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Michael Bloomberg's large, sugary drink ban will start in NYC tomorrow.?

But Bloomberg is facing some intense opposition from corporate giant Starbucks. The coffee chain said it would make no immediate changes to its business based on the ban.?

Bloomberg told television show Face The Nation that Starbucks?not changing its offerings?is "ridiculous."?

When interviewer?Bob Schieffer pointed out that Starbucks wasn't changing its offerings because it was confused about which of its products would fall under the ban, Bloomberg retorted that the corporation should know better.?

?Starbucks knows how to market things, knows how to package things,? Bloomberg said.??They can change instantly when it?s in their interest to do so.?

The?new mandate?limits sugary drinks sold at restaurants, movie theaters, street carts, and more to?16 ounces. But some drinks, such as those made up of 50 percent milk or more, are exempt.?

It will be enforced by city health inspectors during inspections, when restaurants violating the ban will lose points on their sanitation score.?It's not clear, however, how significant the penalities will be or whether the city would take stronger action to target as big an offender as Starbucks.

Starbucks spokeswoman Linda Mills told us that it would not make immediate changes to its menu because of the ban.?

"Our understanding is that any beverage with 50 percent or more milk is exempt from the ruling," Mills said. "Because many of our beverages are made from milk or are customized by the customer, many of our beverages fall outside the ban."?

But Starbucks will still continue to offer beverages like its green iced-tea lemonade in larger sizes too. That drink doesn't contain milk but is high in sugar.?

Starbucks also "recognizes pending litigation" about the ban and "doesn't want to make any knee-jerk reactions," Mills said.?

The?American Beverage Association?filed to stop the ban until a judge decides on whether to stop it altogether.?

Starbucks competitor Dunkin' Donuts is taking the mandate seriously.?

At Dunkin', customers will have to add their own sugar or flavors to large and extra-large hot beverage and medium and large iced beverages.?The company also announced that sweet beverages like hot chocolate will only be available in small and medium sizes.

Bloomberg's ban, which only affects restaurants and places that sell prepared foods, is meant to combat obesity.?

Critics of the ban say it will be difficult to enforce and will make business less efficient.?

For example, instead of a Dunkin' Donuts employee adding sugar to a drink and handing it off, customers will have to line up to add their own sugar.?

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-calls-starbucks-ridiculous-2013-3

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - A whistleblowing Russian lawyer whose death in custody became a symbol of rights abuses and strained relations with the United States will go on posthumous trial on Monday in what relatives say is revenge by the Kremlin.

Sergei Magnitsky, who died while in pre-trial custody in 2009, is being prosecuted for defrauding the state in what will be the first time Russia has ever tried a dead person, a development Amnesty International says sets a "dangerous precedent".

Magnitsky had been jailed after accusing police and tax officials of multimillion dollar tax fraud. His employer says the charges against him were a reprisal and he was murdered, and the Kremlin's own human rights council aired suspicions he was beaten to death.

The circumstances of his demise led the United States last year to bar entry to Russians accused of involvement in his case or in other rights abuses.

Critics say the trial - more than three years after he died and despite pleas by relatives to drop the case - is an attempt by President Vladimir Putin's government to hit back at Washington and show the public Magnitsky was a crook not a hero.

"It's inhuman to try a dead man. If I take part in this circus, I become an accomplice to this," Magnitsky's mother Natalya told Reuters. "I won't take part in the hearings."

Russia took the highly unusual step of reopening the investigation against Magnitsky in 2011, as international criticism of Russia over his death mounted.

"First they killed him, now they are dancing on his grave," said a lawyer for Magnitsky's family, Nikolai Gorokhov.

After Magnitsky's lawyers boycotted pre-trial hearings, the court appointed a lawyer to defend him.

Contacted by Reuters, the court-appointed lawyer, Nikolai Guerasimov, declined to comment on the case. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov also declined to comment.

Magnitsky died at the age of 37 after he said he was denied medical care over 358 days in jail.

DEAD MAN IN THE DOCK

Putin said Magnitsky died of heart failure, but his former employer, London-based investment fund Hermitage Capital, says he was killed for testifying against officials he accused of a $230 million theft through fraudulent tax refunds.

Hermitage owner William Browder is being tried in absentia alongside his former employee. He also faces new fraud charges filed last week over dealings a decade ago in shares in state gas firm Gazprom.

