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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — After 50 years of spinning webs and catching a who’s who of criminals, Peter Parker is out of the hero game.
But Spider-Man is still slinging from building to building — reborn, refreshed and revived with a new sense of the old maxim that Ben Parker taught his then-fledgling nephew that “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
Writer Dan Slott, who’s been penning Spidey adventures for the better part of the last 100 issues for Marvel Entertainment, said the culmination of the story is a new, dramatically different direction for the Steve Ditko and Stan Lee-created hero.
“This is an epic turn,” Slott said. “I’ve been writing Spider-Man for 70-plus issues. Every now and then, you have to shake it up. … The reason Spider-Man is one of the longest running characters is they always find a way to keep it fresh. Something to shake up the mix.”
And in the pages of issue 700, out Wednesday, it’s not just shaken up, it’s turned head over heels, spun in circles, kicked sky high and cracked wide open.
Parker’s mind is trapped in the withered, decaying dying body of his nemesis, Doctor Octopus aka Otto Octavius. Where’s Doc Ock? Inside Parker’s super-powered shell, learning what life is like for the brilliant researcher who happens to count the Avengers and Fantastic Four as friends and family.
The two clash mightily in the pages of issue 700, illustrated by Humberto Ramos and Victor Olazaba. But it’s Octavius who wins out and Parker is, at least for now, gone for good, but not before one more act of heroism.
Slott said that it’s Parker, whose memories envelop Octavius, who shows the villain what it means to be a hero.
“Gone are his days of villainy, but since it’s Doc Ock and he has that ego, he’s not going to try and just be Spider-man, he’s going to try to be the best Spider-Man ever,” said Slott.
Editor Stephen Wacker said that while Parker is gone, his permanence remains and his life casts a long shadow.
“His life is still important to the book because it affects everything that Doctor Octopus does as Spider-Man. Seeing a supervillain go through this life is the point — trying to be better than the hero he opposed,” Wacker said.
“Doc has sort of inspired by Peter’s life. That’s what I mean when he talks about the shadow he casts,” he said.
The sentiment echoes what Uncle Ben said in the pages of “Amazing Fantasy” No. 15, Slott said.
Editor Stephen Wacker called it a fitting end to the old series, which sets the stage for a new one — “The Superior Spider-Man” early next year — because it brings Peter Parker full circle, from the start of his crime-fighting career to the end.
“In his very first story, his uncle died because of something he did so the book has always been aimed at making Peter’s life as difficult as possible,” Wacker said. “The book has always worked best when it’s about Peter Parker’s life, not Spider-Man’s.”
And with Octavius influenced by Parker’s life — from Aunt May to Gwen Stacy to Mary Jane — it will make him a better person, too.
“Because Doctor Octopus knows all of those things and will make decisions on what he saw Peter going through,” Wacker said. “In a way, he gets the ultimate victory as he becomes a better hero.”
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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges that he detains mothers who can’t pay their bills.
Lazarus Omondi says it’s the only way he can keep his medical center running. Now, a New York-based group filed a lawsuit this month in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice.
Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum near the maternity hospital said Pumwani wouldn’t let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn’t afford were $ 60 and $ 160. Guards with sticks would beat mothers who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.
Omondi says one solution to the problem would be a national health insurance program.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures were little changed on Thursday with legislators due to return to Washington to restart negotiations over the “fiscal cliff“.
President Barack Obama will attempt to make another push to resume talks on the cliff, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts set to begin on January 1 which may tip the economy into a recession, on Thursday after returning from a shortened Christmas holiday in Hawaii.
In a sign that there may be a way through deadlock in Congress, Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged the Democrat-controlled Senate to act to pull back from the cliff and offered to at least consider any bill the upper chamber produced.
The Treasury Department, led by Secretary Timothy Geithner, announced steps essentially designed to buy time to allow Congress to resolve its differences and raise the debt ceiling.
Economic data expected on Thursday includes weekly initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a total of 360,000 new filings, compared with 361,000 filings in the previous week.
Also due at 8:30 a.m. (1330 GMT) is the Chicago Fed Midwest Manufacturing Index for November.
Later in the session at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT), investors will eye December consumer confidence and November new home sales data. The Conference Board’s main consumer confidence index is expected to show a reading of 70 versus the 73.7 reported in November while new home sales are expected to show a total of 378,000 annualized units.
The benchmark S&P 500 index has fallen 1.7 percent over the past three sessions as negotiations over the budget crisis have stalled, its longest losing streak since mid-November.
But the S&P has recouped nearly all of its declines suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections and is up 12.9 percent for the year, putting it on track for its best year since 2009.
S&P 500 futures rose 3.2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 4 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures lost 0.5 point.
Marvell Technology Group fell 5.4 percent to $ 7.00 in premarket trading, extending its decline in the prior session after a federal jury found the company infringed two patents held by Carnegie Mellon University, and ordered the chipmaker to pay $ 1.17 billion in damages.
