Massachusetts opens long-hidden Romney archives

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, speaks to supporters and volunteers during a rally Saturday, Dec. 3, 2011, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Massachusetts will make available to the public hundreds of boxes of documents from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's term as governor that have long been locked away, the state said Tuesday. The same agency that is opening the files said it would not pursue an inquiry into the purge of electronic records at the end of Romney's term.

The moves come after disclosures that Romney had authorized the purging of emails and other closely-held electronic records at the end of administration.

The decision by the Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth will ultimately make available more than 460 boxes of documents stored since 2006 in the state archives in south Boston. They were closed to public inspection because of legal uncertainty over the impact of a court ruling that said Massachusetts governor's records were not subject to disclosure.

Romney's presidential campaign aides recently cited that decision to justify the deletion of files from Massachusetts email servers at the end of his governor's term in 2007. Romney also allowed aides to buy and remove their government hard drives and authorized the replacement of leased computers in his executive offices.

A commonwealth spokesman, Brian McNiff, said agency officials decided last week to open up the archived records after a legal review that began last spring, as media and political groups have been pressing for access to the records.

"The decision was made that all of Gov. Romney's records would be made available," McNiff said.

McNiff also said Tuesday that the commonwealth would not pursue an inquiry into the purge of electronic records even though Massachusetts officials have concluded that state law required Romney's aides to have maintained the records.

Both Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin and his top legal counsel, Laurie Flynn, said recently that governor's records must be preserved under state schedules even if they do not have to be disclosed. But McNiff said there would be no examination of the circumstances surrounding the electronics records purge, which was first reported last month by the Boston Globe. McNiff would not elaborate on that decision.

Romney recently acknowledged that he approved the electronics records purge at end of his term because of concerns that the records might include confidential materials. Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior campaign adviser, said that the GOP presidential contender submitted more than 630 boxes of paper files to the state archives in late 2006 in what he said was the interest of transparency.

McNiff said that the newly released boxes of documents could be viewed only five boxes at a time, and any request to review the new material would require what he described as a short delay while archives officials reviewed the files and censored confidential material.

The documents will be reviewed in light of the 1997 Massachusetts high court ruling that exempted governor's records from state public disclosure laws. McNiff said that Romney's representatives would not be consulted during the redaction process. "They're not involved," he said.

A Romney campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, noted that Romney had sent the materials to the state archives with the intent of making them available to the public.

An Associated Press examination of much of the available Romney archives holdings earlier this year suggested the material available then was far from comprehensive. More than 75 cartons reviewed by the AP included staff and legislative documents but no internal records written to or from Romney himself ? except for ceremonial bill-signing and official letters.

News organizations have pressed to view the archived Romney files. Also, the Democratic National Committee recently submitted three open-records requests to current Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, seeking to learn more background about the Romney administration's purge of emails and other electronic records.

Romney's campaign, meanwhile, has asked Patrick's office for any evidence of collusions between his staff and Obama re-election officials.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2011-12-06-US-Romney-Transparency/id-c0d309fa99df4b7493f4c67ae7e734c1

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Jury deliberates death penalty in home invasion case (Reuters)

NEW HAVEN (Reuters) ? A Connecticut jury began deliberating on Monday whether a man convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a gruesome home invasion should be executed for his crimes.

The same 12-person panel convicted Joshua Komisarjevsky, 31, in October of the 2007 murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her two daughters Hayley Petit, 17, and Michaela Petit, 11. The girls' father was the sole survivor of the attack.

Komisarjevsky's accomplice, Steven Hayes, was convicted separately of similar charges and has been sentenced to death.

"You have found the defendant guilty. You must now decide if he lives or dies," Judge Jon Blue told the jury in New Haven Superior Court. "Your responsibility is the most awesome that can be placed upon a jury in our system."

Komisarjevsky and Hayes were convicted of an attack that began after Komisarjevsky spotted Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her younger daughter in a supermarket and followed them to their home in Cheshire, Connecticut.

