Iron may prevent behavioral issues in small babies






NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Iron supplements may help boost brain development and ward off behavioral problems in babies who are born a bit on the small side, a new study from Sweden suggests.


Low birth-weight babies are more likely to end up iron deficient, researchers said. They need more of the nutrient for catch-up growth and haven’t stored as much as other babies if they’re also born premature.






For that reason, very early-term and very small babies are often put on iron – but less research has looked at babies born just shy of normal weight, to see if they are also at risk.


“I think this further solidifies the evidence that it’s a very good idea to give these (marginally low birth-weight) children iron supplements,” said Dr. Magnus Domellof, from Umea University, who worked on the study.


The research was led by his colleague, Dr. Staffan Berglund. Their team followed 285 infants born between 4 pounds, 7 ounces and 5 pounds, 8 ounces.


When the babies were six weeks old, the researchers randomly assigned them to get iron drops – either one or two milligrams per kilogram of body weight – or iron-free placebo drops each day until their six-month birthday.


Then at age three and a half, Domellof’s team brought the kids back for IQ tests and surveyed parents about their behavioral issues. The researchers compared kids in the iron- and placebo-drop study groups with another 95 children who were born at normal weight.


There were no IQ differences based on whether the smaller-than-average babies had been put on an iron regimen. All three low birth-weight groups had average scores between 104 and 105. (“Cognitive impairment” in this study was considered an IQ under 85.)


However, significantly more babies given placebo drops had behavioral problems, as reported by their parents. The issues included problems managing emotional reactions, anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and attention problems.


Almost 13 percent of the placebo-group babies scored above the cutoff for clinical behavior problems, versus about 3 percent of kids who’d taken iron drops and kids from the normal-weight comparison group.


That suggests iron deficiency in infancy may be a direct cause of behavioral problems later in childhood, the researchers wrote Monday in the journal Pediatrics.


They are continuing to monitor the same group of kids as they get older, to see if new cognitive or behavioral problems develop or old ones get better as the children head into grade school.


Domellof said he and his colleagues didn’t see any extra stomach problems in kids or delayed growth linked to the use of iron drops. Some research has suggested giving excessive iron to young kids who aren’t deficient may stunt their development.


But, “I would not be afraid of recommending this to all children (born) below 2,500 grams (5 pounds, 8 ounces) at this dose,” Domellof told Reuters Health.


“Here’s where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said Dr. Michael Georgieff, a child development researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who had reviewed the study as part of Berglund’s dissertation committee.


He told Reuters Health that it’s important for all parents to know their baby’s iron requirements when they leave the hospital.


“The issue with these marginally low birth-weight infants is, people really haven’t paid a lot of attention to them, but the evidence is accumulating that they are at risk for behavioral problems and less than ideal cognitive function,” said Dr. Betsy Lozoff, who studies the effects of iron deficiency in infants at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.


For most babies in the United States, extra iron is recommended starting at four to six months, either through supplements if the mother is breastfeeding or through formula. Very small or premature babies typically have their iron monitored from birth.


But Lozoff, who wasn’t involved in the new research, said that in many places, there are no recommendations for how to treat babies who are just below a normal birth weight.


“This would suggest that it should just be a routine supplementation, and it can be at a low level of iron,” she told Reuters Health.


SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online December 10, 2012.


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Lincoln Wants to Torch the Airport Limo






Last summer, as Ford Motor’s (F) marketing team confronted the daunting challenge of trying to make its fusty old Lincoln luxury line hip again, their New York ad agency came up with what seemed like a dream solution: Film a youngish, A-list actor like Leonardo DiCaprio behind the wheel of the brand’s sleek new MKZ model, but don’t let viewers see his face. The star’s familiar voice would tell what seemed like a personal tale. “You’ve seen me in movies. I’ve met presidents.” At the end of the commercial, though, the actor would walk away without ever being revealed, while the camera would spin to show the car and an announcer intones: “Introducing the Lincoln Motor Company.” Ford staffers loved it.


Jim Farley, Ford’s Lincoln chief, killed the plan for the 60-second spot. “It’s not going to break through,” Farley said, according to his marketing director, Matt VanDyke. “Find me something that’s going to break through.” In late December, Lincoln will air a commercial that opens with the immolation of an old Town Car—the ubiquitous, mundane airport taxi that both defines and dogs the brand. From the flames, phoenix-like, emerges the new MKZ sedan. “The tricky part is getting noticed,” says Farley, who helped Toyota Motor (TM) introduce its Lexus luxury line. “You don’t have much time because you haven’t earned the right to be in people’s minds.”






