US rabbi says jailed American in good health

HAVANA (AP) — A prominent New York rabbi and physician visited an American subcontractor serving a long jail term in Cuba and said the man is in good health, despite his family’s concerns about a growth on his right shoulder.

Rabbi Elie Abadie, who is also a gastroenterologist, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview following Tuesday’s 2 1/2-hour visit at a military hospital in Havana that he personally examined Alan Gross and received a lengthy briefing from a team of Cuban physicians who have attended him.

He said the 1 1/2-inch growth on Gross’s shoulder appeared to be a non-cancerous hematoma that should clear up by itself.

“Alan Gross does not have any cancerous growth at this time, at least based on the studies I was shown and based on the examination, and I think he understands that also,” Abadie said.

Abadie said the hematoma, basically internal bleeding linked to the rupture of muscle fiber, was likely caused by exercise Gross does in jail. He said the growth ought to eventually disappear on its own.

Gross’s plight has put already chilly relations between Cuba and the United States in a deep freeze. The Maryland native was arrested in December 2009 while on a USAID-funded democracy building program and later sentenced to 15 years in jail for crimes against the state.

He claims he was only trying to help the island’s small Jewish community gain Internet access.

Gross’s health has been an ongoing issue during his incarceration. The 63-year-old, who was obese when arrested, has lost more than 100 pounds while in jail.

Abadie, a rabbi at New York’s Edmund J. Safra Synagogue, said Gross’s weight is appropriate for a man his age and height.

Photos that Abadie and a colleague provided to AP of Tuesday’s meeting with Gross showed him looking thin, but generally appearing to be in good spirits.

In one photo, Gross holds up a handwritten note that says “Hi Mom.”

“He definitely feels strong. He is in good spirits. He feels fit, to quote him, physically. But of course, like any other person who is incarcerated or in prison, he wants to be free. He wants to be able to go back home,” Abadie said.

Gross’s family has repeatedly appealed for his release on humanitarian grounds, noting his health problems and the fact that his adult daughter and elderly mother have both been battling cancer.

Jared Genser, counsel to Alan Gross, said late Tuesday that Rabbi Abadie is not Gross’s physician and he would like an oncologist of his choosing to evaluate him.

“While we are grateful Rabbi Abadie was able to see Alan, we have asked an oncologist to review the test results to determine if they are sufficient to rule out cancer. More importantly, if Alan is so healthy, we cannot understand why the Cuban government has repeatedly denied him an independent medical examination by a doctor of his choosing as is required by international law,” said Genser.

Gross and his wife recently filed a $ 60 million lawsuit against his former Maryland employer and the U.S. government, saying they didn’t adequately train him or disclose risks he was undertaking by doing development work on the Communist-run island.

They filed another lawsuit against an insurance company they say has reneged on commitments to pay compensation in case of his wrongful detention.

Separately, a lawyer for Gross has written the United Nations’ anti-torture expert, saying Cuban officials’ treatment of his client “will surely amount to torture” if he continues to be denied medical care.

Rumors have been swirling in U.S. media that Cuba might soon release Gross as a gesture of good will or in the hopes of winning concessions from the administration of President Barack Obama, but Abadie said that those reports appeared to be false.

“As far as I know there is no truth to it,” he said.

Abadie said he met with senior Cuban officials who expressed their desire to resolve the case “as quickly as possible,” but would not say specifically who he spoke with or what they offered.

“They claim that they are more than willing to sit at the table,” he said.

Cuban officials have strongly implied they hope to trade Gross for five Cuban agents sentenced to long jail terms in the United States, one of whom is already free on bail.

Abadie said Gross made clear that he does not want his case linked to that of the agents, known in Cuba as “The Five Heroes,” because he does not believe he is guilty of espionage.

But Abadie said Gross is hoping for a “constructive and productive” dialogue between U.S. and Cuban officials to resolve his case.

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Follow Paul Haven on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/paulhaven.

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U.S. for-profit colleges spend big on marketing while slashing other costs

(Reuters) – Google‘s biggest advertiser is neither a bank nor a retailer.

It’s the for-profit University of Phoenix, which has recently been spending nearly $ 400,000 a day on ads, more than any financial firm or retailer, the traditional big spenders on online advertising, according to search analytics firm SpyFu.

