Kopp: Impostor filed motion in NY Facebook case

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Lawyers fighting a New York man’s ownership claim against Facebook Inc. say a bizarre motion bearing the name of convicted abortion doctor killer James Charles Kopp earlier this month was apparently filed by an impostor.

In court papers, Facebook lawyers say they received a sworn statement from the imprisoned Kopp Monday denying he’s filed any motion in Paul Ceglia‘s lawsuit. An accompanying letter from Kopp to the federal judge handling the case says someone is impersonating him.

The motion signed with Kopp’s name had sought permission to intervene in Ceglia’s lawsuit while accusing Ceglia of a litany of personal slights, threats and crimes. Kopp’s serving life in prison for the 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian in suburban Buffalo.

Facebook says the Kopp motion, even if it’s real, should be denied.

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Israel, Gaza militants agree to ceasefire, Hamas official says

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Like the 10 winners before him, Phillip Phillips faces the uneven road from "American Idol" victor to pop-chart mainstay. After the success of his Top 10 hit, "Home," the Georgia native is facing a new challenge - to replicate the mainstream successes of past "Idol" winners Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson on his debut album, "The World from the Side of the Moon," released on Monday by Interscope Records. ...

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Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne to reprise roles for “Insidious” sequel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – FilmDistrict, Alliance Films and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will bring “Insidious Chapter 2,” the sequel to last year’s hit film “Insidious,” to U.S. theaters on August 30, 2013, the companies announced Monday.

Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins will reprise their roles in the film, which “Insidious” director James Wan will direct from a script written by Leigh Whannell who also wrote the first film.

Jason Blum, who produced “Insidious,” is producing the low-budget sequel through his Blumhouse Productions. Brian Kavanaugh Jones, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, and Charles Layton are executive producing. Production on the sequel is set to begin on January 15 in Los Angeles.

Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired the U.S. rights to the film in conjunction with FilmDistrict. The film is being financed by Alliance Films. FilmDistrict will distribute the film theatrically in the United States, with Sony handling the majority of ancillary rights in the U.S.

Alliance Films will distribute in Canada, the U.K. (via its Momentum Pictures subsidiary) and Spain (via Aurum), and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will distribute in all other international territories.

Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s CEO, said: “We are all very excited to see the next chapter of James and Leigh’s vision of the Further. It’s great to be in business again with Blumhouse, Alliance and Sony.”

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Pre-ski fitness can protect against post-ski problems

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Skiing is a such a skill-based activity that if you don’t start learning until you are 20, it will take 20 years to learn.

But fitness experts say proper conditioning can make the difference between a fun weekend on the slopes and one waylaid by injury.

“Skiing first is technique,” said Robert Forster, a Los Angeles-based physical therapist and founder of Phase IV Scientific Health and Performance Center. “If your quads (muscles) are just burning up on the runs, then you’re not skiing right. That’s a good sign that you might need a lesson.”

To minimize fatigue and risk of injury, Forster, physical therapist to 42 Olympic medalists, suggests getting in ski-shape before hitting the slopes.

“All fitness begins with an aerobic base,” he said. “So six weeks before, start training with an elliptical trainer or stationary bike, or running or walking. Build up to 20 to 30 minutes three times a week.”

Aerobic training also strengthens muscles, Forster said, so any subsequent agility drills, such as running sideways or skipping, will be even more effective if you’ve established an aerobic base.

Stretch before skiing to protect against injury and enhance freedom of motion; stretch afterward to return the muscles to their normal length, said Forster.

He calls stretching the single most important thing people can do for body health maintenance.

“Connective tissue shortens with time,” he explained. “We stretch to maintain good alignment of the bones.”

If your skiing holiday lasts a week, limit your time on the slopes the first day, Forster suggests. And reconsider that dehydrating après-ski cocktail.

“We know that a glass of wine and a hot tub is not a good idea. Heat adds to inflammation. It will only increase swelling the next day,” he said.

