Clashes in West Bank Injure Palestinians

JERUSALEM — Violent clashes broke out on Tuesday between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians in a village in the northern West Bank, leaving up to 30 Palestinians injured, after an undercover Israeli force entered the village to arrest a wanted militant, according to Palestinian news reports and the Israeli military.

The military said two soldiers were wounded, neither seriously, by rocks thrown by Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the Israeli military, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under army rules, said the purpose of Tuesday’s raid on the village, Tamoun, was to arrest a resident, Murad Bani Odeh, who she said was suspected of being a terrorist. Both the military and Palestinian reports identified Mr. Odeh, who was captured by the Israeli forces, as a member of Islamic Jihad, an extremist organization.

In the raid, an undercover force, reportedly disguised as vegetable merchants, entered the village first. When youths started throwing stones and a violent riot broke out, regular forces came in and dispersed the crowd with rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. The military spokeswoman denied Palestinian reports that the soldiers also used live fire.

The confrontation was the latest manifestation of the simmering unrest and disturbances that have spread across the West Bank since mid-November, when Israel embarked on a fierce eight-day military campaign against the rocket-launching infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, controlled by the militant group Hamas.

It also comes after years of stagnation in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, an issue that has re-emerged in recent days as an Israeli election issue, with Israelis scheduled to go to the polls on Jan. 22.

The fate of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — territories that the Palestinians claim for a future state — is always a core, if sometimes underlying, issue for Israeli voters. Until now, the leaders of the two largest political forces, the rightist Likud-Beiteinu joint ticket and the center-left Labor Party, had mostly avoided the subject, aware of public fatigue and skepticism about the prospects of a peace deal and preferring to refocus the debate onto security and socioeconomic issues.

But the president of Israel, Shimon Peres, a veteran politician who is now supposed to stay out of politics and play a mostly symbolic role, intervened in the election campaign on Sunday, telling a large group of visiting Israeli ambassadors that he considered the president of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to be a partner for peace.

“No one will change my opinion about Abu Mazen,” he said in broadcast remarks, referring to Mr. Abbas by his popular name, “even if they say I cannot express it because I’m the president.” Israel, he added, “must complete the task of reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians without further delay.”

The remarks infuriated Likud-Beiteinu, which issued a sharp statement condemning Mr. Peres for expressing what it called a “personal political opinion that is disconnected from the Israeli public’s stance regarding Abu Mazen, the peace refusenik.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of Likud-Beiteinu, who has endorsed a two-state solution under certain conditions, responded on Tuesday with a statement that called for extreme caution and an Israeli foot on the brakes.

“In Egypt, the regime has been replaced, in Syria the regime is being shaken and this could also happen in the Palestinian Authority areas in Judea and Samaria,” he said, referring to the West Bank by its biblical names. “Everyone knows that Hamas could take over the Palestinian Authority,” he continued. “It could happen after an agreement; it could happen before an agreement, like it happened in Gaza. Therefore, as opposed to the voices that I have heard recently urging me to run forward, to make concessions and to withdraw, I think that the diplomatic process must be managed responsibly and sagaciously and not in undue haste.”

There has been a palpable rise in incidents of stone-throwing and firebombing by Palestinians against Israeli vehicles on West Bank roads, and an increase in localized clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and soldiers, according to Israeli officials. On Monday night, the military said, an Israeli civilian bus traveling south of Hebron was shot at. There were no injuries.

The spike in unrest comes after four years of relative stability in the West Bank, and it has led some Israeli commentators to speculate about the chances of a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.

Israeli and Palestinian officials say privately that they have no evidence of plans for a full-blown uprising, though nobody could rule out a spontaneous outburst triggered by some unforeseen incident. Mr. Abbas has stated publicly that he will not support an armed uprising on his watch.

In the meantime, the Israeli military says it has been trying to balance proactive counterterrorism measures — like widespread arrests of militants belonging to Hamas and other armed groups — with a policy of restraint when faced with rioters, to try to prevent Palestinian fatalities and a subsequent spiral of violence.

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Four Android productivity apps you should use in 2013

Happy New Year! Like most folks, I am working on some resolutions for 2013. One resolution I have is to be more productive. One way I am going to do this is by using my Android phone better. Now there are apps that I have, but really have not used to their fullest. As I work on this resolution, I might discover even better apps. For now I will focus on these impressive apps that can make anyone more productive.

