6 ways to tweet yourself out of a job

Hate your job? Want to leave without giving two weeks notice? Thanks to Twitter, it’s never been easier to get fired, says Rob Lammie at Mental Floss

Step 1: Drunk tweet
As any Spring Break partier knows, drinking impairs your judgment. It seems to have also impaired the judgment of Major League pitcher-turned-sports-radio-host Mike Bacsik, who put on quite a show during a San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks NBA game in April 2010. While watching the game, Bacsik bragged that he was “About 12 deep and some shots.” He proceeded to unleash a string of insults aimed at NBA commissioner David Stern, accused the refs of fixing the game, and even threatened to blow up the NBA’s offices. But the one that really got people riled up came after the Mavericks lost the game, when Bacsik tweeted: 

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@MikeBacsik: “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio.”

After sobering up, Bacsik deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology. But it was too little, too late. Numerous people complained to his radio station, which first suspended Bacsik and later fired him. After his dismissal, he told ESPN Dallas, “When you tweet like that, it’s not a playful, harmless thing… I’m very sorry and will try my best for my actions to speak louder than my tweets.”

Step 2: Break the law (or just anger your governor)
Twitter has become a great tool for politicians to connect to the voting public. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, has really embraced the technology as a way to share his opinions and views. For example, in December 2009, he sent out a tweet saying:

 @HaleyBarbour: “Glad the Legislature recognizes our dire fiscal situation. Look forward to hearing their ideas on how to trim expenses.”

Jennifer Carter, one of his Twitter followers who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC), read this message and offered up a suggestion on how Governor Barbour could personally save the taxpayers money:

“Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees overtime to do it when clinics are usually closed.” 

This “Oh, snap!” moment referred to an incident that had occurred three years earlier, when the governor requested the medical center open on a Saturday, when they were normally closed, and bring in a staff of 15-20 people who were paid overtime to administer his annual check-up. This happened before Carter worked for UMC and she was simply repeating what she had been told by other employees. 

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The governor’s office tracked down Carter and made a formal complaint to UMC, saying Carter had violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a privacy law that states no employee of a medical facility can reveal any information about a person’s “protected health information.” Some argued that Carter didn’t violate HIPAA, since she didn’t actually give out any information about the health of the governor. However, others believe that simply saying the governor had even visited a doctor is a violation. 

Semantics aside, UMC administrators said it was a violation, so they suspended Carter for three days without pay and strongly suggested she resign to avoid further disciplinary action, which she did.

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Step 3: Have an NSFW lifestyle
St. Louis-based blogger “The Beautiful Kind” had been writing online about her polyamorous sex life for years. Knowing that not everyone would agree with her chosen lifestyle, she was always very careful about maintaining her anonymity, especially when it came to the workplace. So when she signed up for Twitter, she wanted to be anonymous there as well. She thought that, thanks to the similarities between the two, it was like signing up for an online message board — you supplied your real name to the website privately, but could choose to be known publicly by your username only. But when she logged in for the first time and saw that, not only did it show her username (@TBK365), but also her real name on her profile, she immediately went back and removed it. 

Thinking she was now safely anonymous, she used Twitter to promote her blog and to discuss sexually explicit topics with her followers. However, when her boss at the non-profit group where she worked was told by upper management to do a Google search of all employees, TBK’s Twitter account information — with her real name still associated — came up on the Twitter tracking site topsy.com.

The next day, TBK was called into her boss’ office and fired on the spot. Afterwards, her former boss sent her a letter saying, “While I know you are a good worker and an intelligent person, I hope you try to understand that our employees are held to a different standard. When it comes to private matters, such as one’s sexual explorations and preferences, our employees must keep their affairs private.” Because Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire someone for just about any reason, TBK was SOL.

Step 4: Question company policy
When California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) traded in their standard white shirts for black ones, employee Tim Chantarangsu wasn’t happy with the change. So he tweeted @calpizzakitchen his opinion:

@traphik: “black button ups are the lamest s**t ever!!!”

He didn’t expect anyone to notice or care, but the next day he received a direct message from corporate asking what restaurant he worked for. He knew better than to respond, but they tracked him down anyway and he was fired. They not only referenced his tweet about the shirts, but also an earlier one where he had said he was getting ready to work at “Calipornia Skeetza Kitchen.” 

