The Internet giant Google is testing its newest gadget, Google Glass, which the company describes as a wearable computer that may revolutionize how users interact with each other and with the world.

Most of the Google Glass technology is already incorporated in smart phones.  But Google researchers thought of using it in an unprecedented way.

"Google Glass is a tiny computer that sits in a lightweight frame, just like this, and rests neatly above your eye and it makes exploring and sharing the world around you a lot easier," explained Chris Dale, senior manager of communications for Google Glass.

The frame has a tiny video screen and a camera that connect wirelessly to the Internet through a smartphone.

But what can you actually DO with Google Glass?

"That's the million-dollar question, I guess," Dale said.

Unsure about how Google Glass could or would be used, or how people would react to it, Google decided to enlist volunteers to test the new device. The goal was twofold — see what innovative ways people would come up with to use it, and to attract developers to create new apps.

"We look at Glass and wearable computing in general as the next platform in computing," said Dale.

Dale says an average person uses a smartphone 150 times a day and Google Glass makes that technology available more quickly because it can respond to voice commands.

The device is turned on by tapping one side of the frame. When you say "Okay Glass" the screen shows a range of options, including search the web, take a picture, take video, send a message, and search for directions. Swiping the frame with a finger scrolls the menu up and down.

Google Glass transmits sound through vibration against the head. It has a medium-resolution camera -- about five megapixels -- and the projected image is like watching an iPhone screen.

Seth Rosenblatt, senior writer for Cnet News, says while it's interesting to be able to do Internet-related tasks with nothing in your hand, wearing the device in public attracts a lot of attention.

"They've done something very interesting with technology, but in terms of social interactions they've got a very long way ahead of them," he said.

Rosenblatt says its real potential will be tested by the public.

"I think the real test for Google Glass is going to be out on the street," he said. "How are average people going to react when they're forced to interact with somebody wearing Google Glass?"

Google says it is still testing the wearable computer, which runs on Google's Android operating system, and is expected to be available by early next year.

The biggest criticism has been about privacy.

When Marcia Dawkins, a professor, first heard about Google Glass, she had only one thought.

“I thought this is something I definitely need for my classroom and hopefully for my personal life too,” she said.

Ms. Dawkin's Google Glass looks like a pair of bright orange glasses, without lenses. But there's a tiny rectangular glass at the top right-hand corner of her orange frame. Through that glass, Ms. Dawkins has been recording video while biking. 

She's also been able to talk to her sister in Thailand with Google Glass. She's planning to use the device in her classroom to teach a public speaking class in the coming year. Ms. Dawkins also wants to record her lectures with Google Glass to allow her students to see what she sees.

“I often tell them at the beginning of the term, if you can see me I can see you, but they never believe me. They think they are invisible when they are behind the laptops,” said Ms. Dawkins.

Not everyone, however, embraces this new technology.

“It is essentially going to allow people to come in and spy on you and record that, without you knowing what is going on,” said John Simpson, director of the privacy project with the public interest group, Consumer Watchdog.

But Google’s Dale says the device is designed to address that concern.

“In order to activate the camera or to record the video, you have to take an explicit gesture or say something out loud. So I tap, I activate the device, and say 'Okay, glass, take a picture.' Similarly, I have a little button on the top here that I can push that will again show an explicit gesture to everybody around me that a picture is being taken and a video is being recorded,” he said.

Filmmaker Chris Barrett showed just how easy it is, though, to record people without them knowing. His glass captured a man getting arrested after a fight at a fireworks show. He posted the video to YouTube.

Mike DiGiovanni created a way to take pictures with just a wink.

Hackers have been able to get facial recognition technology to run on Glass. The technology can scan a face, identify the person and provide information about that person. Google says it will not approve face recognition applications.

Consumer Watchdog’s Simpson says it may be up to Congress, however, to protect people’s privacy.

“I think it is going to require some serious legislation. We are going to have to pass some laws,” he said.

Ms. Dawkins says privacy concerns will be a part of her classroom discussion, as she uses Google Glass to enhance her students’ learning experience.


Pope tells rich they must
wipe out vast inequities


Pope Francis Thursday issued the first social manifesto of his young pontificate, telling slum dwellers in Brazil that the world's rich must do much more to wipe out vast inequalities between the haves and the have-nots.

The pope also urged Brazil's youth, who have taken part in recent protests showing discontent with the status quo, to keep alive their sensitivity towards injustice and be a catalyst in the fight against corruption.

The first Latin American pope, who has rallied the church on behalf of the poor and who lives more austerely than his predecessors, called for a culture of solidarity to replace the selfishness and individualism prevailing in modern society.

