French Soldier Killed in Somalia Commando Raid

PARIS — As French forces continued air and ground operations in support of the government of Mali, French special forces failed early Saturday in a hostage rescue mission in southern Somalia.

At least one French commando died in the raid along with some 17 of the Al Shabab militiamen who were holding the hostage, whose fate is unclear, France’s defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said.

Mr. Le Drian insisted that the rescue mission, on the eastern edge of the continent, far from Mali, was unconnected to French military action against Islamist radicals who were threatening to seize more of Mali, but Islamist groups holding up to eight French hostages in northern Africa have threatened to kill them if the French intervene militarily on the continent.

The Somalia operation was carried out by the DGSE intelligence agency to rescue one of its own, an agent using the name Denis Allex, who had been taken hostage on July 14, 2009, from a Mogadishu hotel. He was working as a security consultant to the transitional government in Somalia, the French said.

The rescue operation, using helicopters, was a significant one that met “very strong resistance,” Mr. Le Drian said in a news conference. The fate of Mr. Allex is not clear. Mr. Le Drian said, speaking carefully, that “everything leads us to think that unfortunately Denis Allex was killed by his captors,” but it was clear that the French did not recover Mr. Allex or his body.

Mr. Le Drian said that Mr. Allex was in the location raided, and that 17 Al Shabab fighters had been killed in the operation.

In a statement later Saturday, the Al Shabab movement said that Mr. Allex was still alive and was being held in a different place, and that they were holding an injured French soldier. It was not possible to confirm the statement. The militant group “will give its final verdict regarding the fate of Dennis Allex within two days,” the group said in a statement in English linked to a post on its Twitter account on Saturday.

The movement also said that the raid was carried out at about 2 a.m. by five French helicopters in the southern Somali town of Bula-Marer and lasted about 45 minutes. “Instead of rescuing them, such ill-advised operations only further imperil the lives of the hostages,” the statement said. French military officials would not confirm those details or the name of the town.

Mr. Le Drian said that a French commando had been wounded and later died and that a French soldier was missing; the French Defense Ministry had earlier issued a statement saying that two French soldiers had died. Mr. Le Drian also said that the rescue operation had been planned for some time and had been delayed by weather.

The Defense Ministry statement justified the raid, saying: "Faced with the intransigence of the terrorists, who refused to negotiate for three and half years and who were holding Denis Allex in inhumane conditions, an operation was planned and carried out.” The statement also said that Mr. Allex was killed by his captors, but Mr. Le Drian was careful not to repeat that claim.

Mr. Le Drian also announced the death in the Mali fighting of a French helicopter pilot, Lt. Damien Boiteux. French airstrikes overnight drove back Islamic rebels from a key village, Konna, Mr. Le Drian said, and destroyed a militant command center, while attacking at least three different targets.

The rebels, who are said to have ties to various radical groups including offshoots of Al Qaeda, seized the largely desert region of northern Mali and have set up their own rule there in the last nine months. Their move toward the south prompted a call for French help on Thursday from the Mali government and the French military response on Friday, after France had repeatedly said that it would not get involved militarily except to aid African forces.

But the French tone changed quickly, and its intervention by air and ground troops found broad support in Africa and Western nations. "The threat is the establishment of a terrorist state within range of Europe and of France," Mr. Le Drian said.

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Britney & Jason's Love Story in 6 Sweet Shots

From a snuggle in the surf to a surprise engagement, see the former couple's most romantic moments

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Updated: Friday Jan 11, 2013 | 07:00 AM EST
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Flu season puts businesses and employees in a bind

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly half the 70 employees at a Ford dealership in Clarksville, Ind., have been out sick at some point in the past month. It didn't have to be that way, the boss says.

"If people had stayed home in the first place, a lot of times that spread wouldn't have happened," says Marty Book, a vice president at Carriage Ford. "But people really want to get out and do their jobs, and sometimes that's a detriment."

The flu season that has struck early and hard across the U.S. is putting businesses and employees alike in a bind. In this shaky economy, many Americans are reluctant to call in sick, something that can backfire for their employers.

Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. The only states without widespread flu were California, Mississippi and Hawaii. And the main strain of the virus circulating tends to make people sicker than usual.

Blake Fleetwood, president of Cook Travel in New York, says his agency is operating with less than 40 percent of its staff of 35 because of the flu and other ailments.

"The people here are working longer hours and it puts a lot of strain on everyone," Fleetwood says. "You don't know whether to ask people with the flu to come in or not." He says the flu is also taking its toll on business as customers cancel their travel plans: "People are getting the flu and they're reduced to a shriveling little mess and don't feel like going anywhere."

Many workers go to the office even when they're sick because they are worried about losing their jobs, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employer consulting firm. Other employees report for work out of financial necessity, since roughly 40 percent of U.S. workers don't get paid if they are out sick. Some simply have a strong work ethic and feel obligated to show up.

Flu season typically costs employers $10.4 billion for hospitalization and doctor's office visits, according to the CDC. That does not include the costs of lost productivity from absences.

At Carriage Ford, Book says the company plans to make flu shots mandatory for all employees.

Linda Doyle, CEO of the Northcrest Community retirement home in Ames, Iowa, says the company took that step this year for its 120 employees, providing the shots at no cost. It is also supplying face masks for all staff.

And no one is expected to come into work if sick, she says.

So far, the company hasn't seen an outbreak of flu cases.

"You keep your fingers crossed and hope it continues this way," Doyle says. "You see the news and it's frightening. We just want to make sure that we're doing everything possible to keep everyone healthy. Cleanliness is really the key to it. Washing your hands. Wash, wash, wash."

Among other steps employers can take to reduce the spread of the flu on the job: holding meetings via conference calls, staggering shifts so that fewer people are on the job at the same time, and avoiding handshaking.

Newspaper editor Rob Blackwell says he had taken only two sick days in the last two years before coming down with the flu and then pneumonia in the past two weeks. He missed several days the first week of January and has been working from home the past week.

"I kept trying to push myself to get back to work because, generally speaking, when I'm sick I just push through it," says Blackwell, the Washington bureau chief for the daily trade paper American Banker.

Connecticut is the only state that requires some businesses to pay employees when they are out sick. Cities such as San Francisco and Washington have similar laws.

Challenger and others say attitudes are changing, and many companies are rethinking their sick policies to avoid officewide outbreaks of the flu and other infectious diseases.

