Stocks open mixed on GDP numbers























































































U.S. Stocks Rise to End S&P 500s 3-Week Losing Streak


A pedestrian walks past as workers hang a giant American Flag on the exterior of the New York Stock Exchange.
(Scott Eells / Bloomberg News / May 25, 2012)





































































Stocks are falling after the government revealed that economic growth shrank in the final quarter of 2012, the first time that's happened in more than three years.


Dow Jones industrial average is down 13 points to 13,941.30. The broader S&P futures have given up 0.60 points to 1,507.20. Nasdaq futures are up 4.4 points to 3,158.


Part of the reason for slowing growth was the biggest cutback in U.S. defense spending in four decades.





QUIZ: How much do you know about the stock market?


The Commerce Department says the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent.


It immediately raises questions about the strength of the economic recovery going forward, given the tax increases that went into effect this month.


Attention now turns to the Federal Reserve, which wraps up a two-day policy meeting Wednesday.






















































































































































































Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.
















































';
shareDiv.innerHTML = templateHTML;

/* append the new div to the end of the document, which is hidden already with CSS */
document.body.appendChild(shareDiv);

/* Store the div in both a regular JavaScript variable and as a jQuery object so we can reference them faster later */
var shareTip = document.getElementById('shareTip'),
$shareTip = $('#shareTip');

/* This extends our settings object with any user-defined settings passed to the function and returns the jQuery object shareTip
was called on */
return this.each(function() {
if (options) {
$.extend(settings, options);
}

/* This is a hack to make sure the shareTip always fades back to 100% opacity */
var checkOpacity = function (){
if ( $shareTip.css('opacity') !== 1 ){
$shareTip.css({'opacity': 1});
}
};

/* Function that replaces the HTML in the shareTip with the template we defined at the top */
/* It will wipe/reset the links on the social media buttons each time the function is called */
var removeLinks = function (){
shareTip.innerHTML = templateHTML;
};

/* This is the function that makes the links for the Tweet / Share functionality */

var makeURLS = function (link, message){
/* Here we construct the Tweet URL using an array, with values passed to the function */
var tweetConstruct = [
'http://twitter.com/share?url=', link, '&text=', message, '&via=', settings.twitter_account
],
/* Then join the array into one chunk of HTML */
tweetURL = tweetConstruct.join(''),

/* Same story for Facebook */
fbConstruct = [
'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=', link, '&src=sp'
],

fbURL = fbConstruct.join(''),

newHTML = [
''
],
shareHTML = newHTML.join('');
/* Load in our new HTML */
shareTip.innerHTML = shareHTML;
};

/* Since the shareTip will automatically fade out when the user mouses out of an element */
/* we have to specifically tell the shareTip we want it to stay put when the user mouses over it */
/* This effectively gives the user a 500 ms (or whatever) window to mouse */
/* from the element to the shareTip to prevent it from popping out */
$shareTip.hover(function(){
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
$shareTip.show();
checkOpacity();
}, function(){
$(this).fadeOut(settings.speed);
});

/* This function handles the hover action */
$(this).hover(function(){
/* remove the old links, so someone doesn't accidentally click on them */
removeLinks();

/* If there's already an animation running on the shareTip, stop it */
$shareTip.stop(true, true);

var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;


link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);

if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);

/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top

Read More..

Sheriff's response time is longer in unincorporated areas, audit finds









It took Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies a minute longer to respond to emergency calls from unincorporated parts of the county than from cities that contract with the department for police services, according to a county audit.


The finding comes days after Supervisor Gloria Molina accused Sheriff Lee Baca of "stealing" police resources from residents in unincorporated neighborhoods and threatened to hire "independent private patrol cars" to backfill cuts in sheriff's patrols. She has accused Baca of providing better service to contract cities than to unincorporated areas.


According to the audit, which examined the last fiscal year, it took deputies, on average, 4.8 minutes to respond to emergency calls in contract cities compared with 5.8 minutes in unincorporated areas.





Sheriff's officials said the extra minute was because neighborhoods in unincorporated areas are more spread out and have more difficult road conditions.


The audit also found that Baca provided 91% of promised patrol hours to unincorporated areas, compared with 99% for cities and agencies that buy his services. Sheriff's officials blamed the difference on deep budget cuts imposed by the board that caused the department to leave dozens of deputy positions unfilled.


