Chavez back in Venezuela after Cuba treatment

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez arrived back home early Friday after 10 days of medical treatment in Cuba, but his failure to attend a regional meeting in Brazil raised new questions about his health.

State television showed Chavez arriving at Caracas' airport and walking down the steps from the presidential jet wearing a track suit. He smiled and laughed heartily as he chatted with Vice President Nicolas Maduro and members of his Cabinet.

Chavez, who has been fighting an unspecified type of cancer during the past year and half, didn't explain why he skipped a Friday meeting in Brasilia with leaders of the South American trade bloc Mercosur. The Brazilian government said Venezuelan Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez represented his country at the meeting — the first since Venezuela became a full member.

Chavez traveled to Cuba on the night of Nov. 27 after announcing plans to undergo hyperbaric oxygen treatment in Havana. The Venezuelan leader has spent much of the past 18 months battling cancer in the pelvic area, and he said in July that tests had shown he was cancer-free.

While in Cuba, he kept a low profile and did not speak on television. Chavez last appeared publicly during a televised meeting Nov. 15 in Caracas, and his long absence renewed speculation among some Venezuelans that his health might be taking a turn for the worse.

Chavez appeared vigorous as he spoke on television upon his arrival at Caracas' airport after 2:30 a.m. Friday. He didn't mention his health. Chavez, who travels on a presidential plane, often arrives in Venezuela very late at night or early in the morning.

"I'm very happy, as you all can see, to be arriving here again," Chavez said. "Very happy."

Chavez noted that Thursday marked two months since his Oct. 7 re-election. Addressing Maduro and recalling other election victories, Chavez said: "Look at how we've come, Nicolas, from victory to victory."

Chavez hasn't given details recently about the hyperbaric oxygen treatment, during which patients breathe pure oxygen while in a pressurized, sealed chamber. The treatment's value is well-established for treating burns and some other medical conditions and for aiding wound healing and helping repair bone and tissue damaged by radiation treatments.

The 58-year-old president first underwent cancer surgery in Cuba in June 2011 and later underwent another surgery last February. He has also undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Hyperbaric oxygen is regularly used to treat infections that can develop after radiation treatment, said Dr. Igor Astsaturov, a gastrointestinal cancer specialist who is not involved in Chavez's treatment.

"I would speculate that this is not directly related to the cancer process itself but maybe an infectious complication of pelvic radiation," said Astsaturov, an assistant professor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He said that such oxygen treatment "is used to treat infections but not tumors."

Throughout his treatments, Chavez has kept many details of his illness secret, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumors that were removed.

Chavez said his departure from Cuba had been delayed by a conversation with Fidel Castro, with whom he had been discussing poetry and reciting verses.

The Venezuelan leader also referred to the country's upcoming state gubernatorial elections Dec. 16, saying: "We're eight days away from the next victory."

The government launched a hashtag phrase on Twitter, "BienvenidoComandante," or Welcome Commander, which became a top trending topic in the country Friday morning.

During Chavez's absence, the government had announced that the president appointed new ambassadors in various countries, and he released a couple of written statements. But no messages have been posted on Chavez's Twitter account since Nov. 1.

The uncertainty sparked a rally in Venezuelan government bonds during the past week as investors speculated about the possibility that Chavez's health might be worsening. Bond prices dipped after the president's return. Even as bond prices declined by as much as two percentage points Friday, though, they were still trading about 10 percentage points higher than when Chavez abruptly announced his return to Cuba on Nov. 27, said Russell Dallen, a securities trader at Caracas Capital Markets.

Despite the lack of information about Chavez's condition, some say they think Venezuelans haven't seemed particularly concerned lately.

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Lawyer: McAfee better, hopes to stay in Guatemala

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A lawyer for software company founder John McAfee  said Friday that the self-styled fugitive is feeling better after suffering chest pain and that he has filed three separate legal appeals in hopes his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Attorney Telesforo Guerra told reporters outside the detention center where McAfee is being held that the creator of the McAfee antivirus program is in good health.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee's physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island. McAfee has denied involvement in the killing and says Belizean authorities are persecuting him because he knows about official corruption.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn't give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee's physical integrity is protected.

"We won't look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved," Viana said. "The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue."

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull's home was a couple of houses down from McAfee's compound in Ambergris Caye.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company that is named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

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After long disdain, Jamaica gets 1st patois Bible

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — When English teacher Faith Linton  first proposed translating the Bible into Jamaica's patois tongue in the late 1950s, most people who heard the idea shook their heads.

