Published September 05, 2010 | Associated Press

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican raised the possibility Sunday of using behind-the-scenes diplomacy to try to save the life of an Iranian widow sentenced to be stoned for adultery.

In its first public statement on the case, which has attracted worldwide attention, the Vatican decried stoning as a particularly brutal form of capital punishment.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Catholic church opposes the death penalty in general.

It is unclear what chances any Vatican bid would have to persuade the Muslim nation to spare the woman’s life. Brazil, which has friendly relations with Iran, was rebuffed when it offered her asylum.

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was convicted in 2006 of adultery. In July, Iranian authorities said they would not carry out the stoning sentence for the time being, but the mother of two could still face execution by hanging for adultery and other offenses.

Her son, Sajad, told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that he was appealing to Pope Benedict XVI and to Italy to work to stop the execution.

Lombardi told The Associated Press that no formal appeal had reached the Vatican. But he hinted that Vatican diplomacy might be employed to try to save Ashtiani.

Lombardi said in a statement that the Holy See “is following the case with attention and interest.”

“When the Holy See is asked, in an appropriate way, to intervene in humanitarian issues with the authorities of other countries, as it has happened many times in the past, it does so not in a public way, but through its own diplomatic channels,” Lombardi said in the statement.

In one of the late Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals in 1995, the pontiff laid out the Catholic Church’s stance against capital punishment.

John Paul went to bat in several high-profile cases of death-row inmates in the United States. One of the first was the case of Paula Cooper, who was convicted of murdering her elderly Bible teacher when she was 15 but spared the electric chair by Indiana in 1989. Other appeals for clemency have been made by the Vatican, including one for a group of Cuban officers convicted of drug trafficking.

Meanwhile, Italy’s foreign minister, Franco Frattini, told the ANSA news agency that while Italy respects Iranian sovereignty and isn’t in any way interfering, “a gesture of clemency from Iran is the only thing that can save her.”

Italy has strong economic ties, primarily energy interests, in Iran.

]]> http://www.javedantv.com/2010/09/05/vatican-decries-stoning-as-brutal-punishment-hints-at-help-in-adultery-case-of-iranian-woman/feed/ 0 http://www.javedantv.com/2010/09/05/iran-orders-99-lashes-for-woman-facing-execution-rights-group-says/ http://www.javedantv.com/2010/09/05/iran-orders-99-lashes-for-woman-facing-execution-rights-group-says/#comments Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:17:44 +0000 admin http://www.javedantv.com/?p=5083 Iran orders 99 lashes for woman facing execution, rights group says

By the CNN Wire Staff

(CNN) — An Iranian woman who’d already been condemned to death faces another sentence of 99 lashes because of a case of mistaken identity in a photograph, according to foes of the execution.

Iranian authorities imposed the sentence after they saw the photo of a woman without a head scarf in a newspaper, the International Committee Against Stoning, a human rights group, said Friday.

In an apology, The Times of London, which ran the photo on its front page on August 28, said the woman was wrongly identified as Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who had previously been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery.

The Times said the photo actually is of Susan Hejrat, a political activist living in Sweden.

Iranian law requies all women, regardless of their faith, to wear garments that cover their hair and bodies.

According to the Times, one of Ashtiani’s former lawyers, Mohammed Mostafaei, gave the paper the photo.

Mostafaei told CNN Saturday that he still thinks the photo may be of his former client.

The Times said Mostafei told it that Ashtiani’s son, Sajjad, 22, had e-mailed him two photographs three months ago and told him both were of his mother.

“One was the widely used picture of Ms. Ashtiani with her face obscured by a chador [cloak], and the other was the one used by The Times … That showed the full face of a woman,” The Times said in a statement Friday.

Sajjad Ghaderzadeh wrote in an open letter that another lawyer sent the paper an authentic photo of his mother, but that it did not appear in the Times article. The letter was circulated by the International Committee Against Stoning on Friday.

“We do not know how that picture was originally obtained, nor to whom the picture belongs,” Ghaderzadeh said in the letter.

“My mother has been called in to see the judge in charge of prison misdemeanors and he has sentenced our helpless mother to 99 lashes on false charges of spreading corruption and indecency by disseminating this picture of a woman presumed to be her [Sakineh] without hijab,” he wrote.

