Arias Prosecutor Too Combative, Experts Say

He has barked, yelled, been sarcastic and demanded answers from accused murderer Jodi Arias this week.

And in doing so, prosecutor Juan Martinez and his aggressive antics may be turning off the jury he is hoping to convince that Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander in June 2008, experts told ABCNews.com today.

"Martinez is his own worst enemy," Mel McDonald, a prominent Phoenix defense attorney and former judge, told ABC News. "He takes it to the point where it's ad nauseam. You have difficulty recognizing when he's driving the point home because he's always angry and pushy and pacing around the courtroom. He loses the effectiveness, rather than build it up."

"He's like a rabid dog and believes you've got to go to everybody's throat," he said.

"If they convict her and give her death, they do it in spite of Juan, not because of him," McDonald added.

Martinez's needling style was on display again today as he pestered Arias to admit that she willingly participated in kinky sex with Alexander, though she previously testified that she only succumbed to his erotic fantasies to please him.

Arias, now 32, and Alexander, who was 27 at the time of his death, dated for a year and continued to sleep together for another year following their break-up.

Arias drove to his house in Mesa, Ariz., in June 2008, had sex with him, they took nude photos together and she killed him in his shower. She claims it was in self-defense. If convicted, Arias could face the death penalty.

Jodi Arias, Prosecutor Butt Heads in Cross-Examination Watch Video

Jodi Arias Maintains She 'Felt Like a Prostitute' Watch Video

Jodi Arias Admits to Killing Man, Lying to Police Watch Video

Martinez also attempted to point out inconsistencies in her story of the killing, bickering with her over details about her journey from Yreka, Calif., to Mesa, Ariz., including why she borrowed gas cans from an ex-boyfriend, when she allegedly took naps and got lost while driving, and why she spontaneously decided to visit Alexander at his home in Mesa for a sexual liaison.

"I want to know what you're talking about," Arias said to Martinez at one point.

"No, I'm asking you," he yelled.

Later, he bellowed, "Am I asking you if you're telling the truth?"

"I don't know," Arias said, firing back at him. "Are you?"

During three days of cross examining Arias this week, Martinez has spent hours going back and forth with the defendant over word choice, her memory, and her answers to his questions.

"Everyone who takes witness stand for defense is an enemy," McDonald said. "He prides himself on being able to work by rarely referring to his notes, but what he's giving up in that is that there's so much time he wastes on stupid comments. A lot of what I've heard is utterly objectionable."

Martinez's behavior has spurred frequent objections of "witness badgering" from Arias' attorney Kirk Nurmi, who at one point Tuesday stood up in court and appealed to the judge to have a conference with all of the attorneys before questioning continued. Judge Sherry Stephens at one point admonished Martinez and Arias for speaking over one another.

Andy Hill, a former spokesperson for the Phoenix police department, and Steven Pitt, a forensic psychiatrist who has testified as an expert witness at many trials in the Phoenix area, both said that despite his aggressive style, Martinez would likely succeed in obtaining a guilty verdict.

"When it comes to cross examination, one size does not fit all," said Pitt. "But if you set aside the incessant sparring, what the prosecutor I believe is effectively doing is pointing out the various inconsistencies in the defendant's version of events."

Read More..

Italy parties seek way out of election stalemate

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's stunned political parties searched for a way forward on Tuesday after an inconclusive election gave none of them a parliamentary majority and threatened prolonged instability and a renewal of the European financial crisis.

The results, notably the dramatic surge of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo, left the center-left bloc with a majority in the lower house but without the numbers to control the upper chamber, the Senate.

Financial markets fell sharply at the prospect of a stalemate that reawakened memories of the crisis that pushed Italy's borrowing costs toward unsustainably high levels and brought the euro zone to the brink of collapse in 2011.

"The winner is: Ingovernability," ran the headline in Rome newspaper Il Messaggero, reflecting the deadlock the country will have to confront in the next few weeks as sworn enemies are forced to work together to form a government.

