Abbas sees Palestinian unity as Fatah rallies in Gaza

GAZA (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Abbas predicted the end of a five-year split between the two big Palestinian factions as his Fatah movement staged its first mass rally in Gaza with the blessing of Hamas Islamists who rule the enclave.

"Soon we will regain our unity," Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the 2007 civil war between the two factions, said in a televised address to hundreds of thousands of followers marching in Gaza on Friday, with yellow Fatah flags instead of the green of Hamas.

The hardline Hamas movement, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, expelled secular Fatah from Gaza during the war. It gave permission for the rally after the deadlock in peace talks between Abbas's administration and Israel narrowed the two factions' ideological differences.

The Palestinian rivals have drawn closer since Israel's assault on Gaza assault in November, in which Hamas, though battered, claimed victory.

Egypt has long tried to broker Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, but past efforts have foundered over questions of power-sharing, control of weaponry, and to what extent Israel and other powers would accept a Palestinian administration including Hamas.

An Egyptian official told Reuters Cairo was preparing to invite the factions for new negotiations within two weeks.

Israel fears grassroots support for Hamas could eventually topple Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

"Hamas could seize control of the PA any day," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

The demonstration marked 48 years since Fatah's founding as the spearhead of the Palestinians' fight against Israel. Its longtime leader Yasser Arafat signed an interim 1993 peace accord that won Palestinians a measure of self rule.

Hamas, which rejected the 1993 deal, fought and won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006. It formed an uneasy coalition with Fatah until their violent split a year later.

Though shunned by the West, Hamas feels bolstered by electoral gains for Islamist movements in neighboring Egypt and elsewhere in the region - a confidence reflected in the fact Friday's Fatah demonstration was allowed to take place.

"The success of the rally is a success for Fatah, and for Hamas too," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "The positive atmosphere is a step on the way to regain national unity."

Fatah, meanwhile, has been riven by dissent about the credibility of Abbas's statesmanship, especially given Israel's continued settlement-building on West Bank land. The Israelis quit Gaza unilaterally in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

"The message today is that Fatah cannot be wiped out," said Amal Hamad, a member of the group's ruling body, referring to the demonstration attended by several Abbas advisers. "Fatah lives, no one can exclude it and it seeks to end the division."

In his speech, Abbas promised to return to Gaza soon and said Palestinian unification would be "a step on the way to ending the (Israeli) occupation".

(Editing by Dan Williams, Alistair Lyon and Jason Webb)

Read More..

King speaks to sceptical Spaniards

MADRID: After a year blighted by embarrassing scandals, Spain's King Juan Carlos moves to repair his damaged reputation Friday with the broadcast of a rare televised interview to mark his 75th birthday.

No details of the pre-recorded interview had leaked from the royal palace ahead of its airing on Friday evening, but Spanish media trailed it by scrutinising the recent tribulations of the king, a key player in Spain's modern history.

Juan Carlos has recently appeared hobbling around on crutches after having both hips replaced, but any sympathy for his health has been overshadowed by scandals over elephant-hunting in Africa and a corruption probe implicating his family.

In a poll published Thursday by El Mundo newspaper, only half of people expressed a positive judgement of his reign, compared with three-quarters a year ago.

Juan Carlos, who turns 75 on Saturday, won respect in Spain for helping guide it to democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

But the king's image suffered last year from two scandals.

The first was a corruption case against his son-in-law Inaki Urdangarin, the duke of Palma, who went before a judge in February.

The other was an expensive game-hunting trip the king himself made to Botswana, seen as an unacceptable extravagance while Spain suffered in a recession.

Thursday's poll showed general support for having a monarchy in Spain has fallen to 54 percent, six points down from a year ago and "a historic low", according to the newspaper.

For days ahead of the interview broadcast, national television has aired old footage including Juan Carlos's solemn address, dressed in his officer's uniform, condemning an attempted coup on February 23, 1981.

A generation after those historic events, the poll found that nearly 58 percent of people aged between 18 and 29 said they thought a monarchy was not the best form of governance for Spain.

