc in London during the pre-Christmas weeks.

Addressing reporters, Cameron defended the government's contentious move to triple tuition at UK universities and said protesters, not the police, should be blamed for last night's chaos on Parliament street and nearby areas and for attacking a car transporting Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall.

"I immediately rang the Prince of Wales," said Cameron, a reference to Prince Charles. "We need to learn the lesson of this incident," he said.

On Friday, police sifted through rubble strewn over London's Parliament square, searching for clues and culprits in Thursday night's protests, where students, enraged by the triple tuition hike, broke windows and ambushed the royal vehicle.
Protesters attack Prince Charles' car
London protests turn violent
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"It is not the fault of the police," said Cameron. "It was the fault of those who tried to smash that car."

A photo of the royal couple, dressed in evening wear, made headlines as it showed the startled expressions on their faces as they sat in their Rolls-Royce before exiting for a Royal Variety Performance.

The royal couple escaped unhurt. Police said the route had been cleared minutes before the royal couple was due to make their journey.

The high-profile incident came late in a day of violent protests that left at least 12 officers and 43 demonstrators hurt.

London's Metropolitan Police issued a statement Friday condemning the protests and alleged vandalism that took place Thursday night, claiming protesters intimidated Christmas shoppers and bystanders.

"This has nothing to do with peaceful protest," the statement said. "Students are involved in wanton vandalism including smashing windows in Oxford and Regent streets."

So far, 34 people have been arrested in connection with the protests, and more than 40 protesters have been hospitalized, police said.

The protests followed a vote in the House of Commons to approve a plan to raise the existing cap on tuition rates charged by universities from £3,000 to £9,000 a year. In U.S. dollars, that's a nearly $10,000 a year increase -- from roughly $4,700 to $14,000. Lawmakers approved the plan in a 323-302 vote.

The measure awaits approval by the House of Lords and a signature by the queen before it can become law.

The vote ended hours of debate inside Parliament. Thousands of demonstrators outside said the plan will price many students out of a university education. Supporters say the tuition cap hike is needed to cut the government's massive deficit.

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Tax-cut deal exposes inner workings of D.C.

The temperature in Washington dipped into the 20s last week, and here in the capital, that seems to be the point when hell freezes over: President Obama reached an agreement on the Bush tax cuts with the Republican Senate leader who said "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
But it's also been clarifying. The tax-cut deal, in which the Republicans will give the White House about $300 billion in stimulus in return for the White House giving Republicans about $130 billion in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, laid bare some old and new realities of how Washington works - and doesn't work - right now. It's worth going through them one by one.

1) No one really cares about the deficit. No sooner had Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles completed their work on the deficit reduction package than Democrats and Republicans reached a bipartisan accord to add $900 billion to the debt. Republicans wanted their unpaid-for tax cuts for the rich, Democrats wanted their unpaid-for stimulus measures and both sides wanted the unpaid-for tax cuts for income under $250,000. I think it's appropriate to spend while the economy is weak and then repay when it's strong, but then, I didn't just get elected to Congress by promising to rein in spending.

2) Obama is better at the inside game than the outside game. Sarah Palin likes to ask the president "how that hopey-changey stuff" is going. The answer, it seems, is that the changey stuff is going well, but the hopey stuff is proving more troublesome. Obama might have campaigned in 2008 as the inspirational newcomer who had no patience for the broken ways of Washington, but he has governed like a Washington veteran with little patience for inspired outsiders. In health-care reform, in the stimulus, in financial regulation and in the tax-cut deal, Obama has been a tough negotiator able to move his agenda through a gridlocked Congress - but he has not been able to enthuse Democrats or inspire popular support for his initiatives. He has been prickly when questioned about it.

3) And he's not over health-care reform. Among the president's most passionate moments during the post-deal news conference was his long, impromptu scolding of dissatisfied progressives who're making this into "the public option debate all over again." Obama went on to complain that liberals were so focused on the public option that they lost sight of the rest of the health-care bill - which was much larger. And he's right about that. But it's also time for him to get over it.

4) Republicans really, really, really care about tax cuts for rich people. Many Democrats had been operating under the theory that Republicans would simply obstruct everything Democrats attempted, as that was the best way to make Obama a one-termer. At least when it comes to tax cuts for very wealthy Americans, that's not true. Republicans agreed to far more in unemployment insurance and stimulus proposals than anyone expected, and sources who were involved in the negotiations agree that the mistake Democrats made going in was underestimating how much Republicans wanted the tax cuts for the rich extended.

5) It's still Ronald Reagan's world, at least when it comes to taxes. The Sturm und Drang over the tax cuts for the rich obscured the Democrats' massive capitulation on the tax cuts for everyone else. Even the party's liberals had accepted Obama's argument that the tax cuts for income of less than $250,000 - which includes the bulk of the Bush tax cuts - should be permanently extended. Another way of saying that is Democrats had agreed that the Clinton-era tax rates were too high. If you put it to most Democrats that way, they'd protest vigorously. The economy boomed under Clinton, and the Democratic Party is proud of the efforts it made to balance the budget. But Democrats are so terrified of being accused of raising taxes that they've conceded to the Bush tax rates for 98 percent of Americans.

