Egypt Leader and Obama Forge Link in Gaza Deal

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

Israelis in the town of Sderot watched a Palestinian missile on Wednesday, before a cease-fire.

WASHINGTON — President Obama skipped dessert at a long summit meeting dinner in Cambodia on Monday to rush back to his hotel suite. It was after 11:30 p.m., and his mind was on rockets in Gaza rather than Asian diplomacy. He picked up the telephone to call the Egyptian leader who is the new wild card in his Middle East calculations.

Over the course of the next 25 minutes, he and President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt hashed through ways to end the latest eruption of violence, a conversation that would lead Mr. Obama to send Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the region. As he and Mr. Morsi talked, Mr. Obama felt they were making a connection. Three hours later, at 2:30 in the morning, they talked again.

The cease-fire brokered between Israel and Hamas on Wednesday was the official unveiling of this unlikely new geopolitical partnership, one with bracing potential if not a fair measure of risk for both men. After a rocky start to their relationship, Mr. Obama has decided to invest heavily in the leader whose election caused concern because of his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing in him an intermediary who might help make progress in the Middle East beyond the current crisis in Gaza.

The White House phone log tells part of the tale. Mr. Obama talked with Mr. Morsi three times within 24 hours and six times over the course of several days, an unusual amount of one-on-one time for a president. Mr. Obama told aides he was impressed with the Egyptian leader’s pragmatic confidence. He sensed an engineer’s precision with surprisingly little ideology. Most important, Mr. Obama told aides that he considered Mr. Morsi a straight shooter who delivered on what he promised and did not promise what he could not deliver.

“The thing that appealed to the president was how practical the conversations were — here’s the state of play, here are the issues we’re concerned about,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “This was somebody focused on solving problems.”

The Egyptian side was also positive about the collaboration. Essam el-Haddad, the foreign policy adviser to the Egyptian president, described a singular partnership developing between Mr. Morsi, who is the most important international ally for Hamas, and Mr. Obama, who plays essentially the same role for Israel.

“Yes, they were carrying the point of view of the Israeli side but they were understanding also the other side, the Palestinian side,” Mr. Haddad said in Cairo as the cease-fire was being finalized on Wednesday. “We felt there was a high level of sincerity in trying to find a solution. The sincerity and understanding was very helpful.”

The fledgling partnership forged in the fires of the past week may be ephemeral, a unique moment of cooperation born out of necessity and driven by national interests that happened to coincide rather than any deeper meeting of the minds. Some longtime students of the Middle East cautioned against overestimating its meaning, recalling that Mr. Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood constitutes a philosophical brother of Hamas even if it has renounced violence itself and become the governing party in Cairo.

“I would caution the president from believing that President Morsi has in any way distanced himself from his ideological roots,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “But if the president takes away the lesson that we can affect Egypt’s behavior through the artful use of leverage, that’s a good lesson. You can shape his behavior. You can’t change his ideology.”

Other veterans of Middle East policy agreed with the skepticism yet saw the seeds of what might eventually lead to broader agreement.

“It really is something with the potential to establish a new basis for diplomacy in the region,” said Tamara Cofman Wittes, who was Mr. Obama’s deputy assistant secretary of state for the Middle East until earlier this year and now runs the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. “It’s just potential, but it’s particularly impressive potential.”

The relationship between the two leaders has come a long way in just 10 weeks. Mr. Morsi’s election in June as the first Islamist president of Egypt set nerves in Washington on edge and raised questions about the future of Egypt’s three-decade-old peace treaty with Israel. Matters worsened in September when Egyptian radicals protesting an anti-Islam video stormed the United States Embassy in Cairo.

Peter Baker reported from Washington, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 21, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of the director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. She is Tamara Cofman Wittes, not Teresa.

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Mayim Bialik and Michael Stone Divorcing

By Mike Fleeman

11/21/2012 at 05:00 PM EST

After "much consideration and soul-searching," Mayim Bialik announced Wednesday that she and husband Michael Stone are divorcing after nine years of marriage.

The Big Bang Theory star, who has sons Miles, 7, and Fred, 4, with Stone, cites "irreconcilable differences" for the split, which she revealed in a statement on her Kveller.com parenting blog.

"Divorce is terribly sad, painful and incomprehensible for children. It is not something we have decided lightly," she writes.