El Mundo suggested people of this generation do not share their parents' reverence for the king since they "did not live through the transition and are not very interested in it".

In his annual Christmas speech to the nation, Juan Carlos called on Spaniards to unite against the current economic crisis that has thrown millions out of work.

"We cannot ignore that there is pessimism, and that its effects are felt in the social climate we are living in," the king said, after a year of mass street demonstrations and two general strikes.

Of all the measures to combat the crisis, "the main stimulus that will get us out of this crisis is called confidence," he said in the speech, in which he made a point of appearing without crutches, standing beside his desk.

Observers saw this as one in a series of efforts to strengthen the monarchy's standing.

"The royal palace has launched in recent months a studious marketing operation to improve the image of the king," El Mundo wrote in an editorial.

In this week's poll nearly 45 percent of people questioned said Juan Carlos should abdicate to make way for his son, Felipe, 44.

-AFP/fl

Read More..

The 10 biggest tech innovations (that we personally use) of our lifetimes

Next-train arrival signs, like this one for NYC subway system have revolutionized commutes. Screen shot: Instragram photo by Sree Sreenivasan

As the father of 9-year-old twins, I often find myself telling them about tech products and innovations that I didn't have growing up. All parents do it: trying to get their kids to understand how much tougher life was in the old days.

In my case, the old days were in the 1980s - not that long ago. But the range of change in our lives continues to impress me and make my children roll their eyes.

Yesterday, I posted a photo on Instagram (see above and on my Sreenet account), saying the NYC subway's next-train arrival guides are among the top 20 technology innovations of my lifetime.

As you can tell, I had to post in a hurry as the next train arrived two minutes later. As I stood inside the subway, blissfully without cell service, I had a chance to think about that concept of top tech innovations and asked myself whether those guides were, indeed, worthy of a top 20 listing.

I've now taken a shot at that list. Before you read it, some ground rules I gave myself:

• The technology had to be for personal use, something that affected me and that I use myself. So innovations in space travel, nuclear physics and enterprise computing don't count.


• Innovations that have benefited millions of others, but I don't personally use don't count (sorry, electric
  car).


• They had to be widely available only after my teen years - i.e, around 1988 - to be considered (eliminating the Walkman, the CD, the home video camera, the microwave oven).


• Innovations so new or so rare or so expensive - or all three - that my family couldn't acquire them until many years later, do count (some of the items below might have been under your Christmas tree, but not mine).


• Innovations that were widely adopted but then became irrelevant in their original form aren't here (example: America Online, Compuserve, etc).
  
• Tech products that are mostly an evolution from something prior don't count (therefore, the DVD doesn't make the list; it's too similar to its predecessors, Betamax, VHS and laserdisc).
  
• And if I saw my dad using it, it doesn't count, even if it's wonderful and I use it every day (sorry, electric razor).

Basically, it has to be stuff I didn't have when I was a kid.

What would be on your version of this list? Here's mine (the first six are in order of importance; the rest aren't):

1. The Internet/Web/Search: No explanation needed.


2. Email: Electronic messaging recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, but it wasn't a true mass product until the mid-1990s.


3. Cellphones and smartphones: Cellphones have been around for decades, but the true revolution has only happened since the mid-1990s.


4. Digital cameras: These cameras changed the way I capture and share memories and how I see the worlds of my friends, family and complete strangers. While more of my friends than ever before sling fancy digital SLRs, the only digital camera I've used in the last 15 months or so is the one in my iPhone. The other day, when someone took a group portrait with a point-n-shoot digital camera, several of us in the picture commented on how long it had been since we had used an "old-fashioned" camera.


5. Laptops and wifi: Sure, there were ridiculously expensive laptops around in the 1980s, but none had the transformative effect on my life the way the ones in the 1990s did. And the arrival of wifi freed those laptops from the suffocating ethernet cord.


