Philippines, Muslim rebels to continue peace talks (AP)

MANILA, Philippines ? The Philippine government and Muslim rebels agreed Thursday to continue peace talks despite recent clashes that killed 19 soldiers in a southern province, the chief government negotiator said.

As the two sides work toward ending decades of rebellion for Muslim self-rule, the rebels reaffirmed a commitment under a previous agreement to help the government fight kidnap gangs and other criminal groups, Marvic Leonen said in a statement after an informal meeting in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

The talks had been called into question after Moro Islamic Liberation Front clashed on Oct. 18 with Filipino forces sent to Basilan province to arrest Moro commander Dan Laksaw Asnawi for his alleged involvement in a 2007 attack killing 14 marines. Ten of the marines killed in that attack were later found beheaded.

President Benigno Aquino III rejected recent calls, however, for an all-out offensive against the rebels, and refused to scrap the Malaysia-brokered peace talks.

A joint cease-fire committee investigation later cleared Asnawi of the beheadings, according to rebel spokesman Von Al Haq, and the mutilations were reportedly carried out instead by four militants from the Abu Sayyaf group who strayed later into the battle scene and found the bodies.

The rebel and government negotiators on Thursday also agreed to have Malaysian-led international monitors and the joint cease-fire committee investigate the Oct. 18 clash.

Despite the rebel's claim of Asnawi's being cleared, the military said Wednesday it would continue to hunt for the guerrilla commander, who escaped from Basilan provincial jail in 2009.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, head of the military office monitoring the peace talks, said the 11,000-strong Moro front would not be targeted itself, only rebels "who provide sanctuary or coddle these lawless elements."

Moro front vice chairman Ghazali Jaafar welcomed the international investigation into the Oct. 18 clash.

"That means it will be an impartial investigation. That's what we have been calling for all the while," he told The Associated Press.

Leonen described Thursday's meeting as "a candid exchange where both sides cleared the air about pressing issues."

"We agreed to move forward on the substantive agenda and meet again very soon," he said, without elaborating.

Jaafar said the rebels were aiming to establish an autonomous government to end the insurgency, which has killed more than 120,000 and stunted the growth of the resource-rich but largely impoverished southern Mindanao region.

"The political solution of the Bangsamoro problem is no other than the establishment of a government of the Bangsamoro people ... under the power of the government of the Philippines," he said, using the name the rebels refer to Muslim Filipinos.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111103/ap_on_re_as/as_philippines_muslim_rebels

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Gmail app on iPad and iPhone hands-on (video)

We've been clamoring for a dedicated Gmail app on iOS for so long that, now that there's one available, we couldn't help but take it for a test drive. Once installed the thing differentiates itself from the previous, HTML5-based app by using a darker, more mysterious black background for the app icon. Otherwise it's the same white and red envelope. Open that up and the app inside looks mighty familiar too. Join us after the break for some quick impressions.

Update: Google's confirmed on its blog that the Gmail app contains a bug that breaks notifications, and it's pulled the app while it fixes it. A new version is promised "soon."

Gallery: Gmail for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch

Continue reading Gmail app on iPad and iPhone hands-on (video)

Gmail app on iPad and iPhone hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/02/gmail-app-on-ipad-and-iphone-hands-on-video/

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U.S. soldier sentenced to 10 years in South Korea rape case (Reuters)

SEOUL (Reuters) ? A South Korean court on Tuesday sentenced a U.S. Army private to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting a local teenage girl in one of the heaviest punishments handed to an American serviceman stationed on the divided peninsula.

The case has received active coverage by the local media since the initial news reports and the U.S. military pledged cooperation with South Korean authorities on the investigation.

In 2002, the deaths of two schools girls hit by a U.S. military vehicle conducting exercises and the subsequent acquittal of U.S. soldiers involved in a U.S. court martial led to a massive public outcry and an outpouring of anti-American sentiment in South Korea.

The Uijeongbu District Court said in a sentence that the severity of the crime committed against the victim allowed for the full term as laid out in the sentencing guideline, adding that the status of the defendant did not affect its decision.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea in the allies' defense against North Korea, which was accused of mounting two attacks against its southern neighbor last year that killed 50 people. The South has about 650,000 active force soldiers.

