Deadly Explosions Hit Aleppo University

A series of deadly explosions struck the Aleppo University campus in Syria on Tuesday, antigovernment activists and Syrian state television reported, in what appeared to be a major expansion of the violent struggle for control of the largest city in the nearly two-year-old Syrian conflict. Each side blamed the other for the blasts.

Antigovernment activists also reported that violence convulsed some suburbs of Damascus, the capital, where members of the insurgent Free Syrian Army were engaged in combat with government forces in the Ain Tarma and Zamalka neighborhoods. The fighting erupted after a campaign of Syrian Air Force attacks over the past few days apparently aimed at expunging insurgents from strategic areas. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an antigovernment group based in Britain with a network of contacts in Syria, said at least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded in the explosions at Aleppo University, which was in a government-controlled part of Aleppo and had been conducting classes despite the mayhem and deprivation that have ravaged other parts of the city.

Aleppo, in northern Syria, has essentially been under siege since July, with insurgents and government forces in a stalemate. The city, which was once the commercial epicenter of Syria, has been struck by numerous shellings, bombings and airstrikes, but the university area had been largely spared until Tuesday.

Antigovernment activists said the university dormitories, which had been housing both students and civilians displaced by fighting elsewhere, were hit by one missile fired by Syrian military forces. They said buildings housing the architecture and humanities departments were also hit by missiles fired by the military.

Syria’s state-run SANA news service did not specify the number of casualties but said the explosions came on the first day of exams. SANA attributed the death and destruction to at least two rockets fired by what it called terrorists, the government’s blanket description for the armed insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad.

Photographs and video uploaded on the Internet by antigovernment groups showed extensive destruction of dormitory buildings, the hulks of several burned vehicles and bodies on the ground.

The United Nations has estimated that more than 60,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against Mr. Assad began in March 2011.

Mr. Assad appeared to further distance himself on Monday from any thought of relinquishing power via a BBC interview with his deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad. Mr. Muqdad suggested that Mr. Assad would run for re-election next year when his term expires. “We are opening the way for democracy, or deeper democracy,” he said. “In a democracy you don’t tell somebody not to run.”

Groups opposed to Mr. Assad have said they will not even consider political dialogue to resolve the conflict unless Mr. Assad resigns or is removed from power first. The special peace envoy from the United Nations and the Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, has urged Mr. Assad to step down and said he cannot be part of any transitional government. The Syrian government has accused Mr. Brahimi of bias toward the insurgency.

With diplomacy still deadlocked, more than 50 member states in the United Nations submitted an unusual written appeal to the Security Council on Monday to at least request an investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes and atrocities committed in Syria, by both the loyalist and the insurgent sides.

But whatever chance of such a move appeared to be ended on Tuesday by Russia, the biggest foreign defender of the Syrian government, which has vetoed three Security Council proposals on Syrian intervention since the conflict began.

“We consider this initiative ill-timed and counterproductive if we are to achieve the current priority goal — an immediate end to bloodshed in Syria,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “We are convinced that speculation about international criminal prosecution and the search for guilty parties will only serve to keep the opposing sides in hard-line positions and complicate the search for a path of political-diplomatic settlement of the Syrian conflict.”

Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon. Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

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The Biggest Loser's Alison Sweeney Blogs: We're All to Blame for Childhood Obesity

TV Watch

The Biggest Loser

By Alison Sweeney

01/15/2013 at 12:10 PM EST

Alison Sweeney hosts NBC's The Biggest Loser and is the award-winning star of Days of Our Lives, in addition to being an author, director, producer, wife and mom. Like she has for the past two seasons, Alison will blog each week about the latest episode of The Biggest Loser. Follow her on Twitter @Ali_Sweeney

Monday's episode of The Biggest Loser featured "Cut the Junk" week on campus. Can you believe approximately 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 years are obese? How about this fact: approximately 60 percent of overweight children ages 5 to 10 already have at least one risk factor for heart disease? We are all to blame for this – parents, schools, kids – all of us.

