Election underscores Ghana’s democratic reputation

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Voters in Ghana selected their next president Friday in a ballot expected to mark the sixth transparent election in this West African nation, known as a beacon of democracy in a tumultuous region.

Proud of their democratic heritage, residents of this balmy, seaside capital trudged to the polls more than four hours before the sun was even up, standing inches apart in queues that in some places stretched 1,000-people deep.

By afternoon, some voters were getting agitated, after hitches with the use of a new biometric system caused delays at numerous polling stations.

Each polling station had a single biometric machine, and if it failed to identify the voter’s fingerprint, or if it broke down, there was no backup. At one polling station where the machine had broken down, a local chief said he’d barely moved a few inches: “I’m 58 years old, and I’ve been standing in this queue all day,” Nana Owusu said. “It’s not good.”

Late Friday, when it became clear that large numbers of people had not been able to vote, the election commission announced it would extend voting by a second day. This nation of 25 million is, however, deeply attached to its tradition of democracy, and voters were urging each other to remain calm while they waited their turn to choose from one of eight presidential contenders, including President John Dramani Mahama and his main challenger, Nana Akufo-Addo. The election commission

“Elections remind us how young our democracy is, how fragile it is,” said author Martina Odonkor, 44. “I think elections are a time when we all lose our cockiness about being such a shining light of democracy in Africa, and we start to get a bit nervous that things could go back to how they used to be.”

Ghana was once a troubled nation that suffered five coups and decades of stagnation, before turning a corner in the 1990s. It is now a pacesetter for the continent’s efforts to become democratic. No other country in the region has had so many elections deemed free and fair, a reputation voters hold close to their hearts.

The incumbent Mahama, a former vice president, was catapulted into office in July after the unexpected death of former President John Atta Mills. Before becoming vice president in 2009, the 54-year-old served as a minister and a member of parliament. He’s also written an acclaimed biography, recalling Ghana’s troubled past, called “My First Coup d’Etat.”

Akufo-Addo is a former foreign minister and the son of one of Ghana’s previous presidents. In 2008, Akufo-Addo lost the last presidential election to Mills by less than 1 percent during a runoff vote. Both candidates are trying to make the case that they will use the nation’s oil riches to help the poor.

Besides being one of the few established democracies in the region, Ghana also has the fastest-growing economy. But a deep divide still exists between those benefiting from the country’s oil, cocoa and mineral wealth and those left behind financially.

A group of men who had just voted gathered at a small bar a block away from a polling station in the middle class neighborhood of South Labadi. Danny Odoteye, 36, who runs the bar, said that the country’s economic progress is palpable and that the ruling party, and its candidate, are responsible for ushering in a period of growth.

“I voted for John Mahama,” he said. “Ghana is a prosperous country. Everything is moving smoothly.”

Administrator Victor Nortey, sitting on a plastic chair across from him, disagreed, saying the country’s newfound oil wealth should have resulted in more change.

“I voted for Nana Akufo-Addo,” He said. “Now we have oil. What is Mahama doing with the oil money?” Nortey said. “We can use that money to build schools.”

In an interview on the eve of the vote, Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press that the first thing he will do if elected is begin working on providing free high school education for all. “It’s a matter of great concern to me,” he said, adding that he plans to use the oil wealth to educate the population, industrialize the economy and create better jobs for Ghanaians.

Policy-oriented and intellectual, Akufo-Addo is favored by the young and urbanized voters. He was educated in England and comes from a privileged family. The ruling party has depicted him as elitist.

“The idea that merely because you are born into privilege that automatically means you are against the welfare of the ordinary people, that’s nonsense,” he said.

Ghana had one of the fastest growing economies in the world in 2011. Oil was discovered in 2007 and the country began producing it in December 2010.

Throughout the capital, new condominiums are rising up next to slums and luxury cars creep along narrow alleys lined with open sewers. A mall downtown features a Western-style cinema and is packed on weekends with middle class families. At the same time shantytowns are cropping up, packed with the urban poor.

Polls show that voters are almost evenly split over who can best deliver on the promise of development.

Kojo Mabwa said that he is voting for Akufo-Addo, because he is impressed by his promise of free education. He dismissed critics that say the project is too ambitious. “There is money,” he said. “(The ruling party) has done nothing for us. They are misusing our money.”

Paa Kwesi, a 30-year-old systems analyst, said he doesn’t think Akufo-Addo is making promises he can keep.

“He says he can do free education, but you have to crawl before you can walk. It’s not possible,” he said.

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Associated Press writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report from Accra, Ghana.

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Relationship Ranch: Couples’ Therapy with Horses

It’s fascinating to watch a man trying to win back the love of his life by talking to a horse.

Horse therapy has been used for decades to help treat people with physical disabilities or learning disorders, but now they are also being used in an unconventional form of couples counseling.

Watch the full story on “Nightline” tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET

Nancy Hamilton and Lottie Grimes are marriage therapists who run Relationship Ranch in Louisville, Colo. They are convinced that horses can help feuding couples make peace.

“You wouldn’t think they would have any role in marriage therapy,” Hamilton said. “But because horses are so exquisitely sensitive, they can help us determine what a couple is actually, really feeling.”

For three weekends, “Nightline” followed one couple’s last-ditch effort to save their crumbling relationship and attended their equine therapy sessions.

Justin and Lyz, both 30 and never married, have been together for nine years and have two sons. But lately, they said, the bickering and fighting at home got so bad that Justin reluctantly agreed to move out.

“We have piled problem on top of problem on top of problem for years,” Lyz said. “Who knows what’s at the bottom of that?”

Although he was skeptical about the healing powers of horses, he said he was willing to try just about anything to make his family whole again.

On their first day of therapy, the couple was introduced to the ranch’s herd of horses. Justin was magnetically drawn to the newest and most aggressive horse, Danny, who came to the ranch after surviving a grizzly bear attack. Danny wasn’t fitting in with the other horses, which hit home for Justin, who felt exiled from his own herd. Hamilton said horses can sense and read people’s emotions.

“They’re almost like a Rorschach projective test with a mane and a tail, where people can project onto them their feelings, their thoughts and their fears,” she said.

Hamilton said she believes those fears can stem from what she called unresolved childhood wounds, which plague adult relationships. That was the case with Justin. When he was 9 years old, his sister was brutally murdered by an ex-boyfriend and young Justin saw the murder scene.

“He chased her down and cut her throat,” he said. “We went back several days later and they hadn’t cleaned anything up.”

After working with Justin and Lyz, Hamilton said Lyz saw Justin as controlling, but those tendencies are rooted in his childhood trauma.

“Trauma survivors are very concerned with being able to control their present environment because they were not able to control their environment when they were traumatized,” she said.

Hamilton had Justin go through a blind trust exercise with Danny to force Justin to surrender control to his partner. The goal was to expose Justin’s old wounds. Hamilton instructed him to talk to Danny about what had happened when his sister was killed. Danny, the trauma-surviving horse, set the stage for a major breakthrough.

“It seemed so stupid at first, and then it was actually helpful,” Justin said. “Therapeutic.”

Watching Justin talk to the horse, Lyz said she never saw him so vulnerable. After the session, the two apologized for hurting each other.

Two weeks later, Justin went through a final exercise to fully cope with his past. In a pen, surrounded by the herd, Justin became 9 years old again. He was instructed to confront his absent father through a role-playing exercise, while Lyz acted as a stand-in for his dad.

“You abandoned all of us,” he said aloud. “I had to be the man of the family and I think that you’re a coward.”

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Reinhold Weege, creator of “Night Court,” dies at 63

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Reinhold Weege, the creator of the hit NBC sitcom “Night Court,” has died, a spokeswoman for the family told TheWrap. He was 63 years old.

He also wrote for other notable television shows, including “Barney Miller” and “M*A*S*H.”

However, it was “Night Court,” a show that poked gentle fun at bureaucratic absurdity, that would become his signature work. The series centered on a young judge (Harry Anderson) saddled with handling the bottom of the barrel cases that come into Manhattan’s night court and featured a breakout performance by John Larroquette as a skirt-chasing lawyer.

