Clinton releases road map for AIDS-free generation

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an ambitious road map for slashing the global spread of AIDS, the Obama administration says treating people sooner and more rapid expansion of other proven tools could help even the hardest-hit countries begin turning the tide of the epidemic over the next three to five years.

"An AIDS-free generation is not just a rallying cry — it is a goal that is within our reach," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who ordered the blueprint, said in the report.

"Make no mistake about it, HIV may well be with us into the future but the disease that it causes need not be," she said at the State Department Thursday.

President Barack Obama echoed that promise.

"We stand at a tipping point in the fight against HIV/AIDS, and working together, we can realize our historic opportunity to bring that fight to an end," Obama said in a proclamation to mark World AIDS Day on Saturday.

Some 34 million people worldwide are living with HIV, and despite a decline in new infections over the last decade, 2.5 million people were infected last year.

Given those staggering figures, what does an AIDS-free generation mean? That virtually no babies are born infected, young people have a much lower risk than today of becoming infected, and that people who already have HIV would receive life-saving treatment.

That last step is key: Treating people early in their infection, before they get sick, not only helps them survive but also dramatically cuts the chances that they'll infect others. Yet only about 8 million HIV patients in developing countries are getting treatment. The United Nations aims to have 15 million treated by 2015.

Other important steps include: Treating more pregnant women, and keeping them on treatment after their babies are born; increasing male circumcision to lower men's risk of heterosexual infection; increasing access to both male and female condoms; and more HIV testing.

The world spent $16.8 billion fighting AIDS in poor countries last year. The U.S. government is the leading donor, spending about $5.6 billion.

Thursday's report from PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, outlines how progress could continue at current spending levels — something far from certain as Congress and Obama struggle to avert looming budget cuts at year's end — or how faster progress is possible with stepped-up commitments from hard-hit countries themselves.

Clinton warned Thursday that the U.S. must continue doing its share: "In the fight against HIV/AIDS, failure to live up to our commitments isn't just disappointing, it's deadly."

The report highlighted Zambia, which already is seeing some declines in new cases of HIV. It will have to treat only about 145,000 more patients over the next four years to meet its share of the U.N. goal, a move that could prevent more than 126,000 new infections in that same time period. But if Zambia could go further and treat nearly 198,000 more people, the benefit would be even greater — 179,000 new infections prevented, the report estimates.

In contrast, if Zambia had to stick with 2011 levels of HIV prevention, new infections could level off or even rise again over the next four years, the report found.

Advocacy groups said the blueprint offers a much-needed set of practical steps to achieve an AIDS-free generation — and makes clear that maintaining momentum is crucial despite economic difficulties here and abroad.

"The blueprint lays out the stark choices we have: To stick with the baseline and see an epidemic flatline or grow, or ramp up" to continue progress, said Chris Collins of amFAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research.

His group has estimated that more than 276,000 people would miss out on HIV treatment if U.S. dollars for the global AIDS fight are part of across-the-board spending cuts set to begin in January.

Thursday's report also urges targeting the populations at highest risk, including gay men, injecting drug users and sex workers, especially in countries where stigma and discrimination has denied them access to HIV prevention services.

"We have to go where the virus is," Clinton said.

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Wall Street trims gains, volatile after Boehner remarks

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks climbed on Thursday, but shed some earlier gains, after John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, poured cold water on hopes that lawmakers were getting closer to cutting a budget deal that would avert a possible recession next year.

Boehner's comment - that no "substantive" progress had been made in fiscal talks with the White House - was the latest in a string of contrary pronouncements by policymakers that have wobbled the markets as investors attempt to speculate over whether Washington will finally cut a deal.

There have been some signs that leaders are moving closer to a fiscal agreement. The S&P 500 has gained nearly 5 percent after dropping almost 8 percent following the U.S. election in November. But investors remain wary that ad hoc statements from politicians can spark quick reversals in the market.

"When the sentiment is that nothing is going to get done, it does create a lot of anxiety and selling pressure. If there's any sense of progress, then the market seems to rally," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago. "I think we're hostage to this for the rest of the year."

Discussions are ongoing in Congress over avoiding big spending cuts and tax hikes, known as the "fiscal cliff," that will begin to take effect from January.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 6.95 points, or 0.05 percent, to 12,992.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> gained 3.40 points, or 0.24 percent, to 1,413.33. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> gained 11.82 points, or 0.40 percent, to 3,003.60.

U.S.-listed shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion surged 5.9 percent to $11.75 after Goldman Sachs upgraded the stock to "buy" from "neutral" on optimistic ahead of the launch of the BlackBerry 10 smartphone.

