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Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Sharapova Comes Back to Beat Bartoli at US Open

Maria Sharapova came from behind after a rain delay for the second straight match, advancing to the U.S. Open semifinals with a three-set victory over Marion Bartoli.

The four-time Grand Slam champion won 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 on Wednesday, a day after the quarterfinal started.

Sharapova had trailed 4-0 when rain halted play. After more wet weather delayed the restart, she couldn't erase the deficit in the first set but gritted out the win to improve to 12-0 in three-set matches this year.

"I think that rain break gave me a few hours to think about things," Sharapova said in an on-court interview afterward. "I came out so flat yesterday; she came out on fire. She's so tough."

The 11th-seeded Bartoli was in the U.S. Open quarterfinals for the first time.

Victoria Azarenka, of Belarus, reacts after... View Full Caption

In the fourth round Sunday, the third-seeded Russian was down a break in the third set to Nadia Petrova before rallying after an hour-long break. She next faces top-ranked Victoria Azarenka, who finished her match Tuesday.

Half of the other semifinal is also set after Sara Errani beat good friend and doubles partner Roberta Vinci.

The normally feisty Errani didn't pump her fist or even smile after clinching the 6-2, 6-4 victory. The two embraced at the net afterward, the 10th-seeded Errani looking far more relieved than joyful.

Their matchup guaranteed an Italian woman would reach the semifinals at this tournament for the first time in the Open era, which began in 1968.

Wearing identical pink and black outfits in a mostly empty Louis Armstrong Stadium after rain disrupted the schedule, the two played a subdued match that often felt more like a practice than a Grand Slam quarterfinal.

Errani and Vinci, who won a French Open doubles title this year, have reached the semifinals together here.

Scheduled to follow Sharapova and Bartoli on Arthur Ashe Stadium was Andy Roddick, trying to postpone retirement against Juan Martin del Potro. The two were in a first-set tiebreaker when rain suspended play Tuesday night.

As Chrome turns 4, Google's browser in flux

Computerworld - As Google touted Chrome's fourth launch anniversary on Tuesday, a pair of Web measurement firms continued to argue about whether the browser is still gaining ground or has stalled.

According to California-based Net Applications, Chrome's share of all browsers grew by a quarter of a percentage point to 19.1% in August, returning Chrome to a mark it set in December 2011 but still off its peak of 19.6% in May 2012.

Meanwhile, rival StatCounter pegged Chrome on a downward slope for August, saying the browser lost two-tenths of a point to slip to 33.6%.

What was most striking about the figures was that they were contrary to each firm's longer-running trends.

Powerful earthquake reported in Costa Rica

A powerful, magnitude-7.6 earthquake shook Costa Rica and a wide swath of Central America on Wednesday, collapsing some houses, blocking highways and causing panic and at least one death from a heart attack.

Costa Rica President Laura Chinchilla announced there were no reports of major damage and called for calm.

At the epicenter, the beach town of Cangrejal, Jairo Zuniga, 27, said everything in his house fell when the quake hit at 8:42 a.m. (10:42 a.m. EDT).

"It was incredibly strong. I've felt earthquakes, but this one was 'wow,' he said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was centered about 38 miles from the town of Liberia and 87 miles west of the capital, San Jose, where frightened people ran into the streets.

The magnitude initially was estimated at 7.9, but was quickly downgraded. Local residents said it shook for about 30 seconds and was felt as far away as neighboring Panama and Nicaragua, where school was canceled in some areas.

Officials initially warned of a possible tsunami, and local police supervisor Jose Angel Gomez said about 5,000 people — 80 percent of the population — had been evacuated from coastal towns in the Samara district west of the quake's epicenter. But by mid-day they were allowed to return.

Panama also briefly called for people to evacuate beach areas.

In Costa Rica, one man died of a heart attack caused by fright, said Carlos Miranda, a Red Cross worker in the city of Liberia.

