AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

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Big fight over Victoria's Secret underwear caught on tape

Shopper Lawrence Corpus used his cellphone camera to catch a Black Friday brawl over women's underwear at the Roseville Galleria outside Sacramento.

Corpus pulled out his cellphone as two women started throwing punches at each other. And as the camera
continued to record, the fight spread to three men. The video shows
Black Friday shoppers  scrambling out of the way as the
men crash into a barrier set up around an amusement area at the
Galleria.

PHOTOS: Black Friday shopping in Southern California

Fox 40 reported that the fight apparently started over a sale at a nearby Victoria's Secret shop.

“I’ve been in the retail business six years now, and I’ve never see a Black Friday this bad,” said Jessica Wilbourn of Victoria's Secret.

Wilbourn said
soon after the doors opened, customers went crazy, climbing up
on the “panty bar,” throwing clothes and boxes, pushing and shoving and
trampling one another. She said one girl got hit in the head with a box
and another got punched in the stomach.

— Fox 40.

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Morsi Urged to Retract Edict to Bypass Judges in Egypt

Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times

A demonstrator takes a breather during protests in downtown Cairo on Saturday. More Photos »

CAIRO — The association of judges here called Saturday for courts across Egypt to suspend all but their most vital activities to protest an edict by President Mohamed Morsi granting himself unchecked power by setting his decrees above judicial review until the ratification of a new constitution.

The judges’ strike, which drew the support of the leader of the national lawyers’ association, would be the steepest escalation yet in a political struggle between the country’s new Islamist leaders and the institutions of the authoritarian government that was overthrown last year. As it spills into the courts and the streets, the dispute also increasingly threatens to undermine the credibility of Egypt’s political transition as well.

A council that oversees the judiciary denounced Mr. Morsi’s decree, which was issued Thursday, as “an unprecedented attack on judicial independence,” and urged the president to retract parts of the decree eliminating judicial oversight.

State news media reported that judges and prosecutors had already walked out in Alexandria, and there were other news reports of walkouts in Qulubiya and Beheira, but those could not be confirmed.

Outside Egypt’s high court in Cairo, the police fired tear gas at protesters who were denouncing Mr. Morsi and trying to force their way into the building, the second day in a row that protesters took to the streets over the presidential decree, which critics have assailed as a return to autocracy.

Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a prosecutor appointed by Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, declared to a crowd of cheering judges that the presidential decree was “null and void.” He denounced what he described as “the systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.”

A coalition of disparate opposition leaders including the liberal former United Nations diplomat Mohamed ElBaradei, the leftist-nationalist Hamdeen Sabahy, and the former Mubarak-government foreign minister Amr Moussa formed a self-proclaimed National Salvation Front to oppose the decree. In addition to demanding the dissolution of the constitutional assembly, the group declared that it would not speak with Mr. Morsi until he withdrew his decree.

“We will not enter into a dialogue about anything while this constitutional declaration remains intact and in force,” Mr. Moussa said. “We demand that it be withdrawn and then we can talk.”

As the judges group called for a suspension of the courts, a growing number of lawyers filed claims demanding that the courts seek to overturn Mr. Morsi’s decree, joining the battle between the executive and judicial powers.

Advisers to Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s first democratically elected president, defended his action, saying he was trying to prevent the courts from disbanding the Islamist-dominated constitutional assembly, which is writing a new constitution. The nation’s top courts had already dissolved the Islamist-led parliament and an earlier Islamist-led constituent assembly.

The advisers said a court decision on the new constitutional assembly had been expected as soon as next Sunday.

The judges’ group, as well as the newly unified secular opposition, have demanded that Mr. Morsi withdraw his decree, and that he disband and replace the current constitutional assembly. Many of the assembly’s non-Islamist members, including secularists and representatives of the Coptic Church, had already quit the body to protest the Islamists’ domination.

The increasingly vocal criticism of the assembly threatens to undermine the legitimacy of the ultimate charter, and has only increased the likelihood that the Islamist leaders may seek to pass and ratify it on their own, over the opposition of other groups, further damaging its credibility.

