Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

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Nexus 10: Can Google Compete With the iPad? [REVIEW]

The Nexus 10

The Nexus 10 has a gorgeous 10-inch display with a resolution of 2560×1600.

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[More from Mashable: 13 Popular E-Books That Cost Under $ 3]

After finding success with the Nexus 7, Google expands its tablet lineup with the Nexus 10. The 10-inch tablet features an incredibly high-resolution screen and packs a lot of power into a thin, lightweight package.

Moreover, at a starting price of $ 399, the Nexus 10 is competing head-to-head with Apple’s fourth-generation iPad and Amazon’s 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD. So how does the Nexus 10 stack up to other Android tablets? Can it compete with the iPad? To find out, we spent five days with the tablet.

[More from Mashable: Top 5 Apps Your Kids Will Love This Week]

Build Quality

Samsung designed the Nexus 10, but the look and feel is pure Google. The device is extremely light — but unlike some Android tablets (I’m looking at you, Galaxy Note 10.1), it doesn’t feel cheap.

The device has a nicely curved shape — almost oval-like. The two stereo speakers are nestled into the side and blend in with the backing. Speaking of the back, it’s rubberized and feels great in the hand. I never had a fear of dropping the tablet, its grippy nature adding a sense of substantiality to the device in spite of its svelte frame and weight. The back of the device can get warm with heavy use, but it doesn’t feel hot.

The device weighs a bit less than the third-generation iPad and is just as thin (technically it’s even thinner but we’re talking half a millimeter, which is almost impossible to quantify by sight or touch).

The only odd part of the device is how the Nexus 10 Book Cover connects. There is a plastic panel at the top of the rear side of the device that can be removed. From there, you snap the cover into place. The cover works like a Smart Cover — lift it up, the device turns on. The cover fits well and adds virtually no bulk to the device, but I dislike the method of getting it on and off.

In addition to a micro-USB cable which can be used for charging, there is also a micro-HDMI port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Apparently there is also a dock connector for easy charging, but we haven’t seen accessories that support it yet.

The Screen

As with most tablets, the story behind the Nexus 10 is all about the screen. The Nexus 10 sports a super-high resolution 2560×1600-pixel display. To put that in perspective, my 27-inch iMac’s resolution is 2560×1440.

This gives the the Nexus 10 a higher pixel density than even the iPad. In actual real-world usage, I genuinely couldn’t tell the difference between the clarity of the two displays. I tried with text and with the same 1920×1080 video file — both looked fantastic.

Blacks on the Nexus 10 are very black and colors pop. I used the screen in a variety of lighting conditions and only in direct sunlight did I have an issue with the screen. Bottom line: It’s great.

Of course, the one downside of having such a high-resolution screen is that just like with the iPad Retina, imperfections are readily apparent. For instance, while Google has updated all its app icons to look great on the high resolution screen, most other app makers haven’t.

Because of the way Android’s user interface elements are built, most apps tend to look fine on the high resolution display — even without specific optimizations — but apps that use bitmaps for UI elements/buttons or core graphical components and don’t have high-resolution assets will look pixelated.

The web is really the biggest culprit — most websites haven’t shifted to a Retina-ready web. That’s improving as more high-resolution displays enter the market, but a caveat of having such a high-resolution display is that some sites and images just won’t look great. I think it’s a worthy trade-off for everything else you get with a high-density display.

The Nexus 10 has a 16:10 aspect ratio. This makes the screen well-suited for video and certain games, but maybe not as ideal for reading books or magazines.

Bottom line: The screen is fantastic.

The OS

With Android 4.2, Google has an interesting way of refining its existing Android experience. To wit, 4.2 still has the name “Jelly Bean,” same as Android 4.1. Unfortunately, I was unable to test some of the newest 4.2 features with the Nexus 10 because they aren’t ready. When the devices start shipping to customers, Google says the update will be in place.

I’m a big fan of Android 4.1/4.2, especially on a tablet. Because this is a Nexus tablet, it avoids using any skins such as TouchWiz or Sense. This is a good thing, because I find that the pure Google experience is getting better and better.

