Longtime editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint leaving
Label: LifestylePHILADELPHIA (AP) — DC Entertainment says its executive editor and senior vice president of Vertigo — a groundbreaking imprint whose titles have included “Hellblazer,” ”DMZ” and “Sandman” — is leaving early next year.
Karen Berger will step down in March after nearly 20 years at the helm, saying in a statement released by DC late Monday that she is ready for a professional change.
During her tenure at Vertigo, the imprint saw a wide range of writers and artists — Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson, Becky Cloonan and Brian Wood, among them — who produced titles beyond the traditional superhero and villain archetype.
Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and writer of “The Umbrella Academy” tweeted that Berger gave “us weird kids in high school a Sub Pop Records for comics.”
___
Online:
http://www.vertigocomics.com
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
After parent’s cancer death, one in five kids self-injure
Label: HealthNEW YORK (Reuters Health) – One in five teens who lost one of their parents to cancer cut or burn themselves, compared to one in ten teens with two living parents, according to a new Swedish study.
“We were very surprised to find that so many did it,” said lead researcher Tove Grenklo, a behavioral scientist at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
Cutting and burning is thought to be how some troubled teens express their emotions, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Those teens may hurt themselves if they can’t talk about their feelings, are upset or have low self esteem.
Earlier this year, a study found that children start harming themselves as early as third grade. (see Reuters Health article of June 11, 2012. http://reut.rs/Kveo8v)
The study’s researchers write in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine that past research showed children with one dead parent are already more likely to have – among other things – psychiatric problems, depression, drug and alcohol abuse and anxiety.
Grenklo and her colleagues wanted to see if they were also more likely to hurt themselves.
For the study, they used Sweden’s national death databases to find and survey teens who lost one of their parents to cancer between 2000 and 2003, when they were between 13 and 16.
They then found teens who still had two living parents for a comparison group.
Of the 851 teens who lost a parent, 622 returned their survey, as did 330 of the 451 teens in the comparison group.
Overall, about 20 percent of the teens with only one surviving parent said they hurt themselves, compared to about 10 percent of teens with both parents living.
‘WE SHOULD TALK WITH EACH OTHER’
“This study is one of the first to establish that (losing a parent to cancer) might be a unique risk factor for this behavior,” said Stephen Lewis, who was not involved with the new study but has studied self-injury at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada.
Lewis added that the study’s findings seem to be in line with other estimates of how many teens injure themselves.
The researchers say teens may be driven to self-injure after their parents’ deaths by an increased sense of emotional distress and numbness.
Another possible explanation for the increase is that the teens lost a caretaker who would notice their emotional suffering and prevent self-injury, they add.
As for prevention, both Grenklo and Lewis emphasized communication.
“I’m a strong believer that we should talk with each other,” said Grenklo. “Children need to know the facts of what happened and why. And that it’s OK to be sad and talk about the diseased parent.”
“We know one of the reasons people self injure is that they use injuring as a way to release their emotions,” said Lewis, who added that it’s important for parents, family members and teachers to know how to talk about self-injury and how to prevent it.
Lewis said information on preventing and handling self injury can be found at SIOutreach.org – a Web site where he is co-director.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TLILN8 Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, online December 3, 2012.
Parenting/Kids News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Insight: UK court reveals fear and mistrust at TNK-BP
Label: BusinessLONDON (Reuters) – A former TNK-BP employee may have confessed to fraud out of fear during a meeting in the office of German Khan, the head of the oil company and one of Russia’s most prominent businessmen, according to a British High Court judge.
In the first judicial account of encounters earlier this year between Khan and his former subordinate Igor Lazurenko, testimonies from the two men paint a picture of fear and mistrust at TNK-BP, one of the country’s largest private companies which is half-owned by Britain’s BP.
The actions and methods of Khan and other oligarchs who grew rich from the privatizations of the 1990s are a sensitive issue in Russia, where President Vladimir Putin is trying to increase state control and crack down on profiteering without scaring off investment. The case opens a window on a world where courts, police and imprisonment are seen by many Russians as tools of the wealthy.
Khan, BP and TNK-BP’s other shareholders are trying to fold their business into state oil company Rosneft. Closing the deal, one of the biggest energy takeovers in history, would net them billions of dollars in cash and could make them shareholders in the state company.
