Apple sells 3 million iPads over first weekend

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William Shatner – there’s an app for him
















RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – Actor William Shatner is having a moment. A couple of years after CBS canceled his Twitter-inspired “$ #*! My Dad Says” TV comedy, Shatner is at the top of the tech world.


The former “Star Trek” captain, now 81, is featured in Blindlight Apps “Shatoetry”, which catapulted to the top of the entertainment app list on Apple iTunes last week on its first day of release.













The celebrity app allows users to choose from hundreds of words to arrange sentences, which Shatner will then recite in his trademark voice and style. There is also a mode that allows Shatner fans to collaborate on “Shatisms” and there are single-player challenges like creating Haiku and poetry.


Shatner, who is currently touring the country with his critically-acclaimed one-man Broadway show, “Shatner’s World,” took a few minutes to talk technology with Reuters.


Q: How would you like to expand this app moving forward? Perhaps adding music?


A: “Well, we have that in mind. Words to music. We have in mind holiday things. We have in mind events in your life, words so that you can use them as well. We will increase this if people love it and tell other people that they love it. When we get an audience we know that is worthwhile, we will add to it.”


Q: One audience you know you definitely have out there is “Star Trek” fans. Do you see any opportunities with special app add-ons for them?


A: “Well, yes. I don’t think we’ll leave opportunity unexplored, but I wanted to be very careful about how we introduce it so it is not something that is derogatory or stupid. I want to make sure that it’s used in the way it’s meant to be used, which is for your entertainment.”


Q: Do you see opportunities for other actors to work with you on this app?


A: “We hope that it becomes popular enough to interest people into doing some words.”


Q: So users would be able to mix your words with other actors’ words through this app?


A: “Yes. Exactly. Have them do keywords like ‘love.’ There are certain words that everybody wants to use like ‘love’ and ‘hate’ and words that you use somewhere in your conversation… Commonly used words that are positive, I think that would be a way of getting a well-known person to take a chance in interpreting that word several different ways and know that they won’t look foolish, or be made to look foolish.”


Q: How are you taking advantage of today’s technology to connect with fans?


A: “I’m using it in as many ways as feasible. I’m doing podcasts. I’m certainly doing everything else, Facebook, Twitter and all that kind of thing. I’m taking advantage of communicating with the people out there as much as possible, and this app is one of those ways.”


Q: What technology do you have?


A: “I have iPhone, an iPad and I will be getting an iPad Mini shortly.”


Q: How do you use those devices?


A: “I don’t play games. I read the newspapers. I’ve got a dictation sound-to-print app and since I don’t type very well, I find myself dictating to it and sending the notes on. It’s a truly creative tool with. Once you have a means of communicating – there’s so much wrong with the world and so many crises in the mix here that, if we can communicate faster and better, we may be able to fix them before the end of the world, as far as human beings are concerned.”


Q: How’s the tour going for your show “Shatner’s World”?


A: “I’m going to be in Connecticut and New Jersey this week. I’m playing about four different places that are just opening up now. My heart goes out to the nightmare that these people are in. I feel a little awkward in talking about providing a laugh or two, but on the other hand some people may need that, and that’s what I’ll be doing….I will be with my heart on my sleeve trying to entertain people who have had a great deal of hardship in the last week.”


Q: A lot of my friends in New York and New Jersey are still without power after Hurricane Sandy.


A: “I know, and hopefully by the time I get there, there will be power. And hopefully by that time, they’ll be of a mind to be able to want to be entertained.”


(Reporting by John Gaudiosi, editing by Jill Serjeant and Marguerita Choy)


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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When it comes to colon cancer checks, options exist
















NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – For people who have had a negative colonoscopy, less-invasive screening options may work just fine for follow-up cancer tests, a new analysis suggests.


“No one screening test is right for everyone,” lead researcher Amy Knudsen, from the Institute for Technology Assessment at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told Reuters Health in an email.













The findings, which are based on a mathematical model, showed life expectancy varied by only a few days between people who continued getting colonoscopies every ten years and those who chose annual fecal blood tests and other less-invasive alternatives.


“The best test for you depends on your risk, your preferences, and which screening approach you are willing and able to adhere to, since no screening is effective unless it’s done,” she added.


