George Lucas’ filmmaking rooted in rebellion

























LOS ANGELES (AP) — There’s no mistaking the similarities. A childhood on a dusty farm, a love of fast vehicles, a rebel who battles an overpowering empire — George Lucas is the hero he created, Luke Skywalker.


His filmmaking outpost, Skywalker Ranch, is so far removed from the Hollywood moviemaking machine he once despised, that it may as well be on the forest moon of Endor.





















That’s why this week’s announcement that Lucas is selling the “Star Wars” franchise and the entire Lucasfilm business to The Walt Disney Co. for more than $ 4 billion is like a laser blast from outer space.


Lucas built his film operation in Marin County near San Francisco largely to avoid the meddling of Los Angeles-based studios. His aim was to finish the “Star Wars” series— his way.


Today the enterprise has far surpassed the 68-year-old filmmaker’s original goals. The ranch covers 6,100 acres and houses one of the industry’s most acclaimed visual effects companies, Industrial Light & Magic. Lucasfilm, with its headquarters now in San Francisco proper, has ventured into books, video games, merchandise, special effects and marketing. Just as Anakin Skywalker became the villain Darth Vader, Lucas —once the outsider— had grown to become the leader of an empire.


“What I was trying to do was stay independent so that I could make the movies I wanted to make,” Lucas says in the 2004 documentary “Empire of Dreams.” ”But now I’ve found myself being the head of a corporation … I have become the very thing that I was trying to avoid.”


After the blockbuster sale announcement Tuesday, Lucas expressed a desire to give away much of his fortune, donate to educational causes and return to the experimental filmmaking of his youth. Still, the move stunned those who’ve followed him. He’d contemplated retirement for years and said he’d never make another “Star Wars” film.


Dale Pollock, the author of the 1999 biography “Skywalking,” said Lucas disdained the Disney culture in interviews he gave in the 1980s, even though he admired the company’s founder. “He felt the corporate ‘Disneyization’ had destroyed the spirit of Walt,” Pollock said.


Lucas said through a spokeswoman on Saturday that he never said such a thing. But his anti-corporate streak is renowned. In the Lucasfilm-sanctioned documentary “Empire of Dreams”, Lucas says on camera that he is “not happy that corporations have taken over the film industry.”


Growing up in the central California town of Modesto, the independent streak was strong in young Lucas. The family lived on a walnut ranch and Lucas’ father owned a stationery store. But, like his fictional protege Luke, George had no interest in taking over the family business. Lucas and his father fought when George made it clear that he’d rather go to college to study art than follow in his father’s footsteps.


Lucas loved fast cars, and dreamed that racing them would be his ticket out. A near-fatal car crash the day before his high school graduation convinced him otherwise.


“I decided I’d better settle down and go to school,” he told sci-fi magazine Starlog in 1981.


As a film student at the University of Southern California, he experimented with “cinema verite,” a provocative form of documentary, and “tone poems” that visualized a piece of music or other artistic work.


The style is reflected in some of the short films he made at USC: “1:42:08″ focused on the sound of a Lotus race car’s engine driving at full speed and “Anyone Who Lived in a Pretty How Town,” inspired by an e.e. Cummings poem. In later interviews, Lucas described his early films as “visual exercises.”


Lucas’ intellectual explorations led to an interest in anthropology, especially the work of American mythologist Joseph Campbell, who studied the common thread linking the myths of disparate cultures. This inspired Lucas to explore archetypal storylines that resonated across the ages and around the world.


Lucas’ epic battle with the movie industry began after Warner Bros. forced him to make unwanted changes to an early film, “THX 1138.” Later, Universal Pictures insisted on revisions to “American Graffiti” that Lucas felt impinged on his creative freedom. The experience led Lucas to insist on having total control of all his work, just like Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney in their heyday.


“In order to get my vision out there, I really needed to learn how to manipulate the system because the system is designed to tear you down and destroy everything you are doing,” Lucas said in an interview with Charlie Rose.


He shopped his outline for “Star Wars” to several studios before finding a friend in Alan Ladd Jr., an executive at 20th Century Fox. Despite budget and deadline overruns, and pressure from the studio, the movie was a huge success when it was released in 1977. It grossed $ 798 million in theaters worldwide and caused Fox’s stock price at the time to double.


In one of the wisest business moves in Hollywood history, Lucas cut a deal with distributor Fox before the film’s release so that he could retain ownership of the sequels and rights for merchandise. He figured in the 1970s that might mean peddling a few T-shirts and posters to fans to help market the movie. Over the decades, merchandising has formed the bedrock of his multi-billion-dollar enterprise, resulting in a bonanza for Lucas from action figures, toys, spinoff books and other products.


Industrial Light & Magic, the unit he started in a makeshift space in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, moved to the ranch in northern California and lent its prowess to other movies. It broke ground using computers, motion-controlled cameras, models and masks. Its reach is breathtaking, notably among the biggest science fiction movies of the 1980s: “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial,” ”Poltergeist,” ”Back to the Future,” ”Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” ”Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” and more.


“Between him and (Steven) Spielberg, they changed how movies got made,” said Matt Atchity, editor-in-chief of movie review website Rotten Tomatoes.


These days, the talent at ILM has spread around the globe, and many former employees have become top executives at other special effects companies, said Chris DeFaria, executive vice president of digital production at Warner Bros.


“You meet anybody who’s a significant executive or artist at a company, they’ve spent their time at ILM or got their start there. That’s probably one of George’s greatest gifts to the business,” DeFaria said.


Lucas helped make the tools that were needed for his films. ILM developed the world’s first computerized film editing and music mixing technology, revolutionizing what had been a cut-and-splice affair. Pixar, the imaging computer he founded as a division of Lucasfilm, became a world-famous animated movie company. Apple’s Steve Jobs bought and later sold it to Disney in 2006.


But the goliath Lucas created began to weigh on him. Fans-turned-critics felt the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy he directed fell short of the first films. Others believed his revisions to the re-released classics undid some of what made the first movies great.


Giving up his role at the head of Lucasfilm may shield him from the fury of rebellious fans and critics. He said in a video released by Disney that the sale would allow him to “do other things, things in philanthropy and doing more experimental kind of films.”


“I couldn’t really drag my company into that.”


Still, Lucas is not planning on going to a galaxy far, far away.


Speaking on Friday night at Ebony magazine’s Power 100 event in New York, Lucas said: “It’s 40 years of work and it’s been my life, but I’m ready to move on to bigger and better things. I have a foundation, an educational foundation. I do a lot of work with education, and I’m very excited about doing that.”


This week he assured the incoming president of Lucasfilm, Kathleen Kennedy that he’d be around to advise her on future “Star Wars” movies —just like the apparition of Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi helps Luke through his adventures.


“They’re finishing the hologram now,” he told Kennedy. “Don’t worry.”


___


Liedtke reported from San Francisco. Global Entertainment Editor Nekesa Mumbi Moody in New York contributed to this story.


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Nurses Who Saved NICU Babies Remember Harrowing Hurricane Night

























Nurses at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at New York University’s Langone Medical Center have challenging jobs, even in the best of times. Their patients are babies, some weighing as little as 2 pounds, who require constant and careful care as they struggle to stay alive.


On Monday night, as superstorm Sandy bore down on Manhattan, the nurses’ jobs took on a whole new sense of urgency as failing power forced the hospital’s patients, including the NICU nurses’ tiny charges, to evacuate.





















“20/20″ recently reunited seven of those nurses: Claudia Roman, Nicola Zanzotta-Tagle, Margot Condon, Sandra Kyong Bradbury, Beth Largey, Annie Irace and Menchu Sanchez. They described how they managed to do their jobs – and save the most vulnerable of lives – under near-impossible circumstances.


On Monday night, as Sandy’s wind and rain buffeted the hospital’s windows, the nurses were preparing for a shift change and the day nurses had begun to brief the night shift nurses. Suddenly, the hospital was plunged into darkness. The respirators and monitors keeping the infants alive all went silent.


