Bullying study: It does get better for gay teens

CHICAGO (AP) — It really does get better for gay and bisexual teens when it comes to being bullied, although young gay men have it worse than their lesbian peers, according to the first long-term scientific evidence on how the problem changes over time.

The seven-year study involved more than 4,000 teens in England who were questioned yearly through 2010, until they were 19 and 20 years old. At the start, just over half of the 187 gay, lesbian and bisexual teens said they had been bullied; by 2010 that dropped to 9 percent of gay and bisexual boys and 6 percent of lesbian and bisexual girls.

The researchers said the same results likely would be found in the United States.

In both countries, a "sea change" in cultural acceptance of gays and growing intolerance for bullying occurred during the study years, which partly explains the results, said study co-author Ian Rivers, a psychologist and professor of human development at Brunel University in London.

That includes a government mandate in England that schools work to prevent bullying, and changes in the United States permitting same-sex marriage in several states.

In 2010, syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched the "It Gets Better" video project to encourage bullied gay teens. It was prompted by widely publicized suicides of young gays, and includes videos from politicians and celebrities.

"Bullying tends to decline with age regardless of sexual orientation and gender," and the study confirms that, said co-author Joseph Robinson, a researcher and assistant professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. "In absolute terms, this would suggest that yes, it gets better."

The study appears online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Eliza Byard, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, said the results mirror surveys by her anti-bullying advocacy group that show bullying is more common in U.S. middle schools than in high schools.

But the researchers said their results show the situation is more nuanced for young gay men.

In the first years of the study, gay boys and girls were almost twice as likely to be bullied as their straight peers. By the last year, bullying dropped overall and was at about the same level for lesbians and straight girls. But the difference between men got worse by ages 19 and 20, with gay young men almost four times more likely than their straight peers to be bullied.

The mixed results for young gay men may reflect the fact that masculine tendencies in girls and women are more culturally acceptable than femininity in boys and men, Robinson said.

Savage, who was not involved in the study, agreed.

"A lot of the disgust that people feel when you bring up homosexuality ... centers around gay male sexuality," Savage said. "There's more of a comfort level" around gay women, he said.

Kendall Johnson, 21, a junior theater major at the University of Illinois, said he was bullied for being gay in high school, mostly when he brought boyfriends to school dances or football games.

"One year at prom, I had a guy tell us that we were disgusting and he didn't want to see us dancing anymore," Johnson said. A football player and the president of the drama club intervened on his behalf, he recalled.

Johnson hasn't been bullied in college, but he said that's partly because he hangs out with the theater crowd and avoids the fraternity scene. Still, he agreed, that it generally gets better for gays as they mature.

"As you grow older, you become more accepting of yourself," Johnson said.

___

Online:

Pediatrics: http://www.pediatrics.org

It Gets Better: http://www.itgetsbetter.org

___

AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner

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Slaying casts light on Hollywood's transgender prostitutes

The last that Cassidy Vickers' street friends saw of him was about 10 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2011, outside the Donut Time shop on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood.

He was waving and saying he'd be back in a bit.

A transgender prostitute whose legal name was Nathan, Cassidy had come down from the San Francisco Bay Area to work the Hollywood streets.

That night, on Lexington Avenue, 10 blocks from the doughnut shop, Vickers was shot to death by a man on a bike.

Vickers' death was part of a series of crimes by a man police are now calling the Western Bandit for his armed robberies late at night in the vicinity of Western Avenue from Hollywood to South Los Angeles. Detectives believe he has recently resurfaced, committing six more street robberies from June to October, and then two more last month.

"This is a huge concern for us, and for the safety of the public," said Lt. John Radtke of the Los Angeles Police Department. Radtke, supervisor of West Bureau homicide detectives, said a "signature aspect" of the crimes, which he declined to specify, has led investigators to believe the same man has appeared three times to commit crimes.

His victims, Radtke said, range from transgender prostitutes to people coming home from work late at night. Besides Vickers, two other victims have been transgender women, neither of whom was hurt. Detectives don't believe he's specifically targeting transgender prostitutes.

"My feeling is he's out there robbing and desperate to get his money and he takes whoever he encounters," Radtke said.

Still, the case of the Western Bandit casts light on the world of transgender streetwalkers, which has changed radically in recent years, leaving only the most vulnerable on the street at night — people like Nathan "Cassidy" Vickers.

