Israel successfully tests missile defense system

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel successfully tested its newest missile defense system Sunday, the military said, a step toward making the third leg of what Israel calls its “multilayer missile defense” operational.

The “David’s Sling” system is designed to stop mid-range missiles. It successfully passed its test, shooting down its first missile in a drill Sunday in southern Israel, the military said.

The system is designed to intercept projectiles with ranges of up to 300 kilometers (180 miles).

Israel has also deployed Arrow systems for longer-range threats from Iran. The Iron Dome protects against short-range rockets fired by militants in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Iron Dome shot down hundreds of rockets from Gaza in this month’s round of fighting.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the success of Iron Dome highlighted the “immense importance” of such systems.

“David’s Sling,” also known “Magic Wand,” is developed by Israel’s Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and U.S.-based Raytheon Co. and is primarily designed to counter the large arsenal of Hezbollah rockets in Lebanon.

The military said the program, which is on schedule for deployment in 2014, would “provide an additional layer of defense against ballistic missiles.”

The next generation of the Arrow, now in the development stage, is set to be deployed in 2016. Called the Arrow 3, it is designed to strike its target outside the atmosphere, intercepting missiles closer to their launch sites. Together, the two Arrow systems would provide two chances to strike down incoming missiles.

Israel also uses U.S.-made Patriot missile defense batteries against mid-range missiles, though these failed to hit any of the 39 Scud missiles fired at Israel from Iraq In the first Gulf War 20 years ago. Manufacturers say the Patriot system has been improved since then.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Russia blames technical error for brief YouTube blacklisting

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian officials offered assurances they were not seeking to block access to YouTube on Wednesday, saying a technical error caused the popular video-sharing website to appear briefly on a register of sites containing banned content.

For about an hour, YouTube was listed on the newly-created register, which the government says is needed to fight child pornography but critics of President Vladimir Putin fear may be used to censor the Internet and stifle dissent.

YouTube was subsequently removed from the register, maintained by Russia‘s communications watchdog agency, Roskomnadzor, which said there was no plan to block access to the site.

“An unfortunate technical mistake occurred,” Roskomnadzor spokesman Vladimir Pikov said. “We work closely with them (YouTube). Basically, we see no reason now to apply towards its owners any preventive measures.”

Russia’s consumer protection rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said YouTube took down several videos earlier this week as requested by officials under the new law tightening Internet controls that took effect on November 1.

The blacklist includes websites containing pornographic images of children, instructions on how to make, use and where to get drugs, as well as others describing suicide methods.

Under the legislation, websites have three days to remove content considered harmful or illegal by Russian authorities before they can be blocked.

YouTube is owned by U.S.-based Google Inc..

A spokeswoman for Google in Russia, Alla Zabrovskaya, said all requests from the authorities are handled by the company’s global headquarters in the United States.

Anti-Putin activists, who have used the Internet to organize demonstrations, say the law is part of a crackdown on dissent orchestrated by the Kremlin since Putin, a former KGB spy, returned to presidency in May.

After a stint as prime minister, Putin was elected to a third presidential term in March after a series of opposition protests that were the biggest of his 13-year rule.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Sophie Hares)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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First Person: Unemployed, Disabled and Hungry for Work

Five million Americans are among the long-term unemployed–those without a job for 27 weeks or longer–according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 7.3 million are looking for work, while the unemployment rate sits at 7.9 percent. Numbers aside, individual stories illustrate how America is affected. To see how joblessness hits home, Yahoo News asked unemployed workers to share their job-hunting stories. Here’s one.

FIRST PERSON | I am 40 and live in Racine, Wis. I have been unemployed since I was 33. I try to find work, but I’ve been disabled since 27, and I do not collect Social Security or other income. On job applications, when I am asked if I have any disabilities, I answer yes.

I have even tried to travel to different states for employment. I am seeking employment where I can. I have tried Lowe’s, Home Depot and other similar stores. All I get are letters saying I do not qualify for employment.

By trade, I am a tattoo artist, a job I have been very good at until I became disabled. I have shoulder impingement syndrome, which consists of some of the following: torn ligaments, torn tendons, bone spurs, bursitis and arthritis.