"I think companies are waking up to the fact right now that you might get a little bit of gain from a person coming into work sick, but especially when you have an epidemic, if 10 or 20 people then get sick, in fact you've lost productivity," Challenger says.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Stobbe in Atlanta, Eileen A.J. Connelly in New York, Paul Wiseman in Washington, Barbara Rodriguez in Des Moines, Iowa, and Jim Salter in St. Louis contributed to this report.

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India Ink: Railway Fare Hike Announced

The Indian government said Wednesday that it would raise all railway passenger fares, which would be the first across-the-board increase in nine years, as it grapples with a growing fiscal deficit and weak finances.

Rail passengers will have to pay 10 to 25 percent more, depending on fare class, under the government’s plan, which is expected take effect Jan. 21. Pawan Kumar Bansal, the railways minister, said the higher fares will generate 66 billion rupees ($1.2 billion) in one year for the strained railway system. “Facilities and safety measures will improve with an increase in fares,” he told reporters.

The move comes as part of a series of fiscal changes initiated in September, including an increase in fuel prices and an opening of the retail sector to foreign investment. In October, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram announced a fiscal road map designed to cap the national deficit for this financial year at 5.3 percent of the gross domestic product.

The fare increase was welcomed by analysts. “This announcement signals the willingness of New Delhi to take politically unpopular decisions to put the economy in order,” said Sujan Hajra, chief economist at Anand Rathi Financial Services. “Even if these measures are not particularly populist, the government is now ready to bite the bullet for improving the fiscal situation.”

However, the government’s plan has already been greeted with some resistance from the opposition parties. “The near 20 percent hike in fares has dealt a big blow to the common man, who is already reeling under high inflation,” said the spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party, Ravi Shankar Prasad, according to the Press Trust of India.

Increasing the railway passenger fares has always been a politically sensitive issue, with critics saying that the move that will harm the poorest of the poor, who will not be able to afford higher prices.

Although fares for freight and higher-class travel have seen increases, a lack of political support has kept railways ministers from successfully pushing up passenger fares across the board since 2004. In fact, as Vikas Bajaj of The New York Times noted, adjusted for inflation, railway ticket prices have fallen about 48 percent in the past nine years.

In March 2012, the former railways minister Dinesh Trivedi proposed raising fares, citing a required improvement in safety and modernization of the railways. He was almost immediately dismissed from his position by the West Bengal chief minister and his boss, Mamata Banerjee, who said the fare increase was unacceptable.

Speaking with India Ink shortly after his dismissal, Mr. Trivedi said, “There is too much politics in rail and a trend to discourage any kind of modernization and it is a sad story. If the railway is not robust, the economy of India will not grow.”

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HP Cloud Ushers in 2013 and GA Compute Service with Reduced Pricing

HP Cloud Services is continuously working to increase efficiency in our datacenters, so we can pass these efforts along to our customers via enhanced enterprise-class service and/or lower prices.  As a result, HP Cloud Services is starting the New Year by permanently lowering the prices on Linux instances of HP Cloud Compute by 12.5% and Object Storage by as much as 25%. 

Furthermore, to celebrate our Compute service’s move to General Availability (GA), we are offering a time-limited 40% discount on all Windows and Linux instances until March 31st, 2013.  We’re doing this to make it even easier for new and existing customers to try our new GA service and perform their initial integration work. You can read more about our differentiated, industry-leading SLA at “Under the Hood of HP Cloud Services SLAs” and about what we’re doing behind the scenes to actually deliver on and surpass our SLAs at “How HP Cloud Services Became Enterprise Class.” 

It’s worth noting that we also recently moved HP Cloud Block Storage to public beta and added several major new features, including bootable persistent volumes and enhancements in volume backup to object storage, as detailed here.  HP Cloud Block Storage is being discounted by 50% while in public beta, so now is the perfect time to give it a test drive if you haven’t already!

You can sign up now to start exploring our enterprise-class cloud.  For ongoing news about our new services, pricing and special offers, follow us on Twitter @hpcloud, subscribe to this blog, and follow our Facebook page.

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What's Got Tom Colicchio & Gail Simmons Spinning Out of Control?

Caught in the Act

01/11/2013 at 06:00 AM EST

Tom Colicchi & Gail Simmons

Larry Busacca/Getty

From Top Chef to top cyclist!

Top Chef judges chef Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons kicked off 2013 on a healthy note by they visiting SoulCycle's Tribeca location on Wednesday.

"While Gail was upfront wearing a SoulCycle t-shirt, Tom was in the back wearing black shorts, an Under Armour tank and a do-rag," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.

The co-judges are no strangers to the cycling craze, the source adds. "They both spin on a regular basis" and "spin together regularly when they're filming Top Chef".

After powering through the last song of the class – Beyoncé's "Halo" – Colicchio stopped to chat with Food & Wine magazine publisher Christina Grdovic.

Here's to hoping for a Quickfire Competition on a bike!

– Lesley Messer

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Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard

NEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.

Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.

While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hot spots. On Thursday, health officials blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far.

Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.

"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low.

David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50-year-old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said.

Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.

"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.

Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.

"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed emergency room saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.

The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations. To deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, hospitals are restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.

One hospital in Allentown, Pa., set up a tent this week for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms. But so far "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.

On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, with the city's hospitals counting about 1,500 emergency room visits since December by people with flu-like symptoms.

All the flu activity has led some to question whether this year's flu shot is working. While health officials are still analyzing the vaccine, early indications are that it's about 60 percent effective, which is in line with what's been seen in other years.

The vaccine is reformulated each year, based on experts' best guess of which strains of the virus will predominate. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.

In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones skipped getting a flu shot this season and suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years. She was laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.

But her daughter got the vaccine. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.

Europe is also suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. Flu reports are up, too, in China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo. Britain has seen a surge in cases of norovirus.

On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC. That's an estimate — the agency does not keep a running tally of adult flu deaths each year, only for children. Some state health departments do keep count, and they've reported dozens of flu deaths so far.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Of the 20 children killed by the flu this season, only two were fully vaccinated.

___

AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.

___

Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

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Stock futures flat ahead of Wells Fargo earnings

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were little changed on Friday, a day after the S&P 500 hit a five-year high and ahead of earnings from Wells Fargo, the first big bank to report this season.

The Japanese government approved a massive $117 billion of spending to revive the economy in the biggest stimulus since the financial crisis, a move that boosted optimism about the global outlook.

Basic materials shares could be hurt after China's annual consumer inflation rate picked up to a seven-month high, narrowing the scope for the central bank to boost the economy by easing monetary policy.

S&P 500 futures dipped 1 point and were slightly below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 7 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 1 point.