European shares steadied early in their first trading session following the Christmas break, with investors focusing on Washington’s last-ditch efforts to avoid the so-called fiscal cliff. <.eu></.eu>
Asian shares rose amid caution ahead of the U.S. fiscal negotiations, while the yen hit a 21-month low against the dollar on the prospect of drastic monetary easing and massive state spending.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — 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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Associated Press writers Peter Orsi in Havana, Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Camilo Hernandez in Bogota, Colombia, and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, contributed to this report.
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LONDON (AP) — Britain‘s royal family is attending Christmas Day church services — with a few notable absences.
Wearing a turquoise coat and matching hat, Queen Elizabeth II arrived at St. Mary Magdelene Church on her sprawling Sandringham estate in Norfolk. She was accompanied in a Bentley by granddaughters Beatrice and Eugenie.
Her husband, Prince Philip, walked from the house to the church with other members of the royal family.
Three familiar faces were missing from the family outing. Prince William is spending the holiday with his pregnant wife Kate and his in-laws in the southern England village of Bucklebury. Prince Harry is serving with British troops in Afghanistan.
Later Tuesday, the queen will deliver her traditional, pre-recorded Christmas message, which for the first time will be broadcast in 3D.
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Every October as the clocks are turned back, Jose Balido notices that his mood changes, almost as if his body were going into hibernation.
His limbs are heavy and he has trouble moving around. Simple household chores like loading the dishwasher seem “insurmountable,” he said. But when spring arrives, the lethargy lifts.
“It took me a while to realize what it was,” said Balido, owner of a travel social network site, Tripatini. “I was cranky, short-tempered, depressed, feeling hopeless and having difficulty concentrating.”
Balido, 51, was diagnosed a decade ago with seasonal affective disorder or SAD. The condition affects 62 million Americans, according to Michael Terman, director of the Center for Light Treatment and Biological Rhythms at Columbia University and a leader in the field.
About 5 percent of the population experiences the most severe symptoms of SAD — depression and hopelessness — while another 15 percent have the so-called “winter blues” or “winter doldrums.”
The vast majority never fall into full depression, according to Terman, but “plod through winters with slowness and gloominess that takes effort to hide from others.”
Two decades ago, SAD was identified as a legitimate disorder by the National Institute of Mental Health. Since then, the treatment of choice has been light therapy.
Balido, who lives in Miami, sought help from Terman and now undergoes light therapy. He sits in front of a daylight simulator for a half an hour each morning before 10 a.m.
“Within two or three days, the difference was mind-blowing,” he said.
The standard treatment for SAD is 30 minutes of 10,000-lux, diffused, white fluorescent light, used early in the morning. About half the patients are helped quickly — and when treatment is tailored to a person’s individual wake-sleep cycle, remission can climb to 80 percent, according to Terman.
This year, a utility company in the northern Swedish town of Umea installed ultraviolet lights at 30 bus stops to combat the effects of SAD.
“We wanted to celebrate the fact that all our electricity comes from green sources and we wanted to do this in a way that contributed to the citizens in one way or another,” said Umea Energi marketing chief Anna Norrgard in an email to ABCNews.com.
“As it is very dark where we live this time of year, a lot of us are longing for the daylight,” she said. “A lot of us are also a bit more tired this time of year and I would also say we sleep a little bit more. …We wanted to give the citizens of Umea a little energy boost, to be more alert.”
The town is located about 400 miles north of Stockholm. In December, the sun rises at about 10 a.m. and sets around 2:30 p.m. Some towns north of the Arctic Circle have no daylight for several weeks in the winter.
Geography has a strong influence on the prevalence of SAD symptoms, according to Terman.
“The common wisdom is that it’s worse the farther north you live, because winter days are so much shorter,” he said. “Not so simple.”
Columbia research shows that in North America, the incidence of SAD rises from the southern to the middle states, but levels off and stays bad from about 38 degrees North latitude (near such cities as San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington, D.C.) up through the northernmost states and Canada, according to Terman.
But the problem becomes “more severe” at the western edges of the northern states and provinces.
“This important finding reveals the underlying trigger for relapses into winter depression, since the sun rises an hour more later at the western edge of a zone,” said Terman, whose book, “Chronotherapy,” looks at the phenomenon.
Esther Kane, a clinical counselor from Vancouver, Canada, said her practice is filled with patients as the long days descend on British Columbia.
“On the West Coast where we live it’s so rampant, I can’t even tell you how many people have it,” said Kane. “Everyone is feeling it with the gray skies and rain. It’s like nighttime all the time here.”
Doctors there routinely prescribe fish oil and vitamin D, as well as light therapy to balance out the sleep hormone melatonin and “boost” the feel-good hormone serotonin, according to Kane. Many are also on antidepressants.
“A lot of people depend on alcohol and drugs all of a sudden,” she said. “They are stuffing themselves with carbs and their food intake is up. They have depression symptoms — what’s the point of getting out of bed in the morning when they feel no energy and there is dark all over them?”
