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Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (AP) — For the victims of Superstorm Sandy, it was a sorely needed message delivered.
From “Livin’ on a Prayer” to “The Living Proof,” every song Friday at NBC’s benefit concert became a message song.
New Jersey‘s Jon Bon Jovi gave extra meaning to “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” Billy Joel worked in a reference to Staten Island, the decimated New York City borough.
The hourlong event, hosted by Matt Lauer, was heavy on stars and lyrics identified with New Jersey and the New York metropolitan area, which took the brunt of this week’s deadly storm. The telethon was a mix of music, storm footage and calls for donations from Jon Stewart, Tina Fey, Whoopi Goldberg and others.
The show ended, as it only could, with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, tearing into “Land Of Hope and Dreams.”
“God bless New York,” Springsteen, New Jersey‘s ageless native son, said in conclusion. “God bless the Jersey shore.”
Here, in pictures, are some of the performers on this somber but hopeful night:
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.
But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.
It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.
The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.
Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.
“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.
“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.
Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.
Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.
The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
STRATEGIC BLOW
Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.
With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.
Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.
In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.
The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.
Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.
His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.
The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.
The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Jim Young/Reuters)PORTSMOUTH, N.H.—Mitt Romney kicked off a whirlwind weekend of campaigning across the country in the state where he launched his bid for the presidency, expressing confidence that he will win the election.
"New Hampshire won me the Republican nomination, and New Hampshire is going to get me to the White House," the Republican nominee said at the first of four scheduled rallies on Saturday.
Speaking to more than 1,000 voters here at a chilly airport rally, Romney sounded a more retrospective note heading into the final weekend of the campaign.
"I've watched over the last few months as our campaign has gone from a start to a movement. It's not just the size of the crowds. It's the conviction and compassion in the hearts of the people," Romney said. "It's made me strive to be more worthy of the support I have received across the country and to campaign as I would govern, to speak for the aspirations of all Americans, not just some Americans."
From here, Romney will travel to Dubuque, Iowa, and then to Colorado, where he will hold rallies in Colorado Springs and Englewood. He'll spend the night in Des Moines, where he's scheduled to hold a rally Sunday morning.
Saturday's rally was Romney's first appearance in this hotly contested swing state in more than a month. Romney launched his campaign in the state in June 2011 and will hold his final rally here on Monday night in Manchester. Recent polls have found the GOP nominee statistically tied with President Barack Obama heading into Election Day.
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(Reuters) – Ameridose LLC, sister company to the pharmacy at the heart of the U.S. meningitis outbreak, will extend its shutdown by an additional two weeks, under an agreement between the company and Massachusetts regulators.
Friday’s accord comes two days after Ameridose issued a voluntary recall of all its products following a U.S. Food and Drug Administration directive to improve its sterility testing process.
The Westborough, Massachusetts-based company, which was closed on October 10, said on Wednesday it had not received any reports of adverse reactions to the drugs it is recalling.
Ameridose is owned by the same people who own the New England Compounding Center, which distributed a tainted steroid that has killed 28 people.
(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Mitch Lucker, the lead singer of extreme heavy metal band Suicide Silence, died on Thursday of injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident in Huntington Beach, California, police said.
The band from Southern California was given the Golden Gods award for best new talent by Revolver magazine in 2009.
Lucker, 28, was on a new Harley Davidson motorcycle driving in the Orange County city of Huntington Beach on Halloween night when he lost control and crashed into a light pole, according to a statement from the local police department.
He was taken to the University of California, Irvine Medical Center where he later died, police said. Investigators said they were looking into the cause of the collision and whether alcohol was a factor.
“There’s no easy way to say this,” the band said in a post on Facebook. “Mitch passed away earlier this morning from injuries sustained during a motorcycle accident.”
Suicide Silence in 2007 came out with the album “The Cleansing” and followed that up with the 2009 “No Time to Bleed” and last year’s “The Black Crown,” which made its way to No. 9 on the Billboard hard rock chart.
The band, whose musical style is referred to as “deathcore,” is originally from Riverside, California, a working-class community 50 miles east of Los Angeles.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Will Dunham)
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Anti-government rebels killed 28 soldiers on Thursday in attacks on three army checkpoints around Saraqeb, a town on Syria’s main north-south highway, a monitoring group said.
Some of the dead were shot after they had surrendered, according to video footage. Rebels berated them, calling them “Assad’s Dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.
The highway linking the capital Damascus to the contested city of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial center, has been the scene of heavy fighting since rebels cut the road last month. Saraqeb lies about 40 km (25 miles) south of Aleppo
In other developments, China put forward a new initiative to resolve the 19-month-old conflict, including a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing had made the proposal to international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi – whose own call for a truce over the Muslim holiday of Eid was largely ignored by both sides.
The United States meanwhile has called for an overhaul of Syria’s opposition leadership, signaling a break with the largely foreign-based Syrian National Council to bring in more credible figures.
A meeting in Qatar next week of foreign powers backing the rebels will be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Zagreb on Wednesday.
The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition, while Assad has counted on the support of Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China. International efforts to end the violence have all foundered.
More than 32,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad, an Alawite who succeeded his late father Hafez in ruling the mostly Sunni Muslim country, first broke out on city streets. The revolt has since degenerated into full-scale civil war, with the government forces relying heavily on artillery and air strikes to thwart the rebels.
