Syrians Face a Bread Shortage in Aleppo and Elsewhere

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

A bakery in Aleppo. The price has shot up from 25 Syrian pounds, about 35 cents, for a bag of about eight flat, pitalike loaves to more than 200 pounds, nearly $3.

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Jalal al-Khanji, the closest thing the Syrian city of Aleppo has to a mayor, hopes to organize elections there within two weeks, but he fears that residents with empty stomachs are in no mood for an experiment in democracy.

Since late November, bread has been scarce, with a lack of fuel and flour shutting most bakeries in Aleppo.

“We cannot hold elections while people are hungry; we have to solve that problem first,” he said in an interview in this southern Turkish city, where many leaders of Aleppo’s civil society have sought refuge. “People are angry, frustrated and depressed. They can understand how countries like France and Britain and the United States might hold back on the issue of weapons, but not on the issue of bread and diesel.”

The revolution that erupted across Syria in March 2011 only slowly engulfed Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital. Long after major cities were convulsed by demonstrations, Aleppo’s residents still showed up in Gaziantep by the busload every weekend to scour the malls.

The armed struggle for the city began in earnest last July.

In August, the prominent doctors, engineers, pharmacists and businessmen sheltering here established the Aleppo Transitional Revolutionary Council, a kind of city government in exile for the liberated portions of the city. Mr. Khanji, 67, a civil engineer with a long history of opposing the Syrian government, serves as its president.

Dividing their time between Gaziantep and Aleppo, council members found the chaos convulsing their city worrisome. What if all the competing militias on the ground, even if nominally part of the loosely allied Free Syrian Army, continued to fight for the spoils even after the government’s forces were driven from the city?

They decided the remedy was an elected council of about 250 members who would run both the city and the province of Aleppo, roughly one representative for every 20,000 people in the liberated areas. The council would choose a smaller group to actually govern the city.

The idea is for the council to serve as a liaison between the military and the civilian populations. “If civilian life is not organized, if we cannot do anything, then the chaos will continue,” said a 29-year-old businessman who is also on the transitional council. Several members of the council declined to give their names because they still travel to government-controlled areas.

About 65 percent of the villages have already chosen their representatives, he said, but the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo forced a postponement of the choice of about 150 representatives from the city itself.

The transitional council is in the process of establishing a 500-member police force and runs a few courts, but members view the bread crisis as their first big test. “We represent a civil government to some extent, so if we cannot solve this problem there will be a lack of trust in such rule in the future,” said the businessman.

There is also competition. While about 70 percent to 80 percent of the Free Syrian Army commanders in the province have agreed to support the elected council, election organizers said, opponents include jihadi groups hostile to the very idea of democratic elections.

One such prominent group, Jibhat al-Nusra, which the United States sought to ostracize last week by labeling it a terrorist organization, has been distributing bread in and around Aleppo.

“The so-called terrorists are the ones who have been giving us bread and distributing it fairly,” said Tamam Hazem, a spokesman in Aleppo’s news media center, reached via Skype. “Free Syrian Army battalions have been trying to help, but they just don’t have the same kind of experience.”

Council members pleaded for outside help to counter the jihadists’ efforts. “They are offering bread to people to obtain their sympathy and respect,” said Mr. Khanji, the council’s president. “Prolonging the Syrian crisis will allow the extremist cells in Syria to grow and become more difficult to remove in the future.”

Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Sebnem Arsu from Kilis, Turkey.

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Manitoba Tories to oust youth president over social media comments

WINNIPEG – An official with Manitoba’s Progressive Conservative party is being ousted over social media comments about aboriginals.

Brayden Mazurkiewich, the president of the party’s youth wing, is being asked to resign over a post on his Facebook page today.

The post concerns a planned urban reserve on a former Winnipeg military base, and says the land was designed for — quote — “hard-working men and women of the military, not free-loading Indian.”

Party president Ryan Matthews says the comments are unacceptable.

Matthews says if Mazurkiewich doesn’t quit voluntarily, the party’s management committee will convene next week to deal with the matter.

Mazurkiewich was not immediately available for comment.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Connecticut Shooting: Bodies Removed from School, Positively Identified

By Mike Fleeman

12/15/2012 at 10:25 AM EST

Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance

Mary Altaffer/AP

A horrific day turned to a night of unspeakable grief as parents received formal notifications that their children were killed in the Connecticut school massacre.

The last of the dozens of bodies – most of them children – were removed by early Saturday from Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"Our objective certainly was to positively identify the victims to try to give the families some closure," State Police Spokesman Lt. Paul Vance tells CBS News.

"Our detectives worked well through the night. By early this morning, we were able to positively identify all of the victims and make some formal notification to all of the families of the victims."

The gunman, identified by multiple law enforcement sources as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, killed 20 children between the ages of 5 and 10 and six adults, before taking his own life at the school. His mother also was killed at a different location, bringing the total death toll to 28.

Eighteen children were pronounced dead at the scene and two at the hospital; six adult victims were pronounced dead at the scene, the Los Angeles Times reports.

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Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

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Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

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Actor decapitated student, killed girlfriend, DA alleges

Clinging to keepsakes and memories more than two years after their
children were killed, the parents of two slain Orange Coast College
students say the pain of reliving the details of their deaths in court
can't match their desire for justice.

On Thursday, the families of Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23, and Samuel Herr, 26, sat in Orange County Superior Court
for a preliminary hearing to determine whether prosecutors could move
forward with charges of accessory after the fact against Rachel Buffett,
25, the then-fiancee of alleged killer Daniel Patrick Wozniak. Buffett is accused of helping Wozniak by lying to police after the crime.

The victims' families said that in spite of media attention garnered by the prosecution of Buffett,  who has claimed innocence of murder charges, they trust the legal system to do its job.

"We're not detectives," said Kibuishi's mother, June Kibuishi, expressing her faith in Deputy Dist. Atty. Matt Murphy. "We just want the truth."

"We're here to support Matt Murphy, the Costa Mesa Police Department
and the Orange County D.A.," said Samuel's father, Steve Herr.

