Israel hits Hamas buildings, shoots down Tel Aviv-bound rocket

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli aircraft bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza, and the “Iron Dome” defense system shot down a Tel Aviv-bound rocket on Saturday as Israel geared up for a possible ground invasion.

Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that runs the Gaza Strip, said Israeli missiles wrecked the office building of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh – where he had met on Friday with the Egyptian prime minister – and struck a police headquarters.

Along the Tel Aviv beachfront, volleyball games came to an abrupt halt and people crouched as sirens sounded. Two interceptor rockets streaked into the sky. A flash and an explosion followed as Iron Dome, deployed only hours earlier near the city, destroyed the incoming projectile in mid-air.

With Israeli tanks and artillery positioned along the Gaza border and no end in sight to hostilities now in their fourth day, Tunisia’s foreign minister travelled to the enclave in a show of Arab solidarity.

In Cairo, a presidential source said Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi would hold four-way talks with the Qatari emir, the prime minister of Turkey and Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in the Egyptian capital on Saturday to discuss the Gaza crisis.

Egypt has been working to reinstate calm between Israel and Hamas after an informal ceasefire brokered by Cairo unraveled over the past few weeks. Meshaal, who lives in exile, has already held a round of talks with Egyptian security officials.

Officials in Gaza said 43 Palestinians, nearly half of them civilians including eight children, had been killed since Israel began its air strikes. Three Israeli civilians were killed by a rocket on Thursday.

Israel unleashed its massive air campaign on Wednesday with the declared goal of deterring Hamas from launching rockets that have plagued its southern communities for years.

The Israeli army said it had zeroed in on a number of government buildings during the night, including Haniyeh’s office, the Hamas Interior Ministry and a police compound.

Taher al-Nono, a spokesman for the Hamas government, held a news conference near the rubble of the prime minister’s office and pledged: “We will declare victory from here.”

Hamas‘s armed wing claimed responsibility for Saturday’s rocket attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

“Well that wasn’t such a big deal,” said one woman, who had watched the interception while clinging for protection to the trunk of a baby palm tree on a traffic island.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Among those killed in airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding on motorcycles.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, along with appeals to avoid civilian casualties.

Hamas, shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, says its cross-border attacks have come in response to Israeli strikes against Palestinian fighters in Gaza.

RESERVIST CALL-UP

At a late night session on Friday, Israeli cabinet ministers decided to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000, political sources said, in a signal Israel was edging closer to an invasion.

Around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan … it will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, favorite to win a January national election.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-09, killed over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

“Israel should understand that many things have changed and that lots of water has run in the Arab river,” Tunisian Foreign Minister Rafik Abdesslem said as he surveyed the wreckage from a bomb-blast site in central Gaza.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s manoeuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

“DE-ESCALATION”

Netanyahu spoke late on Friday with U.S. President Barack Obama for the second time since the offensive began, the prime minister’s office said in a statement.

“(Netanyahu) expressed his deep appreciation for the U.S. position that Israel has a right to defend itself and thanked him for American aid in purchasing Iron Dome batteries,” the statement added.

The two leaders have had a testy relationship and have been at odds over how to curb Iran’s nuclear program.

A White House official said on Saturday Obama called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to discuss how the two countries could help bring an end to the Gaza conflict.

Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser, told reporters that Washington “wants the same thing as the Israelis want”, an end to rocket attacks from Gaza. He said the United States is emphasizing diplomacy and “de-escalation”.

In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had spoken to Netanyahu and Egypt’s Mursi, stressing to the Israeli leader that Israel had a right to self-defense and that a ceasefire must be agreed as soon as possible to avoid more bloodshed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt next week to push for an end to the fighting in Gaza, U.N. diplomats said on Friday.

The Israeli military said 492 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel since the operation began. Iron Dome intercepted another 245.

In Jerusalem, targeted by a Palestinian rocket on Friday for the first time in 42 years, there was little outward sign on the Jewish Sabbath that the attack had any impact on the usually placid pace of life in the holy city.

Some families in Gaza have abandoned their homes – some of them damaged and others situated near potential Israeli targets – and packed into the houses of friends and relatives.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams and Douglas Hamilton in Tel Aviv, Allyn Fisher-Ilan in Jerusalem, Jeff Mason aboard Air Force One, Writing by Jeffrey Heller; editing by Crispian Balmer)

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How new Kindle Fire compares with rivals

Amazon.com Inc. started shipping a larger version of its Kindle Fire HD tablet computer on Thursday. Here’s a look at how it compares with the iPad and other tablets with similar screens.

Amazon.com Inc.‘s Kindle Fire HD 8.9″:

— Price: $ 299 for 16 gigabytes of storage, $ 369 for 32 GB.

— Screen size: 8.9 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 1920 by 1200 pixels, at 254 pixels per inch.

— Weight: 1.25 pounds.

— Cameras: Front-facing camera.

— Battery life: 10 hours.

— Operating system: Modified version of Google‘s Android

Pros: Cheap and portable. Convenient access to Amazon store. Dolby audio. Available with access to fast 4G wireless broadband networks, for $ 499 (starts shipping next Tuesday).

Cons: Small selection of third-party applications available from Amazon. No rear camera for taking video and photos.

Apple Inc.‘s iPad:

— Price: Starts at $ 499 for 16 gigabytes of storage, goes up to $ 699 for 64 gigabytes, more for versions with cellular data access. (Apple still sells the older, iPad 2 for $ 399.)

— Screen size: 9.7 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 2048 by 1536 pixels, at 264 pixels per inch.

— Weight: 1.44 pounds

— Cameras: 5-megapixel camera on back and a low-resolution camera on front, for videoconferencing

— Battery life: 10 hours.

— Operating system: Apple’s iOS

Pros: Unmatched access to third-party applications, high-quality Apple software and the iTunes store. Widest range of cases and accessories available. Available with access to fast 4G wireless broadband networks, starting at $ 629.

Cons: Data storage cannot be expanded with memory cards.

Google Inc.’s Nexus 10

— Price: $ 399 for 16 gigabytes of storage, $ 499 for 32 GB

— Screen size: 10.1 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 2560 by 1600 pixels, at 300 pixels per inch.

— Weight: 1.33 pounds.

— Cameras: 5-megapixel camera on back and a low-resolution camera on front, for videoconferencing

— Battery life: 9 hours for video playback, 7 hours for Web browsing.

— Operating system: Google‘s Android

Pros: Access to a variety of games, utilities and other software for Android devices, though not as extensive as apps available for iPad. Longer, narrower screen better suited to movies. Cheaper than newest full-size iPad.

Cons: Integrates with Google Play store, which is still new and isn’t as robust as Apple or Amazon’s stores. Data storage cannot be expanded with memory cards. No option for cellular wireless broadband.

Samsung Electronic Co.’s Galaxy Tab 2 10.1:

— Price: $ 399 for 16 gigabytes of storage

— Screen size: 10.1 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 1280 by 800 pixels, 149 pixels per inch

— Weight: 1.24 pounds

— Cameras: low-resolution front camera, 3-megapixel back.

— Battery life: 11 hours.

— Operating system: Google‘s Android

Pros: Storage is expandable with microSD memory cards. Can act as a universal remote control for an entertainment center. Option for wireless broadband starting in November.

Cons: Selection of third-party applications not as good as iPad’s, but wider than Kindle. Screen resolution lower than iPad’s.

Samsung Electronic Co.’s Galaxy Note 10.1:

— Price: $ 499 for 16 gigabytes of storage, $ 549 for 32 GB

— Screen size: 10.1 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 1280 by 800 pixels, 149 pixels per inch

— Weight: 1.3 pounds

— Cameras: low-resolution front camera, 5-megapixel back.

