Chinese Communist Party to unveil new leadership

BEIJING (Reuters) – China‘s ruling Communist Party unveils a new leadership line-up on Thursday to steer the world’s second-largest economy for the next five years, with Vice President Xi Jinping taking over from outgoing President Hu Jintao as party chief.

The new members of the Politburo Standing Committee – the innermost circle of power in China’s authoritarian government – will emerge around 0300 GMT (10 p.m. EDT on Wednesday) after a closely controlled vote by the party’s new 205-member central committee, which was installed at the end of a five-yearly party congress on Wednesday.

Only Xi and Vice Premier Li Keqiang are certain to be on the new standing committee. Xi will take over Hu’s state position in March at the annual meeting of parliament, when Li will succeed Premier Wen Jiabao.

The committee is expected to be reduced to seven seats from nine to make consensus-building easier.

The other preferred candidates, according to sources close to the party leadership, are North Korean-trained economist Zhang Dejiang, financial guru Wang Qishan, minister of the party’s organization department Li Yuanchao, Tianjin’s party boss Zhang Gaoli, and the conservative Liu Yunshan, who has kept domestic media on a tight leash.

The list of the conservative-leaning preferred candidates was drawn up by Xi, Hu and Hu’s predecessor, Jiang Zemin, the sources said.

Wang, currently vice-premier in charge of economic affairs, is popular with foreign investors but seems set to lead the fight against corruption, having been elected to the party’s main anti-graft body on Wednesday.

Guangdong’s reform-minded party boss Wang Yang, Shanghai party boss Yu Zhengsheng and Liu Yandong, the lone woman, are dark horse candidates.

All eight of these people were on the list for the new central committee, the largest of the party’s top decision-making bodies. Exclusion from that committee means a person cannot progress to the Politburo or the standing committee.

The new leadership will emerge on Thursday morning to “meet the press” in a room in the cavernous, Soviet-style Great Hall of the People, which has been decked out in enormous red flags.

Intense secrecy has also surrounded who and how many will be promoted to the Politburo, a council of 20-odd members, and the all-powerful standing committee.

The composition of the two elite bodies could give clues to China’s political and economic direction, especially if they end up being dominated by conservatives.

Advocates of reform are pressing Xi to cut back the privileges of state-owned firms, make it easier for rural migrants to settle in cities, fix a fiscal system that encourages local governments to live off land expropriations and, above all, tether the powers of a state that they say risks suffocating growth and fanning discontent.

With growing public anger and unrest over everything from corruption to environmental degradation, there may also be cautious efforts to answer calls for more political reform, though nobody seriously expects a move towards full democracy.

The party could introduce experimental measures to broaden inner-party democracy – in other words, encouraging greater debate within the party – but stability remains a top concern and one-party rule will be safeguarded.

Another decision to watch will be chairman of the Central Military Commission. Hu may or may not choose to stay on in that post for a year or two, as did his predecessor, Jiang.

Which standing committee member gets which portfolio depends, in this hierarchical and top-down state, on the order members appear for the first time together on stage.

While the first person out will be Xi, signifying his position as party leader and president-designate, the party’s second-ranked position is head of the largely rubber stamp parliament, leaving the premier in third place.

But portfolios of the second and third-ranked leaders are likely to be reversed, giving Li higher status, sources have said.

Fourth position has historically been occupied by the head of the ceremonial advisory body to parliament, while fifth could be either vice president or propaganda tsar, sixth the executive vice premier and seventh the person in charge of fighting graft.

One position almost certain to go is that held by Zhou Yongkang, the domestic security tsar, reflecting fears the role has become too powerful.

(Additional reporting by Benjamin Kang Lim; Editing by Nick Macfie and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Egypt recalls envoy to Israel after Gaza strike

CAIRO (AP) — Egypt has recalled its ambassador to Israel after an Israeli airstrike killed the military commander of Gaza‘s ruling Hamas.

