Google executive promises ‘insanely great cameras’ on next-gen Nexus phones
Label: TechnologyThe cameras on Google’s (GOOG) line of Nexus smartphones have consistently performed worse than the competition. Some have said the default Android image processing software is at fault, while others have suggested low-end sensors are to blame. Google’s smartphones, nevertheless, cannot compete with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, HTC’s (2498) DROID DNA or Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy S III when it comes to photo quality. Things may be about to change, however.
[More from BGR: Broadband ISPs put to the test: Real data speeds vs. advertised speeds charted by FCC]
Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of engineering, revealed that the company is “committed to making Nexus phones [with] insanely great cameras,” adding “just you wait and see.”
[More from BGR: Best Buy makes online price-matching policy permanent]
It is thought that the executive’s comments were related to Google’s upcoming flagship smartphone. The company is rumored to be working on a device with Motorola, codenamed X Phone, that is said to include revolutionary new features. The handset is expected to debut in May at the company’s annual I/O Developer Conference and will reportedly be equipped with a high-end rear camera, long battery life and a flexible display.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Jerry Buss, Lakers Owner, Dies at 80
Label: LifestyleBy Maggie Coughlan
02/18/2013 at 02:10 PM EST
Jerry Buss, the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, has died, the Associated Press reports. He was 80.
Buss had been hospitalized for cancer, but died of kidney failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Monday, said his assistant, Bob Steiner.
Paying $67.5 million when he first bought the the Lakers from Jack Kent Cooke (in a deal that also included the N.H.L.'s L.A. Kings, the L.A. Forum sports arena and Cooke’s California ranch), Buss saw their value increase to $1 billion, according to a Forbes ranking in January, reports The New York Times. That made the team second in the N.B.A. to the New York Knicks’ $1.1 billion valuation.
During his 32 years with the Lakers, Buss's team made the N.B.A finals 16 times (through 2011), winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010.
At just 24, Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and later had careers in aerospace and real estate development.
Buss is survived by his six children.
As news of his death traveled, athletes and celebrities took to Twitter to share their condolences.
UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows
Label: HealthGENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.
U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.
Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.
He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.
G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan
Label: BusinessMOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.
Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.
Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.
"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."
After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.
A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.
"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.
As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.
As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.
"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.
"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."
Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.
NO FISCAL TARGETS
The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.
The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.
"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.
A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.
The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.
"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."
The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.
Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.
QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.
A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.
"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.
Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.
On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".
It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.
(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)
Blasts Across Baghdad Kill at Least 21 People
Label: World
BAGHDAD — A wave of attacks in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad killed at least 21 people and wounded 125 on Sunday, a security official said.
Four car bombs exploded in a market, a bus station and on a major road in the Sadr City district, killing seven people and wounding more than 30 others, officials said.
More people were killed and dozens were wounded when car bombs were set off in a market in Husseiniya, northeast of Baghdad; in the southeastern Baghdad neighborhood of Al Ameen; and in the Kamaliya area in Baghdad’s eastern suburbs.
In the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, near the Babil Hotel, a roadside bomb killed one person and wounded five others.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Sunni extremists have stepped up their efforts to undermine the Shiite-led government and stoke sectarian divisions since the beginning of the year. More than 200 people have been killed in attacks across Iraq since January.
Sunnis, who are a minority in Iraq, complain of discrimination by officials and accuse Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his political allies of seeking to monopolize power before the provincial elections this spring.
The government’s arrests of a Sunni politician’s bodyguards in December set off weekly protests in several Iraqi cities. But the protesters have rejected calls for violence and have distanced themselves from extremist groups.
Leading Cuban dissident departs for world tour
Label: TechnologyHAVANA (Reuters) – Cuba‘s best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, checked in without incident at Havana’s international airport on Sunday on her way to Brazil, the first stop on an 80-day-tour of a dozen countries.
She was sent off with hugs by a small group of family members and friends.