Some on the deeply Christian island believed it was sacrilegious. Others opposed it because the unique mixture of English and West African languages was widely disdained by the elites as a coarse linguistic stepchild to English, which is the only official language in this former British colony.

"There was shock at the mere suggestion," said Linton, now 81, a longtime board member of the Bible Society of the West Indies. "People were deeply ashamed of their mother tongue. It was always associated with illiteracy and social deprivation."

Decades later, Linton's vision is becoming a reality: After years of meticulous translation from the original Greek, the Bible Society is releasing in Jamaica print and audio CD versions of the first patois translation of the New Testament, or "Di Jamiekan Nyuu Testiment."

The battle lines have softened somewhat, but there is still substantial opposition to patois in the pulpit. Critics say it will dilute Scripture and undermine the already weak hold many poor Jamaicans have on standard English. Advocates see it as a bold, empowering move that will finally affirm the indigenous tongue as a distinct language in Jamaica.

For patois expert Hubert Devonish, a linguist who is coordinator of the Jamaican Language Unit at the University of the West Indies, the Bible translation is a big step toward getting the state to eventually embrace the creole language created by slaves.

"We've now produced a major body of literature in the language, whatever people may think about it one way or the other. And that is part of the process of convincing people that this thing is a serious language with a standard writing system," Devonish said.

The Rev. Courtney Stewart, general secretary of the regional Bible society, said there is a widespread conviction that Scripture is best understood in a person's spoken tongue.

He predicts many Jamaicans will be inspired to hear and read the translation in which the shortest verse — "Jesus wept," following the death of Christ's friend Lazarus in the Gospel of John — becomes "Jiizas baal."

In the depiction of the angel Gabriel's visit to the Virgin Mary that foretold the birth of Jesus, the New King James Bible's version of Luke reads, "And having come in, the angel said to her, 'Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women.'"

The patois version says: "Di ienjel go tu Mieri an se tu ar se, 'Mieri, mi av nyuuz we a go mek yu wel api. Gad riili riili bles yu an im a waak wid yu aal di taim.'"

"It's extremely powerful for people to hear Scripture in their own language, the language they speak and think in. It goes straight to their hearts and people say they are able to visualize it in a way they've never experienced before," Stewart said.

On the other side, some religious leaders, Anglophiles and other critics characterize Jamaican patois as a rowdy, ever-changing vernacular or "lazy English" that is fine for the playground or market but entirely inappropriate in a place of worship.

"Patois is not potent enough to be able to carry the meaning of the Gospel effectively. It just does not have the capacity to properly reflect the word of God," said Bishop Alvin Bailey, who leads the evangelical Holiness Christian Church in the southern city of Portmore.

While most words in Jamaican patois have English origins, much of its grammar derives from the languages of West Africa, so it can be nearly incomprehensible to foreigners. The language was created by slaves who were brought to the island by European colonizers, and some say it was designed to prevent slave masters from understanding their words.

Despite the low view some Jamaicans hold for patois, nearly all islanders, regardless of class, can speak and understand it. Those who speak standard English fluently, mostly people from the middle and upper classes, tend to use patois for emphasis, to affect a down-to-earth persona or to talk to someone of a lower class.

The New Testament translation was recently released in Britain, where there is a large Jamaican diaspora.

"The reaction was curiosity at first, mixed with some skepticism, surprise and amusement when the words were spoken, but quite quickly replaced by enthusiasm and admiration," said Matt Parkes, fundraising director for the Swindon, England-based Bible Society.

In the central England town of Northampton, the Rev. Dennis Hines of the New Testament Church of God said the patois Bible has been received well, especially in prisons where he works as a chaplain and inmates of Jamaican heritage are clamoring for a copy.

"Just to know that there was a Bible in their native tongue has made people feel really proud and excited," said Hines, who was born in Jamaica but moved to Britain when he was a boy.

The translation is a touchier subject in Jamaica, where activists are pushing for patois to be granted official status alongside English and used in classrooms.

"It will be a process of years, probably, in which some will like it and some won't, and then an increasing number will eventually accept it over time. That's the trajectory I see," Devonish said.

Clive Forrester, who teaches the Jamaican tongue at Canada's York University, said the biggest obstacle to launching a patois Bible on the island has always been a psychosocial one, not a linguistic one.

