Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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“Fringe” Two-Hour Finale Set for January

























LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Fringe” might be on its way out, but it’s leaving with a bang.


The series, co-created by J.J. Abrams, will end its five-season run with a two-hour finale on January 18 starting at 8 p.m., Fox said Friday. The finale, which will also mark the series’ 100th episode, will bring the series to “a climactic conclusion,” the network said.





















“It has been an absolute honor to have been a part of the weird and wonderful world of ‘Fringe,’ Abrams said in a statement. “I will always owe the cast and crew for pouring their hearts and souls into every dimension of this series. Creating the show with Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman was a joy, but watching it evolve over the years into such an imaginative, insane and heartbreaking ride is nothing less than a thrill.”


The supernatural series, which stars Joshua Jackson, was a fan favorite, but has suffered in the ratings, and was renewed for a fifth and final season of 13 episodes in April.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

























Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.


On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.





















“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.


On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.


For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.




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“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”


For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.


Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.


“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”


One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.


The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.


“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”


With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.


“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”


When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.


“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”


Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Romney, Obama look for edge as campaign nears end

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. (AP) — Three days. Nine states — give or take. A magic 270 electoral votes. For President Barack Obama and rival Mitt Romney, the final touch-and-go stretch of campaigning is down to the numbers.

New hiring reports or a new jobless rate. Spending totals or early vote totals. Percentage points and rhetorical points. Frequency of stops or size of crowds. In a game of metrics, each camp is looking for that last measure that will separate them at the finish line.

After holding mostly small and mid-size rallies for much of the campaign, Obama's team is planning a series of larger events this weekend aimed at drawing big crowds in battleground states. Still, the campaign isn't expecting to draw the massive audiences Obama had in the closing days of the 2008 race, when his rallies drew more than 50,000.

Obama's closing weekend also includes two joint events with former President Bill Clinton: a rally Saturday night in Virginia and an event Sunday in New Hampshire. The two presidents had planned to campaign together across three states earlier this week, but that trip was called off because of Superstorm Sandy. And, of course, there is always Ohio, the top battleground of them all.

In a whiff of 2008 nostalgia, some of Obama's traveling companions from his campaign four years ago were planning to join him on the road for the final days of his last campaign. Among them are Robert Gibbs, who served as Obama's first White House press secretary, and Reggie Love, Obama's former personal aide who left the White House earlier this year.

Not to be outdone, Romney hosted a massive rally Friday night in West Chester, Ohio, drawing more than 10,000 people to the Cincinnati area for an event that featured rock stars, sports celebrities and dozens of Republican officials. It was a high-energy event on a cold night designed to kick off his own sprint to the finish.

Romney arrived in New Hampshire close to midnight on Friday after an 18-hour day on the campaign trail that took him from Virginia to Wisconsin to Ohio. He was attending a morning rally on the New Hampshire seacoast before making an afternoon appearance in Iowa, and two more in Colorado. He shifted an original plan to campaign in Nevada on Sunday in favor of a schedule likely to bring him back to Iowa, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Aides stress that his schedule is fluid and may change with little notice as they evaluate where his time is best spent.

On Saturday, Obama's first stop was in Mentor, Ohio, then he was campaigning in Milwaukee and Dubuque, Iowa, and ending the day in Bristow, Va. On Sunday, he was taking his campaign to New Hampshire, Florida, Colorado and, yes, Ohio.

Polling shows the race remains a toss-up heading into the final days. But Romney still has the tougher path; he must win more of the nine most-contested states to reach 270 electoral votes: Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Hampshire.

Romney has added Pennsylvania to the mix, hoping to end a streak of five presidential contests where the Democratic candidate prevailed in the state. Obama won Pennsylvania by more than 10 percentage points in 2008; the latest polls in the state give him a 4- to 5-point margin. Romney will campaign in the Philadelphia suburbs on Sunday. Obama aides scoff at the Romney incursion, but they are carefully adding television spending in the state and are sending Clinton to campaign there Monday.

The final frenzy of campaigning comes in the wake of Superstorm Sandy that has dominated much of the news coverage for the past several days as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut recover from the brunt of its force. Friday also offered an economic finale to the campaign with the release of October jobs reports that contained better than average economic news but gave both campaigns a talking point. Employers added a better-than-expected 171,000 jobs last month, but the jobless rate ticked up to 7.9 percent from 7.8 percent — mainly because more people jumped back into the search for work.

In crucial early voting, Obama holds an apparent lead over Romney in key states. But Obama's advantage isn't as big as the one he had over John McCain four years ago, giving Romney hope that he could make up that gap in Tuesday's election.

About 25 million people already have voted in 34 states and the District of Columbia. No votes will be counted until Election Day, but several battleground states are releasing the party affiliation of people who have voted early. So far, Democratic voters outnumber Republicans in Florida, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio. Republicans have the edge in Colorado.

___

Kuhnhenn reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.

Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

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Gruesome video raises concerns about Syria rebels

























BEIRUT (AP) — A video that appears to show a unit of Syrian rebels kicking terrified, captured soldiers and then executing them with machine guns raised concerns Friday about rebel brutality at a time when the United States is making its strongest push yet to forge an opposition movement it can work with.


U.N. officials and human rights groups believe President Bashar Assad‘s regime is responsible for the bulk of suspected war crimes in Syria‘s 19-month-old conflict, which began as a largely peaceful uprising but has transformed into a brutal civil war.





















But investigators of human rights abuses say rebel atrocities are on the rise.


At this stage “there may not be anybody with entirely clean hands,” Suzanne Nossel, head of the rights group Amnesty International, told The Associated Press.


The U.S. has called for a major leadership shakeup of Syria’s political opposition during a crucial conference next week in Qatar. Washington and its allies have been reluctant to give stronger backing to the largely Turkey-based opposition, viewing it as ineffective, fractured and out of touch with fighters trying to topple Assad.


But the new video adds to growing concerns about those fighters and could complicate Washington’s efforts to decide which of the myriad of opposition groups to support. The video can be seen at http://bit.ly/YxDcWE .


“We condemn human rights violations by any party,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, commenting on the video. “Anyone committing atrocities should be held to account.”


She said the Free Syrian Army has urged its fighters to adhere to a code of conduct it established in August, reflecting international rules of war.


The summary execution of the captured soldiers, purportedly shown in an amateur video, took place Thursday during a rebel assault on the strategic northern town of Saraqeb, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.


It was unclear which rebel faction was involved, though the al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra was among those fighting in the area, the Observatory said.


The video, posted on YouTube, shows a crowd of gunmen in what appears to be a building under construction. They surround a group of captured men on the ground, some on their bellies as if ordered to lie down, others sprawled as if wounded. Some of the captives are in Syrian military uniforms.


“These are Assad’s dogs,” one of the gunmen is heard saying of those cowering on the ground.


The gunmen kick and beat some of the men. One gunman shouts, “Damn you!” The exact number of soldiers in the video is not clear, but there appear to be about 10 of them.


Moments later, gunfire erupts for about 35 seconds, screams are heard and the men on the floor are seen shaking and twitching. The spray of bullets kicks up dust from the ground.


The video’s title says it shows dead and captive soldiers at the Hmeisho checkpoint. The Observatory said 12 soldiers were killed Thursday at the checkpoint, one of three regime positions near Saraqeb attacked by the rebels in the area that day.


Amnesty International’s forensics analysts did not detect signs of forgery in the video, according to Nossel. The group has not yet been able to confirm the location, date and the identity of those shown in the footage, she said.


After their assault Thursday, rebels took full control of Saraqeb, a strategic position on the main highway linking Syria’s largest city, Aleppo — which rebels have been trying to capture for months — with the regime stronghold of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.


On Friday, at least 143 people, including 48 government soldiers, were killed in gunbattles, regime shelling attacks on rebel-held areas and other violence, the Observatory said.


Of the more than 36,000 killed so far in Syria, about one-fourth are regime soldiers, according to the Observatory. The rest include civilians and rebel fighters, but the group does not offer a breakdown.


Daily casualties have been rising since early summer, when the regime began bombing densely populated areas from the air in an attempt to dislodge rebels and break a battlefield stalemate.


Karen Abu Zayd, a member of the U.N. panel documenting war crimes in Syria, said the regime is to blame for the bulk of the atrocities so far, but that rebel abuses are on the rise as the insurgents become better armed and as foreign fighters with radical agendas increasingly join their ranks.


“The balance is changing somewhat,” she said in a phone interview, blaming in part the influx of foreign fighters not restrained by social ties that bind Syrians.


Abu Zayd said the panel, though unable to enter Syria for now, has evidence of “at least dozens, but probably hundreds” of war crimes, based on some 1,100 interviews. The group has already compiled two lists of suspected perpetrators and units for future prosecution, she said.


Many rebel groups operate independently, even if they nominally fall under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army. In recent months, rebel groups have formed military councils to improve coordination, but the chaos of the war has allowed for considerable autonomy at the local level.


“The killing of unarmed soldiers shows how difficult it is to control the escalation of the conflict and establish a united armed opposition that abides by the same ground rules and norms in battle,” said Anthony Skinner, an analyst at Maplecroft, a British risk analysis company.


Rebel commanders and Syrian opposition leaders have promised human rights groups that they would try to prevent abuses. However, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report in September that statements by some opposition leaders indicate they tolerate or condone extrajudicial killings.


Free Syrian Army commanders contacted by the AP on Friday said they were either unaware or had no accurate details about the latest video.


Ausama Monajed, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, called for the gunmen shown in the video to be tracked down and brought to justice.


He added, however, that atrocities committed by rebels are relatively rare compared to what he said was a “massive genocide by the regime.”


Regime forces have launched indiscriminate attacks on residential neighborhoods with tank shells, mortar rounds and bombs dropped from warplanes, devastating large areas. In raids of rebel strongholds, Assad’s forces have carried out summary executions, rights groups say.


