Tulsa Town Hall: Nutrition a valuable tool in health care

Weil spoke as part of the Tulsa Town Hall series of speakers.

The United States has an expensive health-care system that doesn’t produce good results, he said.

“Something is very wrong with this picture,” he said. “We’re spending more and more and we have less and less to show for it.”

Changes in diet can be an effective treatment for many conditions, but American physicians are functionally illiterate in nutrition, he said.

“The whole subject of nutrition is omitted in medical education,” he said.

There are many ways of managing diseases other than drugs, he said. Integrative medicine, which can include dietary supplements and practices like meditation, is the future of health care, he said.

The health system is resistant to change because of entrenched vested interests. That includes pharmaceutical companies that do direct-to-consumer advertising, which should be stopped, he said.

“As dysfunctional as our health-care system is at the moment – and it is very dysfunctional – it is generating rivers of money,” he said. “That money is going into very few pockets.”

Weil has developed an anti-inflammatory diet based on the Mediterranean diet but with Asian influences.

Inflammation is associated with some heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease and some cancers, he said. And as a result, people should be eating real, unprocessed foods and whole grains. They should stay away from sugar-sweetened beverages, including fruit juice, he said.

“The new research that’s being done on sugar is not very comforting,” he said.

The aging process can’t be avoided, but age-related diseases can be avoided by proper care, he said.

“The goal should be to live long and well with a big drop off at the end,” he said.

Weil is the director of the University of Arizona’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Tickets to the Tulsa Town Hall series are sold as a $ 75 subscription and cover five lectures. Tickets for individual lectures are not available.

To subscribe, visit tulsaworld.com/tulsatownhall, call 918-749-5965 or write to: Tulsa Town Hall, Box 52266, Tulsa, OK 74152.

Future speakers include journalist Ann Compton on Feb. 8; author James B. Stewart on April 5; historian and cinematographer Rex Ziak on May 10.

Original Print Headline: Speaker highlights nutrition

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Shannon Muchmore 918-581-8378
shannon.muchmore@tulsaworld.com
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Israel bombards Gaza Strip, shoots down rocket

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel bombarded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip with about 300 airstrikes Saturday and shot down a Palestinian rocket fired at Tel Aviv, the military said, widening a blistering assault to include the Hamas prime minister's headquarters, a police compound and a vast network of smuggling tunnels.

The intensified airstrikes came as Egyptian-led attempts to broker a cease-fire and end Israel's four-day-old Gaza offensive gained momentum. The leaders of Hamas and two key allies, Qatar and Turkey, were in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials, and the Arab League was holding an emergency meeting.

The White House said President Barack Obama was also in touch with the Egyptian and Turkish leaders. The U.S. has solidly backed Israel so far.

Speaking on Air Force One, deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said that the White House believes Israel "has the right to defend itself" against attack and that the Israelis will make their own decisions about their "military tactics and operations."

The Israeli attacks, which Gaza officials say left 12 dead, came as Palestinian militants fired more than 100 rockets toward Israel, including two aimed at the commercial and cultural center of Tel Aviv. Rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem this week mark the first time Gaza militants have managed to fire rockets toward the cities, raising the stakes in the confrontation.

The widened scope of targets brings the scale of fighting closer to that of the war the two groups waged four years ago. Hamas was badly bruised during that conflict, but has since restocked its arsenal with more and better weapons, and has been under pressure from smaller, more militant groups to prove its commitment to fighting Israel.

In a psychological boost for the Israelis, a sophisticated Israeli rocket-defense system known as "Iron Dome" knocked down one of the rockets headed toward Tel Aviv, eliciting cheers from relieved residents huddled in fear after air raid sirens sounded in the city.

Associated Press video showed a plume of smoke rising from a rocket-defense battery deployed near the city, followed by a burst of light overhead. The smoke trailed the intercepting missile.

Police said a second rocket also targeted Tel Aviv. It was not clear where it landed or whether it was shot down. No injuries were reported. It was the third straight day the city was targeted.

Israel says the Iron Dome system has shot down some 250 incoming rockets, most of them in southern Israel near Gaza.

