Game email inbox want to make zero of fun

Can making email into a game make you more productive, encourage you to develop better habits and make email more fun? That’s the idea behind Baydin’s The Email Game, which applies gearbox gameplay mechanics to the process of working through your inbox.

After authorizing the app with your Gmail or Google Apps account, you’re presented with the top email in your inbox and have 90 seconds to decide what to do with it: Archive, reply, label or “boomerang” (which archives the email, but will bring it back into your email automatically at an allotted time). Each positive action taken adds points to your score and moves you to the damper next email. Take more than the allotted 90 seconds, or “skip” the email without deciding to take action on it, and you’ll lose points.

If you decide to reply to a message, you’re given three minutes to compose your reply. Again, if you delay, you’ll lose points, although you can always click the “add time” button if you have to compose a particularly long email. Note: By default, The Email Game adds a link to itself in your email signature, which I found a bit annoying; you can remove it in the app’s settings page.
The Email Game isn’t the first app to try to turn email into a game; we’ve previously written about 0boxer, for example, which also awards points for completing email actions, although The Email Game is the first app I’ve seen that adds time limits to discourage procrastination. Unlike 0boxer and  InboxScore, however, The Email Game doesn’t have any social features, so you can’t compete with friends using an led downlight online leaderboard, and it also doesn’t seem to be able to keep track of your scores between sessions; it’s probably not something that you’d want to use on an ongoing basis. However, it’s certainly a fun way to motivate yourself to power quickly through your inbox in order to achieve “inbox zero.”
The “gamification of work” is something that’s attracting the attention of a few companies recently. Rypple, for example, is using gaming mechanics to increase engagement with its employee feedback app. While it remains to be seen as to whether gaming mechanics really can improve worker engagement and productivity, as Jessica noted in a recent post, game enthusiasts do tend to display the kind of traits — being bottom-line oriented, tolerant of diversity, comfortable with constant change, happy to learn, and intensely interested in innovation — that should also be advantageous in the workplace.
The free version of The Email Game works only with Gmail and Google Apps accounts. An enterprise edition is available that works with Outlook/Exchange or IMAP accounts and cable ties costs a rather pricey $20/seat/month.

Rising fuel prices raise import and export prices

Import and export prices continued rising in March, according to the Department of Labor Statistics, the result of surging commodity and fuel prices as well as the backlash of a weakened American dollar.

“On a grand scale, two things are happening,” said Gary Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Tuesday.  “One, commodity prices are going through the roof.  Two, the rise in oil prices, when it’s gone from $80 dollars to $105 or $107 per barrel, translates led bulbs into about $160 billion more that goes into foreign pockets.  That’s about 1 percent of our gross domestic product, which is a pretty big chunk of change.”

Growing fuel prices and nonfuel imports including animal feed and metals led the spike in import prices, which rose 2.7 percent in March.  It’s the largest increase since a similar 2.7 percent rise in June 2009. 

Import prices have been steadily increasing for the past 12 months, rising 9.7 percent.

Fuel prices jumped 9 percent in March, which represents the largest monthly rise since June 2009.  Over the 12-month period ended March, fuel prices ballooned by 28.7 percent, largely the result of skyrocketing petroleum prices.

Hufbauer noted that a weaker American dollar contributed to the rise in oil prices.

“The dollar is down relative to the cable ties currencies for most countries,” he said.  “So, what that means is that foreign suppliers generally tend to absorb a fair amount of dollar devaluation relative to their currency.”
Adolfo Laurenti, deputy economist at Chicago-based Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc., said a weakened dollar was a “curveball.”

“The dollar has continued to weaken,” Laurenti said Tuesday.  “But, there might be reason to expect the dollar to gain some ground, especially against the euro.”

Exports prices rose by a slight 1.5 percent last month, led by international demand for cotton, corn and nonagricultural industrial supplies and materials. The March boost in prices represents the largest increase since a 1.5 percent increase in November.  Over the past 12 months, export prices rose 9.5 percent, the largest increase since July 2008.

Poor weather in the major corn producing countries such golf irons as Russia and Australia increased international demand for U.S. corn, pushing export prices up by 9.2 percent in March.  During the past 12 months, corn prices shot up by 77.7 percent, driving a yearlong increase in overall agricultural export prices.

“The emerging economies have been doing very well in the last years,” Hufbauer said.  “Those economies have been growing quite fast, and in those economies fast growth translates into pretty big additional demand for food claims, which puts pressure on the demand side.”

Hufbauer noted that as emerging economies see growth, they tend to shift toward a meat-based diet, which requires more corn for animal feed.

Similarly, an influx of Chinese demand for cotton boosted the fiber’s export prices by 10.5 percent in March, further increasing export prices.

“Again, we’ve had pretty good weather,” Hufbauer said.  “Egypt is a big cotton producer, and there is a lot of chaos right now. Chaos reduces shipments, which is one reason for an increased demand for U.S.-produced cotton.”

Despite international demand for U.S. products, domestic machinery manufacturing metal halide lamp export prices hardly moved, signaling tough world competition for heavy machinery.

 “It’s just part of the business cycle coming out of recession. There are up months and down months,” said Jim Nelson, vice president of communications for the Illinois Association of Manufacturers. 

“It’s a competitive environment that is a living breathing things, much like the economy. As global competition becomes more intense, the less influence any one country has over price. It’s a competitive atmosphere. Producing the exercise bike best products that will be long lasting is always the way the U.S. succeeds in the world market.”

Oil prices continue sharp fall

Oil prices suffered their biggest two-day loss in 11 months and stocks dropped today on concerns about the strength of global growth metal halide lamp and as Goldman Sachs warned crude was set for a pullback.

The price of crude traded in New York slid more than 3%, bringing losses since Friday to 5.8%. Goldman Sachs predicted Brent prices would fall back to $US105 in "coming months," down from $US120 today, and the International Energy Agency said high prices could be eroding demand.

World stocks, as measured by the MSCI's main world equity index, were down 1.3%, the index's biggest one-day decline in four weeks.

Worries over global growth were heightened after Japan's economic minister warned that damage caused by last month's earthquake and tsunami could be worse than initially thought for the world's third-largest economy.

Japan's decision to put the severity of radiation leakage at exercise bike its stricken Fukushima nuclear plant on a par with the worst nuclear disaster, at Chernobyl, also weighed on sentiment.

"The market is increasingly becoming concerned about the situation in Japan and that high oil prices and high commodity prices will eventually hurt economic growth," said Mark Bronzo, money manager at Security Global Investors in Irvington, New York.

US stocks ended lower after disappointing revenue figures from aluminum maker Alcoa Inc, the Dow component that marked the start of the quarterly earnings season with its release after the market close on Monday. Energy stocks led losses on the benchmark S&P 500.

The S&P energy index, the market's top performer in the first quarter, shed 3%.

"The leadership has been for the longest time in those sectors that are highly related to global growth and commodity prices. So once the commodity space starts rolling over, then equities are poised to follow," said Robert Van Batenburg Spark Plug, head of equity research at Louis Capital in New York.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 117.53 points, or 0.95%, to end at 12,263.58. The Standard Poor's 500 Index dropped 10.30 points, or 0.78%, to 1,314.16. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 26.72 points, or 0.96%, to 2,744.79.

