A sample shirt with the Canyon Creek label hung inside the charred remains of a factory in Karachi where at least 262 workers died in a fire in September.
The garment factory, owned by Arshad and Shahid Bhaila, who are brothers, had been certified as safe three weeks before the blaze.
SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.
Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.
A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.
"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"
Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.
Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.
King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.
Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.
Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."
Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.
Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.
"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.
___
Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Just before Thanksgiving a few years back, Raquel Lopez fielded her umpteenth call of the day to find an irate man on the line.
Someone had littered his lawn with Butterball turkeys.
"This is not funny!" he shouted, demanding the shrink-wrapped birds' immediate removal.
It was another priceless moment for Lopez, who has been answering L.A.'s 311 information line for seven years.
"We're like a human Google," she said, laughing one recent morning as she sat, headset on, in a gray cubicle on the 10th floor of a building across Main Street from City Hall.
And she never can guess what she'll be asked next.
"One call to City Hall," the city's website proclaims, provides residents a "personal gateway to the services Los Angeles has to offer."
But what does that mean, really?
Some L.A. residents have singular ideas:
One caller told Lopez she wanted a wall where her kids played handball tested for STDs because she'd seen a transient urinate on it.
Another refused to accept that she'd have to hire a private service to get rid of bees in her backyard. "They're not my bees," she kept saying. "They're the city's bees."
Then there was the guy who called, very frightened, because he heard strange beeps in his house. Had someone planted something in his walls? Lopez suggested he check the batteries in his smoke alarms.
A man named Kelly had called for years just to talk — after the 911 operators cut him off. His wife, he complained, was sleeping with Dr. Bloomfield — and everything had gone to pot after the Northridge earthquake.
There is an irony in callers' certainty that the city can and should solve their every problem, given that the 311 service has woes of its own.
Budget cuts have shriveled the call center.
When it was launched with much fanfare in 2002, 311 operated all day, every day. Then the hours were chopped — first to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., then 8 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Staffing fell from 70 to 35.
Not that the phones stopped ringing. On weekdays, the center averages 2,000 to 3,000 calls; 700 to 900 come in on a typical Saturday or Sunday. Busy agents end up apologizing to callers who complain about having to wait on hold.
Big screens around the room display the number of calls that have been answered so far that day and how many agents — speaking English and Spanish — currently are on the phone. (If someone calls in another language, say Persian or Thai, an interpreter from a contract translation service can be patched in quickly.)
On rapid-fire days, the saving grace for the agents is the personalized recorded message that plays for a few seconds when they first pick up:
"Thank you for calling 311. This is Raquel. How may I assist you?"
Callers don't notice the voice isn't live, and "it lets you take a breather in between," Lopez said.
Many of the 311 calls, of course, are sensible, expected and easily resolved. People ask how to dispose of bulky items. They report dead animals, fallen tree limbs, graffiti or illegal dumping. Someone wants to set up a building inspection. A pothole has appeared. A streetlight is out.
Sophisticated programs let agents quickly find information. They can zoom in, for instance, on maps that show the location of each streetlight, then confirm that they've located the right one by checking to see that a photo matches the caller's description.
Some agents work radios, sending reports directly to crews out on the streets. When it makes sense to, that is.
Mario Aldaz, 34, who has worked at 311 since it opened, said an agent once took a call about an abandoned couch in an alley. The caller didn't ask for the couch to be removed. She wanted the city to remove graffiti on the couch.
As for those Butterballs, Lopez did in the end offer help. She contacted the Bureau of Sanitation — which, among other things, is responsible for collecting dead animals and spoiled meat.
nita.lelyveld@latimes.com
Follow City Beat @latimescitybeat on Twitter or at Los Angeles Times City Beat on Facebook.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A landmark attempt to set global rules for overseeing the Internet threatened to fall apart on Friday as a rift pitting the United States and some Western countries against the rest of the world widened, participants in the talks said.
A 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, taking place in Dubai, is supposed to result in the adoption of a new international treaty governing trans-border communications.
But in a critical session at the midpoint of the conference on Friday, delegates refused to adopt a U.S.-Canadian proposal to limit the treaty’s scope to traditional communications carriers and exclude Internet companies such as Google, the ITU said on its website.
Further complicating the negotiations was what a U.S. official at the talks called the “surprise” announcement of an accord among some Arab states, Russia and other countries to pursue treaty amendments that are expected to include Internet provisions unacceptable to the United States
A still-secret draft of the coalition’s proposals is to be introduced soon by the United Arab Emirates, the official said.
“It doesn’t look good,” said a former U.S. intelligence official tracking the talks for private technology clients.
The emergence of the new coalition, whose members are generally seeking greater Internet censorship and surveillance, is likely to harden battle lines separating those countries from the United States and some allies in Western Europe.
The United States and others objected to the introduction of complex new material midway through the conference.
“All of the indicators we have so far is it’s something that could be a clear effort to extend the treaty to cover Net governance,” said policy counsel Emma Llanso of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, which draws funding from Google and other U.S. Internet companies.
“What we’re seeing is governments putting forward their visions of the future of the Internet, and if we see a large group of governments form that sees an Internet a lot more locked down and controlled, that’s a big concern.”
CONCERNS ABOUT GOVERNMENT CONTROLS
The U.S. ambassador to the conference said in an earlier interview that his country would not sign any agreement that dramatically increased government controls over the Internet.
That would potentially isolate America and its allies from much of the world, and technology leaders fear that the rest of the globe would agree on actions such as identifying political dissidents who use the Internet and perhaps trying to alter the Net’s architecture to permit more control.
The 147-year-old ITU, which is now under the auspices of the United Nations, historically has set technology standards and established payment customs for international phone calls. But under Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, it has inched toward cyber-security and electronic content issues, arguing that Internet traffic goes over phone lines and is therefore within its purview.
The ITU is considering other issues in its most extensive rewrite of the treaty in 15 years, including proposals that content providers shoulder the costs of transmission. But none is as controversial as the projected Internet controls.
The Internet’s infrastructure, while initially funded in part by the U.S. government, is now largely in private hands. It has been subject to little government control, although many nations have attempted to regulate Internet communications in various ways.
ICANN, a self-governing nonprofit under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce, is ultimately responsible for making sure that people trying to reach a given website actually get there, but most technology policies are developed by industry groups.
At the ITU meeting, the American delegation had counted on support from at least Japan, Australia and other affluent democracies.
But its effort to stave off wholesale changes has been hindered by complications in Western Europe, where some countries were supporting a change to the economic model that would have Google, Facebook and others pay for at least some of the costs of Internet transmission.
Smaller groups at the ITU conference will work through the weekend, with the full body meeting again on Monday.
