Temple Run was downloaded more than 2.5 million times on Christmas Day

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Marvel’s Peter Parker in perilous predicament

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — After 50 years of spinning webs and catching a who’s who of criminals, Peter Parker is out of the hero game.

But Spider-Man is still slinging from building to building — reborn, refreshed and revived with a new sense of the old maxim that Ben Parker taught his then-fledgling nephew that “with great power, comes great responsibility.”

Writer Dan Slott, who’s been penning Spidey adventures for the better part of the last 100 issues for Marvel Entertainment, said the culmination of the story is a new, dramatically different direction for the Steve Ditko and Stan Lee-created hero.

“This is an epic turn,” Slott said. “I’ve been writing Spider-Man for 70-plus issues. Every now and then, you have to shake it up. … The reason Spider-Man is one of the longest running characters is they always find a way to keep it fresh. Something to shake up the mix.”

And in the pages of issue 700, out Wednesday, it’s not just shaken up, it’s turned head over heels, spun in circles, kicked sky high and cracked wide open.

Parker’s mind is trapped in the withered, decaying dying body of his nemesis, Doctor Octopus aka Otto Octavius. Where’s Doc Ock? Inside Parker’s super-powered shell, learning what life is like for the brilliant researcher who happens to count the Avengers and Fantastic Four as friends and family.

The two clash mightily in the pages of issue 700, illustrated by Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba. But it’s Octavius who wins out and Parker is, at least for now, gone for good, but not before one more act of heroism.

Slott said that it’s Parker, whose memories envelop Octavius, who shows the villain what it means to be a hero.

“Gone are his days of villainy, but since it’s Doc Ock and he has that ego, he’s not going to try and just be Spider-man, he’s going to try to be the best Spider-Man ever,” said Slott.

Editor Stephen Wacker said that while Parker is gone, his permanence remains and his life casts a long shadow.

“His life is still important to the book because it affects everything that Doctor Octopus does as Spider-Man. Seeing a supervillain go through this life is the point — trying to be better than the hero he opposed,” Wacker said.

“Doc has sort of inspired by Peter’s life. That’s what I mean when he talks about the shadow he casts,” he said.

The sentiment echoes what Uncle Ben said in the pages of “Amazing Fantasy” No. 15, Slott said.

Editor Stephen Wacker called it a fitting end to the old series, which sets the stage for a new one — “The Superior Spider-Man” early next year — because it brings Peter Parker full circle, from the start of his crime-fighting career to the end.

“In his very first story, his uncle died because of something he did so the book has always been aimed at making Peter’s life as difficult as possible,” Wacker said. “The book has always worked best when it’s about Peter Parker’s life, not Spider-Man’s.”

And with Octavius influenced by Parker’s life — from Aunt May to Gwen Stacy to Mary Jane — it will make him a better person, too.

“Because Doctor Octopus knows all of those things and will make decisions on what he saw Peter going through,” Wacker said. “In a way, he gets the ultimate victory as he becomes a better hero.”

___

Follow Matt Moore at www.twitter.com/MattMooreAP

___

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges that he detains mothers who can’t pay their bills.

Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running. Now, a New York-based group filed a lawsuit this month in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum near the maternity hospital said Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $ 60 and $ 160. Guards with sticks would beat mothers who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Omondi says one solution to the problem would be a national health insurance program.

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Stock futures little changed with “cliff” talks to resume

NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Thursday with legislators due to return to Washington to restart negotiations over the “fiscal cliff“.

President Barack Obama will attempt to make another push to resume talks on the cliff, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts set to begin on January 1 which may tip the economy into a recession, on Thursday after returning from a shortened Christmas holiday in Hawaii.

In a sign that there may be a way through deadlock in Congress, Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged the Democrat-controlled Senate to act to pull back from the cliff and offered to at least consider any bill the upper chamber produced.

The Treasury Department, led by Secretary Timothy Geithner, announced steps essentially designed to buy time to allow Congress to resolve its differences and raise the debt ceiling.

Economic data expected on Thursday includes weekly initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 360,000 new filings, compared with 361,000 filings in the previous week.

Also due at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) is the Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index for November.

Later in the session at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT), investors will eye December consumer confidence and November new home sales data. The Conference Board’s main consumer confidence index is expected to show a reading of 70 versus the 73.7 reported in November while new home sales are expected to show a total of 378,000 annualized units.

The benchmark S&P 500 index has fallen 1.7 percent over the past three sessions as negotiations over the budget crisis have stalled, its longest losing streak since mid-November.

