Surgeon infected patients during heart procedure, Cedars-Sinai admits

A heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center unwittingly infected five patients during valve replacement surgeries earlier this year, causing four of the patients to need a second operation.

The infections occurred after tiny tears in the latex surgical gloves routinely worn by the doctor allowed bacteria from a skin inflammation on his hand to pass into the patients' hearts, according to the hospital. The patients survived the second operation and are still recovering, hospital officials said.

The outbreak led to investigations by the hospital and both the L.A. County and California departments of public health. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was also consulted.

Hospital officials called it a "very unusual occurrence" probably caused by an unfortunate confluence of events: the nature of the surgery, the microscopic rips in the gloves and the surgeon's skin condition. Valve replacement requires the surgeon to use thick sutures and tie more than 100 knots, which can cause extra stress on the gloves, they said.

Nevertheless, the hospital's goal is to have zero infections, said Harry Sax, vice chairman of the hospital's department of surgery. "Any hospital-acquired infection is unacceptable," he said.

The infections raise questions about what health conditions should prevent a surgeon from operating and how to get the best protection from surgical gloves. Surgeons with open sores or known infections aren't supposed to operate, but there is no national standard on what to do if they have skin inflammation, said Rekha Murthy, medical director of the hospital's epidemiology department. She added that there were also no national standards on types of gloves used, whether to wear double gloves or how many times surgeons should change those gloves during a procedure.

Healthcare-acquired infections are very common throughout the United States. Each year, infections cause 99,000 deaths in the country, including about 12,000 in California. Hospitals in the state are required to report certain infections to the California Department of Public Health. That reporting makes the public more aware of the quality of care provided at local hospitals and is an important tool for reducing infections, said Debby Rogers, deputy director of the department's Center for Health Care Quality.

Cedars-Sinai has low rates for hospital-acquired infections compared with the state and national average but has not performed as well on other surgical quality measures recently, according to the Leapfrog Group, an employer-backed nonprofit focused on healthcare quality. The organization gave the hospital a C rating last month on its national report card, down from an A in June, though it was not related to the infection outbreak.

"Clearly this hospital is making attempts to reduce infections, but they have more work to do," said Leah Binder, Leapfrog's chief executive.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center conducts about 360 valve replacement surgeries each year and said infections occur in fewer than 1% of its cases — lower than the national average.

The hospital learned about the problem in June after three patients who had undergone valve replacement surgery showed signs of infection. Doctors diagnosed the patients with an infection called endocarditis. Concerned there might be a connection among the cases, epidemiologists analyzed the bacteria, staphylococcus epidermidis, and determined that it was an identical strain and therefore must have come from a single source. "It led to the question of gee, I wonder where it came from?" Murthy said.

Epidemiologists homed in on the surgeon with the skin inflammation. The bacteria matched, and then they made a surprising discovery: microscopic tears in the gloves typically worn by surgeons after performing valve replacement surgery. The surgeon, whose name was not released, was not allowed to operate again until he healed. He is still a member of the medical staff but no longer performs surgeries at the hospital.

The hospital soon found the same infection in two more patients. Officials also reached out to 67 patients who had heart valve replacements with the same surgeon but didn't find any other cases. One of the five infected patients was treated with antibiotics, and the other four had new valve replacement surgeries. Sax said the hospital apologized to the patients and has continued to monitor their health. The hospital has also covered the cost of their care, including follow-up treatment and all the related surgeries.

All surgeons doing valve replacements are now required to change gloves more frequently, officials said. Some surgeons are wearing double gloves during the operations, Sax said.

Following the outbreak, Cedars-Sinai did the proper follow-up to ensure the safety of their patients, said Dawn Terashita, a medical epidemiologist with L.A. County, who was notified in September. What occurred at Cedars-Sinai was an unintentional consequence of the surgery, she said.

"There is no way to keep a room entirely sterile and all the people in it sterile," she said. "You will always have risk of infection."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

Read More..

New Crowdfunding Site Seeks to Protect Backers of Industrial Design

Entrepreneur Jamie Siminoff wants to build more credibility into crowdfunding — so he’s launching a new platform that takes responsibility for ensuring the viability of new projects.

The crowdfunding process, pioneered by sites like Kickstarter, has had its share of huge successes, as well as failures. The problem, says Siminoff, is that when a venture fails, the funders are left holding the bag. That’s all well and good if you were investing in an artist’s crazy project. It’s much more of a problem if you thought you were pre-ordering a nearly finished gadget.

The biggest culprit for these kinds of issues are physical products. Witness the anger unleashed when Kickstarter darling Pebble announced a further delay alongside underwhelming color choices.

This kind of issue is why Kickstarter recently made some changes, undertaking a combination of education and rule revision. They reminded consumers that Kickstarter is not a store while requiring that all projects disclose risks and challenges, as well as forbidding renderings and concept videos in hardware products.

Siminoff’s answer is Christie Street, a crowdfunding site devoted exclusively to physical products. The promise of Christie Street is that it will vet the projects that it launches carefully, and provide guarantees of progress along the way. The idea is that these protections will make consumers feel safer about the products they’re backing. “We built something that we felt we needed,” he says.

Christie Street, named for the New Jersey road where Edison’s workshop was located, will require that all funders go through an auditing process before they are allowed to go live. Siminoff says that the idea will be to check for basic viability, a kind of sanity test.

“You look at the chips they say they want to use, the size of components that will need to fit in, and so on,” he says, “You check that things conform to what’s available on the market.” From there, they also perform third-party audits of the places where the product will be manufactured, and look at things like production cost and likely shipping time, to ensure that all of this seems realistic.

It’s an all-or-nothing audit. Either the new project meets Christie Street’s approval or it doesn’t. “Our feeling is that the customer that’s buying doesn’t have the sophistication to make the right decision [about whether a design's production targets are reliable],” says Siminoff, “The only way is create a place where you can trust to buy.”

Even after the initial approval, Christie Street stays involved in the project. Successfully funded projects get their money in stages, with Christie Street holding the rest in escrow. Inventors get one-third of the money on funding, one-third of the money once they have a production-ready prototype, and the final one-third when they have a golden prototype, which means they are ready for full manufacturing.

If at any time along the way the project fails, Christie Street will can the project and refund the remaining money to investors.

What constitutes failure? Siminoff ticks off four conditions.

First, the inventor could for whatever reason announce that they couldn’t finish.

Second, if the project ends up more than six months late. “This forces people to be more careful with their delivery dates,” says Siminoff.

Third, if the product falls short of what was promised. “If the pre-production sample is more than 15 percent worse than what was promised, we will not allowed you to manufacture the product,” says Siminoff. (For example, if you promised me 512GB and only delivered 256.)

Last, says Siminoff there are other nuances that they’ll have to work out as the site develops. For example, if a product ends up requiring significant redesign, then Christie Street might end up withholding funds. “Design is a tougher one to quantify,” he says, “but it’s important that the design overall fits what was promised to the customer.”

For the extra cautious, Christie Street goes even further than the refund of remaining money. For 10 percent of their pledge value, backers can insure their entire pledge. If the project goes wrong they’ll get all of it back. Combine that with a pledge from inventors that the product will retail for at least 10 percent more than the pledge amount, and you can either take a 10 percent discount for some additional risk or pay full retail, with a money-back guarantee.

In effect, Christie Street is navigating a space between crowfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which expect backers to handle a lot of their own due diligence while allowing the inventors to be entrepreneurs, and crowdsourcing design sites like Quirky, which handles all of the business elements in-house.

Christie Street is an effort at drawing the lines of trust in a new way, one tied directly to the realities of post-industrial product design. Rather than a blanket ban on renderings and early designs, or a Wild West ‘anything goes’ approach, they instead seeks to tame the parts where production can go really wrong, in the devilish details of prototyping and manufacturing. It leaves questions of whether or not the thing is cool to the wisdom of the crowds, while taking on the question of whether or not the thing is possible.

This is obviously a lot more intervention between middleman and inventor than you’d see on a site like Indigegogo or Kickstarter. Siminoff says that they can still take the same 5 percent cut as their competitors because physical products tend to be involved higher dollar-value projects from the start. “If all goes well, we’ll be doing 10 to 15 live projects a months a year from now,” he says, “We think we can be profitable in the product world.”