Sanchez was granted a passport two weeks ago under Cuba’s sweeping immigration reform that went into effect this year, after being denied permission to travel more than 20 times over the past five years.
“I made it through immigration, now I only need to board the plane and take off,” said Sanchez, who has promised to tweet throughout her saga.
In another tweet to her followers as she waited to board her plane, she added: “To tell the truth, my knees haven’t stopped trembling.”
Sanchez is one of a number of high profile government opponents who have received a passport under the new regulations, but the first to actually take advantage of the measure.
A few lesser-known dissidents have been denied passports.
Sanchez criticized the new law for not simply granting all Cubans the right to travel, but told Reuters at the airport, “I plan to take full advantage of it and push it to the limit.”
The old travel law was put in place in 1961 to slow the flight of Cubans after the island’s 1959 revolution.
The new law scrapped the much-hated requirement of having to obtain an exit visa and loosened other restrictions that had discouraged Cubans from leaving and traveling.
It was one of the wide-ranging reforms President Raul Castro has enacted since he succeeded his older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008.
There are still travel restrictions, mainly for national security reasons and for those with pending legal cases.
PRIZE MONEY FOR A FREE PRESS
Sanchez, who has won a number of international prizes for her blog but has been denied permission to travel to collect them, said she would now do so and planned to use part of the prize money to “found a free press in Cuba.”
“I plan to visit various media and make contact to learn how a modern press runs,” she said.
Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has incurred the wrath of Cuba’s government for constantly criticizing its communist system in her “Generation Y” blog, and using Twitter to denounce repression.
She is one of the world’s best-known bloggers and has tens of thousands of followers abroad, but few in Cuba where the government severely restricts the Internet.
Her blog is named after the penchant of Cuban parents during the Cold War era of Soviet backing for the island of choosing names for their children starting with “Y” because of the many popular Russian names starting with that letter.
Sanchez, considered Cuba’s pioneer in social networking, told Reuters earlier this week that she would visit the headquarters of Google, Twitter and Facebook, and travel to Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Mexico, the United States, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries.
Cuba’s leaders consider dissidents traitorous mercenaries in the employ of the United States and other enemies. Official bloggers regularly charge that Sanchez’s international renown has been stage-managed by Western intelligence services.
But Sanchez is also a critic of U.S. policy toward her homeland. In a recent blog, she said the decades-old trade embargo had failed to stifle the Cuban government and was exploited by Havana as “a big bad wolf to blame for everything.”
“The big news is not now, but in 80 days when she will return,” Bert Hoffmann, a Cuba expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, said.
“Many regime opponents have left Cuba for exile, but this is the first time a prominent dissident sets out on a high-profile world tour to then come back to the island.”
Sanchez’s travels and eventual return to Cuba are being carefully monitored by governments and human rights advocates as a test of Cuban authorities’ commitment to free travel.
“She is gone, now let’s see if the government lets her back in or forces her into exile,” a European diplomat said.
(Reporting By Marc Frank; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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See Mementos from the John F. Kennedy Auction
Label: LifestyleFifty years after JFK's death, a cache of rare mementos from his closest aide goes on sale Feb. 17 at John McInnis Auctioneers
Credit: David F. Powers Estate/John Mcinnis Auctioneers
Updated: Saturday Feb 16, 2013 | 06:00 AM EST
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UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows
Label: HealthGENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.
U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.
Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.
He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.
G20 steps back from currency brink, heat off Japan
Label: BusinessMOSCOW (Reuters) - The Group of 20 nations declared on Saturday there would be no currency war and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets, underlining broad concern about the fragile state of the world economy.
Japan's expansive policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped direct criticism in a statement thrashed out in Moscow by policymakers from the G20, which spans developed and emerging markets and accounts for 90 percent of the world economy.
Analysts said the yen, which has dropped 20 percent as a result of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies to reflate the Japanese economy, may now continue to fall.
