Cardinal Dolan a Dark Horse to Succeed Pope

But suddenly, he found himself in even more rarefied company, with his name mentioned alongside those of more long-serving cardinals as a potential next pope, even though, by all accounts, his chances are slim.

The news on Monday of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation came as a surprise to Cardinal Dolan, as it did to most of the world. But within hours, his life was already changed. As he continued to go about his regular business as archbishop, he found himself even more in the spotlight to which he has become accustomed, facing a glare that will quite likely continue at least through the conclave in Rome next month.

On Monday, when he dedicated a chapel in Rockland County and attended a prayer meeting in the Bronx, he also ricocheted between media appearances, beginning at 7 a.m. on “Today,” the NBC show, then holding a news conference, writing an op-ed, and granting interviews to ABC and CBS. He was still talking to reporters as night fell, holding an impromptu news conference outside the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South before going inside for a fund-raiser. Both Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo fielded questions from reporters about the possibility that Cardinal Dolan could become pope; on late-night television, Stephen Colbert offered his endorsement (what he called a “Colbert bump”) for Cardinal Dolan for pope.

Through it all, the cardinal approached the speculation about “Pope Dolan” with his typical self-deprecating humor. Asked what he would do if he found himself among the finalists, he said, “I’ll tell them they have the wrong guy.”

“Don’t bet your lunch money on that one,” he added of his steep odds. “Bet on the Mets.”

On Tuesday, Cardinal Dolan’s schedule returned to a relative normal, as he headed to Camden, N.J., to attend the installation of his former deputy, Dennis J. Sullivan, as bishop. On Wednesday, he plans to visit the bread line at the Church of St. Francis of Assisi in Manhattan in the morning, bestow ashes on the faithful for Ash Wednesday at St. Patrick’s Cathedral at noon, and then attend a wake on Staten Island.

“Honestly, we could do nothing but media — all day, every day — at this point,” said his spokesman, Joseph Zwilling. “He understands the value of it, he likes to do it. But he knows that as archbishop of New York, he’s got a lot of other things he has to attend to.”

The likelihood of Cardinal Dolan becoming the next pope is low, many observers say. “I would put him in the — what’s less than a dark horse?”  category, said Christopher M. Bellitto, a papal historian at Kean University in New Jersey.

“He is arguably going to be, if he is not already, the voice and face of the American church, though whether he can translate that to higher office is another matter,” Professor Bellitto said.

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, put Cardinal Dolan’s odds at “100 to 1.” But, he added, “Anything can happen.”

Cardinal Dolan is considered an unlikely pope for several reasons. Most obviously, he is a citizen of the United States, and the College of Cardinals has been reluctant to choose a pope from a superpower. This year, some Vatican watchers believe the cardinals might choose someone from North America as a compromise between taking the historic step to electing a pope from the developing world and the more conventional choice of someone from Europe. But even if that is the case, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a Canadian who heads the influential Congregation for Bishops in Rome, seems “a more logical choice,” Professor Bellitto said.

Also, although Cardinal Dolan once served as the rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, a seminary for priests, he has never headed a Vatican department, which has often been a credential of a future pope. And, while Cardinal Dolan speaks Italian well enough to converse and deliver speeches, his Spanish is much more basic; many candidates for pope speak multiple languages.

But Cardinal Dolan has strengths as well. He “left an enormously positive impression when he was in Rome last February for the consistory, when he became a cardinal,” said John L. Allen Jr., the senior correspondent for The National Catholic Reporter. For the first time in memory, Italian newspapers were raising the possibility of an American pope, charmed by the “backslapping, baby-kissing, beer-swilling freak-of-nature that is Cardinal Dolan,” Mr. Allen said.

“I think he is a long shot, probably a remote possibility,” Mr. Allen added, “but I do think he will be in the conversation. And that, in and of itself, is something of a novelty for an American cardinal.”