Adjusted for those cuts, the department was much closer to its goal — averaging 98.5% fulfillment of its pledged patrol hours, according to the audit.


The findings by the county's auditor-controller are expected to add more fuel to the ongoing debate between the sheriff and the board about whether the sheriff is shortchanging county residents who live outside city borders.


Baca and his predecessors have long wrangled with supervisors over funding and patrol resources.


Although the board sets the sheriff's budget, Baca, an elected official, has wide discretion on how to spend it. The Sheriff's Department polices about three-fourths of the county. Along with the unincorporated areas, Baca's deputies patrol more than 40 cities within the county that don't have their own police forces. The patrol obligations for those cities are set in contracts with the department, so county budget cuts are more likely to affect unincorporated areas.


On Tuesday, the board is expected to discuss Molina's idea to empower unincorporated neighborhoods to negotiate police contracts with the Sheriff's Department or some other agency — the same way incorporated cities do.


According to the audit, it costs the sheriff about $552 million to provide police services for contract cities and agencies, but the department gets approximately $371 million back. The auditor-controller suggested pursuing changes in state law or board policy to allow the sheriff to recoup more.


State law prohibits sheriffs from billing contract cities for non-patrol services provided countywide. So the department has provided a broad range of services — such as homicide and narcotics detectives, bomb squads and the county crime lab — at no extra charge.


Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said those rigid agreements — with contract cities, the county's courts, community colleges and public transit lines — limited where the sheriff could slash in the face of county budget woes.


The board has cut the sheriff's budget — now at $2.8 billion — by $128 million in 2010, $96 million in 2011 and $140 million last year, according to Whitmore.


The sheriff has already reassigned about two dozen gang enforcement deputies to patrol in unincorporated areas and has identified more than 90 other deputies to do the same, Whitmore said.


Molina's spokeswoman declined to suggest other areas where sheriff's officials should slash in light of funding cuts from the board but said that services to unincorporated areas should not be one of them.


"We respectfully request they go back to the drawing board," spokeswoman Roxane Márquez said.


robert.faturechi@latimes.com





Read More..

Children’s magazine promotes adult video games






LONDON (Reuters) – A British magazine distributed by a joint venture of Conde Nast and Hearst Corporation and aimed at primary school children has been featuring images of adult-rated video games.


The most recent issue of Cool Kidz, which is published by privately-owned LCD Publishing, contained images of five games that carried age ratings of 18 years, under the European gaming industry’s PEGI rating scheme.






Screenshots appeared as double-page spreads, for use as posters, and were reproduced in spot-the-difference and other puzzles. Earlier issues also had images from 18- and 16-rated games.


Children’s campaigners said the images reflected a growing problem of young children being exposed to violent video games, thereby increasing the chance they start playing them earlier.


It also highlighted what some critics describe as an apparent gap in regulation of children’s magazines since LCD does not appear to have broken any law or industry rule.


LCD Publishing, which is based in Exeter, southwest England, said it took its responsibilities to young readers seriously.


“We censor the images we use to ensure that there is no blood or apparent body damage,” owner Allen Trump said in an emailed statement.


He said the images used were suitable for children 12 or older, although he added the magazine was targeted at children up to 12 years.


The pictures printed depicted life-like computer generated images of men carrying weapons including assault rifles, Bowie knives, an axe, an anti-tank weapon and pistols.


The images showed explosions but not the visceral, bloody combat or scenes of a sexual nature for which the games are frequently criticized by parents’ groups and women’s rights advocates.


Cool Kidz is distributed by Comag, which is controlled by privately-owned U.S. magazine publishers Conde Nast, owners of Vogue magazine, and the Hearst Corporation, owner of Cosmopolitan magazine.


All three groups declined repeated requests for comment.


London-based Comag is one of the largest magazine distributors in the UK with annual turnover of around 230 million pounds ($ 360 million), according to its most recent accounts.


FREE PROMOTION


Trump said LCD downloaded the game images from the Internet although he was also occasionally approached by public relations firms seeking coverage of their clients’ games.


Games publishers regularly post images on their websites, for use by online and print publishers, thus helping create awareness of their game.


