Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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Read More..

A Minute With: Taylor Lautner finding new dawn after “Twilight”
















LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – As dusk sets on the “Twilight” saga with the final film, actor Taylor Lautner is looking at a new dawn for the next stage in his career.


Lautner, 20, shot to fame after being cast as werewolf Jacob Black in the “Twilight” films, entangled in a torrid love triangle with Kristen Stewart‘s Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson‘s vampire Edward Cullen. He became a household name and pin-up for his clean-cut good looks and shirtless scenes.













In “Breaking Dawn – Part 2,” out in U.S. theaters on November 16, Lautner’s character finds new love, albeit unusual, and indulges his comedic side as the story comes to an end.


Lautner spoke to Reuters about leaving Jacob and his cast mates behind, and why the final film may leave fans in tears.


Q: What’s different about Jacob in “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″?


A: “He’s always been so stressed and emotional and things aren’t going his way and there was a huge weight lifted off his shoulders in this one, huge. It was nice to play that side of Jacob where he could sit back and relax and have a smile on his face and crack a few funny jokes every now and then.”


Q: Jacob finds his soul mate in Bella and Edward’s daughter Renesmee from the moment she is born. Was it challenging to balance his affection for her without coming across creepy?


A: “It was a challenge, and it is so complicated, but really nobody understands it more than Stephenie Meyer who created it. I was picking her brain all day long about it. She basically told me over and over again, ‘Taylor, stop trying to overthink it, stop trying to take it different places … It’s a life-long bond between two people, that’s it.’ In the movie, (Renesmee) is 10 years old, it’s much more of a protector relationship right now, and of course the relationship will grow but we don’t explore that, but it was important for me to keep it simple.”


Q: What are you going to miss most about your character and the franchise?


A: “These characters have never stopped changing throughout the entire franchise, and that’s what I love about Jacob. Jacob himself has grown up so much and gone through so many hurdles and it was a fantastic character to play. For me, it’ll be tough to say goodbye to spending time with people that I love. We’ve grown so close over the past few years. Our relationships will go on past this but to not have that excuse to spend day after day together while filming or promoting will be different.”


Q: “Twilight” fans are not just interested in your characters, they’re also interested in your personal lives. The past summer has seen a lot of attention on Robert and Kristen’s relationship. How do you handle that level of scrutiny?


A: “It’s unlike anything else because when we do talk about the movies, 90 percent of the time people want to know more about ourselves than the characters and what’s going on. I guess that just comes with a fan base like this, it comes with the job and you try and not let it affect you too much, but I have no complaints … The scrutiny, is it unfortunate? Yeah, but you just got to make your way around it and think about things more.”


Q: Do you feel protective of your cast members?


A: “Yes, I definitely do, we’re so close by this point, I think that it’s hard not to.”


Q: What do you hope “Twilight” fans take away from “Breaking Dawn – Part 2″?


A: “I just hope they’re happy and they’re proud because we really do make these movies for them. They’re the reason we are able to make them, their support is unreal and we’re so proud of this last one. This last one specifically wraps it up so nicely, it’s an amazing movie. During the movie, it’ll keep you on the edge of your seat but by the end, I think more than a few of the fans will be in tears.”


Q: Post-Twilight, where do you want to take your career to, what roles would you like to explore? I hear you have a cameo in the comedy “Grown Ups 2″?


A: “It was great to do (comedy), just hop in and show a different side, do something fun and work with somebody like Adam (Sandler). But now I’m looking forward to doing something different from that. There are a few projects that I’m very excited about that are extremely challenging and dramatic and would be tough.”


(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Patricia Reaney)


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Obama win clears health law hurdle, challenges remain
















WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama‘s re-election eliminates the possibility of a wholesale repeal of his signature healthcare reform law, but leaves questions about how many of the changes will be implemented as the national focus shifts to tackling the U.S. debt and deficit.


The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the biggest overhaul of the $ 2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare system since the 1960s, aims to extend health coverage to more than 30 million uninsured Americans beginning in January 2014.













Republican challenger Mitt Romney had vowed to repeal the law if elected, calling it a costly government expansion despite the fact that the reforms are based on healthcare legislation he signed as governor of Massachusetts.