During this week's quiz, the contestants were shocked by the staggering statistics, as was I. The childhood obesity epidemic in our country needs to be fixed. I battled with my weight as a teenager, partly because there wasn't the information or conversation about how to live a healthy lifestyle. This season's contestants and kids are being armed with that information. The adults are learning to pour orange juice over everything in the temptation room to not succumb to temptation and the kids (and their families) were forced to make changes when Dr. Joanna visited them in their homes.

On a lighter note, what did you think of the gumball challenge? Being there I felt the weight of the goo from the contestants and their struggles were very real. Plus, it was disgusting on their clothes when they were done. I've got to say, that is one challenge I'm glad I didn't have to do!

At the end of the week, I think each team learned a lot, especially the blue team who was stuck in that temptation room for four hours a day. If you're spending four hours a day eating junk and playing video games, try the last-chance workout challenge that Bob did with his team instead!

At the end of the week, the weigh-in was again intense. I felt for Jackson as he again had a small weight loss but I love that Dolvett continues to support him and keep him positive. At the end, it was Kate who went home but we all had faith she'd be fine in continuing her journey at home, and her "Where Are They Now" package shows we were right.

Favorite moment of the week: Pam's reaction to losing 9 lbs. It was hilarious!

Make sure to tune in next week, when the trainers head to the homes of Sunny, Lindsay and Biingo and leave the adults to train on their own at the Ranch. How do you think they'll do?

The Biggest Loser contestants

Tyler Golden / NBC

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Experts: Proposed NY gun law might hinder therapy

NEW YORK (AP) — Mental health experts say a proposed New York state gun control law might interfere with treatment of potentially dangerous people and even discourage them from seeking help.

One provision would require therapists and doctors to tell government authorities if they believe a patient is likely to harm himself or others. That could lead to revoking a patient's gun permit and seizing the gun.

Dr. Paul Appelbaum, director of law, ethics and psychiatry at Columbia University, said that provision might discourage people from revealing thoughts of harm to a therapist, or even from seeking treatment at all.

Dr. Mark Olfson, a psychiatry professor at Columbia, said if the law is crudely applied, it could erode the trust patients have in their doctors which is needed for effective care.

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Man kills wife, leave her body in casino, police allege

About L.A. Now

L.A. Now is the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news section for Southern California. It is produced by more than 80 reporters and editors in The Times’ Metro section, reporting from the paper’s downtown Los Angeles headquarters as well as bureaus in Costa Mesa, Long Beach, San Diego, San Francisco, Sacramento, Riverside, Ventura and West Los Angeles.

Have a story tip for L.A. Now?

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IHT Rendezvous: 2012: The Year of Extreme Weather

The weather reports are in. 2012 was the hottest and the most extreme year on record in many places.

While parts of China are enduring the harshest winter in 30 years, the Antarctic is warming at an alarming rate. In Australia, out of control bushfires are partially the result of record-breaking weather (new colors were added to weather forecast maps, to account for the new kind of heat). In the United States, where Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of New Jersey and New York and where extreme drought still lingers in the Midwest, the average temperature in 2012 was more than a whole degree Fahrenheit (or 5/9 of a degree Celsius) higher than average – shattering the record.

On Friday a long-term weather forecast for the United States was released, when the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee published a draft of the third Climate Assessment Report. Like last year’s weather, the assessment does not pull its punches.

“Climate change threatens human health and well-being in many ways, including impacts from increased extreme weather events, wildfire, decreased air quality, diseases transmitted by insects, food, and water, and threats to mental health,” write the authors as part of their key findings.

Experts from 13 federal agencies, including NASA, the State Department and the Department of Defense put together the report under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program.

While some predictions have been adjusted upward from previous reports, the difference in tone in this newest assessment is striking. The second assessment, published in 2009, predicted of thresholds that will be crossed, while the 2013 draft presents a reality in which some of the changes are already irreversible.