For several hours, the pair held the family captive, although at one point Hawke-Petit was forced to drive to a bank and withdraw $15,000.

After she returned, she was raped and strangled. The girls, tied to their beds, died of smoke inhalation as the home was set on fire. The younger girl was sexually assaulted.

The sole survivor of the attack, Dr. William Petit, was badly beaten and tied up in the basement but managed to escape as the house went up in flames.

He has attended both men's trials. On Monday, he bowed his head and closed his eyes as the judge read the names of his wife and daughters when charging the jury.

Komisarjevsky sat between his defense attorneys and appeared to be following along with the jury's written instructions. His parents Benedict and Jude Komisarjevsky, who have attended the proceedings, were not in court.

Connecticut has only executed one person, in 2005, since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The jury can sentence Komisarjevsky, who was convicted of 17 charges including murder, kidnapping, arson and sexual assault, to life in prison without the possibility of parole or to die by lethal injection.

During six weeks of the sentencing phase of the case, the defense said Komisarjevsky was molested as a child and that his extremely religious parents relied on prayer and failed to get him clinical help for his troubled behavior.

The defense presented a list of more than 40 mitigating factors arguing against a death sentence, which the jury must weigh against aggravating factors cited by prosecutors.

The mitigating factors included a biological predisposition to mood disorders, strict religious upbringing, sexual assault as a child, his parents and the state's inability to obtain clinical treatment for sexual assaults, mental health disorders and a series of concussions.

The defense attorneys also argued that Komisarjevsky's role in the home invasion was smaller than that of Hayes.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Johnston)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/crime/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111205/us_nm/us_crime_homeinvasion

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US volunteers in North Korea to build homes (AP)

PYONGYANG, North Korea ? A group of Americans is in North Korea to kick off a project to build 50 homes for families working at a tree farm outside Pyongyang.

Six volunteers affiliated with the Fuller Center for Housing arrived Tuesday. Their trip comes at a time of improving relations between the U.S. and North Korea.

The 50-unit project will house the families of workers at a tree nursery in Osan-ri.

Participants with the nonprofit Fuller Center say they'll be working side by side with North Koreans to build the homes.

They're aiming to finish three homes this week, and other volunteers are expected to arrive in coming months to help complete the project.

In Americus, Georgia, Fuller Center President David Snell called the project a "true mission of peace."

The United States and North Korea fought on opposite sides of the Korean War and do not have diplomatic relations. Diplomats from the two countries recently held talks about resuming six-nation nuclear disarmament talks.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/nkorea/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111206/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_us_volunteers

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Daily Crunch: Sleep It Off

1488Here are some recent stories on TechCrunch Gadgets: Video: Anti-Sleep Apnea Robot Pillow Gibson Buys Stanton DJ Equipment, Proving Korn Was On To Something 2011 Holiday Gift Guide: Sports Watches To Help Burn Off The Turkey Hey Android Tab Makers: Put Them Where People Can See Them HTML5 Smart Board Attempts To Out-Surface The Surface

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6g8cgX4UkGQ/

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Yoshikazu Tanaka On How Mobile Social Gaming Will Make GREE ...

One of the fastest growing companies in Japan right now is GREE, a publicly-traded mobile social gaming network with 900 employees and on track to generate $1.7 billion in annual revenues. I interviewed GREE founder and CEO Yoshikazu Tanaka through an interpreter earlier this week at the TechCrunch Tokyo conference. Here are two videos from that interview. (You can watch a third video in my post today comparing GREE?s financials to Zynga?s).

In the video above, Tanaka talks about why he bought OpenFeint in the U.S. last April and how he wants to follow Nintendo in getting to 80 percent of revenues from outside Japan. But more than just follow Nintendo, he wants to displace it. Smartphones are replacing traditional gaming hardware and the games are different in that social features (playing with and against other people over the network) can trump graphics. ?Our goal is to make our brand just as successful, if not better, than Nintendo,? says Tanaka.