A phone call to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran early Sunday morning was not answered.

The Committee Against Stoning said Friday that “it is Mr. Mostafaei’s responsibility to provide an explanation as to why he has disseminated [a] counterfeit photo and information regarding Sakineh’s case; his action has only led to increased pressure on Sakineh and her family.”

“We strongly condemn this barbaric new sentence of 99 lashes imposed by the Islamic Republic against Sakineh and we demand that this sentence be abandoned immediately,” said the committee.

Mostafei told CNN that Ghaderzadeh three months ago gave him two photos — one of Ashtiani wearing a hijab (covering) and one without it, Mostafei said.

The lawyer said he immediately released the photo of Ashtiani wearing the chador and sent the Times the photo of her without the hijab more recently.

Asked about whether the photo printed by the Times is of Ashtiani, Mostafei said, “In my opinion it is Ms. Ashtiani. It was given to me by her own son. If it is not indeed her, it looked just like her. She was wearing religious clothes in the photo, she had the same face, same everything.”

Ashtiani was sentenced to death by stoning after she was convicted of adultery. Iranian judicial authorities say a final verdict in her case has not yet been made, ISNA news agency reported recently. In July, Iran’s judiciary said the case was under review.

Ashtiani, who is being held in Tabriz, Iran, no longer has visitation rights, the family told CNN.

The Committee Against Stoning has said that Iran announced she will not be executed during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends around September 9. Iran’s judiciary could reinstate her sentence of death by stoning, execute her by other means, or possibly grant her a reprieve, according to human rights groups.

Iran’s Judiciary High Council of Human Rights indicated that evidence shows the allegations against Ashtiani “have been proved right” and that Iran’s judiciary operates independently as other justice systems do, the semi-official Iranian Student’s News Agency reported.

CNN’s Mitra Mobasherat contributed to this report

By Michael Holden

(Reuters) – God did not create the universe and the “Big Bang” was an inevitable consequence of the laws of physics, the eminent British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book.

In “The Grand Design,” co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Hawking says a new series of theories made a creator of the universe redundant, according to the Times newspaper which published extracts Thursday.

“Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking writes.

“It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.”

Hawking, 68, who won global recognition with his 1988 book “A Brief History of Time,” an account of the origins of the universe, is renowned for his work on black holes, cosmology and quantum gravity.

Since 1974, the scientist has worked on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics — Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles.

His latest comments suggest he has broken away from previous views he has expressed on religion. Previously, he wrote that the laws of physics meant it was simply not necessary to believe that God had intervened in the Big Bang.

He wrote in A Brief History … “If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

In his latest book, he said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos but was created by God.

“That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions — the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass, far less remarkable, and far less compelling evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.

Hawking, who is only able to speak through a computer-generated voice synthesizer, has a neuro muscular dystrophy that has progressed over the years and left him almost completely paralyzed.

He began suffering the disease in his early 20s but went on to establish himself as one of the world’s leading scientific authorities, and has also made guest appearances in “Star Trek” and the cartoons “Futurama” and “The Simpsons.”

Last year he announced he was stepping down as Cambridge University’s Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a position once held by Newton and one he had held since 1979.

“The Grand Design” is due to go on sale next week.

(Editing by Steve Addison)

Earl’s Gusts, Rains Lash Outer Banks, Reach VA

fter battering North Carolina’s Outer Banks overnight, Hurricane Earl reached Virginia early Friday morning, bringing heavy rain and wind gusts of nearly 70 mph.

National Weather Service meteorologist Jeremy Schulz said early Friday morning that rain bands stretched about 140 miles inland in North Carolina and up to the southern tip of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia.

Experts reported that the storm had produced little storm surge and only minor flooding in some of North Carolina’s coastal counties, but authorities were waiting for daybreak to begin patrolling the coast to check for damage.

The Coast Guard planned an airplane flyover of the Outer Banks and were prepared for search-and-rescue helicopter flights.

Earl had weakened to a Category 2 storm with winds topping at 105 mph as the first bands of rain began to hit the Outer Banks on Thursday and a new tropical storm warning was issued for New England coastlines.

The downpours began in several bursts as the storm’s so-called rain shield whirled into the southernmost tip of the barrier islands with 40 mph winds that made signs shake and heavy rain fall sideways.

