“I learned a big civics lesson today.” — Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, who tweeted a picture of his filled-out ballot (for Mitt Romney, natch), only to learn that appeared to break the law in New York state.
— David Bauder — http://twitter.com/dbauder
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Election Watch shows you Election Day 2012 through the eyes of Associated Press journalists. Follow them on Twitter where available with the handles listed after each item.
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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Star Wars” was the force behind Walt Disney’s $ 4 billion purchase of producer George Lucas’s Lucasfilm entertainment holdings. Not so far, far away is Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic, his award-winning special effects shop that will likely save Disney millions of dollars in costs for its big-budget movies.
ILM, started by Lucas in 1975 when he couldn’t find a special effects house he liked for “Star Wars,” has provided computer-generated dinosaurs, space ships and action characters for a roster of films that includes “Avatar,” “Mission Impossible” and the “Harry Potter” series.
As much as one-third of the cost of films with budgets of $ 200 million and more are for special effects, according to Janney Montgomery Scott analyst Tony Wible, who estimates ILM last year generated at least $ 100 million in revenue. Disney uses ILM‘s computer animators for its “Pirates of the Caribbean” series of films and Marvel-inspired characters for films like “The Avengers.”
ILM is among the companies producing special effects for the Disney film “The Lone Ranger,” a 2013 release estimated to cost more than $ 200 million to produce.
By bringing ILM in-house, Disney can shave as much as $ 20 million a year from its films’ special effects budgets, a welcome savings at a time when all major studios are trying to rein in production spending, Wible said.
“It’s one of the underappreciated aspects of this deal,” he said, along with Skywalker Sound, a Lucas sound production company that will also become part of the Disney empire.
Disney executives, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts, scarcely mentioned ILM in explaining the company’s valuation of Lucasfilm, instead describing its estimate of the company’s rights to its consumer products and the declining value of DVD sales.
Chief Executive Bob Iger praised ILM’s work for Disney and other studios. “Our current thinking is that we would let it remain as-is. They do great work,” Iger said.
A Disney spokesman said the company could not comment further about ILM or the rest of the acquisition until it is cleared by regulators.
The effects house is headquartered in San Francisco at the Letterman Digital Arts Center, a Lucasfilm campus where a statue of Yoda perches atop an outdoor fountain. The effects company employs about 1,000 people between that location and sites in Singapore and Vancouver.
The studio provides effects for as many as 18 projects per year, working with all the major Hollywood studios that compete with Disney. That outside work beyond “Star Wars” will give Disney another revenue source from ILM.
“We can handle quite a slate of films,” Lucasfilm spokesman Miles Perkins said of ILM. “We look forward to continuing that.”
ILM also generates money by supplying effects for commercials by big-name brands Coca-Cola, Budweiser and others.
For Disney’s Iger, who prides his company as being among Hollywood’s most forward thinking on new technology, the Lucasfilm buy might also provide another front for the media giant. Its computer-wielding artists could work with Disney’s Imagineering unit, which creates many of the technologies the company uses at its theme parks.
Lucasfilm engineers created THX, which was designed to help theaters create the best sound for movies through a system that the Lucas company certifies meets its technical standards. THX, which was spun off from Lucasfilms in 2001, also certifies home entertainment systems, consumer electronic products and automobile sound systems.
Hollywood studios have a generally poor record owning effects companies, said Scott Ross, a former general manager of ILM and one of the founders of effects company Digital Domain.
Disney bought Dream Quest Images in 1996 and shuttered it five years later. Warner Bros. also has shut or sold off effects companies it acquired. Only Sony Corp has found success with its Imageworks effects unit.
Studios usually discover that running an effects business is costly and foreign competitors can do the job cheaper, Ross said. “They come to the conclusion that running a visual effects company is not a profitable business,” Ross said.
Iger, in announcing the deal to Wall Street analysts, praised ILM’s work and said he had no immediate plans to change it. “It’s been a decent business for Lucasfilm and one we have every intention of staying in,” he said.