After decades of decline, the same can be said about Lincoln. Ford’s lagging luxury brand hasn’t been hip since JFK was in the White House, and sales have plummeted 63 percent since they reached their peak in 1990. BMW-loving baby boomers have long rejected Lincoln as Dad’s ride—nearly 35 percent of Lincolns are sold to buyers 65 or older, according to auto researcher Edmunds.com. About 14 percent of Lincoln owners are more than 75 years old; only 2 percent of BMW (BMW) and Audi drivers are that age.


6a621  comp lincoln50  01  inline405 Lincoln Wants to Torch the Airport LimoGetty Images(5)


Now Ford is trying to reposition 90-year-old Lincoln as a boutique brand that appeals to Gen Xers not beholden to the German luxury lines. Gone are ads featuring white-haired actor John Slattery, one of the stars of television’s Mad Men. At a press conference at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on Dec. 3, Ford Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally revealed that comedian Jimmy Fallon has been hired to produce (but not star in) the luxury line’s first-ever Super Bowl spot, using script suggestions from Twitter users. The automaker also debuted a new TV commercial starring an actor portraying Abraham Lincoln—a first for the brand that shares his name—and featuring cameos of classic owners Clark Gable and Dean Martin leaning against the fenders of an MKZ. FDR also makes an appearance.


“They shouldn’t ditch their history, but it’s important that they signal change,” says Leslie Butterfield, global chief strategy officer for consultant Interbrand (OMC). “There needs to be something that says this brand has changed, something’s been added, something’s been modernized, something’s fresh about it.”


Stressing a brand’s advanced age can be off-putting to younger buyers. Audi, Volkswagen’s resurgent luxury line, doesn’t pitch its German heritage. Instead, it focuses on what’s next. “People always ask me, ‘Why don’t you guys talk about your history?’ ” says Scott Keogh, president of Audi of America. “That’s not what drives us. What drives us is: Man, how do we come up with the next solution? What’s the next thing? We’re, like, a restless company.”


Lincoln is being selective about the heritage to which it harks back—the glamour of Gable and the flowing Lincolns of that era as opposed to the land yachts of the ’90s. And yet, VanDyke says they ultimately felt they had to take on that stigma with the burning Town Car commercial. When the MKZ emerges from the flames, an announcer says: “It’s not what you think.” VanDyke admits “that was a white knuckler in terms of presenting it to” Mulally and Ford’s top brass. “But they said, ‘Hey, that’s what people think, and that’s what we should directly challenge.’ ”


Ford’s conflicted view of Lincoln’s past highlights the task of repositioning a brand with a trunkful of baggage. They see value in Lincoln’s history as a presidential limo, but President Kennedy, assassinated in a Lincoln Continental, won’t appear in an ad. They debated whether to cut a scene in the upcoming Abraham Lincoln spot that included an American flag on a presidential limo, because luxury buyers aren’t drawn to American brands. (They left the flag in.) “The world is not waiting for another luxury car,” says Cameron McNaughton, head of Lincoln’s new ad agency HudsonRouge, a unit of global ad giant WPP (WPPGY). “If Lincoln is going to succeed, it needs to be brave.”


Ford’s $ 1 billion bet to restock the Lincoln lineup with seven new models by 2015 is a gamble. General Motors (GM) spent twice as much to overhaul Cadillac more than a decade ago. Audi spends €2 billion ($ 2.6 billion) a year on technology and product development, Keogh says. “Ford has got to have reasonable expectations with Lincoln,” says Michelle Krebs, an analyst with Edmunds.com. “The MKZ is a very fine car, but does it really compete with a BMW 3 Series? It’s not even on the same shopping list.”


6a621  comp lincolnchart50 405b Lincoln Wants to Torch the Airport Limo


BMW and Daimler’s (DAI) Mercedes-Benz each outsell Lincoln by more than 3 to 1. Rather than try to dislodge drivers of German vehicles from their cars, VanDyke says Lincoln is seeking “curious” luxury buyers not beholden to brands. Lincoln figures those buyers make up a quarter of the luxury market, though Farley says Ford’s ambition is not to return Lincoln to the top-selling luxury spot in the U.S., a position it last held in 1999. “We’re about personal service. It’s really small, like a small tailor shop,” Farley says. “It’s not huge waiting lounges, Wi-Fi, and cappuccino machines. That wouldn’t be our brand.”


The bottom line: Ford is spending $ 1 billion to revamp Lincoln’s lineup. Changing the luxury line’s fusty image could be a bigger challenge.


