Susan Powell's Father-in-Law Secretly Took 4,500 Pictures of Her

12/07/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

Wrapping up a year that has brought unimaginable frustration and heartbreak, Susan Powell's family marked the three-year anniversary of her disappearance at a ceremony this week near where her two sons are buried.

"It's a hard time of year," Susan's father, Chuck Cox, tells PEOPLE. "Our daughter's still missing. Someday, we will find out what happened to her."

He added that he is not sure what to make of a West Valley City, Utah, police announcement Thursday that their investigation into Susan's Dec. 6, 2009 disappearance remains active but "has been scaled down," with a reduction in the number of full-time investigators working the case.

The announcement came at the same time that more evidence emerged of the alleged obsession Susan's father-in-law, Steven Powell, had toward her. Authorities released nearly 4,500 pictures that they say he secretly took of her at home and elsewhere.

Cox says he's hopeful that the police are still doing everything possible to solve Susan's case, but he hasn't ruled out suing the department for failing to arrest Susan's husband, Josh Powell, for her murder.

More than two years after Susan's disappearance, Josh on Feb. 5 murdered the couple's two sons and committed suicide by blowing up his house.

Cox's lawyer, Anne Bremner, says Cox "goes back and forth" over whether to sue West Valley City. "He wants them to find her. A lawsuit can have a chilling affect on things."

Cox and Bremner say they do plan to file a lawsuit against the state of Washington for continuing to give Josh visitation with his children despite what they claim were mounting concerns regarding his mental stability.

Although Cox and the police believe that Josh Powell knew more than anyone what happened to Susan, they also strongly suspect that his father, Steven Powell, should still be looked at more closely.

Steven Powell

Ted S. Warren / AP

The Coxes hoped Steve Powell's voyeurism trial in May would unearth some answers but it did not. Powell invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked in jail about Susan.

In numerous interviews with PEOPLE, Steve and Josh Powell denied any involvement in Susan's disappearance and have suggested that she ran off with another man.

Steve Powell was prosecuted for surreptitiously photographing his neighbor's young daughters (and is serving a 30-month sentence), but the investigation also unearthed journals in which Powell described his interest in his daughter-in-law, as well as the thousands of photos, which were released Thursday to the Associated Press.

In a journal entry, Steven Powell recalls a sexually charged dream in which Susan asks him, “Do you think I would make a good wife for you?” None of the pictures show Susan naked, although there are images of her crotch and backside.

"We think he knows exactly where our daughter is," Cox says.

Once Susan disappeared, Josh sold the family's home in Utah and moved with the boys into Steven Powell's house in Puyallup, Wash., only about two miles from the Cox family.

On Thursday, families streamed to Puyallup’s Woodbine Cemetery to remember the Powell boys and other children who died tragically and to dedicate a memorial: a bronze angel inspired by the novella The Christmas Box, in which strangers learn the value of love following a child’s death.

The novella's author, Richard Paul Evans, also attended the dedication. The memorial is on a hill overlooking the boys' gravesites 75 yards away.

"We get a lot of support from a lot of people and we're going to make it through," Cox says.

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Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Operators at 311 are accustomed to oddball calls

Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.

Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.

"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.

It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.

"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.

And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.

"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."

But what does that mean, really?

Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:

One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.

Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."

Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.

A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.

There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.

Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.

When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.

Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.

Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)

On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:

"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"

Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.

Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.

Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.

Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.

Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.

As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.

nita.lelyveld@latimes.com

Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.

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India Ink: Vijay Malhotra, Indian Olympic Association Official Who Defies International Rules, Optimistic

NEW DELHI – India’s Olympic Association defied the International Olympic Committee this week and held elections whose results officials in Switzerland said were not valid and would be ignored.

But while international officials remained adamant Thursday that India needed to undertake fundamental reforms before being allowed back into the Olympic fold, officials in India said that the entire controversy was the result of a misunderstanding that could be cleared up with a chat.

On Tuesday, the International Olympic Committee suspended India from participating in the Olympic movement because India’s Olympic leaders are too old, too long-serving and too tainted. The suspension has been widely seen as an enormous embarrassment to the world’s second most populous nation.

Vijay Kumar Malhotra, who was the acting president of the Indian Olympic Association until Wednesday and was in charge when relations with officials in Switzerland reached the breaking point, said in an interview Thursday that India’s Olympic leaders planned to gather Friday to put together an easy-to-understand explanation to mollify the international committee.

“So we will go to the I.O.C. and explain the situation,” Mr. Malhotra said, referring to the international committee. “We will ask them to withdraw the suspension.”

International rules forbid Olympic leaders from serving beyond the age of 70 or for longer than eight years. Mr. Malhotra, 81, is one of many sports leaders in India who defies both restrictions and plans to continue doing so.

“In the archery association where I am the president, we did not follow the government code and we told them that if you do not recognize us, do so, we are not worried,” he said. “I am above 70 and I became the president and have been since 1975.” (The archery association was “de-recognized” by India’s Ministry of Sports on Friday, because of Mr. Malhotra’s age).

In an e-mail sent Thursday, Pere Miro, a spokesman for the International Olympic Committee, said that the Indian association “is not entitled to hold any elections without express prior approval of the I.O.C. We therefore do not recognize any elections the body may have held since being suspended as they are null and void.”

“This issue has been ongoing for more than two years and the I.O.C.’s position has been expressed to all parties concerned on numerous occasions,” Mr. Miro wrote.

In response, the Indian Olympic Committee released a press statement Thursday night defending its election.

“The general body also discussed the International Olympic Council’s [sic] statement that the elections were null and void and wish to clarify that the polls took place with a well laid-out procedure and there is nothing to believe otherwise,” the group stated.

Boria Majumdar, a history professor at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said the government should remove the leaders of the Indian Olympic Association.

“They had the last two years to get their house in order and to prevent national shame,” Mr. Majumdar said. “But none of them have been willing to put the national interests over their own self interests.”

On Wednesday, the Indian Olympic Association elected Lalit Bhanot as its secretary general even though Mr. Bhanot is currently on bail and facing corruption charges related to his role in the scandal-plagued 2010 Commonwealth Games.

Mr. Bhanot became internationally famous for explaining the poor sanitation standards in the Commonwealth Games’ athletes’ village as the result of differing standards of cleanliness between India and the Western world.

