Reader Al F.'s old Apogree speakers and Krell amplifiers.
I never had any doubt that readers of this blog have the coolest systems, but the magnitude of the flood of homemade speakers, desktop systems, headphones, and all sorts of groovy turntables totally knocked me out. There's some sweet gear here, so click to the slideshow and check out the systems. Thanks to all who sent JPEGs -- I heard from well over 100 readers, so I can't show everyone's gear.
President Obama on Saturday called for a "caucus of common sense" to step forward and stop the sequester, which began cutting $85 billion of federal spending out of the economy on Friday.
"I know there are Republicans in Congress who would rather see tax loopholes closed than let these cuts go through," he said in his weekly address. "And I know there are Democrats who'd rather do smart entitlement reform than let these cuts go through. There's a caucus of common sense. And I'm going to keep reaching out to them to fix this for good."
The deadline to avoid the across the board cuts outright came and went on Friday evening, as Mr. Obama officially signed the sequester into effect. Both parties blamed each other for the failure to secure a deal before the deadline, and the finger-pointing continued Saturday.
The sequester "took effect because President Obama and Senate Democrats failed to act," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. and a member of House GOP leadership, said in the Republicans' weekly address. "In the last year, the House of Representatives has passed two proposals to replace the president's sequester with smarter spending cuts," but that the president's desire to "continue singling Americans out for tax increases" prevented Democrats from passing a "responsible plan to replace" the sequester.
"The president must stop using this debate as an excuse to raise taxes," she said, "and start seizing this opportunity to cut spending."
Mr. Obama, for his part, pinned the blame squarely on Republican obstinacy, accusing the GOP of protecting tax loopholes for the rich at the expense of middle-class families.
"None of this is necessary," the president said. "It's happening because Republicans in Congress chose this outcome over closing a single wasteful tax loophole that helps reduce the deficit. Just this week, they decided that protecting special-interest tax breaks for the well-off and well-connected is more important than protecting our military and middle-class families from these cuts."
And "while not everyone will feel the pain of these cuts right away," Mr. Obama said, "the pain will be real."
Instead of submitting to the "perpetual partisanship and brinksmanship," the president suggested, "we can and must replace these cuts with a balanced approach" that combines targeted spending cuts with entitlement reform and closes tax loopholes.
"This is America," he said, "and in America, we don't careen from one manufactured crisis to another. We make smart choices."
Bipartisan leaders from the House and Senate met with President Obama at the White House Friday to continue negotiations before he officially signed the cuts into effect.
No agreement emerged, but both parties forged on, already looking ahead to the next fiscal fight. A temporary budgetary measure funding the government expires March 27, and if the parties cannot reach an agreement on continued funding by then, the government will shut down.
Despite the potential for another bout of budgetary drama, the president and House Speaker John Boehner each signaled after their meeting on Friday that a government shutdown looks unlikely.
"With respect to the budget and keeping the government open," Mr. Obama said, "what's called the continuing resolution, which is essentially just an extension of last year's budget into this year's budget to make sure those basic government functions continue - I think that's the right thing to do to make sure that we don't have a government shutdown. And that's preventable."
Boehner said, "The House is going to move a continuing resolution next week to fund the government past March 27th, and I'm hopeful that we won't have to deal with the threat of a government shutdown while we're dealing with the sequester at the same time. The House will act next week, and I hope the Senate will follow suit."
Rescuers early Saturday morning returned to the site where a sinkhole swallowed a Florida man in his bedroom after the home's foundation collapsed.
Jeff Bush was in his bedroom when a sinkhole opened up and trapped him underneath his home at 11 p.m. Thursday night.
While the sinkhole was initially estimated to be 15 feet deep on Thursday night, the chasm has continued to grow. Officials now estimate it measures 30 feet across and up to 100 feet deep.
MORE: How Sinkholes Can Develop
Rescue operations were halted Friday night after it became too dangerous to approach the home.
Bill Bracken, an engineer with Hillsborough County Urban Search and Rescue team said that the house "should have collapsed by now, so it's amazing that it hasn't."
RELATED: Florida Man Swallowed by Sinkhole: Conditions Too Unstable to Approach
Using ground penetrating radar, rescuers have found a large amount of water beneath the house, making conditions even more dangerous for them to continue the search for Bush.
"I'm being told it's seriously unstable, so that's the dilemma," said Hillsborough County administrator Mike Merrell. "A dilemma that is very painful to them and for everyone."
Hillsborough County lies in what is known as Florida's "Sinkhole Alley." Over 500 sinkholes have been reported in the area since 1954, according to the state's environmental agency.
The Tampa-area home was condemned, leaving Bush's family unable to go back inside to gather their belongings. As a result, the Hillsborough County Fire Rescue set up a relief fund for Bush's family in light of the tragedy.
Officials evacuated the two houses adjacent to Bush's and are considering further evacuations, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, Bush's brother, Jeremy Bush, is still reeling from Thursday night.
Jeremy Bush had to be rescued by a first responder after jumping into the hole in an attempt to rescue his brother when the home's concrete floor collapsed, but said he couldn't find him.
"I just started digging and started digging and started digging, and the cops showed up and pulled me out of the hole and told me the floor's still falling in," he said.
"These are everyday working people, they're good people," said Deputy Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County sheriff's office, "And this was so unexpected, and they're still, you know, probably facing the reality that this is happening."
SINGAPORE: Singapore Education Minister Heng Swee Keat has urged schools here to maintain long-term partnerships, which will enrich the community.
He was speaking at Yishun Junior College's (YJC) Celebrating Values Day on Saturday.
It is a carnival to raise funds for charities such as the President's Challenge and Movement for the Intellectually Disabled of Singapore.
YJC has roped in partners to organise the event - such as parent support groups and other schools in the neighbourhood.
The event also saw Mr Heng launching a book of values. The minister autographed ten copies of the book.
The school will keep a copy, while the remaining nine will be given to well-wishers who pledge at least S$500 to beneficiaries.
Mr Heng said: "YJC is creating a ripple effect in spreading the message to the community that values ought to be celebrated, that we will care for people in need, that we'll nurture the young. These are the values that will uplift our society and will give all Singaporeans a brighter future."
- CNA/xq
This might be illegal, too.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) might investigate whether it should be illegal for consumers to unlock their mobile phones.
Speaking to TechCrunch in an interview published yesterday, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said that the ban is "something that we will look at at the FCC to see if we can and should enable consumers to use unlocked phones." He went on to tell TechCrunch that the "ban raises competition concerns; it raises innovation concerns."
The U.S. in January made illegal unlocking mobile phones -- a relatively common practice among unhappy carrier customers -- after the Library of Congress modified the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That modification left open the right to buy unlocked phones at full price, but stopped consumers from unlocking devices themselves. Unlocked phones typically cost hundreds of dollars more than those that are locked into a two-year agreement with a carrier.
Although Genachowski seemed to indicate some doubt about the new rule, he's by no means saying that his organization will definitely investigate it. His comments also made unclear how the FCC could step in to modify rules put in place by the Library of Congress. In other words, Genachowski's comments need to be taken with a hefty heaping of doubt.
CNET has contacted the FCC for comment on Genachowski's comments. We will update this story when we have more information.
Last Updated 10:01 a.m. ET
SEFFNER, Fla. A man was missing and feared dead early Friday after a large sinkhole opened under the bedroom of a house near Tampa. His brother says the man screamed for help before he disappeared.
The 36-year-old man's brother told rescue crews he heard a loud crash around 11 p.m. Thursday, then heard his brother screaming for help.
"When he got there, there was no bedroom left," Hillsborough County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Jessica Damico said. "There was no furniture. All he saw was a piece of the mattress sticking up."
