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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Mick Jagger’s love letters to singer Marsha Hunt up for auction

(Reuters) – Love letters written by Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger to American singer Marsha Hunt, discussing poetry and his personal turmoil, will hit the auction block next month.

Hunt, with whom Jagger had his first child, Karis, told Britain’s Guardian newspaper she was selling the letters, written in July and August 1969, because she had been unable to pay her bills.

“I’m broke,” Hunt, who lives in France, told the newspaper.

The Guardian said on Friday the 10 letters would be sold by Sotheby’s on December 12.

The auction house values the letters from between 70,000 and 100,000 pounds ($ 111,000-$ 160,000).

Jagger wrote them to Hunt while filming the Tony Richardson movie “Ned Kelly” in Australia.

They are described as showing a sensitive side of the then-young singer, who wrote about the poetry of Emily Dickinson, meeting author Christopher Isherwood and an unrealized multimedia project.

Jagger’s relationship with Hunt, who is African-American, was kept under wraps until 1972.

“The sale is important,” Hunt told The Guardian. “Someone, I hope, will buy those letters as our generation is dying and with us will go the reality of who we were and what life was.”

Hunt has said she was the inspiration for the Rolling Stones‘ song “Brown Sugar,” which Jagger wrote while in Australia.

The rock star also cites in the letters the disintegration of his relationship with singer Marianne Faithful, whom he was also dating at the time, and the death of Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Peter Cooney)

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States given more time to work on health exchanges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration gave states extra time to work toward setting up new health insurance exchanges on Friday, days after President Barack Obama‘s re-election ensured the survival of his healthcare reform law.

The move is seen as a concession to dozens of states that delayed compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act until after the November 6 election. Opponents of the plan had hoped a victory for Republican Mitt Romney would ultimately result in the law’s repeal.

But with Obama now heading into a second term, and a November 16 federal deadline to declare their plans looming, many states needed more time to prepare for exchanges, complex marketplaces meant to offer working families private insurance at federally subsidized rates beginning in 2014.

Since Tuesday’s election, seven states including Texas, Kansas, Virginia and Florida have said they will not pursue state-operated exchanges and conservative political donors are mounting a publicity campaign to encourage more defections.

But there are also signs that opposition could be waning in some states.

In cases where states decide not to participate, the federal government says it will go in and build an exchange on its own.

“The administration would like to do whatever it can to bring states in,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health issues.

“It’s always been expected that if the president got reelected, a lot of states sitting on the sidelines would realize they don’t want the federal government building a state health insurance system. That’s what we’re seeing happening.”

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a November 9 letter to governors that the administration still expects states to declare whether they intend to operate their own exchanges by next Friday.

But they now have until December 14 to file blueprints showing how they would operate the marketplaces. So far, about 13 states are well on their way to setting up their own exchanges.

States can also choose to develop their exchange in partnership with the federal government. As many as 30 could go that route.

Sebelius said states that prefer a partnership now have until February 15, 2013, to declare their intentions and prepare the appropriate paperwork. She said states can still apply to run exchanges in subsequent years but emphasized that the start date for coverage has not changed.

“Consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have access to insurance through these new marketplaces on January 1, 2014, as scheduled, with no delays,” she said in the letter, which described the deadline extension as a response to state requests for more time.

Analysts characterized the extension as a substantial offer from the federal government.

“It’s about as far as they reasonably could extend, knowing that the systems have to be ready by Oct 1, 2013,” said Patrick Howard, who advises states on healthcare issues for Deloitte.

The Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping health legislation since the 1960s, would extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. About half would receive coverage through a planned expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor, and the other half through the exchanges.

The list of states that say they will not participate in the healthcare exchanges grew this week when Virginia and Kansas added their names.

Texas, South Dakota, South Carolina, Alaska and Florida confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they will not participate in exchanges. Louisiana had also opposed the plan before the election, but officials there did not respond to inquiries about their plans under Obama’s second term.

But Maine, which advised the administration last April that it did not intend to pursue a state-based exchange, said on Friday that further guidance from Sebelius’ department could make a difference.

“It’s too soon to tell,” said Adrienne Bennett, spokeswoman for Republican Governor Paul LePage.

“We’re willing to look at the information and move forward. But we can’t move forward if we don’t have information from the Obama administration. So we’re in a holding pattern,” she said.

