Canada spending growth sluggish in November, Mastercard says

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(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)


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2 bombers target mobile phone firms in Nigeria

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KANO, Nigeria (AP) — Authorities blame a radical Islamist sect for twin suicide car bombings targeting two major mobile phone companies, an official said Saturday, blacking out a top operator’s network in most of Nigeria‘s northern commercial hub.


A suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden car into the facilities of the Nigerian subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd. of India at about 8 a.m. in the city of Kano, said Capt. Iweha Ikedichi, who speaks for a special taskforce deployed in Kano to reduce the threat of the Islamic rebels known as Boko Haram. The attack left an Airtel worker injured, authorities said. It also damaged a switch station, said James Eze, an Airtel spokesman. He said the company was still assessing how bad the damage was, but declined to comment further.






Switch stations control the regional mobile phone network and if they are seriously damaged, the entire network could go down. An Airtel staff who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press said the targeted switch station covered six northern states, including Kano. But while Airtel’s network appeared to be down across Kano Sunday, calls to lines in some of the other states went through.


At about the same time as the Airtel attack, another bomber targeted the facilities of the Nigerian subsidiary of South Africa-based MTN Group Ltd., about two miles (three kilometers) away. That attack was botched by security officers who shot the bomber, causing an explosion at the company’s gate, Ikedichi said.


The target of the foiled attack was MTN’s switch station, said Funmilayo Omogbenigun, spokeswoman for Nigeria’s largest cell phone network provider.


Authorities suspect the Boko Haram sect is behind the attacks. The group is held responsible for more than 770 deaths this year alone, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press. Boko Haram’s campaign of bombings and shootings has targeted mosques, churches, schools, universities and government buildings. But, four months ago, the group broadened its scope by attacking mobile phone towers for the first time.


In September, a series of attacks damaged more than 31 towers operated by all the major mobile phone providers in the country. Other attacks have occurred since then, further straining the one link Nigeria relies on for communication in a country with very few landlines. While no one claimed responsibility for the attacks, the Islamist sect had threatened mobile phone companies earlier in the year, warning that they would be targeted for cooperating with the government to flush out its members.


In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than 160 million people, mobile phones serve as a valuable lifeline in both cities and rural communities. Landlines remain almost nonexistent, as the state-run telephone company has collapsed and repeated efforts to privatize it have failed. More 87 million mobile phone lines were in use in 2009, according to estimates.


“Never would we have expected that telecommunications could be targeted,” said Damien Udeh, a spokesman for the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria. “It portends a dangerous situation for everybody, especially government.”


___


Associated Press writer Yinka Ibukun contributed to this report from Lagos, Nigeria


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Iron Butterfly bassist Lee Dorman dies at age 70

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Lee Dorman, the bassist for psychedelic rock band Iron Butterfly, has died at age 70.


Orange County sheriff‘s spokeswoman Gail Krause says Dorman was found dead in a vehicle Friday morning. A coroner’s investigation is under way, but foul play is not suspected.






Krause said Dorman may have been on his way to a doctor’s appointment when he died.


Iron Butterfly was formed and rose to prominence in the late 1960s. Its second album, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” sold more than 30 million copies, according to the band’s website. The title track’s distinctive notes have been featured in numerous films and TV shows including “The Simpsons,” ”That ’70s Show” and in the series finale of “Rescue Me.”


Douglas Lee Dorman was born in September 1942 and had been living in Laguna Niguel, a coastal city in Southern California, when he died.


A message sent through the band’s website was not immediately returned.


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Violence, fear & suspicion imperil Pakistan’s war on polio

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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani health worker Bushra Bibi spent eight years trekking to remote villages, carefully dripping polio vaccine into toddlers’ pursed mouths to protect them from the crippling disease.


Now the 35-year-old mother is too scared to go to work after masked men on motorbikes gunned down nine of her fellow health workers in a string of attacks this week.






“I have seen so much pain in the eyes of mothers whose children have been infected. So I have never seen this as just a job. It is my passion,” she said. “But I also have a family to look after … Things have never been this bad.”


After the deaths, the United Nations put its workers on lockdown. Immunizations by the Pakistani government continued in parts of the country. But the violence raised fresh questions over stability in the South Asian nation.


Pakistan’s Taliban insurgency, convinced that the anti-polio drive is just another Western plot against Muslims, has long threatened action against anyone taking part in it.


The militant group’s hostility deepened after it emerged that the CIA – with the help of a Pakistani doctor – had used a vaccination campaign to spy on Osama bin Laden’s compound before he was killed by U.S. special forces in a Pakistan town last year.


Critics say the attacks on the health workers are a prime example of the government’s failure to formulate a decisive policy on tackling militancy, despite pressure from key ally the United States, the source of billions of dollars in aid.


For years, authorities were aware that Taliban commanders had broadcast claims that the vaccination drive was actually a plot to sterilize Muslims.


That may seem absurd to the West, but in Pakistan such assertions are plausible to some. Years of secrecy during military dictatorships, frequent political upheaval during civilian rule and a poor public education system mean conspiracy theories run wild.


“Ever since they began to give these polio drops, children are reaching maturity a lot earlier, especially girls. Now 12 to 13-year-old girls are becoming women. This causes indecency in society,” said 45-year-old Mir Alam Khan, a carpet seller in the northern town of Dera Ismail Khan.


The father of four didn’t allow any of his children to receive vaccinations.


“Why doesn’t the United States give free cures for other illnesses? Why only polio? There has to be an agenda,” he said.


While health workers risk attacks by militants, growing suspicions from ordinary Pakistanis are lowering their morale. Fatima, a health worker in the northwestern city of Peshawar, said that reaction to news of the CIA polio campaign was so severe that many of her colleagues quit.


