Romney predicts tea party will turn on Gingrich (AP)

CHARLESTON, S.C. ? Mitt Romney is mocking Newt Gingrich's long record in Washington and says conservative tea party voters eventually will reject the former House speaker who's Romney chief presidential rival.

Romney tells reporters in South Carolina that he thinks the state's tea party voters will turn on Gingrich because of his work for the mortgage company Freddie Mac and his consulting time in Washington.

Romney, who's been endorsed by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, isn't sure whether the work Gingrich did after he left the House is considered lobbying. But Romney says that "when it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, typically it's a duck."

South Carolina holds its first-in-the-South primary Jan. 21. Gingrich leads Romney in South Carolina polls and has emphasized his tea party support.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111217/ap_on_el_pr/us_romney_tea_party

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Jurors deadlock in $1B lawsuit against Microsoft (AP)

SALT LAKE CITY ? A federal jury on Friday failed to reach a verdict in a Utah company's $1 billion antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. in a case so important to the computer giant that it put Bill Gates on the stand for two days last month.

Novell Inc. sued the software giant in 2004, claiming Microsoft duped it into developing the once-popular WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own product.

Novell says it was later forced to sell WordPerfect for a $1.2 billion loss.

The trial began two months ago with jurors getting the case on Wednesday. After much confusion, and some perplexing questions from the panel, they told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz they were deadlocked by early Friday evening.

He repeatedly asked them if they could keep trying.

"This has been a very long and expensive case," Motz told the panel.

Novell attorneys pleaded with Motz to give the panel just one more day. In the end, however, the 12 jurors told the judge they were "hopelessly" deadlocked, and they later told lawyers a single holdout refused to vote in Novell's favor.

"He had strongly held views about the technical evidence and refused to budge," Novell attorney Jeffrey Johnson said. Jurors offered no comment after the trial.

Novell was left with little to show for a decade of effort, but the company said it will seek to retry the case with a new jury.

"Although it's a technically complicated case, we're hoping to convince another jury that our claims have merit," Novell's corporate counsel Jim Lundberg said.

Microsoft said it would file a motion asking the judge to dismiss Novell's complaint for good and avoid a second trial.

"We remain confident that Novell's claims don't have any merit and look forward to the next steps in the process," said Steven Aeschbacher, Microsoft's associate general counsel.

Novell waited until 10 years after Microsoft left WordPerfect behind to file the lawsuit. The company said it was waiting for the U.S. government's antitrust enforcement against Microsoft to wrap up. At first Novell's case was dismissed, but it was later reinstated on appeal.

Microsoft lawyers have argued that Novell's loss of market share was its own doing because the company didn't develop a compatible WordPerfect program until long after the rollout of Windows 95. WordPerfect once had nearly 50 percent of the market for word processing, but its share quickly plummeted to less than 10 percent as Microsoft's own Office programs took hold.

Gates testified last month that he had no idea his decision to drop a tool for outside developers would sidetrack Novell. Gates said he was acting to protect Windows 95 and future versions from crashing.

He said that the company's preferred Word software was superior to WordPerfect, which was a "bulky, slow, buggy product" that did not integrate well with Windows 95.

Novell could have worked around the problem but failed to react quickly, he said.

Novell has argued that Gates ordered Microsoft engineers to reject WordPerfect as a Windows 95 word processing application because he feared it was too good.

Novell's lawsuit is the last major private antitrust case to follow the settlement of a federal antitrust enforcement action against Microsoft more than eight years ago.

Novell is now a wholly owned subsidiary of The Attachmate Group, the result of a merger that was completed earlier this year.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111217/ap_on_hi_te/us_antitrust_lawsuit_microsoft

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FBI contacted phone monitoring firm about software (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A senior executive at a technology company that makes monitoring software secretly installed on 141 million cellphones said Thursday that the FBI approached the company about using its technology but was rebuffed. The disclosure came one day after FBI Director Robert Mueller assured Congress that agents "neither sought nor obtained any information" from the company, Carrier IQ.

The company's statement will likely inflame suspicion about the monitoring tool and its usefulness to the U.S. government.

Andrew Coward, vice president of marketing for Carrier IQ of Mountain View, Calif., told The Associated Press that the FBI is the only law enforcement agency that has contacted the company. Coward would not say when, why or how often the FBI has reached out to Carrier IQ, but he said the company is not working with the bureau. "There is no relationship between us and the FBI," Coward said.

