Quadruple Amputee Gets Two New Hands on Life

It's the simplest thing, the grasp of one hand in another. But Lindsay Ess will never see it that way, because her hands once belonged to someone else.

Growing up in Texas and Virginia, Lindsay, 29, was always one of the pretty girls. She went to college, did some modeling and started building a career in fashion, with an eye on producing fashion shows.

Then she lost her hands and feet.

Watch the full show in a special edition of "Nightline," "To Hold Again," TONIGHT at 11:35 p.m. ET on ABC

When she was 24 years old, Lindsay had just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's well-regarded fashion program when she developed a blockage in her small intestine from Crohn's Disease. After having surgery to correct the problem, an infection took over and shut down her entire body. To save her life, doctors put her in a medically-induced coma. When she came out of the coma a month later, still in a haze, Lindsay said she knew something was wrong with her hands and feet.

"I would look down and I would see black, almost like a body that had decomposed," she said.

The infection had turned her extremities into dead tissue. Still sedated, Lindsay said she didn't realize what that meant at first.

Quadruple Amputee Undergoes Hand Transplant Surgery Watch Video

After Hand Transplant, Relearning How to Hold Watch Video

"There was a period of time where they didn't tell me that they had to amputate, but somebody from the staff said, 'Oh honey, you know what they are going to do to your hands, right?' That's when I knew," she said.

After having her hands and feet amputated, Lindsay adapted. She learned how to drink from a cup, brush her teeth and even text on her cellphone with her arms, which were amputated just below the elbow.

"The most common questions I get are, 'How do you type,'" she said. "It's just like chicken-pecking."

PHOTOS: Lindsay Ess Gets New Hands

Despite her progress, Lindsay said she faced challenges being independent. Her mother, Judith Aronson, basically moved back into her daughter's life to provide basic care, including bathing, dressing and feeding. Having also lost her feet, Lindsay needed her mother to help put on her prosthetic legs.

"I've accepted the fact that my feet are gone, that's acceptable to me," Lindsay said. "My hands [are] not. It's still not. In my dreams I always have my hands."

Through her amputation recovery, Lindsay discovered a lot of things about herself, including that she felt better emotionally by not focusing on the life that was gone and how much she hated needing so much help but that she also truly depends on it.

"I'm such an independent person," she said. "But I'm also grateful that I have a mother like that, because what could I do?"

Lindsay said she found that her prosthetic arms were a struggle.

"These prosthetics are s---," she said. "I can't do anything with them. I can't do anything behind my head. They are heavy. They are made for men. They are claws, they are not feminine whatsoever."

For the next couple of years, Lindsay exercised diligently as part of the commitment she made to qualify for a hand transplant, which required her to be in shape. But the tough young woman now said she saw her body in a different way now.

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Eleven dead in Damascus gas station blast

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - At least 11 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded at a crowded petrol station in the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, opposition activists said.

The station was packed with people queuing for fuel that has become increasingly scarce during the country's 21-month-long insurgency aimed at overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad.

The semi-official al-Ikhbariya television station showed footage of 10 burnt bodies and Red Crescent workers searching for victims at the site.

The opposition Revolution Leadership Council in Damascus said the explosion was caused by a booby-trapped car.

There was no immediate indication of who was responsible for the bombing in the Barzeh al-Balad district, whose residents include members of the Sunni Muslim majority and other religious and ethnic minorities.

"The station is usually packed even when it has no fuel," said an opposition activist who did not want to be named. "There are lots of people who sleep there overnight, waiting for early morning fuel consignments."

It was the second time that a petrol station has been hit in Damascus this week. Dozens of people were incinerated in an air strike as they waited for fuel on Wednesday, according to opposition sources.

In northern Syria, rebels were battling to seize an air base in their campaign against the air power that Assad has used to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, a much higher death toll than previously thought.

DRAMATIC ADVANCES

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of rebel fighters were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said much of the base was still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions cut off by the rebels, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" on rebel-controlled areas.

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by shelling and bombing nearby towns.

NIGHTLY BOMBARDMENTS

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble. The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people died in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to step down. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford and Giles Elgood)

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Germany plans 5 to 6b euros in more cuts by 2014: report

FRANKFURT: The German government is eyeing 5.0-6.0 billion euros (US$6.5-7.8 billion) in additional spending cuts in 2014 in a bid to balance the government budget, a newspaper reported on Friday.