Vickers grew up in a tidy, four-bedroom house in East Palo Alto, a working-class black and Latino town south of San Francisco.

In the years after high school, he came out as a gay man, said his mother, Mitzy Thompson, though "he had some of the 'hood in him," dressing in baggy pants, with braided hair and two fake gold front teeth.

His friends remember a funny, talkative and loyal gay man attempting to find his way in a tough town like East Palo Alto.

He left, eventually living in Las Vegas and, briefly, New York. He then returned to the Bay Area, where he worked for years cleaning rooms in hotels.

Sometime in 2010 he began going to Oakland parties in drag and from there, desperate for cash, working as a prostitute.

Cross-dressing, for Vickers, "was 90% economic; 10% because he liked the attention," said Nelee Webb, a friend and former roommate. Unemployment "took his self-esteem. He felt 'This is my last resort.' "

By early 2011, Vickers was traveling the Hollywood-Bay Area circuit that has for years been followed by many transgender prostitutes.

He remained Nathan in East Palo Alto, but became Cassidy while working Hollywood's transgender prostitute strip: Santa Monica Boulevard.

According to a report by the city attorney's office, Cassidy Vickers was arrested for soliciting prostitution, a month before he died, on nearby Lexington Avenue, which is where many transgender prostitutes hang out.

Several blocks of Lexington, just north of Santa Monica Boulevard and lined with small bungalows and crowded apartments, have been a strip for male hookers dressed as women for at least two decades. The scene reached its zenith in the mid-1990s. But it has declined in the era of Internet sites that match johns with prostitutes.

"It's a street of no return," said Elena Pupo, a Venezuelan transgender woman and advocate for the community.

Vickers had no home, no cosmetic surgery. He was, said a friend who asked not to be identified, a handsome man, "but wasn't really an attractive looking female."

He was the kind of vulnerable night denizen that the Western Bandit appears to target. Working late at night, he slept in bushes on a street between Donut Time and Lexington, or in a booth at the X-Spot adult bookstore in the strip mall behind the doughnut shop, Amber said.

The last time Amber saw Vickers, he seemed happier and more exuberant — the kind of outgoing person that Bay Area friends describe. "She felt good about herself that day," Amber said.

An hour later, Amber said, police cars descended on the Donut Time strip mall. Officers circulated a picture of Vickers asking the streetwalkers who heshe was.

More than a hundred people attended Vickers' funeral in East Palo Alto. Thompson didn't know many of them. She was startled to see a few were men with women's breasts and clothes.

Nevertheless, Thompson dressed her son's body in a man's suit — burgundy, his favorite color. His face, bewhiskered for years, was clean-shaven — the way he kept it as a woman when he died. Thompson said she learned of her son's cross-dressing only after his death, from a Facebook video he'd posted.

For police, Vickers' story is one they've seen all too often.

"It's the age-old Hollywood story," said Brett Goodkin, the Los Angeles police homicide detective called to Lexington that night. "People come to Hollywood … so they can be somebody else. In Nathan's case, he could be himself in Hollywood. That was his Hollywood dream. It ended like so many others."

sam.quinones@latimes.com

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IHT Rendezvous: In Villages, Praying for the Souls of Tibetan Self-Immolators

BEIJING — Since November, when cold winter began in the high Tibetan Plateau, thousands of Tibetan villagers have been gathering daily to pray for the souls of the nearly 100 Tibetans who have burned themselves to death in protest over Chinese rule, in a show of widespread support for the self-immolators among ordinary people, according to witness testimony from a person recently returned from the region.

In traditional winter prayer meetings in villages, they gather to chant “Om mani padme hum,” Tibetan Buddhism’s most important mantra, which speeds a soul toward a good reincarnation, said the person, who witnessed a meeting in the Tibetan region of Qinghai Province in China.

The meetings are a sign of support for the self-immolators and point to widespread dislike among ordinary Tibetans for repressive policies in the region that have turned it into an “open-air prison,” said one ethnic Tibetan police officer in Lhasa, quoted by the witness.

The witness cannot be identified because of the high risk of persecution by the Chinese authorities. But the reliable account of ongoing, severe repression and resentment among Tibetans confirms other reports from the Tibet Autonomous Region or from Tibetan regions in Chinese provinces, where the authorities have been cracking down as they try to stop the spread of the self-immolations.

