AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Wall Street ends higher in short session, led by techs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose for a fifth day during a holiday-shortened, thinly traded session on Friday as investors picked up recently beaten-down shares of large technology companies.

Market participants were also encouraged by signs of progress in talks about releasing aid to debt-saddled Greece and piled into U.S. retail shares as Black Friday got the holiday shopping season under way.

U.S. stock market trading ended early and was closed on Thursday for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Volume was the lightest of the year, though the session was abbreviated. Shares of big-cap technology companies climbed as investors took advantage of the day's upward momentum to add to positions, helping the S&P 500 rack up its second best week of 2012.

"Anyone that was on the sidelines waiting for a pullback like the one we just had in some of the tech names, they're looking for any glimpse of strong price action for 'permission' to enter into those (stocks)," said Todd Salamone, director of research at Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio

Microsoft helped lift the Nasdaq, gaining 2.8 percent to $27.70, while Apple Inc rose 1.7 percent to $571.50.

From mid-September to mid-November, the S&P tech sector <.gspt> shed about 13 percent as the broader market also dropped.

Research in Motion surged on optimism about its soon-to-be-launched BlackBerry 10 devices that will vie against Apple's iPhone and Android-based smartphones. RIM was up 13.6 percent at $11.66.

Greece said the International Monetary Fund had relaxed its debt-cutting target for the country, suggesting lenders were closer to a deal for a vital aid tranche to be paid. But other sources involved in the talks cautioned the funding gap was far bigger than Greece has suggested.

Euro zone finance ministers, the IMF and European Central Bank (ECB) failed earlier this week to agree on how to shrivel the country's debt to a sustainable level and will have a third attempt at resolving the issue on Monday.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 172.79 points, or 1.35 percent, to 13,009.68. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 18.12 points, or 1.30 percent, to 1,409.15. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 40.30 points, or 1.38 percent, to 2,966.85.

The S&P 500 broke a two-week losing streak to rise 3.6 percent. Stocks had tumbled earlier in the month on worries about the impact of tax and spending changes set to take effect from January, but hopes that politicians will reach a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff helped the market recoup some of those declines this week.

The Dow and S&P 500 both closed above key technical levels for the first time since Nov 6, which could provide additional support. The Dow ended above 13,000, while the S&P broke above 1,400.

The Dow rose 3.3 percent for the week, while the Nasdaq jumped 4 percent. The Nasdaq had ended lower for the previous six weeks in a row.

Volume was about 2.8 billion shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT, compared with the year-to-date average daily closing volume of over 6 billion.

Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 2,407 to 469 on the New York Stock Exchange. On the Nasdaq, advancers had the lead, with 1,775 stocks gaining and 548 shares declining.

The retail sector rose as investors looked for signs of how much consumers are spending as stores lured shoppers with Black Friday deals and discounts.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, kicks off the U.S. Christmas shopping season for retailers and is often the busiest shopping day of the year. The National Retail Federation expects sales during the holiday season to grow 4.1 percent this year compared with last year's 5.6 percent increase.

If the traffic and sales numbers look strong early on, "it usually gives a sense that the season will be in line with expectations," said Bucky Hellwig, senior vice president at BB&T Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

"The way that could work against a stronger retail season is if there's no follow-through, there could be discounting on the part of retailers."

Wal-Mart rose 1.9 percent to $70.20, while Target gained 1.2 percent to $64.48.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Death of a Palestinian Highlights Confusion Over Gaza Truce

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip — In the 12 years that he has lived here in the Abassam neighborhood adjacent to Gaza’s eastern border, Eyad Qudaih said, he had never ventured more than 20 yards east of his white stucco home because Israel said the entire area was off limits.

But Friday morning, emboldened by the new cease-fire agreement, he took his four young daughters 300 yards east, to the small plot of land where he dreams of growing wheat and malt as his father once did.

“It was like someone who was hungry and had a big meal,” he said as he touched the fence that has separated him from the border lands. “Grilled sheep with nuts.”

But around 11 a.m., the moment was interrupted by the all-too-common sound of gunfire. A spokesman for the Israeli military said soldiers had fired warning shots and then at the feet of some Palestinians who tried to cross into Israeli territory. Mr. Qudaih’s cousin Anwar Qudaih, 20, was killed, and nine others wounded, Health Ministry officials here said.

The episode did not fracture the truce that ended eight days of fighting between Hamas and Israel. But it did showcase the confusion that remains over the cease-fire deal announced Wednesday in Cairo. While Hamas officials have been boasting about the concessions they say they have exacted from Israel, Israeli officials have played down the deal, saying that nothing had yet been agreed beyond the immediate cessation of hostilities.

