Petraeus testifies on Benghazi attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ex-CIA Director David Petraeus (peh-TRAY'-uhs) has told Congress that references to militant groups Ansar al-Shariah and al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb were removed from the agency's draft talking points of what sparked the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya.

A congressional staffer says Petraeus testified in a closed-door hearing Friday that the CIA's talking points did name those groups.

Petraeus told lawmakers he wasn't sure which agency replaced the groups' names with the word "extremist" in the final draft. But he said he allowed other agencies to alter the talking points as they saw fit without asking for final review, to get them out quickly.

The staffer wasn't authorized to discuss the hearing publicly and described Petraeus' testimony to The Associated Press on a condition of anonymity.

Photos: Players in the Petraeus scandal

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Xi takes China's helm with many tough challenges

BEIJING (AP) — Long-anointed successor Xi Jinping assumed the leadership of China on Thursday as the ruling Communist Party confronts slower economic growth, a public clamor to end corruption and demands for change that threaten its hold on power.

The country's political elite named Xi to the top party post and unexpectedly put him in charge of the military too, after a weeklong party congress and months of divisive bargaining.

The appointments give him broad authority, but not the luxury of time. After decades of juggernaut growth, China sits on the cusp of global pre-eminence as the second largest economy and newest power, but it also has urgent domestic troubles that could frustrate its rise.

Problems that have long festered — from the sputtering economy to friction with the U.S. and territorial spats with Japan and other neighbors — have worsened in recent months as the leadership focused on the power transfer. Impatience has grown among entrepreneurs, others in the new middle class and migrant workers — all wired by social media and conditioned by two decades of rising living standards to expect better government, if not democracy.

All along, police have continued to harass and jail a lengthening list of political foes, dissidents, civil rights lawyers and labor activists. A 14-year-old Tibetan set himself on fire in western China on Thursday, in the latest of more than 70 self-immolations Tibetans have staged over the past 20 months in desperate protests against Chinese rule.

In his first address to the nation, Xi, a 59-year-old son of a revolutionary hero, acknowledged the lengthy agenda for what should be the first of two five-year terms in office. He promised to deliver better social services while making sure China stands tall in the world and the party continues to rule.

"Our responsibility now is to rally and lead the entire party and the people of all ethnic groups in China in taking over the historic baton and in making continued efforts to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation," a confident Xi said in nationally televised remarks in the Great Hall of the People.

He later said "we are not complacent, and we will never rest on our laurels" in confronting challenges — corruption chief among them.

By his side stood the six other newly appointed members of the Politburo Standing Committee: Li Keqiang, the presumptive premier and chief economic official; Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang; Shanghai party secretary Yu Zhengsheng; propaganda chief Liu Yunshan; Tianjin party secretary Zhang Gaoli; and Vice Premier Wang Qishan, once the leadership's top troubleshooter who will head the party's internal watchdog panel.

Xi gave no hint of new thinking to address the problems. The lack of specifics and the new leadership heavy with conservative technocrats deflated expectations for change in some quarters.

"We should be expecting more of the same, not some fundamental break from the past," said Dali Yang of the University of Chicago.

Fundamental for the leadership is to maintain the party's rule, he said. "They are not interested in introducing China's Gorbachev" — the Soviet leader whose reforms hastened the end of the Soviet Union — Yang said.

Many of the challenges Xi confronts are legacies of his predecessor, Hu Jintao. In addition to relinquishing his role as party chief, having reached the two-term maximum, Hu also stepped down from the party commission that oversees the military. The move is a break from the past in which exiting party leaders kept hold of the military portfolio for several years.

During Hu's 10 years in office, policies to open up China to trade and foreign investment begun by his predecessors gathered momentum, turning China into a manufacturing powerhouse and drawing tens of millions of rural migrants into cities. Easy credit fueled a building boom, the Beijing Olympics and the world's longest high-speed rail network. At the same time, Hu relied on an ever-larger security apparatus to suppress protests, even as demonstrations continued to rise.

"More and more citizens are beginning to awaken to their rights and they are constantly asking for political reform," said rights activist Hu Jia, who has previously been jailed for campaigning for AIDS patients and orphans. "The Communist Party does not have legitimacy. It is a party of dictatorship that uses violence to obtain political power. What we need now is for this country's people to have the right to choose who they are governed by."

Chief among the problems Xi and his team will have to tackle is the economy. Though Hu pledged more balanced development, inequality has risen and housing costs have soared. Over the past year, the economy has flagged, dragged down by anemic demand in Europe and the U.S. for Chinese products and an overhang from excessive lending for factories and infrastructure.

With state banks preferring to lend to state-run companies or not at all, private entrepreneurs have had to turn to unofficial money-lenders.

"The bank just asked me to wait," said Deng Mingxin, who runs a zipper factory with 10 employees in Jiangsu province. "Maybe it's because I didn't offer enough 'red envelopes'" — a reference to bribes.

