TORONTO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Canada's Rebecca Marino, a rising star in women's tennis, stepped away from the sport in search of a normal life on Wednesday, weary of battling depression and cyber-bullies. Ranked number 38 in the world two years ago, the 22-year-old admitted she had long suffered from depression and was no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach the top. "After thinking long and hard, I do not have the passion or enjoyment to drive myself to the level I would like to be at in professional tennis," Marino explained in a conference call. ...
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World Briefing | Africa: Nigeria: Security Service Says It Halted Group Watching Israeli and U.S. Targets
Label: World
Nigeria’s State Security Service said Wednesday that it broke up what it characterized as a terrorist group, backed by “Iranian handlers,” that wanted to gather intelligence about locations frequented by Americans and Israelis. The service said it arrested three suspects, but one remained at large. A spokeswoman, Marilyn Ogar, who was reading from a statement, identified the head of the group as Abdullahi Mustaphah Berende, a leader of a local Shiite sect. “He personally took photographs of the Israeli culture center in Ikoyi, Lagos,” she said. The group also conducted surveillance on USAID and the United States Peace Corps, she said. Ms. Ogar did not take questions.
Why This 7-Year-Old Is the Doogie Howser of Videogame Design
Label: TechnologyIt’s not unusual for a seven-year-old girl to dream of being a ballerina, but it’s unheard of for a child so young to design a computer game about it. Nonetheless, first-grader and computer science prodigy Zora Ball did just that, making her quite possibly the youngest videogame programmer ever.
Using an open-source software program called Bootstrap, the primary school student designed a mobile game app she titled Vampire Diamonds. In it, the player takes on the role of the main protagonist, a ballerina, whose goal is to search for a jewel that’s hidden in a nail salon, while trying to avoid an evil vampire.
The game debuted at FATE’s Bootstrap Expo last year and while widely acclaimed, some were suspicious that the first-grader may have secretly received help—most likely from her older brother, Trace Ball, a STEM Scholar of the Year. To prove them wrong, the seven-year-old reportedly reconfigured her app on the spot.
Bootstrap, and its functional programming language Racket, are usually taught to kids between the ages of 12-16 as a way to use videogame development to teach algebraic concepts to students. Zora learned it in an after-school program run by the educational nonprofit known as FATE, or The Foundation for the Advancement of Technology in Education.
Kelly Ohlert, FATE’s executive director, tells TakePart, “While Zora was able to follow the directions in order to write the code for her game, everything we know about cognitive psychology indicates that a seven year-old probably can’t yet comprehend the curriculum-based algebra that is the heart of Bootstrap. That being said, she understood enough of the coding side to make simple changes to her game upon request, which is huge.”
FATE’s mission is to promote the skilled and intelligent use of education technology. Ohlert tells TakePart, “Specifically, we are targeting the problem of not having enough students trained in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to meet the needs of the next-generation workforce.
According to the Brookings Institute, the U.S. is already suffering from a lack of professionals qualified for STEM careers. Part of that lack comes from the fact that so few women are involved in science-based professions. That’s why tech companies are targeting girls and young women for more education and employment opportunities. In addition to FATE, which targets boys and girls alike, Microsoft sponsors DigiGirlzHighTech Camp, “Girls Who Code” offers free summer workshops to female high school students, and Womens’ Tech Connect mentors young computer scientists involved in the science education program through NetHope.
While Zora Ball is still too young to think of her new role as the poster child for girls in science, her recent accomplishment is another kick in the slowly opening door for girls to embrace STEM-based fields.
Related Stories on TakePart:
• Girls Love Science Too: 5 Tech Toys to Inspire Your Daughter
• ‘Girls Who Code’ Combats the Gender Gap in Computer Sciences
• More Time in the Womb = Higher Math Scores
A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer. In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a webeditor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com
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American Idol: Women Face Sudden-Death Round
Label: Lifestyle
American Idol
Mariah Carey
Mario Anzuoni/Reuters/Landov
American Idol threw yet another new twist at its 40 remaining contestants: a sudden-death round.
"One song, one chance, no mercy," Ryan Seacrest said as the first group of 10 female contestants gathered in Las Vegas to try to finally sing their way – in front of a boisterous studio audience – through to the "America votes" phase of the competition.
Five women moved on, five went home.
Kentucky high school junior Jenny Beth Willis, whose rendition of a Trisha Yearwood song earned mixed reviews from the judges, was the first up. Although Keith Urban appreciated her "effortless confidence," Nicki Minaj said her performance lacked excitement (a comment that elicited the first audience boos of the season). Final result: It was the end of the road for Willis.