But the S&P has recouped nearly all of its declines suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections and is up 12.9 percent for the year, putting it on track for its best year since 2009.

S&P 500 futures rose 3.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 4 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.5 point.

Marvell Technology Group fell 5.4 percent to $ 7.00 in premarket trading, extending its decline in the prior session after a federal jury found the company infringed two patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, and ordered the chipmaker to pay $ 1.17 billion in damages.

European shares steadied early in their first trading session following the Christmas break, with investors focusing on Washington’s last-ditch efforts to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. <.eu></.eu>

Asian shares rose amid caution ahead of the U.S. fiscal negotiations, while the yen hit a 21-month low against the dollar on the prospect of drastic monetary easing and massive state spending.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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Cuba has much to lose as ally Chavez fights cancer

HAVANA (AP) — Cubans who were tuned in to the nightly soap opera on a recent Saturday received a sudden burst of bad news, from the other side of the Caribbean.

State TV cut to the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez revealed that his cancer had returned. Facing his fourth related surgery in 18 months, he grimly named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his possible successor.

The news shocked not only Venezuelans but millions of Cubans who have come to depend on Chavez’s largesse for everything from subsidized oil to cheap loans. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba‘s energy needs, meaning the island’s economy would be in for a huge shock and likely recession if a post-Chavez president forced the island to pay full price for oil.

Despite the drama, the news likely wasn’t a surprise to Cuba’s Communist government, and not only because Chavez has been receiving medical care on the island.

Havana learned important lessons about overdependence when the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union threw the country into a deep crisis. Trying to avoid the consequences of a similar cut, the Cuban government has been diversifying its portfolio of economic partners in recent years, looking to Asia, Europe and other Latin American nations, and is only about half as dependent on Caracas as it was on the former Soviet Union.

Cuba is also working to stimulate its economy back home by allowing more private-sector activity, giving a leg up to independent and cooperative farming, and decentralizing its sugar industry. A stronger Cuban economy would in theory have more hard currency to pay for energy and other imports.

Also getting off the ground is an experiment with independent nonfarm collectives that should be more efficient than state-run companies. And next year, another pilot program is planned for decentralized state enterprises that will enjoy near-autonomy and be allowed to control most of their income.

“This could have good results,” said a Cuban economist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the foreign media. Cuba “is also thinking of boosting foreign investment in areas of the national economy, including in restricted areas like the sugar industry.”

One of the country’s top goals has been to make the island’s struggling economy less dependent on a single benefactor.

Under the leadership of Chavez, who regularly calls former Cuban President Fidel Castro his ideological father and has followed parts of the Communist leader’s governance playbook, Venezuela has sent billions of dollars a year to Cuba through trade and petro-aid.

Bilateral trade stood at a little over $ 8 billion last year, much of it in Cuban imports of oil and derivatives. In return, Havana primarily provides Venezuela with technical support from Cuban teachers, scientists and other professionals, plus brigades of health care workers. Analysts say those services are overvalued by outside standards, apparently costing as much as $ 200,000 per year per doctor. Experts peg the total Venezuelan subsidy to Cuba at around $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion a year.

While business with Venezuela makes up 40 percent of all Cuban trade, it’s still a far cry from the days when the Communist Eastern Bloc accounted for an estimated 80 percent.

“A (loss of) $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion would definitely pinch. But it is not the same relative weight as the sudden complete withdrawal of the Soviet subsidies in the early ’90s,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego. “Cuba’s not going to go back to the days of bicycles. Could it throw the Cuban economy into recession? Yes.”

That kind of resilience would result largely from Cuba’s successes in courting foreign investors for joint ventures.

Last month, authorities announced a deal with a subsidiary of Brazil’s Odebrecht to manage a sugar refinery, a rare step in an industry that has long been largely off limits to foreign involvement.

China has invested in land-based oil projects, and along with Canada is a key player in Cuba’s important nickel industry. Spain has ventures in tourist hotels and tobacco, while French company Pernod Ricard helps export Cuban liquors. And since 2009, Brazil has been a partner in a massive project to modernize and expand the port at Mariel, west of the capital.

Trade with China alone was $ 1.9 billion and rising in 2010, and Raul Castro paid a visit to Chinese and Vietnamese leaders earlier this year to help cement Asian relationships.

But while Havana says it wants to boost foreign investment, obstacles remain. The approval process for investment projects can be long and cumbersome, and pilferage, disincentives to productivity and government intervention can cut into efficiencies. Foreign companies also pay a sky-high payroll tax.