"The language can handle any concept or idea in the New Testament. It's the average Jamaican speaker who has a hard time accepting Jamaican Creole in written contexts and especially one as formal as the Bible," he said.

Most words in Jamaican patois, like other English Caribbean patois, are English words filtered through a distinct phonetic system with fewer vowels and different consonant sounds. Patois is written phonetically to approximate these differences. So in patois, the English "girl" becomes "gyal."

A small amount of patois words, between 5 percent and 10 percent, are of African origin, like "nyam" for "to eat." But the greatest divergence from English is in grammar, which has origins in the languages of West Africa.

An example of West African grammar in Jamaican patois is the way verbs are formed in the past tense. Instead of using a suffix like "ed," as in "walked," a patois speaker puts a word before a verb, like "deh." The English "I walked" becomes "me deh walk" in patois. The same is done in Haitian Creole by adding "te" before a verb to indicate past tense.

Over the years, the Bible has been translated into hundreds of obscure languages and dialects, among them the Ga language of Ghana, the Mi'kmaq spoken mostly by Indians in eastern Canada, and Gullah, which is largely spoken by African-Americans in isolated coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia.

The advocates of Jamaican patois are thrilled to see their day finally arrive, particularly with the island marking its 50th anniversary of winning independence.

"I am convinced this will have an impact on Jamaican people in every way - academically, psychologically, spiritually," said Linton, who spoke nothing but patois for the first 12 years of her life.

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Puerto Rico governor to push for statehood

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Puerto Rico's governor will call a special legislative session to push for approval of a resolution urging the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama to honor the results of a recent referendum on changing the island's political status.

Gov. Luis Fortuno, who backs seeing statehood, said Saturday that Puerto Rican voters embraced statehood and rejected the current U.S. commonwealth status in the Nov. 6 ballot. He said Congress and Obama pledged to respect the results.

In the first question of the two-part referendum, more than 900,000 voters, or 54 percent, said they were not content with the commonwealth status.

The second question asked what status was preferred. Of the about 1.3 million voters who made a choice, nearly 800,000, or 61 percent, supported statehood. Some 437,000 backed sovereign free association and 72,560 chose independence. However, nearly 500,000 left that question blank, complicating analysis of voter sentiment.

Another complication is that voters rejected Fortuno for another term, electing as governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla. His Popular Democratic Party wants to keep Puerto Rico as a semi-autonomous U.S. commonwealth.

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Venezuela's Chavez says cancer back, plans surgery

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced Saturday night that his cancer has returned and that he will undergo another surgery in Cuba.

Chavez, who won re-election on Oct. 7, also said for the first time that if his health were to worsen, his successor would be Vice President Nicolas Maduro.

"We should guarantee the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution," Chavez said on television, seated at the presidential palace with Maduro and other aides.

Outside medical experts said that based on Chavez's account of his condition, he is facing a very difficult fight against cancer.

The president, who just returned from Cuba early Friday, said tests had shown a return of "some malignant cells" in the same area where tumors were previously removed.

"I need to return to Havana tomorrow," Chavez said, adding that he would undergo surgery in the coming days.

Chavez's quick trip home appeared to allow him to send a clear directive to his inner circle that Maduro would be his chosen successor. He called for his allies to pull together, saying: "Unity, unity, unity."

Chavez named Maduro, his longtime foreign minister, as his choice for vice president three days after winning re-election. Maduro, a burly former bus driver, has shown unflagging loyalty and become a leading spokesman for Venezuela's socialist leader in recent years.

The vice president's expression was solemn as Chavez said that Maduro should become president if any complication were to prevent him from finishing his current term, which concludes in early January. Chavez said that if new elections are held, his movement's candidate should be Maduro.

"You all elect Nicolas Maduro as president," Chavez said, holding a small blue copy of the constitution in his hands and waving it.

The Venezuelan constitution says that if a president-elect dies before taking office, a new election should be held within 30 days and that in the meantime the president of the National Assembly is to be in charge of the government.

While he spoke, Chavez was seated at a table flanked by both Maduro and National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello.

Chavez is scheduled to be sworn in for a new six-year term Jan. 10, and he called his relapse a "new battle."

He is to undergo his third operation to remove cancerous tissue in about a year and a half.

The 58-year-old president first underwent cancer surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011, after an operation for a pelvic abscess earlier in the month found the cancer. He had another cancer surgery last February after a tumor appeared in the same area. He has also undergone chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Chavez said tests immediately after his re-election win had shown no sign of cancer. But he said he had swelling and pain, which he thought was due to "the effort of the campaign and the radiation therapy treatment."

