WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Midwestern U.S. lawmakers and union groups on Tuesday urged President Barack Obama to restrict imports of auto parts from China that they said benefited from massive illegal subsidies and threatened hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
"We need to stand up to the bully on the block," Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said, referring to Beijing. "The bully on the block continues to take our lunch money and we need to stop that," she said.
The push for the administration to bring a possible case at the World Trade Organization or begin a U.S. Commerce Department investigation that could lead to duties on Chinese-made auto parts came one week after Obama said he was creating a new Trade Enforcement Unit to crack down on unfair foreign trade practices in China and other countries around the world.
It could create further strains in the U.S.-China relationship as Obama is preparing to host Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to be China's next leader, a the White House on February 14.
"We must be aggressive on trade enforcement - especially as China ramps up subsidies in strategic industries like auto parts, said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.
"Today, we're providing the president with his first opportunity to deliver on the promise to guarantee a level playing field," said Scott Paul, president of the American Alliance for Manufacturing, whose members include the United Steelworkers union and steel companies.
A U.S. trade official stopped short of committing to action on the issue, but said the Obama "administration will not stand by when our competitors don't play by the rules."
"We will continue to identify and address unfair trade practices to ensure ... U.S. workers and companies can compete and succeed on a level playing field," the official said on condition of anonymity.
The groups released studies prepared by the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute and the Stewart and Stewart law firm that cataloged Chinese government subsidies and practices that they said violated WTO rules and threatened jobs at many small- and medium-sized U.S. auto parts manufacturers.
"If these policies are not stopped, by the end of the decade China could seize 50 percent or more of our auto parts market, costing hundreds of thousands of American jobs," said Terrence Stewart, Stewart and Stewart's managing partner, which specializes in cases against allegedly unfair imports.
Last year, the United States ran a deficit of nearly $10 billion in auto parts trade with China.
The EPI study estimated the Chinese auto parts industry has received $27.5 billion in government subsidies since 2001, helping to fuel U.S. auto parts imports from China.
Although U.S. auto companies have experienced a turnaround since the U.S. government prevented the industry from collapsing in 2009, the auto parts sector has regained only about 60,000 in the past two years and has lost more than 400,000 over the past eleven years, the EPI study said.
Large Chinese government subsidies were the second major cause of the lost jobs, behind competition from Mexico, said Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers union, said in a statement.
He also noted many Chinese auto workers "work for the same multinational corporations as we do" and urged "global corporations to refrain from a 'race to the bottom' to find workers that they can pay the least."
Beijing angered Washington in December with a decision to impose punitive duties of up to 22 percent on large cars and SUVs from the United States, a move that many saw as retaliation for earlier U.S. moves to restrict imports of Chinese goods ranging from tires to poultry.
The Obama administration is now considering whether to slap anti-dumping and countervailing duties on solar panels and wind energy towers from China in response to U.S. industry allegations of unfair trading practices.
(Reporting by Doug Palmer; Editing by Neil Stempleman and Paul Simao)
KINGSTON, Ontario ? A jury on Sunday found an Afghan father, his wife and their son guilty of killing three teenage sisters and a co-wife in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor."
The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in a case that shocked and riveted Canadians from coast to coast.
After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.
Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and going online. Shafia's first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.
The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.
Defense lawyers said the evidence suggested that the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride.
After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust."
His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."
Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."
But Judge Robert Maranger was unmoved, saying the evidence clearly supported their conviction for "the planned and deliberate murder of four members of your family."
"It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous crime ... the apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor ... that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."
The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.
The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.
The prosecution presented wire taps and cell phone records from the Shafia family in court. In one phone conversation, the father says his daughters "betrayed us immensely."
The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.
But defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.
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Robert Hegyes, who played Jewish Puerto Rican wheeler-dealer Juan Luis Pedro Phillipo de Huevos Epstein on the 1970s classic show Welcome Back Kotter, has died.
An apparent heart attack was the cause. He was 60.
Hegyes, a New Jersey native who also co-starred on Cagney and Lacey and taught classes at his alma mater, Rowan University, was best known for his role on Kotter.
Alongside John Travolta, he played one of the remedial students known as the Sweathogs, who reunited in 2011 at the TV Land Awards for the show's 35th anniversary.
Robert Hegyes, top right, starred in Welcome Back Kotter, alongside John Travolta, left, Ron Palillo, second from left, Gabe Kaplan, center, and Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs.
Robert Hegyes wrote that he modeled swaggering, skirt-chasing Epstein after Chico Marx, whom he played in a national touring production of A Night With Groucho.
He was a big fan of the Marx Brothers: "They were immigrant Jews, I was an immigrant Italian. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo, and Zeppo were intellectuals."
"They all played the piano and took music lessons, and they were all juvenile delinquents; I could definitely relate," said Hegyes, whose health deteriorated of late.
It's been two years since a financial crisis erupted in the birthplace of drama, and the final act is still unfinished. A second week of talks in Athens ended Friday with no deal between the country, the European Union and private holders of Greek bonds.
Remarkably, even after the crisis became such an international worry last year that the leaders of France and Germany were actually referred to as "Merkozy," the European debt bomb could still explode, with Greece as the fuse.
Economists and investors see a Greek default as the biggest test of the world financial system since the crisis that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers investment house in 2008.
It is also the biggest threat to what has been a successful start to the year in the U.S. stock market. The Standard & Poor's 500 index has gained 4.7 percent, roughly half its average for a full year, in just four weeks.
