The technology lab behind a Kickstarter-funded project to build a portable device charging station announced today it will refund its crowdfunded $139,170 to donors after Apple refused to license rights to its Lightning connector.
POP, a minimalist portable power station, was billed as "the intersection of charging design" and was expected to feature four retractable cords for charging a variety of devices, including iOS and Android devices. The portable charging station featured a 26,000 mAh battery capable of charging 10 iPhones, according to Junior Edison, the company behind the effort.
In addition to its portable convenience, Junior Edison touted POP as a device that would aid survival when natural disasters kill power, offering many days of charging power for portable devices.
However, Apple was not charged over having its proprietary connector combined with micro-USB connectors, according to Junior Edison Jamie Siminoff.
"After applying to Apple (which is now required for Lightning), we learned that they are no longer willing to approve a product that uses the Lightning charger alongside any other charger (including their own 30-pin - seriously)," he said in a blog post on Kickstarter. "Just like that, POP could no longer fulfill its true promise."
CNET has contacted Apple for comment and will update this report when we learn more.
Unveiled in September, Lightning replaced the 30-pin adapters that date back to early iPods. Its key benefit is the smaller iPhone connector, which is 80 percent smaller than the previous connector. However, the new technology also represented a costly change for people who have multiple cables that they use in their car, home, or at work.
NEWTOWN, Conn. The family of Noah Pozner was mourning the 6-year-old, killed in the Newtown school massacre, when outrage compounded their sorrow.
Someone they didn't know was soliciting donations in Noah's memory, claiming that they'd send any cards, packages and money collected to his parents and siblings. An official-looking website had been set up, with Noah's name as the address, even including petitions on gun control.
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Noah's uncle, Alexis Haller, called on law enforcement authorities to seek out "these despicable people."
"These scammers," he said, "are stealing from the families of victims of this horrible tragedy."
It's a problem as familiar as it is disturbing. Tragedy strikes — be it a natural disaster, a gunman's rampage or a terrorist attack — and scam artists move in.
It happened after 9/11. It happened after Columbine. It happened after Hurricane Katrina. And after this summer's movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.
Sometimes fraud takes the form of bogus charities asking for donations that never get sent to victims. Natural disasters bring another dimension: Scammers try to get government relief money they're not eligible for.
"It's abominable," said Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator, which evaluates the performance of charities. "It's just the lowest kind of thievery."
Noah Pozner's relatives found out about one bogus solicitation when a friend received an email asking for money for the family. Poorly punctuated, it gave details about Noah, his funeral and his family. It directed people to send donations to an address in the Bronx, one that the Pozners had never heard of.
It listed a New York City phone number to text with questions about how to donate. When a reporter texted that number Wednesday, a reply came advising the donation go to the United Way.
The Pozner family had the noahpozner.com website transferred to its ownership. Victoria Haller, Noah's aunt, emailed the person who had originally registered the name. The person, who went by the name Jason Martin, wrote back that he'd meant "to somehow honor Noah and help promote a safer gun culture. I had no ill intentions I assure you."
Alexis Haller said the experience "should serve as a warning signal to other victims' families. We urge people to watch out for these frauds on social media sites."
Consumer groups, state attorneys general and law enforcement authorities call for caution about unsolicited requests for donations, by phone or email. They tell people to be wary of callers who don't want to answer questions about their organization, who won't take "no" for an answer, or who convey what seems to be an unreasonable sense of urgency.
"This is a time of mourning for the people of Newtown and for our entire state," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said in a statement this week. "Unfortunately, it's also a time when bad actors may seek to exploit those coping with this tragedy."
But scam artists know that calamity is fertile ground for profit, watered by the goodwill of strangers who want to help and may not be familiar with the cause or the people they're sending money to.
After the shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., scammers asked for credit card donations for victims' families. After the 9/11 attacks, the North American Securities Administrators Association warned investors to be wary of Internet postings encouraging them to invest in supposed anti-terrorist technologies.
In 2006, the FBI warned about an email widely circulated after the Sago, W.Va., mine explosion, which claimed to be from a doctor treating one of the survivors and asking for donations to cover medical bills.
"As was learned after the tragic events of 9/11/01, the tsunami disaster, and more recently with Hurricane Katrina, unscrupulous cyber criminals have shown the desire and means to exploit human emotion by attempting to defraud the public when they are perceived to be most vulnerable," the FBI said at the time.
This fall, the police in Aurora, Colo., accused a local woman of trying to profit off the deadly movie theater rampage by a gunman who killed 12 people. The woman told people that she was the caretaker for a little girl named Kadence, whose mother had died in the shooting. The police said the child was made up. The scam unraveled when a donor got a phone call from what seemed to be a woman imitating a child's voice.
