UN warns risk of hepatitis E in S. Sudan grows


GENEVA (AP) — The United Nations says an outbreak of hepatitis E has killed 111 refugees in camps in South Sudan since July, and has become endemic in the region.


U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards says the influx of people to the camps from neighboring Sudan is believed to be one of the factors in the rapid spread of the contagious, life-threatening inflammatory viral disease of the liver.


Edwards said Friday that the camps have been hit by 6,017 cases of hepatitis E, which is spread through contaminated food and water.


He says the largest number of cases and suspected cases is in the Yusuf Batil camp in Upper Nile state, which houses 37,229 refugees fleeing fighting between rebels and the Sudanese government.


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After decent rally, perhaps time for a pause

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market bumps into strong technical resistance.


Many analysts say the market could spend the next few weeks consolidating gains that have lifted the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> by 6.6 percent since the start of the year.


The S&P 500 ended up 0.1 percent for the week, recovering from a late sell-off on Friday after a Bloomberg report about slow February sales at Wal-Mart triggered a slide in the retailer's shares. It was the index's seventh week of gains.


Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.


"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.


Fourth-quarter earnings have mostly beaten expectations. Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies is now estimated at 5.6 percent, up from a January 1 forecast for 2.9 percent growth, and 70 percent of companies are exceeding analyst profit expectations, above the 62 percent long-term average, according to Thomson Reuters data.


On Thursday, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is due to report results, unofficially closing out the earnings period. Investors will be keen to see its quarterly numbers, especially after the Friday's news report that rattled investors.


The S&P 500 has gained 4.3 percent since Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on January 8.


The approaching March 1 deadline for across-the-board federal budget cuts unless Congress reaches a compromise adds another reason for caution, especially with recent economic data indicating the recovery remains bumpy.


Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, but production in November and December was much stronger than previously thought.


TESTING RESISTANCE


The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.


As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.


At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.


Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.


Recent M&A activity, including news this week of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group , helped provide some strength for the market this week and optimism that more deals may be on the way.


In the coming days, the market will focus on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due to be released on Wednesday, which could provide support if they suggest the Fed will remain on its current course of aggressive monetary easing.


The Fed minutes released in January spooked markets a bit when they revealed that some Fed officials thought it would be appropriate to consider ending asset purchases later in 2013. U.S. Treasury yields rose on that news, though market worries about a near-term end to quantitative easing have since faded.


Among other companies expected to report earnings next week are Nordstrom , Hewlett-Packard and Marriott International


(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)



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Dismissed as Doomsayers, Advocates for Meteor Detection Feel Vindicated





For decades, scientists have been on the lookout for killer objects from outer space that could devastate the planet. But warnings that they lacked the tools to detect the most serious threats were largely ignored, even as skeptics mocked the worriers as Chicken Littles.







Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dr. Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive, has warned about space threats.






No more. The meteor that rattled Siberia on Friday, injuring hundreds of people and traumatizing thousands, has suddenly brought new life to efforts to deploy adequate detection tools, in particular a space telescope that would scan the solar system for dangers.


A group of young Silicon Valley entrepreneurs who helped build thriving companies like eBay, Google and Facebook has already put millions of dollars into the effort and saw Friday’s shock wave as a turning point in raising hundreds of millions more.


“Wouldn’t it be silly if we got wiped out because we weren’t looking?” said Edward Lu, a former NASA astronaut and Google executive who leads the detection effort. “This is a wake-up call from space. We’ve got to pay attention to what’s out there.”


Astronomers know of no asteroids or comets that pose a major threat to the planet. But NASA estimates that fewer than 10 percent of the big dangers have been discovered.


Dr. Lu’s group, called the B612 Foundation after the imaginary asteroid on which the Little Prince lived, is one team of several pursuing ways to ward off extraterrestrial threats. NASA is another, and other private groups are emerging, like Planetary Resources, which wants not only to identify asteroids near Earth but also to mine them.


“Our job is to be the first line of defense, and we take that very seriously,” James Green, the director of planetary science at NASA headquarters, said in an interview Friday after the Russian strike. “No one living on this planet has ever before been hurt. That’s historic.”


Dr. Green added that the Russian episode was sure to energize the field and that an even analysis of the meteor’s remains could help reveal clues about future threats.


“Our scientists are excited,” he said. “Russian planetary scientists are already collecting meteorites from this event.”


The slow awakening to the danger began long ago, as scientists found hundreds of rocky scars indicating that cosmic intruders had periodically reshaped the planet.


The discoveries included not just obvious features like Meteor Crater in Arizona, but wide zones of upheaval. A crater more than a hundred miles wide beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico suggested that, 65 million years ago, a speeding rock from outer space had raised enough planetary mayhem to end the reign of the dinosaurs.


Some people remain skeptical of the cosmic threat and are glad for taxpayer money to go toward urgent problems on Earth rather than outer space. But many scientists who have examined the issues have become convinced that better precautions are warranted in much the same way that homeowners buy insurance for unlikely events that can result in severe damage to life and property.


Starting in the 1980s and 1990s, astronomers turned their telescopes on the sky with increasing vigor to look for killer rocks. The rationale was statistical. They knew about a number of near misses and calculated that many other rocky threats whirling about the solar system had gone undetected.


In 1996, with little fanfare, the Air Force also began scanning the skies for speeding rocks, giving credibility to an activity once seen as reserved for doomsday enthusiasts. It was the world’s first known government search.


The National Aeronautics and Space Administration took a lead role with what it called the Spaceguard Survey. In 2007, it issued a report estimating that 20,000 asteroids and comets orbited close enough to the planet to deliver blows that could destroy cities or even end all life. Today, with limited financing, NASA supports modest telescopes in the southwestern United States and in Hawaii that make more than 95 percent of the discoveries of the objects coming near the Earth.


Scientists lobbied hard for a space telescope that would get high above the distorting effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. It would orbit the Sun, peering across the solar system, and would have a much better chance of finding large space rocks.


But with the nation immersed in two wars and other earthly priorities, the government financing never materialized. Last year, Dr. Lu, who left the NASA astronaut corps in 2007 to work for Google, joined with veterans of the space program and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to accelerate the asteroid hunt.


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Beyoncé's Life Is But a Dream: The Best Moments















02/16/2013 at 11:05 PM EST



I am ... still singing!

Beyoncé's HBO documentary, Life Is But a Dream, aired Saturday night and it was a 90-minute whirlwind of music, dance and emotion. And though the singer, 31, has been everywhere recently (the Inauguration, the Super Bowl halftime show, Oprah's Next Chapter), the film was full of new and exciting moments. Here are my favorites:

Baby Bey: A home movie of Beyoncé as a little girl playing with bees made my jaw drop. The scene seems to prove what her fans believe: that she was born to be a superstar known as Queen B. I also loved seeing her singing – and being a typical, giggling teenager – with her sister Solange and Kelly Rowland.

The Heartbreak: From her frank discussion of firing her father as a manager to hearing "the saddest song" she's ever written after having miscarriage, the film – which Beyoncé produced and directed herself – had raw, emotional moments.

