In response to a court ruling today in favor of hedge fund manager David Einhorn, Apple has yanked a proxy proposal that would eliminate its ability to issue "blank check" preferred stock without investor approval.
Apple issued a statement concerning the ruling by U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan, who granted Einhorn's bid to block next week's shareholder vote on the proposal:
"We are disappointed with the court's ruling. Proposal #2 is part of our efforts to further enhance corporate governance and serve our shareholders' best interests. Unfortunately, due to today's decision, shareholders will not be able to vote on Proposal #2 at our annual meeting next week."
Greenlight Capital, a hedge fund run by the famed short seller Einhorn, sued Apple on February 7, asserting that the company needed to distribute preferred stock to current shareholders and that Apple had balked at the idea when it was first discussed. Einhorn argues that issuing high-yielding preferred shares to existing shareholders would allow Apple to share the value on the balance sheet but still hold a large amount of cash.
Apple's latest proxy statement, which details items up for a vote at its February 27 shareholder meeting, had included a proposal that would eliminate such preferred stock. Einhorn's suit sought an injunction to prevent Apple from bundling that provision with several other items. Rather, he wanted each item to be voted on separately.
YAKIMA, Wash. Six underground tanks that hold a brew of radioactive and toxic waste at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are leaking, federal and state officials said Friday.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the leaking material poses no immediate risk to public safety or the environment because it would take a while — perhaps years — to reach groundwater.
But the leaking tanks raise new concerns about delays for emptying them and strike another blow to federal efforts to clean up south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation, where successes often are overshadowed by delays, budget overruns and technological challenges.
Department of Energy spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said there was no immediate health risk and said federal officials would work with Washington state to address the matter.
Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee, right, is joined by Maia Bellon, director of the Department of Ecology, at a news conference to discuss a tank leak at Hanford Nuclear Reservation, on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013, in Olympia, Wash.
/ AP Photo/Rachel La Corte
State officials just last week announced that one of Hanford's 177 underground tanks was leaking 150 to 300 gallons a year, posing a risk to groundwater and rivers. So far, nearby monitoring wells haven't detected higher radioactivity levels.
Inslee traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to discuss the problem with federal officials. He said Friday that he learned in meetings that six tanks are leaking waste.
"We received very disturbing news today," the governor said. "I think that we are going to have a course of new action and that will be vigorously pursued in the next several weeks."
The federal government built the Hanford facility at the height of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb. The remote site produced plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and continued supporting the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal for years.
Today, it is the most contaminated nuclear site in the country, still surrounded by sagebrush but with Washington's Tri-Cities of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco several miles downriver.
Hanford's tanks hold some 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — and many of those tanks are known to have leaked in the past. An estimated 1 million gallons of radioactive liquid already leaked there.
The tanks also are long past their intended 20-year life span — raising concerns that even more tanks could be leaking — though they were believed to have been stabilized in 2005.
Inslee said the falling waste levels in the six tanks were missed because only a narrow band of measurements was evaluated, rather than a wider band that would have shown the levels changing over time.
"It's like if you're trying to determine if climate change is happening, only looking at the data for today," he said. "Perhaps human error, the protocol did not call for it. But that's not the most important thing at the moment. The important thing now is to find and address the leakers."
There are legal, moral and ethical considerations to cleaning up the Hanford site at the national level, Inslee said, adding that he will continue to insist that the Energy Department completely clean up the site.
He also stressed the state would impose a "zero-tolerance" policy on radioactive waste leaking into the soil.
Cleanup is expected to last decades and cost billions of dollars.
The federal government already spends $2 billion each year on Hanford cleanup — one-third of its entire budget for nuclear cleanup nationally. The Energy Department has said it expects funding levels to remain the same for the foreseeable future, but a new Energy Department report released this week includes annual budgets of as much as $3.5 billion during some years of the cleanup effort.
Much of that money goes toward construction of a plant to convert the underground waste into glasslike logs for safe, secure storage. The plant, last estimated at more than $12.3 billion, is billions of dollars over budget and behind schedule. It isn't expected to being operating until at least 2019.
Given those delays, the federal government will have to show that there is adequate storage for the waste in the meantime, Inslee said.
