Vivian Hsu - Good Tears, Bad Tears (English Translation)

Yahoo Hires Google to Sell Online Ads

SAN FRANCISCO) — Yahoo has hired Internet search leader Google to sell some online ads in hopes of boosting its profit.

The Sunnyvale-based company announced the plans late Thursday after its stock plunged 10 percent on news that its efforts to revive takeover talks with Microsoft had hit a dead end.

Yahoo Inc. is now counting on Google Inc.'s superior moneymaking system to appease its angry shareholders as it tries to fend off a shareholder mutiny being led by activist investor Carl Icahn.

By using Google's superior advertising technology, Yahoo believes it can boost its annual cash flow by $250 million to $450 million in the first year of the deal.

The partnership could last up to 10 years if it can win antitrust approval.

Picasso Prints Stolen in Brazil

The Police car stop at the outside of museum.

The bandits also took two oil paintings by well-known Brazilian artists Emiliano Di Cavalcanti and Lasar Segall, said Carla Regina, a spokeswoman for the Pinacoteca do Estado museum.

The Picasso prints stolen were "The Painter and the Model" from 1963 and "Minotaur, Drinker and Women" from 1933, according to a statement from the Sao Paulo Secretary of State for Culture, which oversees the museum.

The prints and paintings have a combined value of $612,000, the statement and a museum official said.

About noon, three armed men paid the $2.45 entrance fee and immediately went to the second-floor gallery where the works were being exhibited, bypassing more valuable pieces, authorities said.

"This indicates to us that they probably received an order" to take those specific works, Youssef Abou Chain, head of Sao Paulo's organized crime unit, told reporters at a news conference
(SAO PAULO, Brazil) — Three armed robbers stole two Pablo Picasso prints from an art museum in downtown Sao Paulo on Thursday, the city's second high-profile art theft in less than a year.

The assailants overpowered three unarmed museum guards and grabbed the works, officials said. The robbery took about 10 minutes and the museum was nearly empty at the time.

The assailants took the pieces — frames and all — out of the museum in two bags. The institution has no metal detectors.

In December, Picasso's "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch" and "O Lavrador de Cafe" by Candido Portinari, an influential Brazilian artist, were stolen from the Sao Paulo Museum of Art by three men who used a crowbar and car jack to force open one of the museum's steel doors.

The framed paintings were found Jan. 8, covered in plastic and leaning against a wall in a house on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, South America's largest city.

One of the suspects in that heist — a former TV chef — turned himself over to police in January, who already had two suspects in custody.

How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?

Sleep is one of the richest topics in science today: why we need it, why it can be hard to get, and how that affects everything from our athletic performance to our income. Daniel Kripke, co-director of research at the Scripps Clinic Sleep Center in La Jolla, Calif., has looked at the most important question of all. In 2002, he compared death rates among more than 1 million American adults who, as part of a study on cancer prevention, reported their average nightly amount of sleep. To many, his results were surprising, but they've since been corroborated by similar studies in Europe and East Asia. Kripke explains.

Q: How much sleep is ideal?

A: Studies show that people who sleep between 6.5 hr. and 7.5 hr. a night, as they report, live the longest. And people who sleep 8 hr. or more, or less than 6.5 hr., they don't live quite as long. There is just as much risk associated with sleeping too long as with sleeping too short. The big surprise is that long sleep seems to start at 8 hr. Sleeping 8.5 hr. might really be a little worse than sleeping 5 hr..

Morbidity [or sickness] is also "U-shaped" in the sense that both very short sleep and very long sleep are associated with many illnesses—with depression, with obesity—and therefore with heart disease—and so forth. But the [ideal amount of sleep] for different health measures isn't all in the same place. Most of the low points are at 7 or 8 hr., but there are some at 6 hr. and even at 9 hr. I think diabetes is lowest in 7-hr. sleepers [for example]. But these measures aren't as clear as the mortality data.

I think we can speculate [about why people who sleep from 6.5 to 7.5 hr. live longer], but we have to admit that we don't really understand the reasons. We don't really know yet what is cause and what is effect. So we don't know if a short sleeper can live longer by extending their sleep, and we don't know if a long sleeper can live longer by setting the alarm clock a bit earlier. We're hoping to organize tests of those questions.

One of the reasons I like to publicize these facts is that I think we can prevent a lot of insomnia and distress just by telling people that short sleep is O.K. We've all been told you ought to sleep 8 hr., but there was never any evidence. A very common problem we see at sleep clinics is people who spend too long in bed. They think they should sleep 8 or 9 hr., so they spend [that amount of time] in bed, with the result that they have trouble falling asleep and wake up a lot during the night. Oddly enough, a lot of the problem [of insomnia] is lying in bed awake, worrying about it. There have been many controlled studies in the U.S., Great Britain and other parts of Europe that show that an insomnia treatment that involves getting out of bed when you're not sleepy and restricting your time in bed actually helps people to sleep more. They get over their fear of the bed. They get over the worry, and become confident that when they go to bed, they will sleep. So spending less time in bed actually makes sleep better. It is in fact a more powerful and effective long-term treatment for insomnia than sleeping pills.

Harry Potter Prequel Auctioned for Charity

(LONDON) —An 800-word prequel to the Harry Potter series, handwritten by author J.K. Rowling, sold for nearly 25,000 pounds at a charity auction Tuesday

With the winning bid of $48,858, the absent bidder paid more than $59 a word for Rowling's short story during the event at the flagship of Waterstone's book store chain in London. Proceeds will benefit the writers' association English PEN and a dyslexia charity.

A short mystery story by acclaimed playwright Tom Stoppard raised $7,816.

Rowling was able to squeeze her Harry Potter prequel onto both sides of a piece of A5 paper, which is slightly bigger than a postcard.

The prequel to the seven-book series is set three years before Harry is born and features the characters Sirius Black and James Potter, Harry's father. They get into trouble with a policeman before escaping with broomsticks, drumsticks and a little bit of magic.

Rowling made it clear there was no hope for a new Potter novel and finished her card by writing, "From the prequel I am not working on — but that was fun!"

Twelve other authors and illustrators also contributed cards to the auction, including Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing and novelists Nick Hornby and Margaret Atwood.

Copies of all the cards will be on display in Waterstone's stores and online following the auction, and they will be collected into a book available in August.

The final installment of Rowling's seven-book Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," was published last year.

Rowling has said she has no plans to write another novel about the boy wizard, but in December she sold a handwritten, leather-bound book of fairy tales she described as drawing on the series' themes for nearly $4 million at auction. The money went to the Children's Voice, a charity she co-founded in 2005.

An Italian Snags the Flatiron

Spurred by the weak dollar and the strong euro, European travelers to the U.S. have been lapping up everything from Gap boxers to iPhones to luxury condos in Palm Beach. Now a top Italian real estate investor has nabbed a crown piece of New York property, a sale that echoes the Japanese purchase of Rockefeller Center in 1989. Valter Mainetti has confirmed to TIME that his company, the Sorgente Group, has acquired a majority share of Manhattan's historic Flatiron building.

Among the first and, at the time, tallest of New York City's signature skyscrapers when it was completed in 1902, the 22-story Flatiron is instantly recognizable for its triangular shape at the intersection of Fifth Avenue, Broadway, and 23rd Street. Though it was dwarfed 30 years later by the Empire State building, 11 blocks up Fifth Avenue, the Flatiron is a favorite of architecture buffs and a lasting star in the skyline, featured in the opening credits of the David Letterman show and serving as the fictional headquarters for the Daily Bugle in the recent Spider-Man movies. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1989. Though not quite the shock of the Mitsubishi Group's purchase of Rockefeller Center, the Flatiron's falling into foreign hands nevertheless carries symbolic weight as international investors take advantage of the upheaval in the real estate market and weakness of the U.S. dollar. The euro closed Monday at $1.56.

