Rising Consumer Optimism Fuels an Annual Spree





Worries about the economy and fiscal austerity be damned. On Black Friday, consumers were ready to shop till they dropped. And some even did, dozing off on the furniture displays in department stores offering predawn deals.




Consumers have voiced increasing optimism in recent months as employment rises and their home values (finally) go up, or at least stabilize, even as government talks about taxes and spending remain at an impasse. Bargain hunters put that upbeat mood into action on Thursday night and the wee hours of Friday morning at department and discount stores around the country.


Shoppers stood in line Friday for the 7 a.m. opening of Sam’s Club in Eagan, Minn., enduring freezing temperatures and biting winds, and clinging to free Starbuck’s Holiday Blend coffee as they collected vouchers for laptops and big-screen TVs.


“I didn’t even want it,” Meshia Flood, 36, a student from nearby Eagan, told a worker standing near the exit, referring to the 40-inch Sanyo LED TV on her cart. She and her 13-year-old daughter had come for a 96-cent Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone, but did not snag one before they disappeared minutes after opening.


Hundreds to thousands of consumers lined up outside Sears, Target, Macy’s, Old Navy and other retailers offering time-sensitive deals. Some turned up Thursday night for newly extended hours that some merchants have been experimenting with.


Bryan Everett, Target’s senior vice president for stores, said that Target’s decision to open at 9 p.m. on Thursday rather than midnight meant that there were more families in the store, and that customers stayed longer.


“Usually, it’s just a parent with a child, or mom and dad, or just a single guest in the store,” he said. “This year, we were seeing four- to five-person families.”


As a result, he said, customers stayed longer, and there was more “cross shopping.” Usually the Black Friday shoppers make a beeline for the electronics and toys, he said, but this year in addition to the surge in big-screen LCD TVs, iPads, iPods and Xboxes “we saw a nice pattern of shopping in the apparel and home departments.” Children’s pajamas, blankets, sheet sets, pillows and scarves all did particularly well.


The official sales numbers will not be reported for a few days, but analysts are expecting a strong sales day, with results comparable with last year’s gain of about 3 percent, according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which is a metric for total American retail sales across all payment forms, including cash and check. The earlier hours from a few select chains seem unlikely to increase the size of the spending pie, but they may reapportion it.


“Black Friday has always been and always will be about being first: first to open, first to price, first to offer that special item,” said Michael Brown, a partner in the retail practice of A. T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm.


He said the race to open earlier and earlier would probably continue in coming years, although there was some question about how early was too early. Some Midtown Manhattan stores that were open at midday on Thursday did not seem to get blockbuster traffic, at least compared with the postdinner doorbusters.


In addition to longer hours, stores also experimented with ways to slow the creep of online competitors onto their turf and prevent consumers from using brick-and-mortar locations as showrooms for the goods they planned to purchase online.


Best Buy, Target, Fry’s Electronics and Staples all agreed to match prices with at least some online competitors. Physical stores may also benefit from decisions by some states to force online retailers to pay sales taxes. That is chipping away at the pricing edge of some major companies like Amazon.com, according to Nelson Granados, an assistant professor at the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University.


Reporting was contributed by Christina Capecchi from Eagan, Minn.; Christopher Maag from Columbus, Ohio; Cindy Wolff from Memphis; and Rebecca Fairley Raney from Upland, Calif.



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Secret message found with carrier pigeon may never be deciphered












 Secret message found with carrier pigeon may never be decipheredBritish man finds carrier pigeon skeleton in his fireplace with unbreakable secret code (Reuters)


Before military forces had secure cell phones and satellite communications, they used carrier pigeons. The highly trained birds delivered sensitive information from one location to another during  World War II. Often, the birds found the intended recipient. But not always.












A dead pigeon was recently discovered inside a chimney in Surrey, England. There for roughly 70 years, the bird had a curious canister attached to its leg. Inside was a coded message that has stumped the experts.


The code features a series of 27 groups of five letters. According to Reuters, nobody from Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters has been able to decipher it. The message was sent by a Sgt. W. Scott to someone or something identified as “Xo2.”


A spokesperson remarked, “Although it is disappointing that we cannot yet read the message brought back by a brave carrier pigeon, it is a tribute to the skills of the wartime code-makers that, despite working under severe pressure, they devised a code that was indecipherable both then and now.”


The bird was discovered by a homeowner doing renovations earlier this month. In an interview with Reuters, David Martin remarked that bits of birds kept falling from the chimney. Eventually, Margin saw the red canister and speculated that it might contain a secret message. And it seems as if the message will always be secret.


Carrier pigeons played a vital role in wars due to their incredible homing skills. All told, U.K. forces used about 250,000 of the birds during World War II.


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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'Dallas' star Larry Hagman dies in Texas

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Larry Hagman, whose predatory oil baron J.R. Ewing on television's long-running nighttime soap opera "Dallas" became a symbol for 1980s greed and coaxed forth a Texas-sized gusher of TV ratings, has died. He was 81.

Hagman, who returned as J.R. in a new edition of "Dallas" this year, passed away Friday afternoon due to complications from his battle with cancer, according to a statement from the family provided to The Associated Press by Warner Bros., producer of "Dallas."

"Larry was back in his beloved hometown of Dallas, re-enacting the iconic role he loved the most," the family said. "Larry's family and closest friends had joined him in Dallas for the Thanksgiving holiday."

Linda Gray, his on-screen wife in the original series and the sequel, was with Hagman when he died in a Dallas hospital, said her publicist, Jeffrey Lane.

"He brought joy to everyone he knew. He was creative, generous, funny, loving and talented, and I will miss him enormously. He was an original and lived life to the fullest," Gray said in a statement.

Hagman was diagnosed in 1992 with cirrhosis of the liver and acknowledged that he had drank heavily for years. In 1995, a malignant tumor was discovered on his liver and he underwent a transplant.

Years before "Dallas," Hagman had gained TV fame as a nice guy with the fluffy 1965-70 NBC comedy "I Dream of Jeannie," in which he played Capt. Tony Nelson, an astronaut whose life is disrupted when he finds a comely genie, portrayed by Barbara Eden, and takes her home to live with him.

He also starred in two short-lived sitcoms, "The Good Life" (NBC, 1971-72) and "Here We Go Again" (ABC, 1973). His film work included well-regarded performances in "The Group," ''Harry and Tonto" and "Primary Colors."

But it was Hagman's masterful portrayal of the charmingly loathsome J.R. that brought him his greatest stardom. The CBS serial drama about the Ewing clan and those in their orbit aired from April 1978 to May 1991.

The "Who shot J.R.?" story twist, in which Hagman's character was nearly murdered in a cliffhanger episode, fueled international speculation and millions of dollars in betting-parlour wagers. It also helped give the series a ratings record for the time.

When the answer was revealed in a November 1980 episode, an average 41 million viewers tuned in to make "Dallas" the second most-watched entertainment show of all time, trailing only the "MASH" finale in 1983 with 50 million viewers.

It was J.R.'s sister-in-law, Kristin (Mary Crosby) who plugged him — he had made her pregnant, then threatened to frame her as a prostitute unless she left town — but others had equal motivation.