“We’re not trying to make it where inventors are just be a name on a product,” says Siminoff, “We still want them to be entrepreneur and build this thing. We just want to make sure that they don’t fail in a way that hurts the customer.”

Read More..

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to duet on “Letterman” Top 10

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are no strangers to Top 10 lists, but now they’re poised to expand their knowledge of them beyond the music charts.

Rolling Stones leaders Jagger and Richards will appear on “Late Show With David Letterman” on Tuesday to deliver the Top Ten list for the night, CBS said Friday.

Though this will mark the first time that Jagger and Richards have appeared on “Letterman,” they’ve appeared on the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater – where “Late Show” is taped – before. The Stones made numerous appearances on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” starting with their maiden performance on October 25, 1964.

The group is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary and recently released the greatest-hits anthology “GRRR!” They be in the area to play the Barclays Center in Brooklyn on Saturday, and at Newark’s Prudential Center on Thursday.

The group will also perform at the Hurricane Sandy benefit concert 12.12.12 – The Concert for Sandy Relief, which takes place Wednesday at Madison Square Garden. Other performers at the benefit will include Paul McCartney, the Who, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Billy Joel and Eric Clapton, among others.

Letterman has been rubbing shoulders with rock royalty lately – earlier this week, he was joined on his show by the surviving members of Led Zeppelin. Last weekend, Letterman and the group received Kennedy Center Honors.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

U.S. now hindered by distance it kept on Syria conflict

WASHINGTON — With the Syrian civil war apparently near a turning point, Obama administration officials are finding their ability to influence the fast-moving events and growing violence hampered by their reluctance to become too deeply involved during the first 21 months of the conflict.

As the opposition has scored major gains against the regime of President Bashar Assad in recent days, U.S. officials have stepped up diplomatic efforts and begun weighing whether to start providing arms or other military assistance to the rebels.

But at a moment when the future of the strategically key nation may be up for grabs, Washington's power is limited by its weak ties to rebel field commanders who will have a major say in what comes next if Assad is toppled, say diplomats, opposition officials and regional experts.

"We don't have a presence on the ground and we haven't given assistance in any measure to these people," said James Jeffrey, a veteran U.S. diplomat who retired last summer after a final posting as U.S. ambassador to Iraq. "This is going to have an impact on our influence ... and it didn't have to be this way."

Though the administration has provided diplomatic pressure, humanitarian relief and nonlethal aid, it has been unwilling to supply arms or to use U.S. military force to set up a no-fly zone, as it did in the Libyan civil war last year. Officials fear that weapons would end up in the hands of extremists, and they want to limit U.S. military involvement at a time when Americans are war-weary and world powers and Arab states are divided on the conflict.

But it has become clear that, as they plan their approach to the next stage of the war, U.S. officials will have to try to overcome the unhappiness of rebel commanders who don't understand America's unwillingness to provide the military help it gave Libyan rebels last year.

The stakes are high. If the regime falls — by no means a certainty — the United States and its allies will want to move quickly to try to steer Syria toward a moderate, multiethnic government and away from a sectarian bloodbath. U.S. officials and allies are now busy formulating plans to help Syrians form a new government.

The number of extremist fighters in groups such as the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front has been rising, and if those groups take control of a new government, the geopolitical landscape of the region could change overnight in dangerous ways. Obama, who has been criticized by conservatives for failing to do more in Syria, could face accusations that his policy of limited engagement "lost" Syria.

The issue came up in the presidential campaign, with Republican challenger Mitt Romney saying he would supply arms to the Syrian opposition and Obama advocating a more cautious approach.

"We can't simply suggest that giving heavy weapons to the Syrians is a simple proposition that would lead us to be safer over the long term," the president said in the final debate of the campaign.

The rebel commanders' frustration with the United States has been apparent in recent weeks, in demonstrations that in some cases have shown up on YouTube.

One video shows a Nov. 30 demonstration in the village of Binish in which rebel fighters brandish their weapons and declare that they are fighting to create an Islamist Syria that would not be led by a Western-backed coalition of opposition groups, the newly formed National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.

"We will not leave the revolution to the coalition that is a game in the hand of America and serves the American project," one of the fighters says in Arabic. "Oh, Obama, listen and listen!"

Though his views may be more radical than those of most opposition fighters, there is widespread unhappiness that America has not done more.

"Syrians have been looking for U.S. leadership, but unfortunately the United States has chosen not to get involved and people here have gotten more and more upset," said Khalid Saleh, an executive board member of the Syrian National Council opposition bloc and a representative to the new coalition. He said he believes the United States could still take a lead role, but he has not seen signs that the administration wants to do so.

He noted that whereas France and Britain have recognized the new coalition as the legitimate government-in-waiting in Syria, the United States has been reluctant to do the same — a sign, in his view, that Washington still wants others to lead the way. U.S. officials are expected to formally recognize the group Wednesday at an international meeting on Syria in Marrakech, Morocco.

Dan Layman, an official with the Syrian Support Group, a Washington-based organization that sends nonlethal supplies to the opposition, said he understands the U.S. reluctance to send arms that could end up in the hands of extremists. But he said some Syrian commanders have complained that they have felt compelled to affiliate themselves with militant groups because those groups have access to weapons that are not being supplied by the West.

"We're concerned that some of these commanders may be moving to the wrong side of the street out of necessity," said Layman, whose group is licensed by the U.S. government and funded mostly by Syrian Americans.

U.S. officials have limited their ties to the rebels since the beginning of the conflict, when they urged demonstrators not to turn to arms.

Though they are in regular contact with military councils — provincial bodies that try to coordinate the patchwork of militias — relationships are not strong with individual groups, said Andrew Tabler, a leading Syria expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The United States could have built a valuable relationship, for example, with Al Farouq brigade, a nationalist but mainline group, he said.

Though the new coalition has been praised in the West for its inclusiveness and leadership, diplomats acknowledge that it's not clear whether the umbrella group would be strong enough to issue orders to the militias that could hold the most power in a post-Assad Syria.

One unsettling possibility is that Syria could be filled with militias that retain their weapons, as in postrevolutionary Libya, but without goodwill toward the United States or loyalty to a transitional government.

"You could have dozens of militias, battle-tested and brimming with weapons, that don't necessarily consider the authorities in Damascus to be sovereign," said David Schenker, a Pentagon official in the George W. Bush administration who is now with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

paul.richter@latimes.com

Read More..

'Premium Suite' Packs Still More Features Into Samsung's Galaxy S III

Samsung teased users with seven new features for the Galaxy S III, including the ability to check your Facebook newsfeed from the lockscreen, split-screen apps and even more ways to share photos by way of NFC.

Premium Suite will expand the capabilities of what is already one of the most feature-packed handsets on the market. In our review of the S III, we noted that it does so much it can be almost overwhelming, with many redundant and wonky features among the unquestionably innovative and cool tricks. Samsung sees room for a few more.

Samsung announced the features Friday in a blog post and YouTube video, but didn’t say exactly when they’d be available.

Still, Facebook fiends will love the “Facebook Lock Ticker,” which lets you check your Facebook news feed from the lock screen. See something you’re interested in? Tap it and the S III launches the Facebook app so you can “like” and comment right away.

Another new feature lets you change text size when viewing a webpage in “Reader Mode,” allowing you to see just the text and photos of a website, free of ads, site navigation and the other elements that make up a webpage.

The S III already has about half a dozen ways to share a photo, but Samsung doesn’t think that’s enough. Its newest trick, Auto Share Shot, makes it possible to share a photo to any NFC- and S-Beam- (Samsung’s version of Android Beam) enabled devices. That means you no longer have to rely upon everyone being on the same local Wi-Fi network and accepting invitations one by one. Tap your phone against another NFC- or S-Beam-capable device and voilà, you’ve shared a photo.

Samsung also revamped the picture-in-picture-like function called Pop Up Play. “Multi Window” adds the ability to assign an app to each half of the screen, allowing you to run two apps simultaneously. We found Pop Up Play novel, but not terribly useful. It’s difficult to see how this would be any better on the S III’s 4.8-inch display. Still, if you like Pop Up Play, you’ll dig this feature.

