Singer Travis pleads not guilty to assault






SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Country singer Randy Travis pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor assault in a municipal courtroom in the Dallas suburb of Plano on Friday, his lawyer said.


Lawyer Peter A. Schulte told Reuters his client is “absolutely not guilty of this crime.”






Police say Travis assaulted a man in a church parking lot in Plano in August while attempting to intervene in a disagreement between a woman he was with and the woman’s estranged husband.


“He was actually being a good Samaritan at the time, stepping in to save two women from being assaulted,” Schulte said. He said the woman Travis was with and his daughter were being harassed by two men.


The charge against Travis carries a maximum $ 500 fine and no jail time. The case is set for trial March 11.


The altercation occurred during a bad stretch for the 53-year-old Grammy winner. Earlier in August, Travis was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving after he was found lying naked near his wrecked car along a north Texas highway. He also was accused of threatening to shoot and kill the troopers investigating the case, according to a police report.


The North Carolina-born country singer, known for hits such as “Forever and Ever, Amen,” also was arrested in February for drunken driving while sitting in his car in the parking lot of another north Texas church.


Schulte said Travis has been doing well since the two August incidents. He said his client was upbeat as he left the courtroom Friday.


“He turned and wished everybody who was there a merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year,” he said.


(Editing by Corrie MacLaggan and Bill Trott)


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Brazil president, cancer survivor, pronounced healthy






BRASILIA (Reuters) – Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who survived lymphoma cancer in 2009, was pronounced healthy by doctors after a routine exam on Friday.


Rousseff’s health was “within normal levels,” according to a statement released by her office following the check-up at the Sirio-Libanes Hospital in Sao Paulo, one of South America‘s leading cancer treatment centers.






Rousseff underwent chemotherapy in 2009 and briefly wore a wig, but the cancer went into remission and she appeared to be in good health by the time she staged her winning campaign for the presidency in 2010.


Concerns over her health have faded since then, although a bout with pneumonia and a lengthy recovery in 2011 have kept the issue on some investors’ radar screens.


(Reporting by Ana Flor, Writing by Brian Winter; Editing by Doina Chiacu)


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Make-or-break moment for fiscal cliff talks


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama was preparing to present a limited fiscal proposal to congressional leaders at a White House meeting Friday, a make-or-break moment for negotiations to avoid across-the-board tax increases and deep spending cuts at the first of the year.


Lawmakers and White House officials held out a slim hope for a deal before the new year, but it remained unclear whether congressional passage of legislation palatable to both sides was even possible.


The Friday afternoon meeting among congressional leaders and the president — their first since Nov. 16 — was likely to center on which income thresholds would face higher tax rates, extending unemployment insurance, and preventing a cut in Medicare payments to doctors, among other issues.


For Obama, the eleventh-hour scramble represented a test of how he would balance strength derived from his re-election against an avowed commitment to compromise in the face of divided government. Despite early talk of a grand bargain between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would reduce deficits by more than $2 trillion, the expectations were now far less ambitious.


Although there were no guarantees of a deal, Republicans and Democrats said privately that any agreement would likely include an extension of middle-class tax cuts with increased rates at upper incomes, an Obama priority that was central to his re-election campaign.


A key question was whether Obama would agree to abandon his insistence during the campaign on raising taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year and instead accept a $400,000 threshold like the one he offered in negotiations with Boehner. Another was whether Republicans would seek a higher income threshold.


The deal would also likely put off the scheduled spending cuts. Such a year-end bill could also include an extension of expiring unemployment benefits, a reprieve for doctors who face a cut in Medicare payments and possibly a short-term measure to prevent dairy prices from soaring, officials said.


If a deal was not possible, it would become evident at Friday's White House meeting, and Obama and the leaders would leave a resolution for the next Congress to address in January.


Such a delay could unnerve the stock market, which edged lower for a fifth day Friday amid worries that lawmakers would fail to reach a budget deal. Economists say that if the tax increases are allowed to hit most Americans and if the spending cuts aren't scaled back, the recovering but fragile economy could sustain a traumatizing shock.


Obama called for the meeting as top lawmakers on Thursday alternately cast blame on each other while portraying themselves as open to a reasonable last-minute bargain.


Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded that any effort at this late date was a long shot. "I don't know timewise how it can happen now," he said.


The No. 2 Senate GOP leader, Jon Kyl of Arizona, said it is "pretty unlikely" that Senate Republicans would agree to legislation averting the fiscal cliff if it wouldn't pass muster in the House.


"If you know the House isn't going to do something, why go through the charade?" he told reporters. "That becomes political gamesmanship."


Obama and Reid, D-Nev., would have to propose a package that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell would agree not to block with procedural steps that require 60 votes to overcome.


Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he still thinks a deal could be struck.


The Democrat told NBC's "Today" show Friday that he believes the "odds are better than people think."


Schumer said he based his optimism on indications that McConnell has gotten "actively engaged" in the talks.


Appearing on the same show, Republican Sen. John Thune noted the meeting scheduled later Friday at the White House, saying "it's encouraging that people are talking."


But Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., predicted that "the worst-case scenario" could emerge from Friday's talks.


"We will kick the can down the road," he said on "CBS This Morning."


"We'll do some small deal and we'll create another fiscal cliff to deal with the fiscal cliff," he said. Corker complained that there has been "a total lack of courage, lack of leadership," in Washington.


If a deal were to pass the Senate, Boehner would have to agree to take it to the floor in the Republican-controlled House.


Boehner discussed the fiscal cliff with Republican members in a conference call Thursday and advised them that the House would convene Sunday evening. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an ally of the speaker, said Boehner told the lawmakers that "he didn't really intend to put on the floor something that would pass with all the Democratic votes and few of the Republican votes."


But Cole did not rule out Republican support for some increase in tax rates, noting that Boehner had amassed about 200 Republican votes for a plan last week to raise rates on Americans earning $1 million or more. Boehner ultimately did not put the plan to a House floor vote in the face of opposition from Republican conservatives and a unified Democratic caucus.


"The ultimate question is whether the Republican leaders in the House and Senate are going to push us over the cliff by blocking plans to extend tax cuts for the middle class," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. "Ironically, in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires, they will be responsible for the largest tax increase in history."


Boehner, McConnell, Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi are all scheduled to attend Friday's White House meeting with Obama. Vice President Joe Biden will also participate in the meeting, the White House said.


___


Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Charles Babington and David Espo contributed to this report.


___


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Make-or-break moment for fiscal cliff talks


WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid partisan bluster, top members of Congress and President Barack Obama were holding out slim hopes for a limited fiscal deal before the new year. But even as congressional leaders prepared to convene at the White House, there were no signs that legislation palatable to both sides was taking shape.


The Friday afternoon meeting among congressional leaders and the president — their first since Nov. 16 — stood as a make-or-break moment for negotiations to avoid across-the-board first of the year tax increases and deep spending cuts.


Obama called for the meeting as top lawmakers alternately cast blame on each other while portraying themselves as open to a reasonable last-minute bargain.


Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid all but conceded that any effort at this late date was a long shot. "I don't know timewise how it can happen now," he said.


For Obama, the 11th-hour scramble represented a test of how he would balance the strength derived from his re-election with his avowed commitment to compromise. Despite early talk of a grand bargain between Obama and House Speaker John Boehner that would reduce deficits by more than $2 trillion, the expectations were now far less ambitious.


Although there were no guarantees of a deal, Republicans and Democrats said privately that any agreement would likely include an extension of middle-class tax cuts with increased rates at upper incomes, an Obama priority that was central to his re-election campaign. The deal would also likely put off the scheduled spending cuts. Such a year-end bill could also include an extension of expiring unemployment benefits, a reprieve for doctors who face a cut in Medicare payments and possibly a short-term measure to prevent dairy prices from soaring, officials said.


To get there, Obama and Reid would have to propose a package that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell would agree not to block with procedural steps that require 60 votes to overcome.


Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said he still thinks a deal could be struck.


The Democrat told NBC's "Today" show Friday that he believes the "odds are better than people think."


Schumer said he based his optimism on indications that McConnell has gotten "actively engaged" in the talks.


Appearing on the same show, Republican Sen. John Thune noted the meeting scheduled later Friday at the White House, saying "it's encouraging that people are talking."


But Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., predicted that "the worst-case scenario" could emerge from Friday's talks.


"We will kick the can down the road," he said on "CBS This Morning."


"We'll do some small deal and we'll create another fiscal cliff to deal with the fiscal cliff," he said. Corker complained that there has been "a total lack of courage, lack of leadership," in Washington.


Speaking on the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell cautioned: "Republicans aren't about to write a blank check for anything the Democrats put forward just because we find ourselves at the edge of the cliff."


Nevertheless, he said he told Obama in a phone call late Wednesday that "we're all happy to look at whatever he proposes."


If a deal were to pass the Senate, Boehner would have to agree to take it to the floor in the Republican-controlled House.


Boehner discussed the fiscal cliff with Republican members in a conference call Thursday and advised them that the House would convene Sunday evening. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., an ally of the speaker, said Boehner told the lawmakers that "he didn't really intend to put on the floor something that would pass with all the Democratic votes and few of the Republican votes."


But Cole did not rule out Republican support for some increase in tax rates, noting that Boehner had amassed about 200 Republican votes for a plan last week to raise rates on Americans earning $1 million or more. Boehner ultimately did not put the plan to a House floor vote in the face of opposition from Republican conservatives and a unified Democratic caucus.


"The ultimate question is whether the Republican leaders in the House and Senate are going to push us over the cliff by blocking plans to extend tax cuts for the middle class," White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. "Ironically, in order to protect tax breaks for millionaires, they will be responsible for the largest tax increase in history."


Boehner, McConnell, Reid and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi are all scheduled to attend Friday's White House meeting with Obama. Vice President Joe Biden will also participate in the meeting, the White House said.


Despite the urgency to act, the rhetoric Thursday was quarrelsome and personal.


The House of Representatives is "being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker," Reid said on the Senate floor. He attributed Boehner's reluctance to put a version of Senate bill that raised tax rates on incomes above $250,000 for couples to fears he could lose his re-election as speaker next week.


"Harry Reid should talk less and legislate more if he wants to avert the fiscal cliff," countered Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Boehner.


If a deal is not possible, it should become evident at Friday's White House meeting. If that occurs, Obama and the leaders would leave the resolution to the next Congress to address in January.


Such a delay could unnerve the stock market, which performed erratically Thursday amid the developments in Washington. Economists say that if the tax increases are allowed to hit most Americans and if the spending cuts aren't scaled back, the recovering but fragile economy could sustain a traumatizing shock.


But a sentiment is taking hold that despite a black eye to its image, Congress could weather the fiscal cliff without significant economic consequences if it acts decisively next month.


"Going over is likely because at this point both sides probably see a better deal on the other side of the cliff," Jared Bernstein, Biden's former economic adviser, wrote in a blog post Thursday.


By letting current tax cuts expire and rise, Bernstein and others say, Republicans would be voting to lower taxes next month, even if not for all taxpayers. Democrats — and Obama — would be in a stronger position to demand that taxpayers above the $250,000 threshold pay higher taxes, instead of the $400,000 threshold that Obama proposed in his latest offer to Boehner.


And the debate over spending cuts, including changes to politically sensitive entitlement programs such as Medicare, would have to start anew.


___


Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Charles Babington and David Espo contributed to this report.


___


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Apple still said to account for 87% of North American tablet traffic as Kindle Fire, Nexus 7 gain






Apple’s (AAPL) share of the global tablet market is in decline now that low-cost Android slates are proliferating, but the iPad still appears to be the most used tablet by a huge margin. Ad firm Chitika regularly monitors tablet traffic in the United States and Canada and in its latest report, Apple’s iPad was responsible for almost 90% of all tablet traffic across the company’s massive network.


[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]






Using a sample of tens of millions of impressions served to tablets between December 8th and December 14th this year, Chitika determined that various iPad models collectively accounted for 87% of tablet traffic in North America. That figure is down a point from the prior month but still represents a commanding lead in the space.