In a statement read on state TV late Wednesday, spokesman Yasser Ali said that President Mohammed Morsi recalled the ambassador and asked the Arab League‘s Secretary General to convene an emergency ministerial meeting in the wake of the Gaza violence.

Morsi also called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas, an offshoot of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood. Israel says it struck in response to rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours earlier, Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood group denounced the Israeli airstrike as a “crime that requires a quick Arab and international response to stem these massacres.”

Relations between Israel and Egypt have deteriorated since longtime President Hosni Mubarak was ousted last year.

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Android 4.2 For Nexus 7, Galaxy Nexus Now Available

When Google’s Nexus 10 tablet was unveiled recently, it was running Android 4.2, a new version which adds several features. That version is coming to your Nexus 7 or Galaxy Nexus device as well. Here’s what Android 4.2 brings, where to get it, and which Nexus devices are missing out.

​New features in Android 4.2

Mashable’s Christina Warren has the scoop on what Android 4.2′s bringing. Flashy additions include Daydream, a sort of screensaver for your smartphone or tablet, and Photo Sphere, a new way to take panoramic photographs that capture the whole world around you. Right now you can only see Photo Sphere images on Google+ or in Google Maps, but according to David Ruddock of the Android Police blog Google has made it so “Anyone could, in theory, build a Photo Sphere viewer.”

Less immediately noticeable improvements include a Swype-style gesture keyboard, where you don’t need to type individual letters, and a feature that lets multiple people share the same Android tablet without their apps and things getting in each others’ way. You’ll also be able to mirror your Android device’s screen on your HDTV, Apple AirPlay style, although instead of an Apple TV box you’ll need a third-party wireless display adapter.

​Who’s getting the upgrade now

Nexus 7 owners are already beginning to receive the Android 4.2 upgrade over the air. Your tablet will automatically check for it every so often, but if you want to hurry it along you can go to Settings -> About tablet -> System updates, and tell it to check again. You can also download it from Google and manually install it using Liam Spradlin’s instructions, although this is not recommended unless you’re an experienced Android hacker and are using the Wi-Fi version of the Nexus 7.

Galaxy Nexus owners who bought their phones from a wireless carrier have had to wait an unusually long time for upgrades, as long as several months after a new Android version’s announced. If you bought your Galaxy Nexus phone from a wireless carrier, an upgrade probably won’t be available anytime soon. People who purchased their Galaxy Nexus from the Google Play store are reporting that they are getting the upgrade, though, and Spradlin again has instructions for how to install manually if you are using a Galaxy Nexus bought from the Google Play store.​

Who’s being left out

While announcing that Android 4.2′s programming code was being released to the Android Open-Source Project, Google rep Jean-Baptiste Queru said “There is no support for 4.2 on Nexus S and Xoom.” The Nexus S was a Nexus smartphone released about two years ago, in late 2010, while the Motorola Xoom was the first tablet released (in early 2011) running the Honeycomb version of Android. The Xoom was not an official Nexus device, but was also made in close partnership with Google, and showcased the latest Android software.

Both devices received upgrades to Android 4.1, the first Jelly Bean version. It looks like this is where the upgrade train ends for them, though, after almost two years of support. In contrast, Apple’s iPhone 3GS, released in mid-2009, just recently received an upgrade to the latest version of iOS.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

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NBC names new “Today” show chiefs

(Reuters) – Comcast‘s NBC has appointed two executives to take charge of the “Today” show, a day after the television network announced that longtime producer Jim Bell would be leaving to take a larger role in the sports division.

Don Nash, a broadcast producer who has worked on NBC’s morning show for 23 years, will become the executive producer, reporting to Alexandra Wallace, who has been named executive in charge of the show.

The reshuffling is part of NBC efforts to revive the “Today” show, which has been in a back-and-forth ratings war with ABC’s “Good Morning America” ever since ABC snapped NBC’s 16-year unbeaten streak earlier in the year.