The show started out tackling serious legal issues, but over the course of its nine seasons, slowly expunged commentary in favor of broad humor.

Weege might never have entered show business had he not been fired from a job in journalism. In a 1994 piece in the Chicago Tribune, he wrote that he was working as a reporter and editor of a tiny suburban paper when he reported on a secret meeting, between the town and the Pritzker hotel chain about a proposal to build a monorail, hotels and a 60-story office building.

After his paper was less than thrilled with the piece he copyrighted it and had it picked up by a larger paper — the result was he got canned.

“Shortly after that, I sold our couch, the only asset my wife and I had, got in the car and headed toward Hollywood,” Weege wrote.

The rest is history.

Weege is survived by his ex-wife Shelley, two daughters and a granddaughter.

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Crisis dims German growth hopes

7 December 2012 Last updated at 07:58 ET

Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, has cut its growth forecast for next year, saying the country’s economy might be entering a recession.

Growth in 2013 is now expected to be just 0.4%, compared with a forecast in June of 1.6%, but is expected to bounce back to 1.9% in 2014.

Meanwhile, industrial output fell a steeper-than-expected 2.6% in October.

It comes one day after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi cut his forecast for eurozone growth.

Mr Draghi blamed his move on a stagnation in core eurozone countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands.

Southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy, have been in recession for more than a year, but the malaise has spread to the rest of the single currency zone via weak export demand and falling consumer and business confidence.

Rebound in 2014

Meanwhile, the ECB’s German counterpart warned that Germany’s economy may suffer a recession during the current quarter and the first three months of next year.

The Bundesbank has cut its growth forecast for the current year as a whole to 0.7%, from 1% previously, in light of what is seen to be a very poor performance since the autumn.

Continue reading the main story

The Bundesbank’s view of the economy is markedly worse than it was in the previous forecast six months ago. It still thinks Germany will avoid a recession in 2013 but it doesn’t think growth will be that strong, either.

But in 2014, it forecasts that the economy will rebound to grow at nearly 2%. German economists defend that relative optimism by saying that they expect Chinese growth to pick up and that will mean rising demand for German machinery.

Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman said she was “cautiously optimistic that we’ll keep growing”. Few expect her to lose power in the election next year. The question is, rather, with which party her CDU might form a coalition. It is possible that there will be a coalition between her centre-right CDU and the centre-left SPD.

The rogue element in economic – and political – forecasts is the eurozone. A Greek exit could derail growth – and maybe also her re-election hopes.

Industrial production data released on Friday registered a 2.6% drop in output during October, meaning that output in the month was 3.7% lower than a year earlier, with construction activity and demand for investment goods particularly badly affected.

The Netherlands also reported a 1.7% drop in its industrial output versus a year ago.

The German central bank blamed its more pessimistic growth forecasts on the recessions in neighbouring eurozone countries, as well as on a general slowdown in the world economy.

“Given the difficult economic situation in some euro area countries and widespread uncertainty, economic growth will be lower than previously assumed,” the Bundesbank said.

“The Bundesbank does not see a protracted slowdown, but instead anticipates a return to a growth path soon.”

It noted that German businesses were cutting their investments and were taking on fewer new workers.

The Bundesbank’s president Jens Weidmann is due to give a speech in the afternoon.

‘Downswing territory’

Industrial orders and exports in Germany have fallen in recent months. However, while industrial output fell in October, orders saw a surprise bounce thanks to a surge in demand from outside the eurozone.

Despite that, David Kohl, chief economist at fund managers Julius Baer, said the economy was “moving slowly into downswing territory”.

Gilles Moec, Deutsche Bank: Previous growth forecasts were “unrealistic”

The biggest drag on the economy has been trade, with soft demand from southern Europe weighing on exports.

A steady rise in German house prices in recent months – driven by record low interest rates – had been encouraging a pick-up in domestic spending, but with much of that spending leaking out of the country via imports.

However, that picture appears to have been changing since the summer, with negative economic news affecting sentiment.

“Domestic demand has been a bit disappointing in the third quarter and in the current quarter,” said Mr Kohl. “Uncertainty tends to hit consumer confidence. It depresses private consumption – but it lasts just for a month or two, maybe a quarter.”

German unemployment – which had been falling steadily to a 20-year low of 5.4% – is showing signs of rising again.

Recent data showed German wages rising 3.3% in the third quarter of the year compared with a year earlier.

Such German wage rises are seen as key to a rebalancing of the entire eurozone economy – by helping southern European workers gain their cost competitiveness, and by encouraging greater spending by German households, which should help eliminate Germany’s perennial trade surplus.

‘Reluctant’ ECB

The weak German outlook comes a day after the ECB decided to keep interest rates on hold at 0.75%.

“The ECB had yesterday the chance to add stimulus, but seemed reluctant,” noted Mr Kohl.

Many banks in the suffering southern European economies would directly benefit from a rate cut, as this would reduce the cost of the emergency loans they have received from the ECB.

The German government may also be minded to stimulate the economy, perhaps via tax cuts, as parliamentary elections are due in the second half of next year. However, any such cuts are unlikely to have an effect in time to head off the current downturn in the country’s economy.

Economic data from elsewhere in Europe was similarly discouraging on Friday.

In the UK, manufacturing output fell a surprisingly sharp 1.3% in October from a month earlier, as the economy geared down from hosting the Summer Olympics.

Meanwhile, Portugal, Greece, the Czech Republic and Hungary all confirmed that their economies shrank during the third quarter of the year.

Portugal’s slump was revised down from a contraction of 3.4% versus a year ago, to one of 3.5%, as exports to the rest of the eurozone suffered.

Greece’s recession, by contrast, was not quite as astoundingly deep as originally feared, with the country’s fall in output was revised to 6.9%, from a first estimate of 7.2%.

Outside the eurozone, the Czech economy shrank 1.3% in the third quarter, while the Hungarian economy did so by 1.5% and industrial production in the country fell 3.8% in October from a year earlier.

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Ghana election, test of democratic reputation

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Voters in Ghana were selecting their next president and a 275-seat parliament in elections Friday, solidifying the West African nation‘s reputation as a beacon of democracy in the region.

Some 14 million people are expected to turn out. President John Dramani Mahama, in office for only five months, is running against seven contenders. A former vice president, Mahama became president in July after the unexpected death of former President John Atta Mills. The 54-year-old is also a former minister and parliamentarian and has written an acclaimed biography, “My First Coup d’Etat.”

His main challenger is Nana Akufo-Addo, a former foreign minister and the son of one of Ghana’s previous presidents. The contender lost the 2008 election to Mills by less than 1 percent. Both men are trying to make the case that they will use the nation’s newfound oil wealth to help the poor.

Ghana, a nation of 25 million, is one of the few established democracies in the region as well as the fastest-growing economy. But a deep divide still exists between those benefiting from the country’s oil, cocoa and mineral wealth and those left behind financially.

In an interview on the eve of the vote, Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press that the first thing he will do if elected is begin working on providing free high school education for all. “It’s a matter of great concern to me,” he said, adding that he plans to use the nation’s oil wealth to educate the population, industrialize the economy and create better jobs for Ghanaians.

Policy-oriented and intellectual, Akufo-Addo is favored by the young and urbanized voters. He was educated in England and comes from a privileged family. The ruling party has depicted him as elitist, which Akufo-Addo calls “a little PR construct.”

“The idea that merely because you are born into privilege that automatically means you are against the welfare of the ordinary people, that’s nonsense,” he said.

Ghana had one of the fastest growing economies in the world in 2011. Allegations of corruption against the ruling party are rife.

Akufo-Addo said that if elected, he would not be able to weed out corruption in the government overnight.

“It’s a long fight,” he said. “But we build the institutions that can fight it.”

He said that in 30 years in politics he has never been accused of corruption.

Many analysts believe Mahama and Akufo-Addo are neck-and-neck.

Results are expected to be announced by Sunday, but could be delayed. If no one wins an absolute majority, a second round of voting will be held on December 28.

All candidates have signed a peace pact and have promised to accept the results of Friday’s poll.