As bad as the U.S. housing bust has been, the falloff in sales has been cushioned by foreign buyers in such places as New York City and Florida. Anne Marie Moriarty, a vice president of Corcoran realtors, says residential real estate sales to foreigners have doubled in the past 15 months. The uptick in foreign interest helps explain why New York real estate prices are up 11% from last year in an otherwise tanking marketplace. "It's bucking the trend," says Moriarity of the Manhattan market. "[Foreigners] see it as a long-term investment. Part of it for them is owning a piece of New York."

Similar thinking is behind Mainetti's purchase. He has been building his Michelangelo Fund around investments in so-called "trophy" properties, which have historical or architectural value beyond the typical calculus of location and square footage. In 2005, he bought a 27% stake in the company that owns the Chrysler Building. A year later he acquired a minority share in the Flatiron, which today is valued at a total of $180 million. With the latest deal, he now holds a 53% share of the famous building. "The Flatiron is expensive, but with the [cheap] dollar, it made sense to increase our share," said Mainetti. "The stability of the New York real estate market is unique. This current crisis will pass, and the dollar will reestablish itself. We are confident."

Foreign companies were the buyers in four of the top 13 U.S. commercial real estate deals in 2007, according to Real Estate Alert newsletter. Another foreign acquisition of notable Manhattan real estate was the Dubai-based Jumeirah group's 2006 purchase of the Essex House on Central Park South.

Michael Seton, a managing director in the New York office of German-based property lender Eurohypo AG, said foreigners view the U.S. market as a long-term investment. "They're less rattled by the subprime crisis and short-term gyrations in the market," Seton explains. "Their horizon is longer, which in the end is good for the real estate business. These are properties that are meant to be held onto." The new Italian owners of the Flatiron say they're in for the long haul, and plan to seek city approval for a new project to illuminate the exterior by Vittorio Storaro, the Oscar-winning director of photography for Apocalypse Now and Little Buddha. Just a touch more glamor, perhaps, for the real-life publishing company employees who occupy its offices — not to mention Peter Parker and his Daily Bugle colleagues

Were African-Americans at Iwo Jima?

Sixty-three years after U.S. forces vanquished the Japanese and planted their flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, the remote outpost in the Volcano Islands is the focus of another pitched battle. This time, acclaimed film directors Clint Eastwood and Spike Lee are engaging in verbal warfare over the verisimilitude of Eastwood's two films about the epic clash, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. Lee has claimed that by soft-pedaling African-American contributions to the battle, Eastwood is misrepresenting history.

"Clint Eastwood made two films about Iwo Jima that ran for more than four hours total, and there was not one Negro actor on the screen," Lee said at the Cannes Film Festival. "In his version of Iwo Jima, Negro soldiers did not exist." Eastwood's counter: "Has he ever studied history? [African-American soldiers] didn't raise the flag," he said. "If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, they'd say, "This guy's lost his mind.'" Eastwood also told Lee to "shut his face," prompting Lee to amplify the racism charge: "[Eastwood] is not my father and we're not on a plantation, either," he fumed. "I'm not making this up. I know history."

History, as it turns out, is on both their sides. Lee is correct that African-Americans played an instrumental role in World War II, in which more than 1 million black servicemen helped defeat the Axis Powers. Those efforts include significant contributions to the fight for Iwo Jima. An estimated 700 to 900 African-American soldiers participated in the epic island battle, many of whom were Marines trained in segregated boot camps at Montford Point, within Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

Those soldiers were restricted from front-line combat duty, but they played integral noncombat roles. Under enemy fire, they piloted amphibious truck units during perilous shore landings, unloaded and shuttled ammunition to the front lines, helped bury the dead, and weathered Japanese onslaughts on their positions even after the island had been declared secure. According to Christopher Moore, the author of a book about African-Americans' myriad contributions during World War II, "thousands" more helped fashion the airstrips from which U.S. B-29 aircrafts could launch and return from air assaults on Tokyo, about 760 miles northwest. Hosting that air base, Moore says, was Iwo Jima's primary strategic importance.

Eastwood's portrayal of the specific battle is, if narrow, also essentially accurate. Flags Of Our Fathers zeroes in on the soldiers who hoisted the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, and this task, memorialized in a famous staged photograph, was accomplished by five white servicemen and a sixth, Ira Hayes, of Pima Indian descent. (His other entry in the Iwo Jima category, Letters from Iwo Jima, is told largely from the perspective of Japanese soldiers.)

Eastwood is also correct that black soldiers represented a small fraction of the total force deployed on the island. That argument doesn't placate Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of a book about African-American veterans. Black soldiers "had the most dangerous job," she says. "If you were going to show the soldiers' landing, you'd need to show [African-Americans] on the beach." In Flags of Our Fathers, which shows the landing in significant detail, African-Americans appear only in fleeting cutaway shots and in a photograph during the film's closing credits.

Moore lauds Eastwood's rendering of the battle, but laments the limited role accorded to African-Americans. "Without black labor," he says, "we would've seen a much different ending to the war."

Senate Oil Tax Plan Blocked

(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans blocked a proposal Tuesday to tax the windfall profits of the largest oil companies, despite pleas by Democratic leaders to use the measure to address America's anger over

The Democratic energy package would have imposed a tax on any "unreasonable" profits of the five largest U.S. oil companies and given the federal government more power to address oil market speculation that the bill's supporters argue has added to the crude oil price surge.

"Americans are furious about what's going on," declared Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and want Congress to do something about oil company profits and "an orgy of speculation" on oil markets.

But Republicans argued the Democratic proposal focusing on new oil industry taxes is not the answer to the country's energy problems.

"The American people are clamoring for relief at the pump," said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., but if taxes are increased on the oil companies "they will get exactly what they don't want. The bill will raise taxes, increase imports."

The Democrats failed, 51-43, to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster and bring the energy package up for consideration.

Separately, Democrats also failed to get Republican support for a proposal to extend tax breaks for wind, solar and other alternative energy development, and for the promotion of energy efficiency and conservation. The tax breaks have either expired or are scheduled to end this year.

The tax provisions were included in a broader $50 billion tax measure blocked by a GOP filibuster threat. A vote to take up the measure was 50-44, short of the 60 votes needed.

The windfall profits bill would have imposed a 25 percent tax on profits over what would be determined "reasonable" when compared to profits several years ago. The oil companies could have avoided the tax if they invested the money in alternative energy projects or refinery expansion. It also would have rescinded oil company tax breaks — worth $17 billion over the next 10 years — with the revenue to be used for tax incentives to producers of wind, solar and other alternative energy sources as well as for energy conservation.

The legislation also would:

• Require traders to put up more collateral in the energy futures markets and open the way for federal regulation of traders who are based in the United States but use foreign trading platforms. The measures are designed to reduce market speculation.

• Make oil and gas price gouging a federal crime, with stiff penalties of up to $5 million during a presidentially declared energy emergency.

• Authorize the Justice Department to bring charges of price fixing against countries that belong to the OPEC oil cartel.

Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has acknowledged that Americans are hurting from the high energy costs but strongly opposes the Democrats' response and has ridiculed those who "think we can tax our way out of this problem."

"Republicans by and large believe that the solution to this problem, in part, is to increase domestic production," McConnell said.

