‘The Hobbit’ stays atop box office for third week






LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” continues to rule them all at the box office, staying on top for a third-straight week with nearly $ 33 million.


The Warner Bros. fantasy epic from director Peter Jackson, based on the J.R.R. Tolkien novel, has made $ 222.7 million domestically alone.






Two big holiday movies — and potential awards contenders — also had strong openings. Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti Western-blaxploitation mash-up “Django Unchained” came in second place for the weekend with $ 30.7 million. The Weinstein Co. revenge epic, starring Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz, has earned $ 64 million since its Christmas Day opening.


And in third place with $ 28 million was the sweeping, all-singing “Les Miserables.” The Universal Pictures musical starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway has made $ 67.5 million since debuting on Christmas.


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Italian Nobel scientist Montalcini dies at 103






ROME (Reuters) – Rita Levi Montalcini, joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine and an Italian Senator for Life, died on Sunday at the age of 103, her family said.


The first Nobel laureate to reach 100 years of age, she won the prize in 1986 with American Stanley Cohen for their discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF), a protein that makes developing cells grow by stimulating surrounding nerve tissue.






Her research helped in the treatment of spinal cord injuries and has increased understanding of cardiovascular diseases, Alzheimer’s and conditions such as dementia and autism.


One of twins born to a Jewish family in Turin in 1909, Montalcini was the oldest living recipient of the prize.


During World War Two, the Allies’ bombing of Turin forced her to flee to the countryside where she established a mini-laboratory. She fled to Florence after the German invasion of Italy and lived in hiding there for a while, later working as a doctor in a refugee camp.


After the war she moved to St. Louis in the United States to work at Washington University, where she went on to make her groundbreaking NGF discoveries.


She also set up a research unit in Rome and in 1975 became the first woman to be made a full member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1975. She won several other awards for her contributions to medical and scientific research.


Her face was instantly recognizable in Italy and she was well known as a dignified and respected intellectual, a counterbalance to the image of women succeeding through their looks and sexuality, exacerbated during the scandal-plagued era of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.


Two days after her birthday in April this year she posted a note on Facebook saying it was important never to give up on life or fall into mediocrity and passive resignation.


“I’ve lost a bit of sight, and a lot of hearing. At conferences I don’t see the projections and I don’t feel good. But I think more now than I did when I was 20. The body does what it wants. I am not the body, I am the mind,” she said.


Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said in a statement that Montalcini’s Nobel prize had been an honor for Italy, and praised her efforts to encourage young people, especially women, to play a central role in scientific research.


(Editing by Louise Ireland)


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Suspected US drone kills 3 al-Qaida men in Yemen






SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack this week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country.


The officials said the three men were hit as they were riding in a Land Cruiser in el-Manaseh village on the outskirts of Radda in Bayda province. Dozens of local al-Qaida-linked fighters protested the drone strikes after traditional Islamic Friday prayers.






Earlier this week another suspected U.S. drone strike killed two militants in Radda itself, Yemeni security officials say, and seven were killed in two other strikes in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Four suspected drone strikes a week is uncommon in Yemen.


According to statistics gathered by the Long War Journal before Saturday’s attacks, the United States “is known to have carried out 41 airstrikes” this year against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the group’s branch in Yemen is known. That makes for an average of around three to four strikes per month.


The Journal, a product of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that was founded by former U.S. officials, says that since December 2009, the CIA and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command are known to have conducted at least 54 air and missile strikes inside Yemen, excluding Saturday’s suspected attack.


AQAP overran entire towns and villages — including Radda — last year by taking advantage of a security lapse during nationwide protests that eventually ousted the country’s longtime ruler. Backed by the U.S. military, Yemen’s army was able to regain control of the southern region but al-Qaida militants continue to launch deadly attacks on security forces that have killed hundreds.


Also on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed an intelligence officer in the southeast, security officials said. They said that the officer, Mutea Baqutian, was on his way to work in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, when the men stopped his car, gunned him down, and fled.


The government has blamed al-Qaida militants for similar assassinations of several senior military and intelligence officials this year. The bullet-riddled body of Major al-Numeiry Abdo al-Oudi, deputy director of the security department of al-Qitten in Hadramawt, was found in the town’s suburbs last week. He had been kidnapped earlier in the month.


All officials spoke on condition of anonymity according to regulations.


Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Seif, who is commander of Yemen’s central military region, said the Defense Ministry has deployed an infantry brigade in the northeastern province of Marib to stop armed tribesmen who maintain cordial ties with al-Qaida from attacking oil pipelines and power generating stations, as well as to counter al-Qaida militants.


State TV meanwhile aired a meeting between President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and eight Yemeni sailors who were rescued last week by forces of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region after being held for nearly three years by Somali pirates.


The Puntland government says that its forces captured the hijacked Panama-flagged MV Iceberg 1 on Sunday after a siege that lasted two weeks. They freed the eight Yemeni sailors together with five Indians, two Pakistanis, four Ghanaians, two Sudanese and a Filipino. The ship was hijacked March 29, 2010.


Hadi congratulated the eight sailors for their safety and ordered the government to compensate them for their suffering.


Eqbal Yassin, a relative of one of the freed sailors, told The Associated Press that the hijackers had allowed some sailors to phone their relatives and convey the pirates’ demand for $ 5 million ransom. He said he was told by his relative that the hijackers killed a Yemeni sailor who tried to escape. He gave no further details.


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The Boy Genius Report: The Wii U is the Nintendo’s last console






I remember it still — people flipped out about the Nintendo (NTDOY) Wii. Yes, its name was mocked for a while, but there was genuine excitement around what Nintendo was doing with motion and the entire gameplay experience. While the original Nintendo Wii was almost an Apple (AAPL)-like product — Nintendo focused on the gameplay and not on specs; the company didn’t even have HD graphics when every other console did — the Nintendo Wii U clearly demonstrates how far Nintendo has fallen and how out of touch the company is.


[More from BGR: Samsung could face $ 15 billion fine for trying to ban iPhone, other Apple devices]






I bought a Nintendo Wii U for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to play and beat “Super Mario Bros. U.” I’ll probably end up returning the console after I’m done, because that’s how horrible the Wii U actually is.


[More from BGR: Five-year-old finds porn on refurbished Nintendo 3DS from GameStop]


First of all, the fact that Nintendo actually decided to ship this joke of a controller called the GamePad with a 6.2-inch touchscreen in the middle says it all. It only lasted for around two hours per charge over the week I’ve used it, and it’s big, clunky and made of glossy Nintendo plastic. The problem it, it has no charm. It feels thrown together to try to make a statement, one that says that Nintendo isn’t afraid of the iPads or Android tablets or iPhones or iPod touches, and that it too can take on touch just as it took on motion.


It fails miserably. And that’s just the controller.


The actual console is one that finally for the first time ever supports HDMI and HD graphics, yet Nintendo’s flagship game doesn’t look good in high-definition. The console’s UI is a mess, and let’s be honest, we are living in a time where we are so connected, where so much is shared across continents instantly, that real design transcends what country it was designed in.


When you see a beautiful iPhone app’s interface, there’s a good chance you couldn’t tell if it was designed by a company in San Francisco or Paris or Hong Kong. But Nintendo’s interface is blatantly Japanese, and it lacks any and all sophistication. It’s like all of Nintendo’s designers just gave up and are living in a time when Apple’s iOS devices and Google’s (GOOG) Android devices don’t exist, blissfully ignoring the threat that their company is facing from all angles.


The Wii U experience is so terrible that it took over an hour to update the software on the console recently, and apparently that wasn’t that bad. People have told me their updates took over 4 hours when performed closer to Christmas. Do you know what that 7-year-old is doing during those 4 hours you’re making him wait? Playing Temple Run or Angry Birds on his iPad mini. Way to go Nintendo.


I’ll go on record and say that I think this is the last video game console Nintendo will make for the home. I just don’t see the future here with hardware. Not by a mile.


Nintendo needs to realize that hardware is hardware and that Nintendo’s hardware isn’t special, it isn’t elegant and it isn’t thoughtful. It’s merely a delivery mechanism in a time where design has never been more important.


Nintendo is a great company, one that has invented so many great products, but sooner or later it will be forced to offer its titles on iOS devices and Android devices. It’s going to get to that point. There’s way too much revenue to be made — Nintendo isn’t Sega, and Sega is crushing it as a software-only company.


I just hope Nintendo follows suit sooner or later, because I have $ 9.99 ready to go for the Super Mario app on iOS.