BP has secured government approval to acquire Rosneft shares from the state and expects to complete its part of the sale by mid-2013, but Khan’s side of the deal is only partly formed and has no approvals yet. The whole deal is worth $ 55 billion.
“Whilst it is clearly not possible at this stage to make any definitive findings… Mr. Khan’s own evidence provides some support for Mr. Lazurenko‘s evidence that he was coerced into making this confession,” said Andrew Sutcliffe QC, sitting as judge of London’s High Court, in a November 20 decision.
This week, TNK-BP decided not to appeal the judgment, and on Tuesday, Lazurenko’s lawyers were seeking a total of 1.6 million pounds ($ 2.6 million) in costs from the company.
In his 88-page ruling, Sutcliffe dismissed TNK-BP’s attempts to bring fraud charges against Lazurenko, a one-time Russian army officer who was in charge of organizing oil transport contracts. Sutcliffe called TNK-BP’s potential for a case “very weak”, described some claims as “false and misleading” and was critical about its lack of evidence against Lazurenko.
TNK-BP has also abandoned its attempts to stop Lazurenko from publishing certain documents in his possession. Lazurenko has said they provide evidence of high-level corporate and government corruption and implicate high ranking Russian officials. He has not published them.
The claimant in the November 20 ruling is OJSC TNK-BP Holding, the main holding company of TNK-BP. The defendants are Lazurenko, three other individuals, and a number of companies with which he is connected.
TNK-BP alleged that Lazurenko, who worked for the company from 2003 until he quit this year, took bribes and laundered the money through businesses operating in Montenegro. In August, TNK-BP obtained a UK court order that froze 39 million euros ($ 51 million) worth of the defendants’ assets.
The judge’s account in the November 20 ruling reveals a detailed picture of the encounters in Khan’s office.
In one of them, Lazurenko’s testimony says, Khan told him he stood accused of accepting $ 8 million in bribes for oil transport contracts and threatened “strong action” against him and his family if he did not admit to doing so. Lazurenko denied the allegations on that occasion.
As he arrived for a later meeting, Lazurenko says he saw a man sitting outside “who looked to me like he was from the Moscow police or Ministry of Internal Affairs. I find it hard to explain in the English court how and why I formed this impression,” he said, “but I think it would be very obvious to a Russian judge. It relates to the way this individual looked and was dressed.”
Inside, “Khan told me he had someone outside his office who would arrest me unless I admitted that I had received this money and agreed to repay it”.
He said Khan also told him to remember the fate of Viktor Paliy, a business associate of AAR, through which Khan holds his stake in TNK-BP, who ended up in prison.
“I was scared and knew that I could not continue to deny his allegations if I wanted to get out of his office and leave the building. Therefore I admitted the allegation, even though I knew it to be untrue,” the court document cited Lazurenko saying.
Khan, in his testimony, acknowledged that he referred to the implications for Lazurenko’s family, and that he mentioned the fate of Paliy. He said his intention was to persuade Lazurenko to admit to his crimes.
BETTER TO CONFESS
“I may well have said that if he did not make an admission it would cause serious problems for him. I did not say that he had to confess if he wanted to get out of my office freely and leave the building,” said Khan in his testimony.
Khan denied there had been a policeman outside the office, but said “there may have been someone from internal security service, many of whom are former law enforcement officers.”
He went on to say Lazurenko had “a reputation as a very cold, detached individual”, and that any suggestion he was frightened was “wholly ridiculous.”
However, Sutcliffe used more of Khan’s own testimony to back up his judicial view that Lazurenko might have been right to be scared.
“I told Mr. Lazurenko on at least one occasion that he should think about his family,” the judge quoted Khan as saying. “This was not a threat to harm either Mr. Lazurenko or any members of his family … It is a well-known fact that persons accused of economic crimes can spend years in prison even before being tried, and risk having their assets frozen by the state pending trial… I was offering Mr. Lazurenko a sensible alternative. Pay back the money he stole from TNK-BP and thus avoid the risk of prison.”
The judge also noted Khan’s response to Lazurenko’s description of him as “extremely ruthless”.
“As is well known,” Khan said, “Doing business in Russia is not for the faint hearted.”
Asked for a response to the judgment and the judge’s remarks, TNK-BP said in an emailed statement it was “confident in our position and will continue pursuing Mr. Lazurenko in all appropriate jurisdictions.”
It added: “Before fleeing Russia Mr. Lazurenko admitted his wrongdoing against the company… Mr. Lazurenko did not make any reports to the Russian or English police about any coercion.”
