Syrian rebels kill 28 soldiers, several executed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Anti-government rebels killed 28 soldiers on Thursday in attacks on three army checkpoints around Saraqeb, a town on Syria’s main north-south highway, a monitoring group said.

Some of the dead were shot after they had surrendered, according to video footage. Rebels berated them, calling them “Assad’s Dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

The highway linking the capital Damascus to the contested city of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial center, has been the scene of heavy fighting since rebels cut the road last month. Saraqeb lies about 40 km (25 miles) south of Aleppo

In other developments, China put forward a new initiative to resolve the 19-month-old conflict, including a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing had made the proposal to international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi – whose own call for a truce over the Muslim holiday of Eid was largely ignored by both sides.

The United States meanwhile has called for an overhaul of Syria’s opposition leadership, signaling a break with the largely foreign-based Syrian National Council to bring in more credible figures.

A meeting in Qatar next week of foreign powers backing the rebels will be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Zagreb on Wednesday.

The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition, while Assad has counted on the support of Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China. International efforts to end the violence have all foundered.

More than 32,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad, an Alawite who succeeded his late father Hafez in ruling the mostly Sunni Muslim country, first broke out on city streets. The revolt has since degenerated into full-scale civil war, with the government forces relying heavily on artillery and air strikes to thwart the rebels.

CHECKPOINT ATTACKS

The army has lost swathes of land in Idlib and Aleppo provinces but is fighting to control towns along supply routes to Aleppo city, where its forces are fighting in many districts.

The head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman, said two of the attacked checkpoints at Saraqeb were on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. The third was near a road linking Aleppo with Latakia, a port city still mostly controlled Assad’s forces.

“The rebels will not stay at the checkpoints for long as Syrian warplanes normally bomb positions after rebels move in,” Abdelrahman said.

Five rebels died in the fighting and at least 20 soldiers were killed at the third site, including those shot after surrendering, he said.

The video footage showed a group of petrified men, some bleeding, lying on the ground as rebels walked around, kicking and stamping on their captives.

One of the captured men says: “I swear I didn’t shoot anyone” to which a rebel responds: “Shut up you animal … Gather them for me.” Then the men are shot dead.

Reuters could not independently verify the footage.

The Observatory said the al Qaeda-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group was responsible for the executions.

Islamist rebel units are growing in prominence in the war – a cause for concern for international powers as they weigh up what kind of support to give the opposition.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance. It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance.

Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.

China has been strongly criticized by some Arab countries for failing to take a stronger stance on the conflict. Beijing has urged the Assad government to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change.

“More and more countries have come to realize that a military option offers no way out, and a political settlement has become an increasingly shared aspiration,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.

He said China’s new proposal was aimed at building international consensus and supporting peace envoy Brahimi’s mediation efforts.

(Additional reporting by Ayat Basma, Laila Bassam and Dominic Evans in Beirut and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple rolls out iPad mini in Asia to shorter lines

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Apple fans lined up in several Asian cities to get their hands on the iPad mini on Friday, but the device, priced above rival gadgets from Google and Amazon.com, attracted smaller crowds than at the company's previous global rollouts.

Apple Inc's global gadget rollouts are typically high-energy affairs drawing droves of buyers who stand in line for hours. But a proliferation of comparable rival devices may have sapped some interest.

About 50 people waited for the Apple store in Sydney, Australia, to open, where in the past the line had stretched for several blocks when the company debuted new iPhones.

At the head of Friday's line was Patrick Li, who had been waiting since 4:30 am and was keen to get his hands on the 7.9-inch slate.

"It's light, easy to handle, and I'll use it to read books. It's better than the original iPad," Li said.

There were queues of 100 or more outside Apple stores in Tokyo and Seoul when the device went on sale, but when the company's flagship Hong Kong store opened staff appeared to outnumber those waiting in line.

The iPad mini marks Apple's first foray into the smaller-tablet segment, and the latest salvo in a global mobile-device war that has engulfed combatants from Internet search leader Google Inc to Web retailer Amazon.com Inc and software giant Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft's 10-inch Surface tablet, powered by the just-launched Windows 8 software, went on sale in October, while Google and Amazon now dominate sales of smaller, 7-inch multimedia tablets.

POSITIVE REVIEWS

Unveiled last week, the iPad mini has won mostly positive reviews, with criticism centering on a screen considered inferior to rivals' and a lofty price tag. The new tablet essentially replicates most of the features of its full-sized sibling, but in a smaller package.

"Well, first of all it's so thin and light and very cute - so cute!" said iPad mini customer Ten Ebihara at the Apple store in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district.

At $329 for a Wi-Fi only model, the iPad mini is a little costlier than predicted but some analysts see that as Apple's attempt to retain premium positioning.

Some investors fear the gadget will lure buyers away from Apple's $499 flagship 9.7-inch iPad, while proving ineffective in combating the threat of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, both of which are sold at or near cost.

