Kobe Bryant Finally Joins Twitter — Kind Of

Long among the sports world’s biggest Twitter holdouts, Kobe Bryant has finally joined the social network. But he hasn’t opened an account, and won’t be around for long.

Social savvy fans are being blessed with his presence thanks to Nike Basketball, which has turned over its account to Bryant since Tuesday.

[More from Mashable: Avery Johnson’s Teenage Son Unloads on Twitter After NBA Firing]

Nike Basketball, which sponsors Bryant and produces his official sneaker, announced the Kobe takeover in a Christmas Day tweet. The account’s name is now “Kobe Bryant” although its handle remains @nikebasketball. Kobe has spent the past few days tweeting about a variety of subjects using a series of hashtags that play off the theme #counton-fill-in-the-blank.

He’s tweeted about the Lakers progress as a team:

[More from Mashable: FanDuel Is Fantasy Sports With a Twist]

He’s tweeted behind-the-scenes snippets of training and treatment:

And he’s tweeted a totally normal, typical, everyday holiday family portrait:

Bryant actually joined Twitter for realsies back in 2011, but then deleted the account after racking up more than 35,000 followers in a just a few hours. He’s one of the NBA’s few stars without a Twitter presence. Nearly 90% of the league’s players are on the social network, according to Twitter.

But Bryant did become much more active on Facebook this summer, especially while traveling with the United States’ Olympic basketball team. He has nearly 15 million fans there, and reportedly writes his status updates and messages himself, with editing and actual posting done by support staff. In November he asked Facebook fans whether to join Instagram or Twitter next, and on Monday hinted in a status update that he may soon open an Instagram account.

What athletes would you most like to see get more active on social media? Let us know in the comments.

BONUS: 30 Must-Follow Twitter Accounts This NBA SEASON

1. @NBA

The NBA is arguably the world’s most engaging sports league on social media. Follow its official Twitter account for news, highlights and promotions.

Click here to view this gallery.

Thumbnail image courtesy Flickr, Keith Allison

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hillary Clinton Hospitalized for a Blood Clot

12/30/2012 at 08:55 PM EST

Hillary Clinton has been hospitalized.

The Secretary of State was admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday after doctors found a blood clot during an exam related to the concussion she suffered during a fall earlier this month, CNN reports.

"Her doctors will continue to assess her condition, including other issues associated with her concussion," Philippe Reines, deputy assistant secretary of state, said Sunday. "They will determine if any further action is required."

She's being treated with anti-coagulants and is expected to be hospitalized for 48 hours so she can be monitored.

Clinton, 65, suffered a concussion when she passed out and fell in her Washington, D.C., home. Reports at the time said dehydration suffered after a trip the former first lady took to Europe was the cause of her fall.

Clinton, who was recently named one of Barbara Walters's 10 most-fascinating people of 2012, plans to step down from her secretary post early next year.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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Californians' support for death penalty goes against trend

Even as Californians voted to maintain the death penalty, the nation's support for capital punishment continued to wane in 2012, with relatively few states performing executions.

Only nine states executed inmates in 2012, and three-fourths of the executions occurred in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a monitoring group critical of capital punishment. Connecticut became the fifth state in five years to abolish capital punishment.

California, whose voters rejected a November ballot measure to repeal the death penalty, is not expected to resume executions for three years, according to Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye. Litigation has blocked executions in California for nearly seven years.

Despite its unused execution chamber, California's death row, already the largest in the nation, continued to swell in 2012. Fourteen inmates were added, mostly from Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

Nationally, there were fewer than 80 new death sentences, the second-lowest number since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the center said.

Florida led the country with 21 new death sentences. Following California were Texas, with nine, and Pennsylvania, with seven. Those four states accounted for almost 65% of the 2012 death sentences, the center said.

"The big picture is a declining use or less support for the death penalty," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the death penalty center.

Even California's vote on the death penalty contained some good news for foes of capital punishment. Nearly half the voters — 48% — favored repeal, despite the state's long-standing support for capital punishment.

Dieter said capital sentences in the United States have dropped 75% since their high point in 1996, a trend he attributed to concerns about executing the innocent and the relatively high cost of administering capital punishment.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, said the numbers show that the use of capital punishment has "plateaued."

