When most people think of PC manufacturer HP and "tablets," they probably think of a Windows 8 device. Either that, or the ill-fated TouchPad, an iPad-sized webOS gadget which sold so poorly that HP had to dump them all in a $99 fire sale just a few months in.

If you decided to wait for the price of its latest tablet to go down to $99, though, you wouldn't be saving that much. That's because HP is undercutting Google's $199 Nexus 7 with Like the Nexus 7, it runs Google's open-sourceand for the price, you get slightly lower specs, including just 8 GB of storage.

Why a 7-inch Android tablet?

While it didn't exactly help stave off the Kindle, Barnes and Noble's 7-inch Nook Color e-reader was extremely popular for awhile, as a cheap color tablet which could be easily modified to run normal Android. Then last year'sfrom Google sold millions.

Thatsold in the same time, but pretty soon even Apple had gotten in on the act with its iPad Mini tablet. And with tablets cutting into traditional PC sales, it was perhaps inevitable that someone at HP would try to make something like this.

What do you get for the money?

A 7-inch tablet "with stainless steel accents and a soft-touch back," which comes in red and silver (although the availability of different colors "may vary by region"). It has a dual-core 1.6 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 8 GB of storage, and a microSD slot for expandable memory. The 7-inch screen has a 1024x600 resolution, and it has a VGA webcam and a 3 megapixel rear-facing shooter. It also has Beats Audio technology built in.

How does it compare to other small tablets?

Compared to the Nexus 7, you lose out on the powerful Tegra 3 processor, which is capable of running "Tegra HD exclusive" games. The Slate 7 also runs a slightly less recent version of "Jelly Bean" Android, has half the storage space (of the $199 Nexus 7 model), and has a much fuzzier screen and webcam. The Nexus 7 also has a $299 32 GB version with HSPA+ wireless Internet, although it lacks the microSD slot and rear-facing camera.

Compared to theyou'll mostly be missing Apple's sleek industrial design and high-performance processor, plus the hundreds of thousands of iPad-exclusive games and apps. Of course, it also costs about twice as much.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Michael Dell has been advised to raise his $24.4 billion offer for Dell Inc, coming under further pressure as billionaire investor Carl Icahn revealed he had committed more than $3 billion to back an alternative proposal.

The PC maker's special committee told Dell's founder and chief executive a few days ago that he should raise his offer if he wants it to succeed, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

The special committee, which was formed to independently assess what the best option for Dell shareholders is, came to that conclusion based on its meetings with investors as well as concerns over a key upcoming recommendation by investment advisory firm ISS, the person said.

ISS is expected to publish its view on whether Michael Dell's offer, which is backed by equity financing from buyout firm Silver Lake, is in the interest of Dell's shareholders as early as next week. A July 18 shareholder vote on Dell's take-private plan will follow.

Despite being advised by the special committee that he should raise his offer to see the transaction through, Michael Dell was non-committal, the person added, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News.

Dell Inc and Silver Lake declined to comment.

The special committee's move came as Icahn and his affiliates disclosed on Tuesday they had provided $3.42 billion, or 66 percent, of the debt financing to back his bid for Dell.

Investment bank Jefferies & Co provided $1.6 billion, or 30 percent of the overall $5.2 billion in committed financing with the remainder of about $179 million coming from 14 institutional funds, including pension funds and insurance companies, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

"The fact that he could not get lending from other banks suggests they are not too friendly to this," said Steven Kaplan, a University of Chicago finance professor. "However, one must note that a few banks are locked up with the Silver Lake offer."

"On the positive side, Icahn is putting a lot of money where his mouth is," Kaplan added.

Other market participants evaluating the transaction said Icahn's move could indicate he may never have aimed to broadly distribute the deal in the first place.

Calls to Carl Icahn, who runs Icahn Enterprises LP, were not immediately returned.

Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management are preparing an offer that would see shareholders tender 1.1 billion shares at $14 apiece, rivaling Michael Dell's and Silver Lake's $24.4 billion buyout offer of $13.65 a share.

The billionaire investor has said Michael Dell's offer substantially undervalues the company. Dell's special board committee had recommended Michael Dell's offer to shareholders.

While the financing commitment marks a crucial step forward for Icahn's bid for Dell, it is contingent on a dozen board appointments, according to the SEC filing.

Unless all 12 of the nominees proposed by Icahn and Southeastern on May 13 are elected to Dell's board, the financing is unlikely to take place.

