Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former firefighter with a crush on Madonna has been convicted of resisting arrest outside her former New York City apartment building as he spray-painted poster boards with love notes.

A jury delivered its verdict Friday in Robert Linhart's trial. He could face up to a year in jail.

Defense lawyer Lawrence LaBrew tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/ZgI4jl) that Linhart will appeal.

Linhart was arrested in September 2010. Police say he parked his SUV outside the singer's Manhattan apartment, laid out a tarp and wrote out such messages as "Madonna, I need you."

Jurors told the Post they felt it was fine for Linhart to express himself to the Material Girl. But they said they believed police testimony that he resisted arrest by flailing his arms.

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Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine's protection levels as "unacceptably low." She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn't get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

"Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children," said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

"The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later," said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

"If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale," said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. "We're all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine," she said. "The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it."

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn't comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

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How 'poor judgment' felled military star Petraeus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Petraeus was a star on the battlefield, commanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was undone by "poor judgment" in engaging in an extramarital affair that led to his downfall as CIA director.

Just two days after his 60th birthday, Petraeus stepped down from the spy agency where he had held the top office since September 6, 2011.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation," Petraeus told the shadow warriors he commanded at CIA.

It was a stunning downfall for a revered military man who was seen as one of the top American leaders of his generation and was once considered a potential contender for the White House.

Petraeus was credited with pulling Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war and for battlefield successes in Afghanistan after overseeing a surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Barack Obama in late 2009. He became known for counter-insurgency strategies that were seen as gaining ground against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I don't think he was professionally overrated. His were genuine accomplishments," said James Carafano, a war historian with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

At the time of his nomination to the CIA post, some Washington insiders had said the White House wanted to find a prominent position for Petraeus to ensure he would not be recruited by Republicans as a challenger to the 2012 Obama-Biden ticket.

When he was nominated to lead the CIA there were some concerns in intelligence circles that the high-profile four-star Army general might not be able to lead from the shadows as appropriate for a spy chief.

But once he took over the head office at the U.S. spy agency, Petraeus kept a decidedly low public profile.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, expressed regret about the resignation of "one of America's best and brightest" and said it was an "enormous loss" for the country.

"At CIA, Director Petraeus gave the agency leadership, stature, prestige and credibility both at home and abroad. On a personal level, I found his command of intelligence issues second to none," she said.

RESIGNATION ACCEPTED

After accepting his resignation about a year-and-a-half after nominating Petraeus to the CIA post, Obama said: "By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end."

Earlier this week, in a Newsweek article entitled "General David Petraeus's Rules for Living," he listed 12 lessons for leadership. Number 5 was: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear­ view mirrors - drive on and avoid making them again."

In 2010 Petraeus stepped into the breach as the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to replace General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama in a scandal over an article in which McChrystal and his aides made mocking comments about the president and some of his top advisers.

In 2009 Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and underwent radiation treatment. The media-friendly general joked at that time at a Washington event that reporters were only gathered "to see if the guy is still alive."

Petraeus, born in Cornwall, New York, lives in Virginia with his wife Holly. They have two grown children, a son who was an Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, and a daughter.

Petraeus's wife, Holly, is an activist and volunteer who champions military families, and she continued that work after her husband retired from the military and moved to the CIA.

She currently is assistant director of the office of servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she tries to keep unscrupulous lenders from taking advantage of military personnel. The bureau was championed by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts this week.

Holly Petraeus is the daughter of four-star General William Knowlton, who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when Petraeus was a cadet.

She briefed the press at the Pentagon on her efforts recently and was introduced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called her "a true friend of the Department of Defense and a dedicated member of our military family."

Petraeus has four Defense Distinguished Service Medal awards, three Distinguished Service Medal awards, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the State Department Distinguished Service Award.

He has a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Diane Bartz; Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)

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Sri Lankan move to fire top judge stirs fears

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — When Shirani Bandaranayake was appointed Sri Lanka's chief justice, rights campaigners assailed her as a puppet of a government that was steamrolling opponents and consolidating power. A year later, she is on the verge of becoming its latest victim.

In the wake of court challenges to government authority, the ruling party submitted an impeachment complaint in Parliament accusing her of unexplained wealth and misuse of power. Opposition parties and independent analysts allege it is a naked attempt by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to cow the judiciary.

Rajapaksa's ruling coalition, which controls more than the two-thirds of votes needed to impeach, is expected to pass the motion easily. After impeachment it would be up to the president to remove Bandaranayake.

The impeachment "is totally politically motivated," said human rights lawyer and activist J.C. Weliamuna. "The present regime has concentrated all legal powers and they are not prepared to even accept that the courts can give judgments controlling their power."