Shares of top retailers retreated in the wake of data showing a weak start to November sales after superstorm Sandy. Target fell 1.6 percent to $61.80 percent and Kohl's Corp dropped 8.2 percent to $46.94.

The U.S. economy grew faster than initially thought in the third quarter as businesses restocked, but consumer and business spending were revised lower in a sobering reminder of the economic recovery's underlying weakness.

Gross domestic product expanded at a 2.7 percent annual rate in the quarter, the Commerce Department said, as export growth helped offset the weakest consumer spending and first drop in business investment in more than a year.

Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes rose more than expected in October, a sign the housing market recovery advanced into the fourth quarter despite a mammoth storm and concerns over looming tax hikes.

Shares of companies that build homes rose. The PHLX housing index <.hgx> rose 0.4 percent, shedding some earlier gains in line with the pullback in the broader market.

Tiffany shares slumped 6.7 percent to $59.48 after the upscale jeweler reported quarterly results and cut its full-year sales and profit forecasts.

Although domestic events largely dominated investors' attention, the euro zone is still on the radar. The yield on Italy's 10-year bonds fell to the lowest in two years at an auction, amid relief that international lenders reached agreement this week to reduce Greece's debt by more than 40 billion euros.

"The fact that the bond sales in Europe went well suggest confidence is beginning to reenter some of the peripheral nations and that is a good sign," said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Rockwell Global Capital in New York.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Valetkevitch; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

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Hacking Report Criticizes Murdoch Newspaper and British Press Standards

LONDON — The leader of a major inquiry into the standards of British newspapers triggered by the phone hacking scandal offered an excoriating critique of the press as a whole on Thursday, saying it displayed “significant and reckless disregard for accuracy,” and urged the press to form an independent regulator to be underpinned by law.

Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson on Thursday with his inquiry on press standards.

The report singled out Rupert Murdoch’s defunct tabloid The News of the World for sharp criticism.

“Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility, or considering the consequences for the individuals involved,” the head of the inquiry, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, said in a 46-page summary of the findings in his long-awaited, 1,987-page report published in four volumes.

“The ball moves back into the politicians’ court,” Sir Brian said, referring to what form new and tighter regulations should take. “They must now decide who guards the guardians.”

The report was published after some 337 witnesses testified in person in 9 months of hearings that sought to unravel the close ties between politicians, the press and the police, reaching into what were depicted as an opaque web of links and cross-links within the British elite as well as a catalog of murky and sometimes unlawful practices within the newspaper industry.

“This inquiry has been the most concentrated look at the press this country has ever seen,” Sir Brian said after the report was made public.

But in a first reaction, Prime Minister David Cameron resisted the report’s recommendation that a new form of press regulation should be underpinned by laws, telling lawmakers that they “should be wary” of “crossing the Rubicon” by enacting legislation with the potential to limit free speech and free expression.

Mr. Cameron’s remarks drew immediate criticism from the leader of the Labour opposition, Ed Miliband, who said Sir Brian’s proposals should be accepted in their entirety.

Mr. Cameron ordered the Leveson Inquiry in July, 2011, as the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World blossomed into broad public revulsion with reports that the newspaper had ordered the interception of voice mail messages left on the cellphone of Milly Dowler, a British teenager who was abducted in 2002 and later found murdered. Sir Brian said there had been a “failure of management and compliance” at the 168-year-old News of the World, which Mr. Murdoch closed in July, 2011, accusing it of a “general lack of respect for individual privacy and dignity.”

“It was said that The News of the World had lost its way in relation to phone hacking,” the summary said. “Its casual attitude to privacy and the lip service it paid to consent demonstrated a far more general loss of direction.”

Speaking after the report was published, Sir Brian said that while the British press held a “privileged and powerful place in our society,” its “responsibilities have simply been ignored.”

“A free press in a democracy holds power to account. But, with a few honorable exceptions, the U.K. press has not performed that vital role in the case of its own power.”

“The press needs to establish a new regulatory body which is truly independent of industry leaders and of government and politicians,” he said. “Guaranteed independence, long-term stability and genuine benefits for the industry cannot be realized without legislation,” he said, adding: “This is not and cannot reasonably or fairly be characterized as statutory regulation of the press.”

In the body of the exhaustive report, reprising at length the testimony of many of the witnesses who spoke at the hearings, the document discusses press culture and ethics; explores the press’s attitude toward the subjects of its stories; and discusses the cozy relationship between the press and the police, and the press and politicians.

