New toll lanes open on 10 Freeway

Los Angeles County's venture into toll roads advanced early Saturday with the opening of 14 miles of express lanes on the San Bernardino Freeway — the second project of its type to begin operation in the region since November.

At 12:01 a.m., the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority allowed drivers to travel the 10 Freeway's new high occupancy toll lanes — so-called HOT lanes — between Interstate 605 in El Monte and Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles.

"This shows we are willing to address traffic, gridlock and congestion in the region," said Los Angeles Mayor and MTA board member Antonio Villaraigosa at a dedication ceremony in El Monte on Friday. "Other cities are going to do this across the county. We are going to see smarter use of highways."

The two westbound and two eastbound "Metro ExpressLanes" will be open to solo motorists who pay a toll, but they will be free for cars carrying at least two passengers.

During peak travel times, however, only carpools of three or more people will be able to use the lanes without paying. Van pools and motorcyclists also can enter the lanes toll free.

Using congestion pricing, motorists will pay anywhere from $0.25 a mile during off-peak periods to $1.40 a mile during the height of rush hour. MTA officials estimate that the average one-way cost should range between $4 and $7.

Setting tolls based on the volume of traffic is designed to maintain speeds of no less than 45 mph in the lanes. If the speed falls below that level, solo motorists will be prohibited from entering the lanes until the minimum speed resumes.

Motorists interested in the express lanes must open a FasTrak account with the MTA and make a $40 deposit to obtain a transponder, an electronic device that automatically bills their accounts whenever the lanes are used. Drivers can adjust the transponder to show how many people are in the vehicle, so the charges can be adjusted. Information is available online at metroexpresslanes.net.

The county marked its entry into the use of tollways on Nov. 10, when the MTA opened its first express lanes along 11 miles of the Harbor Freeway between Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles and the Harbor Gateway Transit Center in the South Bay.

The lanes on both freeways are part of a $210-million demonstration project funded largely by the federal government. It includes upgrading transit and rail stations, 59 new clean-fuel buses, the $60-million El Monte Bus Station, highway ramp improvements and 100 new vanpools.

MTA officials said the express lanes on the 10 and 110 will cost $7 million to $10 million a year to operate, but should generate $18 million to $20 million in revenue, money that can be reinvested in both freeway corridors. So far, more than 100,000 people have obtained transponders for the lanes, officials said.

During the next year, the express-lane projects will be evaluated to determine whether the program should be continued and expanded to other freeways in the county.

"We expect it will be totally successful," said Victor Mendez, head of the Federal Highway Administration. "The project offers commuters a variety of choices, not just the highway."

dan.weikel@latimes.com

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

Read More..

From Homeless in the Congo to the Oscars Red Carpet: The Story You Must Read Before Tomorrow

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/23/2013 at 05:40 PM ET

Courtesy Rachel Mwanza

One of the best stories from this year’s Oscars ceremony isn’t taking place on screen, but rather on the red carpet.

Rachel Mwanza, the 16-year-old star of the Best Foreign Language Film nominee War Witch, will be joining her fellow nominees in L.A. after obtaining a visa from the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo just days before the Oscars.

The young actress was “discovered” by the War Witch team from a documentary called Kinshasa Kids, which portrayed the life of Mwanza and other children living on the streets in the Congo.

Since being cast in the film, in which she plays a child kidnapped and enslaved to a life of guerilla warfare, her life has changed dramatically — from having a home and education paid for to winning a best actress award at the Berlin Film Festival.

And since her flight arrived late Friday night, she needed a red carpet-worthy dress quickly, which is where Rent the Runway stepped in.

The designer rental service rushed Mwanza several dresses to wear to the Independent Spirit Awards Saturday, from which she chose Kate Spade New York’s “Tiebreaker” style, adding Chamak by Priya Kakkar bangles and a Judith Leiber clutch.

“I’m so excited to be in Los Angeles. I’ve never seen the ocean before!” Mwanza tells PEOPLE through a translator. “I’m tired from my long trip, but way too excited to rest!”

She shared exclusive shots with PEOPLE (above) of her trying-on process, including shots of her caretaker “Mama” helping her zip into her final dress, and the many jewels Rent the Runway sent her to choose from.

And it didn’t take much to get Mwanza ready for her high-profile debut: “I’m going to work it on the red carpet,” she says. “I’ve been practicing my poses!”

The one disappointment from her trip so far? No sightings of a certain superstar. “Beyoncé is my favorite in the whole world. Why is she not here?!” Mwanza jokes.

Below, see a shot of Mwanza and her War Witch producers Marie-Claude Poulin and Pierre Even at the Independent Spirit Awards, and be sure to watch her film, which will be On Demand beginning Tuesday and in select theaters March 1.

And keep an eye out for her at the Oscars Sunday night, where she’ll be wearing a top-secret dress made for her by an African designer. Can’t wait to see her poses!

Courtesy Rachel Mwanza

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: SEE MORE OSCARS STYLE HERE!

Read More..

Paying People to Play Video Games

House Speaker John Boehner tweets that the Obama administration is spending $ 1.2 million “paying people to play video games.” That’s misleading. The government did pay $ 1.2 million for university research that includes the study of how video games can stimulate the cognitive abilities of seniors. A fraction of that cost went to compensate seniors who participated in the study, researchers say.

Boehner was one of several prominent Republican congressmen who sent out a flurry of tweets – hashtag #cutwaste – distorting the research. Some Republicans said the money was spent to play the video game World of Warcraft. That’s wrong. World of Warcraft is not part of research funded by the federal government, although the study does use, in part, the Wii game Boom Blox.

We take no position on whether spending $ 1.2 million studying ways to improve the cognitive abilities of seniors is a waste of taxpayer money. But the Republicans should call it what it is and not distort the facts – even if they get only 140 characters to make their case against it.

But before we get into the facts of the research project, let’s dissect the anatomy of this Republican talking point.

The first volley in the “World of Warcraft” Twitter campaign appears to have come from House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Feb. 19.

Cantor, Feb. 19: President Obama wants to raise your taxes so he can pay people $ 1.2 million to play World of Warcraft. http://1.usa.gov/Y3NGOH

The link goes to a press release from Cantor’s office listing a number of examples of “federal government waste,” including: “The National Science Foundation spent $ 1.2 million paying seniors to play ‘World of Warcraft’ to study the impact it had on their brain.” That’s not exactly right, but even that incomplete description gets further distorted in a series of tweets from Cantor and other House Republicans on Feb. 20.

Cantor, 10:56 a.m.: Federal Government spends $ 1.2 million paying people to play World of Warcraft video games. Instead of raising taxes, let’s #CutWaste

Speaker John Boehner, 10:57 a.m.: Pres Obama wants more tax hikes, refuses to #cutwaste like $ 1.2M spent paying people to play video games #Obamaquester

GOP Whip Rep. Kevin McCarthy, 11:01 a.m.: Not a kid’s fairytale: fed gov’t actually pays ppl w taxpayer dollars to play video games. Time to #CutWaste. http://1.usa.gov/Y3NH4U

Rep. Ann Wagner, 11:01 a.m.: Did you know the govt paid $ 1.2 million to pay people to play World of Warcraft? http://tinyurl.com/bg8njug Instead of tax hikes #CutWaste

Rep. Diane Black, 11:03 a.m.: Waste of the Day: $ 1.2 million tax dollars used to pay people to play World of Warcraft http://bit.ly/UIG5oK #CutWaste don’t raise taxes

Rep. Renee Ellmers, 11:08 a.m.: Tax dollars at work: govt paid $ 1.2 million to study seniors playing World of Warcraft http://tinyurl.com/bg8njug Instead of tax hikes #CutWaste

Rep. Darrell Issa, 11:46 a.m.: That awkward moment when @BarackObama says “We don’t have a spending problem” then it comes out the Gov paid $ 1.2 mil to play video games…

Rep. David McKinkley, 12:15 p.m.: Did you know the govt paid $ 1.2 million to pay people to play World of Warcraft? http://tinyurl.com/bg8njug Instead of tax hikes #CutWaste

How did this research grant suddenly become the poster child for government waste? It traces its roots to “Wastebook 2012,” Sen. Tom Coburn’s list of 100 wasteful government expenditures. The project in question was No. 87.