Douglas Salgado, a geographer with Costa Rica's National Commission of Risk Prevention and Emergency Attention, said officials a landslide hit the main highway that connects the capital of San Jose to the Pacific coast city of Puntarenas, and hotels and other structures suffered cracks in walls and saw items knocked off shelves.

Rosa Pichardo, 45, who lives in Samara, was walking on the beach with her family when the quake hit.

"When we felt the earthquake, we held onto each other because we kept falling," Pichardo said. "I've never felt anything like this. We just couldn't stay standing. My feet gave out under me. It was terrible, terrible."

In the town of Hojancha a few miles from the epicenter, city official Kenia Campos said the quake knocked down some houses and landslides blocked several roads.

"So far, we don't have victims," she said. "People were really scared ... We have had moderate quakes but an earthquake (this strong) hadn't happened in more than 50 years."

Michelle Landwer, owner of the Belvedere Hotel in Samara, north of the epicenter, said she was having breakfast with about 10 people when the earthquake struck.

"The whole building was moving, I couldn't even walk," Landwer said. "Here in my building there was no real damage. Everything was falling, like glasses and everything."

In the coastal town of Nosara, roughly 20 miles southwest of the epicenter, trees shook violently and light posts swayed. Teachers chased primary school students outside as the quake hit. Roads cracked and power lines fell to the ground.

Wednesday's quake occurred in a seismically active zone where the Pacific tectonic plate is diving beneath Central America.

"All along the Pacific coast of Central America, you can expect fairly big earthquakes," said seismologist Daniel McNamara of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was fairly deep — 25 miles below the surface. Deeper events tend to be less damaging than ones closer to the surface, but more widely felt.

"If it was a shallower event, it would be a significantly higher hazard," he said.

The last deadly quake to strike Costa Rica was in 2009, when 40 died in a magnitude-6.1 temblor. The last similar-sized quake to hit the country was in 1991 when 47 people were killed in the Limon-Pandora area.

Motorola Droid Razr M to sell for $99, use Verizon LTE

In an age when sharing information is effortless, people still want to keep personal data private, according to a new report from the Pew Research Center.

In examining how cell phone users manage their mobile data, Pew found that smartphone users are more likely than basic cell phone users to focus on data protection.

Those who carry a smartphone are more than twice as likely as those with less feature-rich devices to back up their phone contents – photos, contacts, files – and clear browsing or search history once finished. Regular cell users are 23 percent less likely to shut off location tracking that smartphone users.

"The wealth of intimate details stored on smartphones makes them akin to the personal diaries of the past – the information they contain is hard to replace if lost, and potentially embarrassing in the wrong hands," Pew research associate and report co-author Aaron Smith said in a statement.

When it comes to lost or stolen phones, however, everyone is on a level playing field. Pew's survey found that 33 percent of smartphone owners have lost track of their device, while 29 percent of other cell users have found themselves in a similar predicament.

Meanwhile, pressure regarding app privacy transparency has pushed the largest app distributors – Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Hewlett-Packard, and Research in Motion – to better articulate policies.

Still, according to the study, more than half of cell users (smartphone and otherwise) have decided not to install an app upon discovering how much personal information is needed to run it. Another 30 percent have made the effort to uninstall an app because they were uncomfortable with the amount of personal data it consumed.

"As mobile applications become an increasingly important gateway to online services and communications, users' cell phones have become rich repositories that chronicle their lives," Mary Madden, research associate and co-author of the report, said in a statement. "The way a mobile application handles personal data is a feature that many cell phone owners now take into consideration when choosing the apps they will use."

There is little demographic difference between users who avoid or uninstall apps due to data collection and sharing concerns.

"The story of cell owners' concerns about apps and their personal information is one of consistency across groups," the Pew report said.

This seems to be one issue where iPhone and Android users concur: the oft-battling groups take nearly identical steps when it comes to sharing personal information in apps, Pew said.

The report data was collected by Pew via telephone surveys of 2,254 adults age 18 and older, between March 15 and April 3.

For more from Stephanie, follow her on Twitter @smlotPCMag.