Also on Friday, Apple rolled out its fourth-generation iPad, with the same 9.7-inch display as the previous version but with a faster A6X processor and better Wi-Fi. Both devices were going on sale in more than 30 countries.

Apple will likely sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPad minis in the first weekend, far short of the 3 million third-generation iPads sold last March in their first weekend, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

"The reason we expect fewer iPad minis compared to the 3rd Gen is because of the lack of the wireless option and newness of the smaller form factor for consumers," Munster said in a note to clients. "We believe that over time that will change."

Reviewers have applauded Apple for squeezing most of the iPad's features into a smaller package that can be comfortably manipulated with one hand.

James Vohradsky, a 20 year-old student who previously queued for 17 hours at the Sydney store to buy the iPhone 5, only stood in line for an hour and a half this time.

"I had an iPad 1 before, I kind of miss it because I sold it about a year ago. It's just more practical to have the mini because I found it a bit too big. The image is really good and it's got the fast A5 chip too," Vohradsky said.

The iPad was launched in 2010 by late Apple boss Steve Jobs and since then it has taken a big chunk out of PC sales, upending the industry and reinventing mobile computing with its apps-based ecosystem.

A smaller tablet is the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Cook, who took over from Jobs just before his death a year ago. Analysts credit Google and Amazon for influencing the decision.

Some investors worry that Apple might have lost its chief visionary with Jobs, and that new management might not be able to stay ahead of the pack as rivals innovate and encroach on its market share.

(Additional reporting by Mariko Lochridge in Tokyo, Stefanie McIntyre in Hong Kong and Miyoung Kim in Seoul; Writing by Noel Randewich and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Phil Berlowitz and Alex Richardson)

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Blake Shelton pulls off surprise win at CMAs

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Winning the Country Music Association Awards’ entertainer of the year is a top honor and always counted as a career high point. But for Blake Shelton it wasn’t even the most memorable moment of an amazing Thursday night.

“The Voice” star took home three trophies, including his third straight male vocalist victory, but nothing compared to sharing song of the year with wife Miranda Lambert. The pair wrote “Over You,” about the death of Shelton‘s brother Richie in a car wreck 15 years ago. He said that trophy will always have a special place in their Oklahoma home.

“For me as a songwriter that is as personal as I can get,” Shelton said. “So that songwriter award, song of the year award, it will have its own shelf. It will have spotlights on it and an alarm and everything. Trip wires and there will be a land mine if you walk towards it. It is a real big deal to Miranda and I.”

Shelton’s entertainer win was the biggest surprise of a night full of them. Even he couldn’t believe he’d won the award in a field that included Taylor Swift, Jason Aldean, Kenny Chesney and Brad Paisley.

“I didn’t think about that tonight. I was thinking there’s Taylor Swift right there,” he said of the two-time entertainer of the year. “Really, this is pretty dumb that there’s anyone else even nominated.”

The reality, though, is Shelton capped one of the most impressive career reboots in country music history with the win. About three years ago, he was searching for a hit or a gimmick that might return him to the top of the charts, without much luck. He scored a novelty hit with Trace Adkins called “Hillbilly Bone,” began a run of hits and then joined “The Voice” in a move that made him an instant celebrity outside the country world.

He hasn’t sold as many records as Swift, whose “Red” just moved 1.2 million copies in its first week, or as many concert tickets as Chesney or Aldean. But his leading-man looks, wicked sense of humor, Twitter presence and mellow baritone have made him one of country’s top stars.

While Shelton didn’t give himself much of a shot, Lambert — who also won her third straight female vocalist of the year award — thought he fit the definition of entertainer of the year after doing a little research.

“I realized that it just meant not only touring numbers, not only ticket sales or how much production you have, but the way that you represent country music within a year,” Lambert said. “The media that you do and the work that you do and the TV shows that you are on and how you represent yourself and how you speak out about country music. When you think about it that way, Blake Shelton deserved to win that trophy tonight.”

Shelton’s victory was just one of many surprises during the awards. Quartet Little Big Town joined Lambert with two wins apiece, taking home vocal group and single of the year for “Pontoon.” And Thompson Square’s Shawna and Keifer Thompson won vocal duo of the year, ending Sugarland’s five-year run in that category.

“Y’all, this has been a 13-year journey,” Karen Fairchild said as members of the group fist-pumped, jumped up and down and shouted on stage. “We’re living proof that if you work really hard and chase your dream, all the good stuff happens and it follows you. Nashville, you made us your band. Thank you for letting us do this.”

Like fellow outsiders LBT, Eric Church felt the love from the CMA’s voters for the first time. He won the prestigious album of the year for his breakthrough record “Chief,” signaling the North Carolina native’s complete acceptance by the country music community.

“I spent a lot of my career wondering where I fit in — too country, too rock,” Church told the crowd. “I want to thank you guys for giving me somewhere to hang my hat tonight.”

The awards went off-script early, and not just for Little Big Town. Thompson Square won in a category that’s been locked up by either Sugarland or Brooks & Dunn 19 of the last 20 years.

