UC Davis pepper spray, smear tactics: 'Occupy' protests face rougher response

A pepper spray incident at UC Davis and reports of a smear campaign by a PR firm with ties to the financial industry indicate that the Occupy Wall Street movement is?meeting an increasingly tough response from opponents and from police.

Two months after the Occupy Wall Street protests began, the movement's nationwide expression appears to be meeting an increasingly tough response from opponents and from police.

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Two cases in point:

? In an incident Friday, police at the University of California, Davis, appeared to use pepper spray on a group of protesters seated quietly on a paved area on the campus.

? On Saturday, MSNBC reported that a Washington lobbying firm with ties to the financial industry has proposed an $850,000 plan to promote "negative narratives" about Occupy Wall Street and politicians who might express sympathy for the protests.

MSNBC said it had obtained a memo in which the lobbying firm pitches the negative campaign to the American Bankers Association, saying it could help the industry avoid fallout if the protests result in a Congress that is less friendly to Wall Street.

RECOMMENDED:?What do they want??Top 5 targets of Occupy Wall Street

The pepper-spray incident was not the first involving police and the Occupy protesters, but it stirred immediate public outrage.

"Shame on you," onlookers shouted as one officer displayed a bottle and then sprayed its contents toward the faces of activists who appear in video footage to be seated passively with arms interlocked. Officers then moved the protesters off the pavement.

Calling the video "chilling," UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said on Saturday she is forming a task force made up of faculty, students, and staff to review the events surrounding the protests a day earlier. Ms. Katehi made the announcement in a message to the campus.

Police have said protesters were warned repeatedly beforehand that force would be used if they didn't move.

The incident comes as officials are weighing how long to allow protesters to camp on city lands ? and the related question of police tactics. The U.C. Davis video added fuel to media coverage critical of authorities.

"I may be a critic of Occupy Wall Street, but the police are public servants, and public servants have no business treating the public this way," wrote blogger E.D. Kain at Forbes.com on Saturday.

As to the apparent "opposition research" proposal against the wider Occupy movement, MSNBC producers Jonathan Larsen and Ken Olshansky wrote on the station's website Saturday that the memo ?came from the lobbying firm Clark Lytle Geduldig & Cranford.

They quote the memo warning about the impact the protests could have on the financial industry, if Democratic and Republican lawmakers become less sympathetic to Wall Street firms (major campaign?contributors) as a result.

?This would mean more than just short-term political discomfort for Wall Street," the producers quote the memo as saying. "It has the potential to have very long-lasting political, policy and financial impacts on the companies in the center of the bullseye.?

One focus of the letter's proposed opposition-research efforts, MSNBC said, would be to find information on people or groups providing financial support to the protests, and perhaps show "cynical" political motives behind the funding.

In the 2011-12 election cycle, financial firms (including insurance?and real estate) are listed by the website Open Secrets as donating?more to political campaigns than any other industry. The amount totals?some $123 million as of Oct. 31, with Republicans getting 55 percent?of the funds.

Anger at banking bailouts is one point of apparent common ground between the Occupy movement and the tea party on the political right.

Reuters reported that the lobbying firm did not respond to requests?for comment, but that a spokesman for the American Bankers Association?said the group, after receiving the proposal, "chose not to act on it?in any way."

In the pepper-spray video footage, it was not immediately clear what agency the officer who used the pepper spray represents. Officers from UC Davis and other UC campuses as well as the city of Davis responded to the protest, according to Annette Spicuzza, UC Davis police chief.

Protesters were apparently warned on Friday that their tents, set up Thursday, violated university policies.

Katehi said she is asking for a review of the university's policies regarding encampments to see if they allow students enough flexibility to express themselves.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/k_swKciIsWc/UC-Davis-pepper-spray-smear-tactics-Occupy-protests-face-rougher-response

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School in China that ran overcrowded bus to close (AP)

BEIJING ? The kindergarten that operated a crowded, makeshift bus that crashed, killing 19 children, has closed and a new public school will open at the same location Monday, state-run media and a city government said.

The bus, originally a nine-seat van, was carrying 62 children and two adults when it crashed head-on with a truck in northwest Gansu province on Wednesday. Their teacher and the driver died along with the children, who were between 3 and 5 years old, and all 43 surviving children were injured.

The bus was on its way to the privately run Little Doctor Kindergarten in a rural area that comes under the Qingyang city government.