A spokesman for Lazurenko said: “The two damning judgments against TNK-BP… bring to an end a seven month campaign instigated by TNK-BP in an attempt to gag Mr Lazurenko and guarantee his silence.
“Despite its vast resources and lengthy investigations, TNK-BP has been unable to produce any evidence to support its allegations against Mr Lazurenko,” he said in an email.
BP and AAR, a consortium holding 50 percent of TNK-BP, both declined to comment on the contents of the court document.
GAGGING ORDER
The separate UK gagging order keeping Lazurenko’s documents secret was lifted on October 16. The judge who lifted it revealed that Transneft, the Russian pipelines monopoly, was named in the corruption allegations. Transneft has declined to comment on the subject. TNK-BP had plans to appeal against the lifting of the injunction, but has since dropped that action too.
The Khan-Lazurenko dispute dates back to March when Khan made Lazurenko the subject of an internal inquiry. In April, Lazurenko resigned and left Russia.
TNK-BP is a 50-50 venture between BP and AAR. AAR is a consortium owned by Khan and fellow tycoons Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik.
BP has been at odds with the AAR shareholders on and off for years. Problems came to a head in 2010 when BP wanted to do business with increasingly powerful Rosneft, and the tycoons resisted. The sale to Rosneft is set to bring the saga to an end.
BP last month won Russian government approval to acquire Rosneft shares from the state holding company Rosneftegaz, a step on the way to securing $ 12.3 billion of cash and an 18.5 percent stake in Rosneft that will raise its holding to 19.75 percent. AAR’s side of the deal is less complete, but Rosneft has said it hopes to agree it in December.
After the acquisition, Rosneft, headed by Putin ally Igor Sechin, will be pumping 4.6 million barrels of oil equivalent, more than U.S.-based Exxon Mobil.
Lazurenko was represented by solicitors Mischon de Reya and TNK-BP by Bryan Cave.
(additional reporting by Doug Busvine in Moscow and Dmitry Zhdannikov in London; editing by Janet McBride)
Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News
WestJet embraces tech to woo business travelers
Label: WorldTORONTO (Reuters) – WestJet Airlines Ltd will use technological innovation, including a new Internet ticket booking system, to help it transform from a no-frills carrier to a lower-cost full-service airline courting lucrative corporate travelers, its chief executive said on Monday.
Canada’s second-biggest airline plans to launch a series of technology systems, most notably the new online booking engine, which will sell three tiers of tickets, in the next two months.
“Companies evolve or they die,” Chief Executive Gregg Saretsky told Reuters in a phone interview from the company’s Calgary head office.
“We’re 16 and going on 17 years old and we can’t stay just as we were 17 years ago. The world has changed. And we are changing to be more relevant for a broader segment of guests.”
The new Internet booking system, which WestJet hopes to launch in late January, will sell economy, mid-tier and premium tickets. That is a major shift from its current system, which sells only the lowest-priced ticket available.
Economy tickets under the new system will continue to sell the lowest available fare, but the cancellation fee for them will jump to C$ 75 ($ 75.48) from C$ 50. Mid-tier tickets will have a C$ 50 cancellation fee.
Premium tickets, unavailable until late March when WestJet finishes reconfiguring its 100 Boeing 737 planes to allow more leg room, will include priority screening and boarding, free cancellations and flexibility on ticket changes.
Pricing for those tickets, which may include free meals and drinks and an extra baggage allowance, has not yet been determined. Fares will be well below half the price for business class at WestJet’s bigger competitor, Air Canada, Saretsky said.
“It’s time for us to be more serious with respect to going after business travelers because frankly, they’re the ones who are booking last-minute and are happy to pay for the conveniences,” Saretsky said.
WestJet will launch its premium economy service with 24 seats per plane, but will consider expansion if it proves “wildly successful,” he added.
POISED FOR CHANGE
WestJet, which has spent about C$ 40 million over the past two years on technology projects, is poised for major changes in 2013 as it readies to launch a new regional airline, Encore.
Saretsky hopes that WestJet’s switch in coming weeks to a new Internet phone system will allow ticket reservation agents to work from home and help make room for Encore staff.
Some 750 reservation agents work at WestJet’s Calgary offices, which house about 2,400 staff. Space will be needed for Encore employees over the next 18 months while their office, hangars and maintenance stores are constructed at the WestJet campus.