The opposition to the decree has also reinforced the fears of Islamists that judges appointed by Mr. Mubarak and the secular opposition were deliberately seeking to derail the process rather than accept their defeats at the polls.

Nevine Ramzy and Mai Ayyad contributed reporting.

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Russia blames technical error for brief YouTube blacklisting

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian officials offered assurances they were not seeking to block access to YouTube on Wednesday, saying a technical error caused the popular video-sharing website to appear briefly on a register of sites containing banned content.

For about an hour, YouTube was listed on the newly-created register, which the government says is needed to fight child pornography but critics of President Vladimir Putin fear may be used to censor the Internet and stifle dissent.

YouTube was subsequently removed from the register, maintained by Russia‘s communications watchdog agency, Roskomnadzor, which said there was no plan to block access to the site.

“An unfortunate technical mistake occurred,” Roskomnadzor spokesman Vladimir Pikov said. “We work closely with them (YouTube). Basically, we see no reason now to apply towards its owners any preventive measures.”

Russia’s consumer protection rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said YouTube took down several videos earlier this week as requested by officials under the new law tightening Internet controls that took effect on November 1.

The blacklist includes websites containing pornographic images of children, instructions on how to make, use and where to get drugs, as well as others describing suicide methods.

Under the legislation, websites have three days to remove content considered harmful or illegal by Russian authorities before they can be blocked.

YouTube is owned by U.S.-based Google Inc..

A spokeswoman for Google in Russia, Alla Zabrovskaya, said all requests from the authorities are handled by the company’s global headquarters in the United States.

Anti-Putin activists, who have used the Internet to organize demonstrations, say the law is part of a crackdown on dissent orchestrated by the Kremlin since Putin, a former KGB spy, returned to presidency in May.

After a stint as prime minister, Putin was elected to a third presidential term in March after a series of opposition protests that were the biggest of his 13-year rule.

(Additional reporting by Maria Tsvetkova and Anastasia Teterevleva; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Sophie Hares)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Beyoncé & Amanda Seyfried Take on Fantasy Roles

By Julia Haskins

11/24/2012 at 04:15 PM EST

Amanda Seyfried and Beyoncé

Splash News Online; Mike Coppola/Getty

Call it escapism or call it just plain fun, but a crop of upcoming big-screen experiences are full of fantasy for kids and adults alike.

The animated tale Epic features a host of celebrity voice talent – Beyoncé, Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Aziz Ansari, Jason Sudeikis and Steven Tyler for starters.

FirstShowing reports that the 3-D film, based on William Joyce's children's book The Leaf Men will hit theaters Memorial weekend.

More Casting News:

Hugh Laurie, meanwhile, is out of the ER and onto the open sea. He will star as Blackbeard on NBC's pirate drama Crossbones, The Hollywood Reporter confirms. Crossbones, which takes place in 1715 on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, is based off Colin Woodard's book The Republic of Pirates.

Woody Allen is showing that at 76 he's still got it. He'll be playing a pimp in the movie Fading Gigolo, Zimbio reports.

Lenny Kravitz will pay homage to a Motown legend by playing Marvin Gaye, it's been widely reported. The film will follow the last years of Gaye's life, including his addiction problems and rescue by music promoter Freddy Cousaert.
  

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AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians

PADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.

Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.

The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.

"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."

Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.

Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.

"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."

During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:

Read More..

Military court to revisit statute criminalizing suicide attempts

In a case involving a discharged Marine from Oceanside, a military court next week will consider the decades-old military statute that makes it a crime to attempt suicide.

Lawyers for Lazzaric T. Caldwell will argue it is wrong for the military to punish troops whose mental problems cause them to attempt suicide — particularly in an era when the military is trying to reduce the soaring suicide rate among troops.

According to court records, the statute in the Uniform Code of Military Justice was used in World War II to punish troops attempting to avoid duty by faking suicide. The statute has not come to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which will consider Caldwell's case, since the Gulf War of 1990-91, when it was upheld.

Navy Lt. Michael Hanzel, representing Caldwell, argued in a legal brief that "surely, neither Congress nor the president intended [the statute] ... to prosecute mentally ill people who make genuine suicide attempts."

