Shania Twain makes horseback arrival for Vegas gig

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Country music star Shania Twain arrived on horseback Wednesday for a two-year headline gig at Caesars Palace, parading up the Las Vegas Strip with a herd of 40 horses.

Promoters called the event a stampede, but hooves were kept to a steady, slow gait by nine wranglers who escorted Twain to a reception crowd of several hundred people in front of the famous Caesars fountains. Dozens more people watched from the sidewalk of the Flamingo resort across Las Vegas Boulevard.

"We could either lose a few hundred dollars inside or come out and see what kind of spectacle she puts on," said Steve Huffman, a UPS manager from Charleston, W.Va., who watched with his wife, Debi, from an overhead pedestrian walkway.

The couple was in town for his 52nd birthday and learned through a Twitter message that Twain planned to arrive on a horse. They identified Twain's hit, "Man, I Feel Like a Woman," as the country singer rode up the street, and they said they'll plan to see the show next year.

"Still The One" blasted on speakers as Twain stepped onto a temporary outdoor stage near fountains made famous by events including daredevil Evel Knievel's motorcycle crash during a stunt on New Year's Eve 1967.

To some, Twain's arrival echoed singer Frank Sinatra's heralded arrival on a camel at the old Dunes hotel in September 1955.

Twain's show titled "Shania: Still the One" opens Dec. 1 at the nearly 4,300-seat Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The venue also hosts entertainers Celine Dion, Elton John, Jerry Seinfeld and others.

Twain, 47, is touted as one of the best-selling female country artists of all time. The Canadian singer-songwriter has sold more than 75 million albums worldwide.

Las Vegas police, including several on horseback, diverted traffic on the busy casino corridor for about 30 minutes for the spectacle.

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China's Communist Party conclave nearly finished

BEIJING (AP) — China's Communist Party was bringing its pivotal conclave to a close in largely choreographed steps Wednesday, a day before unveiling its leaders for the coming decade.

President Hu Jintao is expected to step down as party chief in favor of the anointed successor, Vice President Xi Jinping, in what would be only the second orderly transfer of power in 63 years of communist rule. The new leaders of the world's second-largest economy will face slowing growth, rising unrest among increasing assertive citizens and delicate relations with neighboring countries.

The party's 2,200-plus delegates filed into Beijing's Great Hall of the People in the morning to select members of the Central Committee, a panel of a few hundred people that approves leadership positions and sets broad policy goals, ahead of the scheduled close of the congress later Wednesday.

But the next lineup in China's apex of power, the Politburo Standing Committee, will be announced only on Thursday. Though congress and Central Committee delegates have some influence over leadership decisions, most of the lineup is decided among a core group of the most powerful party members and elders.

The congress votes are "fully democratic" but "there is a degree of inevitability," said party delegate Song Guofeng of Liaoning province as he entered the hall. "We need to have continuity in leadership to carry on. They are already in the leadership core. The stability of the party and of the county is important."

The voting concluded in the late morning, and the state Xinhua News Agency said in a brief report that Xi and premier-in-waiting Li Keqiang had been voted onto the Central Committee — an expected result.

Hu and senior leaders mostly in their late 60s are handing over power to Xi, 59, and colleagues of his generation over the next several months. Li, currently vice premier, already was tapped five years ago to be the country's next premier, China's top economic official. But other top positions were up for grabs.

China's leadership transitions are always occasions for fractious backroom bargaining, but this one has been further complicated by scandals that have fed public cynicism that their leaders are more concerned with power and wealth than government.

In recent months, Bo Xilai, a senior politician seen as a rising star, was purged after his aide exposed that his wife murdered a British businessman. An ally of Hu's was sidelined after his son died in the crash of a Ferrari he shouldn't have been able to afford. And foreign media recently reported that relatives of Xi and outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao had amassed vast wealth. The scandals have weakened Hu, on whose watch they occurred.

The congress is a largely ceremonial gathering of representatives — mostly carefully selected from the national and provincial political and military elite — who have met to endorse a work report delivered by Hu at the opening a week ago. The real deal-making for the top positions on the Standing Committee is done behind the scenes by the true power-holders.

Aside from appointing Central Committee members, delegates assembled inside the Great Hall of the People were tasked with selecting the membership of the party's internal corruption watchdog, the Central Discipline Inspection Committee, and with voting on amendments to the party's charter.

After the congress ends, the Central Committee meets Thursday to select the next Politburo and from that, the Politburo Standing Committee, largely on the advice of influential leaders.