Ghana, a nation of 25 million, has previously held five transparent elections in a row. Nearby Mali, which was also considered a model democracy, was plunged into chaos this March following a military coup.

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Associated Press writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report from Accra, Ghana.

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Strong quake hits off Japan near Fukushima disaster zone

TOKYO (Reuters) – A strong quake centered off northeastern Japan shook buildings as far away as Tokyo on Friday and triggered a one-meter tsunami in an area devastated by last year’s Fukushima disaster, but there were no immediate reports of deaths or serious damage.

The quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.3, the U.S. Geological Survey said, adding that there was no risk of a widespread tsunami.

The March 2011 earthquake and following tsunami killed nearly 20,000 people and triggered the world’s worst nuclear crisis in 25 years when the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was destroyed, leaking radiation into the sea and air.

Workers at the plant were ordered to move to higher ground after Friday’s quake. Tokyo Electric Power Co, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, reported no irregularities at its nuclear plants.

All but two of Japan‘s 50 nuclear reactors have been idled since the Fukushima disaster as the government reviews safety.

The quake measured a “lower 5″ in Miyagi prefecture on Japan’s scale of one to seven, meaning there might be some damage to roads and houses that are less quake resistant.

The scale measures the amount of shaking and in that sense gives a better idea of possible damage than the magnitude. The quake registered a 4 in Tokyo.

The one-meter tsunami hit at Ishinomaki, in Miyagi, at the centre of the devastation from the March 2011 disaster. All Miyagi trains halted operations and Sendai airport, which was flooded by the tsunami last year, closed its runway.

Five people in the prefecture were slightly injured.

“I was in the centre of the city the very moment the earthquake struck. I immediately jumped into the car and started running away towards the mountains. I’m still hiding inside the car,” said Ishinomaki resident Chikako Iwai.

“…I have the radio on and they say the cars are still stuck in the traffic. I’m planning to stay here for the next couple of hours.”

Narita airport outside Tokyo was back in action after a brief closure for safety checks. There were small tsunamis, measuring in the centimeters, elsewhere near the epicenter.

Last year’s quake, which measured 9.0, triggered fuel-rod meltdowns at Fukushima, causing radiation leakage, contamination of food and water and mass evacuations. Much of the area is still deserted.

The government declared in December that the disaster was under control.

“Citizens are now escaping to designated evacuation centers and moving to places on higher ground,” office worker Naoki Ara said in Soma, 30 km (18 miles) from the Fukushima-Daiichi plant.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cancelled campaigning in Tokyo ahead of a December 16 election and was on his way back to his office, but there was no immediate plan to hold a special cabinet meeting.

Public spending on quake-proofing buildings is a big election issue.

Japanese were posting photos of their TV screens with tsunami warnings on Facebook, asking each other whether they’re safe, confirming their whereabouts.

“It shook for a long time here in Tokyo, are you guys all right?” posted Eriko Hamada, enquiring about the safety of her friends.

Phone lines were overloaded and it was difficult to contact residents of Miyagi.

“Owing to the recent earthquake, phone lines are very busy, please try again later,” the phone operator said.

The yen rose against the dollar and the euro on the news, triggering some safe-haven inflows into the Japanese currency.

(Additional reporting by Tomasz Janowski, Leika Kihara and Aaron Sheldrick; Writing by Nick Macfie; Editing by Ken Wills)

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Deportation looms for tech guru McAfee after heart drama

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation to Belize, was rushed to a hospital in Guatemala on Thursday shortly after his asylum request was rejected, but a suspected heart attack turned out to be stress in a fresh twist to the saga.

The 67-year-old U.S. computer software pioneer was taken swiftly from a hospital in a police car out of the sight of media, after earlier arriving in an ambulance lying on a stretcher.

His lawyer said he was being taken back to an immigration department cottage where he has been detained since crossing illegally into Guatemala from neighboring Belize, where police want to question him in connection with his neighbor’s murder.

“He never had a heart attack, nothing like that,” said Telesforo Guerra, a former attorney general who had earlier said McAfee had two mild heart attacks.

“I’m not a doctor. I’m just telling you what the doctors told me,” he added. “He was suffering from stress, hypertension and tachycardia (an abnormally fast heartbeat).”

McAfee was posting on his blog www.whoismcafee.com in the morning, the time he suffered the stress attack.

“I don’t think a heart attack prevents one from using one’s blog,” Guerra had said at the time.

Guerra’s assistant, Karla Paz, earlier said she found McAfee lying on the ground and unable to move his body or speak.

McAfee was detained by Guatemalan police on Wednesday for illegally sneaking across the border with his 20-year-old girlfriend to escape authorities in Belize. He has said he fears authorities in Belize will kill him if he returns.

Guatemala’s foreign minister, Harold Caballeros, said earlier McAfee’s request for asylum was rejected.

Constitutional lawyer Gabriel Orellana, a former foreign minister, said the government should have given more weight to the asylum request rather than rush to a decision.

“We should take into account the fact that McAfee has not been accused of any crime in Belize,” he said.

QUARRELED WITH FELLOW AMERICAN

Police in Belize want to quiz McAfee as “a person of interest” in the killing of a fellow American, Gregory Faull, with whom he had quarreled. But they say he is not a prime suspect in the probe.

McAfee says he has been persecuted by Belize’s ruling party because he refused to pay around $ 2 million he says it is trying to hustle out of him, he said.

Belize’s prime minister denies this and said McAfee, who made millions from the Internet anti-virus software that bears his name, was “bonkers.” McAfee later lost much of his fortune and turned to a life of semi-reclusion by the Belizean beach.

McAfee spent Wednesday night reading his blog and posting his thoughts on a laptop he said was lent to him by the warden of the cottage where he was staying.

One person asked him if he felt like committing suicide.

“I enjoy living, and suicide is absurdly redundant,” he wrote. “The world, from the very beginning, hurls viruses, accidents, hungry animals, defective DNA – and uncountable more – in an attempt to kill us. It always succeeds. Suicide is simply aiding and abetting.”

McAfee’s earlier posts spoke of his relief at arriving in Guatemala, thinking he had found a way out of his troubles.

One of his readers posted a message offering him just that.

“John. I have a special ops team near the La Aurora International Airport. I can get you out of jail and provide safe passage back to the States for a fee. Please let me know if this interests you.”

DRUG PAST

Guatemala’s government originally said the eccentric tech entrepreneur, who loves guns and young women and has tribal tattoos covering his shoulders, would be expelled to Belize within hours. But it later rowed back.

The U.S. State Department said it was aware of McAfee’s arrest and its embassy was providing “appropriate consular services,” but could not comment further.

On the island of Ambergris Caye, where McAfee has lived for about four years, residents and neighbors say he is eccentric and at times unstable. He was seen to travel with armed bodyguards, sporting a pistol tucked into his belt.

The predicament of the former Lockheed systems consultant is a far cry from his heyday in the late 1980s, when he started McAfee Associates. McAfee has no relationship now with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.

McAfee was previously charged in Belize with possession of illegal firearms, and police had raided his property on suspicions that he was running a lab to produce illegal synthetic narcotics. He says he has not taken drugs since 1983.

“I took drugs constantly, 24 hours of the day. I took them for years and years. I was the worst drug abuser on the planet,” he told Reuters just before his arrest. “Then I finally went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and that was the end of it.”

(With reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Simon Gardner and Dave Graham; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Philip Barbara)

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Stock index futures fall, focus on jobs data

LONDON (Reuters) – Stock index futures pointed to a lower open on Wall Street on Friday, with futures for the S&P 500, the Dow Jones and the Nasdaq 100 falling 0.1 to 0.2 percent.

U.S. non-farm employment, due at 8.30 a.m. EST, is forecast to have risen by 93,000 jobs last month after gaining 171,000 in October, according to a Reuters survey. The unemployment rate is seen holding steady at 7.9 percent.

Superstorm Sandy likely put a dent in U.S. jobs growth in November, temporarily interrupting a recently established trend of modestly rising payrolls.

