TheState.com: Technology

Bankruptcy court approves Kodak's financing

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:17 EST

A U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in New York is approving Eastman Kodak Co.'s $950 million debtor-in-possession financing.

The photography company announced the court's decision Wednesday. The money allows Kodak to operate normally during bankruptcy, while it tries to sell its collection of digital-imaging patents.

Following drawn-out efforts to revive its business, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January when it ran short of cash. The $950 million financing includes an initial $650 million from Citigroup Inc. approved by the court when Kodak first filed.

CBS 4Q earnings top views, but sales fall short

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:03 EST

Broadcasting giant CBS Corp. said Wednesday that its earnings rose 31 percent in the final quarter of 2011, thanks to licensing shows to online video companies such as Netflix as well as cost-cutting that helped offset an advertising slowdown.

Revenue posted a surprising decline, and shares fell 77 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $28.80 in after-hours trading Wednesday.

Net income rose to $370 million, or 55 cents per share, from $283 million, or 41 cents per share, a year ago.

Excluding restructuring charges of $46 million, adjusted earnings came to 57 cents per share, beating the 53 cents expected by analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue fell 3 percent to $3.78 billion from $3.9 billion. That was below the $3.9 billion expected by analysts, which would have been flat with a year ago.

FCC adopts new rules against 'robocalls'

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:16 EST

The federal government is cracking down on "robocalls," those automated phone calls with the tendency to interrupt Sunday dinners and otherwise annoy consumers.

The Federal Communications Commission said Wednesday that it will now require telemarketers to obtain written consent from people before placing a robocall. Written does not mean handwritten, though - electronic forms are OK.

The new rules also eliminate a loophole that allowed telemarketers to place robocalls if they had an "established business relationship" with the consumer. Now, they will have to obtain consent even if they had previously done business with the person they want to call.

Telemarketers will also have to provide an automated way for people to revoke their consent to the robocall by pressing a few keys on their phone during the call. If this happens, the new rules require telemarketer to add the person to the company's do not call list.

The FCC said it is not changing rules that apply to informational robocalls, such as airline flight updates, school notifications or warnings about suspicious bank account activity.

Israeli library uploads Newton's theological texts

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 14:11 EST

He's considered to be one of the greatest scientists of all time. But Sir Isaac Newton was also an influential theologian who applied a scientific approach to the study of scripture, Hebrew and Jewish mysticism.

Now Israel's national library, an unlikely owner of a vast trove of Newton's writings, has digitized his theological collection - some 7,500 pages in Newton's own handwriting - and put it online. Among the yellowed texts are Newton's famous prediction of the apocalypse in 2060.

Newton revolutionized physics, mathematics and astronomy in the 17th and 18th century, laying the foundations for most of classical mechanics - with the principal of universal gravitation and the three laws of motion bearing his name.

However, the curator of Israel's national library's humanities collection said Newton was also a devout Christian who dealt far more in theology than he did in physics and believed that scripture provided a "code" to the natural world.

"Today, we tend to make a distinction between science and faith, but to Newton it was all part of the same world," said Milka Levy-Rubin. "He believed that careful study of holy texts was a type of science, that if analyzed correctly could predict what was to come."

Cisco challenges Microsoft takeover of Skype in EU

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:56 EST

Networking company Cisco said Wednesday that it is challenging Microsoft's $8.5 billion takeover of Skype at the European Union's top court to ensure Microsoft won't block other video conferencing services.

Microsoft completed the deal in October shortly after the European Commission, the EU's competition regulator, cleared the takeover. Microsoft Corp. hopes that owning Skype will allow it to better compete with other tech giants including Apple Inc. or Google Inc.

But for Cisco Systems Inc., the world's largest maker of computer networking equipment, the Skype deal creates a serious challenger to its video conferencing systems.

"Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability," Marthin De Beer, the head of Cisco's video conferencing division, wrote in a blog post.

Video conferencing equipment is a relatively small part of Cisco's overall sales, but it's growing rapidly. Cisco's latest major acquisition was of Tandberg, a Norwegian maker of video conferencing equipment. Cisco spent $3.4 billion for the company in 2010.

Zynga's stock falls after 4Q report disappoints

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:56 EST

Investors sold off shares of Zynga on Wednesday after the company behind the most popular Facebook games fell shy of high expectations for its first earnings report as a publicly traded company.