Asked how he felt, Herr replied with a tired sigh. "How do you feel every day in court?"

Kibuishi said it never gets easier.

During a recess in the lengthy and at times gruesome hearing, Kibuishi tugged at a silver ring that had belonged to her daughter hanging on a chain around her neck.

"This is the only thing that we got back after it happened," she
said. "And a necklace in a little envelope. I wasn't able to see her
until the day before the service. And then we found out what happened to
Sam. Just .... " She shook her head.

"It doesn't make any sense to me," Kibuishi said. "My daughter was
not at the wrong place at the wrong time. She was used. She thought she
was helping out a friend."

Julie Kibuishi, police say, was Costa Mesa actor Wozniak's second victim.

On the afternoon of May 21, 2010, Wozniak shot and killed Herr, his upstairs neighbor, and then dismembered his body, prosecutors say. Wozniak, 28, a community theater actor, then allegedly lured Kibuishi, Herr's friend and tutor, to Herr's apartment.

When she arrived, prosecutors say Wozniak shot her and then staged her body to look as though Herr had sexually assaulted her.

To lure Kibuishi to her death, prosecutors say, Wozniak posed as Herr, using Herr's cellphone to send text messages telling her that
he was having family problems and wanted to talk to someone he could
trust.

Buffett is accused of making misleading statements to detectives investigating the slayings, including an allegedly fictitious third man who was involved in the crime. The judge Friday ultimately found there was enough evidence to move forward with the case against Buffett, but said it would be a tough case for prosecutors.

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Photo: Samuel Herr. Credit: Family photo

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Rome Journal: As Mario Monti Prepares to Step Down, Italians Express Disappointment

ROME — As Prime Minister Mario Monti prepares to exit the stage, he has burnished Italy’s image — and his own — abroad, but he is less beloved at home. Italians are irate about higher taxes, while critics say that Mr. Monti failed to carry out the basic structural changes he said were needed, leaving a legacy more of austerity than growth.

While Mr. Monti passed tax increases, introduced a property tax, raised the retirement age and made changes to Italy’s labor laws, a host of bills aimed at limbering up Italy’s ossified economy have languished in Parliament, blocked by anxious lawmakers within his governing coalition.

But Mr. Monti, who arrived last year as a technocratic white knight whose mandate was to make the tough decisions needed to set Italy right, has struggled to stop them.

Even sympathetic critics say Mr. Monti did not do nearly enough with his mandate, especially in the first months of his government, when market pressures gave him more leverage over lawmakers who helped drive up the spending that got Italy in trouble in the first place.

“The labor market reform was under expectations,” said Tito Boeri, an economist at Bocconi University in Milan. “It didn’t do things it could do. It took very long to negotiate, and at the end brought very modest reforms.” He added that Mr. Monti was also “very timid” about liberalizing the guilds that serve as entry barriers for most professions.

That is largely because the parties nominally supporting his government were looking to save their seats and did not want to alienate their constituents. A bill that would have reduced the number of Italian provinces, eliminating a level of state spending and bureaucracy, was blocked in Parliament, as was a bill that would cut state spending on politicians.

“Paradoxically, the government of technocrats was blocked by the ‘technocracy,’ people in the public administration in Italy who have been there for years and who tried to make it hard for the government,” Mr. Boeri said.

Mr. Monti has said he has done the best he could with limited time.

It is not hard to understand Italians’ dissatisfaction. The austerity measures have exacerbated Italy’s worst recession in 60 years. Consumer spending suffered its sharpest year-on-year drop since World War II, according to Italy’s leading business association. Home sales were down 23 percent in the second quarter of the year compared with the same period last year.

Bank lending has plummeted and unemployment is at 11.1 percent, rising to 36.5 percent for young people, and experts say the figure may be even higher. Italy has one of Europe’s lowest employment levels, and some workers have been put on government-subsidized furloughs.

Much to Italians’ chagrin, the second installment of a new property tax came due just ahead of the holiday shopping season.

“This government has really given us a good thrashing,” said Rosaria Cistello, 62, as she worked at a laundromat in Rome. “Even the honest technocrat only managed to impose taxes on citizens, not to change the system.”

With growth prospects slim — Italy has not grown in two decades — some say Mr. Monti should have used the European Central Bank’s new bond-buying mechanism, which would have locked Italy into budgetary commitments set by the International Monetary Fund in exchange for the bank’s buying Italian bonds to keep interest rates down.

“Had we had an I.M.F. program right now there would be much less uncertainty,” said Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, a former member of the bank’s executive board. If the recession deepens, the credit crunch worsens and reforms stall, he said, Italy may need external help to service its debts in the future. Others say such help can be politically toxic.

With more economic turmoil ahead, it remains to be seen who will govern Italy after the elections. Although former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi startled markets recently by saying that he would run again, he now appears to be looking for ways to back out.

Nothing is certain in the political chaos, but it appears unlikely that Mr. Monti will run in early elections expected in February. Even if Mr. Monti were to decide to run, it is unclear what party he would ally with, since Italy lacks a mainstream center-right.

Lost in the theatrics is Pier Luigi Bersani, the understated leader of the center-left Democratic Party and a former economic growth minister who looks poised to win elections by a large margin. He is trying to forge an image as a reliable leader on board with Mr. Monti’s agenda.

But Mr. Bersani’s party, which is backed by Italy’s largest labor union, will have trouble governing without the help of centrist parties and the smaller Left Ecology and Freedom party, which does not agree with many of Mr. Monti’s neoliberal reforms.

“The most likely scenario today is that the Democratic Party with the Left Ecology and Freedom party will win both in the House and in the Senate,” said Roberto D’Alimonte, a political scientist at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.

There is wide speculation that instead of running for office, Mr. Monti, who will remain in Parliament as a senator for life, could replace Giorgio Napolitano, who is 87, as president of Italy.

“These are the most unpredictable elections in years,” said John Foot, a professor of Italian history at University College London. “It’s not worth trying to predict anything. You will just be proved wrong straight away.”

