Germany rejects Swiss tax deal













Germany’s upper house of parliament has rejected a deal with Switzerland to tax German assets held in Swiss bank accounts.












The deal would have allowed Germans with undeclared assets in Switzerland to avoid punishment by making a one-off payment of between 21% and 41% of the value of their assets.


The deal had been negotiated in April and was due to take effect in January.


But it needed to be ratified by both parliaments.


The rejection by the German upper house, the Bundesrat, prolongs the dispute between the two countries over how to deal with the estimated 180-200bn euros (£145-160bn) of German assets hidden in Switzerland.


German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble had called for support for the deal, saying: “The agreement tries to find a better solution for a situation which is unsatisfactory.”


But Norbert Walter-Borjans, of the main opposition Social Democrats, told the Bundesrat it was a deal which made “honest taxpayers feel like fools”.


Swiss Finance Minister Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf said her government remained “committed to a successful ratification”.


And the Swiss Bankers Association said in a statement: “The German upper house has missed a major opportunity to reach a fair, optimum and sustainable solution for all parties to definitively settle the bilateral tax issues.”


BBC News – Business


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Egypt reformist warns of turmoil from Morsi decree












CAIRO (AP) — Prominent Egyptian democracy advocate Mohammed ElBaradei warned Saturday of increasing turmoil that could potentially lead to the military stepping in unless the Islamist president rescinds his new, near absolute powers, as the country’s long fragmented opposition sought to unite and rally new protests.


Egypt‘s liberal and secular forces — long divided, weakened and uncertain amid the rise of Islamist parties to power — are seeking to rally themselves in response to the decrees issued this week by President Mohammed Morsi. The president granted himself sweeping powers to “protect the revolution” and made himself immune to judicial oversight.












The judiciary, which was the main target of Morsi’s edicts, pushed back Saturday. The country’s highest body of judges, the Supreme Judical Council, called his decrees an “unprecedented assault.” Courts in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria announced a work suspension until the decrees are lifted.


Outside the high court building in Cairo, several hundred demonstrators rallied against Morsi, chanting, “Leave! Leave!” echoing the slogan used against former leader Hosni Mubarak in last year’s uprising that ousted him. Police fired tear gas to disperse a crowd of young men who were shooting flares outside the court.


The edicts issued Wednesday have galvanized anger brewing against Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails, ever since he took office in June as Egypt’s first freely elected president. Critics accuse the Brotherhood — which has dominated elections the past year — and other Islamists of monopolizing power and doing little to bring real reform or address Egypt’s mounting economic and security woes.


Oppositon groups have called for new nationwide rallies Tuesday — and the Muslim Brotherhood has called for rallies supporting Morsi the same day, setting the stage for new violence.


Morsi supporters counter that the edicts were necessary to prevent the courts, which already dissolved the elected lower house of parliament, from further holding up moves to stability by disbanding the assembly writing the new constitution, as judges were considering doing. Like parliament was, the assembly is dominated by Islamists. Morsi accuses Mubarak loyalists in the judiciary of seeking to thwart the revolution’s goals and barred the judiciary from disbanding the constitutional assembly or parliament’s upper house.


In an interview with a handful of journalists, including The Associated Press, Nobel Peace laureate ElBaradei raised alarm over the impact of Morsi’s rulings, saying he had become “a new pharaoh.”


“There is a good deal of anger, chaos, confusion. Violence is spreading to many places and state authority is starting to erode slowly,” he said. “We hope that we can manage to do a smooth transition without plunging the country into a cycle of violence. But I don’t see this happening without Mr. Morsi rescinding all of this.”


Speaking of Egypt’s powerful military, ElBaradei said, “I am sure they are as worried as everyone else. You cannot exclude that the army will intervene to restore law and order” if the situation gets out of hand.


But anti-Morsi factions are chronically divided, with revolutionary youth activists, new liberal political parties that have struggled to build a public base and figures from the Mubarak era, all of whom distrust each other. The judiciary is also an uncomfortable cause for some to back, since it includes many Mubarak appointees who even Morsi opponents criticize as too tied to the old regime.


Opponents say the edicts gave Morsi near dictatorial powers, neutering the judiciary when he already holds both executive and legislative powers. One of his most controversial edicts gave him the right to take any steps to stop “threats to the revolution,” vague wording that activists say harkens back to Mubarak-era emergency laws.


Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in nationwide protests on Friday, sparking clashes between anti-and pro-Morsi crowds in several cities that left more than 200 people wounded.


On Saturday, new clashed broke out in the southern city of Assiut. Morsi opponents and members of the Muslim Brotherhood swung sticks and threw stones at each other outside the offices of the Brotherhood‘s political party, leaving at least seven injured.


ElBaradei and a six other prominent liberal leaders have announced the formation of a National Salvation Front aimed at rallying all non-Islamist groups together to force Morsi to rescind his edicts.


The National Salvation Front leadership includes several who ran against Morsi in this year’s presidential race — Hamdeen Sabahi, who finished a close third, former foreign minister Amr Moussa and moderate Islamist Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Fotouh. ElBaradei says the group is also pushing for the creation of a new constitutional assembly and a unity government.


ElBaradei said it would be a long process to persuade Morsi that he “cannot get away with murder.”


“There is no middle ground, no dialogue before he rescinds this declaration. There is no room for dialogue until then.”


The grouping seems to represent a newly assertive political foray by ElBaradei, the former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. ElBaradei returned to Egypt in the year before Mubarak’s fall, speaking out against his rule, and was influential with many of the youth groups that launched the anti-Mubarak revolution.


But since Mubarak’s fall, he has been criticized by some as too Westernized, elite and Hamlet-ish, reluctant to fully assert himself as an opposition leader.


The Brotherhood‘s Freedom and Justice political party, once headed by Morsi, said Saturday in a statement that the president’s decision protects the revolution against former regime figures who have tried to erode elected institutions and were threatening to dissolve the constitutional assembly.


The Brotherhood warned in another statement that there were forces trying to overthrow the elected president in order to return to power. It said Morsi has a mandate to lead, having defeated one of Mubarak’s former prime ministers this summer in a closely contested election.


Morsi’s edicts also removed Abdel-Meguid Mahmoud, the prosecutor general first appointed by Mubarak, who many Egyptians accused of not prosecuting former regime figures strongly enough.


Speaking to a gathering of judges cheering support for him at the high court building in Cairo, Mahmoud warned of a “vicious campaign” against state institutions. He also said judicial authorities are looking into the legality of the decision to remove him — setting up a Catch-22 of legitimacy, since under Morsi’s decree, the courts cannot overturn any of his decisions.


“I thank you for your support of judicial independence,” he told the judges.


“Morsi will have to reverse his decision to avoid the anger of the people,” said Ahmed Badrawy, a labor ministry employee protesting at the courthouse. “We do not want to have an Iranian system here,” he added, referring to fears that hardcore Islamists may try to turn Egypt into a theocracy.


