Path Wants to Become Your Social Search Engine

Mobile social network Path broke down social network walls in the summer of 2012 by giving new users the option to import their Facebook, Foursquare and Instagram data.

Now, Path is playing up that feature as the best way to cull all your social updates (minus those from Twitter) into one big archive. Starting Thursday, that archive is searchable, making for a very unique and handy way to recall your memories. “We want people to basically use us as their social search engine,” says Path CTO Nathan Folkman. “Our goal is simple, to help people be close to each other.”

Path is slowly rolling out an update that brings a search page to its iOS and Android apps. When you tap over to the page, you’ll get a list of suggestions and the most popular places, friends and keywords you tag in your social updates.

Once you start typing a keyword, Path will instantly bring up a list of relevant posts based on time, date, location, type of location (such as Chinese restaurant or football stadium), which friends you tagged and the text you used. For example, if you search for “summer,” Path will pull up photos, posts and locations that you have added between June and August. Type “watching the baseball game” and you’ll get memories of when you checked into the ballpark, or invited friends over to watch a game.

You’ll also see a Nearby button in the latest version of the app.  If you tap it, you’ll see all the Path updates you and your friends have posted near your current location. The company bills it as an easy way to find the coffee shops close by that your friends recommend, or recall all the memories you’ve shared from your apartment. It would also be helpful when you’re traveling to find that tucked-away sushi place in NYC when you can’t remember the name.

With Nearby and search, you can find anything you’ve shared to Path and Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare (assuming you’ve imported that data). That gives Path a huge leg up, because you can’t search for any past activity on those social networks.

Path really needs that advantage to get bigger. Launched in 2010, the social network hasn’t taken off nearly as well as its competitors. Part of the reason why is that Path limits the number of people you can add as friends and family to 150.

Despite that limit turning some people off, as of December 2012 Path has grown to 5 million users. That’s nowhere near Facebook’s billion, or Instagram’s 100 million. But by giving social networkers access to almost their entire social archive in one searchable place, Path might be poised to catch up soon.

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Taylor Swift keeps Bruno Mars out of Billboard 200 top spot

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country pop star Taylor Swift held her reign at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday, keeping retro-inspired R&B singer Bruno Mars‘ new album at bay.

Swift’s latest album, “Red,” released in October, held the No. 1 slot for a fifth non-consecutive week with sales of 208,000, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Mars’ second album, “Unorthodox Jukebox,” sold 192,000 copies in its opening week to take the No. 2 slot.

The album’s lead single, “Locked Out of Heaven,” stayed at the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for a second week, and is the singer’s fourth chart-topping single. It also tops the Digital Songs chart this week.

Hip hop artist The Game entered the chart at No. 6 with his fifth studio album, “Jesus Piece,” selling 86,000 copies.

Four festive albums sat in the top ten this week, with Michael Buble‘s “Christmas” at No. 3, Rod Stewart‘s “Merry Christmas Baby” at No. 5, Blake Shelton‘s “Cheers, It’s Christmas” at No. 8, and Lady Antebellum‘s “On This Winter’s Night” at No. 10.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy Editing by Jill Serjeant, Gary Hill)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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U.N. Suspends Polio Campaign in Pakistan After Killings of Workers

B.K. Bangash/Associated Press

A Pakistani woman administered polio vaccine to an infant on Wednesday in the slums of Islamabad. Militants have killed nine polio workers this week.

LAHORE, Pakistan — The front-line heroes of Pakistan’s war on polio are its volunteers: young women who tread fearlessly from door to door, in slums and highland villages, administering precious drops of vaccine to children in places where their immunization campaign is often viewed with suspicion.

Now, those workers have become quarry. After militants stalked and killed eight of them over the course of a three-day, nationwide vaccination drive, the United Nations suspended its anti-polio work in Pakistan on Wednesday, and one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health campaigns has been plunged into crisis.

The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets, while government officials reported that some polio volunteers — especially women — were afraid to show up for work.

At the ground level, it is those female health workers who are essential, allowed privileged entrance into private homes to meet and help children in situations denied to men because of conservative rural culture. “They are on the front line; they are the backbone,” said Imtiaz Ali Shah, a polio coordinator in Peshawar.

