Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Wall Street edges up at open after Alcoa results

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened slightly higher on Wednesday after Alcoa got the earnings season under way with better-than-expected revenue and an encouraging outlook for the year.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> gained 36.93 points, or 0.28 percent, to 13,365.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> rose 2.64 points, or 0.18 percent, to 1,459.79. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> advanced 7.35 points, or 0.24 percent, to 3,099.15.

(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Huge Amounts Spent on Immigration, Study Finds

John Moore/Getty Images

A man suspected of being an illegal immigrant from Mexico was searched by a federal immigration officer in Phoenix last April.

The Obama administration spent nearly $18 billion on immigration enforcement last year, significantly more than its spending on all the other major federal law enforcement agencies combined, according to a report published Monday by the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Based on the vast resources devoted to monitoring foreigners coming into the country and to detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, immigration control has become “the federal government’s highest criminal law enforcement priority,” the report concluded.

In recent years, it found, the two main immigration enforcement agencies under the Department of Homeland Security have referred more cases to the courts for prosecution than all of the Justice Department’s law enforcement agencies combined, including the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Total spending on those agencies was $14 billion, official figures show.

The 182-page report was an opening salvo in a contentious debate over immigration that President Obama has pledged to lead this year. Its purpose was to marshal publicly available official figures to show that the country has built “a formidable enforcement machinery” since 1986, the last time Congress considered an overhaul of the immigration laws that included measures granting legal status to large numbers of illegal immigrants. Spending on immigration enforcement was 15 times greater last year than in 1986, the report found.

The report responds to lawmakers, mainly Republicans, who have argued that federal authorities must do much more to strengthen enforcement before Congress can consider any legalization for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.

“The ‘enforcement first’ policy that has been advocated by many in Congress and the public as a precondition for considering broader immigration reform has de facto become the nation’s singular immigration policy,” the report concluded.

Although the institute includes both Democrats and Republicans and did not offer any recommendations in this report, it has previously supported policies to bring illegal immigrants into the legal system, rather than expelling them.

According to the report, financing, staffing and technology investments for the Border Patrol have reached “historic highs,” while apprehensions of illegal border crossers have plunged by 53 percent since 2008. As a result of huge increases in spending, deportations have also “increased dramatically,” the report says, with far more immigrants removed in expedited proceedings that do not involve any formal proceeding before an immigration judge.

The budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which handles interior enforcement and detention, has increased by 87 percent since 2005, to nearly $6 billion, according to the report. The number of foreigners the agency detains annually increased to 429,247 in 2011. In December, the agency announced it had deported 410,000 foreigners in 2012, giving Mr. Obama the record for the highest number of removals during his term.

“As a result of 25 years of investment,” said Doris Meissner, an author of the report who is a senior fellow at the institute, “the bulwark is fundamentally in place.” She said the existing system made it unlikely that an immigration overhaul could unleash a new wave of illegal migration, like the surge since the amnesty of 1986.

Ms. Meissner, who served as commissioner of the immigration service in the Clinton administration, said public perceptions of uncontrolled migration across the border with Mexico “have not caught up with the reality.”

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, federal law enforcement agencies have revamped and coordinated databases for monitoring the movement of foreigners into the country. An immigration databank that federal authorities have created is the “largest law enforcement electronic verification system in the world,” said Donald Kerwin, another author of the report.

Some critics said the report’s figures were misleading because they include the entire budget for Customs and Border Protection, another Department of Homeland Security agency, which also oversees cargo inspections on land and at seaports.

“A large amount of that spending has nothing to do with immigrants,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that supports tough measures against illegal immigration. Immigration enforcement still has “gaping holes,” he said.

One of them, Mr. Krikorian said, is the lack of a national system for employers to verify that new hires are legally authorized to work. He also noted that the United States still has no system to confirm that foreigners leave the country when their visas expire.

Other experts said the report was an accurate summary of a recent transformation in immigration control. “There is no question that there has been a big, big increase in enforcement across the board,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

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Conn. lawmaker apologizes over Facebook post

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A Connecticut lawmaker has apologized after saying in a Facebook post that shooting victim and former Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords should “stay out of my towns.”