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Ronald Grover; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
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LONDON (Reuters) – Retinal implants to help pilots see at night, stimulant drugs to keep surgeons alert and steady handed, cognitive enhancers to focus the minds of executives for a big speech or presentation.
Medical and scientific advances are bringing human enhancements into work but with them, according to a report by British experts, come not only the potential to help society and boost productivity, but also a range of ethical dilemmas.
“We’re not talking science fiction here, we’re talking about advances that could impact significantly on the way we work…in the near future,” said Genevra Richardson, a professor of law at Kings College London and one of the authors of the report.
The report was published after a joint workshop involving four major British scientific institutions which looked at emerging technologies like cognitive enhancing drugs, bionic limbs and retinal implants that have the potential to change workplaces dramatically in future.
Richardson said while such developments may benefit society in important ways, such as by boosting workforce productivity, their use also had “significant policy implications” to be considered by governments, employers, workers and trades unions.
“There are a range of technologies in development and in some cases already in use that have the potential to transform our workplaces – for better or for worse,” she said.
Human physical and cognitive enhancements are primarily developed with sick or disabled people in mind, as medicines or therapies to help them overcome mental or physical disorders.
But experts say drugs and other forms of enhancement are being used increasingly by healthy people who want to benefit from the boost they can give to performance.
Barbara Sahakian, a professor of clinical neuropsychology at Cambridge University who contributed to the report, said for example that modafinil, a generic drug prescribed for sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, is often used by academics or business leaders travelling to conferences who need to be at the top of their game when delivering a speech.
“They take (sleep) medications on the plane to fall asleep, and take modafinil to wake up when they get there,” she said.
Other stimulants such as Novartis’s Ritalin and Shire’s Adderall, prescribed for conditions like Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, are also used by healthy people to increase focus.
One issue with this kind of use is the lack of long-term safety studies of such drugs in healthy people, the experts said, so there may be unknown risks ahead. Other problems include whether cognitive enhancers are fair. Is it cheating to go into a job interview or exam having taken a drug to boost your mental focus?
Research from the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in the United States has estimated that up to 16 percent of students in America also use cognitive enhancers to improve performance in exams or for particular essays or projects.
The report also pointed to visual enhancement technologies, such as retinal implants, that could be used by the military, by night watchmen, safety inspectors or gamekeepers.
Technologies to enhance night vision or extend of the range of human vision to include other wavelengths such as ultra-violet light could become a reality relatively soon, it said.
Sahakian suggested that for drivers or pilots, such enhancements could reduce fatigue and lower the risk of fatal accidents.
But she also raised the question of whether employers keen to squeeze more productivity out of a workforce might coerce workers into using enhancements against their will.
“Imagine you’re a bus driver bringing children back on a journey to the UK overnight and your boss says you have to take cognitive-enhancing drug because there are risks to the children if you don’t stay awake. Is that acceptable?,” she said. “These are the kinds of things we have to grapple with.”
(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Michael Roddy)
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(Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Mary Blige and dozens of other musicians and celebrities helped raise some $ 23 million for victims of Hurricane Sandy on NBC television, while a Day of Giving on ABC TV networks raised more than $ 10 million.
The American Red Cross said the one-hour NBC telethon on Friday, featuring performances by celebrities with strong New York and New Jersey connections, generated a record number of individual donations by phone, text and online for victims of Sandy.
The preliminary amount raised was nearly $ 23 million, the Red Cross said in a statement.
On ABC on Monday, viewers and celebrities had raised more than $ 10 million, also for the American Red Cross, midway through a day-long fundraiser for victims of last week’s storm, which devastated the U.S. Northeast and killed more that 100 people.
Journalist Barbara Walters made a personal donation of $ 250,000 and manned phone lines during breakfast show “Good Morning America” along with Katie Couric, actor Ben Stiller and “Jersey Shore” star Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, ABC said. Donations are expected to rise further during the day-long event.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant in Los Angeles; Editing by Richard Chang)
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(Reuters) – Stem cells culled from the bone marrow of healthy donors work as well or even better as cells harvested from patients themselves as a treatment for damaged hearts and are more convenient to use, according to new research.