When the government doled out disaster aid after Hurricane Katrina, scammers asked for money to rebuild houses they never lived in or to pay benefits for relatives who never existed.
The government later set up the National Center for Disaster Fraud to try to root out such scams in the federal relief programs administered after Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. It has since expanded its mandate to other disasters.
The cases brought since then by the Justice Department sketch a colorful picture of fraud:
— A woman who filed for small-business disaster benefits after the 2010 Gulf Coast oil spill, even though she'd sold the business before the accident.
— A judge and a commissioner in Texas who, after Hurricane Ike, were accused of awarding debris removal contracts to a company in return for kickbacks. The judge also commandeered a 155-kilowatt generator meant for the county to power his convenience store, according to the government.
— A pastor who submitted inflated claims to a government-funded program that reimbursed groups sheltering Hurricane Katrina evacuees.
Bob Webster, spokesman for the NASAA, knows the sad pattern.
"We know cons try to cash in on headlines, and any who would even think about stooping to capitalize on the tragedy in Newtown are the lowest of the low," he said.
Invoking the somber aftermath of the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., President Obama today appealed to congressional Republicans to embrace a standing "fair deal" on taxes and spending that would avert the fiscal cliff in 13 days.
"If there's one thing we should have after this week, it should be a sense of perspective about what's important," Obama said at a midday news conference.
"I would like to think that members of that [Republican] caucus would say to themselves, 'You know what? We disagree with the president on a whole bunch of things,'" he said. "'But right now what the country needs is for us to compromise.'"
House Speaker John Boehner's response: "Get serious."
Boehner announced at a 52-second news conference that the House will vote Thursday to approve a "plan B" to a broad White House deal -- and authorize simply extending current tax rates for people earning less than $1 million a year and little more.
"Then, the president will have a decision to make," the Ohio Republican said. "He can call on Senate Democrats to pass that bill or he could be responsible for the largest tax increase in American history."
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Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, every American will face higher income tax rates and government programs will get hit with deep automatic cuts starting in 2013.
Obama and Boehner have been inching closer to a deal on tax hikes and spending cuts to help reduce the deficit. But they have not yet had a breakthrough on a deal.
Obama's latest plan would raise $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue over 10 years, largely through higher tax rates on incomes above $400,000. He also proposes roughly $930 billion in spending cuts, including new limits on entitlement spending, such as slower annual cost-of-living increases for Social Security beneficiaries.
Boehner has agreed to $1 trillion in new tax revenue, with a tax rate hike for households earning over $1 million. He is seeking more than $1 trillion in spending cuts, with significant changes to Medicare and Social Security.
The president said today that he remains "optimistic" about reaching a broad compromise by Christmas because both sides are "pretty close," a sentiment that has been publicly shared by Boehner.
But the speaker's backup plan has, at least temporarily, stymied talks, with no reported contact between the sides since Monday.
"The speaker should return to the negotiating table with the president because if he does I firmly believe we can have an agreement before Christmas," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a White House ally.
Schumer said Obama and Boehner are "not that far apart" in the negotiations.
"If they were to come to an agreement by Friday, they could write this stuff over the Christmas break and then we'd have to come back before the New Year and pass it," Schumer said.
Obama said he is "open to conversations" and planned to reach out to congressional leaders over the next few days to try to nudge Republicans to accept a "fair deal."
"At some point, there's got to be, I think, a recognition on the part of my Republican friends that -- you know, take the deal," he told reporters.
"They keep on finding ways to say no, as opposed to finding ways to say yes," Obama added. "At some point, you know, they've got take me out of it and think about their voters and think about what's best for the country."
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.
Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave "pending further action."
An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited "leadership and management" deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.
"The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs," Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell's decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.
Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.
PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON
The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton's four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.
"We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks," retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.
The panel's chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton's office.
"We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where - if you like - the rubber hits the road," Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.
The panel's report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.
Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.
Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.
Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.
The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.
Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration's handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.
"It was very thorough," said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: "It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels." Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.
Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.
"The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad," Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.
Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.
The report concluded that there was no such protest.
Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama's top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)
SYDNEY: Australia announced an overhaul of its customs service on Thursday after eight people were arrested in a corruption investigation linked to an alleged drugs ring at Sydney airport.
"I am working on major structural and cultural reforms to Customs and will announce them next year," Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said.
"There is no place for corruption in our law enforcement agencies. Where it exists we have to weed it out."
The move follows the recent arrests of a customs officer, another from the quarantine service and six members of the public after a two-year probe. They have been charged with a range of offences including drug trafficking, receiving bribes and abuse of public office.