“Today” is one of NBC’s most profitable TV shows, generating $ 485 million in ad revenues in 2011, up 6.6 percent from 2010, according to Kantar Media, which provides data to advertisers. Rival “Good Morning America” took in $ 299 million last year.

NBC said on Tuesday that former executive producer Bell would be leaving the morning show to become a full-time executive producer of the Olympics. The network has a contract to broadcast the Olympics in the United States for the next four games in Russia, Brazil, South Korea and an unnamed host city in 2020.

Bell, who has headed the show since 2005, was blamed this year for the controversial firing of Ann Curry as anchor alongside Matt Lauer.

Reuters had previously reported in August that Bell was in line for a kind of uber-producing sports role like the one Dick Ebersol – NBC’s longtime Olympics executive producer and former sports chief who served as a mentor to Bell – played for the network.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

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Black patients fare worse with kidney cancer: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – White patients with the most common form of kidney cancer, called renal cell carcinoma, are slightly more likely to survive the disease than black patients, according to a large new study.

The researchers looked at nearly 40,000 cases and found that black patients tend to start out with more favorable types of renal carcinomas, but “despite that, we still see poorer survival among African Americans,” said Wong-Ho Chow, the lead author of the study and a professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

It’s been known that blacks have higher rates of renal cancer than whites, and smaller studies have also pointed to racial disparities in how patients make out after their diagnosis. But experts have disagreed on the reasons.

About 64,000 people will be diagnosed with some type of kidney cancer this year in the U.S., according to the National Cancer Institute, making the disease the number 12 cause of cancer deaths for Americans.

Chow and her colleagues looked to a large national database to confirm whether African Americans fare worse with renal cell carcinoma and to look for any clues to why that might be the case.

The researchers collected information on 39,350 patients – 4,359 of whom were black and 34,991 white – diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma from 1992 to 2007.

They found that 72.6 percent of white patients survived at least five years out from their diagnosis, while 68 percent of blacks lived for at least five years.

Chow’s group reports in the medical journal Cancer that 66.7 percent of black patients and 61.9 percent of whites were diagnosed with tumors that had not yet spread.

“It wasn’t related to cancers being diagnosed at a later stage,” said Dr. Charles Modlin, the director of the Minority Men’s Health Center at the Cleveland Clinic’s Glickman Urological Institute, who was not involved in the study. “African Americans were more likely to be diagnosed when tumors were smaller, more localized.”

In addition, a greater proportion of black patients had a less dangerous type of renal cell carcinoma than white patients, “and still they didn’t do as well,” Modlin pointed out.

“I’m thinking maybe it has something to do with the type or quality of care that they receive,” he told Reuters Health.

Survival rates were much lower, and equally so, among both black and white patients who did not have surgery to remove their tumors. But whereas 10.5 percent of white patients got no surgery, 14.5 percent of black patients did not have surgery, the study found.

It’s also possible there could be underlying health conditions more common among blacks that predispose them to a worse outcome, researchers said.

“We know African Americans are more prone to hypertension, which, by the way, is a risk factor for renal cell cancer,” said Chow.

But, she added, information on how many people had hypertension was not in this dataset.

“At this point we don’t have the data to explain (the study findings) yet,” Chow said.

Another unknown that could have influenced the outcomes, Chow told Reuters Health, is whether some patients might have made lifestyle changes, such as losing weight or quitting smoking, after their diagnosis, but she wasn’t able to get that information either.

She added that until doctors have a better understanding of what’s driving this disparity, there’s not much advice to offer with regard to treating patients.

Modlin said it’s important to at least be aware of these disparities.

“Because one thing we see is that healthcare providers are not really aware or don’t take into consideration that these health care disparities are real and (are) significant problems,” he said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/ZCl7Y4 Cancer, online November 12, 2012.

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Best Buy CEO sets goals; Wall Street begs for more details

(Reuters) – Best Buy Co Inc hopes to triple its operating margins over time, the company said on Tuesday, though investors and analysts were left wanting for details on how – and how soon – the new chief executive would turn around the world’s largest consumer electronics chain.