The FTSEurofirst 300 index of top European shares slipped 1.7%, with miners and energy firms among the heaviest losers. Emerging markets, which count several resource exporters in their ranks, fell 1.9%.

Brent crude oil fell $US3.06 to settle at $US120.92 a barrel. The May Brent contract expires on Thursday. US May crude fell $US3.67 to settle at $US106.25.

"Fear of demand destruction is killing this market. There is a feeling that the recent rally lifted oil prices to unsustainable levels," said Phil Flynn, analyst at PFGBest Research in Chicago.

Spot gold fell from yesterday's record high while silver sagged a day after hitting a 31-year high.

The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, fell about 2% in its sharpest one-day decline in a month as raw materials markets came under pressure from the sell-off in oil.

Safe-haven demand

Safe-haven demand boosted Treasury prices. The benchmark 10-year US Treasury note was up 23/32, with the yield at 3.498%.

Thirty-year bonds rose more than a point in price, last yielding 4.579%.

The yen and Swiss franc rose sharply as jittery investors sold riskier trades funded by borrowing in the two low-yielding currencies.

"Carry trades are owned heavily and looked overextended, especially the gearbox yen crosses. These are the ones looking shaky," said Tom Fitzpatrick, chief technical strategist at CitiFX in New York.

The yen firmed to a 1-1/2-week high versus the US dollar, though gains are likely to be curbed by the Bank of Japan's perceived determination to keep monetary policy loose to aid economic recovery.

The dollar fell 1.2% against the Swiss franc to 0.8957 francs. It earlier dropped to 0.89421, its lowest in more than three weeks.

The euro rose to a 15-month high against the dollar above $US1.45, boosted by reported buying from China and news that China, the world's second-largest economy, was willing to purchase more Spanish debt.

Dovish comments from key US Federal Reserve officials weighed on dollar sentiment.

Two of the Fed's most powerful officials, Janet Yellen and William Dudley, said the US central bank should damper stick to its super-easy monetary policy as inflation is not a threat and unemployment remains too high.

The US dollar index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of major currencies, was down 0.3% at 74.835 after hitting 74.704, its lowest since December 2009.

The citizenship test has been passed

Mitt Romney tonight pushed back against those in his party who are questioning President Obama's citizenship, suggesting his fellow Republicans should put their energy into more substantive issues.

"The citizenship test has been passed," Romney said tonight on CNBC's Kudlow Report. "I believe the president was damper born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office...but his citizenship isn't the reason why."

Several prominent Republicans — including Donald Trump and Sarah Palin — have once again tried to stoke controversy by questioning Obama's citizenship even though his birth in Hawaii has been confirmed by officials in the state.

Romney said he would welcome Trump into the Republican race, while sidestepping a question whether he views the business mogul as a chief rival.

"He's a new face and a new voice in the process," Romney said of Trump, who is leading in led tube some recent national polls. "My view is, come on in the water's fine. The more the merrier."

Romney, in his first interview since announcing yesterday that he was formally exploring a presidential bid, also was asked several times about his biggest vulnerability: the Massachusetts health care plan. Today is the fifth anniversary of the law, which was used as a template for President Obama's national plan — one that is despised by most Republicans.

Romney repeated his defense of the Massachusetts law, while arguing that Obama was usurping states rights by imposing a federal plan. He largely ignored a question over whether the individual mandate — which is the biggest sticking point for many Republicans — was his biggest mistake as governor.

"One thing I learned is this: you don't take ideas from a state and try and impose cable ties them on the whole nation," Romney said.

"I'm very happy that the Democrats are celebrating the fact that we put in place a health care proposal in Massachusetts, an experiment," he added, referring to cakes that Democrats made today to tweak Romney.

"But why didn't any one of them, or the president, ever call me...Not one Democrat called me and said, 'Of what you did in Massachusetts, what would you do again? What would you have done differently?'"

Romney reiterated that he would repeal President Obama's plan. He also said that he would then file legislation to ensure that people with preexisting conditions aren't refused access to coverage — which is one of the golf irons most popular aspects of Obama's plan.

Doctors hope to the injured patient get well soon

Cardinal Roger Mahony visited Bryan Stow Tuesday to pray for the 42-year-old, who remains in a medically induced coma nearly two weeks after he was attacked after a baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, a hospital spokeswoman said.

"His condition remains critical and doctors are hoping Bryan's condition high pressure sodium lamp improves over the next 24 hours," said hospital spokeswoman Rosa Saca, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center

Relatives of the Giants fan launched a website in part to provide daily updates on his condition. Stow's sister, Bonnie Stow, told CNN that one priority of the neurosurgeons is keeping him sedated to prevent seizures and swelling in the brain.

In a recent web posting, she wrote: "The doctors want to limit visitors, noise and physical contact with Bryan. They're wanting to keep his brain calm and just...quiet...to see how that works.... That way the neurologists can get a better reading of brain activity. Fever down."
Bonnie Stow said her brother's seizures have subsided, and
 over the next 24 to 48 hours doctors want to gradually reduce the sedation he is under and, hopefully, bring him out of the medically induced coma.

"We can't wait for Bryan to wake up so he can see for himself just how much people love him, whether they are family, friends or strangers."

Since the unprovoked attack after the March 31 game at Dodger Stadium, money has poured in from numerous donors and fundraising events to help pay for medical costs and provide support for his two young children. Bonnie Stow said the website exercise bike also identifies fundraising activity endorsed by Stow's family.

"We are trying to post only legitimate fundraisers that we can confirm because unfortunately there are those trying to take advantage of this tragic situation," said Bonnie in a posting.

At a dual fundraiser Monday at Dodger Stadium and ATT Park in San Francisco, where the Giants and Dodgers played Monday, more than $120,000 was raised, said American Medical Response spokesman Jason Sorrick. More than $200,000 has been raised for Stow, who works for AMR.

Meanwhile, investigators continued their search for the two suspected assailants, who fled after the beating in a light-colored, four-door car driven by a woman with a young boy inside, authorities said. Since the release of composite sketches, police have investigated more than 100 clues based on calls and tips, said Los Angeles Police Detective PJ Morris.

About 100 witnesses saw Stow attacked as he left the stadium parking lot, and Morris said some of them have provided useful information. Officials are offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to arrests and autoclave convictions.

"Whether it's the reward money or a Good Samaritan who wants to help solve a horrific crime, there has been a tremendous outpouring of calls from people who might have useful information," Morris said.

Morris said detectives have compiled and presented photographic lineups of possible suspects to witnesses in the Los Angeles area but no one has identified Stow's attackers. Another team of detectives has been showing the photos to witnesses in the Bay Area.

"Every call and tip is helpful in some capacity, even hydraulic winch if it eliminates someone who may resemble the composite sketches," Morris said. "There is no forensic evidence in this case, therefore that person who comes forward is most likely how we're going to solve this thing."

Two more sets of human remains have been discovered near a remote New York beach, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the gearbox entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.

The first remains found Monday morning were about 1.5 miles east of the entrance to Jones Beach on Long Island. Later in the day, a skull was found several miles away.

Two more sets of human remains have been discovered near a remote New York beach, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

The discoveries came as police expanded a search from Long Island's Suffolk County westward into the Jones Beach area of Nassau County, just over the border from New York City. The expanded search was prompted by Suffolk's discovery in the past two weeks of four sets of unidentified human remains.