On Thursday, the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said dismissively that Hamas’s main achievement was getting a document that was typed rather than handwritten. In substance, Israelis said that they agreed only to discuss the border and other issues, but that those talks had not yet begun — and there did not appear even to be a mechanism in place for starting.

But that was clearly not the understanding of the hundreds of Gazans who thought that they would have access to a strip of fertile land that had for years been so tantalizingly close — and yet beyond their reach. Palestinians flocked to the fence Thursday and Friday because their leaders said the cease-fire eased what they call Israel’s “siege” on Gaza, including restrictions on movement in the so-called buffer zone, a 1,000-foot strip on Gaza’s eastern and northern borders.

Hamas leaders said that was but one of the quality-of-life improvements that they had won. They also told their people that Israel would ease the three-mile limit on how far fishermen can venture from the coastline and the passage of people and goods through border crossings.

But an Israeli government official said on Friday that since no further talks had taken place, its policies had not changed.

Riad al-Malki, the Palestinian foreign minister, described Friday’s shooting as “a clear violation of the agreement that was signed, telling reporters at an unrelated news conference in Rome, “I hope it will be the exception rather than the rule.”

That the killing did not incite other violence on Friday suggests that Hamas, the militant Islamic faction that has ruled Gaza since 2007, is not looking for excuses to return to battle. But Ahmed Yousif, a former adviser to the Hamas prime minister, said patience would be limited.

“Gradual steps should be taken to give the impression to the people we are no longer under siege,” said Mr. Yousif, who remains close to the Hamas leaders and now runs a research organization called House of Wisdom. “It might take some time, but this is what we’re going to achieve in the long run. As long as there is progress, I think the people will continue the cease-fire. If there is no progress, this will start again.”

The buffer zone was established in 2005, when Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, which it had occupied since the 1967 war. Human rights organizations say that Israel drops leaflets warning residents to stay out of the area, and that its security forces killed 213 Palestinians near the fence between September 2005, and September 2012, including 154 who were not taking part in hostilities, 17 of them children.

Critics say Israel has classified broad sections of border land as a “no-go zone” in which soldiers are allowed to open fire on anyone who enters, which military officials have strongly denied.

Witnesses, including Hamas police officers, said that about 2,000 people flooded this area of the buffer zone in celebration of the cease-fire on Thursday, and that as many as 500 returned Friday morning starting at 7. The Israeli military spokesman described it as a demonstration, but residents said people were just walking the fallow land their fathers and grandfathers once tilled. Some talked to the soldiers through the fence. They placed atop it a tall green Hamas flag and a smaller Palestinian one, a sight unimaginable here a few days — or a few years — before.

One police officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that some crossed over the four panels of fence downed in the earlier attack on the jeep and stood on the Israeli side.

“In case you were wondering,” Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the military, wrote on her Twitter account as reports of the shooting emerged, “trying to breach Gaza fence in order to enter #Israel is breaking cease-fire. #IDF responding with warning shots.”

Eyad Qudaih, who lives in one of the few houses in the area, said that when he heard the shooting, “I took my girls and escaped.” By afternoon, his cousin was buried after a funeral parade featuring the flags of Hamas as well as rival factions Fatah and Islamic Jihad, an echo of the post-conflict unity on display here at cease-fire celebrations Thursday.

Sgt. Ahmed Mahmoud of the Hamas police force said about 2,000 officers had fanned out along the borders Friday starting at 9 a.m. “to maintain the security.” In blue camouflage suits and navy jackets, they carried wooden sticks but no guns, which he said was part of the buffer-zone arrangement with Israel.

“Within one hour of the shooting, we controlled the area and all the people were out,” Sergeant Mahmoud said a bit later. “Now we won’t let people go in because of the cease-fire.”

By 1 p.m., more than a dozen Hamas police officers were arrayed along the fence, closer than they have dared go in years. Perhaps 50 yards away, on the other side, was an Israeli jeep and a soldier standing behind its open door. They looked at each other.

The crowds were gone, but a few children ran around more freely in the dirt field than they had ever before, one carrying a Palestinian flag. Their parents and grandparents talked outside, contemplating the fence and whether they would indeed be free to approach it today, tomorrow, next week.

Jodi Rudoren reported from Khan Yunis, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Fares Akram contributed reporting from Khan Yunis, and Gaia Pianigiani from Rome.

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Fired colleague of UBS rogue trader Adoboli opens betting site

LONDON (Reuters) – A former senior trader at UBS, sacked for failing to prevent colleague Kweku Adoboli from perpetrating the biggest fraud in British history, has set up a gambling website.

In a decision likely to be seized upon by critics who say traders have often made casino-style bets, John Hughes started his gambling firm even though his website said his old job had “removed all sense of optimism from his character”.

