International Military Officials Investigate Afghan Deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan — International military officials are investigating two episodes in which as many as 11 Afghan civilians may have been killed in what appeared to be American-led military actions.

In the more lethal episode, Afghan officials said 10 civilians were killed overnight in Kunar Province in eastern Afghanistan in a village where two known Taliban commanders were visiting family members.

“Ten civilians were killed last night in a joint Afghan and American operation that took place in Chogam Valley in Shigal District,” said Fazullah Wahidi, the provincial governor. He said four women, one man and five children between the ages of 8 and 13 were killed; four teenagers were wounded, three of whom were girls.

Increasingly over the last two years, foreign insurgents, sometimes with links to Al Qaeda and other non-Afghan groups, have taken refuge in Kunar and neighboring Nuristan Province. Both provinces have a long border with Pakistan, and insurgents can hide easily in the rugged and forested mountain terrain Mr. Wahidi said the target of Kunar operation was a Taliban leader named Shahpour, “a known and really dangerous Afghan Taliban commander with links to Al Qaeda operatives in Kunar” and another Taliban commander, known as “Rocketi,” a Pakistani citizen from the Northwest Frontier Province. Both men were killed in the attack.

Mr. Wahidi said that the operation was not coordinated with Afghan security forces, but that locally hired Afghan paramilitaries were involved in the raid, which included an airstrike and a ground operation. Sometimes other United States government agencies rather than the military use special commandos.

Maj. Adam Wojack, a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said they had no information on the operation but “were aware of the reports” of civilian deaths and were looking into it.

Local officials in Kunar said that Shahpour was believed to have links to Al Qaeda and narrowly escaped being killed last year when the Americans attacked another Al Qaeda-linked Taliban commander known as Abu Hafez Al-Najde, who also went by the name Commander Ghani. Shahpour was the Taliban leader in charge of nearby Dangam district but was visiting relatives at the time of the raid.

People from Chogam, who brought injured from the remote village where the attack took place to the main hospital in the provincial capital of Asadabad, described a precise but damaging hit on two adjacent houses.

“Two homes were totally destroyed; air power was used during the operation,” said a man who brought a boy with cuts to the hospital for treatment, but refused to give his name. “There are still dead bodies under the rubble and human flesh scattered in the area.”

The other episode in which an Afghan civilian was killed by foreign troops occurred on Tuesday during daylight hours.

It took place as NATO-led forces were checking a stretch of heavily traveled highway between Kandahar and Spin Boldak for explosives during a road clearance mission and shot at an oncoming car that did not stop when signaled to do so, Major Wojack said.

An Afghan policeman, Taj Mohammed, the local Border Police commander, corroborated much of the ISAF account, but did not see the shooting himself. He said the car was carrying people from a wedding party.

Major Wojack said that the forces had followed standard procedure of signaling to the car to stop. After the driver stopped, he then started to accelerate toward the convoy, at which point the soldier ISAF shot at the car, Mr. Wojack said.

Reporting was contributed by Taimoor Shah in Kandahar and by an employee of The New York Times in Kunar Province.

Read More..

Ryan Reynolds Punches Costar Scott Speedman on Set of New Film

By Maggie Coughlan

02/13/2013 at 01:50 PM EST

Ryan Reynolds and Scott Speedman

AKM-GSI

Don't mess with Ryan Reynolds!

The actor, 36, proved he knows how to pack a punch while filming a scene for Queen of the Night in Sudbury, Canada, on Tuesday.

On the receiving end of Reynolds's fist is his costar, Scott Speedman.

Directed by Atom Egoyan, the thriller is focused around a father trying to locate his kidnapped daughter.

In addition to Reynolds and Speedman, the movie also stars Rosario Dawson.

But it hasn't been all work and no play for Reynolds, who has been filming in frigid temperatures. Wife Blake Lively – donning lots of warm layers – recently joined him in Sudbury for a date at the movies.

Read More..

Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs

WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.

The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.

Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.

The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.

"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.

A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.

"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.

Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.

The report also concluded that:

—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.

—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.

__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.

The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.

Read More..

Wall Street rally stalls, S&P 500 skims November 2007 high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Wednesday amid investor caution after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.