The regional daily Rheinische Post quoted the deputy chief of the conservative CDU party, Michael Meister, as saying: "If we want to reach the so-called structural zero in 2014, we must close a gap of around 5.0 billion euros.

"That can only be achieved by spending cuts," Meister added.

The so-called structural deficit is the government's financial shortfall after adjustment for cyclical factors.

Already in December, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Germany planned to balance the overall state budget -- which on top of the government budget also includes the regional state and municipal budgets -- as early as 2012 rather than in 2014 as previously envisaged.

And in those projections, the government budget would still be in deficit in 2014, to the tune of around 5.0 billion euros.

Under rules enshrined in the European Union's Maastricht Treaty, member countries are not allowed to run up overall states deficits in excess of 3.0 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and must balance their budgets in the medium term.

- AFP/xq

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The 10 biggest tech innovations (that we personally use) of our lifetimes

Next-train arrival signs, like this one for NYC subway system have revolutionized commutes. Screen shot: Instragram photo by Sree Sreenivasan

As the father of 9-year-old twins, I often find myself telling them about tech products and innovations that I didn't have growing up. All parents do it: trying to get their kids to understand how much tougher life was in the old days.

In my case, the old days were in the 1980s - not that long ago. But the range of change in our lives continues to impress me and make my children roll their eyes.

Yesterday, I posted a photo on Instagram (see above and on my Sreenet account), saying the NYC subway's next-train arrival guides are among the top 20 technology innovations of my lifetime.

As you can tell, I had to post in a hurry as the next train arrived two minutes later. As I stood inside the subway, blissfully without cell service, I had a chance to think about that concept of top tech innovations and asked myself whether those guides were, indeed, worthy of a top 20 listing.

I've now taken a shot at that list. Before you read it, some ground rules I gave myself:

• The technology had to be for personal use, something that affected me and that I use myself. So innovations in space travel, nuclear physics and enterprise computing don't count.


• Innovations that have benefited millions of others, but I don't personally use don't count (sorry, electric
  car).


• They had to be widely available only after my teen years - i.e, around 1988 - to be considered (eliminating the Walkman, the CD, the home video camera, the microwave oven).


• Innovations so new or so rare or so expensive - or all three - that my family couldn't acquire them until many years later, do count (some of the items below might have been under your Christmas tree, but not mine).


• Innovations that were widely adopted but then became irrelevant in their original form aren't here (example: America Online, Compuserve, etc).
  
• Tech products that are mostly an evolution from something prior don't count (therefore, the DVD doesn't make the list; it's too similar to its predecessors, Betamax, VHS and laserdisc).
  
• And if I saw my dad using it, it doesn't count, even if it's wonderful and I use it every day (sorry, electric razor).

Basically, it has to be stuff I didn't have when I was a kid.

What would be on your version of this list? Here's mine (the first six are in order of importance; the rest aren't):

1. The Internet/Web/Search: No explanation needed.


2. Email: Electronic messaging recently celebrated its 30th anniversary, but it wasn't a true mass product until the mid-1990s.


3. Cellphones and smartphones: Cellphones have been around for decades, but the true revolution has only happened since the mid-1990s.


4. Digital cameras: These cameras changed the way I capture and share memories and how I see the worlds of my friends, family and complete strangers. While more of my friends than ever before sling fancy digital SLRs, the only digital camera I've used in the last 15 months or so is the one in my iPhone. The other day, when someone took a group portrait with a point-n-shoot digital camera, several of us in the picture commented on how long it had been since we had used an "old-fashioned" camera.


5. Laptops and wifi: Sure, there were ridiculously expensive laptops around in the 1980s, but none had the transformative effect on my life the way the ones in the 1990s did. And the arrival of wifi freed those laptops from the suffocating ethernet cord.


6. GPS (with a nod to web-based Mapquest and Google Maps): I still remember our car vacations started with my dad would going down to the AAA (Wikipedia tells me it was "known formerly as the American Automobile Association" - sort of like IBM, I guess) and get maps with our route highlighted in yellow. When I first saw Mapquest I was blown away by the potential; the arrival of Web-based Google Maps just continued the innovation and set the stage for how we all use GPS today.

   My friend Arik Hesseldahl (@AHess247) of AllThingsD once explained to me, for another story, how cool technology by itself isn't likely to change the landscape. Luck and government decisions play a role, too:
   

   GPS existed [prior to 1997], but was deliberately made inaccurate for non-military users under a federal directive known as "selective availability" that was eliminated in 2000 by order of President Clinton; prior to this, consumer GPS was good enough for hiking, but nowhere near good enough for in-car navigation, let alone geocaching.