Browder has said the charges are an "absurdity" meant as revenge for his campaigning for the U.S. rights legislations named after Magnitsky.

Pro-Kremlin television channel NTV showed a documentary alleging Browder exploited his late employee's death for his own ends. Critics say NTV often airs such programs to influence public opinion before charges are filed against government foes.

Rights watchdog Amnesty International has called Russia's first posthumous trial a "dangerous precedent."

Authorities say recent legal changes make it possible. But Magnitsky's family lawyers say the law allows such cases only at the request of the deceased's relatives for the purpose of clearing their reputations.

No one has been held accountable for Magnitsky's death. One prison official was tried last year but prosecutors asked the court to clear him.

"Something happened in that prison that no one wants to talk about," Zoya Svetova, an investigator for the independent prison watchdog, the Public Oversight Commission, that probed his death.

"Magnitsky became a symbol of the fight against corruption, and the goal of this trial is to show he is no symbol but just a criminal who didn't pay his taxes," she said.

"It is pure state propaganda because there is no point in trying a dead man."

The case has weighed heavily on U.S.-Russian relations.

Moscow retaliated against the U.S. Magnitsky Act with its own visa ban against Americans suspected of violating the rights of Russians abroad. It also banned U.S. families from adopting Russian children.

(Reporting by Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Jason Webb)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/russia-puts-dead-whistleblower-trial-165253162.html

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Cardinals, including U.S. Roger Mahony, left, and Timothy Dolan, third from left, arrive for a meeting at the Vatican, Monday March 11, 2013. Cardinals have gathered for their final day of talks before the conclave to elect the next pope amid debate over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager pope to clean up the Vatican's messy bureaucracy or a pastoral pope who can inspire the faithful and make Catholicism relevant again. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

In this photo provided by the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano, taken on Saturday, March 9, 2013 and made available Monday, March 11, 2013, firefighters install the top of the Sistine Chapel chimney that will signal to the world that a new pope has been elected, at the Vatican. Cardinals gathered for their final day of talks Monday before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid debate over whether the Catholic Church needs more of a manager pope to clean up the Vatican or a pastoral pope who can inspire the faithful at a time of crisis. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano, ho)

Cardinal Odilo Pedro Scherer arrives for a meeting at the Vatican, Monday March 11, 2013. Cardinals have gathered for their final day of talks before the conclave to elect the next pope amid debate over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager pope to clean up the Vatican's messy bureaucracy or a pastoral pope who can inspire the faithful and make Catholicism relevant again. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn arrives for a meeting at the Vatican, Monday March 11, 2013. Cardinals have gathered for their final day of talks before the conclave to elect the next pope amid debate over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager pope to clean up the Vatican's messy bureaucracy or a pastoral pope who can inspire the faithful and make Catholicism relevant again. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? On the eve of their conclave to select a new pope, cardinals held their final debate Monday over whether the Catholic Church needs a manager to clean up the Vatican or a pastor to inspire the faithful at a time of crisis.

The countdown underway, speculation has gone into overdrive about who's ahead in the papal campaign.

Will cardinals choose Cardinal Angelo Scola, the archbishop of Milan, an Italian with serious intellectual and managerial chops who hasn't been tainted by the scandals of the Vatican bureaucracy?

Or has Cardinal Sean O'Malley, the Capuchin monk from Boston who has charmed the Italian media worked the same magic on fellow cardinals?

Most cardinals already knew Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet since he heads a powerful Vatican office. But maybe over the past week they've gotten a chance to hear him sing ? he has a fabulous voice and is known for belting out French folk songs.

Whoever it is, there were strong indications that plenty of questions remained about the state of the church and the best man to lead it heading into Tuesday's conclave: Not all the cardinals who wanted to speak were able to Monday, and the cardinals were forced to take a vote about continuing the discussion into the afternoon.

In the end, a majority of cardinals chose to cut short the formal discussion, and the cardinals who did speak shortened their comments, according to the Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi.

"This is a great historical moment but we have got to do it properly, and I think that's why there isn't a real rush to get into things," Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier from South Africa said as he left the session.

Cardinal Javier Luis Err?zuriz of Chile was more blunt, saying that while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had tremendous support going into the 2005 conclave that elected him Benedict XVI after just four ballots, the same can't be said for any of the candidates in this election.

