Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Marilyn Monroe photos on auction in Poland

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Who doesn't want a picture of Marilyn Monroe?

Hundreds of photographs of the blonde bombshell and other celebrities, including famous ones of Monroe in bed and as a ballerina, were being sold Thursday evening at an auction house in Poland.

Bidders and spectators packed the Desa Unicum house in Warsaw, where 238 pictures by the late American fashion and celebrity photographer Milton H. Greene were up for sale.

Most of these pictures of Monroe were taken from 1953 to 1957 when Greene was her advisor and business partner. He made many of the prints during Monroe's lifetime and they are highly valued by collectors.

As the bidding began, a black-and-white photo of a reclining Monroe in black stockings sold for 50,000 zlotys ($16,000), and another of her in a ballerina's dress sold for almost $20,000. A picture of her in bed sold for 26,000 zlotys ($13,000.)

The auction also offered Greene's pictures of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly and Liza Minnelli. Other greats in the vast portrait collection, which was estimated at $680,000, included Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Paul Newman, Alfred Hitchcock and Marlon Brando.

The photos come from a collection of some 4,000 Greene pictures that Poland obtained from Chicago businessman Dino Matingas in the mid-1990s as the result of a complex communist-era embezzlement scandal linked to the buy-out of Poland's state debt. Proceeds from the auction will go to the Polish government.

Some of the images have never been published before, according to Marta Maciazek, the Polish official in charge of cleaning up the mess from the corruption affair.

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Obama's health care overhaul turns into a sprint

WASHINGTON (AP) — The long slog has turned into a sprint. President Barack Obama's health care law survived the Supreme Court and the election; now the uninsured can sign up for coverage in about 11 months.

"We are out of the political gamesmanship and into the reality," said Sandy Praeger, Kansas' Republican insurance commissioner. Next week, states have to say if they're committed to building the framework for delivering health insurance to millions.

Not all hurdles have been cleared.

Republican governors who derided "Obamacare" have to decide whether it's better for their states to now help carry it out. The administration could stumble carrying out the complex legislation, or get tripped up if budget talks with Congress lead to scaling back the plan.

"We are still going to be struggling through the politics, and there are important policy hurdles and logistical challenges," said Andrew Hyman of the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, helping states carry out the law. "But we are on a very positive trajectory."

Instead of being dismantled by a Republican president and Congress, Obama's law is now on track to take its place alongside Medicare and Medicaid. The action starts right away.

A week from Friday, states must notify Washington if they'll be setting up new health insurance markets, called exchanges, in which millions of households and small businesses will shop for private coverage. The Health and Human Services Department will run the exchanges in states that aren't ready or willing.

Open enrollment for exchange plans is scheduled to start Oct. 1, 2013, and coverage will be effective Jan. 1, 2014.

In all, more than 30 million uninsured people are expected to gain coverage under the law. About half will get private insurance through the exchanges, with most receiving government help to pay premiums.

The rest, mainly low-income adults without children at home, will be covered through an expansion of Medicaid. While the federal government will pay virtually all the additional Medicaid costs, the Supreme Court gave states the leeway to opt out of the expansion. That adds to the uncertainty over how the law will be carried out.

A steadying force within the administration is likely to be HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. The former Kansas governor has said she wants to stay until the law is fully enacted.

Governors will be the main counterparts to Sebelius, and Republicans are leading more than half the states.

Some, like Rick Perry of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida, have drawn a line against helping carry out Obama's law. In other states, voters have endorsed a hard stance. Missouri voters passed a ballot measure Tuesday that would prohibit establishment of a health insurance exchange unless the Legislature approves. State-level challenges to the federal law will continue to percolate.

Other GOP governors have been on the fence, awaiting the outcome of the election. All eyes will be on pragmatists like Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bob McDonnell of Virginia, whose states have done considerable planning to set up exchanges.

"Republican governors are at the center of the health care universe right now," said Michael Ramlet, health policy director at the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. "They do not have a uniform position."

Virginia's McDonnell, in a rebuff to the administration, said in an interview published Thursday his state would not set up its own exchange, defaulting to a federally run one. McDonnell left open the possibility Virginia might later change course.

Some governors whose states aren't ready to run exchanges are considering the administration's fallback offer to run the new markets through a partnership.

"The real question for Republican governors is: 'Are you going to let the feds come into your state?'" Ramlet said. "The question for the Obama administration is whether they are going to have more flexibility."