“No one can remain insensitive to the inequalities that persist in the world,” he told residents of Manguinhos, a sprawling shantytown, or favela, of ramshackle brick dwellings that until recently was overrun by violence and controlled by drug lords.

His speech, under rains that have persisted throughout most of his first trip abroad as pope, came halfway through a  week-long visit around World Youth Day, a gathering of young Catholics that is expected to attract more than a million faithful to Rio de Janeiro and nearby sites.

Despite the downpours and unusually chilly weather, tens of thousands of rapturous Brazilians and foreign visitors have turned out to welcome the pope. The World Youth Day events are an effort by the Vatican to inspire Catholics at a time when rival denominations, secularism and sexual and financial scandals continue to lead some to abandon the Church.

Brazil, home to the world's biggest population of Catholics with over 120 million faithful, is an apt locale for the pope to remind the world of inequality. A recent decade of economic growth in the country raised incomes for many, but tens of millions of Brazilians still live in poverty or with little more than the basics to get by.

In Manguinhos, Francis, an Argentine known for frequent outings into the slums near Buenos Aires even as a cardinal, smiled and visibly enjoyed the chaotic close contact allowed with residents there. He called for more efforts to end poverty and said authorities must do more than just crack down on the drug trade to ensure opportunities for those at the bottom of the economic ladder.

“Everybody, according to his or her particular opportunities and responsibilities, should be able to make a personal contribution to putting an end to so many social injustices,” he said in an address on a muddy, rain-drenched soccer field next to a river smelling of sewer water.

Making the speech after blessing the favela's small chapel and visiting one of its homes on a recently cleaned street, the pope challenged the rich and powerful to use their influence to enact lasting change.

“I would like to make an appeal to those in possession of greater resources, to public authorities and to all people of good will who are working for social justice: never tire of working for a more just world, marked by greater solidarity!” he said.

Reflecting his humble personal style, Francis said he would like to have been able to stop in every Brazilian home “to ask for a glass of cold water, to take a cafezinho, but not a shot of cachaça,” a mention of Brazilian rum that drew laughter from the crowd.

Driving in an open popemobile, Francis was surrounded by a throng of residents, some barefoot, and leaned out to kiss a woman and shake extended hands as he entered the slum, where there was a heavy presence of police and military.

The pope praised Brazil's efforts over the last decade to reduce poverty in Latin America's largest nation, which last month was rocked by massive protests against corruption, the misuse of public money and the high cost of living.

But he said more needed to be done to bridge the gap between rich and poor at the root of social injustice, in a reference to the police occupation of Rio's slums started last year to pacify drug-related violence.

“No amount of pacification will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself,” he said.

Manguinhos, home to about 35,000 poor people, was known locally as Gaza Strip for its frequent shootings. It is one of the slums that have been part of a community policing operation that has reduced violence in the shantytowns of Rio de Janeiro.

“In those days, I never knew when I entered the church if I would be alive when I got out,” said the Rev. Marcio Queiroz, pastor of the local chapel. “It was like a fruit market but instead of selling fruit on the tables on the street there was guns, crack and other drugs.”

At one end of the sports field where Francis spoke hung a huge painting of Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, who often denounced repression and poverty in his weekly homilies and was murdered by a right-wing death squad in 1980.

Francis has decided to unblock the beatification process for Romero, the penultimate step before Catholic sainthood.

From the slum, Francis traveled to Rio's modern cathedral, where he received a roaring welcome from tens of thousands of young people from his native country who were in Rio for the Catholic jamboree.

Thursday evening he was to welcome participants in the World Youth Day from a stage on the crescent shaped Copacabana beach. More than one million people were expected for the event.

Sunday, he presides at the close of World Youth Day in a pasture outside Rio before leaving for Rome that evening.


Driver of wrecked train
detained by  police in Spain


Police took the driver of a Spanish train into custody in a hospital Thursday after at least 80 people died when it derailed and caught fire in a dramatic accident which an official source said was caused by excessive speed.

The eight-car, high-velocity train came off the tracks just outside the pilgrimage center of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain on Wednesday night. It was one of Europe's worst rail disasters.

The source had knowledge of the official investigation into a crash which brought misery to Santiago Thursday, the day when it should have celebrated one of Europe's biggest Christian festivals. Authorities canceled festivities as the city went into mourning.

The Galicia region supreme court said in a statement that the judge investigating the accident had ordered police to put the driver in custody and take a statement from him. He was under formal investigation, the court said.

Dramatic video footage from a security camera showed the train, with 247 people on board, hurtling into a concrete wall at the side of the track as carriages jack-knifed and the engine overturned.

