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WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning has been deemed competent to face a court martial, according to news reports.
A panel of experts, convened for a so-called 706 board evaluation, determined that the former Army intelligence analyst was both physically and mentally fit to stand trial, Army officials disclosed on Friday. The decision clears the way for an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a Grand Jury, to determine if a court martial trial against Manning should proceed.
The 706 board had been requested by Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, to determine if Manning suffered a ?severe mental disease or defect? at the time of his alleged leaking. Coombs said last year that Army records showed the military had been concerned that Manning might be suicidal during his deployment, and ?did document prolonged periods of disassociated behavior, quite a bit of nonresponsiveness from Pfc. Manning. And, again, that progressed from the very beginning of the deployment and deteriorated somewhat toward the end.? The Army’s concern was serious enough that Manning’s superior had ordered Manning’s firearm disabled.
Manning, 23, is facing 22 charges for illegally downloading classified information and passing it to a third party. The charges include allegations of espionage and unauthorized computer access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Manning, who has been in prison since his arrest last May, was removed from solitary confinement this week, after experts at the Leavenworth facility where he is imprisoned in Kansas determined he was fit to live and mix with other inmates at the facility.
(Image: Anti-war protesters rally for Bradley Manning in Quantico, Virginia last year. Creative Commons photo courtesy�mar is sea Y/Flickr)
Kim Zetter is a senior reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, security and civil liberties.Jaws review Hotel Rwanda review Blade Runner review The General review Fargo review
Employees may be prosecuted under a federal antihacking statute for taking computer files that they were authorized to access and using them in a manner prohibited by the company, a federal appeals court has ruled.
The case decided 2-1 Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concerned the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Congress adopted the CFAA in 1986 to enhance the government’s ability to prosecute hackers who accessed computers to steal information or to disrupt or destroy computer functionality.
“As long as the employee has knowledge of the employer’s limitations on that authorization, the employee ‘exceeds authorized access’ when the employee violates those limitations. It is as simple as that,” Judge Stephen Trott wrote in an opinion (.pdf) joined by Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain.
In dissent, Judge Tena Campbell wrote that, under the majority’s ruling, “any person who obtains information from any computer connected to the internet, in violation of her employer’s computer-use restrictions, is guilty of a federal crime.”
The majority’s decision, which mirrors rulings in two other federal appellate circuits, bolsters an interpretation of the CFAA that’s playing a role in the government’s grand jury probe of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. A grand jury subpoena recently issued in the case (first reported by Salon.com, and confirmed by the Washington Post) was�accompanied�by a letter indicating that one of the charges the government is considering is conspiracy to violate the CFAA by ?exceeding authorized access” to a computer system — the same language at issue in the new decision.
The act makes it a federal offense if one “knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $5,000 in any 1-year period.”
The 9th Circuit’s decision, which reverses a lower court judge, came 18 months after the same San Francisco-based circuit ruled the opposite way in a nearly identical case concerning those same three words.
In 2009, the nation’s largest appellate court ruled that employees are not liable under the antihacking law for accessing their employers’ computers for disloyal purposes. The court wrote that workers authorized to access company computers do not lose or “exceed” that access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act even if their intent was to acquire data to open a competing business — the same factual circumstances in the case decided Thursday.
The court was quick, however, to point out a “substantial factual distinction” between the two cases: the existence of access restrictions instituted by the employer.
In the older case, the court noted, there was no written policy “that would prohibit employees from e-mailing ? documents to personal computers.” In the new case, the court noted, “employees were subject to a computer use policy that placed clear and conspicuous restrictions on the employees’ access.”
The same law was used to prosecute Lori Drew, who was charged criminally for participating in a MySpace cyberbullying scheme against a 13-year-old Missouri girl who later committed suicide. The case against Drew hinged on the government’s novel argument that violating MySpace’s terms of service was the legal equivalent of computer hacking and a violation of the CFAA.