The former star of TV's Blossom, 36, also says that the split is not due to the attachment parenting she discusses in her book Beyond the Sling. "Relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose," she says.

"The main priority for us now is to make the transition to two loving homes as smooth and painless as possible," Bialik continues. "Our sons deserve parents committed to their growth and health and that’s what we are focusing on. Our privacy has always been important and is even more so now, and we thank you in advance for respecting it as we negotiate this new terrain."

She concludes by saying, "We will be ok."

The couple were married in August 2003 in Pasadena, Calif.

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Study finds mammograms lead to unneeded treatment

Mammograms have done surprisingly little to catch deadly breast cancers before they spread, a big U.S. study finds. At the same time, more than a million women have been treated for cancers that never would have threatened their lives, researchers estimate.

Up to one-third of breast cancers, or 50,000 to 70,000 cases a year, don't need treatment, the study suggests.

It's the most detailed look yet at overtreatment of breast cancer, and it adds fresh evidence that screening is not as helpful as many women believe. Mammograms are still worthwhile, because they do catch some deadly cancers and save lives, doctors stress. And some of them disagree with conclusions the new study reached.

But it spotlights a reality that is tough for many Americans to accept: Some abnormalities that doctors call "cancer" are not a health threat or truly malignant. There is no good way to tell which ones are, so many women wind up getting treatments like surgery and chemotherapy that they don't really need.

Men have heard a similar message about PSA tests to screen for slow-growing prostate cancer, but it's relatively new to the debate over breast cancer screening.

"We're coming to learn that some cancers — many cancers, depending on the organ — weren't destined to cause death," said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert. However, "once a woman is diagnosed, it's hard to say treatment is not necessary."

He had no role in the study, which was led by Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School and Dr. Archie Bleyer of St. Charles Health System and Oregon Health & Science University. Results are in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

Breast cancer is the leading type of cancer and cause of cancer deaths in women worldwide. Nearly 1.4 million new cases are diagnosed each year. Other countries screen less aggressively than the U.S. does. In Britain, for example, mammograms are usually offered only every three years and a recent review there found similar signs of overtreatment.

The dogma has been that screening finds cancer early, when it's most curable. But screening is only worthwhile if it finds cancers destined to cause death, and if treating them early improves survival versus treating when or if they cause symptoms.

Mammograms also are an imperfect screening tool — they often give false alarms, spurring biopsies and other tests that ultimately show no cancer was present. The new study looks at a different risk: Overdiagnosis, or finding cancer that is present but does not need treatment.

Researchers used federal surveys on mammography and cancer registry statistics from 1976 through 2008 to track how many cancers were found early, while still confined to the breast, versus later, when they had spread to lymph nodes or more widely.

The scientists assumed that the actual amount of disease — how many true cases exist — did not change or grew only a little during those three decades. Yet they found a big difference in the number and stage of cases discovered over time, as mammograms came into wide use.

Mammograms more than doubled the number of early-stage cancers detected — from 112 to 234 cases per 100,000 women. But late-stage cancers dropped just 8 percent, from 102 to 94 cases per 100,000 women.

The imbalance suggests a lot of overdiagnosis from mammograms, which now account for 60 percent of cases that are found, Bleyer said. If screening were working, there should be one less patient diagnosed with late-stage cancer for every additional patient whose cancer was found at an earlier stage, he explained.

"Instead, we're diagnosing a lot of something else — not cancer" in that early stage, Bleyer said. "And the worst cancer is still going on, just like it always was."

Researchers also looked at death rates for breast cancer, which declined 28 percent during that time in women 40 and older — the group targeted for screening. Mortality dropped even more — 41 percent — in women under 40, who presumably were not getting mammograms.

"We are left to conclude, as others have, that the good news in breast cancer — decreasing mortality — must largely be the result of improved treatment, not screening," the authors write.

The study was paid for by the study authors' universities.

"This study is important because what it really highlights is that the biology of the cancer is what we need to understand" in order to know which ones to treat and how, said Dr. Julia A. Smith, director of breast cancer screening at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. Doctors already are debating whether DCIS, a type of early tumor confined to a milk duct, should even be called cancer, she said.

Another expert, Dr. Linda Vahdat, director of the breast cancer research program at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, said the study's leaders made many assumptions to reach a conclusion about overdiagnosis that "may or may not be correct."

