KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan officials say 17 civilians have been killed by a roadside bomb in western Afghanistan.
Abdul Rahman Zhuwandai, a spokesman for Farah province, says the civilians killed were on a bus traveling on Friday to a wedding in Pusht Rod district.
He says most of the victims were women and children.
He says at least 10 others were wounded in the afternoon explosion.
Posted by kelilipans at 7:10 AM
(Reuters) – Chinese Internet company Sina Corp said its fourth quarter will be hit by a softer economy and posted weaker-than-expected sales guidance, despite a stronger revenue contribution from its hot microblogging platform Weibo.
Shares in Sina fell 7 percent after it forecast adjusted net revenue of $ 132 million to $ 136 million in the current quarter, below analysts’ expectations for $ 151.9 million according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Sina, which makes most of its revenue from online advertising both on its website and Weibo, is facing stiff headwinds as firms slash advertising budgets due to a worsening economic outlook.
“We are going to see a weaker quarter for advertising overall in the fourth quarter,” said Charles Chao, Sina’s chief executive on an earnings conference call. The firm forecast Q4 advertising revenues would rise 6-8 percent from a year earlier.
Chao said Weibo contributed 16 percent to total revenue in the third quarter, up from 10 percent in the previous quarter. The platform, which is very popular with white-collar workers, university students and celebrities, had 424 million registered users at the end of the quarter, up from 368 million three months earlier.
Advertisers, like luxury brands, that traditionally don’t advertise with Sina’s main portal website flocked to Weibo to test out the social platform, Chao said.
There were about 230,000 Weibo advertising accounts in the quarter, and Sina was in the process of rolling out a online payment system and new Weibo advertising product to increase monetization at the end of the fourth quarter.
“We believe a ‘promoted feed advertising’ will become one of the major forms of (Weibo) advertising going forward,” said Chao, adding that the product will be effective also on mobile platforms, allowing Sina to tap into Weibo’s growth on mobile devices.
Q3 PROFIT BEAT
For the third quarter, Sina’s net profit was $ 9.9 million compared with a loss of $ 336.3 million a year earlier, and slighly ahead of analysts’ expectations of $ 7.5 million.
Sina’s quarterly advertising revenue rose 19 percent to $ 120.6 million, while non-advertising revenue rose 9 percent to $ 31.8 million.
The company started monetizing Weibo by offering special services to business accounts and selling VIP memberships to regular users earlier this year.
For its mobile-value-added-services business, Sina said it expects revenue to continue to decline due to new regulatory policies.
The company was also affected by a spat between Japan and China over islands in the East China Sea as Japanese automakers cut back on advertising in China. Chao said he expected the impact to last into the fourth quarter.
“It did have an impact on our third quarter as well as our fourth quarter. We did see cancellations from customers related to Japanese automobiles in the month of September and it impacted the fourth quarter (too),” Chao said.
Sina shares fell 6.74 percent to $ 49.52 in extended trading. They closed at $ 53.10 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
(Additional reporting by Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila and Richard Pullin)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Posted by kelilipans at 7:08 AM
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Jason Mraz will make history next month when he performs in Myanmar to raise awareness about human trafficking.
Mraz will headline a free outdoor concert on Dec. 16 at People's Square in Yangon, at the base of Shwedagon Pagoda.
The Grammy-winning singer-songwriter is believed to be the first international artist to perform an open-air concert in the country. The show includes local acts and is hosted by MTV EXIT, the music channel's initiative to raise awareness about human trafficking and exploitation.
"That's pretty exciting," Mraz said of the history involved, "and I'm going there with an enormous amount of gratitude and respect, and I hope we can actually make a difference. I hope it's also a testament to the songs. I've always wanted my songs to be about healing and self-empowerment, and if this is the way MTV is acknowledging that, then I am incredibly grateful."
The show, which will include local acts, will be broadcast on Myanmar national television and will air on MTV's international network in 2013. Mraz hosted a similar concert in the Philippines last year. He first became interested in the issue about four years ago when he attended the Freedom Awards, an annual salute to those working against human exploitation put on by the organization Free the Slaves.
"I thought this was something that was abolished when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but all it did is become hidden from our view," Mraz said in a phone interview from Zurich, Switzerland. "There was a recent estimate that there are about 27 million people enslaved on the planet, certainly due to hard economic times not just in the Western world but certainly in Third World countries. Humans as a commodity is a great way to run your business. So I signed on, lent my voice, lent my music to the cause."
Myanmar is opening itself to the world since a military junta ceded power to a new elected government last year. President Thein Sein's government has pushed the country toward democracy, and this Monday Barack Obama is scheduled to become the first sitting U.S. president to visit the country.