“People’s attitudes have changed. You will not believe how even the most educated and well-to-do people will turn us away, calling us U.S. spies and un-Islamic,” said the 25-year-old who did not give her last name for fear of reprisals.


“Boys call us names, they say we are ‘indecent women’.”


Pakistan’s government has tried to shatter the myths that can undermine even the best-intentioned health projects by turning to moderate clerics and urging them to issue religious rulings supporting the anti-polio efforts.


Tahir Ashrafi, head of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, said the alliance of clerics had done its part, and it was up to the government to come to the rescue of aid workers.


“Clerics can only give fatwas and will continue to come together and condemn such acts,” he said. “What good are fatwas if the government doesn’t provide security?”


RISK OF POLIO RETURNING


That may be a tall order in Pakistan, where critics allege government officials are too busy lining their pockets or locked in power struggles to protect its citizens, even children vulnerable to diseases that can cripple or disfigure them.


Pakistani leaders deny such accusations.


Politicians also have a questionable track record when it comes to dealing with all the other troubles afflicting nuclear-armed Pakistan.


The villages where health workers once spent time tending to children often lack basic services, clinics, clean water and jobs. Industries that could strengthen the fragile economy are hobbled by chronic power cuts.


Deepening frustrations with those issues often encourage Pakistanis to give up on the state and join the Taliban.


So far it’s unclear who is behind the shootings. The main Taliban spokesman said they were opposed to the vaccination scheme but the group distanced itself from the attacks.


But another Taliban spokesman in South Waziristan said their fighters were behind an attack on a polio team in the northwestern town of Lakki Marwat on Monday. “The vaccinations were part of “a secret Jewish-American agenda to poison Pakistanis”, he said.


What is clear is the stakes are high.


Any gaps in the program endanger hard-won gains against a disease that can cause death or paralysis within hours.


A global effort costing billions of dollars eradicated polio from every country except Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan.


Vaccinations cut Pakistan‘s polio cases from 20,000 in 1994 to 56 in 2012 and the disease seemed isolated in a pocket in the north. But polio is spread person-to-person, so any outbreak risks re-infecting communities cleared of the disease.


Last year, a strain from Pakistan spread northeast and caused the first outbreak in neighboring China since 1999.


Oliver Rosenbauer, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said the group had been coming closer to eradicating the disease.


“For the first time, the virus had been geographically cornered,” he said. “We don’t want to lose the gains that had been made … Any suspension of activities gives the virus a new foothold and the potential to come roaring back and paralyze more children.”


MOURNING FAMILIES


Condemnation of the killings has been nearly universal. Clerics called for demonstrations to support health workers, the government has promised compensation for the deaths and police have vowed to provide more protection.


For women like Fehmida Shah, it’s already too late. The 44-year-old health worker lived with her family in a two-room house before gunmen shot her on Tuesday.


Her husband, Syed Riaz Shah, said she spent her tiny salary – the equivalent of just $ 2 a day – on presents for their four daughters. Even though the family was struggling, she always found some spare money for any neighbor in need.


“She was very kind and big hearted. All the women in our lane knew her,” he said.


“The entire neighborhood is in shock. Pray for my daughters. I will get through this. But I don’t know how they will.”


(Additional reporting by Imtiaz Shah in Karachi, Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar, Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismail Khan and Katharine Houreld in Islamabad; Editing by Michael Georgy and Sanjeev Miglani)


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Obama starts Hawaiian vacation, leaving Washington on ice

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KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) - Taking what promised to be a very brief Christmas break from the ongoing struggle to avoid the "fiscal cliff" of tax hikes and spending cuts, President Barack Obama relaxed with his family on Saturday at a beach retreat in Hawaii.


Congress was to return to Washington next Thursday and Obama has pledged to work with lawmakers to strike a deal to avoid the economic shock from tax and spending measures set to take effect on January 1 if a deal can't be reached, which many economists say could push the U.S. economy back into recession.


The president is expected to indulge in some of his favorite pastimes on the island where he was born and raised: golf, an expedition for the local treat "shave ice," and an evening out with family and friends. He hit the links at the nearby Marine Corps base under sunny skies on Saturday afternoon.


On Sunday, he is expected to attend funeral services for Senator Daniel Inouye, the long-serving Democrat from Hawaii who died on Monday, but the president has no other public events on his schedule.


On Saturday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had urged Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, to name Inouye's successor "with due haste."


"It is critically important to ensure that the people of Hawaii are fully represented in the pivotal decisions the Senate will be making before the end of the year," Reid, of Nevada, said in a statement.


Obama's idyll was not expected to last more than four days, and he will likely retrace the more than 4,800-mile trip from the Aloha State to Washington after Christmas in a bid to cut a deal with Republicans, who failed on Thursday to agree on competing tax and spending bills of their own.


Before leaving Washington on Friday evening, Obama urged Congress to come up with a stopgap measure to spare the U.S. economy the jolt of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts economists say would likely derail the economy.


The president asked lawmakers for a stripped-down deal to continue lower tax rates on middle income earners and extend unemployment insurance benefits to avoid some of the worst effects of the "fiscal cliff" in the new year.


Obama's family holiday, in a quiet beach front community on the other side of the island from bustling Honolulu, should also provide some respite from the somber focus on the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre and the consequent bitter debate over measures to change America's gun culture and prevent violence.


The president's weekly radio and Internet addresses, which in recent weeks have centered on his argument for extending tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans, on Saturday offered holiday greetings to U.S. military forces.