Qingyang city government said in a statement that the kindergarten has been closed, and that the public school opening at the same site will have a 45-seat bus donated by an oil company. It also said that parents of each killed child will receive 436,000 yuan ($68,000) in "compensation and consolation" money.

The city government previously said that police had detained the kindergarten head, Li Jungang, on suspicion of causing a serious accident due to negligence and the truck's driver, Fan Jungang, on suspicion of causing a traffic accident. Fan and a second person in the truck were unhurt.

Xinhua News Agency said the Little Doctor Kindergarten had more than 700 children but only four vans whose seats had been removed so more passengers could be crammed in. The new school will open Monday, it said.

Such overcrowding on school buses is common in China. Commentators say closures of rural schools have exacerbated the problem, as children are forced to travel farther to get an education.

The city government said Friday it will build 200 public kindergartens in the next three years at a cost of 680 million yuan ($107 million) ? throwing in an extra 100 million yuan after Wednesday's crash in order to accelerate the development of preschool education.

China has made a concerted effort to rebuild and improve a public education system that withered with the collapse of centrally planned socialism in the 1990s. Central government spending on education has steadily grown in recent years.

But there are great disparities, with rural areas and small cities like Qingyang chronically short of funds.

The Little Doctor Kindergarten served students mostly from farming families, and many of the parents of the hospitalized children were migrant workers who had left their villages to seek work in cities across China.

The Qingyang government said it aims to make public kindergartens account for more than 80 percent of kindergartens in three years.

Qingyang has a population of 2.5 million ? a small city by China's standards.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111120/ap_on_re_as/as_china_bus_accident

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Hits and misses (hamptonroads)

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3M Camcorder Projector CP45

The 3M Camcorder Projector CP45 ($300 street) has a bit of an identity problem. According to 3M, when it introduced the first generation 3M Camcorder Projector Shoot 'n Share CP40 ($299 list, 3 stars) the company thought of it as a pico projector with a camcorder, but a lot of people who buy it see it as a camcorder with a projector. I could argue either way, or just call it a fun toy that will let you take photos and video and project them too.

That said, given that 3M manufactures projectors rather than cameras, and the camcorder side has more in common with camera phones than full fledged camcorders, treating it as a projector makes more sense.

As a projector, the CP45 has less in common with 3M's other pico projectors, like the 3M Pocket Projector MPro150 ($350, 3.5 stars) than with more consumer-oriented choices like the Ray Pico Projector ($249 direct, 2.5 stars). The 3M MPro150, like the Editors' Choice Optoma PK301 Pico Pocket Projector ($400 street, 4 stars), can connect to either a composite video source or to a computer's VGA port. The CP45, like the Ray Pico Projector, connects to composite video sources only, making it a consumer projector.

The good news if you want to use the CP45 for business is that you can still use it for presentations. One choice is to save the presentation as a set of JPG files and then move the files to the projector. You can move them on a microSD or microSDHC card or by connecting to a computer using the supplied USB cable, letting the computer recognize the CP45's memory as a USB drive, and then copying the files. You can also connect by USB cable to copy video and photo files from CP45 to your computer.

A second choice for Windows is to use the included customized version of ArcSoft MediaConverter 3 to covert PowerPoint slides into movies. Not so incidentally, MediaConverter can also convert most video file formats on your computer to a format the CP45 can play.?

Projector (and Camcorder) Basics
The CP45 offers SVGA (800 by 600) native resolution, and a red-green-blue LED light source rated at 20,000 hours and meant to last the life of the projector. By definition, as a pico projector, it's small and light enough to fit in a shirt pocket, at 0.95 ?by 2.0 by 4.9 inches (HWD) and just 7 ounces.

The physical design is suitably slick, with a shiny white case and your choice of a red or black highlight. The front is defined by the projector lens. The top includes a 2.4-inch LCD display that you can use as a monitor while taking photos and video and also use as a display for playback if you'd rather not use the projector. The control panel, for both the projector and camcorder functions, is below the LCD, and surprisingly easy to use.

The right side includes a thumbwheel focus control, microSD card slot, and power switch. The camera lens and tripod socket are on the bottom. The USB port on the left side doubles as a power connector, letting you charge the unit while it's connected to your computer or plugged into a power outlet with the included power adaptor. The only other connectors are a mini HDMI port and a mini-plug jack.