Zynga Inc. of "FarmVille" and "CastleVille" fame reported better fourth-quarter results than what Wall Street was expecting, at least according to the average estimate compiled by FactSet. But Barclays analyst Mark May said the results fell short of some recent, more bullish expectations.

The company had 54 million daily active users in the fourth quarter, which May called "an improvement from recent trends." But he added that Zynga revenue growth seemed to benefit from a growth in the number of mobile users and paid downloads of its mobile games, as well as from advertising revenue.

This, he said suggests that non-mobile, online metrics - in other words, its Facebook games - "may have been a bit soft."

Zynga did not have an immediate comment on May's report Wednesday.

Against tough odds, Sarkozy is seeking second term

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:13 EST

Nicolas Sarkozy threw himself Wednesday into what may be the toughest fight of his political career: Unpopular for years and running a feeble economy, the divisive French president announced he's running for a second term.

The man who improved French relations with the United States, rallied European leaders to ward off financial meltdown and kicked off international airstrikes in Libya is widely disliked back at home. Polls suggest his Socialist challenger will be the one attending world summits come May.

But Sarkozy is not one to give up easily. He pledged Wednesday to get the jobless back in the workforce and new reforms to ensure a "strong France" and that the French "way of life" can survive the 21st century.

"Yes, I am a candidate," he said on national TV network TF1 on Wednesday night, ending weeks of largely artificial suspense over whether he would run.

Pollsters say the president will face an uphill battle to convince voters that they should elect him again. He has only two months to change minds: The first round of the two-round vote is April 22.

Urgent tweet in Kenya village: Help, sheep missing

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:16 EST

When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher's home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.

"My wife and I were terrified," said teacher Michael Kimotho. "But the alarm raised by the chief helped."

The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariuki regularly sends out tweets about missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village. Lanet Umoja is 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the capital, Nairobi.

"There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi's father," he tweeted recently in the Swahili language. The sheep was soon recovered.

Kariuki said that even the thieves in his village follow him on Twitter. Earlier this year, he tweeted about the theft of a cow, and later the cow was found abandoned, tied to a pole.

FCC plans to nix wireless network that may jam GPS

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:13 EST

Federal officials plan to kill a proposal to build a new national high-speed wireless network after concluding it would in some cases jam personal-navigation and other GPS devices.

The Federal Communications Commission sought comments Wednesday on revoking LightSquared's permit after a federal agency that coordinates wireless signals, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, concluded that there's no way to eliminate the risk of interference with GPS devices.

The FCC had seen LightSquared's proposal as a way to make more airwaves available to feed consumers' appetites for movies, music and games on a variety of mobile devices.

Makers of GPS devices and those who rely on them feared that GPS signals would suffer the way a radio station can get drowned out by a stronger broadcast in a nearby channel. The problem is that sensitive GPS receivers, designed to pick up relatively weak signals from space, could be overwhelmed by high-power signals from as many as 40,000 LightSquared transmitters on the ground. LightSquared planned to transmit on a frequency adjacent to that used by GPS.

When the FCC gave LightSquared tentative approval last year to build the network, it said the company wouldn't be allowed to start operations until the government was satisfied that any problems are addressed. LightSquared and the FCC had insisted the new network could co-exist with GPS systems.

Swiss craft janitor satellites to grab space junk

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:41 EST

The tidy Swiss want to clean up space.

Swiss scientists said Wednesday they plan to launch a "janitor satellite" specially designed to get rid of space junk, the orbiting debris that can do serious and costly damage to valuable satellites or even manned space ships.

The 10-million-franc ($11-million) satellite called CleanSpace One - the prototype for a family of such satellites - is being built by the Swiss Space Center at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology in Lausanne, or EPFL.

Its launch would come within three to five years and its first tasks will be to grab two Swiss satellites that were launched in 2009 and 2010 but will be phased out of use, EPFL said.

The U.S. space agency NASA says over 500,000 pieces of spent rocket stages, broken satellites and other debris are orbiting Earth. The debris travels at speeds approaching 17,500 miles per hour (28,000 kilometers per hour), fast enough to destroy or inflict expensive and time-draining damage on a satellite or spacecraft. Collisions, in turn, generate more fragments floating in space.

Comcast subscribers almost stop cancelling cable

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:22 EST

It's become the routine in the cable industry that subscribers stream out the door every quarter, hanging up on cable in favor of service from satellite or phone companies. But in the October to December quarter, Comcast Corp. nearly managed to stop that flow.

