Many Afghan Ex-Insurgents Regret Laying Down Arms

MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan — Eidi Mohammed, a former Taliban commander who recently renounced violence and sought amnesty under the Afghan government’s reconciliation program, has had another change of heart. Now he is thinking about rejoining his old comrades. Jobless and losing hope he will ever find work, Mr. Mohammed, 38, took his frustrations to provincial officials. They told him there was nothing they could do.

Parwiz/Reuters

Many Taliban militants handed over their weapons last March in Laghman Province as part of the Afghan government

Shah Marai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

An Afghan Local Police training exercise last month in Nangarhar Province. Violence remains high in hotbeds of the insurgency.

“The moment I feel like I can move, I will go back to the mountains, rearm myself and fight you again,” Mr. Mohammed, who is recovering from a recent gunshot wound to the leg caused by a clash with a police officer, recalled warning the governor, police chief and top security official of Badghis Province.

He is not alone. Interviews with more than a dozen former insurgents find a group embittered and torn about their choice to lay down their arms. Many are unable to work and often unable to return to their villages for safety reasons; most feel the government has cheated them.

“I am just counting the days before someone kills me,” said Akhtar Mohammad, a former Taliban commander in Oruzgan. “Every passing moment I feel regret for joining the peace process.”

Mr. Mohammad, who is from the south, where the insurgency is the deadliest, said the only thing he had to show for his decision to switch sides was the turban he had been given for his reintegration ceremony.

Two years into one of the most ambitious efforts to lure Taliban fighters off the battlefield, many Afghan and Western officials acknowledge that the results have been disappointing. Though the number of people claiming the amnesty has swelled in the past year, violence remains high in the hotbeds of the insurgency, where the program has struggled to take hold.

Of the roughly 6,100 participants so far, 80 percent come from the relatively peaceful north and west of the country, where the Taliban presence is thinnest. And even some of those fighters say their activity was more criminal than political or ideological, even though the program was designed to flip the most committed fighters.

Many onetime fighters say they were only loosely affiliated with the Taliban. Though widely thought of as a unified Islamic movement, the Taliban in reality consist of a shifting constellation of forces whose agendas sometimes line up. Many of the insurgents who have given up fighting said they were formerly of Hezb-e-Islami, a rival faction to the Taliban that has been losing power and influence in recent years.

Although some fighters have found employment, Western officials argue that the reintegration initiative was never meant to be a jobs program. It pays a modest stipend, about $100 to $200 monthly for the first three months, depending on the fighter’s rank. In theory, the former fighters can find work on development projects financed in their home villages, though many projects have failed to get off the ground.

In two years, the so-called High Peace Council has spent less than half of what officials hoped to spend in 2011 alone. Tight controls have stalled village development projects meant to employ the former insurgents in their communities. About $180 million of the $235 million the program was granted sits idle in Afghan coffers.

The officials running the program called it a work in progress that would improve over time. The importance of employment for former fighters is acknowledged as an important element of keeping them from picking up arms again.

“We’re working on ways to improve the effectiveness of the program,” said Paul Martin Mason, who oversees the reintegration program for the United Nations Development Program.

In the meantime, many former fighters are expressing second thoughts with their decisions. Having tired of endless fighting, Hazrat Mir, a former Taliban commander in Laghman, joined the government with 130 of his men last year.

With promises of jobs and land, Mr. Mir said, his men left their villages and turned in their weapons, a dangerous prospect given the threat from former comrades. The danger, it turned out, was made clear by an attack the day before their reintegration ceremony in which the Taliban killed Mr. Mir’s top deputy.

Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Mehtar Lam, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.

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Samsung sets sights on RIM’s corporate users

Now that Samsung (005930) has bested Apple in the consumer smartphone market, at least where shipment volume is concerned, the company is setting its sights on Research in Motion’s (RIMM) corporate user base. The company is investing heavily in enterprise devices that incorporate a higher level of security and reliability than consumers require. Various government agencies and corporations aren’t fully sold on RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry 10 operating system and are still unsure if will satisfy their needs. As a result, they have begun to explore alternatives for their employees.

[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]

“The enterprise space has suddenly become wide open,” Kevin Packingham, chief product officer for Samsung Mobile USA, said in an interview with Reuters. “The RIM problems certainly fueled a lot of what the CIOs are going through, which is they want to get away from a lot of the proprietary solutions.”

[More from BGR: CES has sadly become a complete waste of time]

The executive revealed that Samsung’s corporate market ambitions advanced after its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone gained various security certifications. He noted that companies “want something that integrates what they are doing with their IT systems,” and that “Samsung is investing in that area.” Packingham said that enterprise has been a focus of the company for a long time and its products have finally evolved enough to “really take advantage” of the market.