“As a result of past emissions of heat-trapping gases, some amount of additional climate change and related impacts is now unavoidable,” wrote the authors in the executive summary.

Adaptation to climate change is discussed in the new draft, which is open for public comment before it is officially released early in 2014. The authors write:

Planning and managing based on the climate of the last century means that tolerances of some infrastructure and species will be exceeded. For example, building codes and landscaping ordinances will likely need to be updated not only for energy efficiency, but also to conserve water supplies, protect against insects that spread disease, reduce susceptibility to heat stress, and improve protection against extreme events.

The authors predict that within the next several decades, temperatures will go up between 2 and 4 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly 1 and 2 degrees Celsius. The experts discuss a possible 10 degree Fahrenheit (or more than 5 degrees Celsius) warming by the end of the century, in the case that not enough is done to curb emissions. (The World Bank recently released a report of the dangers of a world warmed by 4 degrees Celsius).

Sea levels could rise up to four feet, or 1.2 meters, within the century, according to the experts.

Though official assessments, predictions and studies like these serve to reinforce what many already fear, they do not necessarily lead to policy change. Andrew Restuccia predicted in a Politico article that the new report would ultimately do little to change the embittered climate-change politics in that country. He wrote:

But don’t hold your breath for serious action on climate change in Congress. Republicans and some moderate Democrats remain opposed to measures to address climate change. The Obama administration, meanwhile, is moving forward with its own efforts on climate change, including beefed-up fuel economy standards and greenhouse gas regulations for new power plants.

Sometimes official assessment reports provide substance for those who question man-made climate change.

My colleague Andrew C. Revkin recently reported on how a revision by Britain’s Weather and Climate Agency on short-term global temperature forecast became fodder for climate change deniers. The fact that the government agency had revised its numbers downward allowed climate change skeptics to argue that the world was not significantly warming after all.

In December, Alec Rawls, a climate-change skeptic, made a name for himself by leaking an unpublished Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the major global players in climate change assessment. Mr. Rawls tried to argue that the panel’s language on solar radiation was an admission that much of the warming trends were caused by the sun, not human activity.

As Andrew reported at time, his claims were mostly debunked.

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Come for a Tour of China’s Unlicensed ‘World of Warcraft’ Theme Park

World of Warcraft Theme Park

Image credit Francesca Timbers

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: 20 Tweets That Prove Skittles’ Social-Media Team Inhaled the Rainbow]

Changzhou, China is home to a bizzarre world of rides, food and fun: A World of Warcraft-style theme park that’s completely unlicensed by Blizzard, maker of the Warcraft series.

The park opened in the summer of last year. It reportedly cost $ 48 million to build and is “pretty huge,” according to Reddit user Francesca Timbers who originally posted these pictures republished here with permission.

[More from Mashable: 10 Amusing Cubicle Makeovers [VIDEOS]]

“I thought it was great,” posted Timbers. “A lot of the rides used 4-D and special effects, which I hand’t experienced much of before. There was a good roller coaster with loops, where you are lying horizontally, face forward, like you are flying. That was my favourite ride. The water log ride (‘splash of monster blood’) was pretty good too.”

Another weird tidbit: Some rides have a “happiness index,” showing, we believe, the intensity of the ride.

While most of the park is Warcraft-flavored, one section is dedicated to another Blizzard favorite: Starcraft.

For the rest of Timbers’ pictures and more details about her trip to the utterly weird theme park, visit her Reddit thread. Would you book a trip to China to get out to this theme park?

Images courtesy Francesca Timbers

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Lena Dunham Says Boyfriend Jack Antonoff Is 'Someone Great'

01/14/2013 at 12:35 PM EST

As Hannah Horvath on the hit HBO series Girls, creator and actress Lena Dunham often finds herself struggling with romance.

But when it comes to her real life relationship with Fun guitarist Jack Antonoff, the two-time Golden Globe winner says she's found love.