— Battery life: 9 hours.

— Operating system: Google‘s Android

Pros: Comes with a pen, for jotting notes and drawing on the screen. Slightly thinner and lighter than an iPad. Longer, narrower screen better suited to movies. Storage is expandable with microSD memory cards. Can act as a universal remote control for an entertainment center.

Cons: Selection of third-party applications not as good as iPad’s, but wider than Kindle. Screen resolution lower than iPad’s. No option for wireless broadband. Pen sensor slightly shortens battery life.

Barnes & Noble Inc.’s Nook HD+

— Price: $ 269 for 16 gigabytes of storage; $ 299 for 32 GB

— Screen size: 9 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 1920 x 1280 pixels, 256 pixels per inch

— Weight: 1.14 pounds

— Cameras: None.

— Battery life: 10 hours of reading, 9 hours of video

— Operating system: Modified version of Google‘s Android

Pros: Cheap and portable. Storage is expandable with microSD memory cards. Easy access to Barnes & Noble book store.

Cons: Selection of third-party applications is small. Barnes & Noble lacks wide range of content. Lacks cameras and option for wireless broadband.

Microsoft Corp.’s Surface:

— Price: $ 499 for 32 gigabytes of storage, $ 100 extra for keyboard cover. $ 699 for 64 GB version, includes keyboard cover.

— Screen size: 10.6 inches diagonally

— Screen resolution: 1366 by 768 pixels, 148 pixels per inch

— Weight: 1.5 pounds.

— Cameras: Front and back cameras

— Battery life: 8 hours.

— Operating system: Microsoft’s Windows RT.

Pros: Storage can be expanded with microSD memory cards. Comes with free Microsoft Office software. Models running full version of Windows 8 coming soon, offering compatibility with programs available for traditional Windows computers.

Cons: Operating system lacks good track record on tablets. Selection of tablet-adapted third-party applications small. No option for wireless broadband.

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“Sister” Director Tackles Taboo of Switzerland’s Class Divide With Her Oscar Contender

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Director Ursula Meier can hardly believe that her film “Sister” – which depicts tenements, poverty and a seemingly rigid class system in lovely Switzerland – has made it over the Alps to Hollywood for Academy consideration.

“It shows a not-very-usual aspect of Switzerland,” Meier told the audience at a showing of “Sister” Thursday night at the Landmark, part of TheWrap’s Academy Screening Series. “We don’t show the beautiful mountains and the green and the lush life … For me it was important to show another point of view on this country to the world. Because usually it’s Montblanc, chocolate, and Swatch.”

Indeed, with her second film, Meier has given international audiences something else to associate with Switzerland: larcenous snow urchins.

“Sister” centers mostly around 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), who lives in a high-rise tenement in a not-so-snowy valley far below a ski resort and takes gondolas to the top to steal wealthy tourists’ skis right out from under their goggles.

Wily Simon is financing not just his own existence but that of Louise (Lea Seydoux), the title character, who just might be the worst parental figure or caretaker in a cinematic year that did, after all, include “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

It would involve spoilers to explain why Simon’s older sis is not everything she’s cracked up to be. But there’s nothing misleading about this boy-crazy, substance-abusing twentysomething gal’s unfitness to watch over Simon, the breadwinner of their sad two-person family.

He has to empty out his cash drawer to bribe Louise into snuggling with him, and when he entrusts her with the mere task of waxing skis, she can’t even do that without spilling cigarette ashes on the stolen merchandise.

“It was important for me, when we were at the ski resort, to showing the back door of the restaurant, and the workers inside … And it’s just at the end, when it’s finished, when there is no more snow and the ski resort is closed, for the first time Simon looks at the landscape. And we can see how beautiful this place is, but it’s too late now.”

Meier worked with her young leading man on her first theatrical feature, 2009′s “Home,” where he played Isabella Huppert’s son when he was just 7. She’s emphatic that Klein is not the kind of child actor who has to be tricked into giving a performance.

“During the first casting, I ask him, ‘What do you like to do in your life, Kasey?’ And he told me, ‘Thinking.’ So I said ‘OK, think,’ and I turned on the camera, and he was amazing … He understands that acting is to be, not to look like. So I really wanted to write for him with this film, because it was such an amazing experience on my first film.”

The role of the severely neglectful “sister” was tougher to nail down, both for the director and her leading actress.

“This character was the challenge of the film,” Meier said. “Because Kacey’s character is a child, so for the spectator, of course he’s a victim. But with the character of Louise, for Lea as an actress, at the beginning for her it was very hard to find the fragility of the character. I showed her a lot of films like ‘Vagabond’ … I explained to her, you were 14 when you were pregnant; it was too young for a girl, and you stopped your studies and got bad jobs you cut with your family.”

Sometimes, she said, they’d fight because “she couldn’t find the fragility of the character, and suddenly, months later, wow – it was like we cut something open and all the emotion that came out from her was very deep. I was afraid of the spectators judging the character. It was not easy, in the writing, or in the directing with the actors, because I wanted that they would love these characters, even if they’re sometimes terrible. But I like terrible characters.”

Pond told Meier that when it came to supporting actress Gillian Anderson, of “X-Files” fame, “the first time I watched, I didn’t realize it was her till the end credits” – an experience probably shared by most of those in attendance at the screening.

“I’m very happy that you say that,” said Meier, “because if you recognize the actress, you think about the actress.” But the director did want Armstrong to provoke a where-have-I-seen-you-before vibe.

“I really wanted to be played by a star – not to have a star in my film, but because it was important for Simon to have a kind of phantasma this lady, of what he wants as a mother.

And as a spectator, you can have a phantasma on the star. So I like that she came from another country, and not speak French, because she’s almost an apparition.”

Meier admitted she was frightened before the Swiss premiere – before “Sister” went on to play various fests and win the special Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

“When I had the first screening in Switzerland, a lady came back to me and was very moved by the film, because it’s usually a taboo to show poverty in Switzerland. She cried and told me, ‘I grew up in exactly the same place. My father was a worker in the factory we saw in the film, and as a child we never had the money to go up.’ I liked that she just said up.”

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Tulsa Town Hall: Nutrition a valuable tool in health care

Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers.

The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.

“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”

Changes in diet can be an effective treatment for many conditions, but American physicians are functionally illiterate in nutrition, he said.

“The whole subject of nutrition is omitted in medical education,” he said.

There are many ways of managing diseases other than drugs, he said. Integrative medicine, which can include dietary supplements and practices like meditation, is the future of health care, he said.

The health system is resistant to change because of entrenched vested interests. That includes pharmaceutical companies that do direct-to-consumer advertising, which should be stopped, he said.

“As dysfunctional as our health-care system is at the moment – and it is very dysfunctional – it is generating rivers of money,” he said. “That money is going into very few pockets.”

Weil has developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet but with Asian influences.

Inflammation is associated with some heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers, he said. And as a result, people should be eating real, unprocessed foods and whole grains. They should stay away from sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juice, he said.

“The new research that’s being done on sugar is not very comforting,” he said.

The aging process can’t be avoided, but age-related diseases can be avoided by proper care, he said.

“The goal should be to live long and well with a big drop off at the end,” he said.

Weil is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Tickets to the Tulsa Town Hall series are sold as a $ 75 subscription and cover five lectures. Tickets for individual lectures are not available.

To subscribe, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsatownhall, call 918-749-5965 or write to: Tulsa Town Hall, Box 52266, Tulsa, OK 74152.

