Costa: $14,460 per person for ruined Italy cruises

In this undated photo released by the Italian Navy Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship is seen grounded off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Italian Navy)

In this undated photo released by the Italian Navy Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship is seen grounded off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Italian Navy)

Seagulls stand on a rock near the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

A view of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

Italian firefighters, top, work on the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, as Italian Financial police scuba divers prepare to dive, bottom, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

Italian Navy scuba divers gestures as they return after assignment of the grounded cruise ship Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio, Italy, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Italian authorities have identified the bodies of three German passengers as divers kept up the search for those still missing from the Costa Concordia cruise ship that rammed into a reef off Italy. Sixteen deaths have been confirmed so far in the disaster, but three of those bodies have yet to be identified. Another 16 people are still missing from the ship, which grounded Jan. 13, but officials have acknowledged that it would take a miracle to find any more survivors. Salvage experts worked Thursday so they could begin pumping tons of fuel off the ship starting Saturday to avert an environmental catastrophe. The stricken ship lies very close to a marine sanctuary. (AP Photo/Pier Paolo Cito)

ROME (AP) ? Costa Crociere SpA offered uninjured passengers euro11,000 ($14,460) apiece Friday to compensate them for lost baggage and the psychological trauma they suffered after their cruise ship ran aground and capsized off Tuscany.

But some passengers are already refusing to accept the deal, saying they can't yet put a figure on the costs of the trauma they endured.

Costa announced the offer after negotiations with consumer groups who say they are representing 3,206 passengers from 61 countries who suffered no physical harm when the massive Costa Concordia cruise ship hit a reef on Jan. 13.

In addition to the lump-sum indemnity, Costa, a unit of the world's biggest cruise operator, the Miami-based Carnival Corp., also said it would reimburse uninjured passengers the full costs of their cruise, their return travel expenses and any medical expenses they sustained after the grounding.

The deal does not apply to the hundreds of crew on the ship, many of whom have lost their jobs, the roughly 100 people who were injured in the chaotic evacuation or the families who lost loved ones. Sixteen bodies have already been recovered from the disaster and another 16 people who were on board are missing and presumed dead.

Passengers are free to pursue legal action on their own if they aren't satisfied with the deal and it was clear Friday ? two weeks after the grounding ? that some would.

"We're very worried about the children," said Claudia Urru of Cagliari, Sardinia, who was on board the ship with her husband and two sons aged 3 and 12. Her eldest child, she said, is seeing a psychiatrist: He won't speak about the incident or even look at television footage of the grounding.

"He's terrorized at night," she told The Associated Press. "He can't go to the bathroom alone. We're all sleeping together, except my husband, who has gone into another room because we don't all fit."

As a result, she said, her family has retained a lawyer because they don't know what the real impact ? financial or otherwise ? of the trauma will be. She said her family simply isn't able to make such decisions now.

"We are having a very, very hard time," she said.

Some consumer groups have already signed on as injured parties in the criminal case against the Concordia's captain, Francesco Schettino, who is accused of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning the ship before all those aboard were evacuated. He is under house arrest.

In addition, Codacons, one of Italy's best-known consumer groups, has engaged two U.S. law firms to launch a class-action lawsuit against Costa and Carnival in Miami, claiming that it expects to get anywhere from euro125,000 ($164,000) to euro1 million ($1.3 million) per passenger.

German attorney Hans Reinhardt, who currently represents 15 Germans who survived the accident and is in talks to represent families who lost loved ones, said he is advising his clients not to take the settlement.

Instead, he, like Codacons, is working with the U.S. law firm to pursue the class-action suit in Miami.

"What they have lost is much more than euro11,000," he told the AP.

But Roberto Corbella, who represented Costa in the negotiations, said the deal provides passengers with quick and "generous" restitution that consumer groups estimate could amount to some euro14,000 ($18,500) per passenger when it includes the other reimbursements.

"The big advantage that they have is an immediate response, no legal expenses, and they can put this whole thing behind them," he told AP.

Angry passenger Herbert Greszuk, a 62-year-old German who left behind everything he had with him, including his tuxedo, camera, jewelry, and even his dentures, told the AP before the compensation deal was announced that it was an issue of accountability.

