If all had gone according to plan, Americans would have learned in 25 years that President Barack Obama once a liberal constitutional law professor authorized a top-secret National Security Agency program to monitor the logs of their phone calls.

The court order allowing the government to inspect all Verizon phone records was slated to be declassified on April 12, 2038, when todays political leaders had passed from the stage and were beyond political accountability. Until then, American citizens were supposed to have no way of knowing that the NSA knew when they were good (phoning Grandma for six minutes on her birthday) and when they were bad (arranging an adulterous rendezvous with a 19-minute call to an ex-girlfriend from the office).

Instead, in a major rebuke to Obamas reputation as a purported defender of civil liberties, the Guardian, the British newspaper, published aWednesday night that requires Verizon to provide the NSA with access to all of its phone logs. In one of the more chilling passages in the four-page document, Verizon is not allowed to disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order.

This was the ultimate expression of the doctrine of dont ask, dont tell.

Overnight, the Obama national security team toiled to write talking points for the press, because that damage control strategy worked so well with the news media after Benghazi. While no administration officials commenting on the Guardian story would allow their names to be used (ssshhh, top-secret operation), their responses followed a .

The administrations central argument is that this secret court order allows the NSA to vacuum up phone records but not to listen to the actual phone calls. That might be filed under the heading, We havent secretly shredded all your civil liberties yet.

The talking points also contend that everything is legal under the Patriot Act and other national-security statutes. This was the danger inherent in a panicked Congress overwhelmingly passing draconian legislation in the wake of 9/11.

The continuing veil of secrecy makes it impossible for outsiders to monitor if the Obama administration is overstepping its legal mandate. Democrat MarkUdall, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who had been limited to offeringabout the surveillance program (ssshhh, top-secret operation), said Thursday that this was the kind of government overreach Ive said Americans would find shocking.

The final administration argument is the familiar dont-you-know-theres-a-war-on response: Information of the sort described in the Guardian article has been a critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States. That may well be true, but we dont know for certain (ssshhh, top-secret operation).

Yes, America was attacked in a horrible way nearly 12 years ago on Sept. 11, 2001. But Obama himself said just two weeks ago in hisat the National Defense University: This war like all wars must end. Thats what history advises. Thats what democracy demands.

As has so often been the case during the Obama presidency, especially in national security matters, there is a mismatch between the presidents words and his administrations deeds. Its almost as if the president talks like Rand Paul and governs like Dick Cheney.

Senators who had been briefed on the NSA phone surveillance program suggested Thursday that it is a continuation of policies that the George W. Bush administration adopted after 9/11. As USA Today reported in 2006, of tens of millions of Americans.

It is uplifting that at least one set of policies in Washington remains a bipartisan endeavor.

But that continuity from Bush to Obama brings with it a sense of helplessness for Americans who are frustrated with living perpetually in a fearful national security state. What does it take to turn off the extraordinary measures and supposedly temporary policies adopted after the Twin Towers toppled?

It may take years to know for sure what turned Obama into a national security hawk the moment he entered the Oval Office. But his presidential example is a cautionary lesson in the dangers of believing campaign rhetoric.

Something clearly happens to a newly elected president, regardless of party, the moment he receives his first full-fledged national security briefing. All those can-do national security professionals bristling with news of the latest terrorist threats. All the carefully crafted bureaucratic arguments not to dismantle a single program purportedly safeguarding national security.

The result: A nation of barefoot, beltless, patted-down citizens tromping through airports with the government monitoring their cell phone calls.

Every time there is a revelation like the Guardian story (which will probably trigger another invasive leak investigation), there is the hope that this will be the moment of collective outrage. This will be the moment when left and right unite to pressure the government to revert to the national security policies of the 1990s the approach that merely won the Cold War.

But, once again, nothing substantive is likely to change. Already, the defenders of the national-security status quo are trotting out claims of derailed plots. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told reporters Thursday, Within the last few years, this program was used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States.

Of course, we will never know the details of the incident that Rogers is citing in trust-us fashion or whether the terrorists could have been thwarted by other means that would have protected the privacy of Americans. Because ssshhh, it was a top-secret operation.