7. MetroCard: Prior to the arrival of these yellow electronic payment cards for the subway, New Yorkers had to be obsessed with having enough tokens on hand to enter the system. The MetroCard literally changed my life.


8. Next-train arrival signs: Londoners and Londonphiles love to tell me how they've had these forever in the Underground, but these arrived in NYC only three years ago. Until these real-time signs showed up, you had no idea if your train was coming in two minutes or 20. Just last week, a handy next step: MTA Subway Time, an iPhone app that gives you the same real-time arrival data. It was officially released only for iOS, but, in a sign of the times, someone made an Android version within 24 hours, thanks to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's API offerings (more on APIs below). Yes, it's only for a few subway lines, but 90 percent of my trains are covered and this is my list, after all.


9. Wii and Kinect: When I was growing up, Atari, Intellivision and Commodore were major players in the home console market. The systems that came after that were much more powerful and more popular, but were basically improvements on what came before (sorry, Sega, Nintendo 64,
   PlayStation, Xbox). But the
   Wii, which I first tested at a family gathering on Thanksgiving 2006, was a breakthrough worthy of this list. I saw something I'd never seen before: Grandparents, parents and kids all gathered around the big-screen TV, playing digital bowling, golf and tennis.

   Some of that may have happened on occasion in the Atari days, but now, the players were all standing, not sitting on a couch, thanks to the wireless remotes. I predicted on my local TV segment the following week that the Wii would be unlike any other video game product and outsell the competition. At the time and in the years to follow, gamer-snobs felt the Wii wasn't any good in comparison to consoles with fancier graphics, better sound and more complex - and more gruesome - titles. The Wii went onto to outsell the other so-called "seventh generation" consoles, including PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

   A logical next step in gaming has to be on my list. The Microsoft Kinect sensor, which works on Xbox, does away with the wireless remote and uses a player's arms and entire body to control the games - everything from sports to dance-offs. As I wrote in January 2011 about Five Things I Learned from Two Weeks With Kinect, this is only the beginning. "The Kinect shows that there's still lots of room for innovation in a field that seemed pretty saturated. I expect to see more developments in this area as the sensors gets smarter, the cameras gets sharper and the game play gets more sophisticated.



10. Social media, including blogging: Here I'm including various platforms - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogging - that have changed the way a billion-plus people spend their time, express themselves and engage with each other. For better and worse.


11. Wikipedia: While it's easy to complain about some of the problems of Wikipedia, the fact is that it has completely changed the way I do everyday research. It's my first stop, not my last - and I sometimes spend as much time on the footnotes and where they lead as I do on the main text. Even hoaxes like the one uncovered last week don't deter me (see Bicholim Conflict on this list of the biggest hoaxes in Wikipedia history). If you want to truly understand Wikipedia's impact, potential and pitfalls, you have to read the definitive book about it, "The Wikipedia Revolution: How A Bunch of Nobodies Created The World's Greatest Encyclopedia" by my friend Andrew Lih (@fuzheado).


12. YouTube: I had considered not including YouTube because it is, in many ways, just an evolution in online video. But in recent years, YouTube has become its own community with four billion hours of video watched every month; an important tool for all kinds of marketing, promotion and propaganda; and a source of entertainment and information for 800 million people every month (a stat I found in this compelling Peter Kafka (@pkafka) post that makes that case that Al Jazeera English should have gone with a web-only platform, rather than buying Current TV as announced this week).


13. Zipcar: This car-sharing service changed my family's life, allowing us to access a car in more convenient ways than traditional rental cars (we don't own a car, in part, because parking in our Manhattan building is $500 a month). This week's purchase of Zipcar by Avis for $500 million is causing consternation. Here's an article saying this is good for consumers; here's one that argues the opposite.


14. Credit cards in NYC taxis: Until they came along, I had to always check my wallet for cash before grabbing a taxi. Since they became widely available in 2007, I've not had to hesitate before hailing a cab and, unlike some folks who complain about drivers unhappy to take cards, I've never faced an issue with that.

