Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," right, is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," right, is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," second from right, is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," walks bent forward as he is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," right, is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, alias "Nem," right, is escorted handcuffed by police at the federal police headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday Nov. 10, 2011. Antonio Bonfim Lopes, the most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city, was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio. The arrest comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) ? The most-wanted drug gang leader in this Olympic city was arrested Thursday, police said. The capture is a blow to the gang that controls one of Latin America's biggest slums and the main drug distribution point in Rio.
Antonio Bonfim Lopes, known as "Nem," tried to flee the Rocinha slum in the trunk of a car, which was stopped at a police checkpoint just outside the shantytown, said Victor Poubel, a federal police inspector. He said the occupants of the car tried to bribe police twice, but eventually opened the trunk. Lopes did not resist arrest and calmly stared at TV cameras when taken into a police station.
Police say Lopes is wanted on charges of drug trafficking, murder, kidnapping and money laundering, and his arrest is a blow to the "Friends of Friends" drug gang that controls Rocinha.
It comes as police say they are preparing for an invasion of the slum as part of a campaign to make the city safer by the time it hosts the 2014 World Cup final matches and the 2016 Olympics.
Police are pressing ahead with plans to take back the shantytown, and hope for help from the residents, said Alberto Pinheiro Neto, head of operations for Rio state police, at a press conference Thursday.
About 100,000 people are estimated to live in Rocinha. Pinheiro Neto would not give a specific timeline for the incursion into the slum, saying the operation is ongoing, but guaranteed police would try to minimize harm to residents.
Police would distribute pre-paid cell phones to residents to encourage collaboration with officers, he said.
"The gang is being dismantled, and this is a good moment for law-abiding citizens who want to see their children living in peace to pass information on where criminals, guns and drugs are hidden," he said.
Under the pacification program, elite police units head into violent slums and push out the heavily armed drug gangs that have held sway for decades.
Once security is established, officers trained in community policing move in and set up permanent "police pacification units." City officials also bring in basic services that many of the shantytowns had never received, such as sewage, legal electricity and cable hookups, and trash collection.
Police have created 18 such outposts in slums, mostly in areas seen as geographically key to World Cup and Olympic venues or along a highway leading to the international airport.
Rocinha sprawls across on a mountainside that hugs a road connecting what will be the main Olympic venues to wealthier parts of Rio, including the neighborhoods of Copacabana and Ipanema.
Jose Mariano Beltrame, the head of the Rio state security department, said the arrest of Lopes demonstrates the fragility of the gangs in Rio and said the coming takeover of Rocinha will be another big step in taking territory away from gangs.
Beltrame, the architect of the slum-takeover program that began in 2008, has said that the aim is to deprive the drug gangs of the "territorial empire" where they can hunker down, sell drugs, and keep police at arm's length.
Beltrame said the operations around Rocinha began 10 days ago and would continue, presumably ending with full police control of the slum. He didn't elaborate on what police expect upon entering Rocinha.
"There is no set recipe for pacification. We prepare to enter without confrontations, but we don't know what is in the heads of the criminals," he said.
Joao Luis da Silva, a 65-year-old resident of Rocinha, sat on a wooden stool in a market at the base of the slum. Like most here, he was worried about the coming invasion.
"Only God knows what will happen. We try to stay out of all that business, and stay away from all this trouble," he said. "But sometimes trouble comes to you. With all these police around, someone is going to start shooting. We just have to wait for God's will."
___
Associated Press writer Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
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Your pillow can make all the difference between a good night's rest and pain (both the morning after and possibly longer). To get the perfect pillow, consider your sleeping style?whether you sleep on your back, side, or stomach.
Lifestyle blog Lifescript says, in general, this is the ideal pillow:
The right support is medium firm and not too thick. It keeps your head and neck in a line, as if you were standing up.
For specific sleeping styles:
Check out the article for more detailed advice on which pillows to buy (you're supposed to replace your pillow every 4-5 years, apparently), including which pillow to look for if you have health issues like neck pain.
Photo remixed from an original by Daehyun Park.
What's the Right Pillow for You? | Lifescript
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VIENNA (Reuters) ? A U.N. nuclear watchdog report due this week is expected to show recent activity in Iran that could help in developing nuclear bombs, including intelligence about computer modeling of such weapons, Western diplomats said on Tuesday.
"There are bits and pieces of information that go up through 2010," one Vienna-based diplomat said.
If confirmed in this week's keenly awaited document by the International Atomic Energy Agency, it could stimulate new debate about a controversial U.S. intelligence assessment in 2007 that Iran had halted outright "weaponization" work in 2003.
It would heighten Western suspicions that Iran is resolved to pursue at least some of the research and development (R&D) applicable to atom bombs, even if Tehran has made no apparent decision to actually build them, as diplomats believe.
"There is still evidence there where I think the agency will be in a position to say that they have serious concerns coming up to the present day," said another envoy in the Austrian capital, where the IAEA is based.