A federal judge who presided over the prosecution tossed the guilty verdicts in July 2009, and the government declined to appeal.
Photo: viteez/Flickr
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TRIPOLI (AFP) – A defiant Moamer Kadhafi vowed Saturday not to quit power in Libya but called for talks to end the conflict, even as his forces pressed their offensive against the key rebel-held port city of Misrata.
In an early-morning speech on Libyan television, the Libyan leader said NATO "must abandon all hope of the departure of Moamer Kadhafi.
"I have no official functions to give up: I will not leave my country and will fight to the death," he said, but also added a conciliatory note.
"We are ready to talk with France and the United States, but with no preconditions," Kadhafi said.
"We will not surrender, but I call on you to negotiate. If you want petrol, we will sign contracts with your companies -- it is not worth going to war over.
"Between Libyans, we can solve our problems without being attacked, so pull back your fleets and your planes," he told NATO.
The veteran strongman insisted that the rebels battling his forces "are terrorists who are not from Libya, but from Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia and Afghanistan."
He also said that his people love him, that he is sacred and like a father to them -- "more sacred than the emperor of Japan is to his people."
Meanwhile, the regime threatened to attack any ships trying to enter the lifeline rebel-held port of Misrata, after tanks launched an assault on the western city some 215 kilometres (130 miles) east of Tripoli.
Misrata's port is a crucial conduit for humanitarian aid to the city of half a million people, which Kadhafi's forces have been trying to capture for more than seven weeks.
"Four tanks attacked the city and one has been destroyed so far," said rebel fighter Ibrahim Ahmed Boushagha on Friday.
AFP journalists also reported hearing a volley of detonations from the direction of Misrata's airport.
A constant stream of casualties flowed into the main hospital in Misrata, where fighting has intensified 10 weeks after government forces launched a deadly crackdown on protests inspired by regime-changing movements in Tunisia and Egypt.
The Kadhafi regime said later it would attack "with force" any ship entering Misrata port, saying all aid should now be sent by road and under the supervision of the Libyan army.
State television also said the military had "put the port out of service," and that delivery of humanitarian aid to Misrata should now be carried out "overland and under the supervision of the armed forces."
NATO said three mines were found in the port early on Friday and were being disarmed.
"The mining of a civilian port by pro-Kadhafi forces is clearly designed to disrupt the lawful flow of humanitarian aid to the innocent civilian people of Libya," said Italian Navy Vice Admiral Rinaldo Veri, calling it another "deliberate violation" of UN security Council resolutions.
In Washington, the State Department said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would attend a Libya Contact Group May 4-6 meeting in Rome to discuss how to help the rebels and protect civilians caught in the crossfire.
The group composed of Western countries, Turkey, Arab states, the United Nations, the Arab League and NATO, was set up in London on March 29.
Medics reported at least five people killed in Misrata on Friday and many more wounded.
"All of our operating theatres are full," Dr Khalid Abu Falra of the city's medical committee said. "NATO must quickly intervene, as in previous days."
The airport battle, just southwest of the city limits, followed barrages of rocket and mortar fire on the city.
Western Misrata also came under seemingly indiscriminate mortar and rocket fire on Friday, witnesses and medics said.
Forces loyal to Kadhafi, who has been in power for more than four decades, were pushed back from Misrata by the rebels and a series of NATO air strikes on Monday, but had remained within rocket range of the city.
The rebels said earlier in the week they had secured the port and that their next objective was the airport.
"Attack is the best form of defence," said Ibrahim Bet-Almal, who heads the rebel military forces in the area. "Kadhafi is sending reinforcements to the region every day."
British Brigadier Rob Weighill, director of NATO operations in Libya, said NATO warships stopped pro-Kadhafi forces on Friday from laying mines in Misrata's harbour.
"Our ships intercepted the small boats that were laying them and we are disposing the mines that we found," Weighill told reporters via videoconference from his headquarters in Naples, Italy.