For one brief moment, everyone froze. Then the alarms began to ring as backup batteries kicked in. But the coast wasn’t clear – the nurses were soon horrified to learn that the hospital’s generator had failed, and that the East River had risen to start flooding the hospital.




Vanishing America: Jersey Shore Boardwalks Washed Away Watch Video



“Everybody ran to a patient to make sure that the babies were fine,” Nicola Zanzotto-Tagle recalled. “If you had your phone with a flashlight on the phone, you held it right over the baby.”


For now, the four most critical patients – infants that couldn’t breathe on their own – were being supplied oxygen by battery-powered respirators, but the clock was ticking. They had, at most, just four hours before the machines were at risk of failing.


Annie Irache tended to the most critical baby — he had had abdominal surgery just the day before – as an evacuation of 20 NICU babies began.


“[He] was on medications to keep up his blood pressure,” Irache said, “and he also had a cardiac defect, so he was our first baby to go.”


One by one, each tiny infant, swaddled in blankets and a heating pad, cradled by one nurse and surrounded by at least five others, was carried down nine flights of stairs. Security guards and secretaries pitched in, lighting the way with flashlights and cell phones.


The procession moved slowly. As nurses took their careful steps, they carefully squeezed bags of oxygen into the babies’ lungs.


“We literally synchronized our steps going down nine flights,” Zanzotto-Tagle said. “I would say ‘Step, step, step.”


With their adrenaline pumping, the nurses said, it was imperative that they stay focused.


“We’re not usually bagging a baby down a stairwell … n the dark,” said Claudia Roman. “I was most worried about, ‘Let me not trip on this staircase as I’m carrying someone’s precious child, because that would be unforgivable.”


When the medical staff and the 20 babies emerged, a line of ambulances was waiting. A video of Margot Condon cradling a tiny baby as she rode a gurney struck a chord worldwide. But Condon said she had a singular goal.


“I was making sure the tube was in place, that the baby was pink,” she said. “I was not taking my eyes off that baby or that tube.”


Like other nurses, she did not feel panic. Her precious patient helped keep her calm.


Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Construction output ‘still weak’


























Output in the UK construction sector was fractionally higher in October, a survey had indicated, but new work and employment shrank.





















The Markit/CIPS Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index rose to 50.9 from 49.5 in September, just above the 50 mark that separates growth from contraction.


But new orders fell for a fifth consecutive month and firms cut jobs at the fastest rate since August 2011.


“The bigger picture remains bleak,” said Markit economist Tim Moore.


“The year-ahead business outlook was still relatively subdued during October, as survey respondents cited weak spending patterns and squeezed budgets among clients,” Mr Moore said.


Within the construction sector, only civil engineering saw growth in October, a second consecutive monthly rise.


Residential building activity was the weakest performing sub-sector, with output declining for the fifth successive month. Commercial activity also dropped in October.


‘Long, dark winter’


David Noble, chief executive at the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply, was pessimistic about the future.


“Despite marginal growth in October, the prospects for the construction sector are bleak as firms prepare for the worst,” he said.


“They are heading into a long, dark winter, by shedding jobs and laying off sub-contractors in response to the longest decline in new business since the start of the financial crisis.


“There is contagion right along the supply chain with rising fuel and energy costs and lengthening delivery times ensuring there is little hope of respite in the immediate future. All of this compounds the imminent threat of budget cuts in 2013.”


The PMI survey was released on the same day that the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) economic research group warned that the recovery generally remained weak.


In its report, NIESR downgraded its UK growth forecast for next year to 1.1% from 1.3%, due to a weaker global outlook.


NIESR economist Simon Kirby described current business investment as “shockingly low”, noting that it was 14% below pre-recession levels.


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As foreigners go, Afghan city is feeling abandoned

























KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — By switching from studying business management to training as a nurse, 19-year-old Anita Taraky has placed a bet on the future of the southern Afghan city of Kandahar — that once foreign troops are gone, private-sector jobs will be fewer but nursing will always be in demand.


Besides, if the Taliban militants recapture the southern Afghan city that was their movement’s birthplace and from which they were expelled by U.S.-led forces 11 years ago, nursing will likely be one of the few professions left open to women.





















Taraky is one of thousands of Kandaharis who are weighing their options with the approaching departure of the U.S. and its coalition partners. But while she has opted to stay, businessman Esmatullah Khan is leaving.


Khan, 29, made his living in property dealing and supplying services to the Western contingents operating in the city. Property prices are down, and business with foreigners is already shrinking, so he is pulling out, as are many others, he said.


Many are driven by a certainty that the Taliban will return, and that there will be reprisals.   


“From our baker to our electrician to our plumber, everyone was engaged with the foreign troops and so they are all targets for the Taliban. And unless the government is much stronger, when the foreign troops leave, that is the end,” Khan said.


The stakes are high. Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second city, is the southern counterweight to Kabul, the capital. Keeping Kandahar under central government control is critical to preventing the country from breaking apart into warring fiefdoms as it did in the 1990s.


“Kandahar is the gate of Afghanistan,” said Asan Noorzai, director of the provincial council. “If Kandahar is secure, the whole country is secure. If it is insecure, the whole country will soon be fighting.”


Even though Kandahar city has traffic jams and street hawkers to give it an atmosphere of normality, there are dozens of shuttered stores on the main commercial street, it’s almost too easy to find a parking space these days, and shopkeepers are feeling the pinch.


Dost Mohammad Nikzad said his profits from selling sweets have dropped by a half or more in the past year, to about $ 30 a day, and he has had to cut back on luxuries.


He said that every month he would buy a new shalwar kameez, the tunic favored by Afghan men; now he buys one every other month.


“I only go out to eat at a restaurant once a week. Before I would have gone multiple times a week,” Nikzad said, as he stood behind his counter, waiting for customers to show.


The measurements of violence levels contradict each other. On the one hand, many Kandaharis say things are better this year. On the other hand, the types of violence have changed and, to some minds, gotten worse.


“Before, we were mostly worried about bomb blasts. Now … we are afraid of worse things like assassinations and suicide attacks,” said Gul Mohammad Stanakzai, 34, a bank cashier.


Prying open the Taliban grip on Kandahar and its surrounding province has cost the lives of more than 400 international troops since 2001, and many more Afghans, including hundreds of public officials who have been assassinated by the Taliban.


Kandahar province remains the most violent in the country, averaging more than five “security incidents” a day, according to independent monitors. In Kandahar city, suicide attacks have more than doubled so far this year compared with the same period of 2011, according to U.N. figures.


“They are not fighting in the open the way they were before. Instead they are planting bombs and trying to get at us through the police and the army,” said Qadim Patyal, the deputy provincial governor.


The Taliban have said in official statements that they are focusing more on infiltrating Afghan and international forces to attack them. In the Kandahar governor’s office, armed Afghan soldiers are barred from meetings with American officials lest they turn on them, Patyal said.


And many point out that the “better security” is only relative. By all measures — attacks, bombings and civilian casualties — Kandahar is a much more violent city now than in 2008, before U.S. President Barack Obama ordered a troop surge.


There are no statistics on how many people have left the city of 500,000, but people are fleeing the south more than any other part of the country, according to U.N. figures. About 32 percent of the approximately 397,000 people who were recorded as in-country refugees were fleeing violence in the south, according to U.N. figures from the end of May.


The provincial government, which is supposed to fill the void left by the departing international forces, has suffered heavily from assassinations. It suffered a double blow in July last year with the killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of President Hamid Karzai who was seen as the man who made things work in Kandahar, and Ghulam Haider Hamidi, the mayor of the city.


Now, Noorzai says, he can neither get the attention of ministers in Kabul nor trust city officials to do their jobs.


He remembers 2001, when he and others traveled to the capital flying the Afghan flag which had just been reinstated in place of that of the ousted Taliban. “People were throwing flowers and money on our car, they were so happy to have the Afghan flag flying again,” he said.


“When we got power, what did we give them in return? Poverty, corruption, abuse.”


Mohammad Omer, Kandahar’s current mayor, insists that if people are leaving the city, it is to return to villages they fled in previous years because now security has improved.


