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Thursday, February 28, 2013
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Cheat on taxes? Not cool, say most Americans
IRS Oversight Board
Most Americans don't think it's OK to cheat on taxes.
By Allison Linn, TODAY
Americans may make plenty of jokes about cheating on their taxes, but a new survey finds that in reality most don?t think it?s OK to rob the tax man. Or at least, that?s what they?re telling the IRS Oversight Board.
The?2012 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, released Tuesday by the independent oversight board, finds that 87 percent of Americans don?t think it?s OK to cheat on your taxes. That?s a 3 percentage point increase from last year.
Only 11 percent think it?s OK to cheat, either a little or as much as possible.
Perhaps more surprising, 95 percent of Americans said their personal integrity influences them to report their taxes honestly, an 8 percentage point increase from five years earlier.
About 63 percent said they are influenced by fear of an audit, while 70 percent are motivated by third-party information that could show them to be a tax cheat.
The IRS Oversight Board, an independent body created by Congress in 1998 to oversee the Internal Revenue Service?s actions, completed its annual survey of 1,500 Americans last August and September. The survey has a 3.1 percent margin of error.
If they?re going to pay their taxes honestly, most Americans seem to think everyone else should, too.
The survey found that more than 90 percent of Americans think it?s important that the IRS ensures that low- and high-income taxpayers, small businesses and corporations honestly pay their taxes, too.
Those results appear to show that Americans have come to feel more strongly in recent years that everyone should pay their fair share of taxes, and the IRS should vigorously enforce tax laws.
The results come as many Americans are either getting ready to file their 2012 income tax returns, or already have done so.
They also follow a bruising battle in Washington over the so-called fiscal cliff, a series of tax hikes and spending cuts that were scheduled to take effect until Congress reached a last-minute deal.
The fiscal cliff agreement raised taxes for wealthy Americans earning $400,000 or more and allowed taxes on capital gains and dividends to go up. It also ended a payroll tax holiday, meaning that most Americans are seeing more of their paycheck going to the tax man for Social Security and other entitlements this year.
How honest should people be on their tax returns?
Source: http://lifeinc.today.com/_news/2013/02/27/17102914-cheat-on-taxes-not-cool-say-most-americans?lite
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Muscle, skin and gastrointestinal problems cause a quarter of patients with heart disease and strokes to stop treatment in HPS2-THRIVE trial
Feb. 27, 2013 ? The largest randomised study of the vitamin niacin in patients with occlusive arterial disease (narrowing of the arteries) has shown a significant increase in adverse side-effects when it is combined with statin treatment.
Results from the HPS2-THRIVE study (Heart Protection Study 2 -- Treatment of HDL to Reduce the Incidence of Vascular Events), including the reasons patients stopped the study treatment, are published online February 27 in the European Heart Journal [1].
Niacin has been used for decades to help increase levels of "good" HDL cholesterol and to decrease levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol and triglycerides (fats) in the blood in people at risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart disease and stroke. However, it has a number of side-effects including flushing of the skin. Another drug, laropiprant, can reduce the incidence of flushing by blocking the prostaglandin D2 receptor that is involved in the process. Therefore, the HPS2-THRIVE study investigated whether combining extended-release niacin with laropiprant (ERN/LRPT), given in addition to an LDL cholesterol-lowering statin, simvastatin, could reduce the risk of cardiovascular problems in people at high risk due to existing occlusive arterial disease.
A total of 25,673 patients from China, the UK and Scandinavia were randomised between April 2007 and July 2010 to receive either 2g of extended release niacin plus 40 mg of laropiprant or matching placebo. In addition, all participants received intensive LDL cholesterol-lowering therapy with simvastatin (with or without ezetimibe). Researchers from the Clinical Trial Service Unit & Epidemiological Studies Unit (CTSU) at the University of Oxford (UK), who were responsible for designing and conducting the trial and analysing the results, followed the patients for an average of 3.9 years.
By the end of the study, 25% of patients taking ERN/LRPT had stopped their treatment, compared with 17% of patients taking placebo.
Jane Armitage, Professor of Clinical Trials and Epidemiology & Honorary Consultant in Public Health Medicine at the CTSU, said: "The main reason for patients stopping the treatment was because of adverse side-effects, such as itching, rashes, flushing, indigestion, diarrhea, diabetes and muscle problems. We found that patients allocated to the experimental treatment were four times more likely to stop for skin-related reasons, and twice as likely to stop because of gastrointestinal problems or diabetes-related problems.
"We found that, in the trial as a whole, participants in the experimental arm had a more than four-fold increased risk of myopathy (muscle pain or weakness with evidence of muscle damage) compared with the placebo group. This is highly significant. It appeared that this effect was about three times greater among participants in China than those in Europe, for reasons that are not clear. In the placebo arm (i.e. those on statin-based treatment alone), the statin-related myopathy was more common among participants in China than those in Europe. Therefore -- in combination with the greater effect of ERN/LRPT on myopathy in China -- the excess number of cases of myopathy caused by ERN/LRPT (though low in both regions) was over ten times greater among participants in China than those in Europe (0.53 percent per year compared to 0.03 percent per year)."
Dr Richard Haynes, Clinical Coordinator at the CTSU, said: "This is the largest randomised trial of extended release niacin treatment and it provides uniquely reliable results on adverse side-effects and the ability of patients to tolerate them. Although 25 percent of patients stopped the treatment early, 75 percent continued on it for approximately four years. Currently, we are analysing the final data on the cardiovascular outcomes from the trial, and once we have these we will know whether or not the benefits of the treatment outweigh the myopathy, skin and gastrointestinal problems."
The researchers will be presenting full results on the cardiovascular outcomes at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in March and these will be published in another paper afterwards [2].
The co-principal investigator of the study, Dr Martin Landray, Reader in Epidemiology and Honorary Consultant Physician at the CTSU, said: "Previous research had suggested that improving cholesterol levels in high-risk patients might translate into a 10-15 percent reduction in major vascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. In the HPS2-THRIVE study, 3,400 of the 25,673 participants suffered a major vascular event over an average of four years of follow-up. This means the study has excellent statistical power to discover the effectiveness or otherwise of the treatment."
In an accompanying editorial [3], Professor Ulf Landmesser, of the University Hospital Zurich (Switzerland), points out that although the study showed an increase in myopathy, it also showed that the ERN/LRPT substantially lowered LDL cholesterol and triglycerides by nearly 20%. He writes that these observations "raise important questions as to why niacin/laropiprant did not reduce major cardiovascular events," and he wonders whether laropiprant "is really biologically inert with respect to atherosclerosis and thrombosis."
He concludes that "niacin has failed as a valuable 'partner' of statin therapy in lipid-targeted approaches to further reduce major cardiovascular events in high-risk patients." He continues: "At present, statin therapy has been clearly shown to reduce vascular events effectively and is reasonable well tolerated in most patients. We will still have to wait for the results of ? ongoing studies to see whether another lipid-targeted intervention can further reduce vascular events in addition to statin therapy."