[More from BGR: New purported BlackBerry Z10 specs emerge: 1.5GHz processor, 2GB RAM, 8MP camera]


The next closest device line, Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire tablet family, had a 4.25% share of tablet traffic during that period, up from 3.57% in November. Samsung’s (005930) Galaxy tablets made up 2.65% of traffic, up from 2.36%, and Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets combined to account for 1.06% of tablet traffic in early December.


“Despite these gains by some of the bigger players in the tablet marketplace, there has been a negligible impact to Apple’s dominant usage share,” Chitika wrote in a post on its blog.


This article was originally published by BGR


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MSF warns Kenya not to send more refugees to stricken camp






LONDON (Reuters) – Conditions in a camp for Somali refugees in Kenya are deplorable and a government plan to send in thousands more would pose a major risk to health, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Friday.


Kenya has more than half a million refugees from Somalia, which has lacked an effective central government since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.






A series of bombings, shootings and hand-grenade attacks blamed on Somali militants prompted the government on December 18 to stop registering asylum seekers and refugees in urban areas.


A Kenyan official said more than 100,000 refugees must now head to the remote Dadaab camp in the country’s remote north. Amnesty International said the order breached international law.


Dadaab camp was set up 20 years ago and already houses four times the population it was built for. Hunger and disease outbreaks are common.


MSF says its inhabitants suffer from overcrowding and poor sanitation that recent floods had worsened.


“The assistance provided here in Dadaab is already completely overstretched and is not meeting the current needs,” said Elena Velilla, MSF’s head of mission in Kenya.


In the last month, the number of children admitted to Dadaab’s hospital for severe acute malnutrition has doubled to around 300, MSF said. Sixty-three of those were taken to intensive care this week after developing serious complications.


Most of the sick are also suffering from acute watery diarrhea or severe respiratory tract infections, MSF said.


(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Tom Pfeiffer)


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C. African Republic president seeks foreign help






BANGUI, Central African Republic (AP) — The president of Central African Republic on Thursday urgently called on France and other foreign powers to help his government fend off rebels who are quickly seizing territory and approaching the capital, but French officials declined to offer any military assistance.


The developments suggest Central African Republic could be on the brink of another violent change in government, something not new in the history of this resource-rich, yet deeply impoverished country. The current president, Francois Bozize, himself came to power nearly a decade ago in the wake of a rebellion.






Speaking to crowds in Bangui, a city of some 600,000, Bozize pleaded with foreign powers to do what they could. He pointed in particular to France, Central African Republic’s former colonial ruler.


About 200 French soldiers are already in the country, providing technical support and helping to train the local army, according to the French defense ministry.


“France has the means to stop (the rebels) but unfortunately they have done nothing for us until now,” Bozize said.


French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that France wants to protect its interests in Central African Republic and not Bozize’s government. The comments came a day after dozens of protesters, angry about a lack of help against rebel forces, threw rocks at the French Embassy in Bangui and stole a French flag.


Paris is encouraging peace talks between the government and the rebels, with the French Foreign Ministry noting in a statement that negotiations are due to “begin shortly in Libreville (Gabon).” But it was not immediately clear what, if any, dates have been set for those talks.


French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, meanwhile, spoke via phone with Bozize, asking the president to take responsibility for the safety of French nationals and diplomatic missions in Central African Republic.


U.S. officials said Thursday the State Department would close its embassy in the country and ordered its diplomatic team to leave. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the evacuation publicly.


The United Nations Security Council issued a press statement late Thursday reiterating its concern about the situation in the country and condemned the attacks.


“The members of the Security Council reiterate their demand that the armed groups immediately cease hostilities, withdraw from captured cities and cease any further advance towards the city of Bangui,” the statement reads.


Bozize’s government earlier reached out to longtime ally Chad, which pledged to send 2,000 troops to bolster Central African Republic’s own forces. But it was unclear if the Chadian troops had all arrived, and even then, it is far from certain if the combined government forces could withstand rebel attacks.


At least four different rebel groups are involved, though their overall numbers could not immediately be confirmed.


Central African Republic, a landlocked nation of some 4.4 million people, is roughly the size of France. It has suffered decades of army revolts, coups and rebellions since gaining independence in 1960 and remains one of the poorest countries in the world.


The rebels behind the most recent instability signed a 2007 peace accord allowing them to join the regular army, but insurgent leaders say the deal wasn’t fully implemented.