The benchmark index got a boost from Comcast Corp , which said it will buy the rest of NBC Universal for $16.7 billion from General Electric Co .

Equities have been strong performers until recently, buoyed largely by healthy growth in corporate earnings, which helped the S&P 500 to rise 6.5 percent so far this year. The Dow industrials are about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.

Those gains have left the market vulnerable to a pullback as investors are likely to take profit amid a dearth of new catalysts. While analysts see an upward bias in stocks, recent daily moves have been small and trading volumes light with indexes at multi-year highs.

"I was expecting a 12-15 percent return on the S&P for the whole year of 2013, and we have done about half of that in just 5-6 weeks," said Jack De Gan, principal at Harbor Advisory in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

"We will hit resistance, but the fundamentals and (microeconomic) picture are looking good, so if there is a correction, it's going to be a brief one."

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 39.17 points, or 0.28 percent, at 13,979.53. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 0.80 points, or 0.05 percent, at 1,520.23. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 7.01 points, or 0.22 percent, at 3,193.50.

Investors shrugged off the latest economic data, which showed that retail sales rose just 0.1 percent, as expected, in January as tax increases and higher gasoline prices restrained spending.

The S&P 500 was well above its 50-day moving average of 1,460.92, a sign the market could be overbought.

Comcast agreed late Tuesday to buy General Electric Co's remaining 49 percent stake in NBC Universal for $16.7 billion. Comcast jumped 4.4 percent to $40.70 as the S&P's top percentage gainer while Dow component GE was up 3.3 percent to $23.33.

Deere & Co reported earnings that beat expectations and raised its full-year profit outlook. After initially rallying in premarket trading, the stock fell 3 percent to $91.13.

According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Industrial and construction shares fell, though President Barack Obama, in his State of the Union address late Tuesday, called for $50 billion in spending to create jobs by rebuilding degraded roads and bridges.

The Dow Jones Home Construction index <.djushb> was off 0.5 percent.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)

Read More..

India Ink: In Kashmir, Clashes and Dwindling Supplies As Curfew Continues

The Kashmir Valley is on the fourth day of a government-imposed shutdown begun immediately after the hanging of the militant Muhammad Afzal, also known as Afzal Guru, who comes from the town of Sopore in Baramulla district.

Many residents are running out of food and milk in Srinagar, Kashmir’s summer capital. Meanwhile, dozens have been injured and at least one killed in protests against Mr. Afzal’s hanging, which happened secretly in Delhi on Saturday and was announced afterward.

Mr. Afzal, from the Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to death by a special court in 2002 for his role in planning an attack on India’s Parliament in December 2001.

Schools, colleges and most shops in Kashmir are closed by government order, and people have been asked to stay inside their homes. Rows of shops and restaurants were shuttered.

Vehicles have been banned from the streets, cable news channels have gone dark, Internet service on cellphones has been blocked and newspapers were not being delivered. Hospitals, pharmacies and emergency services remain open.

In Srinagar, the only people in the deserted streets were security forces.

Officials in the area said they were taking preventive measures. During the past decade, many Kashmiris have opposed the death sentence for Mr. Afzal, saying he was being unfairly accused of the crime. His wife had requested a pardon from the Indian government, but her plea was denied.

Many Kashmiris were also outraged that the government letter carrying the news of execution reached Mr. Afzal’s widow in Sopore only after he died. The central government said Tuesday that Mr. Afzal’s family could visit his grave at Tihar Jail in Delhi, but a date has yet to be decided, according to the Press Trust of India.

The ban on the movement of people and vehicles was imposed under Section 144 of India’s criminal procedure code, the same section invoked after protests over the recent Delhi gang rape, which prohibits the assembly of more than four people.

It was invoked by the administration to prevent “a law and order problem,” Suresh Kumar, principal secretary in Jammu and Kashmir’s Department of Home Affairs, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 

Mr. Afzal’s death was mourned across the valley through organized street protests that involved stone pelting, in defiance of the ban.

Three civilians have died and many have been injured over the last four days, officials said. Some news reports attributed all three deaths to protest-related activities, but Mr. Kumar said only one man died of injuries caused by the police. The other two drowned when their boat capsized, an incident unrelated to the violence, he said.

