The Boy Genius Report: Microsoft is blowing it and RIM could too

Who would have thought a couple of years ago that Research In Motion (RIMM) would be on the ropes and Microsoft (MSFT) could be getting close? Well, me… but not many others. Microsoft’s latest strategy of trying to make a no compromise tablet has resulted in, you guessed it, compromise. It’s not as polished as an iPad, it’s more limited in almost every possible way, it’s slow, clunky, unresponsive at times, offers a worse display, weighs more, and is thicker. Plus it costs over $ 100 more when you factor in a Touch Cover or Type Cover keyboard. Plus, you can’t even run Windows applications even though you get the actual Windows desktop.

The best part is the Surface Pro. An even more expensive version of the Surface, an even thicker version of the Surface, and an even heavier version of the Surface, and you get a fan to cool your heating tablet when you’re doing your Excel speadsheets or when Outlook keeps freezing — oh my god why does it freeze so much when you’re typing — and you get half the battery life of the current Surface model.

There’s a very big issue with Microsoft’s strategy of no compromise, because time and time again this company fails to realize that the reason Apple (AAPL) is winning is because Apple choses to compromise.

Apple chooses to throw out the USB port, the DVD drive, the kickstand, the fan, the Intel processor. Apple understands that laptops are still useful but at this point in the game, the only use for a multitouch laptop should be in the trackpad. Microsoft is trying to introduce the Surface Pro as your new laptop, except it doesn’t work well is a variety of situations, especially on your lap. Plus, consumers don’t care, and with enterprises and large companies (and small companies) not rushing out to buy brand new computers or brand new software licenses for their employees and workstations due to cost, and the fact that more and more employees are bringing in their own laptops and also asking for Macs, Microsoft has a tremendous problem.

Compounding Windows 8′s failure is the fact that Microsoft is still not prepared for the consumerization of the enterprise world, Microsoft’s bread and butter, and the reason why Microsoft has $ 60 billion in cash. As Windows licenses erode and Office sales slow, Microsoft isn’t going to have another hugely profitable business to rely on — that’s why this is so scary.

Switching to RIM, the company is actually doing a lot of things right in my book. I respect that everyone there has been huddled up, focused on a single product and operating system and put all of their time into getting it as right as they can. Whether that means anything at all, we’ll soon see; RIM has probably been one of the worst players in the mobile space as far as execution is concerned but Thorsten Heins seems to have a better grasp on where the company can take advantage in different markets and at what price point, though RIM’s market share is declining so rapidly that not even BrickBreaker can save the company there.

I have two concerns from a very high level (in-depth thoughts at a later date) about BlackBerry 10 and the devices RIM is introducing on the hardware front. First off, going with a touch only phone first sends the wrong message to me. What is RIM’s biggest strength? Some would say email, some would say security, most would say the keyboard. Introducing a brand new operating system, with a brand new smartphone that doesn’t feature RIM’s fantastic keyboard feels like a marketing blunder. If there is one single reason BlackBerry owners (yes! they do still exist) still have a BlackBerry, it’s for the keyboard.

Yes, I know, there is a QWERTY BlackBerry 10 smartphone coming just a couple of weeks or months after the first touchscreen device, but these two should have been joined at the hip at the very minimum.

My other concern is RIM is already showing a break in the company’s focus by introducing two different screen sizes from the gate. The BlackBerry L-series will have a 1280 x 768 screen resolution and the BlackBerry N-series have a 720 x 720-pixel display. In my time playing with an N-series prototype, this square resolution felt incredibly awkward and it’s now two screen sizes that RIM’s developer community has to account for when making apps. Add this to the fact that RIM has enough trouble getting developers on board — of course Microsoft is having trouble there, too — and this feels like it’s not the most optimal scenario.  

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Asperger’s dropped from revised diagnosis manual

CHICAGO (AP) — The now familiar term “Asperger‘s disorder” is being dropped. And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given a scientific-sounding diagnosis called DMDD. But “dyslexia” and other learning disorders remain.

The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the diagnostic guide used by the nation’s psychiatrists. Changes were approved Saturday.

Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the American Psychiatric Association‘s new diagnostic manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide. The manual also is important for the insurance industry in deciding what treatment to pay for, and it helps schools decide how to allot special education.

This diagnostic guide “defines what constellations of symptoms” doctors recognize as mental disorders, said Dr. Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor. More important, he said, it “shapes who will receive what treatment. Even seemingly subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care.”

Olfson was not involved in the revision process. The changes were approved Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., by the psychiatric association’s board of trustees.

The aim is not to expand the number of people diagnosed with mental illness, but to ensure that affected children and adults are more accurately diagnosed so they can get the most appropriate treatment, said Dr. David Kupfer. He chaired the task force in charge of revising the manual and is a psychiatry professor at the University of Pittsburgh.

One of the most hotly argued changes was how to define the various ranges of autism. Some advocates opposed the idea of dropping the specific diagnosis for Asperger’s disorder. People with that disorder often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects but lack social skills. Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label.

And some Asperger’s families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services.

But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.

The new manual adds the term “autism spectrum disorder,” which already is used by many experts in the field. Asperger’s disorder will be dropped and incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis. The new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don’t talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.

Kelli Gibson of Battle Creek, Mich., who has four sons with various forms of autism, said Saturday she welcomes the change. Her boys all had different labels in the old diagnostic manual, including a 14-year-old with Asperger’s.

“To give it separate names never made sense to me,” Gibson said. “To me, my children all had autism.”

Three of her boys receive special education services in public school; the fourth is enrolled in a school for disabled children. The new autism diagnosis won’t affect those services, Gibson said. She also has a 3-year-old daughter without autism.

People with dyslexia also were closely watching for the new updated doctors’ guide. Many with the reading disorder did not want their diagnosis to be dropped. And it won’t be. Instead, the new manual will have a broader learning disorder category to cover several conditions including dyslexia, which causes difficulty understanding letters and recognizing written words.

The trustees on Saturday made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several work groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses.

The revised guidebook “represents a significant step forward for the field. It will improve our ability to accurately diagnose psychiatric disorders,” Dr. David Fassler, the group’s treasurer and a University of Vermont psychiatry professor, said after the vote.

The shorthand name for the new edition, the organization’s fifth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, is DSM-5. Group leaders said specifics won’t be disclosed until the manual is published but they confirmed some changes. A 2000 edition of the manual made minor changes but the last major edition was published in 1994.

Olfson said the manual “seeks to capture the current state of knowledge of psychiatric disorders. Since 2000 … there have been important advances in our understanding of the nature of psychiatric disorders.”

Catherine Lord, an autism expert at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York who was on the psychiatric group’s autism task force, said anyone who met criteria for Asperger’s in the old manual would be included in the new diagnosis.

One reason for the change is that some states and school systems don’t provide services for children and adults with Asperger’s, or provide fewer services than those given an autism diagnosis, she said.

Autism researcher Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said small studies have suggested the new criteria will be effective. But she said it will be crucial to monitor so that children don’t lose services.

Other changes include:

—A new diagnosis for severe recurrent temper tantrums — disruptive mood dysregulation disorder. Critics say it will medicalize kids’ who have normal tantrums. Supporters say it will address concerns about too many kids being misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with powerful psychiatric drugs. Bipolar disorder involves sharp mood swings and affected children are sometimes very irritable or have explosive tantrums.

—Eliminating the term “gender identity disorder.” It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn’t a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with “gender dysphoria,” which means emotional distress over one’s gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner .

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Yahoo ‘ordered to pay $2.7bn’

30 November 2012 Last updated at 17:36 ET

Internet group Yahoo says it has been ordered to pay $ 2.7bn (£1.68bn) by a Mexican court.

The reported ruling follows a lawsuit stemming from allegations of breach of contract and lost profits related to a yellow pages listing service.

Yahoo said it “believes the plaintiffs’ claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals”.

The lawsuit had been brought by Worldwide Directories SA de CV and Ideas Interactivas SA de CV.

In a statement on its website Yahoo said the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City had “entered a non-final judgment of US $ 2.7 billion against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo de Mexico” in the case.

Shares in Yahoo, which is based in Sunnyvale, California, fell by 1.4% in after-the-bell trading following the news.

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Egypt’s Mursi calls referendum as Islamists march

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt‘s President Mohamed Mursi called a December 15 referendum on a draft constitution on Saturday as at least 200,000 Islamists demonstrated in Cairo to back him after opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.

Speaking after receiving the final draft of the constitution from the Islamist-dominated assembly, Mursi urged a national dialogue as the country nears the end of the transition from Hosni Mubarak‘s rule.

“I renew my call for opening a serious national dialogue over the concerns of the nation, with all honesty and impartiality, to end the transitional period as soon as possible, in a way that guarantees the newly-born democracy,” Mursi said.

Mursi plunged Egypt into a new crisis last week when he gave himself extensive powers and put his decisions beyond judicial challenge, saying this was a temporary measure to speed Egypt’s democratic transition until the new constitution is in place.

His assertion of authority in a decree issued on November 22, a day after he won world praise for brokering a Gaza truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement, dismayed his opponents and widened divisions among Egypt’s 83 million people.

Two people have been killed and hundreds wounded in protests by disparate opposition forces drawn together and re-energized by a decree they see as a dictatorial power grab.

A demonstration in Cairo to back the president swelled through the afternoon, peaking in the early evening at least 200,000, said Reuters witnesses, basing their estimates on previous rallies in the capital. The authorities declined to give an estimate for the crowd size.

“The people want the implementation of God’s law,” chanted flag-waving demonstrators, many of them bussed in from the countryside, who choked streets leading to Cairo University, where Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood had called the protest.

Tens of thousands of Egyptians had protested against Mursi on Friday. “The people want to bring down the regime,” they chanted in Cairo‘s Tahrir Square, echoing the trademark slogan of the revolts against Hosni Mubarak and Arab leaders elsewhere.

Rival demonstrators threw stones after dark in the northern city of Alexandria and a town in the Nile Delta. Similar clashes erupted again briefly in Alexandria on Saturday, state TV said.

“COMPLETE DEFEAT”

Mohamed Noshi, 23, a pharmacist from Mansoura, north of Cairo, said he had joined the rally in Cairo to support Mursi and his decree. “Those in Tahrir don’t represent everyone. Most people support Mursi and aren’t against the decree,” he said.

Mohamed Ibrahim, a hardline Salafi Islamist scholar and a member of the constituent assembly, said secular-minded Egyptians had been in a losing battle from the start.

“They will be sure of complete popular defeat today in a mass Egyptian protest that says ‘no to the conspiratorial minority, no to destructive directions and yes for stability and sharia (Islamic law)’,” he told Reuters.

Mursi has alienated many of the judges who must supervise the referendum. His decree nullified the ability of the courts, many of them staffed by Mubarak-era appointees, to strike down his measures, although says he respects judicial independence.

A source at the presidency said Mursi might rely on the minority of judges who support him to supervise the vote.

“Oh Mursi, go ahead and cleanse the judiciary, we are behind you,” shouted Islamist demonstrators in Cairo.

Mursi, once a senior Muslim Brotherhood figure, has put his liberal, leftist, Christian and other opponents in a bind. If they boycott the referendum, the constitution would pass anyway.

If they secured a “no” vote to defeat the draft, the president could retain the powers he has unilaterally assumed.

And Egypt’s quest to replace the basic law that underpinned Mubarak’s 30 years of army-backed one-man rule would also return to square one, creating more uncertainty in a nation in dire economic straits and seeking a $ 4.8 billion loan from the IMF.

“NO PLACE FOR DICTATORSHIP”

Mursi’s well-organized Muslim Brotherhood and its ultra-orthodox Salafi allies, however, are convinced they can win the referendum by mobilizing their own supporters and the millions of Egyptians weary of political turmoil and disruption.

“There is no place for dictatorship,” the president said on Thursday while the constituent assembly was still voting on a draft constitution which Islamists say enshrines Egypt’s new freedoms.

Human rights groups have voiced misgivings, especially about articles related to women’s rights and freedom of speech.

The text limits the president to two four-year terms, requires him to secure parliamentary approval for his choice of prime minister, and introduces a degree of civilian oversight over the military – though not enough for critics.

The draft constitution also contains vague, Islamist-flavored language that its opponents say could be used to whittle away human rights and stifle criticism.

For example, it forbids blasphemy and “insults to any person”, does not explicitly uphold women’s rights and demands respect for “religion, traditions and family values”.

The draft injects new Islamic references into Egypt’s system of government but retains the previous constitution’s reference to “the principles of sharia” as the main source of legislation.

“We fundamentally reject the referendum and constituent assembly because the assembly does not represent all sections of society,” said Sayed el-Erian, 43, a protester in Tahrir and member of a party set up by opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei.

Several independent newspapers said they would not publish on Tuesday in protest. One of the papers also said three private satellite channels would halt broadcasts on Wednesday.

Egypt cannot hold a new parliamentary election until a new constitution is passed. The country has been without an elected legislature since the Supreme Constitutional Court ordered the dissolution of the Islamist-dominated lower house in June.

The court is due to meet on Sunday to discuss the legality of parliament’s upper house.

“We want stability. Every time, the constitutional court tears down institutions we elect,” said Yasser Taha, a 30-year-old demonstrator at the Islamist rally in Cairo.

(Additional reporting by Marwa Awad, Yasmine Saleh and Tom Perry; Editing by Myra MacDonald and Jason Webb)

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Zynga shares slide after privileged status with Facebook ends

(Reuters) – Shares of gaming company Zynga Inc fell as much as 10 percent, a day after the “Farmville” creator reached an agreement with Facebook Inc that reduces its dependence on the social networking giant.

The companies reported in regulatory filings on Thursday that they have reached an agreement to amend a 2010 deal that was widely seen as giving Zynga privileged status on the world’s No.1 social network.

Zynga gets a freer hand to operate a standalone gaming website, but gives up its ability to promote its site on Facebook and to draw from the thriving social network of about 1 billion users.

“Although Zynga investors have reacted negatively to Thursday’s announcements so far, we view them as a long-term positive for both companies,” Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said in a note to clients.

“Zynga now has an advantage to offer more payment options which could result in additional subscribers who are not Facebook users,” he said, maintaining his “outperform” rating and price target of $ 4 on the stock.

Both internet companies have been trying to reduce their interdependence, with Zynga starting up its own Zynga.com platform, and Facebook wooing other games developers.

In recent quarters, fees from Zynga contributed 15 percent of Facebook’s revenue, while Zynga relies on Facebook for roughly 80 percent of its revenue.

Francisco-based Zynga’s shares were down 7 percent at $ 2.44 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Facebook shares were down more than 1 percent at $ 26.98.

(Reporting By Aurindom Mukherjee in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)

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Is diabetes linked to hearing loss?

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Diabetes has already been tied to an increased risk of kidney and cardiovascular troubles, nerve damage and vision loss, and now a new study finds diabetics to be more than twice as likely as those without the disease to have hearing impairment.

