Finola Hughes has called the upcoming 50th anniversary of "General Hospital" a "really sweet" moment."I think the fact that we, at 'GH,' are doing so well right now, and to enter into our 50th anniversary on such a high, it feels really sweet," the actress, who plays Port Charles Police Chief Anna Devane, told Access Hollywood, when asked about the daytime drama's impending anniversary.
Read More..
Meteorite hits central Russia, more than 500 people hurt
Label: WorldCHELYABINSK, Russia (Reuters) - More than 500 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, sending fireballs crashing to Earth, shattering windows and damaging buildings.
People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave according to a Reuters correspondent in the industrial city 950 miles east of Moscow.
A fireball blazed across the horizon, leaving a long white trail in its wake which could be seen as far as 125 miles away in Yekaterinburg. Car alarms went off, windows shattered and mobile phone networks were interrupted.
"I was driving to work, it was quite dark, but it suddenly became as bright as if it was day," said Viktor Prokofiev, 36, a resident of Yekaterinburg in the Urals Mountains.
"I felt like I was blinded by headlights," he said.
No fatalities were reported but President Vladimir Putin, who was due to host Finance Ministry officials from the Group of 20 nations in Moscow, and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev were informed.
A local ministry official said such incidents were extremely rare and Friday's events might have been linked to an asteroid the size of an Olympic swimming pool due to pass Earth at a distance of 17,100 miles but this was not confirmed.
Russia's space agency Roscosmos said the meteorite was travelling at a speed of 19 miles per second and that such events were hard to predict. The Interior Ministry said the meteorite explosion had caused a sonic boom.
Russia's Emergencies Ministry said 514 people had sought medical help, mainly for light injuries caused by flying glass, and that 112 of those were kept in hospital. Search groups were set up to look for the remains of the meteorite.
"There have never been any cases of meteorites breaking up at such a low level over Russia before," said Yuri Burenko, head of the Chelyabinsk branch of the Emergencies Ministry.
WINDOWS BREAK, FRAMES BUCKLE
Windows were shattered on Chelyabinsk's central Lenin Street and some of the frames of shop fronts buckled.
A loud noise, resembling an explosion, rang out at around 9.20 a.m. (12:20 a.m. ET). The shockwave could be felt in apartment buildings in the industrial city's center.
"I was standing at a bus stop, seeing off my girlfriend," said Andrei, a local resident who did not give his second name. "Then there was a flash and I saw a trail of smoke across the sky and felt a shockwave that smashed windows."
A wall was damaged at the Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant but a spokeswoman said there was no environmental threat.
Although such events are rare, a meteorite is thought to have devastated an area of more than 1,250 miles in Siberia in 1908, smashing windows as far as 125 miles from the point of impact.
The Emergencies Ministry described Friday's events as a "meteor shower in the form of fireballs" and said background radiation levels were normal. It urged residents not to panic.
Chelyabinsk city authorities urged people to stay indoors unless they needed to pick up their children from schools and kindergartens. They said what sounded like a blast had been heard at an altitude of 32,800 feet.
The U.S. space agency NASA has said an asteroid known as 2012 DA14, about 46 meters in diameter, would have an encounter with Earth closer than any asteroid since scientists began routinely monitoring them about 15 years ago.
Television, weather and communications satellites fly about 500 miles higher. The moon is 14 times farther away.
(Additional reporting by Natalia Shurmina in Yekaterinburg and Gabriela Baczynska in Moscow, Writing by Alexei Anishchuk and Timothy Heritage, Editing by Michael Holden)
Facebook wins German court fight on fake names ban
Label: TechnologyBERLIN (AP) — Facebook has won a court battle against a German privacy watchdog that challenged the social networking site‘s policy requiring users to register with their real names.
Schleswig-Holstein state’s data protection body said Friday it will appeal the court decision. It argues the ban on fake names breaches German privacy laws and European rules designed to protect free speech online.
The administrative court in northern German Schleswig argued in its ruling Thursday that German privacy laws weren’t applicable because Facebook has its European headquarters in Ireland — which has less far-reaching rules.
The California-based company argues its real name policy protects users.
