What to Do With Your New Android

So you got a shiny new Android for Christmas? Before showing it off to all your Apple-loving friends, the device should be fully optimized at the start. Taking a couple measures ahead of time will make for a better experience later.

If you’re a brand new Android owner, the phone’s operating system is likely Jelly Bean or Ice Cream Sandwich. You shouldn’t have to upgrade anything, but there might be newer versions of built-in apps. (We’ll get to that later.)

You’ll have to set up a Google account, which should be fairly easy if you already use Gmail. If you’re completely new to Google, consider a couple things before even setting up your phone.

SEE ALSO: Top 20 Things Every First-Time Android User Should Know

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Switching from an older Android requires a bit more prep, but it’s not impossible. Once you have a Google account, simply log in and sync accounts to receive your email and contacts. Some of your data, like photos and apps, will not transfer as easily, but there are a few ways to get around that.

The easiest way is to purchase the MyBackup Pro app. It’ll cost you $ 4, but the app backs up data and restores it to a new device.

If you’d rather start with a clean slate, without losing old photos, store all of your data in the cloud. Apps like Dropbox will back up data, but you can manually restore specific items to the new device.

Apps will need to be re-downloaded manually on a new device. Any apps purchased on a former Android will not need to be purchased again, but you will have to download those again, too.

Get Connected

The first thing to do before playing around with your new phone is to set up a Wi-Fi connection.

Hit the Menu button, and choose Settings. Then select Wireless & Networks and connect to the proper Wi-Fi as you would anywhere with a computer.

You’ll also have the option to connect to mobile networks — those settings can be found in the same menu. Your phone runs on 3G or 4G mobile networks when there is not a Wi-Fi connection.

It’s important to connect your phone to Wi-Fi when it’s available, because running on mobile networks uses data. Each download will cost data, which can quickly run over when you first get a new phone and want to try new apps. Running over on data can be very expensive.

Apps on Apps on Apps

Now that you’re up and running, it’s time to dive into the Google Play Store and get the apps that will make your life easier and more efficient.

There are so many apps for every aspect of your life. It depends on whether you want something entertaining, educational, fun, informative, creative or navigational. Sifting through apps can feel overwhelming — trial and error is the best way to approach the task. You can always uninstall an app if you don’t want it.

If you plan on purchasing anything, you’ll need a credit card. Your information will be stored securely, so you’ll only need to enter this once. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend money — there are plenty of free apps that will help you just as effectively.

Your phone will already have built-in apps, which differ with every manufacturer. These are likely due for an update before you even log into the new device. You can update them all at once by opening the Play Store, tapping the Menu button and selecting “My Apps.”

The Google Play Store can be accessed and adjusted from your phone or a desktop when logged into your Google account. You can install, update or remove any app from your phone via the store.

Google’s native apps should already be built in the device. If you can’t function without these tools — which is likely why you went with Android — you won’t be disappointed with the mobile versions.

If you juggle more than one email address, Gmail will access multiple accounts in one device.

Google Maps is a seamless GPS system, plus the updated app gives offline maps, indoor navigation and recommendations for nearby places.

Zappos

Free

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Social

Facebook’s native app favors Android devices. The app closely mirrors what you’d see on a desktop, making it easy to navigate. Like any other app, it has pre-fixed settings, so you might need to adjust, depending on your preferences.

After downloading and logging in to your account, hit the Menu button and select Settings. If you don’t want to use Facebook Chat from your phone, make sure Chat Availability is off. You can also adjust notifications so they only push the updates most important to you.

If you choose to sync your Facebook friends, they will automatically appear in your contact list if they share their phone number. When you agree to use the Facebook app, it shows your phone number on your profile. If you don’t want to share your number with friends, be sure to edit your contact info so that information is only available to you. The easiest way to do so is from a desktop.

Setup for Twitter is pretty straightforward. You can adjust syncing and push notifications, just like you did for Facebook, by going to Settings from the Menu button.

There are a couple options for Twitter aside from the native app. If you’re a list person, TweetDeck or Hootsuite might be better experiences.

If there is one good thing about Google+, it’s the syncing features that come with an Android device. If you don’t use the network as a social place, it can function as an automatic storage space. For example, if you take a photo with your phone, it will save to your Google+ account, even if you delete the photo from your device.

