DEAR ABBY: I'm a 51-year-old man. Three years ago, my first and only marriage ended after 20 years. Over the past two years, I have been in a wonderful relationship with a very bright woman, "Toni," who told me she had been married twice before.A year ago, her job required that she move out of state, but we have successfully maintained the long-distance relationship with frequent visits and daily phone calls.A few days ago, I learned by chance that she was briefly married a third time while she was in her early 20s. ...
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As Rebels Gain, Congo Again Slips Into Chaos
Label: World
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo — The lights are out in most of Goma. There is little water. The prison is an empty, garbage-strewn wasteland with its rusty front gate swinging wide open and a three-foot hole punched through the back wall, letting loose 1,200 killers, rapists, rogue soldiers and other criminals.
Now, rebel fighters are going house to house arresting people, many of whom have not been seen again by their families.
“You say the littlest thing and they disappear you,” said an unemployed man named Luke.
In the past week, the rebels have been unstoppable, steamrolling through one town after another, seizing this provincial capital, and eviscerating a dysfunctional Congolese Army whose drunken soldiers stumble around with rocket-propelled grenades and whose chief of staff was suspended for selling crates of ammunition to elephant poachers.
Riots are exploding across the country — in Bukavu, Butembo, Bunia, Kisangani and Kinshasa, the capital, a thousand miles away. Mobs are pouring into streets, burning down government buildings and demanding the ouster of Congo’s weak and widely despised president, Joseph Kabila.
Once again, chaos is courting Congo. And one pressing question is, why — after all the billions of dollars spent on peacekeepers, the recent legislation passed on Capitol Hill to cut the link between the illicit mineral trade and insurrection, and all the aid money and diplomatic capital — is this vast nation in the heart of Africa descending to where it was more than 10 years ago when foreign armies and marauding rebels carved it into fiefs?
“We haven’t really touched the root cause,” said Aloys Tegera, a director for the Pole Institute, a research institute in Goma.
He said Congo’s chronic instability is rooted in very local tensions over land, power and identity, especially along the Rwandan and Ugandan borders. “But no one wants to touch this because it’s too complicated,” he added.
The most realistic solution, said another Congo analyst, is not a formal peace process driven by diplomats but “a peace among all the dons, like Don Corleone imposed in New York.”
Congo’s problems have been festering for years, wounds that never quite scabbed over.
But last week there was new urgency after hundreds of rebel fighters, wearing rubber swamp boots and with belt-fed machine guns slung across their backs, marched into Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province and one of the country’s most important cities.
The rebels, called the M23, are a heavily armed paradox. On one hand, they are ruthless. Human rights groups have documented how they have slaughtered civilians, pulling confused villagers out of their huts in the middle of the night and shooting them in the head.
On the other hand, the M23 are able administrators — seemingly far better than the Congolese government, evidenced by a visit in recent days to their stronghold, Rutshuru, a small town about 45 miles from Goma.
In Rutshuru, there are none of those ubiquitous plastic bags twisted in the trees, like in so many other parts of Congo. The gravel roads have been swept clean and the government offices are spotless. Hand-painted signs read: “M23 Stop Corruption.” The rebels even have green thumbs, planting thousands of trees in recent months to fight soil erosion.
“We are not a rebellion,” said Benjamin Mbonimpa, an electrical engineer, a bush fighter and now a top rebel administrator. “We are a revolution.”
Their aims, he said, were to overthrow the government and set up a more equitable, decentralized political system. This is why the rebels have balked at negotiating with Mr. Kabila, though this weekend several rebels said that the pressure was increasing on them to compromise, especially coming from Western countries.
On Sunday, rebel forces and government troops were still squared off, just a few miles apart, down the road from Goma.
The M23 rebels are widely believed to be covertly supported by Rwanda, which has a long history of meddling in Congo, its neighbor blessed with gold, diamonds and other glittering mineral riches. The Rwandan government strenuously denies supplying weapons to the M23 or trying to annex eastern Congo. Rwanda has often denied any clandestine involvement in this country, only to have the denials later exposed as lies.
Facebook not so fun with a click from boss or mum
Label: TechnologyLONDON (Reuters) – Posting pictures of yourself plastered at a party and talking trash online with your Facebook friends may be more stress than it’s worth now that your boss and mum want to see it all.
A survey from Edinburgh Business School released on Monday showed Facebook users are anxious that all those self-published sins may be coming home to roost with more than half of employers claiming to have used Facebook to weed out job candidates.
“Facebook used to be like a great party for all your friends where you can dance, drink and flirt,” said Ben Marder, author of the report and fellow in marketing at the Business School.
“But now with your Mum, Dad and boss there, the party becomes an anxious event full of potential social landmines.”
On average, people are Facebook friends with seven different social circles, the report found, with real friends known to the user offline the most common.
