Italy PM Monti resigns, elections likely in February

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way to a highly uncertain national election in February.

The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he has faced growing pressure to seek a second term.

President Giorgio Napolitano is expected to dissolve parliament in the next few days and has already indicated that the most likely date for the election is February 24.

In an unexpected move, Napolitano said he would hold consultations with political leaders from all the main parties on Saturday to discuss the next steps. In the meantime Monti will continue in a caretaker capacity.

European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti’s economic reform agenda to continue but Italy’s two main parties have said he should stay out of the race.

Monti, who handed in his resignation during a brief meeting at the presidential palace shortly after parliament approved his government’s 2013 budget, will hold a news conference on Sunday at which he is expected clarify his intentions.

Ordinary Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence that they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.

Whether he runs or not, his legacy will loom over an election which will be fought out over the painful measures he has introduced to try to rein in Italy’s huge public debt and revive its stagnant economy.

His resignation came a couple of months before the end of his term, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi‘s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party in parliament earlier this month.

Speculation is swirling over Monti’s next moves. These could include outlining policy recommendations, endorsing a centrist alliance committed to his reform agenda or even standing as a candidate in the election himself.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has held a strong lead in the polls for months but a centrist alliance led by Monti could gain enough support in the Senate to force the PD to seek a coalition deal which could help shape the economic agenda.

BERLUSCONI IN WINGS

Senior figures from the alliance, including both the UDC party, which is close to the Roman Catholic Church, and a new group founded by Ferrari sports car chairman Luca di Montezemolo, have been hoping to gain Monti’s backing.

He has not said clearly whether he intends to run, but he has dropped heavy hints he will continue to push a reform agenda that has the backing of both Italy’s business community and its European partners.

The PD has promised to stick to the deficit reduction targets Monti has agreed with the European Union and says it will maintain the broad course he has set while putting more emphasis on reviving growth.

Berlusconi’s return to the political arena has added to the already considerable uncertainty about the centre-right’s intentions and increased the likelihood of a messy and potentially bitter election campaign.

The billionaire media tycoon has fluctuated between attacking the government’s “Germano-centric” austerity policies and promising to stand aside if Monti agrees to lead the centre right, but now appears to have settled on an anti-Monti line.

He has pledged to cut taxes and scrap a hated housing tax which Monti imposed. He has also sounded a stridently anti-German line which has at times echoed the tone of the populist 5-Star Movement headed by maverick comic Beppe Grillo.

The PD and the PDL, both of which supported Monti’s technocrat government in parliament, have made it clear they would not be happy if he ran against them and there have been foretastes of the kind of attacks he can expect.

Former centre-left prime minister Massimo D’Alema said in an interview last week that it would be “morally questionable” for Monti to run against the PD, which backed all of his reforms and which has pledged to maintain his pledges to European partners.

Berlusconi who has mounted an intensive media campaign in the past few days, echoed that criticism this week, saying Monti risked losing the credibility he has won over the past year and becoming a “little political figure”.

(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones, Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Paolo Biondi; Writing by Gavin Jones and James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Red Hat shares up on acquisition and 3Q results

Red Hat Inc.‘s shares jumped Friday on the software company‘s solid third-quarter results and plans to acquire cloud-based software company ManageIQ.

THE SPARK: Red Hat said late Thursday that it would buy privately held ManageIQ for $ 104 million in cash.

The Raleigh, N.C., company also reported that it earned 29 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter on an adjusted basis, up a penny from the prior year and in line with analyst expectations. Its revenue for the period increased 18 percent to $ 343.6 million, which beats the $ 338 million that analysts polled by FactSet had forecast.

THE BIG PICTURE: ManageIQ’s software helps businesses deploy and manage private clouds. Red Hat said the deal will expand the reach of its public-private cloud setups for its customers. The acquisition is expected to have no material impact to Red Hat’s revenue for its fiscal year ending in February.

THE ANALYSIS: Stifel Nicolaus analyst Brad R. Reback said that the company has been able to maintain momentum even in a difficult environment and he thinks the latest deal offers an interesting longer-term angle for its business. He thinks the company is well positioned to generate at least 15 to 20 percent billings growth in the future. He reiterated a “Buy” rating and a $ 65 price target on its shares.

SHARE ACTION: Shares gained $ 2.25, or more than 4 percent, to $ 54.86 in afternoon trading. Shares have traded between $ 39.19 and $ 62.75 in the past 52 weeks.

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PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ reaches 1B views on YouTube

NEW YORK (AP) — Viral star PSY has reached a new milestone on YouTube.

The South Korean rapper’s video for “Gangnam Style” has reached 1 billion views, according to YouTube’s own counter. It’s the first time any clip has surpassed that mark on the streaming service owned by Google Inc.

It shows the enduring popularity of the self-deprecating video that features Park Jae-sang‘s giddy up-style dance moves. The video has been available on YouTube since July 15, averaging more than 200 million views per month.

Justin Bieber’s video for “Baby” held the previous YouTube record at more than 800 million views.

PSY wasn’t just popular on YouTube, either. Earlier this month Google announced “Gangnam Style” was the second highest trending search of 2012 behind Whitney Houston, who passed away in February.

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Perennial Flu Vaccine Gets Closer

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NRA move exposes deep divide on guns

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Any chance for national unity on U.S. gun violence appeared to wane a week after the Connecticut school massacre, as the powerful NRA gun rights lobby called on Friday for armed guards in every school and gun-control advocates vehemently rejected the proposal.

The solution offered by the National Rifle Association defied a push by President Barack Obama for new gun laws, such as bans on high-capacity magazines and certain semiautomatic rifles.

At a hotel near the White House, NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre said a debate among lawmakers would be long and ineffective, and that school children were better served by immediate action to send officers with firearms into schools.

LaPierre delivered an impassioned defense of the firearms that millions of Americans own, in a rare NRA news briefing after the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting in which a gunman killed his mother, and then 20 children and six adults at an elementary school.

"Why is the idea of a gun good when it's used to protect our president or our country or our police, but bad when it's used to protect our children in their schools?" LaPierre asked in comments twice interrupted by anti-NRA protesters whom guards forced from the room.

Speaking to about 200 reporters and editors but taking no questions, LaPierre dared politicians to oppose armed guards.

"Is the press and political class here in Washington so consumed by fear and hatred of the NRA and America's gun owners," he asked, "that you're willing to accept a world where real resistance to evil monsters is a lone, unarmed school principal?"

Proponents of gun control immediately rejected the idea, hardening battle lines in a social debate that divides Americans as much as abortion or same-sex marriage.

A brief NRA statement three days earlier in which the group said it wanted to contribute meaningfully to ways to prevent school massacres led to speculation that compromise might be possible, or that the NRA was too weak to defeat new legislation.

"The NRA's leadership had an opportunity to help unite the nation behind efforts to reduce gun violence and avert massacres like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School," said Democratic Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York. She supports new limits on ammunition and firearms, and universal background checks for gun buyers.

WAITING FOR A COMPROMISE

Adam Winkler, author of "Gunfight," a history of U.S. gun rights, said he expected the NRA might yield on background checks. About 40 percent of gun purchasers are not checked, according to some estimates.

"The NRA missed a huge opportunity to move in the direction of compromise. Instead of offering a major contribution to the gun debate, which is what they promised, we got the same old tired clichés," said Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll on Monday showed the percentage of Americans favoring tough gun regulations rising 8 points after the Newtown shooting, to 50 percent.

Inside the NRA, though, attitudes might not change much.

