“I learned a big civics lesson today.” — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, who tweeted a picture of his filled-out ballot (for Mitt Romney, natch), only to learn that appeared to break the law in New York state.
— David Bauder — http://twitter.com/dbauder
___
EDITOR’S NOTE — Election Watch shows you Election Day 2012 through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Star Wars” was the force behind Walt Disney’s $ 4 billion purchase of producer George Lucas’s Lucasfilm entertainment holdings. Not so far, far away is Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, his award-winning special effects shop that will likely save Disney millions of dollars in costs for its big-budget movies.
ILM, started by Lucas in 1975 when he couldn’t find a special effects house he liked for “Star Wars,” has provided computer-generated dinosaurs, space ships and action characters for a roster of films that includes “Avatar,” “Mission Impossible” and the “Harry Potter” series.
As much as one-third of the cost of films with budgets of $ 200 million and more are for special effects, according to Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who estimates ILM last year generated at least $ 100 million in revenue. Disney uses ILM‘s computer animators for its “Pirates of the Caribbean” series of films and Marvel-inspired characters for films like “The Avengers.”
ILM is among the companies producing special effects for the Disney film “The Lone Ranger,” a 2013 release estimated to cost more than $ 200 million to produce.
By bringing ILM in-house, Disney can shave as much as $ 20 million a year from its films’ special effects budgets, a welcome savings at a time when all major studios are trying to rein in production spending, Wible said.
“It’s one of the underappreciated aspects of this deal,” he said, along with Skywalker Sound, a Lucas sound production company that will also become part of the Disney empire.
Disney executives, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts, scarcely mentioned ILM in explaining the company’s valuation of Lucasfilm, instead describing its estimate of the company’s rights to its consumer products and the declining value of DVD sales.
Chief Executive Bob Iger praised ILM’s work for Disney and other studios. “Our current thinking is that we would let it remain as-is. They do great work,” Iger said.
A Disney spokesman said the company could not comment further about ILM or the rest of the acquisition until it is cleared by regulators.
The effects house is headquartered in San Francisco at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a Lucasfilm campus where a statue of Yoda perches atop an outdoor fountain. The effects company employs about 1,000 people between that location and sites in Singapore and Vancouver.
The studio provides effects for as many as 18 projects per year, working with all the major Hollywood studios that compete with Disney. That outside work beyond “Star Wars” will give Disney another revenue source from ILM.
“We can handle quite a slate of films,” Lucasfilm spokesman Miles Perkins said of ILM. “We look forward to continuing that.”
ILM also generates money by supplying effects for commercials by big-name brands Coca-Cola, Budweiser and others.
For Disney’s Iger, who prides his company as being among Hollywood’s most forward thinking on new technology, the Lucasfilm buy might also provide another front for the media giant. Its computer-wielding artists could work with Disney’s Imagineering unit, which creates many of the technologies the company uses at its theme parks.
Lucasfilm engineers created THX, which was designed to help theaters create the best sound for movies through a system that the Lucas company certifies meets its technical standards. THX, which was spun off from Lucasfilms in 2001, also certifies home entertainment systems, consumer electronic products and automobile sound systems.
Hollywood studios have a generally poor record owning effects companies, said Scott Ross, a former general manager of ILM and one of the founders of effects company Digital Domain.
Disney bought Dream Quest Images in 1996 and shuttered it five years later. Warner Bros. also has shut or sold off effects companies it acquired. Only Sony Corp has found success with its Imageworks effects unit.
Studios usually discover that running an effects business is costly and foreign competitors can do the job cheaper, Ross said. “They come to the conclusion that running a visual effects company is not a profitable business,” Ross said.
Iger, in announcing the deal to Wall Street analysts, praised ILM’s work and said he had no immediate plans to change it. “It’s been a decent business for Lucasfilm and one we have every intention of staying in,” he said.
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Ronald Grover; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LONDON (Reuters) – Retinal implants to help pilots see at night, stimulant drugs to keep surgeons alert and steady handed, cognitive enhancers to focus the minds of executives for a big speech or presentation.
Medical and scientific advances are bringing human enhancements into work but with them, according to a report by British experts, come not only the potential to help society and boost productivity, but also a range of ethical dilemmas.
“We’re not talking science fiction here, we’re talking about advances that could impact significantly on the way we work…in the near future,” said Genevra Richardson, a professor of law at Kings College London and one of the authors of the report.
