Mark Wahlberg to star in next ‘Transformers’ movie

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Mark Wahlberg, roll out.

“Transformers” director Michael Bay says the 41-year-old actor will star in the franchise’s fourth film.

Bay called Wahlberg the “perfect guy to re-invigorate the franchise and carry on the Transformers‘ legacy” in a post on his blog Thursday. He previously squashed rumors that Wahlberg was joining the film franchise about warring robots.

Bay worked with Wahlberg on his upcoming film, “Pain and Gain.”

“Transformers 4″ is scheduled to be released by Paramount Pictures on June 27, 2014.

Bay has said the next film will take a new direction in the series. The first three movies starred Shia LaBeouf and featured Peter Cullen as the voice of Autobot general Optimus Prime.

The third “Transformers” film, “Dark of the Moon,” was the second highest-grossing film of 2011.

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Sudan’s Bashir vows “painful response” to alleged Israel bombing

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan‘s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday promised his country would respond robustly to what he believes was an Israeli bombing of a Khartoum arms factory and said he was in “perfect health” after undergoing surgery in Saudi Arabia.

Sudan last month accused Israel of carrying out an air strike on the Yarmouk arms factory in the south of Khartoum, causing a blast that killed four people.

Israel has not commented on the charge, but has long accused Sudan of channeling weapons from Iran to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

“I am in perfect health, and our response to Israel will be painful,” state radio quoted Bashir, 68, as saying in a brief text message sent to mobile phones.

Bashir, who came to power in a bloodless 1989 coup, left hospital in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday after undergoing a “small, successful” operation, state media said.

Sudanese blogs and newspapers had begun to speculate about the president’s health because he has held fewer public rallies in the past few months. He underwent surgery on his vocal cords in Qatar in August, an official said last month.

Over more than two decades in power, Bashir has weathered multiple armed rebellions, years of U.S. trade sanctions, an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court, waves of student protests, and the secession of oil-producing South Sudan last year.

He is known for his fiery speeches and for dancing and waving his walking stick at public events.

(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ghana building collapse traps dozens, kills 1

ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — A five-story shopping center built earlier this year in a bustling suburb of Ghana‘s capital collapsed Wednesday, killing at least one person and leaving several dozen people trapped in the rubble, authorities and eyewitnesses said.

Rescue crews used cranes to try and remove debris from the top of the building amid fears that machinery sifting through the wreckage could injure trapped survivors. Crowds of bystanders gathered as rescuers sifted through cement and glass.

The fatality at the Melcom Shopping Center at Achimota, a suburb of Accra, was confirmed by Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Fire Service Billy Anaglate. “We are still working to find out the fate of others who may be trapped under,” he said.

Other officials told The Associated Press that the death toll was likely to rise.

An AP reporter at the scene saw at least one man pulled from the debris, covered in dust and who was then whisked into an ambulance.

A Greater Accra Regional Public Affairs officer, deputy superintendent Freeman Tettey, confirmed that one person died and told the AP that 51 have been rescued and sent to hospitals around the capital.

“I was on my way to the shop when l saw it crumpling down,” Kojo Boadi, an eyewitness, said.

President John Mahama declared the scene a disaster zone and cut short his election campaign in the north of the country to be able to visit the site. The presidential election is scheduled for December.

The five-story store opened in February is part of the Melcom chain owned by Indian immigrant magnate, Bhagwan Khubchandani. His late father arrived in Ghana in 1929 as a 14-year-old to work as a store boy in the-then Gold Coast.

The store sells a variety of cheap, imported household goods and appliances that are popular with working-class Ghanaians.

Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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

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New storm dumps snow, snuffs NE power

NEW YORK (AP) — The nor'easter that stymied recovery efforts from Superstorm Sandy pulled away from New York and New Jersey Thursday, leaving hundreds of thousands of new people in darkness after a blanket of thick, wet snow snapped storm-weakened trees and downed power lines.

