Stuff I Stole From The Internet: 2011

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

AndroidLock XT: Jailbreak App Brings Android-like Lock Screen To Jailbroken iPhone

Page LinksAdvertiseContact usiPhone GlossaryLink Exchange FAQLinksPrivacy PolicyTop CategoriesiPhone NewsiPhone Applications: iPhone Apps, iPhone Web AppsiPhone RumorsHacksJailbreak iPhone, Jailbreak iPhone 4, Jailbreak iPhone 3GS, Jailbreak iPhone 3GNew iPhone, Next Generation iPhoneiPad, iPad 1iPhone 4Apple NewsRecent Commentsk.C on Untethered Jailbreak Works With iPhone 4 Running iOS 5.0.1J-God on Untethered Jailbreak Works With iPhone 4 Running iOS 5.0.1achex on Untethered Jailbreak Works With iPhone 4 Running iOS 5.0.1Robert Kowalski on VOiPover3G – Hack Allows iPhone Users to Make VOiP Calls over 3G/EDGE/GPRSsammy on Movement App Makes it Easier for Users to Organize iPhone AppsDesigned by BlogConsulting.com

Apple Loses Appeal, Samsung Allowed To Sell Galaxy Tab 10.1 In Australia

EA Daily Deals Sale: Dead Space HD – iPad Game Of The Year Available For Half The Price And Lots More

Monday, 12 December 2011

RadioShack To Offer $30 Discount On iPhone 4S and iPhone 4 From Sunday, Dec 11th Through Dec 17th

Samsung’s New Galaxy II TV Ad Mocks Apple Fanboys Again And Pokes Fun at iCloud, iTunes Match

Apple Planning to Add Bluetooth 4.0 Support For AirPlay

Apple: 1 Billion Apps Downloaded Per Month From App Store; Mac App Store Hits 100 Million Downloads

Untethered Jailbreak Works With iPhone 4 Running iOS 5.0.1

Sunday, 11 December 2011

Rumor: Next Generation iPad Will Be Available In 3-4 Months

Want a Fake Driver’s License? There Was an App For That!

Thursday, 10 November 2011

Abbas: Israel Promised to Release More Prisoners

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas welcomes a prisoner wearing a Hamas headband after the release of hundreds of prisoners from Israeli jails on October 18, 2011, in Ramallah.

Abbas Momani / AFP / Getty Images

As Palestinians exult in the release of 477 prisoners from Israeli jails, and anticipate the arrival of the 550 more due to be freed in December under the terms of the bargain Hamas brokered for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is pushing Israel to release even more, citing what he terms a secret promise from a previous prime minister.

Abbas tells TIME in an interview that the promise was made by Ehud Olmert, who preceded Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, and spent months negotiating the details of a potential peace deal with Abbas before being forced from office three years ago. Abbas says the subject of prisoners came up after Olmert twice arranged the release of several hundred prisoners as a good will gesture in advance of peace talks. "And after that I asked him to release some big number," Abbas says. (Press reports at the time mentioned 2,000.) "He said now I cannot because we have a Shalit deal, but I promise you when we conclude Shalit and everything is okay, I will give you, not the same number, not the same quality, more. I think that he repeated it twice in different meetings.

"But," Abbas adds, "he asked me, please keep it secret, confidential between us, because we don't want to affect the deal with Shalit. I said, okay, okay, I will keep it. Now the deal is over, and we will ask them to fulfill their promises." Olmert's negotiations for Shalit's release fell through but Abbas wants Netanyahu to keep his predecessor's promise. (see photos from the prisoner swap between Palestine and Israel.)

In an effort to nudge the process along, Abbas says he laid out the offer to the Obama administration on Wednesday, informing U.S. diplomat Daniel Rubinstein of the details during a meeting in Ramallah. As U.S. Consul General in Jerusalem, Rubinstein is the primary point of contact for Palestinian officials. Abbas says he is also one of two American diplomats who broached the possibility of prisoner releases as a "confidence building" measure Washington was offering to spark the resumption of peace talks.

"The American envoy David Hall, and the counsel general, Daniel Rubinstein, came six or seven months [ago] telling me that President Obama is willing to give you a confidence building measures to be fulfilled by Netanyahu," Abbas says. "I said what kind of confidence building measures? They said to help Gaza, to alleviate the siege around Gaza, to remove some of the roadblocks, to help you in the C area [portions of the West Bank entirely under Israeli control] and to release prisoners.

"What was my answer? No. Why? Because I knew the Israelis will put it on the table and start to negotiate it instead of the final status issues. But after that they returned back two or three times saying, please this is our offer. You have to appreciate it, you have to accept, because you don't' have to do anything. It is free of charge. It will not cost you anything. After the third time I said okay, let us start. Of course they didn't start, nothing happened." (See why the joy of Gilad Shalit's release is tempered by memories of an Intifadeh.)

Neither the American diplomats nor Olmert could be reached Wednesday night, the start of a religious holiday in Jerusalem. But Abbas' account illustrates the potency of the prisoner issue with the Palestinian public. The Shalit deal gave an immediate political boost to Hamas, the Islamist rival of the secular Fatah party Abbas leads. It was a deft political move that changed the subject, at least for a time, from admiration for Abbas' Sept. 23 speech requesting Palestinian statehood at the United Nations. On Tuesday, both the Gaza Strip, which the Islamist party controls, and Ramallah, a solidly Fatah city, were awash in the green flags of Hamas.

"Why not?" Abbas says. "They are celebrating a very big victory — granted by our neighbor." The neighbor is Israel, and the jab betrays his irritation that the Shalit deal boosted Hamas, whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, at the relative expense of Abbas' Palestinian Authority, the body committed to reaching a negotiated end to the conflict and the four-decade occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel troops. Abbas in fact goes on to say he's skeptical that Netanyahu will honor his predecessor's vow on prisoners, the leader of the conservative Likud Party having already declined to accept the positions Olmert negotiated during months of secret peace negotiations with Abbas.

"Of course I doubt that Netanyahu will do it," Abbas says, seated on a couch in his heavily guarded apartment in northern Ramallah. He shrugs. "But I will send to him a message within two or three days, to ask him whether he will accept or not. I'm not going to argue with him or not negotiate with him or to talk in details about it. Either, or. If he doesn't believe us, he can ask Mr. Olmert. He can turn back to the minutes, protocols — everything is in writing. Of course he didn't give us it in writing, but of course his colleagues write everything."

See photos of the five-year ordeal of Gilad Shalit.

See "Gilad Shalit and the End of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process."

What China Would Gain from Europe in Bailing Out Euro Zone

A Chinese paramilitary officer stands in front of the European Union flag outside the office of the E.U. delegation to China in Beijing on Oct. 28, 2011

In years to come, economists and historians might hark back to this week as the moment the balance of world power tipped toward China. The signs have been there for while, but the symbolism is especially potent now, in the few days between yet another euro-zone crisis summit, held in Brussels on Oct. 26, and the Nov. 3-4 G-20 summit in Cannes, France. The reason for choosing this as the watershed is crudely financial: at the Brussels summit, European leaders made a previously unthinkable appeal for China to use its $3.2 trillion currency reserves to help dig the euro out of its debt hole. And while the euro zone is anxiously awaiting an answer, China — inscrutable about its intentions — is milking the moment.

China is being targeted as a potential investor as part of a complicated scheme agreed to at the summit to leverage Europe's bailout fund up to €1 trillion ($1.4 trillion), along with other potential outsiders like Russia, Brazil, Middle Eastern countries and the International Monetary Fund. On Oct. 27, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is hosting the Cannes G-20 gathering, phoned Chinese President Hu Jintao to seek backing. "If the Chinese, who have 60% of global reserves, decide to invest in the euro instead of the dollar, why refuse?" Sarkozy said after his call. "Why would we not accept that the Chinese have confidence in the euro zone and deposit a part of their surpluses in our funds or in our banks?" (See "Europe's Debt Crisis Agreement: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly.")

China can certainly spare the €100 billion ($140 billion) reportedly being discussed among officials. The real question is why China would want to plant it in a low-growth region like the euro zone. The bond-leverage scheme has already generated its share of criticism, and Greece's recently announced euro referendum only adds to the uncertainty and risk. The Chinese government's official news agency, Xinhua, cautioned in an editorial that "emerging economies should not be seen as Europe's Good Samaritans."

Yet there are still strong reasons that China might park some of its funds in the bailout scheme or some other bond offering. One is that it is already heavily involved: a quarter of China's currency reserves are thought to be held in euros, and Beijing has been a regular buyer of euro-zone bailout bonds in the past. Over the past year, the Chinese government has made several pledges to purchase European debt issues, both at the bilateral level with indebted countries — including Portugal, Greece and Hungary — and toward the euro zone as a whole. (See why the euro hasn't been fixed yet.)