The report was published after a joint workshop involving four major British scientific institutions which looked at emerging technologies like cognitive enhancing drugs, bionic limbs and retinal implants that have the potential to change workplaces dramatically in future.
Richardson said while such developments may benefit society in important ways, such as by boosting workforce productivity, their use also had “significant policy implications” to be considered by governments, employers, workers and trades unions.
“There are a range of technologies in development and in some cases already in use that have the potential to transform our workplaces – for better or for worse,” she said.
Human physical and cognitive enhancements are primarily developed with sick or disabled people in mind, as medicines or therapies to help them overcome mental or physical disorders.
But experts say drugs and other forms of enhancement are being used increasingly by healthy people who want to benefit from the boost they can give to performance.
Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University who contributed to the report, said for example that modafinil, a generic drug prescribed for sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, is often used by academics or business leaders travelling to conferences who need to be at the top of their game when delivering a speech.
“They take (sleep) medications on the plane to fall asleep, and take modafinil to wake up when they get there,” she said.
Other stimulants such as Novartis’s Ritalin and Shire’s Adderall, prescribed for conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, are also used by healthy people to increase focus.
One issue with this kind of use is the lack of long-term safety studies of such drugs in healthy people, the experts said, so there may be unknown risks ahead. Other problems include whether cognitive enhancers are fair. Is it cheating to go into a job interview or exam having taken a drug to boost your mental focus?
Research from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States has estimated that up to 16 percent of students in America also use cognitive enhancers to improve performance in exams or for particular essays or projects.
The report also pointed to visual enhancement technologies, such as retinal implants, that could be used by the military, by night watchmen, safety inspectors or gamekeepers.
Technologies to enhance night vision or extend of the range of human vision to include other wavelengths such as ultra-violet light could become a reality relatively soon, it said.
Sahakian suggested that for drivers or pilots, such enhancements could reduce fatigue and lower the risk of fatal accidents.
But she also raised the question of whether employers keen to squeeze more productivity out of a workforce might coerce workers into using enhancements against their will.
“Imagine you’re a bus driver bringing children back on a journey to the UK overnight and your boss says you have to take cognitive-enhancing drug because there are risks to the children if you don’t stay awake. Is that acceptable?,” she said. “These are the kinds of things we have to grapple with.”
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Michael Roddy)
Medications/Drugs News Headlines – Yahoo! News
6 November 2012 Last updated at 19:04 ET
The pay gap between men and women is at risk of widening for the first time on record, a leading pay equality campaign group warns.
The Fawcett Society says that women still earn 14.9% less on average than men for the same job.
But it says this gap could widen as public sector cuts push women into the private sector, where the gap is wider.
The warning coincides with a survey which suggests that a woman can earn £423,000 less than a man in her career.
That average lifetime earnings figure comes from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) 2012 Gender Salary Survey, which also finds that the average pay gap stands at £10,060. This is a drop from 2011, when the difference was £10,546.
Women also lose out when it comes to bonuses, receiving less than half the average £7,496 that men receive, says the CMI.
Ceri Goddard, the Fawcett Society’s chief executive, said the CMI survey should serve as “a wake-up call to government – business as usual isn’t working”.
Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”
End Quote Ceri Goddard The Fawcett Society
Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson said: “Pay inequality remains a stubborn obstacle to real fairness in the workplace.
“We have implemented measures in the Equality Act to make pay secrecy clauses unlawful and we are taking through legislation which would give tribunals power to order that employers conduct a pay audit where they have been found to discriminate over pay.”
More still needed to be done, she added.
‘Into reverse’
The Fawcett Society, which campaigns for gender equality, is calling for a dedicated women’s employment strategy and for the government to bring more pressure to bear on the private sector to pay women equally for the same job as men.
It is concerned that the employment trend from public to private sector work is likely to push more women into insecure, low-paid, part-time jobs. The private sector pay gap, at 20.4%, is higher than in the public sector.
Who earns what (average salaries) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
Source: Chartered Management Institute | ||||
Male | £42,474 | £41,337 | £42,441 | £40,325 |
Female | £31,268 | £31,306 | £31,895 | £30,265 |
Difference | £11,206 | £10,031 | £10,546 | £10,060 |
“Far from slowly moving forward, we now face going into reverse”, warned Ms Goddard.
Annual figures on pay from the Office for National Statistics to be published next week are expected to indicate that the gap is widening.