"If talks break down next week and it looks like they can't reach a deal, it raises all sorts of risks," says Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial. "The stock market could probably lose half its gains for the year."
On paper, it's hard to see how Greece could take down financial markets in the U.S., the world's biggest economy, with $15.2 trillion in goods and services churned out every year.
Consider:
? Greece's economy weighs in at euro220 billion, according to the International Monetary Fund's estimates. That translates to $285 billion, which puts Greece's economy on par with Maryland's. The U.S. sells about $1.6 billion in weapons, medicine and other products to Greece each year, a minuscule 0.07 percent of exports.
? U.S. banks say Greece on its own poses no danger to them. Unlike European banks, they're not major lenders to Greek businesses and aren't saddled with Greek government debt. In its most recent report, JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the U.S., said it had just $4.5 billion at risk in Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined. That's about what the bank makes in revenue in two and a half weeks.
? Many worry that U.S. banks would struggle to cover the insurance contracts they sold on Greece's euro350 billion, or about $460 billion, in government debt. But the amount of insurance taken out on that debt totals $68 billion, according to the clearinghouse for the contracts. That's hardly enough to pull down the banking system. And the banks have offset all but $3.2 billion of those contracts with other contracts. In other words, pocket change.
"The direct impact of a Greek default is almost zero," Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, told CNBC on Thursday.
So what's everybody ? well, everybody but Jamie Dimon ? worried about?
A breakdown in talks could trigger steep losses in stock markets in Europe and the U.S. Just as in 2008, banks could stop lending to each other, and the credit freeze could cause a market panic.
More importantly overseas, it could cause borrowing rates for Portugal and Italy to jump, pushing those much larger countries closer to defaults of their own.
That's only the beginning. A Greek default could unleash a host of larger problems. Some are already anticipated while others are likely to blindside even the closest observers, says Nick Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group. "In any complex system, you're going to have unintended consequences," he says.
He compares it to the collapse of Lehman Brothers: Analysts saw it coming, but the fallout in still caught them by surprise. A money market mutual fund found that it couldn't redeem its customers' money. Money market funds, which many considered as safe as savings accounts, suddenly looked suspect until the Federal Reserve backed them up.
At a conference on sovereign debt this week in New York, Steve Hanke, professor of economics at Johns Hopkins University, predicted that even commodity prices would plunge in response to a messy Greek default.
If Greece goes under, traders seeking safety would immediately sell euros and buy dollars, Hanke said. The dollar would soar and prices for commodities like oil and wheat, which are bought and sold in dollars around the world, would collapse. A single dollar would buy much more oil or wheat.
"If the bomb is set off by Greece, commodity prices will collapse," Hanke said.
Hanke, who has advised governments around the world on managing their currencies, argued that Greece appears bound to collapse under its debts as its economy shrinks. "Greece is doomed," he said.
So investors will be watching what happens this week in Athens. At the sovereign debt conference, Hans Humes, president of Greylock Capital Management, said this week could bring "the precedent-setting moment." He warned that if the banks and investment funds that hold Greek bonds take steep losses, then Portugal, Italy and other countries shouldering heavy debt burdens can be expected to follow Greece's lead.
It's comparable to a messy default. Traders will respond by immediately selling government bonds from those countries, Humes said. Borrowing costs will rise, and Europe's debt crisis will turn much worse.
Humes has been involved in the negotiations on the side of creditors holding Greek bonds so he has a stake in the game. But it's a scenario other money managers often cite.
"There's a fear that other countries won't negotiate at all. They'll just say, `We'll pay you back at 50 percent or maybe less," Kleintop says.
To Colas, the deepest concern isn't how the S&P 500 reacts or whether the dollar rises if Greece drops the European currency. It's the possibility for panic, especially a run on European banks.
What if people across France and Germany crowd into banks to pull their deposits? Banks, after all, are some of the largest buyers of government debt.
"Human emotions can drive things off the rails," Colas says.
TOKYO ? Japan's deputy prime minister acknowledged Friday that the government failed to take minutes of 10 meetings last year on the response to the country's disasters and nuclear crisis and called for officials to compile reports on the meetings retroactively.
The missing minutes have become a hot political debate, with opposition lawmakers saying they are necessary to provide a transparent record of the government's discussion after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami touched off the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
Deputy Prime Minister Katsuya Okada confirmed Friday at a news conference that the minutes were not fully recorded at the time and called for them to be written up, retroactively, by the end of February. Three of the meetings during the chaotic period had no record at all, not even an agenda, including a government nuclear crisis meeting headed by the prime minister.
Okada has set up a panel to investigate the extent of the problem and its cause.
The missing minutes are the latest example of the government missteps in disclosing information.
Japanese authorities and regulators already have been repeatedly criticized for how they handled information amid the unfolding nuclear crisis. Officials initially denied that the reactors had melted down, and have been accused of playing down the health risks of exposure to radiation.
The government also kept secret a worst-case scenario that tens of millions of people, including Tokyo residents, might need to leave their homes, according to a report obtained recently by The Associated Press.
An outside panel investigating the government response to the nuclear crisis has been critical, calling for more transparency in relaying information to the public.
"Needless to say, keeping records at these meetings is extremely important," Okada said. "Each minister should keep that in mind."
Okada rejected speculation that the nuclear crisis meetings may have intentionally left unrecorded to avoid responsibility. He said the oversights were "unfortunate" developments during the chaotic time when the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant rapidly deteriorated and three of its reactors spiraled into meltdowns.