    There's another reason to use credit cards in cabs, as I wrote in 5 Lessons From a Lost iPhone: "3. I'll always pay for my NYC cabs with credit cards. Turns out the taxi medallion number (the unique number displayed on top of all yellow cabs in Manhattan) is recorded with every credit card purchase, meaning you have way of tracking down cabs you've taken." The taxi industry in the city is the process of a much bigger disruption: figuring out new apps that are changing the decades-old system of hailing cabs.



15. DVR: The arrival of TiVo, and, later, the generic digital video recorder provided by the cable company, introduced us all to timeshifting TV in ways the complicated VHS system and its blink "12:00" clock never could.


16. Netflix: I'm including Netflix here as a representative of a whole new class of video watching, a big leap from the DVR. Whether Netflix will be the eventual winner in this space or not (Amazon, Hulu and others are attacking it), the concept of getting movies anytime from anywhere has changed how our family accesses entertainment.

    But I don't understand how anyone uses Netflix without also accessing Instawatcher.com, which provides a much better, searchable listing of the on-demand movies on Netflix, including my favorite feature, "Expiring soon."

    If you don't want to spring for Netflix, but are an HBO subscriber, you have to check out the free HBO Go app or website, which provides access to dozens of movies and entire seasons of HBO shows that are no longer available on the HBO On Demand service on your cable box. For instance, I saw and enjoyed "The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency," a quirky, charming show I never saw when it first ran on the network.



17. iPod and iTunes: These changed the music world forever, let us carry thousands of songs at a time and got millions of us to pay for digital music for the first time.

    My friend Hari Sreenivasan (@Hari; no relation), now an anchor on PBS Newshour, was the first to outline to me the power of iPod beyond music. One day in late 2001 (soon after iPod was launched), he predicted that the iPod would be a great way to introduce the Apple brand to PC users skeptical of the Mac. He saw it as a way to get people comfortable using an Apple product and getting them hooked and ready to try others. Even though he didn't call it that, iPod became a gateway drug that changed the company's fortunes and set it on the path to iPhone, iPad and beyond. If you are curious, the price of Apple stock on Oct. 1, 2001 was $15.49. On Oct. 1, 2012, it was $671.16 (it's down since then).



18. Tablets and apps: In some ways, tablets feel like cousins of laptops and not worthy of this list. But in many other ways, they are, indeed, new. The key here are the apps we use in smartphones, too. As millions of users have discovered, tablets can be used in ways that are different from laptops and we see them being used as cash registers, restaurant menus, medical devices and much more. And all this is just getting started.

    I didn't include e-readers such as the Kindle on this list because while they were innovative, they are not going to stick around much longer. Thanks to tablets that let you read Kindle content without a Kindle, e-readers are dying much faster than anyone could have predicted. See this chart to understand the whole picture.



19. APIs: I am not an engineer, but I play one on TV, thanks to my CNET tech segments on WCBS-TV. Since I don't program, it's not obvious why I'd include APIs - or application programming interfaces - on this list.

    But these web APIs, which allow live data and content from one web service to be posted and used on another have changed how we access information. Everything from mashups of real-estate listings and Google maps, to embedding videos, to the subway-arrival app I mentioned in #7 above, APIs are now a critical part of our digital lives. Here's a list of the most popular APIs.



20. Cordless irons: I know some of you will claim to have had cordless electric irons for decades now, but the day I saw one of these, I had to have one when the prices became reasonable. They aren't as good as corded ones (the heat dissipates too quickly), but they changed my ironing life.

That's my 20. Am sure I am missing some others and that you will disagree with many of my choices (especially if you are in a different age bracket). That's what makes this list so much fun to put together. It has no right or wrong answers and it's all about you.

Hope you'll take a stab at creating a similar list of 5-20 tech innovations. You can post it in the comments below and/or tweet it with #mytoptech.

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Venezuela's Chavez fighting severe lung infection

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaks during Brazilian Foreign Minister's official visit at Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas, on Nov.1, 2012. / LEO RAMIREZ/AFP/Getty Images

Updated 10:35 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela Venezuela's government says President Hugo Chavez is being treated for "respiratory deficiency" after complications from a severe lung infection.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas provided the update on Chavez's condition Thursday night. He read from a statement saying that Chavez's lung infection had led to "respiratory deficiency" and required strict compliance with his medical treatment.

The government expressed confidence in Chavez's medical team and condemned what it called a "psychological war" in international media surrounding the president's condition.

Chavez hasn't been seen or heard from since his Dec. 11 operation in Cuba. Venezuela's opposition has demanded more specific information from the government about his health.