“In recent years, progress on closing the gap has slowed, but as the age of austerity bites, we now face the very real prospect of the gap actually widening for the first time since records began,” Ms Goddard said.
The warning comes on Equal Pay Day, marking the point in the year when women effectively start working for nothing compared to men.
As well as earning less for doing the same jobs, women still have to climb a much steeper slope than men to reach the top, the CMI figures show.
For while career women account for 57% of the professional workforce, just 40% are department heads and 25% are chief executives, says the CMI.
Ann Francke, CMI chief executive, said: “This lack of a strong talent pipeline has to change, and fast. Allowing these types of gender inequalities to continue is precisely the kind of bad management that we need to stamp out.”
She wants the government to “name and shame” companies “perpetuating inequality”.
Baroness Prosser, deputy chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argues that if women are offered more career opportunities, it would help reduce the gender gap.
“The onus is squarely on employers to redress the balance, but female executives should also look to make the most of the practical support available to them,” she said.
The CMI’s National Management Salary Survey, conducted by XpertHR, collected data on 38,843 employees, from junior manager to board level, between August 2011 and August 2012.
BBC News – Business
(Reuters) – Stem cells culled from the bone marrow of healthy donors work as well or even better as cells harvested from patients themselves as a treatment for damaged hearts and are more convenient to use, according to new research.
The 13-month trial was the first to compare the safety and effectiveness of so-called mesenchymal, or bone marrow-derived, stem cells taken from patients themselves versus those provided by donors.
Such adult stem cells that renew themselves and mature into specific cell types have been used for 40 years in bone marrow transplants.
Scientists are now exploring their use as treatments for ailments such as heart disease and inflammatory conditions, some of the biggest markets in medicine.
The rationale behind using patients’ own stem cells to treat disease is that they do not trigger an attack by the body’s immune system. Mesenchymal stem cells, however, are also not recognized as foreign tissue.
Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that previously prepared cells from a healthy donor were comparatively safe and may offer the most convenience since it takes up to eight weeks to grow the amount of stem cells needed for the treatment.
The study involved 30 patients whose hearts were damaged by an earlier heart attack. Half received heart-muscle injections of their own cells, while the other half received donor cells.
Scar tissue was reduced by 33 percent in both groups, a result researchers called “very, very significant.”
Improvements in heart function were seen in 28 percent of those receiving donor cells, and in 50 percent of patients receiving their own cells.
After a year, five patients in the donor cell group and eight who received their own cells suffered serious adverse events.
“The trials so far have very small patient numbers,” said Stefanie Dimmeler, director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Regeneration Center of Molecular Medicine at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. “I think this early work in cardiac stem cells look very promising.”
The trial results were presented here at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Companies working to develop off-the-shelf stem cell treatments include Celgene Corp, Pluristem Therapeutics Inc, Athersys Inc and Mesoblast Ltd.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks advanced modestly on Monday in light trading in one of the year’s quietest sessions on the day before the presidential election.
Whatever the outcome of the race between incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, the election’s resolution will finally end the uncertainty that has kept the market stagnant for the past few weeks.
“No one’s going to make big bets today,” said Perry Piazza, director of investment strategy at Contango Capital Advisors in San Francisco.
Just 5.16 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and the NYSE MKT on Monday, below this year’s average daily volume of 6.5 billion.
” has been directionless over the last few weeks because of what fiscal and tax policy looks like next year. You could argue that just having the uncertainty behind us could lead to a bit of a relief rally,” Piazza said.
The Nasdaq was the strongest of the three major U.S. stock indexes, helped by a rally in Apple Inc , the most valuable publicly traded U.S. company. Apple‘s stock rose 1.4 percent to close at $ 584.62. The stock has fallen 17 percent from its closing high of $ 705.07 on September 21.
Once the election is over, the market will turn to the “fiscal cliff,” the $ 600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts that could hit the economy hard in 2013 unless Congress comes to an agreement that will soften the blow.
“I guess, academically, you could convince yourself a president doesn’t generally doesn’t have that much influence over the economy near-term, but the fact remains, they could impact the market,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer of Harris Private Bank in Chicago.
A budget crisis in the United States could hamper growth around the world. On Sunday, economic leaders pressed the United States to avert the fiscal cliff in the interest of avoiding a large-scale economic slowdown.