The brother called 911 and frantically tried to help his brother. An arriving deputy pulled the brother from the still-collapsing house.
There's been no contact with the man since then and neighbors on both sides of the Seffner home have been evacuated.
By early Friday, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue officials determined the home had become too unstable to continue rescue efforts.
Hillsborough County Fire Chief Ron Rogers told a news briefing that extra-sensitive listening devices and cameras were inserted into the sinkhole. "They did not detect any signs of life," he said.
Damico said that at the surface, she estimates the sinkhole is about 30 feet across but officials say the sinkhole spreads to about 100 feet across below the surface. Authorities were waiting for an engineering crew to bring monitoring equipment to determine the borders of the sinkhole, she said.
"The entire house is on the sinkhole," Damico said.
Sinkholes are common in seaside Florida, whose underlying limestone and dolomite can be worn away by water and chemicals, then collapse.
Engineers condemned the house, reports CBS Tampa affiliate WTSP.
Janell Wheeler told the Tampa Bay Times newspaper she was inside the house with four other adults and a child when the sinkhole opened.
"It sounded like a car hit my house," she said.
The rest of the family went to a hotel but she stayed behind, sleeping in her car.
"I just want my nephew," she said through tears.
President Obama and congressional leaders today failed to reach a breakthrough to avert a sweeping package of automatic spending cuts, setting into motion $85 billion of across-the-board belt-tightening that neither had wanted to see.
Obama met for just over an hour at the White House today with Republican leaders House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Democratic allies, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Vice President Joe Biden.
But the parties emerged from their first face-to-face meeting of the year resigned to see the cuts take hold.
"This is not a win for anybody," Obama lamented in a statement to reporters after the meeting. "This is a loss for the American people."
READ MORE: 6 Questions (and Answers) About the Sequester
Officials have said the spending reductions immediately take effect Saturday but that the pain from reduced government services and furloughs of tens of thousands of federal employees would be felt gradually in the weeks ahead.
Federal agencies, from Homeland Security to the Pentagon, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education, have all prepared to notify employees that they will have to take one unpaid day-off per week through the end of the year.
The staffing trims could slow many government services, including airport screenings, air traffic control, and law enforcement investigations and prosecutions. Spending on education programs and health services for low-income families will also get clipped.
"It is absolutely true that this is not going to precipitate the crisis" that would have been caused by the so-called fiscal cliff, Obama said. "But people are going to be hurt. The economy will not grow as quickly as it would have. Unemployment will not go down as quickly as it would have. And there are lives behind that. And it's real."
The sticking point in the debate over the automatic cuts -- known as sequester -- has remained the same between the parties for more than a year since the cuts were first proposed: whether to include more new tax revenue in a broad deficit reduction plan.
The White House insists there must be higher tax revenue, through elimination of tax loopholes and deductions that benefit wealthier Americans and corporations. Republicans seek an approach of spending cuts only, with an emphasis on entitlement programs. It's a deep divide that both sides have proven unable to bridge.
"This discussion about revenue, in my view, is over," Boehner told reporters after the meeting. "It's about taking on the spending problem here in Washington."
Boehner: No New Taxes to Avert Sequester
Boehner says any elimination of tax loopholes or deductions should be part of a broader tax code overhaul aimed at lowering rates overall, not to offset spending cuts in the sequester.
Obama countered today that he's willing to "take on the problem where it exists, on entitlements, and do some things that my own party doesn't like." But he says Republicans must be willing to eliminate some tax loopholes as part of a deal.
"They refuse to budge on closing a single wasteful loophole to help reduce the deficit," Obama said. "We can and must replace these cuts with a more balanced approach that asks something from everybody."
Can anything more be done by either side to reach a middle ground?
The president today claimed he's done all he can. "I am not a dictator, I'm the president," Obama said.
ANKARA (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday the United States found a comment by Turkey's prime minister, likening Zionism to crimes against humanity, "objectionable", overshadowing their talks on the crisis in neighboring Syria.
Kerry, on his first trip to a Muslim nation since taking office, met Turkish leaders for talks meant to focus on Syria's civil war and bilateral interests from energy security to counter-terrorism.
But the comment by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan at a U.N. meeting in Vienna this week, condemned by his Israeli counterpart, the White House and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has clouded his trip.
"We not only disagree with it, we found it objectionable," Kerry told a news conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, saying he raised the issue directly with Davutoglu and would do so with Erdogan.
Kerry said Turkey and Israel were both key U.S. allies and urged them to restore closer ties.
"Given the many challenges that the neighborhood faces, it is essential that both Turkey and Israel find a way to take steps in order to bring about or to rekindle their historic cooperation," Kerry said.
"I think that's possible but obviously we have to get beyond the kind of rhetoric that we've just seen recently."
Washington needs all the allies it can get as it navigates the political currents of the Middle East, and sees Turkey as the key player in supporting Syria's opposition and planning for the era after President Bashar al-Assad.
But the collapse of Ankara's ties with Israel have undermined U.S. hopes that Turkey could play a role as a broker in the broader region.
Erdogan told the U.N. Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Vienna on Wednesday: "Just as with Zionism, anti-Semitism and fascism, it has become necessary to view Islamophobia as a crime against humanity."
Erdogan's caustic rhetoric on Israel has in the past won applause from conservative supporters at home but raised increasing concern among Western allies.
Ties between Israel and mostly Muslim Turkey have been frosty since 2010, when Israeli marines killed nine Turks in fighting aboard a Palestinian aid ship that tried to breach Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
"If we must talk about hostile acts, then Israel's attitude and its brutal killing of nine of our civilian citizens in international waters may be called hostile," Davutoglu said, adding Turkey had always stood against anti-Semitism.
"No single statement carries a price higher than the blood of a person ... If Israel wants to hear positive statements from Turkey it needs to reconsider its attitude both towards us and towards the West Bank," he told the news conference.
Turkey has demanded a formal apology for the 2010 incident, compensation for victims and their families and for the Gaza blockade to be lifted. Israel has voiced "regret" and has offered to pay into what it called a "humanitarian fund" through which casualties and relatives could be compensated.
SUPPORT FOR SYRIAN OPPOSITION
Turkey's relations with the United States have always been prickly, driven more by a mutual need for intelligence than any deep cultural affinity. And Erdogan's populist rhetoric, sometimes at apparent odds with U.S. interests, is aimed partly at a domestic audience wary of Washington's influence.
But the two have strong common interests. Officials said Syria would top the agenda in Kerry's meetings with Erdogan and President Abdullah Gul, building on the discussions in Rome between 11 mostly European and Arab nations within the "Friends of Syria" group.
After the Rome meeting, Kerry said on Thursday the United States would for the first time give non-lethal aid to the rebels and more than double support to the civilian opposition, although Western powers stopped short of pledging arms.
"We need to continue the discussion which took place in Rome ... in terms of the main goals there is no daylight between us and the Americans," a senior Turkish official said.
"A broad agreement was reached on supporting the opposition. Now our sides need to sit down and really flesh out what we can do to support them in order to change the balance on the ground," he said.
Turkey has been one of Assad's fiercest critics, hosting a NATO Patriot missile defense system, including two U.S. batteries, to protect against a spillover of violence and leading calls for international intervention.
It has spent more than $600 million sheltering refugees from the conflict that began almost two years ago, housing some 180,000 in camps near the border and tens of thousands more who are staying with relatives or in private accommodation.
Washington has given $385 million in humanitarian aid for Syria but U.S. President Barack Obama has so far refused to give arms, arguing it is difficult to prevent them from falling into the hands of militants who could use them on Western targets.
Turkey, too, has been reluctant to provide weapons, fearing direct intervention could cause the conflict to spill across its borders.