Note that the HDMI port is for output only. The camcorder takes videos at up to 720p (1280 by 720) resolution, which is well above the projector resolution. The HDMI port lets you connect to, say, an HDTV, so you can play back the image at full resolution.

The single mini-plug is for both audio output and composite video input using the supplied cable with RCA phono connectors for video and stereo audio. Unfortunately, having one connector for both functions can be a problem. As with most pico projectors, the built-in audio offers far too little volume to be useful, so you'll usually want to use a headset or external sound system. With an external source already plugged into the AV jack, however, there's no place left to plug in, which means you'll have to bypass the projector's AV input and connect the sound system directly to the source.?

Brightness and Image Quality
I tested the CP45 with a FIOS set-top box and a Blu-ray player as well as with videos I took with its built-in camcorder and with photos from its 5-megapixel still camera. The 20-lumen rating translates to being bright enough to watch a 40-inch-wide image comfortably for only a short time, even in theater-dark lighting. If you want to watch a full-length movie, you'll probably want to stay with a smaller image.

Image quality earns the same broad brush description as with virtually every other pico projector, which is to say that it's good enough to be usable, but well short of impressive. One potentially annoying distraction was a flickering white line I saw at the top of the screen whenever I used an external source. The line didn't show in any of the video I took with CP45 itself however.

I also saw what looked like unusually obvious judder (the jerky movement that shows in filmed scenes because of the industry standard 24 frames per second for film) as well as a particularly obvious rainbow effect (the tendency for light areas to break up into little red-green-blue rainbows when an object moves on screen). The rainbow artifacts are obvious enough with the CP45 so that anyone who's sensitive to the effect will probably find it annoying.

On the plus side, the projector handles skin tones well and does a reasonably good job with shadow detail (details based on shading). It also does relatively better with photos than video, since the jumpiness and rainbow effect related to movement don't come into play.?

Other Issues
Along with the maximum 720p resolution, an important limitation for the camcorder side of the CP45 is the frame rate, at only 30 frames per second (fps) rather than the 60 fps you'd expect in an HD camcorder. Also, as with the 3M CP40, image stabilization was an issue, with the camera producing a jumpy image even when I held it still. The combination translates to video that I found acceptable when projecting with the CP45, but annoying to watch when I moved the MP4 format clips to a computer and used QuickTime to watch them.

Probably the best way to set your expectations for the camcorder side of the CP45 is to think of it as a camera phone without the phone. It can take usable photos and video, and it's small and light enough to carry with you all the time, but it's no match for a full-fledged camcorder.

As a projector, on the other hand, it offers usable, if flawed, image quality, the ability to show video from memory so you don't need to carry a separate video source, and it works as a camcorder too. It also earns extra points for synergy?combining features that enhance each other?which, ultimately, is what makes it worth considering. It's not hard to find better camcorders and better projectors. But by letting you take video or photos and then project them from the same device, the 3M Camcorder Projector CP45 adds a level of convenience?and fun?that you can't get from carrying around two separate products.

?

More projector reviews:

??? 3M Camcorder Projector CP45
??? Casio Signature XJ-M145
??? Optoma ML500
??? Epson MegaPlex MG-850HD Projector
??? Optoma Pro160S
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/YZurZg9n6No/0,2817,2396579,00.asp

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Android Market Lousy With Malware, Says Juniper (NewsFactor)

As the number of applications available in Google's Android Market has soared, users are paying a price: More and more malware.

That's the claim of information technology and network products giant Juniper Networks, whose Global Threat Center believes the easy process for posting apps has led to a whopping 472 percent increase in malware samples since July 2011.

All Too Easy

"These days, it seems all you need is a developer account, that is relatively easy to anonymize, pay $25 and you can post your applications," wrote Juniper on its threat center blog, noting that the lack of upfront review leaves the world's largest smartphone community browsing through poorly defined, unscreened apps that will only be removed after the fact if malware is reported or detected by Google.

"This approach has led to major increases in research into and discovery of vulnerabilities within the Android platform as the delivery mechanisms of mobile malware," said Juniper, which published its Malicious Mobile Threats Report for 2010 and 2011 in July. That report, showing a 400 percent increase in Android malware, looked at increasingly sophisticated attacks, including "Myournet/Droid Dream, Tap Snake and Geinimi as well as the pirating of the 'Walk and Text' application, new threat vectors for mobile cybercrime, and the potential for exploitation and misuse of mobile devices and data."