“Patients should talk with their doctors to decide which test is best for them.”


Knudsen’s team fed colon cancer screening and survival data into a National Cancer Institute (NCI) model, starting with hypothetical study participants that had a negative colonoscopy at age 50.


The researchers found that with no further screening, 31 out of every 1,000 people would be diagnosed with colon cancer during their lives and 12 would die from it. For people who continued having colonoscopies every ten years, that would fall to eight colon cancer diagnoses and two deaths per 1,000 people.


With annual fecal tests starting at age 60, Knudsen and her colleagues calculated that 11 to 13 out of every 1,000 people would get colon cancer, and three or four would die.


And with the last screening method, known as computed tomographic colonography, or CTC, nine people would be diagnosed with cancer and three would die if the tests were done every five years. Like colonoscopy, CTC requires bowel preparation, but otherwise is not as invasive.


The less-invasive screening methods would each cause about half as many complications as colonoscopy – affecting one percent of patients versus two percent, according to findings published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Those complications include bleeding and colon perforations.


“All of these methods will work if your ultimate goal is to reduce deaths from colon cancer,” said gastroenterologist Dr. David Weinberg from Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study.


PAYING A LOT MORE


According to the NCI, about 143,000 people are expected to be diagnosed with colon or rectal cancer in 2012, and close to 52,000 will die of the disease.


Weinberg said one of the advantages of colonoscopy is that it finds pre-cancerous polyps that can be removed before they turn into cancer.


Fecal blood tests, on the other hand, typically catch very early cancers, so more patients screened that way will get cancer and need treatment, although they’ll have a good prognosis.


Colonoscopy is also more expensive than other options, at a bit over $ 1,000 a pop – and getting the procedure is typically not the most pleasant experience. A fecal test costs $ 20 to $ 50, and CTC about $ 500.


“If everybody gets a colonoscopy, you will have many fewer people who ever develop colon cancer, but you’re going to pay a lot more money to get that effect,” Weinberg told Reuters Health.


“What people and populations have to decide is, how do you want to spend your money?”


Although it’s a limitation that the results are based on a mathematical model and not on screening and outcomes for real people, Weinberg said a comparable human study will likely never be done because of the time and money required.


Based on the available evidence, the United States Preventive Services Task Force, a government-backed panel, recommends screening for colon cancer using colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy or fecal occult blood testing between age 50 and 75.


Although both colonoscopy and fecal blood tests are available most places in the U.S., other tests including CTC may be harder to find, or not reimbursed by insurance, according to Weinberg.


SOURCE: http://bitly.com/MnBiCA Annals of Internal Medicine, online November 5, 2012.


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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My plea to the undecided: Stay home!

By Jeff Greenfield

As the momentous day approaches, with epochal consequences for an anxiously awaiting world, I take pen in hand—make that apply fingertips to keypad—to renew a traditional plea I first made more than 30 years ago. It’s a plea I’ve made in print, on the air and, now, through the miracle of digital technology. But its message never changes.

It’s a plea directed to those of you who are still uncertain about which way to vote. And it’s as simple as it is heartfelt: Stay home.

The candidates have been at this for years; both President Obama and Mitt Romney began running for the presidency six years ago. They’ve made speeches, answered (or evaded) questions and raised billions to convince you of their worth—or the other guy’s worthlessness.

The media have been covering their every move and word, even when the candidates thought they weren’t. (Can you say, “Cling to their religion and guns”? “47 percent”?) The coverage has been slanted, scrupulously fair, superficial, in-depth, misleading, dead-on. With the flip of a page or the click of a mouse, you have been able to find out every conceivable piece of information you might want on their backgrounds, families, values, experience, positions taken, positions abandoned, promises made, promises broken, and the music on their iPods.

And after all this time, you’re still trying to make up your minds. The overwhelmingly likely reason is this: You have the reasoning power of a baked potato.

OK, I grant that you may be of the small minority of concerned citizens who are genuinely torn and who have not yet evaluated the relative worth of health care reform notions, the vagaries of the tax proposals or the respective approaches to the increasing power of the renminbi.

But I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it.

The odds are, you’ve just been too busy obsessing about the misfortunes of the Kardashians or the quality of your ringtone, to spend any time thinking about who might be the better president.

