Israel kills Gaza rocket crewman in second day of clashes

GAZA (Reuters) – An Israeli air strike killed a Palestinian militant in the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip on Sunday as a surge in cross-border violence entered its second day, local officials said.

Islamic Jihad, a smaller faction than Hamas which often operates independently, identified the dead man as one of its own, saying he was a member of a rocket crew hit by an Israeli missile in Jabalya, northern Gaza.

The Israeli military confirmed carrying out an air strike in the area. The death brought to six the number of Palestinians killed by Israel since four of its troops were hurt in a missile attack on their jeep along the Gaza boundary fence.

Islamic Jihad said it had fired 70 short-range rockets and mortar bombs across the border since Saturday, salvoes which drove Israeli residents to blast shelters. At least one Israeli, in the town of Sderot, was wounded, ambulance workers said.

Israel described the jeep ambush as part of a Palestinian strategy of trying to curb its countermeasures against possible cross-border infiltration. Israeli forces often mount hunts for tunnels and landmines on the inside of the Gaza boundary, creating a no-go zone for Palestinians.

“Of course we don’t accept their attempt to change the rules,” Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel’s Army Radio.

“The essence of the struggle is over the fence. We intend to enable the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) to work not just on our side but on the other side as well.”

Palestinians said four of Saturday’s dead were civilians hit by an Israeli tank shell while paying respects at a crowded mourning tent in Gaza’s Shijaia neighborhood. Israel denies targeting civilians.

The bloodshed puts internal pressure on Hamas, which, though hostile to the Jewish state, has sat out some of the recent rounds of violence as it tried to consolidate its Gaza rule and reach out to neighboring Egypt and other foreign powers.

Israel blames Hamas for any attacks emanating from Gaza, but has shown little appetite for a major sweep of the territory which might strain its own fraught ties to the new Islamist-rooted government in Cairo.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Todd Eastham)

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U.S. investigator in Afghan rampage case suggests gunman not alone

TACOMA, Washington (Reuters) – The wife of an Afghan villager killed in a rampage blamed on a decorated U.S. officer told an Army investigator that more than one soldier was present when her husband was shot dead at their home in March, the investigator testified on Saturday.

Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, accusing him of killing 16 villagers, mostly women and children, when he ventured out of his remote camp on two revenge-fueled forays over a five-hour period in March.

The wife’s account, relayed by Army criminal investigator Leona Mansapit, appeared to cast doubt on the government’s case that Bales alone was responsible for the deaths, although survivors have so far testified to seeing only a single soldier.

The U.S. government, which has been laying out its case against Bales in a pre-trial hearing aimed at deciding whether he can be sent for court martial, says a coherent and lucid Bales acted alone and with “chilling premeditation”.

Mansapit said that the wife of Mohamed Dawood, who was killed in the village of Najiban, recalled a gunman entering the couple’s room shouting about the Taliban, while another man, a U.S. soldier, stood at the door.

The shootings in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province marked the worst case of civilian slaughter blamed on an individual U.S. soldier since the Vietnam War and damaged already strained U.S.-Afghan relations.

Mansapit said the wife, who spoke to her through an interpreter, said one of the men pulled her husband out of the door, while the other stopped her from following. One of the men then put a gun to her husband’s head and killed him, while the other continued to yell about the Taliban, grabbing her by the hair and slamming her head against the wall, she said.

Mansapit, who was called by the defense, recalled the woman as saying that outside there were more soldiers “speaking English among themselves”. She put the woman’s age at about 25 but did not name her. It was not immediately clear whether the wife would testify to the hearing herself.

The testimony came a day after a father and two sons described being attacked by a sole U.S. soldier in their family compound in the Afghan village of Alkozai. So far, the only sworn references to more than one soldier have been second hand.

AFGHAN TESTIMONY

A veteran of four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder, as well as charges of assault and wrongfully possessing and using steroids and alcohol while deployed.

Prosecutors have already presented physical evidence to tie Bales to the crime scene, with a forensic investigator saying a sample of blood on his clothing matched a swab taken in one of the compounds where the shooting occurred.

Bales’ lawyers have not set out an alternative theory to the prosecution’s case, but have pointed out inconsistencies in testimony and highlighted incidents before the shooting where Bales lost his temper easily, possibly setting up an argument that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Gathering evidence and witness statements was complicated by the speedy burial of victims, the inability of U.S. investigators to access the crime scenes for three weeks after the violence, and the dispersal of possible witnesses after treatment at a Kandahar hospital.