I use Hootsuite on the computer, but rarely find myself engaging with it on my smartphone. With Hootsuite, you can manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare accounts. The free version allows for up to five accounts and one member of your team to access the account. There is a pro version with a monthly fee, in which you can have more accounts and team members and helpful analytics tools.

The design of the app is very good. If you sync the web version to mobile, you will have everything automatically downloaded to the phone. When viewing content, you swipe left or right to change columns or streams. If you are in the middle of a stream, simply tap the top menu bar to automatically return to the top. The app allows for multiple profiles and scheduled tweets. My goal is to keep up with my feeds and tweets in real-time rather than waiting until I get to a computer.

Another web service that I started to use, but find myself not using it to the fullest. Producteev is a web-based task management service. With Producteev you can work as an individual or in a team by setting up workspaces and then organize tasks by labels. For each task you can assign a priority, due date, and share with team members, if you have any. Overall, this is a great service, since I like making lists, even though I rarely remember having made them.

The Producteev app is available for all platforms. The app has a very clean interface and is easy to find tasks. Probably the best way to keep up with tasks is to use the different widget for the home screen. Seeing the widgets will help keep those key tasks in the forefront of your mind. The app will work offline and syncs in the background.

I read blogs every single day, especially those related to new apps, Android, or mobile news. The only way I can do that is via my Google Reader. I find myself trying to catch up each day on the computer (just like with Twitter activity) when I would be better off reading a little bit over time during the day. NewsRob is a Google Reader that I have had for years. The interface is very clean and easy to use. The developer created a bunch of customizations options, which really make this reader stand out.

With NewsRob you can set up a notification of new articles, how you synchronize with Google and when, how many articles to keep in your cache, and more. If you set up folders within Google Reader, NewsRob will download the folders, too. This enables you to read the posts by blog or folder. The app provides a very clean blogpost display optimized for smaller screens. With each post you can zoom in or out, mark a post read or unread, view in the browser, and share the link to email or services such as Evernote. There is a free version of the app.

The last task I need to work on to be more productive is to keep up with the calendar. I find myself checking on the computer, after the fact, finding out that I am either late or forgot about a meeting or appointment. Using Google calendar is a good place to start, but I have not found the standard calendar app on my Droid was all that helpful.

Business Calendar is a very capable calendar app that has a ton of features. The app lets you view your calendar in a number of different views, and has search and favorite-calendar features, to name a few. The option of viewing different calendars, color coding and being able to easily add, delete, and edit events is helpful. The ability to use widgets for reminders is important. The pro version has over 10 different sizes and allows for the import or export of calendar files in the iCalendar format. Business Calendar also has a free version.

So my top goal or resolution for 2013 is to be more productive. I think using these apps more will help me accomplish that goal. Are there any apps you have but not using to their fullest? What resolutions do you have for 2013?

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Len Goodman, Dancing with the Stars Judge, Marries Longtime Girlfriend

TV Watch

By Maggie Coughlan

01/01/2013 at 02:15 PM EST

From the judges' table to the altar!

Len Goodman of Dancing with the Stars tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Sue Barrett on Sunday in London.

The couple exchanged vows during a surprise ceremony in front of 30 family members and friends.

Goodman, 68, and Barrett, 47, have been together for more than 10 years.

"I've had a marvelous day and now my gorgeous Sue is the new Mrs. Goodman," the ballroom dancing expert tells the Daily Mail.

This is Goodman's third marriage.

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Clinton receiving blood thinners to dissolve clot

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to recover in a New York hospital where she's being treated for a blood clot in her head.

Her doctors say blood thinners are being used to dissolve the clot and they are confident she will make a full recovery. Clinton didn't suffer a stroke or neurological damage from the clot that formed after she suffered a concussion during a fainting spell at her home in early December, doctors said in a statement Monday.

Clinton, 65, was admitted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital on Sunday when the clot turned up on a follow-up exam on the concussion, Clinton spokesman Phillipe Reines said. The clot is located in the vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear. She will be released once the medication dose for the blood thinners has been established, the doctors said.

In their statement, Dr. Lisa Bardack of the Mount Kisco Medical Group and Dr. Gigi El-Bayoumi of George Washington University said Clinton was making excellent progress and was in good spirits.

