NATO: Kabul suicide bomb attack

Five troops and eight civilians were killed in central Kabul when a suicide bomber struck a vehicle in a military convoy, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Saturday.

One Canadian was killed in the attack, said Lt. Colonel Christian Lemay.

A U.S. military official had said earlier that 13 Americans had died, but an ISAF spokesman could not confirm that number.

The U.S. official emphasized details are continuing to unfold. A heavily damaged vehicle was believed to be an armored bus that was carrying U.S. troops from one base to another. A senior NATO official identified it as a custom-built, heavily armored Rhino.

The attack caused a "number" of NATO and local Afghan casualties, ISAF said in a statement. Four Afghans, including two students, were also killed, said Hashmat Stanikzai, spokesman for Kabul's police chief.
A Taliban spokesman confirmed Saturday's attack in a text message, saying it killed "16 foreign soldiers, one civilian" and injured many others.

Taliban casualty counts are often inflated; there was no other reliable indication 16 foreigners were killed.

Stanikzai said the vehicle used in the attack appeared to be a red Toyota Corolla packed with a significant amount of explosives.

It was unclear how many people were wounded, said Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul expressed condolences to families and said it will continue the victims' "dedicated work on behalf of peace in this country and region."

"It's a shock. It makes you mad. It makes me angry," said U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. "We are not going to let these guys win."

The attack was one of two targeting NATO-led forces on Saturday.

U.S. and coalition casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

A gunman wearing an Afghan army uniform turned his weapon on coalition forces during training, killing three and wounding several others, ISAF said. The shooter was killed in the incident in southern Afghanistan.

The coalition did not provide any other details about the shooting, and did not disclose the nationalities of those killed.

In another suicide attack in northeastern Afghanistan, a woman in a burqa detonated herself near the nation's intelligence agency.

She tried to enter the National Directorate of Security and was shot at, but she still managed to detonate herself, said Sabour Alayar, deputy police chief of Kunar province.

Two officers and two civilians were wounded, he said, adding that the female suicide bomber was about 25 years old.

Alayar said they had intelligence of a suicide bomber looking for a target, and their security forces were on alert.

Gen. John R. Allen, commander of ISAF, condemned Saturday's attacks across the country.

"I am both saddened and outraged by the attacks that took place today against Coalition forces and the people of Afghanistan," Allen said in a statement. "The enemies of peace are not martyrs, but murderers. To hide the fact that they are losing territory, support, and the will to fight, our common enemy continues to employ suicide attackers to kill innocent Afghan fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, as well as the Coalition forces who have volunteered to protect them."

The U.S.-led war in Afghanistan marked its 10th year earlier this month having passed two major milestones: The Taliban has been forced out of power and Osama bin Laden is dead.

But Afghanistan has been hit by a wave of high-profile attacks in recent months that have jeopardized the peace negotiations.

September's turban bomb assassination of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, revered by many as a father of the Mujahedeen movement that ousted the Soviets in the 1980s, appears to have dealt the biggest blow to the peace process.

Rabbani was the chairman of President Hamid Karzai's High Council for Peace, which has been trying for a year to foster dialogue with the Taliban -- a strategy that Karzai publicly abandoned following Rabbani's killing.

Nearly 2,800 troops from the United States and its partners have died during the 10 years of war, according to a CNN count.

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Could 'Earthscraper' turn architecture on its head?

A team of Mexican architects have designed a 65-story glass and steel pyramid to sit in the middle of Mexico City's most historic plaza. But, if it ever gets built, you won't see it anywhere on the skyline.

That's because it would be the world's first ever "earthscraper" -- a 300-meter deep office and living space with ambitions to turn the modern high-rise, quite literally, on its head.

"There is very little room for any more buildings in Mexico City, and the law says we cannot go above eight stories, so the only way is down" explains Esteban Suarez, co-founder of BNKR Arquitectura, the firm behind the proposals.

"This would be a practical way of conserving the built environment while creating much-needed new space for commerce and living," he added.

But would it really be that practical? The design, which would cost an estimated $800 million to build, is the shape of an inverted pyramid with a central void to allow for some much-needed natural light and ventilation.

Suarez says the first 10 stories would hold a museum dedicated to the city's history and its artifacts. "We'd almost certainly find plenty of interesting relics during the dig -- dating right back to the Aztecs who built their own pyramids here," he says.