Most Italians long for stability. “The real issue with Italian politics is that no one has had a plan, a program for the past 20 years,” said Antonio Torda, 53, who owns a housewares shop in Rome.

Mr. Torda said he had “deep respect” for Mr. Monti, but wished he had passed some growth measures. Now, he said, “We need a political government that really makes decisions, takes responsibility for them and then asks the electorate whether they were right or wrong at the next turn.”

“Just regular democracy,” he added.

Elisabetta Povoledo and Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.

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Dozens Reported Dead in Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

Breaking News

By Stephen M. Silverman

UPDATED
12/14/2012 at 01:55 PM EST

• Originally published 12/14/2012 at 01:00 PM EST

State police personnel lead children from the Sandy Hook Elementary School

Shannon Hicks/Newtown Bee/Reuters/Landov

A massive, deadly shooting broke out Friday morning at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., about 65 miles northeast of New York City.

A federal official tells PEOPLE that 26 people were killed, including 18 children.

"The shooter is deceased inside the building. The scene is secure," Lt. J. Paul Vance of the Connecticut State Police deparatment said in a press conference Friday afternoon. "Many agencies are working together to answer questions about what happened ... the public is not in danger."

CNN reports that one alleged shooter's body was discovered in a classroom, though it is not known if he died by his own hand, by police, or some other means.

According to the Associated Press, the gunman is a 20-year-old man with ties to the school. An official said the gun used in the attacks was a .223-caliber rifle.

Early reports that there was a second gunman remain unconfirmed. Car-to-car searches in the area are taking place, reports ABC News.

The tragedy began just after 9:40 a.m., when police reported that a shooter was in the main office of Sandy Hook Elementary School. One person in a room suffered "numerous gunshot wounds," police told the Hartford Courant.

A photo taken on the scene shows distressed students as they were led away from the school by state police. Nearby Danbury Hospital, which is receiving victims of the shooting, is on lockdown, according to its Facebook page.

"Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat Danbury Hospital is under lockdown," says the statement. "This allows us simply to focus on the important work at hand."

A young girl after being evacuated from Sandy Hook Elementary School

Michelle McLoughlin / Reuters / Landov

FBI agents, SWAT teams and ambulances are on the scene, according to state emergency management officials.

Also under lockdown are all of the area's schools. Newtown Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June said in a statement, "The district is taking preventive measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety of all students and staff."

Some reports are calling this the worst school massacre in American history. At Colorado's Columbine High School in 1999, 15 were killed, including the two shooters. The 2007 Virginia Tech massacre claimed 32 victims.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Google / AP

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APNewsBreak: Texas cancer probe draws NCI scrutiny

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The National Cancer Institute confirmed Friday that federal officials are taking a closer look at a troubled $3 billion cancer-fighting effort in Texas that is under a criminal investigation over a lucrative taxpayer-funded grant awarded by the state agency.

The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas has coveted status as an NCI-approved funding entity — an exclusive group headlined by the nation's most prominent cancer organizations. The list is fewer than two dozen and includes the American Cancer Society, Susan G. Komen for the Cure and federal entities like the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

The designation is a federal seal-of-approval that signals high peer review standards and conflict of interest policies. Yearlong turmoil within the Texas institute, or CPRIT, reached a new peak this week when the agency's beleaguered chief executive asked to resign and prosecutors opened cases following an $11 million grant to a private company that was revealed to have bypassed an independent review.

NCI spokeswoman Aleea Farrakh Khan told The Associated Press that officials are "evaluating recent events" at CPRIT. She said officials have not made decisions or contacted the agency directly.

Members of CPRIT's governing board did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

NCI designation is not required for CPRIT to continue running the nation's second-largest pot of cancer research dollars, Khan said. But jeopardizing that status — and especially losing it — would be a severe blow to CPRIT's reputation, which already has been battered by sweeping resignations, internal accusations of politics trumping science and now a criminal investigation.

A recent internal audit at CPRIT discovered an $11 million funding request from Dallas-based Peloton Therapeutics was approved without the agency ever scrutinizing the proposal's merits. The revelation came only months after two Nobel laureates and other top scientists left the agency in protest over a $20 million grant some accused of being rushed to approval without a proper peer review.

While CPRIT is funded by taxpayers, donors to cancer nonprofits might look to an NCI designation for assurance that their money is in good hands.

"It says, 'If I'm donating money to this agency, if NCI is approving them, that means NCI says it's handling its money well,'" Khan said.

Khan added that CPRIT's inclusion on the list does not mean all of its funding mechanisms are NCI-approved.

An entire page of CPRIT's website is devoted to boasting its NCI designation. The agency says the status is important because it means cancer centers in Texas seeking its own NCI designation — so as to reassure patients or bolster recruitment — can include CPRIT research dollars in their calculations to maintain levels needed to be NCI approved.

"This enhances Texas' ability to leverage additional federal funding for cancer research and raises Texas' profile as a center for cancer research," according to the website.

Executive Director Bill Gimson submitted his resignation letter Tuesday but offered to stay on through January. He has described Peloton's improper funding as an honest mistake and said no one associated with CPRIT stood to personally profit from the company's award.

Prosecutors have not made any specific criminal allegations. Launching separate investigations into CPRIT are the Texas attorney general's office and the Travis County district attorney's public integrity unit, which investigates criminal misconduct within state government.

___

Follow Paul J. Weber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/pauljweber

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Man sought to videotape girlfriend's murder for Christmas, DA says

A south Orange County man who solicited his ex-girlfriend's murder and asked that the killing be videotaped so he could watch it on Christmas was sentenced Thursday to 31 years to life in state prison.

Mark Alan Jarosik, a Ladera Ranch resident, was in custody at the time of the murder solicitation, being held on suspicion of raping his former girlfriend.

Jarosik, 46, was found guilty in October of forcible rape, solicitation to commit murder and attempted murder with premeditation and deliberation, according to the Orange County district attorney's office.

