Endeavour ends its flying days in California

LOS ANGELES?? The space shuttle Endeavour finished its flying days for good on Friday with a sightseeing tour that crisscrossed California and ended up at Los Angeles' airport.

Strapped to the back of a 747 jumbo jet, the pair touched down just before 1 p.m. PT (4 p.m. ET) after a state-spanning flyover that lasted nearly five hours. One of the crew members stuck an American flag out of the hatch of the jet.

The flyover took Endeavour over the state Capitol, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Hollywood Sign and other icons en route to LAX, where the shuttle will be prepped for a slow-speed journey to its museum home next month.

At the Santa Monica Pier, spectators pointed their cameras skyward, and some chanted, "USA! USA!" as Endeavour swooped along the coast. "Even though it was a few seconds, it was a unique experience to witness history," said Andrew Lerner, 23, of Santa Monica.

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Thousands of spectators jammed rooftop buildings and streets in Sacramento, cheering as Endeavour made two loops around the state Capitol. A crowd of schoolchildren squealed in delight during the second flyover.

Matthew Montgomery took a break from his work as a legislative aide and brought his 2-year-old son, Tavion, to see Endeavour airborne. "I was going to leave him in daycare but thought this is a once-in-a-lifetime deal," said Montgomery, whose aunt was an engineer on the early Apollo missions.

Because Endeavour buzzed by some of the Golden State's most iconic sights, law enforcement and transportation authorities warned motorists not to "gawk and drive."

"We want people to take in this majestic show," Los Angeles police Cmdr. Scott Kroeber said earlier this week. "But if you're driving, please drive and don't try to take in the show simultaneously."

Traffic came to a near stop along a freeway near the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory east of Los Angeles when motorists pulled off to the shoulder to watch. California Highway Patrol officers came through and blared on loud speakers for people to move on.

Extra officers were on duty along the freeways near the airport to make sure traffic flowed smoothly as the shuttle zoomed overhead.

Sentimental journey
The landing at LAX marked the end of a three-day cross-country trip from Endeavour's former home at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. On Wednesday, the shuttle left Florida forever and made low passes over NASA facilities in Mississippi and Louisiana. The piggyback pair spent the night at Houston's Ellington Field, near the home of Mission Control at Johnson Space Center.

On Thursday, Endeavour resumed its westward flight and made a special pass over Tucson, Ariz., to honor its last commander, Mark Kelly, and his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Giffords, who is recovering from a head wound she suffered during a mass shooting in Tucson last year, was "hooting and hollering" as Endeavour looped around her hometown, according to her former aide, C.J. Karamargin.

"That's my spaceship," Kelly said proudly.

Thursday afternoon's visit to Edwards Air Force Base brought Endeavour full circle: NASA's shuttle fleet, which retired last year after three decades of flight, was assembled in Palmdale near Edwards. The military outpost, 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, served as the original shuttle landing strip and remained a backup site in case of stormy weather in Florida.

Officials in California played up the shuttle connection. "We're so excited to be welcoming Endeavour home in grand style with these flyovers," Jeffrey Rudolph, president of the California Science Center, said earlier this week.

Past and future
The youngest shuttle, Endeavour replaced Challenger, which blew up during liftoff in 1986. NASA lost another shuttle, Columbia, in 2003 when it disintegrated during re-entry. Fourteen astronauts were killed.

During 25 missions, Endeavour spent 299 days in space and orbited Earth nearly 4,700 times, racking up 123 million miles (198 million kilometers).

On its maiden flight in 1992, a trio of spacewalking astronauts grabbed a stranded communications satellite in for repair. It also flew the first repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope to fix a faulty mirror. But most of its flights ferried cargo and equipment to the International Space Station.

Under White House orders to explore beyond low-Earth orbit, NASA is hitching rides on Russian rockets to the orbiting laboratory until private companies can provide regular service.

Endeavour is the second of three remaining shuttles to head to its retirement home. In April, Discovery arrived at the Smithsonian Institution's hangar in Virginia. Atlantis, which closed out the shuttle program, will stay in Florida. It's due to be towed a short distance to the Kennedy Space Center's visitor center in the fall.

