Major jobs boost in UK North Sea

21 December 2012 Last updated at 11:20 ET

Statoil is to invest £4.3bn in a North Sea oil field, bringing hundreds of jobs to the north east of Scotland.

The Norwegian company said the investment in the Mariner field was the largest new offshore development in the UK in more than a decade.

Statoil expects to start production from Mariner in 2017, pending final approval by the UK authorities.

More than 700 jobs will be created, including 200 onshore posts in Aberdeen.

The field is expected to produce for 30 years, with average production of about 55,000 barrels of oil a day from 2017 to 2020.

The Mariner Field is located on the East Shetland Platform of the UK North Sea, about 150km (93 miles) east of the Shetland Isles.

Statoil is the operator of the field, with 65.11% equity. Other partners include JX Nippon Exploration and Production (UK) Limited (28.89%) and Cairn Energy (6%).

The development concept includes a production, drilling and quarters (PDQ) platform based on a steel jacket, with a floating storage unit (FSU).

More than 140 reservoir targets are planned for Mariner.

‘Good fit’

Executive vice president for development and production international in Statoil, Lars Christian Backer, said: “Statoil has extensive heavy oil experiences from offshore fields in Norway and Brazil.

“The Mariner field was discovered in 1981 and Statoil entered the licence as operator in 2007 with the aim of finally unlocking the resources.

Continue reading the main story

The North Sea is a core area for Statoil, and we look forward to taking a leading role in further developing also the UK part of this basin”

End Quote Lars Christian Backer Statoil

“We are satisfied that we now are able to make an investment decision for a profitable development of the Mariner field.”

He added: “The Mariner project is a good strategic fit for Statoil.

“We are the world’s largest offshore operator and have a portfolio of attractive projects in some of the most prolific basins in the world.

“The North Sea is a core area for Statoil, and we look forward to taking a leading role in further developing also the UK part of this basin.”

Industry body Oil and Gas UK welcomed Statoil’s announcement.

Economics director Mike Tholen said: “The largest offshore development in the UK for a decade, Mariner requires pioneering technology and will bring hundreds of high-skilled, long-lasting jobs across the country, hundreds of millions of pounds in additional tax revenues, as well as crucial security to our energy supplies.

“Expected to produce oil and gas for 30 years, this project – and others recently given the go-ahead on the UK continental shelf – will help to boost production and stem the decline we have seen in recent years, so helping the full economic benefit of our reserves to be realised in time.”

‘Tremendous news’

Energy Minister Fergus Ewing described the investment as “tremendous news for Scotland’s energy industry”.

He said: “There remains more value still to be extracted from the North Sea than there has been to date.

“With up to 24 billion barrels of oil still to be recovered, with a potential value of around £1.5 trillion, North Sea oil and gas is attracting record investment levels with capital investment of £8.5bn in 2011 and an expected £11.5bn in 2012.

“This announcement builds on positive announcements by Global Energy Group and Dana Petroleum this month, who are investing further in Scotland to capitalise on the potential of our energy resources, which will remain an enormous economic resource for decades to come.”

BBC News – Business

Title Post: Major jobs boost in UK North Sea
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Canada spending growth sluggish in November, Mastercard says

(Reuters) – Canada‘s holiday shopping season got off to a slow start in November with retail sales rising only 1.3 percent from the previous year, compared with 4.2 percent growth a year earlier, according to data released by MasterCard on Thursday.

Still, the shopping season was still young in November. MasterCard Advisors, the payment company’s research and consulting division, found that in recent years, holiday shopping peaks from December 20 to December 22.

“Many Canadians may have gotten an early start with Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, but it’s still a very young phenomenon in Canada,” Senior Vice-President Richard McLaughlin, said in a release.

The Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving is the unofficial start to the holiday shopping season south of the border, and in recent years retailers have imported Black Friday sales to Canada.

Some also promote online sales the following Monday.

Canada’s online retail sales continued to grow in November, increasing 26.4 percent.

(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Peter Galloway)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Canada spending growth sluggish in November, Mastercard says
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Facebook releases ‘Poke’ for the iPhone to compete with Snapchat

Title Post: Facebook releases ‘Poke’ for the iPhone to compete with Snapchat
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Americans answer D.C.’s siren song of employment, strong economy

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Thirteen years ago the band The Magnetic Fields crooned that the U.S. capital city is “the greatest place to be,” in the indie love song “Washington, D.C.”

Recently, a growing number of Americans are singing along as they move to the District in search of jobs, economic opportunity and cultural attractions.

In a study on migration provided exclusively to Reuters that is set to be released next month, United Van Lines found the District of Columbia tops all 50 states for the number of people moving in during 2012.

The city has held that spot for five years running, with 64 percent of the household moves in Washington coming from outside the city in 2012.

United Van Lines is the largest moving company in the country for households.

Oregon ranked second, followed by Nevada, North Carolina and South Carolina. Washington is a city that does not belong to a state, but is subject to loose control from the federal government.

“Washington, D.C., is unique because over the last five years its unemployment rate was not hit as hard by the Great Recession,” said Michael Stoll, chair and professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles about the study. “But I think the other thing is that the city has remade itself from the one we knew 10 to 15 years ago.”

Washington has shed its reputation as the crime capital of the country, and it has developed a high technology corridor and other businesses that are both stable and hiring, said Stoll.

Also, many members of the Baby Boom generation are moving in as they retire, taking advantage of the free museums, monuments and cultural events the city has to offer, he said.

The rising popularity could yield a result also unthinkable less than two decades ago.

“D.C. will not just be a place of tourism. It will be a major economic engine, which many of us haven’t thought of it as being before,” Stoll said.

A U.S. Census report released on Thursday also showed the city is gaining new residents. Washington’s population increased 2.15 percent between July 2011 and July 2012, a rise second only to North Dakota.

The District’s population increase of 5.1 percent from 2010 to 2012 was the biggest in the country, the Census found. It had had 632,323 residents as of July 1.

The city has a large international community, largely due to the presence of foreign embassies and organizations such as the World Bank. The Census found people from other countries made up 32 percent of the net migration from 2011 to 2012.

