Apple, Samsung allowed to add products in U.S. patent lawsuit

(Reuters) – A U.S. judge allowed Samsung Electronics Co Ltd to pursue claims the iPhone5 infringes its patents on Thursday, while also allowing Apple Inc to add claims that the Samsung Galaxy Note, Galaxy S III and the Jelly Bean operating system violate its patents.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal in San Jose, California, was the latest development in a continuing legal war by Apple against manufacturers like Samsung whose products use Google Inc’s Android software.

Representatives for both Apple and Samsung declined comment.

The case is one of two patent infringement lawsuits pending in the U.S. District Court in San Jose by Apple against Samsung. An earlier lawsuit by Apple that related to different patents resulted in a $ 1.05 billion jury verdict against Samsung on August 24.

Apple filed the second lawsuit in February, alleging that various Samsung smartphone and tablet products including the Galaxy Nexus infringed eight of its patents.

Samsung denied infringement and filed a cross-complaint alleging that Apple’s iPhone and iPad infringed eight of its patents.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction against pretrial sales of the Nexus in June. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned the sales ban on October 11.

Following the debut of the iPhone on September 21, Samsung sought to add it as an Apple product that infringed its patents. Apple moved likewise to add the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1, Samsung Galaxy S III and the Jelly Bean operating system in connection with the Galaxy Nexus.

In his ruling Thursday, Grewal said Samsung acted with “reasonable diligence” in asking the court to allow it to add the iPhone 5 to the case.

Apple did not oppose adding the iPhone5. Nevertheless, Grewal warned Apple to “think twice before opposing similar amendments reflecting other newly released products — e.g. the iPad 4 and iPad mini — that Samsung may propose in the near future.”

The case is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, 12-cv-00630.

(Reporting By Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Richard Pullin)

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Irish rally for government action on abortion

DUBLIN (Reuters) – At least 5,000 people marched to the offices of Ireland‘s socially conservative prime minister on Saturday to call for clearer guidelines on abortion following the death of a woman denied a termination.

It was the largest of a wave of protests across Ireland in recent days in response to the death of 31-year old Indian woman Savita Halappanavar who died of septicaemia following a miscarriage 17 weeks into her pregnancy.

The Irish health authority (HSE) has launched an inquiry into the death, which has reopened a decades-long debate over whether the government should legislate to explicitly allow abortion when the health of a mother is at risk.

Activists in the overwhelmingly Catholic country, which has some of the world’s most restrictive laws on abortion, say the refusal by doctors to terminate the pregnancy earlier may have contributed to Halappanavar‘s death.

“A vibrant, healthy woman starting her family life has died needlessly … because of the failure of successive governments to deal with this issue,” independent member of parliament Clare Daly told the crowd, which responded with chants of “shame.”

Irish law does not specify exactly when the threat to the life or health of the mother is high enough to justify a termination, leaving doctors to decide. Critics say this means doctors’ personal beliefs can play a role.

Despite a dramatic waning of the influence of the Catholic Church, which dominated politics in Ireland until the 1980s, successive governments have been loath to legislate on an issue they fear could alienate conservative voters.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny, whose ruling Fine Gael party made an election pledge not to introduce new laws allowing abortion, on Friday said he would not be rushed into a decision on the issue.

Halappanavar was admitted to hospital in severe pain on October 21 and asked for a termination after doctors told her the baby would not survive, according to her husband Praveen.

The foetus was surgically removed when its heartbeat stopped days later, but her family believes the delay contributed to the blood poisoning that killed Halappanavar on October 28.

“I just feel outrage,” said Mary Sheehan, a midwife in her 50s, who took part in the march with a sign that read “Vatican Republic killed Savita. “I want the message to out her parents that the Irish people are demanding change.”

The crowd also targeted the government’s junior coalition partner, the Labour Party, which is more socially liberal, for not doing more to force change on the issue, chanting “shame on Labour.”

(Reporting by Conor Humphries; editing by Jason Webb)

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To Get Rich in China Is Not So Glorious

In the course of a U.S. presidential campaign, the American public is bombarded with surveys asking voters to rank the relative importance of various issues, and whether they think the country is overall on the right track. Not so in China, where another leadership transition has just concluded, with the 18th Party Congress choosing Xi Jinping to succeed Hu Jintao as party secretary now and, in March, as president of China.

But a handful of recent studies do give some insight into public sentiment in the world’s second-largest economy on the eve of its once-in-a-decade leadership transition. The upshot: More wealth buys more cars and handbags, but not necessarily happiness—and white-collar workers in China’s fast-changing economy are the most likely in the world to say they’re more stressed out this year than last. Overall life satisfaction has declined since 1990.

“Sometimes I feel like I am driving down an expressway, speeding from one place to another, but I forgot the reason and I do not know the final destination,” says Rebecca Jiang, a 29-year-old civil servant. The petite woman, sipping a fruit smoothie at a teahouse, in many ways seems to be living the modern Chinese dream: Jiang moved from her hometown in Anhui province to Beijing for college in 2002; she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from respected universities, scored well on the highly competitive civil-servant exam, and in June got married. Yet these achievements have not erased the gnawing feeling that she is racing just to stay in place: “I do not have the time or energy to enjoy the scenery. Maybe it is about my personal goals: I am so busy I do not know what I really like, who I want to be. I am just traveling around. I am speeding even.”

Money is one source of stress. Home prices have quadrupled in a decade in Beijing, but salaries haven’t risen so fast. “My parents and my husband’s parents had to spend all their savings to buy us an apartment,” says Jiang. It’s out near the Sixth Ring Road—the capital’s outermost perimeter—and is a 90-minute to three-hour drive into central Beijing, depending on traffic. They bought it secondhand and paid 2 million RMB, or about $ 317,000.

