Facebook IPO will be big, but it doesn't matter

Have you heard the latest rumor? Facebook could sell shares to the public in an IPO ? valuing the social network from $75 billion to $100 billion ? sometime between April and June. But there are four good reasons why this will be a non-event.

Even though I am not among its 800 million users, Facebook is profitable. It sells advertisements directed at those users and eMarketer estimates that between 2009 and 2011, Facebook?s revenues grew at a 127 percent annual rate to $3.8 billion in 2011 with operating profit of $1.5 billion, according to BusinessInsider.

So why is one of history?s biggest IPOs a non-event? Here are four reasons:

Forbes.com: the cars Facebook?s new millionaires should buy

• It?s grossly over-valued. On a price/sales basis, Facebook would trade at 19.7 ? that?s 497 percent higher than Apple at 3.3 and 294 percent above Google?s P/S of 5. And assuming Facebook shares Google?s net margin of 26 percent, Facebook?s P/E of 80 is far higher than Google?s 19 or Apple?s 12.7. This means that Facebook?s stock might not hold up after the first-day IPO pop ? the same fate that greeted most of 2011?s tech IPOs.
• It won?t unleash corporate capital spending. In 1995, Netscape?s IPO spurred a wave of corporate capital spending. That?s because the web browser made the Internet easier for people to use than it had been before. A wave of supporting industries ranging from web consultants to makers of Web infrastructure ? that got their fingers into the corporate Internet investment pie, as I described in my 1998 book, "Net Profit." Facebook is not doing that ? its revenues represent a mere 1 percent of the world?s $507 billion in total ad spending and its IPO would not lead to a major change in the trajectory of corporate spend.

Forbes.com: what will IPO mean for Facebook?s next act

• It doesn?t change much for Facebook insiders. Facebook?s investors and employees were able ? until last week when trading there was halted ? to sell their shares for cash on SharesPost, a secondary market. On January 26th, Facebook was valued at $73.4 billion there ? a few billion below the estimated IPO range. Sure, an IPO required by topping 500 shareholders will add to Facebook the cost of running a public company ? but beyond that, things there should not change much.
• It won?t boost the overall venture financing market. If a Facebook IPO created a fever to invest in tech start-ups, it might be good for the venture capital industry. But since the IPO does not change much for Facebook investors, does not spur the growth of a range of related industries, does not unleash corporate investment, and might not even help out the IPO market, the after-effect of Facebook?s IPO could be modest.

It is popular in the media to compare the Facebook IPO to that of Google whose price has risen nicely since its 2004 IPO from $84 to $580. That 30 percent compound annual growth is good ? but Google trades 19 percent below its 2007 peak of $715.

Forbes.com: 3 months without a cell, email, facebook, linkedin and twitter?

To be fair, there is a bit of good news for those hoping that Facebook stock will climb after it goes public. A quick look at Google?s 2004 prospectus reveals that its IPO price of $84 valued Google at a P/E of 80 ? the same as Facebook?s estimated P/E (Google had 271 million shares and estimated 2004 net income of $286 million at the time of its August 2004 IPO).

That?s the only glimmer of good news for why Facebook?s IPO might breathe some life into the business of VCs and tech entrepreneurs. But Facebook?s inability to transform the way companies operate their business means that it will remain a niche phenomenon in the grander economic scheme.

Forbes.com: Google?s big problem they don?t want you to know about
Forbes.com: Facebook: Hype or substance?

? 2012 Forbes.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46206367/ns/business-us_business/

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Texas town relying on tanker trucks for water (AP)

SPICEWOOD, Texas ? Tanker trucks loaded with water have become the lifeline for a Texas lakefront village that came precariously close to becoming the state's first community to run out of drinking water during a historic drought.

Spicewood got its first delivery of water Monday under dark clouds and rain. The 8,000-gallon water delivery arrived after it became clear the village's wells could no longer produce enough water to meet the needs of the Lake Travis community's 1,100 residents and elementary school, said Clara Tuma, spokeswoman of the Lower Colorado River Authority.

The town uses wells, not the nearby lake, for its drinking water. Ryan Rowney, manager of water operations for the authority, said it plans to truck water into the Central Texas town for several more weeks while exploring alternatives, including drilling a new well or piping water from Lake Travis. But the agency doesn't want to rush into any project, and prefers for now to pay $200 per truckload of water while ensuring the tens of thousands of dollars it will cost to find a permanent solution are well-spent.

Several towns and villages in Texas have come close to running out of water during the driest year in Lone Star State history, but until now none has had to truck in water. Most found solutions to hold them over, often paying tens of thousands of dollars to avoid hauling water, a scenario that conjures up images from the early 1900s, when indoor plumbing was a novelty.

"The hauling of water is just a Band-Aid approach. It's just a short-term approach," said Joe Don Dockery, a Burnet County commissioner that oversees the Spicewood area.

The Lower Colorado River Authority realized last week how dire the situation was, and informed Dockery on Monday. By the next day, the situation was worse ? the well had dropped an additional 1.3 feet overnight. The severest forms of water restrictions were put in place, and the authority said there would be no new hookups to the town's water supply.

Water still ran Monday through pipes and faucets of Spicewood. But instead of being pumped from wells into the community's 129,000-gallon storage tank ? a two day's supply of water ? the already treated liquid will be hauled in from 17 miles away, treated a second time and put into the town's water system.

"If we need to haul every day, we will. This will probably go on for several more months," Rowney said.

Trucks, including at least one 6,000 gallon tanker, will make about four or five deliveries a day, Rowney said, but the town will still have to remain under the severest water restrictions.

"All you can do is take a bath, a shower, and that's really all you're allowed to do. You can flush the commode, but even that we're asking people to do judiciously," Rowney said.

Spicewood, about 35 miles from Austin, is home to many retirees who spend their weekdays in the city and drive to their lakeside homes on the weekends. Residents are now being careful, taking shorter showers, and some are even bringing their clothes to Laundromats.

Until last week, when it became clear they could run out water, the most exciting event in Spicewood was the upcoming wild game chili cook-off advertised on a roadside sign at the entrance to the small community.

"When we had water it was pretty nice here," deadpanned Riley Walker a 73-year-old state transportation employee.

Walker bought land in Spicewood in 1988 when only a handful of families lived here. He built a house and moved into town full time in 2002.