According to a Labor Department report released on Friday, the District’s unemployment rate fell in November to 8.1 percent from 10.1 percent the year before. Local political leaders point to a development boom and one of the highest median incomes in the country – $ 63,124 – as other draws to the city.

On a national level, Stoll said, the migration patterns show Americans are seeking economic opportunity in places where new manufacturing and technology enterprises are building up. The patterns reveal a swelling group of aging people who are retiring and looking for affordable and comfortable places to live, as well.

He added that many people who wanted to move to California, but were put off by the state’s economic woes, turned their moving vans north to Oregon.

New Jersey topped states for outward moves, in 2012, the United Van Lines study showed, largely due to a shrinking factory sector. It was followed by Illinois, West Virginia, Michigan and New York.

Washington’s popularity surge recently created a paradox in the city’s economic success story. Last month, the Brookings Institution concluded three U.S. metropolitan areas are in economic recovery, but did not include Washington because its population burst drove down its gross domestic product on a per capita basis.

(Reporting By Lisa Lambert; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Americans answer D.C.’s siren song of employment, strong economy
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Federal appeals court rules against Hobby Lobby on contraception

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a claim by an arts and crafts chain that wants to be exempted from a requirement to provide emergency contraceptives to employees because it violates the religious principles of its owners.

The Court of Appeals in Denver ruled against family-owned Hobby Lobby‘s assertion that the religious beliefs of its owners should relieve them from providing the “morning after” and “week after” pills to their employees, as required under President Barack Obama‘s signature health care reforms.

Hobby Lobby vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Green family is disappointed with this ruling,” said Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is assisting Hobby Lobby in the legal case. “The Greens will continue to make their case on appeal that this unconstitutional mandate infringes their right to earn a living while remaining true to their faith.”

The medications at issue are classified as emergency contraceptives by the Food and Drug Administration, but the owners of Hobby Lobby call them “abortion-inducing drugs” because they are often taken after conception.

The lawsuit is among 42 legal actions that have been filed over the issue, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm in Washington, D.C.

The company faces fines of up to $ 1.3 million daily if it disobeys the mandate, which takes effect on January 1 for Hobby Lobby, a $ 3 billion chain, and its smaller sister operation, Mardel, a Christian-oriented bookstore and educational supply company.

Both companies are owned by the Green family of Oklahoma City, whose patriarch, David Green, is ranked 79th on Forbes Magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans, with a net worth of $ 4.5 billion.

The family operates 514 Hobby Lobby stores in 41 states and employ 13,240 people. Inspirational Christian music is played in the stores, which are closed on Sundays.

U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton of the Western District of Oklahoma ruled on November 19 that the privately-owned companies are secular, for-profit enterprises that do not possess the same religious rights as the individual members of the family.

(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Lisa Shumaker)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Federal appeals court rules against Hobby Lobby on contraception
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Steve Jobs’ super-yacht impounded

21 December 2012 Last updated at 12:29 ET

Venus, the minimalist high-tech yacht commissioned by the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, has become embroiled in a row over a disputed bill.

French designer Philippe Starck claims Mr Jobs’ heirs still owe him 3m euros of a 9m euro fee for the project, according to Dutch paper Het Financieele Dagblad.

Mr Starck called in the debt collectors and had the yacht impounded,

The Port of Amsterdam confirmed that the boat is not allowed to leave.

Jeroen Ranzijn, spokesman for the Port of Amsterdam told the BBC: “The boat is brand new but there is a 3m euro claim on it. The parties will have to fight it out.”

Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer representing Mr Starck’s company, Ubik, told the Reuters news agency that the boat would remain in port pending payment by lawyers representing Mr Jobs’ estate.

“These guys trusted each other, so there wasn’t a very detailed contract,” he said.

Mr Starck was unavailable for comment.

Gerard Moussault, the lawyer representing the owners of the Venus told the BBC: “I cannot comment at all on this, sorry.”

The sleek, 260ft-long (80m) aluminium super-yacht cost 105m euros ($ 138m; £85m) and was launched in October, at Aalsmeer, The Netherlands.

Mr Starck is known for his striking designs for the Alessi company, including an aluminium lemon squeezer that is shaped like a spaceship.

He collaborated with Steve Jobs for five years on the project, describing the boat as “showing the elegance of intelligence.”

The vessel is minimalist in style and is named after the Roman goddess of love and its windows measure 3m (10 feet) in height.

Mr Starck has said that Venus “looks strange for a boat” but said its shape comes from design ideas he shared with Mr Jobs.

Mr Jobs died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 and never saw his boat go to sea.

BBC News – Business

Title Post: Steve Jobs’ super-yacht impounded
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

TSX ends flat as RIM buckles, gold miners bounce

TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index ended little changed on Friday as gold miners gained on safe-haven buying amid U.S. budget uncertainty, while BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd plunged more than 20 percent.

The index’s materials sector, which includes miners, rose 0.4 percent. Even though the price of gold was near its lowest level in four months, the gold-mining sub-sector added 0.9 percent as investors fretted over stalled U.S. budget talks that could throw Canada’s largest trading partner back into recession.

“As our tiptoes are over the (U.S.) fiscal cliff and we’re looking over the abyss, the markets are upset obviously, and this is sort of putting a damper on the stocks,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.

“But we’ve had a mixed reaction in Canada, mainly because the resources have been much better, like gold for example, which is hedging into the uncertainty (around the budget talks),” he said, noting gold miners had been under pressure for the last two weeks.

Miner Barrick Gold Corp edged up 0.2 percent to C$ 33.29. Centerra Gold Inc jumped more than 3 percent to C$ 9.10.

Gold miners are playing catch-up after underperforming throughout the year and could rise further in 2013, said Gavin Graham, president at Graham Investment Strategy.

Shares of RIM dropped 22.2 percent to C$ 10.86 on fears that a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment could put pressure on the business that has set the company apart from its competitors.

The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> fell 3.01 points, or 0.02 percent, to end at 12,385.70. It gained 0.7 percent for the week.</.gsptse>

Efforts to avoid the looming U.S. “fiscal cliff” were thrown into disarray on Friday with finger-pointing lawmakers fleeing Washington for Christmas vacations even as the year-end deadline for action edged ever closer.