Adoboli, his former subordinate now serving seven years in jail for running up losses of $ 2.3 billion, argued during his trial that his own behavior was the result of a risky trading culture encouraged by senior colleagues, and his lawyers alleged that Hughes had played a major role in “off-book” trading.

Hughes admitted he had known of Adoboli’s scheme to hide his giant losses and that he had booked several fictitious trades himself, but denied knowledge of some of Adoboli’s biggest multi-billion dollar trades.

Hughes said he had chosen to call his new gambling website ‘BetsofMates’, a play on the expression “Best of Mates”.

That may grate with Adoboli who complained that his colleagues, including Hughes, had “sold me down the river” after a meeting at which he said it was decided he alone would carry the can for the huge losses.

Hughes and the others said they had no memory of such a meeting.

“We’re not a standard bookie,” Hughes said of his new website, which enables users to play against each other in leagues, with each player placing bets of between two and 200 pounds.

“We facilitate competition. The emphasis is a lot more on competition than yield enhancement,” he told Reuters on Thursday.

The former senior trader on the Exchange Traded Funds desk at UBS in London said Adoboli’s conviction was “just incredibly sad”. He declined to comment further.

Despite a large salary and bonus, Adoboli was himself an avid gambler and lost 123,000 pounds ($ 200,000) on spread-betting in the year before his arrest.

One prosecutor accused him of being addicted to gambling to which Adoboli countered that spread-betting was common among City traders “like a taxi driver driving his own taxi home”.

Hughes’ profile on his new firm’s website says that “seven years in the City (had) removed all sense of optimism from his character, and made him absurdly superstitious.”

He told Reuters such feelings had arisen “sitting there watching the markets for seven years and watching different news hit the tapes and obviously the last seven years haven’t been the easiest in the financial markets.”

Britain’s Gambling Commission granted a license to his pool betting company ‘Bets of Mates Limited’, which is registered to an East London address, in September 2012, two months before Adoboli was convicted.

(Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Beverley Mitchell Debuts Baby Bump

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

11/23/2012 at 11:00 AM ET

There’s not just turkey in there!

An expectant Beverley Mitchell debuted her baby bump on Twitter Thursday

“Happy Thanksgiving! Here is my first belly pic! 21 weeks,” the actress writes. “Watch out! The belly is getting bigger!”

Mitchell, 31, and husband Michael Cameron will welcome their first child in early April.

“I took seven pregnancy tests,” The Secret Life of the American Teenager star tells PEOPLE. “I went to the doctor and had two more tests and they were like, ‘Bev, usually when the first one comes out positive, the rest of them will all say the same thing.’”

RELATED: Beverley Mitchell Expecting First Child

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Study finds mammograms lead to unneeded treatment

Mammograms have done surprisingly little to catch deadly breast cancers before they spread, a big U.S. study finds. At the same time, more than a million women have been treated for cancers that never would have threatened their lives, researchers estimate.

Up to one-third of breast cancers, or 50,000 to 70,000 cases a year, don't need treatment, the study suggests.

It's the most detailed look yet at overtreatment of breast cancer, and it adds fresh evidence that screening is not as helpful as many women believe. Mammograms are still worthwhile, because they do catch some deadly cancers and save lives, doctors stress. And some of them disagree with conclusions the new study reached.

But it spotlights a reality that is tough for many Americans to accept: Some abnormalities that doctors call "cancer" are not a health threat or truly malignant. There is no good way to tell which ones are, so many women wind up getting treatments like surgery and chemotherapy that they don't really need.

Men have heard a similar message about PSA tests to screen for slow-growing prostate cancer, but it's relatively new to the debate over breast cancer screening.

"We're coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren't destined to cause death," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, "once a woman is diagnosed, it's hard to say treatment is not necessary."

He had no role in the study, which was led by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School and Dr. Archie Bleyer of St. Charles Health System and Oregon Health & Science University. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer and cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Nearly 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed each year. Other countries screen less aggressively than the U.S. does. In Britain, for example, mammograms are usually offered only every three years and a recent review there found similar signs of overtreatment.

The dogma has been that screening finds cancer early, when it's most curable. But screening is only worthwhile if it finds cancers destined to cause death, and if treating them early improves survival versus treating when or if they cause symptoms.

Mammograms also are an imperfect screening tool — they often give false alarms, spurring biopsies and other tests that ultimately show no cancer was present. The new study looks at a different risk: Overdiagnosis, or finding cancer that is present but does not need treatment.

Researchers used federal surveys on mammography and cancer registry statistics from 1976 through 2008 to track how many cancers were found early, while still confined to the breast, versus later, when they had spread to lymph nodes or more widely.