He said reconstruction of the minutes would be possible through notes and recordings kept by officials who attended the meetings.
Japan's public records law requires minutes or summaries at key government meetings, but not all of them.
___
Associated Press writer Eric Talmadge contributed to this report.
This undated photo provided by Lee Enterprises shows the former President and CEO of Lee Enterprises, Mary Junck. Junck has been named chairwoman of The Associated Press Board of Directors Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Lee Enterprises)
This undated photo provided by Lee Enterprises shows the former President and CEO of Lee Enterprises, Mary Junck. Junck has been named chairwoman of The Associated Press Board of Directors Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. (AP Photo/Lee Enterprises)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Mary E. Junck, the CEO of newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises Inc., was named chairman of The Associated Press board of directors Thursday.
Junck replaces William Dean Singleton of MediaNews Group, who had been AP chairman since 2007. She said one of her top priorities will be the search for a new chief executive to replace Tom Curley, who announced Monday that he plans to retire this year after almost nine years leading AP.
As chairman, Junck will help steer the AP's efforts to boost revenue, in part by further expanding the cooperative's video, Internet and mobile services.
"Making good, smart bets on the digital future is the direction we'll keep going," she said in an interview. "Tom has built a terrific foundation. The other thing he has done is work collaboratively in our industry. I see that going forward as well."
The AP, founded in 1846, is the largest independent source of news and information in the world. The not-for-profit organization, owned by newspapers in the U.S., said it expects revenue for 2011 to be down slightly from a year earlier, when it was $631 million.
Revenue has declined in recent years largely because of lower fees from newspapers and broadcasters, a large number of which have struggled because of the slow economy and a shift by advertisers to less-expensive alternatives online.
Junck, 64, has been an AP director since 2004 and became vice chairman in 2008. She is the first woman to head the board.
Junck began her newspaper career 40 years ago, when she joined the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer as a marketing research manager. Since then, she has worked for and managed some of the country's biggest daily newspapers.
She was publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota from 1990 to 1992. She later served as an executive vice president with Times Mirror Co. and oversaw Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford (Conn.) Courant. She also served as publisher of the Sun.
Junck joined Lee in 1999 as executive vice president and chief operating officer. She became CEO in 2001. The company owns the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and nearly 50 other newspapers. In her current job, she helped orchestrate Lee's $1.46 billion purchase of Pulitzer Inc. in 2005, which included the Post-Dispatch.
She is now leading Lee through a prepackaged bankruptcy as it restructures about $1 billion in debt. Earlier this week, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved Lee's debt refinancing plan, which will allow it to exit the process next Monday.
Singleton is chairman of MediaNews Group, which was among the newspaper publishers hardest hit by the industry slump. MediaNews' parent company, Affiliated Media Inc., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2010 and relinquished control to a group of lenders as part of the reorganization. Singleton stepped down as CEO of MediaNews last year.
Singleton said in a statement that the industry "has long been the beneficiary of Mary's deep understanding of the challenges facing all media companies in the digital age."
"She is a strong advocate for AP, for the value of original newsgathering and for everything AP stands for. She'll be an outstanding chairman."
Curley plans to stay on as AP's chief executive until his successor is in place.
Applicants hoping to work as members of security staff at the 2012 London Olympics fill out electronic forms as they go through a screening and interview process at a recruitment center set up by the G4S security company near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday _ as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics began to visibly crank up. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports. But questions about money and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Applicants hoping to work as members of security staff at the 2012 London Olympics fill out electronic forms as they go through a screening and interview process at a recruitment center set up by the G4S security company near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday _ as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics began to visibly crank up. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports. But questions about money and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Mark Hamilton the Managing Director of Security Personnel for the G4S security company sits during a news conference at a recruitment center set up to hire security staff for the 2012 London Olympics near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday, as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics begins. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports, but questions about money, security and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Applicants hoping to work as members of security staff at the 2012 London Olympics fill out forms as they go through a screening and interview process at a recruitment center set up by the G4S security company near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday _ as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics began to visibly crank up. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports. But questions about money and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Jobs posters are displayed on a wall behind seating in a waiting room for applicants wanting to work as security staff at the 2012 London Olympics at a recruitment center set up by the G4S security company near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. The room was empty as the picture was taken at the start of the center's day before any applicants took a seat there. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday _ as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics began to visibly crank up. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports. But questions about money and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
Applicants hoping to work as members of security staff at the 2012 London Olympics fill out paper and electronic forms as they go through a screening and interview process at a recruitment center set up by the G4S security company near the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012. Dozens of unemployed Londoners converged on a center taking applications for security guards for the London Olympics on Thursday _ as the buildup for the 2012 London Olympics began to visibly crank up. With half a year to go before the Olympics, the focus has firmly shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports. But questions about money and transport remain. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)
LONDON (AP) ? The first sprint of the Olympic Games has begun: Unemployed Londoners are converging on a center taking applications for those wanting to be Olympic security guards.
With only six months to go before the opening of the 2012 Summer Games, organizers are finalizing plans for security, ticketing and transport despite a series of setbacks that have pushed costs higher.
Hiring the new Olympic work force is the most visible signal yet that planners' focus has shifted from building stadiums to delivering the sports events.
Organizing committee chief executive Paul Deighton said Thursday that officials are "switching from planning stuff to really doing it."