Several hundred protesters remained in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Saturday, where a number of tents have been erected in a sit-in following nearly a week of clashes with riot police.


____


Brian Rohan contributed to this report from Cairo.


Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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HP says products may have been sold to Syria by others












(Reuters) – Hewlett Packard Co said in a letter made public on Friday that its products could have been delivered to Syria through resellers or distributors, but the world’s largest PC maker affirmed it did not sell directly to the country.


The letter was a response to a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission‘s Office of Global Security Risk that asked whether HP’s products were sold in countries where they would be subject to U.S. sanctions.












“We are aware of November 2011 news reports that your equipment was installed by the Italian company, Area SpA, in Syria as part of a nationwide surveillance and tracking system designed to monitor people in that country,” the SEC wrote in its request.


“Please describe to us the nature, duration, and extent of your past, current, and anticipated contacts with Syria and Iran, whether through subsidiaries, distributors, resellers, vendors, retailers, or other direct or indirect arrangements.”


In a letter dated October 9, HP said it had not authorized the sale of products to Syria.


Instead, HP said the Italian surveillance company had likely obtained its products from an HP partner that was unaware of their ultimate destination.


In another October 9 letter to the agency, HP said it ended its contract with Area SpA in April.


Calls to HP seeking further comment were unanswered as were calls to Area SpA.


HP’s overseas subsidiaries ended sales of printers and related supplies to third-party distributors and resellers with customers in Iran in early 2009, the company wrote.


But because its products are often sold by others through indirect channels without its knowledge or consent “it is always possible that products may be diverted to Iran or Syria after being sold to channel partners, such as distributors and resellers,” HP said.


Reuters has documented how banned computer equipment from U.S. companies has made its way to Iran’s largest telecommunications company through China-based ZTE.


Networking equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc has since cut its ties to ZTE.


HP said in both letters that it would continue to work with ZTE, but it had conducted an internal investigation relating to an alleged sale of its products to MTN Irancell, Iran’s second largest mobile carrier.


The company was also asked about EDS – an IT outsourcing company that HP bought in 2008 – and any activity in Iran, Syria and Sudan.


HP said it had the same policy regarding Sudan as it did on sales to Iran or Syria.


HP is eager to avoid more negative publicity after surprising the market on Tuesday with an $ 8.8 billion write-down on its $ 11.1 billion acquisition of software group Autonomy, accusing the British company of improper accounting to inflate sales.


Autonomy has denied any wrongdoing.


(Reporting by Nicola Leske in New York. Editing by Leslie Gevirtz and Andre Grenon)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Vampires, 007 may set record Thanksgiving sales












LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The teen vampire movie “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ continued to lure huge audiences, siphoning off $ 12.8 million in Wednesday night showings in what could fuel a record box office haul for the five-day Thanksgiving Day holiday.


The final film in the “Twilight” series, collected $ 141.3 million last weekend for the industry’s eighth largest opening weekend. On Wednesday it combined with the Daniel CraigJames Bond” film “Skyfall” to lead a slate of films that generated $ 44.3 million in total U.S. and Canadian ticket sales for the day, according to unofficial data from Hollywood.com’s box office division.












That’s 20 percent ahead of last year’s take for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and, if the pace holds, would put Hollywood on a path to a $ 278 million holiday weekend, according to Hollywood.com estimates. The 2009 holiday weekend record of $ 273 million included “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” and the football flick, “The Blind Side.”


Hollywood traditionally opens its largest Thanksgiving weekend films on Wednesday, when schools are closed before the Thursday holiday.


“Skyfall,” the 23rd film in the “James Bond” series about the exploits of a British spy, collected $ 7.4 million in Wednesday showings.


Dreamworks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians,” featuring the voices of Chris Pine and Alec Baldwin in a story about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and other childhood characters that save the world, opened with $ 4.85 million in Wednesday sales.


“Twilight” and “Skyfall” each easily appear headed to more than $ 200 million in box office sales. “Skyfall,” released by Sony Pictures in association with MGM, has generated more than $ 178 million so far in domestic ticket sales through Wednesday, already making it the 10th biggest selling film of 2012.


“Twilight,” starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, has totaled $ 175.5 million through Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada, according to the Hollywood.com unofficial tally. It was released by Lionsgate Entertainment.


(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Editing by Sandra Maler)


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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First Person: Unemployed, Disabled and Hungry for Work












Five million Americans are among the long-term unemployed–those without a job for 27 weeks or longer–according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 7.3 million are looking for work, while the unemployment rate sits at 7.9 percent. Numbers aside, individual stories illustrate how America is affected. To see how joblessness hits home, Yahoo News asked unemployed workers to share their job-hunting stories. Here’s one.


FIRST PERSON | I am 40 and live in Racine, Wis. I have been unemployed since I was 33. I try to find work, but I’ve been disabled since 27, and I do not collect Social Security or other income. On job applications, when I am asked if I have any disabilities, I answer yes.












I have even tried to travel to different states for employment. I am seeking employment where I can. I have tried Lowe’s, Home Depot and other similar stores. All I get are letters saying I do not qualify for employment.


By trade, I am a tattoo artist, a job I have been very good at until I became disabled. I have shoulder impingement syndrome, which consists of some of the following: torn ligaments, torn tendons, bone spurs, bursitis and arthritis.


And constant pain. I feel the weather. I hardly sleep. I wish I could be somewhere else, as it is hard on my mind to deal with on a daily basis.


Still, I try to find work where I can in this tough economy, and I am on several lists to be called and never have been called to date.


I am too proud to try to get Social Security. I cannot even afford insurance to get my condition fixed. I even have applied for local state insurance to get the problem resolved so I can work again, always with no luck. So I have remained unemployed now for over 10 years and going.


I injured myself, and I am not able to lift more than 10 pounds at a time or stand or sit for long periods of time.


I just want a job so I can try to cover the medical expenses myself since I cannot get help. Surgery costs are around $ 18,000, which sounds pretty reasonable to me.


I am no stranger to hard work. Since 12, I cut grass, shoveled snow, painted houses and fences, swept chimneys, worked in heat treatment plants with dirt and oil, worked in the casting of hot metals, laid brick, made bathroom sinks, swept floors in factories, did drill-press work, sanding work, and worked at fast food places.


I do not lie to get jobs or hid my injury. I do want to work, but I worry now that my disability will mean I won’t be hired by companies because they’re afraid it will come back on them and their company.


I cannot afford private insurance as I do not have steady income. Now I find whatever I can do to reach my goal of paying for my own surgery.


It is a sad world when you live in pain, day in and day out, and you want and need to find work.


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Wall St Week Ahead: Political wrangling to pinch market’s nerves












NEW YORK (Reuters) – Volatility is the name of this game.