Games firms contacted by Reuters said they were unaware Cool Kidz, which has been published for seven years, had been using their images.


The adult games Cool Kidz featured included Hitman: Absolution, Call of Duty Black Ops II, Assassins Creed III, Farcry 3 and Dishonored.


Representatives for Japan’s Square Enix, publisher of the Hitman series, privately-owned Bethesda Softworks, publisher of Dishonored, and Ubisoft Entertainment, publisher of Assassins Creed III and Farcry 3, said they opposed the use but declined to say whether they would take any legal action against LCD.


Call of Duty publisher Activision declined to comment.


Alison Sherratt, senior vice-president of teachers union ATL, said publishers and government needed to do more to limit children’s’ exposure to games.


“It puts peer pressure on children .. If they see these images, it gives them the idea it’s ok, it’s all right to play these games,” she added.


A spokeswoman for the Advertising Standards Authority said games companies could not advertise 18 rated games in children’s magazines and a spokesman for the Video Standards Council (VSC), the UK affiliate of PEGI, said its rules also prohibited this.


However, since the images were not paid-for advertising, or supplied to Cool Kidz by the games publishers, these rules do not apply.


The Press Complaints Commission can adjudicate on complaints against magazines but only in respect of its members. LCD is not one.


The Office of Fair Trade and the Professional Publishers Association, trade group for magazine publishers, said they were unaware of any bodies that had regulatory powers over the content of children’s magazines.


(Reporting by Tom Bergin; Editing by Jon Boyle)


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





Title Post: Children’s magazine promotes adult video games
Url Post: http://www.news.fluser.com/childrens-magazine-promotes-adult-video-games/
Link To Post : Children’s magazine promotes adult video games
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment




Read More..

Rupert Sanders' wife files for divorce in LA


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rupert Sanders' wife has filed for divorce five months after it was revealed the director had a brief affair with actress Kristen Stewart.


Liberty Ross, Sanders' wife of more than nine years, filed for divorce Friday in Los Angeles citing irreconcilable differences.


Ross' filing cites irreconcilable differences for the couple's breakup. They have two children, an 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.


The model-actress is seeking joint custody of the children and spousal support from her estranged husband, who directed Stewart in "Snow White and the Huntsman."


TMZ, which first reported the filing, stated that Sanders also filed divorce paperwork but it was not available on Monday.


Stewart, who has been dating "Twilight" co-star Robert Pattinson, apologized for her fling with Sanders in July after it was revealed by US Weekly.


Read More..

Rescuer Appears for New York Downtown Hospital





Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.




NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.


The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.


New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.


“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.


Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.


Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.


The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.


The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.


Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.


The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.


NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.


Read More..

U.S. home prices show strong growth in November









A leading measure of home prices in the biggest American cities posted strong year-over-year growth in November.


The S&P/Case Shiller 20-city index rose 5.5% from the same month a year earlier, rising in 19 out of the 20 metro areas tracked by the gauge.


According to the index, from October to November, prices declined 0.1% -- a normal seasonal slowdown. The data are the latest indication that home prices continued to rise through the end of last year as housing inventory dwindled and demand surged.





"Housing is clearly recovering," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "Prices are rising, as are both new and existing home sales."


The data indicate that the once hard-hit Sunbelt is resurgent.


In particular, Las Vegas and Phoenix are recovering rapidly. Prices in Las Vegas rose 10.0% over the year, with Phoenix showing a 22.8% increase.


Miami saw a 9.9% gain while Tampa was up 6.8%. California cities are also on the upswing, with San Diego rising 8%, Los Angeles up 7.7% and San Francisco increasing 12.7%.


The only metro area that declined on a year-over-year basis was New York, down 1.2%, according to the survey.


ALSO:


New home sales slip in December


San Bernardino drops eminent domain plan


Blogger keeps finger on the pulse of housing market





Read More..

'Argo' producer scours for the next stranger-than-fiction story









Hunched over a desk in his spartan Westwood apartment, David Klawans squints at his computer monitor and knits his brow in concentration. "I'm perusing," he says.


His eyes dart between headlines almost indecipherable on a Web page displaying about 800 stamp-sized images of newspapers from 90 different countries.


"Two kids running? What's that?" he exclaims before clicking on a photo. "Oh, it's refugees. Whatever. Moving on."





