Reuters - RIM's BlackBerry Bold aims at business users

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RIM's BlackBerry Bold aims at business users

Monday, May 12, 2008 6:37PM UTC

By Wojtek Dabrowski

TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd is launching a new high-end version of the BlackBerry aimed at its core base of business users, but it hopes the sleek new smartphone will also catch on with the broader retail market.

Shares of RIM jumped on Monday, climbing C$8.76, or 6.6 percent, to C$142.11 on the Toronto Stock Exchange. On Nasdaq, the stock was up $8.84, or 6.7 percent, at $141.61.

The BlackBerry Bold, as the new smartphone is called, is the first BlackBerry to support high-speed HSDPA cellular networks and comes with integrated GPS, Wi-Fi and a host of multimedia features.

"It's really a step up in function in many core aspects of the system," RIM Co-CEO Jim Balsillie said in an interview.

The smartphone rolls out globally this summer and will cost between $300 and $400, he said. AT&T will be its lead carrier in the United States.

Citi Investment Research analyst Jim Suva wrote in a note to clients that the timing of the launch of the third-generation smartphone was ahead of his expectations. Third generation, or 3G, essentially refers to advanced and high-speed wireless services.

"We had expected a 3G device later this year," he wrote. "We estimate the Bold could increase RIM's quarterly shipments by 200,000 to 400,000."

While Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM hopes the Bold will entice corporate users to upgrade the handsets they currently use, Balsillie said he "wouldn't be surprised if it gets picked up by the consumer."

The device will be a test of whether the shaky U.S. economy is making corporations less willing to spend on new wireless hardware. Some analysts have expressed concern that companies will delay upgrades or cut back on spending on items such as the BlackBerry.

RIM helped dispel such worries last month when it delivered a higher fourth-quarter profit and a robust outlook.

UBS analyst Jeffrey Fan wrote in a note to clients he expects the company to launch between three or four new devices this year.

"We believe RIM's broadening portfolio should widen its appeal to the mass market," he wrote.

The Bold features the most vivid display ever on a BlackBerry, a 2-megapixel camera with video recording capability, and a media player for watching movies and managing music collections.

This isn't the first time a BlackBerry has been loaded with multimedia features to catch the eye of the retail customer. RIM has actively worked at diversifying its client base away from the executives, lawyers and other professionals who use the BlackBerry for sending secure wireless e-mail.

More than a third of RIM's 14 million subscribers are now classified as nongovernment and noncorporate.

The company has also rolled out customer-oriented applications such as Facebook software specifically designed for the BlackBerry. Last month, RIM said downloads of the application had topped the 1 million mark.

And in a separate announcement on Monday, RIM and Microsoft said they will provide Microsoft Windows Live services such as instant messaging and e-mail on the BlackBerry.

Its pursuit of consumers has put RIM in increasingly direct competition with devices such as Apple's iPhone, which target the broad retail market.

Still, Balsillie said the Bold is aimed first and foremost at the business, or enterprise, audience.

"It's pretty fair to say that the Bold does quite a job for cementing our leadership in the (enterprise) side," he said. "We understand our roots and we understand the priority there."

RIM also announced that, along with Royal Bank of Canada and Thomson Reuters, it will launch a $150 million venture capital fund that will invest in applications and services for the BlackBerry and other mobile platforms.

($1=$1.00 Canadian)

(Reporting by Wojtek Dabrowski; editing by Peter Galloway)

CNN - China: Quake death toll jumps past 7,600

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China: Quake death toll jumps past 7,600

More than 7,600 people have been killed by Monday's powerful earthquake in just one affected region of central China, the Chinese government said.

State-run news agency Xinhua said the official toll had risen to 7,651 in Sichuan Province.

In addition, at least 48 people were killed in the northwest Gansu Province, Xinhua said.

Authorities had earlier said they believed about 10,000 people were injured in Beichuan County in the northeastern part of the province.

The Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said 80 percent of the buildings collapsed in the Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County after the 7.8-magnitude quake, Xinhua reported.