Coburn, Wastebook 2012: 87) Should grandparents play World of Warcraft ? — (NC) $ 1.2 million

Soon, grandma may have to skip dinner to join her World of Warcraft guild in a dungeon raid. Researchers believe they have found another means to help our memories as we age: the “World of Warcraft,” a fantasy video game featuring characters like orcs, trolls, and warlocks. The team of academics used part of $ 1.2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation to continue a video game study this year.

The study asked 39 adults ages 60 to 77 to play “World of Warcraft” for two hours a day over two weeks. In the game, players choose a character and rove around the virtual world participating in guild (group) missions, casting spells, and defeating evil creatures.

Millions of people around the world play, with the average player spending almost 11 hours per week playing.

At the end of the two-week study period, researchers found no cognitive improvement in older people who already scored well on cognitive tests. People who started out with lower initial results, however, experienced some improvements.

It’s true that the National Science Foundation — using funds from the economic stimulus — funded two grants totaling $ 1.2 million to study the ways in which the use of some video games by older people can improve their cognitive and everyday abilities, such as memory and reasoning. You can read the abstracts for the two grant awards here and here.

More broadly, according to the abstract, the researchers hope to “advance the knowledge and understanding of how cognitive training reduces age-related decline.”

The project is being led by Anne McLaughlin and Jason Allaire, both at the North Carolina State University’s Gains Through Gaming Lab, which is “dedicated to conducting applied research examining the relationship between playing commercially available video games and important psychological constructs” and specifically “how video games can improve cognitive functioning.”

We spoke to McLaughlin about the way her research was being characterized by Republican leaders in the House.

“Misleading doesn’t describe it,” McLaughlin said. “It is entirely inaccurate.”

For starters, she said, the research that included the World of Warcraft game was not funded by the National Science Foundation, though it helped to set the stage for the federally funded project.

The initial study looked at the effects of playing an “attentionally demanding game” — in this case, World of Warcraft — on the cognitive abilities of seniors. For the uninitiated, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). (It’s the game featured in episodes of “South Park” and the sitcom “Big Bang Theory.”)

The study cost a total of $ 5,000 and was funded entirely by N.C. State, McLaughlin said. It was initiated as a pilot and showed some promising results in improving the cognitive abilities of some seniors, particularly those who scored poorly in the cognitive pre-tests. Results of this study were featured in stories by the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine and CBS News, as well as in a press release from N.C. State.

Spurred by those results, McLaughlin and Allaire sought and were awarded two grants from the NSF to perform a much larger series of studies — in part employing the interactive Wii game Boom Blox.

By manipulating various aspects of the game, they are trying to pinpoint what kinds of game play best improve cognition and functioning for older adults, McLaughlin said, as well as determining the effects of playing alone versus in groups.

That’s just the first phase. Then, in collaboration with computer whizzes at Georgia Tech, they hope to develop guidelines for games for older players that will lead to “a new class of ‘brain games’ with reliable effectiveness,” according to the abstract.

“The whole purpose of this is to generalize beyond any game and promote cognitive improvement,” McLaughlin said.

Begun in 2009, the research is still in progress, McLaughlin said.

For the record, McLaughlin said, “We don’t pay anyone to play video games. We pay them to participate in a study.”

Participants first take a three-hour cognitive test to use as a baseline. Then they are asked to come back and play a video game for an hour a day for 15 straight days. Then they are given another three-hour cognitive test immediately afterward, and then two more tests — one three months later and the last a year later. The amount of the $ 1.2 million grant money spent on paying the participants of the study is a small fraction of the overall cost, McLaughlin said.

We initially were led to the grants after making an inquiry with Cantor’s office seeking backup material for claims about the federal government spending $ 1.2 million for people to play World of Warcraft.

In addition to passing along links to the study abstracts, Megan Whittemore, Cantor’s press secretary, offered this response: “The President of the United States said he was going to have to turn criminals loose on the street. Clearly, he created a false choice between raising taxes or near-apocalyptic conditions. In reality, we need to make choices on how the federal government spends taxpayers’ hard earned dollars. While some of these programs may have some merit to some people, should they be saved before preventing the drastic scenario the President painted this week?”

Again, as independent fact-checkers, we take no position about whether these grants are a worthwhile use of taxpayer money. Cutting budget deficits — a stated goal of both Republicans and Democrats — is going to require some tough choices. But the facts simply get in the way of this Republican talking point. Paying people $ 1.2 million to play video games sounds a lot more outrageous than studying ways to improve the cognitive abilities of seniors. And it misleadingly twists what the grants are all about.

– Robert Farley

Also Read
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Paying People to Play Video Games
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/paying-people-to-play-video-games/
Link To Post : Paying People to Play Video Games
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Papal Conclave Accompanied by Reports of Scandals and Intrigue

Osservatore Romano/Reuters

Pope Benedict XVI, right, spoke to cardinals at the Vatican on Saturday.

VATICAN CITY — As cardinals from around the world begin arriving in Rome for a conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI, new shadows have fallen over the delicate transition, which the Vatican fears might influence the vote and with it the direction of the Roman Catholic Church.

In recent days, often speculative reports in the Italian news media — some even alleging gay sex scandals in the Vatican, others focusing on particular cardinals stung by the child sex abuse crisis — have dominated headlines, suggesting fierce internal struggles as prelates scramble to consolidate power and attack enemies in the dying days of a troubled papacy.

The reports, which the Vatican has vehemently denied, touch on some of the most vexing issues of Benedict’s reign, including the child sex abuse crisis and international criticisms of the Vatican Bank’s opaque record-keeping. The recent explosion of bad press — which some Vatican experts say is fed by carefully orchestrated leaks meant to weaken some papal contenders — also speak to Benedict’s own difficulties governing, which analysts say he is trying to address, albeit belatedly, with several high-profile personnel changes.

The drumbeat of scandal has reached such a fever pitch that on Saturday, the Vatican Secretariat of State issued a rare pointed rebuke, calling it “deplorable” that ahead of the conclave there was “a widespread distribution of often unverified, unverifiable or completely false news stories, that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.”

The Vatican compared the news reports to past attempts by foreign states to exert pressure on the papal election, saying the latest efforts to skew the choice of the next pope by trying to shape public opinion were “based on judgments that do not typically capture the spiritual aspect of the moment that the Church is living.”

Benedict had hoped to address at least one scandal with the Feb. 15 appointment of a new head of the Vatican Bank. It is less clear why he reassigned a powerful Vatican diplomatic official to a posting outside Rome, though experts say it diminishes the official’s role in helping steer Vatican policy.

On Feb. 11, Benedict made history by announcing that he would step down by month’s end. He said he was worn down by age and was resigning “in full liberty and for the good of the Church.” The volley of news reports since appeared to underscore the backbiting in the Vatican that Benedict was unable to control, and provided a hint of why he might have decided that someone younger and stronger should lead the church.