Future speakers include journalist Ann Compton on Feb. 8; author James B. Stewart on April 5; historian and cinematographer Rex Ziak on May 10.

Original Print Headline: Speaker highlights nutrition

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Shannon Muchmore 918-581-8378
shannon.muchmore@tulsaworld.com
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Congressional leaders optimistic after meeting Obama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republican and Democratic congressional leaders emerged from a meeting with President Barack Obama on Friday pledging to find common ground on taxes and spending that would allow them to avert an upcoming “fiscal cliff” that could send the economy back into recession.

The top lawmakers spoke to reporters as a group for the first time in more than a year in what aides said was a joint decision to project a message of unity.

Each side at least signaled a willingness to put “on the table” issues dear to the two parties for decades, agreeing on a framework to discuss both tax and entitlement reform next year.

The two Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, the minority leader in the House of Representatives, said they recognized the need to curb spending.

John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, who leads the party in the Senate, said they had agreed to put “revenue on the table” as the two sides enter what are likely to be weeks of tense negotiations before a December 31 deadline.

Starting on January 2, about $ 600 billion worth of tax increases and spending reductions, including $ 109 billion in cuts to domestic and defense programs, will begin to kick in if Congress cannot decide how to replace them with less extreme deficit-reduction measures.

Nonpartisan budget forecasters say failure to reach a deal could push the U.S. economy back into recession and drive up the unemployment rate.

Both sides are eager to reassure the public that Washington will not see a repeat of the white-knuckle budget standoffs that spooked consumers and investors last year.

“We have the cornerstones of being able to work something out,” Reid said, standing outside the White House after a meeting with Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and other top officials that lasted more than an hour.

The S&P 500 stock index has dropped 4.7 percent since the November 6 election as investors have turned their attention to the uncertainty surrounding the fiscal cliff.

But stocks closed up on Friday on hopes that politicians would find common ground to steer clear of the danger.

The meeting marked the first time Obama, a Democrat, sat down with his Republican opposition since he won re-election last week.

“I think we’re all aware that we have some urgent business to do,” Obama told reporters at the beginning of the meeting.

ROOM FOR COMPROMISE?

Obama says tax rates on the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans must rise, while Republicans say they will not agree to any rate increase.

Republicans are also eager to rein in government health costs, which are projected to explode over the coming decade.

“We’re prepared to put revenue on the table provided we fix the real problem,” McConnell said, referring to Medicare and other government benefit programs.

There could be room for compromise.

Obama could agree to allow the top tax rate to rise to something less than the 39.6 percent he wants. Policymakers, for example, could also agree to limit the tax increase to households making more than $ 500,000 annually, rather than the $ 250,000 cap Obama is demanding.

Republicans have suggested generating more revenue by limiting tax breaks for the wealthiest, rather than raising their rates. Obama has said that would not raise enough money.

While the government may have a little flexibility in softening the full impact of the budget cuts, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Bloomberg TV on Friday the Treasury Department did not have the authority to delay the tax increases that would take effect at the start of next year if the White House and Congress fail to reach a deal.

Business leaders say the uncertainty is already weighing on the economy as employers postpone hiring and capital expenditures until they get a better sense of the tax and spending environment.

Pelosi suggested two sides might forge a temporary deal that would get them past the fiscal cliff and give them more time to work out a more lasting solution. Lawmakers will almost certainly not have time to retool Medicare and overhaul the outdated tax code before the end of the year, but a preliminary agreement could provide a framework for doing so later.

Following the hour-long White House meeting, Boehner said he had “outlined a framework that deals with reforming our tax code and reforming our spending.”

A Boehner aide, who asked not to be identified, said later the spending cuts would cover “entitlements” – the large federal benefit programs that include Medicare healthcare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.

“The speaker spoke about a framework going into next year,” Pelosi said. “I was focusing on how we send a message of competence to consumers, to the markets, in the short run, too.”

Leaders of civic groups who met with Obama at the White House later on Friday, said the president assured them he would use his leverage to cut the best deal possible.

“He campaigned around tax fairness and the fact that everyone would do their part, and in particular the most wealthy would find a way to make their fair contribution,” said Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.

Boehner faces a delicate balancing act as he will have to sell any deal to rank-and-file conservatives, many of whom believe they owe it to their constituents to hold the line on taxes.

But after Obama won re-election and fellow Democrats picked up seats in the House and Senate last week, Republicans may be more willing to show that they can balance their ideals with the demands of the country as a whole.

“Going over the fiscal cliff, in my view, is a bucket of crazy,” Republican Representative Peter Roskam, one of Boehner’s deputies, said at a budget conference.

(Additional reporting by Thomas Ferraro, Richard Cowan, Mark Felsenthal and Patrick Temple-West in Washington; Writing by Andy Sullivan and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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Israel moves on reservists after rockets target cities

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli ministers were on Friday asked to endorse the call-up of up to 75,000 reservists after Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day.

The rocket attacks were a challenge to Israel‘s Gaza offensive and came just hours after Egypt‘s prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited the enclave and said Cairo was prepared to mediate.

Israel’s armed forces announced that a highway leading to the Gaza Strip and two roads bordering the enclave would be off-limits to civilian traffic until further notice.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area on Friday, and the military said it had already called 16,000 reservists to active duty.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior cabinet ministers in Tel Aviv after the rockets struck to decide on widening the Gaza campaign.

Political sources said ministers were asked to approve the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, in what could be preparation for a possible ground operation.

No decision was immediately announced and some commentators speculated in the Israeli media the move could be psychological warfare against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. A quota of 30,000 reservists had been set earlier.

Israel began bombing Gaza on Wednesday with an attack that killed the Hamas military chief. It says its campaign is in response to Hamas missiles fired on its territory. Hamas stepped up rocket attacks in response.

Israeli police said a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Jerusalem area, outside the city, on Friday.

It was the first Palestinian rocket since 1970 to reach the vicinity of the holy city, which Israel claims as its capital, and was likely to spur an escalation in its three-day old air war against militants in Gaza.

Rockets nearly hit Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired them during the 1991 Gulf War. An air raid siren rang out on Friday when the commercial centre was targeted again. Motorists crouched next to cars, many with their hands protecting their heads, while pedestrians scurried for cover in building stairwells.

The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv strikes have so far caused no casualties or damage, but could be political poison for Netanyahu, a conservative favored to win re-election in January on the strength of his ability to guarantee security.

“The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza,” Netanyahu said before the rocket attacks on the two cities.

Asked about Israel massing forces for a possible Gaza invasion, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “The Israelis should be aware of the grave results of such a raid and they should bring their body bags.”

Officials in Gaza said 28 Palestinians had been killed in the enclave since Israel began the air offensive with the declared aim of stemming surges of rocket strikes that have disrupted life in southern Israeli towns.

The Palestinian dead include 12 militants and 16 civilians, among them eight children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday. A Hamas source said the Israeli air force launched an attack on the house of Hamas’s commander for southern Gaza which resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.

SOLIDARITY VISIT

A solidarity visit to Gaza by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, whose Islamist government is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, had appeared to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy.

Kandil said: “Egypt will spare no effort … to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce.”

But a three-hour truce that Israel declared for the duration of Kandil’s visit never took hold. Israel said 66 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip hit its territory on Friday and a further 99 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Israel denied Palestinian assertions that its aircraft struck while Kandil was in the enclave.

Israel Radio’s military affairs correspondent said the army’s Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defence preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stoked the flames of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to leap across borders.

It is the biggest test yet for Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, a veteran Islamist politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after last year’s protests ousted military autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, seen in the West as the cornerstone of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

Mursi has vocally denounced the Israeli military action while promoting Egypt as a mediator, a mission that his prime minister’s visit was intended to further.