(Editing by Jonathan Weber and Peter Cooney)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
"It's a hard time of year," Susan's father, Chuck Cox, tells PEOPLE. "Our daughter's still missing. Someday, we will find out what happened to her."
He added that he is not sure what to make of a West Valley City, Utah, police announcement Thursday that their investigation into Susan's Dec. 6, 2009 disappearance remains active but "has been scaled down," with a reduction in the number of full-time investigators working the case.
The announcement came at the same time that more evidence emerged of the alleged obsession Susan's father-in-law, Steven Powell, had toward her. Authorities released nearly 4,500 pictures that they say he secretly took of her at home and elsewhere.
Cox says he's hopeful that the police are still doing everything possible to solve Susan's case, but he hasn't ruled out suing the department for failing to arrest Susan's husband, Josh Powell, for her murder.
More than two years after Susan's disappearance, Josh on Feb. 5 murdered the couple's two sons and committed suicide by blowing up his house.
Cox's lawyer, Anne Bremner, says Cox "goes back and forth" over whether to sue West Valley City. "He wants them to find her. A lawsuit can have a chilling affect on things."
Cox and Bremner say they do plan to file a lawsuit against the state of Washington for continuing to give Josh visitation with his children despite what they claim were mounting concerns regarding his mental stability.
Although Cox and the police believe that Josh Powell knew more than anyone what happened to Susan, they also strongly suspect that his father, Steven Powell, should still be looked at more closely.
Steven Powell
Ted S. Warren / AP
In numerous interviews with PEOPLE, Steve and Josh Powell denied any involvement in Susan's disappearance and have suggested that she ran off with another man.
Steve Powell was prosecuted for surreptitiously photographing his neighbor's young daughters (and is serving a 30-month sentence), but the investigation also unearthed journals in which Powell described his interest in his daughter-in-law, as well as the thousands of photos, which were released Thursday to the Associated Press.
In a journal entry, Steven Powell recalls a sexually charged dream in which Susan asks him, “Do you think I would make a good wife for you?” None of the pictures show Susan naked, although there are images of her crotch and backside.
"We think he knows exactly where our daughter is," Cox says.
Once Susan disappeared, Josh sold the family's home in Utah and moved with the boys into Steven Powell's house in Puyallup, Wash., only about two miles from the Cox family.
On Thursday, families streamed to Puyallup’s Woodbine Cemetery to remember the Powell boys and other children who died tragically and to dedicate a memorial: a bronze angel inspired by the novella The Christmas Box, in which strangers learn the value of love following a child’s death.
The novella's author, Richard Paul Evans, also attended the dedication. The memorial is on a hill overlooking the boys' gravesites 75 yards away.
"We get a lot of support from a lot of people and we're going to make it through," Cox says.
NEW YORK — The return of protests, tanks and death to the streets of Cairo this week is harrowing. So is the power of the rampant conspiracy theories that cause both Muslim Brotherhood members and their secular opponents to sincerely believe that they are the defenders of Egypt’s revolution.
Criticisms of President Mohamed Morsi’s power grab and rushed constitutional process are legitimate. So are complaints that the country’s secular opposition is poorly organized, lacks majority support and refuses to compromise.
Barring a surprising change in direction, Egypt’s experiment with democracy seems to be headed toward failure. The country’s flawed constitution will likely be ratified in a referendum on Dec. 15. A frustrated and distrustful opposition will boycott subsequent Parliamentary elections. Mr. Morsi will lead a “soft authoritarian” government similar to that of former President Hosni Mubarak. Small opposition parties will exist, but the Muslim Brotherhood’s dominance of the state, politics and society will never be in doubt.
U.S. officials — ever eager for stability in the Middle East — will turn a blind eye and establish a “working relationship” with Mr. Morsi.
“I think the impulse of most American administrations is to show up in an Arab country and say, ‘Take me to your leader,’ ” Nathan J. Brown, a George Washington University professor and leading expert on Egypt, told me in a bleak interview this week. “I don’t think we have many alternatives. The United States is not in the position to back a military coup or the opposition.”
Mr. Brown is correct. Yes, the United States has some economic leverage in Cairo, but in general America remains radioactive in post-Mubarak Egypt. After 40 years of the U.S. backing Egyptian strongmen who made peace with Israel, Washington is hugely mistrusted.
A September 2012 Gallup Poll found that 82 percent of Egyptians opposed the country’s government accepting any economic aid from the United States. By comparison, 42 percent of Egyptians surveyed — roughly half that number — opposed the country’s peace treaty with Israel.
For those who think more “American leadership” is the answer: a U.S.-backed military coup — which it is doubtful the U.S. could engineer — would radicalize Islamists across the region and be an enormous gift to al Qaeda. Similarly, if Washington openly backs the country’s secular opposition, those opponents will be viewed as American stooges and lose popular support.
“A much more effective strategy for the United States is to call for a dialogue between Morsi’s government and the opposition behind closed doors,” said Dalia Mogahed, the American scholar who conducted the Gallup survey. “The U.S. coming out publicly on the side of the opposition will be used against them.”
The only small cause for hope is that Egypt’s struggles are not unprecedented. Other countries have undergone agonizing and turbulent transitions as well. Thomas Carothers, an expert on transitions to democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said that what is occurring today in Egypt is typical when a long-disenfranchised group gains power. Distrustful and insular after years of struggles, it is often reluctant to share power and still views itself as deeply vulnerable.
Mr. Carothers said Egypt’s struggle mirrors the difficult transition still under way in Bolivia. Seven years after Evo Morales was elected that country’s first president of indigenous descent, a tense “fundamental rebalancing of political power” is still playing out in Bolivia. The country’s traditional elite and the indigenous movement still struggle to trust each other and share power. Bigoted arguments that democracy does not work in the Arab world do not apply in Egypt.
“There is nothing particularly Arab about what is happening,” Mr. Carothers said. “It’s not an Islamist issue per se.”
There is another international comparison that should give the Brotherhood pause, according to Mr. Carothers. South Africa’s African National Congress gained a monopoly on power after the country’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994. With no viable opposition, the ANC grew increasingly corrupt as opportunistic figures flocked to the only patronage show in town.
“The party just became a self-sustaining machine,” Mr. Carothers said. “People start joining your party out of sheer opportunism.”
That may not matter to the Brotherhood. Its fear of being forced from power it has finally attained may lead it to become the kind of governing party its members once loathed.
The stark picture painted by Shady Humid, the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center, in this excellent piece in Foreign Policy this week, may prove to be true. There may be no common vision in Egypt, as Humid argues; there may be no consensus on what the Egyptian nation should be.