"Something like this must not be allowed to happen again. So many people died; it's simply inexcusable," he said.

The Concordia gashed its hull on reefs off the island of Giglio after Schettino made an unauthorized deviation from its approved route to bring it closer to Giglio. Some 4,200 passengers and crew were hastily evacuated.

Search efforts for the missing resumed Friday as salvage crews set up to begin extracting some 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil on Saturday before it leaks into the pristine waters surrounding the ship. That pumping operation is expected to last nearly a month.

Italy's civil protection office on Friday released a list of some of the other possibly toxic substances aboard the cruise liner, including 50 liters of insecticide and 41 cubic meters of lubricants, among other things.

But so far, even though some film has been detected in the waters around the ship, tests on the waters indicate nothing outside the norm, according to Tuscany's regional environment agency.

"Toxic tests have all resulted negative," the agency said.

The crystal clear seas around Giglio are a haven for scuba divers and form part of a marine sanctuary for dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Passengers have said the evacuation was chaotic, with crew members unprepared to deal with an emergency and constantly downplaying the seriousness of the situation. Coast guard data shows the captain only sounded the evacuation alarm an hour after the initial collision, well after the Concordia had listed to the point that many lifeboats couldn't be lowered.

Schettino has admitted he had taken the ship on "touristic navigation" near Giglio but has said the rocks he hit weren't charted on his nautical maps.

Codacons has called for a criminal investigation into the not-infrequent practice of "tourist navigation" ? steering huge cruise ships close to shore to give passengers a view of key sites.

The chief executive of Costa, Pier Luigi Foschi, told Italian lawmakers this week that "tourist navigation" wasn't illegal, and was a "cruise product" increasingly sought out by passengers and offered by cruise lines to try to stay competitive.

___

David Rising in Berlin contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2012-01-27-EU-Italy-Cruise-Aground/id-219a8db18c6c4d478aa9208120b81705

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Mitt Romney's Income, Newt Gingrich's Freddie Mac Woes and Gabby Giffords' Farewell

Plus, how longtime Hollywood pals George Clooney and Brad Pitt are Oscar competitors, why Cynthia Nixon has angered the gay and lesbian community and the third annual iVillage Entertainment Awards.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/mitt-romneys-income-newt-gingrich-s-freddie-mac-woes-and-gabby-giffords-resigns-congress/1-h-422293?dst=iv%3AiVillage%3Amitt-romneys-income-newt-gingrich-s-freddie-mac-woes-and-gabby-giffords-resigns-congress-422293

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CIA to pull officer from NYPD after internal probe (AP)

WASHINGTON ? A CIA operative's unusual assignment inside the New York Police Department is being cut short after an internal investigation that criticized how the agency established its unprecedented collaboration with city police, The Associated Press has learned.

In its investigation, the CIA's inspector general faulted the agency for sending an officer to New York with little oversight after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and then leaving him there too long, according to officials who have read or been briefed on the inquiry. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the investigation. The CIA said last month that the inspector general cleared the agency of any wrongdoing.

The inspector general opened its investigation after a series of AP articles that revealed how the NYPD, working in close collaboration with the CIA, set up spying operations that put Muslim communities under scrutiny. Plainclothes officers known as "rakers" eavesdropped in businesses, and Muslims not suspected of any wrongdoing were put in intelligence databases.

The CIA officer cited by the inspector general for operating without sufficient supervision, Lawrence Sanchez, was the architect of spying programs that helped make the NYPD one of the nation's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. The programs have drawn criticism from Muslims as well as New York and Washington lawmakers.

On Thursday, Muslim activists urged Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to resign and invoked the legacy of the 1960s FBI program COINTELPRO, which spied on political and activist groups.

"We the people find ourselves facing the specter of a 21st century COINTELPRO, once again in the name of safety and security," said Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York.

Sanchez, a CIA veteran who according to his biography spent 15 years overseas in the former Soviet Union, South Asia and the Middle East, was sent to New York to help with information sharing following the 9/11 attacks. While on the CIA payroll from 2002 to 2004, he also helped create and direct police intelligence programs. He then formally joined the NYPD while on a leave of absence from the CIA.