Notes:
[1] "HPS2-THRIVE randomized placebo-controlled trial in 25 673 high-risk patients of ER niacin/laropiprant: trial design, pre-specified muscle, and liver outcomes and reasons for stopping study treatment," by Richard Haynes, Lixin Jiang, Jemma C. Hopewell, Jing Li, Fang Chen, Sarah Parish, Martin J. Landray, Rory Collins, and Jane Armitage, The HPS2-THRIVE Collaborative Group. European Heart Journal.
[2] In December 2012 the pharmaceutical company Merck, which manufactures ERN/LRPT under the trade name Tredaptive and which funded the HSP2-THRIVE study, issued a statement saying the trial had failed to meet its primary endpoint and that "the combination of extended-release niacin and laropiprant to statin therapy did not significantly further reduce the risk of the combination of coronary deaths, non-fatal heart attacks, strokes or revascularizations compared to statin therapy." ERN/LRPT is not approved for use in the USA, and on January 11, Merck announced that it was "taking steps to suspend the availability of TREDAPTIVE? (extended-release niacin/laropiprant) tablets worldwide."
[3] "The difficult search for a 'partner' of statins in lipid-targeted prevention of vascular events: the re-emergence and fall of niacin," by Ulf Landmesser. European Heart Journal. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/eht064
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Society of Cardiology (ESC), via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Richard Haynes, Lixin Jiang, Jemma C. Hopewell, Jing Li, Fang Chen, Sarah Parish, Martin J. Landray, Rory Collins, and Jane Armitage, The HPS2-THRIVE Collaborative Group. HPS2-THRIVE randomized placebo-controlled trial in 25 673 high-risk patients of ER niacin/laropiprant: trial design, pre-specified muscle, and liver outcomes and reasons for stopping study treatment. European Heart Journal, 2013 DOI: 10.1093/eurheartj/eht055
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/Evx6aULTeDo/130226193840.htm
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Mexico plays hardball in jailing of union boss
In this photo released by Mexico's federal court system, the head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, stands behind bars as she appears for a hearing at a federal prison in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Mexico's most powerful woman was formally charged with a massive embezzlement scheme on Wednesday, standing grim-faced behind bars live on national television in what many called a clear message that the new government is asserting its authority. (AP Photo/Juzgado Sexto de Distrito en Procesos Penales Federales)
In this photo released by Mexico's federal court system, the head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, stands behind bars as she appears for a hearing at a federal prison in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Mexico's most powerful woman was formally charged with a massive embezzlement scheme on Wednesday, standing grim-faced behind bars live on national television in what many called a clear message that the new government is asserting its authority. (AP Photo/Juzgado Sexto de Distrito en Procesos Penales Federales)
Police stand guard outside the prison where the head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, is being held in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Mexico's most powerful woman was formally charged with a massive embezzlement scheme on Wednesday, standing grim-faced behind bars live on national television in what many called a clear message that the new government is asserting its authority. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
A boat and jet ski sit tied to a private dock behind the home, right, owned by the family of Mexican union leader Elba Esther Gordillo in Coronado, Califonia, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Gordillo was arrested and accused Tuesday in Mexico of embezzling $160 million in union funds to pay for everything from California homes and plastic surgery procedures to her Neiman Marcus bill. The arrest of Mexico's most powerful union leader echoes the hardball tactics of Mexico's once-imperial presidency while pushing forward an education reform that President Enrique Pena Nieto has made a centerpiece of his new administration. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
A stone figure sits in front of the home owned by the family of Mexican union leader Elba Esther Gordillo in Coronado, California, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Gordillo was arrested and accused Tuesday in Mexico of embezzling $160 million in union funds to pay for everything from California homes and plastic surgery procedures to her Neiman Marcus bill. Gordillo, known for flashing her Hermes handbags and heels, stood behind bars Wednesday in a grim prison in eastern Mexico City as a judge read off charges of embezzlement and organized crime. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
In this photo released by Mexico's federal court system, the head of Mexico's powerful teachers' union, Elba Esther Gordillo, stands behind bars as she appears for a hearing at a federal prison in Mexico City, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013. Gordillo was charged with embezzling 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from union funds, as well as organized crime. The judge in the case said a decision about whether the evidence is sufficient to merit a trial would be taken in three to six days. (AP Photo/Juzgado Sexto de Distrito en Procesos Penales Federales)
MEXICO CITY (AP) ? The arrest of Mexico's most powerful union leader echoes the hardball tactics of Mexico's once-imperial presidency while pushing forward an education reform that Enrique Pena Nieto has made a centerpiece of his new administration.
Elba Esther Gordillo, known for flashing her Hermes handbags and heels, stood behind bars Wednesday in a grim prison in eastern Mexico City as a judge read off charges of embezzlement and organized crime. The arrest sidelined a woman who had tried to mobilize teachers to block a schools shake-up designed to end her control over hiring and firing of teachers across the country.
It also sent a message to other union bosses and business magnates: Don't get in the way of Pena Nieto, whose Institutional Revolutionary Party has newly returned to the power it held for seven straight decades, when incoming presidents often crushed those who challenged them.
"This is an old tactic, let's hope that it doesn't just stop there, as it did in the past, when a single case was enough to calm things down and add legitimacy" to presidential power, said Jose Antonio Crespo, an analyst at the Center for Economic Studies. "Let's hope this doesn't stop and that it becomes something more systematic, for which there is a burning need."
Crespo was referring to the business magnates and union bosses who have built fortunes and political power by dominating whole sectors of the economy. Like Gordillo, their resistance could be an obstacle to Pena Nieto's pledges to modernize and open up Mexico's economy.
But the tough message of Tuesday's arrest may have been enough.
Gordillo, whose 1.5 million-member National Union of Education Workers organized protests against Pena Nieto's education reform signed into law this week, was pulled off a plane arriving from San Diego late Tuesday and taken to Mexico City's women's prison.
It was a dizzying fall from power for a woman often credited with swinging a presidential election and who maintained properties worth millions of dollars in Southern California, where she spent much of her time.
Gordillo, 68, was charged with embezzling 2 billion pesos (about $160 million) from the union she has led for nearly a quarter century. The judge in the case said he would rule in three to six days on whether the evidence is sufficient to merit a trial.
If found guilty, Gordillo could face 30 years in prison.
Asked if he had other cases planned, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam told the Televisa news network, "I don't have evidence as clear as in this case."
Still, analysts said other powerful figures will surely take notice.
"I think there will be more willingness to negotiate and accept" reforms "rather than engage in confrontation," said Crespo.
Pena Nieto went on television Tuesday night to say the case was strictly based on enforcing the rule of law.
"This investigation has to be pursued to the very end but always adhering to the rule of law," he said, without referring to Gordillo by name.
The president also spoke directly to the millions of teachers in the two-minute national broadcast, saying his government will support them and respect the union's autonomy.