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Ex-USC Player: Painkiller Injections Caused Heart Attack

Despite stated label risks of possible fatal heart attack, stroke or organ failure, college football players across the country are still being given injections of a powerful painkiller on game days so they can play while injured, an ABC News investigation has found.

The drug, a generic version of Toradol, is recommended for the short-term treatment of post-operative pain in hospitals but has increasingly been used in college and professional sports, and its use is not monitored by the NCAA, the governing body of college sports.

Only two of the country's top football programs, Oklahoma and the University of Nebraska, reported to ABC News that they have limited or stopped the use of the drug in the wake of growing concern about its risks.

Which Top-Ranked College Football Teams Use Toradol?

Oklahoma said it stopped using the painkillers in 2012 after using them repeatedly in 2010 and 2011.

Nebraska said its doctors now restrict its use.

SEND TIPS About Painkiller Use in College Sports to Our Tipline

"While team physicians reserve the option to use injectable Toradol, it is rarely prescribed, and its use has been avoided this season following reports of heightened concern of potential adverse effects," Nebraska said in a statement to ABC News.

Stephen Dunn/Getty Images

Despite Risks, College Football Still Uses Powerful Painkiller Watch Video

The top two college football programs, Notre Dame and Alabama, refused to answer questions from ABC News about the painkiller. They play for the national college championship on Jan. 7.

Controversy surrounding the drug has grown this year following claims by former USC lineman Armond Armstead that he suffered a heart attack after the 2010 season, at age 20, following shots of generic Toradol administered over the course of the season by the team doctor and USC personnel.

"I thought, you know, can't be me, you know? This doesn't happen to kids like me," Armstead told ABC News.

The manufacturers' warning label for generic Toradol (ketorolac tromethamine) says the drug is not intended for prolonged periods or for chronic pain and cites gastrointestinal bleeding and kidney failure as possible side effects of the drug.

In addition, like other drugs in its class, the generic Toradol label warns "may cause an increased risk of serious cardiovascular thrombotic events, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and stroke, which can be fatal."

"This risk may increase with duration of use," the so-called black box warning reads.

In a lawsuit against the school and the doctor, Dr. James Tibone, Armstead claims the school ignored the stated risks of the drug and never told him about them.

"He was a race horse, a prize race horse that needed to be on that field no matter what," said Armstead's mother Christa. "Whether that was a risk to him or not."

Armstead says he and many other USC players would receive injections of what was known only as "the shot" in a specific training room before big games and again at half-time.

"No discussion, just go in. He would give the shot and I would be on my way," Armstead told ABC News.

Armstead said the shot made him feel "super human" despite severe ankle, and later shoulder pain, and that without it, he never could have played in big USC games against Notre Dame and UCLA.

"You can't feel any pain, you just feel amazing," the former star player said.

USC declined to comment on Armstead's claims, or the use of Toradol to treat Trojan players.

An ABC News crew and reporter were ordered off the practice field when they tried to question USC coach Lane Kiffin about the use of the painkiller. USC says the ABC News crew was told to leave because they had not submitted the appropriate paperwork in advance to attend the practice session.

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Central African Republic rebels halt advance, agree to peace talks

DAMARA, Central African Republic (Reuters) - Rebels in Central African Republic said they had halted their advance on the capital on Wednesday and agreed to start peace talks, averting a clash with regionally backed troops.

The Seleka rebels had pushed to within striking distance of Bangui after a three-week onslaught and threatened to oust President Francois Bozize, accusing him of reneging on a previous peace deal and cracking down on dissidents.

Their announcement on Wednesday gave the leader only a limited reprieve as the fighters told Reuters they might insist on his removal in the negotiations.

"I have asked our forces not to move their positions starting today because we want to enter talks in (Gabon's capital) Libreville for a political solution," said Seleka spokesman Eric Massi, speaking by telephone from Paris.

"I am in discussion with our partners to come up with proposals to end the crisis, but one solution could be a political transition that excludes Bozize," he said.

Bozize on Wednesday sacked his Army Chief of Staff and took over the defense minister's role from his son, Jean Francis Bozize, according to a decree read on national radio, a day after publicly criticizing the military for failing to repel the rebels.

The advance by Seleka, an alliance of mostly northeastern rebel groups, was the latest in a series of revolts in a country at the heart of one of Africa's most turbulent regions - and the most serious since the Chad-backed insurgency that swept Bozize to power in 2003.