The leaders also will select new members of the party's Central Military Commission, which oversees the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army. It is unclear if Hu will relinquish his position at the head of the commission or hold on to it for a period after retirement, as past leaders have, to retain influence.

Hu will remain president until March.

The next cohort of leaders face daunting challenges, including efforts to pull the country's economy into a recovery from a sharp downturn, tense territorial disputes with Japan and other neighbors and the demands of a new middle class and millions of rural migrants for a better life.

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RIM to release new BlackBerrys soon after Jan. 30

TORONTO (AP) — Research In Motion Ltd. will release its much-delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones “not too long” after a launch event on Jan. 30, a senior executive said Tuesday.

Chief Operating Officer Kristian Tear said the company is still fine-tuning the new phones.

The new phones are seen as critical to RIM‘s survival as the smartphone pioneer struggles in North America to hold on to customers who are abandoning BlackBerrys for flashier iPhones and Android phones. The new BlackBerry 10 system is designed for the touch screen, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers now expect. RIM’s current software is still focused on email and messaging and is less user-friendly, agile and robust than iPhone or Android.

On Monday, RIM said details on the BlackBerry 10, including specific availability, will be announced at the event. A touch-screen-only device is expected to be released first followed shortly after by a version with a physical keyboard. Many people still gravitate to BlackBerrys specifically for their physical keyboards, and RIM hasn’t succeeded in the past with touch-only offerings.

Tear said RIM wants to be the No. 1 mobile computing platform, despite the dominance of Apple and Android. He said the Waterloo, Ontario-based company believes it can compete with Silicon Valley because it has access to a lot of talented people and two great universities in the area. He said he’s been involved in two turnarounds before with Sony Ericsson and Ericsson and believes in RIM’s new management.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Tear said. “But everybody is super-focused and super-commited. We’re going to show the world that we are turning this around.”

Steve Zipperstein, RIM’s new chief legal officer, said RIM invented the smartphone and has been the innovator in the mobile space for a long time.

“We’re not going away,” Zipperstein vowed. “We’re going to succeed with BB 10. We’re going to impress our customers. We’re going to fight every day.”

Tear and Zipperstein were hired this past summer by CEO Thorsten Heins, who took over RIM in January after it lost tens of billions of dollars in market value. Heins had vowed to do everything he could to release BlackBerry 10 this year but said in June that the timetable wasn’t realistic. The new BlackBerrys will be released after the holiday shopping season and well after Apple’s September launch of the iPhone 5.

Heins is counting on BlackBerry 10 for a turnaround.

RIM’s platform transition is happening under a new management team and as RIM lays off 5,000 employees as part of a bid to save $ 1 billion this year.

RIM was once Canada‘s most valuable company with a market value of more than $ 80 billion in 2008, but the stock has plummeted since, from over $ 140 per share to around $ 8. Its decline evokes memories of Nortel, another former Canadian tech giant, which declared bankruptcy in 2009.

RIM’s stock fell 41 cents, or 4.7 percent, to close at $ 8.40 Tuesday in New York after rising as high as $ 9.07 the previous day, when RIM announced its Jan. 30 launch date.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Who's who in the Petraeus scandal

What started out as a leisurely stroll through the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Nov. 11 with his girlfriend, quickly turned into quite a surreal experience for Max Galuppo, 20, of Bloomsbury, N.J. Galuppo, a Temple University student, found his doppelganger in a 16th century...

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Man who accused Elmo puppeteer of teen sex recants

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who accused Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of having sex with him when he was a teenage boy has recanted his story.

In a quick turnabout, the man on Tuesday described his sexual relationship with Clash as adult and consensual.

Clash responded with a statement of his own, saying he is "relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest." He had no further comment.

The man, who has not identified himself, released his statement through the Harrisburg, Pa., law firm Andreozzi & Associates.

Sesame Workshop, which produces "Sesame Street" in New York, soon followed by saying, "We are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode."

The whirlwind episode began Monday morning, when Sesame Workshop startled the world by announcing that Clash had taken a leave of absence from "Sesame Street" in the wake of allegations that he had had a relationship with a 16-year-old.

Clash, a 52-year-old divorced father of a grown daughter, swiftly denied the charges of his accuser, who is in his early 20s. In that statement Clash acknowledged that he is gay but said the relationship had been between two consenting adults.

Though it remained unclear where the relationship took place, sex with a person under 17 is a felony in New York if the perpetrator is at least 21.

