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Six new models made our Top Picks this year: the Chevrolet Silverado and Traverse, Mazda5, Nissan Altima, Subaru Forester, and Volkswagen GTI. This marks the first time in six years that two domestic models earned spots or that a European car made the list.



Two of last year's picks, the Toyota Highlander and RAV4 SUVs, were passed over this year. At the time of publication, sales of certain versions had been halted. We have suspended our recommendation until a potentially unsafe part that could cause unintended acceleration is fixed.

Our Top Picks are the best all-around models in their categories, based on their performance, reliability, and safety. They are chosen from the more than 280 vehicles we've recently tested and must meet our criteria in three areas:

Road Test

Each must rank at or near the top of its category in our overall test score, which is based on more than 50 tests and evaluations.

Reliability

Each must have an average or better predicted-reliability Rating, based on the problems CR subscribers reported in our latest Annual Auto Survey.

Safety

Top Picks must perform adequately in overall safety if tested by the government or the insurance industry. (For some models, we do not have enough crash-test data to assign an overall safety Rating.) In addition, electronic stability control, a proven lifesaving safety feature, must be readily available. All of our Top Picks provide standard ESC and curtain air bags.

Each model's report card shows its Rating in each area, if available. Prices are the suggested retail amount for our tested cars.

Family Sedan: Nissan Altima

The Altima has been one of our top-rated family sedans for years, and a freshening for 2010 made it better. It now gets improved gas mileage and provides standard ESC in all trim lines. The Altima offers an appealing balance of comfort and performance, while getting some of the best fuel economy in its class: 26 mpg overall for four-cylinder models and 24 mpg with a V6. The cabin is roomy, well finished, and quiet. And the secure handling, comfortable ride, and spirited acceleration make the car enjoyable to drive. The four- cylinder model earned an above-average reliability Rating, while the V6 model is average. Price: $23,970 to $30,335.

Small Sedan: Volkswagen GTI

Freshened for 2010, the GTI is the sporty version of the Volkswagen Golf (formerly called the Rabbit). This impressive package is exhilarating to drive and easy to live with. It delivers the agile handling, spirited acceleration, and responsive steering of a true sports car, along with a decent ride, a well- finished interior, and the cargo-carrying practicality of a hatchback. Good fuel economy of 27 mpg overall is another plus, although premium fuel is required. Price: $27,504.

Small SUV: Subaru Forester

The Forester provides one of the most carlike driving experiences of any SUV. It combines agile handling with the most comfortable ride in its class. Passengers are treated to a spacious cabin, with a roomy rear seat and excellent visibility. The 2.5X provides an impressive 22 mpg overall with an automatic, 24 mpg with a manual. And the turbocharged 2.5XT delivers effortless acceleration and 20 mpg, but it takes premium fuel. The 2.5X has had excellent reliability, while the 2.5XT 's is average. Price: $20,972 to $28,860.

Best Car Overall: Lexus LS 460L

The LS scored an outstanding 99 out of 100 in our road test, making it our highest-rated vehicle. This large cruiser pampers its passengers with a comfortable ride and luxurious driving environment, including a roomy, well-crafted, and exceptionally quiet interior. It offers a plethora of electronic amenities, including an optional self-parking system. Yet, its controls are easy to use. Although the LS isn't exactly fun to drive, its efficient 380-hp V8 and eight-speed automatic transmission deliver smooth, brisk acceleration and a relatively good 21 mpg overall, the same as a Honda Accord V6. All-wheel drive and a hybrid version are available. Price: $76,572.

Family SUV: Chevrolet Traverse

The Traverse stands out as an impressive overall package with a quiet, spacious cabin that can comfortably seat up to eight adults and leave room for cargo. It provides a pleasant ride, communicative steering, and responsive handling. Our Traverse returned 16 mpg overall, which is respectable for its size. Rear visibility isn't great, but clever convex side mirrors and an optional rear-view camera help. The GMC Acadia is a twin of the Traverse, but its reliability is below average. Price: $39,920.

Sports Sedan: Infiniti G37

The G sedan, which joins our list for the fourth straight year, is one of the highest-rated sedans we've tested, with a score of 95 out of 100. It provides an appealing combination of agile handling, blistering acceleration, a refined powertrain, a fairly comfortable ride, and a high-quality, luxurious interior. The G37 is as inviting to drive on a twisty road as it is on the highway. But compromises include a snug cabin and small trunk. Rear-wheel drive is standard; all-wheel drive is optional. Coupe and convertible versions are also available. Price: $37,225.

Family Hauler: Mazda5

The Mazda5 microvan offers a lot of practicality in a compact, affordable package. With three rows of seats and sliding rear side doors, it combines the convenience of a minivan with the maneuverability and stingy fuel economy—24 mpg overall—of a wagon. The interior is airy, with good fit and finish. Plus the Mazda5 is fun to drive, with a nimble feel and a comfortable ride. The addition of standard ESC for 2010 improved its emergency handling. If you need more room, consider the Honda Odyssey minivan. Price: $23,805.

Green Car: Toyota Prius

The Prius received a redesign for 2010. It's still the most fuel-efficient car in our Ratings, getting 44 mpg overall. That distinction helped it earn our pick in this category for the seventh straight year, the longest of any current model. In addition, the Prius is a pleasant car to drive, with a roomy interior, a steady ride, hatchback versatility, and excellent reliability and crash-test results. The 2010 redesign also gave it a more solid feel and a dedicated EV mode that allows it to run longer on electric power at low speeds, an advantage mainly in slow, congested traffic. Price: $23,150-$26,950.

Pickup Truck: Chevrolet Silverado 1500

The Silverado 1500 returns as our top choice after a year off. The crew-cab 4WD model is a well-rounded pickup with a roomy cabin, generous payload capacity, decent ride quality, available full-time 4WD, and, on higher-end models, very good interior fit and finish. The GMC Sierra is a twin of the Silverado. The reliability of last year's pick, the Chevrolet Avalanche, dropped to below average in our latest Annual Auto Survey, keeping it from repeating. Price: $37,235.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The earthquake in Chile was far stronger than the one that struck Haiti last month — yet the death toll in this Caribbean nation is magnitudes higher.

The reasons are simple.

Chile is wealthier and infinitely better prepared, with strict building codes, robust emergency response and a long history of handling seismic catastrophes. No living Haitian had experienced a quake at home when the Jan. 12 disaster crumbled their poorly constructed buildings.

And Chile was relatively lucky this time.

Saturday's quake was centered offshore an estimated 21 miles (34 kilometers) underground in a relatively unpopulated area while Haiti's tectonic mayhem struck closer to the surface — about 8 miles (13 kilometers) — and right on the edge of Port-au-Prince, factors that increased its destructiveness.



"Earthquakes don't kill — they don't create damage — if there's nothing to damage," said Eric Calais, a Purdue University geophysicist studying the Haiti quake.

The U.S. Geological Survey says eight Haitian cities and towns — including this capital of 3 million — suffered "violent" to "extreme" shaking in last month's 7-magnitude quake, which Haiti's government estimates killed some 220,000 people. Chile's death toll was in the hundreds.

By contrast, no Chilean urban area suffered more than "severe" shaking — the third most serious level — Saturday in its 8.8-magnitude disaster, by USGS measure. The quake was centered 200 miles (325 kms) away from Chile's capital and largest city, Santiago.



In terms of energy released at the epicenter, the Chilean quake was 501 times stronger. But energy dissipates rather quickly as distances grow from epicenters — and the ground beneath Port-au-Prince is less stable by comparison and "shakes like jelly," says University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Survivors of Haiti's quake described abject panic — much of it well-founded as buildings imploded around them. Many Haitians grabbed cement pillars only to watch them crumble in their hands. Haitians were not schooled in how to react — by sheltering under tables and door frames, and away from glass windows.