Saturday's interception was the first time Iron Dome has been deployed in Tel Aviv. The battery was a new upgraded version that was only activated on Saturday, two months ahead of schedule, officials said.

Israel opened the offensive on Wednesday with a surprising airstrike that killed Hamas' military chief, then attacked dozens of rocket launchers and storage sites. It says the offensive is meant to halt months of rocket fire on southern Israel.

While Israel claims to be inflicting heavy damage on Gaza's Hamas rulers, it has failed to slow the rocket fire. In all, 42 Palestinians, including 13 civilians, have been killed, while three Israeli civilians have died.

Maj. Gen. Tal Russo, Israel's southern commander, said Saturday that Hamas had suffered a tough blow.

"Most of their capabilities have been destroyed," he told reporters. Asked whether Israel is ready to send ground troops into Gaza, he said: "Absolutely."

Israel has authorized the call-up of as many as 75,000 reservists ahead of a possible ground operation. Dozens of armored vehicles have massed along the border with Gaza in recent days.

Israeli officials say they have not yet decided whether to send in ground troops, a decision that would almost certainly lead to heavy casualties on both sides.

In Saturday's fighting, Israeli aircraft pounded militants' weapons storage facilities and underground rocket launching sites, and went after rocket squads more aggressively.

Militants, undaunted, have unleashed some 500 rockets against the Jewish state.

Hamas claims that Israeli intelligence is based on a network of collaborators in Gaza. Officials said two Palestinians have been executed by Hamas' military wing for allegedly providing Israel with sensitive information. One man was shot twice in the head. Another body was tossed into a garbage bin with a gunshot wound to the head.

The violence has threatened the Mideast with a new war. At the same time, revolts against entrenched regional regimes have opened up new possibilities for Hamas. Islamists across the Mideast have been strengthened, bringing newfound recognition to Hamas, which had previously been shunned by the international community because of its refusal to recognize Israel and renounce violence.

A high-level Tunisian delegation, led by Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, drove that point home with a visit to Gaza on Saturday. The foreign minister's first stop was the still-smoldering ruins of the three-story office building of Gaza's prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas.

"Israel has to understand that there is an international law and it has to respect the international law to stop the aggression against the Palestinian people," Abdessalem told the AP during a tour of Gaza's main hospital. He said his country was doing whatever it can to promote a cease-fire, but did not elaborate.

It was the first official Tunisian visit since Hamas's violent 2007 takeover of the territory. The West Bank is governed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Egypt's prime minister visited Gaza on Friday and a Moroccan delegation was due on Sunday, following a landmark visit by Qatar's leader last month.

Israel had been incrementally expanding its operation beyond military targets but before dawn on Saturday it ramped that up dramatically, hitting Hamas symbols of power.

Israeli defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential decisions, said military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz personally ordered the scope of the airstrikes to be increased.

Haniyeh's three-story office building was flattened by an airstrike that blew out windows in neighboring homes. He was not inside the building at the time.

Another airstrike brought down the three-story home of a Hamas commander in the Jebaliya refugee camp near Gaza City, critically wounding him and injuring other residents of the building, medics said.

Missiles smashed into two small security facilities and the massive Hamas police headquarters in Gaza City, setting off a huge blaze that engulfed nearby houses and civilian cars parked outside, the Interior Ministry reported. No one was inside the buildings.

The Interior Ministry said a government compound was also hit while devout Muslims streamed to the area for early morning prayers, although no casualties were reported.

Air attacks knocked out five electricity transformers, cutting off power to more than 400,000 people in southern Gaza, according to the Gaza electricity distribution company. People switched on backup generators for limited electrical supplies.

In southern Gaza, aircraft went after underground tunnels militants use to smuggle in weapons and other contraband from Egypt, residents reported. A huge explosion in the area sent buildings shuddering in the Egyptian city of El-Arish, 45 kilometers (30 miles) away, an Associated Press correspondent there reported.

The Israeli military said more than 950 targets have been struck since the operation began.

On Saturday, more than 120 rockets slammed into Israel, causing damage to houses. About 10 Israelis were injured lightly, among dozens of others wounded since the start of the operation.

Despite the violence, Egyptian-led diplomacy was underway to bring an end to the fighting.