Tanaka tells me how he started GREE o a server in his apartment in 2004 in the longer video below. Originally, it was a PC-based social network (the Friendster of Japan), but he shifted to a mobile social network for games a few years later. Now 99 percent of GREE?s users are mobile. ?We believe the PC will get erased at some point,? he says matter-of-factly.


GREE is a Tokyo-based web services company that was founded in 2004 by then 26-year old Yoshikazu Tanaka. Before, Tanaka was responsible for operating the auctions operations for Rakuten, Japan?s biggest online shopping mall. The name GREE is derived from a sociological concept called ?Six Degrees of Separation?. The company?s flagship product is called GREE Mobile, a mix of social network and free casual gaming platform. GREE started social network services on the fixed Internet but ultimately lost to Mixi,...

Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/02/tanaka-gree-next-nintendo/

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End of the line for Cain? Announcement Saturday (AP)

ATLANTA ? Rapidly becoming a mere footnote in the presidential race, Herman Cain sent mixed signals Friday on whether he would abandon his beleaguered White House bid on Saturday after a woman's allegation of an extramarital affair.

He said he would make a "major announcement" on whether he would press on ? at an event still being billed as the grand opening of a new headquarters.

It is the latest ? and perhaps final ? twist in a campaign saga that has taken the Georgia businessman from unknown longshot to surprise frontrunner to embattled tabloid subject.

He arrived at his suburban Atlanta home on Friday afternoon to talk with his wife of 42 years, Gloria, about whether to press on after his campaign was rocked by multiple sexual harassment allegations and this week's claim that he had a 13-year affair. He denies wrongdoing. It was their first face-to-face meeting since the allegation was made public.

Earlier, in a speech in Rock Hill, S.C., Cain wouldn't disclose whether he would drop out but told supporters to stay tuned. He said he would clarify the next steps of the campaign and assured backers the affair claim was "garbage." But he also said he needed to consider what he would do with campaign donations already banked if he dropped out of the race.

"Nobody's going to make me make that prematurely," Cain told a crowd of about 100 people. "That's all there is to it."

"My wife and family comes first. I've got to take that into consideration," Cain added. "I don't doubt the support that I have. Just look at the people who are here."

Cain had not seen his wife since Ginger White, 46, came forward and said she had a sexual affair with Cain that lasted more than a decade. He has said they were only friends but acknowledged that he helped pay her monthly bills and expenses. His wife, Cain said, did not know of the friendship with White.

The former Godfather's pizza executive said he is reassessing whether his presidential bid is still viable.

But it was difficult to imagine a path forward with just a month until the lead-off Iowa caucuses.

Polls suggest his popularity has taken a deep hit.

A Des Moines Register poll released Friday showed Cain's support plummeting, with backing from 8 percent of Republican caucusgoers in Iowa, down from 23 percent a month ago.

Fundraising has also fallen off. He issued an email appeal to supporters on Friday asking for donations, in an attempt to gauge whether his financial support has dried up.

"I need to know that you are behind me 100 percent," Cain told backers. "In today's political environment, the only way we can gauge true support is by the willingness of our supporters to invest in this effort.

A political novice, Cain leveraged strong tea party support to hurtle to the front of the Republican pack in October casting himself as an anti-establishment outsider. His catchy 9-9-9 tax overhaul proposal helped his rise. But his effort soon lost altitude.

He fumbled policy questions, and his campaign was knocked reeling when it was revealed a little more than a month ago that the National Restaurant Association paid settlements to two women who claimed Cain sexually harassed them while he was president of the organization. A third woman told The Associated Press that Cain made inappropriate sexual advances but that she didn't file a complaint. A fourth woman also stepped forward to accuse Cain of groping her in a car in 1997.

Cain has denied wrongdoing in all cases. And his campaign was taking some steps to blunt the drumbeat of allegations.

It unveiled a "Women for Herman Cain" webpage with testimonials from female backers, some urging him to stay in the race. It was led by Gloria Cain.

