01/10/2013 at 10:40 AM EST
George Clooney (left) and Rande Gerber
Seth Browarnik/Startraks
As part of the launch of his new spirit brand, Casamigos Tequila, George Clooney stepped out on Tuesday night to celebrate its launch at Rocco's Tacos in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
The Descendants actor was there with his fellow founders Rande Gerber and Mike Meldman to sample cocktails and mingle with locals.
"George and Rande did not separate the entire night. They both drank the Casamigos specialty cocktails being served," an onlooker tells PEOPLE.
The "really friendly" Clooney also took time to take pictures with "almost every attendee at the event," the source says.
"There was one woman taking photos with her iPad and George was helping her get the best shots – he kept calling her 'the iPad lady'!" the source adds.
The promotional tequila tour – which is expected to bring the actor to L.A., Las Vegas and Dallas – kicked off with a short film starring Clooney, Gerber, Cindy Crawford and Stacy Keibler. In the minute long film, the group of friends play musical beds after a night out of drinking Casamigos.
WASHINGTON (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.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose on Thursday as stronger-than-expected exports in China, the world's second-biggest economy, raised hopes for a more robust recovery in the global economy.
Data showed China's export growth rebounded sharply to a seven-month high in December, a strong finish to the year after seven straight quarters of slowdown, even as demand from Europe and the United States remained subdued.
Ford Motor
Adding to bullish sentiment, Spanish benchmark government bond yields fell below 5 percent to a 10-month low on the back of a strong bond auction that raised more than the targeted amount.
"The market's more positive and it owes a lot of that to the Chinese economic data," said Art Hogan, managing director of Lazard Capital Markets in New York. He said the success of the Spanish auction was also of note.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 47.75 points or 0.36 percent, to 13,438.26, the S&P 500 <.spx> gained 6.73 points or 0.46 percent, to 1,467.75 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 14.04 points or 0.45 percent, to 3,119.85.
Data showed new U.S. claims for unemployment benefits rose last week, though seasonal volatility made it difficult to get a clear picture of the labor market's health.
Also, U.S. wholesale inventories rose more than expected in November and sales rose by the most in more than 1-1/2 years. The market's reaction to both reports was muted.
Several Federal Reserve speakers are due to speak Thursday, including Kansas City Fed President Esther George and St. Louis Fed President James Bullard. Market participants are likely to pay close attention to their remarks following indications, in the minutes of the latest Fed meeting, that the Fed may halt its highly stimulative asset purchases this year. The program has been one of the pillars of the strength in the equity market.
Shares of upscale jeweler Tiffany
Molycorp shares
U.S.-traded Nokia shares
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria denounced international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as "flagrantly biased" on Thursday, casting doubt on how long the U.N.-Arab League mediator can pursue his peace mission.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry was responding to remarks by Brahimi a day earlier in which he ruled out a role for President Bashar al-Assad in a transitional government and effectively called for the Baathist leader to quit.
"In Syria...what people are saying is that a family ruling for 40 years is a little bit too long," Brahimi told the BBC, referring to Assad, who inherited his post from his father Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in 1970 and ruled for 30 years.
"President Assad could take the lead in responding to the aspiration of his people rather than resisting it," the veteran Algerian diplomat said, hinting the Syrian leader should go.
The Foreign Ministry in Damascus said it was very surprised at Brahimi's comments, which showed "he is flagrantly biased for those who are conspiring against Syria and its people".
Brahimi has had no more success than his predecessor Kofi Annan in his quest for a political solution to a 21-month-old conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned that violence in Syria might worsen and said the international community must "step up" its response if it does.
So far regional rivalries and divisions among big powers have stymied any concerted approach to the upheaval, one of the bloodiest to emerge from a series of revolts in the Arab world.
Russian and U.S. diplomats, who back opposing sides of the war, will meet Brahimi in Geneva on Friday.
"MASK OF IMPARTIALITY"
Syria's al-Watan newspaper daily said Brahimi had removed his "mask of impartiality" to reveal his true face as a "a tool for the implementation of the policy of some Western countries".
On Sunday Assad, making his first public speech in six months, offered no concessions and he said he would never talk to foes he branded terrorists and Western puppets.
As peace efforts floundered, rebels battled for a strategic air base for a second day, pursuing a civil war that had briefly receded for some Damascus residents who set aside their differences to play in a rare snowfall that blanketed the city.
For a few hours, people in the capital dropped their weapons for snowballs and traded hatred for giggles.
"Last night, for the first time in months, I heard laughter instead of shelling. Even the security forces put down their guns and helped us make a snowman," Iman, a resident of the central Shaalan neighborhood, said by Skype.
There was no respite on other battlefronts, with heavy fighting around the Taftanaz base in northwestern Syria, which insurgents are trying to capture to extend their grip on Idlib province and weaken Assad's control of the skies.
Rebels assaulted the airport's main buildings and armory using heavy guns, tanks and other weapons and appeared to have overrun half the area of the base, said Rami Abdelrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition group that monitors the conflict from abroad.
"Now, it's serious," he said.
