Syria army quits base on strategic Aleppo road

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.

But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.

The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.

Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.

“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.

“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.

Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

STRATEGIC BLOW

Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.

Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.

In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.

The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.

Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.

His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.

The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.

The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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UK: Apple must apologize again over copycat claims

LONDON (AP) — British judges say Apple needs to apologize once more for falsely claiming that South Korea’s Samsung copied its iPad, the latest embarrassing episode in the tech rivals’ world-spanning patent battle.

Apple Inc. was ordered to print an apology on its website after British judges repeatedly rejected its claim that Samsung Electronics Co. ripped off its designs when creating its own tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab.

Apple did post an apology, but judges at London’s High Court ruled Thursday that it didn’t go far enough and ordered a new one posted to its site within 48 hours.

Samsung and Apple are locked in a series of international lawsuits over alleged copyright violations, including a California case which saddled Samsung with a $ 1 billion fine for copying Apple’s design.

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Ralph Nader to Stephen Colbert: Give me your Super PAC cash!

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Stephen Colbert‘s super PAC is sitting on nearly $ 778,000 in cash, and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader knows exactly where to spend it.

On Ralph Nader.

If only Colbert would listen.

The longtime consumer advocate told TheWrap in an exclusive interview that he has been trying to get the “Colbert Report” host to donate the money remaining in Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow’s coffers to the nonprofit American Museum of Tort Law he plans to build.

Dedicated to personal injury and other tort cases, the museum will go up in Nader’s hometown of Winsted, Conn. Nader announced the plans, and started fundraising, 14 years ago.

“Since he deals with wrongful injuries and reputations night after night, there must be a little humor here,” Nader told TheWrap. “Tell him we’ll name the courtroom after him.”

There’s just one problem: Nader can’t get to Colbert, even though Nader feels responsible for the Comedy Central host’s success.

In 2004, while Colbert was hosting “The Daily Show” during the birth of Jon Stewart’s first child, Nader was the interviewed guest. A year later, Colbert got his own show.

“He did so well that they gave him his own program,” Nader said. “So you’d think he’d be accessible to me, right?”

Apparently, wrong.

Even as Colbert trolled the Republican presidential campaigns as a possible third-party candidate during the primary earlier this year, Nader – the nation’s perennial third-party runner – couldn’t get in touch with him.

“Forget it, forget it,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to reach celebrity media these days.”

A spokesman for Colbert and Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls from TheWrap requesting comment.

Nader did tell TheWrap that he was happy to see Colbert satirize the growing role of money in electoral politics and draw attention to a candidate outside the two-party nexus.

“Since our elections are for sale at ever-higher auction prices, it’s good that he did this satirical effort to highlight the absurdity of it all,” Nader said.

Colbert first announced the formation of his own super PAC during a March 2011 segment of his show. He set up a company in the regulatory oasis of Delaware called Anonymous Shell Company and began raising funds for a farcical campaign.

After briefly declaring his candidacy for “President of the United States of South Carolina,” Colbert launched a series of ads urging voters to cast ballots for Rick Parry — a spinoff of then-candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Later, he threw his support behind Herman Cain, the pizza mogul who was widely mocked for his candidacy and seemingly far-fetched tax plans.

While he scored around $ 1 million for his PAC, the $ 778,000, according to an SEC filing, is what’s left after advertising and expenses.

So far, Nader seems to be one of the few people gunning for the funds. But Colbert has floated at least one idea about how to spend it.

After real-estate-mogul-cum-reality-star-cum-political-blowhard Donald Trump offered President Obama $ 5 million to a charity of his choice to reveal his college and medical records, Colbert made Trump an offer.

The comedian said he’d donate $ 1 million to a charity of Trump’s choice – if he allows Colbert to dip his testicles in his mouth.

So far, at least, Trump has not accepted the offer.

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Pradaxa bleeding risk appears no worse than warfarin – FDA

(Reuters) – The risk of serious bleeding among new users of Pradaxa, a blood-clot preventer made by Germany’s Boehringer Ingelheim, appeared to be no higher than in patients on the widely used standard blood thinner warfarin, U.S. regulators said.

The announcement Friday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may allay some safety concerns about Pradaxa, a pill developed by the privately held drugmaker Boehringer, to prevent strokes among patients with an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation.

The regulator’s findings were based on an assessment of insurance claims and other data.

Over the past year, the FDA has been analyzing reports of serious bleeding among patients prescribed Pradaxa, including gastrointestinal bleeding and bleeding in the brain.