The country's largest cable company on Wednesday said it lost 17,000 TV customers in the fourth quarter, the smallest number of defections in five years. It compares with a loss of 135,000 subscribers in the same quarter a year earlier.

Comcast credits more video programming available on more screens, like tablets and phones, and better customer service for the improved retention. Its stock jumped nearly 5 percent Wednesday.

CEO Brian Roberts said the company will start growing its video subscriber base once the economy improves and new households start forming.

"We may not get back to full growth on video for a while, because we don't see housing growth at the moment, but some day, that's going to happen," he told analysts on a conference call.

Alibaba to reach out to Yahoo CEO on stalled deal

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:06 EST

Alibaba Group and Japan's Softbank will go directly to Yahoo's chief executive, bypassing negotiators from the U.S. Internet company, after talks over the sale of Yahoo's Asian holdings broke down, a person familiar with the negotiations said Wednesday.

The struggling Internet company has been in discussions to sell its stakes in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yahoo Japan back to Alibaba and Yahoo Japan shareholder Softbank Corp.

But the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential, said that Softbank and Alibaba will go directly to Yahoo Inc. CEO Scott Thompson for more clarity after talks broke down over the terms. The person said Yahoo's negotiating team seemed to have different ideas from the company's leaders.

"Softbank and Alibaba will be reaching out to Scott Thompson to get clarity on what the heck is going on," said the person, adding that the two Asian companies are still "very much in alignment."

The fate of Yahoo's Asian holdings remains in limbo after negotiations abruptly broke off. It's the latest twist in the drama that has been swirling around Yahoo since it fired Carol Bartz as CEO five months ago.

Yahoo faces investor mutiny as Asia talks unravel

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:56 EST

Yahoo's hopes for a fresh start under a new CEO faded Tuesday as its closely watched discussions to sell most of its Asian holdings unraveled and a frustrated shareholder announced that he will try to seize four seats on the struggling Internet company's board.

The developments, which unfolded within a few hours of each other, mean Yahoo's recently hired CEO Scott Thompson will have to deal with more uncertainty and potential upheaval than he probably would have liked as he tries to end a strategic and financial malaise that has depressed the company's stock price for years.

"The honeymoon is already over," said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. "Yahoo is probably looking at another year of turmoil."

Yahoo Inc. has been trying to appease shareholders by entering negotiations to sell two of its most valuable assets - its stakes in China's Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan - in a complicated deal that could have generated billions of dollars for dividends and possible acquisitions. The company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., had sought to avoid a confrontation with one of its largest shareholders, New York hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, by purging its board of four longtime directors, including Chairman Roy Bostock.

Both those efforts foundered Tuesday.

Zynga posts 4Q net loss on IPO-related stock costs

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:21 EST

Online game maker Zynga Inc. reported a net loss for the last three months of 2011, weighed down by hefty stock-compensation expenses and other costs in its first quarter as a public company.

Its adjusted earnings and revenue inched past Wall Street's expectations, but that wasn't enough to lift the stock of the company that is behind the most popular games played on Facebook. Zynga's stock fell 6 percent in after-hours trading following its report.

San Francisco-based Zynga said Tuesday that it lost $435 million, or $1.22 per share, in the fourth quarter. That's down from earnings of $16.1 million, or 5 cents per share, a year earlier when it was still privately held.

Adjusted earnings were 5 cents per share in the latest quarter, surpassing Wall Street's expectations by 2 cents. This figure excludes one-time items, including $510 million in stock-compensation expenses triggered by Zynga's initial public offering of stock in mid-December.

Revenue rose 59 percent from a year earlier to $311 million as Zynga grew its user base, ad revenue and the money it makes from games such as "CityVille," "FarmVille and "Zynga Poker." On average, analysts surveyed by FactSet were expecting $302 million.

Yahoo's talks to sell Asian assets unravel

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 20:36 EST

As Yahoo tries to head in a new direction, the fate of the struggling Internet company's Asian holdings remains in limbo.

The negotiations to sell Yahoo's stakes in China's Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan abruptly broke off in a disagreement over the sales price and the best way to get the complex deal done, according to a person familiar with the matter. Another person familiar with talks said Yahoo had second thoughts after agreeing to the sales price in a 300-page proposal outlining the proposed deal in late December.

"It was the culmination of a lot of little items," one person said of the deal's collapse.

Both people spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity because the negotiations are considered to be confidential, despite repeated leaks about the discussions during the past few months.

All Things D, a technology blog affiliated with The Wall Street Journal, reported earlier that the talks had unraveled.