Several Republican advocacy groups are expected to push against the implementation of Obama’s healthcare law. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative non-profit in part funded by billionaire Koch brothers, on Friday urged U.S. governors to reject the state-based exchange options, calling them “flawed” and “bloated bureaucracies” that put states’ budgets at risk.

(Writing by David Morgan; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Eric Walsh, Claudia Parsons and David Gregorio)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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How 'poor judgment' felled military star Petraeus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Petraeus was a star on the battlefield, commanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was undone by "poor judgment" in engaging in an extramarital affair that led to his downfall as CIA director.

Just two days after his 60th birthday, Petraeus stepped down from the spy agency where he had held the top office since September 6, 2011.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation," Petraeus told the shadow warriors he commanded at CIA.

It was a stunning downfall for a revered military man who was seen as one of the top American leaders of his generation and was once considered a potential contender for the White House.

Petraeus was credited with pulling Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war and for battlefield successes in Afghanistan after overseeing a surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Barack Obama in late 2009. He became known for counter-insurgency strategies that were seen as gaining ground against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I don't think he was professionally overrated. His were genuine accomplishments," said James Carafano, a war historian with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

At the time of his nomination to the CIA post, some Washington insiders had said the White House wanted to find a prominent position for Petraeus to ensure he would not be recruited by Republicans as a challenger to the 2012 Obama-Biden ticket.

When he was nominated to lead the CIA there were some concerns in intelligence circles that the high-profile four-star Army general might not be able to lead from the shadows as appropriate for a spy chief.

But once he took over the head office at the U.S. spy agency, Petraeus kept a decidedly low public profile.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, expressed regret about the resignation of "one of America's best and brightest" and said it was an "enormous loss" for the country.

"At CIA, Director Petraeus gave the agency leadership, stature, prestige and credibility both at home and abroad. On a personal level, I found his command of intelligence issues second to none," she said.

RESIGNATION ACCEPTED

After accepting his resignation about a year-and-a-half after nominating Petraeus to the CIA post, Obama said: "By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end."

Earlier this week, in a Newsweek article entitled "General David Petraeus's Rules for Living," he listed 12 lessons for leadership. Number 5 was: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear­ view mirrors - drive on and avoid making them again."

In 2010 Petraeus stepped into the breach as the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to replace General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama in a scandal over an article in which McChrystal and his aides made mocking comments about the president and some of his top advisers.

In 2009 Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and underwent radiation treatment. The media-friendly general joked at that time at a Washington event that reporters were only gathered "to see if the guy is still alive."

Petraeus, born in Cornwall, New York, lives in Virginia with his wife Holly. They have two grown children, a son who was an Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, and a daughter.

Petraeus's wife, Holly, is an activist and volunteer who champions military families, and she continued that work after her husband retired from the military and moved to the CIA.

She currently is assistant director of the office of servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she tries to keep unscrupulous lenders from taking advantage of military personnel. The bureau was championed by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts this week.

Holly Petraeus is the daughter of four-star General William Knowlton, who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when Petraeus was a cadet.

She briefed the press at the Pentagon on her efforts recently and was introduced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called her "a true friend of the Department of Defense and a dedicated member of our military family."

Petraeus has four Defense Distinguished Service Medal awards, three Distinguished Service Medal awards, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the State Department Distinguished Service Award.

He has a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Diane Bartz; Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)

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Justice Department antitrust chief Wayland to step down next week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The acting head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Joseph Wayland, will step down as of November 16, a department spokeswoman said on Thursday.

No one has been named to be the acting assistant attorney general for antitrust, said the spokeswoman, Gina Talamona.

The position has been without a confirmed chief since Christine Varney left in mid-2011. Since then, the nomination of William Baer to succeed her has stalled in the Senate.

Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican Senator, has opposed Baer’s nomination but has not publicly said why.

Baer, a prominent attorney with the law firm Arnold & Porter LLP, was nominated in early February.

Wayland, whose family lives in New York, will return there, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported he was leaving. Before coming to the Justice Department, he specialized in complex business litigation, including antitrust and securities cases.

The Justice Department recruited Wayland in September 2010 to lead litigation efforts at the division, a hire that appears to have paid off.

President Barack Obama‘s Justice Department successfully opposed AT&T Inc’s planned $ 39 billion deal to acquire wireless rival T-Mobile USA and stopped NASDAQ OMX Group and IntercontinentalExchange Inc from buying NYSE Euronext.