Cardinal Dolan said that, when he first heard about Pope Benedict’s resignation Monday morning, he was in the middle of reading one of the pope’s books on the life of Christ. “That’s how much of my day he is,” he recalled that evening. “So I haven’t really thought to the next one, but I will sure miss him.”

He said he expected to be headed to Rome for the conclave as early as the beginning of March, but like everyone else, was still waiting to hear the exact date. “ ’Cause first of all, I’m a rookie,” Cardinal Dolan said, and also because the church itself is still working out how to handle the rare circumstance of a pope stepping down. “So what will happen now?” he wondered aloud. “I don’t know.”

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Lady Gaga: I Can't Walk Due to Injury

02/12/2013 at 06:45 PM EST

Lady Gaga is feeling like a little monster for postponing concerts because of an injury.

"I barely know what to say," she writes on her Facebook page, Tuesday. "I've been hiding a show injury and chronic pain for some time now, [and] over the past month it has worsened. I've been praying it would heal. I hid it from my staff. I didn't want to disappoint my amazing fans. However, after last night's performance I could not walk and still can't."

The pop star, 26 – whose Twitter page explains that she has a case of synovitis, which is severe inflammation of the joints – was forced to postpone two concerts in Chicago, one in Detroit and one in Hamilton, Ontario.

"I hope you can forgive me, as it is nearly impossible for me to forgive myself," the rest of her Facebook post says. "I'm devastated & sad. It will hopefully heal as soon as possible. I hate this. I hate this so much. I love you and I'm sorry."

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly

In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.

Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.

After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.

The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.

The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.

"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."

He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.

In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.

However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.

Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.

They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.

Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.

After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.

Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.

The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.

One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.

"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."

Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.

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Online:

Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer

and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney

Study: http://gucasym.org

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Ex-Bell officials defend themselves as honorable public servants

Less than three years ago, they were handcuffed and taken away in a case alleged to be so extensive that the district attorney called it "corruption on steroids."

But on Monday, two of the six former Bell council members accused of misappropriating money from the small, mostly immigrant town took to the witness stand and defended themselves as honorable public servants who earned their near-$100,000 salaries by working long hours behind the scenes.

During her three days on the stand, Teresa Jacobo said she responded to constituents who called her cell and home phone at all hours. She put in time at the city's food bank, organized breast cancer awareness marches, sometimes paid for hotel rooms for the homeless and was a staunch advocate for education.

"I was working very hard to improve the lives of the citizens of Bell," she said. "I was bringing in programs and working with them to build leadership and good families, strong families."

Jacobo, 60, said she didn't question the appropriateness of her salary, which made her one of the highest-paid part-time council members in the state.

Former Councilman George Mirabal said he too worked a long, irregular schedule when it came to city affairs.

"I keep hearing time frames over and over again, but there's no clock when you're working on the council," he said Monday. "You're working on the circumstances that are facing you. If a family calls … you don't say, '4 o'clock, work's over.' "

Mirabal, 65, said he often reached out to low-income residents who didn't make it to council meetings, attended workshops to learn how to improve civic affairs and once even made a trip to a San Diego high school to research opening a similar tech charter school in Bell.

"Do you believe you gave everything you could to the citizens of Bell?" asked his attorney, Alex Kessel.

"I'd give more," Mirabal replied.

Both Mirabal and Jacobo testified that not only did they perceive their salaries to be reasonable, but they believed them to be lawful because they were drawn up by the city manager and voted on in open session with the city attorney present.

Mirabal, who once served as Bell's city clerk, even went so far as to say that he was still a firm supporter of the city charter that passed in 2005, viewing it as Bell's "constitution." In a taped interview with authorities, one of Mirabal's council colleagues — Victor Bello — said the city manager told him the charter cleared the way for higher council salaries.