Bulgaria could suspend vote on trade agreement

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:53 EST

Bulgaria could join Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland in delaying its decision on whether to sign an international copyright treaty that some Internet users say could lead to online censorship.

Bulgarian Economy Minister Traicho Traikov said Tuesday he will ask his government to suspend ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement on Wednesday until the EU has dealt with opposition to it.

Last weekend, protests were held against the treaty in Bulgaria, Poland, Germany, Finland and other EU nations.

It aims to harmonize international standards on protecting the rights of those who produce music, movies, pharmaceuticals, fashion, and other products that often fall victim to piracy and intellectual property theft.

Hackers claim attack on American tear gas company

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 11:53 EST

A U.S. security company whose tear gas has been used against Egyptian demonstrators has become the latest victim of the Anonymous movement, hackers claimed Tuesday.

In a statement posted to the Internet, hackers claimed to have broken into Combined Systems Inc.'s website and stolen personal information belonging to clients and employees of the Jamestown, Pennsylvania-based firm. They accused the company of being run by war profiteers who sell "mad chemical weapons to militaries and cop shops around the world."

The hackers' claims could not immediately be verified, although the company's website was down Tuesday.

Messages left for Combined Systems executives Donald Smith and Jacob Kravel went unreturned. A customer service representative said senior employees were unavailable for comment because they were in a meeting.

Anonymous has claimed a series of Web attacks worldwide and has increasingly focused on security companies, law enforcement and governmental organizations. The group has often worked in tandem with the Occupy protest movement in the U.S. and has expressed solidarity with the pro-democracy activists across the Arab world.

Angry Birds join Facebook, hope for 800M likes

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:43 EST

Angry Birds has joined Facebook.

The popular avian menace game debuted on the social network globally Tuesday.

Rovio Asia senior vice president Henri Holm said the company launched the new version of the game in Jakarta because it's the "world's most Facebook-connected city."

He said he hoped the game could reach more than 800 million users worldwide. More than 17 percent of Indonesia's 240 million people have Facebook accounts.

He said more than 17 million are in Jakarta and surrounding areas.

UnitedHealth unveils patient info service for MDs

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:28 EST

UnitedHealth Group's Optum business is launching a service that allows doctors to share information about patients over the Internet, as health care companies continue their push to improve care with better coordination.

The system, known as cloud computing, involves storing information and software applications on remote servers that are accessed through a secure Internet connection.

In health care, this means a doctor does not have to go to a particular computer for patient information or care updates. He or she can use portable devices like smart phones or tablet computers.

Optum's cloud provides a platform that health care providers can use for software that helps them track patients. For instance, a doctor can use cloud-based applications, or apps, to receive automatic updates on a hospitalized patient's condition or to be notified when a patient visits an emergency room or fails to fill prescriptions, a company spokesman said.

Currently, most doctors have to rely on patients to tell them when they visit another physician or the ER.

Review: 'The Darkness II' not worth embracing

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:38 EST

When the demonic first-person game "The Darkness" was released in 2007, it was a twisted breath of fresh air among all the war simulators and space-marine romps.

AP video game reviewer Lou Kesten called it an "intriguing mix of stealth and first-person shooting."

Unfortunately, a sequel that's arrived five years later isn't as much of a revelation.

"The Darkness II" (2K Games, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, $59.99), developed by Digital Extremes instead of Starbreeze Studios, feels like an unworthy follow-up that's just a little too late. Jackie Estacado is back as a mob boss possessed by an ancient baddie known as the Darkness, which appears as snakelike tentacles jutting from his back.

After two years of keeping the Darkness at bay, an assassination attempt reanimates those light-averse supernatural forces residing within Jackie, who is still reeling from the shocking death of his girlfriend in the first game. The story by veteran comic-book writer Paul Jenkins is frustratingly uneven, and the single-player campaign is far too short.

AP sues Meltwater News claiming copyright offense

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:06 EST

The Associated Press is suing a digital news distributor, claiming it infringed on AP copyrights.

The complaint, filed Tuesday in New York federal court, alleges that Meltwater U.S. Holding Inc. and its Meltwater News Service have been illegally selling content created by the AP, a 166-year-old news cooperative that sells its services to newspapers, broadcasters and websites around the world.

Meltwater News, based in San Francisco, is an 11-year-old electronic news clipping service that helps its clients monitor how they are covered in the press.