Rebels have also targeted civilians, setting off car bombs near mosques, restaurants and government offices. Human Rights Watch said in September it collected evidence of the summary executions of more than a dozen people by rebels.


In August, a video showed several bloodied prisoners being led into a noisy outdoor crowd in the northern city of Aleppo and placed against a wall before gunmen shot them to death. That video sparked international condemnation, including a rare rebuke from the Obama administration.


The latest video emerged on the eve of a crucial opposition conference that is to begin Sunday in Qatar’s capital of Doha. More than 400 delegates from the Syrian National Council and other opposition groups are expected to attend to choose a new leadership.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a more unified and representative opposition, even suggesting the U.S. would handpick some of the candidates.


Clinton’s comments reflected growing U.S. impatience with the Syrian opposition, which, in turn, has accused Washington of not having charted a clear path to bringing down Assad.


The Syrian National Council plans to elect new leaders during the four-day conference but is cool to a U.S. proposal to set up a much broader group and a transitional government, said Monajed, the SNC member who runs a think tank in Britain.


U.S. officials have said Washington is pushing for a greater role for the Free Syrian Army and representation of local coordinating committees and mayors of liberated cities in Syria.


Nuland said that it would be easier for the international community to deliver humanitarian assistance to civilians and non-lethal aid to the rebels once a broader, unified opposition leadership is in place.


Such a body could also help persuade Assad backers Russia and China “that change is necessary” and that Syria’s opposition has a better plan for the country than the regime, she said.


___


Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.


Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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Read More..

NJ’s Springsteen, Bon Jovi join Sting in Sandy concert

























NEW YORK (Reuters) – New Jersey natives Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi will join Sting and other top music stars on Friday for a special television benefit concert on NBC to aid victims of Sandy, the giant storm that killed scores and devastated large sections of the U.S. Northeast.


The Walt Disney Co meanwhile announced a $ 2 million donation for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts on Thursday, while Disney/ABC Television Group designated November 5 as a “Day of Giving” wherein viewers of network and syndicated programming would be encouraged to help.





















Entertainment giant Viacom Inc. also announced a $ 1 million donation to the Mayor’s Fund NYC and local organizations.


Springsteen and Bon Jovi are both New Jersey natives who have often taken inspiration from their home state and used their star platform to highlight both its charms and challenges.


NBC said on Thursday that the commercial-free one-hour telecast, “Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together,” will air on Friday night and will include appearances by Christina Aguilera, Billy Joel, Jimmy Fallon and NBC News anchor Brian Williams.


The telethon, also to be shown on NBC Universal networks Bravo, CNBC, E!, G4, MSNBC, Style, Syfy and USA and live streamed on NBC.com, will benefit the American Red Cross, with proceeds going toward victims of Hurricane Sandy.


“Today” show anchor Matt Lauer, who announced the concert on air on Thursday, will host. Donors can also text the word REDCROSS to 90999 to make a $ 10 contribution.


On Tuesday, Springsteen tweeted a picture of the legendary Stony Pony club in New Jersey, saying “The Stone Pony stands proud despite hurricane Sandy!”


The club, at the ocean’s edge in Asbury Park, N.J., one of the shoreline communities lashed by the storm, has been associated with Springsteen since he performed there early in his career, and he continues to make appearances.


Bon Jovi cut short a promotional tour in the United Kingdom to rush back to his home state, where he established a charity restaurant several years ago.


“I really need to get back home having spoken to my wife and kids,” he told Britain’s Daily Mail before flying out of London. “I need to be with my people. Thankfully, my family are safe,” he said, adding “The devastation is off the charts.”


Large sections of the state, especially its famous coastline, were devastated by the monster storm this week.


Most of the other telethon performers are also from areas hard-hit by the storm, which killed at least 82 people in the United States and Canada and was the largest storm by area to hit the United States in decades. Millions remain without power, and emergency teams have struggled to reach the worst-hit areas.


Announcing ABC’s “Day of Giving” set for Monday, Anne Sweeney, president of Disney-ABC Television Group, said, “This coordinated effort between network and syndicated programming spanning news, daytime, primetime and late night will reach tens of millions of viewers with a specific call to action,” such as encouraging viewers to donate to the Red Cross.


(Reporting by Colleen Jenkins, and Chris Michaud; Editing by Alden Bentley and M.D. Golan)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Chicago’s Cook County is first metro area to levy gun tax

























CHICAGO (Reuters) – The county that includes Chicago on Friday approved a tax on firearms to help pay the healthcare costs from gun violence, the first major U.S. metropolitan area to impose such a tax as a form of gun control.


Under the plan, Cook County, Illinois, will impose a $ 25 tax on each firearm sold. The tax is expected to raise $ 600,000 in revenue in 2013.





















With Friday’s vote, the nation’s third most populous county with nearly 5.2 million residents becomes the first major U.S. metropolitan area to impose a tax as a form of gun control, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.


The Cook County board of commissioners voted 9 to 7 to approve the firearms tax.


Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who proposed the handgun tax, had earlier this week abandoned an additional proposed tax of 5 cents a bullet because the tax in some cases would have exceeded the price of ammunition.