CHECKPOINT ATTACKS
The army has lost swathes of land in Idlib and Aleppo provinces but is fighting to control towns along supply routes to Aleppo city, where its forces are fighting in many districts.
The head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman, said two of the attacked checkpoints at Saraqeb were on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. The third was near a road linking Aleppo with Latakia, a port city still mostly controlled Assad’s forces.
“The rebels will not stay at the checkpoints for long as Syrian warplanes normally bomb positions after rebels move in,” Abdelrahman said.
Five rebels died in the fighting and at least 20 soldiers were killed at the third site, including those shot after surrendering, he said.
The video footage showed a group of petrified men, some bleeding, lying on the ground as rebels walked around, kicking and stamping on their captives.
One of the captured men says: “I swear I didn’t shoot anyone” to which a rebel responds: “Shut up you animal … Gather them for me.” Then the men are shot dead.
Reuters could not independently verify the footage.
The Observatory said the al Qaeda-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group was responsible for the executions.
Islamist rebel units are growing in prominence in the war – a cause for concern for international powers as they weigh up what kind of support to give the opposition.
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance. It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance.
Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.
China has been strongly criticized by some Arab countries for failing to take a stronger stance on the conflict. Beijing has urged the Assad government to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change.
“More and more countries have come to realize that a military option offers no way out, and a political settlement has become an increasingly shared aspiration,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.
He said China’s new proposal was aimed at building international consensus and supporting peace envoy Brahimi’s mediation efforts.
(Additional reporting by Ayat Basma, Laila Bassam and Dominic Evans in Beirut and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
President Barack Obama and Republican rival Mitt Romney on Friday seized on the last jobs report before Election Day to reinforce their political arguments about the economy. Neither side, however, expected that the better-than-expected news would change many minds.
In a statement, Romney said that come Tuesday the choice would be "between stagnation and prosperity."
Obama, meanwhile, in front of a rowdy crowd of cheering supporters at the Franklin County Fairgrounds in Hilliard, Ohio, said, "This morning we learned that companies hired more workers in October than at any time in the last eight months.
"We've made real progress--but we are here today because we know we've got more work to do," Obama continued. "As long as there's a single American who wants a job and can't find one, as long as there are families working harder but falling behind, as long as there's a child anywhere in this country who's languishing in poverty and barred from opportunity, our fight goes on, we've got more work to do."
Neither campaign expected the new figure to do much to change the dynamic of the race. Aides on both sides have said in recent weeks that Americans' views of the economy are essentially fixed by now, barring a dramatic change.
The Labor Department's monthly jobs report did not provide such a tectonic shift. It showed that the economy added more jobs than experts had predicted and bolstered Obama's argument that he has overseen a slow but steady recovery from the 2007-2008 global economic meltdown.
At the same time, Republicans led by Romney seized on the news to charge that the incumbent has failed to bring about sturdier growth. At the current rate, it would take years to return to pre-recession levels. And no incumbent has faced the voters with unemployment this high since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"On Tuesday, America will make a choice between stagnation and prosperity," Romney also said. "For four years, President Obama has told us that things are getting better and that we're making progress. For too many American families, those words ring hollow. We can do better."
Non-farm payrolls added 171,000 jobs last month, beating forecasts of about 125,000. The Labor Department also revised its previous estimates of employment growth in August and September upward by 84,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate ticked up from 7.8 percent to 7.9 percent, but chiefly as a result of more Americans getting off the sidelines and looking for work (those not looking are not counted in the jobless rate). Democrats emphasized that Obama had inherited a disastrous economy from George W. Bush and reversed what had been accelerating jobs losses. Republicans noted that the unemployment rate when Obama took office was 7.8 percent.
"Today's increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill," Romney added. "The jobless rate is higher than it was when President Obama took office, and there are still 23 million Americans struggling for work."
One of the political challenges for Romney was that unemployment was lower than the national average in some critical battleground states. In September, it was 7 percent in Ohio, and 5.9 percent in Virginia.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Thursday painted a mixed picture of voters' views about the economy. Fifty-four percent of likely voters expressed confidence that the economy would improve under Romney, against 47 percent for Obama. But 51 percent of those surveyed still blamed George W. Bush for the current conditions, against 36 percent for Obama. The Democrat has made tying Romney to Bush a centerpiece of his closing argument.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Two weeks before a high-stakes trial pitting Google's Motorola Mobility unit against Microsoft, Google made what has become a common request for a technology company fighting for billions of dollars: A public court proceeding, conducted largely in secret.
Google and Microsoft, like rivals embroiled in smartphone patent wars, are eager to keep sensitive business information under wraps - in this case, the royalty deals they cut with other companies on patented technology. Microsoft asked for similar protections in a court filing late on Thursday.
Such royalty rates, though, are the central issue in this trial, which begins November 13 in Seattle.
U.S. District Judge James Robart has granted requests to block many pre-trial legal briefs from public view. Though he warned he may get tougher on the issue, the nature of the case raises the possibility that even his final decision might include redacted, or blacked-out, sections.
Legal experts are increasingly troubled by the level of secrecy that has become commonplace in intellectual property cases where overburdened judges often pay scant attention to the issue.