Germany’s strict privacy rules have posed a legal headache for Facebook, Google and others in recent years, giving consumers significant rights to limit the way companies use their information.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Title Post: Facebook wins German court fight on fake names ban
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/facebook-wins-german-court-fight-on-fake-names-ban/
Link To Post : Facebook wins German court fight on fake names ban
Rating:
100%
based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author:
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment
Valentine's Day Playlist for All the Single Ladies
Label: LifestyleIt's Valentine's Day – and you know what that means.
Your coworkers are all wearing red. (You're in black.)
Your "couple friends" are making Facebook positively nauseating today with multiple "I love you, schmoopie" posts. (You posted a link to a news article on rising divorce rates.)
Cut-outs of a certain flying, fat baby line store windows. (You think it's no coincidence that Cupid rhymes with stupid.)
If the above describes you, then we've got the soundtrack to your Valentine's Day! Whether you're sticking pins in a voodoo doll of your ex, or refusing to commit to just one man, embrace your solo status with single-and-lovin'-it anthems from Madonna, TLC and more.
Morning-after pill use up to 1 in 9 younger women
Label: HealthNEW YORK (AP) — About 1 in 9 younger women have used the morning-after pill after sex, according to the first government report to focus on emergency contraception since its approval 15 years ago.
The results come from a survey of females ages 15 to 44. Eleven percent of those who'd had sex reported using a morning-after pill. That's up from 4 percent in 2002, only a few years after the pills went on the market and adults still needed a prescription.
The increased popularity is probably because it is easier to get now and because of media coverage of controversial efforts to lift the age limit for over-the-counter sales, experts said. A prescription is still required for those younger than 17 so it is still sold from behind pharmacy counters.
In the study, half the women who used the pills said they did it because they'd had unprotected sex. Most of the rest cited a broken condom or worries that the birth control method they used had failed.
White women and more educated women use it the most, the research showed. That's not surprising, said James Trussell, a Princeton University researcher who's studied the subject.
"I don't think you can go to college in the United States and not know about emergency contraception," said Trussell, who has promoted its use and started a hot line.
One Pennsylvania college even has a vending machine dispensing the pills.
The morning-after pill is basically a high-dose version of birth control pills. It prevents ovulation and needs to be taken within a few days after sex. The morning-after pill is different from the so-called abortion pill, which is designed to terminate a pregnancy.
At least five versions of the morning-after pills are sold in the United States. They cost around $35 to $60 a dose at a pharmacy, depending on the brand.
Since it is sold over-the-counter, insurers generally only pay for it with a doctor's prescription. The new Affordable Care Act promises to cover morning-after pills, meaning no co-pays, but again only with a prescription.
The results of the study were released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It's based on in-person interviews of more than 12,000 women in 2006 through 2010. It was the agency's first in-depth report on that issue, said Kimberly Daniels, the study's lead author.
The study also found:
—Among different age groups, women in their early 20s were more likely to have taken a morning-after pill. About 1 in 4 did.
—About 1 in 5 never-married women had taken a morning-after pill, compared to just 1 in 20 married women.
—Of the women who used the pill, 59 percent said they had done it only once, 24 percent said twice, and 17 percent said three or more times.
A woman who uses emergency contraception multiple times "needs to be thinking about a more regular form" of birth control, noted Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that does research on reproductive health.
Also on Thursday, the CDC released a report on overall contraception use. Among its many findings, 99 percent of women who've had sex used some sort of birth control. That includes 82 percent who used birth control pills and 93 percent whose partner had used a condom.
___
Online:
CDC report: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/
Emergency contraception info: http://ec.princeton.edu/index.html
Wall Street falls on Europe data but deals support
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks dipped on Thursday after traders cashed in some of their recent gains following weaker-than-expected economic growth data from Europe and Japan, though declines were limited by news on mergers and acquisitions.
A contraction of 0.6 percent in gross domestic product in the euro zone was the steepest for the bloc since the first quarter of 2009, while Japan's GDP shrank 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, crushing expectations of a modest return to growth.
The persisting weakness in Europe and its implications for global growth and U.S. corporate profits prompted some investors to lock in recent profits.
The S&P 500 is still up more than 6 percent so far this year and is hovering near its highest level since November 2007.
U.S. data showed the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits fell more than expected in the latest week. That suggests the job market is improving, said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.
"But it won't be much of a catalyst for the market this morning because of ... the news out of Europe," he said.
Cardillo said a weaker euro, down 0.8 percent versus the U.S. dollar, was also a downward pressure on markets.