Clinton's complication "certainly isn't the most common thing to happen after a concussion" and is one of the few types of blood clots in the skull or head that are treated with blood thinners, said Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist who is director of Duke University's stroke center. He is not involved in Clinton's care.

The area where Clinton's clot developed is "a drainage channel, the equivalent of a big vein inside the skull. It's how the blood gets back to the heart," Goldstein said.

Blood thinners usually are enough to treat the clot and it should have no long-term consequences if her doctors are saying she has suffered no neurological damage from it, Goldstein said.

Clinton returned to the U.S. from a trip to Europe, then fell ill with a stomach virus in early December that left her severely dehydrated and forced her to cancel a trip to North Africa and the Middle East. Until then, she had canceled only two scheduled overseas trips, one to Europe after breaking her elbow in June 2009 and one to Asia after the February 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Her condition worsened when she fainted, fell and suffered a concussion while at home alone in mid-December as she recovered from the virus.

This isn't the first time Clinton has suffered a blood clot. In 1998, midway through her husband's second term as president, Clinton was in New York fundraising for the midterm elections when a swollen right foot led her doctor to diagnose a clot in her knee requiring immediate treatment.

Clinton had planned to step down as secretary of state at the beginning of President Barack Obama's second term. Whether she will return to work before she resigns remains a question.

Democrats are privately if not publicly speculating: How might her illness affect a decision about running for president in 2016?

After decades in politics, Clinton says she plans to spend the next year resting. She has long insisted she had no intention of mounting a second campaign for the White House four years from now. But the door is not entirely closed, and she would almost certainly emerge as the Democrat to beat if she decided to give in to calls by Democratic fans and run again.

Her age — and thereby health — would probably be a factor under consideration, given that Clinton would be 69 when sworn in, if she were elected in 2016. That might become even more of an issue in the early jockeying for 2016 if what started as a bad stomach bug becomes a prolonged, public bout with more serious infirmity.

Not that Democrats are willing to talk openly about the political implications of a long illness, choosing to keep any discussions about her condition behind closed doors. Publicly, Democrats reject the notion that a blood clot could hinder her political prospects.

"Some of those concerns could be borderline sexist," said Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton when she was a senator. "Dick Cheney had significant heart problems when he was vice president, and people joked about it. He took the time he needed to get better, and it wasn't a problem."

It isn't uncommon for presidential candidates' health — and age — to be an issue. Both in 2000 and 2008, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had to rebut concerns he was too old to be commander in chief or that his skin cancer could resurface.

Beyond talk of future politics, Clinton's three-week absence from the State Department has raised eyebrows among some conservative commentators who questioned the seriousness of her ailment after she canceled planned Dec. 20 testimony before Congress on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

Clinton had been due to discuss with lawmakers a scathing report she had commissioned on the attack. It found serious failures of leadership and management in two State Department bureaus were to blame for insufficient security at the facility. Clinton took responsibility for the incident before the report was released, but she was not blamed. Four officials cited in the report have either resigned or been reassigned.

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"Fiscal cliff" moves to House, timing and outcome uncertain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington's last-minute scramble to step back from a recession-inducing "fiscal cliff" shifted to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives on Tuesday after the Senate approved a bipartisan deal to avoid steep tax hikes and spending cuts.

In a rare late-night show of unity, the Senate voted 89 to 8 to raise some taxes on the wealthy while keeping income taxes low on more moderate earners.

The bill's prospects were less certain in the House, where a vote had not yet been scheduled.

Republicans, unhappy that the bill contained over $600 billion in tax increases but only around $12 billion in spending cuts, said they may change it more to their liking and send it back to the Senate. Party leaders planned to take the temperature of rank-and-file lawmakers over the afternoon before deciding on a course of action.

"My recommendation would be not to take a package put together by a bunch of sleep-deprived octogenarians on New Year's Eve," said Representative Steve LaTourette, a moderate Republican from Ohio who is a close ally of House Speaker John Boehner.

Republicans could face a backlash if they scuttle the deal. Income tax rates technically rose back to 1990s levels for all Americans at midnight, and public opinion polls show Republicans would shoulder the blame if Congress fails to act.

Many conservative Republicans have rejected tax increases on any Americans, no matter how wealthy. Some liberal Democrats were also upset with the complex deal, which they thought gave away too much.

