RIM to spice BlackBerry 10 AppWorld with local flavors

WATERLOO, Ontario (Reuters) – Research In Motion is pushing for app quality, not quantity, with its make-or-break BlackBerry 10 devices set for launch on January 30, and targeting applications to customers in various regions.

RIM’s projected 100,000 apps – a record for any new platform at launch – will still be a fraction of those available on Apple Inc or Google Inc devices.

But it is a stronger showing than RIM’s PlayBook tablet computer which was slammed at its 2011 launch for a dearth of apps and incomplete software.

In an interview with Reuters on Wednesday, RIM Chief Executive Thorsten Heins admitted that app libraries play a crucial role in the success or failure of smartphones. But he said the game is not just about numbers.

“The tactic we are deploying is by country and by region. We are aiming to have the most important 200 to 400 apps available, because many applications are regional and they really do have a regional flavor,” Heins said.

RIM says it aims to offer both the most popular applications in the market, and also those most relevant to Blackberry aficionados – people Heins described as hyper-connected multi-taskers who need to get things done.

RIM’s ultra-secure BlackBerry was once the smartphone of choice for government and corporate elites. But rivals have taken giant bites out of RIM’s market share, especially in North America, and the company’s stock has slumped. The BlackBerry remains popular in many emerging markets, partly for its popular BBM messaging system.

With this in mind, RIM has hosted events with developers across the globe.

“We’ve done 30 jam conferences in various cities all around the world, to get the bucket filled with meaningful local apps and not just a huge bunch of applications that you collect and throw at your audience,” he said. “It is a very, very targeted approach.”

Heins, who has met with customers and carriers in a series of whirlwind global tours, came across as relaxed and confident in the interview, in RIM’s Waterloo headquarters.

Speaking rapid fire English with just a hint of an accent from his native Germany, he acknowledged that RIM’s fate may depend on the success of BB10, but he said feedback from clients has been very encouraging.

RIM hopes its new line of BB10 smartphones will help it claw back market share from Apple’s iPhone and devices powered by Google’s Android operating system. Developers say like what they see, but analysts are not convinced that RIM’s gamble on BB10 will succeed.

BIG NAME DRAWS

In terms of numbers, RIM’s app offering will remain far behind the Apple and Google app stores, each of which boast over 700,000 apps. But Heins said he was not worried.

“In my view it is really short-sighted to say, you have 600,000, you have 400,000 and you only have 100,000 apps, so you are not good,” he said.

“Look at how many actually get downloaded. … BlackBerry App World today is still the most profitable portal for application developers – it has the highest number of paid for downloads.”

In a small dig at his rivals, he added: “We don’t have 1,500 Solitaire apps. That is not what Blackberry is about.”

RIM has already said it plans business focused apps from the likes of Cisco WebEx, Box, SAP and Blackboard, as well as music and movie apps like TuneIn, Nobex and Popcornflix and gaming apps from developers like Gameloft, Halfbrick and Paw Print Games.

Heins has said social networks such as LinkedIn, Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook will all have apps for BB10 at launch. But he declined to name any of the other big name apps that RIM will have on board come launch day.

“Allow me to talk to you about this on January 30, otherwise I’m losing a lot of thunder,” he said.

(Editing by Janet Guttsman and Richard Chang)

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Canadian October home sales dip, latest sign of cooling

TORONTO (Reuters) – Sales of existing homes in Canada fell in October from September and year-over-year sales were down as well, the Canadian Real Estate Association said on Thursday in the latest signal that the housing market is slowing.

The industry group for Canadian real estate agents said sales were down 0.1 percent in October from September. Actual sales for October, not seasonally adjusted, were down 0.8 percent from a year earlier.

The housing market, which roared higher in 2011 and the first half of 2012, started to slow after the government tightened rules on mortgage lending in July in a bid to cool the market and prevent home buyers from taking on too much debt.

“Housing market trends in Canada for 2012 can be characterized as before and after regulatory changes,” TD Economics senior economist Sonya Gulati said in a research note.

