Danny Puff

by Rob Walker | @YahooTechSo it s been about a month since I betrayed Apple, one of my longtime favorite brands as mentioned here earlier by buying an HTC One smartphone instead of an iPhone. How s that working out?

Pretty great, actually. I m feeling no pangs of regret. Every app I really use works as well as the iOS versions, and I positively love some of the HTC One s features. But best of all, it s made it easier for me to recognize that the iPhone is, in fact, a totally bourgeois device: The iPhone has become, in its six short years, the technological equivalent of a Polo shirt.

Toting a non-Apple device around the world, for the first time in ages, has made me see the Apple-toters with new eyes. If you ll allow me to be totally and arbitrarily judgmental for a moment: It struck me just how common the iPhone has become. And I mean that in the sense of not distinguished; not of superior excellence; ordinary, per definition 4 in my Webster s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary: Deluxe Second Edition. (I ll stop short of citing definition 7: not refined; low; coarse. )

Before everyone gets upset, I would actually draw a distinction between Apple in general and the iPhone in particular. The latter has become a brand unto itself, one that has long since crossed over from cool (meaning something embraced by a minority that thinks of itself as having elite taste) to acceptable, meaning it s a sort of cultural default, like a Polo shirt or Nike sneakers or, for that matter, Windows (in its heyday at least).

It s the brand for people who don t want to think all that hard about what brand they are buying, and just want whatever everybody else will accept without question. It s bourgeois.

There s nothing wrong with that, per se. Nike sneakers and Polo shirts are acceptable for a reason: They are perfectly fine. And to state the obvious, producing an acceptable default product is an excellent position for a business to occupy. (This is why trendmongers yammering about what a disaster it is for a brand to lose its cool so often miss the point.)

But what I'm getting at isn't business. It's personal. Personally, I don't go for Polo ponies and Nike swooshes. I'm not interested in mindlessly signaling that I have bought in to whatever the market has decided is "acceptable." Maybe you've had the same feeling: It's precisely the fact that the iPhone has attained this status in popular culture that made me curious about alternatives.

By now the (perhaps justifiably) offended iPhone loyalists among you would surely like to point out to me that the HTC One, despite plenty of nice reviews, is not exactly setting the world on fire. The product is a minor sideshow in press coverage of the Apple-Samsung battle; the company seems to be flailing; and its marketing has been a disaster. I wouldn t be surprised if most iPhone owners don t even know what an HTC One is.

This doesn t bother me in the least. First, I like an underdog. Second, any time a brand emerges as a default, I get suspicious: Surely I can do better than whatever the majority thinks is acceptable. I think with my HTC One I ve done exactly that. And this is not dissimilar from my insistence on sticking with Apple s computers when their market share compared to Windows alternatives had shrunk to practically nothing. As long as I could identify what made my choice better, I had to. And that, as you know, worked out just fine.

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NEW YORK (AP) U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg's nearly three decades in office and the causes he championed will be remembered at a funeral service in New York.

A service was set for 11:30 a.m. Wednesday at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan.

The liberal Democrat from New Jersey died Monday after suffering complications from viral pneumonia. At 89 he was the oldest member of the Senate and the last of 115 World War II veterans to serve there.

Vice President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey and members of Lautenberg's family were set to deliver eulogies.

A color guard ceremony was also scheduled for Wednesday afternoon at the Frank Lautenberg Rail Station in Secaucus, N.J., where his casket was to be put on an Amtrak train to Washington.

Lautenberg was an ardent defender of Amtrak and worked to secure hundreds of millions of dollars for mass transit projects.

His casket was set to arrive at the U.S. Capitol on Thursday and lie in repose in the Senate chamber, on the Lincoln Catafalque, a bier that was built for the coffin of Abraham Lincoln.

Lautenberg, who served in the Army Signal Corps during World War II, will be buried Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.

A multimillionaire businessman, he was first elected to the Senate in 1982 and went on to serve nearly 30 years there in two stints.

He won his last race in 2008 at age 84, becoming the first New Jersey politician ever elected to five Senate terms. He had announced earlier this year he would not seek another term in 2014.