Zulmai Hafez disagrees. He has felt like a marked man since his father went to work for the government three years ago, and is too frightened to return to his home in the Panjwai district outside Kandahar city. He refused to have his picture taken or to have a reporter to his home, instead meeting at the city’s media center.


“It’s the Taliban who control the land, not the government,” Hafez said. He notes that the government administrator for his district sold off half his land, saying he would not be able to protect the entire farm from insurgents. Many believe the previous mayor was murdered because he went after powerful land barons.


Land reform is badly needed, and the mayor is angry about people who steal land, but he offers no solution. Kandahar only gets electricity about half the day. The mayor says it’s up to the Western allies to fix that. But the foreign aid is sharply down. Aid coming to Kandahar province through the U.S. Agency for International Development, the largest donor, has fallen to $ 63 million this year from $ 161 million in 2011, according to U.S. Embassy figures.


The mayor prefers to talk about investing in parks and planting trees. “I can’t resolve the electricity problem, but at least I can provide a place in the city for people to relax,” he said.


The only people thinking long-term appear to be the Taliban.


“The Americans are going and the Taliban need the people’s support, so they are trying to avoid attacks that result in civilian casualties,” said Noor Agha Mujahid, a member of the Taliban shadow government for Kandahar province, where he oversees operations in a rural district. “After 2014 … it will not take a month to take every place back.”


One of the biggest worries is the fate of women who have made strides in business and politics since the ouster of the Taliban.


“What will these women do?” asked Ehsanullah Ehsan, director of a center that trains more than 800 women a year in computers, English and business. It was at his center where Anita Taraky studied before switching to nursing.


“Even if the Taliban don’t come back, even if the international community just leaves, there will be fewer opportunities for women,” he said.


On the outskirts of the city stands one of the grandest projects of post-Taliban Kandahar — the gated community of Ayno Maina with tree-lined cement homes, wi-fi and rooftop satellite dishes.


Khan, the departing businessman, says he bought bought 10 lots for $ 66,000 in Ayno Maina and has yet to sell any of them despite slashing the price,


He recalled that when he first went to the project office it was packed with buyers. “Now it is full of empty houses. No one goes there,” Khan said.


Only about 15,000 of the 40,000 lots have been sold, and 2,400 homes built and occupied, according to Mahmood Karzai, one of the development’s main backers and a brother of President Karzai. He argues, however, that prices are down all over Afghanistan, and that Ayno Maina is still viable, provided his brother gets serious about reform that will attract investors.


“Afghanistan became a game,” he said over lunch at the Ayno Maina office. “The game is to make money and get the hell out of here. That goes for politicians. That goes for contractors.”


He shrugged off allegations that he skimmed money from Ayno Maina, saying the claims were started by competitors in Kabul who assume everyone who is building something in Afghanistan is also stealing money.


He said the money went where it was needed: to Western-style building standards and security.


In downtown Kandahar, a deserted park and Ferris wheel serve as another reminder of thwarted hopes. Built in the mid-2000s, the wheel has been idle for two years according to a guard, Abdullah Jan Samad. It isn’t broken, he said, it just needs electricity. A major U.S.-funded project to get reliable electricity to the city has floundered and generators that were supposed to provide a temporary solution only operate part-time because of fuel shortages.


“The government should be paying for maintenance for the Ferris wheel,” the guard said. “When you build something you should also make sure to maintain it.”


____


Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan contributed to this report from Kandahar.


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Microsoft Testing Its Own Smartphone [REPORT]

























Microsoft is building its own smartphone, a new report suggests. It’s currently in the testing phase with Asian component suppliers, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cites “people familiar with the situation.”


[More from Mashable: 5 Companies Making Change on #GivingTuesday]





















In an interview with Mashable this week at Microsoft‘s Build developer conference, Todd Brix, senior director for Windows Phone Apps and Store, said, “We have nothing to talk about our own phone. We’re very happy with all of our partners.”


Microsoft building its own phone makes sense in the context of the Surface, a Microsoft-designed and -manufactured tablet the company unveiled in the summer. Microsoft also managed to keep the Surface a total secret until right before the launch.


[More from Mashable: Windows 8 Is Bold and Powerful [REVIEW]]


Other people involved with Microsoft’s Windows Phone division told Mashable that if the company was indeed working on a phone, that it was being kept even more top secret than the Surface.


Microsoft’s introduction of the Surface has irked some of the company’s hardware partners, and some have even publicly voiced their displeasure over Microsoft becoming a competitor. With regard to mobile, a Microsoft-branded phone has the potential to jeopardize the company’s relationship with Nokia and HTC, both of which have developed hardware specifically for Windows Phone. Nokia has, in fact, tied its very survival to Windows Phone (HTC also makes Android devices).


The Journal report says the phone Microsoft is rumored to be testing has a screen that measures between 4 and 5 inches. The anonymous parties who shared this information said the phone may actually be a testing model, with no plans for it to go into production.


It’s not a crazy idea. Microsoft sets much tighter hardware guidelines for Windows Phone than Google does for Android, where varied design and interface overlays are commonplace. Microsoft may be building a phone to serve as a template for the next generation of Windows Phone software rather than a device it actually intends to market.


What do you think about the rumor of a Microsoft-branded Windows phone? Share your thoughts in the comments.


HTC Windows Phone 8X


HTC has said that the 8X was inspired by the Windows Phone Start Screen, and is designed to look like a live tile if a tile was a physical thing.


With that thought in mind, the phone will be available in a number of different colors – Flame Red, California Blue, Limelight Yellow and Graphite Black – colors that match some of the tile color options available in Windows Phone 8.


Click here to view this gallery.


This story originally published on Mashable here.


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“Roman Polanski: Odd Man Out” documentary to premiere on Showtime next year

























LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Showtime has acquired the rights to the U.S. television premiere of the documentaryRoman Polanski: Odd Man Out,” the cable network said Thursday.


Marina Zenovich, who also directed the documentary “Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired,” also directed “Odd Man Out.”





















The new film follows up on “Wanted and Desired,” will recount the controversial director’s 2009 arrest at the Zurich Film Festival, exploring “the bizarre clash of politics, celebrity justice and the media as sheds new light on the infamous saga of Polanski’s sexual abuse case and his escape from Swiss house arrest,” according to Showtime.


“Odd Man Out” will premiere on Showtime next year. Zenovich is also directing the documentary “Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic,” also slated to air in 2013.


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Disaster Response: A New Yorker Reflects on Sandy

