“In the first half of the year, sales and price gains were modest, but positive. More stringent mortgage rules and tighter mortgage underwriting rules have ‘purposely’ knocked the wind out of the housing market sails,” she said.

The home sales data showed diverging paths in Canadian housing depending on location. In Toronto and Vancouver, where sales and price gains were red hot in 2011 and early in 2012, the market has been cooling. But markets in the resource-rich western provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta have been gaining strength.

“Opinions differ about how sharply sales have slowed depending on the local housing market,” Gregory Klump, CREA’s chief economist, said in a statement.

Led by Calgary, sales in October were up from a year earlier in almost two-thirds of local markets. Sales remained blow year-earlier levels in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, CREA said.

“These results suggest that the Canadian housing market overall has returned to a more sustainable pace,” Klump said.

CREA’s Home Price Index rose 3.6 percent in October from a year earlier, the sixth consecutive month in which gains in prices slowed, and the slowest rate of increase since May 2011.

While tighter mortgage rules have worked to slow the market, TD’s Gulati said the big question is what will happen when that temporary cooling effect wears off in early 2013.

“What happens thereafter is less certain. The low interest rate environment could pull homeowners back onto the market, causing home prices to once again trek upwards. Alternatively, an absence of pent-up demand may leave the market in a bit of a lull until interest rate hikes resume in late 2013,” she wrote.

“Under either scenario, it is safe to say that there is a low probability of out-sized home price gains over the near-term.”

A total of 402,322 homes traded hands via Canadian MLS systems over the first 10 months of 2012, up 0.8 percent from the same period last year and 0.4 percent below the 10-year average for the period, the data showed.

The number of newly listed homes fell 3.8 percent in October following a jump in September. Monthly declines were reported in almost two-thirds of local markets, with Toronto and Vancouver exerting a large influence on the national trend.

Nationally, there were 6.5 months of inventory at the end of October, little changed from the reading of 6.4 months at the end of September.

(Editing by Peter Galloway)

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Jamaica to abolish slavery-era flogging law

KINGSTON, Jamaica (AP) — Jamaica is preparing to abolish a slavery-era law allowing flogging and whipping as means of punishing prisoners, the Caribbean country’s justice ministry said Thursday.

The ministry said the punishment hasn’t been ordered by a court since 2004 but the statutes remain in the island’s penal code. It was administered with strokes from a tamarind-tree switch or a cat o’nine tails, a whip made of nine, knotted cords.

Justice Minister Mark Golding says the “degrading” punishment is an anachronism which violates Jamaica’s international obligations and is preventing Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller‘s government from ratifying the U.N. convention against torture.

“The time has come to regularize this situation by getting these colonial-era laws off our books once and for all,” Golding said in a Thursday statement.

The Cabinet has already approved repealing the flogging law and amendments to other laws in the former British colony, where plantation slavery was particularly brutal.

The announcement was welcomed by human rights activists who view the flogging law as a barbaric throwback in a nation populated mostly by the descendants of slaves.

“We don’t really see that (the flogging law) has any part in the approach of dealing with crime in a modern democracy,” said group spokeswoman Susan Goffe.

But there are no shortage of crime-weary Jamaicans who feel that authorities should not drop the old statutes but instead enforce them, arguing that thieves who steal livestock or violent criminals who harm innocent people should receive a whipping to teach them a lesson.

“The worst criminals need strong punishing or else they’ll do crimes over and over,” said Chris Drummond, a Kingston man with three school-age children. “Getting locked up is not always enough.”

The last to suffer the punishment in Jamaica was Errol Pryce, who was sentenced to four years in prison and six lashes in 1994 for stabbing his mother-in-law.

Pryce was flogged the day before being released from prison in 1997 and later complained to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, which ruled in 2004 that the form of corporal punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading and violated his rights. Jamaican courts then stopped ordering whipping or flogging.

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Exclusive: Facebook offering e-retailers sales tracking tool

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc wants more credit for making online cash registers ring.

Facebook will begin rolling out on Friday a new tool which will allow online retailers to track purchases by members of the social network who have viewed their ads.

