Mexican soldier said that a U.S. citizen attacked an army convoy and was killed when troops shot him in self-defense outside the resort city of Acapulco

ACAPULCO, Mexico  A Mexican soldier said that a U.S. citizen attacked an army convoy and was killed when troops shot him in self-defense outside the resort city of Acapulco, a police official said. The man’s father said Monday that he found it hard to believe.An army lieutenant told police that Joseph Proctor opened fire on a military convoy with an AR-15 rifle, forcing the soldiers to shoot back, said Domingo Olea, a police investigator in the western state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located.

Olea provided no further details on Proctor, who was found dead in his car early Sunday.A Defense Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the case, said the army was investigating the lieutenant’s claim. The official said Proctor might have been a passenger in the car, although nobody else was found with him at the scene.Proctor’s father, William Proctor, said he did not know of his son being involved in any illegal activity and did not believe he would have owned a gun or attacked soldiers.”I doubt that. Joseph had a temper but he didn’t use guns,” Proctor said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from his home in Auburn, New York.

William Proctor said Joseph, 32, had lived off and on in Mexico for at least six years. He said his son had been in the process of divorcing his wife in Georgia and lived with a girlfriend and their young son in Mexico. He said he had little contact with his son and was unsure what Joseph did in Mexico but that he had worked in landscaping in the U.S.He said Joseph had sometimes complained about being pulled over by Mexican security forces looking for bribes.”He would get mad when the police pulled him over looking for payoffs,” Proctor said.Olea said the Mexican girlfriend, Liliana Gil Vargas, identified Proctor’s body. She gave Mexican authorities identification papers that listed Proctor as a resident of Georgia.

In brief comments to Mexican reporters, Gil said she last saw Proctor on Saturday night when he went out to run an errand at a convenience store in Barra de Coyuca, a community outside of Acapulco.Gil said the couple had been living in the central state of Puebla, near Mexico City, but had moved to Barra de Coyuca four months ago.Joseph Proctor’s mother, Donna Proctor, declined to speak to the AP when reached by telephone at her home in Hicksville, N.Y.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said consular officials in Acapulco had been in contact with Proctor’s family and were providing assistance to repatriate his body. The spokeswoman declined to be named, in line with Embassy policy.Soldiers frequently come under attack from drug-trafficking gangs in the Acapulco area and there have been cases across Mexico of innocent bystanders dying in the crossfire between soldiers and drug gangs, or of soldiers opening fire on civilians who failed to stop at checkpoints.The military has faced mounting allegations of human-rights abuses since President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of soldiers in 2006 to fight drug traffickers in their strongholds.

In November 2009, American Lizbeth Marin was shot to death in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. Mexican newspapers reported that Marin was hit by a stray bullet fired by a soldier participating in a raid.More recently, two Mexican university students were killed in March in the crossfire of a shootout between gunmen and soldiers outside the gates of their campus in the northern city of Monterrey.(AP)

Facebook unrestrained amid NY ownership lawsuit

Facebook may continue business as usual while it fights a New York man’s claim he has a contract with founder Mark Zuckerberg that entitles him to 84 percent ownership of the world’s leading social networking site, a U.S. court heard on Tuesday.Paul Ceglia of Wellsville, New York, sued Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc last month claiming a 2003 contract with Zuckerberg to develop and design a website now entitled him to a majority stake in the privately-held company.

A New York State judge in Allegany County put a temporary restraining order on company asset transfers, but that order was suspended on June 30 by Judge Richard Arcara of federal court in Buffalo, New York.Arcara decided at a hearing on Tuesday that his ruling should remain in place, Facebook and a lawyer for Ceglia said.

“We have reached an agreement with respect to the progress of the next stage of the litigation,” said Ceglia’s lawyer, Terrence Connors.In a statement, the Palo Alto, California-based company said: “We are pleased that the court’s decision to stay the temporary restraining order remains in place and will continue to fight this frivolous claim.”The purported contract was dated April 2003 and ended in February 2004, according to Ceglia’s complaint, which had a two-page “‘Work for Hire’ Contract” attached.”He has contract. The contract is clean and clear,” Connors said by telephone after the hearing.Connors said he argued in court that Zuckerberg had signed the contract.