Graham said that until a deal is reached in the U.S. budget talks, investors will avoid economically sensitive Canadian stocks and those most closely tied to the U.S. economy: auto parts manufacturers, forestry companies and resource stocks generally.

“The resource sectors in Canada, which is half of the index, is going to be adversely affected, correctly or not,” he said.

“Chinese demand is likely to pick up somewhat now with the new leadership there but people will be focused on the U.S. given that it is still by far the most important export market for Canada.”

($ 1=$ 0.99 Canadian)

(Additional reporting by Claire Sibonney, Julie Gordon and Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by Peter Galloway)

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: TSX ends flat as RIM buckles, gold miners bounce
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor’s divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher’s filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS’ “Two and a Half Men.”

Messages sent to Kutcher’s and Moore’s publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations’ efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former “That ’70s Show” co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

___

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

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Alexza’s agitation drug gets FDA approval

(Reuters) – Alexza Pharmaceuticals Inc said the U.S. health regulators approved Adasuve, making it the first treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that can be inhaled.

Adasuve, which delivers an older antipsychotic drug called loxapine, passes through the lungs and into the bloodstream faster than a typical pill. Loxapine is available as an oral drug for schizophrenia.

The company said the product will include a boxed safety warning about potentially dangerous side effects including the potential for fatal bronchial spasms in people with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and a higher risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis.

Adasuve use will be restricted to mitigate the potential harm of bronchial spasms, Alexza said.

The FDA also required Alexza to conduct a large post- marketing clinical trial of patients to assess the real-world use of the drug.

“We believe that the ability to deliver medications rapidly and non-invasively will be important for patients and the professionals who care for them,” Chief Executive Thomas King said in the statement.

Three injectable drugs, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Abilify, Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa and Pfizer Inc’s Geodon, are currently approved to calm patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

Adasuve, Alexza’s most advanced drug, will be available for commercial launch early in the third quarter of 2013, the company said.

Earlier this month, European health regulators recommended approval of Adasuve.

The FDA denied approval to Adasuve in May, after it found deficiencies at the company’s Mountain View, California manufacturing facility during an inspection.

The company’s shares fell 12 percent in the after market trading after the trade was halted at $ 5.79 before the drug- approval announcement.

(Reporting by Prateek Kumar; Editing by Sreejiraj Eluvangal)

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Alexza’s agitation drug gets FDA approval
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Vote on US fiscal cliff ‘Plan B’

20 December 2012 Last updated at 17:23 ET

The Republican-led US House is set to vote on a package of spending cuts and tax rises party leaders say will keep the US away from the “fiscal cliff”.

The vote includes tax rises on earnings above $ 1m (£614,000) on Speaker John Boehner’s so-called “Plan B” option.

It comes as talks with the White House appear to have stalled, with President Barack Obama seeking a lower threshold.

A deal must be reached by 1 January, or a combination of steep tax rises and sharp spending cuts will take effect.

Analysts in the US and overseas have expressed concern that failure to reach a deal could take the US into recession.

Veto threat

A vote is expected by the late afternoon on Thursday, but could stretch on into the evening.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on Thursday: “We, as Republicans, have taken concrete actions to avoid the fiscal cliff.”

He and Mr Boehner say the bill as proposed would ensure permanent tax cuts for 99.8% of Americans.

Continue reading the main story

What is the fiscal cliff?

• On 1 January 2013, a series of tax increases and huge spending cuts are due to come into force – the so-called fiscal cliff


• The deadline was put in place in 2011 as a means of forcing the president and Congress to agree on ways to save money over the next 10 years


• If they can reach a deal before 1 January, the cliff will be averted


• The fear is that raising taxes while massively cutting spending will have a huge impact on households and businesses


• Experts believe it could push the US into recession, and have a global impact on growth, especially in China and Europe

But Mr Cantor added that Republicans would not be sending their members home for the Christmas recess after the vote – a sign that Congress could be expected to vote on a more bipartisan deal within days.

Correspondents say the Republican plan has no chance of passing the Democratic-led Senate, and is in effect an effort to tell the US public that they should not be blamed if the US falls over the fiscal cliff.

The White House has threatened to veto the legislation if does pass Congress, saying the bill would mean tax rises on 25 million Americans making under $ 250,000.

A study by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center found some low-income people would see tax rises because the measure would not renew several tax cuts that were part of the 2009 stimulus package.

On Thursday, the White House criticised Republicans, saying Mr Boehner’s response to compromises from the president was “to walk away” from negotiations.

Spokesman Jay Carney said the introduction of Mr Boehner’s so-called Plan B was a “multi-day exercise in futility at a time when we do not have the luxury of exercises in futility”.

‘Partisan war paint’

Mr Boehner announced the bill on Tuesday, saying he would bring forward a measure that extended Bush-era tax cuts for those earning less than $ 1m per year – but would not address the automatic spending cuts.

Correspondents say the move came as a surprise as negotiations appeared to be making progress.

On Wednesday, the Republican leadership added a companion bill that would replace the automatic cuts with a proposal to remove cuts from defence and government operating budgets. They would be offset by reductions elsewhere in the budget.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

It is positioning, theatrics, part of the negotiations, not the negotiations themselves. There are still few days left, and many think a deal will be done, because it has to be done”

End Quote

The proposal would cut food stamps, benefits for federal workers and some social services programmes.

On Wednesday, Mr Obama dismissed the bill, telling reporters that he and Mr Boehner were just a few hundred billion dollars apart on full 10-year deal.

The president said Republicans should “peel off the partisan war paint” and take his most recent offer.

Mr Obama is now proposing a tax rise on incomes over $ 400,000 (£247,000), an increase on the $ 250,000 level he had originally sought.

He also offered a change to the way Social Security cost of living adjustments are made for some recipients, cuts from government healthcare programmes and a two-year extension of the debt ceiling.

Mr Boehner’s office called the proposal “a step in the right direction” but not fully “balanced”.

