Morales mum on Cuba trip after Chavez surgery

 Bolivian President Evo Morales made a lightning trip this weekend to Havana where ally Hugo Chavez is convalescing after cancer surgery, but was mostly silent Monday on the details of his trip or even whether he met with the ailing Venezuelan leader.
The secrecy surrounding his visit was sure to add to the uncertainty surrounding Chavez's condition, despite reassurances Monday from Venezuelan officials that the president was slowly improving.
The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard from since his Dec. 11 surgery. Venezuelan officials have given few specifics about his condition and have offered no information about his long-term prognosis.
Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster who heads the Venezuelan firm Datanalisis, said the government's daily but vague updates on the president's health seem designed to calm anxious Chavez supporters rather than keep the country fully informed. For government opponents, however, he said the updates likely raise more questions than they answer.
"It's more for the Chavez movement than the country in general," Leon said. "There's nothing that one can verify, and the credibility is almost nil."
Morales did not speak to the foreign media while in Havana. Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details.
At an event in southern Bolivia on Monday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba, even though aides had told reporters that he might say something about Chavez's recovery. Later, Morales' communications minister did not respond directly to a question about whether the two South American presidents had met face-to-face, saying only that he "was with the people he wanted to be with" and had no plans to return to Cuba.
"The report that President Morales has given us is that Chavez is in a process of recovery after the terrible operation he underwent," Amanda Davila told The Associated Press.
Morales is the second Latin American leader to visit since Chavez announced two weeks ago that he would have the operation. Rafael Correa of Ecuador came calling the day of the surgery. Uruguay's Jose Mujica has expressed interest in making the trek.
The visits underscore Chavez's importance to regional allies as a prominent voice of the Latin American left, as well as how seriously they are taking his latest bout with cancer.
Chavez underwent his fourth cancer-related operation of the last year-and-a-half on Dec. 11, two months after winning reelection to a six-year term. Venezuelan officials say Chavez is stable and his recovery is progressing, though he was treated for a respiratory infection apparently due to the surgery.
If Chavez is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back his vice president and hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, in that event.
In Caracas, Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement Monday saying that Chavez is showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend," is keeping up with events back home and sends Christmas greetings to Venezuelans.
Maduro and several Cabinet ministers attended a Christmas Eve Mass in Caracas to pray for the president. Maduro again assured Venezuelans that the president was recovering, though he and other officials continued to strongly suggest that Chavez would not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But Attorney General Cilia Flores insisted the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.
"Those who are counting on that date, hoping to thwart the Revolution and the will of the people, will end up frustrated once again," Flores said. "What we have is a president who has been re-elected, he will take over, will be sworn in on that day, another day, that is a formality."
Jaqueline Farias, the head of government for the Caracas area, told the AP outside the church that "we are very happy because each hour the 'commandante' is showing signs that he is overcoming this phase of the operation, his fourth operation."
When asked if the president was breathing on his own, she said she didn't know and walked off, refusing to answer more questions.
Dozens of Chavez supporters gathered outside the church, some carrying posters of the president or wearing red T-shirts decorated with a photograph of just Chavez's eyes. Some women rushed to the church after seeing footage of the Mass on state television and yelled at security guards to let them inside.
"Chavez is going to be mad, if he sees this," said Andres Sanchez, an unemployed Chavez supporter watching a woman shouting at a guard that she wanted to pray for Chavez, too. "He told the ministers to talk to the people."
"Venezuela without Chavez is like a ship without a rudder," Sanchez said, his voice wobbling. "I pray to God that he recovers because he is a man who loves the people, the children, the elderly and everyone a little bit.

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VP says he spoke with Chavez, who is up, walking

 Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said late Monday night that he had spoken by telephone with President Hugo Chavez and that the leader is up and walking following cancer surgery in Cuba.
It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed speaking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation. Venezuelan officials have given few specifics on Chavez's condition, and have yet to offer information on his long-term prognosis.
Maduro told state television station Venezolana de Television that the Christmas Eve conversation lasted about 20 minutes. He said the president was walking and doing some recovery exercises. He added that Chavez had given him guidance on budgetary matters for 2013.
"He was in a good mood," Maduro said. "He was walking, he was exercising."
"He wants to send a hug from the comandante to all the girls and boys in the country who will soon be receiving a visit from baby Jesus," he added. Venezuelan tradition has it that baby Jesus delivers gifts to children on Christmas, along with Santa Claus.
Maduro's surprise announcement came after Chavez's ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that had added to the uncertainty surrounding the Venezuelan leader's condition.
Morales was largely silent Monday on the details of his trip or even whether he met with the ailing Venezuelan leader.
Morales did not speak to the foreign media while in Havana. Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details.
At an event in southern Bolivia on Monday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba, even though aides had told reporters that he might say something about Chavez's recovery. Later, Morales' communications minister did not respond directly to a question about whether the two South American presidents had met face-to-face, saying only that he "was with the people he wanted to be with" and had no plans to return to Cuba.
"The report that President Morales has given us is that Chavez is in a process of recovery after the terrible operation he underwent," Amanda Davila told The Associated Press.
Morales was the second Latin American leader to visit since Chavez announced two weeks ago that he would have the operation. Rafael Correa of Ecuador came calling the day of the surgery.
The visits underscore Chavez's importance to regional allies as a prominent voice of the Latin American left, as well as how seriously they are taking his latest bout with cancer.
Chavez underwent his fourth cancer-related operation of the last year-and-a-half on Dec. 11, two months after winning re-election to a six-year term. He was treated for a respiratory infection apparently due to the surgery.
If Chavez is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.
Earlier Monday, Venezuelan Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying that Chavez is showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend."
Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster who heads the Venezuelan firm Datanalisis, said that the government's daily but vague updates on the president's health seem designed to calm anxious Chavez supporters rather than keep the country fully informed. For government opponents, however, he said the updates likely raise more questions than they answer.
"It's more for the Chavez movement than the country in general," Leon said. "There's nothing that one can verify, and the credibility is almost nil."
Maduro and several Cabinet ministers attended a Christmas Eve Mass in Caracas on Monday afternoon to pray for the president.
The vice president and other officials continued to strongly suggest that Chavez would not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But Attorney General Cilia Flores insisted the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.
"Those who are counting on that date, hoping to thwart the Revolution and the will of the people, will end up frustrated once again," Flores said. "What we have is a president who has been re-elected, he will take over, will be sworn in on that day, another day, that is a formality.

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Mexico bishop inspires, infuriates with activism