One local official described the aftermath of the crash as like a scene from hell, with bodies strewn next to the tracks.

The impact was so huge one car flew several meters into the air and landed on the other side of the high concrete barrier.

Some 94 people were injured, of whom 35 were in a serious condition, including four children, the deputy head of the regional government said.

“We heard a massive noise and we went down the tracks. I helped get a few injured and bodies out of the train. I went into one of the cars but I'd rather not tell you what I saw there,” Ricardo Martinez, a 47-year-old baker from Santiago de Compostela, said.

The train had two drivers, the Galicia government said, but it was not immediately clear which one was in hospital and under investigation.

Newspaper accounts cited witnesses as saying one driver, Francisco Jose Garzon, who had helped rescue victims, shouted into a phone: “I've derailed! What do I do?”.

The 52-year-old had been a train driver for 30 years, a spokeswoman for the Red Nacional de los Ferrocarriles Españoles, known as Renfe, said. Many newspapers published excerpts from his Facebook account where he was reported to have boasted of driving trains at high speed. The page was taken offline Thursday and the reports could not be verified.

El Pais newspaper said one of the drivers told the railway station by radio after being trapped in his cabin that the train entered the bend at 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph). An official source said the speed limit on that stretch of twin track, laid in 2011, was 80 kph.

“We're only human! We're only human!” the driver told the station, the newspaper said, citing sources close to the investigation. “I hope there are no dead, because this will fall on my conscience.”

Investigators were trying to urgently establish why the train was going so fast and why security devices to keep speed within permitted limits had not worked.

The train, operated by the state-owned rail company, was built by Bombardier and Talgo and was around five years old. It had almost the maximum number of passengers.

Spain's rail safety record is better than the European average, ranking 18th out of 27 countries in terms of railway deaths per kilometers traveled, the European Railway Agency said. There were 218 train accidents in Spain between 2008-2011, well below the European Union average of 426 for the same period, the agency said.

Firefighters called off a strike to help with the disaster, while hospital staff, many operating on reduced salaries because of spending cuts in recession-hit Spain, worked overtime to tend the injured.

The disaster happened at 8.41 p.m. on the eve of a festival dedicated to St. James, one of Jesus's 12 disciples, whose remains are said to rest in the city's centuries-old cathedral.

The apostle's shrine is the destination of the famous El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage across the Pyrenees, which has been followed by Christians since the Middle Ages.

Instead of a joyous festival, Masses were held every hour in the cathedral. “The main Mass was transformed from a Mass of joy into a Mass of mourning,” said Italian pilgrim Irene Valsangiacomo.

One U.S. citizen died in the crash and five were injured, the State Department said in Washington. Mexico said one of its nationals was among the dead.

At least one British citizen was injured, a British embassy spokesman said. Several other nationalities were believed to be among the passengers.

Neighbors ran to the site to help emergency workers tend to the wounded. Ana Taboada, a 29-year-old hospital worker, was one of the first on the scene.

“When the dust lifted I saw corpses. I didn't make it down to the track, because I was helping the passengers that were coming up the embankment,” she said. “I saw a man trying to break a window with a stone to help those inside get out.”

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who was born in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia region, visited the site and the main hospital Thursday. He declared three days of official national mourning for the victims of the disaster.

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia also went to Santiago and visited the injured in hospital.

Passenger Ricardo Montesco told Cadena Ser radio station the train approached the curve at high speed, twisted and the carriages piled up one on top of the other.

“A lot of people were squashed on the bottom. We tried to squeeze out of the bottom of the wagons to get out and we realized the train was burning. ... I was in the second carriage and there was fire. ... I saw corpses,” he said.

Both Renfe and state-owned Adif, which is in charge of the tracks, had opened an investigation into the cause of the derailment, Renfe said.

Clinics in Santiago de Compostela were overwhelmed with people flocking to give blood, while hotels organized free rooms for relatives. Madrid sent forensic scientists and hospital staff to the scene on special flights.

The train was traveling from Madrid to Ferrol on the Galician coast when it derailed, Renfe said in a statement. It left Madrid on time and was traveling on schedule, a spokeswoman said.

Allianz Seguros, owned by Germany's Allianz, owns the insurance contract for loss suffered by Renfe passengers, a company spokeswoman told Reuters. The contract does not cover Renfe's trains. The company had sent experts to the scene, she said.

The disaster stirred memories of a train bombing in Madrid in 2004, carried out by Islamist militants, that killed 191 people, although officials do not suspect an attack this time.