Bales’ lead civil defense attorney John Henry Browne, who is in Kandahar to question witnesses, complained early in the investigation that his team was denied access to villagers wounded in the attacks.

One of the villagers, a 15-year-old boy who was wounded in the rampage in Alkozai but survived by hiding, testified to the hearing at a U.S. Army base in Washington state that the shooter wore a U.S. military uniform.

“He put his pistol in my sister’s mouth and then my grandmother started wrestling with him,” the boy, introduced to the court by the single name of Rafiullah, said via video link from Kandahar Air Field. “He shot me in my legs.”

The boy’s testimony was consistent with the recollections of another teenage boy, Sadiquallah, who testified previously that he saw only a single American that night.

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Pravin Char)

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Still photos from Hitchcock’s “Mountain Eagle” film up for auction

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A newly discovered collection of still photos from Alfred Hitchcock’s lost silent film “The Mountain Eagle” is going up for auction in Los Angeles next month.

On Thursday, auction house Profiles in History said the 59 photos were made for the British thriller director’s personal archive in the 1920s. Thirty-five of the photos come from Hitchcock‘s 1929 silent film “The Manxman,” and 24 from “The Mountain Eagle,” which are expected to attract the most interest.

The photos are expected to fetch more than $ 25,000 at the December 15-16 auction.

Profiles in History described them as a rare Hollywood treasure, and a window into one of the most searched-for lost films in history.

No prints have been found of Hitchcock’s 1926 film “The Mountain Eagle,” which is one of the top movies in the British Film Institute’s quest for lost films. Only a few still photos have turned up of the black and white film, which Hitchcock described as “awful.”

Researchers have said it was set in Kentucky, but filmed in Austria. The plot revolved around a wicked father, a crippled son and a teacher.

The auction house declined to name the seller, saying the photos came from a source close to Hitchcock who had saved them for decades, unaware of which films they came from.

“The Mountain Eagle” was the second of Hitchcock’s more than 50 films. He is best known for his classic thrillers, including “Psycho” and “The Birds.”

Hitchcock died in 1980 at the age of 80. His legacy is being re-examined in the upcoming feature film “Hitchcock,” starring Anthony Hopkins, and the HBO film “The Girl” starring Toby Jones as the master of suspense.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Stacey Joyce)

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Right or Wrong, Gallup Always Wins

In the weeks before the 2012 election, Gallup was an outlier among political pollsters. It showed an electorate leaning Romney, when most others showed a dead heat. The discrepancy sparked controversy among poll watchers. By the election’s eve, Gallup fell back in line with the consensus, narrowly underestimating President Barack Obama’s support. But for Gallup, the miss hardly matters: Its name was in the papers for weeks leading up to the election. And that’s the point.

Tracking the presidential race every four years is the most public work Gallup does, and it keeps the company’s storied brand in the spotlight from the primaries through the first Tuesday in November. But conducting far less glamorous research that helps businesses hone their operations—much like a management consultant—is how Gallup makes money. Corporations and organizations pay the firm to do everything from querying customers about new services they’d like to quizzing employees about how happy they are with their benefits. The flashier business of tracking the road to the Oval Office is a flyspeck in the company’s operations and means next to nothing to its bottom line. “It’s a small part of what we do overall,” says Frank Newport, Gallup Poll editor-in-chief.

In 1935, George Gallup was head of market research at the advertising firm Young & Rubicam in New York when he opened a small polling shop on his own time. The next year he boldly forecast that Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be reelected. The Literary Digest, which ran the biggest and best-known poll at the time, predicted that Roosevelt’s Republican challenger, Alf Landon, would prevail. Gallup, who published the results of his political surveys in a column in the Washington Post, said the Digest had a skewed sample of right-leaning magazine subscribers, car owners, and phone customers. “His political surveys kept finding that the Literary Digest was wrong,” says Susan Ohmer, a professor of film and television at the University of Notre Dame and author of George Gallup in Hollywood. “And he had the guts to say so publicly. He became famous overnight.” In 1948, Gallup gave up his day job at Rubicam, put his name on his polling business, and made it his life’s work. The company continues its much-watched political tracking almost three decades after his death.

“The Gallup Poll is our legacy gift from Dr. Gallup to the United States’ leaders and the world,” says Chief Executive Officer Jim Clifton. The opinion surveys, he says, cost the company about $ 10 million a year and bring in scant revenue. That’s not because they can’t find political customers. Clifton says the company receives requests for “hundreds of projects” but turns them all down. “We don’t work for Democrats or Republicans or any special-interest groups,” he says.