The tool is the latest of the new advertising features Facebook is offering to convince marketers that steering advertising dollars to the company will deliver a payoff.

Facebook, with roughly 1 billion users, has faced a tough reception on Wall Street amid concerns about its slowing revenue growth.

“Measuring ad effectiveness and outcomes is absolutely crucial to all types of businesses and marketers,” said David Baser, a product manager for Facebook’s ads business who said the “conversion measurement” tool has been a top customer request for a long time.

The sales information that advertisers receive is anonymous, said Baser. “You would see the number of people who bought shoes,” he said, using the example of an online shoe retailer. But marketers would not be able to get information that could identify the people, he added.

The conversion tool is specifically designed for so-called direct response marketers, such as online retailers and travel websites that advertise with the goal of drumming up immediate sales rather than for longer-term brand-building.

Such advertisers have long flocked to Google Inc’s Web search engine, which can deliver ads to consumers at the exact moment they’re looking for information on a particular product.

But some analysts say there is room for Facebook to make inroads if it can demonstrate results.

“The path to purchase” is not as direct on Facebook as it is on Google’s search engine, said Debra Aho Williamson, an analyst with research firm eMarketer. But she said that providing information about customer sales conversion should help Facebook make a stronger case to online retailers.

“It lets marketers track the impact of a Facebook ad hours or days or even a week beyond when someone might have viewed the ad,” said Williamson. “That allows marketers to understand the impact of the Facebook ad on the ultimate purchase.”

Marketers will also have the option to aim their ads at segments of Facebook’s audience with similar attributes to consumers that have responded well to a particular ad in the past, Baser said.

Online retailer Fab.com, which has tested Facebook’s new service, was able to reduce its cost per new customer acquisition by 39 percent when it served ads to consumers deemed most likely to convert, Facebook said. Facebook defines a conversion as anything from a completed sale, to a consumer taking another desired action on a website, such as registering for a newsletter.

NEW OPPORTUNITIES

Shares of Facebook, which were priced at $ 38 a share in its May initial public offering, closed Thursday’s regular session at $ 22.17.

In recent months, Facebook has introduced a variety of new advertising capabilities and moved to broaden its appeal to various groups of advertisers.

Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in October that Facebook saw multi-billion revenue opportunities in each of four groups of advertisers: brand marketers, local businesses, app developers and direct response marketers.

Facebook does not disclose how much of its ad revenue, which totaled $ 1.09 billion in the third quarter, comes from each type of advertiser. Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser estimates that brand marketers and local businesses account for the bulk of Facebook’s current advertising revenue.

Earlier this year, Facebook introduced a similar conversion measurement service for big brand advertisers, such as auto manufacturers, partnering with data mining firm Datalogix to help connect the dots between consumer spending at brick-and-mortar and Facebook ads.

And Facebook has rolled out new marketing tools for local businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops, including a revamped online coupon service and simplified advertising capabilities known as promoted posts.

The new conversion measurement tool is launching in testing mode, but will be fully available by the end of the month, Facebook said.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric)

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After Garbo, Leigh, no defining “Anna Karenina”: Knightley

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Film adaptations of “Anna Karenina” have featured the likes of Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, but Keira Knightley isn’t fazed about measuring up to such silver screen luminaries with a new cinematic take on Leo Tolstoy‘s classic novel.

The British actress’s turn in the title role in the timeless story about a beautiful married socialite in 1870s Russia who embarks on a passionate affair with a cavalry officer, follows the 1935 version starring Garbo and the 1948 film with Leigh. It is released in the United States on Friday.

“Although there have been many famous actresses play her, there’s never been a definitive version of ‘Anna Karenina,’” Knightley said in an interview. “I think it’s partly because of the relationship you have with the character. She poses more questions than she answers, so it’s always open to different interpretation.”

Knightley stars opposite Jude Law as her husband, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the dashing Count Vronsky, and teams up again with filmmaker Joe Wright in their third film together after previous book-to-film collaborations with 2007′s “Atonement” and 2005′s “Pride & Prejudice.”