The scientists assumed that the actual amount of disease — how many true cases exist — did not change or grew only a little during those three decades. Yet they found a big difference in the number and stage of cases discovered over time, as mammograms came into wide use.

Mammograms more than doubled the number of early-stage cancers detected — from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women. But late-stage cancers dropped just 8 percent, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women.

The imbalance suggests a lot of overdiagnosis from mammograms, which now account for 60 percent of cases that are found, Bleyer said. If screening were working, there should be one less patient diagnosed with late-stage cancer for every additional patient whose cancer was found at an earlier stage, he explained.

"Instead, we're diagnosing a lot of something else — not cancer" in that early stage, Bleyer said. "And the worst cancer is still going on, just like it always was."

Researchers also looked at death rates for breast cancer, which declined 28 percent during that time in women 40 and older — the group targeted for screening. Mortality dropped even more — 41 percent — in women under 40, who presumably were not getting mammograms.

"We are left to conclude, as others have, that the good news in breast cancer — decreasing mortality — must largely be the result of improved treatment, not screening," the authors write.

The study was paid for by the study authors' universities.

"This study is important because what it really highlights is that the biology of the cancer is what we need to understand" in order to know which ones to treat and how, said Dr. Julia A. Smith, director of breast cancer screening at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Doctors already are debating whether DCIS, a type of early tumor confined to a milk duct, should even be called cancer, she said.

Another expert, Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the breast cancer research program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the study's leaders made many assumptions to reach a conclusion about overdiagnosis that "may or may not be correct."

"I don't think it will change how we view screening mammography," she said.

A government-appointed task force that gives screening advice calls for mammograms every other year starting at age 50 and stopping at 75. The American Cancer Society recommends them every year starting at age 40.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society's deputy chief medical officer, said the study should not be taken as "a referendum on mammography," and noted that other high-quality studies have affirmed its value. Still, he said overdiagnosis is a problem, and it's not possible to tell an individual woman whether her cancer needs treated.

"Our technology has brought us to the place where we can find a lot of cancer. Our science has to bring us to the point where we can define what treatment people really need," he said.

___

Online:

Study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809

Screening advice: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Global shares gain as global economic outlook improves

LONDON (Reuters) - World share markets extended a week-long rally on Thursday as manufacturing surveys in China and the United States boosted confidence in global growth and euro zone data at least did not worsen the already weak outlook for that region.

The euro hit a three high against the dollar on optimism that a funding deal for debt-crippled Greece will ultimately be agreed - and despite data indicating the region's economy is on course for its deepest recession since early 2009.

"The driving factors behind euro/dollar are that the global macroeconomic backdrop seems to be improving and people are pricing out the tail risk on Greece," said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, head of currency research at Danske Bank.

The euro rose 0.4 percent to $1.2880, its highest since November 2.

The view there will be a deal to help Athens was bolstered on Wednesday when German Chancellor Angela Merkel said after the failure of the latest talks, that an agreement was possible when euro zone ministers meet again on Monday.

The hopes for a Greek deal, combined with the better economic data and a growing view that a solution can be found to the U.S. fiscal crisis, lifted the MSCI world equity index 0.4 percent to 326 points, putting it on track for its best week since mid-September.

Europe's FTSE Eurofirst 300 index rose 0.4 percent to a two-week high of 1,101.70 points, with London's FTSE 100, Paris's CAC-40 and Frankfurt's DAX between 0.3 and 0.7 percent higher.

However, trading was subdued, with U.S. markets closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

CHINA BOOST

Confidence in the global economic outlook got its biggest boost from the HSBC flash Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for China, which pointed to an expansion in activity after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.

The Chinese data followed a report on Wednesday showing U.S. manufacturing grew in November at its quickest pace in five months, indicating strong economic growth in the fourth quarter.

"There are questions over whether the Chinese economy is really that bad or if the U.S. will take a long time to recover, but we are getting signs that the situation is not as bad as assumed," said Peter Braendle, head of European equities at Zurich-based Swisscanto Asset Management.

PMI data on the manufacturing and services sectors in Europe's two biggest economies, Germany and France, added to the better tone, revealing that conditions had not worsened in November, though both economies are still contracting.

However, the PMI numbers for the wider euro zone remain extremely weak, pointing to the recession-hit region shrinking by about 0.5 percent in the current quarter - its sharpest contraction since the first quarter of 2009.

"The weak PMI outturn for November is a major disappointment in light of the increases in the German and French PMI surveys, and suggest the recession on the euro zone's periphery is gathering further pace," said ING economist Martin van Vliet.

BOND DEMAND

In the fixed-income markets, the improving tone enabled Spain to sell 3.88 billion euros ($4.97 billion) of new government bonds on Thursday, even though it has already raised enough funds for this year's needs.

