Archive for November 2011
Britain set in motion the withdrawal of some diplomatic staff and families from Tehran on Wednesday as Iran’s parliament speaker blamed Britain’s “domination-seeking” policies for the storming of British compounds by hard-line Iranian protesters the day before.
Norway, meanwhile, closed its embassy in Tehran due to security concerns after Tuesday’s assault on the British Embassy and a residential complex. Mobs hauled down British flags and ransacked offices in retaliation for Britain’s support of tighter sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
Protestors remove the flag of the British embassy in Tehran on November 29, 2011. Iranian protesters stormed two British Embassy compounds in Tehran on Tuesday, smashing windows, hurling petrol bombs and burning the British flag in a protest against sanctions imposed by Britain, live Iranian television showed. Reuters
In London, the Foreign Office said some diplomatic staff and dependents would leave Iran. But it declined to say how many people were being removed or give other details.
“Ensuring the safety of our staff and their families is our immediate priority,” said the statement. It noted some diplomatic work is ongoing, though the embassy is officially closed.
The Iranian government has expressed regret about “unacceptable behavior” of protesters, whose attacks began after anti-British demonstrations apparently authorized by authorities.
But Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said that the “wrath of (students) resulted from several decades of domination-seeking behavior of Britain.”
Larijani — addressing an open session of parliament Wednesday — also called the U.N. Security Council’s condemnation of the embassy attack a “hasty move.”
Larijani’s comments reflect the deepening diplomatic crisis between Iran and Britain, whose relations have in the past gone through periods of upheavals. On Sunday, Iran’s parliament approved a bill to downgrade relations with Britain, one of America’s closest allies with diplomatic envoys in the Islamic Republic.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il Photo:AP
An unidentified spokesman at Pyongyang’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the construction of an experimental light-water reactor and low enriched uranium are “progressing apace”.
The statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, said that North Korea has a sovereign right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy and that “neither concession nor compromise should be allowed”.
Concerns about North Korea’s atomic capability took on renewed urgency in November 2010 when the country disclosed a uranium enrichment facility that could give it a second route to manufacture nuclear weapons, in addition to its existing plutonium-based programme.
North Korea has been building a light-water reactor at its main Yongbyon nuclear complex since last year. Such a reactor is ostensibly for civilian energy purposes, but it would give the North a reason to enrich uranium. At low levels, uranium can be used in power reactors, but at higher levels it can be used in nuclear bombs.
Earlier this month, North Korean state media said “the day is near at hand” when the reactor will come into operation. Washington worries about reported progress on the reactor construction, saying it would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
via the telegraph
Twilight hits US$500 million
Posted on: November 30, 2011
The latest film of teen vampires and werewolves franchise “Twilight Saga” has grossed a total of 508 million U.S. dollars in ticket sales from global box office since it was screened 12 days ago, producer and distributor Summit Entertainment said Tuesday.
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1” has also reached a milestone in North America, taking in 223 million dollars in selling ticket stubs in theaters in the United States and Canada, according to the studio.
“We couldn’t be more pleased with the success of this film and a franchise that the fans have continued to support over the past several years,” the company’s Co-Chairmen Rob Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger said in a statement.
The film has topped the foreign box office for a second-straight weekend with 76 million dollars in receipts from 68 markets, according to latest statistics.
Industry analysts said as the penultimate film of the popular series, “Breaking Dawn” was expected to take in about 650 million dollars from the global box office and Summit Entertainment would reap 228 million dollars in profit.
Facebook.com founder Mark Zuckerberg smiles at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Facebook has agreed a settlement with the US’ Federal Trade Commission that will see it being subject to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years.
The company yesterday settled complaints that it disregarded its users’ privacy and agreed to establish a raft of measures to better protect its 800m members’ data.
The agreement will also mean the social networking site will have to seek users’ consent for certain changes to privacy settings.
“I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes,” co-founder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a lengthy post on the company’s official blog.
He said a few “high-profile” mistakes, such as changes to the service’s privacy policy two years ago, “have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”
To ensure that Facebook did a better job, Mr Zuckerberg said the company had created two new corporate privacy officer positions to oversee Facebook products and policy.
In its complaint, the FTC said that Facebook had repeatedly violated laws against deceptive and unfair practices.
For example, it said Facebook promised users that it would not share personal information with advertisers, but it did.
Tue company has often been criticised for its privacy practices since its founding in a Harvard dorm room in 2004.