Chileans, on the other hand, have homes and offices built to ride out quakes, their steel skeletons designed to sway with seismic waves rather than resist them.

"When you look at the architecture in Chile you see buildings that have damage, but not the complete pancaking that you've got in Haiti," said Cameron Sinclair, executive director of Architecture for Humanity, a 10-year-old nonprofit that has helped people in 36 countries rebuild after disasters.

Sinclair said he has architect colleagues in Chile who have built thousands of low-income housing structures to be earthquake resistant.

In Haiti, by contrast, there is no building code.

Patrick Midy, a leading Haitian architect, said he knew of only three earthquake-resistant buildings in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Sinclair's San Francisco-based organization received 400 requests for help the day after the Haiti quake but he said it had yet to receive a single request for help for Chile.

"On a per-capita basis, Chile has more world-renowned seismologists and earthquake engineers than anywhere else," said Brian E. Tucker, president of GeoHazards International, a nonprofit organization based in Palo Alto, California.

Their advice is heeded by the government in Latin America's wealthiest nation, getting built not just into architects' blueprints and building codes but also into government contingency planning.

"The fact that the president (Michelle Bachelet) was out giving minute-to-minute reports a few hours after the quake in the middle of the night gives you an indication of their disaster response," said Sinclair.

Most Haitians didn't know whether their president, Rene Preval, was alive or dead for at least a day after the quake. The National Palace and his residence — like most government buildings — had collapsed.

Haiti's TV, cell phone networks and radio stations were knocked off the air by the seismic jolt.

Col. Hugo Rodriguez, commander of the Chilean aviation unit attached to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Haiti, waited anxiously Saturday with his troops for word from loved ones at home.

He said he knew his family was OK and expressed confidence that Chile would ride out the disaster.

"We are organized and prepared to deal with a crisis, particularly a natural disaster," Rodriguez said. "Chile is a country where there are a lot of natural disasters."

Calais, the geologist, noted that frequent seismic activity is as common to Chile as it is to the rest of the Andean ridge. Chile experienced the strongest earthquake on record in 1960, and Saturday's quake was the nation's third of over magnitude-8.7.

"It's quite likely that every person there has felt a major earthquake in their lifetime," he said, "whereas the last one to hit Port-au-Prince was 250 years ago."

"So who remembers?"

On Port-au-Prince's streets Saturday, many people had not heard of Chile's quake. More than half a million are homeless, most still lack electricity and are preoccupied about trying to get enough to eat.

Fanfan Bozot, a 32-year-old reggae singer having lunch with a friend, could only shake his head at his government's reliance on international relief to distribute food and water.

"Chile has a responsible government," he said, waving his hand in disgust. "Our government is incompetent."

Anyone who suffered through the decade or so while U.S. cellular networks figured out how to upgrade their infrastructure from 2G to 3G -- which they're all finally running now -- is probably pretty darn excited that people are already talking about rolling out 4G, the next generation of networks that, in theory at least, sounds really really fast.



Sorry folks, put away the candles and the birthday hats: The reality is that when 4G actually arrives, it really won't be much faster than 3G is today.

What is 4G, anyway? The name refers to the fourth major generation of cellular technology to be developed, but as with 3G it comprises a variety of standards with acronym-heavy names that you probably have zero interest in. The bottom line is that 4G, like 3G before it, should represent a massive leap in performance over the prior generation of mobile radio technology. If historical trends continued, 4G would be 10 to 20 times faster than what we're working with today, a huge jump that would have a massive impact on how mobile data and entertainment services are consumed.

Well, don't get your hopes up, folks. Analysts are warning consumers that the first 4G networks won't be much faster than 3G -- and question marks remain on upgrades down the line. While no one knows what the true actual average speeds will be when these networks launch, it's clear they won't begin to approach their theoretical maximum speeds, generally quoted in the range of 70 to 100Mbps.



Rather, expect to see speeds well under 10Mbps, and probably closer to 5Mbps... not much better than the 2 to 3.5Mbps you can achieve on a 3G network with good coverage today.

And even though some networks, led by Sprint's WiMax efforts, are already rolling out 4G pilot projects in a variety of cities, we've still got years to go before 4G becomes a reality for most of the country. One network hardware vendor posits that even five years from now, 3G will still be the dominant mobile standard. The bottom line: Don't get suckered by a hot acronym until the technology is actually proven.

4G? More like 3.25G from the sound of it.

NEW YORK – Hummer, the off-road vehicle that once symbolized America's love for hulking SUVs, has hit a dead end after its sale to a Chinese heavy equipment maker collapsed late Wednesday.



Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines Co. pulled out of the deal to buy the company from General Motors Co. Tengzhong failed to get clearance from Chinese regulators within the proposed timeframe for the sale, the Chinese manufacturer said Wednesday.

GM said it will continue to honor existing Hummer warranties.

"We are disappointed that the deal with Tengzhong could not be completed," said John Smith, GM vice president of corporate planning and alliances. "GM will now work closely with Hummer employees, dealers and suppliers to wind down the business in an orderly and responsible manner."

GM has been trying to sell the loss-making brand for the last year and signed a deal with Tengzhong in October. However, resistance from Chinese regulators, who have been putting the brakes on investment in the fast-growing Chinese auto industry, created difficulties from the start.

As recently as Tuesday, private investors were trying to set up an offshore entity in a last-minute effort to complete the acquisition ahead of a Feb. 28 deadline. That plan, along with other options, was unsuccessful, according to a person close to the situation. The person declined to be identified in order to speak more freely.

"There's no way forward with that," this person said. "We're out of time."

GM spokesman Nick Richards said the automaker would still hear last-minute bids for the brand.

"In the early phases of the wind-down, we'll entertain offers and determine their viability, but that will have to happen in pretty short order," he said.

Hummer, which traces its origins to the Humvee military vehicle built by AM General LLC in South Bend, Ind., acquired a devoted following among SUV lovers who were drawn to the off-road ready vehicles. But they drew scorn from environmentalists and sales never recovered after gasoline prices spiked above $4 a gallon in the summer of 2008.

Sales peaked at 71,524 in 2006. But in December 2009, only 325 Hummers were sold, down 85 percent from the previous year, according to Autodata Corp.

Sticker prices start at more than $42,500 and run to about $63,000, according to data posted at the Hummer.com Web site. The H3, the most fuel-efficient vehicle in Hummer's lineup, averages about 16 mpg. The vehicles are built at GM's factory in Shreveport, La.

Under the initial agreement to sell Hummer, Tengzhong would have received an 80 percent stake, while Hong Kong investor Suolang Duoji, who indirectly owns a big stake in Tengzhong, would have gotten 20 percent. The investors would also have owned Hummer's nationwide dealer network.

Financial terms of the sale were not disclosed, although a person briefed on the deal at the time said the sale price was around $150 million. GM's bankruptcy filing last summer said that the brand could bring in $500 million or more.

Beijing had been cool to the acquisition. Tengzhong lacks a government permit to manufacture cars, and Beijing has been seeking to streamline and slow investment in the fast-growing auto industry rather than to attract newcomers.

Richards, the GM spokesman, said the collapse of the sale does not change earlier plans to close the Shreveport facility by 2012. The plant also builds the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon and is currently operating on a single 10-hour shift, he said. Hummer production was idled in January.



Hummer is the second brand after Saturn that GM has failed to sell as part of its restructuring. GM sold Swedish brand Saab to Dutch carmaker Spyker Cars NV earlier this year. Pontiac is being discontinued.