"We are not convinced of this," he said. "There will be a robust exchange of information in the coming weeks to get to the bottom of this."
Inslee and Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber have championed building additional tanks to ensure safe storage of the waste until the plant is completed. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said earlier this week that he shares their concerns about the integrity of the tanks but he wants more scientific information to determine it's the correct way to spend scarce money.
Tom Carpenter of Hanford Challenge, a Hanford watchdog group, said Friday it's disappointing that the Energy Department is not further along on the waste treatment plant and that there aren't new tanks to transfer waste into.
"None of these tanks would be acceptable for use today. They are all beyond their design life. None of them should be in service," he said. "And yet, they're holding two-thirds of the nation's high-level nuclear waste."
Wyden noted the nation's most contaminated nuclear site — and the challenges associated with ridding it of its toxic legacy — will be a subject of upcoming hearings and a higher priority in Washington, D.C.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias believes she should be punished, but hopes she will not be sentenced to death, two of her closest friends told ABC News in an exclusive interview.
Ann Campbell and Donavan Bering have been a constant presence for Arias wth at least one of them sitting in the Phoenix, Ariz., courtroom along with Arias' family for almost every day of her murder trial. They befriended Arias after she first arrived in jail and believe in her innocence.
Arias admits killing her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander and lying for nearly two years about it, but insists she killed Alexander in self defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.
Jodi Arias Testimony: Prosecution's Cross-Examination Watch Video
Jodi Arias Remains Calm Under Cross-Examination Watch Video
Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video
Nevertheless, she is aware of the seriousness of her lies and deceitful behavior.
The women told ABC News that they understand that Arias needs to be punished and Arias understands that too.
"She does know that, you know, she does need to pay for the crime," Campbell said. "But I don't want her to die, and I know that she has so much to give back."
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
The lies that Arias admits she told to police and her family have been devastating to her, Bering said.
""She said to me, 'I wish I didn't have to have lied. That destroyed me,'" Donovan said earlier this week. "Because now when it's so important for her to be believed, she has that doubt. But as she told me on the phone yesterday, she goes, 'I have nothing to lose.' So all she can do is go out there and tell the truth."
During Arias' nine days on the stand she has described in detail the oral, anal and phone sex that she and Alexander allegedly engaged in, despite being Mormons and trying to practice chastity. She also spelled out in excruciating detail what she claimed was Alexander's growing demands for sex, loyalty and subservience along with an increasingly violent temper.
Besides her two friends, Arias' mother and sometimes her father have been sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the testimony. It's been humiliating, Bering said.
"She's horrified. There's not one ounce of her life that's not out there, that's not open to the public. She's ashamed," she said.
GAO, Mali (Reuters) - French and Malian troops fought Islamists on the streets of Gao and a car bomb exploded in Kidal on Thursday, as fighting showed little sign of abating weeks before France plans to start withdrawing some forces.
Reuters reporters in Gao in the country's desert north said French and Malian forces fired at the mayor's office with heavy machineguns after Islamists were reported to have infiltrated the Niger River town during a night of explosions and gunfire.
French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told a news conference in Brussels that Gao was back under control after clashes earlier in the day.
"Malian troops supported by French soldiers killed five jihadists and the situation is back to normal," he said.
In Kidal, a remote far north town where the French are hunting Islamists, residents said a car bomb killed two. A French defense ministry source reported no French casualties.
French troops dispatched to root out rebels with links to al Qaeda swiftly retook northern towns last month. But they now risk being bogged down in a guerrilla conflict as they try to help Mali's weak army counter bombings and raids.
"There was an infiltration by Islamists overnight and there is shooting all over the place," Sadou Harouna Diallo, Gao's mayor, told Reuters by telephone earlier in the day, saying he was not in his office at the time.
Gao is a French hub for operations in the Kidal region, about 300 km (190 miles) northeast, where many Islamist leaders are thought to have retreated and foreign hostages may be held.
"They are black and two were disguised as women," a Malian soldier in Gao who gave his name only as Sergeant Assak told Reuters during a pause in heavy gunfire around Independence Square.