Sesame Workshop, which said it was first contacted by the accuser in June, had launched an investigation that included meeting with the accuser twice and meeting with Clash. Its investigation found the charge of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated.

Clash said on Monday he would take a break from Sesame Workshop "to deal with this false and defamatory allegation."

Neither Clash nor Sesame Workshop indicated on Tuesday when he might return to the show, on which he has performed as Elmo since 1984.

Elmo had previously been a marginal character, but Clash, supplying the fuzzy red puppet with a high-pitched voice and a carefree, child-like personality, launched the character into major stardom. Elmo soon rivaled Big Bird as the face of "Sesame Street."

Though usually behind the scenes, Clash meanwhile achieved his own measure of fame. In 2006, he published an autobiography, "My Life as a Furry Red Monster," and he was the subject of the 2011 documentary "Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey."

He has won 23 daytime Emmy awards and one prime-time Emmy.

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Online:

http://www.sesamestreet.org

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Panetta: Admin deciding on post-2014 troop levels

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT OVER THE PACIFIC (AP) — Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday the Obama administration is nearing a decision in the next few weeks on how many U.S. troops would remain in Afghanistan — and for what purposes — after the U.S.-led combat mission ends in 2014.

Panetta told reporters aboard his plane en route from Hawaii to Australia that Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has developed several options on a post-2014 presence.

Panetta also was asked about his future at the Pentagon. While he declined to reveal his plans, he suggested he still had work to do on the job he took in July 2011.

"It's no secret that at some point I'd like to get back to California," he said. Panetta is from Monterey, Calif.

He added that there are a number of important defense issues awaiting resolution, including a budget impasse and the future of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan — suggesting that he would not leave immediately.

"Right now, my goal is to basically meet my responsibilities with regard to dealing with those issues," Panetta said.

Pressed to say whether he would rule out staying for all four years of a second Obama term, he replied, "Who the hell knows?"

Panetta said the Pentagon is reviewing those options with the White House. He would not reveal what troop levels are being considered, but it is believed that at least several thousand could be needed for several years beyond 2014.

"My hope is that we'll be able to complete this process in the next few weeks," Panetta said.

The decision will depend in part of the Afghan government's willingness to permit a post-2014 U.S. military presence and to provide legal guarantees for those troops that are acceptable to Washington.

Once that decision is made, U.S. officials have said they will set a timetable for reducing troop levels between now and the end of 2014. There now are about 67,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, and their mission is evolving from combat to advising, assisting and training Afghan forces.

A post-2014 U.S. military presence also would be expected to include hunting and killing extremists, including members of al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

Asked about David Petraeus's resignation as CIA director over revelations that he had an affair with his biographer, Panetta said he saw it as a "very sad situation to have him end his career like that." Panetta was CIA director before Petraeus.

"I think he took the right step" by resigning, Panetta added.

Panetta was beginning a weeklong trip to Asia to meet with his counterparts in Australia, Thailand and Cambodia. He said this was an important expression of the Obama administration's commitment to deepening ties in the region and developing more security partnerships.

For decades American administrations have fought the perception among Asians that Washington paid too little attention to their security interests. This view was reinforced during the years of U.S. focus on Iraq, and it persists even as the war in Afghanistan winds down.

The Obama administration has made much of its "pivot" to the Asia-Pacific, which has entailed more high-level diplomatic and security engagements and an attempt to expand cooperation with Australia and others in the region. But it is not fundamentally different from what the administration of President George W. Bush was pursuing even as it got mired in Iraq and saw stalemate in Afghanistan.

In June 2007, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued at a security conference in Singapore that the U.S. was increasingly focused on Asia.

"Far from neglecting Asia, the U.S. is more engaged than ever before," he said. "We have been extraordinarily busy in recent years as we reshape and strengthen our security ties based on shared interests. Some are bilateral relationships that have been formed, renewed, or modernized - each with varying types and degrees of cooperation."

Among the issues dogging Panetta and the Pentagon is the controversy over the U.S. response to an attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, two months ago.

Panetta said the Pentagon and the State Department are assessing what additional or improved arrangements might be necessary to secure U.S. diplomatic outposts in the Middle East. He was not specific.

As for the Benghazi attack, Panetta said it was "largely over" by the time the Pentagon was able to move forces close enough to Libya to respond.

Asked about the prospect of Congress and the administration settling for a short-term fix to the budget deficit crisis, rather than agreeing on measures to end the threat of further large defense spending cuts, Panetta said, "That's the worst thing that could happen."