Mrs. Carter: Life is like a dream for Beyoncé and husband Jay-Z, who surprisingly shared intimate moments together – giddy over her pregnancy, singing Coldplay's "Yellow" to each other, enjoying solitude on a boat in an undisclosed, exotic location. You could feel the love when she toasted him on his birthday.

Blue Ivy: How cute is she?! When Beyoncé and Jay's baby girl, who turned 1 in January, appeared on the screen at the premiere of Life Is But a Dream at New York's Ziegfeld Theater, the crowd gasped and then let out a collective "aww." And I jammed my fingers on the TV screen the first time I watched, trying to pinch those cheeks. Seeing Beyoncé at home with a baby on her hip was a powerful reminder that the fierce superstar is human afterall.

The Music: Of course! Seeing her sing "Listen" with a gorgeously altered ending in a car convinced me of one thing: Beyoncé is definitely not human! I also loved seeing everything that went into her epic Billboard Music Awards performance of "Run the World (Girls)." I just wish I could do that dance. And is it me or does "Resentment" get grittier and angrier every time she performs it?

Praise Beysus and long live the Queen B!

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States' choices set up national health experiment


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's health care overhaul is unfolding as a national experiment with American consumers as the guinea pigs: Who will do a better job getting uninsured people covered, the states or the feds?


The nation is about evenly split between states that decided by Friday's deadline they want a say in running new insurance markets and states that are defaulting to federal control because they don't want to participate in "Obamacare." That choice was left to state governments under the law: Establish the market or Washington will.


With some exceptions, states led by Democrats opted to set up their own markets, called exchanges, and Republican-led states declined.


Only months from the official launch, exchanges are supposed to make the mind-boggling task of buying health insurance more like shopping on Amazon.com or Travelocity. Millions of people who don't have employer coverage will flock to the new markets. Middle-class consumers will be able to buy private insurance, with government help to pay the premiums in most cases. Low-income people will be steered to safety net programs like Medicaid.


"It's an experiment between the feds and the states, and among the states themselves," said Robert Krughoff, president of Consumers' Checkbook, a nonprofit ratings group that has devised an online tool used by many federal workers to pick their health plans. Krughoff is skeptical that either the feds or the states have solved the technological challenge of making the purchase of health insurance as easy as selecting a travel-and-hotel package.


Whether or not the bugs get worked out, consumers will be able to start signing up Oct. 1 for coverage that takes effect Jan. 1. That's also when two other major provisions of the law kick in: the mandate that almost all Americans carry health insurance, and the rule that says insurers can no longer turn away people in poor health.


Barring last-minute switches that may not be revealed until next week, 23 states plus Washington, D.C., have opted to run their own markets or partner with the Obama administration to do so.


Twenty-six states are defaulting to the feds. But in several of those, Republican governors are trying to carve out some kind of role by negotiating with federal Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Utah's status is unclear. It received initial federal approval to run its own market, but appears to be reconsidering.


"It's healthy for the states to have various choices," said Ben Nelson, CEO of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. "And there's no barrier to taking somebody else's ideas and making them work in your situation." A former U.S. senator from Nebraska, Nelson was one of several conservative Democrats who provided crucial votes to pass the overhaul.


States setting up their own exchanges are already taking different paths. Some will operate their markets much like major employers run their health plans, as "active purchasers" offering a limited choice of insurance carriers to drive better bargains. Others will open their markets to all insurers that meet basic standards, and let consumers decide.


Obama's Affordable Care Act remains politically divisive, but state insurance exchanges enjoy broad public support. Setting up a new market was central to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's health care overhaul as governor of Massachusetts. There, it's known as the Health Connector.


A recent AP poll found that Americans prefer to have states run the new markets by 63 percent to 32 percent. Among conservatives the margin was nearly 4-1 in favor of state control. But with some exceptions, including Idaho, Nevada and New Mexico, Republican-led states are maintaining a hands-off posture, meaning the federal government will step in.


"There is a sense of irony that it's the more conservative states" yielding to federal control, said Sandy Praeger, the Republican insurance commissioner in Kansas, a state declining to run its own exchange. First, she said, the law's opponents "put their money on the Supreme Court, then on the election. Now that it's a reality, we may see some movement."


They're not budging in Austin. "Texas is not interested in being a subcontractor to Obamacare," said Lucy Nashed, spokeswoman for Gov. Rick Perry, who remains opposed to mandates in the law.


In Kansas, Praeger supported a state-run exchange, but lost the political struggle to Gov. Sam Brownback. She says Kansans will be closely watching what happens in neighboring Colorado, where the state will run the market. She doubts that consumers in her state would relish dealing with a call center on the other side of the country. The federal exchange may have some local window-dressing but it's expected to function as a national program.


Christine Ferguson, director of the Rhode Island Health Benefits Exchange, says she expects to see a big shift to state control in the next few years. "Many of the states have just run out of time for a variety of reasons," said Ferguson. "I'd be surprised if in the longer run every state didn't want to have its own approach."


In some ways, the federal government has a head start on the states. It already operates the Medicare Plan Finder for health insurance and prescription plans that serve seniors, and the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Both have many of the features of the new insurance markets.


Administration officials are keeping mum about what the new federal exchange will look like, except that it will open on time and people in all 50 states will have the coverage they're entitled to by law.


Joel Ario, who oversaw planning for the health exchanges in the Obama administration, says "there's a rich dialogue going on" as to what the online shopping experience should look like. "To create a website like Amazon is a very complicated exercise," said Ario, now a consultant with Manatt Health Solutions.


He thinks consumers should be able to get one dollar figure for each plan that totals up all their expected costs for the year, including premiums, deductibles and copayments. Otherwise, scrolling through pages of insurance jargon online will be a sure turn-off.


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After decent rally, perhaps time for a pause

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks could struggle to extend their seven-week winning streak as the quarterly earnings period draws to a close and the market bumps into strong technical resistance.


Many analysts say the market could spend the next few weeks consolidating gains that have lifted the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 <.spx> by 6.6 percent since the start of the year.


The S&P 500 ended up 0.1 percent for the week, recovering from a late sell-off on Friday after a Bloomberg report about slow February sales at Wal-Mart triggered a slide in the retailer's shares. It was the index's seventh week of gains.


Odds of a pullback are increasing, with the market in slightly overbought territory, said Bruce Zaro, chief technical strategist at Delta Global Asset Management in Boston.


"I do suspect the closing of the earnings season will lead to at least a pause and possibly a pullback," Zaro said. The S&P 500 could shave 3 to 5 percent between now and early April, he said.


Fourth-quarter earnings have mostly beaten expectations. Year-over-year profit growth for S&P 500 companies is now estimated at 5.6 percent, up from a January 1 forecast for 2.9 percent growth, and 70 percent of companies are exceeding analyst profit expectations, above the 62 percent long-term average, according to Thomson Reuters data.


On Thursday, Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, is due to report results, unofficially closing out the earnings period. Investors will be keen to see its quarterly numbers, especially after the Friday's news report that rattled investors.


The S&P 500 has gained 4.3 percent since Alcoa kicked off the earnings season on January 8.


The approaching March 1 deadline for across-the-board federal budget cuts unless Congress reaches a compromise adds another reason for caution, especially with recent economic data indicating the recovery remains bumpy.