GM is focusing its efforts on its four remaining brands: Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac and Buick.

Start-up Bloom Energy says it can deliver a power plant in a box. What is it and how does it work?

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, which is generating some serious buzz this week, will officially announce on Wednesday what it calls the "Bloom Box." In an interview Sunday on CBS News' "60 Minutes," CEO K.R. Sridhar said the goal is to get businesses, and eventually consumers, off the transmission line grid and deliver power at a much lower cost with zero emissions.



What is the Bloom Box?

It's a fuel cell. (See photo.) While that's nothing new--as Greentech Media editor Michael Kanellos says, fuel cells have been around since the 1800s--it's Bloom Energy's secret sauce that makes it special. Kanellos said that the solid oxide fuel cell patents point to a "yttria stabilized zirconium" and platinum electrodes. This formula is used to make an ink-coated floppy-disk-size ceramic tile. These are then stacked (see photo) into small blocks, and multiple stacks are housed in a unit about the size of a refrigerator.

Inside the Bloom Box

Oxygen is fed into the fuel cell on one side and fuel on the other, according to the "60 Minutes" segment. The two combine in the cell to create a chemical reaction, which produces electricity. No burning or combustion. No power lines from an outside source. More here.



How much does it cost to "save" money?

In the "60 Minutes" interview, Sridhar said the boxes that companies buy cost between $700,000 and $800,000 and the goal is to make them available to the "average person" for less than $3,000. As an example of how the Bloom Box is being used in corporate America today, eBay's five boxes run on landfill waste-based bio-gas and generate more power than the company's 3,000 solar panels, according to eBay CEO John Donahoe, who spoke to "60 Minutes." When averaged out over seven days, the Bloom Box generates five times as much power that eBay can use, Donahoe said.

What kind of fuel does it use?

Fossil fuels like natural gas or renewable fuels such as landfill gas, or bio-gas, and solar.

Who is using Bloom Boxes right now?

Google, Fedex, Wal-Mart, Staples, the San Francisco Airport, and the CIA, to name some of the most high-profile companies and organizations. A total of 20 companies are testing the box in California today. A four-unit box, using natural gas, has been powering a Google data center for 18 months. Here's a yardstick: a 30,000-square-foot office building would use four of these boxes.

And subsidies or tax breaks?

In California, 20 percent of the cost is subsidized by the state and there's a 30 percent federal tax break, according to "60 Minutes."

Who is investing in Bloom Energy?

There is a total investment of about $400 million. Board members and observers include: John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, and T.J. Rodgers, the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor. Advisers include former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Floyd Kvamme, a partner emeritus at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

How economically feasible can it be?

"If this works, basically you have a natural gas tube going to your house or neighborhood, it goes into the fuel cell, and, pow, it makes electricity," Kanellos said. "Your power bills will go down." Potentially, consumers, in the future, will be buying natural gas but getting more bang for their gas-bill buck. The challenge is that the device itself costs a lot of money, Kanellos added. "It will take a few years to pay it off," he said.

News recently broke regarding a sophisticated and massive ring of hackers operating in Europe and China, a huge -- and hugely successful -- group that has apparently absconded with loads of customer data and business intellectual property. The computer attack is known as either the Kneber Botnet or ZeuS. It is still up and running, with countries around the world impacted: Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the U.S. are the top five most-targeted nations. Most of the affected machines are running Windows XP or Vista.



Everything from credit card information to contracts and trade secrets appears to have been run off with, but no one is sure entirely how much data has been stolen or where it has gone from there. Altogether, 2,411 companies and organizations are said to have been affected by the criminal operation.

According to NetWitness, which discovered the security breaches, the operation got underway in Germany in 2008, using a familiar type of phishing attack designed to get corporate insiders to click on phony links that would ultimately install malware on their PCs, granting the hackers remote control access to their computers and ultimately the networks to which they were connected.

Some of the companies impacted, which includes more than a few big, Fortune 500-class names, say that no sensitive information has been accessed and that they have closed the holes that allowed the intrusion to happen, but the majority of companies either aren't saying much or are being completely mute about the incident.

Meanwhile, investigators are trying to track down those responsible, with current signs pointing to an Eastern European crime syndicate using computers located there and in China to do their dirty deeds. Scary stuff.



Businesses are warned that the virus in question -- called Zeus or ZeuS -- is quite difficult to detect even with up-to-date antivirus software. This is the primary reason why its malware family is considered the largest botnet on the internet: Some 3.6 million PCs are said to be infected in the U.S. alone. Security experts are advising that businesses continue to offer training to users to prevent them from clicking hostile or suspicious links in emails or on the web while also keeping up with antivirus updates, whatever good those might do. ZeuS can be detected and removed after the fact, but it remains unclear if modern antivirus software is effective at preventing all of its variants from taking root.

What happens now? Hard to say, but you might be well advised to keep a closer eye than usual on your credit report and bank account. More news as it develops.

Unexpected rate hikes. Over-limit fees. Double-cycle billing. Those are just a few of the credit-card practices that have trapped millions of consumers into a life of constant worry over mounting debt. In less than a week, these practices will be history.



On Feb. 22, 2010, the Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act (CARD Act) takes effect. It puts forth new rules for credit-card issuers that are arguably the most consumer-protective in the history of credit cards.

If you're the type of person who reads every piece of mail sent by your credit-card companies, then chances are you already have a fair idea of the changes coming. (Credit issuers have been mailing out change-of-terms notifications that explain the details in recent weeks.)


Then again, credit-card rules are hardly ever simple -- and the CARD Act is no exception. Below are the key changes that the new law puts forth, along with some notable exceptions that could still allow consumers to get in trouble with their credit cards.

Finance Charges, Interest-Rate Hikes and Notifications

• No rate increases for the first 12 months after opening an account.
• Rate increases can only be applied to new charges.
• Annual and application fees cannot exceed 25% of your initial credit line.
• No more double-cycle billing.
• A six-month minimum promotional-rate period.
• No more over-limit fees, unless the card holder opts in.
• No fees to make credit-card payments online or over the phone, unless you make a payment on your due date.
• Must give 45-day notice of pending rate or fee hikes or any other significant changes to credit-card terms.

Exceptions, Caveats, Loopholes:

• Rate hikes are allowed if you're more than 60 days late with a payment.
• Some banks have already found a way around the rate-hike issue, by increasing card users' regular interest rates to as high as 29.9% and then refunding a part of that rate for each month that the customer pays on time.
• Double-cycle billing, although prohibited, can technically still exist for credit cards that don't have grace periods.
• Issuers have been calling consumers asking them to opt in for over-limit fees in exchange for lowering that fee, says Chi Chi Wu, a staff attorney with the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer advocacy group. What they're not saying is that if people don't opt in, the transaction will be denied and they will not be charged over-limit fees in the first place, Wu says.
  

Billing Statements, Payments and Disclosures

• Billing statements must be sent 21 days before the due date.
• Your due date should be the same date each month.
• Payments are considered on time when received by 5 p.m. on the due date or the next business day after a holiday or weekend.
• Payments above the minimum must be applied to the highest-rate balance first.
• Each monthly statement must include information on how long it would take you to pay off your balance if you make minimum payments only and the total you'll pay, including interest and principal; and how much you need to pay each month in order to pay off your balance in 36 months and the total you'll pay, including interest and principal.
• Statements must also include a warning that by making only minimum payments you will pay more interest and it will take you longer to pay off your debt, as well as a toll-free number to call if you want to be referred to a credit-counseling service.
  