 The white-haired bishop stepped before some 7,000 faithful gathered in a baseball stadium in this violence-plagued northern border state. He led the gathering through the rituals of his Mass, reciting prayers echoed back by the massive crowd. And then his voice rose.
Politicians are tied to organized crime, Bishop Raul Vera bellowed while inaugurating the church's Year of Faith. Lawmakers' attempts to curb money laundering are intentionally weak. New labor reforms are a way to enslave Mexican workers.
How, Vera asked, can Mexicans follow leaders "who are the ones who have let organized crime grow, who have let criminals do what they do unpunished, because there's no justice in this country!"
In a nation where some clergy have been cowed into silence by drug cartels and official power, Vera is clearly unafraid to speak. That makes him an important voice of dissent in a country where the Roman Catholic Church often works hand-in-hand with the powerful, and where cynicism about politics is widespread and corrosive.
Vera's realm is a wide swath of Coahuila, a state bordering Texas that's become a hideout for the brutal Zetas drug cartel. It's where the current governor's nephew was killed in October and the former governor, the victim's father, resigned last year as leader of the political party that just returned to power with newly inaugurated President Enrique Pena Nieto.
Marked by his unvarnished speech, the Saltillo bishop's voice carries beyond his diocese here, especially when he weighs in on hot issues such as drug violence, vulnerable immigrants and gay rights.
In late 2007, Mexico City's Human Rights Commission denounced death threats against Vera and a burglary of the diocese's human rights offices. The following year, after Coahuila became the first Mexican state to allow civil unions for gay couples, a move the bishop endorsed, Vera was invited to speak at a U.S.-based conference for a Catholic gay and lesbian organization. In 2010, he was awarded a human rights prize in Norway.
Anonymous critics have hung banners outside the cathedral asking for what they called a real Catholic bishop. And last year, the 67-year-old was summoned to the Vatican to explain a church outreach program to gay youth.
Natalia Niño, president of Familias Mundi in Saltillo, told the Catholic News Agency last year that Vera had placed too much focus on supporting the gay community.
"A pastoral commitment to homosexual persons is necessary and welcomed, but not at the expense of the family and a solid pastoral plan for marriage and family, which is unfortunately being neglected in the diocese," she said.
Vera, who has had government bodyguards before, said he was foregoing similar security despite the criticism and threats. Such measures were rare and frowned upon in Saltillo, he said.
"I'm not the only one exposed, there are lots of people exposed who work with immigrants, with the missing," Vera said. "How do I cover myself? Them?"
Mexico's Bishops Conference did not respond to repeated requests for an interview about Vera. The church's hierarchy in Mexico did issue a statement in 2010 congratulating Vera on his human rights prize, and last year, the church condemned anonymous threats against him.
Vera's office often lends more weight to his words, especially when he speaks up about human rights, said Emiliano Ruiz Parra, a Mexican journalist and author of a new book that portrays Vera and other "black sheep" of the church in Mexico.
"Among the defenders of human rights he is the one who hedges the least, he says things the way they are," Parra said before Pena Nieto's Dec. 1 inauguration. "He's not afraid, for example, to take on the president, the one who's leaving or the president-elect."
Vera's homily on an October Sunday in Monclova included a lengthy diatribe about an alleged vote-buying scheme involving grocery store gift cards critics say were distributed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI. Citing press reports, the bishop told the crowd organized crime paid for the scheme and helped Peña Nieto's victory. He also labeled as "collaborators" anyone who took a gift card in exchange for their vote.
"What we're seeing now is nothing other than the reaccommodation of the criminal groups with the new government teams," Vera said later as he raced back to Saltillo for another Mass. "The criminal groups always have their agreements with those who are in the state governments, in the federal government."
An industrial hub on the high desert about an hour west of Monterrey, Saltillo had long been known as a quiet haven in Mexico, distinguished by its auto manufacturing and a modern museum exhaustively detailing the surrounding terrain.
In recent years, however, the area has fallen victim to the drug violence plaguing other parts of Mexico. In 2011, 729 murders hit the state, compared to 449 the year before and 107 in 2006, according to preliminary figures released by the government this summer. Four bodies were found hanging from a Saltillo overpass earlier this month.
Until the nephew of Gov. Ruben Moreira was killed in early October, the political class had showed little concern for violence, Vera said.
"Fear of the conditions that Mexico is going through with the insecurity, with so much violence, makes us silent, and Don Raul is a strong voice who says what the rest of us are too scared to say," said Maria Luz Lopez Morales, a Vera friend and self-professed atheist who runs literacy programs for women in rural areas outside Monclova.
Vera arrived in Saltillo in 2000, after serving as the co-bishop in a deeply divided diocese in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where Zapatista rebels were battling government troops. He came with a reputation as a social crusader.
"Ever since I arrived here, as I came from Chiapas and I wasn't a person who was going to support the government, since this moment they decided that my image needed to be restrained," Vera said. He pointed to critical coverage from a local television network where a host once displayed Vera's picture surrounded by flames of eternal damnation. Vera said he believed the host was paid to do the government's bidding.
In February 2006, Vera celebrated Mass at the Pasta de Conchos coal mine where 65 miners had perished and spent days with their families hammering the mine's owners, government officials and union leaders for dangerous working conditions.
Five months later, he traveled to Castanos, a small town near Monclova, where soldiers had been arrested in connection to the sexual assaults of more than a dozen prostitutes. He and his longtime collaborator Jackie Campbell started their own investigation, leading the diocese's human rights office to successfully push to try some of the soldiers in civilian courts, where several were sentenced.
Mysterious cars followed Vera and Campbell during that time. Campbell's home phone line was cut and Vera was threatened. Campbell eventually moved to Argentina for three years to escape the harassment and to pursue graduate studies.
Vera has also demanded investigations into the thousands of migrants who have gone missing while passing through the state and clamored for a DNA database to identify bodies. In an email, the Rev. Pedro Pantoja, who oversees the diocese's migrant programs, said he's enjoyed total support from Vera and called his commitment to social causes "prophetic."
What's drawn perhaps the most controversy has been Vera's stand on gay rights, which even called Rome's attention. In 2001, the Rev. Robert Coogan, an American priest in Saltillo ordained by Vera, suggested starting an outreach program to gay youth, after a teenager came to him when his parents threw him out of the house. Vera lent his support to the program, called Comunidad San Elredo, and later escaped reprimand when called to the Vatican to explain it.
"It flows out of his conviction: The church is for everyone," Coogan said.
Parishioner Julia Castillo, of Saltillo, said Vera wasn't just making headlines with his bold stands. He was also inspiring Mexicans at a time when many are feeling besieged.
"He talks about all of the injustice there is right now, of all the danger there is, that we have to stick together to fight against the corruption, above all in the government and the police," Castillo said. "We like the way he is.

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VP says Chavez up, walking; doubts persist

 Vice President Nicolas Maduro surprised Venezuelans with a Christmas Eve announcement that President Hugo Chavez is up and walking two weeks after cancer surgery in Cuba, but the news did little to ease uncertainty surrounding the leader's condition.
Sounding giddy, Maduro told state television Venezolana de Television that he had spoken by phone with Chavez for 20 minutes Monday night. It was the first time a top Venezuelan government official had confirmed talking personally with Chavez since the Dec. 11 operation, his fourth cancer surgery since 2011.
"He was in a good mood," Maduro said. "He was walking, he was exercising."
Chavez supporters reacted with relief, but the statement inspired more questions, given the sparse information the Venezuelan government has provided so far about the president's cancer. Chavez has kept secret various details about his illness, including the precise location of the tumors and the type of cancer. His long-term prognosis remains a mystery.
Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University's Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, said it was an encouraging sign that Chavez was walking, and it indicated he would be able to return to Venezuela relatively soon. But he said the long term outlook remained poor.
"It's definitely good news. It means that he is on the road to recover fully from the surgery," Pishvaian said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "The overall prognosis is still pretty poor. He likely has a terminal diagnosis with his cancer that has come back."
Pishvaian and other outside doctors have said that given the details Chavez has provided about his cancer, it is most likely a soft-tissue sarcoma.
Chavez first underwent surgery for an unspecified type of pelvic cancer in Cuba in June 2011 and went back this month after tests had found a return of malignant cells in the same area where tumors were previously removed.
Venezuelan officials said that, following the six-hour surgery two weeks ago, Chavez suffered internal bleeding that was stanched and a respiratory infection that was being treated.
Maduro's announcement came just hours after Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a statement saying Chavez was showing "a slight improvement with a progressive trend."
Dr. Carlos Castro, director of the Colombian League against Cancer, an association that promotes cancer prevention, treatment and education, said Maduro's announcement was too vague to paint a clear picture of Chavez's condition.
"It's possible (that he is walking) because everything is possible," Castro told AP. "They probably had him sit in up in bed and take two steps."
"It's unclear what they mean by exercise. Was it four little steps?" he added. "I think he is still in critical condition."
Maduro's near-midnight announcement came just as Venezuelan families were gathering for traditional late Christmas Eve dinners and setting off the usual deafening fireworks that accompany the festivities. There was still little outward reaction on a quiet Christmas morning.
Danny Moreno, a software technician watching her 2-year-old son try out his new tricycle, was among the few people at a Caracas plaza who said she had heard Maduro's announcement. She said she saw a government Twitter message saying an announcement was coming and her mother rushed to turn on the TV.
"We all said, thank God, he's okay," she said, smiling.
Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said if Chavez is talking, it suggests he is breathing on his own despite the respiratory infection and is not in intensive care. But Medrano said he remained skeptical about Maduro's comments and could deduce little from them about Chavez's prognosis for recovery.
"I have no idea because if it was such a serious, urgent, important operation, and that was 14 days ago, I don't think he could be walking and exercising after a surgery like that," Medrano said.
Over the weekend, Chavez's ally, Bolivian President Evo Morales, made a lightning visit to Cuba that only added to the uncertainty.
Journalists had been summoned to cover his arrival and departure in Havana, but hours later that invitation was canceled. No explanation was given, though it could have been due to confusion over Morales' itinerary as he apparently arrived later than initially scheduled.
Cuban state media published photos of President Raul Castro receiving Morales at the airport and said he came "to express his support" for Chavez, his close ally, but did not give further details. He left Sunday without making any public comments.
For the second day in a row Tuesday, Morales made no mention of his trip to Cuba during public events in Bolivia.
Yet more questions surround Chavez's political future, with the surgery coming two months after he won re-election to a six-year term.
If he is unable to continue in office, the Venezuelan Constitution calls for new elections to be held. Chavez has asked his followers to back Maduro, his hand-picked successor, in that event.
Venezuelan officials have said Chavez might not return in time for his Jan. 10 inauguration.
Opposition leaders have argued that the constitution does not allow the president's swearing-in to be postponed, and say new elections should be called if Chavez is unable to take the oath on time.
But government officials have said the constitution lets the Supreme Court administer the oath of office at any time if the National Assembly is unable to do it Jan. 10 as scheduled.