Preckwinkle said that 670 victims of gun violence had been treated by the county’s health system last year. The average cost per patient was $ 52,000.


There have been 443 murders in Chicago so far this year, surpassing last year’s total of 435 and 22 percent more than in the same period a year ago, according to Chicago police.


Taxes on buyers or sellers of guns or ammunition have been proposed but failed in six states, including California, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.


Tennessee has a hunting-related 10-cent tax on sealed packages of shotgun shells and cartridges that applies to sellers. The money is used to support wildlife resources.


Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, has called the Cook County proposal another scheme to punish law-abiding firearm owners and dealers. He said it would prompt people to purchase weapons elsewhere.


(Editing by Greg McCune and Andrew Hay)


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Bloomberg cancels marathon amid outcry

BREAKING: The New York City Marathon will be canceled --> http://t.co/FeKe0PgP
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Canada will push to keep bank capital rules on schedule

























OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada will urge all countries to stick to the agreed schedule for implementing tougher bank capital rules at a November 4-5 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday.


The so-called Basel III rules are the world’s regulatory response to the financial crisis, forcing banks to triple the amount of basic capital they hold in a bid to avoid future taxpayer bailouts.





















They were to be phased in from January 2013 but areas such as the United States and the European Union are not yet ready and U.S. and British supervisors have criticized them as too complex to work.


The Canadian official, who briefed reports ahead of the meeting on condition that he not be named, said it was imperative that the rules, the timelines and the principles behind them be respected and said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would make that view known to his G20 colleagues.


Canada sees the European debt crisis as the biggest near-term risk to the global economy, and it also expects the U.S. debt crisis to be top of mind at the talks, the official said.


But the meeting takes place just before the U.S. presidential election and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be absent, so it remains unclear how much the G20 can pressure Washington on that front.


Some other countries have also scaled back their delegations, raising doubts about how meaningful the meeting will be.


The official dismissed that argument, saying high-level officials substituting for their ministers allowed for extremely important issues to be addressed anyway.


He said holding each country around the table accountable to its past commitments helped keep the momentum going toward resolving global economic problems.


(Reporting by Louise Egan; Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by M.D. Golan)


Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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‘Wilfred’ Gets 3rd Season From FX

























LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “Wilfred” will bark once more.


FX has given the series, which stars Elijah Wood as a struggling young man who befriends his neighbor’s curiously human-like dog, a third season, the cable network said Wednesday.





















The 13-episode third season will debut in June 2013.


In addition to the third-season order, writers/producers Reed Agnew and Eli Jorné have been promoted to executive producers and showrunners for the show. David Zuckerman, who adapted the series for American television from the Australian show of the same name and served as executive producer/showrunner for the first two seasons, will remain as executive producer.


“Wilfred’ averaged 2.63 million total viewers for its second season, with 1.71 million of them in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic.


TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Massachusetts tightens rules for compounding pharmacies

























BOSTON (Reuters) – Massachusetts adopted new regulations on Thursday that it said will allow it to keep a closer eye on compounding pharmacies, a class of drug supplier linked to the U.S. meningitis outbreak that has so far killed 29 people.


The state, home to the New England Compounding Center that produced the injectable steroids at the heart of the outbreak, said the new rules give it the authority to track the volume and distribution of drugs that compounding pharmacies sell to determine if they are operating like manufacturers.





















Compounding pharmacies – which are meant to assemble the raw ingredients of any medication one prescription at a time, not in industrial scale runs – had prior to this year’s outbreak largely escaped the U.S. Food and Drug Administration‘s attention.


“Together with our federal partners, we will ensure that Massachusetts fulfills its responsibility in overseeing this transforming industry,” said Dr. Lauren Smith, interim commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.


The outbreak of fungal meningitis was triggered by steroids used as a treatment for back pain. Health authorities have said the New England Compounding Center failed to make medications in sterile conditions in its facility in Framingham, Massachusetts, outside Boston.


Massachusetts has closed three compounding pharmacies since the start of the outbreak.


(Reporting By Scott Malone. Editing by Andre Grenon)


Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Exasperation builds on Day 3 in storm-stricken NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — Frustration — and in some cases fear — mounted in New York City on Thursday, three days after Superstorm Sandy. Traffic backed up for miles at bridges, large crowds waited impatiently for buses into Manhattan, and tempers flared in gas lines.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city would send bottled water and ready-to-eat meals into the hardest-hit neighborhoods through the weekend, but some New Yorkers grew dispirited after days without power, water and heat and decided to get out.

"It's dirty, and it's getting a little crazy down there," said Michael Tomeo, who boarded a bus to Philadelphia with his 4-year-old son. "It just feels like you wouldn't want to be out at night. Everything's pitch dark. I'm tired of it, big-time."

Rima Finzi-Strauss decided to take bus to Washington. When the power went out Monday night in her apartment building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, it also disabled the electric locks on the front door, she said.