Premium Suite also allows users to organize apps by how often they use them, and “Contextual Tag” will automatically tag date, weather and location data in all of your photos, as well as the person in your shot if you have facial recognition turned on.

Finally, Page Buddy (no, we don’t know why it has that name) will work much like Motorola’s Smartactions app. It will automatically launch tasks based on what you’re doing with your S III. For example, plugging in a set of earphones will open the phone’s music app.

Samsung hasn’t said exactly when the Premium Suite update is coming, but we’ll put it to the test once it arrives. Stay tuned.

Read More..

“American Idol” producer Nigel Lythgoe signs with Shine America

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – “American Idol” and “So You Think You Can Dance” executive producer Nigel Lythgoe has entered a multi-year production deal with Shine America.

Under the exclusive deal between Nigel Lythgoe Productions and Shine, Lythgoe will jointly develop and produce entertainment franchises for the global television marketplace with the Shine Group, Shine America CEO Rich Ross said Thursday.

Nigel Lythgoe Productions will continue to be based in Los Angeles. The agreement begins January 1, 2013.

“I am thrilled to be teaming up with Shine to develop new shows for a global audience,” Lythgoe said. “We live in one world and need to create content for that market. I cannot think of a more exciting company to partner with in order to face that challenge.”

“Nigel is clearly one of the world’s leading television producers, with an un-matched track record in TV programming both here in the U.S. and in the UK,” Ross added. “We are thrilled to welcome Nigel and his team to the Shine family and we look forward to developing the next wave of entertainment franchises together.”

Shine America, the U.S. arm of the Shine Group, the production company chaired by Rupert Murdoch‘s daughter Elisabeth Murdoch, produces and distributes a variety of scripted and unscripted programs. Past and current shows include “The Biggest Loser,” “The Office,” “Ugly Betty,” “Tabatha Takes Over,” and adaptations of Shine Group formats “MasterChef” and “Minute to Win It.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The New Old Age Blog: A Son Lost, a Mother Found

My friend Yvonne was already at the front door when I woke, so at first I didn’t realize that my mother was missing.

It was less than a week after my son Spencer died. Since that day, a constant stream of friends had been coming and going, bringing casseroles and soup, love, support and chatter. Mom hated it.

My 94-year-old mother, who has vascular dementia, has been living in my home in upstate New York for the past few years. Like many with dementia, mom is courteous but, underneath, irascible. Pride defines her, especially pride in her Phi Beta Kappa intellect. She hates to be confronted with how she has become, as she calls it, “stupid.”

The parade of strangers confused her. She had to be polite, field solicitous questions, endure mundane comments. She could not remember what was going on or why people were there. It must have been stressful and annoying.

That night, like every night since the state troopers brought the news, I woke hourly, tumbling in panic. As if it were not too late to save my son. Mom knew something was wrong, but she could not remember what. As I overslept that morning, she must have decided enough was enough. She was going home.

In a cold sky, the sun blazed over tall pines. As I opened the door, the dogs raced out to greet Yvonne and her two housecleaners. Yvonne often brags about her cleaning duo. They were her gift to me. They were going to clean my house before the funeral reception, which was scheduled for later that week. This was a very big gift because, like my mother before me, I am a very bad housekeeper.

Mom’s door was shut. I cautioned the housecleaners to avoid her room as I showed them around. Yvonne went to the kitchen to listen to the 37 unheard messages on my answering machine; the housecleaners went out to their van to get their instruments of dirt removal.

I ducked into Mom’s room to warn her about the upcoming noise. The bed was unmade; the floor was littered with crumpled tissues; the room was empty.

Normally, I would have freaked out right then. I knew Mom was not in the house, because I had just shown the whole house to the cleaners. Although Mom doesn’t wander like some dementia patients, she does on occasion run away. But I could not muster a shred of anxiety.

“Yvonne,” I called, “did you see my mother outside?”

Yvonne popped her head into the living room, eyebrows raised.“Outside? No!” She was alarmed. “Is she missing?”

“Yeah,” I said wearily, “I’ll look.” I stepped out onto the front porch, tightening the belt of my bathrobe and turning up the collar. Maybe she had walked off into the woods. The dogs danced around my legs, wanting breakfast.

I had no space left in my body to care. Either we would find her, or we would not. Either she was alive, or she was not. My child was gone. How could I care about anything ever again?

Then I saw my car was missing. My mouth fell open and my eyeballs rolled up to the right, gazing blindly at the abandoned bird’s nest on top of the porch light: What had I done with the keys?

Mom likes to run away in the car when she is angry. She used to do it a lot when my father was still alive — every time they fought. Since Mom took off in my car almost a year ago, after we had had a fight, I’d kept the keys hidden. Except for this week; this week, I had forgotten.

I was reverting to old habits. I had left the doors unlocked and the keys in the cupholder next to the driver’s seat. Exactly like Mom used to do.

“Uh-oh,” I said aloud. Mom was still capable of driving, even though she did not know where she was going. I just really, really hoped that she didn’t hurt anybody on the road. I pulled out my cellphone, about to call the police.

“Celia!” Yvonne shouted from the kitchen. She hurried up behind me, excited. “They found your mother. There are two messages on your machine.”

At that very moment, Mom was holed up at the College Diner in New Paltz, a 20-minute drive over the mountain, through the fields, left over the Wallkill River and away down Main Street.

Yvonne called the diner. They promised to keep the car keys until someone arrived. By that time, Yvonne had to go to work. She drove my friend Elizabeth to the diner, and Elizabeth drove Mom home in my car.

Half an hour later, they walked in the front door. Mom’s cheeks were rouged by the chill air and her eyes sparkled, her white hair riffing with static electricity. “Hello, hello,” she sang out. “Here we are.” She was wearing the flannel nightgown and robe I had dressed her in the night before. It was covered by her oversized purple parka, and her bare feet were shoved into sneakers.

I started laughing as soon as I saw her. I couldn’t help it. Elizabeth and Mom started laughing too. “You had a big adventure,” I said, hugging them both. “How are you?”

“I’m just marvelous,” said my mother. Mom always feels great after doing something rakish. We settled her on the sofa with her feet on the ottoman. By the time I got her blanket tucked in around her shoulders, she had fallen asleep.

Elizabeth couldn’t stop laughing as she described the scene. “Your mother was holding court in this big booth. She was sitting there in her nightgown and her parka, talking to everybody, with this plate of toast and coffee and, like, three of the staff hovering around her.”

The waitress said Mom seemed “a little disoriented” when she got there. Mom said she was meeting a friend for breakfast, but since she was wearing a nightgown and didn’t know whom she was meeting or where she lived, the staff thought there might be a problem. They convinced Mom to let them look in the glove compartment of the car, where they found my name and number.

It was then that I realized I was laughing – something I’d thought I would never be able to do again. “Elizabeth, Elizabeth, I’m laughing,” I said.

“Ha, ha, ha,” laughed Elizabeth, holding her belly.

“Ha, ha, ha,” I laughed, rolling on the floor.

And she who gave me life, who had suffered the death of my child and the extinction of her own intellect, snoozed on: oblivious, jubilant, still herself, still mine.

Read More..

U.S. spy agencies to detail cyber attacks from abroad

WASHINGTON — The U.S. intelligence community is nearing completion of its first detailed review of cyber spying against American targets from abroad, including an attempt to calculate U.S. financial losses from hacker attacks based in China, officials said.

The National Intelligence Estimate, the first involving cyber espionage, also will seek to determine how large a role the Chinese government plays in directing or coordinating digital attacks aimed at stealing U.S. intellectual property, according to officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified undertaking.

The Pentagon requested the estimate more than a year ago, and it sparked a broad review of evidence and analysis from the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies. The document has been submitted to the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates such efforts, but it was unclear whether the council had reached or approved final conclusions. The study is expected to be given to policymakers early next year.

U.S. intelligence agencies monitor daily digital assaults from hackers based in China who seek to steal intellectual property from American and other Western companies, current and former intelligence officials said. Intelligence analysts disagree over the extent to which the intrusions are organized by Chinese authorities, but the CIA and National Security Agency have traced cyber attacks and thefts to Chinese military and intelligence agencies.

"We know much more about who is doing this than we did even two years ago," one official involved in the effort said. "We have traced attacks back to a desk in a [People's Liberation Army] office building."

