C. African Republic president seeks foreign help

BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — The president of Central African Republic on Thursday urgently called on France and other foreign powers to help his government fend off rebels who are quickly seizing territory and approaching the capital, but French officials declined to offer any military assistance.

The developments suggest Central African Republic could be on the brink of another violent change in government, something not new in the history of this resource-rich, yet deeply impoverished country. The current president, Francois Bozize, himself came to power nearly a decade ago in the wake of a rebellion.

Speaking to crowds in Bangui, a city of some 600,000, Bozize pleaded with foreign powers to do what they could. He pointed in particular to France, Central African Republic’s former colonial ruler.

About 200 French soldiers are already in the country, providing technical support and helping to train the local army, according to the French defense ministry.

“France has the means to stop (the rebels) but unfortunately they have done nothing for us until now,” Bozize said.

French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that France wants to protect its interests in Central African Republic and not Bozize’s government. The comments came a day after dozens of protesters, angry about a lack of help against rebel forces, threw rocks at the French Embassy in Bangui and stole a French flag.

Paris is encouraging peace talks between the government and the rebels, with the French Foreign Ministry noting in a statement that negotiations are due to “begin shortly in Libreville (Gabon).” But it was not immediately clear what, if any, dates have been set for those talks.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, meanwhile, spoke via phone with Bozize, asking the president to take responsibility for the safety of French nationals and diplomatic missions in Central African Republic.

U.S. officials said Thursday the State Department would close its embassy in the country and ordered its diplomatic team to leave. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the evacuation publicly.

The United Nations Security Council issued a press statement late Thursday reiterating its concern about the situation in the country and condemned the attacks.

“The members of the Security Council reiterate their demand that the armed groups immediately cease hostilities, withdraw from captured cities and cease any further advance towards the city of Bangui,” the statement reads.

Bozize’s government earlier reached out to longtime ally Chad, which pledged to send 2,000 troops to bolster Central African Republic’s own forces. But it was unclear if the Chadian troops had all arrived, and even then, it is far from certain if the combined government forces could withstand rebel attacks.

At least four different rebel groups are involved, though their overall numbers could not immediately be confirmed.

Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of some 4.4 million people, is roughly the size of France. It has suffered decades of army revolts, coups and rebellions since gaining independence in 1960 and remains one of the poorest countries in the world.

The rebels behind the most recent instability signed a 2007 peace accord allowing them to join the regular army, but insurgent leaders say the deal wasn’t fully implemented.

Already, the rebel forces have seized at least 10 towns across the sparsely populated north of the country, and residents in the capital now fear the insurgents could attack at any time, despite assurances by rebel leaders that they are willing to engage in dialogue instead of attacking Bangui.

The rebels have claimed that their actions are justified in light of the “thirst for justice, for peace, for security and for economic development of the people of Central African Republic.”

Despite Central African Republic’s wealth of gold, diamonds, timber and uranium, the government remains perpetually cash-strapped. Filip Hilgert, a researcher with Belgium-based International Peace Information Service, said rebel groups are unhappy because they feel the government doesn’t invest in their areas.

“The main thing they say is that the north of the country, and especially in their case the northeast, has always been neglected by the central government in all ways,” he said.

But the rebels also are demanding that the government make payments to ex-combatants, suggesting that their motives may also be for personal financial gain.

Bozize, a former military commander, came to power in a 2003 rebel war that ousted his predecessor, Ange-Felix Patasse. In his address Thursday, Bozize said he remained open to dialogue with the rebels, but he also accused them and their allies of financial greed.

Those allies, he implied, are outside Central African Republic.

“For me, there are individuals who are being manipulated by an outside hand, dreaming of exploiting the rich Central African Republic soil,” he said. “They want only to stop us from benefiting from our oil, our diamonds, our uranium and our gold.”

___

Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris contributed to this report.

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So You Just Got a Wii U. Now What?

Pair It With Your TV

One of the most useful features of the Wii U — and what could make it a staple of our connected living rooms — is its ability to hook in to the entertainment ecosystem seamlessly. When you start up your Wii U for the first time, you’ll be prompted to enter your television and cable box brands. In a surprisingly painless process (you only need the brand name of your TV, not the model number), your Wii U GamePad becomes a very useful remote control. It will be the only thing you have to touch when turning your system and television on in the future. When the Wii U’s television and video on demand aggregation dashboard comes fully online, that remote will be even more useful as you use it select shows on your DVR, video-on-demand services like Netflix, or live TV.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: 10 iPad Cases With Convenient Hand Grips]

Since the holiday gift-giving period is over, many of you might be fortunate enough to have received a brand new Wii U.

Nintendo’s latest console is quite different from other gaming consoles, and there are lots of great ways for you to take advantage of it. There are already a wide variety of games coming out for the Wii U, so you have a plethora of entertainment options as soon as you take it out of the box.

[More from Mashable: 8 Startups to Watch in 2013]

We’ve compiled a list of tips for first-time Wii U owners that should make your setup and first few days much easier. We’ve included a few games to try, as well.

Are you setting up a Wii U for the first time? Share any of your thoughts and tips in the comments.

Thumbnail image courtesy nubobo, Flickr.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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FBI removes many redactions in Marilyn Monroe file

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The FBI has re-issued files it kept on Marilyn Monroe, removing dozens of redactions from entries related to surveillance of the actress for communist ties.

A large section of the files obtained by The Associated Press focuses on Monroe’s 1962 trip to Mexico and her emerging friendship with Frederick Vanderbilt Field, who was disinherited from his wealthy family for leftist views. Field was Monroe’s guide on a trip in which she furniture-shopped for her new home.

The AP appealed the redactions in the file as part of a series of stories on the 50th anniversary of Monroe’s death in 1962, but the bureau previously said it no longer had access to the files. The bureau issued a new version after a request for details on the records’ locations.

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‘Frankenfish’ Nears FDA Approval as Debate Heats up

Genetically engineered salmon could make its way onto plates in the new year, but your body won’t notice anything fishy about the filet, experts say.

The Food and Drug Administration has determined genetically engineered salmon won’t threaten the environment, clearing it of all but one final hurdle before it shows up on shelves throughout the nation — and igniting a final 60-day debate on whether it poses health risks before it’s officially approved.

Although it’s been nicknamed “Frankenfish” by critics, health professionals say they aren’t worried the lab-engineered salmon will cause more allergies or other harmful effects than any other breed of fish.

“The hard science part is that we have been creating [animals] using genes and natural selection for years to genetically predict what kinds of food animals, and recreational animals and such we have on our planet,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

He cited thoroughbred horses, show dogs and crops as examples of genetically engineered plants and animals dating back centuries.

“When Farmer Jones did it in his cornfield to try to get a better crop, it didn’t bother people,” Schaffner said. “When scientist Jones did the same thing in a much more sophisticated fashion in a lab, that does bother people.”

