Clinton calls for overhaul of Syrian opposition

ZAGREB (Reuters) – The United States called on Wednesday for an overhaul of Syria‘s opposition leadership, saying it was time to move beyond the Syrian National Council and bring in those “in the front lines fighting and dying”.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, signaling a more active stance by Washington in attempts to form a credible political opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, said a meeting next week in Qatar would be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against him.

“This cannot be an opposition represented by people who have many good attributes but who, in many instances, have not been inside Syria for 20, 30, 40 years,” she said during a visit to Croatia.

“There has to be a representation of those who are in the front lines fighting and dying today to obtain their freedom.”

Clinton’s comments represented a clear break with the Syrian National Council (SNC), a largely foreign-based group which has been among the most vocal proponents of international intervention in the Syrian conflict.

U.S. officials have privately expressed frustration with the SNC’s inability to come together with a coherent plan and with its lack of traction with the disparate internal groups which have waged the 19-month uprising against Assad’s government.

Senior members of the SNC, Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel groups ended a meeting in Turkey on Wednesday and pledged to unite behind a transitional government in coming months.

“It’s been our divisions that have allowed the Assad forces to reach this point,” Ammar al-Wawi, a rebel commander, told Reuters after the talks outside Istanbul.

“We are united on toppling Assad. Everyone, including all the rebels, will gather under the transitional government.”

Mohammad Al-Haj Ali, a senior Syrian military defector, told a news conference after the meeting: “We are still facing some difficulties between the politicians and different opposition groups and the leaders of the Free Syrian Army on the ground.”

Clinton said it was important that the next rulers of Syria were both inclusive and committed to rejecting extremism.

“There needs to be an opposition that can speak to every segment and every geographic part of Syria. And we also need an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” she said.

Syria’s revolt has killed an estimated 32,000. A bomb near a Shi’ite shrine in a suburb of Damascus killed at least six more people on Wednesday, state media and opposition activists said.

NEW LEADERSHIP

The meeting next week in Qatar’s capital Doha represents a chance to forge a new leadership, Clinton said, adding the United States had helped to “smuggle out” representatives of internal Syrian opposition groups to a meeting in New York last month to argue their case for inclusion.

“We have recommended names and organizations that we believe should be included in any leadership structure,” she told a news conference.

“We’ve made it clear that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition. They can be part of a larger opposition, but that opposition must include people from inside Syria and others who have a legitimate voice which must be heard.”

The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition.

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 – a fact that Assad’s chief backer Russia says shows western powers are intent on determining Syria’s future.

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.

Clinton said she regretted but was not surprised by the failure of the latest attempted ceasefire, called by international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi last Friday. Each side blamed the other for breaking the truce.

“The Assad regime did not suspend its use of advanced weaponry against the Syrian people for even one day,” she said.

“While we urge Special Envoy Brahimi to do whatever he can in Moscow and Beijing to convince them to change course and support a stronger U.N. action we cannot and will not wait for that.”

Clinton said the United States would continue to work with partners to increase sanctions on the Assad government and provide humanitarian assistance to those hit by the conflict.

(Additional reporting by Ayla Jean Yackley; editing by Andrew Roche)

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Pentagon sees further use of BlackBerry as door opens to others

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon on Wednesday said it would continue to support “large numbers” of BlackBerry phones made by Research in Motion Ltd even as it moves forward with plans that would allow the U.S. military to begin using Apple Inc‘s iPhone and other devices.

The U.S. Defense Department last week invited companies to submit bids for software that can monitor, manage and enforce security requirements for devices made by Apple and Google Inc, with an eye to awarding a contract in April.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) quietly posted its request for proposals on a federal website on October 22, the same day that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency said it would end its contract with RIM in favor of Apple’s iPhone.

Losing some of its Pentagon business to other providers could deal another blow to RIM, which once commanded the lead in the smartphone market but has rapidly lost ground to Apple and Samsung’s line of products as customers abandon its aging BlackBerry devices.

For many years, the Pentagon relied solely on BlackBerry phones because RIM met its tough security requirements, but other companies have been improving security on their devices, and a growing number of military commanders are clamoring for rival devices with bigger touch screens and faster browsers.

A Pentagon spokesman said the U.S. military was working toward allowing vendors to supply other smartphones, while maintaining strict security requirements.

He said the department aimed to use commercial mobile technologies as it stepped up the use of “new and innovative applications” to support the military’s evolving requirements.