In September the Data Protection Commissioner here began an audit of Facebook’s operations outside of North America, following complaints from a group called ‘Europe Versus Facebook’.
The group made 22 complaints about the way the website retains user information and as Facebook has its European headquarters in Dublin it came under the remit of the Irish data commissioner.
If Facebook is found to have violated any of the provisions of its settlement with the FTC, the company is subject to fines of $16,000 (€12,044) per day for each violation, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said.
“Nothing in this order will restrict Facebook’s ability to innovate,” said Leibowitz. But, he added, “Facebook’s innovation does not have to come at the expense of consumer privacy.”
Under the settlement, Facebook is barred from being deceptive about how it uses personal information, and is required to get permission before changing the visibility of the personal information users have posted.
Facebook noted that it had reversed some of the privacy settings at issue in the FTC’s complaint prior to the settlement, including restoring users’ ability to limit who sees their Friends List.
It also said it fixed a problem more than a year ago which had “inadvertently” allowed advertisers to obtain the user ID numbers of some Facebook members.
In a statement, Facebook said that the settlement “strikes the right balance between innovation and regulation, and gives us the ability to introduce new sharing, connecting and control features that will continue to improve Facebook.
Samsung defeats Apple in court
Posted on: November 30, 2011
A Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 tablet on display at a trade fair in Germany at the start of September
Samsung Electronics will be allowed to sell its latest Galaxy tablet computers in Australia during the crucial Christmas shopping season after it won a rare victory against Apple and overturned a sales ban in the country.
The decision by a federal appeals court in Australia comes after setbacks for Samsung in Europe, where Apple successfully sued to block sales of Samsung’s tablets in Germany, Europe’s largest market. Samsung has also had to modify some of its smartphone features for the European market following a temporary sales ban on its three Galaxy smartphones in the Netherlands.
Samsung and Apple are locked in about 20 legal disputes in nine countries including the US, South Korea, Japan and the UK, and analysts said this latest verdict should bolster Samsung’s position in these cases. “The ruling shows that Apple’s claims on design are relatively weak while Samsung can fight back with its patents on 3G technology,” said Jae Lee at Daiwa Securities.
The intensifying legal wranglings between the two companies highlight their complex relationship. Samsung is an important supplier of parts for Apple products, but the South Korean company is also the biggest maker of smartphones based on Google’s Android platform and therefore Apple’s biggest competitor in smartphones and tablets.
In Australia, Apple was granted an injunction in October, temporarily blocking sales of the Galaxy 10.1 tablet. Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster on Wednesday reversed the sales ban but granted a stay until Friday. Apple will have to go to the High Court to extend the period further.
via FT
Saudi Telecom boosts 4G network
Posted on: November 30, 2011
Saudi Telecom Company (STC) has added 200 new locations in five cities across the Kingdom to its 4G Long Term Evolution (LTE) network as part of its ambitious growth plans.
STC said it was the first operator in the region to launch and adopt the 4G technology and presently covers key areas including Riyadh, Jeddah, Dammam, Jubail, Al Khobar, Al Ahsa.
The LTE network offers download speeds of more than double that of 3G and is designed for data, rather than voice.
STC said it has further increased the 4G coverage with deployment in new locations at Makkah, Madinah, Abha, Khamis Mushayt, Dhahran.
With this expansion, the total locations covered in the Kingdom have exceeded 600 offering users the best coverage in addition to higher speeds than the existing ones available in other networks, it added.
The Saudi company said it has ambitious plans to deploy advanced technologies during the next phase taking customers from 2G and 3G to the mobile Broadband networks: HSPA+, 4G LTE with unprecedented speeds where new expansion of the 3G advanced network offers speeds reaching 84 mg/sec while the 4G advanced technology offers speeds starting with 100 mb/sec reaching to more than 1000 mb/sec during the next few years.
STC began deploying this new technology since the beginning of 2010 when it announced the successful trials of the technology making it is the solution for mobile telecommunications in the next era.
This technology enhances the capacity and effectiveness of the networks with real speeds reaching more than 100 mbps when receiving data, it added as per trade arabia.
Samsung has already commenced the shipping of the Bada 2.0 operating system based smartphone internationally. France will be the first country to get this smartphone following closely with delivery of the smartphone in countries like Germany, Italy and Russia.
Considering these countries, it is expected that the Samsung Wave 3 smartphone will hit the Indian markets by mid or the end of week two in the month of December.