Several hundred students were also feared to be buried in collapsed school buildings, the agency said.

China's Seismological Bureau said the earthquake had affected more than half the country's provinces and municipalities.

President George W. Bush released a statement saying the United States "stands ready to help in any way possible."

"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," Bush said.

In Sichuan's Shifang city, the quake buried hundreds of people in two collapsed chemical plants, and more than 80 tons of ammonia leaked out, Xinhua said.

The local government evacuated 6,000 civilians from the area after homes and factories were also destroyed.

The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.

At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried. At least 50 bodies have been pulled from the rubble at the high school in the Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.

"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting.

"An unknown number of students were also reported buried after buildings collapsed at five other schools in the province's Deyang City."

One person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell, the news agency reported.

A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City, Xinhua reported.

The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.

Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work.

Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 100 km from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.

"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.

The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.

"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said.

In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.

An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Tangshan is roughly 1,600 km from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.

After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 1,500 km from the epicenter.

They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.

"Our building began to sway," he said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.

At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT), the USGS reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 600 km east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.

The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.

CNN - Report: 3,000 feared dead in China quake

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Report: 3,000 feared dead in China quake

At least 3,000 people are feared dead in Monday's earthquake in China's Sichuan Province, state-run news agency Xinhua said.

Citing local officials, Xinhua said at least 3,000 were thought to be dead in Beichuan County, part of Sichuan Province.

Earlier, Xinhua had said at least 107 people died in the 7.8-magnitude quake that rocked central China and left several hundred students feared buried in collapsed school buildings.

The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.

At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.

"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting."

Among the 107 dead were 55 in Sichuan Province, where 600 people were also injured, Xinhua said.

One person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell, the news agency reported.

Xinhua did not detail where the 107 deaths occurred, although it reported earlier that four students were killed and 110 hurt when a middle school building collapsed in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of the epicenter.

Another person was killed when a water tower fell in the city of Mianyang, the news agency reported.

A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County, Xinhua reported.

The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.

Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work.

Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 60 miles from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.

"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.

The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.

"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said.

In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.

An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Tangshan is roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.

After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 950 miles (1,528 km) from the epicenter.

They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.

"Our building began to sway," he said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.

At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT, 0228 ET), the USGS reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 400 miles east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.

The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.

Reuters - Oliver Stone movie on Bush set for October release

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Oliver Stone movie on Bush set for October release

Friday, May 09, 2008 9:18PM UTC

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Director Oliver Stone has landed a distribution deal with independent studio Lionsgate to get an upcoming film about President George W. Bush into U.S. theaters in October, shortly before the presidential election.

The political biography, to be called "W" and featuring "No Country for Old Men" star Josh Brolin as Bush, is slated to begin shooting in Louisiana on Monday, Lionsgate said on Friday.

Lionsgate is the distributor behind director Michael Moore's commercially successful political documentaries "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Sicko."

The film will open on October 17 in North America, said Lionsgate, which also will distribute the movie in Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Brolin's father James Brolin, who is married to leading Hollywood Democratic activist Barbra Streisand, played another two-term Republican president in the controversial TV movie "The Reagans" in 2003.

In addition to Brolin, the film stars Elizabeth Banks ("Seabiscuit") as first lady Laura Bush; James Cromwell ("The Queen") as former President George H.W. Bush; and Ellen Burstyn ("Requiem for a Dream") as his wife, Barbara Bush.

Rounding out the cast are Thandie Newton ("Crash") as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Jeffrey Wright ("Syriana") as former Secretary of State Colin Powell; Scott Glenn ("The Bourne Ultimatum") as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; and Ioan Gruffud ("Fantastic Four") as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Still to be cast are the roles of Vice President Dick Cheney and former White House political adviser Karl Rove.

"Despite a meteoric, almost illogical rise to power, and a tremendous influence on the world, we don't really know much about Mr. Bush beyond the controlled images we've been allowed to see on TV," Stone said in a statement. "This movie's taking a bold stab at looking behind that curtain."

