Arafat's remains exhumed for poison tests

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Forensic experts took samples from Yasser Arafat's buried corpse in the West Bank on Tuesday, trying to determine if he was murdered by Israeli agents using the hard-to-trace radioactive poison, Polonium.

Palestinians witnessed the funeral of their hero and longtime leader eight years ago, but conspiracy theories surrounding his death have never been laid to rest.

Many are convinced their icon was the victim of a cowardly assassination, and may stay convinced whatever the outcome of this autopsy. But some in the city of Ramallah where he lies deplored the exhumation.

"This is wrong. After all this time, today they suddenly want to find out the truth?" said construction worker Ahmad Yousef, 31, who stopped to watch the disinterment, carried out behind a wall of blue plastic near the Palestinian presidency headquarters.

"They should have done it eight years ago," he said.

French magistrates in August opened a murder inquiry into Arafat's death in Paris in 2004 after a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of polonium on clothing of his which was supplied by his widow, Suha, for a television documentary.

"Samples will be taken according to a very strict protocol and these samples will be analyzed," said Darcy Christen, spokesman for Lausanne University Hospital in Switzerland that carried out the original tests on Arafat's clothes.

"In order to do these analyses, to check, cross-check and double cross-check, it will take several months and I don't think we'll have anything tangible available before March or April next year," he added.

Arafat was always a freedom fighter to Palestinians but a terrorist to Israelis first, and a partner for peace only later. He led the bid for a Palestinian state through years of war and peacemaking, then died in a French hospital aged 75 after a short, mysterious illness.

No autopsy was carried out at the time, at the request of Suha, and French doctors who treated him said they were unable to determine the cause of death.

But allegations of foul play immediately surfaced, and many Palestinians pointed the finger at Israel, which confined Arafat to his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah for the final two and a half years of his life after a Palestinian uprising erupted.

Israel denies murdering him. Its leader at the time, Ariel Sharon, now lies in a coma from which he is expected never to awake. Israel invited the Palestinian leadership to release all Arafat's medical records, which were never made public following his death and still have not been opened.

FRENCH INVESTIGATORS

Polonium, apparently ingested with food, was found to have caused the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. But some experts have questioned whether Arafat could have died in this way, pointing to a brief recovery during his illness that they said was not consistent with radioactive poisoning. They also noted he did not lose all his hair.

Eight years is considered the limit to detect any traces of the fast-decaying polonium and Lausanne hospital questioned in August if it would be worth seeking any samples, if access to Arafat's body was delayed as late as "October or November."

Not all of Arafat's family agreed to the exhumation, and his wife Suha chose not to attend the operation she had prompted.

Working in parallel with the forensic team, French magistrates were in Ramallah this week to ask if members of Arafat's inner circle might be able to shed light on his death.

One source told Reuters the French had a list of 60 questions, and had questioned one man for five hours.

Many Palestinians acknowledge that a Palestinian would almost certainly have had to administer any poison, wittingly or unwittingly.

(Writing by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Tom Pfeiffer)

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Outbreak-Tied Peanut Butter Plant Shut

Nov 26, 2012 7:37pm

The Food and Drug Administration today shut down the country’s largest organic peanut butter processor following a salmonella outbreak that sickened scores of people nationwide.

For the first time the FDA has utilized new power granted by the 2011 food safety law and shut down Sunland Inc.’s New Mexico processing plant.

In a statement on their website, the FDA said that the link between the company and the salmonella outbreak that sickened 41 people in 20 states along with “Sunland’s history of violations led FDA to make the decision to suspend the company’s registration.”

Between June 2000 and September 2012 eleven product lots of nut butter tested positive for presence of Salmonella. And, according to the FDA, between March 2010 and September 2012, Sunland Inc. distributed at least a portion of eight product lots after they had tested positive.

The FDA also found the presence of Salmonella in 28 environmental samples during a September and October 2012 inspection.  FDA inspectors reported that employees of Sunland Inc. failed to wash hands, improperly handled equipment used to process food as well as providing  ”no records” to document cleaning of equipment. Additionally, the building housing the production and packaging had no hand-washing sinks even though employees had “bare-handed contact” with the product.

