French and Malian Ground Troops Confront Islamists in Seized Town

Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

French soldiers rode in armored vehicles as they left Bamako and started their deployment to the north of Mali on Wednesday.

BAMAKO, Mali — French soldiers battled armed Islamist occupiers of a desert village in central Mali on Wednesday, a Malian army colonel said, in the first direct ground combat involving Western troops since France launched its military operation here last week to help wrest this nation back from an Islamist advance.

The Malian colonel said his army’s ground troops had joined the French forces and ringed the village of Diabaly, which Islamist fighters had seized the day before. Now, he said, they were engaged in fighting to extricate the militants, who had taken over homes and ensconced themselves.

“It’s a very specialized kind of war,” said the colonel, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The town is surrounded.”

The ground fighting expanded the confrontation between the Islamists and the French forces, who had previously conducted aerial assaults after President François Hollande of France ordered an intervention in Mali last Friday to thwart a broader push by Islamist rebels controlling the north of the country.

The battle in Diabaly came as news reports from the region said that Islamist militants affiliated with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb had seized a foreign-run gas field near the Algeria-Libya border, hundreds of miles away, and had seized foreign hostages, including Americans, in retaliation for the French intervention in Mali and for Algeria’s cooperation in that effort. The Algerian state-run news agency quoted regional government officials as say ingthat about 20 foreigners had been seized, including American, British, French, Norwegian and Japanese citizens. It also said that two people had been killed, at least one of them British.

The number of hostages and their nationalities could not be confirmed independently. Japanese officials acknowledged that Japanese citizens were involved in the hostage situation, and the Irish foreign ministry said one Irish citizen had been kidnapped. The British foreign office also said in a statement that “British nationals are caught up in this incident,” which it described as “ongoing.”

The developments underscored an earlier acknowledgment from the French defense minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, that the military campaign to turn back the Islamists and drive them from their redoubts in northern Malian desert would be a protracted one.

“The combat continues and it will be long, I imagine,” he said Wednesday on RTL radio. “Today the ground forces are in the process of deploying,” he said. “Now the French forces are reaching the north.”

Adm. Edouard Guillaud, the French chief of staff, told Europe 1 television that ground operations began overnight.

He accused jihadists of using civilians as human shields and said, “We refuse to put the population at risk. If there is doubt, we will not fire.”

In Paris, Mr. Hollande said Wednesday that he took the decision to intervene last Friday because it was necessary. If he had not done so, it would have been too late. “Mali would have been entirely conquered and the terrorists would today be in a position of strength."

On Tuesday, witnesses in Mali reported, the insurgents had regrouped after French airstrikes and embedded themselves among the population of Diabaly, hiding in the mud and brick houses in the battle zone and thwarting attacks by French warplanes to dislodge them.

“They are in the town, almost everywhere in the town,” said Bekaye Diarra, who owns a pharmacy in Diabaly, which remained under the control of insurgents. “They are installing themselves.”

Benco Ba, a parliamentary deputy there, said residents were fearful of the conflict that had descended on them. “The jihadists are going right into people’s families,” he said. “They have completely occupied the town. They are dispersed. It’s fear, ” he said, as it became

clear that airstrikes alone will probably not be enough to root out these battle-hardened insurgents, who know well the harsh grassland and desert terrain of Mali.

Adam Nossiter reported from Bamako, Mali, Alan Cowell from Paris and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Reporting was contributed by Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare from Paris, Julia Werdigier from London, and Elisabeth Bumiller from Madrid.

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“GameStick” and NVIDIA “Project SHIELD” Consoles-in-a-Controller on Their Way

Both GameStick and NVIDIA’s Project Shield are upcoming game consoles the size of a game controller, which can hook up to a larger display. Both are powered by Android, Google‘s open-source operating system that’s normally used on smartphones and tablets. And both have working hardware prototypes already. But one is a $ 99 Kickstarter project by an indie group, while the other has the backing of two major companies in the PC gaming world — and will probably be a lot more expensive when it comes out.

Here’s a look at two upcoming TV game consoles that you’ll be able to fit in your pocket or handbag.

GameStick: Exactly what it sounds like

Imagine a tiny, rectangular game controller, sort of like a Wii Remote with more buttons and twin analog sticks. On one side is a plastic bump, that when you pull it off it becomes this gadget the size of a USB memory stick that plugs into a TV’s HDMI port. That’s GameStick, and with 19 days left to go in its Kickstarter fund-raiser it’s managed to raise more than three times the $ 100,000 its creators asked for.

GameStick will have 8 GB of flash memory, and a processor capable of handling modern AAA Android games like Shadowgun, plus 1080p video. If you don’t like the controller it comes with, you’ll be able to connect up to four of your own via Bluetooth, or even use your Android or iOS smartphone or tablet as a controller.

