Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

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Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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After generations of failure, a school and its students head for success

I was prepared for the dog-and-pony show — the choreographed "reveal" of a school makeover that's been in the works for years.

I didn't expect much beyond a grown-up version of show-and-tell. But I came anyway because I have a soft spot for Jordan High in Watts.

I've spent a decade tracking the school's efforts to improve; watched reformers arrive with big plans and leave with broken dreams.

The school's problems, they'd say, are too deep and expensive to fix; too intertwined with a neighborhood that will always be warped by dysfunction and poverty.

But on Wednesday, state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson visited the school with certificates announcing its improvement. Jordan's 93-point jump on the state's academic performance index was the biggest of any urban high school in California this year.

That's why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa showed up after working "56 hours straight" on trade missions and labor deals. "No way I'd miss this," he said. His Partnership for Los Angeles Schools is the architect of Jordan's reforms.

And it's why philanthropist Melanie Lundquist, whose $50-million contribution keeps the partnership going, showed up ready to celebrate the return on her investment in this city's struggling schools.

We spent the morning visiting classrooms, talking with teachers, oohing and aahing over pristine hallways and perfectly manicured grounds.

But what moved me most was what I heard from students on a campus that, for generations, hasn't been able to shake its "failure" label.

"It used to be 'Why are we here at Jordan?'," said one 12th-grade girl. We knew what she meant:

Their school was nothing but a holding pen. Their neighborhood had been written off. Their lives would never change.

That's how it was for years, she said. "Now everybody is seeing the change, in the school and the community."

::

I don't know that everybody is seeing a difference. "Change" here has been a popular but failed refrain.

Two years ago, the school was failing so persistently, it was essentially dissolved — reconstituted, in edu-speak. Its students and campus were divided between two groups, Green Dot Charter and the mayor's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

Both schools on the campus posted gains this year. But the partnership's jump — from 515 to 608 on the state's academic performance index — surprised even its most ardent supporters.

Still, 608 isn't scholar status; scores at the best public high schools are more than 200 points higher. And Jordan isn't out of the woods. Its enrollment dropped this fall, after a charter school with "college" in its name opened up nearby.

The students I talked with understand that Jordan's reputation may be its biggest hurdle. And they intend to change that by succeeding, returning as mentors and spreading the word.

"We know that we're the ones that have to make the difference," said senior Esmeralda Diaz. She was Student of the Month in her chemistry class — for her good work and for helping classmates with theirs.

She's not sold on all the changes at Jordan. She misses the pep rallies, the socializing, the school spirit that disappeared when her campus was divided in half and its student body shrunk.

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North Korea Gets Ready for Launching

SEOUL, South Korea — The name of the satellite that North Korea will attempt to put into orbit as early as next week helps explain why the country’s impoverished regime wanted its own satellite project. Kwangmyongsong, or Shining Star, was also a title for Kim Jong-il — the late father of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the man whose legacy of nuclear and missile programs his son must consolidate to justify his own hereditary rule.

North Korea’s state news media make it clear that the country’s rocket and nuclear programs have become integral to its self-image as a small, poor but militarily powerful country, which bigger nations must placate with economic concessions, and to its ruling party’s claim to political legitimacy. Thus, analysts say, North Korea will push ahead with its plan to launch the satellite despite international warnings of more sanctions.

By Thursday, all three stages of an Unha-3 rocket had been assembled at a launching pad, waiting for fueling, according to South Korean officials. North Korea said the countdown could come as early as Monday.

The timing is urgent for North Korea and tricky for regional powers.

Dec. 17 is the first anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, an occasion his son’s government must mark with something it hopes will remind its people of the late leader’s greatness and the success of his son’s leadership. This year is also the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather and the founder of the dynasty, as well as the year North Korea was to have become a “strong and prosperous nation.” Mr. Kim is running out of time to provide some evidence of that achievement.

And “what better time to paint Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing into a corner with a flare-up that demands crisis-management diplomacy than during leadership transition?” asked Lee Sung-yoon, a North Korea specialist at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, referring to elections and leadership changes unfolding in countries with the most at stake in the region.

“For Pyongyang, the perennial problem child in Northeast Asia, it pays to provoke,” Mr. Lee said, noting the North’s longstanding strategy of using military threats to grab the region’s attention and extract concessions.

This will be the second attempt by North Korea to send a satellite named after its late leader into orbit by year’s end. A rocket carrying a Kwangmyongsong satellite exploded in April shortly after takeoff. The mishap embarrassed Mr. Kim before the foreign journalists his government had invited to witness the launching. It also scuttled U.S. aid shipments and invited the comment from the country’s rival, South Korea, that the estimated $900 million Pyongyang had spent in developing and launching the rocket would have been better used to buy food for its hungry people. Mr. Kim hardly needs another embarrassment.