A Palestinian official close to Egypt’s mediators told Reuters Kandil’s visit “was the beginning of a process to explore the possibility of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve”.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

Tunisia’s foreign minister was due to visit Gaza on Saturday “to provide all political support for Gaza” the spokesman for the Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, said in a statement.

The United States asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the Islamist movement to stop its rocket attacks.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas’s supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an “observer state” rather than a mere “entity” at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Can NBC keep up its ratings swagger without NFL, “The Voice”?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – NBC is expected to wrap up its fall season as the No. 1 broadcast network in the key 18-49 advertising demographic for the first time in a decade.

The network’s catapult to first place from fourth in the ratings is the biggest surprise so far of the young TV season. The question is how long can its ratings momentum last.

The Comcast-owned network has seen a surge in the fall fueled by two shows that won’t be around by the end of December, its red-hot Sunday Night NFL telecast and the hugely popular singing competition “The Voice.”

The numbers are shining a positive light on Entertainment Chief Bob Greenblatt, in his second year since moving over from the Showtime cable network. In the first quarter of 2013, however, analysts and advertising buyers say holes in NBC‘s lineup can’t make up for the loss of its two top shows.

“I’m skeptical about whether their ratings are sustainable,” said Brad Adgate, who heads research for the advertising firm Horizon Media. “Once those shows go on hiatus or they are doing repeats, I’d be surprised if what they replace with them with will deliver those type of numbers.”

When the TV season started, NBC boosted its ratings by adding a second season of the “The Voice” in the fall, instead of airing it only during the spring, and showing it on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The show gave NBC ratings victories in the 18-49 demographic, the age group that advertisers seek, has consistently won its time slots while boosting shows like “Revolution” and “Go On” that followed it.

Total viewers increased from a year ago by 20 percent, to an average of 8.8 million per night, while rivals CBS, FOX and ABC are all down in total viewers.

NBC‘s ratings engines throttle back without “The Voice,” which goes off the air from Dec 17 until March 25. When it returns, it also faces an uncertain reception as new judges Shakira and Usher replace Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

On December 30, NBC will air its final Sunday night football game of the year, taking prime time’s top-rated show with it, Jeff Bader, NBC‘s president of program planning, strategy and research, said in an interview on Thursday.

NBC‘s ratings will weaken in January, he conceded. The January-to-March period won’t be “necessarily about winning” in the ratings but about getting one or two shows to stick with viewers, he said.

“I wish we had Sunday night football all year, but hopefully these other returning shows will keep us in the hunt,” Bader said.

UBS analyst John Janedis predicts that CBS and FOX will move past the Peacock network by the end of the TV season, and CBS’ Chief Executive Les Moonves vowed on a November 7 earnings call that his network will finish “on top” and “strong in every single one of the key demos.”

“The Voice” served as a launch pad for the hit drama “Revolution,” a post-apocalyptic thriller that airs on Mondays and is set 15 years after all the world’s electricity stopped functioning. But that show, like “The Voice,” is going on hiatus from November 26 to March 25.

Greenblatt has “to make sure that ‘Revolution’ stays strong, said Optimedia media buyer Maureen Bosetti. “I’m a little bit cautious to say he’s a huge success until he’s got more solid hits under his belt that he’s developed.”

NBC will air the weight-loss reality show “The Biggest Loser” in the place of “the Voice” on Mondays, followed by “Deception,” a one-hour soap opera about a murder in a wealthy family that replaces “Revolution.” On Tuesdays, a reality show called “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers” featuring senior citizens playing pranks will take “the Voice” slot.

Ad agency GroupM media buyer Shari Cohen is more optimistic about NBC‘s chances without “The Voice” and said she is impressed by the network’s comeback this season.

“The void will be felt, but there’s confidence enough in their strategy and other nights of the week where they have been gaining traction and things that will be coming back in 2013 like ‘Smash’,” Cohen said.

“Smash,” a lavishly produced and heavily promoted musical drama about a Broadway show starring Katharine McPhee and Debra Messing, finished as NBC‘s top drama in its first season in 18-49 age group and will return for its second season February 5.

The show is heavily championed by Greenblatt, the programming chief who came to Comcast in 2011 after it took control of NBC in a $ 30 billion deal. When he left the CBS-owned Showtime cable channel, it was in the midst of a phenomenal run of developing hit shows such as “Dexter,” “Weeds,” and “The L Word” for cable’s Showtime network.

Greenblatt’s programming performance has been mixed at NBC. He inherited the “The Voice,” and had the benefit of this summer’s NBC Olympic telecast, which enabled him to promote the fall lineup before the more than 30 million people who tuned into the London games each night.

That gave a boost to “Revolution, “Go On” and “The New Normal,” a sitcom from “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy, which were all ordered for full-seasons and are all highly rated new shows. But “Animal Practice,” another program that aired in a special preview after one Olympics telecast, was canceled after six episodes.

NBC is coming off a strong third quarter in which its revenue jumped 31.2 percent to $ 6.8 billion thanks Deto the London Olympics. Excluding the Olympics, its revenue increased 8.3 percent, the company said.

Amy Yong, a sell-side analyst for Macquarie bank, raised her estimates on Comcast in October, citing ratings growth at NBC as a contributing factors.

The NBC model for continued success resembles a strategy employed by Fox, which scheduled shows like “House” and “Bones” after the then-towering ratings champ “American Idol.”

Bader, the NBC scheduling executive, said his network will continue to use “The Voice”‘s momentum as best it can even as it heads toward its three-month break. After the December 17 finale, NBC will air a preview of a new comedy set in the White House called “1600 Penn.”

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Ronald Grover and Leslie Gevirtz)

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Smoking in pregnancy tied to lower reading scores

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Babies exposed to their mother’s cigarette smoke in the womb later perform more poorly on reading comprehension tests, according to a new study.

“It’s not a little difference – it’s a big difference in accuracy and comprehension at a critical time when children are being assessed, and are getting a sense of what it means to be successful,” lead author Dr. Jeffrey Gruen of Yale University told Reuters Health.

In the study, researchers found that children born to mothers who smoked more than one pack per day struggled on tests specifically designed to measure how accurately a child reads aloud and if she understands what she read.

On average, children exposed to high levels of nicotine in utero — defined as the minimum amount in one pack of cigarettes per day — scored 21 percent lower in these areas than classmates born to non-smoking mothers. The difference remained even when researchers took other factors — such as if parents read books to their children, worked in lower-paying jobs or were married — into account.

Put another way, among students who share similar backgrounds and education, a child of a smoking mother will on average be ranked seven places lower in a class of 31 in reading accuracy and comprehension ability, said co-author Jan Frijters of Brock University in Ontario, Canada.

Previous studies have found smoking during pregnancy is linked to lower IQ scores and academic achievement, and more behavioral disorders. The authors found no reports so far that zeroed in on specific reading tasks like accuracy and comprehension in a large population.

The team, which published their results in The Journal of Pediatrics, pulled data from more than 5,000 children involved in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPC) study that began in the early 1990s in the UK. Only data from children with IQ scores of 76 and higher were used. An IQ score of 70 and below can be the sign of a mental disability.

UK researchers collected questionnaires from mothers before and after giving birth. This helps make the self-reported data more trustworthy, explained Sam Oh of the University of California, San Francisco, who wasn’t involved with the work. If mothers knew their child’s reading scores beforehand, they might subconsciously report more or less smoking.

“To me, this study suggests that the effects attributed to in utero smoking can in fact be attributed to the intrauterine environment, and not due to environmental differences that the children grow up in,” Oh told Reuters Health by email.

