Ex-governor in North Korea with Google chief; seeks American's release

SEOUL (Reuters) - Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt began a controversial private mission to North Korea on Monday that will include an effort to secure the release of an imprisoned American.

The trip comes after North Korea carried out a long-range rocket test last month and as, according to satellite imagery, the reclusive state continues work on its nuclear testing facilities, potentially paving the way for a third nuclear bomb test.

Footage from North Korean state television showed Richardson and Schmidt at the Pyongyang airport on Monday evening.

"We are going to ask about the American who's been detained. A humanitarian private visit." Richardson said.

Richardson's efforts to seek the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour guide who was detained last year will mark the latest in a series of high-profile visits over the years to free Americans detained by Pyongyang.

The delegation comprised Schmidt, his daughter, Richardson and Google executive Jared Cohen, according to South Korean news media and it arrived in Pyongyang on a flight from the Chinese capital, Beijing.

The mission has been criticized by the United States due to the sensitivity of the timing. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea and the isolated and impoverished state remains technically at war with U.S. ally South Korea.

"We continue to think the trip is ill-advised," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington. Last week she said the main U.S. objection was that the trip came so soon after North Korea's much-criticized December 12 rocket launch.

South Korea is in the midst of a transition to a new president who will take office in February, while Japan, another major U.S. ally in the region, has a new prime minister.

A U.S. official said the trip's timing was particularly bad from the Obama administration's point of view because it comes as the U.N. Security Council ponders how to respond to the North Korean missile launch.

"We are in kind of a classical provocation period with North Korea. Usually, their missile launches are followed by nuclear tests," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"During these periods, it's very important that the international community come together, certainly at the level of the U.N. Security Council, to demonstrate to North Korea that they pay a price for not living up to their obligations."

Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, has made numerous trips to North Korea in the past that have included efforts to free detained Americans. The reasons for Schmidt's involvement in the trip are not clear, though Google characterized it as "personal" travel.

Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment.

Richardson told CBS television last Friday that he had been contacted by Bae's family and that he would raise the issue while in North Korea.

Pyongyang's most notable success was securing a visit from former President Bill Clinton in 2009 to win the release of two American journalists.

Last year, Jared and Schmidt met defectors from North Korea, a state that ranks bottom in an annual survey of Internet and press freedom by Reporters Without Borders.

Media reports and think tanks say that officials from the North Korean government went to Google's headquarters in 2011, something the U.S. technology giant declined to comment on.

(Additional reporting by Cho Meeyoung and WASHINGTON Bureau; Editing by Michael Perry, Ron Popeski and David Brunnstrom)

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"17 billion" Earth-sized planets in Milky Way: study

WASHINGTON: The Milky Way contains at least 17 billion planets the size of Earth, and likely many more, according to a study out Monday that raises the chances of discovering a sister planet to ours.

Astronomers using NASA's Kepler spacecraft found that about 17 per cent of stars in our galaxy have a planet about the size of Earth in a close orbit.

The Milky Way is known to host about 100 billion stars, meaning that about one of every six has an Earth-sized planet around it.

The finding does not mean that all those planets beyond our solar system, or exoplanets, could be habitable, though it increases the chances of finding planets similar to Earth.

In order to host life, and allow water to flow in liquid form, a planet must be at a distance from its star that allows surface temperatures to be neither too hot nor too cold.

The Kepler craft detected possible exoplanets when they passed in front of their star, creating a mini-eclipse that dims the star slightly.

During the first 16 months of the survey, Kepler identified about 2,400 candidates.

Francois Fressin, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and his colleagues used the results to determine which signals were true and to list the exoplanets by size.

They found that 17 percent of stars have a planet 0.8 to 1.25 times the size of Earth in an orbit of 85 days or less.

About a fourth of stars have a super Earth (1.25 to twice the size of Earth) in an orbit of 150 days or less, with a same fraction having a mini Neptune (two to four times Earth) in orbits up to 250 days long.

Larger planets are a much rarer occurrence. Only about three percent of stars have a large Neptune (four to six times Earth) and only five percent have a gas giant (six to 22 times Earth) in an orbit of 400 days or less.

The researchers presented the analysis at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, California.

Separately, NASA's Kepler mission announced it had discovered 461 new possible planets.