But the department reached compromises on other deals, such as Ticketmaster’s purchase of Live Nation in 2010, Google Inc’s acquisitions of ticketing software company ITA and smartphone handset maker Motorola Mobility, and Verizon Wireless’ controversial plan to buy airwaves from cable operators.

The division is looking at price-fixing in industries as disparate as auto parts, optical disk drives and the derivatives market, as well as interest-rate manipulation and whether cable companies are trying to prevent the rise of Internet video as an alternative to television.

It has also sued Apple and two publishers – Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH’s Macmillan and Pearson Plc’s Penguin Group – accusing them of fixing prices of electronic books.

(Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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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.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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States given more time to work on health exchanges

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Obama administration gave states extra time to work toward setting up new health insurance exchanges on Friday, days after President Barack Obama‘s re-election ensured the survival of his healthcare reform law.

The move is seen as a concession to dozens of states that delayed compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act until after the November 6 election. Opponents of the plan had hoped a victory for Republican Mitt Romney would ultimately result in the law’s repeal.

But with Obama now heading into a second term, and a November 16 federal deadline to declare their plans looming, many states needed more time to prepare for exchanges, complex marketplaces meant to offer working families private insurance at federally subsidized rates beginning in 2014.

Since Tuesday’s election, seven states including Texas, Kansas, Virginia and Florida have said they will not pursue state-operated exchanges and conservative political donors are mounting a publicity campaign to encourage more defections.

But there are also signs that opposition could be waning in some states.

In cases where states decide not to participate, the federal government says it will go in and build an exchange on its own.

“The administration would like to do whatever it can to bring states in,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare policy expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks health issues.

“It’s always been expected that if the president got reelected, a lot of states sitting on the sidelines would realize they don’t want the federal government building a state health insurance system. That’s what we’re seeing happening.”

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a November 9 letter to governors that the administration still expects states to declare whether they intend to operate their own exchanges by next Friday.

But they now have until December 14 to file blueprints showing how they would operate the marketplaces. So far, about 13 states are well on their way to setting up their own exchanges.

States can also choose to develop their exchange in partnership with the federal government. As many as 30 could go that route.

Sebelius said states that prefer a partnership now have until February 15, 2013, to declare their intentions and prepare the appropriate paperwork. She said states can still apply to run exchanges in subsequent years but emphasized that the start date for coverage has not changed.

“Consumers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia will have access to insurance through these new marketplaces on January 1, 2014, as scheduled, with no delays,” she said in the letter, which described the deadline extension as a response to state requests for more time.

Analysts characterized the extension as a substantial offer from the federal government.

“It’s about as far as they reasonably could extend, knowing that the systems have to be ready by Oct 1, 2013,” said Patrick Howard, who advises states on healthcare issues for Deloitte.

The Affordable Care Act, the most sweeping health legislation since the 1960s, would extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans. About half would receive coverage through a planned expansion of the Medicaid program for the poor, and the other half through the exchanges.

The list of states that say they will not participate in the healthcare exchanges grew this week when Virginia and Kansas added their names.

Texas, South Dakota, South Carolina, Alaska and Florida confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they will not participate in exchanges. Louisiana had also opposed the plan before the election, but officials there did not respond to inquiries about their plans under Obama’s second term.

But Maine, which advised the administration last April that it did not intend to pursue a state-based exchange, said on Friday that further guidance from Sebelius’ department could make a difference.

“It’s too soon to tell,” said Adrienne Bennett, spokeswoman for Republican Governor Paul LePage.

“We’re willing to look at the information and move forward. But we can’t move forward if we don’t have information from the Obama administration. So we’re in a holding pattern,” she said.

Several Republican advocacy groups are expected to push against the implementation of Obama’s healthcare law. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative non-profit in part funded by billionaire Koch brothers, on Friday urged U.S. governors to reject the state-based exchange options, calling them “flawed” and “bloated bureaucracies” that put states’ budgets at risk.

(Writing by David Morgan; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Eric Walsh, Claudia Parsons and David Gregorio)

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Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

NEW YORK (AP) — A former firefighter with a crush on Madonna has been convicted of resisting arrest outside her former New York City apartment building as he spray-painted poster boards with love notes.

A jury delivered its verdict Friday in Robert Linhart‘s trial. He could face up to a year in jail.

Defense lawyer Lawrence LaBrew tells the New York Post (http://bit.ly/ZgI4jl) that Linhart will appeal.