The prototype shuttle Enterprise, which was used in aerodynamic glide tests but never flew in space, was moved out of the Smithsonian to make room for Discovery. Enterprise was flown to John F. Kennedy International Airport, shipped up the Hudson River on a barge, and put on display at New York's Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

The piggyback flights of Discovery and Enterprise became popular photo opportunities, and Endeavour's star turn was no different. But now, with Endeavour on the ground and Atlantis staying in Florida, such flights are now a thing of the past.

Endeavour will remain at an airport hangar for several weeks as crews ready the shuttle for its own road trip. Next month, it will creep through city streets on a wheeled transporter, heading for the California Science Center near downtown.

About 400 trees will be cleared along the 12-mile (20-kilometer) route to make room, a move that has riled some residents in affected neighborhoods. Museum officials have pledged to replant double the number of chopped trees.

This report includes information from Associated Press writers Alicia Chang, Tom Verdin and Juliet Williams, as well as NBC News' Alan Boyle.

? 2012 msnbc.com

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49118256/ns/technology_and_science-space/

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New Maps app is rare Apple flub

The new Apple Maps application is demonstrated in New York on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012. Apple released an update to its iPhone and iPad operating system on Wednesday that replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple. (AP Photo/Karly Domb Sadof)

The new Apple Maps application is demonstrated in New York on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2012. Apple released an update to its iPhone and iPad operating system on Wednesday that replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple. (AP Photo/Karly Domb Sadof)

This screenshot made on an iPad shows the new Apple Maps app released Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. The app replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple. (AP Photo)

This screenshot made on an iPad shows the new Apple Maps application released Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. The app replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple. (AP Photo)

This screenshot made on an iPad shows the new Apple Maps application released Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012. The app replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple. (AP Photo)

NEW YORK (AP) ? With a touch of geek whimsy, Google Maps warns anyone who seeks walking directions to Mordor ?the land of evil in "The Lord of the Rings"? to use caution. "One does not simply walk into Mordor," it says. Apple is finding this week that creating an alternative to Google Maps isn't a simple walk, either.

Apple released an update to its iPhone and iPad operating system on Wednesday that replaces Google Maps with Apple's own application. Early upgraders are reporting that the new maps are less detailed, look weird and misplace landmarks. It's shaping up to be a rare setback for Apple.

"It's a complete failure," said Jeffrey Jorgensen. "It's slower, its directions are poorer and its location data doesn't seem to be accurate. All around, it's not quite there yet."

Jorgensen, a user interface designer for a San Francisco-based startup, began using Apple Maps months ago, because Apple made it available early to people in its software development program. He said he finds himself relying on Google Maps running on his wife's Android phone instead.

The most-hyped feature of the new app is a "Flyby" mode that shows three-dimensional renderings of buildings and other features. It presents a convincing depiction of the canyons of Manhattan, but has a hard time rendering bridges and highway overpasses, which tend to look wobbly or partly collapsed.

The Apple app also has a tendency to judge landscape features by their names. For instance, it marks the hulking Madison Square Garden arena in New York as green park space because of the word "Garden" in its name. The TD Garden football stadium in Boston gets the same treatment.

Conversely, Apple Maps marks "Airfield Gardens," a farm and plant nursery in Dublin, Ireland, as an airfield. This prompted the country's Justice Minister, Alan Shatter, to warn pilots on Thursday not to land there.

"Clearly the designation is not only wrong but is dangerously misleading in that it could result in a pilot, unfamiliar with the area, in an emergency situation and without other available information, attempting a landing," he said.

Marcus Thielking, the co-founder of mapping-app developer Skobbler, said the lapses of the Apple app are surprising, particularly since Apple purchases map data from an established provider, Tele Atlas.

"The combination of Apple and TomTom screwing up something like this is very odd. Apple is not the first and only company using Tele Atlas maps," Thielking said.

Tele Atlas is a subsidiary of TomTom, a Dutch maker of navigation devices.

"We launched this new map service knowing it is a major initiative and we are just getting started," said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller. The app will work better the more people use it, she said, alluding to fact that users can report errors and omissions from within the app.