“The judge asked the question of the defense and they said they were looking into it,” Connors said. “I suspect that, if their client did not sign it, they would have made that clear.”In court documents, lawyers for Zuckerberg and Facebook wrote that Ceglia “sat on his allowed rights for over six years” and should not be permitted “to say that now, all of a sudden, he requires immediate relief.”The company, which has nearly 500 million users and 1,000 employees, argued the “purported contract itself is wrought with irregularities, inconsistencies and undefined terms.”Zuckerberg was a freshman at Harvard University in Massachusetts at the time of the purported contract.

Facebook’s court papers noted that last December a state prosecutor accused a wood-pellet fuel company that Ceglia owned with his wife of taking $200,000 from customers and failing to deliver products or refunds.The company is also defending a claim in federal court in Delaware that the most basic functions of its website infringe a patent held by a little-known company [ID:nN16102757].

Facebook ranks among the Web’s most popular sites, alongside Google Inc, Yahoo Inc and Microsoft Corp. Facebook is also one of the most closely watched Web companies by investors eager for a blockbuster initial public offering.The cases are Paul Ceglia v Zuckerberg & Facebook, New York State Supreme Court, Allegany County, No. 038798/2010 and Ceglia v Zuckerberg et al, U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York, No. 10-00569.(Reuters)

World Cup helps ESPN's expansion plans

NEW YORK ESPN marketers will fan out to bars in ethnic enclaves during World Cup matches to pass out schedules and posters, just one way the sports network is using the quadrennial event to build new audiences in both the U.S. and internationally.The network’s large presence of 300 staff members in South Africa for the soccer tournament could also be seen as a dry run to help a future Olympics bid.

Either ESPN, ESPN2 or corporate sister ABC is televising every one of the 64 scheduled matches in the first year the company has the American television rights to the tournament. ESPN leased rights to televise some games in 2006, covering some of the matches with announcing teams based in a Connecticut studio.

“We think it’s a chance to advance the notion that we are a global entity,” said John Skipper, the network’s executive vice president for content.One way to do that is to start at home. ESPN will promote itself heavily in areas where the network’s emphasis on American sports makes it less interesting to residents. The Greek enclave in Queens, N.Y., San Francisco’s Italian section, Boston’s Portuguese neighborhoods and Los Angeles’ Korean communities – all with fans keen on rooting on ancestral homelands – are among the areas that will get special attention.

Besides sending people to gathering places where the games are being watched, ESPN commissioned a South African artist to make posters honoring each of the participating countries, mixing historical and soccer themes. The U.S. poster, for example, commemorates George Washington crossing the Delaware, with soccer players standing in for his troops.

The network has equipped food trucks with a giant TV on the roof, passing out specialty foods from some of the participating countries in New York and Los Angeles, said Seth Ader, the network’s sports marketing senior director.Online and on ESPN Radio, the company will give fans the option of hearing broadcasts in different languages, including Chinese, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

In the U.S., Univision has the rights to Spanish-language broadcasts of the matches. Although ESPN can’t offer Spanish-language broadcasts of the matches, it is moving into the territory by offering 10 hours a day of studio-based Spanish content on its ESPN Deportes network.

Getting an identification as a destination for soccer fans “is a long-term business proposition for us,” Ader said. Showing the World Cup telecast can drum up interest in U.S.-based professional soccer, which ESPN has rights to televise. World Cup soccer is also expected to be a draw for ESPN’s mobile business, too.

Soccer is also key to ESPN’s efforts to expand in international markets. The network made a big move last year by purchasing the rights to show some games in England’s Barclays Premier League.”In order to get a foothold in a number of international markets, they need to get soccer content,” said David Joyce, an analyst for Miller Tabak & Co.