The film debuted at the Toronto film festival to warm reviews for Knightley‘s performance. Critics have said the film is overall technically and visually accomplished but lacks a cohesive emotional punch.

Adapted by playwright Tom Stoppard, Wright’s “Anna Karenina” takes place mostly in a theater setting and sees the title character more high-strung and less sympathetic than in previous incarnations.

The director said he cast Knightley, 27, because he felt she could tap into all the internal elements of Anna.

“She was 18 when we made ‘Pride & Prejudice‘, just a kid,” said Wright. “I’ve seen her develop from stunning ingénue to great actress. I felt that she was stronger, braver, even less conforming than she had been before.”

Knightley, newly engaged to musician James Righton, said she stood in moral condemnation over Anna,- “But am I any better than her? No.”

“I think we’re all her,” she added. “That is why she’s so terrifying. We all have bits of her personality within us. We can be wonderful, we can be loving, we can be full of laughter and full of life, and we can also be deceitful, malicious, needy and full of rage.”

WORLDS AWAY

While “Karenina” cements the perception of Knightley as a go-to actress for period pieces that also includes films like 2008′s “The Duchess” and 2004′s “King Arthur,” her career wasn’t always associated with roles grounded in the past.

Knightley spent the 1990s working in the British film and television industry before gaining international attention in the 2002 teenage soccer movie “Bend it Like Beckham.” After that, the actress said she was offered “an awful lot” of films in the teenage genre.

“The one thing that I knew right from the beginning was that I didn’t want to get into those high school movies,” she said. “I was never that interested in being a teenager. I was always interested in worlds away from my own.”

She credits the “massive” success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise – which saw her play Elizabeth Swan in the first three installments – as an integral part of her career and “a lot of the reason I was able to do other kinds of smaller films, because my name would help in financing them.”

Coming up, Knightley takes a turn away from costume dramas, in “Can A Song Save Your Life?” – a musical drama that sees her starring as an aspiring singer who meets a down-on-his-luck record producer, played by Mark Ruffalo. She’s currently shooting a reboot of the Tom Clancy thriller “Jack Ryan.”

“I got to the end of ‘Anna Karenina’ and I realized that I’d done about five years of work where I pretty much died in every movie and it was all very dark,” she said. “So I thought, okay, I want this year to be the year of positivity and pure entertainment.”

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit, editing by Christine Kearney and Patricia Reaney)

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CDC Report: Number of U.S. Adults with Diabetes Has Skyrocketed

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the findings from its latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) on Thursday, which focused on the prevalence of diabetes among American adults. The MMWR stated that the number of new cases of diabetes, particularly type 2 diabetes, has risen dramatically in the last 15 years across the country, especially in some of the southern states.

The report looked at self-reported data collected from the participants of the study between the years of 1995 and 2010. The data was sorted and analyzed using a CDC system known as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to determine whether or not the average rate of diabetes had increased over time, and if so, by how much.

Here is some of the key information to emerge from the CDC’s latest MMWR release about diabetes.

* According to the MMWR, diabetes prevalence was higher than 6 percent of the adult population in only three states at the start of the study in 1995. Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., also had a greater than 6 percent prevalence of adult diabetes at that time.

* In 2010, at the conclusion of the study, every U.S. state, along with Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., reported a prevalence of diabetes among its adult population that was greater than or equal to 6 percent. In addition, six states as well as Puerto Rico reported a prevalence of diabetes among their adult populations of greater than or equal to 10 percent.

* All of the participants in the study were 18 years or older. The study was conducted through telephone surveys.

* According to a report by Reuters regarding the study, Oklahoma was the state that had the largest increase in the percentage of adults living within its borders who have been diagnosed with diabetes. Kentucky was next, followed by Georgia, Alabama, Washington and West Virginia.

* Linda Geiss, the lead author of the study, told CNN on Thursday that she was surprised by the research team’s findings, saying that the “level of increase was shocking to me.” Specifically, Geiss was referring to the fact that the team found that the number of adults living with diabetes increased by at least 100 percent in 18 different states over the course of their research.

