Police arrest 75 protesters at Oakland's City Hall (AP)

OAKLAND, Calif. ? Police in riot gear cleared anti-Wall Street protesters from in front of Oakland's City Hall on Tuesday morning, leaving a sea of overturned tents, protest signs and trash strewn across the plaza.

Hundreds of officers and sheriff's deputies from more than a dozen agencies went into the two week-old encampment with tear gas and beanbag rounds at around 5 a.m., police said. Seventy-five people were arrested, mostly on suspicion of misdemeanor unlawful assembly and illegal camping.

About 170 protesters were at the site, but no one was injured, according to police.

"I'm very pleased with the way things went," Interim Oakland Police Chief Howard Jordan said at a news conference following the raid.

Television news footage showed protesters being taken away in plastic handcuffs without incident, though some protesters complained of rough handling by police.

Officers fired tear gas and bean bags when one group of demonstrators pelted officers with rocks and bottles near the camp's kitchen area, Jordan said.

"It was definitely chaos. People didn't want to get gassed," said protester Anthony Owens, 40, a computer programmer from Oakland who was at the scene when police moved in but was not arrested.

Some people in the camp left as word spread about possible police action, Owens said. Many of the remaining protesters locked arms and shouted as officers surrounded the plaza and moved in.

Witnesses reported seeing smoke rising from the area. The plaza was "contained" at around 5:30 a.m., city officials said.

The Oakland site was among numerous camps that have sprung up around the country, as protesters rally against what they see as corporate greed and a wide range of other economic issues. The protests have attracted a wide range of people, including college students looking for work and the homeless.

In Oakland, tensions between the city and protesters escalated last week as officials complained about what they described as deteriorating safety, sanitation and health issues at the site.

City officials had originally been supportive of protesters, with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan saying that sometimes "democracy is messy."

But the city later warned the protesters that they were breaking the law and couldn't stay in the encampment overnight. They cited concerns about rats, fire hazards, public urination and acts of violence at the site, which had grown to more than 150 tents and included areas for health care, child care and cooking.

"Many Oaklanders support the goals of the national Occupy Wall Street movement," Quan said in a statement on Tuesday. "However, over the last week it was apparent that neither the demonstrators nor the City could maintain safe or sanitary conditions or control the ongoing vandalism."

There were reports of a sex assault and a severe beating and fire and paramedics were denied access to the camp, according to city officials, who said they had also received numerous complaints of intimidating and threatening behavior.

Protesters disputed the city's claims about conditions at the camp. They said the protest was dominated by a spirit of cooperation that helped keep the site clean and allowed disputes to be resolved peacefully.

Lauren Richardson, a 24-year-old college student from Oakland, complained that the disheveled state of the camp following the police raid gave a false impression. She said volunteers collected garbage and recycling every six hours, that water was boiled before being used to wash dishes and that rats had infested the park long before the camp went up.

"It was very neat. It was very organized," Richardson said.

Volunteers at the medical tent erected on the site said paramedics had not been kept away.

On Thursday, the city ordered the protesters to vacate, though they did not set a deadline. Protesters said the number of people at the camp had steadily dwindled since the city posted the letter, while those who remained understood they would likely face a confrontation with police.

After Tuesday's raid, police maintained a heavy presence around downtown Oakland. Streets were closed off by police barricades, and at least two helicopters were in the air shining lights down. Dozens of officers were on the streets, and police in riot gear were seen facing off with shouting protesters, who briefly blocked traffic on a busy thoroughfare.

City officials advised downtown businesses to delay opening and city employees to come in late.

Police also cleared a smaller encampment from a park near the plaza on Tuesday morning.

The city said protesters would be allowed to return to the plaza after it was cleaned up and could stay between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. but not overnight.

