2 bombs in busy Baghdad market kill at least 9

BAGHDAD (AP) ? Two bombs tore through a market full of morning shoppers in northeastern Baghdad on Friday, killing at least nine people and wounding dozens more, authorities said.

The explosion came at midmorning in a market in the mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Husseiniyah, where shoppers were buying goods before the heat of the day, a police official said.

The blasts were the latest in a fierce wave of attacks in Iraq in the past two weeks that has killed more than 125 people, mostly Shiite Muslims and government security forces.

The bloodshed highlights the struggle the Iraqi government faces in defeating al-Qaida-linked insurgents and staving off renewed sectarian warfare. The government itself is deadlocked over largely sectarian political conflicts.

Minutes later, a second bomb went off, apparently targeting police who had rushed to the scene.

The death toll was at least nine people dead and more than 50 wounded, a medical official said . Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information.

In a separate attack earlier Friday, gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint in western Baghdad, killing three officers, the police official said.

Associated Press

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Study released on library e-book borrowing

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Aaron Sorkin targets journalism in "The Newsroom"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. television news has become as predictably sensational as reality shows, while journalism in general is failing democracy and its crucial role in intelligently informing the public.

That's the message behind a reimagining of what the news could and should be as shown in writer Aaron Sorkin's idealistic new show, "The Newsroom," which premieres on cable channel HBO on Sunday.

Just as Sorkin's "The West Wing" romanticized Washington politics, "The Newsroom" finds optimism in the very industry whose flaws it seeks to expose.

It stars Jeff Daniels as a cynical, middle-aged TV anchorman who shoots for high ratings through pleasing stories before teaming up with his producer ex-girlfriend, played by Emily Mortimer. Together they shake up his nightly news show in an attempt at "reclaiming the Fourth Estate. Reclaiming journalism as an honorable profession."

Mortimer's character informs the young staff members in an early episode that: "We don't do good television, we do the news," while Daniels apologizes on air for recent wrongdoings including miscalculating election results, hyping up terror threats and failing to keep watch on the financial industry.

Driving home what he sees as journalism's current failures, Sorkin uses real news events in his story lines to highlight failings of how events were actually covered. They include taking too long to recognize the huge environmental disaster of the 2010 BP oil spill and exaggerating the 2010 Times Square bomb threat.

"Everything is hyped up to such a loud volume, because they are not doing the news anymore, they are doing reality TV. And they badly want to get you involved with the ongoing story of Casey Anthony or the ongoing story of this person who was mean to that person," Sorkin told Reuters in an interview.

News shows, he added, "have, in a lot of cases, all but abdicated their responsibility to a democracy to inform the electorate."

JOURNALISTIC FAILINGS

The 51-year-old Emmy- and Oscar-winning writer extends his criticism to journalism as a whole and how the quest for balance and objectivity has meant that, at times, media outlets have failed to point out the facts. They are, in the words of Will McAvoy, the anchorman played by Daniels, "biased towards fairness."

McAvoy laments in one early episode that for example, if Republicans introduced a bill saying the earth was flat, newspapers would lead the story by saying that both major parties could not agree on the shape of the earth.

"It was that relevant, timely, smart attack to try to look at an industry that needs to tell the truth," Daniels said in explaining why he took the role. "He (Sorkin) opens up a mirror to a lot of different factions in this country."

In an opening monologue in the pilot episode that is an homage to "Network," the 1976 movie satire on the news business, McAvoy uncharacteristically explodes in a tirade against America's lost standing in the world, and criticizes the polarization of American politics as well as cable TV news.

"You can speak to your base and you can spend some time on air ripping into it and you will make your base happy and they will keep buying the products of the people, of the companies who advertise with you. It's all money," Daniels said.

In Sorkin's more ideal newsroom world, Mortimer's character promises just "the facts," while Daniels' McAvoy takes up his new crusade to point out what he sees as hypocrisies in Arizona's immigration law and the Tea Party movement, while taking a potshot at Sarah Palin and other conservative critics of the "media elite."

Sorkin, who won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for "The Social Network," the story of Facebook, is often criticized by U.S. conservatives. He said he knows "there are many on the right who will quickly jump to a conclusion that this will be a lot of Hollywood liberal hogwash. I hope they give the show a chance."