"This time around, there are many different candidates, so it's normal that it's going to take longer than the last time," he told The Associated Press.

One of the main presentations Monday came from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican No. 2 who heads the commission of cardinals overseeing the scandal-marred Vatican bank. He outlined the bank's activities and the Holy See's efforts to clean up its reputation in international financial circles, Lombardi said.

The Holy See's finances, and particularly the work of the Vatican bank have been under the spotlight during these pre-conclave meetings as cardinals seek to investigate allegations of corruption in the Vatican administration and get to the bottom of the bank's long history of scandal and secrecy.

There's no clear front-runner for a job most cardinals say they would never want, but a handful of names are circulating as top candidates to lead the 1.2 billion-strong church at a critical time in its history.

Scola is affable and Italian, but not from the Italian-centric Vatican bureaucracy. That makes him attractive perhaps to those seeking reform of the nerve center of the Catholic Church, which was exposed as corrupt and full of petty turf battles by the leaks of papal documents last year.

Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer seems to be favored by some Latin Americans and the Vatican Curia, or bureaucracy. Scherer has a solid handle on the Vatican's finances, sitting on the governing commission of the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works, as well as the Holy See's main budget committee.

As a non-Italian, the archbishop of Sao Paolo would be expected to name an Italian insider as secretary of state ? the Vatican No. 2 who runs day-to-day affairs at the Holy See ? another plus for Vatican-based cardinals who would want one of their own running the shop.

The pastoral camp seems to be focusing on two Americans, Cardinals Timothy Dolan of New York and O'Malley. Neither has Vatican experience, though Dolan served in the 1990s as rector of the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary up the hill from the Vatican. He has admitted his Italian isn't strong ? perhaps a handicap for a job in which the lingua franca of day-to-day administration is Italian and the pope's other role as bishop of Rome.

If the leading names fail to reach the 77 votes required for victory in the first few rounds of balloting, any number of surprise names could come to the fore as alternatives.

Those include Cardinal Luis Tagle, archbishop of Manila. He is young ? at age 55 the second-youngest cardinal voting ? and was only named a cardinal last November. While his management skills haven't been tested in Rome, Tagle ? with a Chinese-born mother ? is seen as the face of the church in Asia, where Catholicism is growing.

Whoever it is, the new pope will face a church in crisis: Benedict XVI spent his eight-year pontificate trying to revive Catholicism from the secular trends which have made it almost irrelevant in places like Europe, once a stronghold of Christianity. Clerical sex abuse scandals have soured many faithful on their church, and competition from rival evangelical churches in Latin America and Africa has drawn souls away.

Tuesday begins with the cardinals checking into the Vatican's Domus Sanctae Martae, a modern, industrial-feel hotel on the edge of the Vatican gardens. While the rooms are impersonal, they're a step up from the cramped conditions cardinals faced before the hotel was first put to use in 2005; in conclaves past, lines in the Apostolic Palace used to form for using bathrooms.

Tuesday morning, the dean of the College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, leads the celebration of the "Pro eligendo Pontificie" Mass ? the Mass for the election of a pope ? inside St. Peter's Basilica, joined by the 115 cardinals who will vote.

They break for lunch at the hotel, and return for the 4:30 p.m. procession into the Sistine Chapel, chanting the Litany of Saints, the hypnotic Gregorian chant imploring the intercession of the saints to help guide the voting. They then take their oath of secrecy and listen to a meditation by elderly Maltese Cardinal Prosper Grech.

While the cardinals are widely expected to cast the first ballot Tuesday afternoon, technically they don't have to. In conclaves past, the cardinals have always voted on the first day.

The first puffs of smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney should emerge sometime around 8 p.m. Black smoke from the burned ballot papers means no pope. White smoke means the 266th pope has been chosen.

___

Reporter Jorge Pina contributed.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-11-EU-Vatican-Pope/id-0ee999e64bf842aba926c773536ca16a

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On Mar. 7, 2013, Lil Twist allegedly wrecked Justin Bieber?s super expensive Fisker Karma sports car and then fled the scene, according to TMZ.

The tabloid website writes that the rapper, who is reportedly one of the Bieb?s best friends, hit a cement pole in front of a San Fernando Valley, Calif. liquor store Thursday around 6 p.m.

