Facebook Poke App Is Frustrating as Hell

Facebook Poke: Startup Screen

Poke, the new iPhone app from Facebook, lets you send short messages, photos and videos to friends that automatically self destruct after a few seconds. If you have the Facebook app on your phone already, logging in is effortless.

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[More from Mashable: 2012′s Biggest Winners and Losers]

I was never a big poker on Facebook. When I joined the social network in 2007, giving someone a “poke” was still pretty common. It was a connection that stopped short of an actual friend request, a way to test the waters of a reconnection with, say, an ex.

The new app, Facebook Poke (as it’s listed in the App Store), doesn’t have much in common with poking of old. It’s essentially a clone of other texting apps where all the messages have a built-in self-destruct. It’s ideal for clandestine activities, shall we say.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Introduces Snapchat Competitor, Poke]

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you have a sudden urge to send one of your Facebook friends a photo of a, er, cucumber. But you don’t want to just send them a cucumber pic that they could post and re-share to the world. Poke lets you send the pic, but the recipient will only have 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds to view your majestic vegetable. And they need to press and hold the screen while viewing, or the pic goes away.

You can send photos, videos or text messages via Poke, although you can’t use it for anything too elaborate since the message content lasts 10 seconds maximum. After that, boom. The message, whatever it was, is gone forever. There isn’t even a record on the sender’s phone (although a log of who you’ve poked and who’s poked you still remains).

Poke is pretty unforgiving. The recipient must press and hold the notification to see the content. Once you touch, the countdown starts, and there’s no going back — even if you let go. Videos just stop, with no chance of re-watching. You slip, and you’re done.

I suspect Poke will engender a lot of frustration because of this limitation. You feel as if it should at least pause the countdown when you remove your finger.

The app also lets you just “poke” people — meaning send a message with no content — about the only way the app is similar to the old act of poking. Those are just simple notifications, and don’t expire.

It gets more annoying: All your poke recipients need to download the app to see them. Poking only works on mobile right now, and Facebook’s been careful to ensure notifications for incoming pokes only appear in its mobile apps.

Checking out your profile on the web won’t reveal any trace of poking. On a smartphone, a note appears that encourages pokees to download the app.

What if someone does a screengrab of your poke, turning it into something more permanent? There’s nothing you can do, but the app will inform you if someone does that, with a “flash” icon beside their name in your feed. If you see your ephemeral wild moment appear on Tumblr the next day, at least you’ll know who to blame.

Poke isn’t that intuitive. It displays some basic instructions when you first log in, but would benefit greatly from one of those tutorial overlays that have become ubiquitous among iOS apps. Also, I find it odd that your front-facing camera isn’t selected by default. But maybe my expectation for the subject material of most pokes is off the mark.

You can add text and colored line drawings to any pics you send. That’s helpful to get the attention on the thing in the photo you really want the person to look at in those three seconds of poke life.

At first I found it frustrating that Poke doesn’t let you take horizontal photos or videos. But that’s actually a good idea. If you think about it, if the only people seeing this content are people glancing at their phones for a few seconds, so vertical pics make total sense. In the time it took a person to turn their phone and the accelerometer to react, the message will probably be gone. If you want masterpieces, try Flickr.

Bottom line: Poke is an annoying app, but it probably has more to do with the nature of what it’s trying to do than any design flaws. How do you like Poke? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jcsmily

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Reports: Rolling Stones guitarist Wood ties knot

LONDON (AP) — Two British newspapers say Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood has married his fiancee Sally Humphreys at a ceremony at London‘s Dorchester Hotel.

The Sun and the Daily Mirror carried photographs of the 65-year-old rocker with a pale boutonniere and a dark blue suit, and his 34-year-old bride in a traditional white gown and a clutch of matching white flowers.

The Sun quoted Wood as saying “I’m feeling great” as he and his bride kissed and posed for pictures outside the exclusive hotel in London’s upscale Mayfair district.

The newspapers said the guests included singer Rod Stewart and his wife Penny Lancaster as well as ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell.

A call and an email to Wood’s U.S.-based agent weren’t immediately returned Saturday.

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Analysis: Stop-gap fix most likely outcome of “fiscal cliff” talks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The “fiscal cliff” deadline is days away and the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama have left town for Christmas.

But even if they were still here, it wouldn’t have mattered, according to Steny Hoyer, the second-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives. He says they were going nowhere to resolving the disagreement over how to fix the nation’s fiscal problems.