Of course, there are plenty of other social networks, so test them out and judge for yourself. If you don’t like one (or any app, for that matter) you can always uninstall it from the Google Play Store, just as you would update it.

Music

Your new Android replaces the need to carry multiple devices, including an MP3 player. If you’re gung-ho Google, the native Music app stores all of your files in the cloud, so you can easily switch from device to computer.

There is no native iTunes app, but that’s nothing a little hack can’t work around. DoubleTwist is worth the $ 5 pricetag if you cannot live without your iPod. Also, your iTunes library syncs over Wi-Fi — no wires required.

There are other great apps for music lovers on the go. Spotify is the best service for sharing and discovering music. You can send friends songs, albums and playlists. The free service features a nearly limitless music library, or you can upgrade to premium for an unlimited, ad-free experience.

Are you and Android user? Share any advice for first-timers in the comments below.

Images courtesy of iStockphoto, by_nicholas, Flickr, JD Hancock

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Kanye West, Kim Kardashian expecting baby: reports

(Reuters) – Rapper Kanye West and reality TV star Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child, celebrity media outlets reported on Monday.

Fans and family took to Twitter to congratulate the celebrity power couple.

“Been wanting to shout from the rooftops with joy and now I can!” wrote Kardashian’s sister Kourtney. “Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!”

According to E! News, West, 35, announced the news from the stage at a concert in Atlantic City on Sunday.

Kardashian, 32, who rose to fame five years ago for her appearances in reality TV show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”, was the most-searched person on the Yahoo! website in 2012.

She married basketball player Kris Humphries in August, 2011, in a lavish, made-for-TV wedding, but the couple divorced just 72 days later.

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Vomiting Larry battles “Ferrari of the virus world”

LONDON (Reuters) – Poor Larry isn’t looking too good. He’s pale and clammy and he’s been projectile vomiting over and over again while his carers just stand by and watch.

Yet their lack of concern for Larry is made up for by their intense interest in how far splashes of his vomit can fly, and how effectively they evade attempts to clean them up.

Larry is a “humanoid simulated vomiting system” designed to help scientists analyze contagion. And like millions around the world right now, he’s struggling with norovirus – a disease one British expert describes as “the Ferrari of the virus world”.

“Norovirus is one of the most infectious viruses of man,” said Ian Goodfellow, a professor of virology at the department of pathology at Britain‘s University of Cambridge, who has been studying noroviruses for 10 years.

“It takes fewer than 20 virus particles to infect someone. So each droplet of vomit or gram of feces from an infected person can contain enough virus to infect more than 100,000 people.”

Norovirus is hitting hard this year – and earlier too.

In Britain so far this season, more than a million people are thought to have suffered the violent vomiting and diarrhea it can bring. The Health Protection Agency (HPA) said this high rate of infection relatively early in the winter mirrors trends seen in Japan and Europe.

“In Australia the norovirus season also peaks during the winter, but this season it has gone on longer than usual and they are seeing cases into their summer,” it said in a statement.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say norovirus causes 21 million illnesses annually. Of those who get the virus, some 70,000 require hospitalization and around 800 die each year.

PROFUSE AND PROJECTILE

Norovirus dates back more than 40 years and takes its name from the U.S. city of Norwalk, Ohio, where there was an outbreak of acute gastroenteritis in school children in November 1968.

Symptoms include a sudden onset of vomiting, which can be projectile, and diarrhea, which may be profuse and watery. Some victims also suffer fevers, headaches and stomach cramps.

John Harris, an expert on the virus at Britain’s HPA, puts it simply: “Norovirus is very contagious and very unpleasant.”

What makes this such a formidable enemy is its ability to evade death from cleaning and to survive long periods outside a human host. Scientists have found norovirus can remain alive and well for 12 hours on hard surfaces and up to 12 days on contaminated fabrics such as carpets and upholstery. In still water, it can survive for months, maybe even years.

At the Health and Safety Laboratory in Derbyshire, northern England, where researcher Catherine Makison developed the humanoid simulated vomiting system and nicknamed him “Vomiting Larry”, scientists analyzing his reach found that small droplets of sick can spread over three meters.

