Israel bombards Gaza Strip, shoots down rocket

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

___

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

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Israel moves on reservists after rockets target cities

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli ministers were on Friday asked to endorse the call-up of up to 75,000 reservists after Palestinian militants nearly hit Jerusalem with a rocket for the first time in decades and fired at Tel Aviv for a second day.

The rocket attacks were a challenge to Israel‘s Gaza offensive and came just hours after Egypt‘s prime minister, denouncing what he described as Israeli aggression, visited the enclave and said Cairo was prepared to mediate.

Israel’s armed forces announced that a highway leading to the Gaza Strip and two roads bordering the enclave would be off-limits to civilian traffic until further notice.

Tanks and self-propelled guns were seen near the border area on Friday, and the military said it had already called 16,000 reservists to active duty.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened senior cabinet ministers in Tel Aviv after the rockets struck to decide on widening the Gaza campaign.

Political sources said ministers were asked to approve the mobilization of up to 75,000 reservists, in what could be preparation for a possible ground operation.

No decision was immediately announced and some commentators speculated in the Israeli media the move could be psychological warfare against Gaza’s Hamas rulers. A quota of 30,000 reservists had been set earlier.

Israel began bombing Gaza on Wednesday with an attack that killed the Hamas military chief. It says its campaign is in response to Hamas missiles fired on its territory. Hamas stepped up rocket attacks in response.

Israeli police said a rocket fired from Gaza landed in the Jerusalem area, outside the city, on Friday.

It was the first Palestinian rocket since 1970 to reach the vicinity of the holy city, which Israel claims as its capital, and was likely to spur an escalation in its three-day old air war against militants in Gaza.

Rockets nearly hit Tel Aviv on Thursday for the first time since Saddam Hussein’s Iraq fired them during the 1991 Gulf War. An air raid siren rang out on Friday when the commercial centre was targeted again. Motorists crouched next to cars, many with their hands protecting their heads, while pedestrians scurried for cover in building stairwells.

The Jerusalem and Tel Aviv strikes have so far caused no casualties or damage, but could be political poison for Netanyahu, a conservative favored to win re-election in January on the strength of his ability to guarantee security.

“The Israel Defence Forces will continue to hit Hamas hard and are prepared to broaden the action inside Gaza,” Netanyahu said before the rocket attacks on the two cities.

Asked about Israel massing forces for a possible Gaza invasion, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said: “The Israelis should be aware of the grave results of such a raid and they should bring their body bags.”

Officials in Gaza said 28 Palestinians had been killed in the enclave since Israel began the air offensive with the declared aim of stemming surges of rocket strikes that have disrupted life in southern Israeli towns.

The Palestinian dead include 12 militants and 16 civilians, among them eight children and a pregnant woman. Three Israelis were killed by a rocket on Thursday. A Hamas source said the Israeli air force launched an attack on the house of Hamas’s commander for southern Gaza which resulted in the death of two civilians, one a child.

SOLIDARITY VISIT

A solidarity visit to Gaza by Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil, whose Islamist government is allied with Hamas but also party to a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, had appeared to open a tiny window to emergency peace diplomacy.

Kandil said: “Egypt will spare no effort … to stop the aggression and to achieve a truce.”

But a three-hour truce that Israel declared for the duration of Kandil’s visit never took hold. Israel said 66 rockets launched from the Gaza Strip hit its territory on Friday and a further 99 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.

Israel denied Palestinian assertions that its aircraft struck while Kandil was in the enclave.

Israel Radio’s military affairs correspondent said the army’s Homefront Command had told municipal officials to make civil defence preparations for the possibility that fighting could drag on for seven weeks. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.

The Gaza conflagration has stoked the flames of a Middle East already ablaze with two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to leap across borders.

It is the biggest test yet for Egypt’s new President Mohamed Mursi, a veteran Islamist politician from the Muslim Brotherhood who was elected this year after last year’s protests ousted military autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood are spiritual mentors of Hamas, yet Mursi has also pledged to respect Cairo’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel, seen in the West as the cornerstone of regional security. Egypt and Israel both receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to underwrite their treaty.