Hagman played Ewing as a bottomless well of corruption with a charming grin: a business cheat and a faithless husband who tried to get his alcoholic wife, Sue Ellen (Linda Gray), institutionalized.

"I know what I want on J.R.'s tombstone," Hagman said in 1988. "It should say: 'Here lies upright citizen J.R. Ewing. This is the only deal he ever lost.'"

On Friday night, Victoria Principal, who co-starred in the original series, recalled Hagman as "bigger than life, on-screen and off. He is unforgettable, and irreplaceable, to millions of fans around the world, and in the hearts of each of us, who was lucky enough to know and love him."

Ten episodes of the new edition of "Dallas" aired this past summer and proved a hit for TNT. Filming had been completed for five of the episodes for the second season and work on the sixth episode was in progress, the network said.

There was no immediate comment from Warner or TNT on how the series would deal with Hagman's loss.

In 2006, Hagman did a guest shot on FX's drama series "Nip/Tuck," playing a macho business mogul. He also got new exposure in recent years with the DVD releases of "I Dream of Jeannie" and "Dallas."

The Fort Worth, Texas, native was the son of singer-actress Mary Martin, who starred in such classics as "South Pacific" and "Peter Pan." Martin was still in her teens when he was born in 1931 during her marriage to attorney Ben Hagman.

As a youngster, Hagman gained a reputation for mischief-making as he was bumped from one private school to another. He made a stab at New York theater in the early 1950s, then served in the Air Force from 1952-56 in England.

While there, he met and married young Swedish designer Maj Axelsson. The couple had two children, Preston and Heidi, and were longtime residents of the Malibu beach colony that is home to many celebrities.

Hagman returned to acting and found work in the theater and in such TV series as "The U.S. Steel Hour," ''The Defenders" and "Sea Hunt." His first continuing role was as lawyer Ed Gibson on the daytime serial "The Edge of Night" (1961-63).

He called his 2001 memoir "Hello Darlin': Tall (and Absolutely True) Tales about My Life."

"I didn't put anything in that I thought was going to hurt someone or compromise them in any way," he told The Associated Press at the time.

After his transplant, he became an advocate for organ donation and volunteered at a hospital to help frightened patients.

"I counsel, encourage, meet them when they come in for their operations, and after," he said in 1996. "I try to offer some solace, like 'Don't be afraid, it will be a little uncomfortable for a brief time, but you'll be OK.' "

He also was an anti-smoking activist who took part in "Great American Smoke-Out" campaigns.

___

AP Television Writer Frazier Moore in New York contributed to this report.

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Scientists See Advances in Deep Learning, a Part of Artificial Intelligence


Hao Zhang/The New York Times


A voice recognition program translated a speech given by Richard F. Rashid, Microsoft’s top scientist, into Mandarin Chinese.







Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising new molecules for designing drugs.




The advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among researchers who design software to perform human activities like seeing, listening and thinking. They offer the promise of machines that converse with humans and perform tasks like driving cars and working in factories, raising the specter of automated robots that could replace human workers.


The technology, called deep learning, has already been put to use in services like Apple’s Siri virtual personal assistant, which is based on Nuance Communications’ speech recognition service, and in Google’s Street View, which uses machine vision to identify specific addresses.


But what is new in recent months is the growing speed and accuracy of deep-learning programs, often called artificial neural networks or just “neural nets” for their resemblance to the neural connections in the brain.


“There has been a number of stunning new results with deep-learning methods,” said Yann LeCun, a computer scientist at New York University who did pioneering research in handwriting recognition at Bell Laboratories. “The kind of jump we are seeing in the accuracy of these systems is very rare indeed.”


Artificial intelligence researchers are acutely aware of the dangers of being overly optimistic. Their field has long been plagued by outbursts of misplaced enthusiasm followed by equally striking declines.


In the 1960s, some computer scientists believed that a workable artificial intelligence system was just 10 years away. In the 1980s, a wave of commercial start-ups collapsed, leading to what some people called the “A.I. winter.”


But recent achievements have impressed a wide spectrum of computer experts. In October, for example, a team of graduate students studying with the University of Toronto computer scientist Geoffrey E. Hinton won the top prize in a contest sponsored by Merck to design software to help find molecules that might lead to new drugs.


From a data set describing the chemical structure of 15 different molecules, they used deep-learning software to determine which molecule was most likely to be an effective drug agent.


The achievement was particularly impressive because the team decided to enter the contest at the last minute and designed its software with no specific knowledge about how the molecules bind to their targets. The students were also working with a relatively small set of data; neural nets typically perform well only with very large ones.


“This is a really breathtaking result because it is the first time that deep learning won, and more significantly it won on a data set that it wouldn’t have been expected to win at,” said Anthony Goldbloom, chief executive and founder of Kaggle, a company that organizes data science competitions, including the Merck contest.


Advances in pattern recognition hold implications not just for drug development but for an array of applications, including marketing and law enforcement. With greater accuracy, for example, marketers can comb large databases of consumer behavior to get more precise information on buying habits. And improvements in facial recognition are likely to make surveillance technology cheaper and more commonplace.


Artificial neural networks, an idea going back to the 1950s, seek to mimic the way the brain absorbs information and learns from it. In recent decades, Dr. Hinton, 64 (a great-great-grandson of the 19th-century mathematician George Boole, whose work in logic is the foundation for modern digital computers), has pioneered powerful new techniques for helping the artificial networks recognize patterns.


Modern artificial neural networks are composed of an array of software components, divided into inputs, hidden layers and outputs. The arrays can be “trained” by repeated exposures to recognize patterns like images or sounds.


These techniques, aided by the growing speed and power of modern computers, have led to rapid improvements in speech recognition, drug discovery and computer vision.


Deep-learning systems have recently outperformed humans in certain limited recognition tests.


Last year, for example, a program created by scientists at the Swiss A. I. Lab at the University of Lugano won a pattern recognition contest by outperforming both competing software systems and a human expert in identifying images in a database of German traffic signs.


The winning program accurately identified 99.46 percent of the images in a set of 50,000; the top score in a group of 32 human participants was 99.22 percent, and the average for the humans was 98.84 percent.


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TV Sports: Change in YES Ownership Unlikely to Alter Yankees-Heavy Format


Michael Heiman/Getty Images


News Corporation on Tuesday agreed to purchase a 49 percent stake in the YES Network.







Fear not, Yankees fans: the YES Network’s Yankees propaganda will continue even if News Corporation increases its ownership stake in the channel from 49 percent, which it agreed to purchase Tuesday, to as much as 80 percent in three years.




The deal cedes to the Yankees continued control of pinstripe content even if the team owns as little as 20 percent.


And why would Fox Sports, the division of News Corporation that owns 19 regional sports networks, want to alter YES’s Yankees propaganda formula? It has served YES so well that it will be valued at $3.8 billion if News Corporation buys majority control. Carrying the Nets did not make YES valuable. It’s about Yankees games; the pre- and postgame shows; the “Yankeeography” series and replays of games; and the “Yankee Classics,” in which the Yankees never lose. (They have lost classic games, but YES does not show them.)


Earlier this year, when YES was celebrating its 10th anniversary, I talked to Randy Levine, the Yankees’ president, and Tracy Dolgin, who runs YES, about the unashamedly pro-Yankees slant of the network’s announcers and the absence of a news operation like the one on SNY. “We tell our people if you want to be bipartisan and fair, don’t work for YES,” Levine said.