Widespread sealing of documents infringes on the basic American legal principle that court should be public, says law professor, Dennis Crouch, and encourages companies to use a costly, tax-payer funded resource to resolve their disputes.
"There are plenty of cases that have settled because one party didn't want their information public," said Crouch, an intellectual property professor at University of Missouri School of Law.
Tech companies counter that they should not be forced to reveal private business information as the price for having their day in court.
The law does permit confidential information to be kept from public view in some circumstances, though companies must show the disclosure would be harmful.
Google argues that revelations about licensing negotiations would give competitors "additional leverage and bargaining power and would lead to an unfair advantage."
Robart has not yet ruled on Google and Microsoft's requests, which, in the case of Google includes not only keeping documents under seal, but also clearing the courtroom during crucial testimony.
It is also unclear whether Robart will redact any discussion of royalty rates in his final opinion. The judge, who will decide this part of the case without a jury, did not respond to requests for comment.
NOT PAYING ATTENTION
Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp have been litigating in courts around the world against Google Inc and partners like Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which use the Android operating system on their mobile devices.
Apple contends that Android is basically a copy of its iOS smartphone software, and Microsoft holds patents that it contends cover a number of Android features.
Google bought Motorola for $12.5 billion, partly to use its large portfolio of communications patents as a bargaining chip against its competitors.
Robart will decide how big a royalty Motorola deserves from Microsoft for a license on some Motorola wireless and video patents.
Apple, for its part, is set to square off against Motorola on Monday in Madison, Wisconsin, in a case that involves many of the same issues.
In Wisconsin, Apple and Motorola have filed most court documents entirely under seal. U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb did not require them to seek advance permission to file them secretly, nor did she mandate that the companies make redacted copies available for the public.
Judges have broad discretion in granting requests to seal documents. The legal standard for such requests can be high, but in cases where both sides want the proceedings to be secret, judges have little incentive to thoroughly review secrecy requests.
In Apple's Northern California litigation against Samsung, both parties also sought to keep many documents under seal. After Reuters challenged those secrecy requests, on grounds it wanted to report financial details, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh ordered both companies to disclose a range of information they considered secret - including profit margins on individual products - but not licensing deals. Apple and Samsung are appealing the disclosure order.
In response to questions from Reuters last week, Judge Crabb in Wisconsin, who will also decide the case without a jury, acknowledged she had not been paying attention to how many documents were being filed under seal. Federal judges in Madison will now require that parties file redacted briefs, she said, though as of Wednesday, Apple and Motorola were still filing key briefs entirely under seal.
"Just because there is a seed or kernel of confidential information doesn't mean an entire 25-page brief should be sealed," said Bernard Chao, an intellectual property professor at University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
Crabb promised that the upcoming trial would be open.
"Whatever opinion I make is not going to be redacted," she told Reuters in an interview.
CHECKING THE COMPS
Microsoft sued Motorola two years ago, saying Motorola had promised to license its so-called "standards essential" patents at a fair rate, in exchange for the technology being adopted as a norm industrywide. But by demanding roughly $4 billion a year in revenue, Microsoft says Motorola broke its promise.
Robart will sort out what a reasonable royalty for those standards patents should be, partly by reviewing deals Motorola struck with other companies such as IBM and Research in Motion - much like an appraiser checking comparable properties to figure out whether a home is priced right.
In this case, though, the public may not be able to understand exactly what figures Robart is comparing. Representatives for Microsoft and Google declined to comment.
In its brief, Microsoft said licensing terms could be sealed without the need to clear the courtroom.
"Permitting redaction of this information will minimize the harm to Microsoft and third parties while also giving due consideration to the public policies favoring disclosure," the company argued.
IBM and RIM have also asked Robart to keep licensing information secret.
Chao doesn't think Robart will ultimately redact his own ruling, even though it may include discussion of the specific royalty rates. "I can't imagine that," he said.
Most judges cite lack of resources and overflowing dockets as the reason why they don't scrutinize secrecy requests more closely, especially when both parties support them.
In Wisconsin, Crabb said that even though she will now require litigants to ask permission to file secret documents, it is highly unlikely that she will actually read those arguments - unless someone else flags a problem.
"We're paddling madly to stay afloat," Crabb said.
The Wisconsin case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Wisconsin is Apple Inc. vs. Motorola Mobility Inc., 11-cv-178. The Seattle case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Corp. vs. Motorola Inc., 10-cv-1823.
(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle.; Editing by Jonathan Weber, Andrew Hay and Bernadette Baum)
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – South American babies and toddlers living at high altitude were more likely to score poorly on early tests of brain development, in a new study.
Of all kids age three months to two years, one in five was at high risk of developmental delays, according to tests done at their pediatricians’ offices. That rose to between one in three and one in four for those who lived above 2,600 meters, or 8,530 feet.
Because there is less oxygen at higher elevations, researchers said blood flow in the uterus may also be decreased at altitude – which could impact the brain of a developing fetus.
“The findings emphasize the need for health care providers and policy-makers to recognize that altitude may increase developmental risks not just for physical growth, as has been reported, but for neurologic and cognitive development,” wrote George Wehby from the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who conducted the research.
His study involved over 2,000 young kids evaluated at offices in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador in 2005 and 2006.