This article was originally published by BGR


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Katie Holmes’ Broadway play ‘Dead Accounts’ closes






NEW YORK (AP) — Katie Holmes‘ return to Broadway will be much shorter than she would have liked.


The former Mrs. Cruise‘s play “Dead Accounts” will close within a week of the new year. Producers said Thursday that Theresa Rebeck‘s drama will close on Jan. 6 after 27 previews and 44 performances.






The show, which opened to poor reviews on Nov. 29, stars Norbert Leo Butz as Holmes’ onstage brother who returns to his Midwest home with a secret. Rebeck created the first season of NBC’s “Smash” and several well-received plays including “Seminar” and “Mauritius.”


Holmes, who became a star in the teen soap opera “Dawson’s Creek,” made her Broadway debut in the 2008 production of “All My Sons.” She was married to Tom Cruise from 2006 until this year.


___


Online: http://www.deadaccountsonbroadway.com


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Brazil president, cancer survivor, pronounced healthy






BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who survived lymphoma cancer in 2009, was pronounced healthy by doctors after a routine exam on Friday.


Rousseff’s health was “within normal levels,” according to a statement released by her office following the check-up at the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo, one of South America‘s leading cancer treatment centers.






Rousseff underwent chemotherapy in 2009 and briefly wore a wig, but the cancer went into remission and she appeared to be in good health by the time she staged her winning campaign for the presidency in 2010.


Concerns over her health have faded since then, although a bout with pneumonia and a lengthy recovery in 2011 have kept the issue on some investors’ radar screens.


(Reporting by Ana Flor, Writing by Brian Winter; Editing by Doina Chiacu)


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Apple to drop patent claims against new Samsung phone






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc has agreed to withdraw patent claims against a new Samsung phone with a high-end display after Samsung said it was not offering to sell the product in the crucial U.S. market.


Apple disclosed the agreement in a filing on Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. Representatives for both Apple and Samsung declined to comment.






Last month Apple asked to add the Galaxy S III Mini and other Samsung products, including several tablet models, to its wide-ranging patent litigation against Samsung.


In response, Samsung said the Galaxy S III Mini was not available for sale in the United States and should not be included in the case.


Apple won a $ 1.05 billion verdict against Samsung earlier this year but has failed to secure a permanent sales ban against several, mostly older Samsung models. The patents Apple is asserting against the Galaxy S III Mini are separate from those that went to trial.


Samsung started selling the Mini in Europe in October to compete with Apple’s iPhone 5. In its filing on Friday in U.S. District Court, for the Northern District of California, Apple said its lawyers were able to purchase “multiple units” of the Mini from Amazon.com Inc’s U.S. retail site and have them delivered in the United States.


But Samsung represented that it is not “making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing the Galaxy S III Mini in the United States.” Based on that, Apple said it agreed to withdraw its patent claims on the Mini, “so long as the current withdrawal will not prejudice Apple’s ability later to accuse the Galaxy S III Mini if the factual circumstances change.”


The case in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California is Apple Inc. vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 12-630.


(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Leslie Adler and Dan Grebler)


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Apple CEO’s pay takes big hit vs. record 2011 package






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook’s 2012 compensation package of just over $ 4 million is a huge cut on paper for the top executive of the most valuable U.S. corporation, after a 2011 package fattened by more than $ 376 million in long-term stock awards.


Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple‘s legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs’ death in October 2011.






The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.


Virtually all of Cook’s $ 376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks – one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs’ longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.


In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $ 1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.


The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.


But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group – which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $ 2 billion it manages – said Cook’s package was “normal CEO compensation.”


For example, Yahoo Inc’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $ 70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook’s, with about $ 1 million in annual salary and up to $ 2 million in an annual bonus.


Oracle Corp’s Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States – and also the world’s sixth-richest man, according to Forbes – received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $ 96.2 million – almost all of it in stock options.


That compared with $ 77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.


Cook’s longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $ 1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $ 600 million at the time.


Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday’s filing.


The 2012 package includes a salary of $ 1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $ 2.8 million. Cook’s base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $ 900,000 he earned in 2011.


While Apple’s shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October, when they hit a $ 700.10 high. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.


Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $ 506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.


(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)


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Soprano Bartoli: My voice has more colors, shadow






LONDON (Reuters) – Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has released a year-end blockbuster that is part mystery story, part research project and shows off a voice which only seems to improve with age.