(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Richard Cowan; Editing by Vicki Allen, Todd Eastham and Paul Simao)



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Italy PM Monti resigns, elections likely in February

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ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way to a highly uncertain national election in February.


The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he has faced growing pressure to seek a second term.






President Giorgio Napolitano is expected to dissolve parliament in the next few days and has already indicated that the most likely date for the election is February 24.


In an unexpected move, Napolitano said he would hold consultations with political leaders from all the main parties on Saturday to discuss the next steps. In the meantime Monti will continue in a caretaker capacity.


European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti’s economic reform agenda to continue but Italy’s two main parties have said he should stay out of the race.


Monti, who handed in his resignation during a brief meeting at the presidential palace shortly after parliament approved his government’s 2013 budget, will hold a news conference on Sunday at which he is expected clarify his intentions.


Ordinary Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence that they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.


Whether he runs or not, his legacy will loom over an election which will be fought out over the painful measures he has introduced to try to rein in Italy’s huge public debt and revive its stagnant economy.


His resignation came a couple of months before the end of his term, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi‘s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party in parliament earlier this month.


Speculation is swirling over Monti’s next moves. These could include outlining policy recommendations, endorsing a centrist alliance committed to his reform agenda or even standing as a candidate in the election himself.


The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has held a strong lead in the polls for months but a centrist alliance led by Monti could gain enough support in the Senate to force the PD to seek a coalition deal which could help shape the economic agenda.


BERLUSCONI IN WINGS


Senior figures from the alliance, including both the UDC party, which is close to the Roman Catholic Church, and a new group founded by Ferrari sports car chairman Luca di Montezemolo, have been hoping to gain Monti’s backing.


He has not said clearly whether he intends to run, but he has dropped heavy hints he will continue to push a reform agenda that has the backing of both Italy’s business community and its European partners.


The PD has promised to stick to the deficit reduction targets Monti has agreed with the European Union and says it will maintain the broad course he has set while putting more emphasis on reviving growth.


Berlusconi’s return to the political arena has added to the already considerable uncertainty about the centre-right’s intentions and increased the likelihood of a messy and potentially bitter election campaign.


The billionaire media tycoon has fluctuated between attacking the government’s “Germano-centric” austerity policies and promising to stand aside if Monti agrees to lead the centre right, but now appears to have settled on an anti-Monti line.


He has pledged to cut taxes and scrap a hated housing tax which Monti imposed. He has also sounded a stridently anti-German line which has at times echoed the tone of the populist 5-Star Movement headed by maverick comic Beppe Grillo.


The PD and the PDL, both of which supported Monti’s technocrat government in parliament, have made it clear they would not be happy if he ran against them and there have been foretastes of the kind of attacks he can expect.


Former centre-left prime minister Massimo D’Alema said in an interview last week that it would be “morally questionable” for Monti to run against the PD, which backed all of his reforms and which has pledged to maintain his pledges to European partners.


Berlusconi who has mounted an intensive media campaign in the past few days, echoed that criticism this week, saying Monti risked losing the credibility he has won over the past year and becoming a “little political figure”.


(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones, Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Paolo Biondi; Writing by Gavin Jones and James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy)


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Instagram diverts attention from botched policy change with another new filter

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“It’s a Wonderful Life” is top Christmas film with critics

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – When it comes to Christmas films, “It’s a Wonderful Life” can still melt critics’ hearts nearly 70 years after it was released, according to a survey of the best-reviewed Christmas films.


The survey, to be released on Friday by review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, found that the 1946 redemption story starring Jimmy Stewart edged out the 1942 Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire musical “Holiday Inn” and Tim Burton‘s 1993 stop-motion fantasy “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”






World War Two drama “Stalag 17,” released in 1953, and 1947′s “Miracle on 34th Street” round out the top five.


“It’s a Wonderful Life” vaulted to the top spot from No. 5 in 2009, when the list was last compiled, bumping “The Nightmare Before Christmas” from its best-reviewed status.


Films that use the holiday as a backdrop for the plot such as 1988′s “Die Hard,” which was No. 6 on the list, and 1983′s “Trading Places” at No. 9, were also eligible, the website said.


Rotten Tomatoes, which analyzes film reviews and assigns a score based on total critical reception, applied that same formula to Christmas films for the list, Matt Atchity, the website’s editor in chief, told Reuters.


“You look at the list and it’s all the classics … the cream floats to the top,” Atchity said, adding that the rankings were weighted to reflect the amount of reviews a film received, which could artificially boost or decline a score.


Films from the 1960s and 1970s were notably absent from the list. Atchity said studios were more focused at that time on work by big-name directors than on seasonal films.


Here are the 25 best-reviewed Christmas films of all time, according to website Rotten Tomatoes:


* “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946)


* “Holiday Inn” (1942)


* “The Nightmare Before Christmas” (1993)


* “Stalag 17″ (1953)


* “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947)


* “Die Hard” (1988)


* “Arthur Christmas” (2011)


* “A Christmas Story” (1983)


* “Trading Places” (1983)


* “Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale” (2010)


* “Lethal Weapon” (1987)


* “A Midnight Clear” (1992)


* “A Christmas Tale” (2008)


* “While You Were Sleeping” (1995)


* “Scrooge (A Christmas Carol)” (1951)


* “Elf” (2003)


* “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” (2005)


* “Gremlins” (1984)


* “The Santa Clause” (1994)


* “The Bishop’s Wife” (1947)


* “Bad Santa” (2003)


* “8 Women” (2002)


* “Batman Returns” (1992)


* “White Christmas” (1954)


* “The Ref” (1994)


The full list can been seen at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/best_christmas_movies_2012/?hub=10


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Stacey Joyce)


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Mo. students lose 756 pounds at SC boarding school

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Sixteen-year-old Jason Alexander weighed 326 pounds four months ago when he and 13 classmates boarded a plane for a weight-loss boarding school in South Carolina.