"We had three guys sitting out in the lobby last night with candlelight, and very threatening folks were passing by in the pitch black," she said. "And everyone's leaving. That makes it worse."

The mounting despair came even as the subways began rolling again after a three-day shutdown. Service was restored to most of the city, but not the most stricken parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the tunnels were flooded.

Bridges into the city were open, but police enforced a carpooling rule and peered into windows to make sure each car had at least three people. The rule was meant to ease congestion but appeared to worsen it. Traffic jams stretched for miles, and drivers who made it into the city reported that some people got out of their cars to argue with police.

Rosemarie Zurlo said she planned to leave Manhattan for her sister's place in Brooklyn because her own apartment was freezing, "but I'll never be able to come back here because I don't have three people to put in my car."

With only partial subway service, lines at bus stops swelled. More than 1,000 people packed the sidewalk outside an arena in Brooklyn, waiting for buses to Manhattan. Nearby, hundreds of people massed on a sidewalk.

When a bus pulled up, passengers rushed the door. A transit worker banged on a bus window, yelled at people inside, and then yelled at people in the line.

With the electricity out and gasoline supplies scarce, many gas stations across the New York area remained closed, and stations that were open drew long lines of cars that spilled out onto roads.

At a station near Coney Island, almost 100 cars lined up, and people shouted and honked, and a station employee said he had been spit on and had coffee thrown at him.

In a Brooklyn neighborhood, a station had pumps wrapped in police tape and a "NO GAS" sign, but cars waited because of a rumor that gas was coming.

"I've been stranded here for five days," said Stuart Zager, who is from Brooklyn and was trying to get to his place in Delray Beach, Fla. "I'm afraid to get on the Jersey Turnpike. On half a tank, I'll never make it."

The worst was over at least for public transportation. The Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North were running commuter trains again, though service was limited. New Jersey Transit had no rail service but most of its buses were back.

The storm killed at least 90 people in the U.S. New York City raised its death toll on Thursday to 38, including two Staten Island boys, 2 and 4, swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters.

In New Jersey, many people were allowed back into their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy ravaged the coastline. Some found minor damage, others total destruction.

The storm cut off barrier islands, smashed homes, wrecked boardwalks and hurled amusement park rides into the sea. Atlantic City, on a barrier island, remained under mandatory evacuation.

More than 4.6 million homes and businesses, including about 650,000 in New York and its northern suburbs, were still without power. Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn.

In darkened neighborhoods, people walked around with miner's lamps on their foreheads and bicycle lights clipped to shoulder bags and, in at least one case, to a dog's collar. A Manhattan handyman opened a fire hydrant so people could collect water to flush toilets.

"You can clearly tell at the office, or even walking down the street, who has power and who doesn't," said Jordan Spiro, who lives in the blackout zone. "New Yorkers may not be known as the friendliest bunch, but take away their ability to shower and communicate and you'll see how disgruntled they can get."

Some public officials expressed exasperation at the relief effort.

James Molinaro, president of the borough of Staten Island, suggested that people not donate money to the American Red Cross because the Red Cross "is nowhere to be found."

"We have hundreds of people in shelters throughout Staten Island," he said. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Josh Lockwood, the Red Cross' regional chief executive, said 10 trucks began arriving to Staten Island on Thursday morning and a kitchen was set up to distribute meals. Lockwood defended the agency, saying relief workers were stretched thin.

"We're talking about a disaster where we've had shelters set up from Virginia to Indiana to the state Maine, so there's just this tremendous response," he said. "So I would say no one organization is going to be able to address the needs of all these folks by themselves."

In Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, Mary Wilson, 75, was buying water from a convenience store that was open but had no power. She said she had been without running water or electricity for three days, and lived on the 19th floor.

She walked downstairs Thursday for the first time because she ran out of bottled water and felt she was going to faint. She said she met people on the stairs who helped her down.

"I did a lot of praying: 'Help me to get to the main floor.' Now I've got to pray to get to the top," she said. "I said, 'I'll go down today or they'll find me dead.'"

___

Contributing to this story were Associated Press writers Cara Anna, Verena Dobnik, Michael Hill, Karen Matthews, Jennifer Peltz and Christina Rexrode.

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Clinton calls for overhaul of Syrian opposition

























ZAGREB (Reuters) – The United States called on Wednesday for an overhaul of Syria‘s opposition leadership, saying it was time to move beyond the Syrian National Council and bring in those “in the front lines fighting and dying”.


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signaling a more active stance by Washington in attempts to form a credible political opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said a meeting next week in Qatar would be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against him.





















“This cannot be an opposition represented by people who have many good attributes but who, in many instances, have not been inside Syria for 20, 30, 40 years,” she said during a visit to Croatia.


“There has to be a representation of those who are in the front lines fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom.”


Clinton’s comments represented a clear break with the Syrian National Council (SNC), a largely foreign-based group which has been among the most vocal proponents of international intervention in the Syrian conflict.


U.S. officials have privately expressed frustration with the SNC’s inability to come together with a coherent plan and with its lack of traction with the disparate internal groups which have waged the 19-month uprising against Assad’s government.