"It again shows his complete disregard for international law and his willingness to attack humanitarian delivery efforts," he said of Kadhafi.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, meanwhile, condemned the regime's reported use of banned cluster bombs against civilians, and called for an immediate ceasefire as well as full humanitarian access.
In western Libya, NATO said its warplanes would focus on regime forces threatening the towns of Zintan and Yafran, scenes of heavy fighting between regime and rebel forces.
Fierce fighting which had raged for days for control of the Dehiba border crossing into Tunisia, meanwhile, hit a lull on Friday, but rebels expected a new offensive, witnesses said.
They said rebels retook the post late Thursday in clashes that killed eight loyalist soldiers only hours after Kadhafi forces had overrun it.
A Tunisian police source said 5,150 people had crossed from Libya into Tunisia at Dehiba within 48 hours as the fighting raged.
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Twitter recently upped its rates on Twitter Promoted Trends from $60K-$70K to between $100K-$120K which means the demand for the unique form of advertising is certainly there. But what are brands getting in return? As we?ve seen before with Skittles, Charlie Sheen, and even the #Dickbar, attempting to float a brand message over user generated Twitter content isn?t always a success.
Case in point ? For the past few days the chatter around the #RoyalWedding has been plentiful, but not necessarily all positive.
Diet shake Slim Fast bought the #RoyalWedding Promoted Trends slot yesterday, and at some point had its brand message (and its inexplicable link to its Facebook page)�associated with sundry undesirable content.
While granted it is sort of funny, the relevancy of tweets like ?#RoyalWedding of the ass is my c*ck? to Slim Fast?s admittedly inane message should be a serious issue for a company trying to monetize UGC. Companies who spend money on advertising tend to avoid the above sorts of associations, with good reason.
What makes this specific instance of ad relevancy failure worse is that the #RoyalWedding hashtag is currently being highlighted on Twitter?s revamped homepage along with #STS134 and #NFLDraft ? As things that presumably add value to new Twitter users. Right now all three are riddled with hashtag spam.
Twitter, which just hit 200 million users, is currently averaging about 500K new accounts a day. While this growth isn?t too shabby, it?s hard to picture the middle aged, middle American curious about Twitter landing on the above results and wanting to stick around for very long.
#RoyalWedding side note: Twitter did not have a whole server dedicated to Will & Kate today. That was a joke.
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1964: Mothra vs. Godzilla makes its screen debut in Japan. Or was it Mothra Against Godzilla, Godzilla vs. Mothra or Godzilla vs. The Thing?
By whatever name you choose — and it went by all of them at one time or another — for those of us who grew up watching these entertaining romps, this is the quintessential Godzilla movie.
It had everything you could ask for: wonderfully cheesy special effects (acute halitosis never looked so good); great dubbing (in the English-language release, the talking went on after the Japanese actors had stopped moving their lips); a couple of hot Japanese twins (albeit a pair of faeries scarcely a foot tall); wanton, widespread destruction (Nagoya, rather than Tokyo, took the hit this time); and a monster to root for (the big moth).
The Godzilla-Mothra imbroglio wasn’t the first time these two had courted trouble.
Godzilla had already been around for a decade, rising from the sea in the 1954 film Godzilla to ravage the Japanese mainland following a hydrogen-bomb test gone awry. Godzilla evolved over the years, his dinosaur-like appearance always changing. But he never lost the atomic breath that, along with his sheer bulk, served as his main weapon of destruction.
As for Mothra, she (yes, Mothra was all woman) made her original cinematic bow in the 1961 flick bearing her name. Maybe because fictional lepidopteran Mothra originated in a novel before coming to the screen, she was more nuanced than her troglodytic antagonist. Unlike Godzilla, Mothra possessed an intellect, which she put to use in a series of films.