American Express said it would cut about 5,400 jobs, or 8.5 percent of its workforce, as it restructures its business and pays legal bills.

Boeing's 787 Dreamliner jet suffered a cracked cockpit window and an oil leak on separate flights in Japan on Friday - the latest in a series of incidents to test confidence in the new aircraft. Shares fell 1.4 percent to $76 in premarket trading.

Best Buy shares fell 1.7 percent to $12.00 in premarket trading after it reported flat holiday sales at established U.S. stores.

The U.S. Commerce Department releases November international trade figures at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters poll expect a trade deficit of $41.3 billion in November against a gap of $42.24 billion in October.

At the same time, the Labor Department releases import-export prices for December. Economists forecast a 0.1 percent rise in imports and an unchanged reading for exports.

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia President Charles Plosser speaks on the economic outlook before the New Jersey Economic Leadership Forum at 9:30 a.m. ET (1430 GMT).

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Top Kurdish Militant Is Among Three Slain in Paris

Thomas Samson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Members of the Kurdish community in France protested on Thursday near the institute in Paris where three Kurdish women were found killed.

PARIS — Three Kurdish women, including a founding member of a leading militant group fighting for autonomy in Turkey, were shot to death at a Kurdish institute in central Paris, police officials said on Thursday, potentially jeopardize fragile efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the decades-old conflict.

News reports identified one of the women as Sakine Cansiz, a founder of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, known by the initials P.K.K. Another was identified as Fidan Dogan, the head of the institute and a representative of the Kurdistan National Committee. The third woman was Leyla Soylemez, a youthful Kurdish activist.

The women’s bodies were discovered shortly before 2 a.m. on Thursday, according to Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, a spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor’s office, and the antiterror department of the prosecutor’s office will oversee the investigation.

“No hypothesis can be excluded at this stage" about the motive for the killing, she said, declining to confirm the identities of the victims.

Earlier, a police official said the circumstances of the killings “could lead to the conclusion that this was an execution but inquiries will determine the precise nature of this drama.” Visiting the institute on Thursday, French Interior Minister Manuel Valls called the killings “intolerable” and said they were “without doubt an execution.”

Berivan Akyol, an employee at the Kurdish Institute of Paris, located in the 10th district of the city near the Gare du Nord railroad station, was quoted as saying the killings — which opened a new chapter in the often murky annals of Kurdish exile life — were “politically motivated.”

While Kurdish militants blamed Turkey, Turkish officials said the women could have been killed because of feuding within the P.K.K. Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the ruling party in Turkey, said the shootings seemed to be part of “an internal feud,” but offered no evidence to support the claim, The Associated Press reported.

Police officials said a murder investigation had been opened. The bodies and three shell casings were found in a room at the institute. The women were all said to hold Turkish passports.

The P.K.K. has been fighting a bitter guerrilla war against the Turkish authorities for almost three decades to reinforce demands for greater autonomy. The conflict has claimed some 40,000 lives. But, recently, Turkish officials have acknowledged that the authorities in Ankara have negotiated a tentative peace plan with the imprisoned P.K.K. leader, Abdullah Ocalan.

Turkey, the United States and the European Union have labeled the P.K.K. a terrorist organization, but sympathy for the group and its goals remains widespread in many towns in Turkey’s rugged southeast.

Restive Kurdish minorities span a broad region embracing areas of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and parts of the former Soviet Union. Regional turmoil in recent years has emboldened Kurdish separatists inspired by the example of Iraqi Kurds who control an autonomous zone. Turkey also fears that the civil war in neighboring Syria could strengthen the separatist yearnings of Kurds there, feeding Kurdish activism in Turkey.

The killings, which apparently took place Wednesday, inspired hundreds of Kurdish exiles to gather outside the institute onb Thursday, chanting “We are all P.K.K.” and accusing Turkey of assassinating the three women, abetted by the French president, François Hollande.

The bodies were first discovered in the early hours of Thursday by Kurdish exiles who had become concerned about the whereabouts of the women.

  The victims had been alone in the building on Wednesday and could not be reached by telephone in the late afternoon, according to Leon Edart, who manages the center. Mr. Edart, speaking to French reporters, suggested the victims may have opened the door to their killer or killers.

An organization called the Federation of Kurdish Associations in France, representing many of the estimated 150,000 Kurdish exiles in the country, said in a statement that the women might have been killed on Wednesday afternoon with weapons equipped with silencers.

Scott Sayare reported from Paris, Alan Cowell from London and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.

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Could Alex Jones’s “revolution” actually happen?

Piers Morgan had it easy. Radio show host and author Alex Jones threatened the rest of us with a ”revolution” if the government decides to confiscate guns from the homes and glove compartments of law-abiding Americans. It’s almost too easy to dismiss Jones as a fringe figure, especially since fringe ideas make their way into the mainstream with (exciting? alarming?) frequency these days. So let’s take him seriously.

Let’s accept his premise. Actually, let’s dismiss it first but then turn around and accept it for the sake of argument. The government has not the means nor the mechanism nor the credibility to confiscate 100,000 guns, much less 600,000,000. And those in the government doing the confiscating would be neighbors and relatives of the confiscatory victims: police officers, national guard members, Army reservists. Of course, Jones might say that their intent is bad enough. But “they” — the Obama administration, I assume — have no such intentions, and never did.

But OK. Let’s say that the government tries to confiscate guns and “the people” attempt to revolt.  No doubt that civil disobedience can spring up rather spontaneously and even be organized very quickly, but if rioting were to somehow break out in American cities, it would be isolated and theoretically containable. Organizing a “revolt” would require extensive planning, including the massive transportation of citizens from their homes to wherever the rally points were, a communications infrastructure, and leaders. The same Open Source culture that would make it difficult for the government to plan a confiscation in secret makes it just as unlikely for citizens to plan a feasible response to that confiscation in secret.

One of Jones’s obsessions, which, I confess, I share, is the militarization of the American homeland, and he is not promulgating a conspiracy here. The military has expanded its presence on American soil, and crucially, has expanded the way it is organized to respond to mass contingency events of any kind, including natural disasters and rioting. The U.S. Northern Command does receive intelligence briefings about domestic disturbances from the FBI and DHS, so commanders would be somewhat prepared to deploy troops. Thousands would come from the standing Army, but the bulk would be drawn from state National Guard detachments. It is exceedingly difficult to picture weekend warriors following blind orders en masse to detain or harm U.S. citizens when local police resources are stretched. The government has the power of command and control, but the people have the power of fellow-feeling. The government’s response to any real revolt would probably be quite restrained. There’d be too much attention paid to every movement of every tank to act harshly. The strategy to contain any “revolt” might therefore depend on a period of people letting out their energies and then returning to their normal business. 

