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Beckham sad as Yallop quits Galaxy

CARSON, Calif. (AP) — David Beckham said Galaxy players were sad after Frank Yallop resigned as head coach of the Los Angeles-based MLS team on Sunday.

Obviously, we’re disappointed, England international midfielder Beckham told reporters following a charity match for Southern California’s wildfire victims.

We felt that he was the right man. We felt that he’s a good manager and a strong character with the team.

But, we’ve all said, he’s not walking away. He’s looking after himself and he’s looking after his family. It’s what we would all do. We’re sad to see him leave and we wish him all the luck and all the best.

Yallop has left to return to San Jose and coach the Earthquakes.

Frank steered our team through a unique and challenging period in our history, Galaxy president and general manager Alexi Lalas said in a statement.

He is a friend and a gentleman, and I want to personally thank him for his contributions. We wish him nothing but the best in his return to San Jose.

The Earthquakes, who will return to MLS in 2008, signed Yallop to a three-year contract after acquiring his rights from Galaxy for a third-round pick in January, Quakes general manager John Doyle told media.

As we’re starting anew, this is a step in the right direction, Doyle said. Frank has history here, his best years of coaching were here, and he has a great way with players. We needed a good name and good coach, and we have that in Frank.

Former Ipswich Town player Yallop, hired by the Galaxy to replace Steve Sampson in June 2006, was 18-21-12 in two years with the L.A. club and failed to earn a playoff berth.

The arrival of Beckham from Real Madrid threw the club into the spotlight, but the ex-Manchester United star’s contribution was restricted by an ankle injury.

Yallop told his players of his plans on Sunday — three days before the Galaxy play an exhibition game against Vancouver Whitecaps in Canada. E-mail to a friend

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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At least 20,000 remain trapped in Mexico floods

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico (AP) — Hungry and dehydrated victims of one of the worst floods in Mexico’s history scrambled for government packages of food and medicine, while at least 20,000 people remained trapped Monday on the rooftops of homes swallowed by water.

Residents were running dangerously short of food and water after nearly a week of floods left 80 percent of the Gulf Coast state of Tabasco under water and destroyed or damaged the homes of about half a million people.

Authorities said two more bodies were found Sunday in the brackish waters covering much of the region. If the deaths are confirmed to have been caused by the floods, the disaster’s death toll would stand at 10.

Government officials worked furiously to distribute aid, and authorities continued trolling the water-filled streets looking for stranded residents.

Villahermosa, the state capital, was still completely under water, though river levels had begun to drop after rising to historic levels. The National Water Commission said it had begun efforts to start pumping the streets.

Desperation grew among residents who could not get their hands on government-supplied food and water or who found themselves cut off from crucial medical supplies. Garbage piled up in the murky waters days after the city suspended most public services including trash collection.

As helicopters carrying aid made stops in hard-hit areas, disputes broke out among victims who pushed through crowds and struggled frantically for the packages.

People are fighting over food and water, and the lack of electricity and running water are making life in the city impossible, said Martha Lilia Lopez, who has been handing out food to victims on behalf of a nonprofit foundation she heads.

Daniel Montiel Ortiz, who oversaw helicopter rescue efforts for the federal police, said rescuers were now focused on selective evacuations — primarily of sick people — and delivering badly needed supplies to isolated communities still surrounded by water.

Some people broke into shuttered stores and took food and household goods, and police reported detaining about 50 people for looting over the last couple of days. But Ortiz called those isolated incidents. Watch how some flood victims have prepared for looters

Soldiers created makeshift docks out of sandbags for boats that trolled the water-filled streets, rescuing stranded victims. Some people hitched boat rides back to homes they abandoned a week earlier to retrieve medication, clothing and other supplies before returning to shelters.

We are tired of being in the shelter, but who knows when we will be able to return home? said Mariano Beltran, 35, as he waited for a lift home to pick up medicine for his mother.