“The super-sized bags used by the firm to store peanuts were not cleaned despite being used for both raw and roasted peanuts.  There was a leaking sink in a washroom which resulted in water accumulating on the floor, and the plant is not built to allow floors, walls and ceilings to be adequately cleaned.

Finally, investigators found that raw materials were exposed to potential contamination.  Raw, in-shell peanuts were found outside the plant in uncovered trailers. Birds were observed landing in the trailers and the peanuts were exposed to rain, which provides a growth environment for Salmonella and other bacteria.  Inside the warehouse, facility doors were open to the outside, which could allow pests to enter.”

In a November 15 statement the president and CEO of Sunland, Jimmie Shearer, emphasized that at “no time” did the company distribute products they knew to be contaminated. The company has submitted a response to the FDA outlining their response to the recall and contaminated product testing.

“We believe that drawing any inferences much less conclusions about the Company’s practices based solely on the observations as set forth in the Form 483 without considering the Company’s response would be wholly premature and unduly prejudicial to Sunland.”

Food Safety Modernization Act, which the FDA acted under to shut down the plant, grants the agency the authority to suspend manufacturing when there is “reasonable probability of causing serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals, and other conditions are met.”

Sunland Inc., can request an informal hearing to lift the suspension.  However the 24-year-old company will only have its registration returned after the FDA decides the company has safe manufacturing practices.

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Mexican beauty queen killed in shootout

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Associated Press Writer E. Eduardo Castillo contributed to this report

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Halle Berry’s ex claims he was victim in Thanksgiving brawl

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Halle Berry‘s ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry on Monday won a restraining order against the actress’s current lover, as the two men fought in the Los Angeles courts over who started their Thanksgiving Day brawl.

Releasing photos of himself with a black eye and cuts to his face, Aubry claimed that he was the victim in the November 22 punch-up with Berry’s fiancé, French actor Olivier Martinez, in the driveway of her Los Angeles house.

“I suffered numerous injuries as a result of the attack, including a fractured rib, multiple bruises on my face and a number of cuts which required stitches,” Aubry said in court papers, alleging that Martinez had threatened the day before to kill him.

“It all happened so fast and so suddenly; I did not see Mr Martinez’s actions coming and thus I was not ready for it and was not able to defend myself,” Aubry wrote.

Aubry, Martinez, and the Oscar-winning “Monster’s Ball” actress have been embroiled for months in a custody fight over Berry’s 4-year-old daughter, Nahla. Berry wants to take the daughter she had with Aubry to live with her and Martinez in France, but a Los Angeles judge denied that request earlier in November.

Aubry claimed in his request for a restraining order on Monday that Martinez told him, “You cost us $ 3 million,” while the French actor punched and kicked him on November 22.

Aubry, a Canadian model, was arrested last week for battery after the fist fight, and ordered to stay away from Berry, the child, and Martinez.

Neither man has been yet been formally charged in the case.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Jackie Frank)

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HTC confirms 5-inch ‘Deluxe’ smartphone won’t launch in Europe

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Holiday shopping season off to record start

NEW YORK (AP) — If you make holiday shopping convenient, Americans will come in droves.

It's estimated that U.S. shoppers hit stores and websites at record numbers over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to a survey released by the National Retail Federation on Sunday. They were attracted by retailers' efforts to make shopping easier, including opening stores on Thanksgiving evening, updating mobile shopping applications for smartphones and tablets, and expanding shipping and layaway options.

All told, a record 247 million shoppers visited stores and websites over the four-day weekend starting on Thanksgiving, up 9.2 percent of last year, according to a survey of 4,000 shoppers that was conducted by research firm BIGinsight for the trade group. Americans spent more too: The average holiday shopper spent $423 over the entire weekend, up from $398 last year. Total spending over the four-day weekend totaled $59.1 billion, up 12.8 percent from 2011.