Four of them are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit their sun's "habitable zone," where liquid water might exist on the planet's surface and thus make life possible.

The findings, based on observations conducted from May 2009 to March 2011, showed the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate steadily rising.

-AFP/ac

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Congressman: Google FTC probe results were leaked illegally

Google settled a major win last week when the Federal Trade Commission announced that after a nearly two-year investigation into the Web giant's business practices the company was absolved of making major changes to its search product.

However, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, seems to believe there was something fishy about the announcement.

The official announcement was made on January 3, but several news sources, including Bloomberg, Reuters, and Politico, got a hold of the results of the investigation the day before it was supposed to be made public. Technically, it is illegal for the commission to share the results of a probe before being made public. Issa is now calling for an investigation into the news leaks.

"Nonpublic information about developments in the investigation has been inappropriately shared with the media. It is believed that the Commission may be contributing to, or is the source of, this information," Issa wrote in a letter on January 3 to the FTC, which was obtained by Mashable. "This is of concern because such leaks are prohibited by law and counterproductive to the investigative process."

Issa said that "unnamed and anonymous sources" provided the media with the investigation results. "To discover the source of the leaks as well as the depth of nonpublic information disclosed, I request your office initiate an investigation as soon as possible," he wrote.

The 20-month probe into Google's business practices focused mostly on the way Google displayed search results, which critics said favored the company's own services over those of its competitors. The FTC also examined Google decisions on technology licensing, which some argued were anticompetitive. As part of the settlement, the search giant agreed to voluntarily change the way it uses other Web sites' data.

Google still faces a separate inquiry from European Union antitrust investigators. The investigation, launched in 2010, began after rival companies alleged that Google was abusing its dominance in search. The European Commission said last week that the FTC settlement wouldn't affect its own decision-making process.

CNET contacted the FTC and Google for comment. We'll update the story when we get more information.

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Millions of foreclosure abuse victims to get checks

(CBS News) LOS ANGELES - Since the real estate implosion five years ago, major banks have been accused of fraudulent tactics to foreclose on thousands of Americans.

On Monday, the U.S. government reached a settlement with 10 banks who will pay $8.5 billion. About four million homeowners who lost their homes to foreclosure will be getting some compensation.

About 200 people showed up to a workshop in south Los Angeles last month trying to figure out if their banks improperly foreclosed on their homes. Now many of them will be getting a check.

10 banks agree to pay $8.5B for foreclosure abuse
Consumer advocates question $8.5B foreclosure deal

The 10 banks -- including Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo -- will make $3.3 billion in direct payments to customers who were in foreclosure during 2009 and 2010.

Homeowners charged improper fees could be paid a couple hundred dollars. About $125,000 would go to homeowners who were foreclosed on even though they were up to date in their mortgage payments.

The settlement replaces an existing independent foreclosure review program that began in 2011 after it was discovered many banks approved foreclosure without actually reviewing the cases, sometimes hundreds a day.

Tunua Thrash

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CBS News

Tunua Thrash helps homeowners in Los Angeles navigate foreclosure. She worries the bank payouts won't go far enough.

"Certainly the fact that there have been many mistakes, and some homeowners have lost equity that could exceed that amount, is letting the banks off easy...as far making sure that homeowners are made whole," Thrash said.

The banks will also spend $5.2 billion on loan modifications and principal reductions for current homeowners. That may help James Bruce, who could lose his south L.A. home at the end of the month unless Citibank modifies his adjustable rate mortgage, which he can no longer afford.

"It started adjusting on me and it just got overbearing and I couldn't take it, so it just ate up all my savings and everything that I could muster up to pay that mortgage for over a year," Bruce said.

About 3.8 million people will be getting some payment from these 10 banks. Even homeowners whose foreclosures were processed properly will get something because the banks have decided it's simply easier to write a check than try to figure out who was actually harmed.

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Colo. Suspect Bought Ticket 12 Days Before Shooting

Accused Aurora movie theater gunman James Holmes bought his movie ticket 12 days before the shooting, it was revealed in court today during the emotional first day of a preliminary hearing.

Aurora Police Department homicide detective Matthew Ingui testified that there is no video surveillance of the actual shooting, but there are several photos of Holmes checking into the theater kiosk with his cellphone. He scanned his phone three times.