“There’s sort of an immediate acceptance that this law will stay in place in some meaningful way,” said Chris Jennings, a top healthcare adviser to former Democratic President Bill Clinton. “It’s sort of like a big barrier has been removed.”


Shares in hospitals and insurers that cater to Medicaid, the government insurance for the poor, rose slightly on Wednesday as markets expected the reform laws to be enacted. But health insurers with large employer-based businesses were off slightly, as the health reform law sets limits on their profits and mandates on coverage.


Obama still faces challenges in Congress. Republicans who retained control of the House of Representatives are expected to press for healthcare reform concessions, including delaying and 7scaling back a planned expansion of Medicaid, during negotiations to cut the federal deficit later this month.


But Julie Barnes, director of healthcare policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, said Tuesday’s victory should give the president added leverage to set the healthcare segment of any deficit-cutting compromise largely on his own terms.


“President Obama has the opportunity to make bold leadership moves toward a bipartisan compromise on healthcare and the economy,” she said. “He has the standing to demand that each party see the investment all Americans have in reforming our broken healthcare system.”


DID MEDICARE HELP OBAMA?


In a related issue, Obama’s staunch defense of Medicare, the healthcare program for the elderly and disabled, may have helped his re-election, giving him an edge in close states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada.


Obama and his allies vigorously attacked Romney’s plan to convert the popular program that provides guaranteed benefits to one that gives beneficiaries a fixed payment to help them purchase their own health coverage.


Polls show older Americans oppose the idea by margins of 2-to-1, though it was unclear to what extent that opposition translated into votes.


Major provisions of the Affordable Care Act call for cooperation from individual U.S. states, including an expansion of Medicaid and the introduction of subsidized health insurance exchanges for individuals to buy their own coverage.


Governors and legislatures in as many as a half-dozen Republican-majority states oppose those plans and can refuse to act on them.


Other states may be ill-prepared for implementation but could begin to take action now that repeal is no longer a threat. States have until November 16 to say whether they intend to set up their own exchanges. Most will need to partner with the federal government to have one ready by 2014.


Soon after Obama emerged the winner, reform advocates called on his administration to encourage state support for Medicaid by assuring governors and legislatures that $ 930 billion in federal funds for financing the expansion will be pumped into struggling state budgets.


“This guarantee is essential for governors as they decide whether their programs should cover more low-income adults. It is therefore crucial that upcoming federal budget decisions give governors clear assurances that this funding is stable and won’t be reduced,” said Ron Pollack of Families USA, a Medicaid advocacy group.


The healthcare law that Republicans deride as “Obamacare” has already survived repeated attacks and emerged mostly intact.


The Supreme Court upheld the reforms in a landmark June ruling, but empowered states to opt out of the planned Medicaid expansion without losing federal funding for current programs.


The reform law is still the subject of about two-dozen lawsuits seeking to overturn a requirement that church-affiliated institutions cover birth control for employees.


(Editing by Michele Gershberg, Marilyn Thompson and David Storey)


Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Boehner, Reid in talks to avert 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Fresh off the election, the two top leaders of Congress began tentative discussions on Wednesday aimed at heading off potential economic disaster at year's end, when simultaneous tax increases and spending cuts threaten to throw the United States into a recession.


The leader of the Senate's Democratic majority, Harry Reid, said he had conferred Wednesday morning with his Republican counterpart in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner, and both had agreed not to "draw any lines in the sand" for the time being.


At the same time, Reid stressed that Democrats were not likely to budge from their standard negotiating position, that tax increases should apply to the wealthy, not those in the middle class or below.


The re-election of President Barack Obama and Democratic gains in the U.S. Senate, Reid said, had validated the party's position on taxes.


"I'm willing to negotiate at any time on any issue ... I want to work together but I want everyone to understand you can't push us around," Reid said


Reid said it was his preference they reach agreement in the post-election session of Congress that begins next week on ways to avoid the so-called "fiscal cliff" - the combination of expiring tax cuts and automatic across-the-board reductions in federal spending due at year's end.


He said would prefer a solution in this year's so-called lame duck session rather than enact a temporary fix for the fiscal cliff and would push the issue into the newly elected Congress, which starts in January.