Well, that’s your right. Unlike the Australians, we don’t compel people to vote, and it would likely be a First Amendment violation if we tried. A refusal to vote can be seen as a statement that the electoral system is rigged, meaningless or so thoroughly corrupt as to deserve contempt. (“I never vote,” one citizen said long ago. “It only encourages them.”)

And there are other valid reasons for not voting. As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think about making a choice in the voting booth.

So it strikes me as a sound, honest statement for a prospective voter to say: “Look, I haven’t given this election a minute’s thought, and it’s just not fair for me to cancel out the vote of someone who actually gives a damn.”

Indeed, it’s not just sound and honest—it’s the ethically responsible thing to do.

Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma march for voting rights. In these days of early voting, we’ve seen people waiting in line for hours to exercise the franchise. Countless others, who have never had to fight for it, have spent real time either trying to decide how to cast their vote or donating their time to persuading others.

So if you’re one of those folks who have stayed utterly disengaged through all of this, do the honorable thing: Honor those for whom the vote really matters by staying home.

You’ll be doing yourself—and the country—a favor.

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Newspaper discloses new Cameron text messages
















LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.


The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.













Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.


In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”


Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.


Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Read More..

Turkish ex-president’s autopsy fuels poisoning speculation
















ISTANBUL (Reuters) – An autopsy on late President Turgut Ozal, who led Turkey out of military rule in the 1980s and whose body was exhumed last month, will reveal he was poisoned, his son believes, calling for a full investigation of the “dark years” two decades ago when he died.


Ahmet Ozal was speaking after a newspaper report said high levels of poison had been identified by the autopsy, carried out after his father’s body was dug up on the orders of prosecutors investigating suspicions of foul play in his death.













State forensic authorities have denied the media report.


Ozal’s moves to end a Kurdish insurgency and create a Turkic union with central Asian states have been cited as motives for would-be enemies in the shadowy “deep state”, in which security establishment figures and criminal elements colluded.


Ozal died of heart failure while in office in April 1993 at the age of 65. After undergoing a triple heart bypass operation in the United States in 1987, he kept up a grueling schedule while remaining overweight until he died.


But his family believe he was the victim of a plot.


“Even though 19 years have passed, thanks to technological advances and rigorous investigation they are capable of finding poisonous substances … I believe they will be found,” former member of parliament Ahmet Ozal told Reuters late on Saturday.


“I am 100 percent sure his death was not normal. If it is indeed proven, then Turkey should thoroughly investigate the dark years,” he said, noting that top investigative journalist Ugur Mumcu was killed in a car bomb the year Ozal died.


It was Turkey’s military leaders who appointed him as a minister after a period of military rule following a 1980 coup.


Ozal went on to dominate Turkish politics during his period as prime minister from 1983-89. Parliament then elected him president, but those close to him believe his reform efforts displeased some in the security establishment.


While prime minister, Ozal survived an assassination attempt by a right-wing gunman in 1988 when he was shot at a party congress, suffering a wounded finger. Ahmet Ozal said he believed there was a cover-up over the assassination attempt.


“If the assassination (attempt) is investigated … we may see interesting connections to things happening these days. It could also offer an insight into my father death,” he said, noting a presidential order would be needed for such an investigation.


Turkish political history has been littered with military coups, alleged anti-government plots and extra-judicial killings. A court is currently trying hundreds of suspects allegedly linked to a nationalist underground network known as “Ergenekon” accused of plotting to overthrow the government.


Turgut Ozal‘s brother, Korkut Ozal, said in 2010 he believed Ergenekon had killed the president. ‘Extrajudicial killings’ were common at that time and have been blamed on shadowy militant forces with ties to the state.


STRYCHNINE CLAIM DENIED


Those suspicious about his death have pointed to efforts which Ozal made to end the conflict with Kurdish militants during his time in office, including securing a Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) ceasefire shortly before his death.


A report in Bugun newspaper on Friday said it had obtained a copy of the autopsy which revealed high levels of “strychnine creatine” in Ozal’s body.


Strychnine is a highly toxic alkaloid used as a pesticide which causes muscular convulsions and death through asphyxia. Creatine is an organic acid which supplies energy for muscle contraction.