Superfish: DNA-Altered Salmon Coming to Your Dinner Plate? Watch Video

California’s ‘Frakenfood’ Vote, Legalization of Gay Marriage, Pot Watch Video

A biotech company in Massachusetts called AquaBounty created the AquaAdvantage salmon, which is really an Atlantic salmon with an added Pacific salmon gene to make it grow faster and an added eel gene to make it grow year-round.

The end result is a fish that tastes like an Atlantic salmon but grows twice as fast, making it cheaper to produce and sell. Because the FDA likely won’t require a label that says the salmon was genetically modified, consumers won’t know the difference.

Click here to read about ABC News’ exclusive look at the AquaBounty facility.

Schaffner thinks genetically engineered food is one way to help solve world hunger and, as long as the FDA thoroughly reviews it, there shouldn’t be a problem.

But Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, said he’s been disappointed with FDA decisions on genetically modified food since 1992, when the FDA determined it is equivalent to any other food. He said there’s not enough science to allow AquaAdvantage onto our dinner plates, but the biotech industry has had so much influence in Congress that it’s been impossible to stop.

“Now this latest action by the FDA somehow determined that the salmon is safe — safe for who?” he asked. “Safe for the investors?”

Kucinich has introduced legislation related to genetically modified food and labeling in every Congress since 1997, but it has never passed. He said Monsanto, the $ 2 billion company that produces genetically modified seed and pesticides, is partially to blame because it has so much money and influence.

AquaBounty, the biotech firm that makes AquaAdvantage, contributed less than $ 150,000 toward lobbying Congress over the last three years, according to campaign finance records available on OpenSecrets.org. In contrast, Monsanto spent more than $ 19 million lobbying over the same time frame.

Kucinich said the AquaAdvantage issue is a complex one, and worries about whether the genetically altered fish will hurt naturally occurring wild fish populations by overfeeding because they grow twice as fast as their naturally occurring relatives. However, the most recent FDA finding showed that this is not a concern because the fish are mostly sterile and not expected to escape their man-made farms.

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A make-or-break moment for 'fiscal cliff' negotiations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid partisan bluster, top members of Congress and President Barack Obama were holding out slim hopes for a limited fiscal deal before the new year. But even as congressional leaders prepared to convene at the White House, there were no signs that legislation palatable to both sides was taking shape.

The Friday afternoon meeting among congressional leaders and the president — their first since Nov. 16 — stood as a make-or-break moment for negotiations to avoid across-the-board first of the year tax increases and deep spending cuts.

Obama called for the meeting as top lawmakers alternately cast blame on each other while portraying themselves as open to a reasonable last-minute bargain.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded that any effort at this late date was a long shot. "I don't know timewise how it can happen now," he said.

For Obama, the 11th-hour scramble represented a test of how he would balance the strength derived from his re-election with his avowed commitment to compromise. Despite early talk of a grand bargain between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would reduce deficits by more than $2 trillion, the expectations were now far less ambitious.

Although there were no guarantees of a deal, Republicans and Democrats said privately that any agreement would likely include an extension of middle-class tax cuts with increased rates at upper incomes, an Obama priority that was central to his re-election campaign. The deal would also likely put off the scheduled spending cuts. Such a year-end bill could also include an extension of expiring unemployment benefits, a reprieve for doctors who face a cut in Medicare payments and possibly a short-term measure to prevent dairy prices from soaring, officials said.

To get there, Obama and Reid would have to propose a package that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell would agree not to block with procedural steps that require 60 votes to overcome.

Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he still thinks a deal could be struck.

The Democrat told NBC's "Today" show Friday that he believes the "odds are better than people think."

Schumer said he based his optimism on indications that McConnell has gotten "actively engaged" in the talks.

Appearing on the same show, Republican Sen. John Thune noted the meeting scheduled later Friday at the White House, saying "it's encouraging that people are talking."

But Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., predicted that "the worst-case scenario" could emerge from Friday's talks.

"We will kick the can down the road," he said on "CBS This Morning."

"We'll do some small deal and we'll create another fiscal cliff to deal with the fiscal cliff," he said. Corker complained that there has been "a total lack of courage, lack of leadership," in Washington.

Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell cautioned: "Republicans aren't about to write a blank check for anything the Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff."

Nevertheless, he said he told Obama in a phone call late Wednesday that "we're all happy to look at whatever he proposes."

If a deal were to pass the Senate, Boehner would have to agree to take it to the floor in the Republican-controlled House.

Boehner discussed the fiscal cliff with Republican members in a conference call Thursday and advised them that the House would convene Sunday evening. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an ally of the speaker, said Boehner told the lawmakers that "he didn't really intend to put on the floor something that would pass with all the Democratic votes and few of the Republican votes."

But Cole did not rule out Republican support for some increase in tax rates, noting that Boehner had amassed about 200 Republican votes for a plan last week to raise rates on Americans earning $1 million or more. Boehner ultimately did not put the plan to a House floor vote in the face of opposition from Republican conservatives and a unified Democratic caucus.

"The ultimate question is whether the Republican leaders in the House and Senate are going to push us over the cliff by blocking plans to extend tax cuts for the middle class," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. "Ironically, in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires, they will be responsible for the largest tax increase in history."

Boehner, McConnell, Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi are all scheduled to attend Friday's White House meeting with Obama. Vice President Joe Biden will also participate in the meeting, the White House said.

Despite the urgency to act, the rhetoric Thursday was quarrelsome and personal.

The House of Representatives is "being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker," Reid said on the Senate floor. He attributed Boehner's reluctance to put a version of Senate bill that raised tax rates on incomes above $250,000 for couples to fears he could lose his re-election as speaker next week.

"Harry Reid should talk less and legislate more if he wants to avert the fiscal cliff," countered Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner.

If a deal is not possible, it should become evident at Friday's White House meeting. If that occurs, Obama and the leaders would leave the resolution to the next Congress to address in January.

Such a delay could unnerve the stock market, which performed erratically Thursday amid the developments in Washington. Economists say that if the tax increases are allowed to hit most Americans and if the spending cuts aren't scaled back, the recovering but fragile economy could sustain a traumatizing shock.

But a sentiment is taking hold that despite a black eye to its image, Congress could weather the fiscal cliff without significant economic consequences if it acts decisively next month.

"Going over is likely because at this point both sides probably see a better deal on the other side of the cliff," Jared Bernstein, Biden's former economic adviser, wrote in a blog post Thursday.

By letting current tax cuts expire and rise, Bernstein and others say, Republicans would be voting to lower taxes next month, even if not for all taxpayers. Democrats — and Obama — would be in a stronger position to demand that taxpayers above the $250,000 threshold pay higher taxes, instead of the $400,000 threshold that Obama proposed in his latest offer to Boehner.

And the debate over spending cuts, including changes to politically sensitive entitlement programs such as Medicare, would have to start anew.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Charles Babington and David Espo contributed to this report.

___

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Cuba has much to lose as ally Chavez fights cancer

HAVANA (AP) — Cubans who were tuned in to the nightly soap opera on a recent Saturday received a sudden burst of bad news, from the other side of the Caribbean.

State TV cut to the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez revealed that his cancer had returned. Facing his fourth related surgery in 18 months, he grimly named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his possible successor.