Mursi has vocally denounced the Israeli military action while promoting Egypt as a mediator, a mission that his prime minister’s visit was intended to further.

A Palestinian official close to Egypt’s mediators told Reuters Kandil’s visit “was the beginning of a process to explore the possibility of reaching a truce. It is early to speak of any details or of how things will evolve”.

Hamas fighters are no match for the Israeli military. The last Gaza war, involving a three-week long Israeli air blitz and ground invasion over the New Year period of 2008-2009, killed more than 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died.

Tunisia’s foreign minister was due to visit Gaza on Saturday “to provide all political support for Gaza” the spokesman for the Tunisian president, Moncef Marzouki, said in a statement.

The United States asked countries that have contact with Hamas to urge the Islamist movement to stop its rocket attacks.

Hamas refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. By contrast, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who rules in the nearby West Bank, does recognize Israel, but peace talks between the two sides have been frozen since 2010.

Abbas’s supporters say they will push ahead with a plan to have Palestine declared an “observer state” rather than a mere “entity” at the United Nations later this month.

(Additional reporting by Maayan Lubell, Jeffrey Heller and Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Samsung goes after HTC deal to undercut Apple-filing

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – When Apple Inc and HTC Corp last week ended their worldwide legal battles with a 10-year patent licensing agreement, they declined to answer a critical question: whether all of Apple‘s patents were covered by the deal.

It’s an enormously important issue for the broader smartphone patent wars. If all the Apple patents are included -including the “user experience” patents that the company has previously insisted it would not license – it could undermine the iPhone makers efforts to permanently ban the sale of products that copy its technology.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which could face such a sales ban following a crushing jury verdict against it in August, now plans to ask a U.S. judge to force Apple to turn over a copy of the HTC agreement, according to a court filing on Friday.

Representatives for Apple and Samsung could not immediately be reached for comment.

Judges are reluctant to block the sale of products if the dispute can be resolved via a licensing agreement. To secure an injunction against Samsung, Apple must show the copying of its technology caused irreparable harm and that money, by itself, is an inadequate remedy.

Ron Laurie, managing director of Inflexion Point Strategy and a veteran IP lawyer, said he found it very unlikely that HTC would agree to a settlement that did not include all the patents.

If the deal did in fact include everything, Laurie and other legal experts said that would represent a very clear signal that Apple under CEO Tim Cook was taking a much different approach to patent issues than his predecessor, Steve Jobs.

Apple first sued HTC in March 2010, and has been litigating for more than two years against handset manufacturers who use Google’s Android operating system.

Apple co-founder Jobs promised to go “thermonuclear” on Android, and that threat has manifested in Apple’s repeated bids for court-imposed bans on the sale of its rivals’ phones.

Cook, on the other hand, has said he prefers to settle rather than litigate, if the terms are reasonable. But prior to this month, Apple showed little willingness to license its patents to an Android maker.

HOLY PATENTS

In August, a Northern California jury handed Apple a $ 1.05 billion verdict, finding that Samsung’s phones violated a series of Apple’s software and design patents.

Apple quickly asked U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to impose a permanent sales ban on those Samsung phones, and a hearing is scheduled for next month in San Jose, California.

In a surprise announcement on Saturday, however, Apple and HTC announced a license agreement covering “current and future patents” at both companies. Specific terms are unknown, though analysts have speculated that HTC will pay Apple somewhere between $ 5 and $ 10 per phone.

During the Samsung trial, Apple IP chief Boris Teksler said the company is generally willing to license many of its patents – except for those that cover what he called Apple’s “unique user experience” like touchscreen functionality and design.

However, Teksler acknowledged that Apple has, on a few occasions, licensed those holy patents – most notably to Microsoft, which signed an anti-cloning agreement as part of the deal.

In opposing Apple’s injunction request last month, Samsung said Apple’s willingness to license at all shows money should be sufficient compensation, court documents show.

