‘Star Wars’: Disney’s Latest Empire

“Attacking that battle station ain’t my idea of courage. It’s more like suicide,” Han Solo warns Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars film. As we know, the rebels’ wild risk-taking pays off, and they manage to bring down the Empire over the course of George Lucas’s holy trilogy. The movies may be an affirmation of chancy interstellar battle tactics, but Walt Disney’s (DIS) $ 4.05 billion purchase of Lucasfilm is best understood as an effort to make film production as risk-free as possible. On the analysts’ conference call following the announcement, Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger was asked, “What do Star Wars films come in lieu of, creatively?” The answer: non–Star Wars films. Iger explained: “We actually determined that we’d be better off as a company releasing a sequel to Star Wars than probably most other, I’ll call them not-yet-determined, films.”

It’s no wonder Iger hopes to remove the risk from blockbuster moviemaking. This year, Walt Disney Studios released the disastrous John Carter and, in 2011, Mars Needs Moms, reported to be the biggest money loser in film history. (The company’s Marvel, Pixar, and Disney Animation output has performed much better.) Up next are a series of pricey hedged bets, new prospective franchises based on old material: the prequel Oz: The Great and Powerful (opening March 8); Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger (July 3); and Maleficent (March 14, 2014), starring Angelina Jolie as the villainess from Sleeping Beauty. Iger noted, “One of the things that we were very mindful of is the value of brands and the value of properties that are both known and loved.” That describes Star Wars to a T but may not apply to a title like Maleficent, whose value is, let’s say, not yet determined.

With the Lucasfilm acquisition, one 2015 tent-pole slot goes to a Star Wars film, as sure a bet as exists in the film industry. The irony is that Star Wars itself is Hollywood’s greatest example of the virtue of risk-taking. After being rejected by Universal Studios (CMCSA) and United Artists, Lucas’s odd sci-fi scenario was picked up by Twentieth Century Fox (NWSA). As Lucas remembers in Tom Shone’s book Blockbuster, “Alan [Ladd Jr., president of Fox] …  said, ‘I don’t understand this movie, I don’t get it at all, but I think you’re a talented guy, and I want you to make this.’ ” Dumped into theaters inauspiciously in late May, when its presumed audience of children would still be in school, Star Wars drew massive crowds. The flocks of fans have kept the franchise minting money ever since (an estimated $ 33 billion so far, combining worldwide box office, DVD sales, and merchandise).

Granted, with its comparatively modest budget—$ 40 million in today’s dollars—Star Wars wasn’t as big a swing as recent big-budget gambits. And even Hollywood isn’t immune from surprises: Who’d have thought Liam Neeson would win fanboy love not from his roles in the Star Wars or Batman series, but from Taken, a $ 25 million revenge flick?

Oddly, the very particular set of skills that Lucas demonstrated with Star Wars—creating an original film franchise—are ones that contemporary studios refuse to nurture even with their favorite filmmakers. Today’s nerd-God auteurs came to prominence introducing original concepts in television (J.J. Abrams and Joss Whedon), independent film (Christopher Nolan), or animation (Brad Bird), but their marquee live-action Hollywood credits have come on preexisting properties such as Star Trek, The Avengers, Batman, and Mission: Impossible. James Cameron’s Avatar is the exception that proves the rule: These days, if you want to make an event movie based on an original screenplay set in a galaxy far, far away, you’d better have written and directed the highest-grossing movie of all time first. It’s a sign of the times that the Lucas-worshiping Abrams, Whedon, and Cameron all have their next films lined up: sequels to Star Trek, The Avengers, and Avatar.

George Lucas’s sale to Disney will give a new generation of writers and directors the opportunity to make Star Wars movies. But it diminishes their chances of creating the next Star Wars.

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Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.

SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

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Review: iPad Mini charms, but screen is a letdown

NEW YORK (AP) — I bet the iPad Mini is going to be on a lot of wish lists this holiday season. I also bet that for a lot of people, it’s not going to be the best choice. It’s beautiful and light, but Apple made a big compromise in the design, one that means that buyers should look closely at the competition before deciding.

Starting at $ 329, the iPad Mini is the cheapest iPad. The screen is a third smaller than the regular iPads, and it sits in an exquisitely machined aluminum body. It weighs just 11 ounces — half as much as a full-size iPad — making it easier to hold in one hand. It’s just under 8 inches long and less than a third of an inch thick, so it fits easily into a handbag.

The issue is the screen quality. Apple has been on the forefront of a move toward sharper, more colorful screens. It calls them “Retina” displays because the pixels — the little light-emitting squares that make up the screen — are so small that they blend together almost seamlessly in our eyes, removing the impression that we’re watching a grid of discrete elements.

The iPad Mini doesn’t have a Retina screen. By the standards of last year, it’s a good screen, with the same number of pixels as the first iPad and the iPad 2. The latest full-size iPad has four times as many pixels, and it really shows. By comparison, the iPad Mini’s screen looks coarse. It looks dull, too, because it doesn’t have the same color-boosting technology that the full-size model has.

This is not an entirely fair comparison, as the full-size iPad starts at $ 499 and weighs twice as much. The real issue is that this year, there are other tablets that are cheaper than the iPad Mini, weigh only slightly more and still have better screens.

Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire HD costs $ 199 and has about the same overall size as the Mini. While the Kindle’s screen is somewhat smaller (leaving a bigger frame around the edges), it is also sharper, with 30 percent more pixels than the Mini. Colors are slightly brighter, too.

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD costs $ 229 for a comparable model with 16 gigabytes of storage and has a screen that’s even sharper than the Kindle HD’s. It’s got 65 percent more pixels than the iPad Mini. (There’s a $ 199 model with half the memory, and the storage space can be expanded with inexpensive memory cards.)

Why do tablets from two companies chiefly known as book stores beat Apple’s latest for screen quality?

Sharper screens are darker, requiring a more powerful backlight to appear bright. That, in turn, would have forced an increase in the battery size. That’s the reason the first iPad with a Retina display was thicker and heavier than the iPad 2. So to keep the iPad Mini thin while matching the 10-hour battery life of the bigger iPads, Apple had to compromise on the display.

This can’t last, though. By next year, it will likely be even more obvious that Apple is seriously behind in screen quality on its small tablet, and it will have to upgrade to a Retina display somehow. That means this first-generation iPad Mini will look old pretty fast.

The display causes a few other problems, too. One is that when you run iPhone apps on the Mini, it uses the coarsest version of the graphics for that app — the version designed for iPhones up to the 2009 model, the 3GS. You can blow the app up to fill more of the screen, but it looks pretty ugly. The full-size iPad uses the higher-quality Retina graphics when running iPhone apps, and it looks much better.

