Senate Passes Russian Trade Bill, With a Human Rights Caveat

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to finally eliminate cold war-era trade restrictions on Russia, but at the same time it condemned Moscow for human rights abuses, threatening to further strain an already delicate relationship with the Kremlin.

The Senate bill, which passed the House last month, now goes to President Obama, who has opposed using United States trade policy to make a statement about the Russian government’s treatment of its people.

But with such overwhelming support in Congress — the measure passed the Senate 92 to 4 and the House 365 to 43 — the White House has had little leverage to press its case.

And President Obama has shown little desire to pick a fight in which he would appear to be siding with the Russians on such an issue.

In a statement issued after the Senate vote, the White House mentioned the human rights component of the bill only in passing, instead emphasizing that the president was looking forward to signing a measure that would level the playing field for American workers.

The most immediate effect of the bill would be to formally normalize trade relations with Russia after nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, commerce between Russia and the United States has been subject to restrictions that were intended to punish Communist nations that kept their citizens from emigrating freely.

While presidents have waived the restrictions since the cold war ended — allowing them to remain on the books as a symbolic sore point with the Russians — the issue took on new urgency this summer after Russia joined the World Trade Organization. As part of its pact with the trade group, Russia lowered tariffs for other member countries, but only those that granted it normal trade status.

By some estimates, American exports to Russia are expected to double after its trade status is revised.

But another effect of the bill — and one that has Russian officials furious with Washington — will be to require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human rights abuses and deny them visas.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were inspired to attach those provisions to the trade legislation because of the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who sustained serious injuries and died in a Moscow detention center in 2009 after he accused government officials of a tax fraud scheme.

During the Senate debate, it was Mr. Magnitsky’s case, and not Russia’s trade status, that occupied most of the time.

One by one, Democratic and Republican senators alike rose to denounce Russian officials for their disregard for basic freedoms.

“This culture of impunity in Russia has been growing worse and worse,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “There are still many people who look at the Magnitsky Act as anti-Russia. I disagree,” he added. “Ultimately passing this legislation will place the United States squarely on the side of the Russian people and the right side of Russian history, which appears to be approaching a crossroads.”

In Moscow, the denunciation was swift, and legislators promised retaliation with a proposal of their own that would freeze the bank accounts of American human rights violators.

“This initiative is intended to restrict the rights of Russian citizens, which we consider completely unjust and baseless,” said Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy, in comments to the Interfax news agency in Brussels. “This is an attempt to interfere in our internal affairs, in the authority of Russia’s investigative and judicial organs, which continue to investigate the Magnitsky case.”

Russian officials have said that Mr. Magnitsky is not the hero his supporters make him out to be, and they have pursued posthumous tax evasion charges against him. And lately the case has taken some more unusual turns. One witness was recently found dead in Britain.

Initially the Senate faced some pressure to pass a bill that punished human rights violators from all nations, not just those who are Russian. But the House bill applied only to Russia. And the Senate followed suit, as supporters of the bill wanted something that would pass quickly and not require a complicated back-and-forth with the House.

But Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland who wrote the bill that would apply internationally to all nations, said the United States position on human rights abusers was unambiguous. “This bill is our standard,” he said. “The world is on notice.”

Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

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Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies at 91

Dave Brubeck's pioneering style in pieces such as "Take Five" caught listeners' ears with exotic, challenging rhythms.

In the strait-laced Eisenhower 1950s, Dave Brubeck seemed, on one hand, deeply conventional. He didn't drink, smoke or take drugs. He favored expressions like "baloney!" and "you bet" over ruder alternatives. He had a prodigious work ethic that had been ground into him by his cowboy father on the family's California cattle ranch.

But rebellion was in Brubeck's soul. Schooled in piano by his musically gifted mother, he became a jazz man — outwardly square but quintessentially cool — whose genius at marrying spontaneity and unorthodox rhythms with classical forms became an enduring legacy.

Brubeck, the pianist and composer who pushed the boundaries of jazz for six decades and became one of the genre's most popular artists, died Wednesday, a day before his 92nd birthday.

The jazz maestro, who had a history of heart trouble, became unresponsive on his way to a medical appointment, said his longtime manager and producer Russell Gloyd. Brubeck's son, who was in the car with him, rushed him to a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., where he was pronounced dead.

Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell called Brubeck "a true musical giant. He helped to keep jazz at a truly high level and he was very consistent in both his performance and composition."

He was best known for his work with his classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, which included longtime musical partner Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums. Brubeck's innovative ideas generated an enthusiastic response from a new audience of young listeners — as well as the players most directly connected with his music.

"When Dave is playing his best, it's a profoundly moving thing to experience, emotionally and intellectually," Desmond said in 1952 in the jazz publication Down Beat. "It's completely free, live improvisation ... the vigor and force of simple jazz, the harmonic complexities of Bartok and Milhaud, the form [and much of the dignity] of Bach and, at times, the lyrical romanticism of Rachmaninoff."

In the late 1950s, the group began exploring unusual rhythmic meters. By the end of the decade, the album "Time Out" had reached No. 2 on the pop music album charts, and a single off the album — with "Take Five" on one side and "Blue Rondo a la Turk" on the other — became the first jazz recording to sell more than a million copies.

Written by Desmond, "Take Five" became a universally recognized jazz classic despite the offbeat 5/4 meter.

The group's popularity began to climb in the mid-1950s when a series of live college recordings — "Jazz Goes to College," "Jazz Goes to Junior College" and "Jazz Goes to Oberlin" — was released. Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, only the second such honor for a jazz artist. (Louis Armstrong was first.)

The New Yorker described the quartet as "the world's best-paid, most widely traveled, most highly publicized, and most popular small group now playing improvised syncopated music."

But Brubeck's fascination with groundbreaking elements not generally included in the jazz styles of the '50s also made his music a target of widespread disparagement from jazz critics, who often referred to a "heavy-handed, bombastic approach" to piano improvising. The words directly contradicted another critical view, which identified the music of Brubeck and Desmond as another example of the "effete, laid-back, West Coast cool jazz" style."

Most of the criticism failed to recognize the complex range of elements — from stride piano to a Bach canon — that could course through a single piece. Brubeck often cited the positive response his music received from legendary jazz figures including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, among others.

David Warren Brubeck was born Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, northeast of Oakland. His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, his mother, Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, a pianist and music teacher. When he was 11, the family moved to a 45,000-acre ranch near Ione, in the Sierra foothills.

His older brothers Howard and Henry became classical musicians, but Dave preferred ranching and improvising pop songs on the piano. As a teenager, he played at dances on weekends.

Brubeck started out studying veterinary medicine at what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton but switched to music at the suggestion of his science advisor. He managed to earn a bachelor's degree without learning to properly read music.

He was drafted into the Army after graduation in 1942, marrying his college sweetheart, Iola Marie Whitlock, just before he was sent to France in 1944.

His wife, who frequently wrote lyrics for his projects, survives him along with his daughter Catherine, his sons Darius, Chris, Dan and Matthew, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Michael, died several years ago.

Discharged from the military in 1946, Brubeck went to Mills College in Oakland, studying with French composer Darius Milhaud and forming the Brubeck Octet, a musically adventurous group with an imaginative and avant-garde repertoire. Brubeck's trio, which he led from 1949 to 1951, provided a different, more intimate forum for his far-reaching ideas. The group, which included bassist Ron Crotty and drummer/vibist Cal Tjader, played standards and Brubeck's originals.

In 1951, Brubeck added Desmond to his trio. It was the beginning of a journey into national visibility that established Brubeck and Desmond as significant jazz figures. The quartet, which remained together until 1967 and was briefly reunited in 1976, a year before Desmond died, became the most important vehicle for Brubeck's playing and innovative musical ideas.

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Microsoft #DroidRage Tweet Shows How Malware Has Moved Past Windows

“Do you have an Android malware horror story?” Microsoft asks through its @windowsphone Twitter account, in what may be one of the most ironic tweets of the year.

After all, it wasn’t that long ago that “virus” and “worm” stories made headlines on a regular basis, all of them about “computer viruses” which were really Windows viruses. Just a few years ago, Apple advertised the fact that a Mac “Doesn’t get PC viruses” as a reason to buy one.

But this year, 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback trojan, an epidemic which exceeded the scale of history’s single largest Windows infection. And now ​Microsoft​ is implying that its phones don’t get malware, as a way to advertise them. How did things get to be this way, and what will malware and virus authors do next?