In a brief news conference on Wednesday, the House Speaker countered that the president will bear responsibility for “the largest tax increase in history” if he does veto the bill.

But Senate leaders have signalled there is little hope for the measure in Congress’ upper-chamber.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said the proposal would not pass and that lawmakers would return to Washington next Thursday to continue working on a deal.

Analysts have painted a grim picture of the consequences of going over the cliff, with some warning that the impact could push the US back into recession.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said in its latest economic outlook that the recession from the cliff could become global.

Changing taxation across the years
Tax year	1993-2000	2001	2002	2003-2008	2009-2012	2012 tax brackets	2013 scenarios
Source: Tax Foundation, IRS Tax brackets shown for unmarried individuals
President	Bill Clinton	George W Bush			Barack Obama		Tax cuts expire	Tax cuts expire for top incomes
Bottom rate	15%	15%	10%	10%	10%	Up to $ 8,700	15%	10%
			15%	15%	15%	$ 8,700-$ 35,350		15%
	28%	27.5%	27%	25%	25%	$ 35,350- $ 85,650	28%	25%
	31%	30.5%	30%	28%	28%	$ 85,650- $ 178,650	31%	28%
	36%	35.5%	35%	33%	33%	$ 178,650-$ 388,350	36%	33%
								36%
Top rate	39.6%	39.1%	38.6%	35%	35%	Over $ 388,350	39.6%	39.6%

BBC News – Business

Title Post: Vote on US fiscal cliff ‘Plan B’
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — A baby boy joined the ranks of Syria’s tens of thousands of war wounded when a missile fired by Bashar Assad‘s air force slammed into his family home and shrapnel pierced his skull.

Four-month-old Fahed Darwish suffered brain damage and, like thousands of others seriously hurt in the civil war, he will likely need care well after the fighting is over. That’s something doctors say a post-conflict Syria won’t be able to provide.

Making things worse, there has been a sharp spike in serious injuries since the summer, when the regime began bombing rebel-held areas from the air, and doctors say a majority of the wounded they now treat are civilians.

This week, Fahed was recovering from brain surgery in an intensive care unit, his head bandaged and his body under a heavy blanket, watched over by Mariam, his distraught 22-year-old mother.

She said that after her first-born is discharged from the hospital in Atmeh, a village in an area of relative safety near the Turkish border, they will have to return to their village in a war zone in central Syria.

“We have nowhere else to go,” she said.

Even for those who have escaped direct injury, the civil war is posing a mounting health threat. Half the country’s 88 public hospitals and nearly 200 clinics have been damaged or destroyed, the World Health Organization says, leaving many without access to health care. Diabetics can’t find insulin, kidney patients can’t reach dialysis centers. Towns are running out of water-purifying materials. Many of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting are exposed to the cold in tents or unheated public buildings.

“You are talking about a public health crisis on a grand scale,” said Dr. Abdalmajid Katranji, a hand and wrist surgeon from Lansing, Michigan, who regularly volunteers in Syria.

No one knows just how many people have been injured since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, starting out with peaceful protests that turned into an armed insurgency in response to a violent government crackdown.

More than 43,000 have been killed in the past 21 months, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, basing his count on names and details provided by activists in Syria. He said the number of wounded is so large he can only give a rough estimate, of more than 150,000.

Casualties began to rise dramatically at the start of the summer. At the time, the regime, its ground troops stretched thin, began bombing from the air to prevent opposition fighters from gaining more territory.

Seemingly random bombings have razed entire villages and neighborhoods, driving terrified civilians from their homes, with an estimated 3 million Syrians out of the country’s population of 23 million now displaced.

About 10 percent of the wounded suffer serious injuries and many of those will need long-term care and rehabilitation, said Dr. Omar Aswad of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, an umbrella for 14 aid groups.

This includes artificial limbs and follow-up surgery. “This is of course not available and will be one of the major (health) problems in the months right after the war,” said Mago Tarzian, emergency director for the Paris-based Doctors Without Borders.

For now, aid groups are struggling to provide even emergency treatment in under-equipped clinics.

The two dozen small hospitals and field clinics in rebel-run areas of Idlib province in the north only have a few Intensive Care Unit beds between them, said Aswad. None has a CT scanner, an important diagnostic tool.

“We need generators, we need medical supplies and the most pressing is medicine,” he said.

The challenge has been compounded by new types of injuries.

The regime has begun dropping incendiary bombs that can cause severe burns, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing amateur video and witness accounts.

Ole Solvang, a researcher for the group, said he saw remnants of such a bomb on a recent Syria trip. Aswad said doctors in Idlib and nearby Aleppo province reported seeing patients with burns from such weapons.

Doctors and hospitals have also been targeted. Aswad, who fled the city of Idlib in March after regime forces entered it, said five friends in a secret association of anti-regime physicians have been arrested. Hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been attacked, Solvang said, calling it “a worrying trend that makes the medical situation even worse.”

One of the bright spots is a 50-bed emergency care clinic set up six weeks ago in a former elementary school in Atmeh.

Largely funded by a wealthy Syrian expatriate, the Orient clinic, with five ICU beds, handles some of the most serious cases in a radius of some 150 kilometers (90 miles), said its director, orthopedic surgeon Abdel Hamid Dabbak.

In the past, seriously wounded patients had to go to Turkey, risking dangerous delays at the border, he said. Now, once patients are stabilized in Atmeh, they are sent to a sister clinic across the border for follow-up care.

In Orient’s ICU, a 24-year-old rebel fighter was breathing oxygen through a mask. He had been brought in a day earlier, bleeding heavily from stomach wounds and close to death, said Dr. Maen Martini, a volunteer physician from Joliet, Illinois. After surgery, he stabilized and was taken off a respirator. A delayed crossing into Turkey would have killed him, Martini said.

The fighter’s neighbor was little Fahed, whose house had been struck by a missile on Saturday in the village of Kafr Zeita in Hama province. “The roof collapsed on us,” his mother said of the attack. “We ran out … I saw him bleeding from his head, but it was just a small cut.”

The local clinic said the injury was more serious than it seemed and the family rushed to Atmeh, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north.