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi was meeting the leaders of Turkey and Qatar Saturday as well as Hamas leader Khaled Meshal to discuss details of a proposed cease-fire.

The Arab League also met Saturday to consider sending its chief Nabil Elaraby and a team of foreign ministers to Gaza in the coming two days to assess the situation and respond to humanitarian needs there, according to a draft memorandum obtained by the AP.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters Saturday that during discussions with Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin late Friday, he suggested that Turkey, Egypt, the United States and Russia help broker a simultaneous cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

"It would be good if we could work on it rapidly to solve the matter within 24 hours, because the death toll is mounting," he said.

___

Goldenberg reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Gaza City, Matthew Daly in Washington and Aya Batrawy in Cairo contributed reporting.

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Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.

The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.

The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.

“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.

“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.

The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.

“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.

“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.

CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.

While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.

“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.

“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”

A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.

The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.

Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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“Sister” Director Tackles Taboo of Switzerland’s Class Divide With Her Oscar Contender

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Director Ursula Meier can hardly believe that her film “Sister” – which depicts tenements, poverty and a seemingly rigid class system in lovely Switzerland – has made it over the Alps to Hollywood for Academy consideration.

“It shows a not-very-usual aspect of Switzerland,” Meier told the audience at a showing of “Sister” Thursday night at the Landmark, part of TheWrap’s Academy Screening Series. “We don’t show the beautiful mountains and the green and the lush life … For me it was important to show another point of view on this country to the world. Because usually it’s Montblanc, chocolate, and Swatch.”

Indeed, with her second film, Meier has given international audiences something else to associate with Switzerland: larcenous snow urchins.

“Sister” centers mostly around 12-year-old Simon (Kacey Mottet Klein), who lives in a high-rise tenement in a not-so-snowy valley far below a ski resort and takes gondolas to the top to steal wealthy tourists’ skis right out from under their goggles.

Wily Simon is financing not just his own existence but that of Louise (Lea Seydoux), the title character, who just might be the worst parental figure or caretaker in a cinematic year that did, after all, include “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

It would involve spoilers to explain why Simon’s older sis is not everything she’s cracked up to be. But there’s nothing misleading about this boy-crazy, substance-abusing twentysomething gal’s unfitness to watch over Simon, the breadwinner of their sad two-person family.

He has to empty out his cash drawer to bribe Louise into snuggling with him, and when he entrusts her with the mere task of waxing skis, she can’t even do that without spilling cigarette ashes on the stolen merchandise.

“It was important for me, when we were at the ski resort, to showing the back door of the restaurant, and the workers inside … And it’s just at the end, when it’s finished, when there is no more snow and the ski resort is closed, for the first time Simon looks at the landscape. And we can see how beautiful this place is, but it’s too late now.”

Meier worked with her young leading man on her first theatrical feature, 2009′s “Home,” where he played Isabella Huppert’s son when he was just 7. She’s emphatic that Klein is not the kind of child actor who has to be tricked into giving a performance.

“During the first casting, I ask him, ‘What do you like to do in your life, Kasey?’ And he told me, ‘Thinking.’ So I said ‘OK, think,’ and I turned on the camera, and he was amazing … He understands that acting is to be, not to look like. So I really wanted to write for him with this film, because it was such an amazing experience on my first film.”

The role of the severely neglectful “sister” was tougher to nail down, both for the director and her leading actress.

“This character was the challenge of the film,” Meier said. “Because Kacey’s character is a child, so for the spectator, of course he’s a victim. But with the character of Louise, for Lea as an actress, at the beginning for her it was very hard to find the fragility of the character. I showed her a lot of films like ‘Vagabond’ … I explained to her, you were 14 when you were pregnant; it was too young for a girl, and you stopped your studies and got bad jobs you cut with your family.”

Sometimes, she said, they’d fight because “she couldn’t find the fragility of the character, and suddenly, months later, wow – it was like we cut something open and all the emotion that came out from her was very deep. I was afraid of the spectators judging the character. It was not easy, in the writing, or in the directing with the actors, because I wanted that they would love these characters, even if they’re sometimes terrible. But I like terrible characters.”