"I have faith they will haul water in. They don't really have a choice; there are a lot of people here," Walker said.

Joe Barbera, president of the local property owner's association, said residents have been "really worried about this for a long time now," but have always been conservation minded.

"You look around and you don't see any immaculate lawns," he added. "This is just normal use for a normal community."

For more than a year, nearly the entire state of Texas has been in some stage of severe or exceptional drought. Rain has been so scarce lakes across the state turned into pools of mud. One town near Waco, Groesbeck, bought water from a rock quarry and built a seven-mile pipeline through a state park to get water. Some communities on Lake Travis moved their intake pipes into deeper water. And Houston started getting water from an alternative, farther away reservoir when Lake Houston ran too low.

Although it has started to rain more this winter, it's not enough to fill the state's arid rivers and lakes.

A few inches of rain certainly won't be enough to fill Spicewood's wells.

"We're talking about rainfall events of 20 inches plus. Huge, huge flood events to bring the lake levels up," Rowney said. "The downside of that is that everyone's praying for a flood, well floods can be bad too."

___

Plushnick-Masti contributed to this report from Houston. You can follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com//RamitMastiAP

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120131/ap_on_re_us/us_texas_drought_wells_run_dry

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John "The Unit" Manfre Pleads Not Guilty to Horse Tranq Possession

That douche The Unit from Jersey Shore claims there is no way he was in possession of a powerful horse tranquilizer when he was arrested in N.J. last year.

Yes, Unit got popped with horse tranquilizer in Seaside Heights.

The Situation's boy, whose real name is John (or Jonny) Manfre, entered a not guilty plea to possession of a controlled substance stemming from the July bust.

The substance was determined to be Ketamine, a horse tranq.

The Unit from Jersey Shore does his thing. The girl's face sums it up.

After the hearing, Unit's lawyer Raymond Raya offered TMZ a classic non-explanation: "There were some issues regarding my client's constitutional rights."

"We entered the not guilty plea NOT because that's the normal thing to do ... we've actually entered the not guilty plea because we believe John is not guilty."

He added, "We expect a very favorable outcome." Good to know. We don't expect Snooki's girl Ryder can say the same after she gets tested, however.

[Photo: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/john-the-unit-manfre-pleads-not-guilty-to-horse-tranq-possession/

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Britain sticks to 2014 Afghan troop pullout goal (Reuters)

LONDON (Reuters) ? British Prime Minister David Cameron said Saturday he was sticking to an end-2014 deadline for withdrawing British combat troops from Afghanistan despite French proposals to speed up NATO's handover of security to Afghan forces.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday French troops would leave Afghanistan at the end of 2013 and Paris would propose to NATO that all foreign combat operations in Afghanistan should be handed over next year, a year earlier than the alliance plans.

Cameron cautioned other NATO members that the rate of withdrawal of foreign troops must depend on Afghan security forces being ready to take charge of security.

"We ... want to have a long-term relationship with Afghanistan, long after our combat troops come home, and that will happen at the end of 2014," Cameron said during talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the prime minister's country residence Chequers outside London.

Paris has 3,600 troops in Afghanistan as part of the 130,000-strong NATO-led force, while Britain has some 9,500.

"Obviously, between now and 2014 there will be opportunities for different countries to reduce their troop numbers. Britain has reduced our troop numbers over the last year," Cameron said.

He said he did not want to see troops numbers falling off a "cliff edge" in 2014 with all remaining troops leaving at once.

"But clearly, between now and 2014, the rate at which we can reduce our troops will depend on the transition to Afghan control in the different parts of Afghanistan and that should be the same for all of the members of NATO who are all contributing and helping to a strong, stable and peaceful Afghanistan, which is in all our interests," Cameron said.

His words appeared to reflect concern expressed by some commentators that there could be a "rush for the exits" by Western forces from Afghanistan as their voters grow disillusioned at the cost in lives and money of the decade-long Afghan campaign.

Karzai and Cameron signed a partnership agreement setting out how their countries will work together after British combat troops leave Afghanistan.

Karzai had been due to visit Britain last month, immediately after the Bonn conference on the future of Afghanistan, but cancelled the trip to return home after scores of people were killed in a wave of sectarian bomb attacks.

On the eve of Karzai's visit, Britain's Ministry of Defense announced that a British soldier had been shot dead while on foot patrol in Helmand province Friday, bringing to 397 the number of Britons killed in Afghanistan since October 2001.

Cameron, who visited British troops in Afghanistan last month, plans to leave some British troops behind to train their Afghan counterparts after they end combat operations.

Cameron has committed Britain to pulling out 500 soldiers this year but has not yet set out a timetable for further withdrawals.

(Additional reporting by Tim Castle; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120128/wl_nm/us_afghanistan_britain

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IBM builds 9 nanometer carbon nanotube transistor, puts silicon on notice

It's not the smallest transistor out there, but the boffins at IBM have constructed the tiniest carbon nanotube transistor to date. It's nine nanometers in size, making it one nanometer smaller than the presumed physical limit of silicon transistors. Plus, it consumes less power and is able to carry more current than present-day technology. The researchers accomplished the trick by laying a nanotube on a thin layer of insulation, and using a two-step process -- involving some sort of black magic, no doubt -- to add the electrical gates inside. The catch? (There's always a catch) Manufacturing pure batches of semiconducting nanotubes is difficult, as is aligning them in such a way that the transistors can function. So, it'll be some time before the technology can compete with Intel's 3D silicon, but at least we're one step closer to carbon-based computing.

IBM builds 9 nanometer carbon nanotube transistor, puts silicon on notice originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Technology Review  |  Nano Letters  | Email this | Comments

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/28/ibm-builds-9-nanometer-carbon-nanotube-transistor-puts-silicon/

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Hispanics in focus as GOP race intensifies in Fla. (AP)

DORAL, Fla. ? Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is calling for a measured approach to revising the nation's immigration laws, saying "too many enemies" stand in the way of sweeping change.

The former House speaker says he wants stricter border control, faster deportation proceedings and a guest worker program for certain immigrants.

Gingrich spoke Friday at a conference of influential Hispanic leaders meeting near Miami.

Immigration is a major flashpoint issue among the GOP presidential candidates in Florida. They are trying to strike a balance between sounding compassionate yet firm about stemming the tide of illegal immigration.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was scheduled to address the conference on Friday afternoon.