Some apps adapted for the iPad screen don’t display that well on the Mini screen, either, because of the smaller size. Buttons can be too small to hit accurately, bringing to mind Steve Jobs’ 2010 comments about smaller tablets. The late Apple founder was of the vociferous opinion that the regular iPad was the smallest size that was also friendly to use.

In some apps, text on the Mini is too small to be comfortably read — the section fronts in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal apps are examples of this.

Of course, in some other respects, the iPad Mini outdoes the Fire and the Nook, so it isn’t just the tablet for the buyer who needs the prettiest and the thinnest. In particular, the Mini is a $ 329 entry ticket to the wonderful world of iPad and iPhone apps. For quality and quantity, it beats all the other app stores. (Oddly, there’s an inverse relationship between screen quality and app availability in this category — the Nook HD has the best screen and the fewest apps, while the second-best Kindle Fire HD has middling access to apps.)

The Mini also has front- and back-facing cameras, for taking still photos and video and for videoconferencing. The Kindle Fire HD only has a front-facing camera for videoconferencing. The Nook HD doesn’t have a camera at all.

In short, the iPad Mini is more versatile than the competition, and I’m sure it will please a lot of people. But take a look at the competition first, and figure that by next year, we’ll see something from Apple that looks a lot better.

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Peter Svensson can be reached at http://twitter.com/petersvensson

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About the iPad Mini:

The base model of the iPad Mini costs $ 329 and comes with 16 gigabytes of storage. A 32 GB model goes for $ 429 and 64 GB for $ 529. Soon, you’ll be able to get versions that can connect through cellular networks, not just Wi-Fi. Add $ 130 to the price.

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How Oscar entry “La Source” launched a campaign for clean water across Haiti

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The documentary “La Source” was originally conceived to be the tale of a single project, the efforts by a Princeton University janitor to bring clean water to a single village in rural Haiti.

Now, the film’s exposure has spawned a soccer field, two schools and 20 more villages with sanitary water.

The Oscar-nominated film, which follows Haiti-born Josue Lajeunesse as he fulfills his dream of bringing bacteria-free water to his native village, launched a regional project by the nonprofit Generosity Water to improve the lives of rural Haitians.

“We’re hoping that we can really continue to build on what this film was about,” producer Jordan Wagner told TheWrap’s Steve Pond at Thursday night showing of “La Source,” which is part of TheWrap’s annual Award Screening Series.

Seated at Los Angeles‘ Landmark Theatre alongside director Patrick Shen, producer Brandon Vedder and Lajeunesse, Wagner, the nonprofit’s director, said his organization has already carved out a spot in the film’s namesake village for a school and soccer field.

“We’re putting a plan together to use the film at screenings to mobilize people,” Wagner said. “We figured out which plot of land we’d buy, we’re going to build a primary school and a secondary school.”

Wagner met Lajeunesse after he was filmed in Shen’s “The Philosopher Kings,” a movie about the stories behind college custodians.

He began raising money after hearing the janitor’s lifelong desire to pipe clean water down from a mountain spring and into his village. Students and faculty at Princeton, where Lajeunesse worked after coming to the United States in 1990, held benefit concerts and donated money to help fund the project.

For Lajeunesse, the plan was decades in the works.

“I was seven or eight years old, but I had in my mind that I have to go to school in order to do something to take the people and the town out of the situation,” Lajeunesse told Landmark Theatre audience. “Day by day, day by day, I save, I save, I save but we didn’t know how we were going to start it.”

Then, in January 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 250,000 people and destroying the impoverished nation’s infrastructure.

“The first time we went was about a month after the earthquake,” Vedder said, adding that the humidity in the Caribbean country nearly destroyed the cinematographers’ cameras. “It was hard to be another camera sticking in these people’s faces, right in their lives.”

The troubles didn’t end there. After the pipeline was built and Lajeunesse and his brother installed the spigots, it was clear how the film would begin and finish, but the meat of the story was harder to pare down.

“We knew where it would end, but the whole kind of middle part of the narrative was what was tricky,” Shen said. “We had to have discussions every night about the strategy for the next day.”

And, with $ 30,000 going toward the actual water project, the filmmakers quickly ran out of cash to support themselves during the months of editing.

“The story was happening whether we decided to make this film or not,” Wagner said. “We were scrambling to make this happen. We have the money for the project and this is happening and now we don’t have money for the film.”

Still, the filmmakers raised enough to keep the film alive after its spring-to-fall shooting schedule in 2010, working through the footage for a year and creating a few different cuts of the film before finding its final shape.

The movie premiered at Washington’s Silverdocs festival – the same festival where Wagner first met Shen at a screening of “The Philosopher Kings,” beginning a relationship that led directly to “La Source.”

The film was also a selection in the International Documentary Association’s annual DocuWeeks showcase, which qualified it for the Academy Awards via week-long engagements in Los Angeles and New York in August.

And though Lajeunesse hasn’t been back to Haiti since July 2010 – his janitorial and taxi jobs, plus four kids, make travel difficult – he said he gets phone calls from his family frequently, updating him on how the town is improving.

“Everyone there is so happy,” he said, drawing applause from the audience. “They have water and they don’t know what to say. All the town, they say, ‘tell everyone thank you for me.’”

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Vatican vows to fight gay marriage after gains in U.S., Europe

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican, reacting to strong gains for gay marriage in the United States and Europe, on Saturday pledged never to stop fighting attempts to “erase” the privileged role of heterosexual marriage, which it called it “an achievement of civilization”.

For the second consecutive day, Vatican media weighed in with forceful editorials restating the Roman Catholic Church‘s unequivocal opposition.

“It is clear that in Western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union,” Father Federico Lombardi, said in a tough editorial on Vatican Radio.

Voters in the U.S. states of Maryland, Maine and Washington state approved same-sex marriage on Tuesday, marking the first time marriage rights have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.

Same-sex unions have been legalized in six states and the District of Columbia by lawmakers or courts.

Lombardi’s editorial on Vatican Radio, which is broadcast around the world in some 30 languages, called the votes myopic, saying “the logic of it cannot have a far-sighted outlook for the common good”.

Lombardi, who is also the Vatican’s chief spokesman as well as director of Vatican Radio and Vatican Television, said there was “public acknowledgement” that “monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilization”.

WHY NOT POLYGAMY?

“If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry?” he said.

Polyandry is when a woman has more than one husband.

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but homosexual acts are. It says the rights of homosexuals should be guaranteed but that their unions should not be recognized as equal to heterosexuals and they should not be allowed to adopt children.

The constitutionality of restricting marriage to unions between a man and a woman is widely expected to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court soon.

The powerful U.S. Catholic Bishops conference, which is already at odds with the administration of President Barack Obama because its health care law obliges most employers to cover contraception, is expected to take a lead in trying to influence the court’s decision.

