TANJUNG BENOA, Indonesia (Reuters) - CT Corp, one of Indonesia's emerging conglomerates, has proposed an all-cash deal for a controlling stake in media firm PT Visi Media Asia, valued at up to $1.8 billion, to strengthen its position in the media business in Southeast Asia's biggest economy.
The founder and chairman of CT Corp, Chairul Tanjung, told Reuters that his firm wanted to purchase Visi Media, a unit of Indonesia's powerful Bakrie family, without any partners.
"We are one of the preferred bidders. Our proposal is we want to buy it all ... my pocket is still deep," the 51-year-old billionaire said in his hotel room on the resort island of Bali, shortly after meeting with the president and cabinet ministers in his role as head of the president's economic advisory body.
"(It is) only us that can pay cash one hundred percent ... but the deal is not done yet."
CT Corp is already a major player in the Indonesian media business and controls two local TV stations. Tanjung said he would take out a new loan to buy the Visi Media stake. He declined to say how much the company would borrow for the deal.
This is the first time any bidder has publicly announced that it was offering to buy the company.
Indonesia's politically influential Bakrie family has been in talks to sell its majority interest in Visi Media to help finance a plan to buy back coal assets from London-listed Bumi Plc , sources with direct knowledge have said.
The Bakries are offering around a 51 percent stake in Visi Media, which the family controls via its vehicle CMA Indonesia. The process has been going on for the past three months with local bidders, including CT Corp and MNC Group, the sources said.
The Bakries had been looking for a valuation of $1.2 billion to $2 billion for the unit, although Visi Media's current market capitalization is only around $800 million, the sources said.
Visi Media has two national TV stations and a news website.
The sources said the stake would be worth up to $1.8 billion.
Tanjung, who trained as a dentist before becoming a businessman, also plans to build a $3 billion theme park on Indonesia's Java island and make it one of the biggest theme parks in Southeast Asia when it opens in 2016.
"We will build a city, not only a theme park, as I want to make many Indonesians feel happy," Tanjung said, adding that the land for the park would be around 200 hectares and the construction would start by the end of this year.
The group, which was founded by Tanjung, currently operates two theme parks and has plans to add another 20 theme parks across Indonesia over the next few years.
Tanjung is Indonesia's fifth-richest man with a net worth around $3.4 billion as of march, according to Forbes.
(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher and Chris Gallagher)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's top healthcare adviser acknowledged on Tuesday that costs could rise in the individual health insurance market, particularly for men and younger people, because of the landmark 2010 healthcare restructuring due to take effect next year.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said definitive data on costs will not be available until later this year when private health plans become authorized to sell federally subsidized coverage on new state-based online marketplaces, known as exchanges.
"Everything is speculation. I think there's likely to be some shifting in the markets," she told reporters at the White House.
The law, also known as "Obamacare," eliminates discriminatory market practices that have imposed higher rates on women and people with medical conditions.
It also limits how much insurers can charge older people. But while the changes are expected to lower costs for women, older beneficiaries and the sick, men and younger, healthier people will likely see higher rates as insurers try to hedge against continued risks.
"Women are going to see some lower costs, some men are going to see some higher costs. It's sort of a one to one shift ... some of the older customers may see a slight decline, and some of the younger ones are going to see a slight increase."
Insurance premiums could rise for some with individual plans, she said, as Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act enhances the level of coverage and either eliminates or reduces the rate of price discrimination against people who are older, female or have preexisting medical conditions.
"These folks will be moving into a really fully insured product for the first time, so there may be a higher cost associated with getting into that market," Sebelius said.
But those who qualify for federal subsidies through state healthcare exchanges would still get a better deal, she said.
Her remarks coincide with growing uneasiness about possible cost increases among lawmakers and executives in the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare industry.
A new study released on Tuesday by the nonpartisan Society of Actuaries estimates that insurance costs will rise 32 percent on average nationwide within three years, partly as a result of higher risk pools. Changes would vary by state, from an 80 percent hike in Wisconsin to a 14 percent reduction in New York.
Obama's healthcare restructuring, the signature domestic policy achievement of his first term, is expected to provide coverage to more than 30 million people beginning on January 1, 2014, both through the state exchanges and a planned expansion of the government-run Medicaid program for the poor.
Subsidies in the form of premium tax credits, available on a sliding scale according to income, are expected to mitigate higher costs for many new beneficiaries.