Senior members of the SNC, Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups ended a meeting in Turkey on Wednesday and pledged to unite behind a transitional government in coming months.


“It’s been our divisions that have allowed the Assad forces to reach this point,” Ammar al-Wawi, a rebel commander, told Reuters after the talks outside Istanbul.


“We are united on toppling Assad. Everyone, including all the rebels, will gather under the transitional government.”


Mohammad Al-Haj Ali, a senior Syrian military defector, told a news conference after the meeting: “We are still facing some difficulties between the politicians and different opposition groups and the leaders of the Free Syrian Army on the ground.”


Clinton said it was important that the next rulers of Syria were both inclusive and committed to rejecting extremism.


“There needs to be an opposition that can speak to every segment and every geographic part of Syria. And we also need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” she said.


Syria’s revolt has killed an estimated 32,000. A bomb near a Shi’ite shrine in a suburb of Damascus killed at least six more people on Wednesday, state media and opposition activists said.


NEW LEADERSHIP


The meeting next week in Qatar’s capital Doha represents a chance to forge a new leadership, Clinton said, adding the United States had helped to “smuggle out” representatives of internal Syrian opposition groups to a meeting in New York last month to argue their case for inclusion.


“We have recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure,” she told a news conference.


“We’ve made it clear that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition. They can be part of a larger opposition, but that opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice which must be heard.”


The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition.


U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance.


It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance – a fact that Assad’s chief backer Russia says shows western powers are intent on determining Syria’s future.


Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.


Clinton said she regretted but was not surprised by the failure of the latest attempted ceasefire, called by international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi last Friday. Each side blamed the other for breaking the truce.


“The Assad regime did not suspend its use of advanced weaponry against the Syrian people for even one day,” she said.


“While we urge Special Envoy Brahimi to do whatever he can in Moscow and Beijing to convince them to change course and support a stronger U.N. action we cannot and will not wait for that.”


Clinton said the United States would continue to work with partners to increase sanctions on the Assad government and provide humanitarian assistance to those hit by the conflict.


(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; editing by Andrew Roche)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Changing channels; Sony, Sharp in turnaround battle

TOKYO (Reuters) - Sony Corp is likely to say it returned to an operating profit for July-September after it sold a chemicals business, but investors still aren't sure a consumer electronics revamp will deliver the profit growth the group seeks.


Sony shares, valued at less than $12 billion, have dropped 16 percent since end-June and its 5-year credit default swaps - the cost of insuring against debt default - have jumped by almost 60 percent. The benchmark Nikkei average is down by less than 1 percent.


The maker of Bravia TVs, Vaio laptops and PlayStation game consoles, battling weak demand and tough competition, is expected to say it earned operating profit of 33.8 billion yen ($424.7 million) in its second-quarter, after losing 1.6 billion yen a year ago, according to an average estimate from five analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Sony has sold a chemicals unit to state-backed Development Bank of Japan for 58 billion yen, and other asset sales may further inflate operating profit this business year. The Japanese group, which blazed a trail in the early 1980s with its Walkman portable music players, is closing the Shinagawa Technology Center, a 31-storey Tokyo office built in 1998 and may even sell the 37-storey Sony Tower, the New York headquarters of its U.S. business, according to media reports.


Sony has said it expects to reduce its global workforce by 10,000 people by end-March, around 6 percent of its total, as it seeks to lop 30 billion yen off its costs.


HIGH-RISK


Kazuo Hirai, who took over as CEO in April, has pledged to rebuild Sony around gaming, digital imaging and mobile devices, and nurture new businesses such as medical devices, as the TV business shrinks - Sony has lost close to $9 billion in TVs over the past 8 years. In late-September, Sony agreed to pay 50 billion yen to become the biggest shareholder in Olympus Corp, a world leader in medical endoscopes.


"The areas in which Sony is continuing to focus are of course high-risk, high-return markets," said JP Morgan analyst Yoshiharu Izumi in a recent report. "Although we expect (full-year) margin improvement in the electronics segment, we think it's too early to appraise a sustained recovery."


While battling weak demand for its products, fierce competition from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics and others, Sony is also up against a strong yen and a depressed global economy.


Panasonic Corp, a rival Japanese TV maker, said on Wednesday it will lose almost $10 billion this business year as it cleans its house of risky assets - writing down billions of dollars of goodwill and assets in its mobile and energy units and preparing for more restructuring that is likely to see it shift away from money-losing TVs and other consumer electronics.


OUTLOOK DIMMER


In August, Sony cut its full-year operating profit forecast by more than a quarter to 130 billion yen, still some way above the average forecast by 19 analysts for 107 billion yen. At a net level, Sony sees annual profit of 20 billion yen, while the market prediction is for around a third of that.


"It's unclear if Sony will cut its full-year operating profit guidance, but we see considerable potential for second-half shortfalls, mainly in smartphones and games," Goldman Sachs analyst Takashi Watanabe said in a client note.