Abhay Singh Chautala, the newly elected president of the Indian Olympic Association, will meet Friday with Jitendra Singh, the Indian government’s sports minister, to discuss his group’s suspension, according to a press statement. Jitendra Singh has publicly criticized the Indian Olympic Association for failing to follow international guidelines. He also offered to broker a compromise between the Indian association and the international committee.

Top sporting positions in India provide prestige, international travel benefits and some control over sports jobs, and Indian officials have been loathe to surrender those privileges. Their oversight of India’s sports scene has failed to deliver much glory to the country. The 2012 Olympics were its most successful ever, but India won only six medals and failed to win a single gold. In its entire history, India has won 26 medals; the American swimmer Michael Phelps alone has won 22 medals.

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WiLan sues Apple, HTC, Sierra Wireless

(Reuters) – Canadian patent licensing company WiLan Inc filed patent lawsuits against Apple Inc, HTC Corp and Sierra Wireless Inc‘s U.S. unit.

The company filed three suits claiming infringement of its fourth-generation LTE wireless technologies against all three companies in a federal court in Florida.

The other two suits, related to 3G HSPA handset products, were filed against Apple and Sierra in Texas.

(Reporting By Neha Dimri in Bangalore)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The X Factor Reveals Its Four Semi-Finalists

TV Watch

The X Factor

By Aaron Parsley

12/06/2012 at 09:20 PM EST

There were tears on The X Factor Thursday night.

With only four spots in next week's semi-finals, the six acts who performed two songs each Wednesday night were a tense bunch. Especially after last week's shocking elimination that sent home fan favorite Vino Alan.

A majority of PEOPLE.com readers picked Demi Lovato's only remaining contestant, CeCe Frey, as the singer who most deserved elimination. Was she able to make it through one more week? Keep reading for all the results ...

CeCe Frey was the first to go.

"I'm proud of everything that I've done on this show," she said. "I hope I've taught everyone at home that you need to love who you are, because the more you love who you are, the less you're going to need anybody else to."

Her coach tried to avoid tears but shed a few anyway. "I've grown so close to you," Demi said. "And I'm just so proud of you."

Three acts were then declare safe: Simon Cowell's boy band, Emblem3; Britney Spears's frontrunner, Carly Rose Sonenclar; and L.A. Reid's country singer, Tate Stevens, also a frontrunner.

That left Team Britney's Diamond White and Simon's other group, Fifth Harmony, to sing for survival.

Fifth Harmony sang Mariah Carey's "Anytime You Need a Friend," and Diamond sang Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance."

As expected, Simon and Britney voted to send home each other's acts. But it was the end of the road for Diamond, after L.A. and Demi both voted to send her home as well.

"I'm just thinking of Cher Lloyd right now," she said of the "Want U Back" singer. "She came in fifth and look where she is."

Here's how the top four ranked:
1. Tate Stevens
2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
3. Emblem3
4. Fifth Harmony

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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L.A. literary stalwart selected as city's first poet laureate

Before sitting down for tea in Echo Park, the poet reaches for her iPhone.

"I have to turn this thing off," she explains, silencing the ringer. "It's getting too noisy these days."

As a publisher, educator and author of seven books of poems, Eloise Klein Healy is a stalwart of the Los Angeles literary scene. Her phone has been buzzing more than usual in recent weeks as she prepares to take on a new title. On Friday, Healy will be named L.A.'s first poet laureate.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided earlier this year that his city, like others, should have a namesake poet. The mayor, who chose Healy from a pool of three finalists recommended by a selection panel, said he was moved by the grace of her writing and by her "belief in the power of poetry, and her commitment to sharing this power far and wide."

Healy spent her formative years in Iowa and still maintains an air of Midwestern modesty. She says she doubts the quality of her poems won her the laureate honor.

She guesses it had more to do with her long involvement in the arts community, especially the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and her subject matter: Los Angeles looms large in her work.

She writes lovingly of helicopters and bougainvillea, of strip malls and Santa Anas. Car thefts and stabbings are part of the backdrop. Freeways wind freely through her verse.

In a poem called "Los Angeles," Healy describes the city as an older sister who was less pretty and less charming than her younger sibling. "There was something about your proportions / that was indelicate — your more abundant waist," she tells the city.

But in the final verse, a person enters and loves Los Angeles anyway:

Nobody expected it

and you never told about

the lover who met you

loose and large

in the late afternoon

and loved you all night,

completely out of proportion.

Healy says she writes about Los Angeles to understand "the influence of place on people."

It's a technique she employs often. Once, while working on a book of poems about Sappho, the classical lyric poet, Healy traveled to the poet's birthplace on the island of Lesbos in Greece. "I wanted to walk on a beach where she could have walked," Healy said. "I wanted to look at that horizon."

Healy is 69, but she seems much younger. She is trim, with olive skin and snow-white hair. For years, she lived down the street from the small Sunset Boulevard cafe where she sipped tea one morning this week. She chronicled her time in the neighborhood in a book called "Artemis in Echo Park."

Since 1988, she has lived in Sherman Oaks with her partner, Colleen Rooney.

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Tanks Deployed in Cairo After Night of Deadly Clashes

Asmaa Waguih/Reuters

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood walked past tanks outside the Egyptian presidential palace in Cairo on Thursday. More Photos »

CAIRO — An elite Egyptian unit deployed tanks outside the presidential palace on Thursday after a night of battles between Islamists and secular protesters that left five people dead and 450 wounded, spreading chaos in one of Cairo’s wealthiest suburbs and leaving streets littered with debris and burned-out cars.

Angry mobs of Islamists battled the secular protesters with fists, rocks and firebombs in the first major outbreak of violence between political factions here since the revolt against then-President Hosni Mubarak began nearly two years ago.

With at least 12 tanks drawn up near the palace, troops from the presidential guard hammered stakes into the ground to string barbed wire to separate Islamists camping outside the palace and secular protesters chanting slogans urging the guardsmen to choose “between the revolutionaries and the killers.”

The severity of the clashes — and their potential political impact — became apparent when three senior advisers to Mr. Mubarak’s successor, Mohamed Morsi, Egypt’s first freely elected president, resigned during the clashes Wednesday, blaming him for the bloodshed. Mr. Morsi’s prime minister implored both sides to pull back in order to make room for “dialogue.”