The loosely defined assignment strained relations with the FBI and two consecutive CIA station chiefs in New York who complained that Sanchez's presence undermined their authority. U.S. officials have acknowledged that the rules were murky but they attributed that to the desperate push for better intelligence after the attacks.

Sanchez left the NYPD in 2010. Then, last July, the CIA sent one of its most senior clandestine operatives to work out of the NYPD. That's the officer who now is leaving. While the internal investigation found problems with the oversight of Sanchez's assignment, officials said the rules of the current arrangement were more clearly defined.

Even now, however, confusion remains.

Police Commissioner Kelly said the new officer was working at the NYPD to help share foreign intelligence. Federal officials, however, said he was there on a management sabbatical and was not sharing intelligence.

Kelly and the federal government also are at odds explaining the legal basis for a relationship between a local police department and the CIA, which is not allowed to spy domestically.

This fall, Kelly told the city council that the collaboration was authorized under a presidential order. But under those rules, the assignment would have had to have been approved by the CIA's top lawyer. The AP reported last week there was no such approval.

A CIA spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood, said Sanchez was sent to New York at the direction of then-CIA Director George Tenet, who had the authority to move his officers around the world to make sure intelligence was being shared. That arrangement did not require the lawyer's approval, she said.

"Context matters here," Youngblood said. "The CIA stepped up cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism after 9/11. It's hard to imagine that anyone is suggesting this was inappropriate or unexpected."

The current officer, whose name remains classified, operates under a more formal arrangement, specified in writing that he works directly for the NYPD. Nevertheless, some U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns about the assignment, and the federal government's most senior intelligence official, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, has said the arrangement looks bad and will be addressed.

The CIA officer is working as a special assistant to David Cohen, the NYPD's top intelligence officer. Cohen did not respond to an email Thursday requesting comment.

It's unclear exactly when the CIA officer will leave the police department and what his next job will be. A former station chief in Pakistan and Jordan, he is one of the CIA's most experienced spies. His assignment in New York was expected to last a year.

Kelly, the police commissioner, has defended his department and its Demographics Unit, which monitored conversations in cafes and wrote reports on Muslim businesses. Kelly has said his officers only follow leads. But internal police documents obtained by the AP show that even the most generic lead was used to justify surveillance of entire neighborhoods. Officials involved in the effort also told the AP that the Demographics Unit actually avoided locations where criminal investigations were under way for fear of disrupting them.

Relations between the NYPD and the Muslim community were further strained this week when police acknowledged that it showed nearly 1,500 officers a training video featuring Kelly. The video portrayed Muslims wanting to "infiltrate and dominate" the United States. Kelly apologized but only after police spokesman Paul Browne falsely claimed that the segment showing Kelly had been lifted from a previous interview. Browne later acknowledged that Kelly sat for an exclusive interview with the filmmakers and that Browne himself suggested it.

___

Follow Goldman and Apuzzo at http://twitter.com/goldmandc and http://twitter.com/mattapuzzo. Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120126/ap_on_go_ot/us_nypd_intelligence

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Ice-T weighs in on presidential race from Sundance

Nicole "Coco" Austin, left, and Ice-T, from the film "The Art of Rap," pose for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will)

Nicole "Coco" Austin, left, and Ice-T, from the film "The Art of Rap," pose for a portrait during the 2012 Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Park City, Utah. (AP Photo/Victoria Will)

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) ? Regardless of the outcome of the presidential primaries, Ice-T already has his mind made up about the forthcoming election.

The rapper and actor, who is making his directorial debut at the Sundance Film Festival with the documentary "Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap," says he expects President Barack Obama to be re-elected. After that, he predicts Hillary Clinton will be the next president.

The 53-year-old entertainer said, "She did the Secretary of State job, she was a G, she held it down, she didn't cry," referring to the former New York Senator with the hip-hop term for gangster (a positive thing).

"Obama will support her," he said, "and she'll be the first woman president."

Ice-T's documentary premiered at the Sundance festival, which continues through Sunday in Park City, Utah.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2012-01-26-Film-Sundance-Ice-T/id-eef45f192f3c4f249b53a09fd5a24599

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Digital Spies: The Alarming Rise of Electronic Espionage

The first warning that hackers had penetrated the American oil company came soon after the initial breach, in the summer of 2009. The computer help desk received complaints from employees who were locked out of their accounts or whose computers had already been logged onto.