Tenna Torres, 28, – who attended Mariah Carey's camp for kids as a youngster – took the stage next and impressed the judges with her take on the Natasha Bedingfield's "Soulmate." But she lost style points with Minaj, who didn't like one particular aspect of her look. "Lose the hair," said Minaj, who felt the contestant's coif aged her. Final result: She made it through to the Top 20.
The three most powerful performances of the night all made it to the next round: Nashville's Kree Harrison, who despite taking a decidedly plain-Jane approach to styling, wowed the judges with her version of Patty Griffin's "Up to the Mountain." "You sang the hell out of that song," said Carey.
Angela Miller, 18, of Massachusetts, belted out Jessie J's hit "Nobody's Perfect." But she pretty much was.
And Amber Holcomb, an assistant teacher from Texas, closed the show with a rousing (and well received) rendition of "My Funny Valentine."
For the final spot of the night, it came down to Anchorage, Alaska, resident Adriana Latonio, 17, who tackled Aretha Franklin's "Ain't No Way," and Shubha Vedula, a Michigan high school senior who sang Lady Gaga's "Born This Way."
Although the judges saw potential in both contestants, they ultimately picked Lantonio's powerhouse vocals in a final emotional moment.
Thursday will bring out the guys. The first round of 10 will take the stage to try to make the top 20 – but once again, five will go home.
Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.
"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.
The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.
Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.
They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.
Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.
Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.
The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.
Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.
"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.
Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.
Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.
One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.
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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.
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M&A deals lift Wall Street shares nearer a record high
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks rose on Tuesday as this year's ongoing surge in merger activity suggested investors were still finding value in the market even as indexes closed in on all-time highs.
Office Depot Inc
News of the potential move came just days after Berkshire Hathaway
Deal activity has helped equities resist a pullback as investors use dips in stocks as buying opportunities. The S&P is up about 7 percent so far in 2013 and has climbed for the past seven weeks in its longest weekly winning streak since January 2011, though most of the weekly gains have been slim.
The Dow industrials closed 0.9 percent away from their record high while S&P 500 was 2.2 percent off its peak.
"Deals are good for the market," said Frank Lesh, a futures analyst and broker at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago. "The fact that they're being done is a positive."
More than $158 billion in deals has been announced so far in 2013, more than double the activity in the same period last year and accounting for 57 percent of global deal volumes, according to Thomson Reuters Deals Intelligence.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 53.91 points, or 0.39 percent, to 14,035.67. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 11.15 points, or 0.73 percent, to 1,530.94. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 21.56 points, or 0.68 percent, to 3,213.59.
Other stocks in the office supplies sector also rose. Larger rival Staples Inc
"Equity investors have to be encouraged by M&A since, if the number crunchers are offering large premiums, that shows how much value is still in the market," said Mike Gibbs, co-head of the equity advisory group at Raymond James in Memphis, Tennessee.
On the downside, health insurance stocks tumbled, led by a 6.4 percent drop in Humana Inc
UnitedHealth Group
Wall Street's strong start to the year was fueled by better-than-expected corporate earnings, as well as a compromise in Washington that temporarily averted automatic spending cuts and tax hikes that are predicted to damage the economy.
The compromise on across-the-board spending cuts postponed the matter until March 1, at which point the cuts take effect. Ahead of the debate over the cuts, known as sequestration, further gains for stocks may be difficult to come by.
Some investors say the debate could be the catalyst for a long anticipated sell-off after the market's recent strong run.
Carter Worth, a technical analyst at Oppenheimer, pointed to the "especially complacent action of the past six weeks," noting that, as of Friday, stocks have gone 33 sessions without a dip of more than 1.5 percent.
"We would be selling aggressively into the market's current strength," he said in a research note.
Economic data showed the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market index unexpectedly edged down to 46 in February from 47 in the prior month as builders faced higher material costs.
According to the Thomson Reuters data through Monday morning, of the 391 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.1 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
Express Scripts
About two stocks rose for everyone that fell on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. About 6.48 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, in line with the daily average so far this year.
(Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak Ryan Vlastelica and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Kenneth Barry and Nick Zieminski)
Pistorius Denies Murdering Girlfriend
Label: World
Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters
Oscar Pistorius wept at a hearing on Tuesday seeking bail.