China also has a vested interest in shoring up its biggest trading partner, with which it had bilateral dealings worth €363 billion ($503 billion) last year, almost 10% of the total global-trade flow. China's growth prospects depend heavily on Europe's consumers, whose average per capita GDP is about $32,500, compared with about $4,500 in China. A weaker euro would make Chinese exports more expensive for Europeans. And maintaining the euro as a reserve currency aids China's efforts to counterbalance the U.S. dollar and create a multipolar global economic system.

But significantly, this hands China a remarkable opportunity to extract concessions, both economic and political. In September, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao implied an effective quid pro quo when he asked Europeans to "put their houses in order," almost as a condition for China's "extending a helping hand." (See pictures of the global financial crisis.)

In trading terms, this might be reflected in the recognition of China's status as a "market economy" when it comes to European Union trade sanctions, a measure that could boost exports otherwise hindered by tariffs. And since the E.U. currently has some 55 anti-dumping measures in place against China, individual member states might also be pushed to ease their stance on future sanctions. Other trade issues might slip from the agendas, to the chagrin of European exporters, who regularly gripe about Chinese rules on foreign ownership, subsidies reserved for Chinese firms, lack of access to the public-procurement market and selective enforcement of intellectual-property rules.

These concerns were already raised in July by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which published a paper titled "The Scramble for Europe" on China's "game-changing" economic presence in Europe. It warned that if China became too involved in major financial, investment and public issues, it would leave the Europeans little leverage to improve their access to the same sectors in China, which are mostly closed or controlled.

The political implications are potentially even more troubling for Europe, which has long considered it a right, even a responsibility, to criticize China on issues like human rights and environmental protection. It could mean, for example, that the E.U. lifts its ban on arms sales to China, imposed in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, or that the Dalai Lama receives fewer invitations to meet European leaders. Fredrik Erixson, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based think tank, says that even if there are no formal trade-offs, Beijing could expect generous favors from Europe after years of what it considers intrusive interference. "China wants something more: international recognition in one way or the other, or a Europe that in Beijing's view stops poking its nose in internal Chinese politics," Erixson says. (See pictures of China's investments in Africa.)

At Cannes, Chinese leader Hu will doubtless refrain from any early commitment on the euro-bailout scheme, while soaking up the flattery from Europe's pleading leaders. But he will be aware that as China consolidates its emergence as a world player, any investment risks in the program would be a small price to pay for the wave of European goodwill it would generate.

Is it time to admit the euro has failed?

See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis.

Why Israel's Netanyahu May Prefer a Waltz With Hamas to a Tango With Abbas

Tuesday's milestone prisoner exchange does not, repeat does not portend a new peace process between Israel and Hamas. Neither side is even seeking that goal: If the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is unable to agree peace terms with the moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, it's hardly about to seek a "grand bargain" to end the conflict with the more intractable leadership of Hamas, which Netanyahu sees as a mortal enemy. Hamas, even though its leadership has come to define its immediate goal as establishing a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines,
has no interest in replacing Abbas in a peace process whose terms it has long rejected. Their existential conflict notwithstanding, however, Hamas and Israel may see mutual benefit in a liaison of convenience of the sort seen in the prisoner exchange, in which Abbas was an ineffectual spectator.

Netanyahu came to power in 2009 arguing that there was no prospect for completing the peace process that had been stalled since January of 2001. A grand bargain with the Palestinians simply couldn't be done, he insisted: Abbas was unwilling or unable to accept Israel's terms, and he was too weak, politically, to sell any compromise deal to his own people. Abbas' term of office had expired but he dared not risk new elections; his parliament was actually dominated by Hamas which had won the last vote; and he had no authority in Gaza since his forces were evicted by Hamas in 2007. Rather than seek a political settlement with Abbas, Netanyahu argued, Israel's focus should be on "economic peace" -- easing up on Israel's stranglehold to allow the West Bank economy to grow and provide a basis for peace at some point in the future. (Gaza would remain under an economic stranglehold until its population was willing to topple Hamas.) While Netanyahu's logic may have tracked for a time with the efforts of the U.S.-picked Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build Palestinian institutions -- and with Abbas' hopes of hobbling Hamas -- both Abbas and Fayyad insisted that statehood and an end to the occupation remained their key objective.

And while the incoming Obama Administration had tacitly accepted the "economic war" on Gaza, it made clear that Washington expected more than "economic peace" in the West Bank. So Netanyahu went to Plan B, rhetorically accepting the principle of a two-state solution but setting such preconditions as to ensure that Israel would not, in practice, be required to implement it. Abbas has known all along that Netanyahu won't concede the minimum
necessary for a Palestinian leader to conclude a peace agreement, but he'd hoped the Obama Administration would supply the leverage required to change Israel's calculations. That illusion was shattered by Obama's cave-in to Netanyahu on the U.S. President's insistence that Israel halt settlement construction outside its 1967 borders, as required by President Bush's 2002 "Roadmap". Having been left dangling by Obama, Abbas turned to the United Nations, hoping to create negotiating leverage there through establishing international recognition of Palestinian sovereignty over the 1967 territories.

The U.N. bid, which put Abbas on a collision course with Israel and the Administration, remains in a kind of limbo, with the U.S. still hoping to sidestep it by restarting negotiations on the terms already rejected by Abbas and trying to frustrate his efforts to make headway at the U.N.

But Hamas had also, for its own reasons, opposed Abbas' U.N. bid, seeing it as nothing more than an attempt by the Palestinian to boost his own leverage before returning to the same old negotiating table, rejoining a process that, as Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan put it, "has proved futile over the past twenty years." Instead, Hamas insists that Abbas operate on the basis of a national consensus achieved via Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, and that the Palestinian focus be on pressuring Israel to end the occupation. A state could only be created once that occupation was ended, Hamdan warned.

The prisoner swap, hailed as a victory for Hamas' stubborn resistance, has given the organization
a desperately needed bump in its approval rating among Palestinians. Even then, its popularity remain in the doldrums, dragged down by the misery of Gaza. A recent opinion poll published by An Najah National University in Nablus found that while 67% of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza believed the prisoner deal would boost Hamas' popularity, at the same time, only 8% said they would vote for a Hamas candidate in a presidential election -- compared with 27% for a Fatah candidate. More striking, perhaps was the fact that 22% said they would not bother to vote at all, while a further 20% were undecided. So Hamas has plenty of incentive to try and regain the support that saw it win the 2006 legislative election in the West Bank and Gaza.

And the changing regional situation, in which Hamas may lose its sanctuary in Syria, makes the organization more inclined to please such potential future hosts as Egypt, Turkey and Qatar, all of whom see themselves as mediating a credible peace independent of the failed U.S. effort rather than as joining a "resistance front" with Iran and Syria.

The afterglow of the prisoner release will fade soon enough, which is why Hamas' priority now is to improve the quality of life in Gaza. Currently, it's struggling even to pay salaries there, with Iranian financial support having been withdrawn over Hamas' refusal to condemn the Syrian rebellion. Other sources of funding may well be found, but Hamas' priority going forward will be to ease and end the Israeli blockade of Gaza -- an issue reportedly addressed in the prisoner exchange deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that in the course of the Shalit talks, Netanyahu had agreed to allow the reconstruction of Gaza, adding that the Israeli envoy to the talks had spoken of the Prime Minister's desire to see an economic boom in Gaza. The Journal quoted government officials admitting that the Israeli government planned to follow a policy of "growing openness" towards Gaza.

"Economic peace" in Gaza, then?

Despite its fundamental antagonism for Israel, Hamas' political fortunes may depend on its ability to secure the well-being of Gazans, and that certainly creates an incentive for maintaining its cease-fire with Israel. Egypt, which took the lead in mediating the Shalit deal, also benefits from at once easing conditions in Gaza and also demonstrating its ability to maintain security.

And for Israel, allowing Hamas to rebuild Gaza carries little immediate downside, but could help reverse its isolation by addressing longstanding demands of Turkey and Qatar for an end to the blockade. And, if allowing Hamas to make gains weakens President Abbas -- well, the Israelis weren't planning on doing a deal with him, anyway, and his U.N. strategy has created diplomatic problems for Netanyahu.

Israel has a long-established tradition of playing rivals off against one another, dealing with the one deemed most challenging at any moment: In the late '80s, it was actually Israeli policy to allow Hamas to emerge as a challenger to Yasser Arafat's Fatah in the West Bank and Gaza. During the '90s, Israel repeatedly between a focus on negotiating with the Palestinians and on negotiating with Syria, using each option as leverage against the other. And there was even a period after his 1996 election as Prime Minister during which Netanyahu reached out discreetly to Iran in the hope of improving relations.

So, cooperation between Hamas and Israel on easing conditions in Gaza is not a dance of peace, but rather of circumstance. Neither side may have much faith in Abbas and the peace process, but the deeper reality of the occupation will surely have them stomping on one another's feet -- or worse -- soon enough. Neither partner has any illusions about the other. Nor can the Gaza situation be considered in isolation: Hamas, remember, is a West Bank organization as well as a Gaza one. Also, the prisoner exchange could spur Abbas to act on his vow to to raise economic pressure and non-violent protest action for an end to the occupation -- as Palestinian civil society groups have been doing for some time. Indeed, the strongest impetus coming from ordinary Palestinians, right now, is for Hamas and Abbas to put aside their differences and create a unity government to forge a common strategy to end the occupation. If they do, neither Palestinian faction is likely to be dancing with Netanyahu for very long.