Linhart was arrested in September 2010. Police say he parked his SUV outside the singer’s Manhattan apartment, laid out a tarp and wrote out such messages as “Madonna, I need you.”

Jurors told the Post they felt it was fine for Linhart to express himself to the Material Girl. But they said they believed police testimony that he resisted arrest by flailing his arms.

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How 'poor judgment' felled military star Petraeus

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - David Petraeus was a star on the battlefield, commanding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was undone by "poor judgment" in engaging in an extramarital affair that led to his downfall as CIA director.

Just two days after his 60th birthday, Petraeus stepped down from the spy agency where he had held the top office since September 6, 2011.

"After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation," Petraeus told the shadow warriors he commanded at CIA.

It was a stunning downfall for a revered military man who was seen as one of the top American leaders of his generation and was once considered a potential contender for the White House.

Petraeus was credited with pulling Iraq from the brink of all-out civil war and for battlefield successes in Afghanistan after overseeing a surge of 30,000 troops ordered by President Barack Obama in late 2009. He became known for counter-insurgency strategies that were seen as gaining ground against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

"I don't think he was professionally overrated. His were genuine accomplishments," said James Carafano, a war historian with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.

At the time of his nomination to the CIA post, some Washington insiders had said the White House wanted to find a prominent position for Petraeus to ensure he would not be recruited by Republicans as a challenger to the 2012 Obama-Biden ticket.

When he was nominated to lead the CIA there were some concerns in intelligence circles that the high-profile four-star Army general might not be able to lead from the shadows as appropriate for a spy chief.

But once he took over the head office at the U.S. spy agency, Petraeus kept a decidedly low public profile.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, expressed regret about the resignation of "one of America's best and brightest" and said it was an "enormous loss" for the country.

"At CIA, Director Petraeus gave the agency leadership, stature, prestige and credibility both at home and abroad. On a personal level, I found his command of intelligence issues second to none," she said.

RESIGNATION ACCEPTED

After accepting his resignation about a year-and-a-half after nominating Petraeus to the CIA post, Obama said: "By any measure, he was one of the outstanding General officers of his generation, helping our military adapt to new challenges, and leading our men and women in uniform through a remarkable period of service in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he helped our nation put those wars on a path to a responsible end."

Earlier this week, in a Newsweek article entitled "General David Petraeus's Rules for Living," he listed 12 lessons for leadership. Number 5 was: "We all will make mistakes. The key is to recognize them and admit them, to learn from them, and to take off the rear­ view mirrors - drive on and avoid making them again."

In 2010 Petraeus stepped into the breach as the new commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan to replace General Stanley McChrystal who was fired by Obama in a scandal over an article in which McChrystal and his aides made mocking comments about the president and some of his top advisers.

In 2009 Petraeus was diagnosed with early-stage prostate cancer and underwent radiation treatment. The media-friendly general joked at that time at a Washington event that reporters were only gathered "to see if the guy is still alive."

Petraeus, born in Cornwall, New York, lives in Virginia with his wife Holly. They have two grown children, a son who was an Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, and a daughter.

Petraeus's wife, Holly, is an activist and volunteer who champions military families, and she continued that work after her husband retired from the military and moved to the CIA.

She currently is assistant director of the office of servicemember affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she tries to keep unscrupulous lenders from taking advantage of military personnel. The bureau was championed by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, who was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts this week.

Holly Petraeus is the daughter of four-star General William Knowlton, who was superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when Petraeus was a cadet.

She briefed the press at the Pentagon on her efforts recently and was introduced by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who called her "a true friend of the Department of Defense and a dedicated member of our military family."

Petraeus has four Defense Distinguished Service Medal awards, three Distinguished Service Medal awards, the Bronze Star Medal for valor, and the State Department Distinguished Service Award.

He has a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University.

(Additional reporting by David Alexander, Matt Spetalnick and Diane Bartz; Editing by Warren Strobel and Jackie Frank)

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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Call me JackSUN, says singer Jermaine

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Jackson 5 singer Jermaine Jackson has petitioned to change his name, according to court documents filed earlier this week in Los Angeles.

The older brother of pop stars Michael and Janet Jackson, Jermaine wants to change his famous last name to Jacksun for “artistic reasons.”

Asked why Jermaine wanted to change his name, his attorney Bret D. Lewis, who filed the petition on Jackson’s behalf, told Reuters “If Prince and P Diddy can do it, why can’t and shouldn’t Jermaine?”

