Carrie Underwood to Star as Maria von Trapp on TV's The Sound of Music
Label: Lifestyle
TV Watch
By Stephen M. Silverman
11/30/2012 at 10:55 AM EST
Julie Andrews, as Maria von Trapp in 1965s Best Picture of the Year, The Sound of Music, with Carrie Underwood (inset)
Everett; Inset: Taylor Hill/WireImage
It sounds like mighty big gulp for a relative novice, but Carrie Underwood has been signed to play arguably the most-beloved nanny in the history of entertainment – in the most beloved musical of all time.
The country-singing fourth season American Idol winner, 29, will play Maria von Trapp in next year's live TV broadcast of Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music, it was announced Friday.
"Speaking for everyone at NBC, we couldn't be happier to have the gifted Carrie Underwood take up the mantle of the great Maria von Trapp," said Robert Greenblatt, chairman of NBC Entertainment, which plans to air the three-hour show (based on the original Broadway version) sometime around the holiday season a year from now.
"She was an iconic woman who will now be played by an iconic artist," Greenblatt said in a statement, referring to von Trapp – who was first immortalized on Broadway in 1960 by Mary Martin, then in the Oscar-winning 1965 Best Picture of the Year by Julie Andrews.
Underwood's previous acting credits were roles on TV's How I Met Your Mother, as the love interest of Ted (Josh Radnor), and, in her film debut last year, as a church leader in Soul Surfer, a coolly-received feature about real-life shark victim Bethany Hamilton.
No word yet on who'll play the dashing captain with the whistle.
Ukraine fights spreading HIV epidemic
Label: HealthBUCHA, Ukraine (AP) — Andrei Mandrykin, an inmate at Prison No. 85 outside Kiev, has HIV. He looks ghostly and much older than his 35 years. But Mandrykin is better off than tens of thousands of his countrymen, because is he receiving treatment amid what the World Health Organization says is the worst AIDS epidemic in Europe.
Ahead of World AIDS Day on Saturday, international organizations have urged the Ukrainian government to increase funding for treatment and do more to prevent HIV from spreading from high-risk groups into the mainstream population, where it is even harder to manage and control.
An estimated 230,000 Ukrainians, or about 0.8 percent of people aged 15 to 49, are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Some 120,000 are in urgent need of anti-retroviral therapy, which can greatly prolong and improve the quality of their lives. But due to a lack of funds, fewer than a quarter are receiving the drugs — one of the lowest levels in the world.
Ukraine's AIDS epidemic is still concentrated among high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, homosexuals and prisoners. But nearly half of new cases registered last year were traced to unprotected heterosexual contact.
"Slowly but surely the epidemic is moving from the most-at-risk, vulnerable population to the general population," said Nicolas Cantau of The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, who manages work in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. "For the moment there is not enough treatment in Ukraine."
Stigma is also a big problem for those with HIV in Ukraine. Liliya, a 65-year-old woman who would give only her first name, recently attended a class on how to tell her 9-year-old great-granddaughter that she has HIV. The girl, who contacted HIV at birth from her drug-abusing mother, has been denied a place in preschool because of her diagnosis.
"People are like wolves, they don't understand," said Liliya. "If any of the parents found out, they would eat the child alive."
While the AIDS epidemic has plateaued elsewhere in the world, it is still progressing in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, according to Cantau. Nearly 21,200 new cases were reported in Ukraine in 2011, the highest number since the former Soviet republic registered its first case in 1987, and a 3 percent increase over 2010. As a result of limited and often delayed treatment, the number of AIDS-related deaths grew 17 percent last year to about 3,800.
Two years ago, Mandrykin, the prisoner, was on the verge of becoming part of that statistic, with his level of crucial CD4 immune cells — a way to measure the strength of the immune system — dropping to 11. In a healthy person, the CD4 count is usually over 600.
"I was lying in the hospital, I was dying," said Mandrykin, who is serving seven years for robbery, his fourth stint in jail. "It's a scary disease."
After two years of treatment in a small prison clinic, his CD4 count has risen to 159 and he feels much better, although he looks exhausted and is still too weak to work in the workshop of the medium-security prison.