That kind of spending may seem surprising coming from a college, but marketing has become vital for the university and its for-profit rivals as enrollments plummet and they fight back against a host of criticisms, including low job-placement rates.

Colleges such as University of Phoenix, the industry leader owned by Apollo Group Inc, will not only have to boost enrollments to reverse their fortunes, analysts say. They will also need to consider cutting tuition fees as well as continue to slash costs and take market share from rivals.

“I have witnessed several versions of this cycle but none as extreme as this,” said Trace Urdan, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, who has been covering the U.S. for-profit education industry for about 15 years.

“We are going to see more pointed efforts at marketing and more price competition in an effort to try to capture more market share both from each other as well as from traditional schools,” Urdan said.

Operators of other for-profit colleges, whose ranks include the Washington Post Co’s Kaplan business, DeVry Inc and ITT Educational Services Inc, are also boosting their spending on marketing and are among the 25 biggest advertisers on Google.

But no one is spending like the University of Phoenix, which doubled its spending on Google ads to about $ 380,000 per day on average between October 12 and November 12, compared with $ 170,000 a day in the previous month, according to SpyFu.

Increased marketing alone will not be enough to fatten fast-shrinking profit margins and increase enrollments, however. Lower tuition fees and increased specialization of the type of programs offered, along with further streamlining of operations, will also be necessary, analysts say.

Industry bellwether University of Phoenix, which offers courses at about 230 campuses as well as online, announced plans last month to shut about half its locations and cut 800 jobs in order to save about $ 300 million a year by 2014.

New enrollments in the Apollo system are down nearly 50 percent in the past two years. As of August 31, enrollment totaled about 328,000.

Career Education Corp, which owns American InterContinental University and the Le Cordon Bleu colleges, and Lincoln Educational Services Corp have also announced closures.

LOW-COST MODEL

The $ 25 billion industry, which typically serves adults looking for a career change or a program to enhance job skills, is reeling after government investigations revealed fraud related to financial aid, worryingly high student debt loads and low rates of graduation and job placement.

“Many for-profit colleges make decisions that prioritize their bottom line, even when those decisions limit their students’ opportunities for academic success,” a U.S. Senate report said earlier this year.

Tuition fees, and therefore profits, is one area under pressure as potential students need to be convinced to take out loans in an uncertain job market.

Apollo, whose stock has lost about 65 percent of its value this year, implemented a tuition freeze earlier this year and promised students it will not increase prices through the course of their programs.

Apollo is also looking at different cost models, with a view to serving segments of the population that it cannot serve with current University of Phoenix tuition prices.

“We have certainly seen a lot more competition at the lower end of the price scale, and that’s something we are focusing on,” Apollo spokesman Mark Brennar said, while declining to offer specifics.

Wells Fargo’s Urdan said it is likely that Apollo wants to compete in the low-cost end of the market by building a second brand, which it would likely do by acquiring another college rather than starting from scratch.

As colleges lower their revenue base by cutting tuition fees even as they spend more on marketing, lower margins could become the norm, analysts say. That has spooked investors already worried about sliding enrollments.

The S&P 1500 Education Services index has lost three-quarters of its value since April 2010, including a 50 percent decline in 2012.

Some for-profit colleges already differentiate themselves in the crowded higher-education market by offering programs in a particular field or by targeting students of a particular background, and that trend could accelerate.

American Public Education, for example, is known for enrolling those who work in the military and public services, while Universal Technical Institute offers programs related to the automotive industry.

For-profit colleges play up their links to employers to attract students who may otherwise opt for traditional or community colleges, said Rob Lytle, head of the education practice at advisory firm Parthenon Group.

“They are about getting people workforce employability skills, and I think they are going to be focusing tighter on that,” said Lytle.

(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore; Editing by Ted Kerr)

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Van Gogh, John Lennon letters coming to NY auction

NEW YORK (AP) — An upcoming auction of over 300 historical documents includes rare letters written by Vincent van Gogh, George Washington, John Lennon and other iconic figures.

The property of an anonymous American collector is being offered by Profiles in History in an online and phone auction on Dec. 18.

Among the highlights is a two-page letter from Washington to an Anglican clergyman.