Apple has already licensed at least one of the prized patents in the Samsung case to both Nokia and IBM. That fact was confidential until late last year, when the court mistakenly released a ruling with details that should have been hidden from public view.

In a court filing last week, Apple argued that its Nokia, IBM and Microsoft deals shouldn’t stand in the way of an injunction. Microsoft’s license only covers Apple patents filed before 2002, and IBM signed several years before the iPhone launched, according to Apple.

“IBM’s agreement is a cross license with a party that does not market smartphones,” Apple wrote.

Apple’s seeming shift away from Jobs-style war, and toward licensing, may also reflect a realization that injunctions have become harder to obtain for a variety of reasons.

Colleen Chien, a professor at Santa Clara Law in Silicon Valley, said an appellate ruling last month that tossed Apple’s pretrial injunction against the Samsung Nexus phone raised the legal standard for everyone.

“The ability of technology companies to get injunctions on big products based on small inventions, unless the inventions drive consumer’s demand, has been whittled away significantly,” Chien said.

The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc v. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al, 11-1846.

(Reporting By Dan Levine and Poornima Gupta; Editing by Bernard Orr)

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Can NBC keep up its ratings swagger without NFL, “The Voice”?

NEW YORK (Reuters) – NBC is expected to wrap up its fall season as the No. 1 broadcast network in the key 18-49 advertising demographic for the first time in a decade.

The network’s catapult to first place from fourth in the ratings is the biggest surprise so far of the young TV season. The question is how long can its ratings momentum last.

The Comcast-owned network has seen a surge in the fall fueled by two shows that won’t be around by the end of December, its red-hot Sunday Night NFL telecast and the hugely popular singing competition “The Voice.”

The numbers are shining a positive light on Entertainment Chief Bob Greenblatt, in his second year since moving over from the Showtime cable network. In the first quarter of 2013, however, analysts and advertising buyers say holes in NBC‘s lineup can’t make up for the loss of its two top shows.

“I’m skeptical about whether their ratings are sustainable,” said Brad Adgate, who heads research for the advertising firm Horizon Media. “Once those shows go on hiatus or they are doing repeats, I’d be surprised if what they replace with them with will deliver those type of numbers.”

When the TV season started, NBC boosted its ratings by adding a second season of the “The Voice” in the fall, instead of airing it only during the spring, and showing it on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The show gave NBC ratings victories in the 18-49 demographic, the age group that advertisers seek, has consistently won its time slots while boosting shows like “Revolution” and “Go On” that followed it.

Total viewers increased from a year ago by 20 percent, to an average of 8.8 million per night, while rivals CBS, FOX and ABC are all down in total viewers.

NBC‘s ratings engines throttle back without “The Voice,” which goes off the air from Dec 17 until March 25. When it returns, it also faces an uncertain reception as new judges Shakira and Usher replace Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

On December 30, NBC will air its final Sunday night football game of the year, taking prime time’s top-rated show with it, Jeff Bader, NBC‘s president of program planning, strategy and research, said in an interview on Thursday.

NBC‘s ratings will weaken in January, he conceded. The January-to-March period won’t be “necessarily about winning” in the ratings but about getting one or two shows to stick with viewers, he said.

“I wish we had Sunday night football all year, but hopefully these other returning shows will keep us in the hunt,” Bader said.

UBS analyst John Janedis predicts that CBS and FOX will move past the Peacock network by the end of the TV season, and CBS’ Chief Executive Les Moonves vowed on a November 7 earnings call that his network will finish “on top” and “strong in every single one of the key demos.”

“The Voice” served as a launch pad for the hit drama “Revolution,” a post-apocalyptic thriller that airs on Mondays and is set 15 years after all the world’s electricity stopped functioning. But that show, like “The Voice,” is going on hiatus from November 26 to March 25.

Greenblatt has “to make sure that ‘Revolution’ stays strong, said Optimedia media buyer Maureen Bosetti. “I’m a little bit cautious to say he’s a huge success until he’s got more solid hits under his belt that he’s developed.”