Lingering uncertainty over U.S. tax and spending policy has unnerved investors and depressed business activity for months, and lawmakers had hoped to reach a deal before Tuesday, when a broad range of automatic tax increases and spending cuts would begin to punch a $600 billion hole in the economy.

Financial markets have avoided a steep plunge on the assumption that Washington would ultimately avoid pushing the country off the fiscal cliff into a recession.

With financial markets closed for the New Year's Day holiday, lawmakers have one more day to close the deal.

"My district cannot afford to wait a few days and have the stock market go down 300 points tomorrow if we don't get together and do something," Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat from Tennessee, said on the House floor.

LATE-NIGHT DRAMA

The bill passed by the Senate at around 2 a.m. would raise income taxes on families earning more than $450,000 per year and limit the amount of deductions they can take to lower their tax bill.

Low temporary rates that have been in place for less affluent taxpayers for the past decade would be made permanent, along with a range of targeted tax breaks put in place by President Barack Obama in the depths of the 2009 recession.

However, workers would see up to $2,000 more taken out of their paychecks annually as a temporary payroll tax cut was set to expire.

The bill would also delay an across-the-board spending cut in domestic and military programs for two months, and extend jobless benefits for 2 million long-term unemployed people who otherwise would see them run out.

The bill would raise taxes on less than 1 percent of the population, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

However, that may be too much for conservative Republicans in the House, who last month scuttled an effort by Boehner to limit tax increases to those who earn more than $1 million. He has faced insurrections from his conservative wing in other budget showdowns over the past two years.

Republicans had hoped to include significant spending cuts in the deal to narrow trillion-dollar budget deficits. Conservatives were already looking forward to the next battle over the debt ceiling, in late February, to extract deficit reduction measures from the Democratic president.

The White House has floated $600 billion worth of spending cuts in earlier negotiations, and Obama said he would be willing to tackle deficit reduction over the coming months.

"There's more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I'm willing to do it," he said in a statement urging the House to pass the current bill.

Vice President Joe Biden, who was instrumental in pushing through the Senate measure, addressed a closed-door meeting of House Democrats seeking their support to pass the bill.

The conservative Club for Growth urged a "no" vote on the Senate measure, and warned that Republicans who support it could face a primary challenge when they run for re-election in two years.

Liberal groups also have urged Democrats to reject the deal.

Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO labor union, wrote on Twitter that the deal does not raise taxes enough on the wealthy and "sets the stage for more hostage taking" by Republicans in future budget confrontations.

Obama had originally sought to raise taxes on households making more than $250,000. Even with the higher threshold, the White House said is getting 85 percent of the revenue it wanted.

Republican Representative Tom Cole said his House colleagues should pass the Senate bill rather than try to change it.

"We ought to take this deal right now, and we'll live to fight another day," Cole said on MSNBC.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Mark Felsenthal, Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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Ruthless Smuggling Rings Put Rhinos in the Cross Hairs

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK, South Africa — They definitely did not look like ordinary big-game hunters, the stream of slender young Thai women who showed up on the veld wearing tight blue jeans and sneakers.

But the rhinoceros carcasses kept piling up around them, and it was only after dozens of these hulking, relatively rare animals were dead and their precious horns sawed off that an extravagant scheme came to light.

The Thai women, it ends up, weren’t hunters at all. Many never even squeezed off a shot. Instead, they were prostitutes hired by a criminal syndicate based 6,000 miles away in Laos to exploit loopholes in big game hunting rules and get its hands on as many rhino horns as possible — horns that are now literally worth more than gold.

“These girls had no idea what they were doing,” said Paul O’Sullivan, a private investigator in Johannesburg who helped crack the case. “They thought they were going on safari.”

The rhino horn rush has gotten so out of control that it has exploded into a worldwide criminal enterprise, drawing in a surreal cast of characters — not just Thai prostitutes, but also Irish gangsters, Vietnamese diplomats, Chinese scientists, veterinarians, chopper pilots, antiques dealers and recently an American rodeo star looking for a quick buck who used Facebook to find some horns.

Driven by a common belief in Asia that ground-up rhino horns can cure cancer and other ills, the trade has also been embraced by criminal syndicates that normally traffic drugs and guns, but have branched into the underground animal parts business because it is seen as “low risk, high profit,” American officials say.