However, the head of the state forensic medicine institute, Haluk Ince, said such a substance had not been found and the report had not yet been completed.


“We did not find the material referred to in the newspaper story. We don’t know how that story came about,” Ince told reporters in the wake of the Bugun article, adding the institute aimed to complete its work in December.


No post-mortem examination was conducted at the time of Ozal’s death, reportedly at the request of his widow.


Viewed as a visionary who helped pave the way for the free market economic policies under which modern Turkey has thrived, Ozal also gave firm support to the West, supporting the U.S.-led coalition which expelled Iraq from Kuwait in 1991.


Ahmet Ozal said his father helped transform Turkey from a coup-torn, state-run economy to the emerging power it is now, boosting freedom of expression, religion and private enterprise.


“This was the foundation that gave birth to modern Turkey. Along with this, perhaps the most important was the transformation of people’s mindset. With that you can change anything,” he said.


(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jon Hemming)


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Florida's I-4 corridor: The mother road of swing voters

By Bob Sacha and Maisie Crow


Interstate 4 bisects the center of America's most notorious swing state, running 132 miles from Tampa, through Orlando and ending near Daytona Beach. Fifty-five percent of Florida voters live in the I-4 corridor. It is often where elections are decided in a state that has frequently switched sides, voting for Republicans seven times and Democrats three times in the past 10 elections, and voting for the winning presidential candidate 90 percent of that time.


For the final installment of our Road Trip video series for Campaign 2012, Yahoo News headed to Florida in search of the exotic, perhaps mythical, undecided voter. Here are three of our conversations.


'I have been registered to vote for seven years, and I have never voted.'



In a state filled with colorful characters, Eve Banks, 25, entertains many of them at the Mons Venus club in Tampa. She also travels extensively for her work as an exotic dancer. Eve Banks is a stage name: "I don't want girls from my sorority looking me up online," she says.


"I'm living a version of the American dream," she told Yahoo News. "It's not like the white picket fence, but I do have the dogs and I do have the husband. And I have everything I want. It's just kind of a different way of achieving it."


In the 2012 presidential election, Banks will be voting for the first time, casting a ballot for Barack Obama, she says, because of his support for women. "I generally don't care about politics because I feel like little old me does not make a difference," she said. "But this year I think is a lot different than previous years because of what's at stake right now.


"There was a lot of discrimination against women, believe it or not, not even that long ago really if you think about it. And that'll all change if we don't put the right person in the position," Banks said. "No woman wants a government to control her body or her choices."


'It has gotten pretty ugly between the two. I'm not sure I would want to be a part of it.'



Lloyd Parker, 33, hasn't decided how he is going to vote. He was working for a land development company in Lake Tahoe in Nevada until business started to slow down. His best friend lured him to Florida to become an entrepreneur by starting the Savage Race, an obstacle race in the mud. We hung out with him during their third race in Dade City.


"The Savage Race is a four- to six-mile mud obstacle course," Parker said. "It's timed. Twenty to 25 military-style obstacles that challenge you in many different ways. And afterward it's a fun gathering with live music and a party atmosphere."


Parker called Florida a Savage Race of sorts for Obama and Mitt Romney: "It is everywhere. It seems to be all over Facebook, everything. Maybe that has turned me off a little bit. That it's just been too much of back and forth and negativity, and it probably pushed me away a little bit.


"I have not been following it very much lately," he told Yahoo News. "In the last month I have been extremely busy with this course. I'm out on a ranch with no cable."


'I think somebody that's been in the farming business as long as we have—I don't think we should have to pay any inheritance tax.'



When Dave Black, 73, started in the citrus-farming and ranching business 42 years ago in Clermont, he stood on his 22 acres and saw fruit trees everywhere. Now his property is down to 14 acres, and it is hemmed in by new housing developments on three sides.


"We've got enough houses," Black told Yahoo News. "I mean we should leave a little open space."


Black is voting for Romney because of his opposition to the inheritance tax, in the hope that he can pass his property to his children undivided and tax-free.


"The Electoral College, I don't care for," he said. "I want the people to decide, not this state or that state. You know, Bush, the first election, he won on electoral votes. He didn't win on popular votes. Gore beat him on popular votes. So, that's wrong. That's just my opinion."