A GOP energy plan, rejected by the Senate last month, calls for opening a coastal strip of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to oil development and to allow states to opt out of the national moratorium that has been in effect for a quarter century against oil and gas drilling in more than 80 percent of the country's coastal waters.

The Cheaper, Faster iPhone

Steve Jobs did something never before seen in the history of Apple: he unveiled a cutting-edge product that's relatively cheap

The iPhone 3G handles data at nearly three times the speed of its predecessor and has built-in global positioning via satellite, and it costs $199 — $400 less than the original iPhone, unveiled almost a year ago. The phone will be available in the U.S. and 21 other countries on July 11; within a few months of that, the phone will be available in a total of 70 countries, including Japan and the burgeoning markets of Brazil and India.

The 3G phone is "one of the most amazing products I've ever had the privilege to be associated with," Jobs told a capacity crowd of 5,000 software developers and reporters. Wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck and jeans, Jobs demonstrated the new phone's speed, which he says rivals the performance of home wi-fi networks. With the old iPhone (which ran on AT&T's Edge network) on one side and the new one (which runs on AT&T's 3G network) on the other, Jobs loaded a photo-heavy Web page at nationalgeographic.com. It took 21 sec. on the 3G phone, versus 59 sec. on its predecessor. (While 21 sec. may be slow compared with the near instantaneous access on a high-speed wired desktop computer, the AT&T Edge network is the state-of-the-art wireless system in the U.S.)

While techies have fretted that the 3G phone would consume too much juice, Jobs claimed that the new phone can get 300 hours of standby time, five hours of talk time on a 3G network, five to six hours of high-speed Web browsing, seven hours of video and 24 hours of audio.

Jobs said the new iPhone has already sold 6 million units, and analysts expect Apple to blow through the company's estimate of 10 million units sold worldwide by the end of 2008. Already bullish about Apple before the announcements were made, analysts were thrilled by what they heard from Jobs about the availability of the new iPhone. They were particularly excited by the prices for the new models. In the U.S., the 8-gigabyte version, which sold for $399 previously, is only $199 in its new incarnation; the 16GB model will sell for $299. (The first-generation iPhone models have been discontinued.)

That said, Apple's stock price dropped over 2% because AT&T will no longer pay a subsidy to Apple to sell iPhones, as it did for the 1.0 versions. Jobs is clearly expecting to make up that shortfall by selling even more handsets, in the U.S. and abroad, much faster than anyone imagined. Purchasers will still need to sign a two-year contract with AT&T to use the phone. And the price for a basic plan increases by $10 for 3G usage (that is, $30 a month for unlimited data, with voice plans starting at $39.99 a month). Unlimited 3G data plans for business users will be available for $45 a month.

Apple also unveiled MobileMe, which allows home users to do the kinds of things that were formerly the domain of business users. E-mail, calendars, contacts and photos can now be automatically wirelessly synched among a user's iPhone and computers. The service, which comes with 20GB of storage, costs $99 a year.

Users of iPhone 1.0 will be able to download new software via the iPhone App Store, which will launch with the new phone. But those pioneers won't get the faster speeds or true global positioning due to hardware reasons. The older phone triangulates a user's position via cell-phone towers. The new one has a GPS receiver that can track a user in real time. Jobs showed off the GPS capabilities with a recording that showed a 3G user driving down San Francisco's winding Lombard Street. As a tiny dot appeared on a Google map and slowly wended its way down the street, the crowd roared its approval.

A number of developers showed off applications that will be ready for the iPhone in the coming weeks and months. Sega, for instance, demoed an arcade game, Super Monkey Ball, whose fluid 3-D quality was on par with what one would find on, say, a Sony PSP. On the iPhone, users navigate by tilting the motion-sensitive device. Another application, which takes advantage of the phone's GPS, is a location-aware social network; fire up the app and you can see whether any friends or people in your contact list are nearby. "We make serendipity happen," said Loopt founder Sam Altman. For the first time, one could be walking down a street in New York City and realize, for instance, that a college roommate is nearby. The Loopt application will be free at the iPhone App Store; Monkey Ball will cost $9.99. Phil Schiller, who heads Apple's marketing department, said in an interview later that he had no idea how many apps would be available when the store launched, but "I think many applications, if not most, will be available for free."

Gas Stations in Spain Running Out

(MADRID, Spain) — Gas stations in Madrid and the northeastern Catalonia region began running out of fuel Monday as an indefinite strike by truckers began to bitehe protest over soaring fuel costs began at midnight Sunday.

Antonio Onieva, president of Madrid's station owners organization, told reporters that by 5:30 p.m., 15 percent of the capital's outlets had run out of fuel. Manuel Amado, president of Catalonia's owners' federation, said 40 percent of Catalonia's 1,714 stations had sold out.

The stoppage led to lengthy lines at many gasoline stations across the country as drivers rushed to fill up.

Truckers also blocked a number of roads around the country, including some leading into the center of Barcelona and the international border with France.

"We are the ones who move the goods that this country needs to keep working. If we stop because we haven't got the money to buy fuel then the country will stop," Julio Villascusa, president of the transport association Fenadismer, told Cadena SER radio.

Fenadismer said more than 90,000 drivers have been called to take part in the strike.

The strike was not expected to have a major effect on city food markets until later in the week.

There was almost no movement of trucks early Monday at Mercamadrid, the main wholesale food market for the Spanish capital.

Development Ministry transport chief Juan Miguel Sanchez said the government will guarantee market supplies.

Fenadismer representatives and Development Ministry officials met Monday morning for four hours and were meeting again in the early evening.

A strike by fishermen across Spain also protesting fuel costs has entered a second week. News reports said smaller boats that fish closer to the coast had now joined the protest, which began May 30.

The stoppages are part of Europe-wide protests against rising prices.

Shroud Of Turin Jesus,Spreading 4 time exhibition every 100 years

The Christ sage body wraps corpse cloth , also call Shroud of Turin, be a piece of fourteen chis preserving in one Turin first Sunday of a fourteen-day work system hall in Italy five inches of strong point , three chis of eight inches broad cloth , the cloth being considered being to be used to bind up the Jesus dead body. In one minor church of seat of the aristocratic family who introduces the Safuwa duke within Italy Turin cathedral range, a piece of fourteen chis five inches long , three chis eight inches broad cloth preserving, has spread the portrait predecessor and the back of a garment having one people dimly. Every 100 years approximately takes out this piece of cloth doing four time of public exhibitions , the exhibition at every time , the religious believer of distance by the thousands and tens of thousands looks with reverence coming rushing. They believe that what be seen that is that Christly real contains.

This piece of cloth it is the well-known Shroud of Turin , is also that Christianity preserves the closest in the whole world , arouses a piece of things left behind by the deceased of maximal argument, let alone that is a priceless treasure. That somebody believes that this piece spreads is that Christ is used to wrap a corpse being buried after the nail dying on the cross. Have spread the image being printing him seemingly, the negative is the same like the photograph. Academic circles neither has demonstration clear and definite so far pointing out its real false

Japan Reeling from Stabbing Spree

Tokyo's Akihabara district, a popular shopping area for consumer electronics, was still in shock on Monday following a killing spree by a 25-year-old man who plowed a rented truck into an intersection full of pedestrians, then began stabbing bystanders at random. The rampage, which left seven dead and 10 injured, was another reminder of a violent side of Japan that is not often discussed

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world, yet the country still sees spasms of stunningly brutal, often random killings. The June 8 Akihabara massacre occurred exactly seven years after a former school janitor with a history of mental illness stabbed eight children to death and injured many others at their elementary school near Osaka. The nation has seen a spate of stabbings already this year, including a shopping-mall knife attack in March in which one was slain and seven were injured.