The suit alleges that Meltwater News has been pilfering current and past material from the AP and other news providers.

"Meltwater News is a parasitic distribution service that competes directly with traditional news sources without paying license fees to cover the costs of creating those stories," Tom Curley, AP 's president and CEO, said in a statement. "It has a significant negative impact on the ability of AP to continue providing the high-quality news reports on which the public relies."

Ahead of the Bell: Zynga to post 4Q results

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:23 EST

Zynga will show whether it was able to further boost its rapidly growing number of followers, as well as its profit and revenue as a publicly traded company, when the online game maker reports fourth-quarter results Tuesday.

It will be Zynga's first quarterly report since going public in December. Analysts, on average, expect the San-Francisco company to post earnings of 3 cents per share on revenue of $302.1 million, according to a poll by FactSet.

Zynga Inc. makes nearly all of its money from its Facebook games such as "CityVille," "FarmVille" and "Zynga Poker." The games are free to play, but people pay small amounts of money for virtual items such as poker chips or farm animals.

The company had revenue of $195.8 million in the final quarter of 2010, and revenue grew by double digits - 24 percent, 15 percent and 10 percent - in the first three quarters of 2011. However, Wall Street expects Zynga to post revenue below last year's third quarter, which amounted to $306.8 million. That might not be good enough for investors seeking more rapid growth from a company like Zynga.

Yet Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter thinks the company is going to surprise Wall Street with revenue of at least $335 million, driven by significant growth and increased usage by people using mobile devices.

Independent group inspecting Apple suppliers

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:48 EST

Apple said Monday that an independent group, the Fair Labor Association, has started inspecting working conditions in the Chinese factories where its iPads and iPhones are assembled.

Amid growing criticism over labor and environmental practices -especially in China- Apple, last month, disclosed a list of suppliers for its popular gadgets for the first time.

The FLA team began the inspections Monday morning at Foxconn City in Shenzhen, China, Apple said Monday. The complex employs and houses hundreds of thousands of workers.

Foxconn, a unit of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. employs an estimated 1 million to 1.1 million people in China at a series of huge factory campuses. Foxconn assembles iPads and iPhones for Apple, Xbox 360 gaming consoles for Microsoft and other gadgets for companies including Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

In 2010, there was a rash of suicides at Foxconn's Shenzhen plant. Plant managers installed nets to prevent more people from committing suicide by jumping from the roof. A May explosion at the company's Chengdu, China, plant killed three people and injured 15. A New York Times story published Jan. 26 reported on accidents and long hours in Foxconn factories, based on workers' accounts. Foxconn disputed allegations of back-to-back shifts and crowded living conditions.

US, EU clear Google's $12.5B Motorola Mobility bid

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:33 EST

Google's $12.5 billion bid to buy cellphone maker Motorola Mobility has won approvals from U.S. and European antitrust regulators, moving Google a major step closer to completing the biggest deal in its 13-year history.

Monday's blessings mean Google Inc. just needs to clear regulatory hurdles in China, Taiwan and Israel before it can take control of Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. and expand into manufacturing phones, tablet computers and other consumer devices for the first time.

Getting government approval in China looms as the biggest stumbling block remaining. Google's relationship with China's ruling party has been on shaky ground since the company blamed hackers in that country for breaking into its computers two years ago. The breach prompted Google to move its Internet search engine from mainland China in protest of laws requiring some results to be censored.

Google prizes Motorola Mobility's more than 17,000 patents - a crucial weapon in an intellectual arms race with Apple, Microsoft and other rivals maneuvering to gain more control over smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices. Google announced the deal six months ago.

The deal will "enhance competition and offer consumers faster innovation, greater choice and wonderful user experiences," Don Harrison, Google's deputy general counsel wrote in a blog post.

Apple stock breaks $500 level, continuing rally

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:08 EST

Apple's stock broke above $500 for the first time Monday. It was the latest step in a rally that began more than two weeks ago, when the company reported staggering sales and profits for the holiday quarter.

The shares hit $503.83 soon after opening, before subsiding to $502.60 in after-hours trading. That was up $9.18, or 1.9 percent, from Friday's close.

Apple Inc. and Exxon Mobil Corp. have been vying for the position as most valuable company in the world since last summer, but the latest rally has made the gadget maker 17 percent more valuable than the oil company. Its market capitalization is now $465 billion, compared to Exxon's $400 billion.

On Jan. 24, Apple posted net income of $13.06 billion for the quarter that ended in December, more than doubling its profits from the year before. Sales were $46.3 billion, up 73 percent from a year ago.