Large observational studies like this one call attention to patterns, but do not prove a direct cause-effect relationship between cigarette smoking and low reading scores.

Despite public health initiatives to discourage smoking, as many as one in six pregnant American women still light up, according to national surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“That is a lot of children,” Dr. Tomáš Paus of the University of Toronto told Reuters Health.

Paus added that the study tied the effects of low test scores to nicotine in cigarettes, which also produce other harmful chemicals and carbon dioxide. Either way, smoking while pregnant seems to put a baby at risk for negative health outcomes.

“We should not be happy with those rates. Smoking during pregnancy is preventable,” Paus said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/W7v2kM The Journal of Pediatrics, online November 5, 2012.

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Why Mommy Can’t Get Ahead

In political terms, it was a good year for American women. Female voters were a decisive factor in the presidential race, with 55 percent casting ballots for President Barack Obama, vs. 44 percent for Mitt Romney; the only year the spread was higher was in 1996, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. A record number of female candidates ran for national office—18 for the Senate, up from the 2010 high of 14, and 166 for the House of Representatives, vs. 141 in 2004—which means the 113th Congress will have at least 98 female members, the most ever, including a record 20 Senators. “We hope that this 20 percent will make a difference in the macaroni-and-cheese issues that we want to focus on, along with the macro issues,” Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) told the Wall Street Journal on Nov. 8.

Mikulski and her colleagues have reason to celebrate the female power surge, but those hard-won electoral victories should be kept in perspective. While the sweep of women into office is encouraging to anyone who believes that Washington is badly in need of fresh ideas, not to mention a political class that better reflects the population at large, there’s one area where it’s unlikely to make a difference, at least in the near future: the workplace.

For many working women, the most revealing moment of this political season came during the second presidential debate, on Oct. 16. A 24-year-old teacher named Katherine Fenton asked both candidates what they planned to do about the reality that women still earn, on average, 23 percent less than men. Obama cited the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the first major piece of legislation he signed after taking office, which makes it easier for employees to sue employers for discrimination based on disparities in pay. Romney seemed dumbfounded, rambling about how as governor of Massachusetts he’d searched out qualified females to hire, flipping through “binders full of women” like a bachelor shopping for a mail-order bride.

The ridicule Romney earned for that exchange obscured the fact that neither man attempted to address how to close the pay gap now. This failure was stunning considering that women comprise 47 percent of the workforce and earn more college degrees than men. The number of dual-income households in which women are the primary breadwinner reached 29 percent in 2009, reflecting a radical upending of the traditional model. Women are an increasingly vital part of the workforce—yet, despite talk of the downfall of men, they still don’t come close to economic parity. Obama’s answer in particular highlights the widely held belief that there’s only so much Washington can do.

Illustration by Mark Todd

A mini-industry has sprung up around the question of why women don’t go as far, and earn less, than their male counterparts. But the answer is actually straightforward. After accounting for experience and education, as well as occupation—male-dominated fields tend to be higher-paying than female-dominant ones—the pay gap falls from 23 percent to about 9 percent, according to Cornell University labor economists Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn. Outright discrimination plays a part, but a larger proportion of the disparity can be attributed to the hit women take for absorbing most of the child-care duties that crop up at home, a burden one might call the “caregiver tax.”

Illustration by Mark Todd

The answer to Fenton’s question is thus only partly about discrimination (as Obama suggested) and has almost nothing to do with the failure of managers to identify qualified women (in Romney’s formulation). Instead, says Claudia Goldin, an economist at Harvard University who’s researched gender and the labor market, “The problem she’s concerned about is almost entirely rooted in the fact that women take care of children a lot more than men.” (Women also shoulder more of the burden of caring for siblings, grandparents, and in-laws.) There are “differences in the ways in which men and women respond to competition, bargain, search for jobs, and so on,” says Goldin. Compared with the caregiver burden, however, “everything that I have seen and have done using the best data on the planet indicates that everything else is second order.”

These issues were barely mentioned during the presidential campaign. The U.S. remains one of the only industrialized nations not to guarantee mothers (or fathers, for that matter) some paid time off after the birth of a child. The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 provides for 12 weeks of unpaid leave for pregnancy or other reasons, but it falls short on several fronts: It’s too brief (Germany, Canada, and many other countries offer up to 12 months of subsidized leave), and it excludes vast segments of the workforce employed by small companies that don’t qualify or who couldn’t afford to take it anyway.

Illustration by Mark Todd

When it comes to taking care of the kid after it’s born, the situation is no better: Most working parents must navigate an expensive landscape of day-care centers and nannies with few clues about the quality of what they’re paying for. “The investment that the United States makes in early childhood care and education pales by comparison to the investments being made by other countries,” writes Jane Waldfogel in “International Policies Toward Parental Leave and Child Care,” published by the Future of Children, a collaboration between the Brookings Institution and Princeton University.

More family-friendly public policies in these two areas would make a difference, but they only go so far. Reaching true economic and professional equality between the sexes will require a re-imagining of workplace culture—which continues to penalize women who need flexible schedules, even as it actively disincentivizes men from assuming more duties at home, lest they step off the career track. The attention generated by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s Atlantic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” and Yahoo!/ticker] Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer’s two-week maternity leave, reflect the broad desire for a change. “Employers have an increasing incentive to address work-family issues,” Blau says. “This is disproportionately important to women, but it’s also important to men.”

Much like the Republican Party, companies are facing changing demographics, and the sooner they embrace them, the stronger they’ll be. “I call this the business case for gender diversity,” says Iris Bohnet, academic dean and professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Bohnet mentions several studies, including one by the Credit Suisse Research Institute, showing that companies with more women on their boards perform better. Increasingly, women are better-equipped to perform essential jobs, so businesses need to adjust to their needs. “In many ways we have a mid-20th century workplace for a mid-21st century workforce,” Goldin says.

In some cases, change is forced upon a profession from the inside. Pediatric medicine, for instance, used to be a primarily male specialization, yet women now comprise 57 percent of pediatricians and 70 percent of pediatric residents, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. And, Goldin points out, 35 percent to 40 percent of pediatricians work fewer than 35 hours per week, a drastic shift. “It happened because as a lot more women became pediatricians, a lot more shopped around for more predictable hours and more ability to have fewer and more flexible hours,” Goldin says. Pharmacy and veterinary medicine have shown similar trends.

At the other end of the earnings spectrum are nursing home workers, who tend to be paid by the hour. If one of those workers needs to miss an hour of work one day, she—“it’s almost always a she,” Goldin says—is often told not to bother coming in at all, losing a whole day’s pay. A group at Harvard is experimenting with ways to manage employee schedules that would allow greater flexibility. Instead of a fixed group of 25 workers, for example, a facility could hire 28, with more fluid scheduling. The arrangement could benefit the employees and give the nursing home a more stable workforce.

Katherine Fenton may not have received a satisfying answer to her question, but that doesn’t mean answers are out of reach. Fixing the pay gap will demand more progressive public policies as well as businesses to modernize their cultures to accommodate both halves of the workforce. This isn’t about being generous; it’s self-interest. We shouldn’t need a president to tell us that.

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France urges Mali to step up talks with rebels

PARIS (AP) — France‘s president called Thursday for stepped-up talks between Mali’s government and any leaders from its breakaway north “who reject terrorism,” even as African nations geared up for a possible military operation against Islamic extremists there.

President Francois Hollande‘s comments suggested a growing openness to dialogue with the extremists, but he remained committed to supporting the military planning effort.