She and her husband, who works for a multinational company, are keeping up with the rising costs and complexities of life in the crowded megacity—but just barely, she says. “We are too tired to talk in the evenings. We just go to bed, so we can get up early and do it again.” As for her job: “It is not so good as I thought it would be. Sometimes I have to work like a robot. You have to do what you are told to do, not what you think you should do.”

Recently the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences conducted a survey asking residents of China’s capital whether their quality of life had greatly improved, slightly improved, remained the same, or declined over the period 2005 to 2011. One-fifth of respondents said it had improved slightly, but two-fifths said it had declined. (Only 1 percent said life had improved greatly.)

“The fast changes in China as well as the uncertainties about the future create great psychological pressures,” says Peking University sociologist Xia Xueluan. “Happiness does not merely depend on wealth.” He adds: “For migrant workers, their major pressure is to keep up with costs of living, while for the urban white-collar workers, their major pressure is competition: extreme competition for promotion and recognition.”

Regus, a U.K.-based office-space company, this year polled white-collar workers around the globe and asked whether respondents agreed with the statement “My stress levels have risen in the past year.” The country with the highest proportion of “yes” respondents was China, by a significant margin: 75 percent. (No. 2 was Germany, at 58 percent.) Seventy-three percent of respondents in China said their job was a major source of stress.

In October, the Pew Global Attitudes Project released its survey results for China. Half of respondents said that corrupt officials were now a “very big problem” and 48 percent said the gap between rich and poor was. (In 2008, the responses to the same questions were, respectively, 39 percent and 41 percent.) Among Pew’s most arresting findings was identifying a widespread belief that China’s system creates not only inequality of wealth, but also inequality of opportunity. Nearly 8 in 10 respondents agreed with this statement: The “rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.”

“This country has a very unbalanced income structure, and for young working people it’s getting tougher and tougher to make a living” in the leading cities, says Han Cheng, a researcher with an international NGO in Beijing. As he sees it, the country’s meritocratic promise is waning: “Before, everyone was equally poor and unprivileged. But now there is a privileged class, and for people in that class, there are so many ways for them to receive benefits from their family.”

Richard A. Easterlin, an economist at the University of Southern California, in April published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on “life satisfaction” in China over the past two decades. Even as incomes have risen for all socioeconomic groups, he found that the percentage of people reporting their life satisfaction was “good or very good” had declined markedly from 1990 to 2007 for those of low and moderate incomes, while ticking slightly upward for China’s richest.

“One may reasonably ask, how it is possible for life satisfaction not to improve in the face of such a marked advance in per capita GDP from a very low initial level?” Easterlin wrote. “In answer it is pertinent to note the growing evidence of the importance of relative income comparisons and material aspirations in China, which tend to negate the effect of rising income.” In other words, money alone doesn’t bring happiness—having more money than your neighbor might.

Comparing her life to her cousin in her small hometown, Jiang expresses mixed feelings. Her cousin lives just a five-minute walk from her office, works fewer hours, and has a larger apartment for less money. “Sometimes I wonder why I stay in Beijing,” she reflects. But then, after a moment, she points out that if she has a child, living in China’s capital will “give him the chance to start life on a much bigger stage.” Of course, she quickly adds that she isn’t sure she wants a child—“it’s very expensive and takes a lot of energy; public kindergarten slots are hard to get and private ones are very costly. I’m expected to have a child, but I’m just not sure.”

Larson is a Bloomberg Businessweek contributor.

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Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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News Summary: UK court overturns Facebook demotion

PUNISHED: Britain‘s High Court ruled Friday that a man had been unfairly stripped of a management position and demoted for saying in a Facebook post that he was opposed to gay marriage.

COURT RULING: The court said the Trafford Housing Trust breached Adrian Smith‘s contract and a judge added that Smith had not done anything wrong. Smith had written on Facebook that gay weddings in churches would be “an equality too far.”

EVOLVING LAW: In Britain, same-sex couples can form civil partnerships that carry the same legal rights marriages do. The government plans to introduce legislation allowing civil marriages as well.

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Should doctors add a birth control “vital sign”?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – An effort to develop a birth control “vital sign” measure gets doctors to document women’s use of contraception, but it doesn’t make them any more likely to include family planning counseling during visits, according to a new study.

The proposed “vital sign” consists of questions about contraception and pregnancy.

“We were hoping that this would be a prompt for much more provision of counseling by clinicians and what we saw was it only minimally affected the type of counseling that women were given,” said Dr. Eleanor Schwarz, the lead author of the study and the director of the Women’s Health Services Research Unit at the University of Pittsburgh.

“We got better documentation (by doctors), but we can’t say that women were better informed,” she added.

Unlike blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs, use of birth control is not often addressed during doctor visits, Schwarz said, but it should be for women of childbearing age.

According to Schwarz’s study, published in the Annals of Family Medicine, six percent of pregnancies are exposed to prescription medications that can cause a birth defect, because a large proportion of pregnancies are unplanned and birth control counseling rarely happens during physician visits.

For a year and a half, the patients of all 53 doctors in the study filled out standard intake forms. If the patient said she would like to become pregnant or wouldn’t mind becoming pregnant, or if she said that she didn’t want to become pregnant but isn’t using birth control, the system flagged her form with a note to the doctor that said in bold text: “Consider chance of pregnancy when prescribing.”

For a second year and a half, the patients of 26 doctors answered the pregnancy and birth control questions, while the patients of the other 27 doctors continued to fill out the regular form.

The study included about 5,300 office visits made by 2,300 women of childbearing age.

Doctors in the contraceptive vital sign group were much more likely to write down their patients’ birth control method during the second half of the study when women answered the pregnancy and contraception questions than when their patients used the standard form.