During an oversight hearing Wednesday, Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the FBI "neither sought nor obtained any information from Carrier IQ in any one of our investigations." Mueller was responding to a question by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., chairman of the committee's privacy and technology panel, who has said collecting personal information from people's cellphones could violate federal law.

FBI spokesman Michael Kortan said in an emailed statement that the bureau's technical staff "communicates routinely with many technology companies, including Carrier IQ, relative to new and emerging technologies and capabilities."

The company's technology is designed as a diagnostic tool that gives mobile telephone companies the ability to gather and analyze information that helps them improve the performance of devices that operate on their networks, Carrier IQ said. The software is typically installed by the phone company or the manufacturer of the handset.

Most cellphone users were unaware the company or its software existed until last month when a security researcher, Trevor Eckhart, posted online a video he made showing how keystrokes and messages from his smartphone were logged by the Carrier IQ software.

Eckhart said the software is hard to detect and difficult to turn off. Other researchers who subsequently studied Carrier IQ's software said it does not appear to transmit the contents of emails or text messages but captures detailed information about recipients or destinations of messages, the physical location from where messages were sent or received and details such as the phone's battery level.

Even before Thursday's disclosure by Carrier IQ about the FBI contacting the company, the FBI had fueled questions about whether it sought to use the monitoring software in federal investigations or even whether it was investigating Carrier IQ. The FBI denied a request the AP made on Dec. 2 for internal documents about its interactions with Carrier IQ, citing a provision in the Freedom of Information Act that excludes from disclosure any documents relevant to a "pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding." The FBI also told the AP that releasing the records that it sought could "reasonably be expected to interfere with the enforcement proceedings."

The AP had asked for copies of correspondence from FBI officials requesting access to information stored on Carrier IQ's servers or asking questions about such information. The AP also requested copies of records indicating visits by FBI officials to Carrier IQ's offices and the results of any testing performed by the FBI on Carrier IQ's technology.

Eckhart's online video sparked concerns among privacy advocates about which information Carrier IQ's software is recording and who can view it. In late November, Franken wrote to Carrier IQ's president and asked him to answer a series of questions by Dec. 14 about the kind of data that the software can collect, how long the data is stored and whether any of this information is shared with third parties.

"These actions may violate federal privacy laws, including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," Franken wrote. "This is potentially a very serious matter."

A few days later, Rep. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, co-chairman of the Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, asked the Federal Trade Commission whether it was investigating "the installation of software that secretly tracks and reports back the activities of cellphone users."

Earlier this week, Carrier IQ sought to contain the damage by organizing meetings with officials at the FTC, the Federal Communications Commission and several Senate offices, including Franken's, to explain what the software is intended to do. The company said it is not aware of an official investigation into its products or practices.

"Our data is not designed for law enforcement agencies and to our knowledge has never been used by law enforcement agencies," the company said in a statement. "Carrier IQ have no rights to the data gathered and have not passed data to third parties. Should a law enforcement agency request data from us, we would refer them to the network operators. To date and to our knowledge we have received no such requests."

The company posted a 19-page statement on its website that explains what its software does. It said the only data collected is to help solve common problems, such as batteries that drain too quickly or calls that fail to connect.

The software, called IQ Agent, typically transmits 200 kilobytes of diagnostic data ? the equivalent of 50 typed pages ? once each day when the phone is not being used, the company said, but decisions about what information to collect and how it is analyzed is determined by the phone companies and the agreements they have with their customers.

___

Online:

Carrier IQ: http://www.carrieriq.com/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_hi_te/us_fbi_phone_tracking_software

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Cobertura dos Indicados ao SAG AWARDS 2012 - AO VIVO

Meryl Streep - A Dama de Ferro

Michelle Williams - My Week with Marilyn

Viola Davis - Hist?rias Cruzadas

Tilda Swinton - Precisamos Falar Sobre Kevin

Glenn Close - Albert Nobbs

Christopher Plummer - Toda Forma de Amor

Kenneth Branagh - My Week with Marilyn

Jonah Hill - O Homem que Mudou o Jogo

Armie Hammer - J. Edgar

Nick Nolte - Warrior

Source: http://indicadossagawards2012.blogspot.com/?altcast_code=99e073fedf

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US natural gas supplies shrank last week (AP)

NEW YORK ? The nation's natural gas supplies fell last week, the government said Thursday.