And constant pain. I feel the weather. I hardly sleep. I wish I could be somewhere else, as it is hard on my mind to deal with on a daily basis.

Still, I try to find work where I can in this tough economy, and I am on several lists to be called and never have been called to date.

I am too proud to try to get Social Security. I cannot even afford insurance to get my condition fixed. I even have applied for local state insurance to get the problem resolved so I can work again, always with no luck. So I have remained unemployed now for over 10 years and going.

I injured myself, and I am not able to lift more than 10 pounds at a time or stand or sit for long periods of time.

I just want a job so I can try to cover the medical expenses myself since I cannot get help. Surgery costs are around $ 18,000, which sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I am no stranger to hard work. Since 12, I cut grass, shoveled snow, painted houses and fences, swept chimneys, worked in heat treatment plants with dirt and oil, worked in the casting of hot metals, laid brick, made bathroom sinks, swept floors in factories, did drill-press work, sanding work, and worked at fast food places.

I do not lie to get jobs or hid my injury. I do want to work, but I worry now that my disability will mean I won’t be hired by companies because they’re afraid it will come back on them and their company.

I cannot afford private insurance as I do not have steady income. Now I find whatever I can do to reach my goal of paying for my own surgery.

It is a sad world when you live in pain, day in and day out, and you want and need to find work.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Defeated Sierra Leone opposition says election flawed

FREETOWN (Reuters) – Sierra Leone’s main opposition party on Saturday attacked the credibility of a poll that saw incumbent President Ernest Bai Koroma elected to a second term in an outright victory.

The dispute risks tarnishing a vote deemed free and fair by observers and that many hope will help pave the way for an economic revival of the war-scarred West African nation.

Koroma’s main challenger Julius Maada Bio, a former military junta leader, said “systemic and widespread irregularities, malpractices and injustices … undermined the credibility of the results.”

While the SLPP stopped short of rejecting the results outright, a top party official said the chances it would accept its defeat when the party’s leadership meets on Tuesday were slim.

“It’s very unlikely. Our membership are very strong-hearted about it,” the SLPP’s national secretary general Banja Tejan-Sie told Reuters.

While analysts predicted ethnic loyalties would make it hard to secure the 55 percent of votes required for a first round victory in the November 15 election, Koroma and his All People’s Congress party won outright with 58.7 percent.

Bio garnered 37.4 percent of votes in a high turnout for the election, the third national poll since the end of a 1991-2002 civil war that made Sierra Leone notorious as a “blood diamonds” battleground for rebels and child soldiers.

At stake was the job of overseeing billions of dollars of investment in a natural resources boom with the potential to lift the gold, oil and iron-rich country from poverty.

Iron-ore shipments by British companies African Minerals and London Mining are expected to help the economy achieve 20 percent growth this year, below original forecasts of more than 50 percent, but still one of the highest growth rates on the planet.

While a large European Union observer mission said the advantage of incumbency meant the electoral playing field was skewed in favour of Koroma, it and other observers called the process free and fair.

More than 9,000 polling stations catered to the country of 5.5 million voters on election day.

In a statement released before the results on Friday, electoral commission chief Christiania Thorpe said recounts took place in 173 polling stations, however over-voting was only found to have occurred in five.

“It is mathematically impossible for the number of ballots in the ballot boxes to be recounted to impact the outcome of the presidential election,” the statement read.

Koroma’s spokesman Unisa Sesay said on Saturday that the poll result was credible and the NEC had thoroughly investigated the SLPP’s complaints.

“It’s not only Sierra Leoneans who are saying it,” he said. “Don’t forget that these are the elections that have been most comprehensively observed for a very long time.”

(Editing by Joe Bavier)

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Egypt reformist warns of turmoil from Morsi decree

CAIRO (AP) — Prominent Egyptian democracy advocate Mohammed ElBaradei warned Saturday of increasing turmoil that could potentially lead to the military stepping in unless the Islamist president rescinds his new, near absolute powers, as the country’s long fragmented opposition sought to unite and rally new protests.

