FDA releases Canada OJ results, more due next week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators on Friday cleared the way for the first shipments of imported orange juice to enter the country since January 4, when authorities began testing for an illegal fungicide discovered in juice products from Brazil.

The Food and Drug Administration said final tests confirmed that three samples of Canadian orange juice were negative for the fungicide carbendazim. The sample findings allowed corresponding shipments from Canada into the U.S. market.

But there was no word about Brazilian orange juice, which has riveted industry attention and sent the commodities market for orange juice on its wildest rollercoaster ride in more than 20 years.

Test results have yet to be announced for 28 import samples from Brazil, Mexico and Canada. "Other samples are still pending and won't be released until next week," said FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey.

In a move that suggested testing could continue for some time, the regulatory agency said it planned to set up an online fact sheet that would be updated on Fridays.

The fungicide scare began after Atlanta soft-drink giant Coca-Cola Co. discovered carbendazim in shipments from Brazil and alerted U.S. authorities about a potential industry-wide problem. Coke is the maker of Minute Maid orange juice.

Carbendazim is used in Brazil to combat blossom blight and black spot, a type of mold that grows on orange trees.

But in the United States, it can be used only in non-food items such as paints, textiles and ornamental trees. U.S. authorities still allow trace amounts of carbendazim in 31 food types including grains, nuts and some non-citrus fruits -- but not in citrus juice.

The FDA said low levels of carbendazim are not dangerous and the agency had no plans for a recall.

But U.S. action to halt any imports with detectable levels of the chemical fanned market worries about orange juice supplies. Uncertainty over the import clampdown has already caused exporters to postpone shipments to the United States.

Brands such as Tropicana, from PepsiCo Inc., and Coke's Minute Maid may contain a mix of juices sourced from Brazil and the United States.

The FDA said testing typically takes four to five business days when no carbendazim is found during initial screening, and an additional seven days if further tests are necessary.

U.S. officials will allow any imported products containing less than 10 parts per billion to enter the United States, but will refuse entry to anything with higher levels.

The European Union allows imports with up to 200 ppb. The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates fungicides in the United States, considers several thousand parts per billion to be a health risk.

The chemical is banned in Australia.

The FDA said importers will have 90 days to export or destroy any product that has been refused.

(Additional reporting by Josephine Mason in New York)

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Judge releases Strauss-Kahn

New York (CNN) -- A New York judge released Dominique Strauss-Kahn from house arrest Friday, after prosecutors presented evidence questioning the credibility of the hotel maid who accused the former International Monetary Fund chief of sexual assault.

The alleged victim, a 32-year-old immigrant from Guinea, admitted to prosecutors that she lied about the specifics of her whereabouts following the incident, the details of an asylum application and information she put on tax forms, according to documents filed in court Friday by prosecutors.

But while the case has taken a dramatic turn, it has not been dismissed, said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance. The indictment and charges -- including criminal sexual acts and sexual abuse -- against Strauss-Kahn, 62, still stand, Vance said.

His lawyers said the alleged victim told "substantial lies about her own background and the facts of this case."

Defense attorney Benjamin Brafman commended Vance for doing what he said was appropriate.

"We believed from the beginning that this case was not what it appeared to be," he said. "We are absolutely convinced that while today is a first giant step in the right direction, the next step will lead to a complete dismissal of the charges."

Strauss-Kahn's release significantly eases the extraordinary bail conditions that had been previously ordered.

The French financier had been released from jail on $6 million bail but was under house arrest in a luxury townhouse in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. He was paying roughly $250,000 a month for court-ordered 24-hour armed guards posted at the townhouse.

The presiding judge said authorities will continue to withhold Strauss-Kahn's passport but that he is free to travel in the United States.

The stunning twist in the case came after prosecutors, in the course of their investigation, discovered that the alleged victim had not been truthful in a variety of topics regarding her history and circumstances, prosecutors said in a letter submitted to the court.

Prosecutors said the woman admitted lying in her application for asylum in the United States and that she had been a victim of a gang rape, providing details of that attack. She cried when she first told prosecutors about the rape but in a subsequent interview, she admitted the gang rape never occurred.