Exceptions, caveats, loopholes:

If you make a purchase under a "deferred-interest" plan (such as "No interest for six months," for example), the company may let you choose to apply extra amounts to the deferred-interest balance. Otherwise, for two billing cycles before the end of the promotional period, your entire payment must be applied to that balance. Carrying a "deferred-interest" balance is a risky proposition altogether, says Wu: Unless the balance is paid in full over the specified period, the company will charge all interest retroactively once the promotional rate expires. "We think deferred-interest plans should have been banned," Wu says.

College Students and Young Adults

• No credit cards for college students unless co-signed by a parent or they can demonstrate "ability to pay."
• No credit-limit increases if you are under 21 and have a co-signer without that co-signer's permission.
• No credit-card marketing and freebies on college campuses.
  

Exceptions, Caveats, Loopholes:

• Issuers will likely start appealing to parents to co-sign their children's credit cards. And the Federal Reserve has specified that issuers have the option of keeping the parent on the hook even after the young person turns 21, Wu says. "If that younger person keeps the credit card for 20 years, the co-signer is liable that whole time."
• Issuers are not allowed to give out freebies for signing up for a credit card on or near a campus -- which still allows them to set up shop near popular off-campus venues and offer freebies to everyone, whether or not they apply.

The Pope meets 24 Irish bishops at the Vatican. The Pope held two meetings with the bishops on Monday



Pope Benedict XVI has told Irish Roman Catholic bishops sexual abuse of children by priests is a "heinous crime", the Vatican says.

The Pope summoned the 24 bishops to the Vatican to discuss their response to a child sex abuse scandal.

He said Irish bishops had to face the scandal with courage and resolve, and act to restore the Church's "moral credibility".

Last year the Irish Church admitted covering up abuse for decades.

Two state-ordered reports revealed how abuse was rife in many Catholic-run children's institutions in the Republic of Ireland, and how priests who were accused of abuse were just moved by bishops to new parishes.

Investigators found that Church officials compiled confidential files on more than 100 parish priests accused of sexual abuse, but that the files were kept secret.

Victims of abuse have accused the Church of putting its own reputation ahead of concern for abused children.

'Honesty and Courage'

Following three meetings with the bishops over two days, the Vatican released a statement saying: "For his part, the Holy Father observed that the sexual abuse of children and young people is not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image.

"While realising that the current painful situation will not be resolved quickly, he challenged the Bishops to address the problems of the past with determination and resolve, and to face the present crisis with honesty and courage.

"He also expressed the hope that the present meeting would help to unify the Bishops and enable them to speak with one voice in identifying concrete steps aimed at bringing healing to those who had been abused, encouraging a renewal of faith in Christ and restoring the Church's spiritual and moral credibility."

The Vatican also said that the Irish bishops promised to co-operate with civil authorities, "to guarantee that the Church's standards, policies and procedures represent best practice in this area".

'Clinging On'

Victims of abuse by Irish priests have written a letter to the Pope calling for the resignation of bishops "who engaged in this culture of cover-up".

"The lives of thousands of Irish people have been devastated by sexual abuse by priests," the letter said.

Four bishops have already offered their resignations - though only one has been formally accepted.

A spokesman said the issue of resignation was not discussed at the Pope's meetings with the bishops.


That stance was criticised by some victims. Andrew Madden, who was one of the first to expose Irish clerical paedophilia in 1995, said: "It's clear that most of Ireland's bishops should go, because they conspired in covering up heinous crimes."

"Most of them will cling to their positions regardless of the anguish this causes the victims," he told the Associated Press.

In case you hadn't heard, February is American Heart Month, an initiative to raise awareness about heart disease and stroke, the number one killer in the U.S.

Eating a healthy diet can be a key method of preventing heart disease. We're highlighting five heart-healthy foods that can literally save your health. We recognize that these are not the only five foods that protect your heart, but they stand out as star performers and great additions to any diet.


1. Garlic



This herb is ideal for heart health. Numerous studies have shown the potential benefits of regular garlic consumption on blood pressure, platelet aggregation, serum triglyceride level, and cholesterol levels – all of which keep your heart performing. Garlic also makes a great seasoning for food so you can greatly reduce salt.

2. Salmon



Make the swap from a saturated fat burger to a salmon fillet. While some saturated fat is fine, a little goes a long way. The average cheeseburger has more than half a day worth of the artery clogging fat, which will increase your risk for a heart attack. Conversely, salmon lowers that risk thanks to heart healthy fats. Omega-3s can prevent erratic heart rhythms, reduce likelihood of blood clots inside arteries, improve the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol, and prevent cholesterol from becoming damaged, at which point it clogs arteries.

3. Berries and Cherries



Props must be given to nature’s candy. These sweet treats are high in polyphenols, which prevent cell damage that creates unhealthy blood vessels and heart. During the winter, opt for frozen berries. Try thawing a bag of frozen strawberries in the refrigerator. Then, add unsweetened, steel-cut oatmeal with the berries their juice and your heart will say thanks with each beat.

4. Quinoa



Often mistaken as a grain, this tiny sprouted seed is an excellent source of magnesium, the mineral that relaxes blood vessels. Low dietary levels of magnesium lead to some scary health issues like increased rates of hypertension, ischemic heart disease and heart arrhythmias. Quinoa cooks quickly and makes great leftovers. Toss with grilled veggies and roasted chicken for a delicious one-pot dinner, or try this Red Curry Quinoa recipe.

5. Hot Cocoa



You read right! Hot cocoa is brimming with antioxidants – two-times more than red wine and three times more than green tea. The cool February temperatures are no match for a mug of hot cocoa. My tip: since hot chocolate mixes are full of sugar, use 100% cocoa and combine with a teaspoon of sugar. Plus you'll sweeten with the natural sugars in the milk.

Valentine's Day. A day many men dread but most women wait for with great anticipation.

A lot of guys see Valentine's Day as no more than a "Hallmark holiday." They think they can just make dinner reservations and call it a day. The majority of women, however, attach real importance to what their man does (or does not do) on this day. As a guy, you don't want to do it wrong.



Here are 10 scenarios to avoid if you want to have a happy woman next to you this Valentine's Day.

1. What are we doing? Have a plan.

Never "wing it" on Valentine's Day. You need to be the one who decides what the two of you are going to do. Do not just pick her up and say, "So what type of food do you feel like tonight?" This is the one night you need (and are expected to) show your romantic side. Step up and show her that you have one.

2. What kind of flowers are these?

Before you buy flowers for your girl, gather some key information. It is important to know what kind of flowers she likes. And one of the biggest mistakes is giving her flowers she is allergic to. Make sure you know of any floral allergies before giving her flowers. If you don't, then she will spend the day sneezing. Even worse, if you send the flowers to her office, her co-workers will be asking her whether you pay any attention to her, and you will be quickly thrown under the Valentine's Day bus.

3. Where did you get these flowers? Avoid fast flowers.

The guy selling roses from the middle of the intersection may look like a convenient idea, but chances are that half the flowers will be broken or wilting before they even get put in a vase. If this happens, you will not look like the romantic guy. You will look like the cheap guy, or the guy who forgot to buy her flowers and had no other choice but to grab flowers from the guy on the freeway off-ramp.

4. How did you find this place?

If dinner reservations are part of your Valentine's Day plan, don't choose any random restaurant. Always do your research. You want to find a great romantic restaurant. A lot of guys will just pick a restaurant they've heard good things about, only to arrive with their date and find it filled with screaming children and video game machines. This is Valentine's Day, so make sure the restaurant you pick serves her favorite foods and, especially, her favorite dessert. If you don't know her favorite dessert, ask her ahead of time. The more you plan out this day, the more special she will feel.
5. Where did you get this?