With the S&P 500 above 1,400 following five days of gains, traders will be hard pressed not to cash in on the advance at the first sign of trouble during negotiations over tax hikes and spending cuts that resume next week in Washington.












President Barack Obama and U.S. congressional leaders are expected to discuss ways to reduce the budget deficit and avoid the “fiscal cliff” of automatic tax increases and spending cuts in 2013 that could tip the economy into recession.


As politicians make their case, markets could react with wild swings.


The CBOE Volatility Index <.VIX>, known as the VIX, Wall Street‘s favorite barometer of market anxiety that usually moves in an inverse relationship with the S&P 500, is in a long-term decline with its 200-day moving average at its lowest in five years. The VIX could spike if dealings in Washington begin to stall.


“If the fiscal cliff happens, a lot of major assets will be down on a short-term basis because of the fear factor and the chaos factor,” said Yu-Dee Chang, chief trader and sole principal of ACE Investments in Virginia.


“So whatever you are in, you’re going to lose some money unless you go long the VIX and short the market. The ‘upside risk’ there is some kind of grand bargain, and then the market goes crazy.”


He set the chances of the economy going over the cliff at only about 5 percent.


Many in the market agree there will be some sort of agreement that will fuel a rally, but the road there will be full of political landmines as Democrats and Republicans dig in on positions defended during the recent election.


Liberals want tax increases on the wealthiest Americans while protecting progressive advances in healthcare, while conservatives make a case for deep cuts in programs for the poor and a widening of the tax base to raise revenues without lifting tax rates.


“Both parties will raise the stakes and the pressure on the opposing side, so the market is going to feel much more concerned,” said Tim Leach, chief investment officer of U.S. Bank Wealth Management in San Francisco.


“The administration feels really confident at this point, or a little more than the Republican side of Congress may feel,” he said. “But it’s still a balanced-power Congress so neither side can feel that they can act with impunity.”


THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE


Tension in the Middle East and unresolved talks in Europe over aid for Greece could add to the uncertainty and volatility on Wall Street could surge, analysts say.


An Egypt-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force late on Wednesday after a week of conflict, but it was broken with the shooting of a Palestinian man by Israeli soldiers, according to Palestine’s foreign minister.


Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating the truce, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi assumed sweeping powers, angering his opponents and prompting violent clashes in central Cairo and other cities on Friday.


“Those kinds of potential large-scale conflicts can certainly overwhelm some of the fundamental data here at home,” said U.S. Bank’s Leach.


“We are trying to keep in mind the idea that there are a lot of factors that are probably going to contribute to higher volatility.”


On a brighter note for markets, Greece’s finance minister said the International Monetary Fund has relaxed its debt-cutting target for Greece and a gap of only $ 13 billion remains to be filled for a vital aid installment to be paid.


Still, a deal has not been struck, and Greece is increasingly frustrated at its lenders, still squabbling over a deal to unlock fresh aid even though Athens has pushed through unpopular austerity cuts.


HOUSING DATA COULD CONFIRM RECOVERY


Next week is heavy on economic data, especially on the housing front. Some of the numbers have been affected by Superstorm Sandy, which hit the U.S. East Coast more than three weeks ago, killing more than 100 people in the United States alone and leaving billions of dollars in damages.


The housing data, though, could continue to confirm a rebound in the sector that is seen as a necessary step to unlock spending and lower the stubbornly high unemployment rate.


Tuesday’s S&P/Case-Shiller home price index for September is expected to show the eighth straight month of increases, extending the longest continuous string of gains since prices were boosted by a homebuyer tax credit in 2009 and 2010.


New home sales for October, due on Wednesday, and October pending home sales data, due on Thursday, are also expected to show a stronger housing market.


Other data highlights next week include durable goods orders for October and consumer confidence for November on Tuesday and the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index on Friday.


At Friday’s close, the S&P 500 wrapped up its second-best week of the year with a 3.6 percent gain. Encouraging economic data next week could confirm that regardless of the ups and downs that the fiscal cliff could bring, the market’s fundamentals are solid.


Jeff Morris, head of U.S. equities at Standard Life Investments in Boston, said that “it’s kind of noise here” in terms of whether the market has spent “a few days up or down. It has made some solid gains over the course of the year as the housing recovery has come into view, and that’s what’s underpinning the market at these levels.


“I would caution against reading too much into the next few days.”


(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: rodrigo.campos(at)thomsonreuters.com)


(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Jan Paschal)


Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Beijing’s S. China Sea rivals protest passport map












TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China has enraged several neighbors with a few dashes on a map, printed in its newly revised passports that show it staking its claim on the entire South China Sea and even Taiwan.


Inside the passports, an outline of China printed in the upper left corner includes Taiwan and the sea, hemmed in by the dashes. The change highlights China’s longstanding claim on the South China Sea in its entirety, though parts of the waters also are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei and Malaysia.












China’s official maps have long included Taiwan and the South China Sea as Chinese territory, but the act of including them in its passports could be seen as a provocation since it would require other nations to tacitly endorse those claims by affixing their official seals to the documents.


Ruling party and opposition lawmakers alike condemned the map in Taiwan, a self-governed island that split from China after a civil war in 1949. They said it could harm the warming ties the historic rivals have enjoyed since Ma Ying-jeou became president 4 1/2 years ago.


“This is total ignorance of reality and only provokes disputes,” said Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, the Cabinet-level body responsible for ties with Beijing. The council said the government cannot accept the map.


Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario told reporters in Manila that he sent a note to the Chinese Embassy that his country “strongly protests” the image. He said China’s claims include an area that is “clearly part of the Philippines’ territory and maritime domain.”


The Vietnamese government said it had also sent a diplomatic note to the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, demanding that Beijing remove the “erroneous content” printed in the passport.


In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry said the new passport was issued based on international standards. China began issuing new versions of its passports to include electronic chips on May 15, though criticism cropped up only this week.


“The design of this type of passports is not directed against any particular country,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily media briefing Friday. “We hope the relevant countries can calmly treat it with rationality and restraint so that the normal visits by the Chinese and foreigners will not be unnecessarily interfered with.”


It’s unclear whether China’s South China Sea neighbors will respond in any way beyond protesting to Beijing. China, in a territorial dispute with India, once stapled visas into passports to avoid stamping them.


“Vietnam reserves the right to carry out necessary measures suitable to Vietnamese law, international law and practices toward such passports,” Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi said.


Taiwan does not recognize China’s passports in any case; Chinese visitors to the island have special travel documents.


China maintains it has ancient claims to all of the South China Sea, despite much of it being within the exclusive economic zones of Southeast Asian neighbors. The islands and waters are potentially rich in oil and gas.


There are concerns that the disputes could escalate into violence. China and the Philippines had a tense maritime standoff at a shoal west of the main Philippine island of Luzon early this year.