When he stepped off a return flight home Friday, he was down to 233 pounds, making him the biggest loser in his Missouri school district’s unusually aggressive effort to battle childhood obesity.






While individual families have long enrolled children in weight-loss programs, the Independence school district is believed to be the first to send students as a group to a program like the one in South Carolina. The 12 students who completed the program lost a combined 756 pounds, and relatives and friends who greeted them at the airport could scarcely believe the change.


Jason’s mother, Debbie Alexander, said it wasn’t just the weight loss. Her son who had battled a speech impediment and been slow to smile was now grinning broadly.


“It’s crazy,” Alexander said. “Kids have always given him grief.”


The school district, donors and the students’ families worked together to pay about half of the usual $ 28,500-per-semester tuition at MindStream Academy in Bluffton, S.C. The rest of the tuition was paid by a foundation associated with the academy and other donors.


Jason and the other students — the youngest was 11 — spent the semester exercising, studying, working with counselors and learning to eat healthier. The curriculum was practical and hands-on: Students took field trips to a grocery store and fast food restaurant to learn to make good purchasing decisions and studied things like knife skills in the school’s kitchen.


Their parents, meanwhile, met monthly with MindStream‘s clinical director in Independence to learn how to help their children upon their return. Experts say it’s hard for anyone to maintain weight-loss if their families don’t also develop good eating and exercise habits.


Each student had a story of how the pounds added up. Jason’s weight shot up after his father’s death 6 1/2 years earlier, jeopardizing his dream of joining the military. Like many who are overweight, he became easily winded and his knees hurt.


He said he’s now 40 to 50 pounds from being able to qualify for military service and plans to join a training group to help him shed the rest of the weight. His family has cleansed the kitchen of junk food, made space for a treadmill and stocked up on healthy items like ground turkey. The district envisions Jason and the other participants becoming health ambassadors in their schools, perhaps speaking to groups or working one-on-one with classmates who are struggling with their weight.


“I feel amazing,” said Jason, who shed weight so quickly that he struggled to find clothes. His jeans, which he bought from another classmate, hung loose around him, cinched with a belt to keep them from falling off. “I can’t believe I got to that point. I can’t believe I got that big.”


Several Independence parents said the program also helped them lose weight, from 5 to 80 pounds.


Angela Gentry lost 20 pounds while her 17-year-old daughter, Teah, was in South Carolina. Teah lost more than 60 pounds, and her brother lost 36 at home.


“These kids are ready,” Gentry said. “They could take on anything.”


The district and the boarding school didn’t know of any other public schools that had made such an effort, and other experts couldn’t name any either. But Sarah Stone, MindStream’s programming director, said it hopes to engage other districts in similar partnerships in the future.


“It is to all of our best interest for these kids to be able to realize their best potential,” Stone said.


Independence already had taken aggressive steps to battle childhood obesity, measuring students’ body-mass index and posting the information on a protected website parents use to check grades and lunch account balances. The data was alarming: 36 percent of the students were overweight last year.


The district took steps to address the problem, including offering groups for students focused on healthy eating. But district spokeswoman Nancy Lewis said some students need a more intensive intervention.


“I do think there is something about them being removed from their environment that makes this a success,” said Lewis, adding that the school system hopes to send a second group of students to MindStream next fall. “It just kick starts the process.”


Chrystal Loyd, 15, said she felt “more energized” after losing more than 60 pounds and planned to focus now on her mother. Misty Loyd, 35, already had shed 15 pounds and run a 3-kilometer race, a first for her.


“We are going to start working out together,” Misty Loyd said. “We are going to use their cookbook and start cooking healthier.”


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NRA move exposes deep divide on guns

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any chance for national unity on U.S. gun violence appeared to wane a week after the Connecticut school massacre, as the powerful NRA gun rights lobby called on Friday for armed guards in every school and gun-control advocates vehemently rejected the proposal.


The solution offered by the National Rifle Association defied a push by President Barack Obama for new gun laws, such as bans on high-capacity magazines and certain semiautomatic rifles.


At a hotel near the White House, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said a debate among lawmakers would be long and ineffective, and that school children were better served by immediate action to send officers with firearms into schools.


LaPierre delivered an impassioned defense of the firearms that millions of Americans own, in a rare NRA news briefing after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting in which a gunman killed his mother, and then 20 children and six adults at an elementary school.


"Why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our president or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?" LaPierre asked in comments twice interrupted by anti-NRA protesters whom guards forced from the room.


Speaking to about 200 reporters and editors but taking no questions, LaPierre dared politicians to oppose armed guards.


"Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners," he asked, "that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal?"


Proponents of gun control immediately rejected the idea, hardening battle lines in a social debate that divides Americans as much as abortion or same-sex marriage.


A brief NRA statement three days earlier in which the group said it wanted to contribute meaningfully to ways to prevent school massacres led to speculation that compromise might be possible, or that the NRA was too weak to defeat new legislation.


"The NRA's leadership had an opportunity to help unite the nation behind efforts to reduce gun violence and avert massacres like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School," said Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York. She supports new limits on ammunition and firearms, and universal background checks for gun buyers.


WAITING FOR A COMPROMISE


Adam Winkler, author of "Gunfight," a history of U.S. gun rights, said he expected the NRA might yield on background checks. About 40 percent of gun purchasers are not checked, according to some estimates.


"The NRA missed a huge opportunity to move in the direction of compromise. Instead of offering a major contribution to the gun debate, which is what they promised, we got the same old tired clichés," said Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.