The average yield on the three-year bonds in the auction was 3.617 percent, compared with 3.66 percent at a sale earlier in November and a 2012 average of 3.79 percent.

Ten-year Spanish yields were 6 basis points lower on the day at 5.67 percent, having traded above 6 percent at the start of the week.

"It's a clear reflection that sentiment in Spain has improved markedly," RIA Capital Markets bond strategist Nick Stamenkovic said, adding that the market was expecting Madrid to ask for an international bailout early next year.

Expectations Greece will soon get more cash set Greek yields on course for their 10th consecutive daily fall. The February 2023 bond yield dropped to 16.16 percent, its lowest since it was issued during a debt restructuring in March.

COMMODITIES STEADY

Commodity prices had some support from the improving outlook for world demand, but the prospect of only modest global growth in 2013 kept the gains in check.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose 0.6 percent to $7,735.25 a metric tonne, and spot gold inched up to $1,730.30 an ounce.

Oil prices were more mixed as the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers on Thursday eased concerns over the impact the unrest might have had on supply from the region, offsetting support from the prospect of more Chinese oil demand.

Brent slipped 7 cents to $110.90 a barrel, while U.S. crude was up 2 cents at $87.40.

($1 = 0.7801 euros)

(Additional reporting by Jessica Mortimer and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Will Waterman and Alastair Macdonald)

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Syrian Airstrike Severely Damages Hospital in Aleppo

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Airstrikes by the Syrian government damaged a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo early on Thursday and flattened a building next to it, killing at least 15 people and leaving as many as 40 missing in an attack that closed one of the city’s few functioning medical facilities, antigovernment activists said.

Video purporting to depict the aftermath showed the facade shorn off the first three stories of the hospital, with its name, Dar el-Shifa, in red letters on its tower. Beside it, another building was reduced to a two-story pile of rubble. People milled in the street, shouting “God is great.”

Among the 15 people confirmed dead were two hospital workers and two children, said Abu Louai al-Halabi, an activist in Aleppo, adding that up to 40 people were still believed to be trapped under the rubble. One man was pulled out alive several hours after the explosion, according to another video posted on the Internet by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Rebels seized a military base in southeastern Syria, giving them control of an area of oil-producing territory, and as tensions increased between antigovernment fighters and Kurdish groups in northeastern Syria. In both areas, near the border with Iraq, activists said that fighters from Al Nusra Front for the People of the Levant, a jihadi group, were taking a prominent role among the opposition fighters.

The developments came a day after a well-known antigovernment activist was arrested during a bold protest that showed that the nonviolent opposition movement is still struggling to survive even as civil war deepens.

In the old market in central Damascus, the activist, Rima Dali raised a banner calling for “the end of all military operations” — an act of extraordinary defiance during a time of tight security and surveillance in the capital.

Ms. Dali and three other women stood in wedding dresses in the middle of the arched Souk al-Hamediya, usually bustling with spice sellers but apparently nearly empty. Photographs were posted on Ms. Dali’s and other activists’ sites.

“Syria is for all of us,” the banners read. “You are tired and we are tired. We want to live. Another solution ...“ A video e-mailed by another activist appeared to show the women being led away by security forces.

Ms. Dali had been arrested in March for standing silently in front of Parliament with a sign reading, “Stop the killing” and calling for “Syria for all Syrians.”

Such acts of civil disobedience have been eclipsed as the Syrian protest movement grew into a civil war that has killed more than 30,000 people, but beneath the surface tensions still ripple between rebel leaders and government opponents who favor a less violent approach.

Yet fighting raged in eastern Syria, threatening to engulf displaced people who fled there from other cities, and in the northeast, activists reported tensions between jihadist fighting groups and both pro-regime and antigovernment Kurds.

In Ras al-Ain, near the Turkish border in northeastern Syria, activists said clashes broke out between antigovernment battalions and Kurds from the P.Y.D., or Kurdish Democratic Union Party. That group has ties to a militant Kurdish group long backed by the Syrian government.

But the conflict was not a clear-cut one between government opponents and supporters, an Arab activist who fled to Turkey from Ras al-Ain said in a telephone interview.

The activist, who gave only his first name, Miral, for security reasons, said that the antigovernment battalions in the area did not represent the mainstream of the Syrian uprising, but were jihadist battalions, including from the Nusra Front. He said they enjoyed strong logistical support from similar groups inside Iraq as well as Arab tribes that straddle the border between the two countries.

He said there was little military reason for a heavy rebel presence in the area and suspected that the fighters simply wanted to establish a base in a remote area of Syria. Kurds and Arabs alike are eager to control the area if the government falls.

Christians and Kurds in the area, he said, had agreed to keep extremists out after some fighters burned shops selling alcohol.