​When virii attack

For years, Microsoft’s DOS and Windows operating systems were the biggest targets for virus and malware authors simply because they were the least secure. Today’s PC security best practices had yet to be built into them, and trying to bolt features on to ancient programming code was a half-baked solution at best. HugeWindows malware epidemics spread as the malware programs were able to install themselves without explicit permission and operate without user intervention.

​Network effects

One reason Microsoft Windows dominated the computing world for years and years was simply because it was dominant. More people using Windows meant more profits for Windows app developers, which meant more games and apps for Windows, which meant more people buying Windows PCs so they could use Windows games and apps.

Like with apps, malware is a business that makes money for the people who write it. And while it was theoretically possible to infect a computer running a more secure operating system, like OS X (used on Macs) or Ubuntu (powered by Linux), it was considered impossible to get it to spread far enough to be profitable. Whereas on Windows it was (and still is) possible to infect vast numbers of PCs, even chaining them into zombified “botnets” which act as supercomputers-for-hire.

​How the mighty have fallen?

OS X’s more secure design makes it extremely hard to infect with malware — normally. The Flashback trojan sneaked in this year using the Java web browser plugin, which is bundled with the Mac’s Safari web browser and was poorly maintained.

Plugins like Java and Flash open up new ways to infect a computer, which was one reason why Apple stopped including the Flash plugin (already absent on its iPhone and iPad) by default. Apple created a fix for the problem, but not before over half a million Macs were infected.

​What about on smartphones?

Unlike Apple and Microsoft’s app stores, the Google Play store allows anyone to submit anything with no review. It’s up to Android smartphone and tablet users to look at the “permissions” each game or app requests, as well as the reputation of their developers, and decide whether or not to install them.

While some consider this approach more “trustworthy” and respectful of users, it’s also helped lead to a comparatively enormous number of malware infections on Android, including “The Mother of All Android Malware,” which completely took over tens of thousands of phones last year.

​Are you #DroidRage-ing yet?

Microsoft’s tweet says “we may have a get-well present” for people who send it their best or worst stories of Android malware. Even if all the apps in the Windows Store are virus-free, however, there are still far fewer of them than there are for Android.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A Minute With: Scottish DJ Calvin Harris hits big time in U.S

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Scottish DJ Calvin Harris may not be the most recognizable face in the U.S. music scene, but after writing Rihanna‘s biggest chart hit and with two other top 20 singles, Harris is fast becoming a chart staple.

Harris, 28, found success in the UK over the last five years before storming the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year with “We Found Love,” a dance-infused dark love song featuring Rihanna’s vocals that became one of 2012′s biggest hits.

The DJ, who released album “18 Months” in November featuring other hits “Feels So Close” and “Let’s Go,” sat down with Reuters to talk about his U.S. breakthrough.

Q: Did you ever think “We Found Love” was going to be one of the biggest hits in the U.S. this year, and what do you think of the growing British presence in the U.S. music charts?

A: “I hoped that it would do really well, but you can’t predict writing Rihanna’s biggest-ever record, else you’re an egomaniac. Couldn’t have predicted that – that was a surprise. It’s nice that British music is getting played over here, it seems like everyone has a more even playing field than before.”

Q: Why do you think dance music is becoming such a big part of the U.S. scene?

A: “The people to thank are probably the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. They were the first two American mainstream acts to have that house beat in their songs, whereas before, it was all hip hop. I remember Ne-Yo, when ‘Closer’ came out … and it bombed here but in the UK it was number 1, it was massive … Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Got a Feeling’ and (Lady Gaga’s) ‘Poker Face’ that was pushed really hard, and once they were huge, huge hits … radio stations wanted more and there was plenty of it because it’s been going on for years.”

Q: There are a lot of DJs coming into the mainstream scene now. How do you make yourself stand out in a saturated market?

A: “I like making dance records with lyrical depth. I also like the music to sound rich and full and have real instruments, and not be that kind of synthetic sound, combined with lyrics about popping bottles, being in the club … I like them to be the sort of lyrics you can find in another genre because I think dance music historically, the lyrics have been banal and I’m not into that. I like making actual songs but also something that still works on the dance floor.”