Mraz says there is concern predators will prey on the vulnerable in this time of great flux. The concert offers an opportunity to "educate, empower and engage." The 35-year-old singer says he plans to tailor his show to the message.
"I do curate a set list that I feel is going to be part of that educate, empower and engage (theme)," he said. "Obviously songs like 'I'm Yours,' 'I Won't Give Up' are great examples. Or '93 Million Miles' is a new one where it's about believing in yourself. And a lot of my songs are about that, about believing in yourself and really going for your dreams. Those are the kinds of songs I'll be playing at that show."
___
Online:
http://jasonmraz.com
http://mtvexit.org
___
Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott .
Posted by kelilipans at 7:06 AM
GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest agency that deals with global migration says cholera is again on the rise in Haiti.
The International Organization for Migration says Haitian officials have confirmed 3,593 cholera cases and another 837 suspected cases since Hurricane Sandy's passage.
IOM spokesman Jumbe Omari Jumbe told reporters Friday in Geneva "the numbers are going up" particularly in camps around the capital, Port-au-Prince.
He said his organization has responded by handing out about 10,000 cholera kits in 31 camps this week "badly hit by cholera in the area."
Cholera is a bacterial infection that spreads through water, and Haiti's lack of proper sanitation and sewage systems makes the country more vulnerable.
Haiti was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 24, but received heavy rain for several days.
Posted by kelilipans at 7:04 AM
By Walter Shapiro
Before the initials CIA came to stand for Covert Intimate Affairs, the battle over the next secretary of state would have been the main event of post-election November. Normally, it doesn’t get better than a brand-name Washington struggle pitting the newly reelected president against the Republican senator he defeated in 2008 over filling the Cabinet post soon to be vacated by an ex-president’s wife.
Barack Obama’s ill-camouflaged inclination to name Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, as Hillary Clinton’s successor would normally be about as contentious as, well, a confirmation hearing for David Petraeus in 2011. Rice, an undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, has by most accounts performed well in a job that pivots around the micro-wording of Security Council resolutions rather than grand geopolitical visions.
But all that good will evaporated when Rice, drawing the short straw as Obama’s designated foreign-policy spinner, dutifully made the rounds of the Sunday shows on Sept. 16, five days after the Libyan attacks. Repeating the White House line, Rice argued that, based on “the best information,” a “spontaneous protest” outside the American consulate in Benghazi attracted heavily armed “extremist elements” who murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
In John McCain’s splenetic view, Rice’s TV commentary smacks of a White House cover-up, since subsequent reporting has shown that initial accounts of a triggering protest were incorrect. As McCain put it Wednesday on Fox News, threatening to filibuster the nomination, “Susan Rice should have known better and if she didn’t know better, she is not qualified.”
At Obama’s first press conference since (gasp) June, the president displayed uncharacteristic moxie in his defense of Rice, who was a key foreign-policy supporter during his 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Obama called the attacks on Rice “outrageous” Wednesday and said that if the Republicans “think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me.”
All this posturing could be moot if Obama taps John Kerry for secretary of state, although the 2004 Democratic nominee now seems more likely to be headed to the Pentagon to replace Leon Panetta. (The secretary of defense has become one of the last remaining white-men-only jobs in government).
And even though one of the great political novels, “Advise and Consent” by Allen Drury, is built around a confirmation fight over a would-be secretary of state, this has always been one job that the Senate has given a president wide discretion in filling. For all the Iraq-war bluster over the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, Senate Democrats mustered only 13 votes against her in 2005, the highest number of votes against a secretary of state nomination since the early 19th century.
What makes all of this relevant now – before Obama has named a Hillary Clinton replacement – is that it underscores the illogic of most Senate confirmation fights. There may be hidden but valid strategic reasons to oppose a Rice Stuff nomination at State. But it represents a blame-the-messenger stretch even by Washington standards to ensnare Rice in the aftermath of Benghazi.
As should be obvious, the U.N. ambassador has nothing directly to do with embassy security, American covert operations in the Middle East or the flow of intelligence about terrorism. All Rice was doing in her television appearances on September 16 was reciting from talking points presumably prepared by the White House national security team based on information provided by the CIA and other agencies. According to reporting by Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius, the CIA was still clinging to its belief that the Benghazi attacks began with a spontaneous protest when Rice made her ill-fated rounds of the Sunday shows.