Feinberg, who wrote a report on foreign investment in Cuba published this month by the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution, said that while a number of foreign companies are successfully doing business with the island, others have run into problems, sending a chilly message to would-be investors. In particular he noted the recent cases of a government takeover of a food company run by a Chilean businessman accused of corruption, and contentious renegotiations of a contract with Dutch-British personal and home care products giant Unilever amid shifting government demands.

“The Cuban government has to decide that it wants foreign investment unambiguously. I think now there seem to be divisions among the leadership,” Feinberg said. “Some are afraid that foreign investment compromises sovereignty, creates centers of power independent of the leadership or is exploitative.”

He estimated Cuba has left on the table about $ 20 billion in missed investment over the past decade by not following practices typical of other developing nations. Instead, Cuba received $ 3.5 billion in foreign investment in that period.

Experts say a worst-case scenario for Chavez wouldn’t automatically translate into the oil spigot shutting off overnight.

If Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Vice President Maduro, were to take office, he would likely seek to continue the special relationship.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said he wants to end the oil-for-services barter arrangements, but could find that easier said than done should he win. The two countries are intertwined in dozens of joint accords, and poor Venezuelans who benefit from free care by Cuban doctors would be loath to see that disappear.

“You can’t flip the switch on a relationship like this,” said Melissa Lockhart Fortner, a Cuba analyst at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Los Angeles-based institute that focuses on global affairs. “It would be terrible politics for him. … Switching that off would really endanger his support far too much for that to be really a feasible option.”

For Cuba, Chavez’s latest health scare capped off a year of disappointments in the island’s attempt to wean itself from Venezuelan energy.

Three deep-water exploratory oil wells drilled off the west coast failed to yield a strike, and last month the only oil rig in the world capable of drilling there without violating U.S. sanctions sailed away with no return in sight.

Yet time and again Havana has shown that it’s nothing if not resilient, weathering everything from U.S.-backed invasion and assassination plots in the 1960s to the austere “Special Period” in the early 1990s, when the Soviet collapse sent Cuba’s GDP plummeting 33 percent over four years. When hurricanes damaged the country’s agriculture sector and the global financial crisis squeezed tourism four years ago, Cuba tightened its belt, slashed imports and survived.

“Some people are saying the demise of Chavez is also going to be the demise of Communism in Cuba because the regime’s going to collapse and the people are going to rise up,” Feinberg said. “That’s probably yet another delusion of the anti-Castro exile community.”

Still, many Cubans are nervously tuning into the near-daily updates about Chavez’s health, carried prominently in state media.

“I don’t know what would happen here,” said 52-year-old Havana resident Magaly Ruiz. “We might end up eating grass.”

___

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.

___

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Apps to help achieve New Year’s resolutions

(Reuters) – Whether it is improving health or managing finances better, about 87 percent of Americans will make resolutions for 2013 and there are plenty of apps to help them achieve their goals.

Nearly half of New Year’s resolutions are about setting health-related goals, which is the most popular category, according to a recent survey by online broker TD Ameritrade.

Rather than jumping into a rigorous fitness routine, a new app called 5K Runner suggests it might be better to ease into things slowly and focus on building sustainable habits. The iPhone app helps couch potatoes ramp up their running distance to 5 km over the course of eight weeks.

“You’re slowly building this routine into your daily life with a lot of success and after eight weeks you’re literally running 5K, which is pretty big if (initially) you’re not running at all,” said David-Michel Davies, the executive director of The Webby Awards, an annual ceremony honoring Internet companies.

The app guides runners through each run, alternating periods of running and walking for 35 minutes.

Davies also recommends Nike+ Running and RunKeeper, two popular and free fitness apps, which use GPS to track distance traveled, speed and calories burned. Both apps are available for iOS and Android devices.

Diet is another component of good health and a focus of many apps. Fooducate is an iPhone and Android app that helps shoppers make healthier purchases at the supermarket by allowing them to scan the barcodes of products and get insight into how healthy the product is.

Their database, which contains over 200,000 products, displays a grade for the product and information on its contents. It can show whether there are hidden additives or the probability of containing genetically modified ingredients.

“There are a lot of healthy people out there who unknowingly buy products that have an inordinate amount of salt in them,” Davies said.

DietBet is an app for people with a competitive streak. Available for iPhone and on the Web, it allows its users to join in a four-week weight loss challenge to lose 4 percent of weight. Everyone bets money, which goes into a fund, and submits proof of weight lost. People who meet the challenge split the money.

“It comes back again to how people get motivated,” Davies said. “Gamification is something that technology has really enabled and for some people it really works.”

To stay on top of finances, Davies recommends Mint, which provides a visual view of all financial accounts and is available for iOS, Android and on the Web.