The news shocked not only Venezuelans but millions of Cubans who have come to depend on Chavez’s largesse for everything from subsidized oil to cheap loans. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba‘s energy needs, meaning the island’s economy would be in for a huge shock and likely recession if a post-Chavez president forced the island to pay full price for oil.

Despite the drama, the news likely wasn’t a surprise to Cuba’s Communist government, and not only because Chavez has been receiving medical care on the island.

Havana learned important lessons about overdependence when the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union threw the country into a deep crisis. Trying to avoid the consequences of a similar cut, the Cuban government has been diversifying its portfolio of economic partners in recent years, looking to Asia, Europe and other Latin American nations, and is only about half as dependent on Caracas as it was on the former Soviet Union.

Cuba is also working to stimulate its economy back home by allowing more private-sector activity, giving a leg up to independent and cooperative farming, and decentralizing its sugar industry. A stronger Cuban economy would in theory have more hard currency to pay for energy and other imports.

Also getting off the ground is an experiment with independent nonfarm collectives that should be more efficient than state-run companies. And next year, another pilot program is planned for decentralized state enterprises that will enjoy near-autonomy and be allowed to control most of their income.

“This could have good results,” said a Cuban economist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the foreign media. Cuba “is also thinking of boosting foreign investment in areas of the national economy, including in restricted areas like the sugar industry.”

One of the country’s top goals has been to make the island’s struggling economy less dependent on a single benefactor.

Under the leadership of Chavez, who regularly calls former Cuban President Fidel Castro his ideological father and has followed parts of the Communist leader’s governance playbook, Venezuela has sent billions of dollars a year to Cuba through trade and petro-aid.

Bilateral trade stood at a little over $ 8 billion last year, much of it in Cuban imports of oil and derivatives. In return, Havana primarily provides Venezuela with technical support from Cuban teachers, scientists and other professionals, plus brigades of health care workers. Analysts say those services are overvalued by outside standards, apparently costing as much as $ 200,000 per year per doctor. Experts peg the total Venezuelan subsidy to Cuba at around $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion a year.

While business with Venezuela makes up 40 percent of all Cuban trade, it’s still a far cry from the days when the Communist Eastern Bloc accounted for an estimated 80 percent.

“A (loss of) $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion would definitely pinch. But it is not the same relative weight as the sudden complete withdrawal of the Soviet subsidies in the early ’90s,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego. “Cuba’s not going to go back to the days of bicycles. Could it throw the Cuban economy into recession? Yes.”

That kind of resilience would result largely from Cuba’s successes in courting foreign investors for joint ventures.

Last month, authorities announced a deal with a subsidiary of Brazil’s Odebrecht to manage a sugar refinery, a rare step in an industry that has long been largely off limits to foreign involvement.

China has invested in land-based oil projects, and along with Canada is a key player in Cuba’s important nickel industry. Spain has ventures in tourist hotels and tobacco, while French company Pernod Ricard helps export Cuban liquors. And since 2009, Brazil has been a partner in a massive project to modernize and expand the port at Mariel, west of the capital.

Trade with China alone was $ 1.9 billion and rising in 2010, and Raul Castro paid a visit to Chinese and Vietnamese leaders earlier this year to help cement Asian relationships.

But while Havana says it wants to boost foreign investment, obstacles remain. The approval process for investment projects can be long and cumbersome, and pilferage, disincentives to productivity and government intervention can cut into efficiencies. Foreign companies also pay a sky-high payroll tax.

Feinberg, who wrote a report on foreign investment in Cuba published this month by the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution, said that while a number of foreign companies are successfully doing business with the island, others have run into problems, sending a chilly message to would-be investors. In particular he noted the recent cases of a government takeover of a food company run by a Chilean businessman accused of corruption, and contentious renegotiations of a contract with Dutch-British personal and home care products giant Unilever amid shifting government demands.

“The Cuban government has to decide that it wants foreign investment unambiguously. I think now there seem to be divisions among the leadership,” Feinberg said. “Some are afraid that foreign investment compromises sovereignty, creates centers of power independent of the leadership or is exploitative.”

He estimated Cuba has left on the table about $ 20 billion in missed investment over the past decade by not following practices typical of other developing nations. Instead, Cuba received $ 3.5 billion in foreign investment in that period.

Experts say a worst-case scenario for Chavez wouldn’t automatically translate into the oil spigot shutting off overnight.

If Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Vice President Maduro, were to take office, he would likely seek to continue the special relationship.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said he wants to end the oil-for-services barter arrangements, but could find that easier said than done should he win. The two countries are intertwined in dozens of joint accords, and poor Venezuelans who benefit from free care by Cuban doctors would be loath to see that disappear.

“You can’t flip the switch on a relationship like this,” said Melissa Lockhart Fortner, a Cuba analyst at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Los Angeles-based institute that focuses on global affairs. “It would be terrible politics for him. … Switching that off would really endanger his support far too much for that to be really a feasible option.”

For Cuba, Chavez’s latest health scare capped off a year of disappointments in the island’s attempt to wean itself from Venezuelan energy.

Three deep-water exploratory oil wells drilled off the west coast failed to yield a strike, and last month the only oil rig in the world capable of drilling there without violating U.S. sanctions sailed away with no return in sight.

Yet time and again Havana has shown that it’s nothing if not resilient, weathering everything from U.S.-backed invasion and assassination plots in the 1960s to the austere “Special Period” in the early 1990s, when the Soviet collapse sent Cuba’s GDP plummeting 33 percent over four years. When hurricanes damaged the country’s agriculture sector and the global financial crisis squeezed tourism four years ago, Cuba tightened its belt, slashed imports and survived.

“Some people are saying the demise of Chavez is also going to be the demise of Communism in Cuba because the regime’s going to collapse and the people are going to rise up,” Feinberg said. “That’s probably yet another delusion of the anti-Castro exile community.”

Still, many Cubans are nervously tuning into the near-daily updates about Chavez’s health, carried prominently in state media.

“I don’t know what would happen here,” said 52-year-old Havana resident Magaly Ruiz. “We might end up eating grass.”

___

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.

___

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Temple Run was downloaded more than 2.5 million times on Christmas Day

Title Post: Temple Run was downloaded more than 2.5 million times on Christmas Day
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Marvel’s Peter Parker in perilous predicament

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — After 50 years of spinning webs and catching a who’s who of criminals, Peter Parker is out of the hero game.

But Spider-Man is still slinging from building to building — reborn, refreshed and revived with a new sense of the old maxim that Ben Parker taught his then-fledgling nephew that “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

Writer Dan Slott, who’s been penning Spidey adventures for the better part of the last 100 issues for Marvel Entertainment, said the culmination of the story is a new, dramatically different direction for the Steve Ditko and Stan Lee-created hero.

“This is an epic turn,” Slott said. “I’ve been writing Spider-Man for 70-plus issues. Every now and then, you have to shake it up. … The reason Spider-Man is one of the longest running characters is they always find a way to keep it fresh. Something to shake up the mix.”