Early in his political career, he was a driving force behind the laws that banned smoking on most U.S. flights and made 21 the drinking age in all 50 states.

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By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics scored a point on Tuesday over global rival Apple Inc in their long-running battle over mobile device patents.

A U.S. trade body found the Silicon Valley giant had infringed on a patent owned by the Korean company and slapped a ban on the sale of certain older iPhone and iPad models sold by AT&T Inc.

The U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, issued a limited order stopping all imports and sales for AT&T models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G. The versions targeted are more than a year old but are still solid sellers.

All such exclusion orders are sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them. If he does not veto the order, it goes into effect.

"We are disappointed that the commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal. Today's decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.

Designed to be a trade panel, the ITC has become a popular venue for patent lawsuits because it acts relatively quickly and it can order import bans, which are more difficult to get from district courts.

Samsung said in a statement that the ITC decision "confirmed Apple's history of free-riding on Samsung's technological innovations."

"Our decades of research and development in mobile technologies will continue and we will continue to offer innovative products to consumers in the United States," it said.

Tuesday's ruling overturned a decision by ITC Judge James Gildea, who ruled in September that Apple did not violate patents at issue in the case, which was filed in mid-2011.

Apple was found to infringe on a patent that relates to 3G wireless technology and the ability to transmit multiple services simultaneously and correctly. It is essential to ensuring that the devices are interoperable.

The U.S. Justice Department, the Federal Trade Commission and the Patent and Trademark Office have all said that infringement of these "standard essential patents" should mostly be punished by monetary charges, not sales bans.

An exception would be in the rare instances where the infringer refuses to negotiate a license or to pay.

The usual expectation among companies has been that standard essential patents will be inexpensively licensed to anyone.

Samsung, which is battling Apple in court in some 10 countries, had also accused Apple of infringing on three other patents, but the ITC found that Apple did not infringe these.

Apple has a parallel complaint filed against Samsung at the ITC, accusing Samsung, an Apple chip provider, of blatantly copying its iPhones and iPads. An ITC judge in that case found that Samsung had violated one patent but not a second one. A final decision is due in August.

Apple has waged an international patent war since 2010 as it seeks to limit the growth of Google's Android system. The fight has embroiled Samsung, HTC and others that use Android.

The ITC's decision came on the same day that President Barack Obama weighed in on curbing a totally different type of patent lawsuit - those brought by companies called "patent trolls." The disparaging name is because these companies make or sell nothing, but they specialize in suing others for infringement. Obama asked for new federal regulations on these concerns and action from Congress.

The offensive - announced before Obama makes a fundraising trip this week to California's Silicon Valley - came as U.S. lawmakers and courts are seeking ways to reduce the number of unwarranted patent lawsuits.

Samsung did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The case at the International Trade Commission is No. 337-794.

(Additional reporting by Poornima Gupta in San Francisco.; Editing by Ros Krasny, Bob Burgdorfer and Christopher Wilson)

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CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) A judge accepted James Holmes' long-awaited plea of not guilty by reason of insanity Tuesday and ordered him to undergo a mental evaluation an examination that could be a decisive factor in whether the Colorado theater shooting suspect is convicted and sentenced to die.

The judge also granted prosecutors access to a hotly contested notebook that Holmes sent to a psychiatrist shortly before the July 20 rampage, which left 12 people dead and 70 injured in a bloody, bullet-riddled movie theater in suburban Denver.

Taken together, the three developments marked a major step forward in the 10-month-old case, which at times has inched along through thickets of legal arguments or veered off on tangents.

Holmes faces more than 160 counts of murder and attempted murder, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

He will now be examined by the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, but it's not certain when the evaluation will begin or how long it will take. Hospital officials have said that before they meet with Holmes, they want to review evidence in the case, which prosecutors said totals nearly 40,000 pages.

Judge Carlos Samour Jr. set a tentative date of Aug. 2 for the exam to be complete but said he would push that back if hospital officials request more time. Samour indicated he still hopes to begin Holmes' trial in February.