As for carrying a nightly news show, like SNY’s “SportsNite,” Dolgin said: “News is a loser. If you want news, watch ESPN.”


Fox will, of course, bring some of its programming to YES. That was one reason to make the deal. It needs a New York outpost, especially as it starts a national sports network that is, for now, called Fox Sports 1. But tinker with the propaganda? Never.


Now, if the Steinbrenner family is willing to sell some of its stake in YES, or all of it, is it willing to sell the team?


Hardly likely. There seems to be no incentive unless Hal Steinbrenner eventually cannot envision the Yankees without Derek Jeter. The Yankees owners will continue to get an annual rights fee from YES, now about $85 million. That will rise at about 4 percent annually for a while, and, eventually, to 5 to 7 percent a year. Through their holding company, Yankee Global Enterprises, the Yankees will get $420 million — half of it now, and half of it in three years — from News Corporation to keep the team on YES through 2042.


Another reason the Steinbrenner family might be averse to selling the team: the tax bill they would be handed upon a sale.


The evolution of YES would have been quite different if another deal had gone through.


In 2000, Dave Checketts, then the president of Madison Square Garden, flew to Florida to meet with George Steinbrenner and two of the New Jersey Nets’ owners, Ray Chambers and Lewis Katz. This was after the Yankees and the Nets ownership groups had merged into YankeeNets.


The subject of the meeting was to create a Yankees-centric network together, Checketts said. James L. Dolan, then the chief executive of Cablevision, which owned the Garden, had given him the go-ahead to try.


“Let’s take a shot at this deal,” Checketts recalled telling Dolan.


Checketts, also in an interview earlier this year, said that the joint venture was intended to keep the Yankees and the MSG Network together. For 13 years, MSG had spent nearly $550 million to carry the Yankees. The Yankees wanted their own network and MSG was looking at the distinct possibility of losing its most dominant programming, a staple from March to September.


Checketts suggested that the Yankees get a 40 percent stake in the proposed network, which would have converted what was then called Fox Sports New York — now MSG Plus — into a channel with the Yankees, the Islanders and the Nets. Cablevision would have run the network, so the pronounced Yankees bias would not have been so apparent. Checketts’s bosses subsequently told him he had made too rich a proposal. And Steinbrenner was seeking 50 percent, said another executive involved in the talks, so a deal could not be reached.


With that deal dead, a rancorous legal battle developed over the Yankees’ intent to leave MSG to start their own network. The Yankees paid a $30 million escape fee and started with Goldman Sachs and Providence Equity as their primary partners. Now, having enjoyed YES’s profits and benefited from previous bank refinancings of the channel, they are all cashing out to some extent.


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Lido Beach Journal: Lido Beach Towers Face Major Work After Storm





LIDO BEACH, N.Y. — In the beginning were the marshy sandbars on the Atlantic bought in 1906 by a flamboyant entrepreneur for $3 million, envisioned as the site of an American Venice.




Over the years, there was a little of everything — the elephants brought to Long Beach Island as a publicity stunt for the construction of the Boardwalk; the pink, six-story, 300-room Moorish-style Lido Beach Hotel, where the rich and famous danced under the open skylight of its circular nightclub; the building’s stint as housing for delegates and officials during the earliest days of the United Nations; dreary declines, triumphant rebirths.


It is not entirely clear when anyone will be able to return to what is now called Lido Beach Towers, the former hotel, currently a 184-unit condominium property that was perhaps the most storied edifice on the Long Island shore to feel Hurricane Sandy’s full wrath. But grand dreams built on shifting sands often provide unexpected plot turns and strokes of good or ill luck. Hurricane Sandy is only the latest example.


At the towers, work crews are beginning a cleanup, and grim-faced residents shuttle in and out to survey damage and ask questions about Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance and insurance coverage. While about 60 residents rode out the storm, water and sand inundated the ground floor, reaching almost to the ceiling in the units closest to the beach. The storm damaged or demolished about 18 first-floor apartments, destroyed the building’s electrical system and elevators, and obliterated outdoor perimeter walls and landscaping.


The building’s management company, Cooper Square Realty of New York, says the building appears to be structurally sound but was among the hardest hit of the company’s 40 buildings and could take six to eight months to reopen.


The property owes its existence to William H. Reynolds, an entrepreneur, promoter, racetrack builder and yachtsman with a taste for risk who developed parts of Brooklyn, created Coney Island’s Dreamland amusement park and built Laurelton, Queens, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.


In 1906, at the age of 39, he turned his attention to the resort community of Long Beach, employing dredging so extensive it was compared to the work on the Panama Canal. He built the Boardwalk and the village of Long Beach Estates and became mayor of Long Beach. But it was a rocky ride. His company went bankrupt. He was convicted of grand larceny but had his conviction overturned.


And then he built his ultimate fantasy, the $5 million luxury hotel project just east of Long Beach in Lido Beach. It officially opened just as the stock market was crashing in 1929.


Mr. Reynolds died two years later, his full plan for a seaside wonderland unfinished. But the hotel, with its bubble-gum-pink stucco facade and pair of gilded turrets, became the area’s signature building and a Gatsbyesque haven for socialites and celebrities in tuxedos and gowns.


That first golden age was short lived. When the Navy occupied Long Beach Island during World War II, the hotel became an amphibious base and discharge center. When the United Nations opened at its temporary home in Lake Success, N.Y., in 1946, some 600 delegates and staff members lived there briefly with light green and deep aqua furnishings, and state-of-the-art hide-a-bed sofas and electric blankets.


It returned to hotel use, in the end as a kosher resort with Catskill-style entertainment, and then, its prospects sagging, it became condominiums with the feel of a resort.


The grande dame of a building even has its own grande dame, Dodo Burke, who at 98 has lived there for 50 years, first at the hotel when it was open just for the summer, now in a fourth-floor condominium facing the ocean. She remembers the hotel with its chamber and jazz ensembles playing from the Romeo and Juliet balcony during dinner, the big-name entertainers like Milton Berle and Robert Goulet and the rules for the cabanas — Row A for children with nannies, Row B for the card players, Rows C and D for families. She figures the towers will come back, minus a few of the older residents and maybe with a bit of the luster, like the gorgeous landscaping, lost.


“I compare it to Versailles,” she said. “It will come back. It has to. You’re talking almost 100 years of beautiful things. I’m already looking forward to the party.”


Along with the destruction, there was a bit of luck. In January 2005, the towers’ board began a wholesale renovation that grew to $18 million amid division about the cost and past neglected maintenance. There was a new facade, new roof, windows, doors, terraces and emergency stairwells, even a return to the bubble-gum-pink exterior.


“We were ready for this storm even though we didn’t know that we were building for this storm,” said Gary Weiss, the board chairman.


Still, the toll for residents, especially those on the first floor without flood insurance, will be immense, and it is not yet clear who will pay for what. One thing that did survive, though, was the painting of the original grand plans for the project.


Indeed, with climate change and rising concerns about building on the ocean, the Pink Lady, in some ways, is just as quixotic an undertaking now as it was when Reynolds first rolled the dice. And, even with the wreckage, it is perhaps just as alluring.