Earlier this week, Spain’s highest court upheld a gay marriage law, and in France the socialist government has unveiled a draft law that would allow gay marriage.

An editorial in Friday’s edition of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said local Catholic Churches in many countries around the world were “the sentinels of religious freedom” for opposing gay marriage.

It called support for gay marriage “an ideology founded on political correctness which is invading every culture of the world”.

“The Church is the only institution to say that, while persecuting homosexuals in undoubtedly unjust, opposing marriage between people of the same sex is a point of view that must be respected,” the Vatican newspaper editorial said.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Sophie Hares)

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Exclusive: Ally near $4 billion unit sale, GM in lead – sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ally Financial Inc is nearing a deal to sell its auto financing operations in Europe and Latin America for around $ 4 billion, with General Motors Co emerging as the lead bidder if the company decides to sell those operations as a whole, two sources familiar with the situation said.

Ally is still considering whether to split the business geographically – Europe and Latin America – and sell it to two different parties, the sources said on Friday. A deal could come as soon as next week, they added.

Details of an agreement have not yet been finalized and the outcome could still change, the sources said. Ally is still talking to a handful of financial institutions that have made separate bids for its European and Latin American assets, they said.

GM declined to comment. An Ally spokeswoman said: “We continue to be focused on maximizing shareholder value and finding the best solutions for the remaining international operations.”

(Reporting By Jessica Toonkel in New York and Rick Rothacker in Charlotte, North Carolina, Editing by Soyoung Kim, Bernard Orr)

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Jimmy Kimmel’s Family Members Are Apparently Fair Game

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: The Roots Take on ‘Call Me Maybe’ (and Win)

Watch this video, bookmark it, and watch it the next time you think you’d rather go home than wait in a long line to vote. Seriously, Time‘s look at the Rockaways on the election night hits the matrix where heart-break and optimism meet and it makes you really appreciate a right we shouldn’t take for granted: 

RELATED: Cookie Monster Batman and the Dog You Wish You Had

RELATED: Behold the Power of ‘Gangnam Style’

The best part of Louis C.K.’s SNL appearance was his “Lincoln” skit. Six days later, here we are with a new video: the director’s cut of the Lincoln-Louie parody—it’s funnier, dirtier, and one really awesome look at what NBC think is too offensive for network television. 

RELATED: The Robot That Performs Gangnam Style Better Than You

RELATED: The Uncle You Wish You Had and the Joy of Human Jukeboxes

Children, we’ve learned, are not safe from the pranks of Jimmy Kimmel. Neither is Jimmy Kimmel‘s aunt. 

And finally, the weekend is here. We’re talking like one hour away. This baby elephant video is clear evidence of that: 

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Stradivarius dealer gets six years for embezzlement

VIENNA (Reuters) – A dealer in rare Stradivarius violins coveted by the world’s top violinists was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison for embezzlement after his glittering global empire crumbled.

Dietmar Machold, 63, built his Bremen-based family business into a juggernaut with branches in Zurich, Vienna, New York and Chicago to serve elite musicians and collectors of the instruments that can command prices of several million dollars.

But the business collapsed in 2010, triggering claims against him worth tens of millions of euros (dollars) from creditors and clients who say they were bilked.

“I am a failure. I have lost everything,” Machold said in a Vienna court as he was sentenced after being convicted of embezzling client funds and hiding assets from creditors.

“You played for high stakes and you lost a lot, but you understand you have to take the responsibility for this,” Judge Claudia Moravec-Loidolt told him.

Prosecutor Herbert Harammer had traced the career of the fifth-generation violin expert who became one of the world’s most influential dealers in instruments crafted by 18th-century masters like Antonio Stradivari, whose workshop in Cremona, Italy produced some of the finest violins and cellos ever made.

“This ascent was built on sand,” Harammer had told the court, accusing Machold of leading a lifestyle that was a facade for a business that had actually been insolvent since mid-2006.

FIXTURE OF HIGH SOCIETY

A fixture of high society, Machold lived in an Austrian castle, had a fleet of expensive cars and collected watches and cameras. His global network of rare instrument dealerships let him move in the highest circles of music, fame and money.

His former wife and her mother got one-year suspended sentences for helping him hide precious musical instruments and a valuable watch collection as his business imploded.

Machold admitted from the start that he embezzled money made from the sale of instruments entrusted to him by his customers, but denied fraud charges that are being handled separately.

“I did what I did and I am to be punished for it. That is the way it has to be,” the German native told the court before sentencing, his voice calm before he teared up and had to pause.

Machold, who told the court he did not deserve a mild sentence given the magnitude of his misdeeds, had faced a sentence of up to 10 years. His lawyer did not say if he would file an appeal.

Machold said he acted in desperation after losing a lawsuit brought by a construction company which meant his Eichbuechl castle was at risk.

The high-profile dealer had at times given contradictory testimony, at one stage saying he built personal relationships with the instruments in his care that he called “my children”.

But later he said he “simply forgot” one expensive violin that he failed to report to administrators.

($ 1 = 0.7857 euros)

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Smokers may fare worse after colorectal surgery

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Smoking has long been linked with slower recovery in general from injuries and surgeries, and now a new study finds that smokers face more complications and higher chances of death following major surgery for colorectal cancers and other diseases.

“We wanted to see if smoking has a specific effect on these patients… and really wanted to know if patients who stopped smoking had better results,” said lead author Dr. Abhiram Sharma, who was at the University of Rochester in New York during the study.

Smoking constricts the flow of blood throughout the body and is thought to prevent oxygen from getting to tissues that are trying to heal, according to the authors.

In September, a review of surgeries to repair knee ligaments found that smokers tended to have worse outcomes, including not being able to get back full knee function. (See Reuters Health article of September 26, 2012: http://reut.rs/Xqf6is)

For the new report, published in the Annals of Surgery, Sharma and his colleagues studied patients included in a nationally representative database of U.S. surgeries between 2005 and 2010.

Overall, 47,574 patients were included in the analysis. All had part of their colon or rectum removed, a surgery known as a colorectal resection, either because of cancer, diverticular disease or inflammatory bowel disease.

About 60 percent of the patients had never smoked, 19 percent were former smokers and 20 percent were current smokers.

The researchers looked at the 30 days after surgery to see how many patients in each group suffered either a major complication – such as severe infection, heart or breathing problems or death – or a minor complication, such as an infection at the surgical site or in the urinary tract.

Sharma’s team found that current smokers had a 30 percent greater risk of having a major complication compared to patients who never smoked, and an 11 percent greater risk than ex-smokers.

