After seizing the momentum in recent months in Syria's civil war, President Bashar Assad's forces are on the offensive against the rebels on several fronts, including in Idlib province along the border with Turkey. Government forces are in firm control of the provincial capital of same name, while dozens of rebel brigades control the countryside.

The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights said government shelling overnight targeted five villages near Idlib city. Eight women and six children were among the 29 people killed, according to the Observatory.

The group, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said the deadliest attack took place in the village of Maghra, where a rocket slammed into a row of houses, killing 13 people. Three nearby villages Bara, Basamis and Kafr Nabl were hit by artillery shells that killed another 13 people. Three others died in an airstrike on the village Iblin, the Observatory said.

In central Syria, a car bomb exploded outside a police headquarters in the town of Deir Atiyeh, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Damascus, killing 13 people, including 10 policemen. One child was among the dead, the Observatory said.

Syria's state news agency confirmed the attack late Sunday, but said a suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden car in a residential area of the town, causing an unknown number of casualties. It said "terrorists" were behind the blast a government term for rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad's regime.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but radical Islamic groups, including those with links to al-Qaida, frequently target Syrian government institutions, security installations and troops with car bombs and suicide attacks.

Last month, a Syrian branch of al-Qaida known as Jabhat al-Nusra claimed responsibility for multiple suicide attacks on security compounds in Damascus that killed at least five people.

The Nusra Front and other Islamic extremist groups have been the most effective fighting force on the opposition side in the past year, spearheading many of the rebel offensives that have captured military bases, towns and villages.

The U.N. estimates that more than 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against the Assad regime. It turned into a civil war after opposition supporters took up arms to fight a brutal government crackdown.

Cameron once said that the trouble with the social networking service was its "instant-ness" and the risk of people making themselves look foolish by sending too many Tweets.

On the day the government launched a controversial cap on welfare payments, Cameron sent this message: "@IDS_MP and I are determined to make work pay and help the UK compete on the #GlobalRace".

He meant to link to the account of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, the minister behind the new limits on benefit payments.

However, Duncan Smith does not appear to have a Twitter account. Instead, the link was to a spoof page that jokes sardonically about the high price of champagne and foie gras.

One message said: "A 15 percent increase in MPs' pay is a disgrace. Has anyone seen the price of foie gras and Armand de Brignac...we need at least 25 percent."

Another read: "I've always supported a mansion tax. Your tax buys my mansion. Chin chin!"

Cameron's official spokesman made light of the slip-up, suggesting the episode could be summed up with the Twitter hashtag: #onetotakeonthechin.

Asked whether Cameron writes his own Tweets or approves them before his team sends them out, he said: "The prime minister's Tweets are entirely his views."

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

I am a wife who would love to have sex more often, but I'm tired! I work full-time and do most of the household chores. I also do most of the cooking.

When my husband heads up to the bedroom at 10 o'clock and gives me that "come hither look," I'm not in the mood for sex. I'm thinking about the two loads of laundry and the sink full of dishes that still need to be done. Or I'm trying to remember whether I signed that permission slip for our daughter and making a mental note about picking up my prescriptions on the way to a client meeting in the morning.

Speaking of prescriptions, is Mike's wife perhaps on birth control pills? Those can decrease a woman's sex drive. I took a particular pill for a year before realizing how much it killed my desire. My doctor changed the prescription. Although there's a big difference, I'm still too tired to do much about it most days.

However, my husband has figured out I have more energy in the mornings, so his timing is better on those "come hither looks." Now if I could only get him to help out more with the chores ... -- G. IN DAYTON, OHIO

DEAR G.: Thank you for sharing. And you're right -- readers wasted no time flooding my office with comments on this topic:

DEAR ABBY: After conversations with women of all ages, I have concluded that more often than not, it is the husband who has caused the wife's sex drive to diminish, not hormones or other physical problems.