Ratings agency Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday that policy choices of the next Italian government would be crucial for the country's creditworthiness, underlining the need for a coalition that can agree on new reforms.

Pier Luigi Bersani, head of the center-left Democratic Party (PD), has the difficult task of trying to agree a "grand coalition" with former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the man he blames for ruining Italy, or striking a deal with Grillo, a completely unknown quantity in conventional politics.

The alternative is new elections either immediately or within a few months, although both Berlusconi and Bersani have indicated that they want to avoid a return to the polls if possible: "Italy cannot be ungoverned and we have to reflect," Berlusconi said in an interview on his own television station.

For his part, Grillo, whose movement won the most votes of any single party, has indicated that he believes the next government will last no more than six months.

"They won't be able to govern," he told reporters on Tuesday. "Whether I'm there or not, they won't be able govern."

He said he would work with anyone who supported his policy proposals, which range from anti-corruption measures to green-tinted energy measures but rejected suggestions of entering a formal coalition: "It's not time to talk of alliances... the system has already fallen," he said.

The election, a massive rejection of the austerity policies applied by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of international leaders from U.S. President Barack Obama to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, caused consternation across Europe.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble put a brave face on it, saying "that's democracy".

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo was more pessimistic.

"This is a jump to nowhere that does not bode well either for Italy or Europe," he said.

A long recession and growing disillusionment with mainstream parties and tax-raising austerity fed a bitter public mood and contributed to the massive rejection of Monti, whose centrist coalition was relegated to the sidelines.

Projections by the Italian center for Electoral Studies showed that the center-left will have 121 seats in the Senate, against 117 for the center-right alliance of Berlusconi's PDL and the regionalist Northern League. Grillo would take 54.

That leaves no party with the majority in a chamber which a government must control to pass legislation.

"THE BELL IS RINGING"

On a visit to Germany, President Giorgio Napolitano said he would not comment until the parties had consulted with each other and Bersani called on Berlusconi and Grillo to "assume their responsibilities" to ensure Italy could have a government.

He warned that the election showed austerity policies alone were no answer to the economic crisis and said the result carried implications beyond Italy.

"The bell is ringing for Europe as well," he said in his first public comments since the election.

He said he would present a limited number of reform proposals to parliament, focusing on jobs, institutional reform and European policy.

However forming an alliance may be long and difficult and could test the sometimes fragile internal unity of the mainstream parties.

"The idea of a majority without Grillo is unthinkable. I don't know if anyone in the PD is considering it but I'm against it," said Matteo Orfini, a member of Bersani's PD secretariat.

"The idea of a PD-PDL government, even if it's backed by Monti, doesn't make any sense," he said.

For his part, Berlusconi won a boost when his Northern League ally Roberto Maroni won the election to become regional president of Lombardy, Italy's economic heartland and one of the richest and most productive areas of Europe.

For Italian business, with an illustrious history of export success, the election result brought dismay that there would be no quick change to what they see as a regulatory sclerosis that has kept the economy virtually stagnant for a decade.

"This is probably the worst possible scenario," said Francesco Divella, whose family began selling pasta under its eponymous brand in 1890 in the southern region of Puglia.

Berlusconi's campaign, mixing sweeping tax cut pledges with relentless attacks on Monti and Merkel, echoed many of the themes pushed by Grillo and underlined the increasingly angry mood of the Italian electorate.

But even if the next government turns away from the tax hikes and spending cuts brought in by Monti, it will struggle to revive an economy that has scarcely grown in two decades.

Monti was widely credited with tightening Italy's public finances and restoring its international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, who is currently on trial for having sex with an under-age prostitute.

However, Monti struggled to pass the kind of structural reforms needed to improve competitiveness and lay the foundations for a return to economic growth. A weak center-left government may not find it any easier.

The view from some voters, weary of the mainstream parties, was unrepentant: "It's good," said Roger Manica, 28, a security guard in Rome, who voted for the center-left PD.