From Brooklyn to storm-battered sections of the Jersey shore and Connecticut, about 750,000 customers — more than 200,000 from the new storm — in the region were without power in temperatures near freezing, some living for days in the dark.

"We lost power last week, just got it back for a day or two, and now we lost it again," said John Monticello of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J. "Every day it's the same now: turn on the gas burner for heat. Instant coffee. Use the iPad to find out what's going on in the rest of the world."

But most were just grateful the new storm didn't bring a fresh round of devastation.

"For a home without power, it's great. It came through the storm just great," said Iliay Bardash, 61, a computer programmer on Staten Island without electricity since last week. "But things are not worse, and for that I am thankful."

Nearby, Vladimir Repnin emerged from his powerless home with a snow shovel in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth and a question from someone cut off from the outside world.

"Who won? Obama?" he asked.

He didn't like the answer.

"The Democrats ruined my business," he said, referring to his shuttered clothing manufacturing firm.

Unlike other holdouts who got by with generators or gas stoves, the 63-year-old from the Ukraine has been without power since Sandy brought eight feet of water through his door and his neighbor's deck into his yard. He tried to beat the cold Wednesday night by sleeping with his Yorkie Kuzya and cat Channel.

"I had the dog right here," he said, pointing to his left side, "and the cat on my chest. It was still too cold, but I cannot leave my house."

Throughout Staten Island's beach area, the storm had blanketed growing piles of debris with several inches of snow. By mid-morning, it was starting to melt, filling the streets with filthy sludge.

Roads in New Jersey and New York City were clear for the morning commute, and rail lines into New York were running smoothly so far, despite snow still coming down heavily in some areas.

The nor'easter, as promised, brought gusting winds, rain and snow, but not the flooding that was anticipated.

"The good news, thank goodness, is except for maybe 2 inches of snow, there were no other problems," said Randi Savron, 51, a schoolteacher who lives in the Rockaways, one of the areas that flooded badly last week. The idyllic beachfront boardwalk was loosed from pilings and ended up outside her apartment building door.

She said it seemed like work would continue.

But additional outages could stall recovery efforts, even though utility companies had prepared, adding extra crews ahead of the nor'easter.

In New Jersey, there were about 400,000 power outages early Thursday; 150,000 of those were new. In New York City and Westchester, more than 70,000 customers were without power after the storm knocked out an additional 55,000 customers.

For Consolidated Edison, the extra outages were dealt with swiftly, so there were only about 3,000 additional customers without power from the total Wednesday of 67,000.

"I think we're going to be able to power through. Our objective was to get power restored to everyone by the weekend and we're still working with that goal," said Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesman for the utility.

On Long Island, an area badly battered, there were 125,000 new outages, but about 80,000 were restored, making a total of about 300,000 customers without power. Long Island Power Authority spokesman Mark Gross said the utility was assessing new damage while working to restore outages.

Paul Farash of West Babylon, N.Y. said he got power back after three days and didn't lose it again.

"Whatever I experienced was minimal compared to a whole lot of other people," he said. "I've seen some things. I've heard about some things. and I know some things. And I'm counting my blessings. I'll survive."

Anthony Gragnano, who lives in Lindenhurst, worried the new storm would further stall getting power returned to his flooded family home.

"It's just colder now," he said. "We still don't have heat or power, but aside from a little snow, we're good."

Under ordinary circumstances, a storm of this sort wouldn't be a big deal. But large swaths of the landscape were still an open wound, with the electrical system highly fragile and many of Sandy's victims still mucking out their homes and cars and shivering in the deepening cold. As the storm picked up in intensity Wednesday evening, lights started flickering off again.

Residents from Connecticut to Rhode Island saw 3 to 6 inches of snow on Wednesday. Worcester, Mass., had 8 inches of snow, and Freehold, N.J., had just over a foot overnight. Some parts of Connecticut got a foot or more.

There was good weather news: temperatures over the next few days will be in the 50s in southern New England, said meteorologist Frank Nocera, and on Sunday it could edge into the 60s.