Six Malian military pickups were deployed in the square and opened fire on the mayor's office with the heavy machineguns. Two injured soldiers were taken away in an ambulance.
French troops in armored vehicles later joined the battle as it spilled out into the warren of sandy streets, where, two weeks ago, they also fought for hours against Islamists who had infiltrated the town via the nearby river.
Helicopters clattered over the mayor's office, while a nearby local government office and petrol station was on fire.
A Gao resident said he heard an explosion and then saw a Malian military vehicle on fire in a nearby street.
Paris has said it plans to start withdrawing some of its 4,000 troops from Mali next month. But rebels have fought back against Mali's weak and divided army, and African forces due to take over the French role are not yet in place.
Islamists abandoned the main towns they held but French and Malian forces have said there are pockets of Islamist resistance across the north, which is about the size of France.
CAR BOMB
Residents reported a bomb in the east of Kidal on Thursday.
"It was a car bomb that exploded in a garage," said one resident who went to the scene but asked not to be named.
"The driver and another man were killed. Two other people were injured," he added.
A French defense ministry official confirmed there had been a car bomb but said it did not appear that French troops, based at the town's airport, had been targeted.
Earlier this week, a French soldier was killed in heavy fighting north of Kidal, where French and Chadian troops are hunting Islamists in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains, which border Algeria.
Operations there are further complicated by the presence of separatist Tuareg rebels, whose rebellion triggered the fighting in northern Mali last year but were sidelined by the better-armed Islamists.
Having dispatched its forces to prevent an Islamist advance south in January, Paris is eager not to become bogged down in a long-term conflict in Mali. But their Malian and African allies have urged French troops not to pull out too soon.
(Additional reporting by Emanuel Braun in Gao, Adama Diarra in Bamako, David Lewis and John Irish in Dakar and Adrian Croft in Brussels; Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Jason Webb and Roger Atwood)
ROME: Italy was poised to hold its most important elections in a generation starting on Sunday, as financial markets warned an unclear outcome could plunge the eurozone's third economy back into crisis.
Italians will cast their ballots as they grapple with the longest recession in two decades and several rounds of austerity cuts that have caused deep resentment and could favour a low turnout and a high number of protest votes.
The most likely outcome is a centre-left government led by Democratic Party leader Pier Luigi Bersani, a cigar-chomping former communist with a down-to-earth manner who now espouses broadly pro-market economic views.
But the result is by no means certain and whether Bersani will be able to form a stable coalition is in doubt. Some fear there may have to be another election within months after a reform of a maddeningly complex electoral law.
With everything at stake, the campaign has been remarkably underwhelming, with few rallies and a lot of back-and-forth in television interviews that have provided little or no detail on sometimes extravagant programme promises.
A case in point was Silvio Berlusconi's promise to refund Italians an unpopular property tax levied by Prime Minister Mario Monti's government in a letter that prompted some to queue up to claim their money back immediately.
European capitals and foreign investors will be watching closely as a return to Italy's free-wheeling public finances could spell disaster for the eurozone.
"We believe that a risk exists that after the February 24-25 elections there may be a loss of momentum on important reforms to improve Italian growth prospects," Standard & Poor's ratings agency said in a report this week.
London-based Capital Economics warned that even with a stable governing majority "huge underlying economic problems suggest that it may only be a matter of time before concerns about the public finances begin to build again."
"And a hung parliament might plunge Italy and the eurozone back into crisis rather sooner," the independent economic research company said this week.
Polls open at 0700 GMT on Sunday and close at 1900 GMT. A second day of voting on Monday begins at 0600 GMT and ends at 1400 GMT, after which preliminary results will begin to trickle through late Monday and into Tuesday.
Wild card
The wild card in the election will be Beppe Grillo, a tousle-haired former comedian whose mix of invective and idealism appeals to protest voters fed up with corrupt politicians. He has spoken to packed squares across Italy.
Bersani has said he will follow the course set by Monti, a former high-flying European commissioner roped in to replace the scandal-tainted Berlusconi who was forced to step down in November 2011.
But Bersani will come under immediate pressure to row back on austerity and do more to create jobs in an economy where an already record-high unemployment rate of 11.2 per cent masks far higher joblessness among women and young people.