Save that soak for the morning, and then not more than five minutes.

Ice down any sore spots or tight areas. “Ice is a great treatment for tightness,” he said.

Jessica Matthews, an exercise physiologist with the American Council on Exercise, suggests that even those already in good condition would benefit by integrating sports-specific pre-ski training into their workout.

“Prepare the body to move in short bursts,” said Matthews, who notes that skiing demands carving back and forth, rapid turns and sudden changes of direction.

She said it’s easy to set up fitness drills using plastic cones, which can be had at any sporting goods store.

“There’s great stuff you can do with cones,” she said. “Those newer to fitness can begin with stepovers, laterally, side to side. Those more seasoned can make them hops, or invent more intricate drills.”

For those who prefer to train in groups, the fitness company Equinox recently launched a class at its clubs called Core Values, which uses low parallel bars, called parallettes, and medicine balls to enhance mobility and stability skills.

“It’s geared to help sports people get in condition for their sport,” said Lisa Wheeler, who created the class to train across all ranges of motion.

“Even downhill, skiing is about rotation,” said Wheeler, an experienced skier. “Most people scoop right and left as they are going downhill.”

Falls account for 75 to 85 percent of all skiing injuries, according to the American College of Sports Medicine. Most common is damage to the knee.

Forster said even though more runners than skiers are injured every year, ski injuries tend to be more serious.

“Skiing has much more traumatic injuries that can have long-lasting effects,” he explained.

The National Areas Association, the trade association for ski area owners and operators, said U.S. ski areas tallied an estimated 51 million skier and snowboarder visits during the 2011-2012 season.

Forster advises skiers to assess themselves and the slopes before diving down the mountain.

“Is there fresh snow? Heavy, wet snow?” he said. “Be aware of conditions. Fatigue is a big factor. If I had a dollar for every client who got hurt on the last run …”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and John Wallace)

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Canada pledges again to balance budget by 2015

OTTAWA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Friday reiterated its intention to balance its budget by 2015, three days after projecting there would be deficits until 2016-17.

In separate appearances in Quebec City and New York, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.

“It remains the government’s plan, intention, to balance the budget prior to the next federal election. The recent economic and fiscal update by the minister indicates we are actually very close to that objective,” Harper told reporters in Quebec City. The next election is in October 2015.

Flaherty’s fall fiscal update on Tuesday had pushed back the target date for eliminating the deficit by a year, to 2016-17, citing a weak global economy.

But the minister said in a speech in New York that the government was on track to balance the budget in the next two to three years, barring major external events, and he later clarified that he intended a balanced budget by 2015.

“The prime minister’s always correct,” he chuckled.

He sought to explain the discrepancy by saying the fiscal update had built in a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion, meaning there was an underlying surplus of C$ 1.2 billion for 2015-16. He said the projection of a C$ 1.8 billion deficit amounted to about half a percent of the C$ 275 billion federal budget.

“There’s lots of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” he said.

The opposition New Democratic Party noted the discrepancy in a release headlined: “Stephen Harper makes stuff up about balancing the budget.”

It pointed out that balancing the budget by the next election was not the same as balancing it by 2016-17.

As it is, even the 2015-16 timetable is a year later than offered in the Conservative campaign for reelection in May 2011. They had promised a balanced budget by 2014-15, followed by major personal income tax relief before the 2015 election.

Flaherty’s timetable drew criticism this week from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which said the minister had become expert at kicking the can down the road.

The projections could be thrown out of whack if the United States goes off the fiscal cliff, a set of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that are to be triggered on January 2 if legislators and the White House cannot agree on a more nuanced budget deal.

Flaherty said U.S. failure to avert the fiscal cliff would cause a significant and immediate decline in Canada’s gross domestic product, and he would counter it.

Referring to a possible economic shock from Europe or the United States, he said: “If that were to happen and if the Canadian economy were to be pushed back into recession with the resulting danger for higher unemployment and the danger always of a prolonged recession, then we would act.”