Northern Mali fell to Islamic extremists in April, after coup leaders toppled the government in Bamako, Mali‘s capital. Fearing that northern Mali could become the latest hotbed of terrorism, France has been a driving force in international efforts to bolster Mali’s army to drive the Islamists from power.

Hollande spoke with interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore by phone on Thursday, partly to detail European efforts to help strengthen Mali’s army.

In recent days, representatives from the most moderate of three al-Qaida-linked groups that control northern Mali have been meeting with Burkina Faso‘s president, appointed as a mediator.

“France reiterates its wish that political dialogue will intensify between Malian authorities and representatives of northern populations who reject terrorism,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. “The acceleration of this dialogue must accompany the progress in African military-planning efforts.”

Earlier this week, the African Union approved a plan that calls for 3,300 African troops to be deployed in order to win back Mali’s north. European countries including France and Germany have expressed a willingness to provide military trainers and logistics support, but have stopped short of committing combat troops.

France, like many European countries, fears that the arid, northern Sahel region of Mali could become a breeding ground for terrorism, where al-Qaida and its allies could plot hostage-takings and attacks in Europe or beyond.

France has millions of people whose families hail from former French colonies in north and west Africa. Authorities have long been concerned that French-born militants could travel abroad for terrorism training and return home later to possibly carry out attacks.

French authorities are already investigating two French citizens who were arrested in Mali and neighboring Niger and are suspected of seeking to join up with the al-Qaida-linked extremists, a judicial official told The Associated Press.

Ibrahim Ouattara, a 24-year-old native of the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers who has dual French and Malian nationality, was arrested inside Mali this month and remains in custody there, the official said.

Separately, a 27-year-old Frenchman was arrested in August in Niger and has since been handed over to authorities in France, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss terrorism cases publicly.

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ABC Adapting Disney Theme-Park Ride for “Big Thunder Mountain” Pilot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – ABC found ratings success by adapting Disney‘s finest fairy tales into the one-hour drama series “Once Upon a Time,” so it’s not surprising that the network has turned to a theme-park ride from its parent company for inspiration as well.

Popular roller coaster Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is being adapted for a television pilot by the Disney-owned network, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “Fast Five”) will co-write the story with “Ice Age: Continental Drift’s” Jason Fuchs, who will write the teleplay. ABC has ordered a script from ABC Studios, the individual said.

No word on what the show will have in common with the ride, but if it sticks with the theme presented to visitors at parks in California, Florida, Paris and Tokyo, it should have something to do with a mining town being destroyed by a natural disaster after settlers desecrate sacred Native American land.

Two other film projects have been developed based on Disney rides, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and 2003′s not-equally-successful “The Haunted Mansion.”

Morgan is represented by ICM Partners and McKuin Frankel, while Fuchs is repped by WME and Brookside and Bloom Hergott.

The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news on “Big Thunder Mountain.”

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Kids with Down syndrome twice as likely to be heavy

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – More than one in four children with Down syndrome in The Netherlands is overweight, a rate double that of Dutch youth without the developmental disability, according to a new study.

“We were alarmed by the high prevalence of overweight in children with Down syndrome,” said Dr. Helma van Gameren-Oosterom, the lead author of the study from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in Leiden.

“Of course we knew that the prevalence of overweight is rising; for Dutch standards a twofold level, however, was not expected.”

Previous studies have suggested children with Down syndrome are especially prone to being heavy. But researchers still aren’t sure why that is, according to Dr. Sheela Magge, an endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who was not part of the new study.

Theories have ranged from physiological differences in metabolism or the way the body suppresses appetite to behavioral differences, such as in how much exercise children get, she said, but no studies have been able to pin down the definitive cause.

About 6,000 babies – or one in every 691 – are born with Down syndrome each year in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For the latest study, the researchers compared growth patterns among 659 children with Down syndrome and no other health problems to general data on youth in The Netherlands.

By calculating kids’ weight relative to their height – a unit called body mass index (BMI) – the research team determined which children were overweight and which were obese. The BMI cutoffs for obesity and overweight are different for each age in children.

Magge said they’re not a perfect measure for children with Down syndrome because their body proportions are different than those of other children, but it’s the best available yardstick for now.

Gameren-Oosterom and her colleagues found 25.5 percent of boys with Down syndrome were overweight and 4.2 percent were obese.

Among girls with the condition, 32 percent were overweight and 5.1 percent obese, they report in the medical journal Pediatrics.

In comparison, children in the rest of the Dutch population had much lower rates: for boys, 12.3 percent were overweight and 1.7 percent obese; for girls, 14.7 percent were overweight and 2.2 percent were obese.

Magge said researchers have also observed higher rates of overweight among children with Down syndrome in the U.S.

Gameren-Oosterom wrote in an email to Reuters Health that she and her colleagues suspect lifestyle has something to do with that pattern. Because it’s harder for young people with Down syndrome to develop their motor skills, they may be less active.

Low muscle tone and poor coordination often accompany the disability as well, Magge told Reuters Health.

Her concern with so many kids being overweight is that as people with Down syndrome are living longer, “we may start seeing more complications and comorbidities such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease (and) hypertension, all those things that we worry about in all of our obese adolescents.”

Gameren-Oosterom said it’s difficult to develop a prevention or treatment strategy to target overweight and obesity in children with Down syndrome, given that the causes are unknown.

But like all youth, she added, those children will benefit from a healthy diet and sufficient exercise.

Magge said people with Down syndrome tend to prefer keeping strict routines, which could be something parents can take advantage of to help instill healthy habits.

“In adults it might be that if they get into a routine of eating healthy it’s more likely to stick,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/SnWv05 Pediatrics, online November 12, 2012.

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Wal-Mart 3Q profit up but sees sales shortfall

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reported a 9 percent increase in net income for the third quarter, but revenue for the world’s largest retailer fell below Wall Street forecasts as its low-income shoppers continue to grapple with an uncertain economy.

The discounter issued a fourth-quarter profit outlook that fell short of Wall Street expectations, and the company’s stock price slid more than 3 percent.

Wal-Mart is considered an economic bellwether because the retailer accounts for nearly 10 percent of nonautomotive retail spending in the U.S. The company’s latest results show that many low-income Americans — it’s estimated that the typical Wal-Mart customer has an average household income of between $ 30,000 and $ 60,000, rents their homes and doesn’t own stock — continue to struggle even as the housing and stock markets are improving.

The disappointing revenue comes as Wal-Mart, like other retailers, is preparing for the busy winter holiday shopping season in the U.S. next week. The period, which runs roughly from November throughout December, is a time when stores can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue. Wal-Mart has said that it plans to offer deeper discounts and a broader assortment of merchandise during this year’s season to draw in shoppers.

“Macroeconomic conditions continue to pressure our customers,” said Charles Holley, Wal-Mart’s chief financial officer. “The holiday season is predicted to be very competitive but we are well prepared to deliver on the value and low prices our customers expect.”

The disappointing revenue results come a year after Wal-Mart’s U.S. namesake business turned a corner by reemphasizing low prices and restocking stores with thousands of basic items that it had gotten rid of in an overzealous bid to reduce clutter.

During the third quarter of last year, the division reversed nine straight quarters of declines in revenue at stores opened at least a year, which is considered a key measure of a retailer’s health. The U.S. namesake business has recorded five consecutive quarters of gains since the division rebounded, including a 1.5 percent increase in the third quarter.

But the third-quarter gain is just shy of the 1.8 percent increase analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting. It’s also a slowdown in growth from the 2.2 percent gain the business posted in the second quarter and the 2.6 percent increase it had in the first quarter.