* The states that charted the highest percentage increases in the number of new diabetes cases also have had some of the highest increases in the number of adults who are considered obese, according to the CNN report.

* Geiss told CNN on Thursday that a person “should know that” they “can prevent the disease or delay it” by getting more exercise, adjusting their diet, and losing weight.

Vanessa Evans is a musician and freelance writer based in Michigan, with a lifelong interest in health and nutrition issues.

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Curtains for Rice's State hopes?

By Walter Shapiro

Before the initials CIA came to stand for Covert Intimate Affairs, the battle over the next secretary of state would have been the main event of post-election November. Normally, it doesn’t get better than a brand-name Washington struggle pitting the newly reelected president against the Republican senator he defeated in 2008 over filling the Cabinet post soon to be vacated by an ex-president’s wife. 

Barack Obama’s ill-camouflaged inclination to name Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, as Hillary Clinton’s successor would normally be about as contentious as, well, a confirmation hearing for David Petraeus in 2011. Rice, an undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, has by most accounts performed well in a job that pivots around the micro-wording of Security Council resolutions rather than grand geopolitical visions.

But all that good will evaporated when Rice, drawing the short straw as Obama’s designated foreign-policy spinner, dutifully made the rounds of the Sunday shows on Sept. 16, five days after the Libyan attacks. Repeating the White House line, Rice argued that, based on “the best information,” a “spontaneous protest” outside the American consulate in Benghazi attracted heavily armed “extremist elements” who murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

In John McCain’s splenetic view, Rice’s TV commentary smacks of a White House cover-up, since subsequent reporting has shown that initial accounts of a triggering protest were incorrect. As McCain put it Wednesday on Fox News, threatening to filibuster the nomination, “Susan Rice should have known better and if she didn’t know better, she is not qualified.”

At Obama’s first press conference since (gasp) June, the president displayed uncharacteristic moxie in his defense of Rice, who was a key foreign-policy supporter during his 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Obama called the attacks on Rice “outrageous” Wednesday and said that if the Republicans “think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me.”

All this posturing could be moot if Obama taps John Kerry for secretary of state, although the 2004 Democratic nominee now seems more likely to be headed to the Pentagon to replace Leon Panetta. (The secretary of defense has become one of the last remaining white-men-only jobs in government).

And even though one of the great political novels, “Advise and Consent” by Allen Drury, is built around a confirmation fight over a would-be secretary of state, this has always been one job that the Senate has given a president wide discretion in filling. For all the Iraq-war bluster over the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, Senate Democrats mustered only 13 votes against her in 2005, the highest number of votes against a secretary of state nomination since the early 19th century.

What makes all of this relevant now – before Obama has named a Hillary Clinton replacement – is that it underscores the illogic of most Senate confirmation fights. There may be hidden but valid strategic reasons to oppose a Rice Stuff nomination at State. But it represents a blame-the-messenger stretch even by Washington standards to ensnare Rice in the aftermath of Benghazi.

As should be obvious, the U.N. ambassador has nothing directly to do with embassy security, American covert operations in the Middle East or the flow of intelligence about terrorism. All Rice was doing in her television appearances on September 16 was reciting from talking points presumably prepared by the White House national security team based on information provided by the CIA and other agencies. According to reporting by Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius, the CIA was still clinging to its belief that the Benghazi attacks began with a spontaneous protest when Rice made her ill-fated rounds of the Sunday shows.

This is not to deny the mysteries that are swirling around the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi. All roads lead to Libya may be the unified field theory linking all current Washington scandals. The Wall Street Journal suggested in a front-page article Thursday that a major reason why Petraeus’ resignation was accepted with such alacrity was the CIA director’s determination to shield the spy agency from blame over Benghazi. The CIA’s release of its Benghazi timeline reportedly angered National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who then used the revelation of Petraeus’ affair as a cudgel to drive him out of government.