Then the complaints abruptly ceased: The digital spies had obtained an administrator password and were intercepting help-desk tickets, unlocking accounts, and notifying users that their problems had been fixed. With that access, the hackers copied thousands of confidential emails?including those of top executives?and transmitted them to China in massive files late at night, after the oil company's employees had left for the day.

By the time the FBI informed the company of suspicious network traffic in the summer of 2010, Chinese firms had outbid the oil company on several high-stakes acquisitions by just a few thousand dollars. But it could have been far worse: For months, malware that allowed the hackers to take over terminals had been burrowing deeper into the company's systems and had wormed its way into computers that controlled oil-drilling and pipeline operations.

"People were alarmed that their email was compromised, but the hackers could have crippled the business," says Jonathan Pollet, the founder of Red Tiger Security in Houston. In early 2011, Pollet helped the oil company identify some of the hackers' breaches; he refused to name the company, citing a confidentiality agreement.

The example Pollet cites is just one incident in an ongoing, aggressive campaign of electronic espionage that costs U.S. firms billions of dollars, endangers our military secrets, and threatens to erode our technological edge, as computer hackers?often but not exclusively traced to China?help their clients, and their countries, gain the upper hand in business deals and steal intellectual property. (An October 2011 report prepared for the Director of National Intelligence titled "Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace" explicitly accuses China and Russia of hacking U.S. companies, calling Chinese hackers "the world's most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.")

The phenomenon blurs the lines between white-collar crime, international spying, and even acts of war, but the attacks are known in the intelligence community as advanced persistent threats, or APTs. Well-financed, patient teams of hackers that U.S. intelligence agencies believe are backed by foreign governments now constitute a major national security risk. The hackers use tactics that are inherently difficult to trace and choose targets that have deep roots within U.S. infrastructure, government, and military. Recent news accounts have identified APT victims that include Google, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Morgan Stanley, Dow Chemical, Symantec, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin, to name just a few.

Private industry is understandably reluctant to reveal such breaches, even to the government: If a digital attack strikes fear in the hearts of a company's executives, one can only imagine how it would make shareholders feel. But digital spying is like a cockroach infestation?for every one that you see, thousands thrive out of view. "I can't find an organization, an entity, a business, or a department that hasn't suffered from cyber intrusions," says Gordon M. Snow, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division. "If they really believe they haven't, they're just not aware of it yet."

In August 2011, a report by the security firm McAfee detailed hacks into some 72 public and private computer networks in 14 countries and warned of "the biggest transfer of wealth in terms of intellectual property in history."

Technology theft is the most common motive for digital espionage, but China and other nations have used it to squelch internal political dissent as well. Stolen source code from Google was used to hack into the accounts of Chinese dissidents, and after an Iranian hacker broke into Dutch security firm DigiNotar, the stolen technology was used to help his government spy on troublemakers in Iran. These attacks can cause collateral damage that compromises the security of everyone online. Digital security certificates from DigiNotar were part of the basic verification system of the Internet. If you can fake one of those, you can fool a browser into thinking any site is safe.

A History of Hacks

The United States itself is no slouch at cyber spying. The National Security Agency and the Pentagon possess the most sophisticated signals intelligence and digital warfare technology in the world. That gives us the ability to spy on foreign cellphone calls, shut down enemy air defenses, or even remotely cause equipment in an adversary's weapons facility to self-destruct.

But former U.S. officials insist the government does not engage in economic espionage or intellectual property theft from foreign companies. In part, they contend, that's because there is little IP we would want to steal, and to do so would undercut our efforts to discourage such theft by other nations. Private U.S. companies, meanwhile, would be breaking U.S. law if they hacked into the servers of state-owned competitors in places like China and Russia?although some U.S. multinationals have been accused of dirty business overseas (see "Who's Spying on Whom?" page 55). "The U.S. has an enormous stake in the integrity of the intellectual property regime," says Joel Brenner, former head of U.S. counterintelligence during the Bush and Obama administrations and the author of America the Vulnerable, a book on digital espionage published last September. "Many of our adversaries don't believe we don't do this. But it's really true. We don't." According to James Lewis, a digital security expert at the Washington, D.C.?based Center for Strategic and International Studies, this apparent unwillingness to retaliate presents "an asymmetric disadvantage" that our rivals are exploiting to win an emerging digital cold war.