Among 9,700 current smokers, for example, there were 1,497 major complications and 1,448 minor ones, whereas the 9,136 ex-smokers had 1,374 major and 1,386 minor complications. Never smokers, the largest group numbering 28,738, had 3,316 major complications and 3,462 minor ones.

Current smokers were also 1.5 times as likely to die within 30 days of surgery as never smokers.

In addition, the longer someone had smoked – that is, the greater their number of “pack years” – the stronger their chances of complications, the researchers note.

“We were not completely surprised (by the results). We know smoking is not good and there have been other studies that show smoking is a problem,” Sharma said.

There were, Sharma’s team acknowledges, some limitations in the study.

For example, ex-smokers were defined as patients who had not smoked in at least one year, therefore some more recent ex-smokers may have been included with current smokers, leading the benefits of quitting to be underestimated.

Nonetheless, Sharma told Reuters Health, the results show it’s never too late to stop smoking.

“The sooner the better,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/XqnA9h Annals of Surgery, online October 10, 2012.

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Can Ryan and Obama Get Along?

One of the most fraught and fascinating relationships in Washington over the next few months—and likely the next four years—will be that of Paul Ryan and Barack Obama. Ryan is defeated but unbowed. Obama is triumphant but trying hard not to gloat. The men are archrivals who must find a way to work together to keep the U.S. from plunging off the “fiscal cliff” and then to get the country on the path to balanced budgets.

It won’t be easy for either the House Budget Committee Chairman or the president. Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto in August that Ryan “gets under the president’s skin.” For his part, Ryan let it be known that he was stung when Obama criticized him and his budget proposal last year while Ryan (unbeknownst to the president) was sitting in the audience.

I asked three Washington insiders whether they thought Ryan and Obama would be able to have a constructive relationship after the bitterness of a presidential campaign in which Ryan ran and lost as Mitt Romney’s running mate.

Norman Ornstein, a political scientist, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and co-author, with Thomas Mann, of It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism:

“Ryan has other ambitions now, and comes at it from a different perspective. … It probably makes him less accommodating. You’ve now got serious jockeying for leadership of the conservative movement of the Republican Party.” To win the Republican nomination for president in 2016, Ryan may choose to stick to a strong conservative message rather than move quickly to compromise with Obama, Ornstein says. “It’s a tricky path, let’s put it that way. A lot of peril in that path. I think it’s his inclination. He’s going to get a lot of advice to do that. But he’s a smart guy. He’s very much an ideologue, but he’s not crazy.”

Steve Bell, senior director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, who served on former Republican Senator Pete V. Domenici’s staff from 1974 to 1986 and 1996 to 2009:

“I think he [Ryan] is going to be part and parcel of the negotiations.” Ryan’s staff on the budget committee, led by Austin Smythe, “essentially become the speaker’s staff” in the last session of Congress, Bell says. “They do all the real number-crunching. That worked in the past, and I think that’s how they’ll work it in the future.” Bell says that Obama is a loner who doesn’t bond easily with members of Congress, especially those across the aisle like Ryan. On the other hand, he says, “They’re both athletes. … Males bond this way. There’s a pretty good chance that they’ll be able to get along sufficiently well to make a deal and stick to it. … One thing the president knows about Ryan, he knows he won’t be able to play fast and loose with the assumptions, because he knows that Ryan knows these numbers cold.”

Michael Zolandz, a partner and the practice leader for public policy and regulation at the SNR Denton lobbying firm:

“They were well and truly familiar with one another’s viewpoints and approach before they got into this campaign. … Having been on the same national stage, they have a little bit more, I wouldn’t say admiration, but a better sense of the other’s mojo and capabilities. That kind of familiarity engenders a certain degree of respect. … I don’t think there’s intense hatred. I think there’s significant disagreement on the numbers.” Ryan isn’t the final decision-maker, Zolandz says. “While Paul Ryan’s thoughts were felt [last session] as a matter of politics and leadership, it’s still [House Speaker John] Boehner’s play. He’s still the leader.”

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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama’s election to a second term.

Obama’s administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar’s previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama’s ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar’s generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar’s point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein’s government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

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Priceline to buy Kayak Software for $1.8 billion

(Reuters) – Online travel agency Priceline.com Inc said on Thursday it will buy Kayak Software Corp in a friendly deal that values the company at $ 1.8 billion.

Priceline is offering $ 40 a share for Kayak, a 29 percent premium on the company’s Thursday closing price of $ 31.04.

Kayak shares jumped 27 percent to more than $ 39 in extended trading, while Priceline.com moved lower.

Daniel Kurnos, an analyst at Benchmark Company, said the purchase would let Priceline.com participate more in the travel advertising space.

“Priceline had previously addressed that it was having issues in terms of marketing efficiencies,” he said. “This certainly represents an investment for them in the paid-search, or the advertising channel, which is not an area where they’ve historically had a lot of exposure.”

But Kurnos added the move also exposes Priceline.com more significantly to the volatile air travel market.

Kayak, which uses a website and a mobile site to help consumers compare prices for airlines and hotels, went public in July with shares priced at $ 26.

The deal expected to close late in the first quarter of 2013.

(Reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta and Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Maju Samuel; and Peter Galloway)

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Final “Spartacus” Season to Enter the Arena January 25

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Starz’s “Spartacus” series will engage in one last round of battle in January, the cable network said Tuesday.

“Spartacus: War of the Damned” will premiere January 25, 2013 at 9 p.m., marking the beginning of the end for the blood-and-sex soaked franchise, whose previous installments included “Spartacus: Vengeance” and “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.”

“Spartacus: War of the Damned” sees Liam McIntyre returning as the titular gladiator, and takes place following the defeat of Roman commander Gaius Claudius Glaber. Following successful battles against the Romans after the Battle of Vesuvius, the ranks of the rebellious slaves have swelled, with Rome trembling at Spartacus’ increased threat to the empire.

This season also sees the addition of new cast members Todd Lasance as Gaius Julius Caesar, Simon Merrells as Marcus Crassus and Anna Hutchison as Laeta.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Allscripts to evaluate strategic alternatives

(Reuters) – Healthcare IT firm Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc said it is evaluating strategic alternatives, sending its shares up 10 percent in extended trade.

“We are confirming today that in light of the ongoing interest expressed in the company by third parties, the company is evaluating strategic alternatives,” Allscripts Chief Executive Glen Tullman said.

The company, which reported a lower third-quarter profit on Friday, had spoken to several private equity firms including Blackstone Group LP, Bloomberg reported in September.

The company faced shareholder activism earlier this year, when its largest investor, HealthCor Management, demanded the resignation of Allscripts chief executive.

Allscripts agreed to nominate three of the investor’s candidates to its board in early June.

