Chinese villagers under siege mourn man who died (AP)

BEIJING ? A man from a southern Chinese fishing village whose death in police custody helped spark a rare revolt was given a hero's farewell Friday as thousands of tearful residents mourned what they called his sacrifice for them.

Wukan, a village of 20,000, has for months been the site of simmering protests by locals who say officials sold farmland to developers without their consent.

Protests against official misconduct are increasingly common in fast-developing China, but Wukan residents have taken things a step further, erecting barricades over the weekend to keep police out and posing a challenge to the authoritarian government. On a near-daily basis, thousands of villagers gather for rallies, shouting slogans for the return of their land and pumping their fists in the air.

The gathering took on a more somber note Friday as about 7,000 people attended a memorial ceremony for local butcher Xue Jinbo, who before his death had been one of the village's representatives in tense negotiations with officials over the land seizure.

Banners saying "You sacrificed your life for our land" and "Sadly mourn Xue Jinbo" were displayed at the ceremony, said villager Qin Zhuan, who was reached by phone.

Qin said they made speeches and lined up to bow in front of a large photograph of Xue, who died Sunday, not long after he was detained by police on suspicion of participating in riots in September.

Expressing commonly held suspicions over Xue's death, another villager said he appeared to have been abused in custody.

"He is man with a loving heart for people. He was killed for struggling to win the land for the villagers. We all cried for him," said villager Huang Hancan. "He must have suffered from mistreatment for a good healthy man to turn into a dead man just a day after being detained. No doubt, he was beaten to death and everyone can imagine that."

In an interview this week with Hong Kong online magazine iSun Affairs, Xue Jinbo's daughter said his body showed signs of bruising and swelling on his mouth, hands, neck and elsewhere, as well as open wounds on his forehead and jaw.

"When we looked at his back, there were also many bruises that look like he had been kicked or stamped on," she said in a video posted on the magazine's website.

Calls to the offices of the Communist Party propaganda department and the government of Shanwei city, which oversees Wukan, rang unanswered Friday. Chinese media reported that local authorities said Xue died of cardiac failure.

Problems in Wukan erupted in violence in September, when hundreds of villagers smashed buildings and clashed with police in protest against the sale of their farmland without their consent. Villagers since have submitted petitions and sought meetings with higher officials without success.

Last Friday, police took away several village representatives and when police tried to return the next day, residents blockaded the roads with tree trunks and barriers to stop them. Residents say police fired tear gas and water cannons at the villagers, who armed themselves with sticks, clubs, hoes and other farming tools.

Police then retreated and set up blockades on the main roads into Wukan, preventing villagers from entering and leaving and food from being brought in, villagers reached by phone said.

Huang said the residents would not give up. "We want justice from the government and we will fight to the end," he said, adding that the villagers also wanted the truth about Xue's death.

On Wednesday, the mayor of Shanwei city threatened to take strong measures against the leaders of the rebellion. He also promised to investigate local officials for wrongdoing and impose a temporary freeze on one farmland development project until a majority of villagers are satisfied with the conditions of the land transfer.

But signs of a split in the community were starting to emerge. Government supporters were offering food in exchange for villagers' signatures, said Qin, the woman who attended the funeral.

"Most of them are former village officials and their relatives who have an interest in the land sales," Qin said. "They offered us rice and cooking oil on condition that we must sign an empty white paper. We suspected that our signatures would be used for other purposes, so we refused to sign."

With a booming economy, demand for land to build factories and housing complexes in China has soared. Land disputes have grown apace, becoming one of the leading causes of the tens of thousands of large-scale protests that hit China every year.

Around Wukan village and in much of the rest of Guangdong province, conflicts have been intense because the area is among China's most economically developed, pushing up land prices.

___

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111216/ap_on_re_as/as_china_village_riot

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Hornets re-sign forward Landry (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? The New Orleans Hornets have re-signed forward Carl Landry as they prepare to play without traded All-Star guard Chris Paul, the National Basketball Association team said Saturday.

Details of the contract were not announced.

Landry, 28, averaged 11.8 points and 4.1 rebounds in 23 games for the Hornets last season after being acquired in a trade with Sacramento.

He is expected to be the Hornets' starting power forward this season as they rebuild without Paul, who was traded to the Los Angeles Clippers.

"Carl was a huge part of our success in making the playoffs last season, and we couldn't be more excited to have him back," Hornets general manager Dell Demps said in a statement.

Reserve center-forward Jason Smith has also re-signed with the team to provide depth in the front court.

(Writing by Gene Cherry in Salvo, North Carolina; editing by Stephen Wood)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111217/sp_nm/us_nba_hornets_landry

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'Barefoot Bandit,' Colton Harris-Moore to plead guilty in US court

Barefoot Bandit:?The 20-year-old Colton Harris-Moore hopscotched his way across the United States as he evaded authorities during a two-year crime spree.