Another top item is a signed van Gogh letter, written in 1890, to Joseph and Marie Ginoux, who were proprietors of the Cafe de la Gare in Arles, France, where the Dutch post-impressionist artist lived for a time.

Each of those letters is estimated to bring $ 200,000 to $ 300,000.

A handwritten letter from John Lennon to Eric Clapton has a pre-sale estimate of $ 20,000 to $ 30,000.

The collection will be exhibited Dec. 3-9 at Douglas Elliman’s Madison Avenue art gallery.

Washington‘s letter was written on Aug. 15, 1798, to the Rev. Jonathan Boucher, amid an undeclared naval war with France. Washington thanks Boucher for sending him his “View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution,” a book of 13 discourses Boucher preached.

“Peace, with all the world is my sincere wish, I am sure it is our true policy — and am persuaded it is the ardent desire of the Government,” the former president and Founding Father wrote.

In a Jan. 20, 1890, four-page letter, handwritten in French to his friends Monsieur and Madame Ginoux, van Gogh wishes the ailing proprietress a speedy recovery.

“Illnesses are there to make us remember again that we are not made of wood,” the artist wrote. “That’s what seems the good side of all this to me. Then afterwards one goes back to one’s everyday work less fearful of the annoyances, with a new store of serenity.” Van Gogh died less than seven months later.

He suffered from acute anxiety and bouts of depression throughout his life. Madame Ginoux and the cafe were frequent subjects of his work.

The eight-page letter from Lennon is a draft he wrote to Clapton on Sept. 29, 1971, and signed “John and Yoko.” The whereabouts of the final version is unknown.

Lennon writes candidly about his admiration for the great British guitarist and suggests forming a “‘nucleus’ group (Plastic Ono Band) . — and of course had YOU!!! In mind as soon as we decided.” He writes that drummer Jim Kelnter, artist Klaus Voormann, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Phil Spector “all agreed so far” to join.

“Anyway, the point is, after missing the Bangla-Desh concert, we began to feel more and more like going on the road, but not the way I used with the Beatles — night after night of torture. We mean to enjoy ourselves, take it easy, and maybe even see some of the places we go to! We have many ‘revolutionary’ ideas for presenting shows that completely involve the audience .”

Other luminaries whose papers will be sold include Lou Gehrig, Louis Pasteur, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Giuseppe Verdi, Peter Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, King Henry II and Napoleon I.

The December auction is the first of several sales that will be held over two years. The entire collection contains 3,000 items.

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Online:

Information on how to bid is available on www.profilesinhistory.com.

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Powerball fever sweeps the nation

The allure of the record $500 Powerball jackpot has led to long lines across the nation at local mini-marts and gas stations, with Americans hoping their champagne and caviar dreams become a reality when the numbers are drawn tonight.

The jackpot was boosted Tuesday from $425 million to the now historic $500 million sum, which is expected to get sweeter as millions of Americans rush to the store for their last chance to purchase a ticket and become a multi-millionaire overnight.

Powerball officials tell ABC News they expect to sell more than 105,000 tickets every minute before the drawing. When the dust settles, more than 189 million tickets would have been sold for the half a billion-dollar jackpot. That's more than double the number sold for Saturday's $325 jackpot that nobody won.

ABC News was allowed access to the Powerball studios in Tallahassee, Fla., where the 11 p.m. ET drawing will take place. The closely guarded machines and balls are locked in a vault before the numbers are drawn and only a select few are allowed inside the room during the actual broadcast.

Anyone who enters or leaves the vault is documented and workers who handle the lottery balls wear gloves, worried that human touch might change what numbers are randomly drawn.

Cameras are located in every nook and cranny of the Powerball studio, spying on workers as they ready the machines for the big moment. Lottery officials in several states will be watching those feeds in real time to monitor the proceedings.

Not everyone has Powerball fever in the country as tickets for tonight's jackpot are not offered in eight states. But that has not stopped many Californians and Nevadans who have flocked to Arizona to get in on the action.

"I'd say the line has to be like three, three and a half hours," one person told ABC News while waiting online to purchase tickets Tuesday.

Still, the long lines have not deterred those who hope to dramatically change their lifestyle and make their wildest dreams become a reality.