The World Bank warns that without quick action, growth that fell to a three-year low of 7.4 percent in the latest quarter may fall to 5 percent by 2015 — a low rate for generating the employment and funding the social programs Beijing holds as key to keeping a lid on unrest. Analysts and Beijing's own advisers have said it needs to overhaul its strategy and nurture consumer spending and services to meet its pledge of doubling incomes by 2020.

"China will need a very different economy in the next decade," said Citigroup economist Minggao Shen.

In foreign policy, the U.S. and other partners are looking for reassurance that China's policy remains one of peaceful integration into the world community. Tensions have flared in recent months between China, Japan and the Philippines over contested islets in the East and South China Seas. Mistrust has also grown with the U.S. as it diverts more military and diplomatic resources to Asia in what Chinese leaders see as containment.

Fresh in office, Xi can ill-afford to bow to foreigners, crossing a nationalistic public and a military that may still be uncertain about his leadership.

"The leaders can't look like they are being soft on the U.S. or foreign policy because they will lose power in terms of people," said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, a business consultant and author of the book "How China's Leaders Think." Kuhn expects more tough rhetoric than action in the months ahead, but expects Xi's leadership to develop a more nuanced foreign policy as it consolidates its authority at home.

Of all the knotty long-term challenges, few threaten to derail China's march to a more prosperous society more than its rapidly aging society. Baby boomers whose labor manned the factories and construction sites are starting to retire. Meanwhile fewer Chinese are entering the workforce after a generation of family planning limits and higher incomes led to smaller families.

If left unchecked, the trend will further stress already pressed social security funds.

Scrapping the rule that limits many families to one child would help in the long run, and is being urged by experts. But the leadership for years has delayed change, in part because it sees smaller families and fewer births as having helped raise incomes overall.

"China has wasted some time and opportunities partly because its growth over the last 10 years was so spectacular," said Wang Feng, director of the Brookings-Tsinghua Center for Public Policy and an expert on China's demographics. "Now it no longer has that luxury."

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Associated Press writers Didi Tang, Gillian Wong, Alexa Olesen, Joe McDonald and Louise Watt and researchers Flora Ji and Zhao Liang contributed to this report.

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In UK, Twitter, Facebook rants land some in jail

LONDON (AP) — One teenager made offensive comments about a murdered child on Twitter. Another young man wrote on Facebook that British soldiers should “go to hell.” A third posted a picture of a burning paper poppy, symbol of remembrance of war dead.

All were arrested, two convicted, and one jailed — and they’re not the only ones. In Britain, hundreds of people are prosecuted each year for posts, tweets, texts and emails deemed menacing, indecent, offensive or obscene, and the number is growing as our online lives expand.

Lawyers say the mounting tally shows the problems of a legal system trying to regulate 21st century communications with 20th century laws. Civil libertarians say it is a threat to free speech in an age when the Internet gives everyone the power to be heard around the world.

“Fifty years ago someone would have made a really offensive comment in a public space and it would have been heard by relatively few people,” said Mike Harris of free-speech group Index on Censorship. “Now someone posts a picture of a burning poppy on Facebook and potentially hundreds of thousands of people can see it.

“People take it upon themselves to report this offensive material to police, and suddenly you’ve got the criminalization of offensive speech.”

Figures obtained by The Associated Press through a freedom of information request show a steadily rising tally of prosecutions in Britain for electronic communications — phone calls, emails and social media posts — that are “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character — from 1,263 in 2009 to 1,843 in 2011. The number of convictions grew from 873 in 2009 to 1,286 last year.

Behind the figures are people — mostly young, many teenagers — who find that a glib online remark can have life-altering consequences.

No one knows this better than Paul Chambers, who in January 2010, worried that snow would stop him catching a flight to visit his girlfriend, tweeted: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your (expletive) together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.”

A week later, anti-terrorist police showed up at the office where he worked as a financial supervisor.

Chambers was arrested, questioned for eight hours, charged, tried, convicted and fined. He lost his job, amassed thousands of pounds (dollars) in legal costs and was, he says, “essentially unemployable” because of his criminal record.

But Chambers, now 28, was lucky. His case garnered attention online, generating its own hashtag — (hash)twitterjoketrial — and bringing high-profile Twitter users, including actor and comedian Stephen Fry, to his defense.

In July, two and half years after Chambers’ arrest, the High Court overturned his conviction. Justice Igor Judge said in his judgment that the law should not prevent “satirical or iconoclastic or rude comment, the expression of unpopular or unfashionable opinion about serious or trivial matters, banter or humor, even if distasteful to some or painful to those subjected to it.”

But the cases are coming thick and fast. Last month, 19-year-old Matthew Woods was sentenced to 12 weeks in jail for making offensive tweets about a missing 5-year-old girl, April Jones.