The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> fell 13.86 points or 0.1 percent, to 13,969.05, the S&P 500 <.spx> lost 2.18 points or 0.14 percent, to 1,518.15 and the Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> dropped 8.12 points or 0.25 percent, to 3,188.76.
Shrinking European economies translated to a 5-percent drop in revenue from the region for Cisco Systems
General Motors Co
Recent news on mergers and acquisitions led some investors to bid up shares of related companies.
H.J. Heinz Co
American Airlines and US Airways Group
Constellation Brands
(Additional reporting by Angela Moon; Editing by Bernadette Baum)
"Blade Runner" Pistorius charged with murdering girlfriend
Label: WorldJOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged on Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend at his upscale home in Pretoria.
Police said they opened a murder case after a 30-year-old woman was found dead at the Paralympic and Olympic star's house in the Silverlakes gated complex on the capital's outskirts.
Pistorius, 26, and his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp, had been the only people in the house at the time of the shooting, police brigadier Denise Beukes, told reporters, adding witnesses had been interviewed about the early morning incident.
"We are talking about neighbors and people that heard things earlier in the evening and when the shooting took place," Beukes said outside the heavily guarded residential complex. Earlier, police said a 9mm pistol had been found at the scene.
Beukes said police were aware of previous incidents at the Pistorius house. "I can confirm that there has previously been incidents at the home of Mr Oscar Pistorious, of allegations of domestic nature," she said.
Pistorius, who uses carbon fiber prosthetic blades to run, is due to appear in a Pretoria court on Friday.
"He is doing well but very emotional," his lawyer Kenny Oldwage told SABC TV, but gave no further comment.
A sports icon for triumphing over disabilities to compete with able-bodied athletes at the Olympics, his sponsorship deals, including one with sports apparel group Nike, are thought to be worth $2 million a year.
South Africa's M-Net cable TV channel said it was pulling adverts featuring Pistorius off air immediately.
"WE ARE ALL DEVASTATED"
Steenkamp's colleagues in the modeling world were distraught. "We are all devastated. Her family is in shock," her agent, Sarita Tomlinson, tearfully told Reuters. "They did have a good relationship. Nobody actually knows what happened."
Pistorius, who was born without a fibula in both legs, was the first double amputee to run in the Olympics and reached the 400-metre semi-finals in London 2012.
In last year's Paralympics he suffered his first loss over 200 meters in nine years. After the race he questioned the legitimacy of Brazilian winner Alan Oliveira's prosthetic blades, though he was quick to express regret for the comments.
South Africa has some of the world's highest rates of violent crime, and many home owners have weapons to defend themselves against intruders, although Pistorius' complex is surrounded by a three-meter high wall and electric fence.
In 2004, Springbok rugby player Rudi Visagie shot dead his 19-year-old daughter after he mistakenly thought she was a robber trying to steal his car in the middle of the night.
Before the murder charge was announced, Johannesburg's Talk Radio 702 said the athlete may have mistaken Steenkamp for a burglar.
Recent media interviews with Pistorius revealed he kept an assortment of weapons in his home.
"Cricket and baseball bats lay behind the door, a pistol by his bed and a machine gun by a window," Britain's Daily Mail wrote in a profile published last year.
Pistorius was arrested in 2009 for assault after slamming a door on a woman and spent a night in police custody. Family and friends said it was just an accident and charges were dropped.
"He's very quiet and very modest but he's a big party animal," one of South Africa's top runners, who knows Pistorius, told Reuters. "I've been with him when we've been smashed and he never seemed violent," said the runner, who declined to be named.
OLYMPIAN UNDERGOES POLICE TESTS
Steenkamp, a regular on the South African social scene, was reported to have been dating Pistorius for several months.
In the social pages of last weekend's Sunday Independent she described him as having "impeccable" taste. "His gifts are always thoughtful," she was quoted as saying.
Some of her last Twitter postings indicated she was looking forward to Valentine's Day on Thursday. "What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow???" she posted.
Pistorius was on Thursday being processed through the police system. "At this stage he is on his way to a district surgeon for medical examination," the police brigadier said.
"When a person has been accused of a crime like murder they look at things like testing under the finger nails, taking a blood alcohol sample and all kinds of other test that are done. They are standard medical tests," Beukes said.
Pistorius is also sponsored by British telecoms firm BT, sunglasses maker Oakley and French designer Thierry Mugler.