Ah, but what if the government controls the communication nodes?  Well, corporations do; I assume Jones would have them immediately bend to a secret executive order shutting down serves and clouds and services like Twitter, but even if corporations agreed to do this, together, it would take days to get even a fraction of the telecom infrastructure offline. Maybe the government would order a mass power outage. But that’s why so many Americans have generators in the first place!  Although government “boards” comprising major telecom and infrastructure executives do exist, the most they’ve ever contemplated doing is to shut down a narrow slice of an infected communications node. These days, they’re focused on the cyber threat.  In the early days of civil defense planning, when there were a few television networks an AT&T had its monopoly, the threat of a government takeover of TV, radio and telephones was technically feasible. Today it is not. Actually, it does not make sense. What’s turned on really cannot be turned off.

But wait. if Jones’s “revolution” is to succeed, he needs to take over the government, because he’d need to dominate communications as well, unless he assumes that his movement would be organic and immune to arguments from elected officials asking for stability and calm.

An objective of anyone who wants to take over the government would be a seizure of the Emergency Broadcast System, which allows the President to speak to the nation through almost any mechanism of communication at any time. The EBS lives at Mt. Weather, the massive FEMA bunker in Virginia, but it can be activated and controlled from at least a dozen other places, including the briefcase of the Emergency Actions officer who travels with the President.  A coordinated violent action to seize control of this key portal would require an incredible amount of prior planning.

Assuming even that the government’s response to isolated-turned-mass rioting is uneven, the President would be able to address Americans anytime he wants. In theory, Jones’s followers could try to take over every broadcast entity in America, or could try and jam the broadcasts using sophisticated electronic warfare technology available to the military, but once again, the practicalities are not possible.

Because there will be no revolt over gun control, because there will not be and cannot be a mass confiscation of guns, playing with these ideas is fanciful and fodder for a sequel to Seven Days in May. Heck, we haven’t even addressed the FEMA concentration camps (which don’t exist).  But that isn’t to say that nothing discussed above will ever be relevant. It is much easier to imagine a small-scale revolt, a series of pre-planned violent protests against the powers that be, perhaps because the political system seems so non-responsive to the worries of people who listen to Alex Jones.  It would not take much to make Americans nervous about the government’s ability to restore law and order. And that frission itself is probably the most unknowable of all these factors.

Patriotic citizens aren’t supposed to speculate about these extremely unlikely events, but the government certainly thinks about them. So maybe we should too.

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Whoa! Check Out Taylor Swift’s Sexy Breakover!

Stylewatch
Style News Now

01/09/2013 at 09:30 PM ET

Steve Granitz/WireImage

Don’t worry about changing your relationship status on Facebook, Taylor, since this dress sends the message loud and clear.

For her first official appearance after breaking up with One Direction’s Harry Styles, the newly single star showed a side of her we’ve never seen at the People’s Choice Awards in L.A. on Tuesday night.

Clad in a plunging white gown with cap sleeves, plus turquoise danglers and an intense smoky eye, Swift created quite a buzz when she hit the red carpet.

PHOTOS: SEE MORE PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS RED CARPET STYLE!

Swift has been venturing away from her signature sparkly princess dresses and taking more fashion risks lately, but this is her most revealing look yet.

Now if only she could stay sans boyfriend long enough to keep up this sexy style streak … Tell us: Do you like Swift’s hot new look?

–Jennifer Cress

RELATED: TAYLOR SWIFT GETS KANYE’D … AGAIN!

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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US STOCKS-Futures gain as China data points to growth

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures rose on Thursday, alongside other risk assets, as stronger-than-expected exports in the world's second-biggest economy, China, raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy this year.

Data showed China's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown, even as demand from Europe and the United States remained subdued.

Adding to the bullish sentiment, Spanish benchmark government bond yields fell below 5 percent to a 10-month low on the back of a strong bond auction that raised more than the target amount.

S&P 500 futures rose 3.5 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 25 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 5 points.

Traders will also focus on the Labor Department release of first-time claims for jobless benefits for the latest week at 8:30 a.m. ET (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 365,000 new filings compared with 372,000 in the prior week.

The Commerce Department releases wholesale inventories for November at 10:00 a.m. ET (1500 GMT). Economists expect inventories to rise 0.3 percent, against a 0.6 percent increase in October.

Shares of Duke Realty Corp fell 4 percent in premarket trading after the company announced late on Wednesday an offering of 30 million shares.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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In Old Taliban Strongholds, Qualms on What Lies Ahead

LOY BAGH, Afghanistan — The battle against the Taliban in Helmand Province was so fierce two years ago that farmers here say there were some fields where virtually every ear of corn had a bullet in it.

Now it is peaceful enough that safety concerns were an afterthought during this year’s harvest. In districts of Helmand like Marja and Nad Ali that used to be Taliban strongholds, life has been transformed by the American troop surge that brought in tens of thousands of Marines three years ago. Over several recent days, a reporter was able to drive securely to places that in the past had been perilous without a military escort, and many of the roads were better paved, too.

So why, then, was it so difficult to find an optimist in Helmand Province?

In conversations with dozens of tribal elders, farmers, teachers and provincial officials, three factors loomed large: dissatisfaction with the Afghan government, the imminent departure of Western troops and recognition that the Taliban are likely to return. Few expressed much faith in the ability of the Afghan government and security forces to maintain the security gains won by the huge American and British military effort here.

Although some people said they believed that areas near the provincial capital would remain secure, beyond that there was little confidence, and many voiced worries that much of the province would drift back under Taliban control after the NATO combat mission ends in 2014.

Even now, with at least 6,500 Marines still in Helmand after a peak of 21,000 troops last year in Helmand and neighboring Nimroz Provinces, local people say the Taliban have begun “creeping back.” Residents report that threats from nearby militant commanders have increased, and that the Taliban are sending in radical mullahs to preach jihad in the mosques and woo the young and unemployed to their cause.

As fearful as residents may be of a resurgent Taliban, they are also angry at the government for what they see as widespread corruption and hypocrisy. Some of that anger focuses on bribery connected with government services, and some on policies relating to the opium trade, which still thrives here. Helmand is the supplier of more than 40 percent of the world’s opium, according to United Nations statistics, and the poppy crop is still the most profitable one by far. Even farmers who are willing to grow other crops are angry at officials who have eradicated poppy but failed to provide enough help with alternatives. Farmers say some of those same officials profit from the drug trade they profess to be fighting.