"Next time I'll vote 5-Star. I like that they are changing things, even if it means uncertainty. Uncertainty doesn't matter to me, for me what's important is a good person who gets things done," he said. "Look how well they've done."

(Additional reporting by Barry Moody, Gavin Jones, Lisa Jucca, Steven Jewkes, Steve Scherer, Catherine Hornby and Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Annika Breidthardt in Berlin. Writing by Philip Pullella and James Mackenzie; Editing by Peter Graff)

Read More..

Safety concerns cloud S. Korea nuclear drive

GORI, South Korea: South Korea has big plans to become a major nuclear energy player, but they are unfolding at a time when the global industry is under intense scrutiny after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

And its ambitions have not been helped by a series of domestic scandals and forced reactor shutdowns in 2012 that rattled public confidence and exposed a glaring lack of regulatory transparency.

Around US$400 billion is riding on South Korea's ability to sell its technology to potential clients as it aims to take on the United States, France and Russia and grab a 20 percent share of the nuclear energy market.

With around half of the world's 430 reactors due for retirement by 2030, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the next 15 years or so offer the prospect of a sales bonanza.

Spearheading South Korea's global drive is its ARP-1400 reactor. It won a $20 billion deal in 2009 to build four of them in the United Arab Emirates and it aims to export another 80, worth around US$400 billion, by 2030.

It is also planning a domestic energy expansion that would see it build 16 new reactors by 2030. South Korea currently operates 23 nuclear power reactors which meet more than 35 percent of the country's electricity needs.

"Our reactors are safe," Lee Young-Il insisted as he guided a group around an ARP-1400 nearing completion at the Gori nuclear power complex.

"We also have an excellent record of operating the reactors with a comparatively low annual rate of forced outage," said Lee, who heads the complex where South Korea's first commercial reactor came on line in 1978.

But the Fukushima disaster in Japan forced a number of countries to rethink their energy strategy, as public concern placed an even greater emphasis than before on reactor safety.

A survey commissioned by the Economics Ministry and published in November showed only 35 percent of South Koreans considered nuclear power to be safe, sharply down from 71 percent in January 2010.

"You are never free from worry as long as your country depends heavily on nuclear energy," Yangyi Won-Young, head of Nuclear-Free Korea, a coalition of civic groups, told AFP.

"Our nuclear power plants are vulnerable to natural disasters because of lax safety regulations which have been applied to construction, operation and parts," Yangyi said.

In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami-triggered meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan, the state-run Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co (KHNP) launched a US$1.0 billion-dollar safety upgrade due to be completed by 2015.

The project involves building higher seawalls around the country's four nuclear power complexes, and equipping plants and reactors -- including the ARP-1400 -- with advanced watertight doors and ventilation systems, as well as new quake sensors.

But the upgrade coincided with a series of shutdowns and scandals in 2012 that triggered a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA) in November about the need to rebuild public trust.

In May, five senior KHNP engineers were charged with trying to cover up a potentially dangerous power failure at the country's oldest Gori-1 reactor.

Later in the year, the government shut down two reactors at the Yeonggwang nuclear complex to replace components provided with fake quality certificates.

And a third reactor was taken offline at Yeonggwang when cracks were found on control rod tubes during maintenance work.

"Recent incidents at Korean nuclear facilities should serve as a timely reminder to the government that the nuclear regulatory authority must maintain an enhanced profile... and be able to take independent decisions," the IEA said in a report on South Korea's energy policies.

The South has been criticised in the past for a lack of transparency in the nuclear sector -- largely attributed to the regulatory bodies' mixed supervisory and promotional roles.

President Park Geun-Hye, who took office this week, looks set to further muddy the waters with her proposal for the nominally independent Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.

Park wants to affiliate the commission with a newly created super-ministry in charge of policies on science research, information communication technology and atomic energy development.

