NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday, rebounding from their worst daily loss since November in the prior session.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 84.21 points, or 0.61 percent, at 13,964.29. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 9.12 points, or 0.61 percent, at 1,504.83. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 10.31 points, or 0.33 percent, at 3,141.48.
(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
CAIRO (Reuters) - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Egypt on Tuesday on the first trip by an Iranian president since the 1979 revolution, underlining a thaw in relations since Egyptians elected an Islamist head of state.
President Mohamed Mursi, the Muslim Brotherhood politician elected in June, kissed Ahmadinejad as he disembarked from his plane at Cairo airport. The leaders walked down a red carpet, Ahmadinejad smiling as he shook hands with waiting dignitaries.
Visiting Cairo to attend an Islamic summit that begins on Wednesday, the president of the Shi'ite Islamist republic is due to meet later on Tuesday with the grand sheikh of al-Azhar, one of the oldest seats of learning in the Sunni world.
Such a visit would have been unthinkable during the rule of Hosni Mubarak, the military-backed autocrat who preserved Egypt's peace treaty with Israel during his 30 years in power and deepened ties between Cairo and the West.
"The political geography of the region will change if Iran and Egypt take a unified position on the Palestinian question," Ahmadinejad said in an interview with Al Mayadeen, a Beirut-based TV station, on the eve of his visit.
He said he wanted to visit the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian territory which neighbors Egypt to the east and is run by the Islamist movement Hamas. "If they allow it, I would go to Gaza to visit the people," Ahmadinejad said.
Analysts doubt that the historic changes that brought Mursi to power in Egypt will result in a full restoration of diplomatic ties between states whose relations were broken off after the Iranian revolution and the conclusion of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel in 1979.
OBSTACLES TO FULL TIES
At the airport the two leaders discussed ways of boosting relations between their countries and resolving the Syrian crisis "without resorting to military intervention", Egyptian state media reported.
Egypt is concerned by Iran's support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is trying to crush an uprising inspired by the revolt that swept Mubarak from power two years ago. Egypt's overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population is broadly supportive of the uprising against Assad's Alawite-led administration.
The Mursi administration also wants to safeguard relations with Gulf Arab states that are supporting Cairo's battered state finances and are deeply suspicious of Iran.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr reassured Gulf Arab allies that Egypt would not jeopardize their security.
"The security of the Gulf states is the security of Egypt," he told the official MENA news agency, in response to questions about Cairo's opening to Iran and its impact on other states in the region.
Mursi wants to preserve ties with the United States, the source of $1.3 billion in aid each year to the influential Egyptian military.
His government has established close ties with Hamas, a movement backed by Iran and shunned by the West because of its hostility to Israel, but its priority is addressing Egypt's deep economic problems.
"The restoration of full relations with Iran in this period is difficult, despite the warmth in ties ... because of many problems including the Syrian crisis and Cairo's links with the Gulf states, Israel and the United States," said one former Egyptian diplomat.
Speaking to Reuters on the sidelines of preparatory meetings for the two-day Islamic summit, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he was optimistic that ties could grow closer.
"We are gradually improving. We have to be a little bit patient. I'm very hopeful about the expansion of the bilateral relationship," he said. Asked where he saw room for closer ties, he said: "Trade and economics."
Ahmadinejad's visit to Egypt follows Mursi's visit to Iran in August for a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the 1,000-year-old al-Azhar mosque and university, will meet Ahmadinejad at his offices in mediaeval Islamic Cairo, al-Azhar's media office said.
Salehi, the Iranian foreign Minister, stressed the importance of Muslim unity when he met Sheikh al-Tayeb at al-Azhar last month.
Egypt and Iran have taken opposite courses since the late 1970s. Egypt, under Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat, concluded a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 and became a close ally of the United States and Europe. Iran from 1979 turned into a center of opposition to Western influence in the Middle East.
Symbolically, Iran named a street in Tehran after the Islamist who led the 1981 assassination of Sadat.
Egypt gave asylum and a state funeral to Iran's exiled Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown by the 1979 Iranian revolution. He is buried in a medieval Cairo mosque alongside his ex-brother-in-law, Egypt's last king, Farouk.