Pond told Meier that when it came to supporting actress Gillian Anderson, of “X-Files” fame, “the first time I watched, I didn’t realize it was her till the end credits” – an experience probably shared by most of those in attendance at the screening.

“I’m very happy that you say that,” said Meier, “because if you recognize the actress, you think about the actress.” But the director did want Armstrong to provoke a where-have-I-seen-you-before vibe.

“I really wanted to be played by a star – not to have a star in my film, but because it was important for Simon to have a kind of phantasma this lady, of what he wants as a mother.

And as a spectator, you can have a phantasma on the star. So I like that she came from another country, and not speak French, because she’s almost an apparition.”

Meier admitted she was frightened before the Swiss premiere – before “Sister” went on to play various fests and win the special Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival.

“When I had the first screening in Switzerland, a lady came back to me and was very moved by the film, because it’s usually a taboo to show poverty in Switzerland. She cried and told me, ‘I grew up in exactly the same place. My father was a worker in the factory we saw in the film, and as a child we never had the money to go up.’ I liked that she just said up.”

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Smartphones, tablets spark “post-pie” Thanksgiving sales

(Reuters) – Retailers are targeting “post-pie” commerce, the jump in shopping created by the boom in smartphones and tablet computers which Thanksgiving diners grab as they collapse onto the couch after eating turkey and pumpkin pie.

While people relax with family and friends or watch football on TV, they are increasingly shopping online with these mobile gadgets, creating a surge in traffic and purchases that retailers are beginning to target for the first time this year.

“This is a new shoppable moment,” said Steve Yankovich, who heads the mobile business of eBay Inc, operator of the largest online marketplace.

Before the rise of smartphones and tablets, it was socially unacceptable to pull out a laptop after Thanksgiving dinner, or head to a home office to fire up a desktop computer, Yankovich explained.

“With a tablet or smartphone you don’t get that reaction,” he added.

EBay recently surveyed more than 1,000 shoppers in the United States about their holiday shopping plans. Almost two thirds said holiday sales should begin after Thanksgiving dinner and respondents said their meals would end, on average, at 5:23 p.m. EST.

Based on that feedback, eBay plans to launch 20 mobile-only deals through its eBay Mobile application at 5:23 p.m. EST this Thanksgiving. The company plans 20 more at 5:23 p.m. PST for West Coast shoppers.

Other retailers including Toys “R” Us, HSN Inc, Rue La La and ideeli are also targeting mobile shoppers this Thanksgiving in the evening.

“The iPad holiday sales season starts at the point of indigestion while you’re sitting on the couch after Thanksgiving dinner,” said Ben Fischman, chief executive of Rue La La, which specializes in online limited-time fashion sales events known as flash sales.

Post-pie commerce is the latest example of how mobile devices, in particular Apple Inc’s iPad and iPhone, are changing consumer behavior and forcing retailers to adapt quickly.

The holiday shopping season traditionally kicks off with Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving when shoppers use a day off from work to head to stores.

The following Monday became a big online shopping day known as Cyber Monday because people returned to the office and shopped using their office computers.

Now Thanksgiving is emerging as a big new shopping day online. The value of e-commerce transactions on Turkey Day has surged 128 percent to $ 479 million over the past five years, outpacing the growth of Black Friday, Cyber Monday and other big holiday shopping days, according to comScore Inc.

That’s a far cry from the $ 1.25 billion spent online on Cyber Monday last year, but the growth has caught retailers’ attention.

“It’s still a smaller day, but it is growing much faster,” said Andrew Lipsman of comScore. “We’re seeing a lot more talk about Thanksgiving becoming a more important shopping day.”

Several big retailers, including Target Corp, are opening physical stores on Thanksgiving to make sure they don’t lose sales to online rivals.

“Consumers that would rather shop than watch 12 hours of football on Thanksgiving Day should be given the chance to shop,” Marshal Cohen of The NPD Group wrote in a blog on Thursday. “If online is open, why should brick-and-mortar close just to give away those precious shopping hours to the competition?”

Thanksgiving evening is where the action is online. By 3 p.m. EST last year online sales were up about 20 percent compared to the same period in 2010, according to IBM Software Group, a unit of International Business Machines Corp.

