Maduro says Chavez to lie in state for seven more days

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Demi Moore is seeking alimony from estranged husband Ashton Kutcher, according to divorce documents filed in a Los Angeles court on Thursday. Kutcher, the star of CBS television comedy "Two and a Half Men," filed for divorce from the "G.I. Jane" actress in December 2012 after more than a year of separation. Requesting financial support from Kutcher, 35, is an unusual move for Moore, 50, who was one of the top female earners in Hollywood during the 1990s. Her court filing did not specify an amount sought. ...

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Egypt PM in hot water over "unclean breasts" remarks

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt's prime minister faces accusations of being out of touch with the country's crisis after televised comments blaming rural infant sickness on mothers not washing their breasts.

Hisham Kandil, a former irrigation minister widely seen as a stolid technocrat, was speaking at a meeting with journalists broadcast on state television this week when he veered into a ramble on the "miseries" of life in rural Egypt.

"In my work, I've gone around the countryside," he said. "There are villages in Egypt, in the 21st century, where children get diarrhea ... because the mothers who nurse them, out of ignorance, do not maintain personal cleanliness of their breasts."

Recalling a visit to the Beni Suef area south of Cairo in 2004, he spoke of the dire conditions of village life. "There's no water, there's no sewerage," he said. "The men go to the mosque ... the women go down to the fields and get raped."

He appeared to be responding to complaints about a series of attacks and rapes of political activists in Cairo in recent weeks, citing the case of a man who was caught on video being beaten and dragged naked by police.

"I don't know Hamada (Saber), well, I know him like you do, but I am 99 percent sure he doesn't pay his electricity bill," the prime minister said of the victim of that videoed beating.

His remarks unleashed a storm of criticism, much of it reflecting a sense of economic and political malaise that has settled over the country since an uprising two years ago that toppled veteran autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.

Dina Abdel Fattah, a talk show host on the independent Tahrir channel questioned why the head of government had dwelt on the subject when Egypt was in a state of "darkness".

At least 59 people died in 10 days of protests that started late last month over what demonstrators see as Islamist President Mohamed Mursi's attempts to monopolize power as well as broader economic and political grievances.

"Imagine. Our prime minister is talking about this today, when we have martyrs in the street, we have people getting killed every day, when we have entire provinces in a state of unrest," Abdel Fattah said on her show.

Another television channel, Al Nahar, interviewed residents of Beni Suef voicing dismay at Kandil's comments.

"It's no good the prime minister talking this nonsense about women, good people, clean people, and ignoring all the other problems of the world," one man said on the program.

Since his election in June, Mursi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, has struggled to restore security and revive the ailing economy.

Small demonstrations continued on Friday, drawing thousands of protesters in Cairo and other cities including Tanta in the Nile Delta and Port Said on the Suez Canal.

Critics questioned Mursi's appointment of Kandil in July, saying it was unclear whether he had the political or economic experience for the job.

"Instead of making offensive comments about poor village women and laying blame on them when God knows they are already suffering, he should be blaming himself for the failure of his government to find a proper solution to alleviate poverty, illiteracy and awful health schemes in villages," said Iman Mahmoud, a 61-year-old housewife in Cairo.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz; Editing by Paul Taylor and Jon Hemming)

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Assisted suicide on legal agenda in several states

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A push for the legalization of physician-assisted suicide is under way in a half-dozen states where proponents say they see strong support for allowing doctors to prescribe mentally competent, dying individuals with the medications needed to end their own lives.

The large number of baby boomers facing end-of-life issues themselves has made the issue more prominent in recent years. Groups such as Compassion & Choices, a national end-of-life advocacy organization, have been working to advance the cause.

Advocates received a boost from last year's ballot question in Massachusetts on whether to allow physicians to help the terminally ill die. Although the vote failed, it helped to spark a national discussion, said Mickey MacIntyre, chief program officer for Compassion & Choices.

