Vatican vows to fight gay marriage after gains in U.S., Europe

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican, reacting to strong gains for gay marriage in the United States and Europe, on Saturday pledged never to stop fighting attempts to “erase” the privileged role of heterosexual marriage, which it called it “an achievement of civilization”.

For the second consecutive day, Vatican media weighed in with forceful editorials restating the Roman Catholic Church‘s unequivocal opposition.

“It is clear that in Western countries there is a widespread tendency to modify the classic vision of marriage between a man and woman, or rather to try to give it up, erasing its specific and privileged legal recognition compared to other forms of union,” Father Federico Lombardi, said in a tough editorial on Vatican Radio.

Voters in the U.S. states of Maryland, Maine and Washington state approved same-sex marriage on Tuesday, marking the first time marriage rights have been extended to same-sex couples by popular vote.

Same-sex unions have been legalized in six states and the District of Columbia by lawmakers or courts.

Lombardi’s editorial on Vatican Radio, which is broadcast around the world in some 30 languages, called the votes myopic, saying “the logic of it cannot have a far-sighted outlook for the common good”.

Lombardi, who is also the Vatican’s chief spokesman as well as director of Vatican Radio and Vatican Television, said there was “public acknowledgement” that “monogamous marriage between a man and woman is an achievement of civilization”.

WHY NOT POLYGAMY?

“If not, why not contemplate also freely chosen polygamy and, of course, not to discriminate, polyandry?” he said.

Polyandry is when a woman has more than one husband.

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin but homosexual acts are. It says the rights of homosexuals should be guaranteed but that their unions should not be recognized as equal to heterosexuals and they should not be allowed to adopt children.

The constitutionality of restricting marriage to unions between a man and a woman is widely expected to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court soon.

The powerful U.S. Catholic Bishops conference, which is already at odds with the administration of President Barack Obama because its health care law obliges most employers to cover contraception, is expected to take a lead in trying to influence the court’s decision.

Earlier this week, Spain’s highest court upheld a gay marriage law, and in France the socialist government has unveiled a draft law that would allow gay marriage.

An editorial in Friday’s edition of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, said local Catholic Churches in many countries around the world were “the sentinels of religious freedom” for opposing gay marriage.

It called support for gay marriage “an ideology founded on political correctness which is invading every culture of the world”.

“The Church is the only institution to say that, while persecuting homosexuals in undoubtedly unjust, opposing marriage between people of the same sex is a point of view that must be respected,” the Vatican newspaper editorial said.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Sophie Hares)

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Four days later, Obama wins Florida

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - President Barack Obama was declared the winner of Florida's 29 electoral votes Saturday, ending a four-day count with a razor-thin margin that narrowly avoided an automatic recount that would have brought back memories of 2000.

No matter the outcome, Obama had already clinched re-election and now has 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206.

The Florida Secretary of State's Office said that with almost 100 per cent of the vote counted, Obama led Republican challenger Mitt Romney 50 per cent to 49.1 per cent, a difference of about 74,000 votes. That was over the half-per cent margin where a computer recount would have been automatically ordered unless Romney had waived it.

There is a Nov. 16 deadline for overseas and military ballots, but under Florida law, recounts are based on Saturday's results. Only a handful of overseas and military ballots are believed to remain outstanding.

It's normal for election supervisors in Florida and other states to spend days after any election counting absentee, provisional, military and overseas ballots. Usually, though, the election has already been called on election night or soon after because the winner's margin is beyond reach.

But on election night this year, it was difficult for officials — and the media — to call the presidential race here, in part because the margin was so close and the voting stretched into the evening.

In Miami-Dade, for instance, so many people were in line at 7 p.m. in certain precincts that some people didn't vote until after midnight.

The hours-long wait at the polls in some areas, a lengthy ballot and the fact that Gov. Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours has led some to criticize Florida's voting process. Some officials have vowed to investigate why there were problems at the polls and how that led to a lengthy vote count.

If there had been a recount, it would not be as difficult as the lengthy one in 2000. The state no longer uses punch-card ballots, which became known for their hanging chads. All 67 counties now use optical scan ballots where voters mark their selections manually.

Republican George W. Bush won the 2000 contest after the Supreme Court declared him the winner over Democrat Al Gore by a scant 537 votes.

The win gave Obama victories in eight of the nine swing states, losing only North Carolina. In addition to Florida, he won Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada.

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Syria opposition bloc elects Christian as leader

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Syria‘s main opposition group in exile has elected a Christian Paris-based former geography teacher as its new president.

George Sabra said Friday that his election as head of the Syrian National Council is a sign that the opposition is not plagued by sectarian divisions.

Sabra says the SNC‘s main demand is to receive weapons from the international community. The U.S. and some other foreign backers of rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad have so far refused to send weapons for fear they can fall into the wrong hands.