SAG 2013: Winners | Quotes | Photo BoothRed carpet | Backstage | Best & Worst


Nearly every day, for upward of 10-hour stretches, the independent film producer speed-reads police blogs, articles from RSS feeds and niche-interest journals in dogged pursuit of an elusive prize: a story on which to base his next movie.


His biggest hit to date is "Argo." Before the film landed seven Oscar nominations (including one for best picture) and two Golden Globes (including best drama picture), before it generated more than $180 million in worldwide grosses, "Argo" existed as a declassified story in the quarterly CIA journal Studies in Intelligence, which Klawans happens to have been perusing one day in 1998.


"It's like going on the beach with a metal detector," the self-described news junkie says of his process. "Like Kanye West looks through records to sample on his songs, I'm looking for stories to turn into films."


Klawans, 44, has established himself as Hollywood's least likely movie macher by heeding the advice of his mentor, the old-school producer David Brown ("Jaws," "A Few Good Men"): "Read everything you can get your hands on."


Indefatigable in his quest to root out oddball, overlooked true-life stories, Klawans spins material most others ignore into cinematic gold.


OSCAR WATCH: "ARGO"


"Argo" took nearly 14 years to reach the big screen after Klawans read about CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez's rescue of six American diplomats hiding in Tehran during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. Mendez (portrayed in the movie by "Argo's" director, Ben Affleck) posed the group as Canadian filmmakers scouting locations for a science-fiction film, created a fictitious production company and planted articles about the bogus project in Hollywood trade papers.


Throughout the '90s Klawans was scraping by as a production assistant for an L.A.-based Japanese TV commercial firm. He didn't own a car, so he bicycled to UCLA's magazine archive to check the story. In microfiche files, he came across the CIA's planted articles in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety from January 1980. "My jaw dropped," he says.


Problem was, Mendez already had representation at Creative Artists Agency and was preparing to publish a memoir, "The Master of Disguise." Even so, Klawans persuaded Mendez to let him attempt to set up a movie project. He eventually bought the rights to Mendez's life story as well.


OSCARS 2013: Nominations


"I'm cycling to pitch meetings wearing a backpack with a change of clothes. It's summertime and I'm sweating. And I'm getting to know studio security. They call me 'bike boy,'" remembers Klawans, who would switch from bike to business attire outside the studio gates. "I would basically throw my backpack behind a bush — I was embarrassed to look like a messenger guy."


The New York University film school graduate was born in Chicago. His family moved to Belgium when he was 2 and he grew up in Europe and the U.S. consuming a steady diet of sci-fi and fantasy films including "Star Wars."


He came close to setting up the "Argo" project as a cable TV movie. But when that deal fell through, Klawans says, "it hit me that Tony had planted stories in Variety and Hollywood Reporter as a cover. For the CIA, it's all about illusions and perception. I thought, 'That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to plant an "Argo" story in a magazine.'"


The producer had met former L.A. Weekly staff writer and "This American Life" contributor Joshuah Bearman through friends who thought the two shared an appreciation for offbeat material. Bearman also had experience turning a magazine story into a movie; an article he reported for Harper's became the 2007 documentary "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters," about two die-hard video game players vying for the world's highest score in the vintage arcade game "Donkey Kong."


Klawans handed over his research and contacts to Bearman and proposed that the journalist write "Argo" as a magazine article that would entice movie backers.


Bearman landed an assignment from Wired magazine, then interviewed everyone he could: Mendez, officials in the State Department with knowledge of the exfiltration and Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran who housed some of the fugitive American diplomats, as well as the six embassy "houseguests."





Read More..

'Argo' on a roll with big win at SAG Awards


LOS ANGELES (AP) — A few weeks ago, the Oscar race looked wide open. The stately, historical "Lincoln" seemed like the safe and likely choice, with the provocative "Zero Dark Thirty" and the quirky and inspiring "Silver Linings Playbook" very much in the mix for the Academy Award for best picture.


But now, an "Argo" juggernaut — an "Argo"-naut, if you will — seems to be rolling along and gathering momentum as we head toward Hollywood's top prize.