Egypt‘s liberal and secular forces — long divided, weakened and uncertain amid the rise of Islamist parties to power — are seeking to rally themselves in response to the decrees issued this week by President Mohammed Morsi. The president granted himself sweeping powers to “protect the revolution” and made himself immune to judicial oversight.

The judiciary, which was the main target of Morsi’s edicts, pushed back Saturday. The country’s highest body of judges, the Supreme Judical Council, called his decrees an “unprecedented assault.” Courts in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria announced a work suspension until the decrees are lifted.

Outside the high court building in Cairo, several hundred demonstrators rallied against Morsi, chanting, “Leave! Leave!” echoing the slogan used against former leader Hosni Mubarak in last year’s uprising that ousted him. Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of young men who were shooting flares outside the court.

The edicts issued Wednesday have galvanized anger brewing against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails, ever since he took office in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president. Critics accuse the Brotherhood — which has dominated elections the past year — and other Islamists of monopolizing power and doing little to bring real reform or address Egypt’s mounting economic and security woes.

Oppositon groups have called for new nationwide rallies Tuesday — and the Muslim Brotherhood has called for rallies supporting Morsi the same day, setting the stage for new violence.

Morsi supporters counter that the edicts were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from further holding up moves to stability by disbanding the assembly writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Like parliament was, the assembly is dominated by Islamists. Morsi accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution’s goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament’s upper house.

In an interview with a handful of journalists, including The Associated Press, Nobel Peace laureate ElBaradei raised alarm over the impact of Morsi’s rulings, saying he had become “a new pharaoh.”

“There is a good deal of anger, chaos, confusion. Violence is spreading to many places and state authority is starting to erode slowly,” he said. “We hope that we can manage to do a smooth transition without plunging the country into a cycle of violence. But I don’t see this happening without Mr. Morsi rescinding all of this.”

Speaking of Egypt’s powerful military, ElBaradei said, “I am sure they are as worried as everyone else. You cannot exclude that the army will intervene to restore law and order” if the situation gets out of hand.

But anti-Morsi factions are chronically divided, with revolutionary youth activists, new liberal political parties that have struggled to build a public base and figures from the Mubarak era, all of whom distrust each other. The judiciary is also an uncomfortable cause for some to back, since it includes many Mubarak appointees who even Morsi opponents criticize as too tied to the old regime.

Opponents say the edicts gave Morsi near dictatorial powers, neutering the judiciary when he already holds both executive and legislative powers. One of his most controversial edicts gave him the right to take any steps to stop “threats to the revolution,” vague wording that activists say harkens back to Mubarak-era emergency laws.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests on Friday, sparking clashes between anti-and pro-Morsi crowds in several cities that left more than 200 people wounded.

On Saturday, new clashed broke out in the southern city of Assiut. Morsi opponents and members of the Muslim Brotherhood swung sticks and threw stones at each other outside the offices of the Brotherhood‘s political party, leaving at least seven injured.

ElBaradei and a six other prominent liberal leaders have announced the formation of a National Salvation Front aimed at rallying all non-Islamist groups together to force Morsi to rescind his edicts.

The National Salvation Front leadership includes several who ran against Morsi in this year’s presidential race — Hamdeen Sabahi, who finished a close third, former foreign minister Amr Moussa and moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh. ElBaradei says the group is also pushing for the creation of a new constitutional assembly and a unity government.

ElBaradei said it would be a long process to persuade Morsi that he “cannot get away with murder.”

“There is no middle ground, no dialogue before he rescinds this declaration. There is no room for dialogue until then.”

The grouping seems to represent a newly assertive political foray by ElBaradei, the former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. ElBaradei returned to Egypt in the year before Mubarak’s fall, speaking out against his rule, and was influential with many of the youth groups that launched the anti-Mubarak revolution.

But since Mubarak’s fall, he has been criticized by some as too Westernized, elite and Hamlet-ish, reluctant to fully assert himself as an opposition leader.