Major regulations are due shortly covering such issues as exchange operations, benefits and protections for people with pre-existing health problems. That could signal the administration's willingness to compromise.

A check by The Associated Press found 17 states and the District of Columbia on track to setting up their own exchanges, while 10 have decided not to do so. The federal government could end up running the show in half or more of the states.

The states on track include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia.

Not setting up exchanges are Alaska, Florida, Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Missouri and others are likely to join the list.

A recent AP poll found that 63 percent of Americans want states to run the exchanges, with 32 percent favoring federal control.

GOP governors are also seeking flexibility on expanding Medicaid. They are pressing Sebelius on whether the administration will approve partial, less costly expansions, more attractive to cash-pressed states.

As far as Medicaid, 11 states and the District of Columbia have indicated they will expand their programs, while six have said they will not. That leaves more than 30 undecided.

The states definitely expanding Medicaid include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington. Those declining include Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas.

On Capitol Hill, Republicans say if a budget deal is going to include tax increases, it must also come with cuts to the health care law, or money-saving delays in its implementation.

While major changes can't be ruled out, they don't seem very likely to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., who is close to the administration.

"I think Democrats are increasingly emboldened about the health care act," Daschle said. "The president won re-election partly by defending it. There is a new dynamic around the health care effort."

Republican attempts to amend the law will continue, he said, but outright repeal is no longer a possibility.

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Loughner gets life for deadly Ariz. rampage

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, partially blind, her right arm paralyzed and limp, came face to face Thursday with the man who tried to kill her last year, standing beside her husband as he spoke of her struggles to recover from being shot in the head.

"Her life has been forever changed. Plans she had for our family and her career have been immeasurably altered," said astronaut Mark Kelly, both he and his wife staring at the shooter inside a packed courtroom. "Every day is a continuous struggle to do those things she once was so good at."

Jared Lee Loughner, 24, was then ordered to serve seven consecutive life sentences, plus 140 years in federal prison for the January 2011 shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Giffords, outside a grocery store in Tucson, Ariz.

Loughner pleaded guilty under an agreement that guarantees he will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole. He avoids a federal death sentence, and local prosecutors said Thursday they would not seek state charges.

One by one, survivors of the attack at a Giffords political event approached the courtroom podium to address Loughner, each turning toward him where he sat stoic and emotionless at a table with his attorneys.

"You took away my life, my love and my reason for living," said Mavanell Stoddard, who was shot three times and cradled her dying husband in her arms as he lay bleeding on the sidewalk after shielding her from the spray of bullets.

Susan Hileman, who was shot, spoke to him, at times visibly shaking.

"We've been told about your demons, about the illness that skewed your thinking," she said. "Your parents, your schools, your community, they all failed you.

"It's all true," Hileman said. "It's not enough."

"You pointed a weapon and shot me three times," she said, staring directly at Loughner. He looked back at her. "And now I will walk out of this courtroom and into the rest of my life and I won't think of you again."

Loughner's parents sat nearby, his mother sobbing.

Some victims, including Giffords, welcomed the plea deal as a way to move on. It spared them and their families from having to go through a potentially lengthy and traumatic trial and locks up the defendant for life.

Giffords didn't speak, but stood by Kelly and kissed her husband when he was done. He grabbed her hand and they walked away, her limping.

Earlier, Loughner told Burns that he would not speak at the hearing.

Both sides reached the deal after a judge declared that Loughner was able to understand the charges against him. After the shooting, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and underwent forcible psychotropic drug treatments.

Christina Pietz, the court-appointed psychologist who treated Loughner, had warned that although Loughner was competent to plead guilty, he remained severely mentally ill and his condition could deteriorate under the stress of a trial.

When Loughner first arrived at a Missouri prison facility for treatment, he was convinced Giffords was dead, even though he was shown a video of the shooting. He eventually realized she was alive after he was forcibly medicated.

Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall said she reached out to family members, victims and survivors and decided against filing charges and seeking the death penalty.

It's unclear where Loughner will be sent to serve his federal sentence. He could return to a prison medical facility like the one in Springfield, Mo., where he's been treated for more than a year. Or he could end up in a prison such as the federal lockup in Florence, Colo., that houses some of the country's most notorious criminals, including Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols and "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski.