Chinese courts last week sentenced eight Tibetans for helping self-immolators, The Associated Press reported, including one man to death with a two-year reprieve, and others to between 3 and 12 years in jail, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

The detail and content of the grass-roots prayer meetings is new.

“The meetings are a traditional thing to do during the winter and are held daily in different villages, and last three days,” the witness said. They are known in Chinese as “fahui,” or dharma meetings (also Buddhist law meetings).

“People drive on motorbikes for long distances, 50 or 60 kilometers, to whichever village is holding a prayer meeting. It’s mostly adults, and they are anywhere between 16 and over 80 years old. As soon as they can drive a motorbike, they’ll go,” the person said.

“Around 1,000 people may attend, often going from one meeting to another without returning home.”

“Their aim is for each meeting to have chanted ‘Om mani padme hum’ 100 million times. There’s no question that they regard the self-immolators as very great, and believe that with the help of their prayers, they will come back as powerful and blessed people,” said the person, who confessed to having reservations about the self-immolations.

Yet, “It’s extremely moving. Because if the self-immolations really were a mistake, how could they get so much support and sympathy form ordinary people?”

As my colleague Jim Yardley reports from India, where many Tibetans live in exile, some there are questioning the self-immolations.

The witness confirmed that, saying: “There is a feeling among some Tibetans,” especially monks or those in the religious hierarchy, “that the Dalai Lama needs to say something to stop it.”

Yet Tibetans who are deeply unhappy with Chinese rule are constrained in how they can protest.

“The problem is that Tibetans are Buddhists. The way things are there now, in other places, people might rise up and set off bombs. But they can’t do that because Buddhists believe you shouldn’t destroy other people’s happiness. So the only way they can protest is by killing themselves,” the person said.

And so the grass-roots support goes on.

The testimony from this person also confirmed reports of a very harsh crackdown under way in Lhasa, seat of the Jokhang, Tibet’s holiest temple, and the Potala Palace, the former home of the Dalai Lama, whom Tibetans revere and who has lived in exile since fleeing the Chinese in 1959.

The crackdown, in response to the self-immolations that began not long after an uprising in Lhasa was crushed in 2008, has turned Tibet into “an open-air prison,” said an ethnic Tibetan police officer. Like some other ethnic Tibetan police officers, he was considering resigning his post, he said.

“Lhasa used to be a sacred place for Buddhism. Now it’s a sacred place for Marxism-Leninism,” he said. “Every day there are meetings where leaders both big and small tell you that maintaining stability,” or “weiwen,” in Chinese, “is the most important thing, what the main tasks in Lhasa are. Lhasa is no longer a Buddhist sacred place,” he said.

“Lhasa is stuffed with police, every 10 paces there are several. I am growing to hate my own work. It’s really not possible to keep doing it. Some have already resigned,” he told the witness.

The crackdown includes forbidding ethnic Tibetans from the outlying regions, like Qinghai or Sichuan Provinces, which lie outside Tibet proper, from traveling to Tibet and is strictly enforced at airports and other transport nodes. Ethnic Han Chinese, however, can pass, effectively making Tibet out of bounds for many Tibetans.

Any Tibetan from outside the region wishing to travel to Lhasa must have a “sponsor” in the city working for the government, the witness said. They must surrender their identity cards and be photographed. Uniformed and plainclothes police officers and military patrol heavily in the city, trying to stop self-immolations.

The ban on ethnic Tibetans from outside Tibet, many of whom have traditionally taken pilgrimages to Lhasa, means that hotels and other businesses in the city have suffered since last May when they were ordered shut to such travelers. A petition is currently circulating from hotel owners asking the government to compensate them financially, “or we will take our request higher.” For reasons of political sensitivity, the petition, which has been seen by this newspaper, cannot be discussed in detail.

It is also extremely difficult for ordinary ethnic Tibetans to get a passport, meaning they cannot travel overseas, the witness said. The person believes the government’s motive is to minimize accounts, like this one, of the harsh repression in the region.

“They don’t want Tibetans leaving the country and telling the world what’s happening there. Hundreds of people leaving and telling the world is very different from one or two,” the person said.