Ask Mike how he treats his wife on a daily basis; whether he has habits or hygiene that are off-putting; whether he indulges in pornography; whether he has taken care of his health and appearance. After 17 years, is he a good lover?

Many women are as dissatisfied with their sex lives as their complaining husbands are. Anyone who wants to have a satisfying sex partner needs to be one. -- OVER 50 AND STILL INTERESTED

DEAR ABBY: A woman's sex drive is a complex issue that in my experience has nothing to do with her hormone levels. A decline can occur at any age even though she has no obvious medical issues. The most common causes are stress, unresolved and deeply buried sexual issues, concern about body image, empty nest syndrome, distraction with family problems, worry over work or finances, and the side effects of medications such as antidepressants. -- SAN DIEGO GYNECOLOGIST

DEAR ABBY: When sex was mind-blowing for me was when I felt the most loved by my husband. The way he treats me has changed over the years, and lately I'm so turned off that I can no longer physically respond to him. Often, a woman loses interest in sex because her partner makes her feel like he has lost interest in her.

At the beginning of a relationship, both people do special things for each other to show their affection. These are the things women need. To continue feeling loved, each woman has different emotional needs that can stay the same or evolve as life's circumstances change.

The bottom line is, if men want their wives to want them physically, they need to learn what their wives want emotionally -- and then do a lot of it. Pay attention to her, communicate, make her a priority. I'm amazed that so many men don't understand how enormous the payoff would be if they made the effort to make their wives feel they are still special. -- OUTTA HERE SOON

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

What teens need to know about sex, drugs, AIDS and getting along with peers and parents is in "What Every Teen Should Know." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

Last Tuesday (June 12), I caught a ferry from the lower Manhattan waterfront (just south of the substation thatso dramatically in the midst of Hurricane Sandy) to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. There, Mayor Michael Bloomberghis vision of a New York that will be far better able to withstand the battering from giant storms that, thanks to climate change, are likely to arrive with increased frequency and fury.

The mayor began by noting some stark facts:

A lot of media attention in the wake of the speech focused on Bloomberg's call forto keep rising waters at bay. Yet, embedded in the address was also an ambitious, but practical, rethinking of how New York City makes and uses energy. The plan frames a future in which solar, wind and micro-grids play a much larger role in the city's energy mix.

"Our plan calls for utilities and regulators to diversify the sources of energy feeding the city, to fix rules that hinder the growth of distributed generation, including for customers who want to generate their own power, and to work with the city to evaluate and adopt micro-grid pilots," Bloomberg added.

Together, a network of including solar and combined heat and power, which are proving successful in many places already emit less pollution than fossil fuels and can be a source of power if the grid goes down. The key is to set up the rules of the grid so that homes and businesses can choose to build renewable and resilient systems into their buildings as a matter of routine.

Getting the rules right will require cooperation at many levels. New York City'sis largely in the hands of regulators and companies not directly under the control of city government. As a result, change on the scale proposed by Bloomberg will take unprecedented collaboration among government agencies, and among government, utilities, financial leaders, the real estate community and local communities.

The challenge now is to make these visions a reality. Many of the rules that need to be changed are set by the New York State Public Service Commission. The city will need new rules governing the grid in order to allow for the easy integration of renewable energy sources, using ideas like demand-response to make sure we take full advantage of sunny and windy days.

We will also need to scale up ideas, like , to attract private capital to the task of retrofitting buildings so that they can use cleaner power sources. And, we need to make these solutions work for a city with buildings and neighborhoods as diverse as Wall Street, Red Hook, the Rockaways, Harlem, the South Bronx and Staten Island.

Overall, it's encouraging to me to see city (and state) leaders stepping forward with visions that point toward a future in which New York will both help keep its lights on in a storm and cut the emissions that are linked to.

The stakes are high. Check out these facts:

Let's get to work.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. This article was originally published on.

