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 says sold three million iPads since Friday

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Sharon Osbourne has double mastectomy

LONDON (AP) — Sharon Osbourne says she had a double mastectomy after learning she carries a gene that increases the risk of developing breast cancer.

Osbourne told Hello! magazine that “I didn’t want to live the rest of my life with that shadow hanging over me.”

The 60-year-old “America’s Got Talent” judge, who had colon cancer a decade ago, said that without the surgery, “the odds are not in my favor.”

She added: “It’s not ‘pity me,’ it’s a decision I made that’s got rid of this weight that I was carrying around.”

The magazine went on sale Monday.

Osbourne, husband Ozzy and children Jack and Kelly became rock’s most famous clan thanks to reality show “The Osbournes” a decade ago.

Jack Osbourne, 26, was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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BioMarin genetic disorder drug meets main goal, shares jump

(Reuters) – BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc said a late-stage trial of its experimental genetic disorder drug met the main goal of improving patients’ walking ability when administered weekly, sending the company‘s shares up 25 percent in premarket trading.

The drug, called GALNS, however, did not show any improvement over a placebo when administered every other week.

The trial, named MOR-004, showed that weekly doses of the drug at 2 mg/kg improved the six-minute walk distance of patients by 22.5 meters over the placebo.

However, patients getting the same dose every other week did not show any meaningful or statistically significant change compared to the placebo.

The disorder – Mucopolysaccharidosis Type IVA (MPS IVA), or Morquio A Syndrome – is a rare, inherited disorder caused by the deficiency of a particular enzyme, leading to skeletal dysplasia, short stature and joint abnormalities.

The drug was also tested in another extension trial that showed its benefits continued to improve with further dosage, BioMarin said in a statement.

GALNS was generally well-tolerated and adverse events were similar to those seen in the trials of other enzyme replacement therapies. There were no deaths and no patients withdrew from the study due to adverse events.

BioMarin now plans to submit marketing applications for the drug, starting from the first quarter of 2013.

The company currently has four drugs in the market, two of which are for treating other metabolic disorders caused by the absence of certain enzymes.

Shares of the company closed at $ 37.41 on the Nasdaq on Friday, and were trading at $ 47 before markets opened on Monday. (Reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Will it all come down to Ohio? Both campaigns focus on the state

Most Memorable 2012 Campaign Moments http://t.co/hOTxtWMO

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Brazil’s ‘pop-star priest’ gets mammoth new stage

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil‘s “pop-star priest” is already packing in the crowds at the newly opened mammoth sanctuary that he built for his campaign to stem the exodus of faithful from the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America’s biggest nation.

Brazil still has more Catholics than any other country in the world, with about 65 percent of its 192 million people identifying themselves that way in the 2010 census. But that is down from 74 percent in 2000 and is the lowest since records began tracking religion 140 years ago.

That’s where Father Marcelo Rossi‘s Mother of God sanctuary comes in. The not-yet-finished structure will seat 6,000 people and have standing room for 14,000 more, church leaders say. In addition, the grounds outside can hold 80,000 people who could watch Mass on outdoor video screens.

After the inaugural Mass on Friday attracted upward of 50,000 people, a beaming Rossi told reporters: “They couldn’t all fit in. There was a crowd that had to stand outside! That’s a sign we’re on the right path, and it’s this sanctuary.”

Similar numbers jammed into the huge church Saturday.

It’s a fitting stage for Rossi, a Latin Grammy-nominated singer who is known for tossing buckets of holy water on worshippers and performing rollicking Christian songs backed by a blasting live band during Mass.

The church sits on 323,000 square feet (30,000 square meters) of land. Church officials declined to confirm how big the actual building is, though local reports put it at 91,500 square feet (8,500 square meters). That would make it one of the world’s 10 biggest churches. A cross soaring 138 feet (42 meters) into the air is the focal point.

The Mother of God sanctuary is anything but traditional. Designed by noted Brazilian architect Ruy Ohtake, it has a wide-open layout giving it the feel of a warehouse. Concrete walls hold up a sloping blue roof that from the outside looks more like a basketball arena than a house of worship. With the church several years away from completion, white plastic chairs were in the place of pews for a lucky few thousand to grab a seat. The rest had to stand.

Rossi dismisses the idea his huge church is a response to the explosion of the evangelical Christian faith in Brazil. Rather, the priest seems to be battling what recent studies indicate is Catholicism’s biggest enemy: indifference.

While millions of Brazilian Catholics joined Pentecostal congregations in the 1990s, a study conducted last year by Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation based on census data found that the Catholics leaving the church these days are mostly becoming nonreligious. Experts have said the trend of Brazilians deciding organized religion isn’t for them poses a more potent threat to Catholic leaders than losses to the Pentecostals.

Rossi chose to open his new church on the Brazilian holiday of Finados, the nation’s version of the Day of the Dead. “A day, a day that was dead, was transformed!” the priest told worshippers during the service, using his gold-plated microphone.

The “pop-star priest” is seen by Brazilian Catholicism as its biggest weapon against the lack of interest, and his new sanctuary adds to his tools of best-selling books and music recordings to keep worshippers interested in what many complain has become a staid institution.