If you are thinking about getting her a cute stuffed animal, be careful about where you buy it. I can speak from personal experience on this one. About 20 years ago, I had planned nothing for Valentine's Day and had to find my girl a present somewhere on my way home. I saw a guy on the corner who was selling teddy bears with a little heart that said "Happy Valentine's Day." I thought I was lucky. When I brought the bear home, I held it in my hand and knocked on the door. My girlfriend opened the door, and our Golden Retriever jumped up and grabbed the stuffed bear. I thought that was out of character for her, until I realized that there was something my dog was smelling. It turns out there was some kind of animal scent on the teddy bear, and the guy I bought it from had found the stuffed animals on the street. So be careful where you buy things.

6. I can't believe she's here.

Few things will sour a woman on Valentine's Day more quickly than running into your ex-girlfriend. To avoid this, do not take your girl to any place you ever brought your ex-girlfriend on a previous Valentine's Day. Also, don't take your girl to any of your ex- girlfriend's favorite restaurants. Valentine's Day is a day that women like to remember. So you want to start a new tradition together. Pick a place that will be "your place."
7. You think I can fit in that?

If you are thinking of buying your girl lingerie for Valentine's Day, be absolutely sure you know her size. This is really important. If you buy lingerie that is the wrong size -- whether too big or too small -- you will ruin the evening in very quick order. If you come home with lingerie that is too small, she will think, "Oh my God, do I look fat? Am I fat? Does he think I'm fat?" When she attempts to try it on and discovers she can't fit into it, she will feel completely unattractive. Buying her lingerie that is too big is equally disastrous. In her mind she will wonder, "Does he think I'm this big?" There is almost nothing you can do that is worse than making your girl feel unattractive on Valentine's Day.

8. You know I can't eat that.

Respect her diet. Let's say that your girlfriend is on a diet or in the middle of a cleanse when Valentine's Day arrives. She is trying to take care of herself. Nevertheless, you listen to your buddy who tells you he bought some fancy chocolates for his girl, and so you get a box of those chocolates too. Buying your girlfriend chocolates when you know she is dieting is telling her that you have absolutely no support for her. A woman wants to know that you are aware of where she is in her life. Pick something else that shows her that you're thinking of her.
9. You shouldn't have...really.

Stick to an appropriate budget. One of the biggest mistakes a guy can make on Valentine's Day is buying lavish gifts for a woman he hasn't known for very long. Say you just met at a party a couple of weeks ago and she said yes to a Valentine's Day dinner with you. Do not go overboard and send some ridiculously large gift basket to her. Do not show up to dinner with three dozen roses in hand and a mariachi band to sing her a love song. If you're newly dating, chances are she didn't buy you anything. By going overboard, you are not making her feel special.You are making her feel uncomfortable. Instead, give her a simple card or a simple flower -- it will speak volumes.

10. Do you know what day it is?

Don't blow it off. The number-one biggest mistake men can make on Valentine's Day is not acknowledging it at all. You need to understand that it is a very real and important holiday to most women. So you never want to just do nothing on Valentine's Day. It is easy to make her feel special if you keep the above tips in mind. Start by wishing her a happy Valentine's Day first thing in the morning. Never wait until your nighttime plans; otherwise she may worry that you forgot. The longer you wait to acknowledge the day, the worse your night is going to be, and the more insensitive you are going to seem in her eyes.

By JEFFREY BALL And KEITH JOHNSON

Some top officials of a Nobel Prize-winning climate-science organization are acknowledging the panel made some mistakes amid a string of recent revelations questioning the accuracy of some of the information in its influential reports.



Officials of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored network of scientists whose reports strongly influence global policy on greenhouse-gas emissions, initially played down some of the allegations. Increasingly, however, they are acknowledging the panel's mistakes and saying it needs to tighten its procedures.

"This has not increased the credibility of the IPCC," said Ottmar Edenhofer, a German economist who is co-chairing one of the main sections of the IPCC's next big climate-change report, due out in 2013 and 2014. "There is some room for improvement."

Scientists and other experts involved in the IPCC say most of the information assembled and reported by the organization is valid. They say the revelations don't impugn the IPCC's main conclusions: that climate change is largely due to man-made greenhouse-gas emissions and could have dangerous consequences. Though they say each revelation itself is small, they worry that the continuing string of them is damaging the IPCC's credibility—not just with experts who question the premise of human-induced climate change, but with the public at large.

In citing climate change as an important issue, a U.N. conference in December in Copenhagen didn't rely "on the precise date of the demise of Himalayan glaciers, or African agriculture" to tackle global warming, says IPCC Vice Chairman Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, mentioning subjects that have generated criticism of the group. "It's the body of evidence" in the whole report that makes the case for action.

Officials say they don't know of additional mistakes in the IPCC's seminal 2007 report, but that, given that the report runs more than 3,000 pages, additional mistakes may come to light. "I do not expect serious mistakes," Mr. Edenhofer said. "But I'm quite sure that if people read the 3,000 pages, there will be some more mistakes."



A number of climate-change skeptics and public officials, including U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, have said the IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, should resign. IPCC officials said Mr. Pachauri was traveling and unavailable to comment Tuesday.

A U.N. spokesman said IPCC rules don't appear to give the U.N. secretary-general authority to dismiss the IPCC chairman, and noted that Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon hasn't called for Mr. Pachauri's departure. Under IPCC rules, the panel's members—national-government officials—choose the IPCC chairman.

That officials with the IPCC are on the defensive is a big turnabout from 2007, when the organization shared a Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The IPCC got the prize for its 2007 report concluding that climate change is "unequivocal" and is "very likely" caused by man. The report motivated countries around the world to push for limits on greenhouse-gas emissions.

But recent revelations have undercut the Geneva-based group. Among them: Emails were released on the Internet in which leading scientists at an influential U.K. climate-science institute seemed to squelch dissent from researchers who disagreed with them; and the 2007 report incorrectly said that Himalayan glaciers could disappear as soon as 2035.

Thousands of scientists and other experts volunteer their time with the IPCC to issue joint pronouncements every five or six years about one of the most complex scientific fields. The group, established by the U.N. Environment Program and the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, is administered by a paid staff of only a few dozen and doesn't do any scientific research itself; its job is to assess work done by others, providing information for policy makers.

Experts involved in writing IPCC reports say the 2007 document's errors point up gaps in the group's checks and balances. Mr. Edenhofer said IPCC reports have to be more careful about noting uncertainties surrounding information that hasn't been subjected to peer review.

The most glaring mistake in the 2007 report is the claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035, several IPCC authors say. That claim wasn't based on any peer-reviewed scientific paper, but on a decade-old interview given by an Indian glacier expert.

Chris Field, co-chair of another section of the IPCC's next big report and director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Palo Alto, Calif., said he thinks the IPCC would have caught the error had the team of scientists writing the report chapter on the Himalayas included a glacier expert. It didn't.

U.S. officials said they don't believe revelations of mistakes in IPCC reports undermine cause for concern about global warming. "It's not useful when mistakes are made, but the overwhelming body of evidence [on climate change] is not disturbed by those events," Todd Stern, the Obama administration's top international negotiator on climate-change policy, told an audience Tuesday at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning Washington think tank. "It's nothing short of crazy for us to put our heads in the sand and do nothing" about climate change.
—Guy Chazan and Ian Talley contributed to this article.

Malware and financial fraud were among the chief "growth threats" posed to businesses in 2009, according to a new study from the Computer Security Institute that will be published next week.