Android and iOS shut out Windows Phone, BlackBerry

For the three months ending in July, Android and iOS combined US smartphone subscriber share reached 85.6 percent, according to comScore. That's 3.4 percentage points higher than April. Meanwhile, Research in Motion and Microsoft mobile platforms receded to 9.5 percent and 3.6 percent share from 11.6 percent and 4 percent, respectively. While comScore combines defunct Windows Mobile and Windows Phone, we henceforth refer to both using the latter name.

The smartphone market clearly consolidates around Android and iOS, leaving even less share for Windows Phone or BlackBerry. Android and iOS will soon face the new batch of Windows Phone 8 handsets, including the Nokia Lumia 920 announced today. However, as it stands now, Microsoft's mobile operating system has plenty of ground to cover to even count as a worthy adversary to the two major platforms.

comScore surveyed 30,000 US mobile subscribers 13 or older, focusing on three areas: OEM market share, smartphone market share and phone usage. Android continues its long dominance of the US smartphone market, accounting for 52.2 percent share at the end of July 2012, that is a 1.4 percentage point increase from the 50.8 percent share at the end of April; that translates into 2.75 percent growth.

Similarly, iOS gained, with smartphone subscriber share rising to 33.4 percent from the 31.4 percent during the same time period.

Separately, Android and iOS are the only two mobile operating systems that registered increases. Third-ranked BlackBerry measured an 18.1-percent share loss and no. 4 Windows Phone 10-percent loss in share. Symbian, which placed fifth, and accounted for an abysmal 0.8 percent subscriber share, down from 1.3 percent in April; that equates to a 38.46 percent share loss.

Top Phones

comScore also released manufacturer data for all phones, not just smart ones. Only Apple and HTC posted subscriber share increases over the three months. Third-ranked Apple: 16.3 percent, up from 14.4 percent in April. Fifth-place HTC: 6.4 percent, up from 6 percent.

HTC's gains are surprising, considering weak financial results in second quarter that had some pundits predicting doom. At 6.66 percent, growth is not as substantial as Apple, but HTC was the only Android and Windows Phone manufacturer to gain subscriber share in the United States.

Meanwhile, Samsung, the world's biggest phone manufacturer and US leader, had 25.6 percent subscriber share at the end of July, but lost 0.3 percentage points from the 25.9 percent subscriber share in April. However, month-on-month, that's June to July, Samsung's share was unchanged.

LG had 18.4 percent share of the US phone market at the end of July, but lost 0.8 percentage points from the 19.2 percent market share in April; that's a 4.16 percent loss. Motorola share fell to 11.2 percent from 12.5 percent during the same time period -- that's down 10.4 percent in just three months.

Looked at differently, subscriber share declined for three of the top-four Android phone makers between April and July, all while iPhone eked out share gains.

Nokia shows off flagship Lumia 920, powered by Windows Phone 8

Nokia has revealed its new flagship smartphones the Lumia 920, designed to run a new version of Windows for such devices -- and the market reacted by swatting down the company's stock.

Nokia's Lumia 920 can be charged without being plugged in; the user just places it on a wireless charging pod. The highlight of the device is an incredibly fancy camera. The lenses on the Lumia 920 shift to compensate for shaky hands, resulting in sharper images in low light and smoother video capture, making it one of the most remarkable out there, said president and CEO Stephen Elop.

'We view imaging as a core area for differentiation in the smartphone space. Nokia has addressed this with PureView.'

- Crawford Del Prete, Chief Research Officer, IDC

"If someone sees a picture taken with this device, compared with any other smartphone on the market -- or I dare say that comes on the market in the weeks and months ahead -- they'll be absolutely blown away by it," Elop told Fox Business.

The PureView technology used an 8.7MP camera, image stabilization and and Carl Zeiss optics to capture high quality images.

"If you're taking a picture in the middle of the night in darkness, all of the sudden you can capture images which are not blurry," Elsop said. He also highlighted augmented reality, and the screen technology in the Lumia.