This is not to deny the mysteries that are swirling around the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi. All roads lead to Libya may be the unified field theory linking all current Washington scandals. The Wall Street Journal suggested in a front-page article Thursday that a major reason why Petraeus’ resignation was accepted with such alacrity was the CIA director’s determination to shield the spy agency from blame over Benghazi. The CIA’s release of its Benghazi timeline reportedly angered National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who then used the revelation of Petraeus’ affair as a cudgel to drive him out of government.
Most likely the Republican fury over Benghazi is over-wrought, but it is also easy to grasp. The often secretive Obama administration may be tempted to try to keep everything under wraps, aside from a few sanitized disclosures, in the name of national security. But while there are presumably intelligence risks that would accompany full disclosure, the alternative is letting (probably outlandish) conspiracy theories fester.
The confusion surrounding Benghazi may be attributable to the fog of war – or the fog of a presidential election campaign. In any case, the American people deserve to know what happened and whether the root causes were bad intelligence, bad luck or just bad public explanations.
Otherwise, at the most promising bring-us-together moment of his presidency, the newly reelected Obama will find himself endlessly battling over Benghazi as he attempts to forge a second-term national security team.
Posted by kelilipans at 7:02 AM
NEW DELHI (AP) — The parents of an Indian woman who suffered a miscarriage and died after being refused an abortion in an Irish hospital slammed Ireland's abortion laws Thursday.
Savita Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant when she miscarried and died last month. Ireland's government confirmed Wednesday that Halappanavar suffered from blood poisoning and died after being denied an abortion, reigniting the debate over legalizing abortion in the predominantly Catholic country.
"In an attempt to save a 4-month-old fetus they killed my 30-year-old daughter. How is that fair you tell me?" A. Mahadevi, Halappanavar's mother, told several Indian television stations. Her daughter actually was 31 when she died.
"How many more cases will there be? The rules should be changed as per the requirement of Hindus. We are Hindus, not Christians," she said.
Savita Halappanavar's father, Andanappa Yalagi, said the combination of medical negligence and Irish abortion laws led to his daughter's death.
The spokesman for India's Ministry of External Affairs, Syed Akbaruddin, said in a Twitter post that the Indian Embassy in Dublin was "following the matter."
Halappanavar's husband, Praveen, said doctors at University Hospital Galway in western Ireland determined that his wife was miscarrying within hours of her hospitalization for severe pain on Oct. 21. He said over the next three days, doctors refused their requests for an abortion to combat her searing pain and fading health.
It was only after the fetus died that its remains were surgically removed. Within hours, Savita was placed under sedation in intensive care with blood poisoning, her husband said. By Oct. 27, her heart, kidneys and liver had stopped working, and she was pronounced dead the next day.
Three separate investigations are looking into the cause of Halappanavar's death.
Ireland's constitution officially bans abortion, but a 1992 Supreme Court ruling said the procedure should be legalized for situations when the woman's life is at risk from continuing the pregnancy. Five governments since have refused to pass a law resolving the confusion, leaving Irish hospitals reluctant to terminate pregnancies except in the most obviously life-threatening circumstances.
An estimated 4,000 Irish women travel next door to England every year, where abortion has been legal on demand since 1967. But that option is difficult, if not impossible, if the woman's health is failing.
Posted by kelilipans at 7:10 AM
NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Texas Instruments is eliminating 1,700 jobs, as it winds down its mobile processor business to focus on chips for more profitable markets like cars and home appliances.
Texas Instruments said in September it would halt costly investments in the increasingly competitive smartphone and tablet chip business, leading Wall Street to speculate that part of the company’s processor unit, called OMAP, could be sold.
The layoffs are equivalent to nearly 5 percent of the Austin, Texas-based company’s global workforce.
“A sale would have been better than a restructuring but a restructuring is certainly better than nothing,” Sanford Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon said.
TI has been under pressure in mobile processors, where it has lost ground to rival Qualcomm Inc. Leading smartphone makers Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd have been developing their own chips instead of buying them from suppliers like TI.
Instead of competing in phones and tablets, TI wants to sell its OMAP processors in markets that require less investment, like industrial clients like carmakers.
TI is expected to continue selling existing tablet and phone processors for products like Amazon.Com Inc‘s Kindle tablets for as long as demand remains, but stop developing new chips.
“This year, the Kindle runs on the OMAP 4 and next year’s Kindle is slated, we believe, for OMAP 5. We believe that program is well along to completion and do not expect that the termination of OMAP will disrupt those plans,” said Longbow Research analyst JoAnne Feeney.
Amazon had reportedly been in talks to buy the mobile part of OMAP.