(Additional reporting by Gulsen Solaker; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Michael Roddy)
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Florida: World No. 1 and defending champion Rory McIlroy withdrew from the US PGA Honda Classic during his second round on Friday, saying he was struggling due to pain from a sore wisdom tooth.
McIlroy struggled through the back nine on Friday, his opening nine holes of the round, and hit his approach at the 18th into water. He then walked off the course and quickly departed the grounds with his coach and caddie.
"I sincerely apologise to The Honda Classic and PGA Tour for my sudden withdrawal," McIlroy said. "I have been suffering with a sore wisdom tooth, which is due to come out in the near future."
It was the first time in his career that McIlroy withdrew from a tournament and it comes as the 23-year-old from Northern Ireland struggles to find his form after switching to Nike equipment for this season.
McIlroy is a 6-1 co-favorite with 14-time major champion Tiger Woods in next month's Masters, but the tooth issue could dim his bid to add to a major haul that includes the 2011 US Open and 2012 PGA Championship.
"It began bothering me again last night," said McIlroy. "It was very painful again this morning, and I was simply unable to concentrate. It was really bothering me and had begun to affect my playing partners."
McIlroy gave no hint as to how the injury might impact his plans for playing in the weeks leading up to the year's first major tournament at Augusta National.
He had plans to play next week in a World Golf Championships event at nearby Doral and the Houston Open in the week before the Masters.
Especially gutting for McIlroy was the fact the pain flared as he was trying to defend the title he won a year ago to put himself atop the world rankings for the first time in his career.
"I came here with every intention of defending my Honda Classic title," said McIlroy. "Even though my results haven't revealed it, I really felt like I was rounding a corner. This is one of my favorite tournaments of the year and I regret having to make the decision to withdraw, but it was one I had to make."
McIlroy endured a horror-show start on Friday alongside South Africa's Ernie Els, the reigning British Open champion, and American Mark Wilson.
At the par-4 11th, he nearly put his approach into the water, then chipped across the green on his way to a double bogey.
On the par-4 13th, McIlroy went way to the right off the tee and missed a six-foot par putt.
After a pair of pars, he put his tee shot into the water at the par-4 16th, then took a drop and put his third shot into the water as well on the way to a triple bogey.
At the par-3 17th, the Northern Irishman three-putted from 42 feet for bogey to stand seven-over par for the round through eight holes.
McIlroy, who missed the cut in his first 2013 start at Abu Dhabi and lost in the first round of the WGC Match Play Championship last week, opened with a par-70 on Thursday but admitted he was still working on his timing and adjusting to his new clubs.
"It's hard to commit to the shot that you need to play every time," McIlroy said Thursday. "I felt like I hit the ball OK, not as good as I can, but it's getting there."
-AFP/ac
The lights are on -- it's time to go home. Mobile industry trade show Mobile World Congress is winding down, with new phones and
tablets and software dominating the headlines. But what does this year's show tell us about what to expect at MWC 2014?
The standout trend of this year's show that has the potential to be fully realised next year is the arrival of new operating systems, to challenge iOS and especially
Android. Mobile manufacturers and carriers have got behind
Firefox and OS as a way to stop Android siphoning your app and downloads cash to Google, with Ubuntu Touch also in the mix.
All three promise new phones this year. Firefox is furthest along, appearing on the Alcatel One Touch Fire and ZTE Open among others. By this time next year all three new operating systems should be ready for primetime, so I'm expecting a range of new phones at MWC 2014 endowed with Firefox OS, Tizen, and -- fingers crossed -- Ubuntu Touch too.
On a related note, Firefox OS and Tizen are aimed at low-end, wallet-friendly devices. As high-end phones head for market saturation and feature phones becoming smarter, there's a lot happening at the budget end. I'm expecting that to continue with more cheap devices -- and I'd be pleased if that has a knock-on effect, lowering the prices of high-end phones, a process already started by the Google Nexus 4.
High-end phones will continue to get more powerful, too. The new Nvidia Tegra 4 chip will be in hardware by this time next year, so there'll be Tegra-powered behemoths chomping through the show next year.
And we'll see more phones that work as hubs for your life, like the incredibly powerful LG phone that streams 4K video to a TV.
Finally, one thing we won't see is a flagship announcement from any of the major players. Microsoft, Apple and BlackBerry all snubbed the show in favour of standalone launches, while Samsung limited its involvement, also holding back its biggest announcement -- the Samsung Galaxy S4 -- until away from the show.
At first glance that might seem like a bad thing, but I'm optimistic: without a heavy-hitting flagship sucking up the attention, we were able to explore other aspects of the show. It's a great opportunity to other manufacturers to step up and steal the glory with something exciting, like Nokia did last year with the PureView 808 -- or come up with something divertingly wacky, like the crazier kit we saw at this year's show.
Whatever we see at MWC 2014, you'll see it too right here in CNET. In the meantime stick with us for more news, reviews and videos than you can shake a stick at. Right, we've got a plane to catch!
Updated at 12:57 p.m. ET
FORT MEADE, Md. An Army private charged in the biggest leak of classified material in U.S. history offered guilty pleas Thursday to 10 of 22 charges against him and a military judge said she would allow the soldier to read a statement explaining his actions.
Pfc. Bradley Manning would plead guilty to sending hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, in violation of military regulations but not in violation of federal espionage laws.
Manning said he wanted Americans to know what was going on in Iraq and Afghanistan because he wanted the government to be more transparent.
"I believe that if the general public ... had access to the information ... this could spark a domestic debate as to the role of the military and foreign policy in general," Manning said in court, according to the Reuters news service.
Manning said that after he released some information he was happy that other people were as alarmed as he was.
The judge, Col. Denise Lind, must decide whether to accept the guilty pleas, which could carry a sentence of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors could still pursue a court-martial on the remaining charges, including aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
The 25-year-old Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010 while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad.
The Obama administration has said releasing the information threatened valuable military and diplomatic sources and strained America's relations with other governments. Experts say that by seeking to punish Manning, the administration is sending a strong message that such leaks will not be tolerated.
Manning supporters — who held events Saturday to mark his 1,000 days in confinement — consider him a whistleblowing hero whose actions exposed war crimes and helped trigger the Middle Eastern pro-democracy uprisings known as the Arab Spring in late 2010.
On Tuesday, it was revealed that Manning has submitted a written statement about the leak and the motive behind it that he wanted to read in court during Thursday's hearing. Prosecutors objected to the statement, but the judge said Thursday she would allow him to read it.
Manning has won few significant victories in his lengthy pretrial proceedings, which included testimony from the soldier about how he was deprived of his clothing and told to stand at attention naked while on suicide watch at the maximum-security Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Va. He has since been transferred to medium-security confinement at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
The judge ruled that Manning was illegally punished for part of the time he spent at Quantico and that 112 days should be cut from any prison sentence he receives if convicted.
Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewell to the faithful today, lifting off from the Vatican in a white helicopter as the first pope to resign in six centuries.
Just before 5 p.m. local time, Benedict, 85, walked out of the Vatican for the last time as pope, waving to a cheering crowd in the Courtyard of San Damaso as he entered a black Mercedes for the short drive to a nearby heliport.
In a tweet sent from Benedict XVI @Pontifex as his motorcade rolled to the heliport, Benedict said, "Thank you for your love and support. May you always experience the joy that comes from putting Christ at the centre of your lives."
READ MORE: Pope Benedict XVI Delivers Farewell Address
With church bells ringing across Rome, he then embarked on the 15-minute flight to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence just south of the city and his home for the coming months when he'll be recognized by the church as His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus.
When Benedict landed in the gardens at Castel Gandolfo, he was greeted by a group of dignitaries, including the governor of the Vatican City state Giovanni Bertello, two bishops, the director of the pontifical villas, and the mayor and parish priest. Off the helicopter and back into a car, Benedict headed to the palace.
Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images
In the plaza at Castel Gandolfo, a crowd of supporters, many waving flags or banners, some peering out of windows, gathered to welcome Benedict. When Benedict finally appeared on the balcony, the crowd erupted in applause.
"Thank you for your friendship, your affection," Benedict told them.
Benedict said he was "just a pilgrim starting the last lap of his earthly journey."
After his brief address to the crowd, Benedict waved one last time and walked back into the palace as the sun set around the square.
9 Men Who Could Replace Pope Benedict XVI
In his final remarks earlier in the day to colleagues in the Roman Catholic Church, Benedict had promised "unconditional reverence and obedience" to his eventual successor.
Benedict, in a morning meeting at the Vatican, urged the cardinals to act "like an orchestra" to find "harmony" moving forward.
Benedict spent a quiet final day as pope, bidding farewell to his colleagues and moving on to a secluded life of prayer, far from the grueling demands of the papacy and the scandals that have recently plagued the church.
His first order of business was a morning meeting with the cardinals in the Clementine Hall, a room in the Apostolic Palace. Despite the historical nature of Benedict's resignation, not all cardinals attended the event.
Angelo Sodano, the dean of the College of Cardinals, thanked Benedict for his service to the church during the eight years he has spent as pontiff.
Pope Benedict's Last Sunday Prayer Service
For some U.S. Catholics in Rome for the historic occasion, Benedict's departure is bittersweet. Christopher Kerzich, a Chicago resident studying at the Pontifical North American College of Rome, said Wednesday he is sad to see Benedict leave, but excited to see what comes next.
"Many Catholics have come to love this pontiff, this very humble man," Kerzich said. "He is a man who's really fought this and prayed this through and has peace in his heart. I take comfort in that and I think a lot of Catholics should take comfort in that."
LONDON: Chelsea insisted Thursday would be just another day at the office despite interim manager Rafael Benitez hitting out at the club's fans and management the day before.
Benitez launched a broadside following his side's 2-0 win at Middlesbrough in the FA Cup fifth round on Wednesday, criticising fans for protesting against him and questioning why he was only appointed on a temporary basis.
His outburst sparked speculation on social media that his position was in immediate danger, but a spokesperson for the club said: "It's business as usual."
Benitez was expected to take training as scheduled on Thursday as the European champions began preparations for Saturday's league game with West Bromwich Albion.
The 52-year-old Spaniard has risked the wrath of owner Roman Abramovich by asking why the club insisted on making him an 'interim' manager when he replaced the sacked Roberto di Matteo in November.
"I have a title. Someone decided the title would be 'interim'. Why? Just in case?" he said on Wednesday.
"If they want to blame me for everything that is wrong and then they say, 'We will put interim just in case,' fine, that is your decision.
"I don't agree, but it's your decision and now everybody has to take responsibility. If we are in the Champions League, I will be the happiest man in the world.
"But next year, I will leave anyway because I have finished my contract, so they (his critics) don't need to be worried about me. What they have to do is concentrate on supporting the team.
"I have a contract until the end of the season, that's it, so they don't need to be worried about me."
Benitez has faced opposition from a core of disillusioned Chelsea fans ever since he arrived at the club but he says those supporters have unrealistic expectations about the current squad.
"It's a team in transition -- they don't realise," said the former Liverpool manager.
"In the past, we had (Didier) Drogba, (Michael) Essien, (Salomon) Kalou. These players, it was a very strong squad, players with experience in the Premier League.
"Now we have a group of players with talent, really good players with talent, but they need time. It's a time of transition.
"But they don't realise it was a time of transition when I came here."
Benitez received support from some of his fellow Premier League managers, with Fulham's Martin Jol expressing sympathy for the Spaniard's predicament.
"I feel for any manager who is not well-liked and he wasn't well-liked from the start, so I feel for him," said Jol.
"He is a professional so he will probably do his job until the end of the season."
Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew agreed that being installed as an 'interim' manager had undermined Benitez from the start.
"The title probably didn't do him any favours," Pardew said.
"It probably didn't help Chelsea, and perhaps even upstairs, they might regret that title, if you want to call it that.
"He's a great manager; they are a great club. They will sort it out."
West Brom manager Steve Clarke, whose side visit Stamford Bridge on Saturday, also spoke out in support of Benitez.
"It is difficult for me to say whether it was a rant or not by Rafa because I didn't hear the interview," said the former Chelsea player and assistant coach.
"I read it and seeing a transcription is different to hearing someone say something.
"But I didn't see a lot wrong in what he said. The script, as it was written down, was OK.
"I think by and large we are all interim. Someone is going to come and take your position at some stage."
"Only Sir Alex (Ferguson) and maybe Arsene Wenger can say they are in it for the long haul, but eventually someone is going to take your job so we are all temporary managers."
-AFP/ac
Apple's iPhone 5.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook says today during the electronics giant's annual shareholder meeting that he knows people are upset about the stock drop.
"I don't like it either," Cook said. Nor does the board and management, he added.But what investors are likely still wondering is what Apple's going to do about it. Shares have tumbled roughly 35 percent from their peak in September, and it's unclear what could spur another run higher. Many investors have become worried about increased competition from the likes of Samsung and others, and some shareholders, like David Einhorn, have demanded that Apple return more cash to investors.
Cook today says the company is focused on the long term and making the very best products. He noted that Apple is working harder than ever and "has some great stuff coming."
Apple shares recently slid 1 percent to $444.29 as investors await more news from the shareholder meeting.
Updated at 11:22 a.m. ET
LONDON The sophisticated cyberweapon which targeted an Iranian nuclear plant is older than previously believed, an anti-virus firm said Tuesday, peeling back another layer of mystery on a series of attacks attributed to U.S. and Israeli intelligence.
The Stuxnet worm, aimed at the centrifuges in Iran's Natanz plant, transformed the cybersecurity field because it was the first known computer attack specifically designed to cause physical damage. The precise origins of the worm remain unclear, but until now the earliest samples of Stuxnet had been dated to 2009.
Security experts generally agree that Stuxnet was an attempt to sabotage Iran's uranium enrichment centrifuges, which can be used to make fuel for reactors or weapons-usable material for atomic bombs. Iran maintains its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
As "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft reported last year, Stuxnet was incredibly complicated and sophisticated, beyond the cutting edge. By the time it was first detected in June 2010, it had been out in the wild for a year without drawing anyone's attention, and seemed to spread by way of USB thumb drives, not over the Internet.
By the fall of 2010, the consensus was that Iran's top secret uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was the target and that Stuxnet was a carefully constructed weapon designed to be carried into the plant on a corrupted laptop or thumb drive, then infect the system, disguise its presence, move through the network, changing computer code and subtly alter the speed of the centrifuges without the Iranians ever noticing, Kroft reported.
"Stuxnet's entire purpose is to control centrifuges," Liam O Murchu, an operations manager for Symantec, told Kroft. "To make centrifuges speed up past what they're meant to spin at and to damage them. Certainly it would damage the uranium enrichment facility and they would need to be replaced."
Last June, The New York Times traced the origins of the top-secret program back to 2006.
In a new report issued late Tuesday, Symantec Corp. pushed that timeline further back, saying it had found a primitive version of Stuxnet circulating online in 2007 and that elements of the program had been in place as far back as 2005.
One independent expert who examined the report said it showed that the worm's creators were particularly far-sighted.
"What it looks like is that somebody's been thinking about this for a long, long time — the better part of a decade," said Alan Woodward, a computer science professor at the University of Surrey. "It really points to a very clever bunch of people behind all of this."