Maybe, just maybe, things will change with a new president in 2017. And we can enter a new era when the only government that is secretly hacking our phone calls is the Chinese.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Tony Parker led a masterful fourth quarter performance from San Antonio as the Spurs beat the Heat 92-88 in the opening game of the NBA Finals in Miami on Thursday.

The Heat led 72-69 at the end of the third quarter but the defending NBA champions were out-scored 23-16 in the fourth and Parker sealed the victory with a superb late basket as the shot clock expired.

With the Spurs possessing a two-point advantage and on their likely final play of the game, Parker dribbled and wriggled and yet was still faced with the daunting presence of LeBron James in front of him.

With time and space running out, Parker slipped to his knees but managed to leap back up and find the basket with a jump shot from 16 feet that put San Antonio four points up with just 5.2 seconds remaining.

"We were very fortunate. It looked like he had lost it two or three times... but he stuck with it," Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich told reporters.

"He got control of it again and then got it up there on the rim. It was a great effort by Tony," he said.

Frenchman Parker had a game-high 21 points with six assists while Miami's LeBron James, the league's Most Valuable Player, had his lowest scoring game in this postseason with 18.

HOME ADVANTAGE

James had just eight points in the entire second half as the Spurs maintained their 100 percent record in winning the opening game in five NBA Finals.

The win effectively wipes out Miami's home advantage in the best-of-seven series, which continues in South Florida on Sunday.

Tim Duncan, searching for his fifth championship title with the Spurs, finished with 20 points, 14 rebounds and four assists.

Miami led for the bulk of the game but San Antonio, who only gave up four turnovers in the entire contest, grabbed a 77-76 lead on two free throws from Parker with 7:47 remaining.

A Danny Green three-pointer with a little more than two minutes remaining extended the advantage to 88-81 but Ray Allen kept Miami in the contest, putting away all three free throws after being fouled attempting a shot from outside the arc.

After Duncan sank two more free throws, Miami's Chris Bosh crucially missed his fourth three-point attempt in as many tries.

James, however, maintained his composure to put away a pair of free throws to bring Miami within two points but then came Parker's moment of magic.

"There were plays to made and our offensive inefficiency down the stretch, most of the fourth quarter, probably hurt us more than anything," Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said.

"Now we have to gather ourselves and get ready for Game Two," he added.

(Editing by John O'Brien)

A person familiar with the decision told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Gronkowski will undergo the surgery next month, which means he will miss the rest of offseason training activities with the Patriots. He could return for training camp at the end of July.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the Patriots do not reveal injury details publicly.

Gronkowski missed the 2009 season at the University of Arizona after back surgery. Earlier this month, he underwent a fourth procedure on his left forearm, which he broke last season, to treat an infection.

He broke the forearm Nov. 18 while blocking for an extra point against the Indianapolis Colts. He broke it again early in the Patriots' first playoff game, a win over Houston, ending a rough season for the star tight end.

Gronkowski had 55 receptions and 11 touchdowns despite missing five of the 16 regular-season games last year. The previous year, he had 90 catches for 1,327 yards and a league-high 17 touchdowns.

New England has built its offense around Tom Brady's passing to Gronkowski and fellow tight end Aaron Hernandez. With slot receiver Wes Welker gone to Denver as a free agent, the Patriots will need Gronkowski at full strength when they open the season on Sept. 8.

Only a fool would bet against Emanuel, though. Not for nothing is the foul-mouthed former ballerina nicknamed Rahmbo. Turns out, Mayor Rahm was playing chess while the union was playing checkers.

On Wednesday, the Chicago Board of Education voted 6-0 to shutter 48 elementary schools and one high school program,the Chicago Tribune. (The vote was closer for a 49th elementary school.) All affected students will transfer once their schools close.

The school closings are the centerpiece in Emanuel’s long-term plan to close the $1 billion budget deficit currently facing the city,CBS Chicago.

By comparison, the raises teachers got as a result of their strike have an estimated price tag of $74 million each year,the Tribune.

The move to close so many schools in such a short time is unprecedented in any large American city (though Philadelphia is also closing a couple dozen schools).