"We are shocked by this terrible, tragic news. We await the outcome of the South African police investigation," a BT spokeswoman said before Pistorius was charged.
A Nike spokesman in London said before hearing of the murder charge that the company was "saddened by the news, but we have no further comment to make at this stage".
Pistorius also has a sponsorship deal with Icelandic prosthetics manufacturer Ossur.
"I can only say that our thoughts and prayers are with Oscar and the families involved in the tragedy," Ossur CEO Jon Sigurdsson told Reuters. "It is completely premature to discuss or speculate on our business relationship with him."
Neighbors expressed shock at the arrest of a "good guy".
"It is difficult to imagine an intruder entering this community, but we live in a country where intruders can get in wherever they want to," said one Silverlakes resident, who did not want to be named.
"Oscar is a good guy, an upstanding neighbor, and if he is innocent I feel for this guy deeply," he said.
(Additional reporting by Sherilee Lakmidas, David Dolan, Ed Cropley, Jon Herskovitz, Keith Weir and Kate Holton; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Will Waterman and Peter Millership)
Xbox founder: Apple TV gaming could ‘simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox’
Label: TechnologyThe Xbox is one of the best things that Microsoft (MSFT) has going for it right now, but one of the console’s founding engineers thinks the company is in grave danger of getting its hide handed to it by Apple (AAPL)… again. Nat Brown, a former Microsoft engineer who worked at the company until 1999 and who was one of the founders of the Xbox project, has written a long post on his personal blog making the case that Microsoft has only been winning the console wars over the past couple of years because Sony (SNE) and Nintendo (NTDOY) have been screwing up so badly. He also tears apart the company’s strategy for allowing independent game developers to create games for the platform, saying that the process for developing and distributing games on the console is far too cumbersome.
[More from BGR: Every 10 years, a cataclysm kills off most phone brands – the next one is almost here]
“Xbox’s primary critical problem is the lack of a functional and growing platform ecosystem for small developers to sell digitally-/network-distributed (non-disc) content through to the installed base of Xbox customers, period,” he writes, while detailing how Microsoft has thrown up all sorts of red tape to prevent small gaming developers from easily selling their games on the Xbox platform. “Microsoft, you are idiotic to have ceded not just indie game developers but also a generation of loyal kids and teens to making games for other people’s mobile devices.”
[More from BGR: Apple iWatch: People are getting excited for all the wrong reasons]
Brown wishes that Microsoft had the foresight to adopt the model for game and app distribution that iOS and Android have used to create enormous mobile gaming ecosystems and made fortunes for formerly unknown gaming companies such as Rovio. And to make things worse, Brown thinks that Apple could make a big move into the gaming sphere if it adding a gaming ecosystem to its Apple TV platform that made it just as easy to develop independent games for the big screen as it is to develop games for the iPad.
“Apple, if it chooses to do so, will simply kill PlayStation, Wii U and Xbox by introducing an open 30%-cut app/game ecosystem for Apple TV,” he writes. “I already make a lot of money on iOS — I will be the first to write apps for Apple TV when I can, and I know I’ll make money. I would for Xbox if I could and I knew I would make money.”
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Stephen Fishbach Blogs: Show's Worst Players Will Make Survivor: Caramoan Great
Label: Lifestyle
TV Watch
Survivor
Stephen Fishbach was the runner-up on Survivor: Tocantins and has been blogging about Survivor strategy for PEOPLE.com since 2009. Follow him on Twitter @stephenfishbach.
"Survivor's not meant to be a comedy routine."
– Cochran, Survivor: South Pacific
Here's a riddle for you: What do a zombie, a flip-flopper and two train wrecks have in common?
They're all part of a new cast of "favorites" on Survivor: Caramoan (Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET on CBS), the new season that matches 10 new competitors against some of the worst players in the show's history. Game on?
Survivor may be the only competitive event on earth where being awful makes you an all-star. Brandon Hantz and Erik Reichenbach share the distinction of literally making the worst moves ever when they both sacrificed individual immunity right at the endgame, and were immediately blindsided.
John Cochran ruined his own game – as well as his entire tribe's – with a horrendous flip. Francesca Hogi was first off. Corinne Kaplan would have lost a jury vote to Phillip Sheppard. Brenda Lowe's alliance betrayed her. Andrea Boehlke shambled along as part of Boston Rob's zombie army. Even Dawn Meehan – a paragon of normalcy in the lunatic asylum of the Favorites tribe – had an early-season breakdown.
