Google slashes Nexus phone early stop price

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Google Inc (GOOG.O) told communications regulators on Tuesday the fee assessed on customers who end their service contracts for its Nexus One mobile phone has been slashed to $150 from $350.

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The early termination fee applies to new customers joining the T-Mobile network, while existing subscribers of Deutsche Telekom AG (DTEGn.DE) are charged $50, Google said.

Google was responding to an inquiry by the Federal Communications Commission, which in January had sent letters to Google and wireless companies as part of the agency"s broader consumer protection inquiry.

In January, the FCC asked Google, Sprint Nextel Corp (S.N) ATT Inc (T.N) and Verizon Wireless, a venture of Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) and Vodafone Group Plc (VOD.L), to explain how they tell their customers about early termination fees due when they bow out of service contracts early.

The FCC said in letters to the companies that since there is no industry standard for early termination fees, consumers must be able to understand what they are signing up for when they choose a service plan with such a fee.

U.S. service providers typically require customers to sign 2-year service contracts in exchange for a discount on handset prices. Since carriers pay for part of the cost of the phone the fee is their way of recouping that amount if customers leave before paying for two years of service.

The FCC had kicked off an investigation into such fees late last year after Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile service, caused an uproar by doubling its fees for smartphone users who bow out of their service contracts early.

In December Verizon sent a letter to the FCC defending doubling fees to $350 linked to some smartphones. In Tuesday"s letter, Verizon Wireless said it has reduced the number of devices that are subject to the $350 fee.

(Reporting by John Poirier; Editing by Richard Chang)

Technology Media

Breast cancer screening creates small disproportion investigate claims

Sam Lister, Health Editor & , : {}

Routine breast cancer screening may have little effect on reducing deaths from the disease and the value of national programmes should be questioned, according to a new report.

A study by the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen, published today in the British Medical Journal, concludes that national screening programmes bring no benefit in terms of lives saved. The study, based on the Danish programme, is the latest work to raise questions about the efficacy of population-wide mammographies. It comes as the worlds leading disease experts gather at the European Breast Cancer Conference in Barcelona.

All women aged between 50 and 70 are offered breast cancer screening in Britain, with more than 1.7 million taking up the invitation every year.

The latest findings, based on analysis of data over a 20-year period covering the introduction of regional screening in Denmark, found that breast cancer mortality fell by 1 per cent per year in the screened areas and by 2 per cent per year in non-screened areas.

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The research authors, from the University of Copenhagen and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, conclude that they could find no effect of the Danish programme on death rates.

They write: Our results are similar to what has been observed in other countries with nationally organised programmes. We believe it is time to question whether screening has delivered the promised effect on breast cancer mortality.

The Government, health charities and most doctors encourage women to have regular mammograms in this country on the basis of estimates that the checks save 1,400 lives each year.

However, last year a group of leading health professionals told The Times that women undergoing routine breast cancer screening were not being warned of the risks, with many tests ending in needless treatment. They criticised the Governments unethical failure to provide women with the full facts in the NHS programme of checks, prompting the Department of Health to review its information leaflets.

Of the 2.2 million women invited for checks by the NHS breast screening programme in 2007-08, 1.7 million were screened up half a million on a decade ago. The number of cancer cases detected by screening has more than doubled over the same period to 14,100 in 2007-08.

However, a spokesman for the NHS Screening Programmes said that leading epidemiologists had raised queries about the methodology and comparisons made in the latest Cochrane study. He said that the conclusions published in the BMJ added little to the continuing analysis of breast screening.

Professor Julietta Patnick, the director of the NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, said: Rigorous independent research has shown that the NHS screening programme saves lives. This is a report relating to the Danish screening programme, which is significantly different from the English system.

A report from the World Health Organisations International Agency for Research on Cancer suggested a 35 per cent reduction in mortality from breast cancer among regularly screened women between 50 and 69 years old.

Canadian leaders tuck in to sign dish to challenge EU anathema over annual slaughter

James Bone & , : {}

Canadian lawmakers are to criticism opposite the European Unions anathema on sign imports currently with their stomachs.