TI said it expects to take charges of about $ 325 million related to the job cuts and other cost reduction measures, most of which will be accounted for in the current quarter. Its previously announced financial targets for the fourth quarter do not include these costs, TI said.
The company, which has 35,000 employees around the world, expects annualized savings of about $ 450 million by the end of 2013 from the action.
TI shares rose to $ 29 in after-hours trading after closing at $ 28.76, down 2 percent on Nasdaq.
(Reporting By Sinead Carew in New York and Noel Randewich in San Francisco; editing by Carol Bishopric)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Posted by kelilipans at 7:08 AM
NEW YORK (AP) — Liz Lemon is getting married and you're invited.
Fans of "30 Rock" might have reasonably assumed that Lemon, the harried TV producer played by Tina Fey, would ride out the series' seventh and final season as a perennial bachelorette unlucky in love. But Fey, who is also the creator and producer of the NBC comedy, clearly thought otherwise.
In the "30 Rock" episode airing Nov. 29, Lemon will wed.
Who's the lucky guy? He's Liz's latest fella, Criss Chross (played by guest star James Marsden), a Peter Pan-ish would-be entrepreneur who hatches ventures such as an organic gourmet hot-dog truck.
On Thursday, NBC made the grand announcement that Ms. Elizabeth Miervaldis Lemon, 42, would be presenting herself to be married to Mr. Crisstopher Rick Chross — "But not in a creepy way that perpetuates the idea that brides are virgins and women are property."
The invitation also specifies that guests (i.e., you viewers) should plan to "bring your own snacks."
No preview of the episode has been made available.
The series, which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. EST, will conclude early next year.
"30 Rock" is the saga of Lemon, the overextended producer of a fictitious comedy show loosely inspired by "Saturday Night Live" (where Fey toiled for nine seasons as cast member and writer). Liz is surrounded by kookie comrades like company boss Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) and Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), her boisterously unhinged star.
A recurring theme of "30 Rock" has been Lemon's comicaly flawed love life. Short-lived boyfriends have included quirky airline pilot Carol Burnett (played by Matt Damon), immature businessman Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters) and dimwitted pediatrician Dr. Drew Baird (Jon Hamm).
But clearly there was something special about Criss, who first arrived on the scene last season.
Even before meeting him, Donaghy was disapproving: "Lemon, I have said 'Good God' to you before," he huffed, "but I don't think I've ever MEANT it until now: Good God!!!"
But Criss is different, Liz insisted: "I'm more relaxed around him. My jaws stopped popping. And for once I'm not overthinking everything."
Jack wasn't convinced. He noted that Criss is a puppy-dog-eager dork who carries a Sunglass Hut credit card and owns a ukulele plastered with an Obama sticker.
Is this a match made in heaven? The wedding invitation says, "Whatever. It's no big whoop." But the episode is sure to be a very big whoop.
___
Online:
http://www.nbc.com/30-rock
Posted by kelilipans at 7:06 AM
NEW YORK (AP) — Americans get too many calories from soda. But what about alcohol? It turns out adults get almost as many empty calories from booze as from soft drinks, a government study found.
Soda and other sweetened drinks — the focus of obesity-fighting public health campaigns — are the source of about 6 percent of the calories adults consume, on average. Alcoholic beverages account for about 5 percent, the new study found.
"We've been focusing on sugar-sweetened beverages. This is something new," said Cynthia Ogden, one of the study's authors. She's an epidemiologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which released its findings Thursday.
The government researchers say the findings deserve attention because, like soda, alcohol contains few nutrients but plenty of calories.
The study is based on interviews with more than 11,000 U.S. adults from 2007 through 2010. Participants were asked extensive questions about what they ate and drank over the previous 24 hours.
The study found:
—On any given day, about one-third of men and one-fifth of women consumed calories from beer, wine or liquor.
—Averaged out to all adults, the average guy drinks 150 calories from alcohol each day, or the equivalent of a can of Budweiser.
—The average woman drinks about 50 calories, or roughly half a glass of wine.
—Men drink mostly beer. For women, there was no clear favorite among alcoholic beverages.
—There was no racial or ethnic difference in average calories consumed from alcoholic beverages. But there was an age difference, with younger adults putting more of it away.
For reference, a 12-ounce can of regular Coca-Cola has 140 calories, slightly less than a same-sized can of regular Bud. A 5-ounce glass of wine is around 100 calories.
In September, New York City approved an unprecedented measure cracking down on giant sodas, those bigger than 16 ounces, or half a liter. It will take effect in March and bans sales of drinks that large at restaurants, cafeterias and concession stands.
Should New York officials now start cracking down on tall-boy beers and monster margaritas?