The U.S. government has urged Sri Lanka to refrain from impinging on the judiciary's independence. Sri Lankan lawyers have called for U.N. observers to monitor the impeachment proceedings. Even the country's conservative Buddhist monks have asked Rajapaksa to reconsider.

The impeachment complaint alleges Bandaranayake did not disclose how she obtained 19 million rupees ($146,000) to pay for a house purchased in an opaque real estate deal, and that she took over cases filed against a company involved in the deal after removing the judges who originally heard them.

It accuses her of not declaring the contents of 20 bank accounts, and of misusing her position to harass other judges. It says her actions "plunged the Supreme Court and the office of chief justice into disrepute."

In a statement to Colombo's Daily Mirror newspaper, the chief justice insisted she is innocent and will continue to work.

Government spokesman Keheliya Rambukwella appeared to signal that the impeachment proceedings were about far more than corruption allegations. Bandaranayake, he said, had overstepped her role and worked to undermine Parliament's authority. He said the impeachment was brought because the dispute "had gone beyond the stage of settlement."

Rajapaksa, at an event where he handed out free laptops and interest-free car loans to journalists, said the government did not intend to interfere with the judiciary but insisted Parliament is duty-bound to check into complaints against the justice, according to a government news website.

The president has been accused of manipulating the judiciary to get convictions against his opponents. Sri Lanka's former army commander Sarath Fonseka was convicted in a few cases since he challenged Rajapaksa in the 2010 presidential election.

Bandaranayake is an unlikely government foe.

Her elevation to chief justice came months after she supported a ruling that said Rajapaksa needed only a parliamentary vote — not a national referendum — to amend the constitution to expand his powers and let him serve more than two terms.

But the government and judiciary have repeatedly clashed during her short term in office.

In July, a mob reportedly instigated by a government minister attacked a courthouse with stones in the northern Mannar district because they disagreed with a judge's ruling. The Bar Association of Sri Lanka said the minister threatened the judge in a phone call. Bandaranayake demanded action against the attackers.

In September, the Judicial Services Commission, a disciplinary body for judges that Bandaranayake heads, accused unnamed "powerful persons" of trying to interfere in its work. It said judges and their families were under threat and living in fear.

Commission secretary Manjula Tillakaratne was later beaten in broad daylight last month as he sat in his parked car. Opposition parties blamed the government, which denied responsibility. Police have made no arrests.

Judges and lawyers boycotted courts in protest.

The impeachment complaint against Bandaranayake — submitted last week to Parliament's speaker, the president's older brother — followed a Supreme Court ruling that declared Rajapaksa's effort to take back some powers from the provinces to be unconstitutional.

The ruling angered the government by showing how it had reneged on its promise to strengthen provincial councils as part of a plan to empower minority Tamils and defuse the nation's ethnic conflict, said Jehan Perera, an analyst with the National Peace Council activist group.

The majority Sinhalese-dominated government had told the United States and India it would embark on a reconciliation program after winning a bloody war against Tamil rebels in 2009.

Analyst Kusal Perera said the impeachment was more likely the result of a personal falling-out between a government and a chief justice who once worked hand-in-glove, rather than a dispute over judicial power.

"I don't see the chief justice as a principled person. Her appointment itself was very political," said Perera.

Weliamuna, the human rights lawyer, warned that if the government continues to assert authority over the justice system, it could start appointing party hacks as judges and destroy what remains of judicial independence.

"See the message given to the international community. The chief justice is not protected in Sri Lanka. How can we protect our own citizens?" he said.

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Exclusive: SEC left computers vulnerable to cyber attacks – sources

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Staffers at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission failed to encrypt some of their computers containing highly sensitive information from stock exchanges, leaving the data vulnerable to cyber attacks, according to people familiar with the matter.

While the computers were unprotected, there was no evidence that hacking or spying on the SEC‘s computers took place, these people said.

The computers and other electronic devices in question belonged to a handful of employees in an office within the SEC’s Trading and Markets Division. That office is responsible for making sure exchanges follow certain guidelines to protect the markets from potential cyber threats and systems problems, one of those people said.

Some of the staffers even brought the unprotected devices to a Black Hat convention, a conference where computer hacking experts gather to discuss the latest trends. It is not clear why the staffers brought the devices to the event.

The security lapses in the Trading and Markets Division are laid out in a yet-to-be-released report that by the SEC’s Interim Inspector General Jon Rymer.

NO DATA BREACHED

The revelation comes as the SEC is encouraging companies to get more serious about cyber attacks. Last year, the agency issued guidance that public companies should follow in determining when to report breaches to investors.

