TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
(Reporting by Solarina Ho)
Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Like the 10 winners before him, Phillip Phillips faces the uneven road from “American Idol” victor to pop-chart mainstay.
After the success of his Top 10 hit, “Home,” the Georgia native is facing a new challenge – to replicate the mainstream successes of past “Idol” winners Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson on his debut album, “The World from the Side of the Moon,” released on Monday by Interscope Records.
Phillips, 22, spoke to Reuters about making his first proper studio album, what he might do differently on a second one, and whether he could have won “Idol” with this season’s panel of judges.
Q: How do you plan to transition from “American Idol” winner to a mainstream music career?
A: “It’s pretty funny that you mention that because the majority of the people I meet don’t even know that I was on ‘Idol.’ It’s really cool to hear that. When I go home, people ask, ‘What’ve you been doing? I’ve heard your song,’ but they don’t even know that I’ve been on ‘Idol.’”
Q: Your first single “Home” has gone twice platinum. You’ve said that it isn’t a song you would have written yourself. What’s your relationship now with your first hit?
A: “It’s amazing how well it has done, and I look at all the stories that I hear like how it has helped families out with their situation, or something’s happened with their kid, mom or dad, or if their child’s overseas in the war. Something like that’s pretty amazing how many different stories come out of it.”
Q: Did you have any ideas on how you wanted to develop your sound finally getting into a big-time studio?
A: “I already had the songs written, and it was just a matter of throwing in ideas and then just trimming it down to what felt right, because we only had three weeks to do this album. So it was kind of pressured, but that kind of helped out as well. It didn’t make us overthink anything.”
Q: Was there anything in particular you wanted to achieve?
A: “I wanted to make it similar to what I did on the show – a horn section and some rock. I tried to be a little artistic. I just wrote what came from my heart and what felt right.”
Q: Unlike many of the other contestants, you went into “Idol” as a songwriter, how many of the album’s songs did you write?
A: “I think five. Some of the co-writes, (the writers) really just kind of pushed me, so I kind of wrote most of those myself. But it was a lot of fun; it was a great experience.”
Q: Would you do anything differently next time?
A: “It’s still early, but I’d definitely want a little more time to do it. But that’s really about it, because three weeks is just really quick, and also I have just so many other things going on. … It was very kind of stressful and hopefully for the next record I’ll have a little more time.”
Q: What would that time allow you to do in the studio?
A: “Just being able to listen to it a little more. We all knew that it sounded really good but also having to listen to, like 17 songs in a row. You say, ‘Yeah that sounds great’ but you listen to it more and more and (say) ‘Maybe I would’ve brought this instrument down a little bit or brought it up a little bit more.’”
Q: Would you have fared any differently on ‘Idol’ with the current judges Nicky Minaj and Mariah Carey?
A: “I don’t know. I’m curious to see how they’re going to judge. It’s a completely different panel this year. … I don’t really know how I would’ve turned out. Maybe I’ll have to go out and audition again (laughs).”
Q: Would you have had to change your roots-y style?
A: “Naw, I would’ve still been the same dude. If they wouldn’t have sent me through, they wouldn’t have sent me through. And if they did, that’d be awesome.”
(Reporting By Eric Kelsey, editing by Jill Serjeant and Gunna Dickson)
Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News
FIRST PERSON | New research shows that Medicare patients with breast cancer wait as long as 32 days before surgery. This wait is typical in the United States. It is not only older women that have a long wait. I first found a lump in my breast in September 2011. My first surgery was not until November 2011. The wait was not on my end — in northwest Arkansas, it takes at least three weeks to get an appointment with anyone.
The study
MedicalXpress reports that the Fox Chase Cancer Center published its findings in the Nov. 19, 2012 edition of The Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study evaluated data from over 72,000 Medicare patients with non-metastatic breast cancer and found that in 2005, at least half of the breast cancer patients waited a minimum of 32 days before having surgery. This data shows a marked increase from 21 days back in 1992.