"The Massachusetts initiative lifted the consciousness of the nation and in particular the Northeast region to this issue that there are other alternatives patients and their families should have an opportunity to access," MacIntyre said.

Bills legalizing assisted suicide are being considered in Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Kansas and Hawaii — and in Massachusetts, where proponents decided to resume their efforts after the public vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks legislative trends. There are also bills related to the issue under consideration in New Hampshire, New York, Arizona and Montana.

In Connecticut, which has banned the practice since 1969, a group of lawmakers said Tuesday that the legislature's first public hearing on the subject would probably be held this month. At least two bills on the issue have so far been proposed in this year's session of the Connecticut legislature.

If the General Assembly votes to legalize the practice, it would be the first state legislature to do so.

Oregon and Washington have passed right-to-die laws, but they did so through voter referendums. Montana's Supreme Court has ruled that the practice of physicians helping terminally ill patients could be considered part of medical treatments. Thirty-four states prohibit assisted suicide outright. Seven others, including Massachusetts, banned it through legal precedent.

Opponents claim the initiatives in Connecticut are being pushed only by outside groups like Compassion & Choices.

"There's no grass-roots cry for assisted suicide in the state of Connecticut," said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of the socially conservative Family Institute. "This is mostly an out-of-state organization that has targeted the state of Connecticut. They look at the Northeast and think this is low-hanging fruit: 'We can conduct our social experiments here in the Northeastern United States.'"

In fact, one bill has been filed in Connecticut this year that would establish a mandatory minimum prison term for someone charged with second-degree manslaughter after assisting another person with committing suicide.

Cathy Ludlum, a disabled-rights activist from Manchester, Conn., who has spinal muscular atrophy, said she worries the issue of doctor-assisted suicide will not go away soon.

"Until people are really educated about the issues, it's going to keep coming up, even if it's defeated this time," she said, adding how she wants lawmakers to focus more on "giving people a good life than giving people a good death."

A measure dubbed "end of life choices" recently sped through the Vermont Senate Health and Welfare Committee but is expected to face a bumpier ride in the Judiciary Committee. In New Jersey, a bill that would allow doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication for terminally ill patients wishing to take their own lives cleared an Assembly committee Thursday. That legislation would ultimately be subject to voter approval.

Last November, voters in Massachusetts narrowly defeated a measure legalizing physician-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Supporters of the concept said they hoped the debate would continue and marked the beginning of a conversation to improve end-of-life care.

In Connecticut, Dr. Gary Blick, a Norwalk physician who specializes in treating patients with HIV and AIDS, said he believes the time is right for state lawmakers to push ahead with this issue. In 2009, he and Dr. Ron Levine, of Greenwich, along with end-of-life advocates, sued to seek a clarification of the state's decades-old ban on assisted suicide, citing concerns about Connecticut doctors being prosecuted for giving medications to their dying patients.

A judge ultimately dismissed the suit, saying it was a matter for the legislature to decide.

The 1969 Connecticut law states that a person who "intentionally causes or aids another person, other than by force, duress or deception, to commit suicide" is guilty of second-degree manslaughter.

Blick said not all dying patients will want the ability to take their own life, but he said they should be given the choice.

"This is not for everybody. We do realize there are people that do not believe in this for religious beliefs, and I respect that. There are no issues over that," he said. "But there are those subsets of people that do not want to go through the suffering that they have to go through."

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Palestinian wounded in clash with Israelis dies in hospital

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actress Demi Moore is seeking alimony from estranged husband Ashton Kutcher, according to divorce documents filed in a Los Angeles court on Thursday. Kutcher, the star of CBS television comedy "Two and a Half Men," filed for divorce from the "G.I. Jane" actress in December 2012 after more than a year of separation. Requesting financial support from Kutcher, 35, is an unusual move for Moore, 50, who was one of the top female earners in Hollywood during the 1990s. Her court filing did not specify an amount sought. ...