At the conclusion of the Vatican’s Lenten spiritual retreat, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the director of the Pontifical Council for Culture and a papal contender, spoke darkly of the “divisions, dissent, careerism, jealousies” that he said plagued the Vatican hierarchy.

The recent spate of news reports were linked to an earlier scandal in which the pope’s butler stole confidential documents that was considered one of the gravest security breaches in the modern history of the church.

Last week, largely unsourced articles in the center-left daily La Repubblica and the center-right weekly Panorama reported that three cardinals whom Benedict had asked last summer to investigate the leaking of the documents, known as the “VatiLeaks” scandal, had found evidence of Vatican officials who had been put in compromising positions.

The newspapers reported that, after interviewing dozens of people inside and outside the Vatican, the cardinals produced a hefty dossier. “The report is explicit. Some high prelates are subject to ‘external influence’ — we would call it blackmail — by nonchurch men to whom they are bound by ‘worldly’ ties,” La Repubblica wrote.

Vatican experts speculated that prelates eager to undermine opponents during the conclave were behind the leaks to the news media over the last week.

“The conclave is a mechanism that serves to create a dynasty in a monarchy without children, so it’s a complicated operation,” said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Center in Bologna and the author of a book on conclaves.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: February 23, 2013

An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of a cardinal. His name is Roger M. Mahony, not Roger M. Mahoney.

Read More..

Eric Garcetti's role in L.A. budget fixes is in dispute

Pressed in the race for mayor of Los Angeles to say how he would fix a persistent budget gap that has led to the gutting of many city services, Eric Garcetti urges voters to look at what he has done in the past.

The onetime City Council president claims credit for reforms that he said cut the City Hall shortfall to just over $200 million from more than $1 billion. He sees "tremendous progress," principally in reducing pension and healthcare costs, and asserts: "I delivered that."

But the truth is in dispute. Although there is not a singular view about any aspect of the city's troubled finances, most of those in the thick of recent budget fights depict Garcetti not as a fiscal hard-liner but as a conciliator who used his leadership position to chart a middle ground on the most significant changes.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, city administrative officer Miguel Santana and one of Garcetti's rivals in the mayoral race, Councilwoman Jan Perry, were among those who pushed for bigger workforce reductions and larger employee contributions toward pensions and healthcare. Labor leaders and their champions on the City Council, including Paul Koretz and Richard Alarcon, sought to cushion the blow for workers.

Garcetti and his supporters say he moderated between those extremes. His critics said he worried too much about process and airing every viewpoint rather than focusing relentlessly on shoring up the city's bottom line.

"It was through the mayor's persistence and steadfast position that we got ongoing concessions," said Santana, the chief budget official for Los Angeles. "It was in collaboration with the council leadership that we finally reached agreements with labor."

The $1-billion-plus deficit Garcetti speaks of shrinking refers not to a single year but to the total of budget gaps that confronted Los Angeles over four years if no corrective action had been taken. The city's fiscal crisis worsened during that time because Garcetti and his fellow council members — including Perry and mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel — approved a city employee pay raise of 25% over five years just before the country stumbled into the recession. (Greuel left the council in 2009 when she was elected city controller.)

Although Garcetti focuses on his role, a portion of the financial improvements were outside his control. The state's elimination of redevelopment agencies in 2012 returned millions to L.A.'s general fund. Tax revenue also ticked upward with the economic recovery.

Garcetti's position as council president from 2006 through 2011 did put him at the center of debate about annual shortfalls that ranged to more than $400 million.

In 2009, he supported an early retirement plan that knocked 2,400 workers off the payroll. "I really pushed that through," the councilman said in an interview. Two participants in confidential contract talks at the heart of the deal had diametrically opposed views. "He made it happen, period," one said; the other offered: "I wouldn't say he was a major mover."

The plan saves the city a maximum of $230 million a year in salary and pension reductions in the short run. But Los Angeles borrowed to spread the costs of the program over 15 years, with current employees and retirees expected to shoulder the cost of the early exits.

The early retirements are expected to do nothing to resolve the long-term "structural deficit" — the $200 million to $400 million a year that Los Angeles spends above what it takes in. And early retirements could even be a net negative in the long run if, as city revenue recovers, new employees are put in those 2,400 empty positions too quickly.

In 2010 the city completed a budget fix that did attack the structural imbalance.

Garcetti's initial proposal called for upping the retirement age for new city employees to 60 from 55 and requiring workers to contribute a minimum of 2% of salary toward their retiree health care.

Budget chief Santana offered a markedly tougher plan. It required a 4% retiree health contribution, halved the health subsidy for retirees and capped pension benefits at 75% of salary instead of 100%. Santana's plan, also for new employees, became the basis of the reform.

Some who served with Garcetti on the council committee that leads employee negotiations pushed for even greater sacrifices. But Garcetti fought against ratcheting up demands on workers, saying it would be useless to approve a plan that would not survive subsequent union votes.

The councilman's greatest contribution may have come after city leaders set their position on pensions. Garcetti took the unusual step of visiting groups of workers. Some employees booed. Some asked him why city lawmakers, among the highest paid in the nation at $178,000 a year, didn't cut their own salaries.

"There was a lot of anger," said a labor leader who spoke on condition of anonymity because that union has not endorsed in the race. "But Eric talked to people as if they were adults and stayed until he answered all their questions. People appreciated him ... taking that kind of heat."

Matt Szabo, a former deputy mayor who helped negotiate with labor, said Garcetti deserved "every bit of credit" he has claimed for deficit reduction. "He knew he was running for mayor, and he was doing the right thing, but it was something that was going to cost him later" in terms of union support, said Szabo, who is running to replace Garcetti on the council.

Most of the employee groups that have endorsed thus far in the mayor's race have come out for Greuel. One political advantage for the controller: She left the council in 2009, before the city began making its toughest demands on workers.

Garcetti found himself stuck the middle again with another 2010 vote, this one over the elimination of 232 jobs — most of them in libraries and day care operations at city parks. Garcetti voted for the layoffs. Later he voted to reconsider, though he said recently that he intended only to re-air the issue, not to keep the workers on the job.

Labor leaders faulted Garcetti for giving the appearance he might be ready to save the jobs when he really wasn't. The reductions remain a sore point, because a "poison pill" in the contract required that any layoffs be accompanied by immediate pay raises for remaining city employees. Fierce disagreement remains over whether the layoffs saved the city any money.

"That became part of the negative picture" of Garcetti, said one labor leader, who asked not to be named out of concern about alienating a possible future mayor. The candidate said in an interview that he frequently found himself hewing a middle ground between some colleagues "who simply hope more revenue would come in" and others who wanted to use an "ax," making indiscriminate cuts. He added: "To me, both views were equally unacceptable."

Critics find Garcetti too malleable, ready to shift to the last argument he has heard. But others appreciate his quest for the middle, saying the fact he sometimes irritated both budget hard-liners and unions showed he had taken a reasoned approach.

"The criticism of Eric is also sort of the good news," said one of the union reps. "He has this very process-y, kumbaya, can't-we-all-get-along style. It drove us all crazy. But now I really miss it because it seems to be all politics over policy."

james.rainey@latimes.com

Read More..

FDA approves new targeted breast cancer drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved a first-of-a-kind breast cancer medication that targets tumor cells while sparing healthy ones.

The drug Kadcyla from Roche combines the established drug Herceptin with a powerful chemotherapy drug and a third chemical linking the medicines together. The chemical keeps the cocktail intact until it binds to a cancer cell, delivering a potent dose of anti-tumor poison.

Cancer researchers say the drug is an important step forward because it delivers more medication while reducing the unpleasant side effects of chemotherapy.