During the first half of the study, these doctors documented birth control only 23 percent of the time, compared to 78 percent of the time in the second half of the study when their patients filled out the revised intake form.

Doctors whose patients did not provide the birth control vital sign information during both time periods had no change in their documenting practices – about 28 percent of visits contained information on the patient’s birth control.

Despite this improvement in documentation by the doctors who received a contraceptive vital sign, there were no changes in the amount of counseling that their patients received.

Even patients who were taking medications with a birth defect warning received no more family planning advice during the time when they answered the pregnancy and birth control questions than when they filled in the standard form.

“Simply providing this information to primary care physicians doesn’t seem to make a dramatic change in the rates of their provision of this counseling,” Schwarz told Reuters Health.

“Some of that may be because they have other competing clinical responsibilities and they only have so much time in a given visit and they don’t have a way to bill for providing contraceptive counseling,” she suggested.

PART OF AFFORDABLE CARE ACT

Dr. Melissa Fritsche, a physician at Spartanburg Regional Medical Center in South Carolina, said that’s especially true for patients who are taking medications that carry a birth defect risk.

“They often have more complex health histories and physicians often have a time crunch in terms of the number of things they can deal with in a visit,” she said.

The U.S. Affordable Care Act makes women with health insurance eligible to receive birth control and contraceptive counseling without any additional co-pays.

Although the vital sign system Schwarz developed was a good first step in getting doctors to pay attention to birth control and to write it down, Fritsche said it will be important to explore a variety of ways to get physicians to prioritize contraceptive counseling.

“I think improving and providing more education to primary care providers about contraceptive options would be also an excellent step,” she told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/PWJoWY Annals of Family Medicine, November/December 2012.

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Banks criticised over CPP sales

16 November 2012 Last updated at 19:00 ET

By Bob Howard Moneybox

Banks must share the blame for mis-sold card protection, after a regulator fined the firm CPP £10.5m, says an influential MP.

John Mann, who sits on the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, said most policies were sold when bank customers rang up to activate their cards.

The products were supposed to protect people against identity theft.

CPP has apologised and said it has taken steps to change its practices.

CPP sold a card protection product, which cost about £35 a year, that was designed to cover losses if a card was lost or stolen.

It said customers would benefit from up to £100,000 of insurance cover, but customers were already covered by their banks. Generally, cardholders are not liable for unauthorised card payments on lost or stolen credit and debit cards.

A second product was sold for £84 a year which was designed to cover costs if the customer’s identity was stolen.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

There’s no question there was deception in the way they were sold”

End Quote John Mann MP Treasury Select Committee member

Many customers were put in contact with CPP when they rang a number on their new bank card in order to activate it. Many thought they were talking to their bank, but they were in fact being put in touch with a salesperson from CPP.

CPP then used the opportunity of the call to offer card protection insurance. If the customer bought the product, the bank got a commission.

John Mann MP told Radio 4′s Money Box programme: “There’s no question there was deception in the way they were sold and there was deception on the profit margins which weren’t revealed to people. People were being diddled.”

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) found that CPP overstated the risks and consequences of ID theft when this insurance was being sold. During the period of mis-selling between January 2005 and March 2011, CPP sold 4.4 million policies and generated £354m in gross profit, the FSA said.

Bank scrutiny

Some 18.7 million policies were renewed during the same period, generating an income of £656m.

John Mann believes the regulator could have acted more quickly: “It’s taken an extremely long time. The amount of money which the banks were profiteering on was enormous. This was almost a way of banks printing profits for themselves.”

He welcomed the FSA’s action and hopes the regulator will take tough actions against any bank which acts against the interests of its customers: “I think they need to do more of this. I think they need to get underneath the behaviour of the banks. They have a duty to their customers to act openly, transparently and honestly.”

Santander, RBS/NatWest, Barclays and HSBC have all had business partnerships with CPP during the period the FSA investigated. They all said they were in discussions with the FSA over the issue.

However, the fine from the FSA does not include this and only relates to the hundreds of thousands of direct sales by CPP.

‘Sorry’

New CPP chief executive Paul Stobart said the company had taken steps to overhaul its practices.

Continue reading the main story

CPP products

• Card protection: Covers the cost of unauthorised use of lost or stolen cards. However, these costs are generally covered by a bank


• ID theft protection: Gives access to credit reports and various legal fees. The FSA says that risks and consequences of ID theft were overstated by CPP

“We are deeply sorry for the errors and wrongdoings of the past and are paying a heavy penalty through what is a large fine,” he said in a statement.

“The next steps for the team are to complete the transformation programme and to rebuild our business and our reputation in the market.”

It has adhered to a FSA request to stop sales of the insurance products, unless they are part of a package. It has also stopped trying to retain the business of customers who ring to cancel their policies.

Customers who are on auto-renewal of the product now have a 60-day cooling off period to change their mind over buying the insurance, compared with a 14-day option previously.

Details about compensation for customers are still being discussed by CPP, some of its main business partners, and the FSA. Some customers will be written to by CPP.

The FSA has agreed to CPP paying the fine in instalments, owing to the company’s financial position. It has been told to complete the payments by December 2014.

BBC News – Business

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Israel moves on reservists after rockets target cities

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli ministers were on Friday asked to endorse the call-up of up to 75,000 reservists after Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day.

The rocket attacks were a challenge to Israel‘s Gaza offensive and came just hours after Egypt‘s prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited the enclave and said Cairo was prepared to mediate.

Israel’s armed forces announced that a highway leading to the Gaza Strip and two roads bordering the enclave would be off-limits to civilian traffic until further notice.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area on Friday, and the military said it had already called 16,000 reservists to active duty.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior cabinet ministers in Tel Aviv after the rockets struck to decide on widening the Gaza campaign.