"A lot of people who would support the death penalty generally are weary of the battle and think it won't actually be enforced," Scheidegger said.

California's death penalty supporters are mulling over the possibility of launching a ballot initiative that would speed up legal review of death sentences. "Probably the most important thing looking forward is to get the logjam broken," Scheidegger said.

California's logjam stems from court rulings.

A federal judge in 2006 blocked executions after determining that the state's method of execution posed risks that inmates could suffer inhumanely. After that ruling, the state tinkered with its lethal injection protocol. A state judge then blocked the new protocol on the grounds that California had not complied with public review requirements.

The state is now considering using a single drug to execute inmates, a prospect that capital punishment supporters say would speed up executions. Pentobarbital, a barbiturate, is considered by many to be the drug of choice.

All of the states that executed killers in 2012 did so with pentobarbital, which has been used to euthanize animals. When administered on its own, the drug may cause jerking motions and snoring and take more than 10 minutes to end life.

Although the death penalty center anticipates that more states will repeal capital punishment, Scheidegger said he believes the country will continue to execute criminals.

"I see it as here for a long time, although I think it is important to get enforcement restarted," he said. "If the other side succeeds in obstructing enforcement, then the number who say, 'Why bother? We are not enforcing it anyway' may increase."

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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India Ink: Delhi Rape Victim's Trauma 'Too Severe to Overcome'

A 23-year-old woman, whose rape in Delhi on Dec. 16 galvanized thousands to protest for better treatment of women, died on Saturday morning. The full statement from Kelvin Loh, chief executive of Mount Elizabeth Hospital, where she was being treated, is below:

“We are very sad to report that the patient passed away peacefully at 4.45am on 29 Dec 2012 (Singapore time). Her family and officials from the High Commission of India were by her side. The Mount Elizabeth Hospital team of doctors, nurses and staff join her family in mourning her loss.”

“The patient had remained in an extremely critical condition since admission to Mount Elizabeth Hospital in the morning of 27 Dec (Singapore time). Despite all efforts by a team of eight specialists in Mount Elizabeth Hospital to keep her stable, her condition continued to deteriorate over these two days. She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome.”

“We are humbled by the privilege of being tasked to care for her in her final struggle. We acknowledge the faith the Indian Government and the patient’s family have placed with us to ensure the best care possible was indeed provided to her at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. We share their huge sadness at her passing and will work with the High Commission of India to provide the family support in this time of grief.”

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Matthew McConaughey & Wife Camila Welcome Baby No. 3

By Elizabeth Leonard

12/28/2012 at 06:10 PM EST

Camila and Matthew McConaughey

Gary Miller/FilmMagic

It's a very merry holiday week for Matthew McConaughey and his wife Camila.

The couple welcomed their third child together in Austin, Texas, on Friday, sources confirm to PEOPLE.

The pair, who are also parents to Vida, who turns 3 next month, and Levi, 4, announced the pregnancy just one month after their June nuptials in Texas.

Camila, 29, joked that even as she put on pregnancy pounds, her actor husband, 43, was losing weight – dramatically – for The Dallas Buyers Club, in which he plays the real-life Ron Woodruff, who contracted HIV.

"We have gone the complete opposite direction eating wise, but we're navigating it," she said last summer. "But I don't really have cravings yet."

McConaughey's latest movie, Mud, will be released April. 26,

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

___

Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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'Terminator' actor arrested for lewd conduct at adult movie store

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Iran’s Slowing of Enrichment Efforts May Show It Wants Deal

WASHINGTON — By subtly putting its hands on the brakes of its uranium enrichment efforts, Iran may be signaling that it wants to avoid a direct confrontation over its nuclear program, at least in the near term, according to United States and other Western officials.  The action has also led some analysts to conclude that Iran’s leaders are showing signs that they may be more interested in a deal to end the nuclear standoff with the West.  

Evidence began emerging last summer that the Iranians were diverting a significant portion of their medium-enriched uranium for use in a small research reactor, converting it into a form that cannot easily be used in a weapon.

One American official said the move amounted to trying to “put more time on the clock to solve this,” characterizing it as a step “you have to assume was highly calculated, because everything the Iranians do in a negotiation is highly calculated.” Israel’s departing defense minister, Ehud Barak, came to a similar conclusion when he said in October that his country could safely back away from threats of military action against Iran, at least until the late spring or summer of 2013.