Evolutionary psychologists tell us it’s human nature to search for lessons from the skies. Here is what I think Hurricane Sandy is saying to the U.S.: If you don’t hang together, you will hang separately. I feel undeservedly lucky to be in a part of New York City that has power and water in Sandy’s aftermath. I am also thankful that I paid attention to the meteorological forecasters and stocked up on food and water ahead of storm. Because I have power and Internet but Scientific American‘s offices do not, I have been working from home on one of the articles that will appear in an upcoming issue–provided we can send the magazine to the printer on time. (For more on Scientific American‘s situation, here’s a podcast.) But I keep losing my focus. My mind keeps wandering to the people who are without lights, heat or water just a few blocks south of me on the island of Manhattan. Consolidated Edison, our power company, says it will be able to restore electricity downtown later today. Other areas on ConEd’s grid may have to wait as long as November 11 to have service restored. On Tuesday, the day after the storm, I walked from midtown to downtown to see for myself what conditions were like around our office building at 75 Varick. Along the way, I passed by a utility station and spoke with a Consolidated Edison employee there who was tending to a hose that was pumping out water into the street. He asked me whether the subways were running and I reported that several of the tunnels had been flooded and that they didn’t know when the system would be back up. (The subway started limited service two days later, on Thursday). When I realized he hadn’t heard much about what had happened, I gave him a quick recap. “I’ve learned more useful information from you in the past 10 minutes than in the last two days,” he said as I turned to continue my walk. As I walked through Clinton Cove (West 55th and the Hudson), I snapped photos of the line of leaves that marked how high the water had reached. Then I looked at the photo and thought–who would be impressed by a bunch of leaves on green grass? The waterline didn’t look like much unless you understood the context. That thought reminded me of my grandmother–my dad’s mother–who grew up in rural Missouri and as a married woman lived on a farm in a floodplain. I remember her telling me when I was a child that she feared floods more than fires and I was so surprised. “Why would you be more afraid of water than of fire?” I asked her. “You can run out of a burning building,” she told me, “but a flood surrounds you.” Later, when I lived through a flood during my college years in Houston, I had a more visceral understanding of what she meant. By the time I reached SA’s offices, my legs were getting tired. I hadn’t taken my bicycle because I didn’t know what condition the bike paths would be in. I would have been fine, but now I was committed to being on foot. The locked and darkened lobby looked dry but there was no power as far as I could see in any windows. One or two emergency exit lights on a high floor were lit–powered by batteries?–but that was it. Spoke with two maintenance men coming out of one of the shuttered loading bays of the building. They said they had been up all night during the storm, had even ventured out to clear the drains in the street with their hands. They were in a hurry to get home, find out what the situation was like there. All the traffic lights were out, of course, but drivers were approaching each intersection cautiously. (I had walked down along the Hudson River so as not to have to navigate too many intersections.) Spoke with one woman and her boyfriend who had walked down 32 flights of stairs and were heading uptown to stay with friends who had power. Indeed, nearly everyone I saw on the streets was young and able-bodied. In the days since Hurricane Sandy came ashore, we have seen devastating pictures and heard heart-rending stories, stories that, by definition, have been told primarily by the lucky ones–the ones who are alive, who have contact with the outside world. But we have not heard much from the elderly and infirm who may be stuck in high-rise buildings or cutoff neighborhoods. Those stories will start to trickle out in the next few days. Indeed, a few of them already have begun: the off-duty policeman who died while getting his family to safety, the child who was swept out of his mother’s arms by the water. I remember the pattern from another disaster that befell New York City 11 years ago–the September 11, 2001 terror attack, a disaster that in retrospect was much more limited geographically, although it took so many more lives. We heard the stories of the survivors first, the ones who had been late to work or managed to get out, before we learned about the people who had gone in early or returned to their office before the second plane hit. There is another theme that is developing in this aftermath of this storm as well: the parallel stories of officially organized rescue and recovery efforts–on the part of firefighters, emergency medical personnel, police, local, state and federal government officials–and the self-organized rescue and recovery efforts–on the part of neighbors, strangers, civic organizations, faith groups and businesses. It takes time to get the big, official rescue and recovery organized and moving, which is why disaster preparedness plans always emphasize that people should have at least three to four days supply of water, food and medicines on hand in case of emergency. In the past two days, I read about the heroic efforts of the Visiting Nurse Service to continue serving homebound patients throughout New York City and the ad-hoc efforts of friends, neighbors and strangers to canvass a public housing project in downtown Manhattan. Both the formal official response and the ad-hoc civilian response are saving lives during this recovery. (Indeed, the voluntary efforts of so-called “emergent groups” is a growing area of disaster-planning research.) President Barack Obama and Governor Chris Christie have been photographed together on the devastated New Jersey shore. Why does it take a disaster to teach us all to pull together? How long until we go back to bickering, to ignoring the imperatives of living, as Zorba the Greek referred to it in the movie by the same name, in “the full catastrophe” of life? And now, back to work.


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It’s Global Warming, Stupid

























Yes, yes, it’s unsophisticated to blame any given storm on climate change. Men and women in white lab coats tell us—and they’re right—that many factors contribute to each severe weather episode. Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all.


Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $ 50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater.





















An unscientific survey of the social networking literature on Sandy reveals an illuminating tweet (you read that correctly) from Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. On Oct. 29, Foley thumbed thusly: “Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”


In an Oct. 30 blog post, Mark Fischetti of Scientific American took a spin through Ph.D.-land and found more and more credentialed experts willing to shrug off the climate caveats. The broadening consensus: “Climate change amps up other basic factors that contribute to big storms. For example, the oceans have warmed, providing more energy for storms. And the Earth’s atmosphere has warmed, so it retains more moisture, which is drawn into storms and is then dumped on us.” Even those of us who are science-phobic can get the gist of that.


Sandy featured a scary extra twist implicating climate change. An Atlantic hurricane moving up the East Coast crashed into cold air dipping south from Canada. The collision supercharged the storm’s energy level and extended its geographical reach. Pushing that cold air south was an atmospheric pattern, known as a blocking high, above the Arctic Ocean. Climate scientists Charles Greene and Bruce Monger of Cornell University, writing earlier this year in Oceanography, provided evidence that Arctic icemelts linked to global warming contribute to the very atmospheric pattern that sent the frigid burst down across Canada and the eastern U.S.


If all that doesn’t impress, forget the scientists ostensibly devoted to advancing knowledge and saving lives. Listen instead to corporate insurers committed to compiling statistics for profit.


On Oct. 17 the giant German reinsurance company Munich Re issued a prescient report titled Severe Weather in North America. Globally, the rate of extreme weather events is rising, and “nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” From 1980 through 2011, weather disasters caused losses totaling $ 1.06 trillion. Munich Re found “a nearly quintupled number of weather-related loss events in North America for the past three decades.” By contrast, there was “an increase factor of 4 in Asia, 2.5 in Africa, 2 in Europe, and 1.5 in South America.” Human-caused climate change “is believed to contribute to this trend,” the report said, “though it influences various perils in different ways.”


Global warming “particularly affects formation of heat waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity,” Munich Re said. This July was the hottest month recorded in the U.S. since record-keeping began in 1895, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that two-thirds of the continental U.S. suffered drought conditions this summer.


Granted, Munich Re wants to sell more reinsurance (backup policies purchased by other insurance companies), so maybe it has a selfish reason to stir anxiety. But it has no obvious motive for fingering global warming vs. other causes. “If the first effects of climate change are already perceptible,” said Peter Hoppe, the company’s chief of geo-risks research, “all alerts and measures against it have become even more pressing.”
 
 
Which raises the question of what alerts and measures to undertake. In his book The Conundrum, David Owen, a staff writer at the New Yorker, contends that as long as the West places high and unquestioning value on economic growth and consumer gratification—with China and the rest of the developing world right behind—we will continue to burn the fossil fuels whose emissions trap heat in the atmosphere. Fast trains, hybrid cars, compact fluorescent light bulbs, carbon offsets—they’re just not enough, Owen writes.


Yet even he would surely agree that the only responsible first step is to put climate change back on the table for discussion. The issue was MIA during the presidential debates and, regardless of who wins on Nov. 6, is unlikely to appear on the near-term congressional calendar. After Sandy, that seems insane.


Mitt Romney has gone from being a supporter years ago of clean energy and emission caps to, more recently, a climate agnostic. On Aug. 30, he belittled his opponent’s vow to arrest climate change, made during the 2008 presidential campaign. “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet,” Romney told the Republican National Convention in storm-tossed Tampa. “My promise is to help you and your family.” Two months later, in the wake of Sandy, submerged families in New Jersey and New York urgently needed some help dealing with that rising-ocean stuff.


Obama and his strategists clearly decided that in a tight race during fragile economic times, he should compete with Romney by promising to mine more coal and drill more oil. On the campaign trail, when Obama refers to the environment, he does so only in the context of spurring “green jobs.” During his time in office, Obama has made modest progress on climate issues. His administration’s fuel-efficiency standards will reduce by half the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks by 2025. His regulations and proposed rules to curb mercury, carbon, and other emissions from coal-fired power plants are forcing utilities to retire some of the dirtiest old facilities. And the country has doubled the generation of energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind.


Still, renewable energy accounts for less than 15 percent of the country’s electricity. The U.S. cannot shake its fossil fuel addiction by going cold turkey. Offices and factories can’t function in the dark. Shippers and drivers and air travelers will not abandon petroleum overnight. While scientists and entrepreneurs search for breakthrough technologies, the next president should push an energy plan that exploits plentiful domestic natural gas supplies. Burned for power, gas emits about half as much carbon as coal. That’s a trade-off already under way, and it’s worth expanding. Environmentalists taking a hard no-gas line are making a mistake.