With other large-screen Android tablets we’ve reviewed, I’ve often run into force-closes and problem managing memory. That’s not the case with the Nexus 10. I didn’t see any force-close errors, and the OS managed tons of running apps without a hitch.

I did find that the tablet was less buttery smooth than the Nexus 7. This was particularly true when scrolling in web pages or in some third-party apps. I wouldn’t call it sluggish — but there is a sense of lag that you don’t see on the Nexus 7 or on the iPad.

If you’re new to Android, the Nexus 10 is a good starter device because Jelly Bean 4.2 strikes a nice balance between working out of the box and offering options for more personalized customization.

Battery Life and Performance

The Nexus 10 boasts a huge 9000 mAh battery. I wasn’t able to run conclusive battery tests, but I’ve only had to plug it in once since Wednesday — and that’s with fairly continuous use.

The dual-core A15 processor is extremely fast and I didn’t sense any lag with high-resolution graphics or games. Playing Grand Theft Auto III was lag-free.

Google says the Wi-Fi on the device is better than the competition — but in my tests, I couldn’t see any benefits or deficits against my other gear. I have a dual-band 802.11n router and typically run everything off of 5Ghz N for minimal interference. NFC and Bluetooth are also built into the tablet and both worked well.

The Nexus 10 has two cameras — a rear 5-megapixel camera and 1.9-megapixel front camera. Both are unremarkable. The front-facing camera works well for Skype or Google+ hangouts. The rear camera is acceptable, if not outstanding.

The Nexus 10 is a solid performer and it compares well with the iPad and other large-screen tablets on the market.

Apps (Or Lack thereof)

The biggest problem with the Nexus 10 has nothing to do with the hardware itself. It’s the apps. Or more directly, the tiny number of apps optimized for its display.

While Apple is proud to boast about its 275,000 iPad-optimized apps, Google is nearly silent about the number of apps designed for for Android tablets. Worse, the discovery process for apps optimized for large-screen Android tablets is nearly non-existent.

This is less of a problem for smaller tablets, such as the Kindle Fire HD and the Nexus 7. After all, with 5-inch phones in the wild, scaling up for a 7-inch form-factor isn’t much of a stretch. When it comes to a 10-inch device, however, upscaled phone apps aren’t a great user experience.

More distressingly, the number of big-name apps with Android tablet-optimized versions is ridiculously small. Twitter doesn’t have an Android tablet app. Neither do Rdio, Spotify, The Weather Channel, The New York Times, eBay, LinkedIn, Skype (though Skype works just fine with tablets), Dropbox and many, many more. For the most part, the non-tablet versions of the apps work just fine on the Nexus 10, but the overall experience leaves something to be desired.

Flipboard is available on Android phones and on smaller tablets but I couldn’t even install it from Google Play. I was able to install the app via Amazon’s Appstore, but was presented with a warning that the app hadn’t been optimized for such a large screen. Sure enough, I wound up looking at an upscaled version of the phone interface, rather than a tablet.

In recent months, Google has started to take a more proactive approach, advising developers on tablet guidelines and curating collections of tablet-ready apps, but it doesn’t change the fact that finding apps to take advantage of the Nexus 10′s display is difficult in the best of circumstances.

Ultimately, I keep harping on the app situation because it’s the biggest issue facing not just the Nexus 10, but all large-screen Android tablets. Until the app situation is addressed in a meaningful way, it’s hard to recommend the Nexus 10 over the iPad — and that’s a real shame.

Using the Device

App issues notwithstanding, I found myself really enjoying the Nexus 10, especially for web browsing and watching video.

The tablet is light and its feather weight was really evident when I went back to my third-generation iPad after spending a few days with the Nexus 10 non-stop. The iPad felt heavy by comparison and I missed some of Android’s best features — such as easy access to settings from any screen.