Police said the inquiry was continuing amid allegations that an "entrenched network" of corrupt customs officers at Sydney airport have been working with organised crime figures to import drugs.
A six-month investigation by Fairfax Media and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said up to 20 officials were suspected of being involved in importing pseudoephedrine, cocaine, steroids and possibly weapons.
Australian Customs and Border Protection Service acting chief Michael Pezzullo said he was disappointed but not surprised by the revelations.
"We identified that we had a potential problem at Sydney International Airport and took appropriate investigative activity. This action continues," he said.
"We will review as required the role of workplace culture, management and leadership and take all necessary action to ensure the integrity of our workforce."
Australian Federal Police Commissioner Tony Negus claimed that couriers were sent overseas to collect drugs before returning through customs with the help of people in "trusted positions".
"What has been alleged before the court so far is that the customs officers involved in this would meet drug couriers off a plane," he said.
"They would then walk them through the primary line of customs, and then out into the waiting halls."
He added that it would also be alleged that customs officials "played a role in organising the couriers themselves to go overseas and to actually facilitate their collection of the narcotics overseas".
Anonymous' Twitter account was temporarily shut down after it posted a tweet that broke the social network's rules.
(Credit: Screenshot by Dara Kerr/CNET)
Twitter temporarily shuttered Anonymous' most popular account today, which caused a barrage of hate-tweets -- given that the hacker collective despises online censorship.
The account, @youranonnews, which now has more than 800,000 followers, went black around mid-day. The group claims the censorship had to do with a photo it posted regarding a campaign Anonymous has lodged against Westboro Baptist Church after church leaders announce plans to protest at the site of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre.
Once Anonymous' account was restored, the group posted an image of the letter it got from Twitter regarding the temporary suspension.
"Your account has been suspended for posting an individual's private information such as private email address, physical address, telephone number, or financial documents," the letter read. "It is a violation of the Twitter Rules to post the private and confidential information of others."
Apparently Anonymous' tweet said, "Sorry, Shirley isn't available at the moment," then had a link to a photograph that presumably revealed "Shirley's" private information. This tweet is no longer in Anonymous' Twitter feed.
The social network did not offer any further insight into the matter. A Twitter spokesperson told CNET that the company does not comment on individual accounts for privacy and security reasons.
HARROLD, Texas -- There's at least one school that welcome firearms to class.
It believes nothing makes a school safer than teachers who are armed,
The Harrold Independent School District is one building with 103 students. It's 20 minutes away from the nearest sheriff's station. Superintendent David Thweatt created what he calls a "guardian plan" after the attack at Virginia Tech.
"These people that go in and do these horrible acts, they're evil. But they're not that crazy -- they always know where they are going to get resistance," Thweatt said.
NRA promises "meaningful contributions" to avert another Newtown The Newtown shootings, as they happened Complete Coverage: Elementary School Rampage
Teachers and administrators here carry concealed handguns. They won't say how many faculty members are armed. They get extra training, but the district would not give us details.
Some people are horrified when he starts talking about putting guns in schools with children, but Thweatt said it's important to be safe.
"Sure, but it's a pretty horrific thing that happened the other day." Thweatt said. "And quite a few people are not horrified. Quite a few people we have in our district, since we have a high-transfer district, people bring their students to us for that protection."
Texas law allows concealed weapons in schools with a district's permission. Harrold was the first district to do it. A similar proposal was vetoed by Michigan's governor Tuesday.
Thweatt says allowing the firearms into the school will dissuade anyone who wants to hurt the kids.
"That's the bottom line," he said.
Since the shootings in Connecticut, Superintendent Thweatt has gotten calls from districts around the state and as far away as Missouri from school administrators asking whether they might be able to implement similar plans.
When the private investment firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday it would unload its interest in Bushmaster – the company that built the weapon used in last week's mass murder of 20 Connecticut first graders -- it marked the beginning of what experts say is likely to be a challenging period for the North Carolina-based weapons manufacturer.
"They are looking at a taint on their brand and looking at a marketplace that could change dramatically with respect to their weapon," said Chris Lehane, a crisis public relations expert who worked in the Clinton White House. "To me the fact that Cerberus is pulling out is a pretty significant defining moment."
For years, Bushmaster has been marketing itself to testosterone-fueled male customers, issuing "man cards" to customers who want to be "card carrying men." Now, Lehane and others said the company is facing the prospect of being branded the weapon of choice for mass killers. The Newtown, Connecticut shooting marked the fourth time a Bushmaster has been implicated in a mass shooting since 1999, including the Beltway sniper case that left 10 dead and three more wounded.