Already, the rebel forces have seized at least 10 towns across the sparsely populated north of the country, and residents in the capital now fear the insurgents could attack at any time, despite assurances by rebel leaders that they are willing to engage in dialogue instead of attacking Bangui.


The rebels have claimed that their actions are justified in light of the “thirst for justice, for peace, for security and for economic development of the people of Central African Republic.”


Despite Central African Republic’s wealth of gold, diamonds, timber and uranium, the government remains perpetually cash-strapped. Filip Hilgert, a researcher with Belgium-based International Peace Information Service, said rebel groups are unhappy because they feel the government doesn’t invest in their areas.


“The main thing they say is that the north of the country, and especially in their case the northeast, has always been neglected by the central government in all ways,” he said.


But the rebels also are demanding that the government make payments to ex-combatants, suggesting that their motives may also be for personal financial gain.


Bozize, a former military commander, came to power in a 2003 rebel war that ousted his predecessor, Ange-Felix Patasse. In his address Thursday, Bozize said he remained open to dialogue with the rebels, but he also accused them and their allies of financial greed.


Those allies, he implied, are outside Central African Republic.


“For me, there are individuals who are being manipulated by an outside hand, dreaming of exploiting the rich Central African Republic soil,” he said. “They want only to stop us from benefiting from our oil, our diamonds, our uranium and our gold.”


___


Larson reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writer Sarah DiLorenzo in Paris contributed to this report.


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Piano maker Steinway takes down “for sale” sign






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Steinway Musical Instruments Inc, the famous manufacturer of pianos, saxophones and trumpets, said on Wednesday it had decided not to sell itself following a 17-month-long exploration of strategic alternatives.


An American icon synonymous with handmade grand pianos, Steinway has struggled to keep its production margins competitive amid stagnant sales, and has seen its shares plunge 10 percent year-to-date. Still, its third-quarter earnings last month offered signs that cost-cutting was paying off.






In a statement on Wednesday, Steinway said it had received several non-binding indications of interest in buying the company, following talks with other companies in the sector as well as private equity, yet these did not offer more value than its own strategic plan.


“We will continue to focus management’s efforts on execution of that plan and we look forward to a prosperous 2013,” Steinway CEO Michael Sweeney said in the statement.


An in-principle agreement to sell its band instrument division to an investor group led by two of its board members, Dana Messina and John Stoner, was also scrapped in light of the current operating performance of the band division, Steinway said.


In July 2011, Messina, Stoner and other members of management made an offer for Steinway’s band instrument and online music divisions, prompting the company to set up a special committee in order to assess it.


Later that month, Steinway asked investment bank Allen & Company LLC to a assist the special committee on exploring strategic alternatives that could also include selling the whole company outright to other interested parties.


By October 2011, Messina had stepped down as CEO of the company after 15 years at the helm to pursue his bid, yet he remained a board member. He was replaced by Sweeney, a chairman of the board of Star Tribune Media Holdings and a former president of Starbucks Coffee Company (UK) Ltd.


Steinway said on Wednesday that it was continuing a separate process to sell its leasehold interest in New York’s Steinway Hall building, situated on Manhattan’s 57th Street, and was in talks with several parties.


According to its website, Steinway & Sons, the company’s piano unit, opened the first Steinway Hall on 14th Street in Manhattan in 1866.


With a main auditorium of 2,000 seats, it became New York City’s artistic and cultural center, housing the New York Philharmonic until Carnegie Hall opened in 1891. These days, Steinway Hall is a showroom for the company’s instruments.


The Waltham, Massachusetts-based company’s pianos have been used by legendary artists such as Cole Porter and Sergei Rachmaninoff and by contemporary ones like Chinese concert pianist Lang Lang.


(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis in New York; Editing by M.D. Golan)


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Cuba has much to lose as ally Chavez fights cancer






HAVANA (AP) — Cubans who were tuned in to the nightly soap opera on a recent Saturday received a sudden burst of bad news, from the other side of the Caribbean.


State TV cut to the presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez revealed that his cancer had returned. Facing his fourth related surgery in 18 months, he grimly named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his possible successor.