Encore will be launch in the second half of 2013, “probably closer to July than December,” Saretsky said, with seven Bombardier Q400 planes.
While WestJet won’t announce Encore’s schedule until Jan 21, the carrier will initially serve only “a handful” of new cities, with ticket prices up to 50 percent below Air Canada’s, he added.
Over the next two months, WestJet will also roll out a guest notification system that alerts travelers via email about their flights, allowing them to check in remotely.
Such self-service technology will be critical as WestJet faces increasing labor costs, Saretsky said.
Wage and benefit costs, which represent about a third of operating costs, have climbed 50 percent since WestJet was founded in 1996.
“You can see that creates a little bit of drag on earnings,” Saretsky said. “We’ve got to find ways of reducing our component costs.”
If WestJet can increase self service options for travelers, that could limit the need for new employees, Saretsky said. Management also wants to improve attendance management, so that fewer employees book off sick around long weekends, and more quickly clean and process planes between flights, he said.
(Reporting By Susan Taylor; Editing by Peter Galloway)
(This story was corrected to show that WestJet is replacing its Internet booking engine, not entire reservation system, in the first and second paragraphs)
Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Obama Is Taking Himself and #My2K to Twitter This Afternoon
Label: TechnologyWhat a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff. A @WhiteHouse tweet with the distincitive “-bo” signature, announced not long ago that the big guy himself will be taking questions online, starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo
— The White House (@whitehouse) December 3, 2012
Unfortunately, he’s sticking with the troublesome #My2K hashtag that conservatives have already seized upon in a back-and-forth battle for messaging. Trying to mobilize your supporters through social media is all well and good, but the problem with any genuinely open town hall, is that anyone can invite themselves—even those who disagree with you and might be louder than your friends. (Plus, any reasonably popular hashtag moves much to fast for anyone to follow it or have an actual conversation on Twitter anyway.)
RELATED: Don’t Expect Too Much From Social Media Town Halls
But ask away! Maybe you’ll get luck and get RT’d by the President himself. And then find yourself becoming the next conservative meme as soon as the hashtag-averse pundits start making fun of your question. Should be a fun afternoon.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Hormone disorder and the Pill tied to blood clots
Label: HealthNEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women who have a hormone disorder called polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and who take the birth control pill have twice the risk of blood clots than do other women on the Pill, according to a new study.
“For many women with PCOS, (the risks) will be small,” said Dr. Christopher McCartney, an associate professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, who was not involved in the new work. “For some women, they might be high enough to say we really shouldn’t use the Pill, such as for women over 35 who smoke.”
The three to five percent of women in the U.S. with PCOS have a hormone imbalance, which can lead to irregular periods, extra hair growth and higher risks for being overweight and developing hypertension and diabetes.
They are often treated with oral contraceptives, many of whose labels already include warnings about blood clots. A blood clot, also called venous thromboembolism, can be deadly if it spreads to the lungs, although none of the cases of blood clots in the study were fatal.
Because women with PCOS already tend to have more heart disease risk factors, researchers wanted to see if the Pill adds any additional risk.
They used medical and pharmacy information from a large health insurance database, including 43,500 women with PCOS.
On average, over the course of a particular year, about 24 out of every 10,000 women with PCOS taking the Pill were diagnosed with a blood clot, compared to about 11 out of every 10,000 women without the disorder using the contraceptive.
“Am I particularly surprised by the findings? No,” said Dr. Shahla Nader-Eftekhari, a professor at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, who treats women with PCOS but was not involved in the current study.
OBESITY PLAYING A ROLE?
The study, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, could not say for sure why women with PCOS are more likely to have a blood clot.
McCartney said he suspects that obesity has something to do with it.
At the beginning of the study in 2001 the percent of women with and without PCOS who were obese was the same – about 13 percent – but by the end of the study in 2009, 33 percent of women with PCOS and 21 percent of women without the disorder were obese.
“I really think that could be something that’s contributing to the risk,” McCartney told Reuters Health.
“Weight not only contributes to the risks associated with the Pill, it also contributes to some of the symptoms of PCOS and some of the metabolic problems associated with PCOS,” he added.
McCartney pointed out that the risk of developing a blood clot, even among women with PCOS, is still considered small, and shouldn’t necessarily discourage women from taking the Pill.