"My government will continue to be your ally and will continue to work to improve the conditions in which you carry the high mission of educating tomorrow's citizens," he said.
With education reform now enacted, Pena Nieto is also proposing to open the state oil company to more private investment, a move that could awaken opposition from the oil workers union. The administration is also proposing measures to bring more competition in the highly concentrated television and telecom sectors, steps that business magnates have long tried to stymie with court appeals.
There is a sense that "this is a message to all the other corrupt leaders," said Humberto Castillo, a 55-year-old retired teacher from Mexico State, who was reading a newspaper story about Gordillo's arrest while he waited for his daughter to come out of a job interview. "I thought she was untouchable."
For many, Gordillo stood as a symbol of the powers that dominate Mexico. She was a favorite of newspaper cartoonists because of her immediately recognizable face and designer clothes and accessories. Prosecutors said she spent nearly $3 million in purchases at Neiman Marcus department stores using union funds, as well as $17,000 in U.S. plastic surgery bills and $1 million to buy a home near San Diego.
It was unclear if the arrest would force Gordillo out of her union leadership position. Mexican mining union boss Napoleon Gomez Urrutia has continued to hold his post more than four years after he moved to Canada amid accusations that he misappropriated $55 million in union funds.
Many Mexicans immediately began suggesting prosecution of other union leaders. Opposition parties mentioned the boss of the oil workers union, Carlos Romero Deschamps, who, according to Mexican news media, gave his son a $2 million Ferrari and whose daughter posted Facebook photos of her trips to Europe aboard private jets and yachts.
Romero Deschamps' immunity from prosecution as a legislator ? a status he still enjoys ? helped keep him from going to jail in a scandal over his union's illegal $61.3 million campaign donation to the PRI in 2000.
But if Deschamps stayed within the womb of the PRI while under fire, Gordillo was unusually defiant, allying at times with presidents from the National Action Party, helping create a new political party and finally bolting from the PRI, where she had long been an influential figure. Many credited her party with pulling enough votes to swing the narrow 2006 election to National Action's Felipe Calderon.
Sergio Aguayo, a political analyst at the elite Colegio de Mexico, said Gordillo "wasn't just a shadow power, but one that wanted to be a political power."
"In Pena Nieto's vision of Mexico, no one can be above the president," Aguayo said. "It's the same old imperial presidency."
Gordillo's combativeness may have led her to miscalculate Pena Nieto's willingness to reinstate the old tradition of unquestioned presidential authority.
"She underestimated him," columnist and political analyst Raymundo Riva Palacio said of Pena Nieto.
The PRI, which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000, spent 12 years out of power before returning to the presidency with Pena Nieto's 2012 election victory.
Gordillo's arrest recalled the 1989 detention of once-feared oil union boss Joaquin Hernandez Galicia. He had criticized the presidential candidacy of Carlos Salinas and threatened a strike if Salinas privatized any part of the government oil monopoly.
On Jan. 10, 1989, about a month after Salinas took office, soldiers used a bazooka to blow down the door of Hernandez's home in the Gulf Coast city of Ciudad Madero.
He was freed from prison after Salinas left office.
Salinas' sweep of old, uncooperative union bosses also led to opening the way for a new, up-and-coming leader in the teachers union, Gordillo, who was at first seen as a reformer.
Gordillo's arrest alone is far from enough to help Pena Nieto improve Mexico's schools. So great is the union's control over hiring that even the government acknowledges it's not sure how many schools, teachers or students exist in Mexico.
The Mexican education system has been persistently one of the worst performers among the world's developed economies, with few signs of improvement. Nearly every Mexican 4-year-old is in pre-school, but only 47 percent are expected to graduate high school. In the U.S., the number is closer to 80 percent.
In a television interview last week about education reform, the interviewer told Gordillo that she was the most hated woman in Mexico.
"There is no one more loved by their people than I," Gordillo answered. "I care about the teachers. This is a deep and serious dispute about public education."
Union leaders voiced support for her during a meeting in Guadalajara but issued no formal statement and there were no public demonstrations by teachers.
"To our leader, teacher Elba Esther Gordillo, we affirm our loyalty, our love and our solidarity," Juan Diaz de la Torre, the union's general secretary, said during the meeting.
___
Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez, Adriana Gomez Licon and Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.
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Architects of the 21st Century: Speak Up, Speak Out | ArchDaily
?Take Five: A Titan of Architectrual Criticism has Died, but Architects are Best Prepared to Carry on the Conversation? was originally published in?AIArchitect.
In a stirring call-to-action written for?AIArchitect,?Robert Ivy,?FAIA and?AIA EVP/Chief Executive Officer,?reflects on the state of architecture criticism today. He?recognizes that?the late, great Ada Louise Huxtable was unquestionably the best critic of our time. However, the time of the singular architectural voice has passed; in the 21st century, and with the rise of the Internet, we have all become architectural critics ? architects, informed citizens, and, often most vociferously, not so informed citizens. In this world of critical noise, Ivy proposes that the architect must step up to take on the role of architecture critic? and advocate.
Read Ivy?s stirring article in full, after the break?
Until January, if you asked any architectural writer to name the greatest living critic, the answer would inevitably be Ada Louise Huxtable, Hon. AIA.? While there have been other renowned minds thinking and commenting on architecture and the built environment in the 20th century (Lewis Mumford springs to mind), no one came close to Huxtable.
Writing as the architecture critic for?The New York Times, and later for?The Wall Street Journal, she balanced careful reporting with strong opinions, providing readers with the social, economic, and political context, as well as the effect a given project exerted on a neighborhood, street, and city.? Her columns addressed the art of architecture, but rarely as a stand-alone topic.
Who can forget her realistic?appraisal?of the future for New York?s Ground Zero, warning us to temper optimism for that supercharged urban nexus, since, in Gotham, developers ultimately had the final say:??What Ground Zero tells us is that we have lost the faith and the nerve, the knowledge and the leadership, to make it happen now.? Many of us, filled with optimism for a fresh start, sometimes recoiled a notch at her pronouncements, or actively disagreed with her, but one fact was clear: Her opinion mattered.
We treasured her because she spoke the truth as she understood it, even when it hurt.? And legions of citizens, eager for an educated perspective on buildings or neighborhoods or the city, shared in their appreciation of this refined voice.? In a sense, she acted as a progenitor, arming subsequent generations of writers, such as Paul Goldberger, Hon. AIA, (who succeeded her at the?Times).? But even more importantly, her role helped to set a standard in which informed writers act as the moderator of public discourse, helping us to frame the debate, much as other gifted critics for major news outlets do on their own geographic turf?Blair Kamin in Chicago, Chris Hawthorne in Los Angeles, Robert Campbell, FAIA, in Boston, and now Michael Kimmelman at?The Times.? We are all in her debt.
