New leaks suggest Microsoft Office for iOS could launch soon

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'Zero Dark Thirty,' 'Lincoln' make AFI top-10 list

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden thriller "Zero Dark Thirty," Steven Spielberg's Civil War epic "Lincoln" and Christopher Nolan's superhero tale "The Dark Knight Rises" are among the American Film Institute's top-10 movies of the year.

Also on the AFI top-10 announced Monday: Ben Affleck's Iran hostage-crisis drama "Argo;" Benh Zeitlin's low-budget hit "Beasts of the Southern Wild;" Quentin Tarantino's slavery saga "Django Unchained;" Tom Hooper's Victor Hugo musical "Les Miserables;" Ang Lee's shipwreck story "Life of Pi;" Wes Anderson's first-love romance "Moonrise Kingdom;" and David O. Russell's misfit love story "Silver Linings Playbook."

The AFI also picked its top-10 television shows for the year: "American Horror Story;" ''Breaking Bad;" ''Game Change;" ''Game of Thrones;" ''Girls;" ''Homeland;" ''Louie;" ''Mad Men;" ''Modern Family;" and "The Walking Dead."

Creative ensembles for the films and TV shows will be honored Jan. 11 at a luncheon in Los Angeles.

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Online:

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News Analysis: A Debate on Coated Aspirins and Aspirin Resistance

Millions of Americans take low-dose aspirin every day to prevent heart attacks and strokes. But a study published last week challenges some cherished beliefs about the familiar remedy, leaving some consumers to wonder if they should throw out their coated pills and others concerned that they unnecessarily may be taking expensive substitutes.

The study, published in the journal Circulation, by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, tested 400 healthy people for evidence that aspirin did not work in them, a phenomenon called “aspirin resistance.” Aspirin prevents blood platelets from sticking together, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. Previous studies have estimated that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is resistant to aspirin’s effects.

But the study essentially found that the condition doesn’t exist: they could not document a single case of true aspirin resistance in their sample. What had appeared to be aspirin resistance, they said, actually was caused by the coating commonly used on aspirin pills intended to protect the stomach. The coating slowed the drug’s absorption into the body.

The study didn’t evaluate whether coated aspirin was less likely to prevent heart attacks or strokes, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, one of the authors. And people who took the coated aspirin in his study eventually showed a response to it.

But people who seek out coated aspirin may be doing so unnecessarily, he said, especially since previous studies have not consistently shown that the coating even prevents gastric problems.

“There’s no rationale for you to be on coated aspirin,” said Dr. FitzGerald, who is a cardiologist and chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Some cardiologists have begun advising patients to seek out uncoated aspirin because other studies have suggested that the uncoated type may be more effective. But finding it isn’t so easy. Even cheaper store brands, like those sold by CVS and Wal-Mart, come with a so-called enteric coating. One of the few uncoated aspirins on the market is St. Joseph’s chewable variety — the old orange-flavored baby aspirin.

But other experts, like Dr. Steven E. Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, see no real harm in taking coated aspirin, which is cheap and readily available. Many major studies of aspirin have been conducted using the coated variety.

The new study also calls into question the very idea of aspirin resistance. Testing for the condition became more widespread in the early 2000s, as expensive prescription alternatives like the blood thinner Plavix (also called clopidogrel) gained popularity. Many cardiologists suspected that the timing was not a coincidence.

“Before clopidogrel, we had never heard of aspirin resistance,” said Dr. Sanjay Kaul, a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. “It seemed to be that this was driven mostly by marketing considerations.” The new study raises the possibility that many patients may have been falsely told that aspirin doesn’t work on them, Dr. Kaul and other experts said.

The University of Pennsylvania study was partially financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of branded aspirin, much of which is coated. In a statement, Bayer challenged some of the study’s conclusions and methods, and also said there was evidence that the enteric coating can reduce gastric side effects.

Critics of Dr. FitzGerald’s study also argue that he should have studied aspirin resistance in patients with conditions like heart disease, rather than in healthy people.

But even these critics acknowledge that testing for resistance is probably not worthwhile. Dr. Nissen, who is critical of Dr. FitzGerald’s study, doesn’t test his patients for aspirin resistance. But he said he would be reluctant to switch a patient from another drug back to aspirin now if a test had previously shown they were aspirin-resistant. Changing treatments is always risky, he said.

“If the patient is not bleeding, is not having a complication, am I going to take it away?” Dr. Nissen wondered. “That’s the dilemma we face.”