Having a home team helps ESPN but isn’t vital to success, the network’s executives believe. ESPN’s experience covering the European championship in 2008 was instructive: There was no U.S. team for which to root, but ethnic pockets of fans helped the network draw a strong audience, Ader said.

For ESPN, there’s another important audience that will be watching. Following NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, rights to future games are up for grabs, and ESPN is expected to be interested. A strong performance at the World Cup could show doubting Olympics officials that ESPN would be up to covering a large, multifaceted event.

“I never think of this as a dress rehearsal,” ESPN’s Skipper said. “We think this entity is special enough as itself to merit this sort of attention. If there were no such thing as the Olympics, we would do the same thing. Having said that, we do believe this will demonstrate to people what we can do with a big quadrennial event. That’s an ancillary benefit.” (AP)

Az immigration law, New push for reform

WASHINGTON – As hopes for Republican support fade, Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday unveiled a push for comprehensive immigration reform aimed in part at stopping Arizona’s tough immigration-enforcement law from spreading to other states.”Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: The immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said at a Capitol Hill news conference. “We are offering this framework as an invitation to our Republican colleagues: Work with us to solve this problem that has plagued us for far too long.”But that invitation was met with skepticism by some key Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who this week abandoned efforts to work with Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., on a bipartisan bill. He was the only Republican working on the bill.

When it was clear that Graham was out, Democrats moved ahead with their own proposal, in part to respond to calls for action by Hispanic rights groups. Hispanic voters, who helped propel Barack Obama into the White House in 2008 after he pledged to make immigration reform a priority, make up an important part of Democrats’ political base.

But it is unclear whether the president will throw his weight behind the latest proposal, which would require that border security be significantly tightened before the government could offer a path to citizenship to the estimated 11 million immigrants in the country illegally.On Wednesday, Obama said Congress may lack the “appetite” to take on immigration during an election year in which Democrats are expected to lose seats in the House and Senate. But in a statement Thursday, Obama praised the proposal.

“The next critical step is to iron out the details of a bill,” he said. “We welcome that discussion, and my administration will play an active role in engaging partners on both sides of the aisle to work toward a bipartisan solution that is based on the fundamental concept of accountability that the American people expect and deserve.”

Rodolfo Espino, an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University, said the mixed messages could simply be the result of Obama not wanting to raise expectations too high.Espino warned that Congress’ window of opportunity to act on the hot-button topic is shrinking fast.”If you push this too close to primary- and general-election dates, I just don’t see something very good coming out with respect to a wise immigration-reform policy,” he said. “As you start pushing closer and closer to that Tuesday in November, you’re going to have some Democrats, particularly some of your moderate, vulnerable Democrats, who are going to start waffling a bit more.”

In a joint statement, Graham and Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said the immigration proposal is political gamesmanship. “It poisons the well for those of us who are working toward a more secure border and responsible, bipartisan reform of our immigration laws,” the statement said.

But Schumer said he is serious about reform and is continuing to talk with moderate Republican senators about signing onto the proposal, which would, among other things, bar states and municipalities from enacting their own Arizona-style rules and penalties related to immigration because those rules could “undermine federal policies.”The Arizona law, signed last week by Gov. Jan Brewer, makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police and other law-enforcement agents to check documents of people they reasonably suspect to be illegal.A new Gallup Poll indicates that 39 percent of Americans support the law, 30 percent oppose it and 31 percent have not heard of it or have no opinion. The telephone survey was taken Tuesday and Wednesday and had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.Attorney General Eric Holder is reviewing the law’s constitutionality.

Tamar Jacoby, president of the pro-reform ImmigrationWorks USA, has warned that a politically motivated, all-Democratic push for immigration reform could dramatically set back efforts to enact a new comprehensive policy. But she said it’s too soon to write off the latest Senate proposal as a political gambit and remains cautiously optimistic.”There’s still a chance that this isn’t just playing politics with it,” said Jacoby, whose organization backs reform from a center-right, pro-business perspective. “There are signs that they are still making some effort into making it a bipartisan push. Of course, it also still has a chance to go off the rails, but we so far are still walking that fine line.”