Cerberus announced Tuesday it wanted distance from Bushmaster, calling the murder of 20 first grade children at Sandy Hook Elementary School a "watershed event." The investment firm, which is chaired by former Vice President Dan Quayle, noted in its statement that Bushmaster may not be an investment consistent with the interests of its clients. Its investors include the pension plans of firemen, teachers, and policemen.
Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo
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Lehane said the announcement could signal a shift in the way investors view companies that make military style weapons for a civilian market.
"It reminds me of the time when tobacco began to be associated with a negative light, or the divestiture movement surrounding companies in South Africa," he said. "Where financial markets believe they are going to pay a price."
In addition, a spokesman for Cerberus Group confirmed that the father of Stephen Feinberg, the founder of Cerberus Group, lives in Newtown.
Gun control groups have also lined up to criticize the weapons manufacturer, arguing that the company was selling civilian customers a weapon clearly designed for war.
"This thing is just a killing machine," said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "[I]t's a weapon that can easily shoot hundreds of … In fact it's very similar to the weapon that James Holmes used to shoot up the movie theater in Aurora."
The company has not responded to phone calls seeking comment, but gun enthusiasts say the weapon's menacing appearance can appeal to civilians looking for a means to secure their homes, and its ease of use can appeal to those looking for a weapon for target shooting.
"The [assault rifle] platform is the most popular in the country," said Frank Cornwall, a firearms instructor in Connecticut. "Civilians have always bought similar type arms to the military. And this is a very versatile platform. Quite a popular hunting and target shooting gun."
Phillip Stutts, a crisis management consultant who worked for President George W. Bush, said he has been surprised by the silence of the gun manufacturer.
"Bushmaster doesn't have to take responsibility for this tragedy, but they have a responsibility to respond to this tragedy," he said. "And they haven't. They have to get out in front of this. It needs to be corrected ASAP."
In the aftermath of Friday's Newtown school shooting, we've heard tales mostly horrifying and occasionally heroic, from surviving witnesses and mourning citizens alike, but this one lies somewhere in between, all the more unshakeable. One six-year-old Sandy Hook student played dead in her first-grade classroom, her family pastor said late Sunday, with the kind of quick thinking that ended up saving her life but now leaves her with the unshakeable memories of watching all her classmates being shot and killed. ...
GRAND CAYMAN, Cayman Islands: Nicol David has discovered that greater self-knowledge is helping her deal with the pressures as she tries to extend her all-time record of world titles to seven.
The already legendary Malaysian has made a flying start to her campaign here, but has had to take profound and very personal measures to help endure the stresses which only increase with time.
David carries the relentlessly heavy burden of flag-bearer for an emerging nation, is subjected to constant media demands and appearance requests, and now, in her 30th year, finds herself expected to fend off a growing bevy of younger rivals.
Hence the role of Frank Cabooter, a sports psychologist who works at the University of Amsterdam, specialising in burn-out and depression, has increased in importance for David.
"In the last two to three years he has given me a lot of insight into who I am and how I can look at understanding myself better - not just on a squash basis, but on a personal note," she confides.
"It means you have to admit to things you may not have seen or known. But at the same time if you can improve yourself if you can adjust. It's so fascinating (learning about) our mind and how it works.
"We go into what works for me, what goes through my mind, and how I manage it," adds David, who here has been feeding off the vibes of the music, the warm climate, and the friendly seaside atmosphere.
So far, she has dealt impressively with Omneya Abdel Kawy, the 2010 World Open finalist from Egypt, and Annie Au, the world number nine from Hong Kong, both in straight games and in about half an hour each.
But after more than six years unbroken as world number one, David knows her strengths and weaknesses are evolving. "As time goes on we all change, as we get older," she says.
"I'm trying to use that to my advantage. There are a lot of things to learn from. And a lot of things to understand about myself as a squash player and my own growth.
"All this changed me and kept me in tune (with my feelings)."
David has occasionally revealed signs of human frailty, but when it has happened she has tried to learn why it emerged, and worked to develop her capacity to deal with it.
A notable example was when she lost her British Open title three years ago with a hesitant quarter-final defeat to Ireland's Madeline Perry.
That is why another quarter-final match with Perry here Wednesday may offer an insight into the champion's mental growth and personal development.
David had a rest day on Tuesday in which to prepare. But her focus is unlikely to be on the quality of her opponent's skills, but the entwining of her own tactical concerns with her state of mind.
"It's always a good match with Madeline, but I know how important it is to focus more on my game and what I have to do," the record-breaking champion said. "I have to bring my game up - and make sure I bring it with me to the court."