Such crimes are often perpetrated by mentally unstable men in their 20s and 30s, but experts say that gruesome acts committed by adolescents and teenagers have been on the rise for the last five years. The infamous 1997 Kobe case of a 14-year-old boy who strangled and decapitated an 11-year-old friend of his brother and displayed the child's head on a school gate was followed last year by a 17-year-old boy who cut off his mother's head as she slept and delivered it, wrapped, to the nearest police box the following morning. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people with kitchen knives in Tokyo.

In an attempt to make sense of the senseless, experts point to many possible reasons for these violent outbursts. Because of the stigma of mental illness that exists in Japan, the mentally ill often go untreated. Economic conditions are also blamed. "The gap between wealth and poverty has widened for the past five years," says Mitsuyuki Maniwa, professor emeritus of criminal sociology at Shizuoka University. Society's have-nots "lose everything, from hope to motivation in life, pride, and self-esteem." Maniwa points out that the alleged Akihabara killer, whom police identified as Tomohiro Kato, was "not making an easy living" as a temporary factory employee. "This kind of society and the way it works causes this kind of crime," Maniwa maintains.

Japanese youth face similar pressures because of the country's demanding and competitive educational system. "Young people have been pushed into a corner," says Maniwa. Teachers and parents hold children personally responsible for their failures, so kids "blame themselves and run into a brick wall."

While mass murderers are sometimes too mentally unstable to explain their acts, the suspect in the Akihabara killings gave police reasons that were chillingly mundane. After his arrest, the left side of his face smeared with blood, Kato allegedly told police that he was tired of life and came to Akihabara to kill people — and it didn't matter who they were. The killer, according to the Mainichi newspaper reportedly posted details of his plans in a series of 28 messages on an online discussion board. The postings were sent through his mobile phone. The last came 20 minutes before the rampage began. It read: "It's time

McDonald's Pulls Sliced Tomatoes

McDonald's said Monday it has stopped serving sliced tomatoes in its U.S. restaurants over concerns about salmonella food poisoning linked to some uncooked varieties

The grocer Winn-Dixie Stores said it was also taking some tomatoes off its shelves. Other restaurant and supermarket chains reportedly halted some tomato sales as federal health officials worked to trace the source of the outbreak.

McDonald's Corp., the world's largest hamburger chain, stopped serving sliced tomatoes on its sandwiches as a precaution until the source of the salmonella is known, according to a statement Monday from spokeswoman Danya Proud.

McDonald's will continue serving grape tomatoes in its salads because no problems have been linked to that variety, Proud said.

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc. said it was voluntarily taking tomatoes involved in a Food and Drug Administration warning off its shelves. The Jacksonville, Fla.-based retailer operates 521 stores in Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia and Mississippi.

The source of the tomatoes responsible for the illnesses in at least 16 states has not been pinpointed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said at least 23 people have been hospitalized, and no deaths have been reported.

The FDA is investigating the source of the outbreak, FDA spokeswoman Kimberly Rawlings said in an e-mail. The FDA said Saturday the outbreak was linked to certain varieties of raw tomatoes including red plum, red Roma and red round.

In Pittsburgh, KDKA-TV reported that Giant Eagle supermarkets have removed several kinds of tomatoes from their shelves.

Fast-food chains Taco Bell Corp. and Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. also have halted serving tomatoes, the Los Angeles Times reported. And supermarket chains Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons have stopped the selling red plum, red Roma or round red tomatoes cited by the FDA, the newspaper said.

Football:The American Game

Claudio Reyna has a unique perspective on European soccer. One of the first Americans to feature regularly in Europe, he captained Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga, led Manchester City in the English Premiership, and won a championship with Glasgow Rangers in Scotland; he's played against 11 of the national teams heading for Euro 2008, including Italy, whom the U.S. fought to a wild 1-1 draw in the last World Cup. "They are born tacticians," says Reyna of the Italians. "They force you into positions. Watching them defend as a national team, it's really an art."

Italy is a favorite to create another masterpiece in Euro 2008, which is being hosted this year — with restrained enthusiasm — by Austria and Switzerland. The Italians, of course, are not a sure thing. They will be challenged by France — whom they defeated in the World Cup final — the Netherlands, Germany, Portugal, Croatia ... in other words, the usual suspects. (Four years ago, Greece miraculously beat stratospheric odds to win, a performance unlikely to be repeated.) And as is also now usual, the tournament will be followed on televisions not just in Europe, but everywhere from Kunming, China to — well, to Kearney, N.J., actually. And thereby hangs a tale.

"The beauty of [European football]," says Reyna, "is that you have countries that border each other, yet they all have a distinct style." Americans didn't have to go to Europe to be exposed to such variety. It's been on view in the U.S. for 150 years. Whenever the 11th man from any European town emigrated to the States, a football team got organized. Football, the real variety, is an American game, too. Since the 19th century, whether it was Scottish mill hands in New Jersey, Portuguese fishermen in Massachusetts, Ukrainian steel workers in Pennsylvania, Italian masons and Irish sandhogs in New York City, or German brewers and shopkeepers in Missouri, one ethnicity after the next established its community and its football, not necessarily in that order.

With those immigrants came an approach to the game as distinct as their cuisines. Long before I ever watched the European championships — the cable sports network ESPN didn't televise any games in the U.S. until 1996 — I was familiar with Europeans' football. I had been seeing it on the field, first as a kid living in an immigrant-enriched community near Newark, N.J. — where one learned that Portuguese teams have flair and fire, and that a Scotsman has a very broad view as to what constitutes a fair challenge. My European education would continue in the Cosmopolitan Soccer League, in New York City. The CSL began life in 1923 as the German-American Soccer League, but has long served as a melting pot of teams: Blau Weiss Gotchee, Brooklyn Italians, Greek-American Atlas, Polonia NY, Hungaria, FC Bulgaria, NY Albanians, CD Iberia.

When I got to Europe as a journalist (and as a player when my club team toured) it was amusing to see teams replicate what I'd experienced in New York: the way an Irish team plays the offside trap; an Italian midfielder's pass to an outside back that is as predictable as pasta for dinner; the steely play of the Poles contrasted with the passion of the Greeks. New York City's Croatian teams impressed me with their technical approach; the Hungarians, once powerhouses, have faded; the Greeks are defending champions. Sound familiar?

I learned, also, that the farther south in Europe your opponent's roots, the more dazzling the footballing and the hotter the tempers. Get the Italians mad at each other, and you've got a good shot at winning. Get ahead of a Greek team, and get ready for a fightback. Or at least a fight: the Greeks are people with a tremendous culture and history — and they play every game like it's a World Cup — but my experience has been that when a Greek walks onto the pitch his passion for the game is such that he's one whistle away from snapping. It's not surprising that it took a German, Otto Rehhagel, to channel that energy into the kind of disciplined defense that allowed Greece to beat France, the Czech Republic and (speaking of passion) Portugal, to win in 2004. In Greek neighborhoods such as Astoria, in the New York borough of Queens, the joy was explosive.

A Rush to Judgment at Guantanamo?

Although Osama bin Laden remains at large as President Bush's tenure winds down, the Administration clearly hopes that legal proceedings begun last week against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators will offer a public demonstration that the alleged principal planners of the 9/11 attacks are finally being brought to justice. But their arraignment at Guantanamo on Thursday suggested that the political overtones of the case could call that effort into question and overshadow strictly legal aspects of the trial

For the Bush Administration, which has held some of the defendants for five years of interrogation and torture at secret locations, the trial offers a timely opportunity to remind Americans of the terrorist threat. Showcasing sensational evidence of the 9/11 conspiracy will not only assist the trial and possible execution of its alleged perpetrators, it will bolster the administration's approach to its continuing "global war on terror." Although few observers expect the latest court deadline to be met, prosecutors say they will be ready to start the trial on September 18, close to the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks — and also the point at which U.S. voters start turning their attention to election issues such as national security.