With the Lunar New Year approaching, the prayer meetings will soon be scaled back, as farm work and animal husbandry resume. For now, though, the villagers are praying hard for the souls of the dead, millions of mantras circulating in the thin air of the plateau.

“They say, we want their lives to come back. We want world peace. They pray for Tibet to have peaceful and happy days, and the world, too,” the person said.

Said the police officer: “Living in this tightly controlled atmosphere is unbearable. There’s no feeling of happiness. But maybe it’s good this way, it may speed up the day when the situation has to change. But I don’t have the courage to self-immolate. Maybe after I retire I’ll go to Beijing and petition.”

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Here comes the PlayStation 4: Sony announces February 20th PlayStation event [video]

Here are the ps4 specs I found. I don’t know why they didn’t post them in the article. you can easily find them by searching ps4 specs.
PS4/Orbis (Speculated)
PS4 XrossMediaBar + Gaikai cloud service Redesigned to be more user-friendly and fluid
CPU: 4x Dual-Core AMD64 “Bulldozer”
2.5 inch SATA HDD (160 GB) hard drive (in Developer Console, not likely for the retail version)
8GB DDR5 RAM (speed unknown), VRAM {listed below in GPU}
AMD R10xx with 2.2GB of VRAM
2 x 512 KB (1024 KB)
480p, 576p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p
8x Blu-ray BD-ROM (54-128GB of data) at 36MB/s
Blu-ray 8x, DVD, Compact Disc, Download
Compatable with all past PS3 PlayStation Network Purchases (likely)
4x USB 3.0, 2x Ethernet;
Audio Output: HDMI & Optical, 2.0, 5.1 & 7.1 channels
PS Network (Free) + PlayStation Network Plus (paid service) + Gaikai cloud service
N/A
$ 499-$ 1000 USD

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Busy Philipps Feels No Pressure to Bounce Back After Baby

David Livingston/Getty

Busy Philipps may be willing to dish out style advice to fellow expectant mamas — but she’s not about to start breaking out the postpartum weight loss lectures.

Currently pregnant with her second child, the Cougar Town star admits that while her celebrity status opens her up for public scrutiny, she’s not planning a big bounceback after baby.

“Like most things in this business, I think that you have to do what’s right for you and you can’t be too concerned about what some magazine is going to write about you,” Philipps, 33, tells HuffPost Celebrity.

“We’re in a business where a lot of people are blessed with pretty incredible bodies, that they work hard for or comes naturally, and not everybody has the same body.”

According to Philipps, staying healthy is priority during pregnancy and women “should be given a break” when it comes to packing on the extra pounds — especially by those dubious doctors!

“It’s interesting when people make comments about celebrities’ weight gain or lack of weight gain as if they’re a medical professional that’s treating that celebrity,” she notes. “Like, ‘This doctor does not treat Jessica Simpson, but thinks her weight is unhealthy.’ If you don’t treat her, then how do you know?”

After the arrival of daughter Birdie Leigh, now 4, the actress took her time regaining her post-baby bod — a journey, she says, lasted almost a year — preferring to instead instill a positive attitude (and approach) in her little girl.

“I wanted to be healthy for her and have a healthy body image so that she hopefully grows up to see that her self worth isn’t defined by how thin she is,” Philipps explains.

“Thrilled to be expecting another baby with husband Marc Silverstein, Philipps wasn’t sure if expanding their tight-knit trio was even in the cards for the couple. No one, however, was more ecstatic over the news than the big sister-to-be, whose wish is finally coming true.

“My daughter is very excited … it’s actually something that she has asked for for quite some time,” she says. “My husband and I were on the fence about whether or not we were going to add to our family, but now that we’re on our road, we’re really excited.”

– Anya Leon

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New rules aim to get rid of junk foods in schools

WASHINGTON (AP) — Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools.

For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful.

Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.

The rules, required under a child nutrition law passed by Congress in 2010, are part of the government's effort to combat childhood obesity. While many schools already have improved their lunch menus and vending machine choices, others still are selling high-fat, high-calorie foods.

Under the proposal, the Agriculture Department would set fat, calorie, sugar and sodium limits on almost all foods sold in schools. Current standards already regulate the nutritional content of school breakfasts and lunches that are subsidized by the federal government, but most lunchrooms also have "a la carte" lines that sell other foods. Food sold through vending machines and in other ways outside the lunchroom has never before been federally regulated.