Leonard Feigenbaum, who has a duplex on the first and second floors, was one of those who rode out the storm. Standing among the flooded-out cars in the parking lot, seaweed clinging to ruined chassis, he channeled his inner Reynolds and looked toward the next act.


“This is the best place in the world to live,” he said.


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Halle Berry's ex arrested after fight at her house

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Halle Berry's ex-boyfriend Gabriel Aubry was arrested for investigation of battery Thursday after he and the Oscar-winning actress's current boyfriend got into a fight at her Hollywood Hills home, police said.

Aubry, 37, was booked for investigation of a battery, a misdemeanor, and released on $20,000 bail, according to online jail records. He's scheduled to appear in court Dec. 13.

Aubry came to Berry's house Thanksgiving morning and police responded to a report of an assault, said Los Angeles Police Officer Julie Boyer. Aubry was injured in the altercation and was taken to a hospital where he was treated and released.

Emails sent to Berry's publicist, Meredith O'Sullivan, and Aubry's family law attorney, Gary Fishbein, were not immediately returned.

Berry and Aubry have been involved in a custody dispute involving their 4-year-old daughter, Nahla. The proceedings were sealed because the former couple are not married. Both appeared in the case as recently as Nov. 9, but neither side commented on the outcome of the hearing.

Berry has been dating French actor Olivier Martinez, and he said earlier this year that they are engaged.

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Recipes for Health: Pear Clafoutis — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT:







If you don’t want to make a crust but want something tartlike for your Thanksgiving dessert, a clafoutis, which is something like a cross between a flan and a pancake, is a great choice. It’s a very easy dessert, yet it’s always impressive.




2 tablespoons pear eau-de-vie or liqueur (optional)


2 tablespoons mild-flavored honey, like clover


2 pounds ripe but firm pears, like Bartlett or Comice


3 large eggs


1 vanilla bean, scraped


1/3 cup sugar


2/3 cup sifted unbleached white flour


1/2 cup plain yogurt


1/2 cup milk


pinch of salt


1. Combine the pear eau-de-vie and the honey in a bowl. Peel, core and slice the pears and toss with the mixture. Let sit for 30 minutes.


2. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 10-inch ceramic tart pan or baking dish.


3. In the bowl of an electric mixer or with a whisk, beat together the eggs, the seeds from the vanilla bean and the sugar. Pour off the marinade from the pears and add to the egg mixture. Gradually beat in the flour, then beat in the yogurt, milk and salt.


4. Arrange the pears in the baking dish. Pour on the batter. Place in the oven and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the top is beginning to brown. Serve hot or warm.


Yield: 8 servings.


Advance preparation: Although this is best served warm, you can allow it to cool completely and serve it at room temperature. It will hold for several hours out of the refrigerator. Leftovers make a nice breakfast treat.


Nutritional information per serving: 195 calories; 2 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 0 grams polyunsaturated fat; 1 gram monounsaturated fat; 71 milligrams cholesterol; 40 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 47 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


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News Analysis: Case Casts a Shadow on a Hedge Fund Mogul

In 2010, the billionaire hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen gave a rare interview to Vanity Fair. He said that he wanted to combat persistent rumors that his firm, SAC Capital Advisors, routinely violated securities laws by trading on confidential information.

“In some respects I feel like Don Quixote fighting windmills,” Mr. Cohen said at the time. “There’s a perception, and I’m trying to fight that perception.”

Federal prosecutors only heightened that perception on Tuesday, bringing a criminal case against a former SAC employee in what Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, who brought the charges in Federal District Court in Manhattan, called the most lucrative insider trading scheme ever charged.

And for the first time, the evidence suggests that Mr. Cohen participated in trades that the government says illegally used insider information — though prosecutors have not said that Mr. Cohen himself knew the information was confidential, and he has not been charged.

Any prosecution of Mr. Cohen would most likely hinge on the cooperation of Mathew Martoma, the former SAC employee charged in the case. Mr. Bharara said in the charges that Mr. Martoma obtained secret data from a doctor about clinical trials for an Alzheimer’s drug being developed by the companies Elan and Wyeth. The information enabled SAC to avoid losses of almost $194 million on the stocks, which it sold and then bet against, reaping $83 million in profit — a total benefit to the firm of more than $276 million. SAC executed the trades shortly after Mr. Martoma e-mailed Mr. Cohen and said he needed to discuss something important.

As to Mr. Cohen’s potential culpability in the case, the crucial issue is what Mr. Martoma told Mr. Cohen that led SAC to quickly dump $700 million worth of stock. Did he provide his boss details on why he had turned sour on Wyeth and Elan? Specifically, did he share the leak about the drug trial’s negative results and identify the source of the secret information? Through a spokesman, he said he was confident he had acted appropriately.

It appears, for now, that Mr. Martoma will fight the charges. But the crucial question, as it relates to Mr. Cohen, is whether at some point Mr. Martoma will reverse course, admit to insider trading and agree to help the government build a case against his former boss. Without Mr. Martoma’s cooperation, it is unlikely that the prosecutors have enough evidence to charge Mr. Cohen.

“This has all the markings of a case where the government goes after the smaller fish and then pressures them to flip so they can get the whale,” said Bradley D. Simon, a criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor in New York.

The government has several weapons for its effort to persuade Mr. Martoma to agree to a plea, including the stiff sentences for insider trading. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, Mr. Martoma could receive more than 15 years in prison, a term that could be reduced — or avoided altogether — if he agreed to testify against Mr. Cohen.

F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Martoma, 38, early Tuesday morning at his home in Boca Raton, Fla., a nearly 8,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style mansion on the grounds of the elite Royal Palm Yacht and Country Club. He lives there with his wife, a pediatrician, and three children. A graduate of Duke University and Stanford University’s business school, Mr. Martoma is expected to make an appearance in Federal District Court in Manhattan Monday morning.

Described by a former colleague as low-key and cerebral, Mr. Martoma is one of scores of traders who have earned millions of dollars working under Mr. Cohen and feeding him their best investment ideas. He joined SAC in 2006. In 2008, the year he participated in the alleged illegal trade, the firm paid Mr. Martoma a $9.3 million bonus. But SAC fired him in 2010 after two years of subpar performance.

Charles A. Stillman, a lawyer for Mr. Martoma, said on the day of his arrest, “What happened today is only the beginning of a process that we are confident will lead to Mr. Martoma’s full exoneration.”

It is no secret that the government has been circling Mr. Cohen since the middle of last decade, when it began its crackdown on insider trading, an investigation that has resulted in more than 70 criminal charges. Prosecutors have already linked five former SAC employees to insider trading while at the fund — securing three convictions — though none of those cases connected Mr. Cohen to any illicit activity. But the complaint filed on Tuesday puts Mr. Cohen at the center of the supposed improper conduct.

Mr. Cohen, 56, is a legend on Wall Street, having amassed a multibillion-dollar fortune by posting phenomenal investment returns averaging about 30 percent over the last two decades. Starting with a $25 million grubstake, SAC now manages about $13 billion and has 900 employees across the globe. Mr. Cohen has also emerged as a major force in the art world, owning an eclectic collection that includes works by Picasso, Warhol and Cézanne.

