HipChat Launches Android App Version 2.0, With Completely Native Redesign And Improved Performance

Atlassian's HipChat is in the process of rolling out revised or new native apps across all platforms for it group chat tool, and now it's introducing HipChat version 2.0 for Android devices. The improved app is the product of a beta testing period that spanned the last few months. HipChat beta tested it through by borrowing a page out of Google Chrome's book and offering both a developer and a stable channel, but on Android, and intends to continue that strategy.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fWjaFT1iYlc/

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Venezuelans elect Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's choice, to succeed late president

Luis Acosta / AFP - Getty Images

Presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro waves to sympathizers after casting his vote in Caracas on April 14.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan electoral officials say voters elected Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor as president in a razor-close special election Sunday.

Winner Nicolas Maduro campaigned on a promise to carry on Chavez's self-styled socialist revolution and defeated a two-time challenger who claimed the late president's regime has put Venezuela on the road to ruin.

Officials say Maduro defeated Henrique Capriles by only about 300,000 votes. The margin was 50.8 percent to 49.1 percent.?

Maduro backers celebrated with fireworks over Caracas on Sunday while opposition backers banged pots and pans in protest after the nail-biting win for the Chavez protege.

The contrasting reactions underlined the deep polarization in the South American nation of 29 million people.

"We don't want violence, we want peace," Maduro said in a speech to the nation.

"They (the opposition) want an audit. We welcome the audit.... I formally request the National Electoral Commission to carry out an audit."

Capriles said he would not accept the result without a full recount.

"We have different results," Capriles said in a speech to the nation shortly after midnight, alleging thousands of irregularities in Sunday's vote.

"Mr. Maduro, if you were illegitimate before, now you are more so."

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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PhotoBlog -- voters head to the polls in Venezuela

Venezuela's choice: Chavez disciple or fresh start

This story was originally published on Mon Apr 15, 2013 12:01 AM EDT

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Frustration as retrial of Egypt's Mubarak aborted

By Yasmine Saleh and Maggie Fick

CAIRO (Reuters) - The retrial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak collapsed on Saturday when the presiding judge withdrew from the case and referred it to another court, causing an indefinite adjournment that sparked anger in the courtroom.

"The people demand the execution of Mubarak!" relatives of demonstrators killed in the 2011 uprising that overthrew him chanted in court after presiding Judge Mustafa Hassan Abdullah announced the decision at the opening session.

Outside the heavily guarded compound, pro-Mubarak demonstrators outnumbered opponents. The two groups were kept well apart by a police cordon and there were no incidents.

Mubarak, 84, who ruled Egypt for almost 30 years before being toppled by 18 days of Arab Spring pro-democracy unrest, waved and smiled to supporters from the defendants' cage in the courtroom before the brief hearing began.

He was flown by helicopter from a military hospital where he has been detained to the police academy used as a courthouse, and wheeled from an ambulance into the building lying on a hospital trolley wearing a white tracksuit.

Mubarak, former Interior Minister Habib al-Adli and four top aides face a retrial for complicity in the murder of more than 800 protesters after the highest appeals court accepted appeals by both the defense and the prosecution in January. Two other senior interior ministry officials face lesser charges.

But the judge, who like most of the current judiciary was appointed under Mubarak, said he had decided to refer the case to the Cairo appeals court as he felt "unease" in reviewing the case. He did not explain his decision further.

He has previously acquitted top former Mubarak era officials on charges of orchestrating violence when pro-democracy activists were attacked by thugs riding on camels in Cairo's central Tahrir Square.

"We ask for the harshest possible sentence on Mubarak due to the cruel crimes he committed against the protesters, but we are happy with the judge's decision to withdraw as we had worries about him given his ruling (on) the camel attack case," said Mohamed Abdel Wahab, a lawyer for the victims.

It was the first time Mubarak, who wore gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses in court, had been seen in public since he and Adli were convicted last June on grounds of failing to stop the killing, rather than actually ordering it.

Mubarak's two sons, Alaa and Gamal, were also in court to be retried on separate charges of financial corruption.