“The dramatic nature of the vomiting episodes produces a lot of aerosolized vomit, much of which is invisible to the naked eye,” Goodfellow told Reuters.

Larry’s projections were easy to spot because he had been primed with a “vomitus substitute”, scientists explain, which included a fluorescent marker to help distinguish even small splashes – but they would not be at all easily visible under standard white hospital lighting.

Add the fact that norovirus is particularly resistant to normal household disinfectants and even alcohol hand gels, and it’s little wonder the sickness wreaks such havoc in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, cruise ships and hotels.

During the two weeks up to December 23, there were 70 hospital outbreaks of norovirus reported in Britain, and last week a cruise ship that sails between New York and Britain’s Southampton docked in the Caribbean with about 200 people on board suffering suspected norovirus.

MOVING TARGET

The good news, for some, is that not everyone appears to be equally susceptible to norovirus infection. According to Goodfellow, around 20 percent of Europeans have a mutation in a gene called FUT2 that makes them resistant.

For the rest the only likely good news will have to wait for the results of trials of a potential norovirus vaccine developed by U.S. drugmaker LigoCyte Pharmaceuticals Inc, or from one of several research teams around the world working on possible new antiviral drugs to treat the infection.

Early tests in 2011 indicated that around half of people vaccinated with the experimental shot, now owned by Japan’s Takeda Pharmaceutical Co, were protected from symptomatic norovirus infection.

The bad news, virologists say, is that the virus changes constantly, making it a moving target for drug developers. There is also evidence that humans’ immune response to infection is short-lived, so people can become re-infected by the same virus within just a year or two.

“There are many strains, and the virus changes very rapidly – it undergoes something virologists call genetic drift,” Harris said in a telephone interview. “When it makes copies of itself, it makes mistakes in those copies – so each time you encounter the virus you may be encountering a slightly different one.”

This means that even if a vaccine were to be fully developed – still a big ‘if’ – it would probably need to be tweaked and repeated in a slightly different formula each year to prevent people getting sick.

Until any effective drugs or vaccines are developed, experts reckon that like the common cold, norovirus will be an unwelcome guest for many winters to come. Their advice is to stay away from anyone with the virus, and use soap and water liberally.

“One of the reasons norovirus spreads so fast is that the majority of people don’t wash their hands for long enough,” said Goodfellow. “We’d suggest people count to 15 while washing their hands and ensure their hands are dried completely.”

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Will Waterman)

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China to keep prudent monetary policy in 2013: central bank

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will stick to a prudent monetary policy next year and keep consumer prices stable, its outgoing central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, said on Monday, in fresh sign that Beijing won’t be changing direction when the new government takes over in 2013.

Reiterating China’s long-stated vow to reduce the level of central planning in its economy and make room for more market forces, Zhou also said China will deepen reforms in its financial sector in 2013.

“In 2013, we will continue to implement prudent monetary policy and make policies more pre-emptive, targeted and flexible,” Zhou said in a brief new year address.

“We will keep overall price levels basically stable and promote healthy and sustainable growth of the economy,” he said. “We will also further deepen financial reforms and the opening up of financial markets.”

Zhou’s remarks follows similar comments from China’s soon-to-be-retired president, Hu Jintao, who promised that reform of China’s economic growth model would be a crucial theme next year.

Hu said in a separate new year address broadcast nationally that China’s economy will grow at a balanced and sustainable pace in 2013, whilst noting the challenge from sluggish growth for the world economy.

“Transforming the economic growth model will be a main theme,” Hu said, without giving further details. “The trend of weak global economic growth will continue.”

China’s leaders have repeatedly promised to encourage domestic consumption and reduce the nation’s heavy reliance on exports for growth, a task that has become more pressing due to expectations of prolonged weak demand in developed nations.

Most analysts and academics agree China needs to transform its growth model to allow consumption, not exports and investment, to drive activity.

But there is no clear agreement on how or when China can pursue such changes.

Zhou, who has been head of the central bank since 2003, is set to retire in coming months.

Hu will relinquish office March 5 when China starts its annual parliament meeting, to make room for his successor Xi Jinping.

