2 arrested after Guinea treasury chief killed

CONAKRY, Guinea (AP) — Officials in the West African nation of Guinea say they’ve arrested two suspects in the case of the killing of the country’s treasury chief, who was shot to death nearly two months ago.

Authorities paraded the pair in front of journalists Friday. Aissatou Boiro was killed as she was driving home. She had launched an investigation into the loss of 13 million francs ($ 1.8 million) which went missing from the state coffers.

The government says the suspects were found with Boiro‘s computer memory stick and mobile telephone.

The men denied any involvement in her slaying and said a friend had given them the items.

Boiro’s colleagues say she had zero tolerance for corruption and was intent on putting an end to the mismanagement of state funds.

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Matt Damon tackles “fracking” issue in the “Promised Land”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The hot-button topic of “fracking” has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie “Promised Land,” out in U.S. theaters on Friday, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.

The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or “fracking,” which has sparked nation-wide environmental and political battles over its impact on drinking water, U.S. energy use, seismic activity and other areas.

“Promised Land” will see Damon, 42, reunite with director Gus Van Sant for the third time, following their success with 1997 film “Good Will Hunting and 2002′s “Gerry.”

In their latest film, Damon plays a corporate salesman who goes to a rural U.S. town to buy or lease land on behalf of a gas company looking to drill for oil. He soon faces opposition from a slick environmentalist, played by Krasinski.

In real life, Damon hasn’t shied away from getting involved in political and social issues, working with charities and organizations to eradicate AIDS in developing countries, bringing attention to atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, providing safe drinking water and stopping trees from being chopped and used for junk mail.

Yet “Promised Land,” which Damon also co-wrote and produced, doesn’t take a noticeable stance on “fracking.” The actor would not publicly state his own views, telling Reuters that he didn’t think his opinion had “any bearing” on the film.

“The point is that the movie should start a conversation. It’s certainly not a pro-fracking movie, but we didn’t want to tell people what to think,” Damon said.

The actor said he and Krasinski never set out to make a socially conscious film, and “fracking” was added in later, as a backdrop to the story.

“It wasn’t that we said we wanted to make a movie about ‘fracking’ as much as we wanted to make a movie about American identity, about real people. We wanted to make a movie about the country today, where we came from, where we are and where we are headed,” Damon said.

“‘Fracking’ was perfect because the stakes are so incredibly high and people are so divided. It asks all the questions about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.”

Hydraulic fracturing entails pumping water laced with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock formations to break them up and unleash hydrocarbons. Critics worry that “fracking” fluids or hydrocarbons can still leak into water tables from wells, or above ground.

FROM ‘ADJUSTMENT BUREAU’ TO ‘PROMISED LAND’

At first glance, the pairing of Damon with Krasinski may not come across as the perfect fit, as Damon has primarily been associated with longtime friend and collaborator Ben Affleck, both of whom won Oscars for writing “Good Will Hunting.”

Damon later become a colleague and friend to a number of key Hollywood players, including George Clooney and Brad Pitt, with whom he co-starred in the “Ocean’s Eleven” franchise.

Krasinski, 33, is best known for playing sardonic Jim Halpert on NBC’s long-running television series, “The Office,” and has had occasional supporting roles in films such as 2008′s “Leatherheads.”

Damon and Krasinski came together after meeting through Krasinski’s wife, Emily Blunt, who co-starred with Damon in the 2011 film “The Adjustment Bureau.” Damon said he and his wife started double-dating with Krasinski and Blunt, through which their collaboration on “Promised Land” came about.

The duo’s busy work schedules forced them to moonlight on weekends to make “Promised Land.”

“John showed up at my house every Saturday at breakfast and we would write all day until dinner,” Damon said. “Then we’d do it again on Sunday. I have four kids so he would come to me.”

But Damon’s determination to make the film his feature directorial debut fell through when his acting schedule changed, making it impossible to direct “Promised Land,” so he turned to Van Sant.