Prosecutors have depicted the defendants as salary gluttons who put their city on a path toward bankruptcy. Mirabal and Jacobo, along with Bello, Luis Artiga, George Cole and Oscar Hernandez, are accused of drawing those paychecks from boards that seldom met and did little work. All face potential prison terms if convicted.

Prosecutors have cited the city's Solid Waste and Recycling Authority as a phantom committee, created only as a device for increasing the council's pay. But defense attorneys said the authority had a very real function, even in a city that contracted with an outside trash company.

Jacobo testified that she understood the introduction of that authority to be merely a legal process and that its purpose was to discuss how Bell might start its own city-run trash service.

A former contract manager for Consolidated Disposal Service testified that Bell officials had been unhappy with the response time to bulky item pickups, terminating their contract about 2005, but that it took about six years to finalize because of an agreement that automatically renewed every year.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Edward Miller questioned Mirabal about the day shortly after his 2010 arrest that he voluntarily told prosecutors that no work was done on authorities outside of meetings.

Mirabal said that if he had made such a statement, it was incorrect. He said he couldn't remember what was said back then and "might have heed and hawed."

"So it's easy to remember now?" Miller asked.

"Yes, actually."

"More than two years after charges have been filed, it's easier for you to remember now that you did work outside of the meetings for the Public Finance Authority?"

"Yes, sir."

Miller later asked Mirabal to explain a paragraph included on City Council agendas that began with the phrase, "City Council members are like you."

After some clarification of the question, Mirabal answered: "That everybody is equal and that if they look into themselves, they would see us."

corina.knoll@latimes.com

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With Pope’s Resignation, Focus Shifts to a Successor

L'Osservatore Romano, via Associated Press

Pope Benedict XVI announcing his resignation on Monday at the Vatican. At left is Msgr. Franco Camaldo, a papal aide.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise announcement on Monday that he will resign on Feb. 28 sets the stage for a succession battle that is likely to determine the future course of a church troubled by scandal and declining faith in its traditional strongholds around the world.

Citing advanced years and infirmity, Benedict became the first pope in six centuries to resign. Vatican officials said they hoped to have a new pope in place by Easter, while expressing shock at a decision that some said had been made as long as a year ago.

Saying he had examined his conscience “before God,” Benedict said he felt that he was not up to the challenge of guiding the world’s one billion Catholics. That task will fall to his successor, who will have to contend not only with a Roman Catholic Church marred by the sexual abuse crisis, but also with an increasingly secular Europe and the spread of Protestant evangelical movements in the United States, Latin American and Africa.

The resignation sets up a struggle between the staunchest conservatives, in Benedict’s mold, who advocated a smaller church of more fervent believers, and those who feel the church can broaden its appeal in small but significant ways, like allowing divorced Catholics to receive communion or loosening restrictions on condom use to prevent AIDS. There are no plausible candidates who would move on issues like ending celibacy for priests, or the ordination of women.

Many Vatican watchers suspect the cardinals will choose someone with better management skills and a more personal touch than the bookish Benedict, someone who can extend the church’s reach to new constituencies, particularly to the young people of Europe, for whom the church is now largely irrelevant, and to Latin America and Africa, where evangelical movements are fast encroaching.

“They want somebody who can carry this idea of new evangelization, relighting the missionary fires of the church and actually make it work, not just lay it out in theory,” said John L. Allen, a Vatican expert at the National Catholic Reporter and author of many books on the papacy. Someone who will be “the church’s missionary in chief, a showman and salesman for the Catholic faith, who can take the reins of government more personally into his own hands,” he added.

The other big battle in the church is over the geography of Catholicism, which has spread decisively to the developing world. Today, 42 percent of its adherents come from Latin America, and about 15 percent from Africa, versus only 25 percent from Europe. That has led many in the church to say that the new pope should represent a part of the world where membership is growing quickly, while others say that spiritual vision should be paramount.

But while most of the world’s Catholics live outside Europe, most of the cardinals come from Europe, pointing to a central tension: while the Vatican is a global organization, it is often run like an Italian village.