Analysts say that Wal-Mart’s previous results had benefited from the increase in prices shoppers were paying for groceries due to inflation for some items, a trend that is now subsiding. They also say that Wal-Mart is facing tougher revenue comparisons from a year ago when its business first began to rebound.

Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics, a research company, said Wal-Mart’s revenue is headed in the right direction. But he cautioned that the company will need to continue to keep prices low in order to compete with rivals that have stepped up discounting.

“Overall, it’s a relatively good report,” he said. “But it shows that its consumer is still struggling.”

In the third quarter, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart earned $ 3.63 billion, or $ 1.08 per share, in the quarter ended Oct. 31. That compares with $ 3.33 billion, or 96 cents per share, in the year-ago period.

Net revenue, excluding Sam’s Club membership fees, rose 3.4 percent to $ 113.2 million. Excluding the currency impact, net revenue would have been $ 114.9 million. Analysts were expecting $ 1.07 per share on net revenue of $ 114 billion.

Nearly all areas, including food and clothing, registered gains. However, the company’s entertainment category, which includes gaming, suffered a decline, dragged down by price deflation. Part of the weakness is also due to the company’s layaway business, which winds up deferring sales to the fourth quarter.

For the entire U.S. business, sales at stores opened at least a year rose 1.7 percent, below the 2.1 percent Wall Street estimate. At Sam’s Club, the figure was up 2.7 percent, below the 3.8 percent increase Wall Street expected and the 4.2 percent gain it posted in the second quarter.

The company said its business members at Sam’s Clubs are being hurt by the economic downturn, and are switching to less-expensive chicken from beef. To boost sales, Sam’s Club is increasing its offering of rotisserie chicken, and has reduced prices in several varieties of apples and beauty products.

“Our business members continue to experience economic pressure and uncertainty,” said Rosalind Brewer, president of Sam’s Clubs.

For the full year, Wal-Mart now said it expects earnings per share to be between $ 4.88 per share and $ 4.93 per share. It originally expected earnings per share of $ 4.83 to $ 4.93. For the fourth quarter, it forecasts earnings per share to be $ 1.53 per share and $ 1.58 per share. Analysts had expected $ 1.59 per share.

Separately, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Wal-Mart said Thursday that it was looking into potential violations related to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in Brazil, China and India. This comes after Wal-Mart initially began investigating its Mexico operations following report that surfaced in April that the retailer allegedly failed to notify law enforcement when company officials authorized millions of dollars in bribes in Mexico to speed building permits and gain other favors. The company continues to work with government officials in the U.S. and Mexico on that investigation.

On Thursday, Wal-Mart’s stock fell $ 2.61 to close at $ 68.70. Over the past 52 weeks, Wal-Mart stock has been trading between $ 56.26 and $ 77.60.

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Egypt recalls envoy to Israel after Gaza strike

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.

In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.

Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”

Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.

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Judge tosses anti-paparazzi counts in Bieber case

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A law aimed at combating reckless driving by paparazzi is overly broad and should not be used against the first photographer charged under its provisions, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Superior Court Judge Thomas Rubinson dismissed counts filed under the law against Paul Raef, who was charged in July with being involved in a high-speed pursuit of Justin Bieber.

The judge cited numerous problems with the 2010 statute, saying it was aimed at newsgathering activities protected by the First Amendment, and lawmakers should have simply increased the penalties for reckless driving rather than targeting celebrity photographers.

Attorneys for Raef argued the law was unconstitutional and wasn’t meant to protect the public.

“It’s about protecting celebrities,” attorney Brad Kasierman said. “This discrimination sets a dangerous precedent.”

Prosecutors argued that the law, which seeks to punish those who drive dangerously in pursuit of photos for commercial gain, could apply to people in other professions, not just the media.

“The focus is not the photo. The focus is on the driving,” Assistant City Attorney Ann Rosenthal argued.

While the media is granted freedom under the First Amendment, its latitude to gather news is not unlimited, Rosenthal argued.

“This activity has been found to be particularly dangerous,” she said of chases involving paparazzi.

Raef still faces traditional reckless driving counts and has not yet entered a plea,

Prosecutors claim he chased Bieber at more than 80 mph and forced other motorists to avoid collisions while trying to get shots of the teen heartthrob on a Los Angeles freeway.

The chase prompted several 911 calls from scared motorists and led to Bieber being pulled over.

Rubinson cited hypothetical examples in which wedding photographers or even those rushing to do a portrait shoot with a celebrity could face additional penalties if charged under the new statute.

Rosenthal also argued that the judge should look at factors specific to Raef’s case, not hypothetical scenarios.

Kaiserman said the ruling only applies to Raef’s case but could lead to the law being struck down if prosecutors appeal.

___

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

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U.S. Congress takes aim at FDA over meningitis outbreak

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – Members of a congressional committee investigating the deadly U.S. meningitis outbreak accused the Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday of failing to prevent the crisis by moving too slowly against a Massachusetts pharmacy.

Tainted steroids from the pharmacy, New England Compounding Center (NECC), have so far killed 32 people and sickened 461 in 19 states, according to updated figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those numbers are expected to rise with as many as 14,000 people having been exposed to the drugs injected to ease back pain.

“After a tragedy like this, the first question we all ask is: could this have been prevented? After an examination of documents produced by the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the answer here appears to be yes,” Cliff Stearns, Republican chairman of the oversight and investigations panel, said at the hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The panel aims to learn why regulators took no action against the Framingham, Massachusetts-based compounding pharmacy that manufactured the tainted drug – despite repeated problems dating back to 1999, including adverse patient reactions to a sterile steroid treatment from as early as 2002.

In a highly contentious hearing that lasted four hours, committee members repeatedly accused FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg of failing to answer questions about FDA authority and a lack of action against NECC. Hamburg in turn insisted that the FDA lacks clear authority to regulate compounding pharmacies due to conflicting court rulings and other regulatory ambiguities.

She said new laws must be passed that give the FDA clear authority to regulate compounding pharmacies as it does large drug manufacturers.

“This isn’t, sadly, an isolated incident. This is the worst and most tragic. It should be the last wakeup call for us,” Hamburg said of the deadly meningitis outbreak.

“We really need a strong, clear and appropriate legislation. We cannot have a crazy quilt where different parts of the country are subject to different legal frameworks,” she told the committee.

UNREGULATED COMPOUNDING

Drug compounding is a little-known practice in which pharmacists traditionally alter or recombine drugs to meet the special needs of specific patients with a doctor’s prescription. It is overseen primarily by state authorities that are often ill-equipped for the job.

But in some cases, as with NECC, compounding has evolved to include large-scale production that some experts view as drug manufacturing that should be subject to FDA regulation.

FDA and Massachusetts officials inspected the NECC more than 10 years ago after patients were hospitalized with meningitis-like symptoms and identified contamination in the same drug at issue in the current outbreak.

“Ten years later, we are in the midst of an unthinkable, worst-case scenario – the body count is growing by the day – and hundreds, hundreds – have fallen ill. Inexcusable,” said Fred Upton, Republican chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Upton criticized FDA for not providing all the documents related to NECC or a clear timeline of events. He said his committee requested both more than a month ago.

However, U.S. Representative Henry Waxman of California, the committee’s ranking Democrat, defended the FDA and turned his ire toward NECC.

“Let’s not lose sight of the wrongdoers as we go around blaming regulators,” Waxman said.

He noted that the FDA knew 10 years ago that there could be a meningitis outbreak due to practices at NECC “and it wasn’t corrected by the company.”

He said the agency met with “stubborn refusals and a challenge to FDA’s authority” from NECC officials.

