By Paul Chi and Melody Chiu
01/11/2013 at 12:50 PM EST
Hours after Ben Affleck was snubbed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which did not give him a Best Director nomination for his film Argo, he won in the same category at Thursday night's 18th Annual Critics Choice Movie Awards in Santa Monica.
"I'd like to thank the Academy," joked Affleck, 40, while on stage to collect his hardware. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding! This is the one that counts."
Affleck's victory was greeted by thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the crowd. His absence from the field of Best Director Oscar nominees was considered one of the biggest shocks when the nominations were announced Thursday morning. Meanwhile, Argo was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.
"It actually is very, very cool for me," Affleck said while accepting his Critics Choice Award. "There was a time where the Ben Affleck Critics Award was a Saturday Night Live sketch, so this is a very, very cool and exciting thing."
Affleck, who attended the show without wife Jennifer Garner, went on to thank his family by saying, "My daughter wrote my name on my hand for luck. I don't know how that works, but I guess it worked," he said. "I want to thank my kids and I want to thank my wife, without whom I would not be anywhere, much less here."
When Affleck returned to his table, George Clooney – a producer on Argo – greeted him with a congratulatory hug and smile, while fellow nominee David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) offered his congrats by rubbing Affleck's back.
Argo also was named best picture at the Critics Choice Awards.
NEW YORK (AP) — Flu is more widespread across the nation, but the number of hard-hit states has declined, health officials said Friday.
Flu season started early this winter, and includes a strain that tends to make people sicker. Health officials have forecast a potentially bad flu season, following last year's unusually mild one.
The latest numbers, however, hint that the flu season may already have peaked in some spots.
Flu was widespread in 47 states last week, up from 41 the week before, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. Many cases may be mild. The only states without widespread flu are California, Mississippi and Hawaii
The hardest hit states dropped to 24 from 29. Those are states where large numbers of people have been treated for flu-like illness.
Those with less activity include Florida, Arkansas and South Carolina in South, the first region hit in the current flu season.
Nationally, 20 children have died from the flu. There is no running tally of adult deaths, but the CDC estimates that the flu kills about 24,000 people in an average year.
Flu vaccinations are recommended for everyone 6 months or older. Health officials are still recommending vaccinations, even in areas with widespread flu reports.
Nearly 130 million doses of flu vaccine were distributed this year, and at least 112 million have been used, according to CDC officials.
Vaccine is still available, but supplies may have run low in some locations, health officials say.
Also on Friday, CDC officials said a recent study of more than 1,100 people has concluded the current flu vaccine is 62 percent effective. That's in line with how effective the vaccine has been in other years.
The flu vaccine is reformulated each year, and officials say this year's version is a good match to the viruses going around.
Flu usually peaks in midwinter. Symptoms can include fever, cough, runny nose, head and body aches and fatigue. Some people also suffer vomiting and diarrhea, and some develop pneumonia or other severe complications.
Most people with flu have a mild illness. But people with severe symptoms should see a doctor. They may be given antiviral drugs or other medications to ease symptoms.
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Online:
CDC flu: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/index.htm
An Apple Valley woman accused of fatally poisoning her boyfriend’s 2-year-old toddler with chili powder pleaded not guilty Thursday to murder, a prosecutor said.
Amanda Sorensen, 21, pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and child abuse causing death. She appeared in court Thursday, said Kathleen DiDonato, a deputy district attorney. DiDonato declined to talk about the specifics of the case.
Sorensen was arrested early Monday morning. She is being held at the West Valley Detention Center.
Authorities were called to the 20000 block of Cayuga Road in Apple Valley on a report of a child suffering from a seizure after ingesting chili powder. The toddler died at a hospital, deputies said.
Relatives of the toddler told the Victor Valley Press they were in “shock,” after the incident.
The People’s Love for Chávez Continues:
While Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez lies ill in Cuba, his many fans still flock to the streets at home in support. A recent rally shows Mr. Chávez has established a celebrated and enduring persona.
CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez’s supporters have not ruled out swearing him in from his hospital in Havana. His detractors are calling for government investigators to go check his pulse themselves. The justices whom Mr. Chávez’s allies have named to the Supreme Court have decided that he can continue to govern in absentia.