Icahn's proposal will also be put to shareholders only if the offer by Michael Dell and Silver Lake is not accepted by shareholders when they meet on July 18.

'GAME OF CHICKEN'

All eyes are now on ISS. If it moves against Michael Dell's offer, he will be under even more pressure to raise it.

"It's a game of chicken," a shareholder said. "Icahn's going for the bump."

Speculation about a possible bump in the offer price began on Tuesday with a CNBC report that cited sources claiming that Michael Dell's camp was not feeling confident that ISS will recommend his offer. An ISS spokeswoman, however, said that ISS was still working on its analysis and never signals its recommendation in advance.

Another person familiar with the matter reiterated on Tuesday that neither Michael Dell nor Silver Lake have made any decision on whether to increase their offer.

All sources spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is confidential.

The $5.2 billion financing deal put together by Icahn was shown to a mix of U.S. and foreign banks, asset managers, hedge funds and collateralized loan obligation (CLO) managers.

Icahn's proposed tender offer will be financed with $7.5 billion of cash on the balance sheet, the $5.2 billion credit facility and $2.9 billion from the sale of receivables.

If Icahn's proposal prevails, the loans would launch to a more broad range of institutional investors before September 30, or the three-month commitment period of the $5.2 billion loans, according to sources.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco and Greg Roumeliotis and Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Caleb Frazier, Lynn Adler, Lisa Shumaker and Edwina Gibbs)

The Shenzhou 10 spacecraft, China's fifth manned space mission since 2003, completed the final trial docking with the Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) 1, critical in Beijing's quest to build a working space station by 2020.

China Central Television showed the re-entry of the capsule, dangling from an orange parachute, and its landing on flat grasslands shortly after 8 a.m. China time.

China successfully carried out its first manned docking exercise with Tiangong 1 last June, a milestone in an effort to acquire the technological and logistical skills to run a full space station that can house people for long periods.

The Shenzhou 10 was commanded by Nie Haisheng, with Zhang Xiaoguang and female astronaut Wang Yaping also on board.

The astronauts began emerging about 90 minutes after landing, helped out of the nose of the capsule by workers in white jumpsuits and into waiting chairs, smiling and waving to the TV camera.

"It's good to be home," Nie told CCTV. "Space is our dream. The motherland is always our home."

Wang gave a 50-minute televised physics lecture last week on the effects of weightlessness, widely viewed by middle school students around the country.

"This mission made me realize two dreams: my dream of flying to outer space, and my dream of being a teacher," she told CCTV. "If you have a dream, you can succeed."

The Global Times, a tabloid published by the same company that puts out the official Communist Party newspaper the People's Daily, echoed some criticism among the public about the expense of China's space programme.

"Currently, China's passion to develop space technology mainly lingers at the government level. Some even blame the government for political vanity and question whether the money couldn't be spent improving people's livelihoods," the paper said in an editorial, published before the landing.

The mission went "perfectly", Wang Zhaoyao, director of China's manned space programme, said at a news conference in Beijing.

China is still far from catching up with the established space superpowers, the United States and Russia, which decades ago learned the docking techniques carried out by the Shenzhou 10.

China must still master launching cargo and fuel via space freighters and recycling air and water for extended manned missions, state media have said. Plans call for a working space lab, the Tiangong 2, to be put into orbit in two years.

Beijing insists its space programme is for peaceful purposes, but the U.S. Defense Department has highlighted China's increasing space capabilities and said Beijing is pursuing a variety of activities aimed at preventing its adversaries from using space-based assets during a crisis.

(Reporting and writing by Terril Yue Jones and Michael Martina.; Editing by Nick Macfie)

The admonition came a day after the latest embarrassment for the Vatican hierarchy -- the arrest by Italian authorities of a Vatican accountant, in a probe of an alleged attempt by the prelate to secure the smuggling of 20 million euros ($26 million) in banknotes from Switzerland into Italy. The Italian monsignor, who was suspended a few weeks earlier from his job in the Vatican's finance office, is also under investigation in a separate money-laundering probe by prosecutors in southern Italy.

Francis is making reforms aimed at ensuring his papacy's priorities, which include paying more attention to the world's poor and concentrating on cultivating spiritual, not material, wealth. He delivered a kind of moral pep talk to church leaders, including Vatican cardinals, gathered in St. Peter's Basilica for an annual ceremony to welcome newly made archbishops.