Prosecutors have constructed their case against Mr. Martoma, and increased the pressure on him, by securing the cooperation of Dr. Sidney Gilman, the doctor who supposedly leaked to him the Alzheimer’s drug’s trial data. The case against Mr. Martoma will depend largely on Dr. Gilman’s credibility as a witness.

Dr. Gilman, 80, a neurologist at the University of Michigan medical school, was hired by Elan and Wyeth to monitor the trial’s safety, which gave him access to secret information about the results. SAC retained Dr. Gilman as a consultant and paid him about $108,000.

At first, Dr. Gilman’s reports on the trial’s progress were positive, and SAC built a position in the two drug makers worth approximately $700 million, according to prosecutors. But then, on July 17, 2008, Dr. Gilman told Mr. Martoma that there were problems with the drug, the government said.

A few days later, Mr. Martoma e-mailed Mr. Cohen that he needed to discuss something “important,” and the two then spoke for 20 minutes, according to court filings. Over the next four days, at Mr. Cohen’s direction, SAC Capital jettisoned its entire position in the two stocks and then placed a big negative bet on the drug makers, the government said.

On July 30, after disclosure of the poor trial results, shares of Elan and Wyeth sank. According to the prosecutors’ calculations, SAC would have lost about $194 million had it kept the stock; taking a short position instead generated profits of about $83 million.

Dr. Gilman and the Justice Department have entered into a nonprosecution agreement under which he will cooperate in exchange for not being criminally charged.

Thus far, any potential evidence against Mr. Cohen is entirely circumstantial. The government’s complaint includes e-mails about secretly selling the Elan and Wyeth shares through esoteric methods like algorithms and dark pools. But that is common practice among large, sophisticated funds that do not want to alert competitors or move the stock too much. Moreover, while SAC dumped its large positions in the two stocks quickly — raising the question of what prompted it to do so — Mr. Cohen is known for a rapid-fire trading style. He frequently moves aggressively in and out of stocks while processing gobs of information fed to him by his underlings.

It would be difficult for a jury to infer anything incriminating just from the way these trades were executed.

The government in this case also lacks the powerful wiretap evidence that it has used to convict dozens others, including Raj Rajaratnam, the head of the Galleon Group. Federal agents did wiretap Mr. Cohen’s home telephone for a short period in 2008, according to a person with direct knowledge of the investigation who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. But it is unclear whether the eavesdropping, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, yielded any fruit.

Even without incriminating wiretap evidence, the government has brought cases that rely almost entirely on witnesses testifying against their bosses.

One of those cases is now under way in federal court in Manhattan. Prosecutors are currently trying the former hedge fund portfolio managers Anthony Chiasson of Level Global Investors and Todd Newman of Diamondback Capital Management. Prosecutors say that the two were part of a conspiracy that made about $68 million illegally trading technology stocks.

The outcome of that trial is expected to depend largely on whether the jury believes the testimony of two cooperating witnesses who admitted to the conspiracy — Spyridon Adondakis and Jesse Tortora, former junior analysts at Level Global and Diamondback. The two say they shared secret information with the defendants. Defense lawyers have attacked the witnesses’ credibility, accusing them of lying to avoid prison.

That case, too, has strong ties to SAC. Mr. Chiasson and his co-founder were star traders under Mr. Cohen before starting the now-defunct Level Global. And the owners of Diamondback are both former SAC employees; one is Mr. Cohen’s brother-in-law, Richard Schimel. Diamondback, which continues to operate, has not been accused of wrongdoing.

“SAC’s extraordinary profits have always been something of a market mystery,” said Sebastian Mallaby, the author of “More Money Than God,” a book on the history of hedge funds. “As more and more lawsuits implicate former SAC traders, we may at last understand where SAC’s profits came from.”

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Egypt Leader and Obama Forge Link in Gaza Deal


Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press


Israelis in the town of Sderot watched a Palestinian missile on Wednesday, before a cease-fire.







WASHINGTON — President Obama skipped dessert at a long summit meeting dinner in Cambodia on Monday to rush back to his hotel suite. It was after 11:30 p.m., and his mind was on rockets in Gaza rather than Asian diplomacy. He picked up the telephone to call the Egyptian leader who is the new wild card in his Middle East calculations.




Over the course of the next 25 minutes, he and President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt hashed through ways to end the latest eruption of violence, a conversation that would lead Mr. Obama to send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the region. As he and Mr. Morsi talked, Mr. Obama felt they were making a connection. Three hours later, at 2:30 in the morning, they talked again.


The cease-fire brokered between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday was the official unveiling of this unlikely new geopolitical partnership, one with bracing potential if not a fair measure of risk for both men. After a rocky start to their relationship, Mr. Obama has decided to invest heavily in the leader whose election caused concern because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing in him an intermediary who might help make progress in the Middle East beyond the current crisis in Gaza.


The White House phone log tells part of the tale. Mr. Obama talked with Mr. Morsi three times within 24 hours and six times over the course of several days, an unusual amount of one-on-one time for a president. Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver.


“The thing that appealed to the president was how practical the conversations were — here’s the state of play, here are the issues we’re concerned about,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “This was somebody focused on solving problems.”


The Egyptian side was also positive about the collaboration. Essam el-Haddad, the foreign policy adviser to the Egyptian president, described a singular partnership developing between Mr. Morsi, who is the most important international ally for Hamas, and Mr. Obama, who plays essentially the same role for Israel.


“Yes, they were carrying the point of view of the Israeli side but they were understanding also the other side, the Palestinian side,” Mr. Haddad said in Cairo as the cease-fire was being finalized on Wednesday. “We felt there was a high level of sincerity in trying to find a solution. The sincerity and understanding was very helpful.”


The fledgling partnership forged in the fires of the past week may be ephemeral, a unique moment of cooperation born out of necessity and driven by national interests that happened to coincide rather than any deeper meeting of the minds. Some longtime students of the Middle East cautioned against overestimating its meaning, recalling that Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a philosophical brother of Hamas even if it has renounced violence itself and become the governing party in Cairo.


“I would caution the president from believing that President Morsi has in any way distanced himself from his ideological roots,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But if the president takes away the lesson that we can affect Egypt’s behavior through the artful use of leverage, that’s a good lesson. You can shape his behavior. You can’t change his ideology.”


Other veterans of Middle East policy agreed with the skepticism yet saw the seeds of what might eventually lead to broader agreement.


“It really is something with the potential to establish a new basis for diplomacy in the region,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, who was Mr. Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East until earlier this year and now runs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “It’s just potential, but it’s particularly impressive potential.”


The relationship between the two leaders has come a long way in just 10 weeks. Mr. Morsi’s election in June as the first Islamist president of Egypt set nerves in Washington on edge and raised questions about the future of Egypt’s three-decade-old peace treaty with Israel. Matters worsened in September when Egyptian radicals protesting an anti-Islam video stormed the United States Embassy in Cairo.


Peter Baker reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.



This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 21, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. She is Tamara Cofman Wittes, not Teresa.



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Chevy Chase is leaving NBC's sitcom 'Community'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The NBC series "Community" will finish the season without Chevy Chase.

Sony Pictures Television said Wednesday that the actor is leaving the sitcom by mutual agreement with producers.

