EU in antitrust probe of Apple, e-book publishers

FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 file photo and Apple logo is seen during an announcement at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.. The European Union's antitrust watchdog announced Tuesday Dec. 6, 2011, is probing whether Apple and five major publishing houses have colluded to restrict competition in the market for e-books. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

FILE - In this Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011 file photo and Apple logo is seen during an announcement at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.. The European Union's antitrust watchdog announced Tuesday Dec. 6, 2011, is probing whether Apple and five major publishing houses have colluded to restrict competition in the market for e-books. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)

BRUSSELS (AP) ? The European Union's antitrust watchdog is probing whether Apple helped five major publishing houses illegally raise prices for e-books when it launched its iPad tablet and iBookstore in 2010.

The probe, announced Tuesday by the European Commission, offers a glimpse into the fierce fight for share of the growing e-book market as Apple tries to take on Amazon and its Kindle e-book reader. It also highlights the struggle for profits between retailers and publishers, as more and more readers download books electronically.

In particular, the Commission is investigating a significant shift in the way the price of e-books is determined that occurred in 2010, just as the Cupertino, California-based Apple introduced the iPad and its own online bookshop, iBookstore.

Apple was the first retailer to allow publishers to move to so-called agency agreements, which let publishers set the price that online bookshops sell e-books to consumers. Until then, publishers were able to set the wholesale price of e-books, while retailers decided what price to sell them on to readers.

"The Commission has concerns that these practices may breach EU antitrust rules that prohibit cartels and restrictive business practices," the regulator said in a statement.

Giving publishers the power to set retail prices could effectively restrict competition between online bookshops, since it takes away the individual retailers' powers to set lower prices. Since Apple's deal with the publishers, several other online retailers have also shifted to the agency model, possibly in an attempt to secure the rights to sell popular e-books.

The EU investigation targets publishers Hachette Livre, a unit of France's Lagardere Publishing; Harper Collins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's U.S.-based News Corp.; CBS Corp.'s Simon & Schuster; Penguin, which is owned by U.K. publishing house Pearson Group; and Germany's Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, which owns Macmillan.

The Commission stressed the probe was in its early stages and did not mean that the companies had actually broken EU competition law. It follows a similar investigation by Britain's Office of Fair Trading and a class action lawsuit against the same five publishers and Apple filed this summer in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The U.K. agency on Tuesday closed its own probe, since the Commission has taken over the case, but said it was cooperating closely with the EU investigation. It said its investigation was triggered by several complaints, without naming any complainants.

Apple representative Bethan Lloyd said the company declined to comment at this time.

Pearson said the fact that the Commission has opened a probe did not prejudge its outcome. "Pearson does not believe it has breached any laws, and will continue to fully and openly cooperate with the Commission," it said.

Holtzbrinck echoed that statement, saying it found the Commission's case "without reason." HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster said they are cooperating with the investigation, while Hachette Livre declined to comment.

The e-book market has been dominated by Amazon.com Inc. and its Kindle reader, with both Apple and Barnes & Noble's Nook reader fighting to break in.

In a summary of its complaint, the U.S. law firm Hagens Berman, which filed the U.S. class-action suit, claims that "Apple believed that it needed to neutralize the Kindle when it entered the e-book market with its own e-reader, the iPad, and feared that one day the Kindle might challenge the iPad by digitally distributing other media like music and movies."

The lawsuit also alleges that, following Apple's deals, Amazon was forced to abandon its discount pricing model and move to the agency model.

However, Keith Hylton, a professor at the Boston University School of Law, said Monday that allowing publishers to set prices for retailers didn't necessarily hurt competition in the market for e-books.

"Resale price maintenance can enhance competition by giving retailers a stronger incentive to promote the goods that they are selling," he said in an email. "In the absence of resale price maintenance, some retailers may cut their promotional efforts in order to 'free ride' on the promotional investments of other retailers."

In fact, such lack of promotion of books could hurt sales and thereby competition, Hylton said. "Given this, it's not at all clear that Apple's efforts were harmful to competition."

___

Robert Barr in London, Hillel Italie in New York, Elaine Ganley in Paris, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2011-12-06-eBooks-Antitrust%20Probe/id-50c66ea73acb44ac93c40d0afd901d57

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The Note?s Must-Reads for Tuesday, December 6, 2011 (ABC News)

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Singer Mindy McCready's 5-year-old son in custody

FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. A missing persons report has been filed for McCready and her 5-year-old son Zander. The Department of Children and Families says the report was filed with Cape Coral Police Tuesday night after McCready took Zander from McCready's father's home. McCready doesn't have custody of her son ? her mother does ? and was allowed to visit the boy at her father's home. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, file)

FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. A missing persons report has been filed for McCready and her 5-year-old son Zander. The Department of Children and Families says the report was filed with Cape Coral Police Tuesday night after McCready took Zander from McCready's father's home. McCready doesn't have custody of her son ? her mother does ? and was allowed to visit the boy at her father's home. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, file)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) ? By the time Arkansas authorities took country singer Mindy McCready's 5-year-old son from her and into custody on Friday evening, one thing had already become apparent to much of America: McCready's life has come to resemble a bad country song.