"I'm not for kicking the can down the road," he told reporters. "We need to solve it."


Boehner, will deliver a statement at 3:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday on the need for a bipartisan deal.


Boehner will make his case a day after American voters gave Obama a second term, but maintained a divided government, with Republicans still in control of the House and Democrats still holding the Senate.


Boehner will argue that Republicans and Democrats must "take steps together," a spokesman said in a press release.


(Reporting By Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Fred Barbash and Jackie Frank)


Read More..

Cautious reformers tipped for new China leadership
















BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party will this month unveil its new top leadership team, expected to again be an all-male cast of politicians whose instincts are to move cautiously on reform.


Sources close to the leadership say 10 main candidates are vying for seven seats on the party’s next Politburo Standing Committee, the peak decision-making body which will steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years.













Only two candidates are considered certainties going into the party’s 18th congress, which starts on Thursday: leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping and his designated deputy, Li Keqiang, who are set to be installed as president and premier next March.


Of the remaining eight contenders, only one has the reputation as a political reformer and only one is a woman.


Following are short biographies of the candidates, including their reform credentials and possible portfolio responsibilities.


XI JINPING


REFORM CREDENTIALS: Considered a cautious reformer, having spent time in top positions in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, both at the forefront of China‘s economic reforms.


Xi Jinping, 59, is China‘s vice president and President Hu Jintao’s anointed successor. He will take over as Communist Party boss at the congress and then as head of state in March.


Xi belongs to the party’s “princeling” generation, the offspring of communist revolutionaries. His father, former vice premier Xi Zhongxun, fought alongside Mao Zedong in the Chinese civil war. Xi watched his father purged and later, during the Cultural Revolution, spent years in the hardscrabble countryside before making his way to university and then to power.


Married to a famous singer, Xi has crafted a low-key and sometimes blunt political style. He has complained that officials’ speeches and writings are clogged with party jargon and has demanded more plain speaking.


Xi went to work in the poor northwest Chinese countryside as a “sent-down youth” during the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and became a rural commune official. He went on to study chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and later gained a doctorate in Marxist theory from Tsinghua.


A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, Xi was promoted to governor of southeastern Fujian province in 1999 and became party boss in neighboring Zhejiang province in 2003.


In 2007, the tall, portly Xi secured the top job in China‘s commercial capital, Shanghai, when his predecessor was caught up in a huge corruption case. Later that year he was promoted to the party’s standing committee.


- – - -


LI KEQIANG


REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen as another cautious reformer due to his relatively liberal university experiences.


Vice Premier Li Keqiang, 57, is the man tipped to be China‘s next premier, taking over from Wen Jiabao.


His ascent will mark an extraordinary rise for a man who as a youth was sent to toil in the countryside during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.


He was born in Anhui province in 1955, son of a local rural official. Li worked on a commune that was one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left Anhui, Li was a Communist Party member and secretary of his production brigade.


He studied law at the elite Peking University, which was among the first Chinese schools to resume teaching law after the Cultural Revolution. He worked to master English and co-translated “The Due Process of Law” by Lord Denning, the famed English jurist.


In 1980, Li, then in the official student union, endorsed controversial campus elections. Party conservatives were aghast, but Li, already a prudent political player, stayed out of the controversial vote.


He climbed the party ranks and in 1983 joined the Communist Youth League’s central secretariat, headed then by Hu Jintao.


Li later served in challenging party chief posts in Liaoning, a frigid northeastern rustbelt province, and rural Henan province. He was named to the powerful nine-member standing committee in 2007.


- – - -


WANG QISHAN


REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer and problem solver with deep experience tackling tricky economic and political problems.


Wang Qishan, 64, is the most junior of four vice premiers and an ex-mayor of Beijing. But he has a keen grasp of complex economic issues and is the only likely member of the Standing Committee to have been chief executive of a corporation, leading the state-owned China Construction Bank from 1994 to 1997. As such, he may take a leading role in shaping economic policy, including trade and foreign investment.


Wang is an experienced negotiator who has led finance and trade negotiations as well as the Strategic and Economic Dialogue with the United States. He is a favorite of foreign investors and has long been seen as a problem solver, sorting out a debt crisis in Guangdong province where he was vice governor in the late 1990s and replacing the sacked Beijing mayor after a cover-up of the deadly SARS virus in 2003.