He added: "That's the last damn thing I need right now," because it would perpetuate uncertainty about future defense spending and defense priorities.

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British medical journal slams Roche on Tamiflu

LONDON (AP) — A leading British medical journal is asking the drug maker Roche to release all its data on Tamiflu, claiming there is no evidence the drug can actually stop the flu.

The drug has been stockpiled by dozens of governments worldwide in case of a global flu outbreak and was widely used during the 2009 swine flu pandemic.

On Monday, one of the researchers linked to the BMJ journal called for European governments to sue Roche.

"I suggest we boycott Roche's products until they publish missing Tamiflu data," wrote Peter Gotzsche, leader of the Nordic Cochrane Centre in Copenhagen. He said governments should take legal action against Roche to get the money back that was "needlessly" spent on stockpiling Tamiflu.

Last year, Tamiflu was included in a list of "essential medicines" by the World Health Organization, a list that often prompts governments or donor agencies to buy the drug.

Tamiflu is used to treat both seasonal flu and new flu viruses like bird flu or swine flu. WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said the agency had enough proof to warrant its use for unusual influenza viruses, like bird flu.

"We do have substantive evidence it can stop or hinder progression to severe disease like pneumonia," he said.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends Tamiflu as one of two medications for treating regular flu. The other is GlaxoSmithKline's Relenza. The CDC says such antivirals can shorten the duration of symptoms and reduce the risk of complications and hospitalization.

In 2009, the BMJ and researchers at the Nordic Cochrane Centre asked Roche to make all its Tamiflu data available. At the time, Cochrane Centre scientists were commissioned by Britain to evaluate flu drugs. They found no proof that Tamiflu reduced the number of complications in people with influenza.

"Despite a public promise to release (internal company reports) for each (Tamiflu) trial...Roche has stonewalled," BMJ editor Fiona Godlee wrote in an editorial last month.

In a statement, Roche said it had complied with all legal requirements on publishing data and provided Gotzsche and his colleagues with 3,200 pages of information to answer their questions.

"Roche has made full clinical study data ... available to national health authorities according to their various requirements, so they can conduct their own analyses," the company said.

Roche says it doesn't usually release patient-level data available due to legal or confidentiality constraints. It said it did not provide the requested data to the scientists because they refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Roche is also being investigated by the European Medicines Agency for not properly reporting side effects, including possible deaths, for 19 drugs including Tamiflu that were used in about 80,000 patients in the U.S.

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Online:

www.bmj.com.tamiflu/

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Probe shows federal power to access email

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your emails are not nearly as private as you think.

The downfall of CIA Director David Petraeus demonstrates how easy it is for federal law enforcement agents to examine emails and computer records if they believe a crime was committed. With subpoenas and warrants, the FBI and other investigating agencies routinely gain access to electronic inboxes and information about email accounts offered by Google, Yahoo and other Internet providers.

"The government can't just wander through your emails just because they'd like to know what you're thinking or doing," said Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and now in private law practice. "But if the government is investigating a crime, it has a lot of authority to review people's emails."

Under the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, federal authorities need only a subpoena approved by a federal prosecutor — not a judge — to obtain electronic messages that are six months old or older. To get more recent communications, a warrant from a judge is required. This is a higher standard that requires proof of probable cause that a crime is being committed.

Public interest groups are pressing Congress for the law to be updated because it was written a quarter-century ago when most emails were deleted after a few months because the cost of storing them indefinitely was prohibitive. Now, "cloud computing" services provide huge amounts of inexpensive storage capacity. Other technological advances, such as mobile phones, have dramatically increased the amount of communications that are kept in electronic warehouses and can be reviewed by law enforcement authorities carrying a subpoena.

"Technology has evolved in a way that makes the content of more communications available to law enforcement without judicial authorization, and at a very low level of suspicion," said Greg Nojeim, a senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, has proposed changing the law to require a warrant for all Internet communications regardless of their age. But law enforcement officials have resisted because they said it would undercut their ability to catch criminals.

A subpoena is usually sufficient to require Internet companies to reveal names and any other information that they have that would identify the owner of a particular email account. Google, which operates the widely used Gmail service, complied with more than 90 percent of the nearly 12,300 requests it received in 2011 from the U.S. government for data about its users, according to figures from the company.

Even if a Gmail account is created with a fictitious name, there are other ways to track down the user. Logs of when messages are sent reveal the Internet address the user used to log onto the account. Matching times and dates with locations allow investigators to piece together the chain.