"I know there's some rule that you're not supposed to talk about your boyfriend publicly just because it seems like all starlets under the age of 33 have decided not to do that, but if you're in love with someone great, then I don't understand why you wouldn't tell everybody," Dunham says in the February issue of Interview magazine.

"You don't have to post naked pictures of them on the internet or Tweet pictures of your Christmas celebration, but I feel like, in a way, he's my best advertisement, so I'm like, 'Why would I not tell people who ask?'"

With the second season of Girls under way and Dunham winning two Golden Globes at Sunday's 70th Annual Golden Globe Awards, her star power is quickly rising.

"I've started to get used to people feeling like they already know me when they meet me. I've obviously only experienced it within the past year of my life, but it's really interesting to have so many people who you're not familiar with act familiar with you," she says.

Though her parents are artists Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, success didn't come easy for Dunham – who made her directorial debut with 2010's Tiny Furniture.

"I know that in my family – despite the massive amounts of acceptance – it was thought that in order to be a person who is really contributing something to the world, you had to be generating things creatively. So performing was only really interesting to my parents in the context of things that you create," she says. "I think I'd aligned the idea of liking [acting] with having a horrible ego or something, and admitting that I liked it or that it was important to me – even to myself – just didn't feel okay."

She continues, "I always had these two things of feeling really respected and connected at home, and going to school and feeling like I just could not get it right. I didn't feel like the other kids got me, but then I was also sort of bored and annoyed by them, so I knew that a large part of it was my problem. I actually had to switch schools because I didn't have friends. I remember my parents saying, 'She is so victimized at her school, so she has to switch.' But I was like, 'I'm switching schools because I'm an a–––.' "

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Flu more widespread in US; eases off in some areas

NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is now widespread in all but three states as the nation grapples with an earlier-than-normal season. But there was one bit of good news Friday: The number of hard-hit areas declined.

The flu season in the U.S. got under way a month early, in December, driven by a strain that tends to make people sicker. That led to worries that it might be a bad season, following one of the mildest flu seasons in recent memory.

The latest numbers do show that the flu surpassed an "epidemic" threshold last week. That is based on deaths from pneumonia and influenza in 122 U.S. cities. However, it's not unusual — the epidemic level varies at different times of the year, and it was breached earlier this flu season, in October and November.

And there's a hint that the flu season may already have peaked in some spots, like in the South. Still, officials there and elsewhere are bracing for more sickness

In Ohio, administrators at Miami University are anxious that a bug that hit employees will spread to students when they return to the Oxford campus next week.

"Everybody's been sick. It's miserable," said Ritter Hoy, a spokeswoman for the 17,000-student school.

Despite the early start, health officials say it's not too late to get a flu shot. The vaccine is considered a good — though not perfect — protection against getting really sick from the flu.

Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. The only states without widespread flu were California, Mississippi and Hawaii.

The number of hard-hit states fell to 24 from 29, where larger numbers of people were treated for flu-like illness. Now off that list: Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina in the South, the first region hit this flu season.

Recent flu reports included holiday weeks when some doctor's offices were closed, so it will probably take a couple more weeks to get a better picture, CDC officials said Friday. Experts say so far say the season looks moderate.

"Only time will tell how moderate or severe this flu season will be," CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said Friday in a teleconference with reporters.

The government doesn't keep a running tally of adult deaths from the flu, but estimates that it kills about 24,000 people in an average year. Nationally, 20 children have died from the flu this season.

Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Since the swine flu epidemic in 2009, vaccination rates have increased in the U.S., but more than half of Americans haven't gotten this year's vaccine.

Nearly 130 million doses of flu vaccine were distributed this year, and at least 112 million have been used. Vaccine is still available, but supplies may have run low in some locations, officials said.

To find a shot, "you may have to call a couple places," said Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, who tracks the flu in Iowa.

In midtown Manhattan, Hyrmete Sciuto got a flu shot Friday at a drugstore. She skipped it in recent years, but news reports about the flu this week worried her.