In a country that Mr. Chávez has dominated for so long, his health crisis and the decision to proceed on Thursday with a quasi-presidential inauguration that he is unable to attend are producing a stream of bizarre developments and national angst about who is in charge.
“Who’s governing Venezuela?” Julio Borges, an opposition member of the National Assembly, said during a noisy legislative debate this week on the biggest issue facing the country, overshadowing other urgent matters like pressures for a painful currency devaluation, stagnant oil production and chronic shortages of food and other staples on store shelves.
Mr. Chávez has long said, “I am the people,” a mantra that his supporters are invoking as they plan to don the sash the president would have worn had he been able to attend his inauguration, symbolically becoming presidents themselves.
“Anyone who has a sash, bring it along, because tomorrow the people will be invested as president of the republic, because the people are Chávez,” Diosdado Cabello, the president of the National Assembly, said Wednesday. “All of us here are Chávez, the people in the street are Chávez, the lady who cooks is Chávez, the comrade who works as a watchman is Chávez, the soldier is Chávez, the woman is Chávez, the farmer is Chávez, the worker is Chávez; we’re all Chávez.”
To no one’s surprise, the Supreme Court, full of Chávez loyalists, ruled on the eve of the ceremony that Mr. Chávez’s inauguration could be postponed and that his team of advisers could smoothly move, in his absence, from one term to the next.
The court declined to set a time limit for the swearing in, raising the possibility that the country’s deepening uncertainty could go on for weeks or months. And it did nothing to clear up the stubborn mystery of the president’s condition.
Luisa Estella Morales, the president of the Supreme Court, said Wednesday at a news conference that there was no need at this time for a delegation to go to Cuba and report back on the condition of Mr. Chávez, 58. Asked if the swearing in could occur in Havana, she said the time and place of the ceremony had not been determined.
Ms. Morales said the Supreme Court’s ruling was meant to uphold the results of October’s presidential election.
“It’s one of the most important values that we should preserve as a constitutional court,” Ms. Morales said. “The sovereign Venezuelan people have expressed through their vote their desire to continue being governed by President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías.”
The government has been opaque for months, acknowledging that he suffered from a relapse of cancer in the pelvic area, but not specifying the type of cancer or detailing his prognosis.
The lack of information has left Venezuela tied in knots. Mr. Chávez has loomed so large for so long — with speeches that have lasted for hours, frequent Twitter posts and his outsized singing, ranting, poetry-reciting and foe-bashing personality — that his sudden silence has created a sizable vacuum.
“We don’t have a president,” lamented Estela Martínez, 63, a nurse who has supported Mr. Chávez throughout his 14 years in office. She said she was afraid that the public was not getting the full truth about the president’s condition and that there was far more shouting than clarity from political leaders. “Someone has to take the reins of the country.”
Henrique Capriles Radonski, the opposition candidate who lost to Mr. Chávez in October, criticized the Supreme Court’s decision endorsing a delay in the inauguration. “Institutions should not respond to the interests of a government,” he said.
The State Department in Washington, which has been cautious about getting involved in the contentious political back-and-forth, said Wednesday that it would be eager to improve relations with Venezuela, which have long been strained.
María Iguarán and María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting.
After hitting a rough patch that seemed to last for most of 2012, Research In Motion (RIMM) may finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. RIM plans to unveil the finished version of its next-generation BlackBerry 10 platform at a press conference on January 30th, and at least one new smartphone is expected to be revealed during the event. Generating interest in BlackBerry 10 within the crowded global smartphone market will be no easy task for the struggling vendor, but if demand at top Canadian Rogers is any indication, RIM is off to a promising start.
[More from BGR: ‘Apple is done’ and Surface tablet is cool, according to teens]
In mid-December, Rogers began taking reservations for RIM’s first BlackBerry 10-powered handset. The carrier offered almost no information about the BlackBerry smartphone, which has not yet been announced, but asked subscribers interested in purchasing the device to register on the company’s website.
[More from BGR: iPhone 5 now available with unlimited service, no contract on Walmart’s $ 45 Straight Talk plan]
BGR approached Rogers on Thursday to see how subscriber response has been thus far.