But by midnight PST on Thanksgiving 2011, online sales were up 39 percent versus the same period the previous year, IBM data show. Overall, November 2011 online sales rose 15.6 percent compared to the year-earlier period.

“Post-pie shopping this year will be fueled mostly by tablet shoppers, especially iPad users,” said Jay Henderson, global strategy director for IBM’s enterprise marketing management business.

In September and October, the iPad accounted for at least 7.5 percent of all traffic to retailers’ websites, beating out the iPhone with about 6 percent and Android devices at just over 4 percent, IBM data show.

“This is the first time the iPad has shown sustained leadership over all other mobile devices,” Henderson said.

Last Thanksgiving, retailers were surprised by the surge in tablet traffic in the evening. They also did not expect the devices would be used to complete so many purchases, instead expecting them to be browsing devices mostly, according to Steve Tack, chief technology officer for APM Solutions, a unit of Compuware Corp.

“Tablet users are not waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to purchase, they are doing it on Thursday night on the couch in front of the game,” he said. “This is a significant new shopping event.”

This year, retailers are more prepared, he added.

Rue La La will launch an online boutique called “The Holiday Dash” at 8 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving, “specifically to go after the shopper who will be sitting at home after dinner on the couch,” CEO Fischman said.

More than half of Rue La La‘s sales over Thanksgiving, Black Friday and the following weekend will come from mobile devices. Half of those mobile purchases will be on an iPad, he said.

Fischman said the conversion rate on an iPad is close to double the conversion rate on a smart phone, meaning shoppers are more than twice as likely to purchase using the tablet device.

“The tablet offers the luxury of a larger screen with the convenience and portability of the phone,” Fischman said. “It’s the killer e-commerce device.”

Ideeli, a rival to Rue La La, plans a “Think Fast” online sales event at 6 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving to target tablet shoppers. Ideeli usually runs sales at noon every day.

Toys “R” Us, the largest toy retailer, launched a new tablet-optimized website on Tuesday and the company plans to make all its Black Friday deals available online at 8 p.m. EST on Thanksgiving.

HSN, which runs the Home Shopping Network and has traditionally focused on TV sales, on Tuesday unveiled an online holiday gift guide designed for tablet shoppers.

The company plans to send discounted deals to mobile shoppers on Thanksgiving.

“When people are done with the holiday meal and go back into the screen world, we will have great products on sale,” said Jill Braff, executive vice president of Digital Commerce at HSN.

(Reporting by Alistair Barr in San Francisco; additional reporting by Lisa Baertlein in Los Angeles; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)

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Calpers, others sue Pfizer as “opt outs” to class action

NEW YORK (Reuters) – A dozen large investors have sued Pfizer Inc for securities fraud, distancing themselves from a long-running shareholder class action over allegations the company misled them about the safety of the pain relievers Celebrex and Bextra.

The plaintiffs in the new case, filed late Thursday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, include the California Public Employees‘ Retirement System (Calpers), the biggest U.S. public pension fund, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (Calstrs), and several mutual funds.

“Opting out” of securities class actions has become a growing trend, as some plaintiffs gamble they can do better by suing solo or in a small group instead of joining a larger case.

The plaintiffs in the new case said in September that they would not be part of the pending class action. The class action, led by the Teachers’ Retirement System of Louisiana, grew out of lawsuits that started in 2004 following a study on the cardiovascular risks of Celebrex and Bextra.

Pfizer said it will fight the new case, as well as another opt-out case and the larger class action.

“The company believes these cases and the original class action lawsuit have no merit based on the undisputed facts in the record and the governing federal securities law,” said Pfizer spokesman Chris Loder.

He said both drugs “were rigorously studied and tested” by the company and independent experts, and that the U.S. government, doctors, patients, and investors received accurate information on the risks and benefits of the medications.

Revenues from Celebrex and Bextra dropped by over $ 2 billion in the first nine months of 2005 after the safety concerns were made public, while Pfizer saw a $ 68.4 billion loss in stock market value between October 2004 and October 2005, according to allegations by investors.

In September 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay $ 2.3 billion to settle a U.S. Department of Justice probe into the marketing of drugs including Bextra.

Plaintiffs have opted out of past securities fraud class actions, including cases involving Countrywide Financial Corp and stemming from the collapse of WorldCom.