If there is a common ground, the surest way to reach it is for there to be more democracy in Egypt, not less. Yes, the flawed draft constitution is likely to be ratified on Dec. 15. But the opposition should not boycott the vote or subsequent legislative elections.
In a best-case scenario, the “no” vote could reach as high as 30 percent, according to Mr. Brown, the George Washington University professor. The opposition could then run in subsequent legislative elections. It would not win a majority, but perhaps it would win enough seats to be a viable opposition to the Brotherhood. Two groups that loathe each other would be forced to sit in Parliament together.
Time and a desire to win elections might make them compromise and save Egypt’s fading chances at democracy.
David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, “Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East” will be published in March 2013.
SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.
Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.
Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."
Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.
Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.
___(equals)
Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
Before sitting down for tea in Echo Park, the poet reaches for her iPhone.
"I have to turn this thing off," she explains, silencing the ringer. "It's getting too noisy these days."
As a publisher, educator and author of seven books of poems, Eloise Klein Healy is a stalwart of the Los Angeles literary scene. Her phone has been buzzing more than usual in recent weeks as she prepares to take on a new title. On Friday, Healy will be named L.A.'s first poet laureate.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided earlier this year that his city, like others, should have a namesake poet. The mayor, who chose Healy from a pool of three finalists recommended by a selection panel, said he was moved by the grace of her writing and by her "belief in the power of poetry, and her commitment to sharing this power far and wide."
Healy spent her formative years in Iowa and still maintains an air of Midwestern modesty. She says she doubts the quality of her poems won her the laureate honor.
She guesses it had more to do with her long involvement in the arts community, especially the feminist art movement of the 1970s, and her subject matter: Los Angeles looms large in her work.
She writes lovingly of helicopters and bougainvillea, of strip malls and Santa Anas. Car thefts and stabbings are part of the backdrop. Freeways wind freely through her verse.
In a poem called "Los Angeles," Healy describes the city as an older sister who was less pretty and less charming than her younger sibling. "There was something about your proportions / that was indelicate — your more abundant waist," she tells the city.
But in the final verse, a person enters and loves Los Angeles anyway:
Nobody expected it
and you never told about
the lover who met you
loose and large
in the late afternoon
and loved you all night,
completely out of proportion.
Healy says she writes about Los Angeles to understand "the influence of place on people."
It's a technique she employs often. Once, while working on a book of poems about Sappho, the classical lyric poet, Healy traveled to the poet's birthplace on the island of Lesbos in Greece. "I wanted to walk on a beach where she could have walked," Healy said. "I wanted to look at that horizon."
Healy is 69, but she seems much younger. She is trim, with olive skin and snow-white hair. For years, she lived down the street from the small Sunset Boulevard cafe where she sipped tea one morning this week. She chronicled her time in the neighborhood in a book called "Artemis in Echo Park."
Since 1988, she has lived in Sherman Oaks with her partner, Colleen Rooney.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Netflix Inc said on Thursday securities regulators warned they may bring civil action against the company and its chief executive for violating public disclosure rules with a Facebook post, in a case that raises questions about how public companies communicate on social media.
The high-profile Silicon Valley CEO, Reed Hastings, dismissed the contention and said he did not believe the Facebook post was “material” information.
Hastings wrote in the post on the company’s public Facebook page on July 3: “Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June.” The post was accessible to the more than 244,000 subscribers to the page.
Netflix received what is known as a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the SEC staff will recommend the full commission pursue either a cease-and-desist action and/or a civil injunction against Netflix and Hastings over the alleged violation.
Netflix may have run afoul of the SEC’s Regulation FD, adopted in 2000, which requires public companies to make full and fair public disclosure of material non-public information.
“We think posting to over 200,000 people is very public, especially because many of my subscribers are reporters and bloggers,” Hastings said on Thursday in a letter. He also said that he did not believe the Facebook posting was “material” information.
The SEC believes that figure is material information that should have been disclosed in a press release or regulatory filing, according to Hastings’ letter.
“We remain optimistic this can be cleared up quickly through the SEC’s review process,” said Hastings in the public letter to shareholders that the online video streaming company submitted alongside a regulatory filing citing the receipt of the “Wells Notice” from the SEC.
Netflix’s stock jumped from $ 67.85 a share on July 2, the day before Hastings’ post, to $ 81.72 on July 5. On July 25 its stock fell 22 percent to $ 60.28 when the company reported second-quarter earnings fell from $ 68.2 million a year earlier to $ 6.2 million this year.
“It’s totally disingenuous to say that his statement wasn’t material when the stock went from under $ 70 a share to more than $ 80 and the only data point was that post,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter.
REGULATORY GREY AREAS?
But legal and securities experts say the fast-changing world of social media leaves room for regulatory grey areas.
“The evolution of social media presents the SEC with some very interesting regulatory challenges. But if they’re worried about social media, there are ways for them to address that without threatening to sue Reed Hastings. They should have a rulemaking where they can ventilate these issues,” said Joseph Grundfest, former SEC commissioner and Stanford Law School professor.
“This situation has nothing to do with the problems that Regulation FD was designed to address.”
Joseph Marrow, an attorney at the Waltham, Massachusetts law firm Morse Barnes-Brown Pendleton, said there are conflicting views on what constitutes disclosure in circumstances like this, also noting the rules are not settled in this area.
“I would not suggest companies publish material non-public information on Facebook and Twitter without discussing it before with in-house counsel. Companies are putting together social media policies,” he said.
“If Netflix doesn’t have a policy, I bet they will have one very soon,” he said, adding the issue was unlikely to be serious enough to threaten Hastings’ position as CEO of Netflix, but could result in some type of financial penalty for the company.
Netflix shares fell 1.4 percent to $ 85 in after-hours trading on Thursday.
(Reporting by Ronald Grover and Sue Zeidler in Los Angeles Additional reporting by Alexei Oreskovic and Alistair Barr in San Francisco; Editing by Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Prince William and Kate outside King Edward VII Hospital on Dec. 6
Rupert Hartley/REX USA
But in light of the fact that the Duchess of Cambridge is also suffering from hyperemesis gravidarum, a form of acute morning sickness, there has been growing speculation that she may, in fact, be expecting twins.
According to the National Institutes of Health, the Duchess's rare condition tends to appear more often in women carrying twins.
So what would it mean for the royal family if Kate, 30 – who was discharged from the hospital Thursday – were to deliver two little royals? A pair of heirs?
Nope, royal experts tell PEOPLE. In fact, it's all a bit complicated.