Another drag on trading volume was the residual impact of Hurricane Sandy, which has left about 30,000 to 40,000 Americans homeless. The superstorm wreaked havoc on infrastructure and housing in the Northeast.
“I think Sandy is still affecting volume a little bit,” Piazza said. “Folks we deal with in New York seem to be back at work now, but they were out most of the week last week, and still have other things on their minds.”
The Dow Jones industrial average <.DJI> advanced 19.28 points, or 0.15 percent, to end at 13,112.44. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index <.SPX> rose 3.06 points, or 0.22 percent, to 1,417.26. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.IXIC> gained 17.53 points, or 0.59 percent, to close at 2,999.66.
The CBOE Volatility Index <.VIX> or VIX, Wall Street’s favorite barometer of investor anxiety, rose 4.72 percent – a relatively big move compared with the S&P 500 – to end Monday’s session at 18.42.
“It’s just a few people taking positions ahead of the election, to protect themselves against a pullback,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab. “I think this will go on tomorrow as well,” adding that he believes the market will be flat while the VIX is likely to show “a bigger move, as it’s just the nature of hedging ahead of big news like the election.”
The PHLX semiconductor index <.SOX> rose 1.6 percent and bolstered the Nasdaq.
An index of housing-related shares <.HGX> gained 1.8 percent.
In the energy sector, the S&P energy index <.GSPE> gained 0.7 percent following a gain in crude oil futures prices and third-quarter earnings from two major energy companies.
Transocean Ltd , which operates the world’s largest offshore oil drilling fleet, gained 5.6 percent to $ 48.64, a day after the company reported a higher-than-expected adjusted profit for the third quarter.
Shares of Southern Co , the second-largest U.S. power company, fell 2.5 percent to $ 44.62 after Southern posted third-quarter earnings.
The S&P utilities index <.GSPU>, down 1.66 percent, was the worst performing of the 10 major S&P 500 sectors a week after superstorm Sandy hit New York City and surrounding areas.
Shares of Time Warner Cable , the second-largest U.S. cable operator, lost 6.4 percent to $ 91.93 after the company reported a quarterly profit that missed estimates as it lost more video subscribers than expected.
BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc surged 31.2 percent to $ 49.07 after the company said a late-stage trial of its experimental drug for a rare genetic disorder could improve patients’ walking ability when the medicine is administered weekly. The rally in BioMarin’s stock helped drive the Nasdaq biotech index <.NBI> up 1.7 percent.
Despite the light volume on Monday, the market’s breadth was positive. Advancers slightly outnumbered decliners on the New York Stock Exchange by a ratio of 15 to 14. On the Nasdaq, about three stocks rose for every two that fell.
(Reporting by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Additional reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak and Angela Moon; Editing by Jan Paschal)
Business News Headlines – Yahoo! News
SOFIA (Reuters) – Fed up with ineffective law enforcement, thousands of Bulgarians have flocked to a Facebook page showcasing images of police breaking rules or failing to do their duty.
The “Photograph a Policeman” group includes pictures of badly parked patrol cars, including one in a disabled spot and another on a pedestrian crossing, and a police motorcyclist pulling a “wheelie” – on the wrong side of the road.
In another image, a uniformed policeman holds an open bottle of beer while sitting at the wheel of a patrol car.
It highlights frustration among many Bulgarians with a justice system that is subject to special monitoring by the European Union and a country where corruption and organized crime remain major problems five years after joining the bloc.
Created only this week, the group already has nearly 6,500 followers, including several well-known local politicians, journalists and businessmen.
It started after Boyan Maximov, from the Black Sea city of Varna, took a picture of three policemen apparently asleep in a patrol car and posted it on social networks.
Police then questioned Maximov, who complained of harassment and fines for petty offences like taking the rubbish out without an ID card, which under Bulgarian law must be carried in public at all times.
Last week police spokeswoman Kalinka Pencheva called Maximov “a red neck idiot, who has nothing to do and is bored” on local channel bTV. Pencheva has since been sacked but the Facebook page – and the number of pictures – continues to grow.
The interior ministry said it was aware of the page and most of the pictures were old.
“The Interior Ministry’s inspectorate obtained information about the creation of this group and is checking the photos and the comments that have been published,” a spokeswoman said.
(Reporting by Angel Krasimirov, editing by Paul Casciato)
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – CBS is making a $ 1 million dollar donation to Hurricane Sandy recovery as part of a wider effort that includes PSAs and matching employee contributions through the end of the year, TheWrap has learned.