“Get caught smuggling a kilo of cocaine, you will receive a very significant prison sentence,” said Ed Grace, a deputy chief with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. But with a kilogram of rhino horn, he added, “you may only get a fine.”

The typical rhino horn is about two feet long and 10 pounds, much of it formed from the same substance as fingernails. Yet it can fetch nearly $30,000 a pound, more than crack cocaine, and conservationists worry that this “ridiculous price,” as one wildlife manager put it, could drive rhinos into extinction.

Gangs are so desperate for new sources of horn that criminals have even smashed into dozens of glass museum cases all across Europe to snatch them from exhibits.

“Astonishment and rage, that’s what we felt,” said Paolo Agnelli, a manager at the Florence Museum of Natural History, after three rhino horns were stolen last year, including a very rare one from 1824.

American federal agents recently staged a cross-country undercover rhino horn sting operation, called Operation Crash, “crash” being the term for a herd of rhinos.

Among the 12 people arrested: Wade Steffen, a champion steer wrestler from Texas, who pleaded guilty in May to trafficking dozens of horns that he found through hunters, estate sales and Facebook; and two members of an Irish gang — the same gang suspected of breaking into the museums across Europe.

In an e-mail to an undercover agent, an Irish gangster bragged: “Believe me WE NEVER LOSES A HORN TO CUSTOMS, we have so many contacts and people payed off now we can bring anything we want out of nearly any country into Europe.”

Corruption is a huge element, just like in the illegal ivory trade, in which rebel groups, government armies and threadbare hunters have been wiping out tens of thousands of elephants throughout Africa, selling the tusks to sophisticated criminal networks that move them across the globe with the help of corrupt officials.

Here in South Africa, home to the majority of the world’s last surviving 28,000 rhinos or so, the country is throwing just about everything it has to stop the slaughter — thousands of rangers, the national army, a new spy plane, even drones — but it is losing.

The number of rhinos poached in South Africa has soared in the past five years, from 13 killed in 2007 to more than 630 this year. The prehistoric, battleship-gray animals are often found on their knees, bleeding to death from a gaping stump on their face.

“Ever seen a dead rhino?” said Philip Jonker, who works for a private security firm that has gone into wildlife protection. “It’s worse than going to a funeral.”

Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting from Rome.

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Kim Kardashian: From Divorce Drama to Baby Mama in 5 Clicks

Follow her odyssey from her messy split with Kris Humphries to her great expectation with Kanye West

Credit: INF

Updated: Monday Dec 31, 2012 | 11:45 AM EST

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AP IMPACT: Big Pharma cashes in on HGH abuse

A federal crackdown on illicit foreign supplies of human growth hormone has failed to stop rampant misuse, and instead has driven record sales of the drug by some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The crackdown, which began in 2006, reduced the illegal flow of unregulated supplies from China, India and Mexico.

But since then, Big Pharma has been satisfying the steady desires of U.S. users and abusers, including many who take the drug in the false hope of delaying the effects of aging.

From 2005 to 2011, inflation-adjusted sales of HGH were up 69 percent, according to an AP analysis of pharmaceutical company data collected by the research firm IMS Health. Sales of the average prescription drug rose just 12 percent in that same period.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the second of a two-part series.

___

Unlike other prescription drugs, HGH may be prescribed only for specific uses. U.S. sales are limited by law to treat a rare growth defect in children and a handful of uncommon conditions like short bowel syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome, a congenital disease that causes reduced muscle tone and a lack of hormones in sex glands.

The AP analysis, supplemented by interviews with experts, shows too many sales and too many prescriptions for the number of people known to be suffering from those ailments. At least half of last year's sales likely went to patients not legally allowed to get the drug. And U.S. pharmacies processed nearly double the expected number of prescriptions.

Peddled as an elixir of life capable of turning middle-aged bodies into lean machines, HGH — a synthesized form of the growth hormone made naturally by the human pituitary gland — winds up in the eager hands of affluent, aging users who hope to slow or even reverse the aging process.

Experts say these folks don't need the drug, and may be harmed by it. The supposed fountain-of-youth medicine can cause enlargement of breast tissue, carpal tunnel syndrome and swelling of hands and feet. Ironically, it also can contribute to aging ailments like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

Others in the medical establishment also are taking a fat piece of the profits — doctors who fudge prescriptions, as well as pharmacists and distributors who are content to look the other way. HGH also is sold directly without prescriptions, as new-age snake oil, to patients at anti-aging clinics that operate more like automated drug mills.