Ahead of the storm, public works crews in New Jersey built up dunes to protect the stripped and battered coast, and new evacuations were ordered in a number of communities already emptied by Sandy. New shelters opened.

All construction in New York City was halted — a precaution that needed no explanation after a crane collapsed last week in Sandy's high winds and dangled menacingly over the streets of Manhattan. Parks were closed because of the danger of falling trees.

Airlines canceled at least 1,300 U.S. flights in and out of the New York metropolitan area, causing a new round of disruptions that rippled across the country.

Sandy killed more than 100 people in 10 states, with most of the victims in New York and New Jersey.

___

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Kiley Armstrong, Jonathan Fahey, Tom Hays, David B. Caruso, Meghan Barr, Jennifer Peltz and Deepti Hajela in New York; Jim Fitzgerald in White Plains, N.Y.; and Angela Delli Santi and Wayne Perry in Harvey Cedars, N.J. Eltman reported from Garden City, N.Y.

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Rihanna a rock star on Victoria’s Secret catwalk

NEW YORK (AP) — Rihanna rocked lingerie at Wednesday night’s Victoria’s Secret fashion show in New York, providing the highlight of the live-music soundtrack and holding her own on the catwalk with some of the world’s top models.

And those models even had props, including Adriana Lima‘s ringmaster wand, Doutzen Kroes‘ body cage and several pairs of the oversized wings that the retailer has made its signature. It would be a close contest who got the biggest wings: Toni Garrn’s giant poppy pair or Miranda Kerr’s swan-style feathered pouf. Only Lily Aldridge could boast star-spangled wings that shot out silver sparkles.

Alessandra Ambrosio’s orchid-petal wings might have lacked a little grandeur, but she made up for it with a $ 2.5 million jeweled “floral fantasy bra.”

Still, wearing a sheer pink mini that gave glimpses of her bra, Rihanna sang “Fresh Out the Runway” at the end of the corset-and-garter parade and she was the one to grab the audience’s biggest applause.

The fashion show has become a pre-holiday season tradition for the retailer. CBS will turn it into a one-hour special, which also had performances from Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars, to be shown on Dec. 4.

Lima said she loved opening the show in the ringmaster costume. “The atmosphere of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show is electric,” she said. “It’s so much fun to be able to interact with the audience! What other show will you see Rihanna, Justin Beiber and Bruno Mars on the runway with angels?”

This year’s event had a slight twist. It started with an announcer noting that Victoria’s Secret and CBS had each made a donation to relief efforts for Superstorm Sandy, and a thank you to the National Guard members who are based out of the Lexington Avenue Armory that has for years been home to the show.

Mostly, though, models are encouraged to smile, ham it up and show off the extra time at the gym that most admit to in the weeks beforehand. “It’s highly televised, and you take that into consideration,” said model Joan Smalls ahead of the show. “This is kind of not the same as other runways. You have to prepare your body: No. 1 is the wings are heavy, and No. 2 is you have to be comfortable with your body because the camera will pick up on it if you’re not comfortable and confident.”

There’s an emphasis on glitz, skin and dramatic production here, not wearable undergarment trends for typical Victoria’s Secret shoppers. It was divided into six sections: Circus, complete with acrobats, contortionists and a sword eater; Dangerous Liaisons; Pink Is Us; Silver Screen Angels; Angels in Bloom; and Calendar Girls, which allowed Bruno Mars to serenade a model for each month of the year.

For his first song, “Beauty and the Beat,” Bieber, wearing low-slung white pants and a white leather studded vest, sat alone with his guitarist in the mellowest part of the show. For “As Long As You Love Me,” however, he brought in backup dancers and interacted with the models while moving around a giant makeshift pinball machine.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Bieber on the pink carpet before the show. “I would rather be here than anywhere in the world.”

___

AP reporter John Carucci contributed to this report.

___

Samantha Critchell tweets fashion at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Fashion

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Soda tax ballot measures fizzle in California

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Voters in two California cities rejected measures that would have imposed the nation’s first penny-per-ounce taxes on businesses that sell sodas and other sugary drinks in an effort to boost municipal revenue and fight obesity.