Under normal circumstances, the cardinals would descend on Rome after the death of the reigning pope. In this case, said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope will carry out his duties until Feb. 28 at 8 p.m., with a successor probably elected by Easter, which this year falls on March 31. But he said the timing for an election of a new pope is “not an announcement, it’s a hypothesis.”

Already, speculation is rife about who best fills the perceived needs of the church. Cardinal Angelo Scola, the powerful archbishop of Milan, is seen as the strongest Italian contender. A conservative theologian with an interest in bioethics and Catholic-Muslim relations, he is known for his intellect, his background in the same theological tradition as Benedict, his media savvy and his strong ties with the Italian political establishment. Vatican experts laud his popular touch, even if his writings are often opaque.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a dogmatic theologian and a Canadian, is widely seen as a favorite of Benedict, who named him head of the Vatican’s influential Congregation for Bishops to help select bishops around the world. Critics in his native Quebec said that he was out of step with the province’s more progressive bishops, but that is not necessarily a drawback in today’s church.

Nicholas Kulish contributed reporting from Berlin, and Alan Cowell from London.

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It's a Girl for John Cho

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/11/2013 at 06:30 PM ET

Paul Drinkwater/NBC

Surprise: Actor John Cho is a dad again!

The Go On star and his wife welcomed a daughter recently, Cho’s rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.

Baby girl is the second child for the couple, who are also parents to a son. No further details are available.

Cho currently stars alongside Jason Bateman in Identity Thief and will reprise his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek Into Darkness in May.

He is also well known for his roles in American Pie and the Harold and Kumar films.

– Anya Leon with reporting by Julie Jordan

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life

The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.

There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.

"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.

Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.

When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."

One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.

The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."

In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."

"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.

Experts on aging agreed.

"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."

Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.

But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.

"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.

"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.

Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.

In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.

Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.

The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.

Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.

Other leaders who are still working:

—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.

—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.

—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.

—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.

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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.

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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

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Boy with rifle, guns threatened to kill 23 classmates, police say

A 12-year-old student in northern San Diego County has been admitted to a hospital for "evaluation and treatment" after being taken into custody on suspicion of sending an email threatening to kill a teacher and 23 students, the Sheriff's Department said.

Detectives served a search warrant Saturday night at the student's home and seized several computers and "numerous" rifles and handguns, the Sheriff's Department said. The student was taken into custody as the warrant was being served.

The student is suspected of sending a threatening email Friday night to an administrator at Twin Peaks Middle School in Poway, mentioning 3,000 rounds of ammunition and threatening to shoot to kill a teacher and 23 students.

"There is no evidence to suggest anyone else was involved in making the threats and it is believed to be an isolated incident," according to Sgt. Dave Ross.

A task force of detectives and computer specialists from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies had tracked the email to the student's home, the Sheriff's Department said.

The case will be turned over to the San Diego County district attorney's office for evaluation.

ALSO:

Dorner manhunt: Search resumes in Big Bear mountains

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

Dorner had history of complaints against fellow LAPD officers

--Tony Perry in San Diego

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Syrian War Closes In on the Heart of Damascus

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Fighters from the Free Syrian Army's Tahrir al Sham brigade look at a Syrian Army base in the Arabeen neighborhood of Damascus.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Unkempt government soldiers, some appearing drunk, have been deployed near a rebel-held railway station in the southern reaches of this tense capital. Office workers on 29th of May Street, in the heart of the city, tell of huddling at their desks, trapped inside for hours by gun battles that sound alarmingly close.

Soldiers have swept through city neighborhoods, making arrests ahead of a threatened rebel advance downtown, even as opposition fighters edge past the city limits, carrying mortars and shelling security buildings. Fighter jets that pounded the suburbs for months have begun to strike Jobar, an outlying neighborhood of Damascus proper, creating the disturbing spectacle of a government’s bombing its own capital.

