Anti-Obama “2016″ doc getting last-ditch digital release before election

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “2016: Obama‘s America,” the hit documentary critical of President Obama’s record, is getting a last-minute digital push in Spanish in a bid to boost Mitt Romney‘s chances ahead of the November 6 election, the producers of the movie told TheWrap on Friday.

The producers, who already have digital distribution in English with Lionsgate, have struck a new deal with digital company Yekra to release it in Spanish on Friday, according to Mark Joseph, a representative for the film.

“We’re just finalizing the link – it’s ready to go,” said another individual working on the film. The streamed version in Spanish will cost $ 2.99 and will be aimed at independent voters in Spanish-speaking communities.

Lionsgate released the movie on DVD, video-on-demand and streaming platforms like iTunes and Amazon in mid-October.

The producers hope to swing any remaining independent voters in a race that is neck-and-neck for the two candidates.

A Lionsgate spokesman told TheWrap: “This is commerce for us, not taking sides politically. We’re proud to have released the two highest-grossing political docs of all time, ‘Fahrenheit 911′ and ‘Obama 2016.’”

“2016: Obama’s America,” based on Dinesh D’Souza’s “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” challenges the president’s record and foretells what the nation will be like if he is reelected. Both the Associated Press and the president’s website questioned its many assertions, prompting D’Souza to fire back in an op-ed with TheWrap.

The film has been an unexpected success story, grossing more than $ 33 million at the domestic box office with a reported budget of $ 2.1 million. With its catchphrase, “Love Him. Hate Him. You Don’t Know Him,” it long ago surpassed “Bully” as the year’s top-earning documentary.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Anorexic Bakes to Gain Control Over Food

Camilla Kuhns of Kirkland, Wash., makes the best cookies in the world. Ask anyone but her.

Kuhns is a 29-year-old anorexic with a penchant for baking. She has never tasted one of her own confections. Her younger brother, Seth, samples dough and final products to let her know if anything is off, and her mother, Ilene, tastes the frosting.

“Yeah, my mom’s my angel when it comes to the frosting,” Kuhns told ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV right before she entered an inpatient treatment program for her eating disorder two weeks ago. “I don’t know what it is, but it makes me very anxious.”

On her blog, Kuhns said she is 5’8″ and weighs 104 pounds with her shoes and clothes on and while holding her purse. She baked challah breads, cakes and pastries for others to enjoy while her own daily intake amounted to a head of cauliflower with hot sauce and a tablespoon of nuts. To ensure she burned off every single calorie consumed, she exercised for three to four hours a day.

Her best friend, Amber “Nic” Poppe, said that Kuhns has suffered from various eating disorders since she was 11. Both her anorexia and the baking escalated recently after a tough year that included the death of a friend and a messy divorce.

“Baking became therapeutic for her. I know it sounds strange but it seems like her way of overcoming her issues with food,” Poppe said.

Actually, it isn’t so strange. Experts have long noted the connection between eating disorders and baking, as well as cooking, watching cooking shows and collecting recipes.

In a famous 1943 study known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, men put on a semi-starvation diet for six months developed such an intense obsession with food, they daydreamed, read and talked about it constantly. The fixation was so persistent that more than 40 percent of them mentioned cooking as part of their post-experiment plans. After they left the study and regained their weight, three of the men changed their occupations to become chefs.

“I see it a lot this in my practice,” said Jennifer Thomas, an assistant psychologist at the Klarman Eating Disorders Center at McLean Hospital in Boston. “Patients will prepare elaborate meals for friends and family while they themselves go hungry. They get a vicarious joy and a sense of superiority from watching others indulge while they don’t allow themselves to eat.”

As someone who was anorexic for five years, Victoria Casciaro said she can relate. The 20-year-old college student admitted she was also a starving baker who constantly made treats she never considered eating herself.

“I would look at what I put in the mixing bowl and it would scare me because I didn’t have the nutrition facts, so I couldn’t calculate whether or not it was a safe or dangerous food,” she recalled.

Not only would Casciaro resist her sumptuous creations, she would wash her hands frequently during the baking process to prevent herself from accidentally tasting the ingredients. She’d carefully avoid taking even the tiniest nibble for fear that she’d gain weight or set off a binge.

Haley Anderson, a 20-year-old recovering anorexic, said she’d often whip up copious amounts of baked treats for everyone else, then talk herself out of trying them.

“I’d tell myself that taste buds have memory,” she said, “and if you can avoid a certain food long enough then you could forget what it tastes like and no longer be tempted by it.”

