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Label: WorldFactbox: Video game industry meets with Biden gun task force
Label: TechnologyWASHINGTON (Reuters) – Representatives from the companies that make “first-person shooter” games such as “Call of Duty,” “Medal of Honor” and “Grand Theft Auto” met with Vice President Joe Biden on Friday as the Obama administration looks for ways to curb U.S. gun violence.
Biden is heading a task force formed after a gunman shot dead 20 children and six adults last month at a Connecticut elementary school. Biden plans to make recommendations on reducing gun violence to President Barack Obama by next Tuesday.
The vice president has held discussions with a wide range of groups including gun retailers, gun owners, the National Rifle Association gun rights lobbying organization, the film industry, victims of gun violence, and law enforcement authorities.
Following is a list of groups present at Friday’s meeting with Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
Activision Blizzard Inc
Electronic Arts Inc
E-Line Media
Entertainment Software Association
Entertainment Software Ratings Board
Epic Games
GameStop Corp
Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
Take-Two Interactive Software Inc
Texas A&M University
University of Wisconsin at Madison
Zenimax Media Inc
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Will Dunham)
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Man Arrested for Murder in Teen's Facebook-Revealed Death
Label: LifestylePolice have arrested a sometime boyfriend in the murder of Jasmine Benjamin, a 17-year-old Georgia college student whose parents first learned about her death last November on Facebook.
Benjamin, a freshman at Valdosta State University, was found Nov. 18 on a dormitory study room couch. On Thursday, fellow Valdosta State student Darien Meheux, 18, turned himself in after learning there was a warrant for his arrest, says Steven Turner, an agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
"Right now he's the sole suspect," Turner tells PEOPLE. "They had dated at one time. The status of their relationship back in November is not necessarily clear whether they were dating or not."
Frustrated by the lack of answers and the way they'd learned about Benjamin's death, her family hired a private investigator, Robin Martinelli, but believed all along that Meheux might be involved, says Martinelli.
Benjamin and Meheux both were from Lawrenceville, about 30 miles northeast of Atlanta.
Authorities earlier had said the cause of death was asphyxiation, and that Benjamin may have been dead for several hours before her body was discovered in the shared common area of Georgia Hall on the 10,000-student campus in Valdosta, Ga.
Benjamin's mother Judith Brogdon and stepfather James Jackson were notified of her death when a friend forwarded a Facebook post about the discovery.
Officials then told them their daughter died from natural causes, until the medical examiner changed the investigation within 24 hours to homicide.
"To find out it was a homicide and that somebody actually murdered our daughter changed everything," Jackson tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "It was like hearing the news all over again."
Flu season strikes early and, in some places, hard
Label: HealthNEW YORK (AP) — From the Rocky Mountains to New England, hospitals are swamped with people with flu symptoms. Some medical centers are turning away visitors or making them wear face masks, and one Pennsylvania hospital set up a tent outside its ER to deal with the feverish patients.
Flu season in the U.S. has struck early and, in many places, hard.
While flu normally doesn't blanket the country until late January or February, it is already widespread in more than 40 states, with about 30 of them reporting some major hot spots. On Thursday, health officials blamed the flu for the deaths of 20 children so far.
Whether this will be considered a bad season by the time it has run its course in the spring remains to be seen.
"Those of us with gray hair have seen worse," said Dr. William Schaffner, a flu expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
The evidence so far points to a moderate season, Schaffner and others say. It looks bad in part because last year was unusually mild and because the main strain of influenza circulating this year tends to make people sicker and really lay them low.
David Smythe of New York City saw it happen to his 50-year-old girlfriend, who has been knocked out for about two weeks. "She's been in bed. She can't even get up," he said.
Also, the flu's early arrival coincided with spikes in a variety of other viruses, including a childhood malady that mimics flu and a new norovirus that causes vomiting and diarrhea, or what is commonly known as "stomach flu." So what people are calling the flu may, in fact, be something else.
"There may be more of an overlap than we normally see," said Dr. Joseph Bresee, who tracks the flu for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Most people don't undergo lab tests to confirm flu, and the symptoms are so similar that it can be hard to distinguish flu from other viruses, or even a cold. Over the holidays, 250 people were sickened at a Mormon missionary training center in Utah, but the culprit turned out to be a norovirus, not the flu.