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Stocks close higher; Dow is boosted by McDonald's

Stocks closed with modest gains after a strong sales report from McDonald's offset concerns about the surprise resignation of Italy's prime minister.

The Dow Jones industrial average rose 15 points to end at 13,170 Monday. The index traded within a narrow range of just 56 points.

The Standard and Poor's 500 was up less than a point at 1,419. The Nasdaq composite rose nine points to 2,987.

McDonald's rose 93 cents to $89.41. The company's sales rose in November as U.S. customers bought more breakfast offerings and limited-time Cheddar Bacon Onion sandwiches.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti stepped down after losing support from a key political party.

Rising stocks narrowly outnumbered falling ones on the New York Stock Exchange. Volume was lighter than average at 2.9 billion shares.

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3 killed, 4 wounded in Tulare County shooting

Three people were fatally shot and four others wounded, including two young children, Saturday night on the Tule River Reservation in Tulare County, authorities said.

The suspect, who fled with his two young daughters, was later shot by sheriff’s deputies and taken into custody, according to the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department. The two girls, who were among those shot, were rescued.

The incident began about 7:45 p.m. when the Sheriff’s Department received a 911 call about shots fired in the 100 block of Chimney Road of the Tule River Indian Reservation about 60 miles northeast of Bakersfield, according to a Sheriff’s Department statement.

In a trailer on the property, deputies discovered an adult male and an adult female who had been fatally shot, authorities said. A male juvenile who suffered a gunshot wound was transported to a hospital. 

At a shed on the property, deputies found another male victim who had been fatally shot, authorities said.

The suspect, identified as Hector Celaya, 31, of the Tule River Indian Reservation, fled the scene in a Jeep Cherokee with his two daughters, Alyssa, 8, and Linea, 5, authorities said. An Amber Alert was issued around 11 p.m.

Detectives used Celaya’s cellphone to locate him.

A deputy spotted the vehicle and after failing to make a traffic stop, a slow-speed pursuit began, authorities said.

The suspect eventually stopped and fired his weapon at deputies, who returned fire and struck the suspect twice, seriously wounding him, authorities said.

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Plane of singer Jenni Rivera missing in Mexico

MEXICO (AP) — A small plane carrying Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera went missing early Sunday after taking off from the city of Monterrey, authorities in northern Mexico confirmed Sunday.

Jorge Domene, spokesman for the Nuevo Leon state government, told Milenio television on Sunday that the plane left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m local time after a concert there and aviation authorities lost contact with the craft about 10 minutes later. It had been scheduled to arrive in Toluca, which is located outside Mexico City, about an hour later.

Domene said a search for the plane was launched early Sunday, with helicopters from the local civilian protection agency flying over the state. He said seven people including the crew were believed to be aboard the U.S.-registered Learjet 25.

The 43-year-old who was born and raised in Long Beach, California, is known for her interpretations of Mexican regional music known as nortena and banda.

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Jenni Rivera aboard plane missing in Mexico

Jenni Rivera (Reed Saxon / Associated Press / March 8, 2012)

By Meg James

December 9, 2012, 1:05 p.m.

A small plane carrying Mexican American singer Jenni Rivera is missing and believed to have crashed in northern Mexico early Sunday.

The Associated Press reported the plane, a Learjet, left Monterrey about 3:30 a.m. after a concert by Rivera. The pilot lost contact with air traffic contollers about 10 minutes after its departure. It was scheduled to arrive in Toluca, near Mexico City, about an hour later.

An NBCUniversal spokeswoman confirmed that Rivera was aboard the plane. Seven people, including the pilots and crew, were believed to be on the plane.

The Long Beach native's career has been soaring. The 43-year-old singer is best known for her interpretations of regional Mexican music, norteno and banda. She also is one of NBCUniversal's brightest bilingual television stars.

Her reality show on the Telemundo cable channel, mun2, "I Love Jenni," has been one of the channel's highest rated shows. The program is in its second year.

ABC television network was reportedly considering casting Rivera as a star of a prime-time sitcom in development about a strong-willed single Latina mother.

The AP said that a search for the plane was launched early Sunday.

ALSO:

Los Angeles bands swing into old school music revival

Live Review: Bloc Party at the Palladium

It's girl power on "Jenni Rivera Presents Chiquis and Raq-C"

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Surgeon infected patients during heart procedure, Cedars-Sinai admits

A heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center unwittingly infected five patients during valve replacement surgeries earlier this year, causing four of the patients to need a second operation.