But the Pentagon also stressed it was not moving away from its use of BlackBerry phones.

“DISA is managing an enterprise email capability that continues to support large numbers of RIM devices while moving forward with the department’s planned mobile management capability that will support a variety of mobility devices,” the spokesman said.

The DISA request for proposals said the software would manage at least 162,500 devices to start, but that number could grow to 262,500 by the end of the contract, which will have a one-year base and four six-month options.

Ultimately, the Pentagon wants the software to support a total of 8 million devices, according to the document.

RIM spokesman Paul Lucier said his company’s BlackBerry Mobile Fusion product could also be used to manage Android and Apple devices, and RIM was “excited for the opportunity to include BlackBerry Mobile Fusion in the DOD’s portfolio.”

Lucier said the product could enable the Pentagon to “support a growing number of mobile devices across multiple platforms.”

Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM is also planning to introduce new smartphones that will run on the BlackBerry 10 operating system, offering a faster and smoother user interface and a better platform for various smartphone applications.

(Reporting By Andrea Shalal-Esa; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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NBC sets premiere dates for “1600 Penn,” Eva Longoria series

LOS ANGELES, Oct 30 (TheWrap.com) – NBC announced midseason premiere dates Tuesday for three new series, including the Bill Pullman presidential comedy “1600 Penn” and the new Eva Longoria relationship series “Ready for Love.”

The network also announced the premiere date for the drama “Deception,” which was formerly known as “Infamous.”

In addition to the series premieres, the network announced return dates for several shows, including the on-the-bubble comedy “Community,” which will return to its previous Thursday night timeslot.

“Deception,” a dark family mystery starring Meagan Good and Victor Garber, premieres on Monday, January 7 at 10 p.m. It will follow “The Biggest Loser,” which starts its new season with a two-night premiere on January 6 and 7.

“1600 Penn,” starring Bill Pullman as the president in a comedy about the First Family, premieres Thursday, January 10 at 9:30. The series, which also stars Jenna Elfman and Josh Gad, was co-created by “Modern Family” director Jason Winer. It will join a slightly altered Thursday lineup.

“Parks and Recreation” moves to 8:30 on January 17, and “Community,” returns to 8 p.m. on February 7.

“Ready for Love,” a reality show executive produced by former “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, will premiere Sunday, March 31 at 8 p.m.

(Editing By Zorianna Kit)

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Medications for Normal Aging Driving Up Prescription Drug Expenses

People talk a lot these days about the cost of prescription medications. The issue has been at the heart of discussions about healthcare reform and funding for Medicare. But what if many of the medications that are driving high healthcare costs weren’t even necessary?

That question may become the focus of attention based on new statistics released Tuesday which show the cost impact of optional medications used for conditions that, traditionally, have been considered a normal part of aging — such as sexual dysfunction, menopause, urinary symptoms and insomnia.

Between 2007 and 2011, utilization of drugs to treat these conditions rose 32 percent among Medicare beneficiaries and 8.5 percent among people who have private insurance. These age-related medications are now so popular they rank third in cost impact only behind diabetes and cholesterol medications among commercially insured patients.

“The trend we observed was surprising,” Reethi N. Iyengar, senior manager of health services research at Express Scripts, told Take Part. “There has been no empirical evidence on the cost impact of these medications. We hope, with this study, people will now see what has been happening over the past five years.”

RELATED: Americans Struggling to Pay for Prescription Drugs

The study was conducted by Express Scripts using pharmacy claims data from its  nationally representative sample. The analysis focused on people ages 65 and older, both privately insured and Medicare members.

Iyengar’s analysis showed diabetes medications for privately insured patients in 2011 cost, per member,  an average of $ 81.12 per person compared to $ 78.38 for cholesterol medications and $ 73.33 for aging-related conditions. Drugs for high blood pressure and heart disease ranked fourth at $ 62.84.

The $ 73.33 spent per member, per year “might not sound like much,” Iyengar notes. “But if you look at how much is spent compared to chronic conditions, it’s a high amount. People are spending more on these medications for conditions that are considering to be a normal part of aging.”

Other conditions considered age-related were mental alertness/memory issues, skin aging and hair loss. Among people on Medicare, medications for non-infection urinary symptoms, insomnia and hormone replacement therapy produced the highest expenditures in the category.

RELATED: Quick Study: More Americans Skipping Doctor Visits

 Among privately insured people, drugs for mental alertness/memory issues, non-infection urinary symptoms and hormone replacement therapy where the top three conditions for total spending.