"I don't think it will change how we view screening mammography," she said.

A government-appointed task force that gives screening advice calls for mammograms every other year starting at age 50 and stopping at 75. The American Cancer Society recommends them every year starting at age 40.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the cancer society's deputy chief medical officer, said the study should not be taken as "a referendum on mammography," and noted that other high-quality studies have affirmed its value. Still, he said overdiagnosis is a problem, and it's not possible to tell an individual woman whether her cancer needs treated.

"Our technology has brought us to the place where we can find a lot of cancer. Our science has to bring us to the point where we can define what treatment people really need," he said.

___

Online:

Study: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1206809

Screening advice: http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Global shares gain as economic outlook improves

LONDON (Reuters) - World share markets extended a week-long rally on Thursday as manufacturing surveys in China and the United States boosted confidence over global growth and euro zone data at least didn't worsen the already weak outlook for the region.

The euro also touched a three-week high against the dollar on renewed optimism that a Greek funding deal will eventually be agreed, and despite the data indicating the region's economy is on course for its deepest downturn since early 2009.

"The driving factors behind euro/dollar are that the global macroeconomic backdrop seems to be improving and people are pricing out the tail risk on Greece," said Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, head of currency research at Danske Bank.

The euro rose 0.4 percent to $1.2884, its highest level since November 2.

The prospect of a deal to help Athens was boosted when German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday, after the failure of overnight talks, that an agreement was possible at a euro zone ministers meeting on Monday.

The hopes for a Greek deal, combined with the better economic data and a growing view that a resolution can be found to the U.S. fiscal crisis, lifted the MSCI world equity index 0.35 percent to 326.1 points, putting it on track for its best week since mid-September.

Europe's FTSE Eurofirst 300 index rose 0.4 percent to a two-week high of 1,102.25 points, with London's FTSE 100, Paris's CAC-40 and Frankfurt's DAX between 0.3 and 0.8 percent higher.

However, trading was subdued, with U.S. markets closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.

CHINA BOOST

Confidence in the global economic outlook got its biggest boost from the HSBC flash Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for China, which pointed to expansion in activity after seven consecutive quarters of slowdown.

"There have been a lot of concerns regarding the outlook for global growth. In this context, any improvement in Chinese data is welcome, given that investors are still risk averse," said Robert Parkes, equity strategist at HSBC Securities.

The Chinese data followed a report on Wednesday showing U.S. manufacturing grew in November at its quickest pace in five months, indicating strong economic growth in the fourth quarter.

PMI data on the manufacturing and services sectors in Europe's two biggest economies of Germany and France added to the better tone, revealing that conditions had not worsened in November, though both economies are still contracting.

However, the PMI numbers for the wider euro zone remain extremely weak, pointing to the recession-hit region shrinking by about 0.5 percent in the current quarter - its sharpest contraction since the first quarter of 2009.

"The weak PMI outturn for November is a major disappointment in light of the increases in the German and French PMI surveys, and suggest the recession on the euro zone's periphery is gathering further pace," said ING economist Martin van Vliet.

BOND DEMAND

In the fixed-income markets the improving tone enabled Spain to sell 3.88 billion euros ($4.97 billion) of new government bonds on Thursday, even though it has already raised enough funds for this year's needs.

The average yield on the three-year bonds in the auction was 3.617 percent, compared with 3.66 percent at a sale earlier in November and a 2012 average of 3.79 percent.

Ten-year Spanish yields were 7 basis points lower on the day at 5.66 percent, having traded above 6 percent at the start of the week.

"It's a clear reflection that sentiment in Spain has improved markedly," RIA Capital Markets bond strategist Nick Stamenkovic said. "They are already funded for 2012, and the market is betting that Spain will ask for a bailout early next year when they face a (wall of issuance)."

Expectations that Greece will soon get more cash set Greek yields on course for their 10th consecutive daily fall. The February 2023 bond yield dropped to 16.16 percent, its lowest since it was issued as part of a debt restructuring in March.

COMMODITIES STEADY

Commodity prices gained some support from the improving outlook for world demand from all the PMI data, but the prospect of only modest global growth in 2013 kept the gains in check.

Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose 0.7 percent to $7,744.75 a metric tonne, and spot gold inched up to $1,729.56 an ounce.

