Lady Gaga: I Can't Walk Due to Injury















02/12/2013 at 06:45 PM EST



Lady Gaga is feeling like a little monster for postponing concerts because of an injury.

"I barely know what to say," she writes on her Facebook page, Tuesday. "I've been hiding a show injury and chronic pain for some time now, [and] over the past month it has worsened. I've been praying it would heal. I hid it from my staff. I didn't want to disappoint my amazing fans. However, after last night's performance I could not walk and still can't."

The pop star, 26 – whose Twitter page explains that she has a case of synovitis, which is severe inflammation of the joints – was forced to postpone two concerts in Chicago, one in Detroit and one in Hamilton, Ontario.

"I hope you can forgive me, as it is nearly impossible for me to forgive myself," the rest of her Facebook post says. "I'm devastated & sad. It will hopefully heal as soon as possible. I hate this. I hate this so much. I love you and I'm sorry."

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Study questions kidney cancer treatment in elderly


In a stunning example of when treatment might be worse than the disease, a large review of Medicare records finds that older people with small kidney tumors were much less likely to die over the next five years if doctors monitored them instead of operating right away.


Even though nearly all of these tumors turned out to be cancer, they rarely proved fatal. And surgery roughly doubled patients' risk of developing heart problems or dying of other causes, doctors found.


After five years, 24 percent of those who had surgery had died, compared to only 13 percent of those who chose monitoring. Just 3 percent of people in each group died of kidney cancer.


The study only involved people 66 and older, but half of all kidney cancers occur in this age group. Younger people with longer life expectancies should still be offered surgery, doctors stressed.


The study also was observational — not an experiment where some people were given surgery and others were monitored, so it cannot prove which approach is best. Yet it offers a real-world look at how more than 7,000 Medicare patients with kidney tumors fared. Surgery is the standard treatment now.


"I think it should change care" and that older patients should be told "that they don't necessarily need to have the kidney tumor removed," said Dr. William Huang of New York University Langone Medical Center. "If the treatment doesn't improve cancer outcomes, then we should consider leaving them alone."


He led the study and will give results at a medical meeting in Orlando, Fla., later this week. The research was discussed Tuesday in a telephone news conference sponsored by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and two other cancer groups.


In the United States, about 65,000 new cases of kidney cancer and 13,700 deaths from the disease are expected this year. Two-thirds of cases are diagnosed at the local stage, when five-year survival is more than 90 percent.


However, most kidney tumors these days are found not because they cause symptoms, but are spotted by accident when people are having an X-ray or other imaging test for something else, like back trouble or chest pain.


Cancer experts increasingly question the need to treat certain slow-growing cancers that are not causing symptoms — prostate cancer in particular. Researchers wanted to know how life-threatening small kidney tumors were, especially in older people most likely to suffer complications from surgery.


They used federal cancer registries and Medicare records from 2000 to 2007 to find 8,317 people 66 and older with kidney tumors less than 1.5 inches wide.


Cancer was confirmed in 7,148 of them. About three-quarters of them had surgery and the rest chose to be monitored with periodic imaging tests.


After five years, 1,536 had died, including 191 of kidney cancer. For every 100 patients who chose monitoring, 11 more were alive at the five-year mark compared to the surgery group. Only 6 percent of those who chose monitoring eventually had surgery.


Furthermore, 27 percent of the surgery group but only 13 percent of the monitoring group developed a cardiovascular problem such as a heart attack, heart disease or stroke. These problems were more likely if doctors removed the entire kidney instead of just a part of it.


The results may help doctors persuade more patients to give monitoring a chance, said a cancer specialist with no role in the research, Dr. Bruce Roth of Washington University in St. Louis.


Some patients with any abnormality "can't sleep at night until something's done about it," he said. Doctors need to say, "We're not sticking our head in the sand, we're going to follow this" and can operate if it gets worse.


One of Huang's patients — 81-year-old Rhona Landorf, who lives in New York City — needed little persuasion.


"I was very happy not to have to be operated on," she said. "He said it's very slow growing and that having an operation would be worse for me than the cancer."


Landorf said her father had been a doctor, and she trusts her doctors' advice. Does she think about her tumor? "Not at all," she said.


___


Online:


Kidney cancer info: http://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/kidney-cancer


and http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/kidney


Study: http://gucasym.org


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Wall Street ends slightly higher, Dow near a record

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed modestly higher on Tuesday, putting the Dow within striking distance of an all-time high, as investors looked ahead to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.


Investors will be listening to Obama's speech for any clues on a deal with Republicans to avert automatic spending cuts due to take effect March 1. The tone of the speech will also be scrutinized, with any sign of compromise likely to be warmly received.


The S&P 500 has risen for the past six weeks, putting it up 6.5 percent so far this year, while the Dow is about 1 percent away from its all-time closing record of 14,164.53, reached in October 2007.


But gains have been harder to come by since the S&P hit a five-year high on February 1. Daily moves have been small and trading volume light as investors search for new reasons to drive stocks higher.


About 5.73 billion shares changed hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT on Tuesday, below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.


"We're likely to settle in for a period and digest the gains we've had, though there's still a bias towards positive momentum," said Eric Teal, chief investment officer at First Citizens Bancshares in Raleigh, North Carolina.