Amarin Corporation was down 18.4 percent in late trading on Thursday after the bio-pharmaceutical company said it raised $ 100 million in non-equity financing that will help it form a sales force to launch its heart drug Vascepa, but disappointed investors hoping for a sale or partnership.

Smith & Wesson Holding Corp was up 5.8 percent, after the bell on Thursday following the release of its results, while GEO Group was up 6.2 percent after the company announced a special dividend.

Brent crude steadied above $ 107 per barrel, but prices were headed for their biggest weekly loss in more than a month on worries about the euro zone economy and a looming fiscal crisis in the United States, the world’s top oil consumer.

European shares <.fteu3> were down 0.2 percent, pressured by lower German and Italian shares, after Germany’s central bank cut its growth outlook for Europe’s largest economy next year, and on political uncertainty in Italy.</.fteu3>

U.S. stocks closed modestly higher on Thursday, a day ahead of the key monthly jobs report, as a rebound in shares of Apple helped boost technology shares.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 39.55 points, or 0.30 percent, to 13,074.04 at the close. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> added 4.66 points, or 0.33 percent, to 1,413.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 15.57 points, or 0.52 percent, to close at 2,989.27.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

(Reporting by Atul Prakash)

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South Africa military plane crashes in mountains

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A South African military aircraft on an unknown mission to an area near the village where former President Nelson Mandela lives crashed in a mountain range, officials said Thursday. It was unclear whether there were any survivors.

The Douglas DC-3 Dakota, a twin-propeller aircraft, had taken off from Pretoria’s Waterkloof Air Force Base on Wednesday night, said Brig. Gen. Xolani Mabanga, a military spokesman. On Thursday morning, soldiers found the wreckage of the airplane in the Drakensberg mountains near Ladysmith in KwaZulu-Natal province, some 340 kilometers (210 miles) southeast of the air base, Mabanga said.

Mabanga said soldiers had been sent to the scene to look for survivors. Mabanga said he did not know what the mission of the aircraft was, though it had planned to land in Mthatha in the country’s Eastern Cape. Siphiwe Dlamini, a Defense Ministry spokesman, declined to immediately comment Thursday morning.

Mthatha is about 30 kilometers (17 miles) north of Qunu, the village where Mandela now lives after retiring from public life. South Africa‘s military remains largely responsible for the former president’s medical care. However, military officials declined to say whether those on board had any part in caring for Mandela.

In November, another South African military flight crash landed at Mthatha, sending several people to the hospital with injuries. However, at that time, the military denied that those on board had anything to do with Mandela’s care.

Mandela, 94, was imprisoned for nearly three decades for his fight against apartheid before becoming the nation’s president in the country’s first fully democratic vote in 1994.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

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Zynga Wants to Get into the Gambling Business

Zynga recently filed a preliminary application for a gambling license in Nevada. We’re not talking about gambling with Farmville credits, either. We’re talking cold hard cash.

RELATED: Irish Olympic Athlete Accused of Betting on an Opponent

Getting a gaming license is no easy task in Nevada. The paperwork that Zynga filed this week is just the beginning of a process that the company’s executives expect to take between a year and 18 months. During that time, the state will review Zynga’s financial records and decide whether or not its fit to hold a license. Even then, it’s unclear exactly what the world of real money online gambling will hold. Only this year did the Justice Department lift its ban on online gambling, and so far, Nevada is the first and only state to begin issuing licenses to companies offering online poker games. And even then, the license is only good inside the state of Nevada, where there’s more sand than people.

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Zynga’s willing to take its chances. A lot could happen in the next year or so, and there’s been talk of some sort of agreement between states that would open up the market significantly. And new openings in the market is exactly what Zynga really wants. “As we’ve said previously, the broader U.S. market is an opportunity that’s further out on the horizon based on legislative developments, but we are preparing for a regulated market,” said Zynga Chief Revenue Officer Barry Cottle in a statement.

RELATED: Romney Triumphs in Nevada, Says Obama is ‘Trying to Take a Bow’

This could be really good for Zynga. The five-year-old company has been on a bit of downward spiral, lately. With its earnings per user on a steady decline, Zynga’s stock price has plummeted by more than 75 percent, and a number of key executives have left this year. It’s hard to say exactly why people have cooled on Zynga’s games, most of which live in the Facebook ecosystem, but if the company didn’t do something soon, there was a chance that it could be in real trouble, real soon. And what’s the best way to get out of financial trouble? Gambling. At least if you’re on the right side of the table, it does.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Treat nutrition and cancer research cautiously: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Studies suggesting that everything from cinnamon to lobster either raises or lowers a person’s risk of cancer may sometimes be a bunch of baloney, a new report suggests.

Researchers created a list of 50 random food items, then found studies from the last 35 years that claimed risks or benefits for the majority them. But most of the claims were based on weak evidence.

“We have seen a very large number of studies, just too many studies, suggesting that they had identified associations with specific food ingredients with cancer risk,” said Dr. John Ioannidis from the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California, who worked on the analysis.

“People get scared or they think that they should change their lives and make big decisions, and then things get refuted very quickly,” he told Reuters Health.

That back-and-forth can distract the public from associations that do have solid evidence behind them, such as the increased cancer risk tied to smoking or the beneficial effects of fruits and vegetables, he said.

“There’s very strong evidence, and pretty strong expectation, that some nutrients in some foods would be related to cancer risk – either protecting or increasing the risk – but it’s very hard to believe that almost anything would be associated with cancer,” Ioannidis added.

For their study, he and Dr. Jonathan Schoenfeld from Harvard Medical School in Boston selected the first 50 ingredients they found in randomly-chosen cookbook recipes.

That list included meats and fish, vegetables, dairy products, bread and spices.

The researchers then ran each ingredient through a medical journal database search to see if there were any studies tying how much of it people consumed to their risk for some type of cancer.

For 40 out of the 50 ingredients – including veal, celery, cheese and mustard – there were a total of 264 such studies. Of those, 103 suggested the ingredient was tied to an increased risk of cancer, and 88 to a decreased risk.

Studies on some ingredients, such as onions, carrots and tea, almost all showed a decreased cancer risk, and for others, like bacon and sugar, most or all findings showed a higher risk. But for many foods, study results were all over the map.

The average effect shown in each study was about a doubling of cancer risk or a halving of risk, depending on which direction the association went for a particular ingredient in a particular report. However, the data backing those claims was usually unconvincing, Schoenfeld and Ioannidis said.

In larger reviews that included multiple studies, the links between each particular food item and cancer risk were typically smaller or nonexistent, according to the pair’s findings, which are published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“You have all these individual studies, and people are not getting together and trying to figure out what is going on in terms of the entire picture,” said Teresa Fung, a professor of nutrition at Simmons College in Boston.

“It’s a system problem. It’s also how science is reported,” Fung, who also has an adjunct appointment at the Harvard School of Public Health, told Reuters Health.

“I agree with their point that there’s room for improvement in the way nutrition and cancer is researched and reported to the public,” said Marjorie McCullough, strategic director of nutritional epidemiology at the American Cancer Society.

“These individual results often get taken out of context,” said McCullough, who like Fung wasn’t involved in the new analysis.

“I would caution people not to over-interpret individual studies and look to guidelines that have been published” based on more comprehensive reviews, she added.

Of course, none of this means nutrition isn’t important for cancer risk and general health. McCullough told Reuters Health the evidence is building that extra weight plays a role in many cancers, and maintaining a healthy body weight is an important part of ACS’s guidelines.

But when it comes to diet itself, it may be more important to focus on larger patterns, rather than specific foods, she added.

“Sometimes we need to take a step back and look at things from a different perspective,” Fung said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/THXED0 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online November 28, 2012.

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UK’s Kate leaves hospital after morning sickness

LONDON (Reuters) – Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate left the King Edward VII hospital in central London on Thursday where she had spent four days being treated for acute morning sickness.

Accompanied by her husband, Kate, 30, appeared at the steps of the hospital smiling and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers. Neither she nor William spoke to waiting reporters before being driven way.