Graffiti on the walls of the presidential compound, mocking President Morsi, had been covered by Thursday morning with patches of white paint.The scale of the fighting, in the affluent Heliopolis neighborhood just outside Mr. Morsi’s office in the presidential palace, raised the first doubts about Mr. Morsi’s attempt to hold a referendum on Dec. 15 to approve a draft constitution approved by his Islamist allies over the objections of his secular opposition and the Coptic Christian Church.

Periodic gunshots could be heard at the front lines of the fight, and secular protesters displayed birdshot wounds and pellets. But it could not be determined whether the riot police or Islamists or the opposition had fired the guns.

Many in both camps brandished makeshift clubs, and on the secular side a few carried knives. Thousands joined the battle on each side. The riot police initially tried to fight off or break up the crowds with tear gas, but by mid-evening on Wednesday, the security forces had all but withdrawn. They continued to try to separate the two sides across one boulevard but stayed out of the battle that raged on all around.

In a city square on the Islamist side of the battle lines, a loudspeaker on the top of a moving car blared out exhortations that the fight was about more than politics or Mr. Morsi.

“This is not a fight for an individual, this is not a fight for President Morsi,” the speaker declared. “We are fighting for God’s law, against the secularists and liberals.”

Protesters reportedly set fire to Muslim Brotherhood political offices in the cities of Suez and Ismailia.

Even after two years of periodic battles between protesters and police, Egyptians said they were shocked and alarmed by the spectacle of fellow citizens drawing blood over matters of ideology or political power.

“It is Egyptian fighting Egyptian,” said Mohamed Abu Shukka, 23, who was blocked from entering his apartment building and shaking his head.

Distrust and animosity between Islamists and their secular opponents have mired the outcome of Egypt’s promised transition to democracy in debates about the legitimacy of the new government and its new leaders’ commitment to the rule of law.

The clashes followed two weeks of sporadic violence around the country since Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, seized temporary powers beyond the review of any court, removing the last check on his authority until ratification of the new constitution.

Mr. Morsi has said he needed the expanded powers to block a conspiracy by corrupt businessmen, Mubarak-appointed judges and opposition leaders to thwart Egypt’s transition to a constitutional democracy. Some opponents, Mr. Morsi’s advisers say, would sacrifice democracy to stop the Islamists from winning elections.

Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Guatemala detains McAfee, to expel him to Belize

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan police arrested U.S. software guru John McAfee on Wednesday for illegally entering the country and said it would seek to expel him to neighboring Belize, which he fled after being sought for questioning over his neighbor’s murder.

McAfee, who had been in hiding for three weeks, crossed into Guatemala with his 20-year-old girlfriend to evade authorities in Belize who wanted to quiz him as “a person of interest” about the killing of fellow American Gregory Faull.

“He entered the country illegally and we are going to seek his expulsion for this crime,” Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez Bonilla said. McAfee was detained by Guatemalan police and a member of Interpol at the upscale Intercontinental hotel in Guatemala City.

One of Silicon Valley’s first entrepreneurs to build an Internet fortune, the 67-year-old made millions of dollars through the antivirus software that now carries his name.

McAfee’s behavior has been increasingly erratic in recent years but there is no international arrest warrant for him. Police in Belize say he is not a prime suspect.

Government spokesman Francisco Cuevas said the entrepreneur would be expelled to Belize and he expected the process to be completed by early Thursday morning.

Fernando Lucero, spokesman for Guatemala’s immigration department, saidimmediate deportation had been ruled out. McAfee’s lawyer Telesforo Guerra was seeking an injunction to have him released and the American said on his blog www.whoismcafee.com that he would not now be returned to the Belize border until a higher judge reviewed the case.

McAfee was taken to a residence belonging to the immigration department guarded by a small group of police.

He had been seeking political asylum in Guatemala, which has been embroiled in a long-running territorial dispute with Belize. .

Residents and neighbors on the Caribbean island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived in Belize for about four years, say he is eccentric, impulsive, volatile and at times unstable, citing his love of guns and young women.

McAfee has said he believes authorities in Belize will kill him if he turns himself in for questioning. Belize’s prime minister has denied this and called him paranoid and “bonkers.”

“It’s a wild, wild country,” McAfee told Reuters in an interview in his hotel room just hours before his detention.

“Everyone sees one part of Belize,” he said. “They think it’s a wonderful, peaceful, lovely place, blue waters, so McAfee has got to be crazy. Maybe I am crazy. If I were, I wouldn’t know.”

In Belize, he was often seen with armed bodyguards dressed in camouflage, pistols tucked into his belt. McAfee’s slain neighbor had complained about the loud barking of dogs that guarded his exclusive beachside compound.

His run-in with authorities in Belize is a world away from a successful life in the United States, where the former Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in the late 1980s. McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.

NO REGRETS

There was already a case against McAfee in Belize for possession of illegal firearms, and police had previously raided his property on suspicion he was running a lab to make illegal synthetic narcotics.

He says he has not taken drugs since 1983.

“(Before then) I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day, I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet,” McAfee said. “Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it.”

But he has no regrets about the path his life has taken, or the loss of the lion’s share of his fortune over the years and says he is happier now that he cares less for material things.

“My life has not declined,” he said. “My life has been on the increase ever since I decided that stuff – houses, money – doesn’t mean much. I had more money than I could spend in million lifetimes. Why would I care?”

McAfee says he has been persecuted by Belize’s ruling party because he wouldn’t pay out some $ 2 million to it.

“The misunderstanding of the severity of their request for money was my big mistake,” McAfee said. “Had I known that, I would maybe have said $ 2 million is way too much. Let’s negotiate something, just don’t rape me for the next seven months. Writing a check would have been a lot easier.”

The party has denied soliciting money from him.

McAfee has been living in the tiny Central American nation for about four years, and wants to return to live there eventually. But he says he is being framed, and denies any involvement in his neighbor’s killing.

“We had one disagreement about a dog. I had disagreements with all my neighbors about my dogs. I had a disagreement with myself about my dogs. They were noisy,” he said.

“Why would I leave behind the body and all the evidence?” he asked. “I’m not stupid.”

(Additional reporting by Gabriel Stargardter; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Philip Barbara, Lisa Shumaker and Patrick Graham)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift Collect Grammy Nominations

12/06/2012 at 01:00 AM EST

How FUN!