Waxman called for bipartisan legislation that gives FDA clear and effective authority to prevent compounders from becoming dangerous drug manufacturers like NECC.

HAMBURG IN HOT SEAT

But Republican committee members repeatedly, and sometimes angrily, challenged Hamburg’s contention that FDA lacked the authority to oversee compounders that had grown into defacto manufacturers.

“We’re just not buying it Ms. Hamburg,” said Representative Michael Burgess of Texas, an obstetrician by profession.

“Go look in the eyes of the victims and try to tell them that,” said Republican Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania.

Nebraska Republican Lee Terry was extremely combative with Hamburg, repeatedly asking for specific statutes that prevented FDA oversight of compounders and cutting off her attempts to respond. Terry went as far as accusing the commissioner of deliberately providing written testimony in the middle of the night so committee members had little time to review it.

“I know that you’re frustrated with my answers and I’m sorry. I can’t just give ‘yes or no’ answers. This is complex,” Hamburg told Murphy at one point.

Murphy shot back that what victims were going through was complex. “Leadership is easy if you’re willing to accept it. You are not.”

Florida Democrat Kathy Castor rose to Hamburg’s defense in describing current laws on regulating compounders as varying from region to region, creating conflicting enforcement issues.

“There is ambiguity. There is great ambiguity,” she said.

Waxman also attempted to rescue Hamburg, accusing Republican counterparts of playing politics. “I have a feeling, Dr. Hamburg, that you’re being picked on by Republicans because you’re with the Obama administration,” he said.

He pointed out that past FDA failures being referred to took place under a different commissioner during the Bush administration.

The panel also heard testimony from the widow of one of the victims, as well as Massachusetts Department of Public Health interim Commissioner Dr. Lauren Smith, to whom congress members were respectful and complimentary, and NECC co-owner Barry Cadden, who refused to answer any questions from the committee.

Cadden, a short, middle-aged man flanked by two attorneys, appeared before the committee with spiky close-cropped hair and wearing a dark gray business suit. He repeatedly cited his right to not incriminate himself under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution when asked to explain breakdowns in sanitary conditions at NECC that led to the meningitis outbreak.

The Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy, which does have oversight of NECC, failed to carry out sanctions against the company despite repeated problems that culminated in this year’s outbreak.

Several lawmakers questioned Smith about relations between NECC and the Massachusetts pharmacy board, some saying reports of close ties among individuals could have encouraged state regulators to favor the interests of pharmacies over patients.

Waxman noted that weak sanctions to which NECC previously agreed occurred when Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts.

The committee heard emotional testimony from the 78-year-old widow of a Kentucky judge who was among the first to die in the meningitis outbreak.

“It was such a useless thing that happened to my husband,” Joyce Lovelace said, testifying from a wheelchair.

“I can’t begin to tell you what I have lost,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion. “I’ve come here begging you to do something about it.”

Democrat Edward Markey, whose congressional district includes the town where NECC is located, said Congress would take action.

“I commit to you and all the victims that we will not stop until this industry is safe,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler, Andrew Hay and Maureen Bavdek)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Bank predicts protracted recovery

14 November 2012 Last updated at 12:35 ET

Bank of England cuts UK growth forecast for 2013

The Bank of England has cut its growth forecast for next year to about 1% from nearer 2%, and said recovery will be “slow and protracted”.

It now thinks that the economy will not get back to pre-crisis levels until 2015, two years later than it previously predicted.

The Bank also believes inflation will remain higher for longer.

Governor Sir Mervyn King also welcomed the latest jobs figures which showed a continued fall in unemployment.

He was presenting the Bank’s quarterly Inflation Report, which forecast that inflation would not now fall towards the government’s 2% target until mid-2013, rather than in the first half of next year as previously thought.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

This is going to be a long and challenging recovery from a very substantial crisis”

End Quote David Gauke Treasury Minister

The report said the UK could be stuck in a “low-growth” environment, with economic problems in the eurozone and the rest of world continuing to have an impact domestically.

As the BBC’s economics editor Stephanie Flanders put it: “The Bank hasn’t just lowered its growth forecasts for the next year or so – it has more or less given up hope of being pleasantly surprised.”

Sir Mervyn warned that growth from quarter to quarter would continue to fluctuate. In the April-June quarter growth was depressed by one-off factors such as the unseasonably bad weather and had given a misleadingly weak picture of the economy.

Similarly, growth in the July-September period was boosted by one-off factors including ticket revenue from the Olympics and Paralympics and gave “an overly optimistic impression of the underlying trend,” he said, adding that the data was not necessarily “a reliable guide to the future”.

He said: “Continuing the recent zig-zag pattern, output growth is likely to fall back sharply in Q4 [between October and December] as the boost from the Olympics in the summer is reversed. Indeed, output may shrink a little this quarter,” he said.

The Bank has previously predicted that inflation might fall towards the government’s 2% target in the first half of next year.

But it now expects inflation to stay higher for longer. “We face the rather unappealing combination of a subdued recovery, with inflation remaining above target for a while,” Sir Mervyn said.

“The road to recovery will be long and winding, but there are good reasons to suggest we are travelling in the right direction,” he said.

‘Long process’

Treasury minister David Gauke said he recognised that these were tough times, but insisted that the economy was “moving in the right direction”.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

What is new is that the Bank now thinks that the UK economy will not get back to where it was at the start of 2008 until well into 2015”

End Quote

Asked on BBC Radio 4′s The World At One if he agreed with Sir Mervyn’s warning about a potential sharp fall in output, Mr Gauke said: “The independent Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts growth in the economy in the autumn statement in three weeks’ time. I’m not going to pre-judge that.

“Clearly, there are international pressures on our economy that mean that this is going to be a long and challenging recovery from a very substantial crisis. That is what we are going through at the moment. I think the British people understand that this is going to be a long process,” he said.

However, shadow chancellor Ed Balls said: “This sobering report shows why David Cameron and George Osborne’s deeply complacent approach to the economy is so misplaced.

“Their failing policies have seen two years of almost no growth and the Bank of England is now forecasting lower growth and higher inflation than just a few months ago.

“Britain needs a plan to create the jobs and growth we need to get deficits down, including using funds from the 4G auction to build 100,000 affordable homes and create hundreds of thousands of jobs,” Mr Balls said.

The Bank’s report came on the day that the Office for National Statistics said that the UK unemployment rate fell to 7.8% in the July-September quarter, down from 8% in the previous three months.

The 49,000 fall in number of jobless, to 2.51 million, was almost entirely due to a fall in youth unemployment, the ONS said. It means that the jobless total is now 110,000 lower than for the July-September quarter last year.

Continue reading the main story

However, the claimant count went up in September, leading some economists to suggest that the recent resilience of the jobs market was beginning to weaken. And the number of people unemployed for longer than a year also rose.

Sir Mervyn told the news conference: “I don’t think one would say that the data released this morning were weak.

“This is still a pretty strong labour market and, of course, it is not easy to reconcile that with the picture of underlying growth being still so weak,” he said.

Sir Mervyn also told a press conference that he had not “lost faith” in quantitative easing as a way to stimulate economic growth.

The Bank has kept the amount it injects into the economy by buying up government bonds at £375bn since July this year.

Some have questioned its effectiveness, but the Bank said it had not ruled out further asset purchases to try to stimulate growth.

He said that with the global economy still struggling, “there are limits to the ability of domestic policy to stimulate private sector demand as the economy adjusts to a new equilibrium”.

“But the [Monetary Policy] Committee has not lost faith in asset purchases as a policy instrument, nor has it concluded that there will be no more purchases.”

BBC News – Business

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