Stone's earlier political movies included "Nixon" and a highly controversial film about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, "JFK," both of which earned him Oscar nominations. He won Oscars for directing Vietnam War dramas "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July."

But he suggested in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly magazine that his big-screen take on Bush may be more comical than those movies.

"This movie can be funnier because Bush is funny," he was quoted as saying. "He's awkward and goofy and makes faces all the time. He's not your average president. So let's have some fun with it."

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and David Storey)

Reuters - R. Kelly on trial for child pornography charges

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R. Kelly on trial for child pornography charges

Friday, May 09, 2008 6:50PM UTC

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Six years after he was charged with videotaping himself having sex with an underage girl, R&B superstar R. Kelly went on trial on Friday, with his alleged victim prepared to deny she is the person on the tape.

Kelly has been charged with 14 counts of videotaping, producing or soliciting child pornography. Prosecutors argue he knew, or should have known, the girl was a teenaged minor.

If convicted of all charges, the 41-year-old performer, whose given name is Robert Kelly, could be sentenced to up to 15 years in prison.

As Kelly arrived at the Cook County Criminal Courthouse, fans cheered and critics waved signs and called the prolific songwriter, singer and producer a pedophile.

Judge Vincent Gaughan rejected a request from Kelly's lawyers to delay the trial because of recent publicity. The proceeding, already postponed numerous times, is expected to last up to seven weeks, with jury selection continuing Monday.

Prosecutors say the lurid 26-minute tape was made between January 1998 and November 2000 when the girl was 13 or 14.

The alleged victim, who is now in her 20s, has denied she is the girl on the tape and could testify in Kelly's defense, according to court records. Kelly's lawyers have argued it is not him on the tape either.

In a 2003 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Kelly said he was no pedophile, saying: "I've always loved women. ... But I don't have a bag with little suckers in it, hiding behind some tree talking about, 'Come here, little girl.' Not me."

The story came to light in early 2002 when the Chicago Sun-Times turned over to police a copy of the widely bootlegged videotape.

The Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune both reported last week another woman would testify that she and the girl had engaged in sex together with Kelly, and will identify her as the person on the tape, which will likely be played in court.

The accusations prompted some radio stations to stop playing Kelly's songs, but it didn't derail his career. He has earned millions from concert tours and album sales while being free on $750,000 bond.

After singing for change on Chicago subway platforms, Kelly shot to fame in the early 1990s with rhythm and blues hits like "Sex Me" and "Bump n' Grind."

The carnality of his early lyrics gave way to wholesomeness with the 1996 single "I Believe I Can Fly," which earned Kelly three Grammy Awards. He has received 20 other Grammy nominations.

The Chicago-born singer produced "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number" for young protege Aaliyah in 1994. The pair married, but Aaliyah, then 15, and her parents had the marriage annulled. She died in a plane crash in 2001.

He later married a dancer and has three children.

Reuters/Nielsen

Reuters - "Sopranos" creator signs deal for first film

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"Sopranos" creator signs deal for first film

Thursday, May 08, 2008 10:9PM UTC

By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - David Chase, creator of the acclaimed TV mob drama "The Sopranos," has signed a deal with Paramount Pictures to write, produce and direct his first feature film, the studio said on Thursday.

Adhering to the kind of mystery surrounding some of Chase's past work, the studio offered no details of the project except to describe it as "an original drama," and a spokesman said the film was not an adaptation of "The Sopranos."

Chase, 52, has a long-standing relationship with Paramount Studios chairman Brad Grey, who was his producing partner on "The Sopranos" and occasionally played himself on the series.

The show, which ended a six-season run in June 2007 with its famously ambiguous blackout finale, earned Chase two Emmys as best drama series and two others for his writing on the show.

Centered on the fictional life of a conflicted New Jersey mob boss, played by James Gandolfini, the HBO series was regarded by many critics as the finest drama ever to air on U.S. television.