Since surgery, Fahed has been nursing and has moved his arms and legs, and the doctor is hoping for a near-complete recovery.

“Clinically, he has improved dramatically,” he said.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Video game shares down in wake of shooting

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shares of video game makers and sellers fell Thursday in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which has renewed debate about violent games and their potential influence on crime.

Shares of GameStop Corp., whose stores sell video games as well as systems like the Xbox and Wii, fell 5 percent in afternoon trading.

Investors are seen as being increasingly concerned that the government may impose tougher rules on the sales of games rated for “mature” and older audiences.

Investors may be worried that parents will also avoid buying first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ after the tragedy Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were shot and killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.

“Maybe there will be more stringent efforts to make sure youth are not playing games that they’re not old enough to play,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with National Alliance Securities. “Maybe there will be a greater effort by parents in managing the content their kids are playing.”

Shares of companies involved in the video game industry, many of which had been dropping since the shooting, declined further Thursday.

— GameStop stock lost $ 1.37, or 5 percent, to $ 26.18. Shares have barely changed since last Thursday’s close, the day before the shooting, to Wednesday’s close.

— Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc., the publisher of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” fell 9 cents to $ 10.70. The stock had already dropped 5.6 percent.

— Electronic Arts Inc. shares fell 41 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $ 13.99. Shares had dropped 5.6 percent.

— Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shares slipped 29 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $ 11.69. The stock had dropped 8 percent.

The declines came as broader markets rose. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.3 percent at 13,295.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Video game shares down in wake of shooting
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

World Music Awards postponed due to visa issues, Newtown tragedy

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The World Music Awards was postponed on Thursday due to “logistical and multiple visa issue,” organizers said, two days before the event was scheduled to be held in Miami.

Event producers John Martinotti and Marcol International said in a statement that the December 22 awards ceremony also was being delayed in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, last week.

“We are sorry for any inconvenience but this decision had to be made due to logistical and multiple visa issues and in view of this week’s national mourning. Fans have been a great support to the artists and have voted online in huge numbers,” the producers said in a statement.

The winners in categories ranging from world’s best song, world’s best artists and entertainer of the year, are picked by fans who vote online. The statement said that votes will continue to be collected until a new date is set for the show.

This year’s nominees include Usher, Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Chris Brown. Past winners include Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Michael Jackson.

The awards ceremony, founded in 1989 and hosted by Monaco’s Prince Albert II, has primarily taken place in Monte Carlo and proceeds from the show go to charity. This year, show producers decided to move it to Marlins Park Stadium in Miami.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Eric Kelsey)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: World Music Awards postponed due to visa issues, Newtown tragedy
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Early Language Skills Help Kids Manage Anger

The ability to use words as a toddler may affect the way a child manages anger later in life, a new study suggests.

Children with good language skills at age 2 expressed less anger during frustrating situations at age 4 than did those 4-year-olds with less advanced language skills, according to the study’s findings.

Children whose language skills developed quickly also expressed less anger at age 4.

While previous research suggested a link between language skills and the expression of anger in young children, few studies had followed children over time. [See Kids' Tantrums As Disorder Concern Doctors.]

The new study followed 120 children from 18 months old until they were 4. Children periodically underwent tests that assessed their language skills and their ability to cope with frustrating tasks. One task asked children to wait for eight minutes before opening a present while their mother finished work.

Two aspects of language appeared to help children rein in their anger. First, more-developed language skills allowed kids to ask for support from their parents during a frustrating situation  (for instance, asking the mother whether she was finished with her work). Children also used language to occupy or distract themselves from becoming angry. (One child dealt with the waiting task by counting for a full minute.)

“Better language skills may help children verbalize rather than use emotions to convey needs and use their imaginations to occupy themselves while enduring a frustrating wait,” said study researcher Pamela Cole, a professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University..

The study appears today (Dec. 20) in the journal Child Development.

Pass it on:Toddlers with good language skills are better able to manage anger when they enter preschool.

Follow Rachael Rettner on Twitter @RachaelRettner, or MyHealthNewsDaily @MyHealth_MHND. We’re also on Facebook & Google+.

Copyright 2012 MyHealthNewsDaily, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Parenting/Kids News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Early Language Skills Help Kids Manage Anger
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Aid workers warned Wednesday that armed groups are setting up new front lines in and around the city of Goma in eastern Congo, where the U.N. said it now has documented at least 126 rape cases last month.

Thousands of fighters from the M23 rebel group withdrew several weeks ago from Goma, and the fighters have since taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government.

However, residents in Goma say M23 and other armed fighters are now positioning themselves in an around the city — including inside camps for people displaced by the violence.

The arrival of several thousand fighters within the last week is prompting fear among civilians, who already have experienced years of fighting and rebellions, said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam’s humanitarian coordinator there.

“They are very concerned — people are seeing this and they don’t know what it means,” he said. “I think what everyone is scared about is that it seems like people are ramping up, ramping up but for what purpose?”

Oxfam warns that more than 1 million people could come under attack if violence again flares in Goma, where more than 100,000 people already have fled from elsewhere in the region.

“Goma is typically the last refuge safe haven and now it’s being directly called into question. If Goma falls in a big battle, where are people going to go?” Riebl said.

“This is very, very disconcerting because you have a population of over 1 million people and if war were to break out, we’re looking at a horrific situation.”

The M23 rebel group, which is believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April.

They took control of many villages and towns in the mineral-rich east over the last seven months, culminating in the seizure of Goma on Nov. 20. It took days of negotiations and intense international pressure, including from the U.N., for the thousands of fighters from M23 to finally withdraw from the regional capital.

The U.N. mission says it’s received allegations of serious rights violations, including killings and wounding of civilians, rape, looting, and forced recruitment of children, by elements of the M23 rebels in Goma and neighboring areas.

Congo’s armed forces are also blamed for a series of attacks as they fled Goma in retreat in late November.

The U.N. said Tuesday it now has been able to document at least 126 rapes during that period in the Minova area, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Goma.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said that two Congolese soldiers so far have been arrested in connection with the rapes, while seven others had been implicated in looting in the area.