Little did they know that Chantarangsu is kind of a big deal on another social website, YouTube. Under the name TimothyDeLaGhetto2, Chantarangsu has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, accounting for over 10,500,000 views of his videos at the time. Of course he made a YouTube video telling his Twitter story and it has been viewed well more than 100,000 times. Shortly after the incident, he asked his followers to bombard CPK’s Twitter account with RTs (re-tweets) of his offending message, which they were more than happy to oblige.

Step 5: Make a celebrity look bad
During his five years on the job, Jon Barrett-Ingels had served a lot of celebrities as a waiter at Barney Greengrass, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, Jane Adams, star of the HBO series Hung, came in and had lunch to the tune of $ 13.44. Unfortunately, when the bill came, Adams realized she had left her wallet in the car. Ingels knew who she was, so he told her she could run out and grab it and come back. The actress left, but didn’t return. Instead, someone from her agency called the next day and paid the bill. However, they didn’t leave a tip. Ingels had recently signed up for Twitter and so, his sixth tweet to his 40 followers said:

@PapaBarrett: Jane Adams, star of HBO series “Hung” skipped out on a $ 13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” 

Over the next few weeks, Ingels started using Twitter to send out a few harmless observations about celebrities that came in to eat — mainly what they ordered or what they looked like that day. Then, out of the blue, Jane Adams came back to the restaurant. According to Ingels’ blog, she was clearly upset and begrudgingly slapped $ 3 on the bar for Ingels as a tip. Surprised, Ingels told the actress she really didn’t have to do that, but her gesture was appreciated. She allegedly replied with, “My friend read about it on Twitter!” before storming off. Adams complained about the tweet to management, so someone from Barney’s corporate started following Ingels on Twitter to see what he was up to. After reading his celebrity tweets, it didn’t take long before they gave him the boot.

Step 6: Don’t get hired in the first place
If you’ve followed steps 1 – 5 and you still have a job, here’s the ultimate way to make sure Twitter will keep you from gainful employment.

When recent college grad Skye Riley heard back from Cisco, the computer networking giant, about her job application, one of her first instincts was to tweet about it. Unfortunately, this is what she tweeted:

@theconnor: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The unfortunate part? An employee of Cisco, Tim Levad, came across her post while doing a Twitter search for Cisco. He replied to her by saying:

@timmylevad: Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Riley’s story was the tweet heard round the world. It became a hot topic on tech blogs for weeks afterwards, with writers calling it the “Cisco Fatty” incident. She later claimed that the tweet was taken out of context — that part of her message was referring to a well-paid internship she had turned down — but it appears the damage had already been done. While only she and Cisco know what really happened, according to her online resume, she has never worked for the company.

 — Rob Lammie

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Four new cases of SARS-like virus found in Saudi, Qatar

LONDON (Reuters) – A new virus from the same family as SARS which sparked a global alert in September has now killed two people in Saudi Arabia, and total cases there and in Qatar have reached six, the World Health Organisation said.

The U.N. health agency issued an international alert in late September saying a virus previously unknown in humans had infected a Qatari man who had recently been in Saudi Arabia, where another man with the same virus had died.

On Friday it said in an outbreak update that it had registered four more cases and one of the new patients had died.

“The additional cases have been identified as part of the enhanced surveillance in Saudi Arabia (3 cases, including 1 death) and Qatar (1 case),” the WHO said.

The new virus is known as a coronavirus and shares some of the symptoms of SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which emerged in China in 2002 and killed around a 10th of the 8,000 people it infected worldwide.

Among the symptoms in the confirmed cases are fever, coughing and breathing difficulties.

Of the six laboratory-confirmed cases reported to WHO, four cases, including the two deaths, are from Saudi Arabia and two cases are from Qatar.

Britain’s Health Protection Agency, which helped to identify the new virus in September, said the newly reported case from Qatar was initially treated in October in Qatar but then transferred to Germany, and has now been discharged.

Coronaviruses are typically spread like other respiratory infections, such as flu, travelling in airborne droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

The WHO said investigations were being conducted into the likely source of the infection, the method of exposure, and the possibility of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

“Close contacts of the recently confirmed cases are being identified and followed-up,” it said.

It added that so far, only the two most recently confirmed cases in Saudi Arabia were epidemiologically linked – they were from the same family, living in the same household.

“Preliminary investigations indicate that these two cases presented with similar symptoms of illness. One died and the other recovered,” the WHO’s statement said.

Two other members of the same family also suffered similar symptoms of illness, and one died and the other is recovering. But the WHO said laboratory test results on the fatality were still pending, and the person who is recovering had tested negative for the new coronavirus.

The virus has no formal name, but scientists at the British and Dutch laboratories where it was identified refer to it as “London1_novel CoV 2012″.