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The abortion politics of Campaign 2012: Something that God intended?

Happy birthday, abortion! You’ve bedeviled philosophers, politicians and doctors for 25 centuries! That’s right: Since around the 5th-century B.C., when the Hippocratic Oath for physicians first contained a clause about abortion, we’ve driven ourselves insane over the implications of a simple, common, ancient medical procedure.

As the explosion of abortion punditry in Campaign 2012 made clear, the issue exerts a radioactive fascination. Millions of temples and keyboards began pounding in August after Todd Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, engaged in some pseudoscientific theorizing on the impossibility of pregnancy after a “legitimate rape.” And the number must have reached Carl Sagan proportions after Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, uttered this line: “Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.”

Yikes. Did Mourdock say rape is divinely inspired? Not exactly. Journalists sensitive to religious cosmologies like Amy Sullivan of the New Republic explained that Mourdock had seen God’s intention only in the life conceived during rape, not the rape itself.

That clarification was useful. It spared Mourdock from the gruesome charge that his God advocates rape—or is Himself the rapist’s accomplice. The Sullivan exegesis put these distracting and chilling questions to rest, more or less.

But Mourdock’s comment still managed to throw into relief an intense disagreement between atheists and religious people. And by “religious people,” I mean everyone from Buddhists to evangelicals to plain-old “everything happens for a reason” American optimists.

This disagreement concerns the mind-consuming question of whether the full catastrophe of existence—including the fact of violent crime, or Hurricane Sandy, or the next president of the United States—might be said to reflect something like “God’s will” or “the order of things” or even “the spiritual perfection of the moment.”

You think abortion makes people squeamish? Try the idea, common to many contemplative traditions, that everything in reality, however painful, is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. Some people feel liberated beyond all understanding by this notion. Others feel sickened, crippled, outraged, disempowered.

But if that’s Mourdock’s logic, we might hold him to it—for consistency’s sake, if nothing else. If conception during forced copulation reflects God’s will, in other words, and if rape itself might even reflect that inscrutable will (since it too is part of reality), then abortion—common and legal as it is in the United States—also reflects God’s will.

And this is where the tension surrounding abortion has always resided. Is the art of medicine—the protection and promotion of life and health—best practiced by allowing or prohibiting abortion?

I’ve found that this tension is thoroughly resolved in the Hipprocratic Oath, of all places. Back at the start. We need not visit Roe v. Wade or the teachings of Operation Rescue. In the ancient oath, the Apollo-worshiping internist vows above all to protect “health and life.” He then specifically says that, toward this end, he won’t perform euthanasia; he won’t perform abortion; and he won’t remove kidney stones and gallstones.

Does that mean these procedures are in themselves immoral? Far from it—as anyone who has had gallstones removed might agree. Rather, these three procedures, we are made to understand, require both philosophical and manual work for which early physicians, trained in medicine but not abdominal surgery, were not qualified. The gallstone sufferer needs a surgeon trained specifically in the art of cutting for stones, says the oath. For a generic medicine man to undertake it would be to risk doing harm—the signal crime against the art of medicine.

The would-be suicide, on the same logic, should administer poison to himself, or have a trusted and willing friend aid him. A physician is not qualified to determine the wishes of a euthanasia candidate, and thus might again betray his oath by doing harm.

Finally, those early non-surgical doctors, are not qualified to perform abortions because they don’t have the manual skills or the philosophical ones. Internists are not qualified to determine when this surgery, which is prima facie harmful, favors the life of the patient, as stone-removal does.

Every pregnancy, in every woman, under every circumstance, affects her “health and life.” And “health and life” are the very ideals that physicians all first pledge to protect. If a woman doesn’t want to be pregnant or bear a child, she has a complaint that’s deeply psychological and deeply physical—at least as physical as gallstones. If medical men and women don’t feel qualified to gauge the distress and seriousness of a woman presenting with pregnancy and asking for an abortion, they should refer her to someone—a gynecological practice, Planned Parenthood—that is qualified to assess the patient and treat her.

There should be a comparable oath for all politicians. (Would that we had drawn it up four years ago. There’s still time for Campiagn 2016!) Some topics should be left to experts and avoided by male politicians with neither philosophical nor medical training, nor firsthand appreciation of the effects of pregnancy and childbirth on health and life.

Richard Mourdock may have just been voicing an armchair view of an age-old medico-philosophical issue that’s consistent with his religious beliefs. But to present outlandish views on the subject of abortion,
without the qualifications to do so—as too many politicians and pundits have done over the past three months—is to do harm.