The following 10 floors are assigned to retail and housing, with the remaining 35 intended for commercial office space, says Suarez.

Suarez concedes that getting natural light and fresh air down to the lower floors will be a problem and he is investigating a "system of fiber optics" that could deliver sunlight from the surface.
The design also includes a series of a series of "earth lobbies" that would store plants and trees with the intention of improving air-quality and, no doubt, the gloomy subterranean landscape.

Suarez says renewable energy could be generated by a turbine powered from collected groundwater. Enough to keep the lights on in an underground office block 24 hours a day? "I couldn't say at this stage" replies Suarez.

But although it has the hallmarks of a fossil-fuel guzzling Goliath -- and a name to match -- Suarez says the "Earthscraper" has great eco-credentials. "In many ways, this project is all about the environment -- not just in how we preserve our historic skyline, but how we prevent the serious problem of urban sprawl into the countryside," he says.

According to the 32-year-old architect, Mexico City's main square -- commonly known as the "Zocalo" -- is one of the biggest city plazas in the world. "It's a massive empty plot, which makes it the ideal site for our program," he said.

To conserve the numerous activities that take place on the 190,000 square-foot plaza throughout the year -- including concerts, protests, open-air exhibitions and military parades -- the void will be covered with a glass floor that Suarez believes will allow the life of the "Earthscraper" to blend with everything happening on top.

At present, Suarez and his team are in the process of presenting their idea to the local authorities. So, if you were in their shoes, what would you say? Is the "Earthscraper" a genuinely feasible innovation or a pretty but impractical pipe dream? Tell us you thoughts in the comments section below.

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A Massive hack hit 760 companies

A massive cyberattack that led to a vulnerability in RSA's SecurID tags earlier this year also victimized Google, Facebook, Microsoft and many other big-named companies, according to a new analysis released this week.

A list of 760 organizations that were attacked was presented to Congress recently and published by security analyst Brian Krebs on his blog Monday.
The list is the first glimpse into the pervasiveness of the attack that brought RSA to its knees. Those in the security industry have long suspected that RSA was not the hack's only victim, but no other companies have been willing to talk publicly about whether they had also been compromised.

The names mentioned on Krebs' list include about a fifth of the Fortune 100, as well as many other massive corporations.
Abbot Laboratories , Charles Schwab , Freddie Mac, PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Wells Fargo  are all named.
Tech giants like Amazon , IBM , Intel , Yahoo , Cisco , Google , Facebook, and Microsoft  are also included, as well as government agencies like the European Space Agency, the IRS, and the General Services Administration. Government security contractor Northrop Grumman  was on the list, as was MIT.
The list of affected companies was obtained from a breached "command and control" server, the name for a machine that hackers use to direct the fleets of compromised PCs that they have gained control over. Krebs said he wasn't at liberty to reveal how that server was discovered or who analyzed the data.

The names came to light after researchers traced back the corporate networks that were communicating with the server that attacked RSA. The first victims started "phoning home" as early as November 2010, Krebs said.
But there's a big caveat: As Krebs was quick to note, many Internet service providers were on the list, most likely because their subscribers were attacked using their network, not because the companies themselves were compromised. That means that companies like Comcast , Windstream , Verizon , AT&T  and Sprint  may be off the hook.

The cost of cybercrime

But Google and Amazon, which host Domain Name System services to help people surf the Web, may also have made the list because of activity on their networks, not within their corporate walls. And some companies -- especially security technology vendors like McAfee -- could be named because they discovered the attack and intentionally compromised their own systems in an attempt to reverse-engineer the malware used in the hack.

One last footnote: It's not clear how deeply the hackers were able to penetrate each compromised business' systems. RSA got hammered -- the attackers used the breach to plant malware that let them gain access to RSA's systems -- but other companies may have fended off the intrusion without any damage.

Microsoft, one of the few companies we contacted that was willing to talk on the record about the attack, said it has "not seen any evidence supporting the claim." Several other companies gave similar statements but asked not to be named in this story.
Still, experts say the revelation of the massive number of companies involved in the attack shouldn't be taken lightly.

On his blog, Krebs noted that if this could happen to one of the largest and most integral security firms, organizations that aren't focused on security had little hope of fending it off, let alone discovering it.
"If my blog post does anything, it's to get people to pay attention to it," Krebs told CNNMoney.