The firstborn twin would have a completely different path than his or her sibling, says royal historian Robert Lacey, author of The Queen: A Life in Brief: "The first child to appear will have precedence. Whichever one comes out first will be the heir – and it will be the call of the obstetrician if there is a caesarean section."
And the obstetrician will make that delivery based on the location of the babies during labor, Mark Johnson, Professor of Obstetrics at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, tells PEOPLE.
Says Johnson: "If delivering vaginally, the first baby to enter the pelvis will be delivered first. If delivering by c-section it very much depends on the which baby is closest to the incision, generally that will be the lower of the two babies."
A year ago, the British government voted to modernize the rule of succession so that in the event of twins, a firstborn girl would not lose the title of heir if a boy were to be subsequently born to the royal couple. But that rule hasn't been implemented yet.
Under the current law of the land, says Lacey, "If the twins are a girl first followed by a boy, the boy will be next in succession."
When or if the law is changed, adds Lacey, "the boy would be ousted by his sister."
If Kate is pregnant with twins, William, who will surely be present for the births, will be able to see firsthand which baby is born first. But in the past that wasn't the case, adds Lacey.
In other eras, "the Home Secretary was on hand in the hospital to ensure there was no foul play," says Lacey, "since there were fears that if the firstborn turned out to be a girl, she might get swapped for a substitute baby boy – and smuggled into the bed in a warming pan."
KAMPALA, Uganda — Congolese rebels and government officials prepared on Thursday for direct peace talks in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, their first face-to-face encounter since the rebels relinquished Goma, one of Congo’s principal cities, after capturing it last month.
“Since May, we asked Kabila to come to the table,” said Amani Kabasha, a spokesman for the March 23 rebels, or M23, at the rebel-held border post of Rumangabo. Mr. Kabasha said his delegation was awaiting vehicles sent by the Ugandan government to carry them to Kampala. “He didn’t agree, he used force, arms, fighting. But now, because he was defeated, he agrees,” Mr. Kabasha said, referring to President Joseph Kabila.
An uneasy rhythm of commerce and calm returned to Goma this week as Congolese government soldiers again patrolled the streets and the port and airport reopened, allowing a fresh influx of people and cargo, as well as much-needed humanitarian aid for more than 100,000 people displaced by the recent fighting.
“It’s as good as it has been for the last two and a half weeks,” Tariq Riebl, a humanitarian coordinator for Oxfam in Goma, said Thursday. But the situation remained “very dynamic, very fluid,” he said.
In the strategic area of Masisi, to the northwest of Goma, fighting has continued to flare between government troops and numerous militias. Masisi has long been a hotbed of militia groups and ethnic tensions, and humanitarian relief workers said they were increasingly worried about the situation.
Furthermore, neither side has said it has any real faith in the upcoming talks, which delegates said would likely begin Friday, or possibly late Thursday.
“It’s not a negotiation,” said a Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende. “We will receive a grievance from M23 and help the president compare with what was decided in 2009,” when the peace agreement for which the rebels are named was signed on March 23.
“We are not very optimistic, because we know that M23 is a very small part of the problem; we need the problem to be solved regionally, and internationally,” Mr. Mende said.
The governments of Uganda and Rwanda have denied accusations by a United Nations panel of covertly supporting the M23 rebels, including in the rebels’ capture of Goma. Both countries have been accused of supporting other Congolese rebels groups in the past.
Many of the rebels’ demands, which the government has dismissed, would benefit Rwanda and Uganda, which are two main transit points for commercial exports from eastern Congo.
“We want more than decentralization, we want federalism,” said Mr. Kabasha, although the specific demands had not yet been finalized. “The eastern parts of Congo’s interests are in eastern Africa. Decentralization means that the leader is near the population.”
In recent days there have been reports of lootings and rape, summary executions and recruitment of children, the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs has said. In Goma, there have also been reports of targeted killings.
SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.
Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.
Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.
"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."
In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.
That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.
The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."
Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.
Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."
Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.
But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.
The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.
"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.
The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.
That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.
Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.
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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle
A fundraiser put on by heavyweights in Los Angeles' liberal-leaning environmental community should have been a tough crowd for Kevin James.
But James, affable, polite and the only Republican candidate in a Los Angeles mayor's race dominated by City Hall Democrats, had no trouble chatting up guests as he made his way around the crowded event for the Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters.
Richard Mueller, an executive with a multinational manufacturer, and Dave Alba, his business partner, seemed happy to corner him. The men spent several minutes outlining a massive freight automation project they are hoping to bring to San Pedro — a tough sell in labor-friendly L.A. They were at the party hoping to line up support for the project.
James listened intently, asked questions and took cards from both men before moving on. Afterward, Mueller declared himself impressed. James' candidacy gives the business community hope that private-sector interests will be given real attention in the mayoral race, he said.
"In this city, you have to work both sides — business and labor," Mueller said. "He'd be a win-win."
James, 49, an Oklahoma native with a sharp legal mind, has emerged as the dark horse in a field made up of career politicians. Although the lawyer and talk-show host has never spent a day in the rough and tumble of public office, he says he'll curtail what he characterizes as the cronyism and scandal that dogs City Hall, cut red tape for businesses, foster jobs and demand reductions in public worker pensions to bring stability to the city's chronically underfunded budget.
And he can do that, James insists, because he's the only outsider of the major candidates who will appear on the March primary ballot. The others are Controller Wendy Greuel, previously a city councilwoman, and council members Eric Garcetti and Jan Perry.
If elected, James would make history as the first gay mayor of Los Angeles. He's never tried to hide his homosexuality, he says, but he also does not make an issue of it. He's now a well-regarded litigator in private practice, a former radio talk show host and a longtime activist with AIDS Project Los Angeles who served for a time as its chairman.
In debates and at events, James displays a commanding grasp of city issues. And he seems to be everywhere, shaking hands wherever there might be potential supporters. The GOP establishment has taken note.
Former L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley has endorsed James, and a "super PAC" made up of well-connected GOP donors recently formed to independently support his campaign without having to comply with the city's contribution limits. Those moves, political analysts say, have given his run a new legitimacy.
"In the past couple of months he's gone from being an afterthought to a long shot to a plausible outsider candidate," said Dan Schnur, a former Republican strategist and professor at USC's Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics.
Friends call him hard-working and passionate about what he thinks should be done to return L.A. to economic vibrancy. Todd Eagan, an attorney who's worked with James for years at Lavely and Singer, an entertainment law firm, said James was the firm's go-to guy when facing a tough legal issue.
"Kevin is the person who can cut through to the main issues and solve the problem," Eagan said. "He has a tremendous grasp of the details of any situation."
Another longtime friend, Steve Reymer, said James has a big heart for animals, adopting a rescue Dachshund, Lisa Marie.
