Egypt curfew scaled back as Mursi seeks end to bloodshed

CAIRO/BERLIN (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities scaled back a curfew imposed by President Mohamed Mursi, and the Islamist leader cut short a visit to Europe on Wednesday to deal with the deadliest violence in the seven months since he took power.

Two more protesters were shot dead before dawn near Cairo's central Tahrir Square on Wednesday, a day after the army chief warned that the state was on the brink of collapse if Mursi's opponents and supporters did not end street battles.

More than 50 people have been killed in the past seven days of protests by Mursi's opponents marking the second anniversary of the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak.

Mursi imposed a curfew and a state of emergency on three Suez Canal cities on Sunday - Port Said, Ismailia and Suez. That only seemed to further provoke crowds. However, violence has mainly subsided in those towns since Tuesday.

Local authorities pushed back the start of the curfew from 9:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. in Ismailia and to 1:00 a.m. in Port Said and Suez.

"There has been progress in the security situation since Monday. Calm has returned," Suez Governor Samir Aglan said.

Mursi, speaking in Berlin before hurrying home to deal with the crisis, called for dialogue with opponents but would not commit to their demand that he first agree to include them in a unity government.

He sidestepped a question about a possible unity government, saying the next cabinet would be formed after parliamentary elections in April.

Egypt was on its way to becoming "a civilian state that is not a military state or a theocratic state", Mursi said.

The violence at home forced Mursi to scale back his European visit, billed as a chance to promote Egypt as a destination for foreign investment. He flew to Berlin but called off a trip to Paris and was due back home after only a few hours in Europe.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met him, echoed other Western leaders who have called on him to give his opponents a voice.

"One thing that is important for us is that the line for dialogue is always open to all political forces in Egypt, that the different political forces can make their contribution, that human rights are adhered to in Egypt and that of course religious freedom can be experienced," she said at a joint news conference with Mursi.

SPIRIT OF REVOLUTION

Mursi's critics accuse him of betraying the spirit of the revolution by keeping too much power in his own hands and those of his Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist movement banned under Mubarak which won repeated elections since the 2011 uprising.

Mursi's supporters say the protesters want to overthrow Egypt's first democratically elected leader. The current unrest has deepened an economic crisis that saw the pound currency tumble in recent weeks.

Near Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday morning, dozens of protesters threw stones at police who fired back teargas, although the scuffles were brief.

"Our demand is simply that Mursi goes, and leaves the country alone. He is just like Mubarak and his crowd who are now in prison," said Ahmed Mustafa, 28, a youth who had goggles on his head to protect his eyes from teargas.

Opposition politician Mohamed ElBaradei called for a meeting of the president, ministers, the ruling party and the opposition to halt the violence. But he also restated the precondition that Mursi first commit to seeking a national unity government.

The worst violence has been in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, where rage was fuelled by death sentences passed against soccer fans for roles in deadly riots last year.

After decades in which the West backed Mubarak's military rule of Egypt, the emergence of an elected Islamist leader in Cairo is probably the single most important change brought about by the wave of Arab revolts over the past two years.

Mursi won backing from the West last year for his role in helping to establish a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinians that ended a conflict in Gaza. But he then followed that with an effort to fast-track a constitution that reignited dissent at home and raised global concern over Egypt's future.

Western countries were alarmed this month by video that emerged showing Mursi making vitriolic remarks against Jews and Zionists in 2010 when he was a senior Brotherhood official.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said ahead of Mursi's visit that the remarks, in which Mursi referred to Zionists as "descendants of apes and pigs" were "unacceptable".

"NOT AGAINST JEWS"

Asked about those remarks at the news conference with Merkel, Mursi repeated earlier explanations that they had been taken out of context.

"I am not against the Jewish faith," he said. "I was talking about the practices and behavior of believers of any religion who shed blood or who attack innocent people or civilians. That's behavior that I condemn."

"I am a Muslim. I'm a believer and my religion obliges me to believe in all prophets, to respect all religions and to respect the right of people to their own faith," he added.

Egypt's main liberal and secularist bloc, the National Salvation Front, has so far refused talks with Mursi unless he promises a unity government including opposition figures.

"Stopping the violence is the priority, and starting a serious dialogue requires committing to guarantees demanded by the National Salvation Front, at the forefront of which are a national salvation government and a committee to amend the constitution," ElBaradei said on Twitter.