"Questions over government spending are the big overhang, and we're looking for Obama to inspire some confidence over that tonight."


The White House has signaled Obama will urge investment in infrastructure and clean energy, suggesting companies in those sectors may be volatile in Wednesday's session.


"Gun makers could also see a reaction if Obama talks about anything with respect to gun control," said Teal, who helps oversee $5 billion. Shares of Smith & Wesson fell 2 cents to $9.11 while Sturm Ruger was up 0.4 percent at $53.91.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 47.46 points, or 0.34 percent, at 14,018.70. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was up 2.42 points, or 0.16 percent, at 1,519.43. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 5.51 points, or 0.17 percent, at 3,186.49.


Housing shares were among the strongest of the day, led by a 12.5 percent jump in Masco Corp to $20.02 after the home improvement product maker said it expects new home construction to show strong growth in 2013. The PHLX housing sector index <.hgx> rose 3.7 percent.


Avon Products Inc surged 20 percent to $20.79 as the S&P 500's top percentage gainer after the cosmetics company reversed sales declines and cut costs.


On the downside, Coca-Cola Co fell 2.7 percent to $37.56 and was the biggest drag on the Dow after reporting revenue below estimates, hurt by a weaker-than-expected performance in Europe.


Michael Kors Holdings shares jumped 8.8 percent to $62.04 after the fashion company handily beat Wall Street's estimates and raised its full-year outlook.


With earnings season starting to wind down, Thomson Reuters data through Tuesday morning shows of the 353 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 70.3 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, above a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.


Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.3 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.


About 62 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed higher while 59 percent of Nasdaq-listed shares closed in positive territory.


(Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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Taking Guns to Holy Ground in Mexico City


Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times


Mexican soldiers evaluated guns last month in Mexico City. The city has largely been spared the violence of other areas.







MEXICO CITY — A young woman cradling a large crucifix left Mexico’s holiest shrine, the Basilica of St. Mary of Guadalupe, on a recent afternoon and stopped at a tent outside, where soldiers were piling up pistols and rifles on a table, part of a citywide cash-for-guns program.




The woman had brought the crucifix to be blessed, but the sight of the tent reminded her father, who was with her, that he could finally get rid of the .22-caliber pistol and the .38-caliber revolver he kept at home.


“I have had them for 40 years, and I have never used them or will use them,” said the 67-year-old man, who declined to give his name, citing the gun plan’s anonymity. “So I might as well exchange them.”


Mexico City officials have invited residents to drop off their antique pistols, rusted rifles, Saturday night specials, air guns, even their grenades — no names, no questions — hoping to put a dent in the number of weapons they believe are hidden in people’s homes, avoid accidents and maybe even reduce violent crime.


They chose the basilica in the belief that people would feel more confident turning over their weapons on holy ground.


“It’s neutral territory,” said Rosa Icela Rodríguez, the city’s secretary of social development. People may not trust the police or the government, she said, but “who doesn’t know the basilica?”


The capital has largely been spared the gun violence that has ravaged much of the country. The city of nearly nine million had an average of slightly more than two killings a day last year, a rate lower than that of many large cities in the United States.


But in November, a 10-year-old boy at the movies was killed when a stray bullet fired into the air outside pierced the cinema’s roof. The killing struck a nerve here, leading to calls for action.


City officials responded by shifting the desultory and poorly publicized efforts of the past into overdrive.


They are sending social workers door to door to remind residents that it is illegal to have a gun without a permit and that a gun at home does not guarantee protection. The workers have been spreading the word about the exchange and compiling an informal census on attitudes about guns. The buyback program, which began in December, has so far collected almost 3,500 guns, as well as ammunition and grenades.


Unlike the United States, where proposals for stricter gun laws are driving a heated political debate, Mexico has strict gun laws and little formal opposition to them. Mexico’s Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms, but that right has been severely restricted.


It is virtually impossible to buy a gun legally; there is only one gun shop in the country, and it is run by the army. The kinds of guns people can buy are sharply limited and require a permit first. Private gun sales also require a permit, and carrying a gun outside one’s home requires a separate document.


The Small Arms Survey, a research project at the Graduate Institute of Research and Development in Geneva, estimates that Mexico has 15.5 million civilian-owned guns, about 15 guns for every 100 residents, compared with 99 per 100 in the United States.


But the number of legal guns in Mexico is even lower: only 2.8 million are registered, according to the Organization of American States.


The vast majority of guns here come from the United States, either smuggled in by criminal gangs or diverted from legal purchases by corrupt officials, according to Magda Coss, who has written about Mexico’s gun trade. Mexican leaders have blamed lax gun laws north of the border for the gun violence here, which the government says has taken about 50,000 lives in the past six years.


Long before the drug wars, Mexicans had an ambivalent relationship with guns. The history of insurrection and revolution created a popular mythology studded with armed folk heroes like Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary depicted in a famous photograph with a rifle and bandoleers across his chest.


Village festivals to celebrate the patron saint often end with drunken men lumbering down starlit country roads shooting their weapons into the air. Mexico’s fast-forward urbanization has simply moved the festivals and their shooting into densely populated working-class streets.


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Digital gap: why aren’t moviemakers learning narrative from videogames and the web?






LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – From killing off film prints to designing fantastical CGI worlds, movies are going digital in every way except one – storytelling.


Unlike the eras when the advent of photography inspired the fine arts to embrace abstraction, or when the rise of mass-media pushed writers into modernist and eventually post-modern terrain, movies remain largely impervious to the narrative techniques employed across the internet.






Hollywood views videogames and the web as an existential threat, but instead of radically altering its approach, most movies unfold over the course of two hours in a linear fashion, just as they have done for a century. Over the course of its history the medium has had no problem embracing change in film as long as its technologically driven, hence the shift from silent movies to talkies, or black and white to color. It has remained more precious, however, about how it spins its celluloid fantasies.


Today’s top directors are more interested in aping classical cinema than forging a new filmmaking vernacular. That’s in contrast to 10 years ago when movies like “The Matrix,” “Memento,” or “Being John Malkovich” turned cinematic storytelling on its head, gleefully experimenting with an inter-textuality that mirrored our hyperlinked world.


With a few exceptions like Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina,” which re-imagined Leo Tolstoy’s tragedy as a series of intersecting operas, or Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths,” a bloody crime movie that is also a comment on the art of screenwriting, that flowering of experimentation is over.


“The films of early aughts engaged with virtuality in a way they don’t today,” Alissa Quart, a cultural critic and the author of the forthcoming “Republic of Outsiders,” told TheWrap. “You had people like Steven Spielberg working on ‘Minority Report,’ now you have ‘Lincoln.’ Or Paul Thomas Anderson going from ‘Magnolia’ to ‘The Master.’


“Those movies engaged with multiplicity and technology and surveillance, and now those same filmmakers are looking at these huge commanding triumphal figures in stories set in the past that look antique.”


Films like “The Master” or “Zero Dark Thirty” or “Django Unchained” are referential, but their influences lie in film’s history, mimicking the wide vistas favored by John Ford or the atmosphere of exquisite paranoia in 1970s thrillers like “All the President’s Men.” The directors gaze lingers in the past and rarely looks toward the future.


“A way to get serious as a filmmaker is to be very clearly dealing with your influences,” Kurt Anderson, host of the arts and culture program “Studio 360,” told TheWrap. “Now, I have no doubt that ‘Pulp Fiction’ was full of Quentin Tarantino’s influences, but at the time it seemed like a new way of telling stories. When you get to ‘Django,’ it becomes all about his cinematic influences.”


Even the methods that Hollywood has kicked up to convince teenagers to give up their game consoles and hit the multiplex are bizarrely retro.


Souped-up theatrical exhibition offerings like 3D are a throwback to the 1950s, when Hollywood was facing a different, though no less grave incursion from television. Likewise, what is IMAX and its mammoth projections but a reincarnation of Cinerama, the colossal wide-screen format the flourished in the Eisenhower era?


In contrast, television shows like “Lost” or “Once Upon a Time,” which are set in fantasy worlds and tease out mysteries in episodic fashion, are more akin to what players expect from videogames.


That’s not to say there isn’t some cross-pollination. Flint Dille is a game designer on the likes of “Dead to Rights” and the screenwriter of movies like “An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.” He says that both mediums steal from one another, claiming that the plot of 99 percent of videogames is derived from ‘80s action movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.


In turn, today’s action movies design their set pieces to appeal to audiences who grew up with “Mass Effect” and “World of Warcraft.”


“When you look at ‘The Hobbit’ – that escape from the goblins’ lair is a Nintendo game,” Dille said. “It’s like a videogame in its velocity. Or a movie like ‘Jack Reacher’ is like a game in that the main character arrives with no back story, and that’s something we’ve been conditioned to accept from playing games where the protagonist is a cipher.”


To be sure, studios have shown an appetite for persistent experimentation when it comes to using apps and viral marketing to generate excitement for tent pole films like “The Dark Knight” or “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Yet the emphasis is on promotion, not narrative.


So why is it that, while computer technology has opened up brave new worlds in terms of special effects and advertising, it has not altered storytelling?


The culprit is a hodgepodge of commercial realities and artistic preferences.


“I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering the question what is a modern film?” Howard Suber, professor of film history at UCLA, told TheWrap. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it is basically everything that was made after the 1960s — but that’s 50 years. The reason why that’s still modern is that not a hell of a lot has changed.”


Suber said that when he shows a movie in his class from earlier eras, his students are unable to deal with the slower pacing and editing, but they have a less difficult time adjusting to anything made after that date.


“The entire field of modern film is 50 years long, which is staggering when you compare it to any earlier age films,” he said. “The films of the ‘20s looked antique to audiences in the ‘30s, and the same was true with the way audiences in the ‘50s viewed films from 10 years earlier.”


Quart thinks that the kind of cultural permanence that Suber describes may be a conscious choice by artists who are looking to create spaces that are distinct from the fragmented world wrought by social media.


In a recent piece in the New York Times, Quart argued that “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” are popular in part because they allow viewers to take a break from Twitter, texts and other technologically enabled forms of multi-tasking.


She argues the same appeal underlies movies.


“My gut tells me that filmmakers are trying to give viewers respite from what the virtual world is offering,” Quart said. “It’s motivated by an esthetic defensiveness because we are inundated with all these modes of communication.”