In a review of past research on the question, scientists in Japan also found that younger diabetics were at even higher risk than older adults – though they cannot explain why, and experts caution that this kind of study does not prove that diabetes is directly responsible for the greater hearing loss rates.

“It doesn’t definitively answer the question, but it continues to raise an important point that patients might ask about,” said Dr. Steven Smith, diabetes specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

It’s also not the first time researchers have found a link between diabetes and hearing loss.

In 2008, researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) saw similar patterns in a sample of more than 11,000 people. In that study, people with diabetes were twice as likely to have hearing loss as those without the condition.

Generally, hearing loss is defined as having trouble understanding what people are saying in a hushed voice, and missing some words at a regular volume.

The American Diabetes Association estimates there are currently about 16 million people living in the U.S. with diabetes, and NIH says about 36 million Americans report some level of hearing loss.

It’s thought that high blood sugar levels brought on by diabetes may lead to hearing loss by damaging blood vessels in the ears, according to Chika Horikawa, the study’s lead author from Niigata University Faculty of Medicine in Japan, and colleagues.

They collected information from 13 previous studies examining the link between diabetes and hearing loss and published between 1977 and 2011. Together, the data covered 7,377 diabetics and 12,817 people without the condition.

Overall, Horikawa’s team found that diabetics were 2.15 times as likely as people without the disease to have hearing loss. But when the results were broken down by age, people under age 60 had 2.61 times the risk while people over 60 had 1.58 times higher risk.

The researchers, whose findings appear in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, note that future studies that take more factors into account, such as age and noisy environments, are needed to clarify the link between diabetes and hearing loss.

Still, Horikawa told Reuters Health in an email, people should recognize that diabetics may be at risk for hearing loss based on their results.

“Furthermore, these results propose that diabetic patients are screened for hearing impairment from (an) earlier age compared with non-diabetics,” said Horikawa, adding that hearing loss has also been linked to an increased risk of depression and dementia.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/RlVeeW Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, online November 12, 2012.

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AMR wants keep control over bankruptcy through March 11

NEW YORK (Reuters) – American Airlines‘ bankrupt parent has asked a judge to extend by six weeks, through March 11, the period in which it has the exclusive right to propose a plan to exit bankruptcy.

The request, made jointly with its creditors‘ committee, was filed on Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. The current exclusive window is set to end on January 28.

AMR Corp filed for bankruptcy a year ago in hopes of reducing labor costs and returning to profitability.

Its smaller competitor, US Airways Group Inc , is making a push to acquire it out of bankruptcy. AMR said earlier this year it would prefer to exit as a standalone company, but is discussing merger options, including with US Airways.

Friday’s filing is a sign that discussions with creditors on how to bring AMR out of bankruptcy are progressing cooperatively, if a bit slower than initially expected.

“American and the (creditors’ committee) believe that the proposed extensions will facilitate the expedition of the chapter 11 cases and benefit all parties in interest,” the filing said.

Sean Collins, a spokesman for American, said in a statement that the company “has made significant progress in its restructuring.”

“The work, while progressing well, takes time,” he said.

The exclusivity period bars creditors and other parties from proposing their own plans for how AMR should exit bankruptcy.

That effectively blocks US Airways from making a hostile bid, as any merger plan unveiled during exclusivity would have to be proposed by AMR itself.

AMR’s pilots union, in the midst of bitter contract talks with the company, supports a US Airways merger and called Friday’s extension request a sign that “things are proceeding in a positive way.”

“We assume that the strategic alternative talks, which include US Airways, are functional,” union spokesman Dennis Tajer said.

A hearing on the extension request is set for December 19.

The case is In re AMR Corp et al, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No. 11-15463.

(Reporting by Nick Brown; editing by Tim Dobbyn and Matthew Lewis)

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Taking a page from Louis C.K., Chill launches online store for films, comedy specials

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Chill, a social video platform with close to 20 million users, has launched Chill Direct, a new store for creatives like Maria Bamford and Michael Urie to sell their movies, specials and documentaries directly to fans.

Comedian Louis C.K. sent shockwaves through the entertainment industry this summer by selling a comedy special directly online rather than making a distribution deal with a television network or online service. He made millions, and various others have followed suit, including Jim Gaffigan and Aziz Ansari.

Chill sees an opportunity to enter this emerging market, empowering artists and offering them an opportunity to control the distribution and monetization of their ongoing projects.

“The community gives filmmakers and comedians the ability to distribute premium video directly to fans,” CEO Brian Norgard told TheWrap. “The common analogy is to Louis C.K. and his ‘Live at Beacon Theater.‘ That was a seminal moment in the entertainment business and a lot of things now allow direct-to-fan to become a viable model.”

Artists who choose to sell through Chill also can sell their videos elsewhere, but Chill Direct launches with eight videos exclusive to the site. That slate includes “Maria Bamford: the Special Special Special!,” an hour-long comedy special starring Bamford, “Thank You For Judging,” a documentary from “Ugly Betty” actor Urie about high school speech and debate and “Unknown Sender,” a suspense series from “48 Hrs” and “Die Hard” scribe Stephen E. de Souza.

Starting Thursday, any artist can create a page for a project and has complete creative control over the page, from information about the project to trailers to pricing. Meanwhile, Chill handles distribution across devices as well as payments.

Artists retain rights to their own intellectual property while Chill takes a 30 percent cut of any transaction.

“What Chill does is let anyone build out socially integrated marketing pages – we call them story pages – beautiful, high-resolution tantalizing receptacles of premium videos,” Norgard said.

Chill, funded by WME and Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers and others, has previously enabled frictionless uploading, consumption and sharing of the web’s most popular videos. This maintains a social layer, allowing for commenting and offering bundles that combine the video with other perks like merchandise or meeting the creator.

“The land of premium video is still a very closed marketplace,” Norgard said. “If you have tremendous business development skills or connections to sell a film to Netflix or Hulu, you’re lucky. The ad-supported model doesn’t fit every type of content. There is plenty of stuff out there like documentary films and comedy specials where creators are between a rock and a hard place and wan to get it out there, distribute it, own the right but not put it on a free streaming site like YouTube.”

Selling direct to fans also offers a new revenue stream to a company that until now was mostly luring people a few times a day for videos.

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Adkins explains Confederate flag earpiece

NEW YORK (AP) — Trace Adkins wore an earpiece decorated like the Confederate flag when he performed for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting but says he meant no offense by it.

Adkins appeared with the earpiece on a nationally televised special for the lighting on Wednesday. Some regard the flag as a racist symbol and criticized Adkins in Twitter postings.

But in a statement released Thursday, the Louisiana native called himself a proud American who objects to any oppression and says the flag represents his Southern heritage.

He noted he’s a descendant of Confederate soldiers and says he did not intend offense by wearing it.

Adkins — on a USO tour in Japan — also called for the preservation of America’s battlefields and an “honest conversation about the country’s history.”

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Online:

http://www.traceadkins.com

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Gilda’s Club name change insult to late comedian?

MIDDLETON, Wis. (AP) — Remember Roseanne Roseannadana? Or Emily Litella? Or Baba Wawa?

Younger generations might not recognize the characters popularized by comedian Gilda Radner. Nor might they remember Radner herself, an original cast member of “Saturday Night Live” who died 23 years ago and for whom a national cancer support group is named.