The Grammys handed out their nominations Wednesday night at a concert in Nashville and there was a decidedly youthful feel: Taylor Swift earned a nod for record of the year and the band FUN joined Frank Ocean with the trifecta of album and record of the year and best new artist.

In the country categories, Blake Shelton is up against Carrie Underwood for best solo performance and Miranda Lambert was nominated for best album.

Here are some of the major nominations. For a complete list go to Grammy.com:

Album of the Year:
El Camino – The Black Keys
Some Nights– FUN.
Babel – Mumford & Sons
Channel Orange – Frank Ocean
Blunderbuss – Jack White

Record of the Year:
Lonely Boy – The Black Keys
Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You) – Kelly Clarkson
We Are Young – FUN. featuring Janelle Monáe
Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye Featuring Kimbra
Thinkin Bout You – Frank Ocean
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together – Taylor Swift

Best New Artist:
Alabama Shakes
FUN
Hunter Hayes
The Lumineers
Frank Ocean

Song Of The Year:
"The A Team" – Ed Sheeran, songwriter (Ed Sheeran)
"Adorn" – Miguel Pimentel, songwriter (Miguel)
"Call Me Maybe" – Tavish Crowe, Carly Rae Jepsen & Josh Ramsay, songwriters (Carly Rae Jepsen)
"Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)" – Jörgen Elofsson, David Gamson, Greg Kurstin & Ali Tamposi, songwriters (Kelly Clarkson)
"We Are Young" – Jack Antonoff, Jeff Bhasker, Andrew Dost & Nate Ruess, songwriters (FUN. featuring Janelle Monáe)

Best Country Solo Performance:
"Home" – Dierks Bentley
"Springsteen" – Eric Church
"Cost Of Livin'" – Ronnie Dunn
"Wanted" – Hunter Hayes
"Over" – Blake Shelton
"Blown Away" – Carrie Underwood

Best Country Album:
Uncaged – Zac Brown Band
Hunter Hayes – Hunter Hayes
Living For A Song: A Tribute To Hank Cochran – Jamey Johnson
Four The Record– Miranda Lambert
The Time Jumpers – The Time Jumpers

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Republican Kevin James makes an outsider run for L.A. mayor

A fundraiser put on by heavyweights in Los Angeles' liberal-leaning environmental community should have been a tough crowd for Kevin James.

But James, affable, polite and the only Republican candidate in a Los Angeles mayor's race dominated by City Hall Democrats, had no trouble chatting up guests as he made his way around the crowded event for the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters.

Richard Mueller, an executive with a multinational manufacturer, and Dave Alba, his business partner, seemed happy to corner him. The men spent several minutes outlining a massive freight automation project they are hoping to bring to San Pedro — a tough sell in labor-friendly L.A. They were at the party hoping to line up support for the project.

James listened intently, asked questions and took cards from both men before moving on. Afterward, Mueller declared himself impressed. James' candidacy gives the business community hope that private-sector interests will be given real attention in the mayoral race, he said.

"In this city, you have to work both sides — business and labor," Mueller said. "He'd be a win-win."

James, 49, an Oklahoma native with a sharp legal mind, has emerged as the dark horse in a field made up of career politicians. Although the lawyer and talk-show host has never spent a day in the rough and tumble of public office, he says he'll curtail what he characterizes as the cronyism and scandal that dogs City Hall, cut red tape for businesses, foster jobs and demand reductions in public worker pensions to bring stability to the city's chronically underfunded budget.

And he can do that, James insists, because he's the only outsider of the major candidates who will appear on the March primary ballot. The others are Controller Wendy Greuel, previously a city councilwoman, and council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry.

If elected, James would make history as the first gay mayor of Los Angeles. He's never tried to hide his homosexuality, he says, but he also does not make an issue of it. He's now a well-regarded litigator in private practice, a former radio talk show host and a longtime activist with AIDS Project Los Angeles who served for a time as its chairman.

In debates and at events, James displays a commanding grasp of city issues. And he seems to be everywhere, shaking hands wherever there might be potential supporters. The GOP establishment has taken note.

Former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has endorsed James, and a "super PAC" made up of well-connected GOP donors recently formed to independently support his campaign without having to comply with the city's contribution limits. Those moves, political analysts say, have given his run a new legitimacy.

"In the past couple of months he's gone from being an afterthought to a long shot to a plausible outsider candidate," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist and professor at USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.

Friends call him hard-working and passionate about what he thinks should be done to return L.A. to economic vibrancy. Todd Eagan, an attorney who's worked with James for years at Lavely and Singer, an entertainment law firm, said James was the firm's go-to guy when facing a tough legal issue.

"Kevin is the person who can cut through to the main issues and solve the problem," Eagan said. "He has a tremendous grasp of the details of any situation."

Another longtime friend, Steve Reymer, said James has a big heart for animals, adopting a rescue Dachshund, Lisa Marie.

Raised in Norman, Okla., James received an accounting degree from the University of Oklahoma and later moved to Houston to earn a law degree. In college, he registered as a Republican. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1988, he interned at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, one of the city's premiere law firms. He also worked for three years as an assistant federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, handling criminal cases involving drugs, money-laundering and insurance fraud before returning to private practice.

James said that as he became involved in AIDS Project Los Angeles — serving six years on its volunteer board and still serving as an honorary ambassador — he switched his party registration to Democratic because he thought the GOP was too slow to respond to the AIDS health crisis. In later years, as he began to focus more on economic rather than social issues, he said, he again switched his voter registration to decline-to-state.

Craig E. Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, called him an "effective and well-spoken" board member during his tenure. In board meetings, even when voicing a dissenting point of view, he was always calm and reasonable, Thompson said.

AIDS Project Los Angeles often used James as its official spokesman during those years because he was personable and articulate, Thompson said.

James began filling in as a host on KABC-AM talk radio (790) in 2003 and moved to Oklahoma City the following year to host a morning drive-time show.

In early 2005, he returned to his Laurel Canyon home and registered a third time, back to Republican. The move was prompted by his growing concerns about the economy and his feeling that if he delved more deeply into politics, the GOP would benefit from having more openly gay members in its ranks.