It hasn’t helped that films that have exploded conventional approaches to storytelling sunk at the box office.


Sure, “The Matrix” was a worldwide blockbuster, grossing $ 463 million and spawning two sequels, but “Magnolia” ($ 48.4 million) and “Adaptation” ($ 32.8 million) were lucky to break even. More recent mind-bending films like “Anna Karenina” ($ 49 million globally), and “Synecdoche, New York” ($ 4.3 million globally) continued the trend of hardly making a ripple at ticket counters. Studios’ obsession with tentpole films that can cross language and cultural barriers to appeal to global audiences have likely made them less receptive to films that revel in narrative complexity.


That could change. If filmmakers like J.J. Abrams get their way, blockbuster films will seep off the screen and into other platforms, rivaling the sprawling nature of the web.


The big shake up could come with Transmedia – the notion that stories should be told over various mediums ranging from comic books to videogames. This approach to popular culture has been a buzz word for over a decade, but its adherents believe the film industry is poised to take a dramatic leap forward.


“They’re are a lot of film purists who believe their job is to get the script shot and make it beautiful,” Jeff Gomez, president of Starlight Runner Entertainment and a trans media consultant on films like “Avatar,” said. “But there’s also a growing number of young people, who were weaned on videogames and immersed in multiple media platforms, for whom these new kinds of storytelling are intuitive.”


Gomez notes that Joss Whedon’s decision to set his upcoming ABC show “S.H.I.E.L.D.” in the world of “The Avengers” films is a perfect example of a platform-agnostic approach.


It’s a boundary that could keep eroding when Abrams gets hold of the “Star Wars” franchise. The director already has experimented with transmedia in television shows like “Lost,” but the saga of the Skywalkers and new owner Disney’s consumer products heft could open up whole new galaxies in terms of storytelling – ones that jet from games to toys to movies, creating a vast universe of narrative possibilities.


In 1977, “Star Wars” gave birth to the modern blockbuster. Nearly 40 years later when “Star Wars Episode 7″ is scheduled to hit theaters, will it change the face of film again?From killing off film prints to designing fantastical CGI worlds, movies are going digital in every way except one – storytelling.


Unlike the eras when the advent of photography inspired the fine arts to embrace abstraction, or when the rise of mass-media pushed writers into modernist and eventually post-modern terrain, movies remain largely impervious to the narrative techniques employed across the internet.


Hollywood views videogames and the web as an existential threat, but instead of radically altering its approach, most movies unfold over the course of two hours in a linear fashion, just as they have done for a century. Over the course of its history the medium has had no problem embracing change in film as long as its technologically driven, hence the shift from silent movies to talkies, or black and white to color. It has remained more precious, however, about how it spins its celluloid fantasies.


Today’s top directors are more interested in aping classical cinema than forging a new filmmaking vernacular. That’s in contrast to 10 years ago when movies like “The Matrix,” “Memento,” or “Being John Malkovich” turned cinematic storytelling on its head, gleefully experimenting with an inter-textuality that mirrored our hyperlinked world.


With a few exceptions like Joe Wright’s “Anna Karenina,” which re-imagined Leo Tolstoy’s tragedy as a series of intersecting operas, or Martin McDonagh’s “Seven Psychopaths,” a bloody crime movie that is also a comment on the art of screenwriting, that flowering of experimentation is over.


“The films of early aughts engaged with virtuality in a way they don’t today,” Alissa Quart, a cultural critic and the author of the forthcoming “Republic of Outsiders,” told TheWrap. “You had people like Steven Spielberg working on ‘Minority Report,’ now you have ‘Lincoln.’ Or Paul Thomas Anderson going from ‘Magnolia’ to ‘The Master.’


“Those movies engaged with multiplicity and technology and surveillance, and now those same filmmakers are looking at these huge commanding triumphal figures in stories set in the past that look antique.”


Films like “The Master” or “Zero Dark Thirty” or “Django Unchained” are referential, but their influences lie in film’s history, mimicking the wide vistas favored by John Ford or the atmosphere of exquisite paranoia in 1970s thrillers like “All the President’s Men.” The directors gaze lingers in the past and rarely looks toward the future.


“A way to get serious as a filmmaker is to be very clearly dealing with your influences,” Kurt Anderson, host of the arts and culture program “Studio 360,” told TheWrap. “Now, I have no doubt that ‘Pulp Fiction’ was full of Quentin Tarantino’s influences, but at the time it seemed like a new way of telling stories. When you get to ‘Django,’ it becomes all about his cinematic influences.”


Even the methods that Hollywood has kicked up to convince teenagers to give up their game consoles and hit the multiplex are bizarrely retro.


Souped-up theatrical exhibition offerings like 3D are a throwback to the 1950s, when Hollywood was facing a different, though no less grave incursion from television. Likewise, what is IMAX and its mammoth projections but a reincarnation of Cinerama, the colossal wide-screen format the flourished in the Eisenhower era?


In contrast, television shows like “Lost” or “Once Upon a Time,” which are set in fantasy worlds and tease out mysteries in episodic fashion, are more akin to what players expect from videogames.


That’s not to say there isn’t some cross-pollination. Flint Dille is a game designer on the likes of “Dead to Rights” and the screenwriter of movies like “An American Tail: Fievel Goes West.” He says that both mediums steal from one another, claiming that the plot of 99 percent of videogames is derived from ‘80s action movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.