The candidate's wife ? who's not been on the campaign trail ? has drawn her own support as the allegations against her husband have piled up.

A Facebook page "I Stand With Gloria Cain" had attracted more than 400 supporters by Friday afternoon.

On Friday, Cain urged backers in South Carolina to look past the allegations.

"There's a lot of garbage on the Internet. There's a lot of garbage out there on the TV. There's a lot of garbage out there about me, don't you know? There's a lot of misinformation out there. You have to stay informed and check out the facts for yourself," Cain said.

He added: "I'm on this journey for a reason. I don't look back."

Word of a pending announcement took some aides by surprise.

"I am learning this as you're learning it," said Cain's Iowa campaign chairman, Steve Grubbs, who met Thursday with campaign manager Mark Block.

The two outlined a December travel schedule for Cain, who began advertising on television again in Iowa on Friday.

As of Friday afternoon, Cain was scheduled to participate in the two Iowa debates this month, hold a media announcement in Iowa on Dec. 12 and tour the state at the end of the month.

"That's sort of the plan, very tentatively," Grubbs said. "All that could change."

Georgia supporters set to attend the Saturday event in Atlanta ? billed as a headquarters celebration ? were taken aback by the news that an announcement was coming.

"I have heard nothing," said state Sen. Josh McKoon, a prominent Cain backer who will stand with him Saturday.

___

Philip Elliott reported from Rock Hill, S.C. Associated Press writers Ray Henry in Atlanta and Thomas Beaumont in Iowa contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_el_pr/us_cain

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Get To Know An Internet Commenter: Tinkerbell926 From AllRecipes

McSweeneys.net:

Review of Chicken Salad with Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato:
?VERY GOOD..THO I DID ONLY ADD THE BACON AND THE ONION TO IT?MY HUSBAND DOES NOT LIKE TOMATOES AND IS ALLERGIC TO CELERY AND I DIDNT HAVE ANY LETTUCE.?
Read the whole story '; var coords = [-5, -72]; // display fb-bubble FloatingPrompt.embed(this, html, undefined, 'top', {fp_intersects:1, timeout_remove:2000,ignore_arrow: true, width:236, add_xy:coords, class_name: 'clear-overlay'}); });

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/02/internet-commenter-tinkerbell926_n_1126488.html

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Fukushima residents tour German renewable village (AP)

FELDHEIM, Germany ? A group of residents from the radiation-stricken area around Japan's tsunami-hit nuclear reactors and a Tokyo actor are visiting Germany to learn how renewable energy could work in their homeland.

Among them is Tatsuko Okara, an organic farmer who lives 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant. Okara told The Associated Press on Wednesday that she first began to worry about the impact a nuclear accident could have on her family after the 1986 meltdown in Chernobyl.

After the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in Japan which caused massive radiation leaks, Okara said she decided to devote herself to sparking an energy revolution in her own nation, such as that which is taking place in Germany.

"I would like to see Japan move away from nuclear energy," Okara said. "But we will need another energy source, that's why we are here to learn how we could make it happen."

The group, organized and led by representatives of Greenpeace Japan, arrived Wednesday in the northeastern German village of Feldheim to learn how its 145 residents have taken advantage of the energy generated by a nearby windfarm and a biofuel plant that burns the waste from a local pig farm to become an entirely self-sustaining, energy-positive village.

The project has its roots in the 1990s, when farmers in the area agreed to rent some of their land to a young researcher wanting to install a wind turbine. In the following years, several dozen turbines sprouted out of the once fallow field ? but Feldheim's 145 residents didn't benefit from any of the energy produced in their own back yard.

They made an agreement to receive power from the windpark in partial return for the use of the land, resulting in a 1/4 to 1/3 cut in their energy bills. They then added solar panels and a plant to burn the biofuels they were already producing ? in short they drew on the natural resources at hand.