The same month Azhar Ahmed, 20, was sentenced to 240 hours of community service for writing on Facebook that soldiers “should die and go to hell” after six British troops were killed in Afghanistan. Ahmed had quickly deleted the post, which he said was written in anger, but was convicted anyway.

On Sunday — Remembrance Day — a 19-year-old man was arrested in southern England after police received a complaint about a photo on Facebook showing the burning of a paper poppy. He was held for 24 hours before being released on bail and could face charges.

For civil libertarians, this was the most painfully ironic arrest of all. Poppies are traditionally worn to commemorate the sacrifice of those who died for Britain and its freedoms.

“What was the point of winning either World War if, in 2012, someone can be casually arrested by Kent Police for burning a poppy?” tweeted David Allen Green, a lawyer with London firm Preiskel who worked on the Paul Chambers case.

Critics of the existing laws say they are both inadequate and inconsistent.

Many of the charges come under a section of the 2003 Electronic Communications Act, an update of a 1930s statute intended to protect telephone operators from harassment. The law was drafted before Facebook and Twitter were born, and some lawyers say is not suited to policing social media, where users often have little control over who reads their words.

It and related laws were intended to deal with hate mail or menacing phone calls to individuals, but they are being used to prosecute in cases where there seems to be no individual victim — and often no direct threat.

And the Internet is so vast that policing it — even if desirable — is a hit-and-miss affair. For every offensive remark that draws attention, hundreds are ignored. Conversely, comments that people thought were made only to their Facebook friends or Twitter followers can flash around the world.

While the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that First Amendment protections of freedom of speech apply to the Internet, restrictions on online expression in other Western democracies vary widely.

In Germany, where it is an offense to deny the Holocaust, a neo-Nazi group has had its Twitter account blocked. Twitter has said it also could agree to block content in other countries at the request of their authorities.

There’s no doubt many people in Britain have genuinely felt offended or even threatened by online messages. The Sun tabloid has launched a campaign calling for tougher penalties for online “trolls” who bully people on the Web. But others in a country with a cherished image as a bastion of free speech are sensitive to signs of a clampdown.

In September Britain’s chief prosecutor, Keir Starmer, announced plans to draw up new guidelines for social media prosecutions. Starmer said he recognized that too many prosecutions “will have a chilling effect on free speech.”

“I think the threshold for prosecution has to be high,” he told the BBC.

Starmer is due to publish the new guidelines in the next few weeks. But Chambers — reluctant poster boy of online free speech — is worried nothing will change.

“For a couple of weeks after the appeal, we got word of judges actually quoting the case in similar instances and the charges being dropped,” said Chambers, who today works for his brother’s warehouse company. “We thought, ‘Fantastic! That’s exactly what we fought for.’ But since then we’ve had cases in the opposite direction. So I don’t know if lessons have been learned, really.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Erdrich wins her first National Book Award

NEW YORK (AP) — The National Book Awards honored both longtime writers and new authors, from Louise Erdrich for "The Round House" to Katherine Boo for her debut work, "Beyond the Beautiful Forevers."

Erdrich, 58, has been a published and highly regarded author for nearly 30 years but had never won a National Book Award until being cited Wednesday for her story, the second of a planned trilogy, about an Ojibwe boy and his quest to avenge his mother's rape. A clearly delighted and surprised Erdrich, who's part Ojibwe, spoke in her tribal tongue and then switched to English as she dedicated her fiction award to "the grace and endurance of native people."

The works of two other winners also centered on young boys — Boo's for nonfiction, and William Alexander's fantasy "Goblin Secrets," for young people's literature. David Ferry won for poetry.

Boo's book, set in a Mumbai slum, is the story of a boy and his harsh and illuminating education in the consequences of crime or perceived crime. The author, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist currently on staff with The New Yorker, said she was grateful for the chance to live in a world she "didn't know" and for the chance to tell the stories of those otherwise ignored. She praised a fellow nominee and fellow Pulitzer-winning reporter, the late Anthony Shadid, for also believing in stories of those without fame or power.

Boo was chosen from one of the strongest lists of nonfiction books in memory, from the fourth volume of Robert Caro's Lyndon Johnson series to Shadid's memoir "House of Stone." Finalists in fiction, which in recent years favored lesser known writers, included such established names as Dave Eggers and Junot Diaz. Publishers have been concerned that the National Book Awards have become too insular and are considering changes, including expanding the pool of judges beyond writers.

Winners, chosen by panels of their peers, each will receive $10,000.Judges looked through nearly 1,300 books.

Ferry is a year older than one of the night's honorary recipients, Elmore Leonard. Ferry, 88, won for "Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations," a showcase for his versatile style. He fought back tears as he confided that he thought there was a chance for winning because he "was so much older" than the other nominees. Attempting to find poetry in victory, he called the award a "pre-posthumous" honor.