If all goes to plan, Jackson’s name will officially change following a court hearing set for February 22.

Jermaine, 57, and brothers Jackie, Marlon and Tito are currently in Europe on a Unity Tour, under the name The Jacksons, performing hits made famous by the Jackson 5 along with a tribute to their late sibling Michael.

Jermaine Jackson unofficially adopted the name Mohammad Abdul Aziz after converting to Islam in 1989.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Bernard Orr)

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Achilles Had Only 2 Heels

Recently, I came across the headline “Scientists Find Achilles’ Heel of Cancer Cells”, describing the discovery of a histone deactylase (HDAC11) as a novel target for cancer therapies. I was irritated by the metaphor of Achilles’ heel, because it implied that this was the lone vulnerability of cancer. I was also embarrassed by the fact that I used the same metaphor for the press release describing our work earlier this year showing that mitochondrial network structure can be targeted in cancer. I decided to google the expressions “Achilles’ heel” and “cancer”. It turns out that every year, numerous press releases and news articles claim that researchers have finally identified the “Achilles’ heel” of cancer. In Greek mythology, Achilles only had two feet and thus two heels; only one of the two heels was vulnerable. So how can it be that hundreds of researchers have found the Achilles’ heel of cancer? Apparently, I am not the only one who has used this metaphor inappropriately and it begs the question, whether we should even be using it at all. When I was a child, Gustav Schwab‘s “Sagen des klassischen Altertums” was one of my favorite books. His gripping narrative of the ancient Greek myths has also been translated from German into English and is available as “Gods and Heroes of Ancient Greece”. It was in this book that I first encountered the legend of Achilles and the story of the Trojan War, originally relayed by the Greek poet Homer in his great epic “The Illiad“. Achilles was the son of the sea-goddess (nymph) Thetis and King Peleus and was known for his great strength and skills in battle, but I could find nothing heroic in this demigod Achilles. Even though I loved Schwab’s narration, I despised Achilles. He vacillated between fits of rage and episodes of prolonged sulking. He was rude, arrogant and violent – Anakin Skywalker on steroids. I was especially horrified by how Achilles tied the body of his enemy Hector to his chariot and dragged it around, in order to humiliate the deceased and inflicting great psychological pain on Hector’s family. Basically, Achilles was a jerk; but according to the diagnostic classification of the American Psychiatric Association, Achilles may just have had IED (intermittent explosive disorder). When Achilles was a baby, his mother Thetis stuck him in a special flame to make him invulnerable. She was interrupted by Achilles’ father, who was shocked by what he perceived as poor parenting skills shown by Thetis. The interruption prevented Thetis from making her son completely invulnerable, which is why one of Achilles’ heels remained vulnerable. Later on in the legend, this vulnerable heel is where the Greek god Apollo directs his arrow and this injury ultimately results in Achilles’ demise. I remember the relief I experienced when I first read about Achilles’ death. It was karma – he deserved to die, considering all the pain and suffering that he had caused. I also remember that I was confused by the whole invulnerability aspect of the story. In a different part of the legend, his mother Thetis helps him obtain a special armor to protect his body. If nearly all of his body was already invulnerable, why would he need such a special armor? Wouldn’t he just need a special kind of Band-Aid to cover his one vulnerable heel? But then again, these were Greek gods and goddesses and they may have had different ways of approaching problems. Perhaps the special armor was extra insurance, just like people whose personal auto insurance covers rental cars but they still get suckered into buying additional rental car insurance at the airport. Later on, I found out the Schwab had combined multiple Achilles legends. The story of Achilles being invulnerable everywhere except for his heel and Achilles’ death are not part of Homer’s Illiad. It was long after Homer that the heel story became an integral part of the Achilles legend. In one version, Thetis did not place Achilles in a flame but instead dipped him in the magical River Styx. She held him by the heel of his foot, which is why he remained vulnerable in that one area. I am not sure that I would have held my son by the heel of all places, while dipping him into a magical river. Then again, I am not a Greek god. It also begs the question why Thetis did not dip him in a second time to make sure that the previously dry heal now also became invulnerable. In one narration, it was not Apollo who shot the arrow, but the Trojan prince Paris and Apollo merely directed the arrow into Achilles’ heel, possibly because Paris was not a very good shot. Even though the heel story and Achilles’ death or not part of the Illiad, it is difficult to envision the Achilles legend without it. The idea that even strong, arrogant entities remain vulnerable is very comforting. This may explain why this aspect of the legend is so popular and why it has given rise to the commonly used metaphor of the “Achilles’ heel” to describe lone vulnerable spots. Especially when describing cancer, the metaphor seems very apt. One can easily envision a growing tumor as an Achilles – aggressive and apparently invincible. When one identifies a gene or protein that can prevent tumor growth and or even kills the tumor, it is easy to succumb to using the “Achilles’ heel” metaphor. The problem with using this metaphor is that Achilles only had one single vulnerable heel. If a researcher claims to have found an Achilles’ heel, it not only implies that it is “one” area of vulnerability of the cancer, but that it is the “only” area of vulnerability. Most researchers who work with cancer cells know that there are many different mechanisms by which cancer growth can be slowed down. There is no single vulnerable pathway that can stop all cancer progression. Therefore, when researchers use this expression, they probably just like to convey the image of the powerful Achilles being brought to his knees by a single arrow. They do not want to claim that they have found the ultimate weapon to fight cancer. However, this metaphor inadvertently does imply that the described method is the only way to arrest the tumor. This is not only a gross over-simplification, but plain wrong. Someone who is not familiar with the complexities of cancer biology and reads a press release containing this metaphor may take this to mean that the sole vulnerability of cancer has been identified. Mythology and literature can be very inspiring for scientists and it is tempting to use powerful literary or mythological metaphors when communicating science, but one also needs to think about what these metaphors truly represent. Especially metaphors that oversimplify scientific findings or convey a false sense of certainty should be used avoided. When I think about research, two other Greek legends come to mind: The legend of Sisyphus and the Odyssey. Every day, Sisyphus rolled a rock up a mountain and then had to watch how it would roll back down again. This was his punishment decreed by the Greek gods. It reminds me of a lot of experiments that we scientists perform. When we feel that we are getting close solving a scientific problem we sometimes realize that we have to start all over again. Similarly, Odysseus’ long and exhausting journey is also a metaphor that appropriately characterizes a lot of real-life scientific research. Odysseus did not know if and when he would ever reach his destination, and this is how many of us conduct our research. I googled “Odyssey” and “cancer” to see if I could find news articles that allude to the scientific Odyssey of cancer research. To my surprise, I did find a number of articles, but these were not descriptions of scientific “Odysseys”. They were reports of cancer patients who described how they had undergone numerous different cancer treatments, often with little improvement. I realize that it is easier to market scientific ideas with a simplistic Achilles metaphor than to point out that science is long-winded and at times disorienting journey, similar to the Odyssey. But if we do want to use metaphors, we should probably use ones that appropriately convey the complexity and beauty of science.  