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Cuba has much to lose as ally Chavez fights cancer

Cubans who were tuned in to the nightly soap opera on a recent Saturday received a sudden burst of bad news, from the other side of the Caribbean.
State TV cut to the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez revealed that his cancer had returned. Facing his fourth related surgery in 18 months, he grimly named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his possible successor.
The news shocked not only Venezuelans but millions of Cubans who have come to depend on Chavez's largesse for everything from subsidized oil to cheap loans. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba's energy needs, meaning the island's economy would be in for a huge shock and likely recession if a post-Chavez president forced the island to pay full price for oil.
Despite the drama, the news likely wasn't a surprise to Cuba's Communist government, and not only because Chavez has been receiving medical care on the island.
Havana learned important lessons about overdependence when the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union threw the country into a deep crisis. Trying to avoid the consequences of a similar cut, the Cuban government has been diversifying its portfolio of economic partners in recent years, looking to Asia, Europe and other Latin American nations, and is only about half as dependent on Caracas as it was on the former Soviet Union.
Cuba is also working to stimulate its economy back home by allowing more private-sector activity, giving a leg up to independent and cooperative farming, and decentralizing its sugar industry. A stronger Cuban economy would in theory have more hard currency to pay for energy and other imports.
Also getting off the ground is an experiment with independent nonfarm collectives that should be more efficient than state-run companies. And next year, another pilot program is planned for decentralized state enterprises that will enjoy near-autonomy and be allowed to control most of their income.
"This could have good results," said a Cuban economist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the foreign media. Cuba "is also thinking of boosting foreign investment in areas of the national economy, including in restricted areas like the sugar industry."
One of the country's top goals has been to make the island's struggling economy less dependent on a single benefactor.
Under the leadership of Chavez, who regularly calls former Cuban President Fidel Castro his ideological father and has followed parts of the Communist leader's governance playbook, Venezuela has sent billions of dollars a year to Cuba through trade and petro-aid.
Bilateral trade stood at a little over $8 billion last year, much of it in Cuban imports of oil and derivatives. In return, Havana primarily provides Venezuela with technical support from Cuban teachers, scientists and other professionals, plus brigades of health care workers. Analysts say those services are overvalued by outside standards, apparently costing as much as $200,000 per year per doctor. Experts peg the total Venezuelan subsidy to Cuba at around $2 billion to $4 billion a year.
While business with Venezuela makes up 40 percent of all Cuban trade, it's still a far cry from the days when the Communist Eastern Bloc accounted for an estimated 80 percent.
"A (loss of) $2 billion to $4 billion would definitely pinch. But it is not the same relative weight as the sudden complete withdrawal of the Soviet subsidies in the early '90s," said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego. "Cuba's not going to go back to the days of bicycles. Could it throw the Cuban economy into recession? Yes."
That kind of resilience would result largely from Cuba's successes in courting foreign investors for joint ventures.
Last month, authorities announced a deal with a subsidiary of Brazil's Odebrecht to manage a sugar refinery, a rare step in an industry that has long been largely off limits to foreign involvement.
China has invested in land-based oil projects, and along with Canada is a key player in Cuba's important nickel industry. Spain has ventures in tourist hotels and tobacco, while French company Pernod Ricard helps export Cuban liquors. And since 2009, Brazil has been a partner in a massive project to modernize and expand the port at Mariel, west of the capital.
Trade with China alone was $1.9 billion and rising in 2010, and Raul Castro paid a visit to Chinese and Vietnamese leaders earlier this year to help cement Asian relationships.
But while Havana says it wants to boost foreign investment, obstacles remain. The approval process for investment projects can be long and cumbersome, and pilferage, disincentives to productivity and government intervention can cut into efficiencies. Foreign companies also pay a sky-high payroll tax.
Feinberg, who wrote a report on foreign investment in Cuba published this month by the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution, said that while a number of foreign companies are successfully doing business with the island, others have run into problems, sending a chilly message to would-be investors. In particular he noted the recent cases of a government takeover of a food company run by a Chilean businessman accused of corruption, and contentious renegotiations of a contract with Dutch-British personal and home care products giant Unilever amid shifting government demands.
"The Cuban government has to decide that it wants foreign investment unambiguously. I think now there seem to be divisions among the leadership," Feinberg said. "Some are afraid that foreign investment compromises sovereignty, creates centers of power independent of the leadership or is exploitative."
He estimated Cuba has left on the table about $20 billion in missed investment over the past decade by not following practices typical of other developing nations. Instead, Cuba received $3.5 billion in foreign investment in that period.
Experts say a worst-case scenario for Chavez wouldn't automatically translate into the oil spigot shutting off overnight.
If Chavez's hand-picked successor, Vice President Maduro, were to take office, he would likely seek to continue the special relationship.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said he wants to end the oil-for-services barter arrangements, but could find that easier said than done should he win. The two countries are intertwined in dozens of joint accords, and poor Venezuelans who benefit from free care by Cuban doctors would be loath to see that disappear.
"You can't flip the switch on a relationship like this," said Melissa Lockhart Fortner, a Cuba analyst at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Los Angeles-based institute that focuses on global affairs. "It would be terrible politics for him. ... Switching that off would really endanger his support far too much for that to be really a feasible option."
For Cuba, Chavez's latest health scare capped off a year of disappointments in the island's attempt to wean itself from Venezuelan energy.
Three deep-water exploratory oil wells drilled off the west coast failed to yield a strike, and last month the only oil rig in the world capable of drilling there without violating U.S. sanctions sailed away with no return in sight.
Yet time and again Havana has shown that it's nothing if not resilient, weathering everything from U.S.-backed invasion and assassination plots in the 1960s to the austere "Special Period" in the early 1990s, when the Soviet collapse sent Cuba's GDP plummeting 33 percent over four years. When hurricanes damaged the country's agriculture sector and the global financial crisis squeezed tourism four years ago, Cuba tightened its belt, slashed imports and survived.
"Some people are saying the demise of Chavez is also going to be the demise of Communism in Cuba because the regime's going to collapse and the people are going to rise up," Feinberg said. "That's probably yet another delusion of the anti-Castro exile community."
Still, many Cubans are nervously tuning into the near-daily updates about Chavez's health, carried prominently in state media.
"I don't know what would happen here," said 52-year-old Havana resident Magaly Ruiz. "We might end up eating grass."

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Existing home sales rise to fastest pace in three years

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Home resales rose sharply in November to their fastest pace in three years, a sign the recovery in the housing market is gaining steam.
The National Association of Realtors said on Thursday that existing home sales climbed 5.9 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.04 million units.
That was the fastest since November 2009, when a federal tax credit for home buyers was due to expire. Sales were well above the median forecast of a 4.87 million-unit rate in a Reuters poll.
The U.S. housing market tanked on the eve of the 2007-09 recession and has yet to fully recover, but steady job creation has helped the housing sector this year, when it is expected to add to economic growth for the first time since 2005.
NAR economist Lawrence Yun said superstorm Sandy, which slammed in the U.S. East Coast in late October and disrupted the regional economy for weeks, had only a slight negative impact on home resales.
The NAR expects some purchases delayed by the storm to add a slight boost to resales over the next few months, Yun said.
Nationwide, the median price for a home resale was $180,600 in November, up 10.1 percent from a year earlier as fewer people sold their homes under distressed conditions compared to the same period in 2011. Distressed sales include foreclosures.
The nation's inventory of existing homes for sale fell 3.8 percent during the month to 2.03 million, the lowest level since December 2001.
At the current pace of sales, inventories would be exhausted in 4.8 months, the lowest rate since September 2005.
Distressed sales fell to 22 percent of total sales from 29 percent a year ago.
The share of distressed sales, which also include those where the sales price was below the amount owed on the home, was also down from 24 percent in October.