A look at the locations where Iran carries out work linked to its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons
The Times reported that President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of Stuxnet against Iran in a bid to put the brakes on its atomic energy program, detailing how the worm tampered with the operation of Natanz's centrifuge machines to send them spinning out of control.
President Obama, who succeeded Bush shortly after the first attacks, expanded the campaign, the report said.
U.S. and Israeli officials have long declined to comment publicly on Stuxnet or their alleged involvement in creating and deploying the computer worm.
Symantec's report suggests that an intermediate version of the worm — Stuxnet 0.5 — was completed in November 2007. That worm lacked some of the sophistication of its descendant, Symantec said, and was designed to interfere with the centrifuges by opening and closing the valves which control the flow of uranium gas, causing a potentially damaging buildup in pressure.
That approach was dropped in later, improved versions of the Stuxnet code.
Symantec said the servers used to control the primitive worm were set up in November 2005, suggesting that Stuxnet's trailblazing authors were plotting out their attack at a time when many parts of the Internet now taken for granted were not yet in place. Twitter did not exist, Facebook was still largely limited to U.S. college campuses, and YouTube was in its infancy.
Woodward said that had troubling implications.
"Clearly these were very forward-thinking, clever people that were doing this," he said. "There's no reason to think that they're less forward-thinking now. What are they up to?"
Mark Lucas wouldn't mind seeing America's defense budget cut by billions.
"There's quite a bit of waste within the military," Lucas, who serves as Iowa state director for the conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP), told ABC News. "Being in there for 10 years, I've seen quite a bit of it."
With the budget sequester set to kick in on Friday, the former Army ranger is among a small chorus of conservatives saying bring on the cuts.
Read more: Bernanke on Sequester Cuts: Too Much, Too Soon
Lucas cited duplicative equipment purchases, military-run golf courses and lavish food on larger bases -- unlike the chow he endured at a combat operations post in Afghanistan with about 120 other soldiers.
"These guys would have very good food, and I'm talking almost like a buffet style, shrimp and steak once a week, ice cream, all this stuff," Lucas said. "They had Burger Kings and Pizza Huts and McDonald's. And I said to myself, 'Do we really need this?'"
Lucas and AFP would like to see the sequester modified, with federal agencies granted more authority to target the cuts and avoid the more dire consequences. But the group wants the cuts to happen.
"We're very supportive of the sequestration cuts but would prefer to see more targeted cuts at the same level," said the group's spokesman, Levi Russell.
As President Obama and his Cabinet members are sounding the sequester alarm bells, AFP's willingness shows that not everyone is running for the hills.
Charles Dharapak/Pool/AP Photo
Read more: 57 Terrible Consequences of the Sequester
Obama traveled to Norfolk, Va., on Tuesday to speak at a shipyard about cuts and layoffs to defense contractors. In his most recent weekly radio address, he told Americans that the Navy has already kept an aircraft carrier home instead of deploying it to the Persian Gulf. And last week, he spoke before national TV cameras at the White House, warning that first responders would be laid off.
Homeland Security Secretary Jane Napolitano has warned that the sequester will "leave critical infrastructure vulnerable to attacks." Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has warned that air travel will back up after the Federal Aviation Administration furloughs air traffic controllers. And the heads of 18 other federal agencies told Congress that terrible things will happen unless the sequester is pushed off.
Some Republicans have accused the president of scaremongering to gin up popular support for tax hikes. Obama has warned of calamity and demanded compromise in the next breath, and a few Republicans have rejected this as a false choice.
Read more: Boehner Hopes Senate 'Gets Off Their Ass'
"I don't think the president's focused on trying to find a solution to the sequester," House Speaker John Boehner told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "For 16 months, the president's been traveling all over the country holding rallies, instead of sitting down with Senate leaders in order to try to forge an agreement over there in order to move the bill."
After Obama spoke to governors at the this week, Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal told ABC News' Jonathan Karl outside the White House that the president is exaggerating the sequester's consequences.
"He's trying to scare the American people," Jindal said. "He's trying to distort the impact."
ALMATY (Reuters) - Iran was upbeat on Wednesday after talks with world powers about its nuclear work ended with an agreement to meet again, but Western officials said it had yet to take concrete steps to ease their fears of a secret weapons program.
The United States, China, France, Russia, Britain and Germany offered to ease sanctions slightly in return for Iran curbing its most sensitive work, but had made clear they expected no breakthrough in the talks in Kazakhstan, the first in eight months.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the talks had been "useful" and that a serious engagement by Iran could lead to a comprehensive deal in a decade-old dispute that has threatened to trigger a new Middle East war.
Iran's foreign minister said in Vienna he was "very confident" a deal could be reached and its chief negotiator said he believed the Almaty meeting could be a "turning point".
The two sides agreed to hold expert-level talks in Istanbul on March 18 to discuss the offer, and return to Almaty for political discussions on April 5-6, when Western diplomats made clear they wanted to see substantive movement by Iran.
"Iran knows what it needs to do, the president has made clear his determination to implement his policy that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon," Kerry said in Paris.
A senior U.S. official in Almaty added: "What we care about at the end is concrete results."
ISRAELI WARNING
Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed power, was watching the talks closely. It has strongly hinted it might attack Iran if diplomacy and sanctions fail to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon. Iran denies any such aim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said economic sanctions were failing and urged the international community to threaten Iran with military action.
Western officials said the offer presented by the six powers included an easing of a ban on trade in gold and other precious metals, and a relaxation of an import embargo on Iranian petrochemical products. They gave no further details.
In exchange, a senior U.S. official said, Iran would among other things have to suspend uranium enrichment to a fissile concentration of 20 percent at its Fordow underground facility and "constrain the ability to quickly resume operations there".
This appeared to be a softening of a previous demand that Iran ship out its entire stockpile of higher-grade enriched uranium, which it says it needs to produce medical isotopes.
Iran says it has a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes, and wants to fuel nuclear power plants so that it can export more oil.
But 20-percent purity is far higher than that needed for nuclear power, and rings alarm bells abroad because it is only a short technical step away from weapons-grade.
Iran's growing stockpile of 20-percent-enriched uranium is already more than half-way to a "red line" that Israel has made clear it would consider sufficient for a bomb.
ELECTION LOOMING
The U.S. official said the latest proposal would "significantly restrict the accumulation of near-20-percent enriched uranium in Iran, while enabling the Iranians to produce sufficient fuel" for their Tehran medical reactor.
Iran had previously indicated that 20-percent enrichment was up for negotiation if it received the fuel from abroad instead.
Chief negotiator Saeed Jalili suggested Iran could discuss the issue, although he appeared to rule out shutting down Fordow. He said the powers had not made that specific demand.
Western officials were aware that the closeness of Iran's presidential election in June is raising political tensions in Tehran and made rapid progress unlikely.
One diplomat in Almaty said the Iranians appeared to be suggesting at the negotiations that they were opening new avenues, but that it was not clear if this was really the case.
"Everyone is saying Iran was more positive and portrayed the talks as a win," said Iran expert Dina Esfandiary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "I reckon the reason for that is that they are saving face internally while buying time with the West until after the elections."
The Iranian rial, which has lost more than half its foreign exchange value in the last year as sanctions bite, rose some 2 percent on Wednesday, currency tracking web sites reported.
(Additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl in Almaty, Georgina Prodhan in Vienna, Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich, Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Dan Williams in Jerusalem and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Timothy Heritage and Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
TEHRAN: Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday told the visiting Pakistani president that a much-delayed $7.5 billion gas pipeline project must go ahead despite US opposition.
"The Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline is an important example of Tehran-Islamabad cooperation, and despite hostilities towards the expansion of ties we must overcome this opposition decisively," Khamenei told Asif Ali Zardari, his office reported.