John F. Burns, Sandy Lark Turner and Sandy Macaskill contributed reporting.

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Dear President Obama: My White House petition requires your magical powers

By Chris Wilson

Since President Barack Obama won reelection, the White House website for citizen petitions has received secession requests from all 50 states. In the case of Texas, more than 100,000 people have endured the inconvenience of entering their name and email address in order to support the state’s bid for autonomy. Apparently, in a sign of Americans’ growing distaste for physical activity, 2012 is the year when people stopped threatening to move to a foreign country if their candidate lost the presidency. Instead, they want foreign countries to move to them.

The forum-happy Internet activism crowd has never had a realistic sense of what happens when you to plug government directly into the Ethernet port. This is what happens: In addition to petitions for secession, you get ones calling for Bigfoot to be recognized as an endangered species, naturopathic medicine to be covered by Obamacare, and funding for a Death Star beginning in 2016.

The petition website, called We the People, is not very useful as a guide to what Americans really care about. But it is useful as a guide to how people think of what the government can do, down to the specific words the authors use in the petitions.

Of the 300 most recent petitions, only three request that the government “protect” something—states rights, email privacy, the planet—while seven request that it “recognize” something—same-sex marriage, hate groups, and so forth. Dozens ask that Obama “grant” or “allow” a certain privilege, while only a few suggest he “ban” an action or “prevent” an outcome.

The interactive below arranges the petitions into a tree structure by the principal verb in the title. When you click a blue dot, the tree expands to show all the petitions that begin with that verb. You can mouse over those branches to see the original wording of the petition and search for any word you like by typing a phrase into the box at the top.

 

Bigfoot aside, most of the petitions on the site are earnest. This does not mean they are all sane. About 37,000 people have signed a petition suggesting that it be illegal to offend the prophets of major religions. Another petition demands recognition that Israel is responsible for 9/11—that one with only some 600 signatories.

But many present very good ideas. There’s one for reforming the Electoral College and another that suggests all scientific papers based on taxpayer-funded research should be freely accessible online.

If there is one binding force behind the petitions, it is that most of them request that Obama intercede in matters that he has no authority over or rightful business meddling with, regardless of where one comes down on the subject of big government. While the site is technically designed to lobby the government, most petitions appear personally directed at Obama.

Even the petitions to secede are written in a tone of distinct obeisance: “Peacefully grant the state of Connecticut to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own new government.” Oregon’s petition is particularly careful to specify that there are no hard feelings: “Allow Oregon to vote on and leave the union peacefully and remain an ally to the nation.”

Secession always seemed to me to be something that, by definition, you did without asking permission. (Mutual breakups are as rare in history as they are in love.) But for all the rampant anti-government sentiment in America, many people still believe the president is an omnipotent force who can pass laws on a dime, ban unsavory behavior, manipulate foreign countries with precision, expel citizens at will and otherwise bend the world to his fancy.

This does not mean people love the government. We know they do not. But they still want it to fix their problems with as little trouble as possible.

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There are some great open-source tools, like Python’s Natural Language Toolkit, that can automatically identify verbs and objects in sentences with fairly high accuracy. But a lot of human intervention is still required to clean up the results. I posted the code for retrieving the petitions from the White House website on my Github page, and the White House offers the full code for the petitions website on its Github page. Questions or comments? Email me at [email protected]
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ellen Pompeo: My Neighbor Took My Chicken Egg

People Pets

11/29/2012 at 02:45 PM EST

As the mother of a toddler, Ellen Pompeo is often forced to wake up early – with a little help from her rooster.

During Tuesday's appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, the actress, 43, dished about owning several hens and one male rooster, a fact that didn't go unnoticed by one of her neighbors.

"I have this other neighbor who I don't now and still don't know and she emailed me one day and said, 'I don't have my rooster anymore,'" Pompeo told Ellen DeGeneres. "'But my hens are very depressed because the rooster isn't around, can I take an egg, a fertilized egg?'"

Unsure of how to respond, the Grey's Anatomy star simply obliged, writing, "Nice to meet you too. Come and get an egg."

While Pompeo went on to say she wasn't at home when the neighbor came to collect, DeGeneres suggested the woman was just looking to get a look at the star's impressive chicken set-up in her backyard.

"They do have a very secure coop that was built by a wonderful contractor," Pompeo said. "The chicken wire has to go like 3-feet deep to make sure that no rodents [get in] … but I do let them roam free for a part of the day because they get agitated if they're all cooped up."

"They're in the coop most of the time for their safety," she continued, noting that hawks are a concern, but, "they roam free and they get their worms and things like that."