Many protesters said the raid had only served to strengthen their resolve that the protests would continue. A flier handed out along the police barricades at the edge of the plaza Tuesday morning asked Occupy Oakland demonstrators to reconvene at the city's public library in the afternoon.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111025/ap_on_re_us/us_occupy_wall_street_oakland

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A Decade On, Windows XP Is Still the World's Most-Used Desktop OS [Techniversary]

Windows XP first went on sale ten years ago today. In that span, it has become the desktop OS of choice with a worldwide install base of as much as 80 percent. Here's looking at you XP. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/DfrPs7GCEx8/a-decade-on-windows-xp-is-still-the-worlds-most+used-desktop-os

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It's Official: Fungus Causes Bat-Killing White-Nose Syndrome

News | More Science

Experimental infections prove that Geomyces destructans is responsible for white-nose syndrome

By David Biello ?| October 26, 2011

LITTLE BROWN BAT: A fungus is responsible for the white-nose syndrome that has killed more than 1 million bats of various species, particularly the little brown bat pictured here. Image: ? Alan Hicks

Supplemental Material

• MP3 file Audio Bat Die-Offs Affect Human Health and Economics

A fungus known as Geomyces destructans is indeed responsible for the dusting of white across bat noses and wings that has wiped out entire populations of the flying mammals, new research shows. By purposefully infecting healthy bats with the fungus?and confirming that seemingly healthy "control" bats from the same population did not get sick from a prior but hidden fungal infection?microbiologist David Blehert of the U.S. Geological Survey and his colleagues showed in a paper published online October 26 in Nature that G. destructans is in fact responsible for the disease known as white-nose syndrome (WNS), which has devastated bat populations across the northeastern U.S., killing an estimated one million of the animals. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

"It is specifically during hibernation that bats are infected with this fungus," Blehert notes. "The greatest damage it does to bats is to wing membranes."

Such membranes, in addition to enabling flight, help control physiological functions such as water retention and blood flow, and even "release CO2 when the respiratory rate is just a couple of breaths per minute," Blehert says. At the same time, it is not clear why a skin infection with G. destructans would prove directly lethal to the animals?the bats in this controlled experiment had not died from the disease by the time the experiment ended after 102 days. Nor had the fungus invaded the bats' vital organs, the researchers found.

In addition, it appears that G. destructans has been a part of the European cave-scape for some time and it has been isolated from cave walls there as well as from bats roosting in those caves. Thus far, however, the fungus has not proved lethal for those species. "It could be that European bats have evolved over a longer period of time and are immune or have a different way of coping with the fungus during hibernation," says mycologist Vishnu Chaturvedi of the New York State Department of Health, who is also studying the fungus and disease, which he calls geomycosis, but was not involved in this study. "Or the fungus in the U.S. has subtle variations that we have not even started looking at."

The core problem seems to be that G. destructans is depleting the fat layers?and thus the body mass?of very small North American bat species, such as the little brown bats used in this experiment. Blehert speculates that the lack of mass mortality in Europe may derive from the fact that European bat species are generally larger in size or the fact that they tend to hibernate in much smaller groups. "In the northeastern U.S. there are many very large hibernaculums, with upwards of 1,000 bats," Blehert notes. "The bat is providing food for the fungus and serving as an amplification host."

In fact, Blehert's experiments show that bats are quite effective at spreading the destructive fungal disease to their neighbors. "Bats are very good agents of transmission of the disease," Chaturvedi says. And that?plus the European analysis?may suggest that G. destructans is an invasive species, according to Blehert, which possibly traveled to the U.S. on a European who visited a public cavern in New York State. WNS was first observed in a wild cave connected to that commercial cave complex near Albany, N.Y. Chaturvedi's work has shown that G. destructans in North America is genetically similar wherever it is found.

There is hope for the bats. Another experiment by Blehert and his colleagues showed that bats artificially removed from hibernation, put in a warm environment, and provided with food and water could recover from WNS. "Bats can rapidly clear the infection in just a matter of weeks," Blehert says. It may be that G. destructans relies on the turning down or shutting off of the bat's immune system during hibernation?as is common to most hibernating mammals?to wreak havoc. The fungus seems to grow best at cold temperatures between 4 and 15 degrees Celsius. "It could be that hibernation is the Achilles' heel that is predisposing bats to G. destructans infection," Blehert adds.

But keeping hundreds of thousands of bats from hibernating is hardly plausible. "You can't just wake them up and shoo them out," Blehert notes, nor is it possible to feed them in mass quantities to restore fat levels. Restricting human access to caves where susceptible bats hibernate?as has been done by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service?and following decontamination protocols when such access is necessary will at least reduce the risk of humans further spreading the disease, which has now spread to infect bats in 11 states and Canada. "Segregating healthy animals from diseased ones to the extent possible does seem to be able to control this infection," Chaturvedi adds.