“Before the surge, the government in Helmand did not control even a single district,” said Hajji Atiqullah, a leader of the powerful Barakzai tribe in the Nawa district of central Helmand. “They had a presence in the district centers, a very small area, but the Marines cleared many districts, and they expanded the presence of the central government.”

Afghan forces now control his district, he said, but will not be able to hold it unless “the foreigners manage to get rid of corruption in the Afghan government, in the districts and the province levels.”

Local elders fear that many farmers, especially those impoverished by the government’s strict poppy eradication policies, will return to opium cultivation and look to the Taliban or other criminals for protection because the government has not offered them a satisfactory substitute livelihood.

“Before the Marines launched this big offensive, Marja was the center of the opium trade,” said Ahmad Shah, the chairman of the Marja development shura, a group of elders that works with the government to try to bring change here. “Millions and millions of Pakistani rupees were being traded every day in the bazaar. People were so rich that in some years a farmer could afford to buy a car.

“We were part of the eradication efforts by the government, and if they had provided the farmer with compensation, we could have justified our act. But the government failed to provide compensation, and unless it does so, the people will turn against us or join the insurgency and be against development, as they were during the Taliban.”

Part of the government’s rationale for poppy eradication was to starve militants of the opium profits that have been important to their finances. As opium cultivation was pushed away from the centers of the American troop surge, the Taliban made new allies by providing protection for farmers who moved their poppy cultivation to outlying deserts. Over the past few years, militants and opium farmers have increasingly found common cause.

A largely British-financed alternative crop program made significant headway at first in persuading farmers to switch crops, but few farmers could do as well as they had with opium.

Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.

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NRA, video game makers to meet with Biden gun task force this week

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The powerful gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, is slated to meet with Vice President Joe Biden as he considers recommendations on how to respond to a mass shooting last month in Newtown, Connecticut, the White House said on Tuesday.

After the Newtown school shooting, which President Barack Obama called the worst day of his presidency, he asked Biden to come up with a broad range of ideas to curb gun violence – ideas he will unveil in his annual State of the Union address, traditionally given in late January.

Obama has said he wants new gun control measures passed during the first year of his second term, but gun control is a divisive issue in the United States where the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution.

Biden’s task force is examining legislation that would ban assault rifles, but is also looking at the role of violent movies and videogames in mass shootings and whether there is adequate access to mental health services.

Biden and his task force are slated to hold meeting this week with victims of gun violence, gun safety groups, hunting groups, and gun owners, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.

“His group will also meet with representatives of the entertainment and video-game industries,” Carney said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will meet with mental health and disability advocates, and Education Secretary Arne Duncan is slated to meet with parent, teacher and education groups, Carney said.

The NRA has proposed armed guards in schools, an idea about which Obama has expressed skepticism.

The group’s top lobbyist, James J. Baker, will attend the task force meeting on Thursday, an NRA spokesman said.

“We are sending a representative to hear what they have to say,” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said in an e-mailed statement.

(Additional reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jackie Frank)

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Brooke Burke-Charvet Reveals Thyroid Cancer Surgery Scar

01/09/2013 at 07:25 AM EST

Brooke Burke-Charvet put on a brave face Tuesday morning, recounting the emotional distress she endured leading up to her thyroidectomy.

Managing to stay smiling, the typically upbeat Dancing with the Stars co-host, 41, told Good Morning America her initial diagnosis was "shocking," adding, "I never thought I'd hear the word 'cancer' in relation to myself. The [thought] in my mind when I [heard the news] is that I'm a mother, I've got four children, I've got a family counting on me."

Burke-Charvet's brood was very supportive of her health condition, but it was especially tough for her older daughter.

"It was in the news, and her friends had to come to her and say, 'Oh, we heard about your mom. We're so sorry,' " Burke-Charvet said. "She cried."

Now healthier, the TV personality has a permanent reminder of that tough time in her life.

"[There's] no makeup [on my scar]," she said, revealing her bare neck. "This is a first for me. I've been scarfing it up."

But a little scarring is now the least of her concerns.

"It's fresh, it's a month old and I think scars tell a story," she said. "And I think I'm so fortunate."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Global shares buoyed by Alcoa earnings, dollar gains on yen

LONDON (Reuters) - World shares staged a modest recovery from two days of losses on Wednesday after aluminum giant Alcoa opened the U.S. earnings season with an optimistic outlook for world demand.

However, with European and British central banks due to hold policy meetings on Thursday, the same day Spain will test demand for its debt and China releases its latest trade data, investors were in a cautious mood.

Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer in the United States, rose 1.3 percent in after-hours trade after it reported a fourth-quarter profit in line with Wall Street expectations and revenues that beat forecasts.

The results lifted Asian stock markets and pushed Europe's FTSE Eurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> up around 0.2 percent in early trade, leaving the MSCI world equity index <.miwd00000pus> up 0.1 percent. London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were flat to 0.2 percent higher.

U.S. stock futures were up 0.15 percent, suggesting a firmer start on Wall Street. <.l><.eu><.n/>

Corporate profits are expected to be higher than the third quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' estimates are down sharply from where they were in October.

"Expectations are quite low going into the earnings season as we saw a lot of downward guidance in the past few months. There is potential for an upside surprise to come through," said Robert Parkes, equity strategist at HSBC Securities.

SOVEREIGN DEBT TEST

In European fixed income markets German Bund prices dipped slightly as investors prepared for the government's auction of 5 billion euros' worth of new five-year bonds following successful debt sales in Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland on Tuesday.

Investors were also looking ahead to Spanish and Italian bond auctions on Thursday for the new year's first test of market appetite for peripheral euro zone debt.

The Spanish auction could also provide clues on the timing of a much anticipated request by Madrid for fresh financial aid from the ECB. [ID:nL5E9C46KK]

The dollar meanwhile climbed against the yen, moving back towards a 2-1/2 year high hit last week, on expectations of a much bolder monetary easing from the Bank of Japan at its next meeting later this month.

The U.S. currency was up 0.7 percent at 87.61 yen, above a near one-week low of 86.82 hit earlier in Tokyo.

"No one is going to want to be short yen going into the BOJ meeting," said Derek Halpenny, European head of FX research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Sources familiar with the BOJ's thinking told Reuters the central bank was likely to adopt a 2 percent inflation target at the meeting, double its current goal, and issue a statement with the government pledging to pursue bold monetary easing steps.