Cyber security has become an even more pressing issue after high-profile companies from Lockheed Martin Corp to Bank of America Corp have fallen victim to hacking in recent years.

Nasdaq OMX Group, which runs the No. 2 U.S. equities exchange, in 2010 suffered a cyber attack on its collaboration software for corporate boards, but its trading systems were not breached.

One of the people familiar with the SEC’s security lapse said the agency was forced to spend at least $ 200,000 and hire a third-party firm to conduct a thorough analysis to make sure none of the data was compromised.

The watchdog’s report has already been circulated to the SEC’s five commissioners, as well as to key lawmakers on Capitol Hill, and is expected to be made public soon.

SEC spokesman John Nester declined to comment on the report’s findings.

SEC NOTIFIED EXCHANGES

Rich Adamonis, a spokesman for the New York Stock Exchange, said the exchange operator is “disappointed” with the SEC’s lapse.

“From the moment we were informed, we have been actively seeking clarity from the SEC to understand the full extent of the use of improperly secured devices and the information involved, as well as the actions taken by the SEC to ensure that there is proper remediation and a complete audit trail for the information,” he said.

A spokesman for Nasdaq OMX declined to comment on the security lapse at the SEC.

Since the internal investigation was concluded, the SEC initiated disciplinary actions against the people involved, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

The SEC also notified all of the exchanges about the incident.

The SEC’s Trading and Markets Division, which has several hundred staffers, is primarily responsible for overseeing the U.S. equity markets, ensuring compliance with rules and writing regulations for exchanges and brokerages.

Among the division’s tasks is to ensure exchanges are following a series of voluntary guidelines known as “Automation Review Policies,” or ARPs. These policies call for exchanges to establish programs concerning computer audits, security and capacity. They are, in essence, a road map of the capital markets’ infrastructure.

Although they are only voluntary guidelines, exchanges take them seriously.

Under the ARP, exchanges must provide highly secure information to the SEC such as architectural maps, systems recovery and business continuity planning details in the event of a disaster or other major event.

That is the same kind of data used by exchanges last week after Hurricane Sandy forced U.S. equities markets to shut down for two days.

Prior to re-opening, all of the U.S. stock market operators took part in coordinated testing for trading on NYSE’s backup system.

SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro recently said the SEC is working to convert the voluntary ARP guidelines into enforceable rules after a software error at Knight Capital Group nearly bankrupt the brokerage and led to a $ 440 million trading loss.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Karey Wutkowski and Lisa Shumaker)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Roger Waters plays with band of wounded veterans

NEW YORK (AP) — Roger Waters honored wounded veterans in New York by performing with them at the annual Stand Up for Heroes benefit, Thursday night.

The founding member of Pink Floyd took to the stage of the Beacon Theater with 14 wounded soldiers he met recently at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He rehearsed with them at the hospital, and for the past few days in New York.

The event benefited the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which helps returning veterans and their families, and featured Waters, Bruce Springsteen, Ricky Gervais, Robin Williams, and others.

Before the show, Waters chatted with veterans and called the experience "fantastic." He says he's "looking forward to pulling for the rest of these guys with their comrades" during the healing process.

He says that he shares "enormous empathy with the men."

"I lost my grandfather in 1916 and my father in 1944, so I've been around the sense of loss and what loss from war can do to people," Waters said.

"I never talk about the politics because it's not relevant to me. I'm not interested in it," he said. "What I am interested in is the burdens these guys bear and would never question motive or even dream of talking about any of the politics."

He added: "If any of us have a responsibility in our lives it is to tear down the walls of indifference and miscommunication between ourselves and our fellow men."

Waters said he rehearsed with many of the soldiers at the hospital in between their medical procedures. Before the show, he walked the red carpet with Staff Sgt. Robert Henline, who was not in the band. In 2007, Henline was the sole survivor of a roadside bombing north of Baghdad. As a result, he suffered burns over 38 percent of his body and his head was burned to the skull.

Henline, who fought for his life after the attack, has endured more than 40 surgeries.

Still, he maintains a sense of humor. On the open red carpet on a chilly night, Waters pushed closer to Henline for warmth.

"Get next to the burn guy. I'm good. I'm heated up," Henline joked.

No surprise. The retired soldier says he's been doing stand-up comedy for the past year and a half.

Waters performed three songs with the veterans, including the Pink Floyd classic, "Wish You Were Here."

Waters said he didn't think there would be a reunion with his former band.

"I think David (Gilmour) is retired by and large. I shouldn't speak for him. But that's the impression I get."

Waters then added: "Hey whatever. All good things come to an end."