Regardless, the G. destructans epidemic is just another example of fungal disease on the march: Chytridiomycosis is wiping out amphibians worldwide and fungi may be playing a role in the colony-collapse disorder plaguing honeybees. One effort to protect frogs from this fungal plague are so-called amphibian arks, where small populations are taken into captivity to ensure their survival. That approach may become necessary for certain endangered bat species as well to protect them from the white-nose syndrome caused by G. destructans. As Blehert and his colleagues wrote: "Fungal pathogens have the unique capacity to drive host populations to extinction because of their ability to survive in host-free environments."

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=fc9efc6e94c04cc620a6f80c48b4d17f

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"Tower Heist" Steals Into New York City (Fashion Wire Daily)

New York ? Eddie Murphy and his cinematic criminal cohorts joined forces to take over New York City on Monday, Oct. 24, as they gathered to premiere "Tower Heist" at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Murphy, who also produced the comedy caper flick, had an easy explanation for why he jumped into the project with both feet.

"I wanted to get out of the house and do some stuff," he said at an earlier press conference. "I'd been sitting around the house too long. So I was like, let me get out and do something. I hadn't done a film like this. And that's why it was, 'Hey, I want to do a movie and do something I haven't done.' So here we are."

The "we" of "Tower Heist" is a star-studded group, and most joined Murphy on the red carpet for the celebration, with Ben Stiller leading the gang. Having Stiller as his comedic foil was exactly what Murphy wanted when he started the process of putting "Tower Heist" together with famed producer Brian Grazer. "I'm a big fan of Ben's," Murphy declared. "And I've been wanting to work with him for years. So this all came together perfect for me. I'm very happy to be here."

Casey Affleck, Gabourey Sidibe, Judd Hirsch, Tea Leoni, Alan Alda and Matthew Broderick rounded out the smiling cast. Broderick brought his wife Sarah Jessica Parker and their son James, while Stiller escorted his spouse, actress Christine Taylor. Serena Williams, Sean Combs, Tracy Morgan, Paz de la Huerta and Donald Trump with his wife Melania also turned out for the premiere.

Brett Ratner, the film's director, was actually the night's real center of attention, perhaps because he's also the man tapped to produce the upcoming Academy Awards show. He's already chosen Eddie Murphy as the host, a fact that might worry a lesser performer. But it doesn't faze Murphy.

"I don't get nervous," the veteran comedian said with a chuckle. "The Oscars is just a fun thing to do. I mean the pressure involves a bunch of artists coming in and being honored. I've got a pretty easy job coming out, introduce people, stand up straight. You know, I may be in a couple of silly sketches or something. But I don't feel any pressure. I'm kind of looking forward to it."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/fashion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/fwd/20111025/en_fashion_fwd/towerheiststealsintonewyorkcity

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US House votes to reject EU emissions control plan

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The U.S. House of Representatives voted Monday to exclude U.S. airlines from an emissions cap-and-trade program that the European Union plans to impose on all airlines flying to and from the continent beginning next year.

With the legislation, which passed by voice vote, lawmakers joined the airline industry and the Obama administration in opposing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme scheduled to go into effect on Jan. 1. The bill now goes to the Senate, where there is currently no companion legislation.

The measure directs the transportation secretary to prohibit U.S. carriers from participating in the program if it is unilaterally imposed. It also tells other federal agencies to take steps necessary to ensure that U.S. carriers are not penalized by the emissions control scheme.

The EU program began in 2005 with the capping of carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, refineries, steel mills and other industrial producers. Next year it extends to airlines, which are said to be responsible for about 3 percent of greenhouse gases.

Under the program, similar to the cap-and-trade concept that President Barack Obama unsuccessfully tried to move through Congress, each airliner is issued permits to emit a certain amount of carbon dioxide. They can buy extra credits if they emit more than their allowed limit, or sell credits if they emit less. Payments would be made to the EU country to which they most frequently fly.

The EU says the costs to airlines will be modest and will have minimal impact on passenger fares. The U.S. aviation industry says the cost between 2012 and 2020 could hit $3.1 billion. It says it is unfair that a flight from the United States, for example from Los Angeles, would have to pay for emissions for all parts of flights to Europe, including time spent over the United States and the Atlantic.

"It's a tax grab by the European Union," the House's Republican Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica said. "The meter starts running the minute the plane departs from any point in the U.S. until it reaches Europe."