Those calls have also been backed by the hardline Islamist Nour party - rivals of Mursi's Brotherhood. Nour and the Front were due to meet on Wednesday, signaling an unlikely alliance of Mursi's critics from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

Brotherhood leader Mohamed El-Beltagy dismissed the unity government proposal as a ploy for the Front to take power despite having lost elections. On his Facebook page he ridiculed "the leaders of the Salvation Front, who seem to know more about the people's interests than the people themselves".

In a sign of the toll the unrest is having on Egypt's economy, ratings agency Fitch downgraded its sovereign rating by one notch to B on Wednesday.

(Additional reporting by Tom Perry, Yasmine Saleh and Marwa Awad in Cairo, Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Stephen Brown and Gernot Heller in Berlin; Writing by Peter Graff)

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Anna launches 'Jantantra Morcha', aims to change system

PATNA: Anna Hazare on Wednesday launched a new outfit " Jantantra Morcha" at a rally in Patna.

"Now a change in the system is our aim. The change can be brought about by passing the Jan lokpal Bill and decentralizing power to gram sabhas and ward sabhas," he told a public meeting.

The social activist said the new outfit would not join electoral politics and the occasion marked the beginning of the "second freedom struggle". He said now he plans to tour the entire country to awaken people. "I wish to awaken only six crore of the country's 120 crore people. If six crore people are with me, government "ki naak dabaunga, munh khulegi" (government will be forced to talk)," he said. He said the government would be forced to give Jan lokpal to the country.

In his 45-minute speech, Anna did not refer to Arvind Kejriwal at all. Alleging the Congress-led government did not intend to bring the Jan lokpal because 15 of its ministers would be behind bars and that 163 of the MPs were tainted, he said after the demand of Jan lokpal was fulfilled they would force Parliament to empower people with the "right to reject" and "right to recall" their candidates if they were unworthy.

"None of the rejected candidates should be allowed to contest election," he said and added that parties would be forced to give tickets to clean candidates.

Hazare said he chose Bihar as the venue for his first 'Jantantra Rally' because the "pious land" was the "tapobhoomi" of JP and Mahatma Gandhi. "We have to realize the dreams of JP that have remained unfulfilled," said Anna in a bid to strike a chord with the crowd responding with an applause every time he used adjectives like "goonda", "lootera" and "ghotalebaaz" for the people in power.

Former army chief Gen VK Singh and former IPS officer Kiran Bedi were present at the rally as well.

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Study sees prostate cancer treatment side effects

A new study shows how important it is for men to carefully consider treatments for early-stage prostate cancer. Fifteen years after surgery or radiation treatment, nearly all of the older men in the study had some problems having sex.

About one-fifth had bladder or bowel trouble, researchers found.

The study doesn't compare these men — who were 70 to 89 at the end of the study — to others who did not treat their cancers or to older men without the disease. At least one study suggests that half that age group has sexual problems even when healthy.

The study isn't a rigorous test of surgery and radiation, but it is the longest follow-up of some men who chose those treatments.

Since early prostate cancers usually don't prove fatal but there are no good ways to tell which ones really need treatment, men must be realistic about side effects they might suffer, said one study leader, Dr. David Penson of Vanderbilt University.

"They need to look at these findings and say, 'Oh my gosh, no matter what I choose, I'm going to have some quality-of-life effect and it's probably greater than my doctor is telling me,'" he said.

The study appears in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in American men. In the United States alone, there were about 240,000 new cases and 28,000 deaths from the disease last year. Radiation or surgery to remove the prostate are common treatments when the disease is confined to the gland.

Men usually live a long time after treatment — 14 years on average — so it's important to see how they fare, said another study leader, Vanderbilt's Dr. Matthew Resnick.

The study involved 1,655 men diagnosed in 1994 or 1995, when they were ages 55 to 74. About two-thirds of them had surgery and the rest, radiation. They were surveyed two, five and 15 years later. By that time, 569 had died.

Men who had surgery had more problems in the first few years after their treatments than those given radiation, but by the end of the study, there was no big difference.