Manufacturing output fell 0.4 percent last month, the Federal Reserve said on Friday, but production in November and December was much stronger than previously thought.


TESTING RESISTANCE


The S&P 500 has been trading near five-year highs, and it notched its highest level since November 2007 this week. But the gains have pushed the benchmark index almost as far as it is likely to go in the near term, with strong resistance hovering around 1,525 and 1,540, one analyst said.


As a result, the index is set to move sideways, said Dave Chojnacki, market technician at Street One Financial in Huntington Valley, Pennsylvania. "We just don't have the volume or the catalyst right now" to go above those levels, he said.


At the same time, other analysts say, the market has not shown significant signs of slowing, including a break below 15- and 30-day moving averages.


Such moves would be needed to show that momentum is slowing or that the market is at risk of a correction, said Todd Salamone, director of research for Schaeffer's Investment Research in Cincinnati, Ohio. The S&P 500's 14-day moving average is at 1,511 while the 30-day is at 1,494. The index closed Friday at 1,519.


Recent M&A activity, including news this week of a merger between American Airlines and US Airways Group , helped provide some strength for the market this week and optimism that more deals may be on the way.


In the coming days, the market will focus on minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting, due to be released on Wednesday, which could provide support if they suggest the Fed will remain on its current course of aggressive monetary easing.


The Fed minutes released in January spooked markets a bit when they revealed that some Fed officials thought it would be appropriate to consider ending asset purchases later in 2013. U.S. Treasury yields rose on that news, though market worries about a near-term end to quantitative easing have since faded.


Among other companies expected to report earnings next week are Nordstrom , Hewlett-Packard and Marriott International


(Reporting By Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Leslie Adler)



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Peru Objects to U.S. Embassy’s Warning to Tourists





LIMA, Peru (AP) — A United States Embassy warning to American tourists about a potential kidnapping threat in the Cuzco region of Peru, which includes the Incan citadel Machu Picchu, drew vehement objections from Peruvian officials on Friday.




But a United States Embassy official said credible evidence existed of a threat from a Peruvian terrorist group.


The official confirmed a report in La República, a Peruvian newspaper, that said that leaders of the Shining Path guerrilla group had discussed kidnapping foreigners, particularly Americans, in intercepted communications. Tens of thousands of Americans visit Peru each year.


The official agreed to discuss the report only if not quoted by name because of the political delicacy of the warning.


La República said its sources about the interceptions included members of Peru’s military high command, but the country’s military chief, Adm. José Cueto, said that he had no such information.


“Perhaps it is information that they alone have and have not shared,” Admiral Cueto said of the United States government.


The embassy warning that mentioned Peru’s biggest tourist draw was posted on the embassy’s Facebook page on Thursday. Dated Feb. 13, it was also posted on the embassy’s Web site.


It says a “criminal organization may be planning to kidnap U.S. citizen tourists in the Cuzco and Machu Picchu area.” The warning also says United States Embassy personnel are barred from visiting Machu Picchu and the Cuzco region unless on official business, which is restricted.


“It’s very rare that it would be so pointed to us,” the American official said of the threat.


The mayor of the city of Cuzco, Luis Florez, urged the American ambassador, Rose M. Likins, to retract the warning.


“Tourism is an incredibly sensitive topic, and they would be damaging a big source of earnings at the national level,” Mr. Florez told reporters after a group of mayors met with President Ollanta Humala.


But Ms. Likins said the United States government was obliged by law to inform its citizens of any information regarding their security. “In this case, we received information that we consider reliable,” she told RPP radio.


The Maoist-inspired Shining Path group had been severely disrupted by the time the State Department designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. Its remnants number about 500 and have become an increasingly potent and disciplined fighting force, financing themselves by taxing drug traffickers in Peru’s coca-growing heartland.


Shining Path’s radius of action has in recent years expanded to include the northern jungle province of Convención in Cuzco, where, La República said, the conversations were intercepted and where the Camisea natural gas project is located.


In that region, a rugged 100 miles north of Machu Picchu, Shining Path fighters last April kidnapped and briefly detained 36 construction workers near a Camisea site. All were released unharmed, but the rebels killed eight soldiers and police officers sent to rescue them. The group has killed more than 80 Peruvian soldiers since 2008.


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Electronic Arts, Zynga settle competing lawsuits






(Reuters) – The video game publisher Electronic Arts Inc and social gaming company Zynga Inc have agreed to settle competing lawsuits over alleged copyright violations and the recruiting of employees.


Terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but both companies agreed to permanently drop claims they had raised in litigation begun last August in San Francisco federal court.






Electronic Arts had alleged that Zynga’s new game “The Ville” ripped off EA’s “The Sims Social,” which had been launched the prior August and at one point become Facebook’s second most popular game ahead of Zynga’s “FarmVille.”


It said Zynga was able to clone “The Sims Social” in part with the help of executives it had hired away from Electronic Arts, and who had access to critical information on how that game was developed.


Six weeks later, Zynga countersued, accusing Electronic Arts of trying improperly to stop employees from switching companies. Zynga said this violated a 2011 agreement between the companies over employee solicitations.


In separate emailed statements on Friday, Electronic Arts spokesman John Reseburg and Zynga spokeswoman Kelly Kunz said: “EA and Zynga have resolved their respective claims and have reached a settlement of their litigation in the Northern District of California.”


Silicon Valley companies compete intensely to attract talented employees, but sometimes agree to refrain from poaching each other’s workers. In 2010, several companies agreed with U.S. antitrust authorities to stop entering such agreements.


Zynga is based in San Francisco, and Electronic Arts is about 25 miles south in Redwood City, California.


In October, Zynga said it would significantly scale back its investment in “The Ville” as part of a cost-cutting plan that included the phasing out of 13 older titles.


The company on February 5 reported a $ 6.9 million adjusted fourth-quarter profit, surprising analysts who expected a loss, but posted a net loss of $ 209.5 million for all of 2012.


In afternoon trading on the Nasdaq, shares of Electronic Arts were down 20 cents at $ 16.95, and shares of Zynga were down 6 cents at $ 3.19.


The case is Electronic Arts Inc v. Zynga Inc, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 12-04099.


(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick, Gary Hill)


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Molly Sims: I Nursed a Little Vampire!




Celebrity Baby Blog





02/15/2013 at 01:00 PM ET



Following the birth of her baby boy, Molly Sims was ready to sink her teeth into breastfeeding.


The only problem? Her son Brooks Alan had beaten her to it.


“Early on in the hospital, they really want you to breastfeed, so I’m trying everything,” the model mama, 39, shared during a Wednesday appearance on Anderson Live.


“And I’m like, ‘Gosh, this really, really hurts.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, we know.’”


Determined to find the root of the pain, Sims went searching in her newborn’s mouth — and was shocked at her discovery.


“I’m like, ‘Is there any way a baby could be born with a tooth?’” she recalls. “And they went, ‘Oh sweetie, I know you’re a model, but … babies aren’t born with teeth!’”


She continues: “Come to find out, my baby was born with a tooth!”