"This antibody goes seeking out the tumor cells, gets internalized and then explodes them from within. So it's very kind and gentle on the patients — there's no hair loss, no nausea, no vomiting," said Dr. Melody Cobleigh of Rush University Medical Center. "It's a revolutionary way of treating cancer."

Cobleigh helped conduct the key studies of the drug at the Chicago facility.

The FDA approved the new treatment for about 20 percent of breast cancer patients with a form of the disease that is typically more aggressive and less responsive to hormone therapy. These patients have tumors that overproduce a protein known as HER-2. Breast cancer is the second most deadly form of cancer in U.S. women, and is expected to kill more than 39,000 Americans this year, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The approval will help Roche's Genentech unit build on the blockbuster success of Herceptin, which has long dominated the breast cancer marketplace. The drug had sales of roughly $6 billion last year.

Genentech said Friday that Kadcyla will cost $9,800 per month, compared to $4,500 per month for regular Herceptin. The company estimates a full course of Kadcyla, about nine months of medicine, will cost $94,000.

FDA scientists said they approved the drug based on company studies showing Kadcyla delayed the progression of breast cancer by several months. Researchers reported last year that patients treated with the drug lived 9.6 months before death or the spread of their disease, compared with a little more than six months for patients treated with two other standard drugs, Tykerb and Xeloda.

Overall, patients taking Kadcyla lived about 2.6 years, compared with 2 years for patients taking the other drugs.

FDA specifically approved the drug for patients with advanced breast cancer who have already been treated with Herceptin and taxane, a widely used chemotherapy drug. Doctors are not required to follow FDA prescribing guidelines, and cancer researchers say the drug could have great potential in patients with earlier forms of breast cancer

Kadcyla will carry a boxed warning, the most severe type, alerting doctors and patients that the drug can cause liver toxicity, heart problems and potentially death. The drug can also cause severe birth defects and should not be used by pregnant women.

Kadcyla was developed by South San Francisco-based Genentech using drug-binding technology licensed from Waltham, Mass.-based ImmunoGen. The company developed the chemical that keeps the drug cocktail together and is scheduled to receive a $10.5 million payment from Genentech on the FDA decision. The company will also receive additional royalties on the drug's sales.

Shares of ImmunoGen Inc. rose 2 cents to $14.32 in afternoon trading. The stock has ttraded in a 52-wek range of $10.85 to $18.10.

Read More..

The Hunger Games: Katniss & Peeta's Victory Tour Look Revealed

02/22/2013 at 06:00 PM EST

They survived the Hunger Games – but will they survive the Victory Tour?

Sporting bridal-like attire, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) pose for a promotional poster for the Victory Tour – which – in the Hunger Games universe – is when the victor of the annual Hunger Games tournament visits each of the fictional Panem's districts.

As true Hunger Games fans know, there is usually only one victor – but Katniss and Peeta rebelled against the Capitol in the first movie, originally opting for joint suicide instead of murder.

The softer look is a deliberate statement, meant to continue the charade that Katniss and Peeta were blinded by love when they rebelled against the rules in the arena.

The second film, Catching Fire, hits theaters Nov. 22.

Read More..

‘Anonymous’ becomes latest victim in Twitter hacking spree

Title Post: ‘Anonymous’ becomes latest victim in Twitter hacking spree
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/anonymous-becomes-latest-victim-in-twitter-hacking-spree/
Link To Post : ‘Anonymous’ becomes latest victim in Twitter hacking spree
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Scud Missile Attack Reported in Aleppo

Muzaffar Salman/Reuters

People gathered to search for survivors under rubble after what activists said was a Scud missile hit in Aleppo's Tariq al Bab neighborhood on Friday.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Antigovernment activists in Syria said Scud missiles fired by the Syrian military slammed into at least three rebel-held districts of Aleppo on Friday, flattening dozens of houses, leaving at least 12 civilians dead and burying an undetermined number of others, perhaps dozens, under piles of rubble.

The assertion, corroborated by videos posted on the Internet, came one day after Syrian government targets in central Damascus were hit by multiple car bombings that were among the deadliest and most destructive so far in the nearly two-year-old conflict.

The reported attack on Aleppo’s Hamra, Tariq al Bab and Hanano areas with Scuds, which are not known for their accuracy, was the second time this week that the Syrian opposition has accused the military of using such missiles on Aleppo’s rebel-held areas.

Aleppo, the embattled northern city that was once Syria’s commercial capital during more peaceful times, has become one of the focal points of rebellion in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. On Tuesday, according to activists in Aleppo, a Syrian missile leveled part of Jabal Badro, another neighborhood controlled by the rebels, killing at least 19 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with contacts inside Syria, said in a statement that the victims of missile explosions in Aleppo on Friday included children and that the number of victims “is expected to rise significantly because there are dozens of wounded under the rubble.”

There was no immediate mention of the Aleppo attacks by Syria’s state-run media. The Web site of Syria’s official SANA news agency was dominated by the aftermath of the car bombings that had hit central Damascus on Thursday and had left more than 70 people dead. The ferocity and scope of those bombings were unusual for central Damascus, which up until now has been largely insulated from much of the carnage and destruction wrought by the conflict in the outer Damascus suburbs and other parts of the country.

Most of the casualties in Damascus were caused by an especially powerful bomb near the headquarters of President Assad’s Baath Party and the Embassy of Russia, which were both damaged, according to witnesses contacted inside Damascus and Russian news reports. SANA said a hospital and neighboring schools also were damaged.

No group has taken responsibility for the Damascus bombings but the government has said they were carried out by terrorists, its generic description of the alliance of armed rebels seeking to depose Mr. Assad. The National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main Syrian group for the opposition which was meeting in Cairo at the time, condemned the bombings, as did its Western supporters, including the United States.

Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, told reporters on Thursday that the United States denounces such bombings as “indiscriminate acts of violence against civilians or against diplomatic facilities, which violate international law, and we continue to emphasize that perpetrators on all sides have to be held accountable.”

Nonetheless, the bombings appeared to create a new source of diplomatic friction between the United States and Russia, which has consistently supported the Syrian government during the conflict and has rejected any proposed solution that would force Mr. Assad to relinquish power.

Russia’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States of blocking its attempt to seek approval of a Security Council statement that would have condemned the Damascus bombings as terrorism. The United States mission denied the Russian accusation, saying it had only requested that the Russian statement include a paragraph that also condemned the Syrian government’s “continued, indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry against civilians.”

Erin Pelton, a spokeswoman for the United States mission, said in news release posted Friday on its Web site that “Unfortunately, if predictably, Russia rejected the U.S. suggested language as ‘totally unacceptable’ and withdrew its draft statement.”

Other insurgency-related violence was reported by the Syrian Observatory and other activists elsewhere in Syria on Friday, including random sniping attacks in the north-central city of Raqqa that killed four people during an antigovernment demonstration, and seven people killed around a mosque in Dara’a, the southern city where the anti-Assad uprising first began in March 2011.

The Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad network of activists, reported that fighters from the Free Syrian Army and other groups had taken control of at least two military facilities in the suburbs of Deir al-Zour, the eastern city that has been a battleground for many months. The report, which could not be corroborated, also claimed that rebels had gained control of a missile facility in Deir al-Zour that was formerly the site of a partly built nuclear reactor bombed by Israeli warplanes in 2007. Syria disclosed the existence of the missile facility four years ago at a technical meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Hwaida Saad reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Cairo.

Read More..

Doctor sexually assaulted unconscious patients, police say

An Orange County anesthesiologist convicted of sexually assaulting three unconscious female patients  has been sentenced to six months in jail and five years probation, despite the objections of prosecutors who wanted state prison time.