The report puts something of a damper on Google's boast at the launch of Google Music in Los Angeles Wednesday that more than 200 million Android-based phones have been activated, with more than half of that growth in the past six months, as companies like Samsung, HTC, LG and Motorola trot out increasingly powerful devices via all four top carriers, as well as smaller ones like MetroPCS and Virgin Mobile.

Google's press office did not respond to our inquiry via email for a comment about the report in time for publication.

All The Rage

Last March, both comScore and Nielsen reported that Android had surpassed Research In Motion's BlackBerry and Apple's iOS to become the most popular operating system in the U.S.

ABI Research reported last month that 44 percent of all mobile application downloads in the second quarter were Android, compared with Apple's 31 percent.

Analyst Alex Spektor of Strategy Analytics said the open-source Android was not fundamentally less secure than its competitors.

"Desktop variants of Linux are typically quite secure and suffer from much less malware trouble than does Microsoft Windows," said Spektor. "Rather, the amount of malware in the Android Market is a result of the open nature of the store itself. Unlike Apple, whose App Store staff review each submission, Google does not pre-screen apps."

But he added, "Of course, bad apps can be always removed after being discovered."

So who's responsible for the malware?

"The Global Threat Center believes it's the same actors who originally wrote malicious code for the legacy platforms of Symbian and older versions of Windows Mobile," Juniper wrote. "They shifted to Android given its gains in significant market share when compared with these legacy platforms."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/personaltech/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111117/bs_nf/81055

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Capitol Confidential ? DFS posts health insurance rate increase data

In a classic good news/bad news development, the state Department of Financial Services has followed through on its promise to post online the rate increase requests from health insurers, giving New Yorkers and much clearer view. The bad news: The DFS has granted weighted average increases of 8.2 percent for contracts beginning in 2012 ? although that?s below the requested average increase of 12.7 percent, according to the department.

Insurers had initially objected to the decision by newly installed DFS Superintendent Ben Lawsky to make the request information public.

From the release:

Governor Cuomo said, ?Rising health insurance costs hit everyone, and especially those who can least afford them. This is a great day for transparency and the public?s right to know how their health insurance premiums are set.?

? Department of Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky said, ?The public has a right to know the basis for rising premiums. In addition, transparency and competition should help to control the increases in health premiums. I applaud the insurers decision to make these filings public.?

? Rate applications, available at: http://www.dfs.ny.gov/insurance/health/prior_app/prior_app.htm , contain all of the information needed to determine whether a premium increase is justified, including:

• A summary of the amount of money the insurer spent in the last two years on medical claims, which is used to project future claims expenses. Commonly referred to as ?medical trend,? this information is the basis of the premiums paid by policyholders.
• The actuarial memorandum, which specifies all of the actuarial assumptions used in analyzing how much medical claims are going to be in the coming year.
• The amount of administrative expenses and profits.
• A list of all benefit changes, such as copayments or drug benefits, which have been made to the policy.
• Which policies are affected by the rate increases, which geographic regions will be getting increases and the number of policyholders affected.

Only certain details of specific contracts between an insurer and hospitals or other health care providers will be considered for exclusion because other providers can use that information to demand higher payments and such information is of little value for consumers to be able to make informed comments on the rate requests.

The 2010 prior approval law, which went into effect in 2011, was passed in response to the continuing rapid rise of health insurance premiums and in the hope that transparency and review would help slow that rise. To that end, the law mandates public comment. The Cuomo Administration?s position with respect to rate increase transparency is based on the need for the public?s comments on rate increases to be relevant and meaningful and thus informed by the detailed information in the rate increase filings.

Source: http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/88867/dfs-posts-health-insurance-rate-increase-data/

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Study finds many patients shun free heart drugs

FILE - This Nov. 15, 2005 file photo shows 40 milligram tablets of Lipitor, one kind of statin used for lowering blood cholesterol, in Glen Rock, N.J. A study led by a Boston researcher and presented Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 finds that offering people free medicines after a heart attack can help cut the chances they will suffer another one. It also saves them about $500 for health care over the next year without raising costs for insurers. However, doctors were shocked that only about half of these patients filled their prescriptions even though they got them free. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

FILE - This Nov. 15, 2005 file photo shows 40 milligram tablets of Lipitor, one kind of statin used for lowering blood cholesterol, in Glen Rock, N.J. A study led by a Boston researcher and presented Monday, Nov. 14, 2011 finds that offering people free medicines after a heart attack can help cut the chances they will suffer another one. It also saves them about $500 for health care over the next year without raising costs for insurers. However, doctors were shocked that only about half of these patients filled their prescriptions even though they got them free. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) ? Give people free prescription drugs and many of them still won't bother to take their medicine.