Alexander quoted fellow fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin in highlighting the importance of stories for shaping kids' imaginations and making the world a larger place than the one they live in.

"We have to remember that," Alexander said.

The ceremony was hosted by commentator-performer Faith Salie and went smoothly even though Superstorm Sandy badly damaged the offices of the award's organizer, the National Book Foundation, whose staffers had to work with limited telephone and mail access.

Honorary prizes were given to Leonard and New York Times publisher and chairman Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.

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Booze calories nearly equal soda's for US adults

NEW YORK (AP) — Americans get too many calories from soda. But what about alcohol? It turns out adults get almost as many empty calories from booze as from soft drinks, a government study found.

Soda and other sweetened drinks — the focus of obesity-fighting public health campaigns — are the source of about 6 percent of the calories adults consume, on average. Alcoholic beverages account for about 5 percent, the new study found.

"We've been focusing on sugar-sweetened beverages. This is something new," said Cynthia Ogden, one of the study's authors. She's an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which released its findings Thursday.

The government researchers say the findings deserve attention because, like soda, alcohol contains few nutrients but plenty of calories.

But a liquor trade association said the findings indicate there's no big problem.

"This research shows that the overwhelming majority of adults drink moderately," Lisa Hawkins, a spokeswoman for the Distilled Spirits Council, said in a statement.

The CDC study is based on interviews with more than 11,000 U.S. adults from 2007 through 2010. Participants were asked extensive questions about what they ate and drank over the previous 24 hours.

The study found:

—On any given day, about one-third of men and one-fifth of women consumed calories from beer, wine or liquor.

—Averaged out to all adults, the average guy drinks 150 calories from alcohol each day, or the equivalent of a can of Budweiser.

—The average woman drinks about 50 calories, or roughly half a glass of wine.

—Men drink mostly beer. For women, there was no clear favorite among alcoholic beverages.

—There was no racial or ethnic difference in average calories consumed from alcoholic beverages. But there was an age difference, with younger adults putting more of it away.

For reference, a 12-ounce can of regular Coca-Cola has 140 calories, slightly less than a same-sized can of regular Bud. A 5-ounce glass of wine is around 100 calories.

In September, New York City approved an unprecedented measure cracking down on giant sodas, those bigger than 16 ounces, or half a liter. It will take effect in March and bans sales of drinks that large at restaurants, cafeterias and concession stands.

Should New York officials now start cracking down on tall-boy beers and monster margaritas?

There are no plans for that, city health department officials said, adding in a statement that while studies show that sugary drinks are "a key driver of the obesity epidemic," alcohol is not.

Health officials should think about enacting policies to limit alcoholic intake, but New York's focus on sodas is appropriate, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group.

Soda and sweetened beverages are the bigger problem, especially when it comes to kids — the No. 1 source of calories in the U.S. diet, she said.

"In New York City, it was smart to start with sugary drinks. Let's see how it goes and then think about next steps," she said.

However, she lamented that the Obama administration is planning to exempt alcoholic beverages from proposed federal regulations requiring calorie labeling on restaurant menus.

It could set up a confusing scenario in which, say, a raspberry iced tea may have a calorie count listed, while an alcohol-laden Long Island Iced Tea — with more than four times as many calories — doesn't. "It could give people the wrong idea," she said.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

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More to Petraeus story than meets the eye

It's the soap opera that shocked official Washington and ensnared a previously squeaky clean CIA director at a time when he was supposed to play a role in the accounting for a possible security misstep in Libya.

We don't know all the facts of why the FBI started investigating David Petraeus' biographer and how it ultimately led to his resignation.

But a growing number of conservative commentators contend that the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus is more than simple amends made for a personal wrong.

Charles Krauthammer, the Fox News and Washington Post commentator, believes the Petraeus' sex scandal is linked to a closed briefing that he gave two days after the attack that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, in Benghazi, Libya.

Petraeus is set to speak about circumstances surrounding the tragedy again before a House committee on Friday and possibly at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, as well.

Petraeus' resignation from his post at the CIA in light of his extramarital affair raised the possibility that he would not testify. But on Wednesday morning, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told ABC News Petraeus had agreed to do so.

Krauthammer said on Fox News Tuesday that ties he sees between what Petraeus' told the Congress in September and his fear for his future at the CIA make his affair with biographer Paula Broadwell important to the public.

"The reason that it's important is here's a man who knows the administration holds his fate in his hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he heard from the station chief in Tripoli and with everything that we had heard," Krauthammer said. "Was he influenced by the fact he knew his fate was held by people in the administration at that time?"

Krauthammer's comments seemed to imply that the man who wrote the book on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lied to the House Intelligence Committee to save his skin when he said that the attack was a spontaneous mob spurred by the film, "The Innocence of Muslims."

At the time of his briefings, no one in the White House was aware of the FBI investigation into Petraeus' relationship with Broadwell.