Holmes, 25, shuffled into court with his wrists and ankles shackled, wearing a long, bushy beard and dark, curly hair that was slicked back.

Samour read Holmes a five-page list of consequences of the insanity plea and asked if he had any questions.

"No," Holmes answered in a clear, firm voice. It was only the second time since his arrest that he has spoken in court, other than occasional whispered exchanges with his attorneys.

The findings of the mental evaluation will become evidence in Homes' trial, but they are not the final word on whether he was legally insane at the time of the shootings. The jurors will determine that.

If their verdict is not guilty by reason of insanity, Holmes would be committed to the Mental Health Institute indefinitely. He could theoretically be released one day if doctors determine his sanity has been restored, but that is considered unlikely.

If their verdict is guilty, jurors would then decide whether Holmes will be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Colorado law defines insanity as the inability to distinguish right from wrong caused by a diseased or defective mind.

Marcus Weaver, who was wounded and lost his friend Rebecca Wingo in the shooting, doesn't believe Holmes is insane but is grateful the case is moving forward.

"As we've seen evidence and seen the case unfold, it's become more evident that Mr. Holmes did what he did, and it had nothing to do with his mental state," he said.

The insanity plea is widely seen as Holmes' best chance of avoiding execution, but his lawyers delayed it for weeks, saying Colorado's laws on the insanity plea and the death penalty could work in combination to violate his constitutional rights.

The judge overruled their objections last week, but on Tuesday he conceded one point: Neither Holmes nor his lawyers had to sign a statement or say in court that they understood the five-page list of consequences of the insanity plea.

Samour originally planned to require Holmes and the defense to acknowledge they understood those consequences before he accepted the plea. But Samour said Tuesday he had determined that wasn't required by law.

Holmes needed Samour's approval to enter the insanity plea because a judge had entered a standard not guilty plea on Holmes' behalf in March.

Prosecutors first sought access to the notebook when its existence was made public days after the shooting. Holmes had mailed it to Dr. Lynn Fenton, a University of Colorado, Denver psychiatrist who had treated Holmes. Holmes had been a graduate student in neuroscience at the university.

The notebook's contents have never been officially made public, but media reports have said it contains drawings depicting violence.

The defense argued the notebook was protected by doctor-patient privilege. But Samour ruled Tuesday that under Colorado law, Holmes waived that privilege when he entered the insanity plea.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that in addition to reviewing the contents of the notebook, they would ask police to do unspecified "additional processing" of it.

Court officials also released nearly 100 pretrial motions Tuesday, most of them from the defense.

One signaled that Holmes will seek a change of venue because of pretrial publicity. Others challenged the admissibility of ballistics, handwriting and mountains of other evidence and demanded that prosecutors hand over as many as 2,000 pieces of physical evidence.

Holmes' lawyers appear to be trying to humanize their client, who made his first court appearances with a mop of dyed orange hair. They filed motions asking that he be allowed to appear before jurors in civilian clothes, instead of a jail uniform, and without shackles. They also asked that authorities ratchet back courthouse security, including armed guards on the roof.

Defense lawyers want Holmes' parents to be allowed to witness the entire trial in support of their son and not be sequestered like other possible witnesses.

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Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.

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Follow Dan Elliott at http://twitter.com/DanElliottAP

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PALMDALE, Calif. (AP) All that was left of his two-story home with a stunning panoramic view was black twisted metal and ashes.

On Monday afternoon, Gregg Johnson surveyed the damage along with the nearly 3,000 others allowed to return to their homes in the rural communities threatened by a massive Southern California wildfire.

Johnson, 59, left his home Saturday with his wife and 12-year-old son after watching the fire race down around Lake Hughes below them and then surround their mountaintop home.

"At that point, you know, the deal was done," Johnson said. "Of course I was holding out hope ... maybe the people who told me my house had burned down were wrong."

The remnants of the fire's destructive path left charred hillsides speckled with white ash over 50 square miles in northern Los Angeles County as residents returned to 700 homes they had fled in the rural communities 45 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.