The United States, which has said it takes no sides in the territorial spats but that it considers ensuring safe maritime traffic in the waters to be in its national interest, has backed a call for a “code of conduct” to prevent clashes in the disputed territories. But it remains unclear if and when China will sit down with rival claimants to draft such a legally binding nonaggression pact.


The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam are scheduled to meet Dec. 12 to discuss claims in the South China Sea and the role of China.


___


Associated Press writers Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, Chris Brummitt in Hanoi, Vietnam, and researcher Zhao Liang in Beijing contributed to this report.


Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Nicole ‘Snooki’ Polizzi, Miley Cyrus Share Birthday Joy On Twitter












Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi was celebrating her 25th birthday on Black Friday, but it wasn’t the shops that provided her with her favorite present.


The reality star and new mom Tweeted that her baby boy — Lorenzo, who was born in August — was the most rewarding gift of all.












PLAY IT NOW: The Jersey Shore Cast Makes A Plea To Help ‘Restore The Shore’


“My favorite birthday gift,” she Tweeted, linking to a photo of the MTV star holding her little one. (Click HERE to see the full pic.)


But, Snooki didn’t leave out her love for her fiance, Lorenzo’s daddy — Jionni LaValle, thanking him for celebrating her big day with her.


VIEW THE PHOTOS: We Did It All For The ‘Snooki’! Hot Shots Of The ‘Jersey Shore’ Star!


“Best Birthday ever with my fiance @JLaValle and Lorenzo,” she wrote.


In typical Snooki fashion, though, she wasn’t the perfect birthday girl. She made sure to emphasize it was her big day.


“Lol I’m being that annoying birthday girl to @JLaValle saying ‘but it’s my birthday today you have to,’” she Tweeted.


VIEW THE PHOTOS: She’s Just Bein’ Miley!


Snooki wasn’t the only celeb celebrating their birthday on Black Friday. Miley Cyrus turned 20, and hit Twitter to thank her fans for their well wishes.


“So much BIRFFFDAY love!” she wrote. “i wish everyday was like this.”


VIEW THE PHOTOS: Miley Cyrus & Liam Hemsworth: Young Hollywood’s Hot Power Couple


Copyright 2012 by NBC Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Marc Anthony comes to aid of Dominican orphanage












SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP) — Singer Marc Anthony is coming to the aid of an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.


A foundation run by Anthony with music and sports producer Henry Cardenas plans to build a new residence hall, classrooms and a baseball field for the Children of Christ orphanage in the eastern city of La Romana. Anthony attended the groundbreaking ceremony Friday with his model girlfriend Shannon de Lima.












Children of Christ Foundation Director Sonia Hane said Anthony visited the orphanage previously and decided to help. His Maestro Cares Foundation raised $ 200,000 for the expansion on land donated by a sugar company. The orphanage was founded in 1996 for children who were abused or abandoned or whose parents were unable to care for them.


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Laws don’t curb pricey prostate cancer treatments












NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Laws meant to prevent the overuse of expensive healthcare services don’t stop doctors from using pricey prostate cancer treatments, according to two new studies.


Researchers found doctors used robots and special radiation to treat prostate cancer regardless of whether their area had laws requiring government approval before money is spent on healthcare facilities and new equipment.












“Certificate of need laws were designed to align public need with use of different services,” said Dr. Bruce Jacobs, a lead author of one of the studies from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.


The U.S. government required states to implement the laws in the 1970s and early 1980s, but stopped a few decades ago. Still, some states continue to use the laws in an effort to control costs.


In each study, the researchers looked at treatments for prostate cancer, which is the most common cancer in American men.


The American Cancer Society estimates that one in every six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in their lifetime, but most will not die from it. Past research found that many men’s prostate cancer is slow-growing, and most are candidates for active surveillance or “watchful waiting.”


In Jacobs’s study, the researchers looked at whether states with strict laws – those that require approval for even low-cost equipment – used robotic surgery to remove fewer prostates than states with less strict or no laws.


Jacobs and his colleagues write in The Journal of Urology that the price of such robots, and the questions surrounding whether or not robotic surgery to remove a prostate is better than the old-fashioned way should make it an “ideal target” for review under the laws.


In September, for example, one of the studies that have questioned the usefulness of robotic surgery found that men who had robotic surgery ended up having fewer short-term complications, but questioned its long-term benefits and whether the hefty price tag of $ 1.5 million in startup costs is worth it. (see Reuters Health article of Sep. 12, 2012:)


But another recent study found robotic surgery led to fewer complications, fewer readmissions to the hospital, and fewer deaths due to surgery than traditional methods, according to Intuitive Surgical, the maker of the da Vinci Surgical System.


“That is significant for the patient and for reducing overall costs to the system,” wrote Angela Wonson, a spokesperson for Intuitive Surgical, in an email to Reuters Health.


Overall, in the new study, the use of robotic surgery to remove prostates in Medicare patients increased regardless of whether there were strict, less strict or no laws in place. Also, the chance a surgeon used robots had nothing to do with the laws.


RADIATION AND COSTS


A second study by another group of researchers looked at whether the laws limited the use of intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) or slowed the growth of healthcare costs related to prostate cancer.


IMRT allows doctors to focus radiation beams onto the cancer without harming healthy tissue.


However, the researchers write that IMRT is costly and – to their knowledge – has not been compared to other prostate cancer treatments in a randomized controlled trial, which is considered the “gold standard” of medical research.


In a group of Medicare patients, Dr. Ganesh Palapattu, the chief of urologic oncology at the University of Michigan and the study’s senior researcher, found that areas with the laws actually saw greater growth in IMRT use.


Palapattu and his colleagues found that IMRT use increased from about 2 percent of all prostate cancer treatments in 2002 to almost half in 2009 in areas with the laws.


In areas without the laws, IMRT use increased from about 11 percent of all prostate cancer treatments to about 42 percent over the same time span.


The laws also didn’t seem to help control prostate cancer treatment costs when the researchers compared the price to treat one person with prostate cancer in states with laws, compared to states without laws.


Palapattu told Reuters Health that it may be time to reevaluate the regulations.


“If the goal is to limit the overutilization of more expensive therapies and to improve efficacy or health, then we have to reexamine how we’re doing this,” he said.


Jacobs told Reuters Health that there is more research to be done, because his group’s study did not look at how many applications for equipment may have been turned down by the states’ approval board.


“I think if we really want to get to the bottom of how effective these (laws) are, the next step is to really look closely at each state’s process of review,” he said.


Palapattu said he’d also like to see if the findings are the same for non-Medicare patients. But, for now, he said men with prostate cancer should talk to their doctors about which treatment is right for them.


“Newer isn’t always better, and it’s important to have a meaningful conversation with your physician on treatment options and which one might be best for you and why,” he said.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QzKXvE and http://bit.ly/R5AUhH The Journal of Urology, online November 19, 2012.


Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Serious About Free Markets? Prove It
















On Friday the Republican Study Committee, a policy shop for congressional Republicans, published a memo on how to fix copyright law. By Saturday afternoon the group’s executive director had pulled the memo, which had evidently failed to approach the subject with “all facts and viewpoints in hand.” This is Washington’s way of saying that an interest group hit the roof, and indeed, Ars Technica reports that lobbyists from the “content industry”—Hollywood and recording companies—pressured the group to renounce the memo.


Copyright being in fact broken, you can still read copies of the memo online. It lays out what copyright reform advocates have been saying for years. Copyright protections now extend 70 years past the life of the author; for a corporation, 95 years after publication. This, along with punitive laws on copyright violation, hinders creativity and innovation. These facts aren’t new. What’s new is the tone. Derek Khanna, the memo’s author, writes like an unashamed free marketeer, and in doing so manages to latch on to a larger point: Laws that help businesses often harm markets. From the memo:













Today’s legal regime of copyright law is seen by many as a form of corporate welfare that hurts innovation and hurts the consumer. It is a system that picks winners and losers, and the losers are new industries that could generate new wealth and added value. We frankly may have no idea how it actually hurts innovation, because we don’t know what isn’t able to be produced as a result of our current system. (Emphasis in the original.)


Radical stuff. There’s no one in Washington to lobby for industries that don’t exist yet, and ever so briefly, Khanna and the Republican Study Committee stepped into that breach. Then they stepped back, to gather more facts and viewpoints. Here’s one: Pro-business and pro-market are not the same thing. The most pleasant place for a business is not elbows-out in the middle of a free market, but sitting alone, atop a fat monopoly. Ask your local cable provider. The larger a business gets, the more it has to protect from the companies and industries that might follow it with something better or cheaper. And the best way to protect what you have is to have it written into law.


Real markets, with real competition, are most helpful to newcomers. Small businesses and new industries create new value. Once created, they, too, move to Washington to protect it. Witness the growth of Google (GOOG) and Facebook’s (FB) lobbying operations in the Capitol. Khanna describes extended copyright protection as rent-seeking—in his words, “non-productive behavior that sucks economic productivity and potential from the overall economy.” What’s true of Hollywood and the recording industry could be said of any established industry.


Luigi Zingales, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a regular contributor to Bloomberg View, points out that larger companies can lobby for special exemptions in the tax code. This creates complexity in the tax code, which punishes smaller businesses that can’t pay for tax lawyers and don’t have anyone’s buttonhole on Capitol Hill. Zingales prefers simple regulations and simple taxes, which are harder for lobbyists to game and easier for democracies to understand. He sees this as a bipartisan problem. The left is inclined toward more regulation, and the right is pro-business, rather than pro-markets.


The direction Khanna was headed—a defense of open, competitive markets at the expense of existing businesses—is still wide open space, claimed by no party. This summer, conservatives such as Timothy Carney at the Examiner and Yuval Levin at National Review urged Mitt Romney to back markets, not businesses. But he chose not to, even though he, in his day, disrupted existing markets of his own. Some enterprising Republican can still do it. Derek Khanna in 2016! He’s young. Maybe VP.


Businessweek.com — Top News



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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]
















Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9


Click here to view this gallery.


[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]













Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?


If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.


[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]


That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.


All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.


The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.


Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.


The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen


What It Is


If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).


Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).


I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.


Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.


The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.


The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)


Not Packing a Punch


As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.


Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.


The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.


Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.


The Good


Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.


Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.


The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.


Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.


There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.


Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.


Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.


Staying Connected


The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).


Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).


In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.


At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”


The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.


Review continues after FreeTime Gallery


FreeTime


Kindle HD FreeTime Start


Click here to view this gallery.


Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.


Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.


To Buy or Not to Buy


Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.


Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.


For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Ex-’Price is Right’ model gets $8.5M in damages
















LOS ANGELES (AP) — The producers of “The Price is Right” owe a former model on the show more than $ 7.7 million in punitive damages for discriminating against her after a pregnancy, a jury determined Wednesday.


The judgment came one day after the panel determined the game show’s producers discriminated against Brandi Cochran. They awarded her nearly $ 777,000 in actual damages.













Cochran, 41, said she was rejected when she tried to return to work in early 2010 after taking maternity leave. The jury agreed and determined that FremantleMedia North America and The Price is Right Productions owed her more than $ 8.5 million in all.


“I’m humbled. I’m shocked,” Cochran said after the jury announced its verdict. “I’m happy that justice was served today not only for women in the entertainment industry, but women in the workplace.”


FremantleMedia said it was standing by its previous statement, which said it expected to be “fully vindicated” after an appeal.


“We believe the verdict in this case was the result of a flawed process in which the court, among other things, refused to allow the jury to hear and consider that 40 percent of our models have been pregnant,” and further “important” evidence, FremantleMedia said.


In their defense, producers said they were satisfied with the five models working on the show at the time Cochran sought to return.


Several other former models have sued the series and its longtime host, Bob Barker, who retired in 2007.


Most of the cases involving “Barker’s Beauties” — the nickname given the gown-wearing women who presented prizes to contestants — ended with out-of-court settlements.


Comedian-actor Drew Carey followed Barker as the show’s host.


___


Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .


Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Do drunks have to go to the ER?
















NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – With the help of a checklist, ambulance workers may be able to safely reroute drunk patients to detoxification centers instead of emergency rooms, according to a new study.


Researchers in Colorado found no serious medical problems were reported after 138 people were sent to a detox center to sleep it off, instead of to an ER.













In 2004, according to the researchers, it’s estimated that 0.6 percent of all U.S. ER visits were made by people without any problems other than being drunk. Those visits ended up costing about $ 900 million.


“Part of the issue has been – as it is in many busy ER departments – there’s a lot of chronic alcoholics that are brought in by ambulance, police or just come in. Often they are brought in because they have not committed a crime or there is limited space in our detoxification center. So the majority were brought to the ER department,” said Dr. David Ross, the study’s lead author from Penrose-St. Francis Health Services in Colorado Springs.


Ross said the ambulance company where he serves as medical director created the checklist with the help of the local detox center, which provided limited medical care by a nurse, and the local hospitals to reduce the number of drunks without medical needs being sent to the local ERs.


They created a checklist with 29 yes-or-no questions, such as whether the patient is cooperating with the ambulance worker’s examination and if the patient is willing to go to the detox center.


The patient was sent to the ER if the ambulance worker checked “no” on any question.


The researchers then went back to look at the patients they transported between December 2003 and December 2005 to see whether or not any of them ended up having serious medical problems at the detox center.


During that two year period, the ambulance workers transported 718 drunks. The detox center received 138 and the local ERs got 580.


Overall, 11 of the patients who were taken to detox were turned away because there was no room, their blood alcohol level exceeded the limit, their family came to pick them up or they were combative.