Some 10,000 security guards are needed ? and organizers have already received three times that number of applications.
KYOTO, Japan ? They no longer speak the same language, but two brothers separated nearly 60 years each think the other hasn't changed a bit.
Japanese-American Minoru Ohye celebrate his 86th birthday Monday with his only brother after traveling to Japan for a reunion with him.
The brothers were born in Sacramento, California, but were separated as children after their father died in a fishing accident. They were sent to live with relatives in Japan and ended up in different homes.
The reunited brothers hugged in a hotel room and exchanged gifts of California chocolate and Japanese sake. The American brother wore his trademark baseball cap and jeans. The Japanese bother wore a suit and tie.
But the same bright eyes and square jaws were a dead giveaway that they were brothers. They both loved golf and had back pains. They thought the other hadn't changed a bit.
"If we miss this chance, we may never meet. You never know," said Ohye, energetic except for a sore knee. "Either he may die, or I may die."
Separated across the Pacific, their only prior meeting had been a brief one in the mid-1950s when Ohye stopped by Japan while serving in the U.S. Army in the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula.
His brother, Hiroshi Kamimura, 84, was adopted by a Japanese family, grew up in the ancient capital of Kyoto and became a tax accountant. He married and had three sons.
Ohye joined the youth group of the Japanese Imperial Army at 13 and went to Russia, where he was sent to a Siberian coal mine when Japan surrendered. He returned to be with his mother in Yuba City, California, in 1951, and worked as a bookbinder and a gardener.
He became homeless when he failed to collect payment for a restaurant he ran and later sold in the late 1950s.
About 10 years ago, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a welfare service organization for U.S. veterans, found him a spot in the Eskaton Wilson Manor home for the elderly.
It was Eskaton's program to grant a wish called "Thrill of a Lifetime" that got Ohye back to Japan.
While others wished for rafting trips and football game tickets, the only thing Ohye wanted was to see his brother again. Eskaton administrator Debbie Reynolds put together a fundraiser for Ohye's trip.
Kamimura acknowledged it had been difficult to communicate with his brother through telephone calls because he didn't understand English. They would exchange a lot of "hellos" and then their conversations ended, he said.
"I am happy. He is the only brother I have," Kamimura said after watching Ohye blow out the candles on a birthday cake at a restaurant. "This may be our last time together."
Brian Berry, a graduate student at the University of Tokyo who was approached by Reynolds to help with the reunion and got Ohye from the Tokyo airport to Kyoto, was relieved the brothers were together at last.
"Even over time, with all that has been gone through, still the only thing you are thinking about is your family," he said. "Right when you're near the end of your life, you are still thinking about your family."
___
Follow Yuri Kageyama on Twitter at http://twitter.com/yurikageyama
A friend of mine was diagnosed with high-risk HPV when she was 22 years old. It was caught through a routine Pap test, and when a biopsy found the cells to be precancerous, she got the care she needed right away. Who knows what might have happened if she had waited any longer to have a screening?
Stories like this are all too common in our community. Latinas have the highest cervical cancer rates in the country and the third highest death rate from cervical cancer.
Cervical cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus, or HPV, a very common sexually transmitted infection. There are hundreds of HPV types, but two of them, types 16 and 18, are responsible for 70 percent of cervical cancer cases. HPV is so common that most sexually active people should expect to be exposed to it and, if not vaccinated, infected by HPV at some point in their lives. There aren't any symptoms for high-risk types of HPV, so most people who have or have had HPV don't know it. Women usually learn they have it only after the results of an abnormal Pap test.
The good news is that cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers: when caught early, the five-year survival rate is nearly 100 percent. During National Cervical Cancer Awareness Month (January), it is important to remind women that the keys to combating cervical cancer are getting the HPV vaccination before sexual intimacy and getting routine screenings. Cervical cancer takes many years to develop, so regular Pap tests will help detect any precancerous or abnormal cells early enough to allow cervical cancer to be prevented.
The HPV vaccine is a major breakthrough in the fight to prevent cervical cancer and should be considered a routine, normal part of health care. It is a safe and effective FDA-approved vaccine that prevents most cases of cervical cancer and genital warts. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has included the HPV vaccine in its list of recommended vaccines for girls aged 11-12 years and recommends that all girls and women ages nine to 26 get the vaccine. The American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Planned Parenthood support the CDC recommendation that girls get the HPV vaccine.
In addition to routine cervical cancer screening, the best way to protect young women from cervical cancer is to make sure they get vaccinated before they are at risk of infection. Vaccination before a person is at risk for HPV infection means vaccination must occur before sexual intimacy -- even before skin-to-skin contact. It's also extremely important to use condoms for intercourse, as they greatly reduce the risk of HPV.
Unfortunately, due to unequal access to health care, Latinas are more likely to develop and die of cervical cancer because they are less likely to have access to early screening and early treatment or be able to pay for the HPV vaccine. Planned Parenthood health centers offer affordable health care and confidential services like HPV vaccinations and Pap tests to women and teens. Many health insurance companies cover the vaccine, and some programs allow people without insurance to be vaccinated for little to no cost.
As the nation's leading women's health care provider and advocate, Planned Parenthood encourages every woman to visit her health care provider regularly to receive a preventive checkup that includes a cervical cancer screening. Planned Parenthood is serious about eliminating cervical cancer. In fact, in 2010, Planned Parenthood health centers provided nearly 34,000 HPV vaccinations and 770,000 Pap tests, which identified about 94,000 women who may be at risk of developing cervical cancer.