“The Congolese Armed Forces have started investigating those human rights violations,” he said. “The U.N. Mission is supporting the military justice procedure in conducting thorough investigations into these allegations to ensure that the perpetrators are identified and held accountable.”

Rape has long been used as a brutal weapon of war in eastern Congo, where both soldiers and various armed groups use sexual violence to intimidate, punish and control the population.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Changes in law aim to protect kids’ online data

WASHINGTON (AP) — Aiming to prevent companies from exploiting online information about children under 13, the Obama administration on Wednesday imposed sweeping changes in regulations designed to protect a young generation with easy access to the Internet.

Two years in the making, the amended rules to the decade-old Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act go into effect in July. Privacy advocates said the changes were long overdue in an era of cellphones, tablets, social networking services and online stores with cellphone apps aimed at kids for as little as 99 cents.

Siphoning details of children’s personal lives — their physical location, contact information, names of friends and more — from their Internet activities can be highly valuable to advertisers, marketers and data brokers.

The Obama administration has largely refrained from issuing regulations that might stifle growth in the technology industry, one of the U.S. economy’s brightest spots. Yet the Federal Trade Commission pressed ahead with the new kids’ privacy guidelines despite loud complaints — particularly from small businesses and software apps developers — that the revisions would be too costly to comply with and cause responsible companies to abandon the children’s marketplace.

As evidence of online risks, the FTC last week said it was investigating an unspecified number of software developers that may have illegally gathered information without the consent of parents.

Under the changes to the law, known as COPPA, information about children that cannot be collected unless a parent first gives permission now includes the location data that a cellphone generates, as well as photos, videos and audio files containing a human image or voice.

The Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus commended the FTC for writing the new rules. “Keeping kids safe on the Internet is as important as ensuring their safety in schools, in homes, in cars,” caucus co-chairman Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

Data known as “persistent identifiers,” which allow a person to be tracked over time and across websites, are also considered personal data and covered by the rules, the agency said. But parental consent is not required when a website operator collects this data solely to support its internal operations, which can include advertising, site analysis and network communications.

The rules offer several new methods for verifying a parent’s consent, including electronically scanned consent forms, video conferencing and email.

The FTC sought to achieve a balance between protecting kids and spurring innovation in the technology industry, said Jon Leibowitz, the agency’s chairman.

The final rules expand the definition of a website or online service directed at children to include plug-ins and advertising networks that collect personal information from kids.

But the rules were also tightened in a way favorable to some Internet heavyweights, Google and Apple. Their online apps stores, which dominate the marketplace for mobile applications, won’t be held liable for violations because they “merely offer the public access to child-directed apps,” the FTC said.

Google and Apple had warned that if the rule were written to include their stores, they would jettison many apps specifically intended for kids. They said that would hurt the nation’s classrooms, where new and interactive apps are used by teachers and students.

A Washington trade group that represents independent apps developers criticized the agency for addressing the concerns of large businesses while doing too little for the startups that make educational apps parents and teachers want. The FTC’s belief that the apps industry will figure out how to thrive under the new rules is akin to jumping off a cliff then building a parachute, said Morgan Reed, executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology.

“While that may work for big companies, small companies lack the silk and line to build that parachute before they hit the ground,” Reed said.

Companies are not excluded from advertising on websites directed at children, allowing business models that rely on advertising to continue, Leibowitz said. But behavioral marketing techniques that target children are prohibited unless a parent agrees. “You may not track children to build massive profiles,” he said.

The agency included in the rules new methods for securing verifiable consent after the software industry and Internet companies raised concerns over how to confirm that the permission actually came from a parent. Electronic scans of signed consent forms are acceptable, as is video-teleconferencing between the website operator or online service and the parent, according to the agency.

The FTC also said it is encouraging technology companies to recommend additional verification methods. Leibowitz said he expects that this will “unleash innovation around consent mechanisms.”

Emailed consent is also acceptable as long as the business confirms it by sending an email back to the parent or calling or sending a letter. In cases of email confirmation, the information collected can only be used for internal use by that company and not shared with third parties, the agency said.

The FTC’s investigation of apps developers came after the agency examined 400 kids’ apps that it purchased from Apple’s iTunes store and Google’s apps store, Google Play. It determined that 60 percent of them transmitted the user’s unique device identification to the software maker or, more frequently, to advertising networks and companies that compile, analyze and sell consumer information for marketing campaigns.

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Changes in law aim to protect kids’ online data
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Music, roses at singer Jenni Rivera’s memorial

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. (AP) — Jenni Rivera‘s “celestial graduation” was marked by festive music, heartfelt speeches in Spanish and English and passionate chants of “Jen-ni! Jen-ni!”

Rivera’s children and famed singers Olga Tanon and Joan Sebastian performed during the nearly 2 ½-hour memorial service Wednesday at the Gibson Amphitheatre, where thousands of fans gathered to salute the “Diva de la Banda” who died in a plane crash Dec. 9.

One fan, Veronika Flores, drove nearly eight hours from her home in Woodland, Calif., near Sacramento, to be united with other fans at the service.

“I just came to say goodbye to a Latina woman, La Gran Senora,” she said, invoking the name of one of Rivera’s most beloved songs.

Famed Mexican singers Marco Antonio Solis and Ana Gabriel and actors Lou Diamond Phillips and Kate del Castillo were also among the guests at Wednesday’s service.

A red casket sat onstage amid a sea of white roses as images of Rivera played on three big screens. Family members embraced and kissed the casket at the conclusion of the service, laying more white roses atop it.

While most of the speeches and songs were delivered in Spanish, Rivera’s children spoke in English, often directly to their late mother.

“We’re not here to mourn the death,” said son Michael, 21. “We’re here to celebrate the life and graduation of a singer, an entertainer, a diva, a fighter, an entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and more than anything, a mother — the best mother.”

He then called for 27 seconds of silence for the victims of the massacre in Newtown, Conn.

Rivera’s youngest child, 11-year-old Johnny, was heartbreakingly poised as he said, “The person that everyone’s talking about is my mom.”