Another four patients at the detox center were taken to the ER because of minor complications, including chest and knee pain. However, there were no serious complications reported.


“We really believe that we did not miss anybody with a serious illness and injury that didn’t go to the ER as they should have,” said Ross.


But the researchers write in the Annals of Emergency Medicine that their study did have some limitations.


Specifically, the researchers did not plan in advance to do a study when they were creating the checklist, which means their findings are limited to whatever information was collected at the detox center and ERs.


Also, the number of people who were sent to the detox center in their study is relatively small, so it’s hard to tell how many serious complications they’d see among a larger group of people.


“We tried to estimate how likely we would have been to encounter a serious event… We estimated at most we’d encounter three serious adverse events (in 748 patients),” Ross told Reuters Health.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QgPCT5 Annals of Emergency Medicine, online November 9, 2012.


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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More government action on mergers

















The government plans to become more active in mergers and acquisitions involving UK companies.













The decision is part of the government response to the Kay Review into how to discourage short-termism in markets.


The government has decided it should “engage with companies and their investors… to promote investment which benefits the UK economy”.


Professor John Kay called for it to discourage acquisitions that would threaten a firm’s operations in the UK.


The government’s response comes in the week that the acquisition of Autonomy, which was once Britain’s biggest software company, by Hewlett Packard of the US has ended in acrimony and allegations of financial misbehaviour.


‘No blanket regulation’


The Kay Review was commissioned by Business Secretary Vince Cable and published in July.


The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills endorsed Prof Kay’s 10 principles for stock markets, which were designed to encourage more focus on the long-term returns from businesses rather than short-term profits.


Prof Kay also called for the way that directors are paid to be changed to encourage more long-term thinking.


He suggested that bonuses should only be paid in shares that could not be sold until after an executive left the company.


The government responded that it “does not believe there is a case for blanket regulation”, but hopes that its reforms, designed to empower shareholders and create more transparency in remuneration, will help bring about such good practice.


Similarly, Prof Kay proposed that bankers and investment managers should receive bonuses either in the form of shares in the firms for which they work, or an interest in the investment funds they manage.


Again, such shares could not be sold until they left the company.


The government plans to promote this as best practice rather than imposing it through regulation.


The application of Good Practice Statements for company directors, bankers and investors are to be encouraged by the government.


BBC News – Business



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Ivory Coast: New prime minister named
















ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — President Alassane Ouattara has tapped Foreign Minister Daniel Kablan Duncan to serve as prime minister in a new government one week after the surprise dissolution of cabinet.


The appointment of Duncan, a member of the PDCI party of former President Henri Konan Bedie, was announced at a press conference Wednesday by Amadou Gon Coulibaly, general secretary of the presidency.













Ouattara dissolved the cabinet last week over a feud between his political party and the PDCI over proposed changes to the country’s marriage law.


The PDCI supported Ouattara in the November 2010 runoff election in exchange for the prime minister’s post, helping him defeat incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office led to five months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives before Ouattara’s forces won.


Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Some gifts fall into the love-it-later category
















NEW YORK (AP) — Have you ever said “thank you” through clenched teeth? The gift in that nicely wrapped box was so not what you wanted: comfy clothes instead of designer duds, or a kitchen gadget instead of a shiny piece of jewelry.


Sometimes, though, the best gifts are the ones you use, and, frankly, most of us probably wear hoodies more than haute couture.













With a closet full of beautiful boots and gravity-defying heels, flat-foot, furry Uggs weren’t at the top of celebrity stylist-designer Rachel Zoe‘s shopping list. They were OK for other people — she might even have suggested them — but she didn’t see them fitting into her closet until someone gave her a pair.


“Once you put them on, you can’t go back,” Zoe says. “In my house, it’s now the family at-home shoe. I wear them all the time. My son has 10 pairs and my husband has 10 pairs.”


Bradford Shellhammer, founder of Fab.com, which sells unusual items like canvas carryalls screen-printed with images of designer handbags, says gifts fit into three categories: the things everyone knows you want, the bad surprises and the amazing things that make you wonder, “How did I live without it?”


A. Mitra Morgan, founder and chief curator of decorative home-goods website Joss & Main, can’t imagine her busy life without the wallet-phone case wristlet her mother gave her last year.


Morgan has almost unlimited access to the pretty things on so many gift lists. Her mother, however, thought her daily necessities were too scattered. She didn’t know it at the time, Morgan admits, but mom was right.


Morgan received another love-it-later gift, this one from her husband. He gave her flat-bottomed pizza scissors.


“Coming from my husband, this was at the level of receiving a vacuum. I thought, ‘Really, this is what we’ve come to?’” Morgan says. “But it’s awesome!”


Christine Frietchen, a shopping expert who is advising TJ Maxx and Marshall’s this year on their gift-giving programs, says a gift is something you wouldn’t get for yourself. And the best way to know you’ve given a successful gift, she says, is if the receiver becomes an evangelist for it.


Adam Glassman, creative director at O, The Oprah magazine, was never at risk of buying the Patagonia fleece sweatpants his brother got for him a few years ago. “Never in my life did I think I’d need sweatpants, but I live in them,” he gushes. “When I come home from work, they are my go-to item. I wear them more than any other clothes in my closet.”


The only gift he might treasure more is the Eddie Bauer silk long johns his other brother gave him, something else he didn’t think he needed or wanted.


“Where was the Tom Ford, the Gucci?” Glassman says with a laugh.


But after a few winters of layering the long johns under his more fashionable pieces, he’s now buying them as gifts for other people.


Shellhammer says friends and family can’t ask for the items offered on Fab.com because the website sells things people don’t know exist. Items such as a shower curtain with a map of Paris (what enthusiastic traveler wouldn’t want one?) or a pug T-shirt for your favorite dog lover. (Shellhammer predicts the Mountain Pug Tee will be a top seller this season. The entire shirt becomes the face of a pug, wrinkles, jowls and all.)


And Shellhammer says it’s OK to be playful and show a little sense of humor when giving a gift. You’d be surprised how many positive comments the website has received about a hedgehog dish brush, he says. “It just gives you that crack of a smile.”


Brian Berger says the Yumaki toothbrush his business partner gave him is a present he’ll always remember — and appreciate. And, it’s something he uses every day.


His partner was trying to make a point as he and Berger recently launched a men’s undergarment and socks business called Mack Weldon that also is courting customers with the idea of “elevated basics,” Berger explains.


Some other gift ideas from the experts:


—Kitchen knives.


—Comfortable earbuds.


—Colorful tights and leggings.


—Berry bowls.


—Miniature flashlights that fit in pockets and purses.


—Pretty soaps.


—Personalized tote bags.


A lot of people do skimp on themselves, especially in a season where they are spending so much money, so an upgrade of something mundane to luxurious — or at least more fun — can be a very thoughtful gift, says gift advisor Frietchen.