Yashwant Balgiri Giri, 60, pleaded guilty to a court offer to multiple felony counts related to the sexual battery of patients, including a 16-year-old, according to a statement from the Orange County district attorney's office.

Giri will have to register as a lifetime sex offender and will have his medical license revoked, in addition to the jail time and probation.

Prosecutors sought a state prison sentence, citing a violation of his "position of power and trust" with the women at a particularly vulnerable time.

Giri, who lives in Cypress, was working at Placentia-Linda Hospital at the time of the crimes, prosecutors said. He previously worked at several hospitals in Anaheim and Lakewood.

Through a spokeswoman, Placentia-Linda Hospital declined to comment.

Prosecutors said that in February 2009,  while a 16-year-old was unconscious from medication, Giri assaulted the girl when a scrub nurse preparing surgery tools had her back turned. The nurse witnessed the assault, prosecutors said, and reported it immediately to a hospital official.

Prosecutors allege that the hospital did not report the incident to police at the time.

In March 2011, prosecutors said, a hospital employee witnessed Giri fondling the breasts of a 36-year-old woman while she was under anesthesia for an outpatient surgery procedure.

An employee allegedly witnessed the incident  Prosecutors said the fondling continued for an extended period of time, as his actions were concealed from the surgeon and nurse.

The alleged assault was reported to a hospital official and then to Placentia police, prosecutors said.

Soon after an investigation began, Giri resigned from his duties at the hospital.

After he was arrested in May 2011, a third alleged victim stepped forward, saying she had been assaulted by Giri.

In April 2010, prosecutors said, Giri assaulted a 27-year-old woman while she was being put under anesthesia but before she was unconscious. Prosecutors said he touched the woman under the pretense of performing an examination, although it had no legitimate medical purpose.

During a sentencing hearing, a statement from the then-36-year-old woman, who was fondled, was read by prosecutors.

"His actions make me question every single doctor, nurse, medical decision and procedure I encounter within my everyday life," she said. "I not only fear for myself, I fear for my child, my friends, my family. This is a burden caused by the perverted actions of this predator."

ALSO:

 O.C. shootings: Listen to frantic 911 call

Hollywood Park Casino might lay off all 600 workers

San Diego sheriff confident 2 wounded deputies will fully recover

-- Rick Rojas

Photo: Yashwant Balgiri Giri. Credit: Orange County district attorney's office.

Read More..

Do the Hemsworth Brothers Have a Type?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/20/2013 at 04:30 PM ET

AKM-GSI (2)

Miley Cyrus has been very open about fiancé Liam Hemsworth’s fondness for her bold new do — and he’s obviously a fan of her increasingly funky ensembles as well.

And now that we’ve spotted Hemsworth’s brother Chris out with his wife, Elsa Pataky, who’s rocking a Cyrus-esque ensemble herself, we have to wonder: do the Hemsworth boys have a type?

Both of the Aussie hotties’ significant others share an affinity for shredded denim, chunky engineer boots and choppy, super-short blonde hair.

And when we spotted the tiny girls standing next to the bulky brothers, both clad in V-necks, slouchy jeans and aviators, we admit we had to do a double take to deduce which couple was which.

Fortunately, Chris travels with the ultimate accessory — his adorable baby daughter — which makes them a bit easier to tell apart. But we still have to guess there’s a lot of confusion around the Hemsworth household at holidays.

Tell us: Do you and your siblings go for the same “type?” Are you amused that the Hemsworth boys seem to?

–Alex Apatoff

GET MORE STAR DATE STYLE INSPIRATION HERE!

Read More..

Why Twitter Makes Us Want to Add Extra Letterssss

For the March issue of The Atlantic, I spoke with linguists about this thingggg we’re doing with words — a growing habit in which otherwise reasonable people cavalierly add extra letters to the words in their texts, emails, tweets, and so forth — to find out why. One of the experts I met while working on that piece was Tyler Schnoebelen, a recent PhD from Stanford who wrote his dissertation on emotion in language and blogs about newsworthy word-findings at Corpus Linguistics. He’s been focusing lately on the phenomenon of word lengthening or “expressive lengthening” on Twitter. (He’s also one of the researchers behind a recent study about how men and women tweet.) For his dissertation, he analyzed data consisting of 3,775,174 tweets from 102,304 different English-speaking authors, tweeted in the six months between January to June of 2011 in the U.S. He was looking at the way people used emoticons in their tweets, but in that exploration he found something else: Along with those emoticons, people were adding letters to their words, too. Or toooooo. In the interest of learning more about why word lengthening exists, even on an inherently character-limited social media platform like Twitter, I turned to him with a few questions. 

RELATED: Exploring the Character of a Bad Word

What words get lengthened the most on Twitter, and why? The main ones are the expressive things you don’t think of as words — mmmm, oh, ah, aw. You can put as many letters on those as you want. That gets extended to words like hey, no, yes, and the letters that get extended are usually the ones you can hold onto, vowels or ns or ses. Then it gets even crazier — OMgggg or LMAOoo or LOLlll, though you’re not actually saying “laughing my ass off off off” or “laugh out loud loud loud loud.” From that there’s extending real words you can’t pronounce, shittttt or happppppy or amazinggggg. You start with these expressions that don’t have a proper spelling, things no one tells you how to write, and you add and go beyond that to make words more affective and expressive.

RELATED: David Cameron’s Semantic Chauvinism

You wrote a post about a friend who’d seen the word dumb tweeted as DUMBBB, which inspired you to take a look at which specific letters were added most frequently and why. Ooo was a big winner. Why do you think people pick the particular letters they do?  People love the o! I think it’s something about rounding your lips; it’s iconic of getting your mouth around something. Your lips, pursing forward, going out into the world … there’s something there. 

RELATED: The Ways in Which We Mistake Our Words

What about the more unusual added letters, like b or g? I think the gs are the most fun. People who use them are really taking this idea that you can extend things and going crazy with it. You can’t pronounce a word like Omgggg, but it’s been lifted away from the speech itself. In real speech, which is normally face to face, there are so many different ways to communicate — I’m not just happy but really happy — but we don’t have that in a tweet or text or email. Adding letters is a version of a big intonation, raised eyebrows. 

RELATED: Geoffrey Chaucer Coined ‘Twitter’

In terms of voicing, vowels make sense to lengthen because when we’re speaking that’s what we’re doing. Sometimes there are consonants, s or n, we do that in speech, too. But you don’t pronounce the b in dumb in English, so what does adding that letter mean? The end is a nice attractive spot, maybe, that gets across that you’re doing something. Clearly when people are doing this they’re being playful.  

RELATED: Embracing the Age of Autocorrect

So this is all about adding feeling to our too-brief 140-character missives? It’s not a waste of space, I guess, because of emotional layering gained? If you look at these words, a lot of them are from the expressive class. You’re already expressing some emotional state with them — aw — or you’re using them for augmentative purposes, like so and lots of affirmatives and negations: yeahhh, nooo, yesssss. But I think it’s telling that some of the other more frequent words that get extra letters are unpronounceable. People are trying to give some flavor to the communication. These additions really help get the point across and share intonation. That’s part of it: You can hear them in your ear.

Are specific usages unique to different people or subsets of Twitter? People using LMFAOOO tend to talk about Chris Brown and Nicki Minaj; there’s a hip-hop feel to that. People who write knowww with extra ws or youuu with extra us also use the word mum, they spell thankyou as one word, and they use xoxoxo.

Do you add letters to tweets or emails or texts? I’m a fond of adding extra ooos like most poeple. I don’t think I do it excessively. I tend to make my hms a single. 