While Huxtable honed and valued her professional craft, the Internet has unleashed the genie from the bottle. Today, we don?t have to wait for the authoritative article to see a project and form initial decisions. In a sense, all of us can carry on the conversation, because the times demand it.? And who better to evaluate architecture, and its effects on the world around us, than architects?
In a way, all architects become critics, for good or ill, practicing their faculties first in the design studio on their own projects, then on those of their classmates and colleagues.? The looming need for informed discussion transcends the superficial aesthetic aspects of a given building or community project. Think of Huxtable. Ada Louise would enjoin us to collect our facts, set the context, and look at the larger picture before taking aim.? Then, and only then, are we prepared to advocate effectively and forcefully for the built environment?taking a balanced, if powerful position that our clients, or fellow citizens, will listen to, recall, and act on.
Some of us have lamented that, ?The public doesn?t understand the value of design.? But it doesn?t require a singular generational talent like Ada Louise Huxtable to teach people how architects make the communities we live and work in better places. This is a job for architects as well. No one knows the total story better?neither the client nor the public. You know your project?s intentions.? If the building is a school, you know how it might?enrich a student?s learning experience;?if it?s a hospital, how it might help a patient heal.
We should use op-eds, letters, blogs, and all manner of social media outlets, adding the architect?s voice without waiting for someone else to frame the debate. In one sense, speaking out and speaking up about architecture in your own community becomes a form of advocacy, a positive action you can take to help advance the understanding and appreciation of your own work and of the profession. Then, when our motives and achievements are recognized by third parties, including?great critics like Ada Louise Huxtable, the message will resound clearly and powerfully.
Speak up, speak out about architecture. The AIA of the 21st century needs architects (and critics) like you.
Source: http://www.archdaily.com/336840/architects-of-the-21st-century-speak-up-speak-out/
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ASUS Padfone 2 launching in the UK on March 1
Way back in October last year we first heard word that ASUS planned to bring the Padfone 2 to the UK in early 2013. It's now early 2013 and true to their word ASUS is indeed bringing the Padfone 2 to the UK on March 1 for £599.
For some it may seem an anti-climax given the recent unveiling of the Padfone Infinity at MWC. But, the Padfone 2 is still an impressive device packing a Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB of RAM, a 13MP camera and a HD Super IPS+ display. It isn't quite the powerhouse the new Padfone Infinity is, but the hardware specs are still impressive. And of course, the Padfone 2 will be around £200 cheaper than the Infinity.
Both white and black versions will be available, and several big name retailers will be picking it up including Amazon and Carphone Warehouse. The full press release can be found after the break.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/1VZQkZ1XYSE/story01.htm
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Storm that buried Plains slams Great Lakes region
CHICAGO (Reuters) - A powerful winter storm that buried the U.S. Plains and left at least three people dead moved on Tuesday into the southern Great Lakes region, where it snarled the evening commute in Chicago and Milwaukee, created near-whiteout conditions and forced hundreds of flight cancellations.
Much of the region was under either a winter storm warning or a winter weather advisory, according to the National Weather Service, as the system's potent blend of wet snow, sleet and strong winds bore down on north central Illinois, southern Wisconsin and northern Indiana and Ohio.
The most intense snowfall and greatest accumulations were expected through Tuesday night, the NWS said. With winds gusting up to 35 mph, near-whiteout conditions were reported in some rural areas, the agency said.
More than 500 flights were canceled at Chicago's O'Hare International and Midway airports alone, according to the Chicago Department of Aviation. Those flights that managed to take off or land faced delays of up to an hour.
The Illinois Tollway agency, which maintains nearly 300 miles of highway around Chicago, deployed its fleet of more than 180 snowplows to keep the roads clear.
As the afternoon rush hour began in Chicago, blowing snow reduced visibility and created treacherous driving conditions, doubling average travel times in and out of the city on major expressways, according to Traffic.com.
The Wisconsin Department of Transportation warned that much of Interstate 94 between the Illinois state line and Milwaukee was ice covered.
In Chicago, the city's public school system, the third-largest school district in the country, canceled all after-school sporting events, including six state regional basketball games.
The snowstorm may have discouraged some voters in Chicago and its suburbs from voting in a special election primary to replace indicted Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned the seat in November citing health concerns.
Forecasters with the National Weather Service said the storm would continue to move eastward, dumping 3 to 5 inches of wet snow on Detroit overnight and into Wednesday morning.
It is then expected to move slowly into the Northeast, largely avoiding the cities of New York, Boston and Washington, D.C., but bringing snow to parts of New York state, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, said Brian Korty, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
"It's going to linger for a long time over portions of the Northeast," Korty said.
Parts of New York and Pennsylvania could get a "sloppy mix" of snow, ice and rain. Already, ice accumulations were causing sporadic power outages across higher terrains of western Maryland, eastern West Virginia and far western Virginia, said Erik Pindrock, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.
"It's a very multi-faceted storm," Pindrock said. "It's a whole potpourri of wintry weather."
In Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, where the storm hit earlier, residents were digging out.
Highways in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and parts of Kansas remained closed because of heavy and drifting snow.
Amarillo, Texas, saw 19 inches of snow Sunday night into Monday, the third-largest snowfall ever in that city, Pindrock said.
The storm contributed to at least three deaths, two in Kansas and one in Oklahoma.
A woman died and three passengers were injured Monday night on Interstate 70 when their pickup truck rolled off the icy roadway in Ellis County, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback said. Earlier Monday, a man was killed when his car veered off the interstate in Sherman County near the Colorado border, he said.
"We urge everyone to avoid travel and be extremely cautious if you must be on the roads," said Ernest Garcia, superintendent of the Kansas Highway Patrol.
In northern Oklahoma, one person died when the roof of a home partially collapsed in the city of Woodward, said Matt Lehenbauer, the city's emergency management director.
"We have roofs collapsing all over town," said Woodward Mayor Roscoe Hill Jr. "We really have a mess on our hands."
Kansas City was also hard hit by the storm, which left snowfalls of 7 to 13 inches in the metro region on Tuesday, said Chris Bowman, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. Another 1 to 3 inches is forecast for Tuesday evening and nearly two-thirds of the flights at Kansas City International Airport Tuesday afternoon were canceled.
In addition to the winter storm, National Weather Service forecasters on Tuesday issued tornado watches across central Florida and up the eastern coast to South Carolina.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Missouri, David Bailey in Minneapolis, James B. Kelleher in Chicago and Corrie MacLaggan in Texas; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Barbara Goldberg, Nick Zieminski, Dan Grebler, Phil Berlowitz and Eric Walsh)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/storm-buried-plains-slams-great-lakes-region-025456755.html
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Wednesday, February 27, 2013
US 4Q bank earnings up 37 pct as lending rises
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Profits at U.S. banks jumped almost 37 percent for the October-December period, reaching the highest level for a fourth quarter in six years as banks continued to step up lending.
The figures are fresh evidence of the industry's sustained recovery more than four years after the financial crisis.