Most likely the Republican fury over Benghazi is over-wrought, but it is also easy to grasp. The often secretive Obama administration may be tempted to try to keep everything under wraps, aside from a few sanitized disclosures, in the name of national security. But while there are presumably intelligence risks that would accompany full disclosure, the alternative is letting (probably outlandish) conspiracy theories fester.

The confusion surrounding Benghazi may be attributable to the fog of war – or the fog of a presidential election campaign. In any case, the American people deserve to know what happened and whether the root causes were bad intelligence, bad luck or just bad public explanations.

Otherwise, at the most promising bring-us-together moment of his presidency, the newly reelected Obama will find himself endlessly battling over Benghazi as he attempts to forge a second-term national security team.

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Juanes, Jesse & Joy take home top Latin Grammys

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Colombian rocker Juanes and the Mexican brother and sister pop duo Jesse & Joy took home the top Latin Grammys on Thursday in Las Vegas on a night in which the contemporary triumphed over the traditional.

Juanes, one of the most well known Latin American stars worldwide, won the coveted album of the year with his “MTV Unplugged,” which also won best long-form video. Dominican singer and songwriter Juan Luis Guerra won producer of the year for Juanes‘ album.

“Here’s to the maestro Juan Luis Guerra for making this possible,” said Juanes, 40, who now has won 19 Latin Grammys, tying him with reggaeton group Calle 13 for the most awards.

Guerra, who made the romantic Bachata music famous and is known to sweep the awards from the Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, led the nominations with six nods this year. But he lost out on the big awards for record and song of the year with his “En El Cielo No Hay Hospital” (In Heaven There Is No Hospital).

Those two awards went to “Corre!” (Run!) by Jesse & Joy, the duo from Mexico City who won best new artists in the same Las Vegas venue in 2007. Their third studio album Con Quien Se Queda El Perro? (Who Is The Dog Staying With?) lost out on album of the year, but won best contemporary pop vocal album.

“Viva Mexico!,” said Jesse upon accepting record of the year, a phrase repeated several times by winners at the 13th edition of the Latin Grammys Thursday night.

Like Jesse & Joy five years earlier, Mexican pop group 3BallMTY won best new artists with their musical style known as “tribal guarachero,” a mix of Mexican cumbia and electronic dance music.

The trio, barely beyond their teenage years, found success on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border with their debut album “Intentalo” (Try It). They dedicated their Latin Grammy to Mexican DJs.

Mexico’s Carla Morrison won best alternative music album with “Dejenme Llorar” (Let Me Cry). Wearing a red dress and sporting multiple tattoos on her arms, she let loose an expletive on the live broadcast after crying out “Viva Mexico!”

Among the top performances of the night were Juanes playing with veteran guitarrist Carlos Santana. The show opened with Miami-born rapper Pitbull, who sings in both English and Spanish.

Brazilian singer and songwriter Caetano Veloso was honored as the Latin Recording Academy‘s person of the year in a ceremony on Wednesday. A founder of the 1960s musical movement known as Tropicalia, Veloso continues to to be one of Brazil’s most popular and innovative artists at 70 years of age.

(Writing by Mary Milliken; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Benghazi incident: Curtains for Rice's State hopes?

By Walter Shapiro

Before the initials CIA came to stand for Covert Intimate Affairs, the battle over the next secretary of state would have been the main event of post-election November. Normally, it doesn’t get better than a brand-name Washington struggle pitting the newly reelected president against the Republican senator he defeated in 2008 over filling the Cabinet post soon to be vacated by an ex-president’s wife. 

Barack Obama’s ill-camouflaged inclination to name Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, as Hillary Clinton’s successor would normally be about as contentious as, well, a confirmation hearing for David Petraeus in 2011. Rice, an undersecretary of state in the Clinton administration, has by most accounts performed well in a job that pivots around the micro-wording of Security Council resolutions rather than grand geopolitical visions.