--JETER BACK BUT INJURED AGAIN

New York Yankees captain Derek Jeter returns from a nine-month injury absence, only to get get injured again.

http://apne.ws/12ko6o2

--ROONEY OUT FOR A MONTH AFTER INJURY ON ASIAN TOUR

Manchester United forward Wayne Rooney faces a month on the sidelines after injuring a hamstring in training for a preseason friendly in Thailand.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2013/soccer/wires/07/11/2080.ap.soc.manchester.united.rooney.1st.ld.writethru.242/index.html

--KOVALCHUK SHOCKS DEVILS BY MOVING TO RUSSIAN LEAGUE

Superstar forward Ilya Kovalchuk shocked the New Jersey Devils by retiring from the NHL on Thursday to return home to Russia.

http://apne.ws/15kfjnQ

--KITTEL TOO QUICK FOR CAVENDISH AT LE TOUR

Germany's Marcel Kittel too quick for favorite Mark Cavendish in Tour de France sprint as Chris Froome maintains overall lead.

http://apne.ws/176K5SJ

--AUSTRALIA'S AGAR STUNS ENGLAND IN ASHES FIRST TEST

Australia's Ashton Agar scores a record-breaking 98, batting at No. 11, on debut to stun England and turn the first Ashes test on its head.

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/52453041

[More from BGR: ]

Samsung hasin roughly two months, making the companys latest smartphone the fastest-selling Android device of all time. Meanwhile, thesold , and Apple has gone on to sell more than 80 million iPhones in the past year alone.

[More from BGR: ]

As quickly as phones are selling right now though, the smartphone market likely has not yet peaked. But Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessyargues that Samsung might have. He notes that while Samsung has the ability to reduce costs and increase profits thanks to its production line, the company isnt innovating like Apple is. Shaughnessy claims that if Samsung doesnt acquire new competencies, 2013 could mark the beginning of a reversal of fortunes for the worlds largest smartphone vendor.

Despite Shaughnessys belief that Samsung isnt innovating, recent reports suggest otherwise. Along with working on a new smartwatch, Samsung isthat should debut in early 2014. The company has also continued to with its TouchWiz user interface, bringing unique features such as Smart Scroll, Smart Pause and Air View to its Galaxy S4 smartphone.

There is still room for growth in the smartphone market despite the coming wave of wearable computing devices, and as long as it can keep pushing the envelope with Android, there is also still room for Samsung to grow as well.

This article was

In its sixth-ever test flight, SpaceX's experimental hopped to a maximum altitude of 1,066 feet (325 meters) on June 14. It then made a slow and controlled descent back to Earth at the company's rocket development facility in McGregor, Texas.

SpaceX released a 95-second on Friday (July 5), showing the action from above as seen by a small robotic "hexacopter" drone.

Most rockets are designed to be expendable, burning up in Earth's atmosphere after delivering their payloads to space. wants to develop fully reusable launch vehicles, which experts say would make spaceflight much cheaper and more efficient.

The 10-story-tall Grasshopper is a big step in this direction, company officials say. The rocket takes off and lands vertically, touching down on four metallic legs back at its launch pad.

Grasshopper incorporates the first-stage tank of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, which launches the California-based firm'sDragon capsuleon unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station for NASA. But Grasshopper uses just one Merlin engine while the Falcon 9 sports nine (as its name suggests).

SpaceX's Grasshopper has been leaping higher and higher with every successive test flight. Its previous launches took place in September, November and December of 2012, and March and April of this year. Those hops reached peak altitudes of 8.2 feet (2.5 m), 17.7 feet (5.4 m), 131 feet (40 m), 263 feet (80 m) and 820 feet (250 m), respectively.

In addition to reaching unprecedented heights, the most recent flight also incorporated new navigation technology, company officials said.

"For the first time in this test, Grasshopper made use of its full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to accomplish a precision landing," SpaceX officials wrote in a description accompanying the flight video. "Most rockets are equipped with sensors to determine position, but these sensors are generally not accurate enough to accomplish the type of precision landing necessary with Grasshopper."