And in the pages of issue 700, out Wednesday, it’s not just shaken up, it’s turned head over heels, spun in circles, kicked sky high and cracked wide open.

Parker’s mind is trapped in the withered, decaying dying body of his nemesis, Doctor Octopus aka Otto Octavius. Where’s Doc Ock? Inside Parker’s super-powered shell, learning what life is like for the brilliant researcher who happens to count the Avengers and Fantastic Four as friends and family.

The two clash mightily in the pages of issue 700, illustrated by Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba. But it’s Octavius who wins out and Parker is, at least for now, gone for good, but not before one more act of heroism.

Slott said that it’s Parker, whose memories envelop Octavius, who shows the villain what it means to be a hero.

“Gone are his days of villainy, but since it’s Doc Ock and he has that ego, he’s not going to try and just be Spider-man, he’s going to try to be the best Spider-Man ever,” said Slott.

Editor Stephen Wacker said that while Parker is gone, his permanence remains and his life casts a long shadow.

“His life is still important to the book because it affects everything that Doctor Octopus does as Spider-Man. Seeing a supervillain go through this life is the point — trying to be better than the hero he opposed,” Wacker said.

“Doc has sort of inspired by Peter’s life. That’s what I mean when he talks about the shadow he casts,” he said.

The sentiment echoes what Uncle Ben said in the pages of “Amazing Fantasy” No. 15, Slott said.

Editor Stephen Wacker called it a fitting end to the old series, which sets the stage for a new one — “The Superior Spider-Man” early next year — because it brings Peter Parker full circle, from the start of his crime-fighting career to the end.

“In his very first story, his uncle died because of something he did so the book has always been aimed at making Peter’s life as difficult as possible,” Wacker said. “The book has always worked best when it’s about Peter Parker’s life, not Spider-Man’s.”

And with Octavius influenced by Parker’s life — from Aunt May to Gwen Stacy to Mary Jane — it will make him a better person, too.

“Because Doctor Octopus knows all of those things and will make decisions on what he saw Peter going through,” Wacker said. “In a way, he gets the ultimate victory as he becomes a better hero.”

___

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___

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges that he detains mothers who can’t pay their bills.

Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running. Now, a New York-based group filed a lawsuit this month in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum near the maternity hospital said Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $ 60 and $ 160. Guards with sticks would beat mothers who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Omondi says one solution to the problem would be a national health insurance program.

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Winter storm whips across Northeast

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A powerful winter storm brought snow to inland parts of the Northeast and driving rain and wind to areas along the coast Thursday, a day after it swept through the nation's middle, dumping a record snowfall in Arkansas and wrecking post-holiday plans for thousands of travelers.

The storm, which was blamed for 12 deaths, pushed through the Upper Ohio Valley and made its way into the Northeast Wednesday night. By Thursday morning, there was anywhere from a few inches of snow to a foot in some locations.

National Weather Service spokesman David Roth said the Northeast's heaviest snowfall would be in northern Pennsylvania, upstate New York and inland sections of several New England states before the storm ended Friday morning and headed to Canada.

Dale Lamprey, who was clearing off the sidewalk outside the legislative office building in Concord, N.H., already had several hours of shoveling under his belt by 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

"I got here at quarter of five and it's been windy, it's been snowing and I think it changed over to sleet and freezing rain at one point," he said. "It's pretty bad."

He didn't expect it to get much better.

"I'm going to be shoveling all day, just trying to keep up with the snow," he said. "Which is impossible."

The East Coast's largest cities — New York, Philadelphia and Boston — were seeing mostly high winds and rain Thursday morning. Other areas were getting a messy mix of rain and snow or just rain — enough to slow down commuters and those still heading home from visits with family.

Thousands of travelers were trying to make it home Thursday after the fierce storm stranded them at airports or relatives' homes around the region. Some inbound flights were delayed in Philadelphia and New York's LaGuardia, but the wet and windy weather wasn't leading to delays at other major East Coast airports.

A flight that landed safely in Pittsburgh during the storm Wednesday night got stuck in snow for about two hours on the tarmac.

The American Airlines flight arrived between 8 and 9 p.m., but then ran over a snow patch and got stuck.

Airport spokeswoman JoAnn Jenny told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette workers tried for nearly two hours to tow the plane to the gate before deciding to bus passengers to the terminal.

Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed on Wednesday and scores of motorists got stuck on icy roads or slid into drifts. Said John Kwiatkowski, an Indianapolis-based meteorologist with the weather service: "The way I've been describing it is as a low-end blizzard, but that's sort of like saying a small Tyrannosaurus rex."

The storm system spawned Gulf Coast region tornadoes on Christmas Day, startling people like Bob and Sherry Sims of Mobile, Alabama, who'd just finished dinner.

"We heard that very distinct sound, like a freight train," said Bob Sims. They headed for a center bathroom.

Power was still out at the Sims' home on Wednesday, but the house wasn't damaged and they used a generator to run heaters to stay warm. Some neighbors were less fortunate, their roofs peeled away and porches smashed by falling trees.

The storm also left freezing temperatures in its aftermath, and forecasters said parts of the Southeast from Virginia to Florida saw severe thunderstorms.

Schools on break and workers taking holiday vacations meant that many people could avoid messy commutes, but those who had to travel were urged to avoid it. Snow was blamed for scores of vehicle accidents as far east as Maryland, and about two dozen counties in Indiana and Ohio issued snow emergency travel alerts, urging people to go out on the roads only if necessary.

About 40 vehicles got bogged down trying to make it up a slick hill in central Indiana, and four state snowplows slid off roads as snow fell at the rate of 3 inches an hour in some places.

Officials in Ohio blamed the bad weather for a crash that killed an 18-year-old girl, who lost control of her car Wednesday afternoon and smashed into an oncoming snow plow on a highway northeast of Cincinnati.

A man and a woman in Evansville, Ind., were killed when the scooter they were riding went out of control on a snowy street Wednesday and they were hit by a pickup truck.

Two passengers in a car on a sleet-slickened Arkansas highway were killed Wednesday in a head-on collision, and two people, including a 76-year-old Milwaukee woman, were killed Tuesday on Oklahoma highways. Deaths from wind-toppled trees were reported in Texas and Louisiana. Other storm-related deaths include a man checking on a disabled vehicle near Allentown, Pa., who was struck and killed Wednesday night, and two people killed in separate crashes in Virginia.

The day after Christmas wasn't expected to be particularly busy for AAA, but its Cincinnati-area branch had its busiest Wednesday of the year. By mid-afternoon, nearly 400 members had been helped with tows, jump starts and other aid, with calls still coming in, spokesman Mike Mills said.

In Arkansas, some of the nearly 200,000 people who lost power could be without it for as long as a week because of snapped poles and wires after ice and 10 inches of snow coated power lines, said the state's largest utility, Entergy Arkansas.

Other states also had scattered outages.

As the storm moved east, New England state highway departments were treating roads and getting ready to mobilize with snowfall forecasts of a foot or more.