"I'm going to the Bahamas and enjoying myself on an island," said one Powerball hopeful.

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Des Moines, Iowa-based Multi-State Lottery Association, said the chance of getting a winner tonight is approaching 60 percent.

"We call it the redneck retirement fund cause sooner or later, somebody is going to," said one man.

There has been no Powerball winner since Oct. 6 – that's 16 consecutive drawings without a winner. It's the second-highest jackpot in US lottery history, behind only the $656 million Mega Millions prize in March.

Powerball tickets doubled in price in January to $2, and while the number of tickets sold initially dropped, sales revenue has increased by about 35 percent over 2011, according to the Associated Press.

Lottery officials put the odds of winning Wednesday's Powerball pot at one in 175 million. With so many people plaything this time around, some are worried it may hurt their odds.

"Your odds of being a winner are still the same. With so many people playing, it does mean are more likely to split the jackpot if you want," said Scott Norris, math professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Everyone who lines up with cash in their hand and dreams in their head seems to have a strategy in picking the winning combination of numbers. Or, do you simply let the computer pick for you?

"It doesn't matter. Your odds of winning are actually the same no matter who picks it," said Norris.
Norris says the only real advantage that can help someone is buying more tickets.

"Your odds increase directly proportional to the number of tickets you buy. So if you buy 100, your odds are 1 in 7 million, but still astronomically small," he said.

With odds so small in a game where just about anyone who plays is a loser, there is some hope for those living in Illinois and New Jersey. Both states have sold three winning tickets for jackpots worth at least $300 million.

A single winner choosing the lump sum cash option would take home more than $327 million before taxes.

ABC News' Steve Osunsami and Ryan Owens contributed to this report.

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Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout

CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — A 20-year-old state beauty queen died in a gun battle between soldiers and the alleged gang of drug traffickers she was traveling with in a scene befitting the hit movie “Miss Bala,” or “Miss Bullet,” about Mexico’s not uncommon ties between narcos and beautiful pageant contestants.

The body of Maria Susana Flores Gamez was found Saturday lying near an assault rifle on a rural road in a mountainous area of the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa, the chief state prosecutor said Monday. It was unclear if she had used the weapon.

“She was with the gang of criminals, but we cannot say whether she participated in the shootout,” state prosecutor Marco Antonio Higuera said. “That’s what we’re going to have to investigate.”

The slender, 5-foot-7-inch brunette was voted the 2012 Woman of Sinaloa in a beauty pageant in February. In June, the model competed with other seven contestants for the more prestigious state beauty contest, Our Beauty Sinaloa, but didn’t win. The Our Beauty state winners compete for the Miss Mexico title, whose holder represents the country in the international Miss Universe.

Higuera said Flores Gamez was traveling in one of the vehicles that engaged soldiers in an hours-long chase and running gun battle on Saturday near her native city of Guamuchil in the state of Sinaloa, home to Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel. Higuera said two other members of the drug gang were killed and four were detained.

The shootout began when the gunmen opened fire on a Mexican army patrol. Soldiers gave chase and cornered the gang at a safe house in the town of Mocorito. The other men escaped, and the gunbattle continued along a nearby roadway, where the gang’s vehicles were eventually stopped. Six vehicles, drugs and weapons were seized following the confrontation.

It was at least the third instance in which a beauty queen or pageant contestants have been linked to Mexico’s violent drug gangs, a theme so common it was the subject of a critically acclaimed 2011 movie.

In “Miss Bala,” Mexico’s official submission to the Best Foreign Language Film category of this year’s Academy Awards, a young woman competing for Miss Baja California becomes an unwilling participant in a drug-running ring, finally getting arrested for deeds she was forced into performing.

In real life, former Miss Sinaloa Laura Zuniga was stripped of her 2008 crown in the Hispanoamerican Queen pageant after she was detained on suspicion of drug and weapons violations. She was later released without charges.

Zuniga was detained in western Mexico in late 2010 along with seven men, some of them suspected drug traffickers. Authorities found a large stash of weapons, ammunition and $ 53,300 with them inside a vehicle.