As ABC News' Martha Raddatz reported on "World News with Diane Sawyer," the FBI got involved around May or June tracing emails from Broadwell to Jill Kelley in Tampa, Fla., but President Obama was not informed about Petraeus' indiscretions until November

Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote an op-ed for the Washington Times Wednesday in which he said Petraeus was clearly forced to resign his post in an effort to keep him quiet.

"In the modern era, office-holders with forgiving spouses simply do not resign from powerful jobs because of a temporary, non-criminal, consensual adult sexual liaison, as the history of the FDR, Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ and Clinton presidencies attest. So, why is Gen. Petraeus different?" Napolitano wrote. "Someone wants to silence him."

Napolitano offered no guesses as to what those pressuring Petraeus might be hoping to suppress.

Rudy deLeon, senior vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress, said the American people should allow Petraeus to "speak for himself."

"Anyone who knows Gen. Petraeus, and I've known him since my Pentagon days, knows that his integrity comes first, that he's not a political guy, and that being straightforward is what his considerable reputation has been based on," deLeon said.

In late October, Petraeus personally traveled to Libya to investigate the CIA personnel who were in Benghazi on the night of the attack.

Read more about that trip  HERE.

On the night Petraeus first announced his resignation, Krauthammer said the affair would spur the mainstream media to dig deeper into what transpired in Benghazi.

"It will now become the hottest story around and you can be sure that even the mainstream papers, which did not show any interest whatsoever in this story up to and into the election, are going to get on it," Krauthammer said. "It will unravel."

Implications that Petraeus was covering for the White House play into a larger theory floating around conservative circles that Obama administration officials like Petraeus and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice purposely misled the American people following the attack in Benghazi.

Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., told ABC's Jon Karl Wednesday that they would oppose Obama's hypothetical nomination of Rice to Secretary of State, with Graham saying he didn't "trust her."

President Obama responded to this opposition Wednesday at his first press conference since taking reelection, defending the U.N. ambassador.

"She made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her," Obama said. "If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me."

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China's new leadership faces obstacles to rule

BEIJING (AP) — Months of sharp behind-the-scenes jostling reach a climax Thursday with the announcement of a new Chinese leadership that almost regardless of its makeup is likely to be much like the one it replaces: divided, deliberative and weak.

All but officially announced, Xi Jinping is expected to head the new leadership as Communist Party chief, joined by Li Keqiang, the presumptive prime minster, in a choreographed succession that began five years ago when the two were anointed as successors. Alongside them at the apex of power, the Politburo Standing Committee, will be a handful of senior politicians drawn from top positions in the provinces and bureaucracies.

Their ascent was nudged along Wednesday when a weeklong party congress closed by naming Xi, Li and the other leading candidates to the Central Committee, a 205-member body which appoints the new leadership Thursday. Left off the list was Hu Jintao, who is retiring as party chief after 10 years. A top general told reporters that Hu is also relinquishing his sole remaining powerful post, as head of the military, a significant break from the past that would give Xi leeway to establish his authority.

Leadership lineups typically strike a balance between different interest groups in the 82 million-member party. None of new leaders owe their positions to Xi, but to other political patrons. Decisions are made largely by consensus, forcing Xi to bargain with his colleagues who have their own allegiances and power bases. Party elders, with Hu being the newest, exert influence over major policies through their proteges, further constraining Xi.

While China's leadership may have an image in the rest of the world as decisive and all-powerful, the reality is that decision-making tends to be a slow-going affair.

"It's a power game," said Zheng Yongnian, a China politics expert at the National University of Singapore. "The Standing Committee doesn't function well. They all have to agree, and there are too many checks on each other, so nothing gets done."

If not gridlock, the incremental, step-by-step policy-making of the past comes as China confronts slowing growth, a cavernous rich-poor gap and a clamor for change, in protests and on the Internet, for better government and curbing corruption and the privileges of the politically connected elite.

"Even for a coherent leadership, those problems are challenging, not to mention a divided leadership, which hasn't consolidated its own power base," said Zhu Jiangnan of Hong Kong University.

Unlike the stiff, ultra-reserved Hu, the 59-year-old Xi exudes a comfort with his authority, as befits the son of a hero of the revolution born into the Communist elite. Like Xi, the rest of the leadership came of age as China reopened universities and reached out to the world after the isolation of Mao Zedong's radical rule. As such, their educational backgrounds are more varied than those of Hu and the engineers he led, and they're believed to be more open to ideas.

Charisma is feared by the party, which promotes capable administrators. Bo Xilai, a telegenic top politician once considered a candidate for the leadership, was purged this year in a scandal that buffeted the party. Though he is accused of corruption and aiding the cover-up of his wife's murder of a British businessman, his crime may have been his populist rhetoric and policies that gave him a popular following, but alienated other leaders.

"The system discourages people of unique personalities. It often results in those with colorful characteristics losing out," said Wang Zhengxu of Britain's University of Nottingham.