Wang is also a princeling, son-in-law of a former vice premier and ex-standing committee member, Yao Yilin. His possible portfolio could be chairman of the National People’s Congress (China’s rubber-stamp parliament), head of parliament’s advisory body, executive vice premier (responsible for economic issues) or the party’s top anti-corruption official.


- – - -


LIU YUNSHAN


REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.


Liu Yunshan, 65, may take over the propaganda and ideology portfolio for the Standing Committee.


He has a background in media, once working as a reporter for state-run news agency Xinhua in Inner Mongolia, where he later served in party and propaganda roles before shifting to Beijing.


As minister of the party’s Propaganda Department since 2002, Liu has also sought to control China‘s Internet, which has more than 500 million users. He has been a member of the wider Politburo for two five-year terms ending this year.


Liu has not worked directly for the Communist Youth League, but is aligned to it through his lengthy career in an inland, poor province, long ties to the party’s propaganda system and close relationship with Hu Jintao.


- – - -


LI YUANCHAO


REFORM CREDENTIALS: A reformer who has courted foreign investment and studied in the United States.


Li Yuanchao, 61, oversees the appointment of senior party, government, military and state-owned enterprise officials as head of the party’s powerful organization department. On the Standing Committee, he could head the fight against corruption.


Li, whose father was a vice-mayor of Shanghai, has risen far since his parents were persecuted and he was a humble farm hand during the Cultural Revolution.


Politically astute, Li can navigate between interest groups, from Hu’s Youth League power base to the princelings.


As party chief in his native province, Jiangsu, from 2002 to 2007, Li oversaw a rapid rise in personal incomes and economic development, attracting foreign investment from global industrial leaders such as Ford, Samsung and Caterpillar.


He earned mathematics and economics degrees from two of China‘s best universities and a doctorate in law. He also spent time at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in the United States.


- – - -


ZHANG DEJIANG


REFORM CREDENTIALS: A conservative trained in North Korea.


Zhang Dejiang, 65, saw his chances of promotion boosted this year when he was chosen to replace disgraced politician Bo Xilai as Chongqing party boss. He also serves as vice premier in charge of industry, though his record has been tarnished by the downfall of the railway minister last year for corruption.


Zhang is close to former president Jiang Zemin who still wields some influence. He studied economics at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea and is a native of northeast China.


On his watch as party chief of Guangdong, the southern province maintained its position as a powerhouse of China‘s economic growth, even as it struggled with energy shortages, corruption-fuelled unrest and the 2003 SARS epidemic.


- – - – -


ZHANG GAOLI


REFORM CREDENTIALS: A financial reformer with experience in more developed parts of China.


Zhang Gaoli, 65, party chief of the northern port city of Tianjin and a Politburo member since 2007, is seen as a Jiang Zemin ally but also acceptable to President Hu, who has visited Tianjin three times since 2008. Zhang is an advocate of greater foreign investment and he introduced financial reforms in a bid to turn the city into a financial center in northern China.


He was sent to clean up Tianjin, which was hit by a string of corruption scandals implicating his predecessor and the former top adviser to the city’s lawmaking body. The adviser committed suicide shortly after Zhang’s arrival.


A native of southeastern Fujian province, Zhang trained as an economist. He also served as party chief and governor of eastern Shandong province and as Guangdong vice governor.


Zhang is low-key with a down-to-earth work style, and not much is known about his specific interests and aspirations. But with his leadership experience in more economically advanced cities and provinces, including party secretary of the showcase manufacturing and export-driven city of Shenzhen, he could be named executive vice premier.


- – - – -


WANG YANG


REFORM CREDENTIALS: Seen by many in the West as a beacon of political reform.


Wang Yang, 57, is party chief of the export dependent economic hub of Guangdong province. He was not included in a list of preferred Standing Committee candidates drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to sources close to the leadership, but is firmly in the running.


Born into a poor rural family in eastern Anhui province, Wang dropped out of high school and went to work in a food factory at age 17 to help support his family after his father died. These experiences may have shaped his desire for more socially inclusive policies, including his “Happy Guangdong” model of development designed to improve quality of life.