Florida's presidential primary is Tuesday.

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

More than a million Hispanic voters are the prize as Republican presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich campaign hard in Florida after a feisty, final debate that served to heighten political tensions with the state's GOP primary just days away.

Romney was the aggressor Thursday night in the second debate in four days, pressing Gingrich to apologize for an ad labeling him as anti-immigrant and calling the idea "repulsive."

Both men arranged for appearances Friday in Miami with the Hispanic Leadership Network. The state has roughly 1.5 million Hispanic voters, who figure to play prominently in next Tuesday's Florida primary.

Immigration sparked the first clash Thursday night, moments after the debate opened, when Gingrich responded to a question by saying Romney was the most anti-immigrant of all four contenders on stage. "That's simply inexcusable," the former Massachusetts governor responded.

Gingrich fired back that Romney misled voters by running an ad accusing the former House speaker of once referring to Spanish as "the language of the ghetto." Gingrich said he was referring to a multitude of languages, not just Spanish.

Romney initially said of the ad, "I doubt it's mine," but moderator Wolf Blitzer pointed out that Romney, at the ad's conclusion, says he approved the message.

Gingrich rushed out an ad using debate footage that raised questions about Romney's credibility, including his reluctance to own up to the "ghetto" commercial. "If we can't trust Romney in a debate, how can we trust him in the White House," a narrator says in the Gingrich ad.

The debate was the 19th since the race for the Republican nomination began last year, and came five days before the Florida primary. Opinion polls show a close race, with a slight advantage for Romney and two other contenders, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Texas Rep. Ron Paul, far behind.

Paul has already made clear his intention to skip Florida in favor of smaller, less-expensive states. And Santorum, who had been campaigning aggressively here, conceded that he's better off sitting at his own kitchen table Saturday doing his taxes instead of campaigning in a state where he simply can't keep up with the GOP front-runners.

Outside advisers are urging him to pack up in Florida completely and not spend another minute in a state where he is cruising toward a loss.

The cash-strapped Santorum said he'll make a handful of Florida campaign stops early in the day, but will finish Friday with his family in Pennsylvania, where he'll spend all day Saturday before returning to Florida.

Still, Santorum stood out at times Thursday night.

He drew applause when he called on the front-runners to stop attacking one another. "Can we set aside that Newt was a member of Congress ... and that Mitt Romney is a wealthy guy?" he said in a tone of exasperation.

On Friday, Santorum said the finger-pointing between the two leaders is obscuring how similar both are to President Barack Obama on issues such as health care ? and making it harder to tell voters about his more conservative views.

"There are important issues in this race," Santorum told Fox News. "How people made money, all legitimately in my mind, should have nothing to do with it."

In the days since Romney's loss in South Carolina, Romney has tried to seize the initiative, playing the aggressor in the Tampa debate and assailing Gingrich in campaign speeches and a TV commercial. An outside group formed to support Romney has spent more than his own campaign's millions on ads, some of them designed to stop Gingrich's campaign momentum before it is too late to deny him the nomination.

With polls suggesting his South Carolina surge is stalling, Gingrich unleashed a particularly strong attack earlier in the day, much as he lashed out in Iowa when he rose in the polls, only to be knocked back by an onslaught of ads he was unable to counter effectively.

But he struggled to find an effective attack in the debate and was more often on the defensive.

Romney pounced when the topic turned to Gingrich's proposal for a permanent American colony on the moon ? an issue of particular interest to engineers and others who live on Florida's famed Space Coast.

A career businessman before he became a politician, Romney said: "If I had a business executive come to me and say I want to spend a few hundred billion dollars to put a colony on the moon, I'd say, `You're fired.'"

Gingrich tried to raise questions about Romney's wealth and his investments. "I don't know of any American president who's had a Swiss bank account," Gingrich said.

Romney replied that his investments were in a blind trust over which he had no control. "There's nothing wrong with that," declared Romney, who has estimated his wealth at as much as $250 million.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120127/ap_on_el_pr/us_gop_campaign

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Drew Hoston, A Rocket Man In The Making Should DropBox Not Work Out

Clearly controversy is swirling around web lockers and online storage companies in the wake of the Federal swoop on Megaupload, but if it all goes wrong rest assured that DropBox founder and CEO Drew Houston has a second career to fall back on. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (or just "Davos" to those in the know) is a great place for the world's millionaires and billionaires to loosely affiliate with each-other (as Paul Simon might have put it) and part of that looseness extends to the Piano Bar of the Hotel Europe in the tiny - but 5-star-hotel-packed - village.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/h4iwK0o8h74/

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Video: Gold Forecast for 2012

Insight on how Gold's price surge is helping gold producers, with Richard O'Brien, Newmont Mining president/CEO.

Related Links:

Business & financial news headlines from msnbc.com

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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/46162883/

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Nintendo posts loss on strong yen, weak sales

A boy plays Nintendo's 3DS video game at an electronics retailer in Tokyo Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Nintendo Co. sank into losses for the April-December period last year, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld machine and a strong yen that eroded earnings. The Japanese video game machine maker behind Super Mario and Pokemon franchises reported Thursday a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2012. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

A boy plays Nintendo's 3DS video game at an electronics retailer in Tokyo Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Nintendo Co. sank into losses for the April-December period last year, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld machine and a strong yen that eroded earnings. The Japanese video game machine maker behind Super Mario and Pokemon franchises reported Thursday a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2012. (AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

TOKYO (AP) ? Nintendo Co. sank to losses for the April-December period, battered by a price cut for its 3DS handheld, a strong yen that erodes overseas earnings and competition from mobile devices such as the iPhone that offer games-on-the-go.

The Japanese video game machine maker behind the Super Mario and Pokemon franchises said Thursday it now expects to sell far fewer of its 3DS machines, which feature three-dimensional images. It is forecasting sales of 14 million machines for the fiscal year through March 2012, down from an earlier 16 million. That's despite a price cut for the 3DS in August.

Nintendo, which also makes the Wii home console, posted a loss of 48.35 billion yen ($627.9 million) for the first nine months through December. That was a reversal from a 49.56 billion yen profit the same period in 2010. Nintendo did not break down quarterly numbers.