China's long march to collective leadership marked a concerted attempt to move away from the ruinous later years of Mao when he was worshipped as infallible and factions battled each other like street gangs. Millions of Chinese died or saw their lives and careers upended in the persecution.

The victor in the struggle for power after Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping, sought to end the cult of personality and put China on the path of market-oriented reforms. He was the last strongman from the revolutionary generation, able to summon alliances across the party, the government and the military and impose his vision on others. Ever since, each successive generation of leaders has been forced into painstaking coalition-building to get things done.

The most rumored leadership lineup among Beijing's political watchers seems to favor allies of Jiang Zemin, the 86-year-old former party supremo who stepped aside for Hu a decade ago. Aside from Xi, a Jiang protege, and premier-in-waiting Li, who is Hu's man, the contenders include Zhang Dejiang and Zhang Gaoli, two technocrats who worked with Jiang, and Liu Yunshan, the strict propaganda czar who counts Hu as an early career ally and Jiang as a later mentor.

Certain to be included is Wang Qishan, a longtime trouble-shooter who was named to the party's internal watchdog agency on Wednesday. Also in the running is Yu Zhengsheng, Shanghai's party secretary whose main qualification is his family's ties to long-dead reformist patriarch Deng, another sign of the lingering influence of party elders.

If true — and bargaining continued to take place over the past week, according to party-connected academics in Beijing — the roster leaves out key Hu allies. It's also heavy on older politicians who under current practice would have to retire at the next congress in five years. That's a recipe for continued wrangling as Hu's proteges, feeling left out, resist Xi's rule and campaign for the next leadership, political analysts said.

"China's not a democracy but the leadership is a not a monolithic group," said Cheng Li, a Chinese elite politics expert at the Brookings Institute in Washington. "Balance is important because it's in everyone's interests."

Even with unity in its ranks, Xi's collective leadership will need the better part of a year to assemble a full team. Government offices, like the prime minister or the ceremonial state presidency Hu still holds, do not change hands until the legislature meets in March, delaying the transition.

Should Hu give up his role as head of the military commission, he can still count on the commanders he has promoted across the services of the People's Liberation Army. Proof of that muscle came on the eve of the congress. A general whom Hu appointed to manage the military parade for the 60th anniversary of Communist rule in 2009, Fang Fenghui, was named chief of the general staff and a vice chairman of the commission.

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Associated Press writer Christopher Bodeen contributed to this report.

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Facebook stock up as lock-up expires on largest block of shares

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Shares of Facebook Inc jumped 10 percent in early trading on Wednesday, even as the biggest block of shares held by insiders became eligible for sale for the first time since the social media company’s disappointing debut in May.

In heavy morning trading, Facebook gained $ 2.02 to $ 21.89.

“While the lock-up is expiring, there is nothing requiring anybody to sell,” said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer at Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York. “Given the low price, these long-term holders are deciding to hold the stock and that is lifting it here as the fear of the expiration subsides.”

Roughly 800 million Facebook shares could begin trading on Wednesday after restrictions on insider selling were lifted on the biggest block of shares since the May initial public offering.

The lock-up expiration greatly expanded the 921 million-share “float” available for trading on the market until now.

Facebook, the world’s No. 1 online social network, became the only U.S. company to debut with a market value of more than $ 100 billion. But its value has dropped nearly 50 percent since the IPO on concerns about its long-term money-making prospects.

Insider trading lock-up provisions started to expire in August, and the rolling expirations have added to the pressure on Facebook’s stock.

Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser said he didn’t expect Facebook insiders to sell all of their shares as the lock-ups expired.

“I would expect heavy volumes over the next few weeks, but not undigestible volumes,” said Wieser. By his estimates, roughly 486 million of the nearly 800 million newly freed Facebook shares will be sold.

There is some evidence that the heavy interest in shorting the stock was dissipating, given the poor performance since it first sold shares in May.

According to Markit’s Data Explorers, about 28 percent of the shares available for short-selling were being borrowed for that purpose, down from a high of more than 80 percent in early August.

Similarly, SunGard’s Astec Analytics, which also tracks interest in shorting, noted in a comment on Tuesday that the cost of borrowing Facebook shares is down more than 50 percent since the beginning of the month.

“Everything would seem to indicate the market is losing its appetite to short Facebook,” wrote Karl Loomes, market analyst at Astec.

Several members of Facebook’s senior management have sold millions of dollars worth of shares in recent weeks through pre-arranged stock trading plans as lock-up restrictions expired.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has sold roughly 530 million shares this month, netting just over $ 11 million, though she still owns roughly 20 million vested shares in Facebook.

In August, Facebook board member Peter Thiel sold roughly $ 400 million worth of Facebook stock, the majority of his stake, when an earlier phase of lock-up restrictions expired.