The rising popularity of these medications will continue to weigh heavily on the nation’s overall healthcare expenditures. More than 88 million Americans will be over age 65 by 2050, Iyengar notes. The increased spending on normal aging processes could squeeze dollars available for other healthcare needs, such as immunizations and anti-obesity treatments that impact public health.

Moreover, over-spending could result in a reduction in benefits for everyone. Insurers and the federal government may need to opt for cost-containment strategies of optional, age-related medications going forward, she said.

RELATED: 5 Big Questions About Obama’s Healthcare Plan

“Prescription benefit managers are always looking to contain cost,” she says. “What this study calls for is better management of cost of utilization while insuring much-needed access to medication for patients.”

The study also hints at the Baby Boomers’ views of aging. Some people may feel the treatment of erectile dysfunction or skin wrinkles is important to quality of life while others say such therapies “medicalize” normal aging.

“It can definitely be argued that these medications enhance quality of life, some more than others,” Iyengar says. “What we think is important is that we should be monitoring this trend, not necessarily limiting these medications or limiting access.”

Question: Should insurers limit coverage for elective, age-related medications in order to hold down costs? Tell us what you think in the comments.

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Shari Roan is an award-winning health writer based in Southern California. She is the author of three books on health and science subjects.

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Disney buys firm behind Star Wars

30 October 2012 Last updated at 17:25 ET

Disney is buying Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, from its chairman and founder George Lucas for $ 4.05bn (£2.5bn).

Mr Lucas said: “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers.”

In a statement announcing the purchase, Disney said it planned to release a new Star Wars film, episode seven, in 2015.

That will be followed by episodes eight and nine and then one new movie every two or three years, the company said.

The last Star Wars film was 2005′s Revenge of the Sith, and Disney said it believed there was “substantial pent-up demand”.

Disney will pay about half in cash and half in stock, issuing 40 million Disney shares in the transaction.

The deal follows Disney’s acquisitions of Pixar studios for $ 7.4bn in 2006 and Marvel comics for $ 4.2bn in 2009.

“Our valuation of Lucasfilm is roughly comparable to the value we placed on Marvel when we announced that acquisition in 2009,” Disney said, adding that the valuation was almost entirely driven by the Star Wars franchise.

Transition

George Lucas launched Lucasfilm in 1971 and the first Star Wars film was released in 1977.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” Mr Lucas said.

“I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.”

Mr Lucas will continue as a creative consultant.

Kathleen Kennedy, currently co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become president of the firm and will be the executive producer on the new Star Wars films.

Lucasfilm is also the production company behind the Indiana Jones franchise, and fantasy films Willow and Labyrinth.

Michael Corty, analyst at Morning Star, said Disney’s deal was clearly part of a pattern in buying new franchises.

“Pixar was the first big one, then Marvel, and now this one here,” he said.

“Because Lucas is private, I would assume most investors would be surprised.”

BBC News – Business

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Hurricane’s death toll rises to 65 in Caribbean

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — As Americans braced Sunday for Hurricane Sandy, Haiti was still suffering.

Officials raised the storm-related death toll across the Caribbean to 65, with 51 of those coming in Haiti, which was pelted by three days of constant rains that ended only on Friday.

As the rains stopped and rivers began to recede, authorities were getting a fuller idea of how much damage Sandy brought on Haiti. Bridges collapsed. Banana crops were ruined. Homes were underwater. Officials said the death toll might still rise.

“This is a disaster of major proportions,” Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe told The Associated Press, adding with a touch of hyperbole, “The whole south is under water.”

The country’s ramshackle housing and denuded hillsides are especially vulnerable to flooding. The bulk of the deaths were in the southern part of the country and the area around Port-au-Prince, the capital, which holds most of the 370,000 Haitians who are still living in flimsy shelters as a result of the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Santos Alexis, mayor of the southern city of Leogane, said Sunday that the rivers were receding and that people were beginning to dry their belongings in the sun.

“Things are back to being a little quiet,” Alexis said by telephone. “We have seen the end.”

Sandy also killed 11 in Cuba, where officials said it destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses. Deaths were also reported in Jamaica, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. Authorities in the Dominican Republic said the storm destroyed several bridges and isolated at least 130 communities while damaging an estimated 3,500 homes.

Jamaica’s emergency management office on Sunday was airlifting supplies to marooned communities in remote areas of four badly impacted parishes.