The young U.S. thief who gained an international following as the "Barefoot?Bandit" by stealing planes, boats and cars is expected to plead guilty in Washington state.

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The 20-year-old Colton Harris-Moore hopscotched his way across the United States as he evaded authorities during a two-year crime spree. He was arrested after he flew a stolen plane from Indiana to the Bahamas in July 2010 and crash-landed it near a mangrove swamp.

Harris-Moore earned his nickname by committing some of the crimes?barefoot.

Harris-Moore has already pleaded guilty to federal charges, and on Friday he is expected to plead guilty to about 30 felonies, including burglary charges. Prosecutors will ask for a sentence of just under 10 years, while his lawyers are seeking a six-year term.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/1pBz_UWnb-E/Barefoot-Bandit-Colton-Harris-Moore-to-plead-guilty-in-US-court

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WWE Bring it Back!: Evolution

The classy suits, the fast-moving party atmosphere, the unbridled ruthlessness, the past, present and future of the squared circle. What was must be again. WWE.com calls for the return of Evolution.

PHOTOS OF EVOLUTION AND OTHER GREAT FACTIONS FROM WWE HISTORY

It seemed to be a moment of sheer destiny, the natural progression of all that had come before it. During a 2003 episode of Raw, the WWE Universe stood witness as ?the past? ? 16-time World Champion Ric Flair ? joined forces with ?the present? ? one of the top grapplers in the game Triple H ? and ?the future? ? then up-and-coming Superstars Randy Orton and Batista. Together, they formed Evolution and instantly grew into one of the most dominant WWE factions of all-time.

At the height of Evolution?s success, every member of this multi-generational formidable foursome held a major title. The Game stood at the top of the mountain as World Heavyweight Champion, Orton was the Intercontinental Champion and Batista & Flair were the World Tag Team Champions. However, championship gold was not the only aspect that made them a brand part.

With every step they took, the members of Evolution exuded confidence, truly emulating the life of the group?s legendary mentor ?The Nature Boy? by walking, talking and acting a cut above the rest. They were often seen in the company of beautiful women, dressed to the nines in expensive suits and the coolest sunglasses.

On the flip side to their sophistication ? however ? they also would strive to equal Triple H?s sheer ruthlessness, completely dominating their opposition in a fury of overwhelming force.

Put simply, Evolution was style incarnate and dangerous dominance all at the same time ? the divine successor of a slew of infamous factions that included the immortal Four Horsemen, the NWO, The Nation of Domination, The Cooperate Ministry and D-Generation X.?

The epic return of Evolution would once again represent the ever-evolving nature of WWE, elevating returning members to new heights while bringing in fresh blood to mold into greatness.

Triple H should definitely return. But, considering the legendary status that The King of Kings has grown to over the years, he could now feasibly assume the Ric Flair role ? as the mentor/competitor whose knowledge is as dangerous as his in-ring ability. He is ?that damn good.? Randy Orton, who has clearly soared to the lofty heights that Triple H once predicted he would, is now ready to move to the next step and take the reins as the centerpiece of the elite group.

Still, who would assume the role of the two up-and-comers of Re-Evolution? Clearly the ultra-braggadocio Dolph Ziggler has all the tools to fill the shoes of the once cocky young Orton. Despite his recent differences with both Orton and Triple H, the outspoken Cody Rhodes would also be an A-list option.

When considering a Superstar with the power and temperament once harnessed by ?Evolution?s Animal,? Sheamus is a sure fire choice. Though The Great White already has the WWE Title on his resume, aligning himself with the likes of The Cerebral Assassin and The Viper would propel him to unprecedented heights. Still, another powerful possibility would be the explosive Mason Ryan, poised to make his earth-shattering mark on WWE.

Evolution is inevitable. Inside the WWE Universe, where it is always survival of the fittest, the time has come for one of the greatest factions of all-time to evolve before a new generation and to add the already electrifying atmosphere being created by the likes of WWE Champion CM Punk, John Cena and World Heavyweight Champion Mark Henry. WWE, bring back Evolution.

PHOTOS OF EVOLUTION AND OTHER GREAT FACTIONS FROM WWE HISTORY

What does the WWE Universe think?

Should WWE bring back Evolution? Let your voice be heard at WWE Interaction.

Source: http://www.wwe.com/inside/wwefeaturepage/bring-back-classic-evolution

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Research shows hands-free phones just as risky (AP)

WASHINGTON ? When someone is talking to you, your brain is listening, processing and thinking about what's being said ? even if you're in the driver's seat trying to concentrate on traffic.