His immediate departure means he won't be included in the last episode or two of the show's 13-episode season, which is still in production.

Chase had a rocky tenure playing a bored and wealthy man who enrolls in community college. The actor publicly expressed unhappiness at working on a sitcom and feuded last year with the show's creator and former executive producer, Dan Harmon.

The fourth-season premiere of "Community" is Feb. 7, when it makes a delayed return to the 8 p.m. EST Thursday time slot. The show's ensemble cast includes Joel McHale and Donald Glover.

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Recipes for Health: Apple Pear Strudel — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







This strudel is made with phyllo dough. When I tested it the first time, I found that I had enough filling for two strudels. Rather than cut the amount of filling, I increased the number of strudels to 2, as this is a dessert you can assemble and keep, unbaked, in the freezer.




Filling for 2 strudels:


1/2 pound mixed dried fruit, like raisins, currants, chopped dried figs, chopped dried apricots, dried cranberries


1 1/2 pounds apples (3 large) (I recommend Braeburns), peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice


1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice


2 tablespoons unsalted butter for cooking the apples


1/4 cup (50 grams) brown sugar


1 teaspoon vanilla


1 teaspoon cinnamon


1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg


1/4 cup (30 grams) chopped or slivered almonds


3/4 pound (1 large or 2 small) ripe but firm pears, peeled, cored and cut in 1/2-inch dice


For each strudel:


8 sheets phyllo dough


7/8 cup (100 grams) almond powder, divided


1 1/2 ounces butter, melted, for brushing the phyllo


1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment.


2. Place the dried fruit in a bowl and pour on hot or boiling water to cover. Let sit 5 minutes, and drain. Toss the apples with the lemon juice.


3. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add 2 tablespoons butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough, or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg and almonds, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the pears and dried fruit, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely. Divide into two equal portions (easiest to do this if you weigh it).


4. Place 8 sheets of phyllo dough on your work surface. Cover with a dish towel and place another, damp dish towel on top of the first towel. Place a sheet of parchment on your work surface horizontally, with the long edge close to you. Lay a sheet of phyllo dough on the parchment. Brush lightly with butter and top with the next sheet. Continue to layer all eight sheets, brushing each one with butter before topping with the next one.


5. Brush the top sheet of phyllo dough with butter. Sprinkle on half of the almond powder (50 grams). With the other half, create a line 3 inches from the base of the dough, leaving a 2 1/2-inch margin on the sides. Top this line with one portion of the fruit mixture. Fold the bottom edge of the phyllo up over the filling, then fold the ends over and roll up like a burrito. Using the parchment paper to help you, lift the strudel and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush with butter and make 3 or 4 slits on the diagonal along the length of the strudel. Repeat with the other sheets of phyllo to make a second strudel. If you are freezing one of them, double-wrap tightly in plastic.


6. Place the strudel in the oven and bake 20 minutes. Remove from the oven, brush again with butter, rotate the pan and return to the oven. Continue to bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from the heat and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve warm or room temperature.


Yield: 2 strudels, each serving 8


Advance preparation: The fruit filling will keep for a couple of days in the refrigerator. The strudel can be baked a few hours before serving it. Recrisp in a medium oven for 10 minutes. It can also be frozen before baking, double-wrapped in plastic. Transfer directly from the freezer to the oven and add 10 minutes to the baking time.


Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 13 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 15 milligrams cholesterol; 34 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams dietary fiber; 91 milligrams sodium; 4 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


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U.S. Seeks Truce on Gaza as Enemies Step Up Attacks





JERUSALEM — Efforts to negotiate a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas were set to continue Wednesday but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.




Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter feeds that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of the Hamas’ main command and control centers.”


The Israel Defense Forces also said they scored a direct hit early Wednesday on militants building rockets in what were termed hiding places.


On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. She was due in Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas, placing her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.


Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.


The Israelis, who have amassed tens of thousands of troops on the Gaza border and have threatened to invade for a second time in four years to end the rocket fire, never publicly backed the idea of a short break in fighting. They said they were open to a diplomatic accord but were looking for something more enduring.


“If there is a possibility of achieving a long-term solution to this problem through diplomatic means, we prefer that,” Mr. Netanyahu said before meeting with Mrs. Clinton at his office. “But if not, I’m sure you understand that Israel will have to take whatever actions necessary to defend its people.”


Mrs. Clinton spoke of the need for “a durable outcome that promotes regional stability and advances the security and legitimate aspirations of Israelis and Palestinians alike.” It was unclear whether she was starting a complex task of shuttle diplomacy or whether she expected to achieve a pause in the hostilities and then head home.


The diplomatic moves came as the antagonists on both sides stepped up their attacks. Israeli aerial and naval forces assaulted several Gaza targets in multiple strikes, including a suspected rocket-launching site near Al Shifa Hospital. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said that “800 rockets fired from Gaza hit Israel in the past week — 162 during the last day alone.”


More than 30 people were killed on Tuesday, bringing the total number of fatalities in Gaza to more than 130 — roughly half of them civilians, the Gaza Health Ministry said.


A delegation visiting from the Arab League canceled a news conference at the hospital because of the Israeli aerial assaults as wailing ambulances brought victims in, some of them decapitated.


The Israeli assaults continued early Wednesday, with multiple blasts punctuating the otherwise darkened Gaza skies.


Militants in Gaza fired a barrage of at least 200 rockets into Israel, killing an Israeli soldier — the first military casualty on the Israeli side since the hostilities broke out. The Israeli military said the soldier, identified as Yosef Fartuk, 18, had died from a rocket strike that hit an area near Gaza. Israeli officials said a civilian military contractor working near the Gaza border had also been killed, bringing the number of fatalities in Israel from the week of rocket mayhem to five.


Other Palestinian rockets hit the southern Israeli cities of Beersheba and Ashdod, and longer-range rockets were fired at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Neither main city was struck, and no casualties were reported. One Gaza rocket hit a building in Rishon LeZion, just south of Tel Aviv, wounding one person and wrecking the top three floors.


Senior Egyptian officials in Cairo said Israel and Hamas were “very close” to a cease-fire agreement. “We have not received final approval, but I hope to receive it any moment,” said Essam el-Haddad, President Mohamed Morsi’s top foreign affairs adviser.


Foreign diplomats who were briefed on the outlines of a tentative agreement said it had been structured in stages — first, an announcement of a cease-fire, followed by its implementation for 48 hours. That would allow time for Mrs. Clinton to involve herself in the process here and create a window for negotiators to agree on conditions for a longer-term cessation of hostilities.


But it seemed that each side had steep demands of a longer-term deal that the other side would reject.


Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader, said in Cairo that Israel needed to end its blockade of Gaza. Israel says the blockade keeps arms from entering the coastal strip.


Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Alan Cowell from London; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; and Rick Gladstone from New York.



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Elmo left behind on 'Sesame Street' as actor exits

NEW YORK (AP) — Sesame Street's beloved Elmo character will continue despite the resignation of the puppeteer behind the character following sexual abuse allegations.

Fifty-two-year-old Kevin Clash resigned Tuesday after a young man sued him and accused him of engaging in sexual behavior with him when he was 15.

Clash did not address the allegations directly but said in a statement that he is "looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately."