The Brotherhood‘s Freedom and Justice political party, once headed by Morsi, said Saturday in a statement that the president’s decision protects the revolution against former regime figures who have tried to erode elected institutions and were threatening to dissolve the constitutional assembly.

The Brotherhood warned in another statement that there were forces trying to overthrow the elected president in order to return to power. It said Morsi has a mandate to lead, having defeated one of Mubarak’s former prime ministers this summer in a closely contested election.

Morsi’s edicts also removed Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor general first appointed by Mubarak, who many Egyptians accused of not prosecuting former regime figures strongly enough.

Speaking to a gathering of judges cheering support for him at the high court building in Cairo, Mahmoud warned of a “vicious campaign” against state institutions. He also said judicial authorities are looking into the legality of the decision to remove him — setting up a Catch-22 of legitimacy, since under Morsi’s decree, the courts cannot overturn any of his decisions.

“I thank you for your support of judicial independence,” he told the judges.

“Morsi will have to reverse his decision to avoid the anger of the people,” said Ahmed Badrawy, a labor ministry employee protesting at the courthouse. “We do not want to have an Iranian system here,” he added, referring to fears that hardcore Islamists may try to turn Egypt into a theocracy.

Several hundred protesters remained in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Saturday, where a number of tents have been erected in a sit-in following nearly a week of clashes with riot police.

____

Brian Rohan contributed to this report from Cairo.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sony at greater risk than Panasonic in electronics downturn: Fitch

TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp has a better chance than rival Sony Corp of surviving Japan‘s consumer electronics slump because of its unglamorous but stable appliance business of washing machines and fridges, credit rating agency Fitch said Friday.

Fitch cut Panasonic‘s rating by two notches to BB and Sony three notches to BB minus on Thursday, the first time one of the three major ratings agencies have put the creditworthiness of either company into junk-bond territory.

Rival agencies Moody’s and S&P rate both of Japan’s consumer electronic giants at the same level, just above junk status. Moody’s last cut its rating on Panasonic on Tuesday.

Panasonic “has the advantage of a relatively stable consumer appliance business that is still generating positive margins”, Matt Jamieson, Fitch’s head of Asia-Pacific, said in a conference call on Friday to explain its ratings downgrades.

But at Sony, he added, “most of their electronic business are loss making, they appear to be overstretched.”

Japan’s TV industry has been bested by cheaper, more innovative models from Samsung Electronics and other foreign rivals, while tablets and smartphones built by Apple Inc have become the dominant consumer electronics devices.

Investors are focusing on the fate of Sony and Panasonic after another struggling Japanese consumer electronics firm, Sharp Corp, maker of the Aquos TV, secured a $ 4.6 billion bail-out by banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Sony and Panasonic have chosen divergent survival paths.

Panasonic, maker of the Viera TV, is looking to expand its businesses in appliances, solar panels, lithium batteries and automotive components. Appliances amount to around only 6 percent of the company’s sales, but they generate margins of more than 6 percent and make up a big chunk of operating profit.

Sony, creator of the Walkman, is doubling down on consumer gadgets in a bid to regain ground from Samsung and Apple in mobile devices while bolstering digital cameras and gaming.

The latest downgrades will curtail the ability of both Japanese companies to raise money in credit markets to help fund restructurings of their business portfolios.

For now, however, that impact is limited, given the support Panasonic and Sony are receiving from their banks.

In October, Panasonic, which expects to lose $ 10 billion in the year to March 31, secured $ 7.6 billion of loan commitments from banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ, a financing backstop it says will help it avoid having to seek capital in credit markets.

Sony, which has forecast a full-year profit of $ 1.63 billion helped by the sale of a chemicals business to a Japanese state bank, announced plans to raise $ 1.9 billion through a convertible bond before the latest rating downgrade.

Thomson Reuters’ Starmine structural model, which evaluates market views of credit risk, debt levels and changes in asset values gives Panasonic and Sony an implied rating of BB minus. Sharp’s implied rating is three notches lower at B minus.

Standard & Poor’s rates Panasonic and Sony at BBB, the second lowest of the investment grade, while Moody’s Investors Service has them on Baa3, the lowest of its high-grade category. Moody’s has a negative outlook for both firms while S&P sees a stable outlook for Panasonic and a negative one for Sony.