(Reporting by Aileen Wang and Koh Gui Qing; editing by Jonathan Standing)

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Nintendo’s Wii U wobbles as sales sink

According to Famitsu, Nintendo’s (NTDOY) portable 3DS console continued to see huge success during the week ahead of Christmas. It racked up sales of 433,000 units in Japan, up from 333,000 units in the prior week. But weirdly enough, the brand new and heavily promoted Wii U home console wobbled badly as its weekly sales slipped to 122,000 units from 130,000 units in the previous week. This may have been the biggest week in Japanese console market in 2012, so the stakes were high.

[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]

To put Wii U performance in context, the old PSP portable console sold 58,000 units in Japan during the same week. It is not an encouraging sign that the more than half-decade old PSP (which was displaced by the PlayStation Vita a year ago) managed to sell nearly half as many units as the brand new Wii U during the holidays. Of course, PS Vita continues to miss sales expectations dramatically — it sold only 19,000 units last week, barely more than a quarter of what its predecessor managed.

[More from BGR: Smartphones will replace keys on upcoming Hyundai cars]

Wii U performance may improve dramatically once compelling titles arrive. But during December, it did have “New Super Mario Brothers” and “Nintendo Land” to boost it in Japan. This clearly wasn’t enough. The aging PlayStation 3 sold only 30,000 units and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360 barely cleared a thousand units, so the Wii U should have had a clear shot at strong sales performance in the Japanese home console market.

Overall, Japanese game console sales were down sharply from the week ahead of Christmas in 2011. The 3DS is a big hit in 2012 but instead of buoying the entire console market, it seems to be sapping energy from the Wii U and PS Vita.

It’s still early days for the Wii U, but Nintendo has probably started sweating a bit.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Hot spots draw believers, but not doomsday

As the sun rose from time zone to time zone across the world on Friday, there was still no sign of the world’s end — but that didn’t stop those convinced that a 5,125-year Mayan calendar predicts the apocalypse from gathering at some of the world’s purported survival hot spots.

Many of the esoterically inclined expected a new age of consciousness — others wanted a party. But, in some places said to offer salvation from the end, fewer people showed up than officials had predicted — much to the disappointment of vendors hoping to sell souvenirs.

Here are some key places being marked by the fascination over doomsday rumors:

MEXICO

In an area of Mexico that was once the ancient Mayan heartland, spiritualists gathered in the darkness before dawn on Friday to prepare white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense. They believed the sunrise would herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.

Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it “a new sun” and “a new era.”

FRANCE

According to one rumor, a rocky mountain in the French Pyrenees will be the sole place on Earth to escape destruction. A giant UFO and aliens are said to be waiting under the mountain, ready to burst through and spirit those nearby to safety. But there is bad news for those seeking salvation: French gendarmes, some on horseback, blocked outsiders from reaching the Bugarach peak and its village of some 200 people.

Eric Freysselinard, head of local government, said the security forces had “partially stopped the new age enthusiasts as well as curious people from coming to the area.”

Meanwhile, some Bugarach residents dressed up like aliens, with tinfoil costumes and funnels and fake antenna on their heads, strolling around their village Friday to make light of the rumored UFO prophecy.

RUSSIA

Doomsday rumors have prompted some people across Russia to stock up on candles, water, canned foods and other non-perishable foods. The apocalypse has proven a good business, with some shops selling survival aid packages that include soap and vodka.

In Moscow, salvation has also been promised in the underground bunker for the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — with a 50 percent refund if nothing happens. An underground stay was originally priced at 50,000 rubles ($ 1,625) but dropped to 15,000 ($ 490) a week ahead of the feared end.

The bunker, located 65 meters (210 feet) below ground, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Now home to a small museum, it has an independent electricity supply, water and food — but no more room, because the museum has already sold out all 1,000 tickets.

BRITAIN

Hundreds of people have converged on Stonehenge for an “End of the World” party that coincides with the Winter Solstice.

Arthur Uther Pendragon, Britain’s best-known druid, said he was anticipating a much larger crowd than usual at Stonehenge this year. But he doesn’t agree that the world is ending, noting that he and fellow druids believe that things happen in cycles.

“We’re looking at it more as a new beginning than an end,” he said. “We’re looking at new hope.”