But Western officials and experts suggested that research and experiments pointing to military nuclear aims may not have continued on the same scale as before 2003, when Iran started coming under increased Western pressure over its nuclear work.
"Iran is understood to have continued or restarted some R&D activities since then," said nuclear proliferation analyst Peter Crail of the U.S.-based Arms Control Association, a research and advocacy group.
Iran denies accusations it is seeking nuclear arms, saying they are based on forged documents. It says its uranium enrichment program is aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more of its abundant oil.
Many conservative experts criticized the 2007 findings as inaccurate and naive, and U.S. intelligence agencies now believe Iranian leaders have resumed closed-door debates over the last four years about whether to build a nuclear bomb.
"I suspect that the new IAEA report will play into the hands of U.S. conservative and Israeli critics of the 2007 NIE (National Intelligence Estimate), who had accused the U.S. intelligence community of playing down evidence of clandestine nuclear weapons activities in Iran," said Shannon Kile of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute think tank.
"SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC INTENT"
The IAEA report, due to be submitted to member states in the next few days, is expected to provide new evidence of explosives and physics research suggesting Iran is seeking the capability to design nuclear weapons.
Some of the activities have little application other than atomic bomb-making, including computer modeling of a nuclear weapon, sources familiar with the document said.
They said it would support intelligence reports that Iran built a large steel container at the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran for the purpose of carrying out tests with high explosives usable for a nuclear chain reaction.
"It is a forensic body of evidence that shows some serious scientific intent," one of the Western diplomats said.
In February, U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Iran was "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons."
Crail said Clapper's statements were not "inconsistent with the notion that some weapons-related R&D has resumed which is not part of a determined, integrated weapons-development program of the type that Iran maintained prior to 2003."
Mark Fitzpatrick, a director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said it was too early to say whether the IAEA report will cast doubt on the 2007 NIE assessment.
"The U.S. intelligence community already has the information in the IAEA report," Fitzpatrick said, adding that Clapper as recently as March confirmed the belief that Iran had not made a decision to restart its nuclear weapons program.
"The apparent disconnect between that statement and the leaks that have come out about the IAEA report probably pertain to the time frame of the weapons research and development and the level and scale of the activity that the IAEA apparently believes continued after 2003," he said.
(Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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Stone Age cave paintings of white horses with black spots may have depicted real animals, rather than spirit horses, as sometimes assumed.
Some archaeologists argue that no horses with "leopard" patterns had evolved 25,000 years ago. So spotted horses in cave murals from that time at Pech-Merle in France must be symbolic or shamanistic.
Now Arne Ludwig of the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin, Germany, and colleagues have analysed DNA extracted from the remains of ancient horses in Siberia, eastern and western Europe. Six had variants of the pigment genes that produce the spotted-coat pattern. Four were from western Europe where the Pech-Merle cave is situated and the other two were found in eastern Europe.
The researchers say that their findings do not necessarily exclude religious explanations for why the spotty horses were painted. "In my opinion, a high level of natural realism in the paintings doesn't exclude a spiritual or religious dimension to them," Ludwig says.
The researchers point out that the leopard pattern probably carried an evolutionary penalty, because modern day horses with two copies of the gene variant have a pigment abnormality impairing their night vision.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1108982108
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Emotions continued to run hot on Tuesday over Harbin Electric, the small-cap U.S. listed Chinese motor manufacturer, a week after a year-long management buyout process came to an end.
The company was finally taken private in a deal that paid $24 a share, but not before short-selling bloggers pummeled the stock to a 52-week low of $5.82 on June 16.
Short sellers including Andrew Left of Citron Research and researcher/journalist Roddy Boyd published research claiming the company was being run fraudulently. Harbin was one of many Chinese companies listed in North America that came under scrutiny earlier in the year.
In one of the most animated panel discussions this correspondent has attended in many a year, Harbin?s spokeswoman Christy Shue spoke up from the audience to attack Boyd, questioning his methods, asking him how he can trust his information.
Boyd, who sat on a panel organized by the law firm Loeb & Loeb, said he spends hours pouring over documents, speaking with competitors, suppliers, vendors, bankers, buyside investors, or anyone involved with a company to inform his viewpoint.
?I am a reporter. To be clear, the expression in America is, I call it as I see it and the companies I have written about: China Sky One (Medical), China Green?. ah, I?m sorry I?m not supposed to mention these, but China Sky One, China Green Agriculture, Harbin Electric, Jesus, I threw everything at them and got, you know, my head handed to me. You know, it is my job. No one likes me. My kids, no one likes me. No one likes me.?
?The point is I do what I do because, how would I put this, because I see wrongdoing. I don?t want to hurt people.?
He said he would not apologize for his research, but admitted that he was very hard on Harbin.
?And, I called them a fraud, and it was the first time in my life I ever used that word. And I am sticking to it, but boy oh boy I got proved wrong,? he said.