Breast cancer diagnosis
It is interesting that they looked only at non-metastatic breast cancer. When you first go to see your doctor about a breast problem, like a lump, you have no idea if it is even cancer, much less if it has spread to other parts of the body. Diagnostic mammography, breast MRIs, and ultrasound cannot tell you if the area of concern is cancer. Only surgery can determine breast cancer — that means either a needle biopsy or other invasive procedures.
The waiting can kill you
Medicare had nothing to do with my time delays, as I have private insurance. I have non-metastatic breast cancer. It took 3 weeks to see my OBGYN, then it was another week before I had the imaging done. From there, it took three weeks to schedule a wire-guided surgical biopsy. I had the biopsy in mid-November 2011. It was then I received a cancer diagnosis and was told that it was a high-grade tumor — meaning it was very aggressive. At the same time of my diagnosis, my surgeon ordered more tests. We waited until late December 2011 to discuss a mastectomy. The wait was due to him wanting to see the results of genetic testing. Personally, I was uncomfortable with the long wait time.
Long waits are not just for Medicare recipients and for people in large metropolitan areas. Here in rural Arkansas, wait times are long because there is a shortage of physicians. The area is growing but the medical community is not keeping up with the growth. Patients like me who have serious medical conditions are traveling to other areas in order to get better care.
Lynda Altman was diagnosed with breast cancer in November 2011. She writes a series for Yahoo! Shine called “My Battle With Breast Cancer.”
Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News
TORONTO (Reuters) – Any fiscal problems that would significantly slow the U.S. economy would be of great concern to Canada, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday.
The United States needed a credible medium-term fiscal plan, Harper said at a business forum in Ottawa, adding that he was following the U.S. fiscal debate with “great interest.”
(Reporting by Solarina Ho)
Canada News Headlines – Yahoo! News
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Lawyers fighting a New York man’s ownership claim against Facebook Inc. say a bizarre motion bearing the name of convicted abortion doctor killer James Charles Kopp earlier this month was apparently filed by an impostor.
In court papers, Facebook lawyers say they received a sworn statement from the imprisoned Kopp Monday denying he’s filed any motion in Paul Ceglia‘s lawsuit. An accompanying letter from Kopp to the federal judge handling the case says someone is impersonating him.
The motion signed with Kopp’s name had sought permission to intervene in Ceglia’s lawsuit while accusing Ceglia of a litany of personal slights, threats and crimes. Kopp’s serving life in prison for the 1998 killing of Dr. Barnett Slepian in suburban Buffalo.
Facebook says the Kopp motion, even if it’s real, should be denied.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
In an effort to curb HIV transmission and get treatment to those already infected, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended that every American between the ages of 15 and 65 be tested for HIV.
Experts hope that the new recommendations will encourage more Americans to get tested and, if necessary, get treated.
“HIV screening is an important way to help people who have HIV, and also to prevent transmission,” said Dr. Doug Owens, a leader of the task force and professor of medicine at Stanford University and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. Owens said that HIV treatment “decreases the amount of circulating virus,” making it less likely for it to spread from person to person.
Roughly 1.2 million Americans are currently living with HIV, a number that has been increasing steadily over the past five years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There continue to be about 48,000 new cases per year in the United States, but new treatments are allowing people to live long lives after they’re diagnosed.
“Hopefully, more people with HIV will be identified and treated earlier,” said Dr. Roger Chou of the Pacific Northwest Evidence Based Practice Center, whose study on the evidence supporting the new recommendation was published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
HIV-positive patients who start treatment while their immune systems are relatively intact live longer and are less likely to spread the virus to other people. But 20 percent of patients are unaware they have the virus, said Dr. Carlos Del Rio, co-director of the Emory Center for AIDS research in Atlanta.
“This news about screening is very exciting,” Del Rio said.
Previous task force recommendations on HIV testing, published in 2005, called for adults to get tested only if they’d had unprotected sex with multiple partners or used intravenous drugs — in other words, were at high risk. But up to a quarter of patients who test positive for HIV report no risk factors, according to the new Preventive Services Task Force statement.