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China's power transfer: infighting and spectacle

BEIJING (AP) — China's ruling Communist Party opens a congress Thursday to usher in a new group of younger leaders faced with the challenging tasks of righting a flagging economy and meeting public calls for better government.

The weeklong congress is the start of a carefully choreographed but still fraught power transfer in which President Hu Jintao and most of the senior leadership will begin to relinquish office. Vice President Xi Jinping, the anointed heir for the past five years, came a step closer to power Wednesday, being named the congress' secretary-general at a preparatory meeting.

Meeting in the Great Hall of the People, the congress seems drawn from another time. It's a public gathering of 2,268 delegates drawn from the 82 million-member party where the real deal-making is done by a few dozen power-brokers behind the scenes, even as China is ever more connected to the world through trade and the Internet.

Coming so soon after the U.S. presidential election climaxed with President Barack Obama's re-election, the congress has drawn unfavorable comparisons from politically minded Chinese.

"I am doing nothing but staring at the television before Obama gets re-elected. As for China's party congress, there is no need for me to worry. On the contrary, it would be a waste of my time," Xu Xiaoping, a celebrity entrepreneur who co-founded a successful chain of English cram schools, said on a Chinese version of Twitter where he has 6 million followers.

To many Chinese, China is at an inflection point. Its old model of heavily state-directed growth that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made China an economic powerhouse is sputtering in the face of rising domestic debt and a weak global economy. Meanwhile, the government has to contend with the public's continued expectations of higher living standards and for less corruption and greater accountability, if not outright democracy.

Whether the new leaders want to move China in a new direction is not known. Xi and other top candidates for the new leadership have forged their careers as capable administrators in provinces and bureaucracies, not as policy trail-blazers. Should ambitious change be on their agenda, they will have to confront vested interests within their ranks: cosseted state industries and conservative officials grown prosperous and powerful under the current system.

One thing the party appears to be ruling out is a major shift toward a more open, democratic political system, despite appeals in recent months from commentators, retired party members and government think tanks.

"The leading position of the Communist Party in China is a decision made by history and by the people," congress spokesman Cai Mingzhao told reporters on Wednesday. He pointed to China's rise as an economic power and said, "It speaks fully to the strong leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the fact that the political system suits China's national reality."

The congress itself is unlikely to give Xi and his colleagues a mandate for sweeping reform. They have been engaged with Hu, retired party elders and influential senior politicians and military commanders in divisive bargaining, made worse by a pair of scandals. Politburo member Bo Xilai was purged after an aide disclosed that Bo's wife had murdered a British businessman. One of Hu's top lieutenants was also sidelined after his son died crashing a Ferrari, a sign of corruption.

A likely result of the back-and-forth is a leadership that balances interest groups, and over the past decade that has been a recipe for plodding, incremental policy.

The centerpiece of the congress opening, a lengthy speech by Hu, is an uncertain indicator of where the new leadership wants to take China. In the early decades of reform, such speeches provided ideological cover as the party tried to break away from the dogma of central planning and experiment with freer markets. More recently, the documents have become ways for past leaders to constrain their heirs by stressing continuity.

In a preview of the speech given to senior officials in July and excerpted and analyzed in state media, Hu stressed the economy remains key. He said getting growth back to a relatively high rate remained crucial to meeting demands from the public — most clearly evidenced by large-scale strikes and protests, or what he called "contradictions."

Cai, the congress spokesman, ticked off a list of what Hu's team had accomplished — wider access to state-supported education through the ninth grade, an expanded social safety net and the start of a nationwide low-cost housing sector.

"The past decade has witnessed the greatest improvement in people's livelihoods in the history of China's development," Cui said. "We will make guaranteeing and improving the people's well-being the guide and aim of what we do."

___

Associated Press writers Gillian Wong, Christopher Bodeen and Didi Tang contributed to this report.

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Apple slides to five-month low, uncertainty grows

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Celebrities air post-election feelings online

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mariah Carey was so excited about President Barack Obama's re-election that she released a new song in his honor. Beyoncé popped up on Instagram with a rebuke for Mitt Romney, while Romney supporter Elisabeth Hasselbeck sent out a disappointed but conciliatory tweet urging a divided United States to become one.

Celebrities, who voiced their opinions loudly during the election, continued to speak their minds after the ballots were counted.

Cameron Diaz, who is promoting her film "Gambit" in London, said she was worried about the election as she fell asleep.