Years of raids, sports scandals and media attention haven't stopped major drugmakers from selling a whopping $1.4 billion worth of HGH in the U.S. last year. That's more than industry-wide annual gross sales for penicillin or prescription allergy medicine. Anti-aging HGH regimens vary greatly, with a yearly cost typically ranging from $6,000 to $12,000 for three to six self-injections per week.

Across the U.S., the medication is often dispensed through prescriptions based on improper diagnoses, carefully crafted to exploit wiggle room in the law restricting use of HGH, the AP found.

HGH is often promoted on the Internet with the same kind of before-and-after photos found in miracle diet ads, along with wildly hyped claims of rapid muscle growth, loss of fat, greater vigor, and other exaggerated benefits to adults far beyond their physical prime. Sales also are driven by the personal endorsement of celebrities such as actress Suzanne Somers.

Pharmacies that once risked prosecution for using unauthorized, foreign HGH — improperly labeled as raw pharmaceutical ingredients and smuggled across the border — now simply dispense name brands, often for the same banned uses. And usually with impunity.

Eight companies have been granted permission to market HGH by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which reviews the benefits and risks of new drug products. By contrast, three companies are approved for the diabetes drug insulin.

The No. 1 maker, Roche subsidiary Genentech, had nearly $400 million in HGH sales in the U.S. last year, up an inflation-adjusted two-thirds from 2005. Pfizer and Eli Lilly were second and third with $300 million and $220 million in sales, respectively, according to IMS Health. Pfizer now gets more revenue from its HGH brand, Genotropin, than from Zoloft, its well-known depression medicine that lost patent protection.

On their face, the numbers make no sense to the recognized hormone doctors known as endocrinologists who provide legitimate HGH treatment to a small number of patients.

Endocrinologists estimate there are fewer than 45,000 U.S. patients who might legitimately take HGH. They would be expected to use roughly 180,000 prescriptions or refills each year, given that typical patients get three months' worth of HGH at a time, according to doctors and distributors.

Yet U.S. pharmacies last year supplied almost twice that much HGH — 340,000 orders — according to AP's analysis of IMS Health data.

While doctors say more than 90 percent of legitimate patients are children with stunted growth, 40 percent of 442 U.S. side-effect cases tied to HGH over the last year involved people age 18 or older, according to an AP analysis of FDA data. The average adult's age in those cases was 53, far beyond the prime age for sports. The oldest patients were in their 80s.

Some of these medical records even give explicit hints of use to combat aging, justifying treatment with reasons like fatigue, bone thinning and "off-label," which means treatment of an unapproved condition

Even Medicare, the government health program for older Americans, allowed 22,169 HGH prescriptions in 2010, a five-year increase of 78 percent, according to data released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in response to an AP public records request.

"There's no question: a lot gets out," said hormone specialist Dr. Mark Molitch of Northwestern University, who helped write medical standards meant to limit HGH treatment to legitimate patients.

And those figures don't include HGH sold directly by doctors without prescriptions at scores of anti-aging medical practices and clinics around the country. Those numbers could only be tallied by drug makers, who have declined to say how many patients they supply and for what conditions.

First marketed in 1985 for children with stunted growth, HGH was soon misappropriated by adults intent on exploiting its modest muscle- and bone-building qualities. Congress limited HGH distribution to the handful of rare conditions in an extraordinary 1990 law, overriding the generally unrestricted right of doctors to prescribe medicines as they see fit.

Despite the law, illicit HGH spread around the sports world in the 1990s, making deep inroads into bodybuilding, college athletics, and professional leagues from baseball to cycling. The even larger banned market among older adults has flourished more recently.

FDA regulations ban the sale of HGH as an anti-aging drug. In fact, since 1990, prescribing it for things like weight loss and strength conditioning has been punishable by 5 to 10 years in prison.

Steve Kleppe, of Scottsdale, Ariz., a restaurant entrepreneur who has taken HGH for almost 15 years to keep feeling young, said he noticed a price jump of about 25 percent after the block on imports. He now buys HGH directly from a doctor at an annual cost of about $8,000 for himself and the same amount for his wife.