Sources told TMZ that Twist or someone else in the car boasted to an eyewitness that the car belonged to Bieber.

According to the report, minutes after the accident a BMW pulled up to the scene and told Twist and his passengers to get every piece that fell off the wrecked Fiskar and put them into the BMW. Following the clean-up, all took off in the BMW, leaving Bieber?s sports car behind.

Although unconfirmed, TMZ was told by sources Chris Brown was one of Twist?s passengers.

This is the second time Twist has been involved in an incident while driving one of Bieber?s cars. In January, he was at the helm of the singer?s white Ferrari when a paparazzo was killed by another car after he exited his vehicle to snap a picture of Bieber?s wheels.

Shortly thereafter, photos surfaced of Bieber and Twist smoking what appears to be weed at a hotel party, prompting some to presume the rapper is a bad influence on the Canadian entertainer.

Also Thursday evening, reports say Bieber collapsed on stage during a London concert due to shortness of breath.

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Source: http://www.examiner.com/article/lil-twist-allegedly-involved-hit-and-run-with-justin-bieber-s-sports-car?cid=rss

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As global warming pushes back the Arctic Sea ice, uncovering new natural-resource deposits, China is looking to establish its presence in the north.

By Mike Eckel,?Contributor / March 7, 2013

The crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy, in the midst of their ICESCAPE mission, retrieves supplies for some mid-mission fixes dropped by parachute from a C-130 in the Arctic Ocean in this July 2011 photo.

Courtesy of Kathryn Hansen/NASA/Reuters

Enlarge

Way up above 66th parallel north, the jousting and jostling for the mother lode of oil, gas, mineral, fish, and other resources being exposed by the rapidly receding Arctic sea ice is well under way.

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Russia is building a new class of nuclear icebreakers. Norway is charting fish-migration patterns for potential new fisheries. Canada is setting up a new Arctic training base and constructing a fleet of new patrol ships. US oil giants are angling to drill exploratory oil and gas wells. And China is sending its flagship icebreaker along the Northern Route.

Wait. China?

Not surprisingly, the eight nations that ring the planet?s northern cap ? the United States, Canada, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark ? are the ones who have largely driven the discussion about access in the Arctic. With the exception of periodic saber-rattling or polar tub-thumping (Exhibit A: Russia?s 2007 ocean-floor flag-planting stunt), the discussions have been amicable. That?s due in large part to the 17-year-old intergovernmental agency known as the Arctic Council, which has helped soften the edges of growing competition.

?The lure of riches in the Arctic draws ever more companies and nations,? said William Moomaw, a professor of international environmental law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford, Mass. ?And so far it?s been relatively amicable jousting and jostling there.?

The quickening decline of Arctic Sea ice has its own alarming implications for the globe. As Prof. Moomaw put it at the Tufts University Energy Conference Sunday: ?the trend line looks like a failing stock market or the collapse of a fishery ? it just keeps going down and down, and then keeps going down further.?

That aside, with the wealth of resources being unlocked by global warming, it?s not surprising that other, non-Arctic nations are increasing looking to get in on the action. The US Geological Survey estimates more than a fifth of the world?s undiscovered, recoverable oil and gas lie under the harsh, frigid, and remote conditions above the 66th parallel.

Enter China, whose northern most point in Manchuria, along the Amur River, is at least 1,000 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Beijing last year sent the icebreaker Snow Dragon (MV Xue Long) from Shanghai to Iceland along the Northern Route, which parallels the Russian Arctic coastline and has the potential to be a shorter, cheaper route to get goods from East Asia to Europe. They?ve applied for observer status at the Arctic Council. And, according to Malte Humpert, executive director of The Arctic Institute, China has also built a swanky new, $250 million embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland, of all places.

So what's behind this push?

It?s easy to see that China would clearly like access to oil, gas, and other resources. But a more persuasive argument is that Beijing clearly wants alternate shipping routes to the Strait of Malacca. That?s the crowded 1-1/2 mile bottleneck between Indonesia and Malaysia that 60,000 ships pass through every year, according to Mr. Humpert: Sixty percent are China-bound, and 80 percent are carrying the fuels that are propelling its economic dynamo. China?s leadership is concerned enough this is a strategic vulnerability that they call the situation the ?Malacca Dilemma.?