That’s troubling to the Madison-area chapter of Gilda’s Club, which decided to change its name in part because of concern that many don’t know who Radner was. But the move prompted outrage from some Radner fans — who saw it as a slight to a woman who confronted cancer with dignity and humor — and led other chapters across the nation to hastily reaffirm they have absolutely no intention of changing their names.

Lannia Syren Stenz, the Madison-area club’s executive director, said her organization decided to change its name to Cancer Support Community Southwest Wisconsin after it realized that most college students were born after Radner died in 1989.

“We are seeing younger and younger adults who are dealing with a cancer diagnosis,” Stenz told the Wisconsin State Journal. “We want to make sure that what we are is clear to them and that there’s not a lot of confusion that would cause people not to come in our doors.”

Her comments angered some Radner fans, who let loose a storm of criticism on the organization’s Facebook page.

“The only educating you’re doing is teaching kids that when they die from cancer, their name will be erased from history in 20 years because the next generation doesn’t know who they are. Way to give them hope!” wrote Mark Warneke, 44, a full-time college student in Arlington, Texas.

He told The Associated Press that taking Radner’s name off the foundation was an insult to her memory.

Stenz referred questions from the AP to Linda House, executive vice president of the national group. House said there was no evidence that young people are unfamiliar with Radner and the name change was motivated by the desire to make the organization’s mission clear. She called Stenz’s comments “not accurate, period.”

“Gilda Radner is very much a part of the fiber of this organization,” House said. “There has never been an intent and there is no intent to lose Gilda as part of the organization.”

Stenz’s club held a ceremony Thursday to mark the name change, which will be phased it over the next month.

Radner, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1986, sought support from The Wellness Community in California and wrote about her experience in her book “It’s Always Something,” a reference to one of her characters’ catch-phrases.

Her friends and family started Gilda’s Club in 1991 on the East Coast to honor her legacy. The name was inspired by something Radner said after her diagnosis: “Having cancer gave me membership in an elite club I’d rather not belong to.”

Gilda’s Club Worldwide merged with The Wellness Community in 2009, and the joint headquarters in Washington changed its name to the Cancer Support Community. Local chapters were given the choice of keeping their names or switching to Cancer Support Community, House said.

The 56 chapters around the world deliver $ 40 million a year in free care to about 1 million cancer patients and their families, she said. Of those chapters, 20 are known as Gilda’s Club, three are Wellness Community and 23 are Cancer Support Community.

Changing the chapters’ names made sense to Ron Nief, a professor at Beloit College in southern Wisconsin who has made a career out of studying how different generations view the world differently. He said it could become harder for Gilda’s Club to attract donations as fewer people remember seeing Radner on TV.

“I think we all want to keep our traditions alive,” he said, “but there comes a reality in this case of what does this group represent and how do we raise money for it.”

Radner’s husband, actor Gene Wilder, said he didn’t like the name change but he understood it. He said if he had to break the news to his late wife she might ask, “Do they have to throw me out?”

“I’d say, ‘It’s not throwing you out, honey, it’s getting more money.’ And she’d say, ‘OK, I guess if they have to, they have to,’” he said. “It’s too bad. I wish it weren’t so. But I understand.”

The Wellness Center where Radner once sought support in Los Angeles was one of the groups that updated its name. Julia Forth, the marketing director of what’s now called the Cancer Support Community Benjamin Center, said people who get sick Google the word cancer, so it helps to have that word in the name.

Other organizations were adamant about keeping the Gilda’s Club name. LauraJane Hyde, who runs the Chicago chapter, said her group has spent 15 years teaching people that Radner’s name was synonymous with cancer support, in the same way people know what Starbucks sells even though “coffee” isn’t in its name.

“A lot of people feel very passionately about the name,” she said. “We will lose donations if we change it.”

Radner remains a strong presence at the Madison-area club even without her name on the building in the suburb of Middleton. Paintings and drawings of Radner line the walls. One depicts her on top of Madison’s state Capitol. Another imagines her sitting along the shores of Lake Mendota on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The meeting rooms are named after her Saturday Night Live characters, including New York-street smart reporter Roseanne Roseannadana, out-of-sync editorialist Emily Litella and speech-impeded talk show host Baba Wawa, a parody of Barbara Walters.

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Ramde reported from Milwaukee and can be reached at dramde(at)ap.org. Associated Press researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report from New York. Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sbauerAP.

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Lawmakers unveil new round of Iran sanctions

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators pressed ahead Thursday on a new set of tough sanctions against Iran‘s domestic industries as it seeks to cripple the Islamic republic’s economy and thwart its nuclear ambitions.

Sens. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., unveiled a package of penalties that would designate Iran‘s energy, port, shipping and ship-building sectors as entities of proliferation and sanction transactions with these areas. The legislation also would penalize individuals selling or supplying commodities such as graphite, aluminum and steel to Iran.

The punitive measures build on the sanctions on Tehran’s oil industry that the two lawmakers have shepherded through Congress in the past year.

“Yes, our sanctions are having a significant impact, but Iran continues their work to develop nuclear weapons,” Menendez said in a statement, adding that with the new penalties, “We will send a message to Iran that they can’t just try to wait us out.”

Kirk said the measure “will greatly increase the economic pressure on the Iranian regime and send a clear message of support to the Iranian people.”

The sanctions are contained in an amendment the two lawmakers hope to add to a far-reaching defense policy bill that the Senate was debating and could wrap up by week’s end. Congress has overwhelmingly backed previous efforts by Menendez and Kirk.

The legislation also would designate the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting and its president as human rights abusers for broadcasting forced televised confessions and show trials.

The United States and European Union have imposed tough sanctions on Iran that have weakened its economy. But Tehran has found ways to bypass the penalties, such as Turkey’s use of gold to pay for Iranian natural gas imports.

The Menendez-Kirk measure would allow the president to impose sanctions in cases of the sale or transfer of precious metals, targeting efforts by Iran to circumvent the penalties.

Iran maintains that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Mark Dubowitz, a sanctions expert and executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said there is strong bipartisan support for intense sanctions, with the goal of pushing the Iranian economy to the brink of economic collapse.

Only then “can the central thesis of the administration’s sanctions policy be fairly tested: That crippling economic pressure will break the nuclear will of Iran’s supreme leader and his Revolutionary Guards and lead them to meet their obligations under international law,” Dubowitz said.

The president has 90 days from the legislation’s enactment to act. The bill does include the authority to waive the sanctions based on national security.

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Noisy city: Cacophony in Caracas sparks complaints

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — This metropolis of 6 million people may be one of the world’s most intense, overwhelming cities, with tremendous levels of crime, traffic and social strife. The sounds of Caracas‘ streets live up to its reputation.

Stand on any downtown corner, and the cacophony can be overpowering: Deafening horns blast from oncoming buses, traffic police shrilly blow their whistles and sirens shriek atop ambulances stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Air horns routinely used by bus drivers are so powerful they make pedestrians on crosswalks recoil, and can even leave their ears ringing. Loud salsa music blares from the windows of buses, trucks with old mufflers rumble past belching exhaust, and “moto-taxis” weave through traffic beeping high-pitched horns.

Growing numbers of Venezuelans are saying they’re fed up with the noise that they say is getting worse, and the numbers of complaints to the authorities have risen in recent years.

One affluent district, Chacao, put up signs along a main avenue reading: “A honk won’t make the traffic light change.”

“The noise is terrible. Sometimes it seems like it’s never going to end,” said Jose Santander, a street vendor who stands in the middle of a highway selling fried pork rinds and potato chips to commuters in traffic.

Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega recently told a news conference that officials have started “putting an increased emphasis on promoting peaceful coexistence” by punishing misdemeanors such as violations of anti-noise regulations and other minor crimes. That effort has translated into hundreds of noise-related cases in recent years.

Some violators are ordered to perform community service. For instance, two young musicians who were recently caught playing loud music near a subway station were sentenced to 120 hours of community service giving music lessons to students in public schools.

Others caught playing loud music on the street have been charged with disturbing the peace after complaints from neighbors. Fines can run as high as 9,000 bolivars, or $ 2,093.

On the streets of their capital, however, Venezuelans have grown used to living loudly. The noisescape adds to a general sense of anarchy, with many drivers ignoring red lights and blocking intersections along potholed streets strewn with trash.

“This is something that everybody does. Nobody should be complaining,” said Gregorio Hernandez, a 23-year-old college student, as he listened to Latin rock songs booming from his car stereo on a Saturday night in downtown Caracas. “We’re just having fun. We’re not hurting anybody.”

Adding to the mess is the country’s notoriously divisive politics, which regularly fill the streets with marches and demonstrations.

On many days, the shouts of protesters streaming through downtown can be heard from blocks away, demanding pay hikes or unpaid benefits.

And the sporadic crackling of gunfire in the slums can be confused for firecrackers tossed by boisterous partygoers.

It’s difficult to rank the world’s noisiest cities because many, including Venezuela’s capital, don’t take measurements of sound pollution, said Victor Rastelli, a mechanical engineering professor and sound pollution expert at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. But Rastelli said he suspects Caracas is right up there among the noisiest, along with Sao Paulo, Mexico City and Mumbai.

Excessive noise can be more than simply an annoyance, Rastelli said. “This is a public health problem.”

Dr. Carmen Mijares, an audiologist at a private Caracas hospital, said she treats at least a dozen patients every month for hearing damage caused by prolonged exposure to loud noises.

“Many of them work in bars or night clubs, and their maladies usually include temporary hearing loss and headaches,” Mijares said. For others, she said, the day-to-day noise of traffic, car horns and loud music can exacerbate stress and sleeping disorders.

Several cities have successfully reduced noise pollution, said Stephen Stansfeld, a London psychiatry professor and coordinator of the European Network on Noise and Health.

One of the most noteworthy initiatives, Stansfeld said, was in Copenhagen, Denmark, where officials used sound walls, noise-reducing asphalt and other infrastructure as well as public awareness campaigns to fight noise pollution.

But such high-tech solutions seem like a remote possibility in Caracas, where streets are literally falling apart and aging overpasses regularly lack portions of their guard rails. Prosecutors, angry neighbors and others hoping to fight the noise will have to persuade Venezuelans to do nothing less than change their loud behavior.

For Carlos Pinto, however, making noise is practically a political right.

The 26-year-old law student and his friends danced at a recent street party to house music booming from woofers in his car’s open trunk, with neon lights on the speakers that pulsed to the beat.

When asked about the noise, he answered: “We will be heard.”

___

AP freelance video journalist Ricardo Nunes contributed to this report.

___

Christopher Toothaker on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ctoothaker

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Family learns of student’s death on Facebook

ATLANTA (AP) — The parents of a south Georgia college student first learned from Facebook that their daughter had been found dead in a dormitory study room shortly before Thanksgiving. Now, they hope that Facebook and other social media sites can help solve the death of 17-year-old Jasmine Benjamin, which police are investigating as a homicide.

The Valdosta State University freshman was found unresponsive on a study room couch on Nov. 18.

A family friend forwarded the Facebook post about the teen’s death to her parents before they were officially notified by authorities, said A. Thomas Stubbs, an attorney for the victim’s mother, Judith Brogdon, and her stepfather, James Jackson. But many questions remain unanswered about how she died.

The family has hired a private investigator, and a new Facebook site has been set up in hopes that students and others might share tips.

While some Facebook comments have already been turned over to law enforcement officers, the family hopes friends, classmates or others who noticed suspicious comments will also alert authorities.

“Anything that reveals a little more information than what’s publicly known about her death, those are the kind of comments police are looking for as someone who might warrant a closer examination,” Stubbs said.

Also of interest are “unusual comments or unusually timed comments about her death,” he said.

Police detectives have canvassed dormitories and interviewed several students on the campus, located about 250 miles south of the family’s home in Gwinnett County, outside Atlanta.

Benjamin wanted to follow the career path of her mother and become a nurse.

Police say they’re treating the case as a homicide, though autopsy results are not complete and they can’t say for certain whether she was killed. There were no obvious signs of a crime when her body was found, but an autopsy raised questions, authorities have said.

“We’re providing what resources are necessary to assist Valdosta State University police in solving this crime,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said. “The crime lab is expediting evidence from this incident.”

Shortly after Benjamin’s parents learned of her death from Facebook, Lawrenceville police officers knocked on the doors of the family home to inform them officially that their daughter was dead, Stubbs said.

“As frustrating as that may be for the family to learn that way, they understand it’s a different world,” Stubbs said.

The family has yet to learn the possible timeframe of when their daughter died, and police have not shared any theories about how she was killed, Stubbs said.

“We know that they have looked at the phone records, video records that they can find in the school,” he said. Beyond that, they’ve been going through legal procedures that are required to obtain records from Facebook Inc.

The family hired Martinelli Investigations Inc. of Lawrenceville to assist in the investigation.

Private investigator Robin Martinelli said Wednesday that any video near the scene, even if may seem insignificant, could prove helpful in the investigation.

“It wouldn’t matter if it was two weeks before, two hours before or 20 minutes before,” she said.

Martinelli said she’s confident that police are working diligently to follow up on leads, but private investigators can often provide valuable assistance, she said.

“On any homicide, they’re going to work around the clock aggressively every minute, and they’re doing that,” she said.

She said Jasmine Benjamin was a strong student who showed great potential. “Her favorite color was purple, her nickname was Jazzy,” she said.

“She wanted to help people, plain and simple,” her stepfather, James Jackson, told WSB-TV. “That was her goal in life. That’s all she talked about since she was young — ‘I want to be able to help people.’”

Valdosta State campus police, city police and the GBI were working together to conduct interviews and collect evidence, the university said in a statement Tuesday. University officials said they couldn’t release any further information.

Martinelli hopes students away at college keep in touch with their parents — and give them the passwords to social networking sites and their cell phones in case anything happens.

“If you have passcodes to your computer, your phone, please tell your parents,” she said. “Don’t tell everybody in the world, but tell your parents your passcodes.”

She said some of the best advice parents can give students is this: “They should listen to their gut,” she said. “If they walk into a situation and it’s not feeling right, leave.”

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Former baseball star Doug DeCinces indicted for insider trading

(Reuters) – Former Baltimore Orioles third baseman Doug DeCinces has been indicted by a federal grand jury for insider trading, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

DeCinces was charged with 42 counts of criminal securities fraud and one count of money laundering over the 2008 purchase of stock in a medical device company based on insider information, according to an indictment filed in a federal court in Southern California.

DeCinces, 62, bought $ 160,000 worth of stock in Advanced Medical Optics Inc, after a “close personal friend” alerted him to an impending takeover bid by Abbott Laboratories, according to prosecutors.

He sold his stock shortly after the takeover bid was announced, making $ 1.3 million in profits, the department said.

A lawyer for DeCinces did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The criminal charges came on the heels of civil charges filed against DeCinces in August 2011 by the Securities and Exchange Commission related to the same accusations.

DeCinces settled those charges with the SEC, agreeing to pay $ 2.5 million in fines, while neither admitting nor denying wrongdoing in the trading of Advanced Medical Optics shares.