With Jamie Butters


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Top Google executive forced off Twitter












Working at Google (GOOG) has its benefits — for one thing, the company’s reputation as an innovator is nearly unmatched — however things aren’t always as simple as they look. After making a joke on Twitter about Microsoft and Nokia’s Windows Phone partnership, Google’s senior vice president of engineering Vic Gundotra was told to stop using the micro-blogging site. Gundotra had been using the social network since December 2007 and suddenly stopped in July 2011. It had been previously speculated that Google CEO Larry Page had told the executive to stop, however nothing had been confirmed until now. While speaking at the SMX Social Media Marketing conference on Thursday, Gundotra confirmed that his “boss” had asked him to stop using the service.


“I was asked not to do that by my boss,” he said, according to TheNextWeb. “I tweeted a tweet about two companies that went viral, went very very viral and made a lot of headline news. And honestly, I didn’t anticipate that my comments would be interpreted in the way they were interpreted.”












The tweet in question was posted on February 11th 2011 and quipped that “two turkeys do not make an Eagle,” a shot at Microsoft (MSFT) and Nokia (NOK) joining to release a new wave of Windows Phones.


Gundotra admitted that he still checks Twitter and Facebook (FB), noting that it is part of his job to keep up on innovation. He can predominantly be found using Google+ these days, however.


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Rolling Stones rock Brooklyn at anniversary gig












NEW YORK (AP) — It sure didn’t feel like a farewell.


The Rolling Stones — average age 68-plus, if you’re counting — were in rollicking form as they rocked the Barclays Center in Brooklyn for 2½ hours Saturday night, their first U.S. show on a mini-tour marking a mind-boggling 50 years as a rock band.












And although every time the Stones tour, the inevitable questions arise, — whether it’s “The Last Time,” to quote one of their songs — there was no sign that anything is ending anytime soon.


“People say, why do you keep doing this?” mused 69-year-old Mick Jagger, the band’s impossibly energetic frontman, before launching into “Brown Sugar.” ”Why do you keep touring, coming back? The answer is, you’re the reason we’re doing this. Thank you for buying our records and coming to our shows for the last 50 years.”


Jagger was in fine form, with strong vocals and his usual swagger — strutting, jogging, skipping and pumping his arms like a man half his age. And though he briefly donned a flamboyant feathered black cape for “Sympathy for the Devil” and later, some red-sequined tails, he was mostly content to prowl the stage in a tight black T-shirt and trousers.


The band’s guitarists, the brilliant Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, alternated searing solos and occasionally ventured onto a stage extension that brought them closer to the crowd. The now-gray Richards, wearing a red bandana, exuded the easy familiarity of a favorite uncle: “While we wait for Ronnie,” he said at one point, “I’ll wish you happy holidays.” Watts, the dapper drummer in a simple black T-shirt, smiled frequently at his band mates.


The grizzled quartet was joined on “Gimme Shelter” by Mary J. Blige, who traded vocals with Jagger and earned a huge cheer at the end. Also visiting: the Texas blues guitarist Gary Clark Jr.


The sense of nostalgia was heightened by projections on a huge screen of footage of the early days, when the Stones looked like teenagers. At one point, Jagger reminisced about the first time the band played New York — in 1964.


A carton of milk cost only a quarter then, he said. And a ticket to the Rolling Stones? “I don’t want to go there,” he quipped. It was a reference to the sky-high prices at the current “50 and Counting” shows, where even the “cheap” seats cost a few hundred dollars and a prime seat cost in the $ 700 range or higher.


From the opening number, “Get Off Of My Cloud,” the band played a generous 23 songs, including two new ones — “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot” — but mostly old favorites. The rousing encore included “Jumping Jack Flash,” of course, but the final song was “Satisfaction.” And though the song speaks of not getting any, the consensus of the packed 18,000-seat arena was that it was a satisfying evening indeed.


“If you like the Stones, this was as good a show as you could have had,” said one fan, Robert Nehring, 58, of Westfield, N.J., who’d paid $ 500 for his seat. “It was worth it,” he said simply.


The Brooklyn show was a coup for the new Barclays Center — there are no Manhattan shows. It followed two rapturously received Stones shows in London late last month. The band also will play two shows in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15.


And just before that, the Stones will join a veritable who’s who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Superstorm Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.


In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot,” and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, “Crossfire Hurricane.”


The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who’d met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and Watts were quick additions.


Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 and replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.


The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, “A Bigger Bang,” which earned more than $ 550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really “One Last Shot?”


The Stones won’t say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.


“I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something,” Jagger told The Associated Press. “Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones.”


There certainly was nothing dull about the band’s performance on Saturday, a show that brought together many middle-aged fans, to be sure, but also some of their children, who seemed to be enjoying the classic Stones brand of blues-tinged rock as much as their parents.


Yes, a Stone’s average age might be a bit higher than that of the average Supreme Court justice. (To be fair, the newest justices bring the average down). But to watch these musicians play with vitality and vigor a half-century on is to believe that maybe they were right when they sang, “Time Is On My Side.” At least for a few more years.