NBC will air the weight-loss reality show “The Biggest Loser” in the place of “the Voice” on Mondays, followed by “Deception,” a one-hour soap opera about a murder in a wealthy family that replaces “Revolution.” On Tuesdays, a reality show called “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers” featuring senior citizens playing pranks will take “the Voice” slot.

Ad agency GroupM media buyer Shari Cohen is more optimistic about NBC‘s chances without “The Voice” and said she is impressed by the network’s comeback this season.

“The void will be felt, but there’s confidence enough in their strategy and other nights of the week where they have been gaining traction and things that will be coming back in 2013 like ‘Smash’,” Cohen said.

“Smash,” a lavishly produced and heavily promoted musical drama about a Broadway show starring Katharine McPhee and Debra Messing, finished as NBC‘s top drama in its first season in 18-49 age group and will return for its second season February 5.

The show is heavily championed by Greenblatt, the programming chief who came to Comcast in 2011 after it took control of NBC in a $ 30 billion deal. When he left the CBS-owned Showtime cable channel, it was in the midst of a phenomenal run of developing hit shows such as “Dexter,” “Weeds,” and “The L Word” for cable’s Showtime network.

Greenblatt’s programming performance has been mixed at NBC. He inherited the “The Voice,” and had the benefit of this summer’s NBC Olympic telecast, which enabled him to promote the fall lineup before the more than 30 million people who tuned into the London games each night.

That gave a boost to “Revolution, “Go On” and “The New Normal,” a sitcom from “Glee” creator Ryan Murphy, which were all ordered for full-seasons and are all highly rated new shows. But “Animal Practice,” another program that aired in a special preview after one Olympics telecast, was canceled after six episodes.

NBC is coming off a strong third quarter in which its revenue jumped 31.2 percent to $ 6.8 billion thanks Deto the London Olympics. Excluding the Olympics, its revenue increased 8.3 percent, the company said.

Amy Yong, a sell-side analyst for Macquarie bank, raised her estimates on Comcast in October, citing ratings growth at NBC as a contributing factors.

The NBC model for continued success resembles a strategy employed by Fox, which scheduled shows like “House” and “Bones” after the then-towering ratings champ “American Idol.”

Bader, the NBC scheduling executive, said his network will continue to use “The Voice”‘s momentum as best it can even as it heads toward its three-month break. After the December 17 finale, NBC will air a preview of a new comedy set in the White House called “1600 Penn.”

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Ronald Grover and Leslie Gevirtz)

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4th Grader Writes on Mom’s Cancer

A tear rolled down Veronica Marion-Rawlins‘s cheek when she discovered there weren’t ample resources that could help her explain her breast cancer diagnosis to her then four-year-old son. The single mom and her son, James “Trey” Rawlins III, searched everywhere – from local booksellers to online retailers – for reading materials that could help them better understand the journey they were about to embark on together. When they ended up with nothing,Trey decided to write a book himself.

Five years later, Trey, now age nine and a fourth-grader at Edgewood Magnet School in New Haven, Conn., is a published author, with help from a $ 1,000 donation from Howard University Hospital, in Washington, D.C., and his mom’s credit cards. “When Mommy Came Home” is targeted toward children ages four to seven. By word-of-mouth the book, available for $ 10 through his mother, became so popular among local schools, clinics and hospitals that it is now sold out. The mother-son team hopes that with donations, they will be able to order more books that can be distributed to the people and places that may need them most.

In his book Trey writes how his mom “would see Nurse Karen for her treatments … she’d sit in a big comfy chair … eat treats and snacks and sometimes do her nails.” Although he wasn’t able to accompany his mom around the hospital, “I waited until she came home” and the two would nap on the couch. Trey recounts helping his mom by doing “little jobs” like dusting or emptying out the trash. The book contains over 20 illustrations from Jean Marie Sanchez of Hamden, a children’s book writer and illustrator.

Having only ordered 100 initial copies, Marion-Rawlins said she did not expect the book to garner all the attention it has. Hospitals and clinics as far as Augusta, Ga., are now requesting copies. Although she admitted to “maxing out my credit card” to finance the book, Marion-Rawlins hopes that the book will get picked up by more publishing outlets.