The most recent remains, found several miles away from damper the escorts, included the body of an infant or child, the New York Post reports, leading police to consider that the bodies were victims of multiple killers.

Police say evidence suggests that whoever dumped the four bodies discovered in December is knowledgeable of police investigative tactics and familiar with the area of Long Island where the bodies were found, according to multiple press reports. Authorities are reportedly considering that a former cop may be behind the killings.

The bodies of four women -- all in their 20s and found wrapped in burlap bags -- who worked as Craigslist escorts were found in the same area in December, but a spokeswoman with the Suffolk County Police Department told FoxNews.com that police have not determined whether the bodies found in the last two weeks are linked to those women.

Police expanded their search for more possible victims into Nassau County on Monday. About 125 searchers, some with dogs and others on horseback, scoured Jones Beach State Park for more possible victims.

The New York Post and the New York Times, citing unnamed sources, have reported that the killer may be a former cop or someone familiar with law enforcement procedure.

The person believed to be the killer had reportedly made taunting phone calls to the teen sister of victim Melissa Barthelemy shortly after she disappeared in July 2009. The calls were difficult for police to investigate because they were all under led flexible strip three minutes and made from crowded places, like Madison Square Garden and Times Square.

An official with the Suffolk County Police Department would not confirm to FoxNews.com that authorities are eyeing an ex-cop in the investigation.

"We haven’t said if we think it’s someone in law enforcement," the official said.

Criminal profilers say serial killers are often social and would appear to have a normal life with family and friends as opposed to being a loner.

The disappearance of 24-year-old N.J. resident and Craigslist escort Shannan Gilbert led investigators to the Suffolk County beach spot late last year. The skeletal bodies of female prostitutes found in December and the five unidentified bodies found recently were discovered within a three-mile radius on the north side of Ocean Parkway.

None of the found victims, however, is Gilbert, whose case remains open.

Cell phone calls made by the women are also being tracked, and computer cable ties records of their communications and appointment records have also been viewed.

A Suffolk County investigator who declined to be identified because of the ongoing case told The Associated Press that detectives are taking a methodical approach to finding the suspect, poring over credit card records of the victims to track their movements and where they spent their money in the area, MyFoxNY.com reports.

"These kinds of investigations have to take slow steps; you don't want to jump to conclusions," Katherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., and author of "The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation," told MyFoxNY.
"They are looking at the evidence to determine what may be similar golf irons about the victims, but they also want to look at dissimilarities," she said.

Cleaning Japanese radioactive water may need for decades

For nearly four weeks, Japanese emergency crews have been spraying water on the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors, a desperate attempt to avert the calamity of a full meltdown.

Now, that improvised solution to one nuclear nightmare is spawning another: what to do with hydraulic orbital motor the millions of gallons of water that has become highly radioactive as it washes through the plant.

The water being used to try to cool the reactors and the dangerous spent fuel rods is leaking through fissures inside the plant, seeping down through tunnels and passageways to the lowest levels, where it is accumulating into a sea of lethal waste.

No one is sure how to get rid of it safely.

"There is nothing like this, on this scale, that we have ever attempted to do before," says Robert Alvarez, a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Energy Department.

Japanese officials estimate that they already have accumulated about 15 million gallons of highly radioactive water. Hundreds of thousands of gallons are being added every day as the plant's operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., continues to feed coolant damper into the leaky structures.

Ultimately, the high-level radioactive substances in the water will have to be safely stored, processed and solidified, a job that experts say will almost certainly have to be handled on a specially designed industrial complex. The process of cleaning up the water could take many years, even decades, to complete. The cost could run into the tens of billions of dollars.

Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and longtime advisor on nuclear waste, said the problems facing Japan are greater than even the most highly contaminated nuclear weapons site in the U.S., the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.

The Department of Energy is decommissioning eight reactors at Hanford and plans to process about 58 million gallons of radioactive sludge now in leaky underground tanks, all at an estimated cost of $100 billion to $130 billion, according to outside estimates. But unlike Fukushima Daiichi, none of the Hanford reactors melted down and virtually all of the site is accessible to workers without risking exposure to dangerous levels of radioactivity.

"It will be a big job, bigger than Hanford," Gilinsky said, though he cautioned that U.S. costs are unnecessarily high and that the Japanese may be able to do the work more economically.

The immediate problem facing the Japanese is how to store all that water until the led flexible strip reactors and the spent fuel pools are brought under control. The plant's main storage tanks are nearly full. To make room, Tokyo Electric Power, known as Tepco, released a couple of million gallons of the least contaminated water into the ocean this week, with the expectation that its radioactive elements would be diluted in the ocean's mass.

But international law forbids Japan from dumping contaminated water into the ocean if there are viable technical solutions available down the road.

So Tepco is considering bringing in barges and tanks, including a "megafloat" that can hold about 2.5 million gallons. Japan has also reportedly asked Russia to send a floating radiation treatment plant called the Suzuran that was used to decommission Russian nuclear submarines in the Pacific port of Vladivostok. The Suzuran was built in Japan a decade ago.

Yet even using barges and tanks to temporarily handle the water creates a future problem of how to dispose of the contaminated vessels.

U.S. and Japanese experts say the key to solving the disposal cable ties problem involves reducing the volume of water by concentrating the radioactive elements so they can be solidified into a safer, dry form. But waste experts disagree on exactly how to do that.

The difficulty of concentrating and then solidifying the contaminants depends on how much radioactivity is in the water, the type of isotopes and whether the work can be done on the Fukushima site.

UC Berkeley nuclear engineering professor Edward Morse said the water needs to be diverted into a concrete-lined holding pond fairly soon, where natural evaporation can help reduce its volume.

Youichi Enokida, a specialist in nuclear chemical engineering at Nagoya University in Japan, agrees that the material should be put into some type of storage that would concentrate it through evaporation, though Japanese experts generally talk golf irons about the need for a sealed pool.

Beck and Fox End Relationship Grown Cold

The negotiations that led Glenn Beck to announce his departure from the Fox News Channel on Wednesday ended with an expression of “let’s part as friends,” according to several people with knowledge of the talks. But behind that moment was a torrent of acrimony that underscored just how fractious the relationship between Mr. Beck and the network had become high pressure sodium lamp during his three-year run on Fox.

Mr. Beck’s official departure was preceded by conversations over a period of months with the Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes. Even as Mr. Beck and Mr. Ailes described how much they liked each other in an interview with The Associated Press, the message conveyed between the lines by both sides was that, despite ratings that would normally bring about an automatic contract renewal, this was a relationship that had grown cold — and run its course.

On Wednesday, the two sides made it official, announcing that Mr. Beck would end his top-rated show at some unspecified point later this year. His contract with Fox ends in December, but he is expected to sign off well before then.

Hired away from CNN’s Headline News in 2008, Mr. Beck found a home at Fox News, giving voice to disaffected Americans who were deeply troubled by President Obama’s election. He reached as many as three million viewers on some nights, setting time-slot records for Fox. Although his ratings have since declined — he averaged 1.9 million viewers in March — he still dominates the 5 p.m. hour among the cable news networks.