The plots for what are loosely called “Godzilla movies” follow the same simple formula: The monster — usually our man Godzilla — is awakened from its slumber, either by man’s folly (nuclear testing) or man’s greed (there always seems to be an evil capitalist lurking in the weeds, eager to exploit a lost culture or a slumbering monster). Fully awake now, the monster wreaks vengeance on the hapless Japanese, whose soldiery, never fully recovered from Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, lies prostrate before the rampaging beast.
The soldiers do know how to die dramatically, though, which makes for some entertaining cinematic moments.
In the end, the movie’s alpha monster is finally overcome, either by a few plucky scientists who dream up some goofy formula that works, or by another hairy, scaly or wing-flapping opponent, who — for reasons never adequately explained — decides to temporarily ally itself with the perfidious two-legged mammals that stirred up this hornet’s nest in the first place.
Simple and repetitive as the story lines may be, the ‘64 film began a complicated relationship between Godzilla and Mothra, who, over the course of several movies, died and were reborn, were alternately vanquished and victorious, and lined up both as friend and foe. Their relationship with humanity was equally complex: Mothra could be punishing but was ultimately benevolent. Godzilla, usually the heavy, occasionally emerged as a kind of antihero, earning our sympathy in his role as avenging angel.
The Godzilla franchise was born in the Toho film studios in the 1950s but has been spun off so many times that it’s impossible to chronicle the monster’s lineage here. Suffice it to say, Godzilla has appeared on the screen — both large and small — in comic books, videogames, novels and myriad other places as a pop culture icon.
OK, so maybe Mothra vs. Godzilla wasn’t Kurosawa. But it was a fine way to kill a Saturday afternoon.
Source: Various
Photo: 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla is seen by many as the ultimate Godzilla movie. (Toho Kingdom)
This article first appeared on Wired.com April 29, 2008.
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For those looking to be innovative and drum up some free publicity, social media offers an infinite number of possibilities, especially if you’re, say, a fledgling pro football league looking to seize any spotlight away from the $9 billion National Football League.
So while the NFL, embroiled in seemingly unending labor strife, began its annual player draft last night at swanky Radio City Music Hall, the two-year-old United Football League will also be conducting its own player draft this coming Monday — on Twitter.
?We believe this will be a social media first as our head coaches announce their selections exclusively to their Twitter followers,? said UFL Commissioner Michael Huyghue in a statement. ?The UFL Draft plays an important role in stocking our teams? rosters and we hope fans enjoy this innovative means of communicating each pick.?
Sure, who’s going to be left after the NFL Draft concludes on Saturday?
The UFL Draft starts Monday night at 8 pm Eastern. Huyghue himself will tweet all five of the first-round selections as they’re communicated to the league office, and then each head coach will rattle off their picks over the subsequent nine rounds. Indeed, the roster of coaches reads like a who’s-who of ’90s NFL head-coaching castaways. You’ve got former Atlanta Falcons coach Jerry Glanville leading the Hartford Colonials. Former New York Giants head coach Jim Fassel is in charge of the league-champion Las Vegas Locos. (Yes, you heard that right.) Then you’ve got former Arizona Cardinals head coach Dennis Green leading the Sacramento Mountain Lions.
Pro tip: Get Green to bring some of the intensity that made him a YouTube sensation to this UFL Draft, and maybe this thing could be entertaining after all.
Photo: Flickr/schargis, CC
Erik is the editor of Playbook, Wired.com's sports blog. He's also the managing editor of Longshot and a contributor to Pop-Up Magazine.Witness for the Prosecution review Wild Strawberries review Grave of the Fireflies review Snatch review The Sixth Sense review
INDIANAPOLIS – Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels said Friday he will sign a bill restricting abortions and making Indiana the first state to cut off all government funding for Planned Parenthood, a move likely to beef up his credentials among social conservatives as he considers whether to run for president.
Daniels said he supported the abortion restrictions from the outset and that the provision added to defund Planned Parenthood did not change his mind. He said women's health, family planning and other services will remain available.