Google has been in the mapping game for much longer, giving it the benefit of years of error reports to help shape its maps.

There's been a Google Maps app on the iPhone since it was launched in 2007, but it's always come with the operating system. Now that it's gone from the list of "core" apps, users are finding that it's not available for download either. Google says its goal is to make Maps available, but hasn't said when that will be.

In the meantime, iPhone and iPad owners can access maps.google.com through their browser, said Google spokesman Nate Tyler. The browser version has fewer features but uses a comprehensive mapping database, he said.

Last year, Apple released another software product that many regard as half-baked: the voice-controlled virtual assistant Siri. But Siri's ability to ?at least sometimes? understand spoken queries was something most users hadn't met before, so they forgave its lapses. With Maps, Apple is replacing an app nearly every smartphone user is already familiar with.

User reaction on social media has been fierce. One Twitter user quipped that the lines of people queuing up to buy the iPhone 5 on Friday will be shorter, because the buyers will be misled by the new Maps.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-09-20-Apple%20Maps/id-9b858eb5dc044322bf632e2e49960d44

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Ga. teen: Stepdad gave me $200, put me on bus to LA

By NBC News staff and wire reports

LOS ANGELES -- A scrawny Georgia teen who was discovered at a bus station told police his abusive stepfather gave him $200 and a list of homeless shelters before he was put on a bus to Los Angeles on this 18th birthday, authorities said Thursday.

Retired Los Angeles police Sgt. Joe Gonzalez was working security at a downtown bus station Sept. 11 when he spotted the teen, who stood just over 5 feet tall, weighed 87 pounds and looked much younger, the?LAPD said in a news release Thursday.

The teen told Gonzalez his stepfather declared that he was now a man before putting him on a bus.

Police described him as "pale" and "gaunt" and said they believed he was around 12 or 13 years old at first. Concerned about his age, they decided to investigate further.

The 18-year-old told authorities that he had suffered years of abuse. After removing him from school in the eighth grade, his stepfather shut him in a room, he said.

The youth was fed only small amounts of food and forced to hold a grueling disciplinary position for eight hours a day with the top of his head against a wall, his fingers interlaced behind his head, and his feet raised off the ground.

'Heartbreaking circumstances'
The teen told police he had two younger sisters still living at home, but he did not know his address. LAPD contacted local Paulding County, Georgia, sheriff's deputies, who tracked down his stepfather and mother and took them in for questioning.

The parents were subsequently arrested on child abuse and false imprisonment charges. Detectives also put the teen's younger sisters, aged 11 and 13, into protective custody with Paulding County Children's Services.

After staying in a Los Angeles board and care home, the 18-year-old flew to Georgia on Wednesday to help in the investigation and legal proceedings against his parents.

"I am greatly relieved and thankful that one of our retired officers brought this victim to our attention and started the process to uncover these heartbreaking circumstances," Police Chief Charlie Beck said in a statement.

Dion Walker and Mea Smith, who live near the family in Dallas, Ga., told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution?their children had played with the teen's sisters.?

"Maybe, when the young girls would stare at us, were they trying to say something?" Walker said according to the Journal-Constitution. "Should we have noticed?"

Monica Moore, an investigator with the Paulding County district attorney's office, accompanied the 18-year-old home from California and described him to WSB-TV?as small and very timid, but exceedingly polite.

"I made sure that he knew that ... once he came here he had a lot of people here helping," she told WSB-TV.

District Attorney Dick Donovan told the station his office struggled to find an agency willing to take in the teen because he is legally an adult, but a local family agreed to house him.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Insight: Chavez plays populist card for Venezuela election

SABANETA, Venezuela (Reuters) - To understand why President Hugo Chavez may win yet another election in Venezuela next month, go and sit under the mango trees of Los Rastrojos or Sabaneta.

There, in the rural villages of his childhood at the heart of Venezuela's great savannah or "llanos," family and friends pour out tales of a boy whose motor-mouth and popular touch - now mainstays of his rule - were evident early on.