6) We need tax reform, now more than ever. The end result of this deal is going to be an even weirder tax code than we have now - and the one we have now is pretty weird. We're extending old tax cuts and credits and adding new ones. Some of those may be extended further. Businesses won't want to see deductions for investments expire, and workers won't want to see the payroll-tax cut expire, and the super-rich won't want to see the tax exemption for estates up to $5 million expire. There are so many constituencies fighting for so many breaks that the only hope we're going to have when we actually do need to reduce the deficit - which isn't yet, but will be soon - is to start from square one on the tax code.

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Apple adding cameras to iPad

Rumors of a new and improved Apple iPad continue to swirl, the latest of which come from Reuters.

The news service reports component suppliers are bracing to produce a revamped version of the tablet which will feature front- and back-mounted cameras.Citing "people familiar with the situation," Reuters says the new iPad will be slimmer, lighter and include an improved display.An Apple spokesperson declined comment, according to the report.An analyst quoted by Reuters predicts the new iPad could be revealed next month, and hit stores by next April.

Since launching April 3, the iPad has become one of the hottest tech gadgets. In May, Apple announced sales of the device topped 2 million in less than 60 days.

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Iran Denies Freeing Condemned Woman

Iran denied reports on Friday that it has freed a woman sentenced to death by stoning after human rights campaigners stoked confusion by releasing unconfirmed reports to the press.
A report Friday on the Web site of Iran’s state-run English language news channel Press TV said reports of the release of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, 43, were false and were part of a “vast publicity campaign by Western media.”
On Thursday night, foreign news reports citing a group supporting her based in Germany said that Iran’s authorities had released Ms. Ashtiani, along with her son and her lawyer .
“We have got news from Iran that they are free,” Mina Ahadi, spokeswoman for the International Campaign Against Stoning, was quoted as saying.

The unconfirmed report prompted foreign governments to welcome the news with Maureen Harper, the wife of the Canadian prime minister, and Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini both issuing statements.
The news report also ran images showing Ashtiani standing in the doorway of her home in a village in Iran’s northwestern Azarbaijan region and speaking with her son, Sajjad Ghaderzadeh, in an informal setting, prompting further speculation that she had been released.
The photographs have subsequently been revealed to be stills from a new documentary program, due to be aired on Press TV, which will show Ms. Ashtiani guiding a camera crew around the home where she and an accomplice allegedly plotted to murder her husband in 2006. She was originally sentenced to death by stoning for adultery but that sentenced was suspended and authorities have reframed the charges against her as murder.
“Press TV has arranged with Iran’s judicial authorities to follow Ashtiani to her house to produce a visual recount of the crime at the murder scene,” Friday’s report on the channel’s Web site said.
Iran’s latest attempt to counter the international media campaign against Ms. Ashtiani’s execution is its first to directly address foreign audiences on the issue. On two previous occasions, Iranian state broadcasting has aired confessions by Ms. Ashtiani as well as denunciations by her of human rights campaigners who have joined her cause.
“They are taking my side unnecessarily, I do not consider them legitimate at all,” Ms. Ashtiani said in comments aired on domestic television in November which her lawyers have said were made under pressure during detention.
Two German nationals who entered Iran intending to interview Ms. Ashtiani’s son remain in detention more than two months after being arrested by Iranian security officers in October. The two, said to be a reporter and a photographer working for Germany’s Bild am Sonntag newspaper, have been charged with spying after confessing to having entered Iran without proper journalistic accreditation, Iranian judicial officials say.

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Authorities Destroy 'Bomb Factory' Home in California

Firefighters and law-enforcement officials Thursday deliberately destroyed a Southern California house they said contained one of the largest caches of homemade explosives and bomb-making paraphernalia ever uncovered.

As part of the elaborate plan to burn and blow up the single-family structure in Escondido—which had been rented by an accused bank robber now in federal custody—authorities previously erected a protective wall and ordered scores of nearby residents to evacuate. A busy freeway was shut for about three hours and as a precaution, protective gel was spayed on adjacent homes to prevent fires

Explosives experts decided it was too dangerous to try to remove the volatile materials that remained scattered around the house and yard. So they rigged the home with explosives and ignited it from a distance, as a crowd of reporters and curious onlookers witnessed the event. A grocery store parking lot was used to handle overflow cars from media representatives flocking to the area.
Here's a sign of just how many explosives and chemicals authorities found in the home bomb factory in San Diego County: They figure the best way to deal with the house is to destroy it. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency to give authorities the leeway to seize it and do just that with a controlled burn, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The man accused in the case, who’s charged with 26 counts of bomb-making, has told officials he's robbed three San Diego banks since last year. George Jakubec, who was renting the place, is set to appear in court tomorrow. Investigators also discovered handguns, wigs, and masks in the house. No word yet on Jakubec’s motive for collecting the explosives.

The dramatic, remotely controlled demolition, which sent thick gray smoke billowing through the otherwise quiet, middle-class residential neighborhood nearly 30 miles north of San Diego, attracted air-pollution monitoring teams. Four separate hazardous-waste response crews stood by before the area was declared safe hours later.

A spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said it was "a very complex and difficult" task but nobody was hurt.

George Djura Jakubec, an unemployed software engineer, had rented and lived in the house for about four years with his wife and a dog. Last week, he was indicted by a federal grand jury in San Diego on a total of eight bank-robbery and explosives charges.