“Have you ever had a really nice hairdryer, a REALLY good dryer? You think a hairdryer is a hairdryer until you have a good one in your hand. It can change your life,” Frietchen says.


Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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McCartney, Houston, Dylan lead Grammy Hall of Fame inductees
















LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Music by Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Elton John and late singers Whitney Houston and James Brown will be inducted into the 2013 Grammy Hall of Fame, The Recording Academy said on Wednesday.


Paul McCartney & Wings‘ 1973 album “Band on the Run,” long credited with reigniting McCartney’s career following the Beatles’ split in 1970, was one of the 27 new inductees into the Grammy Hall of Fame, on display at the Grammy Museum in downtown Los Angeles.













Houston‘s self-titled 1985 debut album was also named an inductee, following the singer’s sudden death aged 48 in February this year. Australian hard-rock band AC/DC’s top-selling 1980 “Back in Black” album was also named a new entry.


The Recording Academy, which also runs the Grammy awards, picks songs and albums from all genres that are at least 25 years old, with either “qualitative or historical significance” to be considered annually for the Grammy Hall of Fame by a committee.


“Memorable for being both culturally and historically significant, we are proud to add (the 2013 inductees) to our growing catalog of outstanding recordings that have become part of our musical, social and cultural history,” The Recording Academy President and CEO Neil Portnow said in a statement.


As well as albums, the Grammy Hall of Fame also includes songs of historic and cultural significance and the inductees for 2013 see a range of classic American songs.


Iconic Dylan song “The Times They Are A-Changing” from 1964, R&B singer Ray Charles’ 1961 tune “Hit the Road Jack,” Rat Pack star Frank Sinatra’s 1980 “Theme from ‘New York, New York’”, and ‘Godfather of soul’ James Brown‘s 1965 classic “I Got You (I Feel Good)” were all honored.


Other 2013 inductees include Elton John‘s 1970 self-titled second album and American debut, Billy Joel’s 1973 hit “The Piano Man” and Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton’s 1953 R&B classic “Hound Dog,” later covered by Elvis Presley.


(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Andrew Hay)


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Longer waits for breast cancer patients on Medicare
















NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women with a new diagnosis of breast cancer who are covered by Medicare are waiting longer and longer to get treatment, according to a new nationwide study.


Researchers found that between 1992 and 2005, the average waiting time between being diagnosed and having surgery rose from 21 days to 32 days. The delay was especially long for black and Hispanic women, and for those living in large cities.













Still, the study team noted, it’s unclear how big a difference the extra week or two would make in women’s long-term health.


“I don’t believe the delays we’re seeing here are problematic, (but) we’re clearly going to need to keep any eye on it because if those delays keep increasing, they may become problematic,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Richard Bleicher.


Bleicher, from Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, and his colleagues analyzed cancer registry data and Medicare claims for 72,586 older adults diagnosed with breast cancer between 1992 and 2005, 99 percent of whom were women.


Over that period, both the time between a patient’s first breast cancer-related visit and her first biopsy increased, as did the time between biopsies and surgery, according to findings published this week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.


When the researchers accounted for patient characteristics such as tumor stage, as well as number and type of pre-surgery visits and screenings, the relative delay shrank from 11 days to five days.


Whether the extra waiting in more recent years is “clinically meaningful” remains to be seen, according to Bleicher‘s team.


Another report published in the same journal found that for women with advanced cancer, waiting 60 days or more for treatment was tied to a greater likelihood of dying in the five years after diagnosis.


Shorter delays, however, weren’t associated with worse outcomes.


Among 1,786 North Carolina women on Medicaid, the average time between diagnosis and treatment – usually surgery – was 22 days between 2000 and 2002, Dr. Electra Paskett from The Ohio State University in Columbus and her team found.


The length of that interval didn’t seem to affect a woman’s chance of surviving early-stage breast cancer. But for those with late-stage cancer, women who waited 60 days or more between diagnosis and treatment were 66 percent more likely to die of any cause over the next five years and 85 percent more likely to die of breast cancer, in particular.


In Paskett’s study, one in 10 women waited at least 60 days for treatment.


She pointed out that people on Medicaid, like those in her study, may have more problems getting timely treatment compared to people with private insurance.


“It could be that they had problems finding a doctor who would accept them, because they’re low income, or (there were) scheduling problems with the clinic,” Paskett told Reuters Health.


She recommended health systems look into having “patient navigators” to guide low-income people and others who may need help through the treatment process.


Bleicher said doctors and health systems can start using the new data to figure out how to consolidate the biopsies, second opinions and other visits that often happen between diagnosis and treatment.


But for now, he told Reuters Health that women with breast cancer shouldn’t panic if it takes them a few weeks to coordinate their surgery.


“Getting to the operating room for treatment is not something that’s an emergency, even though it feels like one,” Bleicher said.


Up to 60 days, Paskett said, should be “plenty of time to get second opinions, plenty of time to get consults and things like that.”


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/10tpzc9 and http://bit.ly/10tpIMu Journal of Clinical Oncology, online November 19, 2012.


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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HP’s Financial Mess Is Making Everyone Sorry
















You know who’s probably having the best day ever? Try Mark Hurd, the guy who had to resign as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in August 2010 under a cloud of HR shadiness.


Due in large part to the incompetence of the management that replaced him, and the board that oversaw it all, shares of the venerable Silicon Valley pioneer have since fallen 75 percent, visiting lows unseen since the mid-1990s. Just days after the firing, in letter sent to the New York Times, Hurd’s friend and soon-to-be-new boss, Oracle (ORCL) CEO Larry Mr. Ellison, declared: “The H.P. board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple (AAPL) board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.” Three weeks after his departure from HP, Hurd gave notice of his plans to cash out of more than $ 30 million in company stock.













Today, Hurd and Ellison, both at Oracle (now worth more than six HPs) must be belting out thunderous buhaahahhas. On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard announced an $ 8.8 billion charge, citing “a willful effort to mislead investors and potential buyers” at Autonomy, the U.K. software company Hurd’s short-lived replacement, Leo Apotheker, agreed to purchase for $ 10.3 billion.


“HP is extremely disappointed to find that some former members of Autonomy’s management team used accounting improprieties, misrepresentations, and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company, prior to Autonomy’s acquisition by HP,” Hewlett-Packard said in a statement.


Autonomy aside, HP forecast fiscal first-quarter earnings that missed analysts’ estimates amid a continued decline of its personal computer franchise. As for the fourth quarter: HP registered a net loss of $ 6.85 billion, compared with net income of $ 239 million a year earlier. It’s just the latest in a tragicomic series of largely self-inflicted wounds that have felled the tech giant. So what now? For starters, some freshly served mea culpas.


CEO Meg Whitman took to CNBC to publicly regret voting for the Autonomy deal when she was just a board member.