Waves were expected to reach as high as 18 feet.

A hurricane warning was expanded Thursday night to include part coastlines from Massachusetts to Maine as Hurricane Earl barreled toward the Eastern Seaboard. Earlier the National Hurricane Center in Miami had issued a tropical storm warning along the Connecticut and Rhode Island coasts into Massachusetts.

“Hurricane and tropical storm conditions will be expected in these areas over the next 48 hours,” said Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center.

A slow winding down was expected to continue as the storm moved into cooler waters, but forecasters warned the size of the storm’s wind field was increasing, similar to what happened when Hurricane Katrina approached the Gulf Coast five years ago.

Read said Thursday that Earl is undergoing a change and its powerful winds are going to extend farther out from the eyewall. He said forecasters expect the eyewall to change but said they are not able to say how far inland the winds will reach, adding that strong winds could topple trees and knock out power to thousands of people.

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue on Thursday warned residents to take Earl “very seriously,” and said state emergency officials are “as prepared as we can be.”

Forecasters were trying to pinpoint exactly how close the strongest winds and heaviest surge would get to North Carolina’s fragile chain of barrier islands, some of which were evacuated on Wednesday.

“Right now it’s still predicted to brush the coast at the Outer Banks, but nobody knows,” Perdue said during a press conference. “People should take this very seriously.”

Tourists were largely gone from North Carolina’s Outer Banks, but those resolute residents who stayed behind said they were prepared to face down the powerful hurricane.

“The one thing about North Carolina is that we can’t require adults to do what we tell them to do,” said Perdue, who spoke one day after President Obama declared an emergency in the state and ordered federal agencies to assist in any emergency.

Perdue also wanted that once the storm hit, it would be unlikely that police, firefighters and paramedics would be able to assist anyone who had stayed behind.

“Once this storm comes in and becomes serious, once it’s at its worst point, we are not going to put any emergency worker in harm’s way,” North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said.

Officials in North Carolina expanded mandatory evacuation orders early Thursday to include tourists in Dare County. About 49 counties in the state are currently under hurricane warnings or watches, and residents were advised to evacuate parts of the state’s Outer Banks on Wednesday.

National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said Thursday that there is still concern that the “core of the storm” could shift farther west and have a “very significant impact on the immediate coastline.”

Forecasters also were trying to figure out whether the storm would stay off the Northeast coast or bring hurricane-force winds to Long Island, the Boston metropolitan area and Cape Cod.

“I would not downplay the potential threat to New England,” Read told Fox News.

Evacuations continued early Thursday on the North Carolina coast, with residents and visitors leaving a barrier island in Carteret County. Emergency Services Director Jo Ann Smith said she wasn’t sure how many people were affected by the order to leave the Bogue Banks areas. Unlike some of the barrier islands on the Outer Banks who had to take a ferry, Smith said people could simply leave in their cars.

While thousands of tourists heeded calls to evacuate Hatteras Island, locals familiar with hurricanes vowed to ride out Earl, preparing to spend days stranded from the mainland. Dare County officials said those who do not leave should be ready to fend for themselves for up to three days.

Residents like Nancy Scarborough, who manages the Hatteras Cabanas, said Outer Banks residents have a tight-knit community that takes care of its own.

“I worry about not being able to get back here,” she said. “I’d rather be stuck on this side than that side.”

Along with the 30,000 residents and visitors asked to leave Hatteras Island, 5,000 more tourists were ordered to leave Ocracoke Island, which is only accessible by ferry and airplane.

Many people — boaters, beachgoers and residents alike — were adopting a wait-and-see approach, making simple preparations like stocking up on food or attaching hurricane shutters to their houses. But with the likelihood that the storm’s ultimate path will become clear on Thursday, officials expect planning to shift into high gear.

“Post-Katrina, people are really sensitive to storm preparedness,” said Atlantic Beach, N.C., Mayor Trace Cooper. “I don’t think we’re going to see too many people sticking around and saying they’re going to have hurricane parties. You see enough pictures of people waiting on their roofs to be rescued and you decide to take precautions.”

The North Carolina National Guard is deploying 80 troops to help the state. Obama’s declaration of emergency in the state authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.