The Ukrainian government currently focuses on testing and treating standard cases among the general population. The anti-retroviral treatment of more than 1,000 inmates, as well as some 10,000 HIV patients across Ukraine who also require treatment for tuberculosis and other complications and all prevention and support activities, are paid for by foreign donors, mainly the Global Fund.
The Global Fund is committed to spending $640 million through 2016 to fight AIDS and tuberculosis in Ukraine and then hopes to hand over most of its programs to the Ukrainian government.
Advocacy groups charge that corruption and indifference by government officials help fuel the epidemic.
During the past two years, Ukrainian authorities have seized vital AIDS drugs at the border due to technicalities, sent prosecutors to investigate AIDS support groups sponsored by the Global Fund and harassed patients on methadone substitution therapy, prompting the Global Fund to threaten to freeze its prevention grant.
Most recently, Ukraine's parliament gave initial approval to a bill that would impose jail terms of up to five years for any positive public depiction of homosexuality. Western organizations say it would make the work of AIDS prevention organizations that distribute condoms and teach safe homosexual sex illegal and further fuel the epidemic. It is unclear when the bill will come up for a final vote.
AIDS drug procurement is another headache, with Ukrainian health authorities greatly overpaying for AIDS drugs. Advocacy groups accuse health officials of embezzling funds by purchasing drugs at inflated prices and then pocketing kickbacks.
Officials deny those allegations, saying their tender procedures are transparent.
Much also remains to be done in Ukraine to educate people about AIDS.
Oksana Golubova, a 40-year-old former drug user, infected her daughter, now 8, with HIV and lost her first husband to AIDS. But she still has unprotected sex with her new husband, saying his health is in God's hands.
"Those who are afraid get infected," Golubova said.
Wall Street little changed; Obama to speak on "fiscal cliff"
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks were little changed on Friday as investors were hesitant to make big trading bets ahead of a statement by President Obama on the progress of budget talks.
Trading has been choppy lately, as investors buy on sporadic dips in the market and react to mixed headlines out of Washington regarding discussions on averting the "fiscal cliff," spending cuts and tax hikes that will come into effect in the new year.
U.S. President Barack Obama plans to travel to a factory in Pennsylvania to press his case on raising taxes on the wealthy to narrow the deficit.
The S&P 500 was on track to end the month 0.3 percent higher, after declining nearly 2 percent in October.
"The correction from the S&P 500's September peak has allowed overbought momentum and optimistic sentiment conditions to recede, and we believe the index is closer to an intermediate-term buy signal than a sell signal," said Ari Wald, analyst at PrinceRidge Group.
After a close relationship for several years, Facebook Inc
Zynga shares were down 6.5 percent at $2.45. Facebook shares were down 0.6 percent at $27.15.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 13.89 points, or 0.11 percent, at 13,035.71. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.35 points, or 0.02 percent, at 1,415.60. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 3.20 points, or 0.11 percent, at 3,008.83.
Whole Foods Market Inc
Data showed business activity in the U.S. Midwest expanded for the first time since August, a report showed on Friday, buoyed by an improvement in the labor market.
U.S. consumer spending fell in October for the first time in five months as income growth stalled, suggesting slower economic growth in the fourth quarter.
The equity market's reaction was muted to both data.
Apple Inc's latest iPhone has received final clearance from Chinese regulators, paving the way for a December debut in a highly competitive market where the lack of a new model had severely eroded its share of product sales. Shares of Apple were down 0.3 percent at $587.55.
(Editing by Bernadette Baum)
Palestinians win de facto U.N. recognition of sovereign state
Label: WorldUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly on Thursday overwhelmingly approved the de facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the world body to issue its long overdue "birth certificate."
The U.N. victory for the Palestinians was a diplomatic setback for the United States and Israel, which were joined by only a handful of countries in voting against the move to upgrade the Palestinian Authority's observer status at the United Nations to "non-member state" from "entity," like the Vatican.
Britain called on the United States to use its influence to help break the long impasse in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Washington also called for a revival of direct negotiations.
There were 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions. Three countries did not take part in the vote, held on the 65th anniversary of the adoption of U.N. resolution 181 that partitioned Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.
Thousands of flag-waving Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip set off fireworks and danced in the streets to celebrate the vote.
The assembly approved the upgrade despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinians by withholding funds for the West Bank government. U.N. envoys said Israel might not retaliate harshly against the Palestinians over the vote as long as they do not seek to join the International Criminal Court.
