Each year, lots of people promise that this will be the year they cut back on holiday spending, focus on the true meaning of the holidays and end the season without that other holiday tradition: credit card debt.
Some people actually do trade shopping and splurging for caroling and cookie making. But, based on retail sales figures, it appears that most years, most people don?t.
This year is starting off no different: Although many people said they are worried about being able to afford holiday items, Black Friday weekend saw record crowds?and higher spending levels than last year.
Lately, some companies and organizations have been trying to make the most of those more altruistic intentions.
On Black Friday, jacket maker Patagonia ran ads urging people NOT to buy its clothes if they didn?t need them.
In a post on the company?s blog, the high-end outdoor clothing maker explained, ?It would be hypocritical for us to work for environmental change without encouraging customers to think before they buy.?
It?s an interesting marketing tactic that plays into the company?s longstanding environmental activism, which includes its Common Threads pledge to cut down on waste.
A nonprofit called The Center for the New American Dream also is asking people to take a pledge, this one promising to do things like ?give the gift of time? and ?consider less gimmicky, less commercial gifts.?
The organization also has a template e-mail where you can invite people to sponsor your pledge by making a donation to the Center for the New American Dream. The group describes itself as helping ?Americans consume responsibly to protect the environment, enhance quality of life and promote social justice.?
Kathy Hedge, the group?s deputy director, said about 800 people have signed the pledge so far. Although the organization has in the past offered tips for simplifying the holidays, this is the first year they are offering the pledge. They?re hoping it will make people more likely to keep their commitment to cutting back.
?I think any time you actually make a pledge you?re a little more likely to carry through,? Hedge said.
In 2008, at the height of the recession, we profiled four families who had decided to cut back on their holiday spending.
When we checked back in on them in January, they had mostly kept to their more limited budgets, and they felt good about it. That turned out to be one of the few years when holiday spending actually fell, by 4.4 percent.
Readers, what about you?
Related: Anti-Black Friday actions urged
Are you trying to cut back on spending this holiday season?
Confidence index, Europe send stocks mostly higher
(AP)
NEW YORK ? A jump in U.S. consumer confidence sent stocks modestly higher Tuesday. Investors were also encouraged by new efforts from European leaders to find more aggressive cures for the region's debt crisis.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended with a gain of 32 points, following a 291-point surge Monday. Retail stocks were among the biggest gainers. Home Depot Inc. rose 5.3 percent. Best Buy Co. rose 5.1 percent. Retailers had record sales over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Stocks started higher and gained momentum after 10 a.m., when the Conference Board, a private research group, reported that its Consumer Confidence Index jumped in November to its highest level since July. That news and the surge in holiday shopping reassured investors that the U.S. economy might be sputtering back to life, said Quincy Krosby, market strategist for Prudential Financial.
"For the market, the fact that Americans are spending is a positive force," said Krosby.
European finance ministers gathered Tuesday to hash out the latest ideas for squelching the crisis. At their regular monthly meeting, the ministers also released the latest installment of emergency loans for Greece.
Europe's proposals for wriggling out of a potential financial catastrophe have become more radical as borrowing costs for the region's large economies, including Spain and Italy, spike. President Barack Obama said in a meeting with top EU officials Monday that if Europe failed to solve its crisis, the U.S. economy would suffer.
Acting with new urgency, Europe's finance ministers were considering wide-ranging plans for protecting its shared currency, the euro, from collapsing. Many of those ideas would have been off-limits until recently, including having countries cede some control over their finances to a central European authority.
In the latest sign of trouble, Italy was forced to pay a high interest rate on an auction of three-year debt Tuesday. The 7.89 percent rate was nearly three percentage points higher than last month, an enormous increase.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose 33.62 points, or 0.3 percent, to close at 11,555.63 Tuesday.
The Dow jumped 291 the day before on expectations that European leaders were moving more aggressively to prevent the region's debt crisis from causing a catastrophic breakup of their currency union.
The Standard & Poor's 500 index rose 2.64, or 0.2 percent, to 1,195.19.
Technology stocks were weak. Corning Inc., which makes glass for flat-screen TVs, slumped 10.8 percent, the most in the S&P 500, after saying a major South Korean customer would no longer do business with it.
The Nasdaq composite, which consists mostly of technology stocks, fell 11.83, or 0.5 percent, to 2,515.51. Netflix lost 3.4 percent after Standard & Poor's lowered its rating on the company's debt, saying it expected losses.
Bank stocks lagged the market after the latest jump in Italy's borrowing costs. Morgan Stanley fell 3.6 percent; Bank of America 3.2 percent. Banks are especially sensitive to Europe's financial problems because they hold billions in European debt. They could suffer huge losses in the event of a financial panic in Europe and a freeze-up in global lending markets.
AMR Corp. plunged 84 percent after the parent company of American Airlines said it would file for Chapter 11 because it could no longer shoulder rising fuel costs and its heavy debt load. Competitor United Continental Holdings Inc. jumped 6.3 percent, and Delta Air Lines Inc. rose 5 percent. AMR Corp. has continued to lose money while other U.S. airlines returned to profitability in the last two years.
Seagate Technology PLC jumped 3.7 percent after the hard drive maker forecast revenue for the current quarter that was higher than analysts were expecting. Citi analyst Joe Yoo said higher hard disk drive prices were driving the gain.
Tiffany & Co. fell 8.7 percent after the luxury retailer forecast fourth-quarter earnings that were below Wall Street's expectations. The quarter includes the holiday shopping season.
Dillard's Inc. slumped 6.8 percent after a Sterne Agee analysts cut his rating on the stock, saying the department store operator's profits could be pressured by an increased in markdowns and sluggish economic conditions.