But those aren?t wholly convincing in Humpert?s estimation. The most plausible argument is that, as with many of its policies these days, the Chinese are in it for the long haul: a long-term strategy as a global emerging power.

China ?is extending its reach in Africa, southwest Pacific; the Arctic is just the latest region with geopolitical significance. They can make minimal investments today and can secure strong influence in 20, 30 years,? he told a energy conference panel discussion dubbed ?Arctic Anxiety.?

?China wants to have a seat at the table. They want to be part of the Arctic Council. They?re an emerging power,? he said. ?They know that Arctic may be one of the hot spots of the 21st century.?

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/Hi58C2HgiQM/China-pushes-for-Arctic-foothold-from-a-thousand-miles-away

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As part of Microsoft?s deal with Nokia, both companies are paying each other billions over several years. However, the exchange is heavily uneven, with Nokia getting most of the cash early on and Microsoft getting more in the deal?s later years.

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As we pointed out in January, Nokia has reached the point at which it owes Microsoft more in guaranteed minimum royalty payments than it is due in future ?platform support payments? from Microsoft. Nokia has been getting $250 million per quarter from Microsoft since the deal took effect.

In a regulatory filing on Thursday, Nokia went into more detail on just where things stand.

Nokia noted that it now owes Microsoft more than 500 million more euros ($650.5 million) than it is due from Redmond. However, for the balance of 2013 it still expects to be getting a net payment from Microsoft.

Here?s the full text of what Nokia had to say on the matter:

Our agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft. Under the terms of the agreement governing the platform support payments, the amount of each quarterly platform support payment is USD 250 million.

We have a competitive software royalty structure, which includes annual minimum software royalty commitments that vary over the life of the agreement. Software royalty payments, with minimum commitments are paid quarterly. Over the life of the agreement, both the platform support payments and the minimum software royalty commitments are expected to measure in the billions of US dollars. Over the life of the agreement the total amount of the platform support payments is expected to slightly exceed the total amount of the minimum software royalty commitment payments.

As of the end of 2012, the amount of platform support payments received by Nokia has exceeded the amount of minimum software royalty commitment payments made to Microsoft, thus the net cash flows have been in our favor. As a result, the remaining minimum software royalty commitment payments are expected to exceed the remaining platform support payments by a total of approximately EUR 0.5 billion over the remaining life of the agreement.

However, in 2013 the amount of the platform support payments is expected to slightly exceed the total amount of the minimum software royalty commitment payments, thus the net cash flows are still expected to be slightly in our favor.

Source: http://allthingsd.com/20130307/microsoft-is-still-writing-checks-to-nokia-but-things-will-switch-soon/

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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's second biggest bank, FirstRand, said it is scaling back loans and setting aside more money for bad debts, signs that the consumer credit bonanza in Africa's top economy may be coming to an end.

South African banks have been aggressively pushing lucrative loans to shoppers, sparking concerns that debt levels, especially among lower-income borrowers, are unsustainable.

FirstRand reported a 29 percent surge in first-half profit on Tuesday, as earnings from lending and fees grew by double digit numbers. Shares rose 3 percent on the results, but the bank cautioned that loan growth would likely slow to single digits in the second half.

Other banks in South Africa could start to see a similar squeeze, said Tracy Brodziak, a banking analyst at Old Mutual Equities.

"For advances growth, the trends will be pretty similar. I would expect to have a slow down in unsecured lending," she said.

"We are not expecting on the consumer side real disposable income to grow significantly. That will put pressure on taking out further loans and advances, so we expect it to moderate."

CREDIT TIGHTENING

South African bank customers were hit hard by a recession that cut more than one million jobs during the credit crisis. Households are carrying debt equal to 76 percent of their disposable incomes and unemployment remains stuck at around 25 percent.

But lenders have been relatively unscathed due to tight regulation by the Reserve Bank.

While borrowing has helped fuel consumer spending, fattening profits for both banks and discount retailers, the economy has struggled to post convincing growth.

South Africa last week cut its 2013 growth forecast to 2.7 percent, from the 3.0 percent previously seen.

FirstRand Chief Executive Sizwe Nxasana said the bank was setting aside over 500 million rand in additional provisions, on top of the 800 million it set aside in June 2012.