“We knew we had to build more tech devices to successfully enter the enterprise market,” he said. “What really turned that needle was that we had the power of the GS3.”

This article was originally published on BGR.com

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Sandra Bullock Honored at People's Choice Awards for New Orleans Support

By Alison Schwartz

01/09/2013 at 10:45 PM EST

Sandra Bullock at the People's Choice Awards

Jason Merritt/Getty

Sandra Bullock took home big honors for her work in the Big Easy Wednesday night.

The People's Choice Awards crowned the Oscar-winning actress the favorite humanitarian for her career-spanning philanthropic efforts, including her dedication to New Orleans's Warren Easton Charter High School

"I'm not at all being modest when I say I'm not doing anything compared to what they do on a daily basis," Bullock, 48, told the crowd gathered at Los Angeles's Nokia Theatre.

Just six months after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, the actress showed her support by adopting the school, which sustained $4 million in damages during the storm. She donated hundreds of thousands of dollars for renovations, telling PEOPLE years later that she "felt such a profound need to do something for them."

Her generosity helped the charter school – the first public high school for boys in Louisiana – afford renovations, new band uniforms, athletic equipment and a new health clinic in a city that's close to her heart. After all, she adopted her son, Louis, from New Orleans in 2010 and also has a home in the Garden District.

She pointed to the tireless dedication of the school's students, teachers and tough principal. "I've seen her," she joked. "Yeah, you don't want to go into that office."

Bullock then gave a shout-out to her son, who was sick as home, she said.

"[The students] compete, but they never cut each other down," she added. "And all that happens not because it's easy, but because they do not allow themselves any other option than to succeed."

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Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.

Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.

How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.

In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.

"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.

But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.

The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.

"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.

"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.

But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.

More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.

Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.

The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.

So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.

The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.

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Stock index futures point to second day of gains

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq 100 all around 0.2 percent higher at 0920 GMT.

European shares traded in sight of recent multi-month highs, with FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3> flat at 1,167.51 points by 0913 GMT <.eu> while Asian markets closed higher, supported by solid Chinese data <.t>.

China's export growth rebounded surprisingly sharply in December to a seven-month high, in a strong finish to the year for an economy that had slowed for seven quarters, but the spike may not herald an enduring recovery as global demand stays subdued.

U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season. The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 61.66 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,390.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 3.87 points, or 0.27 percent, to 1,461.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 14.00 points, or 0.45 percent, to 3,105.81.

The nascent earnings season pauses, with no S&P 500 companies scheduled to report on Thursday.

Casual dining chain Ruby Tuesday Inc lowered the upper end of its full-year adjusted profit forecast after posting a wider-than-expected second-quarter loss. Shares fell after the bell.

U.S. asset manager BlackRock is to buy Swiss bank Credit Suisse's exchange-traded fund business for an undisclosed price.

A relatively thin U.S. data calendar features December trade data at 1330 GMT and budget figures at 1900 GMT.

Both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank are expected to announce on-hold policy ahead of U.S. market open, with the focus for the latter on the 1330 GMT press conference.

(Reporting By Toni Vorobyova; Editing by Catherine Evans)

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News Analysis: Obama Nominees in Step on Light Footprint

Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press

President Obama named John O. Brennan, right, as his choice for C.I.A. director and chose Chuck Hagel, left, to be his next defense secretary.

WASHINGTON — With the selection of a new national security team deeply suspicious of the wisdom of American military interventions around the world, President Obama appears to have ended, at least for the moment, many of the internal administration debates that played out in the Situation Room over the past four years.

He has sided, without quite saying so, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s view — argued, for the most part, in the confines of the White House — that caution, covert action and a modest American military footprint around the world fit the geopolitical moment. The question is whether that approach will fit the coming challenges of stopping Iran’s nuclear program and the potential collapse of Syria.

Gone for the second term are the powerful personalities, and more hawkish voices, that pressed Mr. Obama to pursue the surge in Afghanistan in 2009, a gamble championed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert M. Gates, the former secretary of defense. Gone from the C.I.A. is the man who urged Mr. Obama to keep troops there longer, David H. Petraeus.

The new team will include two Vietnam veterans, Senator John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, who bear the scars of a war that ended when the president was a teenager, and a counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, who helped devise the “light footprint” strategy of limiting American interventions, whenever possible, to drones, cyberattacks and Special Operations forces. All are advocates of those low-cost, low-American-casualty tools, and all have sounded dismissive of attempts to send thousands of troops to rewire foreign nations as wasteful and ill-conceived.