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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11,000 flee Syria in huge one-day exodus

DEAR ABBY: My brother lost his wife, the love of his life, three years ago. He has three children. His oldest, a 25-year-old daughter, "Jenny," told him that "when you marry, it is for life." She has threatened that if he dates someone or sees anyone, she will be out of his life and he won't be able to see his future grandchildren. (Jenny is getting married next summer.)My brother is very upset. He wants to settle this argument before she is married. He hasn't dated anyone, but feels she shouldn't be trying to control his life. Please help, Abby. ...

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Icahn says has mulled Netflix takeover, no decision made

(Reuters) – Activist investor Carl Icahn, who holds an almost 10 percent stake in Netflix, said on Thursday he has considered a hostile takeover bid for Netflix, but it was uncertain he stood a chance of acquiring the Internet streaming service.

Asked by TV network CNBC whether he would “go hostile” on Netflix, Icahn said, “The thought had certainly entered my mind. I have to admit I think about it, but we haven’t made that decision.”

While Icahn said a hostile takeover was “certainly an alternative,” he downplayed the possibility several times. He added that he would not be able to pay as much for Netflix as a “synergistic buyer” looking to acquire an Internet movie and TV subscription service.

Netflix has been the subject of periodic acquisition speculation, with potential names tossed around from Microsoft Corp to Amazon.com Inc.

Icahn last month disclosed he had amassed control of 9.98 percent of Netflix shares. Most of his purchases were in the form of call options that expire in September 2014. The billionaire, who is known for shaking up corporate management, has said Netflix was undervalued and an attractive acquisition target for a number of companies.

Netflix has since adopted a poison pill defense to prevent a hostile takeover, a move that Icahn on Thursday called “reprehensible.”