The aggressive new targets come as Best Buy faces cut-throat competition from online and discount retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc and Amazon.com Inc .

CEO Hubert Joly got a difficult reception at an investor day in New York, as people questioned whether management was focusing too much on wringing higher sales out of existing customers rather than attracting new ones. Joly was named CEO on August 20.

“I still think I am a little bit mixed on digesting the take-aways of the presentation. I think they said a lot of good things, but I think people were looking for a little bit more of a playbook and the next steps,” said John Tomlinson, an analyst with ITG Investment Research, in New York. “There’s a lot of pieces to the fixing story that seemed a little opaque and vague.”

Best Buy’s stock closed nearly 1 percent lower at $ 15.70 on Tuesday, continuing a slide that has knocked off a third of the company‘s market capitalization this year. The stock touched a 10-year low of $ 14.39 a week ago.

Dimitri van Toren, senior portfolio manager at Dutch asset manager Syntrus Achmea, which holds about 200,000 Best Buy shares, said he was worried about structural issues and a “management vacuum” at the retailer, but that he would stay in the stock despite concerns about the upcoming holiday season.

The meeting took place against the backdrop of a potential buyout offer from founder and former CEO Richard Schulze, who is expected to make an offer as soon as next month.

“I spend no time worrying about what our corporate structure will be,” Joly told reporters after the event. “I tend to focus on decisions I can influence rather than decisions I can’t influence.”

A representative for Schulze did not immediately respond to a request seeking his thoughts on Joly’s plan.

Joly said “it would have been ridiculous” to offer more concrete details after only a few weeks on the job. He said this meeting was more about setting the record straight and reassuring investors about the company’s future.

“The perception was that Best Buy was dying,” Joly said.

MARGIN TARGETS

In a statement on Tuesday, the company said its short-term goal will be “to stabilize and then begin increasing its comparable-store sales and operating margin.” Over time, it is aiming for a return on invested capital of 13 percent to 15 percent, in addition to a 5 percent to 6 percent operating margin target.

In the last fiscal year, Best Buy had an operating margin of about 2.1 percent. The last time that margin exceeded 5 percent was in the fiscal year that ended in early 2008.

Joly said a mixture of excessive costs and price competition hurt margins, and that the retailer would turn to a wider variety of higher-margin, private-label products to boost results. One example is the company’s own Insignia-brand electronics.

Best Buy has been struggling to combat a phenomenon known as “showrooming,” where people visit its stores to look at products and then buy them online for less.

Joly acknowledged the company has suffered from a “price perception issue” among customers that it needed to address, as well as weakness in its online operations.

The head of the company’s digital business said its online conversion rate – which measures how successfully Best Buy translates customer visits into actual sales – was only about half of what it should be.

“Many of these problems are a result of our own making,” Joly said during the investor presentation.

HOLIDAYS COMING

Best Buy also said on Tuesday that it would pursue a plan to “optimize its store footprint on an ongoing basis,” which suggested the company may look at ways to shrink or close stores, as some other big-box retailers have done. In late March, the company said it would close 50 large U.S. stores.

Joly warned that merely closing stores would not boost operating income, as most of the big-box stores are already profitable. Relocation to smaller space may be an option, however; he said 71 percent of the large-format stores have leases expiring within the next six years.

The details of Joly’s long-awaited plan came roughly a week before the unofficial start of the year’s biggest selling season.

The retailer, which has posted declines in same-store sales in eight of the last nine quarters, warned last month it expected earnings and same-store sales to fall again in the third quarter.

“I am already sick and tired of negative comps,” Joly said, referring to same-store sales figures.

The CEO also admitted a number of past investments have not paid off and promised the new leadership would be “prudent” about that in the future, a nod to Wall Street’s lingering concerns about spending by past management.