Between November 2009 and July 2010, Mr. Jakubec allegedly tried to rob three San Diego branches of Bank of America—going back to the same location twice within two weeks—and got away with more than $54,000, according to the indictment. Michael Berg, Mr. Jakubec's lawyer, filed an unsuccessful motion to stop the house from being destroyed. Mr. Berg on Thursday declined to comment.

Law enforcement officials were alerted to what they later called a backyard "bomb factory" when a gardener was injured after stepping on explosive materials on the property. Prosecutors allege that bomb experts found nine detonators, 13 grenades containing "unknown quantities of high explosives" and other dangerous potential bomb-making materials.

Prior to Thursday's controlled burn, according to law-enforcement officials, investigators discovered and destroyed at the site some mason jars filled with an extremely potent explosive chemical known as HMTD, a substance used by some terrorists. So far, county and federal investigators haven't indicated any motive.

Rees Morgan, one of the federal prosecutors working on the case, said Thursday that a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent previously testified in court that the Escondido property contained the largest stash of HMTD ever discovered by the bureau.

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Prince Charles and Camilla car attack prompts questions over police

Police are facing a major inquiry into how they allowed a car carrying the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall to be cut off in the middle of a riot over tuition fees and attacked.
Sir Paul Stephenson, the Scotland Yard Commissioner, promised a "thorough investigation" into what he described the incident as "hugely regrettable" incident involving the heir to the throne.

But he insisted that the route had been "thoroughly recced" only minutes before the attack, blamed the unpredictable nature of the crowd and said that the police operation overall should be "thoroughly commended".

However, Dai Davies, a former head of Scotland Yard's royal protection squad, said there had clearly been failings in the operation with a breakdown in co-ordination between police controlling the mob and crowd protecting the royal couple.
"I'm sure my successor is looking very carefully at what went wrong and indeed how it must never happen again," he said.

Security analyst and former police officer Charles Shoebridge added: "This is a very serious incident. It ranks amongst the most serious security breaches of the past decade.

"Some of the demonstrators yesterday were carrying petrol, specifically to use in arson attacks. If the can of paint had been a can of petrol, it would have been very different."

The former intelligence officer, who has experience of public order policing, said: "One can visualise a situation where police felt they had no alternative but to open fire. It wasn't potentially dangerous. It was dangerous.

Demonstrators chanting "off with their heads" kicked the Rolls-Royce as it travelled to the Royal Variety Performance in central London. White paint and bottles were thrown over the car and a window shattered after the vehicle became separated from its police escort in a crowd.

The Prince and Duchess were “unharmed” and continued with their engagement at the London Palladium, a Clarence House spokesman said.

David Cameron this morning said that he was "very concerned" over the security lapse and that lessons needed to be learned.

The attack occurred on Regent Street at the end of a day of protest that turned into a riot and left 10 police officers injured, six of them seriously.

The day of rioting in central London saw government buildings around Parliament Square defaced and vandalised as MPs voted for a dramatic rise in university tuition fees in the House of Commons.

Tens of thousands of students besieged the area, starting fires, vandalising a statue of Sir Winston Churchill, smashing windows at the Treasury and the Supreme Court while others rampaged up Oxford Street.

However, genuine students protesting against the political change were joined by large number of mostly teenage boys intent on destruction and violence.

A total of 34 protesters were arrested while 12 police officers and 43 demonstrators were injured in violent clashes.

But Sir Paul insisted police – including the armed Royal Protection Officers with the Prince and Duchess, had shown "huge restraint".

"It was a hugely regrettable and shocking incident, a dreadful incident really," he said.

"Whilst I do not wand to go into the detail of our security operations I do have to say, as you would expect with such operations, that route was thoroughly recced, including minutes beforehand.

"What you've got to remember is the unpredictability of those thugs and the way in which they were moving about London.

"I do think that the officers who were protecting Their Royal Highnesses showed very real restraint, some of those officers were armed.

"Their priority was to get that car to a place of safety and that was achieved but it was a hugely shocking incident and there will be a full criminal investigation."

He defended the decision to allow the couple to travel to the engagement at the height of the rioting.

"Our Royal family have a very welcome practice of being visible to the public," he said.

"I'm not sure that I would want to achieve that kind of security bubble that you might see in other countries."

But Mr Davies said: "One of the principles of protection is to have alternative routes and I would expect there to be at least three different routes, and I'm surprised.

"Clearly the Commissioner (Sir Paul) is embarrassed and surprised, also, why there isn't better co-ordination between those in charge of protection and those marshalling and dealing with the riots we saw?"

He added: "Presumably someone must have told Royal protection there was a demonstration of this sort and intelligence should have coordinated a better system."

David Davis, the former shadow Home Secretary, said: "Sir Paul (Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Commissioner) has very serious questions to answer about this operation.

"The police always know where the Prince is for obvious security reasons.

"So why were professional anarchists and violent agitators allowed to come anywhere near his car?"

Brian Paddick, a former deputy assistant commissioner with the Met, said that the Prince of Wales should not have been travelling through central London after a day of protests.

He said: “Consideration should have been given to whether it was safe for them to go out at all. I don’t understand how the car was allowed to come into such close contact with the protesters, bearing in mind that there should have been motorcycle outriders ahead of the car who would have spotted trouble in advance.”

A Government source was critical of the police. The source said: "You have to wonder about the way the police conducted this operation.