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U.S. childhood obesity fight sees some success: group

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. companies and other groups that have made attempts to reverse the nation's rising childhood obesity rate are starting to see results as more American kids exercise and have better access to healthy foods, they said on Thursday.

More than 1,700 U.S. cities have promoted exercise to get nearly 3 million more kids moving in the last year, according to a report by the Partnership for a Healthier America, a nonprofit that works to get private companies and organizations to pledge specific action to fight the weight epidemic.

Still, if left unchecked, about half of all Americans will be obese by 2030, according to the group, whose partners range from Darden Restaurants Inc and Walmart Stores Inc to the YMCA and the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Some health advocates welcomed the findings but said more effort was still needed, including government action.

Already, one in three U.S. youth are obese and another third are overweight. Experts are worried because heavier children are more likely to remain overweight as adults, and suffer a higher incidence of diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.

"We're seeing pockets of progress toward reversing the childhood obesity epidemic," said Dr. Risa Lavizzo-Mourey of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "For progress to reach every corner of our country, we must redouble our efforts: parents, schools, nonprofit organizations, government at all levels, and the private sector."

Childhood obesity carries significant healthcare related costs and even poses national security risks, experts say, by reducing the pool of those fit for military service.

Some of the partner companies have pledged to change food offerings on restaurant menus or work to get more children into activities like soccer or tennis, according to the group, which released the report as part of its annual conference in Washington that also headlined First Lady Michelle Obama.

The group has said it wants to help 10 million Americans gain access to healthier foods, saying 23.5 million people in the United States - including 6.5 million children - have no nearby access to options like fresh produce or cannot afford to buy it.

Already, 141 grocery stores have been built or renovated in so-called "food deserts," often low-income urban neighborhoods without nearby grocery stores, helping more than a half-million people, it said.

"In places like Philadelphia, New York City and Mississippi - places where folks from every sector are working together - we've seen childhood obesity rates begin to come down," said Obama, who has made tackling obesity her signature issue while in the White House.

Fruits and vegetables, meat and other whole foods can often be more expensive than processed ones that contain subsidized ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup.

Some health experts have been critical of the food industry for offering unhealthy products. Manufacturers have long pointed to consumer choice, but many have begun to change their offerings in recent years as more U.S. consumers become health conscious.

Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker, another honorary vice chairman and a Democrat, told MSNBC the annual progress report is important for holding companies accountable to their commitments to change.

On Thursday, several more companies joined the partnership, including GE Healthcare, part of General Electric Co, and Cerner Corp, among others.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey)

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Thailand struggles to curb high teen pregnancy rate

BANGKOK (Reuters) - When Mallika told her parents she was pregnant at 17, they pulled her out of school and ordered her to marry the baby's father. But the marriage didn't happen and the one-time aspiring singer now cares for her baby girl alone.

"I love her, but at the time I hid in shame," said Mallika, now 23 and a vendor of cheap, made-in-China clothing at a weekend market in Thailand's capital, Bangkok.

"The boy's family wanted to pay me to shut up and stay away from them. We were both children ourselves," she added, sitting in her dilapidated apartment overlooking a highway on the outskirts of Bangkok.

Mallika's situation is, sadly, far from unusual. Thailand's teenage pregnancy rate is the highest in Southeast Asia after neighboring Laos, according to the Bureau of Reproductive Health at the Thai Public Health Ministry.

In fact, even though the overall birthrate is dropping, teen births are on the rise. Out of every 1,000 live births, 54 are from teen mothers aged 15-19 - higher than in the United States and ten times higher than Singapore's teen pregnancy rate.

What's more, it's rising fast. The number of live births by Thai teenage mothers aged 15-18 increased 43 percent between 2000 and 2011, a Thai annual public health report shows.

Though there are many factors responsible, health experts put weight on cultural mores that make frank discussion of the issue difficult, whether in an official context or a personal one. This is complicated by gender issues.