__


Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.


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On the edge of the “cliff,” U.S. cities like Charleston












CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – For 37 years straight, Joseph P. Riley Jr. has sat behind the mayor’s desk here, shaping this city and its budget.


On a recent afternoon, Riley, 69, reached for a draft copy of next year’s spending plan and wondered aloud about what might get cut should politicians in Washington fail to find an agreement this month, unleashing $ 600 billion worth of spending reductions and tax hikes next year.












Hiring new police officers for the city of 123,000 could be put on hold, Riley said. A new piece of equipment for the fire department would have to wait. Sanitation workers might be in trouble, too.


“The thought that they would allow the economic harm that would ensue if we went over the fiscal cliff is mind-boggling,” said Riley, a Democrat who was elected to his 10th term last year.


Charleston, a beautiful city steeped in history and awash in tourist dollars, would seem at first glance a world apart from the harm that could be caused by the combination of spending cuts and higher taxes. Economists predict its arrival could send the United States hurtling back into a recession.


At its edges, however, Charleston harbors the people who are most vulnerable to Washington’s intransigence, making the city an emblem of a country’s worry and of the powerlessness people feel in the face of Washington’s indecision.


The sting of automatic cuts would be felt acutely by those who work in the defense sector and the poor. They form two prominent groups in Charleston County who may share little but the knowledge that federal belt-tightening is less a nuisance than an existential threat.


In South Carolina, defense spending accounts for $ 15.7 billion in annual economic activity – more than one in 10 dollars spent in the state – and nearly 140,000 jobs.


The Charleston area alone, which includes a large Air Force base and a Navy facility, holds more than 66,000 defense jobs and nearly half of the state’s military economic activity, according to a report released last month by the South Carolina Department of Commerce.


While Charleston, like the rest of the state, has seen a boom in military spending over the last decade, the area has the state’s second-highest concentration of people living in poverty, according to 2010 U.S. census data. More than one in four children live in poverty in the surrounding county.


From the anticipated cuts to the military to the shrinking of the safety net, Charleston shows what’s at stake should the United States fall off the fiscal cliff.


‘DEVASTATION’


A fast-talking engineer originally from Detroit, Michigan, Rebecca Ufkes founded UEC Electronics with her husband in neighboring Hanahan 17 years ago. Walking past employees in blue lab coats assembling components for military vehicles and commercial products last week, Ufkes described the chilling effect the possibility of cuts have had on Charleston’s defense industry.


In September, Ufkes traveled to Washington as a part of a lobbying effort organized by the Aerospace Industry Association, hoping to impress politicians with the dangers facing her 200-person company and its competitors should the anticipated $ 500 billion in defense cuts, over 10 years, come to pass.


She came away encouraged by her state’s largely Republican representation in Washington but frustrated by other lawmakers.


“South Carolina is a very pro-business state,” she said. “They are very keen on economics. It’s just that we are only one of 50 states.”


Ufkes, 48, said she worries not only about the uncertainty that has left defense contractors unsure where to invest but the impending tax increases, which she said will put her company, active in the commercial marketplace as well, at a disadvantage against foreign rivals.


“Probably the solution is not going to be perfect for UEC,” she said, “but I don’t want it to be devastating. Compromise and devastation are not the same thing.”


With a mug declaring, “Failure is not an option,” sitting on her desk, Ufkes predicted that her company would make it, no matter how devastating the cuts are.


“If we don’t survive,” she said. “I don’t know who will.”


NO ‘GIFTS’


Five miles (eight km) from Ufkes’ cutting-edge electronics manufacturer is the struggling North Charleston neighborhood of Chicora-Cherokee, where Bill Stanfield and his wife, Evelyn Oliveira, arrived fresh out of Princeton Theological Seminary 10 years ago.


They founded Metanoia, a development organization focusing on bettering the community by securing housing loans, planting a garden, and running after-school and summer programs.


Through government services like AmeriCorps, the national volunteer group, and funds from sources like the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Stanfield said his group received nearly a fifth of its funding from the federal government last year.


With politicians facing immense pressure over limiting cuts to entitlements like the Medicare health insurance program for seniors and the Social Security retirement program, advocates for the poor say they expect painful reductions in spending on education and housing.


“I don’t know if our housing program would survive,” Stanfield, 39, said.


Cuts to education will hit South Carolina hard, where the schools have bled money over the last five years.


According to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, South Carolina’s cuts to education have been the fifth largest in the country, slicing 18 percent off of per-student spending during that period.


The Obama administration, which Republicans consider a profligate spender, has felt like lean times in neighborhoods like Chicora-Cherokee, Stanfield said.