Follow Mike Wall on Twitterand.Follow us , or . Originally published on.

RELATED:

RELATED:

The leaked iPhone specs show a slightly rounded plastic back body case. The plastic form is one solid piece that covers the entire phone, instead of the standard iPhone's glass covers with a metal divide. Techcrunch"very much reminiscent of the current-generation iPod touch." In comparison shots with the current generation iPhone 5, you can see this cheaper option is slightly thicker and only features one speaker grill on the bottom of the phone. 

RELATED:

There's no indication that this is the cheap iPhone's final design and, as always, we should be cautious of the source of this rumor. Techdy is a site that builds knock-off devices to run on Android, so it's not exactly the ideal, but they do look almost identical to pictures leaked purporting tolast week. 

RELATED:

If this really is the cheap iPhone, it fits with what we've heard about the phone . The cheap iPhone will have a slightly different-looking body with interchangeable color backgrounds. Gone will be the days of iPhones in only black and white. Your cheap iPhone could be red, pink, purple or blue. Whatever you want, it's up to you! 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - After more than 15 years of failures by scientists around the world and one outright fraud, biologists have finally created human stem cells by the same technique that produced Dolly the cloned sheep in 1996: They transplanted genetic material from an adult cell into an egg whose own DNA had been removed.

The result is a harvest of human embryonic stem cells, the seemingly magic cells capable of morphing into any of the 200-plus kinds that make up a person.

The feat, reported on Wednesday in the journal Cell, could re-ignite the field of stem-cell medicine, which has been hobbled by technical challenges as well as ethical issues.

Until now, the most natural sources of human stem cells have been human embryos, whose use in research poses ethical quandaries. The technique announced on Wednesday, by scientists at Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center, uses unfertilized human eggs.

Eliminating the need for human embryos could boost attempts to use stem cells and their progeny to replace cells damaged or destroyed in heart disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries and other devastating conditions.

But the achievement could also revive fears of reproductive cloning, or producing genetic copies of living (or dead) individuals.

Even before the study was published, a British watchdog group called Human Genetics Alert protested the research.

"Scientists have finally delivered the baby that would-be human cloners have been waiting for: a method for reliably creating cloned human embryos," said Dr. David King, the group's director. "This makes it imperative that we create an international legal ban on human cloning before any more research like this takes place. It is irresponsible in the extreme to have published this research."

Among scientists, however, the accomplishment is being hailed as "a tour de force," as stem cell biologist George Daley of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute put it. "This represents an unparalleled achievement. They succeeded where many other groups failed, including mine."

The highest-profile failure was that of biologist Hwang Woo-suk of Seoul National University in South Korea. In 2005 he and his team made headlines across the globe when they claimed, in the journal Science, that they had created human embryonic stem cells via nuclear transfer, the same technique the Oregon scientists used. Hwang's claim turned out to be a lie, making it one of the most infamous cases of scientific fraud in the last decade.

DOLLY THE SHEEP

If the Oregon achievement holds up and can be replicated by scientists in other labs, it would offer a third, and potentially superior, way of producing embryonic stem cells.

The field of stem cells took off in 1998, when scientists led by Jamie Thomson at the University of Wisconsin announced that they had harvested the cells from days-old human embryos, called blastocysts, obtained from fertility clinics.

The fact that the blastocysts are destroyed when their stem cells are removed ignited a furor from groups that believe life begins at conception. In 2001, President George W. Bush banned federal funding for research that would create more blastocysts, but stem cells already produced from them were fair game.

Those cell lines turned out to be fewer and of poorer quality than scientists had hoped. The next breakthrough came in 2007, when Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University produced human embryonic stem cells in a way that did not require eggs or embryos. He added four genes to adult cells, and the result was like turning back the calendar: The adult cells, which he called induced pluripotent (iPS) cells, showed all the properties of embryonic stem cells, an achievement for which Yamanaka shared last year's Nobel prize in medicine.