PRETORIA, South Africa — Early on Feb. 14, Oscar Pistorius says, he heard a strange noise coming from inside his bathroom, climbed out of bed, grabbed his 9-millimeter pistol, hobbled on his stumps to the door and fired four shots.
“I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated,” Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read Tuesday to a packed courtroom by his defense lawyer, Barry Roux. “I had no intention to kill my girlfriend.”
Prosecutors painted a far different picture, one of a calculated killer, a world-renowned athlete who had the presence of mind and calm to strap on his prosthetic legs, walk 20 feet to the bathroom door and open fire as his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, cowered inside, behind a locked door.
“The applicant shot and killed an unarmed, innocent women,” Gerrie Nel, the chief prosecutor, said in court on Tuesday. That, Mr. Nel argued, amounted to premeditated murder, a charge that could send Mr. Pistorius to prison for life.
In court, Mr. Pistorius, a Paralympic track star who competed against able-bodied athletes at the London Olympics despite having lost both his lower legs as an infant, wept uncontrollably as Mr. Roux gave the runner’s account of the fateful early morning. At one point, Magistrate Desmond Nair called a recess to allow Mr. Pistorius, who was sobbing loudly, his face contorted, to regain his composure.
“My compassion as a human being does not allow me to just sit here,” Magistrate Nair said.
As the defense and prosecution laid out their competing versions of the shooting, some details were beyond dispute.
Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp were alone in the house, having spent the evening there. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Pistorius shot Ms. Steenkamp through the bathroom door, fatally wounding her. He broke down the door and carried her down the stairs, where she died in the foyer of his upscale home in a highly secured compound.
The young woman, a model, was cremated Tuesday on the other side of the country in her hometown, Port Elizabeth. Her family and friends mourned her and called for the authorities to deal harshly with Mr. Pistorius.
“There’s a space missing inside all the people that she knew that can’t be filled again,” her brother, Adam Steenkamp, told reporters after the memorial service.
In court, Mr. Pistorius is seeking bail on the charge of premeditated murder, but he faces an uphill battle. Magistrate Nair ruled Tuesday that the case would be treated as the most serious kind of offense, which means bail will be granted only if the defense can prove extraordinary circumstances requiring it.
The court proceedings, though they concerned only whether Mr. Pistorius would receive bail, offered the first real glimpse into what unfolded at his home on the day of the shooting.
In his affidavit, Mr. Pistorius said that he and Ms. Steenkamp had decided to stay in for the night. He canceled plans with his friends for a night on the town in Johannesburg, while she opted against movies with one of her friends. They had a quiet evening, he said. She did yoga. He watched television. About 10 p.m., they went to sleep.
In the early morning hours, he said, he woke up to move a fan from the balcony and to close the sliding doors in the bedroom.
“I heard a noise in the bathroom and realized that someone was in the bathroom,” he said. “I felt a sense of terror rushing over me.”
He had already said in the affidavit that he feared South Africa’s rampant violent crime, and later added that he was worried because there were no bars on the window to the bathroom. Construction workers had left ladders in his garden, he said.
“I believed someone had entered my house,” he said in the affidavit. “I grabbed my 9-millimeter pistol from underneath my bed. On my way to the bathroom I screamed words to the effect for him/them to get out of my house and for Reeva to phone the police. It was pitch dark in the bedroom, and I thought Reeva was in bed.”
Walking on his stumps, he heard the sound of movement inside the toilet, a small room within the bathroom.
Exclusive: Apple, Macs hit by hackers who targeted Facebook
Label: TechnologyBOSTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc was recently attacked by hackers who infected Macintosh computers of some employees, the company said Tuesday in an unprecedented disclosure describing the widest known cyber attacks targeting Apple computers used by corporations.
Unknown hackers infected the computers of some Apple workers when they visited a website for software developers that had been infected with malicious software. The malware had been designed to attack Mac computers.
The same software, which infected Macs by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp’s Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, was used to launch attacks against Facebook, which the social network disclosed on Friday.
The malware was also employed in attacks against Mac computers used by “other companies,” Apple said, without elaborating on the scale of the assault.
Twitter, which disclosed that it had been breached February 1 and that hackers might gave accessed some information on about 250,000 users, was hit in the same campaign, according to a person close to the investigation.
Another person briefed on the case said that hundreds of companies, including defense contractors, had been infected with the same malicious software. Though this person said that the malware could have originated from China, there was no proof.
“This is a new campaign. It’s not like the other ones you read about where everyone can tell it’s China,” the first person said.