A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Monday showed the percentage of Americans favoring tough gun regulations rising 8 points after the Newtown shooting, to 50 percent.


Inside the NRA, though, attitudes might not change much.


"The anti-gun forces which are motivated by hysteria and a refusal to deal with the facts are going to be facing a counter-attack here that is going to be very, very effective," said Robert Brown, an NRA board member and the publisher of Soldier of Fortune, a military-focused magazine.


During the news conference, LaPierre laid out a plan for a "National School Shield" and said former U.S. congressman Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas would head up the NRA's effort to develop a model security program for schools.


The NRA is far and away America's most powerful gun organization and dwarves other groups with its lobbying efforts. In 2011, it spent $3.1 million lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies, while all gun-control groups combined spent $280,000, according to records the groups filed with Congress.


ECHOES OF COLUMBINE


Ken Blackwell, another NRA board member, said NRA leaders were discussing how to react to the Newtown shooting on the day it happened, helping LaPierre formulate a position.


"He and the team of lawyers around him are very bright and they understand the Constitution," said Blackwell, a Republican former state official in Ohio.


The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008 guarantees an individual right to own firearms, though it allows for some limits.


While LaPierre's proposal to arm schools came as a surprise to those who hoped for compromise, it is not new.


Former NRA president, the late actor Charlton Heston, made a similar proposal after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre near Denver that killed 12 students and one teacher.


"If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly," Heston said in April 1999, according to The New York Times.


Columbine had an armed sheriff's deputy who exchanged gunfire outside the school with one of the two teenage killers, according to a Jefferson County, Colorado, sheriff's office report. The deputy was unable to hit or stop the student, who was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, from entering the school, and the deputy stayed in a parking lot with police, the report said.


Protesters at the news briefing on Friday accused the NRA of being complicit in gun deaths.


"If teachers can stand up to gunmen, Congress can stand up to the NRA," said Medea Benjamin, co-director of the peace group Code Pink, who was escorted from the news conference.


(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Patrick Rucker and Alina Selyukh in Washington, and Stephanie Simon and Keith Coffman in Denver, Colorado; Editing by Karey Wutkowski, Mary Milliken and Eric Beech)



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Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria

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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.


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‘Homeland’ star Claire Danes gives birth to first child

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Emmy-winning actress Claire Danes has given birth to her first child, a boy, the publicist for the “Homeland” star said on Wednesday.


Cyrus Michael Christopher Dancy was born on Monday to Danes, 33, and her husband, British actor Hugh Dancy.






Danes’ performance as CIA operative Carrie Matheson on Showtime’s “Homeland” series scored her an Emmy win in September, while the psychological thriller won the TV industry’s highest honor of best drama series.


Danes is nominated for her second Golden Globe award in the role at the Hollywood awards show in January. She also has won multiple awards for her past work on 2010 TV film “Temple Grandin,” and as a 15-year-old on the 1990s coming-of-age television drama “My So-Called Life.”


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Lisa Shumaker)


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Ethics panel says Nevada’s Berkley violated rules

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Rep. Shelley Berkley violated House rules and the government’s code of conduct when she used her office to benefit her husband’s medical practice, the House Ethics Committee concluded Thursday.


The committee ended the case after adopting the findings of its investigative panel, saying no discipline was necessary because of Berkley’s cooperation. The conclusions said the Nevada Democrat made no attempt to enrich herself.






The seven-term lawmaker is retiring from the House, and narrowly lost a Senate race in November to incumbent Republican Dean Heller. The investigation was an issue in the Senate campaign, playing to voters’ distrust of Washington. National Republicans and GOP-aligned groups spent millions of dollars questioning Berkley’s character.


The committee said that in four instances from April 2008 through December 2010, her husband, Dr. Lawrence Lehrner, contacted Berkley’s congressional office to complain about problems his medical practice had in collecting payments from the Veterans Administration, Medicare or Medicaid.


Lehrner referenced specific dollar amounts that he believed those agencies owed to his practice, Kidney Specialists of Southern Nevada.


Representative Berkley and her staff took actions in response to these issues to assist in KSSN obtaining payment,” the committee said. It added that the violations occurred because these actions benefited her and could be construed as influencing the performance of her government duties.


But the committee made clear that Berkley’s motivation was proper, even though she ran afoul of standards of conduct. It found that the delayed payments by government agencies were a legitimate issue which —as Berkley publicly stated — could result in providers deciding not to see patients under the government programs. The findings said her activities “appear to have been motivated by factors wholly divorced from her family’s financial well-being.”


Nonetheless, the committee said, “she was mistaken when she applied these facts to the ethics rules and determined that her course of action was proper.” The panel said the lack of any corrupt intent reduced the severity of the violation.


In a statement Thursday night, Berkley said, “The committee’s findings on this issue show I acted only in the interest of protecting Nevada veterans who needed this critical kidney care.”


On a different issue, the committee found insufficient evidence that Berkley violated any rules or laws governing conflicts of interest in her attempts — along with the Nevada delegation — to aid a county hospital’s kidney transplant program where her husband’s practice had a contract to provide services.


“The committee could not determine the precise consequences of the kidney transplant center’s continued operations on KSSN’s existing contract and concluded that whatever those consequences, they did not factor into Rep. Berkley’s decision making at the time.”


Berkley said those findings “put to rest any claims that I acted improperly in fighting for (my constituents’) health care needs.”


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Blizzards, blackouts hit Midwest

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CHICAGO (Reuters) - The first major winter storm of the year hit the U.S. Midwest on Thursday, bringing a blizzard to the Plains and tornadoes to Alabama and Arkansas, and leaving some 133,000 customers without electricity.