A Bersani victory is far from a sure thing mainly because of the rapid rise in the polls of Berlusconi, the irrepressible 76-year-old billionaire tycoon who is still in the game even after 20 tumultuous years in Italian politics.
This is the sixth election campaign for Berlusconi, who has been prime minister three times, has survived multiple court cases, sex scandals and diplomatic gaffes.
One recent poll said he was within 2.5 points of catching up with Bersani.
Berlusconi has pursued a populist campaign, intimating that Italy's current social misery can be blamed on a "hegemonic" Germany imposing austerity.
The president of the European Parliament, who was once invited to play the role of a Nazi camp guard by Berlusconi during a speech when he was still prime minister, has warned Italians not to vote for the flamboyant tycoon.
"Berlusconi has already sent Italy into a tailspin with irresponsible government action and personal capers," Martin Schulz told German tabloid Bild, adding that Italy should not lose its new found confidence in Europe.
Several polls indicate that Bersani may score only a half-victory by managing to secure a stable majority in the lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, but failing to get one in the upper house, the Senate.
That would give Monti, a somewhat staid economics professor who is running as head of an eclectic centrist grouping, a crucial role as a coalition partner and could bring him back into a government with a ministerial posting.
An average of the most recent polls, which cannot be published in the two weeks leading up to the election, would give Bersani 34 per cent, Berlusconi 30 per cent, Grillo 17 per cent and Monti between 10 and 12 per cent of the vote.
Coming after the last polls were made public, Pope Benedict XVI's resignation could boost the church-going Monti and stop Berlusconi as it has drawn away the media attention that the showman tycoon has often relied on.
The run-up to the vote has also been marked by a succession of high-profile corruption inquiries against politicians and business leaders in a period similar to one in the early 1990s that brought down an entire political class.
Monti has said that the storm of scandals marks "the end of an era".
Memolane, a social media aggregator that promised trips down memory lane, announced today it is shutting down immediately and will delete users' account content tomorrow.
Launched in 2010, the Web app extracted each moment users shared on popular social-networking services such as Facebook, Last.fm, Twitter, Foursquare, and others and combined them into one visual timeline. Posts/comments/tweets/etc. were organized by their respective dates and posted as memos under each date.
The San Francisco-based company had raised $2.5 million in venture capital but announced today in a company blog post that it is joining another company that it did not identify that would "utilize the Memolane features in an expanded way, adding more value to all the great memories captured on social media."
Our goal was to make it exciting to relive great adventures with friends. We are proud that we could bring joy to people's lives by sending out daily emails with fun memories from the past. As well, it has been a thrill to share in the excitement when one of our fans rediscovers a precious moment that was once lost.
It wasn't immediately clear if Memolane had been acquired by another company, and if so, who that company might be. But Memolane said the "merger" means that all accounts and their contents would be deleted Friday but noted that the content would still be available at users' original social media sources.
The company also suggested users try formerly competing services offered by Timehop and Jolicloud.
CNET has contacted Memolane for more information and will update this report when we learn more.
ST. LOUIS Powdery snow, up to a foot and a half in some places, bombarded much of the nation's midsection Thursday, impeding travel and shutting down airports, schools and state legislatures.
The widespread winter storm system swirled to the north and east Thursday night, its snow, sleet and freezing rain prompting winter storm warnings in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri and Illinois.
Corey Mead, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla., said the winter storm would be centered in the upper Midwest by Friday morning.
"Even across Kansas, the snowfall rates should continue to taper off through the evening," Mead said.
Chris Suchan, chief meteorologist at CBS affiliate KCTV Kansas City, told "CBS Evening News" anchor Scott Pelley Thursday that the worst is over with. "This morning we had widespread thundersnow from Levenworth, Kansas [and] Overland Park to Warrensburg, Missouri," Suchan said. "Snowfall rates of 2 to 3 inches per hour brought this area to its knees with our motoristsbridges were closed for a while.
Play Video
The sound and fury of "thundersnow"
"Now what we're anticipating is another round for this evening, perhaps another 2 to 4 inches of snowfall, some freezing drizzle right now, and wind chills in the single digits. The storm total for us is about 8 to 12-14 inches of snowfall for Kansas City."