A Watery Solar System Offers Clues to Earth's Creation

An artist's rendering illustrates an icy planet-forming disk around a young star called TW Hydrae, in the constellation Hydra

If E.T. is out there, it may be a lot easier to find him than we thought — mostly because there are a lot more places for him to live. Scientists looking for life (or at least earthlike life) have always obeyed a simple rule: follow the water. Biology is a wet process, after all — and generally the wetter the better. Now, the Herschel Space Observatory has spotted an infant solar system 175 million light years from Earth that seems fairly awash in primordial water. The finding suggests many more such systems may be out there — and offers tantalizing clues about how our own biologically rich world began as well.

Herschel, which was launched by the European Space Agency in 2009, hovers in space 930,000 miles (1.5 million km) from Earth at what's known as a Lagrange point, a gravitationally quirky spot where the pull of the planet Earth and the sun balance out. This allows a spacecraft placed just so to remain locked in place on the far side of the planet, shielded from solar interference. In the case of Herschel, that's important, because the readings it takes are exquisitely precise, scanning the skies in the far infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. (See how earthlike planets may be less common than we think.)

Turning its gaze toward a star known as TW Hydrae — a comparatively cool orange dwarf just 10 million years old — the telescope recently found a vast disk of dusty material moving in a solar orbit about 200 times as far from the star as Earth is from our own sun. Dust is just dust in the visible spectrum, but operating in the extreme infrared, Herschel was able to spot the surprising signal of water — lots and lots of water — created as ultraviolet light from the star knocked individual water molecules free from the traces of ice that cling to the dust grains.

"These are the most sensitive [infrared] observations to date," said NASA project scientist Paul Goldsmith, who collaborates with the European investigators in analyzing Herschel findings. "It is a testament to the instrument builders that such weak signals can be detected." (See how Venus may have once had water.)

What struck Goldsmith and the others was not just the vast quantity of water ice surrounding TW Hydrae, but also its location. Water halos have been found in the warm inner reaches of young solar systems before, but the proximity of the solar fires usually blasts the vapor farther into space where it gets locked up as ice in outer planets and moons. That's what happened in our own solar system, and helps explain why Mercury, Venus and Mars are so dry and the distant gas giants are so icy.

What that model doesn't explain, of course, is how Earth got so wet. One of the prevailing theories has long been that incoming comets crashed into our planet, carrying water ice with them. That scenario became even more plausible as a result of two studies earlier this month — one that found that comets in our solar system carry the same chemical signature as the water in Earth's oceans; and another that discovered what amounts to a hailstorm of comets striking a planet circling the Eta Corvi, a bright star visible in our northern hemisphere. What's happening out there could have easily happened here.

The new findings push the knowledge frontier further since the colder region where the TW Hydrae vapor disk was found is exactly where comets could more easily form, but where the raw materials for that to happen had not been seen until now. Says Herschel astronomer Michiel Hogerheijde of the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands: "Our observations of this cold vapor indicate enough water exists in the disk to fill thousands of Earth's oceans."

None of this means that TW Hydrae will necessarily give rise to a garden spot like Earth. Water is a necessary ingredient for life as we know it, and comets are handy couriers, but a lot of other tumblers have to fall just right for biology to take hold. Still, if astronomical history — not to mention simple arithmetic — suggests one thing, it's that what happens in one spot in the cosmos has a pretty fair chance of being repeated at least a few times in the infinitely vast spaces beyond. The possibility that that kind of repetition includes life is beginning to seem more compelling than ever.

Read about scientists finding a watery new planet.

See iconic images of Earth from space.

The Unthinkable: Could Greece Actually Benefit from Ditching the Euro?

Talk about drama. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou emerged from an emergency meeting on Wednesday evening with a bombshell: Greece will have to decide if it wants to remain in the European monetary union. Merkel and Sarkozy suspended all further bailout funds until that fateful choice is made.

What a shocker. The whole idea of a member of the euro zone bolting the union has been completely taboo, even as a debt crisis has raged through Europe for two years. There isn't even any mechanism in place through which a country can exit the monetary union. The fact that this possibility has even been mentioned is a major break with the past that leaves the future very uncertain.

What happens now? Hard to say. It seemed that a referendum Papandreou had called for on Monday to seek public approval of Greece's participation in the latest euro zone bailout scheme, agreed to last week at a summit of European leaders, would be transformed into a vote on the country's continued membership in the monetary union itself. But events in Athens are changing rapidly and unpredictably. Papandreou may lose a confidence vote in parliament on Friday as his supporters melt away over his referendum plan. That raises the possibility of the Greek government falling and possibly a new election being held. Greece's future in the euro zone will remain an unknown as long as the country's domestic politics remain in turmoil.

Yet this whole amazing series of events has raised an important question: Would Greece be better off in or out of the monetary union?

The conventional wisdom has always been that Greece's departure from the euro zone would be a complete calamity. If Greece bolted, it would lose its European bailout and most likely default, sending shockwaves through Europe's banking system and global financial markets. The Greek banking sector would likely collapse, while the government, frozen out of capital markets, might even be unable to pay its bills. For the euro zone, Greece's defection would raise the specter of a cascading series of departures if other weak economies, also suffering in the debt crisis, chose to follow Athens's example. To sum up, it could get ugly.

But there is another, less terrifying scenario. By leaving the euro, Greece would lose its bailout money – but it would also regain control over its economic future. By returning to its own currency, Athens could depreciate its way to better competitiveness, something the country simply can't do as part of the euro zone. Rather than suffering under German-imposed reforms and retrenchment, Greece could press forward with a drastic restructuring of its national debt, a step the leaders of the euro zone have been anxious to avoid. None of this means the process won't be painful – Greeks will have to endure years of austerity measures and reform whatever currency they use. But departing the euro zone might at the same time give the country a better shot at halting its economic free fall and returning to healthy growth, at least in a more reasonable period of time.

And the euro zone might gain from a Greek exit as well. Those tens of billions thrown at Greece in bailouts could then be redirected to recapitalize banks, shore up Italy and Spain and protect the core of the monetary union. How would global financial markets react? Hard to predict. The exodus of a country from the euro zone would be unprecedented and destabilizing. But then again, Greece's exit would not be surprising to anyone who hasn't been stranded on a South Pacific isle for the past two years. That suggests the impact might not be as dramatic as many fear, especially if Europe acts fast to back up its banks and defend the remaining euro zone member states.

In many ways, Greece is like a contestant on the old game show Let's Make a Deal. The country has a choice of two doors – one that leads it out of the euro and on its own; one that keeps it a part of Europe and its great experiment in integration. We can only guess what is behind those doors, and there is no way of knowing for certain which door is best to open. Greece could end up with a shiny new Cadillac. Or a year's supply of canned tuna. It's not a choice I'd want to make. I wish them luck.

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Wednesday, 9 November 2011

Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results; Sells 17.07 Million iPhones, 11.12 Million iPads, 6.62 Million iPods, 4.89 million Macs

Page LinksAdvertiseiPhone GlossaryLink Exchange FAQLinksPrivacy PolicyTop CategoriesiPhone NewsiPhone Applications: iPhone Apps, Jailbreak Apps, iPhone Web AppsiPhone RumorsHacksJailbreak iPhone, Jailbreak iPhone 4, Jailbreak iPhone 3GS, Jailbreak iPhone 3GNew iPhone, Next Generation iPhoneiPad, iPad 1iPhone 4CarriersRecent CommentsFauji on An Animated History Of The iPhoneHasan on Step-By-Step Guide To Jailbreak iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS Running iOS 5 Using Redsn0wNone Ya on iPhone 4S Goes To SpaceHasan on Step-By-Step Guide To Jailbreak iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS Running iOS 5 Using Redsn0wcmrogy777 on Verizon iPhone Carrier Settings Update: Should You Update Them?Designed by BlogConsulting.com

Will Occupy Wall Street Reach India, One of the World's Most Unequal Countries?

India's main opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) stage a protest against corruption in Indore, India, October 2, 2011. (Photo: Sanjeev Gupta / EPA)

In India mass, non-violent protest is not only a founding national principle; it is a highly developed art form. Any journalist working here must quickly figure out the difference between a dharna (sit-down protest) and a bandh (a general strike), and learn the peculiar conventions of the "fast unto death": every hunger strike must include the manufactured drama of supporters visiting the faster to plead with him, on camera, to break his fast; when he does, cue the symbolism. (The anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare broke his 13-day fast earlier this year by drinking coconut water offered to him by two little girls—one Muslim, one Dalit—to emphasize the inclusiveness of his movement.)