In turn, today’s action movies design their set pieces to appeal to audiences who grew up with “Mass Effect” and “World of Warcraft.”


“When you look at ‘The Hobbit’ – that escape from the goblins’ lair is a Nintendo game,” Dille said. “It’s like a videogame in its velocity. Or a movie like ‘Jack Reacher’ is like a game in that the main character arrives with no back story, and that’s something we’ve been conditioned to accept from playing games where the protagonist is a cipher.”


To be sure, studios have shown an appetite for persistent experimentation when it comes to using apps and viral marketing to generate excitement for tent pole films like “The Dark Knight” or “Star Trek Into Darkness.” Yet the emphasis is on promotion, not narrative.


So why is it that, while computer technology has opened up brave new worlds in terms of special effects and advertising, it has not altered storytelling?


The culprit is a hodgepodge of commercial realities and artistic preferences.


“I’ve been spending a lot of time pondering the question what is a modern film?” Howard Suber, professor of film history at UCLA, told TheWrap. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it is basically everything that was made after the 1960s — but that’s 50 years. The reason why that’s still modern is that not a hell of a lot has changed.”


Suber said that when he shows a movie in his class from earlier eras, his students are unable to deal with the slower pacing and editing, but they have a less difficult time adjusting to anything made after that date.


“The entire field of modern film is 50 years long, which is staggering when you compare it to any earlier age films,” he said. “The films of the ‘20s looked antique to audiences in the ‘30s, and the same was true with the way audiences in the ‘50s viewed films from 10 years earlier.”


Quart thinks that the kind of cultural permanence that Suber describes may be a conscious choice by artists who are looking to create spaces that are distinct from the fragmented world wrought by social media.


In a recent piece in the New York Times, Quart argued that “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” are popular in part because they allow viewers to take a break from Twitter, texts and other technologically enabled forms of multi-tasking.


She argues the same appeal underlies movies.


“My gut tells me that filmmakers are trying to give viewers respite from what the virtual world is offering,” Quart said. “It’s motivated by an esthetic defensiveness because we are inundated with all these modes of communication.”


It hasn’t helped that films that have exploded conventional approaches to storytelling sunk at the box office.


Sure, “The Matrix” was a worldwide blockbuster, grossing $ 463 million and spawning two sequels, but “Magnolia” ($ 48.4 million) and “Adaptation” ($ 32.8 million) were lucky to break even. More recent mind-bending films like “Anna Karenina” ($ 49 million globally), and “Synecdoche, New York” ($ 4.3 million globally) continued the trend of hardly making a ripple at ticket counters. Studios’ obsession with tentpole films that can cross language and cultural barriers to appeal to global audiences have likely made them less receptive to films that revel in narrative complexity.


That could change. If filmmakers like J.J. Abrams get their way, blockbuster films will seep off the screen and into other platforms, rivaling the sprawling nature of the web.


The big shake up could come with Transmedia – the notion that stories should be told over various mediums ranging from comic books to videogames. This approach to popular culture has been a buzz word for over a decade, but its adherents believe the film industry is poised to take a dramatic leap forward.


“They’re are a lot of film purists who believe their job is to get the script shot and make it beautiful,” Jeff Gomez, president of Starlight Runner Entertainment and a trans media consultant on films like “Avatar,” said. “But there’s also a growing number of young people, who were weaned on videogames and immersed in multiple media platforms, for whom these new kinds of storytelling are intuitive.”


Gomez notes that Joss Whedon’s decision to set his upcoming ABC show “S.H.I.E.L.D.” in the world of “The Avengers” films is a perfect example of a platform-agnostic approach.


It’s a boundary that could keep eroding when Abrams gets hold of the “Star Wars” franchise. The director already has experimented with transmedia in television shows like “Lost,” but the saga of the Skywalkers and new owner Disney’s consumer products heft could open up whole new galaxies in terms of storytelling – ones that jet from games to toys to movies, creating a vast universe of narrative possibilities.


In 1977, “Star Wars” gave birth to the modern blockbuster. Nearly 40 years later when “Star Wars Episode 7″ is scheduled to hit theaters, will it change the face of film again?


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News




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It's a Girl for John Cho




Celebrity Baby Blog





02/11/2013 at 06:30 PM ET



John Cho Welcomes Daughter Exclusive
Paul Drinkwater/NBC


Surprise: Actor John Cho is a dad again!


The Go On star and his wife welcomed a daughter recently, Cho’s rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.


Baby girl is the second child for the couple, who are also parents to a son. No further details are available.


Cho currently stars alongside Jason Bateman in Identity Thief and will reprise his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek Into Darkness in May.


He is also well known for his roles in American Pie and the Harold and Kumar films.


– Anya Leon with reporting by Julie Jordan


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Pope shows lifetime jobs aren't always for life


The world seems surprised that an 85-year-old globe-trotting pope who just started tweeting wants to resign, but should it be? Maybe what should be surprising is that more leaders his age do not, considering the toll aging takes on bodies and minds amid a culture of constant communication and change.