Political sources said ministers were asked to approve the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, in what could be preparation for a possible ground operation.

No decision was immediately announced and some commentators speculated in the Israeli media the move could be psychological warfare against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. A quota of 30,000 reservists had been set earlier.

Israel began bombing Gaza on Wednesday with an attack that killed the Hamas military chief. It says its campaign is in response to Hamas missiles fired on its territory. Hamas stepped up rocket attacks in response.

Israeli police said a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Jerusalem area, outside the city, on Friday.

It was the first Palestinian rocket since 1970 to reach the vicinity of the holy city, which Israel claims as its capital, and was likely to spur an escalation in its three-day old air war against militants in Gaza.

Rockets nearly hit Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired them during the 1991 Gulf War. An air raid siren rang out on Friday when the commercial centre was targeted again. Motorists crouched next to cars, many with their hands protecting their heads, while pedestrians scurried for cover in building stairwells.

The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv strikes have so far caused no casualties or damage, but could be political poison for Netanyahu, a conservative favored to win re-election in January on the strength of his ability to guarantee security.

“The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza,” Netanyahu said before the rocket attacks on the two cities.

Asked about Israel massing forces for a possible Gaza invasion, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “The Israelis should be aware of the grave results of such a raid and they should bring their body bags.”

Officials in Gaza said 28 Palestinians had been killed in the enclave since Israel began the air offensive with the declared aim of stemming surges of rocket strikes that have disrupted life in southern Israeli towns.

The Palestinian dead include 12 militants and 16 civilians, among them eight children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday. A Hamas source said the Israeli air force launched an attack on the house of Hamas’s commander for southern Gaza which resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.

SOLIDARITY VISIT

A solidarity visit to Gaza by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, whose Islamist government is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, had appeared to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy.

Kandil said: “Egypt will spare no effort … to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce.”

But a three-hour truce that Israel declared for the duration of Kandil’s visit never took hold. Israel said 66 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip hit its territory on Friday and a further 99 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Israel denied Palestinian assertions that its aircraft struck while Kandil was in the enclave.

Israel Radio’s military affairs correspondent said the army’s Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defence preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stoked the flames of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to leap across borders.

It is the biggest test yet for Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, a veteran Islamist politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after last year’s protests ousted military autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, seen in the West as the cornerstone of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

Mursi has vocally denounced the Israeli military action while promoting Egypt as a mediator, a mission that his prime minister’s visit was intended to further.

A Palestinian official close to Egypt’s mediators told Reuters Kandil’s visit “was the beginning of a process to explore the possibility of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve”.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

Tunisia’s foreign minister was due to visit Gaza on Saturday “to provide all political support for Gaza” the spokesman for the Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, said in a statement.

The United States asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the Islamist movement to stop its rocket attacks.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas’s supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an “observer state” rather than a mere “entity” at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Xbox Live Celebrates 10 Years of Connecting Gamers

Thursday marks the tenth anniversary of Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming platform for the Xbox and the Xbox 360.

[More from Mashable: Steve Ballmer Hints at Microsoft Building More Hardware]

For the last decade, Xbox Live has offered both a marketplace and online play space for gamers. It started in 2002 on Microsoft‘s original Xbox console; Xbox spokeperson Larry Hryb, better known as Major Nelson, said it launched with games like Ghost Recon, MechAssault and NFL Fever.

Now Xbox Live serves as a complete entertainment package for the Xbox 360. Players can still compete online and connect with others, but can also access all kinds of other services through their Xbox 360 as the console moves to position itself as a living room centerpiece. Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, HBO Go, ESPN and NBA Live, as well as on-demand movies from Zune. During this year’s election, Xbox Live offered full access to the debates and election coverage, thanks to a partnership with NBC.

[More from Mashable: New ‘Grand Theft Auto V’ Trailer Takes Game Violence to the Next Level [VIDEO]]

There are about 30 million Xbox Live subscribers, each with their own unique gamertag. Xbox Live was instrumental in the widespread adoption of achievements on games, which players unlocked for completing different in-game challenges. According to Hyrb’s Twitter account, gamers have unlocked 14.5 billion achievements in the past decade.

Xbox Live is the only online network on consoles that charges its users, at $ 60 a pop for a 12-month subscription.

To celebrate today’s anniversary, some long-time Xbox Live subscribers are receiving special edition Xbox 360s, according to Hyrb’s Twitter feed. Hyrb is also giving out one-year subscriptions to Xbox Live on his Twitter all day Thursday.

Do you have fond memories of playing Xbox Live in the past decade? Please share them with us in the comments.

1. Triforce Lamp

Know a Zelda fan in need of some power, wisdom and courage? This beautiful wood and acrylic lamp can be hung or shelved. The pixelated carvings on each side warm the room with dappled light. Price: $ 95.00

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy Rodrigo Denúbila, Flickr.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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“Exposure” to U.S. may raise immigrants’ obesity risk

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – A new study finds that the longer immigrants from Mexico, and their U.S.-born offspring, spend in the United States, the greater their odds of becoming obese.

Compared to similar individuals living in Mexico, researchers found the grandchildren of immigrants to the U.S. from Mexico were three times more likely to be obese adults.

“We just couldn’t believe the fact that we found roughly a threefold increase from the one extreme… to the people on the other side,” said the study’s lead author Karen R. Florez, an associate social scientist at the non-profit research institute Rand Corporation, in Santa Monica, California.

Past research has found that immigrants to the U.S. are typically healthier in many ways than people in their ethnic groups who were born in the U.S.

In February, one study found that Hispanics born abroad had a much lower risk of stroke than their counterparts who were either born or spent most of their lives in the U.S. (see Reuters Health story of March 7, 2012.)