Bartoli’s latest deluxe-packaged album “Mission” (Decca) is devoted to the music of the late 17th-century Italian composer, diplomat and perhaps spy, Agostino Steffani.






Steffani may have been a bit overlooked as a result of his appearance at the end of the Renaissance and at the beginning of the Baroque periods – until Bartoli’s interest alighted on him.


“The variety is amazing in the music of Steffani, the slow arias have very beautiful melodic lines, they are unbelievable, it’s quite hypnotic music,” Bartoli said in a telephone interview from Paris.


Since she burst upon the world in the 1990s, specializing mostly in Mozart and Rossini, Bartoli has gone from strength to strength, not only in digging up unusual repertoires, including another deluxe compilation in 2009 devoted to music sung by castrati, but also vocally.


Here’s what else Bartoli had to say about Steffani and his possible career as a spy, why she goes for the anti-diva look on her recent album covers, and what she calls a Fellini-esque experience at La Scala with conductor Daniel Barenboim:


Q: Is it true, then, that the voice improves with time?


A: “I think this is a very good time because of the maturity of the technique. When you are young, of course, you have to have a beautiful voice. This is a gift you receive, but you don’t have enough technique or experience. So this is a very good time because I can really paint with my voice with so many colors, like a painter. I love painting with the voice and I’m of an age when I do this definitely better than 20 years ago.”


Q: So this bit about Steffani being a spy, surely that was dreamt up by the Decca marketing department?


A: “He had an incredible life as a priest, a missionary and a diplomatic mission to arranging weddings between the royal princes of that period. And also he was a kind of spy, in fact he was a Catholic priest in the north of Germany, in the Protestant area, and he spent lots of years in that area – it was very unusual, very strange. Maybe he also had the mission to convert (people) to Catholicism, who knows? We have lots of speculation about him, all the mysterious things about this man. There’s still mystery.”


Q: There’s no mystery though that the cover for this album, showing you bald-headed and wielding a crucifix, is “non-diva” – like the cover on the “Sacrificium” album of castrati music, with your head superimposed on the torso of a male statue.


A: “The idea was to have a cover related to the project and it was a bit against the cliche of a diva who has to look beautiful all the time. In a project like ‘Sacrificium’, when at the beginning of the 18th century 3,000-4,000 boys were castrated every year in Italy…how can I make a CD project about this and make a cover with a beautiful, glamorous Vanity Fair picture? This would be more embarrassing…People realize there is a real story here to tell, it’s not a compilation of arias which you do for Christmas. And ‘Sacrificium’ was a huge success.”


Q: Your concert recital earlier this month singing Handel, Rossini and Mozart with Daniel Barenboim conducting at La Scala in Milan, with a chorus of boos and whistles in the second half, was perhaps less of a success?


A: “This story is repeating what happened to Carlos Kleiber, one of the greatest conductors of our lives, also to (Maria) Callas, (Luciano) Pavarotti. The concert was magnificent – Handel, Mozart, Rossini – and then I believe at the very end there was a very Fellinian situation. You think these things don’t happen anymore, that they only happen in the movies of (Federico) Fellini but actually, no, this is happening. And it seemed like a parody but the next morning I opened the newspaper and (Silvio) Berlusconi is back (in Italian politics). And so I said, ‘Yes, of course.’


I think living in Italy is difficult but living without Italy is impossible.”


(Editing by Michael Roddy)


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Cancer Sucks to donate $150,000 to cancer research







It will be the largest single donation given by Cancer Sucks, stated the organization’s executive director, Rick Horton, in a recent release.






Cancer Sucks, which will be the recipient of funds raised from the upcoming The Party! New Year’s Eve event in Tulsa’s Blue Dome District, will be donating proceeds from the Shiprocked Music Cruise charity auction, as well as the John F. Henry PanSlam Golf Classic for pancreatic cancer research.


Cancer Sucks will donate $ 70,000 to Gateway for Cancer Research, $ 40,000 to Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences and $ 40,000 to the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.


Cancer Sucks was established in 1998 by the family of Donna Holland White, who died in 1996. The organization, which is run by volunteers who have been touched by cancer, focuses on raising as much money for cancer research as possible. Corporate partnerships fund overhead expenses, allowing Cancer Sucks to donate all proceeds from events to cancer research.


For more, tulsaworld.com/cancersucks


deb87  basic Cancer Sucks to donate $150,000 to cancer research


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