Guillermo Frias recalls with glee how he and cousin "Huguito" ("little Hugo") played baseball in the dirt street using their arms for bats, and molding rubber from trees into homemade balls. "He always talked the most," Frias laughs.

An aunt, Brigida Frias, recalls Chavez's boyhood love of kites and drawing, and shows where the idealistic young adult used to lay in a hammock during earnest conversations.

It is in those placid, sun-baked plains where Chavez the man, and Chavez the myth, both began - and went on to polarize Venezuela like never before.

It is that image, the country boy who became president and then spent years trying to help the underprivileged, which Chavez wants uppermost in the minds of voters on October 7.

His foes' ability to puncture that image, tap into disappointment with Chavez among the poor, and present their counter-image of a man whose socialist experiment has collapsed into shoddy autocracy, will determine their success.

Opposition candidate Henrique Capriles' tactic of targeting Chavez's heartlands for campaigning has given him a fighting chance: most of the traditional polls put Chavez ahead, but they also show Capriles creeping up, and one has him neck and neck.

The romantic, affectionate view of Chavez in Sabaneta is echoed to varying degrees in city slums and poor rural areas across the country where the president is most popular.

It is also matched by the equally deep-felt hatred toward him in other parts of the nation he has ruled since 1999.

For those tales, go to the golf clubs and other bastions of high society where his name is a dirty word and talk revolves around who else plans to emigrate if Chavez beats Capriles to secure a new six-year term.

VOTE TESTS CHAVEZ MYTHS

For a view based less on class identity, step into the half-built Caracas shopping center where hundreds of refugees from 2010 floods are still waiting, ever more desperate, for the government to deliver on a promise of new homes.

"Promises, promises, is all we hear," says Julietta Rodriguez, 37, in another temporary refugee shelter on the coast where she and four children have waited two years for new homes.

"I always voted for Chavez, I loved him, now I don't know. Capriles looks competent and young. Maybe he deserves a chance."

The election will be decided on how far such disenchantment, and the accumulation of day-to-day problems such as power cuts and crime, outweigh Chavez fans' still deep affection for the man and their reliance on his hugely popular welfare programs.

Politically astute despite his often cartoon image abroad, Chavez constantly reminds Venezuelans of his roots in the sleepy farming heartlands that form the national identity and culture.

The 58-year-old leader speaks in the jokey, anecdote-laden style of the "llaneros." He sings their songs and plays their musical instruments.

He tells stories of ancestors who fought among dashing horseback fighters at the vanguard of Venezuela's independence army and later guerrilla movements.

In a nation whose most famous novel, "Dona Barbara," is a story of magic realism in the cattle-ranching plains, Chavez also recounts fantastical tales such as that of a supposedly giant, deer-eating snake that nearly crushed him as a baby in his crib.

Even foes recognize his charisma and connection with the poor. They are also quick to point out the bullying side of his character - the man who vows to "pulverize" foes and harangues businessmen with takeover threats on live TV.

That, they say, is the true Chavez.

"What you have in Venezuela is gross and systematic violation of human rights," opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said.

'ONE OF US'

All around Venezuela, helped by generous use of state resources, enormous socialist-red banners proclaim: "You are Chavez!" - a reverse-play on the president's straight-to-the-heart stump speech line that "I am the people."

"We love him because he is one of us," says Maria Quevedo, a 33-year-old mother who works as a volunteer in the spartan home in Sabaneta where Chavez spent his boyhood years. It is now the local headquarters of the ruling Socialist Party.

One of six siblings, Chavez used to tramp Sabaneta hawking "arana" (spider) sweets, made by his grandmother from papaya strips coated in sugar. "I would go round shouting, 'Hot spiders, tasty spiders for pretty girls!" the garrulous Chavez recalled this month, telling the story for the hundredth or so time.

A new school, named "Mama Rosa" in honor of his beloved grandmother, is going up on the site of her former mud-floor shack where Chavez was born on July 28, 1954.

There is talk in the area that the president will inaugurate the school a few days before the vote: a symbolic return to his roots and yet another nudge to Venezuela's 19 million voters about which candidate they should look to for their basic needs

"His heart has always gone out to the poor. All of us have come up in life thanks to him, otherwise we'd be nowhere," adds Quevedo, casting an admiring eye over the school building site in what is now a bustling town surrounded by ranches and fields.

