Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.

A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million.

The measures included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.

Practices were standardized at the seven hospitals.

The Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons directed the project. They announced results on Wednesday.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

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Wall Street cuts losses on Boehner "fiscal cliff" comment

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks sharply pared losses on Wednesday after U.S. House Speaker John Boehner said he was optimistic that a deal on the "fiscal cliff" to avert large tax hikes and spending cuts could be reached.


After falling nearly 1 percent, the S&P 500 pared losses to trade near flat after Boehner said that Republicans were willing to put revenues on the table if Democrats agreed to spending cuts.


For weeks now, the market has been swinging back and forth on headlines out of Washington regarding the ongoing U.S. budget talks.


Later in the day, President Barack Obama will meet at the White House with chief executives from top corporations including Goldman Sachs , Deloitte LLP, and Caterpillar Inc , to discuss U.S. fiscal problems.


"While there's little that the president and vice president could do at today's meeting to improve moods in America's corner office, we still believe a legislative compromise will be reached before 'fiscal cliff' detonates," said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank.


"In the meantime, we expect daunting headlines and emotional market volatility."


One possible result of the deficit reduction talks is a rise in the tax rate on dividends, prompting some firms to issue special dividends or move up plans for dividends.


The latest example is retailer Costco Wholesale Corp , which said it will pay a special $3 billion dividend to investors. The company posted monthly same-store sales that beat forecasts. The stock rose 4.7 percent to $101.07.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 3.38 points, or 0.03 percent, at 12,881.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 1.73 points, or 0.12 percent, at 1,397.21. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.10 points, or 0.17 percent, at 2,962.69.


Earlier, the S&P 500 fell nearly 1 percent on data that showed U.S. single-family home sales fell in October, casting a shadow over what has been one of the brighter spots in the U.S. economy.


Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 10 percent to $3.27 on news that Getco LLC has sent a proposal for a merger between Getco and Knight Capital at a price of $3.50 per share, according to a regulatory filing.


On the downside, Apple Inc shares fell 1.3 percent to $576.80, weighing heavily on the overall market.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Kenneth Barry)


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Bombings Are Said to Kill Dozens Near Syria’s Capital


Francisco Leong/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images


Rebels celebrated on top of a downed Syrian jet in Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo, on Wednesday.







DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Syrian state media said on Wednesday that 34 people and possibly many more had died in twin car bombings in a suburb populated by minorities only a few miles from the center of Damascus, the capital, as the civil war swirls from north to south claiming ever higher casualties. One estimate by the government’s opponents put the death toll at 47.




There were also reports from witnesses in Turkey and antigovernment activists in Syria that for the second successive day insurgents had shot down a government aircraft in the north of the country, offering further evidence that the rebels are seeking a major shift by challenging the government’s dominance of the skies. It was not immediately clear how the aircraft, apparently a plane, had been brought down.


Video posted on the Internet by rebels showed wreckage with fires still burning around it. The aircraft appeared to show a tail assembly clearly visible jutting out of the debris. Such videos are difficult to verify, particularly in light of the restrictions facing reporters in Syria. However, the episode on Wednesday seemed to be confirmed by other witnesses.


“We watched a Syrian plane being shot down as it was flying low to drop bombs,” said Ugur Cuneydioglu, who said he observed the incident from a Turkish border village in southern Hatay Province. “It slowly went down in flames before it hit the ground. It was quite a scene,” Mr. Cuneydioglu said.


Video posted by insurgents on the Internet showed a man in aviator coveralls being carried away. It was not clear if the man was alive but the video said he had been treated in a makeshift hospital. A voice off-camera says, “This is the pilot who was shelling residents’ houses.”


The aircraft was said to have been brought down while it was attacking the town of Daret Azzeh, 20 miles west of Aleppo and close to the Turkish border. The town was the scene of a mass killing last June, when the government and the rebels blamed each other for the deaths and mutilation of 25 people. The video posted online said the plane had been brought down by “the free men of Daret Azzeh soldiers of God brigade.”


On Tuesday, Syrian rebels said they shot down a military helicopter with a surface-to-air missile outside Aleppo and they uploaded video that appeared to confirm that rebels have put their growing stock of heat-seeking missiles to effective use.


In recent months, rebels have used mainly machine guns to shoot down several Syrian Air Force helicopters and fixed-wing attack jets. In Tuesday’s case, the thick smoke trailing the projectile, combined with the elevation of the aircraft, strongly suggested that the helicopter was hit by a missile.