The sheer number of corporations mentioned in the list proves that no one is safe from attack.
"The only companies that haven't been compromised in some way, shape, or form are either insanely small, lucky or secure," said Dave Jevans, chairman of Ironkey, maker of a security-focused Web browser.
Hacks are almost a form of currency in the cybercrime economy. Hackers launch cyberattacks on as many victims as they can in order to sell their access to interested third parties.

For instance, a hack of MIT's network may not be valuable to anyone right now. But if the university were to do something to rattle, say, Anonymous in a year or two, hacktivists could go on underground channels and attempt to buy access to MIT's compromised systems.
That's why these hacks are called "advanced persistent threats." They often carry on for years without anyone knowing.

RSA came forward in March and admitted that it had been hacked, even though it likely didn't have to: regulations about public disclosure vary from state to state, and tend only to force companies to disclose hacks when customer data is revealed.

Companies don't like admitting that they've been compromised, but the fact that no other company spoke up about this attack is not necessarily indicative of secrecy.
"I'm sure 90% of these companies are just finding out they've been hacked along with the rest of us," Jevans said. "They don't even know they've been penetrated."
It's not uncommon for companies to be unaware of attacks.

In August, McAfee uncovered a wide-ranging, global cyber attack that impacted 72 organizations. The security company noted that the attack had been going on, undetected, for the five years. McAfee actually discovered the attack when the hackers finally made a mistake: They left logs of their attacks on a command and control server that McAfee uncovered in 2009.

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Steve Jobs bio: The best tidbits

"Steve Jobs,' the biography of the late tech visionary that went on sale Monday, has already produced plenty of headlines: How Jobs met his birth father without knowing who he was, how he swore bitter revenge on Google for developing its competing Android system, and how he waited too long after his cancer diagnosis to get surgery that might have saved him.

But the 656-page book by hand-picked biographer Walter Isaacson also contains a wealth of smaller, but no less telling, details about the brilliant but difficult Apple co-founder.

Taken together, they build an illuminating portrait of a charismatic, complicated figure who could inspire people one minute and demean them the next. Even on their own, many of these snippets are still fascinating glimpses into an extraordinary life.

The CNN Tech team has been busy flipping through our copies of the book. Here are some of the more interesting nuggets we've found, in chronological order (we're still reading, so we'll add more as we go):

Childhood and early years

-- Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell Jobs, encouraged Isaacson to be honest about Jobs' failings. "You shouldn't whitewash it," she told him. "He's good at spin, but he also has a remarkable story, and I'd like to see that it's all told truthfully."
-- Jobs' birth mother insisted he be adopted by college graduates. The couple who had initially agreed to adopt Jobs in 1955 -- a lawyer and his wife -- backed out because they wanted a girl. So Jobs was placed instead with Paul Jobs, a high school dropout and mechanic, and his wife, Clara, a bookkeeper. When Jobs' birth mother found out, she refused to sign the adoption papers for weeks and only relented after extracting a pledge that the Jobses fund a savings account to pay for the boy's college education.

-- Jobs saw his first computer terminal as a boy when his father brought him to a NASA research center not far from where the family lived. "I fell totally in love with it," he said.

-- Jobs' famous rebellious streak first manifested itself in elementary school, where he often pulled pranks and once set off an explosive under his teacher's chair. He felt bored at not being challenged by his studies. In fourth grade, he was tested and scored on a high-school sophomore level.

-- Jobs was introduced to Steve Wozniak in high school by a mutual friend, and despite their age difference (Wozniak was five years older), the two bonded over their love of electronics and practical jokes. "I was a little more mature than my years, and he was a little less mature than his, so it evened out," Jobs said.

-- Jobs and Wozniak built a "Blue Box," a device that allowed them to make long-distance calls for free by fooling the networks' routing switches. The two pranksters used the box to call the Vatican, with Wozniak pretending to be Henry Kissinger and asking to speak to the pope. They spoke to several Vatican officials but never actually got the pope on the line.

-- Although it was private and more expensive than his parents could afford, Jobs insisted on applying to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. His parents drove him to the school, but he refused to let them come on campus or even to say goodbye to them. "It's one of the things in life I really feel ashamed about," Jobs said later. "I didn't want anyone to know I had parents. I wanted to be like an orphan. ..."

