Rockets hit Aleppo, killing at least 29: monitor


BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rockets struck eastern districts of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, on Friday, killing at least 29 people and trapping a family of 10 in the ruins of their home, activists in the city said.


"There are families buried under the rubble," said an activist called Baraa al-Youssef, speaking by Skype after visiting the scene in his Ard al-Hamra neighborhood.


"Nothing can describe it, it's a horrible sight."


Video footage posted by several activists showed a burning building and people carrying the wounded to cars to be ferried to hospital. It was hard to gauge the scale of the damage in the night-time footage but rubble was clearly visible on the ground.


Rami Abdulrahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three explosions shook Aleppo and reported at least 29 people had been killed. Another 150 were wounded, he said, and the final death toll was likely to be higher.


Youssef said 30 houses were destroyed by a single rocket.


On Tuesday activists said at least 20 people were killed when a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds hit the rebel-held district of Jabal Badro.


(Reporting by Mariam Karouny and Dominic Evans; Editing by Stephen Powell)



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NZ’s Telecom lowers profit guidance, sees job cuts






WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand’s Telecom Corp Ltd lowered its earnings guidance for the year and warned of hundreds of job cuts as the country’s biggest telecommunications company struggles to compete on broadband pricing and in its business operations.


The top-10 firm warned that ongoing restructuring would result in more job losses down the line and could see full-year adjusted earnings come in at NZ$ 1.04 billion to NZ$ 1.06 billion, lower than its previous forecast of flat to a low single-digit percentage fall from NZ$ 1.09 billion in 2012.






“It is pretty apparent that it will be well into the hundreds (of staff cuts) over the next few months,” Telecom Chief Executive Officer Simon Moutter told reporters, adding that it would announce details in May.


The job losses would follow roughly 350 cuts to date.


The top-10 firm’s adjusted net profit was NZ$ 162 million, slightly higher than market expectations as growth in its mobile business offset low margins on its broadband price plans, while fixed-line businesses also suffered.


Forecasts had been for profits of NZ$ 157 million, according to a Reuters poll of three analysts.


Profits were significantly down from NZ$ 240 million in 2012, reflecting significant one-off gains made last year from its demerger in late 2011, when it split off its fixed-line network operations into Chorus Ltd.


Telecom offers retail fixed-line and Internet services, using Chorus’s network but sells mobile services using the network infrastructure it retained.


It announced a dividend of 8 cents per share, down from 9 cents last year.


Despite Telecom’s downgraded outlook, its shares rose 1.1 percent to a session high of NZ$ 2.23, on optimism that restructuring will help the firm compete with Vodafone, in the broadband market after it bought Telstraclear’s operations last year.


“There’s some anticipation of the restructuring potential coming through,” said Shane Solly, portfolio manager at Mint Asset Management in Auckland.


But he added that Telecom could face a rocky future, adding, “The restructuring announcement will be very influential in how people consider the company going forward.”


Earlier this week Telecom said it would join Vodafone and Australia’s Telstra to build a submarine cable between New Zealand and Australia, offering increased capacity and speeds.


(Reporting by Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Kenneth Barry)


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Survivor's Whitney Duncan: From Secret Marriage to Divorce to Engagement!















02/21/2013 at 06:45 PM EST







Whitney Duncan and Keith Tollefson


Monty Brinton/CBS; Inset: Courtesy Whitney Duncan


Country singer and former Survivor contestant Whitney Duncan is engaged – and this time it's not a secret.

"I'm going to marry this man," Duncan Tweeted on Feb. 14 shortly after announcing her engagement to her fellow Survivor tribemate Keith Tollefson.

Duncan, 28, was secretly married when she met and fell for Tollefson, 27, on Survivor: South Pacific in the summer of 2011 but now the tribemates are headed down the aisle.

"He did good," Duncan wrote on Facebook along with a photo of her sparkling engagement ring of interlocking circles in a complex pattern.