“It’s a conspiracy against the Kurds,” said another Arab activist who fled to Turkey, Sobhi Dawood. He said he was concerned that all sides were building up arms supplies, threatening to fuel “a civil war in the town.”

Because some residents disagree with the goals of the jihadi battalions, he said, it has been hard to recruit locals to fight against the government. He said 62 recent recruits had quit, saying “We are not here to fight against our brothers.”

In Eastern Syria, a McClatchy correspondent in the province of Deir al-Zour reported that rebels appeared to control two of the three oil fields there, siphoning light crude to burn for heat and to sell, and robbing the government of key revenues.

In a video posted online, a fighter claimed that rebels had “liberated” an artillery base in Mayadeen, outside the province’s main city, capturing a tank and a tank carrier.

“I hope Assad’s booty and weapons and their money and their land will be ours, God willing,” he said, concluding with a reference to the prophet: “Our master is Muhammad, our commander forever.”

Hajj Abu Bakr, a local activist in Deir al-Zour reached through Skype, said that three battalions, including one from the Nusra Front, had taken part in seizing the artillery battalion.

He said that clashes in the area had continued for 22 days. He said government shelling had intensified after the artillery position was captured, and that a family of six had been killed. Many families from other provinces, like Homs, are sheltering in the area and he said he was worried that more of the displaced would be injured.

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

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Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is Good, But No iPad Killer [REVIEW]

Unboxing the Kindle Fire HD 8.9

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Apple Now Owns the iMessage Name]

Amazon expands its tablet sights with the bigger, more powerful Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Can it compete against Apple‘s iPad?

If there’s one company that deserves credit for reigniting the iPad competitor market, it’s Amazon. Despite some bugs and an overall blah design, its 7-inch Kindle Fire was the first Android tablet that made sense to consumers who gobbled it up to help the Fire grab 50% of the Android tablet market in just 6 months.

[More from Mashable: 9 Black Friday Deals For iPhone Owners]

That tablet essentially opened the flood gates for a new set of ever-more-powerful 7-inchers from, notably, Barnes & Noble and Google. All three companies have already updated their 7-inch offerings to more powerful components and higher-resolutions screens. They’re all still running Android, though Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to hide the Google OS behind smarter and much more consumer-friendly interfaces.

All this led Apple to finally enter the mid-sized tablet space with the iPad Mini. It’s easily the best-looking tablet of the bunch, but also $ 120 more expensive than its nearest competitor.

The more interesting development, though, is Amazon‘s (and Barnes & Noble‘s) decision to go toe-to-toe with Apple’s full-size iPad and launch the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9 (in 4G LTE and WiFi-only). The move is akin to a middle weight boxer putting on the pounds to take on the Heavyweight world champion. Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD is slightly smaller (the iPad is 9.7-inches), lighter (567g vs. 625g), cheaper ($ 369 for 32 GB model vs. $ 599 for the iPad 4th Gen — Amazon subsidizes with sleep-state ads, that I do not mind) and overall somewhat less powerful. In order to win the battle, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD better be pretty nimble on its feet, while able to throw that all important knockout punch.

Short version of this story: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 does some serious damage, but the iPad 4th Gen gets the decision and retains the tablet leader title.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is by no means a failure. In many ways, it’s as good as the smaller Kindle Fire HD, but throughout my tests I noticed odd bugs and glitches (which should all be fixable by software) and a somewhat disturbing lack of power that’s especially obvious when you put the Fire HD 8.9 next to the iPad 4th Gen

What It Is

If you’ve never seen an iPad and someone handed you the Kindle Fire HD .9, you’d likely say its jet-black, soft-to-the-touch plastic body felt good in your hands and was more than effective at all the core tasks (reading, game playing, e-mail, web browsing).

Design-wise, the 8.9 device looks exactly like the 7-inch model, complete with the too-hard to find volume and power buttons. There are no other physical buttons on this device, but Amazon chooses to hide the few it has by making them the exact same color as the chassis and flush with the body. Every time I use the tablet I do the “where’s the damn button” dance, rotating the Kindle Fire HD round and round until I feel the buttons (since I can barely see them).

I have applauded Barnes & Noble for putting the physical “N” home button right on the face of their Nook HD. Bravo for having the guts to do this. Amazon apparently looks at Apple’s iPad home button and thinks to have anything similar would be seen as “copying” the Cupertino hardware giant, when instead they should realize that it works, consumers like it and tablets without it are at a distinct disadvantage.

Amazon’s interface has you make do with a virtual, slide-out home button that is always available. Problem is, I found times when it wasn’t available. When I played Spider-Man and Asphalt 7, the tiny little left-had bar would disappear and I couldn’t exit the game unless I hit the sleep/power button.