"Whenever we let our thoughts, our feelings or the logic of human power prevail, and we do not let ourselves be taught and guided by faith, by God, we become stumbling blocks," the pope said. "Faith in Christ is the light of our life as Christians and as ministers in the church."

Francis also put church leaders on guard against "the peril of thinking in worldly terms."

Earlier in the week, the pope established a commission to look into the Vatican bank, which has long had a reputation as a largely unregulated financial centre ripe for exploitation as a tax haven or even for money laundering. The arrest of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, along with an Italian financial broker and a former member of an Italian paramilitary police's security agency, highlighted the urgency to ensure that Vatican's financial apparatus is above board.

The Vatican's curia, or bureaucratic administration, is notorious for rivalries among power-seeking factions. Francis received an authoritative show of support Saturday from an Italian cardinal, Velasio de Paolis, a retired chief of the Vatican's finance department.

The Vatican "must clean house," the cardinal told Rome daily Il Messaggero in an interview. "Pope Francis is right to insist on this," he was quoted as saying. The pope's reform drive is "valid for all believers, clergy or non-clergy, with a red skullcap or without a red skullcap," de Paolis said, referring to the crimson headgear that cardinals wear.

De Paolis added that "churchmen ought to be saints, but sometimes they are not." Referring to the pope's determination to clean up the Vatican bank, de Paolis said of Francis: "He's not ingenuous, he knows that the church must have wealth to help those who don't have it. "

Since cardinals elected Francis as pope in March, the pontiff, a Jesuit from Argentina, has eschewed showy symbols of Vatican wealth, refusing, among other decisions, to reside in the Apostolic Palace. He lives in a hotel on the Vatican grounds, and except for religious ceremonies, wears a simple white cassock instead of fancy robes.

The Austrian parachutist known as "Fearless Felix" reached 843.6 mph, according to the official numbers released Monday. That's equivalent to Mach 1.25, or 1.25 times the speed of sound.

His top speed initially was estimated last October at 834 mph, or Mach 1.24.

Either way, he became the first human to break the sound barrier with only his body. He wore a pressurized suit and jumped from a capsule hoisted by a giant helium balloon over New Mexico.

Baumgartner was supersonic for a half-minute "quite remarkable," according to Brian Utley, the official record-keeping official who was present for the Oct. 14 feat. His heart rate remained below 185 beats a minute, and his breathing was fairly steady.

The leap was from an altitude of 127,852 feet. That's 248 feet lower than original estimates.

"He jumped from a little bit lower, but he actually went a little bit faster, which was pretty exciting," said Art Thompson, technical project director for the Red Bull-sponsored project.

"It's fun for us to see reaching Mach speeds and proving out a lot of the safety systems," Thompson said in a phone interview from his aerospace company in Lancaster, Calif.

Thompson said everything pretty much unfolded as anticipated, with no surprises in the final report. The updated records were provided by Utley, official observer for the National Aeronautic Association's contest and records board. Utley was in Roswell, N.M., for Baumgartner's grand finale jump.

In the foreword of the 71-page report, Baumgartner said he never imagined how many people would share in his dream to make a supersonic free fall from so high.

Some 52 million people watched You Tube's live stream of the exploit.

The scientific and engineering experts who helped bring him back alive "broke boundaries in their own fields just as surely as I broke the sound barrier," Baumgartner wrote.

Baumgartner shattered the previous record for a free fall plunge, made by Joe Kittinger, an Air Force officer, in 1960. Kittinger did not quite reach supersonic speed during his jump from 19.5 miles up.

The justices said in 5-4 vote that the law Congress most recently renewed in 2006 relies on 40-year-old data that does not reflect racial progress and changes in U.S. society.

The court did not strike down the advance approval requirement of the law that has been used, mainly in the South, to open up polling places to minority voters in the nearly half century since it was first enacted in 1965. But the justices did say lawmakers must update the formula for determining which parts of the country must seek Washington's approval, in advance, for election changes.

Chief Justice John Roberts said for the conservative majority that Congress "may draft another formula based on current conditions."

That task eluded Congress in 2006 when lawmakers overwhelmingly renewed the advance approval requirement with no changes in which states and local jurisdictions were covered, and Congress did nothing in response to a high court ruling in a similar challenge in 2009 in which the justices raised many of the same concerns.

"The coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs," Roberts said.

The decision means that a host of state and local laws that have not received Justice Department approval or have not yet been submitted will be able to take effect. Prominent among those are voter identification laws in Alabama and Mississippi.