“Ever since I was 5 years old, I used to practice in the kitchen with one of my Meemaw’s Mason jars for this moment here,” Shawna Thompson said.

Hunter Hayes won new artist of the year, while Chesney and Tim McGraw won musical event of the year for “Party Like a Rock Star” and Toby Keith won video of the year for “Red Solo Cup.”

Church helped kick off the show by combining forces with Aldean and Luke Bryan. Playing with a large American flag behind them, the trio of performers teamed up on Aldean’s new single “The Only Way I Know” from his new album “Night Train” and earned a standing ovation. Each returned later to play singles, showing how large a market share they now own in country music.

Most of country’s top stars were on hand at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena for the celebration, with many slated to perform. Swift performed her somber new single “Begin Again” on a set with a picture of the Eiffel Tower and falling leaves in the background. She received an ovation of her own.

Shelton, McGraw and wife Faith Hill, Lady Antebellum and Keith Urban joined together to salute lifetime achievement winner Willie Nelson, ending with a group sing-along of his iconic “On the Road Again.”

Little Big Town performed their winner “Pontoon,” a song that was something of a departure for Fairchild, Kimberly Schlapman, Jimi Westbrook and Phillip Sweet. Produced by Jay Joyce, the song has a sharper groove than LBT’s previous efforts.

In a coincidence, Joyce also produced Church’s “Chief.” The hard edge he brought to both paid off all around.

Church said album of the year, arguably the CMA’s second most prestigious award, was a win that fit right in with his and Joyce’s philosophy.

“I still think in this day and time the only way to really get a fan base is you’ve got to give them more than one chapter of a book,” Church said. “They’ve got to read the whole book.”

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AP writer Kristin M. Hall in Nashville contributed to this report.

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Online:

http://cmaworld.com

http://abc.go.com/shows/cma-awards

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For the latest country music news from the Associated Press: http://twitter.com. Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nine more cases of meningitis reported in outbreak

(Reuters) – Nine more cases of deadly fungal meningitis were reported from an outbreak tied to steroid medications shipped by a Massachusetts company, bringing the national total to 377 cases, U.S. health officials said on Thursday.

No new deaths were reported on Thursday and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Virginia had revised down the number of deaths there to two from three, reducing the national fatality total to 28. The CDC gave no reason for the revision.

In addition to the 377 cases of meningitis, the CDC said there also were nine reported cases of infections after a potentially contaminated steroid was injected into a joint such as a knee, hip, shoulder or elbow, bringing the total number of infections nationwide to 386.

The steroid was supplied by New England Compounding Center of Massachusetts, which faces multiple investigations. Health authorities have said its facility near Boston failed to make medications in sterile conditions. A fungus was found in some of the vials of steroid produced by the company and bacteria was found in other drugs from the facility.

A sister company of NECC, Ameridose, on Wednesday recalled all of its products in a move to cooperate with authorities. The recall could lead to shortages of some drugs.

(Reporting by Greg McCune; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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New York City borough says help is slow after Sandy

NEW YORK (AP) — The mother grabbed her two boys and fled their home as it filled with water, hoping to outrun Superstorm Sandy.

But Glenda Moore and her SUV were no match for the epic storm. Moore's Ford Explorer stalled in the rising tide, and the rushing waters snatched 2-year-old Brandon and 4-year-old Connor from her arms as they tried to escape.

The youngsters' bodies were recovered from a marsh Thursday — the latest, most gut-wrenching blow in New York's Staten Island, an isolated city borough hard-hit by the storm and yet, residents say, largely forgotten by federal officials assessing damage of the monster storm that has killed more than 90 people in 10 states.

"Terrible, absolutely terrible," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said as he announced the boys' bodies had been found on the third day of a search that included police divers and sniffer dogs. "It just compounds all the tragic aspects of this horrific event."

The heartbreaking discovery came as residents and public officials complained that help has been frustratingly slow to arrive on stricken Staten Island, where 19 have been killed — nearly half the death toll of all of New York City.

Garbage is piling up, a stench hangs in the air and mud-caked mattresses and couches line the streets. Residents are sifting through the remains of their homes, searching for anything that can be salvaged.

"We have hundreds of people in shelters," said James Molinaro, the borough's president. "Many of them, when the shelters close, have nowhere to go because their homes are destroyed. These are not homeless people. They're homeless now."

Molinaro complained the American Red Cross "is nowhere to be found" — and some residents questioned what they called the lack of a response by government disaster relief agencies.

A relief fund is being created just for storm survivors on Staten Island, Molinaro and former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Friday. And Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Administrator Richard Serino planned to tour the island.

Four days after Sandy lashed the East Coast with high winds and a huge storm surge, frustration mounted across New York City and well beyond as millions of people remained without power and motorists lined up for hours at gas stations in New Jersey and New York.

In the city's Queens borough, a man was accused of pulling a gun Thursday on a motorist who complained when he cut in line at a gas station; no one was injured. And as the Friday morning commute began, long lines at gas stations in suburban Westchester County snaked along expressway breakdown lanes and exit ramps.