“People are terrible at knowing their own risk,” said Del Rio, adding that people may be unaware of the HIV status of their sexual partners. “And doctors are terrible at asking them about risk. It can be difficult to discuss sex and drugs with our patients.”
The task force recommendations are used by Medicare and other insurance companies to determine what laboratory tests should be covered. Other important task force recommendations included screening for breast and colon cancer, as well as high cholesterol.
“I don’t have to ask my patients if they eat hamburgers before ordering a cholesterol test,” said Del Rio. “Now I can do a routine HIV test when patients come to clinic.”
In order for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to make a testing recommendation, the test has to be accurate, treatment for the disease must be available and the benefits of the treatment outweigh the harms.
“HIV testing is one of the most accurate tests that we have for any condition,” said Chou.
Coupled with the fact that the benefits of HIV treatment are now known to outweigh the risks, screening now makes sense, according to the experts on the task force.
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Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News
JERUSALEM (AP) — Egypt's president predicted Tuesday that Israel's nearly weeklong offensive in the Gaza Strip would end within hours, as diplomats from across the world raced across the region to negotiate a cease-fire to end relentless Israeli airstrikes and Palestinian rocket attacks.
Mohammed Morsi, perhaps the most important interlocutor between the militant Hamas group that rules the Palestinian territory and the Israelis, gave no explanation for his statement, saying only that the negotiations between the two sides will yield "positive results" during the coming hours.
President Barack Obama also dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the Mideast from Cambodia, where she had accompanied Obama on a visit.
Hours before Morsi spoke, a man identified as Hamas' militant commander urged his fighters to keep up attacks on Israel, and Palestinian militants fired a rocket toward Jerusalem, just minutes before U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon arrived in the holy city. Israeli airstrikes killed a senior militant and five others in a separate attack on a car, according to Gaza health officials.
"This must stop, immediate steps are needed to avoid further escalation, including a ground operation," Ban said from Egypt. "Both sides must hold fire immediately ... Further escalation of the situation could put the entire region at risk."
Clinton is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank and Egyptian leaders in Cairo. Turkey's foreign minister and a delegation of Arab League foreign ministers traveled to Gaza on a separate truce mission. Airstrikes continued to hit Gaza even as they entered the territory.
It was unclear how diplomatic efforts to achieve a cease-fire and stave off a threatened Israeli ground invasion into Gaza were hampered by the hard-to-bridge positions staked out by both sides — and by the persistent attacks. Tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers have been dispatched to the Gaza border in case of a decision to invade.
Residents of Jerusalem ran for cover Tuesday when Palestinians fired a rocket toward the holy city for the second time since the fighting started last Wednesday. The rocket, which set off sirens in the city, landed harmlessly in an open area on the outskirts in one of the longest rocket strikes fired from the Gaza.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the rocket landed in Gush Etzion, a collection of Jewish West Bank settlements southeast of the city. Last Friday's attempt to hit Jerusalem, nearly 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Gaza, landed in the same area. No one was wounded in either attack.
Jerusalem had previously been considered beyond the range of Gaza rockets — and an unlikely target because it is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Israeli officials feared Gaza's Hamas rulers will try to stage similar attacks deep into Israel's heartland ahead of any possible truce.
Shortly afterward, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a car in Gaza City killing five people and seriously wounding four others. Their identities were not immediately known.
In a sign of the difficulty diplomats will have in forging such a cease-fire, a man identified as Mohammed Deif, Hamas' elusive military commander, urged his fighters to keep up attacks on Israel.
Speaking from hiding on Hamas-run TV and radio, Deif said Hamas "must invest all resources to uproot this aggressor from our land," a reference to Israel.
Deif is one of the founders of Hamas' military wing and was its top commander until he was seriously wounded in an Israeli airstrike in 2003. He was replaced as the de facto leader by Ahmed Jabari, who was assassinated by Israel last week in the opening salvo of its latest Gaza offensive.