"The anti-gun forces which are motivated by hysteria and a refusal to deal with the facts are going to be facing a counter-attack here that is going to be very, very effective," said Robert Brown, an NRA board member and the publisher of Soldier of Fortune, a military-focused magazine.

During the news conference, LaPierre laid out a plan for a "National School Shield" and said former U.S. congressman Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas would head up the NRA's effort to develop a model security program for schools.

The NRA is far and away America's most powerful gun organization and dwarves other groups with its lobbying efforts. In 2011, it spent $3.1 million lobbying lawmakers and federal agencies, while all gun-control groups combined spent $280,000, according to records the groups filed with Congress.

ECHOES OF COLUMBINE

Ken Blackwell, another NRA board member, said NRA leaders were discussing how to react to the Newtown shooting on the day it happened, helping LaPierre formulate a position.

"He and the team of lawyers around him are very bright and they understand the Constitution," said Blackwell, a Republican former state official in Ohio.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court in 2008 guarantees an individual right to own firearms, though it allows for some limits.

While LaPierre's proposal to arm schools came as a surprise to those who hoped for compromise, it is not new.

Former NRA president, the late actor Charlton Heston, made a similar proposal after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre near Denver that killed 12 students and one teacher.

"If there had been even one armed guard in the school, he could have saved a lot of lives and perhaps ended the whole thing instantly," Heston said in April 1999, according to The New York Times.

Columbine had an armed sheriff's deputy who exchanged gunfire outside the school with one of the two teenage killers, according to a Jefferson County, Colorado, sheriff's office report. The deputy was unable to hit or stop the student, who was armed with a semiautomatic rifle, from entering the school, and the deputy stayed in a parking lot with police, the report said.

Protesters at the news briefing on Friday accused the NRA of being complicit in gun deaths.

"If teachers can stand up to gunmen, Congress can stand up to the NRA," said Medea Benjamin, co-director of the peace group Code Pink, who was escorted from the news conference.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Patrick Rucker and Alina Selyukh in Washington, and Stephanie Simon and Keith Coffman in Denver, Colorado; Editing by Karey Wutkowski, Mary Milliken and Eric Beech)

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Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — A baby boy joined the ranks of Syria’s tens of thousands of war wounded when a missile fired by Bashar Assad‘s air force slammed into his family home and shrapnel pierced his skull.

Four-month-old Fahed Darwish suffered brain damage and, like thousands of others seriously hurt in the civil war, he will likely need care well after the fighting is over. That’s something doctors say a post-conflict Syria won’t be able to provide.

Making things worse, there has been a sharp spike in serious injuries since the summer, when the regime began bombing rebel-held areas from the air, and doctors say a majority of the wounded they now treat are civilians.

This week, Fahed was recovering from brain surgery in an intensive care unit, his head bandaged and his body under a heavy blanket, watched over by Mariam, his distraught 22-year-old mother.

She said that after her first-born is discharged from the hospital in Atmeh, a village in an area of relative safety near the Turkish border, they will have to return to their village in a war zone in central Syria.

“We have nowhere else to go,” she said.

Even for those who have escaped direct injury, the civil war is posing a mounting health threat. Half the country’s 88 public hospitals and nearly 200 clinics have been damaged or destroyed, the World Health Organization says, leaving many without access to health care. Diabetics can’t find insulin, kidney patients can’t reach dialysis centers. Towns are running out of water-purifying materials. Many of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting are exposed to the cold in tents or unheated public buildings.

“You are talking about a public health crisis on a grand scale,” said Dr. Abdalmajid Katranji, a hand and wrist surgeon from Lansing, Michigan, who regularly volunteers in Syria.

No one knows just how many people have been injured since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, starting out with peaceful protests that turned into an armed insurgency in response to a violent government crackdown.

More than 43,000 have been killed in the past 21 months, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, basing his count on names and details provided by activists in Syria. He said the number of wounded is so large he can only give a rough estimate, of more than 150,000.

Casualties began to rise dramatically at the start of the summer. At the time, the regime, its ground troops stretched thin, began bombing from the air to prevent opposition fighters from gaining more territory.

Seemingly random bombings have razed entire villages and neighborhoods, driving terrified civilians from their homes, with an estimated 3 million Syrians out of the country’s population of 23 million now displaced.

About 10 percent of the wounded suffer serious injuries and many of those will need long-term care and rehabilitation, said Dr. Omar Aswad of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, an umbrella for 14 aid groups.

This includes artificial limbs and follow-up surgery. “This is of course not available and will be one of the major (health) problems in the months right after the war,” said Mago Tarzian, emergency director for the Paris-based Doctors Without Borders.

For now, aid groups are struggling to provide even emergency treatment in under-equipped clinics.

The two dozen small hospitals and field clinics in rebel-run areas of Idlib province in the north only have a few Intensive Care Unit beds between them, said Aswad. None has a CT scanner, an important diagnostic tool.

“We need generators, we need medical supplies and the most pressing is medicine,” he said.

The challenge has been compounded by new types of injuries.

The regime has begun dropping incendiary bombs that can cause severe burns, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing amateur video and witness accounts.

Ole Solvang, a researcher for the group, said he saw remnants of such a bomb on a recent Syria trip. Aswad said doctors in Idlib and nearby Aleppo province reported seeing patients with burns from such weapons.

Doctors and hospitals have also been targeted. Aswad, who fled the city of Idlib in March after regime forces entered it, said five friends in a secret association of anti-regime physicians have been arrested. Hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been attacked, Solvang said, calling it “a worrying trend that makes the medical situation even worse.”

One of the bright spots is a 50-bed emergency care clinic set up six weeks ago in a former elementary school in Atmeh.

Largely funded by a wealthy Syrian expatriate, the Orient clinic, with five ICU beds, handles some of the most serious cases in a radius of some 150 kilometers (90 miles), said its director, orthopedic surgeon Abdel Hamid Dabbak.

In the past, seriously wounded patients had to go to Turkey, risking dangerous delays at the border, he said. Now, once patients are stabilized in Atmeh, they are sent to a sister clinic across the border for follow-up care.

In Orient’s ICU, a 24-year-old rebel fighter was breathing oxygen through a mask. He had been brought in a day earlier, bleeding heavily from stomach wounds and close to death, said Dr. Maen Martini, a volunteer physician from Joliet, Illinois. After surgery, he stabilized and was taken off a respirator. A delayed crossing into Turkey would have killed him, Martini said.

The fighter’s neighbor was little Fahed, whose house had been struck by a missile on Saturday in the village of Kafr Zeita in Hama province. “The roof collapsed on us,” his mother said of the attack. “We ran out … I saw him bleeding from his head, but it was just a small cut.”

The local clinic said the injury was more serious than it seemed and the family rushed to Atmeh, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north.

Since surgery, Fahed has been nursing and has moved his arms and legs, and the doctor is hoping for a near-complete recovery.

“Clinically, he has improved dramatically,” he said.

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Insiders steal a march in leak prone Asian markets

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – When South Korean automaker Hyundai Motor Co announced last month it had overstated the fuel efficiency levels on around one million of its cars in the United States and Canada some investors were left fuming more than others.

Some had already sold their shares before the announcement on November 2. The stock fell 4 percent on November 1 with about 2.2 million shares changing hands, the highest trading volume of the year at that point.

“This smells pretty bad,” said Robert Boxwell, director of consulting firm Opera Advisors in Kuala Lumpur who has studied insider dealing patterns.

“It would have fallen into our suspect trading category,” he added.