Prosecutors said Jarosik went to the Ladera Ranch home of his 41-year-old ex-girlfriend in May 2009 to use her computer. They had broken up a month before, after living together and dating for several years.

The woman was at dinner with friends and when she returned, prosecutors said, the two got into an argument. The woman allegedly thought Jarosik had been spying on her, driving past the restaurant where she had been having dinner.

Prosecutors said the argument escalated into a physical and sexual assault, with Jarosik raping the woman.

On May 16, 2009, the incident was reported to law enforcement, and within days, prosecutors had filed rape charges. Jarosik was held in lieu of $100,000 bail. 

A protective order was issued requiring him -- should he make bail -- to stay more than 200 yards away from the woman at all times and forbidding any contact, directly or through a third party.

But after he posted bail, prosecutors said, Jarosik attempted to break into the woman's home. The woman's two children saw a hand come through a window near the front door of the house and screamed, and Jarosik fled.

The next morning, prosecutors said, Jarosik violated the protective order, attacking the woman outside her home. He pushed her to the ground, punched her in the face and banged her head against the curb, according to prosecutors.

Neighbors who witnessed the attack pulled Jarosik off of her, called authorities and pinned him down until police arrived. The woman was left in serious condition with a concussion and lacerations to the head.

While he was in custody at the Orange County Jail, prosecutors said, Jarosik asked another inmate to have a relative murder the woman, requesting that he have it videotaped.

The solicitation was never carried out.

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-- Rick Rojas and Richard Winton

Photo: Mark Alan Jarosik. Credit: Orange County District Attorney.

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Selling flak jackets in the cyberwars

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When the Israeli army and Hamas trade virtual blows in cyberspace, or when hacker groups like Anonymous rise from the digital ether, or when WikiLeaks dumps a trove of classified documents, some see a lawless Internet.

But Matthew Prince, chief executive at CloudFlare, a little-known Internet start-up that serves some of the Web’s most controversial characters, sees a business opportunity.

Founded in 2010, CloudFlare markets itself as an Internet intermediary that shields websites from distributed denial-of-service, or DDoS, attacks, the crude but effective weapon that hackers use to bludgeon websites until they go dark. The 40-person company claims to route up to 5 percent of all Internet traffic through its global network.

Prince calls his company the “Switzerland” of cyberspace – assiduously neutral and open to all comers. But just as companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have faced profound questions about the balance between free speech and openness on the Internet and national security and law enforcement concerns, CloudFlare‘s business has posed another thorny question: what kinds of services, if any, should an American company be allowed to offer designated terrorists and cyber criminals?

CloudFlare’s unusual position at the heart of this debate came to the fore last month, when the Israel Defense Forces sought help from CloudFlare after its website was struck by attackers based in Gaza. The IDF was turning to the same company that provides those services to Hamas and the al-Quds Brigades, according to publicly searchable domain information. Both Hamas and al-Quds, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, are designated by the United States as terrorist groups.

Under the USA Patriot Act, U.S. firms are forbidden from providing “material support” to groups deemed foreign terrorist organizations. But what constitutes material support – like many other facets of the law itself – has been subject to intense debate.

CloudFlare’s dealings have attracted heated criticism in the blogosphere from both Israelis and Palestinians, but Prince defended his company as a champion of free speech.

“Both sides have an absolute right to tell their story,” said Prince, a 38-year old former lawyer. “We’re not providing material support for anybody. We’re not sending money, or helping people arm themselves.”

Prince noted that his company only provides defensive capabilities that enable websites to stay online.

“We can’t be sitting in a role where we decide what is good or what is bad based on our own personal biases,” he said. “That’s a huge slippery slope.”

Many U.S. agencies are customers, but so is WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing organization. CloudFlare has consulted for many Wall Street institutions, yet also protects Anonymous, the “hacktivist” group associated with the Occupy movement.

Prince‘s stance could be tested at a time when some lawmakers in the United States and Europe, armed with evidence that militant groups rely on the Web for critical operations and recruitment purposes, have pressured Internet companies to censor content or cut off customers.

Last month, conservative political lobbies, as well as seven lawmakers led by Ted Poe, a Republican from Texas, urged the FBI to shut down the Hamas Twitter account. The account remains active; Twitter declined to comment.

MATERIAL SUPPORT

Although it has never prosecuted an Internet company under the Patriot Act, the government’s use of the material support argument has steadily risen since 2006. Since September 11, 2001, more than 260 cases have been charged under the provision, according to Fordham Law School’s Terrorism Trends database.

Catherine Lotrionte, the director of Georgetown University’s Institute for Law, Science and Global Security and a former Central Intelligence Agency lawyer, argued that Internet companies should be more closely regulated.

“Material support includes web services,” Lotrionte said. “Denying them services makes it more costly for the terrorists. You’re cornering them.”

But others have warned that an aggressive government approach would have a chilling effect on free speech.

“We’re resurrecting the kind of broad-brush approaches we used in the McCarthy era,” said David Cole, who represented the Humanitarian Law Project, a non-profit organization that was charged by the Justice Department for teaching law to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist group. The group took its case to the Supreme Court but lost in 2010.

The material support law is vague and ill-crafted, to the point where basic telecom providers, for instance, could be found guilty by association if a terrorist logs onto the Web to plot an attack, Cole said.

In that case, he asked, “Do we really think that AT&T or Google should be held accountable?”

CloudFlare said it has not been contacted about its services by the U.S. government. Spokespeople for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, told Reuters they contracted a cyber-security company in Gaza that out-sources work to foreign companies, but declined to comment further. The IDF confirmed it had hired CloudFlare, but declined to discuss “internal security” matters.

CloudFlare offers many of its services for free, but the company says websites seeking advanced protection and features can see their bill rise to more than $ 3,000 a month. Prince declined to discuss the business arrangements with specific customers.

While not yet profitable, CloudFlare has more than doubled its revenue in the past four months, according to Prince, and is picking up 3,000 new customers a month. The company has raked in more than $ 22 million from venture capital firms including New Enterprise Associates, Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners.