BEIJING ? China will have about 780,000 people infected with the AIDS virus by the end of this year, state media reported Wednesday, with most having contracted it through heterosexual sex.
The official Xinhua News Agency said a report from the Ministry of Health and the United Nations estimates there will be about 48,000 new HIV infections in China this year. Xinhua quoted the report as saying the virus remains "mildly prevalent" in China.
HIV gained a foothold in China largely because of unsanitary blood plasma buying schemes and tainted transfusions in hospitals. Health authorities say heterosexual sex has now overtaken drug abuse as the main method of transmission.
After ignoring or demonizing people with AIDS for much of the 1980s and 1990s, China's authoritarian government has taken a more compassionate line on the disease and combating its spread in recent years. But people with AIDS still face difficulties in getting treatment and compensation, and authorities remain deeply suspicious of independent activists.
On Wednesday, a handful of relatives of HIV or AIDS patients who contracted the virus through tainted transfusions planned to protest in front of the Ministry of Finance in Beijing but abandoned the plan because of the tight security there.
Organizer Sun Ya said the group was demanding government compensation. Sun's 15-year-old son contracted HIV from a tainted blood transfusion in 2002 at the Peking University Dental Hospital in Beijing.
Sun said he and others have tried to use the legal system to fight for compensation but courts have declined to take their cases, so they have resorted to sporadic protests in the capital.
Drug may slow spread of deadly eye cancerPublic release date: 28-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Arbanas arbanasc@wustl.edu 314-286-0109 Washington University School of Medicine
A drug commonly used to treat seizures appears to make eye tumors less likely to grow if they spread to other parts of the body, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Their findings are available online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
Uveal melanoma, the second most common form of melanoma, can be very aggressive and spread, or metastasize, from the eye to other organs, especially the liver.
"Melanoma in general, and uveal melanoma in particular, is notoriously difficult to treat once it has metastasized and grown in a distant organ," says principal investigator J. William Harbour, MD. "We previously identified an aggressive class 2 molecular type of uveal melanoma that, in most cases, already has metastasized by the time the eye cancer is diagnosed, even though imaging the body can't detect it yet. This microscopic amount of cancer can remain dormant in the liver and elsewhere for several years before it begins to grow and becomes lethal."
Once this happens, the prospects for survival are poor, according to Harbour, the Paul A. Cibis Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and professor of cell biology and of molecular oncology. He also directs the Center for Ocular Oncology at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.
Harbour's new study shows that drugs known as histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors alter the conformation of the DNA of the aggressive form of uveal melanoma, which changes the way key genes are expressed, rendering the tumor cells less aggressive.
"We looked at uveal melanoma cells in the laboratory and in an animal model, and we found that HDAC inhibitors can block the growth and proliferation of tumor cells," he says. "HDAC inhibitors appear to reverse the aggressive molecular signature that we had identified several years ago as a marker for metastatic death. When we look at aggressive melanoma cells under the microscope after treatment with HDAC inhibitors, they look more like normal cells and less like tumor cells."
Because HDAC inhibitors already are on the market, Harbour says he thinks it may be possible to quickly begin testing the drugs in patients with aggressive forms of uveal melanoma.
The drugs have relatively mild side effects that are not as severe as those seen in patients undergoing chemotherapy. One HDAC inhibitor, for example, is the anti-seizure drug valproic acid. Its most common side effect is drowsiness, which is typical of all HDAC inhibitors.
Clinical trials of HDAC inhibitors could begin in the next six to 12 months, Harbour says. Already, other researchers have applied for funding to begin testing an HDAC inhibitor called SAHA (suberoylanilide hydroxic acid) in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma.
"I think this is a reasonable place to start in the challenging effort to improve survival in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma," Harbour says. "I suspect that the best role for HDAC inhibitors will be to slow or prevent the growth of tumor cells that have spread out of the eye but cannot yet be detected. This might lengthen the time between the original eye treatment and the appearance of detectable cancer in the liver and elsewhere."
Like the chicken pox virus that lives for years in nerve cells without affecting health, Harbour says treatment with HDAC inhibitors may allow patients with aggressive melanomas to live for many years without any detectable spread of their disease.
Harbour and his colleagues previously developed a screening test to predict whether the cancer would be likely to spread to the liver and other parts of the body. The test is helpful because although less than 4 percent of patients with uveal melanoma have detectable metastatic disease, up to half will eventually die of metastasis even after successful treatment of the tumor with radiation, surgery, or, in the worst cases, removal of the eye.
Tumors that tend to remain contained within the eye are called class 1 uveal melanomas. With a needle biopsy, doctors can quickly determine whether a tumor is likely to be a class 1 cancer or whether it carries a molecular signature that identifies it as a high-risk, class 2 melanoma. Harbour's team developed a test to identify the class 2 molecular signature, and that test is now being used around the world to detect the aggressive form of uveal melanoma.
In addition, Harbour's team published a paper last year in the journal Science identifying a mutation in a gene called BAP-1 that helped further explain why some eye tumors develop the class 2 signature and acquire the ability to spread. Harbour explains that HDAC inhibitors appear to reverse some of the effects of BAP-1 mutations on the melanoma cell.
###
Landreville S, Agapova OA, Matatall KA, Kneass ZT, Onken MD, Lee RS, Bowcock AM, Harbour JW. Histone dacetylase inhibitors induce growth arrest and differentiation in uveal melanoma. Clinical Cancer Research, available online at: doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-11-0946
Funding for this research comes from a Fonds de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec Postdoctoral Training Award, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, and the National Cancer Institute, the National Eye Institute the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and by the Horncrest Foundation and Research to Prevent Blindness.