“Opt-outs are a major trend, probably reflecting the increased competition within the plaintiff’s bar,” said John Coffee, a law professor and securities law expert at Columbia University Law School. He said large institutional investors “can settle for more in cases in which they are not submerged in a huge class with smaller investors.”

Other public pension funds in Thursday’s lawsuit include the Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the Montana Board of Investments and the Arizona State Retirement System. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and American Century Investment Management are also among the plaintiffs.

The complaint seeks compensatory and punitive damages, as well as interest and attorneys fees.

The plaintiffs are represented by Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann, a New York law firm that often leads class actions.

Other investors also have opted out of the Pfizer class action. Wolf Opportunity Fund Ltd and Okumus Capital LLC sued Pfizer on Wednesday, making similar allegations of fraud.

Matthew Siben, a lawyer for Wolf and Okumus with law firm Dietrich Siben Thorpe, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Jay Eisenhofer, a lawyer for the lead plaintiff in the class action, declined to comment on the new cases.

The case is Montana Board of Investments, et al. v. Pfizer Inc., et al., U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 12-cv-9379 .

(Reporting By Nate Raymond; Editing by Martha Graybow and Tim Dobbyn)

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Petraeus says al Qaeda role known early

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former CIA Director David Petraeus told Congress on Friday that he and the spy agency had sought to make clear from the outset that September's deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, involved an al Qaeda affiliate, lawmakers said.

Petraeus told the House of Representatives intelligence committee that "there were extremists in the group" that launched the initial attack on the diplomatic mission, describing them as affiliates of al Qaeda and other extremist groups, said Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, the committee's top Democrat. "The fact is that he clarified it."

Another lawmaker, Republican Representative Peter King, said Petraeus' account in the closed-door session differed from the assessment that the CIA chief gave to Congress two months ago, just days after the September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

"He also stated that he thought all along he made it clear that there were significant terrorist involvement, and that is not my recollection of what he told us on September 14," King said.

Petraeus later appeared before the Senate intelligence panel. His appearances before lawmakers came the week after he quit as CIA chief because of an extramarital affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. Lawmakers said a somber Petraeus told them his resignation had nothing to do with issues related to Benghazi or any reluctance to testify before Congress.

"The general did not address any specifics of the affair, of that issue," Democratic Representative Jim Langevin said. "What he did say in his opening statement was that he regrets the circumstances that led to his resignation."

Petraeus, a retired Army four-star general, slipped into the closed sessions unseen by a swarm of media.

The assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi has turned into a flash point between President Barack Obama and Republicans, who accuse the White House of misleading the public in the days following the attack.

Some Republicans have suggested that Obama and his aides wanted to downplay the idea they had failed to prevent a terrorist attack, which might have dampened the president's re-election chances on November 6. Obama has denied that implication.

Petraeus' testimony to the House and Senate intelligence committees seems unlikely to dampen the controversy over why the Obama administration had asserted for days after the Benghazi attack that it had sprung from a spontaneous protest prompted by an anti-Muslim film.

Republicans have targeted Obama's U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, who in five Sunday talk show appearances on September 16 said the assault was prompted by the video and then morphed into a more violent act. But she told CBS's "Face the Nation" that day that it was "clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence."

Rice aides and White House officials have said that she had based her remarks on talking points provided by the CIA.

'A FRIEND'

Lawmakers appeared to treat the question of his personal life with kid gloves. They said the questioning was sometimes awkward against the backdrop of the Broadwell scandal and because some of them have known Petraeus for years and think highly of his military service in which he ran the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"I consider him a friend, which made the questioning tough, to be honest with you," King told reporters.

"I've known him for nine years now. I actually asked him to run for president a few years ago," he said.

The affair has raised questions about whether any classified information was divulged to Broadwell that would affect national security. So far, FBI investigators have not discovered anything to suggest that was the case, law enforcement sources said.

Before his resignation, Petraeus had gone to Libya to interview people about what happened in Benghazi on September 11, when there was a series of escalating attacks on the diplomatic mission and a nearby CIA annex.