While his mammoth tour of "The Wall" ended this summer, Waters promised the theatrical version would hit the Broadway stage in the near future.

The Bob Woodruff Foundation has supported more than 1 million veterans, service members, and their families since it began in 2008.

_____

John Carucci covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at —http://www.twitter.com/jcarucci_ap

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Calif. city plans to provide transgender surgeries

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — San Francisco is preparing to become the first U.S. city to provide and cover the cost of sex reassignment surgeries for uninsured transgender residents.

The city's Health Commission voted Tuesday to create a comprehensive program for treating transgender people experiencing mental distress because of the mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities. San Francisco already provides transgender residents with hormones, counseling and routine health services, but has stopped short of offering surgical interventions, Public Health Director Barbara Garcia said Thursday after the vote was announced.

The idea for a new program that included surgeries came out of conversations between public health officials and transgender rights advocates who wanted mastectomies, genital reconstructions and other surgeries that are recommended for some transgender people covered under San Francisco's 5-year-old universal health care plan.

At the urging of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, the commission agreed this week to drop sex reassignment surgery from the list of procedures specifically excluded from the Healthy San Francisco plan.

But Garcia described the move as "a symbolic process" for now because the city currently does not have the expertise, capacity or protocols in place to provide the surgeries through its clinics and public hospital.

"The community felt the exclusion on Healthy San Francisco was discriminatory and we wanted to change that as the first step," she said.

Instead of expanding the existing plan, the Health Commission approved the establishment of a separate program that covers all aspects of transgender health, including gender transition. Garcia hopes to have it running by late next year, but said her department first needs to study how many people it would serve, how much it would cost, who would perform the surgeries and where they would be performed.

"Sex reassignment surgery is not the end all. It's one service that some transgender people want and some don't," she said. "We can probably manage this over the next three years without much of a budget increase because we already have these (other) services covered."

San Francisco in 2001 became the first city in the country to cover sex reassignment surgeries for government employees. Last year, Portland, Ore. did the same. The number of major U.S. companies covering the cost of gender reassignment surgery for transgender workers also doubled last year, reflecting a decades-long push by transgender activists to get insurance companies to treat such surgeries as medically necessary instead of elective procedures.

Kathryn Steuerman, a member of a transgender health advocacy group in San Francisco, said the city's latest move would help residents avoid going into debt to finance operations related to gender transition, as she did.

"I am filled with hope and gratitude that we are achieving this level of support for the well-being of the transgender community," Steuerman said.

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Gas rationing expands as Sandy, Nor'easter effects linger

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Malaysia firm says high-tech farms can help poor

PULAU MANIS, Malaysia (AP) — For one Malaysian widow, moving to this experimental farming village represented hope for a brighter future for her seven children. Her new neighbor, also among the first to settle here, sought an easier life after years of low-paying, back-breaking plantation labor.

The corporation that built this rural community two years ago sees it as part charity, part test kitchen. The villagers — 80 families in all — live for free in low-cost bungalows and work on a high-tech hydroponic farm, a setup the company hopes to replicate elsewhere.

"We thought that we should do something different, instead of just donating money," said Tan Say Jim, managing director of Malaysian technology firm Iris Corp. "Even if we give you a little money, you'll still be poor. We wanted to really touch lives."

The government is now involved in a plan to build similar villages across this Southeast Asian country, where nearly one of 10 people in rural provinces lives below the official poverty line.

___

The idea for the village began at Iris, a company whose interests range from passport computer chips to agricultural equipment, much of which is in use at Kampung Pulau Manis and a second village set up this year.

Collaborating with a local Islamic bank for charity work, Iris executives brainstormed a plan to develop homes and a farm on 25 acres (10 hectares) of abandoned land that state authorities offered in Pulau Manis district, in eastern Pahang state.

Malaysia's government regularly encourages companies to conduct "corporate social responsibility" programs; in recent years, these ranged from oil-and-gas company BP helping to manage a sanctuary for endangered turtles to toothpaste manufacturer Colgate providing oral care travel kits to Muslim pilgrims bound for Saudi Arabia.

By early last year, families selected by Pahang's welfare and religious authorities left behind their cramped wooden shacks to move into three-bedroom, brick-and-mortar houses built in neat rows on bare land surrounded by vestiges of palm oil plantations. Grocery shops and a school are nearby, but it's nearly an hour's drive to the closest major town.

Iris also constructed plant nurseries where many villagers now tend to cabbage, tomatoes, rock melons, okra, lettuce and chili peppers. Iris sells the produce in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city, as well as in neighboring Singapore.