Flu is a major contributor, though, to what's going on.
"I'd say 75 percent," said Dr. Dan Surdam, head of the emergency department at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, Wyoming's largest hospital. The 17-bed emergency room saw its busiest day ever last week, with 166 visitors.
The early onslaught has resulted in a spike in hospitalizations. To deal with the influx and protect other patients from getting sick, hospitals are restricting visits from children, requiring family members to wear masks and banning anyone with flu symptoms from maternity wards.
One hospital in Allentown, Pa., set up a tent this week for a steady stream of patients with flu symptoms. But so far "what we're seeing is a typical flu season," said Terry Burger, director of infection control and prevention for the hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest.
On Wednesday, Boston declared a public health emergency, with the city's hospitals counting about 1,500 emergency room visits since December by people with flu-like symptoms.
All the flu activity has led some to question whether this year's flu shot is working. While health officials are still analyzing the vaccine, early indications are that it's about 60 percent effective, which is in line with what's been seen in other years.
The vaccine is reformulated each year, based on experts' best guess of which strains of the virus will predominate. This year's vaccine is well-matched to what's going around. The government estimates that between a third and half of Americans have gotten the vaccine.
In New York City, 57-year-old Judith Quinones skipped getting a flu shot this season and suffered her worst case of flu-like illness in years. She was laid up for nearly a month with fever and body aches. "I just couldn't function," she said.
But her daughter got the vaccine. "And she got sick twice," Quinones said.
Europe is also suffering an early flu season, though a milder strain predominates there. Flu reports are up, too, in China, Japan, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Algeria and the Republic of Congo. Britain has seen a surge in cases of norovirus.
On average, about 24,000 Americans die each flu season, according to the CDC. That's an estimate — the agency does not keep a running tally of adult flu deaths each year, only for children. Some state health departments do keep count, and they've reported dozens of flu deaths so far.
Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.
Most people with flu have a mild illness and can help themselves and protect others by staying home and resting. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.
Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Of the 20 children killed by the flu this season, only two were fully vaccinated.
___
AP Medical Writer Maria Cheng in London contributed to this report.
___
Online:
CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm
Wall Street climbs as China data puts S&P back at five-year high
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday and the S&P 500 ended at a fresh five-year high as stronger-than-expected exports from China spurred optimism about global growth prospects.
Buying accelerated late in the day after the S&P 500 broke through technical resistance at 1,466.47, which was the market's closing level last Friday and the highest level since December 2007.
"Historically, January is a positive month for the market and you're seeing that play out," said Michael Sheldon, chief market strategist at RDM Financial in Westport, Connecticut.
Financial and energy stocks were the day's top gainers. The financial sector index <.gspf> rose 1.4 percent and the energy sector <.gspe> was up 1 percent.
Analysts cited economic data out of China as the day's catalyst, which showed the country's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown.
"It is being interpreted positively that they've stopped the downturn (in growth)," said Kurt Brunner, portfolio manager at Swarthmore Group in Philadelphia.
"If they continue to produce good growth, that's going to be supportive of our global manufacturers."
Wall Street's fear gauge, the CBOE Volatility Index <.vix> suggested markets were relatively calm. The VIX was down 2.3 percent at 13.49.
At Thursday's close, the S&P sits about 6 percent below its all-time closing high of 1,565.15, hit in October 2007.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 80.71 points, or 0.60 percent, to 13,471.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 11.10 points, or 0.76 percent, to 1,472.12. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 15.95 points, or 0.51 percent, to 3,121.76.
Thursday's session had earlier included a dip that traders said was triggered by a trade in the options market that prompted a large amount of S&P futures to hit the market at the same time. That sent the S&P 500 index down rapidly but those losses were reversed through the afternoon.
Financials benefited from events this week that added clarity to mortgage rules and banks' potential exposure to the housing market.
The U.S. government's consumer finance watchdog announced mortgage rules on Thursday that will force banks to use new criteria to determine whether a borrower can repay a home loan.
Earlier this week, several big mortgage lenders reached a deal with regulators to end a review of foreclosures mandated by the government.
"It's a resolution. It's not hanging over their heads," said Brunner.