Surveillance footage shown in court for the first time also showed Holmes lingering by the concession stand for about three minutes before entering theater nine dressed in dark pants, a light colored shirt and a skull cap. He would later be caught wearing a bullet proof vest and a gas mask.

Another video showed the lobby the moment theater staff heard shots ring out. Some of them ducked behind counters as people started streaming out of the front door.

Ingui also testified about the positions of the bodies in the theater, strewn across seats and aisles.

Click here for full coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting.

Holmes is accused of killing 12 people and wounding dozens more in the movie theater massacre.

Earlier in the day, two veteran police officers broke down on the stand, with one officer choking up when he described finding the body of a 6-year-old girl inside the theater.

Sgt. Gerald Jonsgaard needed a moment to compose himself as he described finding the little girl, Veronica Moser Sullivan, in the blood splattered theater.

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An officer felt for a pulse and thought Veronica was still alive, Jonsgaard said, but the officer then realized he was feeling his own pulse.

The officers wiped away tears as they described the horror they found inside of theater nine.

Officer Justin Grizzle recounted seeing bodies lying motionless on the floor, surrounded by so much blood he nearly slipped and fell.

Grizzle, a former paramedic, says ambulances had not yet made it to the theater, so he began loading victims into his patrol car and driving to the hospital.

"I knew I needed to get them to the hospital now, " Grizzle said, tearing up. "I didn't want anyone else to die."

Grizzle drove six victims in four trips, saying that by the end there was so much blood in his patrol car he could hear it "sloshing around."

An officer who took the stand earlier today described Holmes as "relaxed" and "detached" when police confronted him just moments after the shooting stopped.

The first two officers to testify today described responding to the theater and spotting Holmes standing by his car at the rear of the theater on July 20, 2012. He allegedly opened fire in the crowded theater during the midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises."

Officer Jason Oviatt said he first thought Holmes was a cop because he was wearing a gas mask and helmet, but as he got closer realized he was not an officer and held Holmes at gunpoint.

Throughout the search and arrest, Holmes was extremely compliant, the officer said.

"He was very, very relaxed," Oviatt said. "These were not normal reactions to anything. He seemed very detached from it all."

Oviatt said Holmes had extremely dilated pupils and smelled badly when he was arrested.

Officer Aaron Blue testified that Holmes volunteered that he had four guns and that there were "improvised explosive devices" in his apartment and that they would go off if the police triggered them.

Holmes was dressed for the court hearing in a red jumpsuit and has brown hair and a full beard. He did not show any reaction when the officers pointed him out in the courtroom.

This is the most important court hearing in the case so far, essentially a mini-trial as prosecutors present witness testimony and evidence -- some never before heard -- to outline their case against the former neuroscience student.

The hearing at the Arapahoe County District Court could last all week. At the end, Judge William Sylvester will decide whether the case will go to trial.

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Activists wary as India rushes to justice after gang rape

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It's no surprise the Indian street wants faster, harsher justice for sexual crimes after a horrific gang rape that rocked the nation, but some activists worry the government will trample fundamental rights in its rush to be in tune with popular rage.

Last month's rape of a physiotherapy student on a moving bus and her death on December 28 in hospital triggered a national debate about how to better protect women in India, where official data shows one rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

Many women's rights groups are cautiously hopeful the protests and outrage that followed the crime can be channeled into real change - fast-track courts for sexual offences and a plan to hire 2,500 new women police in Delhi are measures already in the works.

But legal experts and some feminists are worried that calls to make rape punishable with death and other draconian penalties will cramp civil liberties and are unconstitutional. They say India needs better policing and prosecutions, not new laws.

"If there are not enough convictions, it is not because of an insufficiency of law, but it is the insufficiency of material to base the conviction on," said retired Delhi High Court judge R.S. Sodhi.

Five men have been charged with the student's rape and murder and will appear before a New Delhi court later on Monday. They are due to be tried in a newly formed fast-track court in the next few weeks. A teenager also accused will likely be tried in a juvenile court.

Ahead of Monday's court appearance the five still had no defense lawyers - despite extensive interrogations by the police, who have said they have recorded confessions - after members of the bar association in the South Delhi district where the case is being heard vowed not to represent them.

