Three states to vote on legalizing recreational pot

(Reuters) – Voters in three western U.S. states go to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use in a move that could spur a showdown with the federal government, with polls showing legalization ahead in Washington and Colorado.

If voters approve the measures, the states could become the first in the country to legalize the recreational use of pot. Each of the initiatives would see marijuana taxed and would regulate its sale in special stores to adults age 21 and older.

But the prospect of legalizing pot, which the federal government considers an illicit and dangerous drug liable to be abused, has raised concerns about how to keep stoned drivers off the roads and joints out of the hands of teenagers.

“We’re risking a lot simply because people think they want to buy marijuana from a store,” said Kevin Sabet, a former adviser to the Obama administration’s drug policy czar.

Surveys show legalization measures ahead in Washington state, where campaign finance records say its sponsors have raised $ 6 million, and Colorado, where backers have pulled in nearly $ 2 million. But legalization was trailing in Oregon, where a grass-roots campaign was struggling to sway voters.

Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann, whose affiliate groups have funded current and past legalization initiatives, said he was more optimistic about legalization prospects now than he was before a California legalization referendum that voters rejected in 2010.

“In this case, the polling has stayed up there. It’s almost like we’re seeing a surge of support for this in the final week,” Nadelmann said.

A survey of 932 likely voters in Washington state released on Saturday by Public Policy Polling found 53 percent support legalization, with a margin of error of 3.2 percent.

Legalization was also ahead in Colorado, where a recent SurveyUSA poll of 695 likely voters conducted for the Denver Post showed 50 percent in favor and 44 percent opposed. The survey had a 3.8 percent margin of error.

But in Oregon, legalization was trailing with just 42 percent in favor, according to a survey of 405 likely voters by Elway Research for The Oregonian. The poll had a margin of error of 5 percent.

The initiatives in Colorado and Oregon, in addition to allowing and taxing pot sales at state-sanctioned stores, would allow individuals to cultivate pot plants for their own use.

The Washington state measure differs in that it would ban people from growing their own pot. Unlike the other two measures, it would also create a specific blood limit on pot’s psychoactive element, THC, for drivers.

Nadelmann said that provision and endorsement by such figures as John McKay, the former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington state, make the measure in that state the most likely to sway hesitant voter and ultimately succeed.

Meanwhile, a Massachusetts ballot initiative on Tuesday proposes allowing medical marijuana in that state, and voters in Arkansas are being asked whether to become the first southern state to allow marijuana as medicine. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia allow medical marijuana.

In Montana, where voters in 2004 approved medical marijuana, voters will be asked whether to overturn a 2011 law that imposed tough restrictions on medical pot and led to the shutdown of dispensaries.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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The Dark Art of Political Polling

How could a Gallup Organization survey published a week before the election show Mitt Romney up by 5 percentage points, while a CBS/New York Times poll from the same period put him 1 point behind President Obama? Even professional poll watchers don’t know.

New technologies such as e-mail blasts have made it possible to field polls cheaply—and to publicize them on the Internet, bypassing traditional gatekeepers in the mainstream media. With hundreds of polls to choose from, candidates draw attention to those that support their case. The public is growing suspicious of a snow job, if you believe an Oct. 2 poll about polls by Public Policy Polling. It found that 42 percent of respondents say pollsters are manipulating results to show Obama ahead. “The. Polls. Have. Stopped. Making. Any. Sense,” Nate Silver, who runs the New York Times’ FiveThirtyEight poll blog, tweeted in September.

A well-done poll uses statistical science to produce something a little like magic. The key is giving every person in the target population an equal chance of being contacted. The classic method is known as “random digit dialing,” which sprays out calls to both listed and unlisted phone numbers. By interviewing a sample of just 1,000 or so people, a pollster can come very close to divining the opinions of hundreds of millions.

But there are far more ways to get it wrong than right. Take “tracking” polls. Unlike one-shot polls, they last for months. Each day new people are interviewed, and results are published for a rolling average of the previous three, five, or seven days. These polls get top billing from the media just before an election, but they have a little-noted flaw. Because each wave of polling takes only a day, there’s no opportunity to call back people who don’t answer the first time. That means raw results are skewed toward the kind of people who sit by the phone. “A one-day poll is going to get you a lot of old women,” says Cliff Zukin, a Rutgers University polling expert.