"Sealing Westminster off the way they did allowed the protesters to run riot elsewhere. And the decision to allow the Prince to travel anywhere near the area in a very visible official car shows a complete lack of intelligence."

Mark Pritchard, the Tory MP for The Wrekin in Shropshire, added: "If (the police) knew what was going on, why did they allow the royal convoy to go down that route?"

Matthew Maclachlan, who witnessed the attack on the Prince’s car, said: “The police cars at the front of the convoy drove straight into crowds at the top of Regent Street. They got trapped in that mob and it meant that Charles and Camilla were on their own further down the road except for a Jaguar travelling behind them.

“Charles and Camilla’s car ran into such a concentration of people that it had to stop. It was stationary for a lot of the time, then would squeeze forward an inch. They had just one bodyguard in the car with them and a chauffeur.

“We couldn’t believe it. The car had really big windows so Charles was very much on display. People were trying to talk to him about tuition fees at first but when more people realised what was happening, the crowds swelled and people were throwing glass bottles and picking up litter bins and throwing them at the car. You could hear all this smashing.

“There was one protection officer in the Jaguar behind, dressed in a tuxedo, and he was opening the car doors and using them to bash people away. His car took a real pummelling.

“It must have been frightening for them but, throughout it all, Charles was really calm and smiling at everyone. Camilla was beaming too. He was holding his hands out towards them in a gesture that said, 'I’m innocent’.”

Mr Maclachlan, who was not involved in the protest, said he was astonished that the police had taken that route.

“I don’t know why they went that way. It was the same crowd that had been in Trafalgar Square earlier, setting fire to the Christmas tree. There were so many protesters and they drove right into the middle of them.”

Although the rear window on the Prince’s side of the car was shattered, it did not break. The burgundy Rolls-Royce Phantom VI, used by the Queen on several previous occasions, is fitted with toughened glass as a security measure.

The incident raises serious questions about the policing of the protests, which came as MPs voted in favour of the policy of increasing the fees cap to £9,000.

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China tightens grip ahead of Nobel ceremony

China stepped up security at key locations in Beijing and maintained a clampdown on contacts of jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo hours before Friday's ceremony in Oslo awarding him the Nobel Peace Prize.

Official newspapers said the decision to award the prize to Liu, sentenced last December to 11 years jail for subversion, marked an attempt to impose foreign values on China.

"Today in Norway's Oslo, there will be a farce staged: 'The Trial of China'," the popular Global Times, run by the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily, said in an editorial.

The BBC said its English-language website appeared to have been blocked in several areas of China, for the first time since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Access to other international news sites such as CNN also appeared to be restricted.

Beijing, exercising a political influence growing with its economic power, has pressed countries to stay away from the ceremony honoring a man closely involved in the 1989 "Tiananmen" protests that challenged Communist Party power.

The former literature professor's wife has told Reuters that her husband wants to dedicate the prize to those who died when troops crushed the protest, killing, according to witnesses and rights groups, hundreds or thousands of people. Beijing has never given numbers for casualties in the action.

Greater numbers of police vehicles and officers patrolled key points in Beijing, including Tiananmen Square. Security was also tight around Liu's apartment, where Liu's wife is believed to be under house arrest, and the Norwegian embassy. Police turned away a group of German diplomats who tried to visit her.

LITTLE KNOWN AT HOME

Liu's fame overseas was lost, however, on most residents in Beijing, where memories of the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protestors have faded amid an economic boom.

"Everything is different now since the revolt of 1989. People's ideas have changed. China has changed," said businesswoman Ma Junpeng. "People like Liu are irrelevant."

China was infuriated by the Committee's award to a man it labels a criminal, and the row with the Nobel Committee has spilled over into wider diplomacy.

The Nobel Committee said on Thursday human rights were basic "universal values" but Communist Party ideologists consider the phrase to be code for Western liberal values.

Several nations have heeded Beijing's call to boycott the ceremony, many of them mindful of China's growing economic clout. China declared that the "vast majority" of nations would boycott but the Norwegian award committee said two-thirds of those invited would attend.

Both the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, and the senior member of the House foreign affairs committee, Chris Smith, said they would attend Friday's ceremony after the House's 402-1 passage of a bill calling on China to release Liu.

"Sadly, the Chinese government shares with the governments of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union the terrible distinction of being the only governments of major nations to block a Nobel Peace Prize recipient from accepting the prize," Smith said in a statement. He said he was "outraged that nearly 20 nations have been strong-armed by China to boycott the ceremony".

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Has no link to cyber attacks says WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks says has no link to cyber attacks

WikiLeaks said on Friday it had no links to cyber attacks on global companies seen as enemies of the website and neither supported nor condemned the online campaign.

A statement on its website quoted Wikileaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson as saying the attacks were "a reflection of public opinion on the actions of the targets."

The loosely organised campaign to avenge WikiLeaks against those who have obstructed its operations, calling itself Operation Payback, has already temporarily brought down the websites of Visa and MasterCard, and of the Swedish government.

WikiLeaks noted the attacks were similar to those it had received since it began publishing the first of 250,000 U.S. leaked U.S. embassy cables on Nov. 28.

"These denial of service attacks are believed to have originated from an Internet gathering known as Anonymous. This group is not affiliated with Wikileaks. There has been no contact between any Wikileaks staffer and anyone at Anonymous," the statement said.