Even before it posted blow-out results, Wall Street analysts had pointed to a big gap between Apple's share price and its earnings. By common methods of valuation that compare a stock price to earnings and earnings growth, the stock should be worth much more.

Iran to unveil new nuclear projects Wednesday

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:38 EST

Iran's official news agency says that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will unveil new nuclear projects on Wednesday.

IRNA did not say in its Tuesday report what the projects would be. But an independent news website that regularly reports on nuclear developments says the ceremonies are likely to include the formal inauguration of the the underground Fordo uranium enrichment site in central Iran, and starting operations on two lines of centrifuges there.

Irannuc.ir also says that the president is also likely to announce the final stage of production of nuclear fuel rods to be used in a Tehran research reactor.

The U.S. and its allies accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Iranians get back Internet email access

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:18 EST

Many Iranian web users say their access to foreign email services such as Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail appears to have been restored after a four day outage.

Elaheh Ansari and Reza Estiar are among dozens of Internet users who told The Associated Press that their access was back on Monday.

The semiofficial Mehr agency had said that more than 30 million people in the country were affected by the outage.

Authorities in Iran's national telecommunications company declined to comment, saying the outage had no connection to them.

Iran has occasionally restricted the Internet since the turmoil that followed the 2009 presidential elections and blocked websites including Facebook, Twitter, Voice of America and the BBC Farsi service.

Baghdad's romance grows with Valentine's Day

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:13 EST

Iraq's capital is embracing Valentine's Day this year with a huge public display of affection in what its residents say is the nation's most amorous celebration of the holiday ever.

Street corners across Baghdad are blanketed with the synthetic red fur of teddy bears, while silken nighties and lip-shaped satin pillows hang in store fronts.

It's a vivid counterpoint to a place that's still a far cry from warm and fuzzy - with bombings remaining a fact of life since the withdrawal of U.S. forces two months ago.

"Valentine's Day is for everybody - not only for lovers," said Lina, a school administrator who would only identify herself by her first name. She was among the throngs browsing through an array of plush kittens, scented candles, red lamps and heart-shaped purses outside a store this weekend in the Baghdad downtown shopping district of Karradah.

"It's for you and I, for me and my brother, even for someone on the street. It's not just about me and my fiance," Lina said. "Iraqis need happy moments to make them forget what they have been through - we have had enough sadness."

Malaysia defends deportation of Saudi journalist

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:58 EST

Malaysia's government on Monday defended its decision to deport a young Saudi journalist who may face persecution at home for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad on Twitter.

International rights groups have slammed the deportation but Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Malaysia was not a safe haven for fugitives.

Jiddah-based newspaper columnist Hamza Kashgari, 23, was detained Thursday at the Malaysian airport while in transit to New Zealand. He was deported Sunday despite fears from rights groups that he may face the death penalty if charged with blasphemy over remarks he tweeted that many considered offensive.

"I will not allow Malaysia to be seen as a safe country for terrorists and those who are wanted by their countries of origin, and also be seen as a transit county," Hishammuddin said.

He said the deportation followed a request from the Saudi government. Allegations that Kashgari could be tortured and killed if he was sent back home are "ridiculous" because Saudi Arabia is a respectable country, he said.

AP IMPACT: USAID contractor work in Cuba detailed

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 09:13 EST

Piece by piece, in backpacks and carry-on bags, American aid contractor Alan Gross made sure laptops, smartphones, hard drives and networking equipment were secreted into Cuba. The most sensitive item, according to official trip reports, was the last one: a specialized mobile phone chip that experts say is often used by the Pentagon and the CIA to make satellite signals virtually impossible to track.

The purpose, according to an Associated Press review of Gross' reports, was to set up uncensored satellite Internet service for Cuba's small Jewish community.

The operation was funded as democracy promotion for the U.S. Agency for International Development, established in 1961 to provide economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Gross, however, identified himself as a member of a Jewish humanitarian group, not a representative of the U.S. government.

Cuban President Raul Castro called him a spy, and Gross was sentenced last March to 15 years in prison for seeking to "undermine the integrity and independence" of Cuba. U.S. officials say he did nothing wrong and was just carrying out the normal mission of USAID.

Gross said at his trial in Cuba that he was a "trusting fool" who was duped. But his trip reports indicate that he knew his activities were illegal in Cuba and that he worried about the danger, including possible expulsion.