The killings started in the port city of Karachi on Monday, the first day of a vaccination drive aimed at the worst affected areas, with the shooting of a male health worker. On Tuesday four female polio workers were killed, all gunned down by men on motorcycles in what appeared to be closely coordinated attacks.

The hit jobs then moved to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, which, along with the adjoining tribal belt, constitutes Pakistan’s main reservoir of new polio infections. The first victim there was one of two sisters who had volunteered as polio vaccinators. Men on motorcycles shadowed them as they walked from house to house. Once the sisters entered a quiet street, the gunmen opened fire. One of the sisters, Farzana, died instantly; the other was uninjured.

On Wednesday, a man working on the polio campaign was shot dead as he made a chalk mark on the door of a house in a suburb of Peshawar. Later, a female health supervisor in Charsadda, 15 miles to the north, was shot dead in a car she shared with her cousin.

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here make for easy targets. They wear no uniform but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

That has happened with increasing frequency in Pakistan over the past year. A concerted immunization drive, involving up to 225,000 vaccination workers, drove the number of newly infected polio victims down to 52. Several high-profile groups shouldered the program forward — at the global level, donors like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Nations and Rotary International; and at the national level, President Asif Ali Zardari and his daughter Aseefa, who have made polio eradication a “personal mission.”

On a global scale, setbacks are not unusual in polio vaccination campaigns, which, by dint of their massive scale and need to reach deep inside conservative societies, end up grappling with more than just medical challenges. In other campaigns in Africa and South Asia, vaccinators have grappled with natural disaster, virulent opposition from conservative clerics and sudden outbreaks of mysterious strains of the disease.

Declan Walsh reported from Lahore, and Donald G. McNeil Jr. from New York. Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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Robert Bork, failed Supreme Court nominee, dies at age 85

Robert H. Bork, whose failed Supreme Court nomination in 1987 infuriated conservatives and politicized the confirmation process for the ensuing decades, died Wednesday at the age of 85. 

The former Yale law professor and judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit had a history of heart problems and had been in poor health for some time.

But Bork was a towering figure for an early generation of conservatives. In the 1960s and '70s, he argued that a liberal-dominated Supreme Court was abusing its power and remaking American life by ending prayers in public schools, by extending new rights to criminals, by ordering cross-town busing and by voiding the laws against abortion.

PHOTOS: Robert Bork | March 1, 1927 - Dec. 19, 2012

He was an influential legal advisor in the Nixon administration and served as a footnote to history in the Watergate scandal. When the embattled president ordered the firing of special counsel Archibald Cox, the attorney general and his deputy resigned in protest. Bork, who was in the No. 3 post as U.S. solicitor general, then carried out Nixon’s order.

But Bork’s biggest moment came during the Reagan administration in the 1980s. He left Yale and came to Washington when Reagan appointed him to the U.S. court of appeals in the District of Columbia. The job was seen as a steppingstone to the high court.

In 1986, Bork was passed over for a younger colleague when Reagan named Judge Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. A year later, Bork’s turn came when Justice Lewis Powell, the swing vote on the closely divided court, announced his retirement.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

Democrats, led by Sen. Edward Kennedy, launched an all-out attack on Bork’s nomination, saying he would set back the cause of civil rights, women’s rights and civil liberties.

The summer of 1987 saw campaign-style attacks on Bork’s reputation.  In televised hearings, the bearded, heavy-set professor tried to explain his views, but he won few converts. The Senate defeated his nomination by a 58-42 vote.

In his place, Reagan eventually chose Judge Anthony Kennedy, who was confirmed unanimously. The switch proved to have lasting consequences. Kennedy cast decisive votes to uphold Roe vs. Wade and to preserve the ban on school-sponsored prayers.

Bork stepped down from the bench a year after his defeat, but wrote several books renewing his criticism of liberalism. In the past year, he served as a chairman of Mitt Romney’s advisory committee on the judiciary and the courts.