The BOJ will also consider easing monetary policy again this month, probably through a further increase in its 101 trillion yen ($1.2 trillion) asset buying and lending programme, the sources said.

The euro held steady against the dollar at $1.3080, with most analysts forecasting the European Central Bank will keep interest rates on hold on Thursday, though some believe rates will be cut later this year.

CHINA DEMAND EYED

Brent crude oil slipped around 0.3 percent to below $112 per barrel as the market awaited the latest trade data from China, the world's biggest energy consumer, due on Thursday.

"What we're seeing in the oil markets is the cautious sentiment playing up ahead of some key economic events this week," said Ker Chung Yang, senior investment analyst at Phillips Futures in Singapore.

However, iron ore jumped to its highest since October 2011, stretching a rally that has lifted prices by more than a third since December as China replenished stockpiles and as supply in the spot market remained limited.

Iron ore, a raw material used to make steel, has now risen 83 percent since falling to below $87 in September.

(Additional reporting by Nia Williams and Atul Prakash; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Videos of Chávez Promote Stability During Illness

Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

In Caracas on Saturday, Venezuelans showed support for President Hugo Chávez, who is in Cuba after an operation.

CARACAS, Venezuela — They run around the clock on state television, highly polished videos of President Hugo Chávez hugging children, kissing grandmothers, playing baseball and reciting poetry. As supporters around the world hold up hand-lettered signs that say, “I Am Chávez,” the president’s voice is heard in one of them shouting, “I demand absolute loyalty because I am not me, I am not an individual, I am a people!”

In reality, officials say, Mr. Chávez lies in a Cuban hospital bed, struggling through complications from cancer surgery while his country heads toward a constitutional showdown over his absence.

Mr. Chávez’s fragile health has thrown Venezuela into political uncertainty. After being re-elected in October, he is supposed to be sworn in for the start of his new term on Thursday, but the charismatic leader who has dominated every aspect of government here for 14 years may be too ill to return in time, much less continue in office for the next six years. Top government officials insist that the swearing-in is just a formality. The opposition, meanwhile, says the Constitution requires that Mr. Chávez be present or, in his absence, that a process begin that could lead to new elections.

The government’s television barrage seems intent on reassuring loyalists — and anyone who might raise questions — that Mr. Chávez is still very much the head of the nation. By keeping his image front and center, analysts say, the government can bolster its position as the caretaker of his legacy, mobilize its supporters for the battle over interpreting the Constitution and build momentum for itself in elections should Mr. Chávez die or prove too sick to govern.

“They have combined the mechanisms of left-wing struggle with the best marketing team there is,” said J. J. Rendón, a political consultant who opposes the government.

He compared the saga over Mr. Chávez’s illness to a telenovela, one of the popular Latin American soap operas, with its unexpected plot twists that keep viewers on edge. “They are always prepared for different scenarios,” he said of the government.

During past trips to Cuba for cancer treatment over the last year and a half, Mr. Chávez worked to maintain his customary visibility back home, heading televised cabinet meetings, making phone calls to government-run television programs and posting on Twitter.

But this time is different. He has not been seen or heard from since his surgery on Dec. 11.

To fill the void, the government montages combine elements of campaign ads and music videos, sometimes with the feel of a religious revival broadcast.

They are Mr. Chávez’s greatest hits, showing him on the campaign trail or in scenes from happier times during his many years in office, a nostalgic and emotionally charged way for his supporters to connect with their absent leader. Set to rock, rap or folk music, they mine parallels between Mr. Chávez and his hero, the Venezuelan independence leader Simón Bolívar, and resonate with the religious devotion with which some of his followers regard him.

In one, Mr. Chávez is seen reciting a favorite poem exalting Bolívar. Another shows glowing pictures of Mr. Chávez while choirlike voices sing, “Chávez is the triumphant commander, Chávez is pure and noble love.”

“There is a process of converting Chávez into a myth with religious roots,” said Andrés Cañizalez, a communication professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University.

The television spots, he said, are part of “a political strategy to keep alive this idea that Chávez is not just a political leader but he’s the father of the country, he’s a patriarch, he’s a figure who protects us, who takes care of everything for us, something more than a president.”

Many of Mr. Chávez’s followers already speak of him in religious terms, as a godlike presence, and the campaign seems intended to feed those perceptions.

María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.

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Galaxy phones power Samsung to record $8.3 billion profit

SEOUL (Reuters) – Samsung Electronics, the world leader in mobiles and memory chips, said it likely earned a quarterly profit of $ 8.3 billion, as it sold close to 500 handsets a minute and as demand picked up for the flat screens it makes for mobile devices, including those for rival Apple Inc products.

That run of five straight record quarters may end in January-March on weaker seasonal demand, though a strong pipeline of smartphones – the South Korean group’s biggest earner – and improving chip prices have eased concerns that earnings growth could slow this year, powering Samsung shares to record levels last week.

The stock closed down 1.3 percent on Tuesday, in a Seoul market that fell 0.7 percent.

“Investors are a bit concerned that Samsung’s momentum may slow in the first half. The smartphone market is unlikely to sustain its strong growth as advanced markets are nearing saturation despite growth in emerging countries,” said Kim Sung-soo, a fund manager at LS Asset Management.

Samsung has outpaced Apple – its biggest rival and biggest customer – despite the U.S. firm’s launch of the latest iPhone 5, with sales momentum boosted by its Galaxy Note II phone-cum-tablet, or ‘phablet’, in the fourth quarter. IPhone 5 sales were a little below expectations, analysts said.

While Apple rolled out just a single new smartphone last year globally, Samsung bombarded the market with 37 variants tweaked for regional and consumer tastes, from high-end smartphones to cheaper low-end models. By comparison, Taiwan’s HTC Corp released 18 models, Nokia 9 and LG Electronics 24.

HTC on Monday said its fourth-quarter profit slumped more than 90 percent as its sales continue to trail those of the Galaxy range and the iPhone.

Samsung, valued at close to $ 230 billion, gave its October-December earnings guidance on Tuesday, ahead of the full earnings release expected by January 25.

A HIGH NOTE

Shipments of Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S III, which overtook the iPhone 4S in the third quarter to become the world’s best-selling smartphone, are likely to have slipped to around 15 million in the last quarter from 18 million in July-September, analysts estimate, but sales of around 8 million Galaxy Note II ‘phablets’ should more than make up for that – pushing overall smartphone shipments to around 63 million.

“The Note was selling well, boosting fourth-quarter profit, while iPhone 5 sales were less than expected,” said Song Myung-sub, an analyst at HI Investment & Securities.