"David is one of the great storytellers of our time, and his debut as a filmmaker is both highly anticipated and long overdue," Grey said in a statement issued by the Viacom Inc-owned studio.

A spokesman said a time table for the film's production and release have not been set.

Chase's television career spans three decades and includes work on such series as "The Rockford Files," "I'll Fly Away," "Northern Exposure" and the made-for-TV movie "Off the Minnesota Strip."

Reuters/Nielsen

Reuters - Paper is passe for tech-savvy South Koreans

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Paper is passe for tech-savvy South Koreans

Friday, May 09, 2008 11:50AM UTC

SEOUL (Reuters Life!) - Young, tech-savvy South Koreans are making coupon clipping a thing of the past and turning to their mobile phones instead.

Some of the fastest-growing mobile phone services in the country let retailers send discount coupons and users send gift certificates for anything from lattes to movie tickets through their handsets.

The merchandise vouchers have a barcode embedded in the message. Users show the coupon on the screen and retailers scan the barcode to apply the discount.

"People can actually receive products from places just by showing their phones," Ryu Mina, a spokeswoman with mobile service provider SK Telecom.

She said people may forget their coupons but always carry their cell phones.

SK Telecom rolled out a service a little more than a year ago called a "gifticon" that allows users to send gift vouchers for items such as convenience store merchandise and pizzas via mobile phones. The sender is billed for the cost of the goods.

South Korean companies started sending coupons via text messages about six years ago, but the service never caught on because most users saw the messages as spam and deleted them.

The main users of the new coupon service with the embedded barcodes are usually in their 20s and younger and often use Internet functions on their mobile phones for communication, according the industry sources.

(Reporting by Lee Jiyeon, writing by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Valerie Lee)

Reuters - Academic says gadgets threaten Internet's future

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Academic says gadgets threaten Internet's future

Thursday, May 08, 2008 12:27PM UTC

By Peter Griffiths

LONDON (Reuters) - The rise of gadgets like the iPhone, Blackberry and Xbox threatens to unravel the decades of innovation that helped to build the Internet, a leading academic has warned in a new book.

Professor Jonathan Zittrain says the latest must-have devices are sealed, "sterile" boxes that stifle creativity and turn consumers into passive users of technology.

Unlike home computers, new Internet-enabled gadgets don't lend themselves to the sort of tinkering and collaboration that leads to technological advances, he says.

The mix of gadgets, over-regulation and Internet security fears could destroy the old system where mainstream technology could be "influenced, even revolutionized, out of left field".

"I don't want to see a two-tier world where only the experts can survive ... and the non-experts are stuck between something they don't understand and something that limits them," Zittrain told Reuters in an interview.

Zittrain, professor of Internet governance and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, says the Internet's simple, open architecture is key to its enormous success and also its flaws.

Amateur enthusiasts have come up with scores of new ideas by tinkering with the Internet on home computers. However, hackers have caused huge disruption by exploiting its loose structure.

Zittrain contrasts one of the first mass-produced home computers, the Apple II from the 1970s, with Apple's latest gadget, the iPhone. He says the iPhone is typical of what he calls "tethered appliances".

"They are appliances in that they are easy to use, while not easy to tinker with," he writes. "They are tethered because it is easy to for their vendors to change them from afar, long after the devices have left warehouses and showrooms."

They are a world away from the "generative Internet", a term Zittrain uses to describe the open, creative, innovative approach that helped build the Internet.

The rise of viruses and fraud has also led to tighter controls on PCs, particularly those in schools, universities, offices and public places, Zittrain says.

People are often blocked from experimenting with shared computers and their input is severely limited.

There is still time to save the Internet, he believes, although the answer lies in social rather than technological changes.

Society should resist more regulation and place its trust in the Internet's users. The success of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written and edited by its readers, shows how self-governance can work.

Internet users should see themselves as "netizens", active participants in the online world rather than passive consumers.

"The community itself exercises a form of self-restraint and policing," he said. "You see it in Britain when you try to jump a queue, you see it on Wikipedia when a page is vandalised.