Scientists, environmentalists and a number of politicians -- including some from Park's ruling party -- say the move would undermine the watchdog's independence and weaken its safety management authority.

"The Republic of Korea is going to be the only country across the globe where regulators and basically developers or promoters might be working all together under the same roof," said Suh Kune-Yull, a nuclear engineering professor at Seoul National University.

"A conflict of interest is inevitable," Suh said.

- AFP/fl

Read More..

Yahoo admits new work policy contrary to industry view

Yahoo says work at the office, or work for someone else.

In response to the uproar caused by its recently announced telecommuting policy, Yahoo issued a brief statement this evening acknowledging that its work-at-home ban runs contrary to the tech industry as a whole.

"This isn't a broad industry view on working from home," Yahoo said in a statement published by The New York Times. "This is about what is right for Yahoo right now."

A spokesperson declined to elaborate, saying, "We don't discuss internal matters."

Yahoo's new policy, which requires employees to work in the company's offices, immediately ignited a firestorm of criticism. In a memo that leaked out over the weekend, Human Resources chief Jackie Reses informed the company's workforce that as of June, any existing work-from-home arrangements would no longer be honored.

"To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side," reads the memo.

The new policy was immediately criticized as standoffish in an industry where competition is intense for talented employees and especially ill advised at a company that has over the years battled declining morale among the rank and file. Some pointed out that CEO Marissa Mayer, a new mother who reportedly took only two weeks of maternity leave, should have more empathy for the needs of employees juggling time-conflicting commitments.

However, while working at home has become common at many tech companies, especially at ones eager to show off the benefits of collaborative Web-based software tools, some say the creative process suffers by not being able to share ideas in person.

Read More..

Kelly wins Dem. nod for ex-Rep. Jackson Jr.'s seat

CHICAGO Former Illinois legislator Robin Kelly captured the Democratic nomination Tuesday in the race to replace disgraced ex-U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., after a truncated campaign season where she got a boost from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's super PAC.

The nomination all but assures that she'll sail through the April 9 general election and head to Washington, because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic. The Republican nomination is also being chosen Tuesday night.

From a crowded field of candidates in the Chicago-area district, Kelly emerged early as a leader on gun-control issues. The former state representative from Matteson, a south Chicago suburb, favors an assault weapons ban.

During the campaign, Bloomberg's super PAC, Independence USA, poured more than $2 million into the race by airing anti-gun ads in her favor and against another Democratic front runner, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Halvorson. Halvorson, who unsuccessfully challenged Jackson in a primary last year, is against such a ban.

After casting her ballot in the snowy weather that pelted the region Tuesday, Halvorson warned that if the ads were successful Bloomberg would try to "buy seats" across the country. "We can't let that happen," she said.

Another Democratic front runner, Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale, also took issue with the ads, saying people are "extremely upset" that someone from New York is trying to tell people in Illinois how to vote and predicting that there will be a "backlash."

Guns were a leading issue at candidate forums and email blasts from candidates, even as Jackson's legal saga played out in court and frustrated voters who've seen two other congressmen in the office leave under an ethical or legal cloud.

Jackson resigned in November, after a months-long medical leave for treatment of bipolar disorder and other issues, then pleaded guilty earlier this month to charges that accused him of misspending $750,000 in campaign money on lavish personal items, including a Rolex watch and fur coats.

Jackson's exit created a rare opening in a district where he was first elected in 1995. The primary featured 14 Democrats, including former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds, who held the seat in the 1990s but served prison time after being convicted of fraud and for having sex with an underage campaign volunteer. There were four Republicans on the ballot.

Voters heading to the polls Tuesday indicated that guns, ethics and economic woes were on their minds.

Mary Jo Higgins of south suburban Steger said she voted for Halvorson because the former congresswoman is "the only Democrat who believes in the Second Amendment."

But Country Club Hills minister Rosemary Gage said she voted for former state Rep. Robin Kelly because Kelly is "standing with (President Barack Obama) and trying to get rid of guns."

