By NED POTTER (@NedPotterABC) , COLLEEN CURRY and MICHAEL S. JAMES
Oct. 5, 2011
Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple’s iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said. Jobs was 56.

Jobs died “peacefully,” surrounded by family members, his family said in a statement.

Neither Jobs’ family nor Apple revealed where he died or from what cause, though in recent years Jobs had fought a form of pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today,” read a statement by Apple’s board of directors. “Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Ourhearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.”

As Jobs’ death was announced, the homepage of Apple’s website switched to a full-page image of Jobs with the text, “Steve Jobs 1955-2011.”

Clicking on the image revealed additional text that was credited to current Apple CEO Tim Cook in a separate memo to Apple employees.

“Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being,” the text read. “Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.”

Reaction to Jobs’ death came from far and wide — even from the White House.

“Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs,” President Obama said in a written statement. “Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”

Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak, marketed what was considered the world’s first personal computer, the Apple II.

Shortly after learning of Jobs’ death, Wozniak told ABC News, “I’m shocked and disturbed.”

Later, on ABC News’ “Nightline,” he said it was hard to imagine, in some ways, how the world would move forward without Jobs.

“You get shocked when people you know die,” Wozniak said. “And this was closer to when John Lennon died, or JFK or Martin Luther King.”

Industry watchers called Jobs a master innovator — perhaps on a par with Thomas Edison — changing the worlds of computing, recorded music and communications.

Click Here for Pictures: Steve Jobs Through the Years

Jobs’ rivals in the development of personal computers, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, immediately reacted to his death and highlighted his importance to their industry.

Allen called him “a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products.”

Gates extended his condolences and noted in a written statement that he and Jobs “have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives.”

“The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come,” Gates added. “For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”

A more recent contemporary in the tech world, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, also weighed in with a statement on Jobs.

“Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend,” it read. “Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.”

Source (article): ABCNEWS.COM

Source (pictures): LEADERSHIP-WITH-YOU.COM, EREPAIR, MAYPALO, POKERKNAVE

MIAMI — The rapidly intensifying Irene that’s already cut a destructive path through the Caribbean is the first hurricane to seriously threaten the U.S. in almost three years, a worry for some emergency management officials who hope people haven’t become complacent about the dangers.

Predictions by the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Irene was likely to become a major Category 3 hurricane later Tuesday.

By Thursday, as it roars toward the U.S. coast over warm open waters, it could become a Category 4, NHC hurricane specialist John Cangialosi said late Monday. Winds in such a storm can blow from 131 to 155 mph. By contrast, Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 when it hit New Orleans in 2005.

Late Tuesday morning, the first Atlantic hurricane of the season had maximum sustained winds around 100 mph and was near the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean.

Current projections have Irene tracking off Florida’s coast on Friday and then making landfall in the Carolinas on Saturday or Sunday. From there it could move into Chesapeake Bay, the hurricane center said. The last hurricane to make landfall in the U.S. was Ike, which pounded Texas in 2008.

The center did caution, however, that predictions made days in advance can be off by hundreds of miles. For instance, some models show Irene could remain offshore along the East Coast.

With tropical force winds that extend 205 miles and hurricane force winds 50 miles from Irene’s center, Irene could still hit Florida hard even if it doesn’t make landfall there.

Bryan Koon, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said after a meeting Monday with Gov. Rick Scott that the two have frequently discussed raising awareness since the Atlantic hurricane season began June 1.

“We want to make sure Floridians are paying attention,” Koon said. “We are at the height of the hurricane season right now. If it’s not Hurricane Irene, it could be the follow-up storm that impacts us.”

‘Take this storm seriously’
After several extremely active years, Florida has not been struck by a hurricane since Wilma raked across the state’s south in 2005. The Hurricane Center said it was responsible for five deaths in the state and came two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans.

“For residents in states that may be affected later this week, it’s critical that you take this storm seriously,” said Craig Fugate, administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Julio Gonzalez in Miami was heeding the warnings and headed to a hardware store to pick up what he needed to protect his home.

“I’m gonna board up,” he said Monday. “It’s best to play it safe.”

Others were stocking up on bottled water and plywood. And Hurricane Irene was trending on Twitter.

The storm slashed directly across Puerto Rico, tearing up trees and knocking out power to more than a million people. It then headed out to sea, north of the Dominican Republic, where the powerful storm’s outer bands were buffeting the north coast with dangerous sea surge and downpours. President Barack Obama declared an emergency for Puerto Rico, making it eligible for federal help.

‘Looks like it could get bad’
Irene was forecast to pass over or near the Turks and Caicos Islands and the southeastern Bahamas by Tuesday night and be near the central Bahamas early Wednesday.

In the overseas U.K. territory of the Turks and Caicos, a steady stream of customers bought plywood and nails at hardware stores, while others readied storm shutters and emergency kits at home.