About thirty senators, MPs and provincial ministers will accumulate in the parliamentary dining room in Ottawa to take a break on sign beef in a reprove to opponents of the countrys annual sign cull.

The menu, rebuilt by the parliamentary chef, facilities hors doeuvres of sliced sign sausage and a main march of bacon-wrapped sign loin in a pier reduction.

It will be the initial time for infancy of them generally in a really artistic way, in progress it with port, Cline Hervieux-Payette, the Liberal senator from Quebec who organized the meal, told The Times. Im really certain the going to be good.

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Canadian politicians from opposite the domestic spectrum are indignant about the EU preference to anathema imports of sign products from the argumentative hunt.

Up to 270,000 harp seals are killed each year in Mar and Apr with guns or the hakapik, a peaked club.

The annual winnow initial influenced general indignation 4 decades ago when radio cinema showed baby seals being smashed to death. The EU imposed the anathema in Jul after years of complaints by animal rights activists who rebuke the track as barbarous and feeble monitored.

This years track has annoyed protests from Sir Paul McCartney and the Canadian singer Pamela Anderson.

The EU anathema covers not customarily sealskin that is used to have coats, bags, wardrobe and even sporrans but meat, weep and sign oil, that is used in a small omega-3 pills.

It excludes imports subsequent from normal hunts by the Inuit in the Canadian Arctic.

Canada has requested consultations with the EU at the World Trade Organisation in the initial move towards an central plea of the European ban.

Canadian politicians contend that the anathema threatens an industry that constructed C$10 million (7 million) in exports last year for people vital in remote Atlantic fishing villages. The Government says that about 6,000 people take piece in the annual easterly seashore hunt. One statesman in the northern Nunavut domain has due that the segment should retort by banning European alcohol, trimming from Scotch blockade to French wine, in the 3 off-licences.

G7 financial ministers declined to take up the sign track row at their new assembly at Iqaluit in the icy Canadian north. The on vacation ministers additionally skipped the possibility to representation sign beef for themselves at a nation food eventuality organized by Inuit leaders at a internal school.

Ms Hervieux-Payette pronounced that she motionless to organize todays sign dish after eating the beef on a new sign hunt.

I was in the north dual weeks ago and I went sign sport with a small Inuit hunters. I outlayed a day in reduction 35 degrees. I ate the proposal meat.

She added: Because I am of French origin, we are used to eating things proposal either the fish or meat.

It tastes a lot similar to oyster. Its a small bit soft. You have a ambience of the ocean. Its a small bit messy but the really smooth. Its similar to eating sushi.

The senator pronounced that she had additionally eaten baked sign beef baked at a Montreal grill that serves it. When she proposed promulgation out invitations for the C$35-a-head meal, she was impressed by the response. All the main Canadian parties will be represented between the dinersat the C$35-a-head meal, she added.

Ms Hervieux-Payette pronounced that there was customarily one censor in the Canadian Parliament, a associate senator from the Liberal Party, Mac Harb, We have 400 on one side and customarily one on the alternative side, she said.

Mr Harb, who is introducing a Bill to finish the blurb sign hunt, pronounced that the immeasurable infancy of sign hunters never eat sign meat. They customarily take the whip and leave the skinned physique on the ice, he said.

He programmed to attend the sign dish but not to representation the food, Mr Harb said.

Seal of approval

• Seals have been wanted by Inuits in Canada for some-more than 4,000 years

• Seal beef is a low red, a outcome of the additional haemoglobin that allows the mammals to store oxygen when they dive. Critics report the proposal hardness and essence as closer to liver than steak. The greasy beef and the weep are glorious sources of iron, protein, vitamin A and vitamin B

• Canada, Norway, Russia, Namibia and Greenland are the customarily countries still to track seals

• Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, refused to eat sign beef at a G7 cooking in February. He could not, however, equivocate the seal-upholstered chairs

Source: Times archives

hair wig

Sir Ben Kingsley becomes the initial Oscar-winner to crop up in a Bollywood film

Rhys Blakely, Mumbai & , : {}

Sir Ben Kingsley will finish a singular cinematic round-trip today, apropos the initial Oscar-winner to crop up in a Bollywood movie scarcely 3 decades after personification Gandhi propelled him to tellurian fame.