The company said it will have Wii U, the successor to the Wii, ready in time for the year-end holiday season. Earlier, it had said the machine, which has a touch-screen controller, will go on sale in the latter half of this year. But some had been skeptical whether it would be ready. Nintendo hasn't announced prices.

Kyoto-based Nintendo also lowered its annual earnings forecast to a 65 billion yen ($844 million) loss, much larger than the 20 billion yen ($260 million) loss projected earlier. It posted a 77.62 billion yen profit the previous fiscal year.

Nintendo's past success has come from the appeal of its products to so-called casual gamers ? people who now turn to smartphones and tablet devices such as the iPad from Apple Inc. to enjoy games.

The demand for the Wii has also diminished in recent months.

Nintendo is now expecting to sell 10 million Wii machines in the year ending March, down from an initial estimate of 13 million, which was revised lower to 12 million in July.

Nintendo's nine-month sales dropped 31.2 percent to 556.17 billion yen from the same period the previous year.

The numbers are a disappointment as they include the key year-end holiday season.

"Sales of the 3DS were strong in Japan, but Christmas shopping got to a late start overall in the U.S. and Europe," said Nintendo spokesman Yasuhiro Minagawa. "But we are upbeat about hardware and software sales for next fiscal year."

Worldwide sales of the 3DS for the nine months totaled 11.43 million, the company said. Game software for the 3DS like "Super Mario 3D Land" became million sellers, but games from outside companies did not fare as well, it said.

Competition in portable gaming is heating up with the arrival of the PlayStation Vita from Japanese electronics and entertainment company Sony Corp. Vita went on sale in Japan in December and next month in the U.S. and Europe.

Nintendo has continuously outpaced Sony in portable game sales with its hit DS machines.

The strong yen has also hurt Nintendo's bottom line. The dollar has been trading at about 77 yen lately, down from about 83 yen a year earlier.

Nintendo stock slid 0.6 percent to 10,790 yen in Tokyo.

___

Follow Yuri Kageyama at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-01-26-AS-Japan-Earns-Nintendo/id-33acbce0922f457e80e59dfc5bbadb2b

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O2 UK network security blunder exposes customers' phone numbers to websites

Update: O2 says that as of 1400 GMT today it has fixed, the problem, and that "technical changes" as part of "routine maintenance" were to blame for the issue, which affected customers from Jan. 10 until today. The network's full statement is available on its official blog.

Original story: If you're browsing the web on your phone or tablet on O2 UK, then the network could be exposing your phone number to every website you visit. O2 customer Lewis Peckover recently discovered that when you're browsing over 3G on O2, your handset's phone number is often included in the HTTP headers sent to each website you visit, in plain text.

HTTP headers are information exchanged between your browser and the web server before a page is loaded. In theory, the way O2 includes your phone number -- alongside more mundane information like your IP address, browser and OS -- means that any website you visit could easily find out your number. It's worth pointing out that the header used by O2 to send phone numbers -- "x-up-calling-line-id" -- isn't one that's routinely logged by web servers. However, just a couple of lines of code would allow a malicious server to find your phone number just by having you visit a website over 3G.

Lewis Peckover has set up a site to allow O2 customers to see whether they're affected. We've tried this with an O2 SIM in our Galaxy Nexus, and sure enough, there our phone number was in the list of "headers received". If you're on O2, make sure you've got Wifi disabled on your device, then click here and see if you spot your phone number among the HTTP headers. For what it's worth, early reports indicate that not all O2 customers are affected, though a large proportion apparently are.

This isn't an Android-specific problem, however due to the fact that it's a network-level issue, it'll affect Android phones just the same as any other device that's browsing over O2's data network. For this reason, just about anything that connects via HTTP over O2's network could potentially access this information. For its part, O2 says it's "investigating" the issue, and while this is a big deal for O2 customers, the fact that this is a network-level problem should mean that a fix will be relatively quick and easy to deploy.

More: Lew.io; via: ThinkBroadband

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/W0LTWSsLFNU/story01.htm

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Richard Cordray, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director, Touts Enforcement Powers

WASHINGTON -- The government's new consumer finance watchdog is telling Congress that his agency is ready to sue companies that offer unfair or deceptive mortgages and credit cards.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray says in prepared testimony that his agency can investigate and bring enforcement actions against all types of financial companies now that it has a director in place.

Cordray is speaking to a Republican-controlled subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. He faces questions about the bureau's activities and the legitimacy of his recess appointment by President Barack Obama earlier this month.

Senate Republicans had refused to confirm Cordray because they opposed the creation of the agency. They demanded that it be placed under a bipartisan commission.

Earlier on HuffPost:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/24/richard-cordray-consumer-bureau_n_1228519.html

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Rwanda genocide suspect deported from Canada (Reuters)

KIGALI (Reuters) ? A Rwandan man charged with crimes against humanity has been deported from Canada and is due to arrive in the central African country overnight, Rwanda's justice minister said on Tuesday.

Leon Mugesera, who lost a 16-year battle to stay in Canada, will face charges of inciting murder, extermination and genocide.

Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said he was told Mugesera was on a plane bound for Rwanda, after Canadian authorities said on Monday he would be deported as soon as possible.

"There would be some security that is accompanying him and they would hand him over to Rwandan authorities," Karugarama told Reuters, adding Mugesera would most likely be held in one of two prisons in Rwanda.

Mugesera, who says he fears torture or death if returned to Rwanda, spent years fighting his deportation in various courts. He and his family lived in the predominantly French-speaking province of Quebec.

The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2005 that a speech Mugesera made in Rwanda in 1992 was a crime against humanity by inciting Hutus to kill Tutsis, whom he referred to as cockroaches that should be exterminated.

Rwanda says Mugesera, who was a member of the ruling Hutu party when he made the speech, is a war criminal who was complicit in the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died.

Lawyers for Mugesera argued their client, who taught at a Quebec City college, was a man of integrity who had sheltered ethnic Tutsis.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture had requested Mugesera not be deported until a group of experts could review the case. Ottawa pressed ahead with the deportation.

Rwanda abolished the death penalty in 2007. Its community-based gacaca courts have tried more than 1.2 million genocide-related cases since 2005. The courts will formally close on May 4, 2012.

In October 2011, the European Court of Human Rights agreed to extradite Sylv?re Ahorugeze, another genocide suspect, from Sweden to Rwanda.