The 13-month trial was the first to compare the safety and effectiveness of so-called mesenchymal, or bone marrow-derived, stem cells taken from patients themselves versus those provided by donors.
Such adult stem cells that renew themselves and mature into specific cell types have been used for 40 years in bone marrow transplants.
Scientists are now exploring their use as treatments for ailments such as heart disease and inflammatory conditions, some of the biggest markets in medicine.
The rationale behind using patients’ own stem cells to treat disease is that they do not trigger an attack by the body’s immune system. Mesenchymal stem cells, however, are also not recognized as foreign tissue.
Researchers from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, funded by the National Institutes of Health, found that previously prepared cells from a healthy donor were comparatively safe and may offer the most convenience since it takes up to eight weeks to grow the amount of stem cells needed for the treatment.
The study involved 30 patients whose hearts were damaged by an earlier heart attack. Half received heart-muscle injections of their own cells, while the other half received donor cells.
Scar tissue was reduced by 33 percent in both groups, a result researchers called “very, very significant.”
Improvements in heart function were seen in 28 percent of those receiving donor cells, and in 50 percent of patients receiving their own cells.
After a year, five patients in the donor cell group and eight who received their own cells suffered serious adverse events.
“The trials so far have very small patient numbers,” said Stefanie Dimmeler, director of the Institute of Cardiovascular Regeneration Center of Molecular Medicine at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. “I think this early work in cardiac stem cells look very promising.”
The trial results were presented here at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Association and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Companies working to develop off-the-shelf stem cell treatments include Celgene Corp, Pluristem Therapeutics Inc, Athersys Inc and Mesoblast Ltd.
(Editing by Bernard Orr)
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TOKYO (Reuters) – Asian shares fell on Monday, tracking a sell-off in global shares late last week, as investors continued to shed risk ahead of the closely fought U.S. presidential election and looked past a strong U.S. jobs data to fragile economic growth worldwide.
The MSCI index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.MIAPJ0000PUS> fell 0.3 percent after climbing to its highest since October 23 on Friday.
Australian shares <.AXJO> were down 0.4 percent and South Korean shares <.KS11> opened down 0.7 percent.
“There is an absence of upward momentum, but economic data such as U.S. jobs were better than forecast last week, so the main index is expected to remain boxed in range before the U.S. elections,” Cho Sung-joon, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said of Seoul shares.
Japan’s Nikkei average <.N225> opened down 0.6 percent after closing at a one-week high on Friday. <.T>
The political uncertainty in the world’s largest economy made investors wary of holdings risk assets, and their safe-haven bids buoyed the U.S. dollar to two-month highs against a basket of major currencies <.DXY> on Monday.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney were neck-and-neck in opinion polls in the final 48 hours before Tuesday’s vote.
Obama’s re-election is perceived as negative for equities, while markets see Romney as stock-friendly, analysts have said.
After the U.S. election, Congress must deal with a “fiscal cliff” – up to $ 600 billion in expiring tax cuts and spending reductions that are set to kick in next year – which threatens to hurt the U.S. economy.
“Investors hate uncertainty, so there will be a sigh of relief when the election is over. Provided there is a clear election result and no change in the divided Congress, then traders and investors will see it as ‘business as usual’,” said Craig James, chief economist at CommSec.
Other key events this week include the Chinese congress starting November8 that will usher in a generational leadership change and policy decisions by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank.
The dollar was also bolstered by a report showing U.S. employers added 171,000 people to their payrolls last month, far above forecasts, and 84,000 more jobs were created in August and September than previously estimated.
Demand for U.S. factory goods also rose in September by the most in over a year, but a gauge of business investment plans showed lacklustre momentum.
The dollar steadied at 80.50 yen, near a more-than-six-month high of 80.68 yen scaled on Friday.
Bullion was undermined by the strong dollar. Spot gold ticked up 0.3 percent to $ 1,680.54 an ounce on Monday after a 2 percent plunge to a two-month low of $ 1,673.94 on Friday.