?I get a picture and the picture I got of a certain company that this lady (Shue) works for is, that wow, something entirely is not right. And yeah, I said it and I stuck to it, and hey it looks like I was wrong, the transaction went through,? said Boyd.
Shue accused the shortsellers of never trying to contact her in a meaningful way to respond to the allegations, saying that maybe they called one time in the middle of the night. Reuters tried on several occasions to contact Shue for an official response to the fraud allegations, but never got a response beyond a promise from an assistant to pass along the message once she returned from traveling.
?Unfortunately I did not know those occasions, to be honest. Maybe he has maybe talked,? said Shue, pointing at her assistant and then added: ?He might have passed along but I did not have exact information. And sometimes I have the investor relations firm get back,? Shue told Reuters.
For the record, the IR firm did return my call, took down the questions but never gave an adequate answer.
In the back and forth with Boyd on Tuesday, Shue, who was awarded an?an exit package worth nearly $2.3 million at the close of the?privatization transaction,?asked him how he can trust his information.
Here?s one part of the exchange:
Shue: ?Another issue is, you say that companies in China are frauds. But how can you trust your information? Where did you get information? Maybe you get the information wrong.?
Boyd: ?Your documents.?
Shue: ?Documents were filed? How could the documents be wrong? You were just using your speculation to write about the company. You think that is the right way to do analysis??
Boyd: ?Yeah.?
Shue was asked by this correspondent why Harbin did not simply sue the bloggers and researchers who called the firm a fraud.
?It is not my decision, so I cannot answer that question. It is the board decision. I am just the spokesperson of the company, so I don?t know why,? she said.
?We have been saying we reserve the right, we reserve the right to take actions against the short sellers who make false accusations,? she said, citing the company?s legal advisors.
Source: http://blogs.reuters.com/globalinvesting/2011/11/09/sparks-still-flying-over-harbin-electric/
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Nook Tablet vs. Nook Color...Fight! originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) ? A key U.N. Security Council committee could not reach consensus on whether Palestine should be accepted as a U.N. member, a draft report said in the latest sign the Palestinian U.N. bid is doomed.
The body was "unable to make a unanimous recommendation to the Security Council," said the report of the committee on admitting new member states, circulated to all 15 Security Council members on Tuesday.
The four-page draft appears to confirm that the Palestinian move to join the world body as a full member, which Western envoys said never had a chance due to a U.S. vow to veto it if it ever came to a vote in the council, is set to fail due to the council's unresolvable deadlock.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas applied for full U.N. membership for the state of Palestine on September 23.
Although it is the 193-nation General Assembly that makes decisions on U.N. membership, an applicant state needs prior Security Council approval before it can go to the assembly.
Both the United States and Israel say the Palestinian push in the United Nations is unilateral and an attempt to bypass peace talks, whose resumption Abbas has conditioned on an Israeli freeze of settlement activity in occupied territory.
The Palestinians say those negotiations have failed to bring them closer to the independent state they seek in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. They say it is time to try a different approach.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declined to comment on the draft report. But she said the "Quartet" of Middle East peace mediators will meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian officials on November 14 in Jerusalem, their latest effort to jump-start the stalled peace process.
The Quartet is made up of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations.
PALESTINIANS FAIL TO SECURE MINIMUM OF VOTES
The Palestinians can still call for a vote in the Security Council, but U.N. diplomats said on condition of anonymity that it is not clear whether they will do so given that Washington will likely not even need to use its veto to block it.
The Palestinians would score a moral victory and force Washington to cast its veto if they are able to muster nine votes to support them in the council. A council resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes to pass.
But U.N. diplomats say the Palestinians have so far secured only eight backers.
The draft report details how the council is divided into three groups -- those planning to support the Palestinian bid, those opposing it and those planning to abstain from any vote on it. It does not identify the countries.
The draft said some countries supported "as an intermediate step, (that) the General Assembly should adopt a resolution by which Palestine would be made an Observer State."
It also said some council members questioned whether Palestine fulfilled the U.N. membership criteria. Some voiced doubts about whether Palestine is "peace-loving" and questioned its ability to engage in foreign relations with other states.
The Palestinians already have status as an observer "entity," but have suggested they might seek upgrading that status to that of a non-member observer state, like the Vatican. Such enhanced status would give them a higher profile and implicitly recognize Palestine as a state.
Council diplomats said that at a meeting last week, Russia, China, Brazil, India, Lebanon and South Africa supported the Palestinian bid, the United States opposed it, and Britain, France and Colombia said they would abstain in any vote.
Gabon and Nigeria, expected to support the Palestinians, and Germany and Portugal, expected to abstain, did not spell out their positions and Bosnia did not speak.
Bosnia is also thought likely to abstain because its Muslim, Serb and Croat collective presidency cannot agree.
The report by the committee, which groups all council member states, may be revised before it is formally presented to the Security Council proper on Friday, envoys said.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
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