Democrats acknowledged they cannot pass the bill without help from at least a handful of Republican senators. House Democratic leaders have said they are waiting for the Senate to take action first.”The urgency of immigration reform cannot be overstated,” Schumer said.

AriZona Iced Tea released a statement saying their headquarters is in New York, not Arizona

WOODBURY, N.Y., April 29 The manufacturers of AriZona Iced Tea released a statement saying their headquarters is in New York, not Arizona, to head off boycott talk.Don Vultaggio, founder of the beverage company, released a statement Wednesday asking people not to project their anger about Arizona’s new law — which gives police the right to demand citizenship papers from anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant — onto his company, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

“AriZona Beverages proudly traces its origins back to New York,” Vultaggio said. “In 1992, two hardworking guys from Brooklyn with a dream created AriZona Iced Tea.””Since then … we have remained loyal to our family-run business based in New York. For the last 16 years, our headquarters have remained on Long Island,” he said.

Comedian George Lopez joked on Twitter this week that he “went to buy an AriZona Iced Tea — they asked me for my documentation. So I bought HORCHATA instead!”Company officials replied on Twitter Thursday: “We’re BIG fans! Just wanted to let you know that AriZona is and always has been a NY company and would (heart) to send you some tea!”(UPI)

Four U.S. senators want Facebook to make it easier for its more than 400 million users to protect their privacy as the website develops new outlets to share personal information

SAN FRANCISCO Four U.S. senators want Facebook to make it easier for its more than 400 million users to protect their privacy as the website develops new outlets to share personal information.The call for simpler privacy controls came in a letter that the senators plan to send Tuesday to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The Associated Press obtained a draft of the letter signed by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo; Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska; and Sen. Al Franken, D.-Minn.It marks the second time in the past three days that Schumer has expressed his misgivings about a series of changes that Facebook announced last week. The new features are designed to unlock more of the data that the online hangout has accumulated about people during its six-year history.

Schumer sent a letter Sunday to the Federal Trade Commission calling for regulators to draw up clearer privacy guidelines for Facebook and other Internet social networks to follow.The political pressure threatens to deter Facebook’s efforts to put its stamp on more websites, a goal that could yield more moneymaking opportunities for the privately held company.

Facebook’s expansion “raises new concerns for users who want to maintain control over their information,” the senators wrote in their preliminary draft.In a statement late Monday, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said the company wants to meet with Schumer to explain its commitment to privacy.

“We’ve developed powerful tools to give our users control over what information they want to share, when they want to share it and with whom,” Noyes said.Among other things, Facebook is plugging into other websites so people can communicate their interests with their online entourages. Facebook also tweaked its own website to create more pages where people’s biographical information could be exposed to a wider audience.

Before personal information can be shared with other websites, the senators want Facebook to seek users’ explicit consent, a process known as “opting in.” Facebook currently can share some personal information with websites unless individual users opt out by telling the company they don’t want those details to be passed along.The senators also object to Facebook’s decision to allow other businesses store users’ data for more than 24 hours.

Zuckerberg, who turns 26 next month, says he just wants to build more online avenues for people to connect with their friends and family. Some of his previous efforts have been detoured by privacy concerns, most notably in 2007 when Facebook users revolted against notification tool, called Beacon, that broadcast their activities on dozens of websites.Facebook responded to that rebellion by giving people more control over Beacon before scrapping the program completely. (AP)

airlines that leave passengers stranded on a tarmac in a delayed plane for three hours or more can face a hefty fine under new rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation

airlines that leave passengers stranded on a tarmac in a delayed plane for three hours or more can face a hefty fine under new rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Transportation.If carriers don’t let passengers out of the plane before the three-hour mark, the agency can fine them up to $27,500 per customer.