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Syria army quits base on strategic Aleppo road

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.

But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.

The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.

Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.

“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.

“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.

Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

STRATEGIC BLOW

Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.

Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.

In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.

The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.

Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.

His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.

The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.

The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Google's Android software in 3 out of 4 smartphones

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‘Wreck-It Ralph’: what the critics say about Disney’s new animated film

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Critics love “Wreck-It Ralph.”

The new Disney animated adventure has attracted an 84 percent “fresh” rating on the critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, trouncing the scores of recent Pixar films like “Brave” and “Cars 2.” The film centers on an arcade game villain who tires of being the bad guy and sets off on a quest across various video games to see if he can become a hero. John C. Reilly, Jane Lynch and Sarah Silverman lend their voices to the film, which hits theaters today.

“Wreck-It Ralph” is battling a long legacy of horrific video game movie adaptations, an ignominious list that includes “Street Fighter” and “Super Mario Brothers.” But TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde says that the film, loaded with inside-jokes for gamers, manages to side-step the critical infamy that greeted that anti-Criterion Collection.

“Life lessons about being true to yourself are learned along the way, delivered with all the subtlety of Felix’s hammer, but ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ actually makes us care about these videogame characters and their dreams for a better life,” he writes. “Even when the plot twists and character arcs in Phil Johnston (‘Cedar Rapids’) and Jennifer Lee’s screenplay feel familiar, the voice performances, particularly from Reilly and Silverman, keep things fresh.”

By and large, Duralde’s fellow critics agreed. In The New York Times, A.O. Scott hailed the film and its video game-hopping setpieces as triumphs of the production designer’s art. It’s a film, he says, that could have been crassly commercial and totally fixated on merchandising potential, but instead is a well-executed, cleverly scripted, pixilated pleasure.

“The secret to its success is a genuine enthusiasm for the creative potential of games, a willingness to take them seriously without descending into nerdy pomposity,” he writes. “I am delighted to surrender my cynicism, at least until I’ve used up today’s supply of quarters.”

The Los Angeles Times’ Betsy Sharkey is also among the fans of the film. She praised the 3D film for its innovative premise and for finding the humanity in its video game characters.

“More culturally connected and a tad racier than we usually see in the Disney brand, ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ does a terrific job of providing enough oomph and aaaahs for adults and plenty of giggles for kids inside its artfully wrapped animation package,” she writes. “Whether the presence of Pixar’s John Lasseter at the studio’s animation helm or the new kids on the filmmaking block are responsible, the film blows in like a fresh 21st century breeze.”

Also sitting back and enjoying the game was Time critic Mary Pols, who raved that “Wreck-It Ralph” was the best family film of the year, thanks to its clever jokes and generous heart.

“As a little girl gazes into a screen, with only the audience privy to the lively, far more complex world teeming inside, the message is, And we’re satisfied with this? ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ celebrates video games, but it also makes a subtle plea for participation in a three-dimensional world,” she writes.

“At least that’s what I’m going to tell myself when I take my PlayStation-Game Boy-Xbox-deprived kid to see it this weekend.”

That’s not to say that “Wreck-It Ralph” didn’t have its detractors, among them the Boston Globe’s Ty Burr and the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern. Burr said the conceit was a clever one, but complained that the execution was faulty.

“It’s just more of the fodder designed to keep your kids attached to the life support systems of their home entertainment centers,” Burr writes. “Cranky old critic says: Send ‘em outside to play instead.”

Morgenstern also found the plot to be inert, griping that after kicking off promisingly it devolves into a numbing series of chases.

“A further question posed by ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ is whether brilliant animation alone can sustain a film that comes up short in dramatic development,” he writes.

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Germany’s Merck halts supply of cancer drug to Greek hospitals

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – German pharmaceuticals firm Merck KGaA is no longer delivering cancer drug Erbitux to Greek hospitals, a spokesman said on Saturday, the latest sign of how an economic and budget crisis is hurting frontline public services.

Drugmakers raised concerns with EU leaders earlier this year over supplies to the euro zone’s crisis-hit southern half and Germany’s Biotest in June was the first to stop shipments to Greece because of unpaid bills.

Publicly-owned hospitals in some countries worst hit by the euro zone debt crisis had been struggling to pay their bills, Merck’s chief financial officer, Matthias Zachert, was quoted as saying by German paper Boersen-Zeitung in an interview on Saturday.