"It's really bad in Chicago and across the country," Gage said. "Too many children have died."

The issue of ethics was also on the minds of voters, particularly as Jackson's legal saga has been playing out in federal court. David Berchem, a retired painter, said he voted for Halvorson because he believes she would represent all residents of the district and was "as honest a person as you can find."

Beale voted at a school in Chicago, while Kelly voted early.

Beale touted his record as a job creator for the South Side ward he represents in Chicago's City Council. That's the reason Juanita Williams, who went to school with Beale, voted for him Tuesday, saying he helped bring a Wal-Mart to the area. The 47-year-old assistant teacher also said Beale has regularly provided school supplies and Christmas gifts to needy students.

Election officials in the three counties covering the district reported no problems at the polls, even though voters and poll workers had to contend with a blustery mix of snow and sleet. Chicago's Department of Streets and Sanitation deployed extra resources to keep polls accessible.

Turnout at the polls was low, and election officials said the weather might have kept some voters on the fence at home. The National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for much of northern Illinois and streets and sanitation workers deployed extra resources to keep roads to polls clear.

Read More..

Inside Organized Retail Crime Raids

We used to call it shoplifting, but these days the foot soldiers of retail crime rings are known as boosters. Police even have an acronym for these operations: ORC, which stands for Organized Retail Crime.

"It's just like a Fortune 500 company," said Sergeant Eric Lee of the Gardena Police Department in Gardena, Calif. "All of this is just organized."

Watch the full story on "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET

Police say big retail stores, from Walgreens to J.C. Penny, are getting hit by highly sophisticated shoplifting networks that steal and resell everything from underwear to razors to milk. According to the National Retail Federation, theft can amount to annual losses as high as a $37 billion for retail businesses.

"Every store in every city has to go through this," Lee said. "They wait until no one's paying attention and they walk out."

Tide detergent is currently a hot target because it is compact, expensive and easy to sell on the streets for profit, police said. The Street name: "liquid gold."

"Sometimes we get rings that just do alcohol," Lee said. "And then we get some that do just meat and seafood."

Investigators say boosters move the loot for cents on the dollar to fencing operations -- the black market resellers of the stolen goods -- which sell the stolen merchandise in plain sight in stores. Boosters, fencers, Mr. Bigs, all of those involved in these shoplifting operations can potentially make millions a year from boosting and re-selling stolen goods.

Craigslist Crackdown: Cops Go After Thieves Watch Video

Alleged Underage Prostitution in Philippines Watch Video

And Mike Swett is on the case. A former Riverside County sheriff's deputy in Los Angeles, Swett was badly injured in a car wreck and now works as a full-time private investigator on the ORC beat who has worked with Target, Marshalls, T.J. Maxx. Stores hire him to do his own undercover police work, catching thieves before involving local law enforcement.

"Kind of like working a narcotics case, it's like you've got low-level, mid-level and then top dog," Swett said. "We like to go after the top dog and the only way to get to the top dog is mid-level first."

At his command center -- his apartment -- Swett showed off the boxes upon boxes of tapes and photographs he has collected, the fruits of countless silent stake-out hours.

Swett said he has been casing two joints in L.A. for months, both alleged to be mid-level fencing operations. "Nightline" was invited to ride along with him when he sent undercover agents in for a final reconnaissance mission.

At some stores and shopping malls, clerks do little to stop shoplifters and often let them run, which has contributed to the growing fencing operations.

"[The stores] don't want their employees to get injured," Swett said. "So oftentimes they will call the police, but by the time we get there they are already in their car and they are gone."

This leaves professional investigators like Swett to put the pieces together and bust open the gangs to lead over-stretched police departments to the prey.

When raid day arrived, a motorcade of squad cars departed from the Gardena, Calif., police department and pulled up to one fencing operation. Swett said the merchandise being sold was boosted goods.

"There is Victoria's Secret, expensive Victoria's Secret, the gift sets," he said, pointing down a line of tables. "J.C. Penny, Miramax, its real stuff not counterfeit."

