Friend: James Gandolfini died of heart attack

ROME (AP) ? An autopsy on James Gandolfini has found that the "Sopranos" star died of a heart attack, with no evidence of substance abuse or foul play, a family spokesman said Friday.

Michael Kobold told reporters that Gandolfini's body has been released to a funeral director and that the family was working with the Italian government to speed up the bureaucratic red tape to get the body back to the United States soon.

While the process can take up to 10 days, Kobold said the family was hoping to have the body repatriated by mid-week with a funeral planned in New York by June 29 at the latest.

Gandolfini, 51, died Wednesday night. His body was discovered in a Rome hotel room by a family member.

He had arrived in Rome on Tuesday and spent his first full day in the Eternal City with his teen-age son, visiting the Vatican and staying at the luxury Boscolo Exedra hotel. They dined together in the hotel on Wednesday night, awaiting the arrival in Rome of Gandolfini's sister, Leta.

"He had a wonderful day," Kobold said of the father-son vacation.

Asked if Gandolfini had a history of heart problems, Kobold said he was healthy.

"There's nothing out of the ordinary. It was a heart attack. It was a natural cause," he said in response to questions about the autopsy. "There was no foul play, no substance abuse. None of that."

The Associated Press couldn't independently confirm the results of the autopsy, and it wasn't clear if Italian officials would independently release them.

In 2002, allegations of drug use by Gandolfini spilled into tabloid reports during his divorce case with his first wife, Marcy Wudarski. Gandolfini's then publicist Dan Klores was quoted as acknowledging the actor's prior drug and alcohol abuse, but claimed it was "a problem that existed in the past."

Morgue officials at Rome's Policlinico Umberto I hospital said the U.S. Embassy had told them not to speak to the media, and that a family representative would provide information about the autopsy. Kobold, a longtime family friend, said he had been asked by the family to act as its spokesman.

Kobold provided no written evidence of the autopsy results. The director of the emergency room at the hospital, Dr. Claudio Modini, said on Thursday prior to the autopsy that Gandolfini had suffered a cardiac arrest. Sudden cardiac arrest can be due to a heart attack, a heart rhythm problem, or as a result of trauma.

Leta went to the morgue on Friday to formally identify the body.

Gandolfini was to have helped preside over the closing ceremony on Saturday of the Taormina Film Festival in Sicily. The festival instead is organizing a tribute to him.

His portrayal of criminal Tony Soprano in HBO's landmark drama series "The Sopranos" was just one facet of his rich legacy as an actor in movies and plays.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/friend-james-gandolfini-died-heart-attack-135046174.html

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Rebels hang on near Damascus, hope for deal on arms from Jordan

By Erika Solomon

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels besieged in the outskirts of Damascus say they are facing a slow but steady advance by President Bashar al-Assad's forces, and are pinning their hopes on an anticipated influx of weapons from the Jordanian border.

Opposition fighters once threatened Assad's dominance of Damascus but are now struggling to repel his forces, who have been emboldened by winning a strategic border town further north and have help from Lebanese Hezbollah militants and Shi'ite Iraqi fighters.

"The regime's goal is to slowly bleed us until we are forced to surrender. They are advancing slowly to preserve their fighting force," said Amran, an activist speaking by Skype from the ring of suburbs known as the Eastern Ghouta.

Rebel prospects for reversing Assad's gains in Damascus may now hinge on military support from Western and Arab backers.

"We can survive for a long time, because our fighters know the terrain, but until we get weapons we cannot repel the advance," Amran said.

The rebels believe a recent U.S. decision to give them military support will re-open an arms pipeline from Jordan that was shut down as the United States and Russia negotiated a planned "Geneva 2" peace conference.

But this week's G8 meeting saw no narrowing of the differences between Moscow, Assad's main arms supplier, and Washington, which wants Assad to step down in any transition.

Despite Washington's reluctance to define what kind of help it is willing to give, the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels expect Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia to step up support to help them fight Assad. He is backed by Riyadh's regional Shi'ite rival Iran in a two-year conflict that has become increasingly regionalized.

"We had several meetings in Jordan and Ankara and discussed opening the weapons pipeline to the Damascus rebels from Jordan. I expect good news soon ... We will be getting advanced weaponry but I cannot say what kind," said Abu Moaz al-Agha, a spokesman and commander from the Ansar al-Islam brigades in Damascus.

Rebels want anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to challenge the dominance of Assad's air force, which has allowed him to keep rebels on the defensive even in their own territories through daily air strikes.

"We still need time to plan out the system for delivering the weapons. But I am hoping that within 30 days there will be changes on the ground," Agha said, speaking by Skype.

Over the past two months, rebels around Damascus lost nearly all their supply lines and are struggling to get enough food, let alone weapons, into the eastern and southern outskirts of the capital.

There has been a slow increase in weapons supplies in recent days, particularly to the north, where Assad's forces are also planning a slow encroachment on rebel strongholds in Aleppo.

WAITING FOR REBEL SUPPORT

As well as getting arms over the southern border, the Damascus rebels need opposition forces in neighboring Deraa province to alleviate the blockade from outside.

"We are trapped inside al-Ghouta and there is absolutely no route into the area if the mujahideen (holy warriors) in the south do not come to open the front," said activist Amran.

But infighting and rivalries have long plagued the rebels - it is what made Western powers hesitant to back their fractious forces and has also sabotaged many rebel efforts to unite against Assad offensives across the country.

In the Ghouta region, mistrust and greed has prevented fighters blocking advances as they await help, some rebels say.

"The regime is advancing on the Marj area and has taken several towns in a critical part of the rebel base here. Unfortunately the blame for this lies on us as much as them," said a fighter speaking by Skype, who asked not to be named.