In the Bahamas, Wolf Seyfert, operations director at local airline Western Air, said the domestic terminal of Grand Bahamas‘ airport received “substantial damage” from Sandy’s battering storm surge and would need to be rebuilt.

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Founding Father featured in popular new video game

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Wars and video games seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But those games usually involve tanks and machine guns and Tet offensives; not horses, bayonets and Bunker Hill.

Now, though, one of the biggest game releases of the upcoming holiday season is immersing players in the Revolutionary War, with key cameos from George Washington, Ben Franklin and other Founding Fathers.

Assassin’s Creed III is due for release Tuesday, immersing players in Colonial America and the Revolutionary War.

In some ways, the game is meticulous with historical accuracy. Great attention was paid to research to recreate the cities of New York and Boston on a one-third scale. History professors were brought in as consultants.

In other ways, the game takes liberties with history. It integrates the Revolutionary War into the overarching story of Assassin’s Creed, in which the secret society of the Knights Templar fills the role as the game’s overarching villain.

Game creators were reluctant to reveal too many details in advance of the game’s release. Review copies were not available in advance.

The game’s creative director, Alex Hutchinson, said the ability to explore a historical era that has been largely left untouched by the gaming world was one of the most exciting aspects of the project.

As for Washington himself, Hutchinson said he wanted the game to portray the fact that for the man who would become the nation’s first president, it was far from certain that America would win the war.

“He wasn’t sure he was going to win,” Hutchinson said. “When you read their letters, they were very uncertain for much of their time” how the war would turn out.

Francois Furstenberg, a history professor at the University of Montreal, who has written about the iconography that surrounds Washington, served as a consultant and said he was interested less in making sure names and dates were perfect, but more in the game’s overarching narrative. He said the game’s creators shared his desire to depict the war in a nuanced way that avoided portraying one side as the good guys and vice versa.

“Anything that complicates the narrative is a good thing,” he said. “If anything I think they were more interested in sort of a muckraking account” of the revolution, something that agreed with Furstenberg.

The game’s protagonist — Connor, half American Indian, Half British and not aligned with either side — served as a good vehicle for exploring the era in a way that avoids patriotic cliches, Hutchinson said.

The game’s international fan base also demands an even-handed approach to the Revolution, said Hutchinson, who is frequently questioned by skeptical fans who worry the game will be too pro-American.

Not to worry, said Hutchinson, who jokes that he’s an Australian living in Canada making a game about the American Revolution for a French software company.

Even where it sought to be realistic, the game’s creators took a few liberties. Washington, for instance, is first introduced as a young officer serving under General Braddock in the French and Indian war. The game makers took great care to show the youthful Washington accurately, as a redhead. Looking at the finished product, though, they felt they ought to add a touch of gray to Washington‘s hair, to more closely match the iconic image of Washington held by the public.

“We did not know how odd it is to see a red-headed George Washington,” Hutchinson said. “It was one of those instances where the fiction felt more right than the real version.”

Ubisoft takes far greater liberties in a downloadable add-on game that will be available to Assassin’s Creed players a few months after the games release. In “The Tyranny of King Washington,” players confront a scenario where Washington, rather than yielding power to civil authority, parlays his power and popularity and establishes himself as a new monarch.

At George Washington‘s Mount Vernon estate, curators are happy that the game will introduce so many kids to Washington and the Founding Fathers and hopefully get them thinking about history.

“I would love for people to focus on exactly the incredible choice Washington made to relinquish power,” said Carol Cadou, senior curator at Mount Vernon, even if the vehicle for prompting that discussion is a game that contorts and creates an alternate reality.

Historical figures certainly make appearances in some video games, but rarely from historical eras and rarely in a setting devoted to realism. The popular game “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” for instance, features John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But in the game, the four of them team up to defeat an onslaught of zombies at the Pentagon.

Cadou says that Washington has so often been portrayed so heroically that he becomes unrelatable.

“Washington is almost so good he becomes bland,” she said. “Even if he’s depicted in a negative way, it gives us an opportunity to explore” his life that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The Mount Vernon estate has focused in recent years on piercing the stodgy image of Washington on the dollar bill and sought to emphasize his military daring and action-hero aspects of his life story.

Mount Vernon even looked at producing its own educational video game featuring Washington, but ultimately concluded that such a game would be “a little more violent than we had the appetite for.”

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Taylor Swift to co-host Grammy nominations in Nashville

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop star Taylor Swift will co-host the Grammy nominations live on television from Nashville, the capital of country music, the Recording Academy said on Monday.