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Simple measures cut infections caught in hospitals

CHICAGO (AP) — Preventing infections from surgery 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 measures 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.

Practices were standardized at the seven hospitals.

The Joint Commission hospital regulating group and the American College of Surgeons directed the project. They announced results on Wednesday.

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Online:

Joint Commission: http://www.jointcommission.org

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Wall Street gains on hopes for "fiscal cliff" deal

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks rose in volatile trade on Wednesday after comments from the top Republican in Congress on a possible compromise to avoid the "fiscal cliff" turned the market on its head.

House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said he was optimistic that a budget deal to avert large tax hikes and spending cuts currently under discussion in Washington could be reached. President Barack Obama, speaking later in the day, said he hoped to get a deal done in the next four weeks.

"The fiscal cliff is dominating the discussion, and short term, we're a little bit too optimistic on it being fixed right away," said John Manley, chief equity strategist for Wells Fargo Advantage Funds in New York.

The market has been swinging on headlines from Washington for weeks now, with Wednesday's gyrations once again highlighting the importance that Wall Street is giving to finding a solution to avoid the "fiscal cliff."

Liberals want tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to help balance the budget, while conservatives make a case for deep cuts in programs for the poor and a widening of the tax base to raise revenues without raising tax rates.

"Both (Democrats and Republicans) have potential to benefit from compromise. It's just a question of not losing face in the process," Manley said.

Boehner's words triggered a comeback in stocks after the S&P 500 fell 1 percent, partly on weak data on the housing sector.

Shares of Costco Wholesale Corp jumped 5.9 percent to $102.19 after the retailer became the latest company to announce a special dividend ahead of expected tax hikes that are part of the negotiations.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> rose 65.16 points, or 0.51 percent, to 12,943.29. The S&P 500 Index <.spx> gained 4.71 points, or 0.34 percent, to 1,403.65. The Nasdaq Composite <.ixic> added 10.20 points, or 0.34 percent, to 2,977.99.

Housing stocks fell after data showed new U.S. single-family home sales fell slightly in October, while September's pace of sales was revised sharply lower.

The PHLX housing index <.hgx> slipped 0.6 percent, but is still up more than 8 percent in the last eight sessions.

Knight Capital Group Inc shares jumped 13.5 percent to $3.37 on news that Getco Holding proposed a $1.4 billion merger with Knight, while Virtu Financial offered to buy Knight for at least $1.1 billion.

Apparel retailer Express Inc rose 9.8 percent to $14.26 after it forecast strong earnings for the current quarter as lower prices and easy-to-understand discounts led to robust Black Friday sales.

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters stock surged 27.3 percent to $36.86 a day after it forecast quarterly and full-year earnings well ahead of analysts' expectations.

(Reporting by Ed Krudy; Additional reporting by Gabriel Debenedetti; Editing by Jan Paschal)

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Top BBC Figures Acknowledge ‘Errors’ in Reporting Scandals

LONDON — Two of the most senior figures at the British Broadcasting Corporation said Tuesday that there had been “elementary” failures of the organization’s journalism and “appalling editorial judgment” when it wrongly implicated a former Conservative Party politician in sexual abuse, compounding a scandal that cost the BBC’s director general his job and plunged the organization deeper into crisis.

But, addressing a parliamentary committee hearing, one of them, Chris Patten, the chairman of the supervisory BBC Trust, offered a sympathetic defense of the former director general, George Entwistle, whom he had hired, and who had been labeled hapless and bumbling by many politicians and newspaper columnists before and after his resignation on Nov. 10.

“The easiest thing to do is to join in the general trashing of a decent man, and I’m not going to do that,” Mr. Patten told lawmakers. He described Mr. Entwistle as “a decent man” who “doesn’t deserve to be bullied or have his character demolished.”

Mr. Patten said the trust wanted to bring a quick end to Mr. Entwistle’s embattled tenure and so accepted his demand for nearly $800,000, representing a year’s salary and other benefits, after he had spent less than eight weeks in the job.

“What did we get in return?” Mr. Patten said. “First of all, we got a settlement that was less than we would have got had we gone through constructive dismissal.” And second, he said, if any of the current inquiries finds that Mr. Entwistle “has done anything which is in breach of his contract or the BBC disciplinary guidelines, we can claw back some of the remunerations that has been paid.”

Mr. Patten and another witness, Tim Davie, the acting BBC director general, were speaking just days before an another inquiry into the separate phone hacking scandal, mainly at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper outpost, is to deliver a long-awaited report that could lead to tighter regulation of the press.

