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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(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)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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