In 2011, a Colombian former model and pageant contestant was detained along with Jose Jorge Balderas, an accused drug trafficker and suspect in the 2010 bar shooting of Salvador Cabanas, a former star for Paraguay‘s national football team and Mexico’s Club America. She was also later released.

Higuera said Flores Gamez’s body has been turned over to relatives for burial.

“This is a sad situation,” Higuera told a local radio station. She had been enrolled in media courses at a local university, and had been modeling and in pageants since at least 2009.

Javier Valdez, the author of a 2009 book about narco ties to beauty pageants entitled “Miss Narco,” said “this is a recurrent story.”

“There is a relationship, sometimes pleasant and sometimes tragic, between organized crime and the beauty queens, the pageants, the beauty industry itself,” Valdez said.

“It is a question of privilege, power, money, but also a question of need,” said Valdez. “For a lot of these young women, it is easy to get involved with organized crime, in a country that doesn’t offer many opportunities for young people.”

Sometimes drug traffickers seek out beauty queens, but sometimes the models themselves look for narco boyfriends, Valdez said.

“I once wrote about a girl I knew of who was desperate to get a narco boyfriend,” he said. “She practically took out a classified ad saying ‘Looking for a Narco’.”

The stories seldom end well. In the best of cases, a beautiful woman with a tear-stained face is marched before the press in handcuffs. In the worst of cases, they simply disappear.

“They are disposable objects, the lowest link in the chain of criminal organizations, the young men recruited as gunmen and the pretty young women who are tossed away in two or three years, or are turned into police or killed,” Valdez said.

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Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report

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Card firms’ block on WikiLeaks did not break rules: EU

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A block on processing donations for WikiLeaks by Visa Europe and other credit card companies is unlikely to have violated EU anti-trust rules, the European Commission said on Tuesday.

DataCell, a company that collected donations for WikiLeaks, complained to the Commission about Visa Europe, MasterCard Europe and American Express Co after they stopped processing donations for WikiLeaks in December 2010. Their decisions followed criticism by the United States of WikiLeaks’ release of thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables.

“On the basis of the information available, the Commission considers that the complaint does not merit further investigation because it is unlikely that any infringement of EU competition rules could be established,” said a spokesman for the Commission, the EU executive.

He added, however, that the Commission would look at new information from DataCell before taking a final decision.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been staying in Ecuador’s embassy in central London since June to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations.

Assange said there were no lawful grounds for the card companies’ actions, which he said had cost Wikileaks 95 percent of its revenue and threatened his organization’s existence.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Adrian Croft; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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New Zealand becomes Middle Earth as Hobbit mania takes hold

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand‘s capital city was rushing to complete its transformation into a haven for hairy feet and pointed ears on Tuesday as stars jetted in for the long-awaited world premiere of the first movie of the Hobbit trilogy.

Wellington, where director Peter Jackson and much of the post production is based, has renamed itself “the Middle of Middle Earth“, as fans held costume parties and city workers prepared to lay 500 m (550 yards) of red carpet.

A specially Hobbit-decorated Air New Zealand jet brought in cast, crew and studio officials for the premiere.

Jackson, a one-time printer at a local newspaper and a hometown hero, said he was still editing the final version of the “Hobbit, an Unexpected Journey” ahead of Wednesday’s premiere screening.

The Hobbit movies are based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s book and tell the story that leads up to his epic fantasy “The Lord of the Rings“, which Jackson made into three Oscar-winning films about 10 years ago.

It is set 60 years before “The Lord of The Rings” and was originally planned as only two movies before it was decided that there was enough material to justify a third.

New Zealand fans were getting ready to claim the best spots to see the film’s stars, including British actor Martin Freeman, who plays the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins, Hugo Weaving, Cate Blanchett, and Elijah Wood.

“It’s been a 10-year wait for these movies, New Zealand is Tolkien’s spiritual home, so there’s no way we’re going to miss out,” said office worker Alan Craig, a self-confessed Lord of the Rings “nut”.

The production has been at the centre of several controversies, including a dispute with unions in 2010 over labor contracts that resulted in the government stepping in to change employment laws, and giving Warner Brothers increased incentives to keep the production in New Zealand.

“The Hobbit did come very close to not being filmed here,” Jackson told Radio New Zealand.