"It's a very sensitive area, so we started to pay a lot of attention to that," he said, adding that he had reduced his public appearances.

Chavez made his most recent trip to Cuba on the night of Nov. 27, saying he would receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Such treatment is regularly used to help heal tissues damaged by radiation treatment.

Chavez said that he has been coping with pain and that while he was in Cuba thorough exams detected the recurrence of cancer.

He arrived back in Caracas on Friday after 10 days of medical treatment in Cuba, but until Saturday night had not referred to his health. His unexplained decision to skip a summit of regional leaders in Brazil on Friday had raised suspicions among many Venezuelans that his health had taken a turn for the worse.

Chavez said that he was requesting permission from lawmakers to travel to Havana.

"I hope to give you all good news in the coming days," said Chavez, who held up a crucifix and kissed it. "With the grace of God, we'll come out victorious."

Dr. Carlos Castro, scientific director of the League Against Cancer in neighboring Colombia, told The Associated Press that he expects the operation will likely be followed by more chemotherapy.

"It's behaving like a sarcoma, and sarcoma doesn't forgive," Castro said, adding that he wouldn't be surprised if the cancer had also spread to the lungs or other areas.

"We knew this was going to happen," he said. "This isn't good."

Throughout his treatment, Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. He has said he travels to Cuba for treatment because his cancer was diagnosed by doctors there.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said in a phone interview that he wasn't surprised by the news.

"I think this is recurrent cancer that at this point is almost certainly not going to go away," Pishvaian said. "It's unlikely that what he's going through now is curable."

He speculated that given what Chavez has said about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma. He said those in the pelvis area have a likelihood of recurring of 50 percent to 70 percent, even with the best treatment.

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EBay's double tax base prompts calls for investigation

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain and Germany may have missed out on a combined $1 billion in sales tax since online marketplace eBay picked a tiny Luxembourg office as its base for EU sales, a shift that lawmakers say should now be investigated.

EBay's nomination of Luxembourg unit eBay Europe Sarl - with a staff of nine - as its provider of services to EU clients allows it to charge customers in Europe a low rate of sales tax, often known as Value Added Tax, helping it to compete against rivals.

However, the unit doesn't actually receive the money from sales. Instead, eBay said it continues to channel revenues through a Berne-based unit, allowing the company also to benefit from what Swiss tax lawyers say is the most competitive corporate income tax regime in Europe.

EU rules allow companies to establish subsidiaries in Luxembourg and levy VAT at Luxembourg's low VAT rate on sales to customers across the bloc.

However, the rules also allow individual EU taxmen to challenge any claim to Luxembourg residence, and the right to charge Luxembourg VAT, in their domestic courts, if the taxman feels a Luxembourg-based subsidiary does not have sufficient staff or assets to support its claim to be the true supplier of goods or services.

Tax experts say eBay's arrangement, which appears to give eBay the best of both income and sales tax worlds, could be open to challenge, and lawmakers in the UK and Germany want their taxmen to investigate.

"I hope that HMRC (UK tax authority Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs) takes note ... and takes prompt action," said Margaret Hodge, member of parliament and chairman of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which monitors government finances.

"I will be seeking assurance that they are, next time we take evidence from HMRC," she added. Officials from HMRC are due to testify to the PAC in early December as part of the committee's investigation into tax matters.

Sven Giegold, member of the European Parliament for Germany's Green Party, said he wanted the German tax authorities to "have a very critical look at this".

It is common for companies to seek to reduce their tax bills, and a number of multinationals have established bases in Luxembourg so they can charge customers lower levels of VAT.

EBay said HMRC was aware of all its tax arrangements and that it was confident it met all its tax liabilities in the UK and elsewhere.

"In all countries and at all times, eBay is fully compliant with national, EU and international tax rules (including the OECD) including the remittance of VAT to the appropriate authorities," an eBay spokesman said in an emailed statement.

The UK, German, French and Luxembourg tax authorities declined to comment on eBay, citing rules on taxpayer confidentiality.

LOWER THRESHOLD

Big companies' tax practices have risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe in the past year, with lawmakers growing increasingly frustrated with the way in which companies such as search engine company Google pay almost no income tax in countries where they have billions of dollars in sales.