But Marine Maj. David Roberts, representing the government, countered that the statute is clearly written and that it helps retain discipline within the ranks.

Caldwell, now 25, admitted that he slit his wrists in January 2010 while stationed in Okinawa, Japan. He pleaded guilty to attempting suicide and was sentenced to 180 days in the brig and a bad-conduct discharge. His lawyers are arguing that his guilty plea be thrown out.

The bad-conduct discharge bars Caldwell from receiving veterans benefits, including mental health counseling. Caldwell was never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan but was troubled by numerous problems, including being stabbed by a girlfriend, the deaths of several family members, and confrontations with other Marines, according to court documents.

Along with the suicide charge, Caldwell was convicted of larceny, driving without a license and possession of a banned substance. He had enlisted in the Marine Corps at age 20 after a troubled life in Texas that included a year in jail for assault.

"Now I focus on God and good music," according to a statement on his Facebook page.

tony.perry@latimes.com

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China Detains Former Journalist Who Reported on Deaths of 5 Children

BEIJING — A former journalist and his wife have been detained by security officers in China after he wrote online last week about five boys in Guizhou Province who died in a trash bin after taking shelter there from the cold, according to a lawyer and a friend of the ex-journalist.

The lawyer, Li Fangping, said in a telephone interview that the ex-journalist, Li Yuanlong, who is not related to the lawyer, was picked up by security officers on Wednesday. The men spoke by telephone while Mr. Li was being driven along a highway to a “resort” in Guizhou in south-central China, the lawyer said on Thursday. A friend of Mr. Li who edits an online publication said Mr. Li’s wife had been taken too.

Mr. Li, 52, had been a reporter for Bijie Daily, the main newspaper in the city of Bijie, for eight years, but was imprisoned in 2005 for two years because he had written too many “negative” stories about Bijie, the lawyer said. He has been unemployed since his release from prison, the lawyer added.

Late last week, Mr. Li posted photographs and wrote about the deaths in Bijie of the five boys, who were all related and ranged in age from 9 to 13. The bodies were discovered on Nov. 16 in a rolling trash bin. The local police said the boys appeared to have died of carbon monoxide poisoning after they started a fire with charcoal inside the bin to warm themselves. At least four of the boys had dropped out of school, according to official news reports.

Mr. Li’s posts ignited outrage on the Internet in China. Online users asked scathing questions about how the local government, teachers, family members and society in general could have allowed the boys to end up in such a predicament. Official news organizations, including Xinhua, the state news agency, ran reports on the deaths.

For many Chinese, the plight of the dead children evoked comparisons to the tale of “The Little Match Girl,” a Hans Christian Andersen story of a girl ignored by the rich who froze to death after trying to warm herself with a lighted match. The story was commonly assigned in Chinese schools for many years.

The boys’ parents were migrant workers who had gone off to boom cities seeking jobs, and the boys were being raised in haphazard conditions typical of “left-behind children,” the news reports said. It is common across China for migrant workers to leave children in the care of family members, often grandparents, in their hometowns. Because of a strict residency registration system across China, migrant workers cannot get proper social benefits in the cities in which they work, and their children are often barred from schooling, which gives parents little incentive to bring their children with them.

The lawyer said local officials knew that Mr. Li has more information on the plight of children in Bijie, and so the officials wanted to detain him to keep him away from other reporters. He added that Mr. Li had been documenting the problems faced by children for years.

A person answering the telephone at an office of the Bijie government said the office had no information about Mr. Li. The Web site of the city government has some information on the five dead boys and has a post vowing to protect children and to patrol trash bins. The government also said it would set up a hot line for reporting on cases of street children and send officials to schools to ensure that children are enrolled and attending classes.

Mr. Li’s posts last week came at a particularly delicate time for the Communist Party, which announced a new leadership lineup on Nov. 15. Party leaders have stressed the need to bridge the country’s growing income gap, but many officials still support a growth-at-all-costs strategy.

Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that two school principals and four local officials were fired Monday night for failing to ensure the welfare of the boys in Bijie. Two other officials were suspended from their jobs.

The boys were identified as Tao Zhongjing, 12; Tao Zhonghong, 11; Tao Zhonglin, 13; Tao Chong, 12; and Tao Bo, 9.