Last week, the Tanzania-based U.N. war crimes tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) formally transferred prosecution material for the first case to be heard in Rwanda since the genocide.

"We are now seeing a number of other countries where there are genocide suspects and these countries are now considering extraditing these individuals to Rwanda partly on the basis of the ICTR decision," said Carina Tertsakian, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch.

"I think we are likely to see a sort of snowball effect."

(Editing by Yara Bayoumy)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120124/wl_canada_nm/canada_us_rwanda_genocide_canada

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Egyptians Mark the Tahrir Square Revolution's Anniversary (Time.com)

Courtroom No. 24 at the South Cairo Court is a tumultuous microcosm of postrevolution Egypt. Its wooden benches are packed with men, women and children talking, yelling, never still, as tea and soda vendors weave through the crowd, while a judge inaudibly reads out the names of the defendants on more than a dozen unrelated cases to indicate that their trials have been postponed. Just another day in the life of a country beset by sclerotic bureaucracy and endemic corruption: Egyptians are long accustomed to the fact that everything there takes a long time.

The message of the popular uprising that began one year ago and in just 18 days ended the three-decade reign of President Hosni Mubarak was quite different: Egyptians don't have to wait passively and patiently in hope of getting a fair shake; things can happen remarkably quickly when they take their destiny into their own hands. That's why many have taken to the streets repeatedly over the past year, occupying Tahrir Square, railroads and the doorways of ministries, making demands previously believed to be beyond reach. As the country marks the first anniversary of the uprising on Jan. 25, thousands will take to the streets once again, not only celebrating last year's achievement but also to take up unfinished business. The lesson of Mubarak's ouster for many Egyptians has been that toppling a dictator is not the same as toppling his regime. (Read "Is There Still Hope for a Democratic Egypt?" by Wael Ghonim.)

The crowded halls of Egypt's courts represent both the country's unrelenting woes -- inefficiency, corruption, opacity and even the irrelevance of laws without accountable governance -- and also the revolution's hopes. Justice was the most widely shared goal of the diverse array of Egyptians who joined the uprising, and yet most would concur that it remains elusive. The security men and regime officials accused of killing hundreds of protesters during the rebellion, and in demonstrations since, have mostly gone unpunished. Activists claim that in the year since the uprising, more than 12,000 civilians have appeared before closed military courts, but the trial of the ousted President has dragged on since August. On Monday, according to CNN, Mubarak's attorney argued that his client should be tried in a special court because, technically, he never signed a document certifying his resignation from the presidency. Not that such legal minutiae will determine the court's decision, concedes one jurist. "Till now, the way you get your rights in court is what's your wasta [connections] and who's your cousin," says Hossam Mikawi, a judge at the South Cairo Court.

Mubarak has more wasta than most. Those currently running the country, and deciding such crucial matters as how much authority the newly elected parliament will have, are generals appointed by the ousted President. A few hundred protesters rallied outside the parliament's opening session this week, calling it a relatively nominal step on the road to democracy. "We are here to tell them that the revolution has not ended," said Mohamed Fat'hi, an accountant, who stood among the protesters. "We are here to tell them that we are still going to be in Tahrir, that our cousins were killed in Tahrir and that we have not seen justice." Those protesting outside of parliament are largely drawn from the secular liberal revolutionary groups that led the uprising but were eclipsed by Islamists -- moderate and radical -- once the country's electorate was asked to choose its leaders. Many of them now fear a pact that will enable the Islamists to rule in exchange for accepting immunity for the generals. (See photos of police and protesters clashing in Cairo.)

In Egyptian courtrooms, where there is no jury and -- Mikawi concedes -- judges frequently base their rulings on personal opinion or political allegiance, the power dynamic has changed little over the past year. "It's not about it being difficult to change, it's the uneasiness of touching the judicial system in Egypt," says Ezzat Khamis, the chief judge at the South Cairo Court. Regime-appointed judges like the 66-year-old Khamis have little incentive to change the system that brought them to power. "Till now, the justice system is fulfilling its duty in delivering justice to the people," says the old-guard judge. Mubarak's regime never interfered in the system either, he adds. "Nobody in any institution of this country has any say in the judges' ruling. The only thing that rules is the conscience and the law, and anyone who tries to affect a ruling -- from the President to the lowest employee -- will be tried."

But rights groups and many liberal judges and lawyers dispute Khamis' view. For years, the courts served as little more than a rubber stamp for the regime, they say, and when they ruled against the regime -- on issues like the release of political prisoners -- they were simply ignored. Ahead of the old order's rigged elections, the judges received pay rises to buy their silence, says Mikawi. The key to making real changes, he says, is creating an independent judiciary. (Watch TIME's video "An Islamic Crowd Fills Cairo's Tahrir Square.")

But with Mubarak's authoritarian shoes having been filled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), little has changed, which is why so few officials have been held accountable for the deaths of democracy activists. "The Ministry of Justice chooses the investigators and what to investigate, and the SCAF rules the Ministry of Justice," Mikawi says. "And so what is the result of these investigations? The Maspero incident, Mohamed Mahmoud," he says, listing some of the clashes that left a total of nearly 80 protesters dead in the past three months of 2011. "Of course, we have nothing."

Perhaps anticipating trouble on the rebellion's anniversary, the SCAF on Tuesday repealed Egypt's Emergency Law. Wednesday will see a host of events and marches planned by political parties, officials, activists and even the military to celebrate last year's events. But others will go to protest. Says Mikawi: "The 25th of January is either going to be a birth certificate or a death certificate for the revolution." The staying power of the protest camp will signal that the revolution continues. But a poor showing will underscore the shift from the streets to the elected parliament as the locus of the push for democratization.

Mikawi is confident: a year ago, protesters achieved something momentous in just 18 days, and he believes they have the ability to do it again. "Of course we won't have the same numbers that we had on the first January 25th, but we will have numbers," he says. "We need just to send the message."

-- With reporting by Sharaf al-Houran / Cairo

See how democracy can work in the Middle East.

Watch TIME's video "Mubarak's Gone, but So Are the Tourists and Their Money."