“You know Mitt Romney said that people voted for Obama because of gifts?” Stanfield said. “There’s this misconception that President Obama has been a gravy train of funding. There was more funding under President Bush of these organizations than under Obama.”


‘GAME OF CHICKEN’


Last month, Riley, the Charleston mayor, went to Washington with a group of fellow city leaders, Democrats and Republicans, to lobby the White House and Congress to save cities from drastic cuts.


Vice President Joseph Biden and Democratic leaders from the House of Representatives and Senate met with the mayors. House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican leaders in Congress declined their invitation, Riley said.


While Riley supports Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on income earned over $ 250,000, a sticking point in the negotiations, he and other mayors cautioned that ending the tax-free status of municipal bonds would strangle cities’ access to needed capital.


Riley returned to Charleston feeling like a deal, which could prevent the harshest blows from hitting his city, its residents and jobs, was in the offing. Now, he said, he is not so sure.


“It looks like it’s a game of chicken,” he said, “and there are signals that they are going to go through with it.”


(Reporting By Samuel P. Jacobs Editing by Fred Barbash and Eric Beech)


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Election underscores Ghana’s democratic reputation












ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — Voters in Ghana selected their next president Friday in a ballot expected to mark the sixth transparent election in this West African nation, known as a beacon of democracy in a tumultuous region.


Proud of their democratic heritage, residents of this balmy, seaside capital trudged to the polls more than four hours before the sun was even up, standing inches apart in queues that in some places stretched 1,000-people deep.












By afternoon, some voters were getting agitated, after hitches with the use of a new biometric system caused delays at numerous polling stations.


Each polling station had a single biometric machine, and if it failed to identify the voter’s fingerprint, or if it broke down, there was no backup. At one polling station where the machine had broken down, a local chief said he’d barely moved a few inches: “I’m 58 years old, and I’ve been standing in this queue all day,” Nana Owusu said. “It’s not good.”


Late Friday, when it became clear that large numbers of people had not been able to vote, the election commission announced it would extend voting by a second day. This nation of 25 million is, however, deeply attached to its tradition of democracy, and voters were urging each other to remain calm while they waited their turn to choose from one of eight presidential contenders, including President John Dramani Mahama and his main challenger, Nana Akufo-Addo. The election commission


“Elections remind us how young our democracy is, how fragile it is,” said author Martina Odonkor, 44. “I think elections are a time when we all lose our cockiness about being such a shining light of democracy in Africa, and we start to get a bit nervous that things could go back to how they used to be.”


Ghana was once a troubled nation that suffered five coups and decades of stagnation, before turning a corner in the 1990s. It is now a pacesetter for the continent’s efforts to become democratic. No other country in the region has had so many elections deemed free and fair, a reputation voters hold close to their hearts.


The incumbent Mahama, a former vice president, was catapulted into office in July after the unexpected death of former President John Atta Mills. Before becoming vice president in 2009, the 54-year-old served as a minister and a member of parliament. He’s also written an acclaimed biography, recalling Ghana’s troubled past, called “My First Coup d’Etat.”


Akufo-Addo is a former foreign minister and the son of one of Ghana’s previous presidents. In 2008, Akufo-Addo lost the last presidential election to Mills by less than 1 percent during a runoff vote. Both candidates are trying to make the case that they will use the nation’s oil riches to help the poor.


Besides being one of the few established democracies in the region, Ghana also has the fastest-growing economy. But a deep divide still exists between those benefiting from the country’s oil, cocoa and mineral wealth and those left behind financially.


A group of men who had just voted gathered at a small bar a block away from a polling station in the middle class neighborhood of South Labadi. Danny Odoteye, 36, who runs the bar, said that the country’s economic progress is palpable and that the ruling party, and its candidate, are responsible for ushering in a period of growth.


“I voted for John Mahama,” he said. “Ghana is a prosperous country. Everything is moving smoothly.”


Administrator Victor Nortey, sitting on a plastic chair across from him, disagreed, saying the country’s newfound oil wealth should have resulted in more change.


“I voted for Nana Akufo-Addo,” He said. “Now we have oil. What is Mahama doing with the oil money?” Nortey said. “We can use that money to build schools.”


In an interview on the eve of the vote, Akufo-Addo told The Associated Press that the first thing he will do if elected is begin working on providing free high school education for all. “It’s a matter of great concern to me,” he said, adding that he plans to use the oil wealth to educate the population, industrialize the economy and create better jobs for Ghanaians.


Policy-oriented and intellectual, Akufo-Addo is favored by the young and urbanized voters. He was educated in England and comes from a privileged family. The ruling party has depicted him as elitist.