The babies and toddlers were all given a series of problem-solving and motor tasks to complete, which their doctors used to measure which ones might be at risk for delayed development.
Wehby found that on average, for every 100-meter (328-feet) increase in elevation, kids were 2 percent more likely to be judged at high risk of future developmental problems.
Compared to kids living below 800 meters (2,625 feet), those above 8,530 feet were twice as likely to be at high risk, according to their pediatricians’ evaluations.
The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is published in The Journal of Pediatrics.
All of the babies in Bolivia lived above the 8,530-foot cut-off, and all the kids in Argentina, Brazil and Chile lived below it. Ecuador was the only country in the study that included kids from both high- and low-altitude regions.
Of the largest cities in the United States, Albuquerque has a high point of 6,120 feet and Denver of 5,470 feet. Many Western states – including California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah – have regions above 10,000 feet.
However, it’s hard to know whether the results apply to other communities at high elevation, according to Alexis Handal, an epidemiologist from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, who does her research in Ecuador.
“We’re starting to realize there’s such a complicated social context within which these populations live that it’s very hard to look at one area and try to generalize to other areas,” Handal, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.
For example, she said, parents’ work hours, whether families have access to nutritious food and what environmental toxins communities might be exposed to can all interact with factors like altitude to influence maternal and child health.
“Perhaps what we also have to focus on is… how can we also develop programs that promote infant development, that help families?” she added.
Wehby said in the study that babies born at higher elevations may be helped by earlier health screening to make sure they’re developing normally.
But he also pointed to the need for more research on why altitude may affect development – and whether similar patterns apply to kids in other high-altitude regions.
SOURCE: bitly.com/SsOh9z The Journal of Pediatrics, online October 22, 2012.
Parenting/Kids News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (AP) — NBC will hold a benefit concert Friday for victims of Hurricane Sandy featuring some artists native to the areas hardest hit.
Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi of New Jersey and Billy Joel of Long Island are scheduled to appear at the concert, hosted by “Today” show co-host Matt Lauer.
Other performers include Christina Aguilera, Sting and Jimmy Fallon.
The telecast will benefit the American Red Cross and will be shown on NBC and its cable stations including Bravo, CNBC, USA, MSNBC and E! Other networks are invited to join in.
“Hurricane Sandy: Coming Together” will air at 8 p.m. EDT and will be taped-delayed in the West.
The telethon will be broadcast from NBC facilities in Rockefeller Center in New York City.
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NBC is controlled by Comcast Corp.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Maria Elena Salazar refuses to set out plates of her missing son’s favorite foods or orange flowers as offerings for the deceased on Mexico‘s Day of the Dead, even though she hasn’t seen him in three-and-a-half years.
The 50-year-old former teacher is convinced that Hugo Gonzalez Salazar, a university graduate in marketing who worked for a telephone company, is still alive and being forced to work for a drug cartel because of his skills.
“The government, the authorities, they know it, that the gangs took them away to use as forced labor,” said Salazar of her then 24-year-old son, who disappeared in the northern city of Torreon in July 2009.
The Day of the Dead — when Mexicans traditionally visit the graves of dead relatives and leave offerings of flowers, food and candy skulls — is a difficult time for the families of the thousands of Mexicans who have disappeared amid a wave of drug-fueled violence.
With what activists call a mix of denial, hope and desperation, they refuse to dedicate altars on the Nov. 1-2 holiday to people often missing for years. They won’t accept any but the most certain proof of death, and sometimes reject even that.
Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says 24,000 people have been reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012, and that nearly 16,000 bodies remain unidentified.
But one thing is clear: just as there are households without Day of the Dead altars, there are thousands of graves of the unidentified dead scattered across the country, with no one to remember them.
An investigation conducted by the newspaper Milenio this week, involving hundreds of information requests to state and municipal governments, indicates that 24,102 unidentified bodies were buried in paupers’ or common graves in Mexican cemeteries since 2006. The number is almost certainly incomplete, since some local governments refused to provide figures, Milenio reported.
And while the number of unidentified dead probably includes some indigents, Central American migrants or dead unrelated to the drug war, it is clear that cities worst hit by the drug conflict also usually showed a corresponding bulge in the number of unidentified cadavers. For example, Mexico City, which has been relatively unscathed by drug violence, listed about one-third as many unidentified burials as the city of Veracruz, despite the fact that Mexico City’s population is about 15 times larger.
Consuelo Morales , who works with dozens of families of disappeared in the northern city of Monterrey, said that “holidays like this, that are family affairs and are very close to our culture, stir a lot of things up” for the families. But many refuse to accept the deaths of their loved ones, sometimes even after DNA testing confirms a match with a cadaver.
“They’ll say to you, ‘I’m not going to put up an altar, because they’re not dead,” Martinez noted. “Their thinking is that ‘until they prove to me that my child is dead, he is alive.”
Martinez says one family she works with at the Citizens in Support of Human Rights center had refused to accept their son was dead, even after three rounds of DNA testing and the exhumation of the remains.
“It was their son, he was very young, and he had been burned alive,” Martinez said by way of explanation.
The refusal to accept what appears inevitable may be a matter of desperation. Martinez said some families in Monterrey also believe their missing relatives are being held as virtual slaves for the cartels, even though federal prosecutors say they have never uncovered any kind of drug cartel forced-labor camp, in the six years since Mexico launched an offensive against the cartels.