"The whole scientific community jumped on the iPS bandwagon," said Dr. Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology.

That turned attention away from a third technique for producing embryonic stem cells: the method that created Dolly the sheep in 1996. Scientists in Scotland had started with a sheep oocyte (egg), removed its DNA and replaced it with DNA from a sheep mammary gland cell. They zapped the egg with electricity to make it grow and divide like a fertilized embryo. No sperm were necessary.

This technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). If the embryo is implanted inside a surrogate mother, as the Dolly team did, the result is reproductive cloning, which has also been done for mice, cows and other animals. But if embryonic development is halted after five days or so, the result is stem cells genetically identical to the donor's - and thus custom-made for therapies to treat degenerative diseases without fear of rejection by the patient's immune system.

The Oregon scientists, led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, used a variation of the Dolly technique. They carefully inserted an adult skin cell into a donated human egg whose DNA had been removed. The unfertilized eggs, stimulated by electric pulses to start dividing, developed to about the 150-cell stage.

The cells were all true embryonic stem cells; they have the "ability to convert just like normal embryonic stem cells, into several different cell types, including nerve cells, liver cells and heart cells," said Mitalipov. "While there is much work to be done in developing safe and effective stem cell treatments, we believe this is a significant step forward in developing the cells that could be used in regenerative medicine."

ODD EGGS

In succeeding with humans, the Oregon team toppled the dogma that there is something odd about human eggs or embryos, said stem cell expert Rudolf Jaenisch of the Whitehead Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Published data said there was a difference in principle between humans and the mice and other animals that had been cloned, a difference that presented an insurmountable barrier to human cloning" for either reproduction or stem cells.

The Oregon team figured out how to get the egg to act as if it had been fertilized. The secret was to keep the eggs in the phase of their growth cycle called "metaphase," which is when DNA aligns in the middle of the cell before the cell divides. The scientists got the best results when they grew the eggs in a little of a substance that tends to be abundant in labs: caffeine.

When conducting the same experiment with monkeys, the Oregon scientists stopped at the production of stem cells and never implanted the ball of cells into a surrogate mother. Mitalipov said reproductive cloning is "not our focus, nor do we believe our findings might be used by others" to do it with humans.

"Reproductive cloning hasn't been advanced by this new paper," agreed MIT's Jaenisch. "If you implanted these embryos, which would be illegal, I think you would get the same results as in mice: Most of them die at birth, and the others encounter big troubles as they age."

STEM CELL FACE-OFF

Now the question is whether embryonic stem cells produced with the Dolly method would be superior to those created with the turn-back-the-calendar iPS method.

Scientists have already found that iPS cells tend to age prematurely and die. They are also created with cancer-causing genes, which could make them dangerous to use therapeutically.

Another possible advantage of the embryonic stem cells produced by the Dolly method: It takes just days, compared with weeks for iPS cells.

"If you have a patient who needs, that can be an important difference," said Natalie DeWitt of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

On the other hand, the human eggs needed for the Dolly technique are in short supply and hard to obtain, notes MIT's Jaenisch. (The Oregon team paid the women who donated eggs for their time and "discomfort.") Although the Oregon team coaxed stem cells out of every egg they collected from one of the women, other labs might not be so efficient.

If the Dolly technique becomes a reliable source of embryonic stem cells, it might accelerate clinical trials of the cells, which have been slow to get going and disappointing.

In 2011, for instance, biotechnology firm Geron halted a clinical trial that used embryonic stem cells to repair spinal cord injuries and said it was leaving the field.

The most promising human study is ACT's. It is two years into clinical trials using stem cells derived from human embryos to treat two forms of blindness, including macular degeneration, with encouraging results. One patient's vision went from 20/400 to 20/40, said Lanza.

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Douglas Royalty)

NEW YORK (AP) -- The stock market is getting its momentum back.