Since rivers first began to burst their banks October 28, at least half a million people have been affected by lost power and cut-off roads, according to the government. In neighboring Chiapas state, four bridges and 180 miles of roads were washed out.

Many in Tabasco remained camped out on the rooftops or upper floors of their flooded homes to guard their possessions from looters, but their resolve was waning.

We spent days without food. We thought we were going to die, said Marta Vidal, 47, who was taken to safety by helicopter.

President Felipe Calderon visited the city Sunday and assured the government would help victims get back on their feet with three months of free electricity and tax exemptions. He also vowed to crackdown on looting.

I know that the situation has been very grave, but it is getting better, Calderon told emergency officials.
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Mac’s Leopard an elegant upgrade

(CNET.com) — Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is Apple’s first major operating system upgrade since Tiger more than two years ago. The changes include more than 300 new features, which, while not earth-shattering, further streamline the experience of using a Mac.

Should you pay for Leopard? If you’re happy with the way Tiger works, then maybe not. If you need Bootcamp, however, then you must have Leopard. And if you’re considering the purchase of a new computer, Leopard makes Macs more enticing than Tiger did.

Plus, Leopard makes it far easier to find documents and applications than Windows Vista. Leopard’s interface niceties made the daily mechanics of using the computer more pleasurable. Mundane chores, such as finding files and backing up data, become a visual treat.

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard costs $129 out of the box, or $199 for up to five users. Those who bought Macs after October 1 must pay $9.95 to have Leopard shipped to them.

Setup and installation It took us about 40 minutes to install Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard on an Intel-based MacBook. That’s a bit longer than it took to install than Windows Vista, but not by much. However, installation didn’t run so smoothly on some systems. Leopard took a painfully long hour or so to install on an iBook G4, the 933 Mhz processor just grazing the minimum requirements.

You should proceed carefully when migrating the files and applications you’ll need. Apple steps you through the process, but take your time to avoid overwriting valuable data. Leopard changed the personal desktop image during one migration from Tiger, while leaving the desktop photo alone in other cases. After installing Leopard on MacBook Pro 2.33 Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, there were problems with various applications, including Parallels and GroupCal.

Leopard ran bug-free on a 2Ghz Core 2 Duo Macbook. Some users, however, reported the fabled blue screen of death historically associated with Microsoft Windows; Apple addressed the issue.

To run Leopard, you’ll need an Intel or PowerPC G5 Mac. A PowerPC-based G4 Mac with an 867MHz or better processor will work, as well. Apple suggests having 512MB of RAM. Additionally, you’ll need a USB or FireWire external backup drive (or a file-sharing volume on a network) to use Time Machine. Features on iChat require a Webcam.

Interface The new look and feel of Leopard is different without demanding that you relearn the layout. The Dock organizing applications and files becomes a bit more transparent. Bump it over to one side, and the Dock looks a bit flatter. A drop shadow now highlights the active window, and all windows share a unified visual design.

Click on an icon on the Dock and related items fan out in the order you last accessed them. New Stacks help to unclutter your desktop by showing icons of items in the order they were last accessed. This is especially helpful for keeping downloads in one place, although you can’t resize the icons. If the Stack is packed with items, you can display them as a grid.

The souped-up Finder introduces a sidebar that allows you to rearrange items in the Places section, while Search For submenus can locate files based on type and when you last worked on them. Click on Today, for instance, and you’ll see everything you’ve touched lately in chronological order. If you work on a network, checking out another person’s desktop starts with the simple Share Screen option.

Spotlight scours through files in shared folders on a network, as well as within Safari’s Web History (which you should regularly dump to fend off snoops). It gets smarter, reading Not and Or, dates and phrases, and even serving as a calculator for trig equations.

Many new design elements reflect what you’ve already seen in iTunes and iPhone. Cover Flow, for instance, shuffles through folders as you hold down an arrow key. This makes perfect sense for browsing files. Plus, you can peek at most documents instantly. Quick Look provides previews that can pop up files from iWork, iLife, Microsoft Office, PDFs, as well as popular image and video formats. In each instance appear relevant options, such as Full Screen view or Add to iPhoto. Select several files, double-click them, and you’ve got a custom slide show.

