Syrian activists living in exile speak out

Handout / Reuters

Demonstrators protesting against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad gather during a march through the streets after Friday prayers in Adlb on Dec. 2, 2011. This image has been supplied by a third party. It is distributed, exactly as received by Reuters, as a service to clients

By Rima Abdelkader, NBC News

Activists inside Syria are being forced to leave the country as violence intensifies in the ninth month of anti-government protests.

Rima Flihan is an activist who?left behind two children and her career after she received death threats following her release from a Syrian police station.

Flihan said she was near al-Hassan mosque in the al-Midan neighborhood of Damascus when she and nine other young female activists were detained in mid-July for protesting without permits.


?We laughed, we cried, and shared our fears and hopes together,? Flihan told NBC News in an email about her time in detention.
?
She said she remembered meeting one of the other detained women months earlier at a demonstration on Syria?s Independence Day, April 17. They were reunited when they were arrested and detained for four days in July.
?
Flihan said she met up with other activists on the day of her release and encouraged them to continue the fight. Part of her talk was recorded on this YouTube clip she shared with NBC News. She is the woman speaking with the white shirt and microphone.

The U.N.?s top human rights official said last week that her office estimates that more than 4,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March.

Flihan fled the country in September for Jordan after she said she was threatened by government security forces and left her children in the care of her family still there.
?
Even though Flihan is no longer in the country, she said she remains in touch with many of the activists she demonstrated with through social media daily, and encourages her friends she met at demonstrations inside the country to continue protesting.

Flihan said she hopes to return when she feels her life is no longer under threat.
?
?I dream to go on a trip with my activist friends to all of the troubled spots in Syria and light a candle and celebrate freedom, and build our country in a different way,? Flihan said in an email.
?
A familiar name to the theater community in Damascus, Flihan worked as a theater writer and wrote two Syrian dramas.

Two years ago, she created a popular Syrian television drama called ?Qoloob Saghirah? or ?Small Hearts? that uncovered what she called were injustices in the region to spark discussions and debate surrounding issues of organ trafficking, homelessness, and women?s rights.
?
It?s rare that we hear of the stories of Syrian female activists. Flihan, whose father was an army officer who was imprisoned for his political views against the civilian killings in the Syrian town of Hama in 1982, said she wanted to share her story with NBC News to highlight the women of the revolution.

You can follow Rima Abdelkader on Twitter at: twitter.com/rimakader

Source: http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/05/9230500-syrian-activists-living-in-exile-speak-out

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All My Children's Denise Vasi Joins VH1's Single Ladies (omg!)

Denise Vasi | Photo Credits: Denise Vasi/WireImage

All My Children alum Denise Vasi will join the cast of VH1's Single Ladies, Deadline reports.

"Denise is the perfect addition to the Single Ladies cast," executive producer Queen Latifah said. "She is bringing a fun, new element to the show."

She replaces Stacey Dash, who announced her exit from the series in September.?

Watch full episodes of Single Ladies in our Online Video Guide

Single Ladies, VH1's first scripted program, is about three friends in the world of Atlanta fashion, fame and music. Vasi will play Raquel, a businesswoman from a prominent Southern family. LisaRaye McCoy and Charity Shea also star.

Production on Season 2 begins in January; the series will return some in early summer.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/entertainment/*http%3A//us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/external/omg_rss/rss_omg_en/news_childrens_denise_vasi_joins_vh1s_single_ladies141900925/43808725/*http%3A//omg.yahoo.com/news/childrens-denise-vasi-joins-vh1s-single-ladies-141900925.html

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The New Xbox 360 Software: It's Not About the Games [Video]

On December 6th, Microsoft will officially release a new Xbox 360 dashboard update to all Xbox users. We've played around with it for a while now and can say that the Xbox has never looked so good. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/RIuIe5c26Ic/the-new-xbox-360-software-its-not-about-the-games

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Has Iran Killed This Advanced US Stealth Plane? [Airplanes]

The Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel is one of the most advanced stealth airplanes in the United States Air Force. It was secret drone until the end of 2009. The iranians just claimed today they have killed one. But have they? More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/4aIhrdTL1Bw/has-iran-killed-this-advanced-us-stealth-plane

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The Beaver County Cancer & Heart Association Joins Rob Pratte ...

PITTSBURGH (NEWSRADIO 1020 KDKA) ? This week, KDKA Radio?s Rob Pratte is talking about the Beaver County Cancer & Heart Association.

He is joined in studio by the assocation?s Jackie and Bob Finney to discuss a number of topics.

Listen to Rob Pratte every Saturday morning starting at 5am on NewsRadio 1020 KDKA!

The Beaver County Cancer & Heart Association

Source: http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2011/12/03/the-beaver-county-cancer-heart-association-joins-rob-pratte/

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US jobless rate fell to 8.6 percent in November

Joshua Lott / Reuters

People wait to be interviewed during a job fair in Phoenix, Ariz., held last month.