Banks earned $34.7 billion in the last three months of 2012, up from $25.4 billion a year ago and the highest for a fourth quarter since 2006, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reported Tuesday. Sixty percent of banks reported improved earnings from the fourth quarter of 2011, the agency said.
The FDIC, created during the Great Depression to ensure bank deposits, monitors and examines the financial condition of U.S. banks.
For all of 2012, the agency said bank earnings rose 19 percent to $141.3 billion, the second-highest annual level ever.
The number of banks on the agency's "problem" list fell to 651 from 694. Banks had lower losses on loans in the fourth quarter and set aside almost 25 percent less to cover potential losses than in the final quarter of 2011.
"The improving trend that began more than three years ago gained further ground in the fourth quarter," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said at a news conference. Still, "troubled loans, problem banks and bank failures remain at elevated levels, while growth in lending and revenue remains sluggish," he said.
Banks with assets exceeding $10 billion drove the bulk of the earnings growth in the October-December period. While they make up just 1.5 percent of U.S. banks, they accounted for about 82 percent of the industry earnings.
Those banks include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. Most of them have recovered with help from federal bailout money and record-low borrowing rates.
Gruenberg noted that banks' profit from interest they charge has been eroded by historically low interest rates during the economic recovery. Banks' net interest income fell to $104.4 billion in the fourth quarter from $107.1 billion a year earlier. That was the lowest quarterly level since the final three months of 2009, the FDIC said.
The decline in interest income has made banks increasingly reliant on the fees they charge.
For the sixth time in seven quarters, banks' lending increased. It rose by 1.7 percent in the fourth quarter, led by growth in commercial and industrial loans, and credit cards. That shows banks are becoming less cautious, which could help the economy. More lending leads to more consumer spending, which drives roughly 70 percent of economic activity.
Home equity loans fell by 2.2 percent, however.
So far this year, three banks have failed. That follows 51 closures last year, 92 in 2011 and 157 in 2010. The 2010 closures were the most in one year since the height of the savings and loan crisis in 1992.
In the fourth quarter, the decline in bank failures allowed the insurance fund to continue to strengthen. The fund, which turned from deficit to positive in the second quarter of 2011, had a $32.9 billion balance as of Dec. 31, according to the FDIC. That compares with $25.2 billion at the end of September.
The FDIC is backed by the government, and its deposits are guaranteed up to $250,000 per account. Apart from its deposit insurance fund, the agency also has tens of billions in loss reserves.
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Fans injured at NASCAR race explore legal options
A spectator, center, is transported from the grandstands by emergency personnel after Kyle Larson's car hit the safety wall and fence along the front stretch on the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla., Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013. Several fans were injured when large chunks of debris flew into the grandstands. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
A spectator, center, is transported from the grandstands by emergency personnel after Kyle Larson's car hit the safety wall and fence along the front stretch on the final lap of the NASCAR Nationwide Series auto race at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Fla., Saturday, Feb. 23, 2013. Several fans were injured when large chunks of debris flew into the grandstands. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) ? The attorney for three NASCAR fans injured last weekend during a race the day before the Daytona 500 says they are exploring a possible lawsuit, but some experts say they could face tough obstacles in winning damages.
Matt Morgan, the Orlando-based lawyer for the fans, said at a news conference Tuesday than any suit would focus on the safety fence used along the track at Daytona International Speedway. He said he hopes to reach a settlement with NASCAR to avoid a lawsuit.
More than 30 people were injured last Saturday after a horrific wreck in a second-tier NASCAR series race sent chunks of debris, including a heavy tire, into the stands. Morgan declined to provide the identities of his clients, but said two of them were seated directly in front of the crash and sustained injuries ranging from a fractured fibula to abdominal swelling. All have been released from the hospital.
Some experts say there could be grounds for a lawsuit, and that courts have looked past liability waivers written on the backs of sporting event tickets. Others maintain the ticket is a legal contract that could be hard to overcome in court.
"Ultimately, I believe it would be gross negligence," Morgan said. "We all know that when you go to a race you assume a certain amount of risk. But what people don't assume is that a race car will come flying into the stands... That's why they make the fences."
Asked to comment on the fans' retention of a law firm, NASCAR spokesman David Higdon wrote in a statement, "We are unaware of any lawsuits filed."
Daytona International Speedway is owned by International Speedway Corp., a NASCAR sister company. Spokesman Andrew Booth said, "As per company policy, we do not comment on pending litigation."
Donnalynn Darling, a New York-based attorney who has been practicing personal injury law for 30 years, said there is a theory that a spectator who buys tickets to a sporting event assumes the risk of objects coming out of the field of play, such as a foul ball at a baseball game.
But she said there is also a foreseeable risk question that promoters of events also accept.
"Did the sporting event promoter take action to prevent that specific risk?" Darling asked. "In terms of this fence...it was put up to prevent people from being hurt. You have people who were not only injured by falling debris, but by the failure of the fence."
Others say such restrictive clauses on the back of tickets are generally disfavored by Florida courts.
"If it's just something written on the back of the ticket and not called to the attention of the person purchasing, there's reason to believe many courts in Florida won't hold that they consented efficiently," said University of Florida emeritus law professor Joseph Little.
Still, Paul Huck, an adjunct professor at the University of Miami School of Law, said contract law could take precedence.
"A ticket to one of these events is like a contract ? and its provisions limiting liability are generally enforceable," he said. "We enter into these types of contracts on a regular basis, and we often don't give it a second thought that we may be limiting or even giving up certain legal rights when we do so."
Darling also said that the fence's manufacturer at Daytona would likely be "very much responsible" because of it being foreseeable that debris could go through a fence that has holes in it.
That seems to be theory that Morgan is adopting. He referenced a 2009 crash at NASCAR's racetrack in Talladega, Ala. in which a car that launched into the catch fence sent debris into the stands and injured several fans.
"At that point in time a group of engineers got together and they said 'It's time for us to manufacture a safer fence,'" Morgan said. "To my knowledge, that was done. But what we have to investigate at this point in time is what was done...If you can ever point to monetary considerations being put ahead of people, then there's a big problem."
Darling predicted that NASCAR would try to settle with the injured fans.
NASCAR "had an obligation to protect the fans that are so loyal, and it is bad from a public relations standpoint," Darling said. "So they're going to do something."
___
AP Auto Racing writer Jenna Fryer contributed to this report.
___
Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightower.
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The Super-Slim Xperia Tablet Z Feels Like Sony?s Finest Tablet Yet
After Sony released a string of curious Android tablets that failed to catch on, the company had no choice but to go back to the drawing table and try something different.?That something different wound up being the Xperia Tablet Z, easily one of its most conventional designs yet ? a choice that may end up paying off nicely. Now that the decidedly non-kooky Xperia Tablet Z is gearing up for an appearance stateside, we tracked one down here at MWC to get a glimpse at what Sony?s tantalizingly thin tab brings to the table.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/MdytxIz4RzQ/
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Doubts Emerge on the Value of Very Low Cholesterol Levels
Image: frentusha /iStockphoto
From Nature magazine.