Few truckers were stopping into a TravelCenters of America truck stop in Willington, Conn., near the Massachusetts border early Thursday. Usually 20 to 30 an hour stop in overnight, but high winds and slushy roads had cut that to two to three people an hour.

"A lot of people are staying off the road," said Louis Zalewa, 31, who works there selling gasoline and staffing the store. "I think people are being smart."

As usual, winter-sports enthusiasts welcomed the snow. At Smiling Hill Farm in Maine, Warren Knight was hoping for enough snow to allow the opening of trails.

"We watch the weather more carefully for cross-country skiing than we do for farming. And we're pretty diligent about farming. We're glued to the weather radio," said Knight, who described the weather at the 500-acre farm in Westbrook as being akin to the prizes in "Cracker Jacks — we don't know what we're going to get."

Behind the storm, Mississippi's governor declared states of emergency in eight counties with more than 25 people reported injured and 70 homes left damaged.

Cindy Williams stood near a home in McNeill, Miss., where its front had collapsed into a pile of wood and brick, a balcony and the porch ripped apart. Large oak trees were uprooted and winds sheared off treetops in a nearby grove. But she focused instead on the fact that all her family members had escaped harm.

"We are so thankful," she said. "God took care of us."

___

Associated Press writers Rick Callahan and Charles Wilson in Indianapolis, Kelly P. Kissel in Little Rock, Ark.; Jim Van Anglen in Mobile, Ala.; Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss.; Julie Carr Smyth and Mitch Stacy in Columbus, Ohio; Amanda Lee Myers in Cincinnati; David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md.; and David Sharp in Portland, Maine, contributed to this report.

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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader’s condition.

Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.

“He was in a good mood,” Maduro said. “He was walking, he was exercising.”

Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president’s cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.

“It’s definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery,” Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back.”

Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.

Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.

Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.

Maduro’s announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing “a slight improvement with a progressive trend.”

Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro’s announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez’s condition.

“It’s possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible,” Castro told AP. “They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps.”

“It’s unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?” he added. “I think he is still in critical condition.”

Maduro’s near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.

Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro’s announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.

“We all said, thank God, he’s okay,” she said, smiling.

Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro’s comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez’s prognosis for recovery.

“I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don’t think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that,” Medrano said.

Over the weekend, Chavez’s ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.

Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales’ itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.

Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came “to express his support” for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.

For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.

Yet more questions surround Chavez’s political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.

If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.

Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.

Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president’s swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.

But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.

___

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Camilo Hernandez in Bogota, Colombia, and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

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Apps to help achieve New Year’s resolutions

(Reuters) – Whether it is improving health or managing finances better, about 87 percent of Americans will make resolutions for 2013 and there are plenty of apps to help them achieve their goals.

Nearly half of New Year’s resolutions are about setting health-related goals, which is the most popular category, according to a recent survey by online broker TD Ameritrade.

Rather than jumping into a rigorous fitness routine, a new app called 5K Runner suggests it might be better to ease into things slowly and focus on building sustainable habits. The iPhone app helps couch potatoes ramp up their running distance to 5 km over the course of eight weeks.

“You’re slowly building this routine into your daily life with a lot of success and after eight weeks you’re literally running 5K, which is pretty big if (initially) you’re not running at all,” said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of The Webby Awards, an annual ceremony honoring Internet companies.

The app guides runners through each run, alternating periods of running and walking for 35 minutes.

Davies also recommends Nike+ Running and RunKeeper, two popular and free fitness apps, which use GPS to track distance traveled, speed and calories burned. Both apps are available for iOS and Android devices.

Diet is another component of good health and a focus of many apps. Fooducate is an iPhone and Android app that helps shoppers make healthier purchases at the supermarket by allowing them to scan the barcodes of products and get insight into how healthy the product is.

Their database, which contains over 200,000 products, displays a grade for the product and information on its contents. It can show whether there are hidden additives or the probability of containing genetically modified ingredients.

“There are a lot of healthy people out there who unknowingly buy products that have an inordinate amount of salt in them,” Davies said.

DietBet is an app for people with a competitive streak. Available for iPhone and on the Web, it allows its users to join in a four-week weight loss challenge to lose 4 percent of weight. Everyone bets money, which goes into a fund, and submits proof of weight lost. People who meet the challenge split the money.

“It comes back again to how people get motivated,” Davies said. “Gamification is something that technology has really enabled and for some people it really works.”

To stay on top of finances, Davies recommends Mint, which provides a visual view of all financial accounts and is available for iOS, Android and on the Web.

(Reporting by Natasha Baker in Toronto; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)

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Britain’s royal family attends Christmas services

LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.

Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.

Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.

Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.

Later Tuesday, the queen will deliver her traditional, pre-recorded Christmas message, which for the first time will be broadcast in 3D.

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Light Therapy Helps Ease Winter Blues

Every October as the clocks are turned back, Jose Balido notices that his mood changes, almost as if his body were going into hibernation.

His limbs are heavy and he has trouble moving around. Simple household chores like loading the dishwasher seem “insurmountable,” he said. But when spring arrives, the lethargy lifts.

“It took me a while to realize what it was,” said Balido, owner of a travel social network site, Tripatini. “I was cranky, short-tempered, depressed, feeling hopeless and having difficulty concentrating.”

Balido, 51, was diagnosed a decade ago with seasonal affective disorder or SAD. The condition affects 62 million Americans, according to Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University and a leader in the field.

About 5 percent of the population experiences the most severe symptoms of SAD — depression and hopelessness — while another 15 percent have the so-called “winter blues” or “winter doldrums.”

The vast majority never fall into full depression, according to Terman, but “plod through winters with slowness and gloominess that takes effort to hide from others.”

Two decades ago, SAD was identified as a legitimate disorder by the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, the treatment of choice has been light therapy.

Balido, who lives in Miami, sought help from Terman and now undergoes light therapy. He sits in front of a daylight simulator for a half an hour each morning before 10 a.m.

“Within two or three days, the difference was mind-blowing,” he said.

The standard treatment for SAD is 30 minutes of 10,000-lux, diffused, white fluorescent light, used early in the morning. About half the patients are helped quickly — and when treatment is tailored to a person’s individual wake-sleep cycle, remission can climb to 80 percent, according to Terman.

This year, a utility company in the northern Swedish town of Umea installed ultraviolet lights at 30 bus stops to combat the effects of SAD.

“We wanted to celebrate the fact that all our electricity comes from green sources and we wanted to do this in a way that contributed to the citizens in one way or another,” said Umea Energi marketing chief Anna Norrgard in an email to ABCNews.com.

“As it is very dark where we live this time of year, a lot of us are longing for the daylight,” she said. “A lot of us are also a bit more tired this time of year and I would also say we sleep a little bit more. …We wanted to give the citizens of Umea a little energy boost, to be more alert.”

The town is located about 400 miles north of Stockholm. In December, the sun rises at about 10 a.m. and sets around 2:30 p.m. Some towns north of the Arctic Circle have no daylight for several weeks in the winter.