Bank of America
Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany
Herbalife Ltd
After the closing bell, American Express said it would cut about 5,400 jobs, and take about $600 million in after-tax charges in the fourth quarter. The stock added 0.7 percent to $61.20 in after-hours trade.
Volume was above the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded a day, with roughly 6.77 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT.
Advancers outnumbered decliners on the NYSE by 1,916 to 1,039, while advancers also outpaced decliners on the Nasdaq by 1,439 to 1,036.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski)
Zorbing Accident Kills 1 Man and Injures Another in Russia
Label: World
MOSCOW — It is called a zorb, an outsize inflatable ball in which people strap themselves, then bounce down a ski slope and, presumably, have a good time doing so. But when a zorb veered off a ski run high in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains earlier this month, there was little anyone could do but watch as the two men inside careened along a jagged ridge and then plunged over a precipice.
The ball tumbled down the mountain at the Dombai ski resort for almost a mile, slamming into rocks as it picked up speed, rescue workers said on Wednesday in a televised statement. One of the men, Denis Burakov, 27, injured his spinal cord and died on the way to a hospital. The other, Vladimir Shcherbakov, 33, suffered a concussion and deep cuts to his arms and face.
The accident on Jan. 3, which a friend of the men filmed on a cellphone and then uploaded to the Internet on Tuesday, has generated concern over unlicensed attractions on Russia’s loosely regulated ski slopes.
The man who harnessed Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov into the zorb told the police that they were his first customers, and that he was not licensed to offer rides, having bought the ball two years ago for his own use. On Thursday the police arrested the man, Ravil Chekunov, 25, who said he had charged Mr. Burakov and Mr. Shcherbakov about $10 for the ride.
Russia’s minister of emergency situations called Wednesday for tighter safety precautions at skiing facilities, after a rash of winter sports injuries. Russian television reported this week that 10 people had been seriously injured on a single ski slope in Kolomna, a city 50 miles southeast of Moscow. A woman who descended on a sled broke her spine after she ran into rocks at the bottom.
Russian leaders, notably President Vladimir V. Putin, have tried for years to build interest in downhill skiing in Russia. The country has invested billions of dollars in ski resorts in the Caucasus, and in particular in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, which will host the Winter Olympics in 2014.
Mr. Putin mingled with stunned vacationers at a resort near Sochi during the winter break, and the culture minister, Vladimir R. Medinsky, lavishly praised the local ski conditions on Twitter.
But an investigation into the accident at the Dombai ski resort, less than 100 miles east of Sochi, found 50 unlicensed attractions and guides operating on the mountain, the newspaper Izvestia reported.
A Moscow-based businessman, Montay Imanov, told Izvestia that the zorb that carried the two men was stolen from him at gunpoint in 2009, when he traveled to the region intending to open a zorbing business.
“They didn’t cordon the track off from the gorge,” he said. “It’s just a nightmare. They needed to put six rows of nets there.”
Jimmy Dushku: The 25-year-old who is North Korea’s one true Twitter friend
Label: TechnologyMother Jones takes a look at a globetrotting young investor who’s the only American — and the only human being — Pyongyang follows
Google Chairman Eric Schmidt capped a controversial four-day visit to North Korea on Thursday with a call for the country’s censorship-happy communist government to give its people access to the internet, or face further economic decline due to the country’s global isolation. It was a strong message from one of the web’s most powerful figures, although North Korea watchers seem pretty confident the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un, will ignore it. There’s one American, however, Pyongyang does appear to listen to. That would be Jimmy Dushku, a young investor who is one of exactly three Twitter users Kim’s government follows on Twitter. What’s the story behind this unlikely online bromance? Here, a guide:
Who is Jimmy Dushku?
He’s a 25-year-old financial whiz kid from Austin, Texas. Dushku, who also goes by the nicknames “Jimmer” and “Jammy,” started a website development business when he was 14, according to Mother Jones, and he parlayed his early earnings into investments that now include everything from construction projects in Europe to real estate in Texas to mines in South America. He’s also a rabid Coldplay fan, and when he isn’t jetting around the world, he says he likes to play Rachmaninoff on his piano and zoom around on his Ducati Monster motorcycle.
SEE MORE: North Korea’s rocket launch: 3 consequences
So how did he become buddies with North Korea?