He said however that the only country where Merck had stopped deliveries was Greece.

“It only affects Greece, where we have been faced with many problems. It’s just the one product,” he told the paper.

A spokesman for the company told Reuters that the drug concerned was Erbitux and that ordinary Greeks can still purchase it from pharmacies.

Some countries have taken action to pay bills, such as in Spain, where the government has said it will help hospitals to pay off debts.

“That has improved things, even though the situation should still be regarded as critical for the coming years,” Zachert said.

Erbitux is Merck’s second best-selling prescription drug, bringing in sales of 855 million euros ($ 1.1 billion) in 2011 from treating bowel cancer and head and neck cancer. ($ 1 = 0.7785 euros)

(Reporting by Frank Siebelt and Victoria Bryan; editing by Patrick Graham)

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Power sputters back in New York following Sandy

NEW YORK (AP) — More New Yorkers awoke Saturday morning to power being restored for the first time since Superstorm Sandy pummeled the region, and those whose lights were back on celebrated it, but patience was wearing thin among those in the region who had been without power for most of the week.

From storm-scarred New Jersey to parts of Connecticut, a widespread lack of gasoline frustrated people who were just trying to get to work or pick up a load of groceries. Gas was to be rationed starting at noon Saturday in northern New Jersey, where drivers will be allowed to buy it only every other day, the governor declared.

The ongoing recovery also forced the cancellation of Sunday's New York City Marathon. Mayor Michael Bloomberg reversed himself Friday and yielded to mounting criticism that this was no time to run the race, which starts on hard-hit Staten Island and wends through all five of the city's boroughs.

Bloomberg, who as late as Friday afternoon insisted the world's largest marathon should go on as scheduled Sunday, changed course shortly afterward amid intensifying opposition from the city comptroller, the Manhattan borough president and sanitation workers unhappy they had volunteered to help storm victims but were assigned to the race instead. The mayor said he would not want "a cloud to hang over the race or its participants."

Many runners understood the rationale behind the decision. The death toll in the city stood at 41 and thousands of people were shivering without electricity, making many New Yorkers recoil at the idea of police officers protecting a foot race and evicting storm victims from hotels to make way for runners.

But the suddenness of it all forced runners to deal with an unexpected twist: what to do with no race.

Well over half of the 40,000 athletes were from out of town. Their entry fees were paid. Their airline tickets were purchased. Their friends and family had hotel rooms. And all week the race was a go, even after Sandy came ashore Monday.

"I understand why it cannot be held under the current circumstances," Meb Keflezighi, the 2009 men's champion and 2004 Olympic silver medalist, said in a statement. "Any inconveniences the cancellation causes me or the thousands of runners who trained and traveled for this race pales in comparison to the challenges faced by people in NYC and its vicinity."

ING, the financial company that is the title sponsor of the marathon, said it supported the decision to cancel. The firm's charitable giving arm has made a $500,000 contribution to help with relief and recovery efforts and is matching employee donations. Sponsor Poland Spring said it would donate the bottled water earmarked for the marathon to relief agencies, more than 200,000 bottles.

"When you have a significant amount of people voicing real pain and unhappiness over its running, you have to hear that. You have to take that into consideration," said Howard Wolfson, deputy mayor for government affairs and communications.

"Something that is such a celebration of the best of New York can't become divisive," he said. "That is not good for the city now as we try to complete our recovery effort, and it is not good for the marathon in the long run."

Each day has brought signs of recovery in the region. Fewer than 1 million customers in New York were without power Saturday, the lowest the number has been since the storm hit.

Aida Padilla, 75, was thrilled that the power at her large housing authority complex in New York City's Chelsea section had returned late Friday.

"Thank God," said Padilla, 75. "I screamed and I put the lights on. Everybody was screaming. It was better than New Year's."

Asked about whether she had heat, she replied, "hot and cold water and heat! Thank God, Jesus!"

NYU Langone Medical Center, one of two New York hospitals that had to evacuate patients at the height of the storm, said it would reopen Monday, though some doctors would see patients at alternate sites.

Seven backup generators at the hospital failed during the storm surge on Monday night, forcing the evacuation of 300 patients.

At Bellevue Hospital Center, some 700 patients had to be evacuated after the power failed. An official there said Thursday the hospital could be out of commission at least two more weeks.

In New Jersey, Gov. Chris Christie announced that he would make public a list of when utility companies intend to restore power to each community. Even if they end up working faster or slower, he said, residents will have a sense of when they will have power restored so they can plan their lives a bit better.