Soon after Joseph Francis learned that his levels of ?bad? LDL cholesterol sat at twice the norm, he discovered the short?comings of cholesterol-lowering drugs ? and of the clinical advice guiding their use. Francis, the director of clinical analysis and reporting at the Veterans Health Administration (VA) in Washington DC, started taking Lipitor (atorvastatin), a cholesterol-lowering statin and the best-selling drug in pharmaceutical history. His LDL plummeted, but still hovered just above a target mandated by clinical guidelines. Adding other medications had no effect, and upping the dose of Lipitor made his muscles hurt ? a rare side effect of statins, which can cause muscle breakdown.
So Francis pulled back to moderate Lipitor doses and decided that he could live with his high cholesterol. Later, he learned that other patients were being aggressively treated by doctors chasing stringent LDL targets. But Francis found the science behind the target guidelines to be surprisingly ambiguous. ?You couldn?t necessarily say lowering LDL further was going to benefit the patient,? he says.
The standard advice may soon change. For the first time in more than a decade, the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute is revising the clinical guidelines that shaped Francis?s treatment (see ?How low can you go??). Expected to be released later this year, the fourth set of guidelines, called ATP IV, has been drawn up by an expert panel of 15 cardiologists appointed by the institute. The guidelines will set the tone for clinical practice in the United States and beyond, and will profoundly influence pharmaceutical markets. They will also reflect the growing debate over cholesterol targets, which have never been directly tested in clinical trials.
Since 2002, when ATP III called on doctors to push LDL levels below set targets, the concept of low cholesterol has become synonymous with heart health. Patients brag about their cholesterol scores, physicians joke about adding statins to drinking water, and some hospitals reward doctors when patients hit cholesterol targets.
In 2011, US doctors wrote nearly 250 million prescriptions for cholesterol-lowering drugs, creating a US$18.5-billion market, according to IMS Health, a health-care technology and information company based in Danbury, Connecticut. ?The drug industry in particular is very much in favour of target-based measures,? says Joseph Drozda, a cardiologist and director of outcomes research at Mercy Health in Chesterfield, Missouri. ?It drives the use of products.?
ATP III reflected a growing consensus among physicians that sharply lowering cholesterol would lessen the likelihood of heart attacks and strokes, says Richard Cooper, an epidemiologist at the Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine in Illinois, who served on the committee that compiled the guidelines. The committee drew heavily on clinical data, but also took extrapolations from basic research and post hoc analyses of clinical trials. LDL targets were set to be ?less than? specific values to send a message, Cooper says. ?We didn?t want to explicitly say ?the lower the better? because there wasn?t evidence for that,? he says. ?But everybody had the strong feeling that was the correct answer.?
By contrast, the ATP IV committee has pledged to hew strictly to the science and to focus on data from randomized clinical trials, says committee chairman Neil Stone, a cardiologist at Northwestern University School of Medicine in Chicago. If so, Krumholz argues, LDL targets will be cast aside because they have never been explicitly tested. Clinical trials have shown repeatedly that statins reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke, but lowering LDL with other medications does not work as well. The benefits of statins may reflect their other effects on the body, including fighting inflammation, another risk factor for heart disease.
Krumholz?s scepticism is rooted in experience. In 2008 and 2010, the Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) clinical trial challenged dogma when it reported that lowering blood pressure or blood sugar to prespecified targets did not reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. In the case of blood sugar, the risks were worsened. The trial demonstrated the folly of assuming that risk factors must have a causal role in disease, says Robert Vogel, a cardiologist at the University of Colorado, Denver. ?Short people have a higher risk of heart disease,? he says. ?But wearing high heels does not lower your risk.?
Jay Cohn, a cardiologist at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis, also worries that the focus on LDL levels offers up the wrong patients for statin therapy. Most of those who have a heart attack do not have high LDL, he notes. Cohn advocates treating patients with statins based on the state of health of their arteries, as revealed by noninvasive tests such as ultrasound. ?If your arteries and heart are healthy, I don?t care what your LDL or blood pressure is,? he says.
?We can?t just assume that modifying the risk factor is modifying risk.?
Not all cardiologists want to abolish LDL targets. Indeed, Seth Martin, a fellow in cardiology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, believes that ATP IV should reduce LDL targets further. The simplicity of targets has helped to deliver an important public-health message, he says, and motivated many patients to get the statin therapy that he believes they need. ?Just to throw that out the window doesn?t seem like the ideal scenario.?
Whatever the decision, the pharmaceutical industry will be watching closely, says Donny Wong, an analyst at Decision Resources, a market-research company based in Watertown, Massachusetts. Although most statins are off patent, the big pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring the next LDL-lowering drug to market. In particular, millions of dollars have been poured into drugs that inhibit a protein called PCSK9, an enzyme involved in cholesterol synthesis. This approach lowers LDL but has not yet been shown to reduce heart attacks or strokes.
Francis expects the new guidelines to relax the targets. He and his colleagues decided last autumn to change the VA?s own clinical standards, so that they no longer rely solely on an LDL target but instead encourage doctors to prescribe a moderate dose of statin when otherwise healthy patients have high LDL cholesterol. The ATP IV guidelines will take a similar approach, he speculates, noting that the VA consulted several outside experts who are also serving on the ATP committee.
Despite an increasingly vegetarian diet, Francis?s cholesterol has not budged. ?Sometimes I want to call my physician and say, ?Don?t worry about that target,?? he says. ?It?s going to be changing very soon.?
?
This story is reprinted with permission from Nature. It was first published on February 26, 2013.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=cce506b4a151d1f8aa11d637c60ec862
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Appoint Internet Activist as Next Chairman of the Federal ...
By Christopher Phipps
Target:?President Barack Obama
Goal:?Appoint activist, professor, and author Susan Crawford as FCC Chairman
The Federal Communications Commission needs new leadership, someone who understands not only the need for regulation that promotes competition and innovation in high-speed internet markets, but also the technical details that would make such regulation possible.?Susan Crawford, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and author of ?Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age,? has the appropriate qualifications for the position. She served as Special Assistant to the President in Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy during 2009, and she has been hailed as a champion of net neutrality, open internet, and freedom of speech online.
Early this year, in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, Susan Crawford laid out a plan for a reasonably priced, globally competitive, ubiquitous communications infrastructure that would open the door to innovation and competition. She understands policy and the regulations that are needed to combat incumbents with tremendous market power. More than that, she understands the technology itself, to a degree that has won the respect of industry players like Hunter Newby, CEO of Allied Fiber.
She believes ?internet access is the heart of a democratic society,? and that high-speed internet should be a utility, just like electricity, federally regulated and available to everyone at an affordable price.?Indisputably, a reliable high-speed internet infrastructure is crucial to almost every aspect of our nation?s success and our people?s well-being: education, energy, business, health care, public safety, environmental conservation. Yet that success is being throttled by profit-driven giants and limited to those who can afford it. The FCC has done little in recent years to combat this.