6. GPS (with a nod to web-based Mapquest and Google Maps): I still remember our car vacations started with my dad would going down to the AAA (Wikipedia tells me it was "known formerly as the American Automobile Association" - sort of like IBM, I guess) and get maps with our route highlighted in yellow. When I first saw Mapquest I was blown away by the potential; the arrival of Web-based Google Maps just continued the innovation and set the stage for how we all use GPS today.

   My friend Arik Hesseldahl (@AHess247) of AllThingsD once explained to me, for another story, how cool technology by itself isn't likely to change the landscape. Luck and government decisions play a role, too:
   

   GPS existed [prior to 1997], but was deliberately made inaccurate for non-military users under a federal directive known as "selective availability" that was eliminated in 2000 by order of President Clinton; prior to this, consumer GPS was good enough for hiking, but nowhere near good enough for in-car navigation, let alone geocaching.



7. MetroCard: Prior to the arrival of these yellow electronic payment cards for the subway, New Yorkers had to be obsessed with having enough tokens on hand to enter the system. The MetroCard literally changed my life.


8. Next-train arrival signs: Londoners and Londonphiles love to tell me how they've had these forever in the Underground, but these arrived in NYC only three years ago. Until these real-time signs showed up, you had no idea if your train was coming in two minutes or 20. Just last week, a handy next step: MTA Subway Time, an iPhone app that gives you the same real-time arrival data. It was officially released only for iOS, but, in a sign of the times, someone made an Android version within 24 hours, thanks to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's API offerings (more on APIs below). Yes, it's only for a few subway lines, but 90 percent of my trains are covered and this is my list, after all.


9. Wii and Kinect: When I was growing up, Atari, Intellivision and Commodore were major players in the home console market. The systems that came after that were much more powerful and more popular, but were basically improvements on what came before (sorry, Sega, Nintendo 64,
   PlayStation, Xbox). But the
   Wii, which I first tested at a family gathering on Thanksgiving 2006, was a breakthrough worthy of this list. I saw something I'd never seen before: Grandparents, parents and kids all gathered around the big-screen TV, playing digital bowling, golf and tennis.

   Some of that may have happened on occasion in the Atari days, but now, the players were all standing, not sitting on a couch, thanks to the wireless remotes. I predicted on my local TV segment the following week that the Wii would be unlike any other video game product and outsell the competition. At the time and in the years to follow, gamer-snobs felt the Wii wasn't any good in comparison to consoles with fancier graphics, better sound and more complex - and more gruesome - titles. The Wii went onto to outsell the other so-called "seventh generation" consoles, including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

   A logical next step in gaming has to be on my list. The Microsoft Kinect sensor, which works on Xbox, does away with the wireless remote and uses a player's arms and entire body to control the games - everything from sports to dance-offs. As I wrote in January 2011 about Five Things I Learned from Two Weeks With Kinect, this is only the beginning. "The Kinect shows that there's still lots of room for innovation in a field that seemed pretty saturated. I expect to see more developments in this area as the sensors gets smarter, the cameras gets sharper and the game play gets more sophisticated.



10. Social media, including blogging: Here I'm including various platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging - that have changed the way a billion-plus people spend their time, express themselves and engage with each other. For better and worse.


11. Wikipedia: While it's easy to complain about some of the problems of Wikipedia, the fact is that it has completely changed the way I do everyday research. It's my first stop, not my last - and I sometimes spend as much time on the footnotes and where they lead as I do on the main text. Even hoaxes like the one uncovered last week don't deter me (see Bicholim Conflict on this list of the biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia history). If you want to truly understand Wikipedia's impact, potential and pitfalls, you have to read the definitive book about it, "The Wikipedia Revolution: How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The World's Greatest Encyclopedia" by my friend Andrew Lih (@fuzheado).


12. YouTube: I had considered not including YouTube because it is, in many ways, just an evolution in online video. But in recent years, YouTube has become its own community with four billion hours of video watched every month; an important tool for all kinds of marketing, promotion and propaganda; and a source of entertainment and information for 800 million people every month (a stat I found in this compelling Peter Kafka (@pkafka) post that makes that case that Al Jazeera English should have gone with a web-only platform, rather than buying Current TV as announced this week).