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Watch Darpa's Headless Robotic Mule Respond to Voice Commands

If robots are ever really going to carry the bags of U.S. soldiers and Marines, the Pentagon’s futurists think, they’re going to have to act more like pack animals. That means responding to voice commands, figuring out when it makes sense to follow a human being and when it doesn’t, and getting around uneven terrain and other obstacles. Darpa thinks it’s off to a good start.

Over the past two weeks, the Pentagon’s blue-sky researchers took an upgraded LS3 robot — a cousin of the headless BigDog and PETMAN made by Boston Dynamics — on a walk through the woods and hills of Fort Pickett, Virginia. (LS3 = “Legged Squad Support System,” get it?) It was the first test conducted on the LS3 after bolstering the autonomy functions for the $54 million project, now in its fifth year. As the video above shows, when a human instructor calls out “engine on” and “follow tight,” the robot’s engine activates, and it follows its master on exactly the path the human takes. When the human calls out “follow corridor,” the robot will “generate the path that’s most efficient for itself,” explains Army Lt. Col. Joseph Hitt, Darpa’s LS3 program manager.

Darpa figures that it’s illogical to make a soldier hand over her rucksack to a robotic beast of burden if she’s then got to be preoccupied with “joysticks and computer screens” to guide it forward. “That adds to the cognitive burden of the soldier,” Hitt explains. “We need to make sure that the robot also is smart, like a trained animal.” So the LS3 uses a laser range-finder, specialized cameras and stereo vision to keep track of its human master.

Darpa is really literal when it means that the LS3 has to operate like a mule. It needs to haul up to 400 pounds, walk 20 miles and operate for 24 hours without human intervention. The program’s been undergoing tests for years, and Darpa and Boston Dynamics have put out numerous videos showing the gangly metal beast climbing woodlands, recovering from being kicked over, and running on treadmills. The Fort Pickett tests show much of the same. Only this time, the robot is way quieter — emitting “less noise than any combustion-engine system out there that’s tactically relevant,” Hill says — and its rounded back and spindly legs allow it to climb out of the uneven terrain that troops in, say, Afghanistan encounter. The LS3 can now also put its feet on uneven surfaces like logs, whereas before it labored to avoid them.

All this is the result of major advances to the LS3′s software, particularly as it integrates with the system’s sensors. At Fort Pickett, it walked through an obstacle course of shipping containers that subbed for the narrow alleyways of urban conditions. That showed the LS3 computing a course on its own: “The robot has to decide, ‘Can I fit here 20, 30 meters from now, or do I have to turn around?’” Hitt says. (Skip to 1:40 on the video to see what the robot sees.)

So far, the system responds to 10 basic voice commands — again, like a trained animal — like “stop,” “follow tight,” or “engine off.” But “perception and platform robustness” remain challenges, Hitt concedes, like ensuring the robot can react to changes in light or weather. It can’t, for instance, look at a snow-covered hill and figure out if the snow is too deep to traverse. Nor can it avoid battlefield dangers like gunfire or bombs. “We’ll have to always continue to add additional logic,” Hitt says.

That’s what’s going to happen over the next two years. Every three months, Darpa will take the LS3 to a different set of climate conditions that U.S. troops have to encounter; first up is the arid, desert environment of the Marines’ Twentynine Palms base in California’s Mojave Desert. That’s an indicator of Darpa’s desire to hand over its first robot to a Marine company in 2014. The LS3 may not have a head, but Darpa expects it to be at least as smart as a real-life mule.

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Madonna leads Billboard’s top-grossing tours

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – While this year’s pop charts have been dominated by young singers, it is veteran music stars, led by Madonna, who are commanding big money in tour ticket sales, according to a new Billboard list released on Tuesday.

Madonna, 54, topped Billboard‘s list of highest-grossing live tours, earning an estimated $ 228.4 million in ticket sales from her sold-out ninth worldwide tour in support of her 12th studio album “MDNA.” The singer will wrap her tour in South America this weekend, after performing more than 80 shows across the world starting in Israel in May.

Madonna came ahead of pop star Lady Gaga, who landed at No. 6, with ticket sales of $ 124.9 million from her worldwide “Born This Way Ball” tour. Gaga, 26, is currently midway through her tour, which kicked off in South Korea in April, and will wrap in Oklahoma in March 2013.