After 15 years, 18 percent of the surgery group and 9 percent of the radiation group reported urinary incontinence, and 5 percent of the surgery group and 16 percent of the radiation group said they were bothered by bowel problems. But the differences between the two groups could have occurred by chance alone once researchers took other factors such as age and the size of the men's tumors into account.

Impotence was "near universal" at 15 years, the authors write — 94 percent of the radiation group and 87 percent of the surgery group. But the difference between the groups also was considered possibly due to chance. Also, less than half of men said they were bothered by their sexual problems.

"These men do get some help from pills like Viagra, Cialis, Levitra," but it may not be as much as they would like and most men would rather not need those pills, Penson said.

The National Cancer Institute paid for the study. Two authors have consulted for several makers of prostate cancer treatment drugs.

No study is perfect and this one has many limitations, said Dr. Timothy Wilson, urology chief at City of Hope, a cancer center in Duarte, Calif. Men who are having problems are more likely to complete follow-up surveys because they're angry, so that could skew results, he noted.

Still, "it's a high percentage" with side effects, said Wilson, who has been a paid speaker for two makers of surgery equipment.

"There's no question we overtreat" many cases of early prostate cancer, yet the disease is still the second-leading cause of cancer deaths in men. "We need to better sort out who really needs treatment," he said.

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Online:

New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Jodi Arias Trial: Defense Attacks Ex-Boyfriend

Defense attorneys for accused murderer Jodi Arias went on the attack today, drawing testimony from an ex-girlfriend of Travis Alexander in order to portray Alexander as an insensitive philanderer who was obsessed with sex.

Arias is charged with killing Alexander in a jealous rage in June 2008, and her lawyers are attempting to convince the jury that it was a case of self defense against an abusive lover.

One observer, veteran defense lawyer Melvin McDonald, said it was "swimming up Niagara Falls" because of the evidence amassed by prosecutors.

Arias' defense tried to bolster their case by questioning Lisa Daidone, the woman who became Alexander's girlfriend after he broke up with Arias.

"Did you tell him that you felt he wanted you just for your body, that kissing didn't mean anything to him and was just a way for him to let out sexual tension? And that it made you feel used and dirty?" defense attorney Jennifer Willmott asked Daidone.

Daidone agreed that she had told Alexander all of those things, along with other complaints, when she broke up with him in an email in the fall of 2007. She had also found out that Alexander had cheated on her.

"I came to the understanding that he was cheating on me with Jodi Arias," said Daidone, a Mormon like Alexander.

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Defense's First Day of Witnesses Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Defense Begins Case Watch Video

Jodi Arias Murder Trial: Reported Plea Deal Attempt Watch Video

Daidone said that Alexander always kept in close contact with Arias, texting and calling her often. She was suspicious that he was cheating on her, but did not know they were involved sexually.

Daidone said she was "shocked" to find out Alexander was not a virgin after his death. She and Alexander never had a sexual relationship though she felt pressured to have sex with him, she testified.

The prosecution has shown that Alexander and Arias often traded sexual phone calls and text messages, and engaged in oral and anal sex. On the day she killed him, Arias posed for graphic sexual photos along with Alexander on his bed in his Mesa, Ariz., home.

The defense has argued that Alexander kept Arias as his "dirty little secret" as he pretended to be a virgin to his friends and family.

Daidone's testimony came on the second day of Arias' defense. She is charged with murder for stabbing Alexander 27 times, slashing his throat, and shooting him in the head. Arias could face the death penalty if convicted.

The attacks on Alexander's character may be the only way to help convince jurors that Arias, who admitted to killing Alexander after initially denying it, was acting in self-defense and should not be convicted of murder.

"What you do, obviously, if you're defending this case, especially when the evidence against you is so compelling, is make a case of self-defense. And to do that, you've got to paint this guy as a bad guy," said McDonald, a former judge and prosecutor who has tried cases against Arias prosecutor Juan Martinez.

The testimony today, McDonald said, has still not proven that Alexander might have threatened or been physically violent toward Arias.

"With this other girl, he's feeding her lies and misleading her, but that doesn't show any inclination toward violence whatsoever," McDonald said.

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Thai tycoon takes majority control of Singapore's F&N

SINGAPORE: A Thai tycoon has clinched majority control of Singapore conglomerate Fraser and Neave (F&N), making his offer to fully takeover the company unconditional.