A Gmail account figured prominently in the FBI investigation that led to Petraeus' stunning resignation last week as the nation's spy chief. Petraeus, a retired Army general, stepped down after he confessed to an extramarital affair with Paula Broadwell, an Army Reserve officer and his biographer.

The inquiry began earlier this year after Jill Kelley, a Florida woman who was friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, began receiving harassing emails. Kelley is a Tampa socialite. That is where the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command are located.

Petraeus served as commander at Central Command from 2008 to 2010.

FBI agents eventually determined that the email trail led to Broadwell, according to two federal law enforcement officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the sources were not authorized to speak about the matter on the record. As they looked further, the FBI agents came across a private Gmail account that used an alias name. On further investigation, the account turned out to be Petraeus's.

The contents of several of the exchanges between Petraeus and Broadwell suggested they were having an affair, according to the officials. Investigators determined that no security breach had occurred, but continued their investigation into whether Petraeus had any role in the harassing emails that Broadwell had sent to Kelley, which was a criminal investigation.

Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic.

One of the law enforcement officials said they did not transmit all of their communications as emails from one's inbox to the other's inbox. Rather, they composed some emails in a Gmail account and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic "dropbox." Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail which is easier to trace. It's a technique that al-Qaida terrorists began using several years ago and teen-agers in many countries have since adopted.

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Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.

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'Skyfall' brings record Bond debut of $88.4M

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Bond is cashing in at the box office.

"Skyfall," the 23rd film featuring the British super-spy, pulled in a franchise-record $88.4 million in its U.S. debut, bringing its worldwide total to more than $500 million since it began rolling out overseas in late October.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by Hollywood.com are:

1. "Skyfall," Sony, $88,364,714, 3,505 locations, $25,211 average, $90,564,714, one week.

2. "Wreck-It Ralph," Disney, $33,012,796, 3,752 locations, $8,799 average, $93,647,405, two weeks.

3. "Flight," Paramount, $14,785,097, 2,047 locations, $7,223 average, $47,455,396, two weeks.

4. "Argo," Warner Bros., $6,617,229, 2,763 locations, $2,395 average, $85,583,187, five weeks.

5. "Taken 2," Fox, $4,012,829, 2,487 locations, $1,614 average, $131,300,000, six weeks.

6. "Cloud Atlas," Warner Bros., $2,658,250, 2,023 locations, $1,314 average, $22,844,956, three weeks.

7. "The Man With the Iron Fists," Universal, $2,592,705, 1,872 locations, $1,385 average, $12,821,030, two weeks.

8. "Pitch Perfect," Universal, $2,573,350, 1,391 locations, $1,850 average, $59,099,993, seven weeks.

9. "Here Comes the Boom," Sony, $2,522,790, 2,044 locations, $1,234 average, $39,033,885, five weeks.

10. "Hotel Transylvania," Sony, $2,400,226, 2,566 locations, $935 average, $140,954,208, seven weeks.

11. "Paranormal Activity 4," Paramount, $1,980,033, 2,348 locations, $843 average, $52,600,612, four weeks.

12. "Sinister," Summit, $1,524,448, 1,554 locations, $981 average, $46,578,686, five weeks.

13. "Silent Hill: Revelation," Open Road Films, $1,300,137, 1,902 locations, $684 average, $16,383,406, three weeks.

14. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower," Summit, $1,132,924, 607 locations, $1,866 average, $14,614,770, eight weeks.

15. "Lincoln," Disney, $944,308, 11 locations, $85,846 average, $944,308, one week.

16. "Alex Cross," Summit, $911,973, 1,090 locations, $837 average, $24,603,042, four weeks.

17. "Fun Size," Paramount, $757,223, 1,301 locations, $582 average, $8,800,336, three weeks.

18. "Looper," Sony, $582,150, 491 locations, $1,186 average, $64,669,383, seven weeks.

19. "The Sessions," Fox, $545,550, 128 locations, $4,262 average, $1,655,222, four weeks.

20. "Seven Psychopaths," CBS Films, $404,812, 356 locations, $1,137 average, $14,098,469, five weeks.

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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

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Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

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Cautious enforcer to be China's next premier

BEIJING (AP) — The man in line to oversee China's massive but rapidly slowing economy for the coming decade speaks English and comes from a generation of politicians schooled during a time of greater openness to liberal Western ideas than their predecessors.