Swift, 22, who has won six Grammy awards, will join rapper-actor LL Cool J to announce nominees in some of the major categories during a one-hour live telecast on December 5, featuring performances from country artist Luke Bryan and pop-rockers Maroon 5.

The singer is currently on a touring blitz to promote her latest album, “Red”, and has become an awards show favorite, most recently premiering her new single at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

Swift’s addition to the roster is part of the Grammy organization’s celebration of country music this year, moving the nominations concert from Los Angeles to Nashville, home to the Grand Ole Opry and dozens of recording studios that have spawned artists such as Swift, Carrie Underwood and Lady Antebellum.

Organizers began televising the nominations in a live show five years ago in a bid to boost TV viewership for the annual Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in February. This year, 39.9 million viewers tuned in to see British singer Adele sweep the awards with six major wins.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Dale Hudson)

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Cancer docs often delay referrals to hospice care

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Cancer doctors often refer their patients to palliative care very late in the course of disease, according to a new survey from Canada.

About a third of oncologists said they refer patients to palliative care, or hospice, when they diagnose a cancer that has spread and therefore usually is incurable.

Another third, however, said they wait until chemotherapy has been stopped, which is often just a few months or even weeks away from death.

“All palliative specialists believe that palliative care should be involved early,” said Dr. Camilla Zimmermann of Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, who led the study with funding from the Canadian Cancer Society.

“Despite that and despite guidelines to refer early, many studies have shown that palliative still happens too late, in the last few months of life.”

Rather than providing aggressive medical treatments, palliative care focuses on improving a person’s well-being by offering pain management as well as psychological, social and sometimes spiritual care.

“It is basically team-based whole-person care,” Zimmermann told Reuters Health. “The take-home message for me is that the palliative care specialists and oncologists need to work more in collaboration.”

The new findings, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, are based on a survey of 603 physicians. Most of the doctors did have palliative services available to them, although some were more comprehensive than others.

In the U.S., the picture might be different. A previous survey found six out of 10 National Cancer Institute-designated centers had access to palliative clinics, whereas less than a fourth of cancer centers that didn’t carry that designation had such access.

There are also differences in the insurance coverage of hospice between the U.S. and Canada. Zimmermann said patients in the U.S. cannot receive hospice benefits if they are still getting chemotherapy, which would be an obvious barrier to early referral.

However, she added, that shouldn’t prevent oncologists from reaching out to palliative specialists at the hospital and make sure the transition is as smooth as possible.

“What we are trying to encourage is that everybody gets involved a bit earlier,” Zimmermann told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/Phb4FH Journal of Clinical Oncology, online October 29, 2012.

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Steve Jobs’ ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Is Out at Apple

Apple (AAPL) today announced the departure of Scott Forstall, the company’s senior vice president of its mobile operating system, iOS. The departure was abrupt, but perhaps not entirely unexpected. Forstall had been a longtime and talented member of Apple’s executive team, but as Bloomberg Businessweek reported in a cover story last year, he was also a polarizing figure within the company. He was not without internal rivals and enemies: As we said in our 2011 article, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, and Bob Mansfield, the company’s head of technology, would rarely take meetings with him unless the Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, was also present.

Forstall is a talented, able performer at various who brought a tremendous amount of energy to many product rollouts at Apple. Which is why his absence from the recent iPad Mini announcement raised some eyebrows. At any major release of a new iOS device, Forstall would have been expected to speak to journalists who gathered in San Jose last week.

Overseeing iOS put Forstall in a tremendous position of power, as Apple’s mobile operating system has increasingly been where the action is in new Apple products and services, but his tenure had plenty of speed bumps. The company’s rollout of iCloud has been better than the previous attempts with Mobile Me and .Mac—iCloud has generated complaints about how hard it is to configure. Forstall was an early supporter of Apple’s purchase of Siri, which led to the voice-activated assistant of the same name—Siri’s been criticized for reliability issues. Add to that the recent Maps issue, in which CEO Cook had to release an apology to Apple customers. It’s quite possible that Forstall, for all his agreed-upon talent and dedication to the company, had little to defend himself with when an reorganization was proposed and he had few friends in the executive suite in Cupertino.

Being demanding or prickly is fine when you’re doing everything right (or, in Steve Jobs’s case, when it’s your company). But if things start to go south on you, it can leave you awfully exposed, with few people leaping to your defense or aid (ask A-Rod). Maybe nice guys finish last, but at least they finish.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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