Concerned about the social impact of three decades of blistering development, he lobbied for social and political reform. However, this approach has drawn criticism from party conservatives and Wang has more recently adopted the party’s more familiar method of control and punishment to keep order.


- – - – -


YU ZHENGSHENG


REFORM CREDENTIALS: Relatively low-key but considered a cautious reformer.


Yu Zhengsheng, 67, is party boss in China‘s financial hub and most cosmopolitan city, Shanghai.


His impeccable Communist pedigree made him a rising star in the mid-1980s until his brother, an intelligence official, defected to the United States. His close ties with Deng Pufang, the eldest son of late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, spared him the full political repercussions but he was taken off the fast track.


Yu bided his time in ministerial ranks until bouncing back, joining the Politburo in 2002. However, the princeling’s age would require him to retire in 2017 after one term.


- – - – -


LIU YANDONG


REFORM CREDENTIALS: Uncertain.


Liu Yandong, who turns 67 this month, is the only woman given a serious chance to join the Standing Committee but is considered a dark horse. She is a princeling also tied to President Hu’s Youth League faction.


If promoted, she could head up parliament’s advisory body, but her age would also force her to retire after only one term.


Her bigger challenge is that no woman has made it into the Standing Committee since 1949. Not even Jiang Qing, the widow of late Chairman Mao Zedong, made it that far.


Liu, daughter of a former vice-minister of agriculture, is currently the only woman in the 25-member Politburo, a minority in China‘s male-dominated political culture. She has been on the wider Politburo since 2007 as one of five state councilors, a rank senior to a cabinet minister but junior to a vice-premier.


(Reporting by Terril Yue Jones, Ben Blanchard, Benjamin Kang Lim and Sui-Lee Wee in Beijing. Additional reporting by Chris Ip, Grace Li, Jean Lin, Young Wang, Alice Woodhouse and Julie Zhu; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Mark Bendeich)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Sharon Osbourne has double mastectomy: magazine
















LONDON (Reuters) – British celebrity Sharon Osbourne has had a double mastectomy after discovering she was carrying a gene that increased the risk of her developing breast cancer, she told Hello! magazine in an interview published on Monday.


Osbourne, 60, told the publication that the decision was a “no-brainer” in the end.













“As soon as I found out I had the breast cancer gene, I thought: ‘The odds are not in my favor’,” she said in remarks that also ran in the Daily Mirror tabloid.


“I’ve had cancer before and I didn’t want to live under that cloud: I decided to just take everything off, and had a double mastectomy.”


Osbourne, who put the eccentric life of her family on view in the reality TV series “The Osbournes”, said she did not want to spend the rest of her life with “that shadow hanging over me.


“I want to be around for a long time and be a grandmother to Pearl,” she added, referring to her son Jack’s first child.


“I didn’t even think of my breasts in a nostalgic way, I just wanted to be able to live my life without that fear all the time. It’s not ‘pity me’, it’s a decision I made that’s got rid of this weight that I was carrying around.”


Osbourne raised her profile by appearing as a judge on successful talent shows “The X Factor” and “America’s Got Talent”. She is married to heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne.


Her London publicist referred Reuters to the interview which ran in Hello! and the Daily Mirror when asked to confirm the news.


(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)


Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Hurricane Sandy Hints At The Perils Of Global Catastrophe
















It takes a lot to bump the United States election out of the national spotlight one week before election day. Hurricane Sandy was that big, a direct blow to the most heavily populated region of the country. But all the attention going to the northeastern U.S. has a sad consequence: we’re overlooking the devastation Sandy caused in Haiti. This situation offers an ominous warning of what could happen if catastrophe were to affect the entire planet.