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New York City should hike taxes on big business-comptroller

New York City's top financial officer and possible contender for mayor in 2013, John Liu, proposed on Thursday tax hikes for big businesses and an end to Madison Square Garden's $15 million annual property tax exemption.
The proposals by New York City Comptroller John Liu include tax hikes on private equity firms, which would help offset his plan for $500 million in tax breaks and lowered fines for 90 percent of the city's small businesses.
Liu is expected to vie for the Democratic mayoral nomination for the election in November 2013.
The city could end tax breaks for big companies - more than $250 million of which were handed out last year, Liu said.
The city could also eliminate its $15 million annual property tax exemption for Madison Square Garden, the indoor arena in midtown Manhattan that's home to the New York Knicks basketball team. Madison Square Garden has been exempt from paying taxes on real property since 1982 under New York state law.
The arena is owned by The Madison Square Garden Co, which also owns the Knicks and other professional sports teams. The company also owns Radio City Music Hall, the Beacon Theatre and others venues, as well as television networks.
Liu also proposed examining tax breaks for special interests. Insurance companies, for instance, have not paid the general corporation tax since 1974, at a cost of $300 million annually to the city, he said.
Private equity firms could also start paying the unincorporated business tax for carried interest or gains from assets being held for investment. The exemption costs New York City about $200 million a year, Liu said.
Liu's package would use the revenue generated by those measures to offset his plan to ease the tax burden for small businesses.
He proposed ending the city's general corporation tax for all businesses with liabilities under $5,000 -- about 240,000 business in the city, or 85 percent of those that currently pay the tax.
His plan would also reduce some fines, as well as exempt businesses that make less than $250,000 in annual income from the city's unincorporated business tax.
The proposals would have to be approved by the governor and state legislature after a request by the city council.
The city is facing a possible $2.7 billion gap in fiscal 2014 that could grow to $3.8 billion the following year, Liu said.

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Republicans push own "fiscal cliff" plan; talks frozen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the Congress pushed ahead on Thursday with a "fiscal cliff" plan that stands no chance of becoming law as time runs short to reach a deal with President Barack Obama to avert a Washington-induced economic recession.
House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner's "Plan B" to limit income-tax increases to the wealthiest sliver of the population appeared likely to pass the House on Thursday evening after it narrowly cleared a procedural hurdle in the afternoon.
However, Obama has vowed to veto the plan, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he will not bring it up for a vote in the Democratic-controlled chamber. White House spokesman Jay Carney called it a "multi-day exercise in futility."
Still, passage of Plan B could give Boehner the political cover he needs to strike a deal that would break with decades of Republican anti-tax orthodoxy.
"Time's running short. I'm going to do everything I can to protect as many Americans from an increase in taxes as I can," Boehner told a news conference.
Though it does not raise taxes on as many affluent Americans as Obama wants, the bill would put Republicans on record as supporting a tax increase on those who earn more than $1 million per year - a position the party opposed only weeks ago.
That could make it easier eventually to split the difference with Obama, who wants to lower the threshold to households that earn more than $400,000 annually. Obama also faces resistance on his left flank from liberals who oppose cuts to popular benefit programs, which Republicans say must be part of any deal.
Obama and Boehner will need to engage in more political theater to get lawmakers in both parties to sign on to the painful concessions that will have to be part of any deal to avert the cliff and rein in the national debt, analysts say.
"They are now in the mode where they have to demonstrate how hard they're trying to get everything they can," said Joe Minarik, a former Democratic budget official now with the Committee For Economic Development, a centrist think tank.
Even as he pressured Obama and the Democratic Senate to approve his plan, Boehner indicated that he was not willing to walk away from the bargaining table.
"The country faces challenges, and the president and I, in our respective roles, have a responsibility to work together to get them a result," Boehner said.
TIME RUNNING OUT
Obama and Boehner aim to reach a deal before the end of the year, when taxes will automatically rise for nearly all Americans and the government will have to scale back spending on domestic and military programs. The $600 billion hit to the economy could push the U.S. economy into recession, economists say.
Investors so far have assumed the two sides will reach a deal, but concerns over the fiscal cliff have weighed on markets in recent weeks. The S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks was up 0.4 percent in Thursday trading, despite a round of strong data on economic growth and housing.
"The closer we get to the end of the year without a deal, the more optimism is going to evaporate," said Todd Schoenberger, managing partner at LandColt Capital in New York.
Shares crept up after Boehner said he was prepared to work with Obama to prevent the fiscal cliff from kicking in.
Lawmakers are eager to wrap up their work and return home for the Christmas holiday, but congressional leaders kept the door open for last-minute action.
The Senate was expected to leave town on Thursday or Friday, but Reid said it could return next week to vote on any deal.
Boehner indicated the House would stay in session after Thursday's vote, scheduled for 7:45 p.m. EST (0045 GMT on Friday).
Several influential conservative groups have condemned Plan B, and some Republicans are expected to vote against it. But passage appeared likely after the House narrowly voted by 219 to 197 to bring the bill to the floor for debate.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an influential business group that has often tangled with the Obama administration, offered grudging support.
"We are not comfortable allowing tax increases on anyone in this environment. However, we understand that, at times, politics requires compromise," the Chamber's top lobbyist, Bruce Josten, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.
To placate conservatives, Boehner also scheduled a vote on legislation that would shift $55 billion in scheduled defense cuts to cuts in food and health benefits for the poor and other domestic programs.
That measure also would roll back some of the Dodd-Frank financial regulation reforms of 2010. It is not expected to become law.

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Canada's seven-month budget gap narrows to C$10.6 billion

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's federal budget deficit narrowed in the first seven months of the fiscal year to C$10.57 billion ($10.68 billion) from C$13.90 billion in the same period last year as personal and corporate income tax revenues rose and debt charges were lower.
The monthly shortfall in October was C$1.68 billion, compared with a gap of C$2.13 billion a year earlier, the Department of Finance said in a report on Friday.
The Conservative government in October pushed back by one year, to 2016-17, the date it expects to eliminate the deficit. Most economists believe that if the economy continues to grow, the books could be balanced sooner.
Ottawa has estimated a 2012-13 deficit of C$26 billion, including a C$1 billion cushion for risk.
In the April-October period, revenues increased by 3.6 percent, or C$4.9 billion, from the same period in 2011, pushed up by personal income tax and corporate income tax. Program expenses rose by 2 percent, or C$2.7 billion, on increases in elderly benefits and direct program expenses.
Public debt charges decreased 6.1 percent, or C$1.1 billion, on a lower effective interest rate.

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Bill Howe Family of Companies Named Finalist in Better Business Bureau Torch Awards for Marketplace Ethics for Second Year in a Row

Esteemed San Diego plumber, Bill Howe, and his wife Tina Howe, proudly accept recognition of their continued efforts towards ethical marketplace practices

San Diego, CA (PRWEB) December 18, 2012
For the second consecutive year, the Bill Howe Family of Companies has been named a finalist of the Better Business Bureau’s Torch Award for Marketplace Ethics. The award winners were announced during an award ceremony on December 4, 2012 at the Town & Country Resort in Mission Valley in San Diego. Plumber and businessman Bill Howe and his wife, Tina Howe, accepted the award for 2nd place finalist in the “100-249 employees” category.
In its 15th year, the BBB Torch Awards honor companies that have made a commitment to ethical excellence, integrity and support of the San Diego marketplace, despite any adversities. To be considered for the award, companies must compile a nomination that outlines and proves their commitment to ethics in categories including management practices, community and stakeholder relations, communications and marketing practices, and industry reputation. A panel of judges reviews the submissions and grades each category on a scale of 1-10. While many of the businesses that are nominated for the award are in the San Diego heating and air conditioning or plumbing business, the award is open to businesses in any industry.
“We are here to honor companies that epitomize ethics and integrity, and present them with a coveted Torch Award. But today’s gathering is about much more than that,” said Sheryl Bilbrey, San Diego BBB President and CEO, during the ceremony’s opening remarks. “Today, we honor one another for our steadfast commitment to doing the right thing for consumers in a time when so many others struggle to remain accountable.”
The Bill Howe Family of Companies started with Bill Howe Plumbing, Inc. in 1980 and now offers services in San Diego heating and air conditioning, as well as restoration and flood services. Since its inception, the company upholds their philosophy that to be successful they focus on ensuring the happiness of their employees, their customers and their community. Recently, the Bill Howe Family of Companies proved their philosophy has been a success when they moved to an office more than twice the size of the previous office, to accommodate their growing workforce.
“The Torch Award nomination process has been an incredibly rewarding experience as we looked at every aspect of our company and put all of our efforts on paper,” said Tina Howe, Vice President of the Bill Howe Family of Companies. “When you are doing business, it is not always easy to know the most ethical decision to make; sometimes it means more money, or sometimes it means we need to seek outside counsel. Whatever it takes, we strive to build our company on honest and ethical practices.

