Nintendo says more than 400,000 Wii Us sold in US












NEW YORK (AP) — Nintendo has sold more than 400,000 of its new video game console, the Wii U, in its first week on sale in the U.S., the company said Monday.


The Wii U launched on Nov. 18 in the U.S. at a starting price of $ 300. Nintendo said the sales figure, based on internal estimates, is through Saturday, or seven days later.












The Wii U is the first major game console to launch in six years. It comes with a new touch-screen controller that promises to change how people play games by offering different people in the same room a different experience, depending on the controller used.


Six years ago, Nintendo Co. sold 475,000 of the original Wii in that console’s first seven days in stores, according to data from the NPD Group. The original Wii remains available, and Nintendo said it sold more than 300,000 of them last week, along with roughly 250,000 handheld Nintendo 3DS units and about 275,000 of the Nintendo DS.


At this early stage, demand isn’t the only factor dictating how many consoles are sold. Supply is, too. This means it’s likely that more people wanted to buy the Wii U in the first week than those who were able to. The original Wii was in short supply more than a year after it went on sale.


As of Monday afternoon, the website of Best Buy Co. was sold out of the Wii U. Video game retailer GameStop Corp. said there was at least a three day wait for a deluxe Wii U, which costs $ 350, has more memory and comes with a game called “Nintendo Land.” GameStop still had the basic, $ 300 version available.


Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter estimates that Nintendo will ship 1 million to 1.5 million Wii Us in the U.S. through the end of January.


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Leyes no reducen la sobreutilización de costosas terapias del cáncer prostático












NUEVA YORK, 26 nov (Reuters Health) – Dos estudios coinciden


en que las leyes para prevenir el uso excesivo de servicios de












salud no impiden que los médicos sigan indicando terapias


costosas para el cáncer de próstata.


Los autores hallaron que los médicos utilizaban cirugías


robóticas y radioterapias especiales para tratar la enfermedad,


sin importar si en la región existían leyes que exigen una


autorización oficial previa para el uso de instalaciones y


nuevos equipos médicos.


“Las leyes de certificación de necesidad se diseñaron para


alinear la demanda pública con el uso de distintos servicios”,


dijo el doctor Bruce Jacobs, autor principal de uno de los


estudios, de University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.


El gobierno de Estados Unidos impulsó que los estados


implementaran las leyes en los 70 y los 80, pero dejó de hacerlo


un par de décadas después. Aun así, algunos estados siguen


utilizándolas para controlar los costos.


En cada estudio, los autores analizaron tratamientos del cáncer


de próstata, que es el más común en los varones estadounidenses.


La Sociedad Estadounidense del Cáncer estima que a uno de cada


seis hombres se le diagnosticará cáncer prostático, pero que la


mayoría no morirá por esa causa. Estudios previos habían


mostrado que este cáncer es de lento crecimiento y que la


mayoría de los pacientes se puede controlar con espera vigilada.


El equipo de Jacobs revisó si en los estados con normas


estrictas (los que exigen aprobación hasta para el uso de


equipos de bajo costo) se utilizaban menos cirugías robóticas


para extirpar la próstata que en los estados con leyes no tan


estrictas o sin leyes.


En The Journal of Urology, los autores escriben que tanto el


costo de esos robots como si la cirugía robótica supera o no a


la cirugía tradicional para extirpar la próstata deberían ser


“la meta ideal” de revisión donde se aplican esas leyes.


En septiembre, por ejemplo, uno de los estudios que había


cuestionado la utilidad de la cirugía robótica demostró que los


hombres operados con la técnica robótica tuvieron pocas


complicaciones, pero puso en tela de juicio la conveniencia de


sus efectos en el largo plazo y su costo.


Pero otro estudio más reciente mostró que la cirugía robótica


reducía las complicaciones, las reinternaciones y las muertes


por causas quirúrgicas que los métodos tradicionales, según


informó Intuitive Surgical, el fabricante del sistema quirúrgico


da Vinci.


“Eso es importante para el paciente y para reducir el gasto del


sistema de salud”, indicó por e-mail Angela Wonson, vocera de


Intuitive Surgical.


En el nuevo estudio, los autores hallaron un aumento del uso


de la cirugía robótica para extirparle la próstata a un grupo de


beneficiarios de Medicare, independientemente de si el estado


contaba con leyes estrictas, más blandas o ninguna ley. Además,


la posibilidad de que un cirujano utilizara robots no tenía


relación alguna con la vigencia de las normas.