In addition to making it easier to find your work, interface additions are intended to make multitasking less stressful. Virtual desktops, called Spaces, cluster open windows into categories or boxes.

This can cut the number of windows you may otherwise stack around your desktop, especially helpful for tiny monitors. For example, you could move everything you need to edit a vacation video into one space, and in another Space place the files and apps needed to write a dissertation. Spaces were a cinch to set up (such as drawing a chart in a word processor), but a tad awkward for us to master until we learned the keyboard shortcuts. You can also use the mouse to drag items between Spaces, and to drag the Spaces themselves around.

If you rarely back up your work because the process is too boring or confusing, Time Machine is likely to change that.

The spaced-out interface is about as sexy as backup can get, displaying a dynamic timeline alongside snapshots of selected folders and files throughout their history.

To restore a file you lost, just go to an earlier time, click the Restore button, and you’ll zoom back to your present Desktop. For a current period of 24 hours, Time Machine backs up automatically every hour. It backs up each day for the past month and each week for content updated earlier than that.

Time Machine immediately detected our external hard drive via two USB ports and we started backing up within a few minutes. You cannot back up to your Mac’s hard drive.

You can check out the drives of fellow Leopard users with Time Machine, too. However, Apple doesn’t offer password-protection and encryption options upfront showing you how to lock that drive from curious outsiders. Only longtime Mac users are likely to know to explore such options within Leopard’s Security settings.

iChat lets you and Leopard-using buddies share files and control each others’ desktops, expanding the tool’s potential professional use. And you can record iChat sessions as AAC audio or MPEG video files ready for an iPod, which is a great feature for podcasters.

iChat Theater’s silly effects can distort your face like you’re looking in a fun-house mirror. Green-screen backgrounds within iChat Theater let your talking head appear in a video conference in front of, say, included images of the moon or your own pictures. (We still wish the Star Wars R2D2 theme were included.)

Other chat buddies can see these, whether they’re using an older iteration of OS X or they’re using AIM on a Windows PC. iChat enables you to share files as you gab via video, so you and a friend can watch the same movie clip or flip through the same PowerPoint presentation. Photo Booth integrates with iChat, letting you record videos and show off full-screen slide shows.

Mac’s new Mail application integrates rich note-taking into e-mail. These notes can serve as scrapbooks containing images. Some 32 e-mail templates enable you to drop in pictures and resize them with a built-in photo browser. Mail’s RSS feeds tie into those in Safari.

The e-mail application also detects addresses for mapping via Google, as well as contacts for a quick save. Natural language capabilities, similar to those within Gmail, recognize phrases such as next Saturday for scheduling. Changes are synchronized between Mail and iCal. Setting up Mail is less complicated than Outlook, and it works with accounts from 27 services, including Yahoo, AOL, and Gmail.

However, we wish we could access RSS feeds from Mail without signing into our e-mail account. We encountered delays with several different Gmail accounts. In one case, the most current Gmail message that loaded in Mail–15 minutes after we had logged in–was from December 2006. We kept leaning on the Get Mail button for an unsatisfactory, slow and incomplete refresh.

Finally, the Safari browser default is tabbed without making you turn on the feature. Safari’s cool new Web Clips tool lets you turn any snippet from a Web page into a widget for your Dashboard. Potential plug-ins from third parties that would be nice to have already include the Web Clips feature for the popular Mozilla Firefox browser.

Leopard offers many tie-ins to Web-based content (see the Webware video). Among them is Wikipedia as a new companion to the Dictionary. Although you can access the open-source encyclopedia from the Desktop, no entries are saved locally.

Geotagging is a cool addition to Leopard, enabling you to tie photos to latitude and longitude through built-in GPS on digital cameras so you can put picture galleries on a map.

Leopard offers 17 new features. There’s support for Braille output devices as well as contracted and non-contracted Braille. It’s the first operating system that can use a Braille display during installation.