“Samsung’s profit will drop in the current quarter because of decreased phone profits. It will launch the Galaxy S IV only in March or April so, without new models, phone sales prices will fall this quarter. For the whole year, Samsung will launch new models faster than Apple and have the upper hand in the smartphone market.”

The new Galaxy, widely expected to be released within months, may have an unbreakable screen and full high-definition quality resolution boasting 440 pixels per inch, as well as a better camera and a more powerful processor.

“Samsung’s smartphone shipments are likely to grow even in a seasonally weak first quarter. The early launch of the Galaxy S IV would drive second-quarter growth momentum,” said BNP Paribas Securities analyst Peter Yu, who predicts Samsung’s 2013 operating profit will grow 25 percent to almost $ 35 billion.

Samsung is expected to increase its smartphone sales by more than a third this year, and widen its lead over Apple as it offers a broader range of mobile devices, said Neil Mawston, executive director at market researcher Strategy Analytics, which forecasts Samsung will sell 290 million smartphones this year, up from a projected 215 million in 2012.

Kim Sung-in, an analyst at Kiwoom Securities, sees Samsung shipping 320 million smartphones this year and doubling sales of its tablets to 32 million.

STRONG NUMBERS

Samsung said its October-December operating profit jumped 89 percent to 8.8 trillion won from a year ago, just ahead of a forecast for 8.7 trillion won by 16 analysts surveyed by Reuters. That is 8.6 percent higher than its previous record of 8.1 trillion won in July-September.

Analysts expect profits from the mobile division to more than double from last year and increase slightly from the previous quarter, to around 5.8 trillion won. A recovery in chip prices and flat screens should also boost component earnings, helped by booming sales of mobiles carrying Samsung’s chips, micro-processors and flat screens.

Reflecting the strong outlook, shares in Asia’s most valuable technology stock last week hit a life high of 1.584 million won ($ 1,500). The stock gained 44 percent last year, topping Apple’s 31 percent increase and easily outpacing a 9 percent rise on the broader Korean market.

Samsung, led by founding family member and chairman Lee Kun-hee, is embroiled in a patent legal battle with Apple globally. Apple won a $ 1.05 billion verdict against Samsung in August, but has failed to win a permanent sales ban on several, mostly older Samsung models.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee and Narae Kim; Editing by Ian Geoghegan)

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Fifty Shades of Grey Sparks Musical Theater Spoof

By Andrea Billups

01/08/2013 at 07:45 AM EST

Even with last year's runaway success, 2013 is already shaping up to be a 50 Shades of Grey kind of year.

A feature film based on the sexually charged book, which has sold 65 million copies around the world, is in the works for this year. And a musical spoof of the book, 50 Shades! The Musical, will open at New York City's Gramercy Theater on Friday, the New York Post reports.

The stage version is heavy with innuendo but scarce on nudity, unlike the book, which has drawn high praise and vicious criticism as "mommy porn" for its frank description of the bondage tinged relationship between Anastasia Steele, a student, and Christian Grey, her billionaire sexual provocateur.

The musical version is performed by Chicago's Baby Wants Candy musical comedy troupe and is slowly earning critical buzz. The show includes 11 original songs and pokes fun of the characters including the wealthy Grey portrayed with a beer gut.

The film version of the E L James book has been adapted for the big screen by British screenwriter Kelly Marcel, and leaves nothing to the imagination, she tells the Times of London, noting the movie will not be cast until after the script is complete.

Marcel says the script is so closely guarded she is keeping shredders at her Hollywood home to keep away those whom she says are going through her trash to hunt for clues.

"This isn't going to be Twilight. It's going to be raunchy." Marcel said. "We are 100 percent going there."

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Stock futures flat ahead of earnings season start

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures were little changed in low volume on Tuesday ahead of the unofficial start of an earnings season expected to show sluggish corporate growth.

Profits in the fourth quarter were expected to top lackluster results in the previous quarter, but analysts' current estimates are down sharply from where they were in October. Fourth-quarter earnings are expected to grow by 2.8 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

S&P 500 futures were up 0.2 point and slightly below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures were unchanged, and Nasdaq 100 futures were also flat.

Shares of Yum Brands Inc fell 5 percent to $64.50 in light premarket trading a day after the KFC parent warned sales in China, its top market, shrank more than expected in the fourth quarter.

ConAgra Foods Inc priced a public offering of 8.1 million common shares at $29.75 per share, the foodmaker said on Monday. ConAgra closed at $30.17 during regular Monday trading.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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IHT Rendezvous: IHT Quick Read, Jan. 7

NEWS Sounding defiant, confident and, to critics, out of touch, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Sunday used his first public address in six months to justify his crackdown, rally his supporters and leave recent efforts toward a political resolution of the civil war in tatters. Anne Barnard reports from Beirut.

A group of top regulators and central bankers on Sunday gave banks around the world more time to meet new rules aimed at preventing financial crises, saying they wanted to avoid the possibility of damaging the economic recovery. Jack Ewing reports.

Turmoil at a leading newspaper is posing an early challenge for the new Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, pitting pent-up demand for change against the Communist Party’s desire to maintain firm control. Ian Johnson reports from Beijing.

The French technology entrepreneur Xavier Niel has made a career of disrupting the status quo. Now his company, Free, has taken on Google and other Web companies by allowing its estimated 5.2 million Internet-access users in France to block Web advertising. Free is updating users’ software with an ad-blocking feature as the default setting. David Jolly reports from Paris.

John C. Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer, says he did not intend to harm national security, and he doesn’t think he did. But in a first, he is set to be sentenced to 30 months in prison for disclosing classified information to a reporter. Scott Shane reports from Washington.

A year after Muscovites took to the streets to protest the government and Vladimir V. Putin’s ongoing rule, the excitement that gripped many of the capital’s young professionals appears to be gone. But in its place is a deepening sense of alienation that poses its own long-term risk to the system. Ellen Barry reports from Moscow.

At first glance the willingness of Al Jazeera, the satellite network owned by Qatar, to pay some $500 million for Current TV, Al Gore’s struggling channel, seems like a vanity project. And it may turn out that way. But Qatar has developed one of the more energetic and sophisticated foreign investment strategies of the Gulf oil and gas producers. Al Jazeera’s expansion plan in the United States can be seen as part of its overall plan to put itself on the map. Stanley Reed reports from London.

A small plane carrying four Italian tourists, including the head of the Missoni fashion business, disappeared off the coast of Venezuela on Friday morning, prompting a sea and air search. Vittorio Missoni, 58, an owner of the family-run label famed for its zigzag knitwear, and his wife were aboard the plane, which was missing after takeoff from the island resort of Los Roques. Eric Wilson reports.