The gas pipeline project is strongly opposed by Tehran's archfoe Washington.
"Accessing safe energy source is the first priority for any country including Pakistan. In this region, the Islamic republic is the only nation that has safe energy resources and we are ready to provide Pakistan its energy needs," the all-powerful Khamenei said.
The pipeline project has run into repeated problems, including Pakistan's difficulty in finding funds and opposition to the project from Washington, which has slapped Iran with a raft of sanctions over its nuclear activities.
The Pakistani media reported last year that Zardari would visit Iran in mid-December 2012, when a final agreement was to have been signed, but the visit was delayed.
In 2010, Iran and Pakistan agreed that Tehran would supply between 750 million cubic feet (21 million cubic metres) and one billion cubic feet per day of natural gas by mid-2015.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Zardari that, "building the gas pipeline between Iran and Pakistan is a great and important event, and it serves the two nations' interests," the president's office reported.
"I believe that building this project is very beneficial for both sides and we support all the work carried out so far," Zardari said in talks his Iranian counterpart.
"The international and regional players have tried in vain to prevent an expansion of Iran-Pakistan ties but the people have learnt how to act against enemies of Islam," he was quoted as saying.
Islamabad has said it will pursue the project regardless of US pressure, saying the gas is needed to help Pakistan overcome its energy crisis that has led to debilitating blackouts and suffocated industry.
Iran has almost completed the pipeline work in its territory, but Pakistan has not yet started construction of 780 kilometers (490 miles) of the pipeline on its side, which is said to cost some $1.5 billion.
Sanctions-hit Iran finally agreed to finance one-third of the costs of laying the pipeline through Pakistani territory to Nawabshah, north of Karachi, with the work to be carried out by an Iranian company.
Pakistani officials in mid-December said Iran had promised a $500 million loan and that Islamabad would meet the rest of the cost.
"There are impediments in view of the US opposition to the project but we are determined to complete it to meet our fast-growing energy requirements," said one government official on condition of anonymity.
Tehran has been strangled by a Western oil embargo that has seen its crude exports halve in the past year, while Pakistan has an acute need for energy and plans to produce 20 percent of its electricity from Iranian gas.
Iran has the second largest world gas reserves after Russia and currently produces some 600 million cubic metres a day, almost all of which is consumed domestically due to lack of exports means.
The only foreign client is Turkey, which buys about 30 million cubic metres of gas a day.
Tehran also plans to sell its gas to two other neighbours, Iraq and Syria. The three countries agreed in 2011 to build a pipeline, with the work already started on the Iranian side.
-AFP/ac
Twitter updated its Windows Phone app this morning, bringing it in line with its iOS and Android apps.
Twitter today updated its Windows Phone app, adding a slew of new discovery features that had been included in the social network's iOS and Android apps for some time.
In a blog post, Twitter said that it had fundamentally redesigned the Windows Phone version of its app to be "in line with other Twitter apps," in part by adding an all-new navigation structure for those on Microsoft's mobile OS.
That structure is built around the Home, Connect, Discovery, and Me tabs that have been used for Twitter's iOS and
Android apps for awhile. The Home tab allows users to see their timeline, and to tap on a tweet in order to see its full content. The Connect tab is built to let users see all their @-mentions or who has followed, retweeted, or favorited them. The new Discover tab is home to trending topics, as well as a place to find new content or people on Twitter. And the Me tab is a place for users to see and reply to direct messages, browse lists, and update their profile.
The new Windows Phone app will also feature buttons for instantly composing a new tweet, and for searching Twitter. Plus it will have "live tiles" meant to let users "pin Twitter accounts, lists and searches to your start screen, giving you quick access to some of your favorite Twitter content."
Twitter has recently been working hard to make its user experience consistent across various platforms, and today's move is just the latest in its attempts to ensure that users have a similar experience -- crucial as it builds out its advertising platform -- regardless of which OS they're on.
Updated 9:02 a.m. EST
LUXOR, Egypt A hot air balloon flying over Egypt's ancient city of Luxor caught fire and crashed into a sugar cane field on Tuesday, killing at least 19 foreign tourists, a security official said. The death toll rose Tuesday afternoon after a British tourist died of his injuries.
It was one of the worst accidents involving tourists in Egypt and is likely to push the key tourism industry deeper into recession.
The casualties included French, British, Belgian, Hungarian, Japanese nationals and nine tourists from Hong Kong, Luxor Governor Ezzat Saad told reporters.
Three survivors of the crash -- two British tourists and one Egyptian -- were taken to a local hospital. Local media reports said the pilot was among the survivors. One of the British tourists eventually succumbed to his injuries.
According to the Egyptian security official, the balloon was carrying at least 20 tourists and over Luxor when it caught fire, which triggered an explosion in its gas canister. It then plunged at least 1,000 feet from the sky.
The balloon crashed into a sugar cane field outside al-Dhabaa village just west of Luxor, 320 miles south of Cairo, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Egyptians inspect the site where a hot air balloon exploded over the ancient temple city of Luxor on February 26, 2013.
The official said foul play has been ruled out.
Egypt's civil aviation minister, Wael el-Maadawi, flew to Luxor to lead the investigation into the crash.
The head of Japan Travel Bureau's Egypt branch, Atsushi Imaeda, confirmed that four Japanese died in the crash. He said two were a couple in their 60s and from Tokyo. Details on the other two were not immediately available.
In Hong Kong, a travel agency said nine of the tourists that were aboard the balloon were natives of the semiautonomous Chinese city. There was a "very big chance that all nine have perished," said Raymond Ng, a spokesman for the agency. The nine, he said, included five women and four men from three families.
They were traveling with six other Hong Kong residents on a 10-day tour of Egypt.
Ng said an escort of the nine tourists watched the balloon from the ground catching fire around 7 a.m. and plunging to the ground two minutes later.
In Britain, tour operator Thomas Cook confirmed that two British tourists were dead and two were in hospital.
"What happened in Luxor this morning is a terrible tragedy and the thoughts of everyone in Thomas Cook are with our guests, their family and friends," said Peter Fankhauser, CEO of Thomas Cook UK & Continental Europe.
"We have a very experienced team in resort with the two guests in the local hospital, and we're providing our full support to the family and friends of the deceased at this difficult time," he said.
In Paris, a diplomatic official said French tourists were among those involved in the accident, but would give no details on how many, or whether French citizens were among those killed.
Speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to be publicly named according to government policy, the official said French authorities were working with their Egyptian counterparts to clarify what happened. French media reports said two French tourists were among the dead but the official wouldn't confirm that.
Hot air ballooning, usually at sunrise over the famed Karnak and Luxor temples as well as the Valley of the Kings, is a popular pastime for tourists visiting the area.
The site of the accident has seen past crashes. In 2009, 16 tourists were injured when their balloon struck a cellphone transmission tower. A year earlier, seven tourists were injured in a similar crash.
Egypt's tourism industry has been decimated since the 18-day uprising in 2011 against autocrat leader Hosni Mubarak and the political turmoil that followed and continues to this day.
Luxor's hotels are currently about 25 percent full in what is supposed to be the peak of the winter season.
Scared off by the political turmoil and tenuous security that has followed the uprising, the number of tourists coming to Egypt fell to 9.8 million in 2011 from 14.7 million the year before, and revenues plunged 30 percent to $8.8 billion.
Poverty swelled at the country's fastest rate in Luxor, which is highly dependent on visitors to its monumental temples and the tombs of King Tutankhamun and other pharaohs. In 2011, 39 percent of its population lived on less than $1 a day, compared to 18 percent in 2009, according to government figures.
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's stunned political parties looked for a way forward on Tuesday after an election that gave none of them a parliamentary majority, posing the threat of prolonged instability and European financial crisis.