Notably, Mr. Beck became a daily broadcast platform for a libertarian strain of politics that is also evident in the Tea Party, a movement he embraced. Critics loudly condemned him for living with his own facts — but that only seemed to widen the golf irons conspiracy that he outlined each night, aided by a growing number of chalkboards in his studio.

But at that studio, he was unhappy from almost his first day on the job, which happened to be the day before Mr. Obama was inaugurated. Even in his first year, he was contemplating an exit from Fox and wondering if he could start his own channel.

Beck supporters presented a picture of constant sniping, planted stories about his declining ratings, and discomfort with his ability to build a career for himself outside the Fox News brand.

From Fox’s perspective, the facts about Mr. Beck’s run on the network have been public and indisputable. Among those were the refusal of hundreds of Fox advertisers to allow their commercials to be placed on Mr. Beck’s program, and a history of incendiary comments that attracted harsh backlash, including one where the host called President Obama a racist and another where cable ties he compared Reform Judaism to radical Islam. (He later apologized for both comments.)

Mr. Ailes suggested in the interview Wednesday that he was happy with the departure being characterized as either a cancellation or a decision by Mr. Beck to quit. Fox has retained all its other high-rated hosts in the past, but they didn’t come under the intense scrutiny that Mr. Beck has faced, nor the mass opposition from advertisers.

As onerous as that might have been to Fox financially, it did not seem to be an issue for Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of theNews Corporation. In two recent comments to shareholders, Mr. Murdoch defended Mr. Beck. He said of the advertiser boycott, “They don’t boycott watching it. We’re getting incredible numbers.” He followed that by pointing out that even with his diminished ratings, Mr. Beck’s show provided a “terrific kickoff” to the lineup of Fox shows that followed.

But the ratings clearly could not overcome the fractures in the led bulbs relationship. “By the end both sides had had enough,” said one executive who was involved in the decision to end the deal.

Mr. Beck’s new deal with Fox allows him to develop and produce new projects for Fox and its Web sites. But those projects are likely to amount to occasional specials and appearances, nothing more.

Mr. Beck is known to have contemplated an expansion of his subscription Web site and a takeover of a cable channel in whole or in part. Already, his growing media company produces several hours of shows on the Web each weekday.

A spokesman for Mr. Beck declined to say whether the agreement included a noncompete clause that would preclude Mr. Beck from hosting a TV show elsewhere for a period of time. On his show on Wednesday, Mr. Beck said to damper his viewers, “We will find each other,” adding later, “I’m going to be showing you other ways for us to connect.”

A senior Fox News executive, Joel Cheatwood, will join Mr. Beck at Mercury Radio Arts later this month.
Notably, descriptions of Mr. Beck’s future plans drew derisive comments in some quarters of Fox News, where they argued that Mr. Beck needed the huge platform of his Fox show to build his media empire.

At times, Mr. Beck and his managers said they sensed that Fox was retaliating in public, although they did not prove it.

Last month, when Mr. Cheatwood was first said to be moving over to Mercury, his Fox salary was suddenly leaked to a reporter. That day, a staff member who had been working with Fox on Mr. Beck’s show was asked if he could imagine working at an institution that would leak a salary figure. The staff member replied, “Not only can I imagine it, we’ve done it for 27 months,” referring to the precise hydraulic orbital motor number of months Mr. Beck had been at Fox. “It’s not fun.”

Portugal aid could mark end of spreading crisis

Investors had believed for months that a bailout for Portugal was almost inevitable, so the announcement by caretaker Prime Minister Jose Socrates on Wednesday is unlikely to hurt financial markets. The euro barely moved in the initial hours hydraulic orbital motor after the announcement.

The expected size of the bailout, 60-80 billion euros ($86 billion - $115 billion) according to a senior euro zone source, will not strain the euro zone's 440 billion euro bailout fund, especially since the International Monetary Fund is likely to be involved. Based on past bailouts, it would contribute about a third of the amount.

Many investors will see the request for aid as positive since it promises to avoid a worst-case scenario in which Portugal would have limped along under a minority government until general elections scheduled for June 5, refusing to seek help and digging an ever-bigger economic hole for itself.

This would have continued to push up Portuguese bond yields and threatened a collapse of its finances that might have prompted markets to start attacking Spain, widely seen as the next potential domino in the euro zone.

Other governments in the zone have therefore been pressing Portugal to damper request a bailout, and Lisbon's willingness to comply -- despite its bad memories of IMF-ordered austerity in the 1980s -- suggests the region remains able to summon enough political unity to address its debt problems.

"This is good news. We've been saying for a while that Portugal's finances were not sustainable at these rates," Erik Nielsen, chief European economist at Goldman Sachs, told Reuters. "We think the contagion stops here."

As recently as the turn of the year, it seemed likely that markets would target Spain if Portugal followed Greece and Ireland in seeking a bailout.

But the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has unveiled a series of reforms of the labor market, pensions and banking sector in past months. A stabilization of Spanish bond spreads shows many investors now believe it can avoid the fate of its smaller neighbor.

Portugal will have to agree to tough austerity targets to obtain a bailout, and how quickly a deal can be negotiated is unclear. Socrates resigned abruptly last month after his latest package of austerity measures was voted down in parliament, and his caretaker government has said it lacks the authority to negotiate an economic adjustment program.

European Union officials may also be loath to pursue an agreement led bulbs before a new government emerges in the aftermath of the June 5 elections. In the case of >Ireland, the EU sealed a bailout deal with a lame duck administration only to face demands for changes from a new government in Dublin.

However, now that it is requesting aid, Portugal has much better prospects of obtaining some kind of bridging loan if that is necessary to tide it over until a full bailout deal.

And unlike Ireland, where crumbling banks have been a black hole for state funds, and Greece, which is struggling against ingrained tax evasion and corruption, Portugal may be a relatively straightforward case for the EU and the IMF.

The country already has an austerity plan in place which has received the blessing of EU governments and IMF officials.

Also, Europe has learned lessons from the two previous bailouts. There is now a broad consensus in policymaking circles that the rescue terms for Greece and Ireland were too onerous, straining their economies and finances, so Portugal can hope to get somewhat softer terms in some areas.

"Investors no longer seem to be worried about a full-blown euro zone crisis and the potential demise of the common currency because they assume mechanisms are now in place to prevent the crisis from escalating out of control," said Jane Caron, chief economic strategist at U.S. firm Dwight Asset Management.

DEBT, BANK RISKS

Still, while a Portuguese bailout may end the geographical spread of sovereign debt problems in the euro zone, it will not remove two big risks faced by the weakest countries: the possibility of sovereign debt restructurings, and the cable ties threat of deeper problems in the banking sector.

Some senior government officials in the zone are now acknowledging for the first time in private that some form of debt restructuring for Greece may be inevitable, even though officials publicly deny it will happen.

A number of economists believes the same fate may await Ireland and Portugal, although probably at a later
date.

Those fears are likely to keep market interest rates in all three countries very high for years, even if the countries do carry out the economic and fiscal reforms demanded by the EU and the IMF.

Joao Leite, head of investment at Banco Carregosa in Lisbon, said international aid would solve Portugal's financing problems but that the country still faced a daunting task addressing its large deficits, competitiveness golf irons problems and weak growth.