Conservatives champion market forces—as do smart liberals—and financial incentives should be part of the climate agenda. In 2009 the House of Representatives passed cap-and-trade legislation that would have rewarded more nimble industrial players that figure out how to use cleaner energy. The bill died in the Senate in 2010, a victim of Tea Party-inspired Republican obstructionism and Obama’s decision to spend his political capital to push health-care reform.


Despite Republican fanaticism about all forms of government intervention in the economy, the idea of pricing carbon must remain a part of the national debate. One politically plausible way to tax carbon emissions is to transfer the revenue to individuals. Alaska, which pays dividends to its citizens from royalties imposed on oil companies, could provide inspiration (just as Romneycare in Massachusetts pointed the way to Obamacare).


Ultimately, the global warming crisis will require global solutions. Washington can become a credible advocate for moving the Chinese and Indian economies away from coal and toward alternatives only if the U.S. takes concerted political action. At the last United Nations conference on climate change in Durban, South Africa, the world’s governments agreed to seek a new legal agreement that binds signatories to reduce their carbon emissions. Negotiators agreed to come up with a new treaty by 2015, to be put in place by 2020. To work, the treaty will need to include a way to penalize countries that don’t meet emission-reduction targets—something the U.S. has until now refused to support.
 
 
If Hurricane Sandy does nothing else, it should suggest that we need to commit more to disaster preparation and response. As with climate change, Romney has displayed an alarmingly cavalier attitude on weather emergencies. During one Republican primary debate last year, he was asked point-blank whether the functions of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ought to be turned back to the states. “Absolutely,” he replied. Let the states fend for themselves or, better yet, put the private sector in charge. Pay-as-you-go rooftop rescue service may appeal to plutocrats; when the flood waters are rising, ordinary folks welcome the National Guard.


It’s possible Romney’s kill-FEMA remark was merely a pander to the Right, rather than a serious policy proposal. Still, the reconfirmed need for strong federal disaster capability—FEMA and Obama got glowing reviews from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a Romney supporter—makes the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign-trail statement all the more reprehensible.


The U.S. has allowed transportation and other infrastructure to grow obsolete and deteriorate, which poses a threat not just to public safety but also to the nation’s economic health. With once-in-a-century floods now occurring every few years, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the country’s biggest city will need to consider building surge protectors and somehow waterproofing its enormous subway system. “It’s not prudent to sit here and say it’s not going to happen again,” Cuomo said. “I believe it is going to happen again.”


David Rothkopf, the chief executive and editor-at-large of Foreign Policy, noted in an Oct. 29 blog post that Sandy also brought his hometown, Washington, to a standstill, impeding affairs of state. To lessen future impact, he suggested burying urban and suburban power lines, an expensive but sensible improvement.


Where to get the money? Rothkopf proposed shifting funds from post-Sept. 11 bureaucratic leviathans such as the Department of Homeland Security, which he alleges is shot through with waste. In truth, what’s lacking in America’s approach to climate change is not the resources to act but the political will to do so. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in October found that two-thirds of Americans say there is “solid evidence” the earth is getting warmer. That’s down 10 points since 2006. Among Republicans, more than half say it’s either not a serious problem or not a problem at all.


Such numbers reflect the success of climate deniers in framing action on global warming as inimical to economic growth. This is both shortsighted and dangerous. The U.S. can’t afford regular Sandy-size disruptions in economic activity. To limit the costs of climate-related disasters, both politicians and the public need to accept how much they’re helping to cause them.


Businessweek.com — Top News



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Gruesome video raises concerns about Syria rebels

























BEIRUT (AP) — A video that appears to show a unit of Syrian rebels kicking terrified, captured soldiers and then executing them with machine guns raised concerns Friday about rebel brutality at a time when the United States is making its strongest push yet to forge an opposition movement it can work with.


U.N. officials and human rights groups believe President Bashar Assad‘s regime is responsible for the bulk of suspected war crimes in Syria‘s 19-month-old conflict, which began as a largely peaceful uprising but has transformed into a brutal civil war.





















But investigators of human rights abuses say rebel atrocities are on the rise.


At this stage “there may not be anybody with entirely clean hands,” Suzanne Nossel, head of the rights group Amnesty International, told The Associated Press.


The U.S. has called for a major leadership shakeup of Syria’s political opposition during a crucial conference next week in Qatar. Washington and its allies have been reluctant to give stronger backing to the largely Turkey-based opposition, viewing it as ineffective, fractured and out of touch with fighters trying to topple Assad.


But the new video adds to growing concerns about those fighters and could complicate Washington’s efforts to decide which of the myriad of opposition groups to support. The video can be seen at http://bit.ly/YxDcWE .


“We condemn human rights violations by any party,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, commenting on the video. “Anyone committing atrocities should be held to account.”


She said the Free Syrian Army has urged its fighters to adhere to a code of conduct it established in August, reflecting international rules of war.


The summary execution of the captured soldiers, purportedly shown in an amateur video, took place Thursday during a rebel assault on the strategic northern town of Saraqeb, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.


It was unclear which rebel faction was involved, though the al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra was among those fighting in the area, the Observatory said.


The video, posted on YouTube, shows a crowd of gunmen in what appears to be a building under construction. They surround a group of captured men on the ground, some on their bellies as if ordered to lie down, others sprawled as if wounded. Some of the captives are in Syrian military uniforms.


“These are Assad’s dogs,” one of the gunmen is heard saying of those cowering on the ground.


The gunmen kick and beat some of the men. One gunman shouts, “Damn you!” The exact number of soldiers in the video is not clear, but there appear to be about 10 of them.


Moments later, gunfire erupts for about 35 seconds, screams are heard and the men on the floor are seen shaking and twitching. The spray of bullets kicks up dust from the ground.


The video’s title says it shows dead and captive soldiers at the Hmeisho checkpoint. The Observatory said 12 soldiers were killed Thursday at the checkpoint, one of three regime positions near Saraqeb attacked by the rebels in the area that day.


Amnesty International’s forensics analysts did not detect signs of forgery in the video, according to Nossel. The group has not yet been able to confirm the location, date and the identity of those shown in the footage, she said.


After their assault Thursday, rebels took full control of Saraqeb, a strategic position on the main highway linking Syria’s largest city, Aleppo — which rebels have been trying to capture for months — with the regime stronghold of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.


On Friday, at least 143 people, including 48 government soldiers, were killed in gunbattles, regime shelling attacks on rebel-held areas and other violence, the Observatory said.


Of the more than 36,000 killed so far in Syria, about one-fourth are regime soldiers, according to the Observatory. The rest include civilians and rebel fighters, but the group does not offer a breakdown.


Daily casualties have been rising since early summer, when the regime began bombing densely populated areas from the air in an attempt to dislodge rebels and break a battlefield stalemate.


Karen Abu Zayd, a member of the U.N. panel documenting war crimes in Syria, said the regime is to blame for the bulk of the atrocities so far, but that rebel abuses are on the rise as the insurgents become better armed and as foreign fighters with radical agendas increasingly join their ranks.


“The balance is changing somewhat,” she said in a phone interview, blaming in part the influx of foreign fighters not restrained by social ties that bind Syrians.


Abu Zayd said the panel, though unable to enter Syria for now, has evidence of “at least dozens, but probably hundreds” of war crimes, based on some 1,100 interviews. The group has already compiled two lists of suspected perpetrators and units for future prosecution, she said.


Many rebel groups operate independently, even if they nominally fall under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army. In recent months, rebel groups have formed military councils to improve coordination, but the chaos of the war has allowed for considerable autonomy at the local level.


“The killing of unarmed soldiers shows how difficult it is to control the escalation of the conflict and establish a united armed opposition that abides by the same ground rules and norms in battle,” said Anthony Skinner, an analyst at Maplecroft, a British risk analysis company.