By msnbc.com news services

Employment growth picked up speed in November, pushing the nation?s unemployment rate down to 8.6 percent -- its lowest level since March 2009.

The Labor Department reported Friday that nonfarm U.S. payrolls increased by 120,000 last month, accelerating from October?s 80,000 gain and roughly matching analysts? expectations. The U.S. jobless rate fell sharply from the prior month?s 9 percent level.

Private employers added a net gain of 140,000 jobs in November, but governments shed 20,000 jobs, mostly at the local and state level. Governments at all levels have shed nearly a half-million jobs in the past year. The Labor Department revised up its job gains for September and October by 52,000 and 20,000, respectively.

?The labor market is gradually healing. It?s a glacial pace, but we are taking small steps in the right direction,? said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody's Analytics in West Chester, Penn.

More than half the jobs added last month were by retailers, restaurants and bars, a sign that holiday hiring has kicked in. Retailers added 50,000, the sector's biggest gain since April. Restaurants and bars hired 33,000 workers. The health care industry added 17,000.

Still, a worrisome drop in the size of the U.S. workforce means that even with a big decline in the unemployment rate in November, it's still not time to break out the champagne.

The fall in the jobless rate was aided by 315,000 people leaving the workforce. That pushed the participation rate, a ratio of the amount of the population in the labor force, down to 64.0 percent.

Those who exited the workforce, many of whom gave up on looking for work, outnumbered the 278,000 people who found jobs, according the Labor Department's household survey, which is separate from payrolls data.

Even with the recent gains, the economy isn't anywhere close to replacing the jobs lost in the recession. Employers began shedding workers in February 2008 and cut nearly 8.7 million jobs for the next 25 months. Since then, the economy has regained nearly 2.5 million of those jobs.

The jobs report is unlikely to take much pressure off President Barack Obama, whose economic stewardship will face the judgment of voters next November. The outlook for the U.S. economy is also being threatened by Europe's ongoing financial crisis.

Speaking at a Washington, D.C., press event to promote a $4 billion effort to increase the energy efficiency of government and private sector buildings, Obama noted Friday that, despite some ?strong headwinds,? the U.S. private sector has now added jobs for 21 months in a row.

?We need to keep that growth going,? he added.

The relative strength of the jobs report is in keeping with a recent trend, bolstered by upward revisions to the employment counts for September and October. But it is not seen as proving decisive for the U.S. Federal Reserve, which is weighing whether the recovery needs further monetary policy support.

Data ranging from manufacturing to retail sales suggest the pace of expansion could top 3 percent, in contrast to China, where growth is cooling and much of Europe, where growth has stalled.

While the economy's growth pace appears to have accelerated from the third quarter's 2 percent annual rate, Europe's festering debt crisis poses a big threat. At the same time, U.S. fiscal policy is set to tighten in the new year, even if lawmakers extend a payroll tax cut.

Taken together, some analysts believe the headwinds facing the U.S. economy will lead the Fed to ease monetary policy further by buying more bonds.

Though the economy emerged from recession two years ago, about 25 million Americans are either out of work or underemployed, a fact that is hurting Obama's chances of winning a second term.

Analysts say the economy needs to create at least 125,000 jobs every month just to keep the unemployment rate steady. So far this year, job growth has averaged 125,600 jobs a month. At that pace, it would take about 4-1/2 years for employment just to return to where it was when the recession started.

But there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.

While the government's survey of employers has shown a still tepid pace of job growth, its separate poll of households that is used to calculate the unemployment rate has suggested more-robust jobs gains.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Do you think the economy is improving?

Related stories:

Job growth up, but not for quality jobs

CNBC: Where the jobs are right now

Lingering joblessness taxing nation's food banks

Source: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/02/9164231-employment-growth-picked-up-speed-in-november-jobless-rate-falls-to-86-percent

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Call me...

Into movies? I kinda have to be. Contractually obligated, you see. I'm a film student, with a focus in Screenwriting, so if I'm not absorbing basically everything available to me on Netflix's instant stream, I'm mowing through box sets of television shows. xD

We don't have "finals" at my school, but I have a ton of extensive projects that're due, like, tomorrow and Tuesday since Christmas break is coming up and all. I'm trying to split my time between writing my scripts and posting on here, but that's not going very well, haha.

I saw Pan's Labyrinth when I was very young. My friend and I got it expecting a children's movie in English. As you found out, it is almost exactly, exactly the opposite.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/RolePlayGateway/~3/JGq8FhhY2Tc/viewtopic.php

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Pakistan says US gave wrong info before strike

Pakistani university students protest against the NATO airstrikes on Pakistani troops, outside the U. S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, Dec 2, 2011. U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

Pakistani university students protest against the NATO airstrikes on Pakistani troops, outside the U. S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, Dec 2, 2011. U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

Pakistani university students march towards the U. S. consulate to protest the NATO airstrikes on Pakistani troops, in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, Dec 2, 2011. U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

Pakistani university students march towards the U. S. consulate to protest the NATO airstrikes on Pakistani troops, in Karachi, Pakistan on Friday, Dec 2, 2011. U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad. (AP Photo/Shakil Adil)

(AP) ? U.S. officials gave Pakistan soldiers the wrong location when asking for clearance to attack militants along the border last weekend, Pakistani military officials said Friday. The strike resulted in the deaths of 24 soldiers and a major crisis in relations between Washington and Islamabad.