Caitlyn Maguire, 21, was one of the shoppers that took advantage of all the new conveniences of shopping this year. Maguire, who lives in New York, began buying on Thanksgiving night at Target's East Harlem store. During the two-hour wait in line, she also bought items on her iPhone on Amazon.com. On Friday, she picked up a few toys at Toys R Us. And on Saturday she was out at the stores again.

"I'm basically done," said Maguire, who spent about $400 over the weekend.

The results for the weekend appear to show that retailers' efforts to make shopping effortless for U.S. consumers during the holiday shopping season worked. Retailers upped the ante in order to give Americans more reasons to shop. Stores feared that consumers might not spend because of the weak job market and worries that tax increases and budget cuts will take effect if Congress fails to reach a budget deal by January.

Retailers, which can make up to 40 percent of their annual revenue in November and December, were hoping Thanksgiving openings and other incentives would help boost what's expected to be a difficult holiday shopping season. The National Retail Federation estimates that overall sales in November and December will rise 4.1 percent this year to $586.1 billion. That's more than a percentage point lower than the growth in each of the past two years, and the smallest increase since 2009, when sales were nearly flat.

Matthew Shay, president and CEO of the National Retail Federation, said retailers can be encouraged by the first weekend of the holiday shopping season.

"Retailers and consumers both won this weekend, especially on Thanksgiving," he said.

Here were the trends that emerged over the weekend:

— Online wave: According to comScore, which tracks online spending, online sales rose 26 percent to $1.04 billion on Black Friday compared with a year ago. On Thanksgiving, online sales rose 32 percent from last year to $633 million. And online sales on Black Friday were up 26 percent from the same day last year to $1.042 billion. It was the first time online sales on Black Friday surpassed $1 billion.

— Thanksgiving shopping: Many stores, including Toys R Us and Target, opened on Thanksgiving evening this year. No data is out yet about how much shoppers spent on that day, but it appears that consumers took advantage of the earlier start: According to the National Retail Federation's survey, the number of people who shopped on Thanksgiving rose 23.1 percent. That compares with a 3.1 percent increase for Black Friday.

Linda and James Michaels of Portland, Ore., were among those shopping on Thanksgiving. They hit up the big sales on the day and got everything they were hoping for that night.

They picked up remote control cars and some Mickey Mouse items on sale at Toys R Us. Then they went a few doors down to Target and scored the last Operation game on sale for $7. They were even able to pick up some pajamas and shoes along the way for the kids. In total they spent about $300.

"I felt lucky that I caught the deals and there was no craziness, no fighting," said Linda Michaels. "I was nervous."

ShopperTrak, which analyzes customer traffic at 40,000 U.S. stores, plans to release sales data for Thanksgiving later this week, but the firm is estimating that retailers generated $700 million in sales on the holiday.

— Black Friday flop: It appears that the Thanksgiving openings may have hurt sales on the day after.

Black Friday is still expected to be the biggest shopping day of the year, but sales on that day slipped to $11.2 billion, down 1.8 percent from last year, according to ShopperTrak. That's below ShopperTrak's estimate that Black Friday sales would rise 3.8 percent to $11.4 billion.

Karen MacDonald, a spokeswoman at Taubman Centers, which operates 28 malls across the country, said that Thanksgiving openings hurt business. Based on a sampling of 10 malls, sales growth was unchanged up to mid-single digits on Friday, and unchanged up to low single digit on Saturday.

"It was a different feeling," she said. "It was a good Black Friday, but I don't think it was great."

The disappointing sales on Black Friday may have been the result of shoppers like Miguel Garcia, a 40-year-old office coordinator.

"I can't deal with all that craziness," said Garcia, who was at a Target in the Bronx borough of New York City on Saturday. "Compared to what I saw on TV yesterday, this is so much more comfortable and relaxed. I can actually think straight and compare prices."

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AP writers Rodrigue Ngowi in Watertown, Mass., Juan Carolos Llorca in El Paso, Texas, and Candice Choi in New York contributed to this report

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Embryo survival gene may fight range of diseases: study

HONG KONG (Reuters) – A gene that keeps embryos alive appears to control the immune system and determine how it fights chronic diseases like hepatitis and HIV, and autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, scientists said on Monday.