Stock markets in Japan were closed on Friday for a national holiday.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Canada meat plant operations halted on food safety concerns

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadian food inspectors on Friday said they have suspended operations at a meat-processing plant in Edmonton, Alberta, for failing to properly track its deliveries after detecting the Listeria bacteria on an employee.

The incident comes just a month after a major health scare in Canada over tainted beef at another meat plant in the province.

Capital Packers Inc detected the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes — which can cause fever, nausea and even meningitis in infected people — on a worker’s sleeve and on Monday notified the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

While such a finding is routine and there is no evidence that any food was contaminated, the CFIA suspended the company’s license as a precautionary measure after finding it was unable to properly track the whereabouts of its products.

“The company’s ability to understand the distribution of their products is in question and is an element of concern for us, hence the license suspension,” Paul Mayers, associate vice-president of programs at the CFIA, told reporters on a teleconference.

Initially, the company told the CFIA that the potentially affected products were under its control. The CFIA’s own investigation determined that they may in fact have been delivered to several provinces, Mayers said.

In September, the XL Foods meat plant in Alberta was shut down for about a month after it produced millions of pounds of beef tainted with the E. coli bacteria that sickened at least 16 people in Canada.

Capital Packers makes bacon, sausages, fresh meats and other products and sells them in Western Canada and the Northwest Territories, according to its Web site.

The company has voluntary recalled ham sausages under the brand names Capital and Compliments.

“The ham sausage recall that is underway is not directly related to the suspension, however we are voluntarily recalling this product because there was found to be a positive for listeria on an employee sleeve working on a packaging equipment line,” the company said in a statement.

“We are working closely with the CFIA to rectify this situation in a timely manner.”

CFIA officials said the plant would be closed until they were satisfied Capital Packers has improved its record-keeping and that additional products could be added to the recall as the investigation continues.

(Reporting by Louise Egan; Editing by Bob Burgdorfer)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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HP and UBS Hide Behind Their Scapegoats

The rogue is a perfect villain. This week we had two: Kweku Adoboli, the former UBS trader who got seven years in jail for rogue trades, and Mike Lynch, the rogue leader who allegedly tricked Hewlett-Packard into buying Autonomy with dodgy accounting. Both are being blamed for causing massive damage—a $ 2.3 billion loss for UBS (UBS) and an $ 8.8 billion writedown for HP (HPQ). Both are colorful characters who’d made their homes in London. Adoboli is a Ghanian-born son of privilege who was nurtured as a high-potential player at the bank; Lynch is the Irish-born mathematical genius and entrepreneur who’d built one of the U.K.’s greatest tech companies.

Whatever blame they may deserve for their actions—and Lynch has said several times this week that he deserves none—neither is a solo actor in these losses. The companies that are portraying themselves as victims deserve some blame, too.

Let’s start with UBS. On the surface, it’s a clear-cut case. Adoboli was found guilty of unauthorized trades and will spend years in jail. But UBS is also under scrutiny for failing to detect the trades. Ben Moshinsky and Lindsay Fortado of Bloomberg News report that UBS faces a fine of about £45 million from the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority. If so, that would be a welcome reminder that culture plays a role in many crimes. At the very least, UBS had a culture that enabled this young man to rack up stunning losses with relatively little oversight.

Adoboli himself goes further. In an e-mail to Bloomberg News, he says leaders such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Chief Executive Jamie Dimon and former Barclays (BCS) chief Bob Diamond were rewarded for taking big risks early in their career. Whether or not that’s true, neither was accused of committing fraud. But Adoboli makes an interesting point. Imagine if his behavior had resulted in a $ 2.3 billion gain for the bank. Would he have been hauled into court for those unauthorized trades? Would he even be fired? Think about the accolades that AIG (AIG) heaped on its London-based financial products unit when its credit default swaps boosted the bottom line. Then the housing market blew up and those exotic instruments essentially brought down the company, forcing a AAA-rated global giant to put itself in government hands. Suddenly, a role model unit was cast as a rogue.