The company said it is withdrawing its forecast for 2012 in light of its decision to evaluate strategic alternatives. It had forecast adjusted earnings of between 77 cents and 83 cents per share in August.

Allscripts’s net income fell to $ 9.4 million, or 5 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $ 19.1 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, earnings were 23 cents per share.

Total revenue fell nearly 1 percent to $ 360.7 million.

Analysts expected a profit of 22 cents per share on revenue of $ 377.01 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares of the Chicago-based company closed at $ 12.26 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

(This story corrected paragraph six to say earnings outlook was between 77-83 cents per share, not 74-80 cents per share)

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Greece MPs back austerity cuts

7 November 2012 Last updated at 18:27 ET

Lawmakers in Greece have narrowly backed a fresh round of austerity measures, despite violent protests across the country.

The austerity package aimed at securing the next round of bailout funds was passed with 153 MPs in favour – a majority of just three.

The 13.5bn-euro ($ 17.3bn; £10.5bn) bill includes tax rises and pension cuts.

Earlier, riot police fired tear gas towards protesters when they were attacked with petrol bombs in Athens.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras warned before the vote late on Wednesday that without the bailout Greece would run out of money this month and face “catastrophe”.

The austerity package – Greece’s fourth in three years – is meant to close the nation’s budget deficit, lower its huge debt burden and make its economy more competitive.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Many of these measures are fair and should have been taken years ago, without anyone asking us to”

End Quote Antonis Samaras Greek PM

But the level of resistance on the streets is a reminder that implementing the measures will be extraordinarily difficult, the BBC’s Mark Lowen in Athens reports.

The approval of the bill means that Greece will stay afloat, but the decision will go down very badly among this exhausted nation, our correspondent adds.

Samaras’s warning

The crucial vote was held after a lengthy debate in the 300-strong parliament.

Immediately after the bill was adopted, co-governing New Democracy and Pasok parties expelled seven lawmakers from their ranks for failing to back the package.

The adopted plan includes a two-year increase in the retirement age from the current average of 65, as well as salary cuts and labour market reforms, including cuts to holiday benefits, notice periods and severance pay.

Continue reading the main story

Measures in austerity package

• Retirement age up from 65 to 67


• A further round of pension cuts, of 5-15%


• Salary cuts, notably for police officers, soldiers, firefighters, professors, judges, justice officials; minimum wage also reduced


• Holiday benefits cut


• 35% cut to severance pay


• Redundancy notice reduced from six to four months

Workers fear this will just make it easier and cheaper for them to be fired at a time when unemployment has already soared to 25% and a five-year recession means there are few job prospects.

“Many of these measures are fair and should have been taken years ago, without anyone asking us to,” Mr Samaras said.

“Others are unfair – cutting wages and salaries – and there is no point in dressing this up as something else,” the prime minister said, adding that Greece was, nevertheless, obliged to take the measures.

Mr Samaras has said that without this money, which will be used largely to recapitalise the country’s banks, the country will be bankrupt by 15 November.

The vote on the cuts will be followed by a second vote this Sunday on Greece’s revised budget for 2013.

A positive vote on both is required for Greece to secure 31.5bn euros in fresh loans from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

‘Mother of all strikes’

Earlier on Wednesday, tens of thousands of protesters held a rally in Syntagma Square – outside the parliament building in the heart of the capital.

Continue reading the main story

Key dates

• 6-7 Nov General strike


• 7 Nov Vote on austerity package


• 11 Nov Vote on budget


• 12 Nov Eurozone finance ministers to discuss releasing new cash for Greece


• 16 Nov Deadline for Greece to repay 5bn euros in debt

The protesters chanted: “People – don’t bow your heads!”

Some in the crowd held giant flags of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain – four of the eurozone’s most heavily-indebted states.

The riot police – who sealed off parliament – later fired tear gas after the demonstrators attacked them with petrol bombs and flares.

Protests also took place in other big cities across Greece.

The Greek unions were staging what they described as the “mother of all strikes” – a 48-hour walkout which culminated on Wednesday.

The third major strike in just two months brought public transport to a halt and shut schools, banks and government buildings.

BBC News – Business

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Merkel says Germany, Britain must work together on EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany and Britain must cooperate to work round their differences on the European Union‘s long-term spending plans, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

“Despite differences that we have it is very important for me that the UK and Germany work together,” Merkel said through a translator before a meeting in London with Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the EU‘s 2014-2020 budget.

“We always have to do something that will stand up to public opinion back home. Not all of the expenditure that has been earmarked has been used with great efficiency … We need to address that,” she said.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on November 22-23 to try to secure a seven-year budget for the 27-nation bloc amid signs of differences of opinion over what action should be taken.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

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DC offering monthly titles via Apple, Amazon, B&N

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — DC Comics is expanding its digital storefront, putting all its monthly titles — from Batman to Superman — on sale at iTunes, Amazon‘s Kindle store and Barnes & Noble‘s Nook shop.

The move announced Wednesday appears to make DC Entertainment the first major comics publisher to make its titles available through online stores the same day they’re on sale in comic shops. It also expands its digital offerings beyond the top industry digital purveyor, Comixology.

Hank Kanalz, DC Entertainment senior vice president for digital, said the decision shows the importance of digital downloads to the company, which relaunched its universe last year under the so-called “New 52″ banner.

“We’ve proven over the last two years that going digital has added to our business in general and going wider is the way to go,” he said.

The decision to go with devices by Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Barnes & Noble Inc. reflected the fact that users of those gadgets have extensive libraries of digital files — movies, books, TV shows and, now, comics — and don’t necessarily tend to jump from one device to another.

“If you devoted your library to being collected in your Kindle, now you have the option to add to your comics to that,” Kanalz said. “You’re going to have to commit to what platform you want to build your library in.”

It also offers would-be readers the chance to buy single issues quickly.

“Instant gratification,” Kanalz said. “We found that when certain books hit the news, we see a nice spike in digital sales.”

For DC, and others, the proliferation of tablets — iPads, Kindles and Nooks — means more opportunities to lure new readers, said DC co-publisher and artist Jim Lee.

“As e-readers and tablets continue to explode in popularity, it’s important for us to offer consumers convenience and choice in how they download digital comics and graphic novels and these new distribution deals with the top three e-bookstores do just that,” Lee said, adding that the titles include not just DC but also its Vertigo imprint, too.

Besides Comixology, DC also sells its titles through its own DC and Vertigo apps.

___

DC Comics is owned by Time Warner Inc.

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Follow Matt Moore at www.twitter.com/mattmooreap.

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Online:

http://www.dccomics.com/

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Phase 4 Films Acquires “Precious” Producer’s Directorial Debut “Long Time Gone”

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Phase 4 Films has acquired U.S. and Canadian rights to Sarah Siegel-Magness‘ “Long Time Gone,” a drama starring Virginia Madsen, Amanda Crew and Zach Gilford.