While Earl was at its peak as a Category 4 Wednesday, the governors of North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland declared states of emergency, the USS Cole hustled to return to its port in Virginia and volunteers carried sea turtle nests to safety.

Farther up the East Coast, emergency officials urged people to have disaster plans and supplies ready and weighed whether to order evacuations as they watched the latest maps from the hurricane center — namely, the “cone of uncertainty” showing the broad path the storm could take.

If Earl moves farther east, Friday might just be modestly wet and blustery for millions in the Northeast. If the storm runs along the western edge of the forecast, dangerous storm surge, heavy rain and hurricane-force winds could slam the populous region.

In Massachusetts, some boaters had already pulled their crafts from the water in anticipation of rough seas, said Harwich Assistant Harbor Master Heinz Proft. The Labor Day weekend is about the time of year when people start pulling their boats anyway, so some are just accelerating the process.

“It’s been a small percentage so far, but we are encouraging people to be proactive,” he said.

In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell activated the National Guard and sent 200 troops to the Hampton Roads area on Chesapeake Bay. The area was not expected to get the brunt of Earl, but many remember the surprise fury of Isabel, which killed 33 people and caused $1.6 billion in damage in September 2003.

Red Cross officials in New York prepared to open as many as 50 shelters on Long Island that could house up to 60,000 people in an emergency.

Emergency officials on Cape Cod braced for their first major storm since Hurricane Bob brought winds of up to 100 mph to coastal New England in August 1991.

Click here for maps, charts and more at MyFOXHurricane.com

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Obama says time ripe for Mideast peace accord

Meeting separately with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, on the eve of Israeli-Palestinian talks, he calls on them to seize the moment to craft a two-state plan.

By Paul Richter and Christi Parsons, Los Angeles Times

President Obama began a new effort Wednesday to coax Israelis and Palestinians toward peace, telling Middle East leaders on the eve of renewed negotiations that with sustained American help, a comprehensive deal can be sealed within a year.

Obama, who presided over a day of meetings at the White House, acknowledged obstacles to the talks and widespread pessimism after decades of failure. But the president and his team also pointed to signs of progress and reasons for optimism.

“This is a moment of opportunity that must be seized,” Obama said in a Rose Garden appearance following separate meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. “They cannot afford to let it slip away.”

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times

From: AssociatedPress

8 people were killed Tuesday morning when a bar frequented by locals in the Mexican resort of Cancun burst into flames. Bar employees have told police that unidentified men tossed gasoline bombs at the establishment. (Aug. 31)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Washington (CNN) — President Obama declared that “the American combat mission in Iraq has ended” in his primetime address Tuesday, according to excerpts released before the speech.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom is over, and the Iraqi people now have lead responsibility for the security of their country,” he said, according to the excerpts.

The president addressed the economic crisis in America by talking about how restoring prosperity at home is critical to maintaining the nation’s strength abroad. Obama said getting the economy back on track is his “central responsibility as president,” according to the excerpts.

“Today, our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work,” the president said.

Obama said ending the war in Iraq is in the United States’ best interest and “now, it is time to turn the page.”

“Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility,” the excerpts said.

Obama also planned to ignore Republican suggestions that he acknowledge a personal mistake and give credit to former President George W. Bush for executing the 2007 troop surge, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the speech.

Obama, then a senator, and other Democratic senators at the time opposed the surge.

Senior administration officials said the president wanted his Iraq address to be more forward-looking and thus was not planning to spend any time in the 15- to 20-minute speech looking backward at the divisive 2007 congressional debate over whether Bush should surge more troops into Iraq.

Ignoring a replay of that 2007 debate could be politically advantageous for Obama, given the fact that top Republicans like House Minority Leader John Boehner earlier blasted the president for opposing the surge.

“One lawmaker rejected the idea that the surge would reduce violence in Iraq, saying — and again I’m quoting — ‘in fact, I think it will do the reverse,’” Boehner, R-Ohio, said in reference to Obama during a speech to the American Legion convention in Milwaukee.

GOP claims Iraq success despite Obama

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, delivered a speech suggesting Bush deserves more credit for reaching this milestone.

“You might recall that the surge wasn’t very popular when it was announced,” McConnell said. “You might also recall that one of its biggest critics was the current president. So it makes it easier to talk about fulfilling a campaign promise to wind down our operations in Iraq when the previous administration signs the security agreement with Iraq to end our overall presence there.”