The WHO urged all its member states to continue surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections.

“Until more information is available, it is prudent to consider that the virus is likely more widely distributed than just the two countries which have identified cases,” it said.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

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Massachusetts gas explosion under investigation

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP) — Dozens of building inspectors began assessing homes and businesses in one of New England's biggest cities on Saturday, a day after a natural gas explosion leveled a strip club located next to a day care and heavily damaged a dozen other structures. The blast injured 18 people, many of them first responders.

Investigators were trying to figure out what caused the Friday night blast in Springfield that could be heard for miles, left a large hole in the ground where the multistory brick building housing Scores Gentleman's Club once stood and scattered debris over several blocks.

Officials had already evacuated part of the entertainment district after responding to a gas leak and odor reported about an hour before the explosion while firefighters, police officers and gas company workers were in the area filled with commercial properties and residences.

"It really is a miracle and it's an example of our public safety officials, each and every day, putting themselves in harm's way, taking what could have been considered a very routine call of an odor of gas, but they took the proper precautions," State Fire Marshal Stephen Coan said. "And thanks to God that they did."

Officials also marveled how the 5:30 p.m. blast occurred when a day care center next door was closed. The center's building was heavily damaged.

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray and Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno were attending a tree-lighting ceremony when the explosion occurred. Sarno said some people mistakenly thought the boom was part of the holiday event.

The explosion blew out windows in a three-block radius, leaving at least three buildings irreparably damaged and causing emergency workers to evacuate a six-story apartment building that was buckling, police said. Pieces of broken glass littered streets and sidewalks. It was unclear how many residents had been evacuated. A shelter was set up at a school.

Omar Fermin, manager of the Punta Cana Restaurant two blocks from the explosion site, found the floor-to-ceiling windows blasted out when he came to check on the property Saturday morning.

"It looks like an earthquake hit," said Fermin, a native of the Dominican Republic. "I've never seen anything like it."

He said he was waiting for somebody to come and assess the damage. He worried the restaurant would remain closed for weeks while the owner seeks to replace the massive custom-made windows.

Authorities cordoned off the center of the explosion Saturday morning as building inspectors worked to identify unsafe structures. Anxious residents gathered at the perimeter, waiting for permission to visit their buildings.

Dogs trapped in abandoned buildings barked out loudly Saturday as building inspectors fanned out across the area. One inspector said he wished he could get a ladder and permission to retrieve a dog that was barking in the upper floor of one building sealed off from residents.

Coan, the fire marshal, said his office was investigating a cause of the blast and its possible origin. The state's Department of Public Utilities was also investigating.

Sheila Doiron, a spokeswoman for Columbia Gas of Massachusetts, said the company will continue to monitor for any potential leaks within several blocks of the blast site. So far, she said, the company hadn't yet found any measurable readings.

Doiron said the company also didn't find in its records any gas odor calls to the area where the strip club was located.

The victims were taken to two hospitals in the city. None of their injuries was considered life-threatening, officials said. Those injured were nine firefighters, two police officers, four Columbia Gas workers, two civilians and another city employee.

Springfield, which is 90 miles west of Boston and has about 150,000 residents, is the largest city in western Massachusetts. It's known as the home of the Basketball Hall of Fame, which is not in the vicinity of the blast.

The city has been rebuilding from damage it sustained in a June 2011 tornado.

On Friday night, residents milled around the neighborhood where the explosion occurred, stunned by the destruction and confused by the cordoned-off area, which grew as crews continued to search for gas leaks. The mayor warned against looting, saying police would be out in force.

Wayne Davis, who lives about a block away from the destroyed building, said he felt his apartment shake.

"I was laying down in bed, and I started feeling the building shaking and creaking," he said.

The Navy veteran said the boom from the explosion was louder than anything he'd ever heard, including the sound of a jet landing on an aircraft carrier.

The blast was so loud it was heard in several neighboring communities. Video from WWLP-TV showed the moment of the explosion, with smoke billowing into the air above the neighborhood.

___

Associated Press writers Rodrique Ngowi, Bridget Murphy and Bob Salsberg in Boston and Jessica Hill in Springfield contributed to this report.

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Canada wants to balance budget in 2015, may invest to grow economy

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Thursday he is aiming to wipe out the federal budget deficit by 2015, in time for the next election, but cautioned the Conservative government would be flexible with that target if the economy soured.