Last month’s dreams of a “grand bargain” of tax hikes and spending cuts seem long gone. They had been reduced to more modest bargains in mid-December, and as 2013 approaches, are on the verge of relegation to a “stop-gap measure,” at best the sort of temporary fix that Congress undertook in 2011.

A stop-gap that puts everything off for a while but resolves nothing is now the most promising alternative, if there is to be one, to the across-the-board tax hikes and spending cuts described as a “fiscal cliff” because they threaten to send the U.S. economy plunging into another recession.

It is also the way fiscal showdowns have ended in Washington in recent years.

Such a fix, at best, would delay the spending cuts and tax hikes further into 2013 as well as work to address in a long-term way a government budget that has generated deficits exceeding $ 1 trillion in each of the last four years. Even worse, it would set up a huge fight in January and February over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, which controls the amount of money the federal government can borrow.

Dysfunction in Washington was specifically cited as one of the reasons rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut the U.S. debt rating to AA-plus after a battle over the debt ceiling in 2011. That alone – not to mention going over the cliff – could lead to another rating cut.

At worst, the new year could start with a full-fledged jump off the ‘cliff,’ with an understanding, communicated to financial markets, that Congress and the White House would come back and try again for a solution.

Given the apparent deadlock, some congressional aides this week said that Washington needed to begin telegraphing to Wall Street that markets should not panic if a “fiscal cliff” deal is not struck in December.

The goal, one aide said on condition of anonymity, is to avoid starting 2013 with a steep stock market drop like the one the U.S. suffered in 2008, when the country’s financial industry was falling apart and Congress was divided over what to do.

On Friday, Obama acknowledged that only small steps might be possible with so little time remaining.

Those, the Democratic president said, would consist of extending benefits for the long-term unemployed and keeping income tax rates low for 98 percent of Americans – meaning raising taxes on households with net incomes above $ 250,000 a year but not for those earning less.

He held out the possibility of something “comprehensive,” as he put it, but it had a hollow ring at the close of a work week that saw House Speaker John Boehner step back from negotiations and pursue a partisan plan that even some of his fellow Republicans could not stomach.

MARKET PRESSURE

The steps that Obama outlined were immediately rejected by Republicans, who have given ground on their previous steadfast opposition to any tax hikes but are still demanding that the White House agree to more substantial spending cuts.

“The president has failed to offer any solution that passes the test of balance,” declared Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck, minutes after the end of Obama’s statement on Friday.

On Saturday, a spokesman for Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was similarly dismissive, noting Obama’s call had neither bipartisan support nor spending cuts to ride along with tax increases.

McConnell, on Friday, suggested bringing up a House-passed bill that extends current tax rates for all Americans, including the top earners, and then pushes for comprehensive tax reform next year that theoretically could raise new revenues to help cut deficits.

But Obama has promised repeatedly to veto any extension of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts that fail to hike rates for the wealthy.

And Democrats, who control the Senate, have dismissed the McConnell idea, arguing that Obama ran his successful 2012 re-election campaign on a promise of forcing the wealthy to bear more of the burden of deficit reduction.

Democratic aides in Congress think their own bill implementing Obama’s $ 250,000 income threshold, which passed the 100-member Senate in July with 51 votes, could breeze through this month, or next year after the “fiscal cliff” is breached.

The prospect of a breach is being discussed far more seriously now, and not just as a bluff or to set up the other side for blame.

“I think we’re going to go over the cliff,” said Republican Representative Patrick Tiberi of Ohio. “I don’t see something getting done.”

In an MSNBC interview Friday, Hoyer, a 31-year veteran of Congress from Maryland, said it wouldn’t matter if everyone was in Washington instead of on holiday.

“Frankly, we’ve been in town for four weeks and members haven`t been doing much,” he said, calling it “one of the least productive times that I’ve been in Congress.”

Even Obama speaks of “a mismatch” between how people are thinking about the looming tax hikes and spending cuts “outside of this town and how folks are operating here. And we’ve just got to get that aligned,” he said in his statement.

ITG Investment Research Chief Economist Steve Blitz on Saturday said sliding the “fiscal cliff” negotiations into the new year was not a huge deal. “I think markets will pressure for a deal in January,” he said.

The “pressure” could be in the form of a significant stock market drop, which would hit workers’ retirement plans, threaten to deter consumer and business spending, and possibly rattle other countries’ economies at a time when the global economy is far from robust.