(Additional reporting by Ayman Samir and Alexander Diadosz; Editing by Andrew Roche and Paul Taylor)
Like other new mobile products Apple (AAPL) has launched in recent years, the company’s iPad mini has been in short supply ever since it was released this past November. The sleek device added a new, lower price point to Apple’s tablet portfolio and some analysts believe it will soon be more popular than Apple’s full-size iPad. While demand remained strong through the holidays, Apple managed to improve iPad mini supply and get shipping times for new orders placed in Apple’s online store ahead of the holidays down to 1 week. Now, shipping quotes are down to 1-3 business days, marking the best turnaround time Apple has seen since launching the new device. BGR reviewed the iPad mini last November and called it Apple’s best tablet yet.
[More from BGR: iOS 6.1 untethered jailbreak now available for download, compatible with iPhone 5 and iPad mini]
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Maggie Coughlan
02/05/2013 at 09:45 AM EST
Little House on the Prairie
Think again.
Readers of the beloved series will remember how Wilder's older sister Mary went blind as a result of scarlet fever. But a new study published in Pediatrics, the Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has revealed the cause of Mary's blindness was actually meningoencephalitis – a disease similar to meningitis.
Over the course of 10 years, Dr. Beth Tarini and a team of researchers studied papers and letters written by Wilder, newspaper articles about Mary's illness and data on blindness and infectious disease in the late 19th century, CNN reports.
Tarini discovered that in Pioneer Girl, Wilder's unpublished memoir, there is no reference to Mary contracting scarlet fever before going blind. "She never says scarlet fever. She never says rash," Tarini told CNN.
Then Tarini unveiled what would lead her to discover a different diagnosis. In a letter Wilder wrote to her daughter, Rose, she referenced Mary suffering from "some sort of spinal sickness." The letter goes on to mention that Mary was told by specialist in Chicago that the "nerves of her eyes were paralyzed and there was no hope."
But why would Wilder write that her sister suffered from scarlet fever? Researchers think perhaps Wilder and her editors felt the illness would be more relatable to her readers.
CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.
The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.
The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.
In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.
That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.
In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.
"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."
The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.
But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.
In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.
The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.
Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.
"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.
Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.
"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.
Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.
"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.
___
Online:
Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org
It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks opened lower on Monday, dipping after a recent rally that took the S&P 500 to a five-year high and the Dow to 14,000 for the first time since October 2007.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 58.67 points, or 0.42 percent, at 13,951.12. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 6.84 points, or 0.45 percent, at 1,506.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 18.33 points, or 0.58 percent, at 3,160.77.
(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Kenneth Barry)
KIDAL, Mali (Reuters) - Tuareg rebels in northern Mali said on Monday they had captured two senior Islamist insurgents fleeing French air strikes toward the Algerian border, and France pressed ahead with its bombing campaign against al Qaeda's Saharan desert camps.
Pro-autonomy Tuareg MNLA rebels said they had seized Mohamed Moussa Ag Mohamed, an Islamist leader who imposed harsh sharia law in the desert town of Timbuktu, and Oumeini Ould Baba Akhmed, believed to be responsible for the kidnapping of a French hostage by the al Qaeda splinter group MUJWA.
"We chased an Islamist convoy close to the frontier and arrested the two men the day before yesterday," Ibrahim Ag Assaleh, spokesman for the MNLA, told Reuters from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. "They have been questioned and sent to Kidal."
France has deployed 3,500 ground troops, and warplanes and armored vehicles in its three-week-old Operation Serval (Wildcat) in Mali which has broken the Islamists' 10-month grip on northern towns, where they imposed sharia law.
Paris and its international partners want to prevent the Islamists from using Mali's vast desert north as a base to launch attacks on neighboring African countries and the West.
The MNLA, which seized control of northern Mali last year only to be pushed aside by better-armed Islamist groups, regained control of its northern stronghold of Kidal last week when Islamist fighters fled French airstrikes into the nearby desert and rugged Adrar des Ifoghas mountains.
The Tuareg group says it is willing to help the French-led mission by hunting down Islamists. It has offered to hold peace talks with the government in a bid to heal wounds between Mali's restive Saharan north and the black African-dominated south.