The Energy Department's Energy Information Administration said in its weekly report that natural gas in storage shrank by 102 billion cubic feet to 3.729 trillion cubic feet for the week ended Dec. 9.

Analysts expected a decline of 94 billion to 98 billion cubic feet, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

The inventory level was 10.3 percent above the five-year average of 3.382 trillion cubic feet, and 4.3 percent above last year's level of 3.575 trillion cubic feet, according to the government data.

Natural gas futures rose 5.1 cents to $3.187 per 1,000 cubic feet in New York.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/energy/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_bi_ge/us_natural_gas_storage

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U.S. lawmakers freeze $700 million to Pakistan, ties strained (Reuters)

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) ? A U.S. Congressional panel has frozen $700 million in aid to Pakistan until it gives assurances it is helping fight the spread of homemade bombs in the region, a move one Pakistani senator called unwise and likely to strain ties further.

Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid and the cutback announced is only a small proportion of the billions in civil and military assistance it gets each year.

But it could presage even greater cuts. The aid freeze targets funds used to fight Taliban insurgents.

Calls are growing in the United States to penalize Islamabad for failing to act against militant groups and, at worst, helping them, after the secret U.S. raid on a Pakistan garrison town in which al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in May.

Salim Saifullah, chairman of Pakistan's Senate foreign relations committee, warned that relations, which are already at a low point, could worsen further following the decision by the U.S. House-Senate panel.

"I don't think this is a wise move. It could hurt ties. There should instead be efforts to increase cooperation. I don't see any good coming out of this," Saifullah told Reuters.

Homemade bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs), are among militants' most effective weapons against U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan as they struggle to fight a resurgent Taliban insurgency.

Many are made using ammonium nitrate, a common Fertilizer smuggled across the border from Pakistan.

The freeze on U.S. aid was agreed as part of a defense bill that is expected to be passed this week.

The United States wants "assurances that Pakistan is countering improvised explosive devices in their country that are targeting our coalition forces," Representative Howard McKeon, a House Republican, told reporters.

The United States has allocated some $20 billion in security and economic aid to Pakistan since 2001, much of it in the form of reimbursements for assistance in fighting militants.

But U.S. lawmakers have expressed increasing frustration with Pakistan's efforts in the war.

There have been many proposals to make U.S. aid to Pakistan conditional on more cooperation in fighting militants such as the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network, which Washington believes operates out of Pakistan and battles U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

But Pakistan's civilian leaders have in the past warned against aid cuts, saying it would only harden public opinion against the United States.

Pakistan says it is doing all it can to fight al Qaeda and the Taliban and has lost thousands of soldiers since it joined the U.S.-led war in 2001, some of them at the hands of coalition troops.

Islamabad has accused NATO of deliberately killing 24 Pakistani soldiers in an air strike near the Afghan border last month and shut down supplies for foreign troops in Afghanistan in anger.

"I must say that the aeriel attacks on our army border posts on November 26, 2011, constituted a huge setback to the prospects of much needed cooperation between all important stakeholders," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told a gathering of Pakistani ambassadors to other countries.

The decision to freeze aid could prompt Pakistan to harden its stance towards Washington.

"I think the Pakistan side will understand the type of signal that is coming, which shows it's not only a question of aid," former general and security analyst Talat Masood said.

"The whole attitude of the U.S. and the relationship will be affected by these measures because they know Pakistan will not be in a position to control the smuggling."

RAMPANT SMUGGLING

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, also suggested pressure from the United States would hurt ties, saying Islamabad believes "in cooperative approaches."

U.S. lawmakers said many Afghan bombs are made with Fertilizer smuggled by militants across the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

"The vast majority of the material used to make improvised explosive devices used against U.S. forces in Afghanistan originates from two Fertilizer factories inside Pakistan," Republican Senator John McCain said in the Senate last week.

A Congressional Research Service report in October said the Pakistani factories, owned by one of the country's biggest companies, Pakarab, have been producing over 300,000 metric tonnes of ammonium nitrate per year since 2004.