He added: “We would not stand by and let that happen. The kinds of measure we can take: there are various tax measures we can take, there are measures with respect to stimulus we can take, these are things that we have done before and we can do again.”

On Tuesday, Flaherty spoke of having prepared various contingency plans.

(Additional reporting by Louse Egan; Editing by David Gregorio)

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Amazon’s larger Kindle Fire HD ships early

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon has started shipping the larger version of its Kindle Fire HD tablet computer on Thursday, five days ahead of schedule.

Amazon is short on stock, though, so new orders won’t ship until Dec. 3. Amazon.com Inc. had been taking orders for shipment on Nov. 20.

The Kindle Fire is one of several tablets challenging Apple’s iPad.

The tablet, which has an 8.9-inch screen measured diagonally, is available on Amazon’s website for $ 299. The tablet will be available at Best Buy stores beginning Friday and at more retailers in the coming weeks.

A version with cellular access is available for $ 499 and will start shipping next week as planned, though new orders won’t ship until Dec. 3.

The smaller version, which has a 7-inch screen, has been available since September.

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Militant group says attack on Gaza media center killed top fighter

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad says an Israeli strike on a Gaza media center has killed one of its top militant leaders.

Monday's strike in downtown Gaza City was part of a widening 6-day-old offensive meant to quell Hamas rocket fire.

It's the second strike on the building in two days. The Hamas TV station, Al Aqsa, is located on the top floor.

Islamic Jihad has sent a text message to reporters saying that Ramez Harb was killed in the strike Monday. Harb is a leading figure in their militant wing, the Al Quds Brigades.

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Metal singer Aaron Lewis finds second home in country music

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) – Aaron Lewis stands as one of the more unusual crossovers into country music, but the singer of the metal band Staind believes it was a fit made in the cradle.

“It’s been quite the pleasant eclectic mix of tattoos and black eyeliner, and Stetsons, cowboy boots and big shiny buckles,” Lewis said in an interview after the release of his first full-length country studio album, “The Road,” this week.

Lewis, 40, was raised on what he terms his grandfather’s country music: Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Charlie Daniels and George Jones. He collaborated with Daniels and Jones on his country EP, “Town Line,” released last year.

This made the transition from the angst-ridden world of metal to the laid-back country scene an easy step for him, but perhaps not so much for his head-banging fans.

“A few fans are really having a hard time with it,” Lewis said. “I can’t make everyone happy. Music is about making me happy first. For those who wish I would stick with Staind, they’ll get what they want, too.”

Lewis, who sold seven studio albums over a 17-year career with Staind, says he has two musical careers because he is “creatively bipolar” and suffers from attention deficit disorder.

“I need to switch it up a little bit,” he said. “It’s kind of nice to write a song about taking my daughters to the beach instead (of) about something that’s tearing me apart from the inside.”

For Lewis, each song on “The Road” is the opportunity to explore his creativity in music, while winding down a road filled with new country listeners and taking Staind fans along for the ride.

“The Road” includes “Forever,” a thoughtful song of life on the road, and “Endless Summer,” a simple track about digging up clams and casting for striped bass with his daughters.

“If we catch a keeper we throw it on the grill,” he says. “The beauty of the adventure that I’m on now is I can write songs about stuff like that. I could never bring a song like that to the table for Staind.”

He describes writing “Endless Summer” as a “refreshing and a nice change” from his metal past.

“I remember having a big smile on my face the whole time I was writing it,” he said. “In the past, what’s usually coming up for lyrics is not smiley material. The song wrote itself in 10 minutes.”

In contrast, “Party in Hell,” which has fans up and dancing, was the last song Lewis wrote for the album and was inspired by a stint in Las Vegas.

“Las Vegas really is, in a metaphorical sense, a party in hell; you can get into anything you want to,” he said. “It was like well, ‘OK, I’m going to hell, who else is going to be there? We might as well have a party with it.’”