Oil prices were more mixed as the ceasefire between Israel and Gaza's Hamas rulers on Thursday eased concerns over the impact the unrest may have on supply from the region offsetting support from the prospect of greater Chinese oil demand.

Brent slipped 30 cents to $110.56 a barrel, while U.S. crude was up 3 cents at $87.41.

($1 = 0.7801 euros)

(Additional reporting by Jessica Mortimer and Marius Zaharia; Editing by Will Waterman)

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Fighting Continues as U.S. Seeks Truce in Gaza

JERUSALEM — To a backdrop of airstrikes and mounting casualties, American efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in the latest Gaza fighting between Israel and Hamas continued on Wednesday but the struggle to achieve even a brief pause in the fighting emphasized the obstacles to finding any lasting solution.

Israeli airstrikes overnight continued into Wednesday morning, hitting government buildings, the smuggling tunnels under the southern Rafah border crossing and a bridge on the beach road that is one of three linking Gaza City to the central area of the strip. The Hamas health ministry said the Palestinian death toll stood at 140 at noon, with 1,100 injured. At least a third of those killed are believed to have been militants.

The eight-day conflict in the Gaza Strip also appeared to have spilled onto the streets of Tel Aviv on Wednesday, with what the police described as a bomb blast aboard a civilian bus. Eleven people were injured, one of them seriously.

The latest exchanges, which included the interception of at least two rockets fired from Gaza, came as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was held talks with Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Israeli leaders in Jerusalem. She flew on Wednesday to Cairo where Egyptian-brokered cease-fire talks have been inconclusive.

Around noon on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip, according to the Hamas government media office, a bomb hit the house of Issam Da’alis, an adviser to Ismail Haniya, the Hamas prime minister. The house had been evacuated. Earlier, a predawn airstrike near a mosque in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp killed a 30-year-old militant, a spokesman said, and F-16 bombs destroyed two houses in the central Gaza Strip.

There were 23 punishing strikes against the southern tunnels that are used to bring weapons as well as construction material, cars and other commercial goods into Gaza from the Sinai Peninsula.

Within Gaza City, Abu Khadra, the largest government office complex, was obliterated overnight. Damage was also caused to shops, including two banks and a tourism office, and electricity cables fell on the ground and were covered in dust.

Separately, an F-16 bomb created a 20-foot crater in an open area in a stretch of hotels occupied by foreign journalists. Several of the hotels had windows blown out by the strike around 2 a.m., but no one was reported injured. By morning, the hole in the ground had filled with sludgy water, apparently from a burst pipe, appearing almost like a forgotten swimming hole with walls made of sand and cracked cinder block.

Surveying damage near a government complex, Raji Sourani of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said Gaza civilians were “in the eye of the storm,” and accused Israel of “inflicting pain and terror” on them. Israeli officials accuse Hamas of locating military sites in or close to civilian areas.

Overnight, as the conflict entered its eighth day, the Israeli military said in Twitter posts that “more than 100 terror sites were targeted, of which approximately 50 were underground rocket launchers.” The targets included the Ministry of Internal Security in Gaza, described as “one of the Hamas’ main command and control centers.”

While there was no immediate or formal claim of responsibility for the bus bombing in Tel Aviv, a message on a Twitter account in the name of the Al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip, declared: “We told you IDF that our blessed hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are, ‘You opened the Gates of Hell on Yourselves.’ ” The letters I.D.F. refer to the Israel Defense Forces.

On several occasions since the latest conflagration seized Gaza last week, militants have aimed rockets at Tel Aviv but they have either fallen short, landed in the sea or been intercepted. Hundreds of rockets fired by militants in Gaza have struck other targets.

But the bombing seemed to be the first time in the current fighting that violence had spread directly onto the streets of Tel Aviv.

On Tuesday — the deadliest day of fighting in the conflict — Mrs. Clinton arrived hurriedly in Jerusalem and met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push for a truce. Her planned visit to Cairo on Wednesday to consult with Egyptian officials in contact with Hamas placed her and the Obama administration at the center of a fraught process with multiple parties, interests and demands.

Before leaving for Cairo, news reports said, Mrs. Clinton headed to the West Bank to meet Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, which is estranged from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and has increasingly strained ties with Israel over a contentious effort to upgrade the Palestinian status at the United Nations to that of a nonmember state. Mrs. Clinton was to meet again with Mr. Netanyahu before heading for Egypt, the reports said.