Some analysts believe the Chinese government has a broad policy of encouraging theft of intellectual property through cyber attacks, but that it leaves the details to intelligence services, state-owned companies and freelancers. As a result, at least some of the attacks appear poorly orchestrated.

U.S. officials have raised concerns about cyber espionage with Chinese officials. Beijing has denied any involvement.

Obama administration officials have publicly warned in recent months about threats to national security from cyber attacks, but they have tiptoed around the issue of who is to blame. "It's no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said in a speech on Oct. 11 in New York.

Russia engages in cyber espionage against government targets, as does China, the United States, Israel, France and other nations. But Russia does not systematically steal corporate secrets from U.S. companies to aid its own national companies, U.S. intelligence officials say.

Last week, the congressionally sponsored U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission alleged that China has "an elaborate strategy for obtaining America's advanced technology by subterfuge, either stealing it outright or by requiring U.S. companies to turn over technology to Chinese business partners as a condition for investment and market access in China."

Part of that strategy relies on computer attacks, the commission said.

"In 2012, Chinese state-sponsored actors continued to exploit U.S. government, military, industrial and nongovernmental computer systems," the report said. "The volume of exploitation attempts yielded enough successful breaches to make China the most threatening actor in cyberspace."

Losses from the theft of U.S. intellectual property through cyber attacks and theft are difficult to quantify but are believed to be in the billions of dollars a year.

In one recent case, Brian Milburn, who runs Solid Oak Software Inc. in Santa Barbara, sued the Chinese government and nine companies for $2.2 billion in January 2010 in federal court in Santa Ana, alleging that his Cybersitter child-monitoring software had been pirated and illegally sold to 57 million users in China. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount in April, though the Chinese government did not participate in the settlement.

As the lawsuit unfolded, Milburn was targeted for harassment by Chinese hackers thought to have been tracked by U.S. intelligence, according to his Los Angeles lawyer, Gregory Fayer. He said the hackers blocked orders on the Cybersitter website, costing Milburn tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales.

"The guys they put on us were the virtual Chinese A-Team of hackers," Milburn said in a phone interview Thursday. "They were the most patient people I've ever seen. They basically used the same techniques against me that they would use for cyber espionage."

ken.dilanian@latimes.com

Read More..

How Trusting in Vice Led to John McAfee's Downfall



By now, you are aware of John McAfee. If there’s one thing that the sexagenarian millionaire antivirus founder seems to love more than teenage girls, it’s publicity. And he is extremely adroit at getting it. His misadventures in Central America have eaten the media whole. Even now, in the hospital where he was taken after suffering chest pain, he is surrounded by a crush of media.

He’s a natural story, as I learned firsthand earlier this year. Charming and good-looking, he peppers his speech in Virginia-accented “sirs.” It’s disarming, like some patrician version of neuro-linguistic programming. Combined with his wild stories, it means reporters love to talk to him.

And of course, he is a media magnet for other reasons too, all related to his bizarre lifestyle. His relocation to Belize. His fights with that nation’s government. His coterie of young women. The armed gang members he associates with. The allegations of drug use. The McAfee story, with its drugs and guns and prostitutes and allegations of police corruption, seemed tailor-made for Vice, a publication that revels in all of those subjects on a regular basis. It is as if some hipster god reached down and extended a smelly, fickle finger of fate to Vice editor-in-chief Rocco Castoro, muttering “here’s a cool story, bro.”

Naturally, Vice scuttled down to Belize, and traveled with McAfee as he fled the country, penning a blog post titled “We Are With John McAfee Right Now, Suckers.”

Vice is just the most recent media crew McAfee has latched onto. And if the past is prologue, it won’t go well. The chummy relationship McAfee tends to enjoy with his contacts in the media almost always goes south. He’s previously attached his media ambitions on Jeff Wise, only to then smear him, and then subsequently apologize. Wired’s own Joshua Davis also enjoyed his attentions, and when McAfee first went on the lam, he gave Davis exclusive interviews. This lasted until Davis wrote stories McAfee didn’t like, at which point the old man in the jungle claimed it had all been a ruse and quit talking to Davis.

So now he’s with Vice. In a blog post he later deleted, he claimed they would tell his real story. That Vice would show once and for all whether or not he is a drug-crazed madman. Instead, he’s in a hospital in Guatemala after having been detained by police, and facing likely deportation.

Oddly, Vice directly contributed to McAfee’s capture by revealing his location in the metadata of a photo it published. This was deeply stupid. People have been pointing out the dangers of inadvertently leaving GPS tags in cellphone pictures for years and years. Vice is the same publication that regularly drops in on revolutions and all manner of criminals. They should have known better.

Then, it followed up this egregiously stupid action with a far worse one. Vice photographer Robert King apparently lied on his Facebook page and Twitter in order to protect McAfee. Like McAfee, he claimed that the geodata in the photo had been manipulated to conceal their true location.

This explanation, of course, made no damn sense at all. If McAfee and King were trying to conceal their location by spreading disinformation, why immediately admit to it?

Shortly thereafter, McAfee copped to lying, and admitted to being in Guatemala. King deleted his tweet and Facebook status update. McAfee blamed the disclosure on a Vice “technician,” but regardless of whether it was a technician who screwed up, or King, or Castoro, or some intern, the photo that revealed his whereabouts in Guatemala appeared in Vice. And that photo, effectively, forced McAfee out of hiding.

But the coverup, as always, is worse than the crime. In claiming the geodata had been manipulated when it had not, Vice was no longer just documenting. Now it was actively aiding a fugitive wanted for questioning in the murder investigation of his neighbor Gregory Faull, who was shot dead at his own home.

McAfee had claimed that his plan was to leave the country temporarily, to get his traveling companion and lover Sam out, and then to return to Belize to fight from the inside without turning himself in. But once his location was blown, he had to get a brand-new plan. He would seek asylum in Guatemala. He hired a lawyer, Telésforo Guerra, formerly the attorney general of Guatemala. Vice crowed that McAfee had “just hired the best lawyer in the country.” Take that, suckers.

Vice documented how this attorney, also Sam’s uncle, was able to hook McAfee up with a tailor. He promised McAfee he could make the tailor actually sew faster. McAfee promised publicity in return. Vice rolled cameras.

And then, like that, it was over. King again took to social media to report the arrest, claiming McAfee had been taken into custody by “Guatemalan Federalizes.” Vice posted footage of McAfee being taken into police custody by Guatemala’s National Civil Police and Interpol.

Today, Guatemala’s president denied McAfee asylum. Guatemala is kicking McAfee out of the country, back to Belize. Afterwards, his lawyer claimed McAfee had two heart attacks. ABC reports he has been hospitalized. It’s hard not to wonder if this, too, is part of the plan. If there is a plan.

Though his offer of a $25,000 reward for information about the real killers strikes obvious O.J. Simpson chords, there’s so far no public evidence — aside from his flight — that he anything to do with the murder.

He may have shot his neighbor in the head. He may have ordered one of the gangsters in his employ to do so. He may have had a “will no one rid me of this troublesome priest” moment that caused one of his hangers-on to take it upon himself or herself to kill Faul. He and his entourage may have had nothing to do with it whatsoever. He may be completely innocent.

Nobody knows.

McAfee is clearly sleazy, likely crazy, and possibly even a murderer. But he also would be a free man right now were it not for Vice’s screw up.

As Alan Rules pointed out on Twitter, Vice could come out of this looking good either way. If McAfee turns out to be innocent, it is there to document it and even attempted to help him win his freedom. If he’s guilty, they helped bring him to justice, and have an action-packed documentary to boot. And if he dies? Well. The camera is ready.

Vice promises more footage. That it will continue to pick over John McAfee until he is free or dead or imprisoned, all of which now seem equally likely. And ultimately it offers an implicit promise that it can play by a different set of rules, one that allows it to burn sources and lie to readers. Maybe this is the media partner McAfee has truly wanted all along. Cool story, bro.

Read More..

“Breaking Bad,” dominates Writers Guild TV nominations

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Dark drug drama “Breaking Bad” dominated television nominations for the annual Writers Guild Awards on Thursday, with “Modern Family” leading the way in the comedy category.