“The idea that merely because you are born into privilege that automatically means you are against the welfare of the ordinary people, that’s nonsense,” he said.


Ghana had one of the fastest growing economies in the world in 2011. Oil was discovered in 2007 and the country began producing it in December 2010.


Throughout the capital, new condominiums are rising up next to slums and luxury cars creep along narrow alleys lined with open sewers. A mall downtown features a Western-style cinema and is packed on weekends with middle class families. At the same time shantytowns are cropping up, packed with the urban poor.


Polls show that voters are almost evenly split over who can best deliver on the promise of development.


Kojo Mabwa said that he is voting for Akufo-Addo, because he is impressed by his promise of free education. He dismissed critics that say the project is too ambitious. “There is money,” he said. “(The ruling party) has done nothing for us. They are misusing our money.”


Paa Kwesi, a 30-year-old systems analyst, said he doesn’t think Akufo-Addo is making promises he can keep.


“He says he can do free education, but you have to crawl before you can walk. It’s not possible,” he said.


__


Associated Press writer Francis Kokutse contributed to this report from Accra, Ghana.


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Internet governance talks in jeopardy as Arab states, Russia ally












SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – A landmark attempt to set global rules for overseeing the Internet threatened to fall apart on Friday as a rift pitting the United States and some Western countries against the rest of the world widened, participants in the talks said.


A 12-day conference of the International Telecommunications Union, taking place in Dubai, is supposed to result in the adoption of a new international treaty governing trans-border communications.












But in a critical session at the midpoint of the conference on Friday, delegates refused to adopt a U.S.-Canadian proposal to limit the treaty’s scope to traditional communications carriers and exclude Internet companies such as Google, the ITU said on its website.


Further complicating the negotiations was what a U.S. official at the talks called the “surprise” announcement of an accord among some Arab states, Russia and other countries to pursue treaty amendments that are expected to include Internet provisions unacceptable to the United States


A still-secret draft of the coalition’s proposals is to be introduced soon by the United Arab Emirates, the official said.


“It doesn’t look good,” said a former U.S. intelligence official tracking the talks for private technology clients.


The emergence of the new coalition, whose members are generally seeking greater Internet censorship and surveillance, is likely to harden battle lines separating those countries from the United States and some allies in Western Europe.


The United States and others objected to the introduction of complex new material midway through the conference.


“All of the indicators we have so far is it’s something that could be a clear effort to extend the treaty to cover Net governance,” said policy counsel Emma Llanso of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology, which draws funding from Google and other U.S. Internet companies.


“What we’re seeing is governments putting forward their visions of the future of the Internet, and if we see a large group of governments form that sees an Internet a lot more locked down and controlled, that’s a big concern.”


CONCERNS ABOUT GOVERNMENT CONTROLS


The U.S. ambassador to the conference said in an earlier interview that his country would not sign any agreement that dramatically increased government controls over the Internet.


That would potentially isolate America and its allies from much of the world, and technology leaders fear that the rest of the globe would agree on actions such as identifying political dissidents who use the Internet and perhaps trying to alter the Net’s architecture to permit more control.


The 147-year-old ITU, which is now under the auspices of the United Nations, historically has set technology standards and established payment customs for international phone calls. But under Secretary-General Hamadoun Touré, it has inched toward cyber-security and electronic content issues, arguing that Internet traffic goes over phone lines and is therefore within its purview.


The ITU is considering other issues in its most extensive rewrite of the treaty in 15 years, including proposals that content providers shoulder the costs of transmission. But none is as controversial as the projected Internet controls.


The Internet’s infrastructure, while initially funded in part by the U.S. government, is now largely in private hands. It has been subject to little government control, although many nations have attempted to regulate Internet communications in various ways.


ICANN, a self-governing nonprofit under contract to the U.S. Department of Commerce, is ultimately responsible for making sure that people trying to reach a given website actually get there, but most technology policies are developed by industry groups.


At the ITU meeting, the American delegation had counted on support from at least Japan, Australia and other affluent democracies.


But its effort to stave off wholesale changes has been hindered by complications in Western Europe, where some countries were supporting a change to the economic model that would have Google, Facebook and others pay for at least some of the costs of Internet transmission.


Smaller groups at the ITU conference will work through the weekend, with the full body meeting again on Monday.


(Editing by Jonathan Weber and Peter Cooney)


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Reinhold Weege, creator of “Night Court,” dies at 63












LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Reinhold Weege, the creator of the hit NBC sitcom “Night Court,” has died, a spokeswoman for the family told TheWrap. He was 63 years old.


He also wrote for other notable television shows, including “Barney Miller” and “M*A*S*H.”