"Until there is a peace deal, we cannot hold national elections," Ag Assaleh said, referring to interim Malian President Dioncounda Traore's plan to hold polls on July 31.
Many in the southern capital Bamako - including army leaders who blame the MNLA for executing some of their troops at the Saharan town of Aguelhoc last year - strongly reject any talks.
French special forces took the airport in Kidal on Tuesday, reaching the most northern city previously held by the Islamist alliance. Though the MNLA says it controls Kidal, a Reuters reporter in the town saw a contingent of Chadian troops - part of a U.N.-backed African mission being deployed to help retake northern Mali - backing up French special forces there.
TARGETING REBEL BASES, DEPOTS
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said warplanes were continuing bombing raids on Islamists in Mali's far north to destroy their supply lines and flush them out of remote areas.
"The objective is to destroy their support bases, their depots because they have taken refuge in the north and north-east of the country and can only stay there in the long-term if they have the means to sustain themselves," Fabius said.
"The army is working to stop that," he told French radio.
Jets attacked rebel camps on Sunday targeting logistics bases and training camps used by the al Qaeda-linked rebels near Tessalit, close to the Algerian border.
French President Francois Hollande made a one-day trip to Mali on Saturday, promising to keep troops in the country until the job of restoring government control in the Sahel state was finished. He was welcomed as a savior by cheering Malians.
The rebels' retreat to hideouts in the remote Adrar des Ifoghas mountains - where Paris believes they are holding seven French hostages - heralds a potentially more complicated new phase of France's intervention in its former colony.
"We are still in the same war, but we're entering a new battle," said Vincent Desportes, a French former general and now associate professor at Science-Po university in Paris.
"We will look to gradually wear out and destroy the terrorists that are sheltering in the Ifoghas. It's now a war of intelligence (services), strikes and probably action by special forces in the background."
Hollande said on Saturday that Paris would withdraw its troops from Mali once the landlocked West African nation had restored sovereignty over its territory and a U.N.-backed African military force could take over from the French soldiers.
Drawn mostly from Mali's West African neighbours, this force is expected to number more than 8,000. But its deployment has been badly hampered by shortages of kit and airlift capacity and questions about who will fund the estimated $1 billion cost.
Fabius said French soldiers may soon pull back from Timbuktu. Its residents had celebrated their liberation from the Islamists, who had handed down punishments including whipping and amputation for breaking sharia law.
The rebels also smashed sacred Sufi mausoleums and destroyed or stole some 2,000 ancient manuscripts at the South African-sponsored Baba Ahmed Institute, causing international outcry.
"A withdrawal could happen very quickly," Fabius said. "We're working towards it because we have no desire to stay there for the long-term.
(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, Daniel Flynn in Dakar and David Lewis in Timbuktu; Writing by Daniel Flynn; Editing by Pascal Fletcher and Jon Boyle)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – An Estonian man pleaded guilty on Friday in U.S. federal court for his role in a massive Internet scam that targeted well-known websites such as iTunes, Netflix and The Wall Street Journal.
The scheme infected at least four million computers in more than 100 countries, including 500,000 in the United States, with malicious software, or malware, according to the indictment. It included a large number of computers at data centers located in New York, federal prosecutors said.
Valeri Aleksejev, 32, was the first of six Estonians and one Russian indicted in 2011 to enter a plea. They were indicted on five charges each of wire and computer intrusion. One of the defendants, Vladimir Tsastsin, was also charged with 22 counts of money laundering.
In U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Friday, Aleksejev pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces up to 25 years in prison, deportation and the forfeiture of $ 7 million.
The scam had several components, including a “click-hijacking fraud” in which the malware re-routed searches by users on infected computers to sites designated by the defendants, prosecutors said in the indictment. Users of infected computers trying to access Apple Inc’s iTunes website or Netflix Inc‘s movie website, for example, instead ended up at websites of unaffiliated businesses, according to the indictment.
Another component of the scam replaced legitimate advertisements on websites operated by News Corp’s The Wall Street Journal, Amazon.com Inc and others with advertisements that triggered payments for the defendants, prosecutors said.