All major stocks indexes rose Tuesday, and the biggest gains were in riskier small-company stocks and sectors that do best when the economy is growing.

Major indexes rose for a fourth straight day. The Standard & Poor's 500 index had its best run in two months.

Traders have grown more confident after Friday's strong jobs reports and on expectations of record corporate earnings for the second quarter, which ended June 30. So far, the stock market is up nearly 3 percent in July following a 1.5 percent dip in June, its first monthly decline since October.

The Russell 2000, an index of small-company stocks, rose nearly 1 percent Tuesday. The Dow Jones transportation average, seen as a leading indicator for the broader economy, led all indexes with a 2.3 percent rise, its best performance in a month.

The gains suggest that investors are more certain that the economy's prospects are good. In the first half of the year, stock markets were powered by companies that pay large dividends and are considered a sure way to make money even when the economic outlook is iffy.

The Russell 2000 rose eight points, or 0.9 percent, to 1,018.05. It has gained 4.2 percent in July and is moving deeper into record territory. The index has risen 20 percent, this year, more than its large-company counterparts, the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 index.

Investors "are starting to go to the more aggressive areas that usually do better in an expansionary economy," said Ryan Detrick, a senior technical strategist at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

The Dow Jones transportation was led by strong gains for Alaska Air Group and FedEx.

The index jumped 148 points to 6,446. Alaska Air Group rose 7 percent after it forecast an additional $50 million a year in revenue from increased fees. FedEx rose 6 percent on speculation that William Ackman's hedge fund, Pershing Square, could invest in the company.

Wall Street is also turning its attention to corporate earnings. Results for the second quarter, which ended nine days ago, should give traders and investors insights into the economy. Market watchers spent most of June trying to figure out where the Federal Reserve was headed with its economic stimulus program.

Along with the quarterly results, investors want to see how confident companies are about the rest of the year, said Cam Albright, director of asset allocation for Wilmington Trust Investment Advisors.

Major U.S. stock indexes have notched a series of all-time highs this year on expectations that earnings will remain at record levels.

"A lot of what the market has justified its advances on is a strong second half for the economy and a strong second half for earnings," said Albright. "It's important that we see verification of that."

Alcoa was the first major company to announce second-quarter results. The aluminum maker late Monday reported a loss that wasn't as big as financial analysts feared. The company benefited from strong demand for aluminum used in autos and airplanes, although that was offset by weaker prices.

Traders weren't impressed by the results, though. After rising initially, the stock ended down 1 cent, or 0.1 percent, to $7.91.

Yum Brands, which owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and Family Dollar Stores are among the companies reporting their earnings this week. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo will also report.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 75 points, or 0.5 percent, to 15,300.34. The S&P 500 index gained 11 points, or 0.7 percent, to 1,652.32 The Nasdaq composite rose 19 points, or 0.6 percent, to 3,504.26

The S&P 500 gains were led by industrial firms and companies that provide raw materials. Telecommunications companies, which investors turn to when the economic outlook is gloomier, fell.

The S&P 500 is now just 1 percent below its May 21 record of 1,669. It was down almost 6 percent to 1,573 on June 24.

Stocks have recovered since Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the central bank planned to reduce its economic stimulus.

The central bank is buying $85 billion in bonds a month to keep interest rates low and encourage borrowing and spending. That stimulus has been a major support in the stock markets' four-year bull market.

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note was unchanged from Monday at 2.64 percent.

The yield has pulled back after surging to 2.74 percent Friday, its highest level in almost two years, after the government reported strong hiring for June.

In commodities trading, the price of oil rose 17 cents, or 0.2 percent to $103.33 a barrel. Gold rose $12, or 1 percent, to $1,246.90 an ounce.

Among other stocks making big moves:

Barnes and Noble rose 64 cents, or 3.6 percent, to $18.32 after the bookseller said Monday that its CEO is leaving after three years. The company didn't name a replacement.