View this article on Time.com

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Google Is Betraying Itself [Blockquote]

From a 2004 Playboy interview with Larry Page, in which the Google co-founder describes a very different company from the one we use now: More »

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BlackBerry maker's CEO: No drastic change needed

In this Feb. 5, 2009 photo, Research In Motion co-CEOs Jim Balsillie, left, and Mike Lazaridis talk to media after an Ontario Securities Commission hearing in Toronto. The company on Sunday, Jan. 22 2012 says Balsillie and Lazaridis are stepping down, and will be replaced by Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Nathan Denette)

In this Feb. 5, 2009 photo, Research In Motion co-CEOs Jim Balsillie, left, and Mike Lazaridis talk to media after an Ontario Securities Commission hearing in Toronto. The company on Sunday, Jan. 22 2012 says Balsillie and Lazaridis are stepping down, and will be replaced by Thorsten Heins, a chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Nathan Denette)

This undated photo provided by Research in Motion shows Thorsten Heins, who on Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012 was named President and Chief Executive Officer of Research In Motion. Heins succeeds co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who announced they are stepping down. (AP Photo/Research In Motion via The Canadian Press)

TORONTO (AP) ? The new chief executive of Research in Motion said Monday that drastic change is not needed, even as the once iconic maker of the BlackBerry smartphone confronts the most difficult period in its history.

The Canadian company turned the smartphone into a ubiquitous device that many couldn't live without. But following the departure of Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who stepped down as co-CEOs and co-chairmen on Monday, Thorsten Heins assumes the chief executive role at a time when Americans are abandoning their Blackberrys for flashier touch-screen phones such as Apple's iPhone and various competing models that run Google's Android software.

RIM's U.S. market share of smartphones dropped from 44 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2011, according to market researcher NPD Group. The company still has 75 million active subscribers, but many analysts believe the company will lose market share internationally, just as it has in the U.S.

Heins, a little known chief operating officer who joined RIM four years ago from Siemens AG, replaces RIM's founders after the company has lost tens of billions in market value. Balsillie acknowledged in December that the last few quarters have been among the most challenging times the company has seen.

Even so, Heins said on a conference call on Monday that he didn't think significant change was needed. He said the leadership change was not a "seismic" event. Heins said he's committed to switching the company's phones over to a new operating system, which is expected late this year. That's the same plan favored by Lazaridis and Balsillie, who announced Sunday they would step down from the top jobs, but serve in other roles.

Heins said RIM has to improve its U.S. marketing to go beyond the traditional corporate customer.

"I want us to have a bit more of an ear towards the consumer market, understand trends, and not just do what the Street is telling you," Heins said.

Shares of RIM fell 5.8 percent, or 99 cents to $16.01, following his remarks. The stock had initially moved up almost 4 percent in premarket trading.

Vic Alboini, president of Jaguar Financial Corp. in Toronto, which has been pushing for a change in leadership, said the drop in stock price on Monday meant the market saw the leadership adjustment as "more of the same."

Many shareholders and analysts have said a change or sale of the company has been needed, but the sudden departure of the two founders from their top jobs wasn't expected despite their promises that they would examine the co-CEO and co-chairmen structure.

Balsillie and Lazaridis have long been celebrated as Canadian heroes, even appearing in the country's citizenship guide for new immigrants as models of success. They headed Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM together for the past two decades.

"There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the board and told them that we thought that time was now," Lazaridis said in a statement.

Lazaridis will take on a new role as vice chairman of RIM's board and chairman of the board's new innovation committee. Balsillie remains a member of the board. The two remain two of RIM's biggest shareholders.

"I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company," Balsillie said in the statement. "I remain a significant shareholder and a director and, of course, they will have my full support."

Analysts have said RIM's future depends on its new software platform as RIM has tried and failed to reinvigorate the BlackBerry.

RIM said last month that new phones deemed critical to the company's future would be delayed until late this year. And its PlayBook tablet, RIM's answer to the Apple iPad, failed to gain consumer support, forcing the company to deeply discount it to move the devices off store shelves.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said in late 2010 that RIM would have a hard time catching up to Apple because RIM has been forced to move beyond its area of strength and into unfamiliar territory of trying to become a software platform company.

BlackBerrys made email mobile and were dominant in the North American smartphone market until the iPhone came along. Under Lazaridis and Balsillie, the company struggled to adjust to the times and match the iPhone's facility with Web browsing, third-party applications and multimedia.

Heins, 54, said Lazaridis and Balsillie took RIM in the right direction and they are "more confident than ever that was the right path."

Barbara Stymiest, a former chief operating officer of the Royal Bank of Canada who has been a member of RIM's board since 2007, has been named chair of the board of directors. RIM also announced that Prem Watsa, the chief executive of Fairfax Financial Holdings, is a new board member. Watsa has become a significant shareholder.

Lazaridis said he was so confident in the future direction of the company that he intends to purchase an additional $50 million of the company's shares on the open market.

RIM was worth more than $70 billion a few years ago but now has a market value of around $8.9 billion. Some industry analysts believe RIM is following the same trajectory as struggling Finish handset maker Nokia or former Canadian tech giant Nortel, which declared bankruptcy in 2009.

BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis agrees that a change in marketing is needed, but it will take more than that to reverse the decline. Gillis said the move is two years late and said he'll get more excited when RIM announces positive news about their new software platform.

"It's just a shuffling of the deck," Gillis said. "He's got a pretty rough road to drive up. The other part is that Mike and Jim are still around. Think about Jerry Yang in Yahoo. When he finally stepped down people said he was still a really big influence on the company."

Stuart Jeffrey at Nomura Securities said the management switch could remove an obstacle toward selling the company, but still believes a buyer is unlikely to surface. The value of the company is uncertain, since the new operating system, BlackBerry 10, is unproven.

Private-equity buyers might be enticed to buy the company for its cash flow, he said, but the fair value for the company is about $15 per share on that basis, meaning private-equity firms are unlikely to pay much above $10.

___

Associated Press writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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English Is an Optimistic Language, Study Suggests (LiveScience.com)

When a team of scientists set out to evaluate the emotional significance of English words, they expected most would fall at the center of the scale, at neutral, while equal shares trailed out to the positive and negative ends of the spectrum.

That is not what they found, however: Instead, we appear to speak an optimistically biased language. ?

"I think it is a happy story," said study researcher Chris Danforth, an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Vermont. "Fundamentally, we have this happy bias built into our language."

Overall, English words ? which he described as the atoms of the language ? tend to be more positive than negative, regardless?of whether they are more common or more rare, they found.?