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Port-Au-Prince Journal: Campaign in Haiti to Close Orphanages

Ben Depp for The New York Times

An orphanage north of Port-au-Prince that is part of Mission of Hope Haiti.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Orphanages packed with little ones dot the landscape here, some with brightly colored signs outside their gates, others unmarked on back roads. But many of the children are not actually orphans, and a campaign is under way to close as many of the institutions as possible for good.

In the courtyard of one, Chris Savini, a missionary from Illinois, rocked a 10-month-old boy to sleep. The infant’s mother had died, and his father, Luxe Étienne, overwhelmed with eight children, turned over six of them to orphanages.

“He knew it was his son’s best shot,” said Mr. Savini, who arranged with the father for an American couple to adopt the baby from Mission Une Seule Famille en Jésus Christ, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince.

Such arrangements have long been commonplace here. After the earthquake in 2010, it became clear that most children in the hundreds of orphanages in Haiti have living parents, as 10 Americans were jailed for taking custody of 33 children they said they believed to be orphans and trying to cross into the Dominican Republic with them. All the children were subsequently found to have parents living in Haiti.

Since then, a consensus has developed among government officials, children’s advocates, religious leaders and others that a new approach is required, starting with a reduction in the number of orphanages. But the transition is not easy, and some question whether the country is ready for it.

Of the roughly 30,000 children in Haitian institutions and the hundreds adopted by foreigners each year, the Haitian government estimates that 80 percent have at least one living parent.

The decision by Haitian parents to turn their children over to orphanages is motivated by dire poverty. Also, large families are common, and many parents unable to afford school fees believe that orphanages at least offer basic schooling and food.

On a recent visit to the orphanage caring for three of his children, Mr. Étienne said he struggled to make a living as a contractor and could barely support his two children who remained at home. Their private school fees, the equivalent of $237 per year, add to his burden.

“If I had enough income, I would have taken them back home,” he said, holding his cooing son.

Under rules put in place last month to comply with the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoptions, the Haitian government intends to play a larger role in regulating adoptions. In cases involving children who are not orphans, the government intends to meet with the birth parents at the beginning of the process to obtain their consent and offer assistance like job training if they want their children to stay with them.

“We don’t want poverty to be the only motivation,” said Arielle Jeanty Villedrouin, who took charge of Haiti’s child welfare services last year. “For many cases in the past, that was the only motivation.”

To reduce the number of orphanages, the government has also begun inspecting institutions here in the capital and in the far-flung provinces and trying to close those in the worst shape and reunite as many children as possible with their families. A vast majority of the orphanages are unauthorized, and only 112 are accredited. Before this year, the government did not even have a count of the institutions.

Mission Une Seule Famille en Jésus Christ, where Mr. Étienne’s son awaits adoption, opened in 2005, but its director, Joseph Kesnel, said he picked up an application for accreditation only in October. Inspectors had not yet visited the orphanage, but there were troubling signs, including children complaining of not having enough to eat, a smell of urine and a baby without a diaper in the dirt courtyard.

With a team of 160 inspectors, financed in part by Unicef, the government has reviewed 725 orphanages and has found 72 to be of such poor quality that they should close. But actually shuttering them is another matter. Since September 2011, only 26 have been closed.

When one orphanage, Soeurs Rédemptrices de Nazareth, in the hills outside Port-au-Prince, was closed in June, 3 of the 64 children had to be hospitalized because of malnourishment, officials said, and others showed signs of rat bites and scabies. The director, Sister Dona Bélizaire, has been jailed on suspicion of child trafficking. Her backers have started an Internet campaign asserting that she is being held without cause.

The closings, though, have halted, because there are so few authorized orphanages that can take in children while the government tracks down their families, said Mrs. Villedrouin, the child welfare official.

Emily Brennan reported with the help of a grant from the International Reporting Project.

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Facebook just realized it made a horrible mistake

Facebook (FB) announced on Tuesday that it will begin opening Facebook Messenger to consumers who do not have a Facebook account, starting in countries like India and South Africa, and later rolling out the service in the United States and Europe. This is a belated acknowledgement of a staggering strategic mistake Facebook made two years ago. That is when the messaging app competition was still wide open and giants like Facebook or Google (GOOG) could have entered the competition. WhatsApp, the leading messaging app firm, had just 1 million users as late as December 2009. By the end of 2010, that number had grown to 10 million. Right now, it likely tops 200 million, though there is no current official number on the matter.

SMS usage started peaking in countries like Netherlands in 2010. Companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google were being offered a giant new market on a silver platter with more than 3 billion consumers worldwide use texting on their phones and many of them started drifting away from basic SMS towards IP-based alternatives a few years ago. None of the behemoths saw or understood the opportunity.

They allowed the mobile messaging market to turn into a free-for-all between tiny start-ups like KakaoTalk, Kik, Viber, WhatsApp, etc. And with astonishing speed, the global market picked a winner and rallied around it. Back in early 2011, there was serious debate about the relative merits of different messaging apps and which one might ultimately edge ahead.

In December 2012, the competitive landscape is stark. Kik is not a Top 5 app in any country in the world. Viber is a Top 5 app in 21 countries, but they are countries like Barbados, Nepal and Tajikistan. WhatsApp is a Top 5 app in 141 countries, including the U.S,, U.K., Germany, Brazil and India. The only real weakness of WhatsApp lies in China, Japan and South Korea, where local champions still lead. But those local apps have zero chance of breaking out of their home markets.

The mobile messaging app competition is over. It turned into a red rout sometime during late 2011 and WhatsApp has emerged as the sole beneficiary of a textbook case of the network effect.

Facebook, Google and Twitter threw away their golden chance to create an SMS killer and grab hold of a billion users globally. It would have been so easy and cheap to develop a simple texting app in 2009, leverage the current user base of any of the IT giants and then watch the app soar to global prominence.

And it is so very, very hard to do now. Dislodging WhatsApp now would mean neutralizing a smartphone market penetration advantage that is hitting 80% in some markets. People often ask me why I’m so fixated on WhatsApp and the answer is simple: it’s the most popular and important mobile app in the world. And it beat Facebook, Twitter, Google and other major companies before they even realized there was an important war being waged.

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Voice Reveals Top Four Contestants

TV Watch

By Julia Haskins

12/04/2012 at 09:35 PM EST

The Voice"'s top six contestants were under double pressure Monday night when they had to sing two songs each. But there was even more stress at Tuesday's elimination.