Florez and her fellow researchers said it’s also been established that U.S.-born Mexican Americans have greater odds of being obese than their family members who originally migrated from Mexico.

But the team wanted to extend that comparison to people who are still living in Mexico, in an attempt to tease apart and identify factors in the U.S. environment, or in the fact of being a migrant, that might influence obesity risk.

For the study, the researchers used one database from Mexico and another from the U.S. with information on 3,244 people’s body mass index (BMI), a measurement of weight in relation to height.

In adults, a healthy BMI is between 18.5 and 25. Anything above a BMI of 30 is considered obese.

Each person in the study population was separated into groups depending on how long they had been “exposed” to the U.S., if at all.

For example, one group consisted of those who lived in Mexico and had no family in the U.S.; at the other extreme were U.S.-born Mexican Americans whose grandparents were the first to immigrate.

The researchers found that among those whose grandparents first immigrated to the U.S., about 32 percent of men and 36 percent of women were obese.

That’s nearly double the proportion of men (17 percent) and women (14 percent) living in Mexico without any ties to the U.S. who were obese.

Overall, with a few exceptions, the results showed a trend of increasing obesity as “exposure” to the U.S. grew.

Kiarri Kershaw, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, points out, however, that while a larger percentage of the grandchildren were obese than their immigrant grandparents, the study did not say how long the grandparents had lived in the U.S.

Still, it is unique and valuable that the researchers included comparisons to people still living in Mexico, said Kershaw, who was not involved in the study, even though the findings are consistent with what is already known.

As for why a larger percentage of people may be obese the longer they or their families have been in the U.S., Florez and her colleagues write that one theory centers on the so-called food environment.

For example, the team notes in its brief report, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, that a 12-ounce Coca-Cola in the U.S. has 240 calories with 65 grams of sugar, compared to the same drink in Mexico with 150 calories and 39 grams of sugar.

Kershaw said there could be other reasons too.

“I think it’s complicated. It could be the food environment; it could be stress with acculturation or the loss of support networks when a person moves to a new country. I don’t think that’s clear,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZLXGeV Archives of Internal Medicine, online November 12, 2012.

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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U.S. says to take steps to fill FHA capital hole, avoid bailout

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration said on Thursday it planned to take steps to fill a capital hole at the Federal Housing Administration to lessen the need for a taxpayer bailout.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said an independent actuary had found that the mortgage insurance agency’s capital reserve ratio – a gauge of its buffer against loan losses – had fallen into negative territory and represented a negative economic value of $ 16.3 billion.

It said the actuary’s estimates had not taken into account $ 11 billion in expected capital accumulation and steps the administration planned to outline on Friday to shore up the agency, which insures one out of three U.S. mortgages. (Reporting by Timothy Ahmann and Margaret Chadbourn; Editing by Eric Walsh)

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France urges Mali to step up talks with rebels

PARIS (AP) — France‘s president called Thursday for stepped-up talks between Mali’s government and any leaders from its breakaway north “who reject terrorism,” even as African nations geared up for a possible military operation against Islamic extremists there.

President Francois Hollande‘s comments suggested a growing openness to dialogue with the extremists, but he remained committed to supporting the military planning effort.

Northern Mali fell to Islamic extremists in April, after coup leaders toppled the government in Bamako, Mali‘s capital. Fearing that northern Mali could become the latest hotbed of terrorism, France has been a driving force in international efforts to bolster Mali’s army to drive the Islamists from power.

Hollande spoke with interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore by phone on Thursday, partly to detail European efforts to help strengthen Mali’s army.

In recent days, representatives from the most moderate of three al-Qaida-linked groups that control northern Mali have been meeting with Burkina Faso‘s president, appointed as a mediator.

“France reiterates its wish that political dialogue will intensify between Malian authorities and representatives of northern populations who reject terrorism,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. “The acceleration of this dialogue must accompany the progress in African military-planning efforts.”

Earlier this week, the African Union approved a plan that calls for 3,300 African troops to be deployed in order to win back Mali’s north. European countries including France and Germany have expressed a willingness to provide military trainers and logistics support, but have stopped short of committing combat troops.

France, like many European countries, fears that the arid, northern Sahel region of Mali could become a breeding ground for terrorism, where al-Qaida and its allies could plot hostage-takings and attacks in Europe or beyond.

France has millions of people whose families hail from former French colonies in north and west Africa. Authorities have long been concerned that French-born militants could travel abroad for terrorism training and return home later to possibly carry out attacks.

French authorities are already investigating two French citizens who were arrested in Mali and neighboring Niger and are suspected of seeking to join up with the al-Qaida-linked extremists, a judicial official told The Associated Press.

Ibrahim Ouattara, a 24-year-old native of the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers who has dual French and Malian nationality, was arrested inside Mali this month and remains in custody there, the official said.

Separately, a 27-year-old Frenchman was arrested in August in Niger and has since been handed over to authorities in France, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss terrorism cases publicly.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Verizon says 1.4 million customers back on its fiber optic network

(Reuters) – Verizon Communications said fiber optic services have been restored to more than 1.4 million customers hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

The provider of telephone, Internet and television services said on November 1 that it may take another two weeks to restore telecommunication services for its customers after flooding and power outages knocked out services.

The company said it completed 364,000 repairs across the mid-Atlantic and northeast regions.

Verizon said it will provide credits for landline customers and fix equipment damaged due to the hurricane.

Verizon shares were up at $ 42.39 after the bell on Wednesday. They closed at $ 42.24 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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BAFTA Shifts Corporate Sponsors for Film Awards

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – You can’t buy awards, but when it comes to the BAFTAs you can certainly sponsor them.

The British Academy of Film and Television is switching up its corporate partners for its annual film awards ceremony. That means it’s out with telecom company Orange, and in with broadband network EE.