“Mama, I’ve been crying so much these last few days. I miss you so much,” said the little boy, wearing a red bow tie like many of his family members. “I hope you’re taking care of my dad and I hope he’s taking care of you, too.”

Rivera’s second husband, Juan Lopez, died in 2009. The couple divorced in 2003.

Rivera’s brothers and sisters spoke lovingly of the singer, calling her “the queen of queens,” ”perfectly imperfect” and an “eternal diva.” Her father said Rivera’s “happiness, smile and care for the public will never be forgotten.” He then performed a song he wrote about his daughter, a woman who rose from humble roots to become “la Diva de la Banda.”

One of Rivera’s brothers said his sister “made it OK for women to be who they are. Jenni also made it OK to be from nothing with the hopes of being something.”

The family asked that Latin radio stations play Rivera’s song “La Gran Senora” at noon Thursday in her honor.

The service was closed to most media, although a broadcast of the proceedings was made available.

The burial will be private.

Rivera’s last album before her death, “La Misma Gran Senora,” topped the Latin albums chart this week, selling 27,000 copies — the best sales week for any Latin album this year. Rivera also holds three spots on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Rivera and six other people died Dec. 9 in a northern Mexico plane crash that remains under investigation. Rivera, a mother of five children and grandmother of two, was 43.

Rivera sold more than 15 million copies of her 12 major-label albums. Her soulful singing style and honesty about her tumultuous personal life won her fans on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. She was also an actress and reality TV star.

Born in Los Angeles, Rivera launched her career by selling cassette tapes at flea markets. By the end of the 90s, she won a major-label contract and built a loyal following.

Many of her songs deal with themes of dignity in the face of heartbreak, which Rivera spoke of openly with her fans.

She had recently filed for divorce from her third husband, was once detained at a Mexico City airport with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and publicly apologized after her brother assaulted a drunken fan who verbally attacked her in 2011.

“She was a fighter, a woman who can push boundaries,” said Flores. “That’s why I liked her, because I’m just like her.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Music, roses at singer Jenni Rivera’s memorial
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Sanofi to pay $109 million to settle U.S. kickback charges

(Reuters) – French drugmaker Sanofi has agreed to pay $ 109 million to settle charges that it violated the False Claims Act by providing free drugs as a form of kickbacks to physicians, the U.S. Justice Department announced on Wednesday.

The settlement resolves allegations that Sanofi submitted false average sales price reports for the drug Hyalgan, a knee injection to treat arthritis, that did not account for free units distributed contingent on future purchases.

Average sales prices are used to determine reimbursement rates by government health programs, such as Medicare. The Justice Dept said the practice caused government programs to pay inflated amounts for Hyalgan and a competing product.

Sanofi sales representatives were given thousands of free “sample” Hyalgan syringes and used the free drug as kickbacks with a promise to provide negotiated numbers of the syringes in order to lower Hyalgan’s effective price, the government claimed.

The drugmaker said it had taken “strong, proactive and effective steps” to address the issue and voluntarily halted the Hyalgan sampling program in 2009.

The settlement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts, the U.S. Department of Justice and several states resolves all claims arising out of the investigation into sampling of Hyalgan, Sanofi said.

In addition to the $ 109 million payment, Sanofi said it expects to enter into a Corporate Integrity Agreement with the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Department of Health and Human Services that will place its operations under enhanced scrutiny.

There are no criminal charges against the company related to the Hyalgan allegations.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by M.D. Golan)

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Sanofi to pay $109 million to settle U.S. kickback charges
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Dublin opposes Aer Lingus deal

18 December 2012 Last updated at 17:17 ET

The Irish government has voiced its opposition to Ryanair’s bid to buy rival Aer Lingus, saying the deal risked damaging competition.

However, despite Dublin holding a 25% stake in Aer Lingus, it is the European Union that will decide whether the takeover can go ahead.

Ryanair responded that the Irish government has no power to block its bid. It already owns 30% of Aer Lingus.

Brussels will rule on the deal early next year.

Ryanair wants to buy Aer Lingus for 694m euros ($ 917m; £565m).

It is the third time the airline has attempted to take full control of Aer Lingus, having seen its first bid turned down by the Commission in 2007. Ryanair subsequently dropped a second offer in 2009.

Last month, the Commission gave Ryanair a list of objections, but the airline offered new concessions to Brussels, including selling some of Aer Lingus’ landing slots at London Heathrow to British Airways.

The Republic of Ireland’s Transport Minister, Leo Varadkar, said: “The Ryanair offer and at least the remedies that are being reported are not sufficient in our view, so we won’t support their bid and, in addition, won’t co-operate with their remedies package.

“The Commission will make its own decision, but we have given our views and they are around connectivity, competition and employment.

“We don’t see any advantages for Ireland in what’s being proposed and we see very significant potential risks.”

BBC News – Business

Title Post: Dublin opposes Aer Lingus deal
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature

Title Post: Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Naomi Watts pulls off “The Impossible” to critical acclaim

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Days after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, actress Naomi Watts took part in a fundraising telethon spearheaded by George Clooney to help the region’s hundreds of thousands of people in 14 nations whose lives were shattered.

Little did Watts know that eight years later she would be starring in “The Impossible,” out in the U.S. movie theaters on Friday, about a real family’s experience in Thailand. The tsunami and earthquake killed more than 5,000 people, and resulted in 2,800 missing in that country alone.

Yet when the actress was first approached to star in the film, directed by Spanish filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona, she hesitated.

“I thought, how do you make a movie about a tsunami without it becoming some sort of spectacular disaster movie?” Watts, 44, told Reuters. “That would be so wrong.”

However once Watts read the script, she said was moved by the story based on the real-life Spanish family of Maria Belon, her husband Enrique Alvarez – played by Ewan McGregor in the movie – and their three sons.

Belon’s family were spending their Christmas holiday in Thailand when the tsunami hit. The film follows their struggle to survive, injured and separated, in the aftermath and their perseverance in finding each other amidst the chaos.

“I felt a huge amount of pressure because of the responsibility to Maria’s story,” said Watts. “And on her back, she carries the stories of everybody else because hers is connected to the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. I felt a sense of responsibility.”