But many people like Salazar believe it must be true. “Organized crime is a business, but it can’t advertise for employees openly, so it has to take them by force,” Salazar said.
While she refuses to erect an altar-like offering for her son, she does perform other rituals that mirror the Day of the Dead customs, like the one that involves scattering a trail of flower petals to the doorsteps of houses to guide spirits of the departed back home once a year.
Salazar and her family still live in the same home in Torreon, though they’d like to move, in the hopes that Hugo will return there. They pray three times a day for God to guide him home.
“We live in the same place, and we try to do the same things we used to,” said Salazar, “because he is going to come back to his place, his home, and we have to be waiting for him.”
Mistrust of officials has risen to such a point that some families may never get an answer they’ll accept.
The problem is that, with forensics procedures often sadly lacking in Mexican police forces, the dead my never be connected with the living, which is the whole point of the Mexican traditions.
“As long as the authorities don’t prove the opposite, for us they’re still alive,” Salazar said. “Let them prove it, but let us have some certainty, not just the authorities saying ‘here he is.’ We don’t the government to just give us bodies that aren’t theirs, and that has happened.”
Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) - Rescuers searched flooded streets and swamped houses for survivors, drivers lined up for hours to get scarce gasoline and millions remained without power on Thursday as New York City and nearby coastal towns struggled to recover from one of the biggest storms ever to hit the United States.
New Yorkers heard the rumble of subway trains for the first time in four days as limited service resumed, but the lower half of Manhattan still lacked power and surrounding areas including Staten Island, the New Jersey shore and the city of Hoboken remained crippled from a record storm surge and flooding.
At least 87 people died in the "superstorm" that ravaged the northeastern United States on Monday night. Officials said the number could climb as rescuers searched house-to-house through coastal towns.
The hunt for gasoline added to a climate of uncertainty as the death toll and price tag of the storm rose.
"I'm so stressed out," said Jessica Bajno, 29, a school teacher from Elmont, Long Island, who was waiting in line for gas. "I've been driving around to nearby towns all morning, and being careful about not running out of gas in the process. Everything is closed. I'm feeling anxious."
More deaths were recorded overnight in the New York City borough of Staten Island, where authorities recovered 17 bodies after the storm lifted whole houses off their foundations. Among the dead were two boys, aged 4 and 2, who were swept from their mother's arms by the floodwaters, police said.
In all, 38 people died in New York City, officials said.
The financial cost of the storm also promised to be staggering. Disaster modeling company Eqecat estimates Sandy caused up to $20 billion in insured losses and $50 billion in economic losses, double its previous forecast.
At the high end of the range, Sandy would rank as the fourth-costliest catastrophe ever in the United States, according to the Insurance Information Institute, behind Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the September 11 attacks of 2001, and Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
JERSEY SHORE STAGGERS
In hard-hit New Jersey, where oceanside towns saw entire neighborhoods swallowed by seawater and the Atlantic City boardwalk was destroyed, the death toll doubled to 12.
Floodwaters finally receded from the streets of Hoboken, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan, leaving behind a stinky mess of submerged basements and displaced cars littering the sidewalks.
"The water was rushing in. It was like a river coming," said Benedicte Lenoble, a photo researcher from Hoboken. "Now it's a mess everywhere. There's no power. The stores aren't open. Recovery? I don't know."
In neighboring Jersey City, drivers negotiated intersections without traffic lights. Shops were shuttered and lines formed outside pharmacies while people piled sodden mattresses and furniture along the streets. The city imposed a curfew and banned driving from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
New Jersey favorite son Bruce Springsteen, along with Jon Bon Jovi and Sting, will headline a benefit concert for storm victims Friday night on NBC television, the network announced.
The U.S. government agreed to cover 100 percent of emergency power and public transportation costs through November 9 in eight New Jersey counties. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which already pledged aid directly to victims and local governments, told New Jersey's U.S. senators of the decision, an aide to Senator Frank Lautenberg said.
Sandy started as a late-season hurricane in the Caribbean, where it killed 69 people, before smashing ashore in the United States with 80 mph winds. It stretched from the Carolinas to Connecticut and was the largest storm by area to hit the United States in decades.
Sandy made landfall in New Jersey with a full moon around high tide, creating a record storm surge that flooded lower Manhattan. By Thursday, the storm had dissipated over the North American mainland.
OBAMA BACK ON CAMPAIGN
After a four-day suspension to deal with the storm, President Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail. Polls show him locked in a virtual tie with Republican challenger Mitt Romney before Tuesday's presidential election.
The president toured devastated New Jersey areas on Wednesday with the state's Republican governor, Chris Christie, a vocal Romney supporter who nonetheless strongly praised Obama's response to the disaster.
Obama received an update on storm recovery efforts Thursday from his crisis management team, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One.
More than 36,000 disaster survivors from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have applied for federal disaster assistance and more than $3.4 million in direct assistance has already been approved, Carney said.
GASOLINE SCARCE
Fuel supplies into New York and New Jersey were being choked off in several ways. Two refineries that make up a quarter of the region's refining capacity were still idle due to power outages or flooding. The New York Harbor waterway that imports a fifth of the area's fuel was still closed to traffic, and major import terminals were damaged and powerless.