CEO Les Moonves announced the company’s Red Cross donation in a letter to employees obtained by TheWrap, in which he thanks CBS staff working in hurricane-stricken parts of the Northeast and details its charitable plans.
Other networks are pitching in as well: ABC is devoting its programming day Monday to fundraising, and its corporate parent, Disney, has donated $ 2 million. Fox’s parent, News Corp., has donated $ 1 million. And NBC is holding a telethon tonight. All of the networks are also making viewers aware of the recovery efforts through means ranging from crawls to PSAs.
Moonves singled out employees from all corners of the company who worked through tough conditions to keep its television and radio stations going.
“I am announcing today that November, the month of Thanksgiving, will be dedicated at all our operations to supporting the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts of the American Red Cross, with whom CBS has a long partnership in times of crisis,” he wrote. “Our local TV and radio stations, and their online counterparts, will work both individually and together… to employ our unique resources to lend additional support to those relief efforts through telethons, phone banks and comprehensive PSA campaigns. Those efforts have already begun, and are expanding as you read this.”
CBS, he noted, is producing special PSAs featuring its stars. The first, with Gary Sinise, aired during “The Big Bang Theory” on Thursday. More will air during football over the weekend.
Additionally, “Entertainment Tonight” is enlisting stars to appear in PSAs that will run in syndication on affiliates of all networks airing the show. CBS will also dedicate billboards to the relief effort.
“There will not be one division of our company that does not contribute to this effort, each in its own way, and in ways to be determined by each,” Moonves wrote.
“As a cornerstone of this month-long drive, CBS Corporation will make a $ 1 million contribution to the American Red Cross,” he added. “In addition, we are also making a commitment to match your individual contributions to any Sandy-related relief efforts by making corresponding additional gifts to the American Red Cross. The match will apply to contributions that may have already been made as well as to new donations through the end of the year.”
TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News
(Reuters) – Orthopedic surgeons-in-training said they were tired less often after rules regulating how much they could work went into place, according to a U.S. survey.
But the results published in the Annals of Surgery found the trainee doctors didn’t actually get any more sleep under the limited work hours policy, and also said they felt less prepared as doctors and were less satisfied with their education.
In July 2003, the U.S. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education implemented new policy limiting the on-duty hours of notoriously sleep-deprived residents to 80 per week, with a minimum of ten hours off between shifts. Those changes were further updated in 2011.
The main goal was to ease young doctors’ fatigue and fatigue-related medical errors.
The work limits seem to have been somewhat successful, but they also come at a cost, according to Debra Weinstein from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who worked on the study.
“The extent to which we restrict residents’ time in the hospital does risk (affecting) their skill and sense of preparedness,” she said.
“Continuing to further limit duty hours may not be the best way to address the goals of patient safety, resident well-being and excellent medical education.”
Some past studies have suggested that work limits improve quality of life for residents, but have a negative impact on their education. One survey published last year found that the majority of surgery residents worked more hours than the current regulations allowed.
In the new study, researchers analyzed surveys completed by a total of 216 residents at the Harvard Orthopedic Combined Residency Program between 2003 and 2009.
Compared to pre-2003 residents, orthopedic trainees in 2009 reported working fewer hours per week, about 66 hours versus 75. But they didn’t get any more sleep. Throughout the study period, they reported sleeping for about five hours every night, on average.
Residents rated their own preparedness to make clinical decisions under stress and their ability to perform the range of skills expected of them slightly lower in later years, the researchers said.
After the work-hour policies went into place, residents did say they spent fewer days feeling very tired, and a smaller proportion of them said their fatigue had a negative impact on patient care and safety.
Forty-six percent of residents said their fatigue affected the quality of care they provided in 2003, compared to 26 percent on the 2004 through 2009 surveys.
“There’s a general assumption that reducing work hours will result in more sleep for tired residents, and clearly out findings challenge that,” Weinstein said.
However, it’s possible that having more time to decompress and relieve psychological stress may improve residents’ sense of well-being, even if they’re not getting more sleep, she added.
Weinstein and her colleagues noted that their study didn’t include objective measures of residents’ performance, so they couldn’t tell whether they actually did better or worse on exams, or made more or fewer errors. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TcFx66
(Reporting by Elaine Lies)
Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.
Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.
In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”
Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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