EDUCATION Millions of children in Indonesian elementary schools may no longer have separate science classes if the government approves a curriculum overhaul that would merge science and social studies with other classes so more time can be devoted to religious education. Sara Schonhardt reports from Jakarta.

More Western education institutions are looking to open up in Asia — and U.S. art and design schools are no exception. While the potential for growth is huge, given Asia’s rising creative industries, the actual logistics can be complicated. Kelly Wetherille reports.

ARTS The principal problem with many Web sites is that their designers were neither rigorous nor imaginative enough in planning the way we will navigate them. Alice Rawsthorn on design.

SPORTS The first weekend of the year has its own folklore in England as the time when small clubs can rise and knock the giants out of the F.A. Cup. Rob Hughes on soccer.

On Sunday morning, the long-dormant N.H.L. began stirring to life. The 113-day lockout was over, finished at 5 a.m. after a 16-hour bargaining session at a hotel in Manhattan, and across North America, the game began to awaken from its slumber. Jeff Z. Klein reports.

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‘Facebook Dead’: How to ‘Kill’ Your Friends

Rusty Foster discovered he was dead last week, at least according to Facebook. He had been locked out of his account, which had been turned into a “memorial page,” because someone had reported the Maine man as deceased to the social media site.

He tweeted Thursday, “Facebook thinks I’m dead. I’m tempted to just let it,” then “Did you know that you can report any of your Facebook friends dead & Facebook will lock them out of their account with no evidence needed?”

As one of Foster’s friends discovered, it doesn’t take much to convince Facebook that somebody is dead. By simply going to the ” Memorialization Request” page and filling out a form, including a link to an obituary, anybody can take someone else off Facebook.

The obituary needs to have the same name (or at least a close name), but doesn’t need to match any other details on the profile. The obituary Foster’s friend used to prove Foster’s death was for a man who was born in 1924 and died in 2011 in a different state than the one Foster lists on Facebook as his home state.

Foster, 36, said he never got any notification his account was going to be locked, and only discovered it when he attempted to log in. He filled out a form to report the error, and received a response that began with “We are very sorry to hear about your loss.”

More than a full day later, Foster’s account still hadn’t been unlocked. Buzzfeed, tipped off by Foster, posted an article in which one editor “killed” another editor, John Herrman, on Facebook. According to the article, about an hour after Herrman reported the error to Facebook, his profile was reactivated. About an hour after that, 27 hours after Foster first reported his erroneous death, he was “resurrected” by Facebook and allowed back into his account.

Foster does not know the total amount of time he was “Facebook dead.” He told ABC that nothing was different with his account when he logged back in, only that some of his friends had a little fun with his status.

“The only thing that happened was some of my friends posted little mock-eulogies for me, because word got around that I was locked out, due to a temporary case of death,” Foster wrote in an email with the subject line, “Rusty, the Facebook zombie.”

When pages are memorialized, they are removed from sidebars, timelines and friend suggestions and searches. This is likely to prevent people from seeing their friends who have died pop up on their newsfeed, and to prevent people from hacking into the accounts of dead people.

Foster said he understands the position Facebook is in when it comes to the death of one of its users, but believes there are better options for the social media site.

“There ought to be an email sent to the account’s email address informing it that the account has been reported dead and providing a link or something to dispute the report before any action is taken,” Foster wrote.

Foster said the most frustrating part was not being able to get into his account to “click the ‘I’m not dead’ button that should also be there.”

This has apparently been the same “memorialization” process since at least 2009, when another user took to his personal blog to write about his experience of being “Facebook dead.” In his case, the obituary his friend used to have him declared dead wasn’t even close to his real name. Instead, the man who performed the funeral services had a similar name.

In a statement to ABC News, Facebook said the system is in place in order to respect the privacy of the deceased.

“We have designed the memorialization process to be effective for grieving families and friends, while still providing precautions to protect against either erroneous or malicious efforts to memorialize the account of someone who is not deceased,” the statement reads. “We also provide an appeals process for the rare instances in which accounts are mistakenly reported or inadvertently memorialized.”

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Prince Charles Wants a Better Environment for His Grandchild

By Stephen M. Silverman

01/07/2013 at 07:40 AM EST

Prince Charles (foreground), with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

Allpix/Splash News Online

With his son and daughter-in-law the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge expecting a baby in early summer, grandfather-to-be Prince Charles says he's determined to be greener than ever – and deliver his future descendant a healthier world, not "a poison chalice."

Long a champion of environment causes, the heir to the throne, 64, told ITV’s This Morning show on Monday: "I've gone on for years about the importance of thinking about the long term in relation to environmental damage, climate change and everything else. We don't, in a sensible world, want to hand on an increasingly dysfunctional world to our grandchildren, to leave them with the real problem."

Saying "I don’t want to be confronted by my future grandchild and have them say, 'Why didn’t you do something?' " Charles went on to state, "So clearly now that we will have a grandchild, it makes it even more obvious to try and make sure we leave them something that isn't a total poisoned chalice."

Charles – recently named among the U.K.'s best-dressed gents – also spoke of his concern for son Prince Harry, 27, currently serving in Afghanistan.

"If you are a parent or relation to a loved one and that person is away in incredibly dangerous and challenging circumstances, I know you worry all the time," he said. "Certainly every night I worry. But he loves what he is doing and he's brilliant at it."

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Stock futures slip after stocks hit five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures fell on Monday, with markets expected to consolidate after the S&P 500 index closed at a five-year high on Friday.

Last week was the best for U.S. stocks in more than a year as a budget deal and economic data boosted investor confidence.

Financial shares will be in focus a day after global regulators gave banks four more years and greater flexibility to build up cash buffers, scaling back moves that aimed to help prevent another financial crisis.

By spurring credit, the easing of the bank rule may help support growth, boosting investments in equities and other risk assets.

S&P 500 futures dipped 1.3 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 13 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 1 point.

Walt Disney Co started an internal cost cutting review several weeks ago that may include layoffs at its studio and other units, three people with knowledge of the effort told Reuters.

Video-streaming service Netflix Inc said it will carry previous seasons of some popular shows produced by Time Warner's Warner Bros Television.

Major U.S. technology companies could miss estimates for fourth-quarter earnings as budget worries likely led some corporate clients to tighten their belts last month.

Amazon shares rose 2.3 percent in premarket trading after Morgan Stanley raised is rating on the stock to "overweight" from "equal weight."

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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