(Additional reporting by Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Martin Howell and Paul Simao)

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Obama starts Hawaiian vacation, leaving Washington on ice

KAILUA, Hawaii (Reuters) – Taking what promised to be a very brief Christmas break from the ongoing struggle to avoid the “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending cuts, President Barack Obama relaxed with his family on Saturday at a beach retreat in Hawaii.

Congress was to return to Washington next Thursday and Obama has pledged to work with lawmakers to strike a deal to avoid the economic shock from tax and spending measures set to take effect on January 1 if a deal can’t be reached, which many economists say could push the U.S. economy back into recession.

The president is expected to indulge in some of his favorite pastimes on the island where he was born and raised: golf, an expedition for the local treat “shave ice,” and an evening out with family and friends. He hit the links at the nearby Marine Corps base under sunny skies on Saturday afternoon.

On Sunday, he is expected to attend funeral services for Senator Daniel Inouye, the long-serving Democrat from Hawaii who died on Monday, but the president has no other public events on his schedule.

On Saturday, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he had urged Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, to name Inouye’s successor “with due haste.”

“It is critically important to ensure that the people of Hawaii are fully represented in the pivotal decisions the Senate will be making before the end of the year,” Reid, of Nevada, said in a statement.

Obama’s idyll was not expected to last more than four days, and he will likely retrace the more than 4,800-mile trip from the Aloha State to Washington after Christmas in a bid to cut a deal with Republicans, who failed on Thursday to agree on competing tax and spending bills of their own.

Before leaving Washington on Friday evening, Obama urged Congress to come up with a stopgap measure to spare the U.S. economy the jolt of $ 600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts economists say would likely derail the economy.

The president asked lawmakers for a stripped-down deal to continue lower tax rates on middle income earners and extend unemployment insurance benefits to avoid some of the worst effects of the “fiscal cliff” in the new year.

Obama’s family holiday, in a quiet beach front community on the other side of the island from bustling Honolulu, should also provide some respite from the somber focus on the Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre and the consequent bitter debate over measures to change America’s gun culture and prevent violence.

The president’s weekly radio and Internet addresses, which in recent weeks have centered on his argument for extending tax cuts for all but the wealthiest Americans, on Saturday offered holiday greetings to U.S. military forces.

(Reporting By Mark Felsenthal and Richard Cowan; Editing by Vicki Allen, Todd Eastham and Paul Simao)

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Italy PM Monti resigns, elections likely in February

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti tendered his resignation to the president on Friday after 13 months in office, opening the way to a highly uncertain national election in February.

The former European commissioner, appointed to lead an unelected government to save Italy from financial crisis a year ago, has kept his own political plans a closely guarded secret but he has faced growing pressure to seek a second term.

President Giorgio Napolitano is expected to dissolve parliament in the next few days and has already indicated that the most likely date for the election is February 24.

In an unexpected move, Napolitano said he would hold consultations with political leaders from all the main parties on Saturday to discuss the next steps. In the meantime Monti will continue in a caretaker capacity.

European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso have called for Monti’s economic reform agenda to continue but Italy’s two main parties have said he should stay out of the race.

Monti, who handed in his resignation during a brief meeting at the presidential palace shortly after parliament approved his government’s 2013 budget, will hold a news conference on Sunday at which he is expected clarify his intentions.

Ordinary Italians are weary of repeated tax hikes and spending cuts and opinion polls offer little evidence that they are ready to give Monti a second term. A survey this week showed 61 percent saying he should not stand.

Whether he runs or not, his legacy will loom over an election which will be fought out over the painful measures he has introduced to try to rein in Italy’s huge public debt and revive its stagnant economy.

His resignation came a couple of months before the end of his term, after his technocrat government lost the support of Silvio Berlusconi‘s centre-right People of Freedom (PDL) party in parliament earlier this month.

Speculation is swirling over Monti’s next moves. These could include outlining policy recommendations, endorsing a centrist alliance committed to his reform agenda or even standing as a candidate in the election himself.

The centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has held a strong lead in the polls for months but a centrist alliance led by Monti could gain enough support in the Senate to force the PD to seek a coalition deal which could help shape the economic agenda.

BERLUSCONI IN WINGS

Senior figures from the alliance, including both the UDC party, which is close to the Roman Catholic Church, and a new group founded by Ferrari sports car chairman Luca di Montezemolo, have been hoping to gain Monti’s backing.

