Nokia unveils Windows smartphones to catch rivals

HELSINKI (AP) -- Nokia Corp. on Wednesday launched its long-awaited first Windows cellphones, hoping to claw back market share it has lost in the tough, top-end smartphone race to chief rivals, Apple Inc.'s iPhone, Samsung and Google's Android software.

Multicoloured Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones are seen on display during their launch at the Nokia World event in London, U.K., on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011. Nokia Oyj, the Finnish handset maker seeking to revive its lineup of smartphones in the race against Apple Inc., introduced its first handsets powered by Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Phone software. (Bloomberg)

But some analysts say it may be too little, too late, for the world's top mobile phone maker.

With price tags of (euro) 420 ($580) and (euro) 270, the Lumia 800 and 710 are based on Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 7 software and come eight months after Nokia and the computing giant said they were hitching up.

“Lumia is reasonably good ... but it's not an iPhone killer or a Samsung killer,” Neil Mawston from Strategy Analytics said. “But where Nokia does stand out is on their price -- it looks like they are going to be very competitive.”

Lumia 800, with Carl Zeiss optics and 16GB of internal memory, will be available in selected European countries in November, including France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Britain. It will be sold in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan before the year-end.

Lumia 710, with a 1.4 GHz processor, navigational applications and Nokia Music -- a free, mobile music-streaming app -- will first be available in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan toward the end of the year.

The company's share price jumped almost 3 percent in an otherwise depressed market on the Helsinki Stock Exchange but settled, closing almost unchanged at (euro) 4.80 ($6.68).

Nokia also unveiled four cheaper smartphones aimed at emerging markets -- the Asha range priced (euro) 60 to (euro) 115 -- with cameras, navigation applications and fast downloads -- in a bid to help “the next billion” users connect to the Internet, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said at the Nokia presentation in London.

Equipped with QWERTY keyboards and some with the popular dual SIM cards, the Asha handsets will be shipped globally in the fourth quarter or early 2012.

Nokia, which claims 1.3 billion daily users, has been the world's biggest handset maker since 1998, selling 432 million devices last year -- more than its three closest rivals combined. But after reaching its announced global goal of 40 percent market share in 2008, it has struggled against rivals making cheaper handsets in Asia, and its share has shrunk to 24 percent earlier this year.

Worse still, Nokia's sales in the more lucrative smartphone market crashed 39 percent in the third quarter as it continued to be squeezed in the low end by Asian manufacturers like ZTE and in the high end by the iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry, Korea's Samsung Electronics and Taiwan-based HTC Corp.

The iPhone has set the standard for smartphones among many design-conscious consumers, the Blackberry has been the favorite of the corporate set and increasingly Google Inc.'s Android software has emerged as the choice for phone makers that want to challenge the iPhone.

Samsung and HTC -- snapping at Nokia's heels for third place in topend smartphones behind the iPhone and Samsung -- are the biggest users of the Android platform.

Nokia is still operating Symbian software, older than Apple's software and considered clumsy by many, although it has been upgraded. Nokia also introduced the MeeGo platform in its flagship N9 model launched last month.

Elop has said Windows software will become the main platform for Nokia smartphones but that it won't stop developing Symbian or MeeGo.

Mawston says Nokia has been pushed into a corner as Symbian was unable to compete with other operating systems and MeeGo took too long to develop.

“It's a risk that they may be juggling too many balls at once,” Mawston said. “They were pushed into a multi-platform strategy for at least the short-term, but given the competitive situation with Symbian and MeeGo they really had no choice but to develop a third (platform) and juggle all three at once.”

Elop described the Lumia phones as a “new dawn” for Nokia.

“Lumia is light ... Lumia is the first real Windows Phone,” Elop declared to the London audience.

He acknowledged that since he took over the Nokia leadership a year ago there had been “some difficult moments and some tough decisions to make,” including more than 12,000 layoffs, but was upbeat about the future.

“Eight months ago, here in London we outlined a new direction for Nokia,” Elop said. “Since then we've gone through a significant transition and we are playing to win -- no holding back, no hesitation, no second guessing.”

Ovum analyst Nick Dillon said the success of the new Windows devices will be critical.

“The challenges which Nokia faces are significant -- many potential Windows Phone customers will have already bought an Android or iPhone and will have some form of attachment to those platforms,” Dillon said. “Nokia will have a challenge to convince them to switch to what is a largely unknown, and therefore risky, alternative.”

Nokia, which according to Strategy Analytics, is the world's top seller of dual SIM card handsets, sold 18 million such devices in the third quarter.

“Dual SIM is really something Nokia should have been doing in 2007 and 2008 when the market really started rocketing quite aggressively,” Mawston said. “Like with smartphones really, they're two or three years behind and are gradually playing catch-up.”

The Espoo-based company, near Helsinki, employs 136,000 people -- up from 132,000 a year ago.

Does Kakao Talk infringe on rights?

The National Human Rights Commission of the Republic of Korea ruled that Kakao Talk, the county’s most popular messenger app for smartphones, to be in violation of the right to informational self-determination on Friday.

According to the state’s human rights watchdog, Kakao Talk violates the law on telecom network and information protection, and the group requested the Korea Communications Commission to investigate and take appropriate measures.

Yonsei University graduate student Lee Jung-min, who uses the app while commuting or in between classes to talk to her friends, was surprised to hear of the decision.

“Everything is done through Kakao Talk,” said 26-year-old Lee, who is one of the 20 million users of the app.

“My trust in the app is shaken,” Jang Yun-jeong, a 20-year-old college student, told The Korea Herald. Jang said she uses the app for hours in a single day.

“That’s the reason I even have a smartphone, and I know many others who got one for that same reason,” said the Kyungnam University student.

Kakao Talk started collecting email addresses to verify accounts, denying service and threatening account deletion to those who do not provide the information.

“They are able to provide the service through verification systems that use the client’s phone number and serial number, and they are also using IDs as a backup,” said the NHRC in their ruling.

“Using the excuse of verifying accounts in order to collect emails as part of personal information clashes with the collection limitation principle, and violates the right to informational self-determination.”

The NHRC has also asked that the KCC do an overall inspection regarding the company’s collection of personal information and for guidelines regarding the matter.

By Robert Lee (robert@heraldm.com)

Samsung ordered to compensate local designer for copyrights infringement

Samsung Electronics Co., Korea's electronics giant, has been ordered to compensate a local designer for illegally using the designer's flower pattern creation on its refrigerator models, court records showed Saturday.

   The Seoul Western District Court recently delivered the order for the electronics maker to pay 30 million won ($27,200) in compensation to Lee Jong-gil, a graduate student at Hongik University, for infringing Lee's copyright.

   The 31-year-old student designer signed in 2009 a deal to create flower patterns to be used for Samsung's Zipel refrigerator line.

   Lee's patterns were later adopted by the electronics firm when it released a new refrigerator line for preservation of Kimchi, Korea's traditional fermented pickle, last year.

   In its promotion of the new product, the company introduced Lee's flower patterns as a creation of overseas professional designer Karen Little, leading the student to file suit against the electronics maker.

   The court said Samsung violated Lee's rights to have his name labeled for his design production.

   "The defendant did not mark the plaintiff's name and actively promoted (the refrigerator line) as the production of a famous designer, gravely damaging Lee's pride as a designer," the court noted. (Yonhap News)

Turkey survivor emerges from quake rubble

ERCIS, Turkey (AP) _ A relative says a 13-year-old boy used a rock in a desperate attempt to dig a hole and free himself from the rubble of a collapsed building following a massive earthquake that killed at least 550 people.

Turkish rescuers tend Ferhat Tokay, 13, after he was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Ercis, Van, Turkey, early Friday, Oct. 28, 2011. Rescuers, working under floodlights, pulled the 13-year-old boy alive from the rubble of the collapsed apartment building 108 hours after Sunday's earthquake that hit eastern Turkey. (AP-Yonhap News)

Rescuers pulled Ferhat Tokay out of the debris of a building early Friday, five days after a massive earthquake leveled many buildings in eastern Turkey.

The boy's uncle told NTV television Tokay was caught inside a shoe shop where he worked.

He placed shoes under his head and used them as a pillow to sleep at night.

Earlier reports said the boy was injured but the uncle, Sahin Tokay, said he had ``not even a scratch.''

The quake that hit Sunday has injured some 2,300 others and left thousands homeless.

European debt deal lifts Dow by almost 340 points

NEW YORK (AP) _ An agreement to contain the European debt crisis electrified the stock market Thursday, driving the Dow Jones Industrial average up nearly 340 points and putting the Standard & Poor's 500 index on track for its best month since 1974.