In addition, the main oil pipeline from the Gulf Coast, which pumps 15 percent of the East Coast's fuel, remained shut.
The scarcity of fuel, electricity and supplies made cleanup more daunting for barrier towns such as Seaside Heights, part of the Jersey Shore.
Seaside Heights residents who obeyed the mandatory evacuation order were cut off from their homes. The entire community was submerged by the storm surge that washed over the island and into the bay that separates it from the mainland.
"The bay met the ocean," said Frank Meszaros, 43, standing next to the closed bridge that kept him from returning home.
Chris Delman, 30, saw a photograph of his house in a local newspaper Wednesday, noticing it was still standing.
"We ain't living in Seaside no more, that's obvious," Delman said. "I just want to know what I have left."
(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus throughout the U.S. Northeast; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Doina Chiacu)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook's new go-to management team of mostly familiar faces failed to drum up much excitement on Wall Street, driving its shares to a three-month low on Wednesday.
The world's most valuable technology company, which had faced questions about a visionary-leadership vacuum following the death of Steve Jobs, on Monday stunned investors by announcing the ouster of chief mobile software architect Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett -- the latter after six months on the job.
Cook gave most of Forstall's responsibilities to Macintosh software chief Craig Federighi, while some parts of the job went to Internet chief Eddy Cue and celebrated designer Jony Ive.
But the loss of the 15-year veteran and Jobs's confidant Forstall, and resurgent talk about internal conflicts, exacerbated uncertainty over whether Cook and his lieutenants have what it takes to devise and market the next ground-breaking, industry-disrupting product.
Apple shares ended the day down 1.4 percent at 595.32. They have shed a tenth of their value this month -- the biggest monthly loss since late 2008, and have headed south since touching an all-time high of $705 in September.
For investors, the management upheaval from a company that usually excels at delivering positive surprises represents the latest reason for unease about the future of a company now more valuable than almost any other company in the world.
Apple undershot analysts targets in its fiscal third quarter, the second straight disappointment. Its latest Maps software was met with widespread frustration and ridicule over glaring mistakes. Sources told Reuters that Forstall and Cook disagreed over the need to publicly apologize for its maps service embarrassment.
And this month, Apple entered the small-tablet market with its iPad mini, lagging Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc despite pioneering the tablet market in 2010.
Investor concerns now center around the demand, availability and profitability of new products, including the iPad mini set to hit stores on Friday.
"The sudden departure of Scott Forstall doesn't help," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee. "Now there's some uncertainty in the management."
"There appears to be some infighting, post-Steve Jobs, and looks like Cook is putting his foot down and unifying the troops."
Apple declined to comment beyond Monday's announcement.
Against that backdrop, Cook's inner circle has some convincing to do. In the wake of Forstall's exit, iTunes maestro Eddy Cue -- dubbed "Mr Fixit", the sources say -- gets his second promotion in a year, taking on an expanded portfolio of all online services, including Siri and Maps.
The affable executive with a tough negotiating streak who, according to documents revealed in court, lobbied Jobs aggressively and finally convinced the late visionary about the need for a smaller-sized tablet, has become a central figure: a versatile problem-solver for the company.
Ive, the British-born award-winning designer credited with pushing the boundaries of engineering with the iPod and iPhone, now extends his skills into the software realm with the lead on user interface.
Marketing guru Schiller continues in his role, while career engineer Mansfield canceled his retirement to stay on and lead wireless and semiconductor teams. Then there's Federighi, the self-effacing software engineer who a source told Reuters joined Apple over Forstall's initial objections, and has the nickname "Hair Force One" on Game Center.
"With a large base of approximately 60,400 full-time employees, it would be easy to conclude that the departures are not important," said Keith Bachman, analyst with BMO Capital Markets. "However, we do believe the departures are a negative, since we think Mr. Forstall in particular added value to Apple."
TEAM COOK
Few would argue with Forstall's success in leading mobile software iOS and that he deserves a lot of credit for the sale of millions of iPhones and iPads.
But despite the success, his style and direction on the software were not without critics, inside and outside.
Forstall often clashed with other executives, said a person familiar with him, adding he sometimes tended to over-promise and under-deliver on features. Now, Federighi, Ive and Cue have the opportunity to develop the look, feel and engineering of the all-important software that runs iPhones and iPads.
Cue, who rose to prominence by building and fostering iTunes and the app store, has the tough job of fixing and improving Maps, unveiled with much fanfare by Forstall in June, but it was found full of missing information and wrongly marked sites.
The Duke University alum and Blue Devils basketball fan -- he has been seen courtside with players -- is deemed the right person to accomplish this, given his track record on fixing services and products that initially don't do well.
The 23-year veteran turned around the short-lived MobileMe storage service after revamping and wrapping it into the reasonably well-received iCloud offering.
"Eddy is certainly a person who gets thrown a lot of stuff to ‘go make it work' as he's very used to dealing with partners," said a person familiar with Cue. The person said Cue was suited to fixing Maps given the need to work with partners such as TomTom and business listings provider Yelp.
Cue's affable charm and years of dealing with entertainment companies may come in handy as he also tries to improve voice-enabled digital assistant Siri. He has climbed the ladder rapidly in the past five years and was promoted to senior vice president last September, shortly after Cook took over as CEO.