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"Fiscal cliff" creates waiting game for payrolls firms

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - At payroll processing businesses across the United States, the "fiscal cliff" stalemate in Washington means uncertainty over tax-withholding tables just days before the start of 2013.
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service still has not issued the tables for next year that show how much money employers should hold back from workers' paychecks to cover federal income taxes.
Payroll processors need the tables to get their systems geared up for the new year. The tables are set by many factors, including tax rates and annual inflation adjustments.
In anticipation of late-breaking developments, Rochester, New York-based Paychex Inc will be serving Buffalo chicken wings for staffers working late on New Year's Eve, said Frank Fiorille, an executive at the payroll processing giant.
"Our systems are flexible enough that we can wait almost up until the last minute and still make changes," he said.
The IRS appreciates of the impact of Congress' inaction.
"Since Congress is still considering changes to the tax law, we continue to closely monitor the situation," IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said in a statement. "We intend to issue guidance by the end of the year on appropriate withholding for 2013."
Tax rates are slated to rise sharply for most Americans if Congress and President Barack Obama fail to reach an agreement that averts the "fiscal cliff" approaching at year-end.
"The political process will determine one way or the other what" the IRS must do, said Scott Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a business-oriented tax research group.
For now, he said, from the tax-collection agency's viewpoint, "doing nothing is probably the best course." This would be because withholding tables distributed now might only have to be revised if Congress acts in the next few days.
Some payroll servicers are not waiting for formal IRS guidance. The American Payroll Association, which represents about 23,000 payroll professionals, told members on Friday to rely on 2012 withholding tables until the IRS releases the new forms for 2013.
The association said its decision was based on a statement earlier this month from an IRS official.
The agency would not confirm that policy on Friday.
Tax preparer H&R Block Inc said it will use 2012 tax-withholding tables if the 2013 tables are not issued.
Executives said they were frustrated with the uncertainty in Washington, but were doing their best to cope.
"We are not doctors or surgeons and this is not life threatening," said Rob Basso with Advantaged Payroll Services, an Auburn, Maine-based payroll processor that serves 30,000 businesses. "It is annoying and disruptive to people's lives, but we will get through it."

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Vatican says pope beats Justin Bieber on re-tweets

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, white-haired, 85, and a neophyte to social media site Twitter, has beaten out 18-year old heartthrob Justin Bieber to set a percentage record for re-tweeting by his followers, the Vatican said on Thursday. The Vatican newspaper said that as of noon Italian time on Thursday the pope had 2.1 million followers on Twitter, eight days after his first tweet was sent. While Canadian singer-songwriter Bieber has roughly 15 times as many followers - 31.7 million - the Vatican newspaper said Benedict had beaten Bieber on re-tweets. It said about 50 percent of the pope's followers had re-tweeted his first tweet on December 12 while only 0.7 percent of Bieber's followers had re-tweeted one of the singer's most popular tweets on September 26, when he commented on the death by cancer of a six-year-old fan. The Vatican said this was part of a wider trend in which people were looking for more spiritual content. The pope already tweets in English, German, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic. The newspaper said he will start tweeting in Latin and Chinese soon.

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Saudi website editor could face death for apostasy-rights group

The editor of a Saudi Arabian website could be sentenced to death after a judge cited him for apostasy and moved his case to a higher court, the monitoring group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday. Raif Badawi, who started the Free Saudi Liberals website to discuss the role of religion in Saudi Arabia, was arrested in June, Human Rights Watch said. Badawi had initially been charged with the less serious offence of insulting Islam through electronic channels, but at a December 17 hearing a judge referred him to a more senior court and recommended he be tried for apostasy, the monitoring group said. Apostasy, the act of changing religious affiliation, carries an automatic death sentence in Saudi Arabia, along with crimes including blasphemy. Badawi's website included articles that were critical of senior religious figures, the monitoring group said. A spokesman for Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry was not available to comment. The world's top oil exporter follows the strict Wahhabi school of Islam and applies Islamic law, or sharia. Judges base their decisions on their own interpretation of religious law rather than on a written legal code or on precedent. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's ruler, has pushed for reforms to the legal system, including improved training for judges and the introduction of precedent to standardize verdicts and make courts more transparent.

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Sri Lanka arrests 100 Chinese for cyber fraud, police say

Sri Lanka on Saturday arrested at least 100 Chinese nationals accused of an internet fraud scheme targeting people in their home country, a police spokesman said. The accused, all in Sri Lanka on tourist visas, are suspected of hacking into computers in China and then demanding their owners transfer them money, police spokesman Prishantha Jayakodi told Reuters. Chinese police requested help from Sri Lanka, he said. Officials at the Chinese embassy in Colombo were not available for comment. China has been the top lender to Sri Lanka since the end of a 25-year war in May 2009 and thousands of Chinese are working in the country on Chinese-funded infrastructure projects.

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British retailers start online sales early

British retailers have brought forward their Christmas clearance sales online in the hope that shoppers will log on to buy bargains and offset lackluster spending in stores. Marks & Spencer launched its sale online at midday on Monday, it said on its website, while department store John Lewis said it would cut online prices when its stores close at 1700 GMT. Debenhams has already started its online sale. Retailers in recent years have started sales online on Christmas Day, ahead of the clearances in stores from Boxing Day, but are increasingly launching their online offers before Christmas after delivery deadlines for the day have passed. Hard-pressed shoppers have been leaving it later to buy presents in the hope that retailers would slash prices, the British Retail Consortium said. It was forecasting that 5 billion pounds ($8.1 billion) would be spent in the shops on Saturday and Sunday combined, the last weekend before Christmas. Richard Dodd, the BRC's head of Media and Campaigns, said weekend trading had met expectations. "Christmas, ultimately once all the final sums are done, will turn out to be acceptable but not exceptional," he said. He said the sector expected a modest increase in cash spending against a year go, but not necessarily any significant increase in real terms once inflation was stripped out. Many British families' budgets are stretched, according to a survey from Markit that showed the biggest deterioration in household finances for seven months. Analyst Howard Archer at IHS Global Insight said the weakening in household finances could not come at a worse time for retailers, and it highlighted why many people appeared to have been careful in their Christmas shopping this year. "The suspicion has to be that consumers will be especially keen to take advantage of genuine major bargains in the sales to acquire items that they cannot otherwise afford or are reluctant to make at the moment," he said. "However, we suspect that people will likely to be more careful in buying - or reluctant to buy - items that they don't really want or need in the sales."

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China may require real name registration for internet access

China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity. A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said. "The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people's interest," Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in a front page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week. "Only that way can our internet be healthier, more cultured and safer." Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous - and perhaps most significantly, anonymous - online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate. It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users. It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers. Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp's wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names. The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules. "It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989," wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army. Chinese internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked. Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.

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Wii U finally gets Nintendo’s TVii service on December 20th

After a month-long delay, Nintendo (NTDOY) will launch its Nintendo TVii service for the Wii U on December 20th in the U.S. and Canada. Nintendo TVii is the company’s take on organizing all of the various video streaming and DVR services a user might subscribe to and then displaying them in an easy-to-navigate touchscreen-based interface on the Wii U GamePad. With Nintendo TVii, Nintendo hopes to make content discovery an easier task, rather than a chore. At the same time, Nintendo TVii will offer new “second-screen” experiences (similar to Xbox SmartGlass) with built-in social sharing options to Facebook (FB), Twitter and the Wii U console’s Miiverse. [More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]] [More from BGR: LG’s woeful comeback attempt] Nintendo TVii will support Amazon (AMZN) Instant Video, Hulu Plus and cable and satellite providers on Thursday, but Netflix (NFLX) and TiVo (TIVO) support won’t hit the U.S. until “early 2013.” Nintendo didn’t state when TVii support for the latter two will hit Canada. For the consumer’s sake, we hope the download for Nintendo TVii doesn’t take as long as past system updates. Nintendo’s press release follows below. Nintendo Makes TV Smart and Social – Nintendo TVii Launches Dec. 20 New Wii U Service Gives Every Member of the Family His or Her Own Personalized, Easy-to-Use Second-Screen Viewing Experience REDMOND, Wash.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The company that changed how we play is about to change how we watch. On Dec. 20, Nintendo will introduce Nintendo TVii, a free, integrated service for the recently launched Wii U console that combines what you watch and how you watch into one seamless, second-screen experience on the revolutionary new Wii U GamePad controller. The rapid increase in both the quality and availability of video entertainment content – hundreds of satellite and cable channels, a seemingly endless amount of video-on-demand options – has made finding something to watch a complex and occasionally frustrating process. The solution to this problem is coming from perhaps an unexpected place: a video game console. “After Dec. 20, you’ll never look at your TV the same way again,” said Nintendo of America President and COO Reggie Fils-Aime. “Wii U owners have already experienced the transformative effect that the GamePad has on game play and social interaction. Nintendo TVii shows how the integrated second screen of the GamePad can also transform and enhance the TV viewing experience. Welcome to the new world of TVii.” Nintendo TVii maximizes Wii U owners’ current cable, satellite and video-on-demand services by pulling all of their available content sources – such as a Comcast cable package or Hulu Plus subscription – into one place. This empowers Wii U owners to focus on whatthey want to watch and not how they want to watch. And once users find the show, sporting event or movie they want, they press an icon and Nintendo TVii does the rest. In addition to greatly simplifying finding and watching video content, Nintendo TVii also includes a series of social features that enable Wii U owners to share experiences and exciting moments with friends as they are happening on live TV. People can engage with others by commenting and sharing on Miiverse, Facebook and Twitter. Or they can comment, post or tweet about an incredible touchdown, a remarkable performance or a shocking plot twist, all using the personal screen of the Wii U GamePad. Nintendo TVii requires no additional equipment and can be enjoyed with very little setup, demonstrating what’s possible when the second screen is truly integrated with the TV. Wii U owners can also discover more information about what they’re watching by easily accessing information on the GamePad via an Internet connection, including cast details, movie reviews from Rotten Tomatoes and sports data such as live stats and scores. Nintendo TVii launches in the United States and Canada on Dec. 20. At launch, the service will support cable and satellite providers in both regions, as well as direct integration with Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus subscriptions in the United States. Further integration with Netflix subscriptions and TiVo are expected in early 2013 in the United States. Wii U owners with a Netflix subscription can still access the Netflix application from the Wii U system’s main menu and enjoy their favorite content accordingly. All elements of the Nintendo TVii service are included in the purchase price of the Wii U system. Users will define which services they currently subscribe to – including the channel lineup in their cable package and video-on-demand service subscriptions – as part of the setup process.