A trio of HBO newcomers – Lena Dunham‘s “Girls,” Aaron Sorkin‘s “The Newsroom,” and political satire “Veep” – will compete in the new series category, along with network comedy “The Mindy Project” and country music drama “Nashville,” the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced.

“Girls,” the story of three 20-somethings navigating life and love in New York City, also won a nomination in the best comedy series slot, along with established shows “30 Rock,” “Parks and Recreation,” “Louie” and Emmy darling “Modern Family.”

The Writers Guild recognizes achievements in the writing of U.S. television, radio, news and animation, rather than actors or directors. The Guild will announce its nominations in the movie field in January.

“Breaking Bad,” starring Bryan Cranston as a teacher turned drug kingpin and now in its fifth and final season, picked up five nods on Wednesday, including best drama series and four for individual episodes.

The show is likely to face stiff competition from psychological thriller “Homeland,” which won the WGA’s award for best new drama last year and has since bagged an Emmy and Golden Globe.

“Mad Men,” lavish Prohibition-era show “Boardwalk Empire,” and fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” round out the competition for best drama series.

In longer form television, miniseries “Hatfields and McCoys” – about a 100 year-old family feud – was nominated along with TV film “Hemingway and Gelhorn” and “Political Animals.”

The WGA will hand out its awards in all categories on February 17 at simultaneous ceremonies in both New York and Los Angeles.

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; editing by Andrew Hay)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs might be taken for a longer duration as well.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them are in premenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing 10 years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

“They don’t feel well on them, but it’s their safety net,” said Dr. Garber, who added that the news would be welcomed by many patients who would like to stay on the drug. “I have patients who agonize about this, people who are coming to the end of their tamoxifen.”

Emily Behrend, who is a few months from finishing her five years on tamoxifen, said she would definitely consider another five years. “If it can keep the cancer away, I’m all for it,” said Ms. Behrend, 39, a single mother in Tomball, Tex. She is taking the antidepressant Effexor to help control the night sweats and hot flashes caused by tamoxifen.

Cost is not considered a huge barrier to taking tamoxifen longer because the drug can be obtained for less than $200 a year.

The results, while answering one question, raise many new ones, including whether even more than 10 years of treatment would be better still.

Perhaps the most important question is what the results mean for postmenopausal women. Even many women who are premenopausal at the time of diagnosis will pass through menopause by the time they finish their first five years of tamoxifen, or will have been pushed into menopause by chemotherapy.

Postmenopausal patients tend to take aromatase inhibitors like anastrozole or letrozole, which are more effective than tamoxifen at preventing breast cancer recurrence, though they do not work for premenopausal women.

Mr. Peto said he thought the results of the Atlas study would “apply to endocrine therapy in general,” meaning that 10 years of an aromatase inhibitor would be better than five years. Other doctors were not so sure.

The Atlas study was paid for by various organizations including the United States Army, the British government and AstraZeneca, which makes the brand-name version of tamoxifen.

Read More..

Senate Passes Russian Trade Bill, With a Human Rights Caveat

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted on Thursday to finally eliminate cold war-era trade restrictions on Russia, but at the same time it condemned Moscow for human rights abuses, threatening to further strain an already delicate relationship with the Kremlin.

The Senate bill, which passed the House last month, now goes to President Obama, who has opposed using United States trade policy to make a statement about the Russian government’s treatment of its people.

But with such overwhelming support in Congress — the measure passed the Senate 92 to 4 and the House 365 to 43 — the White House has had little leverage to press its case.

And President Obama has shown little desire to pick a fight in which he would appear to be siding with the Russians on such an issue.

In a statement issued after the Senate vote, the White House mentioned the human rights component of the bill only in passing, instead emphasizing that the president was looking forward to signing a measure that would level the playing field for American workers.

The most immediate effect of the bill would be to formally normalize trade relations with Russia after nearly 40 years. Since the 1970s, commerce between Russia and the United States has been subject to restrictions that were intended to punish Communist nations that kept their citizens from emigrating freely.

While presidents have waived the restrictions since the cold war ended — allowing them to remain on the books as a symbolic sore point with the Russians — the issue took on new urgency this summer after Russia joined the World Trade Organization. As part of its pact with the trade group, Russia lowered tariffs for other member countries, but only those that granted it normal trade status.

By some estimates, American exports to Russia are expected to double after its trade status is revised.

But another effect of the bill — and one that has Russian officials furious with Washington — will be to require that the federal government freeze the assets of Russians implicated in human rights abuses and deny them visas.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill were inspired to attach those provisions to the trade legislation because of the case of Sergei L. Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who sustained serious injuries and died in a Moscow detention center in 2009 after he accused government officials of a tax fraud scheme.

During the Senate debate, it was Mr. Magnitsky’s case, and not Russia’s trade status, that occupied most of the time.

One by one, Democratic and Republican senators alike rose to denounce Russian officials for their disregard for basic freedoms.

“This culture of impunity in Russia has been growing worse and worse,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “There are still many people who look at the Magnitsky Act as anti-Russia. I disagree,” he added. “Ultimately passing this legislation will place the United States squarely on the side of the Russian people and the right side of Russian history, which appears to be approaching a crossroads.”

In Moscow, the denunciation was swift, and legislators promised retaliation with a proposal of their own that would freeze the bank accounts of American human rights violators.

“This initiative is intended to restrict the rights of Russian citizens, which we consider completely unjust and baseless,” said Konstantin Dolgov, the Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy, in comments to the Interfax news agency in Brussels. “This is an attempt to interfere in our internal affairs, in the authority of Russia’s investigative and judicial organs, which continue to investigate the Magnitsky case.”

Russian officials have said that Mr. Magnitsky is not the hero his supporters make him out to be, and they have pursued posthumous tax evasion charges against him. And lately the case has taken some more unusual turns. One witness was recently found dead in Britain.

Initially the Senate faced some pressure to pass a bill that punished human rights violators from all nations, not just those who are Russian. But the House bill applied only to Russia. And the Senate followed suit, as supporters of the bill wanted something that would pass quickly and not require a complicated back-and-forth with the House.

But Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland who wrote the bill that would apply internationally to all nations, said the United States position on human rights abusers was unambiguous. “This bill is our standard,” he said. “The world is on notice.”

Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

Read More..

Jazz legend Dave Brubeck dies at 91

Dave Brubeck's pioneering style in pieces such as "Take Five" caught listeners' ears with exotic, challenging rhythms.

In the strait-laced Eisenhower 1950s, Dave Brubeck seemed, on one hand, deeply conventional. He didn't drink, smoke or take drugs. He favored expressions like "baloney!" and "you bet" over ruder alternatives. He had a prodigious work ethic that had been ground into him by his cowboy father on the family's California cattle ranch.

But rebellion was in Brubeck's soul. Schooled in piano by his musically gifted mother, he became a jazz man — outwardly square but quintessentially cool — whose genius at marrying spontaneity and unorthodox rhythms with classical forms became an enduring legacy.

Brubeck, the pianist and composer who pushed the boundaries of jazz for six decades and became one of the genre's most popular artists, died Wednesday, a day before his 92nd birthday.

The jazz maestro, who had a history of heart trouble, became unresponsive on his way to a medical appointment, said his longtime manager and producer Russell Gloyd. Brubeck's son, who was in the car with him, rushed him to a hospital in Norwalk, Conn., where he was pronounced dead.

Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell called Brubeck "a true musical giant. He helped to keep jazz at a truly high level and he was very consistent in both his performance and composition."

He was best known for his work with his classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, which included longtime musical partner Paul Desmond on alto saxophone, Eugene Wright on bass and Joe Morello on drums. Brubeck's innovative ideas generated an enthusiastic response from a new audience of young listeners — as well as the players most directly connected with his music.

"When Dave is playing his best, it's a profoundly moving thing to experience, emotionally and intellectually," Desmond said in 1952 in the jazz publication Down Beat. "It's completely free, live improvisation ... the vigor and force of simple jazz, the harmonic complexities of Bartok and Milhaud, the form [and much of the dignity] of Bach and, at times, the lyrical romanticism of Rachmaninoff."

In the late 1950s, the group began exploring unusual rhythmic meters. By the end of the decade, the album "Time Out" had reached No. 2 on the pop music album charts, and a single off the album — with "Take Five" on one side and "Blue Rondo a la Turk" on the other — became the first jazz recording to sell more than a million copies.