There may be more behind the story of why Pope Benedict XVI decided to leave a job normally held for life. But the pontiff made it about age. He said the job called for "both strength of mind and body" and said his was deteriorating. He spoke of "today's world, subject to so many rapid changes," implying a difficulty keeping up despite his recent debut on Twitter.


"This seemed to me a very brave, courageous decision," especially because older people often don't recognize their own decline, said Dr. Seth Landefeld, an expert on aging and chairman of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.


Age has driven many leaders from jobs that used to be for life — Supreme Court justices, monarchs and other heads of state. As lifetimes expand, the woes of old age are catching up with more in seats of power. Some are choosing to step down rather than suffer long declines and disabilities as the pope's last predecessor did.


Since 1955, only one U.S. Supreme Court justice — Chief Justice William Rehnquist — has died in office. Twenty-one others chose to retire, the most recent being John Paul Stevens, who stepped down in 2010 at age 90.


When Thurgood Marshall stepped down in 1991 at the age of 82, citing health reasons, the Supreme Court justice's answer was blunt: "What's wrong with me? I'm old. I'm getting old and falling apart."


One in 5 U.S. senators is 70 or older, and some have retired rather than seek new terms, such as Hawaii's Daniel Akaka, who left office in January at age 88.


The Netherlands' Queen Beatrix, who just turned 75, recently said she will pass the crown to a son and put the country "in the hands of a new generation."


In Germany, where the pope was born, Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is 58, said the pope's decision that he was no longer fit for the job "earns my very highest respect."


"In our time of ever-lengthening life, many people will be able to understand how the pope as well has to deal with the burdens of aging," she told reporters in Berlin.


Experts on aging agreed.


"People's mental capacities in their 80s and 90s aren't what they were in their 40s and 50s. Their short-term memory is often not as good, their ability to think quickly on their feet, to execute decisions is often not as good," Landefeld said. Change is tougher to handle with age, and leaders like popes and presidents face "extraordinary demands that would tax anybody's physical and mental stamina."


Dr. Barbara Messinger-Rapport, geriatrics chief at the Cleveland Clinic, noted that half of people 85 and older in developed countries have some dementia, usually Alzheimer's. Even without such a disease, "it takes longer to make decisions, it takes longer to learn new things," she said.


But that's far from universal, said Dr. Thomas Perls, an expert on aging at Boston University and director of the New England Centenarians Study.


"Usually a man who is entirely healthy in his early 80s has demonstrated his survival prowess" and can live much longer, he said. People of privilege have better odds because they have access to good food and health care, and tend to lead clean lives.


"Even in the 1500s and 1600s there were popes in their 80s. It's remarkable. That would be today's centenarians," Perls said.


Arizona Sen. John McCain turned 71 while running for president in 2007. Had he won, he would have been the oldest person elected to a first term as president. Ronald Reagan was days away from turning 70 when he started his first term as president in 1981; he won re-election in 1984. Vice President Joe Biden just turned 70.


In the U.S. Senate, where seniority is rewarded and revered, South Carolina's Strom Thurmond didn't retire until age 100 in 2002. Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was the longest-serving senator when he died in office at 92 in 2010.


Now the oldest U.S. senator is 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. The oldest congressman is Ralph Hall of Texas who turns 90 in May.


The legendary Alan Greenspan was about to turn 80 when he retired as chairman of the Federal Reserve in 2006; he still works as a consultant.


Elsewhere around the world, Cuba's Fidel Castro — one of the world's longest serving heads of state — stepped down in 2006 at age 79 due to an intestinal illness that nearly killed him, handing power to his younger brother Raul. But the island is an example of aged leaders pushing on well into their dotage. Raul Castro now is 81 and his two top lieutenants are also octogenarians. Later this month, he is expected to be named to a new, five-year term as president.


Other leaders who are still working:


—England's Queen Elizabeth, 86.


—Abdullah bin Abd al-Aziz al-Saud, king of Saudi Arabia, 88.


—Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, emir of Kuwait, 83.


—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, U.S. Supreme Court associate justice, 79.


__


Associated Press writers Paul Haven in Havana, Cuba; David Rising in Berlin; Seth Borenstein, Mark Sherman and Matt Yancey in Washington, and researcher Judy Ausuebel in New York contributed to this report.


___


Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP


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Wall Street ends flat as investors seek new catalysts

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks ended a quiet session with slight moves on Monday as investors found few reasons to keep pushing shares higher following a six-week advance, though the longer-term trend was still viewed as positive.


The benchmark index is up more 6.4 percent in 2013, putting both the S&P 500 and Dow industrials near multi-year highs. The S&P is less than 4 percent from its all-time intraday high of 1,576.09, hit in October 2007.


"This is still a market that looks terrific, but when you're up for six weeks in a row, everyone is going to want to take a pause going into the seventh week even if there is no bad news out there," said Eric Kuby, chief investment officer at North Star Investment Management in Chicago.


Volume was light, with about 4.812 billion shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq and NYSE MKT, well below the daily average so far this year of about 6.48 billion shares.


Wall Street was modestly lower throughout the session but regained some ground in the final hour of trading as Google Inc rebounded off earlier losses. Shares of the Internet search giant dipped 0.4 percent to $782.42, recovering from earlier declines of 1 percent after the company said in a filing former chief executive Eric Schmidt is selling roughly 42 percent of his stake in the company.