CSI's 14th annual security survey, which will be distributed in conjunction with a free Dec. 1 Webcast, covers a wide range of issues related to security management, including current threats, data loss statistics, and trends in technology usage.

Respondents reported big jumps in the incidence of financial fraud (19.5 percent, over 12 percent last year); malware infection (64.3 percent, over 50 percent last year); denials of service (29.2 percent, over 21 percent last year), password sniffing (17.3 percent, over 9 percent last year); and Web site defacement (13.5 percent, over 6 percent last year).

The survey showed significant dips in wireless exploits (7.6 percent, down from 14 percent in 2008), and instant messaging abuse (7.6 percent, down from 21 percent).

"The financial fraud was a major concern because the cost of those incidents is so high," says Sara Peters, senior editor at CSI and author of this year's report. Financial fraud costs enterprises approximately $450,000 per incident, according to the study.

While financial fraud costs rose in 2009, average losses due to security incidents of all types are down this year -- from $289,000 per respondent to $234,244 per respondent, CSI says. Those numbers are still higher than 2005 and 2006 figures.

Twenty-five percent of respondents stated the majority of their financial losses in the past year were due to nonmalicious actions by insiders.

For the first time, CSI asked security professionals not only about the technologies they are using, but also about their satisfaction with those technologies. Interestingly, on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being the lowest satisfaction level, none of the security product categories received anything lower than a 3.0.

"What that says to us is that people are generally satisfied, if not overjoyed, with the performance of the products they're using," Peters says. "They're not blaming their problems on technology."

When asked which security technologies ranked highest on their wish lists, many respondents named tools that would improve their visibility -- better log management, security information and event management, security data visualization, security dashboards, and the like, CSI says.
Respondents also were generally satisfied with the amount of money their organizations have invested in their security programs, with one exception: security awareness training.

"In the past, when we saw low spending on security awareness programs, we assumed that it was because those programs simply don't cost that much to put together," Peters says. "But now we see that some security departments aren't getting the funding they need to put together the strength and quality of awareness programs that they would like."



Even as they increase corporate efficiency, Internet banking and e-commerce are heaping additional burdens on the financial services industry. As a result, security has become the number one spending priority for many companies.

You’ve seen the worrisome stories. Viruses and worms literally spreading doom through global computer networks; spam clogging personal and corporate email systems; and identity theft, aided by the Web, robbing financial institutions, merchants and their customers. We need to be able to refute those headlines and say, ‘Hey look, this is how we’re addressing security,’ says Robert Blackburn, director, cash management, in the global transaction services unit of Citigroup.
Many bankers and corporate executives grappling with the harrowing security issues of the present day share Blackburn’s view. Security is a hotter topic than ever before for financial institutions, retailers, other corporations and the technology and software providers trying to help them cope with the threats.

The scale of the interest generated by Internet fraud was clear at the annual information technology conference hosted by RSA Security in San Francisco in late February, which drew 10,000 attendees a 20% jump over the preceding year. The need for better security management was the major theme of the confab.

I think there’s concern about security but not enough action.A lot of people are talking about it, but they haven’t figured out what solutions to put forward,” says Tom Miltonberger, senior vice president of product development at Quova, a Mountain View, California- based firm that sells technology services that allow online businesses to pinpoint the location of their Web site visitors to prevent fraud and comply with regulatory requirements.

Anonymity Aids Internet Criminals

All these crimes are flourishing in large part because the Internet allows the hackers and the fraudsters on the whole to remain anonymous while doing the deed. The speed and efficiency of the medium also plays a significant role. Statistics help tell the story. In 2004, malicious code viruses, worms and Trojan horses will cost the worldwide economy $35 billion, according to the Radicati Group, a Palo Alto, California-based technology research firm.

The major technology companies are responding to the hacker threats largely by introducing new versions of their software and hardware products that work better with other security management products.The dominant theme is integration of intrusion detection systems, firewalls, anti-virus programs and authentication technologies to get a single view of network security.

Then there’s the matter of online fraud.A recent study by the Internet Fraud Prevention Advisory Council, a consortium of online merchants, merchant acquirers, credit card associations and credit card issuers, estimated that the occurrence of online fraud, as a percentage of business revenues, might be as much as 40 times higher than for face-to-face transactions offline.

Identity Theft

One scary financial crime made efficient by the Web and rapidly expanding is identity theft.The number of identity theft cases jumped 40% in 2003, according to the US Federal Trade Commission. The crime is expected to have cost consumers, businesses and governments $221 billion in losses worldwide last year, according to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group. Those losses could increase almost tenfold within two years to reach as much as $2 trillion by the end of 2005.

Identity theft can take several forms. Perpetrators can use the Internet to hack into businesses’ servers and databases to steal client and account information. That can then be used to create new accounts, in customers’ names, that can be emptied out. Of course, the perpetrators can simply steal from the existing accounts they tapped into. Firewalls and encryption are the common methods to stop this form of attack.

Another identity theft scheme rapidly gathering steam is called phishing.The fraudsters pretend to be well-known legitimate businesses such as banks or brokerage firms by setting up Web sites using those companies’ names and logos. They then email customers of those firms, encouraging them to give out key personal, financial and account data.That data can be used to take over their identities for the purposes of applying for credit cards, loans and mortgages.

What we’ve seen recently is that identity theft has gained a lot of celebrity, says Tracy Stover, director, client development, in the commercial card services group at Citigroup. She says that the bank has had some cases of corporate customers who became identity theft victims on their personal accounts. In those cases, the bank works with the client and the major credit bureaus to repair their damaged credit records so that they can obtain loans and financing in the future.

However, bank customers are not immune to theft attempts when they are at work.Turner says Citigroup’s commercial card services group recently received calls from some (fewer than 50) upset corporate customers saying they received emails at work from people claiming to be the bank and asking for account information. What’s made people a little more nervous is that pfishing was happening on their corporate email, says Stover. I think people get a false sense of security with corporate email.We all have firewalls so they automatically assume the email is legitimate.”
Identity theft is a crime that often is difficult or timeconsuming to detect, allowing fraudsters plenty of time to do a lot of damage. Like their colleagues the computer hackers, online fraudsters are generally relentless and innovative in pursuing new techniques, technologies and ingenious new schemes.One of these innovations is the automatic credit- or debit-card number generator. These programs, which can easily be found on the Internet, automatically generate thousands of 14- or 16- digit card numbers.

The thief then submits a large number of transactions to test out the number sequences and see if they get a match. However, these attacks are fairly easy to detect and can be blocked with lockout and refusal systems that limit transactions to a set number, or block purchases because of a lack of billing and address information, according to security and fraud experts.

CALL IN THE CYBER-DETECTIVE Software maps location of Internet users

As cyber-criminals become ever more sophisticated, it may seem that heading off fraudulent transactions is almost impossible. Software from companies such as Quova can help, though.

The four-year-old Mountain View, California-based firm’s geolocation technology figures out the physical location of computers by tracking Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which are like telephone numbers but without the country codes or prefixes to reveal their locations. Quova’s GeoPoint Data Delivery Server uses sophisticated algorithms to process data for Internet gateways, routers and registries of IP addresses.

Our product tells you where the user is, says Tom Miltonberger, senior vice president of product development, noting that the privately held company’s technology maps the IP location down to a specific metropolitan area.
That’s important in preventing fraudulent orders because certain countries, cities and IP addresses are leading sources of fraud. For example, one-quarter of the transactions originating from St. Petersburg, Russia, last year turned out to be fraudulent, as did 38% of the orders placed from one specific IP domain in Indonesia, according to ClearCommerce, a partner of Quova’s. Knowing that the order about to be placed or account about to be opened is originating in one of these places sets off alarm bells for the retailer or financial provider,” Miltonberger says.