Written by Desmond, "Take Five" became a universally recognized jazz classic despite the offbeat 5/4 meter.

The group's popularity began to climb in the mid-1950s when a series of live college recordings — "Jazz Goes to College," "Jazz Goes to Junior College" and "Jazz Goes to Oberlin" — was released. Brubeck appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1954, only the second such honor for a jazz artist. (Louis Armstrong was first.)

The New Yorker described the quartet as "the world's best-paid, most widely traveled, most highly publicized, and most popular small group now playing improvised syncopated music."

But Brubeck's fascination with groundbreaking elements not generally included in the jazz styles of the '50s also made his music a target of widespread disparagement from jazz critics, who often referred to a "heavy-handed, bombastic approach" to piano improvising. The words directly contradicted another critical view, which identified the music of Brubeck and Desmond as another example of the "effete, laid-back, West Coast cool jazz" style."

Most of the criticism failed to recognize the complex range of elements — from stride piano to a Bach canon — that could course through a single piece. Brubeck often cited the positive response his music received from legendary jazz figures including Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Charles Mingus, among others.

David Warren Brubeck was born Dec. 6, 1920, in Concord, northeast of Oakland. His father, Howard "Pete" Brubeck, was a cattle rancher, his mother, Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, a pianist and music teacher. When he was 11, the family moved to a 45,000-acre ranch near Ione, in the Sierra foothills.

His older brothers Howard and Henry became classical musicians, but Dave preferred ranching and improvising pop songs on the piano. As a teenager, he played at dances on weekends.

Brubeck started out studying veterinary medicine at what is now the University of the Pacific in Stockton but switched to music at the suggestion of his science advisor. He managed to earn a bachelor's degree without learning to properly read music.

He was drafted into the Army after graduation in 1942, marrying his college sweetheart, Iola Marie Whitlock, just before he was sent to France in 1944.

His wife, who frequently wrote lyrics for his projects, survives him along with his daughter Catherine, his sons Darius, Chris, Dan and Matthew, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Another son, Michael, died several years ago.

Discharged from the military in 1946, Brubeck went to Mills College in Oakland, studying with French composer Darius Milhaud and forming the Brubeck Octet, a musically adventurous group with an imaginative and avant-garde repertoire. Brubeck's trio, which he led from 1949 to 1951, provided a different, more intimate forum for his far-reaching ideas. The group, which included bassist Ron Crotty and drummer/vibist Cal Tjader, played standards and Brubeck's originals.

In 1951, Brubeck added Desmond to his trio. It was the beginning of a journey into national visibility that established Brubeck and Desmond as significant jazz figures. The quartet, which remained together until 1967 and was briefly reunited in 1976, a year before Desmond died, became the most important vehicle for Brubeck's playing and innovative musical ideas.

Read More..

Google Now Delivers Travel Forecasts, Boarding Passes Before You Search

Google’s Search App has received a travel-focused update just in time for the holidays. Wednesday’s update adds new capabilities to Google Now, the app’s feature set designed to deliver frequently searched-for information before you even think to search for it.

Previously, opening the Google Search App on any Android phone running Jelly Bean (versions 4.1 and newer), would pull up a Google Now card detailing the weather where you’re standing along with traffic routes to your home and office, sports scores, and package tracking info, among other things. The update adds into the mix new information centered around weather, plane flights and finding things to do in the new locale you’re visiting.

In the updated app, Google Now will still bubble up a card with local weather, but it will now also provide a card detailing the forecast for your upcoming destination about a day before you travel so you can pack and plan correctly. This can serve as a raincoat reminder for those headed to Seattle, or an alert for shorts if you’re vacationing in Melbourne, Australia.

If you’re flying for the holidays, the Search app will pull up a Google Now card with your boarding pass — if you’re flying United Airlines. Additional airlines will be added in coming weeks and months, said in Baris Gultekin, a Google Now product director. This feature, like all Google Now cards, requires a user’s permission to pull flight details from your Gmail account. If permission is granted, the app will serve up cards with restaurant and hotel reservations, translation help, and currency conversions too.

“Our goal is to figure out what the one thing you need right now is, and deliver that to you,” Gultekin told Wired. “A lot of our users need assistance the most when they’re traveling.”

With that in mind, Google Now also will provide suggestions on places to check out once you’ve reached your destination. The Search app already regularly offers recommendations on nearby restaurants and photo-worthy spots, but now it will list events taking place nearby and local websites that may be useful in figuring out what to do.

But not all the updates have to do with travel. The refresh also adds birthday reminders for those you’re connected to on Google+. And Google’s stellar voice assistant, also built into the Search app, received some new tricks today as well. Now, by speaking to the Google Search app, a user can post a text update to Google+, ask what song is playing in the background and launch a barcode scanner to retrieve product info while out shopping.

The updates hit the Google Search app today for Android owners — sorry iOS users.

Read More..

A Minute With: Scottish DJ Calvin Harris hits big time in U.S

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Scottish DJ Calvin Harris may not be the most recognizable face in the U.S. music scene, but after writing Rihanna‘s biggest chart hit and with two other top 20 singles, Harris is fast becoming a chart staple.

Harris, 28, found success in the UK over the last five years before storming the Billboard Hot 100 earlier this year with “We Found Love,” a dance-infused dark love song featuring Rihanna’s vocals that became one of 2012′s biggest hits.

The DJ, who released album “18 Months” in November featuring other hits “Feels So Close” and “Let’s Go,” sat down with Reuters to talk about his U.S. breakthrough.

Q: Did you ever think “We Found Love” was going to be one of the biggest hits in the U.S. this year, and what do you think of the growing British presence in the U.S. music charts?

A: “I hoped that it would do really well, but you can’t predict writing Rihanna’s biggest-ever record, else you’re an egomaniac. Couldn’t have predicted that – that was a surprise. It’s nice that British music is getting played over here, it seems like everyone has a more even playing field than before.”

Q: Why do you think dance music is becoming such a big part of the U.S. scene?

A: “The people to thank are probably the Black Eyed Peas and Lady Gaga. They were the first two American mainstream acts to have that house beat in their songs, whereas before, it was all hip hop. I remember Ne-Yo, when ‘Closer’ came out … and it bombed here but in the UK it was number 1, it was massive … Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Got a Feeling’ and (Lady Gaga’s) ‘Poker Face’ that was pushed really hard, and once they were huge, huge hits … radio stations wanted more and there was plenty of it because it’s been going on for years.”

Q: There are a lot of DJs coming into the mainstream scene now. How do you make yourself stand out in a saturated market?

A: “I like making dance records with lyrical depth. I also like the music to sound rich and full and have real instruments, and not be that kind of synthetic sound, combined with lyrics about popping bottles, being in the club … I like them to be the sort of lyrics you can find in another genre because I think dance music historically, the lyrics have been banal and I’m not into that. I like making actual songs but also something that still works on the dance floor.”

Q: Your new album “18 Months” has songs that span different sounds within the dance-pop genre. Were any tracks challenging?

A: “The two most challenging mixes were the tracks with Example and Florence (Welch), because I think the key is to make it sound like there isn’t that much going on when actually there is … it was a more difficult mix because it was more dynamic.”

Q: Some critics say that you use well-known artists like Rihanna or Florence just so you can get hits. What do you say to people who think you’ve sold out?

A: “Critics don’t buy albums, they’re also almost 90 percent either failed musicians or they don’t know better than anyone else. Also, I don’t like them. What’s the point of a critic? … I ‘sold out’ when I signed a major record deal, which was in 2006. People didn’t say I sold out then … so don’t accuse me of selling out now. It’s very very late to do that.

“If Florence Welch wants to do a track with me, I’m going to say no and use someone unknown? … I want to do a track with people I like, not people I haven’t heard of before.”

Q: Some of your music videos have been provocative. “We Found Love” features domestic abuse and drug use, and Florence Welch’s “Sweet Nothing” has violence. Do you think music videos have to provoke to be noticed?