"That screen is by far the brightest in sunlight conditions," Elop told Fox Business.

It's a big step for the company, which is doubling down on its bet that an alliance with Microsoft can pull the company out of a deep sales swoon. But the market appears to dislike that gamble.

Stock of Nokia Oyj, the division of the company responsible for making smartphones, was down at one point more than 15 percent in response the new-phone news, while Nokia's stock was down 11 percent.

Nokia also unveiled a cheaper, mid-range phone, the Lumia 820. It doesn't have the special camera lenses, but it sports exchangeable backs so you can switch colors.

The Finnish company revealed the new phones in New York. The American market is a trendsetter, but Nokia has been nearly absent from it in the last few years. One of CEO Stephen Elop's goals is to recapture the attention of U.S. shoppers, many of whom buy iPhones or Android devices instead.

Nokia Corp. launched its first Windows phones late last year under the Lumia brand, as the first fruits of Elop's alliance with Microsoft. Those ran Windows Phone 7 software, which is effectively being orphaned in the new version. The older phones can't be upgraded, nor can they run applications written for Windows Phone 8.

Nokia sold 4 million Lumia phones in the second quarter, a far cry from the 26 million iPhones that Apple sold. So far, the line hasn't helped Nokia halt its sales decline: Its global market share shrunk from the peak of 40 percent in 2008 to 29 percent in 2011, and it is expected to dwindle further this year.

Wireless charging has shown up in other phones, most notably the Palm Pre of 2009. But Nokia is making its phone compatible with an emerging standard for wireless charging, called Qi. That means the phone can be charged by third-party devices. At the event, Nokia executive Kevin Shields demonstrated the technology by placing the phone on top of a JBL music docking station, which charged it.

The docking station also played music from the phone, even though it wasn't plugged in. The music was transferred from the Lumia's near-field communications chip, which can connect automatically to other devices at short range. Coupled with the right apps, NFC chips can also be used to pay for things in stores, by tapping the phone to credit-card terminals.

For its part, Microsoft and the Windows Phone 8 operating system will have a lot of catching up in the phone world.

Android and Apple devices dominate in smartphones, with 85 percent of the worldwide market combined, according to IDC. Companies making Android devices include Samsung Electronics, HTC Corp. and Motorola Mobility, which Google now owns. Samsung also makes phones running Bada, which is based on Linux.

The prices of the new phones, which will be available later this year, weren't immediately available.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

2012 Sierra Leonean cholera outbreak

Cholera is a water-borne disease, primarily spread by the consumption of water or food contaminated by the feces of an infected person. The outbreak was triggered by heavy rainfall and flooding in Sierra Leone and Guinea, combined with poor hygiene practices, unsafe water sources, and ineffective waste management.^[1]^[4]^[5] Crowded living conditions, poor sanitation and inadequate access to safe water are responsible for the higher rates of the outbreak in the Western Area including Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone.^[5]

Only about 40% of people in Sierra Leone have access to a private or shared latrine, where approximately seven families typically share one toilet.^[6] According to The Africa Review, nearly 60% of toilets are pit toilets that easily drain directly into sources of drinking water^[7] and more than 30% of people defecate in the open.^[8] The water and sanitation systems were damaged after the civil war in Sierra Leone, and have not been rebuilt properly, leaving approximately 43% of Sierra Leoneans without access to clean water.^[7]^[6] Poor health-care system in the country with the population of six million people also contributes to the outbreak. The UN figures indicate that there is only one doctor per 34,744 people.^[9]