The private in the 2nd U.S. Infantry Division had been indicted in September on charges of sexually assaulting the 18-year-old girl in the frontline area about 35 km (22 miles) north of Seoul where the U.S. military maintains a heavy presence.

The court declined to release the name of the soldier pending the filing of any appeal by the defendant. A 2nd Infantry Division private affairs officer reached by telephone could not immediately comment whether the soldier would appeal.

(Reporting by Jack Kim; Editing by Yoko Nishikawa)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111101/us_nm/us_korea_usa_crime

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Fog halts air travel in Poland after Warsaw drama (AP)

WARSAW, Poland ? Heavy fog grounded planes at several Polish airports on Wednesday even as Warsaw's international airport remained closed following a dramatic emergency landing a day earlier.

A Boeing airliner from the U.S. carrying 231 people was forced to land on its belly Tuesday in Warsaw after its landing gear failed to open. No one was injured, and the pilot is being hailed a hero in Poland.

The plane remains on the tarmac at Warsaw's Frederic Chopin airport at the intersection of its two runways, forcing its closure. LOT Polish airlines said Wednesday that efforts were being made to move the plane to unblock one of the runways. The airline said in a communique that 60 flights were canceled on Wednesday until 1500GMT. It was not immediately clear whether flights would resume then.

Meanwhile, flights that were to have been diverted to other airports in Poland are being postponed or canceled due to the fog, a frequent occurrence in November in Poland.

Airports in Krakow, Lodz, Katowice, Gdansk and Poznan have had to cancel or postpone departures and arrivals.

Meanwhile, more than 40,000 fans have expressed their respect and congratulated pilot Tadeusz Wrona, who landed the plane, on newly created Facebook fan pages. They called him Poland's "superhero."

"Fly like an eagle and land like a crow," says a pun coined by the fans. "Wrona" in Polish means crow.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111102/ap_on_re_eu/eu_poland_crash_landing

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Will you save money by making your own noodles?

Probably not. But homemade pasta noodles have many other benefits

Saving Pennies or Dollars is a new semi-regular series on The Simple Dollar, inspired by a great discussion on The Simple Dollar?s Facebook page concerning frugal tactics that might not really save that much money. I?m going to take some of the scenarios described by the readers there and try to break down the numbers to see if the savings is really worth the time invested.

Skip to next paragraph Trent Hamm

The Simple Dollar is a blog for those of us who need both cents and sense: people fighting debt and bad spending habits while building a financially secure future and still affording a latte or two. Our busy lives are crazy enough without having to compare five hundred mutual funds ? we just want simple ways to manage our finances and save a little money.

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Melissa writes in: I?d be interested in knowing if its economical to make your own pasta. I did it the first time the other day to make noodles for my chicken noodle soup because i didn?t want to run to the store. The noodles were far superior, but it did take a bit of time as opposed to dumping a bag of egg noodles in the pot.

This is fairly hard to quantify, actually. Making your own noodles can be surprisingly inexpensive. All you really need are eggs and flour to put together noodles at a lower cost than what can be found in a store, and, as you mentioned, they are just fantastic noodles. Once you start using them, it?s really tough to go back to purchased noodles because the quality difference is immense.

The challenge here is time. To make your own noodles, you?re going to have to invest some significant time in making the dough, rolling it out thin enough to make noodles, then cutting it up.

Just to measure the time, I made a batch of egg noodles in my own kitchen recently. You just take four cups of flour, plus four eggs, plus enough water to make the volume of the eggs equal a cup (if needed, it might not be depending on your egg size). Knead the eggs and flour together until it makes a dough, then roll it out flat repeatedly, folding it over, and rolling it out again on a floured surface, then cutting the noodles and leaving them out to dry. This is about $1.20 worth of ingredients, and it took about forty five minutes to convert all of the dough into noodles working at a steady pace.

I then went to the store and found a pound of extra wide egg noodles for $2. In terms of cost, I saved about $0.80 on the batch, but the noodles I made were light years ahead in quality.

If you?re doing a strict cost comparison, I saved about $1 per hour of work making the noodles from scratch in a typical home kitchen environment. If you?re making them from scratch just to save money, it?s not worth it.

The problem with that simple conclusion, though, is that you?re not quite comparing apples to apples. The quality of homemade noodles far surpasses what you?re ever going to buy in a store.

