Exclusive: Gaddafi pre-planned attacks on civilians: prosecutor

The International Criminal Court prosecutor said on Tuesday Libyan authorities had decided they were ready to kill unarmed protestors opposed to Muammar Gaddafi's rule even before unrest spread from Tunisia and Egypt.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said the plan, which the government of Gaddafi began developing in January, authorized the use of tear gas and, if necessary, killings.

His comments mark the first time since Libya was referred to The Hague-based institution in February that a senior international legal official has said evidence exists the Gaddafi government planned to kill its own people, although Western political leaders have previously alluded to this.

"We have evidence that after the Tunisia and Egypt conflicts in January, people in the regime were planning how to control demonstrations inside Libya," Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters.

"They were hiding that from people outside and they were planning how to manage the crowds ... the evidence we have is that the shooting of civilians was a pre-determined plan."

"The planning at the beginning was to use tear gas and (if that failed to work)..., shooting," he added.

It’s Time For A Government Shutdown

Legislators continue to negotiate a budget deal to avoid a federal government shutdown. Most everyone in Washington assumes that the public would be angry if the bureaucrats were sent home. But a new Rasmussen poll indicates that 57% of Americans like the idea if it is the only way to get deeper budget cuts.

No doubt, the budget needs to be pared. Uncle Sam will spend about $3.8 trillion this year. The deficit will run a record $1.65 trillion.

But the Democratic leadership has decided to stand fast on behalf of Big (Really, Really Big) Government. The budget plan released by President Barack Obama earlier this year relied on the usual “rosy scenarios” to understate future outlays and overstate future revenues, yet still predicted that the annual deficit will remain above $600 billion throughout the coming decade. More realistically, the red ink over that period is likely to approach $10 trillion. Congressional Democrats are acting like there is no program, no expenditure in the entire federal Leviathan that is not essential.

Republicans have taken up the cause of the taxpayers. Of course, their conversion to the cause of fiscal responsibility came late: President George W. Bush and his GOP Congress squandered money on virtually every program known to man — and some previously unknown ones too. Republicans share the blame for today’s fiscal mess. But at least they are now using the phrase “budget cuts” in polite company.

Fragmentation: Is Google's Android in self-destruct mode?

The F-word is here to haunt Google again since a survey published by Fortune stated that 56 percent of Android developers found that the Android fragmentation was a meaningful but huge problem.

Baird research survey which was picked up by Fortune suggests that developers expressed concerns over Android OS fragmentation, app store fragmentation and number of junk apps in Android ecosystem. Baird research surveyed 250 developers.

Fragmentation has been Android's Achilles heel since Google launched its first Android device G1 in conjunction with HTC. Since then Google has released multiple versions of Android (1.5, 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.3.3, 3.0) with the latest being Android 3.0 or Honeycomb for tablets.

Artstechnica defines platform fragmentation as "the proliferation of diverging variants-a situation in which many custom versions of the software platform emerge and coexist with the original. Platform fragmentation can weaken interoperability because applications that are built for one variant might not work on others."

The pace at which Android has been growing has resulted in multiple Android versions and multiple devices in the market. This proliferation has caused developers to call Android a mess compared to Apple's unified iOS experience for developers and users.

However, Android fragmentation has different implications for end-users, developers and manufacturers. Key issues arising out of Android fragmentation are:

Tunisian Migrants Open Tensions in Europe

MENTON, FRANCE — The train from Ventimiglia in Italy takes only a few minutes to crawl across the frontier into Menton Garavan, the first stop in France along the Côte d’Azur railroad. But it was enough time to dash the dreams of four young migrants.

Awaiting their arrival, a half dozen police officers swiftly took them off the train — part of France’s efforts to make its border impenetrable to the thousands of migrants, mostly Tunisian right now, who have slowly made their way up from the southern Italian island of Lampedusa off Sicily since a wave of rebellion began sweeping across North Africa in January.

President Nicolas Sarkozy early in his term of office championed a vision of a “Union for the Mediterranean,” a grouping of the countries that border the sea. Last month he took a lead in pulling more reluctant Western powers into the military intervention in Libya.

But unpopular at home, and seeking to attract far-right nationalist voters with tough anti-immigrant policies before the presidential election next year, Mr. Sarkozy has set a clear limit to his ideas of Mediterranean solidarity, and has infuriated his southern neighbor, Italy, by keeping the border closed to the migrants fleeing political and economic turmoil in North Africa.

Between Feb. 23 and March 28, 2,800 Tunisian migrants were intercepted in France and 1,700 were expelled, most of them to Italy, Interior Minister Claude Guéant told the French National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament, on Tuesday.

In Ventimiglia, a small town popular for its Friday street market, migrants huddle in groups outside the train station, in the park or on the beach, contemplating their attempt to enter France. Police officers quietly patrol the station, where the waiting rooms and toilets are now left open at night at the request of the local authorities.

A center for migrants has been set up on the outskirts of the town, but with the number arriving each day continuing to swell, space is limited and food is in short supply.

Giuseppe Fama, president of ARCI, an anti-racism association based farther down the coast in Imperia, organized a demonstration outside the station in support of the migrants and against the war in Libya. He said the migrant men were sleeping outdoors most nights, “under cardboard boxes near the station or in the park.”

Imed Seroual is one of them. The 27-year-old Tunisian said he had barely slept in five days. Despite it all, he was upbeat and spoke favorably of the Italians.

Advice on hormone replacement therapy continues to evolve

Hormone therapy has been one of the most confusing issues in women's health over the last decade. Now, a study from the Women's Health Initiative shows the increased risk of stroke found among women who take estrogen-only hormone therapy disappears after they stop the pills but the reduced risk of breast cancer -- believed by some to result from hormone use after natural menopause -- is maintained.

The findings should help women who have had a hysterectomy better weigh their risks and benefits of taking estrogen based on their age and symptoms. Here's the study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. and the Los AngelesTimes article: "Estrogen-only therapy less risky than first thought."

Experts in women's health and menopause made a number of additional points regarding the new paper. Among them:

-- The new study, which follows women four years after they have stopped therapy, is unusual. Typically, studies examine participants while they undergo treatment with, perhaps, a brief follow-up period.

"It's important to follow women in clinical trials some time after we stop; that goes for benefits and risks. And that hardly ever happens in studies," said Andrea LaCroix, the lead author of Tuesday's paper and an epidemiologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.