Molly Sims Breastfeeding Anderson Live
Courtesy ANDERSON LIVE



Despite countless attempts to successfully nurse — “I did nipple shields, nipple guards, supplemental nursing system, it was horrible,” the new mom says — Sims eventually decided to call it quits.


“He was literally like a vampire on me for three months — it was unbelievable,” she says with a laugh. “Cut to I’m not breastfeeding and I’m proud of it.”


Now Brooks, 7 months, has moved on to other milestones — including crawling — and is already taking after his dad, Scott Stuber.


“He has the hairline of my husband. It’s like an Eddie Munster kind of hairline. It’s not so attractive, but [he'll] end up growing into it,” Sims says.


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Study: Fish in drug-tainted water suffer reaction


BOSTON (AP) — What happens to fish that swim in waters tainted by traces of drugs that people take? When it's an anti-anxiety drug, they become hyper, anti-social and aggressive, a study found. They even get the munchies.


It may sound funny, but it could threaten the fish population and upset the delicate dynamics of the marine environment, scientists say.


The findings, published online Thursday in the journal Science, add to the mounting evidence that minuscule amounts of medicines in rivers and streams can alter the biology and behavior of fish and other marine animals.


"I think people are starting to understand that pharmaceuticals are environmental contaminants," said Dana Kolpin, a researcher for the U.S. Geological Survey who is familiar with the study.


Calling their results alarming, the Swedish researchers who did the study suspect the little drugged fish could become easier targets for bigger fish because they are more likely to venture alone into unfamiliar places.


"We know that in a predator-prey relation, increased boldness and activity combined with decreased sociality ... means you're going to be somebody's lunch quite soon," said Gregory Moller, a toxicologist at the University of Idaho and Washington State University. "It removes the natural balance."


Researchers around the world have been taking a close look at the effects of pharmaceuticals in extremely low concentrations, measured in parts per billion. Such drugs have turned up in waterways in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere over the past decade.


They come mostly from humans and farm animals; the drugs pass through their bodies in unmetabolized form. These drug traces are then piped to water treatment plants, which are not designed to remove them from the cleaned water that flows back into streams and rivers.


The Associated Press first reported in 2008 that the drinking water of at least 51 million Americans carries low concentrations of many common drugs. The findings were based on questionnaires sent to water utilities, which reported the presence of antibiotics, sedatives, sex hormones and other drugs.


The news reports led to congressional hearings and legislation, more water testing and more public disclosure. To this day, though, there are no mandatory U.S. limits on pharmaceuticals in waterways.


The research team at Sweden's Umea University used minute concentrations of 2 parts per billion of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam, similar to concentrations found in real waters. The drug belongs to a widely used class of medicines known as benzodiazepines that includes Valium and Librium.


The team put young wild European perch into an aquarium, exposed them to these highly diluted drugs and then carefully measured feeding, schooling, movement and hiding behavior. They found that drug-exposed fish moved more, fed more aggressively, hid less and tended to school less than unexposed fish. On average, the drugged fish were more than twice as active as the others, researcher Micael Jonsson said. The effects were more pronounced at higher drug concentrations.


"Our first thought is, this is like a person diagnosed with ADHD," said Jonsson, referring to attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. "They become asocial and more active than they should be."


Tomas Brodin, another member of the research team, called the drug's environmental impact a global problem. "We find these concentrations or close to them all over the world, and it's quite possible or even probable that these behavioral effects are taking place as we speak," he said Thursday in Boston at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.


Most previous research on trace drugs and marine life has focused on biological changes, such as male fish that take on female characteristics. However, a 2009 study found that tiny concentrations of antidepressants made fathead minnows more vulnerable to predators.


It is not clear exactly how long-term drug exposure, beyond the seven days in this study, would affect real fish in real rivers and streams. The Swedish researchers argue that the drug-induced changes could jeopardize populations of this sport and commercial fish, which lives in both fresh and brackish water.


Water toxins specialist Anne McElroy of Stony Brook University in New York agreed: "These lower chronic exposures that may alter things like animals' mating behavior or its ability to catch food or its ability to avoid being eaten — over time, that could really affect a population."


Another possibility, the researchers said, is that more aggressive feeding by the perch on zooplankton could reduce the numbers of these tiny creatures. Since zooplankton feed on algae, a drop in their numbers could allow algae to grow unchecked. That, in turn, could choke other marine life.


The Swedish team said it is highly unlikely people would be harmed by eating such drug-exposed fish. Jonsson said a person would have to eat 4 tons of perch to consume the equivalent of a single pill.


Researchers said more work is needed to develop better ways of removing drugs from water at treatment plants. They also said unused drugs should be brought to take-back programs where they exist, instead of being flushed down the toilet. And they called on pharmaceutical companies to work on "greener" drugs that degrade more easily.


Sandoz, one of three companies approved to sell oxazepam in the U.S., "shares society's desire to protect the environment and takes steps to minimize the environmental impact of its products over their life cycle," spokeswoman Julie Masow said in an emailed statement. She provided no details.


___


Online:


Overview of the drug: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682050.html


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Wall Street ends slightly higher, helped by acquisitions

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 eked out a small gain for a third straight session on Thursday, helped by a flurry of merger activity, though investors see no catalysts to lift the market further with major averages near multi-year highs.


The market's slowed advance took the S&P 500 to its highest intraday level since November 2007 on Wednesday. While the index notched its third straight day of gains, none was more than 0.2 percent.


Shares of H.J. Heinz Co jumped 20 percent to $72.50 after it said Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital will buy the food company for $72.50 a share, or $28 billion including debt. Berkshire's class B shares rose 1.3 percent to $99.21.


Also supporting the market was data showing the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week. The CBOE Volatility index <.vix> fell 2.4 percent, dropping to 12.67.


"While I'm not bearish, I don't see many upside motivations at these levels," said Donald Selkin, chief market strategist at National Securities in New York, who cited the low level of the VIX as a sign the market was overbought.


Equities have struggled to break above current levels where they have been hovering for almost two weeks. The S&P 500 is up more than 6 percent so far this year.


"We need to digest some of our gains to go higher, but people are so eager to buy on the dips that we're not even seeing dips anymore. People are just chasing the market higher," said Selkin, who helps oversee about $3 billion in assets.


Stocks fell earlier after a report the euro zone's gross domestic product contracted by the steepest amount since the first quarter of 2009. In addition, Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 9.52 points, or 0.07 percent, at 13,973.39. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 1.05 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,521.38. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was up 1.78 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,198.66.


Constellation Brands soared 37 percent to $43.75 after AB InBev's deal to take over Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo was revised to grant Constellation perpetual rights to distribute Corona and other Modelo brands in the United States. U.S. shares of AB InBev gained 5.1 percent to $92.77.


American Airlines and US Airways Group said they plan to merge in a deal that will form the world's biggest air carrier, with an equity valuation of about $11 billion. US Airways shares fell 4.6 percent to $13.99.


Weakness in Europe contributed to a 5 percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems , which nonetheless beat estimates as it reported its results late Wednesday. The company's shares dipped 0.7 percent to $20.99.


General Motors Co reported a weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter profit, also citing bigger losses in Europe alongside lower prices in its core North American market. The stock was off 3.3 percent to $27.73.


Only five more stocks rose than fell on the New York Stock Exchange, while 51 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed higher.