Giffords last week visited Newtown, Conn., where a gunman killed 20 young children and six adults at an elementary school last month. The Democrat, who met with families of the victims, was critically wounded two years ago in a deadly mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz.

The Hartford Courant posted images Sunday showing Republican state Rep. DebraLee Hovey‘s Facebook comments. In one dated Friday she says, “Gabby Giffords stay out of my towns!!”

Hovey released a statement Monday saying her comments were insensitive and that she apologizes if she offended anyone.

Hovey had said in another post that the visit was political.

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Miranda Lambert Is 'Protective' Over Time With Husband Blake Shelton

By Maggie Coughlan

01/08/2013 at 09:45 AM EST

Despite countless awards, hit records and a doting husband, Miranda Lambert isn't always so confident.

"I"m insecure about tons of things!" she says in Redbook's February issue – available on newsstands Tuesday.

"I cry onstage once a week, singing 'The House That Built Me,' and I always tell the crowd, 'Don't tell anyone I was cryin'!' Or 'Over You,' when Blake [Shelton] and I had all that loss in our lives. It was really hard to get up there after we had been to three funerals," the singer says of the Country Music Award-winning song she co-wrote with husband Shelton.

Although their high-profile careers sometimes keep Lambert, 29, and Shelton, 36, apart, the singer says the distance makes her heart grow fonder.

"This time I hadn't seen him in 11 days," she recalls. "He was just so happy when I got here it was like [making an angels-singing voice] 'Ahh, you're here.' When I go to the The Voice set and everyone says, 'Blake's been talking about you so much,' it just makes me feel special."

But when they are together, Lambert says she's "protective" over their private time together.

"He's the sweetest guy. Like, he will talk to anyone, sign anything, take a picture with everyone. And if I don't stop it at some point, it ruins our whole night," she says. "I have to be the bad guy. The people are like 'Oh, God, don't mess with her ...' "

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Wall Street dips as earnings season begins

A $20,000 diamond ring found in a tanning salon in St. Charles, Mo., appears to be at the center of a legal dispute over "finders keepers." The St. Louis Post-Dispatch attempts to explain murky statutes revolving around found property versus stealing. After Bonnie Land found the expensive ring and agreed to return it weeks later, she was arrested. She subsequently sued the ring's owner for $66,500 alleging breach of contract as Land wasn't given the posted $3,000 reward money.

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Supporters Back Strike at Newspaper in China

BEIJING — Hundreds of people gathered outside the headquarters of a newspaper office in southern China on Monday to show their support for journalists who had declared a strike to protest what they called overbearing censorship by provincial propaganda officials.

The journalists, who work for Southern Weekend, a relatively liberal newspaper that has come under increasing pressure from officials in recent years, also received support on the Internet from celebrities and well-known commentators.

“Hoping for a spring in this harsh winter,” Li Bingbing, an actress, said to her 19 million followers on a microblog account. Yao Chen, an actress with more than 31 million followers, cited a quotation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian Nobel laureate and dissident: “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.”

Many of the people who showed up Monday at the newspaper offices in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province, carried banners with slogans and white and yellow chrysanthemums, a flower that symbolizes mourning. One banner read: “Get rid of censorship. The Chinese people want freedom.” Police officers watched the protesters without immediately taking any harsh actions.

The angry journalists at Southern Weekend have been calling for the removal of Tuo Zhen, the top propaganda official in Guangdong, whom the journalists blame for overseeing a change in a New Year’s editorial that ran last week and was supposed to have called for greater respect for rights enshrined in the constitution under the headline “China’s Dream, the Dream of Constitutionalism,” according to the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong. The editorial went through layers of changes and ultimately became one praising the current political system, in which the Communist Party exercises authority over all aspects of governance.

A well-known entrepreneur, Hung Huang, said on her microblog that the actions of a local official had “destroyed, overnight, all the credibility the country’s top leadership had labored to re-establish since the 18th Party Congress,” the November gathering in Beijing that was the climax of the leadership transition.

One journalist for Southern Weekend said Monday afternoon that negotiations between the various parties had been scheduled later in the day, but there were no results from any talks as of Monday evening.