Music publication Billboard compiled its list through estimated gross ticket sales figures from Billboard box scores, which tracks concert tours, ticket prices and sales.

The top five highest-grossing tour acts of 2012 included Bruce Springsteen, 63, and the E Street band at No. 2 with $ 199 million from 72 shows and Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, 69, at No. 3 with $ 186 million.

Cirque Du Soleil‘s homage to late singer Michael Jackson in “The Immortal World Tour” ranked No. 4 with $ 147.3 million over 183 shows, and British rock band Coldplay was fifth with $ 147.2 million over 67 shows.

The only other young stars in the list of 25 top-grossing tours was Canadian pop star Justin Bieber, 18, at No. 20 with $ 30 million from 29 shows as part of his ongoing “Believe” tour, and country-pop darling Taylor Swift, 23, who raked in $ 26 million from 21 shows from her “Speak Now World Tour.”

Last year, Swift ranked No. 5 on Billboard‘s list with an estimated $ 97 million in ticket sales from her “Speak Now World Tour,” while Bieber came in at No. 15 with $ 44 million.

Swift will embark on her third worldwide concert tour in support of her studio album “Red” in March 2013.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Walsh)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A search for normality as Newtown schools reopen after massacre

CAPTIONS

Funeral for Jessica Rekos
The casket of 6-year-old Jessica Rekos is carried to St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown, Conn. Rekos was one of the 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Friday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times /December 18, 2012)

By Tina Susman and Michael Muskal

December 18, 2012, 9:31 a.m.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- Amid increased security, schools reopened here on Tuesday as this town searched for a road back to normality after last week’s massacre at a local elementary school.

Funerals for the 20 first-graders and six adults killed Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary School will continue throughout the week. Two children were buried on Monday amid the cold and rain and two more funerals are scheduled for Tuesday.

Sandy Hook remained closed, however, and will likely be shuttered for months as authorities continue their investigation into the shooting spree by Adam Lanza, 20, who killed himself after invading the school, opening fire on students and staff and then turning a gun on himself.

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Who they were: Connecticut school shooting victims

Full coverage: Connecticut school shooting

Transcript and video: Obama's speech

Timeline: Deadliest U.S. mass shootings

The weapons Lanza used were legally owned by his mother, Nancy, who was the first of the 28 people who died from bullets that morning.

Yellow school buses rumbled along roads Tuesday morning, some still dotted with makeshift memorials to those who were slain. Children laden with book bags waited outside their homes for the buses.

 PHOTOS: Shooting at Connecticut school

But it was clear this would not be a normal day for them despite teachers' efforts and the stepped-up presence oflawenforcement. Staffers met on Monday with psychologists and other specialists to hear how to handle their own grief and children's questions.

“It's important to try to make things feel normal for her,” a mother who would give only her first name -- Barbara -- said, explaining why she decided to have her 8-year-old daughter head back to classes.

 FULL COVERAGE: Shooting at Connecticut school

Barbara, who was driving her daughter to school, said she knew not all parents would be comfortable letting their kids go into the schools, even with extra security. “I'll be a lot more anxious than usual,” she admitted.

Newtown police Lt. George Sinko said sending children back to school is a personal choice and parents would have to make their own decisions.

“I can't imagine what it must be like being a parent with a child that young, putting them on a school bus,” Sinko said.

In addition to trying to reassure parents, the increased police presence helped keep the media from the schools. Police have also said they will severely prosecute anyone perpetrating hoaxes, such as two telephone calls saying there were bombs on the grounds of a local church, St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church.

Police have been told to act aggressively, as they did in nearby Ridgefield on Monday where they shut down schools amid reports of a suspicious man at the train station. After investigating, police told reporters there was no threat.

In addition to the investigation at Ridgefield, about 20 miles from Newtown, there have been reports across the country of closures by anxious officials. Two schools were locked down in South Burlington, Vt., and a high school in Windham, N.H., was briefly locked down. Neither case involved any threat.