If successful, however, the rocket launching will bolster the claim North Korea made in October that it has missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. Washington has said that the North Korean rocket is essentially a long-range missile minus a warhead, and therefore banned under U.N. resolutions. How close North Korea has come to mastering the technology necessary to deliver a nuclear payload by intercontinental ballistic missile is open to question.

The planned rocket launching comes amid signs that North Korea and Iran, Washington’s two leading proliferation concerns, have been strengthening their ties, including an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation signed in September. Iran said in 2009 that it had succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit with its Safir rocket. The Japanese and South Korean news media reported this week that Iranian specialists were in North Korea to help fix whatever caused the April launch failure.

“It’s time to formally consider the North Korean and Iranian missile development programs as an integrated one: A missile test in Iran helps North Korea, and a missile test in North Korea helps Iran in terms of sharing of test results and improved components,” said John S. Park, a nuclear security researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adding that Chinese companies have served as intermediaries helping procure and transport components for the two nations.

The North Korean rocket presents one of the first foreign policy tests for Xi Jinping, the new Chinese leader. So far, Beijing appears to be following its standard playbook, not obsessing, publicly at least, over North Korea’s missile threats while encouraging the gradual economic reforms that it hopes will bring progress on denuclearization. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has called on “all sides” to remain “calm and restrained.”

Washington has condemned North Korea’s “highly provocative act.” But the administration of President Barack Obama, who will begin his second term in January, will probably need months to coordinate policy with the new leaderships its allies are in the midst of selecting. Japan is to hold parliamentary elections Dec. 16, and South Korea will elect a president Dec. 19.

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Minecraft sells almost 4.5 million copies on Xbox 360 as other indie games continue to struggle

Big-budget games such as Halo 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops II might brag about how they rule the Xbox 360 in terms of sales, but indie games can also compete – if they’re addictive enough and offer enough value. Take Minecraft, an indie game developed by Markus “Notch” Persson’s company Mojang. According to Mojang, Minecraft, an indie game originally made for PC and ported to the Xbox 360 seven months ago has sold 4,476,904 copies as of the end of November with 40,000 to 60,000 copies sold every week. Minecraft is an anomaly because it doesn’t boast high-definition graphics that ooze of detailed lighting effects and didn’t cost millions of dollars to make, and yet it is the third-most played game on Xbox LIVE.

According to Gamasutra’s analysis and breakdown of November’s Xbox Live Arcade sales, only three other indie games managed to break 1 million copies downloaded last month. See below for the chart.

As you can see, every other game on Xbox Live Arcade other than Castle Crashers, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Happy Wars and Counter Strike: GO isn’t seeing the same type of success Minecraft is.

The lesson here is developers should always focus on the product and the users. If the gameplay mechanics are solid, the experience is fluid and bug-free, the gamers will come.

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Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The X Factor Reveals Its Four Semi-Finalists

TV Watch

The X Factor

By Aaron Parsley

12/06/2012 at 09:20 PM EST

There were tears on The X Factor Thursday night.

With only four spots in next week's semi-finals, the six acts who performed two songs each Wednesday night were a tense bunch. Especially after last week's shocking elimination that sent home fan favorite Vino Alan.

A majority of PEOPLE.com readers picked Demi Lovato's only remaining contestant, CeCe Frey, as the singer who most deserved elimination. Was she able to make it through one more week? Keep reading for all the results ...

CeCe Frey was the first to go.

"I'm proud of everything that I've done on this show," she said. "I hope I've taught everyone at home that you need to love who you are, because the more you love who you are, the less you're going to need anybody else to."

Her coach tried to avoid tears but shed a few anyway. "I've grown so close to you," Demi said. "And I'm just so proud of you."

Three acts were then declare safe: Simon Cowell's boy band, Emblem3; Britney Spears's frontrunner, Carly Rose Sonenclar; and L.A. Reid's country singer, Tate Stevens, also a frontrunner.

That left Team Britney's Diamond White and Simon's other group, Fifth Harmony, to sing for survival.

Fifth Harmony sang Mariah Carey's "Anytime You Need a Friend," and Diamond sang Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance."

As expected, Simon and Britney voted to send home each other's acts. But it was the end of the road for Diamond, after L.A. and Demi both voted to send her home as well.

"I'm just thinking of Cher Lloyd right now," she said of the "Want U Back" singer. "She came in fifth and look where she is."

Here's how the top four ranked:
1. Tate Stevens
2. Carly Rose Sonenclar
3. Emblem3
4. Fifth Harmony

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Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

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Intersection near L.A. library named for Ray Bradbury

The intersection of 5th and Flower streets in downtown Los Angeles was designated Ray Bradbury Square by city officials Thursday.