But the insurance industry, which is set to gain millions of new customers under the law, is warning of soaring premium costs next year because of new regulations that include the need to offer a broader scale of health benefits than some insurers do now.
That has raised concerns about people with individual policies not subject to subsidies and the potential for cost spillovers into the market for employer-sponsored plans, which according to U.S. Census data, cover about half of U.S. workers.
'LITTLE IMPACT'
Sebelius dismissed the idea of significant change for employer plans, saying that market segment was "likely to see very little impact."
Separately, a Democratic U.S. senator on Tuesday said the federal government has limited scope to help millions of people likely to remain without affordable health insurance under the new law.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, released a report submitted to the panel by the administration that outlines an "employee choice" policy that would allow some employers to offer a wider range of coverage choices to their workers at reduced rates for 2014.
But Wyden said the approach would not help many of the nearly 4 million worker dependents who may have to forego subsidized private health coverage as a result of an IRS ruling.
"Even in the states that allow for employee choice, it will be limited to a small number of workers," Wyden said.
The law would have most people with employer insurance remain under their current plans. Workers can opt for subsidized coverage if their employer plan is unaffordable, but only according to a narrow definition of what is affordable.
The IRS ruled in January that the cost of insuring a worker's family will be considered unaffordable if the employee's contribution to an individual coverage plan exceeded 9.5 percent of that person's income. That rule ignores the fact that family coverage is far more expensive than individual coverage.
As a result, the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 3.9 million family dependents could be left unable either to afford employer-sponsored family coverage or to obtain federally subsidized insurance through an exchange.
In its report to the Senate committee, Sebelius' department said some employers could claim a tax credit in 2014 to make coverage more affordable and offer workers a range of coverage plans through state-based exchanges.
(This March 26 story has been corrected to drop reference to "premium" in second bullet and replace "individual premiums" with "insurance costs" in paragraph 11)
(Writing by David Morgan; Editing by Fred Barbash and Paul Simao)
NOvA neutrino detector records first 3-D particle tracksPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andre Salles media@fnal.gov 630-840-6733 DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
What will soon be the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.
Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic raysparticles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth's atmosphere from space.
"It's taken years of hard work and close collaboration among universities, national laboratories and private companies to get to this point," said Pier Oddone, director of the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Fermilab manages the project to construct the detector.
The active section of the detector, under construction in Ash River, Minn., is about 12 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet tall. The full detector will measure more than 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet tall.
Scientists' goal for the completed detector is to use it to discover properties of mysterious fundamental particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are as abundant as cosmic rays in the atmosphere, but they have barely any mass and interact much more rarely with other matter. Many of the neutrinos around today are thought to have originated in the big bang.
"The more we know about neutrinos, the more we know about the early universe and about how our world works at its most basic level," said NOvA co-spokesperson Gary Feldman of Harvard University.
Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had.
When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. They are great for calibration, said Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector.
"Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason," Muether said. "They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector."
The detector at its current size catches more than 1,000 cosmic rays per second. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. But the flood of more visible cosmic-ray data makes it difficult to pick them out.
Once the upgraded Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot.
The NOvA detector will be operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The NOvA experiment is a collaboration of 180 scientists, technicians and students from 20 universities and laboratories in the U.S and another 14 institutions around the world. The scientists are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and funding agencies in the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom.
###
Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
NOvA neutrino detector records first 3-D particle tracksPublic release date: 28-Mar-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Andre Salles media@fnal.gov 630-840-6733 DOE/Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
What will soon be the most powerful neutrino detector in the United States has recorded its first three-dimensional images of particles.
Using the first completed section of the NOvA neutrino detector, scientists have begun collecting data from cosmic raysparticles produced by a constant rain of atomic nuclei falling on the Earth's atmosphere from space.
"It's taken years of hard work and close collaboration among universities, national laboratories and private companies to get to this point," said Pier Oddone, director of the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Fermilab manages the project to construct the detector.
The active section of the detector, under construction in Ash River, Minn., is about 12 feet long, 15 feet wide and 20 feet tall. The full detector will measure more than 200 feet long, 50 feet wide and 50 feet tall.
Scientists' goal for the completed detector is to use it to discover properties of mysterious fundamental particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos are as abundant as cosmic rays in the atmosphere, but they have barely any mass and interact much more rarely with other matter. Many of the neutrinos around today are thought to have originated in the big bang.
"The more we know about neutrinos, the more we know about the early universe and about how our world works at its most basic level," said NOvA co-spokesperson Gary Feldman of Harvard University.
Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had.