Canada’s fiscal shortfall of 1.4 percent of gross domestic product is tiny compared to that of the United States and some other major economies. But it is a sore point for policy makers in a country that ran an 11-year string of surpluses prior to the global financial crisis.

“It remains our intention to balance the budget during this session of Parliament,” Flaherty said in the prepared text of a speech he was delivering in Toronto.

“Although we are prepared to be flexible and pragmatic should circumstances warrant — our plan is to stick to our plan: balanced budgets and low taxes,” he said.

The parliamentary session is due to end in October 2015, the same month a federal election is scheduled.

Last week, Flaherty presented a fiscal update that showed a return to balanced budgets in 2016-17, including a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion in case the global economy worsens.

Three days later, amid criticism, both he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.

Flaherty said on Thursday the next budget in early 2013 would continue with what he called “pro-growth initiatives” of the past year, giving as examples previously-announced initiatives to strengthen the venture capital system and to provide skills training for the work force.

He hinted there would be “much more,” without giving details.

The plan will not include tax hikes and the government will continue to look for ways to cut spending, he said.

“From the experience of Greece and beyond, Canadians know that the consequences of unsustainable finances are all too painful,” he said.

($ 1 = $ 1 Canadian)

(Writing by Louise Egan; editing by Andrew Hay)

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Pussy Riot protester alone in cell after inmate tension

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Jailed Pussy Riot punk protester Maria Alyokhina has been moved to a single-person cell for her own protection because of tension with other prisoners, her lawyer and Russia‘s federal penitentiary service said on Friday.

Alyokhina, 24, is serving a two-year sentence for a raucous protest against President Vladimir Putin in Moscow‘s main Russian Orthodox cathedral. Activists said her trial, and that of two band mates, was part of a crackdown on dissent.

“There was a conflict” between Alyokhina and other inmates and “she was transferred to a individual cell,” her lawyer Irina Khrunova said by telephone. She said it was not yet clear what caused the conflict.

Prison authorities said Alyokhina was moved at her own request.

“Some tensions arose in relationships and, apparently to prevent this situation from escalating, she decided to submit a request to the prison leadership and they moved her to a one-person cell,” a federal prison service spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman dismissed Russian media reports Alyokhina argued with inmates over religion at the Ural Mountains prison about 1,150 km (715 miles) northeast of Moscow. Pussy Riot’s protest offended many members of Russia’s Orthodox Church.

The spokeswoman also said she had no information regarding a report on the tabloid-style Life News website that Alyokhina had received violent threats from cell mates.

Alyokhina’s main meal is taken to her cell and she is accompanied by a guard when she leaves it, the spokeswoman said.

Alyokhina and two band mates were convicted in August of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred for their “punk prayer”, which the dominant Russian Orthodox Church has cast as part of a concerted attack on the church and the faithful.

The women said the protest, in which they burst into Christ the Saviour Cathedral and called on the Virgin Mary to rid Russia of Putin, was not motivated by hatred and was meant to mock the church leadership’s support for the longtime leader.

Putin, a former KGB officer who has cultivated close ties with the church over 13 years in power, has rejected criticism from the United States and European leaders who called the two-year sentences disproportionate.

Alyokhina, who has a young son, argued with the judge and cross-examined witnesses during her trial.

Her band mate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23, is serving her sentence in a different prison. Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, was freed last month when a court suspended her sentence on appeal.

(Additional reporting by Ludmila Danilova and Steve Gutterman; Writing by Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; editing by Jason Webb)

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Ireland opens new probe into death of woman denied abortion

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland has opened a new investigation into the death of a woman denied an abortion of her dying fetus, as the government scrambled to stem criticism of its handling of an incident that polarized the overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year old dentist, was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors said her baby would not survive, according to husband Praveen, but in a country with some of the world’s most restrictive abortion laws, surgeons would not remove the fetus until its heartbeat stopped days later.

Husband Praveen Halappanavar, who believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed his wife on October 28, has said he would not cooperate with an investigation already launched by the country’s health service because he did not believe it would be neutral.

On Friday, the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) watchdog, which is government-funded but independent of the state health service, said it had also launched an investigation after receiving information from the health service and University Hospital Galway, where Halappanavar died.

A solicitor acting on behalf of the husband said the new inquiry was unlikely to be enough to satisfy his client.

“My client has always made his position very clear … He wants a public inquiry. He has made it clear he wants to get to the truth of the matter, so I don’t think that the framework of HIQA will suffice,” Gerard O’Donnell, told RTE radio.

He added that the next step would be to consider an application to the European Court of Human Rights, which criticized Ireland’s abortion ban in 2010.