There was nothing stale about his Mass on Friday.

Singing as loud as they could, waving white hankies and swaying with a rocking band, the 20,000 people who jammed into the Mother of God sanctuary hammed it up for TV cameras and shed tears down their cheeks as their superstar priest waved to them from the pulpit. An estimated 30,000 other people had gathered outside, where young boys climbed up into nearby trees trying to get a glimpse of the church grounds as they squinted over a sea of heads streaming out of the sanctuary.

“We have problems, everyone has problems,” worshipper Zuleima de Oliveira Sales said as she stood in the tightly packed sea of people under the soaring blue roof of the structure, her voice choking. “They don’t come to an end, but I have faith, I have faith in Our Lady.”

That’s the sort of belief the Catholic Church is counting on in Brazil and other developing nations. Leaders from the Vatican on down are looking to them as bulwarks against losses in Europe and the U.S., where sex abuse scandals have inspired many people to leave the church. About half of the world’s Catholics live in Latin America.

Pentecostalism was once seen as a major threat to Brazil’s Catholic Church. Pentecostal churches, many of them founded by U.S. evangelicals, saw their membership double to more than 12 percent of the country’s population over the 1990s, with about half of the congregants estimated to be former Catholics.

During the 1990s, Brazil’s economy suffered from hyperinflation and other woes, and Pentecostal churches aggressively recruited in the slums and poor outskirts of Brazil’s cities by offering nuts-and-bolts self-improvement advice as well as Christian ministry.

Since 2003, however, Pentecostal churches have seen growth slow. The percentage of Brazilians calling themselves Pentecostals edged up from 12.5 percent of the population to 13.3 percent.

Yet the Catholic Church has continued to lose parishioners, and church leaders have had little success so far in halting that trend.

Brazil was the first nation outside Europe that Pope Benedict XVI visited, during a five-day tour in 2007 largely aimed at stopping losses in Latin America. During the trip, the pope canonized Brazil’s first native-born saint.

Then Benedict announced last August during the church’s World Youth Day, which drew 1.5 million people to Spain, that the next version of the gathering would be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2013. The pope is expected to attend.

For now, Rossi hopes his big church will bring together tens of thousands of faithful for every Mass, giving new energy to the Catholic faith.

“People want big spaces. They want grand places for prayer,” he told the Globo TV network. “One candle illuminates, 10 candles illuminate — and 100,000 candles light up so much more.”

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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AnnaLynne McCord to get “Scorned” With Billy Zane in new thriller

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – AnnaLynne McCord is about to become a woman “Scorned.”

“90210″ star McCord has signed on for the revenge thriller “Scorned,” alongside “Titanic” star Billy Zane and Viva Bianca from Starz’s “Spartacus.”

McCord and Zane will play Sadie and Kevin, a couple whose romantic weekend at a lake house takes a sideways turn when a text message from Sadie’s best friend (played by “Bianca”) to Kevin reveals a lurid love affair between the two, sending Sadie on a vengeance spree.

“Scorned” will be directed by Mark Jones, the creator and director of the beloved “Leprechaun” horror-movie series.

Jones likened the project to “sophisticated” thrillers such as “Fatal Attraction” and “Misery.”

“Having done horror with comedy, I wanted to delve into something more sophisticated along the lines of ‘Fatal Attraction’ and ‘Misery,’ and develop a multi-dimensional, twisted character in our lead villain (McCord), who I feel brings an original and incredibly unique take on her character,” Jones said.

Lightning Entertainment will handle international sales of the film, with Lightning’s Audrey Delaney and Marc Bienstock executive-producing.

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Israel’s Neuronix offers new Alzheimer’s treatment

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel-based Neuronix, which has developed a non-invasive medical device to help to treat Alzheimer’s disease, expects the system to be approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in late 2014.

The device, which combines electromagnetic stimulation with computer-based cognitive training, is already approved for use in Europe, Israel and several Asian countries. In Singapore it is approved for clinical trial use and the application for registration of the product is still under evaluation.

“You stimulate the brain on a biological level as well as on a cognitive level,” Neuronix CEO Eyal Baror told Reuters, saying this double approach created longer-lasting benefits.

The device, which consists of a chair containing an electronic system and software in the back and a coil placed at the head, has been tested on mild to moderate Alzheimer’s patients who suffer from dementia but are not totally dependent.

The system is in trials at Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre. Patients are treated for one hour a day, five days a week over six weeks.

“We see improvement lasting for 9-12 months and the good thing is that patients can return and undergo treatment again,” Baror said. “If out of 10 years the patients have left to live we can keep them at home in a relatively mild state of the disease for three, four, five years, it’s a lot.”

According to Alvaro Pascual-Leone, director of the hospital’s Berenson-Allen Centre for Non-invasive Brain Stimulation, brain stimulation – or transcranial magnetic stimulation – involves a very low current applied to a specific part of the brain and is approved by the FDA for treatment of a variety of ailments and diagnostic applications.