In El Monte, 76.8 percent of voters said no, while in Richmond, 66.9 percent opposed the measure, according to final results from Tuesday’s election.

Calls to tax sugary drinks have gathered steam as more cities and states struggle to close budget gaps and American waistlines continue to expand.

The American Beverage Association – which represents PepsiCo Inc, Coca-Cola Inc, Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc and other beverage companies – has spent millions of dollars to beat back soda taxes around the country. The ABA has a strong record of defeating soda tax efforts.

In September New York City passed the first U.S. ban of oversized sugary drinks.

A health board outlawed sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces nearly everywhere they are sold, except groceries and convenience stores. Violators of the ban, which does not include diet sodas, face a $ 200 fine.

About one-third of Americans are obese, and about 10 percent of the nation’s healthcare bill is tied to obesity-related diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Canada firms to capitalize on nuclear trade with India

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Canadian firms will be able to export uranium and nuclear reactors to India for the first time in almost four decades under an agreement between the two nations, their prime ministers said, but more work is needed to implement the deal.

Once implemented, the agreement will end a ban on nuclear cooperation Canada imposed in 1976 after India secretly exploded its first nuclear bomb in 1974, commonly called the “Smiling Buddha”, using material from a Canadian-built reactor in India.

“Being able to resolve these issues and move forward is, we believe, a really important economic opportunity for an important Canadian industry, part of the energy industry, that should pay dividends in terms of jobs and growth for Canadians down the road,” Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Tuesday on a visit to New Delhi.

A negotiator with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the talks, said that what remained was a careful legal review of the language; translation into French and Hindi; and then a signing.

This is not expected to take very long, he said. The two sides have set up a joint committee to liaise on nuclear issues, but he said it would not be negotiating.

India aims to lift its nuclear capacity to 63,000 MW in the next 20 years by adding nearly 30 reactors. The country currently operates 20 mostly small reactors at six sites with a capacity of 4,780 MW, or 2 percent of its total power capacity, according to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited.

Canada’s ambassador to India, Stewart Beck, said on Monday his country wanted to be able to track all nuclear material, but that India felt it only needed to report to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

It was not clear who made concessions in the talks and how effective the safeguards would be to ensure that Canadian material did not get used again for making nuclear weapons.

However, the CNSC official said India would now be required to notify Canada of any transfers to a third country and trade could only go to facilities that are safeguarded by the IAEA.

PROBABLY BEATING AUSTRALIA

Harper said the CNSC had worked to “achieve all of our objectives in terms of non-proliferation”.

Canada is in a race against Australia, its strategic ally but a commercial rival in the uranium business. Australia is also trying to nail down safeguards under which it too could sell uranium to India.

“We are effectively ahead of the Australians,” the CNSC official said, noting however that Russia and Kazakhstan were already supplying into India.

Opening up the Indian market would be a big help to Canada’s Cameco Corp, which is the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer but which recently cut its long-term output targets due to the Fukushima disaster.

“Anytime we can reduce the roadblocks to selling our product around the world is always helpful,” Cameco chief executive Tim Gitzel told Reuters in Canada. “It opens a new market for us with the appropriate safeguards in place. So this is good news.”

Another potential beneficiary is Canadian engineering firm SNC Lavalin Group Inc, which bought the government’s commercial nuclear division, which designed the Candu reactor that is in use in numerous countries.

“As far as the sales of reactors goes, we would normally now request that Canada be accorded the same treatment as the Russians, the French and the Americans and that a site be designated in India for the implementation of at least a twin- unit Candu nuclear power station,” SNC Lavalin International President Ronald Denom, part of Harper’s delegation in India, told Reuters.

He also said it should open up the market to service the existing reactors in India.

Harper also said Canada welcomed foreign investment, after the country temporarily blocked Malaysian state oil firm Petronas’ C$ 5.17 billion ($ 5.19 billion) bid for gas producer Progress Energy Resources on October 20.