Kate, who married the second-in-line to the throne in April last year, has been suffering from Hyperemesis Gravidarum, an acute morning sickness which causes severe nausea and vomiting and requires supplementary hydration and nutrients.

There has been no announcement about when the baby is due, although the prince’s spokesman has said Kate is less than 12 weeks pregnant.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Tim Castle)

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EADS EGM scheduled for first quarter: source

BERLIN (Reuters) – EADS will call an extraordinary general meeting in the first quarter of next year to seek approval of a planned overhaul of its shareholders structure, a source at the German economy ministry said on Thursday.

Nations in EADS on Wednesday agreed on the biggest shake-up of the European aerospace group since it was founded over a decade ago, opting after years of uneasy cohabitation to put its board and most of its shares beyond public control.

(Reporting by Markus Wacket; Writing by Maria Sheahan)

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Sri Lanka see backlash from Aussie ‘wounded soldiers’

(Reuters) – Sri Lanka captain Mahela Jayawardene has warned his team to be wary of a backlash from Australia in their three-test series after the hosts were stung by their series defeat to South Africa earlier this week.

Australia’s hopes of snatching the Proteas’ top test ranking ended in a crushing 309-run defeat in the third and final test in Perth on Monday, but Jayawardene took little comfort from the home side’s disappointment.

“I see them as wounded soldiers – they could come back stronger against us,” Jayawardene told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday, on the eve of a three-day tour match against a Chairman’s XI side.

“So we just need to make sure we are ready for that and start well.

“We can’t be complacent – we need to make sure we know from ball one we give them a good go at it.”

Sri Lanka have their own problems coming into the first test at Hobart next week, losing their last test at home to New Zealand by 167 runs to level a two-match series 1-1, with key batsmen out of form.

Kumar Sangakkara scored five, nought and 16 in his three innings against New Zealand, but Jayawardene backed the veteran to bounce back in Sri Lanka’s bid to win their first test Down Under.

“I am happy that he went through a lean phase because he’ll be really hungry for runs – that’s Kumar for you,” Jayawardene said of the 35-year-old stalwart.

Jayawardene also said he would weigh up his future as captain after the series, which includes tests in Melbourne and Sydney, after taking on the role for a second time in the wake of Tillakaratne Dilshan’s sudden resignation in January.

“After this, we get a well-deserved four weeks off, after about three years, so it gives me a bit of time to think (about) what I need to do,” said Jayawardene, who captained the team for more than three years in his first stint from 2006.

“We need to groom another leader as well. It’s very important to have that changeover done smoothly while the senior players are still in the side.”

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India’s Strides Arcolab, Eli Lilly in generic cancer drug tie-up

MUMBAI (Reuters) – India’s Strides Arcolab and Eli Lilly will jointly manufacture and distribute generic cancer drugs for developing markets, the drugmakers said on Wednesday, as the U.S. company looks to expand its presence in emerging markets.

The tie-up is the latest in a line of agreements between ‘Big Pharma’ companies eyeing greater access to high-growth emerging markets, and Indian companies looking for global expertise.

Under the agreement, Strides subsidiary Agila Specialties will manufacture the generic oral and injectable cancer drugs that Lilly will register and market.

The companies will begin with 10 medicines, with an option for Lilly to increase the number in the future.

Annual drug spending in emerging markets is expected to grow 12 to 15 percent from 2012 to 2016, according to healthcare information provider IMS Health, and is on track to make up 28 percent of global sales by 2015, up from 12 percent in 2005.

“Cancer medicines of the highest quality continue to be an unmet need in many markets around the world,” Jacques Tapiero, Lilly, senior vice-president, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Henry Foy; Editing by Prateek Chatterjee)

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“Family Guy” executive producer lands animated cop series with Fox

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Despite – or perhaps because of – a robust cartoon slate that includes “The Simpsons,” “American Dad” and “Family Guy,” Fox apparently feels that it’s just not animated enough.

The network has given a 13-episode order to a new animated series, “Murder Police,” from “Family Guy” executive producer David Goodman and Jason Ruiz, Fox said Tuesday.

The series, which will be produced by Bento Box Animation (“Bob’s Burgers,” “Brickleberry”) via 20th Century Fox Television, centers around a dedicated, but inept detective and his colleagues – some perverted, some corrupt, some just plain lazy – in a twisted city precinct. Goodman and Ruiz created and wrote the series, with Goodman as executive producer and Ruiz as co-executive producer.

In addition to “Family Guy,” Goodman executive-produced Fox’s short-lived animated series “Allen Gregory,” which failed to receive a pickup after airing a handful of episodes last year.

Ruiz is one of the writers discovered through the network’s Fox Inkubation program. He will also voice the program, along with “MADtv” alum Will Sasso, Chi McBride, Horatio Sanz of “Saturday Night Live,” and other voice actors.

“David and Jason came to us with a really fresh take on law enforcement that we’ve never seen before,” said Kevin Reilly, Chairman of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting Company. “With ‘Murder Police,’ these guys are taking a staple genre of television – the cop show – and turning it on its head by pushing the warped comedic boundaries that only animation can offer. It’s the kind of show our Animation Domination fans will absolutely love, and I can’t wait to introduce it next season.”

“Murder Police” will premiere during the 2013-2014 season.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Stock futures signal gains at open

PARIS (Reuters) – Stocks were indicated to open higher on Wednesday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.35 percent, Dow Jones up 0.43 percent and Nasdaq 100 up 0.41 percent at 4:55 a.m. EDT.

* European shares resumed a recent sharp rally on Wednesday after comments from China’s new leader boosted global growth expectations.

* Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping said the country will maintain its fine-tuning of economic policies in 2013 to ensure stable economic growth, sparking a sharp rally in Chinese shares with the Shanghai Composite Index <.ssec> surging 2.9 percent.</.ssec>

* Xi listed tax reform, urbanization and allowing the market to play a bigger role in setting resource prices as among his key priorities.

* On the domestic front, investors awaited ADP’s November employment report, due at 8:15 a.m. EDT. Economists in a Reuters survey expect 125,000 jobs were created versus 158,000 in October. Other data on Wednesday include factory orders and ISM’s November non-manufacturing index, both due at 11 a.m. EDT.

* Repsol filed a U.S. lawsuit to block Chevron Corp’s deal with Argentina’s YPF , ramping up the Spanish oil company’s legal response to the loss of its assets in Argentina.

* Programmable chipmaker Altera Corp trimmed its fourth-quarter revenue expectation citing fewer orders for its older products, sending its shares down 2 percent after the bell.

* Aerovironment Inc posted a better-than-expected quarterly profit as its unmanned aircraft unit sold more fixed-price products, sending its shares up 9 percent after the bell.

* Pandora Media Inc

lowered its fourth-quarter guidance, blaming a pull-back by advertisers on concerns about the U.S. budget, but analysts suggested it was due more to increasing competition.

* The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted 98-0 to approve a wide-ranging defense bill that authorizes $ 631.4 billion in funding for the U.S. military, the war in Afghanistan and nuclear weapons.

* Walt Disney gave a much needed boost to Netflix , becoming the first major Hollywood studio to use the video service to bypass premium channels like HBO that traditionally controlled the delivery of movies to TV subscribers.

* The U.S. securities regulator is investigating a $ 10 million stock sale in March by Steven Fishman, chief executive of close-out retailer Big Lots Inc who announced his retirement on Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the inquiry.

* U.S. stocks finished slightly lower in a quiet session on Tuesday as the back-and-forth wrangling over the “fiscal cliff” gave investors little reason to act.

* The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 13.82 points, or 0.11 percent, to 12,951.78 at the close. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.spx> dipped 2.41 points, or 0.17 percent, to 1,407.05. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> shed 5.51 points, or 0.18 percent, to close at 2,996.69.</.ixic></.spx></.dji>

(Reporting by Blaise Robinson; Editing by John Stonestreet)

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Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey

BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.

NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.

Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Yahoo sees several flaws in $2.7 billion Mexico ruling: source

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Yahoo Inc believes it has “numerous” grounds to appeal a Mexico City civil court‘s $ 2.7 billion preliminary judgment against the company, including both errors in procedure and in application of law, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.