Meanwhile, end-of-days parties will be held across London on Friday. One event billed as a “last supper club” is offering a three-course meal served inside an “ark.”

SERBIA

Some Serbs are saying to forget that sacred mountain in the French Pyrenees. The place to be Friday is Mount Rtanj, a pyramid-shaped peak in Serbia already drawing cultists.

According to legend, the mountain once swallowed an evil sorcerer who will be released on doomsday in a ball of fire that will hit the mountain top. The inside of the mountain will then open up, becoming a safe place to hide as the sorcerer goes on to destroy the rest of the world. In the meantime, some old coal mine shafts have been opened up as safe rooms.

On Friday a New Age group called “The Spirit of Rtanj” was holding a conference there. Participants, however, said they expect not the end of time but the start of a new time cycle. Locals turned out to sell brandy and herbs.

“There will be no tragedy, no doomsday,” said resident Dalibor Jovic. “It was supposed to happen at 12:12 and I think that time has passed. So, we can now go on with our lives and be happy to be alive.”

TURKEY

A small Turkish village known for its wines, Sirince, has also been touted as the only place after Bugarach that would escape the world’s end. But on Friday journalists and security officials outnumbered cultists. This outcome disappointed local business people who had prepared a range of doomsday products to sell, including a specially labeled Doomsday wine and Turkish delight candy whose “best before” date was Dec. 21, 2012. One restaurant prepared a special “last meal” menu that included a “heaven kebab” and “forbidden fruit dessert.”

ITALY

Another spot said to be spared: Cisternino, a beautiful small town in southern Italy in an area of trulli, traditional dry stone huts with conical roofs. The notion that Cisternino could be a safe haven at world’s end derives from an Indian guru, Babaji, who said “Cisternino will become an island” at world’s end. His followers built a community in Cisternino centered on an ashram built in 1979. Hotel bookings are up this weekend.

Mayor Donato Baccaro told the AP that the beauty of the place has inspired many foreigners to live there. “This confirms that this place has a special energy,” he said.

CHINA

A fringe Christian group has been spreading rumors about the world’s impending end, prompting Chinese authorities to detain more than 500 people this week and seize leaflets, video discs, books and other material.

Those detained are reported to be members of the group Almighty God, also called Eastern Lightning, which preaches that Jesus has reappeared as a woman in central China. Authorities in the province of Qinghai say they are waging a “severe crackdown” on the group, accusing it of attacking the Communist Party and the government.

U.S.

Dozens of Michigan schools canceled classes for thousands of students to cool off rumored threats of violence and problems related to doomsday. The fears were exacerbated by the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which “changed all of us,” the school system in Genesee County said. “Canceling school is the right thing to do.”

___

Associated Press writers Florent Bajrami in Bugarach, France; Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow; Peppino Ciraci in Cisternino, Italy; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Paisley Dodds in London; and Dejan Mladenovic in Mount Rtanj, Serbia, contributed to this report.

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Michigan hospital blazes trail in fight against fungal meningitis

CHICAGO (Reuters) – After his first day working at St Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor hospital’s newly created Fungal Outbreak Clinic, Dr David Vandenberg struggled to describe to his boss the enormity of what lay ahead. He settled on a line from the movie Jaws.

“We’re going to need a bigger boat,” Vandenberg told Dr Lakshmi Halasyamani, chief medical officer of the Michigan hospital, echoing the film’s local police chief after he first eyes a 25-foot (7.5-metre) killer shark.

The St Joseph Mercy clinic has been at the front line of the fight against one of the biggest ever U.S. outbreaks of fungal meningitis, a killer infection that has been traced to tainted steroid shots from a Massachusetts pharmacy.

So far, 620 Americans have developed serious infections related to the outbreak, including 367 cases of deadly meningitis, and 39 people have died. Of the 19 U.S. states affected, Michigan has been worst hit, handling more than one third of the total cases in the outbreak.

St Joseph Mercy – a 537-bed Catholic hospital located in Ypsilanti, on the doorstep of the University of Michigan – has treated 169 of the state’s 223 cases of infections that can cause meningitis, including 7 people who died.

At one point it was so overrun that 87 of its 537 beds, which are usually occupied by patients with cancer or heart ailments and the like, were occupied by patients with fungal meningitis and related infections.