Danforth and colleagues compiled the 5,000 most frequently used words found in four sources ? two decades of material from The New York Times, 18 months' worth from Twitter, manuscripts from Google Books produced between 1520 and 2008 and music lyrics from 1960 to 2007 ? ?for a total of 10,222 words. Then, using a service called Mechanical Turk, they had 50 people evaluate each word on a scale of 1 to 9, with 1 being least happy, 5 neutral, and 9 happiest.

They found that the average score fell at 6, a full point shift toward positivity.

"That phenomenon is not dependent on which list of words you go to ? it is the same shape for all of these different sources," Danforth said.

Certain positively oriented words (such as"pleasure," "comedy" and "love") and other negatively oriented ones (such as "terrorist," "rape" and "cancer") naturally fall at far ends of the scale. Other words ? such as "the" or "and" ? are truly neutral, receiving solid 5s from evaluators. But there was also another, trickier category. [8 Meanings of the Word 'Love']

Words such as "pregnant," "beef" and "alcohol" received a wide spread of scores from their evaluators, signaling that their positivity or negativity is linkedto the context they are used in.

All were included in the analysis, published online Jan. 11 in the journal PLoS ONE. However, the researchers found that any word with an average score of between 4 and 6 could be excluded without changing the overall result.

Why the positive bent?

The reason for the positivity? The researchers think it is evidence of a pro-social nature of our language.

"[English] developed in a society that succeeded, there must be many reasons behind that, but one of them ought to be that we communicate with each other in a good way that produces good results," Danforth said.

"You need the words to be meaningful," said study researcher Peter Sheridan Dodds, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Vermont. He pointed out negative words are less abundant but more meaningful. ?

"We don't run around saying them all the time ? it's the boy who cried wolf sort of thing," he said. "But we are happy to say 'Have a nice day,' lots of small social things," he said.

In another analysis focused entirely on Twitter, the researchers discerned daily, weekly and annual mood cycles, as well as mood spikes associated with holidays and other events. Overall, however, they found the recent trend has been a downer, with Twitterers using less positive words over time.

Building on their work so far, Dodds and Danforth are constructing a happiness sensor they call a "hedonometer," which would draw on Twitter and other sources to provide a real-time measure of a population's mood.

"We are trying to put another dial on the dashboard of how we think about society's performance," Dodds said. The hedonometer's readings could join measures such as the gross national product or the consumer confidence index to inform policymakers and others, he said.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry.?Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience?and on Facebook.

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Blues singer Etta James dies at 73 (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? Etta James, the influential 1950s rhythm-and-blues singer best known for her show-stopping hit "At Last," died on Friday from complications of leukemia in a California hospital surrounded by her family. She was 73.

Her death prompted tributes from numerous musicians and artists who were influenced by her singing, from pop star Mariah Carey to country's LeAnn Rimes and legendary rock band The Doors.

James died in her home town of Riverside, California, east of Los Angeles, said her manager and friend of some 30 years, Lupe De Leon. She would have turned 74 on Wednesday.

"She passed away this morning. She was with her husband and her sons," said De Leon.

James was diagnosed with leukemia two years ago and had been in failing health for a number of years. Her live-in doctor said in December she was terminally ill with leukemia. James also suffered from diabetes, kidney problems and dementia and was hospitalized late in 2011 because she was struggling to breathe.

The three time Grammy-award winning R&B singer saw numerous ups-and-downs in her career and personal life. She struggled with obesity and heroin addiction, ran a hot-check scheme and had troubled relationships with men, including some gangsters. Her weight ballooned, and in 2003 she underwent gastric bypass surgery and lost more than 200 pounds.

Yet in the music industry, among fellow R&B artists and rock icons, James' career was legendary. With songs like "The Wallflower" and "Good Rockin' Daddy," the three-time Grammy winner was a key figure in the early days of rock 'n' roll, and her signature song, the 1961 ballad "At Last," proved her mastery of the blues.

Carey, one of dozens of musicians paying tribute on Twitter on Friday, said, "Rest in peace to one of the world's most influential singers Etta James, you will be missed."

Rimes tweeted "wonderfully soulful Etta James. You will always be in our heart & on our radios. What a voice, a sad loss."

Beyonce, who was slammed by James in 2009 for singing "At Last" at the inaugural ball for U.S. President Barack Obama, tweeted simply; "RIP Etta James".

The Recording Academy, which gives out the Grammys, said James left behind a dynamic legacy. "She will forever be remembered for her timeless ballad 'At Last,' and a powerful voice that will echo around the world for generations to come," academy president Neil Portnow said in a statement.

Other tributes came from Pink, Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill, Chaka Khan, Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, hip-hop producer Russell Simmons and British blues-rock singer Steve Winwood. The Doors called James "one of the world's legendary R&B icons."

POWER AND PAIN

James sang with a mixture of power and pain that led veteran musical producer Jerry Wexler to call her "the greatest of all modern blues singers ... the undisputed Earth Mother."

But throughout her long career she diversified into mainstream blues, soul and R&B. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

"Etta James is simply one of the best singers I've ever heard," singer-guitarist Bonnie Raitt wrote in Rolling Stone magazine. "... Etta is earthy and gritty, ribald and out-there in a way that few performers have the guts to be."

James' last album, "The Dreamer," was released in 2011. She spent the latter part of her life at home in California.

She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles on January 25, 1938, to an unmarried teenager who told her that her father was legendary pool shark Rudolph Wanderone, better known as Minnesota Fats. James told CNN she introduced herself to Wanderone in 1987 but was unable to confirm he was her father.

James sang gospel in the church choir and stood out even as a 5-year-old. By 1954, she recorded "Roll With Me Henry" with two other girls in a trio called The Peaches.

The group was discovered by bandleader Johnny Otis, and their song, renamed "The Wallflower," topped R&B charts in 1955. The Peaches eventually split up, but James continued recording and later that year "Good Rockin' Daddy" hit the charts.

Otis died on Tuesday in the Los Angeles area, age 90.

In the 1960s, James signed with Chicago's legendary Chess Records label and sang songs like "At Last" and "Trust in Me" that were backed by orchestras. But she never strayed too far from her gospel roots, as evidenced by 1962's "Something's Got a Hold of Me."

Over the decades, James' hit the R&B charts with 30 singles, and placed nine of those songs in pop music's top 40. She has often been cited as influencing singers including Raitt, Janis Joplin and Tina Turner.