The air base has been used to launch helicopter attacks in the region, and its loss would be a blow to the government's ability to defend its positions there, Abdelrahman said.
MISSILE LAUNCH
Insurgents have tried to take the base for months, but have been bolstered by the recent arrival of Islamist fighters including the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, he added.
There was no immediate government account of the fighting, which could not be confirmed independently.
Opposition forces have seized swathes of territory in northern Syria in recent months, but remain vulnerable to attack by the military's planes and helicopters - hence their strategy of trying to capture air bases such as the one at Taftanaz.
There was no word on whether the firing of a short-range ballistic missile inside Syria on Wednesday, reported by a NATO official, was linked to the fighting at Taftanaz.
NATO could not confirm the type of missile used, but the description fit the Scuds that are in the Syrian military's armory, the official added, describing the latest launch and similar ones last week as "reckless".
A NATO official said that since the start of December 2012, the alliance had detected at least 15 launches of unguided, short-range ballistic missile inside Syria.
Neither side has gained a clear military advantage in the war pitting mostly Sunni Muslim rebels against security forces dominated by Assad's minority, Shi'ite-linked Alawite sect.
The Observatory also reported fighting between rebels and troops in the Sayyida Zeinab area of Damascus, and air raids were reported in the capital's Maleiha area and eastern suburbs.
Despite some support from Sunni regional powers including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the rebels remain largely disorganized, fragmented and ill-equipped. Poor discipline, looting and insecurity in some insurgent-held areas have also eroded their support from civilians.
Gloom has gripped Damascus for months, as the rebellion edges closer to the capital, but the snowfall offered a rare break from gunfire and shelling echoing from its outskirts.
"We felt a smile that has been missing from our faces for almost two years and we were all just Syrians," said Amin, a resident of central Damascus, speaking on the internet.
"For a few hours our hearts were as pure as the snow."
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes and Erika Solomon in Beirut and Mohammed Abbas in London; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc unveiled a service that increases competition with Apple Inc’s dominant iTunes store.
Amazon launched Amazon AutoRip, which gives customers free digital versions of music CDs they purchase from the world’s largest Internet retailer.
The digital music files are automatically stored in customer libraries in remote datacenters run by Amazon, where they are available to play or download immediately through the company’s Cloud Player service, the company said.
Amazon customers who have bought AutoRip-eligible CDs at any time since the company started selling discs in 1998 will also get digital versions of that music stored in their Cloud Player libraries for free, the company added.
More than 50,000 albums are available for AutoRip and Steve Boom, head of digital music at Amazon, said the company focused on music that has been the most popular among its customers during the past 15 years.
Albums include “21″ by Adele; “Overexposed” by Maroon 5; “Dark Side of the Moon” by Pink Floyd and “Thriller” by Michael Jackson.
Boom declined to estimate how many CDs Amazon expects to digitize through the new service. However, he noted that the company has sold hundreds of millions of CDs to millions of customers.
“When we picked those 50,000 titles we focused on having a substantial majority of our physical CD sales covered,” he added.
Amazon is hoping the new service boosts digital music sales and encourages more people to use its cloud music service.
“People will be exposed to Cloud Player and our digital music offering, which is a good thing,” Boom said. “We want to take this global.”
Amazon’s MP3 digital music business has been around since 2007, but its market share is less than 15 percent, according to The NPD Group. Apple’s iTunes store is the clear leader, with over 50 percent of the market.
Amazon is making a bigger push against iTunes now that the company’s Kindle Fire tablets are in more consumers’ hands and its Cloud Player music application is available on a range of other mobile devices, including Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
(Reporting By Alistair Barr; editing by Andrew Hay)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Maggie Coughlan
01/09/2013 at 10:55 AM EST
Bethenny Frankel (left) and Ellen DeGeneres
Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.
"I can't just only be on reality TV and show everything when it's fairy princess, fairytale, and then not take my hits when I have to," she says on Wednesday's The Ellen DeGeneres Show. "Just going through something personal you have so many different emotions, and I feel like a bit of a disappointment to all of you. And, I feel like a failure."
"You are not a disappointment. You are not a failure," DeGeneres says.
"I feel like a failure. I really put it out there. I wanted the fairytale," Frankel responds. "I thought I had it. And [daughter] Bryn is my fairytale ... Love is everywhere. It's the road and you're on it. It has peaks and valleys, and that's what it is, but I don't know how people go through this because this is excruciating."
News of the split between the Skinnygirl mogul, 42, and Hoppy first broke just before the holidays with Frankel releasing a statement. "It brings me great sadness to say that Jason and I are separating. This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family," she said at the time.
Frankel then filed divorce papers in early January.
The couple married in 2010 and are parents to daughter Bryn, 2½.
As for her decision to divorce, Frankel tells DeGeneres she "wanted to rip the Band-Aid off" so she could "start to heal," but that she struggles with what lies ahead.
"You know everything and one day you don't know. So I'm scared. I'm older. And I want to be able to say to people ... It's about what I do now ... I never thought I'd be a role model but I think to some people I am or have been," she says.
"This is an important time because it's about what I do next. How I handle myself now with grace, with dignity. Now is the time that matters."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.
Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.
"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.
But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.
Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.
The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.
Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.
Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.
But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.
Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.
Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street rose on Wednesday after Alcoa got the earnings season under way with better-than-expected revenue and an encouraging outlook for the year.
Alcoa Inc said it expects global demand for aluminum will continue to grow in 2013, though the company kept a cautious tone as worries lingered over a looming U.S. budget confrontation. Shares of Alcoa, the largest aluminum producer in the United States, rose 0.5 percent to $9.18.
Still, investors are wary about the outcome of the fourth-quarter earnings season. Profits were expected to beat the previous quarter's lackluster results, but analyst estimates were down sharply from where they were in October. Earnings were expected to grow by 2.7 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.
But the lowered expectations leave room for companies to surprise investors even if their results aren't particularly strong, analysts said.
"Clearly no one is expecting a stellar earnings season. With the number of companies that lowered guidance over the last few weeks, I think there's some concern that we could see companies disappoint," said Kate Warne, investment strategist at Edward Jones in St. Louis.
"However, based on the fact that many companies have lowered guidance, that means they've put the bar so low they could crawl over it, and I would expect what we'll see is some relief as earnings come in."
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 67.00 points, or 0.50 percent, to 13,395.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 5.50 points, or 0.38 percent, to 1,462.65. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> added 10.07 points, or 0.33 percent, to 3,101.88.
Among other earnings, Constellation Brands
Apollo Group Inc slid about 10 percent 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 at $18.83.
Dish Network Corp
Clearwire was up 7.5 percent at $3.14, while Sprint lost 2 percent to $5.85.
Hard drive maker Seagate Technology
(Editing by Kenneth Barry)
DAMASCUS/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Forty-eight Iranians freed by Syrian rebels in exchange for more than 2,000 civilian prisoners held by the Syrian government arrived in central Damascus on Wednesday, a Reuters witness reported.
The Syrian government has not referred to the prisoner swap and the whereabouts of the civilian prisoners was not immediately known.
Opposition groups accuse it of detaining tens of thousands of political prisoners during his 12 years in office and say those numbers have spiked sharply during the 21-month-old civil war.
The Syrian rebel al-Baraa brigade seized the Iranians in early August and initially threatened to kill them, saying they were members of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps sent to fight for President Bashar al-Assad.
The Islamic Republic, one of his staunchest allies, denied this, saying they were Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims visiting shrines, and it asked Turkey and Qatar to use their connections with Syrian insurgents to help secure their release.
The freed Iranians arrived at a Damascus hotel in six small buses, looking tired but in good health, each carrying a white flower, and they were welcomed by Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Reza Sheibani. They did not speak to reporters.
Bulent Yildirim, head of the Turkish humanitarian aid agency IHH which helped broker the deal, told Reuters by telephone from Damascus shortly beforehand that the reciprocal release of 2,130 civilian prisoners - most of them Syrian but also including Turks and other foreign citizens - had begun.
Syrian government forces have struck local deals with rebel groups to trade prisoners but the release announced on Wednesday was the first time non-Syrians were freed in an exchange.
The Damascus government has periodically freed hundreds of prisoners during the conflict but always stressed such detainees "do not have blood on their hands."
Given the number of political prisoners held during the course of Assad's rule, missing persons became a key issue when street protests against him first erupted in March 2011.
Turkey is one of Assad's fiercest critics, a strong backer of his opponents and proponent of international intervention. It has denounced Iran's stance during the Syrian uprising, which has killed around 60,000 people according to a U.N. estimate.
Turkey, Gulf Arab states, the United States and European allies support the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels, while Shi'ite Iran supports Assad, whose Alawite minority is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
A pro-government newspaper said on December 31 that Syrian forces arrested four Turkish fighter pilots who were trying to sneak into a military airport with an armed group in the northern province of Aleppo.
The Damascus-based al-Watan newspaper said the arrests at the Koers military base, 24 km (15 miles) east of Aleppo city, proved "scandalous Turkish involvement" in Syria's crisis.
TURKEY, QATAR INTERVENE
The al-Baraa brigade, part of the umbrella rebel organization, the Free Syrian Army, said in October it would start killing the Iranians unless Assad freed Syrian opposition detainees and stopped shelling civilian areas.
But Qatar, following a request from Iran, urged the rebels not to carry out the threat.
Insurgents fighting to topple Assad accuse Iran of sending fighters from the Revolutionary Guards to help his forces crush the revolt, a charge the Islamic Republic denies.
The rebels now control wide areas of northern and eastern Syria, most of its border crossings with Turkey and a crescent of suburbs around the capital Damascus.
But Assad's government is still firmly entrenched in the capital and controls most of the densely populated southwest, the Mediterranean coast and the main north-south highway.
The IHH has been involved in previous negotiations in recent months to release prisoners, including two Turkish journalists and Syrian citizens, held in Syria.
The humanitarian group came to prominence in May 2010 when Israeli marines stormed its Mavi Marmara aid ship to enforce a naval blockade of the Palestinian-run Gaza Strip and killed nine Turks in clashes with activists on board.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing by Nick Tattersall)
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