The system left behind impressive snow accumulations, especially in western Kansas, where 17 inches fell in Hays.
Several accidents and two deaths were blamed on icy and slushy roadways; two people died in crashes Wednesday. Most schools in Kansas and Missouri, and many in neighboring states, were closed. Legislatures shut down in Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska and Iowa.
National Weather Service meteorologist Scott Truett said the "thundersnow" that rumbled through Kansas and Missouri earlier Thursday was the result of an unstable air mass, much like a thunderstorm.
Chuck Carroll, center, uses a snowblower to clear the sidewalk in front of his business in downtown Salina, Kan., Feb. 21, 2013.
/ AP Photo/Salina Journal
"Instead of pouring rain, it's pouring snow," Truett said. And pouring was a sound description, with snow falling at a rate of 2 inches per hour or more in some spots.
Topeka got 3 inches of snow in one 30-minute period, leaving medical center worker Jennifer Carlock to dread the drive home.
"It came on fast," Carlock said as she shoveled around her car. "We're going to test out traction control on the way home."
Snow totals passed the foot mark in many places: Monarch Pass, Colo., had 17-and-a-half inches, the Kansas cities of Hutchinson, Macksville and Hanston all saw 14 inches, and Wichita, Kan., had 13 inches. A few places in far northern Oklahoma saw between 10 to 13-and-a-half inches of snow. Missouri's biggest snow total was 10 inches, shared by the Kansas City metropolitan area, Rockport in the northwest corner and Moberly in the central part of the state.
Transportation officials in affected states urged people to simply stay home.
"If you don't have to get out, just really, please, don't do it," Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said.
Drivers were particularly warned away from the Kansas Turnpike, which had whiteout conditions. Interstate 70 was also snow-packed, and a 200-mile stretch was closed between Salina and Colby.
A firefighter places wheelblocks as he prepares to extinguish a vehicle fire in Lawrence, Kan., Feb. 21, 2013. The car caught on fire trying to make it up a snow covered hill.
/ AP Photo
Cases of wine and beer -- as well as bottles of scotch and whiskey -- were flying off the shelves at Ingersoll Wine and Spirits ahead of the storm's arrival in Des Moines, Iowa.
"A lot of people have been buying liquor to curl up by the fire," wine specialist Bjorn Carlson said.
NWS forecasts showed 3 to 9 inches of snow were expected in Iowa overnight, and Nebraska will see an additional 2 to 5 inches.
Heavy, blowing snow caused scores of businesses in Iowa and Nebraska to close early, including two malls in Omaha, Neb. Mardi Miller, manager of Dillard's department store in Oakview Mall, said most employees had been sent home by 4 p.m., and she believed "only two customers are in the entire store."
The storm brought some relief to a region that has been parched by the worst drought in decades.
Vance Ehmke, a wheat farmer near Healy, Kan., said the nearly foot of snow was "what we have been praying for." Climatologists say 12 inches of snow is equivalent to about 1 inch of rain, depending on the density of the snow.
"The big question is, `Is the drought broke?' " Ehmke asked.
Near Edwardsville, Ill., farmer Mike Campbell called the precipitation a blessing after a bone-dry growing season in 2012. He hopes it is a good omen for the spring.
"The corn was just a disaster," Campbell said of 2012.
In Colorado, the U.S. Forest Service planned to take advantage of the snow to burn piles of dead trees on federal land. Areas in the Texas Panhandle also had up to 8 inches of snow, and in south central Nebraska, Grand Island reported 10 inches of snow. And Arkansas saw a mix of precipitation -- a combination of hail, sleet and freezing rain in some place, 6 inches of snow in others.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency Thursday morning. All flights at Kansas City International Airport were canceled for Thursday night, and officials said they'd prepare to reopen Friday morning. More than 320 flights at Lambert Airport in St. Louis were canceled by Thursday afternoon. Traffic throughout the state was snarled by hundreds of accidents and vehicles in ditches.