Prince, a Midwestern native with mussed brown hair who holds a law degree from the University of Chicago, said he has a track record of working on the right side of the law.

A decade ago, Prince provided free legal aid to Spamhaus, an international group that tracked email spammers and identity thieves. He went on to create Project Honey Pot, an open source spam-tracking endeavor that turned over findings to police.

Prince’s latest company, CloudFlare, has been hailed by groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists for protecting speech. Another client, the World Economic Forum, named CloudFlare among its 2012 “technology pioneers” for its work. But it also owes its profile to its most controversial customers.

CloudFlare has hosted 4Chan, the online messaging community that spawned Anonymous. LulzSec, the hacker group best known for targeting Sony Corp, is another customer. And since last May, the company has propped up WikiLeaks after a vigilante hacker group crashed the document repository.

Last year, members of the hacker collective UgNazi, whose exploits include pilfering user account information from eBay and crashing the CIA.gov website, broke into Prince’s cell phone and email accounts.

“It was a personal affront,” Prince said. “But we never kicked them off either.”

Prince said CloudFlare would comply with a valid court order to remove a customer, but that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has never requested a takedown. The company has agreed to turn over information to authorities on “exceedingly rare” occasions, he acknowledged, declining to elaborate.

“Any company that doesn’t do that won’t be in business long,” Prince said. But in an email, he added: “We have a deep and abiding respect for our users’ privacy, disclose to our users whenever possible if we are ordered to turn over information and would fight an order that we believed was not proper.”

Juliannne Sohn, an FBI spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted computer crimes, said U.S. law enforcement agencies may in fact prefer that the Web’s most wanted are parked behind CloudFlare rather than a foreign service over which they have no jurisdiction.

Federal investigators “want to gather information from as many sources as they can, and they’re happy to get it,” Sussmann said.

In an era of rampant cyber warfare, Prince acknowledged he is something of a war profiteer, but with a wrinkle.

“We’re not selling bullets,” he said. “We’re selling flak jackets.”

(Reporting By Gerry Shih in San Francisco and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Jonathan Weber and Claudia Parsons)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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American Idol: Has Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey's Feud Fizzled?

TV Watch

American Idol

12/13/2012 at 02:45 PM EST

Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey

Frank Micelotta/FOX (2)

Fans hoping to see new American Idol judges Mariah Carey and Nicki Minaj battle it out in an epic feud may be disappointed. The new panelists, along with host Ryan Seacrest, took a break from filming Hollywood week to chat with the press on Wednesday, and by (almost) all accounts season 12 is steeped in mutual admiration, sunshine and rainbows.

Despite her and Carey's heated exchange during auditions in Charlotte, N.C., Minaj had nothing but kind words for her fellow judges.

"We've jelled really, really well as a group," she told reporters. "We have a great chemistry. We have a great rhythm now together, and we really are taking it serious. ... We really are rooting for the contestants and we want to find a great American Idol."

For Idol veteran Randy Jackson, that means he'll play the hard-to-please role vacated by Simon Cowell.

"Nicki is mad funny, and Mariah is mad funny, and Keith is very quick-witted and funny," Jackson said. "We're all kind of silly, but I guess maybe I'm the harsh one. I'm the quickest to say no."

Keith Urban happily boasted about the "synergy" that he has found with his "very different" costars and admitted that his reported role as referee is really nothing more than keeping his fellow judges focused on the task at hand.

"I'm just trying to bring the drama down so that we can stay on point," he told PEOPLE.

Seacrest said the drama has a way of working itself out. "I don't really have to play peacekeeper," he said. "The peace finds itself. They find the peace ... eventually"

But Carey, resplendent in a floor-length red gown and diamond earrings, hinted that perhaps the claws haven't been fully retracted. She heaped praise upon her long-time friend Jackson, called Urban an "expert" of country music and said of the group, "I think this panel is great because of the diversity." But she dodged a question about what Minaj brings to the show.

"You know, I wouldn't feel comfortable commenting on that," she said with a smile. "But thank you for the question."

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Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

___

Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

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'Evil' actor killed college students, girlfriend says

A woman authorities say helped her then-fiance after he allegedly killed two people said at a news conference Tuesday night that she is "completely innocent."

Rachel Mae Buffett, 25, addressed the media at her brother's Long
Beach wine bar flanked by her brothers, sister and mother. She declared
her innocence and vowed to assist Costa Mesa police in their ongoing
investigation into the May 2010 killings of two Orange Coast College
students.

"I will meet them anywhere, anytime," Buffett said. "I'm very compliant."

Police and prosecutors have said that Buffett helped her then-fiance
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 28, after he killed Samuel Herr, 26,
his neighbor in the Camden Martinique apartments, and Herr's friend and
tutor Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23. Authorities say Buffett lied to police
after the slayings, telling police Herr had family problems when he did not.

Authorities said that Herr was killed at a Los Alamitos military base and later dismembered,
and that Kibuishi was killed at Herr's apartment, her body
positioned in such a way to make authorities believe she had been sexually
assaulted.

In a previous interview with the Daily Pilot from jail, Buffett described both victims as "so sweet" and said she continues to grieve for them.

"I'm really sorry such evil has occurred," Buffett said.

In addressing the charges facing her former fiance, Buffett said: "I'm glad that I don't have to do the sentencing.

"I think that they're very justified in going for the death penalty," Buffett said.

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Most Googled in 2012: Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, millions of people searched the Web to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google‘s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston‘s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the “Green Mile” actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and “BBB12,” the 12th edition of “Big Brother Brasil,” a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

— Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

— Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

— Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” ”YOLO (You Only Live Once),” ”SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama‘s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Miranda Lambert Gets Kissed by a Llama

People Pets

12/12/2012 at 02:30 PM EST

Miranda Lambert at the San Diego Zoo

Courtesy Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert is feeling the love – and not just from husband Blake Shelton.

"Llama kisses!" she Tweeted on Friday, sharing a photo of her up-close-and-personal encounter at the San Diego Zoo, which she visited with Shelton over the weekend.