(Reporting by Natasha Baker in Toronto; Editing by Patricia Reaney and Eric Beech)

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Light Therapy Helps Ease Winter Blues

Every October as the clocks are turned back, Jose Balido notices that his mood changes, almost as if his body were going into hibernation.

His limbs are heavy and he has trouble moving around. Simple household chores like loading the dishwasher seem “insurmountable,” he said. But when spring arrives, the lethargy lifts.

“It took me a while to realize what it was,” said Balido, owner of a travel social network site, Tripatini. “I was cranky, short-tempered, depressed, feeling hopeless and having difficulty concentrating.”

Balido, 51, was diagnosed a decade ago with seasonal affective disorder or SAD. The condition affects 62 million Americans, according to Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University and a leader in the field.

About 5 percent of the population experiences the most severe symptoms of SAD — depression and hopelessness — while another 15 percent have the so-called “winter blues” or “winter doldrums.”

The vast majority never fall into full depression, according to Terman, but “plod through winters with slowness and gloominess that takes effort to hide from others.”

Two decades ago, SAD was identified as a legitimate disorder by the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, the treatment of choice has been light therapy.

Balido, who lives in Miami, sought help from Terman and now undergoes light therapy. He sits in front of a daylight simulator for a half an hour each morning before 10 a.m.

“Within two or three days, the difference was mind-blowing,” he said.

The standard treatment for SAD is 30 minutes of 10,000-lux, diffused, white fluorescent light, used early in the morning. About half the patients are helped quickly — and when treatment is tailored to a person’s individual wake-sleep cycle, remission can climb to 80 percent, according to Terman.

This year, a utility company in the northern Swedish town of Umea installed ultraviolet lights at 30 bus stops to combat the effects of SAD.

“We wanted to celebrate the fact that all our electricity comes from green sources and we wanted to do this in a way that contributed to the citizens in one way or another,” said Umea Energi marketing chief Anna Norrgard in an email to ABCNews.com.

“As it is very dark where we live this time of year, a lot of us are longing for the daylight,” she said. “A lot of us are also a bit more tired this time of year and I would also say we sleep a little bit more. …We wanted to give the citizens of Umea a little energy boost, to be more alert.”

The town is located about 400 miles north of Stockholm. In December, the sun rises at about 10 a.m. and sets around 2:30 p.m. Some towns north of the Arctic Circle have no daylight for several weeks in the winter.

Geography has a strong influence on the prevalence of SAD symptoms, according to Terman.

“The common wisdom is that it’s worse the farther north you live, because winter days are so much shorter,” he said. “Not so simple.”

Columbia research shows that in North America, the incidence of SAD rises from the southern to the middle states, but levels off and stays bad from about 38 degrees North latitude (near such cities as San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.) up through the northernmost states and Canada, according to Terman.

But the problem becomes “more severe” at the western edges of the northern states and provinces.

“This important finding reveals the underlying trigger for relapses into winter depression, since the sun rises an hour more later at the western edge of a zone,” said Terman, whose book, “Chronotherapy,” looks at the phenomenon.

Esther Kane, a clinical counselor from Vancouver, Canada, said her practice is filled with patients as the long days descend on British Columbia.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Hits Hard in Canada

“On the West Coast where we live it’s so rampant, I can’t even tell you how many people have it,” said Kane. “Everyone is feeling it with the gray skies and rain. It’s like nighttime all the time here.”

Doctors there routinely prescribe fish oil and vitamin D, as well as light therapy to balance out the sleep hormone melatonin and “boost” the feel-good hormone serotonin, according to Kane. Many are also on antidepressants.

“A lot of people depend on alcohol and drugs all of a sudden,” she said. “They are stuffing themselves with carbs and their food intake is up. They have depression symptoms — what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning when they feel no energy and there is dark all over them?”

“Some suffer so bad, they can’t function,” said Kane. “Everyone here who can afford to get away for two weeks in the winter, go to Hawaii.”

Even those who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the United States can be affected.

Tina Saratsiotis, who works for a faith-based nonprofit group in Towson, Md., was surprised to develop SAD several years ago.

“I used to be a night person and like the dark. Then something changed,” she said. “By fall when it gets darker and the fatigue and sadness comes and by Christmas, it’s difficult to function.”

“It creeps in slowly — I eat more and have trouble concentrating,” she said. “I am more irritable and weeping, like a prolonged version of PMS. It makes it hard to get things done and to enjoy things.”

Columbia’s Terman said there may be genetic influences in who gets SAD — a vulnerability to depression and to insufficient light exposure.