Mr. Abbas’s faction is favored by the United States, but it is not directly involved in either the fighting in Gaza or the effort in Cairo to end it. Like Israel and much of the West, the United States regards Hamas as a terrorist organization.

Officials on all sides had raised expectations that a cease-fire would begin around midnight, followed by negotiations for a longer-term agreement. But by the end of Tuesday, officials with Hamas, the militant Islamist group that governs Gaza, said any announcement would not come at least until Wednesday.

Ethan Bronner reported from Jerusalem, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Reporting was contributed by Jodi Rudoren and Fares Akram from Gaza; Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem; Alan Cowell from London; Peter Baker from Phnom Penh, Cambodia; David E. Sanger and Mark Landler from Washington; Andrea Bruce from Rafah; and Rick Gladstone from New York.

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The Petraeus Affair: How Jill Kelley Inadvertently Brought Down the CIA Director

By Sandra Sobieraj Westfall

11/21/2012 at 08:30 AM EST

Exclusive excerpt from this week's PEOPLE Magazine:

Jill Kelley had e-mailed the Tampa mayor before: to invite him to parties; to tell him she had talked him up to her pal "Dave" Petraeus; to drop the name of Gen. John Allen. But this time it was personal. On Nov. 14 she e-mailed Mayor Bob Buckhorn at 6:18 a.m. about the news crews camped outside her home: "To put insult to injury, your police dept. gave the local 911 tapes to the press! . . . I'm scared and cannot believe what my City – in which I have contributed so much of my love, time, money and leadership – has now done to me and my innocent family."

Buckhorn did nothing about Kelley's complaint and, asked by the Tampa Bay Times about the release of her embarrassing calls to police invoking "diplomatic protection" she's not entitled to, the mayor answered, "Public record." For Kelley, 37 – an unpaid community liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, who placed herself at the nexus of Tampa's military-civilian circles since moving there with her husband, Scott, and twin, Natalie Khawam, a decade ago – the mayor's response was a sign that her fall was now going to be as steep and spectacular as her climb. 

As the world saw this week, she had a lot of company on the way down. By cozying up to two four-star generals – and then flaunting her access to them – Kelley inadvertently exposed a scandal that involves both Petraeus, who stepped down as head of the CIA after admitting an affair with his biographer Paula Broadwell, and Allen, whose promotion to head NATO forces in Europe is in limbo while what government officials describe as suggestive e-mails he wrote to Kelley are reviewed by the Defense Department.

 
How did every thread in the web link back to a chatty, flirty mom of three in Florida? For military lifers like Petraeus and Allen stationed at Central Command in Tampa, the relative glitz Kelley and her sister brought proved enchanting. "Here's the thing about commanders: They can get isolated. It's nice to have civilian friends who support you and the mission," says an active duty Army community-outreach official. "Mostly it's a nice thing. This one backfired." ...

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OB/GYNs back over-the-counter birth control pills

WASHINGTON (AP) — No prescription or doctor's exam needed: The nation's largest group of obstetricians and gynecologists says birth control pills should be sold over the counter, like condoms.

Tuesday's surprise opinion from these gatekeepers of contraception could boost longtime efforts by women's advocates to make the pill more accessible.

But no one expects the pill to be sold without a prescription any time soon: A company would have to seek government permission first, and it's not clear if any are considering it. Plus there are big questions about what such a move would mean for many women's wallets if it were no longer covered by insurance.

Still, momentum may be building.

Already, anyone 17 or older doesn't need to see a doctor before buying the morning-after pill — a higher-dose version of regular birth control that can prevent pregnancy if taken shortly after unprotected sex. Earlier this year, the Food and Drug Administration held a meeting to gather ideas about how to sell regular oral contraceptives without a prescription, too.

Now the influential American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is declaring it's safe to sell the pill that way.

Wait, why would doctors who make money from women's yearly visits for a birth-control prescription advocate giving that up?

Half of the nation's pregnancies every year are unintended, a rate that hasn't changed in 20 years — and easier access to birth control pills could help, said Dr. Kavita Nanda, an OB/GYN who co-authored the opinion for the doctors group.

"It's unfortunate that in this country where we have all these contraceptive methods available, unintended pregnancy is still a major public health problem," said Nanda, a scientist with the North Carolina nonprofit FHI 360, formerly known as Family Health International.