"Some of the biggest brigades here are focusing on cementing their control on specific towns, to loot factories and seize all the supplies. They've ignored the wider cause," he said.

Assad's forces are also advancing on the Sayyeda Zainab district, which houses an important Shi'ite shrine and has been used as a rallying call for Shi'ite fighters.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 93,000 people and has descended from a popular protest movement against four decades of Assaf family rule into a civil war with sectarian overtones.

The country's Sunni majority and has enjoyed rising but inconsistent support from Sunni countries, including a flow of radical Islamist fighters. Assad has relied on minorities, particularly his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and a staunchly loyal support system from Hezbollah and Iran.

An activist working with the rebels in Damascus said that while he believed the rebels had a good chance of holding out until a weapons pipeline was made from Jordan, the chance of seizing Sayyeda Zainab has likely been lost.

"Our own men here betrayed the cause," he said. "Now our only help is our brothers from outside."

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rebels-hang-near-damascus-hope-deal-arms-jordan-133041572.html

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Xbox One DRM rollback cuts family sharing features, digital mirroring of retail games out

In the aftermath of Microsoft's stunning reversal of its Xbox One game licensing plans, we talked to Xbox chief product officer Marc Whitten to find out exactly what will change about Redmond's next game box this November. Whitten thankfully assuaged our primary concern right off the bat: the company's (new) used game policy extends to third-party publishers as well as Microsoft first-party games.

Though gamers won't have to put up with requirements for an internet check-in every 24 hours, some lauded features we'd heard about will not be available as a result -- at least at launch. That includes the sharing between up to ten family members, and playing disc-based games without having the disc in the One. It also means new consoles will need a patch at launch to enable this future / past scenario of disc-based console gaming.

"There are some things -- the family sharing stuff is an example -- where as we move to this system, that functionality goes away," Whitten told us. Another such piece of functionality the console's losing: digitally accessible versions of disc-based games. "You're gonna see your online content but you won't see your physical discs," he said. Should you choose to purchase those games digitally, of course, they'll show up as part of your online persona.

Filed under: Gaming, Software, HD, Microsoft

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/TW9JyM9W2yk/

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Obama nominating Comey as FBI director Friday

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama on Friday plans to nominate President George W. Bush's former No. 2 at the Justice Department, Jim Comey, to lead the FBI as the agency grapples with privacy debates over a host of recently exposed investigative tactics.

If confirmed by the Senate, Comey would serve a 10-year tenure and replace Robert Mueller, who has held the job since the week before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Mueller is set to resign on Sept. 4 after overseeing the bureau's transformation into one the country's chief weapons against terrorism.

The White House said in a statement that Obama would announce his choice of Comey on Friday afternoon.

Comey was a federal prosecutor who severed for several years as the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York before coming to Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks as deputy attorney general. In recent years he's been an executive at defense company Lockheed Martin, general counsel to a hedge fund, board member at HSBC Holdings and lecturer on national security law at Columbia Law School.

The White House may hope that Comey's Republican background and strong credentials will help him through Senate confirmation at a time when some of Obama's nominees have been facing tough battles. Republicans have said they see no major obstacles to his confirmation, although he is certain to face tough questions about his hedge fund work, his ties to Wall Street as well as how he would handle current, high-profile FBI investigations.

The FBI is responsible for both intelligence and law enforcement with more than 36,000 employees. It has faced questions in recent weeks over media leak probes involving The Associated Press and Fox News; the Boston Marathon bombings; the attack at Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans; and two vast government surveillance programs into phone records and online communications.

The leaker of those National Security Agency programs, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, also is the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. And just this week Mueller revealed the FBI uses drones for surveillance of stationary subjects and said the privacy implications of such operations are worthy of debate.

Comey played a central role in holding up Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, one of the administration's great controversies and an episode that focused attention on the administration's controversial tactics in the war on terror.

In dramatic testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2007, Comey said he thought the no-warrant wiretapping program was so questionable that he refused for a time to reauthorize it, leading to a standoff with White House officials at the hospital bedside of an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Comey said he refused to recertify the program because Ashcroft had reservations about its legality.

Senior government officials had expressed concerns about whether the NSA, which administered the warrantless eavesdropping program, had the proper oversight in place. Other concerns included whether any president possessed the legal and constitutional authority to authorize the program as it was carried out at the time.

Comey was deputy attorney general in 2005 when he unsuccessfully tried to limit tough interrogation tactics against suspected terrorists. He told then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that some of the practices were wrong and would damage the department's reputation.

Some Democrats denounced those methods as torture, particularly the use of waterboarding, which produces the sensation of drowning.

As U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Comey headed one of the nation's most prominent prosecutorial offices and one at the front lines in the fight against terrorism, corporate malfeasance, organized crime and the war on drugs.

As an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia, Comey handled the investigation of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. military personnel.

He led the Justice Department's corporate fraud task force and spurred the creation of violent crime impact teams in 20 cities, focusing on crimes committed with guns.

After leaving government in 2005, Comey was senior vice president and general counsel at Lockheed Martin. In 2010, he went to the Westport, Conn.-based hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, before leaving in February.

The White House also said Comey has developed improvements in the military justice system's performance regarding crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a member of the Defense Legal Policy Board, which provides independent advice to the defense secretary.

Comey also has taught at the University of Richmond Law School and worked for law firm McGuireWoods LLP, also in Richmond. He has a bachelor's degree from the College of William & Mary, a law degree from the University of Chicago Law School and clerked for former District Court Judge John M. Walker, Jr. in the Southern District of New York.

___

Follow Nedra Pickler on Twitter at https://twitter.com/nedrapickler

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-nominating-comey-fbi-director-friday-202300449.html

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