Raised in Norman, Okla., James received an accounting degree from the University of Oklahoma and later moved to Houston to earn a law degree. In college, he registered as a Republican. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1988, he interned at Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, one of the city's premiere law firms. He also worked for three years as an assistant federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office, handling criminal cases involving drugs, money-laundering and insurance fraud before returning to private practice.
James said that as he became involved in AIDS Project Los Angeles — serving six years on its volunteer board and still serving as an honorary ambassador — he switched his party registration to Democratic because he thought the GOP was too slow to respond to the AIDS health crisis. In later years, as he began to focus more on economic rather than social issues, he said, he again switched his voter registration to decline-to-state.
Craig E. Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, called him an "effective and well-spoken" board member during his tenure. In board meetings, even when voicing a dissenting point of view, he was always calm and reasonable, Thompson said.
AIDS Project Los Angeles often used James as its official spokesman during those years because he was personable and articulate, Thompson said.
James began filling in as a host on KABC-AM talk radio (790) in 2003 and moved to Oklahoma City the following year to host a morning drive-time show.
In early 2005, he returned to his Laurel Canyon home and registered a third time, back to Republican. The move was prompted by his growing concerns about the economy and his feeling that if he delved more deeply into politics, the GOP would benefit from having more openly gay members in its ranks.
Zynga recently filed a preliminary application for a gambling license in Nevada. We’re not talking about gambling with Farmville credits, either. We’re talking cold hard cash.
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Getting a gaming license is no easy task in Nevada. The paperwork that Zynga filed this week is just the beginning of a process that the company’s executives expect to take between a year and 18 months. During that time, the state will review Zynga’s financial records and decide whether or not its fit to hold a license. Even then, it’s unclear exactly what the world of real money online gambling will hold. Only this year did the Justice Department lift its ban on online gambling, and so far, Nevada is the first and only state to begin issuing licenses to companies offering online poker games. And even then, the license is only good inside the state of Nevada, where there’s more sand than people.
RELATED: It’s Official: The Maker of Farmville Is Worth $ 8.9 Billion
Zynga’s willing to take its chances. A lot could happen in the next year or so, and there’s been talk of some sort of agreement between states that would open up the market significantly. And new openings in the market is exactly what Zynga really wants. “As we’ve said previously, the broader U.S. market is an opportunity that’s further out on the horizon based on legislative developments, but we are preparing for a regulated market,” said Zynga Chief Revenue Officer Barry Cottle in a statement.
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This could be really good for Zynga. The five-year-old company has been on a bit of downward spiral, lately. With its earnings per user on a steady decline, Zynga’s stock price has plummeted by more than 75 percent, and a number of key executives have left this year. It’s hard to say exactly why people have cooled on Zynga’s games, most of which live in the Facebook ecosystem, but if the company didn’t do something soon, there was a chance that it could be in real trouble, real soon. And what’s the best way to get out of financial trouble? Gambling. At least if you’re on the right side of the table, it does.
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
McAfee, 67, was detained Wednesday at a hotel in Guatemala City and is accused of entering the country illegally, CBS News reports.
Hours before his arrest, McAfee told the Associated Press that he was formally requesting asylum in Guatemala because he was being persecuted in Belize over the fatal shooting of neighbor Gregory Faull.
Belize police consider McAfee a person of interest in that case. McAfee has denied any wrongdoing.
Photos released by the Guatemala National Civil Police on Wednesday appear to confirm McAfee's earlier claim to Wired that he had dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache black to avoid detection.
Faull, an American whose body was discovered by a housekeeper on Nov. 10, filed a complaint this fall against McAfee for discharging firearms. Another suspect is already in custody in his murder.
After two days of sometimes ear-splitting debate, India’s Lok Sabha, or lower house, of Parliament voted down a measure prohibiting large foreign retailers like Wal-Mart from entering the country. Of the 543 members in the house, 218 voted in favor of a proposition banning these companies from the country, and 253 against.
Rival leaders from Uttar Pradesh, Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, walked out before the debate and their parties’ abstentions helped defeat the measure.
The issue will now travel to the upper house of Parliament.
Allowing foreign multi-brand retailers into India has been a matter of debate for years, and was fast-tracked this year by a government under fire from allegations of corruption and paralysis. Here’s recent India Ink coverage on the issue:
The United Progressive Alliance government announced in September that they would allow big department stores who carry multiple brands, like Wal-Mart Stores, into the country but “laid out some very specific conditions,” Heather Timmons reported.
In an interview with India Ink in the same month, Anand Sharma, the minister of commerce and industry, said that despite the conditions some companies had “already expressed interest, from Tesco to Carrefore to Wal-Mart and Marks and Spencer.”
Explaining the benefits for rural producers he said:
“It will benefit the rural economy with the farmers, who will get a better price for what they produce. What perishes to a large extent will reach the market or the kitchens.”
The announcement was met with skepticism from industry and analysts, Vikas Bajaj reported, but there was hope that “If they follow through, it could prompt a new economic boom in India, where once-brisk growth has slowed markedly in recent years. But it is a big if.”
In a later article he focused on the way foreign direct investment in retail “often divides Indians as much by age as by their livelihoods.”
“Those younger than 25, a group that includes about half the country’s 1.2 billion people, appear quite open and eager to try foreign brands and shopping experiences, researchers say,” Mr. Bajaj wrote.
The Prime Minister, in a rare address to the nation, tried to assuage small retailers’s fears in late September, by saying that they “had nothing to fear from the impending arrival of giant Western retailers like Wal-Mart or Carrefour because there was a place for everyone, large or small, in a growing economy.”
The government may be overly optimistic about the benefits of allowing foreign direct investment into the retail sector, judging by Wal-Mart’s experience in other countries.
And even if that is not true, “any long-term impacts of Wal-Mart’s Mexico business have been overshadowed this year by the company’s involvement in a bribery scandal there,” and was “sure to find similar demands for bribes in India – especially now that ample evidence exists that the company has paid them elsewhere,” Heather Timmons wrote in an article titled, “Can Wal-Mart Build a Nation?”
In November, Wal-Mart said that an internal “investigation into violations of a federal anti-bribery law had extended beyond Mexico to China, India and Brazil, some of the retailer’s most important international markets,” Stephanie Clifford and David Barstow wrote in the New York Times.
Breast cancer patients taking the drug tamoxifen can cut their chances of having the disease come back or kill them if they stay on the pills for 10 years instead of five years as doctors recommend now, a major study finds.
The results could change treatment, especially for younger women. The findings are a surprise because earlier research suggested that taking the hormone-blocking drug for longer than five years didn't help and might even be harmful.