J. William Harbour and Washington University may receive income based on a license of related technology by the university to Castle Biosciences Inc. This study was not supported by Castle Biosciences Inc.
Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Drug may slow spread of deadly eye cancerPublic release date: 28-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline Arbanas arbanasc@wustl.edu 314-286-0109 Washington University School of Medicine
A drug commonly used to treat seizures appears to make eye tumors less likely to grow if they spread to other parts of the body, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Their findings are available online in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.
Uveal melanoma, the second most common form of melanoma, can be very aggressive and spread, or metastasize, from the eye to other organs, especially the liver.
"Melanoma in general, and uveal melanoma in particular, is notoriously difficult to treat once it has metastasized and grown in a distant organ," says principal investigator J. William Harbour, MD. "We previously identified an aggressive class 2 molecular type of uveal melanoma that, in most cases, already has metastasized by the time the eye cancer is diagnosed, even though imaging the body can't detect it yet. This microscopic amount of cancer can remain dormant in the liver and elsewhere for several years before it begins to grow and becomes lethal."
Once this happens, the prospects for survival are poor, according to Harbour, the Paul A. Cibis Distinguished Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and professor of cell biology and of molecular oncology. He also directs the Center for Ocular Oncology at the Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.
Harbour's new study shows that drugs known as histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors alter the conformation of the DNA of the aggressive form of uveal melanoma, which changes the way key genes are expressed, rendering the tumor cells less aggressive.
"We looked at uveal melanoma cells in the laboratory and in an animal model, and we found that HDAC inhibitors can block the growth and proliferation of tumor cells," he says. "HDAC inhibitors appear to reverse the aggressive molecular signature that we had identified several years ago as a marker for metastatic death. When we look at aggressive melanoma cells under the microscope after treatment with HDAC inhibitors, they look more like normal cells and less like tumor cells."
Because HDAC inhibitors already are on the market, Harbour says he thinks it may be possible to quickly begin testing the drugs in patients with aggressive forms of uveal melanoma.
The drugs have relatively mild side effects that are not as severe as those seen in patients undergoing chemotherapy. One HDAC inhibitor, for example, is the anti-seizure drug valproic acid. Its most common side effect is drowsiness, which is typical of all HDAC inhibitors.
Clinical trials of HDAC inhibitors could begin in the next six to 12 months, Harbour says. Already, other researchers have applied for funding to begin testing an HDAC inhibitor called SAHA (suberoylanilide hydroxic acid) in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma.
"I think this is a reasonable place to start in the challenging effort to improve survival in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma," Harbour says. "I suspect that the best role for HDAC inhibitors will be to slow or prevent the growth of tumor cells that have spread out of the eye but cannot yet be detected. This might lengthen the time between the original eye treatment and the appearance of detectable cancer in the liver and elsewhere."
Like the chicken pox virus that lives for years in nerve cells without affecting health, Harbour says treatment with HDAC inhibitors may allow patients with aggressive melanomas to live for many years without any detectable spread of their disease.
Harbour and his colleagues previously developed a screening test to predict whether the cancer would be likely to spread to the liver and other parts of the body. The test is helpful because although less than 4 percent of patients with uveal melanoma have detectable metastatic disease, up to half will eventually die of metastasis even after successful treatment of the tumor with radiation, surgery, or, in the worst cases, removal of the eye.
Tumors that tend to remain contained within the eye are called class 1 uveal melanomas. With a needle biopsy, doctors can quickly determine whether a tumor is likely to be a class 1 cancer or whether it carries a molecular signature that identifies it as a high-risk, class 2 melanoma. Harbour's team developed a test to identify the class 2 molecular signature, and that test is now being used around the world to detect the aggressive form of uveal melanoma.
In addition, Harbour's team published a paper last year in the journal Science identifying a mutation in a gene called BAP-1 that helped further explain why some eye tumors develop the class 2 signature and acquire the ability to spread. Harbour explains that HDAC inhibitors appear to reverse some of the effects of BAP-1 mutations on the melanoma cell.
###
Landreville S, Agapova OA, Matatall KA, Kneass ZT, Onken MD, Lee RS, Bowcock AM, Harbour JW. Histone dacetylase inhibitors induce growth arrest and differentiation in uveal melanoma. Clinical Cancer Research, available online at: doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-11-0946
Funding for this research comes from a Fonds de la Recherche en Sante du Quebec Postdoctoral Training Award, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship program, and the National Cancer Institute, the National Eye Institute the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and by the Horncrest Foundation and Research to Prevent Blindness.
J. William Harbour and Washington University may receive income based on a license of related technology by the university to Castle Biosciences Inc. This study was not supported by Castle Biosciences Inc.
Washington University School of Medicine's 2,100 employed and volunteer faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals. The School of Medicine is one of the leading medical research, teaching and patient care institutions in the nation, currently ranked fourth in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children's hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Ooh, keyboards. Exciting, right?! Oh, are you nonplussed? Get over it dude: The concept is of a single keyboard that works really well across all of your computers, tablets, and even your phones is actually something incredibly appealing. More »
KINSHASA, Congo ? After an election marred by missing ballots and violence, officials extended voting to a third day Wednesday in an attempt to prevent further unrest in sub-Saharan Africa's largest nation.
Country experts had urged the government to postpone Monday's presidential and legislative elections, arguing that a delayed vote was better than a botched one.
Congo is in a race against the clock, though, because the five-year term of President Joseph Kabila expires next week, and the country could face more unrest if he is seen as staying past his constitutional mandate.
The vote is only the second since the end of Congo's last war, and the first to be organized by the government instead of the international community. The election was supposed to mark another step toward peace, but if the results are not accepted by the population, especially the country's fractured opposition, analysts fear it could drag Congo back into conflict.