"We are willing to tell you how we did it," Mayor Michael Knape told the group. "If you want, we can even help you build a Feldheim in Japan."

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government voted in June to shutter its network of 17 nuclear reactors by 2020 and instead make the expansion of renewable sources the focus of its energy policy. Germany draws 23 percent of its energy from nuclear power, compared to Japan, which drew some 30 percent of its power from nuclear reactors before the accident.

By comparison, renewable sources now provide Germans with 17 percent of their power, as compared with 9 percent in Japan.

Actor Taro Yamamoto, a resident of Tokyo who has also devoted himself to the fight against nuclear power since the accident, said the first step to bringing about change is for Japan to start educating the people about energy.

"It is important for the Japanese to realize that renewable energy can work on a large scale, and that people can make money from it," said Yamamoto, who actively asked questions about Feldheim's 43 wind turbines and the 600 pigs that produce the waste to fuel the biogas plant.

"In order to let the people of Japan know, it is important to be here, to see this," he said, standing beneath a towering wind turbine.

Knape, Feldheim's mayor, said it took about 10 years for residents in the area to come around to the idea of investing in renewable energy. They were truly convinced when they realized that building their own power network would result in a 25 to 30 percent cut in their electricity bills and annual savings of euro100,000 ($134,180) in energy costs for the farmer's co-op in the village.

The 30 local jobs created through the windpark and the biogas plant provided further proof for Feldheim residents that their decision to rely on renewables, and themselves, was the right one.

"The energy revolution is taking place in the countryside," said Werner Frohwitter, spokesman for Feldheim's energy project. "We have created a whole new perspective for these people."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_japan_nuclear

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Opposition candidates call on Congo to annul vote (AP)

KINSHASA, Congo ? Four candidates urged officials to annul Congo's presidential election, citing concerns about fraud as voters were given a third day Wednesday to cast ballots because of problems at polling stations.

The vote, which began Monday and is only Congo's second since civil war ended in 2003, presented enormous logistical challenges from the start. Less than 2 percent of the country's roads are paved. Some districts are so remote that ballot boxes had to be transported across muddy trails on the heads of porters, and by dugout canoe across churning rivers.

But even in the country's capital, there were reports of polling stations running of out ballots or never even receiving them. Election officials extended voting by a second day Tuesday, and again on Wednesday to give people more time to vote.

President Joseph Kabila faces 10 opponents and three of them signed a declaration Wednesday calling for the results to be annulled even before they are announced.

"In a democratic and peaceful manner, we will be the first to contest these fraudulent elections if nothing is done by (the U.N. mission) MONUSCO and the international community to correct or annul this disgraceful poll," Vital Kamerhe, one of the candidates, said in an open letter.

Election commission Daniel Ngoy Mulunda announced the second extension of the voting late Tuesday. He said that more than 99 percent of voting districts had functioned normally, and that only 485 out of 61,380 polling stations had been unable to complete voting.

"We have authorized the voting bureaus to stay open due to the late arrival of voting materials," he said. "The election will continue tomorrow."

The vote is the first to be organized by the Congolese government instead of the international community. The election was supposed to mark another step toward peace, but if the results are not accepted by the population, especially the country's fractured opposition, analysts fear it could drag Congo back into conflict.

Congo's territory straddles an area the size of the United States east of the Mississippi ? over 1.4 million square miles, much of it covered by rainforest. The vast forest in the country's east is still inhabited by militias and rebel groups responsible for attacks villages and raping civilians.

Congo is also in a race against the clock because the incumbent's term expires next week, and the country could face more unrest if he is seen as staying past his constitutional mandate.

Kabila is widely expected to win re-election since the opposition is split among 10 candidates, including 79-year-old Etienne Tshisekedi, a longtime opposition leader who is running for president for the first time.

Kabila was first thrust into the position of president a decade ago, after the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, the rebel leader who toppled the country's dictator of 32 years, Mobutu Sese Seko.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/africa/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111130/ap_on_re_af/af_congo_election

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