The international thriller from director Ben Affleck, who also stars as a CIA operative orchestrating a daring rescue during the 1979 Iranian hostage crisis, received the top honor of best ensemble cast in a movie at Sunday night's Screen Actors Guild Awards, their equivalent of the best-picture Oscar. It's a decent indicator of eventual Academy Awards success, with the two matching up about half the time.


The film, which also stars John Goodman and Alan Arkin as Hollywood veterans who help stage a fake movie as a cover, has received nearly unanimous critical raves and has proven to be a box-office favorite, as well, grossing nearly $190 million worldwide.


But "Argo" also won the Producers Guild of America Award on Saturday night, which is an excellent Oscar predictor, and it earned best picture and director statues from the Golden Globes two weeks earlier. The Directors Guild of America Awards next Saturday will help crystallize the situation even further.


The one tricky thing at work here: Affleck surprisingly didn't receive an Academy Award nomination in the director category, which most often goes hand in hand with best picture. (There are nine best-picture nominees but only five slots for directors.) Only once in modern times has a film won best picture without a directing nomination: 1989's "Driving Miss Daisy." The other two times came in the show's early years, at the first Oscars in 1929 with "Wings" and for 1932's "Grand Hotel."


Asked backstage at the SAG Awards what might happen when the Oscar winners are announced Feb. 24, Affleck said: "I don't do handicapping or try to divine what's going to happen down the road with movies.


"I didn't get nominated as a director and I thought, 'OK, that's that.' Then I remembered that I was nominated as a producer," said Affleck, who already has an original screenplay Oscar for writing 1997's "Good Will Hunting" with longtime friend Matt Damon. "Nothing may happen but it's a wonderful opportunity to be on the ride and I'm really honored."


Many of the usual suspects throughout the lengthy awards season heard their names called again Sunday night, including Daniel Day-Lewis as best actor for his intense, deeply immersed portrayal of the 16th U.S. president in "Lincoln." Accepting the prize on stage, he gave thanks to several of his colleagues including "The Master" star Joaquin Phoenix (who did not receive a SAG nomination), Leonardo DiCaprio and Liam Neeson.


Backstage, Day-Lewis elaborated for reporters that DiCaprio urged him to stick with Steven Spielberg's project, which was in the works for many years.


"He said, 'Don't give up, he's the greatest man of the 19th century,'" Day-Lewis said. "So this is all Leo's fault."


His co-star, Tommy Lee Jones, also won again in the supporting-actor category for his lacerating portrayal of abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens in Spielberg's Civil War epic.


Anne Hathaway, the front-runner for best supporting actress at the Oscars and a winner already at the Golden Globes, won at the SAGs for her performance as the doomed prostitute Fantine in the gritty musical "Les Miserables."


"I'm just thrilled I have dental," Hathaway joked on stage.


But in the already-tight best actress race, Jennifer Lawrence made things a little more interesting in winning for the drama "Silver Linings Playbook." The 22-year-old plays a damaged young widow opposite Bradley Cooper, whose character is fresh out of a mental institution. Jessica Chastain, the winner at the Golden Globes, has been her main competition as a driven CIA operative searching for Osama bin Laden in "Zero Dark Thirty."


Lawrence said on stage that she got her SAG card at 14 — which was only eight short years ago — for a promo for the MTV reality series "My Super Sweet 16," which she said felt like the best day of her life.


"And now I have this naked statue which means that some of you even voted for me, and that is an indescribable feeling," she said.


On the television side, the popular PBS series "Downton Abbey" bested more established shows like "Mad Men" to win the TV drama cast award in just its first nomination. "Modern Family" won the comedy cast prize for the third straight year.


And Dick Van Dyke received the guild's life-achievement award, an honor he presented last year to his "The Dick Van Dyke Show" co-star, Mary Tyler Moore.


After receiving a lengthy standing ovation from the audience, he asked his fellow actors, "Aren't we lucky that we found a line of work that doesn't require growing up?"


____


Contact AP Movie Writer Christy Lemire through Twitter: http://twitter.com/christylemire


Read More..

Well: Keeping Blood Pressure in Check

Since the start of the 21st century, Americans have made great progress in controlling high blood pressure, though it remains a leading cause of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and kidney disease.

Now 48 percent of the more than 76 million adults with hypertension have it under control, up from 29 percent in 2000.