The story behind HP and the culpability of Autonomy founder Mike Lynch continues to unfold. What we do know is that more than a dozen firms were involved in advising on the $ 11 billion acquisition last year. We know that HP chief Meg Whitman, who was on the board at the time of the deal, told investors on Nov. 20 that the company now needs to take a $ 8.8 billion charge on the deal because of a “willful sustained effort” to “inflate the underlying financial metrics” to “mislead investors and potential buyers.” And who inflated those numbers? “Some” Autonomy employees, according to Whitman, though she also blames accounting firm Deloitte for failing to catch it. (The FBI has opened an investigation.) What about the HP management or directors who voted to pay an 80 percent premium on top of what investors thought Autonomy was worth? Do they deserve any blame? Well, Apotheker and the former head of strategy are gone.

But let’s not ignore the environment in which this massive hit is taking place. HP is a company that’s battling a persistent decline in its revenue, net income, and market share. Last quarter, it took an $ 8 billion charge for another acquisition—Electronic Data Systems, which HP bought for $ 13.9 billion in 2008. HP’s stock has more than halved since Apotheker left. Lynch may have been a marketing genius in allegedly selling HP a bill of goods on his company, but even he can’t be blamed for that.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Beijing’s S. China Sea rivals protest passport map

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has enraged several neighbors with a few dashes on a map, printed in its newly revised passports that show it staking its claim on the entire South China Sea and even Taiwan.

Inside the passports, an outline of China printed in the upper left corner includes Taiwan and the sea, hemmed in by the dashes. The change highlights China’s longstanding claim on the South China Sea in its entirety, though parts of the waters also are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.

China’s official maps have long included Taiwan and the South China Sea as Chinese territory, but the act of including them in its passports could be seen as a provocation since it would require other nations to tacitly endorse those claims by affixing their official seals to the documents.

Ruling party and opposition lawmakers alike condemned the map in Taiwan, a self-governed island that split from China after a civil war in 1949. They said it could harm the warming ties the historic rivals have enjoyed since Ma Ying-jeou became president 4 1/2 years ago.

“This is total ignorance of reality and only provokes disputes,” said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the Cabinet-level body responsible for ties with Beijing. The council said the government cannot accept the map.

Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told reporters in Manila that he sent a note to the Chinese Embassy that his country “strongly protests” the image. He said China’s claims include an area that is “clearly part of the Philippines’ territory and maritime domain.”

The Vietnamese government said it had also sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, demanding that Beijing remove the “erroneous content” printed in the passport.

In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry said the new passport was issued based on international standards. China began issuing new versions of its passports to include electronic chips on May 15, though criticism cropped up only this week.

“The design of this type of passports is not directed against any particular country,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily media briefing Friday. “We hope the relevant countries can calmly treat it with rationality and restraint so that the normal visits by the Chinese and foreigners will not be unnecessarily interfered with.”

It’s unclear whether China’s South China Sea neighbors will respond in any way beyond protesting to Beijing. China, in a territorial dispute with India, once stapled visas into passports to avoid stamping them.

“Vietnam reserves the right to carry out necessary measures suitable to Vietnamese law, international law and practices toward such passports,” Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said.

Taiwan does not recognize China’s passports in any case; Chinese visitors to the island have special travel documents.

China maintains it has ancient claims to all of the South China Sea, despite much of it being within the exclusive economic zones of Southeast Asian neighbors. The islands and waters are potentially rich in oil and gas.

There are concerns that the disputes could escalate into violence. China and the Philippines had a tense maritime standoff at a shoal west of the main Philippine island of Luzon early this year.

The United States, which has said it takes no sides in the territorial spats but that it considers ensuring safe maritime traffic in the waters to be in its national interest, has backed a call for a “code of conduct” to prevent clashes in the disputed territories. But it remains unclear if and when China will sit down with rival claimants to draft such a legally binding nonaggression pact.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to meet Dec. 12 to discuss claims in the South China Sea and the role of China.

___

Associated Press writers Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Vietnam, and researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]

Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]

That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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