A bigger obstacle to the show's success may be that, according to some early reviews, it goes downhill after the pilot episode. "If the storytelling were more confident, it could take a breath and deliver drama, not just talking points," observed The New Yorker.

Sorkin said the characters, who include a chief executive played by Jane Fonda - once married to CNN founder Ted Turner - are not based on any real-life news figures.

"This is an idealistic, romantic, very optimistic, look at television in general and the news in particular," he said. "I can only write the way I write. So, there is an authorial voice to these things."

(Reporting by Christine Kearney, Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Walsh)

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N. Zealand's 'night parrot' brought back from the brink

Flightless, slow-moving and at times more sexually attracted to humans than their own species, it's small wonder New Zealand's kakapo parrot is on the verge of extinction.

But a mammoth conservation effort stretching back decades is offering hope for one of the world's rarest birds, lifting its numbers from about 50 in 1990 to 126 this year.

The plump, green kakapo -- the name means "night parrot" in Maori -- was once one of the most common birds in New Zealand, which had few land predators before European settlement in the early Nineteenth Century.

"There was a report from an early explorer, Charles Douglas, who said they were so populous you could shake them out of trees like apples," said Deirdre Vercoe Scott, head of the Department of Conservation's kakapo recovery programme.

"He said he'd once seen six kakapo shaken from a single tutu bush."

Vercoe Scott said habitat destruction by humans and the introduction of pests such as stoats and predatory cats and dogs, sowed the seeds of the kakapos' decline.

The flightless nocturnal birds, while essentially ground dwelling, are strong climbers but freeze when confronted by a threat, making them easy pickings for predators.

The males also attract mates by emitting a deep booming sound from thoracic air sacs, turning them into conspicuous targets for hunters in the night forest.

With an ageing population and bird numbers declining, kakapo recovery programme chief scientist Ron Moorehouse said the species' future appeared "dire" in the 1990s.

The situation sparked an intense conservation initiative, which has cost tens of millions of dollars, to save a bird that those who have encountered it describe as endearing and full of personality.

"They can be quite grumpy," ranger Sarah Kivi said. "They display so much personality, which I guess you don't get from a lot of birds. They'll sit there and look at you and you wonder 'what are they thinking?'".

Exacerbating the problem was the fact that kakapo, which can live up to 90 years, are notoriously slow breeders, only reproducing in seasons when abundant fruit is available from native tree species.

The breeding programme faced another hurdle when male kakapo became "imprinted" on their human handlers, meaning they saw them as more likely potential mates than female kakapo.

In the early days of the conservation effort, rangers even wore an outlandish rubber helmet dotted with dimples in an unsuccessful attempt to collect kakapo sperm when males tried to mate with their heads.

British actor Stephen Fry witnessed the kakapo's amorous antics first hand while filming his programme "Last Chance to See" in 2009, when a kakapo named Sirocco took a shine to zoologist Mark Carwardine and began vigorously coupling with his scalp.

The resulting footage, which Fry described as "one of the funniest things I've ever seen", attracted almost four million hits on video-sharing website Youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T1vfsHYiKY.

Vercoe Scott said the birds' fortunes began to improve when they were moved to two remote islands where existing pests had been eliminated and which predators from the mainland could not reach by swimming.

"The biggest breakthrough was putting all the birds together on predator-free islands and understanding how they breed while getting over (our) fear of intervening," she said.

"If we'd taken a hands-off policy we would have lost the kakapo, so we really had to get in there and be quite intense with our management, particularly during the nesting period."

She added that her team set up cameras, weighed the chicks nightly and as a result hand reared many of the birds.

Vercoe Scott said it was highly unlikely any kakapo now survived in the wild, meaning only the conservation programme could save the species.

Such has been its success that rangers this year re-introduced eight kakapo to a third sanctuary, Little Barrier Island off the Auckland coast, after eliminating a rat infestation which forced their removal in 1999.

Moorehouse said some of the eight birds originally came from the island and immediately returned to their old nesting spots, raising hopes they will quickly settle in and breed in the new environment.

While the kakapo is still listed as critically endangered, Moorehouse said the situation no longer looked bleak.

"The trend is up, so we're encouraged by that," he said.