Elsewhere in Venezuela, though, that rose-tinted view of the president is under threat like never before.

For all his big gestures, showmanship and professions of "love," many Venezuelans are asking why they suffer some of the highest crime rates in the world, electricity cuts shameful for such a big energy producer, and an economic malaise that has hundreds of thousands sitting idle.

Chavez's socialism is, opponents say, a bitter joke, an empty concept that masks cronyism, mismanagement, grandstanding, autocratic leadership and the squandering of the biggest oil-revenue boom in the OPEC member's history.

Just look at the ballooning wealth of Chavez's closest allies, Capriles is wont to say. "If they're socialists, then I'm a Marxist-Leninist!" the state governor quipped last week.

A string of bad news in the past couple of months - from a jail riot and a refinery explosion that killed nearly 70 people between them, to a bridge collapse that caused traffic chaos in eastern Venezuela and the rare heckling of Chavez by disgruntled steel workers - has helped illustrate the opposition's argument.

Chavez has become more authoritarian over time. At one recent rally, when he unilaterally named a candidate for the Carabobo state governorship, some in the crowd called for a different local official to be nominated instead.

"I have said Ameliach!" Chavez answered them angrily, making clear who his preferred candidate was - end of discussion.

FATHER FIGURE

Despite that, Chavez has kept his popularity high by continuing to pump billions of dollars into house-building and other new social "missions" - from pensions for the elderly to stipends for low-income single mothers - that drive home the message that he remains the nation's father and "patron" (boss).

In interviews, many traditional "Chavistas" acknowledge the president has disappointed them, yet they are still reluctant to abandon him and turn to the opposition.

Painted by the president's fans as a rich kid in cahoots with a U.S.-backed elite of right-wing Venezuelans, Capriles does indeed come from a wealthy family and has the light-skinned features characteristic of the old ruling class.

Although rooted in the earthy poverty and simplicity of Sabaneta, the Chavez story grew quickly from there. He joined the army and spent years quietly plotting before a failed coup in 1992 against then-President Carlos Andres Perez.

On his way into jail, wearing a red military beret that was to become his insignia, Chavez gave a two-minute televised speech admitting that his revolution had failed "for now." The speech electrified the nation and launched his political career.

Granted amnesty in 1994, Chavez began criss-crossing the country sharing his vision and eventually shocking the political elite by sweeping to victory at the ballot box in 1998.

With private media and business leaders opposed to his rule, Chavez was briefly toppled by army dissidents and street protests in 2002 - but returned two days later thanks to military loyalists and popular counter-demonstrations.

He also survived an economically crippling oil strike.

Those are the best-known events of Chavez's life, but they are only the tip of the iceberg of the countless controversies he has fanned and fought throughout a rule that has seen him replace Fidel Castro as Latin America's leading firebrand.

CANCER SHADOW

In Sabaneta and Los Rastrojos, they know every detail of Chavez's life and recount them with pride. There was not a single pro-Capriles banner on a recent visit.

"He doesn't have the same charisma or way of talking. He doesn't have a chance," says Frias, Chavez's 69-year-old aunt.

Down the road inside Chavez's old school - where he first arrived in a pair of ragged rope sandals - a group of Socialist Party youth members push that message in an exuberant meeting that basically involves singing and chanting against Capriles.

In their midst, a toddler is given the microphone and taught to shout, "Down with the loser!"

Surprisingly, after dominating headlines and Venezuelan politics for a year, Chavez's health has all but disappeared as a campaign issue in the final run-up to the vote.

Having declared himself completely cured of cancer in early July, after three operations and lengthy rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, Chavez now barely mentions the subject.

He has had to limit his physical activities on the campaign trail to a few big appearances onstage or waving from buses - frustrating for a man who was arguably one of Latin America's most charismatic and energetic street campaigners.

Should he win on October 7, the question of a possible recurrence of cancer will hang over him. Near one of the homes where he grew up, a shadow falls over friends' and relatives' faces when asked about the president's health.