Ruppersberger said the committee learned on Thursday during a closed hearing in which it saw a real-time film of the events in Benghazi that the attack on the diplomatic mission was different than the subsequent attack on the nearby annex.

"The first incident was a lot different than the second incident in the annex," he said. The attack on the mission involved looters and people setting buildings on fire, while the attack on the annex was "well-organized" and involved people who had experience in conducting attacks, he said.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o’nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the “degrading” punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica’s international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller‘s government from ratifying the U.N. convention against torture.

“The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all,” Golding said in a Thursday statement.

The Cabinet has already approved repealing the flogging law and amendments to other laws in the former British colony, where plantation slavery was particularly brutal.

The announcement was welcomed by human rights activists who view the flogging law as a barbaric throwback in a nation populated mostly by the descendants of slaves.

“We don’t really see that (the flogging law) has any part in the approach of dealing with crime in a modern democracy,” said group spokeswoman Susan Goffe.

But there are no shortage of crime-weary Jamaicans who feel that authorities should not drop the old statutes but instead enforce them, arguing that thieves who steal livestock or violent criminals who harm innocent people should receive a whipping to teach them a lesson.

“The worst criminals need strong punishing or else they’ll do crimes over and over,” said Chris Drummond, a Kingston man with three school-age children. “Getting locked up is not always enough.”

The last to suffer the punishment in Jamaica was Errol Pryce, who was sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes in 1994 for stabbing his mother-in-law.

Pryce was flogged the day before being released from prison in 1997 and later complained to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which ruled in 2004 that the form of corporal punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading and violated his rights. Jamaican courts then stopped ordering whipping or flogging.

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Film defrocks church hierarchy over handling of sex abuse

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Four deaf Wisconsin men were some of the first to seek justice after suffering childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and a new documentary about the Catholic Church‘s poor handling of such cases stemming from the Vatican seeks to make their voices heard.

“Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God” explores the impact of the Roman Catholic Church’s protocol as dictated from the Vatican for dealing with pedophile priests. It opens in U.S. cinemas on November 16, and will air on cable channel HBO in February.

Though American media coverage about child sex abuse by clergy has been extensive since a slew of cases came to light in Boston in 2002, Oscar-winning documentary director Alex Gibney wanted to connect individual stories with what he sees as systemic failures stemming from the top of the church.

“A lot of individual stories had been done about clerical sex abuse, but I hadn’t seen one that really connected the individual stories with the larger cover-up by the Vatican, so that was important,” Gibney told Reuters in an interview.

The film centers on the group of deaf men and their experiences as young boys attending St. John’s School for the Deaf in St. Francis, Wisconsin.

In a letter to the Vatican in 1998, the late Rev. Father Lawrence Murphy admitted abusing some 200 deaf boys over two decades beginning in the 1950s.

Murphy claimed he had repented, and asked to live out his last years as a priest, and was never defrocked or punished by civil authorities. He died in 1998.

In the film, the men communicate their frustrating attempts to bring their experiences to the attention of religious and civil authorities with effusive sign language and facial expressions, paired with voiceovers by actors such as Ethan Hawke.

The film also traces a convoluted bureaucracy – right up to the cardinal who is now Pope Benedict – to reveal a set of policies that the film portrays as often seeming more interested in preserving the Church’s image.

STRUGGLING TO BE HEARD

“These were deaf men whose voices literally couldn’t be heard, so there was a silence from them, and there was also this silence coming from the church, a refusal to confront this obvious crime, in part because they were covering it up,” said Gibney.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the Murphy case and in 2010 issued a statement condemning his abuse. It has criticized media reports about the Church’s handling of the cases as anti-Catholic.

Contrasting that, the film shows interviews with former church officials who talk openly of church policies to handle cases by “rehabilitating” abusive clergymen and snuffing out scandal.

Gibney said that all of the Vatican officials he contacted declined his interview requests.

Raised Catholic himself, Gibney no longer practices organized religion, but empathizes with Catholics who feel a sense of loyalty to the religion’s institutions and acknowledges that criticism of the church can feel like a personal attack.

“Mea Maxima Culpa,” a Latin phrase meaning “my most grievous fault” focuses on the failures of the Catholic Church‘s hierarchy. But Gibney – who won an Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side” – said the film’s theme transcends religion and is also relevant for secular institutions.