The indictment also names three friends of DeCinces to whom he provided the insider information to make up for previous investment advice that “had gone bad,” according to prosecutors.

The others indicted are David Parker and Fred Scott Jackson, each charged with six counts of securities fraud. A third friend, Roger Wittenbach, faces four securities fraud charges. Parker also faces a money laundering charge.

The securities fraud charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment each, while the money laundering charges carry a 10-year maximum sentence for each count.

The four men charged are scheduled to appear in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, California, on December 17.

(Reporting by Mary Slosson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

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Wall Street jumps in another “fiscal cliff” swing

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks rallied on Wednesday after comments from House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, on a possible compromise to avoid the “fiscal cliff” turned the market around.

The S&P 500 rebounded from a 1 percent decline, gaining more than 20 points from its low after Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avoid big spending cuts and tax hikes can be worked out. President Barack Obama added to the good feelings, saying he hoped to get a deal done in the next four weeks.

Whether or not those remarks reflect the reality of negotiations is another story.

“The fiscal cliff is dominating the discussion, and short term, we’re a little bit too optimistic on it being fixed right away,” said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York.

In expectation of higher dividend tax rates in 2013, companies have been shifting dividends or announcing special payouts to shareholders.

Costco Wholesale Corp , up 6.3 percent at $ 102.58, was the S&P 500′s biggest percentage gainer after it became the latest company to announce a special dividend.

The market’s move marked the second straight day where a leading legislator dictated trading action. On Tuesday, stocks fell on pessimistic remarks from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada.

The market has been swinging for weeks now on headlines from Washington, with Wednesday’s gyrations once again highlighting the importance that Wall Street is giving to finding a solution to avoid the series of tax increases and spending cuts that could push the U.S. economy into recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> rose 106.98 points, or 0.83 percent, to 12,985.11 at the close. The S&P 500 <.SPX> gained 10.99 points, or 0.79 percent, to 1,409.93. The Nasdaq Composite <.IXIC> added 23.99 points, or 0.81 percent, to close at 2,991.78.

The S&P 500 bounced off a strong support area near 1,385 that includes both its 200- and 14-day moving averages. It closed above 1,400 for the third session in four – an optimistic sign for stock bulls.

Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 15.2 percent to $ 3.42 on news that Getco Holding proposed a $ 1.4 billion merger with Knight, while Virtu Financial offered to buy Knight for at least $ 1.1 billion.

Apparel retailer Express Inc rose 8.9 percent to $ 14.15 after it forecast strong earnings for the current quarter as lower prices and easy-to-understand discounts led to robust Black Friday sales.

The S&P retail index <.SPXRT> gained 1.4 percent.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters surged 27.3 percent to $ 36.86 a day after it forecast quarterly and full-year earnings well ahead of analysts’ expectations.

Nearly 6.1 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.

On the NYSE, roughly seven stocks rose for every three that fell, and on Nasdaq, five issues rose for every three that fell.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Rapper PSY wants Tom Cruise to go ‘Gangnam Style’

BANGKOK (AP) — The South Korean rapper behind YouTube’s most-viewed video ever has set what might be a “Mission: Impossible” for himself.

Asked which celebrity he would like to see go “Gangnam Style,” the singer PSY told The Associated Press: “Tom Cruise!”

Surrounded by screaming fans, he then chuckled at the idea of the American movie star doing his now famous horse-riding dance.

PSY’s comments Wednesday in Bangkok were his first public remarks since his viral smash video — with 838 million views — surpassed Justin Bieber‘s “Baby,” which until Saturday held the record with 803 million views.

“It’s amazing,” PSY told a news conference, saying he never set out to become an international star. “I made this video just for Korea, actually. And when I released this song — wow.”

The video has spawned hundreds of parodies and tribute videos and earned him a spotlight alongside a variety of superstars.

Earlier this month, Madonna invited PSY onstage and they danced to his song at one of her New York City concerts. MC Hammer introduced the Korean star at the American Music Awards as, “My Homeboy PSY!”

Even President Barack Obama is talking about him. Asked on Election Day if he could do the dance, Obama replied: “I think I can do that move,” but then concluded he might “do it privately for Michelle,” the first lady.

PSY was in Thailand to give a free concert Wednesday night organized as a tribute to the country’s revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who turns 85 next month. He paid respects to the king at a Bangkok shopping mall, signing his name in an autograph book placed beside a giant poster of the king. He then gave an outdoor press conference, as screaming fans nearby performed the pop star’s dance.

Determined not to be a one-hit wonder, PSY said he plans to release a worldwide album in March with dance moves that he thinks his international fans will like.

“I think I have plenty of dance moves left,” he said, in his trademark sunglasses and dark suit. “But I’m really concerned about the (next) music video.”

“How can I beat ‘Gangnam Style’?” he asked, smiling. “How can I beat 850 million views?”

___

Associated Press writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Play Your Wii U Anywhere — Even on a Train

Wii U on a Train

No need for a TV set. If you plug the Wii U in, you can interact entirely with the GamePad. This is on a Japanese Shinkansen, a high-speed train.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: Nintendo Unveils Wii Mini for the Canucks]

Nintendo’s new Wii U console may have one real advantage over the competition: portability. Since you don’t need a television to play a good portion of the Wii U titles, gaming on the road is as easy as locating a power outlet.

Rocket News 24 tested the console’s mobility by taking a Wii U on a Japanese bullet train, which has power outlets at every seat. Thanks to that — and a little iPhone tethering magic — their staff was able to play New Super Mario Brothers U and Call of Duty Black Ops 2 while riding comfortably.

[More from Mashable: Wii U Sells 400,000 Units in First Week]

Check out Rocket News 24 to see more pictures and a full recount of their experience.

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ex-Elmo puppeteer faces new sex-with-minor allegation

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The puppeteer formerly behind the “Sesame Street” character Elmo faces a new accusation of having sex with an underage boy, a week after a similar allegation prompted him to resign from the iconic public television children’s program.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, a man identified only as John alleges Kevin Clash engaged in oral sex and other sex acts with him when John was 16 years old. The suit seeks at least $ 75,000 in damages.

The suit alleges the incident occurred in either 2000 or 2001 when John, who is from Florida, visited New York for modeling opportunities. John came to know Clash, then 40, through a telephone chat line for gays on which Clash claimed to be a 30-year-old named Craig, according to the suit.

John returned to New York when he turned 18, and he and Clash renewed the relationship, the lawsuit said.

“Mr. Clash believes the lawsuit has no merit,” Clash’s publicist, Risa B. Heller, said in an emailed statement.

It is the latest charge levied against Clash, now 52, who resigned on November 20 from Sesame Workshop, the company behind “Sesame Street,” after nearly 30 years on the show.

His resignation came the same day Cecil Singleton filed a claim seeking more than $ 5 million in damages from Clash. Singleton claims he met the then-32-year-old puppeteer in 1993 in a gay chat room when he was 15.

It added that on numerous occasions over a period of years Clash engaged in sexual activity with Singleton.

The newest allegation comes about two weeks after another man recanted his claims that Clash had sex with him when he was 16 years old. The man later said the relationship was consensual.

Clash had denied the allegations and acknowledged a past relationship with his first accuser. He added the pair were both consenting adults at the time.

The Elmo character debuted on “Sesame Street” in 1979, 10 years after the show premiered and introduced the now-iconic characters Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster, among others, to American children.

While Clash was the third performer to animate the child-like shaggy red monster, Sesame Workshop credits him with turning Elmo into the international sensation he became.