Steven Bird, the lead author of the study and an epidemiologist with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said that the importance of the findings is to raise awareness among women and their doctors that there is an increased risk for them if they take the Pill.
“Although the risk is small, prescribers should consider the increased risk for blood clots in women with PCOS who are prescribed contraceptive therapy,” Bird told Reuters Health by email.
McCartney agreed, and added that it’s also a good reminder for doctors of women with PCOS to discuss the importance of maintaining a healthy weight.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VgvaOa Canadian Medical Association Journal, online December 3, 2012.
Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Weight Watchers’ Big Fat Marketing Dilemma
Label: BusinessJessica Simpson isn’t getting fat. She’s just pregnant again. (Of course, she hasn’t yet confirmed the happy news, but her statement to People—”I’m not going to comment on this speculation”—is, in celebrity baby talk, the equivalent of posting a sonogram on her Facebook (FB) page.)
Either way, it’s a potential problem for Weight Watchers (WTW), which signed up Simpson as a spokeswoman less than a year ago. The endorsement deal, worth an estimated $ 3 million, wasn’t supposed to pay out in full until Simpson reached her weight goal. This fall, she was noticeably slimmer, rocking a pair of Daisy Dukes for the paparazzi in L.A.
Now the company has a quandary. No company can control when its spokespeople eat, work out, or procreate, a fact that creates special pitfalls for Weight Watchers and other companies selling the promise of weight loss. Kirstie Alley, star of Fat Actress, starred in commercials for Jenny Craig, only to regain the pounds she’d shed. Even Jared, who slimmed down at Subway, was snapped looking chubby several years after he rose to skinny fame. Weight Watchers declined to comment for this story.
If signing on famous people to lose weight is so unreliable, why do diet companies do it? It certainly would be easier (and cheaper) for Weight Watchers to find a more predictable spokesperson—say, a cartoon character they could slim down at will—or to abandon the spokesperson model entirely.
Grant Johnson, chief executive of Brookfield (Wisc.) marketing agency Johnson Direct, says a company such as Weight Watchers benefits from a recognizable, believable, aspirational person. And Simpson’s $ 3 million deal was small relative to the $ 292 million the company says it spent on marketing in 2011.
Still, there’s maybe a better reason for diet companies to abandon stars: They may not be shining so brightly. Ask the average person to name a favorite Weight Watchers spokesperson—Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, or Marie Osmond—and Johnson doubts any of them would know that Alley sold Jenny Craig, while Osmond repped NutriSystem (NTRI). “It just creates more confusion in the category,” says Johnson.
Even Weight Watchers spokesman Charles Barkley has expressed doubts about being a spokesperson. Earlier this year, the “round mound of rebound” got caught disparaging his endorsement deal on air during a Hawks-Heat basketball game when he thought the microphone was off. “I thought this was the greatest scam going—getting paid for watching sports—this Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam,” he said. Still, Barkley, who ballooned to 350 pounds and reportedly has a target weight of 270 pounds, remains a spokesperson and had lost 50 pounds by April. And so far, no one has confused him with Marie Osmond.
Businessweek.com — Top News
Official: Syria moving chemical weapons components
Label: WorldWASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. and allied intelligence have detected Syrian movement of chemical weapons components in recent days, a senior U.S. defense official said Monday, as the Obama administration strongly warned the Assad regime against using them.
A senior defense official said intelligence officials have detected activity around more than one of Syria‘s chemical weapons sites in the last week. The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about intelligence matters.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Prague for meetings with Czech officials, reiterated President Barack Obama‘s declaration that Syrian action on chemical weapons was a “red line” for the United States that would prompt action.
“We have made our views very clear: This is a red line for the United States,” Clinton told reporters. “I’m not going to telegraph in any specifics what we would do in the event of credible evidence that the Assad regime has resorted to using chemical weapons against their own people. But suffice it to say, we are certainly planning to take action if that eventuality were to occur.”
Syria said Monday it would not use chemical weapons against its own people. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Syria “would not use chemical weapons — if there are any — against its own people under any circumstances.”
Syria has been careful never to confirm that it has any chemical weapons.
The use of chemical weapons would be a major escalation in Assad’s crackdown on his foes and would draw international condemnation. In addition to causing mass deaths and horrific injuries to survivors, the regime’s willingness to use them would alarm much of the region, particularly neighboring states, including Israel.