The infections occurred after tiny tears in the latex surgical gloves routinely worn by the doctor allowed bacteria from a skin inflammation on his hand to pass into the patients' hearts, according to the hospital. The patients survived the second operation and are still recovering, hospital officials said.

The outbreak led to investigations by the hospital and both the L.A. County and California departments of public health. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was also consulted.

Hospital officials called it a "very unusual occurrence" probably caused by an unfortunate confluence of events: the nature of the surgery, the microscopic rips in the gloves and the surgeon's skin condition. Valve replacement requires the surgeon to use thick sutures and tie more than 100 knots, which can cause extra stress on the gloves, they said.

Nevertheless, the hospital's goal is to have zero infections, said Harry Sax, vice chairman of the hospital's department of surgery. "Any hospital-acquired infection is unacceptable," he said.

The infections raise questions about what health conditions should prevent a surgeon from operating and how to get the best protection from surgical gloves. Surgeons with open sores or known infections aren't supposed to operate, but there is no national standard on what to do if they have skin inflammation, said Rekha Murthy, medical director of the hospital's epidemiology department. She added that there were also no national standards on types of gloves used, whether to wear double gloves or how many times surgeons should change those gloves during a procedure.

Healthcare-acquired infections are very common throughout the United States. Each year, infections cause 99,000 deaths in the country, including about 12,000 in California. Hospitals in the state are required to report certain infections to the California Department of Public Health. That reporting makes the public more aware of the quality of care provided at local hospitals and is an important tool for reducing infections, said Debby Rogers, deputy director of the department's Center for Health Care Quality.

Cedars-Sinai has low rates for hospital-acquired infections compared with the state and national average but has not performed as well on other surgical quality measures recently, according to the Leapfrog Group, an employer-backed nonprofit focused on healthcare quality. The organization gave the hospital a C rating last month on its national report card, down from an A in June, though it was not related to the infection outbreak.

"Clearly this hospital is making attempts to reduce infections, but they have more work to do," said Leah Binder, Leapfrog's chief executive.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center conducts about 360 valve replacement surgeries each year and said infections occur in fewer than 1% of its cases — lower than the national average.

The hospital learned about the problem in June after three patients who had undergone valve replacement surgery showed signs of infection. Doctors diagnosed the patients with an infection called endocarditis. Concerned there might be a connection among the cases, epidemiologists analyzed the bacteria, staphylococcus epidermidis, and determined that it was an identical strain and therefore must have come from a single source. "It led to the question of gee, I wonder where it came from?" Murthy said.

Epidemiologists homed in on the surgeon with the skin inflammation. The bacteria matched, and then they made a surprising discovery: microscopic tears in the gloves typically worn by surgeons after performing valve replacement surgery. The surgeon, whose name was not released, was not allowed to operate again until he healed. He is still a member of the medical staff but no longer performs surgeries at the hospital.

The hospital soon found the same infection in two more patients. Officials also reached out to 67 patients who had heart valve replacements with the same surgeon but didn't find any other cases. One of the five infected patients was treated with antibiotics, and the other four had new valve replacement surgeries. Sax said the hospital apologized to the patients and has continued to monitor their health. The hospital has also covered the cost of their care, including follow-up treatment and all the related surgeries.

All surgeons doing valve replacements are now required to change gloves more frequently, officials said. Some surgeons are wearing double gloves during the operations, Sax said.

Following the outbreak, Cedars-Sinai did the proper follow-up to ensure the safety of their patients, said Dawn Terashita, a medical epidemiologist with L.A. County, who was notified in September. What occurred at Cedars-Sinai was an unintentional consequence of the surgery, she said.

"There is no way to keep a room entirely sterile and all the people in it sterile," she said. "You will always have risk of infection."

anna.gorman@latimes.com

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Are Online Degrees as Valuable as Traditional College Diplomas?

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with constant technology and personal computers. That might explain why they see such a value in online education.

A recent poll by Northeastern University showed that 18 to 29 year olds had a more negative view about attending college because of the high cost, and a more positive opinion about online classes than their older counterparts. The survey also showed more than half of the millennials had taken an online course.

Online education is attracting hundreds of thousands of students a year. Perhaps this is why more brick-and-mortar universities are searching for an online identity.

This week Wellesley College announced that it will offer free online classes to anyone with an Internet connection as part of the nonprofit project edX. Earlier this year, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology teamed up to fund and launch the online platform.

More: Harvard and MIT Want to Educate You for Free

Online education was even the talk in Washington this week when a group of panelists convened to discuss Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), which is an open source network like edX. These courses are very much like correspondence classes in the early 20th century.