A: “I like videos to be seen by all and the guy who’s done my videos since ‘Bounce,’ Vince Haycock, I forever censor him … But recently, I’ve let him do whatever he wants and it’s more fun, I’ve discovered, to make whatever video he wants to make … I guess you’re more likely to get more views if someone is getting smacked in the face with a chair … ‘Sweet Nothing’ was great, but there was a lot that was cut out, like a brutal fight scene at the end … it got cut out because I couldn’t watch it, and the soundtrack was my music. There’s obviously a boundary. I’ve not had any naked people in my videos yet.”

Q: A lot of DJs are now collaborating with brand names in sponsorship deals. Are you doing anything similar?

A: “I’m genuinely just making music, I’m trying to make it good. I know these guys with their headphones and their logos and their gimmicks – you can take that route but I think it’s just added pressure to uphold something … Other people do it much better than me because they’re more like personalities.”

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Nick Zieminski)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Extended Use of Breast Cancer Drug Suggested

The widely prescribed drug tamoxifen already plays a major role in reducing the risk of death from breast cancer. But a new study suggests that women should be taking the drug for twice as long as is now customary, a finding that could upend the standard that has been in place for about 15 years.

In the study, patients who continued taking tamoxifen for 10 years were less likely to have the cancer come back or to die from the disease than women who took the drug for only five years, the current standard of care.

“Certainly, the advice to stop in five years should not stand,” said Prof. Richard Peto, a medical statistician at Oxford University and senior author of the study, which was published in The Lancet on Wednesday and presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

Breast cancer specialists not involved in the study said the results could have the biggest impact on premenopausal women, who account for a fifth to a quarter of new breast cancer cases. Postmenopausal women tend to take different drugs, but some experts said the results suggest that those drugs might be taken for a longer duration as well.

“We’ve been waiting for this result,” said Dr. Robert W. Carlson, a professor of medicine at Stanford University. “I think it is especially practice-changing in premenopausal women because the results do favor a 10-year regimen.”

Dr. Eric P. Winer, chief of women’s cancers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that even women who completed their five years of tamoxifen months or years ago might consider starting on the drug again.

Tamoxifen blocks the effect of the hormone estrogen, which fuels tumor growth in estrogen receptor-positive cancers that account for about 65 percent of cases in premenopausal women. Some small studies in the 1990s suggested that there was no benefit to using tamoxifen longer than five years, so that has been the standard.

About 227,000 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and an estimated 30,000 of them are in premenopausal women with estrogen receptor-positive cancer and prime candidates for tamoxifen. But postmenopausal women also take tamoxifen if they cannot tolerate the alternative drugs, known as aromatase inhibitors.

The new study, known as Atlas, included nearly 7,000 women with ER-positive disease who had completed five years of tamoxifen. They came from about three dozen countries. Half were chosen at random to take the drug another five years, while the others were told to stop.

In the group assigned to take tamoxifen for 10 years, 21.4 percent had a recurrence of breast cancer in the ensuing 10 years, meaning the period 5 to 14 years after their diagnoses. The recurrence rate for those who took only five years of tamoxifen was 25.1 percent.

About 12.2 percent of those in the 10-year treatment group died from breast cancer, compared with 15 percent for those in the control group.

There was virtually no difference in death and recurrence between the two groups during the five years of extra tamoxifen. The difference came in later years, suggesting that tamoxifen has a carry-over effect that lasts long after women stop taking it.

Whether these differences are big enough to cause women to take the drug for twice as long remains to be seen.

“The treatment effect is real, but it’s modest,” said Dr. Paul E. Goss, director of breast cancer research at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Tamoxifen has side effects, including endometrial cancer, blood clots and hot flashes, which cause many women to stop taking the drug. In the Atlas trial, it appears that roughly 40 percent of the patients assigned to take tamoxifen for the additional five years stopped prematurely.

Some 3.1 percent of those taking the extra five years of tamoxifen got endometrial cancer versus 1.6 percent in the control group. However, only 0.6 percent of those in the longer treatment group died from endometrial cancer or pulmonary blood clots, compared with 0.4 percent in the control group.

“Over all, the benefits of extended tamoxifen seemed to outweigh the risks substantially,” Trevor J. Powles of the Cancer Center London, said in a commentary published by The Lancet.

Dr. Judy E. Garber, director of the Center for Cancer Genetics and Prevention at Dana-Farber, said many women have a love-hate relationship with hormone therapies.

“They don’t feel well on them, but it’s their safety net,” said Dr. Garber, who added that the news would be welcomed by many patients who would like to stay on the drug. “I have patients who agonize about this, people who are coming to the end of their tamoxifen.”

Emily Behrend, who is a few months from finishing her five years on tamoxifen, said she would definitely consider another five years. “If it can keep the cancer away, I’m all for it,” said Ms. Behrend, 39, a single mother in Tomball, Tex. She is taking the antidepressant Effexor to help control the night sweats and hot flashes caused by tamoxifen.

Cost is not considered a huge barrier to taking tamoxifen longer because the drug can be obtained for less than $200 a year.

The results, while answering one question, raise many new ones, including whether even more than 10 years of treatment would be better still.

Perhaps the most important question is what the results mean for postmenopausal women. Even many women who are premenopausal at the time of diagnosis will pass through menopause by the time they finish their first five years of tamoxifen, or will have been pushed into menopause by chemotherapy.

Postmenopausal patients tend to take aromatase inhibitors like anastrozole or letrozole, which are more effective than tamoxifen at preventing breast cancer recurrence, though they do not work for premenopausal women.

Mr. Peto said he thought the results of the Atlas study would “apply to endocrine therapy in general,” meaning that 10 years of an aromatase inhibitor would be better than five years. Other doctors were not so sure.

The Atlas study was paid for by various organizations including the United States Army, the British government and AstraZeneca, which makes the brand name version of tamoxifen.

Read More..

Ransomware Is Expanding in the United States

CULVER CITY, Calif. — Kidnappers used to make ransom notes with letters cut out of magazines. Now, notes simply pop up on your computer screen, except the hostage is your PC.

Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times

Security researchers Eric Chien, left, and Vikram Thakur at Symantec, where Mr. Chien has been tracking ransomware schemes.

Sometimes victims get a message, ostensibly from the F.B.I., accusing them of breaking the law and demanding a fine.

In the past year, hundreds of thousands of people across the world have switched on their computers to find distressing messages alerting them that they no longer have access to their PCs or any of the files on them.

The messages claim to be from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, 20 other law enforcement agencies across the globe or, most recently, Anonymous, a shadowy group of hackers. The computer users are told that the only way to get their machines back is to pay a steep fine.

And, curiously, it’s working. The scheme is making more than $5 million a year, according to computer security experts who are tracking them.

The scourge dates to 2009 in Eastern Europe. Three years later, with business booming, the perpetrators have moved west. Security experts say that there are now more than 16 gangs of sophisticated criminals extorting millions from victims across Europe.

The threat, known as ransomware, recently hit the United States. Some gangs have abandoned previously lucrative schemes, like fake antivirus scams and banking trojans, to focus on ransomware full time.

Essentially online extortion, ransomware involves infecting a user’s computer with a virus that locks it. The attackers demand money before the computer will be unlocked, but once the money is paid, they rarely unlock it.

In the vast majority of cases, victims do not regain access to their computer unless they hire a computer technician to remove the virus manually. And even then, they risk losing all files and data because the best way to remove the virus is to wipe the computer clean.

It may be hard to fathom why anyone would agree to fork over hundreds of dollars to a demanding stranger, but security researchers estimate that 2.9 percent of compromised computer owners take the bait and pay. That, they say, is an extremely conservative estimate. In some countries, the payout rate has been as high as 20 percent.

That people do fall for it is a testament to criminals’ increasingly targeted and inventive methods. Early variations of ransomware locked computers, displayed images of pornography and, in Russian, demanded a fee — often more than $400 — to have it removed. Current variants are more targeted and toy with victims’ consciences.

Researchers say criminals now use victims’ Internet addresses to customize ransom notes in their native tongue. Instead of pornographic images, criminals flash messages from local law enforcement agencies accusing them of visiting illegal pornography, gambling or piracy sites and demand they pay a fine to unlock their computer.

Victims in the United States see messages in English purporting to be from the F.B.I. or Justice Department. In the Netherlands, people get a similar message, in Dutch, from the local police. (Some Irish variations even demand money in Gaelic.) The latest variants speak to victims through recorded audio messages that tell users that if they do not pay within 48 hours, they will face criminal charges. Some even show footage from a computer’s webcam to give the illusion that law enforcement is watching.