Connecticut resident who has a nervous breakdown after discovering her husband is having an affair. Her son tries to comfort her with the help of his older brother (Gilford) and live-in girlfriend (Crew).

Anthony LaPaglia and Eva Longoria also star in the directorial debut of Siegel-Magness, who produced “Precious.”

“We are thrilled to be working with Sarah on her directorial debut after her past success as a producer,” Phase 4 president and CEO Ben Meyerowitz said in a statement. “We cannot wait until audiences see the great performances by Virginia Madsen and the rest of the wonderful cast involved.”

Phase 4 will release the film day-and-date in theaters and across all VOD and digital platforms Spring 2013.

“I am thrilled to have Phase 4 release my directorial debut. From the very start, they understood and appreciated our film and their enthusiasm has us very excited to move forward in the next chapter of our film’s journey,” Siegel-Magness said in a statement. “Their understanding of the ever changing landscape of the marketplace has us feeling confident that our film is in the right hands.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Genital injuries send 16k people to ERs each year

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Bicycles, furniture and clothing are all items blamed for causing genital injuries, which send almost 16,000 men and women to U.S. emergency rooms every year, according to a new study.

“To put this in perspective, the yearly incidence of these (injuries) is almost twice as much as dental injuries, and about the same of electrical and chemical burns,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Benjamin N. Breyer, an assistant professor of urology at the University of California, San Francisco.

Though television shows and viral videos may portray people getting hit in the crotch as comical, it’s a serious issue. Breyer said that genital injuries can go on to cause people physical, psychological and reproductive problems later on.

In the past, most research looked at severe genital and urinary tract injuries caused by major trauma, such as car accidents. For the new study, however, Breyer and his colleagues decided to look at those injuries thought to be caused by common consumer products.

The team, which published its findings in The Journal of Urology, analyzed a national database of ER visits for injuries caused by consumer products.

For their search, the researchers identified all genital injuries to men and women 18 years old and older between 2002 and 2010. The injured body parts included – among other things – penises, testicles, bladders, kidneys and external female genitalia, such as the clitoris and labia.

Overall, 142,143 injuries sent people to an ER over the nine-year period, which worked out to about 15,794 per year – a number that didn’t seem to change over time.

And with sporting items blamed for about 30 percent of the ER visits, they were the most common cause of injuries among people of all ages. The culprit sporting goods included bicycles as well as basketball, soccer, football and baseball equipment.

Breyer said one example of damage from a sporting item is people falling forward on their bicycle and landing on the center bar. He added that padding or cushioning that bar could help prevent injuries.

Other accidents involved clothing items, shaving items and bathing products – including men catching their penises in zippers or people cutting themselves while trying to shave their pubic hair.

“I was surprised to find how many injuries from bicycles, personal grooming and bathrooms there were. Those to me were unexpected,” said Breyer.

AGE, SEX DIFFERENCES

Types of injuries also differed by age and sex.

Men were injured the most – accounting for about two thirds of the ER visits.

When the researchers looked at age, young people were the most often injured, with 18 to 28 year olds making up roughly 40 percent of the visits.

Older people sustained only about eight percent of the injuries, but were more likely to hurt themselves during everyday activities, such as taking a shower.

That finding suggests fall prevention may be the best way to prevent these injuries in the elderly, the authors write.

Older people were also admitted to the hospital more often than any other age group, which, according to Breyer, could reflect that age group’s overall health and the severity of their injuries.

“The next step is to get a little more information on the actual injuries, what happens to the patients and the mechanism of how it happened,” said Breyer.

Ultimately, he said the information can be used to craft strategies or programs to prevent genital injuries.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VTxWtb The Journal of Urology, online November 5, 2012.

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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France to give businesses $25 billion tax break

PARIS (AP) — France‘s government has promised €20 billion ($ 25 billion) in tax credits to businesses as part of a “competitiveness pact” that it hopes will spark innovation and lower unemployment – but falls short of calls in a recent report for a “shock” to the economy.

The announcement of the plan Tuesday came a day after a government-commissioned report — by Louis Gallois, former head of Airbus parent EADS — said the country’s ailing economy needed a big kick to stay globally competitive.

Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the government‘s plan, which includes a €500 million fund to help struggling small businesses, would put the country “back at the heart of the world economy.”

“This new French model will consist of finding a way back to creating jobs and will no longer be financed by permanent deficits,” he said.

However, the government plan has fallen short of some of the recommendations in the Gallois report and raises fears that the Socialist administration of President Francois Hollande is not doing enough to revitalize the French economy.

For example, the $ 20 billion tax credit is to be implemented over three years — with €10 billion available in 2013 and the rest split over the following two years. Gallois recommended in his report for the government that the breaks should happen over one or two years to have the maximum effect.

The measure also takes the form of an income tax credit, rather than a reduction in the social charges employers pay on salaries, as Gallois had suggested. The government argues that its method is designed to have immediate impact, while deferring payment until 2014 when next year’s tax bill comes due. That, however, assumes that companies will start spending and hiring right away in anticipation of the credit.

France faces several major economic challenges, including an unemployment rate of 10.8 percent, and labor regulations that make firing so difficult it has discouraged hiring. Growth has ground to a halt, and several major companies have announced thousands of layoffs in recent weeks.

France has largely sidestepped the massive budget cuts and reforms undertaken by its neighbors, despite having one of the world’s highest proportions of state spending. Unions and companies are currently in discussions to overhaul the labor market – but the issues are so touchy in France that it’s unclear how far they’ll go.

Gallois warned in his report that the biggest problem in France is that because of high labor costs, companies have to slash prices in order to compete. Without high profit margins, companies have very little to invest in product innovation and quality. Ayrault promised that the pact would give companies more room to maneuver and address this problem.

The government’s plan focuses on small businesses, often the motors of innovation and employment. It calls for small businesses to receive special help to compete internationally, and billions of euros in a new public investment bank will be reserved for smaller companies.

The government also promised to reduce red tape and to limit changes to its tax and other policies over the next five years. France has a very complex tax code – a major thorn in the side of companies, especially small ones that spend tremendous resources to figure out what they owe.

Half of the money will come from spending cuts between 2014 and 2015. However, Ayrault did not detail what would be cut. The rest will come from new taxes, including a hike to most sales taxes – apart from basics like food which will benefit from a cut – in 2014.

The new measure follows a similar plan by former President Nicolas Sarkozy to lower the tax burden on companies via a blanket increase in sales tax. At the time, the Socialists campaigned against the plan and one of their first moves in office was to scrap it. The new government’s plan is similar, but lowers the sales tax on basic necessities, a move the Socialists hope will ensure the poorest people aren’t unduly burdened.