"Unfortunately, the solutions to these problems will only have an impact over the longer term. Until then the Portuguese have a hard road ahead."

A conversation about the cars and trucks we drive

Microsoft and Toyota announced today a joint venture to create a system for energy management of plug-in cars for now -- and perhaps to oversee energy use in the home, as well, in the future.

Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer held a high pressure sodium lamp joint webcast to announce creation of Toyota Media Service, a Toyota subsidiary that will provide the data service to drivers. The two companies will invest about $12 million in the venture.

The first application of the system -- which will be based on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform -- will be to manage energy use for the plug-in version of the Prius due in the first half next year. That Prius will be able to go about 13 miles on electric power only with a full charge from the power grid.

The system eventually will manage every electric thing in your life, including making your coffee in the morning:

Just kidding about the coffee, but not about everything else: Toyoda said, the system could link owners with their cars, their home appliances, heating and AC and control and their utility company's "smart grid" to minimize energy use, to schedule use for times when rates are lowest, to have your car ready when you are with its temperature preset and your most efficient route already dialed up in the navigation system. The link could dial down the energy use of your home while you're away and ramp up the heating or air conditioning as you approach so the house is just right.

"Our cars will play a big role in the global expansion of what we call 'smart centers' … on-board systems capable of better managing overall energy consumption of cars… driving trips…and homes," said Toyoda. " For example, this new system will include advanced car telematics like virtual operators with voice recognition … management of vehicle charging to reduce stress on energy supply…and remote control of appliances, heating and lighting at home."

For Toyota, which is trying to build up the infotainment and energy management tools for its electrified vehicles, the access to "Microsoft's vast information infrastructure" will, said Toyoda, "boost the value of golf irons automobiles by making them 'information terminals' …moving beyond today's GPS navigation and wireless safety communications, while at the same time enhancing driver and traffic safety."

Microsoft gets a high-profile user for Windows Azure, its software in the "cloud" -- i.e. that delivers services via the Internet rather than being loaded on a particular computer.

"Starting in 2012, customers who purchase one of Toyota's electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles will be able to connect via the cloud to control and monitor their car from anywhere," said Ballmer. "For example, customers will be able to turn on the heat or AC in their car while their vehicle is plugged into the grid or dynamically monitor miles until the next charging station right from their GPS system."

Ballmer said the cloud-based system will be particularly important for the car company in emerging markets, "Toyota will be able to deliver these new applications and services in the 170 countries where Toyota cars are sold. Historically, this type of service was limited to only major markets where the automotive maker could build and maintain a data center." Toyota will also have the benefit of paying cable ties for only the computing power it uses while being able to quickly scale to support spikes in demand or entry into new markets."

Eat freeze-dried strawberry may help prevent esophageal cancer

Freeze-dried strawberries may play a role in the prevention of esophageal cancer, a new study suggests.
"Strawberries may be an alternative or work together with other hydraulic orbital motor chemopreventive drugs for the prevention of esophageal cancer," said lead researcher Tong Chen, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, division of medical oncology, department of internal medicine at the Ohio State University.

Study findings were presented at the ongoing 102nd annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Orlando, Florida, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on Wednesday.

"We concluded from this study that six months of eating strawberries is safe and easy to consume. In addition, our preliminary data suggests that strawberries can decrease histological grade of precancerous lesions and reduce cancer- related molecular events," said Chen, who is also a member of the Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention Program in the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The study involved a group of participants who consumed 60 grams of freeze-dried strawberries daily for six months and completed a dietary diary chronicling their strawberry consumption.

The researchers obtained biopsy specimens before and after strawberry consumption. The results showed that 29 out of 36 participants damper experienced a decrease in histological grade of the precancerous lesions during the study.

Using freeze-dried strawberries was important because by removing the water from the berries, they concentrated the preventive substances by nearly 10-fold, Chen said.

Esophageal cancer is the third most common gastrointestinal cancer and the sixth most frequent cause of cancer death in the world, she noted.

Chen and her team are studying esophageal squamous cell led bulbs carcinoma (SCC) which makes up 95 percent of cases of esophageal cancer worldwide. China, where this study took place, has the highest incidence of esophageal SCC, according to the AAAS.

In a previous study, Chen and colleagues found that freeze- dried strawberries significantly inhibited tumor development in the esophagus of rats. Based on these results, they embarked on a Phase Ib trial that included participants with esophageal precancerous lesions cable ties who were at high risk for esophageal cancer.

"Our study is important because it shows that strawberries may slow the progression of precancerous lesion in the esophagus," Chen said.

But she said they need to test this in randomized placebo- controlled trials in the future.

Brown ends talks on bipartisan budget deal

Gov. Jerry Brown abandoned his effort to negotiate a bipartisan budget Tuesday, charging that Republicans were unwilling to support his plan to put taxes before voters unless he yielded to "an metal halide lamp ever-changing list of collateral demands."

The governor's announcement that he is walking away from the negotiating table, made in a late-afternoon
press release, places the state's finances in further turmoil.

Budget cuts that lawmakers approved earlier this month closed only a fraction of the state's $26-billion
budget shortfall. Brown wanted to close much of the rest of the gap with a special election in June, when
voters would have the option of extending temporary increases in taxes on income, sales and vehicles that will all have expired by July 1.

The governor needed at least four GOP votes to get that measure on the ballot. On Tuesday, he announced that weeks of talks have led nowhere. Brown said he was giving up on his plan.

"Each and every Republican legislator I've spoken to believes that voters should not have this right to vote
unless I agree to an ever-changing list of collateral demands," his statement said.

Brown said he was willing to make concessions on key policy issues that are important to Republicans.

"Let me be clear: I support pension reform, regulatory reform and a spending cap 3d prototype and offered specific and detailed proposals for each of  these during our discussions," his statement said. "While we made significant progress on these reform issues, the Republicans continued to insist on including demands that would materially undermine any semblance of a balanced budget. In fact, they sought to worsen the state's problem by creating a $4-billion hole in the budget."

He cited as an example the GOP demand that he eliminate from his proposed budget a change in the tax code to end a tax break given to California companies that move jobs out of state.

Administration officials and legislative leaders declined to elaborate on how they intend to proceed. They would say that a June election is no longer part of their plans.

Earlier in the day, key GOP lawmakers who had been negotiating with the governor had declared the talks fruitless. They announced that they, too, were walking away from the negotiating table.

"We gave it our best. We're very disappointed. It's done," said Sen. Bill Emmerson (R-Hemet).

Talks involving business groups and union leaders as well as Brown and GOP lawmakers had moved in fits and starts for weeks. Impasses have been declared before. But all sides made clear that by Tuesday, talks were over.

There were several major disagreements that could not be overcome, Emmerson said. One was how to impose a cap on state spending. Another was the amount of time voters would be asked to renew billions in temporary taxes on income, sales and vehicles in a June election. Brown wants to extend the taxes for five years. Republicans wanted three years.

The third problem area was a GOP demand to place a change in a business-tax formula before voters. Brown wants the Legislature to change the formula.

Emmerson called Brown a "very honorable adversary" in negotiations but said the divide bakugans between them could not be bridged even though much progress had been made on changes to state regulations and pensions.

Yemen weapons factory exploded in the death toll

Initial reports said 78 had died, but more bodies have since been pulled out of the factory in the town of Jaar.