TCC Assets, owned by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, said in a statement late Wednesday that its stake in F&N stands at 50.92 per cent after further purchases in the stock market and more shareholders accepting its offer.

With majority control now in the hands of the Thai parties, "accordingly, the F&N offer has become unconditional in all respects," the statement added.

TCC Assets is offering to buy F&N shares it does not already own at S$9.55 apiece, valuing the drinks, property and publishing conglomerate at S$13.75 billion.

The deadline for the rest of the shareholders to accept the offer was extended from February 4 to February 18, according to the statement.

Indonesia-led property firm Overseas Union Enterprise (OUE) averted a bidding war earlier this month when it declined to match the offer by the Thais. OUE is linked to Indonesian tycoon Mochtar Riady.

The takeover is said to be the biggest in Singapore's corporate history if it pushes through.

F&N became a takeover target after it sold off its most prized asset, Tiger Beer maker Asia Pacific Breweries, to Dutch giant Heineken in September.

It still has lucrative beverages, property and publishing operations.

Analysts believe more shareholders are likely to accept the offer as it is the only bid on the table.

The market however is closely watching whether Japanese brewer Kirin, which holds a 15 per cent stake in F&N, will sell its interests or remain a minority shareholder.

Kirin had allied itself with OUE in the bidding war. Its 15 per cent stake is worth more than S$2.0 billion at the rate offered by TCC Assets.

Charoen's TCC Group has a real estate unit, and the tycoon also owns Thai Beverage, which sells Chang beer.

- AFP/jc

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Sixty-five found executed in Syria's Aleppo: activists

BEIRUT (Reuters) - At least 65 people were found shot dead with their hands bound in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday in a "new massacre" in the near two-year revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, activists said.

Opposition campaigners blamed the government but it was impossible to confirm who was responsible. Assad's forces and rebels have been battling in Syria's commercial hub since July and both have been accused of carrying out summary executions.

More than 60,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the Syrian war, the longest and deadliest of the revolts that began throughout the Arab world two years ago.

The U.N. refugee agency said on Tuesday the fighting had forced more than 700,000 people to flee. World powers fear the conflict could increasingly envelop Syria's neighbors including Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, further destabilizing an already explosive region.

Opposition activists posted a video of a man filming at least 51 muddied male bodies alongside what they said was the Queiq River in Aleppo's rebel-held Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood.

The bodies had bullet wounds in their heads and some of the victims appeared to be young, possibly teenagers, dressed in jeans, shirts and trainers.

Aleppo-based opposition activists who asked not to be named for security reasons blamed pro-Assad militia fighters.

They said the men had been executed and dumped in the river before floating downstream into the rebel area. State media did not mention the incident.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says it provides objective information about casualties on both sides of Syria's war from a network of monitors, said the footage was evidence of a new massacre and the death toll could rise as high as 80.

"They were killed only because they are Muslims," said a bearded man in another video said to have been filmed in central Bustan al-Qasr after the bodies were removed from the river. A pickup truck with a pile of corpses was parked behind him.

STALEMATE

It is hard for Reuters to verify such reports from inside Syria because of restrictions on independent media.

Rebels are stuck in a stalemate with government forces in Aleppo - Syria's most populous city which is divided roughly in half between the two sides.

The revolt started as a peaceful protest movement against more than four decades of rule by Assad and his family, but turned into an armed rebellion after a government crackdown.

About 712,000 Syrian refugees have registered in other countries in the region or are awaiting processing as of Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency Said on Tuesday.

"We have seen an unrelenting flow of refugees across all borders. We are running double shifts to register people," Sybella Wilkes, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told Reuters in Geneva.

On Monday, the United Nations warned it would not be able to help millions of Syrians affected by the fighting without more money and appealed for donations at an aid conference this week in Kuwait to meet its $1.5 billion target.

Speaking ahead of that conference, Kuwait's foreign minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Sabah said on Tuesday there was concern Syria could turn into a failed state and put the entire region at risk.

Aid group Médecins Sans Frontières said the bulk of the current aid was going to government-controlled areas and called on donors in Kuwait to make sure they were even-handed.

MISSILES

In the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, insurgents including al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters captured a security agency after days of heavy fighting, according to an activist video issued on Tuesday.

Some of the fighters were shown carrying a black flag with the Islamic declaration of faith and the name of the al-Nusra Front, which has ties to al Qaeda in neighboring Iraq.