Asked about the Republican attacks on Obama, one senior administration official said flatly: “Who cares?”

This official explained the president was more interested in focusing on acknowledging the combat mission is coming to end and thanking U.S. troops for their hard work to “show the world America has the determination to finish the job” after a long conflict.

A second senior administration official added the president wanted to use the address in part to turn the nation’s attention to ratcheting up combat operations in Afghanistan. This official noted Obama spent a lot of time during the 2008 campaign vowing not only to bring home combat troops in Iraq within 16 months of taking office, but also said he wanted to finally give Afghanistan the resources it needed.

“This is what he promised in the campaign: responsibly ending the war in Iraq, and then using our resources to bring the fight directly to al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan,” said the senior official.

During a visit with U.S. troops at Fort Bliss, Texas, earlier on Tuesday, Obama signaled he would spend a good chunk of his speech preparing the nation for heavier casualties and “heartbreak” in Afghanistan in the days ahead as new commanding Gen. David Petraeus takes the fight directly to the enemy.

“We also have a very tough fight in Afghanistan,” Obama said. “It’s going to be a tough slog.”

Obama told the troops at Fort Bliss that his address will not be anything close to the “Mission Accomplished” moment his predecessor had.

“It is not going to be a victory lap,” Obama said. “We still have a lot of work to do.”

Fort Bliss has supplied soldiers to Iraq at all stages of the seven-year war and is still sending troops to the region as part of the 50,000-troop contingent that is staying in Iraq.

The president, who opposed the start of the war while he was serving as a state senator in Illinois, acknowledged there has long been debate about the merits of the conflict, but he said the focus now should be on the sacrifice of U.S. troops.

Al-Maliki marks U.S. end to Iraq combat mission in national address

“The one thing we don’t argue about is we have the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” Obama said. “America is more secure” because of their service.

Obama said the nation cannot forget about the war in Afghanistan, and it will be a heavy focus of Tuesday night’s speech, his second from the Oval Office. The first was about the Gulf oil disaster in early June.

Oval Office setting is message behind the message

“We also have a very tough fight in Afghanistan,” Obama said. “It’s going to be a tough slog.”

White House aides said Obama called Bush from aboard Air Force One on his way to Texas, but they declined to provide specifics about the call.

The August 31 drawdown and end to the U.S. combat phase is a new page in what has been a controversial seven-year conflict. Weapons of mass destruction, a major justification by the Bush administration for going to war, were never found. Saddam Hussein was toppled along with his massive Baghdad statue, but sectarian violence soon erupted.

The war in Iraq has so far claimed the lives of more than 4,400 U.S. troops.

CNN’s Dan Lothian contributed to this report.

By Pascal Fletcher

(Reuters) – Hurricane Earl strengthened into a powerful Category 4 storm on Monday after lashing the northeast Caribbean islands, and was expected to swipe the U.S. East Coast in the next few days, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

But the Miami-based forecasters said it was too early to say which part of the U.S. eastern seaboard might be impacted by Earl, the second major hurricane of the 2010 Atlantic season.

Earl had sustained winds of 135 mph and could strengthen in the next two days, the forecasters said.

The hurricane was moving west-northwest on a curving track that the National Hurricane Center said would take it near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, on Thursday and Friday.

A direct hit could not be ruled out, and Earl was expected to bring drenching rain, dangerous seas and surf and gusting wind to the Atlantic Coast from North Carolina to New England and Canada, said Alex Sosnowski, a senior meteorologist for private forecaster AccuWeather.

“How nasty the weather gets in this region will depend on the exact track of Earl and its proximity to the coast,” Sosnowski said in a posting on the AccuWeather website.

If Earl swings farther west than expected, heavy rain could sweep the Interstate 95 corridor from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and New York City, he said.

On its current path, Earl posed no threat to the Gulf of Mexico, where major U.S. oil and gas installations are located.

Hovensa LLC said operations were normal at its 500,000 barrel-per-day refinery on the island of St. Croix but that the refinery’s harbor and all other ports in the U.S. Virgin Islands had been closed because of Earl.