Investors were relieved after European leaders crafted a deal to slash Greece's debt load and prevent the crisis there from engulfing larger countries like Italy. The package is aimed at preventing another financial disaster like the one that happened in September 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

But some analysts cautioned that Europe's problems remained unsolved.

``The market keeps on thinking that it's put Europe's problems to bed, but it's like putting a three-year old to bed: You might put it there but it won't stay there,'' said David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds.

Kelly said Europe's debt problems will remain an issue until the economies of struggling nations like Greece and Portugal grow again.

Commodities and Treasury yields soared as investors took on more risk. The euro rose sharply against the dollar.

Stronger U.S. economic growth and corporate earnings also contributed to the surge. The government reported that the American economy grew at a 2.5 percent annual rate from July through September on stronger consumer spending and business investment. That was nearly double the 1.3 percent growth in the previous quarter.

Banks agreed to take 50 percent losses on the Greek bonds they hold. Europe will also strengthen a financial rescue fund to protect the region's banks and other struggling European countries such as Italy and Portugal.

``This seems to set aside the worries that there would be a massive contagion over there that would have brought everything down with it,'' said Mark Lamkin, head of Lamkin Wealth Management.

The Dow Jones industrial average soared 339.51 points, or 2.9 percent, to 12,208.55. That was its largest jump since Aug. 11, when it rose 423.

All 30 stocks in the Dow rose, led by Bank of America Corp. with a 9.6 percent gain. It was the first time the Dow closed above 12,000 since Aug. 1.

Even with Thursday's gains, the Dow remains 4.7 percent below the high for the year it reached April 29. The Dow has fallen every month since then due to a combination of a slowdown in the U.S. economy, a worldwide parts shortage after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and concerns about the European debt crisis. The Dow is now at approximately the same level it traded at on July 28.

Stocks fell for much of August in the wake of a last-minute deal to prevent the U.S. government from defaulting on its debt.

But anticipations of a solution to Europe's debt problems and signs that the U.S. economy is not in another recession have lifted stocks higher throughout October.

The Dow is up 11.9 percent for the month so far. With only two full days of trading left in the month, the Dow could have its biggest monthly gain since January 1987.

The S&P 500 rose 42.59, or 3.7 percent, to 1,284.59. Those gains turned the S&P positive for the year for the first time since Aug. 3, just before the U.S. government's debt was downgraded. The index is up 13.5 percent for the month, its best performance since a 16.3 percent gain in October 1974.

The Nasdaq composite leaped up 87.96, or 3.3 percent, to 2,738.63.

Small-company stocks rose more than the broader market. That's a sign investors were more comfortable holding assets perceived as being risky but also more likely to appreciate in a strong economy. The Russell 2000 index jumped 5.3 percent.

Raw materials producers, banks and stocks in other industries that depend on a strong economy for profit growth led the way. Copper jumped 5.8 percent to $3.69 a pound and crude oil jumped 4.2 percent to $93.96 a barrel.

The euro rose sharply, to $1.42, as confidence in Europe's financial system grew. The euro was worth $1.39 late Wednesday and had been as low as $1.32 on Oct. 3. European stock indexes also soared. France's CAC-40 rose 6.3 percent and Germany's DAX jumped 6.1 percent.

Investors sold U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, an indication they were moving away from safer investments. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which moves in the opposite direction of its price, rose to 2.39 percent from 2.21 percent late Wednesday.

European leaders still have to finalize the details of their latest plan. French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with Chinese President Hu Jintao amid hopes that countries with lots of cash like China can contribute to the European rescue.

Past attempts to contain Europe's two-year debt crisis have proved insufficient. Greece has been surviving on rescue loans since May 2010. In July, creditors agreed to take some losses on their Greek bonds, but that wasn't enough to fix the problem.

Worries about Europe's debt crisis and a weak U.S. economy dragged the S&P 500 down 19.4 percent between April 29 and Oct. 3. That put it on the cusp of what's called a bear market, which is a 20 percent decline.

Since then, there have been a number of more encouraging signs on the U.S. economy. Despite the jitters over Europe, many large American companies have been reporting strong profit growth in the third quarter.

Dow Chemical rose 8.2 percent after its profit last quarter rose 59 percent on strong sales growth from Latin America. Occidental Petroleum Corp. jumped 9.7 percent after reporting a 50 percent surge in income.

Citrix Systems Inc. rose 17.3 percent. The technology company's revenue rose 20 percent last quarter, and it forecast growth of up to 13 percent for 2012. Akamai Technologies Inc., whose products help speed the delivery of online content, jumped 15.4 percent after the company reported earnings that beat analysts' expectations.

Avon Products Inc. fell 18 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after the company said the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating its contacts with financial analysts and Avon's own probe into bribery in China and other countries.

Nine stocks rose for every one that fell on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was heavy at 6.5 billion shares.

Japan nuke radiation higher than estimated

NEW YORK (AP) ― The Fukushima nuclear disaster released twice as much of a dangerous radioactive substance into the atmosphere as Japanese authorities estimated, reaching 40 percent of the total from Chernobyl, a preliminary report says.

The estimate of much higher levels of radioactive cesium-137 comes from a worldwide network of sensors. Study author Andreas Stohl of the Norwegian Institute for Air Research says the Japanese government estimate came only from data in Japan, and that would have missed emissions blown out to sea.

The study did not consider health implications of the radiation. Cesium-137 is dangerous because it can last for decades in the environment, releasing cancer-causing radiation.

The long-term effects of the nuclear accident are unclear because of the difficulty of measuring radiation amounts people received.

The reactor building of Unit 4 at Tokyo Electric Power Co.`s (Tepco) Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power station in Fukushima (Yonhap News)

In a telephone interview, Stohl said emission estimates are so imprecise that finding twice the amount of cesium isn’t considered a major difference. He said some previous estimates had been higher than his.

The journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics posted the report online for comment, but the study has not yet completed a formal review by experts in the field or been accepted for publication.

Last summer, the Japanese government estimated that the March 11 Fukushima accident released 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium. Terabecquerels are a radiation measurement. The new report from Stohl and co-authors estimates about 36,000 terabecquerels through April 20. That’s about 42 percent of the estimated release from Chernobyl, the report says.

It also says about a fifth of the cesium fell on land in Japan, while most of the rest fell into the Pacific Ocean. Only about 2 percent of the fallout came down on land outside Japan, the report concluded.

Experts have no firm projections about how many cancers could result because they’re still trying to find out what doses people received. Some radiation from the accident has also been detected in Tokyo and in the United States, but experts say they expect no significant health consequences there.

Still, concern about radiation is strong in Japan. Many parents of small children in Tokyo worry about the discovery of radiation hotspots even though government officials say they don’t pose a health risk. And former prime minister Naoto Kan has said the most contaminated areas inside the evacuation zone could be uninhabitable for decades.

Stohl also noted that his study found cesium-137 emissions dropped suddenly at the time workers started spraying water on the spent fuel pool from one of the reactors. That challenges previous thinking that the pool wasn’t emitting cesium, he said.

S. Korean activists hold another 'Occupy Seoul' protests

SEOUL (Yonhap) -- A group of civic and labor activists rallied in Seoul Saturday to protest what they called the greed of financial institutions and the growing income disparity in the country.

The rally, the second of its kind since Oct. 15, was in concert with the "Occupy Wall Street" movement that began in the United States. They, among other things, urged Korean lawmakers not to approve the free trade agreement (FTA) with the United states.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed the FTA with South Korea into law Friday (Washington time) after Congress approved it last week. South Korea's legislature has yet to ratify it.

The "Occupy Seoul" rally drew several hundred protesters. They claimed that the FTA with the U.S. will only benefit the top 1 percent of the South Korean population.

This, they insisted, will fuel wealth disparity between the haves and have-nots that has become a serious social issue in South Korea.

"The pact passed by the U.S. Congress aims to burden South Korean workers with the economic crisis taking place in the United States," said a statement adopted at the rally.

In addition to the "Occupy Seoul" rally, the progressive Korea Confederation of Trade Unions, held a separate protest rally calling for an end to discrimination between regular and non-regular workers and more welfare benefits.

The labor protesters also asked South Korea's National Assembly not to ratify the FTA with Washington.

The two groups later joined forces, marching 1,1 kilometers down the Seoul streets, police said.

Samsung ahead of Apple in Q3 smartphone sales

Samsung Electronics Co. outpaced Apple Inc. in the global smartphone market by more than 10 million handsets during the third quarter of the year, industry data showed Friday.