Going forward, the outcome alters the calculus of passing election-related legislation in the affected states and local jurisdictions. The threat of an objection from Washington has hung over election-related proposals for nearly a half century. At least until Congress acts, that deterrent now is gone.

That prospect has worried civil rights groups which especially worry that changes on the local level might not get the same scrutiny as the actions of state legislatures.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by her three liberal colleagues, dissented from Tuesday's ruling.

Ginsburg said no one doubts that voting discrimination still exists. "But the court today terminates the remedy that proved to be best suited to block that discrimination," she said in a dissent that she read aloud in the packed courtroom.

Ginsburg said the law continues to be necessary to protect against what she called subtler, "second-generation" barriers to voting. She identified one such effort as the switch to at-large voting from a district-by-district approach in a city with a sizable black minority. The at-large system allows the majority to "control the election of each city council member, effectively eliminating the potency of the minority's votes," she said.

Justice Clarence Thomas was part of the majority, but wrote separately to say again that he would have struck down the advance approval requirement itself.

Civil rights lawyers condemned the ruling.

"The Supreme Court has effectively gutted one of the nation's most important and effective civil rights laws. Minority voters in places with a record of discrimination are now at greater risk of being disenfranchised than they have been in decades. Today's decision is a blow to democracy. Jurisdictions will be able to enact policies which prevent minorities from voting, and the only recourse these citizens will have will be expensive and time-consuming litigation," said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The group represented a black resident of the Alabama County that challenged the law.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, "This is like letting you keep your car, but taking away the keys."

The decision comes five months after President Barack Obama, the country's first black chief executive, started his second term in the White House, re-elected by a diverse coalition of voters.

The high court is in the midst of a broad re-examination of the ongoing necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded. The justices issued a modest ruling Monday that preserved affirmative action in higher education and will take on cases dealing with anti-discrimination sections of a federal housing law and another affirmative action case from Michigan next term.

The court warned of problems with the voting rights law in a similar case heard in 2009. The justices averted a major constitutional ruling at that time, but Congress did nothing to address the issues the court raised. The law's opponents, sensing its vulnerability, filed several new lawsuits.

The latest decision came in a challenge to the advance approval, or preclearance, requirement, which was brought by Shelby County, Ala., a Birmingham suburb.

The lawsuit acknowledged that the measure's strong medicine was appropriate and necessary to counteract decades of state-sponsored discrimination in voting, despite the Fifteenth Amendment's guarantee of the vote for black Americans.

But it asked whether there was any end in sight for a provision that intrudes on states' rights to conduct elections, an issue the court's conservative justices also explored at the argument in February. It was considered an emergency response when first enacted in 1965.

The county noted that the 25-year extension approved in 2006 would keep some places under Washington's oversight until 2031 and seemed not to account for changes that include the elimination of racial disparity in voter registration and turnout or the existence of allegations of race-based discrimination in voting in areas of the country that are not subject to the provision.

The Obama administration and civil rights groups said there is a continuing need for it and pointed to the Justice Department's efforts to block voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas last year, as well as a redistricting plan in Texas that a federal court found discriminated against the state's large and growing Hispanic population.

Advance approval was put into the law to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep blacks from voting.

The provision was a huge success because it shifted the legal burden and required governments that were covered to demonstrate that their proposed changes would not discriminate. Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent extension was overwhelmingly approved by a Republican-led Congress and signed by President George W. Bush.

The requirement currently applies to the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also covers certain counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some local jurisdictions in Michigan. Coverage has been triggered by past discrimination not only against blacks, but also against American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaska Natives and Hispanics.

Towns in New Hampshire that had been covered by the law were freed from the advance approval requirement in March. Supporters of the provision pointed to the ability to bail out of the prior approval provision to argue that the law was flexible enough to accommodate change and that the court should leave the Voting Rights Act intact.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced an agreement that would allow Hanover County, Va., to bail out.

Those and other questions will have to wait, at least until the next time the court considers an affirmative action case.

But the ruling was nonetheless significant. On the one hand, it validated earlier court rulings that racial diversity is a "compelling state interest" and that colleges may use racial preferences to achieve it. However, the justices also sent a sharp reminder to higher education. The 7-1 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, showed virtually the entire court believes that colleges must, at the very least, meet a high bar in demonstrating such preferences are absolutely necessary, and that race-neutral methods of enrolling a diverse student body won't create such a student body on their own.