I do want to note that as much as I enjoyed the tablet in landscape, I didn’t love using it in portrait. It’s just too tall and too narrow. I read a lot on my iPad — especially magazines — and the experience is nearly perfect. We’ll be discussing the magazine situation on the Nexus 10 (and Android in general) in a future article, but suffice to say, it’s not as enjoyable on a 16:10 device because the ratio really works against reading.

The same is true for reading regular books. Where the Nexus 7 makes a perfect sized e-reader, the Nexus 10 suffers because of its size. Books are best read in two-page side-by-side mode in the Kindle and Google Books apps, but in portrait, the screen feels too narrow.

Final Verdict

There are so many great things about the Nexus 10 — its screen and build quality, its great battery life and fast performance — not to mention the UI enhancements with Android 4.2. It’s a really solid device, except for one glaring, unavoidable reality: The apps.

Google has done an admirable job with all of its apps, and for those who never stray from the Google ecosystem, the tablet is a joy to use. For everyone else, using upscaled phone apps (often with forced orientations) is a frustrating use of what is otherwise such an excellent tablet.

For the average user, I’d have a hard time recommending the Nexus 10 over the fourth-generation iPad, because the iPad’s extra $ 100 cost is worth the greater tablet ecosystem. But the Nexus 10 is far and away the best large-screen Android tablet hardware I’ve used. If nothing else, it’s a solid example of what is possible on Android. With any luck, it will encourage Android developers to start making tablet-friendly apps.

What do you think of the Nexus 10? Sound off in the comments.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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California GMO measure may fail after food industry fights back

(Reuters) – Major food and seed companies appear to be on the verge of defeating a California ballot initiative that, if passed on Tuesday, would create the first labeling requirement for genetically modified foods in the United States.

In a campaign reminiscent of this summer’s successful fight against a proposed tobacco tax in California, opposition funded by Monsanto Co, DuPont, PepsiCo Inc and others unleashed waves of TV and radio advertisements against Proposition 37 and managed to turn the tide of public opinion.

Four weeks ago, the labeling initiative was supported by more than two-thirds of Californians who said they intended to vote on November 6, according to a poll from the California Business Roundtable and Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy. On Tuesday, their latest poll showed support had plummeted to 39 percent, while opposition had surged to almost 51 percent.

The swing in sentiment in the final weeks was predicted by pollsters, based on the power of a $ 46 million “No on 37″ campaign, one of the best-funded for a California ballot measure fight. The ads claim the “badly written” initiative would increase the average family’s grocery bills by $ 400 annually and hobble California farmers. Opponents also take aim at what they call “special interest exemptions” for restaurant food and products from animals fed with grain containing genetically modified organisms, popularly known as GMOs.

Backers of the labeling initiative say consumers have the right to know what is in the food they eat. They dispute opponents’ cost projections and say labeling would not be burdensome to families or businesses.

They could still prevail on Tuesday if the polling turns out to be wrong, or if a last minute push by grassroots supporters takes root.

Many processed foods sold in the United States are made at least in part with corn, soybeans or other crops that have been genetically modified – crossed with DNA from other species to do things like make them resistant to insects or weed killer.

Each side accuses the other of resorting to desperate measures to mislead voters and using science that falls short of rigorous standards.

Such polarized debate is common in California, where ballot measures play a big role in governing. But labeling proponents say it also speaks to the research gap around GMOs, specifically a lack of mandated government studies that would show whether long-term consumption of GMOs causes health problems.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined labels are not needed for GM crops that are “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops. The United States does not require labeling or mandatory independent pre-market safety testing for GMOs. At least three dozen countries require labeling and mandatory pre-market safety testing, said Michael Hansen, senior scientist from watchdog group Consumer Reports.

Some food and agriculture experts predict food companies would remove genetically modified ingredients rather than label them just for California – a move that would hit the multi-billion genetically modified seed business, where Monsanto and DuPont are market leaders.

Monsanto, the largest backer of the campaign with more than $ 8 million in funding, and DuPont say Proposition 37 would mislead consumers. PepsiCo referred reporters to the “No on 37″ campaign.