According to the data, Samsung Electronics sold about 27 million smartphones during the July-to-Sept. period, while Apple’s figure came in at about 17 million.

While those in the industry had forecast that Samsung Electronics would outperform Apple in the period, the Korean electronics maker was expected to gain, at most, a 3 million handset lead.

While some point to Apple’s postponement of the launch of its new handset as the cause of the changes in the two companies’ figures, Samsung Electronics has been closing the sales gap between it and Apple for some time.

For the second quarter of last year, Samsung Electronics took 5 percent of the global smartphone market while Apple took 13.5 percent.

By the final quarter of 2010, Samsung Electronics had narrowed the gap with Apple to 5.5 percentage points, moving down to 1 percentage points during the second quarter of 2011.

Although Samsung Electronics’ lineup had included smartphones before the third quarter of last year, the chase after Apple began with the launch of the Galaxy S in June last year. Since its launch, more than 20 million units of the device have been sold, laying the ground for Samsung Electronics to take on the smartphone market. With the launch of the Galaxy S2 in April, more than 10 million units of which have been sold so far, Samsung’s chase picked up the pace.

While the new iPhone 4S has proved highly popular, those in the industry expect the Korean company’s lead to be maintained during the final quarter of the year.

In the four days following the iPhone 4S launch on Oct. 14, more than 4 million units were sold, outpacing the previous model’s sales figure for the comparable period by more than twofold.

However, with Samsung Electronics having a larger lineup and Galaxy Y, a more affordable smartphone model designed for emerging markets, ready for launch, some industry watchers are projecting that the company’s smartphone sales during the final three months of the year could rise as high as 40 million units.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldm.com)

Eurozone crisis efforts in disarray amid divisions

BRUSSELS (AP) ― Europe’s efforts to solve its escalating debt crisis plunged into disarray, after Germany and France could not bridge their differences in time for a summit Sunday, forcing them to call a second meeting.

Sunday’s summit was supposed to deliver a comprehensive plan to finally get a grip on the currency union’s debt troubles by detailing new financing for debt-ridden Greece, a plan to make Europe’s banks fit to sustain worsening market turbulence and a scheme to make the eurozone bailout fund more powerful.

The offices of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Thursday that they needed more time after it became clear that the currency union’s two biggest countries could not agree on the main points of the plan.

Both governments said that all elements of the eurozone’s crisis strategy would be discussed on Sunday “so it can be definitively adopted by the Heads of State and Government at a second meeting Wednesday at the latest.’’

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (right) reacts to German Chancellor Angela Merkel after a meeting on the financial crisis in Berlin on Oct. 9. (AP-Yonhap News)

It also said that the two leaders would meet Saturday evening ahead of the summit in Brussels in the hope of making progress.

“The chancellor is confident that in this way good, coordinated measures for the stability of the eurozone can be achieved,’’ Merkel’s spokesman Steffan Seibert told journalists in Berlin.

The announcement of a second summit is likely to increase concern over the eurozone’s ability to stick together and stabilize the common currency. Sunday’s summit had already been delayed from earlier in the week to give the leaders more time to agree on the key issues.

“The parochialism and procrastination that got us into this mess continues,” said Sony Kapoor, managing director of economic think tank Re-Define. “Unless EU leaders pull a rabbit out of their hat now, this will worsen the already deep politico-economic crisis that Europe is facing.”

European officials said ahead of the announcement that the eurozone remained deeply divided on important parts of its strategy on debt-ridden Greece, banks and its bailout fund.

Germany and several other rich countries have been pushing for banks and other private investors take steeper losses on their Greek bondholdings, before the eurozone can sign off on a second multibillion euro rescue package for the struggling country.

France and the European Central Bank have so far opposed forcing banks to write off more Greek debt, fearing that would destabilize the banking sector and worsen market turmoil.

But Greece’s international debt inspectors warned earlier in the day that even under a rescue package tentatively agreed in July the country’s debts were not sustainable.

In their statements Thurday, Merkel and Sarkozy said that ―based on the inspectors’ report ― Greece should immediately start negotiations with the private sector to reach a deal “that would improve this debt sustainability.’’

The eurozone is also divided on how to give its bailout fund more firing power, with the French wanting the ECB to help out, which Germany opposes.

A third point of contention is how to fund expensive capital injections into weak banks that might take losses on Greek debt and have already taken a hit from falling prices of other government bonds. France and several other countries are worried that bailing out their banks could hurt their credit rating and want the bailout fund to support lenders directly, rather than lending first to governments.

Ahead of the announcement, one European official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity, suggested that the need for more time may also have been caused by disagreement between Merkel’s government and the German parliament, which felt that decisions affecting taxpayer money were being taken over its head.

Seibert appeared to support that assessment, saying further changes to Europe’s bailout fund would require the agreement of the Bundestag, the German parliament.

“A two-step summit allows for this to take place,’’ Seibert said.

Merkel’s address to parliament scheduled for Friday was canceled, and Seibert said it would take place next week.

Governments in rich and poor countries are finding it increasingly difficult to get their parliaments to support the common rescue efforts.

Greek lawmakers late Thursday barely passed a deeply resented austerity bill needed to get the next batch of rescue money and avoid a disastrous default next month.

But the vote further diminished the ruling Socialists’ grip on parliament and triggered violent protests on the streets of Athens, leaving one person dead and dozens injured.

Tear gas choked the air in Athens’ central Syntagma Square as riot police tried to separate more than 50,000 peaceful protesters from smaller groups determined to wreak havoc with firebombs and stones. The scene degenerated into running battles between groups of protesters beating each other and between helmeted, heavily armed police and masked rioters.

One central Athens hospital said it had treated 74 people injured in the clashes. Some of the injured were covered in blood from head wounds.

Gadhafi's death energizes Syrian, Yemeni protests

Yemen`s government supporters shout slogans during a funeral for 11 government soldiers and supporters who died in the clashes with rebels in Sanaa, Yemen, Oct. 21, 2011. (Xinhua-Yonhap News)

BEIRUT (AP) _ Energized by the killing of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, thousands of protesters in Syria and Yemen poured into the streets and said their longtime rulers will be next.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's security forces opened fire on the protesters, killing at least 24 people nationwide on Friday, according to activists. It did not stop the crowds from chanting, “Your turn is coming, Bashar.”

Yemenis delivered a similar message to President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who survived an assassination attempt in June. ``Gadhafi is gone, and you're next, oh butcher,'' they chanted.

The armed rebellion that drove Gadhafi from power _ with NATO air support _ appears to have breathed new life into the uprisings elsewhere in the Arab world.

``Our souls, our blood we sacrifice for you, Libya!'' Syrian protesters chanted Friday.

Gadhafi was killed Thursday under still-murky circumstances, although he apparently was dragged from hiding in a drainage pipe, begging for his life.

His brutal end less than two months after he lost control of his oil-rich nation follows the ouster of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who has been driven into exile, and of Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who is in jail and facing charges of complicity in the deaths of more than 800 protesters.

All three uprisings have given Syrian protesters hope. One banner read, ``Ben Ali fled, Mubarak is in jail, Gadhafi is killed, Assad ... ?''

The uprisings in Syria and Yemen have proved remarkably resilient even as the governments relentlessly try to crush the revolts. The U.N. estimates the Syrian crackdown has killed some 3,000 people since March; in Yemen, the figure is believed to be around 500 since late January.

Yemen is falling deeper into turmoil, and Islamic militants have taken advantage of the chaos to seize control of several cities and towns in a southern province. That has raised American fears that the militants may establish a firmer foothold in the Arabian Peninsula country, which is close to vast oil fields and overlooks key shipping routes.

Syria's mass demonstrations, meanwhile, have shaken one of the most authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, but the opposition has made no major gains in recent months, holds no territory and has no clear leadership. The regime has sealed off the country and prevented independent media coverage, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.

``Gadhafi's death will boost the morale of Syrians,'' Syria-based activist Mustafa Osso told the AP in a telephone interview. ``It will make them continue until they bring down the regime.''

The Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian activist network, put Friday's death toll at 24 nationwide. It said 19 of those killed died in the flashpoint city of Homs, where military operations in pursuit of activists and anti-government protesters are a daily occurrence. The LCC said three others were killed in Hama and its suburbs, one in the northern Idlib province and one in the Damascus suburb of Saqba.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, said at least 15 people were killed in Hama. It also reported heavy fighting in Saqba between troops and gunmen thought to be army defectors.

In the Syrian town of Qusair near the Lebanese border, Syrian forces closed all mosques to prevent people from gathering. The weekly protests usually begin as Syrians pour out of mosques following Friday afternoon prayers.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner decried the ``appalling'' violence by the Syrian government.