Rebels hailed the event as the culmination of their long pursuit of effective antiaircraft weapons, though it was not clear if the downing on Tuesday was an isolated tactical success or heralded a new phase in the war that would present a meaningful challenge to the Syrian government’s air supremacy. In Damascus, the official SANA news agency said the explosions in Jaramana outside the city at around 7 a.m. were the work of “terrorists,” the word used by the authorities to denote rebel forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad. Photographs on the SANA Web site showed wreckage and flames in what looked like a narrow alleyway with cars covered in chunks of debris from damaged buildings. The agency said the bombings were in the main square of Jaramana, which news reports said is largely populated by members of the Christian and Druse minorities. Residents said the neighborhood was home to many families who have fled other parts of Syria because of the conflict and to some Palestinian families. The blasts caused “huge material damage to the residential buildings and shops,” SANA said.


The photographs on the Web site showed shattered windows at the Abou Samra coffee house and gurneys laden with injured people clogging what seemed to be a hospital corridor.


SANA said two bombings in other neighborhoods caused minor damage. Activists reported that there were four explosions and said they were all “huge.”


Footage broadcast on Syria’s private Addounia channel and state television showed damage scarring gray six-story apartment houses above tangles of wrecked cars as ambulances arrived to transport the wounded and rescuers spraying rubble with fire hoses. The camera panned over bloodstained sidewalks.


The blasts seemed initially at least to shift the focus of the fighting from the north, where insurgents have claimed string of tactical breakthroughs in recent days, to areas ringing Damascus.


In the north in recent days, the insurgents also claimed to have seized air bases and a hydroelectric dam, apparently seeking both to expand their communications lines and to counter the government’s supremacy in the air.


The death toll from Wednesday’s bombings was not immediately confirmed. An activist group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, initially said that 29 people had died but revised the figure later to 47, of whom 38 had been identified. Of the 120 injured, the rebel group said, 23 people were in serious condition, meaning that the tally could climb higher.


The explosions reflected the dramatic shift since Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful protest centered on the southern town of Dara’a. It has since spread across the land in a full-blown civil war pitting government forces against a rebel army of Army defectors, disaffected civilians and what the authorities say are foreign jihadists.


Hala Droubi reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Sebnem Arsu contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon.



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German lawmakers condemn Google campaign against copyright law












BERLIN (Reuters) – Senior German politicians have denounced as propaganda a campaign by Google to mobilize public opinion against proposed legislation to let publishers charge search engines for displaying newspaper articles.


Internet lobbyists say they are worried the German law will set a precedent for other countries such as France and Italy that have shown an interest in having Google pay publishers for the right to show their news snippets in its search results.












Lawmakers in Berlin will debate the bill in the Bundestag (lower house) on Thursday. Google says the law would make it harder for users to retrieve information via the Internet.


Google launched its campaign against the bill on Tuesday with advertisements in German newspapers and a web information site called “Defend your web”.


“Such a law would hit every Internet user in Germany,” Stefan Tweraser, country manager for Google Germany, said in a statement. “An ancillary copyright means less information for consumers and higher costs for companies.”


The campaign has caused outrage among some members of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition.


“The campaign initiated by Google is cheap propaganda,” said conservative lawmakers Guenter Krings and Ansgar Heveling.


“Under the guise of a supposed project for the freedom of the Internet, an attempt is being made to coopt its users for its own lobbying,” the two said in a statement.


Supporters of the law argue that newspaper publishers should be able to benefit from advertising revenues earned by search engines using their content.


Under the plans, publishers would get a bigger say over how their articles are used on the Internet and could charge search engines for showing articles or extracts.


German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, a member of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power in Merkel’s government, said she was astonished that Google was trying to monopolize opinion-making. She is responsible for the law.


“PANIC MONGERING”


Germany’s newspaper industry, suffering from economic slowdown and keen to get its hands on any revenues it can, backs the plans and railed against Google’s campaign.


“The panic mongering from Google has no justification,” Germany’s BDZV newspaper association said in a statement.


“The argument from search engine companies that Internet searching and retrieval will be made more difficult is not serious. Private use, reading, following links and quoting will be possible, just as before.”


Internet lobbyists in Brussels fear the European Commission is sympathetic to publisher demands for a piece of Google’s profits online. Recent statements, they say, are proof.


“Consumers are not the only ones facing difficulties,” Michel Barnier, the EU’s internal market commissioner, said in a speech on November 7. “Think of newspaper publishers who see the content they produce being used by others to attract consumers on the net and generate advertising revenues.”


French newspapers and magazines want Google to pay them for linking to their articles on Google. The French government has named a mediator to negotiate with the press and Google to try to get a deal by the end of the year.


If no deal emerges, President Francois Hollande’s government will ask parliament to draft a law modifying copyright laws to protect the press from appropriation of its content online, according to a letter signed by two ministers on November 28.