There’s also a kind of a social meme-ing to these things. I’m tempted to use v. for very but I can’t help but associate that with Bridget Jones, who does that in her diary, and I have a problem with someone reading me as Bridget Jones. I tentatively aded a v. in a tweet the other day. I rearranged and deleted and put it back several times. Other people may not have a reference like this.

It makes you wonder how long the “curse of Bridget Jones” will hold. Speaking of things evolving and changing, this kind of behavior tends to inspire rants about how proper language and grammar is dying. What do you think about that?  As far as I understand, [the ranters] are full of it. This represents changing conventions; we’re not becoming impaired. We all have cues, while we’re talking on the phone, for instance, and we’d have even more if we were face to face. What we’re usually doing is negotiating what we know about a particular person and what we know about people in general. It has to do with expectations, my experience with you and everybody else. We generally accommodate each other. Over the course of a conversation, our vowels become more alike. Any of these things can be going on below our level of awareness, or they can come up to our level of awareness. We can tweak them, we can notice them.

Your research focused on tweets in which people had used emoticons. Do you think emoticon-users are more likely to add letters to the words they tweet?  They very much do exist together, emoticons and adding letters. It’s easy to call these habits nonstandard, but whether they’re really nonstandard …10 percent of tweets use emoticons. As for the percent of letters added to words, I don’t know. They’re clearly very frequent, especially the expressive sound ones. Emoticons and added letters are not warring with each other; in fact, they go together very well. It’s speculation, but my guess is, if you’re fine with lengthening, you’re probably fine adding emoticons.

What other things do people do on Twitter in order to convey emotion?  Other types of punctuation. You can underline, you can bold, you can do all caps. People do all caps all the time. Putting asterisks around words has existed for a long time, and tends to be used on the internet with verbs indicating what you are doing at the moment (*smiles*). Or you see underscore, word, underscore. Those punctuation techniques will give you a sense that this is important, but not a sense of how it’s said. The all-caps gives you a sense of how it’s said, but many people hear or read it as shouting, and you don’t always mean to do that. The awwwww (expressing condolences) is not something you shout. You can’t shout mmmm.

Mmmmm. Do you see an end to the “trend” of adding letters? Once we get to the point of digesting audio tweets, we won’t need to add letters.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Why Twitter Makes Us Want to Add Extra Letterssss
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/why-twitter-makes-us-want-to-add-extra-letterssss/
Link To Post : Why Twitter Makes Us Want to Add Extra Letterssss
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

The Lede: Syrian Television's Most Outraged Bystander

Last Update, 4:47 p.m. In the aftermath of a deadly bombing in Damascus on Thursday, a man emerged from a small knot of bystanders crowded around a camera crew from Syrian state television to vent his anger at the foreign Islamist fighters he held responsible. “We the Syrian people,” he said, “place the blame on the Nusra Front, the Takfiri oppressors and armed Wahhabi terrorists from Saudi Arabia that are armed and trained in Turkey.”

A report on Thursday’s bombing in Damascus from Syrian state television’s YouTube channel.

Pointing at the ruined street near the headquarters of President Bashar al-Assad’s ruling Baath Party, the man described the location as “a civilian place — a mosque, an elementary school, the homes of local families.”

Watching a copy of the report online, Rime Allaf, a Syrian writer monitoring the conflict from Vienna, noticed that this man on the street, whose views so closely echoed those of the Syrian government, had a very familiar face. That is because, as opposition activists demonstrated last June, the same man had already appeared at least 18 times in the forefront or background of such reports since the start of the uprising.

Man who appears on #Syria TV as “innocent bystander” with every Damascus car bomb has again appeared today. http://t.co/PmPRhzUUBN

— Rime Allaf (@rallaf) 21 Feb 13

After she posted a screenshot of the man’s latest appearance, Ms. Allaf observed on Twitter that “it would be funny if there weren’t so many victims of Syria regime terrorism!”

As The Lede noted last year, the man was even featured in two reports the same day during a small pro-Assad rally in Damascus.

Two pro-Assad television channels in Syria interviewed the same man on the street at a rally in July 2012.

Mocking the dark comedy of government-run channels recycling the same die-hard Assad supporter in so many reports, activists put together several video compilations of his appearances in the state media. The most comprehensive, posted online last June, featured excerpts from 18 reports.

A compilation of Syrian state media reports featuring the same Assad supporter again and again.

Another highlight reel, uploaded to YouTube 13 months ago by a government critic, showed that after the man had spoken at least five times on state-run television, he appeared in the background of a BBC report wearing a military uniform.

A man who is frequently interviewed on Syrian state television in civilian dress appeared in the background of a BBC report wearing a military uniform.

As longtime readers of The Lede may recall, during the dispute over Iran’s 2009 presidential election, opposition bloggers noticed that one particularly die-hard supporter of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also appeared again and again and again in photographs of pro-government rallies.

While there is no way to determine just who is responsible for Syrian television’s frequent interviews with this same man on the street, there is some evidence that Iran has advised Syria on how to report bombings on state television.

Last year, when The Guardian published a trove of hacked e-mails taken from the in-boxes of Syrian officials, one message forwarded to the president appeared to include advice from Iranian state television’s bureau chief in Damascus on what his Syrian counterparts should report after bombings. That e-mail, from Hussein Mortada, a Lebanese journalist who runs coverage of Syria for the Iranian government’s satellite news channels, complained that the government was not heeding directions he had received “from Iran and Hezbollah,” the Lebanese militant group, about who Syria should blame for bomb attacks. “It is not in our interest to say that Al Qaeda is behind” every bombing, Mr. Mortada wrote, “because such statements clear the U.S. administration and the Syrian opposition of any responsibility.”

Read More..

Tourist's body found stuffed in hotel water tank; guest horrified

There were few details Wednesday on how the body of a missing Canadian tourist ended up at the bottom of a water tank on the roof of a downtown hotel.

For days, residents of the Cecil Hotel thought something was amiss. At least one said there was flooding in one of the fourth-floor rooms, while others complained about weak water pressure.
One of those complaints led a hotel maintenance worker to check Tuesday on one of the large metal water cisterns on the roof, where he discovered the body of an unidentified woman in her 20s at the bottom of the tank.

Authorities said late Tuesday the body was that of Elisa Lam, 21, a Vancouver, Canada, woman last seen at the hotel Jan. 31.

"We're not ruling out foul play," said LAPD Sgt. Rudy Lopez, noting that the location of the remains "makes it suspicious."

Los Angeles police investigators searched the roof of the Cecil with the aid of dogs when Lam was reported missing about three weeks ago. Lopez said he didn't know if the tanks were examined.

"We did a very thorough search of the hotel," he said. "But we didn't search every room; we could only do that if we had probable cause" that a crime had been committed.

Once a destination for the rich and famous in the 1930s and '40s, the Cecil has gradually deteriorated, mirroring the decay of downtown Los Angeles, particularly in the skid row area. With rock-bottom rents and flexible stays, the historic 1927 building attracted those who were a step away from homelessness.

The Cecil also became a magnet for criminal activity. Most notably it was the occasional home to infamous serial killers Jack Unterweger and Richard "Night Stalker" Ramirez. Even after a multimillion-dollar makeover in 2008, police said they frequently respond to the Cecil for calls relating to domestic abuse and narcotics.

In 2010, the hotel was the scene of a bizarre incident in which a Los Angeles city firefighter who had been honored as paramedic of the year said he was stabbed while responding to a distress call. But police found inconsistencies in the story and no assailant was ever located.