The ruling in the case, which involves allegations of breach of contract related to an online yellow pages listings service, was made by the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City, Yahoo said on Friday.

The case has perplexed many investors and tech-industry observers since Yahoo disclosed it, particularly given the large value of the “non-final” judgment.

The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas S.A. de C.V. against Yahoo and Yahoo de Mexico, Yahoo said.

The companies could not be reached for comment, although Carlos Bazan-Canabal, who describes himself as a founder of Worldwide Directories, told Reuters via email that he had contracted a U.S.-based law firm to handle the Yahoo case.

He declined to comment further on the matter.

Bazan-Canabal operates a number of web sites. He said on one that he joined Yahoo in 1999, adding that he is a former executive of Yahoo Mexico, and that he helped to launch that company. Yahoo could not immediately be reached for comment on this.

The details of the suit remained unclear on Monday. Documents from local courts in Mexico are not available for public consultation. Yahoo declined to comment.

Yahoo signed a commercial relationship with the two companies in 2002, the person familiar with the matter said. Yahoo terminated the relationship with the companies in 2009, the person said.

Yahoo’s appeal is expected to be heard by a panel of three judges in a superior court in Mexico City, the person said who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. It was not clear when Yahoo might file its appeal.

Yahoo’s most recent 10Q filing, which lists major ongoing legal proceedings, makes no mention of the lawsuit.

“We believe the $ 2.7 billion figure appears high based on the seemingly small size of Yahoo’s business in Mexico, but we believe shares could trade off modestly on the news,” wrote JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth in a note to investors following Friday’s announcement.

“It’s not clear how the Mexican court arrived at the $ 2.7 billion figure, but it would represent 40 percent of our projected 2012 year-end cash balance for Yahoo,” and equate to about $ 2.30 per share, he wrote.

Shares of Yahoo closed Monday’s regular session down 1.2 percent, or 22 cents, at $ 18.55.

(Additional reporting by Dave Graham in Mexico City and Sarah McBride in San Francisco; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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U.S. hospital chain HMA’s shares fall after TV report

(Reuters) – Shares of Health Management Associates Inc fell about 5 percent on Monday after the television news program 60 Minutes aired a story describing aggressive patient admissions policies allegedly pursued at the company’s U.S. hospitals.

The story included interviews with several former employees of the hospital chain who said they were pressured to meet quotas for admitting patients.

HMA Senior Vice President Alan Levine told 60 Minutes the allegations were “absolutely wrong”.

In a statement released after the 60 Minutes broadcast, the Naples, Florida-based hospital company said the report found no issues with the quality of care at its hospitals and relied entirely on “disgruntled” former employees and contracted physicians.

“Neither 60 Minutes nor the physicians interviewed identified any admission decision in which a physician’s medical judgment was overridden by an HMA executive, much less to defraud Medicare,” HMA said.

HMA, which operates 70 hospitals in 15 states, said admissions rates from its emergency rooms were in line with industry standards and consistent over several years.

The company held a conference call for investors on Friday ahead of the 60 Minutes report in which Levine said that HMA’s review showed there was no basis for an allegation of increased admissions through the company’s emergency departments.

CRT Capital Group analyst Sheryl Skolnick cut her rating on HMA shares to “sell” from “fair value”, citing the Medicare fraud allegations in the 60 Minutes report.

“We believe there is significantly greater risk of a deeper/wider (government) investigation and a substantially higher risk that HMA may have to pay bigger fines to settle it,” Skolnick wrote in a note to clients.

Among those interviewed for the television show was a former director of compliance for HMA, Paul Meyer, who sued the company for wrongful termination. Meyer accused the company of committing Medicare fraud by billing the government for hospital stays that did not meet government standards for admission or reimbursement.

HMA said it hired an outside law firm to investigate Meyer’s allegations, but it found no evidence to support an allegation of fraud.

HMA shares were down 38 cents, or 4.8 percent, at $ 7.57 in afternoon trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting By Susan Kelly; Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York; Editing by Andrew Hay and Marguerita Choy)

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Kutcher’s Steve Jobs, Gordon-Levitt among Sundance premieres

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ashton Kutcher‘s turn as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s directorial debut about a modern day Don Juan are leading a slew of star-studded premieres unveiled Monday for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

Kutcher stars in “Jobs,” a biographical look at the career rise of Jobs from wayward hippie to charismatic inventor and entrepreneur, which Sundance said Monday will officially close the indie film festival backed by Robert Redford that runs January 17 to January 27.

The premiere lineup also features Gordon-Levitt directing, writing and starring in “Don Jon’s Addiction,” about a self-centered porn-addict attempting to reform his ways opposite Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore and Tony Danza.

Behind-the-scenes tales of pornography will also be explored in British director Michael Winterbottom‘s “The Look of Love,” starring Steve Coogan and based on British adult magazine publisher and entrepreneur Paul Raymond.

“Lovelace,” starring Amanda Seyfried and James Franco, tells the story of porn star Linda Lovelace famed for the film “Deep Throat.”

Sundance, the top U.S. film festival for independent cinema held in Park City, Utah, unveiled the premieres section – which typically feature more established directors – after it announced its competition films last week.

Adding to the premieres list is “Before Midnight,” director Richard Linklater’s third film collaborating with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy after “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” in which the audience encounters their characters nine years later in Greece.

New Zealand director Jane Campion will screen her new six-hour epic, “Top Of The Lake,” a haunting mystery about a pregnant 12-year-old girl who disappears, with Holly Hunter.

Other big-name actors in the lineup include Steve Carell and Toni Collette in “The Way, Way Back,” Naomi Watts and Robin Wright in “Two Mothers”, Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Olsen in “Very Good Girls,” and Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood in “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman.”

Australian actresses Nicole Kidman, Mia Wasikowska and Jacki Weaver star in psychological thriller “Stoker,” which marks South Korean director Park Chan-wook’s English-language debut.

WIKILEAKS, POLITICS LEAD DOCUMENTARIES

Among documentaries premiering at Sundance in January is Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney’s insight on WikiLeaks, the power of the Internet and the beginning of an information war in “We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks.”

Author and documentarian Sebastian Junger chronicles the life of late photojournalist Tim Hetherington in “Which Way Is The Front Line From Here?” after Hetherington’s death in Libya in 2011. The photojournalist had collaborated with Junger on the 2010 Oscar-nominated film “Restrepo” about the Afghanistan war.

“The World According to Dick Cheney” promises to examine the former vice president while “Anita” profiles how Anita Hill’s allegations in 1991 of sexual harassment against then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas brought sexual politics into the national consciousness for the next two decades.

“Linsanity” offers a portrait of basketballer Jeremy Lin and “Running From Crazy” follows actress Mariel Hemingway, granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, and her insights into her family’s mental illness and suicide.

“Pandora’s Promise” looks at a growing number of environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists changing their minds after decades of opposition to support nuclear power.

Continuing the rise of music documentaries in the last several years, Foo Fighters’ musician Dave Grohl looks at the history of Sound City studios in California, where Grohl’s former band Nirvana had recorded their classic 1991 album “Nevermind.”

Veteran Los Angeles rock band The Eagles will also showcase their past in “The History of the Eagles Part 1.”

(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Cynthia Osterman)

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Investors’ Risky Bet on the Ghost of Freddie Past

The post-bailout world abounds with financial incongruities. Witness: Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, or “Freddie Mac,” the government-sponsored agency that by its own admission “makes home possible for one in four home buyers and is one of the largest sources of financing for multifamily housing.” Since the beginning of 2009, it has provided nearly $ 1.6 trillion of funding to the U.S. mortgage market. Albeit under one giant black cloud: Alongside its cousin Fannie Mae, Freddie Mae has been under government “conservatorship (pdf)” since September 2008, after a decade of gorging on risky mortgages that effectively rendered the two insolvent. Washington euphemism aside, taxpayers bailed them out.

Yet Freddie Mac (FMCC) shares—which were thought to be irrelevant since the government formally took over—still trade on the over-the-counter pink sheets, province of penny-stock shops. FMCC is up 40 percent this year. Fannie Mae’s (FNMA) pink-hued stock is up 35 percent.