Most important to Mr. Obama and his national security adviser, Tom Donilon, all three are likely to accommodate themselves, in ways their predecessors often did not, to a White House that has insisted on running national security policy from the West Wing.

“One of the characteristics of this administration has been that decision-making has been centered in the White House,” said Dennis B. Ross, a Mideast expert who left the Obama administration a year ago but never wandered far from some of its key debates. “And most second-term administrations don’t change their sociology.”

But if they grab hold of the national security levers after what many predict will be, for Mr. Hagel and Mr. Brennan, bruising confirmation hearings, they will confront problems that may test whether the light footprint carries enough weight.

“Issues 1 and 2 will be cutting the defense budget and confronting Iran,” said Michael Mandelbaum, a political scientist whose 2010 book, “The Frugal Superpower,” dealt with the challenge of trying to manage the world on the cheap. “And then you will have issues like Syria, which test the question of whether you can manage to control a dangerous situation with no boots on the ground — and unless something dramatic changes, there will be no boots.”

Mr. Hagel, who was both a senator and a cellphone entrepreneur, has long been a critic of Pentagon bloat. But others with business experience, like Donald Rumsfeld, have believed they could bring market discipline to one of the country’s most sprawling enterprises, only to discover that killing off unneeded weapons systems has almost nothing to do with business decisions and everything to do with the politics of Congressional districts and campaign funds.

Mr. Obama’s bet was that by appointing a Republican, he will better his chances of overcoming those obstacles. What he discovered even before announcing Mr. Hagel’s appointment is that the former senator burned many bridges with his Republican colleagues, in part with his outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, despite voting in 2002 to authorize military action, and to the 2008 surge when President George W. Bush was still in office.

“If the president thinks Chuck Hagel can get him the Republican votes to downsize the Pentagon,” said one former senior aide to Mr. Bush, who declined to speak on the record, “I think he is in for a very rude surprise.”

Then there is Iran, which will be a test for all three men, for different reasons. Mr. Hagel has been particularly vocal about the dangers of a military confrontation with Tehran. While both Mr. Gates and his successor, Leon E. Panetta, expressed similar concerns at various points in the first term, Mr. Hagel’s view is considerably to the left of Mr. Obama’s. The president has, gradually, endorsed “coercive diplomacy,” telling the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in March, “As I’ve made clear time and again during the course of my presidency, I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

But Mr. Hagel has opposed unilateral sanctions and suggested that threatening Iran just closes down opportunities for dialogue.

“The key to coercive diplomacy is that the side you are trying to influence is convinced you are willing to follow through on the threat,” said Mr. Ross, who drafted some of those threats. “The president has been clear, but from others there have been mixed messages.”

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Panasonic considers headcount savings, asset sales in revival plan

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Japan‘s Panasonic Corp may see its headcount fall further and may sell non-core money-making business units to raise cash, president Kazuhiro Tsuga told reporters at the CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas on Tuesday.

Hammered by competition from South Korean rivals such as Samsung Electronics, Panasonic may also squeeze wages and seek joint ventures in its semiconductors and other struggling operations in a bid to rekindle profit growth, Tsuga said.

Shares in Panasonic slipped 1.4 percent to a two-week low in Tokyo morning trade, compared to a 0.4 percent increase on the benchmark Nikkei average.

The Panasonic chief said in an earlier keynote speech he would pursue strategies to expand business-to-business sales of car batteries, in-flight entertainment systems, hydrogen cells, solar panels and LED lighting.

Japan’s share of the world’s flat panel TV market this year likely contracted to 31 percent compared with 41 percent in 2010, according to the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association.

Panasonic earlier unveiled a prototype of the world’s largest organic light-emitting display screen in a show of technological one-upmanship with its South Korean rivals Samsung and LG Electronics Inc.

Sony Corp, which is cooperating with Panasonic in OLED technology, unwrapped on Monday its own 56-inch ultra high-definition model.

Tsuga, who heads Japan’s biggest commercial employer with 300,000 staff, is also pursuing a niche strategy and bolstering the company’s appliance business in a bid to capture more profitable markets while the likes of Samsung and Apple Inc slug it out in mass-market consumer electronics.

The executive has promised to deliver the details of the revival plan by the end of March, when he plans to reorganize 88 businesses into 56 units.

So far he has said that businesses that fail to achieve a 5 percent operating margin within two years will be shuttered or sold. Sales of the weakest ones may start next business year. Panasonic in the year to March 31 is forecasting a net loss of $ 8.9 billion.