“While we can’t release the total number of reservations we have received for the BlackBerry 10 all-touch device, we can say that customer interest is definitely strong and reservations continue daily,” a RIM spokesperson told BGR via email.
The strong response from Rogers subscribers despite being provided only with the knowledge that the device will feature an all-touch form factor and will run the BlackBerry 10 OS is a good sign for RIM.
The vendor has a number of difficult challenges ahead, and convincing current BlackBerry users to upgrade en masse is near the top of the list. Strong early demand at Rogers for RIM’s first BlackBerry 10 handset is clearly a positive sign in this regard, as most early reservations likely came from current BlackBerry subscribers.
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News
By Kevin O'Donnell
01/10/2013 at 12:20 PM EST
Despite reports in August that a new album wasn't forthcoming soon, the musician and actor revealed on Twitter Thursday he'll be releasing new music.
"I think I'M READY," he Tweeted before posting a link to a YouTube video which shows him walking into a studio and explains his absence from releasing new songs.
While he doesn't explicitly state what he's releasing – the video ends with a countdown that expires on Sunday at midnight – the pop star says in the clip, "I don't want to put anything out that I feel like is anything I don't love. You just don't get that every day. You have to wait for it. ... I'm ready."
Timberlake, who wed Jessica Biel in Italy in October, teased fans online about his announcement Wednesday night. "Thursday, January 10th, 2013 at 9:01 am PST…" he posted cryptically. That Tweet caused him to become a top trending topic almost immediately.
Despite the denial of a new album, a source told PEOPLE this summer that he had been cooking up new material with longtime collaborator Timbaland. The source added he was waiting for "the right time" to put it out. It seems that moment has come.
Since the release of Futuresex/Lovesounds in 2006, Timberlake has focused primarily on acting projects as well as MySpace, in which he took on a major role in June for the social networking site's re-launch.
• Reporting by JESSICA HERNDON
WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, doctors have lamented that there's no Pap test for deadly ovarian cancer. Wednesday, scientists reported encouraging signs that one day, there might be.
Researchers are trying to retool the Pap, a test for cervical cancer that millions of women get, so that it could spot early signs of other gynecologic cancers, too.
How? It turns out that cells can flake off of tumors in the ovaries or the lining of the uterus, and float down to rest in the cervix, where Pap tests are performed. These cells are too rare to recognize under the microscope. But researchers from Johns Hopkins University used some sophisticated DNA testing on the Pap samples to uncover the evidence — gene mutations that show cancer is present.
In a pilot study, they analyzed Pap smears from 46 women who already were diagnosed with either ovarian or endometrial cancer. The new technique found all the endometrial cancers and 41 percent of the ovarian tumors, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
This is very early-stage research, and women shouldn't expect any change in their routine Paps. It will take years of additional testing to prove if the so-called PapGene technique really could work as a screening tool, used to spot cancer in women who thought they were healthy.
"Now the hard work begins," said Hopkins oncologist Dr. Luis Diaz, whose team is collecting hundreds of additional Pap samples for more study and is exploring ways to enhance the detection of ovarian cancer.
But if it ultimately pans out, "the neat part about this is, the patient won't feel anything different," and the Pap wouldn't be performed differently, Diaz added. The extra work would come in a lab.
The gene-based technique marks a new approach toward cancer screening, and specialists are watching closely.
"This is very encouraging, and it shows great potential," said American Cancer Society genetics expert Michael Melner.
"We are a long way from being able to see any impact on our patients," cautioned Dr. Shannon Westin of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She reviewed the research in an accompanying editorial, and said the ovarian cancer detection would need improvement if the test is to work.
But she noted that ovarian cancer has poor survival rates because it's rarely caught early. "If this screening test could identify ovarian cancer at an early stage, there would be a profound impact on patient outcomes and mortality," Westin said.
More than 22,000 U.S. women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer each year, and more than 15,000 die. Symptoms such as pain and bloating seldom are obvious until the cancer is more advanced, and numerous attempts at screening tests have failed.
Endometrial cancer affects about 47,000 women a year, and kills about 8,000. There is no screening test for it either, but most women are diagnosed early because of postmenopausal bleeding.