Samsung Wave 3 is priced at Rs 19,600. It will feature a wide variety of new capabilities which were missing from the earlier version that includes multi-tasking, WiFi Direct (which allows Wi-Fi devices to share content without the need for wireless access points such as routers), Near Field Communication (NFC), and voice recognition.
The handset will come with latest Bada 2.0 operating system which is considerably faster than previous Bada devices. Bada 2.0 will also support HTML5 and improved Flash functions, thus offering enhanced usability and web experience.
The new Samsung Wave 3 features a 4 inch Super Amoled display with 480 x 800 pixel resolution. It will run on a 1.4 GHz processor and have an improved TouchWiz user interface that would ensure a better user experience. Along with that for shutter bugs, the Wave 3 carries a 5 megapixel camera at the back with LED flash, capable of recording 720p HD videos
Google Maps get new features
Posted on: November 30, 2011
Google’s free online mapping service has begun helping people navigate inside airports, transit centers, and major shops in the United States and Japan.
The latest version of Google Maps for smartphones powered by Android software began providing detailed floorplans marked with blue dots showing where users are to within several meters.
Google Maps for Android enables you to figure out where you are and see where you might want to go when you’re indoors,” Google Earth and Maps vice president of engineering Brian McClendon said in a blog post.
The California-based Internet titan partnered with large retailers, airports and transit stations to launch the feature and said it planned to continually add new floorplans of public buildings around the world.
“When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall, or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help,” McClendon said.
“With the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you’re on, and where to go indoors,” he said.
Businesses interested in adding floor plans to Google Maps were invited to upload the information at maps.google.com/floorplans.
Government regulators are sharing some alarming information about Facebook: They believe the online social network has often misled its more than 800 million users about the sanctity of their personal information.
The unflattering portrait of Facebook’s privacy practices emerged Tuesday in a Federal Trade Commission complaint alleging that Facebook exposed details about users’ lives without getting legally required consent. In some cases, the FTC charged, Facebook allowed potentially sensitive details to be passed along to advertisers and software developers prowling for customers.
To avoid further legal wrangling, Facebook agreed to submit to government audits of its privacy practices every other year for the next two decades. The company committed to getting explicit approval from its users – a process known as “opting in” – before changing their privacy controls.
The FTC’s truce with Facebook, along with previous settlements with Google and Twitter, is helping to establish more ground rules for online privacy expectations even as Internet companies regularly vacuum up insights about their audiences in an effort to sell more advertising.
“I’m the first to admit that we’ve made a bunch of mistakes,” Zuckerberg wrote. “In particular, I think that a small number of high-profile mistakes … have often overshadowed much of the good work we’ve done.”
Facebook has overcome its missteps in the past to emerge as the world’s largest social network and one of the Internet’s most influential companies since Zuckerberg created the website in his Harvard University dorm room in 2004.
No website has been as successful as Facebook at getting people to voluntarily share intimate details about themselves. Zuckerberg has emerged as the Internet’s chief evangelist for sharing, partly because he believes it can help make the world a better place by making it easier for people to stay connected with the things and people that they care about.
Nokia hasn’t been shy promoting the Lumia 800, but it cranked things up even higher in London, UK, last night with a huge animation projected onto a 120m high building on the banks of the River Thames. Millbank Tower saw electro producer deadmau5 pumping out an exclusive set while its 800 windows – specially vinyl-clad for better graphics – were painted by light from 16 projectors across the water. Check out the video
Ahead of this week’s Tokyo Motor Show, Japanese car manafacturers Toyota
unveil the ‘Fun-Vii’, a futuristic interactive concept car that features a
touchscreen door.
Apple beats Android in Britain
Posted on: November 29, 2011
The long-awaited iPhone 4S launch helped Apple Inc take top spot in the British smartphone market in October, overtaking phones using Google Inc’s Android platform, data from research firm Kantar Worldpanel ComTech showed on Monday.
Apple took a whopping 42.8 percent share of all smartphone sales, giving it a significant lead over Android — a feat many thought was impossible,” Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at the firm, said in a statement.
“With nearly a year and a half between iPhone launches there has been huge pent-up demand for a new Apple device,” he said.
In October Google’s (GOOG.O) Android had 35 percent of the British smartphone market, often seen as the indicator for the rest of Europe.