"The principle involved commands the support of an overwhelming majority of Hoosiers," Daniels said in a statement announcing his intention to sign the bill when it arrives on his desk in about a week.
But doing so also puts Daniels' state at risk of losing $4 million a year in federal family planning grants likely to be cut off because of the legislation. Daniels, known as a fiscal hawk, did not address the loss in his statement.
Daniels said he has ordered Indiana's Family and Social Services Administration to ensure that Medicaid recipients receive prompt notice of nearby care options.
"Any organization affected by this provision can resume receiving taxpayer dollars immediately by ceasing or separating its operations that perform abortions," Daniels said.
Planned Parenthood of Indiana had urged Daniels to veto the bill and started a series of statewide rallies against it Friday.
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WikiLeaks suspect Bradley Manning has been deemed competent to face a court martial, according to news reports.
A panel of experts, convened for a so-called 706 board evaluation, determined that the former Army intelligence analyst was both physically and mentally fit to stand trial, Army officials disclosed on Friday. The decision clears the way for an Article 32 hearing, the military equivalent of a Grand Jury, to determine if a court martial trial against Manning should proceed.
The 706 board had been requested by Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, to determine if Manning suffered a ?severe mental disease or defect? at the time of his alleged leaking. Coombs said last year that Army records showed the military had been concerned that Manning might be suicidal during his deployment, and ?did document prolonged periods of disassociated behavior, quite a bit of nonresponsiveness from Pfc. Manning. And, again, that progressed from the very beginning of the deployment and deteriorated somewhat toward the end.? The Army’s concern was serious enough that Manning’s superior had ordered Manning’s firearm disabled.
Manning, 23, is facing 22 charges for illegally downloading classified information and passing it to a third party. The charges include allegations of espionage and unauthorized computer access under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Manning, who has been in prison since his arrest last May, was removed from solitary confinement this week, after experts at the Leavenworth facility where he is imprisoned in Kansas determined he was fit to live and mix with other inmates at the facility.
(Image: Anti-war protesters rally for Bradley Manning in Quantico, Virginia last year. Creative Commons photo courtesy�mar is sea Y/Flickr)
Kim Zetter is a senior reporter at Wired covering cybercrime, privacy, security and civil liberties.Network review The Battle of Algiers review The Diving Bell and the Butterfly review The Wild Bunch review In Bruges review
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The president was on his way. Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts were riding out to the launch pad in a van. And a wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords had flown in from her Houston rehab hospital to watch her husband blast off Friday on the historic, next-to-last shuttle mission.
Then it all came to a sudden stop.
Without warning, a faulty heater part forced NASA to scrub the launch and slam the brakes on the space agency's biggest event in years, a flight made more fascinating to many by the plight of Giffords and her husband, Mark Kelly, the mission commander.
Endeavour's flight was delayed until at least Monday.
"Bummed about the scrub!! But important to make sure everything on shuttle is working properly," Giffords' staff tweeted.
Travel plans for the Arizona congresswoman, who is still recovering from a gunshot wound to the head from an assassination attempt in January, are still up in the air, said her spokesman, C.J. Karamargin. He said she is waiting until Sunday when NASA should know more about a possible launch date.
President Barack Obama and his family came to Cape Canaveral anyway, and he and his family met with Giffords for about 10 minutes. Karamargin said only that Giffords was pleased to meet with them.
The congresswoman's husband greeted Obama in a corridor, saying: "I bet you were hoping to see a rocket launch today."
Obama replied: "We were hoping to see you."
The two men shook hands and embraced.
The president told Endeavour's six astronauts he is still hoping to get back to Florida for a shuttle launch.
"One more chance, we may be able to get down here," Obama said.
"It's a priority for us," Michelle Obama added.
As many as 700,000 tailgaters and other spectators had been expected to pour into the seaside area for the liftoff, one of the biggest launch-day crowds in decades. It would have been the first time in NASA history that a president and his family witnessed a launch.