The war has become heavily sectarian, with rebels who mostly come from the Sunni Muslim majority fighting an army whose top generals are mostly from Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Assad has framed the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy and blames the West and Sunni Gulf states.

Fighting also took place in the northern town of Ras al-Ain, on the border with Turkey, between rebels and Kurdish militants, the Observatory said.

In Turkey, a second pair of Patriot missile batteries being sent by NATO countries are now operational, a German security official said on Tuesday.

The United States, Germany and the Netherlands each committed to sending two batteries and up to 400 soldiers to operate them after Ankara asked for help to bolster its air defenses against possible missile attack from Syria.

(Additional reporting by Sylvia Westall in Kuwait, Sabine Siebold in Berlin and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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Intellectuals come out in support of Ashis Nandy

NEW DELHI: The paradox of a champion of social justice being booked under the caste atrocities law has prompted an array of intellectuals and artistes to come out in support of academic Ashis Nandy from India and abroad. They include Romila Thapar, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, Aparna Sen, Shabana Azmi, Sharmila Tagore, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Charles Taylor, Rajeev Bhargava and Yogendra Yadav.

Referring to his controversial statement at the Jaipur Literature Festival, an online petition signed by them said: "While Nandy's deliberately ironic remark on corruption in the OBC and SC/ST political elites as a form of equality may not be to the liking of all, we have no doubt that it was meant to question the upper caste-middle class notions of morality rather than denigrate marginalized and subaltern groups."

In a tacit admission that his statement was open to diverse interpretations, the petition addressed to the government said that Nandy had evolved "a distinctive and provocative style of making claims, comments and arguments". Although he has over the years "affirmed the rights of marginalized groups and communities to assert and express themselves in their unique ways", the petition added that Nandy's own method has been "to illuminate through anecdote, aphorism and irony".

Lamenting the illiberal demands for his arrest, the petition signed so far by over 300 persons said: "In a country where intellectual freedoms are shrinking every day, the right of thinkers like Ashis Nandy to argue and articulate unconventional views must be protected at all costs."

Other signatories to the petition include Arjun Appadurai, Nandita Das, Alok Rai, Zoya Hasan, Leela Gandhi, Achin Vinaik, Nandini Sundar, Lawrence Liang, Pranab Bardhan, Shamndad Basheer, Kamal Chenoy, Dilip Menon and Sumit Sarkar.

In a similar expression of support to the besieged scholar, Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Association (JTSA) alleged that the crisis had been created by "media violence and culture of intolerance". According to JTSA, a section of the media "in the garb of safeguarding the dignity of the underprivileged has not only harmed that further but has also disgraced the eminent intellectual by forcing an apology out of him".

Denying the suggestion that he had held backward communities responsible for widespread corruption, JTSA said that those who were familiar with Nandy's work would know that "the accusation is farthest from the truth". It said: "Not only has he been grossly misunderstood but the accusation is an affront to his decades long deeply sensitive scholarship including that on the backward communities."

Meanwhile, Kancha Ilaiah, well-known scholar on Dalit issues, reportedly said: "Ashis Nandy made a bad statement with good intentions. However, as far as I know, he was never against reservation. The controversy should end here."

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Soldier with new arms determined to be independent

BALTIMORE (AP) — After weeks of round-the-clock medical care, Brendan Marrocco insisted on rolling his own wheelchair into a news conference using his new transplanted arms. Then he brushed his hair to one side.

Such simple tasks would go unnoticed in most patients. But for Marrocco, who lost all four limbs while serving in Iraq, these little actions demonstrate how far he's come only six weeks after getting a double-arm transplant.

Wounded by a roadside bomb in 2009, the former soldier said he could get by without legs, but he hated living without arms.

"Not having arms takes so much away from you. Even your personality, you know. You talk with your hands. You do everything with your hands, and when you don't have that, you're kind of lost for a while," the 26-year-old New Yorker told reporters Tuesday at a news conference at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Doctors don't want him using his new arms too much yet, but his gritty determination to regain independence was one of the chief reasons he was chosen to receive the surgery, which has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

That's the message Marrocco said he has for other wounded soldiers.