He spotted a bottle of Katy Perry brand perfume, which usually retails for around $90 but one seller had it priced at $59.

Read More..

Italy faces stalemate after election shock

ROME (Reuters) - Italy faced political deadlock on Tuesday after a stunning election that saw the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement of comic Beppe Grillo become the strongest party in the country but left no group with a clear majority in parliament.

The center-left coalition led by Pier Luigi Bersani won the lower house by around 125,000 votes and claimed the most seats in the Senate but was short of the majority in the upper house that it would need to govern.

Bersani claimed victory but said it was obvious that Italy was in "a very delicate situation". Party officials said the center-left would try to form a government but it was unclear what its options would be.

Neither Grillo, a comedian-turned-politician who previously ruled out any alliance with another party, nor Silvio Berlusconi's center-right bloc, which threatened to challenge the close tally, showed any immediate willingness to negotiate.

World financial markets reacted nervously to the prospect of a government stalemate in the euro zone's third-largest economy with memories still fresh of the financial crisis that took the 17-member currency bloc to the brink of collapse in 2011.

Italy's borrowing costs have come down in recent months, helped by the promise of European Central Bank support but the election result confirmed fears that it would not produce a government strong enough to implement effective reforms.

Grillo's surge in the final weeks of the campaign threw the race open, with hundreds of thousands turning up at his rallies to hear him lay into targets ranging from corrupt politicians and bankers to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In just three years, his 5-Star Movement, heavily backed by a frustrated generation of young Italians increasingly shut out from permanent full-time jobs, has grown from a marginal group to one of the most talked about political forces in Europe.

Its score of 25.5 percent in the lower house was just ahead of the 25.4 percent for Bersani's Democratic Party, which ran in a coalition with the leftist SEL party and it won almost 8.7 million votes overall, more than any other single party.

"The 5-Star Movement is the real winner of the election," said SEL leader Nichi Vendola, who said that his coalition would have to deal with Grillo, who mixes fierce attacks on corruption with policies ranging from clean energy to free Internet.

RECESSION

"It's a classic result. Typically Italian," said Roberta Federica, a 36-year-old office worker in Rome. "It means the country is not united. It is an expression of a country that does not work. I knew this would happen."

A long recession and growing disillusion with mainstream parties fed a bitter public mood that saw more than half of Italian voters back parties that rejected the austerity policies pursued by Prime Minister Mario Monti with the backing of Italy's European partners.

Berlusconi's campaign, mixing sweeping tax cut pledges with relentless attacks on Monti and Merkel, echoed many of the themes pushed by Grillo and underlined the increasingly angry mood of the Italian electorate.

Stefano Zamagni, an economic professor at Bologna University said the result showed that a significant share of Italians "are fed up with following the austerity line of Germany and its northern allies".

"These people voted to stick one up to Merkel and austerity," he said.

Election rules give the center-left a solid majority in the lower house, despite its slim advantage in terms of votes, but without the Senate it will not be able to pass legislation.

Calculations by the Italian Centre for Electoral Studies, part of LUISS university in Rome, gave 121 seats to Bersani's coalition, 117 to Berlusconi, 54 for Grillo and 22 to the centrist coalition led by Monti.

That leaves no party or likely alliance with the 158 seats needed to form a Senate majority.

Even if the next government turns away from the tax hikes and spending cuts brought in by Monti, it will struggle to revive an economy which has scarcely grown in two decades.

Monti was widely credited with tightening Italy's public finances and restoring its international credibility after the scandal-plagued Berlusconi, whom he replaced as the 2011 financial crisis threatened to spin out of control.

But he struggled to pass the kind of structural reforms needed to improve competitiveness and lay the foundations for a return to economic growth and a weak center-left government may not find it any easier.

(Additional reporting by Naomi O'Leary and Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

Read More..