VoiceOver makes it easier to jump to sections on a Web page, and its preferences can be transported to other Macs. However, for people with repetitive stress injuries, Leopard supports voice-activated commands only–not dictation.

There are updates to less glamorous elements such as Automator and Dashcode, and Network Preferences has been streamlined. Developers can enjoy full 64-bit support, and get to tinker with fun extras, which we wish were integrated already within iChat Theater.

ColorSync reads EXIF sRGB data from cameras, and there’s support for connecting more cameras via cable or Wi-Fi, and for other gadgets via Bluetooth.

Security More firewall controls are among several security enhancements to Leopard. Yet the firewall isn’t turned on by default, and we consider it vulnerable to outside threats. To fend off Trojans and spoofing attempts, you’ll be grilled more when downloading materials.

A mechanism called Sandboxing is supposed to prevent potential external threats from hijacking your applications. Parental controls are now featured more prominently in the System and offer content filters, time limits, and Internet activity loggers to keep tabs on young Web surfers.

We saw only a 1 percent to 3 percent improvement with Leopard over Tiger on our performance tests. As this falls within our typical margin of error (5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when moving from Tiger to Leopard.

We were unable to complete our Photoshop CS3 test because our automation routine tests, which typically run fine under Tiger, had problems with Leopard.

Adobe’s Web site indicates that Photoshop CS3 should be compatible with Leopard–other than the automation snafu, Photoshop CS3 appears to operate normally.

This underlies the point that some applications might not be 100 percent compatible yet with Leopard. For instance, Adobe is rolling out updates to various CS3 image, video and audio editing applications within the next four months.

FileMaker is warning users of FileMaker Pro 9 that there are some compatibility problems with Leopard. However, FileMaker expects to have an update available by November 19.

Service and support Support options remain the same as in the Tiger version. You get 90 days of help free by telephone, as with other products from Apple.

Phone support thereafter costs $49 per incident. AppleCare support lasts a year after you buy Leopard. For extra peace of mind, you should consider extended warranties.

Apple also tweaked the Help menus within OS X 10.5. These are arranged well, although they didn’t always provide an instant answer. Many items are better explained on Apple’s Web site via message boards, user forums, and a well-organized knowledge base. E-mail to a friend

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Rice says Palestinian state within reach

RAMALLAH, West Bank (CNN) — A Palestinian state alongside Israel is within reach, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday after talks with the Palestinian president and Israeli prime minister.

Rice said a proposed summit in Annapolis, Maryland, later this year can be a launching pad toward a two-state solution.

We appear to be on course to prepare seriously for continuous ongoing negotiations, said Rice, who appeared at a press briefing in the West Bank with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. She met Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who underscored the importance of the Annapolis summit in a speech.

Annapolis will be the jumping-off point for continued serious and in-depth negotiations which will not avoid any issue or ignore any division which has clouded our relations with the Palestinian people for many years, Olmert said.

Rice said there are very clear signs Arab neighbors want the process to succeed. I can really say without fear of contradiction that everybody’s goal is the creation of a Palestinian state, she said.

Rice’s trip is her third visit to the Middle East since mid-September, indicative of the Bush administration’s efforts to jump-start the dormant peace process before the president’s term ends.

Abbas said he was encouraged by Olmert’s statements Sunday and said he’s seeking an accord that will lead to a solution on final status issues such as Jerusalem, settlements, water and refugees.

We are serious to use this opportunity to reach this historical peace which would lead to the establishment of the Palestinian state and its capital East Jerusalem, that will live side by side with the state of Israel, said Abbas.

No date has been set for the Annapolis summit because both sides have yet to reach an agreement on the mutual vision they hope to present at the conference.