Survivor's Whitney Duncan: From Secret Marriage to Divorce to Engagement!| Couples, Engagements, Survivor, Survivor: South Pacific, TV News

Whitney Duncan and Keith Tollefson

Courtesy Whitney Duncan

The "Skinny Dippin' " singer portrayed herself as single on the 23rd season of the CBS reality show, but she had actually been married to Donny Fallgatter, lead singer for the band KingBilly, since August 2010.

Fallgatter and Duncan had kept their marriage a secret from even friends and family until Duncan confessed her feelings for Tollefson to Fallgatter during a phone call made just before she returned from filming Survivor, a source close to the couple told PEOPLE in 2011.

The country couple's divorce proceedings were complete in November 2011 and now Duncan and Tollefson – a self-described environmentalist – are happily celebrating their impending nuptials.

"Thanks to everyone for the best wishes on mine and @whitneyduncan's engagement," Tollefson tweeted. "I know real original proposing on Valentines day ha."

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Flu shot doing poor job of protecting older people


ATLANTA (AP) — It turns out this year's flu shot is doing a startlingly dismal job of protecting older people, the most vulnerable age group.


The vaccine is proving only 9 percent effective in those 65 and older against the harsh strain of the flu that is predominant this season, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.


Health officials are baffled as to why this is so. But the findings help explain why so many older people have been hospitalized with the flu this year.


Despite the findings, the CDC stood by its recommendation that everyone over 6 months get flu shots, the elderly included, because some protection is better than none, and because those who are vaccinated and still get sick may suffer less severe symptoms.


"Year in and year out, the vaccine is the best protection we have," said CDC flu expert Dr. Joseph Bresee.


Overall, across the age groups studied, the vaccine's effectiveness was found to be a moderate 56 percent, which means those who got a shot have a 56 percent lower chance of winding up at the doctor with the flu. That is somewhat worse than what has been seen in other years.


For those 65 and older, the vaccine was only 27 percent effective against the three strains it is designed to protect against, the worst level in about a decade. It did a particularly poor job against the tough strain that is causing more than three-quarters of the illnesses this year.


It is well known that flu vaccine tends to protect younger people better than older ones. Elderly people have weaker immune systems that don't respond as well to flu shots, and they are more vulnerable to the illness and its complications, including pneumonia.


But health officials said they don't know why this year's vaccine did so poorly in that age group.


One theory, as yet unproven, is that older people's immune systems were accustomed to strains from the last two years and had more trouble switching gears to handle this year's different, harsh strain.


The preliminary data for senior citizens is less than definitive. It is based on fewer than 300 people scattered among five states.


But it will no doubt surprise many people that the effectiveness is that low, said Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious-disease expert who has tried to draw attention to the need for a more effective flu vaccine.


Among infectious diseases, flu is considered one of the nation's leading killers. On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC.


This flu season started in early December, a month earlier than usual, and peaked by the end of year. Hospitalization rates for people 65 and older have been some of the highest in a decade, at 146 per 100,000 people.


Flu viruses tend to mutate more quickly than others, so a new vaccine is formulated each year to target the strains expected to be the major threats. CDC officials have said that in formulating this year's vaccine, scientists accurately anticipated the strains that are circulating this season.


Because of the guesswork involved, scientists tend to set a lower bar for flu vaccine. While childhood vaccines against diseases like measles are expected to be 90 or 95 percent effective, a flu vaccine that's 60 to 70 percent effective in the U.S. is considered pretty good. By that standard, this year's vaccine is OK.


For senior citizens, a flu vaccine is considered pretty good if it's in the 30 to 40 percent range, said Dr. Arnold Monto, a University of Michigan flu expert.


A high-dose version of the flu shot was recently made available for those 65 and older, but the new study was too small to show whether that has made a difference.


The CDC estimates are based on about 2,700 people who got sick in December and January. The researchers traced back to see who had gotten shots and who hadn't. An earlier, smaller study put the vaccine's overall effectiveness at 62 percent, but other factors that might have influenced that figure weren't taken into account.