A Netflix spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Icahn’s remarks.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker in New York; Additional reporting by Katya Wachtel and Sam Forgione in New York and Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

DOHA (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad said he would “live and die” in Syria and warned that any Western invasion to topple him would have catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and beyond.

Assad’s defiant remarks coincided with a landmark meeting in Qatar on Thursday of Syria’s fractious opposition to hammer out an agreement on a new umbrella body uniting rebel groups inside and outside Syria, amid growing international pressure to put their house in order and prepare for a post-Assad transition.

The Syrian leader, battling a 19-month old uprising against his rule, appeared to reject an idea floated by British Prime Minister David Cameron on Tuesday that a safe exit and foreign exile for the London-educated Assad could end the civil war.

“I am not a puppet. I was not made by the West to go to the West or to any other country,” he told Russia Today television in an interview to be broadcast on Friday. “I am Syrian; I was made in Syria. I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Russia Today’s web site, which published a transcript of the interview conducted in English, showed footage of Assad speaking to journalists and walking down stairs outside a white villa. It was not clear when he had made his comments.

The United States and its allies want the Syrian leader out, but have held back from arming his opponents or enforcing a no-fly zone, let alone invading. Russia has stood by Assad.

The president said he doubted the West would risk the global cost of intervening in Syria, whose conflict has already added to instability in the Middle East and killed some 38,000 people.

“I think that the price of this invasion, if it happened, is going to be bigger than the whole world can afford … It will have a domino effect that will affect the world from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” the 47-year-old president said.

“I do not think the West is going in this direction, but if they do so, nobody can tell what is next.”

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

Backed by Washington, the Doha talks underline Qatar’s central role in the effort to end Assad‘s rule as the Gulf state, which funded the Libyan revolt to oust Muammar Gaddafi, tries to position itself as a player in a post-Assad Syria.

Qatari Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged the Syrian opposition to set its personal disputes aside and unite, according to a source inside the closed-door session.

“Come on, get a move on in order to win recognition from the international community,” the source quoted him as saying.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmed Davutoglu delivered a similar message, saying, according to the source: “We want one spokesman not many. We need efficient counterparts, it is time to unite.”

An official text of a speech by Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah showed he told the gathering: “The Syrian people awaits unity from you, not divisions … Your agreement today will prove to the international community that there is a unity … and this will reflect positively in the international community’s stance towards your fair cause.”

Across Syria, more than 90 people were killed in fighting on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

In Turkey’s Hatay border province, two civilians, a woman and a young man, were wounded by stray bullets fired from Syria, according to a Turkish official. Turkish forces increased their presence along the frontier, where officials have said they might seek NATO deployment of ground to air missiles.

Syria poses one of the toughest foreign policy challenges for U.S. President Barack Obama as he starts his second term.

International rivalries have complicated mediation efforts. Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolutions that would have put Assad under pressure.

Syria’s conflict, pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against forces dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, whose origins lie in Shi’ite Islam, has fuelled sectarian tensions across the Middle East. Sunni Arab countries and Turkey favor the rebels, while Shi’ite Iran backs Assad, its main Arab ally.

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

The main opposition body, the Syrian National Council (SNC), has been heavily criticized by Western and Arab backers of the revolt as ineffective, run by exiles out of touch with events in Syria, and under the sway of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

British Foreign Minister William Hague said London would now talk to rebel groups inside Syria, after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week criticized the SNC and called for a new opposition body to include those “fighting and dying”.

But the plan for a body that could eventually be considered a government-in-waiting capable of winning foreign recognition and therefore more military backing ran into trouble almost as soon as it was proposed by SNC member Riyad Seif.

The meeting has so far been bogged down by arguments over the SNC representation and the number of seats the rival groups – which include Islamists, leftists and secularists – will have in a proposed assembly. Seif said he hoped for agreement on that on Thursday night, although the talks may continue into Friday.

Senior SNC member Burhan Ghalioun said the participants were moving towards consensus: “The atmosphere was positive. We all agree that we don’t want to walk away from this meeting in failure,” he told reporters.

Seif’s proposal is the first concerted attempt to merge opposition forces to help end the devastating conflict.

The initiative would also create a Supreme Military Council, a Judicial Committee and a transitional government-in-waiting of technocrats – along the lines of Libya’s Transitional National Council, which managed to galvanize international support for its successful battle to topple Gaddafi.