For more information on cervical cancer, HPV, and cancer screenings in English and Spanish, or to locate a Planned Parenthood health center, visit plannedparenthood.org and plannedparenthood.org/esp. The new year is the perfect time to focus on your health and schedule a checkup. With both the HPV vaccine and routine checkups, we can protect our health and that of the women in our lives.
Destiny Lopez is the director of Latino engagement for Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Bankruptcy protection, sought by Kodak Thursday, gives company until Feb. 15, 2013, to offer reorganization plan. Kodak expects to continue normal operations during bankruptcy protection.
Eastman Kodak Co. has a little over a year to reshape its money-losing businesses and deliver a get-out-of-bankruptcy plan.
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Girded by a $950 million financing deal with Citigroup Inc., the photography pioneer aims to keep operating normally during?bankruptcy?while it peddles a trove of digital-imaging patents.
After years of mammoth cost-cutting and turnaround efforts, Kodak ran short of cash and sought protection from its creditors Thursday. It is required under its?bankruptcy?financing terms to produce a reorganization plan by Feb. 15, 2013.
U.S.?Bankruptcy?Judge Allan Gropper in New York gave Kodak permission to borrow an initial $650 million from Citigroup.
He also set a June 30 deadline for Kodak to seek his approval of bidding procedures for the sale of 1,100 patents that analysts estimate could fetch at least $2 billion. No buyers have emerged since Kodak started shopping them around in July.
Through negotiations and lawsuits, Kodak has already collected $1.9 billion in patent licensing fees and royalties since 2008. Last week, it intensified efforts to defend its intellectual property by filing patent-infringement lawsuits against Apple Inc., HTC Corp., Samsung Electronics and Fujifilm Corp.
Kodak is also pursuing another high-stakes dispute before the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C., against Apple and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. over image-preview technology it patented in 2002.
Kodak has said it hopes to garner $1 billion from the two-year-old claim. But the commission, a U.S. arbiter for trade disputes, recently put off its decision until September.
Founded by George Eastman in 1880, Kodak turned photography into a mass commodity at the dawn of the 20th century and was known all over the world for its Brownie and Instamatic cameras and its yellow-and-red film boxes. It was brought down first by Japanese competition and then an inability to keep pace with the shift from film to digital technology.
"They're a company that knows more about imaging than anyone else in the world," said Robert Burley, a photography professor at Ryerson University in Toronto. "But I think they lost their ability in their corporate structure to turn those innovations into real-world applications and get them on the market fast.
"There were just too many fronts to deal with, too many battles all at the same time."
In its?bankruptcy?filing, Kodak said its nearly decade-long overhaul has been undermined since 2008 by a sluggish economy and high restructuring costs. Its payroll has plunged below 19,000 from 70,000 in 2002, and it hasn't had a profitable year since 2007.
"At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003," CEO Antonio Perez said.
"Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core (intellectual-property) assets," Perez said in a statement.
Kodak's stock edged up to 32 cents in over-the-counter trading Friday afternoon. The?bankruptcy?filing prompted the New York Stock Exchange to delist the securities.
LAGOS, Nigeria ? Police say unknown bombers detonated locally made dynamite near an important bridge in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta overnight, though no one was injured.
The blast happened Friday night in Yenagoa, the capital of Bayelsa state, the home of President Goodluck Jonathan. Bayelsa state police spokesman Eguavoen Emokpae said the bomb targeted a bridge, but caused little damage.
The blast occurred as Bayelsa state is under increasing political pressure over an upcoming gubernatorial race in the state. The winner of the race will control a state budget that's larger than some nations surrounding oil-rich Nigeria. Violence remains common in elections in Nigeria, a nation of more than 160 million people and a top crude oil supplier to the U.S.
Well that didn't take long. Shortly after getting our grubby mitts on the AT&T variant of Samsung's Galaxy Note at CES, the jumbo phone has made its way into the loving arms of Uncle Sam at the FCC. Naturally, it's not advertised as such, but test documents reveal that a model SGH-i717 handset packing UMTS/HSPA+ (21Mbps) and GSM/EDGE world radios, plus Ma Bell-friendly bands 4 and 17 LTE has passed the FCC's emissions tests with flying colors. So, now that it's got the governmental stamp of approval, all that's left is to find out when we can make with the S Pen action on AT&T's newly minted high speed network. Don't keep us waiting, guys.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) ? Housing starts fell in December as groundbreaking on rental property posted a big decline, splashing some cold water on hopes the still-weak housing sector could boost economic growth this year.
The Commerce Department said on Thursday housing starts fell 4.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 657,000 units.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast housing starts edging down to a 680,000-unit rate in December.
Starts of buildings with five or more units dropped 27.8 percent to a 164,000-unit rate, the biggest drop since February.
Tempering the overall decline, groundbreaking on single family buildings rose 4.5 percent to a 470,000-unit rate.
Permits fell 0.1 percent to an annual rate of 679,000 units.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Neil Stempleman)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A senior U.S. defense official says all six reported killed in the crash of a U.S. helicopter in Afghanistan were U.S. Marines.
The helicopter crashed Thursday in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand.
The defense official who said all six were Marines spoke on condition of anonymity because the U.S. command in Afghanistan had not yet publicly released details, including the nationalities of the dead.