So why hasn't Occupy Wall Street spread to India yet? India has its own version of Wall Street—Dalal Street in Mumbai—and staggering inequalities of wealth. And yet the protests have so far gotten only as close as Hong Kong and Singapore. The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a group called Occupy Mumbai, but even it is directing its protests at politicians, not bankers. Dinesh Thakkar, head of Angel Broking, one of India's largest stock brokerage houses, reasons in an interview with the Hindu newspaper that India hasn't fully embraced capitalism, so it isn't yet an object of public anger:

"Caught between socialism and capitalism, India does not provide fertile conditions for mass resentment against capital markets....The awareness about capital markets is low even among the educated Indians which makes it a non entity in their lives. So there is no connect between an anti-capitalist movement and the daily grind of an aam-aadmi [the common man]."

It's an interesting analysis, particularly from a financial insider. And he is right about one thing: the vast majority of Indians live and work outside the formal economy, so the financial markets are much less important to them than, say, the price of petrol or the difficulty of getting a ration card, both of which are the responsibility of the state. That's why India's mass protest movement has channeled public anger mainly at the government.

That doesn't mean the Occupy Wall Street movement has left India untouched. It is getting lots of attention in the Indian press — India's largest circulation English-language daily, the Times of India, today floated the poll question, "Wall Street protest: Is it the beginning of the end of capitalism?" And the country's largest leftist party, the Communist Party (Marxist), is considering hitching itself to the 'Occupy' bandwagon to restore its faded popular appeal and credibility, according to a report in the Indian Express:

The ‘Occupy Wall Street' movement that is spreading around the globe has excited the CPM at a time when it is engaged in an exercise to redefine its ideological approach to keep pace with the changing times and counter the neo-liberal economic framework. It has decided to launch a campaign on issues that can appeal to the middle class besides the poor. Against the backdrop of the global agitation against corporate greed, the comrades felt it was time to “step up and broaden” the campaign against the “neo-liberal policies” in India. Assessing the impact of “globalisation” and prescribing credible policy alternatives besides stepping up its fight against imperialism were at the centre of the ideological resolution which the Politburo has finalised.

It's unlikely, though, that Occupy Wall Street will get to India via an established political party. The movement gets its energy from its spontaneity; trying to harness to a fixed political agenda is likely to drain its appeal. That is already happening to India's anti-corruption movement, which rode a wave of public sympathy this summer but since has devolved into a collection of competing egos and priorities. In the last week alone, one faction of the Anna Hazare movement's leadership claimed credit for defeating a Congress Party candidate in a state by-election while another faction quit over the "political turn" that the movement has taken. Meanwhile, a group of activists from Hazare's home village publicly complained about not getting an appointment with Congress Party scion Rahul Gandhi—sounding less like visionary reformers than ordinary political supplicants. That's a lesson the Occupy Wall Street movement might consider as it comes under increasing pressure to define its own policy agenda.

Hazare's movement has also failed to move beyond its lone demand for the establishment of a Lokpal—a new, indepenent, anti-corruption ombudsman—to look more closely at the ties between India's increasingly powerful industrial houses and the government. Many progressive activists, most notably Arundhati Roy, have criticized Hazare for letting corporations off the hook and, in fact, allowing them to co-opt the anti-government public mood to their benefit. Some observers have cast India's anti-corruption movement as an iteration of the indignados, a loosely defined Spanish protest ethos of which Occupy Wall Street is the latest. By that reasoning, the Hazare crowd would be enthusiastically "occupying" New Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai this week. That hasn't happened, and it isn't likely to. Indians may yet occupy Dalal Street — but it will take a new generation of protesters to do it.

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The Race to Reverse Military Suicides: Can Anything Be Done?

The problem of suicides continues to haunt Pentagon personnel officials. After 10 years of war, the suicide rate has climbed and remains stubbornly high despite numerous initiatives to bring it down. What's behind the spike, and what -- if anything -- can be done to curb it? John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and I discuss this vexing and tragic challenge with Dr. Margaret Harrell, a CNAS military personnel expert who just co-wrote a study on the topic, and Dr. Elspeth "Cam" Ritchie, who recently retired as the Army's top psychiatrist.

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The Realm of the Red Penguin: Peru's Dead Sea of Fossils

A researcher for Peru's Natural History Museum rests next to the fossilized skeleton of an ancient seal in the Ocucaje Desert in Ica, Peru.

Moises Saman / The New York Times / Redux

Roberto Penny Cabrera is a former officer in the Peruvian Navy and still loves the sea, but the ocean that now captures his attention is not wet. In fact, it has been one of the driest places on earth for millions of years.

Penny, 55, is self-trained authority on a strip of Peru's coastal desert in Ica, 180 miles south of the capital, Lima. The desert was once a shallow sea with abundant marine life, but that ended when the Andes Mountains surged upward. The resulting cataclysm created what is the world's largest cemetery of marine fossils, many poking out of the white sand.(See photos of Peru's Inca Trail.)

What sets this stretch of Ica desert apart from similar areas is the preservation of more than bone. The discovery last year of a five-foot tall penguin included the first ever evidence of preserved scales and feathers, letting experts know that the big bird was red instead of black and white like today's smaller version. It died around 36 million years ago. Also recently discovered in this wind-swept, rolling desert was the skull of a giant whale, dubbed Leviathan melvillei in honor of Moby Dick's creator, which stretched nearly 60 feet and is believed to have fed on other whales. The whale's jaw is similar to that of modern-day sharks, with rows of top and bottom teeth.

Penny, who calls himself a "finder," said "it is amazing to see what the ocean was like millions of years ago. I am not a paleontologist, but you don't have to have a degree to know that what we have here can tell us how the ocean worked." He may not have a title, but Penny has the desert in his blood. One of his distant relatives founded the city of Ica in the mid-16th century and the family has been there since. He first wandered into the desert as a boy, when his parents would take him to a nearby oasis, Huacachina. "We would go to Huacachina, but I was interested in the surrounding desert. It is where I feel free," he said. Those early family excursions turned into a life-long obsession with Peru's dead sea.(See why Peru's Inca Trail is one of the world's greatest hikes.)

Penny's quest today is to protect the desert, not only safeguarding marine fossils but also burial grounds of Nazca and Paracas cultures, which date back more than 2,000 years, and the area's stunning landscape of ancient sea beds and towering, wind-blown dunes.

It is an uphill battle.

The rolling dunes around Ocucaje, a small town that serves as a gateway to the desert and lends the arid strip its name, are strewn with skeletons, tossed aside by looters digging through burial grounds in search of pottery and world-renowned Paracas textiles. Fossil hunters have chipped away at whale skeletons and decimated shell beds looking for the prized teeth of giant sharks, the megalodon (literally "giant tooth"), that once prowled here. "The principal problem in Ocucaje right is the illegal collection of fossils for scientific or commercial purposes," said José Apolín, a specialist at Peru's Culture Ministry, which just celebrated its first anniversary.

Read about how a penguin fossil was found in Peru.

Money and Education: The Problem with Paying Teachers Less

Lara Cerri / St. Petersburg Times / ZUMAPRESS.comShore Acres Elementary fourth grade teacher Telsha Marmash leads her students in a discussion about prefixes Nov. 1, 2011 in St. Petersburg, Florida.

It’s not often that you hear teachers should be paid less. In fact, it’s almost always the exact opposite. From teachers unions to education reformers to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the refrain that teachers are underpaid is a constant. So, when conservative thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation issued a paper on Tuesday arguing not only that teachers are overpaid, but when you factor in pensions, health care and other benefits, that total compensation for teachers is 52% higher than fair market value, it was bound to be controversial.

To get to that conclusion, AEI and Heritage focused on three main findings:

The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education.

Translation: Teachers have lower IQs than their non-teacher equivalents because education degrees are easier to get. There are plenty of people who would find this assertion offensive, but even taken at face value, it doesn’t necessarily show that teachers are overpaid. Experts say one of the best ways to attract highly qualified people with advanced skills into the teaching profession is to pay higher wages.

Public school teachers earn higher wages than private school teachers, even when the comparison is limited to secular schools with standard curricula.

This is probably true, but is not a very useful comparison because working for private schools has its own set of advantages, such as a lighter emphasis on standardized tests and better job security, that can’t be measured by salary alone.

Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9%, while teachers who leave the profession on average see their wages decrease by roughly 3%.

The biggest problem with this finding is that while it may be true, you have to consider where non-teachers are coming from when they enter the profession. Since it’s hard to attract highly skilled workers to teaching, many enter the profession from other low-paying fields or from jobs that did not require a college degree. If a highly skilled science major is choosing between pursuing a career in teaching or going into bioengineering, unless the person is incredibly idealistic, dollars and cents will likely win out.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, says the paper “uses misleading statistics and questionable research to make its case,” but that really isn’t the point. As Jonathan Chait notes in a piece titled, “You Get the Teachers You Pay For,” the paper doesn’t show that we pay teachers enough, it shows the skill level of teachers is commensurate with their pay level — an important distinction. “Pay teachers badly, and you’ll get a lot of bad teachers,” he writes.