Although the experts have only conducted studies on the gene Arih2 using mice, they hope it can be used as a target for drugs eventually to fight a spectrum of incurable diseases.

Lead author Marc Pellegrini at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Australia said the gene appears to act like a switch, flipping the immune system on and off.

“If the gene is on, it dampens … the immune response. And if you switch it off, it greatly enhances immune responses,” Pellegrini said in a telephone interview.

“It is probably one of the few genes and pathways that is very targetable and could lead to a drug very quickly.”

Arih2 was first identified by another group of scientists in the fruit fly but it drew the interest of Pellegrini’s team because of its suspected links to the immune system.

In a paper published in Nature Immunology, Pellegrini and his team described how mice embryos died when the gene was removed.

Next, they removed the gene from adult mice and noticed how their immune systems were boosted for a short period of time. But it quickly went into an overdrive and started attacking the rodents’ own healthy cells, skin and organs.

“The mice survived for six weeks quite well. Then they started developing this very hyperactive immune responses and if you leave it for too long, it starts reacting against the body itself,” Pellegrini said.

Pellegrini and his colleagues hope that scientists can study the gene further and use it as a drug target to fight a large spectrum of diseases.

“It’s like an accelerator. In infectious diseases, you want to slam on the brakes on this gene, and for autoimmune diseases, you want to push the accelerator to make it work much harder to stop the whole immune response,” said Pellegrini.

“The more the gene works, the less of an immune response there is. And the less active the gene is, the more the immune response is.”

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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UN climate talks open in Qatar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Jose Luis Borau, Spanish Filmmaker, dies at 83

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Influential Spanish filmmaker Jose Luis Borau died Friday in Madrid, the Spanish Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences said. He was 83.

Borau had reportedly been suffering from throat cancer.

Though Borau, who was born in Zaragoza in 1929, only made a handful of films since his 1960 directorial debut “En el Rio,” his talents were widely respected, and he received a Goya award for Best Director in 2000 for his final film, “Leo.”

Borau was also a screenwriter and producer, and acted in some of his films. According to the Academy, his other pursuits included editing the first published biography of director-producer Samuel Bronston and short-story writing. He also “dabbled in advertising,” the Academy said.

Borau was probably best known for his 1975 drama “Furtivos” (“Poachers”), a film whose success, he later said, made him “a little sad.”

“Nobody is bitter sweet, but I’m a little sad,” the filmmaker once said. “My scale is a bit like what happened to Orson Welles, who made great films after ‘Citizen Kane,’ but just remember that title. “

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Betfair pulls out of Greece over permits row

LONDON (Reuters) – Online gambling exchange Betfair said it would withdraw from the Greek market until there was greater clarity on gaming regulation in the country.

Betfair, which has not yet applied for a permit to operate in Greece, questioned the cost and conditions attached to permits required by gaming firms to trade in the country.

“According to legal advice received, the value of these permits is unclear and we consider the gambling legislation in the country to be inconsistent with European law,” Betfair said on Monday.

“The associated fiscal conditions attached to these permits, which may include payment of taxes on historical revenues, make the market economically unattractive.”

Earlier this month the Greek Gaming Commission said gambling firms operating in Greece without a permit would face financial penalties and criminal sanctions.

Betfair said it believes there are “significant issues with the legality of this decision” by the Greek Gaming Commission.

It added that it was disappointed the European Commission had not moved to prevent what Betfair calls “protectionist behavior.”

Earlier this month Betfair, which launched 12 years ago and operates an exchange system that allows gamblers to bet against each other rather than the bookmaker, withdrew its online sports betting exchange in Germany because of a tax levied on stakes on sports events from July 2012.

The European Commission last month said it was not proposing EU-wide legislation to regulate online gambling.

Prior to Betfair’s decision to withdraw from the market, it had been expected to generate 13 million pounds ($ 20.81 million) of revenue from the Greek market in the current financial year.

($ 1 = 0.6246 British pounds)

(Reporting by Rhys Jones; editing by James Davey)

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