But all that good will evaporated when Rice, drawing the short straw as Obama’s designated foreign-policy spinner, dutifully made the rounds of the Sunday shows on Sept. 16, five days after the Libyan attacks. Repeating the White House line, Rice argued that, based on “the best information,” a “spontaneous protest” outside the American consulate in Benghazi attracted heavily armed “extremist elements” who murdered Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

In John McCain’s splenetic view, Rice’s TV commentary smacks of a White House cover-up, since subsequent reporting has shown that initial accounts of a triggering protest were incorrect. As McCain put it Wednesday on Fox News, threatening to filibuster the nomination, “Susan Rice should have known better and if she didn’t know better, she is not qualified.”

At Obama’s first press conference since (gasp) June, the president displayed uncharacteristic moxie in his defense of Rice, who was a key foreign-policy supporter during his 2008 primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Obama called the attacks on Rice “outrageous” Wednesday and said that if the Republicans “think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me.”

All this posturing could be moot if Obama taps John Kerry for secretary of state, although the 2004 Democratic nominee now seems more likely to be headed to the Pentagon to replace Leon Panetta. (The secretary of defense has become one of the last remaining white-men-only jobs in government).

And even though one of the great political novels, “Advise and Consent” by Allen Drury, is built around a confirmation fight over a would-be secretary of state, this has always been one job that the Senate has given a president wide discretion in filling. For all the Iraq-war bluster over the appointment of Condoleezza Rice, Senate Democrats mustered only 13 votes against her in 2005, the highest number of votes against a secretary of state nomination since the early 19th century.

What makes all of this relevant now – before Obama has named a Hillary Clinton replacement – is that it underscores the illogic of most Senate confirmation fights. There may be hidden but valid strategic reasons to oppose a Rice Stuff nomination at State. But it represents a blame-the-messenger stretch even by Washington standards to ensnare Rice in the aftermath of Benghazi.

As should be obvious, the U.N. ambassador has nothing directly to do with embassy security, American covert operations in the Middle East or the flow of intelligence about terrorism. All Rice was doing in her television appearances on September 16 was reciting from talking points presumably prepared by the White House national security team based on information provided by the CIA and other agencies. According to reporting by Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius, the CIA was still clinging to its belief that the Benghazi attacks began with a spontaneous protest when Rice made her ill-fated rounds of the Sunday shows.

This is not to deny the mysteries that are swirling around the Obama administration’s response to Benghazi. All roads lead to Libya may be the unified field theory linking all current Washington scandals. The Wall Street Journal suggested in a front-page article Thursday that a major reason why Petraeus’ resignation was accepted with such alacrity was the CIA director’s determination to shield the spy agency from blame over Benghazi. The CIA’s release of its Benghazi timeline reportedly angered National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who then used the revelation of Petraeus’ affair as a cudgel to drive him out of government.

Most likely the Republican fury over Benghazi is over-wrought, but it is also easy to grasp. The often secretive Obama administration may be tempted to try to keep everything under wraps, aside from a few sanitized disclosures, in the name of national security. But while there are presumably intelligence risks that would accompany full disclosure, the alternative is letting (probably outlandish) conspiracy theories fester.

The confusion surrounding Benghazi may be attributable to the fog of war – or the fog of a presidential election campaign. In any case, the American people deserve to know what happened and whether the root causes were bad intelligence, bad luck or just bad public explanations.

Otherwise, at the most promising bring-us-together moment of his presidency, the newly reelected Obama will find himself endlessly battling over Benghazi as he attempts to forge a second-term national security team.

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Pfizer’s once-daily Lyrica trial fails to meet goal

(Reuters) – Pfizer Inc said on Friday a late-stage trial of a once-a-day formulation of its drug pregabalin did not significantly reduce the frequency of some types of seizures in patients with epilepsy.

The drug, sold under the brand name Lyrica, is currently used to treat epilepsy when given several times a day in combination with other drugs.

Pfizer said the lack of a statistically significant improvement may have been due to a higher-than-expected response among patients taking the placebo.

The trial was the first of three trials testing the drug as a once-a-day therapy. The company is also testing it in patients with fibromyalgia and some types of nerve pain, for which it is also approved in its immediate-release formulation.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

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