The official says there is no indication that the helicopter was hit by enemy fire.
MIT researchers find critical speed above which birds- and drones- are sure to crashPublic release date: 19-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline McCall cmccall5@mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The northern goshawk is one of nature's diehard thrill-seekers. The formidable raptor preys on birds and small mammals, speeding through tree canopies and underbrush to catch its quarry. With reflexes that rival a fighter pilot's, the goshawk zips through a forest at high speeds, constantly adjusting its flight path to keep from colliding with trees and other obstacles.
While speed is a goshawk's greatest asset, researchers at MIT say the bird must observe a theoretical speed limit if it wants to avoid a crash. The researchers found that, given a certain density of obstacles, there exists a speed below which a bird and any other flying object has a fair chance of flying collision-free. Any faster, and a bird or aircraft is sure to smack into something, no matter how much information it has about its environment. A paper detailing the results has been accepted to the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation.
These findings may not be news to the avian world, but Emilio Frazzoli, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, says knowing how fast to fly can help engineers program unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly at high speeds through cluttered environments such as forests and urban canyons.
Frazzoli is part of an interdisciplinary team that includes biologists at Harvard University, who are observing flying behaviors in goshawks and other birds, and roboticists at MIT, who are engineering birdlike UAVs. With Frazzoli's mathematical contributions, the team hopes to build fast, agile UAVs that can move through cluttered environments much like a goshawk streaking through the forest.
Speedy intuition
Most UAVs today fly at relatively slow speeds, particularly if navigating around obstacles. That's mainly by design: Engineers program a drone to fly just fast enough to be able to stop within the field of view of its sensors.
"If I can only see up to five meters, I can only go up to a speed that allows me to stop within five meters," Frazzoli says. "Which is not very fast."
If the northern goshawk flew at speeds purely based on what it could immediately see, Frazzoli conjectures that the bird would not fly as fast. Instead, the goshawk likely gauges the density of trees, and speeds past obstacles, knowing intuitively that, given a certain forest density, it can always find an opening through the trees.
Frazzoli points out that a similar intuition exists in downhill skiing.
"When you go skiing off the path, you don't ski in a way that you can always stop before the first tree you see," Frazzoli says. "You ski and you see an opening, and then you trust that once you go there, you'll be able to see another opening and keep going."
Frazzoli says that in a way, robots may be programmed with this same speedy intuition. Given some general information about the density of obstacles in a given environment, a robot could conceivably determine the maximum speed below at it can safely fly.
Forever flying
Toward this end, Frazzoli and PhD student Sertac Karaman developed mathematical models of various forest densities, calculating the maximum speed possible in each obstacle-filled environment.
The researchers first drew up a differential equation to represent the position of a bird in a given location at a given speed. They then worked out what's called an ergodic model representing a statistical distribution of trees in the forest similar to those commonly used by ecologists to characterize the density of a forest. In an ergodic forest, while the size, shape and spacing of individual trees may vary, their distribution in any given area is the same as any other area. Such models are thought to be a fair representation of most forests in the world.
Frazzoli and Karaman adjusted the model to represent varying densities of trees, and calculated the probability that a bird would collide with a tree while flying at a certain speed. The team found that, for any given forest density, there exists a critical speed above which there is no "infinite collision-free trajectory." In other words, the bird is sure to crash. Below this speed, a bird has a good chance of flying without incident.
"If I fly slower than that critical speed, then there is a fair possibility that I will actually be able to fly forever, always avoiding the trees," Frazzoli says.
The team's work establishes a theoretical speed limit for any given obstacle-filled environment. For UAVs, this means that no matter how good robots get at sensing and reacting to their environments, there will always be a maximum speed they will need to observe to ensure survival.
The researchers are now seeing if the theory bears out in nature. Frazzoli is collaborating with scientists at Harvard, who are observing how birds fly through cluttered environments in particular, whether a bird will choose not to fly through an environment that is too dense. The team is comparing the birds' behavior with what Frazzoli's model can predict. So far, Frazzoli says preliminary results in pigeons are "very encouraging."
In the coming months, Frazzoli also wants to see how close humans can come to such theoretical speed limits. He and his students are developing a first-person flying game to test how well people can navigate through a simulated forest at high speeds.
"What we want to do is have people play, and we'll just collect statistics," Frazzoli says. "And the question is, how close to the theoretical limit can we get?"
###
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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.
MIT researchers find critical speed above which birds- and drones- are sure to crashPublic release date: 19-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Caroline McCall cmccall5@mit.edu Massachusetts Institute of Technology
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The northern goshawk is one of nature's diehard thrill-seekers. The formidable raptor preys on birds and small mammals, speeding through tree canopies and underbrush to catch its quarry. With reflexes that rival a fighter pilot's, the goshawk zips through a forest at high speeds, constantly adjusting its flight path to keep from colliding with trees and other obstacles.
While speed is a goshawk's greatest asset, researchers at MIT say the bird must observe a theoretical speed limit if it wants to avoid a crash. The researchers found that, given a certain density of obstacles, there exists a speed below which a bird and any other flying object has a fair chance of flying collision-free. Any faster, and a bird or aircraft is sure to smack into something, no matter how much information it has about its environment. A paper detailing the results has been accepted to the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation.
These findings may not be news to the avian world, but Emilio Frazzoli, an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, says knowing how fast to fly can help engineers program unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to fly at high speeds through cluttered environments such as forests and urban canyons.