Iris uses technology it calls the "autopot system." Each plant is in its own pot that regulates the delivery of water and nutrients, using less water than other farming methods. The company says it is "absolutely certain" the villages will be profitable from crop earnings and sustainable in the long term, though it was unable to provide specific projections.

___

Among the residents is Faizal Zulkifli, a thin, darkly tanned father of three. His bungalow is almost indistinguishable from his neighbors', with a rust-tainted motorcycle, papaya tree and a clothesline filled with sarongs and sweat pants in his front yard. His living room is sparsely furnished with a worn-out couch and a table topped with baby formula and fruits.

It's far from a luxurious existence, but it's better than what his family had when he worked on a palm oil plantation.

"I remember when we lived before in a house with no electricity, no tap water," he said, carrying his year-old son while taking a break from his work doing farm equipment maintenance.

He said his work is a cinch compared to his old job loading heavy bunches of palm oil fruits onto trucks.

Norlailawati Yusof feels much the same way. She used to work as a housemaid in another Pahang province, earning 15 ringgit ($5) a day. Now she makes three times that much working on Iris' farm.

Norlailawati, whose husband died of pneumonia several years ago, prunes vegetables planted neatly in mechanically irrigated pots inside a plastic-shaded, nylon-walled nursery. She says the morning heat and the menial chores rarely faze her, since she considers it a blessing to be earning a steady salary.

And her present working hours — seven hours a day, six days a week — feel less demanding, enabling her to devote more time to her children.

"I don't worry so much anymore," says Norlailawati, who wears a flowing Muslim headscarf and a loose-fitting dress while working. "I can afford to send my seven children to school."

___

A few months after the Pulau Manis village was completed, Iris began building a similar village about a half-hour drive away. Early this year, another 50 families moved into the second village, which features space for raising chickens and water tanks where thousands of freshwater fish are now bred.

It wasn't long before Malaysia's federal government took notice of both villages, which Iris says cost a total of 16 million ringgit ($5.2 million) to develop. Tan, the Iris executive, gave Prime Minister Najib Razak a tour of one of the villages.

Subsequently, government officials agreed to fund the construction of at least five more villages by Iris in various Malaysian states, each costing about 25 million ringgit ($8.2 million). The project is known in the Malay language as "Rimbunan Kasih," loosely translated as "Canopies of Love."

Each upcoming village will contain 100 houses and wide-ranging farm facilities, as well as community halls, places of worship and computer laboratories.

There will be other upgrades: The 1,000-square-foot (100-square-meter) houses will be better insulated and can be constructed faster, within 10 days instead of four weeks, with Iris using its own building panels made of Styrofoam and mineral compounds. Tan said it is "not unlike making a house out of Lego blocks."

Iris says the "Rimbunan Kasih" villages are environmentally friendly. It says construction of the houses requires no timber or concrete, and that its farm technology cuts waste. Water is recycled from fish tanks to the mechanically irrigated vegetable pots.

Najib is expected to launch the first village before the end of the year as part of efforts to bring better wages to rural regions, where official data show about 8.5 percent of Malaysians live in poverty. In rural parts of peninsular Malaysia, the government considers families earning less than 743 ringgit ($242) a month to be living in poverty.

The poverty rate is far lower than the 58 percent in 1970, but there has been little improvement since the 1990s. So far, villagers in the project have comprised the country's majority ethnic Malay Muslims as well as a small number of indigenous tribal people, all of whom make up the bulk of the country's rural poor.

___

Some see the project as a model for how the corporate sector can become more closely involved in Malaysia's anti-poverty efforts.

Tan hopes he can also drum up interest in other countries in Asia and Africa for such villages, as well as potentially build integrated farms in refugee camps.

Mohd Khanif Yusop, a professor specializing in agriculture and land management at Malaysia's Putra University, said the project must strike a balance between being cost-effective and producing lucrative crops.

"In spite of the costs of the hydroponic system, it's possible for you to market high-value crops at a high price," he said. "But then, if your lettuce is more expensive than the lettuce imported from China, then it won't be sustainable."

Tan acknowledges there have been problems: A few villagers were reprimanded for failing to show up for work, while another struggled with a drug addiction.

But residents of Pulau Manis and the second village in nearby Padang Rumbia district told The Associated Press they are happy with their new homes and feel safe. Villagers in Padang Rumbia are nurturing a sense of community by organizing soccer games and get-togethers to spruce up the neighborhood.

Asked how long he hopes to stay, Padang Rumbia resident Hanif Abdul Hamid grins and replies: "Until they kick me out. Why should I go anywhere else?"

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Siemens to sharpen its game with 6 billion euros of savings

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