However, sophisticated fraudsters can try to get around this by setting up proxy servers in other locations not known for fraud, thereby hiding their true whereabouts. Our solution is not perfect either, concedes Miltonberger. In fact, a simple search of the Internet can yield lists of proxy servers that can be used to set up IP addresses that mask the real location of the fraudster. But we do the same thing and search for these proxies, test them and mark them in our databases, says Miltonberger.

Tiny Transactions, Huge Hauls

Another area that is facing increasing attacks is the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network. Fraudsters are submitting small transactions across the system that can reap large amounts if they succeed in initiating automatic debits against thousands or millions of company checking accounts.Clients can set up a debit block to stop any ACH transactions from debiting the account. We advocate that all of our clients put a block on their account when it is used for any sort of checking going out of it, says Citigroup’s Blackburn.The bank also tells its corporate cash management customers to reconcile their accounts daily. “Make sure you recognize them and the persons who made them,” he says.

Fraud has become a big concern as use of the ACH system has greatly expanded with consumers’ use of debit cards to make Internet purchases.
The system used to be primarily the province of businesses as a way of paying their employees, vendors and suppliers.

Another major problem in Internet commerce is the overwhelming amount of spam, or junk email, increasingly dominating the email servers of most companies. Spam will account for 52% of all email by the end of this year and will cost $41.6 billion in financial losses, more than double the amount in 2003, according to the Radicati Group. The losses stem mostly from increased IT infrastructure costs for bigger servers and more administrators.

SELECTED SECURITY/FRAUD STATISTICS

Identity theft is expected to have cost consumers, businesses and governments $221 billion in losses worldwide last year. Losses could reach $2 trillion by the end of 2005.
* Online fraud incidents, as a percentage of business revenues, may be as much as 40 times higher than in face-to-face transactions.
* Online credit card fraud could cost businesses $60 billion by 2005.
* In 2004, malicious code (viruses, worms and Trojan horses) will cost the worldwide economy $35 billion.
* By the end of 2004, spam will account for 52% of all email and will cost $41.6 billion in financial losses, mostly due to higher IT infrastructure costs.

Sources: US Federal Trade Commission, Aberdeen Group, Internet Fraud Prevention Advisory Council, Financial Insights, and Radicati Group

The Real Cost of Spam

The volume of email you’re dealing with is enormous because of all the garbage you don’t want.Your infrastructure is blown way out of proportion because of the spam, says Sara Radicati, CEO of the Radicati Group. She estimates that companies spend an average of $49 per user mailbox per year in additional administration costs directly caused by the deluge of spam they’re facing. Those costs don’t include the loss of worker productivity in having to wade through and delete spam.

Spam is also a security threat because many of the messages carry computer viruses with them.The email pfishing schemes that have become prevalent over the past year often originate in spam messages. Companies typically combat spam with filters, but they are of limited effectiveness. The filters let a lot through, says Radicati, who estimates that 17% of spam still gets through the filters.

Technology companies are now proposing and devising a number of hardware and software solutions that try to verify the access rights of the email sender. For example, Microsoft is proposing a caller-ID system for email.

There’s no magic bullet. It’s a complex problem, and the solutions will be expensive, says Radicati.

Now that Apple has chosen the famously awkward name “iPad” for its tablet, the most obvious candidate “iTablet” is up for grabs. Sure enough, a UK company is leaping at the opportunity.



X2 is happy to announce it’s “hot on the heels of Apple’s latest product launch” with the iTablet, which will run Windows 7 and Linux. The iTablet will ship April in two screen sizes — 10.2 inches and 10.7 inches — with a 1,024-by-768 resolution TFT touchscreen (multitouch optional).

Other specs sound like the guts of a netbook: a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, up to 250GB hard drive capacity, built-in stereo speakers, three USB ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI output, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and 3G connectivity.

It’s good to see competition for the iPad (I did, after all, predict 2010 would be the year of the tablet), but it’s hard to draw positive impressions from a company whose website is practically impossible to navigate. No details on price have been announced.

2010 - The Year of the Tablet

After years of enticing rumors, ambitious prognostications and flat-out blather, 2010 may finally be the year that the tablet PC evolves from being a niche device to becoming a mainstream portable computer.

The tipping point comes via word to Wired.com from a well-connected industry executive that mainstream heavyweights Dell and Intel are collaborating on a touchscreen tablet due for release next year. Though our source has learned little about specifications of the device, what’s apparent is that the tablet will serve as a subscription-based e-reader for displaying newspapers, magazines and other media, giving Amazon’s Kindle — particularly, the nearly $500 large-format DX model — a run for its money.

As notable as the format is the business model: The tablet will be free for consumers who opt into a contract subscribing to one or more digital media subscriptions, according to our source. That’s similar to how telecom companies currently subsidize cellphones when customers agree to two-year contracts.

Our source, who requested to remain anonymous due to a non-disclosure agreement, said the companies are aiming to launch this product in about six months.

Dell and Intel are just the latest examples of a growing trend. MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen said he, too, has heard rumors about not just Dell, but also handset makers Nokia and HTC delivering tablets by end of first quarter 2010. Nearly everyone has now confidently reported that Apple is launching a tablet by early next year. Singapore start-up Fusion Garage and TechCrunch are rushing to release the CrunchPad touchscreen tablet by this November.

Market research firm Display Search now projects the touchscreen market will triple in the next few years, from $3.6 billion to $9 billion.

“The iPhone was a big catalyst for the whole touchscreen industry, even if it’s just from a 3.5-inch mobile phone,” said Jennifer Halgrove, an analyst and director of display technologies with Display Search. “It encouraged people’s imaginations, and now companies are saying, ‘Oh, I can make a bigger one, and I can also have this user friendly interface.’ That really opened this industry.”

The idea of the tablet computer is nothing new to the tech industry. The development of tablet PCs can be traced as far back as 1888, when the United States Patent office granted a patent to electrical engineer Elisha Gray for an electrical-stylus device for capturing handwriting. In more recent years, plenty of hardware companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer, have presented tablets that have only succeeded to fulfill a niche. Controlled with a stylus on a touch-sensitive “digitizer” screen, tablet PCs have traditionally been tailored toward artists and designers, failing to break into the mainstream.



But in recent years, costs of touchscreen components and software have been declining, and new types of touchscreens are emerging in the display market, Colegrove said. After stylus-controlled digitizer touchscreens came resistive touchscreens, which were very cheap to produce but suffered from low durability and poor transmittance. Then, a newer technology called capacitive touch became available, in which electrodes sense a user’s fingers on the X and Y axes, negating the need for a stylus.

In 2007, Apple featured capacitive touch technology (which it marketed with the more friendly term “multitouch”) in its iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 40 million units worldwide to date. Clearly, there is a mainstream audience for these keyboard-less computers, and Apple opened the doors with a superior user interface.

“The touch-based user interface is something we got from the handset market,” Kuittinen said. “And now that you have this innovation, it’s easier to go back to the tablet concept, and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s add this.’ All of a sudden the device is a lot more appealing and sexier, especially since you have multitouch.”

A $0.00, media-centric tablet from Dell and Intel would certainly be competitive against Amazon’s Kindle in terms of price. Who would buy an Amazon Kindle reader if a free tablet were made available? The Kindle 2 costs $300, and the large-format Kindle DX runs for $490 — and even after purchasing a Kindle, consumers must still pay for content.

At Amazon’s Kindle DX launch event in May, The New York Times teased the idea of subsidizing longer term subscription commitments, but only in areas where “home delivery is not available.” Still, no such subsidy model has yet come into fruition for Amazon’s Kindles.