Volume was light, with about 6.36 billion shares changing 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.


(Editing by Nick Zieminski and Kenneth Barry)



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Loi Journal: In Vietnam, Some Chose to Be Single Mothers


Justin Mott for the International Herald Tribune


Nguyen Thi Nhan at home with her grandson, Thao, 2. Abandoned by her husband after the war, she asked another man to impregnate her. More Photos »







LOI, Vietnam — They had no plan to break barriers or cause trouble. But 30 years ago in this bucolic village in northern Vietnam, the fierce determination of one group of women to become mothers upended centuries-old gender rules and may have helped open the door for a nation to redefine parenthood.




One recent morning in Loi, as farmers in conical straw hats waded quietly through rice paddies, a small group of women played with their grandchildren near a stream. Their husbands were nowhere to be found, not because they perished in the war, but because the women decided to have children without husbands.


The women’s story began during the American War, as it is called here, when many put the revolution before their families. As peace settled more than a decade later, it became clear that they — like so many of their generation — had sacrificed their marriageable years to the war.


At that time Vietnamese women traditionally married around 16, and those still single at 20 would often be considered “qua lua,” or “past the marriageable age.” When single men who survived the war returned home, they often preferred younger brides, exacerbating the effects of a sex ratio already skewed by male mortality in the war. According to the Vietnam Population and Housing Census of 2009, after reunification in 1979 there were on average only about 88 men for every 100 women between 20 and 44.


Unlike previous generations of unwanted Vietnamese women who dutifully accepted the “so,” or “destiny,” of living a solitary life, a group of women in Loi decided to take motherhood into their own hands. They had endured the war, developed a new strength and were determined not to die alone.


One by one they asked men — whom they would never interact with afterward — to help them conceive a child. The practice became known as “xin con,” or “asking for a child,” and it meant breaking with tradition, facing discrimination and enduring the hardships of raising a child alone.


“It was unusual, and quite remarkable,” said Harriet Phinney, an assistant professor of anthropology at Seattle University who is writing a book on the practice of xin con in Vietnam. Purposely conceiving a child out of wedlock, she said, “was unheard-of” before the revolutionary era.


It was a product of the mothers’ bravery, said Ms. Phinney, but also of a postwar society that acknowledged the unique situation of women across Vietnam, including thousands of widows, who were raising children alone.


Some of the women in Loi were willing to share their stories, though they always kept the names of the fathers a tightly held secret. One of the first women in Loi to ask for a child was Nguyen Thi Nhan, now 58.


Ms. Nhan had led a platoon of women during the war, and though she never saw battle, was awarded a medal for her exemplary leadership. Her husband, with whom she had a daughter, abandoned her after the war. Ms. Nhan moved to the cheapest land she could find, a field near the stream on the outskirts of Loi, where a few refugees from bombing nearby still lived. She then asked for a second child, ending up with the son she wished for.


Her first several years were hard. Despite her best efforts, food and money were scarce. The villagers eventually set aside prejudices and accepted her choice, offering to share the little food they could spare. Eventually, Ms. Nhan was joined by more than a dozen other women. Among them was Nguyen Thi Luu, 63. She had fallen in love with a soldier who was killed in battle in 1972.


“I was 26 when the war ended,” Ms. Luu said. “That was considered too old for marriage, in those times. I did not want to marry a bad, older man, and no single men came to me.”


But Ms. Luu wanted to become a mother, not least so she would have support in her old age. In Vietnam, nursing homes are scarce, and care for the elderly is considered a filial duty.


“I was afraid to die alone,” Ms. Luu said. “I wanted someone to lean on in my old age. I wanted a child of my own.”


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ARCHOS debuts three quad-core iPad clones with HD displays and affordable price tags






ARCHOS (JXR) on Thursday announced a new line of “Platinum” tablets that feature high-end specs and a low price tag. The company debuted three different sized tablets — 8-inch, 9.7-inch and 11.6-inch — that are equipped with high-definition IPS displays, 1.2GHz quad-core processors, microSD ports, 2GB of RAM and Android 4.1. The 8-inch Platinum slate features a 1024 × 768 resolution screen and will be priced at $ 199, while the 9.7-inch Platinum HD tablet, which looks strikingly similar to Apple’s (AAPL) iPad, will be equipped with a 2048 × 1536 resolution display and will sell for $ 299. Both tablets will be released this month, while the largest Platinum slate will be available in April and offer a 1920 × 1080 resolution screen for $ 349. ARCHOS’ press release follows below.


[More from BGR: After using Microsoft’s Surface Pro, going back to the first Surface is agonizing]







ARCHOS Introduces the New Platinum Range
The Platinum tablets are amongst the first Android tablets to offer a super high resolution IPS screen combined with the performance of a Quad-Core CPU

Denver, CO – February 14, 2013 – ARCHOS, an award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, introduces the Platinum range, a new line of tablets that feature a sleek aluminum design combined with the best high definition IPS displays, quad-core processors and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. There will be three tablets in the range including an 8-inch, 9.7-inch and 11.6-inch all of which deliver true vivid colors, sharper text and amazingly fast performance.


[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]


The entire Platinum range will all share the following features:
• High-Definition IPS display with capacitive multi-touch screen
• QUAD core CPU at 1.2 GHz with 8-core GPU, with 1080p video decoding
• 2 GB RAM
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
• Full access to the 700,000 applications
• Archos Media Center applications
• Front and Back Cameras
• Mini-HDMI and Micro SD ports


The ARCHOS 80 Platinum, an 8” tablet, features a 1024×768 resolution IPS screen and when compared to the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 it is almost twice as fast, has double the RAM and has a back camera for a fraction of the cost. The 80 Platinum will be available in February for $ 199.


The ARCHOS 97 Platinum HD, a 9.7” tablet, features a stunning 2048×1536 resolution IPS screen, which is comparable to the Retina display found in the iPad, but is 40% less expensive.
The 97 Platinum HD will be available in February for $ 299.


The ARCHOS 116 Platinum, an 11.6” tablet, features a 1920×1080 resolution IPS screen, unlike anything currently on the market. The 116 Platinum will be available in April for $ 349.



This article was originally published on BGR.com


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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American Idol's Top 40 Revealed






American Idol










02/14/2013 at 10:00 PM EST







From left: Randy Jackson, Mariah Carey, Ryan Seacrest, Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban


Michael Becker/FOX.


American Idol really, really wants a woman to win this season. At the beginning of Thursday's episode, they reminded us that a female singer hasn't won the show since 2007, when Jordin Sparks bested Blake Lewis for the top prize. Let's put this into perspective: The last time a woman won, George W. Bush was still president, J.K. Rowling was still writing the Harry Potter series, and no one had any idea who Snooki was. Well, maybe a few people knew her.

After Ryan Seacrest all but begged us to vote for a female, we finally got to see the level of the women's talent. Angela Miller sat at the piano and sang her own song, "You Set Me Free." It was a show-stopping performance, prompting judge Keith Urban to rave.

"If that was recorded right there, I would play it in my car," he said. "That was just a beautiful song."