Bad driving conditions led to a 25-car pileup on a highway near Clarion, Iowa, that left three people dead, authorities said. Blizzard warnings were in effect in eastern Iowa and parts of Wisconsin and Illinois Thursday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service.


"It's going to be very windy with considerable blowing and drifting of snow," said Bruce Terry, a senior National Weather Service forecaster at the HydroMeteorological Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland. He called the pre-Christmas storm "a major winter snowstorm" for the Midwest and western Great Lakes.


Accumulations of up to a foot of snow were expected in some areas, Terry said, adding there was a potential for severe weather on the so-called "warm side" of the storm in the U.S. Southeast.


Blowing snow led to school closures in parts of Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, plus the closure of all state government offices in Iowa.


"Thunder" snow was reported in Iowa Wednesday night, especially in southeastern Iowa, as thunder and lightning accompanied the storm as it surged across the state.


Travel was not advised on Iowa roads for the rest of the day, according to Annette Dunn with the Iowa Department of Transportation.


"We're going to have visibility and drifting problems through midnight," she said.


Late Thursday morning, troopers responded to a 25-car crash which killed three people on southbound Interstate 35 in northern Iowa. Iowa DOT closed I-35 at Highway 30 due to deteriorating conditions.


The Iowa National Guard has deployed about 80 soldiers from across the state to help highway assistance teams cope with the storm.


In Nebraska, portions of I-80 were closed Thursday due to snow-packed and icy road conditions. The entire road was expected to reopen before 4 p.m. local time.


In Chicago, rain was expected to change to snow Thursday night, with wind gusts of as much as 50 miles per hour, the NWS said.


Due to low visibility, airlines at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport were reporting delays of up to 90 minutes and have canceled more than 200 flights. At Midway Airport in Chicago, airlines canceled 150 flights and Southwest Airlines canceled all flights after 4:30 p.m.


A twister near downtown Mobile, Alabama, damaged buildings, snapped trees, downed power lines and flipped vehicles early on Thursday, but there were no reports of injuries, authorities said.


"The potential is there certainly for some isolated tornadoes," Terry said, referring to a broad swath of Gulf of Mexico coast and inland territory stretching from southeast Louisiana through the western Florida Panhandle.


The National Weather Service confirmed on Thursday that a tornado destroyed a mobile home southwest of Sheridan, Arkansas. There were no reports of injuries.


High winds of around 45 miles per hour in Tennessee knocked down trees and power lines.


While the heavy snow in the Upper Midwest will create potentially dangerous travel conditions, meteorologist Jeff Masters said it put an end to this year's "record-length snowless streaks in a number of U.S. cities."


Writing on his website weatherunderground.com, Masters said the storm would also provide "welcome moisture for drought-parched areas of the Midwest."


The winter storm, named Draco by the Weather Channel, began Tuesday in the Rocky Mountains and marked a dramatic change from the mild December so far in most of the nation.


High winds kicked up a dust storm in West Texas on Wednesday, leading to at least one death in a traffic accident near Lubbock.


Power companies reported electrical outages in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Virginia and Tennessee, with a peak of 400,000 customers without power Thursday morning. That fell to 133,000 by Thursday afternoon.


(Writing by Tom Brown and Nick Carey; Reporting by Mary Wisniewski in Chicago, Eileen O'Grady in Houston, Kaija Wilkinson in Mobile, Alabama and Keith Coffman in Denver, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, Kay Henderson in Des Moines, Iowa, Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee, Matthew Waller in San Angelo, Texas and Suzi Parker in Little Rock, Arkansas.; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Greg McCune, Tim Dobbyn and Jim Marshall)



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Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup

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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.


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Kodak in $525 million patent deal, eyes bankruptcy end

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(Reuters) – Eastman Kodak Co agreed to sell its digital imaging patents for about $ 525 million, a key step to bringing the photography pioneer out of bankruptcy in the first half of 2013.


The deal for the 1,100 patents allows Kodak to fulfill a condition for securing $ 830 million in financing.






The patent deal was reached with a consortium led by Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corp, and which includes some of the world’s biggest technology companies, which will license or acquire the patents.


Those companies are Adobe Systems Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc, Facebook Inc, Fujifilm, Google Inc, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, HTC Corp, Microsoft Corp, Research In Motion Ltd, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd and Shutterfly Inc, according to court documents.


Kodak still must sell its personalized and document-imaging businesses as part of the financing package, and also has to resolve its UK pension obligation.


Kodak said the patent deal puts it on a path to emerge from Chapter 11 in the first half of 2013.


“Our progress has accelerated over the past several weeks as we prepare to emerge as a strong, sustainable company,” said Antonio Perez, chairman and chief executive of the Rochester, New York-based company.


The patent portfolio was expected to be a major asset for Kodak when it filed for bankruptcy in January. An outside firm had estimated the patents could be worth as much as $ 2.6 billion.


Kodak’s patents hit the market as intellectual property values have soared and technology companies have plowed money into patent-related litigation.


For example, last year Nortel Networks sold 6,000 wireless patents in a bankruptcy auction for $ 4.5 billion and earlier this year Google spent $ 12.5 billion for patent-rich Motorola Mobility.


But Kodak’s patent auction dragged on beyond the initial expectation that it would be wrapped up in August. One patent specialist blamed those early, overly optimistic valuations, which he said encouraged Kodak’s team to set their sights too high.


“Unfortunately (Kodak management) was misled into thinking it was worth billions of dollars and it wasn’t,” said Alex Poltorak, chairman of General Patent Corp, a patent licensing firm. “I think they sold them at a very good price.”


He said after Google acquired Motorola, the search engine company no longer needed patents at any price, deflating the intellectual property market.