The CDC's Bresee said there is a danger in providing preliminary results because it may result in people doubting — or skipping — flu shots. But the figures were released to warn older people who got shots that they may still get sick and shouldn't ignore any serious flu-like symptoms, he said.


___


Online:


CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr


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Wall Street ends lower on growth worries

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell for a second straight day on Thursday and the S&P 500 posted its worst two-day loss since November after reports cast doubt over the health of the U.S. and euro-zone economies.


But a late-day rally helped stocks erase some of their losses with most of the pullback concentrated in the technology- heavy Nasdaq. The move suggested investors were still willing to buy on dips even after the sharp losses in the last session.


In Europe, business activity indexes dealt a blow to hopes that the euro zone might emerge from recession soon, showing the downturn across the region's businesses unexpectedly grew worse this month.


"The PMI numbers out of Europe were really a blow to the market," said Jack De Gan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. "The market was expecting signs that recovery is still there, but the numbers just highlighted that the euro-zone problem is still persistent."


U.S. initial claims for unemployment benefits rose more than expected last week while the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said its index of business conditions in the U.S. mid-Atlantic region fell in February to the lowest in eight months.


Gains in Wal-Mart Stores Inc shares helped cushion the Dow. The shares gained 1.5 percent to $70.26 after the world's largest retailer reported earnings that beat expectations, though early February sales were sluggish.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 46.92 points, or 0.34 percent, to 13,880.62 at the close. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> lost 9.53 points, or 0.63 percent, to 1,502.42. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> dropped 32.92 points, or 1.04 percent, to close at 3,131.49.


The two-day decline marked the U.S. stock market's first sustained pullback this year. The Standard & Poor's 500 has fallen 1.8 percent over the period and just managed to hold the 1,500 level on Thursday. Still, the index is up 5.3 percent so far this year.


The abrupt reversal in markets, which started on Wednesday after minutes from the Federal Reserve's January meeting suggested stimulus measures may end earlier than thought, looks set to halt a seven-week winning streak for stocks that had lifted the Dow and the S&P 500 close to all-time highs.


Wall Street will soon face another test with the upcoming debate in Washington over the automatic across-the-board spending cuts put in place as part of a larger congressional budget fight. Those cuts, set to kick in on March 1 unless lawmakers agree on an alternative, could depress the economy.


Semiconductor stocks ranked among the weakest of the day, pressuring the Nasdaq as the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index <.sox> fell 1.8 percent. Intel Corp fell 2.3 percent to $20.25 while Advanced Micro Devices lost 3.7 percent to $2.60 as the S&P 500's biggest percentage decliner.


The Dow also got a helping hand from personal computer maker Hewlett-Packard Co , which rose 2.3 percent to end the regular session at $17.10. The company was scheduled due to report first-quarter results after the closing bell.


Shares of Boeing Co rose 1.6 percent to $76.01 as a senior executive was set to meet with the head of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration on Friday and present a series of measures to prevent battery failures that grounded its 787 Dreamliner fleet, according to a source familiar with the plans.


In other company news, shares of supermarket operator Safeway Inc jumped 14.1 percent to $22.97 after the company reported earnings that beat expectations.


Shares of VeriFone Systems Inc tumbled nearly 43 percent to $18.24 after the credit-card swipe machine maker forecast first- and second-quarter profits well below expectations.


Of the 427 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results so far, 69.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters, according to Thomson Reuters data through Thursday morning.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.9 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


Berry Petroleum Co jumped 19.3 percent to $46.02 after oil and gas producer Linn Energy LLC said it would buy the company in an all-stock deal valued at $4.3 billion, including debt. Linn Energy shares advanced 2.8 percent to $37.68.


About two stocks fell for everyone that rose on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 7.64 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well above the 20-day moving average of around 6.6 billion shares.