At least three domestic airlines have announced plans to avoid the penalties. But that won’t necessarily cut down on delays.US Airways and Continental Airlines have both unveiled procedures to return the plane to the gate if it can’t take off before the three-hour limit.American Airlines Chief Executive Gerard Arpey said his carrier the nation’s second-largest has modified a previous plan to unload passengers stranded four hours or longer.

US Airways, the sixth-largest domestic carrier, announced its plans in an employee newsletter last week.For example, if a US Airways flight is delayed 90 minutes, the crew offers drinks and snacks to avoid a fine that applies if fliers are delayed for two hours without food and water.

After 2 1/2 hours, the airline’s operations center makes a decision: Either return the plane to the gate or, if a takeoff is imminent, keep it in line on the tarmac.In 2009, US Airways alone had 193 flights that were delayed more than three hours. If each had an average of 200 passengers, under the new rules the fines could add up to more than $1 billion.It is unclear what happens to a flight after it returns to the gate, but American’s Arpey predicted bad news for passengers: “Most certainly, it will result in more cancellations.”

Costliest city is still New York

If you can afford to stay in New York, you can afford to stay anywhere.The 2010 rankings for the most expensive cities for business travelers put New York at the top again, with the average daily cost for food, hotel and a car rental totaling $622.The results came from the annual survey of hotel, restaurant and car rental costs by the Business Travel News, a publication for business travel managers, of 100 U.S. travel destinations. New York topped the list last year and in 2008 as well.

White Plains, N.Y., and Detroit inched up in the list, with hotel and car rental prices rising in both cities.Las Vegas, on the other hand, dropped on the list.Last year, Sin City ranked as the nation’s 30th most expensive city to visit. It fell to 45th this year, below such cities as Oakland, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.Honolulu ranked ninth in the 2009 survey but dropped to 20th this year, below Minneapolis, Austin and Detroit.

Most hospitality experts blame what they call the “AIG affect” for the drop in hotel and restaurant prices at cities with a reputation for luxury and frivolity.After the insurance giant American International Group Inc.took a federal bailout in 2008, it hosted a junket for senior executives at the St. Regis Monarch Beach resort and was then stung by public outrage. Since then, image-conscious executives have avoided holding corporate meetings in places known for fun and opulence.

“There is still a huge residual from the AIG affect,” said Carl Winston, the director of the hospitality and tourism management program at San Diego State University.Los Angeles dropped to 16th on the list this year from 13th in 2009, based on cheaper car rental rates.Prank tells guests to break windowYou are asleep in a hotel room, and a frantic caller warns you that the building is on fire, instructing you to pull the fire alarm and break the window.

The American Hotel & Lodging Assn. has issued a warning, telling hotel guests to think twice before following such instructions. Prank callers have been victimizing hotel guests in California, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida and Nebraska, the trade group warned.The group advises hotel guests who get such a call to phone the front desk to see if the emergency is legitimate.In Orlando, Fla., the victim of such a prank busted a hotel window with part of a toilet after his wife took the call. “When I broke the window, I got suspicious,” the hotel guest told the Orlando Sentinel. “It didn’t seem right, but she was panicking, so I continued.”

ALICIA Keys says the “bright lights” of Broadway inspired her to make a success of her life

ALICIA Keys says the “bright lights” of Broadway inspired her to make a success of her life.The singer  who grew up in a rough neighborhood called Clinton, New York  says the revered theater district gave her the drive she needed to become a star.“Those bright lights… it did always have endless possibilities, because Broadway was so close,” Keys told the March issue of Gotham magazine when asked what inspired her and kept her going.“Even thought Eight Avenue was super grungy-drug needles and all kinds of dingy things  Broadway was a lot more creative and interesting and possible.“When I was growing up, it was way darker, way more dismal, way more like the place where all the outcasts lived. So now, to see it more like a tourist destination is really interesting.”