Frazzoli is part of an interdisciplinary team that includes biologists at Harvard University, who are observing flying behaviors in goshawks and other birds, and roboticists at MIT, who are engineering birdlike UAVs. With Frazzoli's mathematical contributions, the team hopes to build fast, agile UAVs that can move through cluttered environments much like a goshawk streaking through the forest.
Speedy intuition
Most UAVs today fly at relatively slow speeds, particularly if navigating around obstacles. That's mainly by design: Engineers program a drone to fly just fast enough to be able to stop within the field of view of its sensors.
"If I can only see up to five meters, I can only go up to a speed that allows me to stop within five meters," Frazzoli says. "Which is not very fast."
If the northern goshawk flew at speeds purely based on what it could immediately see, Frazzoli conjectures that the bird would not fly as fast. Instead, the goshawk likely gauges the density of trees, and speeds past obstacles, knowing intuitively that, given a certain forest density, it can always find an opening through the trees.
Frazzoli points out that a similar intuition exists in downhill skiing.
"When you go skiing off the path, you don't ski in a way that you can always stop before the first tree you see," Frazzoli says. "You ski and you see an opening, and then you trust that once you go there, you'll be able to see another opening and keep going."
Frazzoli says that in a way, robots may be programmed with this same speedy intuition. Given some general information about the density of obstacles in a given environment, a robot could conceivably determine the maximum speed below at it can safely fly.
Forever flying
Toward this end, Frazzoli and PhD student Sertac Karaman developed mathematical models of various forest densities, calculating the maximum speed possible in each obstacle-filled environment.
The researchers first drew up a differential equation to represent the position of a bird in a given location at a given speed. They then worked out what's called an ergodic model representing a statistical distribution of trees in the forest similar to those commonly used by ecologists to characterize the density of a forest. In an ergodic forest, while the size, shape and spacing of individual trees may vary, their distribution in any given area is the same as any other area. Such models are thought to be a fair representation of most forests in the world.
Frazzoli and Karaman adjusted the model to represent varying densities of trees, and calculated the probability that a bird would collide with a tree while flying at a certain speed. The team found that, for any given forest density, there exists a critical speed above which there is no "infinite collision-free trajectory." In other words, the bird is sure to crash. Below this speed, a bird has a good chance of flying without incident.
"If I fly slower than that critical speed, then there is a fair possibility that I will actually be able to fly forever, always avoiding the trees," Frazzoli says.
The team's work establishes a theoretical speed limit for any given obstacle-filled environment. For UAVs, this means that no matter how good robots get at sensing and reacting to their environments, there will always be a maximum speed they will need to observe to ensure survival.
The researchers are now seeing if the theory bears out in nature. Frazzoli is collaborating with scientists at Harvard, who are observing how birds fly through cluttered environments in particular, whether a bird will choose not to fly through an environment that is too dense. The team is comparing the birds' behavior with what Frazzoli's model can predict. So far, Frazzoli says preliminary results in pigeons are "very encouraging."
In the coming months, Frazzoli also wants to see how close humans can come to such theoretical speed limits. He and his students are developing a first-person flying game to test how well people can navigate through a simulated forest at high speeds.
"What we want to do is have people play, and we'll just collect statistics," Frazzoli says. "And the question is, how close to the theoretical limit can we get?"
###
[ | 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.
The HiNation solar panel is yet another solar charger for gadget-toting campers, but this one comes with a clever difference: it has a built-in lantern, meaning one less thing to carry when you hike or bike out into the countryside. It’s also designed for on-the-go use, offering a good compromise between weight and capacity, while being [...]
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have found a new way to block infection from the hepatitis C virus (HCV) in the liver that could lead to new therapies for those affected by this and other infectious diseases.
More than 170 million people worldwide suffer from hepatitis C, the disease caused by chronic HCV infection. The disease affects the liver and is one of the leading causes of liver cancer and liver transplant around the world. HCV is spread by blood-to-blood contact and there is no vaccine to prevent it. Current treatments for the disease are only moderately effective and can cause serious side effects.
"As HCV infects a person, it needs fat droplets in the liver to form new virus particles," says Fran?ois Jean, Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and Scientific Director of the Facility for Infectious Disease and Epidemic Research (FINDER) at UBC. "In the process, it causes fat to accumulate in the liver and ultimately leads to chronic dysfunction of the organ."
"HCV is constantly mutating, which makes it difficult to develop antiviral therapies that target the virus itself," says Jean. "So we decided to take a new approach."
Jean and his team developed an inhibitor that decreases the size of host fat droplets in liver cells and stops HCV from "taking residence," multiplying and infecting other cells.
"Our approach would essentially block the lifecycle of the virus so that it cannot spread and cause further damage to the liver," says Jean. The team's method is detailed in the journal PLoS Pathogens.
According to Jean, HCV is one of a number of viruses that require fat to replicate in the human body. This new approach to curbing the replication of HCV could translate into similar therapies for other related re-emerging viruses that can cause serious and life threatening infections in humans, such as dengue virus. Dengue is endemic in more than 100 countries, with approximately 2.5 billion people at risk of infection globally. In some countries, Dengue has become the leading cause of child mortality.
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University of British Columbia: http://www.ubc.ca
Thanks to University of British Columbia for this article.
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BRUSSELS ? Rating agency Standard & Poor's said Monday it has downgraded the creditworthiness of the eurozone's rescue fund by one notch to AA+, putting the fund's ability to raise cheap bailout money at risk.