There were hopeful signs, though, that life would soon begin to return to something approaching normal.

Consolidated Edison, the power company serving New York, said electricity should be restored by Saturday to customers in Manhattan and to homes and offices served by underground power lines in Brooklyn. More subway and rail lines were expected to open Friday, including Amtrak' New York to Boston route on the Northeast Corridor.

But the prospect of better times ahead did little to mollify residents who spent another day and night in the dark.

"It's too much. You're in your house. You're freezing," said Geraldine Giordano, 82, a lifelong resident of the West Village. Near her home, city employees had set up a sink where residents could get fresh water, if they needed it. There were few takers. "Nobody wants to drink that water," Giordano said.

"Everybody's tired of it already," added Rosemarie Zurlo, a makeup artist who once worked on Woody Allen movies. She said she planned to temporarily abandon her powerless, unheated apartment in the West Village to stay with her sister in Brooklyn. "I'm leaving because I'm freezing. My apartment is ice cold."

There was increasing concern about the outage's impact on elderly residents. Community groups have been going door-to-door on the upper floors of darkened Manhattan apartment buildings, and city workers and volunteer in hard-hit Newark, N.J., delivered meals to seniors and others stuck in their buildings.

"It's been mostly older folks who aren't able to get out," said Monique George of Manhattan-based Community Voices Heard. "In some cases, they hadn't talked to folks in a few days. They haven't even seen anybody because the neighbors evacuated. They're actually happy that folks are checking, happy to see another person. To not see someone for a few days, in this city, it's kind of weird."

Along the devastated Jersey Shore and New York's beachfront communities, a lack of electricity was the least of anyone's worries.

Residents were allowed back in their neighborhoods Thursday for the first time since Sandy made landfall Monday night. Some were relieved to find only minor damage, but many others were wiped out. "A lot of tears are being shed today," said Dennis Cucci, whose home near the ocean in Point Pleasant Beach sustained heavy damage. "It's absolutely mind-boggling."

After touring a flood-ravaged area of northeastern New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie said it was time to act, not mourn.

"We're in the 'triage and attack phase' of the storm, so we can restore power, reopen schools, get public transportation back online and allow people to return to their homes if they've been displaced," he said.

In Staten Island, police recounted Glenda Moore's fruitless struggle to save her children.

Kelly said the 39-year-old mother "was totally, completely distraught" after she lost her grip on her sons shortly after 6 p.m. Monday. In a panic, she climbed fences and went door-to-door looking in vain for help in a neighborhood that was presumably largely abandoned in the face of the storm.

She eventually gave up, spending the night trying to shield herself from the storm on the front porch of an empty home.

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Associated Press writers Cara Anna and Karen Matthews in New York, David Porter in Moonachie, N.J., and Wayne Parry in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., contributed to this story.

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Mexico’s Day of Dead brings memories of missing

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Maria Elena Salazar refuses to set out plates of her missing son’s favorite foods or orange flowers as offerings for the deceased on Mexico‘s Day of the Dead, even though she hasn’t seen him in three-and-a-half years.

The 50-year-old former teacher is convinced that Hugo Gonzalez Salazar, a university graduate in marketing who worked for a telephone company, is still alive and being forced to work for a drug cartel because of his skills.

“The government, the authorities, they know it, that the gangs took them away to use as forced labor,” said Salazar of her then 24-year-old son, who disappeared in the northern city of Torreon in July 2009.

The Day of the Dead — when Mexicans traditionally visit the graves of dead relatives and leave offerings of flowers, food and candy skulls — is a difficult time for the families of the thousands of Mexicans who have disappeared amid a wave of drug-fueled violence.

With what activists call a mix of denial, hope and desperation, they refuse to dedicate altars on the Nov. 1-2 holiday to people often missing for years. They won’t accept any but the most certain proof of death, and sometimes reject even that.

Numbers vary on just how many people have disappeared in recent years. Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission says 24,000 people have been reported missing between 2000 and mid-2012, and that nearly 16,000 bodies remain unidentified.

But one thing is clear: just as there are households without Day of the Dead altars, there are thousands of graves of the unidentified dead scattered across the country, with no one to remember them.

An investigation conducted by the newspaper Milenio this week, involving hundreds of information requests to state and municipal governments, indicates that 24,102 unidentified bodies were buried in paupers’ or common graves in Mexican cemeteries since 2006. The number is almost certainly incomplete, since some local governments refused to provide figures, Milenio reported.

And while the number of unidentified dead probably includes some indigents, Central American migrants or dead unrelated to the drug war, it is clear that cities worst hit by the drug conflict also usually showed a corresponding bulge in the number of unidentified cadavers. For example, Mexico City, which has been relatively unscathed by drug violence, listed about one-third as many unidentified burials as the city of Veracruz, despite the fact that Mexico City’s population is about 15 times larger.