“My first inclination was to send the script to somebody I’d worked with before,” he said. “Gus seemed like the most obvious choice and I realized later that I’d never written anything that anyone else had directed, except Gus. I have a real comfort level with him.”

Damon said he has not given up on his dream of directing movies and has his eye on a project at movie studio Warner Bros., which has a deal with Damon and Affleck’s joint production company, Pearl Street Films.

With Affleck’s third directorial effort “Argo” becoming an awards contender, Damon joked that the film’s success can only be a good thing for his own budding directing career.

“I now happen to be partnered with the hottest director in Hollywood!” he said, laughing.

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit, Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Paul Simao)

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Brazil president, cancer survivor, pronounced healthy

BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who survived lymphoma cancer in 2009, was pronounced healthy by doctors after a routine exam on Friday.

Rousseff’s health was “within normal levels,” according to a statement released by her office following the check-up at the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo, one of South America‘s leading cancer treatment centers.

Rousseff underwent chemotherapy in 2009 and briefly wore a wig, but the cancer went into remission and she appeared to be in good health by the time she staged her winning campaign for the presidency in 2010.

Concerns over her health have faded since then, although a bout with pneumonia and a lengthy recovery in 2011 have kept the issue on some investors’ radar screens.

(Reporting by Ana Flor, Writing by Brian Winter; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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'Clock is ticking': Debt talks underway

WASHINGTON (AP) — The end game at hand, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders made a final stab at compromise Friday to prevent a toxic blend of middle-class tax increases and spending cuts from taking effect at the turn of the new year.

Success was far from guaranteed in an atmosphere of political mistrust — even on a slimmed-down deal that postponed hard decisions about spending cuts into 2013, and pessimism vied with optimism in a Capitol where lawmakers grumbled about the likelihood of spending the new year holiday in the Capitol.

"The clock is ticking," Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in remarks on the Senate floor as Obama and congressional leaders were meeting several blocks away at the White House. "My message to them is simple. We can do this. We can get this done, and we must," added the Montana Democrat.

Congressional Democrats said Obama was ready with a revised offer to present.

But that drew a denial from a person familiar with the talks, who said the president would review his proposal from a week ago, when he urged lawmakers to preserve tax cuts for most while letting rates rise above incomes of $250,000 a year. At the same time, Obama said lawmakers should extend unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless. The person was unauthorized to discuss the private meeting publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Neither the president nor the four lawmakers spoke with reporters in advance of their session.

The guest list included two Republicans, House Speaker John Boehner, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell; as well as Democrats Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, her party's leader in the House.

The same group last met more than a month ago and emerged expressing optimism they could strike a deal that avoided the fiscal cliff. At that point, Boehner had already said he was willing to let tax revenues rise as part of an agreement, and the president and his Democratic allies said they were ready to accept spending cuts.

Since then, though, talks between Obama and Boehner faltered, the speaker struggled to control his rebellious rank and file, and Reid and McConnell sparred almost daily in speeches on the Senate floor. Through it all, Wall Street has paid close attention, and in the moments before the meeting, stocks were trading lower for the fifth day in a row.

The core issue is the same as it has been for more than a year, Obama's demand for tax rates to rise on upper incomes while remaining at current levels for most Americans. He made the proposal central to his successful campaign for re-election, when he said incomes above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples should rise to 39.6 percent from the current 35 percent.

Boehner refused for weeks to accept any rate increases, and simultaneously accused Obama of skimping on the spending cuts he would support as part of a balanced deal to reduce deficits, remove the threat of spending cuts and prevent the across-the-board tax cuts.

Last week, the Ohio Republican pivoted and presented a Plan B measure that would have let rates rise on million-dollar earners. That was well above Obama's latest offer, which called for a $400,000 threshold, but more than the speaker's rank and file were willing to accept.

Facing defeat, Boehner scrapped plans for a vote, leaving the economy on track for the cliff that political leaders in both parties had said they could avoid. In the aftermath, Democrats said they doubted any compromise was possible until Boehner has been elected to a second term as speaker when the new Congress convenes on Jan. 3.