Diplomatic sources have said talks organized by central African regional bloc ECCAS could start on January 10. The United States, the European Union and France have called on both sides to negotiate and spare civilians.

Central African Republic is one of the least developed countries in the world despite its deposits of gold, diamonds and other minerals. French nuclear energy group Areva mines the country's Bakouma uranium deposit - France's biggest commercial interest in its former colony.

RELIEF IN BANGUI

News of the rebel halt eased tension in Bangui, where residents had been stockpiling food and water and staying indoors after dark.

"They say they are no longer going to attack Bangui, and that's great news for us," said Jaqueline Loza in the crumbling riverside city.

ECCAS members Chad, Congo Republic, Gabon and Cameroon have sent hundreds of soldiers to reinforce CAR's army after a string of rebel victories since early December.

Gabonese General Jean Felix Akaga, commander of the regional force, said his troops were defending the town of Damara, 75 km (45 miles) north of Bangui and close to the rebel front.

"Damara is a red line not to be crossed ... Damara is in our control and Bangui is secure," he told Reuters. "If the rebellion decides to approach Damara, they know they will encounter a force that will react."

Soldiers armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket propelled grenade launchers and truck-mounted machineguns had taken up positions across the town, which was otherwise nearly-abandoned.

Some of the fighters wore turbans that covered their faces and had charms strung around their necks and arms meant to protect them against enemy bullets.

Chad's President Idriss Deby, one of Bozize's closest allies, had warned the rebels the regional force would confront them if they approached the town.

Chad provided training and equipment to the rebellion that brought Bozize to power by ousting then-president Ange Felix Patasse, who Chad accused of supporting Chadian dissidents.

Chad is also keen to keep a lid on instability in the territory close to its main oil export pipeline and has stepped in to defend Bozize against insurgents in the past.

A CAR government minister told Reuters the foreign troop presence strengthened Bozize's bargaining position ahead of the Libreville peace talks.

"The rebels are now in a position of weakness," the minister said, asking not to be named. "They should therefore stop imposing conditions like the departure of the president."

Central African Republic is one of a number of countries in the region where U.S. Special Forces are helping local soldiers track down the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group which has killed thousands of civilians across four nations.

France has a 600-strong force in CAR to defend about 1,200 of its citizens who live there.

Paris used air strikes to defend Bozize against a rebellion in 2006. But French President Francois Hollande turned down a request for more help, saying the days of intervening in other countries' affairs were over.

(Additional reporting by Paul-Marin Ngoupana in Bangui and Jon Herskovitz in Johannesburg; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Janet Lawrence)

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Japanese trucker gets kicks from Syria war tourism

ALEPPO, Syria: Japanese trucker Toshifumi Fujimoto is bored with his humdrum job, a daily run from Osaka to Tokyo or Nagasaki hauling tanker loads of gasoline, water or even chocolate.

Yet while the stocky, bearded 45-year-old could spend his free time getting a jolt of adrenaline by bungee-jumping or shark hunting, he puts his life on the line in a most unusual way.

He's become a war tourist.

Fujimoto's passion has taken him from the dull routine of the highway to Syria, where as part of his latest adventure in the Middle East's hot spots he shoots photos and video while dodging bullets with zest.

He was in Yemen last year during demonstrations at the US embassy and in Cairo a year earlier, during the heady days that followed the ouster of longtime president Hosni Mubarak. Later this year, he plans to hook up with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

But for the moment, he is wrapping up a week's tour of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, which for going on six months has been one of the hottest spots in a conflict that has cost more than 60,000 lives, according to UN figures.

He already spent two weeks in the war-torn country at the end of 2011, taking advantage of a tourist visa, but this time he has entered the country clandestinely from Turkey.

Dressed in a Japanese army fatigues and armed with two cameras and a video camera -- Japanese, of course -- Fujimoto heads for whatever frontline he can every morning to document the ongoing destruction of Syria's second city and one-time commercial capital.

Fujimoto, who doesn't speak English, much less Arabic, has picked up a few words, such as "dangerous" and "front line".

"I always go by myself, because no tour guide wants to go to the front. It's very exciting, and the adrenaline rush is like no other.

"It's more dangerous in Syria to be a journalist than a tourist," he said, describing how "each morning I walk 200 metres to reach the 'front', and I'm right there on the firing line with soldiers of the (rebel) Free Syria Army."

"It fascinates me, and I enjoy it," he says, as some FSA fighters stop him in one of the Old City's streets to have their picture taken with him.