Boxwell spots suspect trading by looking at how much the volume diverges from the average level in the days before a market moving announcement. In the Hyundai instance, the volume was more than five standard deviations, a measure of variation, away from the daily average of 598,741 shares over the past year.

A Hyundai spokeswoman declined to comment.

Research from the Capital Markets Co-operative Research Centre (CMCRC), an academic centre in Sydney that studies financial market efficiency, found that 26 percent of price-sensitive announcements in Asia Pacific markets showed signs of leakage in the first quarter of this year, the most recent period for which data was available.

That compared with 13 percent in North American markets.

The CMCRC says it looks for suspected information leaks by examining abnormal price moves and trading volumes ahead of price-sensitive announcements.

Investors say one reason for leaks in Asia has been low enforcement rates for insider trading and breaches of disclosure rules. Enforcement in some markets is virtually non-existent.

There are also misconceptions about whether trading on non-public information is a crime.

“The idea that insider trading is wrong rather than smart is only being ingrained in the current generation of Asian players, not the older generation who are often still in the driving seat,” said Peter Douglas, founder of GFIA, a hedge fund consultancy in Singapore.

LOSS OF CONFIDENCE

Japan’s largest investment bank Nomura Holdings was embarrassed this year after regulatory investigations found it leaked information to clients ahead of three public share offerings.

Nomura has acknowledged that its employees leaked information on three share issues it underwrote in 2010. In June, it published the results of an internal investigation that found breaches of basic investment banking safeguards against leaking confidential information and announced a raft of measures to prevent recurrence.

The bank was also fined 200 million yen ($ 2.37 million) by the Tokyo Stock Exchange and 300 million yen by the Japan Securities Dealers Association.

Such leaks hurt companies’ share prices in the long run because investors put in less money if they feel they are not on a level playing field.

“It is very damaging. You may not know how much money you’ve lost but if there is not confidence that the regulators are prosecuting and enforcing the rules on this then it undermines investor confidence and liquidity,” said Jamie Allen, secretary general of the Asian Corporate Governance Association.

The issue isn’t being ignored. Many Asian markets such as Hong Kong and China have tightened their rules on insider trading over the past decade.

Indeed some investors feel that while leaks and insider dealing are unfair, regulators in the region have more serious issues they should be tackling.

“I would like to see the regulators spend more resources on investigating and prosecuting fraud against listed companies, which severely damages shareholder value,” said David Webb, a corporate governance activist in Hong Kong, arguing insider dealing as less of an impact on a company’s long-term share price.

HTC AND APPLE

A week after Hyundai’s announcement about its problems in the United States, there was an unexpected move on the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Shares in smartphone maker HTC Corp jumped almost seven percent on Friday, November 9, hitting the daily upper trading limit. On Sunday came the surprise announcement that the company was ending its long-running patent dispute with Apple Inc , a move seen as a positive for the stock.

The Taiwan bourse announced it was investigating the trading patterns to see if there was a possible leak.

When asked for comment, HTC referred back to a November 13 statement in which the company said it had kept the Apple settlement process confidential and has strict controls on insider trading.

Michael Lin, a spokesman for the Taiwan Exchange, told Reuters on Friday that the bourse is still working with the regulator on the case.

‘ENORMOUS LOSSES’

Michael Aitken, who oversees research at the CMCRC, said many other Asian markets lack tough enough rules to force information to be released as efficiently and timely as possible, a primary reason for the prevalence of leaks.

“Poor regulation hampers enforcement efforts,” he said pointing out that few markets have the “continuous disclosure” rules used in Australia which require listed companies to release material information as soon as possible.

In Korea, when Hyundai shares started to fall, rumours began swirling that news about a problem with some of its cars was on its way, but investors say it took the company too long to disclose what exactly was happening.

“Hyundai at that time did not confirm the rumours. We suffered enormous losses because of this,” said one fund manager, who declined to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.

An official from Korea Exchange declined to comment on whether it was investigating this case, saying only that the exchange looks carefully into possible cases of insider trading.

Across Asia, regulators concede that many company executives and insiders still do not appreciate that leaking or trading on material, non-public information is an offence.

“People don’t even know they are engaging in insider trading, for example if their friends are talking about it on the golf course,” said Tong Daochi director-general for international affairs at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, during a regulation conference last month.

“We try to tell society, what are the criminal issues, what are the insider trading issues? For example we have held 27 press conferences to tell the public what kind of activities are involved in insider trading and to let people know that this is an active crime.” ($ 1 = 84.2600 Japanese yen) ($ 1 = 0.6147 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rachel Armstrong; additional reporting by Nishant Kumar in HONG KONG and Hyunjoo Jin in SEOUL; Editing by Emily Kaiser)

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Marilyn Monroe subway grate photo on view in NYC

NEW YORK (AP) — A famous image of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt billowing atop a New York City subway grate is on display in a picture-perfect spot: outside the Times Square subway station.

The supersized version of Sam Shaw‘s well-known picture is part of an exhibit. The exhibit also features eight of Shaw’s other Monroe pictures, on view inside the 42nd Street-Bryant Park station on the B, D, F, M and 7 lines.

The show opened Thursday. It’ll be up for a year.

Shaw shot the subway grate photo for the 1955 film “The Seven Year Itch.” He took the other pictures in 1957.

The exhibit is part of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program. Manager Lester Burg says matching a mass transit setting with a popular figure from mass culture seemed a good fit.

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First Condom/Contraceptive Sales for DKT International in Pakistan

WASHINGTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–

DKT International has just launched a new birth control and safe sex project in Pakistan. DKT is one of the world’s largest private providers of contraceptives in developing countries and brings 23 years of social marketing experience to the Pakistan effort. Early work has included hiring key staff, registering with the Government of Pakistan, and building partnerships with the Ministry of Health and with the Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health Program in the province of Sindh. In November 2012 DKT Pakistan made its first sales of nearly 700,000 condoms and 1,000 IUDs to eight distributors in three Pakistani administrative districts.

Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous country and its population could double by 2050, if the current rate of growth continues. Although its birth rate has been falling, Pakistan’s total fertility rate is still 4.1 children per woman and has remained even higher for women living in rural areas. Maternal mortality remains very high at approximately 276 deaths per 100,000 live births.

DKT Pakistan and its local partners are working together to reach Pakistani couples and more than 6 million women with unmet needs for contraception. The goal is to provide customers and health providers with more contraceptive choices, combined with regular access to family planning training and education.

DKT Pakistan’s program, called JANNAT (heaven), offers high quality, affordable contraceptives for Pakistani women and families, and training for reproductive health service providers. It addresses problems of supply and demand that have kept Pakistan’s contraceptive prevalence rate lower than its neighbors, with a focus on underserved populations. Supply-side barriers, especially in rural areas, include such challenges as the limited number of providers and outlets for family planning products, and the lack of trained mid-level providers of reproductive health services, such as community midwives, lady health workers and lady health visitors.

DKT Pakistan will overcome these barriers by using social marketing to drive contraception demand through mass media and non-traditional communication and by improving reproductive health service availability via regular contact with the country’s primary providers of family planning and OBGYN health services.

DKT International promotes family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention through 21 social marketing programs in 19 countries.

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Boehner suffers major 'fiscal cliff' setback

House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks to the media about the fiscal cliff at the U.S. Capitol in Washington. …In a stinging setback for Republican House Speaker John Boehner, a lack of support from inside his own party for his “fiscal cliff” fall-back plan forced him late Thursday to cancel a much-trumpeted vote on the measure.