She said the fabricated account on the asylum application was made with the assistance of a man who "provided her with a cassette recording of the facts" so that she could memorize them.

The woman told prosecutors that she has declared the child of a friend as her own dependent on her tax return in order to receive a larger refund. She "also admitted to misrepresenting her income in order to maintain her present housing," the prosecutors said.

After the alleged hotel assault, the woman told prosecutors that she "fled to an area of the main hallway of the hotel's 28th floor and waited there until she observed the defendant leave," the prosecutors said. She said she then reported the incident to her supervisor.

But in subsequent interviews, the woman admitted her testimony before the Grand Jury was false; that she "proceeded to clean a nearby room, and then returned to Suite 2806 (the room occupied by Strauss-Kahn) and began to clean the suite before she reported the incident to her supervisor."

In angry remarks delivered outside the courthouse, the woman's attorney, Kenneth Thompson, admitted problems with his client's credibility, but the bottom line, he said was that she was attacked.

"That was true the day it happened and it is true today," he said, describing in chilling detail the account the woman gave of her attack and the bruising on her body.

"She has described that sexual assault many times to the prosecutors and to me. And she has never once changed a single thing about that account."

The development is particularly stunning given prior statements by New York authorities, who spoke forcefully about the accuser's credibility, and it leaves the felony case against Strauss-Kahn teetering on collapse, despite incontrovertible DNA evidence of sexual contact recovered from the hotel suite.

"It's just an extraordinary, extraordinary development considering this case was brought with such great fanfare by the Manhattan district attorney and they very loudly trumpeted the credibility of the accuser," said Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst.

"What makes it even more extraordinary is that the (DNA) evidence apparently shows a sexual encounter between Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the woman who is the maid. Yet even with DNA evidence, the prosecution is considering dropping the case. That shows how bad her credibility may be."

Kenneth Thompson, her attorney, said allegations about the woman's involvement in drugs, published in The New York Times, are a lie, adding that Manhattan District Attorney Vance was afraid of losing the high-profile case.

Thompson also said one of Vance's top aides is married to an individual connected Strauss-Kahn's defense team, creating an untenable conflict of interest in the case.

Vance told reporters Friday that Strauss-Kahn's release did not dismiss the indictment or any of the charges against the former IMF chief, though he did not address Thompson's accusations of impropriety.

The implications of the case are far reaching, especially in France, where before his arrest, Strauss-Kahn was considered a viable candidate in France's presidential election.

The turnaround in the case comes just ahead of the July 13 filing deadline for the French presidential primaries. If the case collapses, Strauss-Kahn theoretically has enough time to file.

His supporters would still like to see him run, though some Parisians interviewed on the streets Friday said even if Strauss-Kahn was cleared of wrongdoing, it was too late for him to seek office this go-around.

Still, many in France felt vindicated over concerns that New York prosecutors were perhaps over zealous and that there had been a rush to judgment.

They were shocked by widely broadcast footage of Strauss-Kahn in handcuffs in May, since a French law passed in 2000 prohibits the publication of images of suspects in handcuffs or in court in order to protect defendants' presumption of innocence.

Jack Lang, France's former minister of culture and education, said he was very happy about the latest developments -- and hoped to see his fellow Socialist party politician make a comeback.

"If the prosecutor and the court decide to declare the innocence of DSK, it will be a good day -- a good day for Dominique himself, a good day for American justice, a good day for France and a good day for the Left," he said.

CNN's Susan Candiotti in New York and Jim Bittermann and Saskya Vandoorne in Paris contributed to this report.

CNN

Alaska releases Sarah Palin e-mails

NEW: Palin, aides express frustration with questions about children's travelPalin wanted to know about "past administration's dealing" with scandal figureThe 24,000 pages of records include e-mails include both official, personal accountsRelease of e-mails is in response to a 2008 Freedom of Information requestEditor's note: CNN is in Juneau, Alaska, to examine the more than 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin's emails being released by the Alaska governor's office. They will be available over the weekend on CNNPolitics.com and we invite our readers to examine them and contribute to the discussion.

Juneau, Alaska (CNN) -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin moved quickly to link a key figure in a 2007 corruption scandal that rocked the state's political establishment to her defeated predecessor, newly released documents show.