More than four-fifths of users add extended family on Facebook, a similar number add siblings. Less than 70 percent are connected to friends of friends while more than 60 percent added their colleagues online, despite the anxiety this may cause.
Facebook has settings to control the information seen by different types of friends, but only one third use them, the report said.
“I’m not worried at all because all the really messy pics – me, drunken or worse – I detag straight away,” said Chris from London, aged 30.
People were more commonly friends with former boyfriends or girlfriends than with current ones, the report also found.
(Reporting By Dasha Afanasieva, editing by Paul Casciato)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Lindsay Lohan Is a Fascinating (if Terrible) Elizabeth Taylor in Liz & Dick: Review
Label: Lifestyle
TV Watch
TV News
Completely miscast as Elizabeth Taylor in Liz & Dick, Lindsay Lohan makes a reckless but brave dive into a pool that anyone can see is empty. And yet she survives.
The Liz showcased in this unrevealing bio is Taylor in the years of her stormy, world-publicized life with Richard Burton (Grant Bowler). By this point in her career, nearing 40, the legendary beauty was giving way to the gauzy celebrity who sailed through decades on a golden barge rowed by paparazzi.
Lohan, 26, suggests this Taylor only in a few carefully lit close-ups: She's gorgeous, full-faced, worn. As the still-later Taylor, the perfume merchandiser with the spiked plumes of hair, she looks more like Joan Collins stapled in half. She captures none of Taylor's generously displayed voluptuousness, none of the sloppy good humor that endeared her to the public – not even that glass-scratching voice.
This is not Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin.
But Lohan, despite all her career troubles, is still a star. And one star playing another makes for a fascinating performance, if not a great or even good one. She has thrown herself into an impossible project, in a grand gamble to reestablish herself, and she attacks the part with a relentless, huffing-and-puffing determination that throws any acting technique under the bus and yet still rivets attention.
It's an approach, really, not much different from Taylor's own performances.
Bowler is a flawless Burton, but Lohan's single-minded fierceness obliterates him. Jack Black could have played Dick, and I wouldn't have noticed.
Liz & Dick airs Nov. 25 (9 p.m. ET) on Lifetime.
AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians
Label: HealthPADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.
Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.
The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.
"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."
Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.
"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."
During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:
Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales
Label: Technology(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.
Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.
These requirements include a September order from regulator, Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). This states all pre-paid sim users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and that this number must be the same as the one registered with their mobile operator when the sim card was bought, according to a statement on the CITC website.
This measure is designed to ensure customer account details are kept up to date, the CITC said.
Mobily said the financial impact of the CITC’s decision would be “insignificant”, claiming data, corporate and postpaid revenues would meet its main growth drivers.
The firm, which competes with Saudi Telecom Co (STC) and Zain Saudi, reported a 23 percent rise in third-quarter profit in October, beating forecasts.
Prepaid mobile subscriptions are typically more popular among middle and lower income groups, with telecom operators pushing customers to shift to monthly contracts that include a data allowance.
Customers on monthly, or postpaid, contracts are also less likely to switch provider, but the bulk of customers remain on pre-paid accounts.
Mobily shares were trading down 1.4 percent at 0820 GMT on the Saudi bourse.
(Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Dinesh Nair)
Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Jessica Simpson Made You Say 'Wow' - And You're Laughing at the President
Label: LifestyleMcKayla Maroney and President Barack Obama
Pete Souza/The White House/Getty
From baby news, to post baby-bodies and a scowl on President Obama, it's been an eclectic week on PEOPLE.com
As always, you've been reacting in droves, telling us what you love, what makes you mad, and what's making you LOL.
Check out the stories with top reactions on the site this week, and keep clicking on the emoticons at the bottom of each story to tell us what you think!
Nothing like a newborn baby to make you smile! Readers loved meeting Tamera Mowry-Housley's brand new baby boy, Aden.
Jaws likely dropped over Jessica Simpson's dramatic 60-pound weight loss, which she showed off at an event for her fashion line, the Jessica Simpson Collection. The hot mama worked her post-baby body in jeans and a hot pink blazer, drawing raves from fans.
Guess Taylor Swift fans aren't too fond of One Direction … or vice versa. Amid speculation that Swift is dating Harry Styles, readers clicked their displeasure.
Three teenagers at the same high school who committed suicide in the last two months saddened readers this week. Few details about the students have been released, but school superintendant Dr. Michael Murphy said, "Each incident seems to be in isolation of each other."
On a lighter note, Fab Five gymnast McKayla Maroney perfected her "not impressed" expression at the Olympic Games … and she's brought it all the way to the White House. President Obama mimicked the vault silver medalist's scowl, and regardless of where you stand on the political spectrum, everyone agreed the pic was laugh-out-loud funny.
Check back next week for another must-read roundup, and see what readers are reacting to every day here.