Sesame Workshop says other puppeteers have been trained to serve as Clash's stand-in. The company said last week that "Elmo is bigger than any one person."

Toy company Hasbro says it is confident that "Elmo will remain an integral part of Sesame Street."

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Recipes for Health: Pear Cranberry Galette — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times







I used Bartlett pears for this juicy galette, but pretty much any variety will work, as long as they’re not overly ripe.




1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)


2/3 cup dried cranberries


2 pounds pears, ripe but not too soft, peeled, cored and sliced (about 8 to 12 wedges per pear, depending on the size; if the pears are very large, cut the slices into 2 pieces at the middle)


1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice


2 tablespoons mild honey, like clover


1/2 teaspoon cinnamon


1 teaspoon vanilla


1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder


1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash


1 tablespoon raw brown sugar


1. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Leave to thaw while you prepare the fruit, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.


2. Soak the cranberries for 5 minutes in hot water. Drain and dry on paper towels. Toss the sliced pears with the lemon juice in a large bowl, then add the dried cranberries, honey, cinnamon and vanilla and gently toss together.


3. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the fruit on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.


4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 50 to 60 minutes, until the fruit is bubbly and the juice is running out and caramelizing on the parchment. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.


Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8


Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 3 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.


Nutritional information per serving: 246 calories; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 2 grams monounsaturated fat; 43 milligrams cholesterol; 46 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams dietary fiber; 90 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


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Clinton to Visit Israel in Effort to Defuse Gaza Conflict





PHNOM PENH, Cambodia – President Obama is sending Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Middle East to try to defuse the conflict in Gaza, the White House announced on Tuesday.




Mrs. Clinton, who has been accompanying Mr. Obama on his three-country Asia trip, will leave directly from Asia, traveling first to Jerusalem to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, then to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders and finally to Cairo to meet with Egyptian officials.


“This morning, Secretary Clinton and the president spoke again about the situation in Gaza and the they agreed that it makes sense for the secretary to travel to the region so Secretary Clinton will depart today,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama. “Her visits will build on the engagement that we’ve undertaken in the last several days.”


Mr. Rhodes said that “any resolution to this has to include an end to that rocket fire” by Hamas militants on Israeli communities but “the best way to solve this is through diplomacy.”


He added: “It’s in nobody’s interest to see an escalation of the military conflict.”


The decision to dispatch Mrs. Clinton dramatically deepens the American involvement in the crisis. Mr. Obama made a number of late-night phone calls to the Middle East on Monday night that convinced him that he had to become more engaged and that Mrs. Clinton might be able to accomplish something.


After an Asian summit dinner in Phnom Penh on Monday night, Mr. Obama called President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt to discuss the situation, then spoke with Mr. Netanyahu and called Mr. Morsi back. He was up until 2:30 a.m. on the phone, the White House said. He has been consulting with Mrs. Clinton repeatedly on the sidelines of the Asian summit meetings on Tuesday.


Mrs. Clinton will not meet with Hamas representatives on her trip, but instead with leaders of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, which is at odds with Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. “We do not engage directly with Hamas,” Mr. Rhodes said.


Instead, Mr. Obama is focused on leveraging Egypt’s influence with Hamas to press for a halt to the rocket attacks. “We believe Egypt can and should be a partner in achieving that outcome,” Mr. Rhodes said.


Mr. Rhodes reaffirmed that the United States supports Israel’s right to defend itself and said Mr. Obama did not ask Mr. Netanyahu to hold off a ground incursion into Gaza. Thousands of Israeli forces have gathered in possible preparation to move into Gaza, which would significantly escalate the conflict.


With the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday followed by Mrs. Clinton, Israel has decided to give some more time to diplomacy to end the crisis with Gaza before launching a ground invasion into the Palestinian enclave, a senior Israeli official said.


The official in the Israeli prime minister’s office said that the country’s top nine ministers, who make up the inner security cabinet, held discussions late into the night on the state of the diplomatic efforts and Israel’s military operation in Gaza, which entered its seventh day on Tuesday. The goal of the operation, Israel says, is to bring about an end to years of rocket fire by Gaza militants against southern Israel.


“A decision has been taken to give diplomacy more time, but not unlimited time,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the deliberations of the inner cabinet are highly confidential.


Egypt has been brokering efforts, with American involvement, for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza.


“What is on the table is not there yet. It does not bring about what we need,” the official said, referring to Israel’s demands for an end to the threat of rocket fire in the south.


Tens of thousands of Israeli reserve soldiers have been mobilized and troops and tanks have massed along the border with Gaza, ready to go in the order is given.


So far Israel has carried out its campaign from the air, pounding more than 1,000 targets in Gaza, including long-range rocket launchers and stores. Palestinian health officials have put the death toll at about 107, including 26 children. Gaza militants have fired more than 800 rockets at Israel, killing three civilians there in one attack. Several have reached as far north as Tel Aviv.


Many of the rockets headed for densely populated areas have been intercepted by Israel’s anti-rocket missile system while others have landed in open ground.


On Tuesday morning, Gaza militants fired more barrages of rockets into southern Israel. One struck a bus in the southern city of Beersheba but the passengers had disembarked and escaped unharmed, according to initial reports.


Mrs. Clinton’s trip comes even as she is preparing to step down as secretary of state, presenting her a delicate late test after four years in which Mr. Obama’s administration has failed to achieve the broader peace it once sought in the region.


With the president’s re-election behind him, Mrs. Clinton plans to resign around the time of the second inauguration on Jan. 20. Aides said she would stay until a successor can be confirmed as long as it does not drag too long into the new year.


The abrupt change in plans here underscored the challenges for Mr. Obama as he tries to reorient American foreign policy away from its dominant focus on the Middle East and more toward the Pacific-Asia region that he sees as the long-term future. Even as he chose Southeast Asia as the destination for the first overseas trip after winning a second term, Mr. Obama has found himself drawn every day into the deadly dispute consuming the Middle East.


Peter Baker reported from Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem



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People turn to Twitter for CPR information: study
















(Reuters) – Amid snarky comments and links to cat videos, some Twitter users turn to the social network to find and post information on health issues like cardiac arrest and CPR, according to a U.S. study.


Over a month, researchers found 15,234 messages on Twitter that included specific information about resuscitation and cardiac arrest, said the study published in the journal Resuscitation.













“From a science standpoint, we wanted to know if we can reliably find information on a public health topic, or is (Twitter) just a place where people describe what they ate that day,” said Raina Merchant, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.


According to the researchers, they found people using Twitter to send and receive a wide variety of information on CPR and cardiac arrest, including their personal experiences, questions and current events.


Some researchers and organizations already use Twitter for public health matters, including tracking the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic and finding the source of the Haitian cholera outbreak, the researchers said.


For the study, the researchers created a Twitter search for key terms, such as CPR, AED (automatic external defibrillators), resuscitation and sudden death.


Between April and May 2011, their search returned 62,163 tweets, which were whittled down to 15,324 messages that contained specific information about cardiac arrest and resuscitation.


Only 7 percent of the tweets were about specific cardiac arrest events, such as a user saying they just saw a man being resuscitated, or a user asking for prayers for a sick family member.