That's why drivers get distracted during cellphone conversations, even when using hands-free phones, researchers say. It's also part of the reason why the National Transportation Safety Board made a recommendation this week it knows a lot of drivers won't like ? that states ban hands-free, as well as hand-held, cellphone use while driving.

It's not where your hands are, but where your mind is that counts, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman told reporters.

The board doesn't have the power to force states to impose a ban, but its recommendations carry significant weight. And, judging from the public reaction, they've already started a national conversation on the subject. NTSB has been swamped with calls, emails and tweets from drivers both praising and condemning the action.

It's the proposed hands-free ban that has generated the most controversy.

What's next? No passengers? No kids? No tuning the radio? Maybe NTSB will ban driving altogether, was the tenor of the response on Twitter.

The scientific evidence, however, is generally with NTSB, researchers said.

"There is a large body of evidence showing that talking on a phone, whether hand-held or hands-free, impairs driving and increases your risk of having a crash," Anne McCartt, senior vice president for research at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said.

Jim Hedlund, a safety consultant and former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official, recently examined 300 cellphone studies for the Governors Highway Safety Association. He couldn't recall a single study that showed drivers talking on a headset or hands-free phone were at any less risk of an accident than drivers with one hand on the wheel and a phone in the other.

A similar analysis for the government of Sweden recently came to the same conclusion: "There is no evidence suggesting that hands-free mobile phone use is less risky than handheld use."

What's missing is hard evidence that accidents are increasing because of cellphone use. One reason is that U.S. privacy laws have made it difficult for researchers to study whether cell phones were in use in accidents in the U.S. The two large studies that have been done ? in Canada and Australia ? found drivers were four times more likely to have a crash if talking on a cellphone. It didn't matter whether the cellphone was hands-free or hand-held.

But that hasn't translated to an increase in highway fatalities in the U.S., where they hit their lowest level since 1949 last year.

Of 6,000 drivers surveyed by the highway administration, 40 percent said they don't consider it unsafe for drivers to talk on a hands-free cellphone. Less than 12 percent said that about a hand-held phone.

Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, isn't surprised.

It's counterintuitive to think that hands-free talking is dangerous because people don't have any sense that their conversation is draining brain power away from driving, but that's exactly what's happening, he said.

Just is the co-author of a 2008 study that used driving simulators to test the performance of drivers not engaged in conversation and drivers who could hear someone talking to them through headphones. Drivers took the simulator tests inside an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machine that recorded images of changes in their brains while driving, including which areas of the brain were used for driving. The amount of the brain devoted to driving was 37 percent less in drivers who could hear someone talking to them than for drivers not using cellphones.

"The human mind can multitask, but each task is performed with less brain power and lower proficiency," Just said.

The driving simulators also showed a deterioration of skills on the part of drivers who could hear someone talking to them, including weaving between lanes and edging over the side of the road.

"When someone is speaking your native language, you can't will yourself to not hear and process it. It just goes in," Just said. Even if a driver tries to ignore the words, scientists "can see activation in the auditory cortex, in the language areas (of the brain). "

Accident investigators have seen cases of drivers talking on hands-free phones whose minds are so engrossed in their conversations that they ran into something plainly visible.

In a 2004, a bus driver taking students on a class trip drove his 12-foot-high bus into a 10-foot, 2-inch-high bridge arch in Alexandria, Va., peeling off the roof of the bus. There were signs warning drivers about the height of the bridge, and the bus driver was familiar with the route. He also saw a bus in front of him change lanes to avoid the low arch. But the bus driver, who was talking a hands-free phone at the time, drove right into it.

"There is a standard code for crash investigations called roughly `look, but didn't see.' In other words, I was looking in the right place, but I didn't register what was there," Hedlund said.

Of course, drivers don't have to be using cellphones to have conversations ? they talk with passengers all the time. But talking to an adult passenger doesn't involve the same risk as a phone conversation, researchers said. That's because passengers are engaged in the driving experience with the driver. If they see a danger, they'll usually warn the driver. Passengers also tend to instinctually adjust their conversation to the level of traffic and other difficulties confronting the driver.

There are lots of other things that go on in cars that are risky: eating and drinking, tuning the radio, studying maps and applying makeup, for example. Just like talking on the phone, most of those things involve a choice by the driver.

As for the screaming toddler in the backseat demanding attention, "some things are just part of life," McCartt said.

___

Follow Joan Lowy on http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

___

Governors Highway Safety Association: http://www.ghsa.org/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111215/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_drivers_cellphones

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China FDI flows stumble in November as U.S. drags (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? Foreign direct investment growth in China fell year-on-year for the first time in 28 months, with November's $8.8 billion of commitments down 9.8 percent and hurt by a sharp drop in inflows from the United States, Commerce Ministry data showed Thursday.