(Editing by Jan Paschal)



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Cuban dissident blogger inflames splits in Brazil’s Congress






BRASILIA (Reuters) – Cold War politics appeared to take over Brazil‘s Congress on Wednesday during a visit by Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, with leftists heckling her as a pawn of U.S. imperialism and others praising her for standing up to Cuba‘s communist government.


Sanchez, Cuba’s best-known dissident, has been followed by boisterous sympathizers of the Cuban government since she arrived in Brazil on Monday on her first trip abroad since receiving a passport to leave the Caribbean island.






After the screening of a documentary about Cuba that she was due to attend in northeastern Brazil was disrupted by demonstrators, Brazilian opposition politicians invited Sanchez to the capital Brasilia for a showing of the documentary in Congress.


But her visit ended up exposing entrenched political divides in Brazil reminiscent of the Cold War, with those on the left hailing Cuba as a victim of U.S. aggression against communism while others praised Sanchez for fighting against political repression on the island.


“Mercenary, go to Disney,” shouted those opposed to her visit, repeating the Cuban government’s view that all dissidents on the island are on the payroll of its ideological archenemy, the United States.


“Down with the dictatorship,” yelled sympathizers who welcomed the blogger.


Sanchez, 37, was shielded from the protesters by congressional and Senate leaders of Brazil’s main opposition party, the PSDB, led by feisty Senator Alvaro Dias.


Dias has called on members of the ruling Workers’ Party and the Cuban ambassador to explain to Congress media allegations that the Cuban embassy in Brasilia has spied on Sanchez and distributed a “dossier” on the blogger as part of carefully orchestrated smear campaign.


An unperturbed Sanchez visited a committee room to see parts of the documentary, titled “Cuba-Honduras Connection,” that she had not been able to attend on Monday in Bahia state. The screening of the film, in which she is featured, was the main reason for her trip to Brazil in the first place.


“I dream of the day when we Cubans can express ourselves freely, and have a legislature where all opinions can be heard,” Sanchez told reporters. “The legislature of my country has a sad record. It has never said ‘no’ to any law proposed by the government.”


Sanchez’s visit touched a political nerve in Brazil, where the left-leaning government of President Dilma Rousseff is often criticized for not taking a more critical stance against Cuba’s one-party system and the repression of political dissent there. ID:nL1N0BJ08I]


Sanchez has won several international prizes for blogging about life in Cuba but has been unable to collect them until now. She began a whirlwind 80-day international tour on Sunday after she was granted a passport two weeks ago under Cuba’s sweeping immigration reform that went into effect this year.


In Brazil, Sanchez praised recent reforms undertaken by Cuban President Raul Castro but said they were too little.


(Reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Anthony Boadle)


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Oscar Preview: Les Mis, Chicago Casts to Sing & Dance









02/20/2013 at 07:00 PM EST







From left: Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, in Les Misérables, and Catherine Zeta Jones, in Chicago


Universal (2); Miramax


Strike up the band, for Sunday night's Oscars promise to be very musical.

In the most detailed preview yet of what is to be expected – and what isn't – the 85th annual Academy Awards producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron tell Deadline.com that their special tribute to the resurgence of movie musicals in the past decade will star Les Misérables nominees Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway with costars Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, Aaron Tevit, Samantha Barks, and Helena Bonham Carter; Dreamgirls Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson; and Chicago winner Catherine Zeta-Jones.

"What we don't want to do is play it safe," says Zadan about the show in general, admitting – repeatedly – that the job of producing it is "enormous."

So is the Oscar night orchestra: 60 pieces. Accompanying all those instruments will be:

• The previously announced Justin Timberlake, as well as Barbra Streisand, who's only sung on the show once before in her 5½-decade career (and that was 36 years ago)

• Golden Globe song winner Adele ("Skyfall" is up for Best Song) and "Goldfinger" diva Shirley Bassey, an Oscar newbie, who'll appear as part of the James Bond 50th anniversary tribute

• And the evening's host, Seth MacFarlane, who's been known to break into song on more than one occasion – such as when he hosted SNL.