The country couple also got acquainted with one of the zoo's big turtles, with Lambert – who took home three guitar trophies at Monday's American Country Awards – posting another photo of what she dubbed the pair's "zoo date."

"We had a blast at the San Diego zoo!!!!" she wrote. "Thanks so much."

The trip comes as no surprise for fans of the duo, whose love of animals has been well-documented. Lambert and Shelton plan to spend the holidays with their six rescue pooches, each of whom will receive a gift-wrapped present.

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Congress examines science behind HGH test for NFL

WASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional committee has opened a hearing to examine the science behind a human growth hormone test the NFL wants to start using on its players.

Nearly two full seasons have passed since the league and the players' union signed a labor deal that set the stage for HGH testing.

The NFL Players Association won't concede the validity of a test that's used by Olympic sports and Major League Baseball, and the sides haven't been able to agree on a scientist to help resolve that impasse.

Among the witnesses before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday is Pro Football Hall of Fame member Dick Butkus. In his prepared statement, Butkus writes: "Now, let's get on with it. The HGH testing process is proven to be reliable."

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Doctor caught with 1,000 child porn images, police say

A
Santa Ana foot doctor was arrested Tuesday on a warrant accusing him of possessing more
than 1,000 images of child pornography on his company computer.

Dr. Pete Thomas, 58, of Coastline Podiatry in Santa Ana, surrendered to a judge
Tuesday and was booked into Santa Ana jail before being released on $50,000 bail,
Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.

The images were first discovered by a
computer technician who was servicing company computers, Bertagna said. The technician told his bosses, who alerted
police in late October.

Detectives then seized the computer, and upon being
granted a search warrant, sent it to an FBI forensics lab, authorties said. There, investigators
located more than 1,000 images of children between age 7 and “early teenage
years,” who were  “involved
in sex acts with other kids and adults,” Bertagna
said.

“Right now, there is no evidence that he’s had any
personal contact with the children in the photographs,” Bertagna added.

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Afghan Law Offering Abused Women Redress Makes Slow Gains

KABUL, Afghanistan — Women who suffer violence in Afghanistan are often afraid to report abuses to government authorities and rarely see their cases taken to trial, though prosecutors regularly obtain convictions when cases do go forward, according to a report released on Tuesday by the United Nations office here.

The detailed study of the Elimination of Violence Against Women Act, enacted by Afghanistan in 2009, found that the use of that law had increased significantly, with prosecutions doubling, but still lagging far behind the growing number of complaints.

More than 4,000 reports of abuse of women were recorded by the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission from over the seven months ending in October, which far outstrips the number recorded during the 12 preceding months, March 2011 to March 2012.

However, in the United Nations’ study of 16 Afghan provinces, including some of the most populous, only a small percentage of those reports were registered with the police or the courts, and prosecutors took barely a third of the complaints — just 163 — to trial. Still, they obtained 100 convictions.

The antiviolence law lists 22 acts that constitute violence against women, including rape, forced prostitution, forced marriage, child marriage, harassment or persecution, and causing injury or disability.

The reasons for the huge gap between the number of reports and the number investigated and brought to trial have much to do with Afghan culture, which discourages discussing family troubles with strangers, and with widespread discrimination against women, which leads to “acceptance of violence against them,” said Georgette Gagnon, the director of human rights for the United Nations’ Afghanistan office, who discussed the findings at a news conference.

In many places, the police and prosecutors discourage women from pressing their case in court, Ms. Gagnon said. The commitment of government authorities ranges widely, with some deeply supportive of the law — to the extent of risking their lives to help women — and others reluctant to move cases into the courts.

“Rather than following required legal procedures in all cases, police and prosecutors’ offices continue to refer numerous cases, including serious crimes of violence against women, to jirgas and shuras for advice or resolution,” she said.

Shuras and jirgas, tribal councils that rely on male elders to determine a solution, often return women to the circumstances in which they were abused, and only rarely punish the perpetrators. The use of shuras and jirgas is especially prevalent in ethnic Pashtun areas of the country, but it is not unknown in Tajik areas. Of 52 cases registered by the provincial office of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Nangarhar Province in eastern Afghanistan, 17 were sent to jirgas, according to the report.

The report noted that in some areas, government authorities appeared to be so reluctant to invite public attention that they reported no cases of abuse at all. That was the case in Panjshir Province, which is overwhelmingly ethnic Tajik, as well as in Wardak and Logar Provinces, which are both majority Pashtun. In Panjshir, abuse complaints were diverted to jirgas, the United Nations report said.

Women are afraid to make their troubles public in part because they fear retribution from those who abused them, Ms. Gagnon said. “Women will tell you that most of them don’t go to authorities to complain,” she said. “And how would they go? They can’t get out of the house.”

Prosecutors are most active in Herat, in western Afghanistan, and in Kabul, the two largest metropolitan areas, which together accounted for more than half of the instances of violence that were registered with prosecutors’ offices. That indicated better systems for reporting there and perhaps a greater awareness of the issues, women’s rights advocates said.

Still, the tiny percentage of prosecutions outraged the advocates, who said a major problem was a culture of impunity that allowed abusers who occupied positions of power in communities to go unpunished, discouraging prosecutions.

“Given the high number of cases of violence against women, from now on we should stop using the word ‘violence’ and use the word ‘crime’ when we talk about this,” said Selay Ghaffar, a member of the Afghan Women’s Network. “Unfortunately, those who violate women’s rights have not been punished, and they still walk free.”

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Web host Go Daddy appoints former Yahoo executive as CEO

(Reuters) – Go Daddy, one of the world’s biggest Internet hosting firms, appointed Yahoo Inc‘s former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving as chief executive.

He will take over from interim CEO Scott Wagner on January 7. Irving left Yahoo, where he headed a centralized products group that straddled several client types, on April 27.

“Blake Irving’s deep technology experience and his history of developing new cutting-edge products and leading large global teams make him a … compelling choice to drive Go Daddy to the next level of its … growth,” said Bob Parsons, Go Daddy’s executive chairman and founder.