The fall -- the first since July 2009's 35.7 percent year-on-year collapse to $5.4 billion -- saw year-to-date FDI flows ease to 13.2 percent from 15.9 percent previously, bringing the total to a robust $103.8 billion and still leaving 2011 poised to be a record-breaking year for FDI.

The slowdown in the rate of FDI growth comes on top of recent data which showed the first net capital outflow from China in four years in October, part of a recent trend of capital flight from emerging markets largely inspired by Europe's festering debt crisis.

But Hua Zhongwei, an economist with Huachuang Securities in Beijing, says the long-term allure to global investors of the world's second biggest economy remained strong and he expected a reasonably swift return.

"The Chinese market is too big to be neglected for most foreign companies," Hua said. "Once the dust settles, foreign investment inflows into China are expected to rise steadily again."

But he noted that rising costs in China and a slowdown in the global economy were forcing some low-end manufacturers to relocate to other regions.

"For those that rely heavily on cheap labor as an advantage, China may seem to be an increasingly unwelcoming place," he said.

U.S. INFLOWS SINK

Data from the Commerce Ministry showed that U.S. investments in China dropped to $2.74 billion in the first 11 months of the year, down a deep 23.1 percent versus the same period last year.

Investments from the European Union -- China's single largest trading partner -- were $5.98 billion in the January-November period, up a tiny 0.29 percent from a year earlier.

Investments from 10 of China's Asian neighbors, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan and South Korea, however, jumped 17.98 percent to $89.6 billion in the same period.

Service sector FDI was up 18.6 percent between January and November, more than twice the 7.6 percent rate of growth in the manufacturing sector in the same period.

Separately, China has approved 74 yuan foreign direct investment (FDI) projects since the yuan FDI rules were launched in October, with total investments of 16.53 billion yuan ($2.6 billion), Huang Feng, a foreign investment official with the Ministry of Commerce, was quoted by the local media as saying.

Investment inflows, which surged in the years after China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001, have recovered strongly after being hit hard by the global economic slowdown.

EXPORT OUTLOOK SEVERE

But the darkening backdrop is clearly concerning Chinese officials, with economic growth having slowed for three straight quarters and many forecasters expecting it to dip in 2012 below 9 percent for the first time since 2001.

"The overall trade environment next year for China will be complicated, partly due to the economic uncertainties in the European countries, and I should say that the export situation in the first quarter of next year will be very severe," Commerce Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang told a news conference at the release of the FDI data.

Growth in Chinese exports and imports slowed in November, fresh evidence of faltering demand abroad and at home that is pushing Beijing towards a more explicit pro-growth policy stance, according to data published on December 10.

Customs data showed exports at their most sluggish in two years -- stripping out the volatile month of February, which was affected by the Lunar New Year holiday.

The uncertainty of the external environment saw China on Wednesday pledge to guarantee growth in the face of an "extremely grim" outlook for the global economy in 2012, rounding off its annual policy-setting conference with a series of commitments to deliver economic stability. [ID:nL3E7NE3R9]

The HSBC flash manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI), the earliest indicator of China's industrial activity, showed China's factory output shrank again in December after new orders fell, entrenching views that manufacturers are struggling with waning global demand and tight domestic credit conditions.

The index stood at 49 in December, a modest rise from November's 47.7 but pointing to a monthly contraction in activity nonetheless. [ID:nL3E7NF0OE]

Economists say fine-tuning of economic policy towards a pro-growth setting is already under way. Data showed Chinese banks made 562 billion yuan of new loans in November, a shade more than forecast as Beijing gently eases tight credit conditions.

Bank lending is a focal point in China's monetary policy as it is controlled by the government to steer economic growth and control inflation.

Inflation appears to be coming off the boil, having fallen from a three-year high of 6.5 percent in July to 4.2 percent in November, but stability-obsessed Beijing is wary of any policy that might fire up prices again.

Periods of high inflation have historically been accompanied by periods of social tension, making the leaders of China's ruling Communist Party particularly sensitive to sharp price rises or a sudden erosion of consumer spending power.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Don Durfee; Editing by Nick Edwards and Alex Richardson)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/china/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111215/bs_nm/us_china_economy_fdi

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Obama would veto Republican House tax bill: White House (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? The White House said on Tuesday that President Barack Obama would veto a bill proposed by Republicans in the House of Representatives if it were approved by Congress and sent to his desk.

"This debate should not be about scoring political points. This debate should be about cutting taxes for the middle class," the White House said in a statement, referring to the Middle Class Tax Act of 2011 being proposed by House Republicans. "If the President were presented with (it) he would veto the bill."

(Reporting by Alister Bull and Caren Bohan; editing by Jackie Frank)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/obama/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111213/pl_nm/us_usa_taxes_whitehouse

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