Election commission Daniel Ngoy Mulunda announced the second extension of the voting late Tuesday. He said that over 99 percent of voting districts had functioned normally, and that only 485 out of 61,380 polling stations had been unable to complete voting.
"We have authorized the voting bureaus to stay open due to the late arrival of voting materials," he said. "The election will continue tomorrow."
Less than 2 percent of roads are paved in Congo, which suffered decades of dictatorship and two civil wars. Some districts are so remote that ballot boxes had to be transported across muddy trails on the heads of porters, and by dugout canoe across churning rivers.
Even in the capital, though, one precinct ran out of ballots late Monday and had to call for more to be delivered, said Jean-Felix Dikamba, the president of one of the polling stations inside the school.
The ballots were delivered in an unmarked car and when the poll workers tried to unload the materials, a mob rushed the car, accusing the poll workers of delivering pre-marked ballots. Police then fired tear gas to disperse angry voters outside.
Elsewhere, five people were killed in the southeastern town of Lubumbashi on Monday after gunmen opened fire on a truck carrying ballots and on a polling center.
The head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo, Roger Meece, told reporters that he had received reports of at least two polling stations being set on fire in the Kananga province.
Congo's territory straddles an area the size of the United States east of the Mississippi ? over 1.4 million square miles, much of it covered by rain forest. The vast forest in the country's east is still inhabited by militias and rebel groups responsible for attacks villages and raping civilians.
The incumbent president is widely expected to win re-election since the opposition is split among 10 candidates, including 79-year-old Etienne Tshisekedi, a longtime opposition leader who is running for president for the first time.
Kabila was first thrust into the position of president a decade ago, after the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, the rebel leader who toppled the country's dictator of 32 years, Mobutu Sese Seko.
Learn How-To Download And Install Android 4.0.1 ICS On Galaxy Tab
Samsung smartphones are well known among the world but here we?ll talk about the Samsung Galaxy Tab. If you have a desire to Install Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich then you are on right place because here I am going to present you a fine tutorial and the credit goes to RedmondPie for this tutorial so, below you can see all the easy to understand steps?
Step 1:?Download the latest build of?Ice?Cream?Sandwich?for original Galaxy Tab from this thread.
Step 2:?Transfer the .zip?file?to the root directory of your Galaxy Tab.
Step 3:?Turn off your Galaxy Tab. Boot into ClockworkMod (CWM) Recovery Mode by holding a specific key combination. This can be found by performing a simple search on your favorite engine.
Step 4:?Format?/system, /data?and?/cache?from?mounts and storage?under main?menu?of CWM.
Step 5:?Wipe data / factory reset?from main menu.
Step 6:?Go back to main menu and choose the .zip file you transferred in step 2 from?install zip from sdcard > choose zip from sdcard.?Ice Cream Sandwich will now be flashed to your Galaxy Tab.
Step 7:?Reboot device from main menu.
If you followed the steps correctly, your Galaxy Tab will boot into an alpha build of Android 4.0.1 Ice Cream Sandwich. Have fun! If you have any issues or queries, visit the original thread on?XDA.
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Nexus Prime product page at Best Buy, $299 with 2-year agreement starting Nov 27?
Once again we see Best Buy using the name Nexus Prime, this time it's on the new product page live on their website as of tonight. Even more interesting is the fact that the $299 price point is good starting today (Nov. 17), with a 2-year agreement of course. While we don't know if this name is going to stick, and no date is official until we hear it from Verizon, any news that shows this phone is close to a release is good news. Another best buy snafu, or something nobody expects? We're not sure what to think any more. Hit the link to have a look, and discuss more in the forums.
GRANTS PASS, Ore. ? A young wolf from Oregon has become a media celebrity while looking for love, tracing a zigzag path that has carried him hundreds of miles nearly to California, while his alpha male sire and a sibling that stayed home near the Idaho border are under a death warrant for killing cattle.
Backcountry lodge owner Liz Parrish thinks she locked eyes with the wolf called OR-7 on the edge of the meadow in front of her Crystalwood Lodge, on the western shore of Upper Klamath Lake, and hopes someday she will hear his howls coming out of the tall timber.
"I was stunned ? it was such a huge animal," said Parrish, who has seen her share of wolves while racing dog sleds in Alaska and Minnesota. "He just stopped and stared. I stopped and stared. We had a stare-down that seemed like a long time, but was probably just a few seconds.
"He just evaporated into the trees. I stayed there awhile, hoping he might come back. He didn't."
Cattle rancher Nathan Jackson has not seen or heard the wolf, and hopes he never does.
"In this country, we worked really hard to exterminate wolves 50 years ago or so, and there was a reason," said Jackson, who ranches on the other side of Upper Klamath Lake from Parrish's lodge.
"A lot of people who don't have a direct tie to the agricultural community tend to view wolves as majestic, beautiful creatures. They don't seem so majestic and beautiful when they are ripping apart calves and colts."
Last February, OR-7 was in a snowy canyon in northeastern Oregon, when a state biologist shot him with a tranquilizer dart from a helicopter, then fitted him with a tracking collar and blue ear tags. State biologists have been able to chart his journey from GPS positions transmitted from the collar. They show he has traveled 730 miles on his meandering route, getting as far as 320 miles from home. And each time he crosses a county line, OR-7 makes it into the newspapers and on TV news.
The conservation group Oregon Wild has begun a contest to give OR-7 a different name, hoping to make him too famous to be shot, either by a poacher, rancher or government hunter. One entry came from as far away as Finland. The first came from a little girl in OR-7's home territory of Wallowa County, who suggested "Whoseafraida."