Miller was followed by Candice Glover, who gave an strong version of Alicia Keys's "Girl on Fire." Janelle Arthur also impressed with a pleasant version of Carrie Underwood's "I told You So."

Shubha Vedula had the nerve to sing a Mariah Carey song in front of Mariah Carey and did a great job.

And then there was Zoanette Johnson. (At some point, she needs to drop her last name and just be known as Zoanette.) She played the drums as she sang a song she had improvised onstage the previous night. It was a rambling tune about her Idol experience. It was manic and baffling. And then she came to an abrupt stop and yelled at the background singers.

"Slow it down! C'mon guys," she pleaded. "I need this to be right." At some point, she lost a drumstick.

It's fun to imagine what Simon Cowell's reaction would be to her performances.

Kez Ban, the season's other memorable contestant, was quickly cut from the competition after singing her original song. There is clearly only room for one unpredictable contestant this season – and her name is Zoanette.

As the show wound down, the judges cut the field down to 20 women, and then brought in the remaining 28 male singers to cut them down to 20. That's when the judges had Josh Holiday sing "Georgia on My Mind." He split his pants from crotch to knee.

But Holiday and 39 others are season 12's top 40. One of them will be the next American Idol. Will it be a girl?

Top 20 Women

Adriana Latonio
Amber Holcomb
Angela Miller
Aubrey Cleland
Brandy Hotard
Breanna Steer
Candice Glover
Cristabel Clack
Isabelle Pasqualone
Janelle Arthur
Jenny Beth Willis
Jett Hermano
Juliana Chahayed
Kamaria Ousley
Kree Harrison
Melinlda Ademi
Rachel Hale
Shubha Vedula
Tenna Torres
Zoanette Johnson

Top 20 Men

Bryant Tadeo
Burnell Taylor
Charlie Askew
Chris Watson
Cortez Shaw
Curtis Finch, Jr.
David Willis
Devin Velez
Elijah Liu
Gurpreet Singh Sarin
Jimmy Smith
Johnny Keyser
Josh Holiday
Kevin Harris
Lazaro Arbos
Mathenee Treco
Nick Boddington
Paul Jolley
Vincent Powell
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Clues to why most survived China melamine scandal


WASHINGTON (AP) — Scientists wondering why some children and not others survived one of China's worst food safety scandals have uncovered a suspect: germs that live in the gut.


In 2008, at least six babies died and 300,000 became sick after being fed infant formula that had been deliberately and illegally tainted with the industrial chemical melamine. There were some lingering puzzles: How did it cause kidney failure, and why wasn't everyone equally at risk?


A team of researchers from the U.S. and China re-examined those questions in a series of studies in rats. In findings released Wednesday, they reported that certain intestinal bacteria play a crucial role in how the body handles melamine.


The intestines of all mammals teem with different species of bacteria that perform different jobs. To see if one of those activities involves processing melamine, researchers from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and Shanghai Jiao Tong University gave lab rats antibiotics to kill off some of the germs — and then fed them melamine.


The antibiotic-treated rats excreted twice as much of the melamine as rats that didn't get antibiotics, and they experienced fewer kidney stones and other damage.


A closer look identified why: A particular intestinal germ — named Klebsiella terrigena — was metabolizing melamine to create a more toxic byproduct, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.


Previous studies have estimated that fewer than 1 percent of healthy people harbor that bacteria species. A similar fraction of melamine-exposed children in China got sick, the researchers wrote. But proving that link would require studying stool samples preserved from affected children, they cautioned.


Still, the research is pretty strong, said microbiologist Jack Gilbert of the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, who wasn't involved in the new study.


More importantly, "this paper adds to a growing body of evidence which suggests that microbes in the body play a significant role in our response to toxicity and in our health in general," Gilbert said.


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Wall Street pauses after rally to five-year high

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks drifted in light volume on Wednesday, ending little changed, as investors remained cautious after the S&P 500 index briefly hit its highest intraday level since November 2007.


The S&P 500 was buoyed by General Electric after cable company Comcast Corp said it will buy from GE the the part of NBCUniversal it didn't already own for $16.7 billion.


Comcast's stock hit the highest since 1999 before closing up 3 percent at $40.13 and GE gained 3.6 percent to $23.39.


The S&P 500 is up 6.6 percent so far this year, partly due to stronger-than-expected corporate earnings and a better economic outlook. The Dow industrials is about 1 percent away from an all-time intraday high, reached in October 2007.


Volume has been weak in recent days with the S&P moving sideways around 1,520. The index is about 3 percent away from closing at a record high.


A scarcity of sellers after a consistent string of gains is a positive sign and shows the uptrend is intact, King Lip, chief investment officer at Baker Avenue Asset Management in San Francisco, said.


"Last year we had double-digit returns in the first quarter. It's fairly possible we can move higher from here," he said.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 35.79 points or 0.26 percent, to 13,982.91, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 0.9 point or 0.06 percent, to 1,520.33 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.38 points or 0.33 percent, to 3,196.88.


The S&P gained 12 percent in the first three months of 2012.


Deere & Co , the world's largest farm equipment maker, forecast a modest increase in sales this year despite the prospect of the biggest corn crop in U.S. history. The forecast fell short of analysts' expectations, sending shares of Deere down 3.5 percent to $90.68.


In extended trading, shares of technology bellwether Cisco Systems fell 2 percent after it posted results.


Dr Pepper Snapple fell 5.8 percent to $42.69 after it forecast profit for the current year below analysts' estimates.


Cliffs Natural Resources lost a fifth of its market value a day after the miner reported a quarterly loss and slashed its dividend by 76 percent. Its shares fell 20 percent to 429.29.


According to the latest Thomson Reuters data, of the 364 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.


About 5.9 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, below the daily average in February last year of 6.94 billion.


On the NYSE, roughly seven issues rose for every five that fell and on Nasdaq more than six rose for every five decliners.


(Editing by Kenneth Barry and Bernadette Baum)



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India Ink: In India, Kisses Are on Rise, Even in Public


Manpreet Romana for The New York Times


A couple in a public park in New Delhi. Indians have long tended to view outward expressions of love with suspicion, but kissing is increasing.







NEW DELHI — India may be the birthplace of the Kama Sutra, the ancient how-to manual on kissing and sex. But for many years, Indian couples did not widely embrace kissing, at least not in public. Now that is changing.




The Mahabharata, an epic poem written 3,000 years ago, is believed to include the first written description of mouth-to-mouth kissing. But anthropological studies done over the past century in India and elsewhere in Asia showed that kissing was far from universal and even seen as improper by many societies, said Elaine Hatfield, a professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii.


Sanjay Srivastava, a professor of sociology at the Institute of Economic Growth at Delhi University, said: “Until recently, kissing was seen as Western and not an Indian thing to do. That has changed.”


In India, most marriages are still arranged, and the rate of sex before marriage is low, according to a government survey, so passionate kissing among the unmarried has long been discouraged. Many married couples refrained as well, at least in front of other people. But recent studies, backed by interviews with sociologists and psychiatrists in India, suggest that kissing’s popularity has risen considerably.


Chastity is viewed as highly desirable in India, and Indians, as a result, have also tended to view outward expressions of love, be they physical or verbal, with suspicion, said Dr. Roy Abraham Kallivayalil, president of the Indian Psychiatric Society.