(Reporting by Tim Kelly; Editing by Paul Tait and Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Beyoncé & Kelly Clarkson to Sing for the Obamas at Presidential Inauguration

01/09/2013 at 05:00 AM EST

From left: Beyoncé, Kelly Clarkson and James Taylor, with President Obama (inset)

Celebrity Photo; Getty; Filmmagic. Inset: Landov

Michelle Obama works out to her music – plus, she's no stranger to the White House – so it's only fitting this year that Beyoncé will be front and center at President Barack Obama's inauguration.

The R&B superstar will be performing the National Anthem at the Jan. 21 ceremony, which will take place at the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, the Presidential Inaugural Committee tells PEOPLE. And she will be joined by an equally auspicious roster of singers: Kelly Clarkson will perform "My Country 'Tis of Thee" this year (that honor went to Aretha Franklin ... and her infamous hat in 2009), while James Taylor will sing "America the Beautiful."

In 2009, Beyoncé performed Etta James's classic, "At Last," while the President and Michelle Obama took their first dance during the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball.

Other inaugural ceremony participants include civil rights activist and journalist Myrlie Evers-Williams, who will give the invocation. Reverend Louie Giglio will deliver the benediction.

According to the Presidential Inaugural Committee, more information about ceremonial participants will be released in the coming days. Could Aretha be back for her encore?

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Global shares buoyed by Alcoa earnings, dollar gains on yen

LONDON (Reuters) - World shares staged a modest recovery from two days of losses on Wednesday after aluminum giant Alcoa opened the U.S. earnings season with an optimistic outlook for world demand.

However, with European and British central banks due to hold policy meetings on Thursday, the same day Spain will test demand for its debt and China releases its latest trade data, investors were in a cautious mood.

Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer in the United States, rose 1.3 percent in after-hours trade after it reported a fourth-quarter profit in line with Wall Street expectations and revenues that beat forecasts.

The results lifted Asian stock markets and pushed Europe's FTSE Eurofirst 300 index <.fteu3> up around 0.2 percent in early trade, leaving the MSCI world equity index <.miwd00000pus> up 0.1 percent. London's FTSE 100 <.ftse>, Paris's CAC-40 <.fchi> and Frankfurt's DAX <.gdaxi> were flat to 0.2 percent higher.

U.S. stock futures were up 0.15 percent, suggesting a firmer start on Wall Street. <.l><.eu><.n/>

Corporate profits are expected to be higher than the third quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' estimates are down sharply from where they were in October.

"Expectations are quite low going into the earnings season as we saw a lot of downward guidance in the past few months. There is potential for an upside surprise to come through," said Robert Parkes, equity strategist at HSBC Securities.

SOVEREIGN DEBT TEST

In European fixed income markets German Bund prices dipped slightly as investors prepared for the government's auction of 5 billion euros' worth of new five-year bonds following successful debt sales in Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland on Tuesday.

Investors were also looking ahead to Spanish and Italian bond auctions on Thursday for the new year's first test of market appetite for peripheral euro zone debt.

The Spanish auction could also provide clues on the timing of a much anticipated request by Madrid for fresh financial aid from the ECB. [ID:nL5E9C46KK]

The dollar meanwhile climbed against the yen, moving back towards a 2-1/2 year high hit last week, on expectations of a much bolder monetary easing from the Bank of Japan at its next meeting later this month.

The U.S. currency was up 0.7 percent at 87.61 yen, above a near one-week low of 86.82 hit earlier in Tokyo.

"No one is going to want to be short yen going into the BOJ meeting," said Derek Halpenny, European head of FX research at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Sources familiar with the BOJ's thinking told Reuters the central bank was likely to adopt a 2 percent inflation target at the meeting, double its current goal, and issue a statement with the government pledging to pursue bold monetary easing steps.

The BOJ will also consider easing monetary policy again this month, probably through a further increase in its 101 trillion yen ($1.2 trillion) asset buying and lending programme, the sources said.

The euro held steady against the dollar at $1.3080, with most analysts forecasting the European Central Bank will keep interest rates on hold on Thursday, though some believe rates will be cut later this year.

CHINA DEMAND EYED

Brent crude oil slipped around 0.3 percent to below $112 per barrel as the market awaited the latest trade data from China, the world's biggest energy consumer, due on Thursday.

"What we're seeing in the oil markets is the cautious sentiment playing up ahead of some key economic events this week," said Ker Chung Yang, senior investment analyst at Phillips Futures in Singapore.

However, iron ore jumped to its highest since October 2011, stretching a rally that has lifted prices by more than a third since December as China replenished stockpiles and as supply in the spot market remained limited.

Iron ore, a raw material used to make steel, has now risen 83 percent since falling to below $87 in September.

(Additional reporting by Nia Williams and Atul Prakash; Editing by Will Waterman)

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