“We can no longer embrace the status quo because the status quo is not working for all Chicago schoolchildren,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett Byrd-Bennett, according to the Trib. “It is imperative that you take the difficult decision but essential steps.”

“I firmly believe the most important thing we can do as a city is provide the next generation with a brighter future,” said Emanuel in statement.

Emanuel is continuing — in radical fashion — a transformation initiated some two decades ago by then-Mayor Richard Daley who convinced the Illinois legislature to give the city considerable power to overhaul public education. As the Trib notes, Hizzoner presciently saw improved public schools as critical to luring and sustaining a middle-class tax base.

Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and an ardent critic of Mayor Emanuel, has promised to force the mayor out of office over the school closings. The union has also filed lawsuits.

“Today is a day of mourning for the children of Chicago,” Lewis lamented in an email obtained by The Daily Caller. “Their education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children.”

Lewis swore that her side will eventually win the war.

“Our fight for education justice has now moved to the courts, but it must eventually move to the ballot box,” the labor leader wrote. “We must resist this neoliberal savagery masquerading as school reform. We must resist racism in all of its forms as well as the escalating attacks on the working-class and the poor.”

The Chicago Teachers Union will hold an event designed to teach people how to register voters on Thursday evening at Bethel AME Church on Chicago’s South Side.

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LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Showtime's papal drama "The Borgias" will end its run at the end of its current third season, the network said Wednesday.

The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale - and, now, its series finale - on June 16 at 10 p.m.

The series, which stars Jeremy Irons, Francois Arnaud, Holliday Grainger and others in the tale of Pope Alexander VI, who bribed, bullied and muscled his way into the papacy, will run its Season 3 finale - and, now, its series finale - on June 16 at 10 p.m.

Series creator Neil Jordan said that the series is ending for "a variety of reasons" but that the final episode, dubbed "The Prince," seemed "like the end of a journey" for the Borgia family.

"I never thought I would make a cable series and have enjoyed every minute of it," Jordan noted. "For a variety of reasons we won't be doing a fourth season, but, The Prince', when I wrote it and shot it, did seem like the end of a journey for the family. Whatever bonded them as a family dies in this episode, and the center of the drama for me was always the family. I want to thank Showtime and David Nevins for their unstinting support over the last three years, and look forward to working with them in the future."

Despite the cancelation, Showtime Networks president of entertainment David Nevins called "The Borgias" an example of "outstanding television that will live on."

"It has been an honor to work with the great Neil Jordan and the incomparable Jeremy Irons on 'The Borgias,'" Nevins said. "Neil has written nearly every episode of this series himself. His extraordinary storytelling combined with Jeremy's fascinating portrayal of the infamous Pope Alexander VI, has made for truly outstanding television that will live on. I look forward to future collaborations."

So far in his current season, "The Borgias" has averaged 2.4 million total viewers across platforms, basically what it averaged for its second season in the same time frame.

Early last year, as the show prepared to launch its second season, "Borgias" executive producer James Flynn said that the series would ideally run for four seasons.

"The overall plan in a series like this is ideally four seasons," he said Thursday. "That would be the plan, that would be the ambition."

Team President Josh Kroenke confirmed in an email to The Associated Press on Thursday that Karl's tenure was over just weeks after he was named the NBA's coach of the year. Karl's departure comes shortly after Masai Ujiri, the league's executive of the year, left to become general manager of the Toronto Raptors.

Karl guided the third-youngest team in the NBA to the third-best record in the Western Conference with a franchise-record 57 wins, but the Nuggets were bounced from the first round of the playoffs for the fourth straight season.

He had one more year on his contract. The news was first reported by Yahoo! Sports.

Government forces have moved steadily against rebels in key areas of the country over the past two months, making strategic advances and considerably lowering the threat to the capital, Damascus.

With army soldiers no longer defecting and elite Hezbollah fighters actively helping, the regime now clearly has the upper hand in a two-year civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.

In back-to-back interviews with Lebanese TV stations this week, Assad and his foreign minister both projected an image of self-assuredness, boasting of achievements and suggesting that the military's offensive would continue regardless of whether a peace track is in place.

"What is happening now is not a shift in tactic from defense to attack, but rather a shift in the balance of power in favor of the armed forces," Assad said of his troops' recent battleground successes.