Pollsters correct for this by giving less weight to replies from quick-to-answer types and more to replies from people in hard-to-reach groups. But the reweighting itself is imprecise, so a tracking poll’s actual margin of error can be a percentage point or two higher than what’s reported as its “sampling error,” typically 3 to 4 percentage points. Paul Lavrakas, president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, calls this “almost like a dirty little secret.”

Another secret: Americans routinely lie to pollsters when asked if they’ll vote—saying yes when the real answer is heck no. The trick is to ask a set of questions that ferrets out respondents’ true intentions. In an Oct. 18 blog post, FiveThirtyEight’s Silver contended that Gallup may have gotten its formula wrong, overestimating the likelihood of Romney’s supporters going to vote. Frank Newport, Gallup’s editor-in-chief, says that can’t be ruled out. “If our model is not as accurate as we’d like, we’ll definitely reevaluate it,” he says. RealClearPolitics’ average of eight national polls (including Gallup’s) showed Romney with just a 0.8 percentage-point lead through Oct. 28, compared with Gallup’s 5 percentage points.

Any poll that doesn’t include cell phones is highly suspect because cell-only households are more likely to vote Democratic than ones in landline-only households, says the American Association for Public Opinion Research. Robo-dialing polls, the cheapest kind of phone poll, are always landline-only, because federal law prohibits robo-dialing of mobile numbers. Correcting for that political bias by reweighting results is imperfect. Polls conducted online raise a red flag because of disparities in Web usage. YouGov, for one, works hard to get a clean random sample. But some Internet-based firms use e-mail lists that are unrepresentative, counting on weighting to fix errors. Pollsters generally disclose their methodologies, but journalists often fail to report them, treating all polls as if they’re equally valid.

The proliferation of polls has added to the public’s disillusionment, which only makes the pollsters’ job harder. People don’t answer calls from unfamiliar numbers or hang up when they hear a pollster on the line. So pollsters have to try about 10,000 households just to complete 1,000 interviews, more than three times as many as 15 years ago. “It’s harder every day,” says Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which polls for Bloomberg News.

A simple rule is to beware of polls whose results are far outside the mainstream. Journalists (though not all of us) play them up because they’re surprising, but outliers are the least likely to be accurate. Polls that crunch averages are a decent guide, because errors tend to cancel each other out. Ultimately, though, no poll is anything more than a snapshot of a single moment. The only real way to figure out who’ll win: wait till Election Day.

The bottom line: To get a reliable sample of 1,000 people, pollsters need to call 10,000, more than three times as many as 15 years ago.

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Bomb shakes Damascus, opposition holds unity talks

AMMAN (Reuters) – A bomb exploded near army and security compounds in Damascus, Syrian television reported, and fractured opposition groups seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad began unity talks abroad to win international respect and arms supplies.

The 50-kilogram (110-pound) bomb, near a large hotel in a heavily guarded district, was described by state media as an attack by “terrorists” – the government’s term for insurgents in the 19-month-old uprising against Assad.

Opposition activists said Sunday’s blast appeared to be the work of the Ahfad al-Rasoul (Grandsons of the Prophet) Brigade, an Islamist militant unit that attacked military and intelligence targets several times in the last two months.

The mainly Sunni rebels have carried out a series of bombings targeting government and military buildings in Damascus this year, extending the war into the seat of Assad’s power.

The Syrian conflict has aggravated divisions in the Islamic world, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad — whose Alawite faith derives from Shi’ite Islam — and U.S.-allied Sunni nations such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar backing his foes.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an activist monitoring group, said government forces had killed 179 people on Sunday. It said most of the dead were civilians killed in shelling of Damascus suburbs and included 14 women and 20 children. The rest were rebels killed in battles in the capital and the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

Opposition campaigners said the Syrian army shelled rebel positions inside a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of Damascus on Sunday, killing at least 20 people. They said the Yarmouk camp had become the latest battleground in the war.