Both Cue and Cook will work more closely with Federighi, who spent a decade in enterprise software before rejoining Apple in 2009, taking over Mac software after the legendary Bertrand Serlet left the company in March last year
Federighi was instrumental in bringing popular mobile features such as notifications and Facebook integration onto the latest Mac operating system Mountain Lion, which was downloaded on 3 million machines in four days.
The former CTO of business software company Ariba, now part of SAP, worked with Jobs at NeXT Computer. Federighi is a visionary in software engineering and can be as good as Jobs in strategic decisions for the product he oversees, a person who has worked with him said.
His presentation skills have been called on of late, most recently at Apple annual developers' gathering in the summer.
Then there's Ive, deemed Apple's inspirational force. Among the iconic products he has worked on are multi-hued iMac computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone and the iPad.
Forstall's departure may free Ive of certain constraints, the sources said. His exit brought to the fore a fundamental design issue -- to do or not to do digital skeuomorphic designs. Skeuomorphic designs stay true to and mimic real-life objects, such as the bookshelf in the iBooks icon, green felt in its Game Center app icon, and an analog clock depicting the time.
Forstall, who will stay on as adviser to Cook for another year, strongly believed in these designs, but his philosophy was not shared by all. His chief dissenter was Ive, who is said to prefer a more open approach, which could mean a slightly different design direction on the icons.
"There is no one else who has that kind of (design) focus on the team," the person said of Ive. "He is critical for them."
(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by Edwin Chan and Ken Wills)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Ameridose, the sister company to the U.S. pharmacy linked to a national outbreak of meningitis that has killed 28 people, on Wednesday announced it was recalling all its products, in a move to cooperate with U.S. and state regulators.
The Westborough, Massachusetts-based company said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked it to improve its sterility testing processes.
The company said it had not received any reports of adverse reactions to the products it is recalling.
“Ameridose and FDA agree that the use of injectable products that are not sterile can represent a serious hazard to health,” the company said in a statement.
(Reporting By Toni Clarke, writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON (AP) — Brad Pitt has agreed to donate $ 100,000 to help the Human Rights Campaign raise money for its efforts to support same-sex marriage initiatives in several states.
The nation’s largest gay rights group announced Wednesday that Pitt agreed to match contributions from the group’s members up to $ 100,000.
In an e-mail to members of the Human Rights Campaign, Pitt wrote that it’s “unbelievable” that people’s relationships will be put to a vote on Election Day.
Same-sex marriage will be on the ballot in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota and Washington state.
The Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign says it has spent $ 8 million to push for marriage equality for gays and lesbians over the past two years, including $ 5 million in the four ballot measures this year.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian warplanes bombed rebel targets with renewed intensity on Tuesday after the end of a widely ignored four-day truce between President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces and insurgents.
State television said “terrorists” had assassinated an air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi, in a Damascus suburb, the latest of several rebel attacks on senior officials.
In July, a bomb killed four of Assad‘s aides, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and the defense minister.
Air strikes hit eastern suburbs of Damascus, outlying areas in the central city of Homs, and the northern rebel-held town of Maarat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo highway, activists said.
Rebels have been attacking army bases in al-Hamdaniya and Wadi al-Deif, on the outskirts of Maarat al-Numan.
Some activists said 28 civilians had been killed in Maarat al-Numan and released video footage of men retrieving a toddler’s body from a flattened building. The men cursed Assad as they dragged the dead girl, wearing a colorful overall, from the debris. The footage could not be independently verified.
The military has shelled and bombed Maarat al-Numan, 300 km (190 miles) north of Damascus, since rebels took it last month.
“The rebels have evacuated their positions inside Maarat al-Numaan since the air raids began. They are mostly on the frontline south of the town,” activist Mohammed Kanaan said.
Maarat al-Numan and other Sunni towns in northwestern Idlib province are mostly hostile to Assad’s ruling system, dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.
Two rebels were killed and 10 wounded in an air strike on al-Mubarkiyeh, 6 km (4 miles) south of Homs, where rebels have besieged a compound guarding a tank maintenance facility.
Opposition sources said the facility had been used to shell Sunni villages near the Lebanese border.
“WE’LL FIX IT”
The army also fired mortar bombs into the Damascus district of Hammouria, killing at least eight people, activists said.
One video showed a young girl in Hammouria with a large shrapnel wound in her forehead sitting dazed while a doctor said: “Don’t worry dear, we’ll fix it for you.”
Syria’s military, stretched thin by the struggle to keep control, has increasingly used air power against opposition areas, including those in the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Insurgents lack effective anti-aircraft weapons.
U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said he will pursue his peace efforts despite the failure of his appeal for a pause in fighting for the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.
But it is unclear how he can find any compromise acceptable to Assad, who seems determined to keep power whatever the cost, and mostly Sunni Muslim rebels equally intent on toppling him.
Big powers and Middle Eastern countries are divided over how to end the 19-month-old conflict which has cost an estimated 32,000 dead, making it one of the bloodiest of Arab revolts that have ousted entrenched leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
The United Nations said it had sent a convoy of 18 trucks with food and other aid to Homs during the “ceasefire”, but had been unable to unload supplies in the Old City due to fighting.