"I was terrified that I was going to wake up to a total embarrassment for our country and that today would be a very different day for me," she said Wednesday. "But I was so thrilled."

Romney supporters Donald Trump and Ted Nugent ranted on Twitter after the election that the country is doomed, while Spike Lee and Russell Simmons celebrated Obama's victory and the diverse electorate behind it.

NBC News anchor Brian Williams called attention to Trump's series of tweets Tuesday while covering election returns, saying the real-estate magnate and reality-TV star had "driven well past the last exit to relevance and veered into something closer to irresponsible" with his posts.

"This election is a total sham and a travesty. We are not a democracy!" Trump tweeted. "Let's fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us."

Nugent was similarly upset — and expressive — Wednesday morning.

"Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America," he wrote. "Goodluk America u just voted for economic & spiritual suicide. Soulless fools."

He concluded with: "I cry tears of blood for The Last Best Place & the warriors who died for this tragedy."

Hasselbeck shared a more measured response, tweeting, "(Hash) momentofpeace: You cannot love the game only when your player wins. We remain to be the greatest nation and (at)BarackObama is OUR President." Mark Cuban, meanwhile, extended a virtual olive branch to Trump, writing, "I know it was a rough night for u," and inviting Trump to join him in raising funds for victims of Hurricane Sandy.

Spike Lee was among the most vocal Obama supporters online after the election, using his Twitter feed to blast the Republican party.

"Great Lesson. This Is Not Ike's 1950's USA. Complexion Of This Great Country Has Changed-A True Melting Pot. The GOP Is Stuck In A Time Warp. YO," the filmmaker wrote Wednesday. "GOP WAKE UP. This Is Not" LEAVE TO BEAVER.FATHER KNOWS BEST OR MAYBERRY R.F.D." THE 21st CENTURY. And Dat's Da 2nd Term Truth, Ruth. YA-DIG??"

Beyoncé also gloated a bit, posting a photo on her blog that read, "Take that Mitches." It was accompanied by another photo of the singer wearing a "Texans for Obama" T-shirt.

Carey released a new song, "Bring It On Home," online Wednesday to celebrate the president's victory. She first performed the song at an Obama fundraiser over the summer, said Carey publicist Cindi Berger.

The pop star also shared her support on Twitter.

"Congratulations to our beloved President Barack Obama, our spectacular First Lady Michelle Obama & the adorable Malia & Sasha. We love you!" Carey wrote. "INCREDIBLE SPEECH!!!!!! Watching in a room full of diverse people-all truly moved. Thank you America for President Obama-4more yrs."

Simmons also acknowledged the diversity of Obama supporters in a blog post Wednesday called "Forward!"

"This is no time for triumphalism, because we are still in an economic crisis and we still have deep social divisions that must be dealt with," he wrote. "But we have to absorb, as a country, as a NATION, that first and foremost, AMERICA IS CHANGING... We cannot fight demographics by ignoring women, Latinos, blacks, young people, and gays who gave their lives for our country.

"The middle class and poor need support," he continues, "and every politician who is not ready for this change should wake today and realize that minorities will wait in line into the early hours of the morning to vote them out of office. Forward, we go."

Scores of other stars — including Tony Bennett, Cher, Shakira, Lady Gaga, Jessica Alba and Samuel L. Jackson— celebrated Obama's victory on Twitter.

Others, including filmmaker Ron Howard and actors Rob Lowe and James Van Der Beek, say it's time to move past the election toward mending the nation.

"To all the winners (and losers) tonight: Politicians run campaigns. Leaders strike compromises," Van Der Beek wrote. "Time for everyone to shift gears now (hash)please."

___

— AP Entertainment Writer Hilary Fox contributed to this report from London.

___

— Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/APSandy .

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Experts raise concerns over superhuman workplace

LONDON (AP) — Performance-boosting drugs, powered prostheses and wearable computers are coming to an office near you — but experts warned in a new report Wednesday that too little thought has been given to the implications of a superhuman workplace.

Academics from Britain's leading institutions say attention needs to be focused on the consequences of technology which may one day allow — or compel — humans to work better, longer and harder. Here's their list of upgrades that might make their way to campuses and cubicles in the next decade:

BRAIN BOOSTERS

Barbara Sahakian, a Cambridge neuropsychology professor, cited research suggesting that 16 percent of U.S. students already use "cognitive enhancers" such as Ritalin to help them handle their course loads. Pilots have long used amphetamines to stay alert. And at least one study has suggested that the drug modafinil could help reduce the number of accidents experienced by shift workers.