Facebook’s 28-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has committed to not sell any shares before September 2013.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Petraeus affair and the role of biographers

NEW YORK (AP) — The affair between retired Army Gen. David Petraeus and author Paula Broadwell is but an extreme example of the love/hate history between biographers and their subjects.

Even before their outing led to Petraeus' resignation as CIA director, Broadwell had been criticized for the rosy tone of "All In," which The Associated Press described in 2011 as "part hagiography and part defense" of his strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. But as long as biographies are written by and about human beings, scientific precision will remain an ideal. The stories of famous women and men often are colored by rapture and disenchantment, confusion and bias.

"As with psychiatrists, same with biographers, you shouldn't sleep with your subject," Blake Bailey, the prize-winning biographer of authors John Cheever and Richard Yates, said with a laugh.

"The ideal case is to have no assumptions. ... But it is possible to write a great book and have strong opinions. ('Eminent Victorians' author) Lytton Strachey, the father of all modern biographers, had a very distinctive voice and a very distinctive perspective — a person looking down from the world at a great distance, quite disparagingly, but with vast humor that informs every word."

Broadwell conducted extensive interviews with both critics and supporters of Petraeus, but the finished story was overwhelmingly positive. She is far from alone in allowing personal or professional regard to shape a biography, especially when the subject cooperates. Flattering books come out all the time, whether a biography of Dick Cheney by Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes or Chris Matthews' "Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero."

Years spent together, as Broadwell had with Petraeus in Afghanistan, can make the biographer's experience intensely personal, whether sexual or not. Walter Isaacson did not avoid the unpleasant side of Steve Jobs, but acknowledged he had bonded strongly with the dying Apple CEO. Doris Kearns Goodwin was an aide to Lyndon Johnson who sometimes took notes while the ex-president lay in her bed, a relationship that she called platonic and described in her book on him, "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream."

Some relationships end in court. Jimmy McDonough spent years working on an authorized biography of Neil Young, only to have Young withdraw support and attempt to stop publication, leading to mutual lawsuits and delay in the release of "Shakey," which came out in 2002. Some biographers seem energized by perceived sins, like the late Albert Goldman and his takedowns of Elvis Presley and John Lennon. Others use scholarship to build up or pick apart a figure from the distant past. Jon Meacham's new biography of Thomas Jefferson praises him as a subtle and effective politician, while a competing book, Henry Wiencek's "Master of the Mountain," faults Jefferson as a calculating slave holder who tolerated brutality.

David McCullough has likened the biographer's choice to picking a roommate, one you must live with for years. McCullough himself abandoned a Picasso book out of distaste for the painter's private life and chose men he related to for his two Pulitzer Prize winning presidential biographies, Harry Truman and John Adams. Former JFK aide Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. won a Pulitzer for "A Thousand Days," his book on the Kennedy administration. But his reverence for the late president led Gore Vidal to dismiss "A Thousand Days" as a "political novel."

Biography often is the art of reconciling opposites. Robert Caro, the prize-winning biographer of New York municipal builder Robert Moses and Lyndon Johnson, has taken on men who have both inspired and dismayed him. A former investigative journalist, Caro sees his job as collecting as much information as possible and only then forming opinions. There is no such thing as "objective truth," he says, but there are enough "objective facts" to bring you close.

For his Moses and Johnson books, Caro has relied upon countless documents and interviews. He has labeled his Johnson series, begun soon after the president's death and still going, as a narrative of darkness and light, of the basest cruelty and the noblest achievement. His Moses book, "The Power Broker," was another epic of greatness and destruction and even more complicated to write because he actually interviewed Moses.

"You were awed by seeing the scope of his vision as he talked about it to you and explained it to you. You see him standing in front of this map, with a yellow pencil and sharp point, just gesturing toward this tri-state area that he sees as one entity and has a vision for it," says Caro, whose book was harshly criticized by Moses, but won the Pulitzer in 1975 and is now standard reading.

"But I was simultaneously talking to the people he had displaced, hounded them out of their homes. You have to show both of these things, his genius and its effect on people."

Authors have followed paths they never imagined before starting a book or encountering the subject. Edmund Morris was a prize-winning biographer of Theodore Roosevelt, but the chance to write about a living president led him to take unusual license. Granted years of access to Ronald Reagan, Morris was left so mystified that he inserted a fictionalized version of himself into the book, "Dutch," as a way of making sense out of the president.

Jane Leavy, author of a well-regarded biography on Mickey Mantle, said she had a hard time starting the book because of her childhood worship for the New York Yankees star. She decided the best way to move ahead was to acknowledge up front her memories, and map out the life of the flawed and troubled man she came to know and to hear about.

"He was multidimensional and far more complicated than the hagiographic biographies I read in school or the dark stories about him being a womanizer and an offensive drunk," she says. "No one is one way or another. The fact he was horrible to his wife doesn't invalidate his skill. So the task became why he treated people the way he did. And that's the biographer's job."