Dr Tom Chiller, the fungal disease expert at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has been overseeing the outbreak, praised the work of the hospital in helping to limit deaths from the outbreak.

“They have been incredibly creative in dealing with these complicated patients,” he said.

In all, almost 14,000 people seeking relief from back and joint pain received injections from moldy steroid shots made at the now-bankrupt New England Compounding Center in Massachusetts before they were recalled in late September.

CDC experts initially feared death rates in the 40 to 50 percent range; instead, only about 6 percent of those infected have died, and the CDC credits the creative and dogged efforts of state and local health officials for keeping the death rates so low.

The first wave of the outbreak involved the most severe cases of meningitis – an inflammation of the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord. But starting in mid-October, patients who had been recovering from meningitis were developing potentially fatal localized infections near the site where contaminated drug was injected to treat back or neck pain.

As they started seeing more cases of these local, secondary infections, the staff at St Joseph‘s devised a bold plan to screen all patients in their database looking for potential new infections that might have been missed in the first wave.

On December 20, the CDC issued an alert to doctors incorporating some of lessons learned by the efforts of doctors at St Joseph’s and other hospitals, calling for increased screening of patients who may be harboring localized infections.

A BEWILDERING FUNGI

Among the patients who developed secondary infections was Bonita Robbins, a 72-year-old retired nurse from Pinckney, Michigan, who received doses of the tainted drug at the Michigan Pain Specialists clinic in the nearby town of Brighton while seeking relief for lower-back pain.

The first shot brought some relief, the second did little to ease her aches, and the third was contaminated. In October, Robbins went to St Joseph’s with a severe headache, back pain and pain in her thighs.

She spent 37 days in the hospital taking two kinds of antifungal drugs.

Dr Anurag Malani, an infectious disease specialist treating Robbins, said the challenge with the outbreak was that there was no medical literature to fall back on.

“No one has ever seen anything of this magnitude related to fungal infections, ever,” he said.

Chiller said U.S. doctors had never treated meningitis caused by Exserohilum rostratum, the environmental mold causing most of the infections.

“It’s just a rare, rare cause of infection.” Seeing that mold in the meninges – membranes covering the brain and spinal cord – is “completely new.”

Initially, St Joseph’s Fungal Outbreak Clinic was started in order to coordinate the care of patients after their discharge, which included overseeing the administration of a complex regime of anti-fungal drugs.

It morphed into something bigger when some of its 53 patients with meningitis started returning with infections near the site in their back or neck where the contaminated drug was injected.

Then came a wave of patients like Robbins, who had been ruled out for meningitis with a spinal tap, but were still complaining of pain near their injection site.

GETTING THE ‘BIGGER BOAT’

“When it became obvious that the number of patients would be a much higher percentage than anticipated by the CDC, we expanded our clinic and started enlisting the help of several other hospitals,” Vandenberg said.

Many of the patients had spinal abscesses, an infection in the space between the outside covering of the spinal cord and the bones of the spine. Others developed arachnoiditis, an infection of nerves within the spinal canal.

The decision to screen all patients in the hospital database who might have received tainted injections was not taken at the recommendation of the CDC.

“That was our own decision,” said Vandenberg, a specialist in internal medicine overseeing the screening effort.

He admitted that the strategy was aggressive, but said that, especially early on, doctors feared the local infections might be precursors to meningitis, making catching them early a potentially life-saving move.

Excluding patients who had already been screened and those who had injections in areas other than the spine, the hospital targeted about 500 patients for MRI scans.

Most so far have had private insurance that covers the screening. For the uninsured, the hospital’s Patient Financial Services department has been helping them to apply for financial support.

“We did over 400 MRIs in about a 4-week period,” Vandenberg said. The hospital screened so many patients, in fact, that the state of Michigan sent in an emergency mobile MRI unit to help.

Vandenberg got the task of reading stacks of MRI reports, sometimes as many as 30 a day.

So far, about 20 percent of the MRIs have shown up as abnormal, meaning that patients have to come back for surgery and treatment.

Vandenberg makes all of those calls personally. Not all of them go smoothly. He likens the gravity of the conversation – learning you have a potentially deadly new disease that requires months of treatment with risky drugs – to telling someone they have cancer.