The Powerhouse Fire was 60 percent contained Monday evening as firefighters finally gained the upper hand on a blaze that had doubled in size over the weekend and spread rapidly through more than 32,000 acres of old, dry chaparral with the help of gusty winds and triple-digit temperatures.

Cooler, moist air on Monday helped thousands of firefighters battling flames that moved out into easier, sparser terrain from the rugged mountains of the Angeles National forest onto the floor of the high desert Antelope Valley.

Full containment was expected in a week as terrain, and officials expressed guarded optimism Monday.

"What a difference a day makes," said LA County Deputy Chief David Richardson.

Firefighters expected cooler temperatures, lighter winds and rising humidity to help them make more progress overnight, said U.S. Forest Services spokesman Nathan Judy. Water-dropping helicopters would continue to fly through the night, he said.

"We're supposed to have a good marine layer into the morning, we're hoping for it not too heat up too early," said a U.S. Forest Service spokesman Ed Gililland.

The fire was most active Monday in the northwest, pushing through a brushy area and had not burned since the 1930s, said Ronald Ashdale, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service. On Monday winds had swept across a dozer line set up by firefighters, pushing the area of containment out by another 5 acres.

But with only widely scattered homes in the area, firefighters were able to work more on attacking flames than on structure protection. At least six houses have been destroyed by the fire, and nine more damaged.

The fire continued to threaten about 275 homes Monday evening, down from 1,000 earlier in the day.

Monique Hernandez, 37, saw the fire jump Lake Hughes and decided to flee the mountaintop home she and her parents rented in March.

The family put their dog, photos and clothes into a van and sped down a mile-long dirt road. An hour later, they learned their home had burned.

"I saw it on the news," Hernandez said at the Red Cross shelter in Palmdale with her 3-year-old daughter, Angelique. "It was all gone. It was down to ashes."

About 2,100 firefighters took on the flames, aided by water-dropping helicopters and airplanes unleashing loads of retardant across the flanks of the fire.

The cause of the fire was under investigation. Three firefighters had minor injuries, but no one else was hurt.

Smoke from the Southern California wildfire and from Nevada fires hung over Las Vegas, where Clark County officials advised Monday that it could bother sensitive people such as those with respiratory conditions.

In the West, two major wildfires were burning in northern New Mexico, and weather conditions were not expected to be helpful to firefighters.

The Tres Lagunas fire north of Pecos in Santa Fe National Forest had grown to 12 1/2 square miles, causing smoke to spread across much of the region.

It previously prompted the evacuation of about 140 houses, mostly summer residences, but no structures had been burned.

Drier and windier weather was moving in, said interagency fire management team spokeswoman Denise Ottaviano. "It's going to be challenging," she said.

Firefighters were working to protect a group of homes in Holy Ghost Canyon and prevent the fire from spreading east, where it could endanger a river watershed that supplies Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, the Thompson Ridge fire near Jemez Springs remained at nearly 3 square miles. Forty to 50 houses were evacuated late last week.

A light gray haze blanketed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east of Santa Fe and a thicker haze nearly obscured a view from Santa Fe of the Jemez Mountains to the west.

In Evergreen, Colo., about 30 miles west of Denver, sheriff's officials made about 9,900 automated calls telling people to evacuate as gusts carried sparks a half mile from where a fire burned an estimated 25 to 35 acres. The exact number of evacuees wasn't known because some homes receive calls to multiple numbers.

The fire was settling down Monday night and authorities said some evacuees will be able to return home.

In Alaska, wetter, cooler weather was giving crews a reprieve at many of the 40 active wildfires in the state. There have been 150 fires in Alaska this year, with more than 66 square miles burned.

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Associated Press writers Christopher Weber and Tami Abdollah in Los Angeles, Paul Davenport in Phoenix and Rachel D'Oro in Anchorage, Alaska, contributed to this story.

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Fido rests his paw on the casket of Jason Ellis in Bardstown, Ky., May 30, 2013. (Jonathan Palmer)

More than 1,000 people including hundreds of fellow police officers from surrounding states turned out at a funeral in rural Kentucky late last week to pay their respects to Jason Ellis, a 33-year-old K-9 officer gunned down last month in what authorities believe was an ambush.