Consuelo Morales , who works with dozens of families of disappeared in the northern city of Monterrey, said that “holidays like this, that are family affairs and are very close to our culture, stir a lot of things up” for the families. But many refuse to accept the deaths of their loved ones, sometimes even after DNA testing confirms a match with a cadaver.

“They’ll say to you, ‘I’m not going to put up an altar, because they’re not dead,” Martinez noted. “Their thinking is that ‘until they prove to me that my child is dead, he is alive.”

Martinez says one family she works with at the Citizens in Support of Human Rights center had refused to accept their son was dead, even after three rounds of DNA testing and the exhumation of the remains.

“It was their son, he was very young, and he had been burned alive,” Martinez said by way of explanation.

The refusal to accept what appears inevitable may be a matter of desperation. Martinez said some families in Monterrey also believe their missing relatives are being held as virtual slaves for the cartels, even though federal prosecutors say they have never uncovered any kind of drug cartel forced-labor camp, in the six years since Mexico launched an offensive against the cartels.

But many people like Salazar believe it must be true. “Organized crime is a business, but it can’t advertise for employees openly, so it has to take them by force,” Salazar said.

While she refuses to erect an altar-like offering for her son, she does perform other rituals that mirror the Day of the Dead customs, like the one that involves scattering a trail of flower petals to the doorsteps of houses to guide spirits of the departed back home once a year.

Salazar and her family still live in the same home in Torreon, though they’d like to move, in the hopes that Hugo will return there. They pray three times a day for God to guide him home.

“We live in the same place, and we try to do the same things we used to,” said Salazar, “because he is going to come back to his place, his home, and we have to be waiting for him.”

Mistrust of officials has risen to such a point that some families may never get an answer they’ll accept.

The problem is that, with forensics procedures often sadly lacking in Mexican police forces, the dead my never be connected with the living, which is the whole point of the Mexican traditions.

“As long as the authorities don’t prove the opposite, for us they’re still alive,” Salazar said. “Let them prove it, but let us have some certainty, not just the authorities saying ‘here he is.’ We don’t the government to just give us bodies that aren’t theirs, and that has happened.”

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple's Cook fields his A-team before a wary Wall Street

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook's new go-to management team of mostly familiar faces failed to drum up much excitement on Wall Street, driving its shares to a three-month low on Wednesday.

The world's most valuable technology company, which had faced questions about a visionary-leadership vacuum following the death of Steve Jobs, on Monday stunned investors by announcing the ouster of chief mobile software architect Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett -- the latter after six months on the job.

Cook gave most of Forstall's responsibilities to Macintosh software chief Craig Federighi, while some parts of the job went to Internet chief Eddy Cue and celebrated designer Jony Ive.

But the loss of the 15-year veteran and Jobs's confidant Forstall, and resurgent talk about internal conflicts, exacerbated uncertainty over whether Cook and his lieutenants have what it takes to devise and market the next ground-breaking, industry-disrupting product.

Apple shares ended the day down 1.4 percent at 595.32. They have shed a tenth of their value this month -- the biggest monthly loss since late 2008, and have headed south since touching an all-time high of $705 in September.

For investors, the management upheaval from a company that usually excels at delivering positive surprises represents the latest reason for unease about the future of a company now more valuable than almost any other company in the world.

Apple undershot analysts targets in its fiscal third quarter, the second straight disappointment. Its latest Maps software was met with widespread frustration and ridicule over glaring mistakes. Sources told Reuters that Forstall and Cook disagreed over the need to publicly apologize for its maps service embarrassment.

And this month, Apple entered the small-tablet market with its iPad mini, lagging Amazon.com Inc and Google Inc despite pioneering the tablet market in 2010.

Investor concerns now center around the demand, availability and profitability of new products, including the iPad mini set to hit stores on Friday.

"The sudden departure of Scott Forstall doesn't help," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with Sterne Agee. "Now there's some uncertainty in the management."

"There appears to be some infighting, post-Steve Jobs, and looks like Cook is putting his foot down and unifying the troops."

Apple declined to comment beyond Monday's announcement.

Against that backdrop, Cook's inner circle has some convincing to do. In the wake of Forstall's exit, iTunes maestro Eddy Cue -- dubbed "Mr Fixit", the sources say -- gets his second promotion in a year, taking on an expanded portfolio of all online services, including Siri and Maps.

The affable executive with a tough negotiating streak who, according to documents revealed in court, lobbied Jobs aggressively and finally convinced the late visionary about the need for a smaller-sized tablet, has become a central figure: a versatile problem-solver for the company.

Ive, the British-born award-winning designer credited with pushing the boundaries of engineering with the iPod and iPhone, now extends his skills into the software realm with the lead on user interface.

Marketing guru Schiller continues in his role, while career engineer Mansfield canceled his retirement to stay on and lead wireless and semiconductor teams. Then there's Federighi, the self-effacing software engineer who a source told Reuters joined Apple over Forstall's initial objections, and has the nickname "Hair Force One" on Game Center.