-- After Jobs dropped out of Reed, he talked his way into a $5-an-hour job at Atari, the video game company, because the chief engineer "saw something in him." Jobs believed at the time that his fruit- and vegetable-heavy diet would prevent body odor -- a theory that proved flawed. After Jobs' co-workers complained about his hygiene, the CEO asked him to work the night shift, where he would be alone.

-- Jobs quit Atari to go on a seven-month spiritual quest to India, where he contracted dysentery, had his long hair shaved off by a Hindu holy man and failed to find the inner calm he was seeking. His appearance changed so radically during his pilgrimage that his parents did not recognize him when they picked him up at the airport upon his return.

-- Jobs returned to Atari, where he and Wozniak collaborated on their first project: an early version of the hit video game "Breakout." But Jobs did not tell Wozniak they would be paid a bonus if they designed the game using fewer than 50 computer chips. Wozniak did it with 45 chips, but Jobs pocketed the entire bonus -- a fact his partner didn't find out for years. "I wish he had just been honest," Wozniak said later.

The origins of Apple

-- When it came time to name their new computer company, Jobs and Wozniak considered names like Matrix, Executek and Personal Computers Inc. before Jobs, who was eating a fruit diet and helping out at an apple farm, suggested Apple. "It sounded fun, spirited and not intimidating." he said. "Plus it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book."

-- On April 1, 1976, Jobs, Wozniak and a third investor, former Atari engineer Ron Wayne, drew up the partnership agreement for Apple and began assembling computers in Jobs' parents garage. Wayne chipped in 10% but soon got cold feet and withdrew 11 days later. Had he stayed on, his stake at the end of 2010 would have been worth about $2.6 billion.

-- Jobs chose the Apple logo, an apple with a bite taken out of it, because he thought the other design option, a whole apple, looked too much like a cherry.

-- When it came time to assign employee badge numbers, Apple's first president, Mike Scott, gave Wozniak No. 1 and Jobs No. 2. Jobs was furious and demanded to be No. 1, but Scott refused. Finally, they reached a compromise: Jobs would be badge No. 0.

-- In Apple's early years, Jobs oversaw the hiring process and sought out applicants who were smart but somewhat rebellious. When one uptight candidate came in for an interview, Jobs began to toy with him, asking such offbeat questions as, "Are you a virgin?" and "How many times have you taken LSD?"

The Macintosh

-- When designing the Macintosh, Apple's engineers didn't trust the company Jobs had selected to build the computer's disk drive. So they went behind his back and asked Sony to get a disk drive ready. Sony sent a designer from Japan to Cupertino to oversee the secret project, but the Mac team made him hide in a closet every time Jobs came by.

-- On the day he unveiled the Macintosh in 1984, a reporter asked Jobs what kind of market research he had done on the product. Jobs scoffed and replied, "Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone?"

-- Now a celebrity, Jobs brought several newly minted Macintoshes to New York City in early 1984. He gave one to John Lennon's 9-year-old son Sean at a party, where an enthralled Andy Warhol used the machine to draw a circle. At Warhol's suggestion, Jobs then took a computer to a baffled Mick Jagger, who didn't seem to know who Jobs was. When Jagger's young daughter Jade took to the machine immediately, Jobs gave it to her instead.

-- Jobs was impatient and in a bad mood one day in 1984 when a Bay Area policeman pulled him over for going more than 100 mph in a 55-mph zone. Although the cop warned him he'd go to jail if he was caught speeding again, Jobs honked at him and told him to hurry up writing the ticket. As soon as the cop left, Jobs immediately accelerated to 100 mph again. Said his companion at the time, "He absolutely believed that the normal rules didn't apply to him."

Leaving Apple for NeXT and Pixar

-- In 1985, fresh off his ouster as CEO of Apple, Jobs showcased his feisty side on a trip to the then-Soviet Union, where the Apple II was going on sale. First, in a meeting at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, he bristled at the suggestion that there were laws against sharing computer technology with the Soviets. Later, after praising Leon Trotsky, the Soviet revolutionary, Jobs was informed by the KGB agent escorting him that Trotsky was no longer considered "a great man." Jobs then went to deliver a speech to Russian computer students, one he began by heaping praise on Trotsky.

-- Jobs paid designer Paul Rand $100,000 to create a logo for his new computer company, NeXT. It went so well that Rand agreed to design a personal calling card for Jobs, which led to a "lengthy and heated disagreement" about the placement of the period after the "P" in "Steven P. Jobs." Rand placed it to the right of the "P." Jobs thought it should be nudged further left, under the "P's" curve. In the end, Jobs won.