Halappanavar’s death has reopened a decades-long debate over whether the government should legislate to explicitly allow abortion when the life of the mother is at risk.

Irish law does not specify exactly when the threat to the life of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide. Critics say this means doctors’ personal beliefs can play a role.

Though the influence of the Catholic Church over Irish politics has waned since the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

CALL TO CLARIFY

Ireland’s abortion stance is enshrined in a 1983 constitutional amendment that intended to ban abortion in all circumstances. In 1992, when challenged in the “X-case” involving a 14-year-old rape victim, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was permitted when the woman’s life was at risk, including from suicide.

But successive governments refused to make clear the circumstances under which a threat would make an abortion legal. After several challenges, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2010 that Ireland must clarify its position.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, whose ruling Fine Gael party made an election pledge not to introduce new laws allowing abortion, said last week he would not be rushed into a decision on the issue.

The government was forced into an embarrassing u-turn this week when it removed three Galway-based consultants from the health service inquiry following criticism from Praveen Halappanavar.

The issue has raised tensions between Fine Gael and the more socially liberal Labour Party, its junior coalition partner, which has campaigned for a clarification of the country’s abortion rules.

The country’s president, Michael D. Higgins, a former member of the Labour Party, weighed into the debate this week when he said an investigation was needed that satisfied the dead woman’s family.

Opposition party Sinn Fein introduced a motion to parliament on Wednesday calling for parliament to legislate on abortion, but it was rejected.

“Successive governments over the past 20 years have failed in respect of legislation. That failure is in large measure due to fear or cowardice,” said Mary Lou McDonald, vice president of Sinn Fein.

(Editing by Will Waterman)

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The politics of shopping: Does that store lean left or right?

Black Friday: It’s a day in which most American citizens put aside politics in pursuit of shopping bargains. But in Washington we can sort almost anything in the US in terms of partisan proclivity, and temples of commerce are no exception. Want to know whether the big box store where you’re waiting in line leans Democratic or Republican? The folks at the invaluable Center for Responsive Politics have compiled a handy guide based on campaign contributions.

Toys R Us, for instance, seems a solidly blue store. Self-identified employees of the store gave $39,000 to political candidates in the 2012 election cycle, and $36,000 of that went to Democrats.

Dig into the numbers though, and you’ll see that Toys R Us is not so much Democratic as Klobucharian. All that $36,000 went to one candidate, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota. (That’s kind of odd, isn’t it? The retailer’s corporate headquarters are in New Jersey.) Other than that, Mitt Romney got $1,750 from Toys R Us workers. President Obama got zilch, according to CRP’s Open Secrets blog.

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Macy’s employees, on the other hand, were big Obama fans. They donated $28,870 to the president’s reelection campaign, as opposed to $16,390 to GOP nominee Mr. Romney. This Democratic lean was counterbalanced to a certain extent by the store’s corporate political action committee, however. (Toys R Us doesn’t appear to have a central PAC.) Macy’s PAC gave $12,000 to Republicans, and $4,000 to Democrats.

Best Buy seems more of a red retailer. Both it s employees and the company’s PAC had a slight preference for Republicans, according to CRP. Store employees gave $17,662 to Democrats and $22,419 to the GOP, for instance.

But there’s Senator Klobuchar again – she’s the individual candidate to whom Best Buy-related entities donated the most. Yes, she’s chairperson of a Senate Commerce subcommittee on competitiveness, so that might have something to do with it. Maybe the money comes due to her political affiliation with Minnesota’s Gov. Mark Dayton? Governor Dayton is the scion of the Dayton retail empire, which among other things founded Target.

Hmm, we see that Target leaned GOP as well, so maybe that theory isn’t right. Of the store’s $483,777 in individual and PAC contributions, the majority went to the right side of the aisle, according to Open Secrets. And the top recipient is not Sen. Klobuchar, but Rep. Eric Paulsen – a Twin Cities Republican.

Then there’s Wal-Mart. Sam Walton’s empire has a major presence in politics compared with its big box brethren. Its employees and PAC gave $2.7 million to candidates in the 2012 cycle.

Employee donations skewed Republican – which might not be surprising, since Wal-Mart is a big employer in the exurban/rural areas where Romney ran strongly. The firm’s PAC gave roughly equal amounts to candidates of both parties, however. That might be because Wal-Mart lobbies hard in Washington and needs relationships on both sides of the aisle.