"With a large base of approximately 60,400 full-time employees, it would be easy to conclude that the departures are not important," said Keith Bachman, analyst with BMO Capital Markets. "However, we do believe the departures are a negative, since we think Mr. Forstall in particular added value to Apple."

TEAM COOK

Few would argue with Forstall's success in leading mobile software iOS and that he deserves a lot of credit for the sale of millions of iPhones and iPads.

But despite the success, his style and direction on the software were not without critics, inside and outside.

Forstall often clashed with other executives, said a person familiar with him, adding he sometimes tended to over-promise and under-deliver on features. Now, Federighi, Ive and Cue have the opportunity to develop the look, feel and engineering of the all-important software that runs iPhones and iPads.

Cue, who rose to prominence by building and fostering iTunes and the app store, has the tough job of fixing and improving Maps, unveiled with much fanfare by Forstall in June, but it was found full of missing information and wrongly marked sites.

The Duke University alum and Blue Devils basketball fan -- he has been seen courtside with players -- is deemed the right person to accomplish this, given his track record on fixing services and products that initially don't do well.

The 23-year veteran turned around the short-lived MobileMe storage service after revamping and wrapping it into the reasonably well-received iCloud offering.

"Eddy is certainly a person who gets thrown a lot of stuff to ‘go make it work' as he's very used to dealing with partners," said a person familiar with Cue. The person said Cue was suited to fixing Maps given the need to work with partners such as TomTom and business listings provider Yelp.

Cue's affable charm and years of dealing with entertainment companies may come in handy as he also tries to improve voice-enabled digital assistant Siri. He has climbed the ladder rapidly in the past five years and was promoted to senior vice president last September, shortly after Cook took over as CEO.

Both Cue and Cook will work more closely with Federighi, who spent a decade in enterprise software before rejoining Apple in 2009, taking over Mac software after the legendary Bertrand Serlet left the company in March last year

Federighi was instrumental in bringing popular mobile features such as notifications and Facebook integration onto the latest Mac operating system Mountain Lion, which was downloaded on 3 million machines in four days.

The former CTO of business software company Ariba, now part of SAP, worked with Jobs at NeXT Computer. Federighi is a visionary in software engineering and can be as good as Jobs in strategic decisions for the product he oversees, a person who has worked with him said.

His presentation skills have been called on of late, most recently at Apple annual developers' gathering in the summer.

Then there's Ive, deemed Apple's inspirational force. Among the iconic products he has worked on are multi-hued iMac computers, the iPod music player, the iPhone and the iPad.

Forstall's departure may free Ive of certain constraints, the sources said. His exit brought to the fore a fundamental design issue -- to do or not to do digital skeuomorphic designs. Skeuomorphic designs stay true to and mimic real-life objects, such as the bookshelf in the iBooks icon, green felt in its Game Center app icon, and an analog clock depicting the time.

Forstall, who will stay on as adviser to Cook for another year, strongly believed in these designs, but his philosophy was not shared by all. His chief dissenter was Ive, who is said to prefer a more open approach, which could mean a slightly different design direction on the icons.

"There is no one else who has that kind of (design) focus on the team," the person said of Ive. "He is critical for them."

(Additional reporting by Alistair Barr; Editing by Edwin Chan and Ken Wills)

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“The Details” Review: airless all-star comedy is devilishly dull

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – The devil is in “The Details,” but only in that this smug and airless comedy feels like 91 minutes in hell. The first few minutes promise a Rube Goldberg whirligig of bad behavior, unhappy coincidences and plain old rotten luck, but all writer-director Jacob Aaron Estes (“Mean Creek”) can deliver is a group of jerks acting like jerks.

If there were any recognizable human beings on screen, this might have delivered the sort of squirmy, uncomfortable laughs that have sustained “Curb Your Enthusiasm” through multiple seasons, but the perpetrators and victims here are all such smug, dull caricatures that none of the intended satirical barbs have anywhere to land.

Tobey Maguire stars as Jeff, a doctor who’s seemingly got the perfect house and perfect nuclear family with his wife Nealy (Elizabeth Banks) and their young son. Unfortunately, their newly-sodded backyard attracts the attention of (metaphor alert!) raccoons. Things get worse when the couple tries expanding the house to accommodate a new child, since the noise, dust and code violations all stoke the mania of their crazy-cat-lady neighbor Lila (Laura Linney).

Over the course of the film, Jeff commits horrible acts (including cheating on his wife with two different women and accidentally poisoning one of Lila’s cats) and generous ones (donating a kidney to a friend in need), and Estes delights in showing the universe punishing and rewarding Jeff purely at random, with no connection to either his sins or his good deeds.

Estes fails, however, to write any real characters, so we have a cast of talented performers trying to breathe life into people with all the depth of chess pieces. Besides Maguire (whose tendency to recede into himself is in full effect here), Banks and Linney, there’s also Kerry Washington, Dennis Haysbert and Ray Liotta trying valiantly to be more than pegs in this plot (which is less elaborate than we’re led to believe) but ultimately they are given nothing to play, nothing to do, no one to inhabit.