“We were trying to take advantage of positive signs we saw at the end of last week. The truce lasted more or less four hours so there was not much opportunity for us after all,” said Jens Laerke, a U.N. spokesman in Geneva.
The prime minister of the Gulf state of Qatar told al-Jazeera television late on Monday that Syria’s conflict was not a civil war but “a war of annihilation licensed firstly by the Syrian government and secondly by the international community”.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said some of those responsible were on the U.N. Security Council, alluding to Russia and China which have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad.
He said that the West was also not doing enough to stop the violence and that the United States would be in “paralysis” for two or three weeks during its presidential election.
(Additional reporting by Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
World News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (AP) — Two major airports reopened and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange came back to life Wednesday, while across the river in New Jersey, National Guardsmen rushed to rescue flood victims and fires still raged two days after Superstorm Sandy.
For the first time since the storm battered the Northeast, killing at least 61 people and inflicting billions of dollars in damage, brilliant sunshine washed over the nation's largest city — a striking sight after days of gray skies, rain and wind.
At the stock exchange, running on generator power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a thumbs-up and rang the opening bell to whoops from traders on the floor. Trading resumed after the first two-day weather shutdown since the Blizzard of 1888.
New York's subway system was still down, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo said parts of it will begin running again on Thursday. He said some commuter rail service between the city and its suburbs would resume on Wednesday afternoon.
Kennedy and Newark Liberty airports began handling flights again just after 7 a.m. New York's LaGuardia Airport, which suffered far worse damage and still had water on its runways, remained closed.
It was clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks that link them could take considerably longer.
More than 6 million homes and businesses were still without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Electricity was out as far west as Wisconsin and as far south as the Carolinas.
The scale of the challenge could be seen across the Hudson River in New Jersey, where National Guard trucks rolled into heavily flooded Hoboken to deliver ready-to-eat meals and other supplies and to evacuate people from their condo high-rises, brownstones and other homes.
The mayor of the city of 50,000 issued an appeal for people to bring boats to City Hall to help with the evacuation.
And new problems arose when firefighters were unable to reach blazes rekindled by natural gas leaks in the heavily hit shore town of Mantoloking. More than a dozen homes were destroyed.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie issued an order postponing Halloween trick-or-treating until Monday, saying floodwaters, downed electrical wires, power outages and fallen trees made it too dangerous for children to go out.
President Barack Obama planned to visit Atlantic City, N.J., which was directly in the storm's path Monday night and saw part of its historic boardwalk washed away.
Outages in the state's two largest cities, Newark and Jersey City, left traffic signals dark, resulting in fender-benders at intersections where police were not directing traffic. At one Jersey City supermarket, there were long lines to get bread and use an electrical outlet to charge cellphones.
Amid the despair, talk of recovery was already beginning.
Photo By Julio Cortez 20 hrs agoAs New York began its second day after the megastorm, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as people started returning to work. There was even a sign of normalcy: commuters waiting at bus stops. School was out for a third day.
The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan, and the Holland Tunnel, between New York and New Jersey, remained closed. But bridges into the city were open, and city buses were running, free of charge.
On the Brooklyn Bridge, closed earlier because of high winds, joggers and bikers made their way across before sunrise. One cyclist carried a flashlight. Car traffic on the bridge was busy.
The subway system suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, with floodwaters rushing into tunnels and stations and threatening the electrical wiring. Experts said the cost of the repairs could be staggering.
Amtrak trains were still not running in or out of New York's Penn Station because of flooding in the tunnels.
Power company Consolidated Edison said it could also be the weekend before power is restored to Manhattan and Brooklyn, perhaps longer for other New York boroughs and the New York suburbs. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers lost power.
The recovery and rebuilding will take far longer.
When New Jersey's governor stopped in Belmar, N.J., during a tour of the devastation, one woman wept, and 42-year-old Walter Patrickis told him, "Governor, I lost everything."
Christie, who called the shore damage "unthinkable," said a full recovery would take months, at least, and it would probably be a week or more before power is restored to everyone who lost it.
"Now we've got a big task ahead of us that we have to do together. This is the kind of thing New Jerseyans are built for," he said.
Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted it would cause $20 billion in damage and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15 billion.
In Connecticut, some residents of Fairfield returned home in kayaks and canoes to inspect the flood damage.
"The uncertainty is the worst," said Jessica Levitt, who was told it could be a week before she can enter her house. "Even if we had damage, you just want to be able to do something. We can't even get started."
In New York, residents of the flooded beachfront neighborhood of Breezy Point in returned home to find fire had taken everything the water had not. A huge blaze destroyed perhaps 100 homes in the close-knit community where many had stayed behind despite being told to evacuate.
John Frawley acknowledged the mistake. Frawley, who lived about five houses from the fire's edge, said he spent the night terrified "not knowing if the fire was going to jump the boulevard and come up to my house."
"I stayed up all night," he said. "The screams. The fire. It was horrifying."
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Contributors to this report included Associated Press writers Angela Delli Santi in Belmar, N.J.; Geoff Mulvihill and Larry Rosenthal in Trenton, N.J.; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, N.J.; Samantha Henry in Jersey City, N.J.; Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Hartford, Conn.; Susan Haigh in New London, Conn.; John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Conn.; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; David Klepper in South Kingstown, R.I.; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York.
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