Bob Sacha is a multimedia producer, a documentary filmmaker, a photojournalist and a teacher. Maisie Crow is a documentary photographer, a filmmaker and a visual storytelling teacher. Earlier this year, Bob Sacha and Zach Wise traveled to Nevada to talk to Hispanics about the presidential election. In October, they talked to small-business owners along Colorado's Colfax Avenue. In July, Bob Sacha and Miki Meek traveled to Northern Virginia to talk to Mormons about what a President Romney would mean to them. In March, they drove Ohio's I-71 and talked to Republicans before Super Tuesday.


Read More..

As foreigners go, Afghan city is feeling abandoned

























KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — By switching from studying business management to training as a nurse, 19-year-old Anita Taraky has placed a bet on the future of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — that once foreign troops are gone, private-sector jobs will be fewer but nursing will always be in demand.


Besides, if the Taliban militants recapture the southern Afghan city that was their movement’s birthplace and from which they were expelled by U.S.-led forces 11 years ago, nursing will likely be one of the few professions left open to women.





















Taraky is one of thousands of Kandaharis who are weighing their options with the approaching departure of the U.S. and its coalition partners. But while she has opted to stay, businessman Esmatullah Khan is leaving.


Khan, 29, made his living in property dealing and supplying services to the Western contingents operating in the city. Property prices are down, and business with foreigners is already shrinking, so he is pulling out, as are many others, he said.


Many are driven by a certainty that the Taliban will return, and that there will be reprisals.   


“From our baker to our electrician to our plumber, everyone was engaged with the foreign troops and so they are all targets for the Taliban. And unless the government is much stronger, when the foreign troops leave, that is the end,” Khan said.


The stakes are high. Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, is the southern counterweight to Kabul, the capital. Keeping Kandahar under central government control is critical to preventing the country from breaking apart into warring fiefdoms as it did in the 1990s.


“Kandahar is the gate of Afghanistan,” said Asan Noorzai, director of the provincial council. “If Kandahar is secure, the whole country is secure. If it is insecure, the whole country will soon be fighting.”


Even though Kandahar city has traffic jams and street hawkers to give it an atmosphere of normality, there are dozens of shuttered stores on the main commercial street, it’s almost too easy to find a parking space these days, and shopkeepers are feeling the pinch.


Dost Mohammad Nikzad said his profits from selling sweets have dropped by a half or more in the past year, to about $ 30 a day, and he has had to cut back on luxuries.


He said that every month he would buy a new shalwar kameez, the tunic favored by Afghan men; now he buys one every other month.


“I only go out to eat at a restaurant once a week. Before I would have gone multiple times a week,” Nikzad said, as he stood behind his counter, waiting for customers to show.


The measurements of violence levels contradict each other. On the one hand, many Kandaharis say things are better this year. On the other hand, the types of violence have changed and, to some minds, gotten worse.


“Before, we were mostly worried about bomb blasts. Now … we are afraid of worse things like assassinations and suicide attacks,” said Gul Mohammad Stanakzai, 34, a bank cashier.


Prying open the Taliban grip on Kandahar and its surrounding province has cost the lives of more than 400 international troops since 2001, and many more Afghans, including hundreds of public officials who have been assassinated by the Taliban.


Kandahar province remains the most violent in the country, averaging more than five “security incidents” a day, according to independent monitors. In Kandahar city, suicide attacks have more than doubled so far this year compared with the same period of 2011, according to U.N. figures.


“They are not fighting in the open the way they were before. Instead they are planting bombs and trying to get at us through the police and the army,” said Qadim Patyal, the deputy provincial governor.


The Taliban have said in official statements that they are focusing more on infiltrating Afghan and international forces to attack them. In the Kandahar governor’s office, armed Afghan soldiers are barred from meetings with American officials lest they turn on them, Patyal said.


And many point out that the “better security” is only relative. By all measures — attacks, bombings and civilian casualties — Kandahar is a much more violent city now than in 2008, before U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge.


There are no statistics on how many people have left the city of 500,000, but people are fleeing the south more than any other part of the country, according to U.N. figures. About 32 percent of the approximately 397,000 people who were recorded as in-country refugees were fleeing violence in the south, according to U.N. figures from the end of May.