If the Palestinians were to join the ICC, they could file complaints with the court accusing Israel of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious crimes.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the vote "unfortunate and counterproductive," while the Vatican praised the move and called for an internationally guaranteed special status for Jerusalem, something bound to irritate Israel.
The much-anticipated vote came after Abbas denounced Israel from the U.N. podium for its "aggressive policies and the perpetration of war crimes," remarks that elicited a furious response from the Jewish state.
"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Abbas told the assembly after receiving a standing ovation.
"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded quickly, condemning Abbas' critique of Israel as "hostile and poisonous," and full of "false propaganda.
"These are not the words of a man who wants peace," Netanyahu said in a statement released by his office. He reiterated Israeli calls for direct talks with the Palestinians, dismissing Thursday's resolution as "meaningless."
ICC THREAT
A number of Western delegations noted that Thursday's vote should not be interpreted as formal legal recognition of a Palestinian state. Formal recognition of statehood is something that is done bilaterally, not by the United Nations.
Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it does have important legal implications - it would allow them access to the ICC and other international bodies, should they choose to join.
Abbas did not mention the ICC in his speech. But Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki told reporters after the vote that if Israel continued to build illegal settlements, the Palestinians might pursue the ICC route.
"As long as the Israelis are not committing atrocities, are not building settlements, are not violating international law, then we don't see any reason to go anywhere," he said.
"If the Israelis continue with such policy - aggression, settlements, assassinations, attacks, confiscations, building walls - violating international law, then we have no other remedy but really to knock those to other places," Maliki said.
In Washington, a group of four Republican and Democratic senators announced legislation that would close the Palestinian office in Washington unless the Palestinians enter "meaningful negotiations" with Israel, and eliminate all U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority if it turns to the ICC.
"I fear the Palestinian Authority will now be able to use the United Nations as a political club against Israel," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the sponsors.
Abbas led the campaign to win support for the resolution, which followed an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose a negotiated peace.
The vote highlighted how deeply divided Europe is on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
At least 17 European nations voted in favor of the Palestinian resolution, including Austria, France, Italy, Norway and Spain. Abbas had focused his lobbying efforts on Europe, which supplies much of the aid the Palestinian Authority relies on. Britain, Germany and many others chose to abstain.
The traditionally pro-Israel Czech Republic was unique in Europe, joining the United States, Israel, Canada, Panama and the tiny Pacific Island states Nauru, Palau, Marshall Islands and Micronesia in voting against the move.
'HOPE SOME REASON WILL PREVAIL'
Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world. There are 4.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
After the vote, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice called for the immediate resumption of peace talks.
"The Palestinian people will wake up tomorrow and find that little about their lives has changed save that the prospects of a durable peace have only receded," she said.
She added that both parties should "avoid any further provocative actions in the region, in New York or elsewhere."
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said he hoped all sides would use the vote to push for new breakthroughs in the peace process.
"I hope there will be no punitive measures," Fayyad told Reuters in Washington, where he was attending a conference.
"I hope that some reason will prevail and the opportunity will be taken to take advantage of what happened today in favor of getting a political process moving," he said.
Britain's U.N. ambassador, Mark Lyall Grant, told reporters it was time for recently re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama to make a new push for peace.
"We believe the window for the two-state solution is closing," he said. "That is why we are encouraging the United States and other key international actors to grasp this opportunity and use the next 12 months as a way to really break through this impasse."
(Additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington, Noah Browning in Ramallah, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Robert Mueller in Prague, Gabriela Baczynska and Reuters bureaux in Europe and elsewhere; Editing by Eric Beech and Peter Cooney)
The Xbox 720 Is Coming Sooner Than Anyone Anticipated
Label: TechnologyAfter almost three years without an update, and with Windows 8 sales flailing, Microsoft will release a new Xbox just in time for Christmas next year, sources told Bloomberg’s Dina Bass and Ian King. Last year Microsoft had said that it wouldn’t release a new version of the gaming system “anytime soon,” with other sources talking up a date sometime in 2013 “at the earliest.” This new Christmas launch makes perfect sense for the video-game nerd anticipated “Xbox 720,” as the rumorers refer to it. An Xbox is one of those it toys that gets people lining up at 3 a.m. during holiday shopping craziness. Even the aging 360 console has managed to double the sales of the new Nintendo Wii so far this holiday season, according to numbers from the NDP Group. Microsoft hasn’t put out an entirely new console since 2005, which led to riots during Black Friday of that year.