After one especially tough call, in which a heart patient feared he would not survive the surgery he would need to clear his infection, Vandenberg cracked.

“I started crying. I probably haven’t cried for 15 years.”

SIGNS OUTBREAK IS EASING

But at last, after months of onslaught, there are signs the outbreak is easing.

Attendance at the hospital’s daily support group has begun to taper off. And since the beginning of December, more than 50 patients with fungal infections have been discharged, while only 20 have been admitted, bringing the total number of fungus-related inpatient to 30.

Vandenberg nevertheless cautions that the outbreak is still far from over.

“Every single day of this screening program, we’re finding one or two cases that are abnormal and need to be admitted,” he said.

Vandenberg gave the CDC access to the clinic’s database so the agency could see how the effort turned out, and this month, the CDC issued the alert to doctors incorporating some of the results of the MRI screening program.

The alert warned that some patients who got tainted injections but did not develop meningitis may still be at risk of localized infections.

And it urged doctors to consider ordering an MRI for all patients who still have pain, even if the pain is similar to what sent them in for treatment in the first place.

Chiller said the United States had not yet reached the end of the outbreak.

“Unfortunately, with fungi, the incubation periods are so long and they can remain indolent. I’m definitely concerned that we’re going to continue to see more cases.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by Jilian Mincer, Mary Milliken and David Brunnstrom)

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Crucial day for US budget talks

30 December 2012 Last updated at 08:03 ET

US President Barack Obama: “Agreement is being discussed as we speak”

US politicians are facing a crucial day of talks aimed at preventing the economy falling over a “fiscal cliff”.

Congress must reach a deal by the end of the year to avert steep spending cuts and tax rises due to take effect.

President Barack Obama has said he is “modestly optimistic” that Senate leaders can craft a bill that could win approval in both chambers of Congress.

If they fail, taxes will significantly rise for most Americans, raising fears of a US economic slowdown.

Republicans and Democrats tried to resolve the looming crisis in 2011 but failed, instead signing temporary agreements which postponed the deadlock until the end of 2012.

Democrat Senate leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell have been locked in negotiations over the weekend, in an otherwise closed-down Capitol.

According to the Washington Post, they have set themselves a deadline of 15:00 local time (20:00 GMT) to reach a compromise agreement, after which they will convene caucus meetings of their members and decide whether the measure has enough support to be put to a vote.

The Senate could then vote on the measure and allow the House of Representatives enough time on Monday to consider it, said the paper.

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America’s reckless politicians may still take the country over the cliff into an uncertain land where recession looms”

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But Republican and Democratic leaders remain divided over core ideological issues about tax and government funding.

There is also debate over where to set the threshold for tax rises. Democrats say tax cuts introduced by former President George W Bush and now due to expire should be extended for all Americans except the richest, those with annual earnings of more than $ 250,000 (£155,000), who should pay more.

Republicans want the tax threshold set higher, at around $ 400,000, and for revenue to be raised by economic growth and cuts in social security and mandatory spending programmes.

President Obama is scheduled to make a rare appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.

He has urged negotiators to reach a deal, even if the resulting legislation is an unhappy compromise for both sides which defers resolution of some elements under discussion.

The country “just can’t afford a politically self-inflicted wound to our economy,” he said, warning that if they fail, “every American’s paycheck will get a lot smaller”.

“Congress can prevent it from happening, if they act now,” he said.

Some Republicans have pledged never to vote for increased taxes. There are some indications they could oppose any deal which included higher taxes.

If Mr Reid and Mr McConnell cannot reach a deal by the end of the year, Mr Obama has said he will seek a vote to prevent tax rises on incomes up to $ 250,000 and ensure unemployment insurance is continued.

That, he says, is the “bare minimum” Congress should get done before 1 January.

End to benefits

The term fiscal cliff refers to the combination of almost $ 600bn (£370bn) of tax rises and spending cuts due to come into force on 1 January if Congress fails to pass new legislation.

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What is the fiscal cliff?