The defendants reaped at least $ 14 million from the fraud, prosecutors said. However, Aleksejev’s lawyer, William Stampur, said in court on Friday that Aleksejev has no assets.
Estonian police arrested Aleksejev and the other Estonians in November 2011. One other Estonian, Anton Ivanov, has been extradited, and the extradition of the other four is pending, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan. The Russian, Andrey Taame, remains at large, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
Aleksejev told Magistrate Judge James Francis he assisted in blocking anti-virus software updates on infected computers. Francis asked Aleksejev if he knew what he was doing was illegal.
“I thought it was wrong,” Aleksejev said in broken English after a long pause. “But of course I didn’t know all the laws in the U.S.”
Francis set a tentative sentencing date of May 31 for Aleksejev.
The case is USA v. Tsastsin et al, U.S. District Court in Manhattan, No. 11-00878.
(Reporting by Bernard Vaughan; Editing by Dan Grebler)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Andrea Billups
02/04/2013 at 09:50 AM EST
Jenny McCarthy (inset) and new new tattoo
Courtesy Jenny McCarthy
Jenny McCarthy Tweeted an early Monday morning photo of a fresh tattoo that now covers the top of her left foot.
"Got a new tattoo during half time black out. So excited 2 b wearing heels on The Today Show this morning. Ouch," McCarthy, 40, posted with a photo, noting it was still painful. The tattoo features a rose with leaves and intricate vines.
McCarthy, a veteran Playboy centerfold and comedian, hosted a Super Bowl kickoff party, Leather & Laces, on Friday in New Orleans. But it was back to business this week as she continues to make press rounds, promoting her return to TV on the new The Jenny McCarthy Show, which premieres Friday on VH1.
Apparently her foot wasn't the only thing hurting as McCarthy headed over for an appearance with Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb Monday morning. She Tweeted: "Cramps on press tour. Doing Kathy lee and Hoda next. Hoping they have a heating pad and Whisky. Wait... Of course they will have Whisky."
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somalia's prime minister on Sunday said the authorities will do more to protect rape victims after foreign donors and human rights groups criticised the arrests of a woman allegedly gang-raped by soldiers and a journalist who interviewed her.
The trial of an unidentified 27-year-old woman, her husband, and the freelance journalist has sparked international concerns over sexual violence and press freedom in the country.
The trio face prison terms of several years on charges including insulting a government body, making false accusations, and seeking to profit from the allegations.
Human rights groups say the trial is politically motivated, designed to cover up rampant sexual abuse of women by Somali security forces, while the U.N. and the United States have voiced concerns about the treatment of rape victims.
Recently-appointed Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon Saaid promised to reform Somali armed forces and the judiciary once the trial has concluded, acknowledging "deep-seated problems" with both institutions.
"We recognize the concerns of our international partners and we are only too aware of the enormous challenges our nation faces," Saaid said in a statement.
For two decades the Horn of Africa state has been plagued by civil war, anarchy and Islamist insurgencies. However, September's peaceful elections, the first since military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown by warlords in 1991, have been heralded as the dawn of a new era for Somalia.
The U.N.'s Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Zainab Hawa Bangura, on Saturday called for the Somali government to deal with the country's rape problems, saying the U.N. had evidence around 1,700 women were raped between January and November last year in camps for internally displaced people around Mogadishu.
Saaid, a former businessman who is married to an influential Somali peace activist, said the government has launched public campaigns designed to bring down instances of rape. However, he concedes more can be done.
"I have since urged the government in the strongest terms to be much more responsive on this question, to take proactive measures, prosecute any such crimes and provide all appropriate care to the victims," he said.
Journalism organizations and human rights groups say arresting a journalist and putting him on trial for interviewing a rape victim is an attack on media freedoms and free speech.
Somalia is one of the world's most dangerous places for journalists, with killings of reporters reaching an all-time high in 2012 when 18 media workers were killed, according to the National Union of Somali Journalists.
But Saaid stressed the government's support for press freedom, saying "journalists perform a critical role and we want them to be able to work without fear or favor".
Saaid said the government will soon form a new and independent task force on human rights which will investigate attacks against women and violence against journalists.
(Reporting by Andi Sheikh and Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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