Preparations for the trial have already featured accusations of political manipulation, notably set forth by Air Force Col. Morris Davis, Guantanamo's former chief prosecutor. He has said under oath that the top legal advisor to Guantanamo's military commissions, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, interfered in his planning of trials at the base by demanding that he drum up "sexy", high-profile cases "with blood on them" to attract public support for convictions. That charge led a military judge several weeks ago to exclude Hartmann from further involvement in a prominent case. Davis has also accused the Pentagon's second-ranking civilian of telling him to quickly charge "high value" prisoners — like Mohammed — "because there could be strategic value before the (November) election." Both Hartmann and the Pentagon civilian, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, have disputed those allegations, though not under oath.

The accused, meanwhile, may have a political agenda of their own in the proceedings: Mohammed and some of the other defendants have said explicitly that they do not recognize the authority of the court, branding it a political trial. At the apparent direction of Mohammed, confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, the accused have also told the court they will represent themselves, albeit with some assistance from professional military and civilian lawyers. Mohammed, who repeatedly appeared to give courtroom instructions to his co-accused on Thursday, explained that he rejects the authority of the U.S. legal system and instead follows "God's law." He also said he welcomes a death penalty in order to "martyr" himself.

Lawyers for the accused also suspect a political motivation in the timing of the case, since both presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama, have said they would like to close down Guantanamo. Given that possibility, and an expected Supreme Court ruling later this month on the rights of prisoners at Guantanamo, it is almost certainly in the legal interests of the accused to see trial proceedings delayed — at least until a new administration in Washington potentially takes a different legal approach to dealing with terror suspects. The possibility of bringing the five accused to the U.S. and charging them in Federal court would grant them more legal rights than they enjoy under the Guantanamo system of military commissions.

Thursday's opening round suggested, however, that the case will pivot on two factors: the rulings and conduct of Judge Ralph Kohlman, the Marine colonel presiding over the trial; and the wily intentions of Mohammed, who seems to be guiding his fellow defendants and setting defense strategy.

Judge Kohlman must soon rule, for example, on whether Guantanamo's top legal adviser, Brig. Gen. Hartmann, has unduly interfered in the case. If the ruling should go against Hartmann, many observers believe he could be removed or forced to resign. And that might be important, because Hartmann has recently pushed hard to conduct trials as quickly as possible, although that haste was not evident during years when the accused were held in prison after their capture.

The Judge will also have to respond to new complaints from defense lawyers that Mohammed is intimidating and trying to exercise control over at least two of his co-defendants, pressuring them to reject legal advice.

Mohammed and the others accused could also decide to remain in their cells and avoid future court appearances, an option Judge Kohlman has said they are free to exercise. Since all five have opted to legally represent themselves, if they also decided not to show up, that could, speed the proceedings along, by cutting down on legal maneuvers or the number of objections. A smoother, faster trial might well please the Bush administration and perhaps even the al-Qaeda prisoners themselves, who are seeking to delegitimize the U.S. legal process and, if Mohammed is to be taken at his word, to pursue "martyrdom." Should the two sides concur on speeding the legal process for their own political reasons, the resulting trial is unlikely to create a convincing appearance of justice being done. And that, in the court of international public opinion, would probably register as a victory for al-Qaeda.

Why Didn't More Women Vote for Hillary?

Amy Klobuchar was a swing voter this year. At the outset of the 2008 race, the 48-year-old Senator from Minnesota was exactly the kind of voter Hillary Clinton's campaign was counting on. Women a generation older would be safely in their camp. Younger women would be susceptible to Obamamania. Clinton's team thought that those in Klobuchar's demographic--professional, well-educated women who came of age during the modern women's movement--would be moved by the very real opportunity to put one of their own in the White House

It hasn't quite worked out that way. While Klobuchar's 80-year-old mother is an ardent Clinton supporter and her adolescent daughter is "all about Barack," the Senator voted for Obama. "He has transcended traditional politics," she says.

One of the Democratic campaign's great misperceptions has been that Clinton held an overwhelming advantage among women voters. But that isn't the case. As expected, Clinton captured the over-65 vote, and Obama won over younger women. But women in the middle split almost evenly between the two. And while both Senators boasted historic candidacies, Obama's seemed to resonate more deeply, translating into 70%, 80% and even 90% of the black vote in primary contests. No one expected Clinton to sweep 90% of Democratic women voters, but 60% wouldn't have been an unreasonable accomplishment for the first woman to have a serious chance of winning the presidency. Instead, Clinton won just over a majority of women's votes.

So what does that mean? Clinton and her supporters have charged that sexism is responsible for her loss of the nomination. But it seems more likely that women themselves cost her the nod. The reasons more women haven't voted for Clinton tell us something about the evolution of feminism and what the future may hold for female politicians.

Clinton's run has exposed a divide between what could be termed optimist and pessimist feminists. It's a split between those who see Clinton's candidacy as groundbreaking--as the first of many serious runs by strong women--and those who count backward to Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 and conclude that this kind of opportunity comes along only once in a generation. For this latter group, Clinton's candidacy took on a pressing urgency: If not now, when? If not her, who?

What unites the pessimists--many of whom are older women or women who don't work outside the home--is the persistent belief that women continue to face sexism and barriers in the workplace. Some may have an outmoded sense of the obstacles women face on the job, while others may well have left a workplace that made it hard for them to maintain a work-life balance. In both cases, they're more likely to place value in the symbolic power of electing a woman President.

Optimist feminists, on the other hand, don't question that a woman can become President or that it will occur in their lifetime. When these women look around, they see themselves making up half of business- and medical-school classes. They are law partners, CEOs and university presidents. And they don't want to rally behind a female candidate simply because she is a woman.

Women often tell me it's important to get more of them elected so they can change the tenor of politics. But that goal has faced some tough choices in the Democratic contest. "He's the girl in the race," explains Marie Wilson, head of the White House Project, a nonprofit that helps women move into positions of leadership. "Clinton came out tough; she voted for the war. Obama came out as the person bringing people together and offering messages of hope and reconciliation."

Although Klobuchar approvingly cites Obama's practice of feminine politics ("He uses things like the Jeremiah Wright controversy as teachable moments"), she knows as well as anyone that female politicians still face some skepticism. Three months into her Senate tenure, Klobuchar was in an elevator with some aides when a gop colleague entered and gently chided them for taking the Senators-only elevator.

Yet Klobuchar doesn't feel she has to prove she belongs. And thanks to Clinton, neither will the next women who run for President. Clinton has shattered long-standing assumptions about whether a woman could seriously compete for the White House. She not only avoided the label of "novelty candidate," but embraced that of "inevitable nominee." She mopped the floor with her opponents in debates. "This will only help women candidates," says Klobuchar. In that sense, the biggest legacy of Clinton's run may prove to be some sisterly competition the next time around.

Will the Olympics Not Be Televised?

(BEIJING) — Television networks that will broadcast the Beijing Olympics to billions around the world are squaring off with local organizers over stringent security that threatens coverage of the games in two months.

Differences over a wide range of issues — from limits on live coverage in Tiananmen Square to allegations that freight shipments of TV broadcasting equipment are being held up in Chinese ports — surfaced in a contentious meeting late last month between Beijing organizers and high-ranking International Olympic Committee officials and TV executives — including those from NBC.