He has not said clearly whether he intends to run, but he has dropped heavy hints he will continue to push a reform agenda that has the backing of both Italy’s business community and its European partners.

The PD has promised to stick to the deficit reduction targets Monti has agreed with the European Union and says it will maintain the broad course he has set while putting more emphasis on reviving growth.

Berlusconi’s return to the political arena has added to the already considerable uncertainty about the centre-right’s intentions and increased the likelihood of a messy and potentially bitter election campaign.

The billionaire media tycoon has fluctuated between attacking the government’s “Germano-centric” austerity policies and promising to stand aside if Monti agrees to lead the centre right, but now appears to have settled on an anti-Monti line.

He has pledged to cut taxes and scrap a hated housing tax which Monti imposed. He has also sounded a stridently anti-German line which has at times echoed the tone of the populist 5-Star Movement headed by maverick comic Beppe Grillo.

The PD and the PDL, both of which supported Monti’s technocrat government in parliament, have made it clear they would not be happy if he ran against them and there have been foretastes of the kind of attacks he can expect.

Former centre-left prime minister Massimo D’Alema said in an interview last week that it would be “morally questionable” for Monti to run against the PD, which backed all of his reforms and which has pledged to maintain his pledges to European partners.

Berlusconi who has mounted an intensive media campaign in the past few days, echoed that criticism this week, saying Monti risked losing the credibility he has won over the past year and becoming a “little political figure”.

(Additional reporting by Gavin Jones, Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Paolo Biondi; Writing by Gavin Jones and James Mackenzie; Editing by Michael Roddy)

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‘So You Think You Can Dance’ Hoofs It Into a 10th Season

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Put on your dancing shoes; “So You Think You Can Dance” has been given a 10th season, Fox said Thursday.

Auditions for the upcoming season will begin January 18 in Austin, Texas, before moving on to Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and Memphis.

Fox’s president of alternative programming Mike Darnell praised “SYTYCD” creator Nigel Lythgoe in announcing the renewal.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the amazing work that Nigel and the entire ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ team has done over the past nine seasons,” Darnell said. “This show is truly one of the most compelling series on television and I can’t wait to bring it back for Season 10.”

Last season, the series underwent a format shakeup after Fox cut the show from two nights a week to one, eliminating the results shows.

Fox did not say when the new season of “So You Think You Can Dance” will premiere.

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Judge orders end to HIV prison segregation in Alabama

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge ruled on Friday to end the segregation of prisoners with HIV in Alabama, agreeing that it violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“It is evident that, while the … segregation policy has been an unnecessary tool for preventing the transmission of HIV, it has been an effective one for humiliating and isolating prisoners living with the disease,” U. S. District Judge Myron Thompson wrote in his ruling.

South Carolina now remains the only state segregating HIV inmates from the general population. Mississippi ceased a similar practice in March 2010.

The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over what the group contended was a discriminatory practice that prevented most HIV-positive inmates from participating in rehabilitation and retraining programs, including mental health and substance abuse programs, important for their success after prison.

“We won on all counts. It is a total victory and a glorious day for everyone with HIV,” said Margaret Winter, associate director of the ACLU National Prison Project and lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

Proponents of ending the policy sited an out-dated view of HIV/AIDS, which has become increasingly controllable. In the case of a virus transmitted by behavior, and not environment, preventing its spread is easier through proper medical treatment, rather than radical segregation of HIV positive inmates, according to Nancy Mahon, who chairs the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA).

“We now have ability to suppress the virus and reduce the possibility of transmission to four percent. Alabama and South Carolina have been in the dark ages about this public health sorrow,” said Mahon, who also directs the MAC AIDS Fund, which is financing the ACLU challenges in both states.

“The last thing we want to do is send them back into the community without treatment,” she added.

Two of Alabama’s 29 prisons have dormitories specifically housing prisoners with HIV. A handful of prisoners had been allowed to live and work in non-segregated settings in work-release programs, Winter said.

Currently, the inmates with HIV live, eat and exercise apart from the general population, according to court documents filed by the ACLU. Male inmates in the HIV dormitories were given white armbands that signal their medical status.

“First, we are isolated … like we are contagious animals,” Dana Harley, another prisoner who was a plaintiff in the case, said in a letter included in the court file. “It is like punishment three times over.”

Approximately 270 inmates out of the 26,400 in the state prison system have tested positive for the virus and none have developed AIDS, according to Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett, who did not respond to inquiries about the ruling.