Q: Your new album “18 Months” has songs that span different sounds within the dance-pop genre. Were any tracks challenging?

A: “The two most challenging mixes were the tracks with Example and Florence (Welch), because I think the key is to make it sound like there isn’t that much going on when actually there is … it was a more difficult mix because it was more dynamic.”

Q: Some critics say that you use well-known artists like Rihanna or Florence just so you can get hits. What do you say to people who think you’ve sold out?

A: “Critics don’t buy albums, they’re also almost 90 percent either failed musicians or they don’t know better than anyone else. Also, I don’t like them. What’s the point of a critic? … I ‘sold out’ when I signed a major record deal, which was in 2006. People didn’t say I sold out then … so don’t accuse me of selling out now. It’s very very late to do that.

“If Florence Welch wants to do a track with me, I’m going to say no and use someone unknown? … I want to do a track with people I like, not people I haven’t heard of before.”

Q: Some of your music videos have been provocative. “We Found Love” features domestic abuse and drug use, and Florence Welch’s “Sweet Nothing” has violence. Do you think music videos have to provoke to be noticed?

A: “I like videos to be seen by all and the guy who’s done my videos since ‘Bounce,’ Vince Haycock, I forever censor him … But recently, I’ve let him do whatever he wants and it’s more fun, I’ve discovered, to make whatever video he wants to make … I guess you’re more likely to get more views if someone is getting smacked in the face with a chair … ‘Sweet Nothing’ was great, but there was a lot that was cut out, like a brutal fight scene at the end … it got cut out because I couldn’t watch it, and the soundtrack was my music. There’s obviously a boundary. I’ve not had any naked people in my videos yet.”

Q: A lot of DJs are now collaborating with brand names in sponsorship deals. Are you doing anything similar?

A: “I’m genuinely just making music, I’m trying to make it good. I know these guys with their headphones and their logos and their gimmicks – you can take that route but I think it’s just added pressure to uphold something … Other people do it much better than me because they’re more like personalities.”

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Nick Zieminski)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs might be taken for a longer duration as well.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them are in premenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing 10 years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

“They don’t feel well on them, but it’s their safety net,” said Dr. Garber, who added that the news would be welcomed by many patients who would like to stay on the drug. “I have patients who agonize about this, people who are coming to the end of their tamoxifen.”

Emily Behrend, who is a few months from finishing her five years on tamoxifen, said she would definitely consider another five years. “If it can keep the cancer away, I’m all for it,” said Ms. Behrend, 39, a single mother in Tomball, Tex. She is taking the antidepressant Effexor to help control the night sweats and hot flashes caused by tamoxifen.

Cost is not considered a huge barrier to taking tamoxifen longer because the drug can be obtained for less than $200 a year.

The results, while answering one question, raise many new ones, including whether even more than 10 years of treatment would be better still.

Perhaps the most important question is what the results mean for postmenopausal women. Even many women who are premenopausal at the time of diagnosis will pass through menopause by the time they finish their first five years of tamoxifen, or will have been pushed into menopause by chemotherapy.

Postmenopausal patients tend to take aromatase inhibitors like anastrozole or letrozole, which are more effective than tamoxifen at preventing breast cancer recurrence, though they do not work for premenopausal women.

Mr. Peto said he thought the results of the Atlas study would “apply to endocrine therapy in general,” meaning that 10 years of an aromatase inhibitor would be better than five years. Other doctors were not so sure.

The Atlas study was paid for by various organizations including the United States Army, the British government and AstraZeneca, which makes the brand name version of tamoxifen.

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Ransomware Is Expanding in the United States

CULVER CITY, Calif. — Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except the hostage is your PC.

Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

Security researchers Eric Chien, left, and Vikram Thakur at Symantec, where Mr. Chien has been tracking ransomware schemes.

Sometimes victims get a message, ostensibly from the F.B.I., accusing them of breaking the law and demanding a fine.

In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them.

The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 20 other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently, Anonymous, a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine.

And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them.

The scourge dates to 2009 in Eastern Europe. Three years later, with business booming, the perpetrators have moved west. Security experts say that there are now more than 16 gangs of sophisticated criminals extorting millions from victims across Europe.