"There is no doubt that as events have unfolded, Syrians have been able to better understand the situation and what is really at stake," he told Al-Manar TV, owned by the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group. "This has helped the armed forces to better carry out their duties and achieve results."

Military analysts and activists on the ground in Syria say that Assad's forces have shown renewed determination since roughly the beginning of April, moving to recapture areas that had long fallen to rebels.

Significantly, Syrian troops appear to have gained the edge in the country's central Homs region.

The regime considers Homs strategically important partly because it links Damascus with the coastal heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The rebels are mostly from the country's Sunni Muslim majority. The coast also is home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus.

Syrian troops and Hezbollah forces have successfully been clearing the town of Qusair in Homs province, where rebels have been entrenched for a year.

State-run Syrian TV said troops on Friday captured the village of Jawadiyeh outside Qusair, closing all entrances leading to the town and tightening the government's siege.

For the rebels, holding the town means protecting their supply line to Lebanon, just 10 kilometers (six miles) away.

Rebels have fought back against the government push into Qusair, and days ago called on opposition forces around the country to join them. Activists said that organized groups of rebels from the northern province of Aleppo managed on Friday to enter areas of the town still in opposition hands to help defend it.

In an interview with Al-Mayadeen TV Wednesday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said he expected the fall of Qusair to the regime "within days."

The commander of the main Western-backed umbrella group of Syrian rebel brigades, Gen. Salim Idris, told The Associated Press in an interview this week that unless rebels receive weapons quickly, they might not be able to hold Qusair.

The army has also successfully pushed back rebels in some areas around the capital. According to residents, that's led to a decline in mortar shells on the city center that only few weeks ago were a daily occurrence.

"The army has broken the atmosphere of fear and terror inside Damascus that the rebels created by firing mortars," said Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese army general who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut.

Jaber said troops have cleared up to 80 percent of the areas around Damascus in the past two months.

Equally important, he said, is the successful offensive the army is conducting in the area south of Damascus that links the capital with the Jordanian border.

Despite a surge in rebel advances near Jordan earlier this year, the government now appears to control much of Daraa province, an opposition stronghold south of Damascus and the birthplace of the uprising.

Experts say the defection rate from Assad's military has sharply dwindled by now, and he has more than made up for it with the help of paramilitary forces and Shiite fighters from Iraq and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Politically, Assad can still count on the support of his Russian and Iranian allies and the growing disarray of the Western-backed Syrian opposition.

On Friday, Russia's MiG aircraft maker announced plans to sign a new agreement to ship at least 10 fighter jets to Syria, a move that comes amid international criticism of earlier Russian weapons deals with Assad's regime.

MiG's director general, Sergei Korotkov, said a Syrian delegation was in Moscow to discuss a new contract for MiG-29 M/M2 fighters. Russian news agencies cited him as saying Syria wants to buy "more than 10" such fighters, but wouldn't give the exact number.

Hours after the Russian announcement, the U.S. and Germany lashed out at Moscow's intentions to provide the Assad regime with an advanced air defense system, which they believe could prolong Syria's civil war.

Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia's transfer of the S-300 missiles would not be "helpful" as the U.S. and Russia jointly try to get the Syrian government and opposition into peace negotiations. The peace talks were initially planned for Geneva next month but have been delayed until July at the earliest.

After meeting Kerry, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said Russia must not "endanger" the peace talks, describing weapon deliveries to Assad as "totally wrong."

An air defense system could also make it harder for the international community to enforce a possible no-fly zone to assist the Syrian rebels fighting Assad something it did in the 2011 civil war in Libya.

Meanwhile, Syria's main political opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition faced stiff criticism from Syrian activists for spending weeklong meetings in Turkey bogged down in personal issues and quarrels about expanding its membership.

On Thursday, the Coalition announced that in light of "massacres" in Qusair, it would not attend peace talks.

Assad, in the interview, projected forcefulness and repeatedly mocked the opposition, calling members of the Coalition "tools" and "slaves" of the West and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab countries.

"We have absolute confidence in our victory," he said. While saying his government is ready "in principle" to attend peace talks in Geneva, he said any agreement reached there would have to be put to a referendum. He also said he would "not hesitate" to run for re-election in 2014 if the Syrian people so wished.