Michael Doran of the Brookings Institute in Washington told a forum in Doha it would not work for Syria. “It’s not a ridiculous idea, but it’s not going to succeed,” he said.

A diplomat on the sidelines of the talks said international divisions in the U.N. Security council did not help.

“It’s a vicious circle. They are asking the opposition to unite when they admit they are not themselves united,” he said.

(Writing by Tom Perry and Samia Nakhoul; Editing by Alistair Lyon, Alastair Macdonald and Philippa Fletcher)

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Malaria vaccine a letdown for infants

LONDON (AP) — An experimental malaria vaccine once thought promising is turning out to be a disappointment, with a new study showing it is only about 30 percent effective at protecting infants from the killer disease.

That is a significant drop from a study last year done in slightly older children, which suggested the vaccine cut the malaria risk by about half — though that is still far below the protection provided from most vaccines. According to details released on Friday, the three-shot regimen reduced malaria cases by about 30 percent in infants aged 6 to 12 weeks, the target age for immunization.

Dr. Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders, described the vaccine’s protection levels as “unacceptably low.” She was not linked to the study.

Scientists have been working for decades to develop a malaria vaccine, a complicated endeavor since the disease is caused by five different species of parasites. There has never been an effective vaccine against a parasite. Worldwide, there are several dozen malaria vaccine candidates being researched.

In 2006, a group of experts led by the World Health Organization said a malaria vaccine should cut the risk of severe disease and death by at least half and should last longer than one year. Malaria is spread by mosquitoes and kills more than 650,000 people every year, mostly young children and pregnant women in Africa. Without a vaccine, officials have focused on distributing insecticide-treated bed nets, spraying homes with pesticides and ensuring access to good medicines.

In the new study, scientists found babies who got three doses of the vaccine had about 30 percent fewer cases of malaria than those who didn’t get immunized. The research included more than 6,500 infants in Africa. Experts also found the vaccine reduced the amount of severe malaria by about 26 percent, up to 14 months after the babies were immunized.

Scientists said they needed to analyze the data further to understand why the vaccine may be working differently in different regions. For example, babies born in areas with high levels of malaria might inherit some antibodies from their mothers which could interfere with any vaccination.

“Maybe we should be thinking of a first-generation vaccine that is targeted only for certain children,” said Dr. Salim Abdulla of the Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, one of the study investigators.

Results were presented at a conference in South Africa on Friday and released online by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study is scheduled to continue until 2014 and is being paid for by GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative.

“The results look bad now, but they will probably be worse later,” said Adrian Hill of Oxford University, who is developing a competing malaria vaccine. He noted the study showed the Glaxo vaccine lost its potency after several months. Hill said the vaccine might be a hard sell, compared to other vaccines like those for meningitis and pneumococcal disease — which are both effective and cheap.

“If it turns out to have a clear 30 percent efficacy, it is probably not worth it to implement this in Africa on a large scale,” said Genton Blaise, a malaria expert at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in Basel, who also sits on a WHO advisory board.

Eleanor Riley of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the vaccine might be useful if used together with other strategies, like bed nets. She was involved in an earlier study of the vaccine and had hoped for better results. “We’re all a bit frustrated that it has proven so hard to make a malaria vaccine,” she said. “The question is how much money are the funders willing to keep throwing at it.”

Glaxo first developed the vaccine in 1987 and has invested $ 300 million in it so far.

WHO said it couldn’t comment on the incomplete results and would wait until the trial was finished before drawing any conclusions.

___

Online:

www.nejm.org

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ex-oilman named new leader of world’s Anglicans

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain named a former oil executive as the new Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the world’s 80 million Anglicans on Friday as the church struggles to overcome a painful rift over the issues of female bishops and same-sex marriage.

Welby, 56, who has been bishop of the northern English city of Durham for little more than a year, will replace incumbent Rowan Williams who steps down in December.

The long-awaited appointment, announced by Prime Minister David Cameron‘s office in a statement, follows weeks of intense speculation that a row over whether to choose a reformer or a safe pair of hands had stalled the nomination process.

For Welby, the move capped a meteoric rise up the Church of England hierarchy since quitting the business world and being ordained in 1992.

The bespectacled father-of-five is seen as more conservative than the liberal Williams and is widely reported to be against gay marriage but in favor of the ordination of women bishops.

(Writing by Maria Golovnina Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

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Gas rationing expands as Sandy, Nor'easter effects linger

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