SAD sufferers say it’s especially hard on their relationships when their winter moods kick in.

“Now, he’s very understanding,” said Saratsiotis, who uses both light therapy and antidepressants to deal with the condition. “But before, when I didn’t feel up to going out, I couldn’t explain not feeling great. People wonder, ‘Why doesn’t she like me?’ and, ‘She’s no fun.’”

But when spring rolls around, so does her old self.

“I love the solstice — thank you, Lord, for the solstice,” she said. “I really need [the medication] now, but I may not in the spring and summer.”

But now, in when the days are their shortest, SAD puts a crimp on the holidays.

“It kills Christmas,” said Saratsiotis. “I sit in the middle of the department store with that particular song about the sleigh bells ringing, and I am sobbing. I burst into tears and think, ‘Just kill that song.’”

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Stock futures edge higher ahead of “cliff” talk resumption

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures edged higher on Wednesday, indicating the S&P 500 may stem its worst two-day drop since mid-November, ahead of the resumption of “fiscal cliff” negotiations.

U.S. President Barack Obama is cutting short his Hawaiian holiday to leave for Washington on Wednesday to address the unfinished negotiations with Congress.

Obama is due to arrive in Washington on Thursday to resume talks on the cliff, a sharp rise in taxes and deep spending cuts due to begin on January 1 that could tip the U.S. economy into recession.

“This is what we’ve come to – the President might get on a plane today and this is what the markets might react to,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.

“It’s all about the fiscal cliff.”

A Republican plan that failed to gain traction last week triggered the recent decline in the S&P 500 <.spx>, highlighting market sensitivity to headlines centered around the talks.</.spx>

Investors will also look to housing data for signs of improvement in that sector of the economy, with the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index for October expected at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT).

Housing data has shown modest improvement in recent months, and continued strength could help support the sagging economy.

“The data is two months old, so it’s interesting, but I don’t know that people will react to it given these other more timely events,” said Forrest.

S&P 500 futures rose 3 points and were slightly above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 17 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 3.25 points.

The benchmark S&P index is up 13.4 percent for the year, and has recouped nearly all of the losses suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections, when the fiscal cliff concerns moved to the forefront of investors’ focus.

China’s Sinopec Group and ConocoPhillips will research potentially vast reserves of shale gas in southwestern China over the next two years, state news agency Xinhua reported.

An outage at one of Amazon.com Inc’s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.

In Asian markets, the Nikkei moved to a new nine-month high but shares elsewhere in the region were capped in thin holiday trade, with investors focusing on the fate of U.S. negotiations to avert a budget crunch looming at the end of the year.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader’s condition.

Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.

“He was in a good mood,” Maduro said. “He was walking, he was exercising.”

Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president’s cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.

Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.

“It’s definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery,” Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back.”

Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.

Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.

Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.

Maduro’s announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing “a slight improvement with a progressive trend.”

Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro’s announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez’s condition.

“It’s possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible,” Castro told AP. “They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps.”

“It’s unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?” he added. “I think he is still in critical condition.”

Maduro’s near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.

Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro’s announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.

“We all said, thank God, he’s okay,” she said, smiling.

Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro’s comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez’s prognosis for recovery.

“I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don’t think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that,” Medrano said.

Over the weekend, Chavez’s ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.

Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales’ itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.

Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came “to express his support” for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.

For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.

Yet more questions surround Chavez’s political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.

If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.

Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.

Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president’s swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.

But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.

___

Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Camilo Hernandez in Bogota, Colombia, and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.

Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Mundie, one of Gates’ successors, to retire from Microsoft

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Craig Mundie, one of two Microsoft Corp executives who took over Bill Gates‘ role at the company, has relinquished control of Microsoft’s large research organization and is to retire from the company in 2014.

Mundie is taking on a new role as a senior adviser to Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, according to a memo circulated internally earlier this month but only made public on Monday.

Eric Rudder, another Microsoft veteran, is taking on responsibility for Microsoft Research, Trustworthy Computing, and the Technology Policy Group, which were all run by Mundie.

A 20-year Microsoft veteran, Mundie was one of two men hand-picked by co-founder Gates to take over leadership of the technical side of Microsoft when he retired from day-to-day work at the company in 2008.

Mundie took over responsibility for the company’s long-term research activities, while Ray Ozzie became chief software architect. Ozzie left Microsoft in 2010. According to Ballmer’s memo, Mundie will retire from Microsoft in 2014, when he will be 65.

Mundie’s new role was first reported on Monday by the All Things D tech blog.

(Reporting By Bill Rigby; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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