The Hopkins research piggybacks on one of the most successful cancer screening tools, the Pap, and a newer technology used along with it. With a standard Pap, a little brush scrapes off cells from the cervix, which are stored in a vial to examine for signs of cervical cancer. Today, many women's Paps undergo an additional DNA-based test to see if they harbor the HPV virus, which can spur cervical cancer.
So the Hopkins team, funded largely by cancer advocacy groups, decided to look for DNA evidence of other gynecologic tumors. It developed a method to rapidly screen the Pap samples for those mutations using standard genetics equipment that Diaz said wouldn't add much to the cost of a Pap-plus-HPV test. He said the technique could detect both early-stage and more advanced tumors. Importantly, tests of Paps from 14 healthy women turned up no false alarms.
The endometrial cancers may have been easier to find because cells from those tumors don't have as far to travel as ovarian cancer cells, Diaz said. Researchers will study whether inserting the Pap brush deeper, testing during different times of the menstrual cycle, or other factors might improve detection of ovarian cancer.
Capping a raucous eight-hour-plus meeting, the Irvine City Council early Wednesday voted to overhaul the oversight and spending on the beleaguered Orange County Great Park while authorizing an audit of the more than $220 million that so far has been spent on the ambitious project.
A newly elected City Council majority voted 3 to 2 to terminate contracts with two firms that had been paid a combined $1.1 million a year for consulting, lobbying, marketing and public relations. One of those firms — Forde & Mollrich public relations — has been paid $12.4 million since county voters approved the Great Park plan in 2002.
"We need to stop talking about building a Great Park and actually start building a Great Park," council member Jeff Lalloway said.
The council, by the same split vote, also changed the composition of the Great Park's board of directors, shedding four non-elected members and handing control to Irvine's five council members.
The actions mark a significant turning point in the decade-long effort to turn the former El Toro Marine base into a 1,447-acre municipal park with man-made canyons, rivers, forests and gardens that planners hoped would rival New York's Central Park.
The city hoped to finish and maintain the park for years to come with $1.4 billion in state redevelopment funds. But that money vanished last year as part of the cutbacks to deal with California's massive budget deficit.
"We've gone through $220 million, but where has it gone?" council member Christina Shea said of the project's initial funding from developers in exchange for the right to build around the site. "The fact of the matter is the money is almost gone. It can't be business as usual."
The council majority said the changes will bring accountability and efficiencies to a project that critics say has been larded with wasteful spending and no-bid contracts. For all that has been spent, only about 200 acres of the park has been developed and half of that is leased to farmers.
But council members Larry Agran and Beth Krom, who have steered the course of the project since its inception, voted against reconfiguring the Great Park's board of directors and canceling the contracts with the two firms.
Krom has called the move a "witch hunt" against her and Agran. Feuding between liberal and conservative factions on the council has long shaped Irvine politics.
"This is a power play," she said. "There's a new sheriff in town."
The council meeting stretched long into the night, with the final vote coming Wednesday at 1:34 a.m. Tensions were high in the packed chambers with cheering, clapping and heckling coming from the crowd.
At one point council member Lalloway lamented that he "couldn't hear himself think."
During public comments, newly elected Orange County Supervisor Todd Spitzer chastised the council for "fighting like schoolchildren." Earlier this week he said that if the Irvine's new council majority can't make progress on the Great Park, he would seek a ballot initiative to have the county take over.
And Spitzer angrily told Agran that his stewardship of the project had been a failure.
"You know what?" he said. "It's their vision now. You're in the minority."
mike.anton@latimes.com
rhea.mahbubani@latimes.com
ISTANBUL — More than 2,000 prisoners incarcerated by the Syrian authorities were being released on Wednesday in return for 48 Iranians freed by rebels after five months in captivity in what appeared to be the biggest prisoner swap since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began almost two years ago.
The exchange, brokered by Turkey and Qatar, came days after Mr. Assad warned on Sunday that he would not abandon the fight against armed adversaries pressing on the approaches to the Syrian capital, Damascus, and brushed aside calls for him to quit.