``Let's be completely clear that the onus for these deaths lies on the Syrian government, on Assad, on his regime, who continue to kill innocent civilians,'' he told reporters.

Toner said the U.S. supported Arab League efforts to mediate dialogue. But, he said, ``we're not particularly optimistic since the Syrian government has shown no interest in pursuing any kind of dialogue.''

The unrest in Syria could send unsettling ripples through the region, as Damascus' web of alliances extends to Lebanon's powerful Hezbollah movement and Iran's Shiite theocracy.

In many ways, the Syrian uprising has taken cues from the Libyans recently.

Syria's opposition formed a national council like the Libyans' National Transitional Council, hoping to forge a united front against Assad that Syrians and the international community could rally behind.

And with the successes of armed Libyan revolutionaries present in their minds, many Syrian protesters say they are starting to see the limits of a peaceful movement. Some want to take up arms and are inviting foreign military action, hoisting signs that say ``Where is NATO?'' and urging the world to come to Syria's aid.

Syrian opposition leaders, however, have not called for an armed uprising and have for the most part opposed foreign intervention. In addition, Washington and its allies have shown little appetite for intervening in another Arab nation in turmoil.

There is concern that Assad's ouster would spread chaos around the region, and that his opposition is too fragmented. Various parties are vying for power as they seek an end to more than 40 years of iron rule by Assad and his late father, Hafez.

The Syrian protesters have been largely peaceful, though there have been some clashes in border regions between Syrian forces and apparent defectors from the military.

The growing signs of armed resistance may give the government a pretext to use even greater firepower against its opponents. Authorities have already used tanks, snipers and gangster-like hired gunmen known as ``shabiha.''

Global population set to reach 7 billion this month

SEOUL, Oct. 23 (Yonhap) -- The world's population is expected to hit 7 billion by the end of this month, more than quadrupling from 100 years earlier, a report showed Sunday.

According to the report by insurance giant Allianz Group, the planet's population is set to reach the new milestone at the end of October, compared with 1.65 billion a century ago, due mainly to improvements in hygiene and nutrition.

Asia has the bulk of the world's population. The region topped the list with 4.2 billion, followed by Africa with 1 billion and South America with 600 million, the report showed.

By country, China was the most populous country with 1.3 billion, followed by India with 1.2 billion.

By economic power, three out of four people were living in developing countries and emerging markets, according to the report.

Meanwhile, the report forecast that the world's population will hit 8 billion between 2020 and 2030. By 2082, a total of 10 billion people are expected to be living on the planet, the report said.

Thailand leader says floods may last 6 more weeks

BANGKOK (AP) -- Thailand’s catastrophic floods may take up to six weeks to recede, the prime minister said Saturday, as residents living in Bangkok’s outskirts sloshed through waist-high waters in some areas and the human toll from the crisis nationwide rose to 356 dead and more than 110,000 displaced.

Water bearing down on the capital from the north began spilling through Bangkok’s outer districts on Friday and continued creeping in on Saturday. So far, however, most of the metropolis of 9 million people has escaped unharmed, and its two airports are operating normally.

Workers ride on their vehicle through a flooded road in Bangkok, Thailand Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. (AP-Yonhap News)

Bangkokians are girding for the worst, though, after Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra this week urged all residents to move valuables to higher ground.

A mild panic prompted a run on grocery stores, with many running out of bottled water. A Thai company that distributes drinking water across the city sent out an SMS to customers announcing deliveries had been halted because of the crisis.

The government’s emergency relief center said flooding in the city was occuring at “concentrated points.” One of them, the northern district of Don Muang, was partially inundated after floodwaters burst through a canal barrier wall that workers were scrambling to repair overnight.

Don Muang is home to the capital’s second airport, as well as the government flood relief center. But some residents in swamped areas there said they were running short on food. Volunteers who had been preparing to send emergency supplies to Ayutthaya, a city north of Bangkok which has been submerged for more than two weeks, were forced to consume them instead.

“Now we’ve become flood victims” ourselves, said 53-year-old Pimnipha Na Bangchang. “We’re distributing this food aid to our community because we haven’t received any help.”

Also Saturday, Bangkok’s governor advised several thousand people living along the city’s main Chao Phraya river to move as high tides expected Sunday could cause the river to overflow its banks in some areas.

Excessive monsoon rains have drowned a third of the Southeast Asian nation since late July, causing billions of dollars in damage and putting nearly 700,000 people temporarily out of work.

Some flooding on Bangkok’s outskirts was expected after Yingluck ordered floodgates opened Thursday in a risky move to drain the dangerous runoff through urban canals and into the sea. Nobody knows with any certainty to what extent the city will flood.

In a weekly radio address Saturday, Yingluck said that “during the next four to six weeks, the water will recede.”

In the meantime, the government will step up aid to those whose lives have been disrupted, including 113,000 people living in temporary shelters after being forced to abandon submerged homes, she said.

The government said at least 356 people have died in the floods since July.

The flooding is the worst to hit the country since 1942, and the crisis is proving a major test for Yingluck’s nascent government, which took power in July after heated elections and has come under fire for not acting quickly or decisively enough to prevent major towns north of the capital from being ravaged by floodwaters.

The Labor Ministry says many of the nearly 700,000 people put temporarily out of work are from five major industrial estates north of Bangkok that were forced to suspend operations. Among those affected are Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda, which have halted major assembly operations. The electronics industry has also suffered, including computer hard drive maker Western Digital, which has two major production facilities in the flooded zone.

In an interview published in the Bangkok Post, Science and Technology Minister Plodprasop Suraswadi said natural and manmade factors combined to create the crisis.

Seasonal monsoons came six weeks early and have lasted longer than usual, filling reservoirs, dams and fields with 30 percent more rainfall than average. At the same time, the government kept too much water in dams over the summer in a bid to save water for rice cultivation, Plodprasop said.

Overall, about 700 billion cubic feet (20 billion cubic meters) of rainfall has drenched Thailand over the last several months, Plodprasop said.

About half of that has already drained into the sea, leaving about 350 billion cubic feet (10 billion cubic meters) of water threatening Bangkok, much of it spread across rice fields in Thailand’s central plains.

Plodprasop said it will take about 20 more days to drain those floodwaters into the Gulf of Thailand, a task he said was complicated by the fact that the nation’s irrigation system was designed to control water flows for farming and consumption -- not to prevent floods.

“We have never faced such a huge mass of floodwater in the fields,” Plodprasop said.

He said he believed inner Bangkok “should be safe, as we have an extensive drainage system with water pumps to drain excess water out quickly.” But some of the city’s outskirts could flood up to 6 feet (2 meters) deep, he said.

Falling German satellite enters atmosphere

BERLIN (AP) -- A defunct satellite entered the atmosphere early Sunday and pieces of it were expected to crash into the earth, the German Aerospace Center said.

In this undated artist rendering provided by EADS Astrium the scientific satellite ROSAT is seen. On Sunday, Oct. 23, 2011, between 1:45 UTC (3:45 CEST) and 2:15 UTC (4:15 CEST) ROSAT re-entered Earth's atmosphere. (AP-Yonhap News)

There was no immediate solid evidence to determine above which continent or country the ROSAT scientific research satellite entered the atmosphere, agency spokesman Andreas Schuetz said.

Most parts of the minivan-sized satellite were expected to burn up during re-entry, but up to 30 fragments weighing 1.87 tons (1.7 metric tons) could crash into Earth at speeds up to 280 mph (450 kph).

Scientists were no longer able to communicate with the dead satellite and it must have traveled about 12,500 miles (20,000 kilometers) in the last 30 minutes before entering the atmosphere, Schuetz said.

Experts were waiting for ``observations from around the world,’’ he added.

Scientists said hours before the re-entry into the atmosphere that the satellite was not expected to hit over Europe, Africa or Australia. According to a precalculated path it could have been above Asia, possibly China, at the time of its re-entry, but Schuetz said he could not confirm whether the satellite actually entered above that area.

The 2.69-ton (2.4 metric ton) scientific ROSAT satellite was launched in 1990 and retired in 1999 after being used for research on black holes and neutron stars and performing the first all-sky survey of X-ray sources with an imaging telescope.

The largest single fragment of ROSAT that could hit into the earth is the telescope’s heat-resistant mirror.

During its mission, the satellite orbited about 370 miles (600 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface, but since its decommissioning it has lost altitude, circling at a distance of only 205 miles (330 kilometers) above ground in June for example, the agency said.