• On 1 January 2013, tax increases and huge spending cuts are due to come into force – the so-called fiscal cliff


• Deadline was put in place in 2011 to force president and Congress to agree ways to save money over the next 10 years


• Fear is that raising taxes while massively cutting spending will have a huge impact on households and businesses


• Experts believe it could push the US into recession, and have a global impact on growth

Sweeping Bush-era tax cuts will expire, eventually affecting people of all income levels, and many businesses.

While some of the impact would be felt almost immediately, other effects would take longer to filter through. This could damage America’s recent fragile economic recovery and alarm global markets.

In addition, the US Treasury will hit its legal borrowing limit on 31 December of $ 16.4tn.

Last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner won a reprieve of about two months of time, but the debate on the borrowing ceiling will also need to be properly addressed in the new year.

The tax cuts and benefits set to expire include:

• A 2010 payroll tax cut, the expiration of which would prompt immediate wage-packet cuts

• Benefits for the long-term unemployed, which could mean more than two million Americans immediately stopped receiving payments

• Compensation for doctors treating patients on federal healthcare programmes

• Inheritance taxes are also likely to be affected if no deal is reached.

In addition, spending cuts mandated by a law passed to break a previous fiscal impasse in Congress will come into force, affecting both military and domestic budgets.

The cuts are expected to affect federal government departments and the defence sector, as well as hitting unemployment insurance and veterans’ support.

BBC News – Business

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Suspected US drone kills 3 al-Qaida men in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack this week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country.

The officials said the three men were hit as they were riding in a Land Cruiser in el-Manaseh village on the outskirts of Radda in Bayda province. Dozens of local al-Qaida-linked fighters protested the drone strikes after traditional Islamic Friday prayers.

Earlier this week another suspected U.S. drone strike killed two militants in Radda itself, Yemeni security officials say, and seven were killed in two other strikes in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Four suspected drone strikes a week is uncommon in Yemen.

According to statistics gathered by the Long War Journal before Saturday’s attacks, the United States “is known to have carried out 41 airstrikes” this year against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the group’s branch in Yemen is known. That makes for an average of around three to four strikes per month.

The Journal, a product of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that was founded by former U.S. officials, says that since December 2009, the CIA and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command are known to have conducted at least 54 air and missile strikes inside Yemen, excluding Saturday’s suspected attack.

AQAP overran entire towns and villages — including Radda — last year by taking advantage of a security lapse during nationwide protests that eventually ousted the country’s longtime ruler. Backed by the U.S. military, Yemen’s army was able to regain control of the southern region but al-Qaida militants continue to launch deadly attacks on security forces that have killed hundreds.

Also on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed an intelligence officer in the southeast, security officials said. They said that the officer, Mutea Baqutian, was on his way to work in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, when the men stopped his car, gunned him down, and fled.

The government has blamed al-Qaida militants for similar assassinations of several senior military and intelligence officials this year. The bullet-riddled body of Major al-Numeiry Abdo al-Oudi, deputy director of the security department of al-Qitten in Hadramawt, was found in the town’s suburbs last week. He had been kidnapped earlier in the month.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity according to regulations.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Seif, who is commander of Yemen’s central military region, said the Defense Ministry has deployed an infantry brigade in the northeastern province of Marib to stop armed tribesmen who maintain cordial ties with al-Qaida from attacking oil pipelines and power generating stations, as well as to counter al-Qaida militants.

State TV meanwhile aired a meeting between President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and eight Yemeni sailors who were rescued last week by forces of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region after being held for nearly three years by Somali pirates.

The Puntland government says that its forces captured the hijacked Panama-flagged MV Iceberg 1 on Sunday after a siege that lasted two weeks. They freed the eight Yemeni sailors together with five Indians, two Pakistanis, four Ghanaians, two Sudanese and a Filipino. The ship was hijacked March 29, 2010.

Hadi congratulated the eight sailors for their safety and ordered the government to compensate them for their suffering.

Eqbal Yassin, a relative of one of the freed sailors, told The Associated Press that the hijackers had allowed some sailors to phone their relatives and convey the pirates’ demand for $ 5 million ransom. He said he was told by his relative that the hijackers killed a Yemeni sailor who tried to escape. He gave no further details.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Windows Phone Store doubled in size this year

Title Post: Windows Phone Store doubled in size this year
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