RELATED: Foxconn Is Still a Hard Place to Work
And Microsoft needs a super-anticipated something, since Windows 8 sales fell so flat this year. After whispers that the new operating system wasn’t selling well, NDP research group found that sales fell 21 percent for new computers running Windows. The research group doesn’t measure sales from Microsoft stores or online, but Microsoft has said most of its sales come from third-party retailers like Best Buy anyway. Windows 8 tablet sales were almost “nonexistent” said the report, making up just 1 percent of all Windows 8 sales. Yeesh. However, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said he is playing the long game on this one, claiming that people will get used to the new look and when they do fall in love with it. Maybe the people will line up for Windows 8 next year, too?
RELATED: Amazon’s New Cloud Music Player Is Great, But Is It Legal?
If not, though, the new Xbox sounds like an upgrade that will get gamers excited and buying. As for what exactly the gadget will look like, the rumorers say it will be cheaper and smaller than the 360, which retails starting at $ 300. In addition, it will have an udpated Kinect controller, a quad core processor, 8GB Ram, Blu-Ray, and augmented reality glasses, according to “leaked reports.”
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Judge Judy Becomes a Grandma for 12th Time
Label: LifestyleBy Julia Haskins
11/29/2012 at 11:00 AM EST
Judy Sheindlin
Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage
It's grandbaby no. 12 for Judge Judy, and the famously tough TV star has some words of wisdom – as always.
"Welcoming this beautiful little girl is a treat, but whoever said it's cheaper by the dozen ... hasn't had a dozen grandchildren," Judy Sheindlin told the New York Post Thursday.
Sheindlin's son Gregory Sheindlin, a lawyer, and his wife Laurie Sheindlin, a video producer, are now the parents of their first child, Daniella Grace Pila Sheindlin.
Judy and her husband Judge Jerry Sheindlin, a former Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, have five children between them and now a nice (and even) number of grandkids. Congrats!
– Julia Haskins
Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Preventing surgery-linked infections is a major concern for hospitals and it turns out some simple measures can make a big difference.
A project at seven big hospitals reduced infections after colorectal surgeries by nearly one-third. It prevented an estimated 135 infections, saving almost $4 million, the Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons announced Wednesday. The two groups directed the 2 1/2-year project.
Solutions included having patients shower with special germ-fighting soap before surgery, and having surgery teams change gowns, gloves and instruments during operations to prevent spreading germs picked up during the procedures.
Some hospitals used special wound-protecting devices on surgery openings to keep intestine germs from reaching the skin.
The average rate of infections linked with colorectal operations at the seven hospitals dropped from about 16 percent of patients during a 10-month phase when hospitals started adopting changes to almost 11 percent once all the changes had been made.
Hospital stays for patients who got infections dropped from an average of 15 days to 13 days, which helped cut costs.
"The improvements translate into safer patient care," said Dr. Mark Chassin, president of the Joint Commission. "Now it's our job to spread these effective interventions to all hospitals."
Almost 2 million health care-related infections occur each year nationwide; more than 90,000 of these are fatal.
Besides wanting to keep patients healthy, hospitals have a monetary incentive to prevent these infections. Medicare cuts payments to hospitals that have lots of certain health care-related infections, and those cuts are expected to increase under the new health care law.
The project involved surgeries for cancer and other colorectal problems. Infections linked with colorectal surgery are particularly common because intestinal tract bacteria are so abundant.
To succeed at reducing infection rates requires hospitals to commit to changing habits, "to really look in the mirror and identify these things," said Dr. Clifford Ko of the American College of Surgeons.
The hospitals involved were Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles; Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; Mayo Clinic-Rochester Methodist Hospital in Rochester, Minn.; North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System in Great Neck, NY; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; OSF Saint Francis Medical Center in Peoria, Ill.; and Stanford Hospital & Clinics in Palo Alto, Calif.