The provincial government, which is supposed to fill the void left by the departing international forces, has suffered heavily from assassinations. It suffered a double blow in July last year with the killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai who was seen as the man who made things work in Kandahar, and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of the city.


Now, Noorzai says, he can neither get the attention of ministers in Kabul nor trust city officials to do their jobs.


He remembers 2001, when he and others traveled to the capital flying the Afghan flag which had just been reinstated in place of that of the ousted Taliban. “People were throwing flowers and money on our car, they were so happy to have the Afghan flag flying again,” he said.


“When we got power, what did we give them in return? Poverty, corruption, abuse.”


Mohammad Omer, Kandahar’s current mayor, insists that if people are leaving the city, it is to return to villages they fled in previous years because now security has improved.


Zulmai Hafez disagrees. He has felt like a marked man since his father went to work for the government three years ago, and is too frightened to return to his home in the Panjwai district outside Kandahar city. He refused to have his picture taken or to have a reporter to his home, instead meeting at the city’s media center.


“It’s the Taliban who control the land, not the government,” Hafez said. He notes that the government administrator for his district sold off half his land, saying he would not be able to protect the entire farm from insurgents. Many believe the previous mayor was murdered because he went after powerful land barons.


Land reform is badly needed, and the mayor is angry about people who steal land, but he offers no solution. Kandahar only gets electricity about half the day. The mayor says it’s up to the Western allies to fix that. But the foreign aid is sharply down. Aid coming to Kandahar province through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the largest donor, has fallen to $ 63 million this year from $ 161 million in 2011, according to U.S. Embassy figures.


The mayor prefers to talk about investing in parks and planting trees. “I can’t resolve the electricity problem, but at least I can provide a place in the city for people to relax,” he said.


The only people thinking long-term appear to be the Taliban.


“The Americans are going and the Taliban need the people’s support, so they are trying to avoid attacks that result in civilian casualties,” said Noor Agha Mujahid, a member of the Taliban shadow government for Kandahar province, where he oversees operations in a rural district. “After 2014 … it will not take a month to take every place back.”


One of the biggest worries is the fate of women who have made strides in business and politics since the ouster of the Taliban.


“What will these women do?” asked Ehsanullah Ehsan, director of a center that trains more than 800 women a year in computers, English and business. It was at his center where Anita Taraky studied before switching to nursing.


“Even if the Taliban don’t come back, even if the international community just leaves, there will be fewer opportunities for women,” he said.


On the outskirts of the city stands one of the grandest projects of post-Taliban Kandahar — the gated community of Ayno Maina with tree-lined cement homes, wi-fi and rooftop satellite dishes.


Khan, the departing businessman, says he bought bought 10 lots for $ 66,000 in Ayno Maina and has yet to sell any of them despite slashing the price,


He recalled that when he first went to the project office it was packed with buyers. “Now it is full of empty houses. No one goes there,” Khan said.


Only about 15,000 of the 40,000 lots have been sold, and 2,400 homes built and occupied, according to Mahmood Karzai, one of the development’s main backers and a brother of President Karzai. He argues, however, that prices are down all over Afghanistan, and that Ayno Maina is still viable, provided his brother gets serious about reform that will attract investors.


“Afghanistan became a game,” he said over lunch at the Ayno Maina office. “The game is to make money and get the hell out of here. That goes for politicians. That goes for contractors.”


He shrugged off allegations that he skimmed money from Ayno Maina, saying the claims were started by competitors in Kabul who assume everyone who is building something in Afghanistan is also stealing money.


He said the money went where it was needed: to Western-style building standards and security.


In downtown Kandahar, a deserted park and Ferris wheel serve as another reminder of thwarted hopes. Built in the mid-2000s, the wheel has been idle for two years according to a guard, Abdullah Jan Samad. It isn’t broken, he said, it just needs electricity. A major U.S.-funded project to get reliable electricity to the city has floundered and generators that were supposed to provide a temporary solution only operate part-time because of fuel shortages.


“The government should be paying for maintenance for the Ferris wheel,” the guard said. “When you build something you should also make sure to maintain it.”


____


Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.


Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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