Commuter rail operator NJ Transit said it would have more service restored in time for the workweek to start Monday, most of Atlantic City's casinos reopened, and many school districts decided to hold classes next Thursday and Friday, days previously reserved for the New Jersey Education Association's annual conference, which has been canceled because of the storm.

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Syrian rebels kill 28 soldiers, several executed

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Anti-government rebels killed 28 soldiers on Thursday in attacks on three army checkpoints around Saraqeb, a town on Syria’s main north-south highway, a monitoring group said.

Some of the dead were shot after they had surrendered, according to video footage. Rebels berated them, calling them “Assad’s Dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

The highway linking the capital Damascus to the contested city of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial center, has been the scene of heavy fighting since rebels cut the road last month. Saraqeb lies about 40 km (25 miles) south of Aleppo

In other developments, China put forward a new initiative to resolve the 19-month-old conflict, including a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Beijing had made the proposal to international peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi – whose own call for a truce over the Muslim holiday of Eid was largely ignored by both sides.

The United States meanwhile has called for an overhaul of Syria’s opposition leadership, signaling a break with the largely foreign-based Syrian National Council to bring in more credible figures.

A meeting in Qatar next week of foreign powers backing the rebels will be an opportunity to broaden the coalition against President Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in Zagreb on Wednesday.

The United States and its allies have struggled for months to craft a credible opposition coalition, while Assad has counted on the support of Russia, Iran and, to a lesser extent, China. International efforts to end the violence have all foundered.

More than 32,000 people have been killed since protests against Assad, an Alawite who succeeded his late father Hafez in ruling the mostly Sunni Muslim country, first broke out on city streets. The revolt has since degenerated into full-scale civil war, with the government forces relying heavily on artillery and air strikes to thwart the rebels.

CHECKPOINT ATTACKS

The army has lost swathes of land in Idlib and Aleppo provinces but is fighting to control towns along supply routes to Aleppo city, where its forces are fighting in many districts.

The head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdelrahman, said two of the attacked checkpoints at Saraqeb were on the Damascus-Aleppo highway. The third was near a road linking Aleppo with Latakia, a port city still mostly controlled Assad’s forces.

“The rebels will not stay at the checkpoints for long as Syrian warplanes normally bomb positions after rebels move in,” Abdelrahman said.

Five rebels died in the fighting and at least 20 soldiers were killed at the third site, including those shot after surrendering, he said.

The video footage showed a group of petrified men, some bleeding, lying on the ground as rebels walked around, kicking and stamping on their captives.

One of the captured men says: “I swear I didn’t shoot anyone” to which a rebel responds: “Shut up you animal … Gather them for me.” Then the men are shot dead.

Reuters could not independently verify the footage.

The Observatory said the al Qaeda-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra rebel group was responsible for the executions.

Islamist rebel units are growing in prominence in the war – a cause for concern for international powers as they weigh up what kind of support to give the opposition.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration has said it is not providing arms to internal opponents of Assad and is limiting its aid to non-lethal humanitarian assistance. It concedes, however, that some of its allies are providing lethal assistance.

Russia and China have blocked three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed at increasing pressure on the Assad government, leading the United States and its allies to say they could move beyond U.N. structures for their next steps.

China has been strongly criticized by some Arab countries for failing to take a stronger stance on the conflict. Beijing has urged the Assad government to talk to the opposition and take steps to meet demands for political change.

“More and more countries have come to realize that a military option offers no way out, and a political settlement has become an increasingly shared aspiration,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in Beijing.

He said China’s new proposal was aimed at building international consensus and supporting peace envoy Brahimi’s mediation efforts.

(Additional reporting by Ayat Basma, Laila Bassam and Dominic Evans in Beirut and Terril Yue Jones in Beijing; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Apple rolls out iPad mini to shorter lines

SYDNEY/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The launch of Apple Inc's iPad mini attracted smaller crowds from Sydney to New York on Friday than have been typical for previous Apple product debuts, events marked by people lining up for hours or even days.

A proliferation of comparable rival devices may have sapped some interest for the device, which is priced above rival gadgets from Google Inc and Amazon.com Inc.

A few hundred people were in line at Apple's Fifth Avenue flagship store in New York at about 8 a.m., days after the city was battered by Hurricane Sandy, one of the biggest storms to ever hit the United States.