Computer espionage has a history almost as long as that of the modern Internet. In the late 1980s, the German hacker Markus Hess and several associates were recruited by the KGB to penetrate computers at American universities and military labs. They made off with sensitive semiconductor, satellite, space, and aircraft technologies. Today, China, Israel, and Russia are reportedly the most aggressive about stealing secrets. But China is playing a game of a different magnitude. "The Chinese didn't create this problem," Brenner says. "But there's no question China is the worst offender now. They are all over us. It's just relentless."

Experts believe today's attacks on U.S. industry are an extension of a series of attacks on American military computer networks that took place in the late '90s and early 2000s. The assault has netted the Chinese sensitive military technologies that might one day be used against us. Then, as now, the Chinese government has vehemently denied that it has any state-sponsored hacking program, calling U.S. allegations groundless and irresponsible.

Plausible deniability is precisely what makes digital espionage such an effective tool. It's difficult to detect and impossible to prove?and thus can't be used to justify retaliation. Digital-security experts call this the attribution problem. "At most, you know the immediate computer involved in attacking you or receiving the stolen data?and sometimes you don't even know that," says Columbia University computer scientist Steven Bellovin, who advises the Department of Homeland Security on the issue. "But you don't know who actually controls the computer. It could be another hacked computer someplace that somebody else is controlling from somewhere else."

Still, few buy the Chinese denials. There have simply been too many attacks traced to the mainland. Last spring, secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made public by Reuters detailed a widespread digital spying operation, Byzantine Hades, linked to the People's Liberation Army Chengdu Military Region First Technical Reconnaissance Bureau, an electronic espionage unit of the Chinese military. According to the cables, Byzantine Hades targeted not only the U.S. government and industry, but also high-level European officials. The Chinese hackers even managed to remotely activate the computer microphones and Web cameras of French officials so they could peek in on everything from office gossip to high-level diplomatic planning sessions. In the past, surveillance like that would have required spies to know where their targets were staying and mic the room?but in the age of cellphones and laptops, spies can listen in on foreign officials half a world away.

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/how-to/computer-security/digital-spies-the-alarming-rise-of-electronic-espionage?src=rss

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Minn. bear delivers at least 2 cubs on Internet (AP)

ELY, Minn. ? A 3-year-old bear in Minnesota has given birth to two cubs before an Internet audience.

Lynn Rogers of the Wildlife Research Institute, affiliated with North American Bear Center, said in a news release that Jewel gave birth in a den near Ely to the first cub at 7:22 a.m. Sunday, and a second at 8:40.

It's not the first time Rogers and his colleagues have monitored hibernating pregnant black bears.

In 2010, they recorded the birth of a bear named Hope in 2010. A Hunter killed Hope last year.

Jewel is the younger sister of Hope's mother, Lily.

Lily also gave birth last year to two cubs named Faith and Jason.

___

Online:

North American Bear Center: http://www.bear.org

___

Information from: Duluth News Tribune, http://www.duluthsuperior.com

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_re_us/us_internet_bear_sister

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Sony Ericsson details GLONASS support in Xperia phones

Sony (Ericsson) has taken to its mobile Developer World blog to confirm thats 2011 Xperia smartphones, as well as the recently-announced Xperia S and Xperia Ion, fully support the Russian GLONASS positioning service in addition to GPS. GLONASS is run by the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, and performs similar tasks to GPS, but operates independently of it. By using information from both systems, it's possible to get a more accurate fix of your location in built-up areas where GPS alone may struggle.

Sony says that all its devices equipped with Snadragon S2 and S2 chips fully support both GLONASS and GPS for improved location-tracking accuracy. That means if you have a 2011 Xperia phone, or you're planning on picking up an Xperia S or Ion, you may have an edge over devices which only support GPS. For more technical info, head over to SE's blog post in the source link.

Source: SE Developer World

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/8W0RC1vLbVQ/story01.htm

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