Even in the last days, the satellite still circled the planet every 90 minutes, making it hard to predict where on Earth it would eventually come down.

A dead NASA satellite fell into the southern Pacific Ocean last month, causing no damage, despite fears it would hit a populated area and cause damage or kill people.

Experts believe about two dozen metal pieces from the bus-sized satellite fell over a 500-mile (800 kilometer) span of uninhabited portion of the world.

The NASA climate research satellite entered Earth’s atmosphere generally above American Samoa. But falling debris as it broke apart did not start hitting the water for another 300 miles (480 kilometers) to the northeast, southwest of Christmas Island.

Earlier, scientists had said it was possible some pieces could have reached northwestern Canada.

The German space agency puts the odds of somebody somewhere on Earth being hurt by its satellite at 1-in-2,000 -- a slightly higher level of risk than was calculated for the NASA satellite. But any one individual’s odds of being struck are 1-in-14 trillion, given there are 7 billion people on the planet.

Prosecutors to summon head of controversial Google mapping technology

Prosecutors said Friday they have identified a person believed to be responsible for the development of the controversial privacy-infringing Street View mapping feature of U.S. Internet company Google Inc. and notified the person to appear before them.

(AP-Yonhap News)

The Seoul prosecution has been looking into suspicions that Google gathered and stored privacy information of at least 600,000 individuals in South Korea while collecting images for the panoramic Street View service from October 2009 to May last year.

But the investigation has stalled due mainly to ambiguity in identifying who is to be blamed for the development of the privacy-breaching function.

"After tracking various Internet sources, including documents from an expert research institute, we found the person known to be the program developer and notified the person early this week to appear before the prosecution," said an official of the Seoul Central District Prosecutors' Office, which is investigating the case.

The message was delivered to the developer through Google's U.S. headquarters and the firm's attorney, but Google has given no response, according to the prosecutors.

Whether the person is actually responsible for the technology or not can be determined only after the interrogation, prosecutors noted. If so, the stagnant investigation may pick up speed.

An earlier police probe found that Google's fleet of camera-equipped vehicles not only shot the 360-degree images of streets in Seoul, Busan, Incheon and Gyeonggi Province but also collected serial numbers of wireless devices on Wi-Fi networks as well as mobile text messages exchanged between the networks' users.

Also gathered were users' e-mails, passwords and credit card payment histories, police said.

Police interrogated about 10 local Google officials last year before the case was sent to the prosecution for legal action.

Google confirmed the data collection officially but denied any wrongdoing under the local communication or privacy protection laws.

More than a dozen countries accused the U.S. company of similar charges after South Korea first raised the accusations last year. (Yonhap News)

SNS battle rages in mayoral race

Park ahead of Na in cyber campaign; Twitter users criticize online crackdown


With the Seoul mayoral by-election looming next Wednesday, the online campaigns are heating up, with independent candidate Park Won-soon taking a visible lead over Na Kyung-won of the ruling Grand National Party.

The SNS battle between the two top candidates also brought up a debate on the leverage and legitimate boundaries of SNS election campaigning.

In cyberspace, civic activist Park currently has 145,000 followers ahead of not only all the mayoral hopefuls, but even former GNP chairwoman Park Geun-hye, frontrunner in next year’s presidential race.

A number of progressive public figures, including professor Cho Kuk of Seoul National University Law School, have taken part in Park’s campaign to spread the word on Twitter.

Na, on the other hand, has stepped up her online campaign to make up for the right wing’s weakness in social networking.

“We have asked party members to communicate more actively through SNS, placing focus on younger, first-term lawmakers,” said the online spokesperson for Na’s camp.

Efforts are also being made to find an influential conservative debater who may counteract Park’s Twitter group, he said.

Na Kyung-won (left photo) and Park Won-soon (right photo) meet voters. (Yonhap News)

Despite such efforts, however, Na’s Twitter account is not as lively as Park’s, especially since the recent suggestions that she hired a part-time worker to put up positive remarks.

The National Police Agency pledged on Thursday to respond firmly to all illicit campaigns detected on Twitter, Facebook and other forms of SNS, officials said Thursday.

The prosecution made a similar announcement Wednesday, following a local district court ruling which convicted a citizen of illicit campaigning through Twitter.

The Uijeongbu District Court handed down a fine of 1 million won to a 41-year-old office worker for campaigning against specific lawmakers in regard to next year’s general election.

“Twitter may be seen as one of the telecommunications methods as defined by the public election law,” said the court in its ruling.

“It is also more powerful than other online communities and blogs in conveying one’s opinion to many unspecified people.”

The actions came amid concerns that such networking services may be abused with the intention to tarnish the image of a certain candidate.

According to the prosecutorial guidelines and Seoul City’s election commission, users may support a specific candidate by posting his or her campaign pledges on SNS but may not spread rumors based on speculations or make personal attacks.

Also, they may post pictures of themselves near voting stations, as to prove their participation in the vote, but may not show which candidate they cast their ballot for, said officials.

Twitter users, however, lashed out at the authorities’ response, claiming that the crackdown was based on arbitrary standards and that the online space should be left as a forum for free communication.

Several users also shared a set of tips on evading the prosecutors’ investigation.

The National Election Commission, from 2009 up to last week, has detected 45 cases of public election law violations through SNS, according to officials.

It also charged a Twitter user with mimicking Na’s account and posting derogatory messages about her.

By Bae Hyun-jung (tellme@heraldm.com)

Obama signs FTAs with S. Korea, Colombia, Panama

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday signed into law a free trade agreement (FTA) with South Korea, completing a long-delayed process in Washington to put the accord, expected to help create jobs, into effect.

The FTA still requires ratification by South Korea's National Assembly, embroiled in a partisan strife over the issue.

In a scaled-down ceremony, Obama also signed FTAs with Colombia and Panama, along with a bill on extending the Trade Adjustment Authority (TAA) worker-aid program.

Congress approved the three free trade pacts and the TAA measure last week during South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's trip to Washington.

Obama initially planned to sign the bills at a public ceremony in the Rose Garden and make some comments. But he canceled it on Thursday after issuing a televised speech at the Rose Garden on the death of Libyan dictator Moamer Kadhafi.

He instead signed them at the Oval Office, followed by a Rose Garden reception attended by dozens of South Korean and U.S. officials and lawmakers.

White House officials cited a "busy day" as a reason for the change.

(Yonhap News)

Libya faces challenges ahead

Gadhafi gone, but revolutionaries struggle among themselves


WASHINGTON (AP) ― Libya’s victorious revolutionaries now face a new threat: Themselves.

The secular and religious, the politicians and the militants basked Thursday in the demise of a dictator, as fighters killed Moammar Gadhafi and eradicated once and for all his four decades of cruel repression in Libya. But while the congratulations poured in from across the world, the Obama administration and others tempered the celebrations with a dose of caution, conscious that Libya’s formerly ragtag band of rebels must now avoid falling prey to extremists among them, or the type of political infighting that has hijacked the hopes of previous revolutions.

Gadhafi’s death clears a cloud over Libya’s shaky interim government while focusing new scrutiny on the group of former rebels and exiles now in charge and the possible candidates to lead a permanent government. Despite a public embrace of Libya’s transitional leaders, the U.S. remains leery of some of the motives of those who have promised a quick move to elections and democracy.

And while no official said it, the fear of an Islamist surge in power loomed large over Libya’s unsure future.

“This is a momentous day in the history of Libya,” President Barack Obama declared from the White House Rose Garden. “The dark shadow of tyranny has been lifted and with this enormous promise the Libyan people now have a great responsibility: to build an inclusive and tolerant and democratic Libya that stands as the ultimate rebuke to Gadhafi’s dictatorship. We look forward to the announcement of the country’s liberation, the quick formation of an interim government and a stable transition to Libya’s first free and fair elections.”

The 69-year-old Gadhafi was killed by revolutionary fighters overwhelming his hometown of Sirte, the last bastion of his regime’s resistance. Along with the reported capture of Gadhafi’s son and heir apparent Seif al-Islam, and the killing of Gadhafi’s son and security chief, Mutassim. Thursday’s developments appeared to signal a decisive end to eight months of civil war in the North African country.

The National Transitional Council’s largely secular leaders has promised to respect human rights and the rule of law and foster in an inclusive era of government, but it is held together by a shaky coalition of individuals with competing interests and ambitions. There remains a massive power vacuum, and uncertainty about what or who will fill it.

Armed groups across the country have emerged as laws unto themselves. Interim leader Mahmoud Jibril has indicated he will step aside once Libya’s liberation is completed, which would create possibly another vacuum. And in a country awash in weapons, where Gadhafi’s once vast arsenal of conventional arms and rocket-propelled missiles have been looted, the threat of widespread instability is high.