Apart from income tax rates, congressional officials in both parties said a handful of other issues were the subject of private talks in the Capitol. These included the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would effectively raise taxes on millions of upper-middle-class families unless Congress acts; as well as taxes on capital gains, dividends and estates.

In addition, benefits for the long-term unemployed are due to expire in the next few days, and doctors face the prospect of a deep cut in the fees they receive for treating Medicare patients unless legislation is passed to prevent it.

Further compounding the year-end maneuvering, there are warnings that the price of milk could virtually double beginning next year.

Congressional officials said that under current law, the federal government is obligated to maintain prices so that fluid milk sells for about $20 per hundredweight. If the law lapses, the Department of Agriculture would be required to maintain a price closer to $36 of $38 per hundredweight, they said. It is unclear when price increases might be felt by consumers.

______

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Andrew Taylor contributed to this report.

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China tightening controls on Internet

BEIJING (AP) — China‘s new communist leaders are increasing already tight controls on Internet use and electronic publishing following a spate of embarrassing online reports about official abuses.

The measures suggest China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, and others who took power in November share their predecessors’ anxiety about the Internet’s potential to spread opposition to one-party rule and their insistence on controlling information despite promises of more economic reforms.

“They are still very paranoid about the potentially destabilizing effect of the Internet,” said Willy Lam, a politics specialist at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “They are on the point of losing a monopoly on information, but they still are very eager to control the dissemination of views.”

This week, China’s legislature took up a measure to require Internet users to register their real names, a move that would curtail the Web’s status as a freewheeling forum to complain, often anonymously, about corruption and official abuses. The legislature scheduled a news conference Friday to discuss the measure, suggesting it was expected to be approved.

That comes amid reports Beijing might be disrupting use of software that allows Web surfers to see sites abroad that are blocked by its extensive Internet filters. At the same time, regulators have proposed rules that would bar foreign companies from distributing books, news, music and other material online in China.

Beijing promotes Internet use for business and education but bans material deemed subversive or obscene and blocks access to foreign websites run by human rights and Tibet activists and some news outlets. Controls were tightened after social media played a role in protests that brought down governments in Egypt and Tunisia.

In a reminder of the Web’s role as a political forum, a group of 70 prominent Chinese scholars and lawyers circulated an online petition this week appealing for free speech, independent courts and for the ruling party to encourage private enterprise.

Xi and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee have tried to promote an image of themselves as men of the people who care about China’s poor majority. They have promised to press ahead with market-oriented reforms and to support entrepreneurs but have given no sign of support for political reform.

Communist leaders who see the Internet as a source of economic growth and better-paid jobs were slow to enforce the same level of control they impose on movies, books and other media, apparently for fear of hurting fledgling entertainment, shopping and other online businesses.

Until recently, Web surfers could post comments online or on microblog services without leaving their names.

That gave ordinary Chinese a unique opportunity to express themselves to a public audience in a society where newspapers, television and other media are state-controlled. The most popular microblog services say they have more than 300 million users and some users have millions of followers reading their comments.

The Internet also has given the public an unusual opportunity to publicize accusations of official misconduct.

A local party official in China’s southwest was fired in November after scenes from a videotape of him having sex with a young woman spread quickly on the Internet. Screenshots were uploaded by a former journalist in Beijing, Zhu Ruifeng, to his Hong Kong website, an online clearing house for corruption allegations.

Some industry analysts suggest allowing Web surfers in a controlled setting to vent helps communist leaders stay abreast of public sentiment in their fast-changing society. Still, microblog services and online bulletin boards are required to employ censors to enforce content restrictions. Researchers say they delete millions of postings a day.

The government says the latest Internet regulation before the National People’s Congress is aimed at protecting Web surfers’ personal information and cracking down on abuses such as junk e-mail. It would require users to report their real names to Internet service and telecom providers.