OR-7 set out on his trek on Sept. 10, just before state wildlife officials issued a death warrant for members of his Imnaha pack for killing cattle. The kill order specifically mentions OR-7's father, the alpha male, and one younger wolf with no collar. Since OR-7 and two siblings took off, that would leave his mother and one pup.
The department reports a government hunter had a shot but missed, and did not get another before conservation groups won a stay of the kill order while their legal challenge is settled by the Oregon Court of Appeals.
Wolves started moving into Oregon from Idaho in the late 1990s, from packs introduced into the Northern Rockies as part of a federal endangered species restoration program. From trail cameras, radio tracking collar data, and sightings, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife figures the state has at least 23 wolves. All four packs are in the northeastern corner of the state. Two produced pups this year.
Federal protection for wolves was lifted in Eastern Oregon, but they remain under state protection. West of Interstate 97 they are back under federal protection.
When wolves reach about 2 years old, they typically strike out on their own, looking for a mate and an empty territory they can call their own. And that's what OR-7 has done.
He's trekked across mountains, deserts and major highways from his pack's turf.
Once in the Cascade Range, OR-7 meandered through the Rogue-Umpqua Divide, where Oregon's last known wolf was shot by a bounty hunter in 1946. He skirted Crater Lake National Park, and dropped down to the flatlands near Upper Klamath Lake, climbed back up in the Cascades, and crossed over the crest south of Mount McLaughlin, a snow-capped volcano visible from Interstate 5.
So far there have been no reports of cattle killing along his path.
Russ Morgan, the wolf coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, has been surprised by the way the public has embraced the wandering wolf. Much of Morgan's time is spent on a more difficult task, trying to build acceptance among ranchers.
"With all that's going on right now with management of wolves in Oregon, this is kind of a different side that people across the state have taken a shine to," Morgan said.
OR-7's travels are not unusual, said Ed Bangs, the retired U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wolf coordinator for the Northern Rockies. A female from Montana headed south through Wyoming, crossed southeastern Idaho, dropped down to Utah, crossed northern Colorado, and headed back up to Wyoming, where she ate poison and died.
"If you connect all the dots, she walked something like 3,000 miles," said Bangs. "Wolves are amazing travelers.'"
And patient. One male hung out four years in Idaho, howling and leaving scent markers, before a female found him, Bangs said. They established a pack, and the male lived to the near-record age of 13 before lying down and dying next to a dead elk.
Bangs said most of the wanderers become biological dead ends, but even if OR-7 dies alone, the trail of scent posts he has left will be followed by others.
And OR-7 already may have company. Tracks and sightings from last winter indicated other wolves made it to the Cascades. Parrish spotted a track last May in a muddy area of her meadow.
The 4Moms Origami: Look At This Robotic Stroller! Look At It!
There are things you need to be afraid of when you're a new parent. There's gluten, pull cords, Disney products, and BPA, to be sure, but what about wild robotic strollers that look as if they'll eat your wee ones in one snap of their plastic jaws?
Luckily, the 4moms Origami stroller won't close on the little ones and is in fact a automatic stroller with a bit of a twist. Instead of pressing down on some hydraulics, this thing opens and closes with the tap of a button. It is, in short, pretty darn amazing.
Military: 3 rockets from Lebanon strike Israel
(AP)
JERUSALEM ? Rockets fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel early Tuesday for the first time in more than two years, drawing a burst of Israeli artillery fire across the tense border, the Israeli military said.
No casualties or major damage were reported on the Israeli side and no one claimed responsibility for the attack. The military said at least two of the rockets landed on Israeli soil, and that Israeli guns shelled the area where the fire had originated.
A Lebanese security official told The Associated Press that one rocket was fired from Lebanon and that Israel hit back with six rockets, which landed in an empty area. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
The flare-up comes at a time when the entire region is engulfed in violence and upheaval, with thousands killed in the regime's crackdown on protesters in Syria and after popular uprisings ousted longtime rulers in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
The Israeli military said it did not expect Tuesday's incident to touch off a wider conflict with Lebanon. In a statement, however, it said it regarded the attack as "severe" and held the Lebanese government and army responsible for preventing rocket fire at Israel.
Army Radio said it was the eighth rocket attack since Israel's monthlong war with Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas ended in August 2006. Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for any attacks since the end of the fighting, but smaller militant organizations, some Palestinian and some linked to al-Qaida, have launched rockets on several occasions.
None of the rocket attacks has caused serious casualties.
But in August 2010, two Lebanese soldiers, a Lebanese journalist and an Israeli soldier were killed in a brief border clash touched off by Lebanese army fire toward an Israeli military base.
Overall, however, the border has been largely quiet but tense since the 2006 war, which was sparked by a deadly cross-border attack by Hezbollah on an Israeli military patrol.
Israel bombed the group's strongholds and Hezbollah barraged northern Israel with nearly 4,000 rockets.
About 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed in the conflict, which ended with a U.N.-brokered truce that sent thousands of Lebanese troops and international peacekeepers to south Lebanon.
Although the cease-fire agreement forbade Hezbollah to rearm, Israel contends the group has since replenished its arsenal with even more powerful weapons.
_____
Associated Press writer Elizabeth A. Kennedy contributed to this report from Beirut.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) ? The Palestinians' rival leaders have quietly decided to keep their respective governments in the West Bank and Gaza in place until elections, a senior Hamas figure told The Associated Press. This proposal would remove a major obstacle to efforts to reconcile the factions: the need to form an interim unity government.
A representative of Hamas' rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, denied however that such a deal was struck.
The understanding was reached between Western-backed Abbas and Khaled Mashaal, chief of the Islamic militant Hamas, during one-on-one talks last week, said the Hamas figure.