"Parents and teachers work hard to instill healthy eating habits in our kids, and these efforts should be supported when kids walk through the schoolhouse door," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

Most snacks sold in school would have to have less than 200 calories. Elementary and middle schools could sell only water, low-fat milk or 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice. High schools could sell some sports drinks, diet sodas and iced teas, but the calories would be limited. Drinks would be limited to 12-ounce portions in middle schools and to 8-ounce portions in elementary schools.

The standards will cover vending machines, the "a la carte" lunch lines, snack bars and any other foods regularly sold around school. They would not apply to in-school fundraisers or bake sales, though states have the power to regulate them. The new guidelines also would not apply to after-school concessions at school games or theater events, goodies brought from home for classroom celebrations, or anything students bring for their own personal consumption.

The new rules are the latest in a long list of changes designed to make foods served in schools more healthful and accessible. Nutritional guidelines for the subsidized lunches were revised last year and put in place last fall. The 2010 child nutrition law also provided more money for schools to serve free and reduced-cost lunches and required more meals to be served to hungry kids.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has been working for two decades to take junk foods out of schools. He calls the availability of unhealthful foods around campus a "loophole" that undermines the taxpayer money that helps pay for the healthier subsidized lunches.

"USDA's proposed nutrition standards are a critical step in closing that loophole and in ensuring that our schools are places that nurture not just the minds of American children but their bodies as well," Harkin said.

Last year's rules faced criticism from some conservatives, including some Republicans in Congress, who said the government shouldn't be telling kids what to eat. Mindful of that backlash, the Agriculture Department exempted in-school fundraisers from federal regulation and proposed different options for some parts of the rule, including the calorie limits for drinks in high schools, which would be limited to either 60 calories or 75 calories in a 12-ounce portion.

The department also has shown a willingness to work with schools to resolve complaints that some new requirements are hard to meet. Last year, for example, the government relaxed some limits on meats and grains in subsidized lunches after school nutritionists said they weren't working.

Schools, the food industry, interest groups and other critics or supporters of the new proposal will have 60 days to comment and suggest changes. A final rule could be in place as soon as the 2014 school year.

Margo Wootan, a nutrition lobbyist for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said surveys by her organization show that most parents want changes in the lunchroom.

"Parents aren't going to have to worry that kids are using their lunch money to buy candy bars and a Gatorade instead of a healthy school lunch," she said.

The food industry has been onboard with many of the changes, and several companies worked with Congress on the child nutrition law two years ago. Major beverage companies have already agreed to take the most caloric sodas out of schools. But those same companies, including Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, also sell many of the non-soda options, like sports drinks, and have lobbied to keep them in vending machines.

A spokeswoman for the American Beverage Association, which represents the soda companies, says they already have greatly reduced the number of calories that kids are consuming at school by pulling out the high-calorie sodas.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Performing well at this decathlon is the smart thing to do

A triumphal march blared and the crowd roared Saturday afternoon as hundreds of competitors filed into the massive gymnasium at the Roybal Learning Center.

The high school students were pumped — some teams danced a little to get warmed up, and at least one team had their school mascot there to root them on — and they were prepared, having spent months training for this moment.

Some of the students carried themselves with the intensity of gladiators stepping into the ring. The challenge before them was a purely intellectual one, but it was still daunting: The last leg of Los Angeles Unified's regional Academic Decathlon was about to begin.

They'd taken tests on mathematics, music, arts and science. They'd been interviewed by judges and had to give a speech. And now it was time for the Super Quiz, a high-pressure, multiple-choice relay that is the 10-subject competition's only public event. (This year's theme: Russia.)

The students — from 58 high schools in the district — faced questions about Peter the Great's influence on art and architecture, the significance of Sputnik and the hurdles Russia faced after the fall of communism. And they had to answer them as family and friends — and their rivals — looked on.

Marshall and Granada Hills Charter high schools, typical powerhouses, were the top performers in the Super Quiz, according to a preliminary tally. The final results for the entire competition will be announced Friday.

"It's daunting," said Evae Silva, an English teacher who coaches Verdugo Hills' decathlon team, "the amount of material they cover and the hours they put in. You have to expect a lot of out of them."