___
Online:
Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org
American College of Surgeons: http://www.facs.org
___
AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner
Wall Street cuts gains on "fiscal cliff" worry
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - A young model was either insane, or a calculating, quick-thinking murderer who feigned mental illness when he killed and castrated his lover, a prominent Portuguese journalist, in their New York hotel room last year, a jury heard on Wednesday. No one disputes that Renato Seabra, 22, killed Carlos Castro, 65, in January 2011. Seabra pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to a charge of second degree murder, and his trial reached closing arguments at Manhattan criminal court. ...
Read More..
U.N. set to implicitly recognize Palestinian state, despite threats
Label: WorldUNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly is set to implicitly recognize a sovereign state of Palestine on Thursday despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinian Authority by withholding much-needed funds for the West Bank government.
A resolution that would lift the Palestinian Authority's U.N. observer status from "entity" to "non-member state," like the Vatican, is expected to pass easily in the 193-nation General Assembly. At least 15 European states plan to vote for it.
Israel, the United States and a handful of other members are set to vote against what they see as a largely symbolic and counterproductive move by the Palestinians, which takes place on the 65th anniversary of the assembly's adoption of resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been leading the campaign to win support for the resolution, which follows an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose his efforts toward a negotiated peace.
The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday that Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns and U.S. Middle East peace envoy David Hale traveled to New York on Wednesday in a last-ditch effort to get Abbas to reconsider.
The Palestinians gave no sign they were turning back.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated to reporters in Washington on Wednesday the U.S. view that the Palestinian move was misguided and efforts should focus instead on reviving the stalled Middle East peace process.
"The path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York," she said. "The only way to get a lasting solution is to commence direct negotiations."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reiterated U.S. warnings that the move could cause a reduction of U.S. economic support for the Palestinians. The Israelis have also warned they might take significant deductions out of monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinians' behalf.
Despite its fierce opposition, Israel seems concerned not to find itself diplomatically isolated. It has recently toned down threats of retaliation in the face of wide international support for the initiative, notably among its European allies.
"The decision at the United Nations will change nothing on the ground," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Jerusalem. "It will not advance the establishment of a Palestinian state. It will delay it further.
CRIMINAL COURT ACCESS
Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it would allow them access to the International Criminal Court and other international bodies, should they choose to join them.
Hanan Ashrawi, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official, told a news conference in Ramallah that "the Palestinians can't be blackmailed all the time with money."
"If Israel wants to destabilize the whole region, it can," she said. "We are talking to the Arab world about their support, if Israel responds with financial measures, and the EU has indicated they will not stop their support to us."
Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world. There are 4.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
In the draft resolution, the Palestinians have pledged to relaunch the peace process immediately following the U.N. vote.
As there is little doubt about how the United States will vote when the resolution is put to a vote sometime after 3 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority has been concentrating its efforts on lobbying wealthy European states, diplomats say.
With strong support from the developing world that makes up the majority of U.N. members, it is virtually assured of securing more than the requisite simple majority. Palestinian officials hope for more than 130 yes votes.
Abbas has been trying to get as many European votes as possible.
Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland all pledged to support the resolution. Britain said it was prepared to vote yes, but only if the Palestinians fulfilled certain conditions.
The fiercely pro-Israel Czech Republic was planning to vote against the move, dashing European hopes of avoiding a three-way split in the continent's vote.
It was unclear whether some of the many undecided Europeans would join the Czechs. Germany, Hungary and the Netherlands plan to abstain, like Estonia and Lithuania.
Ashrawi said the positive responses from European states were encouraging and sent a message of hope to all Palestinians.
"This constitutes a historical turning point and opportunity for the world to rectify a grave historical injustice that the Palestinians have undergone since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948," she said.
A strong backing from European nations could make it awkward for Israel to implement harsh retaliatory measures. But Israel's reaction might not be so measured if the Palestinians seek ICC action against Israel on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes the court would have jurisdiction over.
Israel also seems wary of weakening the Western-backed Abbas, especially after the political boost rival Hamas received from recent solidarity visits to Gaza by top officials from Egypt, Qatar and Tunisia.
Hamas militants, who control Gaza and have had icy relations with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, unexpectedly offered Abbas their support this week.
(Andrew Quinn in Washington, Noah Browning in Ramallah, Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem, Michelle Nichols in New York, Robert Mueller in Prague and Reuters bureaux in Europe and elsewhere; Editing by Xavier Briand)
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