"The challenge to the technologists is to build technologies to let people of good faith help without having to devote their lives to it."

* The Future of the Internet and How To Stop It, http://futureoftheinternet.org , is published by Penguin.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

Reuters - Kick the oil habit and make your own ethanol

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Kick the oil habit and make your own ethanol

Friday, May 09, 2008 5:19PM UTC

By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices.

E-Fuel Corp unveiled on Thursday the "MicroFueler" touting it as the world's first machine that allows homeowners to make their own ethanol and pump the brew directly into their cars.

The portable unit that sells for $10,000 resembles a gasoline station pump and nozzle -- minus the slot for a credit card, or the digital "SALE" numbers that whir ever faster at retail pumps as global demand pushes fuel prices to record levels.

Instead of tapping gasoline from an underground tank, the pump's back end plugs into home power and water supplies to make ethanol for as little as $1 a gallon (3.8 liters), according to E-Fuel.

The company says one of the machine's top selling points is its sweet tooth. It ferments fuel from sugar, the price of which is historically cheap as global supplies are glutted.

That means it avoids the Achilles heel of today's U.S. ethanol system -- reliance on corn -- which has been blamed for helping to spike global food prices.

"There's no mother in America crying that their kids aren't getting enough sugar," Tom Quinn, CEO and founder of E-Fuel said in an interview.

Regular table sugar alone is too expensive, so E-Fuels says it will link customers to cheaper surplus supplies, including inedible sugar from Mexico that sells at a fraction of the price. It also hopes to get users to help pay for feedstock by selling carbon credits for using the machine, since making ethanol from sugar emits fewer greenhouse gases than making it from corn.

"We will break the traditional ethanol system," said Quinn a California computer and computer games inventor, who has bankrolled the company with what he calls "millions, but not multimillion" of dollars.

He said despite the steep upfront costs, the machines will pay for themselves quickly. For a two-car family that drives about 34,500 miles a year, the MicroFueler will pay for itself in less than two years, assuming average gasoline prices of $3.60 per gallon, the company said. The unit makes up to 35 gallons (132 liters) of 100 percent ethanol per week.

Others are not so sure that the MicroFueler is a good investment.

"I doubt it will work," said David Pimental, a professor at Cornell University who has studied the economics of ethanol for decades. He said the history of the fuel has been one of moving to greater and greater scales to increase the efficiencies of making the fuel.

E-Fuel says the machine is efficient in a way that big ethanol plants aren't because it removes water from the fuel with special fine filters that reduce the fuel costs of distilling the water out.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, editing by Marguerita Choy)

CNN - The pictures that horrified America

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The pictures that horrified America

World War II was over, but as the 1940s gave way to the 1950s, a new evil lurked in the land.

It attracted a youthful audience -- boys, mostly -- who fell victim to its colorful images, dripping in red, and gave money to its purveyors.

Authorities took notice. The United States had a new menace, they said, one whose name started with "c" and whose first syllable rhymed with "bomb."

Comic books.

"The country was fixated on this," said David Hajdu, author of the recently released "The Ten-Cent Plague" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a history of the era.

These weren't just any comic books, the ones filled with the derring-do of superheroes. These had names such as "Tales from the Crypt," "Shock SuspenStories" and "Justice Traps the Guilty," and they told stories of crime and horror. Their cover images included alluring women (often in low-cut outfits), decaying corpses and spooky, murky swamps.

Hajdu, who wrote "Positively Fourth Street" about the early-'60s folk music scene, observes that when we think of postwar pop-cultural rebellion, what comes to mind is rock 'n' roll and Marlon Brando. But comic books, he notes, came first. Hundreds of millions sold every month, at 10 cents a throw.

"Everybody read comic books. They were the most popular form of entertainment in America," he said.

The fact that such entertainment was primarily aimed at children and teens raised the ire of authorities, including social scientists, newspaper columnists and political leaders. These works, they believed, were causing crime and degeneracy. They had to be stopped.