During her commute from Edgewater, N.J., by ferry and bus, "I have people coughing in my face," she said. "I didn't want to risk it this year."

The vaccine is no guarantee, though, that you won't get sick. On Friday, CDC officials said a recent study of more than 1,100 people has concluded the current flu vaccine is 62 percent effective. That means the average vaccinated person is 62 percent less likely to get a case of flu that sends them to the doctor, compared to people who don't get the vaccine. That's in line with other years.

The vaccine is reformulated annually, and this year's is a good match to the viruses going around.

The flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in flu-like illnesses caused by other bugs, including a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." Those illnesses likely are part of the heavy traffic in hospital and clinic waiting rooms, CDC officials said.

Europeans also are suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo have also reported increasing flu.

Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.

Most people with flu have a mild illness. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.

Some shortages have been reported for children's liquid Tamiflu, a prescription medicine used to treat flu. But health officials say adult Tamiflu pills are available, and pharmacists can convert those to doses for children.

___

Associated Press writers Dan Sewell in Cincinnati, Catherine Lucey in Des Moines, and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.

___

Online:

CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm

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Nordstrom hostages made to strip naked; 1 sexually assaulted, police say

Los Angeles police confirmed Sunday evening the arrests of three suspected gang members in the takeover robbery at the Nordstrom Rack in Westchester last week.

The Times first reported two arrests, one on Friday and the second Saturday in Phoenix. Sources familiar with the investigation described the man arrested in Phoenix as a principal suspect but would give no further details.

In a press release Sunday, the LAPD said that a total of three suspects had been arrested but did not give additional details.

Police would not release the suspects’ identities, nor would they detail how the suspects were taken into custody or their alleged roles in the robbery and hostage situation.

Sources said they had strong evidence linking the men to the crime, including physical evidence and security camera video. Prosecutors will decide this week whether to file charges.

The incident began about 11 p.m. Thursday at the Promenade at Howard Hughes Center, near the 405 Freeway. The LAPD called a tactical alert and closed off the area around the shopping center.
When the Police Department's SWAT officers arrived, they surrounded the store. At one point, one suspect exited, saw the police and ran back inside.

A second suspect walked out with an unidentified woman, saw police and also headed back inside. The officers entered the store at 3:30 a.m. and freed the hostages.

At least three of the hostages were injured, including one woman who was sexually assaulted. Another woman was stabbed in the neck and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, and a third employee was pistol-whipped, police said.

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India Ink: Woman Raped by Seven Men in Punjab, India, Police Say

NEW DELHI — Police said Sunday that a  29-year-old woman had been raped by a bus driver, a bus conductor and five other men in the north Indian state of Punjab, in an incident that recalls the recent attack in Delhi that has caused widespread outrage.

The woman boarded a bus on Friday bound for Gurdaspur, to visit her in-laws, the police chief of Gurdaspur, Raj Jit Singh, said in a telephone interview. When she got off the bus, the driver offered her a ride on his motorcycle, perhaps to her in-laws village, the police said. Instead, he took her to a nearby village where he and six other men, including the bus conductor, raped her repeatedly through the night.

The next morning, the driver dropped her at her in-laws home, where the woman told her family members of the incident, and then reported it to the police, Mr. Singh said.

Six men, including the bus driver and conductor, have been arrested, he said. All of the men are their twenties.

Gurmesh Singh, the deputy superintendent of police for the  region, said it was unclear how or why the bus driver persuaded the woman to go with him on his motorcycle. She was in a state of distress during the bus ride, Mr. Singh said, and originally refused to get off of the bus when it reached its final destination.

The Press Trust of India reported that the bus driver did not stop at her stop when requested.

The gang-rape of a woman on a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, and her subsequent death from injuries sustained during the rape, has sparked widespread protests and calls for increased policing and tougher laws against sexual assault in India.

The case against five of the men arrested in that rape is being heard this month in a special fast-track court created just for incidents of sexual assault.

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