In the new study, researchers found that women who took tamoxifen for 10 years lowered their risk of a recurrence by 25 percent and of dying of breast cancer by 29 percent compared to those who took the pills for just five years.
In absolute terms, continuing on tamoxifen kept three additional women out of every 100 from dying of breast cancer within five to 14 years from when their disease was diagnosed. When added to the benefit from the first five years of use, a decade of tamoxifen can cut breast cancer mortality in half during the second decade after diagnosis, researchers estimate.
Some women balk at taking a preventive drug for so long, but for those at high risk of a recurrence, "this will be a convincer that they should continue," said Dr. Peter Ravdin, director of the breast cancer program at the UT Health Science Center in San Antonio.
He reviewed results of the study, which was being presented Wednesday at a breast cancer conference in San Antonio and published by the British medical journal Lancet.
About 50,000 of the roughly 230,000 new cases of breast cancer in the United States each year occur in women before menopause. Most breast cancers are fueled by estrogen, and hormone blockers are known to cut the risk of recurrence in such cases.
Tamoxifen long was the top choice, but newer drugs called aromatase inhibitors — sold as Arimidex, Femara, Aromasin and in generic form — do the job with less risk of causing uterine cancer and other problems.
But the newer drugs don't work well before menopause. Even some women past menopause choose tamoxifen over the newer drugs, which cost more and have different side effects such as joint pain, bone loss and sexual problems.
The new study aimed to see whether over a very long time, longer treatment with tamoxifen could help.
Dr. Christina Davies of the University of Oxford in England and other researchers assigned 6,846 women who already had taken tamoxifen for five years to either stay on it or take dummy pills for another five years.
Researchers saw little difference in the groups five to nine years after diagnosis. But beyond that time, 15 percent of women who had stopped taking tamoxifen after five years had died of breast cancer versus 12 percent of those who took it for 10 years. Cancer had returned in 25 percent of women on the shorter treatment versus 21 percent of those treated longer.
Tamoxifen had some troubling side effects: Longer use nearly doubled the risk of endometrial cancer. But it rarely proved fatal, and there was no increased risk among premenopausal women in the study — the very group tamoxifen helps most.
"Overall the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially," Dr. Trevor Powles of the Cancer Centre London wrote in an editorial published with the study.
The study was sponsored by cancer research organizations in Britain and Europe, the United States Army, and AstraZeneca PLC, which makes Nolvadex, a brand of tamoxifen, which also is sold as a generic for 10 to 50 cents a day. Brand-name versions of the newer hormone blockers, aromatase inhibitors, are $300 or more per month, but generics are available for much less.
The results pose a quandary for breast cancer patients past menopause and those who become menopausal because of their treatment — the vast majority of cases. Previous studies found that starting on one of the newer hormone blockers led to fewer relapses than initial treatment with tamoxifen did.
Another study found that switching to one of the new drugs after five years of tamoxifen cut the risk of breast cancer recurrence nearly in half — more than what was seen in the new study of 10 years of tamoxifen.
"For postmenopausal women, the data still remain much stronger at this point for a switch to an aromatase inhibitor," said that study's leader, Dr. Paul Goss of Massachusetts General Hospital. He has been a paid speaker for a company that makes one of those drugs.
Women in his study have not been followed long enough to see whether switching cuts deaths from breast cancer, as 10 years of tamoxifen did. Results are expected in about a year.
The cancer conference is sponsored by the American Association for Cancer Research, Baylor College of Medicine and the UT Health Science Center.
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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP
SAN FRANCISCO — California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris told local law enforcement agencies Tuesday that they were not obligated to comply with a federal program whose stated goal is to deport illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes.
It was Harris' first public assessment of Secure Communities. Under the program launched in 2008, all arrestees' fingerprints are sent to immigration officials, who may ask police and sheriff's departments to hold suspects for up to 48 hours after their scheduled release so they can be transferred to federal custody.
Although the intent may have been to improve public safety, Harris said that a review of data from March through June showed that 28% of those targeted for deportation in California as a result were not criminals. Those numbers, she noted, had changed little since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement a year earlier pledged to reform the program to focus on the most serious offenders.
"Secure Communities has not held up to what it aspired to be," Harris said. The law enforcement bulletin she issued Tuesday stated that "immigration detainer requests are not mandatory, and each agency may make its own decision" about whether to honor them.
Harris said her office conducted its analysis after dozens of agencies across the state inquired about whether they were compelled to honor the ICE requests.
Some elected officials and local law enforcement have complained that — in addition to pulling in those found guilty of minor offenses or never convicted — Secure Communities had made illegal immigrants fearful of cooperating with police, even when they were the victims.
Harris, a former prosecutor, echoed that view Tuesday.
"I want that rape victim to be absolutely secure that if she waves down an officer in a car that she will be protected … and not fear that she's waving down an immigration officer," Harris said
While immigrant-rights advocates applauded her announcement, they said it did not go far enough. Allowing police chiefs and sheriffs to craft their own policies without state guidance, they said, could lead to disparate enforcement and enable racial profiling.
This "should eliminate the confusion among some sheriffs about the legal force of detainers," said Reshma Shamasunder, executive director of the California Immigrant Policy Center. "The only logical next step is a strong, statewide standard that limits these burdensome requests."
One attempt by legislators to do just that unraveled in October with Gov. Jerry Brown's veto of the Trust Act. The proposed law by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would have forbidden police departments to honor federal detainer requests except in cases in which defendants had been convicted of a serious or violent crime.
Ammiano on Monday reintroduced a modified version of the measure. Harris said she had opposed the bill's last iteration for going "too far" and had not seen the current version, but looked forward "to working with the governor and any of our lawmakers to take a look at what we can do to improve consistency."
"It's very difficult to create formulas for law enforcement," she said, noting that local agencies should have the freedom to determine which federal hold requests to honor. For example, she said, an inmate with five previous arrests for forcible rape but no convictions might still be deemed too great a risk for release.
Some law enforcement agencies, including the San Francisco Sheriff's Department and the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department, have declined to comply with federal requests to hold non-serious offenders. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck followed suit last month, announcing that suspected illegal immigrants arrested in low-level crimes would no longer be turned over for possible deportation.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who opposed the Trust Act, is among those who have argued that compliance with Secure Communities was mandatory.
On Tuesday, Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said that Harris' opinion was welcome guidance that may offer sheriffs more flexibility in how they deal with immigration detainees.
"The attorney general's opinion is going to be taken very seriously," Whitmore said. "The sheriff applauds it and is grateful for it." Baca, he added, has been working with the attorney general and the governor on the issue.