“For now, the liquidation in gold is likely to leave investors licking gaping wounds rather than focus on the benefits of a gently growing economy especially as it is currently set back in the shadows of the fiscal cliff,” Andrew Wilkinson, chief economic strategist at Miller Tabak & Co said in a note to clients.
Hedge funds and other big speculators shed U.S. commodities by $ 8 billion last week, the biggest weekly drop in nearly six month, with gold seeing the largest outflow of net long money for a second week running.
U.S. crude futures eased 0.1 percent to $ 84.82 a barrel and Brent was down 0.2 percent to $ 105.48.
The euro edged up 0.1 percent to $ 1.2823. It hit a one-month low of $ 1.2816 early in Asia on Monday, undermined by not only the U.S. data but also Friday’s survey showing euro zone October manufacturing shrank for the 15th straight month as output and new orders fell.
Finance chiefs of leading economies gathering in Mexico urged the United States on Sunday to avert a series of spending cuts and tax hikes that could hurt global output, though some countries saw Europe’s debt crisis as the No. 1 danger.
China offered some comforting news on Saturday, with an official survey showing the country’s services sector rebounded in October from a two-year low in September on stronger activity in the construction and retail sectors.
(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul and Ian Chua in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)
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LONDON (AP) — A British lawmaker says he’s asked the country’s media ethics inquiry to consider newly disclosed text messages sent between Prime Minister David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, the ex-chief executive of Rupert Murdoch‘s British newspaper division.
The Mail on Sunday newspaper on Sunday published two previously undisclosed messages exchanged between the pair, who are friends and neighbors.
Brooks is facing trial on conspiracy charges linked to Britain’s phone hacking scandal, which saw Murdoch close down The News of The World tabloid.
In one newly disclosed message, Cameron thanked Brooks in 2009 for allowing him to borrow a horse, joking it was “fast, unpredictable and hard to control but fun.”
Opposition lawmaker Chris Bryant has asked a judge-led inquiry scrutinizing ties between the press and the powerful to examine the messages.
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SOFIA (Reuters) – Fed up with ineffective law enforcement, thousands of Bulgarians have flocked to a Facebook page showcasing images of police breaking rules or failing to do their duty.
The “Photograph a Policeman” group includes pictures of badly parked patrol cars, including one in a disabled spot and another on a pedestrian crossing, and a police motorcyclist pulling a “wheelie” – on the wrong side of the road.
In another image, a uniformed policeman holds an open bottle of beer while sitting at the wheel of a patrol car.
It highlights frustration among many Bulgarians with a justice system that is subject to special monitoring by the European Union and a country where corruption and organized crime remain major problems five years after joining the bloc.
Created only this week, the group already has nearly 6,500 followers, including several well-known local politicians, journalists and businessmen.
It started after Boyan Maximov, from the Black Sea city of Varna, took a picture of three policemen apparently asleep in a patrol car and posted it on social networks.
Police then questioned Maximov, who complained of harassment and fines for petty offences like taking the rubbish out without an ID card, which under Bulgarian law must be carried in public at all times.
Last week police spokeswoman Kalinka Pencheva called Maximov “a red neck idiot, who has nothing to do and is bored” on local channel bTV. Pencheva has since been sacked but the Facebook page – and the number of pictures – continues to grow.
The interior ministry said it was aware of the page and most of the pictures were old.
“The Interior Ministry’s inspectorate obtained information about the creation of this group and is checking the photos and the comments that have been published,” a spokeswoman said.
(Reporting by Angel Krasimirov, editing by Paul Casciato)
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NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – CBS is making a $ 1 million dollar donation to Hurricane Sandy recovery as part of a wider effort that includes PSAs and matching employee contributions through the end of the year, TheWrap has learned.
CEO Les Moonves announced the company’s Red Cross donation in a letter to employees obtained by TheWrap, in which he thanks CBS staff working in hurricane-stricken parts of the Northeast and details its charitable plans.