13. Zipcar: This car-sharing service changed my family's life, allowing us to access a car in more convenient ways than traditional rental cars (we don't own a car, in part, because parking in our Manhattan building is $500 a month). This week's purchase of Zipcar by Avis for $500 million is causing consternation. Here's an article saying this is good for consumers; here's one that argues the opposite.


14. Credit cards in NYC taxis: Until they came along, I had to always check my wallet for cash before grabbing a taxi. Since they became widely available in 2007, I've not had to hesitate before hailing a cab and, unlike some folks who complain about drivers unhappy to take cards, I've never faced an issue with that.

    There's another reason to use credit cards in cabs, as I wrote in 5 Lessons From a Lost iPhone: "3. I'll always pay for my NYC cabs with credit cards. Turns out the taxi medallion number (the unique number displayed on top of all yellow cabs in Manhattan) is recorded with every credit card purchase, meaning you have way of tracking down cabs you've taken." The taxi industry in the city is the process of a much bigger disruption: figuring out new apps that are changing the decades-old system of hailing cabs.



15. DVR: The arrival of TiVo, and, later, the generic digital video recorder provided by the cable company, introduced us all to timeshifting TV in ways the complicated VHS system and its blink "12:00" clock never could.


16. Netflix: I'm including Netflix here as a representative of a whole new class of video watching, a big leap from the DVR. Whether Netflix will be the eventual winner in this space or not (Amazon, Hulu and others are attacking it), the concept of getting movies anytime from anywhere has changed how our family accesses entertainment.

    But I don't understand how anyone uses Netflix without also accessing Instawatcher.com, which provides a much better, searchable listing of the on-demand movies on Netflix, including my favorite feature, "Expiring soon."

    If you don't want to spring for Netflix, but are an HBO subscriber, you have to check out the free HBO Go app or website, which provides access to dozens of movies and entire seasons of HBO shows that are no longer available on the HBO On Demand service on your cable box. For instance, I saw and enjoyed "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," a quirky, charming show I never saw when it first ran on the network.



17. iPod and iTunes: These changed the music world forever, let us carry thousands of songs at a time and got millions of us to pay for digital music for the first time.

    My friend Hari Sreenivasan (@Hari; no relation), now an anchor on PBS Newshour, was the first to outline to me the power of iPod beyond music. One day in late 2001 (soon after iPod was launched), he predicted that the iPod would be a great way to introduce the Apple brand to PC users skeptical of the Mac. He saw it as a way to get people comfortable using an Apple product and getting them hooked and ready to try others. Even though he didn't call it that, iPod became a gateway drug that changed the company's fortunes and set it on the path to iPhone, iPad and beyond. If you are curious, the price of Apple stock on Oct. 1, 2001 was $15.49. On Oct. 1, 2012, it was $671.16 (it's down since then).



18. Tablets and apps: In some ways, tablets feel like cousins of laptops and not worthy of this list. But in many other ways, they are, indeed, new. The key here are the apps we use in smartphones, too. As millions of users have discovered, tablets can be used in ways that are different from laptops and we see them being used as cash registers, restaurant menus, medical devices and much more. And all this is just getting started.

    I didn't include e-readers such as the Kindle on this list because while they were innovative, they are not going to stick around much longer. Thanks to tablets that let you read Kindle content without a Kindle, e-readers are dying much faster than anyone could have predicted. See this chart to understand the whole picture.



19. APIs: I am not an engineer, but I play one on TV, thanks to my CNET tech segments on WCBS-TV. Since I don't program, it's not obvious why I'd include APIs - or application programming interfaces - on this list.

    But these web APIs, which allow live data and content from one web service to be posted and used on another have changed how we access information. Everything from mashups of real-estate listings and Google maps, to embedding videos, to the subway-arrival app I mentioned in #7 above, APIs are now a critical part of our digital lives. Here's a list of the most popular APIs.