Geography has a strong influence on the prevalence of SAD symptoms, according to Terman.

“The common wisdom is that it’s worse the farther north you live, because winter days are so much shorter,” he said. “Not so simple.”

Columbia research shows that in North America, the incidence of SAD rises from the southern to the middle states, but levels off and stays bad from about 38 degrees North latitude (near such cities as San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.) up through the northernmost states and Canada, according to Terman.

But the problem becomes “more severe” at the western edges of the northern states and provinces.

“This important finding reveals the underlying trigger for relapses into winter depression, since the sun rises an hour more later at the western edge of a zone,” said Terman, whose book, “Chronotherapy,” looks at the phenomenon.

Esther Kane, a clinical counselor from Vancouver, Canada, said her practice is filled with patients as the long days descend on British Columbia.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Hits Hard in Canada

“On the West Coast where we live it’s so rampant, I can’t even tell you how many people have it,” said Kane. “Everyone is feeling it with the gray skies and rain. It’s like nighttime all the time here.”

Doctors there routinely prescribe fish oil and vitamin D, as well as light therapy to balance out the sleep hormone melatonin and “boost” the feel-good hormone serotonin, according to Kane. Many are also on antidepressants.

“A lot of people depend on alcohol and drugs all of a sudden,” she said. “They are stuffing themselves with carbs and their food intake is up. They have depression symptoms — what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning when they feel no energy and there is dark all over them?”

“Some suffer so bad, they can’t function,” said Kane. “Everyone here who can afford to get away for two weeks in the winter, go to Hawaii.”

Even those who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the United States can be affected.

Tina Saratsiotis, who works for a faith-based nonprofit group in Towson, Md., was surprised to develop SAD several years ago.

“I used to be a night person and like the dark. Then something changed,” she said. “By fall when it gets darker and the fatigue and sadness comes and by Christmas, it’s difficult to function.”

“It creeps in slowly — I eat more and have trouble concentrating,” she said. “I am more irritable and weeping, like a prolonged version of PMS. It makes it hard to get things done and to enjoy things.”

Columbia’s Terman said there may be genetic influences in who gets SAD — a vulnerability to depression and to insufficient light exposure.

SAD sufferers say it’s especially hard on their relationships when their winter moods kick in.

“Now, he’s very understanding,” said Saratsiotis, who uses both light therapy and antidepressants to deal with the condition. “But before, when I didn’t feel up to going out, I couldn’t explain not feeling great. People wonder, ‘Why doesn’t she like me?’ and, ‘She’s no fun.’”

But when spring rolls around, so does her old self.

“I love the solstice — thank you, Lord, for the solstice,” she said. “I really need [the medication] now, but I may not in the spring and summer.”

But now, in when the days are their shortest, SAD puts a crimp on the holidays.

“It kills Christmas,” said Saratsiotis. “I sit in the middle of the department store with that particular song about the sleigh bells ringing, and I am sobbing. I burst into tears and think, ‘Just kill that song.’”

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Snowstorm heads east after South twisters; 3 dead

MOBILE, Ala. (AP) — An enormous storm system that dumped snow and sleet on the nation's midsection and unleashed damaging tornadoes around the Deep South began punching its way toward the Northeast on Wednesday, slowing holiday travel.

Post-Christmas travelers braced for flight delays and a raft of weather warnings for drivers, a day after rare winter twisters damaged buildings in Louisiana and Alabama.

Snow and ice covered roads in southern Illinois and southern Indiana early Wednesday. Officials urged residents to stay home if they can. State police reported numerous slide-off accidents in the Evansville, Ind., area and white-out conditions on Interstate 64 in Indiana with wind gusts around 30 mph.

The storm system headed from the Gulf Coast to New England has been blamed for three deaths and several injuries, though no one was killed outright in the tornadoes. In snowy Arkansas, the storm left more than 189,000 customers without electricity Wednesday, utility Entergy Arkansas said.

Severe thunderstorms were forecast for the Carolinas while a line of blizzard and winter storm warnings stretched from Arkansas up the Ohio River to New York and on to Maine.

Thirty-four tornadoes were reported in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama during the outbreak Tuesday, the National Weather Service said.

Rick Cauley's family was hosting relatives for Christmas when tornado sirens went off in Mobile. Not taking any chances, he and his wife, Ashley, hustled everyone down the block to take shelter at the athletic field house at Mobile's Murphy High School in Mobile.

It turns out, that wasn't the place to head.

"As luck would have it, that's where the tornado hit," Cauley said. "The pressure dropped and the ears started popping and it got crazy for a second." They were all fine, though the school was damaged, as were a church and several homes, but officials say no one was seriously injured.

Camera footage captured the approach of the large funnel cloud.

Mobile was the biggest city hit by numerous twisters. Along with brutal, straight-line winds, the storms knocked down countless trees, blew the roofs off homes and left many Christmas celebrations in the dark. Torrential rains drenched the region and several places saw flash flooding.

More than 325 flights around the U.S. were canceled as of Wednesday morning, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com. The cancelations were mostly spread around airports that had been or soon would be in the path of the storm.

Holiday travelers in the nation's much colder midsection battled treacherous driving conditions from freezing rain and blizzard conditions from the same fast-moving storms. In Arkansas, highway department officials said the state was fortunate the snowstorm hit on Christmas Day when many travelers were already at their destinations.

Texas, meanwhile, dealt with high winds and slickened highways.

On Tuesday, winds toppled a tree onto a pickup truck in the Houston area, killing the driver, and a 53-year-old north Louisiana man was killed when a tree fell on his house. Icy roads already were blamed for a 21-vehicle pileup in Oklahoma, and the Highway Patrol there says a 28-year-old woman was killed in a crash on a snowy U.S. Highway near Fairview.

Trees fell on homes and across roadways in several communities in southern Mississippi and Louisiana. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency, saying eight counties reported damages and some injuries.

It included McNeill, where a likely tornado damaged a dozen homes and sent eight people to the hospital, none with life-threatening injuries, said Pearl River County emergency management agency director Danny Manley.

The snowstorm that caused numerous accidents pushed out of Oklahoma late Tuesday, carrying with it blizzard warnings for parts of northeast Arkansas, where 10 inches of snow was forecast. Freezing rain clung to trees and utility lines in Arkansas and winds gusts up to 30 mph whipped them around, causing about 71,000 customers to lose electricity for a time.

Christmas lights also were knocked out with more than 100,000 customers without power for at least a time in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

Blizzard conditions were possible for parts of Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky up to Cleveland with predictions of several inches to a foot of snow. By the end of the week, that snow was expected to move into the Northeast with again up to a foot predicted

Jason Gerth said the Mobile tornado passed by in a few moments and from his porch, he saw about a half-dozen green flashes in the distance as transformers blew. His home was spared.

"It missed us by 100 feet and we have no damage," Gerth said.

In Louisiana, quarter-sized hail was reported early Tuesday in the western part of the state and a WDSU viewer sent a photo to the TV station of what appeared to be a waterspout around the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans. There were no reports of crashes or damage.