According to a 2003 study from the Education Policy Analysis Archives, only 4.7 percent of college juniors would consider teaching at the current starting salary (about $39,000, on average, nationwide), while 68% of those same students said they would consider teaching if it paid 50% more than the current occupations they were considering. Of those who do enter the field, 46% leave during the first five years.

The irony, of course, is that this report comes from two conservative think tanks. Conservative education folks often preach the need to infuse public education with the essence of the private sector. And, you know how people in the corporate world attract highly qualified employees? They actively recruit smart people into the field, use head hunters to find only the very best applicants and pay the most-qualified employees large salaries to keep them happy and dedicated to their jobs.

Kayla Webley is a reporter at TIME. You can follow her on Twitter at @kaylawebley or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kaylawebley.

Death or Disco? Preserve Your Loved Ones as Their Favorite Vinyl Record

(ZURICH) — Tupac Shakur ended up as a joint. The long-circulated rumor was recently confirmed by two members of his former band Outlawz, EDI Mean and Young Noble. In 1996, the two musicians actually mixed the ashes of the assassinated hip-hop star with marijuana and smoked it just like Tupac had asked in his song Black Jesus: "Last Wishes, niggas, smoke my ashes."

Of course, Tupac's last wish is hardly common. Still, it isn't as unusual as one may think. The number of people choosing an alternative to the peaceful coffin or urn of ashes is increasing every year. If fate has already gambled away half of your battle, the reasoning goes, you should at least be able to organize your departure entirely on your own terms.

In Switzerland, natural burials are very popular, due in part to the "ash freedom" laws: anyone who chooses to be cremated may also decide where the ashes are cast. Scattered under a favorite tree? Along a favorite trail? In the river, on whose banks you stole your first kiss? Basically everything is permitted. (See the top 10 unsolved hip-hop murders.)

Such "gone with the wind" burials are undoubtedly very poetic and moving moments of farewell. And yet there's a catch: once the ashes are gone, all is gone. The memory of an individual is reduced to a thought, without a fixed place of remembrance or a tangible symbol in which the remains can be preserved.

Nature lovers can work around this problem elegantly by asking that their ashes be turned into fertilizer for a newly planted young tree. As the tree grows, it absorbs the ground cover in its roots, its branches and foliage soon flourishing into a natural grave.

Diamonds and drinks
The pan-European company Algordanza (meaning "memory" in Romansh), founded in 2004, offers a relic particularly well-suited for widows: it converts the ashes of dead loved ones into faux diamonds. The synthetic stones are manufactured in a laboratory in Neuchatel; depending on how much boron has been deposited in the body, the diamonds have a weaker or stronger blue shimmer. The process from order to delivery usually takes two to four months, and the price depends on the carat weight of the gemstone — between 4,800 and 10,000 Swiss francs ($5,300 to $11,085). (See why happens to your social networks when you die.)

An eternal end as a tree or a piece of jewelry? Dandy's and rock 'n' rollers laugh at the idea. Their perpetuation should of course be staged according to the way they lived their lives: unconventional, loud, hedonistic. Actor James Doohan (Scotty in the TV series "Star Trek") and LSD guru Timothy Leary had particularly cool send-offs. They both had their ashes attached to a rocket and sent into space. The price tag? Around $10,000.

Another original — but far more sustainable — offer comes from the British company And Vinyly, who rewrote the well known RIP (Rest in Peace) to RIV — Rest in Vinyl. Specifically: the ashes of the deceased are processed into a working vinyl record. The simplest version costs $3,100, but that will get you 30 vinyl copies (enough for friends and relatives) onto which music or a recorded message can be pressed. One particularly spooky option: opt against a song or message and leave only the eerie crackling of ash to be heard on the blank disc. (See TIME's video, "YouTomb: Where the Rich and Famous Spend Eternity.")

Of course, it can all get much more extravagant. For $786, you can get a custom tune composed; and for a bit more cash, you can circulate your records in shops around the world. Or choose the ultimate option, which will run you $5,500: James Hague, a painter at the National Portrait Gallery, will use residual ash and acrylics to paint your face in gorgeous pastel colors onto the album covers.

Unlike Algordanza, whose diamond offer is strictly limited to human ashes, And Vinyly will also process your pet's ashes onto a record.

Those for who want to take Tupac's joint solution to the next level, should head on over to Thailand. There, a new drug concoction called "Tai Hong," in which cooked leaves of the Kratom tree are mixed with freshly cremated ashes, is quickly gaining popularity. Supposedly, not only does the drink have an exquisite flavor, but it also elicits a heightened state of consciousness — usually not for too long, but just enough time to share an unforgettable farewell.

See a greener alternative to cremation.

See if we're heading to an American without cemeteries.

Tuesday, 8 November 2011

Third Worker Accuses Cain of Harassment

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain talks to the media at a National Press Club luncheon in Washington, Oct. 31, 2011

(WASHINGTON) — A third former employee considered filing a workplace complaint against Herman Cain over what she considered aggressive and unwanted behavior when she and Cain, now a Republican presidential candidate, worked together during the late 1990s, the woman told The Associated Press on Wednesday. She said the behavior including a private invitation to his corporate apartment.

The woman said he made sexually suggestive remarks or gestures about the same time that two co-workers had settled separate harassment complaints against Cain, who was then the head of the National Restaurant Association. (Photos: Herman Cain Through the Years.)

She did not file a formal complaint because she began having fewer interactions with Cain, she said. Afterward, she learned that a co-worker — one of the two women whose accusations have rocked Cain's campaign this week — had already done so. She said she would have had to file if they hadn't.

The woman spoke only on condition of anonymity, saying she feared retaliation. She was located and approached by the AP as part of its investigation into harassment complaints against Cain that were disclosed in recent days and have thrown his presidential campaign into turmoil. She said she was reluctant to describe the encounters she had with Cain when they worked together at the Washington-based restaurant trade group.

The employee described in conversations with the AP over several days situations in which she said Cain told her that he had confided to colleagues how attractive she was and invited her to his corporate apartment outside work.

His actions "were inappropriate, and it made me feel uncomfortable," she said.

Cain's campaign manager, Mark Block, replied, "No comment," when he was asked Wednesday about the new allegations.

The AP confirmed that the employee worked at the restaurant association with Cain during the period in question, that she has no party affiliation in her voter registration in the past decade and is not identified as a donor in federal campaigns or local political campaigns. Records show she was registered as a Democrat at one point previously.

Though trying to project an image of campaign business as usual, Cain appeared frazzled at times Wednesday and couldn't escape the questions that have dogged him since a published report Sunday night that at least two women had complained about his behavior while at the restaurant association and had been given financial settlements. The controversy has arisen two months before the leadoff Iowa caucuses and as polls show Cain at the head of the GOP field alongside former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

As the day began, Cain said, "There are factions that are trying to destroy me personally, as well as this campaign." He didn't say to whom he was referring, but he said "the voice of the people" is stronger.

Israel: What Occupy Tel Aviv Can Teach Occupy Wall Street

Israelis sleep in a protest tent encampment in central Tel Aviv, Israel, July 2011.

The tents seem to be everywhere now — Wall Street, London, Hong Kong, Madrid — but very little really comes close to what happened in Israel this summer: thousands camping out, hundreds of thousands marching, a society transformed. "It's all part of the same thing. It's people saying, 'We want to be in charge,'" says Stav Shaffir, 26, one of the first Israeli campers. Says Yonatan Levi, also 26, and also an early organizer, on the comparison with the scale of things in New York City: "Sadly I think we were much more successful in transmitting our message and our ability to show up in great numbers. I mean, a half million to a million people!"

The tent protests in Tel Aviv began in muggy mid-July with a handful of young people pitching tents to protest the skyrocketing price of housing in Israel. (Tents, get it?) The first night the reporters outnumbered the protesters, but a chord had been struck. The focus quickly widened to take in a wide gamut of shared complaints about an economy that looked great at the macro level, but had created a growing gap between rich and poor. Inspired in part by the Arab Spring — "People thought, Wow, if they can do it, why can't we do it?" says Shaffir — and in part by Madrid's Indignants movement, the Israeli protests combined and managed the contagious spread seen in Israel's neighbors as well as the difficult economic and social issues similar to those that emerged in Spain. Ground zero, fittingly enough, in the Tel Aviv protests was Rothschild Boulevard, a shady walkway named for a fabulously wealthy family who helped found Israel as a state originally grounded in social welfare. Within two weeks, 40 camps had sprung up around the country. Two weeks later, the camps numbered 100 and marchers 350,000, a whopping turnout in a country of just 7 million.(See photos of Occupy protests from around the world.)

"The spirit of this was amazing," says Shaffir. "That's maybe something you can send to the people at Wall Street: happiness was the key. Journalists asked: 'Is it really serious? Because I see a lot of people smiling.' I said that's what makes it serious. People have hope again."