The Coalition's decision not to attend peace talks with representatives of the Assad regime torpedoes the only plan for trying to end Syria's civil war that the international community had been able to agree on.

With prospects for a diplomatic solution dim, the West may have to come up with a new approach. President Barack Obama will likely face renewed pressure to help the rebels militarily.

On Friday, Republican Senator John McCain said rebels need ammunition and heavy weapons to reverse a battlefield situation that currently favors Assad's forces. He spoke a day after he returned from an unannounced trip to Syria.

Britain and France, meanwhile, might have to reassess their timetable for possible arms shipments to the rebels. Earlier this week, the European Union's two main military powers had said they will not send weapons while peace talks remain a viable option.

Amr Al Azm, a U.S.-based Syrian activist and professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio, said the regime's definition of victory has changed. He said it did not matter anymore to Assad that large swathes northern and northeastern Syria were out of government control.

"Assad now considers that if he survives until 2014 while holding on to the coast and the capital, his seat of power, that's victory," he said.

Meanwhile, relatives of a 33-year-old Michigan woman said Friday that she was killed in Syria, the only American known to have died fighting in the civil war. Nicole Lynn Mansfield's relatives said she became interested in the Middle East after converting to Islam and marrying an Arab immigrant several years ago, but said they didn't know she was in Syria.

A pro-Syrian TV said Mansfield, a British man and another fighter working with the opposition were killed in a confrontation with troops in the northern city of Idlib. The report on the circumstances of the deaths could not immediately be confirmed. Britain's Foreign Office confirmed that a U.K. national was killed in Syria but gave no other details.

The Secret Service said the letter addressed to President Barack Obama was intercepted by a White House mail screening facility, and it was turned over to the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for testing and investigation.

Officials previously revealed that two threatening letters postmarked in Louisiana and sent to Bloomberg contained traces of the deadly poison ricin. It was unclear how the letter sent to Obama was similar to the ones addressed to Bloomberg.

The anonymous letters to Bloomberg were opened in New York on Friday at the city's mail facility in Manhattan and in Washington on Sunday at an office used by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the nonprofit he started, police said Wednesday.

Chief New York Police spokesman Paul Browne said preliminary testing indicated the presence of ricin in both letters but that more testing would be done. He said the threats contained references to the debate on gun laws and an oily pinkish-orange substance.

The billionaire mayor has emerged as one of the country's most potent gun-control advocates, able to press his case with both his public position and his private money.

The postal workers' union, citing information it got in a Postal Service briefing, said the letters bore a Shreveport, La., postmark.

Louisiana State Police spokeswoman Julie Lewis said state authorities have deferred to the FBI and have not opened an investigation. The Shreveport postal center handles mail from Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, so the letter might have come from any of those states, Lewis said.

The people who initially came into contact with the letters showed no symptoms of exposure to the poison, but three officers who later examined the New York letter experienced minor symptoms that have since abated, police said.

Browne would not comment on what specific threats were made. He also wouldn't say whether they were handwritten or typed and whether investigators believe they were sent by the same person.

"In terms of why they've done it, I don't know," Bloomberg said at an event Wednesday night.

One of the letters "obviously referred to our anti-gun efforts, but there's 12,000 people that are going to get killed this year with guns and 19,000 that are going to commit suicide with guns, and we're not going to walk away from those efforts," said Bloomberg, adding that he didn't feel threatened.

The letters were the latest in a string of toxin-laced missives.

In Washington state, a 37-year-old was charged last week with threatening to kill a federal judge in a letter that contained ricin.

About a month earlier, letters containing the substance were addressed to Obama, a U.S. senator and a Mississippi judge. One of the letters postmarked in Memphis, Tenn., was traced back to Tupelo, Miss., and a Mississippi man was arrested.

Browne would not say whether the letters were believed to be linked to any other recent ricin cases.

Police said the letter to Bloomberg in Washington, D.C., was opened by Mark Glaze, the director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. He was working out of the offices of The Raben Group, a Washington lobbying firm where he keeps an office. Glaze happened to open the letter while sitting outside over the Memorial Day weekend, said the firm's founder, Robert Raben.