For the 12 weeks to end-October Android was still ahead of Apple (AAPL.O), while Research In Motion Ltd (RIM.TO) held on to its 20 percent share. Nokia Oyj (NOK1V.HE) had 4 percent and Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) Windows Phone platform 1 percent share.
Nokia started to sell its first Windows Phone in Britain in mid November.
Young Steve Jobs
An April 1976 contract establishing Apple and signed by the technology giant’s three founding partners — Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak and Ronald Wayen — will go under the hammer at auction house Sotheby’s here next month and is expected to fetch about $150,000.
The “two typed documents” of the three-page “Apple Computer Company Partnership Agreement” dated 1 April 1976 will be auctioned by Sotheby’s on 13 December. It is estimated to fetch anywhere between $100,000-150,000.
Along with the original Apple partnership agreement, an amendment dated 12 April dissolving Wayne’s share in Apple will also be put up for auction.
“This is a foundation document in terms of financial history, social history and technological history,” said Richard Austin, the head of books and manuscripts at Sotheby’s. It is the “founding document of the company that has revolutionised technology, business, personal computing and the world.”
Wayne’s withdrawal as partner was documented by a County of Santa Clara statement, which is also part of the Sotheby’s lot. Wayne received $ 800 for relinquishing his 10 per cent ownership of Apple, according to the document
He subsequently received another payment of $1,500.
The original partnership agreement is in three pages (8½ x 11 in; 216 x 279 mm) with “small staple holes and crease in upper left corners.”
The trio met on April 1, 1976 in Wayne’s apartment to draft and sign the partnership agreement for the Apple Computer Company, with Wozniak’s friend Randy Wigginton standing by.
Facebook, the world’s largest Internet social network, is preparing for a initial public stock offering next year, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Facebook is exploring raising $10 billion, the Wall Street Journal said on Monday. It hopes the offering will value the company at more than $100 billion, according to WSJ, which first reported the story.
Facebook’s Chief Financial Officer, David Ebersman, had discussed a public float with Silicon Valley bankers but founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg had not decided on any terms and his plans could change, the Journal said.
The social network, which now claims more than 800 million members after seven years of explosive growth, has not selected bankers to manage what would be a very closely watched IPO. But it had drafted an internal prospectus and was ready at any moment to pull the IPO trigger, the Journal cited people familiar with the matter as saying.
At $100 billion valuation, the company started by Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room would have double the valuation of Hewlett-Packard, the Journal said.
A formal S-1 filing could come before the end of the year, though nothing was decided, the newspaper added.
A Facebook representative declined to comment.
Silicon Valley start-ups have this year begun to test investor appetite for a new wave of dotcoms. If it does debut in 2012, Facebook’s IPO would dwarf that of any other dotcom waiting to go public.
“Farmville” creator Zynga has filed for an IPO of up to $1 billion. In November, daily deals service Groupon debuted with much fanfare, only to plunge below its IPO price within weeks.
LinkedIn and Pandora are now also trading significantly below the levels their stocks reached during their public debuts earlier this year.
Facebook has become one of the world’s most popular Web destinations, challenging established companies such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc for consumers’ online time and for advertising dollars.
Facebook does not disclose its financial results, but a source familiar with the situation told Reuters earlier this year that the company’s revenue in the first six months of 2011 doubled year-on-year to $1.6 billion.
Eric Feng, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who now runs social-networking site Erly.com, said that the cash Facebook will get in an IPO would allow them to make more acquisitions and refine or work on new projects, such as a rumored-Facebook phone or a netbook.
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A man checks stock indexes on a screen of a bank in Milan, Italy, Monday, Nov. 28, Photo By Luca Bruno, 16 hrs ago. AP
European leaders rushed Monday to stop a rampaging debt crisis that threatened to shatter their 12-year-old experiment in a common currency and devastate the world economy as a result.
One proposal gaining prominence would have countries cede some control over their budgets to a central European authority. In a measure of how rapidly the peril has grown, that idea would have been unthinkable even three months ago.
World stock markets, glimpsing hope that Europe might finally be shocked into stronger action, staged a big rally. The Dow Jones industrial average in New York rose almost 300 points. In France, stocks rose 5 percent, the most in a month.
More relevant to the crisis, borrowing costs for European nations stabilized. They had risen alarmingly in recent weeks — in Greece, then in Italy and Spain, then across the continent, including in Germany, the strongest economy in Europe.
The yields on benchmark bonds issued by Italy and Germany rose, but only by hundredths of a percentage point. The yield fell 0.1 percentage point on bonds of France, 0.14 points for those of Spain and 0.22 points for Belgium.