Project SHIELD: A controller that can stop bullets

Maybe it can’t literally serve as a shield. But at about the size of the original Xbox’s controller, the “portable” console NVIDIA showed off at this year’s CES sure looks like it can. It’s powered by a next-generation Tegra 4 processor, and features its own built-in 5-inch multitouch screen for gaming on the go. But it can also connect to a TV, and can even stream PC games via Steam’s Big Picture mode, which was designed for controller games.

A not-so-silver lining?

GameStick’s biggest weakness may be its developer support. Its Kickstarter page mentions the hundreds of thousands of Android games out there, but most of those are only on Google Play, which (unlike most of the rest of Android) is proprietary to Google. Time will tell whether its creators can get enough developers to write games for the platform by the time of its planned April launch, or enough gamers to buy games they might already have on their tablets.

In contrast, between full support for the Google Play store and PC game streaming from Steam, Project SHIELD will have thousands and thousands of games, and there will be no need to repurchase titles you’ve already bought from either store. There’s no word from NVIDIA yet, though, on how much its game console will cost or even when it will launch.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Channing & Jenna Dewan-Tatum Take Pregnant Pause for Dog Walk

People Pets

01/16/2013 at 12:50 PM EST

Channing and Jenna Dewan-Tatum with dogs Lulu and Meeka

All Access Photo/Splash News Online

Pregnancy sure isn't slowing down Jenna Dewan-Tatum!

The American Horror Story actress, who has stayed active while expecting, was joined by husband Channing on Tuesday for a trek through L.A.'s Runyon Canyon with the couple's two dogs, Lulu and Meeka.

"They are my kids," Dewan-Tatum told PEOPLE in October of the pair's furbabies. "I always joke around, 'If I can love my actual kids as much as my dogs, we're golden.'"

Meanwhile, the Magic Mike star has expressed his excitement over expanding the couple's human family.

"The first number that pops into my head is three," Tatum said about the number of children he'd like, "but I just want one to be healthy and then we’ll see where we go after that."

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ER visits tied to energy drinks double since 2007

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new government survey suggests the number of people seeking emergency treatment after consuming energy drinks has doubled nationwide during the past four years, the same period in which the supercharged drink industry has surged in popularity in convenience stores, bars and on college campuses.

From 2007 to 2011, the government estimates the number of emergency room visits involving the neon-labeled beverages shot up from about 10,000 to more than 20,000. Most of those cases involved teens or young adults, according to a survey of the nation's hospitals released late last week by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The report doesn't specify which symptoms brought people to the emergency room but calls energy drink consumption a "rising public health problem" that can cause insomnia, nervousness, headache, fast heartbeat and seizures that are severe enough to require emergency care.

Several emergency physicians said they had seen a clear uptick in the number of patients suffering from irregular heartbeats, anxiety and heart attacks who said they had recently downed an energy drink.

More than half of the patients considered in the survey who wound up in the emergency room told doctors they had downed only energy drinks. In 2011, about 42 percent of the cases involved energy drinks in combination with alcohol or drugs, such as the stimulants Adderall or Ritalin.

"A lot of people don't realize the strength of these things. I had someone come in recently who had drunk three energy drinks in an hour, which is the equivalent of 15 cups of coffee," said Howard Mell, an emergency physician in the suburbs of Cleveland, who serves as a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians. "Essentially he gave himself a stress test and thankfully he passed. But if he had a weak heart or suffered from coronary disease and didn't know it, this could have precipitated very bad things."

The findings came as concerns over energy drinks have intensified following reports last fall of 18 deaths possibly tied to the drinks — including a 14-year-old Maryland girl who died after drinking two large cans of Monster Energy drinks. Monster does not believe its products were responsible for the death.

Two senators are calling for the Food and Drug Administration to investigate safety concerns about energy drinks and their ingredients.

The energy drink industry says its drinks are safe and there is no proof linking its products to the adverse reactions.

Late last year, the FDA asked the U.S. Health and Human Services to update the figures its substance abuse research arm compiles about emergency room visits tied to energy drinks.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's survey was based on responses it receives from about 230 hospitals each year, a representative sample of about 5 percent of emergency departments nationwide. The agency then uses those responses to estimate the number of energy drink-related emergency department visits nationwide.

The more than 20,000 cases estimated for 2011 represent a small portion of the annual 136 million emergency room visits tracked by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The FDA said it was considering the findings and pressing for more details as it undertakes a broad review of the safety of energy drinks and related ingredients this spring.

"We will examine this additional information ... as a part of our ongoing investigation into potential safety issues surrounding the use of energy-drink products," FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said in a statement.

Beverage manufacturers fired back at the survey, saying the statistics were misleading and taken out of context.