U.S. senators seek to punish
countries helping Snowden


A U.S. Senate panel voted unanimously Thursday to seek trade or other sanctions against Russia or any other country that offers asylum to former spy agency contractor Edward Snowden, who has been holed up for weeks at a Moscow airport.
 
The 30-member Senate Appropriations Committee adopted by consensus an amendment to a spending bill that would direct Secretary of State John Kerry to meet with congressional committees to come up with sanctions against any country that takes Snowden in.
 
Snowden is wanted by the United States on espionage charges for revealing details of government intelligence programs. He arrived in Moscow on June 23 from Hong Kong, where he had fled to escape capture and trial in the United States.
 
He has asked for temporary asylum in Russia until he can reach a country that will shelter him, but U.S. authorities have made clear they will be deeply disappointed if Russia lets the fugitive leave the airport.
 
Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela have said they could offer sanctuary to Snowden.
 
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said he introduced the amendment to try to get the attention of any country that might take in Snowden, not Russia in particular, although he noted Moscow has lined up against the United States on other issues, including the civil war in Syria.
 
“When it comes to Russia, it's just not about Snowden. They are allying with Iran, 100,000 Syrians have been killed, they are providing weapons to Assad that are getting in the hands of Hezbollah. And really enough's enough,” said Graham, who has suggested the U.S. consider boycotting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia.
 
The amendment would direct Kerry to meet with congressional committees to develop sanctions options including revocation or suspension of trade privileges and preferences.
 
It was not immediately clear how any sanctions program would work, and the spending bill is several steps from becoming law.
 
But the United States has a number of programs that provide international trade benefits to developing countries, including Bolivia and Venezuela, which could be affected.
 
The country also has a free trade agreement with Nicaragua that could come under scrutiny.
 
Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman, told reporters Thursday that President Barack Obama's administration was having  conversations with Russia and that authorities there had not made clear Snowden's status.


Progress made in curing
allergies to cat dander


People who are allergic to cats may soon get some relief from the itchy eyes, sneezing, asthma and coughing.

Researchers at Cambridge University in England have shown how the most common cause of allergic reactions to cats, the Fel d 1 protein that is found in cat dander, interacts with a common chemical in the human body to cause an allergic reaction.

When the dander -- dead skin cells -- is combined with a common environmental toxin called lipopolysaccharides, or LPS, it stimulates an immune receptor called TLR 4, triggering allergic reactions

Allergic reactions are the result of the immune system overreacting to a perceived danger. Instead of identifying and responding to a harmful virus or bacteria, it misidentifies different allergens, including dander, as dangerous and mounts an immune response.

"How cat dander causes such a severe allergic reaction in some people has long been a mystery," said Clare Bryant, the lead author of the study. "Not only did we find out that LPS exacerbates the immune response’s reaction to cat dander, we identified the part of immune system that recognizes it."

Using a drug that inhibits TLR 4, researchers were able to block an allergic reaction.

"As drugs have already been developed to inhibit the receptor TLR4, we are hopeful that our research will lead to new and improved treatments for cat and possibly dog allergy sufferers," Ms. Bryant added.

In the future, the findings could yield a drug that could block the allergic reaction completely.  Cat allergy sufferers usually rely on antihistamines, which have side effects such as drowsiness.



U.S. jobless claims rise
as Obama pushes his plan


The number of Americans making new claims for jobless benefits edged higher last week, a new sign of the up-and-down nature of the economic recovery in the United States.
 
The government said Thursday 343,000 workers made their initial claims for unemployment compensation, up 7,000 from the week before. The claims serve as a measure of layoffs in the country, which is steadily, but slowly recovering from its steep economic downturn five years ago.
 
The U.S. labor market has been adding about 200,000 jobs a month for the last nine months. But its 7.6 percent jobless rate remains high by historical standards.
 
U.S. President Barack Obama has embarked on a new effort to boost the country's economy, and especially the fortunes of its vast middle class. He is visiting the Atlantic Ocean port of Jacksonville, in the southern state of Florida, Thursday to push for more construction projects to improve the country's infrastructure.
 
The U.S. leader laid out his economic plans in a speech in the central part of the country Wednesday, and said increasing the number of manufacturing jobs is essential.
 
"Over the past four years, for the first time since the 1990s, the number of American manufacturing jobs has actually gone up, instead of down. That's the good news. But we can do more.  So I'm going to push new initiatives to help more manufacturers bring more jobs back here to the United States," he said.
 
The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, is weighing whether the American economy has improved enough so it can start to trim its stimulative effort, an $85-billion-a-month purchase of securities it has used to put more money into the economy.