The British actor, who won an Academy Award for his description of the father of Indian Independence in 1982, appears as Perci Trachtenberg the worlds biggest vital mathematician in Teen Patti, a keenly awaited Hindi-language thriller.

Set in the upmarket casinos of London, the bootleg gambling dens of Mumbai and the University of Cambridge, the movie has been garnering headlines in India for months. Despite the inclusion of a raft of Bollywood A-listers, majority of the hype has centred on Sir Ben. Gandhi done the actor, formerly majority appropriate well known for a purpose in Coronation Street, a domicile name opposite the country. He not long ago spoke of how it felt to be recognized and appreciated by a total sub-continent. He described a humbling and steadying experience singular for any actor.

Richard Attenboroughs epic is shown on radio in India each Independence Day. Some critics even indicate that the star has achieved a kind of psychic significance.

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Sir Bens opening gave him a special stature, pronounced Subhash K. Jha, a heading Indian motion picture critic. Hes turn a kind of human persona of Gandhi, a man majority in this nation cruise to be a demi-god.

The drive-in theatre longevity contingency additionally owe something to the perfect scale. One stage facilities a jot down 400,000 extras numbers out of the reach of Indian film-makers who have tackled the same theme on a fragment of the British productions budget.

Teen Patti (Three Husbands a sort of Indian label game) was done for $7.5 million (4.5 million). It does not crop up expected to grasp the heights of Gandhi, but might still paint a landmark. In it, Sir Ben, 66, will crop up to one side an additional cinematic icon, Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywoods majority princely superstar, who plays a reserved arithmetic might whose ultimate regulation renders disharmony predictable.

The heavyweight pairing is being seen by a little as emblematic of the flourishing ties beautiful and blurb being fake in between Bollywood and Hollywood. The movie was shot in London, Cambridge and Mumbai by the writer Ambika Hinduja, a part of of Indias absolute Hinduja family.

She says that the plan is an e.g. of globalised motion picture a genre epitomized by Slumdog Millionaire, that was done for fifteen million and went on to take some-more than 225 million at the box office.

hair wig

The Ripper should not be authorised anywhere nearby release Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple & , : {}

The subject right away prior to the High Court is either Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, should be since a calculable jail judgment and thus a possibility to win parole. This is the man who brutally killed thirteen women and attempted to kill at slightest 7 others.

The normal adult is expected to feel heated disappointment that this thought could be severely entertained (at substantial open expense) for even a millisecond. What kind of law, what kind of justice, needs to think about such a question?

However, we contingency accept that, underneath the order of law, lawyers have infrequently to take leave of the majority clear usual sense. It is to be hoped, then, that the decider will take no notice of the psychiatrists report.

Sutcliffe was pronounced to humour from overly suspicious schizophrenia. If so, he refused diagnosis for it for his initial 9 years inside. This is not encouraging. He is pronounced by his psychiatrist to have responded well to diagnosis and presumably right away represents small risk to the public. However, people with schizophrenia mostly relapse, with or but medication, and unpredictably. They are generally expected to do so if they fume simply accessible cannabis or take alternative unlawful drugs. No grade of notice can forestall this.

BACKGROUNDYorkshire Ripper creates bid for freedomVictims" kin voice ire over Sutcliffe"s bidFamilies" ire as Ripper bids for leisure

It is well well well well known that mental health services in this nation are mostly not always, but mostly amateurish in their follow-up of psychiatric patients. Indeed, their insufficiency infrequently surpasses all human understanding. I have myself well well well known of cases of dangerous people liberated from follow-up simply since they unsuccessful to keep their appointments, when such disaster was the initial and majority viewable pointer of relapse.

If the temperament of Sutcliffe became well well well known after his release, his own hold up competence be in danger. It is far from improbable that someone competence take it on himself to revenge Gods self-appointed avenger of prostitutes. A feeling that the law and probity have split association a feeling that the recover of Sutcliffe would certainly foster is precisely what would incite this kind of vigilantism and lynch law in the society.

The really actuality that Sutcliffe wants to request for recover speaks strenuously opposite him. If he had any genuine feeling for the concern of what he did, even if he was not utterly himself when he did it, he would be content, in truth eager, to stay in jail for the rest of his life.