Silva, who previously coached athletics, said putting together a decathlon team — which consists of nine students, with a mix of A, B and C grade-point averages — isn't all that different from recruiting for track and field. Talent and intelligence matter, but what matters more? "Commitment, enthusiasm and the willingness to put in the work," he said.

When he coached cross country and track and field, he said, "I had to coach them to be faster than I am. Now I have to teach them to be smarter than I am. I have to prepare them to perform."

Decathletes are a special breed of high schooler. Not all students want to hand over their free time, especially the seniors, to study things for which they won't get a grade.

Dylan Bladen, a senior at Los Angeles High School, said that when his coach first tried to recruit him, he gave him a few pages of study material for the art portion of the competition. Bladen balked. "Oh, no! I'm not doing this," he recalled thinking.

Months later, it's a different story. "I was complaining about three pages," Bladen said. But the workload had probably gotten up to "thousands of pages and probably thousands of hours too!"

They say they do it because they thrive on having to confront something more difficult than the rest of their schoolwork. "Normal school is mundane and annoying to me, and this provided a challenge," said Maxwell Lederer, 17, a senior at Venice High School. A Soviet flag, with the hammer and sickle, was draped over his shoulders.

Camaraderie is forged among teammates as the season progresses. They have their inside jokes and pick on one another like siblings. But they depend on one another too, especially for motivation. "At one point, I was doing it more for them," Bladen said, pointing to his team.

For some schools, their preparation consisted of hours of late nights after school and weekend practices. It's exhausting, said Oriel Gomez, a South East High School senior. But it pays off come competition time, facing test after test.

"You realize you have the answer," he said, "and you have no doubt about it."

rick.rojas@latimes.com

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Taliban Assault in Pakistan Results in Deaths of 35 People

Taliban militants killed at least nine soldiers and four paramilitary troops in an attack on a Pakistani army base in northwestern Pakistan early Saturday, officials said. Ten civilians, including three women and three children who were living in a nearby compound, were also killed.

The brazen assault took place in the restive Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province and comes just a day after a suicide bombing near a mosque in another northwestern town, Hangu, killed at least 26 people.

A spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility and said it was to avenge the death of two Taliban commanders who were killed in U.S drone strikes.

According to initial details, Taliban militants, armed with heavy machine guns, fired rockets in the pre-dawn assault at the base in Serai Norang in the Lakki Marwat district, setting off a heavy gun battle that lasted for several hours.

A Pakistani army official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 12 militants were killed in the assault.

“Bodies of four terrorists, out of which two were wearing suicide jackets, are in custody of security forces,” the official said.

Eighteen security forces officials were wounded in the attack and were sent for treatment to a military hospital in Peshawar, the provincial capital.

During the attack, one of the suicide bombers entered a house near the camp and detonated his explosives, killing the women and children, the official said.

Pakistani officials described the base as “an isolated camp,” and one of the three bases set up two years ago to wrest Lakki Marwat from the control of Taliban militants.

The ferocity of the attack, which appeared well planned and coordinated, took security officials by surprise, and they speculated that the attackers came from neighboring lawless semi-autonomous tribal regions, where the government has traditionally had little sway.

“We are trying to piece evidence,” a security official said.

Ihsanullah Ihsan, the Taliban spokesman, who said in a telephone interview the attack was in retaliation to the killing of two Taliban commanders, identified one of the commanders as Wali Muhammad, also known as Toofani Mehsud. He was killed in an American drone strike on Jan. 6 in the tribal region of South Waziristan, and was known as a trainer of suicide bombers.

The country’s lawless tribal regions have been a safe haven for local and foreign militants and as a result have been a frequent target of American drone strikes, which are deeply unpopular in the country. Pakistan’s parliament has repeatedly demanded an end to drone strikes, although Pakistani officials privately acknowledge the effectiveness of the such attacks in killing militants.

Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud contributed reporting from Islamabad.

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BlackBerry doesn’t need to catch up with Android and iOS overnight, it needs to live to fight another day

The biggest criticism of BlackBerry’s (RIMM) revamped mobile operating system and smartphone line so far is that they don’t give iOS or Android users any compelling reasons to switch brands. And this is certainly true — BlackBerry 10, for all its virtues, doesn’t do anything significantly better than the top two mobile operating systems and seems designed mostly to please the faithful and not win new converts. At the same time, I think this sort of criticism is based on somewhat unrealistic expectations for what a revamped BlackBerry would be able to achieve in its first iteration. Put simply, making its own loyal fans happy might have been the best that BlackBerry could do in this particular product cycle.