Rebel commanders and Syrian opposition leaders have promised human rights groups that they would try to prevent abuses. However, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report in September that statements by some opposition leaders indicate they tolerate or condone extrajudicial killings.


Free Syrian Army commanders contacted by the AP on Friday said they were either unaware or had no accurate details about the latest video.


Ausama Monajed, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group in exile, called for the gunmen shown in the video to be tracked down and brought to justice.


He added, however, that atrocities committed by rebels are relatively rare compared to what he said was a “massive genocide by the regime.”


Regime forces have launched indiscriminate attacks on residential neighborhoods with tank shells, mortar rounds and bombs dropped from warplanes, devastating large areas. In raids of rebel strongholds, Assad’s forces have carried out summary executions, rights groups say.


Rebels have also targeted civilians, setting off car bombs near mosques, restaurants and government offices. Human Rights Watch said in September it collected evidence of the summary executions of more than a dozen people by rebels.


In August, a video showed several bloodied prisoners being led into a noisy outdoor crowd in the northern city of Aleppo and placed against a wall before gunmen shot them to death. That video sparked international condemnation, including a rare rebuke from the Obama administration.


The latest video emerged on the eve of a crucial opposition conference that is to begin Sunday in Qatar’s capital of Doha. More than 400 delegates from the Syrian National Council and other opposition groups are expected to attend to choose a new leadership.


U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a more unified and representative opposition, even suggesting the U.S. would handpick some of the candidates.


Clinton’s comments reflected growing U.S. impatience with the Syrian opposition, which, in turn, has accused Washington of not having charted a clear path to bringing down Assad.


The Syrian National Council plans to elect new leaders during the four-day conference but is cool to a U.S. proposal to set up a much broader group and a transitional government, said Monajed, the SNC member who runs a think tank in Britain.


U.S. officials have said Washington is pushing for a greater role for the Free Syrian Army and representation of local coordinating committees and mayors of liberated cities in Syria.


Nuland said that it would be easier for the international community to deliver humanitarian assistance to civilians and non-lethal aid to the rebels once a broader, unified opposition leadership is in place.


Such a body could also help persuade Assad backers Russia and China “that change is necessary” and that Syria’s opposition has a better plan for the country than the regime, she said.


___


Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.


Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News



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Twitter CEO lobbied against exiling Dorsey in 2008: investor

























SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Twitter CEO Dick Costolo lobbied against exiling Executive Chairman Jack Dorsey in a 2008 power struggle, according to an early investor who shed new light on the management turmoil that for years roiled one of Silicon Valley’s drama-ridden companies.


Chris Sacca, a former Google executive turned investor, said Costolo – another Twitter investor in 2008 – urged the board to keep hold of Dorsey, who is widely credited with inventing the 140-character messaging service.





















Costolo told board members that “you can’t just send the f- inventor of the product on his way,” Sacca said during a five-minute, expletive-laced monologue at a talk hosted in Los Angeles on Thursday by PandoDaily, a technology blog.


“Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.”


Dorsey’s successor as CEO, Ev Williams, also left the company under political pressure in late 2010, said Sacca. Costolo assumed the top role after Williams’s departure, and brought Dorsey back to Twitter as executive chairman in March, 2011.


“I’m sure Jack still holds grudges, and he should,” said Sacca, who served as a middleman last year when he connected investors with Twitter shares in deals worth hundreds of millions dollars.


Dorsey, who founded payments company Square Inc in 2010, became chatter fodder in the Valley earlier this month when the New York Times reported that he had been pushed out of Twitter for a second time after employees complained that he was difficult to work with.


Dorsey responded publicly by saying he had trimmed his role at Twitter as part of a transition process pre-arranged with Costolo.


(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Bernard Orr)


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Jodie Foster to get lifetime achievement award at Golden Globes

























LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Double-Oscar winner Jodie Foster will receive a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes ceremony in January, recognizing her 40-year career as an actress, director and movie producer, organizers said on Thursday.


The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), which organizes the annual Golden Globe awards, said Foster will join the likes of past winners Lucille Ball, Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Morgan Freeman and Judy Garland, and become the 2013 recipient of the Cecil B. DeMille award.





















“Jodie is a multifaceted woman that has achieved immeasurable amounts of success and will continue to do so in her career,” HFPA president Aida Takla-O’Reilly said in a statement.


“Her ambition, exuberance and grace have helped pave the way for budding artists in this business. She’s truly one of a kind,” she added.


Foster, 49, began her career filming commercials at the age of three and won international fame with her role as a streetwise teen in the 1976 film “Taxi Driver.”


She has since appeared in more than 40 movies, winning best actress Oscars for her role as a rape victim in “The Accused” and as the FBI agent in 1991 thriller “The Silence of The Lambs.”


Foster also branched out into directing (“Little Man Tate”) and producing for both film and television through her production company Egg Pictures.


Foster will be presented with her award at the Golden Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills on January 13, where the HFPA will also announce its picks for the best films and performances in film and television of 2012.


(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by David Gregorio)


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Many HIV patients skip medications to drink

























NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – In a new study, about half of HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy skipped their medications whenever they were drinking alcohol, an ill-advised behavior that could lead to higher viral loads, researchers say.


Nearly 200 people with HIV who were on antiretroviral drugs and drank alcohol were followed for a year, and 51 percent stopped taking their medications while drinking – and those same patients tended to have higher viral loads, according to the new report.





















Lapses in pill-taking could be due to forgetfulness while under the influence, but a widespread – and erroneous – belief that mixing alcohol and HIV drugs can be toxic appears to play a role, researchers found.


Seth Kalichman, a professor at the University of Connecticut and lead author of the study, said patients need to be better educated about drinking and HIV treatments.


“The harms caused by missing their medications far outweigh the harms caused by mixing the two, if the person doesn’t have liver disease. That’s the reality of it,” Kalichman told Reuters Health.


Drinking has been known to interfere with people’s adherence to their medications, but “the consequences of inconsistent use of medications for HIV can be more severe in some ways,” said Dr. Michael Ohl, a professor of medicine and infectious disease at the University of Iowa, who was not involved in the study.


Antiretroviral drugs suppress the HIV virus, and patients must take the medications continuously to prevent the virus from surging.


Additionally, going on and off the pills can lead to drug resistance, in which the antiretrovirals lose their potency.


To see how patients’ beliefs about drinking and taking medication might contribute to poor adherence to the drugs, Kalichman and his colleagues surveyed 178 people – about four out of five of them men – who were currently using antiretroviral therapy and who reported that they drank alcohol.


At the beginning of the study, the researchers asked the participants about their alcohol-related beliefs, such as whether they thought their drugs wouldn’t work as well if the two mixed. They also asked whether people would not take both at the same time – either by avoiding alcohol or the medicines.


Over the following year, the team checked in with patients every month to see how well they were sticking to their prescriptions through a pill count, and every other month they called to ask how often the patient had been drinking recently.


In addition, doctors’ offices provided each patient’s level of virus in the body and his or her CD4-cell counts, a measure of immune system health.


Kalichman’s group found that 51 percent of the patients would avoid their medications at times when they drank, and half of the people in this group had poor adherence to their prescriptions.


In addition, half of the group that would skip pills also said they do not take their medications until alcohol is completely out of their system.


“It’s pretty remarkable that about 50 percent of their patients reported doing this,” said Catherine Grodensky, a researcher at the Center for AIDS Research at the University of North Carolina, who was not part of the study. “That’s pretty surprising to me that it was such a high percentage.”


In comparison, of the patients who reported not skipping their medications when they drank, 36 percent also did not adhere well to their prescriptions and 31 percent said they don’t take the drugs until alcohol is out of their system.


“I think it’s pretty well demonstrated that alcohol use is tied to poor adherence, and I think most people think it’s because they’re impaired in some way or they forget and it’s an unintentional missing their medications, whereas here it shows they’re (often) intentionally missing their medications,” said Grodensky.


“And it looks like it’s having some significant impacts on their treatment,” she added.


People who skipped their medications while drinking were also more likely to have higher levels of HIV in their bodies and lower numbers of CD4 cells.