Giffords arrived on Wednesday, nearly four months after the shooting in her hometown of Tuscon, but the 40-year-old congresswoman hasn't been seen in public. She has difficulty walking and talking and wears a helmet because doctors removed a large piece of skull to allow for swelling of her brain.
She had planned to watch the launch from a private VIP viewing area along with the other astronauts' families before the countdown was halted about 3 1/2 hours short of the 3:47 p.m. liftoff. NASA's silver-colored astrovan did a U-turn and brought the astronauts back to their crew quarters.
Giffords' Houston doctors declined to say whether a prolonged stay away from her rehab center would cause problems. It was unclear whether she is continuing her therapy while in Florida; her staff would provide no details.
Dr. Jaime Levine, a brain-injury expert at Rusk Rehab at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York, said she had no reason to think that Giffords' recovery would be harmed by the time away from her rehab center or the psychological stress of the launch cancellation. But Levine said she did not know Giffords' situation.
Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana said that while he didn't meet with Giffords, "she's enjoying her time in Florida, she's enjoying her time with Mark and she's doing well."
Engineers aren't certain what part on the heating system — needed for launch and landing — needs to be replaced. To fix the heater, technicians will have to crawl into the engine compartment. If it is a simple fix, NASA could make another launch attempt as early as Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, but if not, the flight could be delayed to May 8 or later, said launch director Mike Leinbach.
If NASA tries on Monday, the president can't make it, Cabana said.
After Endeavour, there is only one more shuttle flight — by Atlantis — before NASA ends the 30-year-old program and the orbiters become museum pieces.
When Endeavour finally flies, it will be the last mission in its 19-year history. It will deliver a $2 billion instrument that will search the universe for antimatter and dark energy.
Tammi Flythe, among the thousands gathered across the Indian River in Titusville with her two children, was disappointed at the postponement. They had driven from Tampa, about 130 miles across the state.
"I really wanted my son to experience this," she said.
At the space center, astronaut Clayton Anderson was typically stoic.
"Of course, it's always disappointing, especially for the crew," he said. "NASA has a great safety record and they're going to do it the right way."
___
AP writers Erica Werner and Kyle Hightower in Florida, Malcolm Ritter in New York and Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston contributed to this report.
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Online:
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Paint? Sunscreen? Whatever the reason, the white iPhone is 0.2mm thicker than its black counterpart. Photo TiPb
We may have discovered the secret behind the new white iPhone, and why now, ten months late, Apple finally thinks it will stay white instead of fading to a dirty, stained yellow. Extra paint, and lots of it.
The internet is abuzz today with comparison photos showing that the white iPhone is noticeably thicker than its black counterpart. The metal antenna band is just the same, but the glass panels on the white phone are thicker. From the pictures, it appears that it’s the rear panel that has grown the most, and the whole phone is now 0.2mm fatter.
This probably isn’t just layers of extra paint inside the glass, although Apple’s Phil Schiller, when speaking about the long delayed handset, did mention that extra UV protection was needed.
In practical terms, this layer of sunscreen means that many precision-made cases will not fit the new iPhone. Add this to the slightly different positions of the mute switch on the Verizon iPhone and we now have four handset configurations for case makers to cover. Given that Apple is famous for keeping its product lines simple, this starts to look rather messy.
In reality, this doesn’t really matter too much. After all, the iPhone 4S looks like it might be arriving in September, and hopefully Apple will manage to make all models the same size and shape.
iPhone 4 is thicker in white [Ryan Cash via Mac Rumors]
Yes, your case will probably still fit the 0.2mm thicker white iPhone 4 [TiPb]
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MISRATA, Libya – Moammar Gadhafi's forces holed up inside the airport in the key western city of Misrata have been shelling a civilian neighborhood around it. Libyan rebels say at least two men died in the morning fighting.