“I don’t tell my wife that I love her,” Dr. Kallivayalil said. “My father has never in 88 years told me that he loved me. We don’t do that.”


A study led by James Witte, a professor of sociology at George Mason University in Virginia, reported that more than half of a set of volunteer respondents in India said they kissed at least several times a week. He solicited respondents through Internet portals, in English, but cautioned that his sample was not random. He said he reached people who were “well educated, younger and more urban” and who had access to the Internet.


In Professor Witte’s study, of the 112 respondents in the kissing module, 24.1 percent said they kissed passionately “many times a day,” but when asked about kissing, hugging or caressing in public, 41.1 percent of participants chose “hardly ever or not at all.”


A pivotal screen kiss reflected the changing romantic landscape here. Kissing scenes were banned by Indian film censors until the 1990s, and Shah Rukh Khan, a Bollywood heartthrob who is one of the world’s biggest movie stars, has been teasing Indian audiences in dozens of films since then by bringing his lips achingly close to those of his beautiful co-stars. But his lips never touched any of theirs until he kissed the Bollywood bombshell Katrina Kaif in “Jab Tak Hai Jaan,” which was released in December 2012.


Mr. Khan tried to soften the impact by saying in a published interview that his director made him do it. But the cultural Rubicon had been crossed.


“That kiss was an incredibly important moment,” Dr. Srivastava said. “Shah Rukh Khan defines what is mainstream. If he does it, it becomes acceptable.”


Kissing’s rise here may also reflect the growing power of young women in deciding who to marry, said Debra Lieberman, an assistant professor of evolutionary psychology at the University of Miami. In many cases, “women are now able to select mates without having to negotiate as much with family members,” Dr. Lieberman said.


And Dr. Avdesh Sharma, a psychiatrist practicing in New Delhi, said that his younger female patients are far more insistent than their mothers were that their emotional needs be met. That often involves kissing, he said.


“The terms and timing of intimacy used to be initiated and decided entirely by the man,” Dr. Sharma said. “That is no longer true.”


Indeed, while arranged marriages are still the norm in India, a growing share of young couples say that their views play a role in the process. If a young woman does not like the man her parents have picked, many families now offer her a veto.


Shreeya Sinha contributed reporting from New York.



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Microsoft now sees the Xbox as an ‘entertainment’ console that’s not limited to gaming








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Lady Gaga Cancels Born This Way Ball Tour Due to Severe Injury















02/13/2013 at 08:50 PM EST



It's a somber week for Lady Gaga – and her Little Monsters.

Following Tuesday's Facebook announcement that she was "devastated and sad" because she couldn't walk and had to postpone several Born This Way Ball concerts, the pop star, 26, has officially canceled the remaining dates of her world tour.

"After additional tests this morning to review the severity of the issue, it has been determined that Lady Gaga has a labral tear of the right hip," the singer's rep told PEOPLE Wednesday in a statement. "She will need surgery to repair the problem, followed by strict down time to recover. This unfortunately, will force her to cancel the tour, so she can heal."

Refunds for the cancelled performances will be available at point of purchase starting on Thursday.

"I hope you can forgive me, as it is nearly impossible for me to forgive myself," she wrote the previous day of postponing the dates. "I hate this. I hate this so much. I love you and I'm sorry."

Get well, Gaga!

Reporting by CHUCK ARNOLD

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly


In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.


Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.


After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.


The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.


The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.


"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."


He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.


In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.


However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.


Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.


They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.


Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.


After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.


Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.


The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.


Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.


One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.


"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."


Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.


___


Online:


Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer


and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney


Study: http://gucasym.org


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Comcast to buy rest of NBC stake for $16.7 billion


(Reuters) - Comcast Corp on Tuesday said it would buy General Electric's remaining 49 percent equity stake in their NBCUniversal joint venture for about $16.7 billion, speeding up a deal that had not been expected until at least late 2014.


Analysts said Comcast was getting a good deal at that price, while Comcast's chief executive said the company moved because it was eager to take control of the business sooner than planned.


Comcast shares rose 7.5 percent in afterhours trading.


Comcast bought 51 percent of NBC Universal in 2011 after winning antitrust approval from the Justice Department. The transaction created a $30 billion business that includes broadcast, cable networks, movie studios and theme parks.


"Pretty much in our opinion given that media stocks have gone up quite a bit, it's a very attractive price, a fair price because we had a formula buyout," Comcast Chairman and Chief Executive Brian Roberts said in an interview with Reuters. "We feel many good things coming today and in the future and we wanted to get 100 percent of that for our shareholders."


In addition to the main deal, NBCUniversal will also buy from GE Capital the properties it uses at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City and CNBC's headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, for about $1.4 billion.


Comcast said it would fund the deal with $11.4 billion of cash on hand, $4 billion in senior unsecured notes to be issued to GE, $2 billion in credit facility borrowings and the issuance of $725 million in subsidiary preferred stock to GE.


Separately, Comcast said it would increase its dividend by 20 percent and that it would buy back $2 billion in stock this year. GE also said it would accelerate its own share buy-back program to $10 billion this year.


"It's an attractive price - Comcast is getting a good deal," Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan said.


LONG-HELD AMBITIONS


Comcast turned its attention to NBC after a failed $54 billion hostile takeover attempt of Disney in 2004 that ultimately led to the resignation of that company's CEO, Michael Eisner, after more than 20 years on the job.


The hostile offer exposed Comcast's desire to merge content with distribution at a time when most of its industry peers, such as Viacom-CBS and AOL-Time Warner, were doing the opposite.


While Comcast held the title of the nation's leading cable operator by a wide margin, its status as a content player was always second tier, with middling networks like E!, G4 and Golf forming the basis of its channel portfolio.


The NBC deal gave the Philadelphia-based cable operator the cable industry's top-rated entertainment network, USA, its leading business network CNBC, upstart news network MSNBC and Bravo, among others.


For GE, the sale culminates a long-planned exit from the entertainment business.


Since reaching the deal to sell its majority stake in NBC Universal, GE officials have made clear that they eventually planned to exit the entertainment business entirely.


The initial sale contract gave GE the option to sell back as much as all its remaining stake in NBC Universal by mid-2014.


The company's accelerated share buyback could be an answer to shareholders, who have wondered what GE would do with a cash windfall that could total tens of billions of dollars over several years, as the company sold its remaining NBC stake and recouped more profits earned by GE Capital.


COMCAST EARNINGS


In addition to the GE deal, Comcast reported fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday.


It posted $15.94 billion in revenue, up 6 percent from a year ago. It posted net income of $1.8 billion, or 56 cents per share, up from $1.56 billion, or 47 cents a year ago.


In its cable business, it lost a net 7,000 video customers, which is better than the 17,000 subscribers lost a year ago.


Wall Street analysts were expecting Comcast to lose 5,000 customers, according to StreetAccount. It added 341,000 Internet customers in the quarter, which beat the 329,000 new customers analysts were expecting.


Comcast shares rose to $41.89 after the market close from $38.97 in regular trading. GE shares rose 3 percent to $23.37 from a $22.58 close.