How did Malcolm Freberg slip into this casting net that only dragged for bottom-feeders? Gazing around that island on day one, he must have wondered what he did so wrong. Remember – nobody had seen Malcolm's season, himself included. Even he made a catastrophic, head-slapping move when he didn't guarantee Denise a deal at the Philippines final four.
Where's Jim Rice? Where's Marty Piombo? For the love of God, where's Jane Bright? They were big characters ... and also big players. It's like this cast was specially selected to only include the very worst. You were disqualified from coming if your Survivor IQ was above a flatline.
The producers, of course, know exactly what they're doing. Even the show's promos are set to the tune of Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." The more shouting matches there are, the more emotional cataclysms, the more cultural moments the show creates, the more people Tweet. And the greater the odds that a clip winds up on The Soup.
The cast of Survivor: Caramoan
Monty Brinton / CBS
Bad Means Good
Don't get me wrong – I'm not complaining. Survivor is a TV show, not a political convention. Bring on the crazy. It's unreasonable to compare this season to some idealized memory of what the show once was: 16 strangers who stop being polite and start getting malnourished. Let's get a cast full of Phillips out there communing with their ancient ancestors and misquoting the Bhagavadi Gita. Could you ask for better television?Furthermore, lunatics can create big challenges for a strategist. It's easy to play a game against someone who's behaving rationally. How do you manipulate a person whose only allegiances are to camera time and the voices in their head? We could see the emergence of a Survivor super-genius.
And some players really need a second chance to mature. Parvati Shallow wasn't Parvati her first time out. I could see Brenda or Corinne or Dawn doing something ferocious. I've long argued it stunts new players to be cast on a tribe with returnees. How might Cochran or Francesca fare without Ozzy or Boston Rob overshadowing them?
Oh – and the fans? Does anybody really care about the fans? They're like the gladiators thrown into the lion pit: there to be eaten. As horrible as the favorites are, there's no comparison between watching a few seasons on television and in-game experience.
Of course, it's always possible for someone to pull a Running Man (the Schwarzenegger movie, not the dance move) and beat the favorites at their own game. If it's going to be anyone, my money's on Reynold Toepfer. He has a kind of Malcolm-ish vibe – strategic, athletic, and social. It didn't hurt that he gave me a shout-out in his "Survivor memorable moment." See below.
Pre-season Fishy for Reynold! Because it's gotta go to somebody!
Report: Tracking system needed to fight fake drugs
Label: HealthWASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday.
The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient.
Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. pharmaceutical companies move more of their manufacturing overseas. The risk made headlines in 2008 when U.S. patients died from a contaminated blood thinner imported from China.
The Institute of Medicine report made clear that this is a global problem that requires an international response, with developing countries especially at risk from phony medications. Drug-resistant tuberculosis, for example, is fueled in part by watered-down medications sold in many poor countries.
"There can be nothing worse than for a patient to take a medication that either doesn't work or poisons the patient," said Lawrence O. Gostin, a professor of health law at Georgetown University who led the IOM committee that studied how to combat the growing problem.
A mandatory drug-tracking system could use some form of barcodes or electronic tags to verify that a medication and the ingredients used to make it are authentic at every step, from the manufacturing of the active ingredient all the way to the pharmacy, he said. His committee examined fakes so sophisticated that health experts couldn't tell the difference between the packaging of the FDA-approved product and the look-alike.
"It's unreliable unless you know where it's been and can secure each point in the supply chain," Gostin said.
Patient safety advocates have pushed for that kind of tracking system for years, but attempts to include it in FDA drug-safety legislation last summer failed.
The report also concluded that:
—The World Health Organization should develop an international code of practice that sets guidelines for monitoring, regulation and law enforcement to crack down on fake drugs.
—States should beef up licensing requirements for the wholesalers and distributors who get a drug from its manufacturer to the pharmacy, hospital or doctor's office.
__Internet pharmacies are a particularly weak link, because fraudulent sites can mimic legitimate ones. The report urged wider promotion of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy's online accreditation program as a tool to help consumers spot trustworthy sites.
The Institute of Medicine is an independent organization that advises the government on health matters.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Copyright © News cachalot. All rights reserved.
Design 