SAME PROCESS

His previous country EP, “Town Line,” featured the gold-selling single “Country Boy,” a collaboration with Daniels and Jones that hit the top of the “Billboard” album charts and topped off at No. 7 on the Top 200.

“That’s crazy, right?” Lewis asks, shaking his head. “It was pretty amazing for me, pretty surreal. I was actually in the studio with Charlie, which was a lot of fun. We have become good friends.”

The writing process for country or rock is the same, according to Lewis.

“The music is always first, then the melody, and the lyrics third,” he said. “I need the music to know what the landscape is that I’m singing over, and I need the melody to fit the words in, and then the words come last.”

But the lyrics do not come while he is writing on a piece of paper. “They come with me standing in front of a microphone with the song playing in the background and singing,” he said. “It’s total improv, right off the cuff.”

As with recording, Lewis does not approach a rock performance differently from a country performance.

“I go out on stage and perform those songs I recorded to the best of my ability to sound just like the recording,” he said. “I have always tried to approach every show like it’s the only show that I have. That’s kind of how I’ve gone about this crazy career I’ve had now coming up on 15 years.”

(Reporting by Vernell Hackett; Editing by Christine Kearney and Lisa Von Ahn)

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Questions of Blame Linger 34 Years After Jonestown

From the age of 13, Leslie Wagner Wilson had been indoctrinated in the California-based Peoples Temple, led by the charismatic Jim Jones, whose mission was to foster racial harmony and help the poor.

But on Nov. 18, 1978, she and a handful of church members fought their way through thick jungle in the South American country of Guyana, escaping a utopian society gone wrong where followers were starved, beaten and held prisoner in the Jonestown compound.

She walked 30 miles to safety with her 3-year-old son, Jakari, strapped to her back and a smaller group of defectors. But just hours later, the mother, sister and brother and husband she left behind were dead.

“I was so scared,” said Wagner, now 55. “We exchanged phone numbers in case we died. I was prepared to die. I never thought I would see my 21st birthday.”

Today, on the 34th anniversary, Wilson said it’s important to remember the California-based Peoples Temple Jonestown massacre, especially the survivors who have wrestled with their consciences for decades.

PHOTOS: Jonestown Massacre Anniversary

Nine members of her family were among the 918 Americans who died that day, 909 of them ordered by Jones to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid in the largest ritual suicide in history.

Her husband, Joe Wilson, was one of Jones’ top lieutenants who helped assassinate congressman Leo Ryan and his press crew when they tried to free church members who were being held against their will.

After arriving back in the United States, Wilson said she “went through hell” — three failed marriages, drug use and suicidal thoughts she describes in her 2009 book, “Slavery of Faith.”

“I was like Humpty Dumpty, but you couldn’t put me back together again,” she said.

Survivors, many of them African-American like Wilson, say they felt guilt and shame and faced the most agonizing question surrounding the nation’s single largest loss of life until 9/11: Was it suicide or murder?

Full Coverage: Jonestown Massacre

In the now-famous “death tape,” supporters clapped and babies cried as Jones instructed families to kill the elderly first, then the youngest in protest against capitalism and racism. Mothers poisoned 246 children before taking their own lives.

“We really can’t understand the Peoples Temple without looking at the historical time period when it arose,” said Rebecca Moore, a professor of religious studies at San Diego State University.

“With the liberation movements of the ’60s and ’70s, the collapse of the black-power movement, the Peoples Temple was the main institution in the San Francisco Bay area that promoted a message of integration and racial equality.”

Moore lost her two sisters and her nephew, the son of Jim Jones. “They were hardcore believers,” she said of her siblings.

Jim Jones, who was white, came from a “wrong side of the tracks,” poor background in Indiana where in the 1950s he became known as a charismatic preacher with an affinity for African-Americans.

“A number of survivors, including those who defected, believe to this day he had paranormal abilities,” said Moore, who met him years later. “He could heal them and read their minds.”