The explosion has caused great anger among locals, who accuse the bakugans authorities of planning it to try to win further support from the US, a BBC correspondent says.

Yemeni officials have blamed al-Qaeda for the blasts.

The explosions came after weeks of protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh's rule.

They occurred while residents were searching for ammunition left behind by suspected Islamist militants, who had been involved in clashes with government forces in the area on Sunday.

'Burnt beyond recognition'

Local officials said the death toll was based on the number of bodies found and the number of people missing following the blasts, adding that some bodies had been burnt beyond recognition.

About 80 people were injured, according to Ahmed Ghaleb Rahawi, the sub-prefect of Jaar.

Hundreds of people protested in the southern city of Aden on Tuesday, blaming the explosion on the authorities.

Residents quoted by Reuters said the authorities had deserted Jaar over recent days.

Opposition groups accused the authorities of withdrawing "in a desperate attempt by President Saleh and rapid prototype his ilk to prove that he was right when he said that Yemen is a ticking time bomb, that he is the only one who can prevent it from blowing up".

A statement from the opposition Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) said it held "the president and his entourage accountable for the conspiracy with al-Qaeda" in the Arabian Peninsula.

The authorities said fighters from the al-Qaeda group raided the factory on Sunday, stealing carloads of weapons.

Analysts fear that the group, which claims affiliation with Osama Bin Laden's militant network, is taking advantage of instability caused by the spate of anti-government protests.

The Yemeni government has been a key US ally in the region, conducting numerous joint anti-terror raids.

Despite this, militancy has continued to flourish.

It is one of a range of security issues in the country, including a separatist movement in the south and an uprising of Shia Houthi rebels in the north.

Yemen is also chronically poor - unemployment runs at about 40%, and there are rising food prices and acute levels of malnutrition.

Mr Saleh has continued to reject opposition demands high pressure sodium lamp that he leave office immediately.

"I tell those who appear in the media asking others to leave, that it is up to them to go," he was quoted as as saying by the state news agency Saba on Tuesday.

BP loses laptop with private info on 13,000 people

(CNN) -- A BP laptop computer containing the private information of about 13,000 individuals who filed oil-related claims after last year's led flexible strip oil spill has been lost, according to the oil giant.

The laptop contained names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth and Social Security numbers for those who filed claims related to last year's Deepwater Horizon spill.

"There is no evidence that the laptop or data was targeted or that anyone's personal data has in fact been compromised or accessed in any way," BP spokesman Tom Mueller said in a written statement. "We have sent written notice to individuals impacted by this event to inform them about the loss of their personal data
and to offer them free credit monitoring services to help protect their personal information."

The loss of the laptop, which can be remotely disabled, was reported to law enforcement authorities and BP security. Its loss came during business-related travel.

BP says they cannot release any information on where or when, the laptop computer was lost to prevent the investigation from being jeopardized.

Mueller told CNN that he could not comment on the employee involved in the loss of the laptop.

On April 20, 2010, an explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil well in cable ties the Gulf of Mexico, off the Louisiana coast, killed 11 workers and spilled an estimated 205 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

It took 85 days to stop the oil from pouring into the sea.

IDC think 2011 smartphone market growth 50 pct

With more and more consumers and business users clamoring for smartphones, the global market for these handsets is slated to grow nearly 50 percent this year, research firm gearbox IDC said Tuesday.

IDC expects the market to grow 49.2 percent in 2011, with smartphone makers shipping over 450 million smartphones, up from 303.4 million shipped in 2010.

Growth last year was "exceptional," helped by many people buying smart phones that they'd held off on buying in 2009 due to the shaky economy, IDC senior research analyst Kevin Restivo said in a statement.

This year, growth will still be notable, but will taper off somewhat from last year, he said.
As for which smartphone operating system will reign, Framingham, Mass.-based IDC thinks Google Inc.'s Android software will wrestle the lead from Nokia Corp.'s Symbian software, which has been the market leader.

For 2011, IDC expects Android smartphones to make up 39.5 percent of the market, while smartphones running Symbian will account for 20.9 percent. Apple Inc.'s iPhone is expected to make up 15.7 percent of the market and Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry software are expected to make up 14.9 percent.

By 2015, IDC believes Android-running phones will take up 45.4 damper percent of the market, while phones running Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone software will take up 20.9 percent of the market and the iPhone will capture 15.3 percent of the market.

Tokyo water problem is serious

TOKYO—Tokyo officials said infants in Japan's capital shouldn't be given city tap water due gearbox to elevated radiation levels, as the country's nuclear crisis broadened into a public-health issue for its biggest city.

Some Tokyo tap water could represent a long-term health risk to infants, officials said Wednesday, after tests done earlier this week at three Tokyo water plants showed levels of radioactive iodine-131 at one plant exceeded the government's threshold for consumption by infants.

The officials sought to dispel broader fears, discouraging residents from stockpiling water and saying Tokyo's tap water remains safe for adults, even under Japanese standards that are tighter than international guidelines. Officials also said contamination found in food and water elsewhere in the country remains below levels that could cause immediate health damage.

Still, Wednesday's findings suggest a new front is unfolding in Japan's fight to contain radioactive material at the heavily damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power complex in northeast Japan.

Airborne radiation in Tokyo was four times the normal level Wednesday, though still within government limits. Officials said the heightened levels could have been due to recent rainstorms that brought radioactive material down from the air—the same possible cause to which they attributed the radiation levels that spurred concerns at one Tokyo water facility this week.

Also Wednesday, Japan's Food Safety Commission barred shipments of various types of vegetables from Fukushima prefecture, after heath officials found higher-than-permissible levels of radioactive material in food goods led flexible strip from the area over the weekend. The commission barred shipments of milk and parsley from neighboring Ibaraki prefecture, expanding its list restricted products, including spinach, from Ibaraki, Gunma and Tochigi prefectures. The U.S. has blocked imports of milk, vegetables and fruit produced near the plant.

Tokyo's main stock index fell following the news, ending down 1.7%.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Wednesday that it had tested water in three of the 11 plants that supply water to greater Tokyo. The city's spiderweb of pipes makes it difficult for consumers to know which plant supplies their water, but the plants where tests were conducted represent different sources—three rivers that account for the vast majority of the city's water.

The government said it detected 210 becquerels per kilogram of iodine-131 from a sample collected Tuesday at a water facility in Katsushika ward in northern Tokyo, which accounts for about 22% of Tokyo's overall water capacity. The level is about double the government's permissible limit for infants, 100 becquerels. An initial check Wednesday showed a similarly elevated level, of 190 becquerels.

A sample gathered at a second location found 32 becquerels Tuesday, though on Wednesday the level had dropped to zero. At a third water facility, no radioactivity was found either day.

None of the radioactive iodine levels in Tokyo tap water exceeded 300 becquerels per kilogram, the broader limit set by the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan. Japan's threshold, in turn, is stricter than the international level for intervention of 3,000 becquerels—a measure that represents one radioactive event per second—per kilogram.

Iodine-131 has a half-life of roughly a week, which means levels cable ties could fade if new radioactive material isn't added.

Citing Japan's stricter standards, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano urged shoppers not to stockpile bottled water.

