NBC sets premiere dates for “1600 Penn,” Eva Longoria series

LOS ANGELES, Oct 30 (TheWrap.com) – NBC announced midseason premiere dates Tuesday for three new series, including the Bill Pullman presidential comedy “1600 Penn” and the new Eva Longoria relationship series “Ready for Love.”

The network also announced the premiere date for the drama “Deception,” which was formerly known as “Infamous.”

In addition to the series premieres, the network announced return dates for several shows, including the on-the-bubble comedy “Community,” which will return to its previous Thursday night timeslot.

“Deception,” a dark family mystery starring Meagan Good and Victor Garber, premieres on Monday, January 7 at 10 p.m. It will follow “The Biggest Loser,” which starts its new season with a two-night premiere on January 6 and 7.

“1600 Penn,” starring Bill Pullman as the president in a comedy about the First Family, premieres Thursday, January 10 at 9:30. The series, which also stars Jenna Elfman and Josh Gad, was co-created by “Modern Family” director Jason Winer. It will join a slightly altered Thursday lineup.

“Parks and Recreation” moves to 8:30 on January 17, and “Community,” returns to 8 p.m. on February 7.

“Ready for Love,” a reality show executive produced by former “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, will premiere Sunday, March 31 at 8 p.m.

(Editing By Zorianna Kit)

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¿Las demandas por los efectos adversos de Neurontin aumentan el gasto en salud?

NUEVA YORK (Reuters Health) – En el 2004, el laboratorio

Pfizer aceptó declararse culpable y pagar más de 430 millones de

dólares por la acusación de haber comercializado el

antiepiléptico Neurontin ilegalmente para usos no aprobados.

Ahora, un estudio publicado en Journal of Clinical Psychiatry

cuestiona si el juicio terminó aumentando el gasto en otros

antiepilépticos en lugar de reducir los usos sin aprobación.

Los médicos pueden recetar fármacos con usos no autorizados

por las autoridades regulatorias de Estados Unidos, pero la

industria tiene prohibido comercializarlos con esos fines.

“En los últimos años hubo juicios importantes para penalizar

a las empresas farmacéuticas por la promoción ilegal de usos no

aprobados”, dijo Meredith Chace, investigadora especializada en

políticas farmacéuticas de la Facultad de Medicina de Harvard,

Boston. “Sospechábamos que eso podía tener consecuencias no

intencionales.”

Con su equipo analizó información del período 2001-2005 de

los seguros de salud federales Medicare y Medicaid. Se

concentraron en el tratamiento del trastorno bipolar, uno de los

distintos usos sin aprobar de Neurontin (gabapentina).

Desde la primera noticia publicada sobre el juicio en marzo

del 2002, la participación de Neurontin en el mercado de los

antiepilépticos que se utilizan para tratar el trastorno bipolar

se redujo del 21 al 15 por ciento.

En tanto, se disparó o siguió creciendo ese uso sin

aprobación de otros cuatro fármacos (uno de ellos aprobado más

adelante). Hasta el gasto en Neurontin aumentó, a pesar de que

se redujo su indicación.

“Desafortunadamente, el estudio sugiere que los médicos

siguieron indicando medicamentos sin efectividad probada para el

tratamiento del trastorno bipolar”, dijo el doctor Daniel

Carlat, psiquiatra y director del Proyecto Pew de Indicaciones

Médicas, que promueve políticas para limitar las relaciones

entre los médicos y la industria que afecten la atención de los

pacientes.

¿NO TAN DAÑINO COMO SE ESPERABA?

El nuevo estudio detalla que en el 2000, dos años antes de

que se conocieran las noticias sobre el juicio, las ventas de

Neurontin eran de casi 1.000 millones de dólares, principalmente

por sus usos no autorizados. Chace opinó que la cobertura

negativa de los medios influyó en parte en la caída de las

ventas de Neurontin y que es posible que el fabricante

aumentara los precios para anticiparse.