"Just not to give up hope. You know, life always gets better, and you're still alive," he said. "And to be stubborn. There's a lot of people who will say you can't do something. Just be stubborn and do it anyway. Work your ass off and do it."

Dr. W.P. Andrew Lee, head of the team that conducted the surgery, said the new arms could eventually provide much of the same function as his original arms and hands. Another double-arm transplant patient can now use chopsticks and tie his shoes.

Lee said Marrocco's recovery has been remarkable, and the transplant is helping to "restore physical and psychological well-being."

Tuesday's news conference was held to mark a milestone in his recovery — the day he was to be discharged from the hospital.

Next comes several years of rehabilitation, including physical therapy that is going to become more difficult as feeling returns to the arms.

Before the surgery, he had been living with his older brother in a specially equipped home on New York's Staten Island that had been built with the help of several charities. Shortly after moving in, he said it was "a relief to not have to rely on other people so much."

The home was heavily damaged by Superstorm Sandy last fall.

"We'll get it back together. We've been through a lot worse than that," his father, Alex Marrocco, said.

For the next few months, Marrocco plans to live with his brother in an apartment near the hospital.

The former infantryman said he can already move the elbow on his left arm and rotate it a little bit, but there hasn't been much movement yet for his right arm, which was transplanted higher up.

Marrocco's mother, Michelle Marrocco, said he can't hug her yet, so he brushes his left arm against her face.

The first time he moved his left arm was a complete surprise, an involuntary motion while friends were visiting him in the hospital, he said.

"I had no idea what was going through my mind. I was with my friends, and it happened by accident," he recalled. "One of my friends said 'Did you do that on purpose?' And I didn't know I did it."

Marrocco's operation also involved a technical feat not tried in previous cases, Lee said in an interview after the news conference.

A small part of Marrocco's left forearm remained just below his elbow, and doctors transplanted a whole new forearm around and on top of it, then rewired nerves to serve the old and new muscles in that arm.

"We wanted to save his joint. In the unlucky event we would lose the transplant, we still wanted him to have the elbow joint," Lee said.

He also explained why leg transplants are not done for people missing those limbs — "it's not very practical." That's because nerves regrow at best about an inch a month, so it would be many years before a transplanted leg was useful.

Even if movement returned, a patient might lack sensation on the soles of the feet, which would be unsafe if the person stepped on sharp objects and couldn't feel the pain.

And unlike prosthetic arms and hands, which many patients find frustrating, the ones for legs are good. That makes the risks of a transplant not worth taking.

"It's premature" until there are better ways to help nerves regrow, Lee said.

Now Marrocco, who was the first soldier to survive losing all four limbs in the Iraq War, is looking forward to getting behind the wheel of his black 2006 Dodge Charger and hand-cycling a marathon.

Asked if he could one day throw a football, Dr. Jaimie Shores said sure, but maybe not like Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

"Thanks for having faith in me," Marrocco interjected, drawing laughter from the crowd.

His mother said Marrocco has always been "a tough cookie."

"He's not changed that, and he's just taken it and made it an art form," Michelle Marrocco said. "He's never going to stop. He's going to be that boy I knew was going to be a pain in my butt forever. And he's going to show people how to live their lives."

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Associated Press Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione in Milwaukee and AP writer David Dishneau in Hagerstown, Md., contributed to this report.

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Palin and Fox Part Ways, but Is She Really Over?

Sarah Palin's break up with Fox News should not have been, well, breaking news, as she had publicly complained in August on Facebook that the network had canceled her appearances at the Republican National Convention. And going back even further, Palin didn't give Fox the scoop in October 2011 when she announced she wasn't going to run for president. Still, the news of the Fox split overtook Twitter and the news cycle by storm.

One thing I've learned in my years covering Palin, which began on Aug. 29, 2008, when Sen. John McCain stunned the country by selecting her as his running mate: Everyone has an opinion on whatever she does, and she can get clicks and coverage like no one else.

The prevailing theory now is that since Palin no longer has a megaphone like Fox News through which she can blast her opinions, her moment is now officially over.

The 'Ends' of Sarah Palin

It might be true, but there have been so many "ends of Sarah Palin" that it's almost too hard to keep track of them all. She was over when she lost the 2008 campaign, she was over when she quit the Alaska governorship, she was over when she decided to do a reality show, she was over when she decided not to run for president, and now again, she's over because her appearances on Fox News are over.