In northern Idlib, opposition sources said rebels were forced to halt an offensive to take a big air base because of a shortage of ammunition, a problem that has dogged their campaign to cement a hold on the north by eliminating Assad’s devastating edge in firepower.

Islamist insurgents had launched the attack on the Taftanaz military airport at dawn on Saturday, using rocket launchers and at least three tanks captured from the military.

The Syrian government restricts journalists’ access in Syria, making it difficult to verify reports from the ground.

The Jaafar bin Tayyar Division, a rebel unit in Deir al-Zor, said its fighters had taken control of the al-Ward oilfield near the Iraqi border on Sunday, after overrunning a loyalist outpost that had 40 militiamen defending it.

Rebel commanders, former Syrian officials and the Syrian head of an oil services company familiar with oil production in the area said the fields, mostly not operational, had been under de facto rebel control for months.

FEARS OF WIDER CONFLAGRATION

The conflict began with peaceful protest rallies that morphed into armed revolt when Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since 1971, tried to stamp them out with military might. About 32,000 people have been killed, wide swathes of the major Arab state have been wrecked and the civil war threatens to widen into a regional sectarian conflagration.

The opposition talks that began in Qatar marked the first concerted attempt to meld feuding, disparate groups based abroad and coordinate strategy with rebels fighting in Syria.

Divisions between Islamists and secularists as well as between those inside Syria and opposition figures based abroad have foiled prior attempts to forge a united opposition and deterred Western powers from intervening militarily.

Analysts were skeptical the planned four days of opposition talks in the Qatari capital Doha would bring immediate results.

They aim to broaden the Syrian National Council (SNC), the largest of the overseas-based opposition groups, from some 300 members to 400, to pave the way for talks in Doha on Thursday including other anti-Assad factions to crystallise a coalition.

“The main aim is to expand the council to include more of the social and political components. There will be new forces in the SNC,” Abdulbaset Sieda, current leader of the Syrian National Council, told reporters in Doha ahead of the meeting.

The meetings would also elect a new executive committee and leader for the SNC, he said.

A Qatar-based security analyst, who asked not to be named, said the meetings would bring a small step forward, at most. “The Syrian National Council is just too divided,” he said.

In Cairo, the international mediator on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, called on Sunday for world powers to issue a U.N. Security Council resolution based on a deal they reached in June to set up a transitional Syrian government.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking at the same news conference, dismissed the need for a resolution and said others were stoking violence by backing rebels. His comments highlighted the impasse over Syria’s civil war.

Russia and China, both permanent council members, have vetoed three Western-backed U.N. draft resolutions condemning Assad’s government for the violence. The other three permanent members are the United States, Britain and France.

(Additional reporting by Rania el Gamal and Regan Doherty in Qatar, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Philippa Fletcher and Stephen Powell)

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EU boosts radio spectrum for superfast mobile services

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Commission is to release a swathe of radio spectrum to give mobile and internet companies more space for rolling out faster fourth-generation (4G) wireless services.

Monday’s announcement means an extra 120 MHz of spectrum will be available for 4G from 2014 at the latest to try to accommodate a sharp rise in the use of such services on mobile devices.

The radio spectrum, used by all wireless technologies for sending and receiving information, is becoming increasingly crowded as mobile demand adds to TV and radio broadcasting in using a resource also needed by emergency services and military telecommunications.

Industry estimates put growth in global mobile data traffic at 26 percent annually by 2015. According to networking firm Cisco Systems, mobile data traffic volumes in the European Union are expected to increase by more than 90 percent each year for the next 5 years.

Superfast 4G mobile communications allow the use of data-heavy services such as video conferencing.

“This extra spectrum for 4G in Europe means we can better meet the changing and growing demand for broadband,” said Neelie Kroes, European Union Commissioner for digital policy.

Freeing up additional spectrum would also help the EU address competition from countries such as the United States and Japan, where wireless services are among the world’s fastest.

“The EU will enjoy up to twice the amount of spectrum for high speed wireless broadband as in the United States,” the Commission said in a statement.