Another key: nonpartisanship. There was no room for labels and even less for parties in a protest that strove for a "new language" based on common ground staked out in group discussions, assemblies or councils. People shared with strangers what they were embarrassed about confessing to their children: We can't afford the expensive ice cream.

"The other thing that's very important is chaos," says Shaffir, who arrived for a breakfast interview after spending the night talking on Rothschild Boulevard, where a handful of tents had gone up anew, weeks after police dismantled the last vestiges of the main camp. "As a movement that goes up against the most powerful force, if you act like an organization, like an institution, you lose. If you have one head, they know what to cut off. You have to be like water, to be everywhere, to be unpredictable. We work like an open code. Everybody should act their part. Everybody should act like a leader."(Read about New York City protesters holding ground in Zuccotti Park.)

At one end of Rothschild, a headquarters of sorts went up, though it amounted to a few work stations under fabric stretched to keep down the glare on the computers that lay underneath it all. "I think in a way what we see in the streets today is a result of things we were trained for from using the Internet since age 5," says Levi. "I think these assemblies are chat rooms, wide open, with this sense of nonhierarchy, that everyone is equal in the kingdom of the Internet, where there are no kings or queens. We've taken these tools that we've acquired unknowingly — this generation of ours which was blamed for not doing anything in the world — and now we've taken these things we've learned out into the street. And it's pretty impressive I must say."

In Israel, the leap to the masses was both more challenging and, in other ways, a bit easier than elsewhere. Jewish Israeli society is relatively small and cohesive, united in a sense of nationhood and shared risk; almost everyone, for instance, serves in the army. But it is also riven by differences, between secular and religious, between Jews and the 20% of the population that is Arab, between recent immigrant and native-born. Only the black-clad ultra-orthodox religious, who gather in residential enclaves, started the summer with a community, Shaffir notes. "If you're secular, your community is your family, that's all."

"If we talk about tips, the most important thing is to connect the different groups, the different social classes," she says. "And that's the hardest thing."

Yet it happened. In just weeks, the protests that some conservative politicians reflexively dismissed as elitist or leftist swelled into a national movement, drawing Israelis from every class and cohort, all of them beaming as they found one another on the street together. In the tent cities, campers organized kitchens, kindergartens, trash removal, even electing representatives to reclaim a political realm that had grown alien and remote, the province of professional politicians. "And people were so happy," Shaffir says. "Israelis, for so many years, didn't feel like we could do anything."(Read about rioters hijacking Rome's Occupy protest.)

In time the political establishment scrambled to respond, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu naming a committee to list specific actions — more money for child care, less for defense — that many in the group call a misapprehension of what was, at bottom, something more diffuse: a remaking of the national consciousness. "The fact that we have no specific list of demands is very hard for them," says Levi, referring to the Knesset, the Israeli legislature. "I'm not sure we've directly affected the political system yet, but I'm sure we will. Because the people who elect these robots spent many hours in the tent cities. It was a learning experience."

The lessons continue. The other day organizers set out to secure Tel Aviv's main public gathering place, Rabin Square, for a follow-up demonstration. They learned it would cost them around $5,000. "That's a disgrace," says Shaffir. "It's like your right of protest is also privatized."

So they decided they didn't need the permission of the very people they were opposing. "We just told everybody we're going to reoccupy Rothschild," she says. "It made everybody happy, because we were getting back to the streets." — With reporting by Aaron J. Klein / Tel Aviv

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Libya's New Regime: The Fight for Gaddafi's Hometown

Armed conflict rages between rebels and pro-Gaddafi forces

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Grading the GOP Debate: Why Romney Won Tuesday

Candidate grades are based on both performance and success in using the debate to improve their standing in the nomination contest.

Romney

Style: Rose above the fray on jobs and the economy, while Cain took heat for his 9-9-9 plan. Sought to play the adult, although Perry goaded him into noisy squabbles and went further than necessary in playing defense, taking some personal shots.

Substance: Displayed a cutting recall and delivery of detailed opposition research on his opponents — notable in such a setting.

His worst moment: Lost his cool fending off Perry on immigration and seemed shrill when asserting it was his turn.

His best moment: Showed the eye of the tiger in fighting off Santorum’s attempts to question his commitment to repealing ObamaCare.

The main thing: A strong voice on Mormonism, health care, immigration and the economy. Revealed chinks when assailed, likely emboldening Perry for future conflict. Still, no soundbite-ready moment of weakness coming out of Vegas and that means another win for the frontrunner.

Grade: A-
_____________________

Cain

Style: Stronger and more confident than in past debates. Did small things well — cleverly gave out his website address in the guise of educating the public.

Substance: In command of the broad facts on health care and taxes, but weaker on foreign aid and terrorism.

His worst moment: Missed a chance to connect with middle and working class voters when responsding to a question about Occupy Wall Street protesters.

His best moment: Withstood early, intense gang-up on his tax plan, without changing his pleasing demeanor.

The main thing: Did very little attacking and a good job defending (although he overused his apples and oranges metaphor). Disappeared after the opening round but showed sufficient momentum throughout. Still too lightweight for the Chattering Class, but whatever has propelled Cain upward, upward, upward will almost certainly continue after this strong performance.

Grade: B+
_____________________

Perry

Style: His head was in a much better place than in previous debates, allowing him to show off some natural Texas charm. But going negative on Romney (including insistently bringing up the old controversy of illegal immigrants working on Romney’s lawn) reduced the likeability quotient substantially.

Substance: Didn’t drill down below the bullet points on his economic plan or take command of the issue.

His worst moment: Tried to challenge Romney on immigration, but lost his focus and thrust in the heated interchange.

His best moment: When slamming Obama’s energy policy, reminded viewers that the party is looking for the candidate who can most effectively make the case against the incumbent — and Perry demonstrated he has that capacity.

The main thing: More focused and energized this time around. Far from a perfect performance, but he engineered moments of titan-versus-titan conflict with Romney to build on in future debates. That, along with big budget TV advertising, remains his path back to the front of the pack.

Grade: B+
_____________________

Bachmann

Style: Forceful and passionate on every answer.

Substance: Showed off her knowledge of tax policy.

Her worst moment: Just when the Romney health care pile-on was heating up, she interrupted to take the conversation in a different direction.

Her best moment: Deft touch in knocking Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan.

The main thing: Her best debate since the June New Hampshire face-off that made her the hottest candidate in the race for a time. Still not selling her own economic plan or claiming a signature issue, but carried a strong anti-Obama critique throughout.

Grade: B
_____________________

Gingrich

Style: Cool and poised, he displayed assurance rather than anger.

Substance: Informed on every topic, but neglected to drive a positive message of his own.

His worst moment: Got schooled by Romney, who forced him to admit he once supported an individual mandate for health insurance.

His best moment: His appeal to Hispanic voters was passionate and clear, and the audience seemed intrigued by the notion of an epic Gingrich-Obama debate.

The main thing: Played the elder statesman well and was engaging, but didn’t leap over Romney or Cain.

Grade: B
_____________________

Paul

Style: Struck a good balance between genial and serious.

Substance: Still has trouble bringing his policy oratory down from 30,000 feet to, say, 15,000 feet, so people can understand how it impacts their lives.

His worst moment: Nearly incoherent on Occupy Wall Street and bailouts, a topic that should have been in his wheelhouse.

His best moment: Struck a huge audience chord with his call to bring the troops home from Afghanistan.

The main thing: Overall, more accessible and clear than in previous debates. But still no breakthrough performance to expand his reach.

Grade: B-
_____________________

Santorum

Style: Had flashes of his usual forensic skills, but at times veered towards fraught.

Substance: Still focused more on rhetoric and criticism than concrete policies; asserts he has an economic plan, but doesn’t sell it with specifics.

His worst moment: Given an early chance to take on Cain and 9-9-9, he didn’t puncture his rival one bit.

His best moment: None stand out.

The main thing: Not as polished and distinct as in past sessions. Energetic on the attack, but had plenty of company this time and got marginalized.

Grade: C

Inside Occupy Wall Street's 'People's Library': Chomsky, Zinn, Klein

A demonstrator browses books at the library of the Occupy Wall Street protesters' camp at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in New York.

Mike Segar / Reuters

Another blue-skied weekend at Occupy Wall Street saw the usual congeries of activists, drummers, pontificators and sympathizers converge on Lower Manhattan's Zuccotti Park.

Folk musicians strummed guitars next to environmental campaigners agitating against the practice of fracking. By the northern face of the park, a man visiting from Florida angrily denounced the bailout of banks before a broadcast streamed across the Internet. Viewers watching online texted back their support in an open chat window.

Not far from this real-time vox pop, three volunteers sat sorting a pile of books. One raised a copy of an Estonian dictionary. “Is this for reference or foreign languages?” she asked. “Foreign, I think,” came the considered answer.