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Shooting renews argument over video-game violence

WASHINGTON (AP) -- In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits cited include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the "culture of violence" — the entertainment industry's embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games. "The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent," Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said. "There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge — they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games," said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July. White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, "But shouldn't we also quit marketing murder as a game?" And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, "Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!" There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody "Call of Duty" series to the innocuous "Dance Dance Revolution." But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza's age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven't made any connection between Lanza's possible motives and his interest in games. The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday's attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians' criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, "I'd simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link." It's unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors. The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games "are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature." Scalia also agreed with the ESA's argument that researchers haven't established a link between media violence and real-life violence. "Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively," Scalia wrote. Still, that doesn't make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year's E3 — the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry's largest U.S. gathering — some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony's "The Last of Us" ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft's "Splinter Cell: Blacklist" showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix's "Hitman: Absolution" showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns. "The ultraviolence has to stop," designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. "I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it's in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble." "The violence of these games can be off-putting," Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. "The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There's this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like 'Journey,' a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn't sell as much." During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters "Call of Duty: Black Ops II," from Activision, and "Halo 4," from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, "There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people." Critic John Peter Grant said, "I've also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se." The problem, Grant said, "is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential." There are some hints of a growing self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer — Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation — has called for other players to join in a "Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters" this Friday, one week after the massacre. "We are simply making a statement," Pearman said, "that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost."

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Nintendo’s amazing triumph in Japan may doom the company

Nintendo’s amazing triumph in Japan may doom the company According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16. Sony’s PS Vita limped along at 13’000 units. The new Wii U did an OK 130,000 units and PS3 managed 46,000 units. The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient “Animal Crossing” series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. “Inazuma Eleven” sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140’000 units its DS version managed in 2011. [More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm] Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition. [More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]] 3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the US market topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The US November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a Nineties time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc. Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like Call of Duty series are doing better than ever. In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of Eighties and early Nineties. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on US and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track. The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to rethink its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again. This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. 20 years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. Ithe idiosyncratic nature of Japan may now be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.

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Nintendo’s amazing triumph in Japan may doom the company internationally

According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo (NTDOY) 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16, while Sony’s (SNE) PS Vita limped along at 13,000 units, the new Wii U did an okay 130,000 units and the PlayStation 3 managed to sell 46,000 units. The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient Animal Crossing series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. Inazuma Eleven sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140,000 units its DS version managed in 2011. [More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm] Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a Godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition. [More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]] 3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the United States topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The U.S. November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a ’90s time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc. Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like the Call of Duty series are doing better than ever. In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of ’80s and early ’90s. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on U.S. and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track. The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to reconsider its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again. This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. Twenty years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. And now the idiosyncratic nature of Japan may be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.

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North Korean Video Game Has Western Ties

Video games represent a true luxury for most North Koreans living in a country where even the elite have only hours of electricity each day. That has not stopped a Western company in the capital city of Pyonyang from creating what may be the first North Korean game widely available online. The game, called "Pyongyang Racer," is a simple Web browser game that allows players to drive a car around North Korea's capitol city of Pyongyang, according to Beijing Cream. Players must avoid hitting cars and collect gasoline in the form of petrol barrels to keep their run going as long as possible — all while getting warnings from one of Pyongyang's famously picturesque traffic girls. "Pyongyang Racer" has an unusual development history as a video game. The North Korean programmers who made the game work for Nosotek, a Western company that describes itself as the "first western IT venture" in North Korea. Nosotek's North Korean programmers previously made mobile-phone games based on the Hollywood films "The Big Lebowski" and "Men in Black." Those games ended up getting published through a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp (owner of Fox News), according to Bloomberg News. Nosotek claims to have "attracted the cream of local talent as the only company in Pyongyang offering Western working conditions and Internet access." That would likely be true in North Korea, given the nuclear-armed country's pariah status among Western countries and businesses. The Nosotek website also praises the advantages of working in North Korea because "IP secrecy and minimum employee churn rate are structurally guaranteed." Translation: North Korean programmers would likely never leave Nosotek with the company's intellectual property secrets because they have practically no other employment options. Nosotek built the game for Koryo Tours, a company based in Beijing, China, to distribute "Pyongyang Racer" through the Koryo Tours website. Koryo Tours is currently the leading company that runs tours of secretive North Korea for Westerners and other foreigners. "This game was developed in 2012 and is not intended to be a high-end technological wonder hit game of the 21st century, but more a fun race game (arcade style) where you drive around in Pyongyang and learn more about the sites and get a glimpse of Pyongyang," Koryo Tours said on the game's website.

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NBA: Kings suspend top scorer Cousins indefinitely

(Reuters) - The Sacramento Kings have suspended leading scorer and rebounder DeMarcus Cousins indefinitely for "unprofessional behavior and conduct detrimental to the team", the Kings said on Saturday. The suspension, his third this season, came after Cousins exchanged words with Kings coach Keith Smart during halftime of Friday's loss to the Los Angeles Clippers. The center did not play in the second half after being left in the locker by Smart. Cousins, who is averaging 16.6 points and 9.5 rebounds, lashed out at Smart after the coach said something to him, the Sacramento Bee reported. Cousins later apologized for his actions. "I shouldn't have responded back," he told reporters. "Should have accepted what was said and stayed quiet." Cousins twice has been suspended by the National Basketball Association this year. He was suspended for two games in November for confronting a San Antonio Spurs announcer and was benched one game by the league earlier this month after striking the Dallas Mavericks' O.J. Mayo in the groin.

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AP Source: D-backs, Ross agree to 3-year contract

PHOENIX (AP) — Outfielder Cody Ross has agreed to a three-year contract with the Arizona Diamondbacks, a person with knowledge of the negotiations said Saturday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the deal had not been announced. Ross, who turns 32 Sunday, adds to the abundance of outfielders on the Arizona roster, leading to speculation a trade may be ahead. He .267 with 22 home runs and 81 RBIs last season with the Boston Red Sox. He's a career .267 hitter in nine big league seasons. The addition gives the Diamondbacks four veteran outfielders — Ross, Justin Upton, Gerardo Parra and Jason Kubel — along with two youngsters the organization has deemed ready for the majors — Adam Eaton and A.J. Pollock. That would indicate a trade could be in the works with Kubel the center of that speculation. In his one season with Arizona, the left-handed slugger hit .253 with 30 home runs and 90 RBIs. He was hitting .300 on July 22 but batted .176 with 19 RBIs the rest of the season. Ross, who throws left-handed and bats right-handed, was a fourth-round draft pick of Detroit out of Carlsbad, N.M., High School in 1999. He had brief major league stints with the Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati before becoming a full-time big leaguer with the Florida Marlins. Ross was claimed by San Francisco off waivers in August 2010 and was MVP of that year's NL championship series, when he hit .350 with three home runs in five RBIs against Philadelphia. He also homered against Texas in the World Series. He committed one error in each of the last two seasons.