The companies escape liability for income taxes in countries like the UK by arguing the value created by their business, and therefore the location where the profit should be realized, is not the place where the customer resides, but rather in the location where the intellectual property underpinning the product or service is based.

Chas Roy-Chowdhury, head of taxation at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, said this was a valid economic argument and that if, for example, HMRC wants to claim more income tax from Google, it has to prove the company is generating more value in the UK than it is declaring.

This would require a thorough deconstruction of its business model and supply chain.

However, it is easier to establish liability to VAT, since this tax hinges simply on the location of the buyer and seller.

"The threshold is lower," said Simon Newark, head of VAT at accountants UHY Hacker.

"There are a lot more aspects for HMRC to challenge in VAT than in direct (income) tax."

For tax purposes, the EU deems eBay's online platform an "electronically supplied service", a category that also covers e-Books and music downloads.

Under EU rules, suppliers of such services based within the bloc are supposed to charge EU customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the supplier is based.

A number of suppliers of electronic services, including Amazon.Com Inc and Apple Inc's iTunes have established European headquarters in Luxembourg to enable them to charge customers lower VAT rates than prevail in their customers' countries.

Luxembourg has traditionally charged the lowest standard VAT rates in the European Union. Its 15 percent rate compares with rates of 19-25 percent in most other EU members.

By charging customers VAT at Luxembourg's rate eBay is better able to compete with rivals based elsewhere in the EU, such as Britain's eBid, which must charge customers VAT at the standard UK rate of 20 percent.

However, to be entitled to charge Luxembourg rates, a company has to be able to prove in British, German or EU courts that it is genuinely based in the Grand Duchy.

Companies selling to EU customers from outside the EU - as eBay was until the 2007 nomination of eBay Europe Sarl as supplier to EU clients - must charge European customers VAT at the rate prevailing in the country where the customer resides, and to pay that VAT to the taxman in the customer's country.

There is no definitive checklist that determines the true base of a company and any decision by a national court can be challenged in the European Court of Justice. In the UK, HMRC said it approached the matter on a case-by-case basis, and disputes are often resolved in court.

"HMRC will challenge any arrangements where it is claimed that supplies are made from a particular country but the business does not have the necessary resources to make those supplies," a spokesman said.

EUROPE EXPANSION

EBay, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, moved into Europe in 1999 when it established eBay International in Berne. Switzerland's low income tax regime for foreign companies was highly beneficial for the auction site. "We do have a very favorable international tax structure," then-Chief Financial Officer Rajiv Dutta told analysts in 2002 when asked how the company managed to pay such low taxes on its non-U.S. income.

The Swiss base also meant, initially, that the company didn't have to charge EU customers VAT. But in 2003, Brussels changed the rules, which forced eBay to charge EU sellers on its platform VAT based on their residence. The VAT gathered was remitted to the tax authority in the customer's country.

Not all customers are charged VAT. Most medium-sized and big businesses are legitimately exempted from paying VAT on some purchases, such as eBay seller fees.

EBay's Swiss-based European public relations head declined to say what portion of its EU customers were liable to be charged VAT. James Cordwell, equities analyst at Atlantic Equities, estimated that such customers accounted for 40-50 percent of sales in Europe.

Since the 2007 creation of its Luxembourg operation, eBay has had German fee revenues of $6.1 billion and UK revenues of $5 billion, its annual accounts show.

If the services were supplied from Switzerland or another non-EU country, and assuming only half of customers should have been charged VAT, EU rules would have obliged eBay to collect $580 million in VAT for the German taxman and $500 million in VAT for HMRC since 2007.

EBay's entitlement to charge Luxembourg VAT on sales and to pay this to the Luxembourg taxman rests on being able to prove in court that eBay Europe Sarl is the provider of services to EU clients.

But despite German and UK fee income of $3.1 billion last year, eBay Europe Sarl recorded turnover of only 5 million euros in 2011.

John Hemming, an MP with the Liberal Democrats, the junior partner in the British coalition government, said the fact eBay's sales revenues did not go through the Luxembourg unit undermined the claim that it was the true provider of services to EU clients.

"If it's a real transaction, you would expect the money to pass with it, and not pass someplace else," he said.

Rather than going to Luxembourg, the money generated from customers continues to go to Berne-based eBay International AG, a spokeswoman said.

When Reuters visited in mid November, staff at the Luxembourg office, just opposite the central post office, declined to discuss what operations the unit conducted for eBay.