He spoke on condition of anonymity, because he said the two leaders decided not to make the arrangement public.
Another top Hamas official, Moussa Abu Marzouk said that it was at least possible to skip an interim government and head straight to elections, tentatively scheduled for May.
However, Abbas envoy Azzam al-Ahmed on Saturday denied the two leaders reached such an understanding. "There is no possibility of holding elections without a unity government," he said.
Keeping the existing governments in place would help Abbas avoid a Western backlash in the run-up to elections. Western powers fear a unity government, even one composed of technocrats without clear political affiliation, would be heavily influenced by the Islamic militant Hamas.
It also would mean that Salam Fayyad, an internationally respected economist, remains in charge in the West Bank for the time being and continue to ensure that donor countries keep funding Abbas' Palestinian Authority. Hamas will keep running Gaza, the territory it seized from Abbas by force in 2007.
Shelving the unity government would also remove a major sticking point in Hamas-Abbas negotiations. The unity deal, approved in principle in May, has stalled in part over who should lead the interim unity government. Hamas adamantly opposed Abbas' preference for appointing Fayyad, arguing he is too close to the West.
At Thursday's meeting, Abbas told Mashaal that that the two-government status quo was "convenient for both sides and any change might be costly," according to the Hamas figure. The Hamas figure said he was briefed by Mashaal, who welcomed the idea.
Al-Ahmed, the Abbas envoy, said negotiators from both sides would meet again next month to try to form a unity government. Abu Marzouk confirmed that such talks are planned.
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, a worker inspects the label on vials containing H1N1 flu vaccine produced by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, a worker inspects the label on vials containing H1N1 flu vaccine produced by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, a worker inspects vials containing H1N1 flu vaccine produced by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, workers inspect labels on vials containing H1N1 flu vaccine during production at the Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, vials of H1N1 flu vaccine by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. are seen during production at Sinovac facilities in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
In this photo taken on Thursday, Nov. 24, 2011, workers prepare to wrap the packages containing vials of H1N1 flu vaccine produced by Beijing-based drug maker Sinovac Biotech Ltd. in Beijing. The world should get ready for a new Made in China product, vaccines. After years of supplying its own market, China's vaccine makers are gearing up to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
BEIJING (AP) ? The world should get ready for a new Made in China product ? vaccines.
China's vaccine makers are gearing up over the next few years to push exports in a move that should lower costs of lifesaving immunizations for the world's poor and provide major new competition for the big Western pharmaceutical companies.
However, it may take some time before some parts of the world are ready to embrace Chinese products when safety is as sensitive an issue as it is with vaccines ? especially given the food, drug and other scandals the country has seen.
Still, China's entry into this market will be a "game changer," said Nina Schwalbe, head of policy at the GAVI Alliance, which buys vaccines for 50 million children a year worldwide.
"We are really enthusiastic about the potential entry of Chinese vaccine manufacturers," she said.
China's vaccine-making prowess captured world attention in 2009 when one of its companies developed the first effective vaccine against swine flu ? in just 87 days ? as the new virus swept the globe. In the past, new vaccine developments had usually been won by the U.S. and Europe.
Then, this past March the World Health Organization announced that China's drug safety authority meets international standards for vaccine regulation. It opened the doors for Chinese vaccines to be submitted for WHO approval so they can be bought by U.N. agencies and the GAVI Alliance.
"China is a vaccine-producing power" with more than 30 companies that have an annual production capacity of nearly 1 billion doses ? the largest in the world, the country's State Food and Drug Administration told The Associated Press.
But more needs to be done to build confidence in Chinese vaccines overseas, said Helen Yang of Sinovac, the NASDAQ-listed Chinese biotech firm that rapidly developed the H1N1 swine flu vaccine. "We think the main obstacle is that we have the name of 'made in China' still. That is an issue."
China's food and drug safety record in recent years hardly inspires confidence: in 2007, Chinese cough syrup killed 93 people in Central America; one year later, contaminated blood thinner led to dozens of deaths in the United States while tainted milk powder poisoned hundreds of thousands of Chinese babies and killed six.
The government has since imposed more regulations, stricter inspections and heavier punishments for violators. Perhaps because of that, regulators routinely crack down on counterfeit and substandard drugmaking.
While welcoming WHO's approval of China's drug safety authority, one expert said it takes more than a regulatory agency to keep drugmakers from cutting corners or producing fakes.
"In the U.S., we have supporting institutions such as the market economy, democracy, media monitoring, civil society, as well as a well-developed business ethics code, but these are all still pretty much absent in China," said Yanzhong Huang, a China health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. "For China, the challenge is much greater in building a strong, robust regulative capacity."
Last year, a Chinese newspaper report linked improperly stored vaccines to four children's deaths in northern Shanxi province, raising nationwide concern. The Health Ministry said the vaccines did not cause the deaths, but some remained skeptical.
Meanwhile, Chinese researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year that a pandemic flu vaccine given to 90 million people in 2009 was safe.
WHO's medical officer for immunization, Dr. Yvan Hutin, said WHO's approval of the Chinese drug regulatory agency is not "a blank check." Each vaccine will be evaluated rigorously, with WHO and Chinese inspectors given access to vaccine plants on top of other safety checks, he said.
Vaccines have historically been a touchy subject in the Western world, rife with safety concerns and conspiracy theories. Worries about vaccine safety resurfaced in the late 1990s triggered by debate over a claimed association between the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella and autism. The claim was later discredited.
For China, the next few years will be crucial, as biotech companies upgrade their facilities and improve procedures to meet the safety and quality standards ? a process that is expected to be costly and challenging. Then they will submit vaccines to the U.N. health agency for approval, which could take a couple of years.