(Reporting by Dhanya Skariachan in New York; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Maureen Bavdek, Phil Berlowitz, Matthew Lewis and Jan Paschal)

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General investigated for emails to Petraeus friend

PERTH, Australia (AP) — In a new twist to the Gen. David Petraeus sex scandal, the Pentagon said Tuesday that the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, is under investigation for alleged “inappropriate communications” with a woman who is said to have received threatening emails from Paula Broadwell, the woman with whom Petraeus had an extramarital affair.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a written statement issued to reporters aboard his aircraft, en route from Honolulu to Perth, Australia, that the FBI referred the matter to the Pentagon on Sunday.

Panetta said that he ordered a Pentagon investigation of Allen on Monday.

A senior defense official traveling with Panetta said Allen’s communications were with Jill Kelley, who has been described as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., which is headquarters to the U.S. Central Command. She is not a U.S. government employee.

Kelley is said to have received threatening emails from Broadwell, who is Petraeus’ biographer and who had an extramarital affair with Petraeus that reportedly began after he became CIA director in September 2011.

Petraeus resigned as CIA director on Friday.

Allen, a four-star Marine general, succeeded Petraeus as the top American commander in Afghanistan in July 2011.

The senior official, who discussed the matter only on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation, said Panetta believed it was prudent to launch a Pentagon investigation, although the official would not explain the nature of Allen’s problematic communications.

The official said 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails and other documents from Allen’s communications with Kelley between 2010 and 2012 are under review. He would not say whether they involved sexual matters or whether they are thought to include unauthorized disclosures of classified information. He said he did not know whether Petraeus is mentioned in the emails.

“Gen. Allen disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter,” the official said. He said Allen currently is in Washington.

Panetta said that while the matter is being investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General, Allen will remain in his post as commander of the International Security Assistance Force, based in Kabul. He praised Allen as having been instrumental in making progress in the war.

The FBI’s decision to refer the Allen matter to the Pentagon rather than keep it itself, combined with Panetta’s decision to allow Allen to continue as Afghanistan commander without a suspension, suggested strongly that officials viewed whatever happened as a possible infraction of military rules rather than a violation of federal criminal law.

Allen was Deputy Commander of Central Command, based in Tampa, prior to taking over in Afghanistan. He also is a veteran of the Iraq war.

In the meantime, Panetta said, Allen’s nomination to be the next commander of U.S. European Command and the commander of NATO forces in Europe has been put on hold “until the relevant facts are determined.” He had been expected to take that new post in early 2013, if confirmed by the Senate, as had been widely expected.

Panetta said President Barack Obama was consulted and agreed that Allen’s nomination should be put on hold. Allen was to testify at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Panetta said he asked committee leaders to delay that hearing.

NATO officials had no comment about the delay in Allen’s appointment.

“We have seen Secretary Panetta‘s statement,” NATO spokeswoman Carmen Romero said in Brussels. “It is a U.S. investigation.”

Panetta also said he wants the Senate Armed Services Committee to act promptly on Obama’s nomination of Gen. Joseph Dunford to succeed Allen as commander in Afghanistan. That nomination was made several weeks ago. Dunford’s hearing is also scheduled for Thursday.

___

Associated Press writer Slobodan Lekic in Kabul, Afghanistan, contributed to this report.

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FTC chief: Kids’ Internet privacy rules done by year’s end

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Regulators will likely finish a long-awaited update to rules protecting children’s online privacy by the end of the year, the head of the Federal Trade Commission said on Tuesday.

The original rules were developed when most computers were large beige boxes sitting under office desks instead of smartphones slung into backpacks and permeating most aspects of daily life.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said the agency was moving forward on two issues: self-regulatory “do not track” guidance, and regulations to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA.

The law requires that website and online service operators obtain verifiable consent from parents before collecting information about children.

Leibowitz, who is thought keen to leave the agency within months, said he was more confident of finishing an update of COPPA’s rules, which were written following the 1998 legislation.