World powers, Iran bid to break nuclear stalemate

ALMATY, Kazakhstan: World powers meet negotiators from Iran in Kazakhstan on Tuesday in the hope of reaching a breakthrough in the decade-long crisis over its nuclear programme, despite low expectations after years of dashed hopes.

They are hoping to coax concessions out of Iran by advancing a new offer but Tehran has already doused expectations by installing new centrifuges and saying it will not go beyond existing obligations.

The two-day meeting under the shadow of the Tien Shan mountains in the Kazakh city of Almaty comes as sanctions bite against the Islamic republic and Israel still refuses to rule out air strikes to knock out Iran's suspected nuclear weapons drive.

Little apparent progress has been made since the last such session of talks in Moscow in June 2012 ended without any breakthrough and the crux of the dispute remains Iran's insistence on not abandoning uranium enrichment operations.

"We don't expect any breakthrough. The Iranians have made different declarations in the last days. It depends if you take the positive or the negative ones," said one Western official who asked not to be named.

World powers will present Iran with a "good" offer, said Michael Mann, the spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

"We hope that Iran will seize this opportunity and come to the talks with flexibility and commitment to make concrete progress towards a confidence-building step."

A source close to the negotiations said that the world powers in their offer would stick to their insistence that Iran halts enriching uranium to 20 percent, shuts down its controversial Fordo uranium enrichment plant and sends abroad all uranium already enriched to 20 percent.

Previous reports have said that Iran could in return be offered a softening of the sanctions regime against Tehran, possibly starting with a lifting of measures against its gold industry.

The atmosphere has already been clouded by a UN nuclear watchdog report saying Iran started installing next-generation centrifuges at its Natanz nuclear plant, a move Washington said would be "provocative".

Meanwhile, chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili said Saturday Tehran will not go beyond its obligations or accept anything outside its rights under the non-proliferation treaty (NPT).

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say in all foreign policy matters, has effectively rejected the offer of direct US talks and appeared to order a tough line in Almaty.

Khamenei defiantly claimed earlier this month that even though Iran has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, the United States could not thwart Tehran if it wanted to.

The talks involve the so-called 5+1 world powers on one side -- Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States -- and Iran's team led by Jalili on the other.

They come with the lingering threat of Israel launching a unilateral strike on Iran just as it had done against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1981.

Such action would almost certainly drag the United States into a conflict it clearly wants to avoid and leave the global economy in peril due to the impact on the price of oil.

Strikes would also risk sparking a broader Middle East conflict -- a danger the region can hardly afford with the violence raging in Syria.

Analysts said Israel's "red line" would be a decision by Iran to enrich uranium above its current upper limit of 20 percent -- within reach of weapons-grade uranium but necessary for Iran's medical research.

Iran already has a nuclear power plant in the southern city of Bushehr -- built with Russian help -- but Khamenei has described atomic weapons as a "sin".

- AFP/fl

Read More..

Foursquare checks in to more revenue with credit card specials

Foursquare's latest offer: attach a Visa or MasterCard to your account and get $1 credited back to your card when spend $10 at Burger King.

(Credit:
Foursquare)

Money in the bank. That's the motivation behind a new Foursquare initiative that lets members link their Visa and MasterCard credit or debit cards and redeem money-back specials from participating merchants.

Foursquare, a company banking on check-ins to power its Explore discovery feature, aims to encourage more of its 30 million members to tell the application where they are with the additional freebies. The places-centric social network also hopes to cash in from the program. The company pockets a fee for every credit redemption it processes.

Today's announcement marks the first significant expansion to the startup's credit card specials program, which Foursquare launched exclusively with American Express two years ago. The program gives people automatic, coupon-free credit rewards for shopping at select venues.

Members can now sync Visa and MasterCard credit or debit cards with Foursquare to get $1 credited back to their accounts when they spend $10 or more at fast-food chain Burger King, the initial partner for the expanded program.