First up is likely to be a homegrown vaccine for Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease that can cause seizures, paralysis and death. The vaccine has been used for two decades in China with fewer side effects than other versions. Its manufacturer expects WHO approval for it in about a year. Also in the works are vaccines for polio and diseases that are the top two killers of children ? pneumonia and rotavirus, which causes diarrhea.
Vaccines also are a significant part of a $300 million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of new health and farming products for poor countries.
China's entry into this field is important because one child dies every 20 seconds from vaccine-preventable diseases each year. UNICEF, the children's agency and the world's biggest buyer of vaccines, has been in talks with Chinese companies, said its supply director Shanelle Hall. The fund provides vaccines to nearly 60 percent of the world's children, and last year spent about $757 million.
Worldwide, vaccine sales last year grew 14 percent to $25.3 billion, according to healthcare market research firm Kalorama Information, as drugmakers which face intensifying competition from generic drugs now see vaccines as key areas of growth, particularly in Latin America, China and India.
China's vaccine makers, some of whom already export in small amounts, are confident they will soon become big players in the field.
"I personally predict that in the next five to 10 years, China will become a very important vaccine manufacture base in the world," said Wu Yonglin, vice president of the state-owned China National Biotec Group, the country's largest biological products maker that has been producing China's encephalitis vaccine since 1989.
CNBG will invest more than 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) between now and 2015 to improve its facilities and systems to meet WHO requirements, Wu said. The company also intends to submit vaccines to fight rotavirus, which kills half a million kids annually, and polio for WHO approval.
Smaller, private companies are also positioning themselves for the global market.
Sinovac is now testing a new vaccine for enterovirus 71, which causes severe hand, foot and mouth disease among children in China and other Asian countries. It is also preparing for clinical trials on a pneumococcal vaccine Yang says could rival Pfizer's Prevnar, which was the top-selling vaccine worldwide last year with sales of about $3.7 billion.
Pneumococcal disease causes meningitis, pneumonia and ear infection.
"In the short term, everyone sees the exporting opportunities, because outside of China the entire vaccine market still seems to be monopolized by a few Big Pharma (companies)," Yang said.
The entry of Chinese companies is expected to further pressure Western pharmaceutical companies to lower prices. Earlier this year, UNICEF's move to publicize what drugmakers charge it for vaccines showed that Western drugmakers often charged the agency double what companies in India and Indonesia do.
The aid group Doctors Without Borders criticized the vaccine body GAVI for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-pneumonia vaccines from Western companies, saying it could put its buying power to even better use by fostering competition from emerging manufacturers like those in China.
GAVI's Schwalbe said the vaccine body has to buy what is available and negotiates hard for steep discounts. "We need to buy vaccines now to save children's lives now. We can't wait."
FFA chief not convinced '22 will go ahead in Qatar
updated 5:04 a.m. ET Nov. 28, 2011
SYDNEY - Australia's soccer chief isn't convinced the 2022 World Cup will go ahead as planned in Qatar.
Football Federation Australia chairman Frank Lowy said on Monday that the "last word hasn't been heard yet" on the FIFA vote that awarded the event to Qatar over bids from countries including the United States and Australia.
Lowy did not elaborate on how or why Qatar would lose the rights, but said it related to "the state of the FIFA executive committee."
"I don't know whether you recall when I came back from that fateful day (after losing the bid) and I said 'this is not the last word about awarding the World Cup,' " Lowy said after he was formally re-elected as FFA chairman on Monday. "Well, it wasn't the last word.
"Don't ask me to elaborate because I don't have a crystal ball ... but the media all over the world is talking about that, the awarding particularly of '22, the state of the FIFA executive committee ? all that stuff.
"It's not over," Lowy was quoted to say by Australian Associated Press. "I don't exactly know where it will bounce. The only thing I know is it's not over yet."
Qatar's successful bid became implicated in a broad-ranging corruption scandal that plagued FIFA this year, with FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke saying in a leaked email that they "bought the World Cup."
There were accusations of corruption in the bidding process and Mohamed Bin Hammam, the president of the Asian Football Confederation and a campaigner for his native Qatar to host the World Cup, has since been banned for life from all soccer activities on charges of trying to bribe Caribbean voters in his quest to unseat Sepp Blatter as president of FIFA.
Bin Hammam has denied the allegation and is appealing his ban in the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Meanwhile, questions have been raised about the feasibility of Qatar's promise to air-condition stadiums to combat the searing heat in the Middle East during the World Cup window in June and July.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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The death of Wales manager Scott Speed cast a shadow over the English Premier League games on Sunday.
Philly calm but 4 arrested in LA after deadlines
(AP)
LOS ANGELES ? Deadlines for Wall Street protesters to leave their encampments came and went in two cities with no arrests in Philadelphia but four people taken into custody in Los Angeles several hours after the midnight deadline passed.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said it remained unclear when the nearly two-month-old Occupy LA camp would be cleared. About half of the 485 tents had been taken down as of Sunday night, leaving patches of the 1.7-acre park around City Hall barren of grass and strewn with garbage.
"There is no concrete deadline," Beck told reporters Monday morning after hundreds of officers withdrew without moving in on the camp. The chief said he wanted to make sure the removal will be done when it was safe for protesters and officers and "with as little drama as possible."
Protesters chanted "we won, we won" as riot-clad officers left the scene.
"I'm pretty much speechless," said Clark Davis, media coordinator for Occupy LA.
Police turned back after hundreds of Occupy LA supporters showed up at the camp Sunday night as the midnight deadline for evacuation neared. As the night drew on, many demonstrators left.