Many women have trouble affording a doctor's visit, or getting an appointment in time when their pills are running low — which can lead to skipped doses, Nanda added.

If the pill didn't require a prescription, women could "pick it up in the middle of the night if they run out," she said. "It removes those types of barriers."

Tuesday, the FDA said it was willing to meet with any company interested in making the pill nonprescription, to discuss what if any studies would be needed.

Then there's the price question. The Obama administration's new health care law requires FDA-approved contraceptives to be available without copays for women enrolled in most workplace health plans.

If the pill were sold without a prescription, it wouldn't be covered under that provision, just as condoms aren't, said Health and Human Services spokesman Tait Sye.

ACOG's opinion, published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, says any move toward making the pill nonprescription should address that cost issue. Not all women are eligible for the free birth control provision, it noted, citing a recent survey that found young women and the uninsured pay an average of $16 per month's supply.

The doctors group made clear that:

—Birth control pills are very safe. Blood clots, the main serious side effect, happen very rarely, and are a bigger threat during pregnancy and right after giving birth.

—Women can easily tell if they have risk factors, such as smoking or having a previous clot, and should avoid the pill.

—Other over-the-counter drugs are sold despite rare but serious side effects, such as stomach bleeding from aspirin and liver damage from acetaminophen.

—And there's no need for a Pap smear or pelvic exam before using birth control pills. But women should be told to continue getting check-ups as needed, or if they'd like to discuss other forms of birth control such as implantable contraceptives that do require a physician's involvement.

The group didn't address teen use of contraception. Despite protests from reproductive health specialists, current U.S. policy requires girls younger than 17 to produce a prescription for the morning-after pill, meaning pharmacists must check customers' ages. Presumably regular birth control pills would be treated the same way.

Prescription-only oral contraceptives have long been the rule in the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia and a few other places, but many countries don't require a prescription.

Switching isn't a new idea. In Washington state a few years ago, a pilot project concluded that pharmacists successfully supplied women with a variety of hormonal contraceptives, including birth control pills, without a doctor's involvement. The question was how to pay for it.

Some pharmacies in parts of London have a similar project under way, and a recent report from that country's health officials concluded the program is working well enough that it should be expanded.

And in El Paso, Texas, researchers studied 500 women who regularly crossed the border into Mexico to buy birth control pills, where some U.S. brands sell over the counter for a few dollars a pack. Over nine months, the women who bought in Mexico stuck with their contraception better than another 500 women who received the pill from public clinics in El Paso, possibly because the clinic users had to wait for appointments, said Dr. Dan Grossman of the University of California, San Francisco, and the nonprofit research group Ibis Reproductive Health.

"Being able to easily get the pill when you need it makes a difference," he said.

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Online:

OB/GYN group: http://www.acog.org

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Futures retreat on Greek deal impasse; U.S. data on tap

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures retreated Wednesday after international lenders were unable to agree on emergency aid for Greece, and ahead of data on the U.S. labor market and consumer confidence.

For a second week, euro zone finance ministers, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank failed to agree on how to make Greece's debt sustainable, which is necessary before the next cash infusion can be made to the fiscally beleaguered nation.

The FTSEurofirst 300 <.fteu3> edged up 0.06 percent at 1,095.13.

Investors will also look to weekly initial jobless claims at 8:30 a.m. ET for signs of improvement in the labor market. Economists in a Reuters survey expect a total of 410,000 new filings compared with 439,000 in the prior week, when a surge in claims was linked to the impact of superstorm Sandy.

At 8:58 a.m., information services company Markit releases U.S. flash Markit Manufacturing PMI for November, expected to show a reading of 51, unchanged from October.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers release the final November consumer sentiment index at 9:55 a.m. Economists in a Reuters survey expect a reading of 84.5 compared with 84.9 in the final October report.

"The market has shifted into Thanksgiving mode, while waiting for more news from Greece - after three positive sessions coming off the low, the market is looking for the next driving theme which could be today's economic numbers," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.

The S&P 500 <.spx> had risen for three straight sessions as rhetoric from Washington did little to erode investor optimism of a deal to avert the "fiscal cliff," a series of tax hikes and spending cuts which will go into effect in the new year and threaten to derail the nation's fragile economic recovery.