“People living with HIV who deliberately stop their medications when they are drinking are at risk for treatment failure,” the authors write in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.


Ohl said the belief that antiretrovirals and alcohol are a toxic mix is something he hears frequently in his medical practice, but that there’s no evidence that drinking should preclude taking HIV medication.


Andrea Sankar, a professor at Wayne State University, who did not participate in the study, said the belief likely comes from the advice that doctors typically give to patients, which is that they shouldn’t drink when they are on therapy.


“When clinicians say, ‘if you’re taking antiretroviral therapy you shouldn’t drink,’ then what happens is rather than people stopping drinking, they stop taking their medications,” she told Reuters Health.


Sankar said that doctors’ offices are the best place to start changing behavior to make sure people continue to take their medication.


“We think it may be a pretty simple fix, just educating patients,” said Kalichman.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/SmCjg9 Journal of General Internal Medicine, online October 12, 2012.


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Shut That Taxi Window! China’s Leaders Are Meeting

























How does China prepare for its biggest political event of the decade? That’s the meeting of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party, opening Nov. 8 in Beijing, which will see a historic shift in top leadership. For starters, dramatically beef up security in Beijing, while beautifying the city with elaborate flower decorations and revolutionary banners. Other measures include shutting off foreign television in five-star hotel gyms, ripping out articles in overseas publications, and perhaps oddest of all, ordering taxis to disable their windows so passengers can’t open them.


Amping up security is not surprising. After all, more than 2,000 congress delegates from across China will attend the week-or-so-long political meeting. All of China’s present and future top leaders will be in Beijing, too, and will gather to meet in the Great Hall of the People, just off Tiananmen Square. Those include outgoing Party Secretary and Premier Hu
Jintao and his almost certain replacement, Xi Jinping, set to take over leadership of the 83 million-member Communist Party at the congress, as well as become president of China early next year. Premier Wen Jiabao and his likely successor, Li Keqiang, as well as the other present and future members of the elite Politburo Standing Committee (now with nine members, but that may become seven), will also be in attendance.





















And with political scandals recently roiling the top leadership, including the stunning downfall of former Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, once a candidate for the Standing Committee, Beijing has hardly felt stable. Indeed, rumors swept China’s blogosphere in March that a coup had been attempted by supporters of Bo. Bo is now awaiting trial for his complicity, along with his wife, in the murder of an Englishman, as well as corruption charges.


Since August, Beijing public security authorities have been cracking down on everything from gambling and prostitution to unlicensed taxis and stolen bicycles. All told, 33,000 cases have been dealt with, according to the China Daily on Oct. 21. Authorities too have been monitoring migrant workers more carefully, the Legal Daily reported Oct. 19. Extra police have been stationed at subway stations, with bomb-sniffing German Shepherd dogs, and also are posted along important Beijing byways, such as Chang’an Avenue, which is festooned with red and white banners with slogans proclaiming “Long Live the Great Chinese People” and “Long Live the Great Communist Party.” Meanwhile, vehicles carrying toxic chemicals have been banned from Beijing from Nov. 1 to 18.


 ”We must crack down on all kinds of serious criminal activities according to law and strengthen security measures for important infrastructure and the management of individuals from special groups,” said Standing Committee member and security czar Zhou Yongkang, on Oct. 19, reported the official Xinhua News Agency. “We must soberly realize that various factors exist which can lead to disharmony, insecurity and instability, bringing many risks and challenges for the security work of the Party congress.” (Zhou is believed to have been a supporter of Bo, and the March online rumors suggested he was in charge of the alleged coup attempt.)


But perhaps oddest of all has been the order from Beijing’s Traffic Management Bureau for all taxi drivers to secure their cab doors and disable the windows during the congress, so that passengers don’t attempt to throw anti-government leaflets out—possibly contained in ping pong balls or borne by balloons.


“’Seal the door’ by activating child safety locks on the doors. ‘Seal the windows’ by removing window cranks,” the traffic bureau advised taxi drivers. “During the 18th Party Congress period, taxicab drivers are to be on guard for passengers carrying any type of ball. Look for passengers who intend to spread messages by carrying balloons that bear slogans or
ping-pong balls bearing reactionary messages,” the notice continued, which was posted by a user called Lu Hua on Weibo, China’s microblogging service. Drivers too must “regularly inspect the inside and outside of their vehicles in order to ensure lawbreakers have not affixed reactionary materials or messages to the vehicle.”


“I’ve been driving 10 years and have never had a problem,” scoffed one driver when asked about the new rules. In any case, “anyone who is thinking of causing trouble is already being watched,” he said. Another said: “No one will want to open the windows then anyway—it’s too cold.” And he plans to avoid possible trouble by not driving inside the second ring road of Beijing during the congress, the heart of the city and where Tiananmen Square and the Zhongnanhai leadership residence compounds are located.


For their part, authorities insist that the clampdown won’t be too much of a problem for locals. Those agencies responsible for the congress’ security “should take residents’ feelings and opinions into consideration when they carry out their duties,” Beijing deputy party chief Ji Lin said in mid-October, the China Daily reported. And the police have been ordered to “build ‘harmonious relationships’ with the public and make sure that residents’ lives are not affected by the security measures for the congress,” said Meng Jianzhu, China’s minister of public security, on Oct. 16.


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Canada will push to keep bank capital rules on schedule

























OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada will urge all countries to stick to the agreed schedule for implementing tougher bank capital rules at a November 4-5 meeting of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 nations, a senior finance ministry official said on Thursday.


The so-called Basel III rules are the world’s regulatory response to the financial crisis, forcing banks to triple the amount of basic capital they hold in a bid to avoid future taxpayer bailouts.





















They were to be phased in from January 2013 but areas such as the United States and the European Union are not yet ready and U.S. and British supervisors have criticized them as too complex to work.


The Canadian official, who briefed reports ahead of the meeting on condition that he not be named, said it was imperative that the rules, the timelines and the principles behind them be respected and said Finance Minister Jim Flaherty would make that view known to his G20 colleagues.


Canada sees the European debt crisis as the biggest near-term risk to the global economy, and it also expects the U.S. debt crisis to be top of mind at the talks, the official said.


But the meeting takes place just before the U.S. presidential election and U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will be absent, so it remains unclear how much the G20 can pressure Washington on that front.


Some other countries have also scaled back their delegations, raising doubts about how meaningful the meeting will be.


The official dismissed that argument, saying high-level officials substituting for their ministers allowed for extremely important issues to be addressed anyway.


He said holding each country around the table accountable to its past commitments helped keep the momentum going toward resolving global economic problems.


(Reporting by Louise Egan; Writing by David Ljunggren; Editing by M.D. Golan)


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Apple rolls out iPad mini in Sydney to shorter lines

























SYDNEY (Reuters) – Apple fans lined up in Sydney, Australia, to get their hands on the iPad mini on Friday, but the device, priced above rival gadgets from Google and Amazon.com, attracted smaller crowds than at the company’s previous global rollouts.


About 50 people waited for the Apple store to open, where in the past the line had stretched for several blocks when the company launched new iPhones.





















Apple Inc’s global gadget rollouts are typically high-energy affairs drawing droves of buyers who stand in line for hours. But a proliferation of comparable rival devices may have sapped some interest.


At the head of Friday’s line was Patrick Li, who had been waiting since 4:30 am and was keen to get his hands on the 7.9-inch slate.


“It’s light, easy to handle, and I’ll use it to read books. It’s better than the original iPad,” Li said.


The iPad mini marks Apple’s first foray into the smaller-tablet segment, and the latest salvo in a global mobile-device war that has engulfed combatants from Internet search leader Google Inc to Web retailer Amazon.com Inc and software giant Microsoft Corp.


Microsoft’s 10-inch Surface tablet, powered by the just-launched Windows 8 software, went on sale in October, while Google and Amazon now dominate sales of smaller, 7-inch multimedia tablets.