AP PHOTOS: Simple surgery heals blind Indonesians
Label: HealthPADANG SIDEMPUAN, Indonesia (AP) — They came from the remotest parts of Indonesia, taking crowded overnight ferries and riding for hours in cars or buses — all in the hope that a simple, and free, surgical procedure would restore their eyesight.
Many patients were elderly and needed help to reach two hospitals in Sumatra where mass eye camps were held earlier this month by Nepalese surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. During eight days, more than 1,400 cataracts were removed.
The patients camped out, sleeping side-by-side on military cots, eating donated food while fire trucks supplied water for showers and toilets. Many who had given up hope of seeing again left smiling after their bandages were removed.
"I've been blind for three years, and it's really bad," said Arlita Tobing, 65, whose sight was restored after the surgery. "I worked on someone's farm, but I couldn't work anymore."
Indonesia has one of the highest rates of blindness in the world, making it a target country for Ruit who travels throughout the developing world holding free mass eye camps while training doctors to perform the simple, stitch-free procedure he pioneered. He often visits hard-to-reach remote areas where health care is scarce and patients are poor. He believes that by teaching doctors how to perform his method of cataract removal, the rate of blindness can be reduced worldwide.
Cataracts are the leading cause of blindness globally, affecting about 20 million people who mostly live in poor countries, according to the World Health Organization.
"We get only one life, and that life is very short. I am blessed by God to have this opportunity," said Ruit, who runs the Tilganga Eye Center in Katmandu, Nepal. "The most important of that is training, taking the idea to other people."
During the recent camps, Ruit trained six doctors from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.
Here, in images, are scenes from the mobile eye camps:
Wall Street Week Ahead: Political wrangling to pinch market's nerves
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Volatility is the name of this game.
With the S&P 500 above 1,400 following five days of gains, traders will be hard pressed not to cash in on the advance at the first sign of trouble during negotiations over tax hikes and spending cuts that resume next week in Washington.
President Barack Obama and U.S. congressional leaders are expected to discuss ways to reduce the budget deficit and avoid the "fiscal cliff" of automatic tax increases and spending cuts in 2013 that could tip the economy into recession.
As politicians make their case, markets could react with wild swings.
The CBOE Volatility Index <.vix>, known as the VIX, Wall Street's favorite barometer of market anxiety that usually moves in an inverse relationship with the S&P 500, is in a long-term decline with its 200-day moving average at its lowest in five years. The VIX could spike if dealings in Washington begin to stall.
"If the fiscal cliff happens, a lot of major assets will be down on a short-term basis because of the fear factor and the chaos factor," said Yu-Dee Chang, chief trader and sole principal of ACE Investments in Virginia.
"So whatever you are in, you're going to lose some money unless you go long the VIX and short the market. The 'upside risk' there is some kind of grand bargain, and then the market goes crazy."
He set the chances of the economy going over the cliff at only about 5 percent.
Many in the market agree there will be some sort of agreement that will fuel a rally, but the road there will be full of political landmines as Democrats and Republicans dig in on positions defended during the recent election.
Liberals want tax increases on the wealthiest Americans while protecting progressive advances in healthcare, while conservatives make a case for deep cuts in programs for the poor and a widening of the tax base to raise revenues without lifting tax rates.
"Both parties will raise the stakes and the pressure on the opposing side, so the market is going to feel much more concerned," said Tim Leach, chief investment officer of U.S. Bank Wealth Management in San Francisco.
"The administration feels really confident at this point, or a little more than the Republican side of Congress may feel," he said. "But it's still a balanced-power Congress so neither side can feel that they can act with impunity."
THE MIDDLE EAST AND EUROPE
Tension in the Middle East and unresolved talks in Europe over aid for Greece could add to the uncertainty and volatility on Wall Street could surge, analysts say.
An Egypt-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force late on Wednesday after a week of conflict, but it was broken with the shooting of a Palestinian man by Israeli soldiers, according to Palestine's foreign minister.
Buoyed by accolades from around the world for mediating the truce, Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi assumed sweeping powers, angering his opponents and prompting violent clashes in central Cairo and other cities on Friday.
"Those kinds of potential large-scale conflicts can certainly overwhelm some of the fundamental data here at home," said U.S. Bank's Leach.
"We are trying to keep in mind the idea that there are a lot of factors that are probably going to contribute to higher volatility."
On a brighter note for markets, Greece's finance minister said the International Monetary Fund has relaxed its debt-cutting target for Greece and a gap of only $13 billion remains to be filled for a vital aid installment to be paid.
Still, a deal has not been struck, and Greece is increasingly frustrated at its lenders, still squabbling over a deal to unlock fresh aid even though Athens has pushed through unpopular austerity cuts.