"WikiLeaks has not received any prior notice of any of Anonymous' actions."

Some freedom of information campaigners who are sympathetic to WikiLeaks look askance at the Anonymous attacks, saying the website's cause cannot be furthered by denying the freedom of information to others.

A succession of U.S. institutions has withdrawn services from WikiLeaks after the website published thousands of sometimes embarrassing secret U.S. diplomatic reports that have caused strains between Washington and several allies. (Writing by William Maclean, Editing by Matthew Jones)

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Charles caught up in London riots

The clashes, described as the worst on the streets of the British capital since the 1990 poll tax riot, involved tens of thousands of people.

Masked rioters battled police outside the Houses of Parliament as a student protest turned violent following the government's narrow victory in a vote in the House of Commons.

Protesters then started fires and smashed windows at the Treasury and the Supreme Court as well as attacking shops in Oxford Street and climbing on a statue of wartime prime minister Sir Winston Churchill.

Prince Charles's limousine was attacked by rioters in Regent Street as he travelled to a theatre in central London, but he and his wife Camilla were "unharmed", his Clarence House residence said.

Protesters cracked a window and splashed white paint on the boot.

An eyewitness said Charles was trying to calm the demonstrators down and described how the unruffled prince "beamed" as protesters smashed bottles on the car, a 1977 Rolls Royce Phantom VI.

"The Jaguar behind Prince Charles's car got really heavily laid into, but people were more hesitant to do it. They were smashing bottles on it, but he remained very calm. He was beaming - absolutely beaming. Camilla was smiling as well. They were trying to calm people down, and he was just trying to have a chat with them through the window."

Police said tens of thousands joined the protests, including groups of hooded and masked youths who were at the centre of the violence. Police had warned that, like in previous student demonstrations, violent groups could hijack the rallies.

The BBC said 37 people had been injured and 22 people arrested. Several protesters suffered head wounds, one being taken away on a makeshift stretcher.

Prime minister David Cameron condemned the violence.

"It is clear that a minority of protesters came determined to provoke violence, attack the police and cause as much damage to property as possible," he said.

"It is shocking and regrettable that the car carrying the Prince of Wales [Prince Charles] and the Duchess of Cornwall was caught up and attacked in the violence," he added.
Outside the Houses of Parliament, activists rained missiles on police protecting the building and clashed with police at other points around Parliament Square, with several officers and demonstrators wounded.

Flares, sticks, metal fences, rocks, snooker balls and paint bombs were among the missiles hurled at police in a battle that lasted hours.

Hooded youths repeatedly attacked police lines, torched benches and a security guard box in the square, and smashed the doors and windows of the Treasury.

The clashes were believed to be the worst political violence in London since the 1990 poll tax riot which helped to end Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher's decade in power.

Analysts said there could be more to come as hundreds of thousands of public sector workers lose their jobs.

"There will probably be serious injuries, if not deaths, if this level of protest is replicated in the new year by militant unions," said Carina O'Reilly, European security analyst with IHS Jane's.
Inside the House of Commons, the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government's majority was cut by three-quarters as MPs voted by 323 to 302 to raise the cap on annual tuition fees at English universities from 2012.

Of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, 28 voted with the government, while 21 voted against.

The basic level of fees will now climb to 6,000 pounds ($9,600) with an upper limit of 9,000 pounds ($14,400). The current cap is 3,290 pounds ($5,270).

The proposal to raise fees has exposed deep tensions within the Liberal Democrats, putting the strain on their coalition with the larger Conservative party which came to power following the general election in May.

Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg's Lib Dems had vowed to phase out tuition fees altogether if it won the election.

The coalition suffered its first resignations over policy when two Lib Dem parliamentary aides to ministers and one Conservative quit their posts in order to vote against the plans.

The Lib Dem u-turn outraged students who voted for the centrist party, and has sparked a series of demonstrations over the past month which have turned violent.

One protester, Andrea Baptiste, 18, from London, said Mr Clegg was "a liar and a snake".

"To raise fees to 9,000 pounds a year just creates serious social divisions," she said.

A defiant Mr Clegg dismissed opponents of the plans as "dreamers" and insisted it was reasonable to make students pay more for their education at a time of deep cuts to public spending.

The rise in fees is also supported by the majority of universities.

Demonstrator Anna Campbell, a 19-year-old studying French and Russian at Sheffield University, cried after hearing the result of the vote.

"I'm so angry, but this is not the end," she said. "It's just the beginning, we are going to keep fighting."
Julyan Phillips, 23, a student at Goldsmiths College in London, who had blood pouring from a cut on his head, said: "I was on the front line. I walked up to the police, had my hands behind my back."

"The guys who were next to me were pushing a metal fence towards them but a policeman decided to lash out at me instead with a baton."

He said he was demonstrating because "education is a right, not a privilege".

Superintendent Julia Pendry of the Metropolitan Police said it was "absolutely obvious" that people had come to London "with the intention of committing violent disorder, not coming for peaceful protest."

"There has been a continued unprovoked attack by protesters," she said.

Protests also took place in other cities, including Newcastle in north-east England.

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Obama says Christmas message "love and redemption"

President Barack Obama said on Thursday that the message of Christmas was one of "love and redemption to every human being" as he and his family lit the national Christmas tree outside the White House.
That message was not just for Christians like himself and his wife but universal, he said, wearing a long overcoat and scarf in the cold early evening.