“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass,” Boehner said in a written statement released after an emergency meeting of House Republicans.

The measure, dubbed “Plan B,” would have let Bush-era tax cuts expire on income above $1 million annually, while extending them for everyone else. It appeared that Boehner faced a rebellion from conservatives opposed to any tax hike, while House Democrats starved the bill of their support, making passage impossible.

Boehner’s dramatic defeat cast fresh doubt on efforts to avert the “fiscal cliff” and spare Americans across-the-board income tax hikes come Jan. 1. Those increases, coupled with deep automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect the same day, could plunge the fragile economy into a new recession. Talks between the speaker and President Barack Obama were at a stalemate, according to aides on both sides.

After the cancellation of the vote, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced on Twitter the House "has concluded legislative business for the week. The House will return after the Christmas holiday when needed."

Boehner’s “Plan B” had aimed to shift any blame for going over the "fiscal cliff" to Obama and Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid. Polls show a narrow majority of Americans say they would hold the GOP responsible if a deal is not reached to avert the "cliff."

“Now it is up to the president to work with Senator Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff,” the speaker said. He pointed to House passage of Republican bills that would stop all of the tax increases and replace the automatic cuts. “The Senate must now act.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement Thursday night that Obama's "main priority is to ensure that taxes don’t go up on 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses in just a few short days. The president will work with Congress to get this done and we are hopeful that we will be able to find a bipartisan solution quickly that protects the middle class and our economy."

The vote had initially been scheduled for 7:30 p.m. But House Republican leaders’ vote counting showed up coming up short. Rather than suffer a defeat in a floor vote, they pulled the bill.

Earlier, the White House had pressed Boehner to stick with negotiations with Obama and threatened to veto “Plan B,” which top Senate Democrats mocked as “dead on arrival” in the upper chamber.

“Instead of taking the opportunity that was presented to them to continue to negotiate what could be a very helpful, large deal for the American people, the Republicans in the House have decided to run down an alley that has no exit while we all watch,” Carney told reporters.

He also indicated that communications, even at the staff level, were on hold.

President Barack Obama waves to the media as he walks from Marine One to the Oval Office of the White House (Carolyn …One early sign of trouble for Boehner came in a too-narrow-for-comfort vote victory on the second part of his plan, which would have replaced the automatic cuts in defense and domestic spending–the so-called “sequester”–with a Republican alternative. That measure passed by a 215-209 margin.

Before that, lawmakers had defeated a Democratic attempt to derail the process by a 179-243 margin.

The “Plan B” push had pitted Boehner against conservative groups like the anti-tax Club for Growth and Heritage Action–which warned lawmakers the results would go on their permanent records.

But even a victory for Boehner would have been mostly symbolic.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offered the “fiscal cliff” equivalent to Monty Python’s “dead parrot” sketch, dismissing "Plan B" as a “pointless political stunt,” declaring that Boehner’s efforts were “non-starters in the Senate” and insisting that “House Republicans know that the bill has no future.”

“If they don’t know it now, tell them what I said,” Reid said. “It’s time for Republicans to get serious” about negotiating with Obama. (Anyone still think the parrot is just resting? No. 2 Senate Democrat Dick Durbin bluntly declared “Plan B” to be “dead on arrival.”)

Reid also announced that the Senate would be back at work on Dec. 27. (Earlier, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said representatives would not leave town immediately after the "Plan B" vote.)

Boehner shrugged off Reid’s comments.

“After today, Senate Democrats and the White House are going to have to act on this measure,” he told reporters. “And if Senate Democrats and the White House refuse to act, they’ll be responsible for the largest tax hike in American history.”

Boehner had declared himself “hopeful” that he and Obama can reach a broader deal and insisted he was “not convinced at all that when the bill passes the House today it will die in the Senate.”

The White House, which had already leveled a veto threat, blasted “Plan B” in a blog post as “nothing more than a dangerous diversion” that scraps funding for services like Meals on Wheels, which reaches some 1.7 million elderly people, as well as child care programs and initiatives that help homeowners prevent foreclosure.

Some analysts had noted that Obama and Boehner were just a few billion dollars apart and that “Plan B” could turn out to the be the legislative vehicle for any final compromise deal.

“We will have to be here the 27th no matter what happens,” Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said. “If there’s no agreement we have to be here to try and hammer out something. If there is an agreement it’ll take several days to write it up–our poor staffs will have to be doing it during the holiday–and then vote on it the 27th.”

Democrats argued that Obama’s latest offer to Boehner included a sizable concession. The president said Monday that he’d accept rates going up on household income above $400,000, rather than $250,000, the number he cited throughout his reelection campaign.

Obama's new proposal also calls for raising $1.2 trillion in new tax revenues on individual income–down from $1.4 trillion in his previous proposal and $1.6 trillion in his opening gambit–coupled with about $1 trillion in spending cuts. The president’s proposal includes about $130 billion saved by adopting lower cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security, something liberal Democrats oppose.

Republicans charged that the president was relying on dodgy math by including interest that won’t have to be paid on the national debt thanks to the savings–even though Boehner has embraced that accounting maneuver in the past.

Early in the day, Boehner himself had rejected charges that “Plan B” showed that he feared he would be unable to rally enough Republicans behind a more comprehensive deal.

“Listen, the president knows that I’ve been able to keep my word on every agreement we’ve ever made,” he said.

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Worries grow in east Congo with fighter buildup

DAKAR, Senegal (AP) — Aid workers warned Wednesday that armed groups are setting up new front lines in and around the city of Goma in eastern Congo, where the U.N. said it now has documented at least 126 rape cases last month.

Thousands of fighters from the M23 rebel group withdrew several weeks ago from Goma, and the fighters have since taken steps toward negotiating with the Congolese government.

However, residents in Goma say M23 and other armed fighters are now positioning themselves in an around the city — including inside camps for people displaced by the violence.

The arrival of several thousand fighters within the last week is prompting fear among civilians, who already have experienced years of fighting and rebellions, said Tariq Riebl, Oxfam’s humanitarian coordinator there.

“They are very concerned — people are seeing this and they don’t know what it means,” he said. “I think what everyone is scared about is that it seems like people are ramping up, ramping up but for what purpose?”

Oxfam warns that more than 1 million people could come under attack if violence again flares in Goma, where more than 100,000 people already have fled from elsewhere in the region.

“Goma is typically the last refuge safe haven and now it’s being directly called into question. If Goma falls in a big battle, where are people going to go?” Riebl said.

“This is very, very disconcerting because you have a population of over 1 million people and if war were to break out, we’re looking at a horrific situation.”

The M23 rebel group, which is believed to be backed by neighboring Rwanda, is made up of hundreds of soldiers who deserted the Congolese army in April.

They took control of many villages and towns in the mineral-rich east over the last seven months, culminating in the seizure of Goma on Nov. 20. It took days of negotiations and intense international pressure, including from the U.N., for the thousands of fighters from M23 to finally withdraw from the regional capital.

The U.N. mission says it’s received allegations of serious rights violations, including killings and wounding of civilians, rape, looting, and forced recruitment of children, by elements of the M23 rebels in Goma and neighboring areas.

Congo’s armed forces are also blamed for a series of attacks as they fled Goma in retreat in late November.

The U.N. said Tuesday it now has been able to document at least 126 rapes during that period in the Minova area, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) south of Goma.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said that two Congolese soldiers so far have been arrested in connection with the rapes, while seven others had been implicated in looting in the area.