In a written response to Harris' announcement, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency's top priorities were the deportation of criminals, recent border-crossers and repeat violators of immigration law.
"The federal government alone sets these priorities and places detainers on individuals arrested on criminal charges to ensure that dangerous criminal aliens and other priority individuals are not released from prisons and jails into our communities," the statement said.
lee.romney@latimes.com
cindy.chang@latimes.com
Romney reported from San Francisco and Chang from Los Angeles.
Courtney Mazza, Mario Lopez and their daughter, Gia
FameFlynet
In photos from his weekend nuptials to actress Courtney Mazza, Lopez, 39, looks like a classic handsome groom dressed in black and white as he leads his bride – and their adorable 2-year-old daughter Gia – down the aisle after tying the knot.
The trio also shared the spotlight as they cut the enormous pink multiple-tiered wedding cake as a family. The cake, a winter-wonderland-meets-beach theme creation, was by Cake Boss star Buddy Valastro.
Mario Lopez, Courtney Mazza and their daughter, Gia
FameFlynet
The lavish wedding, which featured a mariachi band and was also attended by Lopez's close pal Eva Longoria, was held on the beach in Punta Mita, Mexico, on Saturday.
The wedding will be featured in a two-hour TLC special called Mario & Courtney's Wedding Fiesta, slated to air Dec. 8.
Funny isn’t an adjective often used to describe Afghanistan. Yet to many Afghans, the war and the foreigners waging it can present a surprising source of humor.
Afghans around the country tell anecdotes about encounters with NATO troops. The best of these are encapsulated, shared and sometimes aggrandized in the form of half-funny, half-sad tales told over warm chai or at picnics. Sometimes told with a laugh, sometimes told with a tone of bitterness, these stories tend to be about cultural mishaps and miscommunication that, 11 years after the start of the international intervention, still occur with alarming frequency.
Every province seems to have its own variations of these tales. Here, I will share three that I heard while meeting with local entrepreneurs in Bamian, Kabul and Kandahar city, respectively. All of them are based – or so my informants tell me – on actual events.
But even if they are apocryphal, these are the narratives that Afghans are telling in everyday conversations about foreigners – when the foreigners aren’t around.
1. A Disproportionate Response
Over a picnic lunch on the shores of beautiful Band-e-Amir, Afghanistan’s first national park, an 18-year-old high school student from Bamian Center laughingly told me this story:
One day, the New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team had lunch with some local village elders. At the end of the meal, they wanted to thank their hosts. One of them spoke on behalf of the team, saying: “Thank you for your great hospitality. The food was delicious.”
But the interpreter was confused. He translated: “Thank you for your great food. We will build you a hospital.”
The elders were surprised, but delighted. But not so much when the hospital never materialized.
Later, I shared this with a friend who works for NATO. He shook his head. “That’s no joke,” he said. “I caught my interpreter making the same mistake in Daikundi last week.”
2. “Not on the agenda!”
A colleague in Kabul who works in a nongovernmental organization that does media training had a collection of linguistic mishaps to share. This one was the most memorable.
A United States military trainer was making a routine visit to an Afghan government official whom he mentored. He was excited because new computers had just been delivered, and he wanted to hear how the devices were working.
The trainer had a thick Southern accent that, evidently, his interpreter found hard to understand.
“How’s the system?” the trainer asked.
“How’s your sister?” the interpreter said, translating.
The government official was visibly angry, to the American’s confusion: “My sister?! Who are you to be asking about my sister?!” The interpreter translated the official’s response into English, but said “system” instead of “sister.”
Trainer: “Yeah, your system! We just delivered new computer systems.”
Interpreter’s translation: “Yeah, your sister. You have beautiful sister.”
The Afghan, roaring: “You better stop talking about my sister!” The interpreter kept the miscommunication going, again telling the American that the official had said “system.”
Trainer: “Hey, relax! It’s on the agenda.”
The Afghan, huffing and puffing: “My sister is most definitely NOT on the agenda!” He stormed out.
The American was perplexed. The interpreter shrugged.
3. The Best Job Ever
I recounted these anecdotes to a friend whom I was visiting in Kandahar city. After having a good laugh, this friend shared one as well. “This one is definitely true,” he said, “because my friend was the interpreter!”
Back in 2004, an officer at Kandahar Airfield hired a group of local residents to do some manual labor. When the workers arrived, the officer instructed his interpreter: “O.K., tell them to get their shovels and start working. I will be back in an hour.”
The interpreter thought it was an odd request, but he translated anyway: “O.K., he says to go shower and come back in an hour.”
And so the workers went to the local bathhouse. When the officer returned, he angrily asked the interpreter, “Where have all the men gone?”
“They went to the bathhouse,” the interpreter replied.
The officer was furious. “Why would they do that?”
“Well, because you told them to…”
The officer suddenly understood what had happened. He grabbed a shovel and shoved it at the interpreter. “SHOVEL! I said shovel, not shower!”
At least in this story, there was a moment of comprehension and a confrontation was avoided. But all these stories make me wonder: How often have hospitals been accidentally promised? And how often did those mistranslations cause bad blood? We may never know.
Eileen Guo lives in Kabul, where she runs Impassion Media, a start-up that delivers social media and mobile technology solutions in emerging markets and frontier environments. She first worked in Afghanistan as a research assistant for the military’s Counterinsurgency Training Center and wrote about her experiences for At War. You can read more of her writing about Afghanistan at her personal blog, and follow her on Twitter.
A Chino Hills residence allegedly housing women from China who want to give birth to U.S.-citizen children is on the verge of being shut down by the city after complaints about traffic and a sewage spill.
The home is on a hilltop at the end of a long driveway on Woodglen Drive, an area zoned for single family houses. City officials have issued a cease and desist order, alleging that the site is being used as a hotel in a rural residential zone. They plan to take the property owner to court.
"Who the customer base is, is not our concern," said city spokeswoman Denise Cattern. "Our concern is that it's a hotel."
A website that city officials believe is associated with the business describes a full range of services, from shopping trips for pregnant women to assistance obtaining American passports for newborns.
A 30-day stay at the Chino Hills facility, along with a month of prenatal care, costs $10,500 to $11,500, according to the Chinese-language website, www.asiamchild.com.
Asiam Child is based in Shanghai, with branches in Anhui province and Nanjing, the website says.
The property owner, Hai Yong Wu, did not return a call seeking comment. A man who left the hotel in a black BMW on Monday afternoon would not speak to reporters.
So-called birth tourism appears to be an active but largely under-the-radar industry in Southern California. One local Chinese phone book has five pages of listings for birthing centers, where women from China and Taiwan stay for a month or so before going home with their U.S.-citizen babies. When the children get older, they may return here to study, perhaps paving the way for the rest of the family to immigrate more easily.