Companies that own parts of the radio wave spectrum bought after liberalization in the 1990s consider the resource among their most valuable assets and many are reluctant to share.

But in September the Commission pushed telecoms firms to share the radio frequencies they use for mobile and broadband services as space runs out.

(Reporting By Claire Davenport; Editing by Louise Heavens)

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MTV to air fundraiser for devastated Jersey shore

NEW YORK (AP) — MTV, home of the “Jersey Shore” reality show, plans to air a fundraising special to help rebuild New Jersey’s devastated shoreline.

The one-hour program will air Nov. 15 from MTV’s Times Square studio in New York City. It will feature the cast of “Jersey Shore” along with other guests.

The network said Monday the program will solicit contributions for the rebuilding of Seaside Heights, the heart of the Jersey shore and the principal setting for the “Jersey Shore” series.

For this effort, MTV will be partnering with Architecture for Humanity, a non-profit organization that provides design and construction services to communities in need.

Seaside Heights was among numerous coastal areas devastated by Sandy last week.

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Sudan’s Bashir to get health check in Saudi Arabia: report

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan‘s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir will visit Saudi Arabia where he will receive a medical checkup, state media said on Monday, after an official said the 68-year-old ruler had undergone throat surgery in August.

Bashir, who has ruled Sudan for 23 years, has held fewer public rallies in the past few months, prompting Sudanese newspapers and blogs to speculate about his health.

Last month, a government official said he had undergone surgery on his vocal cords in Qatar in August but was in good health.

State news agency SUNA said on Monday Bashir would meet the king and other officials on his trip to Saudi Arabia but did not say when the visit would take place.

“During the visit, the president will undergo a normal medical checkup related to the inflammation of his vocal cords,” SUNA said, quoting the presidency.

The president was in “good health” and was carrying out his activities normally, the report said.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes committed in the western Darfur region. He denies the charges.

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A Rising Tide of Natural Disasters

The number of natural disasters since 1996 costing $ 1 billion or more doubled compared with the previous 15-year period.

Note: Damage numbers represent the 2012 Consumer Price Index cost adjusted value except in the case of 2012 estimates; Data: NOAA, IHS Global Insight; Bloomberg

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Bwin.party revenue hit by German tax rules, poor poker

LONDON (Reuters) – Bwin.party Digital Entertainment, the world’s largest listed online gaming group, said a new gaming tax in its core German market and a big drop in poker sales pushed net revenue down 10 percent in its third quarter.

The firm said on Friday net revenue in the three months to October 31 fell to 175.7 million euros compared to the same period a year ago, but added that it had seen a marked recovery in trading since the end of September.

“The introduction of a 5 percent turnover tax on sports betting in Germany, revenue decline in poker and continued pressure on consumer spending, particularly in parts of southern Europe, held back our performance in the third quarter,” the firm said in a statement.

In Germany, the tax rule which came into effect from July 1 contributed to an 8 percent decline in the amount wagered on sports betting as Bwin.party removed short-odds bets. Year-on-year sports betting revenues fell 2 percent to 828.3 million euros, with unfavourable European soccer results also a factor.

Poker net revenue fell 29 percent year-on-year to 37.0 million euros, continuing a recent decline, although the firm said the imminent integration of its dotcom poker networks would provide a major catalyst for growth.

The group said that a recent upturn in business had been driven by a strong recovery in sports betting, with average daily net revenue in October up 19 percent on the previous quarter. It said it was confident about its full-year result.

Shares in the group were down 1.65 percent at 119 pence by 0842 GMT.

(Reporting by Neil Maidment; Editing by Paul Sandle)

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Anti-Obama “2016″ doc getting last-ditch digital release before election

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “2016: Obama‘s America,” the hit documentary critical of President Obama’s record, is getting a last-minute digital push in Spanish in a bid to boost Mitt Romney‘s chances ahead of the November 6 election, the producers of the movie told TheWrap on Friday.

The producers, who already have digital distribution in English with Lionsgate, have struck a new deal with digital company Yekra to release it in Spanish on Friday, according to Mark Joseph, a representative for the film.