"It's a message that says no matter who we are or where we are from, no matter the pain we endure or the wrongs we face, we are called to love one another as brothers and as sisters," he said as he stood in front of the 42-foot-plus living Colorado spruce on the Ellipse just south of the White House.

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Two killed at W.Va. chemical plant in explosion

An explosion rocked a small chemical plant Thursday in West Virginia's northern panhandle, killing two workers and injuring two people, police and company officials said.

The explosion happened around 1:20 p.m. at the AL Solutions Inc. plant in New Cumberland, a small town about 33 miles west of Pittsburgh.

The first officer on the scene, Lt. Jeremy Krzys, said he had been sitting at a traffic light when he heard the blast and immediately rushed to the plant.

"I just heard a loud bang and all of a sudden you saw black smoke pouring out," Krzys said.

Krzys said he saw two injured men run out of the building when he arrived. He said one man was badly burned, while the other was still on fire. Krzys says co-workers used blankets to extinguish the man who was on fire.

The company reported earlier Thursday night that three workers had been killed, based on information from emergency responders, but corrected themselves about two hours later.

One of the injured workers was badly burned and was transported to UPMC Mercy hospital in Pittsburgh. The other injured person was an employee of an outside contractor and suffered minor burns.

None of the victims has been identified, though Police Chief Lester Skinner said he knew both of the men who died and had grown up with them.

The plant site is home to a large, corrugated metal building complex and a smaller stucco building that sits across the parking lot, which is where the men were working. Skinner said they were working with titanium powder, which is used as an alloy additive in aluminum.

The powder is packed into bricks that look similar to hockey pucks, Skinner said. It's highly flammable, which is why firefighters had to finish extinguishing hotspots before investigators could get to the dead men inside.

"It's not like putting out a brush fire or wood," Skinner said.

Labor Department spokeswoman Joanna Hawkins said federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials were on their way to investigate.

AL Solutions was formerly called Jamegy Inc. The company website says it also has a plant in Missouri.

In August 1995, a worker was killed and another injured when an explosion and fire ripped through the West Virginia plant when it was operated by Jamegy. In 2006, another worker died following an explosion and fire in a production building there.

At the Mid-Ridge Cafe, which sits along the main highway that leads into town and overlooks the plant, waitress Sandy Lemasters said she didn't hear the blast that was just a mile away. But it didn't take long for people to start coming in to talk about what happened.

People who came in said the men who died were two brothers from the town, Lemasters said.

"They came in and said there were two dead," she said. "It's a shame. That's the third time it's happened there."

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White House calls on China to restrain N. Korea

The White House on Thursday called on China to rein in its North Korean allies in order to "stabilize" the divided peninsula as the top officer in the US military returned from the region.

"China is in a position to have strong influence over the actions and the behavior of the North Koreans," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters.

"It is our belief that they should use their influence in that country to stabilize the region," he added, when asked about a visit to the region by Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mullen was expected to brief US President Barack Obama about the trip, which came as part of a flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at reducing tensions on the peninsula after a deadly North Korean attack last month.

Mullen lashed out at China in Tokyo on Thursday as he touted a united defense front with South Korea and Japan against North Korea.

"Northeast Asia is today more volatile than it has been in much of the last 50 years," Mullen said.

"Much of that volatility is owed to the reckless behaviour of the North Korean regime, enabled by their friends in China."

Washington has repeatedly called on China to restrain its communist ally, but Beijing has yet to condemn the North's shelling of a South Korean border island on November 23, which killed two soldiers and two civilians.

In a show of unity on Thursday, North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Il received a senior Chinese envoy for the first time since the incident.

Washington has meanwhile stepped up diplomatic efforts, announcing that a high level State Department delegation will go to China next week, to be followed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates in January.

"There will be additional trips to Beijing by senior administration officials to reiterate our call that the Chinese be clear with the North Koreans about their belligerent behavior and its destabilizing effect on the region," Gibbs said.

China is North Korea's sole major ally and sustains its shaky economy with fuel and food aid.

But Beijing has come under increasing pressure from the United States and its allies Japan and South Korea following the border incident, which was the first shelling of civilian areas in South Korea since the 1950-53 war.

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oppose tax deal -Democrats defy Obama

While unlikely on its own to derail the tax plan, the House Democrats' rebellion gives Obama another political headache just over a month after he took a beating in mid-term elections.

In a raucous, closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, mutinous Democrats chanted "Just say no!" as they vowed to overhaul Obama's plan to extend low tax rates for nearly all Americans, according to lawmakers in the room.

But in the Senate, the plan took a significant step forward as Democrats there unveiled legislation late in the day that reflected the terms laid out by the White House. A vote could come by Saturday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.

Obama's plan would keep lower rates in place for another two years, reduce the estate tax, and extend tax breaks and other benefits aimed at lower-income Americans.

Economists say it could boost the sluggish economy at a time when Congress has no appetite for spending-based stimulus efforts.

Democrats have argued that the revenue that would be lost by extending tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of U.S. households can be put to better use at a time when unemployment is close to 10 percent.

Tax bills will rise in January by an average of $3,000 per household if Congress does not act.

The administration is confident that the "major components" of the deal will survive the congressional maneuvering, White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage said.