Investigations into the breaches are ongoing. It was not immediately clear when the attacks had begun, the extent to which the hackers had succeeded in stealing data from targeted systems, or whether all infected machines have been identified.
The malware was distributed at least in part through a site aimed at iPhone developers, which might still be infecting visitors who haven’t disabled Java in their browser, the person close to the case said. There is a version that infects computers running Microsoft Windows as well.
Security firm F-Secure wrote that the attackers might have been trying to get access to the code for apps on smartphones, seeking a way to infect millions of end-users. It urged developers to check their source code for unintended changes.
Apple disclosed the breach as tensions are heating up over U.S. allegations that the Chinese military engages in cyber espionage on U.S. companies.
U.S. cyber security firm Mandiant reported over the weekend that it has uncovered evidence that the Chinese military is behind a slew of cyber attacks on U.S. businesses. The White House said it has repeatedly raised concerns about Chinese cyber theft with Beijing.
The breaches described by Apple mark the highest-profile cyber attacks to date on businesses running Mac computers. Hackers have traditionally focused on attacking machines running the Windows operating system, though they have gradually turned their attention to Apple products over the past couple of years as the company gained market share over Microsoft Corp.
“This is the first really big attack on Macs,” said the source, who declined to be identified because the person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. “Apple has more on its hands than the attack on itself.”
Charlie Miller, a prominent expert on Apple security who is co-author of the Mac Hacker’s Handbook, said the attacks show that criminal hackers are investing more time studying the Mac OS X operating system so they can attack Apple computers.
For example, he noted, hackers recently figured out a fairly sophisticated way to attack Macs by exploiting a flaw in Adobe Systems Inc’s Flash software.
“The only thing that was making it safe before is that nobody bothered to attack it. That goes away if somebody bothers to attack it,” Miller said.
NATIONAL SECURITY
Cyber security attacks have been on the rise. In last week’s State of the Union address, U.S. President Barack Obama issued an executive order seeking better protection of the country’s critical infrastructure from cyber attacks.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Tuesday that the Obama administration has repeatedly taken up its concerns about Chinese cyber theft with Beijing, including the country’s military. There was no indication as to whether the group described by Mandiant was involved in the attacks described by Apple and Facebook.
An Apple spokesman declined to specify how many companies had been breached in the campaign targeting Macs, saying he could not elaborate further on the statement it provided.
“Apple has identified malware which infected a limited number of Mac systems through a vulnerability in the Java plug-in for browsers. The malware was employed in an attack against Apple and other companies, and was spread through a website for software developers,” the statement said.
“We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple,” it continued.
The statement said Apple was working closely with law enforcement to find the culprits, but the spokesman would not elaborate. The Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to comment.
Apple said it plans to release a piece of software on Tuesday that customers can use to identify and repair Macs infected with the malware used in the attacks.
(Editing by Andre Grenon, Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)
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What's Next for Mindy McCready's Two Young Boys?
Label: LifestyleMindy McCready's apparent suicide on Sunday has left her two young sons in custodial limbo.
The boys – Zander, 6, and Zayne, 10 months – had been in state custody since Feb. 7, when McCready called police to ask for help in making her father and stepmother leave her home. When police arrived, McCready appeared to be intoxicated, according to a Department of Human Services report.
In a subsequent petition, the singer's father, Tim McCready, asked the court to order her to undergo mental health and substance abuse evaluation and treatment, alleging that his daughter, who had recently lost her boyfriend, "hasn't had a bath in a week ... screams about everything ... [is] very verbally abusive to Zander."
After a judge granted the petition, the children were quickly removed and placed into foster care. Although McCready was released from treatment, the boys remained in state custody.
At the time, Zander's father, Billy McKnight, requested custody of his son. "My son needs me," he told PEOPLE on Feb. 8. "I'm married, working and successful. I'm on the right track and proud of it. I've been sober for years. I just want my son."
But McCready's mother and stepfather, Gayle and Michael Inge, also want custody of the children – and authorities seem to agree.
In a proposed order sent to Circuit Judge Lee Harrod, the Department of Human Services proposed that the Inges might be a better fit for the children, claiming that they have "a substantial relationship." The Inges had custody of Zander for much the past few years, during McCready’s rehab and jail stints.
With McCready's death, the judge will have to determine what is in the children's best interest. A custody hearing has been scheduled for April 5.
Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.
The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.
"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.
Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.
"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."
Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.
That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.
The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.
"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."
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