Allowing a central European authority to have some control over the budgets of sovereign nations would create a fiscal union in Europe in addition to the monetary union of the 17 countries that share the euro currency.
Some analysts have said that would be a leap toward creating a United States of Europe. More delicately, it would force the nations of Europe to swallow their national pride, cede some sovereignty and agree to strengthen ties with their neighbors rather than fleeing the euro union during the crisis.
The common currency has the problem that the monetary policy is joint, but the fiscal policy is not,” Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said in a meeting with foreign reporters in Berlin.
The monetary union has existed since the euro was created in 1999, but the European Union, which includes the 17 euro nations and 10 others that use their own currencies, has no central authority over taxing and spending.
Countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy overspent wildly for years and racked up annual budget deficits that have left them with monstrous debt. Italy holds €1.9 trillion in debt, or 120 percent of the size of its economy.
via AP.
Twitter has acquired a start-up company that makes software to improve security and privacy for smartphones and other mobile devices. With its acquisition of Whisper Systems, Twitter gains technology to bolster security of its fast-growing microblogging service and gets a pair of highly-respected experts in the field of online security.
Whisper Systems was co-founded last year by security experts Moxie Marlinspike and Stuart Anderson. “The Whisper Systems team is joining Twitter starting today,” Twitter said in an emailed statement on Monday. “As part of our fast-growing engineering team, they will be bringing their technology and security expertise to Twitter’s products and services. We’re happy to have Moxie and Stuart onboard.”
Twitter did not disclose a price for the deal and declined to comment beyond its statement. Twitter, which has more than 100 million active users, allows people to send short, 140-character, messages to groups of followers.
The service has become a popular communications tool for celebrities, politicians and businesses. It has also played a role in several geopolitical events, such as the past year’s uprisings in the middle east, by allowing dissidents to organize and communicate. But some privacy advocates have warned that certain governments also have used Twitter to help monitor dissidents and activists.
WikiLeaks has been recognised in Australia for its “outstanding contribution to journalism”, with founder Julian Assange lashing out at “cowardly” Prime Minister Julia Gillard in an acceptance speech.
The anti-secrecy website was lauded at the annual Walkley Awards, where winners are chosen by an independent panel of journalists and photographers, for its courageous reporting of secret US cables.
“WikiLeaks applied new technology to penetrate the inner workings of government to reveal an avalanche of inconvenient truths in a global publishing coup,” the Walkley trustees said in bestowing the award Sunday evening.
“Its revelations, from the way the war on terror was being waged, to diplomatic bastardry, high-level horse-trading and the interference in the domestic affairs of nations, have had an undeniable impact.”
The whistleblowing website has published thousands of cables in which US diplomats give their often candid views on world leaders, to Washington’s acute embarrassment.
Assange, an Australian citizen who has previously blasted Canberra for not doing enough to protect him in the fallout from the leaks, was scathing of the government in accepting the accolade in a pre-recorded video message.
“The Gillard government has shown its true colours in relation to how it?s handled US pressure on WikiLeaks,” he said in footage shown on SBS television which broadcast the awards.
via AFP.
Barack Obama hosts EU leaders
Posted on: November 28, 2011
- In: Politics
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President Barack Obama is hosting European Union leaders for a summit Monday that is likely to focus on the European debt crisis.
Obama will meet at the White House with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
The Obama administration is watching warily as European countries struggle to bolster confidence in the euro currency. The crisis has seen smaller eurozone nations Greece, Portugal and Ireland bailed out and is now threatening much bigger economies, such as Italy and Spain.
The Obama administration has expressed concerns that the crisis could damage the U.S. economy.
via AP.
Actress Amy Adams has been opening up about her role in The Muppets movie which opened on Nov. 23 and it appears she couldn’t be happier for the chance to take on her role.
Adams told KABC-TV:
“I had ‘The Muppet Movie’ in rotation constantly in my childhood and every road trip – even as a teenager and even into adulthood – I would play ‘Movin’ Right Along’ and so it’s definitely just a part of who I am.”
Adam’s plays the girlfriend of Jason Segel’s character Gary, After Gary and his brother Walter discover that oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Copper) wants to tear down the Muppet Theater to drill for oil they travel to Los Angeles to save the landmark of their beloved muppets but first they have to find all of the muppets who have become separated from one another over the years.