"I'm very concerned about our employees and co-workers and clients," Raben said by phone Wednesday, adding that the firm would do whatever needed to ensure safety. "I'm sorry that we live in a world in which people do such awful things. Thank God, right now, everybody's physically fine."

A mayor's spokesman also speaking for the nonprofit said he had no comment.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ricin is a poison found naturally in castor beans. Symptoms can include difficulty breathing, vomiting and redness on the skin depending on how the affected person comes into contact with the poison.

Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now counts more than 700 mayors nationwide as members. It lobbies federal and state lawmakers, and it aired a spate of television ads this year urging Congress to expand background checks and pass other gun-control measures after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The background check proposal failed in a Senate vote in April, and other measures gun-control advocates wanted including a ban on sales of military-style assault weapons have stalled.

Separately, Bloomberg also has made political donations to candidates who share his desire for tougher gun restrictions. His super PAC, Independence USA, put $2.2 million into a Democratic primary this winter for a congressional seat in Illinois, for example. Bloomberg's choice, former state lawmaker Robin Kelly, won the primary and the seat.

___

Associated Press Writer Jennifer Peltz in New York and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

Another problem is I am having a lot of feelings for his best friend, and he has feelings for me, too. I don't want to tell my boyfriend because I love him and don't want to lose him. I also don't want to ruin his friendship with the other guy.

My boyfriend wants to have sex again, but I don't. I wish I could take it back. What can I do? -- LOST AND CONFUSED

DEAR LOST AND CONFUSED: Because you had sex once does not mean you are compelled to do it again. Feeling as you do about the best friend is a strong sign that as much as you care for your boyfriend, you are not in love with him.

If you are being pressured to have sex, it's important for your sake that you tell your boyfriend you feel it happened too soon, you're sorry you did it, and you have decided to wait until you are older to start again. It would be an intelligent move for you because your affections appear to be all over the map right now.

I am also concerned because you didn't mention whether you both used birth control. It's a sign of maturity when couples plan ahead and take precautions to avoid an unwanted pregnancy. (And yes, a girl can get pregnant the first time.) In fact, there's a word for teens who have sex on the spur of the moment and don't use birth control: It's PARENTS.

DEAR ABBY: My friend is a compulsive talker. "Chatty Cathy" draws detailed descriptions of people I don't know and don't care about and lingers over past and current tribulations. I tolerate her behavior because she's a kind person, but she is oblivious to how much she dominates a conversation. It's like something compels her to fill every silence with monologue.

Her personal and work relationships suffer because of it. It's hard for her to hold a job, and she often becomes upset over this co-worker's or that family member's behavior. It is always the other person's failure, yet she is always in the center of the commotion.

She has had a tough life, partly of her own making. If I try to send subtle cues of uninterest, she doesn't pick up on them and keeps talking and talking. I feel sorry for her. Is there anything I can do to help her, without seeming critical? -- EXHAUSTED LISTENER IN HAWAII

DEAR EXHAUSTED: Not knowing your friend, I can only guess what drives her to talk compulsively. Some people do it because they feel the need to prove to others how smart they are. Others do it out of nervousness or insecurity because they are uncomfortable with silence -- even if it is a momentary pause in conversation.

Because her behavior has had a negative impact on her employability, the next time she mentions problems at work, it would be a kindness to suggest to her that, because it's happening repeatedly, she discuss it with a psychologist. That's not hurtful; it's helpful.

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.

For an excellent guide to becoming a better conversationalist and a more sociable person, order "How to Be Popular." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Popularity Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)

Yara Abbas, a reporter for the al-Ikhbariya news channel, was killed near Debaa airport in Homs province. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad there have been trying to recapture the base from the rebels seeking to oust him.

Syria TV said Abbas, in her mid-twenties, was targeted by "terrorists", the term commonly used by Assad supporters to describe the rebels.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition monitoring group, said several members of her television team were also wounded in the attack.

Abbas was a common sight for Syrian television viewers. She frequently reported alongside Assad's forces from the frontline of Syria's two-year conflict.

(Reporting by Erika Solomon; Editing by Jon Hemming)