"It went as well as it could have gone," Team Blake's Terry McDermott said on Monday of his performances of "I Want to Know What Love Is" and Rod Stewart's "Stay with Me." "There was a lot of pressure stripping a song down, but it worked to my advantage."

"I felt good," said Team Cee Lo's Trevin Hunte, who performed "Walking on Sunshine" and Jennifer Hudson's "And I Am Telling You (I'm Not Going)." "I'm confident. I feel like I've really grown. I'm definitely happy with my performance. I just want to see how America votes."

His chance came Tuesday when he and McDermott stood alongside competitors Nicholas David (Team Cee Lo), Cassadee Pope (Team Blake), Melanie Martinez and Amanda Brown (both Team Adam) to hear host Carson Daly reveal the voting results. Keep reading to find out ...

America saved McDermott, Hunte and Pope, but Martinez said goodbye to the competition for good. "I love all of you who have supported me," she said to her fans. "I'm just so grateful for you."

Brown also met the same fate, making David the final member of the top four.

The semi-final show airs Monday at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.

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Study: Drug coverage to vary under health law

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new study says basic prescription drug coverage could vary dramatically from state to state under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

That's because states get to set benefits for private health plans that will be offered starting in 2014 through new insurance exchanges.

The study out Tuesday from the market analysis firm Avalere Health found that some states will require coverage of virtually all FDA-approved drugs, while others will only require coverage of about half of medications.

Consumers will still have access to essential medications, but some may not have as much choice.

Connecticut, Virginia and Arizona will be among the states with the most generous coverage, while California, Minnesota and North Carolina will be among states with the most limited.

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Online:

Avalere Health: http://tinyurl.com/d3b3hfv

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Deal brings end to L.A., Long Beach ports strike

Clerical workers at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach will return to work Wednesday, ending a strike that crippled America's busiest shipping hub for more than a week.

Leaders of the 800-member International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 Office Clerical Unit agreed to a tentative deal after marathon negotiations that ended late Tuesday. The deal will not become final until it is ratified by the full union membership.

It ends a grueling battle between both sides that threatened to damage the fragile U.S. economy. Since the strike began, 20 ships diverted to rival ports in Oakland, Ensenada and Panama, while other freighters docked offshore waiting for a resolution.

"This was at a critical juncture," said Jack O'Connell, an international trade economist. "The national economy is still trying to get on its feet and this strike would have been decidedly unhelpful. There are enough head winds out there already."

The deal came after Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called in two federal mediators Tuesday morning to try and break the impasse. That pushed the unions into a quicker deal, fearing a loss of influence and negotiating power once the mediators took over.

For Villaraigosa, a former union leader before going into politics, the tentative agreement was seen as a victory. "Mission accomplished. This has been a long eight days, but it's a great day for everybody now that a deal has been reached," Villaraigosa said in announcing a deal.

The strike began Nov. 27 as the clerical workers' union voiced frustration about shipping line employers outsourcing jobs, an accusation the Harbor Employers Assn. has denied.

Though the union is small, it was backed by the 10,000 regional members of the ILWU, which honored the picket line and refused to work. By the end, the strike shut down 10 of the 14 cargo container terminals at the nation's busiest seaport complex.

The port employers had been pushing for mediation since last week. Clerical workers agreed only after Villaraigosa intervened.

Both union and harbor employers spent most of Tuesday huddled inside a community center near the port.

The mediators joined Villaraigosa there at about 8:30 p.m. as negotiators for the union were voting behind closed doors.

"When unions are weak, they badly want mediators, and when they are strong, they sometimes don't," said Nelson Lichtenstein, who directs the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at UC Santa Barbara. "This was a sign that the union felt it was dealing from a position of strength."

The dispute wasn't about wages or benefits. It centered on the claim by the union that employers have steadily outsourced jobs through attrition.

The union says the employers have transferred work from higher-paid union members to lower-paid employees in other states and countries.

"Tonight is the end of a very long journey," said Steve Berry, lead negotiator for the Los Angeles and Long Beach Harbor Employers Assn.

Berry said there will be "no outsourcing under this contract."

Berry said the package included unspecified wage and pension increases. He also said there was added job security to the deal, that included a "no layoff" clause that would go into effect once ratified.

The contract will last for six years, and is retroactive to June 30, 2010. It will be set to expire on June 30, 2016.

Few other details of the agreement were revealed by either side or the mayor.

However, during the last few days, salary has been one major bargaining point.

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Pakistan’s Hazara Shiites Under Siege

Declan Walsh/The New York Times

Many members of the Hazara Shiite community killed by Sunni extremists are buried in a graveyard in Quetta, Pakistan.

QUETTA, Pakistan — Calligraphers linger at the gates of an ancient graveyard in this brooding city in western Pakistan, charged with a macabre and increasingly in-demand task: inscribing the tombstones of the latest victims of the sectarian death squads that openly roam these streets.

For at least a year now, Sunni extremist gunmen have been methodically attacking members of the Hazara community, a Persian-speaking Shiite minority that emigrated here from Afghanistan more than a century ago. The killers strike with chilling abandon, apparently fearless of the law: shop owners are gunned down at their counters, students as they play cricket, pilgrims dragged from buses and executed on the roadside.

The latest victim, a mechanic named Hussain Ali, was killed Wednesday, shot inside his workshop. He joined the list of more than 100 Hazaras who have been killed this year, many in broad daylight. As often as not, the gunmen do not even bother to cover their faces.

The bloodshed is part of a wider surge in sectarian violence across Pakistan in which at least 375 Shiites have died this year — the worst toll since the 1990s, human rights workers say. But as their graveyard fills, Hazaras say the mystery lies not in the identity of their attackers, who are well known, but in a simpler question: why the Pakistani state cannot — or will not — protect them.

“After every killing, there are no arrests,” said Muzaffar Ali Changezi, a retired Hazara engineer. “So if the government is not supporting these killers, it must be at least protecting them. That’s the only way to explain how they operate so openly.”