In San Gabriel last year, code enforcement officials shut down a facility where about 10 mothers and seven newborns were staying.
Federal immigration officials say there is no law prohibiting pregnant women from entering the U.S. But obtaining a visa through fraud would be a crime, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Chino Hills officials have notified federal authorities about the residence. Kice said she could not confirm whether ICE is investigating.
Neighbors report seeing groups of pregnant women walking along the quiet cul de sac. Cars from the residence sometimes drive down the street at unsafe speeds, they said.
In addition to the single-family zoning violation, the city has cited the owner for allegedly constructing additional rooms without a permit. A sewage spill estimated at 2,000 gallons also prompted a cease and desist order.
"It would be nice to have my neighborhood back. It was a quiet little street," said neighbor Sonya Valez.
On Saturday, a group called Not in Chino Hills staged a street-corner protest against the site.
"They go back," said Rossana Mitchell, a co-founder of the group. "They don't pay taxes, they don't assimilate."
cindy.chang@latimes.com
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc believes it has “numerous” grounds to appeal a Mexico City civil court‘s $ 2.7 billion preliminary judgment against the company, including both errors in procedure and in application of law, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.
The ruling in the case, which involves allegations of breach of contract related to an online yellow pages listings service, was made by the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City, Yahoo said on Friday.
The case has perplexed many investors and tech-industry observers since Yahoo disclosed it, particularly given the large value of the “non-final” judgment.
The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas S.A. de C.V. against Yahoo and Yahoo de Mexico, Yahoo said.
The companies could not be reached for comment, although Carlos Bazan-Canabal, who describes himself as a founder of Worldwide Directories, told Reuters via email that he had contracted a U.S.-based law firm to handle the Yahoo case.
He declined to comment further on the matter.
Bazan-Canabal operates a number of web sites. He said on one that he joined Yahoo in 1999, adding that he is a former executive of Yahoo Mexico, and that he helped to launch that company. Yahoo could not immediately be reached for comment on this.
The details of the suit remained unclear on Monday. Documents from local courts in Mexico are not available for public consultation. Yahoo declined to comment.
Yahoo signed a commercial relationship with the two companies in 2002, the person familiar with the matter said. Yahoo terminated the relationship with the companies in 2009, the person said.
Yahoo’s appeal is expected to be heard by a panel of three judges in a superior court in Mexico City, the person said who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. It was not clear when Yahoo might file its appeal.
Yahoo’s most recent 10Q filing, which lists major ongoing legal proceedings, makes no mention of the lawsuit.
“We believe the $ 2.7 billion figure appears high based on the seemingly small size of Yahoo’s business in Mexico, but we believe shares could trade off modestly on the news,” wrote JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth in a note to investors following Friday’s announcement.
“It’s not clear how the Mexican court arrived at the $ 2.7 billion figure, but it would represent 40 percent of our projected 2012 year-end cash balance for Yahoo,” and equate to about $ 2.30 per share, he wrote.
Shares of Yahoo closed Monday’s regular session down 1.2 percent, or 22 cents, at $ 18.55.
(Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City and Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Editing by Bernard Orr)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The Voice
From left: Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton and host Carson Daly
Mark Seliger/NBC
Amanda Brown sang "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" by Aretha Franklin and "Here I Go Again" by Whitesnake, proving she could pay tribute to a legend while still belting out the rock hits that have made her a fan favorite. "You're a world class singer," Blake Shelton told her.
Trevin Hunte surprised viewers with a bubbly yet passionate rendition of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine." He also scored rave reviews for Jennifer Hudson's "And I Am Telling You (I'm Not Going)," making a return to his classic soul roots. The performance prompted his coach to ask for "a moment of silence to mourn the loss of all the other competition."
Accompanied by just a piano, Terry McDermott gave a stripped-down performance of Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is." The simplicity of the set left him nowhere to hide, but his strong voice did not let him down, the coaches said. He also won them over with "Stay With Me" by Rod Stewart. His first performance even had Aguilera, speaking out for Shelton's powerhouse team: "After hearing that," she said, "there's no doubt Blake has the strongest team."
PRAGUE — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday warned President Bashar al-Assad of Syria not to use chemical weapons and said that the United States was prepared to act if he ignored the warning.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during a news conference in Prague on Monday.
Syrian civilians fled from the village of Ras al-Ayn on Monday, after Syrian jets bombed the village.
“This is a red line for the United States,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I am not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
There have been signs in recent days of heightened activity at some of Syria’s chemical weapons sites, according to American and Israeli officials familiar with intelligence reports. Mrs. Clinton did not confirm the intelligence reports or say what sort of activity was occurring.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry, in a swift response, said the government “would not use chemical weapons, if it had them, against its own people under any circumstances.” The statement was reported on Syrian state television and on the Lebanese channel LBC.
Mrs. Clinton, who made her comments after meeting with Karel Schwarzenberg, the foreign minister of the Czech Republic, indicated that the two sides had discussed the situation in Syria, including the potential chemical weapons threat.
Mr. Schwarzenberg described the situation in Syria as “rather chaotic” and “highly dangerous.” He said that Czech troops who specialize in the detection of chemical weapons and decontamination were in Jordan training with forces there.
An American task force has been deployed to Jordan and has been helping the Jordanians deal with the escalating humanitarian crisis, including an exodus of more than 200,000 refugees from Syria to Jordan. The force is also planning how to respond, if necessary, to a chemical weapons threat.
Although Mrs. Clinton’s reference to a “red line” echoed a warning issued by President Obama in August, it was the most explicit warning from a ranking American official since reports of renewed chemical weapons activity began to surface in recent days.
Mrs. Clinton stopped in Prague on her way to Brussels for a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. A major topic of the NATO meeting is a Turkish request that the alliance deploy Patriot antimissile batteries in Turkey. The Turkish government is concerned about Syria’s ballistic missiles, which could carry chemical weapons, and it wants NATO to guard as many as 10 sites inside Turkey.
What exactly is happening at Syria’s chemical sites is unclear. One American official said Sunday that “the activity we are seeing suggests some potential chemical weapon preparation,” which goes beyond the mere movement of stockpiles among Syria’s several dozen known sites. But the official declined to offer more specifics.
Over the weekend, the activity in Syria prompted a series of urgent consultations among the Western nations, which have long been developing contingency plans to neutralize the chemical weapons, a task that the Pentagon estimates would require more than 75,000 troops. But there were no signs that any American action was imminent.
So far, Mr. Obama has been very cautious about intervening in Syria, declining to arm the opposition groups directly.
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