Fido, Ellis' police dog, was there, too, placing his paw on the closed casket a moment captured in a heartbreaking image by photographer Jonathan Palmer.

Fido was not with Ellis on May 25 when he was shot multiple times while collecting debris on a highway off-ramp in Bardstown, Ky., a close-knit community of about 12,000 located 40 miles southeast of Louisville. Ellis' slaying remains unsolved.

Dozens of fellow K-9 officers attended the funeral and, according to the Herald Leader, their dogs could be heard barking from their cruisers:

Hundreds of officers snapped to attention when the honor guard was called; the 60 or so police dogs at the ceremony barked with the sound of the guards' 21-gun salute.

Ellis, a six-year veteran of the police force, was remembered by Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin, who pledged to hunt down the killer.

"I am your chief, Jason, but you're our hero and you need to know this chief will not stand down," McCubbin said. "Jason, my friend, rest easy. We've got it from here."

Ellis is survived by his wife, Amy, and two sons: Hunter, 7, and Parker, 6.

"He paid the ultimate sacrifice doing what he loved, being a police officer," McCubbin added.

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TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Inc raised prices of iPads and iPods in Japan on Friday, becoming the highest-profile brand to join a growing list of foreign firms asking Japanese consumers to pay more as a weakening yen squeezes profit.

Some U.S. companies have inoculated themselves at least temporarily against the yen's fall through financial hedging instruments, while others are charging customers more.

The yen has fallen more than 20 percent against the U.S. dollar since mid-November when then-opposition leader Shinzo Abe, who is now prime minister, prescribed a dose of radical monetary easing to reverse years of sliding consumer prices as part of a deflation-fighting policy, dubbed "Abenomics."

The Bank of Japan, under a new Abe-backed governor, in April promised to inject $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years to achieve 2 percent inflation in roughly two years.

Price rises are rare in Japan, which has suffered 15 years of low-grade deflation. A few other foreign brands have also raised prices on products, providing an early sign of inflation for Abe and an indication that these companies feel consumer demand is strong enough to withstand the increases.

Still, price rises would have to spread much more widely, especially to lower-end discretionary goods, to show that Abe's aggressive policies are helping reinvigorate the economy.

TIFFANY, COACH, HARLEY

Apple, one of the most visible foreign companies in Japan, raised the price of iPads by up to 13,000 yen ($130) at its local stores. The 64-gigabyte iPad will now cost 69,800 yen, up from 58,800 yen a day ago, an Apple store employee said. The 128-gigabyte model will cost 79,800 yen compared with 66,800 yen.

Apple also upped prices of its iPod music players by as much as 6,000 yen and its iPad Mini by 8,000 yen.

Mobile phone network operators SoftBank Corp and KDDI Corp, which offer iPhones and iPads at their stores, said they had not yet decided on whether to ask customers to pay more.

By raising prices in response to a weakening yen, Apple joins Tiffany & Co, which on April 10 raised its prices. Tiffany said this week that it has seen no slowdown in sales since the price hike.

Upscale handbag maker Coach Inc told investors in April that it used hedging strategies to shield itself from currency fluctuations for the next three quarters. Delta Air Lines Inc said in an interview that hedging has meant the currency impact is "minimal."

Motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc told Reuters in April that the yen's decline would hit its bottom line, but that it makes it a point to avoid raising prices when the Japanese currency slides.

More recently, German appliance maker Miele raised prices of some products, such as its dishwashers, because of the weaker yen. Volkswagen AG, the biggest foreign car company in Japan, this month also increased the recommended prices of 14 car models by an average of 1.5 percent.

Pressure too is mounting on Japanese companies that shifted production overseas under a stronger yen and now import products to sell at home.

Speaking to investors on Thursday, Kazunori Takami, the head of Panasonic Corp's appliance business, said his company would have to consider shifting production of washing machines and other appliances sold in the domestic market back to Japan if the yen-dollar rate weakened beyond 105 yen.