"FYI -- I've asked Frank Bailey to help me track down soem [sic] evidence of past administration's dealing with Bill Allen," Palin wrote on May 8, 2007, a day after Allen pleaded guilty to bribery, extortion and conspiracy.

The document is one of the roughly 24,000 pages of records from Palin's administration released by Alaska state officials on Friday in response to requests from reporters dating to her 2008 entry into the national spotlight. The release follows Freedom of Information Act requests filed by CNN and five other news agencies made shortly after Palin was tapped to be Sen. John McCain's GOP vice presidential running mate.

Allen had been the CEO of the Alaska oilfield services company VECO, and federal prosecutors accused him of leading a scheme to bribe top lawmakers in exchange for favorable state action.

The day after Allen's guilty plea, Palin sent e-mails to staffers asking for information on his ties to her predecessor, Frank Murkowski. Palin had beaten Murkowski in 2006 in a primary battle in which she campaigned as a reformer, and backed an unsuccessful 2010 challenge to Murkowski's daughter, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

Aides soon replied that VECO had paid $15,000 to fly Frank Murkowski and Allen to a Council of State Governments meeting in Thailand in 2004. Palin aides also asked Allen to resign from a seat on a state board that cultivated ties with the Canadian province of Alberta, a request to which Allen -- who was later sentenced to three years in prison -- quickly agreed.

Palin is now seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2012. A spokesman for her political action committee said the documents released Friday will show "a governor hard at work."

"The thousands upon thousands of e-mails released today show a very engaged Governor Sarah Palin being the CEO of her state," said Tim Crawford, treasurer of Sarah PAC, Palin's political action committee.

The messages detail the back-and-forth between Palin and her top aides as she pushed state support for a massive natural gas pipeline and new taxes on the oil and gas industry that supports the state's economy. It also gives a glimpse of the feedback that Palin was receiving when leading conservatives first began talking her up as a possible running mate for McCain, in the middle of 2008.

"As a life long Republican, I, along with many others, hope that you will come to the aid of your party and our great country and serve as our next Vice-President. Our party and our country need you," Georgia resident Douglas Brooks wrote. "As you can see, I am not a resident of the great State of Alaska, but even here in Georgia, we have heard about you and the great things you have done there."

And it shows her frustration with questions about her family's state-paid travel even before she entered the national spotlight, instructing an aide to remind a reporter "of the family travels w (with) me that I have personally pd (paid) for."

"Hopefully our records very clearly show that," Palin wrote in July 10, 2008. "Also, my return of every per diem offer for everything related to the kids ... and we need to be proactive in this issue with reminding him of all the steps taken to save state monies like no Anchorage apartment ... no chef ... security down from 7 to 2, whatever."

And longtime aide Kris Perry called the travel issue "ridiculous."

"We're talking about a Governor who had the state buy tickets on Hotwire saving the state hundreds of dollars rather than just going w/ the norm (much more expensive) or the fact that she often drives to the peninsula or Fairbanks or the fact that her family rarely travels w/her when most of the invitations are for first family."

Palin eventually paid back about $7,000 for travel expenses for her children after an ethics investigator determined nine trips were questionable. The settlement stated that Palin did not violate Alaska's ethics law or commit any wrongdoing, and that she followed the advice of experienced staff.

The documents released Friday include messages from both her official account as well as private accounts, according to Linda Perez, the administrative director for current Gov. Sean Parnell. A search was done "in an effort to capture everything in the state e-mail system" that would comply with the request, Perez said.

Some of the documents were redacted to remove names and others were withheld due to legal privileges. Perez said 2,275 pages are not being released.

E-mails for the remaining 10 months of Palin's tenure, before her resignation, are not yet being released. As early as last week, Palin said she was not worried about what was in the e-mails.

"I think every rock in the Palin household that could ever be kicked over and uncovered anything, it's already been kicked over," Palin told Fox News Sunday.

Palin told Fox News Sunday that "those e-mails obviously weren't meant for public consumption," saying she was sure the material would be taken out of context.

And Alaska Dispatch political columnist Amanda Coyne says all the attention is "for what I'm betting won't be much."