Irving also served in various positions at Microsoft Corp from 1992 to 2007.

Go Daddy, which describes itself as the top provider of domain names, filed to go public in 2006 but withdrew its IPO due to poor market conditions.

(Reporting by Neha Alawadhi in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Man Builds Full-Scale Replica of Noah's Ark

People Pets

By Stephen M. Silverman

12/11/2012 at 02:15 PM EST

Johan Huibers and his ark

Peter Dejong/AP

He may have trouble finding two animals of every kind, but Johan Huibers of the Netherlands isn't one to be dissuaded.

After 20 years, the professional builder completed his goal of building a full-scale, fully-operational version of Noah's Ark, using Genesis, books 6-9, in The Bible as his guide.

Huibers converted cubits to modern measurements to pull off the feat, reports the Associated Press, leading to an impressive wooden vessel that is 427 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet high.

But just to be clear, the Dutchman, a Christian, is not expecting a flood of Biblical proportions anytime soon.

"I had a call from American television," he told AP with a laugh. "This has nothing to do with the end of the Mayan calendar."

Instead, citing what The Bible predicts might be in store for Earth, Huibers says, "I want to make people question that so that they go looking for answers." He also hopes people will ultimately find salvation through God and eternal life.

And while the ark is not currently occupied with multitudes of four-legged creatures – though there are reportedly some plastic and stuffed replicas of larger species onboard for atmosphere – there is a small petting zoo with ponies, dogs, sheep, rabbits and exotic birds aboard the ship, which is moored just south of Rotterdam, as well as a restaurant and movie theater that can seat 50.

See more photos inside the ark on CNN.com.

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Surprise: New insurance fee in health overhaul law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

"Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it," said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.

Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.

The program "is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all," the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to "contributions" without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.

Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.

The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama's expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.

But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don't provide coverage.

"This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount," said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.

Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama's law take effect.

But employers already offering coverage to their workers don't see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

"It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs," said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The fee will be assessed on all "major medical" insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That's because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.

The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.

It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.

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Actor's girlfriend says he killed, dismembered college students

Hours before he played the romantic lead in a community theater play opposite his real-life fiancee, authorities allege Daniel Patrick Wozniak shot and killed his neighbor.

Not long after that evening’s performance, he slipped out of the Costa Mesa apartment he shared with his then-fiancee, Rachel Buffett, 25, and killed a second person , according to police, prosecutors and Buffett's account of events.

Authorities say that when they questioned Buffett, she lied to protect Wozniak, who is now facing double murder charges.

More than two years after the May 2010 crimes, Buffett was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact. It is a charge she disputes. 

"I'm innocent, and he's guilty, and he confessed to that," she told the Daily Pilot in a jailhouse interview. She said Wozniak told her that he confessed to police that he killed the two victims.

She said she's always been honest and forth-coming with police and doesn't understand why she is now facing felony charges and a possible prison sentence of more than three years.

"You go over it in your mind, 'How could I possibly give someone wrong information?' " she said. "I was trying to be helpful and give them every conception in my mind."

Police, however, say their investigation, which included interviews with Buffett and multiple witnesses, indicates she wasn't truthful.

"She told us a story we know not to be true," said Costa Mesa Police Sgt. Ed Everett. "We waited that long basically because we didn't want to prematurely arrest her for accessory and find out she was complicit in the homicides." 

Police said Wozniak killed his neighbor Samuel Herr in the theater of the Joint Forces Training Center in Los Alamitos before dismembering his body and leaving his head and hands at the nearby El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach.

Authorities allege that Wozniak then killed Herr's friend and tutor, Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, 23, in Herr's apartment, then staged the crime to make it look like a sexual assault.

Wozniak reportedly told detectives he was motivated by money. He and Buffett had planned to marry soon. Authorities said Wozniak killed Herr to secure his ATM card. Herr had saved money from his time in the military.

Wozniak remains in Orange County Jail on murder charges. If convicted, he could receive the death penalty.

Buffett faces three felony charges of accessory to murder after the fact. She faces a three-year, eight-month, sentence if convicted.

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Photo: Rachel Buffett. Credit: Daily Pilot

Read More..

Morsi Spokesman Tries to Clarify Military Order

Petr David Josek/Associated Press

Demonstrators camping out in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Monday.

CAIRO — A day after President Mohamed Morsi formally directed the military to help keep public order and authorized soldiers to arrest civilians, a spokesman on Monday sought to draw distinctions between the order and the forms of martial law that the Egyptian Army had previously imposed.

The spokesman, Khaled Al-Qazzaz, said the president had called upon the military for the limited purpose of protecting polling stations during Saturday’s constitutional referendum. He also said the president had instructed the army to refer any civilians arrested by soldiers to a civilian court for trial, instead of military tribunals, reversing the blanket authorizations that the Egyptian military has long demanded when it takes on a policing role in the streets.

“This is very different from what happened under the SCAF,” said Mr. Qazzaz, referring to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, which ruled Egypt after President Hosni Mubarak was ousted and until Mr. Morsi took over. “What the president did with the cabinet is, anyone arrested will be referred to a normal judicial process and it will go to a normal civilian court. There will be no military trials.”

Ending military trials was a rallying cry of the opposition when the council was in charge, but it was not immediately clear on Monday how the instructions Mr. Qazzaz described might fit within the written order or the usual rules of the Egyptian military.

Heba Morayef, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, noted that the text of the order allowed the military to continue taking civilians to military courts. “Had he wanted to,” Ms. Morayef said, “President Morsi could have stipulated that the military’s jurisdiction would have been limited in this case and that every civilian will be referred to a civilian court, but he chose not to.” She also noted that the draft constitution specifically allows for the military to continue bringing civilians to military courts for trial if they disobey a military authority. “As long as the military is deployed, the military has jurisdiction under the military code of justice,” she said.