The overhaul will require some rechristening of BAFTA‘s hardware. After 15 years with Orange in the title, the ceremony will now be known as the EE British Academy Film Awards. Moreover, its award for best newcomer will now be named the EE Rising Star Award.

The BAFTAs are the U.K. equivalent of the Oscars. EE is a sister company of Orange, so the shakeup is not seismic.

The EE British Academy Film Awards will be broadcast on the BBC on February 10, 2013 and will be hosted by satirist Stephen Fry.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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To Quit Smoking, Go Where the Cigarettes Aren’t

Nov. 15 marks this year’s Great American Smokeout, when organizations across the country encourage smokers to quit the habit. Yahoo asked former smokers to offer to advice to those trying to stop smoking.

FIRST PERSON | If you can find a place where nicotine is unattainable, go there, and stay for at least one month. That is the easiest way to quit smoking. I know this from experience.

When I was still a kid, I was able to quit smoking for more than two years, and it would not have been possible for me to do so had I not found myself in a situation where tobacco was unattainable. Correction: Cigarettes were available but at a cost of $ 5 per cigarette. And that is not a typo. Being a youthful troublemaker, I found myself incarcerated. Hence, the $ 5 per cigarette price.

But after being detained for quite some time, I was able to quit smoking and never go through withdrawal or have “nic-fits” (a.k.a. nicotine tantrums). By now you are saying “Let’s be realistic, I can’t go to jail.” Right. But you can do your best to replicate that type of isolation.

Certain spas and hotels have prohibited smoking. Ditto for cottage rentals. The second time I quit smoking I did so by taking a rather short trip to the Berkshires and rented a house directly on Lake Garfield. The owner would not allow smoking, so I packed up everything I needed and headed out leaving cigarettes behind. The key here is to bring everything that you need on trip like this. Doing so will ensure that you do not purchase cigarettes (or bum one) if you have to head to the store because you forgot something. Once you make it past the first few days you can start to think of yourself as a non-smoker and also start to congratulate yourself daily, or even hourly.

Being away from my regular routine, along with not having cigarettes, I found myself almost entirely remaking my schedule and my daily habits. Also I made sure to do this when it was cold out. This ensures two things: First, when it is cold outside and you are staying in a “non-smoking” house, you are less likely to want to go outside. The second thing it ensures is that it will be extremely affordable; when done in the “off-season.” While this is more expensive than Nicorette (or any other aids for quitting smoking), most do not realize that to actually quit smoking your behavior needs to change. This is why those products are called “aids.”

Feel free to take any one you like with you on your trip, but a change in environment is the best start. Even those that struggle with drugs or alcoholism are told in rehab that they need to change “people, places, and things.” And, naturally, these measures can only help someone quitting smoking.

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Airport capacity ‘costs UK £14bn’

14 November 2012 Last updated at 19:02 ET

A lack of capacity at Heathrow is costing the UK economy £14bn a year in lost trade, according to a report published by the airport.

That figure could rise to £26bn a year by 2030, the report said.

Heathrow bosses are keen to see a third runway built at the west London airport, but the government has ruled it out for the time being.

The government has asked a commission headed by Sir Howard Davies to advise on future UK airport capacity needs.

The Davies Commission is expected to present an interim report to the government by the end of 2013, with a full report due in the summer of 2015 – after the next general election.

‘Lay doubts to rest’

Heathrow’s report, “One hub or none”, was prepared for the airport by consultants Frontier Economics. It was commissioned to inform Heathrow’s response to the Davies Commission but is not its formal submission.

Continue reading the main story

I’ve just looked back through my notes from the start of the year.

“Dead and buried” was the phrase a senior person at the DfT used to describe to me a third runway at Heathrow. Just a few months after that Justine Greening, the Transport Secretary at the time, effectively told me that she was against the idea.

What a difference a few months and some expensive lobbying makes. Justine Greening has been unceremoniously shunted out of the way and the idea is now firmly back on the table. It’s also backed by some big hitters across the business world, unions, aviation bosses and many politicians.

But don’t let that fool you into thinking the diggers will move in any time soon, if ever.

First, there’s the rabid opposition it would face from the likes of London Mayor Boris Johnson, the Lib Dems and the hundreds of thousands of Londoners who’d be affected by the noise.

Second, Sir Howard Davies might not actually recommend it when he reports back in 2015, and even if he does, the next government will have to back it. If it clears all those hurdles, Heathrow’s owners then say it will take at least eight years to get planning permission and finally build the thing.

On Tuesday, London Mayor Boris Johnson met Sir Howard, stating his opposition to a third runway at Heathrow, and putting forward the case for a Thames estuary airport.

The all-party 2M Group, which represents more than 20 councils close to Heathrow, has said it will tell the Davies Commission that loosening restrictions on Heathrow’s existing runways would destroy the quality of life for people living near the flight path.

Heathrow chief executive Colin Matthews said: “If anyone was still in doubt about the importance of aviation to the UK economy, today’s report should lay those doubts to rest.”

The report said that the choice for the UK was not between two hubs or one, but one hub or none.

It said only one airport could operate as a hub in the UK and said the government could either do nothing and “let the UK fall behind competitors”, add additional capacity at Heathrow or close Heathrow and replace it with a new larger hub airport.

A Department for Transport spokeswoman said that the UK was one of the best connected countries in the world, and maintaining its airport network was vital to the economy.

“The strength with which the different options for achieving this are put forward shows precisely why we were right to set up a proper independent review with the timescale to consider fully what is in the country’s interest,” she said.

A report by the Policy Exchange think tank last month supported replacing Heathrow’s existing runways with four new ones immediately to the west of the current site as the best option for increasing airport capacity in the UK.