But White House, State Department and Pentagon officials all cautioned against drawing firm conclusions about Iran’s ultimate intentions.

A new session of talks involving Iran and six major powers, including the United States, is expected next year, and American officials say they still cannot determine whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is ready to strike a deal.

A quiet feeler seeking direct talks with Iran that the administration put out after President Obama’s re-election last month resulted in “no real response,” another senior official said, adding: “It wasn’t that they said yes or no. They said nothing.”

These uncertainties underlie the hunger in Western countries to understand why Iran appears to be keeping its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium — which could be converted to bomb fuel in weeks or months — to a level below the amount necessary to build a single weapon.

Evidence from a variety of sources, including the International Atomic Energy Agency, suggests that as Iran produced more uranium enriched to near 20 percent purity, a process that takes it most of the way to bomb-grade fuel, it began diverting some into an oxide powder that could be used in a small research reactor in Tehran. That diversion is believed to have begun in August.

Iran had been complaining for years that the research reactor, which was supplied by the United States during the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to produce isotopes for medical purposes, was running out of fuel, and that the West refused to sell it more. So it decided to make the fuel itself. Now, even though it has enough fuel to keep the reactor running for at least a decade, it may be making more, several sources indicate.

The statistics released in quarterly reports by the atomic energy agency show that if Iran had not diverted fuel to that project, it would have enough medium-enriched fuel for one bomb and would be on its way to enough for a second. Instead, as of the agency’s last report, in November, Iran had enriched 232 kilograms (about 511 pounds) of the fuel, nearly enough to produce a weapon. But more than 96 kilograms (almost 212 pounds) had been sent off for fabrication into fuel plates for the reactor. Once turned to that purpose, the fuel is very difficult to use in a bomb.

The diversion “was a move to take heat away so that things didn’t go over the tipping point,” said Olli Heinonen, the former head of inspections for the atomic energy agency, who dealt with Iran extensively. Mr. Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, said that since the diversion, the Iranians had continued to produce about 15 kilograms (about 33 pounds) a month of medium-enriched fuel. So unless they slow that pace, or divert more fuel to the reactor program, “they are going back up to the tipping point,” he said.

Iran could use that to its advantage in negotiations. “I think it is hard to understand what Iran was doing if not sending a deliberate signal, signaling some cautiousness,” said Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst who is now at the Arms Control Association. “I think it is reasonable to see the diversion as a negotiating signal, and a note of moderation.”

Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that “the sanctions policy that the United States has pursued over the past decade is beginning to bear fruit.” He said that the steps, which have led to a huge devaluation of the Iranian currency and a sharp decline in Iranian oil exports, “have seemingly succeeded in convincing influential sectors of the theocracy to reconsider their options.”

Some Arab officials agree, though they warn that it could be three years before the sanctions hurt Iran enough to bring about a change of position. “The problem is we don’t have three years,” a senior Arab diplomat said recently.

The big question is whether any of this is more than tactical positioning. “Tehran almost certainly hopes the diversion will be read in Western capitals as a sign of its willingness to reach a deal,” said Paul R. Pillar, a former C.I.A. analyst who is now at Georgetown University.

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Analysis: For tech investors, it’s hard to know when to bolt

(Reuters) – When Hewlett-Packard Co agreed to buy British software company Autonomy in August last year for $ 11.1 billion, two well-known investors made diametrically different bets on how the big deal would play out.

To short seller Jim Chanos, who had been raising red flags on Autonomy for years and had started shorting shares of HP in 2011, the deal was another nail in the coffin of the Silicon Valley tech giant, according to a source familiar with his thinking.

But to activist investor Ralph Whitworth, co-founder of Relational Investors LLC, it was time to commit to HP and the turnaround story the company was trying to sell to Wall Street. His fund bought more than 17.5 million HP shares after the deal was announced, and Whitworth received a seat on the company’s board. This year, Relational roughly doubled its stake in HP.

In the wake of HP’s decision to take an $ 8.8 billion write-down on the deal because of alleged accounting irregularities at Autonomy, it appears Chanos – whose call to short Enron before the energy company collapsed in a corporate scandal may be his most famous trade – was more astute.