A look at some of the key questions and possible results of the ruling.

___

Q. What was this case about?

A. The focus of the case was a University of Texas admissions policy, used to select a small portion of the class at its flagship Austin campus, which took race into account as one factor among many. Abigail Fisher, a rejected white applicant, sued. But in deciding her case, the court also had the opportunity to consider the broader issue of how far colleges nationally can go in taking race into account in their admissions policies.

The key question is how to resolve sometimes conflicting rights the educational right of a college to create a diverse class it believes will benefit all students, versus the equal protection right of students not to face discrimination on the basis of race.

Q. What did the court decide?

A. On the Texas policy, it sent the case back down to a federal appeals court, which previously had sided with the university against Fisher. The Supreme Court said the lower court hadn't subjected the university's justification for the preferences to enough scrutiny. A university's educational judgment and experience can play a role in justifying racial preferences, the court said. But it also said lower courts shouldn't just take a university's "good faith" word that racial preferences are educationally necessary, or that such programs have been "narrowly tailored" to achieve their goals.

Rather, the justices ruled, courts must closely evaluate a college's claims about why it needs to use racial preferences, and why race-neutral alternatives (such as simply giving a boost to low-income students, regardless of race) won't achieve the diversity they need.

Q. What happens now?

A. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will reconsider the case in light of the Supreme Court's instructions to give the University of Texas more scrutiny; the university will now have to meet a higher standard to persuade the court it needs to use racial preferences. If the university can meet that standard, its policy could survive. But the case could return to the Supreme Court for another ruling, which could open the door to a broader decision on exactly what colleges can and cannot do when it comes to implementing racial preferences.

Q. Who won?

A. Both sides will claim something of a victory. Opponents of affirmative action will cheer the court's sharp reminder that colleges must prove they have tried other alternatives before resorting to racial preferences. Many may now be more vulnerable to lawsuits, which could cause them to use racial preferences less aggressively (you can certainly count lawyers among the winners).

Overall, however, defenders of affirmative action are most relieved. The court upheld the essence of an idea it last articulated in a 2003 case involving the University of Michigan: Diversity is so important in education that it can justify racial preferences at least sometimes. "It's a strong affirmation of the importance of student body diversity in higher education, by a strong majority of the court," said Marvin Krislov, who was the University of Michigan's general counsel during the last affirmative action case and is now president of Oberlin College in Ohio.

"Relief is a good word," said Lee Bollinger, a constitutional scholar and president of Columbia University who previously had warned that the use of affirmative action might be imperiled by this case. He emphasized that the court, in a series of decisions, now has upheld the value of diversity in education and made that value "completely solid constitutional doctrine."

Q. What effect will the ruling have on college admissions policies, and which students go to which schools?

A. Probably very little, at least in the short run, according to numerous experts. First, remember that racial preferences are mostly an issue at perhaps several hundred colleges nationwide where slots are scarce; the majority of schools take anyone who meets baseline requirements and are able, even eager, to make room for more.

Many selective schools, however, have been practicing some form of affirmative action since about the early 1970s. Presumably, those schools used race in a manner they believed was consistent with what the Supreme Court allowed in 2003. On Monday, the court didn't change those standards; it just instructed courts to review more closely what colleges do.

Q. What about in the long run?

A. The ruling could embolden rejected applicants like Fisher who believe they've been discriminated against, because universities know they must meet a higher bar to show such policies are justified. Such litigation likely would produce cases that get more deeply into the nuts and bolts of how admissions offices use race to make decisions. If those cases bubble up to the Supreme Court, the justices may then address more specifically what they think colleges can and cannot do.

But for now, the general right of colleges to make use of racial preferences to ensure a diverse student body is safe.

___

Follow Justin Pope on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/JustinPopeAP

Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh has been at the forefront of the attacks, pointing out that Gore sold his pet cable network to an Arab news giant owned by the royal family of oil-rich Qatar, an OPEC regime.

He also asked if some of the female hosts on the left-leaning cable news network, including Joy Behar and Jennifer Granholme, will "now have to wear burkas and veils over their faces?"

Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly piled on, maligning Gore for selling to the "anti-American" Al-Jazeera before the Jan. 1 hike in the U.S. capital gains tax.

"This is really stunning," O'Reilly said this week. "A former vice president selling his far-left cable network to anti-Americans, then trying to jam the deal to avoid higher taxes."