"We're certainly more comfortable, but with 126 birds you have to manage the genetics very carefully and that's what we're trying to do, so we retain as much genetic variation in the population as we can.

"So we're not out of the woods by any means but we're going in the right direction."

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How McDonald's food stylists work their magic

By msnbc.com staff

UPDATED 7 p.m. EDT: What, you think David Beckham really looks like that when he wakes up too?

?My (insert fast food favorite) never looks like it does in the ad? has almost achieved cat status on the Internet. McDonald?s Canada either has found a nice way to jump on the bandwagon or actually is a company that believes in corporate transparency. Or some combination of the two.

In the video below, Hope Bagozzi, director of marketing for McDonald?s Canada, walks through a hamburger photo shoot. Aside from her repeated awesome pronunciation of ?about? (full disclosure: we love Canadians), the video is notable for its complete demystification of the process -- from the ... er ... fluffing of pickles to the Photoshopping of bun imperfections at the end.

The two-day-old video has more than 2 million views on YouTube, so obviously people care (or are hungry). It was a response to a question submitted to the few-weeks-old "Our Food" section on McDonald's Canada's web site.?Also pretty cool is the president of the company answering "Why is the food at McDonald's so cheap?"?We're still waiting on their reply to "What is in the sauce that is on the Big Mac?"

Sorry Yanks, due to differences in the menus on different sides of the border, Americans can't ask.

As for McDonalds U.S., "That is solely a McDonald's Candada effort. There are no (similar) plans on our end," for a video, Julie Pottebaum of McDonald's U.S. said.

Thanks to?ViralViralVideos?for pointing it out.?

More money and business news:

Follow msnbc.com business on Twitter and Facebook

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Court throws out FCC penalties for cursing, nudity

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Broadcasters anticipating a major constitutional ruling on the government's authority to regulate what can be shown and said on the airwaves instead won only the smallest of Supreme Court victories Thursday.

The justices unanimously threw out fines and other penalties against Fox and ABC television stations that violated the Federal Communications Commission policy regulating curse words and nudity on television airwaves.

Forgoing a broader constitutional ruling, however, the court concluded only that broadcasters could not have known in advance that obscenities uttered during awards show programs on Fox stations and a brief display of nudity on an episode of ABC's "NYPD Blue" could give rise to penalties. ABC and 45 affiliates had been hit with proposed fines totaling nearly $1.24 million.

Broadcasters had argued that the revolution in technology that has brought the Internet, satellite television and cable has made the rules themselves obsolete. The regulations apply only to broadcast channels.

The justices said the FCC is free to revise its indecency policy, which is intended to keep the airwaves free of objectionable material during the hours when children are likely to be watching.

The agency's chairman, Julius Genachowski, said the ruling "appears to be narrowly limited to procedural issues related to actions taken a number of years ago. Consistent with vital First Amendment principles, the FCC will carry out Congress's directive to protect young TV viewers."

It was the second time the court has confronted, but not ruled conclusively on the FCC's policy on isolated expletives. Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court that "it is unnecessary for the court to address the constitutionality of the current policy."

The narrow decision, coupled with the more than five months that elapsed between the argument in January and Thursday's decision, could mean that the justices struggled and failed to reach agreement on a broader outcome.

Broadcasters argue that viewers now have many options, unlike the handful of channels they had available in the 1960s and 1970s when the court last weighed in on indecency on the airwaves. In many cases, viewers don't even know when they are switching between the older broadcast channels and cable.

Still, the regulated broadcast channels provide what the government has called a safe haven of milder programming, and those channels remain dominant, even in the Internet age, the administration argued.

Paul Smith, a First Amendment expert and partner with the Jenner and Block law firm in Washington, said the court should expect more challenges until it rules definitively.

"The Supreme Court decided to punt on the opportunity to issue a broad ruling on the constitutionality of the FCC indecency policy. The issue will be raised again as broadcasters will continue to try to grapple with the FCC's vague and inconsistent enforcement regime," said Smith, who wrote a brief supporting the broadcasters.

The case arose from a change in the FCC's long-standing policy on curse words.

For many years, the agency did not take action against broadcasters for one-time uses of curse words. But after several awards shows with cursing celebrities in 2002 and 2003, the FCC toughened its policy after it concluded that a one-free-expletive rule did not make sense in the context of keeping the airwaves free of indecency when children are likely to be watching television.