Word of the exchange dominated news in Iran, the Syrian government’s only Middle East ally, leading the Web site of the official Islamic Republic News Agency. Iran state television showed a brief clip of the released hostages at the Sheraton Hotel in Damascus, grinning, flashing victory signs and holding flowers. In an interview on Iran state TV, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ramin Mehmanparast, thanked those involved in the swap for the hostages and expressed happiness that “we managed to get them released.”
Precise details of the exchange, including when the 48 Iranians would be repatriated, remained unclear. Mr. Mehmanparast also said two Iranian engineers who had been abducted earlier in Syria remained captive. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, a regional power broker allied to the Western and Arab nations seeking Mr. Assad’s departure, said he hoped the exchange on Wednesday would lead to freedom for more prisoners in Syria.
“We wish many other innocent people, and people in need, to be released from Syrian jails without delay,” Mr. Erdogan said in a televised news conference in Niamey, Nigeria, where he arrived on an official visit.
“This process needs to be appreciated. We are not in a position to say anything more than, ‘May this produce some good.’ ”
The exchange emerged from months of behind-the-scenes negotiations involving a Turkish charitable foundation, the Humanitarian Relief Foundation, an Islamist-leaning aid organization based in Istanbul and widely known as I.H.H.
The aid group had set up an operation center in Damascus to unite 2,130 prisoners, including 73 women, at one base while another aid team remained in Douma, near the Syrian capital, to oversee the return of the 48 Iranians.
“Captivity is a hard thing,” said Bulent Yildirim, the foundation’s director, who coordinated the exchange in Damascus.
“I saw young women crying, many people lost a lot of weight, and there were also many sick people.”
The Syrian opposition has claimed that the Iranians are members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, but Tehran has denied the assertion, saying the captives are Shiite civilian pilgrims. The Iranians were seized in August while traveling on a bus from Damascus International Airport to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of the capital, Iran’s Press TV said.
Opposition fighters had threatened to kill the Iranians unless Mr. Assad’s forces halted military operations. But since then the fighting around Damascus has intensified.
Iran is Mr. Assad’s main ally in a region where most Arab states and neighboring Turkey have turned against him. The Iranian captives offered the rebels holding them a source of powerful pressure on the Syrian leader to release opposition prisoners in return.
“We expect the swap to be completed in the next hour,” Huseyin Oruc, a member of the aid group’s executive board said in a telephone interview around midday. He said the captives released by the Syrian authorities included four Turks and a Palestinian.
By midafternoon it was not clear whether the 2,130 prisoners had been freed.
“It is the first time that the ‘humanitarian diplomacy’ we initiated succeeded in releasing such a large group of people at once,” Mr. Oruc said. “There are many more held captive and our efforts to free them will continue without delay.”
The Turkish aid group gained international attention in 2010 for organizing a flotilla of boats heading to Gaza, ostensibly with relief supplies, that prompted a deadly Israeli commando raid in which eight Turks and an American of Turkish descent died. At the time of the raid, the group was reported to have extensive connections with Turkey’s political elite. The episode began an unraveling of Turkey’s once close ties with Israel.
In recent months, the organization has also been part of negotiations to free smaller numbers of prisoners, including two Turkish journalists held in Syria, Reuters reported. It has been active since the early 1990s in charitable works in the Middle East and Africa, focusing most recently on Gaza.
Since the start of the uprising against Mr. Assad, the organization has also cast itself as a leading private charitable organization in Syria, delivering food and other basic supplies and pursuing what it calls “humanitarian diplomacy” to help free captive civilians.
While the numbers involved in Wednesday’s exchange seemed dramatic, some rebel commanders said more modest prisoner exchanges had become a feature of the conflict.
The leader of a rebel fighting group in the central city of Hama, reached via Skype, said pro-government militia members had captured his uncle and two other relatives in a village in the northern Idlib province more than a month ago.
“The only way to release them is capturing hostages,” the commander said, adding that negotiations were under way to win the release of his relatives in return for 12 captives held by the rebels. Two months ago, the commander said, nine members of the pro-government militia, known as shabiha, were exchanged for five captured rebels. Syria’s uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations, but a harsh suppression broadened into civil war with an estimated 60,000 people killed, according to United Nations estimates.
Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul and Alan Cowell from London. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Thomas Erdbrink from Tehran.
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