Their bodies were brought to Misrata's Hikma hospital on Friday, as loud booms and the crackle of machine gun reverberated across the city.
The rebels say one — a middle-aged man with a bullet wound to the chest — died as he sat outside his home in the southern neighborhood next to the airport. The other was a younger man with several shrapnel wounds.
The two-month battle for Misrata has killed hundreds and prompted warnings of a humanitarian crisis. The city is increasingly the focus of fighting as the other key front in the rebel-held east settled into a stalemate.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumer spending rose as households stretched to cover the higher cost for food and gasoline as inflation posted its biggest year-on-year rise in 10 months.
The Commerce Department said on Friday consumer spending, adjusted for inflation, edged up 0.2 percent last month after rising 0.5 percent in February.
Nominal spending increased 0.6 percent for a ninth straight month of gains, after advancing 0.9 percent in February.
Economists had expected spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of U.S. economic activity, to rise 0.5 percent.
"The story in the first quarter was higher gas prices are forcing people to spend more at the expense of other items," said Christopher Low, chief economist at FTN Financial in New York. "The inflation burden increased in the quarter, things were progressively worse as you moved from January to March."
U.S. stock index futures maintained earlier gains after the report, while bond prices held their slight gains. The dollar was weaker versus the euro and yen.
The government reported on Thursday that consumer spending grew at a 2.7 percent annualized rate in the first quarter after a 4 percent increase in the final three months of 2010.
That contributed to economic growth slowing to a 1.8 percent rate in the first quarter after a 3.1 percent expansion in the last quarter of 2010.
The moderation in spending was not as sharp as economists had feared, suggesting that consumers were somewhat adapting to the high commodity prices, but could face a litmus test should gasoline prices shoot above $4 a gallon.
The national price for regular unleaded gasoline rose 3.5 cents to $3.88 in the week through Monday.
The Fed this week expressed confidence high energy prices would not spark broader inflation, with Chairman Ben Bernanke saying he did not believe gasoline prices would continue to rise at their recent pace.
High food and energy prices kept inflation elevated in March, with the personal consumption expenditures price (PCE) index up 0.4 percent after rising by the same margin in February. Compared to March last year, the index was up 1.8 percent - the largest increase since May - after rising 1.6 percent in February.
The core PCE index -- excluding food and energy - slowed to a 0.1 percent increase after rising 0.2 percent in February. The core index, which is closely watched by Federal Reserve officials, increased 0.9 percent in the 12 months through March.
The index rose 0.9 percent in February and the Fed would like to see it around 2 percent.
Spending was supported by incomes, which increased 0.5 percent last month after a 0.4 percent gain in February. The rise in incomes was a touch above economists' expectations for a 0.4 percent gain.
Savings edged up to $651.2 billion from $647.5 billion in February. The saving rate was unchanged at 5.5 percent.
Separately, wages rose at a 0.4 percent rate in the first quarter, a Labor Department report showed, after increasing by the same pace in the fourth quarter.
(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani, Additional reporting by Karen Brettell in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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NEW YORK – It's a sight many Americans would surely love to see: a recovering Rep. Gabrielle Giffords watching as her astronaut husband blasts off into space.
But it's unlikely they will see it. Giffords will attend Friday's space shuttle launch in Florida but watch in private, and her staff says there are no plans to release photos of her, though that could change.
Why is the congresswoman, whose recovery from catastrophic wounds has inspired so many, being kept out of public view?
First of all, it's long-standing NASA policy for all relatives at a shuttle launch. "It's just for privacy," said spokeswoman Nicole Cloutier-Lemasters at Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. "They are here in a private capacity."
Sometimes family members choose independently to make themselves available, she said, but most decide not to.
"They're not the spotlight," added space center spokesman Allard Beutel. "They're not the public figure."
Of course, Giffords is a special case. There's extraordinary public interest in her progress since that horrific Jan. 8 assassination attempt in Tucson, Ariz., and in the simultaneous story of husband Mark Kelly's journey into space — a life-vs.-career dilemma like no other.