At 5 p.m. EST, the hurricane’s center was 110 miles northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Earlier, the hurricane buffeted the northernmost Leeward Islands of the Caribbean with fierce winds, driving rain and pounding waves as it passed.

The world’s three largest cruise lines — Carnival Corp, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line — changed their Caribbean itineraries and rerouted at least seven ships to avoid the storm.

POWER OUTAGES, TREES TOPPLED

Residents on the island of St. Martin/St. Maarten, its two halves respectively administered by France and the Netherlands, said Earl’s passage caused power outages and toppled trees.

“Now the wind is really blowing, incredibly strong … I’ve seen a lot of tree damage … I would certainly assume roofs off, I’m watching mine very carefully,” Steve Wright, general manager of the Grand Case Beach Club in Grand Case, St. Martin, told Reuters.

“It’s nothing that we haven’t seen before but I’m surprised at the ferocity of the winds right now,” he said.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

In Antigua, some flooding in low-lying areas was reported. After the hurricane passed, Antigua and Barbuda Governor General Dame Louise Lake-Tack declared a national holiday to allow residents of the twin-island state to mop up.

The forecasters said hurricane conditions would gradually subside over Puerto Rico on Monday evening, while the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeast Bahamas would get tropical storm conditions as Earl passed east of them in the next few days.

The ports of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Puerto Rican ports of Vieques, Culebra, Fajardo, and San Juan were closed, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Government offices and schools in eastern Puerto Rico were shut.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the hurricane center said Tropical Storm Fiona had formed about 890 miles east of the Leeward Islands. Fiona had top winds of 40 mph and was moving west at 24 mph on a course that was expected to take it northeast of the Leeward Islands on Wednesday and east of Bermuda by Sunday.

None of the forecast models took Fiona into the Gulf of Mexico.

In the North Atlantic, Hurricane Danielle, which was a major Category 4 storm last week, weakened to a tropical storm as its sustained winds fell to 70 mph. It was expected to weaken further and lose its tropical characteristics later in the day. It was about 425 miles south southeast of Cape Race, Newfoundland.

(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher, Tom Brown and Jane Sutton in Miami; Writing by Pascal Fletcher and Jane Sutton, Editing by Stacey Joyce)

]]> http://www.javedantv.com/2010/08/31/strengthening-hurricane-earl-may-rake-u-s-east-coast/feed/ 0 http://www.javedantv.com/2010/08/30/next-big-internet-trend-may-be-in-trouble/ http://www.javedantv.com/2010/08/30/next-big-internet-trend-may-be-in-trouble/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 06:45:26 +0000 admin http://www.javedantv.com/?p=5032 Technology Aside, Most People Still Decline to Be Located

Internet companies have appropriated the real estate business’s mantra — it’s all about location, location, location.

But while a home on the beach will always be an easy sell, it may be more difficult to persuade people to start using location-based Web services.

Big companies and start-ups alike — including Google, Foursquare, Gowalla, Shopkick and most recently Facebook — offer services that let people report their physical location online, so they can connect with friends or receive coupons.

Venture capitalists have poured $115 million into location start-ups since last year, according to the National Venture Capital Association, and companies like Starbucks and Gap have offered special deals to users of such services who visited their stores.

But for all the attention and money these apps and Web sites are getting, adoption has so far been largely confined to pockets of young, technically adept urbanites. Just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.

“Ever since mobile phones and location technology got started, there have been conversations about the potential for doing something really incredible with this for marketers,” said Melissa Parrish, an interactive marketing analyst at Forrester. “But clearly the question is whether it has reached the mainstream, and it looks like the answer is no.”

Foursquare, for example, which lets people “check in” to public places on their phones and let their friends know where they are, has close to three million users, most of them in cities. Loopt, a similar service, has four million users, about a quarter of whom actively use it. Compare that with Twitter, which has 145 million registered users.

This month, Facebook introduced Places, which adds some Foursquare-like features to its social network. If Places catches on with Facebook’s 500 million users, many think it could bring location-sharing to the masses.

“Clearly location is not yet mainstream — it’s still a younger-demographic phenomenon — but if anyone can change it, Facebook will,” said Sam Altman, chief executive of Loopt.

For now, many people say sharing their physical location crosses a line, even if they freely share other information on the Web.