Since her success in the mid-1990s as a honey-voiced success story out of Nashville, McCready has been increasingly known for her personal foibles instead of her music.

This week's custody battle was the latest in a long saga of personal heartache and brushes with the law.

Florida Department of Children and Families spokeswoman Terri Durdaller said in an email Friday night that her agency was working with Arkansas state officials to bring McCready's son, Zander, back to his maternal grandmother in Florida. His grandmother has been his guardian since 2007.

Officials say he's safe and in good health.

Gayle Inge, Zander's grandmother and McCready's mother, was tearful when she talked about the news by phone Friday night with The Associated Press.

"I'm real excited that he's safe," she said. "But I can't explain what this is like. We feel for Mindy and we feel for Zander."

Inge said Zander was taken into custody at McCready's boyfriend's lake home in Arkansas. Inge said that her son ? McCready's half-brother ? texted McCready, who responded with a text that said her mother would never see her again.

"I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her that I love her," Inge said, adding that her daughter and grandson were found by authorities "hiding in a closet."

McCready, who turned 36 on Wednesday, did not respond to emails late Friday.

The evening's developments capped a days-long struggle between McCready ? who is seven months pregnant with twins ? and several others, including state of Florida child welfare authorities, a Fort Myers, Fla. judge and her own mother.

Authorities say McCready took the boy during a visit late last month to her father's Florida home, where she was allowed to visit the boy. McCready's parents are divorced.

A Florida judge signed an order Thursday telling authorities to take the boy into custody and return him. It's not yet clear whether the singer could face criminal charges.

McCready said earlier in the week that she would not bring her son back from Tennessee, where she has a home, despite violating the custody arrangement. She told the AP that her son had suffered abuse at her mother's house, a claim that Inge vehemently denies.

"I'm doing all this to protect Zander, not stay out of trouble," McCready wrote in an email to the AP on Thursday. "I don't think I should be in trouble for protecting my son in the first place."

McCready told the AP Wednesday night she was in Tennessee and couldn't travel because she is pregnant with twins.

The boy's father, Billy McKnight, told NBC's "Today" show Friday he spoke on the phone with McCready and their boy after the judge's 5 p.m. EST Thursday deadline expired.

"He did sound healthy and ok. He wasn't crying or scared," McKnight said about their son.

"I think she believes she has a case and doesn't realize she's pushing her luck on this one," he said.

McCready and her mother have had a long custody battle over the boy, who was living with McCready's mother.

"We can confirm that Zander has been taken into custody and we are working with Arkansas state officials to bring him back to his legal guardian in Florida," Durdaller wrote late Friday. "He is safe and in good health.

McCready had provided a series of emails to the AP with Lee County Judge James Seals' ruling to return the boy.

"Mom has violated the court's custody order and we are simply restoring the child back into our custody," the judge wrote. "Nothing more. Nothing less. The court makes no judgment about whether Mom will or will not competently care for the child while in her custody. It only wants the child back where the court placed him."

McCready found fame in the mid-1990s when she moved to Nashville at the age of 18, armed with only her karaoke tapes. Her first album, "Ten Thousand Angels," sold two million copies.

Her next four albums weren't as successful. Her personal troubles began encroaching on her professional success. According to her website, she suffers from severe depression.

McCready fought the release of a tape in which she reportedly talked about former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens, with whom she had an affair as a teenager.

In August, she filed a libel suit against her mother and the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., over a story published in the tabloid newspaper that quoted Inge.

And in 2008, McCready was admitted to a hospital after police said she cut her wrists and took several pills in a suicide attempt.

During the TV show "Celebrity Rehab 3" in 2010, McCready came off as a sympathetic figure, and host Dr. Drew Pinsky called her an angel in the season finale.

Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2011-12-03-People-McCready/id-0d0c2180ea67424d88e487b861b73bf9

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Egypt parliament election had 62 percent turnout (AP)

CAIRO ? The head of Egypt's election commission says 62 percent of eligible voters turned out for the first round of parliamentary elections.

Abdel-Mooaez Ibrahim called the number "the highest since the time of pharaohs."

The parliamentary election is the first since President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in a popular uprising in February. The Muslim Brotherhood's political arm is expected to take the largest share of votes, followed by an ultraconservative Islamist party and a coalition of liberal parties called the Egyptian bloc.