Other reveals:

• "It's not going to be three hours but we will try to get it close to that," says Zadan. (There are 24 categories to recognize.)

• Six college filmmaking students will serve as Oscar presenters after winning a contest to be on the show.

• The 007 tribute will not feature a reunion of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig.

• MacFarlane's opening monologue is "clever and sort of unique … like a throwback to the days of Bob Hope and Johnny Carson," says Zadan.

• Streisand's number is being kept a secret, "but we love the speculation," says Meron.

The 85th annual Academy Awards will air live on Sunday, Feb. 24, on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Oscar Preview: Les Mis, Chicago Casts to Sing & Dance| Oscars 2013, Chicago, Les Miserables, Anne Hathaway, Barbra Streisand, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Daniel Craig, Justin Timberlake, Shirley Bassey

Justin Timberlake and Barbra Streisand

Justin Lane / Landov; Walter McBride / Retna

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Scientists use 3-D printing to help grow an ear


WASHINGTON (AP) — Printing out body parts? Cornell University researchers showed it's possible by creating a replacement ear using a 3-D printer and injections of living cells.


The work reported Wednesday is a first step toward one day growing customized new ears for children born with malformed ones, or people who lose one to accident or disease.


It's part of the hot field of tissue regeneration, trying to regrow all kinds of body parts. Scientists hope using 3-D printing technology might offer a speedier method with more lifelike results.


If it pans out, "this enables us to rapidly customize implants for whoever needs them," said Cornell biomedical engineer Lawrence Bonassar, who co-authored the research published online in the journal PLoS One.


This first-step work crafted a human-shaped ear that grew with cartilage from a cow, easier to obtain than human cartilage, especially the uniquely flexible kind that makes up ears. Study co-author Dr. Jason Spector of Weill Cornell Medical Center is working on the next step — how to cultivate enough of a child's remaining ear cartilage in the lab to grow an entirely new ear that could be implanted in the right spot.


Wednesday's report is "a nice advancement," said Dr. Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who wasn't involved in the new research.


Three-dimensional printers, which gradually layer materials to form shapes, are widely used in manufacturing. For medicine, Atala said the ear work is part of broader research that shows "the technology now is at the point where we can in fact print these 3-dimensional structures and they do become functional over time."


Today, people who need a new ear often turn to prosthetics that require a rod to fasten to the head. For children, doctors sometimes fashion a new ear from the stiffer cartilage surrounding ribs, but it's a big operation. Spector said the end result seldom looks completely natural. Hence the quest to use a patient's own cells to grow a replacement ear.


The Cornell team started with a 3-D camera that rapidly rotates around a child's head for a picture of the existing ear to match. It beams the ear's geometry into a computer, without the mess of a traditional mold or the radiation if CT scans were used to measure ear anatomy.


"Kids aren't afraid of it," said Bonassar, who used his then-5-year-old twin daughters' healthy ears as models.


From that image, the 3-D printer produced a soft mold of the ear. Bonassar injected it with a special collagen gel that's full of cow cells that produce cartilage — forming a scaffolding. Over the next few weeks, cartilage grew to replace the collagen. At three months, it appeared to be a flexible and workable outer ear, the study concluded.


Now Bonassar's team can do the process even faster by using the living cells in that collagen gel as the printer's "ink." The 3-D technology directly layers the gel into just the right ear shape for cartilage to cover, without having to make a mold first.


The next step is to use a patient's own cells in the 3-D printing process. Spector, a reconstructive surgeon, is focusing on children born without a fully developed external ear, a condition called microtia. They have some ear cartilage-producing cells in that tissue, just not enough. So he's experimenting with ways to boost those cells in the lab, "so we can grow enough of them from that patient to make an ear," he explained.


That hurdle aside, cartilage may be the tissue most amenable to growing with the help of 3-D printing technology, he said. That's because cartilage doesn't need blood vessels growing inside it to survive.