Lisa Sieber, 59, from Germany rode a bike to the Apple store on Friday as she said she's been going 'stir crazy' from lack of power and water at her 81-year-old mother's home in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

"I didn't think I needed an iPad but once you get your first Mac, you slide into the iPhone and the next one and it makes it easy to get more Apple products," she said, adding that "there's not much to do without power and lights."

While many people have been happy to camp overnight at the New York store for past launches, some were angry on Friday that Apple changed the store's opening time to 10 a.m. for this launch from 8 a.m. previously.

"Usually it's 8 a.m.," said Vincent Leroy, 27, a student from Long Island City in Queens who showed up at the store at 6:30 a.m. His friends complained loudly in unison when he told them he had found out about the delayed opening.

In Amsterdam two hours after the Apple store opened, it looked like a typical day at the store with no lines outside the door. An Apple employee on the scene told Reuters that people had lined up ahead of the store opening.

About 50 people waited for the Apple store in Sydney, Australia, to open, where in the past the line had stretched for several blocks when the company debuted new iPhones.

At the head of Friday's line was Patrick Li, who had been waiting since 4:30 a.m. and was eager to get his hands on the 7.9-inch slate.

"It's light, easy to handle, and I'll use it to read books. It's better than the original iPad," Li said.

There were queues of 100 or more outside Apple stores in Tokyo and Seoul when the device went on sale, but when the company's flagship Hong Kong store opened staff appeared to outnumber those waiting in line.

The iPad mini marks Apple's first foray into the smaller-tablet segment, and the latest salvo in a global mobile-device war that has engulfed combatants from Internet search leader Google, whose Android software runs on tablets from several vendors, to Web retailer Amazon.com and software giant Microsoft Corp.

Microsoft's 10-inch Surface tablet, powered by the just-launched Windows 8 software, went on sale in October, while Google and Amazon now dominate sales of smaller, 7-inch multimedia tablets.

POSITIVE REVIEWS

Unveiled last week, the iPad mini has won mostly positive reviews, with criticism centering on a lofty price tag and a screen considered inferior to those of rivals. The new tablet essentially replicates most of the features of its full-sized sibling, but in a smaller package.

"Well, first of all it's so thin and light and very cute - so cute!" said iPad mini customer Ten Ebihara at the Apple store in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district.

At $329 for a Wi-Fi only model, the iPad mini is a little costlier than predicted, but some analysts see that as Apple's attempt to retain premium positioning.

Some investors fear the gadget will lure buyers away from Apple's $499 flagship 9.7-inch iPad, while proving ineffective in combating the threat of Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7, both of which are sold at or near cost.

Also on Friday, Apple rolled out its fourth-generation iPad, with the same 9.7-inch display as the previous version but with a faster A6X processor and better Wi-Fi. Both devices were going on sale in more than 30 countries.

Apple will likely sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPad minis in the first weekend, far short of the 3 million third-generation iPads sold last March in their first weekend, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.

"The reason we expect fewer iPad minis compared to the 3rd Gen is because of the lack of the wireless option and newness of the smaller form factor for consumers," Munster said in a note to clients. "We believe that over time that will change."

Reviewers have applauded Apple for squeezing most of the iPad's features into a smaller package that can be comfortably manipulated with one hand.

James Vohradsky, a 20-year-old student who previously queued for 17 hours at the Sydney store to buy the iPhone 5, only stood in line for an hour and a half this time.

"I had an iPad 1 before, I kind of miss it because I sold it about a year ago. It's just more practical to have the mini because I found it a bit too big. The image is really good and it's got the fast A5 chip too," Vohradsky said.

The iPad was launched in 2010 by late Apple boss Steve Jobs and since then it has taken a big chunk out of PC sales, upending the industry and reinventing mobile computing with its apps-based ecosystem.

A smaller tablet is the first device to be added to Apple's compact portfolio under Chief Executive Tim Cook, who took over from Jobs just before his death a year ago. Analysts credit Google and Amazon for influencing the decision.

Some investors worry that Apple might have lost its chief visionary with Jobs, and that new management might not be able to stay ahead of the pack as rivals innovate and encroach on its market share.

Apple shares were down 1 percent at $590.56 in morning trade on Friday.

(Additional reporting by Mariko Lochridge in Tokyo, Stefanie McIntyre in Hong Kong and Miyoung Kim in Seoul, Roberta Cowan in Amsterdam; Writing by Noel Randewich and Edwin Chan in San Francisco, Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Phil Berlowitz, Alex Richardson and Steve Orlofsky)

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