TARGETING FLAWS IN INITIATIVE

Consumer advocates say the “No on 37″ campaign has employed many of the same tactics the tobacco industry used this summer in California in a $ 47 million campaign that defeated Proposition 29, which would have raised cigarette taxes by $ 1 per pack to fund cancer research and other health efforts.

Opponents of the tobacco tax overcame early support approaching 70 percent by flooding airwaves with ads, including one featuring a doctor in a white coat warning that tobacco tax proceeds would not be spent on cancer treatment and could be shipped out of state. Outgunned supporters said those claims were false.

The food and tobacco industry campaigns both employed messages that weren’t “arguing with the premise of the initiatives, but rather making picky criticisms of the details of the initiatives,” said anti-smoking activist Stanton Glantz, a professor and researcher at the University of California-San Francisco.

“No on 37″ spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks rejects the notion of copycat tactics and said the similarities between the two campaigns are limited to pointing out flaws in the initiatives and spending significant money on ads.

Backers of Proposition 37, including thousands of individual donors, organic food companies and natural health news provider Joseph Mercola, have been outspent roughly six to one, according to campaign reports filed with the California Secretary of State. In their final push, they are trying to trumpet cases where they say opponents have used misinformation to sway the public.

MISSTEPS ON BOTH SIDES

Both sides have made missteps.

Supporters of Proposition 37 got a boost when the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics said “No on 37″ inaccurately stated in the California official voter information guide that the academy had concluded that GMOs were safe.

“We are concerned that California’s voters are being misled to believe the nation’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals is against Proposition 37, when in fact, the academy does not have a position on the issue,” its president said in a statement in early October.

“No on 37″ said it based its information on a policy statement on the academy’s website and that it was not aware the position had expired in 2010.

The FDA also set the record straight on a “No on 37″ mailer that put the FDA’s logo below a quote criticizing efforts like the California labeling measure as “inherently misleading.” The use of the quote next to the logo made it appear that FDA had weighed in on the fight.

FDA spokeswoman Morgan Liscinsky said the agency made no such statement and had no position on the initiative. “Yes on 37″ also asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the allegedly fraudulent misuse of FDA’s seal in that mailer – something that won’t be resolved until well after the election.

Then, just four days before the vote, supporters of Proposition 37 fumbled the facts about the status of its DOJ request, releasing a statement titled: “FBI opens investigation into No on 37 shenanigans.”

The U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California quickly responded: “Neither the FBI nor this office has a pending investigation related to this matter.”

“Yes on 37″ said it issued its statement after a field agent for the FBI called its attorney. It later revised its statement to say that the U.S. Attorney’s office had referred the matter to the FDA, which like other federal agencies has its own criminal investigations unit.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Stacey Joyce)

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HSBC earmarks more for US fines

5 November 2012 Last updated at 03:47 ET

HSBC bank has put aside a further $ 800m (£500m) to cover potential money-laundering fines in the US as it announced a fall in quarterly profits.

The bank had already put aside $ 700m after a US Senate report published in July said lax controls had left it vulnerable to money laundering.

Pre-tax profit for the three months to the end of September was $ 3.5bn, down $ 3.7bn from a year earlier.

However, the bank said underlying profits in the quarter had increased.

They totalled $ 5bn, more than double the figure recorded for the same quarter a year ago.

Europe’s largest bank also put aside a further £223m to cover UK payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling claims. This brings the total the bank has set aside for PPI compensation to £1.3bn and the total for the UK banking industry as a whole to almost £13bn.

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Katy Perry wears dress with Obama slogan at rally

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Pop star Katy Perry is sporting a skin-tight minidress with President Barack Obama‘s campaign slogan “Forward” emblazoned across it at the president’s rally in Milwaukee.

Perry came on stage at Saturday’s event initially wearing a red, white and blue dress and holding a microphone shaped like the Statue of Liberty’s torch.

But after her first song, a cover of Al Green’s soul hit “Let’s Stay Together,” she tossed aside the dress to reveal the bright blue minidress.

Obama’s slogan “Forward” is also Wisconsin’s state motto.