It was unclear how many employees in the newsroom had heeded the calls for a strike. It appeared Sunday that many of Southern Weekend’s reporters had declared themselves on strike. A local journalist who went by the newspaper’s Beijing office on Monday said the building appeared to be open but quiet. One employee told the journalist that the people there were not on strike. Dozens of supporters showed up outside the building at various times, some carrying signs and flowers.

The conflict was exacerbated Sunday night by top editors at the newspaper, who posted a message on the publication’s official microblog saying that the New Year’s editorial had been written with the consent of editors at the newspaper.

According to an account from a newspaper employee posted online on Monday, that statement was made after pressure was exerted on the top editors by Yang Jian, the head of the party committee at Southern Media, the parent company that runs Southern Weekend and other publications. Southern Weekend’s editor in chief, Huang Can, then pressured an employee to give up the official microblog password so the statement could be posted on the microblog.

Neither Mr. Yang nor Mr. Huang could be reached for comment Monday.

Some political analysts have said the conflict raises questions about whether the central government, led by Xi Jinping, the new party chief, will support the idea of a more open media by moving to support the protesting journalists. In his first trip outside Beijing, Mr. Xi traveled to Guangdong and praised the market-oriented economic policies put in place by Deng Xiaoping, the former supreme leader. But more recently, Mr. Xi has said that China must respect its socialist roots.

Resolving the Southern Weekend tensions could also be a test for Hu Chunhua, the new party chief in Guangdong and a potential candidate to succeed Mr. Xi as the leader of China in a decade. Mr. Hu’s predecessor, Wang Yang, was regarded by many Western political analysts as being a “reformer,” but he presided over a tightening of media freedoms in the province and specifically over Southern Media.

On Monday, People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, ran a signed commentary that referred to a recent meeting of propaganda officials in Beijing and said propaganda officials should “follow the rhythm of the times” and help the authorities establish a “pragmatic and open-minded image.” Some people have interpreted that as support for officials in adopting a more enlightened approach in dealing with the news media.

But Global Times, a populist newspaper, ran a scathing editorial that said Southern Weekend was merely a newspaper and should not challenge the system.

“Even in the West, mainstream media would not choose to openly pick a fight with the government,” the editorial said. Xinhua, the state news agency, published the editorial online.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting. Mia Li and Shi Da and contributed research.

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Alcatel One Touch readies U.S. invasion with world’s thinnest smartphone and a colorful 5-inch phablet

TCL Communication’s (2618) Alcatel One Touch brand is ostensibly unknown in the United States, but the company is looking to make a name for itself at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Alcatel One Touch has a number of new devices debuting at CES 2013 and to start things off, the China-based firm has unveiled a trio of intriguing new Android phones.

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

While the show doesn’t officially begin until Tuesday, Alcatel One Touch got an early start on Monday — likely in order to ensure that it can lay claim to “the world’s thinnest smartphone” for at least a few hours.

[More from BGR: Next-generation LTE chips to reduce power consumption by 50%]

The first of three smartphones debuting at CES 2013 is the One Touch Idol Ultra, a sleek Android-powered handset that is just 6.45 millimeters thick. To put that dimension in perspective, the phone is 15% thinner than Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 5.

Other notable specs include a 4.7-inch HD AMOLED display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

Next up is the One Touch Idol, an entry-level version of the Idol Ultra. Measuring a slightly thicker 8.15 millimeters, the One Touch Idol includes a 4.7-inch qHD IPS display, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, an 8-megapixel camera, 512MB of RAM and the same Jelly Bean OS as the Ultra model.

Finally, Alcatel One Touch has unveiled its first entry into the “phablet” market with the One Touch Scribe HD. This stylus-ready device features a 5-inch HD IPS display, the 1.2GHz quad-core MediaTek MT6589 chipset, an 8-megapixel camera, 1GB of RAM, a microSD slot and Android 4.1. The One Touch Scribe HD also comes in a variety of colors including black, white, red and yellow.