However, it was “Night Court,” a show that poked gentle fun at bureaucratic absurdity, that would become his signature work. The series centered on a young judge (Harry Anderson) saddled with handling the bottom of the barrel cases that come into Manhattan’s night court and featured a breakout performance by John Larroquette as a skirt-chasing lawyer.


The show started out tackling serious legal issues, but over the course of its nine seasons, slowly expunged commentary in favor of broad humor.


Weege might never have entered show business had he not been fired from a job in journalism. In a 1994 piece in the Chicago Tribune, he wrote that he was working as a reporter and editor of a tiny suburban paper when he reported on a secret meeting, between the town and the Pritzker hotel chain about a proposal to build a monorail, hotels and a 60-story office building.


After his paper was less than thrilled with the piece he copyrighted it and had it picked up by a larger paper — the result was he got canned.


“Shortly after that, I sold our couch, the only asset my wife and I had, got in the car and headed toward Hollywood,” Weege wrote.


The rest is history.


Weege is survived by his ex-wife Shelley, two daughters and a granddaughter.


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Relationship Ranch: Couples’ Therapy with Horses












It’s fascinating to watch a man trying to win back the love of his life by talking to a horse.


Horse therapy has been used for decades to help treat people with physical disabilities or learning disorders, but now they are also being used in an unconventional form of couples counseling.












Watch the full story on “Nightline” tonight at 11:35 p.m. ET


Nancy Hamilton and Lottie Grimes are marriage therapists who run Relationship Ranch in Louisville, Colo. They are convinced that horses can help feuding couples make peace.


“You wouldn’t think they would have any role in marriage therapy,” Hamilton said. “But because horses are so exquisitely sensitive, they can help us determine what a couple is actually, really feeling.”


For three weekends, “Nightline” followed one couple’s last-ditch effort to save their crumbling relationship and attended their equine therapy sessions.


Justin and Lyz, both 30 and never married, have been together for nine years and have two sons. But lately, they said, the bickering and fighting at home got so bad that Justin reluctantly agreed to move out.


“We have piled problem on top of problem on top of problem for years,” Lyz said. “Who knows what’s at the bottom of that?”


Although he was skeptical about the healing powers of horses, he said he was willing to try just about anything to make his family whole again.


On their first day of therapy, the couple was introduced to the ranch’s herd of horses. Justin was magnetically drawn to the newest and most aggressive horse, Danny, who came to the ranch after surviving a grizzly bear attack. Danny wasn’t fitting in with the other horses, which hit home for Justin, who felt exiled from his own herd. Hamilton said horses can sense and read people’s emotions.


“They’re almost like a Rorschach projective test with a mane and a tail, where people can project onto them their feelings, their thoughts and their fears,” she said.


Hamilton said she believes those fears can stem from what she called unresolved childhood wounds, which plague adult relationships. That was the case with Justin. When he was 9 years old, his sister was brutally murdered by an ex-boyfriend and young Justin saw the murder scene.


“He chased her down and cut her throat,” he said. “We went back several days later and they hadn’t cleaned anything up.”


After working with Justin and Lyz, Hamilton said Lyz saw Justin as controlling, but those tendencies are rooted in his childhood trauma.


“Trauma survivors are very concerned with being able to control their present environment because they were not able to control their environment when they were traumatized,” she said.


Hamilton had Justin go through a blind trust exercise with Danny to force Justin to surrender control to his partner. The goal was to expose Justin’s old wounds. Hamilton instructed him to talk to Danny about what had happened when his sister was killed. Danny, the trauma-surviving horse, set the stage for a major breakthrough.


“It seemed so stupid at first, and then it was actually helpful,” Justin said. “Therapeutic.”


Watching Justin talk to the horse, Lyz said she never saw him so vulnerable. After the session, the two apologized for hurting each other.


Two weeks later, Justin went through a final exercise to fully cope with his past. In a pen, surrounded by the herd, Justin became 9 years old again. He was instructed to confront his absent father through a role-playing exercise, while Lyz acted as a stand-in for his dad.


“You abandoned all of us,” he said aloud. “I had to be the man of the family and I think that you’re a coward.”


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Crisis dims German growth hopes













Germany’s central bank, the Bundesbank, has cut its growth forecast for next year, saying the country’s economy might be entering a recession.












Growth in 2013 is now expected to be just 0.4%, compared with a forecast in June of 1.6%, but is expected to bounce back to 1.9% in 2014.


Meanwhile, industrial output fell a steeper-than-expected 2.6% in October.


It comes one day after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi cut his forecast for eurozone growth.


Mr Draghi blamed his move on a stagnation in core eurozone countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands.