The judge plans to rule separately on the medical criteria for work release for HIV prisoners, according to his ruling.

(Editing by David Adams and Andrew Hay)

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Scenarios: Seven ways the US ‘fiscal cliff’ crisis could end

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – So what now?

The U.S. House of Representatives‘ rejection of a bill to raise taxes on just 0.18 percent of Americans – those making more than $ 1 million a year – has raised questions about the Republican-led chamber’s ability to approve any plan to avert the looming “fiscal cliff.”

Unless President Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress can forge a deal during the Christmas and New Year’s holiday season, the largest economy in the world could be thrust back into a recession because of the steep tax increases and spending cuts that are due to begin in January.

The threat of across-the-board government spending cuts and tax increases – about $ 600 billion worth – was intended to shock the Democratic-led White House and Senate and the Republican-led House into moving past their many differences to approve a plan that would bring tax relief to most Americans and curb runaway federal spending.

For weeks, Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, have struggled to find a compromise.

But after a glimmer of hope that a deal was close early this week, Boehner – apparently under pressure from anti-tax House Republicans aligned with the conservative Tea Party movement – pressed the “pause” button on negotiations. He then tried to push a backup plan through the House late on Thursday, only to see his fellow Republicans kill it.

Where do Obama and Congress go from here? Here are some possible scenarios.

* Obama and Boehner go back into their secret negotiations.

Before Boehner started touting his failed “Plan B” to boost taxes on those who make more than $ 1 million, he and Obama were moving closer together on a plan to raise taxes on certain high-income Americans and cut spending. They could pick up where they left off and quickly cut a deal to bridge the gap.

But a compromise with possibly $ 1 trillion in new taxes and $ 1 trillion in new, long-term spending cuts could be a tough sell for both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Boehner would have to persuade enough Republicans on the idea of tax increases. Obama, meanwhile, would have to get Democrats in Congress to back cuts to some social safety net programs such as Social Security pensions and Medicare and Medicaid health insurance for the elderly and poor. House Republicans appear to be the tougher sell.

* A huge drop in the stock market sends a loud message to Washington politicians to stop arguing and cut a quick but meaningful deal.

That is what happened in late September 2008, after Congress rejected a massive financial bailout package despite warnings by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson of an economic collapse if the bill failed.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than 700 points and Congress quickly reversed course, approving the $ 700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program just days later.

The “fiscal cliff” may not be as dramatic a situation, but the tax increases and cuts in federal spending could deal a stiff blow to the economy.

* No deal happens in the dwindling days of 2012 and the U.S. government jumps off the fiscal cliff – at least temporarily.

On January 1, income taxes would go up on just about everyone. During the first week of January, Congress could scramble and get a quick deal on taxes and the $ 109 billion in automatic spending cuts that most lawmakers want to avoid.

Why could they reach a deal in January if they fail in December?

The reason would be that once taxes go up, it would be easier to allow a few of those increases to remain in place – mostly on the wealthy – and repeal those that would hit middle- and lower-income taxpayers.

Such a scenario would mean that no member of Congress technically would have to vote for a tax increase on anyone – taxes would have risen automatically – and the only votes would be to decrease tax rates for most Americans back to their 2012 levels.

* No deal occurs for another six weeks or so.

If Congress does not raise the nation’s debt limit, by mid-February the Treasury Department likely would exhaust its ability to borrow. That would put the nation at risk of defaulting on its debt.

Republicans have withheld their approval of the debt-limit increase as leverage to try to get the kind of “fiscal cliff” solution they want: Fewer increases in spending and taxes, and more cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is the strategy they employed in mid-2011 during the last fight over the debt limit, which is about $ 16.4 trillion.

Republicans wrung spending cuts out of Democrats in return for new borrowing authority, but paid a political price. Global financial markets were rocked by the long uncertainty brought on by the standoff in Congress, one ratings agency downgraded U.S. credit standing and Republicans saw their public approval ratings sink.

* Boehner decides on a gutsy move: Call a House vote on a bill that would raise tax rates for families with net annual incomes above $ 250,000, exactly what Obama has sought.

The plan could pass the House with strong Democratic support and some Republican votes. As soon as it passed, the House likely would leave town for the rest of the year without addressing other Obama priorities such as increasing the government’s debt limit.

* A partial deal is struck at any point.

Congress could pass a plan that would put off most of the income tax increases that are due in January, or extend some other expiring tax breaks – namely one to prevent middle-class taxpayers from being subject to higher tax rates aimed at the wealthy under the alternative minimum tax.