"He does look better to me, but you never know," says farmer Cecilio Perez, 56, wandering past the plot that belonged to Chavez's parents in the one-street village of Los Rastrojos.

"No one is removing him, though. He'll only leave the presidency when he dies. Four hundred years might pass, but there will still be revolution here. If the gringos couldn't get rid of Fidel (Castro), how are they going to stop Chavez?"

(Editing by Daniel Wallis and Kieran Murray)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/insight-chavez-plays-populist-card-venezuela-election-050241833.html

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CT scan and 3-D print help scientists reconstruct an ancient mollusk

ScienceDaily (Sep. 19, 2012) ? Using a combination of traditional and innovative model-building techniques, scientists in the U.S. and a specialist in Denmark have created a lifelike reconstruction of an ancient mollusk, offering a vivid portrait of a creature that lived about 390 million years ago, and answering questions about its place in the tree of life, as described in the Sept. 18 edition of the journal Palaeontology.

The model of the oval-shaped sea creature, called a multiplacophoran, which was covered with stiff plates and a ring of spines, resulted from a collaboration between Jakob Vinther, a postdoctoral researcher at The University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences, and Esben Horn, owner of the model making company 10 Tons in Copenhagen (http://www.10tons.dk), with animation help from Ryan Carney, a doctoral student at Brown University.

Working with a delicate specimen of a multiplacophoran partially covered by rock, Vinther used a micro CT scan -- a noninvasive technology similar to medical CAT scanning -- to create a three-dimensional view of the fossil. With Carney's help, the CT scan yielded an animated view of the original placement of the creature's dense spines and shells, which had splayed out and decayed prior to fossilization.

The CT scan also produced a three-dimensional cast of the specimen in its reconstructed shape. Working with the cast, the animation and information on living relatives of the multiplacophorans, Horn was able to create a multicolored, textured model in clay, resin and silicone showing how the creature looked millions of years ago, when it crawled on a single, suction-like foot over shells and rocky surfaces in ancient oceans.

The model helps address a debate about how multiplacophorans (which were only discovered in the past decade) relate to chitons, another more widely known plated mollusk that lives on seashores and is commonly eaten in the Caribbean. By dating the origin of modern chitons, Vinther could demonstrate that multiplacophorans are stem group chitons.

"We can now demonstrate that multiplacophorans are distant relatives of the modern chitons, which did not evolve until later in Earth history," said Vinther. "We can also show that they evolved a number of characteristics seen in some modern chitons convergently."

The CT scan was integral to the project, allowing the scientists to see below the surface of the fossil.

"CT scanning is an extremely powerful technique for paleontologists," said Vinther, "since we can look inside fossils without destroying them."

The original fossil was discovered 10 years ago in Ohio by private collector and co-author George Kampouris, who donated it to the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Texas at Austin.

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Journal Reference:

1. Jakob Vinther, Peter Jell, George Kampouris, Ryan Carney, Rachel A. Racicot, Derek E. G. Briggs. The origin of multiplacophorans - convergent evolution in Aculiferan molluscs. Palaeontology, 2012; 55 (5): 1007 DOI: 10.1111/j.1475-4983.2012.01180.x

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/BRMxucD4HJ0/120919125742.htm

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German Government: Stay Away From Internet Explorer

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-government-stay-away-internet-explorer-030212984.html

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Groupon launches payments service in US

NEW YORK (AP) ? Groupon is launching a new service that allows businesses to run credit cards using an iPhone or iPod Touch, the latest company to seek a portion of that growing market.

Groupon Payments is aimed mainly at businesses that offer deals through the Groupon. A test program, however, allows other merchants to use the service at higher rates.

With its launch of the service Wednesday, Groupon Inc. is going up against services like PayPal and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's Square, which make it easier for merchants to accept credit cards with a simple phone attachment.

The online deals company has seen a sharp decline in its stock price since going public late last year. With Groupon Payments, the Chicago company is trying to broaden the array of services it offers to merchants.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/495d344a0d10421e9baa8ee77029cfbd/Article_2012-09-19-Groupon-Payments/id-402ea3e39fea4b8b8e31b0b6b1245eee

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