The debate over the military’s role in the referendum added to the intensifying political crisis over Egypt’s draft constitution, which the president and his Islamist allies are trying to pass quickly. After announcing its “complete rejection of the referendum” on Sunday, a coalition of the president’s opponents indicated on Monday that it was still debating whether to call for a boycott of the charter or to campaign for a vote against it.

There are also splits among Egypt’s judges, who are supposed to supervise the referendum. On Monday, a group representing administrative court judges said that under certain conditions they would agree to supervise the vote, while other judges’ clubs have said their members would boycott the referendum.

Major demonstrations are expected at the presidential palace again on Tuesday and Friday — ensuring that questions about Egypt’s national unity and stability will continue to overshadow debate about the specific contents of the charter. Although international experts who have studied the draft say it is hardly more religious than Egypt’s existing Constitution, opponents say it fails to adequately protect individual rights from being constricted by a future Islamist majority in Parliament.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to oppose the charter, crowds have attacked 28 Muslim Brotherhood offices and the group’s headquarters, and at least seven people have died in clashes between Islamist and secular political factions.

Kareem Fahim contributed reporting from Cairo.

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Pink Offers Sympathy for Kate's Pregnancy Woes

By Andrea Billups

12/10/2012 at 02:30 PM EST

Pink and Willow Sage Hart

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She's tiny, athletic and so fit she can sing while hanging upside down performing Cirque du Soleil-style moves. But Pink says she was just like many other women when she was pregnant last year – devouring a whole cheesecake in one sitting, gaining 60 pounds, feeling no morning sickness, but rather rage, often pointed at husband Carey Hart.

She now feels sympathy for the ailing Duchess of Cambridge, who is suffering in the early stages of her own pregnancy.

"I didn't have morning sickness at all, I just had genuine rage throughout my pregnancy," said the singer, 33. "I'm talking 28 Days Later rage. Demonic eyes. I wanted to kill everybody," she told London's Mirror.

"I remember the first time my husband Carey p––d me off during my pregnancy and I bit his head off ... his eyes glazed over, he was so scared," says Pink. "He realized this is how it was and he better not say another word. I wasn't pukey – I was just angry."

Now a happy mom to 18-month-old Willow, the former gymnast is back in shape, thanks to tons of core workouts, and she's ready to tour in 2013 with a chart-topping (and Grammy-nominated) album, The Truth of Love.

The tattooed singer says she gets why her fierce energy sometimes can be intimidating, but says she has also tender side.

"I completely understand why people can be scared of me," she says. "But underneath all that rage I'm a petite tulip."

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Surprise: New insurance fee in health overhaul law

WASHINGTON (AP) — Your medical plan is facing an unexpected expense, so you probably are, too. It's a new, $63-per-head fee to cushion the cost of covering people with pre-existing conditions under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

The charge, buried in a recent regulation, works out to tens of millions of dollars for the largest companies, employers say. Most of that is likely to be passed on to workers.

Employee benefits lawyer Chantel Sheaks calls it a "sleeper issue" with significant financial consequences, particularly for large employers.

"Especially at a time when we are facing economic uncertainty, (companies will) be hit with a multi-million dollar assessment without getting anything back for it," said Sheaks, a principal at Buck Consultants, a Xerox subsidiary.

Based on figures provided in the regulation, employer and individual health plans covering an estimated 190 million Americans could owe the per-person fee.

The Obama administration says it is a temporary assessment levied for three years starting in 2014, designed to raise $25 billion. It starts at $63 and then declines.

Most of the money will go into a fund administered by the Health and Human Services Department. It will be used to cushion health insurance companies from the initial hard-to-predict costs of covering uninsured people with medical problems. Under the law, insurers will be forbidden from turning away the sick as of Jan. 1, 2014.

The program "is intended to help millions of Americans purchase affordable health insurance, reduce unreimbursed usage of hospital and other medical facilities by the uninsured and thereby lower medical expenses and premiums for all," the Obama administration says in the regulation. An accompanying media fact sheet issued Nov. 30 referred to "contributions" without detailing the total cost and scope of the program.

Of the total pot, $5 billion will go directly to the U.S. Treasury, apparently to offset the cost of shoring up employer-sponsored coverage for early retirees.

The $25 billion fee is part of a bigger package of taxes and fees to finance Obama's expansion of coverage to the uninsured. It all comes to about $700 billion over 10 years, and includes higher Medicare taxes effective this Jan. 1 on individuals making more than $200,000 per year or couples making more than $250,000. People above those threshold amounts also face an additional 3.8 percent tax on their investment income.

But the insurance fee had been overlooked as employers focused on other costs in the law, including fines for medium and large firms that don't provide coverage.

"This kind of came out of the blue and was a surprisingly large amount," said Gretchen Young, senior vice president for health policy at the ERISA Industry Committee, a group that represents large employers on benefits issues.

Word started getting out in the spring, said Young, but hard cost estimates surfaced only recently with the new regulation. It set the per capita rate at $5.25 per month, which works out to $63 a year.

America's Health Insurance Plans, the major industry trade group for health insurers, says the fund is an important program that will help stabilize the market and mitigate cost increases for consumers as the changes in Obama's law take effect.

But employers already offering coverage to their workers don't see why they have to pony up for the stabilization fund, which mainly helps the individual insurance market. The redistribution puts the biggest companies on the hook for tens of millions of dollars.

"It just adds on to everything else that is expected to increase health care costs," said economist Paul Fronstin of the nonprofit Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The fee will be assessed on all "major medical" insurance plans, including those provided by employers and those purchased individually by consumers. Large employers will owe the fee directly. That's because major companies usually pay upfront for most of the health care costs of their employees. It may not be apparent to workers, but the insurance company they deal with is basically an agent administering the plan for their employer.

The fee will total $12 billion in 2014, $8 billion in 2015 and $5 billion in 2016. That means the per-head assessment would be smaller each year, around $40 in 2015 instead of $63.

It will phase out completely in 2017 — unless Congress, with lawmakers searching everywhere for revenue to reduce federal deficits — decides to extend it.

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