The agency said on Friday a comparable risk of serious bleeding for Pradaxa and warfarin was suggested by its review of insurance claims and by analyzing electronic healthcare data from multiple other sources.

The FDA said it was also planning other assessments of Pradaxa’s bleeding risks.

The medicine competes with Xarelto, a stroke-prevention pill for atrial fibrillation patients developed by Johnson & Johnson and Bayer AG.

A similar pill being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pfizer Inc, Eliquis, is awaiting U.S. approval and is deemed by many Wall Street analysts to be the most impressive of a new generation of oral drugs to replace warfarin.

(Reporting by Ransdell Pierson in New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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US economy adds 171,000 new jobs

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Do ordinary Americans feel their economy is on the road to recovery?

The US economy added 171,000 new jobs in October, which was much more than had been expected.

But the official figures from the Labor Department showed that the unemployment rate still rose to 7.9%, having fallen to 7.8% in September, as more workers resumed the search for jobs.

Only people who are currently looking for a job count as unemployed.

Unemployment is one of the key issues ahead of Tuesday’s presidential election.

The figures were the last major set of economic data scheduled before the election and the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has made the state of the jobs market one of the central planks of his campaign.

“Today’s increase in the unemployment rate is a sad reminder that the economy is at a virtual standstill,” he said.

“The jobless rate is higher than it was when President Obama took office, and there are still 23 million Americans struggling for work.”

The number of jobs created in the previous two months was revised upwards, with an extra 34,000 jobs added in September and 50,000 added in August.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

For President Obama, there is good and bad news in these latest jobs figures.

He can breathe a sigh of relief that, when Americans vote next week, there are more of them with jobs than when he took office.

His challenger Mitt Romney can no longer accuse him of presiding over a net loss of jobs.

However, the unemployment rate rose and is now higher than it was when Mr Obama took over at the White House.

Setting out the key figures still leaves another vital political question: who is at fault for the state of the US labour market?

Was it due to a recession already in full swing when he took over or did his policies aggravate the situation?

“We’ve made real progress,” Barack Obama told a crowd in Ohio.

“But we’ve got more work to do.”

Despite the new jobs, Barack Obama will still go to the polls with the highest rate of unemployment of any president seeking re-election since Franklin D Roosevelt.

The unemployment rate edged up slightly because the number of people looking for jobs increased. These were people who had previously given up hope of finding work, but who now think they may have a better chance. As a result, this increase may be seen as a sign of confidence in the economy, analysts say.

The total workforce, which is the number of people either working or looking for jobs, rose 578,000 in October.

Improved direction

The Labor Department said in its release that Hurricane Sandy, which hit the East Coast of the US on 29 October, had had “no discernable effect” on the employment data.

The number of involuntary part-time workers, who would prefer to be working full-time, fell 269,000 to 8.3 million, having risen by 582,000 in September.

Kathy Jones from Charles Schwab said they were good numbers, but warned that: “We’re way short of where we need to be to bring down the unemployment rate to where the Federal Reserve would like to see, closer to 6% than 8%.”

“We would need to see twice as many jobs as we’re seeing, but the direction has improved.”

The average number of jobs added per month so far in 2012 has been 157,000, which is slightly ahead of the average of 153,000 in 2011.

Continue reading the main story

"Remember that butterfly whose wing-beat in the Amazon causes a storm over the Atlantic? I think she is hovering over the election right now"

The category adding the most jobs in October was professional and business services, followed by healthcare and retailing.

There was also a small increase in employment in the construction sector, which has been helped by a pick-up in house building.

The average working week was 34.4 hours for the fourth month in a row, while the average hourly wage was down one cent at $ 23.58 (£14.69).

Despite there being signs of momentum in the jobs market, there is great concern in the US about what 2013 will bring.

Whoever wins the presidential election will have to reach a budget agreement with legislators by the end of the year, to prevent $ 600bn of tax increases and spending cuts kicking in automatically in 2013.

The measures, known as the fiscal cliff, could take the US back into recession.

There is also some uncertainty about the coming months as a result of Hurricane Sandy.

Many businesses will have their work interrupted by effects of the storms. On the other hand, reconstruction on the East Coast is likely to increase employment in the construction sector.

In New York, the Dow Jones index opened higher but had fallen 40 points, or 0.3%, by late morning trading, while the US dollar was up two-fifths of a cent against the pound.