Sales of Sony's handsets, including its Xperia smartphones, are expected to have slid by more than a fifth in July-September, to below 8 million devices, a Reuters poll showed last month. [ID:nL6E8LAL10] For next year, it's forecast to sell 34.4 million mobiles, about the same as Samsung shifts each month.


The South Korean firm and Apple are also encroaching on Sony's gaming business, and Hirai has cut the forecast for annual sales of the hand-held Vita and PSP consoles to 12 million from 16 million.


After four straight years of net losses, Hirai is also hampered by weakened finances. At end-June, Sony's shareholder equity ratio fell to below 15 percent - a rate of 20 percent is generally considered a healthy minimum.


While selling off non-core assets, Sony has also spent to bolster its business portfolio - laying out $1.8 billion in four months on the Olympus stake, a cloud gaming firm and a website for doctors, but this has prompted both Moody's and Standard & Poor's to lower their long-term debt rating on the company to the second-lowest investment grade.


SHARP DOWNTURN


At rival Japanese TV maker Sharp Corp, which also announces quarterly earnings on Thursday, the need to return to profit is more urgent.


The maker of Aquos TVs has secured a $4.6 billion bank bailout, and has pledged to axe 10,000 jobs, sell assets, and return to profit. At end-June, Sharp's shareholder equity ratio was 18.7 percent.


After adding restructuring charges, valuation losses on stocks of LCD display panels and other costs, Sharp is expected to post a 400 billion yen net loss for April-September, almost double the company's estimate, the Nikkei business daily reported last week.


In front-loading those costs, and taking the hit now, Sharp may be better placed to return to profit in the current second half of the year, allowing lenders to justify the bailout.


Sharp is said to be increasing production capacity for its high-definition power-saving IGZO screens, which it hopes to sell to makers of ultrabook computers, including Lenovo Group, Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard, Japanese media have reported.


For the second quarter, Sharp is expected to have made a 50.4 billion yen operating loss, according to the average of six analysts on Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.


Both Sharp and Sony may also have felt the impact of a recent dispute with China over ownership of islands in the East China Sea, which triggered sometimes violent protests against Japanese products. Sharp had almost a fifth of its revenues in China, while Sony has around 8 percent of its business there.


Sharp shares have more than halved since end-June, to record lows below 150 yen. Five years ago, the stock traded at above 2,440 yen. Its market value has slumped to below $2.4 billion.


($1 = 79.5800 Japanese yen)


(Additional reporting by Reiji Murai; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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A Minute With: Rapper RZA putting on “Iron Fists” for new movie

























LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Rapper and music producer RZA is best known as the leader of the hip-hop group the Wu-Tang Clan which also includes such popular members as Method Man, Ghostface Killah and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard.


RZA branched out into film, taking on small acting roles and scoring music, including the soundtrack for Quentin Tarantino‘s “Kill Bill: Vol. 1.”





















Now, nearly a decade later, 43-year-old RZA has combined his childhood love of martial arts movies to co-write with Eli Roth the feature film “The Man With the Iron Fists,” which he also directs and acts in the title role.


Shot on location in China, and co-starring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu, Iron Fists is set during the 19th century and sees several groups of warriors and assassins descend on a village in search of gold. The quiet and unassuming local blacksmith (RZA) ends up being the village defender.


RZA, whose real name is Robert Fitzgerald Diggs, sat down with Reuters in Hollywood to talk about the film and the future of the Wu-Tang Clan.


Q: You had to pull double duty, working simultaneously in front and behind the camera. How did you balance that?


A: “My spirit had to be extra strong to pull this off. It was difficult because in the morning (as the director) I’m worrying about everybody else, I’m talking fast. Then I have to get ready for the scene and I gotta sync my voice down to this guy. I gotta sync my spirit to him. He doesn’t smile once in the film. I smile. I’m not this morbid dude. He’s almost empty.”


Q: This is your biggest acting role to date. What did you learn as an actor?


A: “The thing about playing him that I could attest to as an actor was that I was lonely in China. I was personally lonely. And I think that shows on screen (in the character).”


Q: You’re in an exotic location with Russell Crowe and some of the biggest names in martial arts. How could you be lonely?


A: “I had no love, yo. You know what I mean? Going into a massage parlor is not gonna give you no love. I was yearning for it. For a brief minute there, I learned why actors fall in love with their co-stars.”


Q: How’s that?


A: “Because the only girl I had was (co-star/love interest) Jamie Chung. We all went out one night after shooting and Jamie had a guy friend with her. I looked over and I was so jealous. I felt weird. I told my buddy, ‘I’m about to punch this guy in the face!’ In that moment, I just felt that she was my woman. And the sad thing for me is, it would have been a one way street because she wasn’t interested in me at all.”


Q: Looking back on your first experience directing a studio movie, what do you think?


A: “It was hard work. It was 18 hour days. It was cold. The food was terrible sometimes and the language was an issue. But I kept it fun. I didn’t let nothing deter me from this path. I’m grateful and happy I had a chance to learn this craft and express it. I feel that out of everything I do as an artist – I make music, I write lyrics, I’m into fashion and clothing – filmmaking is the perfect medium and accumulates it all. I found what I should be doing. I matured into being this kind of person.”