The government, already battling Taliban insurgents, insists it is taking the threat seriously. During the recent Mourning of Muhurram, when Shiites parade through the streets over 10 days, the Interior Ministry imposed stringent security measures such as blocking cellphone signals for up to 12 hours — to try to prevent remote bomb detonations — and banning doubled-up motorcycle riding. Even so, Sunni bombers struck at least five times, killing at least 50 Shiites and wounding several hundred. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the biggest attacks, highlighting an emerging link between that group and traditional sectarian militants that has worried many.

Yet the unchecked killings have also raised wider questions about Pakistani society: about the spread of a cancerous sectarian ideology in a public that even just a decade ago seemed more tolerant, and about what might be spurring the growing audacity of the killers, some of whom are believed to have links to the country’s security services.

The murders in Quetta, for instance, involve remarkably little mystery. By wide consensus, the gunmen are based in Mastung, a dusty agricultural village 18 miles to the south that is the bustling local hub of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, the country’s most notorious sectarian militant group.

Like so many Pakistani groups that combine guns with zealotry, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi thrives in a wink-and-nod netherworld: it is officially banned, but its leader, Malik Ishaq, was released from jail last year amid showers of rose petals thrown by supporters. Now Mr. Malik lives openly in southern Punjab Province, protected by armed men who loiter outside his door, allowing him to deliver hate-laced statements to visitors. Shiites are “the greatest infidels on earth,” he told a Reuters reporter last month.

In Quetta, his followers are similarly unfettered. In targeting the Hazara — who, with their distinctive Central Asian features, are easy to pick out — Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants block busy highways as they search vehicles for Hazaras and daub walls with hate slogans. “The face is the target,” said Major Nadir Ali, a senior Hazara leader and retired army officer. “They see the face, then they shoot.”

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Facebook voting begins on Instagram data-sharing, email privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc opened the polls on Monday for its roughly 1 billion users to vote on a variety of changes to the social network‘s policies, including a proposal to scrap the user voting system that Facebook introduced in 2009.

Facebook also said it had “clarified” some of the proposed changes, specifying that a new policy allowing it to share user data with recently acquired photo-application Instagram will be carried out in compliance with applicable laws and that Facebook will seek user consent when necessary.

The proposed changes, which Facebook announced on November 21, generated roughly 89,000 user comments as well as concerns from some privacy-advocacy groups and a request for more information from the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, where Facebook’s European business has its headquarters.

“Based on your feedback and after consultation with our regulators, including the Irish Data Protection Commissioner‘s Office, we’ve further clarified some of our proposals,” said Elliot Schrage, Facebook Vice President of Communications, Public Policy and Marketing in a post on Facebook’s company blog on Monday.

Facebook is proposing to eliminate the 4-year-old system that allows users to vote on changes to its governance policies. The company says the voting system hasn’t functioned as intended and is no longer suited to its current situation as a large publicly traded company subject to oversight by various regulatory agencies.

Facebook said on Monday that it would incorporate user suggestions for creating new tools to “enhance communication” on privacy and governance matters.

Another proposal would loosen the restrictions on how members of the social network can contact other members using the Facebook email system. The company said it planned to replace the “Who can send you Facebook messages” setting with new filters for managing incoming messages.

Facebook’s potential information sharing with Instagram, a photo-sharing service for smartphone users that it bought in October, flows from proposed changes that would allow the company to share information between its own service and other businesses or affiliates it owns.

The change could open the door for Facebook to build unified profiles of its users that include people’s personal data from its social network and from Instagram, similar to recent moves by Google Inc.

Facebook said on Monday that the proposed change was “standard in the industry” and “promotes the efficient and effective use of the services Facebook and its affiliates,” such as allowing users in the U.S. to interact with users in Europe.

“This provision covers Instagram and allows us to store Instagram’s server logs and administrative records in a way that is more efficient than maintaining totally separate storage systems,” the company wrote in a separate post on its website Monday titled “explanation of changes”.

“Where additional consent of our users is required, we will obtain it,” Facebook said.

Facebook users have until December 10 to vote on the policies using a special third-party application provided by Facebook and Facebook said the results will be certified by an independent auditor.

The vote is only binding if at least 30 percent of users take part, and two prior votes never reached that threshold.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Andrew Hay)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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PHOTO: See Molly Mesnick's Baby Belly

Noah Graham

Happy holidays! Celebrities gathered to celebrate the season Saturday, attending the Second Annual Santa’s Secret Workshop in West Hollywood, Calif. Presented by Bill Horn and Scout Masterson and held at the Andaz Hotel, the event benefitted L.A. Family Housing.

Among the revelers: Bachelor alums Jason and Molly Mesnick — whose first child together is due in March — attending their first event since announcing the happy news.

“I’m just about six months and feeling really good,” Molly tells PEOPLE.

“I’m at a perfect stage now so I’m trying to get as much done around the house as I possibly can while I have the energy.”

Also in attendance? Tori Spelling, Malin Akerman, Tiffani Thiessen, Ali Landry, David Boreanaz, Marla Sokoloff, Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney, Angela Bassett, Ian Ziering, Amanda Righetti, Marshall and Jamie Anne Allman, Kimberly Van Der Beek, Spencer Grammer and more.

Guests enjoyed manicures from Mom.me, cookie decorating with Jenny Cookies, photos with Santa from HP, create-a-card with Snapfish.com, and a craft bar from Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts.

Styled by Sybarite Designs, the event featured companies such as  SodaStream, Corolle, Stokke, Orbit Baby, Ergo Baby, Teddy Needs a Bath, Funktion, Numi Numi Design, Ju-Ju-Be, Innobaby and Joovy showcasing their latest products — be sure to enter this week’s giveaway for a chance to win them all!

Noah Graham

It was a family affair for Tori Spelling, who brought the whole gang for their first public event since 3-month-old Finn‘s birth in August.

Joining the actress, husband Dean McDermott and their newborn are Hattie, 13 months, Stella, 4, and Liam, 5½.

“I’m not going to lie. It’s a little crazy. It’s hard work,” Spelling tells PEOPLE.

“I think three was safe. Four tips you over the edge a little bit. Maybe it’s because they’re 10 months apart — but we’re so blessed. It keeps you on your toes.”

Noah Graham

With her first child on the way in April, Malin Akerman was all smiles at the event, posing with her growing belly.

“I’m feeling great,” the actress tells PEOPLE. “I’m closing in on five months now so it’s getting more and more exciting as time goes by.”