Exactly what outcome are investors romancing?

For simplicity’s sake, focus on Freddie Mac. At the end of 2006, before housing went to Hades, Freddie sported a market capitalization of $ 45 billion. Today, it’s at $ 955 million. In mid 2010, its old listing (FRE) was moved from the New York Stock Exchange to the OTC bulletin-board, where it was ostensibly left to fall to zero. It proceeded to diminish from $ 1.24 to as low as 19¢ a year ago. Today, it’s back up to 30¢.

“I’m surprised it’s up so much this year,” says analyst Edwin Groshans of Height Analytics. “For the foreseeable future, maybe even up to a decade, Freddie is in limbo, as its profits and dividends have to pass through to the Treasury Department.” (As opposed to making their way to common shareholders). Indeed, through Sept. 30, Freddie Mac has forked over just under $ 22 billion in cash dividends to Treasury, on the company’s senior preferred stock.

With U.S. mortgage finance never so dependent on the government-sponsored agencies, Freddie and Fannie are still touch-and-go stories. Recidivism rates after 12 months for modified subprime mortgages have declined to about 40 percent from almost 80 percent in four years, according to Nomura Securities. As the backstops of last resort, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have largely had no choice but to keep stockpiling these still-shaky modified mortgages, which sent their nonperforming loans to a record last quarter; as of Sept. 30, they owned $ 195 billion of restructured loans.

Yet things are looking up. In its latest quarterly report (pdf), Freddie Mac revealed that it was decently profitable—even after paying its dividend to Uncle Sam—and did not need to draw on Treasury funds. This year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have almost doubled what they charge to guarantee bonds. Of course, it helps greatly that the Federal Reserve, sailing the good ship QE3, is now buying at least $ 40 billion a month of Freddie’s agency debt.

According to Bloomberg data, issuance of U.S. government-backed mortgage securities soared 45 percent last month, to the highest since at least 2009. Lenders raced to move up this issuance (which Freddie and Fannie guarantee) before the pair hiked their fees on Dec. 1.

This comes as U.S. home prices rose 4.4 percent for the 12 months ending September.

Maybe the penny stock crowd is hoping residential real estate goes back up so wildly that enough upside will accrue to Freddie Mac’s otherwise-forgotten share price.

But that’s quite a treacherous wager. As blogger and former broker Jon Ogg noted when Freddie was evicted from the Big Board in 2010: “Once these go to the [pink sheets] … the implied upside for any price above zero comes with the notion that the economy could return or even that inflation comes back in a hurry. Ten percent inflation per year would be one short-term cure for housing. It would be like treating a case of the flu with syphilis.”

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Gunmen assassinate peasant leader in Paraguay

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo‘s presidency last June.

Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguaty.

A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.

Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.

He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.

By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firefight during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.

Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.

Vega was expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders who weren’t killed in the clash or jailed afterward.

He wasn’t charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted at the settlement erected by the peasants inside Riquelme’s ranch, the Naranjaty Commission’s secretary, Martina Paredes, told the AP.

“We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don’t know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken by Riquelme,” she said.

Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use.

A local court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme’s claim to the land years later. Lugo’s government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Holiday fitness gifts trend from high-tech to basic

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Looking for the perfect holiday present for a fitness fan? Gift offerings this year range from apps that can store a run in the country to be viewed later to gadgets so sophisticated they measure quality of sleep as well as calories burned.

There is also the revival of the humble foam roller, which experts say, like old-time push-ups, squats and planks, has never been more popular.

Anita Golden, fitness manager at a Crunch gym in New York City, said she’ll be giving clients a foam roller called the GRID.

“We’ve always had foam rollers in the club but now more people are using them as a way to ease post-workout muscles, prevent injuries and exercise the core,” Golden said.

When it comes to big-ticket items, Colleen Logan of Icon Health and Fitness, which manufactures a number of fitness brands, said the treadmill remains the most popular gift.

“Treadmills continue to lead the industry in terms of home fitness purchases,” said Logan.

They account for about 57 percent of fitness purchases, while elliptical trainers and stationary bicycles are a distant second and third place at about 8 percent each.

The average home treadmill costs about $ 700, said Logan, but the technology revolution has transformed even this stalwart at the high end.

The ultimate splurge, at $ 4,000, she said, is the Boston Marathon Treadmill, which allows users to adjust speed in 1/10 of a mile per hour increments without touching the console. It also lets users run a virtual Boston Marathon.

For people on a smaller budget, there is the iFit app that lets the iPhone capture a favorite vacation run or bike ride in Hawaii, store it in data centers all over the world which collectively are referred to as the “cloud,” and download it to an iFit-enabled treadmill at home.

“You’ll view the exact route and experience the same terrain again,” Logan explained.

Devices, gadgets and apps proliferate as tech-savvy fitness becomes more accessible, according to Jessica Matthews of the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

“There’s a lot of interest in on-body monitoring devices as ways to motivate and track progress,” she said. “They run the gamut from basic devices to track hours, steps, and caloric expenditure to full-body tracking.”

Nike+ Sportsband has a series of small lights on the wrist band that change from red to green as the runner nears his goal, while the BodyMedia FIT Armband tracks everything from the number of calories burned to the quality and quantity of sleep.

ACE also studied fitness DVDs released for the holidays.

“We evaluated them for quality of instruction, safety, effectiveness and design of workout,” Matthews said.

Among the best were “Amy Dixon’s Breathless Body Vol.2: The Edge.” Matthews called it a challenging cardio workout best suited to those on your list with “an established base of fitness.”

“Jessica Smith’s 10 Pounds Down Better Body Blast” also got a thumbs up for its well-rounded routine and clarity of instruction.

For people seeking a mind-body approach, Matthews praised “STOTT Pilates Intense Body Blast: Pilates Interval Training: Level I,” which she said is accessible for someone new to fitness.

“They do a great job queuing movements and creating flow,” she said.

Richard Cotton of the American College of Sports Medicine suggests giving the fitness novice the gift of a personal trainer.

“The best is human assistance,” he said. “Another way is a beginner group exercise class.”

He also suggests a gift certificate for shoes at a running store equipped with a treadmill.

“You need shoes that fit your gait,” he said. “People should always get their gait analyzed.”

Golden likes to cite the law of reciprocity to the personal trainers she manages.

“I always tell them to get their clients something,” she said.

And what does the personal trainer want for Christmas?

“I like the roller, or a new jump rope,” she said. “Fitness people aren’t hard to please. Get me a new yoga mat and I’m happy.”

(Reporting by Dorene Internicola; editing by Patricia Reaney)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Letterman, Hoffman, Zeppelin honored by Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — David Letterman‘s “stupid human tricks” and Top 10 lists vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim Sunday night as the late-night comedian received this year’s Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin, an actor, a ballerina and a bluesman.

Stars from New York, Hollywood and the music world joined President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday night to salute the honorees, whose ranks also include actor Dustin Hoffman, Chicago bluesman Buddy Guy and ballerina Natalia Makarova.

The honors are the nation’s highest award for those who influenced American culture through the arts. The recipients were later saluted by fellow performers at the Kennedy Center Opera House in a show to be broadcast Dec. 26 on CBS.

Obama drew laughs from his guests when he described the honorees as “some extraordinary people who have no business being on the same stage together.”

Noting that Guy made his first guitar strings using the wire from a window screen, he quipped, “That worked until his parents started wondering how all the mosquitoes were getting in.”

The president thanked the members of Led Zeppelin for behaving themselves at the White House given their history of “hotel rooms trashed and mayhem all around.”

Obama noted Letterman’s humble beginnings as an Indianapolis weatherman who once reported the city was being pelted by hail ‘the size of canned hams.’”

“It’s one of the highlights of his career,” he said.

All kidding aside, Obama described all of the honorees as artists who “inspired us to see things in a new way, to hear things differently, to discover something within us or to appreciate how much beauty there is in the world.”

“It’s that unique power that makes the arts so important,” he added.