After Democrats suffered substantial losses in the November midterm elections, Obama grudgingly accepted a rare compromise on taxes with the Republicans, who will take control of the House and wield greater clout in the Senate in January.

Obama now must now quell an insurrection from the liberal wing of his own party. Under the resolution approved by House Democrats, his plan would not even come up for a vote in that chamber.

The plan will cost at least $800 billion over 10 years, according to a congressional estimate by the Joint Tax Committee, deepening budget deficits that are already at their highest levels relative to the economy since World War Two.

Bond markets slumped this week on fears that the tax cuts would put too heavy a burden on the budget, but U.S. Treasuries prices rose on Thursday as investors reckoned the selloff was overdone.

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WikiLeaks backers threaten more cyber attacks

Internet activists vowed to crash sites that have blocked business with WikiLeaks and PayPal, and others saw sporadic outrages.

Attorney General Eric Holder said U.S. authorities were looking into cyber attacks on companies like Amazon.com and others. "We are aware of the incidents," he said.

The teenage boy was arrested by a high-tech crime unit in The Hague after admitting to attacks on the websites of two credit card companies, MasterCard and Visa, the prosecution in the Netherlands said on its website.

The suspect, whose details were not disclosed, was believed to be part of a larger group of hackers under investigation that participated in so-called denial of service attacks, the prosecution said. Data and computer equipment were confiscated during his arrest.

The loosely organized campaign to avenge WikiLeaks against those who have obstructed its operations, calling itself Operation Payback, has already temporarily brought down the websites of Visa and MasterCard, and of the Swedish government.

A succession of U.S. institutions has withdrawn services from WikiLeaks after the website published thousands of sometimes embarrassing secret U.S. diplomatic reports that have caused strains between Washington and several allies.

In Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange showed the West was hypocritical in its criticism of Russia's record on democracy.

When asked about leaked U.S. diplomatic cables that cast him as Russia's "alpha-dog" ruler of a corrupt bureaucracy, Putin questioned whether the U.S. Foreign Service was a "crystal clean source of information."

WikiLeaks activists instructed their followers on Thursday to mount a distributed denial of service attack on a PayPal website that manages the integration of the company's payment processing technology with independent online merchant websites. PayPal is a subsidiary of eBay.

A PayPal spokesman said the company had detected an attack on the site, http:/api.paypal.com, but that it appeared to be operational, although various attempts to access the website by Reuters on Thursday were unsuccessful.
Online retail and web-hosting powerhouse Amazon last week stopped hosting WikiLeaks' website, and on Thursday it briefly became the main target of the pro-WikiLeaks campaigners -- before they admitted it was too big for them, for the moment.

"We cannot attack Amazon, currently. The previous schedule was to do so, but we don't have enough forces," read one message on Twitter.The activists said they would instead attack PayPal, which has suspended the WikiLeaks account the organization had used to collect donations. MasterCard and Visa had also become targets after stopping processing donations.By early evening EST (1810 GMT), the main websites of PayPal, Amazon -- a key Christmas shopping destination -- MasterCard and Visa all appeared to be functioning normally.

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Obama tax plan causes headache for advisers

President Barack Obama's latest tax proposal has plenty of good news for the rich, but it also has financial advisers scrambling to adjust their year-end tax and estate plans.


On Monday, Obama proposed extending all Bush-era tax cuts for two years and maintaining the top dividend and capital gains tax rates at 15 percent. He also proposed implementing an estate tax of 35 percent with a $5 million exemption.


If the U.S. Congress does not act, the Bush tax cuts would expire and the estate tax would rise next year to 55 percent with a $1 million exemption.


The possibilities have advisers scratching their heads as to what to tell clients about their year-end tax plans.


William Fleming, a managing director in the personal finance division at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said he is scheduled to give a number of tax presentations over the next few weeks, and now it looks as though two-thirds of his slides will be irrelevant.


"We were going to talk about contingency planning and what we would do if tax rates went up. Now we might be able to throw all of that to the curb," said Fleming.


Advisers to the wealthy are pleased with this latest development, which would let clients retain more of their wealth. Still, the experience of riding the tax roller coaster over the past few years has left them hesitant to make any changes until Congress takes action.


This time last year, many advisers were convinced that Congress would act in time to prevent the elimination of the estate tax. That did not happen, and wealthy people who died this year paid no federal estate tax.


"I predicted to my clients that the estate tax would never be repealed this year, so you can see how good my crystal ball is," said Gerald Dunworth, an estate planning attorney at New York-based Gibney, Anthony & Flaherty.


This time, he is telling his clients to just wait and see.


The estate tax repeal has also caused plenty of headaches for advisers trying to draft estate plans despite uncertainty about whether a retroactive tax would be imposed and what the rate would be going forward.


It is not just 2010 that has been problematic for estate planning. The estate tax was phased out gradually from 2001 to 2010, with the rate decreasing and the exemption amount increasing each year.


This made planning a challenge for advisers unable to predict when a client would pass away and what the estate tax rate would be, said David Hamar, head of the tax group at Silvercrest Asset Management.

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Operation Payback cripples MasterCard site in revenge for WikiLeaks ban

The websites of the international credit card MasterCard and the Swedish prosecution authority are among the latest to be taken offline in the escalating technological battle over WikiLeaks, web censorship and perceived political pressure.