"Women are told to protect their virginity but Thai men who have multiple sexual encounters are seen as cool," said Visa Benjamano, a commissioner at the Thai National Human Rights Council (NHRC).

"If men sleep around, their image is not at stake whereas a woman's image is. Women are generally more afraid to discuss their sexual health needs in public."

LACK OF DISCUSSION

Although sexual education is part of the national school curriculum, teaching is clearly insufficient. The Education Ministry limits instruction on the subject to eight hours a year despite changing attitudes towards sex among the young.

"Teachers are prudish and out of touch with Thai kids today and they approach the topic like a biology class rather than talking about the emotional issues involved," said Visa.

The consequences of unplanned pregnancy are often left out of classroom teaching too, despite a lack of legal options.

A 2011 report by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and Thailand's National and Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB) shows the number of women hospitalized in connection with abortions increased by over 16 percent between 1994 and 2009, hitting 60,000 in 2009.

Yet abortion is illegal in Thailand except in cases of rape or incest, to save a woman's life or preserve her physical or mental health, and if the woman is under 15 years of age.

Under Thai law the penalty for performing illegal abortions is up to five years in prison or a fine of up to 10,000 baht ($340). Despite this, illegal clinics and back street abortions abound.

In 2010, Thai police found 2,000 fetuses on the grounds of a Bangkok Buddhist temple. They were to have been sent there from illegal abortion clinics.

The discovery left the Thai public grappling with the reality of a highly charged religious and social issue. Abortion is recognized as a "sin" in the Theravada Buddhism practiced by up to 95 percent of the population.

Unlike the predominantly Catholic Philippines, Thailand offers easy access to contraception and birth control pills, with condoms and most other contraceptives readily available and sold over the counter.

But when it comes to teenage girls getting them, social stigma gets in the way.

Kanya Musiket was 15 when she started a physical relationship with a boy in her neighborhood. But when she ventured to a local shop to buy condoms, shopkeepers would look at her "disapprovingly," making her feel ashamed.

OVERSEAS HELP?

In a bid to find solutions, a Thai delegation visited Britain in November 2012, looking to emulate programs there.

The number of babies born to teen mothers in England dropped by 27 percent between 2000 and 2010 and overall conception by teens fell by 25 percent between 1999 and 2010. Some areas, like Hackney in East London, showed reductions of over 40 percent.

This was due largely to a 1999 government plan aiming to halve England's under 18 conception rate by 2010. The plan used local grants and guidelines, government funds to improve access to contraceptives and media campaigns to raise awareness.

By contrast, Thailand issued a population strategy plan in 2012 that focuses on reducing teen births but does not include either target reduction goals or concrete ways to do so.

There are university-led sexual health awareness programs, and the UNFPA is trying to raise awareness through both civil and private networks. Yet the most fundamental measure is the hardest to achieve: changing attitudes.

"This is about trusting the moral standards of those young people whom we have invested years of education and nurturing - our children," said Caspar Peek, UNFPA Representative for Thailand and Country Director for Malaysia.

"We need everyone ... to see this as a challenge to development and not just something bad that happens to teenagers because they do 'bad' things." ($1 = 29.8000 Thai baht)

(Editing by Elaine Lies)

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Britain condemns "criminal" horsemeat scandal

LONDON (Reuters) - The British government accused unknown criminals for a growing scandal of horsemeat being sold in imported beef products that has generated shock headlines in a country where many recoil in horror at the very idea of eating horses.

Prime Minister David Cameron assured consumers on Friday there was no health risk from a product considered a delicacy in France and Italy. But, as the furor saps public confidence in food labeling and hygiene supervision, he called it "completely unacceptable", and his office condemned "acts of criminality".

Health officials said police had been called in.

Investigations into suppliers have been launched in recent weeks after the discovery that beef products sold to companies including Britain's biggest supermarket firm Tesco and fast-food chain Burger King contained horsemeat.