Economy News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Officials: New mass graves found in Ivory Coast

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast (AP) — Up to 10 new mass graves have been discovered near the site of a July attack on a camp for displaced people, officials said Tuesday, amid allegations that initial casualty totals were downplayed to mask killings carried out by the national army.

Rights groups claim summary executions were carried out by the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast, known by its French acronym of FRCI. Last month, officials found six bodies in a well close to the former campsite in the western town of Duekoue.

Government, army and U.N. officials toured 10 more graves in the same area on Saturday, said Paul Mondouho, vice-mayor of Duekoue. He said the graves had first been identified by civilians, and that officials did not know the number of bodies they contained because they had not yet been properly exhumed.

“People were suspecting the presence of bodies in these graves because of the smell coming out of them and because of the shoes we saw nearby,” Mondouho said.

Prosecutor Noel Dje Enrike Yahau, who is based in the commercial capital of Abidjan, confirmed that multiple new graves had been discovered but could not provide details. U.N. officials and the local prosecutor in charge of investigating the suspected killings could not be reached Tuesday.

U.N. spokeswoman Sylvie van den Wildenberg confirmed that U.N. forces helped Ivorian authorities secure a perimeter around 10 wells “similar to the one in which six bodies were found,” and that “some of those wells are suspected mass graves.”

She stressed that Ivorian authorities were leading the investigation but that the U.N. was able to provide assistance.

Army spokesmen could not be reached Tuesday. The Justice Ministry has previously vowed to investigate the discovery of the initial grave.

On the morning of July 20, a mob descended on the U.N.-guarded Nahibly camp, which housed 4,500 people displaced by violence in Ivory Coast, burning most of the camp to the ground. Officials said at the time that six people were killed.

The attack was prompted by the shooting deaths of four men and one woman on the night of July 19, according to local officials and residents. In response a mob of some 300 people overran the camp on the morning of July 20 after the perpetrators of the shootings reportedly fled there.

The victims in the July 19 attack lived in a district dominated by the Malinke ethnic group, which largely supported President Alassane Ouattara in the disputed November 2010 election. The camp primarily housed members of the Guere ethnic group, which largely supported former President Laurent Gbagbo.

Gbagbo’s refusal to cede office despite losing the election to Ouattara sparked months of violence that claimed at least 3,000 lives.

Albert Koenders, the top U.N. envoy to Ivory Coast, said one week after the attack that U.N. security forces had been inside and outside the camp at the time but that no Ivorian security forces were present. He said the U.N. forces decided not to fire at a large group of people that were attacking the camp in order to avoid “a massacre.”

Several witnesses have said soldiers and traditional hunters, known as dozos, participated in the attack on the camp. Both military and dozo leaders have denied the claims, saying they had tried to protect the camp.

In a statement released Friday, the International Federation for Human Rights, known by its French acronym of FIDH, said it had information — including the preliminary results of autopsies — confirming that the six bodies found in October were men who had been summarily executed by the army.

“The disappearance of dozens of displaced persons after the attack, as well as confirmation of cases of summary and extra-judicial executions, suggest a much higher victim rate than the official figures report,” said the organization, which counts Ivorian civil society groups among its members.

Duekoue was one of the hardest-hit towns during the post-election violence. The U.N. has established that at least 505 people were killed in and around the town, including during a notorious March 2011 massacre that claimed hundreds of lives and was allegedly carried out by fighters loyal to Ouattara.

Duekoue residents belonging to ethnic groups that supported Gbagbo have long complained about abuses carried out by the FRCI, with some pointing to the direct involvement of the local commander, Kone Daouda. FIDH said in its statement that Daouda had been transferred following the discovery of the grave in October, and called for him to be interrogated over the matter.

The group also said two FRCI members were being “actively sought” after failing to return to their barracks on Oct. 16, noting that they are believed to have fled to neighboring Burkina Faso.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple Hides its Second Faux-pology to Samsung

For all that its products are (arguably unfairly) associated with elitism, Apple as a company has a pretty good track record when it comes to apologizing for screw-ups.

For example: When people complained about the iPhone 4′s poor reception, back in 2010, Steve Jobs took reporters on a tour of Apple’s antenna testing center, and gave everyone who bought an iPhone 4 a free case if they wanted one. More recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly apologized for “the frustration [iOS 6's maps have] caused our customers,” and suggested they use Google’s app instead. The Wall Street Journal even reported that Scott Forstall — formerly Apple’s exec in charge of iOS — was asked to leave the company for refusing to be the one to apologize.

But when the British courts ordered Apple to apologize to Samsung for accusing the Korean tech giant of copying Apple’s designs? Cue the snark and passive-aggressiveness.

The lawsuit(s)

Apple filed suit against Samsung in numerous courts worldwide, claiming its designs infringed on Apple’s and seeking injunctions to ban them. (Pseudonymous Redditor MarsSpaceship published a graphic which ironically points out the uncanny similarities.) Courts in Australia and the United States ruled in Apple’s favor, and Samsung was ordered to pay more than $ 1 billion to Apple in damages.

Except in the United Kingdom

The courts in the UK not only found that Samsung’s designs don’t infringe, they ordered Apple to publicly apologize to Samsung on its website and in newspapers, in words big enough to be read. Apple faux-pologized by stating the facts — that the court found Samsung’s designs don’t infringe — then going on to point out how every other court in the world said otherwise, and quoting the judge when he said that the reason people wouldn’t mistake Samsung’s products for Apple’s is because “They are not as cool.”

Try again, Apple

The British courts were not amused, and told Apple to try it again. You can read Apple’s new “apology” on its UK website, assuming you can translate the legalese which calls an iPad a “Community registered design No. 0000181607-0001″ … and assuming you can find it.

Say what, now?

Another anonymous Redditor, Dismiss, discovered that Apple had reprogrammed its UK website to hide the apology to Samsung. Not only did it redesign the site’s front page, making graphics larger and pushing the legal text out of view, it used custom code to make it so that you have to scroll to see the apology, no matter how big your screen is. This effectively hides it from view for most people, unless they go out of their way to look for it.

Round three, coming up?

The UK courts haven’t responded to Apple’s second faux-pology, which may be partly because they aren’t aware of what Apple did yet. Either way, Apple seems to have come out the winner worldwide, and Samsung’s latest designs — like the Galaxy S III smartphone — are much less derivative of Apple’s.

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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Controversial “SEAL Team Six” Film Gives Nat Geo Highest Ratings in a Year

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden” might have drawn cries of partisan bias, but despite the controversy – or perhaps because of it – the film about the killing of the terrorist leader yielded big numbers with its premiere on National Geographic Channel on Sunday night, handing the network its best ratings in more than a year, and the sixth-highest ratings in the network’s history.