He said Warners had sent scouts to Britain to look at possible locations and also matched parts of the script to shots of the Scottish Highlands and English forests.

“That was to convince us we could easily go over there and shoot the film … and I would have had to gone over there to do it but I was desperately fighting to have it stay here,” Jackson said.

Last week, an animal rights group said more than 20 animals, including horses, pigs and chickens, had been killed during the making of the film. Jackson has said some animals used in the film died on the farm where they were being housed, but that none had been hurt during filming.

The films are also notable for being the first filmed at 48 frames per second (fps), compared with the 24 fps that has been the industry standard since the 1920s.

The second film “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” will be released in December next year, with the third “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” due in mid-July 2014.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

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Married Cancer Research Couple Both Get Breast Cancer

Fighting cancer is never easy. But as Dr. Oliver Bogler undergoes his second month of chemotherapy for breast cancer, he says he is grateful that his wife can relate. Five years ago, she was also going through her second month of chemotherapy, also for breast cancer.

Oliver and his wife Irene are both cancer researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas. They met 20 years ago while doing cancer research at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in San Diego. The two connected over their passion for research.

Irene, now 52, was the first in their family to face cancer. It was 2007, she was 46, and they had two children under the age of seven at the time.

“I think you feel numb, a little bit shocked, but within a few days I was in at Anderson having tests and making determinations on treatments,” says Irene. She went through chemotherapy, a mastectomy and radiation, in that order. During that time, Irene says she remembers Oliver giving her unconditional support.

“Oliver was great,” says Irene, “he obviously didn’t understand the personal experience but he understood the process.”

The two have also drawn from their extensive background in cancer research: They know what to expect when facing cancer head-on.

“Even though you’re a laboratory researcher, you do over time, meet cancer patients,” says Irene, “so you are sort of immersed in that.” Never before, however, have the two researchers met a couple who have developed the same kind of breast cancer at the same age.

Oliver, 46 years old, is now undergoing chemotherapy and is looking ahead to his own radical mastectomy in March.

“First of all, we don’t have a history of cancer” in the family, says Oliver’s brother Daniel. “Second of all,” he says, “breast cancer is an extremely unusual thing for a man.”

Breast cancer is very rare in men. “Of all the cases of breast cancer, 99 percent are women and one percent are men,” according to Oliver’s doctor and men’s breast cancer specialist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, Dr. Sharon Giordano. The Boglers are the first couple Giordano has ever seen who have both had breast cancer — and she has seen over 100 male breast cancer patients.

“These two people who do nothing but work against cancer all their lives — what have they done to deserve this? Why does lightning have to strike twice on their little family?” asks Daniel. He does, however, say, “If it has to happen to anyone, he’s someone who’s intimately familiar with cancer and he’s at the best place to get the best care.”

“I am probably not going to die of this in the next five or 10 years,” says Oliver, “I have to tell you, it would have been better to go to the doctor sooner but I couldn’t imagine this happening twice in our family. Having a wife who had [breast cancer], I thought it would be weird saying I had it too.”

Giordano says a lot of the time men have a delayed diagnosis because they don’t think they could be at risk for breast cancer. “Men on average have an advanced disease because you have to have a lump to identify it. They don’t examine their nipples and think breast cancer.”

Members of Oliver’s family say they wondered if the cancer research could have been a reason Irene and Oliver both had the same cancer.

“It’s not Irene’s genes or Oliver’s genes, so you do wonder why,” says Daniel. “We asked Oliver about that when he was diagnosed; we thought maybe while feeding his cells and growing his cultures.”

Oliver assured his family that the radiation he and Irene received in their labs while researching is no worse than one gets from an X-ray machine at the airport. Daniel says he believes the entire situation is nothing more than very bad luck.

Oliver’s cancer is Stage 2, just as Irene’s was. The family remains overwhelmingly optimistic that Oliver will reach the same cancer-free stage that Irene has. Until then, the two are benefiting from a mutual understanding of what Oliver is going through.

“I think all cancer patients have an internal dialogue,” says Irene. “They are having an internal conversation with themselves about the hope, fears and their future and I think only a cancer patient would know more about that and what that means to have that going on in your head all the time.”

