CNN - Illinois governor taken into custody

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Illinois governor taken into custody

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is in federal custody on corruption charges, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris, are charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's office for the Northern District of Illinois.

Both men are expected in U.S. District Court in Chicago later Tuesday.

A news conference is expected at noon ET.

Federal prosecutors say Blagojevich, Harris and others conspired to gain financial benefits in appointing President-elect Barack Obama's Senate replacement, according to the statement.

"The breadth of corruption laid out in these charges is staggering," U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said in a statement. "They allege that Blagojevich put a 'for sale' sign on the naming of a United States Senator; involved himself personally in pay-to-play schemes with the urgency of a salesman meeting his annual sales target; and corruptly used his office in an effort to trample editorial voices of criticism."

According to the statement, Blagojevich is alleged to have discussed obtaining:

a substantial salary for himself at either a non-profit foundation or an organization affiliated with labor unions;

a spot for his wife on paid corporate boards, where he speculated she might garner as much as $150,000 a year;

promises of campaign funds -- including cash up front;

a Cabinet post or ambassadorship for himself.

The Obama transition team is aware that Blagojevich is in federal custody, but has no comment, according to a senior Democratic source.

The statement also alleges that Blagojevich and others tried to illegally obtain campaign contributions.

Blagojevich, Harris and others are also alleged to have withheld state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field. The statement says this was done to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members who were critical of Blagojevich.

Blagojevich, who turns 52 on Wednesday, is in his second four-year term as Illinois governor. His term ends in January 2011.

Before being elected governor, he served as a U.S. congressman for Illinois' 5th district from 1997 until 2003, according to his online biography. He and his wife, Patti, have two daughters.

Blagojevich announced last month that he was forming a panel to review candidates to fill Obama's Senate seat.

Several Illinois Democrats -- including Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth, a former congressional candidate who now serves in Blagojevich's administration -- have been mentioned as possible Senate replacements for Obama.

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Reuters - MySpace delivers video to mobile phones

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MySpace delivers video to mobile phones

Wednesday, Dec 03, 2008 5:11AM UTC

By Robert MacMillan

NEW YORK (Reuters) - MySpace users with mobile phones are about to find out if they can walk and watch TV at the same time.

On Wednesday, News Corp's online social network will make video clips from its members' pages available for viewing on mobile devices including the BlackBerry Bold, Palm Centro, Motorola Q9, LG Voyager, Nokia N95 and Samsung Instinct.

Members will be able to look at video on their own homepages as well as friends' pages. They also will be able to view professionally produced video from TMZ, the celebrity news and gossip website owned by Time Warner Inc; the National Hockey League; National Geographic magazine; satirical newspaper The Onion and others.

The free service will be supported by advertising. MySpace and many other companies are trying to exploit the small but growing mobile advertising market.

MySpace declined to comment on the cost of the project or how much money it would make them.

"These are the big guys doing it, and they're going to make some noise about it," said David Card, a media analyst at Forrester Research who called it a medium-sized deal in terms of significance. "Mobile is one of those things where people keep saying, 'Is next year going to be the year of mobile'?"

MySpace video will be sent, or "streamed," from the social network's pages rather than downloaded onto mobile phones. For this reason, the clips will not be available on Apple Inc's iPhone, which runs downloaded video.

MySpace, one of the world's largest online social networks, plans to support mobile video downloads in the future, a spokeswoman said.

MySpace's growth strategy includes developing mobile phone applications, as well as international markets and building up its music service. Acquisitions are central to this strategy, Chief Executive Chris DeWolfe told the Reuters Media Summit on Monday.

The company will work with technology from a company called RipCode to make video available on mobile handsets that have different technical specifications for how they handle video.

RipCode also will allow MySpace users to stop having to save their video clips in different formats, something that it said would save hardware, energy and storage resources.

(Reporting by Robert MacMillan)

CNN - No way to stop us, pirate leader says

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No way to stop us, pirate leader says

Somalis are so desperate to survive that attacks on merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean will not stop, a pirate leader promises.

"The pirates are living between life and death," said the pirate leader, identified by only one name, Boyah. "Who can stop them? Americans and British all put together cannot do anything."

The interview with the pirate was conducted in late August by journalists employed by the Somali news organization Garowe. The complete interview was provided to CNN last week and provides a glimpse of why piracy has been so hard to control in the region.