"This report does not share information about the overall health of those who may have consumed energy drinks, or what symptoms brought them to the ER in the first place," the American Beverage Association said in a statement. "There is no basis by which to understand the overall caffeine intake of any of these individuals — from all sources."

Energy drinks remain a small part of the carbonated soft drinks market, representing only 3.3 percent of sales volume, according to the industry tracker Beverage Digest. Even as soda consumption has flagged in recent years, energy drinks sales are growing rapidly.

In 2011, sales volume for energy drinks rose by almost 17 percent, with the top three companies — Monster, Red Bull and Rockstar — each logging double-digit gains, Beverage Digest found. The drinks are often marketed at sporting events that are popular among younger people such as surfing and skateboarding.

From 2007 to 2011, the most recent year for which data was available, people from 18 to 25 were the most common age group seeking emergency treatment for energy drink-related reactions, the report found.

"We were really concerned to find that in four years the number of emergency department visits almost doubled, and these drinks are largely marketed to younger people," said Al Woodward, a senior statistical analyst with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration who worked on the report.

Emergency physician Steve Sun said he had seen an increase in such cases at the Catholic hospital where he works on the edge of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.

"I saw one young man who had mixed energy drinks with alcohol and we had to admit him to the hospital because he was so dehydrated he had renal failure," Sun said. "Because he was young he did well in the hospital, but if another patient had had underlying coronary artery disease, it could have led to a heart attack."

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Follow Garance Burke on Twitter at http://twitter.com/garanceburke

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Wall Street flat as Apple gains, Boeing weighs

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks were little changed on Wednesday as concerns about global economic growth and a drop in Boeing shares offset strong bank results and gains in technology stocks.

Goldman Sachs shares hit their highest level since June 2011 as earnings nearly tripled on increased revenue from dealmaking and lower compensation expenses, while JPMorgan Chase said fourth-quarter net income jumped 53 percent and earnings for 2012 set a record.

JPMorgan shares edged up 0.2 percent at $46.43 and Goldman was up 2.5 percent to $139.01. The KBW bank index <.bkx> gained 0.3 percent.

But with only 37 companies in the S&P 500 having reported earnings so far this season, investors are exercising caution until signs of growth can emerge.

A slow economic recovery in developed nations is holding back the global economy, the World Bank said on Tuesday, as it sharply scaled back its forecast for world growth in 2013 to 2.4 percent from an earlier forecast of 3.0 percent.

"Domestically, we are pretty well positioned," said Marc Helman, Vice President, Institutional Services at HFP Capital Markets in New York.

"But globally it's more of a mixed bag and that is where we have some of our concerns, so you are going to continue to see people wait on the sidelines until they get a little more clarity through the earnings season."

Shares of Dow component Boeing fell 3.1 percent to $74.59, the biggest drag on the Dow, on safety concerns for its new Dreamliner passenger jets. Japan's two leading airlines grounded their fleets of 787s after an emergency landing, adding to safety concerns triggered by a series of recent incidents.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> shed 19.70 points, or 0.15 percent, to 13,515.19. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> edged up 0.32 points, or 0.02 percent, to 1,472.66. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 7.26 points, or 0.23 percent, to 3,118.04.

The Nasdaq moved higher on gains in Apple shares, which were up 3.2 percent at $501.66 after losses in three straight sessions. Morgan Stanley stamped the tech giant as a "best idea," citing overblown concerns about iPhone shipments.

Talks to take Dell Inc private were at an advanced stage, with at least four major banks lined up to provide financing, two sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters. Shares fell 4 percent to $12.65 after jumping more than 21 percent over the past two sessions.

U.S. consumer prices were flat in December, pointing to muted inflation pressures that should give the Federal Reserve room to prop up the economy by staying on its ultra-easy monetary policy path.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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Deadly Explosions Hit Aleppo University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Experts: Proposed NY gun law might hinder therapy

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

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

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

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

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Apple stock's continuing decline drags Wall Street lower

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - "The Muppets 2" will open in theaters March of 2014, "Maleficent," a reimagined "Sleeping Beauty" tale starring Angelina Jolie moves to July of the same year and Brad Bird's "1952" will open before Christmas of 2014, Disney announced on Monday. The news was part of an omnibus announcement, as Disney also announced "Pirates of the Caribbean 5" will open July 10, 2015. The next "Pirates" will star Johnny Depp with a script by Jeff Nathanson, but no director has been attached. Disney's planned 3D re-release of "Little Mermaid," set for September 13, has been called off. ...

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IHT Rendezvous: 2012: The Year of Extreme Weather

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

World of Warcraft Theme Park

Image credit Francesca Timbers

Click here to view this gallery.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Images courtesy Francesca Timbers

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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