Oliver agrees, “One of the things that’s nice is that she understands where I’m at — that support has been great. You begin to think about the fact that you won’t make it ’til 80 years old and it changes how you tackle life. It’s hard to convey that unless you’ve gone through that yourself.”

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Obama to appeal to public on 'fiscal cliff'

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama plans to make a public case this week for his strategy for dealing with the looming fiscal cliff, traveling to the Philadelphia suburbs Friday as he pressures Republicans to allow tax increases on the wealthy while extending tax cuts for families earning $250,000 or less.

The White House said Tuesday that the president intends to hold a series of events to build support for his approach to avoid across-the-board tax increases and steep spending cuts in defense and domestic programs. Obama will meet with small business owners at the White House on Tuesday and with middle-class families on Wednesday.

The president's visit to a small business in Hatfield, Pa., that makes parts for a construction toy company will cap a week of public outreach as the White House and congressional leaders negotiate a way to avoid the tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1. The trip will mark Obama's first public event outside the nation's capital since winning re-election.

Both sides warn the so-called "fiscal cliff" could harm the nation's economic recovery, but an agreement still appears far from assured. The White House and congressional Republicans have differed on whether to raise revenue through higher tax rates or by closing tax loopholes and deductions.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has pushed for raising additional revenue through the reducing of tax loopholes instead of raising tax rates on wealthy Americans. The White House has countered that the president will not sign legislation that extends current tax rates for the top 2 percent of income earners, or those households with incomes over $250,000.

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a conservative Republican who opposes Obama's plan to increase taxes on the wealthy, said that while a presidential visit to his state "is always welcome," he remains staunchly against Obama's strategy for avoiding the fiscal cliff crunch.

"The president seems absolutely determined to inflict a tax increase on the American people," Toomey told CNN on Tuesday. He said Obama and congressional Democrats must come up with cuts in entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Obama, only weeks after winning re-election, has signaled his intention to rally the public to pressure Congress to support his agenda, an approach that helped him win passage of a payroll tax cut extension and prevented interest rates on millions of federal student loans from doubling last summer.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in an email to supporters after the election that the president's volunteer base was crucial to his re-election but said it was not aimed "just to win a campaign. We have more progress to make, and there's only one way to do it: together."

Following the election, Obama aides asked supporters to record YouTube videos discussing the need to have the wealthiest Americans pay more in taxes. Some of the people who shared their stories on YouTube planned to join Obama at the White House on Wednesday.

On Friday, Obama will tour and deliver remarks at The Rodon Group manufacturing facility in Hatfield, Pa., offering the company up as an example of a business that depends on middle-class consumers during the holiday season. The company manufactures parts for K'NEX Brands, a construction toy company whose products include Tinkertoy, K'NEX Building Sets and Angry Birds Building Sets.

Congressional Republicans, led by Boehner, have expressed openness to discussing additional revenue but oppose any plan that raises tax rates on the wealthy. They argue that the higher rates would also hurt some small businesses and hinder economic growth.

Republicans have called for changes to the tax code to eliminate tax breaks and loopholes that primarily benefit the wealthy. Several key Republican lawmakers have also said they would not be bound by a no-tax-increase pledge that they have adhered to in the past.

Boehner and GOP leaders planned to meet Wednesday with members of a bipartisan coalition of former members of Congress and business leaders that has advocated cuts in spending in major health care programs as well as changes in the tax code to raise more money but also to lower rates.

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UN climate talks open in Qatar

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it.

The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.

Attempts to create a new climate treaty failed in Copenhagen three years ago but countries agreed last year to try again, giving themselves a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty.

A host of issues need to be resolved by then, including how to spread the burden of emissions cuts between rich and poor countries. That’s unlikely to be decided in the Qatari capital of Doha, where negotiators will focus on extending the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions deal for industrialized countries, and trying to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.

“We all realize why we are here, why we keep coming back year and after year,” said South Africa Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year’s talks in Durban, South Africa. “We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing.”

The U.N. process is often criticized, even ridiculed, both by climate activists who say the talks are too slow, and by those who challenge the scientific near-consensus that the global temperature rise is at least partly caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.

A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) this century, compared with pre-industrial times, overshooting the 2-degree target that has been the goal of the U.N. talks.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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