In 2009, American, United and Continental Airlines and the Air Transport Association of America filed suit in a case now before the European Court of Justice, arguing that the unilateral imposition of emissions rules violates international aviation agreements.

They received a setback this month when the court's advocate general, a legal adviser, said in a nonbinding statement that the EU emissions trading scheme is compatible with international law and urged the court to reject the U.S. challenge.

That drew fire from Krishna R. Urs, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for transportation affairs, who repeated the U.S.'s "strong legal and policy objections to the inclusion of flights by non-EU carriers" in the EU program.

The Air Transport Association said that preliminary opinion "does not mark the end of this case" and noted that more than 20 countries, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and Japan, oppose the EU plan.

"It imposes an exorbitant tax that siphons away from aviation the very funds it needs to continue to invest in aircraft technology, sustainable alternative fuels and infrastructure advances," the ATA said.

Mica, who recently led a delegation to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal, said ICAO member nations next month will approve overwhelmingly a measure opposing the EU's carbon trading system.

"This shouldn't lead to a trade war," Mica said. "It should lead to a resolution that does improve our environment."

One of the few voices of dissent came from Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, who said the United States also passes laws that dictate security and pollution standards for foreign ships and planes entering U.S. territory. "The Europeans are taking climate change seriously. We shouldn't undermine their efforts by legislating that our airlines break the law."

___

The bill is H.R. 2594

Online:

Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-10-24-Congress-Airline%20Emissions/id-3cb6cd13765448e3aa122830bb4fe013

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AP Essay: Leaders, once mythic, reduced in death

FILE - In this file image made from amateur video provided by the Libya Youth Movement and filmed on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, center, is surrounded by Libyan fighters in Sirte, Libya. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, Liberia's Samuel Doe, Benito Mussolini and, now, Gadhafi. No matter how much a powerful human being builds up a cult of personality in life, when an undignified death arrives _ the moments before it and the hours afterward _ the incontrovertible reality is hard to avoid: We are, in the end, merely lumps of flesh. What's different today is that sometimes the world gets to see it. (AP Photo/Libya Youth Movement via APTN, File)

FILE - In this file image made from amateur video provided by the Libya Youth Movement and filmed on Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011, Moammar Gadhafi, center, is surrounded by Libyan fighters in Sirte, Libya. Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, Liberia's Samuel Doe, Benito Mussolini and, now, Gadhafi. No matter how much a powerful human being builds up a cult of personality in life, when an undignified death arrives _ the moments before it and the hours afterward _ the incontrovertible reality is hard to avoid: We are, in the end, merely lumps of flesh. What's different today is that sometimes the world gets to see it. (AP Photo/Libya Youth Movement via APTN, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 22, 2011 file photo, a man photographs the body of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi on a mattress in a commercial freezer at a shopping center in Misrata, Libya, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, Liberia's Samuel Doe, Benito Mussolini and, now, Gadhafi. No matter how much a powerful human being builds up a cult of personality in life, when an undignified death arrives _ the moments before it and the hours afterward _ the incontrovertible reality is hard to avoid: We are, in the end, merely lumps of flesh. What's different today is that sometimes the world gets to see it. (AP Photo/David Sperry, File)

NEW YORK (AP) ? It may be true, it may be myth. But in 1967, when Che Guevara faced the Bolivian army sergeant who was about to execute him, history records the legendary revolutionary's final words like this: "Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man."

Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu, Liberia's Samuel Doe, Benito Mussolini and, now, Moammar Gadhafi. No matter how much a mythologized despot or mastermind builds up a cult of personality in life, when an undignified death arrives, the incontrovertible reality is hard to avoid: We are, in the end, merely lumps of flesh.

What's different today is that sometimes the world gets to see it.

Exhibit A: the surreal odyssey of Gadhafi's violent ending over the past few days. The ruthless strongman, who for four decades erected giant billboards and intricate mosaics to his own glory, exited the stage in a series of chaotic, deeply disturbing bursts of amateur video.

First we saw his battered corpse, enmeshed in the chaos of revolution's final throes in his hometown. Then video emerged of him alive, bloodied, mumbling, struggling to survive as revolutionaries splayed him upon a hood as a trophy. Finally, there he was laid out, shirtless, on a brown floral twin mattress in a shopping-mall freezer; his fellow Libyans lined up and gawked. A blusterer and preener for so many years, Gadhafi had been laid low, rendered small.