For the majority of us, mention of the FCC likely brings to mind censorship: bleeping out expletives or blurring nudity. But their responsibilities go far beyond enforcement of ?moral decency? in public broadcast stations of television and radio. The FCC is pivotal to the growth of our national telecommunications. As a government agency, the FCC has a responsibility to?support the nation?s economy by ensuring an appropriate competitive framework for the unfolding of the communications revolution.
Ten years ago, the United States was at the fore of the Internet revolution, with fast speeds and bargain prices. But now, the broadband and wireless internet landscape is vastly different. Our nation?s high-speed needs are met by a handful of restrictive monopolies that have carved out their territories and jealousy guard their expensive (and limited) fiber infrastructures. Alarmingly, not only do they control how we access information, but they have begun to control what information we have access to. They are waging war on the concept of ?net neutrality,? wherein content is not blocked by service providers, and they are driving deeper the wedge of the ?digital divide,? the gulf between those who can afford service and those who cannot. Already, one-third of Americans cannot afford high-speed internet, and those who can pay higher prices for substandard service. The U.S. lags behind nearly every other industrialized country in terms of speed, price, and broadband penetration.
So what has the FCC done to counteract the will of these giant, entrenched corporations? The answer is surprisingly little, with a few, rare exceptions, such as opposition to the Comcast-NBC merger from former FCC Chairman Michael Copps, or the recently-proposed public super wifi networks by current Chairman Julius Genachowski.
What we need now is new leadership at the FCC.?Susan Crawford is well-qualified and she understands the technology, the players, and the landscape. She knows that with a truly pro-competition agenda, the FCC can unleash American ingenuity. Let?s put her at the helm.
PETITION LETTER:
Dear President Obama,
At the beginning of the year, you said that during your second term, Americans must act together to ?build the roads and networks and research labs that will bring new jobs and businesses to our shores.? If the U.S. is to regain its global competitive edge in business, energy, and education, we need pro-innovation, pro-competition regulation in a high-speed internet market that is dominated by incumbent powerhouses with little desire to see change.
Please appoint Susan Crawford as the next Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is in dire need of leadership who both understands the need for policy that stimulates competition and growth, and holds the technical knowledge to make those regulations feasible. Susan Crawford is well-qualified and she demonstrates a profound vision for the future of high-speed internet for all.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
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Ghana's Turkson is bookmakers' favorite for new pope
LONDON (Reuters) - Ghana's Peter Turkson is the Irish bookmakers' favourite to replace Pope Benedict, putting a non-European in pole position to lead the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church for the first time in more than a millennium.
Irish bookmaker Paddy Power offered odds of 11/4 against for Turkson, meaning successful punters would win 11 pounds for every four staked, while Britain's second largest bookmaker Ladbrokes offered odds of 5/2 against.
Turkson would be the first non-European to lead the Catholic church in more than a millennium if he is chosen to succeed Benedict. Italian Angelo Scola is second favourite according to Paddy Power at 3/1 against.
"Pope Benedict quitting leaves a tall hat to fill - let's just hope God gives him a good reference for his next job," a Paddy Power spokesperson said in a statement. "As for the betting, the real action kicks off now."
The new pope will inherit a Church scarred by Vatileaks and by child abuse scandals in Europe and the United States, both of which may have weighed on Benedict's decision to decide he was too old and weak to continue the papacy.
The pope has two days left before he takes the historic step of becoming the first pontiff in some six centuries to step down instead of ruling for life.
Betting on the new pope earlier in February had ranked Nigeria's Cardinal Francis Arinze and Canadian Marc Ouellet alongside Turkson in a three 'cardinal' race.
Some 115 cardinals will enter a closed-door conclave at the Vatican in March.
"While Turkson and Scola are currently out in front, let us not forget those fabled words ?he who enters the conclave as Pope, leaves it as a Cardinal'," the Paddy Power spokesman said.
Paddy Power said Turkson has attracted the highest number of bets, accounting for 15 percent of the market and is shouldering the biggest single bet of 5,000 pounds.
The head of the Vatican's justice and peace department, the Ghanaian has been tipped as Africa's frontrunner in a contest heavy with speculation that a Latin American or African could be elected as chief of the 1.2 billion-strong Catholic population.
While Canada's Ouellet is still in the running at 7/1 according to Ladbrokes, Arinze's standing at both bookmakers has sunk to 25/1.
Paddy Power said that betting on who will be elected as the new pope is set to become the largest non-sporting market in its history. It said it had taken 300,000 pounds on "pope betting".
Dark horses include a fictional character from Irish sitcom Father Ted, the simple-minded Father Dougal McGuire, who has attracted nine more bets than real-life Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ghanas-turkson-irish-bookmakers-favourite-pope-050708996--finance.html
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Communist honcho's airport rage caught on film
By Ed Flanagan, Producer, NBC News
BEIJING ? Exasperated passengers everywhere have at some point felt like lashing out over the frustrations of modern air travel.? One prominent member of China?s Communist Party acted on that urge recently to the undoubted dismay of airline workers but the delight of many online viewers.
In a video that went viral over the weekend, Yan Linkun, a deputy chairman of a mining company and a member of a Communist Party political advisory body in Yunnan, is seen smashing up a gate counter at Kunming Changshui International Airport.
Shanghai Daily reported?that Yan, his wife and two 10-year-old sons missed their 11 a.m. flight to the southern Guangdong city of Shenzhen on Feb. 5. The family was put on another flight at 1 p.m. the following day, only to miss that one as well after they went for breakfast and didn't hear the boarding announcement.?
That?s when hostilities kicked off.
Airport surveillance video leaked to?local Chinese media?on Friday shows Yan?s reaction to the news that he and his family had missed the second flight.
A minute into the video, Yan pushes against the gate?s glass door. He then slaps his hand on the counter, yells and grabs a computer keyboard and hurls it at the screens.
Yan continues to throw equipment at the counter, and at one point tries to kick down the gate door.? Seemingly immobilized airport security personnel and a growing crowd is seen watching the rampage.
His wife, whose name has not been reported, also gets in on the act, and smashes what appears to be a coffee cup midway through the video.
Despite the tantrum, the Shanghai Daily reported that airport police in Kunming were still investigating to determine whether Yan would face any criminal charges.
The paper also reported that Yan had apologized to the airport?s deputy manager, telling him, ?My irrational actions and rudeness have caused some losses to the airport as well as bad effects to the public, so I sincerely apologize to the airport and public. I am willing to compensate."
Yan also explained he and his wife had reacted angrily because they were in a hurry to get their children back to school in time for the end of the New Year holiday, the newspaper reported.
That contrition reportedly wasn?t good enough for his bosses. Yan?s employer, Yunnan Mining Corp., suspended him.
The local Communist People's Political Consultative Conference -- one of the regional advisory boards to China?s ruling Communist Party -- was considering whether to impose some kind of punishment, Shanghai Daily reported.