Also in the tech space, Apple Inc rose up 1 percent to $479.93 after the New York Times reported the iPhone maker was experimenting with the design of a device similar to a wristwatch.


The Federal Reserve's Vice Chair Janet Yellen, seen as a potential successor to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke next year, said the Fed is still aggressively stimulating an anemic U.S. economic recovery that has failed to bring rapid progress on employment.


The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was down 21.81 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,971.16. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 0.92 points, or 0.06 percent, at 1,517.01. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 1.87 points, or 0.06 percent, at 3,192.00.


Upbeat U.S. and Chinese data last week helped the S&P 500 extend its weekly winning streak to six. The index gained about 8 percent over that period.


Equities have been strong performers lately and many investors have used any declines in the market as opportunities to buy.


"Everyone wants to buy on a dip in this market, but if you're on the sidelines right now, the decline we're seeing today just isn't the kind you would jump in on," Kuby said.


President Barack Obama will describe his plan for spurring the economy in his State of the Union address on Tuesday. He is expected to offer proposals for investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, clean energy and education.


Opposition has grown to the $24.4 billion buyout of Dell Inc , the No. 3 personal computer maker, as three of the largest investors joined Southeastern Asset Management on Friday in raising objections. Dell said in a regulatory filing it had considered many strategic options before opting to go private in a buyout led by Chief Executive Michael Dell.


Dell shares hovered near $13.65, the buyout offer price.


Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc shares rose 2.7 percent at $170.35 after it said longtime drug development partner Sanofi plans to boost its stake.


Moody's Corp was one of the strongest percentage gainers on the S&P 500, rising 4.9 percent to $45.49. Last week the stock plunged 22 percent after the U.S. government launched a civil lawsuit against the company. The sell-off marked the stock's worst week since October 2008.


About 53 percent of stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed lower while slightly more Nasdaq-listed stocks closed in negative territory.


(Editing by Nick Zieminski)



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Militant Threats Test Pentagon’s Role in Africa


Pool photo by


Gen. William E. Ward, left, departed as Africa Command leader under a cloud, succeeded by Gen. Carter F. Ham in 2011.







NIAMEY, Niger — Created five years ago to focus on training the armed forces of dozens of African nations and strengthening social, political and economic programs, the Pentagon’s Africa Command now finds itself on a more urgent mission: confronting a new generation of Islamist militants who are testing the United States’ resolve to fight terrorism without being drawn into a major conflict.




Some military and Congressional critics question whether the command is up to dealing with its dual mission, and some influential lawmakers warn that Africom, with its headquarters in Germany, is understaffed and poorly financed for challenges that include countering Al Qaeda’s fighters in Mali, Islamic extremists in Libya, drug traffickers in West Africa and armed rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo.


The leader of the command, Gen. Carter F. Ham, must straddle the new and the old missions, as he demonstrated one day last month when he flew to the northern reaches of this largely desert nation to watch United States troops train Niger’s fledgling border corps in basic skills to help combat Al Qaeda’s branch in North and West Africa. Then, within hours, he was back here in the capital for an urgent secure phone call from Washington to weigh what kind of advanced military support or surveillance the Pentagon could provide a French-led operation to blunt an Islamist offensive in neighboring Mali.


“The command is searching to find the right balance between the press of current military operations and the vision of longer-term engagement, helping Africans develop greater capacity for themselves,” said Christopher W. Dell, a former United States ambassador to Angola and Zimbabwe, who is General Ham’s deputy for civil-military activities.


Africom has an annual budget of about $300 million and 2,000 employees worldwide — an operation that Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, calls “an ‘economy of force’ effort.” By comparison, the military’s Central Command, which oversees Afghanistan and the Middle East, has a yearly budget of about $800 million and 5,000 employees.


With no assigned forces in the region except for those at a base in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, the command was caught napping last Sept. 11, critics contend, when it had no military forces poised to respond to the attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. An independent review of the attack concluded that events had unfolded too quickly for any American forces to make a difference.


Still, controversy has dogged the command since its creation in 2008. Initial statements about its mission and scope of activity alarmed some African leaders and State Department officials, who feared that the Pentagon was trying to militarize diplomacy and development on the continent. These concerns led the command to set up its headquarters in Stuttgart.


The command’s first boss, Gen. William E. Ward, left two years ago under a cloud. Pentagon investigators later found that General Ward had lavishly overspent on official trips. He was ordered to repay the government $82,000 and was forced to retire as a lieutenant general, a one-rank demotion.


Enter General Ham, who turns 61 this week and is the rare Army officer to have risen from private to four-star commander in a 40-year career. He has led troops in northern Iraq, overseen military operations at the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and helped lead reviews into the Defense Department’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and the fatal shootings at Fort Hood, Tex.


His combat mettle was tested almost immediately. Within days of assuming command in March 2011, General Ham was leading the initial phase of the Libya air campaign, for which he earned high marks from his civilian bosses at the Pentagon and the White House.


But the general, who will retire this spring, acknowledged in one of three interviews during his recent trip to Niger that the command’s ability to address the terrorist threat in Africa had been “mixed.”