The idea of opting into a contract might initially sound like a turn-off, but Kuittinen told Wired.com that for cellphones, carrier-subsidy has been an extremely successful method to reel in customers. He said he would expect similar results with a subsidized tablet.

Kuittinen added that he has heard the Dell tablet would measure 5 inches — slightly larger than an iPhone but smaller than a Kindle. However, he said he is skeptical about Intel’s involvement with the product. Given the nature of the company, Intel would provide the guts of the device — perhaps a low-powered processor such as the Atom, which is currently used in netbooks. Kuittinen said this processor is not adequately energy-efficient to power a tablet PC compared to the ARM-based chips used in iPhones and devices running Google Android.

“There’s really no other viable alternative,” he said. “Android has such a strong moment right now. It’s going to be so much easier to develop for it.”

The low cost of Intel’s Atom chips would help keep the a rumored device’s overall price down in order to make subsidy not too hefty for content providers involved. But the software would be the key ingredient to drive the success for this device, and an Intel-based machine would either have to run a Windows or Linux-based operating system.

A tablet produced by Dell and Intel would most likely run a mobile version of Windows 7. In presentations marketing Windows 7, Microsoft has been heavily promoting the upcoming operating system’s support for multitouch. Windows 7 is slated for an October 2009 release.

The challenge for Dell and Intel is unlikely to be the creation of the product, but rather cementing negotiations with content partners. The companies will find it difficult convincing large newspaper companies to convert from being an advertisement-based business to a fee-based business. However, they might be more open to the idea if Dell and Intel keep their tablet at a low cost.

Journalist Rebecca Skloot’s new book investigates how a poor black tobacco farmer had a groundbreaking impact on modern medicine



Medical researchers use laboratory-grown human cells to learn the intricacies of how cells work and test theories about the causes and treatment of diseases. The cell lines they need are “immortal”—they can grow indefinitely, be frozen for decades, divided into different batches and shared among scientists. In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman with cervical cancer. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research—though their donor remained a mystery for decades. In her new book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, journalist Rebecca Skloot tracks down the story of the source of the amazing HeLa cells, Henrietta Lacks, and documents the cell line's impact on both modern medicine and the Lacks family.

Who was Henrietta Lacks?

She was a black tobacco farmer from southern Virginia who got cervical cancer when she was 30. A doctor at Johns Hopkins took a piece of her tumor without telling her and sent it down the hall to scientists there who had been trying to grow tissues in culture for decades without success. No one knows why, but her cells never died.


Why are her cells so important?

Henrietta’s cells were the first immortal human cells ever grown in culture. They were essential to developing the polio vaccine. They went up in the first space missions to see what would happen to cells in zero gravity. Many scientific landmarks since then have used her cells, including cloning, gene mapping and in vitro fertilization.

There has been a lot of confusion over the years about the source of HeLa cells. Why?
When the cells were taken, they were given the code name HeLa, for the first two letters in Henrietta and Lacks. Today, anonymizing samples is a very important part of doing research on cells. But that wasn’t something doctors worried about much in the 1950s, so they weren’t terribly careful about her identity. When some members of the press got close to finding Henrietta’s family, the researcher who’d grown the cells made up a pseudonym—Helen Lane—to throw the media off track. Other pseudonyms, like Helen Larsen, eventually showed up, too. Her real name didn’t really leak out into the world until the 1970s.

How did you first get interested in this story?

I first learned about Henrietta in 1988. I was 16 and a student in a community college biology class. Everybody learns about these cells in basic biology, but what was unique about my situation was that my teacher actually knew Henrietta’s real name and that she was black. But that’s all he knew. The moment I heard about her, I became obsessed: Did she have any kids? What do they think about part of their mother being alive all these years after she died? Years later, when I started being interested in writing, one of the first stories I imagined myself writing was hers. But it wasn’t until I went to grad school that I thought about trying to track down her family.

How did you win the trust of Henrietta’s family?

Part of it was that I just wouldn’t go away and was determined to tell the story. It took almost a year even to convince Henrietta’s daughter, Deborah, to talk to me. I knew she was desperate to learn about her mother. So when I started doing my own research, I’d tell her everything I found. I went down to Clover, Virginia, where Henrietta was raised, and tracked down her cousins, then called Deborah and left these stories about Henrietta on her voice mail. Because part of what I was trying to convey to her was I wasn’t hiding anything, that we could learn about her mother together. After a year, finally she said, fine, let’s do this thing.

When did her family find out about Henrietta’s cells?

Twenty-five years after Henrietta died, a scientist discovered that many cell cultures thought to be from other tissue types, including breast and prostate cells, were in fact HeLa cells. It turned out that HeLa cells could float on dust particles in the air and travel on unwashed hands and contaminate other cultures. It became an enormous controversy. In the midst of that, one group of scientists tracked down Henrietta’s relatives to take some samples with hopes that they could use the family’s DNA to make a map of Henrietta’s genes so they could tell which cell cultures were HeLa and which weren’t, to begin straightening out the contamination problem.

So a postdoc called Henrietta’s husband one day. But he had a third-grade education and didn’t even know what a cell was. The way he understood the phone call was: “We’ve got your wife. She’s alive in a laboratory. We’ve been doing research on her for the last 25 years. And now we have to test your kids to see if they have cancer.” Which wasn’t what the researcher said at all. The scientists didn’t know that the family didn’t understand. From that point on, though, the family got sucked into this world of research they didn’t understand, and the cells, in a sense, took over their lives.

How did they do that?

This was most true for Henrietta’s daughter. Deborah never knew her mother; she was an infant when Henrietta died. She had always wanted to know who her mother was but no one ever talked about Henrietta. So when Deborah found out that this part of her mother was still alive she became desperate to understand what that meant: Did it hurt her mother when scientists injected her cells with viruses and toxins? Had scientists cloned her mother? And could those cells help scientists tell her about her mother, like what her favorite color was and if she liked to dance.

Deborah’s brothers, though, didn’t think much about the cells until they found out there was money involved. HeLa cells were the first human biological materials ever bought and sold, which helped launch a multi-billion-dollar industry. When Deborah’s brothers found out that people were selling vials of their mother’s cells, and that the family didn’t get any of the resulting money, they got very angry. Henrietta’s family has lived in poverty most of their lives, and many of them can’t afford health insurance. One of her sons was homeless and living on the streets of Baltimore. So the family launched a campaign to get some of what they felt they were owed financially. It consumed their lives in that way.

What are the lessons from this book?

For scientists, one of the lessons is that there are human beings behind every biological sample used in the laboratory. So much of science today revolves around using human biological tissue of some kind. For scientists, cells are often just like tubes or fruit flies—they’re just inanimate tools that are always there in the lab. The people behind those samples often have their own thoughts and feelings about what should happen to their tissues, but they’re usually left out of the equation.

And for the rest of us?

The story of HeLa cells and what happened with Henrietta has often been held up as an example of a racist white scientist doing something malicious to a black woman. But that’s not accurate. The real story is much more subtle and complicated. What is very true about science is that there are human beings behind it and sometimes even with the best of intentions things go wrong.

One of the things I don’t want people to take from the story is the idea that tissue culture is bad. So much of medicine today depends on tissue culture. HIV tests, many basic drugs, all of our vaccines—we would have none of that if it wasn’t for scientists collecting cells from people and growing them. And the need for these cells is going to get greater, not less. Instead of saying we don’t want that to happen, we just need to look at how it can happen in a way that everyone is OK with.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Henrietta-Lacks-Immortal-Cells.html#ixzz0ehVgOSfN