Under revised rules, the FTC would make websites, mobile apps and data brokers all responsible for getting parental consent before collecting data about children aged 12 and younger. Currently it is unclear who has the responsibility.

Data brokers buy and sell consumer data.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s annual CEO Conference in Washington, Leibowitz said the process would most likely be done by the end of the year.

“We are looking at all the comments that came in and weighing how to tweak the regulation,” he said.

Leibowitz was slightly less optimistic about the fate of “do not track,” an effort to allow Internet users to tell companies they did not want to be tracked online.

Some large technology companies, like Microsoft and Google, have agreed to let consumers opt out of being tracked, but advertisers have pushed back hard.

“We’re still making forward progress,” Leibowitz said when asked if the efforts would be done by the end of the year. “We continue to be optimistic. It’s not a certainty though.”

(Reporting By Diane Bartz; Editing by Ros Krasny and Kenneth Barry)

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Man who accused Elmo puppeteer of teen sex recants

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who accused Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash of having sex with him when he was a teenage boy has recanted his story.

In a quick turnabout, the man on Tuesday described his sexual relationship with Clash as adult and consensual.

Clash responded with a statement of his own, saying he is “relieved that this painful allegation has been put to rest.” He had no further comment.

The man, who has not identified himself, released his statement through the Harrisburg, Pa., law firm Andreozzi & Associates.

Sesame Workshop, which produces “Sesame Street” in New York, soon followed by saying, “We are happy that Kevin can move on from this unfortunate episode.”

The whirlwind episode began Monday morning, when Sesame Workshop startled the world by announcing that Clash had taken a leave of absence from “Sesame Street” in the wake of allegations that he had had a relationship with a 16-year-old.

Clash, a 52-year-old divorced father of a grown daughter, swiftly denied the charges of his accuser, who is in his early 20s. In that statement Clash acknowledged that he is gay but said the relationship had been between two consenting adults.

Though it remained unclear where the relationship took place, sex with a person under 17 is a felony in New York if the perpetrator is at least 21.

Sesame Workshop, which said it was first contacted by the accuser in June, had launched an investigation that included meeting with the accuser twice and meeting with Clash. Its investigation found the charge of underage conduct to be unsubstantiated.

Clash said on Monday he would take a break from Sesame Workshop “to deal with this false and defamatory allegation.”

Neither Clash nor Sesame Workshop indicated on Tuesday when he might return to the show, on which he has performed as Elmo since 1984.

Elmo had previously been a marginal character, but Clash, supplying the fuzzy red puppet with a high-pitched voice and a carefree, child-like personality, launched the character into major stardom. Elmo soon rivaled Big Bird as the face of “Sesame Street.”

Though usually behind the scenes, Clash meanwhile achieved his own measure of fame. In 2006, he published an autobiography, “My Life as a Furry Red Monster,” and he was the subject of the 2011 documentary “Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey.”

He has won 23 daytime Emmy awards and one prime-time Emmy.

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Online:

http://www.sesamestreet.org

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Life is beautiful, pope tells fellow elderly

ROME (Reuters) – Pope Benedict visited a home for the elderly on Monday and told its residents that life can be beautiful at every age.

“I feel younger after being here,” the pope, 85, said as he was leaving a home run by the Roman Catholic Sant’ Egidio Community in a Rome neighborhood near the Vatican.

“In every age we have to know how to discover the presence of the blessings of the Lord and the riches that they contain,” he told the residents.

“You must never lock yourselves in sadness. Living is beautiful even at our age, even though we have some ailments and limitations,” he said.

His audience broke into applause when he told them that the quality of a society and a civilization can be judged by how they treat their elderly.

The Sant’ Egidio community, which has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize several times, runs homeless shelters, AIDS clinics and homes for the elderly on several continents.

In 1992 it brokered an end to the 15-year civil war in Mozambique, where it now runs programs to stop the passage of HIV/AIDS from mothers to their children.

(Reporting By Philip Pullella)

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