strong winter storm slammed New York City and much of the U.S. Northeast on Friday

NEW YORK  A strong winter storm slammed New York City and much of the U.S. Northeast on Friday, forcing businesses, schools and transportation systems to shut down.Commuters struggled in the absence of suburban train and bus services into New York City, where several inches (cm) of snow accumulation and drifts of several feet snarled morning rush hour travel.On Wall Street, workers pitched in electronically or braved the storm to get to their jobs, so trading was unlikely to take a heavy hit, observers said.”I don’t think it will affect the volume, and volumes have been light anyway,” said Alan Valdes, director of floor trading at Kabrik Trading. “I would guess volumes would be light whether it was sunny and in the 70s or not.”

The wintry blast, which began on Thursday and was predicted to last through Saturday, was the third heavy storm to hit the region in a month.Bond trading was light due to the inclement weather, said William Larkin, fixed income portfolio manager at Cabot Money Management in Salem, Massachusetts.”New York is probably out of the picture,” he said.Parts of Pennsylvania, northern New Jersey, upstate New York and Massachusetts could expect snow accumulations of as much as two feet, the National Weather Service said.The storm was moving very slowly and was expected to hover over the Northeast through Saturday, the NWS said.The impact of the bad winter weather could be felt throughout a U.S. economy still struggling to emerge from recession.

HIGH WINDS

“The issue … has been the unusual weather this quarter, said Subodh Kumar, chief investment strategist at Subodh Kumar & Associates, in Toronto,In New York City, subway service was slowed and buses struggled to navigate snow-covered streets.Strong winds, gusting up to 60 miles per hour in eastern Long Island, posed danger to those venturing outside, the NWS said.Among the storm’s casualties, a man was struck and killed by a snow-laden tree limb that fell in Central Park on Thursday, authorities said. The roof of a home in suburban New Jersey collapsed under the heavy snow, and a snowplow and an automobile collided in suburban New York, causing an undermined number of injuries, authorities said.

Some 28,000 people were without power in suburban New York, and more than 2,000 customers suffered outages in the city, Con Edison said. More than 2,000 customers were without power in New Jersey, local power authorities said.Schools were closed in New York City, Philadelphia and elsewhere in the Northeastern states.Hundreds of flights were canceled at Newark Liberty International Airport, while delays were reported at John F. Kennedy International Airport and flights canceled at Philadelphia’s airport, authorities said.Winds gusted up to 50 miles per hour in Philadelphia, which declared a snow emergency, its fourth of the winter.Amtrak canceled regional trains in upstate New York, and commuter bus service was suspended in northern New Jersey.(Reuters)

blizzard warnings were expected to expire early Thursday. Some areas in New York, Maryland and Washington

Blizzard warnings in some areas, such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, expired late Wednesday. And other blizzard warnings were expected to expire early Thursday. Some areas in New York, Maryland and Washington, already buried under layers of snow, might still see light snow Thursday, the National Weather Service said.

Officials were still deciding early Thursday whether to open Dulles International Airport and Reagan Washington National airports, after they were shut down Wednesday.Amtrak was still providing limited service for Washington, New York and Boston, Massachusetts, on Thursday, but most passenger rail service south of Washington was canceled.

The New York subway system was expected to run normally Thursday, compared with the limited service at the height of the blizzard, transit officials said.This winter is already the snowiest on record for Washington and its suburbs, as well as Baltimore, Maryland, and Wilmington, Delaware, the National Weather Service said. And it’s on track to set records in other cities, including Philadelphia and Atlantic City, New Jersey.

The 55 inches of snow that have accumulated in the nation’s capital during the past two storms proved too much for some buildings. Snow was blamed for the collapse of at least 22 roofs in Washington.In central Pennsylvania, Interstate 80 near Clearfield was shutdown after two pileups — one involving 17 cars and the other involving seven cars, said Rich Kirkpatrick of the state’s Department of Transportation.One person died and another person was seriously injured, police said.