“Some suffer so bad, they can’t function,” said Kane. “Everyone here who can afford to get away for two weeks in the winter, go to Hawaii.”
Even those who live south of the Mason-Dixon Line in the United States can be affected.
Tina Saratsiotis, who works for a faith-based nonprofit group in Towson, Md., was surprised to develop SAD several years ago.
“I used to be a night person and like the dark. Then something changed,” she said. “By fall when it gets darker and the fatigue and sadness comes and by Christmas, it’s difficult to function.”
“It creeps in slowly — I eat more and have trouble concentrating,” she said. “I am more irritable and weeping, like a prolonged version of PMS. It makes it hard to get things done and to enjoy things.”
Columbia’s Terman said there may be genetic influences in who gets SAD — a vulnerability to depression and to insufficient light exposure.
SAD sufferers say it’s especially hard on their relationships when their winter moods kick in.
“Now, he’s very understanding,” said Saratsiotis, who uses both light therapy and antidepressants to deal with the condition. “But before, when I didn’t feel up to going out, I couldn’t explain not feeling great. People wonder, ‘Why doesn’t she like me?’ and, ‘She’s no fun.’”
But when spring rolls around, so does her old self.
“I love the solstice — thank you, Lord, for the solstice,” she said. “I really need [the medication] now, but I may not in the spring and summer.”
But now, in when the days are their shortest, SAD puts a crimp on the holidays.
“It kills Christmas,” said Saratsiotis. “I sit in the middle of the department store with that particular song about the sleigh bells ringing, and I am sobbing. I burst into tears and think, ‘Just kill that song.’”
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stock index futures edged higher on Wednesday, indicating the S&P 500 may stem its worst two-day drop since mid-November, ahead of the resumption of “fiscal cliff” negotiations.
U.S. President Barack Obama is cutting short his Hawaiian holiday to leave for Washington on Wednesday to address the unfinished negotiations with Congress.
Obama is due to arrive in Washington on Thursday to resume talks on the cliff, a sharp rise in taxes and deep spending cuts due to begin on January 1 that could tip the U.S. economy into recession.
“This is what we’ve come to – the President might get on a plane today and this is what the markets might react to,” said Kim Forrest, senior equity research analyst at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
“It’s all about the fiscal cliff.”
A Republican plan that failed to gain traction last week triggered the recent decline in the S&P 500 <.spx>, highlighting market sensitivity to headlines centered around the talks.</.spx>
Investors will also look to housing data for signs of improvement in that sector of the economy, with the S&P Case/Shiller Home Price Index for October expected at 9 a.m. (1400 GMT).
Housing data has shown modest improvement in recent months, and continued strength could help support the sagging economy.
“The data is two months old, so it’s interesting, but I don’t know that people will react to it given these other more timely events,” said Forrest.
S&P 500 futures rose 3 points and were slightly above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 17 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures climbed 3.25 points.
The benchmark S&P index is up 13.4 percent for the year, and has recouped nearly all of the losses suffered in the wake of the U.S. elections, when the fiscal cliff concerns moved to the forefront of investors’ focus.
China’s Sinopec Group and ConocoPhillips will research potentially vast reserves of shale gas in southwestern China over the next two years, state news agency Xinhua reported.
An outage at one of Amazon.com Inc’s web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc’s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas Day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.
In Asian markets, the Nikkei moved to a new nine-month high but shares elsewhere in the region were capped in thin holiday trade, with investors focusing on the fate of U.S. negotiations to avert a budget crunch looming at the end of the year.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The U.N. General Assembly expressed serious concern on Monday over violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Myanmar and called upon its government to address reports of human rights abuses by some authorities.
The 193-nation General Assembly approved by consensus a non-binding resolution, which Myanmar said last month contained a “litany of sweeping allegations, accuracies of which have yet to be verified.”
Outbreaks of violence between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and the Rohingyas have killed dozens and displaced thousands since June. Rights groups also have accused Myanmar security forces of killing, raping and arresting Rohingyas after the riots. Myanmar said it exercised “maximum restraint” to quell the violence.
The unanimously adopted U.N. resolution “expressing particular concern about the situation of the Rohingya minority in Rakhine state, urges the government to take action to bring about an improvement in their situation and to protect all their human rights, including their right to a nationality.”
At least 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas live in Rakhine State along the western coast of Myanmar, also known as Burma. But Buddhist Rakhines and other Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh who deserve neither rights nor sympathy.
The resolution adopted on Monday is identical to one approved last month by the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which focuses on human rights. After that vote, Myanmar’s mission to the United Nations said that it accepted the resolution but objected to the Rohingyas being referred to as a minority.
“There has been no such ethnic group as Rohingya among the ethnic groups of Myanmar,” a representative of Myanmar said at the time. “Despite this fact, the right to citizenship for any member or community has been and will never be denied if they are in line with the law of the land.”
(Reporting By Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Paul Simao)
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