HOUSING DATA COULD CONFIRM RECOVERY
Next week is heavy on economic data, especially on the housing front. Some of the numbers have been affected by Superstorm Sandy, which hit the U.S. East Coast more than three weeks ago, killing more than 100 people in the United States alone and leaving billions of dollars in damages.
The housing data, though, could continue to confirm a rebound in the sector that is seen as a necessary step to unlock spending and lower the stubbornly high unemployment rate.
Tuesday's S&P/Case-Shiller home price index for September is expected to show the eighth straight month of increases, extending the longest continuous string of gains since prices were boosted by a homebuyer tax credit in 2009 and 2010.
New home sales for October, due on Wednesday, and October pending home sales data, due on Thursday, are also expected to show a stronger housing market.
Other data highlights next week include durable goods orders for October and consumer confidence for November on Tuesday and the Chicago Purchasing Managers Index on Friday.
At Friday's close, the S&P 500 wrapped up its second-best week of the year with a 3.6 percent gain. Encouraging economic data next week could confirm that regardless of the ups and downs that the fiscal cliff could bring, the market's fundamentals are solid.
Jeff Morris, head of U.S. equities at Standard Life Investments in Boston, said that "it's kind of noise here" in terms of whether the market has spent "a few days up or down. It has made some solid gains over the course of the year as the housing recovery has come into view, and that's what's underpinning the market at these levels.
"I would caution against reading too much into the next few days."
(Wall St Week Ahead runs every Friday. Questions or comments on this column can be emailed to: rodrigo.campos(at)thomsonreuters.com)
(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Tim Dobbyn and Jan Paschal)
Protests Erupt After Egypt’s Leader Seizes New Power
Label: World
Tara Todras-Whitehill for The New York Times
Egyptians in central Cairo ran from tear gas during clashes with the police on Friday. Protesters took to the streets in several cities. More Photos »
CAIRO — Protests erupted across Egypt on Friday, as opponents of President Mohamed Morsi clashed with his supporters over a presidential edict that gave him unchecked authority and polarized an already divided nation while raising a specter, the president’s critics charged, of a return to autocracy.
In an echo of the uprising 22 months ago, thousands of protesters chanted for the downfall of Mr. Morsi’s government in Cairo, while others ransacked the offices of the president’s former party in Suez, Alexandria and other cities.
Mr. Morsi spoke to his supporters in front of the presidential palace here, imploring the public to trust his intentions as he cast himself as a protector of the revolution and a fledgling democracy.
In a speech that was by turns defensive and conciliatory, he ultimately gave no ground to the critics who now were describing him as a pharaoh, in another echo of the insult once reserved for the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak.
“God’s will and elections made me the captain of this ship,” Mr. Morsi said.
The battles that raged on Friday — over power, legitimacy and the mantle of the revolution — posed a sharp challenge not only to Mr. Morsi but also to his opponents, members of secular, leftist and liberal groups whose crippling divisions have stifled their agenda and left them unable to confront the more popular Islamist movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The crisis over his power grab came just days after the Islamist leader won international praise for his pragmatism, including from the United States, for brokering a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.
On Friday, the State Department expressed muted concern over Mr. Morsi’s decision. “One of the aspirations of the revolution was to ensure that power would not be overly concentrated in the hands of any one person or institution,” said the State Department spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland.
She said, “The current constitutional vacuum in Egypt can only be resolved by the adoption of a constitution that includes checks and balances, and respects fundamental freedoms, individual rights and the rule of law consistent with Egypt’s international commitments.”
But the White House was notably silent after it had earlier this week extolled the emerging relationship between President Obama and Mr. Morsi and credited a series of telephone calls between the two men with helping to mediate the cease-fire in Gaza.
For Mr. Morsi, who seemed to be saying to the nation that it needed to surrender the last checks on his power in order to save democracy from Mubarak-era judges, the challenge was to convince Egyptians that the ends justified his means.
But even as he tried, thousands of protesters marched to condemn his decision. Clashes broke out between the president’s supporters and his critics, and near Tahrir Square, the riot police fired tear gas and bird shot as protesters hurled stones and set fires.
Since Thursday, when Mr. Morsi issued the decree, the president and his supporters have argued that he acted precisely to gain the power to address the complaints of his critics, including the families of protesters killed during the uprising and its aftermath.
By placing his decisions above judicial review, the decree enabled him to replace a public prosecutor who had failed to win convictions against senior officers implicated in the killings of protesters.
The president and his supporters also argued that the decree insulated the Constituent Assembly, which is drafting the constitution, from meddling by Mubarak-era judges.
Since Mr. Mubarak’s ouster, courts have dissolved Parliament, kept a Mubarak loyalist as top prosecutor and disbanded the first Assembly.
But by ending legal appeals, the decree also removed a safety valve for critics who say the Islamist majority is dominating the drafting of the constitution.
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