If you really value the food you make at home, then making homemade noodles is going to be worth it. It?s enough to turn a regular meal into a memorable one and a great meal into a fantastic one. It?s the kind of thing that will leave your guests truly enjoying the meal you prepared and leave you with a satisfied mouth and stomach.

It?s also going to be healthier, because you control the ingredients. If you want to use whole wheat flour and egg whites, you can. If you want to make your own specific flour mix, you can. If you want to use farm fresh eggs, you can. You control it all. There?s no hidden ingredients or preservatives or mysterious industrial processes or anything else.

Such value, though, is incredibly hard to quantify because it comes down to the value you hold in such things.

If it were all about the dollars and cents, you?d probably never make your own noodles.

But sometimes, it?s not about the dollars and cents.

The Christian Science Monitor has assembled a diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there. Our guest bloggers are not employed or directed by the Monitor and the views expressed are the bloggers' own, as is responsibility for the content of their blogs. To contact us about a blogger, click here. To add or view a comment on a guest blog, please go to the blogger's own site by clicking on www.thesimpledollar.com.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/BZLbYY55KjU/Will-you-save-money-by-making-your-own-noodles

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Does October Snow Signal A Wild Winter Ahead? (LiveScience.com)

Between a second impending snowstorm in Denver and last weekend's 'Snowtober' storm in the Northeast, there's been a lot of early show across the United States. With so much snow so soon, it may seem like we're in for a long, snowy winter. But don't panic yet, weather forecasters say.

"There's no correlation or patterns that we're aware of that correlate October snow storms and how brutal a winter will be," said Carl Erickson, meteorologist with AccuWeather.

Erickson said this winter's forecast shows the main storm track focusing more to the west than last season. The big cities along the I-95 corridor should see a fairly typical winter, with a few big snow events, but nothing like two years ago where the East Coast had big snowstorms every few weeks. This year the Great Lakes region, including Chicago and much of Indiana will see the heavy snows.

Unfortunately, the Southwest and Southern Plains aren't likely to see any relief from the extreme drought conditions they have experienced this year, with warmer and drier than normal conditions expected to continue through the winter.

As a result of the Snowtober storm, more than 2 million people lost power and the storm has been blamed for at least 13 deaths. New York City set an October snow record with 2.9 inches (7.4 centimeters) accumulating, and towns in western Massachusetts piled up more than 30 inches (76 cm) of snow.

The historic nor'easter was the remnants of a storm that brought an?October snow oddity?to Denver earlier last week. The city went from a record daily high of 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) to several inches of snow in 24 hours.

For the Frontal Range, the October snow, as wild of a weather swing as it was, isn't all that unusual, said Matthew Kelsch, a hydrometeorologist at the University Corp. of Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colo.

And that wild weather swing that is repeating today.

"Now we're seeing much of the east quieting down and more activity firing up across the Rockies," Erickson told OurAmazingPlanet.

The latest storm is already moving through the region today (Nov. 1). Snow is starting to accumulate in Wyoming and a blizzard warning has been issued for the south side of Denver tonight. The temperature was 74 F (23 C) yesterday and now the region is expecting 10 inches (25 cm)of snow. [The Snowiest Places on Earth]

"That's the continental climate for you," Kelsch said.

You can follow OurAmazingPlanet staff writer Brett Israel on Twitter:?@btisrael.?Follow OurAmazingPlanet for the latest in Earth science and exploration news on Twitter?@OAPlanet?and on?Facebook.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20111101/sc_livescience/doesoctobersnowsignalawildwinterahead

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Billionaire battle: Russians take feud to UK court (AP)

LONDON ? They were once said to be like father and son, vacationing, signing deals, and socializing at the Kremlin together. But these days two of Russia's richest men can't stand each other ? and they're trading insults in a spectacularly expensive public feud.

At more than $6.5 billion, the lawsuit brought by Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky against fellow oligarch Roman Abramovich is a financial drama of giant proportions.

"It's the biggest claim currently being litigated anywhere in the world," said Mark Hastings, one of the lawyers acting for Berezovsky in the case being heard at London's Commercial Court. "I haven't seen anything like it."

It's not just the money that sets the case apart; it's the larger-than-life cast of characters set against the murky backdrop of post-Soviet politics.