“We’re not looking to make a profit,” Marion-Rawlins, currently an education consultant for the State Education Resource Center in Connecticut, said. “We want to donate them to hospitals, so when other moms are diagnosed, now they’ll have a tool that I didn’t have. So if they have a young child, they’ll know what to expect.”

Marion-Rawlins, whose son was in school when ABC News spoke with her, said both she and her son have had an amazing journey. Neither expected the outcome “to be so big.”

Although she is now happy to report, “I’m doing great,” Marion-Rawlins was diagnosed back in 2007. The former first-grade teacher said the first thing she asked the hospital social workers for was a children’s book.

“She came back with really technical medical pamphlets and I thought to myself, ‘No, this isn’t going to do it,’” Marion-Rawlins said. “I figured that if I could just show him in a book with pictures what Mommy was going to go through and that we’re going to be O.K., then it would be O.K.”

In “When Mommy Came Home,” the “adventures” between mother and son during the treatment help drive the book forward and show readers that the little moments are what helped them get through the ordeal.

“He had always wanted to wear a [beanie] that he saw his older cousins wearing, so when I lost my hair, we wore matching ones,” she said.

When her taste buds changed, Marion-Rawlins recommended her son “eat everything Mommy can’t eat anymore,” and after her treatment, when her body ached so much she couldn’t walk to her bedroom upstairs, she and Trey pretended to be in the wilderness and “camped out” in their living room.

But Marion-Rawlins said although the book is a team effort, her son really takes the spotlight for his proactive attitude that was initially triggered when more and more families began to share their stories, asking Trey to talk to other children about his experience. When the mother of Trey’s friends across the street was diagnosed with breast cancer last year, Trey was more than willing to talk to them about what he was going through.

Karen Underwood, aka Nurse Karen, told ABC News that she was “speechless” when she learned she was a character in the book. Underwood’s role was to administer Marion-Rawlins’ chemotherapy and “assess and take care of her.”

“I think this will definitely have a positive impact on children,” said Underwood, a registered nurse at Yale New Haven. “That population goes through a lot of stuff and many parents wonder what’s going to happen to their children.”

Trey’s main focus during this time was “being brave,” and Marion-Rawlins said she is “blown away” by her son’s care and compassion. The young author has been asked to speak to other children and parents in the community and Marion-Rawlins said instead of getting nervous like most other kids his age, he doesn’t shy away because he “knows it’s going to help other moms and children.”

Jennifer Quirk, library media specialist at Trey’s school, said although they do have children’s literature on breast cancer and other diseases, many of the material is non-fiction and “doesn’t talk about real people going through the experience.” Quirk said this will be the first book in the school’s library that chronicles a personal experience.

“It’s always a taboo subject, so having literature like this will help to make it something that parents can talk about with their kids,” Quirk said.

Andrea Seigerman, LCSW, of the Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New-Haven, said there is still a great need for materials for “children of all ethnic groups and of all educational levels.” Seigerman worked closely with Marion-Rawlins as her social worker during her treatment at Yale.

“There is a real need for easily understandable, easily communicated information from parents – both mothers and fathers going through cancer treatment – to children,” Seigerman, who was with Marion-Rawlins since day one, said. “It touches on a universal need – the idea that a little boy or girl can look at a book and feel that they’re not the only one who’s going through this.”

“Parents want to protect and inform them, but many aren’t sure how to do that,” Seigerman said. “So the most important outcome of this book is that it will help other parents feel comfortable opening up about this topic with their children.”

But the mother-and-son duo’s journey doesn’t end here. Marion-Rawlins, who has a niece who wears a cochlear implant because of a hearing impairment, said they are currently discussing the possibilities of writing a second book about her to “provide awareness regarding that community.”

“[Trey] knows what it feels like to be different,” Marion-Rawlins said. “I think it’s so important to share with children what’s going on at a level they can understand.”