"There will be tidbits, but nothing that a few local reporters and bloggers couldn't cover quite nicely," Coyne wrote in a recent column.

CNN's Drew Griffin, Kathleen Johnston, Katie Glaeser and Steve Brusk contributed to this report.

CNN

Russian company releases iOS decryption tools (Appolicious)

The first set of commercially sold tools for cracking into an iPhone’s security have been made available by a Russian company. You might want to change your iOS passwords to something more solid than “1234.”

According to a story from Ars Technica, Russian data security company ElcomSoft has created a set of software tools that can be used to break through the encryption on an iPhone. Part password-breaker, part scanner for encryption numbers to get further data out of the phone, the tools are only being made available to law enforcement. Here’s a quote from Ars’ story:

“The decryption tool requires access to the device in question, but once it's in hand, a few different kinds of keys need can be scraped from it, including the unique device key (UID) and escrow keys calculated using the UID and escrow pairing records. If the device is only protected by a 4-digit passcode, the program then only needs to brute-force its way through that to get access to all of the decryptable information.”

As Ars points out, the security features of Apple’s iOS platform aren’t exactly impregnable, and the story goes on to mention that a similar decryption method was created by the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology in February. The difference is that those tools aren’t for sale.

And though the decryption tools exist, they’re not infallible, either. Switching out a 4-digit code for a longer and more complex password basically stops the commercially available tools dead, since the password breaker works by trying number combinations until it finds the right one. Mix it up, and the first step of the decryption gets stalled out.

Another good way to beat the decryption: Keep your iPhone stuffed full of incriminating information out of the hands of the coppers. Without the device, they got nothin’.

With smartphones becoming more and more prevalent, though, data and information stored on them is being used in ways their creators and owners might not have considered. It’s a good idea to keep in mind that the things you do on your smartphone might not remain private.

The U.S. Senate is considering an amendment to a law that would offer more protections to citizens about the use of their data in the cloud and on smartphones by law enforcement, but it’s not infallible. It came out just a few weeks ago that law enforcement officials were using a bug in iPhones to track their owners’ movements for investigations, with no warrant required.

Moral of the story: Use your smartphone cautiously, both for your security and your privacy.

Yahoo! News

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U.S. releases videos seized from bin Laden compound

Washington (CNN) -- Keenly conscious of his image, a graying Osama bin Laden no doubt never expected this video -- showing him hunched over, draped in blanket and using a television clicker -- to hit the world's airwaves as it did Saturday.

Filmed by a confidant, the al Qaeda leader contrasts with the younger version of himself on a TV screen a few feet away. That man has a more youthful beard, a hand held up in resolve and a photo of the burning World Trade Center.

U.S. officials, who Saturday released five videos, emphasized the recordings and other materials seized at bin Laden's Pakistan compound show the terrorist still had a firm hand on the tiller, managing strategic and tactical control of his organization, even as he stayed out of sight in Abbottabad.

The undated videos make clear bin Laden "remained active in al Qaeda terrorist propaganda operations, especially in shaping his own image," said a senior intelligence official granted anonymity under the ground rules of a briefing at the Pentagon.

Four of the clips show bin Laden, who was killed along with four others Monday by U.S. commandos, in more formal attire. No audio of the terrorist leader speaking accompanied the images.

The intelligence official said the audio was removed because it would be "inappropriate to spread the words of terrorists and propaganda messages, especially Osama bin Laden."

Besides the missing audio, the videos, according to the intelligence official, were not altered in any other way.

Still, the release of the videos sends a message to those who doubted bin Laden was killed: Navy SEALs got footage that likely could have been held only by bin Laden at his hideout.

It may also have accomplished something else: diminishing the bin Laden mythology of invincibility.

CNN national security contributor Frances Townsend said U.S. officials "picked these videos pretty deliberately."

Portions are unflattering of bin Laden and reflect his vanity, Townsend said.

Some of the videos indicate problems with production value. Bin Laden misses a cue in one and another shows him with a wrinkled backdrop.

The candid recording of an aging bin Laden, stroking his beard, reviewing news footage and calling up a DVD menu, portrays him as an ordinary man, not a terror mastermind. Bin Laden wears a dark wool cap, slightly rocking in his seat in the spartan surroundings.