The main ruling party newspaper, People’s Daily, has called in recent weeks for tighter Internet controls, saying rumors spread online have harmed the public. In one case, it said stories about a chemical plant explosion resulted in the deaths of four people in a car accident as they fled the area.

Proposed rules released this month by the General Administration of Press and Publications would bar Chinese-foreign joint ventures from publishing books, music, movies and other material online in China. Publishers would be required to locate their servers in China and have a Chinese citizen as their local legal representative.

That is in line with rules that already bar most foreign access to China’s media market, but the decision to group the restrictions together and publicize them might indicate official attitudes are hardening.

That comes after the party was rattled by foreign news reports about official wealth and misconduct.

In June, Bloomberg News reported that Xi’s extended family has amassed assets totaling $ 376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi. The government has blocked access to Bloomberg’s website since then.

In October, The New York Times reported that Premier Wen Jiabao’s relatives had amassed $ 2.7 billion since he rose to national office in 2002. Access to the Times’ Chinese-language site has been blocked since then.

Previous efforts to tighten controls have struggled with technical challenges in a country with more than 500 million Internet users.

Microblog operators such as Sina Corp. and Tencent Ltd. were ordered in late 2011 to confirm users’ names but have yet to finish the daunting task.

Web surfers can circumvent government filters by using virtual private networks — software that encrypts Web traffic and is used by companies to transfer financial data and other sensitive information. But VPN users say disruptions that began in 2011 are increasing, suggesting Chinese regulators are trying to block encrypted traffic.

Curbs on access to foreign sites have prompted complaints by companies and Chinese scientists and other researchers.

In July, the American Chamber of Commerce in China said 74 percent of companies that responded to a survey said unstable Internet access “impedes their ability to do business.”

Chinese leaders “realize there are detrimental impacts on business, especially foreign business, but they have counted the cost and think it is still worthwhile,” said Lam. “There is no compromise about the political imperative of controlling the Internet.”

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“Rescue Me” singer Fontella Bass dies aged 72

(Reuters) – American soul singer Fontella Bass, who topped the R&B chart in 1965 with the song “Rescue Me,” died in St. Louis. She was 72.

Bass died in hospice care on Wednesday night from complications of a heart attack she suffered three weeks ago, her daughter, Neuka Mitchell, told Reuters. Bass had also suffered from strokes in recent years.

“She’s going to be missed,” Mitchell said. “Her big personality. Her love for family. Her big, giving heart and her cooking.”

She was known as the “queen of soul food” to her family, Mitchell said.

Bass was born into a singing family in St. Louis. Her mother, Martha Bass, was a singer in the Clara Ward Singers gospel group. Her brother, the late R&B singer David Peaston, scored a handful of hits in the 1980s and 1990s.

Bass first achieved success dueting with Bobby McClure in 1965 on songs such as “Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing” and “You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone),” both of which were hits on the pop and R&B charts.

Bass’ biggest hit came with “Rescue Me,” which shot up the Billboard pop charts in the fall of 1965, becoming one of the most popular soul hits of all time.

“It held a special place in her heart,” Mitchell said of the song. “She sang it every time she performed.”

The song has been covered and sampled numerous times over the years, including by pop stars Linda Ronstadt and Cher, and more recently in 2000 by UK group Nu Generation, who remixed the song into a dance track.

Nu Generation’s remix, “In Your Arms (Rescue Me)” hit the top 10 of the UK singles chart.

Bass had moderate success in later years with a gospel album in the 1990s, but was unable to emulate the popularity set by “Rescue Me.”

She was married to jazz trumpeter and composer Lester Bowie. The two spent time living in Europe in the late 1960s and early 1970s before moving back to the United States.

Funeral arrangements for Bass have not been finalized. The singer is survived by her four children.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey and Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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House sets Sunday session as “fiscal cliff” deadline nears

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The House of Representatives will return to Washington on Sunday night, just over a day before income tax rates are set to spike higher, in a last-ditch chance to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff.”