20. Cordless irons: I know some of you will claim to have had cordless electric irons for decades now, but the day I saw one of these, I had to have one when the prices became reasonable. They aren't as good as corded ones (the heat dissipates too quickly), but they changed my ironing life.

That's my 20. Am sure I am missing some others and that you will disagree with many of my choices (especially if you are in a different age bracket). That's what makes this list so much fun to put together. It has no right or wrong answers and it's all about you.

Hope you'll take a stab at creating a similar list of 5-20 tech innovations. You can post it in the comments below and/or tweet it with #mytoptech.

Read More..

Pakistani girl shot by Taliban out of hospital, for now

The Pakistani teenager shot in the head by the Taliban in October for advocating girls' education has been discharged from the British hospital where she was being treated, but faces rehabilitation and future hospital stays, the facility says.

Malala Yousufzai was released from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham, on Thursday to continue her rehabilitation at her family's temporary home in the vicinity.

The 15-year-old, who was shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls' education, is well enough to be treated by the hospital as an outpatient for the next few weeks, officials say.

She is still due to be re-admitted late this month or early next for reconstructive cranial surgery as part of her long-term recovery. In the meantime, she will visit the hospital regularly for appointments with physicians.

Dr Dave Rosser, Medical Director, University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust, said, "Malala is a strong young woman and has worked hard with the people caring for her to make excellent progress in her recovery.

"Following discussions with Malala and her medical team, we decided that she would benefit from being at home with her parents and two brothers.

"She will return to the hospital as an outpatient and our therapies team will continue to work with her at home to supervise her onward care."

Over the past couple of weeks, Malala has been leaving the hospital on a regular basis on 'home leave' to spend time with her family.

Malala was admitted to the Birmingham hospital Oct. 15 after being flown from Pakistan, where she was wounded in a school bus shooting Oct. 9.

Read More..

Ex-USC Player: Painkiller Injections Caused Heart Attack

Despite stated label risks of possible fatal heart attack, stroke or organ failure, college football players across the country are still being given injections of a powerful painkiller on game days so they can play while injured, an ABC News investigation has found.

The drug, a generic version of Toradol, is recommended for the short-term treatment of post-operative pain in hospitals but has increasingly been used in college and professional sports, and its use is not monitored by the NCAA, the governing body of college sports.

Only two of the country's top football programs, Oklahoma and the University of Nebraska, reported to ABC News that they have limited or stopped the use of the drug in the wake of growing concern about its risks.

Which Top-Ranked College Football Teams Use Toradol?

Oklahoma said it stopped using the painkillers in 2012 after using them repeatedly in 2010 and 2011.

Nebraska said its doctors now restrict its use.

SEND TIPS About Painkiller Use in College Sports to Our Tipline

"While team physicians reserve the option to use injectable Toradol, it is rarely prescribed, and its use has been avoided this season following reports of heightened concern of potential adverse effects," Nebraska said in a statement to ABC News.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Despite Risks, College Football Still Uses Powerful Painkiller Watch Video

The top two college football programs, Notre Dame and Alabama, refused to answer questions from ABC News about the painkiller. They play for the national college championship on Jan. 7.

Controversy surrounding the drug has grown this year following claims by former USC lineman Armond Armstead that he suffered a heart attack after the 2010 season, at age 20, following shots of generic Toradol administered over the course of the season by the team doctor and USC personnel.

"I thought, you know, can't be me, you know? This doesn't happen to kids like me," Armstead told ABC News.

The manufacturers' warning label for generic Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) says the drug is not intended for prolonged periods or for chronic pain and cites gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure as possible side effects of the drug.

In addition, like other drugs in its class, the generic Toradol label warns "may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke, which can be fatal."

"This risk may increase with duration of use," the so-called black box warning reads.

In a lawsuit against the school and the doctor, Dr. James Tibone, Armstead claims the school ignored the stated risks of the drug and never told him about them.

"He was a race horse, a prize race horse that needed to be on that field no matter what," said Armstead's mother Christa. "Whether that was a risk to him or not."