Late on Friday, Canada extended to December 10 its review of a $ 15.1 billion bid made in July by China’s CNOOC Ltd for Canadian energy producer Nexen Inc.

“Those decisions have to be taken looking at the global evolving economy in which we operate,” Harper said.

($ 1 = C$ 0.9965)

(Additional reporting by Julie Gordon in Toronto; Additional writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Michael Roddy)

Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Apple's shares slide 4 percent to five-month low

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Election night was a good night for Calif., civility and statheads

By Jeff Greenfield

Forgive me if I don’t offer thoughts on the impending Republican civil war, the brilliance of the Obama campaign team, the effect of Hurricane Sandy, the demographic nightmare confronting the GOP, or prospects for the 2016 Iowa caucuses, now just a short 1,100 days or so away.

There’s plenty of that for your Wednesday pleasure. But Tuesday night produced other news that’s worth your attention.

First, California’s voters made two decisions that will have a profound impact on the state’s fiscal and political life. They approved Proposition 30, Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to increase sales taxes and income taxes on the affluent to ease the state’s perennial budget dilemma. (California’s 34-year-old Prop 13 requires a two-thirds vote in the legislature to increase taxes, an all but unreachable level). Had Prop 30 failed—and most thought it would—the already draconian cuts on California’s schools, public universities, and other services would have been just a prelude to further slashes.

Second, the state’s voters rejected Prop 32, which would have banned labor unions and corporations from raising money for state political purposes through paycheck deductions. Because corporations rarely use this tactic, Prop 32’s real impact would have kept tens of millions of dollars from aiding Democratic Party candidates in the state—one reason why business interests contributed some $120 million in a futile effort to pass the Proposition.

While Democrats might cheer the result, it also means that labor unions will continue to hold outsize power with the party—meaning that Brown’s efforts to rein in pension benefits for public employees may have gotten a lot harder.

Second, civility in the House of Representatives just took a step forward, as two of the most rhetorically combative members lost re-election. Allen West, a Florida Republican and Tea Party favorite who once declared that “there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party,” lost his seat. Across the aisle—way, way across the aisle—Pete Stark of California, a 40-year veteran whose temper tantrums are the stuff of legend, was defeated by a fellow Democrat.

On the other hand, Minnesota’s Michelle Bachmann narrowly survived re-election, meaning we may be treated to at least two more years of her idiosyncratic approach to history (locating the battle of Lexington and Concord in New Hampshire) and medicine (vaccines cause mental retardation because someone she just met told her). And Florida’s Alan Grayson, who once said the Republican health care plan was for older people to die quickly, will return to the House. Cable news networks now have their hot-ticket debaters for the coming year.

Third, the ability of the Obama campaign to target supporters and lure them to the polls, and the ability of analysts like the New York Times’ Nate Silver to predict the outcome of a race with near precision, means that those of us who got into politics because we were told there’d be no math have got to get a clue.

If you care at all about politics, your two pieces of required reading are Silver’s “The Signal and the Noise” and Sasha Issenberg’s “The Victory Lab.” Silver explains why predictions from the world of sports, finance, science and politics fail, and should offer a permanent rebuke to those pundits who write and speak in gaseous terms of gut instincts, vibes and a mystical ability to detect sweeping forces that will drive elections. Issenberg’s book details precisely how the combination of behavioral psychology and data crunching enables campaigns to find supporters and persuade them to go to the polls.

This just-concluded campaign demonstrated forcefully that if you do not understand this brave new world, you will not understand politics, no matter how well you know the history of the Electoral College.

Finally, let me end with a concession. I plan to spend this day searching the websites of all of those who so confidently asserted why and how Obama was destined to lose. I’m particularly eager to read the wisdom of Dick Morris, the most consistently, hilariously ignorant pollster/strategist, who wrote just a few days ago “Here Comes The Landslide.” Mr. Morris’ continued employment is an inspiration to all those who believe that a career should in no way be limited by a total lack of competence.

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