Olmert, who opposed the Oslo Accords in the early ’90s, said an opportunity for peace talks exists because it’s time.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, and Salaam Fayyad, its prime minister, publicly state — without hesitation and despite the inherent difficulties of the complex relations within Palestinian society — that they want to live with us in peace. This is an opportunity. It should be taken, Olmert said.
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Writers hit the picket lines

NEW YORK (CNN) — Dozens of writers picketed Monday morning outside NBC studios at Rockefeller Plaza, carrying signs and yelling, on the first day of the Writers Guild of America’s strike against studios and production companies.

What do we want? a man called to the strikers.

Contracts! the group answered.

When do we want it?

Now!

The writers’ union says the strike, which began at 12:01 a.m. PT (3:01 a.m. ET), is necessary to protect their members’ future incomes as the shows they write are increasingly distributed over new media, primarily through Internet downloading. A last-day effort to reach a new work agreement collapsed Sunday night despite the writers conceding a demand for a doubling of how much they are paid for DVD sales. This had been considered the major stumbling block to a deal.

The DVD situation has always been a catastrophe, Warren Leight, the executive producer of NBC’s Law and Order: Criminal Intent, said Monday. But, he stressed, At the moment, we have no piece of the Internet at all. Watch what’s at stake

While studios have been hoarding scripts for months in anticipation of a strike, some television shows that are more topical — particularly late-night TV talk shows — are expected to immediately go to re-runs.

It’s affecting us in the most visible way possible, John Oliver, a writer and correspondent for The Daily Show, told CNN on Monday as he stood amid the pickets, who carried signs that read On Strike and Pencils Down. The group had also brought a large inflatable rat, which they had tethered to metal railings set up along the street.

We’re off the air, Oliver said. We’d much rather work than stand in the cold. Writers are people who fear the sunlight, he added, smiling.

However, he said, the writers need new contracts that incorporate new media’s impact.

Clearly, revenue is being created from new media, he said. But we are not receiving any of it.

The president of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) criticized the WGA negotiators for walking out of the talks Sunday night.

When we asked if they would ’stop the clock’ for the purpose of delaying the strike to allow negotiations to continue, they refused, said AMPTP President Nick Counter.

The union’s statement early Monday morning said that while it chose to withdraw its DVD proposal — which they say would have doubled writers’ residuals — the studios and production companies were still insisting on a framework concerning Internet distribution that makes a mockery of any residual, the statement said.

The WGA said producers want to deny the union future jurisdiction over scripts written for most new media and have offered no economic proposal for the parts of new media writing the guild wants covered.

Other rules demanded by producers would give writers no residuals when a movie is streamed online or during a window when online consumers have free reuse of downloads, the WGA said.

Counter placed the blamed for the failed talks on the negotiators for the writers.

We made an attempt at meeting them in a number of their key areas, including Internet streaming and jurisdiction in new media, Counter said.

Ultimately, the guild was unwilling to compromise on most of their major demands.

While working writers are generally paid well, they depend on residuals to get them through often-frequent times of unemployment.

And, as video iPods and Internet downloads increasingly supplant traditional television and movie theaters, writers confront a changing industry. Their last contract was negotiated in 1988, years before DVD sales displaced VHS distribution.

Reality television has been another wake-up call for writers, since most do not require scripts. American Idol and other hit shows should not be affected by a prolonged strike.

AMPTP said that 67 percent — 64 of 96 — television series this season are scripted, down from 81 percent just two seasons ago. Late-night television hosts like David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel, as well as programs like The Daily Show will likely feel the pinch of the strike first. Because of their topical nature, networks do not typically shoot these shows in advance.

Daytime soaps normally stockpile about 30 days in advance and most prime-time shows would likely make it through the end of the year without any major impact on programming.

A spokeswoman for the guild, Sherry Goldman, told CNN on Monday that the strike would not affect news divisions.

But networks would have to resort to reruns, news programs and reality shows to fill the schedule in 2008 if a strike were to drag on.

If the strike lingers, the WGA faces the danger of writers opting out of full membership for financial core status, which would allow them to return to work. They would lose their voting privileges, but retain all benefits.

The last WGA strike 20 years ago lasted five and a half months. It cost the entertainment industry an estimated $500 million.
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