More than 13 million voters cast ballots in Monday and Tuesday's vote, the first of three rounds for the lower house. Three other rounds lasting until march will elect the less powerful upper house.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

CAIRO (AP) ? Egypt's ultraconservative Islamist party plans to push for a stricter religious code in Egypt after claiming surprisingly strong gains in the first round of parliamentary elections, a spokesman said Friday.

Final results are to be announced later in the day for a first phase of voting held in half of Egypt's 18 provinces, but preliminary counts have been leaked by judges and individual political groups.

Islamists led by the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Salafists appear to have taken a strong majority of seats in the first round of Egypt's first parliamentary vote since Hosni Mubarak's ouster, a trend that if confirmed would give the religious parties a popular mandate in the struggle to win control from the ruling military and ultimately reshape a key U.S. ally.

Spokesman Yousseri Hamad says the Salafi Nour party expects to get 30 percent of the vote. Their party appeared to lead the polls in the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheik, in the rural area of Fayoum, which is known for high rates of illiteracy and poverty, and in parts of their longtime stronghold of Alexandria.

Hamad also said the party faced its toughest challenge in Cairo because of the small presence of Salafi supporters there.

The strong showing would put them in a position to influence policy, although it's unclear how much power the new parliament will have with the ruling generals still in power. For example, the military, which is not keen to see Egypt delivered to radical Islamists, maintains that it ? not the largest bloc in parliament ? will choose the next Cabinet. It is also poised to closely oversee the drafting of a new constitution.

The Nour Party's purist pursuit of strict Shariah, or Islamic law, would also face tough opposition from a diverse array of youth activists in the streets, Egypt's Coptic Christian minority, as well as liberal and secular political parties pushing for more social and political freedoms ? perhaps forcing it to veer less toward the large role that religion plays in Saudi Arabia.

The Nour Party is the main political arm of the hard-line Salafi movement, which was inspired by the Saudi-style Wahhabi school of thought.

Salafists are newcomers on Egypt's political scene. They long shunned the concept of democracy, saying it allows man's law to override God's. But they formed parties and entered politics after Mubarak's ouster to position themselves to try to make sure Shariah law is an integral part of Egypt's new constitution.

The more moderate and pragmatic Muslim Brotherhood, on the other hand, has been around since 1928 and has for decades been the largest and best organized opposition movement in Egypt, despite being officially outlawed until Mubarak's ouster.

Seeking to broaden its political appeal, the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party has described its election platform as civil but with an Islamic background, setting them up to be more rival than ally to harder-line Islamists.

Hamad told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that his party is willing to cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood as well as with secular and liberal forces "if it will serve the interest of the nation."

Still, Salafi groups speak confidently about their ambition to turn Egypt into a state where personal freedoms, including freedom of speech, women's dress and art are constrained by Islamic Shariah codes.

"In the land of Islam, I can't let people decide what is permissible or what is prohibited. It's God who gives the answers as to what is right and what is wrong," Hamad said. "If God tells me you can drink whatever you want except for alcohol, you don't leave the million things permitted and ask about the prohibited."

Their surprisingly strong showing worries many liberals and Coptic Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population.

"We want democracy and what they want is anything but democratic," said Amir Fouad, a Coptic Christian who trained as an engineer but drives a taxi because he can't find another job. "They want Egypt to be like Saudi Arabia, all Islamic."

Fouad, 40, said he worries the Salafists will force Christian women to wear Islamic veils.

"I feel like it will be very hard for me to live in Egypt if they rule," he said. "They will take Egypt backward."

Even some religious Egyptians see the Salafists as too extreme.

"I am religious and don't want laws that go against my beliefs, but there shouldn't be religious law," said Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, a geography teacher. "I don't want anyone imposing his religious views on me."

Islamist victory in Egypt ? long considered a linchpin of regional stability ? would be the clearest signal yet that parties and candidates connected to political Islam will emerge as the main beneficiaries of this year's Arab Spring uprisings.

Tunisia and Morocco have both elected Islamist majorities to parliament, and while Libya has yet to announce dates for its first elections, Islamist groups have emerged as a strong force there since rebels overthrew Moammar Gadhafi in August. They also play a strong opposition role in Yemen.

This week's vote, held in nine provinces, will determine about 30 percent of the 498 seats in the People's Assembly, parliament's lower house. Two more rounds, ending in January, will cover Egypt's other 18 provinces.

The new parliament, in theory, is tasked with selecting a 100-member panel to draft Egypt's new constitution. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which took control of the country after Mubarak's fall in February, has suggested that it will choose 80 of those members.

The Carter Center, which sent teams to observe the parliamentary vote, said in a Friday statement that participation was high and that all parties appeared committed to a democratic transition in Egypt.

The center, which visited more than 300 stations in the nine provinces that voted, also called on election officials to better prepare workers at polling and counting stations and issue clearer regulations about campaigning before future rounds of voting.