But there are still those universities that only exist in a virtual world and students pay to attend. Are they as beneficial to students as attending a two- or four-year college?

“It depends at what level and what subject,” says Isabelle Frank, dean of Fordham College of Liberal Studies. “In general, fully online degrees are not valued as highly as degrees from brick-and-mortar institutions. This is because online-only universities do not have the faculty quality and interaction that occurs with full-time faculty and secure positions.”

She says that Fordham has online master programs and some online courses, but the model is “that of a small seminar style class with a lot of faculty feedback and involvement.”

Just like a physical college, a quality online education depends on the institution.

For example, students at Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business take online classes and communicate with other students around the world—something students 25 years ago couldn’t have dreamed of doing.

“This affords the opportunity to learn leadership, team-building and managerial skills by solving problems and coordinating efforts for projects through the process of establishing real-time meetings, coordinating time zones and dealing with potential language issues,” Sher Downing, executive director of online academic services at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University, said. “This value cannot be mirrored as easily in a traditional classroom, and for many companies with offices located around the world, this is a valuable skill, when the workforce is required to handle these types of situations.”

Downing said that students can save money by taking online classes because they no longer have to commute, live on or near a campus or relocate.

The millennials surveyed by Northeastern University are keen to take online courses. In fact, nine in 10 said online classes should be used as a tool and mixed with other teaching methods. The poll also found that students want flex­i­bility, which is exactly what online colleges offer.

Employers may not yet see an online degree in the same light as a traditional university but that is likely to change in the near future. It may just be that millennials, who don’t want to go in debt for an education like some of their parents did, are just a bit ahead of educators and employers.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Top Universities Want You to Take Free Online Classes in Your Pajamas

• Military Gives ‘F’ to Online Diplomas

• 2012 List: The Most Expensive Colleges in America

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Suzi Parker is an Arkansas-based political and cultural journalist whose work frequently appears in The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. She is the author of two books. @SuziParker | TakePart.com 

Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rolling Stones hit NY for 50th anniversary gig

NEW YORK (AP) — "Time Waits for No One," the Rolling Stones sang in 1974, but lately it's seemed like that grizzled quartet does indeed have some sort of exemption from the ravages of time.

At an average age of 68-plus years, the British rockers are clearly in fighting form, sounding tight, focused and truly ready for the spotlight at a rapturously received pair of London concerts last month.

On Saturday, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts hit New York for the first of three U.S. shows on their "50 and Counting" mini-tour, marking a mind-boggling half-century since the band first began playing its unique brand of blues-tinged rock.

And the three shows — Saturday's at the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn, then two in Newark, N.J., on Dec. 13 and 15 — aren't the only big dates on the agenda. Next week the Stones join a veritable who's who of British rock royalty and U.S. superstars at the blockbuster 12-12-12 Sandy benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. Also scheduled to perform: Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Alicia Keys, Kanye West, Eddie Vedder, Billy Joel, Roger Waters and Chris Martin.

The Stones' three U.S. shows promise to have their own special guests, too. Mary J. Blige will be at the Brooklyn gig, as well as guitarist Gary Clark Jr., the band has announced. (Blige performed a searing "Gimme Shelter" with frontman Jagger in London.) Rumors are swirling of huge names at the Dec. 15 show, which also will be on pay-per-view.

In a flurry of anniversary activity, the band also released a hits compilation last month with two new songs, "Doom and Gloom" and "One More Shot," and HBO premiered a new documentary on their formative years, "Crossfire Hurricane."

The Stones formed in London in 1962 to play Chicago blues, led at the time by the late Brian Jones and pianist Ian Stewart, along with Jagger and Richards, who'd met on a train platform a year earlier. Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts were quick additions.

Wyman, who left the band in 1992, was a guest at the London shows last month, as was Mick Taylor, the celebrated former Stones guitarist who left in 1974 — to be replaced by Wood, the newest Stone and the youngster at 65.

The inevitable questions have been swirling about the next step for the Stones: another huge global tour, on the scale of their last one, "A Bigger Bang," which earned more than $550 million between 2005 and 2007? Something a bit smaller? Or is this mini-tour, in the words of their new song, really "One Last Shot"?

The Stones won't say. But in an interview last month, they made clear they felt the 50th anniversary was something to be marked.

"I thought it would be kind of churlish not to do something," Jagger told The Associated Press. "Otherwise, the BBC would have done a rather dull film about the Rolling Stones."

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Associated Press writer David Bauder contributed to this report.

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