Obama said the U.S. was “under no illusions.”

“Libya will travel a long and winding road to full democracy,” he said. “There will be difficult days ahead. But the United States, together with the international community, is committed to the Libyan people. You have won your revolution, and now we will be a partner as you forge a future that provides dignity, freedom and opportunity.”

Libyan people celebrate the death of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in Tripoli on Thursday. (Xinhua-Yonhap News)

Libya’s patchwork of competing tribal and regional loyalties makes it a challenging place to govern under any circumstances, and 42 years of idiosyncratic rule under Gadhafi compounds the difficulty. He drained the country of institutions, eliminated any threat to his authority and defined nearly all aspects of life through his bizarre political vision that centered on a green book, powerless “people’s committees” and his unpredictable antics.

The U.S. has directed its diplomacy through a narrow group of ex-government officials, lawyers and economists with questionable influence on the streets. Washington has delivered only a fraction of the billions in Gadhafi assets it has seized, and it has hedged support for some transitional council allies who also are promising a quick move to elections and democracy but have spotty resumes.

“Nobody is in charge,” said Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “You have a council that is barely able to work together, and you have militias with no chain of command. In the course of the next week or so, they are going to have to figure out how to govern.”

“The revolution is over and the state-building must begin, and we have no clue how they are going to do it,” added Eugene Rogan, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Oxford. Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, Libya does not have an old constitution or parliament to turn to because Gadhafi so thoroughly decimated the government, and Libyans “have no working civil service, no proper ministries and no officials with a mandate from the people.”

The NTC’s public statements have sometimes raised eyebrows, as when military chief Abdel-Fattah Younis’ body was found dumped outside the eastern city of Benghazi in July. Leaders insisted the assassination was the work of the Gadhafi regime, even as several witnesses came forward and said Younis was killed by fellow rebels.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner echoed that the “tricky part” of the revolution begins now, saying Libya’s leaders should move rapidly “to establish control over the military” and “to establish control throughout the country.”

“You’ve got militias, you’ve got units that have been very much involved in fighting, and it is a significant challenge how to bring them under a single command,” he said.

Revolutions often are abducted by armed or organized minority interests. Iran ousted the shah in 1979 but soon fell under a repressive theocracy that in many ways was more intolerant than its predecessor, while Russia’s communists quickly eliminated the rival groups that helped overthrow the czar last century. By removing the whole political order, as opposed to a head of state or head of government, revolutions are by nature unpredictable and dangerous.

Libya’s fighters include both secular and religious Muslims, and their militias almost surely will demand a large role in Libya’s future governance. Some come with questionable pasts, having waged jihad against U.S. forces in Iraq or belonged to hard-line Islamist groups suppressed under Gadhafi’s dictatorship. With a third of the country impoverished, the U.S. and other Western powers are worried about what will happen if the jubilation of defeating Gadhafi turns to entrenched political frustration.

“My guess is that there will be more fighting,” said retired U.S. diplomat Leslie H. Gelb.

Ali Errishi, a former Libyan minister who abandoned Gadhafi early in the revolution and sought his removal, said the best strategy for stability would be to start democracy work immediately.

“We don’t have to wait for elections,” Errishi told the Associated Press, saying the leaders of Libya’s “quasi-democratic” council should “give everybody a chance and show the rest of the world we are capable of having a civilized democratic conversation for the best interests of our people.”

Jobs questioned authority all his life, book says

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A new biography portrays Steve Jobs as a skeptic all his life _ giving up religion because he was troubled by starving children, calling executives who took over Apple ``corrupt'' and delaying cancer surgery in favor of cleansings and herbal medicine.

``Steve Jobs'' by Walter Isaacson, to be published Monday, also says Jobs came up with the company's name while he was on a diet of fruits and vegetables, and as a teenager perfected staring at people without blinking.

The Associated Press purchased a copy of the book Thursday.

The book delves into Jobs' decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor _ a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.

Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.

Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: ```I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret.''

Jobs died Oct. 5, at age 56, after a battle with cancer.

The book also provides insight into the unraveling of Jobs' relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009. Schmidt had quit Apple's board as Google and Apple went head-to-head in smartphones, Apple with its iPhone and Google with its Android software.

Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to ``grand theft.''

``I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong,'' Jobs said. ``I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.''

Jobs used an expletive to describe Android and Google Docs, Google's Internet-based word processing program. In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, California, cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.

``I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want.'' The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.

The book is clearly designed to evoke the Apple style. Its cover features the title and author's name starkly printed in black and gray type against a white background, along with a black-and-white photo of Jobs, thumb and forefinger to his chin.

The biography, for which Jobs granted more than three dozen interviews, is also a look into the thoughts of a man who was famously secretive, guarding details of his life as he did Apple's products, and generating plenty of psychoanalysis from a distance.

Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO on Aug. 24, six weeks before he died.

Doctors said Thursday that it was not clear whether the delayed treatment made a difference in Jobs' chances for survival.

``People live with these cancers for far longer than nine months before they're even diagnosed,'' so it's not known how quickly one can prove fatal, said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, a pancreatic cancer expert at Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, said people often are in denial after a cancer diagnosis, and some take a long time to accept recommended treatments.

``We've had many patients who have had bad outcomes when they have delayed treatment. Nine months is certainly a significant period of time to delay,'' he said.

Fortune magazine reported in 2008 that Jobs tried alternative treatments because he was suspicious of mainstream medicine.

The book says Jobs gave up Christianity at age 13 when he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine. He asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them.

Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.

Jobs calls the crop of executives brought in to run Apple after his ouster in 1985 ``corrupt people'' with ``corrupt values'' who cared only about making money. Jobs himself is described as caring far more about product than profit.

He told Isaacson they cared only about making money ``for themselves mainly, and also for Apple _ rather than making great products.''

Jobs returned to the company in 1997. After that, he introduced the candy-colored iMac computer, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, and turned Apple into the most valuable company in America by market value for a time.

The book says that, while some Apple board members were happy that Hewlett-Packard gave up trying to compete with Apple's iPad, Jobs did not think it was cause for celebration.

``Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands,'' Jobs told Isaacson. ``But now it's being dismembered and destroyed.''

``I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple,'' he added.

Advance sales of the book have topped best-seller lists. Much of the biography adds to what was already known, or speculated, about Jobs. While Isaacson is not the first to tell Jobs' story, he had unprecedented access. Their last interview was weeks before Jobs died.

Jobs reveals in the book that he didn't want to go to college, and the only school he applied to was Reed, a costly private college in Portland, Oregon. Once accepted, his parents tried to talk him out of attending Reed, but he told them he wouldn't go to college if they didn't let him go there. Jobs wound up attending but dropped out after less than a year and never went back.

Jobs told Isaacson that he tried various diets, including one of fruits and vegetables. On the naming of Apple, he said he was ``on one of my fruitarian diets.'' He said he had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded ``fun, spirited and not intimidating.''

Jobs' eye for simple, clean design was evident early. The case of the Apple II computer had originally included a Plexiglas cover, metal straps and a roll-top door. Jobs, though, wanted something elegant that would make Apple stand out.

He told Isaacson he was struck by Cuisinart food processors while browsing at a department store and decided he wanted a case made of molded plastic.

He called Jonathan Ive, Apple's design chief, his ``spiritual partner'' at Apple. He told Isaacson that Ive had ``more operation power'' at Apple than anyone besides Jobs himself _ that there's no one at the company who can tell Ive what to do. That, says Jobs, is ``the way I set it up.''

Jobs was never a typical CEO. Apple's first president, Mike Scott, was hired mainly to manage Jobs, then 22. One of his first projects, according to the book, was getting Jobs to bathe more often. It didn't work.

Jobs' dabbling in LSD and other aspects of 1960s counterculture has been well documented. In the book, Jobs says LSD ``reinforced my sense of what was important _ creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.''

He also revealed that the Beatles were one of his favorite bands, and one of his wishes was to get the band on iTunes, Apple's revolutionary online music store, before he died. The Beatles' music went on sale on iTunes in late 2010.

The book was originally called ``iSteve'' and scheduled to come out in March. The release date was moved up to November, then, after Jobs' death, to Monday. It is published by Simon & Schuster and will sell for $35.

Isaacson will appear Sunday on ``60 Minutes.'' CBS News, which airs the program, released excerpts of the book Thursday.