Kodak traces its roots to the 19th century and invented the handheld camera. But it has been unable to successfully shift to digital imaging.


It will likely be a different company when it exits bankruptcy, out of the consumer business and focused instead on providing products and services to the commercial imaging market.


The patent sale is subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.


The Kodak bankruptcy case is in Re: Eastman Kodak Co. et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-10202.


(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware and Sruthi Ramakrishnan in Bangalore; Editing by Nick Zieminski,; John Wallace and Peter Galloway)


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Leah Remini sued by former managers over “Family Tools” commissions

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Leah Remini‘s new TV gig is already giving her a headache, months before it even starts. Former “King of Queens” star Remini is being sued by her former managers, the Collective Management Group, which claims that it’s owed $ 67,000 in commissions relating to her upcoming ABC comedy “Family Tools,” which debuts May 1.


In a complaint filed with Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, the Collective says that it entered into an agreement with the actress in November 2011 that guaranteed the company 10 percent of the earnings that emerged from projects that Remini “discussed, negotiated, contemplated, or procured/booked during Plaintiff’s representation of Remini,” regardless of whether the income was earned after she and the Collective parted ways.






According to the lawsuit, that would include the $ 1 million that it says Remini will earn for the first season of “Family Tools.” (The suit allows that it isn’t owed commission on a $ 330,000 talent holding fee that Remini received from ABC prior to officially being booked on the show.)


Remini, pictured above wearing the self-satisfied smirk of someone who just might stiff her former managers out of their commission, terminated her agreement with the Collective “without warning or justification” in October, the suit says.


Alleging breach of oral contract among other charges, the suit is asking for an order stipulating that it’s owed the $ 67,000, plus unspecified damages, interest and court costs.


Remini’s agent has not yet responded to TheWrap’s request for comment.


(Pamela Chelin contributed to this report)


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Officials: 31 suspended in Army day care scandal

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WASHINGTON (AP) — At least 31 people were suspended from two Army day care centers at Fort Myer, Va., last week after officials scrutinized their backgrounds and found criminal convictions including fourth-degree sexual assault and drug use, a defense official said Wednesday.


An earlier statement that the 31 people had been fired was erroneous, the official said. Suspension allows for the possibility of reinstatement or dismissal.






The escalating scandal surrounding the Fort Myer Child Development Center has triggered a review of hiring procedures, angered defense leaders, and prompted a late-night telephone call Tuesday from President Barack Obama to the Army secretary. In the call, Obama expressed concern and urged a speedy and thorough investigation.


Details of the scandal emerged this week, nearly three months after two workers were arrested on charges of assaulting children at the Fort Myer center. The slow pace of public revelations enraged Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who on Tuesday ordered a worldwide review of hiring practices at all military child care centers, schools, youth centers and other facilities that involve children.


According to a defense official, 10 of the 31 suspended workers were involved in minor criminal offenses, 13 were involved in assaults, six were involved in drug use and two were involved in fourth-degree sexual assault. The official noted that neither person with sex assault charges ever ended up on a national registry of sex offenders. In some cases, sexual assaults can involve people over the age of 18 who are having consensual relationships with someone under the age of 18.


After the arrests, the youth services coordinator and deputy at the day care center were reassigned. The center was shut down last Thursday.


The defense official also said the approximately 100 remaining child care employees at Fort Myer are caring for the children at the Cody Child Development Center, also on the base.


Coming on the heels of last week’s massacre of 6- and 7-year-olds in a shooting at their elementary school in Newtown, Conn., the day care scandal caught Obama’s attention and prompted a 10 p.m. telephone call Tuesday to Army Secretary John McHugh.


A White House official said the president relayed his concern about reports of abuse at the day care center and made clear that there must be a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to protecting the children of service members.


The official said Obama urged McHugh to conduct the investigation into its hiring practices quickly and thoroughly. Officials spoke about the investigation and the phone call on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.


Obama has been outspoken in his demands for a quick government reaction to the Newtown shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead.


The Army had no immediate comment on the president’s call.


Pentagon leaders were angry that it took the Army months to disclose the problems to top officials and the public.


Panetta ordered the military-wide review Tuesday shortly after the Army disclosed problems with security background checks of workers at Fort Myer. Pentagon press secretary George Little said department leaders were surprised to hear of the problems and that “clearly this information did not get reported up the chain of command as quickly as we think it should have.”


A defense official said McHugh was first notified of the problems last Friday because, prior to that, it was considered a local law enforcement matter. The official, however, said authorities at Fort Myer took quick action after the Sept. 26th arrests by alerting parents, and began a steadily expanding review of people and policies during October and November.


According to officials, one person was charged with four counts of assault on children and the other was charged with five counts of assault. The alleged actions included hitting, grabbing or pushing the children. In the days after the arrests, the two administrators were dismissed, others were brought in and town hall meetings took place with parents.


Asked about the timing, Army spokesman George Wright said the local installation commander at Fort Myer took immediate action after the arrests to address the problems, and over time officials did some random background checks of employees. When those checks revealed some criminal convictions, every worker’s background was then reviewed.


Wright said it’s not as though the arrests happened and nothing was done. “There were deliberate, prudent and cautious actions taken” as more and more information was learned over the past three months, he said.


Officials, however, said it remained unclear if the initial background checks were not done, were insufficient or simply were ignored during the screening of personnel as they were hired.


“We need to do everything we can wherever our children are entrusted to the care of DOD-employed personnel to insure we have the right personnel with the right background taking care of them,” Little said. “We want to insure that there’s consistency in the standards and policies and practices in hiring wherever military youth are involved.”


___


Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.