Armstead says he and many other USC players would receive injections of what was known only as "the shot" in a specific training room before big games and again at half-time.

"No discussion, just go in. He would give the shot and I would be on my way," Armstead told ABC News.

Armstead said the shot made him feel "super human" despite severe ankle, and later shoulder pain, and that without it, he never could have played in big USC games against Notre Dame and UCLA.

"You can't feel any pain, you just feel amazing," the former star player said.

USC declined to comment on Armstead's claims, or the use of Toradol to treat Trojan players.

An ABC News crew and reporter were ordered off the practice field when they tried to question USC coach Lane Kiffin about the use of the painkiller. USC says the ABC News crew was told to leave because they had not submitted the appropriate paperwork in advance to attend the practice session.

Read More..

Myanmar says jets used against Kachin rebels

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has used jets to attacks rebel fighters in northern Kachin state, the government said on Thursday, its first admission of an intensification of a conflict that has raised doubts about its reformist credentials.

Rebel sources have reported aerial bombings, shelling and even the use of chemical weapons since December 28 after the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) ignored an ultimatum to stop blocking an army supply route in the hilly, resource-rich state where more than 50,000 people have been displaced.

Official newspapers said that air support was used on December 30 to thwart KIA fighters who had occupied a hill and were attacking logistics units of the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's military is known.

"The Tatmadaw troops cleared Point-771 hill and its surrounding areas where the KIA troops were attacking the Tatmadaw logistic troops," the New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, said. "The air cover was used in the attack."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern on Wednesday over reports of helicopters and fighter jets being used in the state bordering China. The KIA said the attacks were intended to clear the path for an assault on its headquarters in Laisa.

Ban called on Myanmar's government to "desist from any action that could endanger the lives of civilians" and reiterated demands for humanitarian aid groups to be granted access, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a statement.

President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration insists it wants a ceasefire and political dialogue. It says troops have acted only in self-defense and on Thursday denied having plans to seize the KIA's stronghold.

DOMINANT MILITARY

The escalation of fighting has raised doubts about the sincerity of the reformist ex-generals running the government and the extent of their power in a country the size of Britain and France plagued by decades of internal conflict.

Some analysts and diplomats say central government is either not fully committed to peace with the KIA or unable to assert control over the military, which still dominates politics and the economy despite formally ceding power in March 2011.

Colonel James Lum Dau, a Thai-based spokesman for the KIA's political wing, said Kachin officials on the ground had reported up to 300 people killed in air strikes.

"We are in a defensive position. Right now more people are suffering not only bombings, but shelling and spraying of chemical weapons with helicopter gunships and jets," he said. "Only god knows what to do. We are praying."

It is difficult for journalists to independently verify accounts from the two sides.

Fighting erupted in Kachin in June 2010, ending a 17-year truce, and has continued even as government negotiators have agreed ceasefires elsewhere with ethnic Shan, Chin, Mon and Karen militias after decades of fighting in border areas.

Mistrust runs deep between the military and the KIA, which was once backed by China, and multiple rounds of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire have gone nowhere. Analysts say a history of bad blood and a battle for control of resources, including highly lucrative jade, could be stoking the unrest.

Zaw Htay, a senior official in Thein Sein's office, told Reuters no air strikes had taken place but K-8 trainer jets had provided cover fire to protect ground troops from rebel attacks. The military, he said, had no intention of seizing the KIA's headquarters.

"The president has said this and at the same time he has invited KIA leaders to come and talk with him in Naypyitaw, but they still haven't responded," Zaw Htay said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Carsten in Bangkok; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould)

Read More..

Delhi gang-rape suspects formally charged

NEW DELHI: Indian police on Thursday formally charged five men with murder, kidnapping and rape following the fatal gang-rape of a young woman that appalled the nation.

"We have filed the charge sheet against the five accused," an investigating police officer told a magistrate hearing the case in the Saket court complex in New Delhi.