But bioethicist Jackie Leach Scully of northern England's Newcastle University worries that the use of such drugs might focus on worker productivity over personal well-being.

"Being more alert for longer doesn't mean that you'll be less stressed by the job," she said. "It means that you'll be exposed to that stress for longer and be more awake while doing it."

WEARABLE COMPUTERS

The researchers also noted so-called "life-logging" devices like Nike Inc.'s distance-tracking shoes or wearable computers such as the eyeglasses being developed by Google Inc. The shoes can record your every step; the eyeglasses everything you see. Nigel Shadbolt, an expert in artificial Intelligence at southern England's University of Southampton, said such devices were as little as 15 years away from being able to record every sight, noise and movement over an entire human life.

So do you accept if your boss gives you one?

"What does that mean for employee accountability?" Shadbolt asked.

BIONIC LIMBS — AND BEYOND

The report also noted bionic limbs like the one used this week by amputee Zac Vawter to climb Chicago's Willis Tower or exoskeletons like the one used earlier this year by partially paralyzed London Marathon participant Claire Lomas. It also touched on the development of therapies aimed at sharpening eyesight or cochlear implants meant to enhance hearing.

Scully said any technology that could help disabled people re-enter the workforce should be welcomed but society needs to keep an eye out for unintended consequences.

"One of the things that we know about technology hitting society is that most of the consequences were not predicted ahead of time and a lot of things that we worry about ahead of time turn out not to be problems at all," she said. "We have very little idea of how these technologies will pan out."

THE PRESSURIZED WORKPLACE

The report was drawn up by scientists from The Academy of Medical Sciences, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society.

"We're not talking science fiction here," said Genevra Richardson, the King's College law professor who oversaw the report. "These technologies could influence our ability to learn or perform tasks, they could influence our motivation, they could enable us to work in more extreme conditions or in old age, or they could facilitate our return to work after illness or disability .... Their use at work also raises serious ethical, political and economic questions."

Scully said workers may come under pressure to try a new memory-boosting drug or buy the latest wearable computer.

"In the context of a highly pressurized work environment, how free is the choice not to adopt such technologies?" she said.

Union representatives appeared taken aback by some of the experts' predictions. One expressed particular disquiet at the possibility raised by the report that long-distance truck drivers might be asked to take alertness drugs for safety reasons.

"We would be very, very against anything like that," said James Bower, a spokesman for Britain's United Road Transport Union. "We can't have a situation where a driver is told by his boss that he needs to put something in his body."

___

Online:

The report: http://royalsociety.org/policy/projects/human-enhancement

Raphael Satter can be reached on: http://raphae.li/twitter

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Boehner: House GOP will work with Obama

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China hauls away activists in congress crackdown

BEIJING (AP) — During her 30-hour train journey to Beijing, Wang Xiulan ducked into bathrooms whenever the conductors checked IDs. Later, as she lay low in the outskirts of the capital, unidentified men caught her in a nighttime raid and hauled her to a police station. She assumed a fake identity to get away, and is now in hiding again.

Wang's not a criminal. She's a petitioner.

She's among many people attempting to bring local complaints directly to the central government in an age-old Chinese tradition that has continued during the Communist Party era. But police never make that easy, and this week, as an all-important leadership transition begins, a dragnet is aimed at keeping anyone perceived as a threat or a troublemaker out of Beijing.

"There is no law in China, especially for us petitioners and ordinary folk," Wang, 50, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "Even common gangsters and hoodlums get to leave after they serve time for crimes, but for us, if we get locked up, we never know when we might be freed."

Authorities want no surprises as the handover of power begins in the capital Thursday. The transition already has been rocked by the party's messiest scandal in decades, involving a former high-flying politician now accused of engaging in graft and obstructing the investigation into his wife's murder of a British businessman.

Rights groups say the wide-ranging crackdown on critics bodes poorly for those who hope the incoming generation of leaders will loosen restrictions on activism.

"China's top political leaders are very nervous, as they have since early this year been consumed by one of the most destabilizing and disharmonious power struggles in decades," said Renee Xia, international director of the Chinese Human Rights Defenders. The group estimates that hundreds or thousands of people have come under some kind of restriction in preparation for the party congress.