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Syrian rebels kill 28 soldiers, several executed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHECKPOINT ATTACKS

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reuters could not independently verify the footage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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‘Wreck-It Ralph’ celebrates video-game nostalgia

LOS ANGELES (AP) — In Disney’s “Wreck-It Ralph” opening Friday, the title character is the bad guy from a fictional 1980s video game. Despite faithfully doing his job well for 30 years, he gets no respect at work, so he escapes through the wires of Litwak’s Family Fun Center searching for another game where he might prove his worth.

Along the way, Ralph takes viewers on a nostalgic trip through the history of video games, from the blocky, eight-bit look of the ’80s through the swirly, colorful, Nintendo 64-inspired games of the ’90s to the gritty, ultra-detailed first-person shooters of today.

For director Rich Moore and the 450 artists and animators behind the Walt Disney Animation Studios production, video games are as integral a part of childhood as the green army men and pull-string cowboys celebrated in Pixar’s “Toy Story” films.

“There’s a lot of history in video gaming — serious nostalgia,” Moore said. “The worlds of video games are so fertile. They cover everything, and so many different genres. You can kind of make up whatever you want and it can feel like a game.”

Besides the scores of fictional game characters featured in the film, there’s also familiar arcade favorites such as Q(asterisk)Bert, Clyde (the orange ghost from Pac-Man), Sonic the Hedgehog and Zangief from “Street Fighter.”

“It’s pretty awesome to animate game characters that you knew as a child,” said animation supervisor Renato dos Anjos. “It’s like living in a dream world. All your favorite heroes and villains are in your hands.”

“Wreck-It Ralph” centers on Ralph (John C. Reilly), the 9-foot, 643-pound bad guy from the ’80s video game “Fix-It Felix Jr.” Ralph’s job is to wreck the apartments of Niceland so Felix (Jack McBrayer) can fix them. But while Felix is lauded and loved for his efforts, Ralph is ostracized to a trash heap on the edge of town. Fed up and bummed out — especially when he realizes he wasn’t invited to a 30th anniversary party for “Fix-It Felix Jr.” — Ralph goes rogue, tripping through the wires of the arcade into games where he doesn’t belong.

He’s drawn to “Hero’s Duty,” a contemporary shooting game led by tough-as-battle-armor Sergeant Calhoun (Jane Lynch), in which soldiers who destroy the invading CyBugs win a glittery medal — tangible proof of their heroic efforts. With such a trophy, Ralph figures the Nicelanders would have to appreciate him. But he isn’t programmed to handle such ultra-violent play, and when things go awry, Ralph finds himself trapped in the pink-hued, candy-filled world of Sugar Rush. Here he meets another video-game misfit, Vanellope Von Schweetz (Sarah Silverman), whose pixelated programming glitch makes her an outcast.

Reilly, McBrayer and Silverman all grew up as gamers, and say bringing life to their animated characters called upon the same imagination and determination gaming did when they were kids.

“If you were born any time after 1965, when I was born, video games made a huge impression,” Reilly said, adding that when “Space Invaders” first came out, “it was like a spaceship landed in the bowling alley.”

“People can’t fully appreciate what an insane change that was,” he continued. “Because there were no computers; there were no cellphones. I didn’t even have a VCR at that point. There was no way to manipulate something on a screen. And all of a sudden, this thing lands in the arcade.”

McBrayer grew up with an Atari 2600 system, “but we kept that over at grandma’s house so we wouldn’t get too attached to it.”

He remembers taking his report card to Super Scooper, the ice-cream parlor/arcade near his Georgia home, where good grades were rewarded with video-game tokens. He preferred the “cutesy, non-threatening games” and the escape they provided.

“So many kids won’t even recognize half of these (game references in the film),” McBray said, “but I hope they have fun just realizing that there’s this whole world of video-game characters and environments that make up the history of the video games they’re playing now.”

Silverman, whose early arcade favorites included “Asteroids,” ”Missile Command” and “Space Invaders,” notes that video games have been around for 30 years, “but in technology years, that’s like 200 years old.”

The actors said they don’t play video games much these days, but the film’s director does, whipping out his iPhone during a recent interview to prove the point.

“I feel really, really fortunate to have been someone who got to grow up with them,” said Moore, whose previous directing credits include “The Simpsons” and “Futurama.” So it’s an honor and a privilege to be the guy that gets to pull from one end of the timeline to this end of the timeline … to put them in a movie and put them in a story that pays tribute to all of them.”

___

Follow AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen on Twitter at www.twitter.com/APSandy .