Some mountainous areas of Arkansas' Ozark Mountains could get up to 10 inches of snow, which would make travel "very hazardous or impossible" in the northern tier of the state from near whiteout conditions, the weather service said.

The holiday may conjure visions of snow and ice, but twisters this time of year are not unheard of. Ten storm systems in the last 50 years have spawned at least one Christmastime tornado with winds of 113 mph or more in the South, said Chris Vaccaro, a National Weather Service spokesman in Washington, via email.

The most lethal were the storms of Dec. 24-26, 1982, when 29 tornadoes in Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi killed three people and injured 32.

In Mobile, a large section of the roof on the Trinity Episcopal Church is missing and the front wall of the parish wall is gone, said Scott Rye, a senior warden at the church in the Midtown section of the city.

On Christmas Eve, the church with about 500 members was crowded for services.

"Thank God this didn't happen last night," Rye said.

___

Associated Press writers Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Ala., Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Ramit Plushnick-Masti in Houston, Chuck Bartels in Little Rock, Ark., Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans and AP Business Writer Daniel Wagner in Washington, contributed to this report.

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U.N. General Assembly voices concern for Myanmar’s Muslims

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.

The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said last month contained a “litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified.”

Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised “maximum restraint” to quell the violence.

The unanimously adopted U.N. resolution “expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality.”

At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine State along the western coast of Myanmar, also known as Burma. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.

The resolution adopted on Monday is identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights. After that vote, Myanmar’s mission to the United Nations said that it accepted the resolution but objected to the Rohingyas being referred to as a minority.

“There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar,” a representative of Myanmar said at the time. “Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land.”

(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)

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A huge collection of odd TV stuff needs a home

LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Comisar is the first to acknowledge that more than a few have questioned his sanity for spending the better part of 25 years collecting everything from the costume George Reeves wore in the 1950s TV show “Superman” to the entire set of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Then there’s the pointy Spock ears Leonard Nimoy wore on “Star Trek” and the guns Tony Soprano used to rub out a mob rival in an episode of “The Sopranos.”

“Along the way people thought I was nuts in general for wanting to conserve Keith Partridge’s flared pants from ‘The Partridge Family,’” the good-natured former TV writer says of the 1970s sitcom as he ambles through rows of costumes, props and what have you from the beginnings of television to the present day.

“But they really thought I needed a psychological workup,” Comisar, 48, adds with a smile, “when they learned I was having museum curators take care of these pieces.”

A museum is exactly where he wants to put all 10,000 of his TV memorabilia items, everything from the hairpiece Carl Reiner wore on the 1950s TV variety program “Your Show of Shows” to the gun and badge Kiefer Sutherland flashed on “24″ a couple TV seasons ago.

Finding one that could accommodate his collection, which fills two sprawling, temperature-controlled warehouses, however, has sometimes been as hard as acquiring the boots Larry Hagman used to stomp around in when he was J.R. on “Dallas.” (The show’s production company finally coughed up a pair after plenty of pleading and cajoling.)

Comisar is one of many people who, after a lifetime of collecting, begin to realize that if they can’t find a permanent home for their artifacts those objects could easily end up on the trash heap of history. Or, just as bad as far as he’s concerned, in the hands of private collectors.

“Some of the biggest bidders for Hollywood memorabilia right now reside in mainland China and Dubai, and our history could leave this country forever,” says Comisar, who these days works as a broker and purchasing expert for memorabilia collectors.

What began as a TV-obsessed kid’s lark morphed into a full-fledged hobby when as a young man writing jokes for Howie Mandel and Joan Rivers, and punching up scripts for such producers as Norman Lear and Fred Silverman, Comisar began scouring studio back lots, looking for discarded stuff from the favorite shows of his childhood. From there it developed into a full-on obsession, dedicated to preserving the entire physical spectrum of television history.

“After a couple years of collecting, it became clear to me,” he says, “that it didn’t much matter what TV shows James watched in the early 1970s but which shows were the most iconic. In that way, I had sort of a curator’s perspective almost from the beginning.”

In the early days, collecting such stuff was easy for anyone with access to a studio back lot. Many items were simply thrown out or given away when shows ceased production. When studios did keep things they often rented them out for small fees, and if you lost or broke them you paid a small replacement fee. So Comisar began renting stuff right and left and promptly losing it, acquiring one of Herman Munster’s jackets that way.

These days almost everything has a price, although Comisar’s reputation as a serious collector has led some people to give him their stuff.

If he simply sold it all, he could probably retire as a millionaire several times over. Just last month someone paid $ 480,000 for a faded dress Judy Garland wore in the 1939 film “The Wizard of Oz.” What might Annette Funicello’s original Mickey Mouse Club jacket fetch?

He won’t even think about that.

“I’ve spent 25 years now reuniting these pieces, and I would be so sick if some day they were just broken up and sold to the highest bidder,” he says.

He, and every other serious collector of cool but somewhat oddball stuff, face two major obstacles, say museum curators: Finding a museum or university with the space to take their treasures and persuading deep-pocketed individuals who might bankroll the endeavor that there’s really any compelling reason to preserve something like Maxwell Smart’s shoephone.

“People hold television and popular culture so close to their hearts and embrace it so passionately,” says Dwight Bowers, curator of entertainment collections for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who calls Comisar’s collection very impressive. “But they don’t put it on the same platform as military history or political history.”

When the Smithsonian acquired Archie Bunker’s chair from the seminal TV comedy “All in the Family,” Bowers said, museum officials took plenty of flak from those offended that some sitcom prop was being placed down the hallway from the nation’s presidential artifacts.

The University of California, Santa Cruz, took similar heat when it accepted the Grateful Dead archives, 30 years of recordings, videos, papers, posters and other memorabilia gifted by the band, said university archivist Nicholas Meriwether.

“What I always graciously say is that if you leave the art and the music aside for one moment, whatever you think of it, what you can say is they are still a huge part of understanding the story of the 1960s and of understanding the nation’s counterculture,” says Meriwether.

Comisar sees his television collection serving the same purpose, tracing societal changes TV shows documented from the post-World War II years to the present.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation looked into establishing such a museum some years back, and Comisar’s collection came up at the time, said Karen Herman, curator of the foundation’s Archive of American Television.

Instead, the foundation settled on an online archive containing more than 3,000 hours of filmed oral history interviews with more than 700 people.

While the archive doesn’t have any of Mr. Spock’s ears, anyone with a computer can view and listen to an oral history from Spock himself, the actor Leonard Nimoy.

Comisar, meanwhile, believes he’s finally found the right site for a museum, in Phoenix, where he’s been lining up supporters. He estimates it will cost $ 35 million and several years to open the doors, but hopes to have a preview center in place by next year.

Mo Stein, a prominent architect who heads the Phoenix Community Alliance and is working with him, says one of the next steps will be finding a proper space for the collection.

But, really, why all the fuss over a place to save one of the suits Regis Philbin wore on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”?

“In Shakespeare’s time, his work was considered pretty low art,” Comisar responds.