GROUNDS FOR APPEAL

The men will be assigned lawyers by the court before the trial begins, but their lack of representation so far could give grounds for appeal later should they be found guilty - similar cases have resulted in acquittals years after convictions.

"The accused has a right to a lawyer from point of arrest - the investigations are going on, statements being taken, it is totally illegal," said Colin Gonsalves, a senior Supreme Court advocate and director of Delhi's Human Rights Law Network.

Senior leaders of most states on Friday came out in support of a plan to lower to 16 the age that minors can be tried as adults - in response to fury that the maximum penalty the accused youth could face is three years detention.

A government panel is considering suggestions to make the death penalty mandatory for rape and introducing forms of chemical castration for the guilty. It is due to make its recommendations by January 23.

"The more you strengthen the powers of the state against the people, the more the possibility you create a draconian regime," said Sehjo Singh, Programme and Policy Director with ActionAid in India and an expert on Indian women's social movements.

"We want to raise the bar of human rights in India, we want to raise the standards, not lower them."

The Indian Express newspaper warned against "knee-jerk" reaction and said any change to the juvenile law "must come after rigorous and considered debate. It cannot be a reaction to a fraught moment".

Courts are swamped with a backlog of cases in the country of 1.2 billion people and trials often take more than five years to complete, so the launch by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir of six fast-track courts in the capital to deal with sexual offences was widely greeted as a welcome move.

Several other states including Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are now looking at following Delhi's example.

But Gonsalves says while the courts are a good idea on paper, similar tribunals in the past delivered dubious verdicts and put financial pressure on the rest of the justice system.

FAST TRACK COURTS

India set up 1,700 fast-track courts in 2004, but stopped funding them last year because they turned out to be costly. The courts typically work six days a week and try to reduce adjournments that lead to long delays in cases.

"The record of the fast-track courts is mixed," Gonsalves said. Conviction rates rose, he said, but due process was sometimes rushed, leading to convictions being overturned.

"Fast-track courts were in many ways were fast-track injustice," he said.

The real problem lie with bad policing and a shortage of judges, Gonsalves said. India has about a fifth of the number of judges per capita that the United States has.

Indian police are often poorly trained and underpaid, and have sometimes been implicated in organized crime. Rights groups complain the mostly male officers are insensitive to victims of sexual crimes.

Resources for, and expertise in, forensic science is limited in most of the country's police forces and confessions are often extracted under duress. The judiciary complains it is hard to convict offenders because of faulty evidence.

Human Rights Watch said reforms to laws and procedures covering rape and other sexual crimes should focus on protection of witnesses and modernizing support for victims at police stations and hospitals.

The rights organization has documented the continued use of archaic practices such as the "finger test" used by some doctors on rape victims to allegedly determine if they had regular sex.

"Reforms in the rape laws - these are needed. But not in terms of enhancing punishment," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.

"Why they are not investigated, why there are not enough convictions, those are the things that need to be addressed."

(Additional reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Shashank Chouhan and Annie Banerji; Editing by Alex Richardson)

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British tourist plunges to death off Australia waterfall

SYDNEY: Police on Monday were attempting to retrieve the body of a British tourist who slipped over the edge of a waterfall in Australia's Blue Mountains and plunged to his death.

The 20-year-old man was walking with friends at Wentworth Falls, west of Sydney, on Sunday afternoon when he lost his footing and fell some 80 metres (260 feet).

Police said a friend summoned help and while paramedics were able to establish that he was dead, their helicopter crew was unable to retrieve the body due to high winds.

A guard was placed at the scene overnight and officers walked into the bushland Monday morning to help winch him out.

A witness told state broadcaster ABC she had seen a group of friends gathered on some rocks.

"Then they went down to the next one and I knew something was going to happen," she said.

"We just saw them all panic and a 20-year-old boy fell over, down the waterfall."

The Blue Mountains are a popular tourist attraction some 60 kilometres (40 miles) west of Sydney. Consisting mainly of a sandstone plateau, the area is dissected by gorges up to 760 metres deep.

-AFP/ac

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Dexim's Music Talking Stylus marries talk with touch

Lucia Lu shows off the Dexim Talking Music Stylus.