"The market will take the G20 statement as an approval for what it has been doing -- selling of the yen," said Neil Mellor, currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon in London. "No censure of Japan means they will be off to the money printing presses."
After late-night talks, finance ministers and central bankers agreed on wording closer than expected to a joint statement issued last Tuesday by the Group of Seven rich nations backing market-determined exchange rates.
A draft communiqué on Friday had steered clear of the G7's call for economic policy not to be targeted at exchange rates. But the final version included a G20 commitment to refrain from competitive devaluations and stated monetary policy would be directed only at price stability and growth.
"The mood quite clearly early on was that we needed desperately to avoid protectionist measures ... that mood permeated quite quickly," Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told reporters, adding that the wording of the G20 statement had been hardened up by the ministers.
As a result, it reflected a substantial, but not complete, endorsement of Tuesday's proclamation by the G7 nations - the United States, Japan, Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Italy.
As with the G7 intervention, Tokyo said it gave it a green light to pursue its policies unchecked.
"I have explained that (Prime Minister Shinzo) Abe's administration is doing its utmost to escape from deflation and we have gained a certain understanding," Finance Minister Taro Aso told reporters.
"We're confident that if Japan revives its own economy that would certainly affect the world economy as well. We gained understanding on this point."
Flaherty admitted it would be difficult to gauge if domestic policies were aimed at weakening currencies or not.
NO FISCAL TARGETS
The G20 also made a commitment to a credible medium-term fiscal strategy, but stopped short of setting specific goals as most delegations felt any economic recovery was too fragile.
The communiqué said risks to the world economy had receded but growth remained too weak and unemployment too high.
"A sustained effort is required to continue building a stronger economic and monetary union in the euro area and to resolve uncertainties related to the fiscal situation in the United States and Japan, as well as to boost domestic sources of growth in surplus economies," it said.
A debt-cutting pact struck in Toronto in 2010 will expire this year if leaders fail to agree to extend it at a G20 summit of leaders in St Petersburg in September.
The United States says it is on track to meet its Toronto pledge but argues that the pace of future fiscal consolidation must not snuff out demand. Germany and others are pressing for another round of binding debt targets.
"We had a broad consensus in the G20 that we will stick to the commitment to fulfill the Toronto goals," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said. "We do not have any interest in U.S.-bashing ... In St. Petersburg follow-up-goals will be decided."
The G20 put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009 but has failed to reach those heights since. At successive meetings, Germany has pressed the United States and others to do more to tackle their debts. Washington in turn has urged Berlin to do more to increase demand.
Backing in the communiqué for the use of domestic monetary policy to support economic recovery reflected the U.S. Federal Reserve's commitment to monetary stimulus through quantitative easing, or QE, to promote recovery and jobs.
QE entails large-scale bond buying -- $85 billion a month in the Fed's case -- that helps economic growth but has also unleashed destabilising capital flows into emerging markets.
A commitment to minimize such "negative spillovers" was an offsetting point in the text that China, fearful of asset bubbles and lost export competitiveness, highlighted.
"Major developed nations (should) pay attention to their monetary policy spillover," Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao was quoted by state news agency Xinhua as saying in Moscow.
Russia, this year's chair of the G20, admitted the group had failed to reach agreement on medium-term budget deficit levels and expressed concern about ultra-loose policies that it and other emerging economies say could store up trouble for later.
On currencies, the G20 text reiterated its commitment last November, "to move more rapidly toward mores market-determined exchange rate systems and exchange rate flexibility to reflect underlying fundamentals, and avoid persistent exchange rate misalignments".
It said disorderly exchange rate movements and excess volatility in financial flows could harm economic and financial stability.
(Additional reporting by Gernot Heller, Lesley Wroughton, Maya Dyakina, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Jan Strupczewski, Lidia Kelly, Katya Golubkova, Jason Bush, Anirban Nag and Michael Martina. Writing by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Timothy Heritage/Mike Peacock)
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