Still, earlier gains on Tuesday were mostly erased as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that the central bank lacked the tools to cushion the U.S. economy from the impact of the cliff in a worst-case scenario.

"Investors are ignoring the elephant in the room in the form of the fiscal cliff and much of the recent strength stems from hopes of a benign resolution; however, until a deal is actually done, it could come back to haunt at any time," said Bakhos.

Shortly after at 10:00 a.m. the Conference Board releases its report on October leading economic indicators. Economists in a Reuters survey forecast a 0.2 percent rise compared with a 0.6 percent rise in September.

S&P 500 futures shed 0.1 point and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures fell 2 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures added 1.75 points.

Volume is expected to be light ahead of the Thanksgiving Day holiday on Thursday.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said it was unlikely to decide, before Thursday's holiday, on Wal-Mart Stores Inc's push to stop protests and rallies outside its stores. This was a blow to the company's attempt to avoid major protests at its stores on "Black Friday," the day after Thanksgiving and the busiest shopping day of the year.

Deere & Co slipped 1.2 percent to $85 in light premarket trading, even as the agricultural equipment maker reported higher fourth-quarter earnings.

Business software provider Salesforce.com Inc beat Wall Street expectations for the third quarter and maintained its earnings outlook for the rest of its fiscal year despite the uncertain economic outlook.

Asian shares fell after the failure to reach a deal on another bailout for Greece, a day after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke highlighted the dangers of a U.S. fiscal crisis.

(Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Gazans Mourn Dalu Family Killed by Israeli Bomb

GAZA CITY — Sweat streamed through the beards of three men clutching the body of 7-year-old Jamal Dalu as they raced through the streets toward his final resting place here amid bursts from assault rifles fired into the air and shouts of “God is great.” They occasionally bent to kiss the boy’s bare, bloodied head or shrouded feet. But they had to jog to stay ahead of the body of his father on a grand wooden pallet, and thousands who thronged on all sides.

There were few if any visible tears at the intense, chaotic, lengthy funeral on Monday of Jamal and seven relatives, among 12 people killed the day before in the single deadliest attack since the latest hostilities between Israel and the Gaza Strip began Wednesday after months of Palestinian militant rocket fire into Israel. Instead, there were fingers jabbing the air to signal “Allah is the only one,” defiant chants about resistance and calls for revenge, flags in the signature green of Hamas and the white of its Al Qassam Brigades.

At the destroyed Dalu family home, a man climbed atop the pile of rubble where a dozen photographers had positioned themselves and hoisted the body of one of the four dead children into the air several times, as though a totem. At the mosque, the eulogy was disrupted by the sound of missiles launched toward Israel from nearby. And at the cemetery, a Qassam commander addressed himself not to the mourners but to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, warning, “We still have so much in our pockets, and we will show you if we have to.”

Much of the militant pageantry most likely was meant as a message for the news media, and thus the world, given how the Dalus had instantly become the face of the Palestinian cause. But the tone, far more fundamentalist than funereal, was also a potent sign of the culture of martyrdom that pervades this place, and the numbness that many here have developed to death and destruction after years of cross-border conflict.

“This blood which was provided by your family will not go in vain,” a Hamas minister told the mourners at the mosque. “The rights of these children, the rights of these little flowers, is on our neck.

“We are all going to die, today or tomorrow,” he added. “But those who died yesterday are martyrs and not any dead.”

Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces, said it was “still looking into” the Sunday afternoon strike on the Dalu home in the neighborhood of Al Nasser, which she described as an accident. She said the target had been a man “in charge of rocket launching” from the neighborhood, and that 200 to 300 rockets had been fired at Israel under his command in recent days, but it was unclear whether that man even lived nearby.

The obliterated two-story structure had been home to 15 people in three generations. The patriarch, also named Jamal, ran a shop in Al Zawya market selling seeds, sugar, teas and other staples that his grandfather had started and he had worked in since childhood. He survived because he had been at the market when the bomb hit. Jamal’s son Mohammed worked in the Hamas government as a police officer. Neighbors and relatives insisted that he was not a Qassam fighter or a political leader, though the scope of the militant presence at the funeral raised questions.

Besides Mohammed, his wife and his four children, Jamal’s sister, wife and two daughters were killed in the attack, according to the Hamas Health Ministry, along with two neighbors, an 18-year-old and his grandmother. Two other members of the Dalu family killed in the strike will be buried later.