“The application in Alzheimer’s disease and in combination with cognitive training is novel,” Pascual-Leono said in a phone interview from Boston.

About 20 percent of patients experience a mild headache but there are no long-term negative effects, he said.

Pascual-Leone, who is principal investigator in the Harvard trial, said that of 12 patients in the study, six received the real treatment and all showed cognitive improvement. Their improvement was significantly more than the average seen in patients taking just medication, he said.

The study’s results will be submitted for publication in the coming weeks and a follow-up study on 30 patients is planned.

Neuronix received European approval several months ago and has installations in the UK and Germany. In Israel, a few dozen patients are being treated with the device.

The U.S. trials are expected to run till the end of 2013. Neuronix is also running a trial in Israel for pre-Alzheimer’s patients.

The company expects to sell half a dozen systems in the second half of 2012 and three dozen in 2013. In Israel, the treatment costs $ 6,000.

“Our target for becoming profitable is in parallel to entering the U.S. market around 2015,” Baror said.

Neuronix has raised $ 8 million from private individuals as well as in grants from the Israeli Chief Scientist’s Office and is exploring options to raise more money in the coming year, including the possibility of going public.

(This version of the October 24 story corrects paragraph two that company corrects to say that in Singapore, device is approved for clinical trial use and its application for registration of the product is under evaluation, not that device is approved for commercial use.)

(Reporting by Tova Cohen; editing by Stephen Nisbet)

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Campaigning for victory, Romney speeches shift

NEWINGTON, N.H. (AP) — From an airport runway on a cold New Hampshire morning, Republican Mitt Romney faced 2,000 supporters and delivered the same speech he had given the day before — three times on the day before, actually.

"I won't just represent one party, I'll represent one nation," the presidential candidate declared Saturday for the fourth time in 36 hours as swing-state Republicans cheered, most of them hearing his pledge for the first time.

The Romney stump speech, like that of his opponent, is a carefully crafted 15 minutes that opens a window into the strategy behind his second presidential bid. And for Romney, it is a constantly evolving tool that has shifted sharply in recent weeks to appeal to the political center.

Let there be no doubt that Romney, who once described himself as "severely conservative," is aggressively courting the narrow slice of undecided voters — largely women and moderates — who have yet to settle on a candidate.

From central Florida to central Iowa, the stories Romney tells in daily campaign stops have changed to include intimate personal details. The emphasis on his business career has been forgotten. And while he repeatedly jabs President Barack Obama, he devotes as much time to an optimistic vision for an America that would "come roaring back" under a Romney administration.

"Come walk with me. Walk together to a better place," Romney said Saturday with the confidence of a man who has used the line several times before.

The year before, Romney launched his presidential campaign in New Hampshire with a very different message. At the time, he referenced his 25-year business career in almost every speech, suggesting he was uniquely qualified to repair the nation's ailing economy.

It was all economy, all the time.

"This, for me, is not about the next step in my political career," the former Massachusetts governor who also ran for president in 2008 told a New Hampshire audience in September 2011. "I don't have a political career. I spent 25 years in business."

But three days before Election Day, Romney the businessman had completed the journey to becoming Romney the politician.

He drew heavily from his experience in Massachusetts, devoting just a few sentences to his business career. He cited his work to cut taxes, create jobs, cut the deficit, improve education. And above all, he emphasized his ability to work with the Democrats who dominated state politics.

"Instead of attacking each other, we went to work to try to solve our problems," Romney said.

While heavily scripted, the daily stump speech also offers the occasional insight. Romney often slips dry humor into his speeches along with awkward words that sometimes raise eyebrows. He loves to begin sentences with, "In the final analysis," references "quartiles," and often proclaims, "Wow!"

On Saturday he joked that his New Hampshire supporters should "harangue" his friends. Later Saturday in Iowa, he noted that Sen. Chuck Grassley recently hit a deer with his car and asked, "Was it delicious?"

Romney has never possessed the same charm at the podium that allowed successful campaigners in the past — Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama among them — to connect with voters. But, in the speeches themselves, Romney has tried to address that weakness. This week he has repeatedly declared that "talk is cheap."

He also uses his speeches to address the regular criticism that he's not offering enough specifics. In virtually every rally since late summer, he outlines a five-point plan to get the nation's economy going. It's a general list of talking points that is largely in line with Obama's, albeit with different focuses.

First, Romney says he'd push an energy agenda that focuses on oil, gas and coal. He'd then adopt a trade policy that opens markets in Latin America and cracks down on China. The Republican also supports training and education programs that work around teachers unions. He'd also get the nation "on track" to a balanced budget. And finally, he would "champion small business."

Perhaps most striking is the shift in the personal stories he tells to help connect with voters.

For several months, on a near-daily basis, he shared underdog stories of oilmen and food industry magnates. In recent weeks, he has spoken instead about Boy Scouts who watched a space shuttle explosion, talked of a sister who has raised a child with Down syndrome and devoted a special mention to single mothers.

"I think of all the single moms who are scrimping and saving to make sure they have a good meal on the table at the end of the day for their children," he said this week. "We're a nation of people with great hearts who care very deeply about things bigger than ourselves."

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