The rest of the Kindle Fire HD 8.9′s body is solid and unremarkable (if you read my Kindle fire HD 7 review, then you know exactly what to expect.). Like the iPad 4th Gen, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has a front-facing 720p-capable camera. It’s useful for capturing video, snapping 1 Megapixel images and, probably most important, Skype video chats. Skype has built a fairly sharp-looing Kindle Fire app, though the design doesn’t fully fit the larger 8.9-inch screen. Skype just updated its Android app for better tablet viewing and hopefully, we’ll see this update hit the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 as well.

The iPad also has an HD rear-facing camera. The Kindle fire HD 8.9 does not (Barnes & Noble leave out cameras altogether)

Not Packing a Punch

As a large-screen high-resolution tablet (though iPad’s 2048×1536 retina display beats it), the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 offers plenty of attractive screen real estate for web browsing, book and magazine reading and games. But the results can be mixed. Silk, Amazon‘s custom web browser, was occasionally less than responsive and games, though, they ran well, never looked half as good as they do on the considerably more expensive iPad 4.

Granted, you can’t always find the same high-quality immersive action games on both Android and iOS, but Asphalt 7 Heat is a notable exception and it throws the performance differences between the two tablets into stark contrast. Game play is equally responsive on both platforms: the Kindle Fire HD 8.9’s accelerometer reads my moves just as well as the iPad.

The graphics on the Kindle Fire HD, however, are reduced to blobs and blocks (palm trees without distinct leaves, buildings without discernible windows) . The iPad’s quad-core graphics simply overmatch the Kindle Fire. I have never, for example, seen an iPad draw the game as I was playing, as I did when I tried out The Amazing Spider-Man.

Additionally, I experienced more than my share of crashes with games and even magazine apps like Vanity Fair.

The Good

Not everyone, however, will compare the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to the iPad. Some will see the $ 299 entry-level price point (for the 16 GB model) and appreciate the power, flexibility and utility of this device. Like all Fire’s before it, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 makes it easy to consume mass quantities of content. Nearly every menu option: Games, Apps, Books, Music, Videos, Newsstand, puts you just one click away from shopping for fresh content. If you have an Amazon account (and who doesn’t) your desired book, music or movie is just a click away. Plus, you can still easily store any of it locally, and worry about running out of storage space, or in the cloud, and never worry about space or accessibility—you can get to that purchased Kindle content from any Kindle app or registered Amazon device.

Watching movies on the tablet is a pleasure. I streamed a couple through Amazon Prime; they looked good on the 1920 x 1200 screen and the Dolby Stereo speakers produced sharp, loud, almost room-filling sound—an impressive feat not even the iPad can match.

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 also includes a mini-HDMI-out port, which prompted me to connect the tablet to my 47-inch LED HDTV so we could watch Disney’s Brave. Yes, I had to get up and tap on the Kindle screen each time I wanted to pause and restart the move, but otherwise, I was pretty impressed with how the Kindle handled the task.

Obviously I yearn for an Apple Airplay-like feature on Android tablets (rumor has it one is coming), but this is the next, best thing.

There isn’t a lot to say about the Kindle Fire HD 8.9-inch interface that I did not say in the Kindle Fire HD 7 review. I will note, however, that the increased real estate makes the trademark task carousel seem almost too big. Icons for everything from your recently played Spider-Man game to magazine apps, books and Web sites all sit side-by-side-by side. Some, like book covers, look gorgeous.

Others like a broken web-page link look stupid. Worse yet, none of them have labels, which can occasionally make it hard to identify which app or task you’re looking at. I’m just not sure this interface metaphor is sustainable.

Personally I prefer either the clean consistent look of iOS, or the uber-user friendly, family-oriented Nook HD profile-based one. Amazon may want to take a hard look at those and start over.

Staying Connected

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 is also Amazon’s first cellular-based tablet. That fact puts it even more squarely in competition with the iPad (which obviously has always had 3G models and now offers blazing fast 4G LTE ones as well on all major carriers).

Amazon’s mobile broadband plans are a little more conservative, with just the AT&T 4G LTE option (the 32 GB 4G model that I tested lists for $ 499, which is still $ 224 less than a comparable iPad 4th Gen).

In my experience, the connectivity is superfast and fairly ubiquitous. Amazon‘s $ 49 (a year) flat fee plan is attractive, but with a cap of 250MB per month of data, it’s unlikely it will satisfy the most data-hungry users. If you do need more data, users can also get 3GB and 5GB data plans directly from AT&T on the device.

At press time, Amazon had not enabled streaming video over LTE. Having it sounds nice, but even with the most generous data plans, streaming video would eat it up faster than you can say, “I’m streaming Back to the Future in HD over 4G LTE on my Kindle fire HD!”