NBC News tried unsuccessfully to contact Yen and Yunnan Mining Corp. to get their version of events.
On China?s Twitter-like service, Weibo, users were quick to joke about the meltdown and to ask how in the world Yan had ever risen to become a CPPCC member.
?I suggest that Yan smash an airplane next time so that he can show his real power as a CPPCC member!" one sarcastic user wrote.
Others dismissed the tantrum as the privilege of China?s new moneyed elite.
?That's just how a rich man acts,? wrote one user, ?He who has wealth speaks louder than others."
New Communist Party boss, Xi Jinping, has taken a tougher stance against Party corruption and poor behavior since taking power late last year.
A series of high profile anti-graft and corruption campaigns have brought down a number of officials across China and approval from mainland Chinese eager to see systemic corruption stamped out.
NBC News? Grace Huang contributed to this report.
Related:
China's anti-corruption drive hits New Year Sales
Chinese official booted after account of lurid affair emerges
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Too Many Sleepless Nights Can Actually Shut Down Important Genes
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Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Remains of the Day: Your New Mac May Not Be Able To Reinstall Mountain Lion
Late-2012 Mac owners are reporting issues with reinstalling Mountain Lion, Apple settles a class-action lawsuit, Chrome is testing a convenient new feature, and Twitter for Windows Phone catches up with its mobile brethren .
- Late 2012 Macs Unable to Reinstall OS X Mountain Lion or Restore from Time Machine Backups An issue effecting Apple's late-2012 Macs?the Mac Mini, the new iMacs, and the Retina MacBook Pros?has some users reporting that they are unable to reinstall OS X Mountain Lion on their system. This includes reinstalling from a recovery partition or Time Machine backup in addition to the app store download. Apple has not commented on the issue, however, the next OS X update, 10.8.3, has been in testing since November and may address the issue. [MacTrast]
- Apple Settles Lawsuit Over Apps Aimed at Kids - Will Pay $5 iTunes Credit or Cash A proposed settlement in a class action lawsuit against Apple may result in compensation for customers whose children racked up charges for virtual currency in free apps. If the settlement is approved by a federal judge, Apple will offer $5 in iTunes credit for those who were charged without their knowledge, matching the cost up to $30 in credit. For amounts in question over $30, a cash refund can be claimed. In order for Apple customers to claim settlement money, they will have to attest that "a minor bought 'game currency' and that the user did not provide the minor with the Apple password." [GigaOm]
- Google Chrome Audio Indicators The latest Chromium build now has an indicator that will show which Chrome tabs are currently playing audio. No word on when the official Chrome update containing this feature will roll out, but having an easy way to tell which tab is making noise will be great. [Google+]
- An Update to Twitter for Windows Phone Today Twitter updated its Windows Phone app to reflect the four-tab design already used by the iOS and Android version. Also in the update is live tile support and fixed Tweet/Search buttons that can be used anywhere in the app. [Twitter]
- Indie Fantasy StoryBundle Now Available StoryBundle, the ebook service from former Lifehacker Jason Chen, has returned with a pay-what-you-want bundle of fantasy books. Those who pay more than $10 will score two additional books. The bundle will be available for another three weeks. [StoryBundle]
Photo by photastic (Shutterstock), a2bb5s (Shutterstock), and Feng Yu (Shutterstock).
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Pregnant mother's blood pressure may affect future health of children
Feb. 25, 2013 ? Up to 10% of all women experience some form of elevated blood pressure during pregnancy. Researchers from the Centre for Social Evolution at the Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen show that mild maternal hypertension early in pregnancy actually benefits the fetus, but that late-pregnancy hypertension has negative health consequences for the child. The study is based on more than 750,000 births in Denmark, with follow-up data on children's hospital diagnoses for up to 27 years.
'It has been known for some time now that pregnancy-induced hypertension can lead to more serious toxic conditions (preeclampsia), but it has puzzled biologists why such a medical condition that can be quite dangerous for both mother and child has not previously been removed by natural selection in our stoneage ancestors. However, evolutionary theory also emphasizes that paradoxes of this kind can be due to genetic parent-offspring conflicts, so we set out to test whether we could find statistical evidence for that type of explanation', says Professor Jacobus Boomsma, Director of the Centre for Social Evolution and coordinator of the study.
Minor increases in blood pressure gives better health
The results clearly indicate that mothers with minor increases in blood pressure in the first trimester of pregnancy have babies that enjoy generally better health than children of mothers who never get a hypertension diagnosis during pregnancy. The difference was between 10 and 40% fewer diagnoses across all disease categories during the 27 years of available follow-up data, a result that has never been documented before. However, when hypertension continues or starts later in pregnancy, this advantage shifts to a ca. 10% disadvantage in terms of an increased risk of acquiring a diagnosis in the Danish public health data bases. Child mortality during the first year of life showed the same trend. In spite of this risk being very low in Denmark, no children of mothers with early pregnancy-induced hypertension died, whereas the mortality risk of children born to mothers with hypertension late in pregnancy was above average.
Fathers genes enhances blood pressure
Parent-offspring-conflict theory maintains that father-genes in the placenta will have a tendency to 'demand' a somewhat higher level of nutrition for the fetus than serves the interests of mother-genes. It argues that father genes that somehow manage to enhance maternal blood pressure will likely be met by maternal genes compensating this challenge. Both types of genes are 50/50 represented and thus likely to find a 'negotiated' balance while creating an optimally functioning placenta. However, when the pull of paternal genes cannot quite be managed by maternal counterbalances, there is a risk of elevated blood pressure to develop and persist, leading to late occurring pregnancy complications and compromised offspring health. The results obtained are consistent with the idea that some deep fundamental conflicts lay buried in our genes right from the moment of conception. Imprinted genes are prime suspects for mediating such conflicts as they 'remember' which parent they come from.
'Molecular biologists have recently found many such genes in mice and man, and they are particularly expressed in the placenta as the theory predicts. Our study therefore suggests that further research to test whether different patterns of pregnancy-induced hypertension are indeed related to paternal or maternal imprints would be highly worthwhile', says PhD student Birgitte Hollegaard, who did the analyses together with EU Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow Sean Byars.
The authors of the study hope these results will help build bridges between their evolutionary inspired public health analyses and established clinical praxis.
'Ultimately we are not only interested in the fundamental science aspects of genome level reproductive conflicts, but also in seeing some of these findings being made more directly useful, for example by adjusting pregnancy monitoring schemes to take long term risks for offspring health into account', concludes Jacobus Boomsma.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Copenhagen, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
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Journal Reference:
- Birgitte Hollegaard, Sean G. Byars, Jacob Lykke, Jacobus J. Boomsma. Parent-Offspring Conflict and the Persistence of Pregnancy-Induced Hypertension in Modern Humans. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (2): e56821 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0056821
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/tmVYAfINulI/130225201930.htm
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