PLAUDITS FOR WATTS’ PERFORMANCE

The British-born, Australian actress delivered, despite her fears. So far, her performance has earned Watts best actress nominations from the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild and the Broadcast Film Critics Association.

The New York Observer wrote in its review that “Watts seems almost spiritually committed to her role” while The Hollywood Reporter said she “packs a huge charge of emotion as the battered, ever-weakening Maria whose tears of pain and fear never appear fake or idealized.”

Watts credits the real Maria Belon for being “an open book” when it came to recalling her personal experience during that harrowing time.

The two met before shooting began, and Belon was on the film set. Belon, a physician in Spain, also wrote detailed letters chronicling her experience, including taking refuge in a tree and the Thai villagers who discovered her weak and injured body.

One of the more challenging aspects of the shoot was recreating the tsunami, a 10-minute sequence in the film that Watts said took six weeks to shoot on location in Spain. Rather than creating the tidal wave digitally, actors were anchored in water tanks with the current pushing at them and “debris being chucked at you.”

Watts said that while the challenge of shooting the sequence was incomparable to the suffering of those who went through the ordeal in 2004, it was “physically the most demanding thing I’ve ever done.”

There was much more dialogue scripted during that sequence but “you were struggling to breathe and we quickly learned that once you open your mouth, water is going in and nothing is coming out.

“Though it was difficult, I’m grateful we got that kind of level of fear and intensity,” she added.

What offset the intensity during the shoot was having her sons Sasha, 5, and Sammy, 4, visiting Watts on the set. “We had them paint stuff on themselves like scars and wounds, then rub them off so they could see it wasn’t real,” recalled Watts.

It’s a far cry from the way she used to approach her work before having kids, such as her Oscar-nominated performance as a grief-stricken mother the 2003 film “21 Grams.”

“I was taking everything home with me, staying up all hours, writing, thinking, researching … just living with torment,” Watts recalled of that time. “I can’t live like that at this point in my life with little ones. I am a mom of two small kids and once I put the key in the door, it’s my duty to be totally present.”

(Editing By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Alden Bentley)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Naomi Watts pulls off “The Impossible” to critical acclaim
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma

WASHINGTON (AP) — They might not want to talk about the gunshots or the screams. But their toys might start getting into imaginary shootouts.

Last week’s school shooting in Connecticut raises the question: What will be the psychological fallout for the children who survived?

For people of any age, regaining a sense of security after surviving violence can take a long time. They’re at risk for lingering anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

But after the grief and fear fades, psychiatrists say most of Newtown‘s young survivors probably will cope without long-term emotional problems.

“Kids do tend to be highly resilient,” said Dr. Matthew Biel, chief of child and adolescent psychiatry at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital.

And one way that younger children try to make sense of trauma is through play. Youngsters may pull out action figures or stuffed animals and re-enact what they witnessed, perhaps multiple times.

“That’s the way they gain mastery over a situation that’s overwhelming,” Biel explained, saying it becomes a concern only if the child is clearly distressed while playing.

Nor is it unusual for children to chase each other playing cops-and-robbers, but now parents might see some also pretending they’re dead, added Dr. Melissa Brymer of the UCLA-Duke National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.

Among the challenges will be spotting which children are struggling enough that they may need professional help.

Newtown’s tragedy is particularly heart-wrenching because of what such young children grappled with — like the six first-graders who apparently had to run past their teacher’s body to escape to safety.

There’s little scientific research specifically on PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, in children exposed to a burst of violence, and even less to tell if a younger child will have a harder time healing than an older one.

Overall, scientists say studies of natural disasters and wars suggest most children eventually recover from traumatic experiences while a smaller proportion develop long-term disorders such as PTSD. Brymer says in her studies of school shootings, that fraction can range from 10 percent to a quarter of survivors, depending on what they actually experienced. A broader 2007 study found 13 percent of U.S. children exposed to different types of trauma reported some symptoms of PTSD, although less than 1 percent had enough for an official diagnosis.

Violence isn’t all that rare in childhood. In many parts of the world — and in inner-city neighborhoods in the U.S., too — children witness it repeatedly. They don’t become inured to it, Biel said, and more exposure means a greater chance of lasting psychological harm.

In Newtown, most at risk for longer-term problems are those who saw someone killed, said Dr. Carol North of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who has researched survivors of mass shootings.

Friday’s shootings were mostly in two classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary School, which has about 450 students through fourth-grade.

But those who weren’t as close to the danger may be at extra risk, too, if this wasn’t their first trauma or they already had problems such as anxiety disorders that increase their vulnerability, she said.

Right after a traumatic event, it’s normal to have nightmares or trouble sleeping, to stick close to loved ones, and to be nervous or moody, Biel said.

To help, parents will have to follow their child’s lead. Grilling a child about a traumatic experience isn’t good, he stressed. Some children will ask a lot of questions, seeking reassurance, he said. Others will be quiet, thinking about the experience and maybe drawing or writing about it, or acting it out at playtime. Younger children may regress, becoming clingy or having tantrums.

Before second grade, their brains also are at a developmental stage some refer to as magical thinking, when it’s difficult to distinguish reality and fantasy. Parents may have to help them understand that a friend who died isn’t in pain or lonely but also isn’t coming back, Brymer said.

When problem behaviors or signs of distress continue for several weeks, Brymer says it’s time for an evaluation by a counselor or pediatrician.

Besides a supportive family, what helps? North advises getting children back into routines, together with their friends, and easing them back into a school setting. Studies of survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks found “the power of the support of the people who went through it with you is huge,” she said.

Children as young as first-graders can benefit from cognitive-behavioral therapy, Georgetown’s Biel said. They can calm themselves with breathing techniques. They also can learn to identify and label their feelings — anger, frustration, worry — and how to balance, say, a worried thought with a brave one.

Finally, avoid watching TV coverage of the shooting, as children may think it’s happening all over again, Biel added. He found that children who watched the 9/11 clips of planes hitting the World Trade Center thought they were seeing dozens of separate attacks.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Experts: Kids are resilient in coping with trauma
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..