The downgrade follows ratings cuts for AAA-rated France and Austria, whose financial guarantees were key to the creditworthiness of the European Financial Stability Facility.
If replicated by other rating agencies, S&P's move complicates the eurozone's efforts to emerge from a debt crisis that has dragged on for more than two years. It also underlines how reliant states and financial firms still are on the opinion of rating agencies, despite policymakers across Europe vowing on Monday to curtail their influence.
Although the ratings cut had been expected after S&P downgraded nine euro countries on Friday, the EFSF's top official quickly moved to reassure investors.
"The downgrade to 'AA+' by only one credit agency will not reduce (the) EFSF's lending capacity of euro440 billion," Klaus Regling, the fund's chief executive officer, said in a statement. He added that the EFSF has enough money to fund the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, as well as a second rescue for Greece that is likely to be decided in the coming weeks.
S&P had warned in December that it would cut the rating of the euro440 billion EFSF in line with the downgrades of any AAA country.
Moody's and Fitch, the two other big rating agencies, still have the EFSF at AAA, meaning that it would count as a top-notch investment for most funds. But analysts warn that further downgrades could follow soon.
Once another big agency cuts the EFSF's rating, the eurozone faces a stark choice. Either the fund starts issuing lower-rated bonds ? and accepts higher borrowing costs ? or its remaining AAA contributors increase their guarantees.
So far, Germany, the biggest of the four AAA economies in the eurozone, has ruled out boosting its commitments to the fund, and increases also appear politically difficult in the Netherlands and Finland. Luxembourg, the fourth country that S&P still awards its highest rating, is so small that its contributions have little impact.
Another option would be to accept that the EFSF can give out fewer loans.
Because of the EFSF's strange setup the bonds it issues to raise bailout money are underpinned by some euro720 billion in guarantees from the 14 eurozone countries that haven't received bailouts. But for issuing AAA-rated bonds, only AAA-guarantees count, taking the fund's lending capacity down to euro440 billion.
With the downgrades of France and Austria, the EFSF loses some euro180 billion in AAA-guarantees, leaving it with a loan capacity of just over euro260 billion. Of that, around euro40 billion have already been committed to the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, and a new Greek rescue will quickly take more than euro100 billion out of the till.
While that would leave the eurozone with a severely diminished firewall, the lower lending capacity may not matter that much. To rescue Italy and Spain, the EFSF would need more than euro1 trillion, according to analysts, and whether the shortfall is euro900 billion or euro600 billion won't make much of a difference.
Regling said that more support was on the way from the eurozone's new, permanent rescue fund, the euro500 billion European Stability Mechanism, which is expected take over from the EFSF later this year. In contrast to the EFSF, the ESM has paid-in capital, similar to a bank, and is thus less vulnerable to rating downgrades.
Policymakers on Monday nevertheless lashed out against S&P's downgrades and promised to curtail their influence.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in his first public comment since France lost its AAA-rating on Friday, said the move's importance should not be exaggerated.
"We have to react to this (the French downgrade) with calm, by taking a step back," he said at a news conference in Madrid. "At the core, my conviction is that it changes nothing."
Meanwhile, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, told European lawmakers in Strasbourg, France, that banks and other financial firms should stop basing their risk assessment solely on the opinion of rating agencies.
"One needs to ask how important are these ratings for the marketplace, for the regulators and for investors," Draghi said, adding that investors should treat the agencies' judgments as just one piece of information alongside their own analyses.
The European Union is currently in the process of putting new banking rules into law that cut the reliance on risk assessments from rating agencies. It also has proposed new legislation that would force the agencies to be more transparent about how they reach their decisions and even allow investors to sue firms that misjudged ratings "intentionally or with gross negligence."
__
David McHugh in Frankfurt and Jamey Keaten in Madrid contributed to this story.
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) ? Two adults and two children were killed in an apparent murder-suicide Sunday at an apartment building in California's Central Valley, while a fifth person was hospitalized in critical condition, police said.
Police were called to investigate a disturbance at the Fresno home shortly before 7 a.m. They found a man outside the apartment suffering from a stab wound, Fresno Police Lt. Mark Salazar said.
The man told officers his "wife" was inside and causing a disturbance; authorities later determined the woman was his live-in girlfriend, Salazar said.
Police then heard a gunshot and rushed inside. They found a woman believed to be in her 20s with a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a man in his 20s or 30s dead of a gunshot wound, he said.
Two children ? an 18-month-old and a 3-year-old ? also died from gunshot wounds. The children were the dead woman's children, and all five people involved were Hispanic, Salazar said. No names were released.
"We have not done an autopsy yet and we're continuing the investigation, but we believe it was a murder-suicide," Salazar said. "We cannot confirm the order of events, and we don't know what led up to the shooting."
Police also were still investigating the circumstances around the man suffering from a stab wound, Capt. Dennis Bridges told The Fresno Bee. Bridges did not know if there was a history of domestic violence calls or other disturbances at the apartment.
The man suffering from the stab wound was taken to a local hospital, where he was reported to be in critical condition.
A neighbor, Eric Gonzalez, described the residents of the apartment as a "normal" family.
"I never saw them fighting. They would come out with the baby carriage, and the man was taking care of his children," he told an Associated Press reporter outside the apartment complex.
Gonzalez said he did not hear any fighting or gunshots before the incident.
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Public release date: 19-Jan-2012
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