The United States has urged Pakistan to regulate the distribution of ammonium nitrate to Afghanistan strictly. So far, Pakistan has only produced draft legislation on the issue.

Analysts say U.S. demands will be tough to meet because of rampant corruption on both sides of the porous border that makes smuggling easy.

One businessman explained how easy it is to get through security.

"We pay a 1,200-rupee ($13) bribe to the Pakistani Frontiers Corps on the border for every car carrying Fertilizer," said Kamal Khan in the border town of Chaman.

"Fertilizer is smuggled on trucks, pickup trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and donkey carts."

Pakistan's fragile economy is heavily dependent on agriculture, so cutting down on Fertilizer output would hurt the sector.

The provision freezing $700 million in aid was agreed upon by leaders of the armed services committees from both parties in the House and Senate, including McCain. It is part of compromise legislation authorizing U.S. defense programs expected to be approved this week, McKeon said.

The bill would also require the Pentagon to deliver a strategy for improving the effectiveness of U.S. aid to Pakistan, he said.

(Additional reporting by Saeed Ali Achakzai in CHAMAN and Susan Cornwell in WASHINGTON; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Paul Tait)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111213/pl_nm/us_pakistan_usa

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Kennedy Center Honors celebrates Streep, Diamond (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? President Barack Obama revealed a secret crush and Caroline Kennedy crooned to her namesake song on Sunday at the Kennedy Center Honors, which celebrated actress Meryl Streep and singer Neil Diamond.

The annual awards program, which also honored singer Barbara Cook, jazz great Sonny Rollins, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma, brought together stars from the stage and screen in a celebration of music, movies, and Broadway shows.

"Right now, somewhere in America, there is a future Kennedy Center honoree - practicing on some phone books, or writing songs to impress a girl, or wondering if she can cut it on the big stage," Obama said at the White House, greeting the winners before the show and noting the importance of the arts.

It turns out the president once fell for Streep, the actress who has been nominated for 16 Academy Awards and won two.

"Anybody who saw 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' had a crush on her," Obama said, joking that he was straying from his prepared remarks.

Of Diamond, Obama said his songs could be heard everywhere from baseball games to children's movies.

"With a voice he describes as being full of gravel, potholes, left turns and right turns, he went on to sell more than 125 million records," Obama said.

The "Sweet Caroline" singer told reporters he would thank Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, for being the namesake of that signature song.

"I'm going to thank her for giving me the title for 'Sweet Caroline,'" Diamond said before the show. "The story really is about my former wife and myself, but it is her name that I used, and I have to thank her for that."

Kennedy, who presided over the evening, referred to Diamond with a line from the tune -- "reaching out, touching me" -- to laughter from the audience. She later joined singer Smokey Robinson and other performers for a rendition of the song, crooning along somewhat awkwardly.

HUMOR, MUSIC

In other crowd-pleasing moments, comedian Stephen Colbert gave a humorous introduction to the music of Ma, who first played for a U.S. president at the age of 7.

"Yo-Yo doesn't just play the cello. He rocks it. He shreds it. He cranks it up and he rips off the knob - metaphorically, of course, because the knobs on a Stradivarius are like a half a million dollars a piece," he said.

Obama said he could learn a thing or two from the cellist.

"Maybe the most amazing thing about Yo-Yo Ma is that everybody likes him," Obama said at the White House, drawing laughter. "You've got to give me some tips."

Actor Bill Cosby introduced the portion of the show dedicated to Rollins, saying the musician's tenor sax became a legend. Rollins, 81, told reporters his award celebrated a uniquely American form of music - jazz.

"America is the home of jazz, it's where we started jazz, and people love jazz all over the world," he told reporters.

Actresses Glenn Close and Patti LuPone joined a lineup of top stage stars that sang a series of songs honoring Cook, who achieved fame with roles in "Candide" and "The Music Man" on Broadway decades ago.

"Thank you, Barbara for all the music - the joys, the longing, the sadness and humor with which you infuse each song," said actor Matthew Broderick who, along with wife Sarah Jessica Parker, addressed the audience about Cook.

This was the 34th version of the Kennedy Center Honors. It will be broadcast by CBS on December 27.

(Editing by Eric Beech)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111205/stage_nm/us_usa_kennedy_honors

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