* Stock markets do not tank and Washington politicians conclude that the “fiscal cliff” is not such a bad thing.

Under this scenario, Congress and the White House could continue sniping at each other throughout 2013 and 2014 as they try to revamp tax policy and impose long-term spending cuts.

(Editing by David Lindsey and Will Dunham)

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Wounded presage health crisis for postwar Syria

ATMEH, Syria (AP) — A baby boy joined the ranks of Syria’s tens of thousands of war wounded when a missile fired by Bashar Assad‘s air force slammed into his family home and shrapnel pierced his skull.

Four-month-old Fahed Darwish suffered brain damage and, like thousands of others seriously hurt in the civil war, he will likely need care well after the fighting is over. That’s something doctors say a post-conflict Syria won’t be able to provide.

Making things worse, there has been a sharp spike in serious injuries since the summer, when the regime began bombing rebel-held areas from the air, and doctors say a majority of the wounded they now treat are civilians.

This week, Fahed was recovering from brain surgery in an intensive care unit, his head bandaged and his body under a heavy blanket, watched over by Mariam, his distraught 22-year-old mother.

She said that after her first-born is discharged from the hospital in Atmeh, a village in an area of relative safety near the Turkish border, they will have to return to their village in a war zone in central Syria.

“We have nowhere else to go,” she said.

Even for those who have escaped direct injury, the civil war is posing a mounting health threat. Half the country’s 88 public hospitals and nearly 200 clinics have been damaged or destroyed, the World Health Organization says, leaving many without access to health care. Diabetics can’t find insulin, kidney patients can’t reach dialysis centers. Towns are running out of water-purifying materials. Many of the hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting are exposed to the cold in tents or unheated public buildings.

“You are talking about a public health crisis on a grand scale,” said Dr. Abdalmajid Katranji, a hand and wrist surgeon from Lansing, Michigan, who regularly volunteers in Syria.

No one knows just how many people have been injured since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011, starting out with peaceful protests that turned into an armed insurgency in response to a violent government crackdown.

More than 43,000 have been killed in the past 21 months, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, basing his count on names and details provided by activists in Syria. He said the number of wounded is so large he can only give a rough estimate, of more than 150,000.

Casualties began to rise dramatically at the start of the summer. At the time, the regime, its ground troops stretched thin, began bombing from the air to prevent opposition fighters from gaining more territory.

Seemingly random bombings have razed entire villages and neighborhoods, driving terrified civilians from their homes, with an estimated 3 million Syrians out of the country’s population of 23 million now displaced.

About 10 percent of the wounded suffer serious injuries and many of those will need long-term care and rehabilitation, said Dr. Omar Aswad of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organizations, an umbrella for 14 aid groups.

This includes artificial limbs and follow-up surgery. “This is of course not available and will be one of the major (health) problems in the months right after the war,” said Mago Tarzian, emergency director for the Paris-based Doctors Without Borders.

For now, aid groups are struggling to provide even emergency treatment in under-equipped clinics.

The two dozen small hospitals and field clinics in rebel-run areas of Idlib province in the north only have a few Intensive Care Unit beds between them, said Aswad. None has a CT scanner, an important diagnostic tool.

“We need generators, we need medical supplies and the most pressing is medicine,” he said.

The challenge has been compounded by new types of injuries.

The regime has begun dropping incendiary bombs that can cause severe burns, according to the New York-based Human Rights Watch, citing amateur video and witness accounts.

Ole Solvang, a researcher for the group, said he saw remnants of such a bomb on a recent Syria trip. Aswad said doctors in Idlib and nearby Aleppo province reported seeing patients with burns from such weapons.

Doctors and hospitals have also been targeted. Aswad, who fled the city of Idlib in March after regime forces entered it, said five friends in a secret association of anti-regime physicians have been arrested. Hospitals, ambulances and doctors have been attacked, Solvang said, calling it “a worrying trend that makes the medical situation even worse.”

One of the bright spots is a 50-bed emergency care clinic set up six weeks ago in a former elementary school in Atmeh.

Largely funded by a wealthy Syrian expatriate, the Orient clinic, with five ICU beds, handles some of the most serious cases in a radius of some 150 kilometers (90 miles), said its director, orthopedic surgeon Abdel Hamid Dabbak.