The results, notably by the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, left the center-left bloc with a majority in the lower house but without the numbers to control the powerful upper chamber, the Senate.
Financial markets fell sharply at the prospect of a stalemate that reawakened memories of the crisis that pushed Italy's borrowing costs toward unsustainably high levels and brought the euro zone to the brink of collapse in 2011.
"The winner is: Ingovernability," ran the headline in Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, reflecting the deadlock the country will have to confront in the next few weeks as sworn enemies are forced to work together to form a government.
Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), has the difficult task of trying to agree a "grand coalition" with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the man he blames for ruining Italy, or striking a deal with Grillo, a completely unknown quantity in conventional politics.
The alternative is new elections either immediately or within a few months, although both Berlusconi and Bersani have indicated that they want to avoid a return to the polls if possible: "Italy cannot be ungoverned and we have to reflect," Berlusconi said in an interview on his own television station.
For his part, Grillo, whose "non-party" movement won the most votes of any single party, has indicated that he believes the next government will last no more than six months.
"They won't be able to govern," he told reporters on Tuesday. "Whether I'm there or not, they won't be able govern."
He said he would work with anyone who supported his policy proposals, which range from anti-corruption measures to green-tinted energy measures but rejected suggestions of entering a formal coalition: "It's not time to talk of alliances... the system has already fallen," he said.
The election, a massive rejection of the austerity policies applied by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of international leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, caused consternation across Europe.
"This is a jump to nowhere that does not bode well either for Italy or Europe," said Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo.
In a sign of worry at the top over what effect the elections could have on the economy, Monti, whose austerity policies were repudiated by voters who shunned his centrist bloc, met the governor of the central bank, the economy minister and the European affairs minister to discuss the situation on Tuesday.
The former EU commissioner and his team of technocrats, who were brought in to govern when Berlusconi was consumed by crisis and scandal, will stay on until a new administration is formed.
UNTHINKABLE WITHOUT GRILLO
Projections for the Senate by the Italian Centre for Electoral Studies indicated that the center-left would have 121 seats, against 117 for the center-right alliance of Berlusconi's PDL and the regionalist Northern League. Grillo would take 54.
That leaves no party with the majority in a chamber which a government must control to pass legislation and opened up the prospect of previously inconceivable partnerships that will test the sometimes fragile internal unity of the main parties.
"The idea of a majority without Grillo is unthinkable. I don't know if anyone in the PD is considering it but I'm against it," said Matteo Orfini, a member of Bersani's PD secretariat.
"The idea of a PD-PDL government, even if it's backed by Monti, doesn't make any sense," he said.
Berlusconi, a media magnate whose campaigning all but wiped out Bersani's once commanding opinion poll lead, hinted in a telephone call to a morning television show that he would be open to a deal with the center-left - but not with Monti, the economics professor who replaced him 15 months ago.
"Italy must be governed," Berlusconi said, adding that he "must reflect" on a possible deal with the center-left. "Everyone must be prepared to make sacrifices," he said of the groups which now have a share of the legislature.
The Milan bourse was down almost 4 percent and the premium Italy pays over Germany to borrow on 10-year widened to a yield spread of 338 basis points, the highest since December 10 and more than 80 points above the level seen earlier on Monday.
At an auction of six-month Treasury bills, Italy's borrowing costs jumped by more than two thirds with the yield reaching 1.237 percent, the highest since October and compared to just 0.730 percent in a similar sale a month ago.
The euro dropped to an almost seven-week low against the dollar in Asia on fears of a revival of the euro zone crisis. It fell as far as $1.3042, its lowest since January 10.
"What is crucial now is that a stable functioning government can be built as swiftly as possible," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. "This is not only in the interests of Italy but in the interests of all Europe."
However the view from some voters, weary of the mainstream parties, was unrepentant: "It's good," said Roger Manica, 28, a security guard in Rome, who voted for the center-left PD.
"Next time I'll vote 5-Star. I like that they are changing things, even if it means uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't matter to me, for me what's important is a good person who gets things done," he said. "Look how well they've done."
A long recession and growing disillusionment with mainstream parties and tax-raising austerity fed the bitter public mood and contributed to the massive rejection of Monti, whose centrist coalition was relegated to the sidelines.
Berlusconi's campaign, mixing sweeping tax cut pledges with relentless attacks on Monti and Merkel, echoed many of the themes pushed by Grillo and underlined the increasingly angry mood of the Italian electorate.
But even if the next government turns away from the tax hikes and spending cuts brought in by Monti, it will struggle to revive an economy that has scarcely grown in two decades.
Monti was widely credited with tightening Italy's public finances and restoring its international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, who is currently on trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute.
However he struggled to pass the kind of structural reforms needed to improve competitiveness and lay the foundations for a return to economic growth. A weak center-left government may not find it any easier.
For Italian business, with an illustrious history of export success, the election result brought dismay that there would be no quick change to what they see as a regulatory sclerosis that has kept the economy virtually stagnant for a decade.
"This is probably the worst possible scenario," said Francesco Divella, whose family began selling pasta under its eponymous brand in 1890 in the southern region of Puglia.
"We are very concerned about the uncertainty and apparent ungovernability," said Silvio Pietro Angori, chief executive of Pininfarina, which has designed Ferrari sportscars since 1950. "A company competing on the global markets like Pininfarina needs the support of a stable government that inspires trust."
One of the country's leading bankers summed up his personal reaction: "I'm in shock," he told Reuters. "What a mess!"
(Additional reporting by Barry Moody, Gavin Jones, Lisa Jucca, Steven Jewkes, Steve Scherer Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
LISBON: Portugal's prime minister on Tuesday said his country may be granted more time to meet its fiscal targets as the implementation of its international bailout was under review.
"There is a possibility of getting one year more to adjust the state deficit and it is very likely that this is up for discussion", Pedro Passos Coelho said as the so-called Troika of public creditors -- the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- on began its latest review of the country's finances.
Portugal was granted a financial rescue package worth 78 billion euros ($103 billion) in May 2011, in exchange for a pledge to straighten out its finances via austerity measures and economic reforms.
Last year the Troika gave eased Portugal's fiscal targets given the recession in the country and across much of the eurozone.
Lisbon now has to reduce its public deficit to 4.5 percent of GDP this year, instead of bringing it back within the EU ceiling of 3.0 percent of GDP.
The government has recently conceded it may be impossible for it to reach even the revised targets given the continued recession.
On Sunday, Finance Minister Vitor Gaspar said the economy is expected to contract around 2 percent this year, or double that of its previous forecast, and said he hopes the European Commission will give Portugal another year to reach the 3.0 percent target.
Passos Coelho said his country would like to "finish the (rescue) programme in June 2014 and we will neither ask for more time or more money."
-AFP/ac
Kyocera's Durapro feature phone.
Smartphones may be hot in the U.S. and U.K, but feature phones dominate in such countries as India and Russia, according to the folks at Nielsen.
Released today, Nielsen's "2013 Mobile Consumer Report" found that smartphones owners make up the majority of mobile phone users in nations such as the U.S., the U.K., South Korea, and China.
But in other countries, the networks required to support smartphones are still limited to large urban areas. As a result, the standard feature phone remains the top choice in regions such as India, Brazil, and Russia. But that trend could eventually start to swing.
Younger mobile users around the world are the ones most likely to be drawn to smartphones. As those people age and make up a greater slice of the consumer base, more countries may be spurred to expand their smartphone networks.
Among people surveyed for the report, smartphone ownership was cited by 53 percent of those in the U.S., 61 percent in the U.K., 67 percent in South Korea, and 66 percent in China. But only 10 percent in India, 19 percent in Turkey, 36 percent in Brazil, and 37 percent in Russia said they owned a smartphone.