Still, for some companies, the weak yen is helpful. Caterpillar Inc exports a lot of its equipment from Japan, and last month said a "weaker yen provides a cost benefit."

(Reporting by Mari Saito, Tim Kelly and Hideyuki Sano in Tokyo; additional reporting by Phil Wahba in New York and James B. Kelleher and Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Chicago; editing by Matt Driskill, Neil Fullick and Matthew Lewis)

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ISTANBUL (AP) Violence has flared in Istanbul between a group of demonstrators and police on the fourth day of protests set off by a brutal police crackdown of a peaceful environmental protest.

The private Dogan news agency said police fired tear gas at the group in an area close to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Istanbul offices on Monday. The protesters responded by hurling stones.

The agency said as many as 500 protesters were detained overnight Monday after police broke up a protests by several thousands of people in the capital Ankara. Turkey's Fox television reported 300 others detained in a similar crackdown in Izmir, Turkey's third largest city.

The demonstrations that grew out of anger over excessive police force have spiraled into Turkey's biggest anti-government demonstrations in years, challenging Erdogan's power.

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BEIJING (AP) A large fire broke out at a poultry farm and processing plant in northeastern China early Monday, trapping workers inside large concrete buildings and killing at least 61 people, reports and officials said.

The fire in Jilin province's Mishazi township appeared to have been sparked by three early-morning explosions in the farm's electrical system, the official Xinhua News Agency said. State broadcaster CCTV quoted unidentified workers as saying the fire broke out during a change of shifts and may have originated in a locker room at a time when about 350 workers were at the site.

The provincial fire department said on its microblog that the fire was caused by a leak of ammonia.

The fire killed 61 people, according to a posting on the Jilin provincial government's official microblog. Calls to fire and rescue services rang unanswered and hospital administrators said they had no information about injuries among the dozens of people reportedly sent for treatment.

Rescue workers found the bodies in the charred buildings, and rescue efforts were continuing. CCTV footage showed dark smoke billowing up from the cement structures.

Xinhua quoted survivors as saying that the plant's "complicated" interior, narrow exits and a locked front gate made escape difficult.

The fire highlighted the lax safety standards at many Chinese workplaces. It could also focus renewed scrutiny on China's biggest pork producer, Shuanghui International unrelated to the poultry plant as it aims to buy U.S. food giant Smithfield in what would be China's biggest takeover of an American company.

The poultry plant's owner, Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co., is a major producer of processed chicken and employs about 1,200 people. The plant is located outside the city of Dehui, about 800 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of China's capital, Beijing.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) Just back from his part-time home in Mexico, former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura dangled the idea Friday that he could run for the U.S. presidency in 2016.

Ventura eagerly volunteered the possibility while at Minnesota's Capitol and pushed back against skepticism that he would re-enter the political fray after being out of office since 2003. It's hardly the first time the publicity savvy Ventura has broached the idea he would run for the White House or Senate, only to pass on a campaign.

He said the next race is "an opportune time" for an independent like him to run because there will be no incumbent. He said he's approached radio shock jock Howard Stern about being his running mate, and Stern expressed interest.

An email message seeking comment from Stern's agent was left Friday night by The Associated Press.

"The key to this next election I think will be a candidate who doesn't belong to a political party and who has the ability to rise above the mainstream and get the press, which I've never had a problem doing," Ventura said.

He said he would run on an anti-war platform, and his first act would be to close the military prison in Guantanamo Bay and return the naval base to Cuba.

The former actor and ex-pro wrestler won election in 1999 in Minnesota as a Reform Party candidate, but he later disavowed party ties. He didn't seek re-election after his term. He went on to host a short-lived television talk show and more recently a cable TV program on conspiracy theories. Ventura now splits his time between Minnesota and Mexico, where he's surfs and golfs.

Tanned and relaxed, the 62-year-old Ventura pulled up his tie-dye shirt at one point to show off his toned abdomen muscles to prove he was in good health.

He was at the Capitol to mark the retirement of a veteran gubernatorial bodyguard.

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