"Most people think I'm Chinese, and they greet me in Chinese," he smiled.

He takes his time getting his shots right, as the rebels he hangs out with shout from both sides of the street: "Run! Run! There are snipers. Run!"

But he ignores them, finishes shooting and casually walks away with photos that he will later post on his Facebook page to share with his friends.

"I'm not a target for snipers because I'm a tourist, not like you journalists," he told a reporter, "Besides, I'm not afraid if they shoot at me or that they might kill me. I'm a combination of samurai and kamikaze."

Fujimoto won't even wear a helmet or a flack jacket.

"They are very heavy when it comes to running and it's more fun to go to the front without anything. Besides, when they shoot it's fun and exciting."

Fujimoto said his employers don't know he's in Syria.

"I just told them I was going to Turkey on holiday; if I'd told them the truth, they'd tell me I'm completely crazy."

But though some might doubt his sanity, no one can question his financial foresight, which is rooted in the sadness of his personal life.

Fujimoto is divorced, and says "I have no family, no friends, no girlfriend. I am alone in life."

But he does have three daughters, whom he hasn't seen for five years, "not even on Facebook or the Internet, nothing. And that saddens me deeply," he said as he wiped away a tear.

So he's bought a life insurance policy, and "I pray every day that, if something happens to me, my girls might collect the insurance money and be able to live comfortably."

Fujimoto doesn't make any money off his photography, and spent us$2,500 (1,894 euros) out of his own pocket for the flight to Turkey. Then there's another us$25 a day that he pays a local resident, who puts him up in his house and gives him Internet access.

In his week in Aleppo, he has covered all the battle fronts -- in the districts of Amariya, Salaheddin, Saif al-Dawla, Izaa -- and though he's shared many of the images he's captured, one of them has stuck in his mind.

He opened a file on his laptop to show the partly decomposed body of a seven-year-old girl in Saif al-Dawla, gunned down by a sniper, which has lain unclaimed for months.

One wonders if any of his daughters could be the same age, but there was no way to pry more out of him, as he wept every time they were brought up.

"I love children, but Syria is no place for them. A bomb can snuff out their lives at any moment," he said, as some FSA fighters asked him to join them in Saleheddin and he ambled off down the street toward the sound of fighting.

-AFP/fl

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WhatsApp processes record 18B messages on New Year's Eve

WhatsApp Messenger running on iOS.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Steven Musil/CNET)

WhatsApp has a message for its users -- a lot of them.

The mobile messaging service announced today that it set a WhatsApp record on New Year's Eve, processing 18 billion messages on the last day of the year. The company said it delivered 7 billion inbound messages and 11 billion outbound messages, surpassing its previous record of 10 billion messages processed in August.

In comparison, Apple revealed in October that its iMessage text service had delivered about 300 billion texts sent by iOS users during the previous 12 months -- an average of less than a billion a day.

That kind of growth reportedly attracted acquisition interest from Facebook -- a TechCrunch report that the company called "a rumor and not factually accurate."

Founded in 2009, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company provides a smartphone app for
Android, BlackBerry, iOS, Symbian, and Windows Phone that delivers text messages, as well as images and audio and video messages.

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Hillary Clinton discharged from hospital

WASHINGTONSecretary of State Hillary Clinton was discharged from a New York hospital Wednesday, after spending 72 hours under observation following the discovery of a blood clot in her head, the State Department said.

In a statement, spokesperson Philippe Reines said: "Her medical team advised her that she is making good progress on all fronts, and they are confident she will make a full recovery. She's eager to get back to the office."

Clinton and her family thanked her medical team "for the excellent care she received," Reines said.

Earlier Wednesday, Clinton had been seen in public for the first time in three weeks when she walked out of the Harkness Eye Institute in New York City and into a secure van along with a smiling Bill and Chelsea Clinton and accompanied by a security detail, reports CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan.

The State Department had said Secretary Clinton was active in speaking with staff and reviewing paperwork while she continued to recover at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Clinton was admitted to a New York hospital Sunday and was treated with blood thinners to dissolve a clot in the vein behind the right ear. Doctors found the clot during a follow-up exam stemming from a concussion she suffered in early December. She has been hospitalized for around 72 hours, which is a window of time during which it is possible to establish the proper blood thinner dosage that would be required prior to discharge according to doctors.

Clinton's doctors say there was no neurological damage.

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