But that means more than half, including many receiving treatment, have blood pressure that remains too high to be healthy. (A normal blood pressure is lower than 120 over 80.) With a plethora of drugs available to normalize blood pressure, why are so many people still at increased risk of disease, disability and premature death? Hypertension experts offer a few common, and correctable, reasons:

¶ About 20 percent of affected adults don’t know they have high blood pressure, perhaps because they never or rarely see a doctor who checks their pressure.

¶ Of the 80 percent who are aware of their condition, some don’t appreciate how serious it can be and fail to get treated, even when their doctors say they should.

¶ Some who have been treated develop bothersome side effects, causing them to abandon therapy or to use it haphazardly.

¶ Many others do little to change lifestyle factors, like obesity, lack of exercise and a high-salt diet, that can make hypertension harder to control.

Dr. Samuel J. Mann, a hypertension specialist and professor of clinical medicine at Weill-Cornell Medical College, adds another factor that may be the most important. Of the 71 percent of people with hypertension who are currently being treated, too many are taking the wrong drugs or the wrong dosages of the right ones.

Dr. Mann, author of “Hypertension and You: Old Drugs, New Drugs, and the Right Drugs for Your High Blood Pressure,” says that doctors should take into account the underlying causes of each patient’s blood pressure problem and the side effects that may prompt patients to abandon therapy. He has found that when treatment is tailored to the individual, nearly all cases of high blood pressure can be brought and kept under control with available drugs.

Plus, he said in an interview, it can be done with minimal, if any, side effects and at a reasonable cost.

“For most people, no new drugs need to be developed,” Dr. Mann said. “What we need, in terms of medication, is already out there. We just need to use it better.”

But many doctors who are generalists do not understand the “intricacies and nuances” of the dozens of available medications to determine which is appropriate to a certain patient.

“Prescribing the same medication to patient after patient just does not cut it,” Dr. Mann wrote in his book.

The trick to prescribing the best treatment for each patient is to first determine which of three mechanisms, or combination of mechanisms, is responsible for a patient’s hypertension, he said.

¶ Salt-sensitive hypertension, more common in older people and African-Americans, responds well to diuretics and calcium channel blockers.

¶ Hypertension driven by the kidney hormone renin responds best to ACE inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers, as well as direct renin inhibitors and beta-blockers.

¶ Neurogenic hypertension is a product of the sympathetic nervous system and is best treated with beta-blockers, alpha-blockers and drugs like clonidine.

According to Dr. Mann, neurogenic hypertension results from repressed emotions. He has found that many patients with it suffered trauma early in life or abuse. They seem calm and content on the surface but continually suppress their distress, he said.

One of Dr. Mann’s patients had had high blood pressure since her late 20s that remained well-controlled by the three drugs her family doctor prescribed. Then in her 40s, periodic checks showed it was often too high. When taking more of the prescribed medication did not result in lasting control, she sought Dr. Mann’s help.

After a thorough work-up, he said she had a textbook case of neurogenic hypertension, was taking too much medication and needed different drugs. Her condition soon became far better managed, with side effects she could easily tolerate, and she no longer feared she would die young of a heart attack or stroke.

But most patients should not have to consult a specialist. They can be well-treated by an internist or family physician who approaches the condition systematically, Dr. Mann said. Patients should be started on low doses of one or more drugs, including a diuretic; the dosage or number of drugs can be slowly increased as needed to achieve a normal pressure.

Specialists, he said, are most useful for treating the 10 percent to 15 percent of patients with so-called resistant hypertension that remains uncontrolled despite treatment with three drugs, including a diuretic, and for those whose treatment is effective but causing distressing side effects.

Hypertension sometimes fails to respond to routine care, he noted, because it results from an underlying medical problem that needs to be addressed.

“Some patients are on a lot of blood pressure drugs — four or five — who probably don’t need so many, and if they do, the question is why,” Dr. Mann said.

Read More..

First subject: Paying for college

























































































First subject: Paying for college


Several websites can give loan and college cost information to parents. Above, Cal State Long Beach students head to classes as the spring semester gets underway.
(Christina House, For The Times / January 28, 2013)





































































By Reid Kanaley

College acceptance letters are starting to arrive, and families now must figure out how to pay the tuition. Here are some sites that offer guidance to the world of financial aid:


The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A relatively new federal agency, the bureau has a beta site on college finances. One of the bureau's goals is to make students' borrowing costs clearer. Near the top of the page is a college-prep timeline showing the steps from researching schools to repaying college debt. Along the way, one presumably gets an education.