Ultimately, “The Details” feels frenetic when it wants to be fast-paced, and facile when it aims for some grand statement about the randomness of existence and the bitter irony of the good falling short while the evil flourish. Rarely funny, never deep and consistently exasperating, it’ll have you cheering for the raccoons.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Insight: Crunching the numbers to boost odds against cancer

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Software engineers are moving to the fore in the war on cancer, designing programmes that sift genetic sequencing data at lightning speed and minimal cost to identify patterns in tumors that could lead to the next medical breakthrough.

Their analysis aims to pinpoint the mutations in our genetic code that drive cancers as diverse as breast, ovarian and bowel. The more precise their work is, the better the chance of developing an effective new drug.

Ever since James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA in 1953, scientists have been puzzling over how genes make us who we are. The confluence of computing and medicine is accelerating the pace of genetic research.

But making sense of the swathes of data has become a logjam.

That, in turn has created an opportunity for computer geeks and tech firms such as Microsoft, SAP and Amazon.

Oncology is the largest area of therapy in the global drugs market with market researcher IMS predicting it will increase to $ 83-$ 88 billion by 2016 from $ 62 billion in 2011. Computational genomics – using computers to decipher a person’s genetic instructions and the mutations in cancerous cells – is emerging as the driver of this growth.

Life Technologies Corp and Illumina Inc are among firms developing equipment that can extract a person’s entire genetic code – their genome – from a cell sample.

The newest machines are about the size of an office printer and can sequence a genome in a day, compared with six to eight weeks a few years ago. They can read the 3.2 billion chemical “bases” that make up the human genetic code for $ 1,000, compared with $ 100,000 dollars in 2008.

Growing numbers of software engineers are needed to help make sense of all this data.

“Many labs can now generate the data but fewer people or labs have the expertise and infrastructure to analyze it – this is becoming the bottleneck,” said Gad Getz, who heads the Cancer Genome Analysis group at the Broad Institute in Boston, jointly run by MIT and Harvard.

Getz is one of a new generation of computational biologists who develop algorithms to parse data from tens of thousands of cell samples, shared with research institutes around the globe.

He and his team of 30 are trying to establish recurring patterns in the mutations and how they are linked to tumor growth. They are using some 1,200 processing units, each with 4-8 gigabytes of random access memory – about the computing power that comes with most desktop PCs.

HARVESTING KNOWLEDGE

Eli Lilly CEO John Lechleiter sees potential for progress.

“We are starting to harvest the knowledge that we gained through the sequencing of the human genome, our understanding of human genetics, disease pathways. We’ve got new tools that we can use in the laboratory to help us get to an answer much, much faster,” said Lechleiter, whose firm is co-owner of the rights to bowel cancer drug Erbitux.

Approved drugs that take genetic information into account include Amgen’s Vectibix and AstraZeneca’s Iressa. But both these drugs derive from a single mutation. Sequencing has laid bare many more mutant genes – often hundreds in any given tumor – and highlighted the need for a subtler approach to cancer treatment.

Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer medicines, has spent several million euros on information technology for a pilot scheme examining how cancer cells in petri dishes react to new drugs. The scheme involves crunching hundreds of terabytes of gene sequences.

“It’s the first large-scale in-house sequencing project for Roche and we expect more to follow in the near future,” said Bryn Roberts, Roche’s head of informatics in drug research and early development.

Roberts said the project, which uses processing power equivalent to hundreds of high-end desktop PCs, was self contained but there were plans to draw in external data. This would require advances in cloud computing – using software and computing power from remote data centers – but Roberts said the technology would soon be available.

“The scale of the problem means the solution will be on an international collaborative scale,” he said.

OPPORTUNITIES IN CLOUDS

The trend of using cloud computing networks to allow commercial and public researchers to share cancer data is promising for the likes of IBM and Google which according to GBI Research are already established providers of cloud computing to drug makers’ research efforts.

Amazon, with its cloud computing unit AWS, said it is benefiting as life science researchers rethink how data is stored, analyzed and shared. “We are happy with the growth we are seeing,” a spokesman said, declining to provide figures.

Microsoft said it was dedicating “significant resources” to the expansion of cloud computing in the health and life sciences markets.

“Pharma R&D will be working with other technology companies, like Microsoft, in developing new algorithms, methodologies and indeed even therapies themselves,” said Les Jordan, chief technology strategist at Microsoft’s Life Sciences unit.

The world’s largest business software company SAP has teamed up with German genetic testing specialist Qiagen. They are modifying SAP database software so that certain cancer diagnostic tests, which now keep a network of super computers busy for days, can be run on a desktop PC within hours.

Genetic analysis has revealed that types of cancer, now treated as one because they are in the same organ and look the same under the microscope, are driven by different genetics.

Hans Lehrach at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin says every single tumor should be seen as an “orphan disease”, using a term for rare illnesses that typically prompt drug regulators to make drug approval easier.