O'Reilly called Gore a "hypocrite," pointing to the one-time Democratic presidential nominee's assertions in a November interview that people "like me should pay our fair share."

Gore reportedly decided in December to sell Current to Al-Jazeera for US$500 million, pocketing an estimated $100 million personally in the sale. He had previously turned down an offer from the right-wing The Blaze network, rebuffing its owner, conservative pundit Glenn Beck, because of his politics.

American Jewish leaders are also expressing concern that Al-Jazeera could gain access to tens of millions of American homes via the Current TV deal. They accuse the network of anti-Israeli coverage and supporting extremist Islamic regimes.

"Al-Jazeera has a troubling record and history that is very disturbing, particularly in its Arabic language broadcasts," said Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement from the organization on Friday.

"It has exploited and exaggerated the Arab-Israel conflict in a heavy-handed and propagandistic manner, and always at the expense of Israel, while giving all manner of virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic extremists access to its airwaves."

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, agreed.

"Their general coverage has served to destabilize regimes and favour some of the more extremist elements in the Arab world," he said.

Al-Jazeera has fought to gain a foothold in the U.S. market because of the refusal of many American cable providers to carry it. Time Warner, the second-largest cable company in the U.S., dropped Current TV after the sale to Al-Jazeera was confirmed earlier this week.

The news network is readily available on most major Canadian cable providers, including Rogers and Bell, after Ottawa approved the channel for distribution three years ago.

Americans turned on Al-Jazeera following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when it gave al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden a broadcasting platform. But in recent years, it's earned praise from some U.S. officials, in particular Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lauded its coverage of the so-called Arab Spring.

The brouhaha about Gore's sale to the network comes as the Republican party confronts anti-Muslim sentiment among some of its lawmakers. The soul-searching follows last November's presidential election, when three of the party's most vocal anti-Muslim legislators were defeated.

Even anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, a hard-right conservative on fiscal issues, has acknowledged the need for the party to evolve in terms of attitudes towards Muslims.

"They have gotten a bit of bad odour," Norquist recently told Mother Jones magazine.

The tipping point appears to have come in July, when Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann and four colleagues suggested the State Department had been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood thanks to Huma Abedin, a respected aide and longtime friend to Hillary Clinton.

John Boehner, speaker of the House of Representatives, and Sen. John McCain were among the prominent Republicans who assailed Bachmann for her allegations.

What has happened in our society that people don't understand that this is unsanitary and rude? Had I been there, I don't know that I could have kept a civil tongue, and I feel like people today regard my disgust as unreasonable. Is there something I'm missing here? -- CAFE CRAZY

DEAR "CRAZY": I don't know who you have been talking to, but your disgust is not "unreasonable." What that mother was missing was common sense and courtesy for those around her. I agree that changing a baby on a restaurant table was out of the ballpark -- particularly if a changing table was available in the women's restroom of your cafe. (I'm assuming there is one, but if there isn't, the situation should be immediately rectified.)

DEAR ABBY: My husband, "Gene," and I were married for five years until our divorce six months ago. We still live together and are dating each other. We had so many issues, I felt there needed to be a fresh start, including filing for divorce and living apart.

Now that we have started over, moved away from our hometown and gotten rid of several "friends," our issues are gone and we're financially stable. In fact, our relationship is better than ever.

Since things are now worked out, I'd like us to get remarried. I told him before our divorce that I hoped we could resolve things and marry again. Now he's not sure, because he says if we got divorced again, he couldn't bear the hurt. He says he still doesn't understand why our "fresh start" included a divorce.

Abby, we love each other. We want to be together forever and have children. I don't want to be dating my ex-husband indefinitely. Do you have advice for us? -- GOING NOWHERE IN WASHINGTON

DEAR GOING NOWHERE: I sure do. In the interest of solidifying your fresh start, you and Gene should sign up for some premarital counseling. If you do, you may be able to help him understand why you felt the way you did. With counseling, you can sure that your problems are fully resolved, and it may reassure him that this time there won't be another divorce. If you are thinking about a religious ceremony, the officiant may even require it.

DEAR ABBY: My sister and mother went to a movie recently. My sister became concerned that her husband and kids were locked out of the house, so she quickly took out her phone and texted her husband. It took less than 30 seconds.

A minute later a large man came down the stairs of the theater, got right in her face and began berating her -- telling her she was rude for pulling out her phone. It was so upsetting that she and Mom got up and left.