___

Online:

http://disney.go.com/wreck-it-ralph/

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Kardashian boosts “X Factor” ratings, but wins few fans

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Khloe Kardashian‘s first outing as the new co-host of “The X Factor” helped boost the show’s audience by 30 percent, yet the reality star got mixed reviews for a nipple-baring debut that made headlines – but many TV critics found awkward.

Kardashian, 28, best known for starring with socialite sisters Kim and Kourtney in “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” shocked some viewers by wearing a sheer purple blouse without a bra on Wednesday’s first live episode of the TV singing contest.

“I think the air conditioning is on high tonight. It’s very distracting,” judge and producer Simon Cowell quipped on the show, apparently referring to the glimpses of nipple.

But Kardashian was less impressive in her hosting duties.

The Washington Post said Kardashian “came across like the novice she is, shouting her lines despite the mic clutched in her hand and making awkward small talk with contestants and judge and executive producer Simon Cowell.”

Nevertheless, Kardashian brought more eyeballs to the show. Some 7.4 million viewers watched “The X Factor” on Fox television, according to early ratings data, up some 30 percent from last week’s 5.7 million and a 13 percent increase in the 18-49 age group most coveted by advertisers.

Kardashian was Cowell’s personal pick for the job as part of his efforts to revamp the singing contest after a disappointing first season. But the reality star’s lack of experience had already raised eyebrows, and “X Factor” has often drawn a smaller audience than last year.

Cowell told reporters earlier this week that Kardashian “wants to prove (to) anyone who doubted her that she’s capable of doing the job … she really has got a fun personality.”

The New York Daily News called Kardashian a “surprisingly good host,” while The Hollywood Reporter said “both Kardashian and (co-host Mario) Lopez seemed at ease in their new roles.”

The Hollywood Gossip website, however, said Kardashian was “every bit as boring and awkward as we imagined she would be.”

“The X Factor” is broadcast on Fox, a unit of News Corp.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Judge backs Catholic firm over contraception mandate

(Reuters) – A Catholic-owned family business in Michigan does not have to comply with the provision of the new U.S. healthcare law that requires private employers to provide employees with health insurance that covers birth control, a federal judge in Detroit has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland, in a ruling late Wednesday, temporarily blocked the government from forcing the owner of Weingartz Supply Company, which sells outdoor power equipment, to include contraception in its health coverage of employees.

The ruling only affects the company’s Catholic proprietor, Daniel Weingartz, and the approximately 170 people who work for him. But it opens the door for other firms to seek relief on religious grounds.

Cleland is now the second federal judge to temporarily block part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 from being enforced against the religious owners of a family business. In July, U.S. District Judge John Kane in Denver temporarily prevented the government from requiring the Catholic owners of Hercules Industries Inc, a private manufacturer of heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment, to provide health insurance that covers birth control.

Weingartz was joined in his lawsuit, filed in May, by Legatus, a national association of Catholic business owners.

Roman Catholic bishops and many Republican lawmakers have opposed the birth control provision, and priests have been speaking out against the law from pulpits across the country. Church doctrine opposes artificial contraception but most American Catholics do not adhere to church policy.

Lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services argued that granting exceptions for small business owners would interfere with the government’s ability to implement the law. The contraception mandate serves the government’s interests in promoting public health and gender equality, they argued.

The federal government has carved out an exemption from the contraception requirement for religious organizations. Allowing additional relief for Weingartz Supply Co and its 170 employees would not be a much greater burden, the company argued. Cleland agreed with Weingartz.

“The harm in delaying the implementation of a statute that may later be deemed constitutional must yield to the risk presented here of substantially infringing the sincere exercise of religious beliefs,” Cleland wrote in a 29-page opinion.

The judge refused to shield Legatus from the law, finding that the non-profit association would likely qualify for the government’s accommodation for religious organizations. If the government later tries to enforce the mandate against Legatus, the group can resume its court challenge then, Cleland wrote.

Erin Mersino, an attorney with the Thomas More Law Center, which filed the challenge, called the ruling “not only a victory for our clients, but for religious freedom.”

The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

More than 20 lawsuits have been filed against the birth control mandate by organizations including the University of Notre Dame, Catholic University of America and the Archdiocese of New York.

In July, another federal judge in Nebraska dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by seven states, two Catholic individuals and three Catholic non-profit institutions, finding that the plaintiffs did not face any immediate harm from the law.

The case in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan is Legatus et al v. Sebelius et al, No. 12-12061.

(Reporting By Terry Baynes in New York; Editing by Claudia Parsons)

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Mexico’s Day of Dead brings memories of missing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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