The news shocked not only Venezuelans but millions of Cubans who have come to depend on Chavez’s largesse for everything from subsidized oil to cheap loans. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba‘s energy needs, meaning the island’s economy would be in for a huge shock and likely recession if a post-Chavez president forced the island to pay full price for oil.


Despite the drama, the news likely wasn’t a surprise to Cuba’s Communist government, and not only because Chavez has been receiving medical care on the island.


Havana learned important lessons about overdependence when the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union threw the country into a deep crisis. Trying to avoid the consequences of a similar cut, the Cuban government has been diversifying its portfolio of economic partners in recent years, looking to Asia, Europe and other Latin American nations, and is only about half as dependent on Caracas as it was on the former Soviet Union.


Cuba is also working to stimulate its economy back home by allowing more private-sector activity, giving a leg up to independent and cooperative farming, and decentralizing its sugar industry. A stronger Cuban economy would in theory have more hard currency to pay for energy and other imports.


Also getting off the ground is an experiment with independent nonfarm collectives that should be more efficient than state-run companies. And next year, another pilot program is planned for decentralized state enterprises that will enjoy near-autonomy and be allowed to control most of their income.


“This could have good results,” said a Cuban economist who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the foreign media. Cuba “is also thinking of boosting foreign investment in areas of the national economy, including in restricted areas like the sugar industry.”


One of the country’s top goals has been to make the island’s struggling economy less dependent on a single benefactor.


Under the leadership of Chavez, who regularly calls former Cuban President Fidel Castro his ideological father and has followed parts of the Communist leader’s governance playbook, Venezuela has sent billions of dollars a year to Cuba through trade and petro-aid.


Bilateral trade stood at a little over $ 8 billion last year, much of it in Cuban imports of oil and derivatives. In return, Havana primarily provides Venezuela with technical support from Cuban teachers, scientists and other professionals, plus brigades of health care workers. Analysts say those services are overvalued by outside standards, apparently costing as much as $ 200,000 per year per doctor. Experts peg the total Venezuelan subsidy to Cuba at around $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion a year.


While business with Venezuela makes up 40 percent of all Cuban trade, it’s still a far cry from the days when the Communist Eastern Bloc accounted for an estimated 80 percent.


“A (loss of) $ 2 billion to $ 4 billion would definitely pinch. But it is not the same relative weight as the sudden complete withdrawal of the Soviet subsidies in the early ’90s,” said Richard E. Feinberg, a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego. “Cuba’s not going to go back to the days of bicycles. Could it throw the Cuban economy into recession? Yes.”


That kind of resilience would result largely from Cuba’s successes in courting foreign investors for joint ventures.


Last month, authorities announced a deal with a subsidiary of Brazil’s Odebrecht to manage a sugar refinery, a rare step in an industry that has long been largely off limits to foreign involvement.


China has invested in land-based oil projects, and along with Canada is a key player in Cuba’s important nickel industry. Spain has ventures in tourist hotels and tobacco, while French company Pernod Ricard helps export Cuban liquors. And since 2009, Brazil has been a partner in a massive project to modernize and expand the port at Mariel, west of the capital.


Trade with China alone was $ 1.9 billion and rising in 2010, and Raul Castro paid a visit to Chinese and Vietnamese leaders earlier this year to help cement Asian relationships.


But while Havana says it wants to boost foreign investment, obstacles remain. The approval process for investment projects can be long and cumbersome, and pilferage, disincentives to productivity and government intervention can cut into efficiencies. Foreign companies also pay a sky-high payroll tax.


Feinberg, who wrote a report on foreign investment in Cuba published this month by the U.S. think tank the Brookings Institution, said that while a number of foreign companies are successfully doing business with the island, others have run into problems, sending a chilly message to would-be investors. In particular he noted the recent cases of a government takeover of a food company run by a Chilean businessman accused of corruption, and contentious renegotiations of a contract with Dutch-British personal and home care products giant Unilever amid shifting government demands.


“The Cuban government has to decide that it wants foreign investment unambiguously. I think now there seem to be divisions among the leadership,” Feinberg said. “Some are afraid that foreign investment compromises sovereignty, creates centers of power independent of the leadership or is exploitative.”