Senior Republican aides confirmed that House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday told members to be back in Washington in time for a 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) legislative session on Sunday.

The House may then stay in session until January 2, the final day of the current Congress, according to a Twitter message from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

That is the day that another component of the “fiscal cliff” – $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts to military and domestic programs – is set to start.

The House went on recess a week ago amid a deadlock over how to resolve ways to avoid the $ 600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that could throw the U.S. economy back into recession.

Some media outlets reported that Obama would meet with congressional leaders on Friday, but several congressional aides said no such meeting had yet been arranged.

If a meeting occurs, Obama is not expected to offer a new “fiscal cliff” solution and he is instead likely to stick to the outline he set out a week ago for a stop-gap fix, according to a senior Democratic aide.

That would include legislation to shield most Americans from any income tax increase starting on January 1, except for those households with net incomes above $ 250,000 a year. Obama also wants an extension of expiring benefits for the long-term unemployed.

So far, the Republicans who control the House have refused to go along with any measure that would raise income taxes on anyone.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders held an approximately 35-minute telephone conference call with rank-and-file members on Thursday, according to one Republican aide.

“There were a lot of different members who spoke on the call. All had questions. All had comments,” the aide said, refusing to elaborate.

(Reporting By Richard Cowan and David Lawder; Editing by Will Dunham)

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House back Sunday night, will have 29.5 hours to strike deal on fiscal cliff

President Barack Obama salutes as he returns via Marine One from a Christmas visit with his family in Hawaii, to …Will parachutes be provided? Republican House leaders informed their rank-and-file on a conference call Thursday that they have to be back at work at 6:30 p.m. Sunday – giving them, oh, 29.5 hours to forestall the “fiscal cliff.”

Absent a last-minute compromise, Americans will see across-the-board income-tax hikes and painful federal spending cuts come into force January 1. Some economists fear that, taken together, the measures could plunge the economy into a new recession.

Technically, however, the Congress could vote the cliff into oblivion at any time – either before OR after the income-tax increases and spending cuts are slated to take effect. Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor noted on Twitter that lawmakers “may be in session through Wednesday, January 2.”

House Speaker John Boehner told his troops on the conference call that the Senate would have to act first, either by passing, or by amending, legislation the House has already passed to avert the cliff.

“If the Senate will not approve these bills and send them to the president to be signed into law in their current form, they must be amended and returned to the House,” he said, according to a source on the call.

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Afghan bomber attacks near major US base

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A vehicle driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the gate of a major U.S. military base in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, killing the attacker and three Afghans, Afghan police said. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

Police Gen. Abdul Qayum Baqizai said a local guard who questioned the vehicle driver at the gate of Camp Chapman was killed along with two civilians and the assailant. The camp is located adjacent to the airport of the capital of Khost province, which borders Pakistan. Chapman and nearby Camp Salerno had been frequently targeted by militants in the past, but violent incidents have decreased considerably in recent months.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in an email that the bomber targeted Afghan police manning the gate and Afghans working for the Americans entering the base. He claimed high casualties were inflicted.

NATO operates with more than 100,000 troops in the country, including some 66,000 American forces. It is handing most combat operations over to the Afghans in preparation for a pullout from Afghanistan in 2014. Militant groups, including the Taliban, rarely face NATO troops head-on and rely mainly on roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

NATO forces and foreign civilians have also been increasingly attacked by rogue Afghan military and police, eroding trust between the allies.

On Tuesday, the Interior Ministry said a policewoman who killed an American contractor in Kabul a day earlier was a native Iranian who came to Afghanistan and displayed “unstable behavior” but had no known links to militants.

The policewoman, identified as Sgt. Nargas, shot 49-year-old Joseph Griffin, of Mansfield, Georgia, on Monday, in the first such shooting by a woman in the spate of insider attacks. Nargas walked into a heavily-guarded compound in the heart of Kabul, confronted Griffin and shot him once with her pistol.