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Wall Street ends down sharply after Fed minutes

(Reuters) - And the Oscar for best pickup line in a movie goes to - Audrey Hepburn in the romantic thriller, "Charade." That's according to the results from women polled by the U.K.-based dating site Badoo.com and released on Wednesday before the Academy Awards on Sunday. "I don't bite you know ... unless it's called for," Hepburn told Cary Grant in the 1963 release, and, 50 years later, women still chose it first. Men, however, had different ideas. They favored this Bette Davis line from the 1932 movie, "The Cabin in the Cotton," - "I'd love to kiss you, but I just washed my hair. ...
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French general urges EU to equip "impoverished" Mali army


BAMAKO, Mali (Reuters) - The European Union should complement a mission to train Mali's army, routed by rebels last year, by providing equipment from uniforms to vehicles and communications technology, a French general said on Wednesday.


General Francois Lecointre, appointed to head the EU training mission to Mali (EUTM) that was formally launched this week, said in Bamako equipping the "very impoverished" and disorganized Malian army was as important as training it.


Europe, along with the United States, has backed the French-led military intervention in Mali which since January 11 has driven al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents out of the main northern towns into remote mountains near Algeria's border.


European governments have ruled out sending combat troops to join French and African soldiers pursuing the Islamist rebels.


But the EU is providing a 500-strong multinational training force that will give military instruction to Malian soldiers for an initial period of 15 months at an estimated cost of 12.3 million euros ($16.45 million).


While hailing what he called the EU's "courageous, novel, historic" decision to support Mali, Lecointre told a news conference the Malian army's lack of equipment was a problem.


"I know the Malian state is poor, but the Malian army is more than poor," the French general told a news conference, adding that it urgently needed everything from uniforms and weapons to vehicles and communications equipment.


Last year, when Tuareg separatist forces swelled by weapons and fighters from the Libyan conflict swept out of the northern deserts, a demoralized and poorly-led Malian army collapsed and fled before them, abandoning arms and vehicles.


Mali's military was further shaken by a March 22 coup by junior officers who toppled President Amadou Toumani Toure, sowing division among rival army factions. Islamist radicals allied to al Qaeda later hijacked the victorious Tuareg rebellion to occupy the northern half of the country.


In a fast-charging military campaign led by Paris, French and African troops have driven the jihadists out of principal northern towns like Gao and Timbuktu, and are fighting the rebels in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.


HUMAN RIGHTS INSTRUCTION


Flanked by Mali's armed forces chief, General Ibrahima Dembele, Lecointre said he was disappointed that a meeting of international donors last month pledged funds for an African military force, known as AFISMA, being deployed in Mali, but included "very few" contributions for the Malian army itself.


"The European Union needs to invest today in the equipping of the Malian army and not just in its training," the general said, adding he would make this point strongly in a report to EU member state representatives early next month.


Asked how much re-equipping the army would cost, he said it would be "much more" than the 12 million euros of EU financing for the training mission, but could not give a precise estimate.


Starting early in April, the EU mission will start instructing Malian soldiers with a plan to train four new battalions of 600-700 members each, formed from existing enlisted men and new recruits.


Lecointre said the EU training would include instruction in human rights. Demands for this increased after allegations by Malian civilians and international human rights groups that Malian soldiers were executing Tuaregs and Arabs accused of collaborating with Islamist rebels.


The European training contingent is drawn from a range of European countries, but the main contributors would be France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain, EUTM officers said.


Mali's army has received foreign training before - several battalions that fled before the rebels last year were trained by the U.S. military and the leader of the March 22 coup, Captain Amadou Sanogo, attended training courses in the United States.


Dembele said U.S. training failed to forge cohesion among Malian units and he hoped the EU training would achieve this.


The United States, which halted direct support for the Malian military after last year's coup, could eventually resume aid if planned national elections in July fully restore democracy to the West African country.


Washington is providing airlift, refuelling and intelligence support to the French-led military intervention in Mali. ($1 = 0.7479 euros)


(Reporting by Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Jason Webb)



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