A spokesman later said the office conducted activities including billing, data privacy, contracting, regulatory, management and some customer services operations.

By contrast, Amazon and iTunes do report their sales of ebooks and music downloads to EU customers through their Luxembourg units.

Prem Sikka, professor of accounting at Essex University, along with Newark and Roy-Chowdhury said a cash trail through a unit was one of the key factors used as evidence that the unit was the true supplier of a service.

UK and German tax authorities could argue that the shift in eBay's supply base to Luxembourg from Berne was therefore not genuine. If successful, they could claim back the VAT lost.

EBay declined to say why it channeled sales through Switzerland. Tax advisors say the country can still offer some companies lower tax rates than other European low-tax jurisdictions such as Ireland and Luxembourg.

Indeed, EBay's closest rival Amazon, which channels about half its non-U.S. earnings through Luxembourg, reported average income tax on overseas earnings of 6 percent in the past four years. EBay paid just 3 percent over the same period.

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Twitter in legal spat over data clampdown

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Twitter Inc's steadily tightening grip over the 140-character messages on its network has set off a spirited debate in Silicon Valley over whether a social media company should or should not lay claim over its user-generated content.

That debate has now landed in court.

A San Francisco judge on Wednesday granted a temporary restraining order compelling Twitter to continue providing access to its "Firehose" - the full daily stream of some 400 million tweets - to PeopleBrowsr Inc, a data analytics firm that sifts through Twitter and resells that information to clients ranging from technology blogs to the U.S. Department of Defense.

As part of a broader revenue-generating strategy, Twitter in recent months has begun clamping down on how its data stream may be accessed, to the dismay of many third-party developers who have built businesses and products off of Twitter's Firehose.

PeopleBrowsr, which began contracting Firehose access in July 2010, has continued to buy Twitter data on a month-to-month basis until this July, when Twitter invoked a clause in the agreement that allowed for terminating the contract without cause.

The court's decision to extend the two San Francisco-based companies' contract has not settled the legal spat; a judge will hear PeopleBrowsr's arguments for a preliminary injunction against Twitter on January 8.

But the case could provide the first, in-depth look at issues surrounding one of the Internet industry's most prominent players in Twitter.

In a court filing, PeopleBrowsr founder John David Rich argued the Twitter move was a "commercial disaster" for his business and contradicted the spirit of repeated public statements that Twitter has made regarding its data.

"Twitter has repeatedly and consistently promised that it would maintain an 'open ecosystem' for its data," Rich said in his company's request for a temporary injunction.

In its response, Twitter's lawyers argued: "This is Contracts 101."

Twitter said in a statement after the court decision: "We believe the case is without merit and will vigorously defend against it."

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Professor finds profiling in ads for personal data website

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) - Dr. Latisha Smith, an expert in decompression sicknesses afflicting deep sea divers, has cleared criminal background checks throughout her medical career. Yet someone searching the Web for the Washington State physician might well come across an Internet ad suggesting she may have an arrest record.

"Latisha Smith, arrested?" reads one such advertisement.

Another says: "Latisha Smith Truth... Check Latisha Smith's Arrests."

Instantcheckmate.com, which labels itself the "Internet's leading authority on background checks," placed both ads. A statistical analysis of the company's advertising has found it has disproportionately used ad copy including the word "arrested" for black-identifying names, even when a person has no arrest record.

Latanya Sweeney is a Harvard University professor of government with a doctorate in computer science. After learning that her own name had popped up in an "arrested?" ad when a colleague was searching for one of her academic publications, she ran more than 120,000 searches for names primarily given to either black or white children, testing ads delivered for 2,400 real names 50 times each. (The author of this story is a Harvard University fellow collaborating with Professor Sweeney on a book about the business of personal data.)

Ebony Jefferson, for example, often turns up an instantcheckmate.com ad reading: "Ebony Jefferson, arrested?" but an ad triggered by a search for Emily Jefferson would read: "We found Emily Jefferson." Searches for randomly chosen black-identifying names such as Deshawn Williams, Latisha Smith or Latanya Smith often produced the "arrested?" headline or ad text with the word "arrest," whereas other less ethnic-sounding first names matched with the same surnames typically did not.

"As an African-American, I'm used to profiling like that," said Dr. Smith. "I think it's horrendous that they get away with it."