Candlelit bar in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. Photo credit: Seth Baum

This story is very personal for me. I live in New York City, and I do research on global catastrophes. While my neighborhood (Harlem) never lost electricity, this past Thursday and Friday I ventured to the area of Lower Manhattan that did. The area was much quieter than normal – clearly many people had left town. Of the remaining local residents, some reported enjoying the simpler life of “camping at home” and candlelit bars, while others were sick of it and wanted things back to normal. I even saw one woman frantically trying to care for an elderly neighbor who had run out of food and lacked the strength to go outside without her building’s elevator. This is a difficult situation, but as I know from my research, it could have been a lot worse. Meanwhile in Haiti, things may be worse. It seems sadly inevitable that we have the worst storm to hit the northeastern U.S. in a very long time, and it is disaster-stricken Haiti that may have been hit the hardest. At least 60 Haitians have died from Sandy. The U.S. has more deaths, but these are spread across a much larger affected population. Meanwhile Haiti may now have 200,000 homeless from Sandy, many of whom were still living in makeshift homes built following the 2010 earthquake. Its cholera outbreak could be worsened by the floods. But most worrisome is the large loss of crops. Haiti has an agriculture-oriented economy. The crop damage is prompting concerns about food shortages. For all the destruction in the U.S., it’s not at risk of running out of food.

Flooding in Haiti caused by Hurricane Sandy. Photo credit: Chimen Lakay, IOM Haiti












Despite the dire situation in Haiti, U.S. aid efforts are concentrated on the U.S. side of the storm. A giant benefit concert was held for the American Red Cross. Other domestic aid charities have also reported a spike in donations, whereas international charities report receiving much less. It is quite reasonable for the U.S. to focus on helping its own country, but it is nonetheless unfortunate that this focus could leave Haitians to suffer. Haiti should get the aid it needs. The U.S. should even be able to help. Yes, we have our own recovery to attend to, but we are a large and wealthy country, most of which was not hit by the storm. Even if the U.S. does not contribute, the rest of the world could, just as it did following the 2010 Haiti earthquake and every other major disaster of recent years. The propensity for countries to help each other out in times of great need – even when those countries are otherwise at odds – is among the most uplifting features of the international system. But a global catastrophe could thwart the international assistance paradigm. Just as the U.S. is now less able to aid Haiti, a global-scale event could leave each country devastated and with nowhere to turn for help. Each country would have to attempt recovery on its own. Each region within a country may be left to its own devices. Without external assistance, the challenge of recovery would be much more difficult. No hurricane, however large, will ever cause so great of a global catastrophe. But other events could [1]. Some come from nature, including supervolcano eruptions and large asteroid impacts. But these events are relatively rare, happening no more often than once every 50,000 years. The most urgent come from human activity, including nuclear war and pandemics. Pandemics could come from nature or from bioengineering, but either type of pathogen would be spread by human trade and travel. The worst-case nuclear war and pandemic scenarios are plenty bad enough to prevent international and inter-regional aid. Other processes like climate change and biodiversity loss can cause global disruptions and help trigger global catastrophes. In the event of a global catastrophe, each region could be left on its own. There would be no benefit concert, no international aid. If a region runs out of food supplies, its residents simply start dying. Rural Haiti may actually fare better than urban New York City, since Haitians are able to grow their own food. New York City without food supplies is a scary thought. A societal breakdown and collapse of law and order is possible, though also not inevitable. Research on the effects of resource scarcities on conflict and violence paints a mixed picture: sometimes scarcities bring more conflict, but not always [2]. Either way, this sort of global catastrophe poses challenges that go far beyond those of Hurricane Sandy. Fortunately, we do have tools we can use to rise to the challenges of global catastrophe. Building local self-sufficiency can be crucial if external aid becomes unavailable. Preparations like stockpiling food and water help people endure catastrophes of all sizes. Research on specific threats and cross-cutting issues can clarify what we’re up against and point to smarter opportunities to both prevent global catastrophes and recover from them if they occur. And experience with local catastrophes can often be extrapolated to the global scale, as is the case with Hurricane Sandy. As the recovery from Sandy proceeds, we should work towards building society’s resilience to both local and global catastrophes. References: [1] Bostrom, Nick and Milan ?irkovi?, 2008. Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [2] Nord?s, Ragnhild and Nils Petter Gleditsch, 2007. Climate change and conflict. Political Geography, vol. 26, pages 627-638. Photos: Seth Baum, and Chimen Lakay.

Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
© 2012 ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved.


Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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If Romney wins, he would begin his first term as a baffling figure

By Walter Shapiro



In the frenetic closing hours of a hard-fought presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has been ballyhooing his bipartisan credentials. It’s part of his final argument to persuadable voters that he’s really Moderate Mitt rather than the “severely conservative” Massachusetts governor of the Republican primaries.