-- An early backer of NeXT was Ross Perot, the billionaire Texan. He watched a PBS segment on Jobs and immediately called offering to invest. Jobs returned the call a week later. "I pick the jockeys, and the jockeys pick the horses and ride them," Perot told Jobs. "You guys are the ones I'm betting on, so you figure it out." Perot gave him $20 million.

-- Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates had an uneasy relationship. "Part of the problem," Isaacson writes, "was that the rival titans were congenitally unable to be deferential to each other." When Gates first visited NeXT headquarters in Palo Alto, Jobs kept him waiting 30 minutes, even though Gates could see through a glass wall that he was having casual conversations.

-- Digital animation was originally just to be a sideline for Pixar, the business Jobs bought from George Lucas for $5 million in 1985. The short movies' main purpose was to show off the hardware and software used to create them.

-- For a few years beginning in 1982, Jobs, then 27, was romantically involved with folk legend Joan Baez, who was 41. "He was both romantic and afraid to be romantic," she said.

-- In the early 1980s, Jobs, with the help of a private investigator, found his biological parents. But he would not contact his birth mother until after Clara Jobs, the woman who raised him, died in 1986. By contrast, Jobs had no interest in meeting his birth father, who he felt had abandoned his birth mother and sister. It would turn out that his birth father, Abdulfattah Jandali, owned a Syrian restaurant in Silicon Valley that Jobs had patronized several times, and that Jobs had met him.

-- After NeXT was bought by Apple, Jobs acted as de facto CEO until September 16, 1997, when he became "iCEO" -- an abbreviation that first signified "interim" but would eventually mean "indefinite."

Apple's rebound


-- When Apple unveiled iTunes and its innovative digital music store in 2001, Jim Allchin, who ran the Windows division for Microsoft then, sent an e-mail to four fellow executives saying: "We were smoked. How did they get the music companies to go along?" At the time, iTunes and the iPod only worked on Mac computers. Apple execs argued that the iPod should interface with Windows, too, and Jobs was alone in opposing that proposition. When he finally relented, he insisted that Apple make iTunes for Windows as well, so the company could control more of the experience.

-- At one point during the development of the iPod Mini, which was immensely popular and catapulted Apple's portable music players into the mainstream, Jobs considered killing the product because it was smaller in size and storage capacity, yet sold for the same price. He didn't quite understand the device's appeal among workout fiends because he didn't do sports.

-- During the creation of the iPod Shuffle, Apple engineers kept shrinking the device's screen in prototypes until Jobs had the idea to get rid of the screen altogether.

-- The only time Jobs could recall being tongue-tied was upon meeting one of his heroes, Bob Dylan, in 2004. Dylan invited Jobs to his hotel before a Bay Area concert, and they talked for two hours. Jobs was "really nervous" and afraid the aging Dylan would disappoint him, but "he was as sharp as a tack."

-- Jobs was the first person outside of U2 to get a pre-release copy of the band's 2004 album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb." Bono wanted to be in an iPod commercial and wanted Apple to make a black iPod. Jobs told him, "We've tried other colors than white, and they don't work." He soon relented. Bono later compared Apple's creativity to that of a rock band, and said, "the lead singer is Steve Jobs."

-- Famed industrial designer Jony Ive was tasked with coming up with the successor to the candy-color translucent iMac, which was the bestselling desktop computer for some time. He wanted to develop a flat-screen monitor with the components integrated into the display unit. Jobs did not like that idea, and he invited Ive over to his backyard at home to brainstorm. The sunflowers in the garden maintained by Powell Jobs inspired the design of the iMac, which had a display connected to a dome base by a metal stem. When computer parts became compact enough a few years later, Ive's initial concept was used in the models that replaced the sunflower iMac.

-- Apple maintained two separate development teams working on cell-phone prototypes. P1 was a phone that looked like the classic iPod and included a track wheel. "It was cumbersome," said former Apple exec Tony Fadell. P2 was a touchscreen gadget, which in some prototypes had a physical keyboard, but more closely resembled the iPhone that we have today.

-- While in the hospital for a liver transplant in 2009, Jobs refused to wear a medical mask because he disliked the design. Barely able to speak, he demanded the doctors bring five options of masks so that he could choose the one that he liked best.