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Stradivarius dealer gets six years for embezzlement

VIENNA (Reuters) – A dealer in rare Stradivarius violins coveted by the world’s top violinists was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison for embezzlement after his glittering global empire crumbled.

Dietmar Machold, 63, built his Bremen-based family business into a juggernaut with branches in Zurich, Vienna, New York and Chicago to serve elite musicians and collectors of the instruments that can command prices of several million dollars.

But the business collapsed in 2010, triggering claims against him worth tens of millions of euros (dollars) from creditors and clients who say they were bilked.

“I am a failure. I have lost everything,” Machold said in a Vienna court as he was sentenced after being convicted of embezzling client funds and hiding assets from creditors.

“You played for high stakes and you lost a lot, but you understand you have to take the responsibility for this,” Judge Claudia Moravec-Loidolt told him.

Prosecutor Herbert Harammer had traced the career of the fifth-generation violin expert who became one of the world’s most influential dealers in instruments crafted by 18th-century masters like Antonio Stradivari, whose workshop in Cremona, Italy produced some of the finest violins and cellos ever made.

“This ascent was built on sand,” Harammer had told the court, accusing Machold of leading a lifestyle that was a facade for a business that had actually been insolvent since mid-2006.

FIXTURE OF HIGH SOCIETY

A fixture of high society, Machold lived in an Austrian castle, had a fleet of expensive cars and collected watches and cameras. His global network of rare instrument dealerships let him move in the highest circles of music, fame and money.

His former wife and her mother got one-year suspended sentences for helping him hide precious musical instruments and a valuable watch collection as his business imploded.

Machold admitted from the start that he embezzled money made from the sale of instruments entrusted to him by his customers, but denied fraud charges that are being handled separately.

“I did what I did and I am to be punished for it. That is the way it has to be,” the German native told the court before sentencing, his voice calm before he teared up and had to pause.

Machold, who told the court he did not deserve a mild sentence given the magnitude of his misdeeds, had faced a sentence of up to 10 years. His lawyer did not say if he would file an appeal.

Machold said he acted in desperation after losing a lawsuit brought by a construction company which meant his Eichbuechl castle was at risk.

The high-profile dealer had at times given contradictory testimony, at one stage saying he built personal relationships with the instruments in his care that he called “my children”.

But later he said he “simply forgot” one expensive violin that he failed to report to administrators.

($ 1 = 0.7857 euros)

(Editing by Michael Roddy)

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Smokers may fare worse after colorectal surgery

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Smoking has long been linked with slower recovery in general from injuries and surgeries, and now a new study finds that smokers face more complications and higher chances of death following major surgery for colorectal cancers and other diseases.

“We wanted to see if smoking has a specific effect on these patients… and really wanted to know if patients who stopped smoking had better results,” said lead author Dr. Abhiram Sharma, who was at the University of Rochester in New York during the study.

Smoking constricts the flow of blood throughout the body and is thought to prevent oxygen from getting to tissues that are trying to heal, according to the authors.

In September, a review of surgeries to repair knee ligaments found that smokers tended to have worse outcomes, including not being able to get back full knee function. (See Reuters Health article of September 26, 2012: http://reut.rs/Xqf6is)

For the new report, published in the Annals of Surgery, Sharma and his colleagues studied patients included in a nationally representative database of U.S. surgeries between 2005 and 2010.

Overall, 47,574 patients were included in the analysis. All had part of their colon or rectum removed, a surgery known as a colorectal resection, either because of cancer, diverticular disease or inflammatory bowel disease.

About 60 percent of the patients had never smoked, 19 percent were former smokers and 20 percent were current smokers.

The researchers looked at the 30 days after surgery to see how many patients in each group suffered either a major complication – such as severe infection, heart or breathing problems or death – or a minor complication, such as an infection at the surgical site or in the urinary tract.

Sharma’s team found that current smokers had a 30 percent greater risk of having a major complication compared to patients who never smoked, and an 11 percent greater risk than ex-smokers.

Among 9,700 current smokers, for example, there were 1,497 major complications and 1,448 minor ones, whereas the 9,136 ex-smokers had 1,374 major and 1,386 minor complications. Never smokers, the largest group numbering 28,738, had 3,316 major complications and 3,462 minor ones.

Current smokers were also 1.5 times as likely to die within 30 days of surgery as never smokers.

In addition, the longer someone had smoked – that is, the greater their number of “pack years” – the stronger their chances of complications, the researchers note.

“We were not completely surprised (by the results). We know smoking is not good and there have been other studies that show smoking is a problem,” Sharma said.

There were, Sharma’s team acknowledges, some limitations in the study.