(Reporting by Liana B. Baker, Jennifer Saba and Peter Lauria in New York, Diane Bartz in Washington, Scott Malone in Boston and A. Ananthalakshmi in Bangalore; Writing by Ben Berkowitz; Editing by Dan Grebler)



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India Ink: Silicon Valley and Immigrant Groups Find Common Cause





SAN FRANCISCO — What do computer programmers and illegal immigrants have to do with each other?




When it comes to the sweeping overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that Congress is considering this year, the answer is everything.


Silicon Valley executives, who have long pressed the government to provide more visas for foreign-born math and science brains, are joining forces with an array of immigration groups seeking comprehensive changes in the law. And as momentum builds in Washington for a broad revamping, the tech industry has more hope than ever that it will finally achieve its goal: the expanded access to visas that it says is critical to its own continued growth and that of the economy as a whole.


Signs of the industry’s stepped-up engagement on the issue are visible everywhere. Prominent executives met with President Obama last week. Start-up founders who rarely abandon their computers have flown across the country to meet with lawmakers.


This Tuesday, the Technology CEO Council, an advocacy organization representing companies like Dell, Intel and Motorola, had meetings on Capitol Hill. On Wednesday, Steve Case, a founder of AOL, is scheduled to testify at the first Senate hearing this year on immigration legislation, alongside the head of the deportation agents’ union and the leader of a Latino civil rights group.


“The odds of high-skilled passing without comprehensive is close to zero, and the odds of comprehensive passing without high-skilled passing is close to zero,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a nonpartisan research group based in Washington.


The push comes as a clutch of powerful Senate Republicans and Democrats have reached a long-elusive agreement on some basic principles of a “comprehensive” revamping of immigration law. Separately, a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate in late January focuses directly on the visa issue.


The industry’s argument for more so-called high-skilled visas has already persuaded the president.


“Real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods, reduce bureaucracy, and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy,” Mr. Obama said in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech.


In a speech in Las Vegas in January in which he introduced his own blueprint for overhauling immigration law, Mr. Obama embraced the idea that granting more visas was essential to maintaining innovation and job growth. He talked about foreigners studying at American universities, figuring out how to turn their ideas into businesses.


In part, the new alliance between the tech industry and immigration groups was born out of the 2012 elections and the rising influence of Hispanic voters.


“The world has changed since the election,” said Peter J. Muller, director of government relations at Intel, pointing out that the defeat of many Republican candidates had led to a softening of the party’s position on broad changes to immigration law. “There is a focus on comprehensive. We’re thrilled by it.”


“At this point,” he added, “our best hope for immigration reform lies with comprehensive reform.”


Mr. Case, the AOL co-founder, who now runs an investment fund, echoed that sentiment after meeting with the president last Tuesday.


“I look forward to doing whatever I can to help pass comprehensive immigration reform in the months ahead,” he said, “and ensure it includes strong provisions regarding high-skilled immigration, so we are positioned to win the global battle for talent.”


That sort of sentiment delights immigrants’ rights advocates who have banged their heads against the wall for years to rally a majority of Congress around their agenda.


“The stars are aligning here,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum. “You’ve got the politics of immigration reform changing. You’ve got tech leaders leaning in not just for high-skilled but for broader immigration reform.”


Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, who is co-sponsoring the bill to increase the number of visas available for highly skilled immigrants, said the cooperation went both ways.


“All the talk about the STEM field — science, technology, engineering, mathematics — has awakened even those who aren’t all that interested in the high-tech world,” he said.


While the growing momentum has surprised many in Washington, comprehensive change is still not a sure thing, especially in the Republican-controlled House.


Mr. Hatch said he would push forward with his measure even if the broader efforts foundered. But his Democratic co-sponsor, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, said she would press for the bill to be part of the comprehensive package.


Last year, technology executives had a taste of what could happen with stand-alone legislation.


In November the House passed a bill, sponsored by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Republican of Texas, that would have provided 55,000 visas for foreigners graduating from American universities with advanced degrees in STEM fields. Mr. Smith, then the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, brought considerable clout, and the tech industry rallied behind the bill.


But the legislation died in the Senate, because Democrats wanted any technology-specific measure to be part of a broader bargain that would include more visas for family members.


In pressing its case, the industry has used some vivid examples to sway lawmakers, arguing that if skilled workers cannot get visas, tech companies will simply move the jobs overseas.


Facebook was the latest to make this case. It said it had to place nearly 80 engineers in its office in Dublin in 2011 because it could not obtain even temporary work visas to employ them at the company’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Those temporary visas, called H-1B visas, are capped at 60,000 a year and usually run out within a couple of months. The bill proposed by Mr. Hatch and Ms. Klobuchar would more than double that number.


Microsoft has also argued that the visa backlog takes jobs out of the United States, saying it was forced to open a development office in Vancouver.


Hundreds of thousands of foreigners, the largest share from India and China, come to American universities every year to study science and engineering. But it can take so long for them to get permanent residency that many end up returning home. Mr. Hatch said he was keen to see foreign-born graduates of American universities remain in this country rather than work for competitive firms elsewhere.


“China, India — they would love to have these Ph.D.’s return to their countries,” he said. “They see the benefits. Why can’t we?”


There is no dearth of jobs in Silicon Valley. Employment in San Francisco and its southern suburbs grew about 3.6 percent in 2012, twice the growth rate nationally, according to a study released last week by Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a nonpartisan research organization.


But many of those jobs are filled by foreigners. In San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, nearly two-thirds of those employed in science- and engineering-related jobs were born abroad, compared with about one-fourth nationwide, according to the study.


Industry executives hope to employ many more.


“The issue has truly ripened,” said Bruce Mehlman, a veteran Washington lobbyist and executive director of the Technology CEO Council. “Levels of optimism are higher than they’ve been in a while.”


Julia Preston contributed reporting from New York.



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Microsoft says Xbox 360 sales have surpassed 76 million units, Kinect sales top 24 million








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Larry Bird's Son Connor Arrested















02/12/2013 at 10:00 PM EST







Conner Bird


Monroe County Sheriff’s Office/AP


Basketball star Larry Bird's son is in trouble with the law.

According to CBS Chicago, 21-year-old Connor Bird was involved in an argument with an ex-girlfriend at his apartment on Sunday afternoon and reportedly threw a cell phone at her.

Hours later, the two drove to a nearby parking lot where the woman got out of the car, intending to walk home, and Conner allegedly attempted to hit her twice with his vehicle.

Bird was later arrested by the Indiana University Police on charges of battery with injury, criminal mischief, intimidation with a deadly weapon and possession of marijuana. He is now free on bail. No trial date has been set.

A lawyer for Bird tells PEOPLE: "What has happened is a very private matter. We’re trying to resolve this as quickly as possible and we're all thankful no one was seriously injured."

Bird was reportedly arrested in 2011 for underage drinking and disorderly conduct, according to TMZ.

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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life


The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.


There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.


"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.


Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.


Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.


When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."


One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.


The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."


In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."


"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.


Experts on aging agreed.


"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."


Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.


But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.


"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.


"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.


Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.


In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.


Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.


The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.


Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.


Other leaders who are still working:


—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.


—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.


—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.


—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.


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Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.


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Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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