The threat, known as ransomware, recently hit the United States. Some gangs have abandoned previously lucrative schemes, like fake antivirus scams and banking trojans, to focus on ransomware full time.

Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s computer with a virus that locks it. The attackers demand money before the computer will be unlocked, but once the money is paid, they rarely unlock it.

In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data because the best way to remove the virus is to wipe the computer clean.

It may be hard to fathom why anyone would agree to fork over hundreds of dollars to a demanding stranger, but security researchers estimate that 2.9 percent of compromised computer owners take the bait and pay. That, they say, is an extremely conservative estimate. In some countries, the payout rate has been as high as 20 percent.

That people do fall for it is a testament to criminals’ increasingly targeted and inventive methods. Early variations of ransomware locked computers, displayed images of pornography and, in Russian, demanded a fee — often more than $400 — to have it removed. Current variants are more targeted and toy with victims’ consciences.

Researchers say criminals now use victims’ Internet addresses to customize ransom notes in their native tongue. Instead of pornographic images, criminals flash messages from local law enforcement agencies accusing them of visiting illegal pornography, gambling or piracy sites and demand they pay a fine to unlock their computer.

Victims in the United States see messages in English purporting to be from the F.B.I. or Justice Department. In the Netherlands, people get a similar message, in Dutch, from the local police. (Some Irish variations even demand money in Gaelic.) The latest variants speak to victims through recorded audio messages that tell users that if they do not pay within 48 hours, they will face criminal charges. Some even show footage from a computer’s webcam to give the illusion that law enforcement is watching.

The messages often demand that victims buy a preloaded debit card that can be purchased at a local drugstore — and enter the PIN. That way it’s impossible for victims to cancel the transaction once it becomes clear that criminals have no intention of unlocking their PC.

The hunt is on to find these gangs. Researchers at Symantec said they had identified 16 ransomware gangs. They tracked one gang that tried to infect more than 500,000 PCs over an 18-day period. But even if researchers can track their Internet addresses, catching and convicting those responsible can be difficult. It requires cooperation among global law enforcement, and such criminals are skilled at destroying evidence.

Charlie Hurel, an independent security researcher based in France, was able to hack into one group’s computers to discover just how gullible their victims could be. On one day last month, the criminals’ accounting showed that they were able to infect 18,941 computers, 93 percent of all attempts. Of those who received a ransom message that day, 15 percent paid. In most cases, Mr. Hurel said, hackers demanded 100 euros, making their haul for one day’s work more than $400,000.

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Northridge shooting probe yields more arrests, sources say

Los Angeles Police Department detectives have made additional arrests in connection with a quadruple homicide in Northridge, sources familiar with the investigation said.

The sources would not immediately identify the suspects nor would they detail what offenses they were arrested for. One of the arrests took place in Las Vegas overnight; it was not clear where the others occurred.

Sources familiar with the investigation said the killings appeared to stem from a dispute over personal property, although they would not say what kind of items were involved.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander said one of the suspects was believed to have lived in the illegal boardinghouse where the shootings occurred. Englander stressed that the information came from people briefed on the case but outside the LAPD.

A news conference is planned for later Tuesday, when the LAPD is expected to reveal more information about the case.

Officers responded to the home in the 17400 block of Devonshire Street about 4:25 a.m. Sunday after a 911 caller reported yelling and shots fired, police said. Authorities found four people -- two men and two women -- shot dead outside.

No weapon was recovered at the home, prompting police to rule out a murder-suicide. Three of the victims -- a man and two women -- were shot on the walkway on the left side of the home, a source familiar with the case told The Times on Monday. They were all wearing hooded sweat shirts and were about two feet apart from one another. All three had at least one bullet wound to the head.

One victim was crumpled on her knees, the source said, her face buried in the palms of her hands, "almost like she was praying." The other two victims on the walkway were face down.

The fourth victim -- a man -- was farther away and appeared as if he was trying to run to the backyard when he was shot. He had at least one gunshot wound, according to the source.

"It looked like a quick kill," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

The names of the victims have not been released. Police said the women were in their mid-20s; one man was in his mid-30s and the other man in his late 40s.

Authorities said the home was an illegal boardinghouse, with up to 17 people living in conditions that Englander described as "deplorable." The home had so much debris and so many partitions that one room could be accessed only through a window, he said.