Jamal and his wife, Tahani, had recently returned from their first pilgrimage to Mecca, relatives said, and were filled with joy and optimism from the experience. They have five surviving children, relatives said, including 18-year-old Abdullah, who was practically carried through the funeral, his arms around the shoulders of two friends.

“This is the occupation doing injustice to the Palestinians,” the elder Mr. Dalu said in a brief interview at the house as he waited for the bodies to be brought from the morgue. “They didn’t give us a warning. They just hit the house with the children in it. My daughters were in their youth. What did they do to them?”

But while political leaders and human rights advocates have called the deaths a massacre and a war crime, the mourners, except for a few close relatives inside the mosque, were neither overcome with emotion nor fed up, perhaps because the current casualty count pales in comparison to the 1,400 lost four years ago when the Israelis invaded Gaza.

Many of them aspire to what they see as martyrdom in the struggle for a Palestinian state. Such funerals are a punctuating rhythm of life here, the bodies taken from the morgue to the family home, then to the mosque and on to the cemetery in processions that attract large crowds.

“We got used to it; we got used to the killing,” said Emad Al Dalu, 35, an accountant and cousin of the dead. “Every one of us has seen one of his relatives, one of his neighbors has died. We’re defending our rights. We can take more.”

The three-hour ritual was a nearly all-male affair. Several dozen women did briefly view the bodies in a home near the rubble pile, one of them collapsing in grief. But even close female relatives did not attend the service at the mosque nor the burial.

So it was the men who carried the bodies: the grown-ups on stretchers over their shoulders in pallbearer style, and the children, cradled in their arms as they walked, then ran through the normally traffic-clogged city’s now-empty streets. Some were wrapped in white sheets, others in Palestinian or Hamas flags. One’s bare head lobbed backward and needed to be steadied at times.

The crowd ran down a long hill, around several corners, and finally into the Sheikh Radwan cemetery, a messy mosaic of stones on a steep mound of dirt. There, it split into several circles surrounding separate graves.

Jamal and two of his siblings were lowered vertically into a one-square-yard hole that the men covered with a concrete slab, then dirt. The baby, 1-year-old Ibrahim, was buried with his mother.

Hala Nasrallah and Fares Akram contributed reporting.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 19, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the rank of Avital Leibovich, a spokeswoman for the Israel Defense Forces. She is a lieutenant colonel, not a lieutenant general.

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Blake Shelton Has Unforgettable Night on The Voice

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

11/20/2012 at 08:15 AM EST

Cassadee Pope (Blake Shelton inset)

Tyler Golden/NBC (2)

It was a night of creative growth on The Voice Monday, as the top 10 wowed the coaches in unexpected ways.

"This may be the best episode of The Voice we've ever had," Blake Shelton said. But it was the top talent among the remaining handful of singers that really gave his statement weight.

Christina Aguilera and Shelton kicked off the night with "Just a Fool," a duet from her new album Lotus, which ushered in rousing performances from each team.

Melanie Martinez, the eccentric star of Team Adam, pleased fans with her offbeat take on the White Stripe's "Seven Nation Army." Cee Lo Green called her performance "one of the coolest things that's happened this season." It even had Shelton feeling envious. If there was one singer who wasn't on his team that he could coach, "It's you, Melanie," he told her.

Dez Duron took a grown-up approach to his choice of song with Nina Simone's "Feeling Good." "I'm so happy that you brought not only your stage presence to the table, but you dug deeper," his coach Aguilera said. "You made everyone's heart melt tonight."

Green's Trevin Hunte set out to show that he could go beyond ballads with Usher's "Scream," and the bold move paid off. Coupled with a sublime gospel choir, Hunte's moving vocals won over his astonished coach. "It was so sweet to me. It makes me cry," Green said.

Shelton hinted at an important development with a Tweet early in the night. "One of the biggest nights of my career on The Voice tonight for a couple reasons... Watch," he said.

His own Cassadee Pope had the honor of singing "Over You," the song Shelton and wife Miranda Lambert co-wrote about his late brother. Pope faced a big challenge, but the tenderness of her voice and the energy in her performance had Shelton on his feet in standing ovation.

"Ladies and gentlemen, you're looking at an artist standing up there," he said of his singer who had just honored his brother with her performance.

The Voice returns Tuesday night with the elimination round.

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