Perry paused midway through her set to make a pitch for donations to victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Obama’s rally with Perry comes before he’s set to be in Madison on Monday with rocker Bruce Springsteen.

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Barnes & Noble Drops Price of Nook Color and Tablet

In what is surely a response to the release of its Nook HD and HD+, Barnes & Noble announced Saturday it will lower the price of its Nook Color and Nook tablets beginning Sunday.

[More from Mashable: Barnes & Noble PIN Pads Hacked at Stores Nationwide]

The Nook tablet will now sell for $ 159 and the Nook Color for $ 139. The price represents a drop of $ 10 and $ 20 respectively.

[More from Mashable: Microsoft and B&N Name Joint Venture: Nook Media]

The company will release its 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch HD+ on Nov. 8 in time for the holidays. They are priced $ 199 and $ 269 respectively.

Barnes & Noble Nook HD+

With the Nook HD+, Barnes & Noble both takes on the iPad and gives the recently unveiled Kindle Fire HD tablets a serious competitor. The big-size Nook tablet is priced at $ 269 for the 16GB model and $ 299 for 32GB. It’s also 2.8 ounces lighter than the Kindle Fire HD, but it doesn’t have any cameras.

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This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.

On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.

“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.

On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.

For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.

Vanishing America: Jersey Shore Boardwalks Washed Away Watch Video

“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”

For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.

Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.

“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”

One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.

The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.

“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”

With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.

“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”

When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.

“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”

Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.

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Anglogold strikers return to work

2 November 2012 Last updated at 10:31 ET

Striking miners at two South African Anglogold Ashanti pits have agreed to return to work as tensions across the country’s mineral sector ease.

Hundreds of miners have been holding underground sit-ins this week at the Anglogold Ashanti site at TauTona and Mponeng 40 miles west of Johannesburg.

The strikers demanded early payment of a bonus, an Anglogold spokesman said.

South Africa’s mining industry has been wracked since the summer by widespread strikes and sporadic violence.

“In both these cases these people, who represent less than 2% and 5% of the respective workforces, returned safely to surface after holding talks with the mines’ management,” said Anglogold Ashanti in a statement.

Employees had been promised a 1,500-rand ($ 173, £108) bonus, a company spokesman said, but this would only be paid out “at a later stage, based on safety and attendance outcomes”.

Work at the mines, which employ 10,000 people, is expected to resume with the night shift on Sunday.

A series of strikes across the mining industry has crippled output and had a major effect on the economy since August.

Mass dismissals

Many other mining companies besides Anglogold have been affected by the industrial unrest, in which over 80,000 workers have downed tools.

Striking workers have been involved in several fatal clashes.

In the worst incident, more than 40 people died in August in clashes between police and striking workers at Lonmin’s Marikana platinum mine near Rustenburg, 120km (70 miles) north-west of Johannesburg.

Miners have primarily been demanding higher wages, while the owners have variously responded with offers of conditional bonus payments, or mass dismissals.

Anglo American Platinum has sacked and subsequently reinstated 12,000 workers at its site in Rustenburg, but the miners have so far refused to return to work.

One mine belonging to Gold Fields remains shut after 8,500 workers were fired for striking, while on Thursday Xstrata sacked 400 workers for an illegal strike at its Kroondal chrome mine.

South Africa is one of the world’s biggest producers of precious metals and has a huge coal-mining industry.

Also on Friday, striking coal miners at the Mooiplaats mine returned to work.

The colliery’s owner, Coal of Africa, has agreed to increase their wages by 26% retroactively from July this year, including medical care and allowances for housing, shift and underground work.

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“Breaking Bad” to get the “MythBusters” treatment

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Finally, the world might find out if it’s truly a bad idea to dissolve a body with hydrofluoric acid in a bathtub.

Discovery Channel‘s reality show “MythBusters” – which re-enacts scenarios from movies, TV and urban legend to test their accuracy with scientific methodology – is filming a “Breaking Bad”-themed episode, a spokesman for the cable network told TheWrap on Friday.