Occupy Wall Street's “People's Library” is, like much else at the movement's adopted home, somewhat surprising. Taking up a good chunk of the northeastern corner of the park, it consists of a maze of tables and hard plastic boxes marked by genre — fiction, classics, sci-fi, children's, and so on. The movement's designated librarians say there's somewhere between 2,500 to 4,000 volumes in the park, with more in storage and dozens of new books donated by visitors and supporters every day. “As the occupation and movement has grown,” says Zachary Loeb, an actual librarian in the New York City area who volunteers at the site, “so too has its library.”

(MORE: Occupy Wall Street's Own Mini-Government, Complete With Library)

The ten or so volunteers who man the library at any given moment record the ISBN number of each book and tag the books' bindings with pink stickers marked “OWSL” — making the collection, despite its unorthodox home, look like something not out of place in any public library. But there is no formal method for borrowing from the People's Library. It exists on an unwritten honor code among denizens of Occupy Wall Street.

While I was speaking with Loeb, a visitor asked him whether there was any system to returning books. “None,” Loeb replies. “You'll just have my eternal gratitude.” Hristo Voynov, a student at Hunter College and another volunteer at the library, claims that simple trust works at Occupy Wall Street. “Every night, the library ends up with more books than it started with.”

One may wonder why Occupy Wall Street needs to invest time and energy into maintaining a library, not least as New York's bitter, oft-snowy winter approaches. Loeb turns the question around: “Why is it important to have a kitchen, a [tents and blanket] station, a press table and not a library? Information matters. We are feeding people's minds.”

The most popular books on offer do seem to be what one would expect: leftist tracts on history and politics by authors like Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, or Naomi Klein. These populate a set of shelves in the People's Library of books that cannot be borrowed because they're so popular and in demand. Yet also in the most popular mix are satirical commentaries from The Onion, a binder of ponderous articles explaining the financial crisis and myriad anthologies of poetry, including one of poetry written explicitly by participants of Occupy Wall Street or in honor of the protesters. That collection even boasts works submitted by famous American poets such as Adrienne Rich and Anne Walmdan.

(PHOTOS: Occupy Wall Street Protests Go Global)

In the Sunday afternoon sunshine, one adolescent boy sits amid the crowd in yellow socks and soccer cleats, reading a comic book entitled “Addicted to War,” about the militarization of American society. Myriad New Yorkers and protesters file through the library's aisles, perusing and sitting down on nearby park benches with copies. Amanda Hartkey, another library volunteer, says that the library is emblematic of the wider spirit in the park. “I'm inspired by how so many different people come here and treat each other with respect. No one interrupts the other and now they read together.” Through wireless headphones passed around to those in the park, the library has recently started its own public readings series. It's Zuccotti Park's local radio station.

But, away from the almost quaint pleasantness of the library, all's not rosy for Occupy Wall Street. Winter is coming and the scramble is on to amass enough warm sleeping bags and clothing so that the occupiers could withstand below freezing temperatures. Organizers claim they'll be prepared, but also acknowledge that the park's overnight numbers may slip dramatically as activists opt for warmer, indoor spaces. Meanwhile, some among the group are pushing for the movement to consider Occupying Central Park, a move that could more easily incite police intervention and which is opposed by a good number of the organizers at Zuccotti Park.

Moreover, concerns are growing about local community complaints over the disturbances caused by protesters — including incidents of public urination and the incessant noise of the park's drum circle. Organizers claim to have reined in the hours during which the drummers bang away and some grumble about wanting to sabotage the musicians' equipment. Occupy Wall Street has the money to rent Port-a-Potties, but protesters say New York City authorities have so far denied them the right to set those up. “We are doing everything in our power to abide by the laws and respect our neighbors,” says Sherman Jackson, an Occupy Wall Street media representative, who adds that many on the neighborhood community board support their presence. Still, the threat of eviction is a perennial, invisible presence in the park.

Back at the library, there are more immediate problems. Voynov, one of the volunteers, struggles to preserve the integrity of the sci-fi/fantasy shelf. “People just put back books anywhere,” he says. But he admits it's impressive that books once borrowed come back at all. Of course, not all are returned. The People's Library had on reserve two copies of Steal This Book, by 1960s activist rabble-rouser Abbie Hoffman. Both volumes have been stolen.

LIST: Occupy Wall Street Protester in 2011's Topical Halloween Costumes

Ishaan Tharoor is a writer for TIME and editor of Global Spin. You can find him on Twitter at @ishaantharoor. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIMEWorld.

The scenic shores of Hawaii are bracing for a surge of waves, but not of water. Read More

The Lingerie Football League is hoping a little bit of celebrity can help get its youth division off the ground. That is, unless grandma has something to say about it. Read More

The Death of Kid Sports: Is Our Obsession with Winning Making Us Lose the Point?

Sports A recent survey shows — surprise! — that the more seriously we take youth sport the less fun they have Getty Images

Glanville's first book The Game from Where I Stand: A Ballplayer's Inside View was published in 2010.

At the age of 7, I put on my first baseball uniform as a member of Joey’s Children’s Wear of Teaneck Western Little League. From that day forth, I would continue to wear team colors through high school, college, and until I retired from major league baseball in 2005. Even in between seasons or off the field, I would find ways to adorn my baseball attire, from my Phillies’ Halloween costume in the early 1980s to my “acting” on the movie Summer Catch in the late 1990s.

Looking back, I realize that my first uniform housed a pristine state of what sport meant to me. I was able to see baseball as a blank canvas, the art of the game fusing color and imagination on a field of green without boundaries. Yet with experience and time, I realized that an innocence flaked off this uniform, layer by layer. Maybe it started with an unfair benching, a particularly rambunctious teammate’s parent fighting for his son or daughter, or an angry manager berating an umpire for a suspect call on the field.

Today, as my molting has come to its end, I see the time coming for me to pass the torch on to my children and I worry about the negative elements that are accelerating the process of an innocence lost. To respond to that concern, I joined the United States Anti-Doping Agency, where I am on their research committee, to study youth sports in America. What we found was both reassuring — and troubling.

The reassuring part is that our country loves sport, with the vast majority of kids in our nation participating. Coaches have wide and great influence over our youth, in fact, they even have more influence than parents. But what the data of our study also showed is that there is often a parasitic relationship between winning and how the game is taught and celebrated. This obsession forges unhealthy expectations on coaches, on the professional aspirations of these young athletes, or on efforts in how we invest in sport as a nation. Winning at all costs is costly.

(MORE: Should a Gene Test Decide Which Sport Your Kid Should Play?)

This study also showed that early specialization — focusing on just one sport above all others — leads to diminishing returns for those who participate. Playing a variety of sports reduces the stress of prematurely having all eggs in one basket, which can lead players to desperate measures to excel and make them enjoy the game less. Having “fun” was important to young people — once they stopped having fun, they lost an interest in playing. And when parents are fighting in the stands, or coaches have to recruit to fortify a Little League team, or when a child is not allowed to enjoy sport because he or she is not “good enough,” fun often goes out the window.

My oldest child is only three, so for now, I will enjoy the window that I am in before I inevitably sign him up for soccer and Little League. Right now, the only uniform my kids will be wearing are their Halloween costumes — my son as James from Thomas the Tank Engine, and my daughter a color-rich rainbow. And I hope that when the time comes, my daughter’s rainbow costume truly can symbolize what sport will be — something that everyone can enjoy at any level and allows young people to fly high above the clouds of their greatest potential.

Monday, 7 November 2011

Even Outside Syria, Refugees Fear Kidnappers

A Syrian man at a hospital in Antakya, Turkey, covers his face during an interview on June 9, 2011. The man said he was hiding his identity for fear of Syria's secret service

Ramy al-Dow, 21, draws his thin-striped V-neck sweater up to his neck and crosses his arms over his chest in a futile bid to shield himself from the piercing chill cloaking this mountainous southern Turkish village overlooking the Syrian border. He's noticeably on edge, despite the fact that on this night he's in a safe house. Three generations of women sit in the courtyard outside, shelling buckets of pomegranates harvested from their nearby fields. Ramy's cousin Mahmoud al-Dow, 16, stands watch on the street. "Just in case," Ramy says.

The young Syrian refugees have spent the past two weeks sleeping outdoors, in mosques, in people's courtyards, in the fields along the border. They are afraid of being kidnapped by spies and sympathizers working for Syrian President Bashar Assad's ruthless regime and being taken across the border by force. They want their real names published in the event that if they are captured they will not disappear into the nameless, faceless pit of victims, but that somebody may ask after them. Their fears are not entirely unwarranted. (See photos of Syrians fleeing into Turkey.)

There's a palpable change in the border area since the heady, bustling days this summer when the sleepy village of Guvecci was inundated with refugees. Activists who swaggered around town have now moved deeper into Turkey, into the city of Antakya, where they keep a low profile. Gone are the days of illegally trekking across the Turkish border into Syria unimpeded by the security forces of either country, and of the hopeful optimism that the Damascus regime would soon fall. It's all been replaced with a sharp fear that Assad's reach extends well beyond his borders. Although Turkey pursues a foreign policy hostile to Syria, has opened its arms to thousands of Syrian refugees and housed them in a network of well-maintained camps, many of the fugitives still feel it is not a safe haven.