About 44 percent of the tweets were about performing CPR and using an AED. Those types of tweets included information on rules about keeping AEDs in businesses and questions about how to resuscitate a person.


The rest of the tweets were about education, research and news events, such as links to articles about celebrities going into cardiac arrest.


The vast majority of the Twitter users send fewer than three tweets about cardiac arrest or CPR throughout the month. Users that sent more tweets typically had more followers – people who subscribe to their messages – and often worked in a health-care related field.


About 13 percent of the tweets were re-sent, or retweeted, by other users. The most popular retweeted messages were about celebrity-related cardiac arrest news, such as an AED being used to revive a fan at a Lady Gaga concert.


“I think the pilot (study) illustrated for us that there is an opportunity to potentially provide research and information for people in real time about cardiac arrest and resuscitation,” Marchant said.


“I can imagine in the future we will see systems that would automatically respond to tweets of individual users. Twitter is a really powerful tool, and we’re just beginning to understand its abilities.”


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/T2bj7u


(Reporting from New York by Andrew Seaman at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Fight over 'Modern Family' star returns to court

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge is scheduled to wade into the messy family dynamics of teen actress Ariel Winter and determine whether the "Modern Family" star should stay away from her mother, who has been described in court filings as physically and emotionally abusive.

At a hearing Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas will consider whether the 14-year-old should continue living with her sister, who has temporary guardianship of the actress.

The judge will have more information to consider than he did on Oct. 3, when he temporarily stripped Chrisoula Workman of custody of her daughter. Workman has denied all accusations of abuse and filed more than two dozen declarations from friends, acquaintances, stylists and others who say they've never witnessed any abuse.

Winter's father, Glenn Workman, also filed an objection to the guardianship late Monday, stating he wants a better relationship with his daughter and would be willing to care for her.

Winter has been in the care of her adult sister, Shanelle Gray, who was removed from Chrisoula Workman's care in the 1990s amid accusations of abuse. Chrisoula Workman contends Gray was a rebellious teen who left home and that she is contending with a similar situation with Winter, who has been acting since age 7 and currently stars as Alex Dunphy on the hit ABC series "Modern Family."

People on the show's set are concerned about Winter's wellbeing and have been sneaking her food, according to in-court statements by Gray's attorney, Michael Kretzmer.

Gray's filing states Chrisoula Workman has repeatedly slapped Winter and engaged in emotional abuse, including name-calling.

"The allegations made by Ariel are false," said Chrisoula Workman's attorney Anita Gumm. "We really feel she's just a rebellious teen and wants her independence. It's our hope that the court terminates the guardianship. Both parents want Ariel home. Shanelle is not suitable to be a guardian."

Glenn Workman's filing Monday does not address the abuse allegations, but states he believes his daughter should be returned to live with Chrisoula Workman, or that he be allowed to raise her.

"I want to provide for her a calm loving home environment that is a retreat from the glitz and glamour of Hollywood; a place where she can think and relax without any distractions," Glenn Workman wrote. "This whole situation has turned into a circus and places Ariel in a position she should not have to be in."

Kretzmer declined to comment on Glenn Workman's filing.

He has previously told The Associated Press that it is unfortunate that the case became public, but that Winter was removed from her mother's custody for good reasons. "The court granted a temporary guardianship, and I think any rational person will realize that the court simply doesn't see the sky falling but has some basis for granting a temporary guardianship," he said last week.

During a contentious court hearing Workman lashed out at Gray, called Kretzmer a moron and accused Winter of screaming her and hitting her.

"I think what we've got is a situation that's not healthy, at least for a temporary ... basis," Levanas said in early October. He ordered child welfare workers to conduct an investigation and appointed an attorney to represent Winter's interests.

Workman's attorney has also scheduled a deposition of Gray for early December, and a review of Winter's finances will be conducted. Currently, Gray has no access to Winter's money, some of which should be in a special account meant to protect the earnings of child actors.

Gumm and Workman have cited Gray's finances as a reason why she should not be granted guardianship of her sister. But Kretzmer denied last week that money was an issue in the case.

"There's no truth whatsoever to Shanelle obtaining this guardianship for purposes of advancing her career or for some other personal gain," Kretzmer said. "Shanelle is successful and has done very well in her own rights. This is a tragedy for her, too."

Winter has been acting since age 7, appearing in several TV series, including "ER" and "Phineas and Ferb," and movies such as "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," ''Ice Age: The Meltdown" and "ParaNorman."

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Recipes for Health: Apple Walnut Galette — Recipes for Health


Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times NYTCREDIT:







A great rustic apple pie for Thanksgiving, this has very little butter in the pastry and a minimum of sweetening. It’s all about the apples.




1 dessert galette pastry (1/2 recipe)


Juice of 1/2 lemon


2 pounds slightly tart apples, like Braeburns, peeled, cored and cut in wedges (about 1/2 inch thick at the thickest point)


2 tablespoons (1 ounce) unsalted butter


1/4 cup (50 grams) plus 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar or turbinado sugar


1 teaspoon vanilla extract


1/4 cup lightly toasted walnuts, chopped


3/4 teaspoon cinnamon


1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg


1/4 cup (25 grams) almond powder


1 egg beaten with 1 teaspoon milk, for egg wash


1. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment. In a large bowl combine the lemon juice and apples and toss together.


2. Heat a large, heavy frying pan over high heat and add the butter. Wait until it becomes light brown and carefully add the apples and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Do not add the apples until the pan and the butter are hot enough or they won’t sear properly and retain their juice. But be careful when you add them so that the hot butter doesn’t splatter. When the apples are brown on one side, add the vanilla, 1/2 teaspoon of the cinnamon and the nutmeg, flip the apples and continue to sauté until golden brown, about 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in the walnuts, then scrape out onto one of the lined sheet pans and allow to cool completely.


3. Remove the pastry from the freezer and place it on the other parchment-lined baking sheet. Leave to thaw while the apples cool, but don’t keep it out of the freezer for too long. It’s easiest to handle if it’s cold and will thaw quickly. You just want it soft enough so that you can manipulate it.


4. Sprinkle the almond powder over the pastry, leaving a 2- to 3-inch border all around. Place the apples on top. Fold the edges of the dough in over the fruit, pleating the edges as you work your way around the fruit to form a free-form tart that is roughly 9 inches in diameter. Place in the freezer on the baking sheet for 45 minutes to an hour. This helps the galette maintain its shape.


5. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Remove the galette from the freezer. Brush the exposed edge of the pastry with the egg wash. Combine the remaining tablespoon of sugar and 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and sprinkle over the fruit and the crust. Place in the oven and bake 1 hour, until the crust is nicely browned and the apples are sizzling. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 15 minutes. Serve hot, warm or at room temperature.


Yield: 1 9-inch galette, serving 8


Advance preparation: You can assemble this through Step 4 and freeze it for up to a month. Once it is frozen, double-wrap it in plastic. You can also freeze the galette after baking. Thaw and warm in a 350-degree oven for 10 to 15 minutes to recrisp the crust.


Nutritional information per serving: 259 calories; 11 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 3 grams polyunsaturated fat; 3 grams monounsaturated fat; 50 milligrams cholesterol; 37 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams dietary fiber; 92 milligrams sodium; 5 grams protein


Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”


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