“I can tell you I don’t want this storm to come. It looks like it could get bad, so I’ve definitely got to get my boats out of the water,” said Dedrick Handfield at the North Caicos hardware store where he works.

Many of the center’s computer models had the storm veering northward away from Florida’s east coast toward Georgia and the Carolinas, but forecasters said much was still unclear.

“In terms of where it’s going to go, there is still a pretty high level of uncertainty,” said Wallace Hogsett, a National Hurricane Center meteorologist. “It’s a very difficult forecast in terms of when it’s going to turn northward.”

One key reason for that, he said, is the difficulty of measuring the effect on Irene of the high terrain of the island of Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican. Hurricane warnings were up on the northern side of the Dominican Republic, as well as the Turks and Caicos islands just south of the long Bahamas chain. Forecasters say it depends on which way the storm veers after passing the Bahamas Tuesday or into Wednesday and heads into the very warm Atlantic waters.

And several past hurricanes have turned into Category 4 or 5 monsters but hit land with much less force.

The other big factor is exactly when the storm will encounter a higher-level trough along the U.S. East Coast, which will eventually turn it to the north.

“Timing is everything,” Hogsett said.

In South Carolina, state and coastal emergency agencies went on alert for possibly the first hurricane to hit there in seven years.

Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor, who went from child star to screen siren, died Wednesday in Los Angeles from congestive heart failure. She was 79. Her children were at her side when she died.

Taylor had been in Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for about six weeks.

Taylor first gained stardom as a child and appeared in more than 50 films. She won Oscars for her performances in “Butterfield 8″ and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

She was equally famous for extraordinary beauty and her stormy personal life, including eight marriages and a series of physical ailments.

In later years, she was a spokeswoman for humanitarian causes, notably AIDS research. That work gained her a special Oscar in 1993.

“My Mother was an extraordinary woman who lived life to the fullest, with great passion, humor, and love,” said her son, Michael Wilding, in a statement. “Though her loss is devastating to those of us who held her so close and so dear, we will always be inspired by her enduring contribution to our world. Her remarkable body of work in film, her ongoing success as a businesswoman, and her brave and relentless advocacy in the fight against HIV/AIDS, all make us all incredibly proud of what she accomplished. We know, quite simply, that the world is a better place for Mom having lived in it. Her legacy will never fade, her spirit will always be with us, and her love will live forever in our hearts.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): MYCLASSYLYRICS, NEWSDAILYBRIEF

As Haitians mark the anniversary on Wednesday of the earthquake that flattened much of the capital Port-au-Prince, hopes that a better nation could rise from the rubble have given way to a crushing sense of bitterness and despair.

Reconstruction work has barely begun despite billions of dollars in pledged aid, profiteering by Haiti’s tiny and notoriously corrupt elite has reached epic proportions, and a national cholera epidemic has added to the misery of a country where the magnitude 7 quake killed about 250,000 people and left more than a million homeless.

Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, was in bad shape before the quake. But promises from the international community to “build Haiti back better” now ring hollow to many of the country’s most vulnerable.

Banks, schools and government offices were ordered closed for the anniversary and a national day of mourning was to kick off with a service offered by the papal envoy to Haiti at the quake-shattered remains of the National Cathedral in downtown Port-au-Prince.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, the special U.N. envoy for Haiti who heads its main disaster management body, was due to attend the service along with a host of officials including outgoing Haitian President Rene Preval.

Clinton, in an interview with NBC News’ Mara Schiavocampo, said he was not satisfied with the rate of progress, but remained optimistic that this would change.

“Everyday there’s hope and there’s frustration, but I’d say the hope still outweighs the frustration,” he said. “I think there has been some real progress. We got 60 percent of the pledges for the first year distributed.”

Schiavocampo, noting that some of the additions to the tent camps to make them more livable — such as concrete structures and latrines — also made them easier to rely on as permanent housing, asked Clinton if he expects them to still be in use in the next several years.

“If they’re here in five years, I’ll be really diasppointed,” responded Clinton, who co-chairs the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission with Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive. “But I have to tell you, I didn’t think we’d get a third of the people out in a year because we knew couldn’t do any comprehensive block-by-block building.”

Clinton continued, saying that those who have left the camps were able to clear rubble from

their existing homes, or get into temporary housing.

“So, where actually that’s the one area where there are more people out of those camps than what I thought would be, but I want to really see a lot of rapid movement.”

‘Continuing spirit’ of Haitians
He said between 40 to 60 exhibitors were expected at a housing expo in spring and the Haitian government would then choose which of them were eligible for aid.

“Then I’ll be surprised if we don’t really start going to town on the housing,” Clinton said. “I think you’ll see big time movement and there’ll be employment and there’ll be new businesses as a result of it. So, we’ll do better on housing this year.”