In the past, seriously wounded patients had to go to Turkey, risking dangerous delays at the border, he said. Now, once patients are stabilized in Atmeh, they are sent to a sister clinic across the border for follow-up care.

In Orient’s ICU, a 24-year-old rebel fighter was breathing oxygen through a mask. He had been brought in a day earlier, bleeding heavily from stomach wounds and close to death, said Dr. Maen Martini, a volunteer physician from Joliet, Illinois. After surgery, he stabilized and was taken off a respirator. A delayed crossing into Turkey would have killed him, Martini said.

The fighter’s neighbor was little Fahed, whose house had been struck by a missile on Saturday in the village of Kafr Zeita in Hama province. “The roof collapsed on us,” his mother said of the attack. “We ran out … I saw him bleeding from his head, but it was just a small cut.”

The local clinic said the injury was more serious than it seemed and the family rushed to Atmeh, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) to the north.

Since surgery, Fahed has been nursing and has moved his arms and legs, and the doctor is hoping for a near-complete recovery.

“Clinically, he has improved dramatically,” he said.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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RIM loses BlackBerry subscribers for first time

TORONTO (AP) — Research In Motion‘s stock plunged in after-hours trading Thursday after the BlackBerry maker said it plans to change the way it charges fees.

RIM also announced that it lost subscribers for the first time in the latest quarter, as the global number of BlackBerry users dipped to 79 million.

In a rare positive sign, the Canadian company added to its cash position during the quarter as it prepared to launch new smartphones on Jan. 30. The new devices are deemed critical to the company’s survival.

RIM’s stock initially jumped more than 8 percent in after-hours trading on that news, but then fell $ 1.48, or 10.4 percent, to $ 12.65 after RIM said on a conference call that it won’t generate as much revenue from telecommunications carriers once it releases the new BlackBerry 10 platform.

RIM is changing the way it charges service fees, putting an important source of revenue at risk. RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said only subscribers who want enhanced security will pay fees under the new system.

“Other subscribers who do not utilize such services are expected to generate less or no service revenue,” Heins said. “The mix in level of service fees revenue will change going forward and will be under pressure over the next year during this transition.”

RIM’s stock had been on a three-month rally that has seen the stock more than double from its lowest level since 2003.

But Mike Walkley, an analyst with Canaccord Genuity, said BlackBerry 10 will change RIM’s services revenue model dramatically. He said that instead of getting about $ 6 per device each month from carriers and users RIM could get as little as zero.

“That’s what turned the stock from being up 10 percent to being down 10 percent,” Walkley said. “That’s been part of our worry. How do they come back with a new platform and get carriers to continue to share the higher revenue —which sounds like they are not going to— and then subsidize the phone to make it affordable for consumers and enterprises.”

“People are seeing that the services revenue has a lot of risk to it now with the BlackBerry 10 migration.”

Three months ago, RIM had 80 million subscribers. Analysts said the loss of 1 million subscribers was expected. Once coveted symbols of an always-connected lifestyle, BlackBerry phones have lost their luster to Apple’s iPhone and phones that run on Google’s Android software.

RIM is banking its future on its much-delayed BlackBerry 10 platform, which is meant to offer the multimedia, Internet browsing and apps experience that customers now demand.

“We believe the company has stabilized and will turn the corner in the next year,” Heins said. He noted that the company’s cash holdings grew by $ 600 million in the quarter to $ 2.9 billion, even after the funding of all its restructuring costs. RIM previously announced 5,000 layoffs this year.

Heins said subscribers in North America showed the largest decline, but said there is growth overseas.

Colin Gillis, an analyst with BGC Financial, said before the conference call that the company bought itself more time.

“It doesn’t mean (BlackBerry) 10 will gain traction. A lot of people said 10 would be DOA, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” he said.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek also earlier called the results better than expected, noting that RIM added a significant amount of cash. RIM will need the money to advertise the new BlackBerrys and operating system.

Misek also called it a positive development that RIM said there would not be another delay to BlackBerry 10.

“The success or failure of this company will be on BlackBerry 10,” Misek said.

RIM posted net income of $ 14 million, or 3 cents per share for its fiscal third quarter, which ended Dec. 1. That compares with a profit of $ 265 million, or 51 cents per share, in the same quarter a year ago.

The latest figure includes a favorable tax settlement. Excluding that adjustment, RIM lost 22 cents per share. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a wider loss of 27 cents.

RIM reported revenue of $ 2.7 billion, down 47 percent from a year ago.

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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