Accused murderer Jodi Arias was challenged today by phone records, text message records, and her own diary entries that appeared to contradict her claim that she caught her ex-boyfriend, Travis Alexander, looking at pictures of naked boys.
Arias had said during her testimony that one afternoon in January 2008, she walked in on Alexander masturbating to pictures of naked boys. She said she fled from the home, threw up, drove around aimlessly, and ignored numerous phone calls from Alexander because she was so upset at what she had seen.
The claim was central to the defense's accusation that Alexander was a "sexual deviant" who grew angry and abusive toward Arias in the months after the incident, culminating in a violent confrontation in June that left Alexander dead.
Arias claimed she killed him in self-defense. She could face the death penalty if convicted of murder.
Catching Up on the Trial? Check Out ABC News' Jodi Arias Trial Coverage
Today, prosecutor Juan Martinez, who has been aggressive in questioning witnesses throughout the trial, volleyed questions at her about the claim of pedophilia, asking her to explain why her and Alexander's cell phone records showed five calls back and forth between the pair throughout the day she allegedly fled in horror. Some of the calls were often initiated Arias, according to phone records.
Jodi Arias Doesn't Remember Stabbing Ex-Boyfriend Watch Video
Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Testimony About Ex's Death Watch Video
Arias on Ex-Boyfriend's Death: 'I Don't Remember' Watch Video
She and Alexander also exchanged text messages throughout the afternoon and evening at a time when Arias claims the pedophilia incident occurred. In those messages they discuss logistics of exchanging one another's cars that night. Alexander sends her text messages about the car from a church social event he attended that night that she never mentioned during her testimony.
Arias stuck by her claim that she saw Alexander masturbating to the pictures, and her voice remained steady under increasingly-loud questioning by Martinez.
But Martinez also sparred with Arias on the stand over minor issues, such as when he asked Arias detailed questions about the timing and order of events from that day and Arias said she could not remember them.
"It seems you have problems with your memory. Is this a longstanding thing? Since you started testifying?" Martinez asked.
"No it goes back farther than that. I don't know even know if I'd call it a problem," Arias said.
"How far back does it go? You don't want to call them problems, are they issues? Can we call them issues? When did you start having them?" he asked in rapid succession. "You say you have memory problems, that it depends on the circumstance. Give me the factors that influence that."
"Usually when men like you or Travis are screaming at me," Arias shot back from the stand. "It affects my brain, it makes my brain scramble."
"You're saying it's Mr. Martinez's fault?" Martinez asked, referring to himself in the third person.
"Objection your honor," Arias' attorney finally shouted. "This is a stunt!"
Timeline of the Jodi Arias Trial
Martinez dwelled at one point about a journal entry where Arias wrote that she missed the Mormon baptism of her friend Lonnie because she was having kinky sex with Alexander. He drew attention to prior testimony that she and Alexander used Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks candy as sexual props.
"You're trying to get across (in the diary entry) that this involved a sexual liaison with Mr. Alexander right?" he asked. "And you're talking about Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?"
"That happened also that night," Arias said.
"You were there, enjoying it, the Tootsie Pops and Pop Rocks?" he asked again, prompting a smirk from Arias.
BAMAKO, Mali (Reuters) - The European Union should complement a mission to train Mali's army, routed by rebels last year, by providing equipment from uniforms to vehicles and communications technology, a French general said on Wednesday.
General Francois Lecointre, appointed to head the EU training mission to Mali (EUTM) that was formally launched this week, said in Bamako equipping the "very impoverished" and disorganized Malian army was as important as training it.
Europe, along with the United States, has backed the French-led military intervention in Mali which since January 11 has driven al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents out of the main northern towns into remote mountains near Algeria's border.
European governments have ruled out sending combat troops to join French and African soldiers pursuing the Islamist rebels.
But the EU is providing a 500-strong multinational training force that will give military instruction to Malian soldiers for an initial period of 15 months at an estimated cost of 12.3 million euros ($16.45 million).
While hailing what he called the EU's "courageous, novel, historic" decision to support Mali, Lecointre told a news conference the Malian army's lack of equipment was a problem.
"I know the Malian state is poor, but the Malian army is more than poor," the French general told a news conference, adding that it urgently needed everything from uniforms and weapons to vehicles and communications equipment.