In response to the complaints from broadcasters, Sun Weijia, head of media operations for the Beijing organizers, asked them to put it in writing, only to draw protests about mounting paperwork.

"I think what I have heard here are just a number of conditions or requirements that are just not workable," said IOC official Gilbert Felli, according to minutes of the May 29 meeting obtained by The Associated Press. "There are a number of things that are just not feasible."

Despite the outburst, Sun asked again to have the complaints in writing.

"I just wish to have a kind of document to help me identify the key points," he said, drawing immediate protest.

"How many times do we have to do that?" asked Manolo Romero, an Olympic broadcasting official.

With time running out before the games open on Aug. 8, the minutes hint that procedures broadcasters have used in other Olympics are conflicting with China's authoritarian government. Some plans are months behind schedule, which could force broadcasters to compromise coverage plans.

The meeting in Beijing included representatives of nine broadcasters, each of which has paid for the rights to broadcast the Olympics. Top IOC officials and Beijing organizers were also on hand in what one TV executive termed an "emergency meeting."

Non-rights holding broadcasters — news organizations that have not bought TV rights to cover Olympic action at the venues — did not attend the meeting but also are concerned about delays and security restrictions.

"We are two weeks away from putting equipment on a shipment and we have no clearance to operate, or to enter the country or a frequency allocation," said Sandy MacIntyre, director of news for AP Television News. APTN is the television arm of The Associated Press.

Unnerved by protests on international legs of the Olympic torch relay following the outbreak of deadly rioting March 14 in Tibet, China's communist government seems to be backtracking on some promises to let reporters work as they have in previous Olympics.

The government also has tightened visa rules in the last several months. One target has been students. The government fears many would side with activist groups if protests break out.

The minutes of the meeting show behind-the-scenes dialogue that differs markedly from the IOC's public statements about smooth cooperation with Beijing organizers. In an interview, one broadcaster who attended the meeting summed up the problem.

"The Chinese are very concerned about something going wrong — and so they are in Olympic gridlock," said John Barton, director of sport for the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union, which represents broadcasters in 57 countries.

"This is the greatest moment in their sporting history," Barton said. "They've built a stage on which they want to perform, but they are rather queasy about how it should be shown."

"They are suffocating the television coverage in the crazy pursuit of security. They can't secure the event. Nothing can be totally secure, yet they are trying to do that."

Chinese officials say more than 500,000 people will handle security during the games, equaling the number of foreign visitors expected. Public security officials said a few days ago that protests won't be allowed — unless protesters get a permit — with arrests or expulsion likely. Some athletes in Beijing also are expected to speak out against Chinese policies on Tibet or Darfur.

The World Need $45 Trillion to Fight Warming

(TOKYO) — The world needs to invest $45 trillion in energy in coming decades, build some 1,400 nuclear power plants and vastly expand wind power in order to halve greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to an energy study released Friday

The report by the Paris-based International Energy Agency envisions a "energy revolution" that would greatly reduce the world's dependence on fossil fuels while maintaining steady economic growth.

"Meeting this target of 50 percent cut in emissions represents a formidable challenge, and we would require immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale," IEA Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka said.

A U.N.-network of scientists concluded last year that emissions have to be cut by at least half by 2050 to avoid an increase in world temperatures of between 3.6 and 4.2 degrees above pre-18th century levels.

Scientists say temperature increases beyond that could trigger devastating effects, such as widespread loss of species, famines and droughts, and swamping of heavily populated coastal areas by rising oceans.

Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and Russia backed the 50 percent target in a meeting in Japan last month and called for it to be officially endorsed at the G-8 summit in July.

The IEA report mapped out two main scenarios: one in which emissions are reduced to 2005 levels by 2050, and a second that would bring them to half of 2005 levels by mid-century.

The scenario for deeper cuts would require massive investment in energy technology development and deployment, a wide-ranging campaign to dramatically increase energy efficiency, and a wholesale shift to renewable sources of energy.

Assuming an average 3.3 percent global economic growth over the 2010-2050 period, governments and the private sector would have to make additional investments of $45 trillion in energy, or 1.1 percent of the world's gross domestic product, the report said.

That would be an investment more than three times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.

The second scenario also calls for an accelerated ramping up of development of so-called "carbon capture and storage" technology allowing coal-powered power plants to catch emissions and inject them underground.

The study said that an average of 35 coal-powered plants and 20 gas-powered power plants would have to be fitted with carbon capture and storage equipment each year between 2010 and 2050.

In addition, the world would have to construct 32 new nuclear power plants each year, and wind-power turbines would have to be increased by 17,000 units annually. Nations would have to achieve an eight-fold reduction in carbon intensity — the amount of carbon needed to produce a unit of energy — in the transport sector.

Such action would drastically reduce oil demand to 27 percent of 2005 demand. Failure to act would lead to a doubling of energy demand and a 130 percent increase in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, IEA officials said.

"This development is clearly not sustainable," said Dolf Gielen, an IEA energy analyst and leader for the project.

Gielen said most of the $45 trillion forecast investment — about $27 trillion — would be borne by developing countries, which will be responsible for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Most of the money would be in the commercialization of energy technologies developed by governments and the private sector.

"If industry is convinced there will be policy for serious, deep CO2 emission cuts, then these investments will be made by the private sector," Gielen said.

America's Medicated Army

Seven months after Sergeant Christopher LeJeune started scouting Baghdad's dangerous roads — acting as bait to lure insurgents into the open so his Army unit could kill them — he found himself growing increasingly despondent. "We'd been doing some heavy missions, and things were starting to bother me," LeJeune says. His unit had been protecting Iraqi police stations targeted by rocket-propelled grenades, hunting down mortars hidden in dark Baghdad basements and cleaning up its own messes. He recalls the order his unit got after a nighttime firefight to roll back out and collect the enemy dead. When LeJeune and his buddies arrived, they discovered that some of the bodies were still alive. "You don't always know who the bad guys are," he says. "When you search someone's house, you have it built up in your mind that these guys are terrorists, but when you go in, there's little bitty tiny shoes and toys on the floor — things like that started affecting me a lot more than I thought they

So LeJeune visited a military doctor in Iraq, who, after a quick session, diagnosed depression. The doctor sent him back to war armed with the antidepressant Zoloft and the antianxiety drug clonazepam. "It's not easy for soldiers to admit the problems that they're having over there for a variety of reasons," LeJeune says. "If they do admit it, then the only solution given is pills."

While the headline-grabbing weapons in this war have been high-tech wonders, like unmanned drones that drop Hellfire missiles on the enemy below, troops like LeJeune are going into battle with a different kind of weapon, one so stealthy that few Americans even know of its deployment. For the first time in history, a sizable and growing number of U.S. combat troops are taking daily doses of antidepressants to calm nerves strained by repeated and lengthy tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medicines are intended not only to help troops keep their cool but also to enable the already strapped Army to preserve its most precious resource: soldiers on the front lines. Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope. Escalating violence in Afghanistan and the more isolated mission have driven troops to rely more on medication there than in Iraq, military officials say.

At a Pentagon that keeps statistics on just about everything, there is no central clearinghouse for this kind of data, and the Army hasn't consistently asked about prescription-drug use, which makes it difficult to track. Given the traditional stigma associated with soldiers seeking mental help, the survey, released in March, probably underestimates antidepressant use. But if the Army numbers reflect those of other services — the Army has by far the most troops deployed to the war zones — about 20,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq were on such medications last fall. The Army estimates that authorized drug use splits roughly fifty-fifty between troops taking antidepressants — largely the class of drugs that includes Prozac and Zoloft — and those taking prescription sleeping pills like Ambien.