Nielsen also found a difference in smartphone plans based on country.
People in areas with a higher percentage of smartphone owners tend to opt for fixed price data plans. Those in countries with a small percentage of smartphone users were more inclined to use pay-as-you-go plans or simply rely on Wi-Fi to get connected.
Many people across different countries also own more than one mobile phone, in some cases one for work and one for home. A full 51 percent of people in Russia said they own more than one phone, while only 17 percent of those in the U.S. said the same.
And what are people across the globe doing with their smartphones?
Text messaging, Web browsing, and using social networks proved the most popular activities among most of the countries included in the report. Games, social networking apps, and navigation apps were tops in mobile software across a majority of countries.
Nielsen's report analyzed the behavior and device preferences among consumers in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Brazil, China, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea, and Turkey.
From April to June 2012, Nielsen interviewed 76,204 mobile users, 54,585 of which were able to identify their mobile phone. Among those, 28,103 said they owned a smartphone and 26,482 owned a non-smartphone.
Amid a handful of allegations that threaten to mar his reputation in the Senate, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., continues to maintain his innocence, decrying the accusations as right-wing attempts to "destroy" his career and invoking the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in asserting his faith that justice will win out.
Menendez, who was re-elected to his seat in November, has since been hit with allegations that he solicited prostitutes in the Dominican Republic, where prostitution is legal. The FBI is looking into the claims. The allegations were originally reported by a conservative website citing an anonymous source.
Menendez has also been accused of improperly lobbying the State Department on a port security contract on behalf of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a close friend and donor. Menendez recently reimbursed Melgen $58,000 for two of three trips he took on Melgen's plane to the Dominican Republic in 2010, but called the tardy reimbursement an honest oversight and says the allegations against him are "absolutely false." The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating Menendez regarding those trips. Melgen himself is the target of more than one federal investigation stemming from allegations of Medicare fraud.
This weekend, at an event celebrating Black History Month at Shiloh Baptist Church in Trenton, N.J., the senator answered the accusations with the words of Martin Luther King Jr.
"Dr. King said that 'the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,'" he said, according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. "Now we face anonymous, faceless, nameless individuals from right-wing sources seeking to destroy a lifetime of work. And their scares are false. I have worked too hard and too long in the vineyards to allow, at my hands, for the harvest to be soured."
"I have felt the sting of discrimination," he said, according to the North Jersey Record.
Menendez said he believes ultimately, "justice will overcome the forces of darkness."
"I have my hand on the plough," he said, "and I am going to continue to look forward and to work to make that plough lead us to the fulfillment of educational, economic and health care opportunity in this country."
A recent Quinnipiac poll shows a recent drop in Menendez's popularity, with just 36 percent approving and 41 percent disapproving.
But the Democrat, who is at the start of another six-year term, brushed off the importance of those numbers.
"The only poll that matters is what do I get accomplished each and every day," he said, according to the Star-Ledger.
Feb 25, 2013 9:05am
ROME – Pope Benedict XVI decided to keep secret the contents of an investigative report on the “Vatileaks” scandal, ruling that the only person who will get to see it will be the next pope.
The top secret dossier details the findings of an internal investigation the pope launch last April into the so-called Vatileaks affair, in which Benedict’s former butler leaked confidential documents stolen from the papal chambers.
Italian newspapers have claimed — without attribution — that the investigation revealed a sex and blackmail scandal inside the curia.
The Vatican spokesman today underscored that the contents of the dossier are known only to the pope and his investigators, three elderly prelates whom the Italian papers have nicknamed “the 007 cardinals.”
Pope Benedict met today with Cardinals Julian Herranz of Spain, Jozef Tomko of Slovakia, and Salvatore De Giorgi of Sicily in a private audience.
According to the Vatican, the pope thanked them for their work and expressed satisfaction with their investigation.
“Their work made it possible to detect, given the limitations and imperfections of the human factor of every institution, the generosity and dedication of those who work with uprightness and generosity in the Holy See,” read a Vatican statement.
The Vatican statement pointedly added: “The Holy Father has decided that the acts of this investigation, known only to himself, remain solely at the disposition of the new pope.”
Many here had expected the investigating cardinals, who are too old to participate in the conclave, would brief the voting cardinals about their findings.
Today Vatican officials clarified the investigating cardinals will be free to discuss their investigation with the other cardinals, as the voting members of the conclave seek to understand the challenges the next pope will face.
But the dossier itself will remain “For the Pope’s Eyes Only.”
ALMATY (Reuters) - Major powers will offer Iran some sanctions relief during talks in Almaty, Kazakhstan, this week if Tehran agrees to curb its nuclear program, a U.S. official said on Monday.
But the Islamic Republic could face more economic pain if it fails to address international concerns about its atomic activities, the official said ahead of the February 26-27 meeting in the central Asian state, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"There will be continued sanctions enforcement ... there are other areas where pressure can be put," the official said, on the eve of the first round of negotiations between Iran and six world powers in eight months.
A spokesman for European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who leads the talks with Iran on behalf of the powers, said Tehran should understand that there was an "urgent need to make concrete and tangible progress" in Kazakhstan.
Both Russia and the United States stressed there was not an unlimited amount of time to resolve a dispute that has raised fears of a new war in the Middle East.
"The window for a diplomatic solution simply cannot by definition remain open forever. But it is open today. It is open now," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference in London. "There is still time but there is only time if Iran makes the decision to come to the table and negotiate in good faith."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said there was "no more time to waste", Interfax news agency quoted him as saying in Almaty.
The immediate priority for the powers - the United States, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France - is to convince Iran to halt its higher-grade enrichment, which is a relatively short technical step away from potential atom bomb material.
Iran, which has taken steps over the last year to expand its uranium enrichment activities in defiance of international demands to scale it back, wants a relaxation of increasingly harsh sanctions hurting its lifeline oil exports.
Western officials say the Almaty meeting is unlikely to produce any major breakthrough, in part because Iran's presidential election in June may make it difficult for it to make significant concessions before then for domestic reasons.
But they say they hope that Iran will take their proposals seriously and engage in negotiations to try to find a diplomatic settlement.
"No one is expecting to walk out of here with a deal but ... confidence building measures are important," one senior Western official said.
The stakes are high: Israel, assumed to be the Middle East's only nuclear-armed arsenal, has strongly hinted at possible military action to prevent its old foe from obtaining such arms. Iran has threatened to retaliate if attacked.
GOLD SANCTIONS RELIEF?
The U.S. official said the powers' updated offer to Iran - a modified version of one rejected by Iran in the unsuccessful talks last year - would take into account its recent nuclear advances but also take "some steps in the sanctions arena".
This would be aimed at addressing some of Iran's concerns, the official said, while making clear it would not meet Tehran's demand of an easing of all punitive steps against it.
"We think ... there will be some additional sanctions relief" in the powers' revised proposal," the official said, without giving details.
Western diplomats have told Reuters the six countries will offer to ease sanctions on trade in gold and precious metals if Iran closes its Fordow underground uranium enrichment plant.
Iran has indicated, however, that this will not be enough.
Tehran denies Western allegations it is seeking to develop the capability to make nuclear bombs, saying its program is entirely peaceful. It wants the powers to recognize what it sees as its right to refine uranium for peaceful purposes.
The U.S. official said the powers hoped that the Almaty meeting would lead to follow-up talks soon.
"We are ready to step up the pace of our meetings and our discussions," the official said, adding the United States would also be prepared to hold bilateral talks with Tehran if it was serious about it.
Ashton's spokesman, Michael Mann, said the updated offer to Iran was "balanced and a fair basis" for constructive talks.
(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati and Dimitry Solovyov; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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