Protester Julie Levine said she was surprised that police did not move in as the numbers dwindled. "We were fearful," she said. "But we held our numbers and police were on their best behavior."
A celebratory atmosphere filled the night with protesters milling about the park and streets by City Hall in seeming good spirits. A group on bicycles circled the block, one of them in a cow suit. Organizers led chants with a bull horn.
Officers reopened the streets at around 6:30 a.m.
"Let's go get breakfast," said Commander Andrew Smith as he removed his helmet.
The protest was largely peaceful but there were some skirmishes. Four people were arrested for failure to disperse and a few protesters tossed bamboo sticks and water bottles at officers, Smith said. No injuries were reported.
A hearing in federal is scheduled for later Monday morning on a petition for an injunction to prevent the camp closure.
Both the mayor and Beck said Monday morning that there was no firm deadline to remove the protesters.
"We want to make sure that everybody knows the park is closed and there are services available, that there are alternative ways to protest," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in an interview with MSNBC.
Villaraigosa, a former labor organizer himself, earlier said he sympathizes with the movement but felt it was time it moved beyond holding on to "a particular patch of park" and that public health and safety could not be sustained for a long period.
The Los Angeles showdown follows police actions in other cities ? sometimes involving the use of pepper spray and tear gas ? that resulted in the removal of long-situated demonstration sites. Some of those encampments had been in use almost since the movement against economic disparity and perceived corporate greed began with Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan two months ago.
A deadline set by the city for Occupy Philadelphia to leave the site where it has camped for nearly two months passed Sunday without any arrests.
Dozens of tents remained at the encampment outside Philadelphia's City Hall Monday morning, 12 hours after a city-imposed deadline passed for the protesters to move to make way for a construction project.
The camp appeared mostly quiet amid a heavy police presence, but around 5 a.m. EST a handful of people were marching one of the city's main business corridors banging drums.
The scene outside City Hall was quiet most of the day Sunday. But the sound of protesters' drumming did bring complaints from several people living in nearby high-rise apartment buildings.
Along the steps leading into a Philadelphia plaza, about 50 people sat in lines Sunday with the promise that they would not leave unless they were carried out by authorities. For a time, they linked arms. But as it seemed that a forceful ouster was not imminent, they relaxed a bit. A police presence was heavier than usual but no orders to leave had been issued.
A few dozen tents remained scattered on the plaza, along with trash, piles of dirty blankets and numerous signs reading, "You can't evict an idea."
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter was out of town Sunday, but his spokesman reiterated that "people are under orders to move."
The mayor himself had an exchange on Twitter with hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, who asked Nutter "to remember this is a non-violent movement ? please show restraint tonight."
Nutter's response: "I agree."
Elsewhere on the East Coast, nine people were arrested in Maine after protesters in the Occupy Augusta encampment in Capitol Park took down their tents and packed their camping gear after being told to get a permit or move their shelters.
___
Mulvihill reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press Writers Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia, Glenn Adams in Augusta, Maine, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this story.
U.N., EU call for calm on eve of Congo vote
(Reuters)
KINSHASA (Reuters) ? International organizations appealed for calm on the eve of a presidential election in Democratic Republic of Congo already tainted by deadly street clashes and a showdown between security forces and the main opposition candidate.
The European Union and the United Nations called for restraint after at least three people were killed in clashes on Saturday, the last day of campaigning, putting in doubt the central African state's ability to ensure a representative vote in its second post-war presidential contest on November 28.
"The security forces should refrain from any acts that could heighten tensions and create any difficulties on the eve of elections," Mounoubai Madnodje, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping mission, said.
The EU observer mission accused the Congolese police of denying President Joseph Kabila's main rival, Etienne Tshisekedi, his right to campaign in the capital after he was blocked at the airport on Saturday.
Police had earlier banned rallies after violence erupted in the capital Kinshasa. The confirmed toll for Saturday's violence has risen to three, according to U.N. human rights sources.
Kabila and the head of the election commission are both due to meet ambassadors in Kinshasa on Sunday. The election commission said on Saturday the vote will take place but poll observers fear many voting centers will not have ballot papers.
SHOWDOWN
Congo's last war ended eight years ago, leaving at least 5 million dead, but the peace is fragile, with pockets of clashes across much of its east while ordinary Congolese complain of rampant corruption and sluggish development.
U.N. peacekeepers on Saturday failed to end a showdown between veteran opposition leader Tshisekedi and the police on Saturday, who blocked him at the airport and fired bullets to disperse his supporters.
Kinshasa is a Tshisekedi stronghold and Reuters reporters saw tens of thousands of his supporters on the streets of the capital after the 78 year-old called for them to try and reach the airport where he was blocked.
Tshisekedi was later driven home by the police, and Albert Moleka, one of his spokesmen, said at least 25 of his UDPS party supporters had been arrested.
Authorities had earlier canceled campaign rallies that were due to take place in close proximity of each other as violence flared in the teeming city of 10 million people.
The EU observer mission in Congo criticized the authorities for mishandling the end of the campaign period and called the police operation to prevent Tshisekedi from leaving the airport "a serious impediment" to his right to campaign.
Preparations for the poll have been marred by delays at all stages at the process, with ballot papers being delivered late and many voters unsure where they are meant to be voting.
There were reports of trouble elsewhere in Congo.
A security source said one soldier was killed when the Vangu military camp in the mining capital, Lubumbashi, was attacked overnight by unknown arsonists.
A government building was also attacked on Saturday in the southern town of Kananga by people suspecting local officials of hoarding ballot papers in preparation for rigging the poll, a U.N. official said.
(Writing by David Lewis; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)
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Public release date: 28-Nov-2011
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