Lawyers have been held under illegal house arrest, dissidents sent back to their hometowns and activists questioned. Internet users report difficulties accessing many websites and the failure of software meant to bypass Internet filters.

Veteran activist Huang Qi, who runs a website on petitioners like Wang, said nearly 1,000 people have contacted him over the past few weeks to complain that authorities have hired thugs to harass and beat them.

"I hope that the Chinese authorities will face up to the social problems," Huang said in an interview. "Using violence will only escalate the resistance."

The crackdown reflects the leadership's nervousness as slowing economic growth exacerbates public outrage over corruption, social injustice, pollution and favoritism toward state-run agencies and the elite at the expense of ordinary people.

Under normal circumstances, petitioners are relatively safe once they reach Beijing's outskirts, though in their home provinces they are almost perpetually on the run from hostile local officials or thugs-for-hire who want to nab them before they can get an audience with central government agencies.

Now, however, even the capital's fringes are off limits.

Wang, a petite woman with shoulder-length hair neatly tied back, has been trying for two decades to draw central government attention to what she says was police mishandling of a serious assault she suffered in her native Harbin. Not only did her attacker go unpunished, but Wang ended up getting dismissed from her job years later.

Wang arrived in late October in Lu Village in Beijing's southwest, where petitioners have sought refuge for years. A police post guards the road into the village, and residents say officers have lately blocked petitioners from entering.

Wang had rented a bed — a wooden plank on bricks — in a tiny concrete room shared with two others. A gang of two dozen men barged in one night at 11 p.m., demanded to see her ID, searched her belongings and grabbed her cellphone.

"I was scared to death when they suddenly barged in here," Wang said, pointing at the door, where the lock had just been replaced.

The men refused to identify themselves and bundled her into a minivan with other petitioners. At another stop, she saw a couple dragged into the vans in their pajamas, the woman wearing only one shoe.

All were taken to a police station in nearby Jiujingzhuang village, where many petitioners say police process them for return to their hometowns. Using someone else's identity, Wang was able to evade police suspicion and was released. Many of the others were sent back, she said.

The raids are having an effect. The compound that houses her room and others now has only a handful of residents, down from about 30.

"They've all been chased away, caught or scared home," said Liu Zhifa, a 67-year-old petitioner from Henan province and one of the holdouts. Liu confirmed Wang's description of the Oct. 31 raid and described his own encounter with thugs breaking his lock and entering his room three times in one night in mid-October.

"I asked them to show their identifications, and they yelled at me, saying 'What right do you have to see our identification? Who do you think you are?" said Liu. "They were ruthless. The authorities and the police are working with people in the underworld."

A police officer who would only give his surname, Wei, answered the phone at a Jiujingzhuang police station (not 'the' because the police station has another name) and denied that authorities were raiding petitioners' villages. "We only act according to the law," Wei said. Questions about the broader crackdown were referred to the Beijing public security bureau, which did not respond to faxed questions.

The crackdown has extended to lawyers such as Xu Zhiyong. He said Beijing authorities have held him under informal house arrest since mid-October, stationing four or five guards outside his apartment in Beijing around the clock.

Xu has campaigned for years against Chinese authorities' use of "black jails," or unofficial detention centers run by local governments to hold petitioners. The government has denied the existence of such facilities, but even the tightly controlled state media have reported on them.

"The illegal restriction of a citizen's personal freedom for a long period of time is criminal behavior," Xu wrote in an email. "In an authoritarian state, this type of crime takes place everywhere."

Authorities in Shanghai also have ratcheted up pressure on critics, sentencing veteran women's rights activist Mao Hengfeng to a year and a half of labor camp. Mao, accused of disturbing social order, had been detained in Beijing in late September, said her husband, Wu Xuewei, who indicated she was being put away to silence her before the party congress.

Even dissidents' relatives have come under pressure. Beijing activist Hu Jia said he was warned by police to leave town, and that even his parents told him that police had told them to escort him to his hometown.

"My parents said to me: 'Hu Jia, you don't know what kind of danger you are in, but we know,'" he recounted in a phone interview from his parents' home in eastern Anhui province. "They said: 'Beijing is a cruel battlefield. If you stay here, you will be the first to be sacrificed. Don't do this.'"

___

Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at twitter.com/gillianwong

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