Each of the three smartphones Alcatel One Touch debuted on Monday will launch in China later this month. The One Touch Scribe HD will then be released in the U.S. some time in the second quarter for a surprisingly affordable $ 397 before taxes and subsidies, and both the One Touch Idol and One Touch Idol Ultra will launch at a later point in time. The latter will cost $ 444 before taxes and subsidies, while pricing for the One Touch Idol has not yet been announced.

No carrier partners have been revealed at this point in the U.S. or in China.

This article was originally published by BGR

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Downton Abbey: 5 Best Moments from Season 3 Premiere

TV Watch

TV News

By Aaron Parsley

01/07/2013 at 09:35 AM EST

Dame Maggie Smith and Shirley Maclaine on the set of Downton Abbey

Nick Briggs

Downton Abbey is back!

Sunday's two-hour premiere was full of developments – upstairs, downstairs and outside of the Crawleys' sprawling country home. As Mary and her fiancé Matthew prepare for their wedding, Lord Crawley gets word that his wife Cora's fortune has disappeared thanks to a bad investment in a Canadian railroad company. At the same time, Matthew has learned that he may become the heir to his late fiancée's father's inheritance. And so just when the problem of finding a practical heir to Downton is resolved, the future of the estate is once again in question. Anna is as loyal a wife as ever, working to free Bates from spending life in prison; Lady Edith continues to pursue the much older Lord Anthony; and housekeeper Mrs. Hughes may have cancer!

But that's just the tip of the iceberg that sank the Titanic. Here are the best moments from the season 3 premiere:

1. You May Kiss the Bride: After Matthew tells Mary he could never in good conscience keep Lavinia's father's fortune, she reveals her own father's financial troubles, hoping that he'll change his mind to save Downton. But he does not back down, and, after accusing him of not caring, she runs away in tears – the night before their wedding. Later, Matthew goes to her bedroom to smooth things over. Because it's bad luck to see the bride before the wedding, they talk with a door between them and then share a kiss with their eyes closed. But Mary peeks – will it bring bad luck? Well, her horse-drawn carriage did make it to the chapel and the pair returned safely from their honeymoon in the south of France.

2. Branson, You're Welcome: An expectant Lady Sybil returns from Dublin with her husband Thomas Branson, Lord Crawley's former chauffeur. And he doesn't receive a warm welcome. That he doesn't have proper dinner attire and speaks his mind about Irish politics at the meal table does not help his cause. But when uppity guest Larry Grey (a former suitor of Sybil's) drugs Branson's drink, making him appear drunk at dinner, two men come to his rescue: Lord Anthony accuses Grey, and Matthew – very democratically – declares he wants Branson to be his best man at the wedding.

3. Dowager's Secret: Though she says of her unsavory son-in-law, "I shall make sure he behaves normally because I shall hold his hand on the radiator until he does," the Dowager Countess reveals at dinner that she was the one who paid for Branson's passage from Dublin to Downton because she wanted Sybil and her husband to be present for the wedding. It's a sign that Downton's most traditional resident is coming around to the idea that her granddaughter has found love with a former servant.

4. Martha Saves the Day: The much-anticipated arrival of Lady Mary's mother, Martha Levinson, from New York was all Downton Abbey fans could have hoped for. Whether spewing progressive American superiority or going head-to-head with Lady Violet, Martha ignited Downton. But it was her quick thinking when the stove went out before a dinner party that was her best moment. Instead of sending Downton Village's most distinguished guests home without dinner, she suggested an indoor picnic, inviting everyone to eat what they want, where they want. Then she sang a tune! Her song: "Let Me Call You Sweetheart."

5. Thomas vs. O'Brien: They shared cigarettes and schemed together to bring down Bates in the past, but in season 3 Downton's most mischievous couple, valet Thomas Barrow and lady's maid Sarah O'Brien, are at odds since the arrival of a new footman, O'Brien's nephew Alfred. After Thomas embarrassed Alfred by wrongly advising him on how to clean Matthew's dinner jacket, and thereby burning it, O'Brien returned the favor by hiding Lord Crawley's shirts, forcing the most distinguished man in the county to dress in black tie rather than white, which according to Martha, made him suitable for a nothing more than a barbecue.

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