On Tuesday, the Cecil grappled with a deeper mystery.
According to detectives with the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division, Lam came to Los Angeles from Vancouver on Jan. 26. While they did not discuss her exact movements or whether she visited anyone here, they believe her ultimate destination was Santa Cruz. Lam's reasons for visiting California were unclear, detectives said.

She was last seen Jan. 31 inside the elevator of the hotel. In surveillance footage, Lam is seen pushing buttons for multiple floors and at one point stepping out of the elevator, waving her arms.
A cause of death is still to be determined by county coroner’s officials, Lopez said.

A locked door that only employees have access to and a fire escape are the only ways to get to the roof. The door is equipped with an alarm system that notifies  hotel personnel if someone is up there, Lopez said.

ALSO:

O.C. shootings: Killings occurred during morning routines

Body found in hotel water tank identified as Canadian tourist

Woman who ran surrogate parenting firm pleads guilty in fraud case

— Andrew Blankstein and Adolfo Flores

Read More..

Florida governor backs limited Medicaid expansion

MIAMI (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott backed a limited expansion of healthcare coverage for the poor on Wednesday, joining six other Republican governors who have agreed to the move under President Barack Obama's landmark reform law.

Scott, a vocal critic of the law known as Obamacare who had balked at expanding Medicaid, only agreed to the expansion after the federal government granted Florida a conditional waiver to privatize Medicaid statewide.

Scott said in a statement that he would only agree to the expansion for three years, however, while the federal government picks up all the costs.

"We will support a three year expansion of our Medicaid program under the new healthcare law, as long as the federal government meets their commitment to pay 100 percent of the cost during this time. This legislation would sunset after three years and need to be reauthorized," the statement said.

Scott's conditional endorsement of an expanded Medicaid program in Florida, a move that officials have said could add at least 1 million people to the state's Medicaid rolls, must still be approved by the Florida Legislature.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; editing by Andrew Hay)

Read More..

Jodi Arias Testifies: I Don't Remember Stabbing My Lover 27 Times

Update

By Howard Breuer

UPDATED
02/20/2013 at 05:45 PM EST

• Originally published 02/20/2013 at 05:00 PM EST

Jodi Arias

Charlie Leight/The Arizona Republic/AP

Nearly two months into her murder trial in a Phoenix courtroom, Jodi Arias told jurors Wednesday morning that she killed Travis Alexander in self-defense – but doesn't remember stabbing him nearly 30 times.

"I just remember dropping the knife and being very freaked out and screaming," Arias, 32, said after two weeks of explicit direct testimony about her sex life with Alexander, including their kinky sex shortly before his death. She says the knife was the same one Alexander had used that afternoon when he tied her up for sex.

Facing the death penalty if convicted, Arias says her memory of June 4, 2008, clears up when she put the knife in the dishwasher. Driving off barefoot, she brought with her the rope she said Alexander had used to tie her up and a gun that she pulled from the top of his walk-in closet before shooting him.

"I was very scared and very upset. ... I just wanted to die," Arias testified. "I thought, 'My life is probably done now.'"

She says she decided to bury those feelings and try to act normal as she drove north into Utah to visit another man with whom she already had plans to see.

She says she tossed the gun in the desert, dropped the rope in a Dumpster near St. George, Utah, washed the blood from her hands with a case of bottled Costco water she kept in her trunk and put on a spare pair of work shoes.

The man she met, Ryan Burns, earlier testified that Arias was frisky and affectionate when she visited on June 5. Arias testified that she kissed Burns and cuddled with him the day after killing Alexander because, "I felt safe right there and, I figured, I just wanted to seem normal, like I didn't just do what I just did."

Centerpiece of Defense

Arias's testimony was the long-anticipated centerpiece of her defense. Once that's done, prosecutors are expected to spend several days trying to pick apart her story.

Arias also talked about how she and Alexander, a charismatic Mormon motivational speaker, had an off-and-on relationship in which he sometimes become violent or sadistic.

She says she had arrived at his Mesa, Ariz. home at 5 a.m. and although they took photos and video of themselves having sex, Alexander repeatedly became enraged with her – first for giving him badly scratched CDs of photographs of their trips together, then for dropping his camera.

She says that as Alexander chased her through a walk-in closet "like a linebacker," she grabbed a gun that she knew he kept on a top shelf. She says that she held up the gun, expecting that Alexander would stop charging at her, but he didn't.

"The gun went off, I didn't even mean to shoot, I didn't know my hand was on the trigger," Arias testified. She says that, as they wrestled on the ground, she assumed that she'd shot a hole in the wall, not that she'd hit Alexander. After that, she says, "there's a lot of that day that I don't remember, there's a lot of gaps.

"I have no memory of stabbing him," Arias told jurors, who have heard graphic testimony that Alexander was shot in the head and repeatedly stabbed, and that his throat was slashed ear to ear.

Arias testified she remembers standing in his bathroom, dropping the knife on the hard floor, and thinking, "that I just couldn't believe what had just happened and I couldn't rewind the clock and take it back." She did not recall dragging him to the bathroom or placing him in the shower, she said.

Arias also testified that she still loves Alexander – "It's a different love but yes, I do."

Since the slaying, Arias has changed her story, first saying she had no connection to the crime, then saying two masked intruders killed Alexander and almost killed her. "I basically told everyone what I could remember of the day, and that the intruder story was all B.S.," Arias said Wednesday afternoon at the close of her testimony.

Prosecutors suggest Arias killed Alexander out of jealousy after he pushed her out of his life and started dating someone else, and that the gun was actually a pistol that she stole from her grandparents' home in Yreka, Calif., weeks earlier.

Read More..

Apple’s Retina display for the next-gen iPad mini is reportedly already in development

Read More..

IHT Special: Women Face Fight to Keep Their Rights in Tunisia

TUNIS — At the funeral this month of Chokri Belaid, the murdered secular opposition leader in Tunisia, his widow Basma Khalfaoui, a prominent feminist, stood on the ambulance carrying his casket, her head uncovered, raising her arm to wave a defiant victory sign.

“My husband was denouncing Ennahda’s double talk and we will continue his struggle,” Ms. Khalfaoui, 42, said at the funeral, referring to the moderate Islamist party that governs the country. “We will not give up the fight.”

Tunisia, perceived by the West as the most secular country in the Arab world and a staunch promoter of women’s rights, has gone through a rocky transition since the revolution two years ago that ousted President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. While political pluralism exists for the first time in decades, new freedoms for some are threatening long-cherished ones for others — in particular those for Tunisian women.

After Tunisia gained its independence from France in 1956, the government passed laws to expand women’s rights, including the right to education and gender equality. Over the following decades, Islamists were persecuted and exiled while the government pushed the secularization of society to such an extent that a decree in 1981 banned women from wearing a veil in public buildings and universities.

After the fall of Mr. Ben Ali’s regime, the Ennahda party won elections in October 2011 with a comfortable majority. Since then, worries have grown that one of its aims is to restrict women’s freedoms in a country where, until recently, those rights had been taken for granted for decades.

“I think it’s normal that the Islamists are so vocal — veiled women used to be harassed and the frustration came out all at once,” said Sarah Ben Hamadi, 28, a blogger and journalist. “We are simply paying today for Ben Ali’s mistakes.”

“I don’t think the country is more radical,” she added. “There is more freedom so we see more of the religious people who were hiding in the past.”

Certainly, the religious ultraconservatives known as Salafists are more visible. The University of Manouba, in suburban Tunis, experienced months of tension last year after Salafist students rioted against the ban on the niqab, the face-covering veil.

More worrying are legal overhauls, human rights officials say. As Tunisia’s Constituent Assembly writes a new constitution, there have been repeated confrontations between Islamists, who dominate the assembly and want to roll back some rights acquired by women, and secular liberals, who want an expansion of those rights to include, for example, equal inheritance rights.