(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Cynthia Osterman)

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Flu Symptoms Drove Boston Mayor to Hospital

When Boston Mayor Thomas Menino ended his vacation in Italy short this fall and checked into a Boston hospital complaining of a respiratory infection, it led doctors to find and treat a blood clot in his leg, a fracture in his back, an infection around the fracture and type 2 diabetes.

Cold and flu symptoms from respiratory infections can be a hassle, but sometimes that fever and cough can be good for just getting people to the doctor.

“That’s why every patient needs a careful evaluation because every once in a while, what the patient thinks is the flu or reports as the flu is not,” said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. “I would say 99 percent of people who present to the emergency room and doctor’s office with symptoms of influenza – that is cough, fever and the like – are certainly going to have influenza.”

Click here to read about cold- and flu-fighters.

Menino, 69, arrived at Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Oct. 25, complaining of fatigue and a cough, and doctors described him as “extremely washed out” with some “malaise.” In addition to the respiratory infection, doctors found a blood clot that traveled from Menino’s leg to his lungs.

Respiratory illnesses, like the one that initially drove Menino to seek medical attention, can often range from mild to severe, Schaffner said.

“He was feeling poorly enough to end what was supposed to be a very pleasant vacation, and when he got here, he was very weak and very washed out,” Dr. Dale Adler, Menino’s doctor, said during a press conference in mid-November.

Doctors can usually tell whether flu-like symptoms are the result of a respiratory infection or something else soon after the patient is admitted. If not, they can perform a series of tests to find out.

Click here to read about flu fact and fiction.

(The flu can lead to other ailments, the most common of which is pneumonia, or an infection of the lungs, Schaffner said.

About 1.1 million pneumonia patients were hospitalized and discharged in 2009, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On average, they stayed in the hospital 5.2 days.)

Weeks later, Menino was still in the hospital. Although his illness and clot had been resolved, he was complaining of back pain, which doctors discovered was the result of a compression fracture and an infection around the fracture.

Finally, doctors discovered that Menino had underlying type 2 diabetes, which may have contributed to the infection, Menino’s doctor said during a press conference on Monday.

It’s not clear how Menino’s initial flu-like symptoms tied into his other ailments, but doctors said they are positive about his prognosis. The mayor relocated to a rehabilitation center on Monday.

“It is a run of bad luck,” Morris said of Menino. “He will rebound from this.”

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Norway Covets Its Neighbors’ Carbon

The fjords of western Norway seem an unlikely place to tackle industrial pollution. But an hour’s drive north of Bergen, the Norwegians recently inaugurated the world’s largest test facility for carbon capture, the process of trapping carbon dioxide before it spews from the stacks of power plants and factories. The Norwegian government spent more than $ 1 billion to build the facility, a tangle of pipes, scaffolding, and cooling towers overlooking the port of Mongstad. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has called it “Norway’s moon landing.”

That’s quite an investment considering the country’s greenhouse emissions are among the lowest in the developed world. But it’s not domestic CO₂ the Norwegians are after. It’s their neighbors’. Beneath the North Sea lie vast reservoirs that have been emptied of oil by state-owned Statoil. “The potential to store [waste CO₂] in aquifers under the sea is enormous,” says Tore Amundsen, the managing director of the Technology Centre Mongstad.

In theory, Amundsen should face no shortage of customers from countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where plans for underground storage of waste CO₂ have run into opposition from environmental groups. Norway’s oil industry could benefit, too, as the process of undersea injection would force residual oil and gas deposits out of the seabed.

While it’s integral to the fight against global warming, carbon capture has had a slow start. The International Energy Agency says it expects the technology to account for as much as 20 percent of the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to a maximum of two degrees by 2050. The European Union has promised more than 1 billion euros ($ 1.3 billion) in financing for carbon-capture projects, but with the region’s economy in crisis, national governments haven’t provided the loan guarantees required for the work to go forward.

Yet the need has never been greater, says Jon Gibbins, a professor at the University of Edinburgh specializing in carbon-capture and power-plant engineering. The U.S. is awash in cheap shale gas, while worldwide, coal consumption, led by China and India, has risen more than 50 percent over the past decade. “We’ve got far too much, far too cheap fossil fuel” to ignore carbon capture, Gibbins says.

To jump-start development, the Norwegians have invited companies to try out carbon-capture technologies at Mongstad. The tests are carried out using emissions from a gas-fired power plant that adjoins the facility. French engineering group Alstom (ALSMY), for example, is testing a process in which emissions are sprayed with chilled ammonia to strip out the carbon dioxide.

Even some environmental groups are willing to give carbon capture a chance. “People have rightfully worried that carbon capture is just an excuse” to avoid developing cleaner energy sources, says Mike Childs, head of policy, research, and science at Friends of the Earth in Britain. “While we want to move to a system of 100 percent renewable energy, that will take time.”

Amundsen says the processes being tested at Mongstad would add 30 percent to 50 percent to the cost of electricity generated by a conventional gas- or coal-fired power plant. That’s roughly on a par with wind- and solar-generated power, and Amundsen expects prices to come down sharply as the technology matures. Norway is considering a plan to expand Mongstad from a test site into a full-scale facility that would scrub all CO₂ emissions from the adjacent power plant and a nearby refinery, at an estimated cost of $ 4 billion.

The country can’t import CO₂, though, unless other countries come up with billions to build their own carbon-capture plants and pay the Norwegians for storage. And while existing gas pipelines could be modified to transport carbon at relatively modest cost, burying it under the seabed would be expensive. What’s more, Norway could face competition from the Dutch port of Rotterdam, which has a plan to become a hub for CO₂ transshipment to North Sea storage sites. Rotterdam has the advantage of being closer than Norway to most of Europe’s major industrial regions.

Amundsen is unfazed by these challenges. “Norway has an interest to see that oil and gas remain an important energy source for the future,” he says. “We’re so incredibly rich, we can actually afford to do it.”

The bottom line: A new $ 1 billion carbon-capture plant is the cornerstone of a plan to bury Europe’s waste CO2 beneath the North Sea.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Rugby-England add flyhalf Burns to squad for All Blacks’ test

LONDON, Nov 27 (Reuters) – England called up uncapped Gloucester flyhalf Freddie Burns on Tuesday to their squad for Saturday’s test against New Zealand in place of the injured Toby Flood.

Flood sustained ligament damage to a big toe during the 16-15 loss to South Africa at Twickenham last Saturday.

Owen Farrell, whose last start was in the first test in South Africa this year, is set to replace Flood in the starting XV against the world champions.

Lock Courtney Lawes, who missed England’s first three tests of the November series because of a knee injury, has also been included in the 23-man squad. Two other locks, Mouritz Botha and Tom Palmer, have been omitted.

After beating Fiji in their opening match, England have lost to Australia and the Springboks and now face a daunting match against the All Blacks who are unbeaten in 20 tests since the start of their victorious World Cup campaign last year.

“For those in Saturday’s squad the message is clear – last week we went toe to toe with the second best team in the world and felt we should have won,” England head coach Stuart Lancaster said in a statement.

“Now we have a chance to take on the number one side in front of a passionate Twickenham crowd, who have been fantastic throughout the Internationals, and it is a challenge we will meet head on.” (Reporting by John Mehaffey; Editing by Ken Ferris)

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132 online counterfeit sites seized in Cyber Monday blitz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. and European authorities seized 132 domain names in a counterfeit goods crackdown linked to Cyber Monday, the online bargain day, the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

ICE agents seized 101 domain names in the United States and 31 were taken over by officers in Britain, Romania, Belgium, France and Denmark and by Europol, the European Police Office, ICE Director John Morton said.