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Siri, Iris and the dream of talking to our phones

The only scene I really loved in "Star Trek: The Voyage Home" was when Scotty tried speaking verbal commands to a Macintosh Plus. Keyboards always seem to get in the way of doing what I want to do -- and nowhere is this as apparent, or frustrating, as on smartphones and tablets.

With the recent launch of the iPhone 4S, Apple's not-really-new voice recognition system Siri has been getting a lot of attention.

Yet it took the India-based software company Dexetra just eight hours to create the initial version of Iris -- a blatant Android knockoff of Siri.

Even the name "Iris," which is the reverse of "Siri," stands for "Intelligent Rival Imitator of Siri" according to Dexetra's blog. (And yes, I'm just waiting for the trademark suit from Apple.)

Granted, Dexetra wasn't starting completely from scratch. This company had already been working on natural language processing and machine learning -- two notably thorny, complex technologies -- for more than a year.

A few days later, Dexetra made an improved version of Iris available as a free app in Google's Android Market and as of this writing it has been installed more than 50,000 times.
I put Iris on my Android phone this weekend, and it's amusing. For instance, here's a discussion I had with Iris yesterday:

Me: "What time is the John Scofield concert at Yoshi's Jazz Club in Oakland tonight?"

Iris: "I have no idea."

Me: "Who is John Scofield?"

Iris: "John Scofield, born 1951, the musician." (Shows a photo of Scofield performing.)

Me: "Where is Yoshi's, Oakland?"

Iris: "Right now being pulled in by a black hole."

So Iris is about as entertaining as Siri seems to be. (I don't own an iPhone, but for comparison I've been checking out the STSS Tumblr blog, a crowdsourced collection of weird and wonderful wisdom from Siri.)

Still, neither Iris nor Siri seems very useful so far.

Fortunately, there are better voice control options on both the iPhone and Android handsets than either Siri or Iris. And they've been around for a while.

For some time the Android mobile operating system has had pretty well integrated speech-to-text functionality (Google Voice Actions). I use this often for texting, searching, navigating and e-mailing on the go.

Also, whenever I bring up a keyboard in any Android app, there's a microphone option for voice entry. Generally it recognizes pretty well what I want to say or do. If Android guesses wrong, I can use the keyboard to correct it, and it does seem to learn over time.

Then there is Vlingo, a voice control app for all the major smartphone platforms. I've tried it, and for some tasks it works reasonably well.

On the iPhone, Siri does integrate with some of Apple's own productivity tools (such as the calendar). But as my CNN.com colleague Mark Milian pointed out, Siri can't yet execute many basic commands like taking a picture.

Most importantly, Siri doesn't integrate with any third-party iOS apps, such as Shazam or Tweetdeck. Given Apple's closed iOS ecosystem, it's an open question whether such integration will ever happen.

Besides Siri, there are other iOS apps and tools that provide some voice control. ExtremeTech recently published a list.

Such baby steps are important -- but on any mobile platform, we're still a long, long way from phones that you can just talk to and they'll do what you say.

This is frustrating from the consumer perspective. Smartphones are, first and foremost, phones. They're supposed to be for talking.

Typing on any mobile device, through a physical or virtual keyboard, is a chore. That's why QR codes are getting popular -- they eliminate the need to type on a mobile device.

The challenge of typing on handheld devices is exactly why the kind of voice control Scotty expected is such an alluring and intuitive idea. Eventually we'll probably get there.

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Nokia unveils the first Windows smartphones

How do you say "here goes nothing" in Finnish?Nokia's  bet-the-company moment is now underway, as the Finnish mobile phone maker unveiled two new smartphones Wednesday that will run Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system -- the first Nokia devices to run anything but the company's own software platform.

The struggling handset manufacturer is hoping the major strategy shift will boost its flagging fortunes in the booming smartphone market.
The two new devices, dubbed Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, will go on sale in Europe next month and represent the company's attempt to gain traction in the market dominated by Apple's  iPhones and Google's  Android operating system.

But Nokia has not yet committed to selling the phones in the United States. The company said it would begin selling Windows Phone devices here in early 2012, but it's not clear whether it will be a Lumia or another yet-to-be-released device.
Nokia did say it would sell U.S. devices next year built for the CDMA network, which Verizon  and Sprint use, as well as the HSPA standard, used by AT&T  and T-Mobile. Nokia's presence in the United States has been severely diminished in recent years, and it has not sold devices on the Verizon or Sprint networks since 2005.