It also advocated much tighter restrictions on operating hours, permitted aircraft type and the steepness of take-off and descent, in order to reduce noise pollution over London from current levels.

Other options include building a second runway at Gatwick or Stansted, expanding Luton, or replacing Heathrow with an airport in the Thames Estuary, as favoured by Mr Johnson.

BBC News – Business

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Egypt recalls envoy to Israel after Gaza strike

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.

In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.

Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”

Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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RIM to release new BlackBerrys soon after Jan. 30

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heins is counting on BlackBerry 10 for a turnaround.

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

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

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

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Congress, Obama playing with dynamite, CEOs say of “fiscal cliff”

BOSTON (Reuters) – Corporate America is raising the volume of its plea that the U.S. government avert a year-end “fiscal cliff” that could send the nation back into recession, but chief executives aren’t pushing the panic button just yet.

With a heated election season in the rear-view mirror, executives are calling on the White House and congressional leaders to head off a self-imposed deadline that could bring $ 600 billion in spending cuts and higher taxes early in 2013 if they are unable to reach a deal on cutting the federal budget deficit.

The Business Roundtable on Tuesday kicked off a print, radio and online ad campaign on which it plans to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars featuring the chiefs of Honeywell International Inc , Xerox Corp and United Parcel Service Inc calling on lawmakers to resolve the issue.

In an opinion piece published on Tuesday evening on the Wall Street Journal’s website, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein urged the business community and the Obama administration to compromise and reconcile so as not to derail the fragile recovery.

One of the more dramatic warnings of the consequences of allowing the U.S. economy to go over the fiscal cliff came from Honeywell CEO David Cote.

“If the last debt ceiling discussion was playing with fire, this time they’re playing with nitroglycerin,” Cote said in an interview. “If they go off the cliff, I think it would spark a recession that’s a lot bigger than economists think. Some think it would just be a small fire. I think it could turn into a conflagration.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the U.S. economy would contract 0.5 percent in 2013 if the government fails to stop the budget cuts and tax increases – far below the 2 percent growth economists currently forecast.

A failure in Washington to solve the crisis by the year’s end could prompt major companies to curtail investment plans, said Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE Euronext , operator of the New York Stock Exchange.

“We simply won’t be investing in the United States. We will be investing elsewhere where we have more certainty of the outcome,” Niederauer said in an interview.

About a dozen top U.S. CEOs, including General Electric Co’s Jeff Immelt, Aetna Inc’s Mark Bertolini, American Express Co’s Ken Chenault and Dow Chemical Co’s Andrew Liveris are scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama on Wednesday to discuss the issue.

The four are members of “Fix the Debt,” an ad-hoc lobbying organization that this week launched an advertising campaign that advocates long-term debt reduction.

UNCERTAINTY FACTOR

Bank of America Corp CEO Brian Moynihan said on Tuesday that worries about the cliff have companies holding off on spending.

“That uncertainty continues to hold back the recovery,” Moynihan said, speaking at an investor conference in New York.

Sandy Cutler, CEO of manufacturer Eaton Corp , shared his concern.

“Until we solve the fiscal issues (in the United States and Europe), you’re not going to get back to normal GDP growth,” Cutler told investors on Tuesday.

CEOs are not alone in this worry. The CBO report warned that failure to reach a deal could push the U.S. unemployment rate up to 9.1 percent, the highest since July 1991. It is currently 7.9 percent.

Obama and the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives have signaled a more conciliatory tone since last week’s election, when Obama soundly defeated Republican challenger Mitt Romney, whose party retained a majority in the House.

Wilbur Ross, an investor known for taking stakes in distressed companies, is bracing for higher tax rates in 2013.

“We, like many people, have been trying to utilize gains this year. It does seem that the probability is that rates will go up,” Ross said in an interview with Reuters Insider. “We don’t have a “for sale” sign on anything. But we are mindful that there is a benefit to concluding things this year rather than next.

NO SIGNS OF PANIC

Concerns about the cliff have not prompted customers to cancel orders, though they have added to an overall level of uneasiness that has companies wary of making large capital purchases or hiring significant numbers of new workers.

“We haven’t seen the panicking, like, ‘I’m not going to order something because of the fiscal cliff,’” said Steve Shawley, chief financial officer of heating and cooling systems maker Ingersoll Rand Plc . “Customers are being very judicious with their orders.”

Likewise, JPMorgan Chase & Co CEO Jamie Dimon last month told investors he did not expect the negotiations to hurt lending in the fourth quarter.

“The fiscal cliff isn’t going to change us,” Dimon said, referring to JPMorgan’s commercial bank, which loans money to businesses. The bank’s investment banking side could be more vulnerable if the debate makes investors jittery, he allowed.

WEAPONS, MEDICINES IN THE CROSS-HAIRS

The defense and healthcare sectors are the most vulnerable to the fiscal cliff, as they face the threat of sequestration — automatic, across-the-board cuts to their funding.

Makers of weapons systems note that they have long been preparing for declining sales as the United States winds down two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The industry has already shed tens of thousands of jobs and closed facilities.

Lockheed Martin Corp’s new president and chief operating officer, Marillyn Hewson, told analysts on Monday her company had been preparing for tighter defense budgets for years, even before the sequestration deal.

“We aren’t going to see a major change,” said Hewson. “We’ve been very proactive as a leadership team in taking actions in recent years to address our cost structure, to look at how we can make our product more affordable.”

Automatic cuts to the federal budget could reduce federal health spending by $ 21.5 billion in 2013, potentially affecting everything from Medicare to the Food and Drug Administration, according to an analysis by PwC’s Health Research Institute.

Vincent Forlenza, the CEO of Beckton Dickinson & Co , said the labs he supplies have held off on buying new instruments because of the threat of spending cuts.