Unveiled last week, the iPad mini has won mostly positive reviews, with criticism centering on a screen considered inferior to rivals’ and a lofty price tag. The new tablet essentially replicates most of the features of its full-sized sibling, but in a smaller package.


At $ 329 for a Wi-Fi only model, the iPad mini is a little costlier than predicted but some analysts see that as Apple’s attempt to retain premium positioning.


Some investors fear the gadget will lure buyers away from Apple’s $ 499 flagship 9.7-inch iPad, while proving ineffective in combating the threat of Amazon’s $ 199 Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7, both of which are sold at or near cost.


Also on Friday, Apple rolled out its fourth-generation iPad, with the same 9.7-inch display as the previous version but with a faster A6X processor and better Wi-Fi.


Apple will likely sell between 1 million and 1.5 million iPad minis in the first weekend, far short of the 3 million third-generation iPads sold last March in their first weekend, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.


“The reason we expect fewer iPad minis compared to the 3rd Gen is because of the lack of the wireless option and newness of the smaller form factor for consumers,” Munster said in a note to clients. “We believe that over time that will change.”


Reviewers have applauded Apple for squeezing most of the iPad’s features into a smaller package that can be comfortably manipulated with one hand.


James Vohradsky, a 20 year-old student who previously queued for 17 hours at the Sydney store to buy the iPhone 5, only stood in line for an hour and a half this time.


“I had an iPad 1 before, I kind of miss it because I sold it about a year ago. It’s just more practical to have the mini because I found it a bit too big. The image is really good and it’s got the fast A5 chip too,” Vohradsky said.


The iPad was launched in 2010 by late Apple visionary Steve Jobs and since then it has taken a big chunk out of PC sales, upending the industry and reinventing mobile computing with its apps-based ecosystem.


A smaller tablet is the first device to be added to Apple’s compact portfolio under Cook, who took over from Jobs just before his death a year ago. Analysts credit Google and Amazon for influencing the decision.


Some investors worry that Apple might have lost its chief visionary with Jobs, and that new management might not be able to stay ahead of the pack as rivals innovate and encroach on its market share.


(Writing and additional reporting by Noel Randewich and Edwin Chan in San Francisco; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)


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Broadway lights go up in post-Sandy NYC

























NEW YORK (AP) — The lights went up again on Broadway Wednesday for the first time since Hurricane Sandy hit New York, as entertainers headed back to work in a city still wracked by power-outages and a suspended subway system.


Though some Broadway shows, including Disney’s “Mary Poppins” and “The Lion King” remained dark Wednesday night, the curtain was to rise for many of the other 38 shows, including “Cyrano De Bergerac.” Patrick Page, who plays the villain Comte de Guiche in the production, was heading back to the theater for a matinee performance, even if he was unsure if there would be anyone in the seats.





















“Broadway is as important an icon of New York City as the subways, so to get back to work is a sign that we can bounce back,” he said. “This has been such a tough time for so many and it’s vital that we show the lights are on and there’s great work being done onstage.”


Page said he spent a restless time off in his Upper West Side neighborhood, worried about his in-laws along the New Jersey shore — he is married to actress and TV personality Paige Davis. He said he checked Facebook to find out how friends were fairing, obsessively watched the news and went out to check that neighbors had ridden out the storm.


“We’re New Yorkers,” he said. “We’ll get through this.”


The company of “Peter and the Starcatcher,” the Tony Award-nominated prequel to Peter Pan, faced some tense moments before their Wednesday matinee. Five of their dozen cast members live in Brooklyn and faced a dicey commute. For instance, their Peter Pan, Adam Chanler-Berat, didn’t fly to the theater — he biked.


As the 2 p.m. show loomed, all the cast was in place, except for Isaiah Johnson, who plays Captain Scott. Playwright Rick Elice and co-director Roger Rees, who were both at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, each was ready to go on if he didn’t make it. He did — but only five minutes until curtain.


In downtown theaters, though, the stories were grim.


The SoHo Rep was without power and had some flooding, while MCC Theatre had no electricity Wednesday. The Barrow Street Theatre was dark and facing the prospect of canceling additional performances of “Tribes” while they await power. The Bank Street Theater is without power and its basement is flooded, forcing the Labyrinth Theater Company to put off the first preview of their “Radiance.” One of the cast members of Eve Ensler’s “Emotional Creature,” playing on 42nd Street, lives in Long Island, has no electricity and may not be able to get to tonight’s performance.


All Broadway shows planned to be back on schedule Thursday and some even managed to turn the mess into promotions. “The Performers” was offering a “Sandy Special” of $ 29.50 for top tickets, while the Roundabout Theatre Company let patrons with MetroCards buy tickets for $ 20 to its “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”


New York‘s late-night TV hosts were back in swing, though, with all resuming regular production Wednesday. The remaining holdouts — Jon Stewart with “The Daily Show” and Stephen Colbert with “The Colbert Report” — were to join David Letterman (“The Late Show”), Jimmy Fallon (“Late Night”) and Jimmy Kimmel (“Jimmy Kimmel Live”), who is doing a week of shows in Brooklyn, on the airwaves.


All were to tape with a live studio audience Wednesday. Out of safety and caution, Letterman taped Monday and Tuesday’s episodes in front of an empty Ed Sullivan Theater, but it will again be full Wednesday. Fallon did the same at Rockefeller Center on Monday.


Other New York cultural institutions were forced to continue to cancel planned events. Carnegie Hall, which sits on 57th Street near the hanging crane, announced that its Thursday concerts were postponed, after having already done the same for Wednesday night’s performances. Lincoln Center swung back into business Wednesday, with the exception of a handful of events. Performances were also to resume at the Metropolitan Opera.


For many, figuring out exactly when to reopen business was a daunting and uncertain decision. While parts of the New York transit system have been restored, predictions on when subways, commuter rails and power to the southern end of Manhattan have generally been vague. Knowing when both performers and audience can get to their stages, TV studios and concert halls has been a day-by-day waiting game.


The Keep a Child Alive foundation announced Wednesday that the 9th annual Black Ball, scheduled for Thursday, has been postponed. Alicia Keys was to host, Oprah Winfrey was to be honored and Beyonce was to perform at the Hammerstein Ballroom event, which raises money to fight AIDS in Africa.


Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Enterprises, the umbrella organization that includes the annual Tribeca Film Festival and the film distribution company Tribeca Film, has remained closed and without power. The organization’s nonprofit arm, the Tribeca Film Institute, on Wednesday canceled its annual benefit which was to be a special screening Thursday for the James Bond film “Skyfall.” It has been postponed until Monday, and cast members are no longer able to attend.


Film and TV production in New York has ceased outside of sound stages, as the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting said it would not grant permits to shoot in exterior locations throughout the five boroughs until at least Saturday. Production on shows from “30 Rock” to “Gossip Girl” has been affected.


“The city has not issued any location permits this week, so probably the earliest we’ll be able to shoot is this weekend,” said Warren Leight, executive producer of “Law & Order: SVU.” ”We are able to do some location scouting tomorrow and we have our production meetings by phone, with people on their cells and calling from their cars. The main issue is going to be getting power restored.”


Some celebrities sought to raise money for those affected by Hurricane Sandy. Edward Norton on Wednesday kicked off a crowd-funded relief effort via the website CrowdRise.com, with money donated from various companies to help spark giving.


“We wanted to make it easy for people to quickly support relief efforts after Hurricane Sandy through reliable organizations and, even better, to have the impact of their dollars doubled,” said Norton. “So CrowdRise has rallied a bunch of great companies committed to matching the funds raised through our page.”


The storm also made a mess of Henry Winkler’s birthday plans. The one-time TV “Fonzie,” rode out the storm safely in upper Manhattan but his thoughts were with those suffering in New Jersey, Long Island and lower Manhattan. He turned 67 on Monday.


“It made my birthday insignificant,” said Winkler, who stars as a veteran porn star in the new Broadway comedy “The Performers.” ”Just to be able to take a walk was pretty terrific. You think you know how to plan for a storm after all these years and then it makes history. All those millions of people affected, it breaks my heart.”


___


AP TV Writer Lynn Elber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.


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