Two more children will be buried on Tuesday and both funerals will be held at St. Rose, which has been a center of grief counseling and community support. Services will be held for 6-year-olds Jessica Rekos and James Mattioli.

Jessica was avid about horses and had asked Santa for new cowgirl boots and a cowgirl hat this year, according to her family. “Jessica loved everything about horses,” her parents, Rich and Krista Rekos, said in a statement. “She devoted her free time to watching horse movies, reading horse books, drawing horses and writing stories about horses.”

James was described by his relatives as a “numbers guy” who loved math.

On Monday, two funeral homes were filled with mourners for Noah Pozner and Jack Pinto, both 6. Pozner had a Jewish service and Pinto a Christian one.

Noah Pozner’s twin, Arielle, survived the rampage because she was assigned a different classroom.

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Read the 4-Page 'Sketch' That Became <em>Looper</em>

Turns out the mind-bending time-travel flick Looper actually came from a pretty humble four-page pitch, and thanks to the movie’s writer/director Rian Johnson, you can now read it online.

“This is the original four page sketch for Looper, written in 2002. At the time I intended to film it, just with a video camera and a few friends, but we never did,” Johnson writes at the beginning of the document, which was posted on the Looper Tumblr. “It’s presented here for the curious, exactly as I wrote it ten years ago.”

Written over a decade ago while Johnson was still “trying and failing” to get his debut film Brick to the big screen, the treatment for Looper sat in a drawer for seven years before it inspired the movie’s script.

What’s interesting is that this version — devoid of the Rainmaker plot and a lot of the complex time-travel paradoxes — is still an excellent story, no matter how short. It’s focused on the struggle between Joe and Old Joe (even though they’re not named that here) and Old Joe’s quest to get back to his wife, and even though the ending is similar, it’s not the same. (Obviously don’t read it if you haven’t seen Looper and don’t want any spoilers.)

Check out the full write-up here [.pdf].

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Ben Stiller’s Red Hour sells two more comedies to ABC Studios

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Ben Stiller‘s Red Hour Television is continuing to pump out comedies for ABC Studios.

Following the sale of “Complikated” in October, the production company has sold network’s production division two new series – “You’re Not Doing It Right” and “Between Two Kings” – a rep for Red Hour told TheWrap on Monday.

Comedian Michael Ian Black writes, stars and produces in the former, a half-hour single-camera comedy based on his book of the same name that explores his childhood, marriage, children and career. Set “in the wilds of Connecticut,” the show takes a hard look at what happens when you wake up, look around and don’t recognize the life you’re living as your own, Red Hour said.

“Between Two Kings” is written and executive-produced by Jeff Kahn, who has written for series like “Drawn Together” and “The Ben Stiller Show.” It follows the hardships of a divorced father raising an 11-year-old son while living in his elderly father’s home.

Both are being executive-produced by Stiller, along with Red Hour’s Debbie Liebling and Stuart Cornfeld.

Since signing an overall deal with ABC Studios at the end of 2011, Red Hour also has sold “Please Knock,” written by Kevin Napier, and “The Notorious Mollie Flowers,” written by Adam Resnick.

The sale of “You’re Not Doing It Right” and “Between Two Kings” were first reported by Deadline.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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World Briefing | Science and Health: Lack of Funds Could Weaken Malaria Fight, Report Says

The world has made great progress against malaria in the last decade, but the fight is stalling for lack of funds, the World Health Organization’s annual report on malaria concluded on Monday. The amount spent on the disease by all countries rose to $1.8 billion last year, compared with $100 million in 2000, and, as a result, about one million children’s lives were probably spared over that time, the report said. But it would take $5 billion a year to get nets, insecticide spraying, diagnostic kits, effective drugs and hospital treatment to everyone needing them, and donor contributions, especially to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, have been nearly flat since 2010. Last year, the number of new nets purchased fell sharply, to 66 million from 145 million two years ago. Since nets wear out in three years and children are always being born, large numbers of infants and toddlers will soon be unprotected if more money does not come in, the report warned. The W.H.O. estimated that there were 219 million malaria cases in the world in 2010, with 660,00 deaths.

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