In some ways, the prescriptions may seem unremarkable. Generals, history shows, have plied their troops with medicinal palliatives at least since George Washington ordered rum rations at Valley Forge. During World War II, the Nazis fueled their blitzkrieg into France and Poland with the help of an amphetamine known as Pervitin. The U.S. Army also used amphetamines during the Vietnam War.

The military's rising use of antidepressants also reflects their prevalence in the civilian population. In 2004, the last year for which complete data for the U.S. are available, doctors wrote 147 million prescriptions for antidepressants, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical-market-research firm. This number reflects in part the common practice of cycling through different medications to find the most effective drug. A 2006 federally funded study found that 70% of those taking antidepressants along with therapy experience some improvement in mood.

When it comes to fighting wars, though, troops have historically been barred from using such drugs in combat. And soldiers — who are younger and healthier on average than the general population — have been prescreened for mental illnesses before enlisting.

The increase in the use of medication among U.S. troops suggests the heavy mental and psychological price being paid by soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pentagon surveys show that while all soldiers deployed to a war zone will feel stressed, 70% will manage to bounce back to normalcy. But about 20% will suffer from what the military calls "temporary stress injuries," and 10% will be afflicted with "stress illnesses." Such ailments, according to briefings commanders get before deploying, begin with mild anxiety and irritability, difficulty sleeping, and growing feelings of apathy and pessimism. As the condition worsens, the feelings last longer and can come to include panic, rage, uncontrolled shaking and temporary paralysis. The symptoms often continue back home, playing a key role in broken marriages, suicides and psychiatric breakdowns. The mental trauma has become so common that the Pentagon may expand the list of "qualifying wounds" for a Purple Heart — historically limited to those physically injured on the battlefield — to include posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on May 2 that it's "clearly something" that needs to be considered, and the Pentagon is weighing the change.

Using drugs to cope with battlefield traumas is not discussed much outside the Army, but inside the service it has been the subject of debate for years. "No magic pill can erase the image of a best friend's shattered body or assuage the guilt from having traded duty with him that day," says Combat Stress Injury, a 2006 medical book edited by Charles Figley and William Nash that details how troops can be helped by such drugs. "Medication can, however, alleviate some debilitating and nearly intolerable symptoms of combat and operational stress injuries" and "help restore personnel to full functioning capacity."

Which means that any drug that keeps a soldier deployed and fighting also saves money on training and deploying replacements. But there is a downside: the number of soldiers requiring long-term mental-health services soars with repeated deployments and lengthy combat tours. If troops do not get sufficient time away from combat — both while in theater and during the "dwell time" at home before they go back to war — it's possible that antidepressants and sleeping aids will be used to stretch an already taut force even tighter. "This is what happens when you try to fight a long war with an army that wasn't designed for a long war," says Lawrence Korb, Pentagon personnel chief during the Reagan Administration.

Military families wonder about the change, according to Joyce Raezer of the private National Military Family Association. "Boy, it's really nice to have these drugs," she recalls a military doctor saying, "so we can keep people deployed." And professionals have their doubts. "Are we trying to bandage up what is essentially an insufficient fighting force?" asks Dr. Frank Ochberg, a veteran psychiatrist and founding board member of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.

Such questions have assumed greater urgency as more is revealed about the side effects of some mental-health medications. Last year the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) urged the makers of antidepressants to expand a 2004 "black box" warning that the drugs may increase the risk of suicide in children and adolescents. The agency asked for — and got — an expanded warning that included young adults ages 18 to 24, the age group at the heart of the Army. The question now is whether there is a link between the increased use of the drugs in the Iraqi and Afghan theaters and the rising suicide rate in those places. There have been 164 Army suicides in Afghanistan and Iraq from the wars' start through 2007, and the annual rate there is now double the service's 2001 rate.

At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, including 36 in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army said on May 29. That's the highest toll since it started keeping such records in 1980. Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use — though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier's spirits. "The high percentage of U.S. soldiers attempting suicide after taking SSRIs should raise serious concerns," says Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "And there's no question they're using them to prop people up in difficult circumstances.

Icahn: Yahoo Should Set $49.5B Price

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Hoping to negotiate a compromise, activist investor Carl Icahn urged Yahoo Inc. to declare it's willing to sell for $49.5 billion — about $2 billion above Microsoft Corp.'s last offer for the Internet pionee Icahn recommended the price tag, which works out to $34.375 a share, in a letter he sent Friday to Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock.

It marks the first time that Icahn has publicly indicated what price he has in mind as he tries to force Yahoo's sale before the Sunnyvale-based company's annual meeting on Aug. 1.

If a deal isn't done before August, Icahn will try to replace Yahoo's board with a slate of his own directors and then fire company co-founder Jerry Yang as chief executive.

Should the mutiny succeed, Icahn said Friday he would then hire a "talented and experienced" CEO in the mold of Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt before trying to sell Yahoo to Microsoft.

Yahoo said it would be "ill-advised" to publicly set a specific sales price.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Merger talks between the two high-tech powerhouses fell apart May 3 when Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer withdrew an oral offer of $47.5 billion, or $33 per share, after Yang asked for $37 per share — a price that Yahoo's stock hasn't reached since January 2006.

By suggesting a sales figure for Yahoo, Icahn clearly hopes to spur Yahoo to seek more expansive discussion with Microsoft, said Peter Falvey, managing director of Revolution Partners, which specializes in high-tech deals.

Microsoft has been exploring a partial deal involving Yahoo's search and advertising operations — a concept that has been panned by Icahn, along with many industry analysts who believe the companies need to combine completely to counter the dominance of Internet search and advertising leader Google Inc.

"This (sales figure) keeps the pressure on Yahoo," Falvey said. "It could also act as a sort of fig leaf so they can start talking about a sale again without it seeming like they are crawling back to Microsoft. They can now say to Microsoft, 'Look, we need to have these conversations now.' "

Many analysts have been predicting all along that Microsoft and Yahoo would eventually agree to a deal at somewhere between $34 and $35 per share. At least two major Yahoo shareholders, Capital Research Global Investors and Legg Mason, have publicly pushed for a deal in the same price range.

While emphasizing it isn't currently interested in buying Yahoo in its entirety, Microsoft also has stressed it hasn't ruled out the possibility of making another takeover bid.

For now, Falvey thinks it makes sense for Microsoft to let Icahn agitate for a deal so the software maker doesn't risk alienating many of the Yahoo workers that it hopes to retain.

Wall Street's hopes that a friendly deal might still be worked out has helped cushion the blow to Yahoo's stock since the takeover talks unraveled. Yahoo shares gained 37 cents to $26.73 amid a sharp downturn in the overall stock market.

Icahn recently helped pick up the pieces of fractured sales talks between software makers Oracle Corp. and BEA Systems Inc. After Oracle withdrew a takeover offer of $17 per share when BEA insisted on $21 per share, Icahn helped negotiate a sale at $19.375 per share, or $8.5 billion.

Microsoft's withdrawal of its $47.5 billion offer outraged many Yahoo shareholders who believe their company's board allowed Yang's emotions ruin a chance to sell at a price far above Yahoo's market value before Microsoft made its bid Jan. 31.

At $33 per share, Yahoo shareholders would have received a 72% premium, based on the company's $19.18 stock price at the time of Microsoft's offer.