Last year, when Tuareg separatist forces swelled by weapons and fighters from the Libyan conflict swept out of the northern deserts, a demoralized and poorly-led Malian army collapsed and fled before them, abandoning arms and vehicles.
Mali's military was further shaken by a March 22 coup by junior officers who toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure, sowing division among rival army factions. Islamist radicals allied to al Qaeda later hijacked the victorious Tuareg rebellion to occupy the northern half of the country.
In a fast-charging military campaign led by Paris, French and African troops have driven the jihadists out of principal northern towns like Gao and Timbuktu, and are fighting the rebels in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.
HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUCTION
Flanked by Mali's armed forces chief, General Ibrahima Dembele, Lecointre said he was disappointed that a meeting of international donors last month pledged funds for an African military force, known as AFISMA, being deployed in Mali, but included "very few" contributions for the Malian army itself.
"The European Union needs to invest today in the equipping of the Malian army and not just in its training," the general said, adding he would make this point strongly in a report to EU member state representatives early next month.
Asked how much re-equipping the army would cost, he said it would be "much more" than the 12 million euros of EU financing for the training mission, but could not give a precise estimate.
Starting early in April, the EU mission will start instructing Malian soldiers with a plan to train four new battalions of 600-700 members each, formed from existing enlisted men and new recruits.
Lecointre said the EU training would include instruction in human rights. Demands for this increased after allegations by Malian civilians and international human rights groups that Malian soldiers were executing Tuaregs and Arabs accused of collaborating with Islamist rebels.
The European training contingent is drawn from a range of European countries, but the main contributors would be France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, EUTM officers said.
Mali's army has received foreign training before - several battalions that fled before the rebels last year were trained by the U.S. military and the leader of the March 22 coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, attended training courses in the United States.
Dembele said U.S. training failed to forge cohesion among Malian units and he hoped the EU training would achieve this.
The United States, which halted direct support for the Malian military after last year's coup, could eventually resume aid if planned national elections in July fully restore democracy to the West African country.
Washington is providing airlift, refuelling and intelligence support to the French-led military intervention in Mali. ($1 = 0.7479 euros)
(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jason Webb)
NEW YORK: Sony unveiled a new-generation PlayStation 4 (PS4) system on Wednesday and laid out its vision for the "future of gaming" in a world rich with mobile gadgets and play streamed from the Internet cloud.
At a press event in New York, computer entertainment unit chief Andrew House said PS4 "represents a significant shift from thinking of PlayStation as a box or console to thinking of the PlayStation 4 as a leading place for play."
PS4 was designed to get to know players, ideally to the point of being able to predict which games people will buy and have them pre-loaded and ready to go.
It also allows live streaming of gameplay in real-time, letting friends virtually peer over one another's shoulders and even letting game makers to act as "directors" guiding players along.
Sony has also given a "green light" to building "the most powerful network for gaming in the world", according to David Perry, chief of Gaikai cloud gaming company purchased last year by Sony.
Gaikai specialises in letting people play video games streamed from the Internet "cloud" instead of buying titles on disks popped into consoles or computers.
"By combining PlayStation 4, PlayStation Network and social platforms, our vision is to create the first social network with meaning dedicated to games," Perry said during the event.
A button on the PS4 controller will let players instantly stream in-game action to friends in real time, and even allow someone to transfer control to more capable allies when stuck, according to Perry.
He expressed a vision of letting people access and play video games old or new on the Internet using PS4, smartphones, tablets or PS Vita handheld devices.
"We are exploring opportunity enabled by cloud technology with a long-term vision of making PlayStation technology available on any device," Perry said.
"This would fundamentally change the concept of game longevity, making any game new or old available to get up and running on any device, anywhere."
Sony needs to adapt to changing lifestyles while not alienating video game lovers devoted to its hardware.
Low-cost or free games on smartphones or tablet computers are increasing the pressure on video game companies to deliver experiences worth players' time and money.
With the press event still in progress, Sony had yet to indicate availability or pricing for the PS4. New-generation consoles are typically priced in the $400 to $500 range, and blockbuster game titles hit the market at $60 each.