“We’re just finalizing the link – it’s ready to go,” said another individual working on the film. The streamed version in Spanish will cost $ 2.99 and will be aimed at independent voters in Spanish-speaking communities.

Lionsgate released the movie on DVD, video-on-demand and streaming platforms like iTunes and Amazon in mid-October.

The producers hope to swing any remaining independent voters in a race that is neck-and-neck for the two candidates.

A Lionsgate spokesman told TheWrap: “This is commerce for us, not taking sides politically. We’re proud to have released the two highest-grossing political docs of all time, ‘Fahrenheit 911′ and ‘Obama 2016.’”

“2016: Obama’s America,” based on Dinesh D’Souza’s “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” challenges the president’s record and foretells what the nation will be like if he is reelected. Both the Associated Press and the president’s website questioned its many assertions, prompting D’Souza to fire back in an op-ed with TheWrap.

The film has been an unexpected success story, grossing more than $ 33 million at the domestic box office with a reported budget of $ 2.1 million. With its catchphrase, “Love Him. Hate Him. You Don’t Know Him,” it long ago surpassed “Bully” as the year’s top-earning documentary.

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Anorexic Bakes to Gain Control Over Food

Camilla Kuhns of Kirkland, Wash., makes the best cookies in the world. Ask anyone but her.

Kuhns is a 29-year-old anorexic with a penchant for baking. She has never tasted one of her own confections. Her younger brother, Seth, samples dough and final products to let her know if anything is off, and her mother, Ilene, tastes the frosting.

“Yeah, my mom’s my angel when it comes to the frosting,” Kuhns told ABC News Seattle affiliate KOMO-TV right before she entered an inpatient treatment program for her eating disorder two weeks ago. “I don’t know what it is, but it makes me very anxious.”

On her blog, Kuhns said she is 5’8″ and weighs 104 pounds with her shoes and clothes on and while holding her purse. She baked challah breads, cakes and pastries for others to enjoy while her own daily intake amounted to a head of cauliflower with hot sauce and a tablespoon of nuts. To ensure she burned off every single calorie consumed, she exercised for three to four hours a day.

Her best friend, Amber “Nic” Poppe, said that Kuhns has suffered from various eating disorders since she was 11. Both her anorexia and the baking escalated recently after a tough year that included the death of a friend and a messy divorce.

“Baking became therapeutic for her. I know it sounds strange but it seems like her way of overcoming her issues with food,” Poppe said.

Actually, it isn’t so strange. Experts have long noted the connection between eating disorders and baking, as well as cooking, watching cooking shows and collecting recipes.

In a famous 1943 study known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment, men put on a semi-starvation diet for six months developed such an intense obsession with food, they daydreamed, read and talked about it constantly. The fixation was so persistent that more than 40 percent of them mentioned cooking as part of their post-experiment plans. After they left the study and regained their weight, three of the men changed their occupations to become chefs.

“I see it a lot this in my practice,” said Jennifer Thomas, an assistant psychologist at the Klarman Eating Disorders Center at McLean Hospital in Boston. “Patients will prepare elaborate meals for friends and family while they themselves go hungry. They get a vicarious joy and a sense of superiority from watching others indulge while they don’t allow themselves to eat.”

As someone who was anorexic for five years, Victoria Casciaro said she can relate. The 20-year-old college student admitted she was also a starving baker who constantly made treats she never considered eating herself.

“I would look at what I put in the mixing bowl and it would scare me because I didn’t have the nutrition facts, so I couldn’t calculate whether or not it was a safe or dangerous food,” she recalled.

Not only would Casciaro resist her sumptuous creations, she would wash her hands frequently during the baking process to prevent herself from accidentally tasting the ingredients. She’d carefully avoid taking even the tiniest nibble for fear that she’d gain weight or set off a binge.

Haley Anderson, a 20-year-old recovering anorexic, said she’d often whip up copious amounts of baked treats for everyone else, then talk herself out of trying them.

“I’d tell myself that taste buds have memory,” she said, “and if you can avoid a certain food long enough then you could forget what it tastes like and no longer be tempted by it.”

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