Human-rights groups are working to document the cases of Syrian refugees in countries bordering Syria, including Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, who are being kidnapped and forced back across the border. Some are reportedly sold by mercenaries, according to Syrian activists, others have been picked up by roving Syrian mukhabarat (intelligence and secret police) agents. In Lebanon — which shook off Syrian occupation in 2005 but is now firmly back in the Syrian sphere of influence — the country's top cop, Ashraf Rifi (an anti-Syrian stalwart), recently claimed that Syria's embassy in Lebanon was behind the kidnapping of three Syrian activists, the Jassem brothers, in Beirut, and that personnel from Rifi's own Internal Security Forces aided the alleged kidnapping. The Syrian embassy in Beirut denied any involvement.

Amnesty International's Syria researcher, Neil Sammonds, says several cases have been reported to the rights group in Turkey. "We can't verify them," he says, "but there's one — the case of Hussein Harmoush — we have written to the Turkish government about. But that was only the week before last, so we don't have a response yet. And we raised the alleged cases of three other people as well." (See TIME's video of Turkey's Muslim minority.)

Colonel Hussein Harmoush was one of the earliest and highest-ranking officers to defect from the Syrian army. He disappeared under mysterious circumstances on Aug. 29, before surfacing on Syrian state TV two weeks later, retracting his claims of leading the Syrian Free Officers Movement and insisting that he returned to Syria of his own free will. He'd been staying in a Turkish refugee camp along with his wife Gofran Hejazi and their four children. It's unclear if he was picked up in Turkey or Syria (which he reportedly frequented, according to people who spoke with him daily). Still, his wife lays the blame for her husband's capture squarely on Turkey.

Although Turkish authorities denied TIME's request to meet Hejazi, we reached her by phone. She says her husband was in regular contact — both on the phone and in person — with an Arabic-speaking Turkish man known as Abu Mohammad. Hejazi, 33, said she had met the Turk several times. Abu Mohammad called Harmoush before his disappearance, promising to provide weapons to the Syrian revolutionaries and to help the colonel ferry them across the border. "I heard this. I was near my husband during this call," she says. Abu Mohammad reportedly insisted that Harmoush keep the plan to himself, and insisted he meet him as soon as possible. According to other Harmoush family members, on Aug. 29, the colonel left the refugee camp to meet the mysterious Turk. That was the last time he was seen in the country.

"In my opinion, the Turks played a role," Hejazi says. "I think they pay lip service to the revolution, but under the table they are making deals with the Syrian regime." Harmoush, she alleges, "was under surveillance [by the Turks] — even his phone, his Internet conversations. That's what Internet activists in Antakya and Ankara told me. So how could the Turks not know anything about his disappearance?"

The Harmoush family submitted details about Mohammad, including his cell-phone number, to Turkish authorities, but according to Hejazi, the Turks have told her that they do not have any suspects in the case. Now she fears that the same people who captured her husband can harm her and her children. "I want to apply for political asylum in an Arab country. Please, can you get my message out? I am not safe here. I am living in fear, not for myself, but for my children. A mother cannot see her children harmed. Look at what happened to my husband. He thought he was safe here."

Many exiled Syrian activists now live in the shadows. Mohammad Fezo, 31, hasn't left his barely furnished rented home in Antakya for more than two months. When he does venture outdoors, he's accompanied by several family members, lest he "disappear." "Ziad," another activist, has lived in three different places in Antakya since August. He's looking to move again, in part because he's running out of money, and in part because he and his activist roommates have recently noticed Syrians they don't know following them. "It has scared us," says Ziad, 26, a raised semicircular scar under his left eye a permanent reminder of a brush with Syrian security forces during a demonstration in his hometown, the coastal city of Latakia. "I've received threats, both direct and indirect, from Syrians here in Turkey," says Fezo. "It's not safe for us, they can reach us anywhere."

Read about Syrians fleeing into Turkey.

Gaddafi's Family: A Who's Who

With the death of Muammar Gaddafi, TIME looks at the eight children (and one nephew who was adopted as a son) Gaddafi had groomed — to varying extents — to carry his perplexing, brutal legacy forward.

Mohammed Gaddafi, age uncertain: Not much is known about Muammar's eldest son and the only child from the strongman's first marriage. Mohammed is a computer scientist who has headed the country's Olympic committee and the state-run General Post and Telecommunications Co., which oversees Libya's mobile-phone providers.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, 40: Until the recent upheaval, Saif al-Islam ("the sword of Islam") had cultivated himself as a figure of reform. Urbane, equipped with flawless English and educated largely overseas — and the recipient of a controversial Ph.D. from the London School of Economics — he was compelled to leave Libya in 2006 after perceived criticism of his father's domineering rule. But Saif, a shrewd operator and canny businessman, found himself in Muammar's good graces a few years later and was wholly rehabilitated. His loyalty to the embattled dictatorship now seems hard to question — see TIME's exclusive interview with Saif here. And while he has handled much of his father's p.r. at home, squatters have occupied his North London luxury pad. Update: Whereabouts unknown, believed to be still in "the desert."

Al-Saadi Gaddafi, 39: It's safe to say al-Saadi isn't the brainiest of the bunch. After enrolling in the military and attaining the rank of colonel (like his dad), he opted to follow his passion — soccer — leveraging his family's Italian business connections in 2003 to get himself on the books of Perugia, a team that was then in the top tier of Italy's soccer league. But his career was stillborn; al-Saadi had an undistinguished debut match and, with only one game under his belt, was effectively booted off the squad following a failed drug test. The BBC reported that al-Saadi directly encouraged Libyan soldiers to shoot at protesting civilians in Benghazi at the start of the uprising. UPDATE: Saadi fled to Niger following the rebels' seizure of Tripoli.

Mutassim Billah Gaddafi, 35 or 36: Saif al-Islam's most apparent rival to the throne, Mutassim cuts an interesting figure. A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks shows that he actively tried to cultivate relations with Washington. But Mutassim seems even more embedded in Libya's state-security firmament than Saif and commands their father's elite presidential guard. UPDATE: Captured alive in the fall of Sirt.

Ayesha Gaddafi, 35: Gaddafi's only daughter is a lawyer who was part of the unsuccessful team defending ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in a war-crimes trial that eventually led to his execution. According to a U.S. cable, Ayesha is "considered by some shrewder and smarter than her brothers" and is dear to Muammar but has never seemed to be in line for succession. She married a cousin of her father's in 2006 and was more recently photographed by TIME attending pro-regime demonstrations in Tripoli. Update: Fled to Algeria.

Hannibal Gaddafi, 33 or 34: Named after the ancient Carthaginian general who famously crossed the Alps and almost brought an end to the Roman republic, Hannibal has tried to live up to the moniker by leaving a trail of wrecked hotel rooms and unpaid bills in some of Europe's grandest capitals. In 2005 he was accused of hitting his girlfriend (now his wife), Libyan Lebanese model Aline Skaf, in a Paris hotel. A few years later, the couple was arrested by Swiss police after allegedly beating their attendants in a fancy suite in Geneva. They were eventually bailed out to the tune of nearly half a million dollars, but the incident prompted a diplomatic crisis, with Libya cutting off oil supplies to Switzerland and boycotting Swiss goods. UPDATE: Fled to Algeria.

Saif al-Arab Gaddafi, age uncertain: Not much known is about Saif al-Arab, who, according to reports, studied at a Munich business school, where authorities were compelled to impound his Ferrari due to Saif's habit of making excessive noise when revving up the engine. He also has his brother Hannibal's penchant for brawling in high-end nightclubs. Update: Believed killed in NATO strike on Tripoli.

Khamis Gaddafi, 30 or 31: Khamis is thought of by some as the dark horse in any eventual war of succession among the Gaddafi brothers. Schooled at a military academy in Russia, he commands an elite unit known as the "Khamis Brigade," comprising some of the most well-trained, well-equipped and loyal soldiers in the regime. Rumors that Khamis' battalion recruited mercenaries from sub-Saharan Africa to help crack down on antigovernment protests fueled outrage in eastern Libya. Now it appears that Khamis may have died in a kamikaze attack on his father's bunker, ever the loyal defender of the family empire. Update: Believed killed during the fall of Tripoli to rebel forces.

Milad Gaddafi, age uncertain: Little is known about Milad, but Muammar Gaddafi apparently adopted this nephew of his as a son, a symbolic gesture tied to an incident in 1986 when the young Milad reportedly saved the Libyan leader's life during a U.S. bomb attack on his compound. Muammar now invokes his lucky survival that day during his many bromides against the U.S. Libyan state TV likes to show the statue erected by the Gaddafi clan to commemorate its patriarch's escape.