But Kennedy, in the ruling throwing out the fines, said the commission did not adequately explain that under the new policy "a fleeting expletive or a brief shot of nudity could be actionably indecent."

The stepped-up indecency enforcement, which included issuing record fines for violations, also was spurred in part by widespread outrage following Janet Jackson's breast-baring performance during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show on CBS.

That incident and the FCC's proposed fine of $550,000 are not part of the current case. The government has an appeal pending of a lower court ruling that threw out the fine in that case.

The 2004 Super Bowl took place before the FCC later that year laid out its new policy and the possibility of fines for even one-time utterances of certain words.

Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said he read the new decision as a "green light" for the FCC to rule against broadcasters in the many pending complaints of indecent material that aired after the FCC explained its new policy.

"Once again the Supreme Court has ruled against the networks in their yearslong campaign to obliterate broadcast decency standards," Winter said.

The material at issue in Thursday's decision included the isolated use of expletives as well as fines against broadcasters who showed a woman's nude buttocks on a 2003 episode of "NYPD Blue."

In December 2002, singer Cher used the phrase "F--- 'em" during the Billboard Music Awards show on the Fox television network. A month later, U2 lead singer Bono uttered the phrase "f------ brilliant" during NBC's broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show. During the December 2003 Billboard awards show on Fox, reality show star Nicole Richie said, "Have you ever tried to get cow s--- out of a Prada purse? It's not so f------simple."

But the challenge went beyond just the penalties for the use of fleeting expletives.

The broadcasters wanted the court to free them from all regulation of content around the clock. The court's 1978 Pacifica decision upheld the FCC's reprimand of a New York radio station for airing a George Carlin monologue containing a 12-minute string of expletives in the middle of the afternoon.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a brief opinion that she would have overturned the Pacifica ruling, which she called wrong even when it was decided. Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not take part in the current case because she was involved in an earlier version while sitting as an appeals court judge in New York.

The case is FCC v. Fox, 10-1293.

___

AP Technology Writer Peter Svensson in New York contributed to this report.

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iPad vs Microsoft Surface: Tablet Specs Compared

Microsoft?s back in the tablet race, folks. Today the company pulled back the curtain on a small family of slates called Surface. Available in two flavors ? one all business for a full-featured install of Windows 8 Pro and another with Windows RT powered by an Nvidia ARM CPU?Surface is the tech behemoth?s one-two counterpunch to the Apple iPad.?

But how do the new Windows-based slates compare to Apple?s high-selling game changer? Well, for starters, the Surface are both larger machines. The screens measure in at 10.6-inches (with what?s described to be full HD resolutions in Microsoft?s press materials). Despite that win in size, the Surface twins are heavier than the iPad, about 1.5? for the Windows RT version vs. 1.44 pounds for Apple?s slate. The Windows 8 Pro model is nearly 2 pounds.

Some other points of difference include storage size: the Surface with Windows 8 Pro can include a 128GB hard drive. Since that more robustly equipped model is designed to have a more powerful, laptop-compatible processor, the added storage could be a welcome addition.

We don?t yet know how much it costs to take a Surface tablet home. Nor do we know the rated battery life. But for those of you already stoked for the Surface, here?s how Microsoft?s new tablets stand up against the iPad 3.

?	?		?
Device	iPad (Third Generation)	Surface (Windows RT)	Surface (Windows Pro)
Price	$499	?TBA	TBA
CPU	?Apple A5X dual-core	?Nvidia Tegra 3	Intel Core i5
OS	iOS 5	Windows 8 RT	Windows 8 Pro
Display	9.7 inches (2048 x 1536)	10.6 inches (Resolution unknown)	?10.6 inches? (Resolution unknown)
Size (inches)	9.5 x 7.31 x 0.37	.37 inches thick	?.53 inches thick
Weight (pounds)	?1.44	?1.49	?1.99
Storage (Built-In)	16GB, 32GB, 64GB	32GB, 64GB	?64GB, 128GB
Ports	10-pin	microSD, USB 2.0, Micro HD Video, 2?2 MiMO Antenne	microSDXC, USB 3.0, Mini DisplayPort, 2?2 MiMO Antenae

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