Berezovsky, 65, is a fabulously rich former Kremlin power broker turned enemy of the state who has sought refuge in Britain while remaining an outspoken critic of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Abramovich, 45, has gobbled up London institutions like Chelsea Football Club and spent part of his vast fortune on beautiful yachts and homes.

They are among the most visible members of the freespending Russian oligarchy that emerged after the collapse of the Soviet state.

Abramovich is scheduled to take the witness stand and undergo cross-examination on Monday.

At the core of the suit is the billions of dollars that Berezovsky claims Abramovich owes him. Berezovsky accuses his former friend and protege of betraying him when he fell out of favor with then-president Vladimir Putin.

The case has drawn large crowds of journalists, trainee lawyers and spectators, especially on days when Berezovsky was on the stand. The Commercial Court has opened another room video-linked to it for visitors who can't find a seat in court.

But many Russians in London seem to take a cynical view in this battle of the billionaires.

"I think the prevailing mood is that of apathy and the average person wants them both to lose the case somehow, or at least not to have further financial gains," said Natasha Chouvaeva, the London-based publisher of RussianUK magazine.

The oligarchs' feud is just the most visible of the huge number of big commercial fraud cases dealing with Russia and Central Asia that have found their way to London courts. Lawyers say that many wealthy Russians flock to English courtrooms because they believe they can find fairness there, compared with Russian courts.

"In modern Russia people who can afford it won't buy a pack of medicine in a local pharmacy or a bottle of wine for fear of it being fake, let alone trust the authorities," Chouvaeva said. "And of course, people do not trust the judicial system."

In the witness stand over the past few weeks, Berezovsky has called Abramovich a "gangster," describing him as a man who's "not so smart" but talented in manipulating people.

The lawyer for Abramovich ? a so-called "stealth oligarch" who has shied away from the media and hardly speaks in public ? has dismissed Berezovsky's claims as nonsense and accused him of lying.

In a witness statement published this weekend in advance of his testimony, Abramovich says he has already paid Berezovsky more than $2.5 billion for his political patronage, and doesn't owe him any more.

"I am disappointed and surprised that he additionally asserts a legal claim to a further significant portion of my wealth," he says of Berezovsky. "This is wealth that I have generated through hard work and by taking risks associated with doing business in Russia. I am not part of his family; I am not his keeper and I have no obligation, legal or moral, to fund his lifestyle or attempt to indulge his fantastic demands."

Berezovsky and Abramovich, both self-made entrepreneurs, were said to have become friends after they met on a private cruise. Berezovsky, a mathematician who founded the first Mercedes dealership in the former Soviet Union, built his fortune during Russia's privatization of state assets in the early 1990s.

In return for backing former president Boris Yeltsin, he and others gained access to his exclusive inner circle ? called "the Family" ? as well as valuable state assets at knock-down prices.

According to Berezovsky, he had been "impressed" with Abramovich ? who was a 28-year-old oil trader when the pair first met ? but believed the younger man needed his political influence to get ahead in the lawless chaos of post-Soviet Russia.

He claimed he had treated Abramovich just like a son.

Together with a third partner, the pair founded Sibneft, the Russian oil and gas conglomerate. In 2005, Abramovich sold Sibneft to Russia's state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom in a multibillion-dollar deal.

The two men's fortunes reversed when Berezovsky fell out with Putin, with whom he said he had enjoyed "fantastical relations", shortly after he became president in 2000.

He testified that Putin decided it would be "helpful for him" to push Berezovsky out. In 2001, Berezovsky fled to Britain, which granted him political asylum.

Charged in Russia with fraud and embezzlement, Berezovsky has been living in London in self-imposed exile.

His lawyers claim that Abramovich sought to profit from his former mentor's difficulties, choosing to cut ties with him for wealth and influence. According to them, Abramovich "intimidated" Berezovsky into selling his shares in Sibneft at a fraction of their value, causing him losses of almost $6 billion. They also allege breach of trust and breach of contract when Abramovich sold Berezovsky's alleged stake in aluminium company Rusal without his consent.

Abramovich denies all the allegations. According to his account, Berezovsky's role in creating Sibneft was political, not monetary ? asserting that Berezovsky never had shares in either Sibneft or Rusal. Abramovich's net worth is valued by Forbes at $13.4 billion.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/britain/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111030/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_britain_billionaires_battle

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