“The Congolese Armed Forces have started investigating those human rights violations,” he said. “The U.N. Mission is supporting the military justice procedure in conducting thorough investigations into these allegations to ensure that the perpetrators are identified and held accountable.”

Rape has long been used as a brutal weapon of war in eastern Congo, where both soldiers and various armed groups use sexual violence to intimidate, punish and control the population.

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$66M Kinkade estate dispute secretly settled

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Thomas Kinkade‘s widow and girlfriend have reached a settlement after a dispute over the late artist’s $ 66 million estate, their attorneys said Wednesday.

The San Jose Mercury News reports (http://bit.ly/Wq5kti ) that counsel for Nanette Kinkade and his girlfriend Amy Pinto announced the settlement but wouldn’t provide further details, leaving it unclear who will inherit Kinkade’s San Francisco Bay area mansion and his warehouse of paintings.

In a statement, they said the women kept Kinkade’s message of “love, spirituality and optimism” in their amicable resolution.

The dispute went public after the 54-year-old artist died April 6 from an accidental overdose of alcohol and prescription tranquilizers.

Pinto, who began dating Kinkade six months after his marriage of 28 years imploded, claimed Kinkade wrote two notes bequeathing her his mansion and $ 10 million to establish a museum of his paintings. Her lawyers filed court papers stating that she and Kinkade had planned to marry as soon as his divorce went through.

Nanette Kinkade disputed those claims and sought full control of the estate. She portrayed Pinto in court papers as a gold-digger who is trying to cheat the artist’s rightful heirs.

Kinkade, the self-described “Painter of Light,” was known for sentimental scenes of country gardens and pastoral landscapes. His work led to a commercial empire of franchised galleries, reproduced artwork and spin-off products that was said to fetch some $ 100 million each year in sales.

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Obama calls Army secretary over day care scandal

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama called the Army secretary to express concerns over arrests and the discovery of problems with background checks at an Army day care center and to urge a speedy investigation, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

The call at 10 p.m. Tuesday to Army Secretary John McHugh came against the backdrop of last week’s massacre of young children in a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

A White House official said the president relayed his concern about reports of abuse at the Fort Myer, Va., day care center and made clear that there must be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to protecting the children of service members.

The official said Obama urged McHugh to conduct the investigation into its hiring practices quickly and thoroughly.

Obama has been outspoken in his demands for a quick government reaction to the Newtown shooting that left 20 children and six adults dead, and he visited the Connecticut town Sunday to offer condolences to parents and the community.

The Army had no immediate comment on the president’s call.

The Pentagon is reviewing hiring procedures at military day care centers, schools, youth centers and other facilities where children are present, after revelations that some employees at the day care center had criminal records. Pentagon leaders were angry that it took months for the Army to disclose the problems to top officials and the public.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the military-wide review Tuesday shortly after the Army disclosed problems with security background checks of workers at Fort Myer. Pentagon press secretary George Little said department leaders were surprised to hear of the problems and that “clearly this information did not get reported up the chain of command as quickly as we think it should have.”

Little said Wednesday that officials also are questioning why it took three months for the Army to inform Panetta about arrests and problems with background checks at the day care center. Two people were arrested in September on multiple charges of assault against children at the center.

Little also said reports that parents of children at the center weren’t told about the problems indicate there may have been a serious breakdown in communications.

“We need to do everything we can wherever our children are entrusted to the care of DOD-employed personnel to insure we have the right personnel with the right background taking care of them,” said Little. “We want to insure that there’s consistency in the standards and policies and practices in hiring wherever military youth are involved.”

The actions stem from the Sept. 26 arrests of two Army employees. One was charged with five counts of assault and the second was charged with four counts of assault.

But the problems at Fort Myer apparently went much deeper. Indications are that at least 30 workers at the facility have histories that call into question their suitability to care for children, according to two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation into worker backgrounds at Fort Myer has not been completed.

After the Fort Myer arrests, the Army replaced the day care center’s management team and found what the Army called “derogatory information” in the background of an unspecified number of other employees there. Army officials did not reveal the information, and officials said it’s not clear if the background checks were not done, were not sufficient or simply were not used appropriately in screening personnel.

Col. Fern Sumpter, the Fort Myer commander, said the day care center was closed “out of an abundance of caution” and the children moved to a separate day care center at Fort Myer. A Fort Myer spokeswoman, Mary Ann Hodges, said the center was closed on Dec. 13.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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Funerals become routine in shattered town

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — One by one by one by one, each with fresh heartbreak, hearses crisscrossed two New England towns on Wednesday, bearing three tiny victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre and a heroic teacher in a seemingly never-ending series of funeral processions.

"The first few days, all you heard were helicopters," said Dr. Joseph Young, an optometrist who attended one funeral and would go to several more. "Now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day."

As more victims from the slaughter of 20 children and six adults were laid to rest, long funeral processions clogged the streets of Newtown, where Christmas trees were turned into memorials and a season that should be a time of joy was marked by heart-wrenching loss.

At least nine funerals and wakes were held Wednesday for those who died when gunman Adam Lanza, armed with a military-style assault rifle, broke into the school Friday and opened fire on their classrooms. Lanza killed his mother at her home before the attack and committed suicide at the school as police closed in.

At St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, mourners arrived for Caroline Previdi, an auburn-haired 6-year-old with an impish smile, before the service had even ended for Daniel Barden, a 7-year-old who dreamed of being a firefighter.

"It's sad to see the little coffins," said the Rev. John Inserra, a Catholic priest who worked at St. Rose for years before transferring to a church in Greenwich.

He returned to his old parish to comfort families wondering how a loving God could permit such carnage and has attended several of the funerals.

"It's always hard to bury a child," Inserra said of the seemingly unrelenting cycle of sorrow and loss. "God didn't do this. God didn't allow this. We allowed it. He said, 'Send the little children to me.' But he didn't mean it this way."

Hundreds of firefighters formed a long blue line outside the church for little Daniel's funeral. Two of his relatives work at the Fire Department of New York, and the gap-toothed redhead had wanted to join their ranks one day.

"If me being here helps this family or this community just a little bit, it's worth it," said Kevin Morrow, a New York firefighter and father of two young girls. "He wanted to be a firefighter, as any young boy wants to be."

Family friend Laura Stamberg, of New Paltz, N.Y., whose husband plays in a band with Daniel's father, said that on the morning of the shooting, Mark Barden taught his son to play a Christmas song on the piano.

"They played foosball and then he taught him the song and then he walked him to the bus and that was their last morning together," Stamberg said.

At Caroline's funeral, mourners wore pink ties and scarves — her favorite color — and remembered her as a New York Yankees fan who liked to kid around. "Silly Caroline" was how she was known to neighbor Karen Dryer.

"She's just a girl that was always smiling, always wanting others to smile," Dryer said.

Across town, at Christ the King Lutheran Church, hundreds gathered for the funeral of Charlotte Helen Bacon, many wearing buttons picturing the 6-year-old redhead. Speakers, including her grandfather, told of her love of wild animals, the family's golden retriever and the color pink.

She was "a beautiful little girl who could be a bit stubborn at times — just like all children," said Danbury resident Linda Clark as she left the service.

And in nearby Stratford, family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Victoria Soto, a first-grade teacher hailed as a hero for trying to shield her students, some of whom escaped. Musician Paul Simon, a family friend, performed "The Sound of Silence" at the service.

"She had the perfect job. She loved her job," said Vicky Ruiz, a friend since first grade.

Every year, Soto described her students the same way, Ruiz said.