He has designed a software he describes as a virtual patient. It suggests a drug or a mix of drugs based on each tumor’s genetic fingerprint. A single case can take several days to be processed.

Lehrach, a geneticist who says he has written software code throughout his scientific career, likens his approach to that of a meteorologist who regards every day’s set of readings as unique.

Taking the analogy further, he says the convention of stratifying cancer patients is equivalent to a weather forecast based on simple rules such as ‘red sky in the morning, sailor take warning’.

At a unit of Berlin’s Charite university hospital, 20 patients left with no other treatment options for their aggressive type of skin cancer are being diagnosed based on Lehrach’s computer model.

The trial is exploratory and there are no results yet on the overall treatment success, but the project, like many others, is driven by the hope that cancer can be wrestled down by sheer computing power.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; editing by Janet McBride)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Thousands still trapped after Sandy

NEW YORK, N.Y. - People along the battered U.S. East Coast slowly began reclaiming their daily routines Thursday, even as crews searched for victims and tens of thousands remained without power after superstorm Sandy claimed more than 70 lives.

The New York Stock Exchange came back to life, and two major New York airports reopened to begin the long process of moving stranded travellers around the world.

New York's three major airports were expected to be open Thursday morning with limited flights. Limited service on the subway, which suffered the worst damage in its 108-year history, would resume Thursday.

President Barack Obama landed in New Jersey on Wednesday, which was hardest hit by Monday's hurricane-driven storm, and he took a helicopter tour of the devastation with Gov. Chris Christie. "We're going to be here for the long haul," Obama told people at one emergency shelter.

For the first time since the storm pummeled the heavily populated Northeast, doing billions of dollars in damage, brilliant sunshine washed over New York City, for a while.

At the stock exchange, running on generator power, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a thumbs-up and rang the opening bell to whoops from traders. Trading resumed after the first two-day weather shutdown since a blizzard in 1888.

It was clear that restoring the region to its ordinarily frenetic pace could take days — and that rebuilding the hardest-hit communities and the transportation networks could take considerably longer.

There were still only hints of the economic impact of the storm.

Forecasting firm IHS Global Insight predicted it would cause $20 billion in damage and $10 billion to $30 billion in lost business. Another firm, AIR Worldwide, estimated losses up to $15 billion.

About 6 million homes and businesses were still without power, mostly in New York and New Jersey. Electricity was out as far west as Wisconsin in the Midwest and as far south as the Carolinas.

In New Jersey, National Guard troops arrived in the heavily flooded city of Hoboken, just across the river from New York City, to help evacuate about 20,000 people still stuck in their homes and deliver ready-to-eat meals. Live wires dangled in floodwaters that Mayor Dawn Zimmer said were rapidly mixing with sewage.

Tempers flared. A man screamed at emergency officials in Hoboken about why food and water had not been delivered to residents just a few blocks away. The man, who would not give his name, said he blew up an air mattress to float over to a staging area.

As New York crept toward a semi-normal business day, morning rush-hour traffic was heavy as buses returned to the streets and bridges linking Manhattan to the rest of the world were open.

A huge line formed at the Empire State Building as the observation deck reopened.

Tourism returned, but the city's vast and aging infrastructure remained a huge challenge.

Power company Consolidated Edison said it could be the weekend before power is restored to Manhattan and Brooklyn, perhaps longer for other New York boroughs and the New York suburbs.

Amtrak said the amount of water in train tunnels under the Hudson and East rivers was unprecedented, but it said it planned to restore some service on Friday to and from New York City — its busiest corridor — and would give details Thursday.

In Connecticut, some residents of Fairfield returned home in kayaks and canoes to inspect widespread damage left by retreating floodwaters that kept other homeowners at bay.

"The uncertainty is the worst," said Jessica Levitt, who was told it could be a week before she can enter her house. "Even if we had damage, you just want to be able to do something. We can't even get started."

In New York, residents of the flooded beachfront neighbourhood of Breezy Point returned home to find fire had taken everything the water had not. A huge blaze destroyed perhaps 100 homes in the close-knit community where many had stayed behind despite being told to evacuate.

John Frawley, who lived about five houses from the fire's edge, said he spent the night terrified "not knowing if the fire was going to jump the boulevard and come up to my house."

"I stayed up all night," he said. "The screams. The fire. It was horrifying."

___

Contributors to this report included Associated Press writers Angela Delli Santi in Belmar, New Jersey; Geoff Mulvihill and Larry Rosenthal in Trenton, New Jersey; Katie Zezima in Atlantic City, New Jersey; Samantha Henry in Jersey City, New Jersey; Pat Eaton-Robb and Michael Melia in Hartford, Connecticut; Susan Haigh in New London, Connecticut; John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Connecticut; Alicia Caldwell and Martin Crutsinger in Washington; David Klepper in South Kingstown, Rhode Island; David B. Caruso, Colleen Long, Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays, Larry Neumeister, Ralph Russo and Scott Mayerowitz in New York.

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