The sites, many linked to organized crime, were selling fake goods that ranged from National Football League jerseys and Nike Inc shoes to Adobe Systems Inc software, he said.

“There is much money to be made out there duping consumers and that is what is going on,” Morton said on a conference call.

Investigations are ongoing and more sites will be seized in coming days.

In the United States, 41 rights owners’ merchandise was being sold on the seized sites, Morton said.

ICE said in a statement that one U.S. arrest had been made.

The crackdown marks the third year that ICE has targeted websites selling counterfeit goods on Cyber Monday, the online shopping spree. It is the first time the agency has carried out the operation with European police.

The Cyber Monday seizures raise the total number of U.S. sites taken over to 1,630 since ICE began its anti-counterfeit campaign in June 2010.

PayPal accounts identified with the sites and holding a total of more than $ 175,000 are being targeted for seizure, the ICE statement said.

Morton put the scale of online piracy in the billions of dollars. Much of the online counterfeiting is in China and other parts of Asia, and U.S. authorities are working with China on the problem, he said.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Dan Grebler)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Beyonce to direct documentary about herself for HBO

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Pop superstar Beyonce is stepping behind the camera to direct a behind-the-scenes documentary about her personal and professional life, U.S. cable channel HBO said on Monday.

The currently untitled film will debut on February 16 and show the Grammy-winning singer’s life in the recording studio, readying for live performances and running her own TV and music production company.

“Everybody knows Beyonce’s music, but few know Beyonce the person,” HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo said in a statement. “Along with electrifying footage of Beyonce on stage, this unique special looks beyond the glamour to reveal a vibrant, vulnerable, unforgettable woman.”

The documentary will also feature moments in the “Crazy in Love” singer’s family life and first-person footage Beyonce captured on her laptop.

Beyonce, 31, who is married to hip hop artist and mogul Jay-Z, will headline the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans on February 3.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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HIV Vaccine Under Study May Last A Lifetime

A genetically-engineered HIV vaccine under study by Texas researchers works in a novel way.

It targets specific cells exactly where the virus enters the body, stimulating them to generate an immune response so the virus can’t take hold.

If the strategy bears out, the vaccine will be a single dose and last a lifetime, says Marie-Claire Gauduin, PhD, assistant scientist at Texas Biomedical Research Institute.

”Many other HIV vaccines try to block the infection when the virus is already in,” she says.  ”Here we try not to be infected to begin with,” Gauduin tells Take Part.

RELATED: Breakthrough: Early HIV Treatment Virtually Erases Risk of Passing Virus On

About 33 million people worldwide are living with  HIV/AIDS, according to estimates by the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS.  Most do not know it. The new vaccine, if perfected, could be given to children at puberty to stem this toll, Gauduin says.

Most new cases of HIV infections worldwide are transmitted by sexual intercourse through outer layers of cells known as epithelial cells. These line the surfaces of structures throughout the body.

The target of the new vaccine is the mucosal layers of the epithelium in the genital and rectal areas, where the virus  typically enters.

“We are targeting the basal layer, the lower layer of epithelial stem cells,” she says. These stem cells divide and differentiate into specialized cell types.

The vaccine stays put in the epithelial stem cells, she says. Next, antigens that recognize the virus are produced.  ”These antigens stimulate your immune response to fight the virus,” she says.

“The virus will be recognized at the site of entry,” she says. “The virus won’t get to the blood stream is the hope.”

What makes it long lasting, she says, is the initial targeting of the stem cells. “Once the epithelial stem cell gets the message to stimulate your immune response, it will do so constantly,” she says, so the virus will be recognized long term.

Gauduin and her colleagues recently filed for a patent on the approach.

The vaccine, of course, is years from clinical practice, she says. “We have a lot of work to do,” she tells Take Part. Primate studies may start in early 2013. Human trials may begin as early as 2015.

Currently, other HIV vaccine approaches can’t deliver the antibody production for long periods of time. So the protection is weak and temporary, Gauduin says.

“It looks very interesting, certainly a great idea,” say Yegor Voronin, PhD, science officer for Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, an alliance devoted to developing a preventive HIV vaccine.

RELATED: FDA Approves Truvada as First HIV Prevention Drug

The approach makes sense to scientists like him. “Epithelial cells don’t live very long,” he says. “They are continuously shed off. They are trying to affect the stem cells that produce epithelial cells. As the stem cells differentiate into epithelial cells, that is when they start producing the antigen.”

“It’s very early stages,” he says. “It’s an excellent idea. Whether it will work–who knows?”

Many other attempts have not panned out, he says.

One important as-yet unanswered question, he says, is whether the vaccine could cause some sort of health problem ”and you have the antigen being expressed continuously.” He asks: “How are you going to turn that off?”

Much safety testing, among other research, will be needed, he says.

As with other vaccines under development, he says a wait-and-see stance is best. “At this point, it’s just way too early to tell.”

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Kathleen Doheny is a Los Angeles journalist who writes about health. She doesn’t believe inmiracle cures, but continues to hope someone will discover a way for joggers to maintain their pace.

Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Eurozone deal on Greece bailout

26 November 2012 Last updated at 22:16 ET

Olli Rehn: “Greece has kept its commitments”

Eurozone finance ministers and the IMF have reached a deal on an urgently needed bailout for debt-laden Greece.

They have agreed to cut debts by 40bn euros ($ 51bn; £32bn) and have paved the way for releasing the next tranche of bailout loans – some 44bn euros.

Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras welcomed the deal, saying “a new day begins for all Greeks”.

Asian shares climbed on news of the agreement.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan gained 0.6% to its highest in more than two weeks.

Australian shares rose 0.7%, while South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index was up nearly 1%.

The euro reached its highest level against the dollar since 31 October, up about 0.3% to $ 1.3010.

‘Credibility test’

The breakthrough came after more than 10 hours of talks in Brussels. It was the eurozone’s third meeting in two weeks on Greece.

The deal opens the way for support for Greece’s teetering banks and will allow the government to pay wages and pensions in December.

Continue reading the main story

We simply could not afford to fail”

End Quote Olli Rehn EU economic and monetary affairs comissioner

The leader of the eurozone finance ministers’ group, Jean-Claude Juncker, said Greece would get the next installment of cash on 13 December.

Greece has been waiting since June for the tranche, to help its heavily indebted economy stay afloat.

European Central Bank (ECB) president Mario Draghi said the bailout would “strengthen confidence in Europe and in Greece”.

For his part, Mr Juncker said the deal did not just have financial implications.

“This is not just about money. It is the promise of a better future for the Greek people and for the Euro area as a whole.”

Greece’s international lenders have agreed to take steps to reduce the country’s debts, from an estimated 144%, to 124% of its gross domestic product by 2020.

These include cutting the interest rate on loans to Greece, and returning 11bn euros to Athens in profits from ECB purchases of Greek government bonds.

Ministers have also agreed to help Greece buy back its own bonds from private investors.

So far the ECB, IMF and the European Commission have pledged a total of 240bn euros in rescue loans, of which Greece has received around 150bn euros.

In return, Greece has had to impose several rounds of austerity measures and submit its economy to scrutiny.

The European Union’s commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Olli Rehn, said it was crucial that a deal had finally been reached.

“For the eurozone this was a real test of our credibility, of our ability to take decisions on the most challenging of issues.

“And it was a test that we simply could not afford to fail.”

BBC News – Business

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