In Sanford, Fla., on Monday, Romney boasted that in Massachusetts, working with “a Democrat legislature—85 percent Democrat—I helped turn my state from deficit to surplus.” And the Republican nominee in his final major campaign speech Friday in West Allis, Wis., pledged, “When I’m elected, I will work with Republicans and Democrats in Congress. I will meet regularly with their leaders.”



All this brings to mind a delicious story from Romney’s first days as governor in 2003. At a closed-to-the-press meeting with top legislative leaders, Romney told them about his private-sector management philosophy from Bain Capital, “My usual approach has been to set out the strategic vision for the enterprise and then work with the executive vice presidents to implement that strategy.”



As Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman make clear in their biography, “The Real Romney,” the mostly Democratic legislators were not amused by Romney’s business theories of political governance. Regardless of party, few legislators in Congress or on Beacon Hill in Boston see themselves as second-tier management implementing someone else’s strategic vision.



Romney has matured as a political leader over the past decade, though he has spent more time running for president than serving in public office. And Romney did have legislative victories in Massachusetts, including (shhh!) a health care reform plan eerily similar to the President Barack Obama’s.



The lasting relevance of that Massachusetts anecdote lies in the way it highlights the painful transition from the glib certainties of the campaign trail to the unrelenting demands of actually governing. It’s why it’s still hard to see the relevance to the White House in Romney’s frequent campaign trail claim, “I promise change—and I have a record of achieving it. I built a business, and turned around another.”



If Romney were elected, he would probably have to deal with a divided Congress in which Democrats retain a narrow majority in the Senate while the Republicans are in command of the House. The legislative arithmetic for Romney would revolve around the necessity to pick up about a dozen Democratic votes to overcome any Senate filibuster.



As the 45th president, Romney might well be able to enact a significant portion of his domestic agenda during the post-inaugural honeymoon period thanks to GOP discipline and Democratic skittishness.



Obamacare would almost certainly be eviscerated or eliminated, though in an era of austerity budgeting, it’s hard to imagine what alternatives would be offered to the uninsured. The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy would be made permanent—and business would be granted a permissive regulatory climate.



Far trickier would be enacting Romney’s signature proposal to slash all income tax rates by 20 percent and make up the revenue loss by closing loopholes and ending deductions. The intractable problem is that President Romney would either have to slash popular deductions like mortgage interest or concede that his numbers cannot add up as revenue neutral. Whenever Congress gets into the act on taxes, it is a safe bipartisan prediction that no voting bloc suffers and the deficit soars.



Beyond the bold strokes of his budget-slashing economic agenda, Romney would enter the Oval Office as a baffling political figure. He has reinvented himself politically so many times from his centrist days of his 1994 Senate campaign against Ted Kennedy to the fire-breathing conservatism of the Republican presidential primaries that it’s impossible for an outsider to know what’s real. In fact, Romney himself may be a bit bewildered as to where he stands.



A Romney presidency might be a portrait in schizophrenia.



On one hand, he probably would assign key roles to soft-right Republican advisers like the former Utah governor Mike Leavitt (who heads the transition team) and Beth Myers (who ran the vice-presidential search).



But whatever his personal beliefs, Romney also understands that the right-wing conservatives who dominate the Republican Party have accepted him with reservations. Whether picking Supreme Court nominees or charting his way through the thicket of social issues, President Romney would be keenly aware of the implicit threat of a primary challenge in 2016 if he deviates far from doctrinal purity.



Every new president in his confident, post-election naiveté makes serious errors. In fact, the desk chair in the Oval Office should come with a seat belt and training wheels.



The character test lies in how a new president responds to the discovery that no one, not even a veteran of Bain Capital, is prepared for the rigors of the White House. What he does with that knowledge—rather than his six-year quest for the White House—would be the true measure of the leadership style of Mitt Romney.

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Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks
















AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.


The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.













Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.


The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.


The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.


The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.


Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.


In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.


Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.


The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.


The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.


Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.


FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION


The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.


The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.


Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.


Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.


They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.


“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.


The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.


A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.


In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.


But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.


Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.


(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Apple sells 3 million iPads over first weekend

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