Despite a legal ban on campaigning on election day, many parties actively distributed flyers outside polling stations.

Also Friday, more than 5,000 protesters demonstrated in Cairo's Tahrir Square to call for a speedier transition to civilian rule and trials for security officers accused of killing protesters.

Large crowds marched into the square carrying dozens of coffins wrapped in Egyptian flags to represent those killed in clashes with the police near the square in the week before the elections.

Islamist groups did not join the protests, hanging their hopes ? for now at least ? on the election results.

While the number of protesters was smaller that in recent weeks, many said they had voted but still considered protest necessary.

"People haven't given up on the square just because there were elections," said Ibrahim Hussein, who voted this week for the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party. "They all have the same demands and they haven't been met yet."

In Cairo's Abdeen neighborhood, a few thousand protesters marched in support of the military, saying only it can bring stability at this time.

___

Associated Press writer Ben Hubbard contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_egypt

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Olive: the first feature film 'intentionally' shot on a smartphone (video)

Sure, your smartphone might shoot HD, you might even have a dolly, but most of us know that 30 seconds of accidental filming inside a pocket and a blurry clip from the office party are about the best we can hope for. Not director Hooman Khalili. He made a feature length film using his trusty Nokia N8 and a custom lens, and now plans to show it in movie theaters. The film, called Olive, tells the story of a mute little girl, and the impact she has on the lives of those who meet her. Partly financed by the former Facebook CPO Chris Kelly, this Kickstarter story has the making of a movie itself. Should it raise the required $300k in funding, Khalili hopes it might even get a sniff by the Academy. That's assuming, of course, they've had a recent change of policy. For a sneak peak and a look at the making of, check the video after the break.

Continue reading Olive: the first feature film 'intentionally' shot on a smartphone (video)

Olive: the first feature film 'intentionally' shot on a smartphone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 02:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Wealthfront Debuts Customized, Intelligent Online Investment Advisor For The Tech Community

You may have heard of Wealthfront (formerly kaChing), a startup that has been disrupting the investing and personal finance space. As we've written in the past, Wealthfront made it possible for average investors to access registered money managers who otherwise might require a minimum investment of $1 million or more. Today, Wealthfront is launching its online financial advisor for the tech community, appealing to professionals from the tech communities who favor doing everything online, and are looking for ways to have their new wealth managed for far lower fees.

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"Look at that!" -- ravens use gestures, too

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Pointing and holding up objects in order to attract attention has so far only been observed in humans and our closest living relatives, the great apes. Simone Pika from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and Thomas Bugnyar from the University of Vienna, however, now provide the first evidence that ravens (Corvus corax) also use so called deictic gestures in order to test the interest of a potential partner or to strengthen an already existing bond.

From early childhood on, children frequently use distinct gestures to draw the attention of adults to external objects. So-called deictic gestures such as "pointing" ("look here") and "holding up of objects" ("take this") are used by children for the first time at the age of nine to twelve months, before they produce their first spoken words. Scientists believe that such gestures are based on relatively complex intelligence abilities and represent the starting point for the use of symbols and therefore also human language. Deictic gestures are thus milestones in the development of human speech.

Surprisingly, observations of comparable gestures in our closest living relatives, the great apes, are relatively rare. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in the Kibale National Park in Uganda, for example, use so-called directed scratches, to indicate distinct spots on their bodies to be groomed. Deictic gestures thus represent an extremely rare form of communication evolutionarily and have been suggested as confined to primates only.

According to the two researchers from Seewiesen and Vienna, however, such behaviour is not restricted to humans and great apes. For two years, Simone Pika und Thomas Bugnyar investigated the non-vocal behaviour of individually marked members of a wild raven community in the Cumberland Wildpark in Gr?nau, Austria. They observed that ravens use their beaks similar to hands to show and offer objects such as moss, stones and twigs. These distinct gestures were predominantly aimed at partners of the opposite sex and resulted in frequent orientation of recipients to the object and the signallers. Subsequently, the ravens interacted with each other, for example, by example billing or joint manipulation of the object.

Ravens are songbirds belonging to the corvid family like crows and magpies, and they surpass most of the other avian species in terms of intelligence. Their scores on various intelligence tests are similarly high than those of great apes. Ravens in particular can be characterized by complex intra-pair communication, relatively long-time periods to form bonds and a relatively high degree of cooperation between partners.

This new study shows that differentiated gestures have especially evolved in species with a high degree of collaborative abilities. "Gesture studies have too long focused on communicative skills of primates only. The mystery of the origins of human language, however, can only be solved if we look at the bigger picture and also consider the complexity of the communication systems of other animal groups" says Simone Pika from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology.

###

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: http://www.mpg.de

Thanks to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/115548/_quot_Look_at_that__quot_____ravens_use_gestures__too

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