Many older patients go for HGH treatment to scores of anti-aging practices and clinics heavily concentrated in retirement states like Florida, Nevada, Arizona and California.

These sites are affiliated with hundreds of doctors who are rarely endocrinologists. Instead, many tout certification by the American Board of Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine, though the medical establishment does not recognize the group's bona fides.

The clinics offer personalized programs of "age management" to business executives, affluent retirees, and other patients of means, sometimes coupled with the amenities of a vacation resort. The operations insist there are few, if any, side effects from HGH. Mainstream medical authorities say otherwise.

A 2007 review of 31 medical studies showed swelling in half of HGH patients, with joint pain or diabetes in more than a fifth. A French study of about 7,000 people who took HGH as children found a 30 percent higher risk of death from causes like bone tumors and stroke, stirring a health advisory from U.S. authorities.

For proof that the drug works, marketers turn to images like the memorable one of pot-bellied septuagenarian Dr. Jeffry Life, supposedly transformed into a ripped hulk of himself by his own program available at the upscale Las Vegas-based Cenegenics Elite Health. (He declined to be interviewed.)

These promoters of HGH say there is a connection between the drop-off in growth hormone levels through adulthood and the physical decline that begins in late middle age. Replace the hormone, they say, and the aging process slows.

"It's an easy ruse. People equate hormones with youth," said Dr. Tom Perls, a leading industry critic who does aging research at Boston University. "It's a marketing dream come true."

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Associated Press Writer David B. Caruso reported from New York and AP National Writer Jeff Donn reported from Plymouth, Mass. AP Writer Troy Thibodeaux provided data analysis assistance from New Orleans.

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AP's interactive on the HGH investigation: http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/hgh

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The AP National Investigative Team can be reached at investigate(at)ap.org

EDITOR'S NOTE _ Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the second of a two-part series.

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Wall Street rallies in choppy day after Obama's "cliff" talk

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks advanced on Monday in a choppy session after comments from President Barack Obama suggesting a deal on the "fiscal cliff" was drawing closer.

The S&P 500 jumped above 1 percent after Obama said it appeared a deal was within sight, but quickly cut some gains when the president noted an agreement was not complete yet. With just an hour left in the final session of 2012, though, the S&P 500 resumed its climb and shot above 1 percent.

A source familiar with the matter said an emerging deal, if adopted by Congress and President Barack Obama, would raise $600 billion in revenue over the next 10 years by increasing tax rates for individuals making more than $400,000 and households earning above $450,000 annually.

A plan is needed in order to avert a combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that many believe could push the U.S. economy into recession.

"There is positive momentum in the market, and we are building up to a deal - markets are definitely starting to price in a deal sometime before tomorrow," said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Capital in Jersey City, New Jersey.

"This sounds counterintuitive, but if that doesn't happen, even if we don't get a bridge deal done, that is just going to increase the pressure on a deal getting done."

The gains put the S&P 500 on track to snap a five-day losing skid, its longest losing streak since September.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 136.08 points, or 1.05 percent, to 13,074.19. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 19.82 points, or 1.41 percent, to 1,422.25. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> climbed 59.89 points, or 2.02 percent, to 3,020.20.

The S&P 500 is now up 13.1 percent for the year, compared with a flat performance in 2011. The Dow is up 7 percent and the Nasdaq is up 15.9 percent.

Gains in Apple Inc , the most valuable U.S. company, helped lift the Nasdaq. The stock rose 4.4 percent to $531.85, lifting the S&P information technology sector index <.gspt> up 1.9 percent. For the year so far, Apple is up 31.3 percent.

The Dow was bolstered by Caterpillar Inc and Home Depot , both up more than 1 percent. In late afternoon trading, Caterpillar shot up nearly 3 percent to $86.35.

While a deal on the cliff is not yet official, investors may be ready to take on more risk next year in hopes of a greater reward.

Bank stocks rose after a New York Times report that U.S. regulators are nearing a $10 billion settlement with several banks that would end the government's efforts to hold lenders responsible for faulty foreclosure practices.

Bank of America Corp was up 2.1 percent at $11.59.