[More from BGR: GS: Ignore the chatter, BlackBerry rebound is coming]

Before we go further with this line of thinking, we should remind ourselves of the truly dire state that BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins found the company in when he took it over just over a year ago.

[More from BGR: Here comes the PlayStation 4: Sony announces February 20th PlayStation event [video]]

Longtime customers were fleeing BlackBerry for iOS and Android after BlackBerry repeatedly shot itself in the foot by releasing devices that featured outdated hardware (the first-generation BlackBerry Torch) or that lacked some of the core capabilities that BlackBerry customers had come to expect (the BlackBerry PlayBook and its lack of native corporate email without a “bridge” connection). The company also got caught completely flat-footed by the rise of mobile apps as a vital component of the global smartphone ecosystem and typically wouldn’t get big-name apps on its platform for more than a year after they’d been out on iOS and Android, if at all.

Let’s also recall that when Heins announced last summer that BlackBerry 10 would be delayed until the first quarter of 2013, many of us wondered if the new operating system would ever be released or if the company would simply collapse under the weight of competitive pressures. That Heins has been able to not only get BlackBerry 10 launched but also get more than 100 carriers on board with the new platform is a pretty impressive feat. Add in that Heins has been able to score commitments from some important apps such as Skype, WhatsApp and Amazon Kindle, and you begin to appreciate just how far BlackBerry has come from almost going over the brink.

Of course, none of this is even close to being enough to make BlackBerry a force in the mobile industry anytime soon. But if ardent BlackBerry fans buy up the new BlackBerry 10 handsets and if the company maintains its corporate clients, it may be enough to let the company live to fight another day.

Benedict Evans, a strategy consultant for Enders Analysis, has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimates BlackBerry could sell as many as 20 million BlackBerry 10 smartphones in 2013, although he admits this number could be overly optimistic by as much as 50%. But even if BlackBerry sells just 15 million BB10 phones this year, that could be enough to give the company some breathing room while it works to recruit more app developers and generally improve its new operating system’s functionality.

This is not to say that BlackBerry has an easy road from here — the odds are still very much against it. But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, no one should have expected BlackBerry to return to its former glory overnight. As much as BlackBerry fans would love to see their favorite devices rise up and crush iOS and Android, that sort of comeback was never in the cards. The best BlackBerry can hope is that they’ve stopped the bleeding and can continue building from here.

This article was originally published on BGR.com

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Jenna Miscavige Hill Pens Revealing Scientology Book

02/01/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Jenna Miscavige and her uncle David inset

Michael Murphree; Inset: Polaris

What was it like to grow up inside Sea Org, the Church of Scientology's most elite body?

In her memoir Beyond Belief, excerpted exclusively below, Jenna Miscavige Hill describes her experiences at the Ranch, a San Jacinto, Calif., boarding school for children of Scientology execs. The niece of church head David Miscavige, she was raised away from her parents, then worked within Sea Org until leaving Scientology in 2005.

Now living near San Diego, married to Dallas Hill and mom to their children Archie, 3, and Winnie, 10 months, she's telling her story, she says, to increase awareness about Scientology: "I realize every day how lucky I am to have gotten out." (When asked to comment on the book's portrayal of its members, the church stated they had not read the book but that "any allegations of neglect are blatantly false.")

Jenna's parents, Ron and Blythe Miscavige, high-ranking members of Sea Org, sent both Jenna and her older brother Justin to the Ranch. There, at age 7, in accordance with Scientologists' belief that they are "Thetans," or immortal spirits, Jenna signed a billion-year contract.

I tried to write my name in my best cursive, the way I'd been learning. I had goose bumps. Just like that, I committed my soul to a billion years of servitude to the Church of Scientology.

Sea Org was run like the Navy: Members wore uniforms and managed all aspects of the church. Married members couldn't have kids; those who already did sent them to be raised communally.

A Sea Org member was required to be on duty for at least 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with a break for an hour of 'family time.' I was too young to understand that seeing your parents only one hour a day was highly unusual.

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