But Li Keqiang also has been a cautious bureaucrat who rose through, and is bound by, a consensus-oriented Communist Party that has been slow to reform its massive state-owned enterprises while reflexively stifling dissent — and he has been an enforcer keeping a lid on bad news.

Li, to be promoted within the leadership's top council after a pivotal party congress closes later this week and expected to take the economy-focused post of premier from outgoing Wen Jiabao next spring, was governor of the agricultural province of Henan in 1998 during an unusual explosion of AIDS cases.

Tens of thousands of people had contracted HIV from illegal blood-buying rings that pooled plasma and re-injected it into donors after removing the blood products. But Beijing hadn't acknowledged the problem yet, and Li oversaw a campaign to squelch reporting about it, harass activists and isolate affected villages.

When the government finally did go public four years later, Li showed canny political instincts with a rapid course reversal, channeling government assistance to victims and making public shows of compassion.

"He just tried to escape from this crisis" at first, said Wan Yanhai, a prominent Chinese AIDS activist who fled to the United States with his family in 2010 following increasing police harassment. "He's probably not a bad guy, but he's not shown himself to be very capable of managing crises in a strong and responsible way."

Li's formative years are typical of the fifth generation of communist leaders. He was introduced to politics during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, then entered the prestigious Peking University. In contrast to the current leadership crop of engineers, Li studied law and economics, during a time of great liberal influence in the party and optimism in China.

After graduation, Li went to work at the Communist Youth League, an organization that grooms university students for party roles, when it was headed by now-President Hu Jintao.

After Beijing erupted in the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Square, Li originally tried to build bridges between the league and student activists. However, after martial law was declared, he quickly abandoned such efforts and within four years rose to head of the league at a time when it was becoming irrelevant to young people amid increasing choices and a growing market economy.

Li had been seen as Hu's preferred successor, but the need to balance party factions prompted the leadership to choose a consensus candidate, Xi Jinping, who's expected to take over as party chief after a pivotal party congress ends Wednesday and later as president.

Li's relationship with Xi remains ambiguous, although the two are expected to follow the existing model under which Hu stayed somewhat aloof as head of state while Wen acted as the public face of the administration.

Both are seen as part of a generation of leaders more comfortable with the West than their predecessors, said Ding Xueliang of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

"Their reference for great power status from Day One was the United States, unlike Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, who looked toward the Soviet Union," Ding said.

After Henan, Li's next posting was in the northeastern rustbelt province of Liaoning, where he oversaw a revival that drew foreign investment from BMW and Intel. One of the province's largest cities, the port of Dalian, even attracted the glitzy World Economic Forum, where global tycoons mixed with top Chinese leaders and captains of industry.

In a U.S. State Department cable released by the Wikileaks organization, Li is quoted telling diplomats that Chinese economic growth statistics were "man-made," and saying he looked instead to electricity demand, rail cargo traffic and lending as more accurate indicators.

Married to an English literature professor, Li and his family have largely steered clear of the webs of corruption surrounding other leading Chinese officials, although questions have been raised over whether his brother's powerful position at the government tobacco monopoly clashes with Li's role in making health policy.

Since his 2007 appointment to the Standing Committee, Li has overseen modest progress in his areas of responsibility, including public health, food safety and housing, which have long been plagued by funding difficulties, lax supervision and soaring prices.

He's maintained a steady, if low-key, schedule of meetings and speeches, with a visit last year to the Chinese autonomous region of Hong Kong attracting the greatest attention — though not necessarily for the right reasons. The stifling security surrounding him and his unwillingness to meet with political critics seemed to cast him as a typical Chinese leader, tone deaf to public opinion in the former British colony that has maintained its own legal system and political freedoms.

In an April speech to the Boao Forum, a gathering of government officials and business leaders in southern China, Li made the case for structural reform of China's economy, citing the need for greater balance, coordination and stability. China wants to create an "open, transparent, fair, competitive, and predictable marketplace and legal environment," he said.

Yet similar pledges have been made many times before, including in China's latest Five Year Plan, and questions remain about Li's willingness to take on vested interests, particularly in the state-owned enterprises, said Patrick Chovanec, a business professor at Beijing's Tsinghua University.

"It remains to be seen whether Li will come out as a leader, or just follow a weak, watered-down consensus," Chavonec said.

That demand for consensus severely constrains the scope of any administrative reform, even though Li and the party say they are necessary, said U.S. Naval Academy China scholar Yu Maochun.

"You can't change the key parts of China's economic structure without fundamentally changing China's political structure, so I don't expect much" from Li, Yu said.

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