Noah Graham

White Collar star Tiffani Thiessen gave 2-year-old daughter Harper Renn a leg up at the event.

On the Landry-Monteverde family’s list? Meeting Santa! PEOPLE.com blogger Ali Landry held 13-month-old son Marcelo Alejandro while husband Alejandro Monteverde snuggled in behind 5-year-old daughter Estela Ines.

Noah Graham

Tiffany Rose/WireImage

Ravishing redhead Amanda Righetti showed off her growing belly at the event — The Mentalist star is due this winter with her first child.

Noah Graham

No Bones about it – David Boreanaz‘s children look like him! The actor and wife Jaime Bergman brought kids Jaden, 10, and Bella, 3, to meet Santa.

Always Sunny in Philadelphia stars Kaitlin Olson and Rob McElhenney brought their elder son Axel, 2, to the event, but little Leo, 7 months, sat this one out.

Tiffany Rose/WireImage

Noah Graham

Meeting Santa was twice as nice for Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance, who brought along their 6-year-old twins Bronwyn Golden and Slater Josiah (peace out, dude).

Tiffany Rose/WireImage

Who cares about photos — it’s time for a snack! PEOPLE.com blogger Kimberly Van Der Beek gives 2-year-old daughter Olivia (plus her doll!) a lift.

Picture perfect! Ian Ziering gets daughter Mia, 19 months, in the frame while enjoying the craft table. The actor and wife Erin expect their second child in May.

Meagan Reidinger

Meagan Reidinger

With a baby doll in tow, PEOPLE.com blogger Marla Sokoloff and her little lady, 9-month-old Elliotte, check out the event.

Spencer Grammer arrived with her main men — husband James Hesketh and their son, 13-month-old Emmett.

Tiffany Rose/WireImage

Tiffany Rose/WireImage

The event was a baby bump debut for Marshall and Jamie Anne Allman as well — the True Blood and Killing stars just announced that they’re expanding their family — by two. Twins are on the way this spring!

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Fossil fuel subsidies in focus at climate talks

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Hassan al-Kubaisi considers it a gift from above that drivers in oil- and gas-rich Qatar only have to pay $1 per gallon at the pump.

"Thank God that our country is an oil producer and the price of gasoline is one of the lowest," al-Kubaisi said, filling up his Toyota Land Cruiser at a gas station in Doha. "God has given us a blessing."

To those looking for a global response to climate change, it's more like a curse.

Qatar — the host of U.N. climate talks that entered their final week Monday — is among dozens of countries that keep gas prices artificially low through subsidies that exceeded $500 billion globally last year. Renewable energy worldwide received six times less support — an imbalance that is just starting to earn attention in the divisive negotiations on curbing the carbon emissions blamed for heating the planet.

"We need to stop funding the problem, and start funding the solution," said Steve Kretzmann, of Oil Change International, an advocacy group for clean energy.

His group presented research Monday showing that in addition to the fuel subsidies in developing countries, rich nations in 2011 gave more than $58 billion in tax breaks and other production subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. The U.S. figure was $13 billion.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has calculated that removing fossil fuel subsidies could reduce carbon emissions by more than 10 percent by 2050.

Yet the argument is just recently gaining traction in climate negotiations, which in two decades have failed to halt the rising temperatures that are melting Arctic ice, raising sea levels and shifting weather patterns with impacts on droughts and floods.

In Doha, the talks have been slowed by wrangling over financial aid to help poor countries cope with global warming and how to divide carbon emissions rights until 2020 when a new planned climate treaty is supposed to enter force. Calls are now intensifying to include fossil fuel subsidies as a key part of the discussion.

"I think it is manifestly clear ... that this is a massive missing piece of the climate change jigsaw puzzle," said Tim Groser, New Zealand's minister for climate change.

He is spearheading an initiative backed by Scandinavian countries and some developing countries to put fuel subsidies on the agenda in various forums, citing the U.N. talks as a "natural home" for the debate.

The G-20 called for their elimination in 2009, and the issue also came up at the U.N. earth summit in Rio de Janeiro earlier this year. Frustrated that not much has happened since, European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Monday she planned to raise the issue with environment ministers on the sidelines of the talks in Doha.

Many developing countries are positive toward phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, not just to protect the climate but to balance budgets. Subsidies introduced as a form of welfare benefit decades ago have become an increasing burden to many countries as oil prices soar.

"We are reviewing the subsidy periodically in the context of the total economy for Qatar," the tiny Persian gulf country's energy minister, Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, told reporters Monday.

Qatar's National Development Strategy 2011-2016 states it more bluntly, saying fuel subsides are "at odds with the aspirations" and sustainability objectives of the wealthy emirate.

The problem is that getting rid of them comes with a heavy political price.

When Jordan raised fuel prices last month, angry crowds poured into the streets, torching police cars, government offices and private banks in the most sustained protests to hit the country since the start of the Arab unrest. One person was killed and 75 others were injured in the violence.

Nigeria, Indonesia, India and Sudan have also seen violent protests this year as governments tried to bring fuel prices closer to market rates.

Iran has used a phased approach to lift fuel subsidies over the past several years, but its pump prices remain among the cheapest in the world.

"People perceive it as something that the government is taking away from them," said Kretzmann. "The trick is we need to do it in a way that doesn't harm the poor."

The International Energy Agency found in 2010 that fuel subsidies are not an effective measure against poverty because only 8 percent of such subsidies reached the bottom 20 percent of income earners.

The IEA, which only looked at consumption subsidies, this year said they "remain most prevalent in the Middle East and North Africa, where momentum toward their reform appears to have been lost."

In the U.S., environmental groups say fossil fuel subsidies include tax breaks, the foreign tax credit and the credit for production of nonconventional fuels.

Industry groups, like the Independent Petroleum Association of America, are against removing such support, saying that would harm smaller companies, rather than the big oil giants.

In Doha, Mohammed Adow, a climate activist with Christian Aid, called all fuel subsidies "reckless and dangerous," but described removing subsidies on the production side as "low-hanging fruit" for governments if they are serious about dealing with climate change.

"It's going to oil and coal companies that don't need it in the first place," he said.

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Associated Press writers Abdullah Rebhy in Doha, Qatar, and Brian Murphy in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report

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Karl Ritter can be reached at www.twitter.com/karl_ritter

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