Financial stocks were among the strongest of the year, with the S&P financial index <.gspf> surging 25.2 percent for 2012 so far. Bank of America is the top-performing Dow component, with its stock price more than doubling over the past 12 months.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Cold-Weather Aid Trickles Into Afghan Camps

But camp leaders and Afghan government officials criticized the aid delivery as inadequate to protect residents from the weather and to prevent more deaths.

Last winter, more than 100 children died of the cold in refugee camps around Kabul, with 26 dying in the Charahi Qambar camp alone. That is the same camp where the 3-year-old died on Friday; it was the first confirmed death because of the cold this winter.

The distribution of supplies at the camp, which is home to about 900 families in western Kabul, had been scheduled before news reports about the child’s death, said Mohammad Nader Farhad, a spokesman for the United Nations refugees agency in Kabul.

On less than an hour’s notice, the agency convened a news conference with Afghan government officials at the camp to announce the distribution.

Each family was given warm children’s clothing, blankets, tarps, cooking utensils and soap. Separately, other aid groups, financed by the United Nations and other donors, will be distributing charcoal once every month through February, officials said.

United Nations officials acknowledged, however, that the fuel distributions in themselves were not enough to heat the mud and tarp huts throughout the season, and there were no plans to distribute food to the families. In most cases the men, who are largely war-displaced refugees, are unable to find day labor work in the cold weather, so they are usually unable to buy food.

“We are happy to receive this,” said Tawoos Khan, one of the camp representatives. “But we want food, and we need more fuel; we have all run out of firewood and charcoal.” He and other camp officials said large sacks of charcoal were distributed to every family more than two weeks ago, but supplies had run out.

“It’s supplementary,” said Douglas DiSalvo, a protection officer with the United Nations agency who was at the Charahi Qambar camp. “People have some level of support they can achieve for themselves.”

Mr. Farhad said: “The assistance we are providing, at least it is mitigating the harsh winter these families are experiencing right now.”

The estimated 35,000 people in 50 camps in and around Kabul are not classified as refugees from an international legal point of view, but as “internally displaced persons.” Since the United Nations agency’s mandate is to primarily help refugees — defined as those who flee across international borders — has not provided support to the Kabul camps in the past. That changed late last winter when the Afghan government asked it to do so in response to the emergency conditions that were taking so many lives.

This year, the agency is spearheading the effort to supply the camps, along with the Afghan government’s Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation, other United Nations agencies, and several aid groups, in order to prevent a recurrence of the crisis last winter.

Ministry officials, however, criticized the effort on Sunday — even though they were among the sponsors. “We have never claimed that we provided the internally displaced Afghans with sufficient food items, clothing or means of heat. We admit this. What the internally displaced people have received so far is not adequate at all,” said Islamuddin Jurat, a spokesman for the Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation.

“Before the arrival of harsh winter, we asked the international community and donor countries to help the internally displaced people, and luckily today U.N.H.C.R. provided them with some humanitarian assistance, but again we believe it’s not sufficient at all,” he added.

Both aid officials and the Afghan government have said they are wary about providing too much aid for fear that it would encourage more people to leave their homes. That fear has also been why the Afghan government has refused to allow permanent buildings to be erected in the camps, many of which are five or more years old.

“The illegal nature of these squatter settlements poses an obstacle to more lasting interventions and improvements,” said Mr. Farhad of the United Nations refugees agency. “Coordination this year has been very strong, and we expect that the multiagency effort will help us to detect and respond to particular problem areas as the winter progresses.”

Little is provided in the way of food aid. The only food aid in the Charahi Qambar camp is a hot lunch program for 750 students at a tented school run by Aschiana, an Afghan aid group.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is providing the cold-weather packages to 40,000 families, 5,000 of them in the Kabul camps, at a cost of $6 million. Other Kabul camps will receive distributions in the next two days, Mr. Farhad said.

The packages, which cost about $150 each, include two tarpaulins, three blankets, six bars of soap, a cooking utensils set, and 26 items of clothing ranging from jackets and sweaters to socks and hats, mostly for children.

Taj Mohammad, the father of the child who died, Janan, said Sunday that he believed that his son might have survived if the cold-weather kit had arrived earlier. But like many of the refugees, he was critical of its contents, which he said were hard to sell in exchange for food.

“I didn’t know a package costs $150,” he said. “It’s a lot of money. It would have been much better if they had given us the money, and we would have spent it on what we need the most.”

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