"They were always good kids. They were always angels," she said, even if, like typical first-graders, they might not always listen.

In Woodbury, a line of colleagues, students and friends of slain Sandy Hook Principal Dawn Hochsprung, 47, wrapped around the block to pay their respects to the administrator, who rushed the gunman in an effort to stop him and paid with her life. U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan attended the service.

"She loved kids. She'd do anything to help them and protect them," said Joann Opulski, of Roxbury.

In emotion-charged Newtown, tempers flared as residents of the town of 27,000 navigated the hordes of reporters and camera crews that descended on the town. Some shouted at reporters outside the funerals Wednesday, urging them to leave their town in peace.

Cynthia Gubitose said the shooting and its aftermath have jolted what she described as a quintessential "Norman Rockwell, New England community."

"Nobody knew about Sandy Hook," Gubitose said as she placed flowers at a memorial with bouquets stacked chest-high. "Many of the people that live here like it that way."

The symbol of Christmas took on a new meaning in the town, where one memorial featured 26 Christmas trees — one for each victim at the school.

Edward Kish said he bought a Christmas tree two days before the shooting but hasn't had the heart to put it up or decorate it.

"I'll still put it up, probably," he said. "It doesn't seem right, and it doesn't seem like Christmas."

Mourners from across the country came to offer condolences. A jazz band from Alabama played at the main memorial site as local children played with a team of trained therapy dogs brought in to provide comfort.

At the Newtown Library, dozens of people gathered for a meeting of Newtown United, a grassroots community group formed in the wake of the shootings. The topic was gun legislation and how the community could push for a ban on assault weapons and other measures to make certain types of guns and ammunition more difficult to obtain.

There was a rumor that guests from Washington, D.C., would show up. About 10 minutes into the meeting Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen.-elect Chris Murphy walked into the room, to applause and surprised looks. They spoke and took questions for about a half-hour.

The school massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control.

President Barack Obama promised he'd send Congress broad proposals for tightening gun laws and curbing violence and pressed Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. He called for stricter background checks for people who seek to buy weapons and limited high-capacity clips.

"This time, the words need to lead to action," said Obama, who set a January deadline for the recommendations.

Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, at their home and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school.

Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.

However, Connecticut's chief medical examiner, Dr. H. Wayne Carver, told The Hartford Courant he is looking for genetic clues that might explain the behavior and is working with the University of Connecticut department of genetics.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Helen O'Neill, John Christoffersen, Katie Zezima and Pat Eaton-Robb in Newtown; Michael Melia in Hartford; Larry Margasak in Washington and AP Business Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis.

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NBC’s Engel, TV crew escape abduction in Syria

BEIRUT (AP) — NBC‘s chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel said Tuesday he and members of his network crew escaped unharmed after five days of captivity in Syria, where more than a dozen pro-regime gunmen dragged them from their car, killed one of their rebel escorts and subjected them to mock executions.

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, an unshaven Engel said he and his team escaped during a firefight Monday night between their captors and rebels at a checkpoint. They crossed into Turkey on Tuesday.

NBC did not say how many people were kidnapped with Engel, although two other men, producer Ghazi Balkiz and photographer John Kooistra, appeared with him on the “Today” show. It was not confirmed whether everyone was accounted for.

Engel said he believes the kidnappers were a Shiite militia group loyal to the Syrian government, which has lost control over swaths of the country’s north and is increasingly on the defensive in a civil war that has killed 40,000 people since March 2011.

“They kept us blindfolded, bound,” said the 39-year-old Engel, who speaks and reads Arabic. “We weren’t physically beaten or tortured. A lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first and when we refused, there were mock shootings,” he added.

“They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government,” Engel said. He said the captors were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group, but he did not elaborate.

There was no mention of the kidnapping by Syria’s state-run news agency.

Both Iran and Hezbollah are close allies of the embattled Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, who used military force to crush mostly peaceful protests against his regime. The crackdown on protests led many in Syria to take up arms against the government, and the conflict has become a civil war.

Engel said he was told the kidnappers wanted to exchange him and his crew for four Iranian and two Lebanese prisoners being held by the rebels.

“They captured us in order to carry out this exchange,” he said.

Engel and his crew entered Syria on Thursday and were driving through what they thought was rebel-controlled territory when “a group of gunmen just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes on the side of the road.”

“There were probably 15 gunmen. They were wearing ski masks. They were heavily armed. They dragged us out of the car,” he said.

He said the gunmen shot and killed at least one of their rebel escorts on the spot and took the hostages into a waiting truck nearby.

Around 11 p.m. Monday, Engel said he and the others were being moved to another location in northern Idlib province.

“And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. We were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan,” he said. “The kidnappers saw this checkpoint and started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.”

Engel and his crew crossed back into neighboring Turkey on Tuesday.

The network said there was no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.

NBC sought to keep the disappearance of Engel and the crew secret for several days while it investigated what happened to them. Major media organizations, including The Associated Press, adhered to a request from the network to refrain from reporting on the issue out of concern it could make the dangers to the captives worse. News of the disappearance did begin to leak out in Turkish media and on some websites on Monday.

Syria has become a danger zone for reporters since the conflict began.

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Syria is by far the deadliest country for the press in 2012, with 28 journalists killed in combat or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces.

Among the journalists killed while covering Syria are award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain’s Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.

The Syrian government has barred most foreign media coverage of the civil war in Syria. Those journalists whom the regime has allowed in are tightly controlled in their movements by Information Ministry minders. Many foreign journalists sneak into Syria illegally with the help of smugglers and travel with rebel escorts or drivers.

Engel joined NBC in 2003 and was named chief foreign correspondent in 2008. He previously worked as a freelance journalist for ABC News, including during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He has lived in the Middle East since graduating from Stanford University in 1996.

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Instagram tests new limits in user privacy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Instagram, which spurred suspicions this week that it would sell user photos after revising its terms of service, has sparked renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.

In forcefully establishing a new set of usage terms, Instagram, the massively popular photo-sharing service owned by Facebook Inc, has claimed some rights that have been practically unheard of among its prominent social media peers, legal experts and consumer advocates say.

Users who decline to accept Instagram’s new privacy policy have one month to delete their accounts, or they will be bound by the new terms. Another clause appears to waive the rights of minors on the service. And in the wake of a class-action settlement involving Facebook and privacy issues, Instagram has added terms to shield itself from similar litigation.

All told, the revised terms reflect a new, draconian grip over user rights, experts say.

“This is all uncharted territory,” said Jay Edelson, a partner at the Chicago law firm Edelson McGuire. “If Instagram is to encourage as many lawsuits as possible and as much backlash as possible then they succeeded.”

Instagram’s new policies, which go into effect January 16, lay the groundwork for the company to begin generating advertising revenue by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information such as who users follow in advertisements.

The new terms, which allow an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation, triggered an outburst of complaints on the Web on Tuesday from users upset that Instagram would make money from their uploaded content.

The uproar prompted a lengthy blog post from the company to “clarify” the changes, with CEO Kevin Systrom saying the company had no current plans to incorporate photos taken by users into ads.

Instagram declined comment beyond its blog post, which failed to appease critics including National Geographic, which suspended new posts to Instagram. “We are very concerned with the direction of the proposed new terms of service and if they remain as presented we may close our account,” said National Geographic, an early Instagram adopter.

PUSHING BOUNDARIES

Consumer advocates said Facebook was using Instagram’s aggressive new terms to push the boundaries of how social media sites can make money while its own hands were tied by recent agreements with regulators and class action plaintiffs.