(Additional reporting by Harro ten Wolde in Frankfurt, Claire Davenbport in Brussels and Leila Abboud in Paris; Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Gareth Jones and)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Meet Britney Spears's 'New Little Baby Girl': Hannah the Dog















11/27/2012 at 12:20 PM EST








Courtesy of Britney Spears


New job, new dog?

Freshly minted The X Factor judge Britney Spears is showing off an adorable addition to her fan base: introducing ... Hannah!

"I want you all to meet my new little baby girl @hannahspears," Spears, 30, Tweeted Monday, alongside a sweet snapshot of the duo. "How cute is she?!?!"

And, yes, Britney's b––h already has a budding fan following of her own. The pint-sized pooch is taking to Twitter – perhaps with the help of mom – with some doggone pressing thoughts.

"Should I wear a bow?" reads a Tweet from Hannah's account. "Mom says I'm a princess & that I need a bow."

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CDC: HIV spread high in young gay males

NEW YORK (AP) — Health officials say 1 in 5 new HIV infections occur in a tiny segment of the population — young men who are gay or bisexual.

The government on Tuesday released new numbers that spotlight how the spread of the AIDS virus is heavily concentrated in young males who have sex with other males. Only about a quarter of new infections in the 13-to-24 age group are from injecting drugs or heterosexual sex.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said blacks represented more than half of new infections in youths. The estimates are based on 2010 figures.

Overall, new U.S. HIV infections have held steady at around 50,000 annually. About 12,000 are in teens and young adults, and most youth with HIV haven't been tested.

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Online:

CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/vitalsigns

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Wall Street down as "fiscal cliff" scares investors away

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell on Tuesday as worries over the impact of "fiscal cliff" on the economy overshadowed progress in easing Greece's debt burden and a slew of positive U.S. economic data.


A deal in Europe to release emergency aid to debt-laden Greece gave a brief, early lift to stocks, but the news was not enough to sustain the gains as investors confronted the looming "fiscal cliff" at home.


As Democrats and Republicans prepared to resume efforts to bridge their sharp differences over taming the federal debt this week in Washington, the market resumed its cautious mode.


"It's like there is nothing else but the fiscal cliff now. It is too big of an issue both economically and politically for investors to just brush off," said Jack DeGan, chief investment officer at Harbor Advisory Corp in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.


The market's worry is whether Congress and the White House can agree on ways to avoid some $600 billion in automatic spending cuts and tax increases that are due to kick early next year. Some fear dramatic fiscal restraint could send the economy into recession.


"It's hard for markets to move on fundamentals now. Even if they do, they quickly come back to being cautious. Investors may buy on small dips but they don't stay in that position for long," DeGan said.


Market reaction was muted to data that showed Americans' confidence in November hit the highest level in more than four years and home prices in September rose for an eighth straight month.


In addition, a gauge of planned U.S. business spending increased by the most in five months in October, data on durable goods orders showed.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 37.35 points, or 0.29 percent, at 12,930.02. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.75 points, or 0.20 percent, at 1,403.54. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 4.21 points, or 0.14 percent, at 2,972.58.


As of Monday's close, the S&P 500 was holding above the 1,400, the level it reclaimed last week. But volume continued to be weak as traders awaited any progress to avert the fiscal restraint. Last week, the S&P 500 advanced nearly 4 percent.


Among individual stocks, Corning Inc shares rose 6.3 percent to $12.07 after the specialty glass maker said it expects full-year sales of its Gorilla glass, used in smartphones and tablets, to approach $1 billion.


McMoRan Exploration Co shares tumbled 22 percent to $7.55 after the oil and gas explorer said on Monday that it could not achieve a measurable flow test at its key Davy Jones No. 1 well in the Gulf of Mexico.


(Reporting By Angela Moon; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio and Kenneth Barry)


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Protesters Gather Again in Cairo Streets to Denounce Morsi





CAIRO — Thousands of people flowed into the streets of Cairo, the Egyptian capital, Tuesday afternoon for a day of protest against President Mohamed Morsi’s attempt to assert broad new powers for the duration of the country’s political transition, dismissing his efforts just the night before to reaffirm his deference to Egyptian law and courts.




By early Tuesday afternoon in Cairo, a dense crowd of hundreds had gathered outside the headquarters of a trade group for lawyers, and thousands more had filed in around a small tent city in Tahrir Square. In an echo of the chants against Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian’s ousted president, almost two years ago, they shouted, “Leave, leave!” and “Bring down the regime!” They also denounced the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group allied with Mr. Morsi.


A few blocks away, in a square near the American Embassy and the Interior Ministry headquarters, groups of young men resumed a running battle that began nine days ago, throwing rocks and tear gas canisters at riot police officers. Although those clashes grew out of anger over the deaths of dozens of protesters in similar clashes one year ago, many of the combatants have happily adopted the banner of protest against Mr. Morsi as well.