Obair Mushtaq, from the Baramulla district, died after he was shot, his relatives said. Farooq Ahmed, his uncle, said Obair was 13.

Mr. Ahmed said that on Sunday evening, a handful of children, including his nephew, were throwing stones at a passing military convoy. “It was not aggressive. We were laughing at them,” he said, crying over the phone. “We can’t understand why there is so much fighting. Why are our children dying?”

A Kashmir police official told India Ink that 60 people have been injured since Saturday in clashes between police and civilians. Forty of those were security officials and 20 were civilians, he said. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that he feared for his life.

Additionally, there were about 60 incidents of stone pelting across the valley. “Most of the violence erupted in Sopore and Baramulla,” he said.

“People are not allowed to step out of their homes,” he added. Many residents described the past four days as the longest curfew since 2010, when the valley was shaken by mass pro-independence demonstrations. 

Manzoor Ahmed, who drives an auto-rickshaw, said that he hasn’t earned any money since the curfew was imposed on Saturday. “I haven’t stepped out of the house so I cannot even make the little money I do,” he said during a telephone interview. “The children cannot go to school.”

Mr. Ahmed said that his family was surviving on dal, a stew made of lentils, because there are no fresh vegetables available. “We have a backup supply of dal because we know things like this can happen,” he said.

In some areas, for a few hours in the evening, residents said they were allowed out of their homes to shop. Vegetables and milk are generally shipped into Srinagar, which is nestled in the mountains, from villages and other states during the winter months.

Mr. Mohammed, a hotel manager near the Dal Lake, who requested his first name not be used to avoid any retaliatory action, said that his hotel was running out of vegetables like peas and cauliflower, and guests were only being served beans and potatoes from storage. “The situation is quite bad,” he said.

For around two hours in the evening, a few stores selling basic groceries were open. But these shops have limited resources because the supply chain had been disrupted due to the ban on vehicles.

One businessman, who requested not be named to avoid possible retaliatory action by the police, said he hasn’t opened his crockery shop in downtown Srinagar in the past four days. “What choice do I have? They won’t let us step out,” he said. He estimated he has lost 60,000 rupees ($1,000) since Saturday.

The hanging of Mr. Afzal came as Kashmiris were planning protests to mark the death of Maqbool Bhatt, a pro-Kashmir independence leader who was hanged on Feb. 11, 1984. His death is considered the spark for two decades of unrest. Both men are buried at Tihar Jail in Delhi.

“Maqbool Bhatt inspired the insurgency while Afzal Guru was the product of it,” said Sheikh Showkat Hussain, a law professor at Kashmir University. 

He warned that Mr. Afazal’s hanging and the subsequent curfew would make the Kashmiri people’s “alienation with the government more deep rooted.”

Read More..

Julianne Hough: Ryan Seacrest Makes Valentine's Day Super Romantic

By Carlos Greer

02/12/2013 at 01:40 PM EST

Ryan Seacrest and Julianne Hough

Michael Buckner/WireImage

Who knew Ryan Seacrest was such a romantic? His girlfriend, Julianne Hough, tells PEOPLE he likes to go all out for Valentine's Day.

"[He likes] surprising me and ending up at a restaurant and having the place cleared out and rose petals and stuff like that," the actress, 24, said at Monday's Self magazine New York screening of her new movie Safe Haven. The gestures, she added, make her feel "so cute and special."

"Every year is really wonderful. The first two years were super romantic and like, over the top, because it was new," she said.

So, how will the Idol host, 38, who spent a romantic getaway with Hough in St. Barts earlier this year, make this Valentine's Day even more special?

"This year I think it will be more understated, like [celebrating] real joy of what we truly have. I have no idea, but I know there are plans. He likes to do Valentine's Day," she said.

Finally, asked if there will be a ring anytime soon, she responded, "Not yet."

Read More..

Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

__

Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Read More..

Wall Street edges up ahead of Obama speech as housing gains

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks edged higher on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 holding near multi-year highs ahead of President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, as housing stocks advanced.

The economy will be a major topic of Obama's speech before a joint session of Congress set for 9 p.m. (0200 GMT Wednesday). Investors will listen for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1, including the tone of the speech.