James won her first Grammy in 1995 for her album, "Mystery Lady: The Songs of Billie Holiday." She also won Grammys in 2003 and 2005, as well as a lifetime achievement award in 2003 from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Grammys.

She is survived by her husband, Artis Mills, two sons Donto and Sametto who played in James' backing band, and four grandchildren.

(Reporting By Bill Trott and Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bob Tourtellotte)

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Video: Will the public forgive Gingrich?

What if there were another advanced species?

What if Neanderthals, who bit the dust just 28,000 years ago, had instead wised up and were now living next door? Or what if, during all these millennia that humans have been evolving, some unrelated creature had evolved cognitive and technological prowess in keeping with our own? Another scenario: what if humans had split into two separate species ? the original gangsters, and a successful evolutionary offshoot?

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/46077091#46077091

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Iran's Gulf smugglers feel blowback from tensions

KHASAB, Oman (AP) ? By dawn, the unmarked speedboats from Iran pull into port. By dusk, they are racing back across the Strait of Hormuz loaded with smuggled consumer goods ranging from Chinese-made shoes to cut flowers from Holland.

Even as sanctions squeeze Iran ever tighter, there's one clandestine route that remains open for business: A short sea corridor across the Persian Gulf connecting a rocky nub of Oman and the Iranian coast about 35 miles (60 kilometers) away.

Yet even this established smugglers' path is now feeling the bite from the pressures on Iran over its nuclear program.

Business is sharply down, the middlemen and boat crews say, as the slumping Iranian currency leaves fewer customers for the smuggled wares. At the same time, the risks of interception are higher as Iranian authorities step up patrols near the strategic oil tanker lanes at the mouth of the Gulf.

The strait, which is the only access in and out of the Gulf, has been the scene of Cold War-style brinksmanship between Iran and the West after Tehran last month threatened to block the passageway for about one-sixth of the world's oil in retaliation for new U.S. sanctions.

"We used to make two or three trips across every day. Now, it's maybe one," said an Iranian middleman, who gave only his first name Agheel to protect his identity from authorities in his homeland.

He watched crews load up a pickup truck with bolts of fabric from Pakistan and table-size boxes of cut flowers from the Netherlands, before the trucks headed off through the treeless mountains to Khasab port.

The operation smuggles in merchandise to avoid Iranian tariffs and to bring in American and European products that have disappeared from Iranian markets because of international sanctions. Experts note that the consumer items post no real challenge to efforts to block material with military or nuclear uses.

"Still, it shows you can't close off all channels into Iran no matter how hard you try," said Paul Rogers, who follows security affairs at Bradford University in Britain. "People will find a way."

On this side of the Gulf, the smugglers operate under a tacit tolerance from authorities, even though Oman and the United Arab Emirates are close U.S. allies and have pledged to enforce sanctions. The port lies in a sparsely populated peninsula enclave belonging to Oman but encircled on land by the UAE, a legacy of how the area was carved up in the final days of British rule here in the last century that resulted in Oman holding joint control with Iran over the strait.

The goods are legally imported into the UAE and truck drivers take them across the border, paying the customary 50 dirham ($13.50) entry fee, according to the smugglers interviewed by The Associated Press. In Khasab, the merchandise is taken to warehouses and then piled on the docks less than 100 yards (100 meters) from the port police headquarters.

Omani authorities did not respond to requests for comment on the traffic.

The Khasab speedboats are far from the only back channel into Iran. Drug traffickers easily cross the hinterland borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan, and black market networks stretch across the frontiers with Iraq and Turkey. Authorities in Iraq's Kurdish region have been under pressure for years to crack down on fuel trucks heading into Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

But Khasab stands out for its openness and for lying on the highly sensitive Strait.

A shipment arranged by the Iranian smuggler Agheel this week was done with practiced efficiency.

A pickup truck backed into a wood-floored warehouse with hundreds of cases of cigarettes bundled three together and wrapped tightly in gray plastic weave ? in total 3,000 cigarettes under south Asian brands such as Ruby Menthol. The truck was soon sagging under the weight of boxes piled five high.

Agheel did some quick calculations: Each three-case load cost him about $1,200 and he could sell them to merchants in Iran for the equivalent of about $1,350 under current exchange rates. The truck pulling out of the warehouse represented a potential return of about $4,500.

"If we don't get caught," he added.

The smugglers have their ways of avoiding Iranian authorities.

Spotters off the coast ? on the island of Qeshm and near the port of Bandar Abbas ? call in coast guard movements to Khasab. The speedboat drivers keep close attention to the water conditions on the Strait and try to approach the Iranian coast just after sunset. The trip can take as little as 90 minutes in calm seas and up to four hours in rough water in the stripped down stripped-down 16-foot (five-meter) fiberglass boats.

Agheel's truck passed through the Khasab customs station at midday and then down a strip of hardscrabble road.

At the port ? almost in the shadow of a Costa cruise ship making a day stop ? dozens of boats were being packed and secured for the trip. There were no names or markings on the speedboats. But the items loaded on carried familiar logos: LG 42-inch flatscreen TVs, Discovery Channel DVDs, Panasonic microwaves, Yamaha motorcycle parts. Also in the stacks were textiles, satellite dishes and Chinese-made clothes and shoes.

One boat driver, who gave his name only as Aziz, had a breakfast of eggs, beans and Mountain Dew as he waited for the day's shipment to be loaded for the return run to Qeshm, a long arrow-shaped island near the Iranian coast and a main waystation for the smugglers.

Months ago, he could make as many trips as possible because the merchants in Iran were demanding goods.

But now the struggling Iranian rial ? dragged down partly by U.S.-led sanctions that could target Iran's Central Bank ? has put many things out of reach for Iranians, he said.

"No one wants to buy because the (rial) rate is not stable," he said.

He also said the Iranian coastal patrols have been boosted amid the escalating tensions over the Strait.

On Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the American military is "fully prepared" to deal with any Iranian effort to close the waterway. Next month, Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard plans naval exercises in the area.

If spotted by patrols, Aziz said the two-man boat crews try to heave the goods overboard. They then must pay back the smuggling network, which can amount to thousands of dollars.

But it's worth the risk, he said.

"The situation is getting worse now," he said. "All the prices are up and Qeshm has nothing else" except smuggling.

Associated Press

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