"Foursquare is in the business of connecting people with places, and places with people," Product Manager Noah Weiss told CNET. "We make money when those two parties are happy."

So how does it work, exactly? It's not simple, but it's also not terribly complicated either. People will see the Burger King credit card special when they check-in to the establishment or find it through Foursquare's Explore tab, which highlights nearby specials and places that might of be interest to individuals. After a person sync's his or her card with Foursquare, he or she can click to redeem the offer, and pay with the credit or debit card in question as they normally would -- meaning no coupon or voucher is required.

In the background, a company called First Data, Foursquare's technology partner, recognizes the transaction and offer to credit the special amount, in this case $1 at Burger King, back to the person's Visa or MasterCard account.

Foursquare still maintains a special relationship with AmEx, which has its own custom technology powering the purchase-to-credit process on Foursquare. The prestigious card company, for instance, is expanding its own presence on the location platform with a new spend-$20, get-$5-back special at AMC Theaters. Weiss said that hundreds of thousands of users have saved many millions of dollars as a result of the AmEx credit card specials. While he still considers credit card specials a "pilot" program for Foursquare, the deals, which net Foursquare a fee for each redemption, will eventually grow into a core pillar, alongside promoted updates and other to-be-announced merchant-friendly tools, of the startup's revenue model. Hopefully sooner rather than later. The Wall Street Journal reported that the company expected to bring in a measly $2 million in revenue for all of 2012.

Burger King is the first merchant partner to embrace the Visa and MasterCard credit rewards, but Weiss said that additional campaigns will be rolling out to users in the weeks ahead.

Read More..

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop dies at 96

C. Everett Koop, who raised the profile of the surgeon general by riveting America's attention on the then-emerging disease known as AIDS and by railing against smoking, has died in New Hampshire at age 96.

The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth said in a release that Koop died peacefully in his home in Hanover on Monday. They did not disclose a cause of death

Koop wielded the previously low-profile post of surgeon general as a bully pulpit for seven years during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.

An evangelical Christian, he shocked his conservative supporters when he endorsed condoms and sex education to stop the spread of AIDS.

He carried out a crusade to end smoking in the United States -- his goal had been to do so by the year 2000. A former pipe smoker, he said cigarettes were as addictive as heroin and cocaine.

Koop's impact was great, although the surgeon general has no real authority to set government policy. He described himself as "the health conscience of the country."

"My only influence was through moral suasion," Koop said just before leaving office in 1989. By then, his Amish-style silver beard and white, braided uniform were instantly recognizable.

Out of office, he switched to business suits and bow ties, but continued to promote public health causes, from preventing childhood accidents to better training for doctors.

"I will use the written word, the spoken word and whatever I can in the electronic media to deliver health messages to this country as long as people will listen," he promised.

In 1996, he rapped Republican hopeful Bob Dole for suggesting that tobacco is not invariably addictive, saying Dole's comments "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his blind support of the tobacco industry."

Although he eventually won wide respect with his blend of old-fashioned values, pragmatism and empathy, Koop's nomination in 1981 met a wall of opposition from women's groups and liberal politicians.

Critics said President Reagan selected Koop, a pediatric surgeon from Philadelphia, only because of his conservative views -- especially his staunch opposition to abortion.

Foes noted that Koop traveled the country in 1979 and 1980 giving speeches that predicted a progression "from liberalized abortion to infanticide to passive euthanasia to active euthanasia, indeed to the very beginnings of the political climate that led to Auschwitz, Dachau and Belsen."

But Koop, a devout Presbyterian, was confirmed after he told a Senate panel he would not use the surgeon general's post to promote his religious ideology. He kept his word.

In 1986, he issued a frank report on AIDS, urging the use of condoms for "safe sex" and advocating sex education as early as third grade.

He also maneuvered around uncooperative Reagan administration officials in 1988 to send an educational AIDS pamphlet to more than 100 million U.S. households -- the largest public health mailing ever done.

Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how the HIV virus was transmitted.

1/2

Read More..