The S&P 500 has risen in the past six weeks and is up 6.7 percent so far this year. But gains have been harder to come by since the benchmark S&P index hit a five-year high on February 1. The market has had to consolidate strong gains at the year's start while investors search for reasons to drive stocks higher.

"It is a drift higher here, it certainly seemed like we were stalled out for awhile," said Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group in Bedford Hills, New York.

"There are a lot of people looking for some type of pullback, some type of profit-taking, and often when everybody is looking it simply doesn't happen."

Housing shares helped lift equities in the latter portion of trading, led by a 14.4 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.35 after the home improvement product maker posted fourth-quarter earnings and said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 4.3 percent.

The White House has signaled Obama, in his speech, will urge U.S. investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education. He is also expected to call for comprehensive trade talks with the European Union.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 47.77 points, or 0.34 percent, to 14,019.01. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 3.95 points, or 0.26 percent, to 1,520.96. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 0.88 points, or 0.03 percent, to 3,192.88.

Coca-Cola Co shares fell 2.9 percent to $37.51 and were the biggest drag on the Dow after the world's largest soft drink maker reported quarterly revenue slightly below analysts' estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.

With earnings season starting to wind down, Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning shows of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported earnings, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.

Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.

Avon Products shares surged 18.6 percent to $20.49 after the beauty products company reported a better-than-expected quarterly profit.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber shares slipped 0.4 percent to $13.86 after it posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit but cut its 2013 forecast due to weakness in the European automotive market.

Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 10.8 percent to $63.18 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)

Read More..

The Lede: Latest Updates on the Pope’s Resignation

The Lede is providing updates on Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement on Monday that he intends to resign on Feb. 28, less than eight years after he took office, the first pope to do so in six centuries. (Turn off auto-refresh to watch videos.)

Read More..

Tia Mowry-Hardrict: Cree 'Gets a Little Jealous' of Aden

Bret Hartman/AP

Tia Mowry-Hardrict and her twin sister Tamera Mowry-Housley couldn’t be closer, but the siblings have to work a bit harder to get their little boys on that same level.

“I will be honest, Cree [20 months] gets a little jealous [of his 3-month-old cousin],” Mowry-Hardrict, 34, tells PEOPLE Tuesday at Blushington in West Hollywood.

“When I was trying to feed Aden, Cree started crying. I have to just slowly introduce Aden into our world. It’s kind of hard on Cree, but he loves Aden. We really, really enjoy having him around.”

Luckily, the mommies give their kids plenty of opportunity to get acquainted.

“My sister and I try to see each other once a week,” Mowry-Hardrict, who teamed up with Puffs and Dress for Success’s Virtual Kiss program, says. “We actually just had a play date. We went to the Grove and hung out.”

Being a mom is tiring for the actress, who is working on a new sitcom, Instant Mom, but there are a few things that manage to keep her energized.

“I just look at my son,” she says. “When I’m away from him, I really feel it. I’m exhausted, I feel like a zombie. I’m like, ‘What am I going to do?’ But when I see him and I see the smile on his face, it just gives me this instant burst of energy.”

Adds Mowry-Hardrict, “I’m very into holistic living and very healthy eating, so I don’t run to coffee or caffeine. I think it drops you rather quickly. Instead I juice with my husband [Cory Hardrict] every single morning. I have kale, celery, ginger, a little bit of garlic, parsley and cucumber. I drink half in the morning and half in the afternoon. And that’s my energy drink.”

Luckily, her new hairdo also saves her from wasting any additional energy.

“I think it’s very practical for me because I am a mom,” she says. “Now I can just get in the shower and put some conditioner in my hair. I have curly hair, so this makes it easy to just go. But I also have a great stylist who can just [style] my hair in so many different ways. It does take a while when you want to do a straight look. But when I want to go au naturel, I just get out of the shower, and boom — I’m done.”

Clearly, motherhood is working for Mowry-Hardrict, because she’s already planning for more little ones.

“Cree’s almost two, and I really, really want him to be close with his sibling,” she says. “So I would say I’m having more kids sooner rather than later.”

– Dahvi Shira

Read More..