The claim was the latest in a series by mostly anonymous officials in both countries trying to explain what happened before and during last week's bombing of two Pakistani border checkpoints by U.S. aircraft.

NATO and America have expressed regret for the loss of lives, but have rejected Pakistani allegations it was a deliberate act of aggression.

The incident has pushed already strained ties between Washington and Islamabad close to rupture, complicating American hopes of securing Pakistan's help in negotiating an end to the Afghan war. In retaliation for the raid, Islamabad has already closed its western border to NATO supplies traveling into landlocked Afghanistan.

Thousands of Islamic extremists and other demonstrators took to the streets across the country after Friday prayers to protest the Nov. 26 strike. Some called on the army to attack the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. The chants were a worrying sign for the West because it indicates that anger over the incident is uniting hard-liners and the military.

Pakistan's army, still smarting from the criticism it received after the unilateral U.S. chopper-borne raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2, has ordered border troops to take a more aggressive posture against intruders, said Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.

"Instructions have been issued to all units of the Pakistan armed forces to respond, with full force, to any act of aggression and infringement of Pakistan's territorial frontiers," he said.

U.S. officials have told The Associated Press that Saturday's incident occurred when a joint U.S. and Afghan patrol requested backup after being hit by mortar and small arms fire by Taliban militants.

Before responding, the patrol first checked with the Pakistani army, which reported it had no troops in the area, they said.

U.S. officials say Pakistani troops had "given the go-ahead" for the strikes, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday. This account would suggest that the Pakistanis were at least partly to blame for the deadly error.

A Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information confirmed that the Americans had provided his side with a location for the planned strike.

However, he said, the information arrived late, Pakistan never cleared the strike, and the coordinates provided were incorrect.

"Wrong information about (the) area of operation was provided to Pakistani officials a few minutes before the strike," he said. "Without getting clearance from Pakistan side, the post had already been engaged by U.S. helicopters and fighter jets."

The prime minister said that after the attack, military authorities contacted the border coordination center, where the two sides liaise over operations close to the frontier. The strikes continued, however, and "that relief and reinforcements sent from the nearby Pakistani posts also came under attack," he said.

U.S. officials at the border coordination center later "apologized privately to Pakistani officials for initially providing wrong information and the subsequent engagement of the post without prior information," he said.

The U.S. and NATO have both launched investigations. Washington has not formally apologized, saying it would not be appropriate before an investigation into the incident is complete. The mountainous, poorly defined border has been a regular flashpoint between U.S. and Pakistan, with Washington accusing Pakistani troops of tolerating or supporting militants who operate there and attack inside Afghanistan.

Anti-American demonstrations took place around Pakistan on Friday, including a 2,000-strong rally in the country's commercial hub of Karachi by the Sunni extremist Sipah-e-Sahaba group. The group is banned because of its ties to al-Qaida, but that ban is largely ignored.

Aurangezeb Farooqi, a leader of the group, asked the protesters whether they were ready to join the army to fight Americans. Many raised their fists in response and shouted "God is great!" Some held up placards saying: "There is only one treatment for America: jihad, jihad," meaning holy war.

Washington believes that Islamabad's cooperation is vital to negotiate a truce with Afghan insurgent leaders based on Pakistani soil, so that the U.S. can withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

But Islamabad has its own interests, chiefly in ensuring that whatever regime remains in Kabul after U.S. forces withdraw is friendly to Pakistan, and hostile to India, its long-term regional foe. Consequently, Pakistan appears to be in no rush to take political risks helping the United States.

___

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khan in Karachi, Pakistan and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-12-02-AS-Pakistan/id-23b8b4f10dbb43c0b307eda239b7cfac

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The Engadget Podcast is live tonight at 5PM!

It's that time again! Sure, Tim, Brian and Terrence aren't all in the same city, but at least they're on the same coast for once. They've got a lot of extra calories to burn off after last week's turkey hiatus, so get ready and follow along in the chat after the jump.

Continue reading The Engadget Podcast is live tonight at 5PM!

The Engadget Podcast is live tonight at 5PM! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dickproofing Is The Greatest Consulting Idea Since Firing People [Dickproofing]

The Internet is full of horrible trolls! Like me. Launch some new product, and we'll flock to it in an attempt to make mischief. That's why Mike Monteiro's Dickproofing idea [link kinda nsfw-ish] is pure genius. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/c3ha3nje04g/dickproofing-is-the-greatest-consulting-idea-since-firing-people

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