On Thursday, the scandal deepened further with the news that horsemeat had been found in Findus ready meals made in France, prompting the British government to call it "very distasteful" and forcing the firm to apologize to customers.

Some packs of "beef lasagne" may have contained no beef at all, only horse, officials said after genetic tests showed concentrations of horsemeat in a range from 60 to 100 percent.

"This is a very shocking story," Cameron said in Brussels where he was attending a European Union summit. "It is completely unacceptable.

"People will be very angry to find out that they have been eating horse when they thought they were eating beef."

The saga has offended many Britons' emotional self-image as a nation of animal lovers with a particularly soft spot for the horse and its place on the racecourse or in a vanished rural idyll. That their French neighbors consume it for lunch, is seen as no more palatable than their snails and frogs' legs.

More seriously, in the wake of health scandals including the "mad cow" disease which saw British beef exports banned for years by EU partners in 1996, the affair raises questions over the effectiveness of agencies supervising the food chain.

CRIMINALITY

Cameron's spokeswoman said the government was looking into two incidents which "at the heart are acts of criminality" and Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it had asked police in London and in other European countries to investigate.

"If you are a company buying a particular meat and you are led to believe it is what you asked for, but then you find it's not, then clearly there's been some law broken there," Cameron's spokeswoman said.

French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll said there would be an investigation there: "We need to avoid this idea that there was some desire to hide things," he told BFM television. "We will determine where the problem came from and we will find the solutions and sanctions that apply."

In a statement, Findus said it knew there was a possible problem with its ready meals two days before the products were withdrawn from the shelves of British stores.

"We understand those concerns, we are sorry that we have let people down and we want to outline the facts," it said.

"Findus UK had extensive DNA testing completed by leading independent experts. On Wednesday 6th February these tests confirmed that horsemeat was present in a number of samples and this information was shared with the Food Standards Agency."

Findus Sweden also said it had recalled thousands of packets of frozen "beef lasagne" after tests showed they contained horsemeat.

British supermarket chains Aldi, Lidl, Iceland and the Co-operative Group have also been sold beef products found to contain horse DNA.

The FSA put the horsemeat content at Findus at between 60 and 100 percent while one Tesco burger contained about 29 percent horsemeat, making those the two most serious incidents to date.

Tesco has since dropped the Irish supplier of frozen beef burgers, Silvercrest, a unit of ABP Food Group. Findus began a recall of its beef lasagne from retailers earlier in the week on advice from its French supplier, Comigel.

MEAT SUMMIT

In response to the problem, the FSA has demanded that food retailers and suppliers test all beef products and present their findings to the agency by February 15.

Environment Minister Owen Paterson, who said "urgent" checks were being made on supplies to schools and hospitals, will also host a summit of meat retailers and suppliers on Saturday.

Two senior lawmakers advised on Friday against eating processed beef products, but Paterson said he would happily eat them and Cameron insisted there was no health risk.

"There is no reason to believe that any frozen food currently on sale is unsafe or a danger to health. It's not so much about food safety, it's about proper food labeling, it's about confidence in retailers," Cameron said.

Experts say horsemeat could contain traces of veterinary drug phenylbutazone, or "bute", used as a painkiller, which can be harmful to humans but only in high concentrations.

European plants processing horsemeat for food avoid carcasses in which the drug is present. French media last month reported complaints that horsemeat imported from Britain and contaminated with bute had been found in French food products.

However, the danger of eating such meat may be slight: "The idea that you might get a clinically significant amount in horsemeat, even after therapeutic administration to the horse is, frankly, daft," said Colin Berry, a professor of pathology at Queen Mary, University of London.

The FSA advised against eating Findus beef lasagne products, but - pending further testing for bute - said it had no evidence to suggest the product was a food safety risk.

(Additional reporting by Ben Hirschler and Michael Holden in London, Nicholas Vinocur in Paris and Peter Griffiths in Brussels; Editing by Maria Golovnina and Alastair Macdonald)

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