The Art of Online Portraiture

By CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN

Social-media profiles are increasingly important in building your business identity. "It's a hugely powerful branding tool—and you have to be very strategic about building it," says Nicole Williams, connection director for LinkedIn.
A key component is the profile picture. The New York City-based Ms. Williams, who primarily splits her time among three social-media sites—Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn—says it is crucial to strike the right tone.

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Nicole Williams of LinkedIn

First, you should have a profile picture. LinkedIn research shows that a page with a profile picture is seven times as likely to be viewed as a page without one, she says.
Think of these pictures as the modern-day version of the oil paintings that estate owners once commissioned. The smallest details in them will convey volumes. It's best, Ms. Williams says, to have your profile picture feature you alone, not your pet or significant other. "Being so strongly identified with your dog or your husband might not be appropriate unless you're a vet or a marriage counselor and that's part of your professional image."
The way you are dressed should reflect the norms of the profession that you're in or hope to join. "If you're looking for a job in media or fashion, then you can wear more color in the picture, have more jewelry," says Ms. Williams. Still, it's usually best to "nix the glitz," she says. "What you don't want is to meet with a client or walk into an interview and have the person say, 'I wouldn't have recognized you, you look so different.' "
In Ms. Williams's two go-to profile photos, she looks at ease and in her element. In both, she is shown in mid-action. She is working at her desk in one and walking down a New York street holding her work bag and a newspaper in the other. "Try and be caught in the moment so your energy in that moment is somehow captured," she says.

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Ms. Williams has a profile picture that shows her mid-action, walking on a city street.

Posture can speak volumes, Ms. Williams says. "If you're sitting up straight, your shoulders are back, you're smiling and you have open eyes, you're nonverbally communicating that you're confident, competent and have a curiosity about the world," she says.
In Ms. Williams's favorite profile shots of other people—which show authors Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou—the subjects look natural and "their faces are filled with glee. You can sense their personalities and feel a certain energy."
Ms. Williams suggests having your photo taken by a friend or someone who puts you at ease. "Professional photographs can feel uptight," says Ms. Williams. "When someone you're comfortable with is taking your photo, you're exuding comfort, you're natural." Also, "people respond better to color photos, which have more life and energy" than black-and-white ones, she adds.
It's also a good idea to pay attention to the other photos you're sharing on your social-media pages, says Ms. Williams, who goes through the photos she's posted to weed out old ones about once a month. "I'm old enough to remember the people with slide projectors who would come back from a trip to Italy and make you sit through three reels of photos," she says. "Select and choose your photos carefully—think of them as a highlight reel."
While people often post photos of daily minutiae such as food, Ms. Williams is careful to post only photos that relate to her own image, have "a great story attached," or have a point she would like to make. "I don't think anyone cares about what coffee I'm drinking in the morning, no matter how flavorful it is," she says.
Ms. Williams, who has written several books about careers and lifestyles, occasionally posts a photo of her son, who is now 6-months old. People "respond to authenticity," she says. Even so, Ms. Williams is careful not to do it too often. "People would very quickly get bored with that." (Ms. Williams carefully monitors the number of responses she gets to her postings to gauge which ones have broad appeal.)
Even the most carefully managed social-media profile can be ruined by a photo someone else thoughtlessly posts. Ms. Williams is always on the lookout for photos in which others have "tagged" her or identified her by name.
Recently, she was horrified when a relative tagged her in a picture showing her drinking wine at a family party.
"I have professional people on this network—I don't want them seeing what I'm drinking on a Sunday afternoon," she says. She immediately untagged herself.

Write to Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan at cheryl.tan@wsj.com

Samsung, Google unveil Galaxy Nexus

New Android-powered phone to compete with Apple’s iPhone 4S

HONG KONG ― Samsung Electronics and Google Inc. unveiled the first smartphone running on the Android’s latest mobile operating system at a global launch event in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

“We’re very excited to be introducing our next-generation Nexus phone,” said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at Google. “We measure it ourselves by three defining terms ― simplicity, beauty and going beyond smart.”

The Galaxy Nexus, running on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform, features a 4.65-inch high definition Super AMOLED display screen and a 1.2 gigahertz dual core processor that upgrades speed.

The collaboration effort, put together by the two global tech giants to grab a bigger share in the global smartphone industry, comes with a unique curved design and offers Long Term Evolution or Evolved High-Speed Packet Access connectivity.

Shin Jong-kyun (right), chief of mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics, and Andy Rubin, Google’s vice president of mobile, jointly showcase the new Galaxy Nexus at a launch event in Hong Kong on Wednesday. (Samsung Electronics)

With a thickness of 8.94 millimeters, it has a redesigned user interface with improved multi-tasking, notifications and near-field communications functions, as well as a full web browsing experience.

It also introduced innovative features such as face unlock, which uses facial recognition to unlock the phone and the Android beam, based on the NFC technology, that allows the quick sharing of web pages, apps and videos by tapping the back of phones together.

“It’s a powerful example of us in joint commitment to take giant steps to always stay ahead of the curve,” said Shin Jong-kyun, head of mobile communications business at Samsung Electronics.

The global launch of the Galaxy Nexus will kick off next month in many countries, including the U.S., Europe and Asia.

The Galaxy Nexus is the second Nexus phone jointly built by Samsung and Google, following the Nexus S smartphone. The Nexus phone serves as a reference device for other Android partners and developers, meaning it gives them a look into Google’s new mobile platform.

The Ice Cream Sandwich platform is Google’s first joint platform for both smartphones and tablet PCs.

Google’s Android mobile software has already become the world’s most-used smartphone platform, powering up to 190 million devices.

Growing with the Android OS is Samsung, named the No. 1 seller of Android-powered mobile phones. The company is projected to overtake Apple’s mobile sales figure from the third quarter as it aims to sell over 300 million units by the end of this year.

Apple third quarter mobile sales figure announced in the U.S. on Tuesday failed to meet the market expectations of 20 million units, recording 17.07 million units.

By Cho Ji-hyun, Korea Herald correspondent
(sharon@heraldm.com)

Samsung trumps Apple in Q3 smartphone sales

(Yonhap News)

Samsung Electronics Co. surpassed Apple Inc. in smartphone sales in the July-September quarter, according to the Korean company's mobile chief and industry reports Friday.



Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung's mobile division, estimated the company had shipped more than 20 million smartphones in the third quarter.

"I think it is more," he told reporters when asked if Samsung had sold more than 20 million smartphones in the three-month period.

Shin made the comments on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Galaxy Nexus launch event in Hong Kong, according to a voice recording of the briefing released later.

Apple said it sold 17.07 million iPhones during the three months to Sept. 24.

The U.S. company was the world's biggest smartphone maker in the previous quarter, followed by Samsung, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics.

Samsung's spokesman declined to discuss the company's smartphone sales. The Korean firm is scheduled to release its third-quarter earnings results next week.

Market analysts and media reports estimate that Samsung shipped between 23 million and 28 million smartphones in the last three months, helped by the rollout of the Galaxy S2 smartphone in the spring.

The Galaxy S2 smartphone was introduced in Korea in April and went on sale globally in the following months. In the U.S. market, Samsung launched the Galaxy sequel in September through three mobile operators -- AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus earlier this week in collaboration with Google Inc., days after Apple's iPhone 4S went on sale globally.

Samsung may have also benefited from Apple's weak iPhone sales in the last quarter. Rumors about Apple's new iPhone kept consumers from purchasing new ones, Dow Jones Newswires quoted Apple's chief financial officer as saying.  (Yonhap News)

Greece: Riots as austerity steps get first approval

A protester throws a stone at Greek riot police, during clashes on Wednesday. (AP-Yonhap News)

ATHENS (AP) ― Hundreds of youths smashed and looted stores in central Athens and clashed with riot police during a massive anti-government rally against painful new austerity measures that won initial parliamentary approval in a vote Wednesday night.

The rioting came on the first day of a 48-hour nationwide general strike that brought services in much of Greece to a standstill, grounding flights for hours, leaving ferries tied up in port and shutting down customs offices, stores and banks.

More than 100,000 people took to the streets of the Greek capital to demonstrate against the austerity bill, which includes new tax hikes, further pension and salary cuts, the suspension on reduced pay of 30,000 public servants and the suspension of collective labor contracts.

Creditors have demanded the measures before they give Greece more funds from a 110 billion euros ($152.11 billion) package of bailout loans from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund. Greece says it will run out of money in mid-November without the 8 billion euros ($11 billion) installment.

But Greek citizens said they already are reeling from more than one-and-a-half years of austerity measures.

“We just can’t take it any more. There is desperation, anger and bitterness,” said Nikos Anastasopoulos, head of a workers’ union for an Athens municipality, as he joined the demonstration early in the day.