(Credit:
Casey Newton/CNET)

LAS VEGAS--For years now, people who rely on capacitive styluses to get their work done have had one major complaint: they can't use them to take phone calls.

At least, that's what Dexim says. The Chinese manufacturer hit
CES Unveiled today with a funky hybrid device that turns a regular capacitive stylus into a Bluetooth speaker, allowing people to take phone calls through their stylus because ... reasons.

"People don't want to carry around a bunch of different sticks," asserts Lucia Lu, the company's vice president of sales and marketing. Until now, she said, a hands-free phone call for stylus users has required separate devices. No more!

The catchily named Dexim Music Talking Stylus boasts five hours of talk time, 180 hours of standby time, and is recharged through a micro USB port on the bottom of the device. Headphones plug into a standard 3.5MM port at the top. A user could leave a phone across the room, accept a call while drawing on an
iPad, and never stop sketching. Or play music from across the room and listen in on the attached headphones, courtesy Bluetooth.

The stylus goes on sale for $79.99 in February.

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NFL Playoffs: Seahawks beat Redskins 24-14

Marshawn Lynch #24 of the Seattle Seahawks scores a fourth quarter touchdown against the defense of Lorenzo Alexander #97 of the Washington Redskins during the NFC Wild Card Playoff Game at FedExField on January 6, 2013 in Landover, Maryland. / Al Bello/Getty Images

LANDOVER, Md. The Seattle Seahawks finally won a road playoff game Sunday, taking a 24-14 NFC wild-card victory over the Washington Redskins, who lost Robert Griffin III to another knee injury in the fourth quarter.

Marshawn Lynch ran for 131 yards, and Russell Wilson completed 15 of 26 passes for 187 yards and ran eight times for 67 yards for the Seahawks, who broke an eight-game postseason losing streak away from home.

24 Photos

NFL Week 18: Playoff highlights

Seattle will visit the top-seeded Atlanta Falcons next Sunday.

Lynch's 27-yard run with 7:08 remaining gave the Seahawks (12-5) the lead. On Washington's next series, Griffin reinjured the right knee he sprained about a month ago while trying to field a bad shotgun snap.

The knee buckled badly, and the Seahawks recovered the fumble and kicked an insurance field goal.

Kirk Cousins replaced Griffin, but Washington (10-7) was unable to come back.

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Hagel to Be Obama's Defense Secretary Nominee

Jan 6, 2013 4:52pm

(Junko Kimura/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Obama will nominate former senator Chuck Hagel to be his next Secretary of Defense tomorrow.

Senior officials within the administration and Capitol Hill confirmed the pick to ABC News today after the Nebraska Republican had emerged as a frontrunner among potential candidates several weeks ago.

Hagel, 66, is a decorated Vietnam veteran and businessman who served in the senate from 1997 to 2009. After having sat on that chamber’s Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees,  he has in recent years gathered praise from current and former diplomats for his work on Obama’s Intelligence Advisory Board as well as the policy board of the current Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

But the former lawmaker faces an upscale battle in the coming confirmation hearings in Congress; critics on both sides of the aisle have taken aim at his record toward Israel and what some have called a lack of experience necessary to lead the sprawling Pentagon bureaucracy or its operations.

Progressives have also expressed concern about comments he made in 1998, questioning whether an “openly, aggressively gay” James Hormel could be nominated to an ambassador position by then-President Clinton. Hagel apologized for the comments last month, adding that he also supported gays in the military – a position he once opposed.

Who Is Chuck Hagel? Meet Obama’s Top Pentagon Pick

The friction with his former colleagues has left a degree of uncertainty in the air going into the hearings. Today on ABC’s “This Week,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell demurred when asked whether he would support the man who, in 2008, he had championed for his candidness and stature in foreign policy.

“I’m going to wait and see how the hearings go and see whether Chuck’s views square with the job he would be nominated to do,” he told George Stephanopoulos.

Senator Lindsey Graham was more blunt in his opposition to Hagel on CNN. The Georgia Republican called Hagel an “in your face nomination,” and said he “would be the most antagonistic secretary of defense towards the state of Israel in our nation’s history.”

If confirmed, Hagel will join a crop of new cabinet members expected to join the president in his second term, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was nominated in December to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

ABC’s Elizabeth Hartfield and Devin Dwyer contributed reporting.

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