Other networks are pitching in as well: ABC is devoting its programming day Monday to fundraising, and its corporate parent, Disney, has donated $ 2 million. Fox’s parent, News Corp., has donated $ 1 million. And NBC is holding a telethon tonight. All of the networks are also making viewers aware of the recovery efforts through means ranging from crawls to PSAs.
Moonves singled out employees from all corners of the company who worked through tough conditions to keep its television and radio stations going.
“I am announcing today that November, the month of Thanksgiving, will be dedicated at all our operations to supporting the Hurricane Sandy relief efforts of the American Red Cross, with whom CBS has a long partnership in times of crisis,” he wrote. “Our local TV and radio stations, and their online counterparts, will work both individually and together… to employ our unique resources to lend additional support to those relief efforts through telethons, phone banks and comprehensive PSA campaigns. Those efforts have already begun, and are expanding as you read this.”
CBS, he noted, is producing special PSAs featuring its stars. The first, with Gary Sinise, aired during “The Big Bang Theory” on Thursday. More will air during football over the weekend.
Additionally, “Entertainment Tonight” is enlisting stars to appear in PSAs that will run in syndication on affiliates of all networks airing the show. CBS will also dedicate billboards to the relief effort.
“There will not be one division of our company that does not contribute to this effort, each in its own way, and in ways to be determined by each,” Moonves wrote.
“As a cornerstone of this month-long drive, CBS Corporation will make a $ 1 million contribution to the American Red Cross,” he added. “In addition, we are also making a commitment to match your individual contributions to any Sandy-related relief efforts by making corresponding additional gifts to the American Red Cross. The match will apply to contributions that may have already been made as well as to new donations through the end of the year.”
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(Reuters) – Orthopedic surgeons-in-training said they were tired less often after rules regulating how much they could work went into place, according to a U.S. survey.
But the results published in the Annals of Surgery found the trainee doctors didn’t actually get any more sleep under the limited work hours policy, and also said they felt less prepared as doctors and were less satisfied with their education.
In July 2003, the U.S. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education implemented new policy limiting the on-duty hours of notoriously sleep-deprived residents to 80 per week, with a minimum of ten hours off between shifts. Those changes were further updated in 2011.
The main goal was to ease young doctors’ fatigue and fatigue-related medical errors.
The work limits seem to have been somewhat successful, but they also come at a cost, according to Debra Weinstein from Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, who worked on the study.
“The extent to which we restrict residents’ time in the hospital does risk (affecting) their skill and sense of preparedness,” she said.
“Continuing to further limit duty hours may not be the best way to address the goals of patient safety, resident well-being and excellent medical education.”
Some past studies have suggested that work limits improve quality of life for residents, but have a negative impact on their education. One survey published last year found that the majority of surgery residents worked more hours than the current regulations allowed.
In the new study, researchers analyzed surveys completed by a total of 216 residents at the Harvard Orthopedic Combined Residency Program between 2003 and 2009.
Compared to pre-2003 residents, orthopedic trainees in 2009 reported working fewer hours per week, about 66 hours versus 75. But they didn’t get any more sleep. Throughout the study period, they reported sleeping for about five hours every night, on average.
Residents rated their own preparedness to make clinical decisions under stress and their ability to perform the range of skills expected of them slightly lower in later years, the researchers said.
After the work-hour policies went into place, residents did say they spent fewer days feeling very tired, and a smaller proportion of them said their fatigue had a negative impact on patient care and safety.
Forty-six percent of residents said their fatigue affected the quality of care they provided in 2003, compared to 26 percent on the 2004 through 2009 surveys.
“There’s a general assumption that reducing work hours will result in more sleep for tired residents, and clearly out findings challenge that,” Weinstein said.
However, it’s possible that having more time to decompress and relieve psychological stress may improve residents’ sense of well-being, even if they’re not getting more sleep, she added.
Weinstein and her colleagues noted that their study didn’t include objective measures of residents’ performance, so they couldn’t tell whether they actually did better or worse on exams, or made more or fewer errors. SOURCE: http://bit.ly/TcFx66
(Reporting by Elaine Lies)
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