HP’s shares are down 36 percent since Relational, which declined to comment, built its stake in the third quarter of 2011.

BARRIERS TO ENTRY

Relational’s big move into HP is a reminder that even smart investors can get things wrong in the fast-evolving technology sector, where once hot global names like Research in Motion and Yahoo can quickly become yesterday’s news.

It is a world where a company may effectively erect barriers to entry in a market only to have them torn down by a rival with a new whizz-bang product – just as Apple‘s iPhone broke the dominance that Research in Motion’s BlackBerry had enjoyed.

One warning sign that a tech company may be on the verge of losing its edge is when it makes acquisitions outside of its main area of expertise to move into new product lines. Savvy tech investors also say be wary of companies that experience a succession of management changes, or when a successful core business starts looking tired.

The pace of change in the technology sector is much faster than in other industries, said Kaushik Roy, an analyst at Hercules Technology Growth Capital. “It attracts new talent and capital, many startups are formed, which can be extremely disruptive to incumbents,” Roy said. “In other words, yesterday’s winners can rapidly become today’s losers and vice versa.”

In the case of HP, the company not only has had four CEOs since 1999, it has been striving to find another niche to dominate as demand for one of its core products – computer printers – wanes and as its PC business stumbles.

Or consider online search pioneer Yahoo, which has gone through six chief executives and is struggling to keep pace with Google.

Josh Spencer, a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price, said frequent turnover in the executive suite at Yahoo was a warning sign to him. Spencer said he does not own Yahoo shares and has not in the recent past.

RED FLAGS

While a company may view an acquisition as a fresh start – that is what HP was trying to say about Autonomy – some investors see it as a warning the core business is struggling.

Spencer noted that the technology industry’s most successful companies – Apple and Samsung – generally have not made acquisitions and instead developed new products internally.

For Margaret Patel, managing director at Wells Capital Management, one of the first red flags she saw at HP was when former CEO Carly Fiorina bought Compaq for roughly $ 25 billion in 2002.

“I felt then that the acquisition was too large and expensive, and personal computers were not their core strength,” said Patel, who has since avoided investing in HP.

Of course, timing can be everything even if an investor is eventually proven right. Patel missed out on a 137 percent gain in HP’s stock price from the time of the Compaq deal up until the end of 2010.

PREMIUM VALUATIONS

A few money managers see a flashing yellow light in the big sell-off of Apple shares in the past few months.

Apple, the most valuable U.S. company, has shed nearly 30 percent of its value in the last three months.

Since the death of co-founder Steve Jobs – the driving force behind Apple’s iPod, iPhone and iPad – DoubleLine co-founder Jeffrey Gundlach has been recommending that investors short the company’s shares because “the product innovator isn’t there anymore.”

Gundlach said he began shorting Apple’s stock at around $ 610 and maintains that it could drop to $ 425. He declined to comment on Tim Cook, who succeeded Jobs over a year ago and is seen by many as less visionary and innovative than Jobs.

Christian Bertelsen, chief investment officer at Global Financial Private Capital, with assets under management of $ 1.7 billion, said his firm began paring back its exposure to Apple this fall because he felt the expectations for the company’s new iPhone5 had gotten overheated.

He said his firm dramatically took down its exposure to Apple shares when the stock hit $ 670 a share. “For us, the light bulb went off this fall,” he said. Mind you, Apple’s shares still remain up about 25 percent for the whole year.

And then there’s Research in Motion. Once a leader in smartphones, it’s now in danger of becoming irrelevant.

“They saw the move towards all touch-screen phones and didn’t move with it,” said Stuart Jeffrey, an analyst at Nomura Securities who noted how the BlackBerry 10 touch-screen phone will debut on January 30, 2013, six years after Apple released its first iPhone in 2007.

Robert Stimpson, a portfolio manager at Oak Associates Funds whose fund does not own any shares of Research in Motion, said the company’s BlackBerry phones are on a downward slope and it will be tough for the company to regain its lost luster.

“The end of the road is a long, lonely journey,” Stimpson said of Research in Motion. “I think they will fight the good fight for many years, probably unsuccessfully.”

(Reporting by Nicola Leske and Sam Forgione in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal, Tiffany Wu, Jennifer Ablan and Matthew Goldstein; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Analysis: For tech investors, it’s hard to know when to bolt
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