When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. They are great for calibration, said Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector.
"Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason," Muether said. "They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector."
The detector at its current size catches more than 1,000 cosmic rays per second. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. But the flood of more visible cosmic-ray data makes it difficult to pick them out.
Once the upgraded Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot.
The NOvA detector will be operated by the University of Minnesota under a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
The NOvA experiment is a collaboration of 180 scientists, technicians and students from 20 universities and laboratories in the U.S and another 14 institutions around the world. The scientists are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and funding agencies in the Czech Republic, Greece, India, Russia and the United Kingdom.
###
Fermilab is America's premier national laboratory for particle physics research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab's website at http://www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @FermilabToday.
The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Wondering who would be the first to concoct a Kickstarter for governmental wishes? We suppose it's Lockheed Martin. Today, the aforementioned outfit has launched an initiative "aimed at expanding its collaboration with Silicon Valley companies to meet the diverse technology needs of the federal government." Called the Lockheed Martin Silicon Valley Alliance, the hub will reportedly "provide the federal government with greater visibility into innovative technology solutions developed locally," even going so far as to suggest that a game developer could use their resources in order to improve the realism of a military simulation system. It sounds as if Lockheed will end up being the middleman between aspiring companies and entities like the Department of Defense and NASA, essentially ensuring that whatever is built meets federal requirements. Those interested in venturing down such a rabbit hole can give the source link a look, but as always, we'd caution you to register at your own risk.
DENVER (AP) ? Prosecutors in the Colorado theater shooting on Thursday abruptly rejected an offer from suspect James Holmes to plead guilty in exchange for avoiding the death penalty and accused defense lawyers of a serious breach of court rules by making the offer public.
In a scathing court document, prosecutors said the defense has repeatedly refused to give them the information they need to evaluate the plea offer, so the offer can't be considered genuine.
No plea agreement exists, prosecutors said, and one "is extremely unlikely based on the present information available to the prosecution."
They also said anyone reading news stories about the offer would inevitably conclude "the defendant knows that he is guilty, the defense attorneys know that he is guilty, and that both of them know that he was not criminally insane."
Neither the defense nor the prosecution immediately returned phone calls Thursday.
Holmes is charged with multiple counts of murder and attempted murder in the July 20 shootings in a packed theater in the Denver suburb of Aurora. Twelve people were killed and 70 were injured.
Holmes' attorneys disclosed in a court filing Wednesday that their client has offered to plead guilty, but only if he wouldn't be executed.
Prosecutors criticized defense attorneys for publicizing the offer, calling it a ploy meant to draw the public and the judge into what should be private plea negotiations.
Prosecutors did not say what information the defense refused to give them, but the two sides have argued in court previously about access to information about Holmes' mental health.
Karen Steinhauser, a former prosecutor who is now a law professor at the University of Denver, said prosecutors clearly do not want to agree to a plea deal without knowing whether Holmes' attorneys could mount a strong mental health defense.
"One of the issues the prosecution needs to look at is, is there a likelihood that doctors, and then a jury, could find that James Holmes was insane at the time of the crime?" she said.
Prosecutors also criticized comments to The Associated Press by Doug Wilson, who heads the state public defenders' office.
Wilson told the AP Wednesday that prosecutors had not responded to the offer and said he didn't know whether prosecutors had relayed the offer with any victims as required by state law.
George Brauchler, the current Arapahoe County DA, is scheduled to announce Monday whether he will seek the death penalty for Holmes. Brauchler hasn't publicly revealed his plans. He has refused repeatedly to comment on the case, citing the gag order and his spokesman didn't immediately return a call Thursday evening.
Pierce O'Farrill, who was shot three times, said he would welcome an agreement that would imprison Holmes for life. The years of court struggles ahead would likely be an emotional ordeal for victims, he said.
"I don't see his death bringing me peace," O'Farrill said. "To me, my prayer for him was that he would spend the rest of his life in prison and hopefully, in all those years he has left, he could find God and ask for forgiveness himself."
A plea bargain would bring finality to the case fairly early so victims and their families can avoid the prolonged trauma of not knowing what will happen, said Dan Recht, a past president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.
"The defense, by making this public pleading, is reaching out to the victims' families," he said.