Dushku tells Asawin Suebsaeng at Mother Jones he’s not really sure. “People always ask me how it happened, and I honestly can’t remember,” he says. “It started sometime back in 2010. I was initially surprised.” North Korea followed him, he followed North Korea “out of courtesy.” He tweeted back, “Hello my friend,” and a relationship was born. Then, the North Korean government, which has piled up some 11,000 followers in two-and-a-half years on Twitter, abruptly whittled down the number of accounts it follows, leaving just three. Dushku made the cut (along with a Vietnam account and another official North Korean handle).
What has Dushku gotten from the relationship?
Death threats, for one thing. Not long after he linked up with North Korea’s account, which goes by @uriminzok (or “our nation”), Dushku says he started getting angry messages from exiles and South Koreans. Since then, he has mostly kept a low profile, just to be safe, although he does occasionally grant interviews to foreign publications. For its part, North Korea gets a rare glimpse at the outside world through Dushku, as his is the only account North Korea follows that is regularly updated — the other two haven’t tweeted in months. He’s also the only human being in the bunch.
Will @JimmyDushku and @uriminzok ever meet in real life?
That’s always the question for acquaintances who meet online, isn’t it? Dushku says his friendly relationship has won him a standing offer to visit North Korea. Casual observers, however, advise him to proceed with caution. “Am I the only one thinking they picked some random guy so they can lure him into North Korea and use him as a political prisoner/bargaining chip?” one commenter at Gizmodo said. Another suggests that Dushku play it cool, without making Pyongyang angry, saying, “Never unfollow anybody with nuclear weapons.”
Sources: Austinist, CNN, Gizmodo, Mother Jones
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Dumb Criminal: Juan Ramirez Tijerina Packed for Jail Break
Label: LifestyleGive him an "A" for ingenuity.
Four years into a 20-year sentence for illegal weapons possession, Juan Ramirez Tijerina had had enough of life in the pokey. After a conjugal visit in July 2011 with his partner, Maria del Carmen Arjona Rivero, he was packed and ready to go – literally.
Ramirez was apprehended after officers, noticing that Arjona seemed nervous as she headed for the prison exit in Chetumal, Mexico, with a bulging suitcase, unzipped the bag and found the convict inside.
He's back behind bars, and Arjona was detained.
"This is rare," says a prison spokesman. "Most of the inmates here dig tunnels, try to jump fences or take advantage of a riot to escape."
Retooling Pap test to spot more kinds of cancer
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.
Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.
How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.
In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.
"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.
But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.
The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.
"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.
"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.
But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.
More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.
Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.
The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.
So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.
The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.
Wall Street rises after Alcoa reports earnings
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Wednesday, rebounding from two days of losses, as investors turned their focus to the first prominent results of the earnings season.
Stocks had retreated at the start of the week from the S&P 500's highest point in five years, hit last Friday, on worries about possible earnings weakness.
Shares of Alcoa Inc were down 0.5 percent to $9.08 after early gains, following the company's earnings release after the bell on Tuesday. The largest U.S. aluminum producer said it expects global demand for aluminum to grow in 2013.
Herbalife Ltd
Traders have been cautious as the current quarter shaped up like the previous one, with companies recently lowering expectations, said James Dailey, portfolio manager of Team Asset Strategy Fund in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lower expectations leave room for companies to surprise investors even if their results are not particularly strong.
"The big question and focus is on revenue, and Alcoa had better-than-expected revenue," which calmed the market a little, Dailey said.
Overall, corporate profits were expected to beat the previous quarter's meager 0.1 percent rise. Both earnings and revenues in the fourth quarter are expected to have grown by 1.9 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 61.66 points, or 0.46 percent, to 13,390.51. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 3.87 points, or 0.27 percent, to 1,461.02. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 14.00 points, or 0.45 percent, to 3,105.81.
Facebook Inc
Clearwire Corp
Apollo Group Inc slid after heavier early losses, a day after it reported lower student sign-ups for the third straight quarter and cut its operating profit outlook for 2013. Apollo's shares were last off 7.8 percent at $19.32.
Volume was below the 2012 average of 6.42 billion shares traded per day, as 6.10 billion were traded on the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE MKT and Nasdaq.
Advancing stocks outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by 2,014 to 963, while on the Nasdaq advancers beat decliners 1,603 to 859.
(Reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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