As he unveiled the Lumia 800 in London, Nokia Chief Executive Stephen Elop said the company intends to be "leaders in smartphone design and craftsmanship." The top-tier Lumia 800 is based on the much-hyped N9 device, which Nokia unveiled earlier this year.

U.S. cell phones, tablets outnumber Americans

The Lumia phones put the emphasis on entertainment, navigation and sports, offering music mixes and a partnership with ESPN for mobile coverage.
The announcement follows Nokia's partnership with Microsoft in February. The phones, Elop said, were part of "a new dawn for Nokia."

Nokia also launched four new mobile phones that it said blur the line between smartphones and more traditional handsets by offering keyboards and touchscreens, combined with Internet access and integrated social networking.
Elop is under pressure to rejuvenate the company which, despite selling the highest volume of mobile phones worldwide, has suffered in the smartphone market. Earlier this year, Apple overtook Nokia to become the world's top smartphone maker.
Nokia announced last month that it plans to cut 3,500 jobs by the end of 2012. Those were in addition to 4,000 job cuts announced in April.

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Obama reveals new refinance rules at Western trip start

President Barack Obama traveled to Las Vegas on Monday to launch a Western trip that mixes campaigning with presidential business -- and an appearance on "The Tonight Show."

After a campaign event at The Bellagio hotel and casino Monday afternoon, Obama met with homeowners at a private residence to announce new efforts to help homeowners with refinancing.

The government's Home Affordable Refinance Program will be changed to make it easier for homeowners to capitalize on current low interest rates by refinancing old, high-interest mortgages.

The new rules will allow homeowners who owe more than 125% of the market value of their homes to get the new loans.

"So let me just give you an example. If you've got a $250,000 mortgage at 6 percent interest rates, but the value of your home has fallen below $200,000, right now you can't refinance. You're ineligible," Obama said, according to a copy of his remarks released by the White House.

"But that's going to change. If you meet certain requirements, you will have the chance to refinance at lower rates, which could save you hundreds of dollars a month, and thousands of dollars a year on mortgage payments."

In addition, Obama told the gathering,"there are going to be lower closing costs, and certain refinancing fees will be eliminated -- fees that can sometimes cancel out the benefits of refinancing altogether." The changes also will allow consumers to shop around for better rates beyond their original lenders, he said.

Learn why the program probably won't help the real estate market

The president then traveled to Los Angeles, where he was expected to deliver remarks at two more campaign events.
On Tuesday, Obama will tape an appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," according to the White House.

The last time the president appeared on the show, in March 2009, he caused controversy by attempting to poke fun at his poor bowling skills -- evident during a 2008 campaign stop. He told Leno he bowled 129 in the White House bowling alley and said his bowling skills were "like Special Olympics or something."

Before the show aired, the president called Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver to apologize, White House officials said, and stress his intention was not to humiliate the disabled. Shriver called Obama's apology "sincere and heartfelt," but noted in a written response, "This is a teachable moment for our country."

After the "Tonight Show" taping, Obama will travel to San Francisco for a fundraiser, according to the White House. On Tuesday night, he will be in Denver to push his jobs agenda. Other private fundraisers will also be sprinkled in, officials said.

A Democratic official estimates the campaign will haul in more than $4 million from six fundraisers in three states.

It's the second time in less than a month that Obama has headed west to push for jobs and raise campaign cash.

A senior campaign official noted the importance of spending time in the region, saying the "campaign has already established an extensive operation in Western states."

And they expect to make "heavy investments there."

The official singled out Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona, where the campaign has offices and field staff.

In 2008 Obama won decisively in Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico, but lost to Republican John McCain in McCain's home state of Arizona.

This time around the economy remains under heavy downward pressure despite efforts by the Obama administration to turn things around.

In Nevada, home prices have plummeted by 53% since the peak, and according to online real estate site Zillow, 85% of the state's homeowners owe more than their homes are worth.

At his fundraiser at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas Monday, the president acknowledged that "things are tough right now," but he reminded the audience of some 300 supporters of his accomplishments.

"As tough as things are right now, we were able to stabilize this economy and make sure it didn't go into a great depression," the president said.

While the campaign is targeting key Western states, officials realize every vote will be critical.

"Our goal in 2011 is to build the biggest organization possible to compete on the widest playing field possible in 2012," the campaign official said.

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