The messages often demand that victims buy a preloaded debit card that can be purchased at a local drugstore — and enter the PIN. That way it’s impossible for victims to cancel the transaction once it becomes clear that criminals have no intention of unlocking their PC.

The hunt is on to find these gangs. Researchers at Symantec said they had identified 16 ransomware gangs. They tracked one gang that tried to infect more than 500,000 PCs over an 18-day period. But even if researchers can track their Internet addresses, catching and convicting those responsible can be difficult. It requires cooperation among global law enforcement, and such criminals are skilled at destroying evidence.

Charlie Hurel, an independent security researcher based in France, was able to hack into one group’s computers to discover just how gullible their victims could be. On one day last month, the criminals’ accounting showed that they were able to infect 18,941 computers, 93 percent of all attempts. Of those who received a ransom message that day, 15 percent paid. In most cases, Mr. Hurel said, hackers demanded 100 euros, making their haul for one day’s work more than $400,000.

Read More..

Northridge shooting probe yields more arrests, sources say

Los Angeles Police Department detectives have made additional arrests in connection with a quadruple homicide in Northridge, sources familiar with the investigation said.

The sources would not immediately identify the suspects nor would they detail what offenses they were arrested for. One of the arrests took place in Las Vegas overnight; it was not clear where the others occurred.

Sources familiar with the investigation said the killings appeared to stem from a dispute over personal property, although they would not say what kind of items were involved.

Los Angeles City Councilman Mitchell Englander said one of the suspects was believed to have lived in the illegal boardinghouse where the shootings occurred. Englander stressed that the information came from people briefed on the case but outside the LAPD.

A news conference is planned for later Tuesday, when the LAPD is expected to reveal more information about the case.

Officers responded to the home in the 17400 block of Devonshire Street about 4:25 a.m. Sunday after a 911 caller reported yelling and shots fired, police said. Authorities found four people -- two men and two women -- shot dead outside.

No weapon was recovered at the home, prompting police to rule out a murder-suicide. Three of the victims -- a man and two women -- were shot on the walkway on the left side of the home, a source familiar with the case told The Times on Monday. They were all wearing hooded sweat shirts and were about two feet apart from one another. All three had at least one bullet wound to the head.

One victim was crumpled on her knees, the source said, her face buried in the palms of her hands, "almost like she was praying." The other two victims on the walkway were face down.

The fourth victim -- a man -- was farther away and appeared as if he was trying to run to the backyard when he was shot. He had at least one gunshot wound, according to the source.

"It looked like a quick kill," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is ongoing.

The names of the victims have not been released. Police said the women were in their mid-20s; one man was in his mid-30s and the other man in his late 40s.

Authorities said the home was an illegal boardinghouse, with up to 17 people living in conditions that Englander described as "deplorable." The home had so much debris and so many partitions that one room could be accessed only through a window, he said.

A trail of extension cords led investigators to the backyard, where several makeshift living quarters had been assembled.

The owner of the home, Yag Kapil, said he rented out rooms but denied he was running a boardinghouse. Kapil, 78, who lives at the home, said he is bedridden and was sleeping at the time of the shootings. He said he didn't hear anything and didn't know the victims.

The slayings stunned the quiet Northridge street, which residents said was the kind where neighbors knew one another and walked to the grocery store or synagogue nearby.

"It's usually sleepy-time America," said Richard Rutherford, 58, who was awakened by the gunfire. The violent-crime rate for Northridge falls in the middle of all Los Angeles neighborhoods, but homicide is rare in the community, according to LAPD data analyzed in The Times' Crime L.A. database. In the previous six months, Northridge had one homicide out of the 89 violent crimes reported.

Since 2007 and before Sunday's quadruple homicide, Northridge had 11 homicides, 10 of them south of Nordhoff Street. The location of Sunday's slayings is on the border with Granada Hills, which typically has a much lower violent-crime rate than Northridge.

Read More..

YouTube Releases iPad App, Filling Last Device Gap in Split from Apple

Google has updated its YouTube app to support the iPad’s larger screen, creating a new experience for the iPad and iPhone 5 while filling in yet another gap created when iOS 6 took away YouTube’s coveted spot on iDevice home screens.

Tuesday’s updated YouTube app follows the earlier release of an iPhone-specific app, and using the app is a familiar and seamless experience. A right-hand menu highlights the video service’s channels, ranging from “Film and Animation” to “Pets and Animals.” You get the same sharing features — through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, e-mail, messaging and via your clipboard — as you do on the iPhone app. It just looks so much better on the larger screen. You can scroll through comments, related videos, and channels while watching any given clip. Overall, it’s a very iPad-friendly design that gives you the best (and, too often, worst) of internet video.

The updated YouTube app also supports AirPlay, allowing you to beam videos to an Apple TV. You can now also add and remove videos from your playlist, click links in video descriptions and tap a logo to open your specific guide of channels. The company has also enhanced its VoiceOver accessibility. These are all small updates that amount to a better mobile YouTube experience.

Now Google just needs to release its iOS Google Maps app and the company will be good to go.

Read More..

Disney loses appeal of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” ruling

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Walt Disney Co. was ordered to pay the British creator of the television game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” $ 319 million after a Los Angeles court rejected the company’s request for a new trial.

Britain’s Celador International, which created the quiz show, sued Disney in 2004 alleging that the company hid some of the show’s U.S. profits from Celador.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena ruled on Monday that the lower court’s judgment was neither excessive nor based on speculation of profits owed.

A 2010 jury trial found that Disney and its domestic syndication company, Buena Vista Television, owed Celador $ 269.2 million and a federal judge added $ 50 million in interest.

“We are extremely disappointed with the decision, as ABC and Buena Vista Television continue to believe that they fully adhered to the ‘Millionaire’ agreement,” Walt Disney said in a statement on Tuesday.

Disney did not comment on further possible legal action.

“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” aired on Disney-owned broadcaster ABC from 1999 to 2002 and was credited with ushering in a new era of reality programming on U.S. television.

“I am pleased that justice has been done,” Celador Chairman Paul Smith said in a statement.

The game show, which started in Britain and later became an international hit, quizzes contestants on trivia for the top prize of $ 1 million. The show is now in U.S. syndication.

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Two Mexican nationals charged in killing of U.S. Coast Guardsman

Federal prosecutors charged two Mexican nationals in connection with killing U.S. Coast Guardsmen Terrell Horne III after they allegedly rammed his vessel with a drug-smuggling panga boat.

The two men, boat captain Jose Mejia-Leyva and Manuel Beltra-Higuera, are expected to appear in court Monday afternoon to face charges that they killed a federal officer.

Horne, 34, of Redondo Beach, was killed Sunday after suspected smugglers in a panga rammed his vessel off the Ventura County coast. He died of severe head trauma, officials said.

The Redondo Beach resident was second in command of the Halibut, an 87-foot patrol cutter based in Marina del Rey. Authorities said they could not recall a Coast Guard chief petty officer being killed in such a manner off the coast of California.

Early Sunday morning, the Halibut was dispatched to investigate a boat operating near Santa Cruz Island, the largest of California's eight Channel Islands. The island is roughly 25 miles southwest of Oxnard.

The boat, first detected by a patrol plane, had come under suspicion because it was operating in the middle of the night without lights and was a "panga"-style vessel, an open-hulled boat that has become "the choice of smugglers operating off the coast of California," said Coast Guard spokesman Adam Eggers.

The Coast Guard cutter contains a smaller boat, a rigid-hull inflatable used routinely for search-and-rescue operations and missions that require a nimble approach. When Horne and his team approached in the inflatable, the suspect boat gunned its engine, maneuvered directly toward the Coast Guard inflatable, rammed it and fled.

The impact knocked Horne and another guardsman into the water. Both were quickly plucked from the sea. Horne had suffered a traumatic head injury. While receiving medical care, he was raced to shore aboard the Halibut. Paramedics met the Halibut at the pier in Port Hueneme and declared Horne dead at 2:21 a.m.

The second crew member knocked into the water suffered minor injuries and was treated and released from a hospital later Sunday. He was not identified.

Read More..