Images on the TV screen include U.S. President Barack Obama, bin Laden handling an AK-47 rifle, troops and other scenes.

The videos lifted a corner of the tent on materials seized by U.S. commandos, including reams of documents, disks, thumb drives, computers and more. Analysts have pored over them for evidence of further plots or operations.

"The materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group," the intelligence official said. "Though separated from many al Qaedamembers who are located in more remote areas of the region, he was far from a figurehead. He was an active player making the recent operation even more essential for our nation's security."

But U.S. officials would not describe any of that material in detail Saturday.

They did say that the intelligence reveals bin Laden and al Qaeda had a driving interest in taking on the United States

and that the leader was involved in the details of plotting attacks.

One of the videos is a message to the United States officials believe was recorded in October or November. In that video, bin Laden's beard has been dyed black and he was well-composed as he delivered his message.

The three other videos are practice sessions for videos he was planning to release to the world.

The videos were shown amid the Obama administration's decision not to release photos of the slain bin Laden and bury the al Qaeda leader at sea.

The senior intelligence official briefing reporters said Monday's raid by U.S. forces yielded a significant amount of intelligence, and that a special federal task force -- including members of the CIA and FBI -- is combing through the material.

The official also said the DNA evidence unquestionably shows that the person shot and killed in the Pakistan compound was bin Laden.

The intelligence officials said they are trying to determine what bin Laden's death means to the future of al Qaeda and are combing through intelligence to get clues on the locations of the other top al Qaeda leaders.

The No. 2 man in al Qaeda is Ayman al-Zawahiri; another top militant is Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. born militant who is a leader in the group's Yemen branch.

This week, al-Awlaki eluded a drone attack in southern Yemen as security personnel continue their hunt for him, Yemeni and American officials said.

CNN's Reza Sayah contributed to this report.

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Trump: I'll release tax returns if Obama releases birth certificate

Donald Trump says he'll disclose his finances if he runs for president, but may not release his income tax returns unless President Obama releases his birth certificate.

Trump made his comments in a wide-ranging interview with ABC's Good Morning America. He has vowed to say by June whether he'll seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

The real estate executive told host George Stephanopoulos that he's "done a great job" with his company and vowed to "do a full disclosure of finances."

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Tucson shooting suspect's school releases records

Pima County Sheriff's Dept., AP

Nearly 3,000 pages of documents released by an Arizona community college that Jared Loughner attended show how school administrators struggled to keep up with a flood of media requests and protect its own image after the January shooting rampage in Tucson.

EnlargeClosePima County Sheriff's Dept., AP

Nearly 3,000 pages of documents released by an Arizona community college that Jared Loughner attended show how school administrators struggled to keep up with a flood of media requests and protect its own image after the January shooting rampage in Tucson.

In the thousands of emails and documents released by Pima Community College on Friday, none was dated before the Jan. 8 shooting and most were requests by members of the media for information on Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect in the shooting that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

Requests included questions about whether the college ever sought to get Loughner a mental health evaluation when he was a student at the college, or whether he threatened to kill anyone on campus. The college either refused to answer questions or released short, prepared statements.

Loughner began attending classes at the college in 2005, but was eventually kicked out because of behavior campus police considered disturbing. He was told to get a mental health evaluation or not return.

In one email, college Chancellor Roy Flores told all employees that national news media organizations had sent teams of reporters to campus looking for anyone who knew Loughner. He instructed them not to delete any emails mentioning Loughner so the college could comply with public records laws.

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Syria releases two Americans linked by state TV to spying

were picked up while taking photographs of demonstrations March 18, according to Syrian state media.

Syria's government-run TV has blamed foreigners, among others, for the unrest, and President Bashar Assad said this week that a "foreign conspiracy" was behind the protests.

Mohammed Radwan, 32, was accused of selling photos and video of demonstrations to a Colombian woman, according to the state-run news agency.

Pathik Root, 21, of Ripton, Vt., a student at Middlebury College, was studying Arabic in Damascus.

See photos of: SyriaTags:Syria .div-wrapper

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