“This is obviously about the church, but it’s also a crime film,” he said. “It’s about abuse of power and it’s about how institutions instead of reckoning with problems try to cover them up. It’s always the cover-up that creates the problem.”

He cited the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse scandal that rocked Penn State University recently, and the BBC’s poor handling of abuse allegations against the late British TV personality Jimmy Savile as examples of secular institutions brought low by similar issues.

“The thing about predators is that they tend to hide in plain sight,” Gibney said. “You’re seeing it now with Sandusky, you’re seeing it now with Jimmy Savile in Great Britain, and you saw it with Father Murphy in the film.”

Gibney thinks that the public’s stubbornly rosy perceptions of charismatic authority figures, including priests, is a major factor in such scandals.

“They’re often involved in charity or good works,” he said of high-profile abusers. “That seems to give you license to do unbelievable things because people cut you all sorts of slack that they wouldn’t normally do for other people.”

(Editing by Christine Kearney and Richard Chang)

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Belize prime minister says McAfee “bonkers,” should help in murder case

BELIZE CITY (Reuters) – Belize‘s prime minister on Wednesday urged anti-virus software pioneer John McAfee to help the country’s police with a murder inquiry, calling McAfee “bonkers” for recent media statements.

“I don’t want to be unkind, but he seems to be extremely paranoid – I would go so far as to say bonkers,” Prime Minister Dean Barrow said in Belize City. “He ought to man up and respect our laws and go in and talk to the police.”

Belizean police want to question McAfee, 67, about the murder of his neighbor and fellow U.S. citizen, Gregory Viant Faull, 52, with whom McAfee had quarreled.

Police have been unable to track down McAfee since finding Faull dead on Sunday in his house on Ambergris Caye, an island off the coast. In an interview on Tuesday, McAfee said he had gone into hiding because he believed Belizean authorities were trying to frame him for Faull’s murder.

“You can say I’m paranoid about it, but they will kill me, there is no question. They’ve been trying to get me for months,” Wired magazine’s website quoted McAfee as saying. “I am not well liked by the prime minister.

According to the magazine, which has published details of several interviews with the entrepreneur, McAfee says he has been riding in boats, hunkering down on the floorboards of taxis, and sleeping in a bed that he said was infested with lice.

Since he went into hiding, McAfee has repeatedly told Wired he had nothing to do with Faull’s death. Explaining his actions, McAfee said he does not want to give himself up because he is afraid the authorities will torture or kill him.

But McAfee said they would track him down in the end. On Wednesday, the magazine said that McAfee claimed to have dyed his hair, eyebrows, beard, and mustache jet black.

“I’ll probably look like a murderer, unfortunately,” it quoted him as saying.

PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT

Barrow called McAfee’s statements “nonsense,” noting he had “never met the man” and that the media attention McAfee had attracted was offering him “the best possible safeguard.”

“It’s not as if the police have said he is a suspect and certainly there is no question at this point of charges pending,” Barrow said. “The fact that this is smeared across international headlines means the police would have to act extremely cautiously in the full glare of the public spotlight.”

McAfee, who invented the anti-virus software that bears his name, has homes and businesses in Belize, and is believed to have settled around 2010 in the tiny Central American nation bordered by Mexico and Guatemala.

There is already a case pending in Belize against McAfee for possession of illegal firearms, and police previously suspected him of running a lab to make the synthetic drug crystal meth.

On Wednesday, Belizean police said they had charged McAfee’s British bodyguard William Mulligan, 29, and Mulligan’s wife, Stefanie, 22, for having unlicensed weapons and ammunition.

Barrow rejected statements made by McAfee and an associate that the software pioneer was being targeted for refusing to donate to Belize’s ruling United Democratic Party (UDP) to help fund its successful re-election bid in March.

“I know of no individual in the UDP who has spoken to McAfee about contributions,” Barrow said.

McAfee was one of Silicon Valley’s first entrepreneurs to build an Internet fortune. The ex-Lockheed systems consultant started McAfee Associates in 1989. He now has no relationship with the company, which was sold to Intel Corp.

(Writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Dave Graham and Eric Walsh)

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