Propped up on a gurney in a cage with the other defendants, he looked fitter and more relaxed than on previous appearances in the dock, holding animated conversations with his son Gamal, and occasionally smiling and waving to people in the courtroom.

COMPETING DEMONSTRATIONS

Prosecutors accuse Mubarak of giving orders to Adli to open fire with live ammunition against protesters to suppress demonstrations across the Arab world's most populous country.

Mubarak and his interior minister were sentenced to life imprisonment at their first trial but the appeals court upheld complaints stemming from the weakness of the evidence offered by the prosecution.

Outside the court, pro-Mubarak demonstrators chanted "thirty years without destruction!" in reference to accusations that the Muslim Brotherhood movement which won free elections after his ouster are destroying the country.

"The word ?sorry' is not enough!" the pro-Mubarak crowd chanted. Some held posters of Mubarak and signs reading "Where are your days?"

"Look at the country now," said a supporter who gave his name as Ibrahim. "When Mubarak fell, there were $40 billion (in foreign reserves). And now after two years, we are going bankrupt. The whole country is suffering from this economic crisis, from this lack of security."

Across the square, relatives of victims of Mubarak's security forces held posters of young men killed in the revolt.

"What can I expect from this trial? If there was justice in this country, the first trial would have been fair," said Eman Saeed, whose 24-year old son Mohab died in January 2011 after marching from the working-class district of Shobra to Tahrir Square. Saeed said Mohab died from bullet wounds to the chest.

Mubarak became the first ruler toppled by the Arab Spring uprisings to stand trial in person. But the case has also exposed the difficulties of transitional justice in a country where the judiciary and security forces are still largely run by men appointed during the Mubarak era.

The prosecution complained that the interior ministry had failed to cooperate in providing evidence, leading to the acquittal of six senior ministry officials tried with Mubarak.

The trial irked Gulf Arab rulers in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, of whom the former air force commander had been a loyal ally for decades.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry; Writing by Paul Taylor)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/egypts-mubarak-flown-court-retrial-tv-070906417.html

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Russia bars 18 Americans in retaliation for Magnitsky List

By Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Moscow said on Saturday that Washington had dealt a severe blow to relations by barring 18 Russians from the United States over alleged human rights abuses, and in retaliation it banned 18 Americans from entering Russia.

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration had on Friday issued a list of 18 people subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the United States under the Magnitsky Act legislation passed by Congress late last year.

"Under pressure from Russophobic members of the U.S. Congress, a powerful blow has been dealt to bilateral relations and mutual trust," a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said.

The mutual blacklisting could dim hopes voiced publicly by both sides of rehabilitating a relationship increasingly strained since President Vladimir Putin returned to the Kremlin last May.

Obama's national security adviser is to have talks on Monday with senior officials in Moscow - the highest-level face-to-face contact since the U.S. president began a second term in January.

The Foreign Ministry listed 18 Americans subject to visa bans and asset freezes under a retaliatory law Putin signed in December that allowed such steps against Americans deemed to have violated the human rights of Russians abroad. That law also banned the adoption of Russian children by Americans.

The Americans barred from Russia include two officials from President George W. Bush's administration who the ministry said were linked to the "legalization and application of torture" - David Addington, a former chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, and John Choon Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer.

The list includes two ex-commanders of the U.S. military detention centers at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, whose detainees have included Russian citizens.

As counsel to Cheney, Addington pressed for more coercive interrogation tactics while Yoo issued a legal opinion that said federal laws on the use of torture did not apply to interrogations conducted overseas.

Geoffrey Miller, a commander at Guantanamo in the Bush era, was sent to Iraq to advise on interrogation tactics and was an adviser on interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison. Jeffrey Harbeson was a Guantanamo commander during Obama's first term.

The list includes law enforcement authorities involved in the prosecution of Viktor Bout, a Russian arms trader serving a 25-year U.S. prison term after his arrest in Thailand, and of Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was detained in Liberia and sentenced to 20 years on drug-trafficking charges in the United States.