Mia Li contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 23, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the author of “The Little Match Girl.” He is Hans Christian Andersen, not Anderson.

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Sony at greater risk than Panasonic in electronics downturn: Fitch

TOKYO (Reuters) – Panasonic Corp has a better chance than rival Sony Corp of surviving Japan‘s consumer electronics slump because of its unglamorous but stable appliance business of washing machines and fridges, credit rating agency Fitch said Friday.

Fitch cut Panasonic‘s rating by two notches to BB and Sony three notches to BB minus on Thursday, the first time one of the three major ratings agencies have put the creditworthiness of either company into junk-bond territory.

Rival agencies Moody’s and S&P rate both of Japan’s consumer electronic giants at the same level, just above junk status. Moody’s last cut its rating on Panasonic on Tuesday.

Panasonic “has the advantage of a relatively stable consumer appliance business that is still generating positive margins”, Matt Jamieson, Fitch’s head of Asia-Pacific, said in a conference call on Friday to explain its ratings downgrades.

But at Sony, he added, “most of their electronic business are loss making, they appear to be overstretched.”

Japan’s TV industry has been bested by cheaper, more innovative models from Samsung Electronics and other foreign rivals, while tablets and smartphones built by Apple Inc have become the dominant consumer electronics devices.

Investors are focusing on the fate of Sony and Panasonic after another struggling Japanese consumer electronics firm, Sharp Corp, maker of the Aquos TV, secured a $ 4.6 billion bail-out by banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Sony and Panasonic have chosen divergent survival paths.

Panasonic, maker of the Viera TV, is looking to expand its businesses in appliances, solar panels, lithium batteries and automotive components. Appliances amount to around only 6 percent of the company’s sales, but they generate margins of more than 6 percent and make up a big chunk of operating profit.

Sony, creator of the Walkman, is doubling down on consumer gadgets in a bid to regain ground from Samsung and Apple in mobile devices while bolstering digital cameras and gaming.

The latest downgrades will curtail the ability of both Japanese companies to raise money in credit markets to help fund restructurings of their business portfolios.

For now, however, that impact is limited, given the support Panasonic and Sony are receiving from their banks.

In October, Panasonic, which expects to lose $ 10 billion in the year to March 31, secured $ 7.6 billion of loan commitments from banks including Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Mitsubishi UFJ, a financing backstop it says will help it avoid having to seek capital in credit markets.

Sony, which has forecast a full-year profit of $ 1.63 billion helped by the sale of a chemicals business to a Japanese state bank, announced plans to raise $ 1.9 billion through a convertible bond before the latest rating downgrade.

Thomson Reuters’ Starmine structural model, which evaluates market views of credit risk, debt levels and changes in asset values gives Panasonic and Sony an implied rating of BB minus. Sharp’s implied rating is three notches lower at B minus.

Standard & Poor’s rates Panasonic and Sony at BBB, the second lowest of the investment grade, while Moody’s Investors Service has them on Baa3, the lowest of its high-grade category. Moody’s has a negative outlook for both firms while S&P sees a stable outlook for Panasonic and a negative one for Sony.

Stock markets in Japan were closed on Friday for a national holiday.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Mark Bendeich)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi Turns 25

11/23/2012 at 04:00 PM EST

Snooki and Lorenzo

Courtesy of Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi

Happy birthday Snooki!

Nicole Polizzi turns 25 Friday, celebrating with her "favorite birthday gift" – son Lorenzo Dominic, 3 months.

"Best birthday ever with my fiancé [Jionni LaValle] and Lorenzo!!" she Tweeted.

The fist-pumping nights at the club Polizzi is known for may be over, but it seems as though the Jersey Shore star will still make the most of her special day.

"Once a month, I go out with my girlfriends because if you don't go out when you're a new mom, you're just going to freak out," she said recently. "You need time for yourself. It's always so busy with the baby. Sometimes you get stressed or frustrated, so you just need your own time."

The family of three had plenty of time as a trio on Thursday, as evidenced by the documentation of "baby's first Thanksgiving" on Polizzi's Instagram account.

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