Egyptian television had captured the growing polarization of the country on Monday in split-screen coverage of two simultaneous funerals, each for a teenage boy killed in clashes set off by disputes over the new president’s powers. Thousands of supporters of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood marched through the streets of the Nile Delta city of Damanhour to bury a 15-year-old killed outside a Brotherhood office during an attack by protesters. And in Tahrir Square here in Cairo, thousands gathered to bury a 16-year-old killed in clashes with riot police officers and to chant slogans blaming Mr. Morsi for his death. “Morsi killed him,” the boy’s father said in a video statement circulated over the Internet.


“Now blood has been spilled by political factions, so this is not going to go away,” said Rabab el-Mahdi, a professor at the American University in Cairo and a left-leaning activist, adding that these were the first deaths rival factions had blamed on each other and not on the security forces of the Mubarak government since the uprising began last year. Still larger crowds were expected in the evening, as marchers from around the city headed for the square. Many schools and other businesses had closed in anticipation of bedlam, and on Monday, the Brotherhood called off a rival demonstration in support of the president, saying it wanted to avoid violence.


Egypt’s Supreme Judicial Council met again on Tuesday to consider its response to the president, and the leader of Al Azhar, a center of Sunni Muslim learning that is regarded as the pre-eminent moral authority here, met with groups of political leaders in an effort to resolve the battle over the president’s decree and the deadlock in the constitutional assembly, which is trying to draw up a new constitution.


But even as Mr. Morsi met with top judges Monday night in an effort to resolve the crisis, a coalition of opposition leaders held a news conference to declare that preserving the role of the courts was only the first step in a broader campaign against what Abdel Haleem Qandeil, a liberal intellectual, called “the miserable failure of the rule of the Muslim Brothers.” Mr. Morsi “unilaterally broke the contract with the people,” he declared. “We have to be ready to stand up to this group, protest to protest, square to square, and to confront the bullying.”


Mr. Morsi’s effort to remove the last check on his power over the political transition had brought the country’s fractious opposition groups together for the first time in a united front against the Brotherhood. But the show of unity papered over deep divisions between groups and even within them, said Ms. Mahdi of the American University.


“This is not a united front, and I am inside it,” she said. “Every single political group in the country is now divided over this — is this decree revolutionary justice or building a new dictatorship? Should we align ourselves with folool” — the colloquial term for the remnants of the old political elite — “or should we be revolutionary purists? Is it a conflict between the Muslim Brotherhood and the pro-Mubarak judiciary, or is this the beginning of a fascist regime in the making?”


Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.



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Nintendo says more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US












NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S., the company said Monday.


The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo said the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Saturday, or seven days later.












The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in six years. It comes with a new touch-screen controller that promises to change how people play games by offering different people in the same room a different experience, depending on the controller used.


Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores, according to data from the NPD Group. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo said it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.


At this early stage, demand isn’t the only factor dictating how many consoles are sold. Supply is, too. This means it’s likely that more people wanted to buy the Wii U in the first week than those who were able to. The original Wii was in short supply more than a year after it went on sale.


As of Monday afternoon, the website of Best Buy Co. was sold out of the Wii U. Video game retailer GameStop Corp. said there was at least a three day wait for a deluxe Wii U, which costs $ 350, has more memory and comes with a game called “Nintendo Land.” GameStop still had the basic, $ 300 version available.


Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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How Will Larry Hagman's Death Affect Season 2 of Dallas?






TV News










11/26/2012 at 12:45 PM EST







Larry Hagman as J.R. Ewing


TNT


What will happen to J.R. Ewing?

Before his death on Friday from complications from throat cancer, Larry Hagman, who plays the devious oil tycoon, had filmed six of 15 episodes for season 2 of Dallas.

Now, the show's writers and producers will have to find a way to finish filming the season without the show's most iconic character.

According to EW.com, producers want to give J.R. "the proper sendoff that he deserves."

"Larry Hagman was a giant, a larger-than-life personality whose iconic performance as J.R. Ewing will endure as one of the most indelible in entertainment history," executive producers Cynthia Cidre and Michael M. Robin said in a statement on Friday.

In the show's first season, an aging – but still scheming – J.R. spent some time in a nursing home to be treated for depression.

TNT, which airs Dallas, said in a statement: "We will be forever thankful that a whole new generation of people got to know and appreciate Larry through his performance as J.R. Ewing."

Deadline.com reports that it's currently unclear how Hagman's death will affect the show but speculates there may be a hiatus in filming, so "the writers can rework the scripts for the remaining episodes" without him.

Like the 1980 cliffhanger on the original Dallas – which left viewers asking, "Who shot J.R.?" – a farewell episode will likely be must-watch TV for fans.

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