Un segundo estudio, a cargo del doctor Ganesh Palapattu, jefe


de oncología urológica de University of Michigan, analizó si las


leyes limitaban el uso de la radioterapia de intensidad modulada


o IMRT, por su sigla en inglés, o si controlaba el aumento de


los costos de atención del cáncer prostático (la IMRT permite


que los médicos orienten la radiación al tumor sin dañar el


tejido sano que lo rodea).


El equipo escribe que la IMRT es costosa y que, hasta ahora, no


habría sido comparada con otros tratamientos del cáncer de


próstata en un estudio aleatorizado, que es el diseño de


preferencia en la investigación clínica.


Al comparar el costo de tratar a una persona con cáncer


prostático en los estados con leyes y los estados sin leyes, el


equipo observó que las leyes no parecían influir en el control


de los costos de los tratamientos.


Palapattu opinó que es tiempo de reevaluar las leyes.


FUENTE: The Journal of Urology, online 19 de noviembre del


2012.


Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Rolling Stones turn back clock with hit-filled comeback












LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones turned back the clock in style on Sunday with their first concert in five years, strutting and swaggering their way through hit after familiar hit to celebrate 50 years in business.


Before a packed crowd of 20,000 at London‘s O2 Arena, they banished doubts that age may have slowed down one of the world’s greatest rock and roll bands, as lead singer Mick Jagger launched into “I Wanna Be Your Man”.












More than two hours of high-octane, blues-infused rock later, and they were still going strong with an impressive encore comprising “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.


In between there were guest appearances from American R&B singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige, who delivered a rousing duet with Jagger on “Gimme Shelter” and guitarist Jeff Beck who provided the power chords for “I’m Going Down”.


Former Rolling Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor were also back in the fold, performing with the regular quartet of Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums for the first time in 20 years.


“It took us 50 years to get from Dartford to Greenwich!” said Jagger, referring to their roots just a few miles from the venue in southeast London. “But you know, we made it. What’s even more amazing is that you’re still coming to see us…we can’t thank you enough.”


The Sunday night gig was the first of two at the O2 Arena before the band crosses the Atlantic to play three dates in the United States.


The mini-tour is the culmination of a busy few months of events, rehearsals and recordings to mark 50 years since the rockers first took to the stage at the Marquee Club on London‘s Oxford Street in July, 1962.


There has been a photo album, two new songs, a music video, a documentary film, a blitz of media appearances and a handful of warm-up gigs in Paris.


“STYLE AND PANACHE”


The reunion nearly did not happen. One factor behind the long break since their record-breaking “A Bigger Bang” tour in 2007 has been Wood’s struggle with alcohol addiction, while Jagger and Richards also fell out over comments the guitarist made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.


But they eventually buried the hatchet, and Richards joked in a recent interview: “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids!”


Critics were fulsome in their praise of the first comeback gig.


Keith Richards has said that the beauty of rock and roll is that every night a different band might be the world’s greatest. Well, last night at the O2 Arena, it was the turn of the Rolling Stones themselves to lay claim to the title they invented,” wrote Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph.


“And they did it with some style and panache.”


The big question on every fan’s lips is whether the five concerts lead to a world tour and even new material. The Stones sang their two new tracks “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which appeared on their latest greatest hits album “GRRR!”.


Richards has hinted that the five concerts ending at the Newark Prudential Center in the United States on December 15 would not be the last.


“Once the juggernaut starts rolling, it ain’t gonna stop,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “So without sort of saying definitely yes – yeah. We ain’t doing all this for four gigs!”


The band has come in for criticism from fans about the high price of tickets to the shows – they ranged from around 95 pounds ($ 150) to up to 950 pounds for a VIP seat.


The flamboyant veterans, whose average age is 68, have defended the costs, saying the shows were expensive to put on, although specialist music publication Billboard reported the band would earn $ 25 million from the four shows initially announced. A fifth was added later.


“Everybody all right there in the cheap seats,” Jagger asked pointedly as he looked high to his left at the arena. “They’re not really cheap though are they? That’s the trouble.”


Among the biggest cheers on the night were for classics including “Wild Horses”, “It’s Only Rock and Roll” and “Start Me Up”.


There was even time for the odd reference to their advancing years.


“Good to see you all,” said Richards with a mischievous grin. “Good to see anybody.”


(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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UN climate talks open in Qatar












DOHA, Qatar (AP) — U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it.


The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.












Attempts to create a new climate treaty failed in Copenhagen three years ago but countries agreed last year to try again, giving themselves a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty.


A host of issues need to be resolved by then, including how to spread the burden of emissions cuts between rich and poor countries. That’s unlikely to be decided in the Qatari capital of Doha, where negotiators will focus on extending the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions deal for industrialized countries, and trying to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.


“We all realize why we are here, why we keep coming back year and after year,” said South Africa Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year’s talks in Durban, South Africa. “We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing.”