For example, ex-smokers were defined as patients who had not smoked in at least one year, therefore some more recent ex-smokers may have been included with current smokers, leading the benefits of quitting to be underestimated.

Nonetheless, Sharma told Reuters Health, the results show it’s never too late to stop smoking.

“The sooner the better,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/XqnA9h Annals of Surgery, online October 10, 2012.

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CIA chief admits affair, resigns

CIA Director David Petraeus resigned his post on Friday, confessing to having shown "extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair." The former Army general rocketed to global prominence as the man in charge of the "surge" in Iraq and later the commander of American forces in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama said Petraeus had led the Central Intelligence Agency "with characteristic intellectual rigor, dedication and patriotism."

"I am completely confident that the CIA will continue to thrive and carry out its essential mission, and I have the utmost confidence in Acting Director Michael Morell and the men and women of the CIA who work every day to keep our nation safe," the president said in a written statement.

"Going forward, my thoughts and prayers are with Dave and Holly Petraeus, who has done so much to help military families through her own work. I wish them the very best at this difficult time," Obama continued.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a statement that did not specify a reason for Petraeus' departure but praised his colleague extensively.

"From his long, illustrious Army career to his leadership at the helm of CIA, Dave has redefined what it means to serve and sacrifice for one's country," said Clapper.

Petraeus went to work as CIA chief in September 2011 after heading up the war in Afghanistan. He had drawn fire in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya. His departure comes barely a week before he was scheduled to testify about the assault in closed-door sessions with the intelligence committees of the Senate and House of Representatives. Morell was expected to take his place, congressional aides said.

Petraeus' resignation letter, quoted by several news outlets, centered on his personal behavior.

"Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours," he said. "This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation."

Petraeus, 60, has been described as the father of the military's counterinsurgency doctrine. The charismatic officer had been cited as a possible future presidential or vice presidential prospect.

His wife, Holly, has worked inside the Obama administration, serving at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Petraeus' most outspoken admirers, said the general "will stand in the ranks of America's greatest military heroes."

"His inspirational leadership and his genius were directly responsible—after years of failure—for the success of the surge in Iraq," McCain said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family."

In a statement, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said, "I very much regret the resignation of David Petraeus. This is an enormous loss for our nation's intelligence community and for our country.

"I wish President Obama had not accepted this resignation, but I understand and respect the decision," Feinstein added.

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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama’s election to a second term.

Obama’s administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar’s previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama’s ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar’s generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar’s point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein’s government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

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Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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Final “Spartacus” Season to Enter the Arena January 25

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Starz’s “Spartacus” series will engage in one last round of battle in January, the cable network said Tuesday.

“Spartacus: War of the Damned” will premiere January 25, 2013 at 9 p.m., marking the beginning of the end for the blood-and-sex soaked franchise, whose previous installments included “Spartacus: Vengeance” and “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.”

“Spartacus: War of the Damned” sees Liam McIntyre returning as the titular gladiator, and takes place following the defeat of Roman commander Gaius Claudius Glaber. Following successful battles against the Romans after the Battle of Vesuvius, the ranks of the rebellious slaves have swelled, with Rome trembling at Spartacus’ increased threat to the empire.

This season also sees the addition of new cast members Todd Lasance as Gaius Julius Caesar, Simon Merrells as Marcus Crassus and Anna Hutchison as Laeta.

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Allscripts to evaluate strategic alternatives

(Reuters) – Healthcare IT firm Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc said it is evaluating strategic alternatives, sending its shares up 10 percent in extended trade.

“We are confirming today that in light of the ongoing interest expressed in the company by third parties, the company is evaluating strategic alternatives,” Allscripts Chief Executive Glen Tullman said.

The company, which reported a lower third-quarter profit on Friday, had spoken to several private equity firms including Blackstone Group LP, Bloomberg reported in September.

The company faced shareholder activism earlier this year, when its largest investor, HealthCor Management, demanded the resignation of Allscripts chief executive.

Allscripts agreed to nominate three of the investor’s candidates to its board in early June.

The company said it is withdrawing its forecast for 2012 in light of its decision to evaluate strategic alternatives. It had forecast adjusted earnings of between 77 cents and 83 cents per share in August.

Allscripts’s net income fell to $ 9.4 million, or 5 cents per share, in the third quarter, from $ 19.1 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, earnings were 23 cents per share.

Total revenue fell nearly 1 percent to $ 360.7 million.

Analysts expected a profit of 22 cents per share on revenue of $ 377.01 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Shares of the Chicago-based company closed at $ 12.26 on Thursday on the Nasdaq.

(This story corrected paragraph six to say earnings outlook was between 77-83 cents per share, not 74-80 cents per share)

(Reporting By Pallavi Ail in Bangalore; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

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