___
Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
Cable companies routinely score lower in customer satisfaction than almost any other consumer service, and a large part of that is the fact that most Americans can't choose their cable provider. But if you do have options, you should choose Verizon FiOS, according to a new report from Consumer Reports. More »
Mar 26 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $3,787,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $2,859,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,154,500 4. Steve Stricker $1,820,000 5. Phil Mickelson $1,650,260 6. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 7. John Merrick $1,343,514 8. Dustin Johnson $1,330,507 9. Russell Henley $1,313,280 10. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 11. Keegan Bradley $1,274,593 12. Charles Howell III $1,256,373 13. Michael Thompson $1,254,669 14. Brian Gay $1,171,721 15. Justin Rose $1,155,550 16. Jason Day $1,115,565 17. Chris Kirk $1,097,053 18. ...
Eleodoro Carlos "El Cholo" Rodriguez Sanchez (Handout)
?The Ridgway toddler who was killed in a quiet Mexican fishing and surfing village Feb. 28 was beaten and sexually abused before he drowned in a swimming pool.
Newspapers in the Puerta Vallarta area are reporting that suspect Eleodoro Carlos "El Cholo" Rodriguez Sanchez has admitted to Mexican authorities that he abused 2-year-old Axel Charrette before throwing him into the pool at the Sayulita home where the child's family had been living for nearly two months.
Axel and his brother Kalden, 7, were in the care of babysitter Nancy Sara Lee Solorio P?rez, 19, on Feb. 28 when she let Rodriguez Sanchez, her former boyfriend, into the walled complex.
Vallarta Opina and the Guadalajara Reporter reported that
Nancy Sara Lee Solorio P?rez (Handout)
after he left the compound, she found Axel's body floating in the small swimming pool at the home.
Doctors at the nearby San Francisco Hospital told state police that Axel's body showed signs of beating and sexual abuse, the newspapers reported.
In a statement given to The Watch newspaper in Telluride, Axel's parents, Randy and Jen Charrette, said the babysitter realized after she allowed Rodriguez Sanchez into the home that he was in a violent drug-induced state. The Charrettes wrote that she locked herself in a closet, leaving Axel outside and Kalden playing in another room.
"The boyfriend, for reasons unknown, hurt Axel, then threw him in the pool, leaving him to drown," the Charrettes wrote.
The Charrettes had been staying in Sayulita, a beach town called one of the safest places to stay in Mexico by Sunset Magazine, since Jan. 4.
They had sold many of their possessions and rented out their Ridgway home and planned to travel with their children.
In their blog about their trip, the Charrettes had written that they were happy to find their rental in Sayulita was "a secure house with parking ... a huge fenced yard and a swimming pool."
They said they planned to stay there for three months and then to possibly travel further south into Mexico.
Officials with the Mexican General Consulates in Denver and in Puerta Vallarta could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957, nlofholm@denverpost.com or twitter.com/nlofholm
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Senior U.S. and Russian diplomats will discuss the Syrian conflict at talks in London on Thursday, Russia said on Wednesday, announcing the latest in a series of meetings aimed at finding an end to the bloodshed.
Russia's special Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, will hold talks with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns on the sidelines of an international meeting on Yemen, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
Moscow and Washington have long been at odds over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and repeated meetings between senior U.S. and Russian diplomats in recent months have given little sign of progress toward ending the two-year conflict that has killed some 70,000 people.
The United States says he must abandon power but Russia, which sells arms to Syria and rents one of its naval bases, says his exit must not be a precondition for a negotiated settlement, and has blocked Western-backed efforts to use the clout of the U.N. Security Council to pressure him.
The planned meeting comes after a telephone call on Friday in which the White House said Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Barack Obama agreed on "the need to advance a political transition" to end the violence in Syria as soon as possible.
The Kremlin said Putin and Obama had told their foreign ministers to seek "new initiatives" to end the civil war.
Bogdanov also met Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League peace envoy for Syria, in London on Wednesday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Brahimi has said Russia and the United States hold the key to finding an agreement on Syria, where the conflict started with street protests against Assad's rule and escalated into a civil war with sectarian overtones.
Bogdanov also held talks with British Foreign Secretary William Hague.
(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Alison Williams)
Refugee Bushra, 19, who fled her home in Syria 17 days ago, holds her son Omar, 2, as she registers at the UNHCR center in the northern city of Tripoli, Lebanon, Wednesday. She was declared the millionth refugee to leave the country.
By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News
The number of refugees fleeing Syria has hit a million ? nearly 5 percent of the population ? the United Nations said Wednesday, as the U.K. announced it planned to send armored vehicles to the rebels fighting President Bashar Assad?s regime.