Under the terms of a 2011 settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, Facebook is required to get user consent before personal information is shared beyond their privacy settings. A preliminary class action lawsuit settlement with Facebook allows users to opt-out of being included in the “sponsored stories” ads that use their personal information.

Under Instagram’s new terms, users who want to opt-out must simply quit using the service.

“Instagram has given people a pretty stark choice: Take it or leave, and if you leave it you’ve got to leave the service,” said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a Internet user right’s group.

What’s more, he said, if a user initially agrees to the new terms but then has a change of mind, their information could still be used for commercial purposes.

In a post on its official blog on Tuesday, Instagram did not address another controversial provision that states that if a child under the age of 18 uses the service, then it is implied that his or her parent has tacitly agreed to Instagram’s terms.

“The notion is that minors can’t be bound to a contract. And that also means they can’t be bound to a provision that says they agree to waive the rights,” said the EFF’s Opsahl.

BLOCKING CLASS ACTION SUITS

While Facebook continues to be bogged in its own class action suit, Instagram took preventive steps to avoid a similar legal morass.

Its new terms of service require users with a legal complaint to enter arbitration, rather than take the company to court. It prohibits users from joining a class action lawsuit unless they mail a written “opt-out” statement to Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park within 30 days of joining Instagram.

That provision is not included in terms of service for other leading social media companies like Twitter, Google, YouTube or even Facebook itself, and it immunizes Instagram from many forms of legal liability, said Michael Rustad, a professor at Suffolk University Law School.

Rustad, who has studied the terms of services for 157 social media services, said just 10 contained provisions prohibiting class action lawsuits.

The clause effectively cripples users who want to legally challenge the company because lawyers will not likely represent an individual plaintiff, Rustad argued.

“No lawyers will take these cases,” Rustad said. “In consumer arbitration cases, everything is stacked against the consumer. It’s a pretense, it’s a legal fiction, that there are remedies.”

Instagram, which has 100 million users, allows consumers to tweak the photos they take on their smartphones and share the images with friends. Facebook acquired Instagram in September for $ 715 million.

Instagram’s take-it-or-leave-it policy pushes the envelope for how social networking companies treat user privacy issues, said Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

“I think Facebook is probably using Instagram to see how far it can press this advertising model,” said Rotenberg. “If they can keep a lot of users, then all those users have agreed to have their images as part of advertising.”

(Additional reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

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NY appeals court takes up Cameron Douglas case

NEW YORK (AP) — The Douglas name — first with patriarch Kirk and later with son Michael — has always meant gold for Hollywood. But drama for the third generation of the Douglas family has occurred mostly off-screen, where Cameron Douglas has battled drug addiction and legal troubles.

In papers submitted for appeals court arguments Wednesday, prosecutors and a lawyer for Cameron Douglas have retold in greater detail than before how a man who seemed to have so many advantages in life could land in prison for a decade on a drug conviction.

The dispute is over Manhattan Judge Richard M. Berman‘s decision to double Douglas’ five-year prison term after he committed several new drug infractions, including convincing a lawyer-turned-love interest to sneak drugs into prison for him in her bra on three or four occasions.

Berman said he had not “ever encountered a defendant who has so recklessly and wantonly and flagrantly and criminally acted in as destructive and (as) manipulative a fashion as Cameron Douglas has.”

In his brief, Douglas’ lawyer Paul Shechtman called the additional sentence “shockingly long,” saying it “may be the harshest sentence ever imposed on a federal prisoner for a drug possession offense.”

Douglas, 34, was originally accused of distributing and conspiring to distribute more than 4.5 kilograms of methamphetamine and 20 kilograms of cocaine from August 2006 until his July 28, 2009, arrest at a Manhattan hotel. At the time, he was so visibly high on heroin that he was taken first to a hospital before he was brought to court, and it was later learned he had been shooting heroin five to six times a day for five years, Shechtman noted.

He was released from custody on the condition that he remain under “house arrest” with a private security guard at his mother’s apartment, Shechtman said. Within days, he persuaded his girlfriend, Kelly Sott, to smuggle heroin to him, hidden in an electric toothbrush. Once discovered, his bail was revoked and he was incarcerated. Sott pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in a plea deal and was sentenced to the seven months she had already served.

Still, Douglas gained leniency from what otherwise could have been a mandatory 10-year prison sentence by cooperating with the government, contacting his suppliers by telephone and text messages as law enforcement agents watched. As a result, two drug suppliers were arrested and convicted. Douglas testified at the trial of one supplier.

Douglas was sentenced to five years in prison for a Jan. 27, 2010, guilty plea to narcotics distribution charges even before his cooperation was completed.

At sentencing, Berman noted that the Douglas family had staged interventions for Douglas that he had refused and that two decades of drug addiction treatment had been unsuccessful. He said it appeared incarceration had produced the longest period of sobriety for Douglas since he was 13.

However, it was learned afterward that even prior to the April 20, 2010, sentencing, Douglas had persuaded one of his attorneys — a 33-year-old associate at a law firm with whom lawyers said he also had a romantic relationship — to smuggle Xanax pills to him in prison. Shechtman said she “apparently became enamored of Cameron during frequent visits.”

He admitted that he had shared the 30 Xanax pills with other inmates and that he had also smoked cigarettes, gambled, snorted substances and committed other infractions while in prison.

Shortly after testifying at the Oct. 3, 2011, trial of a drug supplier, prison staff caught Douglas with the opioid dependence medication Suboxone and a white powdery substance believed to be heroin. The prison punished him with disciplinary segregation for 11 months and canceled nearly three months of his good conduct time.

On Oct. 20, 2011, Douglas again pleaded guilty to drug possession, agreeing in a plea deal that the sentencing range should be an additional 12 to 18 months in prison. Prosecutors say that within a week of the plea, the government learned from a cooperating defendant in another case that Douglas had misled the government about how he obtained heroin while in prison.

Douglas had claimed he got it in a television room or at a church service or that he obtained the heroin by chance, picking it up off the floor after another inmate dropped it, the government said. But prosecutors say the cooperator revealed he had brought Douglas the drugs directly to his cell.

In court papers, Shechtman blamed Cameron Douglas’ long history of substance abuse and growing up with little parental support.

“While still a young teenager, he drank heavily and began selling drugs after his father sharply limited snorting cocaine,” he said. “He used illegal drugs to self-medicate — to ward off depression and panic attacks.”

He began using intravenous cocaine at age 20 and then started using heroin so that by age 25, “his life revolved around heroin,” Shechtman said.

His friends were fellow users, who gravitated to him because of his access to family money, which supported their habits, the lawyer said. His drug habit led him to be fired from a movie in which he had a minor role in 2006.

“Exasperated, his father gave him an ultimatum: enter a drug rehabilitation program or have his access to family money sharply limited. Cameron declined to enter treatment; his father carried out his threat; and Cameron turned to drug dealing to support his habit,” Shechtman wrote.

Shechtman argued that the judge had gone too far with Cameron Douglas, punishing an addict for something beyond his control.

“While we recognize that many of the words that the district court used to describe Cameron’s conduct — ‘reckless,’ ‘manipulative,’ ‘destructive,’ — were apt, the simple truth is that Cameron Douglas is a heroin addict who has yet to shake his habit,” he said.

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Diabetes remission possible with diet, exercise

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – One in nine people with diabetes saw their blood sugar levels dip back to a normal or “pre-diabetes” level after a year on an intensive diet and exercise program, in a new study.