“If we don’t get to a deal we will have another year of paralysis and putting off research,” Forlenza said. “The impact of uncertainty on the (National Institutes of Health) budget is causing our research customers to put off research.”

(Additional reporting by John McCrank, Nick Zieminski, Caroline Humer, Jed Horowitz, Sharon Begley and Daniel Wilchins in New York, Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina, Nichola Groom in Los Angeles, Andrea Shalal-Esa in Washington, Debra Sherman in Chicago and Anna Driver in Houston; Editing by Patricia Kranz and Steve Orlofsky and Carol Bishopric)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Asia stocks up after successful Greek bond auction

BANGKOK (AP) — Asian stock markets edged higher Wednesday as the threat of an imminent meltdown in debt-swamped Greece receded.

Greece held a sale of short-term treasury bills Tuesday that will help it make a crucial debt repayment at the end of the week. Without the sale, Athens would have found it impossible to repay the €5 billion ($ 6.4 billion) treasury bill maturing on Friday, the day on which Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has said Greece would run out of money.

Analysts at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong called the auction of 4.06 billion euros ($ 5.15 billion) in bills a success and said that it “added to the positive tone” helping to boost stocks.

Japan‘s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.1 percent to 8,670.67. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 0.6 percent to 21,321.15 and Australia‘s S&P/ASX 200 gained 0.2 percent to 4,387.60. South Korea‘s Kospi fell 0.1 percent to 1,887.62.

Benchmarks in Taiwan, Indonesia and the Philippines also rose. Singapore and Malaysia fell.

Greece has been locked out of the international long-term debt market by exceptionally high interest rates demanded for its bonds since 2010, and has been relying on funds from rescue loans by other euro countries and the International Monetary Fund.

Traders also have to deal with the uncertainty posed in the U.S. by the looming “fiscal cliff,” a set of U.S. government spending cuts and tax increases that will take effect automatically at the beginning of next year unless U.S. leaders reach a compromise before then.

Economists have warned that the U.S. economy could be thrown into a recession if nothing is done. Worries about the fiscal cliff pushed U.S. stocks to one of their worst weekly losses of the year last week.

On Tuesday, the Dow closed down closed down 0.5 percent at 12,756.18. The Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 0.4 percent to 1,374.53. The Nasdaq composite index lost 0.7 percent to 2,883.89.

Benchmark oil for December delivery was down 14 cents to $ 85.24 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 19 cents to finish at $ 85.38 per barrel on the Nymex on Tuesday.

The euro rose to $ 1.2715 from $ 1.2705 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 79.48 yen from 79.41 yen.

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Follow Pamela Sampson on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pamelasampson

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend

PERTH, Australia (AP) — In a new twist to the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal, the Pentagon said Tuesday that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under investigation for alleged “inappropriate communications” with a woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.

Panetta said that he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.

A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen’s communications were with Jill Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.

Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Broadwell, who is Petraeus’ biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.

Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

The senior official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen’s problematic communications.

The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen’s communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.

“Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter,” the official said. He said Allen currently is in Washington.

Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.

The FBI’s decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta’s decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.

Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.

In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen’s nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined.” He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.

Panetta said President Barack Obama was consulted and agreed that Allen’s nomination should be put on hold. Allen was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.

NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen’s appointment.

“We have seen Secretary Panetta‘s statement,” NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. “It is a U.S. investigation.”

Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama’s nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford’s hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.

___

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ads are Invading Gadgets and Apps that You Already Paid For

Most of us are used to seeing ads on stuff that we get for free, like smartphone and tablet apps or online news websites. But you’re probably also used to being able to pay to remove ads, whether by getting the premium version of an app or even upgrading to a new computer that doesn’t have so much garbage on it.

As it turns out, this strategy doesn’t work so well anymore. That’s because companies are starting to put “special offers” all over things that you buy … and this time, it’s not just the usual preinstalled trashware. Here’s a look at some of the latest strikes in the war for your attention.

​Microsoft: Xbox Music and Xbox Live

Last year’s redesign of the Xbox 360 dashboard featured prominent ads, including videos that played automatically, even if you were paying for a $ 60/year Xbox Live Gold membership. This year, Microsoft introduced its new Xbox Music Pass, which allows you to stream millions of songs to your Xbox 360 or Windows 8 PC. It has an ad-supported free trial mode, which lets you listen to songs (and ads) for free for the first six months before imposing a monthly listening limit.

But according to Neowin.net editor Owen Williams, the ads stay even if you pay $ 99 per year for the subscription service. On top of that, you can’t use Xbox Music on the actual Xbox at all (beyond a 30-day trial) unless you ​also​ pay for an Xbox Live Gold Subscription. That’s almost $ 160 per year for two separate subscriptions, and in return you apparently get twice the ads.

​Microsoft: Windows 8

If the ads in the Xbox Music service aren’t enough, Microsoft has also put ads all over its Windows 8 operating system. Whether you buy a new Surface tablet or you pay for the upgrade from Windows 7 such as through buying a separate boxed copy, you still have to contend with ads in “many of the bundled [Modern] UI applications,” according to Williams.

​Amazon: The entire Kindle lineup

Amazon began selling Kindle e-readers with “special offers” a while back. These appeared on the lock screen, and replaced the normal screen saver, which was more literary.

When Amazon announced its new lineup of Kindle Fire HD tablets not too long ago, it turned out that every single one of them had advertisements. Not just on the lock screen, but now even in a corner on the home screen while you’re browsing through your books and apps.

At the time, Amazon wasn’t offering any way to get rid of these ads on the new Kindle Fire HD, but the company now gives people the option to buy Kindles sans ads for an extra $ 15. That won’t help you with in-app ads, though, if you use free apps.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

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