Oh, he’ll admit that “Mike and Molly,” the modern TV love story of a couple who fall for each other at Overeaters Anonymous, may never rank in the same category as “Romeo and Juliet.”

“But what about a show like ‘Star Trek’?” he asks.

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Top 7 Holiday Allergy Triggers

When you wheeze through your fa-la-la’s and your nose rivals Rudolph’s, it’s a little tougher to feel jolly. Although allergies peak in the spring and fall, the holidays may surprise sensitive sufferers with a gift of unexpected triggers, from dusty decorations and potent potpourri to even — say it ain’t so — the Christmas tree.

Here are seven yuletide allergens, and expert tips to help you stay focused on shopping and wrapping, not sneezing and scratching.

How To Keep Your Allergies From Ruining Your Day

Holiday Allergy Triggers

That’s right — the one and only, the centerpiece of all things Christmas, that perfect fir you found hiding in the lot of freshly-cut trees that’s now twinkling with the lights you spent hours untangling — may be to blame for your stuffy nose, watery eyes and rash-y skin.

“Mold is the biggest problem with live Christmas trees,” says Dr. Marilyn Li, an asthma and allergy specialist with the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center. “Often, they are cut in advance and kept in humid environments, promoting spore growth.”

Within just two weeks of bringing a tree into your home, indoor mold counts can increase significantly, according to one study.

Other tree-related allergens: The sap contains terpene and other substances that can irritate skin and mucous membranes; and pollen stuck to the tree may be released inside and lead to reactions, adds Dr. Nathanael S. Horne, clinical assistant professor of medicine at NYU school of Medicine and fellow of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. What about the artificial versions? They could harbor dust and mold from their time in storage, also triggering allergies.

Prevent it: Slip on gloves and wear long sleeves when handling your fresh tree to avoid the sap coming into contact with your skin. Before schlepping your tree inside, give it a good shake (or a blast with a leaf blower) and spray it down with a garden hose (especially the trunk) to help remove some of the pollen and mold, suggests Horne. Then sit the stump in a bucket of water and let the tree dry for few days on a covered porch or in a garage. For an allergen-free fake tree, give it a good wipe-down before decorating with lights and ornaments.

4 Holiday Health Busters

Holiday Allergy Triggers

For eleven months out of the year, all your ornaments, lights, and holiday chotchkes sit stored out of sight, collecting dust and maybe developing mold. When the boxes of red, green, and gold goodies come out, the symphony of sneezing, coughing and nose-blowing commences.

Prevent it: Before decking your halls, mantels, windows and trees, wipe down each item thoroughly; when it’s time to repack, store your holiday trimming in airtight containers, and in a dry spot if possible. Also, go easy on the spray snow — you may love the look of frosted windows, but any aerosolized chemical can cause irritant reactions in the eyes, nose or lungs of a sensitive person, says Horne.

Holiday Allergy Triggers

The fact that she makes “Why aren’t you pregnant yet?” the topic of Christmas dinner is enough to make you break out in hives, but the nuts that she baked into her dessert crust could be to blame, too.

If you have food allergies, the holidays in particular are a ripe time for reactions, simply because you’re around so. much. food. The most common food allergens are milk, eggs, soy, fish, shellfish, peanuts, tree nuts, and wheat.

“Of those, peanuts and tree nuts will most often make it into holiday dishes without people knowing, and have the potential to cause severe reactions,” says Horne.

Prevent it: It’s a good idea to let your holiday host know about your food allergies; it’s important to ask about the ingredients in each dish; and it’s very nice to volunteer to bring something that’s safe for you, and shareable with others. But what’s crucial is to be prepared with an epinephrine auto-injector (Epi Pen), an emergency dose of antihistamine, and an inhaler if you have asthma—just in case, adds Li, director of the USC Breathmobile, a pediatric clinic that travels to schools and provides ongoing asthma and allergy care to children. Learn which foods and recipes are unexpected sources of allergens at FoodAllergy.org and AAAAI.org.

How To Prevent Holiday Weight Gain

Holiday Allergy Triggers

You raise a glass to your loved ones, your boss and colleagues, friends and neighbors, and even the strangers sitting next to you at a bar. There’s lots of cheers-ing this time of year, but be mindful of what you’re using to toast. Some people may experience mild wheezing or other symptoms from the sulfites in wine, for example, and certain alcoholic concoctions contain major food allergens.

Prevent it: There aren’t good tests for sulfite sensitivity, but your reaction to dried fruit — high in this sulfur-based preservative — could be an indicator, says Horne. Pay attention if you have asthma, as sulfites can trigger symptoms. Maraschino cherries contain small amounts of sulfites, as well. Stick with organic wine for a sulfite-free sip. Other triggers to be aware of: Tree nuts may be found specialty beers, particularly seasonal ales; milk is in Irish crème and white chocolate liqueurs; and egg whites may be used to add froth to specialty drinks.

Low Calorie Holiday Treats

Holiday Allergy Triggers

This festive plant is a member of the rubber tree family and contains compounds similar to those found in latex, so stay away if you have a latex allergy. Certain groups of people — such as healthcare workers and people with spina bifida who have had numerous surgeries — are more likely to be allergic to latex, says Li, and one study showed that 40 percent of latex-allergic individuals were also allergic to poinsettias.

Prevent it: If you have a latex allergy, keep the iconic plant out of your house—not only can it give you a rash if you touch it, but inhaling the allergen can lead to serious respiratory problems, like shortness of breath and wheezing.

5 Holiday Pet Dangers

Holiday Allergy Triggers

Pine-infused potpourri, dessert-scented candles, cinnamon air sprays — while they will make your house smell like Christmas, they can irritate the nose and throats of allergy-sensitive people.

“Candles in particular are an increasingly recognized source of indoor air pollution,” says Horne. “The same is true for air sprays and other types of air fresheners—they can release many different types of noxious compounds, which can generate adverse reactions in sensitive patients.”

Prevent it: If skipping the scents feels Grinch-like, try making your own potpourri with cinnamon sticks and cloves so you know what’s in the mixture, says Horne. And choose candles made of soy or beeswax, suggests Li. There’s not much smell, but you can still enjoy the warm glow. By the way, fireplaces are an absolute no-no for asthmatic patients — the ash and smoke can trigger an attack, so keep the log unlit.

Attack Allergies With Yoga

Holiday Allergy Triggers

Stress doesn’t cause allergies or asthma by itself, but it can hinder your immune system and be a trigger for asthma attacks, says Horne. Chemicals released by the body during stressful times can cause the muscles around your airways to tighten, making it difficult to breathe.

Prevent it: All the deep breathing in the world probably can’t calm the chaos that comes with the season, but what you can do is make sure you take the steps to stay healthy: Stick to your controller medication regimen and get a flu shot, advises Li.

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More from Prevention:

7 Ways The Holidays Hurt Your Look

Your Stay-Slim Holiday Survival Plan

Are You Allergic To Wine?

How To Keep Allergies From Ruining Your Day

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Title Post: Top 7 Holiday Allergy Triggers
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