Gallup can afford to lose money on public opinion work because it takes in “high nine figures in revenue,” Clifton says, consulting for about 200 clients, many of them Fortune 500 companies. A privately held company with about 2,000 employees, Gallup occupies an unusual niche between market research and strategic consulting. From centers in Nebraska and Texas, as well as smaller offices in 40 cities around the world, its hundreds of interviewers make thousands of calls every day to ask questions about everything from voting habits and employment status to personality traits and customer satisfaction. Gallup’s statisticians crunch the numbers; their daily political and public opinion results are made available free of charge, burnishing the brand. But most of the interviewing is specifically designed to help give clients advice about getting the most out of employees and serving customers better. The company also has its own publishing imprint that cranks out management titles such as StrengthsFinder 2.0.

Gallup, says Clifton, is not to be confused with market researchers like Nielsen (NLSN) or SymphonyIRI Group that help companies find out their market share in “hubcaps or candy bars.” Its competitors, he says, are consultants such as McKinsey and Bain & Co. Gallup, however, doesn’t give advice about mergers and acquisitions; instead, it focuses on employees and customers. Gallup tracks all of Wells Fargo’s (WFC) 270,000 employees, for instance, with a regular questionnaire to assess aptitude and satisfaction and surveys millions of the bank’s customers to see how it can capture more business.

Clifton became CEO of Gallup in 1988, four years after its founder died, when Clifton’s family company, Selection Research (SRI), bought it for an undisclosed price from Gallup’s sons. According to the New York Times report on the sale, SRI had $ 45 million in revenue at the time, compared with Gallup’s $ 10 million. “The company [Gallup] was losing money,” says Jack Honomichl, who publishes an annual list of the top 50 market-research firms and covered the sale for Advertising Age. SRI, which specialized in personnel testing, bought the firm, Honomichl says, “to get ahold of the Gallup name.” SRI’s own market-research wing was having trouble getting people to stay on the phone. “If you call and say you’re SRI, to be honest about it, they hang up on us, and it ruins the quality of the data,” Clifton told the New York Times then. Things have changed. “We definitely get higher cooperation rates than anybody in the country,” he now says. “That Gallup Poll brand gives us a little cachet. Sort of a Tiffany’s (TIF) thing, rather than a Wal-Mart (WMT).”

The bottom line: Gallup’s call on the presidential vote missed narrowly. Its lesser-known consulting business will still benefit from all the publicity.

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Twin explosions strike southern Syrian city

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria‘s state-run news agency says two large explosions have struck the southern city of Daraa, causing multiple casualties and heavy material damage.

SANA did not immediately give further information or say what the target of Saturday’s explosions was.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the blasts went off near a branch of the country’s Military Intelligence in Daraa.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says the explosions were followed by clashes between regime forces and rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad.

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First Person: Unfriending a Facebook Friend to Save a Friendship

Yahoo News asked voters to share stories about relationships gone sour during the election — and how they’re working to mend fences. Here’s one person’s story.

FIRST PERSON | Because of the election,I had to ignore one of my oldest friends.

My name is Kathy Foust from Knox, Ind., and I am in my late 30s. If there is one thing I have learned during my time on this Earth, it is the value of relationships that span the decades and embrace even the worst personality flaws.

I met Matt when we were teens. We had both gotten into trouble and as a result, we each were sent to live in a residential placement for wayward teens. There, we experienced some travesties that can only serve to bring a group of people closer. Attempted suicides, attempted arson, violence, tears, broken hearts, friends with self-made wounds from the war in their hearts, and pretty much every other teenage dilemma that could possibly manifest itself in physical form were all part of our daily lives.

We lost touch, but found it again on Facebook. A small group of us reconnected and care as much for each other as we ever did.

I almost let politics change all that with Matt. What teenage years and the trauma of all that we went through could not tear apart, the 2012 presidential election had the potential to annihilate.

There was no one single argument. There were no words of separation. A simple click of a button took my friend from someone who was on a select list to someone who no longer existed in my virtual world. In truth, we never actually said a harsh word to each other. We did say plenty about politics though.

He used terms like “lazy,” “stupid,” “welfare,” and “socialist,” while I threw out terms like “compassion,” “opportunity,” and “equality.”

We debated political topics in Facebook, sometimes in such a harsh manner that friends outside of our personal little circle would voice questions as to how we ever became friends in the first place. That’s when I knew I had to unfriend a political adversary in order to keep a friend.

On the night of the election, we made the choice to resume our friendship in the morning, no matter who won.

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GSK rotavirus shot chosen for UK immunisation campaign

LONDON (Reuters) – GlaxoSmithKline‘s Rotarix vaccine has been chosen for Britain‘s first routine rotavirus immunisation programme to protect babies and children against the most common cause of severe diarrhoea and vomiting.