At the White House, press secretary Jay Carney said, “We are concerned that in an increasingly beleaguered regime, having found its escalation of violence through conventional means inadequate, might be considering the use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. And as the president has said, any use or proliferation of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime would cross a red line for the United States. “
Administration officials would not detail what that response might be.
Although Syria is one of only seven nations that have not signed the Chemical Weapons Treaty, it is a party to the 1925 Geneva Protocol that bans the use of chemical weapons in war. That treaty was signed in the aftermath of World War I, when the effects of the use of mustard gas and other chemical agents outraged much of the world.
Clinton didn’t address the issue of the fresh activity at Syrian chemical weapons depots, but insisted that Washington would address any threat that arises.
An administration official said the trigger for U.S. action of some kind is the use of chemical weapons or movement with the intent to use or provide them to a terrorist group like Hezbollah. The U.S. is trying to determine whether the recent movement detected in Syria falls into any of those categories, the official said. The administration official was speaking on condition of anonymity this person was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
The senior defense official said the U.S. does not believe that any Syrian action beyond the movement of components is imminent.
An Israeli official said if there is real movement on chemical weapons, it would require a response. He didn’t say what that might be and spoke on condition of anonymity pending a formal government response to the reports of the latest activities.
Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed concerns that Syrian chemical weapons could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other anti-Israel groups, or even be fired toward Israel in an act of desperation by Syria.
Syria is believed to have several hundred ballistic surface-to-surface missiles capable of carrying chemical warheads.
Its arsenal is a particular threat to the American allies, Turkey and Israel, and Obama singled out the threat posed by the unconventional weapons earlier this year as a potential cause for deeper U.S. involvement in Syria’s civil war. Up to now, the United States has opposed military intervention or providing arms support to Syria’s rebels for fear of further militarizing a conflict that activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since March 2011.
Clinton said that while the actions of President Bashar Assad‘s government have been deplorable, chemical weapons would bring them to a new level.
“We once again issue a very strong warning to the Assad regime that their behavior is reprehensible, their actions against their own people have been tragic,” she said. “But there is no doubt that there’s a line between even the horrors that they’ve already inflicted on the Syrian people and moving to what would be an internationally condemned step of utilizing their chemical weapons.”
Activity has been detected before at Syrian weapons sites, believed to number several dozen.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in late September the intelligence suggested the Syrian government had moved some of its chemical weapons in order to protect them. He said the U.S. believed that the main sites remained secure.
Asked Monday if they were still considered secure, Pentagon press secretary George Little declined to comment about any intelligence related to the weapons.
Senior lawmakers were notified last week that U.S. intelligence agencies had detected activity related to Syria’s chemical and biological weapons, said a U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meetings. All congressional committees with an interest in Syria, from the intelligence to the armed services committees, are now being kept informed.
“I can’t comment on these reports but I have been very concerned for some time now about Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons and its stocks of advanced conventional weapons like shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles,” said House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich. “We are not doing enough to prepare for the collapse of the Assad regime, and the dangerous vacuum it will create. Use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would be an extremely serious escalation that would demand decisive action from the rest of the world,” he added.
Syria is believed to have one of the world’s largest chemical weapons programs, and the Assad regime has said it might use the weapons against external threats, though not against Syrians. The U.S. and Jordan share the same concern about Syria’s chemical and biological weapons — that they could fall into the wrong hands should the regime in Syria collapse and lose control of them.
___
Klapper reported from Prague. Associated Press writers Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Albert Aji in Damascus and Matthew Lee, Kimberly Dozier, and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Apple to sell new iPads, iPhone 5 in China in Dec.
Label: TechnologyCUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple Inc. on Friday said its latest iPad models will go on sale in China on Dec. 7, followed by the iPhone 5 a week later.
China is one of Apple‘s largest and fastest-growing markets. Analyst Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets said iPhone 5 is launching roughly when he expected it, but he hadn’t expected the iPad mini and the fourth-generation, full-size iPad to go on sale in China this year.
“Our conversations during our meetings and casual consumer interactions during our China trips tell us that the iPad Mini will take off like wildfire in China,” White wrote in a research report Friday morning. “The smaller form factor and lower price point, we believe Apple will be able to sell the iPad mini in meaningful volumes.”
White said uptake of the iPhone 4S was relatively slow in China, because the signature new feature, voice-recognition-powered virtual assistant Siri, did not understand Mandarin Chinese. With this year’s software update, Siri now does understand the language, which should encourage upgrades, he said.
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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