Secret Service Scandal: Fired Agent 'Checked Out' Sarah Palin Watch Video

I, for one, did think Palin would lose her relevancy when she quit the Alaska governorship, and also when she didn't run for president. But in both cases, people who both love her and hate her just couldn't get enough information about her, and she still got an incredible amount of news coverage. Her voice was heard loud and clear, even if it blasted only from her Facebook posts. That's just another example of what she's been able to pull off that others who've come before or after just haven't. Palin's been written off from Day One, but like a boomerang, she just keeps coming back.

Yes, she wasn't really helpful to Mitt Romney's campaign, but she also never really explicitly backed him. And what an odd pair they would have made if she had. In her interview last weekend with Steve Bannon, the executive chairman of Breitbart News who made "The Undefeated," the positive 2011 movie about her, she said, "The problem is that some on the right are now skittish because of the lost 2012 election. They shouldn't be. Conservatism didn't lose. A moderate Republican candidate lost after he was perceived to alienate working-class Reagan Democrats and independent voters." Not a sign that she wants to rethink some of her policy points, or that she will retreat into the shadows.

Another Possible TV Home

I think more likely than her fading away (we all still cover every eyebrow-raising Facebook post of hers) is that she will possibly find an on-air home elsewhere, at somewhere like CNN. She told Breitbart.com that she "encourages others to step out in faith, jump out of the comfort zone, and broaden our reach as believers in American exceptionalism. That means broadening our audience. I'm taking my own advice here as I free up opportunities to share more broadly the message of the beauty of freedom and the imperative of defending our republic and restoring this most exceptional nation. We can't just preach to the choir; the message of liberty and true hope must be understood by a larger audience."

Later in the interview, she added, "I know the country needs more truth-telling in the media, and I'm willing to do that. So, we shall see."

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Israeli vote doesn't nail shut door to peace: Clinton

WASHINGTON: The outcome of Israel's elections did not torpedo hopes for peace with the Palestinians, but instead opened up a new chance for dialogue, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued Tuesday.

"I actually think this election opens doors, not nails them shut," she said, during a so-called "global townhall" meeting, in which she took questions from Internet-users and broadcasters around the world.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud-Beitenu list emerged from last week's vote with the biggest single share of seats in the Knesset, but was weakened by a surge in support for Yair Lapid's centrist Yesh Atid party.

Party leaders are negotiating a new coalition, which is expected to have a centre-right bent, and the talks are being watched for signs as to whether it will be able to revive the Middle East peace process.

According to Israeli reports, Netanyahu has offered Lapid the post of foreign minister or finance minister in a new government. And while Lapid has rarely spoken about foreign policy challenges or the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, he has said he favours negotiations.

Clinton, in one of her final public engagements before she steps down from US President Barack Obama's administration, chose to strike an optimistic note.

She said: "A significant percentage of the Israeli electorate chose to express themselves by saying, 'We need a different path than the one we have been pursuing internally and with respect to the Middle East peace process.'

"So I know President Obama and my successor soon-to-be secretary of state John Kerry will pursue this, will look for every possible opening."

As Clinton was speaking, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee gave its backing to Kerry's appointment, clearing the way for the full Senate to confirm him as her successor later in the day.

Last week, in his confirmation hearings, Kerry appeared to hint he may have new proposals up his sleeve to restart direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians which have stalled for more than two years.

"We need to try to find a way forward, and I happen to believe that there is a way forward," he said.

"But I also believe that if we can't be successful that the door, or window, or whatever you want to call it, to the possibility of a two-state solution could shut on everybody and that would be disastrous in my judgment."

Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have theoretically committed themselves to the goal of a "two-state solution" with both living side-by-side within agreed borders.

But direct talks have foundered, with Palestinians decrying ongoing Israeli settlement building on occupied territory and Israel denouncing rocket attacks on its civilians from Gaza, which is controlled by the Hamas militia.

Clinton told the Washingon townhall meeting that she believed "Hamas is not interested in democracy... is still largely a military resistance group."

But she added: "We've made it very clear that if Hamas renounces violence, if they morph themselves into a political entity the way that Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have from the origins in the PLO, if they accept the previous commitments... there's a place for them at the table. And it would be my great hope that they would do that."

- AFP/jc

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