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara said parents of babies under one year old shouldn't use tap water for powdered milk or baby formula. "We will continue to disclose tap-water testing results. We want everyone to act calmly," he said. The Tokyo government said Wednesday evening that it will distribute as much as 240,000 bottles of water to households with babies.

Several grocery stores on Wednesday had empty shelves where bottled water used to be. Bottled water was already in short supply as consumers stocked up on emergency supplies following the quake.

"If available, you can get only one or two" bottles, said a manager at a Tokyo daycare that takes care of about 100 children aged 1-6. "All we can do is not drink too much."

A number of people in Japan took the announcement in their stride after two weeks of unsettling events. But the latest disclosures fed already heightened anxiety over the uncertainty of radiation readings, and over conflicting reports in the past several days about progress at the Fukushima Daiichi complex.

"I thought this was something that only happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or something I'd read in a novel," said Ayaka Nishimura, a 20-year-old student at Tokyo's Keio University. "It worries me that this is becoming a reality."

Tokyo government officials said it is unclear bakugans why radioactivity suddenly increased in water, but said airborne iodine-131 drifting over rivers that feed Tokyo's water system could have come down in recent rainfall. The plant with the higher radiation levels is fed by the Edogawa River, which runs north to south along Tokyo's east side. The other plants tested are fed by different rivers.

Officials referred to rivers, not groundwater, as feeding the plants tested this week.

Radioactivity in water has been a mounting concern in Japan. The science ministry said it had detected radioactive iodine in 12 prefectures in a nationwide survey of tap water Tuesday, up from eight on Monday, though the detected levels were all below the suggested limit.

Officials cited rain as a potential reason, too, for a rise in radiation in Tokyo since Monday. The Tokyo government said Wednesday that radiation levels in downtown Tokyo began to rise Monday and stood at an average 0.146 microsieverts an hour at about 9 p.m. Wednesday, compared with the 0.035 microsieverts an hour a person would typically be exposed to in central Tokyo. A chest X-ray typically exposes a patient to a dose of around 100 microsieverts, according to the Radiological Society of North America.

Japanese officials declined to comment Wednesday on data disclosed by U.S. officials that they said justified the U.S.-recommended 50-mile evacuation area around the site. Previously, Japan's government defended its 12-mile evacuation zone—plus an 18-mile stay indoors requirement—as appropriate.

U.S. officials late Tuesday said their own tests had concluded that radiation levels in certain areas within 25 miles of the Fukushima Daiichi complex exceeded levels at which U.S. officials would order evacuations to protect public health. The Energy Department said U.S. aircraft and ground measurements detected radiation levels in some areas, mostly in a northwest direction within 25 miles of the plant, that exceeded 125 microsieverts per hour over three days last week.

Japanese tests show lower levels. Wednesday's results from Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology showed levels of 8.5 microsieverts at roughly the same distance northwest of the plant, with lower levels in surrounding areas. It is unclear how well those results compare due to potential differences in location and equipment.

Japan has worked in recent years to overcome a reputation of downplaying past national rapid prototype health scares. The current Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, gained fame in the 1990s by helping to expose a government cover-up of HIV-tainted blood in the country's blood supply.

Socrates defeat push Portugal close to the international support

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates tendered his resignation after plans to cut the budget were rejected by parliament, pushing the country closer to an high pressure sodium lamp international bailout.

President Anibal Cavaco Silva said late yesterday he will meet the main parties on March 25 and the government will retain its powers until he accepts Socrates’s resignation. The vote came hours before European Union leaders meet in Brussels to sign off on measures aimed at drawing a line under the region’s sovereign debt crisis.

The risk is that investors dump Portuguese bonds in the face of a political stalemate that delays the negotiation of a rescue package, which Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc estimates may be worth around 80 billion euros ($113 billon). The cost of insuring Portuguese debt against default is near a record high.

“It’s pretty inevitable” that Portugal will need a rescue, said Jacques Cailloux, a London-based economist at Royal Bank of Scotland, in a phone interview. “The market will deteriorate in the absence of other measure going through. There is obviously the risk of further downgrades, which will become anticipated by the markets and be a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Portugal has already raised taxes and implemented the deepest spending cuts in more than three decades to convince investors it can reduce its budget shortfall. Additional cuts, announced on March 11, prompted a political backlash and failed to persuade investors.

The spread between Portuguese and German 10-year bond yields widened 16 basis points to 438 basis points yesterday after reaching a euro-era record of 484 on Nov. 11.

Spotlight

“This crisis occurs in the worst possible moment for Portugal,” Socrates said last night. Greece and Ireland were forced to seek bailouts last year.

The spotlight now falls on President Cavaco Silva,3d rapid prototyping with JPMorgan Chase & Co. economist Nicola Mai saying his statement stresses that Socrates still holds power as he heads into two- day summit that starting later today.

It “could open the door for a possible negotiation of an international bailout package as soon as this week,” said Mai in an e-mailed note. She says further options include calling an election, which could take more than two months; asking the parties to form a coalition; or appointing an “independent technical government.”

Opposition parties united to reject the additional cuts that were the equivalent of 4.5 percent of gross domestic product over three years. The package included a reduction in pensions of more than 1,500 euros ($2,114) a month and further cuts in tax benefits.

Extra Measures

The government said the extra measures were needed to trim the deficit to 4.6 percent of GDP this year and within the EU’s 3 percent limit in 2012.

Socrates warned on March 15 that parliament rejecting the cuts would cause “a worsening of the financing risks of our economy and would lead Portugal to request external intervention.”

Socrates, who first came to power in 2005, leads a minority government. The Social Democrats, the biggest opposition group, had allowed the government’s earlier batch of austerity measures to pass with this year’s budget plan. They say they still support efforts to reduce the budget gap, while voting against the current package.

Polls

The Social Democrats would defeat the Socialists if elections were held today, polls indicate. In a Feb. 25 survey published by Diario Economico, 48 percent said they supported the Social Democrats with 29 percent backing the Socialists.

“The country has faced very difficult times gearbox before and has always been able to overcome them,” Pedro Passos Coelho, the leader of the Social Democrats, said in Lisbon last night after Socrates announced his resignation.

The political crisis comes as Portugal braces for its first bond maturities of the year. Portugal faces redemptions in April and June worth about 9 billion euros in total. It also faces bill maturities in July, August, September, October and November. The country intends to sell as much as 20 billion euros of bonds this year to finance its budget and cover maturing debt.

“Portugal faces heavy redemptions in April and June and difficult and costly access to the primary market, which makes it hard to roll over the debt,” Tullia Bucco, an economist at Unicredit SpA in Milan, said in an e-mailed note to investors.

Credit Rating

Concern about Portugal’s finances also led to a decline in its creditworthiness. Portugal’s credit rating was cut two steps by Moody’s Investors Service on March 15 to A3, four steps from so-called junk status, with the outlook on the grade “negative.”

Portugal should continue to finance itself in the market at present, Teixeira dos Santos had said on March 16, though “it’s obvious that current market conditions are unsustainable in the medium to long term.”

The European Central Bank has prevented those yields from rising further by buying Portuguese debt in secondary markets to shore up demand. The ECB has bought about 20 billion euros of Portuguese debt since last May, Barclays Capital estimates.