I understand that she should have stepped out of the theater to text. However, the man caused more of a scene than her texting did. What makes people think it is OK to treat people badly? -- HOLLY IN KOKOMO

DEAR HOLLY: The same thing that made your sister think it was OK to use her cellphone in a darkened theater. She's lucky that all she got was a lecture because these days many people have short fuses.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

For everything you need to know about wedding planning, order "How to Have a Lovely Wedding." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Wedding Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

It was the stock's biggest, single-day, percentage price drop since September 2008. But shares were still nearly 80 percent above the year's low, which was reached in September. They started to rally in November as investors began to bet that RIM's long-awaited new BlackBerry 10 phones, which will be unveiled in January, would turn the company around.

The services segment has long been RIM's most profitable and accounts for about a third of total revenue. Some analysts said there was a risk that the fee changes could endanger its service ecosystem and leave the Canadian company as just another handset maker.

The fee changes, which RIM announced on Thursday after market close, overshadowed stronger-than-expected quarterly results. The company said the new pricing structure would be introduced with the BlackBerry 10 launch, expected on January 30.

RIM said some subscribers would continue to pay for enhanced services such as advanced security. But under the new structure, some other services would account for less revenue, or even none at all.

Chief Executive Thorsten Heins tried to reassure investors in a television interview with CNBC on Friday, saying RIM's "service revenue isn't going away".

He added: "We're not stopping. We're not halting. We're transitioning."

Since taking over at RIM in January, Heins has focused on shrinking the company and getting it ready to introduce its new BB10 devices, which RIM says will help it claw back ground it has lost to competitors such as Apple Incand Samsung Electronics .

But the new services pricing strategy came as a shock to markets, and some analysts cut their price targets on RIM stock.

RIM will not be able to sustain profitability by relying on its hardware business alone, said National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson, whom Thomson Reuters StarMine has rated the top RIM analyst based on the accuracy of his estimates of the company's earnings.

Thompson downgraded RIM's stock to "underperform" from "sector perform" and cut his price target to $10 from $15.

Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin said the move was likely about stabilizing market share: "At the moment, they need to stem the bleeding."

He said the tiered pricing might line up better with RIM's subscriber base as it expands in emerging economies.

RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares closed down 22.7 percent at $10.91 on Friday. The stock fell 22.2 percent to C$10.86 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH

The success of the BB10 will be crucial to the future of RIM, which on Thursday posted its first-ever decline in total subscribers. Heins said on CNBC that the company expected to ship millions of the new devices.

He cautioned that this will require heavy investment, which will reduce RIM's cash position in its fourth and first quarters from $2.9 billion in its fiscal third quarter. He said, however, it would not go below $2 billion.

Still, doubts remain about whether RIM can pull off the transformation. Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said the BB10 would have to look meaningfully superior to its competitors for RIM to stage a comeback.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said it was highly unlikely that the market would support RIM's new mobile computing ecosystem, and he remained skeptical about the company's ability to survive on its own.

"We believe RIM will eventually need to sell the company," said Walkley, who cut his price target on RIM shares to $9 from $10.

Baird Equity Research analysts said BB10 faced a daunting uphill battle against products from Apple, as well as those using Google Inc'sAndroid operating system, and, increasingly, phones with Microsoft Corp'sWindows 8 operating system.

Baird maintained its "underperform" rating on the stock, while Paradigm Capital downgraded the shares to "hold" from "buy" on uncertainty around the services revenue model.

"RIM has gone from having one major aspect of uncertainty - BlackBerry 10 adoption - to two, given an uncertain floor on services revenue," William Blair analyst Anil Doradla said.

RIM will have to discount BB10 devices significantly to maintain demand, Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said.

The BlackBerry, however, still offers the security features that helped it build its reputation with big business and government, a selling point with some key customers.

Credit Suisse maintained its "neutral" rating on the stock, but not because it expected BB10 to be a big success.

"Only the potential for an outright sale of the company or a breakup keeps us at a neutral," Credit Suisse analysts said.

Separately on Friday, ailing Finnish mobile phone maker Nokiasaid it had settled its patent dispute with RIM in return for payments. Nokia did not disclose detailed terms, but said the deal included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.

(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore and Allison Martell in Toronto. Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Ted Kerr, Dale Hudson, Janet Guttsman,; Lisa Von Ahn, Peter Galloway and Leslie Gevirtz)