While InstantCheckmate.com was given the opportunity to comment on how it generates ads, for which it declined to comment, citing "trade secrets," it wasn't specifically asked about the issue of racial profiling. The company denies engaging in racial profiling. The company's founder and managing partner, Kristian Kibak, did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls over a period of several months, and other employees referred calls to management. Company officials also declined to comment when visited twice at their call center in Las Vegas. Former employees said they had signed nondisclosure agreements that barred them from speaking openly about Instant Checkmate.

Instantcheckmate.com is one of many data brokers that use and sell data for a variety of purposes. The field is attracting growing attention, both from government and consumers concerned about possible abuse. Rapid advances in technology have opened up all sorts of opportunities for commercialization of data.

Anyone can set up shop and sell arrest records as long as they stay clear of U.S. legal limitations such as using the information to determine creditworthiness, insurance or job suitability.

Companies that compete with instantcheckmate.com include intelius.com and mylife.com. An examination of Internet advertising starting last March as well as Sweeney's study did not find any rival companies advertising background searches on individual names along racial lines.

WHO CAN BE TRUSTED?

In its own marketing, Instantcheckmate.com sums up its mission like this: "Parents will no longer need to wonder about whether their neighbors, friends, home day care providers, a former spouse's new love interest or preschool providers can be trusted to care for their children responsibly."

According to preliminary findings of Professor Sweeney's research, searches of names assigned primarily to black babies, such as Tyrone, Darnell, Ebony and Latisha, generated "arrest" in the instantcheckmate.com ad copy between 75 percent and 96 percent of the time. Names assigned at birth primarily to whites, such as Geoffrey, Brett, Kristen and Anne, led to more neutral copy, with the word "arrest" appearing between zero and 9 percent of the time.

A few names fell outside of these patterns: Brad, a name predominantly given to white babies, produced an ad with the word "arrest" 62 percent to 65 percent of the time. Sweeney found that ads appear regardless of whether the name has an arrest record attached to it.

Blacks make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 28 percent of the arrests listed on the FBI's most recent annual crime statistics.

Internet advertising based on millions of name pairs has only existed in recent years, so targeting ads along racial lines raises new legal questions. Experts say the Federal Trade Commission, which this year assessed an $800,000 penalty against personal data site Spokeo.com for different reasons (related to the use of data for job-vetting purposes), would be the institution best placed to review Instant Checkmate's practices.

The FTC enforces regulations against unfair or deceptive business practices. A deceptive claim that would be more likely to get people to purchase a product than they would otherwise would be a typical reason the FTC might act against a company, said one FTC official who did not want to be identified. For example, authorities could take action against a firm that makes misleading claims suggesting a product such as records exist when they do not.

"It's disturbing," Julie Brill, an FTC commissioner, said of Instant Checkmate's advertising. "I don't know if it's illegal ... It's something that we'd need to study to see if any enforcement action is needed."

Instant Checkmate's Kibak, who is in his late 20s, works out of a San Diego office near the Pacific Ocean. The son of a California biology professor, he did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails seeking comment about his business.

"We would consider the answers to most of your questions trade secrets and therefore would not be comfortable disclosing that information," Joey Rocco, Kibak's partner according to the firm's Nevada state registration, said in an email.

Instant Checkmate LLC maintains its official corporate headquarters at an address in an industrial zone across the highway from the Las Vegas strip. At the back of a long parking lot, the company shares a warehouse building with an auto repair shop. At one end, a large roll-up garage-style door opens to the company's call center. Workers face a gray cinder-block wall, their backs to the entrance. Staff declined to answer questions.

DATA FIRMS PROLIFERATE

Professor Sweeney's analysis found that some instantcheckmate.com ads hint at arrest records when the firm's database has no record of any arrest for that name, as is the case with her own name. In other cases, such as that of Latisha Smith, the company does have arrest records for some people by that name, although not for the doctor of hypobaric medicine in Washington State.

Laura Beatty, an Internet Marketing Inc expert in helping companies achieve prominent placement in Web searches, said instantcheckmate.com appeared to choose its ads based on combinations of thousands of different first and last names and then segment them based on the first names.

"There does look like there is some definite profiling going on here," she said. "In the searches that I looked at, it seemed like the more Midwestern- and WASP-sounding the name was, the less likely it was to have either any advertisement at all or to have something that was more geared around the arrest or criminal background."

Internet firms selling criminal records and personal data to the public have proliferated in recent years, as low-cost computing enables even modest operations to maintain large databases on millions of Americans. Such sites sell access to users for a one-time fee - $29.95 in the case of instantcheckmate.com - or via monthly subscription plans.