[edit]Casualties

The disease has killed 327 people and infected more than 17,400 others in Sierra Leone and Guinea since February 2012, when the epidemic was reported.^[1]^[3] For the period of January to mid-August 2012, more than 11,600 cholera cases were officially recorded by the Ministry of Health and Sanitation in Sierra Leone.^[10] By 30 August, reported cases increased to 13,934 according to the World Health Organization (WHO).^[11] The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that ten of Sierra Leone's thirteen districts were affected.^[1] The outbreak has occurred primarily in eight districts: Port Loko, Kambia, Tonkolili, Bo, Moyamba, Bombali, Pujehun and the Western Area. Of these districts, the one most affected is the Western Area, which includes the capital, Freetown. This area witnessed 4,965 cases and 63 deaths from 1 January to mid-August 2012.^[12] The number of cases and deaths for Port Loko during the same period is 2,806 and 45, respectively.^[5] There were 1,134 reported cases and 28 deaths in the Kambala district.^[5] At the beginning of August, the disease began to ravage the Kenema district.^[13] The Ministry of Health and Sanitation reported that the disease is spreading more rapidly in cities than in isolated areas with poor sanitation.^[7]

In late August 2012, Amanda McClelland, the Emergency Health Coordinator of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said that the outbreak "has the potential to cause a serious humanitarian crisis" and called for "more funds to deliver the most effective response".^[14]

[edit]State of emergency

On 17 August 2012, Sierra Leonean President Ernest Bai Koroma announced that the outbreak was a national public health crisis.^[1] At this time the cholera outbreak had a mortality rate of 1.8% in the country, nearly double the threshold for a state of emergency.^[15] By the end of August 2012, approximately 13,300 people were infected by cholera; humanitarian officials confirmed that 217 had already died by 23 August.^[16]^[17] The Sierra Leonean government and WHO predict that 32,000 people will be infected in September due to the rainy season.^[6]^[16]

[edit]International responses

The British government announced that it allocated £2 million for an emergency plan to counter the cholera outbreak in Sierra Leone.^[4] Additionally, the Rapid Response Facility (RRF) established in March 2012 and activated by the British government is expected to assist Sierra Leone in coping with the epidemic.^[18]^[19] The facility is a network consisting of private businesses and specialist aid organisations that provide rapid emergency medical, water and sanitation assistance to affected people in the country.^[19]

In addition, Doctors Without Borders, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation, runs three cholera treatment units in Freetown, where more than 500 patients have been treated.^[20] The organisation has treated approximately 4,600 patients in Sierra Leone and Guinea since February.^[3] The group has begun to establish other cholera treatment centres at 34 Military Hospital in the west of Freetown, expanding the total number of beds from 90 to 200.^[21]^[20] The group is also collaborating with the Ministry of Health and Sanitation to inform the public of how to avoid contracting the disease.^[20] Among the other groups helping victims are Action Firm (AF) and the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society. AF provided free medical care for victims while about 400 volunteers of the Sierra Leone Red Cross helped out on sanitation awareness campaigns.^[8] Oxfam, a charity group based in the United Kingdom, is another group that provides nearly 67,000 people in Freetown with emergency water chlorination.^[22]Oxfam also plans to assist up to 500,000 people with cholera prevention kits, water purification kits and public information campaigns on how to prevent the disease.^[22] The Isle of Man donated £25,000 to assist the activities in the country through Oxfam.^[23] The other British groups mobilised include Save the Children, International Rescue Committee, Concern, Care International and the British Red Cross.^[18] The Finnish Red Cross sent medication and doctors to the country on 24 and 25 August.^[6]

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies launched an emergency appeal for $1.14 million in August, explaining that the number of cases of cholera was rising, along with the number of fatal cases.^[14] Tiina Saarikoski of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Society reported on 30 August that the Bombali, Tonkolili, Port Loko and Kambia districts have been targeted to effectively deal with the epidemic.^[24] The IFRC has funded health promotion activities and assistance to affected families, including the preparation of oral rehydration solutions and construction of suitable toilets, but the organisation has stated that the level of aid coverage remains "very low."^[14]

Regrettably oral cholera vaccines which can shorten cholera outbreaks, and hence reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with outbreaks have not been deployed in Sierra Leone. The large international institutions IFRC as well WHO have shied away from large mass vaccination campaigns despite the fact that oral cholera vaccines have been successfully used earlier in 2012 by MSF in Guinea Bissau and by Partners in Health in Haiti.