Details about Giffords' condition in the 3 1/2 months since she took a bullet to the head have been sparse. There have been no photos showing her face. A grainy video image purporting to show her slowly climbing stairs to board the plane for Florida earlier this week was the most visible and hopeful sign yet of her improvement.
Few would argue with a patient's right to privacy, even a public figure and officeholder like Giffords. But her neurosurgeon, Dr. Michael Lemole, added another dimension to the privacy argument when asked recently if it wouldn't be beneficial for the public to see the effects of the shooting.
"I understand that would be useful to the public, but I also understand that a picture is worth a thousand words, and with those words would come rampant speculation," he told the Association of Health Care Journalists earlier this month. "If you release one picture, people start speculating on what you will or won't do, on what you can or can't do."
Lemole, of University Medical Center in Tucson, added that when he performs brain surgery, the patient may have a swollen eye at the beginning and a bruise at three months, and then, at six months, look like someone who never had brain surgery at all.
"Perhaps the congresswoman, after all is said and done, after she recovers as well as she will, may release (photos) as sort of a retrospective documentary, and maybe that would be valuable," he said. But that, he made clear, lies well into the future.
Giffords had a piece of her skull removed shortly after the shooting to allow room for brain swelling and has been wearing a helmet adorned with an Arizona state flag.
Earlier this week, The Arizona Republic quoted her staff as saying she speaks in single words or simple declarative phrases, she has short hair with scars showing through, and her face is sometimes swollen but basically looks the same. Those close to her also said she can stand on her own and walk a little.
The congresswoman arrived in Cape Canaveral on Wednesday, leaving behind the Houston hospital where she has been undergoing rehab for the past three months. When she watches the shuttle Endeavour lift off Friday afternoon, it will surely be her husband's last mission in space. NASA is retiring the shuttles with one final flight in June.
"It's something she's been looking forward to for a long time," Kelly said of his wife's trip. "She's more than medically ready to be here."
Since the congresswoman's arrival, her whereabouts have been kept secret. A staff member said in a Twitter update Thursday morning that Giffords was enjoying Florida and "all the space action."
Giffords also was believed to have attended Wednesday night's family barbecue, a closed-door event.
NASA officials said they still didn't know where Giffords would view the launch. The congresswoman was expected to be in the general area of the presidential entourage, which will watch from an area near launch controllers.
Online, there seemed little if any criticism of the decision to shield Giffords from view.
"She should NOT be exposed to the public if she doesn't feel comfortable with it — it should be her decision!" Nancy Younce Volmer, a retired university administrator who lives in Warsaw, Ky., wrote in a typical comment on Facebook.
Another consideration was Giffords' physical and emotional well-being at the launch, noted Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
"You don't know how someone's going to react to all those people and all that movement," Helmke said. "We're talking about a serious, traumatic injury that happened less than four months ago. You wouldn't want to do anything in terms of crowds, cameras or questions that could possibly affect her condition. I'm sure that's what her doctors and family are concerned about."
Helmke noted that it has been just over 30 years since James Brady, a former press secretary to President Ronald Reagan, was shot in the head in an assassination attempt on his boss. Even now, he said, Brady has good days and bad ones, easy ones and difficult ones.
Besides, noted many, isn't there stress enough watching a spouse leave the planet?
"Things are tense enough with no injury at all," Helmke said.
To be sure, a photo of Giffords would be newsworthy. "This is a moment people have been waiting for," said Roy Peter Clark of the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla., a journalism think tank.
But, he noted, the desire to know needs to be balanced against considerations of the congresswoman's well-being and the risk that people will draw premature conclusions about her condition. A solution, he added, might be a photo that is not overly invasive or revealing of specific details of her medical condition.
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Associated Press writers Seth Borenstein and Marcia Dunn in Cape Canaveral, Fla., and Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston contributed to this report.
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