He said he was “most encouraged by the fact that I can’t find any donor who has given up,” but also by the the “continuing spirit of the people of Haiti.”

Clinton has faced pointed criticism for painfully slow progress in relief and rebuilding efforts so far. He acknowledged disappointment with the commission’s work in remarks to foreign reporters on Tuesday.

“Nobody’s been more frustrated than I am that we haven’t done more,” he said.

In his interview with Schiavocampo, Clinton said he was asked “a lot” by donors about what their money had been spent on.

“If someone wants to know how was their money spent and was it well spent, how do you answer that question?” he said. “Well, I think first of all, to answer how it was spent, I have to know to whom they gave it.

“But, for example, anyone who gave me money … I just raised for about three days $15 million  and we spent 85 percent of it and I can tell you how every penny of it was spent,” he added.

In Champs Mars, Port-au-Prince’s central plaza where thousands of families made homeless by the quake live in a sweltering tent city, residents said the official ceremonies and renewed pledges of aid and progress for Haiti from foreign officials, were like something taking place in another world.

Hundreds of thousands are still living in such camps and are falling victim to the cholera that has already taken some 3,750 lives since mid-October.

Political impasse
A political impasse since a disputed presidential election on November 28 has fueled further instability in the Caribbean country.

“I hear about aid on TV but us in Champs Mars, we’ve never seen it. We have no way to get out,” said 55-year-old Ginelle Pierre Louis.

“The diplomats pass through in the air, in helicopters, but they never come through here on the ground,” said Hyacinthe Mintha, 56, a resident of Champs Mars, which overlooks the heavily damaged presidential palace.

Mintha’s daughter, Hyacinthe Benita, 39, lives in a metal and wood shack with a frayed tarp roof and a thin pallet as the only bed for herself and her four children.

“We are still here in misery,” she said of the quake anniversary. “I hope this year brings serious change because 2010 was hell for us,” she added.

“The president’s right over there,” said Benita, gesturing toward the annex where Preval, who is deeply unpopular, works behind the presidential palace. “He’s never done anything for us, he’s never come to see us at all. They look at us like animals,” she said.

The new chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., said Tuesday that real recovery and development in Haiti depended on accountability and strong leadership by the Caribbean country’s government.

“Leadership that is not there,” she said after returning to Miami International Airport. “It will be crucial, critical, necessary for Haiti’s next leader to take every step necessary to institute the needed changes to bring transparency, trust and credibility back to this nation.”

Ros-Lehtinen said future U.S. and international support for Haiti depended on concrete eff orts to curb corruption and graft. The congresswoman said she planned to reintroduce legislati on to increase oversight of U.S. funding to Haiti.

Cheryl Mills, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, has said the U.S. could support throwing out the disputed results of Haiti’s first-round presidential election in November, if that’s what is proposed by a 12-member election team from the Organization of American States.

Fraudulent ballots
A draft copy of the OAS report on the election, obtained by The Associated Press, said the disputed vote should neither be thrown out entirely nor recounted.

But it said enough fraudulent or improper ballots should be invalidated to drop ruling-party candidate Jude Celestin into third place and out of the second-round runoff.

Denis O’Brien, a supporter of Bill Clinton and chairman of the Irish-owned cell phone company Digicel that is Haiti’s biggest foreign investor, told Reuters in an interview this week that the former U.S. leader had a solid understanding of what needs to be done to get Haiti back on its feet.

But one of his big problems, according to O’Brien, is that most members of Haiti’s ruling class have done little to help, seeking only to profit on the back of their nation’s catastrophe.

“There’s very few of the elite families that are actually doing a lot for Haiti,” O’Brien said.

“They’re making massive profits on the importation of goods, products, services, everything … Profiteering at a major scale is going on here,” he added.

Jimmy Jean-Louis, a Haitian-born actor and performer who now lives in Los Angeles but has visited his homeland frequently since the quake, said the ruling class had always benefited from chaos and mayhem in Haiti.

“The more destabilization there is, unfortunately, the more money the elite makes,” he said.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): PURECASHMAGAZINE, OUTBLUSH

LONDON — Britain’s Prince William will marry his longtime girlfriend Kate Middleton next spring or summer in London, the royal family announced Tuesday.

The announcement ends years of rumored splits, reconciliations and will-they, wont-they speculation. It will be the biggest royal wedding since Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer almost 30 years ago.

Prince Charles’ Clarence House office said the heir to the British throne was “delighted to announce the engagement of Prince William to Miss Catherine Middleton.” It said the couple got engaged last month during a vacation in Kenya.

William’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and her husband Prince Philip “are absolutely delighted for them both,” Buckingham Palace said.

Prime Minister David Cameron was delighted, too, wishing the couple “great joy in their life together.” He said he announced the news during a Cabinet meeting, and it was greeted by cheers and “a great banging of the table.”