"That's in anticipation of a tightening credit environment and a slowing environment where customers are going to find it a bit more difficult despite the fact that interest rates went down even further," he told Reuters.

"Customers' indebtedness is still a big issue."

Nxasana said the bank tightened up credit scoring on unsecured lending in the mass market last year, and is now becoming more vigilant with the middle-income market.

FirstRand's vehicle and asset finance unit, WesBank, wrote new business worth 39.2 billion rand, a 19 percent rise from a year ago, driven chiefly by motor and unsecured credit books.

However, in another sign that consumer spending may be weakening, data on Monday showed that new auto sales increased just 1.6 percent year-on-year in February, and an auto industry body warned sales will remain sluggish this year.

FirstRand said diluted headline earnings - the main measure of profit in South Africa and exclude certain one-time items - totaled 131.1 cents per share in the six months to end-December, from 101.5 cents a year earlier.

High margin loans from its retail unit, First National Bank (FNB), and WesBank boosted net interest income before bad debts by 18 percent to 12.38 billion rand.

Smaller rival Capitec Bank, one of the pioneers in South Africa's consumer lending market, said on Tuesday it expects its full-year profit to rise by as much as 36 percent.

Shares of FirstRand were 3.4 percent higher at 31.86 rand by 1425 GMT, outpacing 1.7 percent rise in Johannesburg's benchmark Top-40 index.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/firstrand-faces-slower-growth-credit-boom-dims-145121514--finance.html

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One of Samsung's most popular lines of Android smartphones is the Galaxy Note series, which is so large that some call it a "phablet." The original Galaxy Note had a 5.3-inch AMOLED screen, when it launched in late 2011, and was recently beaten by the Galaxy Note 2's 5.5-inch display.

Now, Samsung has apparently decided to just jump all the way to making a phablet the size of a full tablet. Just before Mobile World Congress last week, it debuted the Galaxy Note 8.0, which (sure enough) has a screen that's 8 inches across. The Galaxy Note 8.0 has all of the signature Galaxy Note features, including its Wacom stylus digitizer and specialized software package, and some models will even be able to make phone calls. This feature won't be found on the "international" model sold in the United States, but that still won't keep Samsung from setting a record for the world's largest new smartphone.

Bigger is better?

Exhibitors at Mobile World Congress (and January's Consumer Electronics Show) demonstrated a trend towards bigger and bigger smartphones. The Huawei Ascend Mate, which was introduced at CES this year and doesn't have an international release date announced yet, has a 6.1-inch screen. Its website still claims for it the title of "The World's Largest Screen Smartphone."

LG and Samsung both debuted 5-plus-inch smartphones at Mobile World Congress, while Asus introduced the "Fonepad," which is basically a 7-inch device like the Nexus 7 which can make phone calls. It appears to bear no relation to the Asus Padfone, an earlier hybrid device which docked a smartphone with a tablet screen. The Fonepad doesn't have a North American release date.

Not(e) completely unprecedented

Besides the fact that the Galaxy Note series had been creeping upwards in screen size for awhile now, Samsung actually released a 7-inch smartphone way back in 2010 -- the first Samsung Galaxy Tab. While marketed as a tablet, it was also able to make phone calls, or at least the models sold outside the United States were.

Not(e) just bigger

Besides the typical features and software found in the Galaxy Note series, the Galaxy Note 8.0 also features new apps and exclusive versions of apps. iOS annotation app Awesome Note will have an Android port shipped with the phablet, according to Joseph Volpe's hands-on for Engadget, and the version of Flipboard it comes with will have a "hover" feature which uses the S-Pen. It will also feature a "reading mode," which changes the (somewhat low-resolution) screen to look like sepia-toned paper.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-release-8-inch-smartphone-q2-2013-220000277.html

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Monday, March 11, 2013

Bloomberg Calls Starbucks 'Ridiculous' - Business Insider

Russia puts dead whistleblower on trial

Cardinals count down to conclave with final talks

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Lil Twist allegedly involved in hit and run with Justin Bieber?s sports car

Friday, March 8, 2013

China pushes for Arctic foothold, from a thousand miles away

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Microsoft Is Still Writing Checks to Nokia, but Things Will Switch Soon

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

FirstRand faces slower growth as credit boom dims

Samsung to Release 8-Inch Smartphone in Q2 2013