“Breaking Bad” creator Vince Gilligan and star Aaron Paul – who plays meth manufacturer Jesse Pinkman on the series — will be on hand as “MythBusters” stars Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage put the logic of the hit AMC drama.

No other details, such as when the episode will air, were available.

Back in June, Gilligan said in an interview that he’d like to do a “Breaking Bad”/”MythBusters” crossover.

“I’d dig seeing those guys prove or disprove some of the crazy stuff we’ve done on ‘Breaking Bad,’” Gilligan enthused.

While they’re at it, perhaps they can get to the bottom of whether that electromagnet episode would have been possible in the real world.

EW.com first reported the news of the “Breaking Bad”/”MythBusters” crossover.

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Syria army quits base on strategic Aleppo road

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian army abandoned its last base near the northern town of Saraqeb after a fierce assault by rebels, further isolating the strategically important second city Aleppo from the capital.

But in a political setback to forces battling to topple President Bashar al-Assad, the United Nations said the rebels appeared to have committed a war crime after seizing the base.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday government troops had retreated from a post northwest of Saraqeb, leaving the town and surrounding areas “completely outside the control of regime forces”.

It was not immediately possible to verify the reported army withdrawal. Authorities restrict journalists’ access in Syria and state media made no reference to Saraqeb.

The pullout followed coordinated rebel attacks on Thursday against three military posts around Saraqeb, 50 km (30 miles) southwest of Aleppo, in which 28 soldiers were killed.

Several were shown in video footage being shot after they had surrendered.

“The allegations are that these were soldiers who were no longer combatants. And therefore, at this point it looks very likely that this is a war crime, another one,” U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville said in Geneva.

“Unfortunately this could be just the latest in a string of documented summary executions by opposition factions as well as by government forces and groups affiliated with them, such as the shabbiha (pro-government militia),” he said.

Video footage of the killings showed rebels berating the captured men, calling them “Assad’s dogs”, before firing round after round into their bodies as they lay on the ground.

Rights groups and the United Nations say rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have committed war crimes during the 19-month-old conflict. It began with protests against Assad and has spiraled into a civil war which has killed 32,000 people and threatens to drag in regional powers.

The mainly Sunni Muslim rebels are supported by Sunni states including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and neighboring Turkey. Shi’ite Iran remains the strongest regional supporter of Assad, who is from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

STRATEGIC BLOW

Saraqeb lies at the meeting point of Syria’s main north-south highway, linking Aleppo with Damascus, and another road connecting Aleppo to the Mediterranean port of Latakia.

With areas of rural Aleppo and border crossings to Turkey already under rebel control, the loss of Saraqeb would leave Aleppo city further cut off from Assad’s Damascus powerbase.

Any convoys using the highways from Damascus or the Mediterranean city of Latakia would be vulnerable to rebel attack. This would force the army to use smaller rural roads or send supplies on a dangerous route from Al-Raqqa in the east, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdelrahman.

In response to the rebels’ territorial gains, Assad has stepped up air strikes against opposition strongholds, launching some of the heaviest raids so far against working class suburbs east of Damascus over the last week.

The bloodshed has continued unabated despite an attempted ceasefire, proposed by join U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to mark last month’s Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

In the latest in a string of fruitless international initiatives, China called on Thursday for a phased, region-by-region ceasefire and the setting up of a transitional governing body – an idea which opposition leaders hope to flesh out at a meeting in Qatar next week.

Veteran opposition leader Riad Seif has proposed a structure bringing together the rebel Free Syrian Army, regional military councils and other rebel forces alongside local civilian bodies and prominent opposition figures.

His plan, called the Syrian National Initiative, calls for four bodies to be established: the Initiative Body, including political groups, local councils, national figures and rebel forces; a Supreme Military Council; a Judicial Committee and a transitional government made up of technocrats.

The initiative has the support of Washington. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on Wednesday for an overhaul of the opposition, saying it was time to move beyond the troubled Syrian National Council.

The SNC has failed to win recognition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people and Clinton said it was time to bring in “those on the front lines fighting and dying”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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