“We cannot speak of an obvious rollback since the legal reality is still the same,” said Amna Guellali, the director of Human Rights Watch in Tunis. “But acquired rights are being threatened by repeated attacks by Salafist groups on those they consider infidels or on behavior they deem contrary to Islamic morality.”

When a young woman was allegedly raped by police officers in September, she was charged with indecency and risked six months in prison before the charges were dropped, after a huge uproar. Human rights organizations cite the case as an example of how rights are under threat.

“Under the old regime, there were similar cases,” Ms. Guellali acknowledged. “Now with the new freedoms in the country, the media is paying attention to these kinds of stories.” Still, she said, even allowing for the amplifying effect of the news coverage, something has changed.

Chema Gargouri, the president of the Tunisian Association for Management and Social Stability, a nongovernmental organization that provides training and microloans for women and young people in poor areas, said women were more secure under Mr. Ben Ali.

“What was really striking to me after the revolution was that women started to lose their self-esteem,” Ms. Gargouri said. “The dictatorship was pro-woman. The hatred against the dictatorship is expressed through action against women.”

The rise of social and religious repression and the loss of self-confidence “prevents any entrepreneurial initiative for women,” she added.

Ms. Gargouri, who is in her 40s, said that women of her generation had never previously had to debate or defend their rights. But recent developments had pushed her to work to raise awareness of the challenge now facing them.

“What scares me is that the Tunisian woman seems lost,” she said. “In many places I go to, people ask what the government can do for them. We try to teach them to do it on their own.”

The fact is that Tunisia has an Islamist majority, said Ms. Ben Hamadi, the blogger. “Article 1 of the Tunisian Constitution states that it is an Islamic state,” she said. “If we want real democracy, we must listen to everyone’s voice.”

Read More..

Rapes may be tied to Christian dating website, officials say

Police in the San Diego suburb of La Mesa are investigating whether a 37-year-old man charged with raping a woman he met on the ChristianMingle website may have victimized other women he met on the dating website.

Sean Banks of Del Mar is charged with rape, burglary and penetration by force involving a woman in La Mesa, according to court records. He was arrested Feb. 11 and has pleaded not guilty.

Banks, a computer technician, worked in various locations across the United States. Police said they are investigating whether he may have lured other victims through ChristianMingle and other websites, possibly using pseudonyms, including Rylan Butterwood and Rylan Harbough.

In the La Mesa case, he used the name Rarity, police said. The alleged attack occurred in the woman's home the first time the two met in person after carrying on conversations over the Internet, police said.

Beverly Hills-based ChristianMingle is cooperating with the investigation, police said.

Anyone with information about Banks or other possible victims should call the La Mesa Police Department at (619) 667-7538.

ALSO:

Dorner stalked LAPD officials before killings, Chief Beck says

O.C. shootings: Ladera Ranch neighbor heard a 'bunch of ruckus'

Suspect in O.C. killings shot at drivers on 55 Freeway, police say

-- Tony Perry in San Diego

Photo: Sean Banks. Credit: La Mesa Police Department

Read More..

Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year

CHICAGO (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.

___

Stobbe reported from Atlanta.

___

Online:

JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org

CDC: http://www.cdc.gov

___

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

Read More..

How Does Fergie's Maternity Style Stack Up to Kate, Jessica and Kim?

Stylewatch
Style News Now

02/19/2013 at 03:31 PM ET

Getty; GSI; Abaca; Xposure

When we heard that Fergie was expecting a baby Black Eyed Pea, we were on the edge of our seats waiting to see how the famously funky star‘s maternity style would play out. Luckily she didn’t keep us waiting long, stepping out with husband Josh Duhamel Tuesday in a shearling bomber jacket, yellow sweater dress and circular sunglasses.

“It’s clear to see how happy they are,” a source close to the couple tells PEOPLE. ”They are really excited.” And we are really excited to see how her outfits fit into the range of maternity style — from low-key to high-wattage — that we’ve been spotting from L.A. to London.

On the “mild” end of the spectrum is the Duchess of Cambridge (left), who has dressed her barely-there bump in conservative coats and this elegant Max Mara wrap dress.

A little wilder is Jessica Simpson, wearing a pink jacket with Jessica Simpson Maternity leggings, who sticks to the same styles she favors even when not pregnant (blazers, maxis and sky-high heels) but isn’t shy about putting her fuller curves on display with plunging V-necks.

And on the far end of the “mild to wild”-o-meter: Kim Kardashian, of course, who has put her bump on display in feathers, crop tops, mesh, sequins and sheer numbers — including this onesie pantsuit.

As it turns out, these stars’ maternity style isn’t so different from how they dressed pre-baby … which makes us even more excited to see how the rest of their pregnancy wardrobe will go. Tell us: Who’s the best-dressed mom-to-be?

–Alex Apatoff

PHOTOS: SEE MORE STAR MATERNITY STYLE HERE!

Read More..

MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible

On Tuesday afternoon, just as the week of the big-brand Twitter hack was getting as old as it was useful to the “victims,” the Twitter feeds of BET and MTV — both owned by the media conglomerate Viacom — were “hacked.” Except they weren’t, in fact, hacked. They were stunt-hacked in a pre-planned, inter-office joke that turned into a viral marketing ploy gone bad.

RELATED: 4 Reasons To Praise Twitter’s New URL Shortener

On Monday hackers took to Burger King’s Twitter feed in a fake McDonald’s takeover that gained the brand 30,000 followers and a whole lot of social-media brand recognition, almost by accident. By midday Tuesday, Jeep had been “taken over” by hackers posing as Cadillac, and thousands of followers came with the very similar “attack.” But the social-media teams at BET and MTV had already noticed the bump, and had some “fun” in store. Which, because this is Twitter and jokes last about a day, didn’t end up much fun for anyone involved — and because this is MTV, definitely ended up in making the network look even more behind the times than usual.

RELATED: Does Google Have a Double Agent at Twitter?

We spotted this message (since deleted) from BET’s “social media pugilist”:

RELATED: The New York Times’s Bill Keller Riles Up Twitter

And there was this evidence, from an MTV marketing director’s feed minutes before the reality-TV channel was hacked:

MTV Marketing Director @schoprah tweets about the #MTVhack 4 minutes before the first “hacked” @mtv post:twitpic.com/c563h6

— Ellie Hall (@ellievhall) February 19, 2013

And have at these musings that MTV’s social media manger, Tom Fischman, tweeted after Burger King was hacked yesterday:

Is there any real downside to the @burgerking hack? Mistake leaving the account suspended all day, would have seen a nice follower windfall.

— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013

@mcbc Nobody thinks BK tweeted that stuff, doesn’t really reflect on them at all. Just bought them a ton of publicity, sympathy if anything.

— Thomas Fishman (@Tom_Fishman) February 18, 2013

The stunt certainly earned MTV and BET a bunch of publicity — like this post that you’re reading! — but came with the price of Twitter’s scorn … and no real bump in followers to either feed, either up or down:

I knew MTV wasn’t hacked when their content continued to still be complete crap.

— Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) February 19, 2013

I hope @twitter suspends @mtv and @bet just for being asshats

— Peter Ha (@ThePeterHa) February 19, 2013

It’s days like today that make me hate the Internet.

— Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) February 19, 2013

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/mtv-fake-hacks-its-own-twitter-handle-proving-that-mtv-is-still-terrible/
Link To Post : MTV Fake-Hacks Its Own Twitter Handle, Proving That MTV Is Still Terrible
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..