"The war of lists is not our choice, but we have no right not to respond to blatant blackmail," the ministry statement said. "It is high time for politicians in Washington to finally realize that it is futile to build relations with a country like Russia in a spirit of mentoring and outright diktat."

Putin, in power as president or prime minister since 2000, has frequently complained about what he says is the use by the United States of human rights concerns as a pretext for meddling in the affairs of Russia and other nations.

The U.S. list includes 16 people linked to the case of Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, whose death in jail in 2009 underscored the risks of challenging the Russian state and deepened U.S. concern for civil rights and the rule of law in Russia.

THE MAGNITSKY EFFECT

Putin has said that Magnitsky's death at age 37 was caused by heart failure. But the Kremlin's own human rights council has aired suspicions that Magnitsky was beaten to death and he had repeatedly said he was denied medical treatment in jail.

Former colleagues say Magnitsky was jailed on tax evasion charges by the same Russian officials he had accused of stealing $230 million from the state through fraudulent tax rebates.

Nobody has been held criminally responsible for Magnitsky's death, and he is now being tried posthumously in a Moscow court despite the outrage of relatives and lawyers who say the trial is illegal and inhuman.

Putin and other Russian officials say the United States is in no position to criticize other nations on human rights.

The Russian list includes Americans "involved in the legalization and application of torture and the indefinite detention at the Guantanamo special prison, and in arrests and abductions of Russian citizens in third countries".

The exchange of lists increased tension before the visit by White House national security adviser Tom Donilon, who is expected to gauge Russia's appetite for better ties and the chances of progress on the divisive issue of missile defense.

A U.S. decision to scale down plans for a European missile shield could ease Russia's stated concerns that the system will weaken its security, but Moscow's response so far has been cautious.

Putin's spokesman said on Friday the U.S. list would have a "very negative" effect but also signaled Russia wanted to limit the damage, saying relations were multifaceted and there remained "many prospects for development and growth".

The fact that neither nation included any current high-ranking official on its list could help keep the issue separate from others, though both governments have indicated some names were kept secret for national security reasons.

A senior Russian lawmaker said on Friday he believed Obama had kept the list to a "minimum" to try not to cause a crisis.

Relations between the former Cold War foes improved during Obama's first-term push to "reset" ties with Russia, but they soured again after Putin started his march back to the presidency in 2011. He was elected in March 2012.

Putin accused the United States of encouraging opposition protests against him, and Russia has cracked down on Western-funded non-governmental organizations since he took office.

The countries are also at odds over the war in Syria and what Putin's foes say is a clampdown by him on dissent through restrictive legislation and politically charged trials.

(Additional reporting by Lidia Kelly; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-bars-18-americans-response-u-magnitsky-list-085230665.html

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Kerry visits tense SKorea amid missile test fears

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in South Korea on Friday on an unusual diplomatic journey, traveling directly into a region bracing for a possible North Korean missile test and risking that his presence alone could spur Pyongyang into another headline-seeking provocation.

Kerry was kicking off four days of talks in East Asia amid speculation that the North's unpredictable regime would launch a mid-range missile designed to reach as far as the U.S. territory of Guam. Kerry also planned to visit China and Japan.

North Korea often times its provocations to generate maximum attention, and Kerry's presence in Seoul will provide plenty of that, even if the United States is engaged in intense diplomacy with China, the North's benefactor, in an effort to lower tensions. Another key date on the calendar is April 15, the 101st birthday of North Korea's deceased founder, Kim Il Sung.

Kerry's trip coincides with the disclosure of a new U.S. intelligence report that concludes North Korea has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead. The analysis, disclosed Thursday at a congressional hearing in Washington, said the Pentagon's intelligence wing has "moderate confidence" that North Korea has nuclear weapons capable of delivery by ballistic missiles but that the weapon would be unreliable.