A trail of extension cords led investigators to the backyard, where several makeshift living quarters had been assembled.

The owner of the home, Yag Kapil, said he rented out rooms but denied he was running a boardinghouse. Kapil, 78, who lives at the home, said he is bedridden and was sleeping at the time of the shootings. He said he didn't hear anything and didn't know the victims.

The slayings stunned the quiet Northridge street, which residents said was the kind where neighbors knew one another and walked to the grocery store or synagogue nearby.

"It's usually sleepy-time America," said Richard Rutherford, 58, who was awakened by the gunfire. The violent-crime rate for Northridge falls in the middle of all Los Angeles neighborhoods, but homicide is rare in the community, according to LAPD data analyzed in The Times' Crime L.A. database. In the previous six months, Northridge had one homicide out of the 89 violent crimes reported.

Since 2007 and before Sunday's quadruple homicide, Northridge had 11 homicides, 10 of them south of Nordhoff Street. The location of Sunday's slayings is on the border with Granada Hills, which typically has a much lower violent-crime rate than Northridge.

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Disney loses appeal of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” ruling

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. was ordered to pay the British creator of the television game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” $ 319 million after a Los Angeles court rejected the company’s request for a new trial.

Britain’s Celador International, which created the quiz show, sued Disney in 2004 alleging that the company hid some of the show’s U.S. profits from Celador.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena ruled on Monday that the lower court’s judgment was neither excessive nor based on speculation of profits owed.

A 2010 jury trial found that Disney and its domestic syndication company, Buena Vista Television, owed Celador $ 269.2 million and a federal judge added $ 50 million in interest.

“We are extremely disappointed with the decision, as ABC and Buena Vista Television continue to believe that they fully adhered to the ‘Millionaire’ agreement,” Walt Disney said in a statement on Tuesday.

Disney did not comment on further possible legal action.

“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” aired on Disney-owned broadcaster ABC from 1999 to 2002 and was credited with ushering in a new era of reality programming on U.S. television.

“I am pleased that justice has been done,” Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.

The game show, which started in Britain and later became an international hit, quizzes contestants on trivia for the top prize of $ 1 million. The show is now in U.S. syndication.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Two Mexican nationals charged in killing of U.S. Coast Guardsman

Federal prosecutors charged two Mexican nationals in connection with killing U.S. Coast Guardsmen Terrell Horne III after they allegedly rammed his vessel with a drug-smuggling panga boat.

The two men, boat captain Jose Mejia-Leyva and Manuel Beltra-Higuera, are expected to appear in court Monday afternoon to face charges that they killed a federal officer.

Horne, 34, of Redondo Beach, was killed Sunday after suspected smugglers in a panga rammed his vessel off the Ventura County coast. He died of severe head trauma, officials said.

The Redondo Beach resident was second in command of the Halibut, an 87-foot patrol cutter based in Marina del Rey. Authorities said they could not recall a Coast Guard chief petty officer being killed in such a manner off the coast of California.

Early Sunday morning, the Halibut was dispatched to investigate a boat operating near Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's eight Channel Islands. The island is roughly 25 miles southwest of Oxnard.

The boat, first detected by a patrol plane, had come under suspicion because it was operating in the middle of the night without lights and was a "panga"-style vessel, an open-hulled boat that has become "the choice of smugglers operating off the coast of California," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

The Coast Guard cutter contains a smaller boat, a rigid-hull inflatable used routinely for search-and-rescue operations and missions that require a nimble approach. When Horne and his team approached in the inflatable, the suspect boat gunned its engine, maneuvered directly toward the Coast Guard inflatable, rammed it and fled.

The impact knocked Horne and another guardsman into the water. Both were quickly plucked from the sea. Horne had suffered a traumatic head injury. While receiving medical care, he was raced to shore aboard the Halibut. Paramedics met the Halibut at the pier in Port Hueneme and declared Horne dead at 2:21 a.m.

The second crew member knocked into the water suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a hospital later Sunday. He was not identified.

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Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4

Besides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.

This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?

​A glass back

With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.

While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.

​No 4G

Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).

The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.

​Selling out fast

Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.

How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.

​Public relations nightmares

It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.

On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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