But a better description might be "the intersection of imagination and inspiration," author and producer Steven Paul Leiva told fans of the noted writer who died in June at age 91.

The location, near the front entrance to the Central Library, is a fitting place to honor the author of "The Illustrated Man" and "The Martian Chronicles" because Bradbury was a lifelong supporter of libraries and wrote his early short stories and novels on library typewriters that were available to the public.

"Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college so he went to the public library instead," city Librarian John Szabo told a crowd of more than 100 on hand for the unveiling of the intersection's new signs. "He said he graduated at age 28 from the library."

Said one of Bradbury's daughters, Sue Bradbury Nixon:

"My father would say that the library was his university. He would lecture at libraries for free. He was concerned that without everyone's support libraries would close."

Bradbury's writing career began at age 12 when he met a carnival magician called Mr. Electrico, who touched him with his "electric sword" and caused his hair to stand on in end, which he later described as an epiphany.

"I knew something special had happened in my life," Bradbury would explain.

Those honoring Bradbury on Thursday recalled his poetically spun fantasy and horror tales, some of which reflected his fear that technology was causing humans to lose touch with their souls.

The theme of his 1953 bestseller "Fahrenheit 451," in which a totalitarian government destroys books, was not censorship but how technology such as television was deterring people from reading, he said.

Perhaps because of that fear, Bradbury pounded out his 1,000-word-a-day writing regimen on a typewriter instead of a computer and was reluctant to have his work published as e-books.

Nonetheless, he remained a futurist to the end. Actor Joe Mantegna, who had a role in the 1998 movie "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" — based on Bradbury's 1957 short story called "The Magic White Suit" — told the crowd that the author's dream was to have his ashes "put in a Campbell's soup can and sent to Mars."

"He was a science fiction writer who admitted he knew no science," said another friend, fellow science fiction author David Brin. "He couldn't solve an algebra problem. He'd say 'I don't write science fiction. I write fantasy.' But nothing made him happier than sitting next to Walter Cronkite during the moon landing."

Brin joked that Bradbury "nodded" in recognition to City Councilman Jose Huizar, who represents the downtown area, when a gust of wind knocked a large color portrait of him off an easel. It was caught by author Sam Weller, who wrote a 2005 biography of Bradbury.

He said a Fire Department ambulance's siren "saluted" Bradbury as it screamed down Flower Street, momentarily drowning out City Councilman Paul Koretz as he spoke to the crowd.

Although Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., and his family didn't move to Los Angeles until he was 14, the new Ray Bradbury Square signs succinctly describe him as "Author-Angeleno."

bob.pool@latimes.com

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Oscar Niemeyer, Modernist Architect of Brasília, Dies at 104

Eraldo Peres/Associated Press

The Esplanade of Ministries in Brasília features some of the most famous works by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, including the Metropolitan Cathedral, center right. More Photos »

Oscar Niemeyer, the celebrated Brazilian architect whose flowing designs infused Modernism with a new sensuality and captured the imaginations of generations of architects around the world, died on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 104.

The medical staff at the Hospital Samaritano in Rio, where he was being treated, said on national television that he died of a respiratory infection. Mr. Niemeyer was among the last of a long line of Modernist true believers who stretch from Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe to the architects who defined the postwar architecture of the late 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. He is best known for designing the government buildings of Brasília, a sprawling new capital carved out of the Brazilian savanna that became an emblem both of Latin America’s leap into modernity and, later, of the limits of Modernism’s utopian aspirations.

His curvaceous, lyrical, hedonistic forms helped shape a distinct national architecture and a modern identity for Brazil that broke with its colonial and baroque past. Yet his influence extended far beyond his country. Even his lesser works were a counterpoint to reductive notions of Modernist architecture as blandly functional.

“Brazil lost today one of its geniuses,” Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, said in a statement issued Wednesday night. “Few dreamed so intensely, and accomplished so much, as he did.” Allied with the far left for most of his life, he suffered career setbacks during the rule of Brazil’s right-wing military dictatorships of the 1960s and ’70s, and he was barred from working in the United States during much of the cold war. As Modernism later came under attack for its sometimes dogmatic approach to history, his works were marginalized.

Still, Mr. Niemeyer never stopped working; he churned out major new projects through his 80s and 90s. And as the cold-war divide and architecture’s old ideological battles faded from memory in recent years, a younger generation began embracing his work, intrigued by the consistency of his vision and his ability to achieve voluptuous effects on a heroic scale. For his part, Mr. Niemeyer never wavered from a conviction that, as he once put it, “form follows beauty.”

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born in Rio de Janeiro on Dec. 15, 1907, one of six children of a typographer and his wife. His father owned a graphic arts business, and a grandfather was a judge on the country’s supreme court. A precocious talent, Mr. Niemeyer was trained at the National School of Fine Arts, where he soon drew the attention of its dean, Lucio Costa. Costa was at the center of a small group of architects working to bring the message of Modernist architecture to Brazil.