Pentagon spokesman George Little said afterward that "it would be inaccurate to suggest that the North Korean regime has fully tested, developed or demonstrated the kinds of nuclear capabilities referenced" at the congressional hearing.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said he concurred with Little and noted that the report alluded to at the hearing was compiled by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency and was not an assessment by the entire U.S. intelligence community. "Moreover, North Korea has not yet demonstrated the full range of capabilities necessary for a nuclear armed missile," he said.

President Barack Obama on Thursday urged calm, calling on Pyongyang to end its saber-rattling while sternly warning that he would "take all necessary steps" to protect American citizens.

Kerry's trip marks his first foray to the Asia-Pacific as America's top diplomat, spearheading the effort to "pivot" U.S. power away from Europe and the Middle East and toward the world's most populous region and fulcrum of economic growth.

And it comes on the heels of months of provocative action and warlike rhetoric from Pyongyang, including talk of nuclear strikes against the United States ? however outlandish analysts consider such threats. No one is discounting the danger entirely after tests of a nuclear device and ballistic missile technology in recent months.

Kerry's trip was planned well in advance of the latest danger to destabilize the Korean peninsula: North Korea's apparent preparations for another missile test in defiance of United Nations resolutions. The crisis clearly has overtaken the rest of his Asian agenda.

The Obama administration believes North Korea is preparing for another missile test, said a senior State Department official traveling with Kerry on the plane to Seoul. "We will show to our allies that we are prepared and we will defend them," the official said.

To mitigate the threat, however, Kerry is largely depending on China to take a bigger role in pressuring North Korea to live up to previous agreements to halt its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. It's a strategy that has worked poorly for the U.S. for more than two decades.

Beijing has the most leverage with Pyongyang. It has massively boosted trade with its communist neighbor and maintains close military ties. And the U.S. believes the Chinese could take several specific steps to show North Korea it cannot threaten regional stability with impunity.

These include getting China to cut off support for North Korea's weapons of mass destruction program, said the State Department official and another senior administration official, though they rejected that the U.S. was seeking a commercial embargo against the North.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about Kerry's meetings in advance.

Neither could say, however, whether Pyongyang under its enigmatic young leader, Kim Jong Un, was actually listening at this point. One of them stressed that he "wouldn't say there is no conversation between them," but declined to describe the level and impact of Chinese-North Korean contacts.

Kim's actual control of the country also is unclear, the official added. Now 29 or 30, the basketball devotee and product of a Swiss boarding school inherited power from his late father, Kim Jong Il, some 16 months ago and has seemed to lead his country on an increasingly reckless path toward possible confrontation.

That has led many observers and policymakers abroad to devote increasing time toward analyzing what little information they have on Kim to figure out how he can be mollified without being rewarded.

Pyongyang has conducted three nuclear tests and shown it can launch a three-stage missile. But a senior U.S. military official in South Korea said it was "premature" to believe North Korea can develop a warhead, launch it, have it re-enter the atmosphere and then actually target something.

Putting a miniaturized nuclear weapon on a warhead is a "very difficult task," said the official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter and demanded anonymity.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-visits-tense-skorea-amid-missile-test-fears-054634320--politics.html

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Are human genes patentable?

Apr. 12, 2013 ? On April 15, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral argument in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, a case that could answer the question, "Under what conditions, if any, are isolated human genes patentable?" Kevin Emerson Collins, JD, patent law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, believes that layered uncertainties make this case an unusually difficult case in which to predict the outcome.

During the early 1990s, Myriad Genetics made important scientific discoveries related to mutations in the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 genes, which are biomarkers for increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer. Based on this work, Myriad sought, and obtained, patent protection for "isolated" DNA molecules that embody these sequences.

The Supreme Court's opinion in Myriad will determine whether Myriad's gene patents are valid or, alternatively, whether they were improperly issued from the beginning.

"The legal controversy centers on patent law's 'products of nature' doctrine -- a doctrine that prevents the patenting of newly made products that do not display a 'marked difference' from naturally occurring products," Collins says.