About half those fleeing Syria were children, most under the age of 11, the UNHCR refugee agency said in a statement.
They arrived in neighboring countries ?traumatized, without possessions and having lost members of their families,? it added.
"With a million people in flight, millions more displaced internally, and thousands of people continuing to cross the border every day, Syria is spiralling towards full-scale disaster," U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ant?nio Guterres said.
"We are doing everything we can to help, but the international humanitarian response capacity is dangerously stretched. This tragedy has to be stopped,? he added.
Syria had a population of 22.5 million in July 2012, according to the CIA's World Factbook.
Guterres said the impact of such large numbers of people arriving in Syria?s neighbors was severe.
The statement said that Lebanon's population had increased by "as much as 10 per cent," while Jordan's energy, water, health and education services "are being strained to the limit."
Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry signaled a change in U.S. policy, saying military rations and medical supplies would be sent directly to Syrian opposition fighters. He also said the U.S. would provide $60 million in new aid to help opposition groups provide basic goods and services.
Scud missiles used on civilians Speaking in the U.K. parliament Wednesday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the conflict in Syria had reached ?catastrophic proportions,? with 70,000 people estimated to have died.
He said that the U.K. would provide equipment to protect civilians, including armored four-wheel drive vehicles ?to help opposition figures move around more freely,? and body armor.
?The regime has used 'scud' ballistic missiles against civilian areas. And the U.N. Commission of Inquiry for Syria has found evidence of grave human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity; including massacres, torture, summary executions and a systematic policy of rape and sexual violence by the regime?s forces and its militia,? he said.
He said diplomacy was ?taking far too long and the prospect of an immediate breakthrough is slim.?
A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.
?The international community cannot stand still in the face of this reality,? Hague added.
Bushra, a 19-year-old mother of two, was declared the symbolic millionth refugee by the UNHCR after she was registered in Tripoli, Lebanon, Wednesday.
?Her flight to Lebanon was a desperate last measure. She moved with her children from the city of Homs, where she lived, and sought safety in several villages to avoid tanks and shelling and gangs of men whom she feared would rape or kill her and her little ones,? the UNHCR statement said.
?But soon, she said, the shooting would begin, the shelling would rain down and it would be time to leave,? it added. Her husband, a truck driver, is missing.
"We need help," Bushra said, according to the statement. "We hope this will end so we can go back to our house. We need to feel peace and stability. We cannot ask for anything more."
In Beirut, Panos Moumtzis, the UNHCR regional coordinator for Syrian refugees, told The Associated Press that 7,000 Syrians have been crossing into neighboring countries every day since the fighting escalated in December.
"When you stand at the border crossing, you see this human river flowing in, day and night," Moumtzis said after inspecting UNHCR's registration centers at border crossings in Lebanon.
He told the AP that the U.N. refugee agency badly needed money to help host countries cope and manage the refugee population.
He added the agency was only able to provide Syrians fleeing violence with a bare minimum: a tent, a blanket, a sleeping mat, 2,000 calories a day and 20 liters of water a day.
"We are getting desperate," Moumtzis said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Related:
Syrian rebels reported in control of first provincial capital
US to send rations, medical supplies to Syrian rebels but not weapons
Both sides in Syria commit war crimes including murder, torture, UN says
iMore has learned that Apple is planning the release of the iPhone 5S for this summer, currently for August. Next generation iPads, presumably the iPad 5 and potentially the iPad mini 2, may also debut as soon as this April.
Sources familiar with the plans have told iMore that the iPhone 5S does indeed have the same basic design as the iPhone 5, with a more advanced processor and an improved camera. With the iPhone 5, Apple reduced the thinness of the casing but managed to keep essentially the same, if not slightly better, overall quality. Given the dimensions, or lack-thereof, that in-and-of itself was a feat of engineering. With the iPhone 5S, the aim is to once again raise the bar in terms of iPhone optics, including a much better camera in essentially the same casing. No huge surprises there, given the past history of S-class iPhones.
We've also been told an April-ish launch is getting serious consideration for the next-generation iPads, but we're really not sure what to make of that yet. iPad 5 casings have already begun to leak -- the only big redesign in the line -- so that could make sense. Retina for the iPad mini, however, still doesn't sound imminent.
Apple is not going to release iPads that costs more or don't get as good battery life as the current models. So, if the next iPad mini does end up getting slated for April, it could be a spec bump, or have something other than Retina as a differentiator. Hopefully we'll know more soon.
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Public release date: 28-Mar-2013
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