The U.N. process is often criticized, even ridiculed, both by climate activists who say the talks are too slow, and by those who challenge the scientific near-consensus that the global temperature rise is at least partly caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.


The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.


A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) this century, compared with pre-industrial times, overshooting the 2-degree target that has been the goal of the U.N. talks.


Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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SEC chair Mary Schapiro leaving post

President Barack Obama announced Monday he had picked Securities and Exchange Commissioner Elisse Walter to replace outgoing Chairman Mary Schapiro, who plans to step down in mid-December. Schapiro has helmed the agency since January 2009, winning confirmation with the economy shaken to its core by the global financial meltdown.


Walter is a former top official of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street's industry-funded watchdog. She does not need Senate confirmation to her new post.


The new SEC chairman will likely find herself in the thick of a fight over financial industry regulations known as Dodd-Frank. Some Obama aides have said the president hopes to improve aspects of the law, while Republicans insist they want to roll back many of its provisions. And big banks want a say in how the new rules are implemented. 


Obama praised Schapiro for her stewardship of the SEC during a critical time.


"When Mary agreed to serve nearly four years ago, she was fully aware of the difficulties facing the SEC and our economy as a whole," Obama said in a statement. "But she accepted the challenge, and today, the SEC is stronger and our financial system is safer and better able to serve the American people—thanks in large part to Mary's hard work."


"I'm confident that Elisse's years of experience will serve her well in her new position, and I'm grateful she has agreed to help lead the agency," the president said.


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Nokia unveils 2 new cellphone models, priced at $62












HELSINKI (Reuters) – Struggling Finnish cellphone maker Nokia unveiled on Monday two new cellphone models, the Asha 205 and the Asha 206, pricing both models at around $ 62, excluding subsidies and taxes.


Both models will go on sale this quarter.












Nokia unveiled a new Slam feature which allows consumers to share multimedia content like photos and videos with nearby friends almost instantly through Bluetooth connection.


(Reporting By Tarmo Virki)


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German research points way to faster flu vaccines












LONDON (Reuters) – An experimental vaccine based on a molecule related to DNA protects animals against influenza and may one day offer an ultra-rapid way to develop new shots for humans, German scientists reported on Sunday.


Assuming it also works in people, the new approach could allow commercial flu vaccines to be designed and manufactured in weeks rather than months.












Making vaccines quickly is critical in fighting flu, particularly during a pandemic when health authorities and drugmakers are in a race to keep up with mutating strains of virus.


Flu vaccines have traditionally been produced in chicken eggs, a tricky and lengthy process. More recently some firms have started using animal cell cultures, with Novartis on November 20 winning the first U.S. approval for such a product.


Both approaches, however, still involve virus cultivation, which can result in variable yields and production delays.


The new vaccine developed by Lothar Stitz of Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut and colleagues uses a quicker approach. It is made solely of messenger RNA (mRNA) – a single-stranded molecule that carries information telling cells which proteins to make.


“The only thing we need is the sequence of the relevant genes,” Stitz said. “It’s a new option and it doesn’t take long to do.”


His team vaccinated mice, ferrets and pigs with an mRNA vaccine and found that the immune response was similar or better than that found with conventional vaccines. What is more, the new vaccines showed high efficacy in very young and very old animals, which can be a problem with current flu shots.


Reporting their results in the journal Nature Biotechnology, the scientists calculated that a completed vaccine could be produced within six to eight weeks of the genetic code of a flu virus strain being published.


In contrast growing vaccines in fertilised chicken eggs can take up to six months, while using cell cultures may reduce that by up to eight to 10 weeks.


Another potential advantage of mRNA vaccines is the fact that they do not need to be refrigerated.


A human vaccine based on the research is still years away, since extensive clinical trials will be needed to test safety and efficacy, and the job of taking the work forward now rests with CureVac, a privately owned biotech company.


CureVac, backed by billionaire German investor and business software firm SAP’s co-founder Dietmar Hopp, is already developing a therapeutic mRNA vaccine for prostate cancer in human trials.


The firm also has a vaccine for lung cancer in development and is working on prophylactic vaccines against several unnamed infectious diseases in a collaboration with Sanofi.


Sanofi is a major supplier of flu vaccines, along with Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline.


(Editing by Greg Mahlich)


Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video becomes YouTube’s most viewed












LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – South Korean rap star Psy‘s music videoGangnam Style” on Saturday became the most watched item ever posted to YouTube with more than 800 million views, edging past Canadian teen star Justin Bieber‘s 2-year-old video for his song “Baby.”