The five men, who could face the death penalty if convicted, were not present when the media were allowed into the courtroom. Journalists were initially prevented from listening to proceedings, sparking chaotic scenes outside.

The men face at least seven charges, including murder, kidnapping, rape, robbery and attempting to destroy evidence. The next hearing in the case was set for January 5.

A police charge sheet under Indian law lays out the charges against the accused and details the key evidence against them.

The 23-year-old victim in the gang-rape case, who died at the weekend from her horrific injuries, gave a statement to police immediately after the attack.

Her boyfriend, who was with her at the time and was also attacked, has also given an account.

- AFP/xq

Read More..

WhatsApp processes record 18B messages on New Year's Eve

WhatsApp Messenger running on iOS.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)

WhatsApp has a message for its users -- a lot of them.

The mobile messaging service announced today that it set a WhatsApp record on New Year's Eve, processing 18 billion messages on the last day of the year. The company said it delivered 7 billion inbound messages and 11 billion outbound messages, surpassing its previous record of 10 billion messages processed in August.

In comparison, Apple revealed in October that its iMessage text service had delivered about 300 billion texts sent by iOS users during the previous 12 months -- an average of less than a billion a day.

That kind of growth reportedly attracted acquisition interest from Facebook -- a TechCrunch report that the company called "a rumor and not factually accurate."

Founded in 2009, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides a smartphone app for
Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone that delivers text messages, as well as images and audio and video messages.

Read More..

Hillary Clinton discharged from hospital

WASHINGTONSecretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from a New York hospital Wednesday, after spending 72 hours under observation following the discovery of a blood clot in her head, the State Department said.

In a statement, spokesperson Philippe Reines said: "Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery. She's eager to get back to the office."

Clinton and her family thanked her medical team "for the excellent care she received," Reines said.

Earlier Wednesday, Clinton had been seen in public for the first time in three weeks when she walked out of the Harkness Eye Institute in New York City and into a secure van along with a smiling Bill and Chelsea Clinton and accompanied by a security detail, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.

The State Department had said Secretary Clinton was active in speaking with staff and reviewing paperwork while she continued to recover at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Clinton was admitted to a New York hospital Sunday and was treated with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in the vein behind the right ear. Doctors found the clot during a follow-up exam stemming from a concussion she suffered in early December. She has been hospitalized for around 72 hours, which is a window of time during which it is possible to establish the proper blood thinner dosage that would be required prior to discharge according to doctors.

Clinton's doctors say there was no neurological damage.

Read More..

Obama Signs 'Fiscal Cliff' Bill With Autopen

Jan 3, 2013 12:53am

Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

HONOLULU, Hawaii — President Obama has signed the “fiscal cliff” legislation into law via autopen from Hawaii, where he is vacationing with his family.

The bill to avert the “fiscal cliff” arrived at the White House late this afternoon and it was immediately processed, according to a senior White House official. A copy was delivered to the president in Hawaii for review. He then directed the bill to be signed by autopen back in Washington, D.C.

The Bush administration deemed in 2005 that the use of the autopen is constitutional, although President George W. Bush never used the mechanical device to replicate his signature on a bill.

The office of legal counsel found at the time that Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution allows the president to use the autopen to sign legislation, stating “the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill to sign it.”

Obama has used the autopen twice in the past to sign legislation, both times while he was overseas.

Use of the autopen has been controversial.  Conservative groups alleged last summer that Obama used an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of Navy SEALs killed in a Chinook crash in Afghanistan — a charge the White House disputed flatly as false.

In 2004, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was criticized for using an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of fallen troops.

And in 1992 then-Vice President Dan Quayle even got into some hot water over his use of the autopen on official correspondence during an appearance on “This Week with David Brinkley.”

Obama, who arrived back in Hawaii early Wednesday morning to continue his family vacation, spent the afternoon golfing with friends at the Marine Corps base at Kaneohe Bay.

Obama is slated to remain in Hawaii through Saturday.

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl contributed to this report

SHOWS: Good Morning America This Week World News

Read More..