Stephanie Angelucci, who is 30 and lives in North Beach, Md., updates her MySpace page with photos of her babies, news about her health and testaments to her love of sailing. But she won’t use location apps.

“I don’t like broadcasting where we are or when my husband’s gone, just for safety reasons,” she said. And privacy concerns aside, she doesn’t see the need: “We go to playtime, the park and the grocery store. My life isn’t exciting enough to broadcast where I am and what I do.”

Some users of Foursquare like the spontaneous social gatherings it can inspire, or the way it keeps friends informed of one’s nightlife exploits. But people who are not frequent bar-hoppers need other reasons to check in. The companies that make location-based services are working to add incentives that they hope will reel in a bigger audience.

Sharing location becomes a simple cost-benefit analysis for most people, said Matt Galligan, chief executive of SimpleGeo, which sells location technology to companies building apps. “There has to be an incentive for giving away very specific information, like coupons or points.”

Shopkick, which became available this month, offers coupons to people when they walk into stores like Best Buy and Macy’s. The application allows users to share their location just with the store and not with other people, and is making inroads with a broader demographic.

Elizabeth Aley, 38, a volunteer in Nixa, Mo., says she is “kind of addicted” to Shopkick. She uses it when she goes to Wal-Mart, Target and the Price Cutter grocery store, to rack up points for entering the stores and to get coupons that she has exchanged for Tide laundry detergent and a Swiffer.

Ms. Aley has chosen to use the app to also reveal her location to her Facebook friends and Twitter followers. The rewards make using the app worthwhile, she said, and the privacy trade-off “really never crossed my mind.”

Gowalla bills itself as a travel game that lets users stamp digital passports at places they visit, find virtual objects in real-world places in a kind of scavenger hunt, or follow trip itineraries in new cities.

“Connecting with friends is nice, but I don’t know that it alone will be enough of a driver” to make a location service widely popular, said Josh Williams, a Gowalla founder.

Foursquare hit upon the idea of allowing people to become “mayor” of places they visit most frequently, touching off competitions among users. Now it is teaming up with big companies and small stores so people see special offers when they check in, whether they are in Brooklyn or Milwaukee.

The company has signed promotional deals like a recent one with the History Channel, which sends users historical facts when they check in at a landmark.

“It’s a misconception that the service is just for city kids,” said Dennis Crowley, a Foursquare founder. “Cities have the densest use, of course, but it happens in the Midwest and all over the world.”

Still, wariness about broadcasting one’s location extends to city dwellers, too. Marsha Collier lives in Los Angeles and writes “For Dummies” books on technology. She uses Whrrl and Foursquare as a way to share information about her life with her online fans and followers — but instead of checking in when she arrives at a place, she checks in as she leaves, to avoid alerting people that she is away from home.

“If I’m going to go work out at the gym, I’ll check in on my way out,” she said. “That way, you’re going to be home soon, so your house won’t be unattended for a long time.”

Others let only a small circle of people see where they are. Ellen Lovelidge, 27, a fishery specialist and D.J. in Washington, carefully chooses who can see her Foursquare updates. She does not plan to use Facebook’s new service, since her Facebook updates go out to a large network of friends, colleagues and family.

“I like Foursquare because I can actually pick who sees where I actually am, compared to Facebook, where I have 1,200 friends,” she said. “I don’t want 1,200 people knowing where I am.” Facebook does let users pick a smaller subgroup of friends who can see location updates, but Ms. Lovelidge said it would be too much trouble to set that up.

Location services are catching on more quickly with young people, who have grown up posting personal information online.

“The magic age is people born after 1981,” said Mr. Altman of Loopt. “That’s the cut-off for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance.”

That rings true for Richard Sherer, 65, a freelance writer in Redondo Beach, Calif. “I can’t think of anybody who cares where I am every minute of the day except my wife, and she already knows,” he said. “Maybe it’s a generational thing. As we old fogies die off, maybe this will no longer be an issue.”

2010 Emmy Awards:

A night for new comedies, old dramas

First-timer ‘Modern Family’ wins, but ‘Mad Men’s’ streak extends to three years.

By Susan King, Rene Lynch and Joe Flint
August 30, 2010

There was a lot of new comedy but not much new drama at the 62nd annual prime-time Emmy Awards on Sunday night.