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Ireland probes death of ill abortion-seeker

DUBLIN (AP) — The debate over legalizing abortion in Ireland flared Wednesday after the government confirmed that a miscarrying woman suffering from blood poisoning was refused a quick termination of her pregnancy and died in an Irish hospital.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny said he was awaiting findings from three investigations into the death of Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian who was 17 weeks pregnant. Her case highlights the bizarre legal limbo in which pregnant women facing severe health problems can find themselves in predominantly Catholic Ireland.

Ireland's constitution officially bans abortion, but a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found the procedure should be legalized for situations when the woman's life is at risk from continued pregnancy. Five governments since have refused to pass a law resolving the confusion, leaving Irish hospitals reluctant to terminate pregnancies except in the most obviously life-threatening circumstances.

In practice the vast bulk of Irish women wanting abortions, an estimated 4,000 per year, simply travel next door to England, where abortion has been legal on demand since 1967. But that option is difficult, if not impossible, for women in failing health.

University Hospital Galway in western Ireland declined to say whether doctors believed Halappanavar's blood poisoning could have been reversed had she received an abortion rather than wait for the fetus to die on its own. In a statement, it described its own investigation into the death, and a parallel probe by the national government's Health Service Executive, as "standard practice" whenever a pregnant woman dies in a hospital. The Galway coroner also planned a public inquest.

Savita Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, said doctors determined she was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Sunday, Oct. 21. He said that over the next three days doctors refused their requests for an abortion to combat her surging pain and fading health.

"Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby," he told The Irish Times in a telephone interview from Belgaum, southwest India. "When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked if they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy? The consultant said: 'As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can't do anything.'

"Again on Tuesday morning ... the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita said: 'I am neither Irish nor Catholic,' but they said there was nothing they could do," Praveen Halappanavar said.

He said his wife vomited repeatedly and collapsed in a restroom that night, but doctors wouldn't terminate the fetus because its heart was still beating.

The fetus died the following day and its remains were surgically removed. Within hours, Praveen Halappanavar said, his wife was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning and he was never able to speak with her again. By Saturday her heart, kidneys and liver had stopped working and she was pronounced dead early Sunday, Oct. 28.

The couple had settled in 2008 in Galway, where Praveen Halappanavar works as an engineer at the medical devices manufacturer Boston Scientific. His wife qualified as a dentist but had taken time off for her pregnancy. Her parents in India had just visited them in Galway and left the day before her hospitalization.

Praveen Halappanavar said he took his wife's remains back to India for a Hindu funeral and cremation Nov. 3. News of the circumstances that led to her death emerged Tuesday in Galway after the Indian community canceled the city's annual Diwali festival. Savita Halappanavar had been one of the festival's main organizers.

Opposition politicians appealed Wednesday for Kenny's government to introduce legislation immediately to make the 1992 Supreme Court judgment part of statutory law. Barring any such bill, the only legislation defining the illegality of abortion in Ireland dates to 1861 when the entire island was part of the United Kingdom. That British law, still valid here due to Irish inaction on the matter, states it is a crime punishable by life imprisonment to "procure a miscarriage."

In the 1992 case, a 14-year-old girl identified in court only as "X'' successfully sued the government for the right to have an abortion in England. She had been raped by a neighbor. When her parents reported the crime to police, the attorney general ordered her not to travel abroad for an abortion, arguing this would violate Ireland's constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled she should be permitted an abortion in Ireland, never mind England, because she was making credible threats to commit suicide if refused one. During the case, the girl reportedly suffered a miscarriage.

Since then, Irish governments twice have sought public approval to legalize abortion in life-threatening circumstances — but excluding a suicide threat as acceptable grounds. Both times voters rejected the proposed amendments.

Legal and political analysts broadly agree that no Irish government since 1992 has required public approval to pass a law that backs the Supreme Court ruling. They say governments have been reluctant to be seen legalizing even limited access to abortion in a country that is more than 80 percent Catholic.

Coincidentally, the government said it received a long-awaited expert report Tuesday night proposing possible changes to Irish abortion law shortly before news of Savita Halappanavar's death broke. The government commissioned the report two years ago after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Ireland's inadequate access to abortions for life-threatening pregnancies violated European Union law.

An abortions right group, Choice Ireland, said Halappanavar might not have died had any previous government legislated in line with the X judgment. Earlier this year, the government rejected an opposition bill to do this.

"Today, some 20 years after the X case, we find ourselves asking the same question: If a woman is pregnant, her life in jeopardy, can she even establish whether she has a right to a termination here in Ireland?" said Choice Ireland spokeswoman Stephanie Lord.

Yet the World Health Organization identifies Ireland as an unusually safe place to be pregnant. Its most recent report on global maternal death rates found that only three out of every 100,000 women die in childbirth in Ireland, compared with an average of 14 in Europe and North America, 190 in Asia and 590 in Africa.

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