There are no plans for that, city health department officials said, adding in a statement that while studies show that sugary drinks are "a key driver of the obesity epidemic," alcohol is not.
Health officials should think about enacting policies to limit alcoholic intake, but New York's focus on sodas is appropriate, said Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public health advocacy group.
Soda and sweetened beverages are the bigger problem, especially when it comes to kids — the No. 1 source of calories in the U.S. diet, she said.
"In New York City, it was smart to start with sugary drinks. Let's see how it goes and then think about next steps," she said.
However, she lamented that the Obama administration is planning to exempt alcoholic beverages from proposed federal regulations requiring calorie labeling on restaurant menus.
It could set up a confusing scenario in which, say, a raspberry iced tea may have a calorie count listed, while an alcohol-laden Long Island Iced Tea — with more than four times as many calories — doesn't. "It could give people the wrong idea," she said.
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Online:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Posted by kelilipans at 7:04 AM
HOUSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - BP Plc is expected to pay a record U.S. criminal penalty and plead guilty to criminal misconduct in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster through a plea deal reached with the Department of Justice that may be announced as soon as Thursday, according to sources familiar with discussions.
Three sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said BP would plead guilty in exchange for a waiver of future prosecution on the charges.
BP confirmed it was in "advanced discussions" with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC).
The talks were about "proposed resolutions of all U.S. federal government criminal and SEC claims against BP in connection with the Deepwater Horizon incident," it said in a statement on Thursday, but added that no final agreements had been reached.
The discussion do not cover federal civil claims, both BP and the sources said.
London-based oil giant BP has been locked in months-long negotiations with the U.S. government and Gulf Coast states to settle billions of dollars of potential civil and criminal liability claims resulting from the April 20, 2010, explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig.
The sources did not disclose the amount of BP's payment, but one said it would be the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history. That record is now held by Pfizer Inc, which paid a $1.3 billion fine in 2009 for marketing fraud related to its Bextra pain medicine.
The DoJ declined to comment.
The deal could resolve a significant share of the liability that BP faces after the explosion killed 11 workers and fouled the shorelines of four Gulf Coast states in the worst offshore spill in U.S. history. BP, which saw its market value plummet and replaced its CEO in the aftermath of the spill, still faces economic and environmental damage claims sought by U.S. Gulf Coast states and other private plaintiffs.
The fine would far outstrip BP's last major settlement with the DoJ in 2007, when it payed about $373 million to resolve three separate probes into a deadly 2005 Texas refinery explosion, an Alaska oil pipeline leak and fraud for conspiring to corner the U.S. propane market.
The massive settlement, which comes a week after the U.S. presidential election, could ignite a debate in Congress about how funds would be shared with Gulf Coast states, depending on how the deal is structured. Congress passed a law last year that would earmark 80 percent of BP penalties paid under the Clean Water Act to the spill-hit states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Texas.
POTENTIAL LIABILITY
In an August filing, the DoJ said "reckless management" of the Macondo well "constituted gross negligence and willful misconduct" which it intended to prove at a civil trial set to begin in New Orleans in February 2013. The U.S. government has not yet filed any criminal charges in the case.
Given that the deal will not resolve any civil charges brought by the Justice Department, it is also unclear how large a financial penalty BP might pay to resolve the charges, or other punishments that BP might face.
Negligence is a central issue to BP's potential liability. A gross negligence finding could nearly quadruple the civil damages owed by BP under the Clean Water Act to $21 billion in a straight-line calculation.
Still unresolved is potential liability faced by Swiss-based Transocean Ltd, owner of the Deepwater Horizon vessel, and Halliburton Co, which provided cementing work on the well that U.S. investigators say was flawed. Both companies were not immediately available for comment.
According to the Justice Department, errors made by BP and Transocean in deciphering a pressure test of the Macondo well are a clear indication of gross negligence.
"That such a simple, yet fundamental and safety-critical test could have been so stunningly, blindingly botched in so many ways, by so many people, demonstrates gross negligence," the government said in its August filing.
Transocean in September disclosed it is in discussions with the Justice Department to pay $1.5 billion to resolve civil and criminal claims.
The mile-deep Macondo well spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days. The torrent fouled shorelines from Texas to Florida and eclipsed in severity the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska.
BP has already announced an uncapped class-action settlement with private plaintiffs that the company estimates will cost $7.8 billion to resolve litigation brought by over 100,000 individuals and businesses claiming economic and medical damages from the spill.
(Additional reporting by Andrew Callus in London; Editing by Edward Tobin and David Stamp)
Posted by kelilipans at 7:02 AM
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