The combination of inquiries and findings seemed to illustrate once more the intense scrutiny faced by journalists and editors in Britain at a time when the news business is struggling to make a painful and costly adjustment to the digital era. But Mr. Davie said that while the BBC was going through a “major crisis,” it was not in chaos. “This is not an organization that is falling apart internally,” he said, adding, “I’ve been overwhelmed by journalists at the BBC who are aghast at the errors that were made.”

Mr. Patten, too, described the failings that led to the scandal as ones that the BBC would quickly put right. “The BBC tells the truth about itself, even when the truth is appalling,” he said. He contrasted the broadcaster’s readiness to clean its stables with what he said had been an opaque and truculent reaction among Britain’s newspapers when confronted by their own scandals.

But Mr. Patten’s composure faltered under aggressive questioning by one lawmaker, the Conservative Philip Davies, who pressed him to provide an itinerary of his work schedule at the BBC. “Certainly not,” he said. “I think it’s a thoroughly impertinent question.

“What is the role of it? Do you want to know my toilet habits?”

Mr. Entwistle appeared before the panel on Oct. 23 when its attention was focused on a decision a year ago by the editor of the current affairs program “Newsnight” to cancel an investigation into the sexual misconduct of Jimmy Savile, a longtime television host who died in last year at age 84. The BBC was also preparing Christmastime programs paying tribute to Mr. Savile.

At that time, Mr. Entwistle was in charge of television programming, while the director general was Mark Thompson, who resigned in September to become the president and chief executive of The New York Times Company. Mr. Thompson appeared Friday before a separate closed-door inquiry in London into the cancellation of the “Newsnight” segment last year.

Since the panel’s session with Mr. Entwistle, the scandal has widened after a “Newsnight” broadcast on Nov. 2 wrongfully implicated a former Conservative Party politician in sexual abuse at a children’s home in North Wales during the Thatcher era.

Mr. Patten said the second “Newsnight” program showed “appalling editorial judgment.”

“The journalism was — to be polite — shoddy,” he said, adding, “This was a terribly elementary journalistic failure.”

Mr. Davies’s irascible exchanges with the BBC chairman were set off when the lawmaker widened his questioning to include Mr. Thompson’s role in the Savile scandal.

Mr. Patten said he would have nothing to say about Mr. Thompson’s role until the completion of an inquiry into the BBC’s handling of the pedophile allegations against Mr. Savile.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

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Italian tax police probe Google Italy again

ROME (Reuters) – Italian police launched a new tax probe into Google Italy this week after earlier investigations found the group had failed to declare income and still owed sales tax, an economy ministry document showed on Wednesday.

The earlier probe, which was launched by Italian financial police in 2007, found that Google had developed a system to transfer profits from its Italian operations to Ireland so it could benefit from a more favorable tax regime.

The investigation is the Internet search giant’s latest entanglement with European tax authorities, following problems in France and Britain over its Irish strategy.

In Italy, investigations of the years 2002-2006 found that Google had failed to declare at least 240 million euros ($ 310 million) of income to authorities and owed more than 96 million euros in sales tax, according to the ministry’s response to questions in parliament.

It said police had launched a new probe on Monday to check the company was meeting its fiscal obligations in Italy.

Google said in a statement that it complies with tax law in every country in which it operates.

“We are confident we comply with Italian law,” a spokeswoman said, adding the firm would cooperate with authorities and answer any questions for the investigation.

Italian officials have stepped up tax surveillance and collection efforts in recent months as part of government efforts to bring Italy’s huge public debt under control.

Police have also been assessing the practices of other multinational online businesses who are managing to shift profits made in Italy into countries where they can pay less tax, the ministry said.

($ 1=0.7746 euros)

(Reporting By Danilo Masoni, Giuseppe Fonte and Catherine Hornby; Editing by Mike Nesbit)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Khloé Kardashian Spills the Secret of Her Family's Perfect Christmas Card

By Julia Haskins

11/28/2012 at 02:15 PM EST

'Tis the season for ... Photoshop?

In an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The X Factor host Khloé Kardashian shared the secret of her family's annual Christmas card: If a family member can't attend the shoot, they get Photoshopped in to make the picture complete.

"We pretend that we're always together," Kardashian said during the interview airing Wednesday. "The powers of cameras and Photoshop."

While the Kardashian clan can't always be in the same physical space, they do their best to make lasting memories, she says.

Lamar Odom, Kendall Jenner and Scott Disick will all be expertly (and digitally) placed in this year's card.

"The older we get the more we stick together. Who knew?," Kardashian said. "I'm surprised Scott’s still around but he's here."

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