Rotarix, a two-dose oral vaccine squirted into the baby’s mouth, will be added to the childhood immunisation schedule for three years from September 2013 to vaccinate all babies aged 6-24 weeks, the government said.

Rotavirus is a common and highly contagious virus that infects the bowel and stomach, swiftly causing gastroenteritis, or diarrhoea and vomiting.

It is the most common cause of gastroenteritis in babies and young children in Britain, where public health experts estimate every child will have at least one rotavirus infection before their fifth birthday.

Adam Finn, a professor of paediatrics at Bristol University said the new vaccination would help cut down epidemics of diarrhoea and vomiting in babies and young children that occur every winter in Britain.

“It will also help hospitals cope in the busy winter months by reducing pressure on beds and front-line staff,” he said.

Rotavirus vaccines are already included in routine childhood immunisation programmes across the world including in Australia, Austria, Belgium and the United States.

The GAVI Alliance, which funds bulk-buy immunisation programmes for poorer countries, is also helping to roll out rotavirus vaccines in developing nations.

In Britain, rotavirus infections have been estimated to cost the taxpayer-funded National Health Service at least 14.2 million pounds ($ 23 million) a year.

Rival U.S. drugmaker Merck also makes a rotavirus vaccine called Rotateq.

($ 1 = 0.6262 pound)

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Dan Lalor)

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Madonna fan guilty in NYC resisting arrest trial

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

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

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

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

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

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Official: China can meet 7.5 percent growth target

BEIJING (AP) — China‘s sharp economic downturn has ended after trade and consumer spending improved in October but the world’s second-largest economy is not ready for a recovery and exporters face tough conditions, officials said Saturday.

The economy should be able to meet the government’s 7.5 percent growth target this year, the chairman of the country’s planning agency told a news conference during a congress of the ruling Communist Party.

The comments echoed private sector analysts who say economic activity is improving but a recovery from China’s deepest slump since the 2008 global financial crisis will be gradual and weak.

“The figures do indeed indicate an obvious trend of the Chinese economy stabilizing,” Zhang Ping said.

“That said, we should not let down our guard,” he said. “Our conclusion is that the foundation is not solid enough for a rebound in the Chinese economy and therefore we need to step up our efforts.”

Trade data on Saturday showed export growth accelerated in October to 11.6 percent from the previous month’s 9.9 percent. Data released Friday showed auto sales, consumer spending and investment also improved in October.

Zhang gave no indication what new initiatives Beijing might consider. The government has cut interest rates twice this year and is injecting money into the economy through higher spending on building airports and other public works and investment by state companies. But it has avoided a large stimulus after its huge response to the 2008 crisis fueled inflation.

Economic growth fell to a three-and-a-half-year low of 7.4 percent in the quarter ending in September. Growth for the first three quarters of the year was 7.7 percent, putting the government’s target for the year within reach.

Also in October, inflation fell, giving Beijing room to launch new stimulus if needed with less danger of igniting new price spikes.

The improvement is welcome news for the ruling Communist Party, which is in the midst of a congress to install younger leaders who might benefit from an economic uptick.

Still, Commerce Minister Chen Deming warned that Chinese exporters face tough conditions due to weak global demand and rising operating costs.

“The trade situation will be relatively grim in the next few months and there will be many difficulties next year,” Chen told a news conference.

Stronger exports will help manufacturers that were battered by last year’s slump in global demand. Thousands closed and survivors slashed payrolls, raising the danger of unrest as Communist leaders tried to enforce calm ahead of the leadership transition.

The import weakness meant China’s global trade surplus widened by nearly 90 percent over a year ago to $ 32 billion — the highest monthly level this year.

Chen also warned that “growing trade protectionism” might hurt exporters.

World leaders pledged after the 2008 crisis to avoid steps that might hinder trade and hamper a recovery. But Beijing and trading partners including the United States, Europe and Japan have raised tariffs on goods including autos and solar panels in a series of disputes over market access, subsidies and other issues.

Lackluster Chinese import demand reflects government curbs on lending and investment to cool inflation and overheating.

Those controls helped to crush surging prices but hurt China’s large construction industry and depressed its voracious appetite for steel beams, wiring and other materials made of imported iron ore, copper and other commodities. That is bad news for miners and other commodity exporters such as Australia and Brazil that supply China.

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Assad says will live and die in Syria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QATAR, TURKEY CHIDE OPPOSITION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“VICIOUS CIRCLE”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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