One investor who should be taking a major bow on HP is short-seller Jim Chanos, who this summer warned HP was the “ultimate value trap.” Looking ahead, it all raises the question: How much more time will shareholders give Meg Whitman and her board to turn around a supertanker that increasingly looks like it’s taking on water?


According to Jefferies (JEF) analyst Peter Misek, despite HP’s seemingly sufficient cash flow, its dividend “could be in serious danger” next year. While the company’s diminished market capitalization of $ 23 billion makes it look ripe for activist agitation or even euthanasia-by-takeover—Oracle, anyone?—directors have already moved to silence an internal agitator in their ranks.


ISI Group analyst Brian Marshall apologized to clients for recommending the stock: “We can no longer recommend investors buy shares of HP at current levels as negative information continues to pour out, the end is not in sight, and we no longer understand what we are ‘playing for.’ … HP has become the ‘quintessential value trap’ as material negative news overrides any small positive developments and forward estimates continue to decline at a rapid rate. We apologize to investors for our extremely poor performance on this attempted ‘value’ play.”


For added measure, Marshall quipped that HP has “more shoes than Imelda Marcos.”


Businessweek.com — Top News



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AP Exclusive: Syrian rebels seize base, arms trove
















BASE OF THE 46TH REGIMENT, Syria (AP) — After a nearly two-month siege, Syrian rebels overwhelmed a large military base in the north of the country and made off with tanks, armored vehicles and truckloads of munitions that rebel leaders say will give them a boost in the fight against President Bashar Assad‘s army.


The rebel capture of the base of the Syrian army’s 46th Regiment is a sharp blow to the government’s efforts to roll back rebels gains and shows a rising level of organization among opposition forces.













More important than the base’s fall, however, are the weapons the rebels found inside.


At a rebel base where the much of the haul was taken after the weekend victory, rebel fighters unloaded half a dozen large trucks piled high with green boxes full of mortars, artillery shells, rockets and rifles taken from the base. Parked nearby were five tanks, two armored vehicles, two rocket launchers and two heavy-caliber artillery cannons.


Around 20 Syrian soldiers captured in the battle were put to work carrying munitions boxes, barefoot and stripped to the waist. Rebels refused to let reporters talk to them or see where they were being held.


“There has never been a battle before with this much booty,” said Gen. Ahmad al-Faj of the rebels Joint Command, a grouping of rebel brigades that was involved in the siege. Speaking on Monday at the rebel base, set up in a former customs office at Syria’s Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, he said the haul would be distributed among the brigades.


For months, Syria’s rebels have gradually been destroying government checkpoints and taking over towns in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo along the Turkish border.


Rebel fighters say that weapons seized in such battles have been essential to their transformation from ragtag brigades into forces capable of challenging Assad’s professional army. Cross-border arms smuggling from Turkey and Iraq has also played a role, although the most common complaint among rebel fighters is that they lack ammunition and heavy weapons, munitions and anti-aircraft weapons to fight Assad’s air force.


It is unclear how many government bases the rebels have overrun during the 20-month conflict, mostly because they rarely try to hold captured facilities. Staying in the captured bases would make them sitting ducks for regime airstrikes.


“Their strategy is to hit and run,” said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general and Beirut-based strategic analyst. “They’re trying to hurt the regime where it hurts by bisecting and compartmentalizing Syria in order to dilute the regime’s power.”


The 46th Regiment was a major pillar of the government’s force near the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s economic hub, and its fall cuts a major supply line to the regime’s army, Hanna said. Government forces have been battling rebels for months over control of Aleppo.


“It’s a tactical turning point that may lead to a strategic shift,” he said.


At the 46th Regiment’s base, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) west of Aleppo, the main three-story command building showed signs of the battle — its walls punctured apparently from rebel rocket attacks. The smaller barracks buildings scattered around the compound, about 2.6 square kilometers (1 square mile) in size, had been looted, with mattresses overturned. A number of buildings had been torched.


Reporters from The Associated Press who visited the base late Monday saw no trace of the government troops who had been defending it — other than the dead bodies of seven soldiers.


Two of them, in camouflage uniforms, lay outside the command building. One of them was missing his head, apparently blown off in an explosion.


The rest were in a nearby clinic. Four dead soldiers were on stretchers set on the floor, one with a large gash in his arm, another with what appeared to be a large shrapnel hole in the back of his head. The last lay on a gurney in another room, his arms and legs bandaged, a bullet hole in his cheek and a splatter of blood on the wall and ceiling behind him as if he had been shot where he lay.


It could not be determined how or when the soldiers had been killed.


The final assault that took the base came after more than 50 days of siege that left the soldiers inside demoralized, according to fighters who took part.


Working together and communicating by radio, a number of different rebels groups divided up the area surrounding the base and each cut the regime’s supply lines, said Abdullah Qadi, a rebel field commander. Over the course of the siege, dozens of soldiers defected, some telling the rebels that those inside were short of food, Qadi said.


The rebels decided to attack Saturday afternoon when they felt the soldiers inside were weak and the rebels had enough ammunition to finish the battle, Qadi said. The battle was over by nightfall on Sunday. Seven rebel fighters were killed in the battle, said al-Faj of the rebels’ Joint Command. Other rebel leaders gave similar numbers.


It remains unclear how many soldiers remained in the base when the rebels launched their attack and what happened to them.


Al-Faj said all soldiers inside were either killed or captured. He said he didn’t know how many were killed, but that the rebels had taken about 50 prisoners, all of whom would be tried in a rebel court. Aside from the 20 prisoners seen at the rebel’s Bab al-Hawa base, the AP was unable to see any other captured soldiers.


The Syrian government does not respond to requests for comment on military affairs and said nothing about the base’s capture. It says the rebels are terrorists backed by foreign powers that seek to destroy the country.


Disorganization has plagued the Syrian opposition since the start of the anti-Assad uprising in March 2011, with exile groups pleading for international help even when they have no control over those fighting inside of Syria.


A newly formed Syrian opposition coalition received a boost Tuesday, when Britain officially recognized it as the sole representative of the Syrian people.


The National Coalition of the Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces was formed in the Gulf nation of Qatar on Oct. 11 under pressure from the United States for a stronger, more united opposition body to serve as a counterweight to more extremist forces.


British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Tuesday the body’s members gave assurances to be a “moderate political force committed to democracy” and that the West must “support them and deny space to extremist groups.”


The United States and the European Union have both spoken well of the body but stopped short of offering it full recognition.


Key to the body’s success will be its ability to build ties with the disparate rebel groups fighting inside Syria. Many rebel leaders say they don’t recognize the new body, and a group of extremist Islamist factions on Monday rejected it, announcing that they had formed an “Islamic state” in Aleppo.


Anti-regime activists say nearly 40,000 people have been killed since Syria’s crisis started 20 months ago.


___


Associated Press write Elizabeth Kennedy contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.


Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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