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Blast rocks Gulf oil rig, two missing

Ships and helicopters are searching for two oil rig workers who disappeared when an explosion rocked a gulf oil rig off the coast of Louisiana and set it on fire, Coast Guard officials said.

Eleven other crew members were flown to hospitals, and four of them are listed in critical condition. No one has been confirmed dead.

Earlier reports by the Coast Guard that as many as 15 people were unaccounted for were resolved as the workers were located.

Among the injured were four who were airlifted for medical treatment to the West Jefferson Medical Center, where they are in critical condition after suffering serious burns. All four are intubated and will be evacuated to Baton Rouge Burn Center when they are stabilized, according to West Jefferson spokesman Taslin Alfonzo.

Three helicopters and two rescue boats are scouring the water looking for the missing crew members, according to Ed Cubanski, chief of the U.S. Coast Guard response.

The Coast Guard said that a Black Elk Energy Co. oil and natural gas platform caught fire after workers using a torch cut a line that had 28 gallons of oil in it, causing an explosion.

Black Elk's CEO, John Hoffman, said that the wrong tool was used in cutting the line. Contract workers should have used a saw instead of a torch, which caught vapors and caused the blast. The workers were employees of Grand Isle Shipyard, not Black Elk, he said. All of the individuals were men.

The rig was offline for maintenance and was scheduled to go back online for production later this month.

There were 22 people on board at the time of the explosion, according to the Coast Guard.

An oil sheen a half mile long and 200 yards wide has spread over the water surrounding the platform, which sits in 56 feet of water. The platform was shut down for the work at the time of the accident, Cubanski said.

The platform was located about 20 nautical miles southeast of Grand Isle, La., when the explosion happened, Vega said.

The explosion and fire comes the day after BP agreed to a $4 billion settlement for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion in the gulf, triggering the worst offshore oil spill in the country's history.

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France urges Mali to step up talks with rebels

PARIS (AP) — France‘s president called Thursday for stepped-up talks between Mali’s government and any leaders from its breakaway north “who reject terrorism,” even as African nations geared up for a possible military operation against Islamic extremists there.

President Francois Hollande‘s comments suggested a growing openness to dialogue with the extremists, but he remained committed to supporting the military planning effort.

Northern Mali fell to Islamic extremists in April, after coup leaders toppled the government in Bamako, Mali‘s capital. Fearing that northern Mali could become the latest hotbed of terrorism, France has been a driving force in international efforts to bolster Mali’s army to drive the Islamists from power.

Hollande spoke with interim Mali President Dioncounda Traore by phone on Thursday, partly to detail European efforts to help strengthen Mali’s army.

In recent days, representatives from the most moderate of three al-Qaida-linked groups that control northern Mali have been meeting with Burkina Faso‘s president, appointed as a mediator.

“France reiterates its wish that political dialogue will intensify between Malian authorities and representatives of northern populations who reject terrorism,” Hollande’s office said in a statement. “The acceleration of this dialogue must accompany the progress in African military-planning efforts.”

Earlier this week, the African Union approved a plan that calls for 3,300 African troops to be deployed in order to win back Mali’s north. European countries including France and Germany have expressed a willingness to provide military trainers and logistics support, but have stopped short of committing combat troops.

France, like many European countries, fears that the arid, northern Sahel region of Mali could become a breeding ground for terrorism, where al-Qaida and its allies could plot hostage-takings and attacks in Europe or beyond.

France has millions of people whose families hail from former French colonies in north and west Africa. Authorities have long been concerned that French-born militants could travel abroad for terrorism training and return home later to possibly carry out attacks.

French authorities are already investigating two French citizens who were arrested in Mali and neighboring Niger and are suspected of seeking to join up with the al-Qaida-linked extremists, a judicial official told The Associated Press.

Ibrahim Ouattara, a 24-year-old native of the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers who has dual French and Malian nationality, was arrested inside Mali this month and remains in custody there, the official said.

Separately, a 27-year-old Frenchman was arrested in August in Niger and has since been handed over to authorities in France, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to discuss terrorism cases publicly.