Recorded on grainy video, the interview took place in the Somali port city of Eyl, now a center of pirate operations. Eyl is on the east coast of Somalia in the autonomous territory of Puntland. It is a largely lawless zone, considered extremely dangerous for Westerners to enter.

The Puntland government said two unidentified Western journalists were taken hostage Wednesday as they attempted to report on pirate activity.

Boyah said that the piracy began because traditional coastal fishing became difficult after foreign fishing trawlers depleted local fish stocks. Traditional fishermen started attacking the trawlers until the trawler crews fought back with heavy weapons. The fishermen then turned to softer targets.

"We went into the deep ocean and hijacked the unarmed cargo ships," Boyah said.

"For the past three years, we have not operated near the Somali coast. We have operated at least 80 miles [out], in international waters."

When merchant shipping started avoiding the Somali coast, Boyah said, "we went to ships traveling other routes."

Over the past year, the number of pirate attacks has increased dramatically. The International Maritime Bureau cites more than 90 pirate attacks off East Africa so far in 2008. When attacks are successful, the hijacked ships are taken to Somali waters, where the ships and crew are held until a ransom is paid.

Ships recently captured include a massive Saudi supertanker laden with crude oil valued at more than $100 million and a freighter carrying Russian-built tanks.

The hijackings have been profitable. Kenya's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, estimates the pirates have been paid more than $150 million during the past year. One pirate gang wants $2 million dollars to release a Yemeni freighter and crew seized last week.

Facing increasing disruptions through one of the busiest sea lanes in the world, several countries have sent warships to patrol the area. There have been reports of skirmishes between pirates and naval forces, but the military presence does not concern pirate leader Boyah. He boasts the pirates literally sail in a vast ocean beneath the radar of the warships.

"No ship has the capability to see everything," he said. "A ship can see 80 miles or so [on radar]. It cannot see us at all. No one can do anything about it."

Boyah said it is unlikely the Puntland regional government would ever crack down on piracy because government officials are involved in financing the piracy and collect a cut of the ransoms.

"They motivate us. It's their money and their weapons," Boyah said. "Thirty percent belongs to them."

The Puntland foreign minister, Ali Abdi Aware, denied government involvement with the pirates, including taking bribes. The minister cited the arrest of six pirates earlier this year as evidence it is acting to stop piracy.

Pirate Boyah said he is unimpressed with the arrests by Puntland authorities.

"The pirates are at sea and Puntland does not approach them. The pirates are on land and Puntland does not approach them," Boyah said. "They arrest some small people and tell the world that they captured pirates, but they are liars."

While Boyah may have been outspoken about the government's ineffectiveness, he did not allow interviewers to show his face, an indication that even in this lawless country, pirates still have some fear.

Reuters - Google to shut down virtual world website

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Google to shut down virtual world website

Friday, Nov 21, 2008 8:28AM UTC

(Reuters) - Google Inc said it would shut down its three-dimensional virtual experience website by year end to focus more on its core search, advertisements and applications business.

The company said in its blog it supports experimentation but added: "We've also always accepted that when you take these kinds of risks not every bet is going to pay off."

Lively, which features real-time virtual world characters known as avatars and three-dimensional graphics to congregate in virtual rooms, was launched in July to match Linden Lab's popular Second Life.

"Between now and the end of the year we encourage you to capture all your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms," the blog said.

(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore; Editing by David Holmes)

Reuters - Urgent regulation needed for nanomaterials: experts

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Urgent regulation needed for nanomaterials: experts

Wednesday, Nov 12, 2008 8:7AM UTC

By Michael Kahn

LONDON (Reuters) - More testing and regulation of nanomaterials used in an increasingly number of everyday products is urgently needed, experts said on Wednesday.

"...having analyzed the potential health and environmental impacts which flow from the properties of nanomaterials, we concluded that there is a plausible case for concern about some (but not all) classes of nanomaterials," the Royal Commission experts from the scientific, legal, business and medical communities wrote in a British government-funded report.

In particular the report cited tiny soccer-ball shaped carbon molecules called buckyballs that may have potential uses ranging from novel drug-delivery system to fuel cells, as well as carbon nanotubes and nanosilver.

Recent studies have found buckyballs -- short for buckministerfullerenes -- may threaten health by building up fat and have linked carbon nanotubes to potential lung cancer risk.

"We are very conscious of the extent to which knowledge about the potential health and environmental impacts of nanomaterials lags significantly behind the pace of innovation, although this could change as new scientific information arises," the study said.