Sunday’s premiere of “Seal Team Six,” which was initially slated for theatrical release before getting snapped up by National Geographic Channel, posted a 1.4 rating in the 25-54 demographic – four times the network’s average in the Sunday 8 to 10 p.m. timeslot this season. In total viewers, the military dramatization drew 4.7 million people, with an average 2.7 million tuning in throughout the premiere.

“SEAL Team Six” posted the highest performance in the demographic since the August 2011 special “George W. Bush: The 9/11 Interview,” which drew a 1.7 in the 25-54 demo.

“We are overwhelmed that viewers across the country responded en masse to this socially relevant, factually based and entertaining film that highlighted the real inside story behind the manhunt for bin Laden and the heroes in our military and intelligence agencies,” said David Lyle, CEO National Geographic Channels. “It proved that no matter who Americans are planning to vote for, a good film is a good film, and we are happy to have had such success with our first original broadcast of a feature film inspired by real-life events.”

The film’s premiere date – just two days before the election – drew suspicion from some of the more conspiracy-minded segments of the population, who suggested that the premiere might have been planned to boost President Barack Obama‘s chances in the election by reminding the public of one of his major accomplishments during his first term. The criticism was fueled by the fact that unabashed Obama supporter Harvey Weinstein served as an executive producer on the film.

The network denied the allegations, with Lyle telling TheWrap last month, “The movie itself is its own defense; it’s a perfectly straightforward dramatization of what happened.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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FDA grants priority review to Roche’s breast cancer drug

(Reuters) – Roche, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, said U.S. health regulators granted a priority review to its experimental breast cancer drug TDM-1, expediting the review process for the marketing application of the drug.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will announce its decision on the marketing approval by February 26, the Swiss drugmaker said.

The FDA grants priority reviews to medicines that are considered potentially significant therapeutic advancements over existing therapies.

Roche said its marketing application for the drug was accepted by European regulators.

TDM-1, or trastuzumab emtansine, is being developed with ImmunoGen, using ImmunoGen’s targeted antibody payload delivery technology.

Roche said in late-August that the drug significantly extended the lives of women with an aggressive type of breast cancer, compared with those receiving the standard drug cocktail.

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

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MF Global customers sue PricewaterhouseCoopers in amended lawsuit

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former customers of MF Global Holdings Ltd‘s broker-dealer have added accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as a defendant in a lawsuit stemming from the collapse of the brokerage.

In an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Monday, the customers of MF Global Inc accused PwC of failing to adequately audit MF Global’s internal controls over customer funds.

The complaint also repeated prior accusations against former officials at MF Global, including former Chief Executive Jon Corzine, who is accused of violating the Commodity Exchange Act, which restricts the use of customer funds.

Caroline Nolan, a spokeswoman for PwC, said it conducted its last audit of MF Global in March 2011 “in accordance with professional standards.” The audit at the time confirmed that MF Global had maintained its customer accounts in accordance with federal regulations, she said.

“We will defend this lawsuit vigorously,” Nolan said.

The lawsuit also named as a defendant CME Group Inc , the exchange that oversaw MF Global.

Neither a lawyer for Corzine nor spokesperson for CME Group immediately responded to requests for comment on the case.

An estimated $ 1.6 billion in customer funds went missing following MF Global’s collapse. MF Global filed for bankruptcy in October 2011.

Investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and Commodity Futures Trading Commission are ongoing.

PwC had served as independent auditor of MF Global in 2010 and 2011, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, contends that PwC failed to examine MF Global’s controls over customer funds. This amounted to professional malpractice and a breach of the auditors duties to the company and customers, the lawsuit said.

“If PwC had properly executed its duties and evaluated and reported on ‘s control problems in March 2011, there would have been ample time for management to institute proper controls over customer funds,” the complaint said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs are cooperating with James Giddens, the trustee for the liquidation of MF Global Inc. Under the deal, the plaintiffs’ lawyers say Giddens has assigned to them certain claims against MF Global’s directors and officers and PwC.

The case is DeAngelis et al v. Corzine et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-07866.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Methane warnings ignored before NZ mine disaster

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A New Zealand coal mining company ignored 21 warnings that methane gas had accumulated to explosive levels before an underground explosion killed 29 workers two years ago, an investigation concluded.

The official report released Monday after 11 weeks of hearings on the disaster found broad safety problems in New Zealand workplaces and said the Pike River Coal company was exposing miners to unacceptable risks as it strove to meet financial targets.

“The company completely and utterly failed to protect its workers,” New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Monday.

The country’s labor minister, Kate Wilkinson, resigned from her labor portfolio after the report’s release, saying she felt it was the honorable thing to do after the tragedy occurred on her watch. She plans to retain her remaining government responsibilities.

The Royal Commission report said New Zealand has a poor workplace safety record and its regulators failed to provide adequate oversight before the explosion.

At the time of the disaster, New Zealand had just two mine inspectors who were unable to keep up with their workload, the report said. Pike River was able to obtain a permit with no scrutiny of its initial health and safety plans and little ongoing scrutiny.

Key said he agrees with the report’s conclusion that there needs to be a philosophical shift in New Zealand from believing that companies are acting in the best interests of workers to a more proscriptive set of regulations that forces companies to do the right thing.

The commission’s report recommended a new agency be formed to focus solely on workplace health and safety problems. It also recommended a raft of measures to strengthen mine oversight.

Key said his government would consider the recommendations and hoped to implement most of them. He would not commit on forming a new agency. Workplace safety issues are currently one of the responsibilities of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

In the seven weeks before the explosion, the Pike River company received 21 warnings from mine workers that methane gas had built up to explosive levels below ground and another 27 warnings of dangerous levels, the report said. The warnings continued right up until the morning of the deadly explosion.

The company used unconventional methods to get rid of methane, the report said. Some workers even rigged their machines to bypass the methane sensors after the machines kept automatically shutting down — something they were designed to do when methane levels got too high.

The company made a “major error” by placing a ventilation fan underground instead of on the surface, the report found. The fan failed after the first of several explosions, effectively shutting down the entire ventilation system. The company was also using water jets to cut the coal face, a highly specialized technique than can release large amounts of methane.

The report did not definitively conclude what sparked the explosion itself, although it noted that a pump was switched on immediately before the explosion, raising the possibility it was triggered by an electrical arc.

The now-bankrupt Pike River Coal company is not defending itself against charges it committed nine labor violations related to the disaster. Former chief executive Peter Whittall has pleaded not guilty to 12 violations and his lawyers say he is being scapegoated.

An Australian contractor was fined last month for three safety violations after its methane detector was found to be faulty at the time of the explosion.

Australia / Antarctica News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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