The couple were to give their first joint interview later Tuesday. Middleton has rarely, if ever, spoken about William in public.

“I love the uniform. It’s so, so sexy,” — her assessment at William’s graduation from Sandhurst — was a rare slip.

‘National celebration’
The news was not, however, a surprise. Kate and William’s engagement was the safest bet in Britain, considered so certain that bookies had stopped taking bets on a 2011 wedding. The date avoids London’s Summer Olympics and the queen’s Diamond Jubilee, both being held in 2012.

Visions of a royal wedding were stoked by the visit several weeks ago of Kate’s parents — Michael and Carole Middleton — to Balmoral, Queen Elizabeth II’s 50,000-acre estate in Scotland. It marked the first time the Middletons had been invited to such an intimate royal gathering.

Britain’s royal watchers said the invitation to Balmoral was a way of welcoming the middle class Middletons into the very highest realm of British society. Middleton is not from the aristocracy. Her parents worked for British Airways before founding Party Pieces, a successful party-supply business. She works for the family business.

“We thought it was going to happen, now that it has it’s an opportunity for a welcome national celebration,” said Patrick Jephson, former secretary to Princess Diana, adding that her son’s nuptials would be “a masterclass” in wedding planning.

Wedding venue
Recent speculation about the site of the event has focused on Westminster Abbey, where the funeral for the prince’s mother, Princess Diana, was held in 1997. But the palace remained mum on details. “Further details about the wedding day will be announced in due course,” the statement said.

For pomp itself, the ceremony is likely to fall between the extraordinary spectacle of Charles and Diana’s 1981 wedding in St. Paul’s Cathedral and Charles’ subdued second marriage to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall at Windsor Guildhall in 2005.

Clarence House said after the wedding, the couple will live in north Wales, where William is based with the RAF.

Middleton will now be protected by Scotland Yard, and William recently requested a female bodyguard for her, royal expert and News of the World correspondent Robert Jobson said on TODAY.

Jobson also speculated that the pair will be given new titles before their wedding. William will likely be known as the Duke of Cambridge and she will be knows as the Duchess of Cambridge, he said.

Couple’s courtship
William, who is second in line to the throne after Charles, once told an interviewer he wouldn’t marry “until I’m at least 28 or maybe 30.” He turned 28 in June.

Middleton, also 28, met William at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. They shared a student house in the seaside university town, where William initially studied art history before switching to geography.

In 2002, William paid 200 pounds to sit in the front row at a charity fashion show where Middleton was modeling in a daring outfit — they are thought to have started dating the following year.

She attended Marlborough College, an elite private school, where she played tennis and field hockey, before studying art history at St. Andrews.

Once the couple’s relationship became public with a joint photo on a Swiss skiing holiday in 2004, Middleton became a media darling — especially after both graduated, ending a media agreement to leave William alone while he was at university. With her confident good looks and long brown hair, Middleton became one of the most photographed women in Britain.

The brunette fashion buyer was photographed attending public events, going to work, even getting a parking ticket — a level of attention that evoked the romance of William’s parents, Charles and Diana.

Middleton was there when William was commissioned as a British Army officer after graduating from Sandhurst military college in 2006.

William was determined that Middleton would not suffer the same media hounding endured by his mother, who died in a Paris car crash in 1997. He appealed through his office for the media to leave her alone.

In 2007 Middleton filed a harassment complaint against a newspaper. She accepted an apology and admission of error from the Daily Mirror.

It was widely thought the couple would soon announce their engagement. The retail chain Woolworths even commissioned mugs, plates and other Wills-and-Kate memorabilia.

But only weeks later in 2007, media reported — and Clarence House did not deny — that the couple had broken up. Newspapers pored over the apparent end of the relationship in long stories sourced to anonymous “friends.” William’s army training kept them apart, said some. The media pressure was too much for her, said others. Still others murmured that senior courtiers felt Middleton’s middle-class background wasn’t royal material.

Soon, however, the same newspapers were reporting that the pair had rekindled their romance. They were photographed leaving a London nightclub together, and Middleton was snapped on a stag hunting expedition at the royal family’s Balmoral estate alongside Prince Charles.

When William graduated from his first flying course in the spring of 2008, Middleton applauded from the sidelines — although his training was not without incident. The Ministry of Defense confirmed that William had landed a helicopter on Middleton’s parents’ lawn during a training flight and flew a Chinook to a friend’s stag party on the Isle of Wight.

William later served a two-month deployment with the Royal Navy before training to become a Sea King search-and-rescue pilot with the Royal Air Force. He recently completed that training.

It has been widely reported that for the last six months, the pair have lived together on the Welsh island of Anglesey, close to the RAF base where the price is based. William is also a frequent visitor to the Middleton family house in the affluent village of Bucklebury, 50 miles west of London.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): WHYFAME, TOPNEWS, DIANAQUEENOFHEAVEN