The U.S-based security firm DynCorp International said on its website that Griffin was a U.S. military veteran who earlier worked with law enforcement agencies in the United States. In Kabul, he was under contract to the NATO military command to advise the Afghan police force.

The ministry spokesman, Sediq Sediqi, told a news conference that Nargas, who uses one name like many in the country, was born in Tehran, where she married an Afghan. She moved to the country 10 years ago, after her husband obtained fake documents enabling her to live and work there.

A mother of four in her early 30s, she joined the police five years ago, held various positions and had a clean record, he said. Sediqi produced an Iranian passport that he said was found at her home.

No militant group has claimed responsibility for the killing.

The chief investigator of the case, Police Gen. Mohammad Zahir, said that during interrogation, the policewoman said she had plans to kill either the Kabul governor, city police chief or Zahir himself, but when she realized that penetrating the last security cordons to reach them would be too difficult, she saw “a foreigner” and turned her weapon on him.

There have been 60 insider attacks this year against foreign military and civilian personnel, compared to 21 in 2011. This surge presents another looming security issue as NATO prepares to pull out almost all of its forces by 2014, putting the war against the Taliban and other militant groups largely in the hands of the Afghans.

More than 50 Afghan members of the government’s security forces also have died this year in attacks by their own colleagues. The Taliban claims such incidents reflect a growing popular opposition to the foreign military presence and the Kabul government.

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iPad is a Christmas graveyard for ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Modern Combat’

At the beginning of December, the traditional video game industry attempted another iPad invasion. New versions of “Grand Theft Auto,” “Modern Combat” and “Baldur’s Gate” hit the iOS app market priced between $ 5 and $ 10. Over the past years, we have seen repeated attempts by major console and PC industry franchises to tailor their blockbuster games for iPhone and iPad platforms. None have succeeded. As the iOS app market increasingly favors free games with in-app purchases, the old-timers have started failing spectacularly.

[More from BGR: Microsoft Surface trampled at the bottom of the tablet pile this Christmas]

December is the most important month of the year for the iOS app market and the days around Christmas are the hottest period. As consumers upgrade their iPhones or receive their very first iOS devices, they tend to go on mobile app buying binges. That is why mega franchises like GTA and “Modern Combat” launched their latest iOS products at the beginning of the month. The games were supposed to stay alive for at least three weeks. They did not.

[More from BGR: Mark Cuban: Nokia Lumia 920 ‘crushes’ the iPhone 5]

The lavishly marketed “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” peaked on iPhone app chart at No.2 on December 8th and plunged to No.36 by December 22nd. It rebounded to No.25 on December 25th. On the iPad, the game plummeted to a shocking No.52 by the all-important Christmas Day, when new iPad owners go berserk on iTunes.

Here is the kicker: on the revenue chart for U.S. iPad apps, the new GTA game had tanked to No.75 by December 25th. This is even worse than the No.52 position on the download chart. I find that genuinely fascinating, because it means that a game with a very stiff download price of $ 5 is showing weaker revenue performance than on raw download volume.

The GTA title is priced at $ 5 at a time when 80% of the top-grossing iPad games are free downloads. The top free apps have compelling in-game purchase strategies — “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” does not. As a result, it is getting beaten by titles such as “Fairway Solitaire” and “My Little Pony” in revenue generation. Having massive name recognition and hundreds of millions of units in console game sales helps very little in the brutally competitive iOS game market.

“Modern Combat 4″ has also plunged out of top-50 on the iPad revenue chart just three weeks after its high-profile debut. The $ 10 update of “Baldur’s Gate” is out of top-200, brought low by its ridiculously high sticker price.

The proud console and PC game champions keep repeating the same gambit in the iOS market: price ‘em high and ignore the in-app purchase angle. They keep failing. When are we going to see a major console game franchise finally adapt to the Apple (AAPL) ecosystem and create an iOS game that is free to download but lures users into an in-app purchase trap effectively?

This article was originally published by BGR

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