On Sunday, the government sent tanks there to battle rebels for control of a key ring road.

In this war of murky battlefield reports, it is hard to know whether the rebels’ recent forays past some of the capital’s circle of defenses — in an operation that they have, perhaps immodestly, named the “Battle of Armageddon” — will lead to more lasting gains than earlier offensives did. But travels along the city’s battlefronts in recent days made clear that new lines, psychological as much as geographical, had been crossed.

“I didn’t see my family for more than a year,” a government soldier from a distant province said in a rare outpouring of candor. He was checking drivers’ identifications near the railway station at a checkpoint where hundreds of soldiers arrived last week with tanks and other armored vehicles.

“I am tired and haven’t slept well for a week,” he said, confiding in a traveler who happened to be from his hometown. “I have one wish — to see my family and have a long, long sleep. Then I don’t care if I die.”

For months, this ancient city has been hunched in a defensive crouch as fighting raged in suburbs that curve around the city’s south and east. On the western edge of the city, the palace of the embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, sits on a steep, well-defended ridge.

In between, Damascus, with its walled Old City, grand diagonal avenues and crowded working-class districts, has remained the eye of the storm. People keep going to work, even as electric service grows sporadic and groceries dwindle, even as the road to the airport is often cut off by fighting outside the city, and even as smoke from artillery and airstrikes in suburbs becomes a regular feature on the horizon.

But after rebels took the railway station 10 days ago in a city district called Qadam and attacked Abassiyeen Square on an approach to the city center on Wednesday, a new level of alarm and disorder has suffused the city. Rebels have pushed farther into the capital than at any point since July, when they briefly held part of a southern neighborhood.

Near the Qadam railway station last week, many of the government soldiers, their hair and beards untrimmed, wore disheveled or dirty uniforms and smelled as if they had not had showers in a long time. Some soldiers and security officers even appeared drunk, walking unsteadily with their weapons askew — a shocking sight in Syria, where regimented security forces and smartly uniformed officers have long been presented as a symbol of national pride.

The deployment appeared aimed at stopping the rebels from advancing past Qadam, either across the city’s ring road and toward the downtown or to suburbs to the east to close a gap in the opposition’s front line.

But even stationed here in Damascus, the heart of the government’s power, the soldier at the checkpoint — who was steady on his feet — said he felt vulnerable.

“It is very scary to spend a night and you expect to be shot or slaughtered at any moment,” he said. “We spend our nights counting the minutes until daytime.”

The government has hit back hard, striking Qadam with artillery and airstrikes. It has also made pre-emptive arrests in Midan, the neighboring district, closer to downtown, where rebels gained a temporary foothold in July and which they said was their next target.

Anne Barnard reported from Beirut, Lebanon.

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Wiz Khalifa Wants Amber Rose to 'Stay Pregnant Forever'

Mom & Babies
Celebrity Baby Blog

02/10/2013 at 08:00 PM ET

Lester Cohen/WireImage

Bump, there it is!

With only three weeks left until baby boy’s big arrival, Amber Rose and her fiancé Wiz Khalifa graced the red carpet in coordinated black and white ensembles during Sunday’s Grammy Awards at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

“[I'm feeling] good. It’s different, it’s weird,” Rose, 29, whose budding belly was front and center in her black floor-length Donna Karan gown, told E! News.

“I want her to stay pregnant forever,” quipped Khalifa, 25.

And while the couple are staying mum on their son’s name — “We haven’t told anybody,” says the dad-to-be — they’re not shy about sharing their birth plan.

“We watched The Business of Being Born with Ricki Lake and we just got inspired. We’ve got a pool, everything,” explains Rose.

“We’ve been taking classes, we got a doula, midwife — we’re going the whole thing,” says Khalifa, who adds he’s looking forward to taking part in the delivery process.

“I want to have a role in it, too. I wanted to get taken on a ride,” he admits.

– Anya Leon

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