Instant Checkmate, first registered in Nevada in 2010, said in a recent press release posted online that the firm had attracted more than 570,000 customers since its start and counted more than 200,000 subscribers.

According to alexa.com, an Amazon.Com Inc site analyzing website traffic, instantcheckmate.com has ranged roughly between the 500th and 600th most visited U.S. site in recent weeks, making it an increasingly major player in this area.

The company is able to target its ads on an individual name basis through a program called Google AdWords. Instantcheckmate.com and others companies like it use Google AdWords to bid to place small text advertisements alongside search results on major websites triggered by the names in their data base. Such ads typically cost a company far less than a dollar, sometimes just a few pennies, each time they're clicked.

Google says it does not control what names appear in AdWords. "Advertisers select all of their keywords, and ads are triggered when someone searches for that name. We don't have any role in the advertiser's selection of unique proper names," said a Google spokesman.

Some in Congress have raised concerns about developments in the use of personal data. In October, Senator John Rockefeller IV, a Democrat from West Virginia and chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, opened a probe into leading data brokers. "Collecting, storing and selling information about Americans raises all types of questions that require careful scrutiny," he said.

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EU plan could push up access costs for broadband challengers

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Smaller telecoms providers may have to pay more to rent space on networks owned by former monopolies as part of efforts to boost the fiber broadband rollout, a European Commission document seen by Reuters showed.

The Commission's recommendation came after strong criticism from major operators, such as Telecom Italia SpA, forced it to backtrack from an initial proposal to cut such access charges to legacy copper networks.

The proposal underlines EU concerns that economic growth in the 27-country European Union could lag behind the United States and Asia because of a lack of broadband connectivity.

Under the new plan, which is subject to scrutiny by national telecoms regulators and could still be modified, monthly rental access prices per customer would have to range between 8 and 10 euros by the end of 2016.

If the range is adopted, it could lead to higher charges in 10 EU countries including the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Hungary and Estonia, which currently offer rates below 8 euros.

For example, the rent in Slovakia would double from the 4.20 euros charged in October 2011, the Commission's data showed.

On the other hand, Ireland, which currently has the highest monthly cost at 12.41 euros, Finland, Britain and Luxembourg would have to bring their prices down.

Incumbent operators such as Deutsche Telekom AG, Telefonica SA, France Telecom SA and Telecom Italia, inherited copper-based networks when they were privatized in the 1990s.

The former monopolies have said they need the cash from rents to invest in costly fiber broadband which can deliver much higher speeds than traditional copper lines.

The EU document also said that new fiber broadband networks would not be subject to regulation. The EU executive had floated the idea in July, saying a regulatory holiday would be valid as long as there was enough competition in the market.

"The national regulatory authority (NRA) should not maintain or impose price control obligations, including obligations for cost-orientation," the document said.

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Thousands touched by photograph of New York cop helping shoeless man

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A photograph of a New York City police officer  crouching by a shoeless panhandler to give him a new pair of boots on a cold night in Times Square has drawn a deluge of praise after it was published on the police department's Facebook page this week.

By Thursday afternoon, nearly 394,000 people had clicked a button on the department's Facebook page to indicate that they "liked" the photograph. Tens of thousands left comments, most praising Officer Lawrence DePrimo for his charitable deed.

The photograph was snapped by Jennifer Foster, an employee of the Pinal County Sheriff's Office in Florence, Arizona, during a trip to New York this month, according to police.

She took the picture shortly after she noticed the man asking passersby for money.

"Right when I was about to approach, one of your officers came up behind him," Foster wrote in an email to the New York Police Department accompanying the snapshot, according to the picture caption on the department's Facebook page. She said she was some distance away, and the officer did not know he was being photographed.

"The officer said, ‘I have these size 12 boots for you, they are all-weather. Let's put them on and take care of you.' The officer squatted down on the ground and proceeded to put socks and the new boots on this man."

DePrimo and Foster could not be reached for comment on Thursday, and the police department did not respond to queries about the photograph.

DePrimo, 25, joined the force in 2010 and lives with his parents on Long Island, according to The New York Times. He paid $75 for the boots from a nearby Skechers store after an employee there gave him a 25 percent discount upon learning they were to be donated to a man in need.

"I wish more cops were like this guy," one person wrote on the department's Facebook page. Others suggested there were plenty of good-hearted police officers about, even if their good deeds were not photographed or touted on Facebook.

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