Co-ordinated attacks by online activists who support the site and its founder Julian Assange – who is in UK custody accused of raping two Swedish women – have seen the websites of the alleged victims' Swedish lawyer disabled, while commercial and political targets have also been subject to attack by a loose coalition of global hackers.


The Swedish prosecution authority has confirmed its website was attacked last night and this morning. MasterCard was partially paralysed today in revenge for the payment network's decision to cease taking donations to WikiLeaks.


In an attack referred to as Operation Payback, a group of online activists calling themselves Anonymous appear to have orchestrated a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack on the financial site, bringing its service to a halt.


Attempts to access www.mastercard.com have been unsuccessful since shortly after 9.30am.


The site would say only that it was "experiencing heavy traffic on its external corporate website" but insisted this would not interfere with its ability to process transactions.


But one payment service company told the BBC its customers were experiencing "a complete loss of service" on MasterCard SecureCode. The credit card company later confirmed that loss.


MasterCard announced on Monday that it would no longer process donations to WikiLeaks, which it claimed was engaged in illegal activity.


Visa, Amazon, Swiss bank PostFinance and others have also announced in recent days that they will cease trading with the whistleblowing site.


The moves have led to concerted attempts by hackers to target companies they deem guilty of "censoring" WikiLeaks.


Operation Payback, which has been targeting commercial sites that have cut their ties with WikiLeaks for some days, has also made threats to other organisations including Twitter, which it says is suppressing the site.


"We will fire at anything or anyone that tries to censor WikiLeaks, including multibillion-dollar companies such as PayPal," a statement circulating online, apparently from Operation Payback, said.


"Twitter, you're next for censoring #WikiLeaks discussion. The major shitstorm has begun," it added.


Twitter has issued a statement denying it has censored the hashtag, and saying confusion had arisen over its "trending" facility.


Meanwhile it has also emerged that Visa has today ordered DataCell, an IT firm that helps WikiLeaks collect payments, to suspend all of its transactions – even those involving other payees – a day after it cut off all the firm's donations being made to WikiLeaks.


DataCell, a small Icelandic company that facilitates transfers made by credit cards including Visa and MasterCard, says it will take up "immediate legal actions" and warned that the powerful "duopoly" of Visa and MasterCard could spell "the end of the credit card business worldwide".


Andreas Fink, chief executive of DataCell, said in a statement: "Putting all payments on hold for seven days or more is one thing but rejecting all further attempts to donate is making the donations impossible.


"This does clearly create massive financial losses to WikiLeaks, which seems to be the only purpose of this suspension.


"This is not about the brand of Visa; this is about politics, and Visa should not be involved in this.


"Visa customers are contacting us in masses to confirm that they really donate and they are not happy about Visa rejecting them. It is obvious that Visa is under political pressure to close us down."


Earlier, PayPal, which has also been the subject of technological attack since it suspended payments to WikiLeaks last week, appeared to admit that it had taken the step after an intervention from the US state department.


PayPal's vice-president of platform, Osama Bedier, told an internet conference the site had decided to freeze WikiLeaks' account on 4 December after government representatives said it was engaged in illegal activity.


"[The US] state department told us these were illegal activities. It was straightforward," he told the LeWeb conference in Paris, adding: "We ... comply with regulations around the world, making sure that we protect our brand."


Though he later reined back the comments, saying that PayPal had not been contacted directly by the state department but had seen a letter it had sent to WikiLeaks, his remarks will undoubtedly intensify criticism from supporters of WikiLeaks that the site is being targeted for political reasons.


Operation Payback, which refers to itself as "an anonymous, decentralised movement that fights against censorship and copywrong", and has been linked to the influential internet messageboard 4Chan, argues that such steps "are long strides closer to a world where we cannot say what we think and are unable to express our opinions and ideas".


It added: "We cannot let this happen. This is why our intention is to find out who is responsible for this failed attempt at censorship.


"This is why we intend to utilise our resources to raise awareness, attack those against and support those who are helping lead our world to freedom and democracy."


The MasterCard action was confirmed on Twitter at 9.39am by user @Anon_Operation, who later tweeted: "We are glad to tell you that http://www.mastercard.com/ is down and it's confirmed! #ddos #WikiLeaks Operation: Payback (is a bitch!) #PAYBACK"


PostFinance was successfully hacked on Monday after it shut down one of WikiLeaks' key bank accounts, accusing Assange of lying. Its service since has been seriously disrupted.


PayPal has also been targeted a number of times, but while its internal blog was paralysed for more than two hours, the payment processing facility has so far been able to withstand the attacks.


Other cyber attacks were mounted yesterday on EveryDNS.net, which suspended dealings on 3 December, while Amazon, which removed WikiLeaks content from its EC2 cloud on 1 December, may also be a possible target.


According to bloggers monitoring the cyber attacks, those involved in the protests have also been targeting the websites of US senator Joe Lieberman, who is an outspoken critic of WikiLeaks, and Sarah Palin, who said Assange should be treated like a terrorist.


Claes Bergstrom, the lawyer of the two women who claim Assange raped or assaulted them, confirmed his website was shut down overnight, as was the site of a lawyer representing Assange in Sweden. This was the first time such an attack had occurred, he said.


DDoS attacks, which often involve flooding the target site with requests so that it cannot cope with legitimate communication, are illegal.

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