The timing was ideal. Costa was then designing the Ministry of Education and Health’s headquarters in Rio, and he invited Mr. Niemeyer to join his firm as a draftsman. In 1936, the ministry hired the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier to contribute ideas for the design. Le Corbusier was already a legend in architecture, and the building would become the first major public project by a Modernist architect in Latin America.

Mr. Niemeyer, one of several draftsmen assigned to the project, absorbed Le Corbusier’s vision of a modern world shaped by the myth of the machine, and drew on the master’s belief in an architecture of abstract forms enlivened by a sensitive use of light and air.

A Vision Emerges

But Mr. Niemeyer was also a self-confident apprentice with a vision of his own; under Costa’s supervision, he made significant changes to Le Corbusier’s scheme. The columns supporting the building’s main office block were more than doubled in height, giving the structure a more slender profile. An auditorium that Le Corbusier had envisioned as a separate structure was tucked under the office block, creating a more compact urban composition.

Shielded from the sun behind rows of elegant baffles, the building had a clean, stripped-down style that made it a sparkling example of classical Modernism while heralding Brazil’s emergence as a vibrant center of experimentation.

Simon Romero contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

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In brewing rivalry, Instagram trims ties to Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s recently acquired photo-sharing service Instagram removed a key element of its integration with Twitter, signaling a deepening rift between two of the Web’s dominant social media companies.

Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom said Wednesday his company turned off support for Twitter “cards” in order to drive Twitter users to Instagram’s own website. Twitter “cards” are a feature that allows multimedia content like YouTube videos and Instagram photos to be embedded and viewed directly within a Twitter message.

The move marked the latest clash between Facebook and Twitter since April, when Facebook, the world’s no. 1 social network, outbid Twitter to nab fast-growing Instagram in a cash-and-stock deal valued at the time at $ 1 billion. The acquisition closed in September for roughly $ 715 million, reflecting Facebook’s recent stock drop.

The companies’ ties have been strained since. In July, Twitter blocked Instagram from using its data to help new Instagram users find friends.

Beginning earlier this week, Twitter’s users began to complain in public messages that Instagram photos did not seem to display properly on Twitter’s website.

Systrom confirmed Wednesday that his company had decided its users should view photos on Instagram’s own Web pages and took steps to change its policies.

“We believe the best experience is for us to link back to where the content lives,” Systrom said in a statement, citing recent improvements to Instagram’s website.

“A handful of months ago, we supported Twitter cards because we had a minimal Web presence,” Systrom said, noting that the company has since released new features that allow users to comment about and “like” photos directly on Instagram’s website.

The move escalates a rivalry in the fast-growing social networking sector, where the biggest players have sought to wall off access to content from rival services and to their ranks of users.

“They’re both competing for slices of the same pie, the pie being users’ attention,” said Ray Valdes, an analyst with research firm Gartner.

If Facebook decides to offer advertising on Instagram, it’s important that the users visit Instagram’s own website, said Valdes. “If the eyeballs are elsewhere, you have less to work with in terms of monetization,” he said.

Photos are among the most popular features on both Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram’s meteoric rise in recent years has further proved how picture-sharing has become a key front in the battle for social Internet supremacy.

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends, a feature that Twitter has reportedly also begun to develop. Twitter’s executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, was an early investor in Instagram and had hoped to acquire it before Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a successful bid.

When Zuckerberg announced the acquisition in an April blog post, he highlighted Instagram’s inter-connectivity with other social networks.

“We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience,” Zuckerberg wrote. “We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks.”

A Twitter spokesman declined comment Wednesday, but a status message on Twitter’s website confirmed that users are “experiencing issues,” such as “cropped images” when viewing Instagram photos on Twitter.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic and Gerry Shih; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Leslie Adler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kate Receives Hospital Visit from Pippa and James

12/05/2012 at 07:30 PM EST

James and Pippa Middleton

Alpha /Landov; Inset:Allpix/ plash News Online

The Duchess of Cambridge had more hospital visitors on Wednesday.

Just two days after husband Prince William, 30, was photographed leaving the King Edward VII Hospital in Central London where a pregnant Kate, 30, was admitted for hyperemesis gravidarum, her sister, Pippa Middleton, brother James and mom Carole (not pictured), also dropped by to keep the mom-to-be company.

Pippa was bundled up in a coat, sporting a tan-colored ensemble, while her brother was casually dressed in jeans and layered tops.

The Palace announced the Duchess's pregnancy Monday in a statement. "Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Cambridge is expecting a baby," it said. "The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall and Prince Harry and members of both families are delighted with the news."

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