Yang maintains Yahoo is poised to bounce back from a financial malaise that caused the company's stock to crumble. He has promised his business strategy will generate more online ad sales and increase Yahoo's net revenue by at least 25% in 2009 and 2010. Yahoo's net revenue has recently been rising at about 12%, far behind Google's first-quarter pace of 46%.

Besides imploring Yahoo to set a sales price, Icahn on Friday reiterated an earlier demand for Yahoo to eliminate an employee severance plan that could trigger up to $2.4 billion in additional payments if Microsoft bought the company at $35 per share.

The estimated costs of the plan, adopted 12 days after Microsoft's initial bid, surfaced earlier this week when a Delaware court unsealed documents in a Yahoo shareholder lawsuit alleging the company improperly tried to avoid a takeover.

Yahoo once again defended the retention program as a good thing for shareholders because it will help retain top workers while the company's fate remains in limbo.

* Buzz up!on Yahoo!

Oil Jumps $10 to New Record High

(NEW YORK) — Oil prices shot up more than $10 to a new record above $139 Friday after a major investment bank predicted a spike to $150 in the coming weeks and rising tensions in the Middle East left investors uneasy about supply The meteoric surge, which pushed prices more than 8 percent higher in a single day, built on a huge jump the Thursday and capped oil's biggest two-day gain in the history of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The burst higher raised the prospect of accelerating inflation, including a continuing advance in gasoline prices that are now averaging just under $4 a gallon nationally. That gloomy outlook sent stocks tumbling, taking the Dow Jones industrials down more than 300 points.

A further weakening of the dollar helped send oil prices higher by enticing overseas buyers armed with stronger currencies and others looking for a hedge against the greenback. But it also represented a stampede by bullish traders and optimistic computer models betting that prices still have further to rise.

Light, sweet crude for July delivery jumped as high as $139.01 on the Nymex, before easing slightly to $138.39, up $10.60. Prices hit a previous record of $135.09 a barrel on May 22, and settled Thursday at $127.79.

Prices pushed sharply higher Friday after Morgan Stanley analyst Ole Slorer predicted strong demand in Asia could drive prices to $150 by Independence Day, when millions of Americans are expected to take to the roads. Slorer said shipments from the Middle East are mimicking patterns seen in the third quarter last year, when Morgan Stanley based an oil price spike prediction on falling supplies in the Atlantic.

"We made the same call using the same parameters, but now we are starting from much lower inventory levels," Slorer said.

Traders also zeroed in on remarks by an Israeli Cabinet minister, who was quoted as saying his country will attack Iran if it doesn't abandon its nuclear program. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz added that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "will disappear before Israel does," the Yediot Ahronot daily reported.

Iran is the second-biggest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and traders worry that any conflict with Israel could disrupt global supplies.

Friday's surge builds on a $5.49 gain Thursday, which was the biggest single-day price increase in the history of the Nymex crude contract. That spike came as the dollar fell after the European Central Bank suggesting it could raise interest rates.

"With oil pushing back up to the mid-$130s, it's the make it or break it point. If we go past that, we set the course for uncharted waters and head up toward $150," said Stephen Schork, an analyst and trader in Villanova, Pa. "

Meanwhile, U.S. gas prices at the pump continued to hover just shy of an average $4 a gallon, easing only 0.3 cent from Thursday's record.

Drivers are now paying an average of $3.99 for a gallon of regular gas nationwide, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service; in many parts of the country, consumers are already paying well over $4. Retail diesel slipped a penny overnight to $4.76.

Pump prices are bound to rise even further if oil sustains its advance. James Cordier, president of Tampa, Fla.-based trading firm Liberty Trading Group, predicted prices could rise to $4.25 as early as the end of the month.

"Unfortunately, drivers cutting back isn't going to lower the price of gasoline any time soon," he said.

The dramatic reversal in what had been a weakening oil market began Thursday after ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet suggested the bank could raise interest rates and the euro climbed against the dollar. When interest rates rise in Europe, or fall in the U.S., the dollar tends to weaken against the euro.

Many traders buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar is falling, and a weaker dollar makes oil cheaper for investors dealing in other currencies. Analysts believe the dollar's protracted decline has been a major reason why oil prices have nearly doubled in the past year.

The euro strengthened further against the greenback Friday. A Labor Department report showing the U.S. unemployment rate jumped half a percentage point to 5.5 percent last month — its biggest monthly increase since 1986 — could drag the dollar even lower in the days ahead.

"Unemployment jumping as it did today will be in the market for a long time and will continue to pressure the U.S. dollar," Cordier said.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil futures rose 23.72 cents to $3.918 a gallon while gasoline prices rose 15.7 cents to $3.4915 a gallon. Natural gas futures rose 25 cents to $12.769 per 1,000 cubic feet.

In London, July Brent crude shot up $7.75 to $135.30 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Who Will Rule The New Internet?

An anonymous wit scratched those lines on the side of a junked car door and lugged it to a trail near my home in Northern California. The middle of a pristine, ancient redwood grove is the wrong place to find a rusted-out car door, but the words magically transformed the thing from an aggravating piece of junk into art. I Googled the quote as soon as I got home, of course, but found nothing. (Thanks to Google, we live in a world where "I don't know" has become an unacceptable response. So my inability to identify the author there is driving me crazy.)

My town is pretty close to Silicon Valley, and most of my neighbors make their living in technology, while I make mine writing about it. All of us, though, worship at the altar of bright and shiny things. These days, it's the impending launch of Apple's next-generation iPhone that has the faithful davening. If the whispers of pending miracles are to be believed, this new phone could end up becoming the next big "platform."

A platform, to computer people, is the software code on which third-party applications function. There are scores of big platforms out there—something like three dozen in the international mobile-phone business alone. But a truly successful one can extend far beyond its immediate group of users and effectively create and control an enormous market. In the computer industry, IBM dominated the first commercial platform with its expensive mainframes and operating systems, aimed at corporate users. Seemingly overnight, IBM was supplanted by Microsoft and its Windows operating system as the PC revolution took hold. Windows, in turn, is now losing its power as the Web—owned by no one, accessible to all—becomes the dominant platform. (Yes, the Web is nothing more than a big layer of code; all those websites we visit are merely applications that sit atop it.)

Every major player in Techland wants to create the next great platform, of course. What's new here is that it's possible for any number of them to succeed. "Among the things that are different from the old status quo is the idea that one will win," says Marc Andreessen, who helped write the first widely adopted browser, Mosaic, which popularized the Web. The Internet is a much larger playing field than PC operating systems. "Trying to decide which will win," Andreessen adds, "is kind of like debating whether beef, chicken or lobster is going to win the market for food."

Still, for wonks like me, it's been riveting to watch three of the most innovative companies in Silicon Valley—each representing a fundamental phase of the information era—battle it out. Apple, Google and Facebook are, respectively, an icon from the pioneering days of personal computers; the biggest, most profitable company yet born on the Web; and a feisty upstart whose name is synonymous with the current migration to social networks.

In many ways, these companies are technology's standard-bearers, though their guiding philosophies differ. Google, for instance, advocates an "open" Web and tends to push for open standards and alliances among developers. Facebook, with its gated community of 70 million active users, offers a more controlled experience and, so far at least, wants to keep its users safely within its walls. Apple comes from the old world. Its elegant products cocoon customers from the chaos of the information age, but the Apple experience tends to be highly controlled, with Apple hardware at the end points and Apple software and services, like the iTunes Music Store, in between.

The winners of the platform wars stand to make billions selling devices, selling eyeballs to advertisers, selling services such as music, movies, even computer power on demand. Yet the outcome here is far more important than who makes the most money. The future of the Internet—how we get information, how we communicate with one another and, most important, who controls it—is at stake.