Doctors were stunned to see that happen in a major study involving heart attack survivors. The patients were offered well-established drugs to prevent a recurrence of heart trouble, including cholesterol-lowering statins and medicines that slow the heart and help it pump more effectively.

"My God, we gave these people the medicines for free and only half took it," said one of the study's authors, Dr. Elliott Antman of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

In fact, the researchers couldn't even give the stuff away: They had trouble just signing up patients to take part in the study.

Nevertheless, Aetna, the insurance company that footed the bill, thinks this approach will save money in the long run and plans to start offering certain heart drugs free to some patients. In the study, patients offered medicines at no cost suffered fewer heart problems and saved $500 on average over roughly a year.

It is no secret many Americans don't follow their doctors' instructions. In one survey, one-third said they didn't fill a prescription or used less medicine than they should because of cost. The researchers in this study wanted to see what would happen if they took cost out of the equation.

The results were disheartening.

"Adherence in America is miserable," lamented Dr. Eric Peterson of Duke University, who had no role in the study. He noted that only 10 percent of the patients were taking all the medicines they should one year after a heart attack.

The study was led by Dr. Niteesh Choudhry of Brigham and Women's, who presented the findings Monday at an American Heart Association conference in Florida. They also were published online by The New England Journal of Medicine.

The study did not examine why people didn't take their medications. But doctors know that some forget. Most of these drugs mean three pills a day or more, for the rest of a patient's life. Also, some of these medicines carry side effects such as fatigue, lightheadedness, muscle pains, cough, even sexual difficulties for men.

Still, heart attack survivors like Joan Ferraro, 53, of Freehold, N.J., said they can't imagine not taking prescribed medicines, though she sometimes forgets her pills over a weekend.

"Why would you want to go through something like that again? It was the most horrific experience of my life. I would never want another one," she said.

The study enrolled 5,855 Aetna members who had a drug plan as part of their benefits and were going home from the hospital after a heart attack. They were 53 years old on average, and three-fourths were men.

The researchers had hoped to recruit 7,500 patients but scaled back when so few signed on.

Preventive medicines were offered free to 2,845 patients and prescribed with the usual copayments for the rest. Copays for these drugs run around $50 a month.

Roughly a year later, the share of patients who filled their prescriptions ranged from 36 percent to 49 percent in the copay group, depending on the drug, and was only 4 to 6 percentage points higher in the group that had no copays.

Providing these medicines for free had a "distressingly modest" effect on patients' willingness to take them, Dr. Lee Goldman of Columbia University and Dr. Arnold Epstein of the Harvard School of Public Health wrote in an editorial in the medical journal.

The Commonwealth Fund, a foundation devoted to improving the health care system, helped pay for the study, and some of authors consult for insurance companies.

In the study, the total number of heart attacks, strokes, cases of chest pain or heart failure and other such problems was significantly lower in the group offered free medicine.

That meant that an additional 2 of every 100 people were spared such problems because they were offered free medicines. Doctors suspect the difference between the groups would have been greater if more people had actually filled their prescriptions.

Costs dropped 26 percent for patients in the free drug group compared with the others, partly because of fewer doctor visits, lab tests and hospitalizations.

The costs for the insurer averaged $69,997 over a year for those with the usual coverage and $64,726 for those offered free medicines. That was not considered a significant difference statistically, but insurers looking at the bottom line would still view it as worthwhile.

Dr. Lonny Reisman, an author of the study and chief medical officer for Aetna, said the company plans to offer some of these drugs free or with a reduced copay to some heart attack survivors and is considering doing do so for other chronic conditions such as diabetes and chronic lung disease.

The study may persuade other insurers to do the same, Goldman and Epstein said.

___

Online:

Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/bbd825583c8542898e6fa7d440b9febc/Article_2011-11-14-Free%20Heart%20Drugs/id-76b13f71be6d41feba7d7ce858ee4f19

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