"A perfectly circular section cut out of a leaf of a newly discovered plant may be technically new at the time that it is first made -- and it may be socially useful if the leaf contains chemicals that are natural wound healers, but it's likely an unpatentable product of nature because there is no marked difference between the newly created product and the naturally occurring product.

"Importantly, the Myriad gene patents only encompass DNA molecules in an 'isolated' state, separate from the remainder of the chromosome in which they exist in a human body, and they thus describe molecules that were technically new when Myriad first made them."

The question before the Court is whether the structural and functional differences between naturally occurring DNA molecules and DNA molecules in an isolated state is sufficiently significant to constitute a "marked difference" and to sanction the patenting of the isolated DNAs.

Behind the legal controversy is an economic controversy that may (or may not) influence the Supreme Court's pronouncement on the products of nature doctrine. "The social costs of the exclusive rights to inventions granted by patents are normally justified by the incentives that patents provide for self-interested entities to invest in research and development and generate the socially valuable inventions," Collins says.

However, under some circumstances, there are legitimate concerns that the incentive-based benefits of patents may not outweigh these costs.

"One function of the products of nature doctrine is to ensure that the basic tools of scientific and technological work are not constrained by claims of patent rights and remain free for all to use as inputs into future research," says Collins.

"To the extent that isolated genes are essential technological and scientific building blocks, the costs of Myriad's gene patents in the form of slower innovation in the future may be so great that they will outweigh the benefits of the patent-induced incentives that speed up the creation of the isolated genes themselves."

The verdict

Collins says it is difficult to predict how the Supreme Court will decide this case because of three compounded uncertainties.

First, the Supreme Court has to date not offered a clear legal framework for identifying products of nature, so it is unclear how high a hurdle the markedly different standard will prove to be.

Second, it is unclear how strongly the Court's legal determination will be influenced by the underlying economic concerns about the privatization of the building blocks of technological progress.

Third, the relationship between the Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals -- the court that authored the opinion below in Myriad -- is not likely to lead to much of any deference.

"Recent Federal Circuit patent decisions have been poorly received by the Supreme Court," Collins says. "The Federal Circuit upheld the patentablity of these genes, but, given recent history, this is not much of an indicator as to Supreme Court will handle this case."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Jessica Martin.

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Woman tracks down lifeguard who saved her -- 50 years ago

(Wikicommons)In 1964, Eady Rothstein was just a 5-year-old girl hanging out with her family by a pool near Lido Bach on Long Island, New York.

But she fell into the water and nearly drowned before a 21-year-old lifeguard, Larry Brickman, saved her life.

And now, NBC 4 New York reports that nearly 50 years later Rothstein has tracked down the former lifeguard to thank him for rescuing her.

"I've always said I wanted to thank him, and I should do it," Rothstein said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3,533 people drowned in the U.S. from 2005 to 2009, about 700 per year. But that number was much higher in previous decades before CPR and other life-saving medical innovations became more readily available. According to the Original Watermen, some 9,000 people drowned in the U.S. each year after swimming became a national phenomenon in the early 1900s.

In August 2012, an electronic lifeguard device named EMILY was sent on its first rescue mission. The buoy-like device can travel up to 22 mph and serves as a flotation device for struggling swimmers.

On Wednesday, the local branch of the YMCA in Austin, Texas, announced it was hiring lifeguards for the summer to help fill a shortage at public pools in the city.

After the 1964 rescue, Rothstein and Brickman fell out of contact. So, Rothstein went online and looked for Brickman?s contact information after finding a reference to him in her family scrapbook.

After she found his phone number, the two were able to connect over the phone and plan to meet in person sometime soon.

"My final words to her when I hung up that day, after I called her back, were, 'You know, I guess we just got very lucky, you and I both,'" Brickman told NBC.

Both Rothstein and Brickman say his knowledge of CPR, which was rare at the time, was instrumental in the rescue.

"If no one was there to do this, I'm afraid she would have succumbed," Brickman said.

"I owe my life, and it's a very nice feeling to finally be able to say, 'Thank you,'" Rothstein added.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/woman-tracks-down-lifeguard-saved-her-nearly-50-001717211.html

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