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Funerals become routine in shattered town

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NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — One by one by one by one, each with fresh heartbreak, hearses crisscrossed two New England towns on Wednesday, bearing three tiny victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre and a heroic teacher in a seemingly never-ending series of funeral processions.


"The first few days, all you heard were helicopters," said Dr. Joseph Young, an optometrist who attended one funeral and would go to several more. "Now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day."


As more victims from the slaughter of 20 children and six adults were laid to rest, long funeral processions clogged the streets of Newtown, where Christmas trees were turned into memorials and a season that should be a time of joy was marked by heart-wrenching loss.


At least nine funerals and wakes were held Wednesday for those who died when gunman Adam Lanza, armed with a military-style assault rifle, broke into the school Friday and opened fire on their classrooms. Lanza killed his mother at her home before the attack and committed suicide at the school as police closed in.


At St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, mourners arrived for Caroline Previdi, an auburn-haired 6-year-old with an impish smile, before the service had even ended for Daniel Barden, a 7-year-old who dreamed of being a firefighter.


"It's sad to see the little coffins," said the Rev. John Inserra, a Catholic priest who worked at St. Rose for years before transferring to a church in Greenwich.


He returned to his old parish to comfort families wondering how a loving God could permit such carnage and has attended several of the funerals.


"It's always hard to bury a child," Inserra said of the seemingly unrelenting cycle of sorrow and loss. "God didn't do this. God didn't allow this. We allowed it. He said, 'Send the little children to me.' But he didn't mean it this way."


Hundreds of firefighters formed a long blue line outside the church for little Daniel's funeral. Two of his relatives work at the Fire Department of New York, and the gap-toothed redhead had wanted to join their ranks one day.


"If me being here helps this family or this community just a little bit, it's worth it," said Kevin Morrow, a New York firefighter and father of two young girls. "He wanted to be a firefighter, as any young boy wants to be."


Family friend Laura Stamberg, of New Paltz, N.Y., whose husband plays in a band with Daniel's father, said that on the morning of the shooting, Mark Barden taught his son to play a Christmas song on the piano.


"They played foosball and then he taught him the song and then he walked him to the bus and that was their last morning together," Stamberg said.


At Caroline's funeral, mourners wore pink ties and scarves — her favorite color — and remembered her as a New York Yankees fan who liked to kid around. "Silly Caroline" was how she was known to neighbor Karen Dryer.


"She's just a girl that was always smiling, always wanting others to smile," Dryer said.


Across town, at Christ the King Lutheran Church, hundreds gathered for the funeral of Charlotte Helen Bacon, many wearing buttons picturing the 6-year-old redhead. Speakers, including her grandfather, told of her love of wild animals, the family's golden retriever and the color pink.


She was "a beautiful little girl who could be a bit stubborn at times — just like all children," said Danbury resident Linda Clark as she left the service.


And in nearby Stratford, family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Victoria Soto, a first-grade teacher hailed as a hero for trying to shield her students, some of whom escaped. Musician Paul Simon, a family friend, performed "The Sound of Silence" at the service.


"She had the perfect job. She loved her job," said Vicky Ruiz, a friend since first grade.


Every year, Soto described her students the same way, Ruiz said.


"They were always good kids. They were always angels," she said, even if, like typical first-graders, they might not always listen.


In Woodbury, a line of colleagues, students and friends of slain Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, wrapped around the block to pay their respects to the administrator, who rushed the gunman in an effort to stop him and paid with her life. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan attended the service.


"She loved kids. She'd do anything to help them and protect them," said Joann Opulski, of Roxbury.


In emotion-charged Newtown, tempers flared as residents of the town of 27,000 navigated the hordes of reporters and camera crews that descended on the town. Some shouted at reporters outside the funerals Wednesday, urging them to leave their town in peace.


Cynthia Gubitose said the shooting and its aftermath have jolted what she described as a quintessential "Norman Rockwell, New England community."


"Nobody knew about Sandy Hook," Gubitose said as she placed flowers at a memorial with bouquets stacked chest-high. "Many of the people that live here like it that way."


The symbol of Christmas took on a new meaning in the town, where one memorial featured 26 Christmas trees — one for each victim at the school.


Edward Kish said he bought a Christmas tree two days before the shooting but hasn't had the heart to put it up or decorate it.


"I'll still put it up, probably," he said. "It doesn't seem right, and it doesn't seem like Christmas."


Mourners from across the country came to offer condolences. A jazz band from Alabama played at the main memorial site as local children played with a team of trained therapy dogs brought in to provide comfort.


At the Newtown Library, dozens of people gathered for a meeting of Newtown United, a grassroots community group formed in the wake of the shootings. The topic was gun legislation and how the community could push for a ban on assault weapons and other measures to make certain types of guns and ammunition more difficult to obtain.


There was a rumor that guests from Washington, D.C., would show up. About 10 minutes into the meeting Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen.-elect Chris Murphy walked into the room, to applause and surprised looks. They spoke and took questions for about a half-hour.


The school massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control.


President Barack Obama promised he'd send Congress broad proposals for tightening gun laws and curbing violence and pressed Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. He called for stricter background checks for people who seek to buy weapons and limited high-capacity clips.


"This time, the words need to lead to action," said Obama, who set a January deadline for the recommendations.


Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school.


Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.


However, Connecticut's chief medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver, told The Hartford Courant he is looking for genetic clues that might explain the behavior and is working with the University of Connecticut department of genetics.


___


Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Helen O'Neill, John Christoffersen, Katie Zezima and Pat Eaton-Robb in Newtown; Michael Melia in Hartford; Larry Margasak in Washington and AP Business Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis.


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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

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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





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