Southern European countries, such as Spain and Italy, have been in recession for more than a year, but the malaise has spread to the rest of the single currency zone via weak export demand and falling consumer and business confidence.


Rebound in 2014


Meanwhile, the ECB’s German counterpart warned that Germany’s economy may suffer a recession during the current quarter and the first three months of next year.


The Bundesbank has cut its growth forecast for the current year as a whole to 0.7%, from 1% previously, in light of what is seen to be a very poor performance since the autumn.


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The Bundesbank’s view of the economy is markedly worse than it was in the previous forecast six months ago. It still thinks Germany will avoid a recession in 2013 but it doesn’t think growth will be that strong, either.


But in 2014, it forecasts that the economy will rebound to grow at nearly 2%. German economists defend that relative optimism by saying that they expect Chinese growth to pick up and that will mean rising demand for German machinery.


Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman said she was “cautiously optimistic that we’ll keep growing”. Few expect her to lose power in the election next year. The question is, rather, with which party her CDU might form a coalition. It is possible that there will be a coalition between her centre-right CDU and the centre-left SPD.


The rogue element in economic – and political – forecasts is the eurozone. A Greek exit could derail growth – and maybe also her re-election hopes.



Industrial production data released on Friday registered a 2.6% drop in output during October, meaning that output in the month was 3.7% lower than a year earlier, with construction activity and demand for investment goods particularly badly affected.


The Netherlands also reported a 1.7% drop in its industrial output versus a year ago.


The German central bank blamed its more pessimistic growth forecasts on the recessions in neighbouring eurozone countries, as well as on a general slowdown in the world economy.


“Given the difficult economic situation in some euro area countries and widespread uncertainty, economic growth will be lower than previously assumed,” the Bundesbank said.


“The Bundesbank does not see a protracted slowdown, but instead anticipates a return to a growth path soon.”


It noted that German businesses were cutting their investments and were taking on fewer new workers.


The Bundesbank’s president Jens Weidmann is due to give a speech in the afternoon.


‘Downswing territory’


Industrial orders and exports in Germany have fallen in recent months. However, while industrial output fell in October, orders saw a surprise bounce thanks to a surge in demand from outside the eurozone.


Despite that, David Kohl, chief economist at fund managers Julius Baer, said the economy was “moving slowly into downswing territory”.




Gilles Moec, Deutsche Bank: Previous growth forecasts were “unrealistic”



The biggest drag on the economy has been trade, with soft demand from southern Europe weighing on exports.


A steady rise in German house prices in recent months – driven by record low interest rates – had been encouraging a pick-up in domestic spending, but with much of that spending leaking out of the country via imports.


However, that picture appears to have been changing since the summer, with negative economic news affecting sentiment.


“Domestic demand has been a bit disappointing in the third quarter and in the current quarter,” said Mr Kohl. “Uncertainty tends to hit consumer confidence. It depresses private consumption – but it lasts just for a month or two, maybe a quarter.”


German unemployment – which had been falling steadily to a 20-year low of 5.4% – is showing signs of rising again.


Recent data showed German wages rising 3.3% in the third quarter of the year compared with a year earlier.


Such German wage rises are seen as key to a rebalancing of the entire eurozone economy – by helping southern European workers gain their cost competitiveness, and by encouraging greater spending by German households, which should help eliminate Germany’s perennial trade surplus.


‘Reluctant’ ECB


The weak German outlook comes a day after the ECB decided to keep interest rates on hold at 0.75%.


“The ECB had yesterday the chance to add stimulus, but seemed reluctant,” noted Mr Kohl.


Many banks in the suffering southern European economies would directly benefit from a rate cut, as this would reduce the cost of the emergency loans they have received from the ECB.


The German government may also be minded to stimulate the economy, perhaps via tax cuts, as parliamentary elections are due in the second half of next year. However, any such cuts are unlikely to have an effect in time to head off the current downturn in the country’s economy.


Economic data from elsewhere in Europe was similarly discouraging on Friday.


In the UK, manufacturing output fell a surprisingly sharp 1.3% in October from a month earlier, as the economy geared down from hosting the Summer Olympics.


Meanwhile, Portugal, Greece, the Czech Republic and Hungary all confirmed that their economies shrank during the third quarter of the year.


Portugal’s slump was revised down from a contraction of 3.4% versus a year ago, to one of 3.5%, as exports to the rest of the eurozone suffered.


Greece’s recession, by contrast, was not quite as astoundingly deep as originally feared, with the country’s fall in output was revised to 6.9%, from a first estimate of 7.2%.


Outside the eurozone, the Czech economy shrank 1.3% in the third quarter, while the Hungarian economy did so by 1.5% and industrial production in the country fell 3.8% in October from a year earlier.


BBC News – Business


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