Federal student aid. The first step in requesting federal aid for school is to fill out the Federal Application for Student Aid. You have to do it only once a year, no matter how many colleges you apply to. And the earlier the better. As soon as you file the electronic form, you'll see what is likely to be a shocking ballpark number for the education expenses you're expected to pay out of pocket.


U.S. News & World Report college roundup. The section on paying for an education is meant to explain some of the terminology and procedures that students and families will encounter. Take note of the "overlooked ways to pay for college," which include getting an early start on college savings accounts called 529 plans and digging around for otherwise-overlooked community sources of scholarship money.


College Board. This group, which runs the SAT college-entrance examination system, also offers advice on financing your higher education. This page includes a link to the board's scholarship-search service. Many scholarships have obscure criteria, so how would you even find all the ones that might fit you? Fill out a questionnaire that can help match students to what the board says is $6 billion available in scholarships through 2,200 programs.


Kanaley writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer.






















































































































































































Comments are filtered for language and registration is required. The Times makes no guarantee of comments' factual accuracy. Readers may report inappropriate comments by clicking the Report Abuse link next to a comment. Here are the full legal terms you agree to by using this comment form.
















































';
shareDiv.innerHTML = templateHTML;

/* append the new div to the end of the document, which is hidden already with CSS */
document.body.appendChild(shareDiv);

/* Store the div in both a regular JavaScript variable and as a jQuery object so we can reference them faster later */
var shareTip = document.getElementById('shareTip'),
$shareTip = $('#shareTip');

/* This extends our settings object with any user-defined settings passed to the function and returns the jQuery object shareTip
was called on */
return this.each(function() {
if (options) {
$.extend(settings, options);
}

/* This is a hack to make sure the shareTip always fades back to 100% opacity */
var checkOpacity = function (){
if ( $shareTip.css('opacity') !== 1 ){
$shareTip.css({'opacity': 1});
}
};

/* Function that replaces the HTML in the shareTip with the template we defined at the top */
/* It will wipe/reset the links on the social media buttons each time the function is called */
var removeLinks = function (){
shareTip.innerHTML = templateHTML;
};

/* This is the function that makes the links for the Tweet / Share functionality */

var makeURLS = function (link, message){
/* Here we construct the Tweet URL using an array, with values passed to the function */
var tweetConstruct = [
'http://twitter.com/share?url=', link, '&text=', message, '&via=', settings.twitter_account
],
/* Then join the array into one chunk of HTML */
tweetURL = tweetConstruct.join(''),

/* Same story for Facebook */
fbConstruct = [
'http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=', link, '&src=sp'
],

fbURL = fbConstruct.join(''),

newHTML = [
''
],
shareHTML = newHTML.join('');
/* Load in our new HTML */
shareTip.innerHTML = shareHTML;
};

/* Since the shareTip will automatically fade out when the user mouses out of an element */
/* we have to specifically tell the shareTip we want it to stay put when the user mouses over it */
/* This effectively gives the user a 500 ms (or whatever) window to mouse */
/* from the element to the shareTip to prevent it from popping out */
$shareTip.hover(function(){
$shareTip.stop(true, true);
$shareTip.show();
checkOpacity();
}, function(){
$(this).fadeOut(settings.speed);
});

/* This function handles the hover action */
$(this).hover(function(){
/* remove the old links, so someone doesn't accidentally click on them */
removeLinks();

/* If there's already an animation running on the shareTip, stop it */
$shareTip.stop(true, true);

var eso = $(this),
message,
/* Store the width and height of the shareTip and the offset of the element for our calculations */
height = eso.height(),
width = eso.width(),
offset = eso.offset(),
link;


link = eso.children('a').attr('href');
message = escape( eso.find('img').attr('alt') ) || eso.attr(settings.message_attr);

if (link.search('http://') === -1){
link = 'http://www.latimes.com' + link;
}
link = encodeURIComponent(link);

/* If it's at the top of the page, the shareTip will pop under the element */
if (offset.top

Read More..