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ABC Adapting Disney Theme-Park Ride for “Big Thunder Mountain” Pilot

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – ABC found ratings success by adapting Disney‘s finest fairy tales into the one-hour drama series “Once Upon a Time,” so it’s not surprising that the network has turned to a theme-park ride from its parent company for inspiration as well.

Popular roller coaster Big Thunder Mountain Railroad is being adapted for a television pilot by the Disney-owned network, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap.

Chris Morgan (“Wanted,” “Fast Five”) will co-write the story with “Ice Age: Continental Drift’s” Jason Fuchs, who will write the teleplay. ABC has ordered a script from ABC Studios, the individual said.

No word on what the show will have in common with the ride, but if it sticks with the theme presented to visitors at parks in California, Florida, Paris and Tokyo, it should have something to do with a mining town being destroyed by a natural disaster after settlers desecrate sacred Native American land.

Two other film projects have been developed based on Disney rides, “Pirates of the Caribbean” and 2003′s not-equally-successful “The Haunted Mansion.”

Morgan is represented by ICM Partners and McKuin Frankel, while Fuchs is repped by WME and Brookside and Bloom Hergott.

The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news on “Big Thunder Mountain.”

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People overestimate benefits of prevention

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Patients asked to estimate how many lives would be saved through cancer screening or how many hip fractures can be prevented with bone-building medication mostly overestimate the benefits of these preventive measures, according to a survey of New Zealanders.

Annette O’Connor of the University of Ottawa, who studies how patients weigh risk and make decisions, said she would expect that people would overvalue any given prevention effort.

“Most people would overestimate because they’re told about their benefits, but with no numbers…so why would you think that it’s going to be really low?” said O’Connor, who was not involved in the new study.

Doctors, nurses and others who communicate health information often don’t detail how much a given test or drug can help, but only say that people ought to have it, O’Connor told Reuters Health.

“I think it’s led to more people taking part in screening or availing themselves of preventive medication than would have been the case if they were presented the information in more meaningful terms,” said Dr. Ben Hudson, the new study’s lead author and a professor at the University of Otago in Christchurch, New Zealand.

“I would also be concerned that it’s led to people having over-heightened expectations of what these things can achieve, and that may lead to disappointment when the inevitable breast cancer happens despite screening,” he added.

Hudson said that in talking with his patients about screening, he found they were surprised by how small the benefits were.

To get a broader sense of patients’ expectations for preventive measures, Hudson and his colleagues asked 354 people about the benefits of breast cancer screening with mammography, bowel cancer screening with stool testing, taking antihypertension medication and taking bone-strengthening medication.

Specifically, participants were asked to imagine scenarios in which 5,000 people between ages 50 and 70 undergo one of these preventive interventions for 10 years, then asked how many “events” the participants thought would be avoided as a result of the measure.

For three of the four interventions in the survey, the event to be avoided was death and in the case of bone drugs, it was hip fracture.

For breast cancer screening, only seven percent of the participants answered in the correct range of one to five lives being saved with screening, whereas 90 percent overestimated how many lives would be saved. Fully a third thought that 1,000 deaths would be averted.

The numbers were similar for bowel cancer screening, which is thought to save five to 10 lives for every 5,000 people tested, Hudson’s group reports in the Annals of Family Medicine.

Eighty-two percent of participants overestimated the number of fractures prevented by bone-strengthening medication, which in reality is about 50 for every 5,000 patients given the drug.

And 69 percent of participants reported that 500 or more lives would be saved if 5,000 people took blood pressure medication, when the correct range should have been 50 to 100.

“It’s probably unreasonable to expect people to make an accurate guess at the absolute number (of lives saved or fractures prevented), but what we found was a consistent trend toward higher levels,” Hudson told Reuters Health.

“I don’t think most patients are likely to have access to good numerical data presented in a simple and informative way. I think that’s part of the problem here,” he said.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) issues screening recommendations and other guidelines for disease prevention, which doctors, nurses and public health groups often consult when counseling patients.

A survey of U.S. physicians found that most of them don’t fully grasp what the numbers mean when it comes to cancer screening (see Reuters Health story of March 5, 2012).