Speaking about the movies actual production Adams told The National Post:
“I have a whole new respect for the puppeteers. I did not know it was so technical, so complicated and so specific.”
For her next role Amy Adams can be seen alongside Kristen Stewart and Sam Riley in On The Road which will be released at theaters in 2012.
The Muppets movie managed to rake in $40 million this weekends opening showtimes, not bad for a movie with a reported budget of just $45 million. Did you head out to theaters this weekend to see the new Muppets movie?
read more inquisitr
Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP Roger Federer said winning his sixth title at the ATP World Tour Finals was an "amazing finish" to his season.
Roger Federer wasn’t about to let Jo-Wilfried Tsonga pull off another improbable comeback. After a year that saw some uncharacteristic slip-ups from Federer in big matches, he shrugged off a second-set letdown to beat Tsonga 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 for a record sixth title in the ATP World Tour Finals.
“I know it’s one of my greatest accomplishments,” Federer said. “This definitely is an amazing finish again to the season. I’ve never finished so strong.”
Federer was by far the most impressive player during the week at the season-ending event for the top eight players in the world. His three group-stage victories included his most comprehensive win ever over Rafael Nadal, 6-3, 6-0 on Tuesday. Federer, though, looked in danger of faltering against Tsonga when he failed to serve out the match at 5-4 in the second set and then wasted a match point in the tiebreaker.
Tsonga, who became the first player to rally from a two-set deficit to beat Federer in a Grand Slam tournament in this year’s Wimbledon quarterfinals, couldn’t pull off another surprise. Federer broke for a 5-3 lead in the decider and served out the match to love, sealing his 70th career title with an easy volley.
Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson star in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 Photo: Andrew Cooper © 2011 Summit Entertainment
The good news for studios was that, overall, people liked what they saw in theaters over the long Thanksgiving holiday. The bad news was that there were a lot fewer of them than in years past.
In fact, despite some highly regarded new movies, it was the slowest Thanksgiving moviegoing weekend in the last four years. Ticket sales were down roughly 11% compared with the same period last year. So far this year, attendance is off about 5%, and box office receipts are down about 4%.
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1” was easily the No. 1 film, taking in $62.3 million Wednesday to Sunday, according to an estimate from distributor Summit Entertainment. Since the film’s release the previous weekend, the fourth installment in the vampire romance franchise has collected $221.3 million.
Meanwhile, three well-reviewed PG-rated films fought for young moviegoers at the multiplex with varying degrees of success. “The Muppets,” the latest film incarnation of Jim Henson’s popular felt puppets, came out on top with a respectable $42 million over the five-day period. “Arthur Christmas,” an animated 3-D holiday tale, took in a lackluster $17 million. Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,” a lavish 3-D family story about the early days of filmmaking, grossed $15.4 million — almost as much as “Arthur” despite playing on about 2,000 fewer screens.
“The Muppets,” which stars and was co-written by Jason Segel, performed far better than previous feature films featuring Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog. In 1999, “Muppets From Space” mustered only $22 million by the end of its run.
read more at LA Times
Webber cruises to victory as Red Bull finishes 1-2 and Vettel takes second, drivers championship
Posted on: November 28, 2011
German driver Sebastian Vettel gives a thumbs-up after finishing second in the Brazilian Grand Prix. Vettel won the drivers championship. Photograph by: Yasuyoshi Chiba, AFP, Getty Images, Bloomberg
Red Bull’s Mark Webber won the season-ending Brazilian Grand Prix for his first Formula One victory of 2011, with teammate and world champion Sebastian Vettel taking the second spot in Sao Paulo.
McLaren driver Jenson Button was third Sunday and will finish as runner-up to Vettel in the drivers’ championship.
“It’s an important win for me and the team to finish on a high,” Webber said.
“I felt good all weekend.”
Vettel started in pole position for a record 15th time in a season, beating the previous record of Nigel Mansell set in 1992 when there were 16 events. This year there were 19 races.
The German made a clean start, with Webber retaining second, but Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso was able to split the McLaren drivers as he slipped into fourth ahead of Lewis Hamilton. Alonso then went around the outside of Button on lap 11 to take third.
Red Bull confirmed a gearbox problem for Vettel on the 14th of 71 laps, but he was still able to maintain a competitive pace and manage the situation.
He did, though, allow Webber to take the lead on lap 31 and comfortably held second spot even as Button mounted a late charge.