"When we captured him, he was like a child," said Hassan Doua, a commander in Libya whose fighters found Gadhafi in Sirte. "He hardly looked us in the eye. It was very hard for us to believe this man was the reason for all the killing."

Now, a new, unpredictable element has emerged. The potent combination of cellphone video and the social media network that transmits it around the world. As with the ghostly phone-cam images of Saddam Hussein's disorderly execution in late 2006, the emerging medium turned a despot's death and its aftermath into a globally distributed snuff film.

In death, these commanding figures are, at last, human ? no longer cocooned by the carefully calibrated facades that their power allowed them to create. It's like the American celeb-magazine features that find common ground between famous people and the rest of the world ? "Stars: They're Just Like Us." But in these leaders' cases, the twisted notoriety of their demises brought them down to size.

"Death is the ultimate take-down," says Mary Roach, author of "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers."

"It's a powerful, visceral verification of that basic truth that we are all just flesh and blood, that even the most powerful and seemingly omnipotent among us are in fact as vulnerable as children," she says.

Which, of course, is how all humans encounter their own ends ? with no firsthand knowledge of what lies beyond. Images like those of Gadhafi before and after he died are a jarring reminder of death's informality, which humans often struggle to hide. It's also a weird intimacy: There is perhaps nothing more personal than the moments just before death and the hours after it. That we can be privy to these moments at all ? let alone the degrading expression of them, controlled and disseminated by one's enemies ? is visceral.

This notion holds true even with Osama bin Laden, whose death photos President Barack Obama decided not to release. "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies," Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" afterward. But though no one beyond a small group saw the postmortem images of his body, even the loose contours of description ? shot dead in his bedroom at night, his wife by his side, porn found in nearby computers ? undercut the global-mastermind legend that al-Qaida's leader spent two decades crafting.

Sometimes, in more controlled circumstances, a mythic figure's body is used to amplify his reign rather than reduce it. Even after decades of decay, the preserved corpses of Lenin and Mao still lie on display in the lands they changed irrevocably. They serve as reminders that the human body is a malleable symbol for those who control it. Of course, in those two cases the leaders' governments survived them and endured for many years.

Whatever ultimately happens with Gadhafi's body, the impact of its visibility will endure. Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate about his objections to the Libyan leader's end, nevertheless acknowledged the sentiment of many in the Arab world: "At the close of an obscene regime," he wrote, "it is natural for people to hope for something like an exorcism. It is satisfying to see the cadaver of the monster and be sure that he can't come back."

That's the very definition of "habeas corpus" ? "you have the body." And now, in an age when a device we keep in our pockets can reveal a dictator's demise, it has never been more relevant. Whether it's Saddam hanging from a rope, Nicolae Ceausescu dead in his suit and tie, or Gadhafi beaten and confused and then dead and gone, the sight of the body is one of the most powerful political and emotional totems of all.

Gadhafi's former subjects attested to that in the city of Misrata this weekend. In long lines curling around corners and into the street, they waited to enter a produce locker in a run-down shopping plaza. There, upon that blood-stained mattress, they saw a man they held responsible for years of misery and ruined lives.

They looked down upon his shirtless remains, his toupee gone, his slight pot belly visible, his oft-facelifted visage sagging. They smiled and they ogled and they wept. They were the ones who had the power now. The man who had carefully built himself into a curious myth was rendered unto those he once ruled as something diminished and frail, hurtling toward impermanence and irrelevance.

Great and terrible in life, in death these mythologized despots and masterminds are revealed at last as the much smaller men behind the curtain ? shorn of the outsized facades that frightened and mesmerized so many for so long. The stars, in the end, are just like us.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE ? Ted Anthony writes about American culture for The Associated Press. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/anthonyted

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2011-10-23-The%20Great%20Equalizer/id-f160e917c4f14868ac5cc450c4baf3b2

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Video: Understanding the ?08 financial collapse

Battling for gay rights, in Allah's name

Like other aspiring religious reformers before her, Ani Zonneveld takes positions that make her unpopular with her religion's spiritual leaders, in this case America's Islamic leaders, including advocating for gay Muslims. Msnbc.com's Kari Huus reports.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/vp/45023311#45023311

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