Q: So many members of the Wu-Tang Clan are doing their own thing. Will you be assembling again soon for another album?


A: “Only time will tell. For now, I will say Iron Fists is Wu-Tang. We have all the members participating on the soundtrack. And if you look closely, you’ll notice that when (Rick Yune’s character) needs a second suit of knives, there are W’s on that second suit. You gotta look closely though. So the Wu-Tang is there. I made it subtly into the film so fans can enjoy it and feel the energy.”


Q: Some groups have their time in the spotlight and disappear. Others manage to evolve and stay relevant. Where is Wu-Tang at?


A: “To me, film is the medium that Wu-Tang needs to be at. I don’t think Wu-Tang needs to be in clubs while we gettin’ drunk and dancing. We need to be in theaters now where we sitting with our families and really appreciating our childhood in a different way. This is the reason why (movies like) ‘Iron Man’, ‘Captain America’, ‘Thor’, ‘The Avengers’ all work. Because we are adults who read comics and now we want our children to understand what we love.”


Q: So Iron Fists is the beginning of that for Wu-Tang – having others understand and appreciate the martial arts you all love?


A: “If Iron Fists goes over well and people accept it, we got great ideas for part two already. We’ve got a great sequel for all the characters and back stories that are so remarkable.”


Q: Sounds like you’re creating your own Marvel universe in a sense.


A: “Essentially, yes.”


(Reporting by Zorianna Kit, editing by Jill Serjeant)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Many women stop their asthma meds while pregnant

























NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Almost a third of women on asthma control medications stop using them during the first few months of pregnancy – despite advice that a mother’s uncontrolled asthma is more dangerous to the developing fetus than the drugs, according to a new study from the Netherlands.


The researchers could not determine why moms-to-be stop taking their asthma meds, or whether it led to any negative health effects, but the findings are concerning, said Lucie Blais, a pharmacy professor at the University of Montreal, who was not involved in the study.





















“Some studies show that uncontrolled asthma is bad for the fetus. You can have babies that will be small for their gestational age or low birth weight,” Blais told Reuters Health.


Both the Global Initiative for Asthma (GINA) and the U.S. National Asthma Education and Prevention Program recommend that women continue taking asthma medications throughout pregnancy, because the risks of exacerbated asthma are greater than the risks of the medication.


A lack of oxygen during development, known as hypoxemia, is one of the dangers to a fetus when its mother has uncontrolled asthma.


According to the GINA guidelines, there is not much evidence showing that asthma medications are harmful to the fetus, and “using medications to obtain control of asthma is justified even when their safety in pregnancy has not been unequivocally proven.”


To see how well pregnant mothers stick to their prescriptions, Priscilla Zetstra-van der Woude at the University of Groningen and her colleagues used information on more than 25,000 pregnancies from a prescription database in The Netherlands.


More than 2,000 of those pregnant women (about 8 percent) received a prescription for an asthma medication at least once during the study period, from 1994 to 2009.


Between 1994 and 2003, the women’s rate of asthma control medication prescriptions held steady before, during and after pregnancy.


From 2004 to 2009, however, the researchers saw a drop of 30 percent in the rate of asthma prescriptions filled in the first three months of pregnancy, compared to a woman’s pattern in the months before becoming pregnant.


When Zetstra-van der Woude’s group looked at the types of medications that women were cutting out, they saw that long-acting bronchodilators and combinations of these drugs with inhaled corticosteroids – used to keep moderate to severe asthma under control – were less popular during pregnancy than shortly before.


Prescriptions for these drugs declined by about 50 percent during the first trimester, from roughly 1.2 percent of pregnancies in the database down to 0.6 percent.


“Long-acting bronchodilators are usually prescribed for patients with more severe asthma, and discontinuation could lead to severe symptoms of respiratory distress,” the authors wrote in their report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.


Zetstra-van der Woude’s study could not say whether the drop off in asthma medications had any negative effects on the mother or baby, and it’s possible that women did not have any worsening of symptoms.


“The course of asthma often changes during pregnancy and some women may experience a relief of asthma symptoms, and as a consequence can do with less or with no medication at all. This is no problem as long as the asthma is under control,” Zetstra-van der Woude said in an email to Reuters Health.


“Doctors as well as women themselves should be informed about the importance of adequate asthma control during pregnancy and about the risks of poorly controlled asthma…for the unborn child,” said Zetstra-van der Woude.


Blais said asthma patients are not especially good at sticking to their medications to begin with, and pregnancy could add an extra hurdle because women might be afraid of taking any drugs during pregnancy.


On the other hand, pregnancy could serve as an opportunity to get women to become more adherent to their prescriptions if it means keeping their asthma in check.


“Maybe pregnancy could be a period in a woman’s life where she might listen more to the recommendations because it’s about her health, but also the fetus’s health,” she said.


SOURCE: http://tinyurl.com/9uuelcy The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, online October 15, 2012.


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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