“It was a real shame as I had a good start and a very good feeling,” Vettel said. “But nevertheless Mark drove a fantastic race and he deserved to win.”
Hamilton also had problems with his gearbox that eventually led the Briton to make his first retirement of the year.
Vladimir Putin yesterday issued a blunt warning to the West not to interfere in Russia’s forthcoming elections.
Mr Putin accused Western countries, including Britain, of meddling by giving financial grants to Russian democracy and human rights groups, and by sending observers to monitor elections.
He branded Russians who accept such grants as “Judases”, adding: “It would be better if [Western countries] used this money to pay off their national debt and stop conducting an ineffective and costly foreign policy.”
Mr Putin, 59, made the remarks at a rally in which he accepted the nomination to represent his United Russia party as its presidential candidate in March. Dmitry Medvedev, the current president, is expected to swap jobs with him as prime minister.
Mr Putin’s enemies insist his party is full of corrupt bureaucrats, and claim ballot-rigging has already begun for the parliamentary elections next Sunday. – Daily Mail
China’s top economic planner has allocated 660 million yuan (103.6 million U.S. dollars) of special funds to guide cloud computing research, as part of the government’s efforts to boost the sector’s development, the China Securities Journal reported Friday.
The funds, the first batch of their kind, were designated to 15 cloud computing programs scattered across the country’s five cloud-computing pilot cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Wuxi, according to the report.
Internet giants Alibaba and Baidu received more than 100 million yuan to lead the projects while several other companies, including Shanghai East-China Computer Co. Ltd and Beijing Teamsun Technology Co. Ltd, received some 15 million to 20 million yuan, the report quoted an unnamed source as saying.
The news gave a brief lift to related stocks despite the downbeat sentiment on the broader market. Stocks of East-China Computer Co. Ltd, rose 2.23 percent in the morning trading to end the session at 23.4 yuan per share.
The business-led projects will experience a five-year assessment period, through which the National Development and Reform Commission will follow and evaluate the process to decide whether to inject more money, according to the source.
The report also said China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has drafted a framework document on the development of cloud computing during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).
Tang Gang, an official with the MIIT, said China will see the effects of applying the technology by the end of the 2011-2015 period, but its large-scale application won’t emerge till the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020).
According to estimates by Orient Securities, the cloud computing sector in China could be worth 750 billion to 1 trillion yuan over the next five years, about 15 percent of the value of strategic emerging industries.
Motorola is building up on their Droid army. After recently unveiling the Droid RAZR across the globe, images and specifications of Motorola’s next handset have been leaked online through Droid Life. This time around it does not come in the form of blurry cam images, but rather official shots of the smartphone. The Droid 4 looks very alike to the Droid RAZR with the only difference being that the former has a slide out keyboard. The layout of the keyboard appears to be really good with the keys appearing to be well spaced. From the image, we can see that there is a white backlight that glows between the spaces of the keys.
Apart from images, the specifications of the Motorola Droid 4 have also been revealed. The handset will run on Android Gingerbread and powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. Here is a quick look at the rest of the highlighted specifications:
- Android 2.3 Gingerbread with added Motorola features
- 1.2GHz Dual-Core Processor
- 1GB RAM
- 4.0-inch qHD display with Corning Gorilla glass
- 8 Megapixel rear camera with 1080p video recording
- HD front facing camera for video calling
- 4G LTE
- 1,785mAh battery
Flynet pictures
While her boyfriend Justin Bieber may be fighting off paternity claims by Mariah Yeater who claims that she and the superstar had a backstage romp that resulted in a child, Selena Gomez finally has a reason to celebrate.
The former Disney star’s mother Mandy who is only 35 is expecting a child with Selena’s stepfather. The actress put up on twitter, “Momma and Brian are finally letting me share the news… My mommy’s carrying my baby brother or sister 🙂 I’m the happiest girl in the world! (sic)” This will be the second child for Mandy who married Brian Teefey in 2006. She had Selena with Ricardo Joel Gomez at the young age of 16. Selena has recently been on a career high and is one of the top-earning celebrity teenagers. She has come a long way since her child acting days and her popularity has only peaked since she started dating the Baby hitmaker Justin.
NASA to launch new Mars rover
Posted on: November 26, 2011
NASA will launch its latest Mars rover, Curiosity, on Saturday.
It is the agency’s most ambitious mission yet to discover if life ever existed on the red planet. The Rover lands next August and will spend two years studying the planet.
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