In fact, Wal-Mart has spent more than $12 million on lobbyists in the past two years. It has its own Washington office, with 15 employees, and pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in retainers to such top outside lobby firms as Patton Boggs and the Podesta Group.

The firm’s No. 1 issue is sales taxes – specifically, getting states to slap sales taxes on web retail. Rep. Steven Womack (R) of Arkansas, whose district includes Wal-Mart’s Bentonville headquarters, has long pushed national legislation that would force out-of-state online retailers to collect sales tax. He’s one of the top recipients of Wal-Mart campaign contributions.

“The traditional brick and mortar retailer is not asking for special treatment. They know they have to compete against a number of consumer criterion. What they don’t want – and should not compete against – is a disadvantage based on a tax loophole,” said Congressman Womack earlier this year during a Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue.

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Former Ivory Coast leader’s wife wanted by ICC

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court unsealed an indictment Thursday against former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo‘s wife on charges including murder, rape and persecution. It was the first time in the court’s 10-year history it has charged a woman.

The world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal said the arrest warrant was issued on Feb. 29 for former first lady Simone Gbagbo for crimes against humanity.

Her husband, Laurent Gbagbo, is already in custody at the court’s detention unit in The Hague facing similar charges stemming from his fight to retain power after losing a 2010 presidential election. If his wife is extradited, they could face justice together in an unprecedented husband-wife trial.

But a senior member of Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara‘s government, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media, said Ivory Coast has already informed the ICC that the nation will not let her go.

“We informed them of this a long time ago,” he said.

The court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, urged Ivory Coast to extradite Gbagbo.

“The type of crimes committed in the aftermath of the 2010 elections did not happen by chance — they were planned and coordinated at the highest political and military levels and all those bearing the greatest responsibility must be held to account,” Bensouda said in a statement.

She said prosecutors continue to investigate crimes committed by both sides in Ivory Coast’s bloody power struggle and expect to issue further arrest warrants in the future.

“The investigations are objective, impartial and independent, and are conducted in strict accordance with the law,” she said.

Ivory Coast officials are holding the 63 year old under house arrest in the northwest town of Odienne. Last week, Ivorian prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau said lawyers had questioned Simone Gbagbo there for two days and that the domestic charges against her remained the same: genocide, blood crimes and economic crimes.

Unsealing the ICC arrest warrant issued nearly nine months ago appears to be a tactic by the court to put pressure on Ouattara’s administration to hand over Ms. Gbagbo.

If authorities in Ivory Coast want to prosecute her, they have to convince judges at The Hague tribunal that their case involves the same crimes she is charged with at the ICC. It is a court of last resort, meaning it only takes cases from countries unwilling or unable to prosecute them.

The international court said in the warrant that there is evidence pro-Gbagbo forces deliberately attacked perceived supporters of Ouattara in the aftermath of the election.

Judges who reviewed evidence supporting the charges against Ms. Gbagbo said they found “there are reasonable grounds to believe that Ms. Gbagbo bears individual criminal responsibility for the crimes … as ‘an indirect co-perpetrator.’”

The warrant called Gbagbo an “alter ego for her husband” with the power to make state decisions. It said there is evidence to suggest she “instructed the pro-Gbagbo forces to commit crimes against individuals who posed a threat to her husband’s power.”

Her husband was the first former head of state to be taken into custody by the court when he was extradited to The Hague by the Ivory Coast government last year.

Prosecutors say about 3,000 people died in violence by both sides after Gbagbo refused to concede defeat following the election. Ouattara finally took power in April 2011 with the help of French and U.N. forces.

Ivory Coast is not a member state of the court, but has voluntarily accepted its jurisdiction.

It is very rare for a woman to be charged by an international war crimes court. In the past, the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic of persecution and sentenced her to 11 years imprisonment.

The announcement of the arrest warrant and Ivory Coast’s refusal to hand over Gbagbo appeared likely to raise tensions between supporters of her husband and those who back Ouattara.

Moussa Toure Zeguen, a leader of the Gbagbo allies in exile in Ghana, said by phone from Accra that the former president’s supporters had no faith in the Ivorian authorities to give Simone Gbagbo a fair trial.

“We don’t trust them. The only thing that Ouattara is doing is revenge,” Zeguen said. “He wants to try us without trying any of the fighters from his side who also committed crimes. It is not fair, and this cannot bring reconciliation.”

____

Associated Press writers Rukmini Callimachi in Dakar, Senegal, and Robbie Corey-Boulet in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, contributed to this report.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

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Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

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That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.

The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.

Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.

“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”

FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.

“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.

In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.

Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.

Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.

Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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