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OF Cody Ross and Diamondbacks agree to 3-year deal

PHOENIX (AP) — Cody Ross and the Arizona Diamondbacks agreed to a three-year contract Saturday with a club option for 2016. Ross, who turns 32 on Sunday and lives in nearby Scottsdale, adds to the abundance of outfielders on the Arizona roster, leading to speculation a trade might be coming. Ross batted .267 with 22 home runs and 81 RBIs last season for the Boston Red Sox. He's a career .267 hitter in nine big league seasons with six teams. "Could not be happier to be in the Dbacks family! Truly Blessed!" Ross posted on his Twitter account. The addition gives the Diamondbacks four veteran outfielders — Ross, Justin Upton, Gerardo Parra and Jason Kubel — along with two youngsters the organization has deemed ready for the majors: Adam Eaton and A.J. Pollock. That would indicate a trade could be in the works, with Kubel the center of that speculation. In his first season with Arizona last year, the left-handed slugger hit .253 with 30 home runs and 90 RBIs. He was hitting .300 on July 22 but batted .176 with 19 RBIs the rest of the season. Ross, who throws left-handed and bats right-handed, was a fourth-round draft pick of Detroit out of Carlsbad, N.M., High School in 1999. He had brief major league stints with the Tigers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Cincinnati before becoming a full-time big leaguer with the Florida Marlins. Ross was claimed by San Francisco off waivers in August 2010 and was MVP of that year's NL championship series, hitting .350 with three home runs and five RBIs against Philadelphia. He also homered against Texas in the World Series and batted .294 (15 for 51) with five homers, five doubles and 10 RBIs in 15 postseason games for the champion Giants. He committed one error in each of the last two seasons. The Diamondbacks also announced that infielder Gustavo Nunez cleared waivers and was returned to Detroit, opening a spot for Ross on the 40-man roster. Nunez was claimed off waivers from Pittsburgh in October after the Pirates selected him from the Tigers in the 2011 Rule 5 draft.

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Boise State wins Vegas Bowl, beating Washington

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The last two times Boise State played in the Las Vegas Bowl, there were other places the Broncos wanted to be. Not so on Saturday, when the smallest player on the team came up big in a 28-26 victory over Washington. After two straight blowouts in the Las Vegas Bowl, the Broncos had to work hard for a win sealed by a 27-yard field goal by 5-foot-5 Michael Frisina with 1:16 left. It left them feeling good about a game and a season when, unlike the last two years, there was hardly any talk about Boise State being in a BCS game. "The most satisfying thing about this season was each week you'd see us get just a little bit better," Boise State coach Chris Petersen said. "These guys, they don't go through the motions. They have a chip on their shoulder." The win capped another strong year for the No. 20 Broncos (11-2), who had to overcome a 205-yard rushing game by Bishop Sankey against their normally stingy defense. Sankey also had 74 yards receiving, giving him 279 of Washington's 447 yards from scrimmage. But it was Frisina who came up with the biggest game of his career in his final game. He kicked three field goals, including the first game winner he could ever recall booting. "It's every kicker's dream to win a big game with a field goal," Frisina said. "For this one to come on the last game of my career, you couldn't ask for anything more.' Washington (7-6) had taken the lead for the first time on a 38-yard field goal by Travis Coons with 4:09 left when No. 20 Boise State got a big kickoff return by freshman Shane Williams-Rhodes to the Washington 42. Joe Southwick guided the team to the 12 before Frisina hit the winning kick. "I was just focused on what I had to do," Frisina said. "I'm there as the insurance guy, I guess you'd say." Boise State sealed the win when Jeremy Ioane intercepted Keith Price's pass as the Huskies neared midfield. "To their credit they found a way to win the game in the end," said Washington coach Steve Sarkisian. "Our inability to finish is pretty blaring." Sankey, who was third on the depth list when fall practice began, rushed 30 times and caught six passes in the biggest game of his career. He scored one touchdown and was the MVP of the game, despite being on the losing side. "There's a lot of mixed emotions going on," Sankey said. "The MVP doesn't mean so much when you come out a loser." Frisina was only 12 for 17 on field goals coming into the game, but kicked three of them, including a 34-yarder to open the scoring that was his first field goal over 30 yards for the year. Southwick, meanwhile, had another efficient game, completing 26 of 38 passes for 264 yards and two touchdowns for a Boise State team that struggled offensively through much of the season before improving over its last three games. "All year I knew I could play at this level," he said. "It's just a lot of work, a lot of moving parts to put the puzzle together. The last three games it's really showed. We've just been executing at a high level in the offense." Southwick, a junior who took over from the departing Kellen Moore, also ran for 39 yards and had a punt that pinned Washington by its goal line in the fourth quarter. Boise State, which outscored Utah and Arizona State 82-24 in its two previous Las Vegas Bowl wins, looked headed for a third straight blowout when Holden Huff scored on a 34-yard pass with 5:25 left in the second quarter for an 18-3 lead. But Sankey scored on a 26-yard run on Washington's next possession, and Price scrambled for another score with 3 seconds left to make it 18-17 at halftime. The teams traded long drives in the third quarter, with Boise going 74 yards in 15 plays to open the second half, and Washington responding with a 75 yard, 12 play drive. The Huskies went for a 2-point conversion that would have tied it, but the pass was incomplete Sankey kept Washington in the game almost by himself in the first half, scoring the first touchdown for the Huskies and gaining huge chunks of yardage against the normally stingy Bronco defense. Of the 238 yards Washington gained in the half, Sankey had 178 of them. He ran 16 times for 130 yards and stretched out two short passes for another 48 yards. Boise State was playing without starting defensive end Demarcus Lawrence, the team's sack leader. Lawrence was sent home Thursday for violating unspecified team rules, his second suspension of the season. The two teams had met only once before, but they won't have to wait long to meet again. They will play in the opener of Washington's new stadium next August.

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Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" adapted for 21st century

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - In a bid to resurrect Walter Scott's historical novel "Ivanhoe", retired Scottish medical professor David Purdie unsheathed his scalpel to cut out the early 19th century verbiage and deliver a new edition for 21st century readers.

Ivanhoe is a romantic tale of fair maidens, bold knights-at-arms, merry friars, skulduggery, enmity between Saxons and Norman barons, and even a cameo appearance by Robin Hood during the reign of England's Richard I in 1194.

The first historical novel by Scott (1771-1832) set outside Scotland was hugely popular when it was published at the start of 1820. Its first printing of 10,000 copies sold out in less than two weeks and it set the scene for the rise of the historical novel in Europe.

Scott was widely read through Europe and North America.

Purdie, chairman of the Sir Walter Scott Club in Edinburgh, said the idea for his abridged Ivanhoe "came from repeated observations in the press that Scott was ‘difficult', above all, verbose...and out of touch with the attention span of a modern audience."

The punctuation style of 1820 just jarred, he said.

"I have shortened paragraphs and sentences, removed excessive commas, trimmed descriptions, especially of scenery, and adjusted syntax," Purdie told Reuters.

The new edition is published by Luath Press Limited in Edinburgh for sale at 9.99 pounds ($16.09).

Purdie, who is also editor-in-chief of the (Robert) Burns Encyclopaedia, said he had trimmed Ivanhoe to 95,000 words - about the length of a modern solid novel - from 195,000 words.

"As a former surgeon, I used the good old surgical discipline of only cutting where necessary, and then only removing extraneous matter, conserving the vital organs of the story while minimizing blood loss and keeping the patient alive," he said.

Graham Tulloch, professor of English at Australia's Flinders University in Adelaide and editor of the definitive 1998 Edinburgh Edition of Ivanhoe, told Reuters he would naturally like readers to peruse the original, but commended Purdie's efforts.

"David Purdie has gone to some trouble to make the book in size, cover, and page layout look like a modern historical novel. If this can attract more readers, then I am all in favor. If it means those readers go on to read the novel in its full version, then that is even better."

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Book Talk: "Fun" bestsellers a big switch for Justin Cronin

TOKYO (Reuters) - Justin Cronin was writing literary fiction when he and his daughter, then eight, dreamed up a vampire trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world just for fun - until he belatedly realized what they'd put together, and sat down to write.

Cronin said he's still a little astonished by the success of "The Passage," which began the series, and now "The Twelve," which just came out last month, both of which have been bestsellers.

Cronin spoke with Reuters about the book, about writing, and what it was like to make the transition from literary fiction to genre writing.

Q: I hear the inspiration came from your daughter?

A: "The conversations that I had with my daughter were where we assembled the plot together, with only two rules, which were: everything in the story had to be interesting, and it had to have one character with red hair, because she has red hair. I think there are two things that made it work so well. One was that she's my daughter, we have a lot of chemistry, we're close. She's very smart, she's very well-read. She was eight years old at the time, but she was a kid who read a ton that early.

"The other thing that made it work well is that I had no intention of writing these books. We were just having fun. All the inner critics were silent, they had been sent out of the room. We made a great story. My intentions with this were simply to have a good time, and then I looked up and said, oh my God, look what we have. It's fantastic, I'm going to write this."

Q: Did it take a lot of time to go from having fun to actually writing it?

A: "There was almost no gap. We spent three months together doing this, always in motion. I was jogging, and she came on her bike beside me, and we spent an hour doing this. Monday through Friday, something like that. We'd pick up where we left off the day before and just keep kind of spitting it out, trying different ideas and throwing other ideas into the ditch.