O’Connor said that when health care professionals repeat these guidelines to patients, they often don’t include the numbers when talking about benefits or they only refer to something called the “relative risk.”

The relative risk describes the change in a person’s chances of developing a disease, but it does not give any sense of how much risk that person had to begin with.

For example, a “50 percent reduction in risk” may be less significant than it sounds if a person’s absolute risk for a condition – how likely they are to develop it at some point in life – was originally five percent, and drops to 2.5 percent.

“Professionals and people who provide health information need to know absolute benefits,” O’Connor said.

The relative risk of dying from breast cancer is 17 percent lower among a population of women aged 50 to 69 who get screened, compared to women who do not get screened, for instance.

But in absolute terms, that means that instead of 23 in 100,000 women dying of breast cancer, screening would reduce that number to 19 in 100,000 women.

Hudson said that one of the potential problems that can arise when people overvalue a test is that if recommendations are scaled back because of insufficient benefits, people get upset.

In 2009, for instance, the USPSTF changed its guidelines for regular mammograms from beginning at age 40 to beginning at 50, because the number of lives saved through screening during that extra decade of life was too small compared to the potential harms from the screening itself and follow-up procedures.

A survey of women at the time found that most of them considered the new guidelines to be “unsafe,” at least in part because they feared that insurers would no longer cover screening for women in their 40s who wanted it.

“The other thing that happens when you have an established screening program for which people have heightened expectations, it becomes very politically difficult to make any changes insofar as recommending reduced access, even when the evidence is pretty convincing that the outcomes are better,” said Hudson.

Hudson advocated for better informing patients of the benefits and harms of any preventive intervention.

“I have a feeling this would all be easier if we could present (patients) with this information, trust them with their decisions and support them in doing so,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/XINd5u Annals of Family Medicine, November/December 2012.

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BP employees charged with manslaughter

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Two men who worked for BP during the 2010 Gulf oil spill disaster have been charged with manslaughter and a third with lying to federal investigators, according to indictments made public Thursday, hours after BP announced it was paying $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government over the disaster.

A federal indictment unsealed in New Orleans claims BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine acted negligently in their supervision of key safety tests performed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the explosion killed 11 workers in April 2010. The indictment says Kaluza and Vidrine failed to phone engineers onshore to alert them of problems in the drilling operation.

Another indictment charges David Rainey, who was BP's vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, on charges of obstruction of Congress and false statements. The indictment claims the former executive lied to federal investigators when they asked him how he calculated a flow rate estimate for BP's blown-out well in the days after the April 2010 disaster.

Before Thursday, the only person charged in the disaster was a former BP engineer who was arrested in April on obstruction of justice charges. He was accused of deleting text messages about the company's response to the spill.

Earlier in the day, BP PLC said it would plead guilty to criminal charges related to the deaths of 11 workers and lying to Congress.

The day of reckoning comes more than two years after the nation's worst offshore oil spill. The figure includes nearly $1.3 billion in criminal fines — the biggest criminal penalty in U.S. history — along with payments to certain government entities.

"We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders," said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP chairman. "It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims."

The settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge, includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences and about $500 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused BP of misleading investors by lowballing the amount of crude spewing from the ruptured well.

London-based BP said in a statement that the settlement would not cover any civil penalties the U.S. government might seek under the Clean Water Act and other laws. Nor does it cover billions of dollars in claims brought by states, businesses and individuals, including fishermen, restaurants and property owners.

A federal judge in New Orleans is weighing a separate, proposed $7.8 billion settlement between BP and more than 100,000 businesses and individuals who say they were harmed by the spill.

BP will plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect of a ship's officers, one felony count of obstruction of Congress and one misdemeanor count each under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. The workers' deaths were prosecuted under a provision of the Seaman's Manslaughter Act. The obstruction charge is for lying to Congress about how much oil was spilling.

The penalty will be paid over five years. BP made a profit of $5.5 billion in the most recent quarter. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the U.S. Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

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