Nanotechnology, the design and manipulation of materials thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair, has been hailed as a way to make strong, lightweight materials, better cosmetics and even tastier food.

Major corporations and start-ups across almost every industry invest in nanotechnology, which found its way into $147 billion worth of products in 2007, according to Lux Research.

But scientists are only just starting to look at the impact such tiny objects might have, and the British report warned existing regulations may not be able to keep up with technology.

"We are also concerned that more sophisticated later generation nanoproducts will raise issues which cannot be dealt with by treating them as chemicals or mixtures of chemicals," John Lawton, an ecologist, who chaired the report, said in a statement.

The report, to which the government must reply, also determined that there were not grounds for a blanket ban or moratorium on nanomaterials.

Specifically, it also called on the government to recognize a "degree of ignorance and uncertainty in this area" and lay out the time it will take to address these.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Louise Ireland and Maggie Fox)

A New Day

Well it's off I go to work again on a crazy Monday. Overworked and underpaid as usual. Story of my life. I pray that Obama can institute something to help get me out of this mess.

Reuters - L.A. man pleads innocent in Guns N' Roses piracy

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L.A. man pleads innocent in Guns N' Roses piracy

Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008 1:15PM UTC

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A man accused of placing songs on the Internet from an unreleased album by the rock band Guns N' Roses pleaded innocent on Monday in federal court.

Kevin Cogill, 27, is charged with violating federal copyright law.

Cogill pleaded innocent to the charge on Monday and no date has been set for the trial, said Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The FBI says that Cogill posted nine tracks from Guns N' Roses' upcoming album "Chinese Democracy" on a website called antiquiet.com (http://www.antiquiet.com).

Cogill was arrested in August at his Los Angeles home and released on bail the same day. He faces three years in federal prison if convicted, and five years if the court finds he posted the songs for commercial gain.

Guns N' Roses said in a statement at the time of the arrest that while it did not condone Coghill's actions, "our interest is in the original source" of the material. Mrozek declined to comment on whether there would be any additional arrests.

One of the biggest bands to emerge from the American metal scene in the late 1980s, Guns N' Roses has not released an album of new material in more than 17 years. "Chinese Democracy" will reportedly come out later next month, but the project has been delayed multiple times over the years as singer Axl Rose shed all his original bandmates.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis: Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Dean Goodman)

Reuters - Facebook eyes digital-music business: report

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Facebook eyes digital-music business: report

Friday, Oct 17, 2008 10:54AM UTC

(Reuters) - Social networking site Facebook's founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg plans to enter the digital-music business in the wake of the launch of News Corp's MySpace Music last month, the New York Post said.

Zuckerberg is talking to a number of song-streaming services and music community sites, including Rhapsody.com, iMeem.com, iLike.com and Lala.com about an outsourcing deal, the Post reported, citing sources familiar with the situation.

Facebook executives have been busy meeting major record companies about the strategy, the paper said on its website.

The Post quoted sources saying that unlike MySpace, which traded equity in its music venture in exchange for licenses to stream ad-supported songs, Facebook doesn't want to secure licenses to distribute music, or build a proprietary service from scratch.

Sources further cautioned that nothing was imminent, and Facebook may ultimately walk away from the plan altogether, the paper reported.

Facebook did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

(Reporting by Shradhha Sharma in Bangalore, editing by Will Waterman)

Reuters - Nokia Siemens says shipping 4G-ready network gear

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Nokia Siemens says shipping 4G-ready network gear

Wednesday, Oct 15, 2008 4:43PM UTC

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) said on Wednesday it has started to deliver technology for emerging high-speed wireless networks.

NSN said it was the first vendor to do so, and it would deliver fourth-generation-ready (4G) mobile network hardware to more than 10 major operators by end 2008. Rival Ericsson was not immediately available for comment.

The gear can be upgraded into much faster Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology with just new software -- meaning lower costs for operators -- starting from latter half of 2009, promising a smoother transition than third generation, which required steep investments and took years to gain popularity.

LTE promises to make everything from mobile video sharing to music downloads speedier, but it may not show a visible boost in sales for the network equipment industry any time soon, as the first networks are not expected for two years and many operators will wait longer until the technology matures.

Canada's Nortel Networks Corp sees LTE as the most likely upgrade path for about 80 percent of the world's existing mobile phone providers, with others going for an alternative technology known as WiMax. Nokia Siemens said it expects to see commercial LTE network rollouts from 2010.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by David Cowell)