Complete remission of type 2 diabetes is still very rare, researchers said. But they added that the new study can give people with the disease hope that through lifestyle changes, they could end up getting off medication and likely lowering their risk of diabetes-related complications.

“Kind of a long-term assumption really is that once you have diabetes there’s no turning back on it, and there’s no remission or cure,” said Edward Gregg, the lead author on the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The research, he told Reuters Health, “is a reminder that adopting a healthy diet, physically-active lifestyle and reducing and maintaining a healthy weight is going to help manage people’s diabetes better.”

His team’s study can’t prove the experimental program – which included weekly group and individual counseling for six months, followed by less frequent visits – was directly responsible for blood sugar improvements.

The original goal of the research was to look at whether that intervention lowered participants’ risk of heart disease (so far, it hasn’t).

But the diabetes improvements are in line with better weight loss and fitness among people in the program versus those in a comparison group who only went to a few annual counseling sessions, Gregg’s team reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

IS IT COST-EFFECTIVE?

About eight percent of people in the United States have diabetes, according to the American Diabetes Association. The new study included 4,503 of them who were also overweight or obese.

People randomly assigned to the intensive program had diet and exercise counseling with a goal of cutting eating and drinking back to 1200 to 1800 calories per day and increasing physical activity to just under three hours per week.

After one year, 11.5 percent of them had at least partial diabetes remission, meaning that without medication their blood sugar levels were no longer above the diabetes threshold. That compared to just two percent of participants in the non-intervention group who saw their diabetes improve significantly.

People who’d had diabetes for fewer years were more likely to have blood sugar improvements, as were those who lost more weight or had stronger fitness gains during the study.

However, less than one-third of people whose diabetes went into remission during the program managed to keep their blood sugar levels down for at least four years, the researchers found.

“Clearly lifestyle intervention is good for people with diabetes,” said Dr. John Buse, a diabetes researcher from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

“The question is how cost-effective is it, what are the long-term consequences (and) how would it really compare with alternative approaches like bariatric surgery and drug therapy?” Buse, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told Reuters Health.

Dr. David Arterburn, from Group Health Research Institute in Seattle, said some studies of weight-loss surgery, for instance, have found two-thirds of people who start out with diabetes have complete remission.

Arterburn, who co-wrote an editorial published with the new study, said anyone with diabetes – or at high risk – should consider either lifestyle interventions or surgery, if they’re eligible, to reduce future health risks.

Gregg said his team was working on a cost-analysis of the current program, but that it was fairly “resource-intensive.”

“If people have access to the support to make these sorts of changes, they may have the benefits that we’ve seen here,” he said. But, “What we should remember is that more modest changes in lifestyle are also effective.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/JjFzqx Journal of the American Medical Association, online December 18, 2012.

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Rush to boost safety sparks flurry of ideas

(Reuters) - They began calling on Friday morning, even before confirmation of the death toll at Sandy Hook Elementary. Principals, district administrators, school police chiefs all asked the same pleading questions: What can we do? How do we stop this? How can we keep our children safe?

Michael Dorn, phone to his ear until 2 a.m., gave them all the same advice: Slow down.

Every horrific school shooting sets off a rush to bolster security, and Dorn, a widely respected school safety consultant, says he has seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted in the frenzy to upgrade.

Principals spend lavishly on emergency response software, not realizing how impractical it is to fumble with a log-in during a crisis. Districts buy pricey metal detectors, only to switch them off because they cannot afford to deploy staff to do pat-downs and search book bags.

"People are frightened. They're trying so hard," said Dorn, a former schools police chief who runs the nonprofit consulting network Safe Havens International in Macon, Georgia. "But you want to build something that will last decades. Focus on making quality improvements rather than doing it quickly."

The horrific toll in Newtown has prompted administrators across the U.S. to reassess their safety protocols. Some have found obvious deficiencies that will take money to fix, such as classroom doors that don't lock. Bu t in many cases, security experts say districts can strengthen safety on campus without big spending.

In a survey conducted by the American Association of School Administrators in 2009 -- the 10th anniversary of the Columbine High School shootings -- fully a third of educators admitted they sometimes propped open doors to their schools, potentially giving intruders easy access. And almost 40 percent acknowledged they weren't training staff adequately in emergency response.

School safety consultants said such lapses remained common until the Newtown tragedy snapped administrators out of their complacency. "We tend to let our guard down as memories fade," said Paul Timm, president of RETA Security Inc, a consulting firm in Lemont, Illinois.

He and others said schools could greatly improve safety with a series of inexpensive measures: Keep all exterior doors shut and locked. Equip recess monitors with walkie-talkies to report signs of trouble. Regularly review emergency plans and practice for a variety of scenarios, not just an active shooter. Train all adults on campus to recognize behavior patterns that could indicate that a student is planning mischief or malice.

Hundreds of school districts and colleges across the U.S. have also adopted a more controversial approach to safety: teaching staff -- and students -- to fight back in the face of danger.

The ALICE protocol, developed a decade ago by a former police officer in response to a series of school shootings, rejects as inadequate the traditional response to an armed intruder, which prompts teachers and students to lock themselves in their classroom, turn out the lights and hide as best they can.

Greg Crane, the retired police officer who developed ALICE, says rather than fall back on that response, students and teachers must develop the confidence that allows them to think on their feet.

If they can escape the building quickly, through a window perhaps, why huddle in a darkened classroom? And if an intruder enters the classroom, why remain passive; why not run around, scream, throw books and desks at the gunman, even try to tackle him, Crane asks.

"If a predator tried to snatch a child off the street, what part of our advice is for him to remain quiet, static, passive?" Crane asked. "We want you throwing things, yelling, trying to get out of there," he said. The same should hold in a classroom, he said, arguing that even 5- and 6-year-olds can cause enough distraction to confuse a gunman and perhaps buy a few minutes for escape.

"Chaos is not a bad thing," Crane said. "We want to see chaos. That makes it very difficult for the shooter to operate."

The ALICE program -- it stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate -- has sparked concern in some communities, with parents protesting that terrified children can't be asked to confront crazed gunmen or make snap decisions about escape routes.

But Crane said his company, Response Options, which is based in Burleson, Texas, has been flooded with calls since Friday from officials eager to sign up for his $400 training workshop, which prepares participants to teach ALICE to students and teachers in their communities.

While the tragedy at Sandy Hook focused attention on the danger of armed intruders, safety consultants cautioned that schools must also remain vigilant about internal threats from students who may feel alienated or may be struggling with mental illness.

"The ultimate in safety is caring about one another and kids trusting you with information," said Bill Bond, a security consultant with the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

Bond was the principal at Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, when a student opened fire on a morning prayer circle, killing three girls. He advocates programs that connect children with adult mentors.

Such connections are harder to maintain in an era of tight budgets, however. There is just one school counselor for every 471 students in the U.S.; a few years ago, the ratio was 1 to 457, according to the American School Counselor Association. Faced with tight budgets, some districts have asked every adult connected with the school, including bus drivers, custodians and cafeteria workers, to pitch in with mentoring and monitoring kids.

"People want to be able to say, if we just do X, Y and Z in every school in America, we'll stop these," said Dorn, the security consultant in Georgia. There is no such solution, he said. Each school, and each threat, is too different.

But Dorn said he understands why the school officials who call him up are so eager to do something, anything, at once. "I have a 4-year-old. I took him to school this morning," Dorn said. "I understand the fear." (Reporting By Stephanie Simon. Editing by Douglas Royalty)

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