“In a situation of political void, cutting a deal with the IMF and the EU to trigger financial support cable ties would be particularly cumbersome,” Gilles Moec, an economist at Deutsche Bank AG in London, said in a research note yesterday. “In the meantime, ECB intervention may be required.”

IDF strikes targets in Gaza in retaliation to rockets

A third strike hit a power transformer, causing blackouts in the area, witnesses said. Medical workers said no one was injured in the strikes.



The IDF confirmed that several strikes were carried out in Gaza in gearbox response to earlier rocket attacks and that direct hits on multiple targets were recorded.



On Wednesday, Israel vowed to retaliate for rocket attacks against Beersheba and Ashkelon as Hamas evacuated most of its manned positions throughout the Gaza Strip in anticipation of IDF air strikes.



At 5:30 Wednesday morning the first Grad-model Katyusha rocket slammed into Beersheba for the first time in almost a month, lightly wounding one person.



Several hours later, another rocket hit the Negev city.



Yet another rocket landed south of Ashkelon on Wednesday, a day after a rocket fell near Ashdod.





Authorities announced that schools would be closed in Beersheba, Ashdod and Ashkelon on Thursday as a result of the security situation.



Also Wednesday, seven mortar shells containing white phosphorous hit the Eshkol region, followed shortly after by three more near a kibbutz in the Sha’ar Hanegev region. The IAF later destroyed the launcher that was used to fire the rocket into Ashdod.



The Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the missile fire, which came after Israel killed four terror operatives in a missile strike on Tuesday night. The four were behind the firing of two Katyusha rockets into Beersheba in late February, the IDF said.



Fearing a further escalation, the IDF Home Front Command ordered residents in Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod to stay close to their homes and near bomb shelters, out of concern that additional rockets will be fired in the coming days from the Gaza Strip.



“The IDF will continue to act to protect Israeli citizens and will take preemptive action along the Gaza border,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said. “There will be highs and lows; not everything will end tomorrow, but we are determined to restore quiet and security to the South.”



Meanwhile, police in the South increased the number of officers and patrol cars on the streets, in response to the threat of further rockets and shells from Gaza.



On Wednesday, the IDF’s Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration coordinated the transfer of an 8-year-old Palestinian boy from the Gaza Strip to Kaplan Hospital in Rehovot after he was injured in an Israeli mortar attack on Tuesday.



The boy was injured after IDF troops fired mortar shells into an open field in northern Gaza and accidentally hit a number damper of civilians nearby, killing four members of a family and wounding several others, including the boy, who was transferred Wednesday to Israel for medical treatment.

Yahoo fine-tuning the search engine

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — Since Yahoo surrendered its search engine to Microsoft two years ago as part of a major overhaul of its business, it has been trying to innovate on top of Microsoft’s technology to keep people gearbox coming to its site.

The latest effort was announced Wednesday when Yahoo introduced a refinement that gives users answers to their questions without having to click on the search results. Search Direct, as the product is called, provides weather forecasts, celebrity biographies and news reports before users finish typing the question.
If it sounds familiar, that is because it is Yahoo’s response to Google Instant, which automatically pulls up search results as people type their queries. Yahoo’s version goes a little bit further by presenting edited information and images just under the search box instead of a page full of links.

Shashi Seth, senior vice president for Yahoo’s search and marketplaces, said that the new service helped users find what they were seeking much faster because they did not have to click away from the search page. “People are looking for answers, they’re not looking for links,” he said.

“I think it’s very interesting conceptually,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. “As for the execution let’s call it limited or nascent.”

By entering into a search alliance, Yahoo and Microsoft had hoped to better challenge Google and cuts costs. They succeeded in cutting costs, but Yahoo also found its share of Internet searches eroding. Google still holds a wide lead in search with 65.4 percent of all queries. Yahoo has slipped to 16.1 percent from around 20 percent two years ago, according to comScore.com. Much of that damper loss was picked up by Microsoft, which now has a 13 percent share.

Mr. Seth declined to predict that Search Direct would bring people back to Yahoo’s search page. But he said that it would raise the number of searches by existing users based on their increased satisfaction with the results.

Search Direct is available on Yahoo’s search page, but not from its home page. Yahoo intends to test the performance of the new design before introducing it more broadly in the coming months, Mr. Seth said.

Typing “Kobe,” as in Kobe Bryant, the basketball star, brings up a box with related search terms along with his playing statistics and a photograph. Searching for “Paris, France” automatically shows the local time and a list of the top three things to do in the city.

For now, such information is limited to about 15 categories and is far from comprehensive. Yahoo executives acknowledged the shortcoming and said more would be added over time.

Yahoo is considering whether to place ads in the Search Direct box, including video ads bakugans. Those details are still being worked out, as is whether Yahoo would share the revenue from them with Microsoft.

Chris brown as "GMA" event apology

R&B singer Chris Brown has publicly apologized a day after storming backstage following an interview and performance on "Good Morning America."

"First of all, I want to apologize to anybody high pressure sodium lamp who was startled in the office, or anybody who was offended or really looked, and [was] disappointed at my actions," Brown said, according to a transcript of his live appearance on BET's "106 & Park." "Because I'm disappointed in the way I acted."
"Yes, I got very emotional," he later added. "And I apologize for acting like that."

Brown emphasized that he did not hurt anyone backstage at "GMA" but had to release "the anger that I had inside of me" after, he claimed, he was thrown off by questions about his personal life in an interview he believed would focus on his new album.

Brown had agreed to talk about his past on "Good Morning America" Tuesday and was aware that questions would be asked about his domestic abuse incident involving his ex-girlfriend, pop singer Rihanna.
"Any time we have a guest cable ties here on the program, we let them know ahead of time the subject matter, the topics that we're going to discuss and we, even right before the interview, I said that to Chris and I was shocked like everybody else was," Roberts said today on "GMA."

Brown has been invited to return to "GMA" and is seriously considering the offer.

We wish him the absolute best and ... we've extended the invitation to him and I sure hope that he takes us up on it, because we'd love to have another chat with him," Roberts said today.

During Tuesday's interview, Roberts asked Brown about the status of the restraining order against him stemming from a felony assault case involving Rihanna.

"Recently, the restraining order against you that Rihanna had issued rapid prototype has been relaxed," Roberts said Tuesday. "Have you seen each other, been around each other?"

"Not really," Brown said. "It's not a big deal to me as far as that situation. ... This album is what I want to focus on and not something that happened two years ago."

Roberts said that she thought Brown was joking when he tried to redirect the interview to discuss his new album, "F.A.M.E."

"You saw me laughing during the interview because when he was doing that, I thought he was joking about some things because of the easy relationship that we have," Roberts said.

On BET, Brown said he had a different impression of the interview's ground rules.

"I felt like, 'OK, they told us this just so they can get us on the show so they can exploit me.' You know, that's what I thought," Brown said. "I kind of took it very, very hard. And I kept my composure throughout the interview, although you could see me upset, you know. I kept my composure and did my performances, and when I got back, I just let off, like, steam in the back."

A fuming Brown returned to his dressing room after the interview and performance of "Yeah 3x," the lead single off his new album.

Then he came back down the hall, still backstage, and stopped upon seeing golf irons the person who produced the segment. Brown didn't have his shirt on.

The show's hair and makeup staff said they called security because they heard loud noises coming from Brown's dressing room.