The milestone was the latest pop culture victory for Psy, 34, a portly rap singer known for his slicked-back hair and comic dance style who has become one of the most unlikely global stars of 2012.












Psy succeeded with a video that generated countless parodies and became a media sensation. He gained more fame outside his native country than the more polished singers in South Korea‘s so-called K-Pop style who have sought to win international audiences.


YouTube, in a post on its Trends blog, said “Gangnam Style” on Saturday surpassed the site’s previous record holder, Bieber’s 2010 music video “Baby,” and by mid-day “Gangnam Style” had reached 805 million views, compared to 803 million for “Baby.” Within a few hours, “Gangnam Style” had gone up to more than 809 million views.


“Gangnam Style” was first posted to YouTube in July, and by the following month it began to show huge popularity on YouTube with audiences outside of South Korea.


“It’s been a massive hit at a global level unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said the YouTube blog.


The blog also said the “velocity” of the video’s popularity has been unprecedented for YouTube.


In his “Gangnam Style” video the outlandishly dressed, sunglass-wearing Psy raps in Korean and dances in the style of an upper-crust person riding an invisible horse.


The song is named after the affluent Gangnam District of Seoul and it mocks the rampant consumerism of that suburb. Psy, whose real name is Park Jai-sang, is no stranger to wealth as his father is chairman of a South Korean semiconductor company.


His parents sent him to business school in the United States but he confesses that he bought musical instruments with his tuition money. He later graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and won fame in South Korea with his 2001 debut album.


The viral success of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube also has translated into strong record sales. In late September, the song jumped to the top of the British pop charts and it also has sold well in other countries.


Popular parodies of the “Gangnam Style” video included one featuring the University of Oregon’s duck mascot, and another done in the “Star Trek” language Klingon.


The official YouTube view count for Gangnam Style represents only the figure for the original video posted to the site, but copycat versions, parodies and videos by people commenting on the song have been posted to the site and elsewhere on the Web.


Counting all those different versions, “Gangnam Style” and its related videos have more than 2.2 billion views across the Internet, said Matt Fiorentino, spokesman for the online video tracking firm Visible Measures.


“Without the dance, I don’t think it would have been as big as it is,” Fiorentino said. “And the other thing is, Psy has a unique sense of humor which comes through in the video. He doesn’t take himself too seriously.”


(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Bill Trott)


Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Egypt’s Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree












CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country’s deep divisions.


The Judges’ Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the “downfall of the regime” – the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.












Mursi’s political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.


Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.


It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt’s new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.


Egypt’s highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an “unprecedented attack” on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges’ Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.


That demand was echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. “There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says ‘let us split the difference’,” he said.


“I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity,” he said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.


More than 300 people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.


POLARISATION


Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.


In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own protests that day to support the president’s decree.


Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero’s welcome at the Judges’ Club.


In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.


The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak’s rule to a new system of democratic government.


Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood’s suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak’s days.


“It aims to sideline Mursi’s enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution,” said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.


“We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down.”


ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS


Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas hung over the capital’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.


Youths clashed sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.


Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely read dailies, hailed Friday’s protest as “The November 23 Intifada”, invoking the Arabic word for uprising.


But the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind Mursi’s decree.


The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.


Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi’s spokesman. Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: “I refuse to continue in the shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition”.


Mursi’s decree has been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians.


“The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.


The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.


(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)


World News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Black Friday sales slip as shoppers opt for Thursday ‘doorbusters’

Security guards break up a fight between shoppers outside a Bowling Green, Ky., Target, Nov. 22, 2012. (AP)


Black Friday, the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, saw more foot traffic than ever before, according to estimates. But it appears so-called "doorbuster" deals offered the day before dinged sales.


According to ShopperTrak, which tracks retail foot traffic, there were more than 307 million store visits on Friday, up 3.5 percent. But Black Friday shoppers spent an estimated $11.2 billion, down 1.8 percent over 2011, when consumers spent $11.4 billion.


And for once, the sluggish economy is not to blame.


"It is all Black Thursday's fault," ZeroHedge.com said.


[Slideshow: Black Friday madness]


Shopping malls were "less hectic" on Black Friday this year, Bloomberg.com reported, as retailers "have turned Black Friday, once a one-day event after Thanksgiving, into a week's worth of deals and discounts."


And Thursday's deals "attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday," ShopperTrak said.


Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target were open on Thanksgiving night, drawing crowds that were--in some cases--rowdy. (Thankfully, it was nothing like the dystopian version of shopping hell recently envisioned by "Saturday Night Live.")


Another reason for the Black Friday dip: people skipped lines and shopped online. According to IBM Benchmark, online sales rose 17 percent on Thanksgiving and 21 percent on Black Friday.



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