“Modern Family,” the ABC comedy series about a disarmingly dysfunctional family, won the top comedy series honor as well as writing and supporting actor awards. Fox’s cult phenomenon “Glee” — nominated for 19 Emmys — took home two trophies: Jane Lynch for supporting actress in a comedy and series creator Ryan Murphy for comedy direction. The combination of “Modern Family” and “Glee” ended the dominance in the comedy category by ” 30 Rock,” NBC’s critically acclaimed but low-rated spoof of the television business.

On the drama side, the telecast looked like a rerun of the last two years. AMC’s ” Mad Men,” a dark period drama set in the 1960s on Madison Avenue, won its third consecutive Emmy for drama series, while Bryan Cranston, star of AMC’s ” Breaking Bad,” won his third lead acting Emmy for his portrayal of Walter White, a science teacher-turned- crystal meth cook.

While this was supposed to be the year that broadcast television made a dent on cable’s dominance of the Emmy Awards, overall cable took home 17 statues while the broadcasters walked away with nine. HBO, as usual, dominated the movies and mini-series category thanks to “Temple Grandin,” “You Don’t Know Jack” and “The Pacific.”

It was a good night for first-timers as the majority of the statuettes handed out at the Emmys went to first-time winners — although many were familiar faces.

Kyra Sedgwick won her first Emmy, for actress in a drama series, playing the sweet-as-sugar and hard-as-nails L.A. cop in TNT’s “The Closer,” while Bravo’s “Top Chef” put a stunning end to the reign of CBS’ ” The Amazing Race,” which had won for competitive reality series seven years in a row, ever since the category was created by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Other first-timers going home with a statuette: Jim Parsons for actor in a comedy series for his performance as ultimate nerd Sheldon on CBS’ “The Big Bang Theory”; Eric Stonestreet for supporting actor in a comedy for playing half of the gay couple on “Modern Family”; Aaron Paul picked up his first Emmy, for supporting actor in a drama for playing a character who teams with his former teacher to make meth in “Breaking Bad”; and Archie Panjabi won her first trophy, for supporting actress in a drama for CBS’ “The Good Wife.”

There was a familiar face in a new category: Edie Falco, best known for her Emmy-winning role as mob wife Carmela Soprano in HBO’s “The Sopranos,” won her fourth Emmy but this time in the comedy actress category as the pill-popping “Nurse Jackie” in the darkly comic Showtime series. Falco seemed shocked at the win: “I’m not funny!” she insisted. Falco becomes the first actress to win acting Emmys in both the drama and comedy categories.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was HBO’s “Temple Grandin.” Besides winning the top honor in the made-for-TV movie category, the under-the-radar HBO film about a woman who triumphed over autism to become a doctor of animal science, resulted in three acting statuettes for first-time winners. Claire Danes won for lead actress in a movie or miniseries for playing Grandin. She thanked her real-life counterpart, calling her “the most brave and intrepid person I have ever known.” During her speech, Grandin took a bow. Danes’ co-star Julia Ormond won supporting actress for the movie, and David Strathairn also won for “Temple Grandin” for supporting actor. A fourth Emmy for the movie went to another first-timer, director Mick Jackson, who told Grandin, “we wanted to make a movie worthy of you.”

That “Temple Grandin” managed to overshadow two other much higher-profile HBO projects — the $100 million miniseries “The Pacific” executive produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg and “You Don’t Know Jack” about the trial of controversial doctor Jack Kevorkian and starring Al Pacino — seem to come as a shock to even the movie’s producers as well as the audience. Pacino, however, did win his second acting Emmy, for his portrayal of Kevorkian.

Emmy voters denied viewers and industry attendees their one shot at real drama during the show by giving the award for variety, musical or comedy series to Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and not Conan O’Brien, who was nominated for his brief stint as host of NBC’s “Tonight Show” and was in attendence.

Hosted by Jimmy Fallon, the show opened with a spoof of Fox’s musical comedy “Glee.” Fallon, along with several cast members from “Glee” as well as appearances from Tina Fey of “30 Rock,” Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” and, of course, Betty White, tore through a version of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” that got the show off to a roaring start. Throughout the program, Fallon played to the crowd at home as well as the industry audience with witty song parodies and an everyman quality that has been lacking from previous hosts who often try to seem too smart for the room.

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