The U.S. considers Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide and other attacks, to be a terror group and does not meet with its officials. The Obama administration blames Hamas for the latest eruption of violence and says Israel has the right to defend itself. At the same time, it has warned against a ground invasion, saying it could send casualties spiraling.
An airstrike Tuesday killed a senior Hamas militant identified as Amin Al Dada and wounded two others, Gaza heath official Ashraf al-Kidra said.
By Tuesday, 115 Palestinians, including 54 civilians, were killed since Israel began an air onslaught that has so far included nearly 1,500 strikes. Some 840 people have been wounded, including 225 children, Gaza health officials said.
Three Israeli civilians have also been killed and dozens wounded since the fighting began last week, the numbers possibly kept down by a rocket-defense system that Israel developed with U.S. funding. More than 1,000 rockets have been fired at Israel this week, the military said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel was exploring a diplomatic solution, but wouldn't balk at a broader military operation.
"I prefer a diplomatic solution," Netanyahu said in a statement after meeting with Germany's Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, who is also in the region trying to advance peace efforts. "But if the fire continues, we will be forced to take broader measures and will not hesitate to do so."
Westerwelle said a truce must be urgently pursued, "but of course, there is one precondition for everything else, and this is a stop of the missile attacks against Israel."
The conflict erupted last week, when a resurgence in rocket fire from Gaza set off the Israeli offensive, which included hundreds of airstrikes on militants' underground rocket launchers and weapons' stores.
The onslaught turned deadlier over the weekend, as airstrikes began targeting the homes of suspected Hamas activists, leading to a spike in civilian casualties. Israel sent warnings in some cases, witnesses said, but in other instances missiles hit suddenly, burying residents under the rubble of their homes.
Hamas is deeply rooted in densely populated Gaza, and the movement's activists live in the midst of ordinary Gazans. Israel says militants are using civilians as human shields, both for their own safety and to launch rocket strikes from residential neighborhoods.
Early Tuesday, Israeli aircraft targeted another Hamas symbol of power, battering the headquarters of the bank senior Hamas officials set up to sidestep international sanctions on the militant group's rule. After Hamas violently overran Gaza in June 2007, foreign lenders stopped doing business with the militant-led Gaza government, afraid of running afoul of international terror financing laws.
The inside of the bank, which was set up by leading Hamas members and describes itself as a private enterprise, was destroyed. A building supply business in the basement was damaged.
Owner Suleiman Tawil, 31, grimly surveyed the damage to his store and six company cars. "I'm not involved in politics," he said. "I'm a businessman. But the more the Israelis pressure us, the more we will support Hamas."
Fuad Hijazi and two of his toddler sons were killed Monday evening when missiles struck their one-story shack in northern Gaza, leaving a crater about two to three meters (seven to 10 feet) deep in the densely populated neighborhood. Residents said the father was not a militant.
The conflict showed signs of spilling into the West Bank, as hundreds of Palestinian protesters in the town of Jenin clashed with Israeli forces during a demonstration against Israel's Gaza offensive.
Two Palestinian protesters were killed in anti-Israel demonstrations in the West Bank on Monday, according to Palestinian officials. Separate clashes occurred Tuesday in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, during the funeral for one of the dead.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007, now governs from the West Bank. Abbas claims to represent both areas, and there is widespread sympathy among West Bank Palestinians for their brethren in Gaza.
As part of truce efforts, Ban was to meet with Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on Tuesday. In Cairo, Ban said he would also travel to the West Bank to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Egypt, the traditional mediator between Israel and the Arab world, has been at the center of recent diplomatic efforts involving the U.S., Turkey, Qatar and other nations.
Israel demands an end to rocket fire from Gaza and a halt to weapons smuggling into Gaza through tunnels under the border with Egypt. It also wants international guarantees that Hamas will not rearm or use Egypt's Sinai region, which abuts both Gaza and southern Israel, to attack Israelis.
Hamas wants Israel to halt all attacks on Gaza and lift tight restrictions on trade and movement in and out of the territory that have been in place since Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007. Israel has rejected such demands in the past.
Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal told reporters in Cairo on Monday that Hamas would only agree to a cease-fire if its demands are met. "We don't accept Israeli conditions because it is the aggressor," he said. "We want a cease-fire along with meeting our demands."
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi in Cairo, and Karin Laub and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – FilmDistrict, Alliance Films and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will bring “Insidious Chapter 2,” the sequel to last year’s hit film “Insidious,” to U.S. theaters on August 30, 2013, the companies announced Monday.
Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Lin Shaye and Ty Simpkins will reprise their roles in the film, which “Insidious” director James Wan will direct from a script written by Leigh Whannell who also wrote the first film.
Jason Blum, who produced “Insidious,” is producing the low-budget sequel through his Blumhouse Productions. Brian Kavanaugh Jones, Oren Peli, Steven Schneider, and Charles Layton are executive producing. Production on the sequel is set to begin on January 15 in Los Angeles.
Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions acquired the U.S. rights to the film in conjunction with FilmDistrict. The film is being financed by Alliance Films. FilmDistrict will distribute the film theatrically in the United States, with Sony handling the majority of ancillary rights in the U.S.
Alliance Films will distribute in Canada, the U.K. (via its Momentum Pictures subsidiary) and Spain (via Aurum), and Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions will distribute in all other international territories.
Peter Schlessel, FilmDistrict’s CEO, said: “We are all very excited to see the next chapter of James and Leigh’s vision of the Further. It’s great to be in business again with Blumhouse, Alliance and Sony.”
Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News
OTTAWA/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Canadian government on Friday reiterated its intention to balance its budget by 2015, three days after projecting there would be deficits until 2016-17.
In separate appearances in Quebec City and New York, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty were at pains to say they still intended to end the red ink by 2015.
“It remains the government’s plan, intention, to balance the budget prior to the next federal election. The recent economic and fiscal update by the minister indicates we are actually very close to that objective,” Harper told reporters in Quebec City. The next election is in October 2015.
Flaherty’s fall fiscal update on Tuesday had pushed back the target date for eliminating the deficit by a year, to 2016-17, citing a weak global economy.
But the minister said in a speech in New York that the government was on track to balance the budget in the next two to three years, barring major external events, and he later clarified that he intended a balanced budget by 2015.
“The prime minister’s always correct,” he chuckled.
He sought to explain the discrepancy by saying the fiscal update had built in a C$ 3 billion ($ 3 billion) contingency cushion, meaning there was an underlying surplus of C$ 1.2 billion for 2015-16. He said the projection of a C$ 1.8 billion deficit amounted to about half a percent of the C$ 275 billion federal budget.
“There’s lots of water to go under the bridge between now and then,” he said.
The opposition New Democratic Party noted the discrepancy in a release headlined: “Stephen Harper makes stuff up about balancing the budget.”
It pointed out that balancing the budget by the next election was not the same as balancing it by 2016-17.
As it is, even the 2015-16 timetable is a year later than offered in the Conservative campaign for reelection in May 2011. They had promised a balanced budget by 2014-15, followed by major personal income tax relief before the 2015 election.
Flaherty’s timetable drew criticism this week from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which said the minister had become expert at kicking the can down the road.
The projections could be thrown out of whack if the United States goes off the fiscal cliff, a set of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that are to be triggered on January 2 if legislators and the White House cannot agree on a more nuanced budget deal.
Flaherty said U.S. failure to avert the fiscal cliff would cause a significant and immediate decline in Canada’s gross domestic product, and he would counter it.
Referring to a possible economic shock from Europe or the United States, he said: “If that were to happen and if the Canadian economy were to be pushed back into recession with the resulting danger for higher unemployment and the danger always of a prolonged recession, then we would act.”
He added: “We would not stand by and let that happen. The kinds of measure we can take: there are various tax measures we can take, there are measures with respect to stimulus we can take, these are things that we have done before and we can do again.”
On Tuesday, Flaherty spoke of having prepared various contingency plans.
(Additional reporting by Louse Egan; Editing by David Gregorio)
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