In the 1960s, Jones moved to San Francisco, where at the height of the Peoples Temple there were about 5,000 members.

WATCH: A Look Back at Jonestown Massacre

“They wanted my parents to join,” she said. “Like most outsiders, we didn’t have any idea what was happening outside closed doors.”

Jones ingratiated himself with celebrities and politicians, mobilizing voters to help elect Mayor George Moscone in 1975 and becoming chairman of the city’s housing authority.

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Israel, Gaza fighting rages on as Egypt seeks truce

GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion though Egypt saw “some indications” of a truce ahead.

Militant rocket fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning with three rockets fired at the nearby coastal city of Ashkelon, the Israeli army said.

“As of now we have struck more than 1,000 targets, so Hamas should do the math over whether it is or isn’t worth it to cease fire,” Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon, over Twitter.

“If there is quiet in the South and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel’s citizens nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack.”

Forty-eight Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 13 children, have been killed in Israel’s raids, Palestinian officials said. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three people and injuring dozens.

Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the commander of the Hamas Islamist group that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state. Israel’s declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has plagued Israeli border towns for years.

Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. A Gaza City media building was hit, witnesses said, wounding 6 journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain’s Sky News.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop “transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity”.

Two other predawn attacks on houses in the Jabalya refugee camp killed two children and wounded 13 other people, medical officials said.

These attacks followed a defiant statement by Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida, who told a news conference: “This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning.”

The masked gunman dressed in military fatigues insisted that despite Israel’s blows Hamas “is still strong enough to destroy the enemy”.

An Israeli attack on Saturday destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.

Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant’s family understood as a warning to flee, and thus their lives were spared, witnesses said.

Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.

Among those killed in air strikes on Gaza on Saturday were at least four suspected militants riding motorcycles, and several civilians including a 30-year-old woman.

ISRAELI SCHOOLS SHUT

Israel said it would keep schools in its south shut on Sunday as a precaution to avoid casualties from rocket strikes reaching as far as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the past few days.

Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile interceptor system destroyed in mid-air a rocket fired by Gaza militants at Tel Aviv on Saturday, where volleyball games on the beach front came to an abrupt halt as air-raid sirens sounded.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack on Tel Aviv, the third against the city since Wednesday. It said it had fired an Iranian-designed Fajr-5 at the coastal metropolis, some 70 km (43 miles) north of Gaza.

In the Israeli Mediterranean port of Ashdod, a rocket ripped into several balconies. Police said five people were hurt.

Israel’s operation has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called Israel’s right to self-defense, but there was also a growing number of calls from world leaders to seek an end to the violence.

British Prime Minister David Cameron “expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides,” in a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.

London was “putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate,” the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu “to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end.”

Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through “de-escalation” and diplomacy, but also believes Israel has a right to self-defense.

Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that “there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees.”

Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unraveled with recent violence.

A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying “there is hope,” but it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official declined to comment on the negotiations. Military commanders said Israel was prepared to fight on to achieve a goal of halting rocket fire from Gaza, which has plagued Israeli towns since late 2000, when failed peace talks led to the outbreak of a Palestinian uprising.

Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.

POSSIBLE GROUND OFFENSIVE

Israel, with tanks and artillery positioned along the frontier, said it was still weighing a ground offensive.

Israeli cabinet ministers decided on Friday to more than double the current reserve troop quota set for the Gaza offensive to 75,000 and around 16,000 reservists have already been called up.

Asked by reporters whether a ground operation was possible, Major-General Tal Russo, commander of the Israeli forces on the Gaza frontier, said: “Definitely.”

“We have a plan. … It will take time. We need to have patience. It won’t be a day or two,” he added.

A possible move into the densely populated Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favored to win a January election.

The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.

But the Gaza conflagration has stirred the pot of a Middle East already boiling from two years of Arab revolution and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.

One major change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, potentially narrowing Israel’s maneuvering room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Douglas Hamilton)

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