The bill won initial approval in the 300-member Parliament late Wednesday, with 154 deputies voting in favor on principle and 141 against. A second vote, on the bill’s articles, is due Thursday. Only after that procedure will the bill have passed. A communist party-backed union has vowed to encircle Parliament Thursday in an attempt to prevent deputies from entering the building for the procedure.

The new measures have even prompted some lawmakers from the governing Socialists to threaten not vote for at least some of the articles in the bill. But Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos insisted there was no choice but to accept the hardship.

“We have to explain to all these indignant people who see their lives changing that what the country is experiencing is not the worst stage of the crisis,” he said in Parliament. “It is an anguished and necessary effort to avoid the ultimate, deepest and harshest level of the crisis. The difference between a difficult situation and a catastrophe is immense.”

Hours before Wednesday’s vote, one of Athens’ largest demonstrations in years degenerated into violence as masked and hooded youths pelted riot police outside Parliament with gasoline bombs and chunks of marble smashed from buildings, metro stops and sidewalks.

Police responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Authorities said 50 police were injured in the clashes, along with at least three demonstrators, while 33 people were detained for questioning or arrested for alleged involvement in the rioting. At least three journalists covering the riots were also slightly hurt.

Long after Wednesday’s demonstration was over, violence continued, with police fighting running street battles with youths setting up burning barricades along the back streets near Athens’ main Syntagma Square and near the tourist area of Monastiraki.

Thick black smoke billowed from burning trash and bus-stops, and debris lay strewn along the capital’s broad avenues. A hurled gasoline bomb set fire to a sentry post used by the ceremonial presidential guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier outside Parliament.

In Greece’s second city of Thessaloniki, protesters smashed the facades of about 10 shops that defied the strike and remained open, as well as five banks and cash machines. Police fired tear gas and threw stun grenades.

The general strike is set to continue Thursday, with all sectors ― from dentists, hospital doctors and lawyers to tax office workers, taxi drivers, prison guards, teachers and dock workers ― staying off the job.

Air traffic controllers scaled back their strike from 48 hours to 12, allowing flights to take off and land after noon on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, European countries are trying to work out a broad solution to the continent’s deepening debt crisis, before a weekend summit in Brussels. It became clear earlier this year that the initial bailout for Greece was not working as well as had been hoped, and European leaders agreed on a second, 109 billion euros ($151 billion) bailout. But key details of that rescue fund, including the participation of the private sector, remain to be worked out.

Gadhafi, Libya's leader for 42 years, killed as his hometown falls

SIRTE, Libya (AP) -- Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled Libya with a dictatorial grip for 42 years until he was ousted by his own people in an uprising that turned into a bloody civil war, was killed Thursday when revolutionary forces overwhelmed his hometown, Sirte, the last major bastion of resistance two months after his regime fell.

The 69-year-old Gadhafi is the first leader to be killed in the Arab Spring wave of popular uprisings that swept the Midde East, demanding the end of autocratic rulers and greater democracy. Gadhafi had been one of the world's most mercurial leaders, dominating Libya with a regime that often seemed run by his whims and bringing international condemnation and isolation on his country for years.

``We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. Moammar Gadhafi has been killed,'' Prime Minister Mahmoud Jibril told a news conference in the capital Tripoli.

In this Sept. 23, 2009 photo, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi shows a torn copy of the UN Charter during his address to the 64th session of the United Nations General Assembly. (AP-Yonhap News)

This image from video broadcast on Al-Arabiya television is said to show Moammar Gadhafi in Sirte, Libya, Thursday. (AP-Yonhap News)

Initial reports from fighters said Gadhafi had been barricaded in with his heavily armed loyalists in the last few buildings they held in his Mediterranean coastal hometown of Sirte, furiously battling with revolutionary fighters closing in on them Thursday. At one point, a convoy tried to flee the area and was blasted by NATO airstrikes, though it was not clear if Gadhafi was in the vehicles. Details of his death remained unverified.

Al-Jazeera TV showed footage of a man resembling the 69-year-old Gadhafi lying dead or severely wounded, bleeding from the head and stripped to the waist as fighters rolled him over on the pavement.

The body was then taken to the nearby city of Misrata, which Gadhafi's forces besieged for months in one of the bloodiest fronts of the civil war. Al-Arabiya TV showed footage of Gadhafi's bloodied body carried on the top of a vehicle surrounded by a large crowd chanting, ``The blood of the martyrs will not go in vain.''

Celebratory gunfire and cries of ``Allahu Akbar'' or ``God is Great'' rang out across the capital Tripoli. Cars honked their horns and people hugged each other. In Sirte, the ecstatic former rebels celebrated the city's fall after weeks of bloody siege by firing endless rounds into the sky, pumping their guns, knives and even a meat cleaver in the air and singing the national anthem.

Libya's new leaders had said they would declare the country's ``liberation'' after the fall of Sirte.

The death of Gadhafi adds greater solidity to that declaration.

It rules out a scenario that some had feared _ that he might flee deeper into Libya's southern deserts and lead a resistance campaign against Libya's rulers. The fate of two of his sons, Seif al-Islam and Muatassim, as well as some top figures of his regime remains unknown, but their ability to rally loyalists would be deeply undermined with Gadhafi's loss.

Information Minister Mahmoud Shammam said he was told that Gadhafi was dead from fighters who said they saw the body.

``Our people in Sirte saw the body,'' Shammam told The Associated Press. ``Revolutionaries say Gadhafi was in a convoy and that they attacked the convoy.''

Sirte's fall caps weeks of heavy, street-by-street fighting as revolutionary fighters besieged the city. Despite the fall of Tripoli on Aug. 21, Gadhafi loyalists mounted fierce resistance in several areas, including Sirte, preventing Libya's new leaders from declaring full victory in the eight-month civil war. Earlier this week, revolutionary fighters gained control of one stronghold, Bani Walid.

By Tuesday, fighters said they had squeezed Gadhafi's forces in Sirte into a residential area of about 700 square yards but were still coming under heavy fire from surrounding buildings.

In an illustration of how heavy the fighting has been, it took the anti-Gadhafi fighters two days to capture a single residential building.

Reporters at the scene watched as the final assault began around 8 a.m. Thursday and ended about 90 minutes later. Just before the battle, about five carloads of Gadhafi loyalists tried to flee the enclave down the coastal highway that leads out of the city. But they were met by gunfire from the revolutionaries, who killed at least 20 of them.

Col. Roland Lavoie, spokesman for NATO's operational headquarters in Naples, Italy, said the alliance's aircraft Thursday morning struck two vehicles of pro-Gadhafi forces ``which were part of a larger group maneuvering in the vicinity of Sirte.''

But NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance to alliance rules, said the alliance also could not independently confirm whether Gadhafi was killed or captured.

The Misrata Military Council, one of the command groups, said its fighters captured Gadhafi.

Another commander, Abdel-Basit Haroun, said Gadhafi was killed when the airstrike hit the fleeing convoy.

One fighter who said he was at the battle told AP Television News that the final fight took place at an opulent compound for visiting dignitaries built by Gadhafi's regime. Adel Busamir said the convoy tried to break out but after being hit it turned back and re-entered the compound. Several hundred fighters assaulted.

``We found him there,'' Busamir said. ``We saw them beating him (Gadhafi) and someone shot him with a 9mm pistol ... then they took him away.''

Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Bani in Tripoli told Al-Jazeera TV that a wounded Gadhafi ``tried to resist (revolutionary forces) so they took him down.''

``I reassure everyone that this story has ended and this book has closed,'' he said.

After the battle, revolutionaries began searching homes and buildings looking for any hiding Gadhafi fighters. At least 16 were captured, along with cases of ammunition and trucks loaded with weapons. Reporters saw revolutionaries beating captured Gadhafi men in the back of trucks and officers intervening to stop them.

In the central quarter where Thursday's final battle took place, the fighters looking like the same ragtag force that started the uprising eight months ago jumped up and down with joy and flashed V-for-victory signs. Some burned the green Gadhafi flag, then stepped on it with their boots.

They chanted ``Allah akbar,'' or ``God is great'' in Arabic, while one fighter climbed a traffic light pole to unfurl the revolution's flag, which he first kissed. Discarded military uniforms of Gadhafi's fighters littered the streets. One revolutionary fighter waved a silver trophy in the air while another held up a box of firecrackers, then set them off.

``Our forces control the last neighborhood in Sirte,'' Hassan Draoua, a member of Libya's interim National Transitional Council, told The Associated Press in Tripoli. ``The city has been liberated.''