He estimated Cuba has left on the table about $ 20 billion in missed investment over the past decade by not following practices typical of other developing nations. Instead, Cuba received $ 3.5 billion in foreign investment in that period.


Experts say a worst-case scenario for Chavez wouldn’t automatically translate into the oil spigot shutting off overnight.


If Chavez’s hand-picked successor, Vice President Maduro, were to take office, he would likely seek to continue the special relationship.


Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said he wants to end the oil-for-services barter arrangements, but could find that easier said than done should he win. The two countries are intertwined in dozens of joint accords, and poor Venezuelans who benefit from free care by Cuban doctors would be loath to see that disappear.


“You can’t flip the switch on a relationship like this,” said Melissa Lockhart Fortner, a Cuba analyst at the Pacific Council on International Policy, a Los Angeles-based institute that focuses on global affairs. “It would be terrible politics for him. … Switching that off would really endanger his support far too much for that to be really a feasible option.”


For Cuba, Chavez’s latest health scare capped off a year of disappointments in the island’s attempt to wean itself from Venezuelan energy.


Three deep-water exploratory oil wells drilled off the west coast failed to yield a strike, and last month the only oil rig in the world capable of drilling there without violating U.S. sanctions sailed away with no return in sight.


Yet time and again Havana has shown that it’s nothing if not resilient, weathering everything from U.S.-backed invasion and assassination plots in the 1960s to the austere “Special Period” in the early 1990s, when the Soviet collapse sent Cuba’s GDP plummeting 33 percent over four years. When hurricanes damaged the country’s agriculture sector and the global financial crisis squeezed tourism four years ago, Cuba tightened its belt, slashed imports and survived.


“Some people are saying the demise of Chavez is also going to be the demise of Communism in Cuba because the regime’s going to collapse and the people are going to rise up,” Feinberg said. “That’s probably yet another delusion of the anti-Castro exile community.”


Still, many Cubans are nervously tuning into the near-daily updates about Chavez’s health, carried prominently in state media.


“I don’t know what would happen here,” said 52-year-old Havana resident Magaly Ruiz. “We might end up eating grass.”


___


Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana contributed to this report.


___


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Christmas box-office haul paces Hollywood for record year






LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A strong Christmas-day box office performance by musical “Les Miserables” and western “Django Unchained” put Hollywood on pace to set an all-time box office record with $ 10.8 billion in annual revenue, box-office tracker Hollywood.com said on Wednesday.


Universal Pictures‘ star-studded “Les Miserables” took in a weekday Christmas record of $ 18.2 million in the United States and Canada when it opened on Tuesday, according to studio estimates of weekday ticket sales.






Quentin Tarantino‘s spaghetti western “Django Unchained,” starring Jamie Foxx and Leonardo DiCaprio, hauled nearly $ 15 million for The Weinstein Co.


Studios “are definitely on the road to a record year with $ 10.8 billion expected (up 6 percent over last year and beating the previous record of $ 10.6 billion in 2009),” Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Reuters in an email, adding that the number of tickets sold should climb 6 percent from 2011 to 1.36 billion.


Dergarabedian credits a successful marketing year for studios as a chief reason for the projected box-office record, as well as spring and summer smashes “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers” helping boost revenue.


“It was not just the fact that most of the movies delivered, it was the timing of their release dates and the marketing was obviously effective as well with social media continuing to provide an outlet for the movie-going peer group to talk about their favorite flicks,” Dergarabedian said.


“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” based on the J.R.R. Tolkein classic fantasy novel, brought in $ 11.4 million on Christmas day after ruling the box office with nearly $ 37 million in sales over the weekend.


Billy Crystal family film “Parental Guidance” debuted in fourth place with about $ 6.4 million in Christmas sales while Tom Cruise’s “Jack Reacher,” which featured author Lee Child’s character in an investigation into a sniper shooting, was fifth with some $ 5.3 million.


“The Hobbit” was distributed by Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. Studio. News Corp’s 20th Century Fox released “Parental Guidance” and Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom, released “Jack Reacher.” Universal Pictures is owned by Comcast Corp.


(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Edited by Ronald Grover and Andrew Hay)


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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