Later on the red carpet, Letterman said he was thrilled by the recognition and to visit Obama at the White House.

“It supersedes everything, honestly,” he said. “I haven’t won that many awards.”

During the show, comedian Tina Fey said she grew up watching her mom laugh at Letterman as he brought on “an endless parade of weirdos.”

“Who was this Dave Letterman guy?” Fey said. “Was he a brilliant, subtle passive-aggressive parody of a talk show host? Or just some Midwestern goon who was a little bit off? Time has proven that there’s just really no way of knowing.”

Alec Baldwin offered a Top 10 reasons Letterman was winning the award, including the fact that he didn’t leave late night for a six-month stint in primetime — a not-so-subtle dig at rival Jay Leno.

Jimmy Kimmel, who will soon compete head-to-head with Letterman on ABC, said he fell in love with Letterman early in life and even had a “Late Night” cake on his 16th birthday.

“To me it wasn’t just a TV show,” Kimmel said. “It was the reason I would fail to make love to a live woman for many, many years.”

For Buddy Guy, singers Bonnie Raitt, Tracy Chapman and others got most of the crowd on its feet singing Guy’s signature “Sweet Home Chicago.”

Morgan Freeman hailed Guy as a pioneer who helped bridge soul and rock and roll.

“When you hear the blues, you really don’t think of it as black or white or yellow or purple or blue,” Freeman said. “Buddy Guy, your blue brought us together.”

Robert De Niro saluted Hoffman, saying he had changed acting, never took any shortcuts and was brave enough to be a perfectionist.

“Before Dustin burst on the scene, it was pretty much OK for movie stars to show up, read their lines and, if the director insisted, act a little,” De Niro said. “But then Dustin came along — and he just had to get everything right.”

By the end of the night, the Foo Fighters, Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz got the crowd moving to some of Zeppelin’s hits at the Kennedy Center.

Jack Black declared Zeppelin the “greatest rock and roll band of all time.”

“That’s right. Better than the Beatles. Better than the Stones. Even better than Tenacious D,” he said. “And that’s not opinion — that’s fact.”

For the finale, Heart’s Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson sang “Stairway to Heaven,” accompanied by a full choir and Jason Bonham, son of the late Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.

Zeppelin front man Robert Plant and his bandmates John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page seemed moved by the show.

Meryl Streep first introduced the honorees Saturday as they received the award medallions during a formal dinner at the U.S. State Department hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Clinton said ballerina Makarova “risked everything to have the freedom to dance the way she wanted to dance” when she defected from the Soviet Union in 1970.

Makarova made her debut with the American Ballet Theatre and later was the first exiled artist to return to the Soviet Union before its fall to dance with the Kirov Ballet.

Clinton also took special note of Letterman, saying he must be wondering what he’s doing in a crowd of talented artists and musicians.

“Dave and I have a history,” she said. “I have been a guest on his show several times, and if you include references to my pant suits, I’m on at least once a week.”

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Follow Brett Zongker on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Global firms’ tax pay ‘an insult’

3 December 2012 Last updated at 05:44 ET

Global firms in the UK that pay little or no tax are an “insult” to British businesses, a committee of MPs says.

Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge said HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) needed to be “more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance”.

Multinationals such as Starbucks and Amazon have come under fire for paying little or no tax.

They generate UK sales of hundreds of millions of pounds.

Starbucks, for example, sold nearly £400m worth of goods in the UK last year, but paid no corporation tax at all, because much of the money it earns in this country is transferred to a sister company in the Netherlands in the form of royalty payments.

HMRC said it already ensured that international companies paid the tax due “in accordance with UK tax law”.

UK-based companies pay corporation tax on their taxable profits wherever they are made. Companies based outside the UK must pay tax on profits made in this country.

Continue reading the main story

Multinationals in the tax spotlight

Starbucks’ UK sales last year were £400m but much of its earnings are paid as royalties to another part of the company.

Amazon generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the UK last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits, and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Apple paid less than 2% corporation tax on its profits outside the US, paying $ 713m (£445m) on foreign pre-tax profits of $ 36.8bn.

Google’s UK unit paid £6m to the Treasury in 2011 on UK turnover of £395m, according to the Telegraph newspaper.

Source: Various

The influential committee’s report comes after it took evidence in November from executives from Starbucks, Google and Amazon about the amount of corporation tax the companies have paid in the UK.

‘Evasive evidence’

Margaret Hodge told the BBC that there was a danger corporation tax was becoming “voluntary” and that this had to change.

“These global companies are making money in the UK. All we are saying is that if you have economic activities in the UK you are making profits and tax is payable on that,” she said.

It emerged on Sunday that coffee shop chain Starbucks is in talks with HMRC about the amount of tax it pays.

Meanwhile, Chancellor George Osborne will unveil later details of £154m of funding to help tackle tax avoidance and evasion, amid public concern over the tax affairs of major international companies and wealthy individuals.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Although they employ many thousands of people in Britain, it is unclear whether collectively they are net creators or destroyers of employment”

End Quote

The money will be used to take on extra staff to investigate high earners who aggressively avoid or evade paying tax and global firms that use legal loopholes to move profits out of the UK.

The funding is expected to help bring in about £2bn a year for HMRC.

In the report, Mrs Hodge said the level of tax taken from multinational firms with large UK operations was, “outrageous and an insult to British businesses and individuals who pay their fair share”.

Public Accounts Committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge: “It is time for HMRC to get a grip”.

“The inescapable conclusion is that multinationals are using structures and exploiting current tax legislation to move offshore profits that are clearly generated from economic activity in the UK.

“HMRC should be challenging this, but its response so far to these big businesses and their aggressive tax planning has lacked determination and looks way too lenient. Policing the tax system must be at the heart of what HMRC does.

An HMRC spokesman said: “We relentlessly challenge those that persist in avoiding tax and have recovered £29bn additional revenues from large businesses in the last six years, including £4.1bn in the last four years from transfer pricing enquiries alone.”

‘Breathtaking hypocrisy’

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

Jonty Bloom Business correspondent, BBC News

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It is worth remembering that corporation tax is not the only tax that companies pay. Corporation tax does raise £50bn in the UK, but other taxes that cannot be avoided so easily include VAT; then there is the business rate, which raises some £25bn a year. The Institute for Economic Affairs says that is enough to pay for the secondary education system and the police and the fire service.

Also, companies pay National Insurance contributions for every worker they hire and fuel duty and vehicle excise duty which are one of the biggest revenue earners for the government.

That doesn’t mean that foreign companies aren’t doing their best to avoid paying corporation tax on the profits they make here, but then UK companies operating in France, China or the US are probably doing much the same there.

Laws on corporate taxation are extremely complex and often part of internationally negotiated treaties, one reason they are difficult to change and why companies have become very good at exploiting every legitimate and legal loophole that they can.

In a statement to coincide with the committee’s report, Amazon said it paid all applicable taxes in every jurisdiction that it operated in: “We have a single European headquarters in Luxembourg with hundreds of employees to manage this complex operation.”

Starbucks said in a statement: “We have listened to feedback from our customers and employees, and understand that to maintain and further build public trust we need to do more.

“As part of this we are looking at our tax approach in the UK. The company has been in discussions with HMRC for some time and is also in talks with the Treasury.”

‘Small fry’

The War on Want charity, which is campaigning for more to be done to tackle tax avoidance, accused the government of “breathtaking hypocrisy”.

It said: “Osborne and Cameron are happy to talk tough on tax. But, in reality, their plans will only go after the small fry on the fringes, while giving a green light to multinationals like Amazon, Google and Starbucks to continue avoiding billions in tax.”

Heather Self, a tax expert, told the BBC assessing tax for major companies was not simple.

“If you buy a book from Amazon you are actually buying from a Luxembourg company,” she said. “It decides how many books to buy and at what price they sell them for. All you have in the UK is a warehouse, a very big warehouse that employs a lot of people but that is all it does. The risk is taken in Luxembourg.

“Profits paid here are for the activities it undertakes here and that is not highly profitable. It is not as simple a situation as the Public Accounts Committee likes to make out sometimes.”

BBC News – Business

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