The reality for most users is that WiFi is plentiful and you’ll be hard pressed to find a spot where you can’t connect for free or a small one-off fee. It’s the reason Barnes & Noble’s line of HD Nooks do not include a cellular option.

Review continues after FreeTime Gallery

FreeTime

Kindle HD FreeTime Start

Click here to view this gallery.

Perhaps the best new addition to the Kindle Fire family is not a piece of hardware or new component, but the new FreeTime app. Amazon put a lot of loving care into this parental control interface, but almost mucks the whole thing up by hiding the tool under an app that you have to scroll down to (or search) to find. By contrast profiles and age and content controls are baked into the Barnes & Noble Nook HD in a way that makes them impossible to ignore.

Even so, once you do access FreeTime, I think you’ll be pleased with the level of control it gives you. I added test profiles for my two children and then hand-picked every app and piece of content they could access. I was also able to block broadband mobile and even set time limits for access to content and overall screen viewing time (on a per profile basis). The set-up is a bit wonky and it bizarrely switches between landscape and profile screens, but I still applaud the effort. It would make sense for Amazon to move FreeTime into a device set-up screen. If the user has no additional family members or kids using the device, they can easily skip it.

To Buy or Not to Buy

Amazon’s expansive content and shopping ecosystem has always been a strong draw and it’s just as good in this large screen tablet as it was in the very first Kindle Fire. Still, you have to compare it with the equally strong iOS ecosystem, which is no slouch in the content shopping department. Apple doesn’t connect you as seamlessly to physical products, but there’s nothing difficult about shopping on Amazon.com via your iPad. It’s also notable that tablet competitor Barnes & Noble has added movie and TV viewing, rental and purchase.

Ultimately, all of these tablets are offering more and more of the same content options, apps, and features. The decision will likely come down to price, app selection, interface and overall ease of use. The Amazon Kindle fire HD 8.9 scores well on all of these, but does not always lead.

For the price, it’s a great value, but I want Amazon to focus on hardware and interface design for the next big update. Then, they may get my full endorsement.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Scott Macaulay Gives Strangers Free Thanksgiving Dinner - and Family for a Day

Heroes Among Us

By Alicia Dennis

11/22/2012 at 01:00 PM EST

When the turkey, potatoes and stuffing get passed around at Scott Macaulay's Thanksgiving dinner table, there's really no telling whether he'll know his fellow diners.

For 27 years, Macaulay, 51, has cooked and served Thanksgiving to groups of strangers in Melrose, Mass., because, "I don't think anyone should spend Thanksgiving alone," he tells PEOPLE.

His annual dinner came to be when his parents got a divorce in September of 1985 and then began arguing about where he would spend Thanksgiving. When Macaulay realized spending the day with either one or splitting it up wasn't going to work, he resigned himself to attending neither celebration. But he didn't want to eat alone on one of his favorite holidays, either.

"So, I put an ad in the local paper that I would cook dinner for up to 12 people," he says. "And it went pretty well. Thanksgiving is not a holiday about presents or fireworks, it is about giving thanks for the blessings in your life and you just can't do that by yourself. It isn't as much about the food as it is about being together."

Through the years, his annual dinners have grown in number – and in the connections he's made with the people at the table. Last year, 89 people were served dinner by Macaulay, who is single and buys and cooks the majority of the meal. He now holds the feast at the First Baptist Church in Melrose, where he makes the atmosphere more "homey" by bringing in his own rocking chairs, a faux fireplace and serving appetizers so people can visit together.

"I don't want it to look like an institution," he says. "I make it look like a home as much as possible, with cloth tablecloths and napkins and plastic silverware that looks real."

He recalls diners through the years: A woman who comes because her kids live out of state and it is too far to travel, a man whose wife has Alzheimer's, a young woman whose father was in the hospital nearby (Macaulay was recently invited to her wedding and he attended), as well as those who are recently widowed or divorced or who just find themselves with nowhere to go on the day.

"It's nice for us to share our blessings together and enjoy the day," says Macaulay, who also delivers meals to local police who have to work on the holiday.

Macaulay doesn't own a computer (or a television), so he relies on word of mouth and his annual notice in the paper to get the word out to people in the community. His reservation numbers before the holiday were at 32 for this year, but he expects and plans for more, getting up at 4 a.m. to put four turkeys into the ovens at the church and then start peeling and cooking the potatoes.

"I don't like to eat alone," Macaulay says, simply. "And I enjoy getting to have Thanksgiving with other people who want to enjoy being together too."

Know a hero? Send suggestions to heroesamongus@peoplemag.com. For more inspiring stories, read the latest issue of PEOPLE magazine

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