"Then it got cold, it got dark early and the bicycle went into the garage. I said, this is good material, I don't know what I'm going to do with it but I should at least write it down for some future use. So I sat down at my computer and I looked up a few days later and I had 30 pages of notes, I had a really complete outline. I said wow, how often does this fall into your lap? But the book still didn't have a voice, I didn't know how it would sound. So I sat down and said look, I'm just going to write a chapter - and there was another chapter, and then another chapter. Next thing I knew I'd written 337,000 words."

Q: So, it was a gift.

A: "Yes. I don't want to say it came from above, but it felt like that."

Q: Was it all smooth sailing?

A: "Every book has got its challenges. You run into a plot point that you can't figure out, or a scene that you struggle to write and have to write 50 times. Writing is 10 percent inventiveness and creativity, and 90 percent stamina, especially for long books like these. Of course there were bumps in the road, there were days when I was frustrated, but for the most part the thing was a gas to write, and that was true for the second book as well. I hope it's true for the third."

Q: What's it like to go from literary to genre fiction?

A: "The question that I had going into this was, would I write differently, given the fact that I was going to write a book that had certain kinds of plot elements that I'd not worked with before - a lot of action sequences, things like that. And what I found very quickly was, you write how you write. I didn't end up writing differently from the way I would write anything, my interests were roughly the same. I had a very robust plot to work from, which was a gas, but I realized very quickly that I was writing about people, and the things that are important to me. Things like the bonds between parents and children - I'm a dad, so that comes up everywhere.

"What I had was a great way for exploring this stuff, because it seems true to me that people who are running for their lives can't help but be themselves. It's just a characterization tool. I found myself back in the presence of all my concerns as a man and my habits as a writer. It gave really clean lines to what I was doing."

Q: Was that kind of transition easy all the way?

A: I had to learn how to do some new stuff, basically the big action sequences. I wanted to write some scenes in which simply enormous events occur, with a lot of kinetic energy - a runaway train. In the second book, an attack on the refugee processing center where there's all these different story elements and points of view operating simultaneously, and you have to see things from several angles at once, and you have to find a rhetoric that still makes it feel like it's moving quickly. All this technical stuff. That was a real challenge, I had to sit down and really think about that one. One of the things you get to do as a writer is that you get to learn new stuff all the time, and I hope that I'm a better writer when I'm 70 than I was when I was 30. That's one of the great things about a literary career.

Q: Any advice for aspiring writers?

A: "Just like any other job, you need to show up for work. You need to read a lot, you need to be wise, you need to watch people. If you try to write 1,000 words a day, as I do, after 100 days you'll look up and have a book. It may be a mess, and you may have to revise it 50 times, but you can't revise it if you haven't written it."

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"The Racketeer" jumps to top spot on U.S. bestseller list

NEW YORK (Reuters) - John Grisham's "The Racketeer" soared to top of Publishers Weekly's bestseller list on Thursday.

The list is compiled using data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "The Racketeer" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) -

2. "The Casual Vacancy" by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown, $35.00) 2

3. "The Panther" by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $27.99) 1

4. "The Bone Bed" by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam, $28.95) 3

5. "NYPD Red" by James Patterson and Marshall Karp (Little, Brown, $27.99) 5

6. "Back to Blood" by Tom Wolfe (Little, Brown, $30.00) -

7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown, $25.00) 7

8. "Angels at the Table" by Debbie Macomber (Ballantine, $18.00) -

9. "Winter of the World" by Ken Follett (Dutton, $36.00) 6

10. "The Bridge" by Karen Kingsbury (Howard, $19.99) -

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. "Killing Kennedy" by Bill O'Reilly (Henry Holt, $28.00) 1

2. "No Easy Day" by Mark Owen (Dutton, $26.95) 2

3. "Guinness World Records 2013" (Guinness World Records) 5

4. "Rod: The Autobiography" by Rod Stewart (Crown Archetype, $27.00) -

5. "Clients First" by Joseph Callaway (John Wiley & Sons, $21.95) -

6. "Bouchon Bakery" by Thomas Keller (Artisan Publishers, $50.00) -

7. "America Again" by Stephen Colbert (Grand Central, $28.99) 3

8. "God Loves You" by David Jeremiah (FaithWords, $23.99) 7

9. "I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak" by Joel Osteen (FaithWords, $21.99) 8

10. "Who I Am: A Memoir" by Peter Townshend (Harper, $32.50) 6

Week ended October 28, 2012, powered by Nielsen BookScan (c) 2012 The Nielsen Company.

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"Argo" rises above "Cloud Atlas" as Sandy spooks

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Acclaimed Iran hostage thriller "Argo" brought home its first box-office win over a quiet weekend, leading movie charts with $12.4 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales as would-be moviegoers hunkered down for Hurricane Sandy.

The tally for "Argo," directed by and starring Ben Affleck, topped the $9.4 million for new sci-fi drama "Cloud Atlas". Halloween-themed animated film "Hotel Transylvania" scared up $9.5 million from Friday through Sunday, narrowly edging "Cloud Atlas", studio estimates showed.

After two weeks in the No. 2 spot, "Argo" moved into the lead and lifted its domestic sales to $60.8 million through three weekends.

The movie, produced by Warner Bros. and GK Films for $44 million, tells the story of a mission to rescue U.S. government employees from Iran in 1979. The film has earned Oscar buzz after stellar reviews from critics and an "A+" grade from audiences polled by CinemaScore.

Dan Fellman, president of theatrical distribution for Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, attributed the film's jump to "great word-of-mouth", which he called "the best form of advertising".

"Cloud Atlas", also from Warner Bros., fell short of industry forecasts for a $13 million debut at North American (U.S. and Canadian) theaters. Fellman said the film did better in larger cities, but struggled in the South and Midwest.

The film, starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry, cost $100 million to make. Many in Hollywood thought the story, based on a philosophical novel by David Mitchell, was too complex to bring to the big screen.

The nearly three-hour film with six interweaving stories divided critics, with the harshest reviewers saying it would try audiences' patience with multiple storylines and century-hopping plots. The film's stars also shift characters. Hanks, for example, is a shady doctor in the 1840s, a nuclear scientist in the 1970s and a simple valley-dweller in the distant future.

But "Cloud Atlas" also drew praise as an ambitious and well-acted epic. Sixty-one percent of reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes website recommended the film.

"Hotel Transylvania" set a record for a September film opening in North America when it opened on September 28, and has performed solidly since then.

In the family comedy, Frankenstein, the Invisible Man and other monsters gather for a party at a high-end resort operated by Dracula. Their celebration is disrupted when a boy discovers the hotel and falls in love with Dracula's daughter but must deal with her overprotective father.

The president of worldwide distribution for Sony Corp's Sony Pictures studio, Rory Bruer, wasn't entirely surprised that the weeks-old movie beat "Cloud Atlas", despite the latter movie's buzz.

"Anything at this point doesn't surprise me," Bruer said. "It's like an annuity that keeps on giving and giving."

Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst at Hollywood.com, said the Halloween weekend gave the film a boost, and is "still the number one choice for families" among the spooky seasonal films currently playing.

This weekend was fairly quiet at the box office in North America, which Dergarabedian attributed to Hurricane Sandy, a storm menacing the East Coast of the United States.

However, the new James Bond movie "Skyfall" whipped up a storm of its own overseas, taking $77.7 million in 25 countries. The latest installment of the British spy saga took the top spot in all 25 countries, broke the all-time Saturday attendance record in the United Kingdom, and was the biggest film opening there of 2012. It will open in the United States on November 9.

Rounding out the weekend's top five, low-budget horror sequel "Paranormal Activity 4" grossed $8.7 million at domestic theaters. "Silent Hill: Revelation 3D" and "Taken 2" tied for fifth place, each pulling in $8 million.

Two other new films failed to crack the top five.

New Halloween-themed comedy "Fun Size" brought in $4.1 million at domestic theaters, landing in tenth place. The $14 million production tells the story of a boy who goes missing among trick-or-treaters, sparking his teen sister's frantic search to find him before her mother comes home.

Sports drama "Chasing Mavericks" disappointed, failing to break the top ten. The movie stars Gerard Butler in the story of a surfer who tries to conquer one of the biggest waves on Earth.

"Silent Hill: Revelation 3D" was released by Open Road Films, a joint venture between theater owners Regal Entertainment Group and AMC Entertainment Inc. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc, released "Fun Size" and "Paranormal Activity 4".

"Chasing Mavericks" was distributed by News Corp's 20th Century Fox studio. Sony Corp's movie division released "Hotel Transylvania".

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