His grades? “Pretty good” in Somalia, where the Shabab, Islamist militants, have been dealt several setbacks in the past year. “Less good” in Libya, Mali and other parts of North and West Africa, where the United States is hunting Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a militant leader who claimed responsibility for the attack on a gas field in Algeria last month. And lacking in Nigeria, where an Islamist extremist group, Boko Haram, poses a major threat.


“Frankly, the intelligence community has not focused a lot on this part of the world,” General Ham said. “But we are starting to, out of necessity.”


Read More..

The strangely amazing Twitter poetry of Sen. Charles Grassley






Some people just have a way with words. A poetic retrospective of the haiku-like 140-character musings of Iowa‘s senior Republican


On Nov. 26, 2007, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) joined the still-young Twitter revolution, tweeting the simple-yet-direct message “Attending events in Iowa.” Since then he has racked up more than 2,400 tweets, 65,500 followers, and a strangely loyal fan base. “If you’re on Twitter and not following Sen. Chuck Grassley, you’re not using Twitter correctly,” says Elahe Izadi at National Journal. “Twitter just speaks to some people,” says Virginia Heffernan at Yahoo News, and Grassley is definitely one of them. Iowa’s senior senator says he took to Twitter to bypass the “liberal” media filter, but he’s turned mundane musings into a sort of minimalist poetry. So here, some of the haiku-like 140-character (or less) musings of the Bard of New Hartford, starting with his greatest hit:







Fred and I hit a deer on hiway 136 south of Dyersville. After I pulled fender rubbing on tire we continued to farm. Assume deer dead



SEE ALSO: A long-lost pet


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) October 26, 2012



U hv herad saying:”deer in headlight look”. It is a frightening xperience when a real deer is there



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 1, 2012



I was doing morning run at farm. Deer killed by car in ditch. He was dead. I didn’t have to”assume” anything about his condition



SEE ALSO: The church of veganism


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 1, 2012



Seen dead deer on way church. They didn’t hit my car Unsafe if u drive in area where deer congregateIowa needs longerseason to kill more



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 19, 2012



My local steak house serves nothing but vegetarian bc cows are vegetarian



SEE ALSO: Don’t blame gerrymandering for our political paralysis


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 26, 2012



Michele Obama in DsMoines to fight obesity Good Tell the Pres to bk off stupid child farm labor rules Farm children workin at home is good



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 9, 2012



The govt food police came around to local school said”no catchup” so kids bring their own catchup. What’s accomplished? Too much govt?



SEE ALSO: Eau de bébé


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 26, 2012



Iowa legislators and staff drink lots soft drink but are too carefree what they do w empty cans. Always recycle Deposit 5cents. Inflation?



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 1, 2012



2of us new Hartford lions wanted to be ambassadors Reinbeck lions. Found out Reinbeck not meeting So we ended up eating w AmLegion Auxiliary



SEE ALSO: Call me, maybe


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 21, 2012



Mother nature certified Hamburg levee last summer. Corps shld leave Hamburg alone. save $ and use common sense.



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 19, 2012



There will b weather in Iowa todaySo I’m flying bk to DC early



SEE ALSO: No kids for you!


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) January 27, 2013



A team that is punting all the time isn’t scoring.The senate dem teams been punting all yr: No budget/No approps/ no tax reform/All timeouts



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) September 22, 2012



Evrybody asking how Romney”relates”to avg person Me thinks”no problem” but if so I hv answer “just lv starch out of shirt”



SEE ALSO: The cost of commuting


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 4, 2012



Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said ‘time to delivr on healthcare’ When you are a “hammer” u think evrything is NAIL I’m no NAIL



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) June 7, 2009



C me intrvud by greta van sunshine on FOX tonite at 9pm central. Fast and furious and white house stonewall my investigation



SEE ALSO: Will Congress force the USPS to deliver mail on Saturdays?


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 29, 2012



Just turned to history channel.No history. I used to get history. Why do we h v such a channelwhen it doesntdo history



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 20, 2012



History. No history. Axe manTimberNothing historical.Back to FOX.Sigh. Suggest name to change channel name



SEE ALSO: Ahmadinejad is a monkey, and 6 other examples of John McCain’s peculiar sense of humor [Updated]


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 19, 2012



Turned to history channel.No.HIstory again



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 11, 2012



Since History channel doesnt hv history anymore i advise National Geographic channel. At least that channel has some history



SEE ALSO: Just dessert


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 25, 2012



Wondering if No History Channel would be interest in covering my axe and chain saw work at my farm for Axeman. At least it would b new



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 1, 2012



I can’t blieve itThere is actually history on history channelAbout ex presidents



SEE ALSO: Gunning for love


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) October 6, 2012



If



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 16, 2012



U



SEE ALSO: Sweet revenge


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) January 30, 2013



Test



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 3, 2012



A



SEE ALSO: Why are Millennials so optimistic about the future?


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) January 20, 2012



#



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 9, 2012



Test



SEE ALSO: No mail on Saturday: Will five-day-a-week delivery save the U.S. Postal Service?


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) November 3, 2012



#9



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) October 16, 2012



P



SEE ALSO: A winning loser


— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) April 7, 2012



@



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 3, 2012



3



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) March 3, 2012



I now h vaniphone



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) February 13, 2012



Welcome to Twitter Pope Benedict. U will find it useful and interesting



— ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) December 3, 2012


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