Towns hosted bonfires to rid themselves of comics; congressional hearings about the issue helped burnish the image of Tennessee's Estes Kefauver, who had led hearings against organized crime.

Comic books had been attracting concern since they were introduced in the 1930s -- and superheroes weren't immune. Figures such as children's author Sterling North and a Catholic bishop, John Francis Noll, protested the medium as glorifying crime and corrupting youngsters. The fervor dulled during World War II but came back with a vengeance afterwards as news focused on an alleged increase in juvenile delinquency.

The anti-comics movement really caught fire with the work of psychiatrist Frederic Wertham, who wrote a book, "Seduction of the Innocent," linking comics with delinquency. Sidebar: Were comics that violent?

In recent decades, Wertham has become a figure of mockery for his theories (he called the relationship between Batman and Robin "like a wish-dream of two homosexuals living together"), but Hajdu says he wasn't a cardboard villain. He was committed to working with minorities -- he ran a free clinic in Harlem -- and he genuinely cared about young people.

"He was misguided and used utterly fallacious methods, but what he was getting at was understandable," Hajdu said, though adding that "he did much more harm than good."

Among Wertham's adversaries was William M. Gaines, son of comics pioneer Max Gaines and the owner of EC Comics. Thanks to a staff of innovative writers and artists -- including Al Feldstein, Harvey Kurtzman, Wally Wood, Will Elder and Jack Davis -- and a deep investment in the crime and horror genres, Gaines revived a moribund EC, making it one of the business's most successful companies. Its titles, including "Crypt" and "SuspenStories," were both graphic and groundbreaking.

"EC Comics out-bloodied them all but also used social commentary and had a lighter quality of gruesome art," said Bill Svitavsky, a history professor at Florida's Rollins College who teaches a course on American graphic publishing with his colleague Julian Chambliss.

"EC had statements about racism and conformity to small-town values," Chambliss said. Many of EC's staffers, he observes, were World War II veterans who'd seen their share of violence, and their art -- if graphic -- gave their stories the ring of truth. (Author Grant Geissman put together a collection of EC's work, "Foul Play!" (HarperDesign), in 2005.)

However, the keepers of the boundaries pushed back, Svitavsky says. In those Red Scare times, "Adults were fearful [of works that questioned the establishment.] ... Comic books were believed to be an underestimated, unpatriotic tool to get at kids."

The children, Hajdu says, illustrated the tension of the times. Some had tried to hide their collections; others had energetically taken part in comic-book burnings. He interviewed many of them, now grown-ups in their 60s or 70s. "It was harrowing to listen to them," he said.

The issues came to a head at the subcommittee hearings on juvenile delinquency, which began in late 1953. Among the witnesses were Gaines and Wertham, who "looked as if he had come straight from doing scientific work," Hajdu writes. The comics' fate was sealed when Gaines, in televised testimony, attempted to defend a "Crime SuspenStories" cover, depicting the hand of a killer clutching a woman's severed head, as "good taste." Audiences were shocked; opinion leaders raged.

A comics publishers' association put together the Comics Code Authority, which banned the words "horror" and "terror" from comic books. Sales plunged, dozens of artists lost their jobs, and comic books didn't make a comeback for years.

"Everybody was cautious in the '60s," noted Ron Goulart, author of "Good Girl Art," a history of female images in comic books. He credits the horror-crime scare with "probably help[ing] resurrect superheroes," particularly the new breed created by Marvel Comics in the '60s.

The horror and crime books were also reflective of a changing world. Film historians have observed that the heyday of film noir was in the late '40s, and it wasn't long before Brando, James Dean, Elvis Presley and many others were busting boundaries in other genres.

Gaines was a part of that, Hajdu observes. There was one comic, a humor book, he had protected. He made it a magazine to save it from the Comics Code Authority and refused to accept advertising.

In time, the magazine became one of the most influential publications of the 20th century, inspiring generations to question authority and mocking the pieties of politics, religion and popular culture.

It was called Mad.