It is not alone unfair to contend to someone who killed thirteen people over a duration of years that his hold up as a free man in multitude was over for ever. Indeed, it would be grossly unfair to contend anything else to him.

Theodore Dalrymple is a former jail doctor. His ultimate book is Second Opinion (Monday Books)

Farage dismisses reparation direct from honeyed MEP

David Charter, and Rory Watson in Brussels & , : {}

Nigel Farage compounded a sarcastic conflict on the EUs new President yesterday by refusing a ask by a honeyed and rather flattering Belgian MEP that he apologize for his critique of her nation and the majority comparison statesman.

The former personality of the UK Independence Party came underneath drawn out critique for job Herman Van Rompuy a slightly wet broom and dismissing the EU Presidents local Belgium as a non-country in a harangue in the European Parliament.

Rather than show contrition, Mr Farage is accepted to be on a mission to get himself dangling from the council to beget broadside for his ubiquitous choosing conflict with the Speaker, John Bercow, to be inaugurated MP for Buckingham. He has been summoned to see the European Parliament President, Jerzy Buzek, about his coming out on Tuesday and is reportedly deliberation wearing shorts and a schoolboy top as if for a dressing-down from the headmaster. Asked either he was perplexing to get himself banned, Mr Farage told The Times: You have your own mind up, mate.

The BBC was drawn in to the row after it played the shave of Mr Farages conflict regularly and was indicted of utilizing it to drum up observation total for Question Time, on that the UKIP MEP was due to crop up last night.

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Mr Van Rompuy pronounced that he would not reply to the conflict but the Belgian press was angry and the Prime Minister, Yves Leterme, wrote a minute of censure to Mr Buzek. Like others of Mr Farages proudest moments, it was placed on YouTube and has turn an internet hit.

Vronique De Keyser, a Belgian Socialist MEP, demanded a grave reparation for Mr Farages explain that Belgium was a non-country.

Mr Farage said: She is really honeyed and rather flattering but I cannot apologize for the actuality that Belgium is a utterly synthetic building a whole and a mistake.

Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham and a former Europe Minister, said: Nigel Farage gives the normal rent-a-quote MP or MEP a bad name. He has regularly confused personal insults with critical politics.

Last-minute talks to save Portsmouth stalling | Portsmouth

Nick Szczepanik & , : {}

Negotiations are approaching to go on currently in in between Balram Chainrai, the Portsmouth owner, and as most as 3 probable buyers for the Barclays Premier Leagues bottom club.

Chainrai had creatively set a deadline of the close of commercial operation yesterday for a multi-national consortium with South African links to furnish explanation that they had the supports to buy him out. But nonetheless talks pennyless up around 8pm yesterday, they are to resume this sunrise with all parties in the goal of reaching an agreement.

Chainrai and Levi Kushnir, his commercial operation partner, are accepted to have deliberate administration department as the fall-back on all sides if the benefaction talks fail, but might right away keep articulate late in to the week if they hold a sale is possible.

However, Chainrai already owns the freehold of Fratton Park, and with a winding-up apply to from HM Revenue Customs scheduled to be listened on Monday, there will come a time when serve delays could jeopardise the clubs existence.

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Victor Cattermole, the authority of Endeavor Plan, a Hong Kong-based investment company, has additionally voiced interest, but requires a 30-day due industry period. We arent here to have income out of the bar and positively not to sell off the assets, Cattermole said.

The unsafe inlet of the clubs incident appears to have translated in to tragedy at the precision ground, with reports last night that Michael Brown and Jamie OHara, the midfield players, were concerned in a fight.

Supporters, meanwhile, have since a discreet acquire to the suggest of Sulaiman al-Fahim, the non-executive authority and former owner, to give his 10 per cent shareholding to the Portsmouth Supporters Trust after his abdication from the clubs board.

Peter Storrie, the arch executive, has responded to questions about an strong mismatch in in between the clubs debts and large amounts accrued in send fees. The bulk of the income has left to the players in wages, he said. The cost of the players salary this year is �37 million. Last deteriorate it was �52 million and the year prior to it was �42 million.