El equipo estima que el gasto gubernamental en

antiepilépticos para el tratamiento del trastorno bipolar

aumentó en más de 200 millones de dólares después del juicio,

sin incluir los potenciales cambios de indicaciones del mismo

producto para otras enfermedades, como la migraña, el síndrome

de piernas inquietas y distintos trastornos asociados con el

dolor.

“Las consecuencias no esperadas incluyen la sustitución de

otros productos similares y un aumento del gasto general”, dijo

Chace a Reuters Health.

Agregó que los ensayos clínicos habían demostrado que

Neurontin no es efectivo para el tratamiento del trastorno

bipolar, aunque con algunas excepciones.

Una limitación del estudio es no haber incluido información

sobre la inversión de la industria en la comercialización de sus

productos. Además, el cargo de Carlat está parcialmente

financiado con un subsidio que surgió del arreglo comercial de

la demanda contra Pfizer.

“Se desconoce si el juicio fue la causa del aumento de la

indicación de antiepilépticos y, por lo tanto, del gasto en

salud -dijo Carlat por e-mail-. El estudio no controló los

efectos de otros factores en las decisiones médicas, como la

estrategia de comercialización de otros productores de

antiepilépticos y la información científica de la efectividad de

otros fármacos.”

El doctor Randall S. Stafford, que no participó del estudio,

opinó sobre la posibilidad de que el juicio “no haya dañado a

Pfizer tanto como se esperaba”. Dijo por e-mail que “se estaba

venciendo la patente de Neurontin y el juicio sólo aceleró el

cambio deseado al uso sin aprobar de Lyrica”, un antiepiléptico

(pregabalina) que aún conserva su patente y fue motivo de otro

juicio similar contra Pfizer, que aceptó un convenio por 2.300

millones de dólares en el 2009.

Pfizer no realizó comentarios sobre resultados asociados “con

un acuerdo de hace una década”.

Chace consideró que las autoridades deberían trabajar con las

asociaciones médicas para informar a los profesionales sobre

estas crisis para que actúen adecuadamente.

FUENTE: Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, online 16 de octubre

del 2012

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Disney buys firm behind Star Wars

30 October 2012 Last updated at 17:25 ET

Disney is buying Lucasfilm, the company behind the Star Wars films, from its chairman and founder George Lucas for $ 4.05bn (£2.5bn).

Mr Lucas said: “It’s now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of film-makers.”

In a statement announcing the purchase, Disney said it planned to release a new Star Wars film, episode seven, in 2015.

That will be followed by episodes eight and nine and then one new movie every two or three years, the company said.

The last Star Wars film was 2005′s Revenge of the Sith, and Disney said it believed there was “substantial pent-up demand”.

Disney will pay about half in cash and half in stock, issuing 40 million Disney shares in the transaction.

The deal follows Disney’s acquisitions of Pixar studios for $ 7.4bn in 2006 and Marvel comics for $ 4.2bn in 2009.

“Our valuation of Lucasfilm is roughly comparable to the value we placed on Marvel when we announced that acquisition in 2009,” Disney said, adding that the valuation was almost entirely driven by the Star Wars franchise.

Transition

George Lucas launched Lucasfilm in 1971 and the first Star Wars film was released in 1977.

“For the past 35 years, one of my greatest pleasures has been to see Star Wars passed from one generation to the next,” Mr Lucas said.

“I’ve always believed that Star Wars could live beyond me, and I thought it was important to set up the transition during my lifetime.”

Mr Lucas will continue as a creative consultant.

Kathleen Kennedy, currently co-chairman of Lucasfilm, will become president of the firm and will be the executive producer on the new Star Wars films.

Lucasfilm is also the production company behind the Indiana Jones franchise, and fantasy films Willow and Labyrinth.

Michael Corty, analyst at Morning Star, said Disney’s deal was clearly part of a pattern in buying new franchises.

“Pixar was the first big one, then Marvel, and now this one here,” he said.

“Because Lucas is private, I would assume most investors would be surprised.”

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Founding Father featured in popular new video game

McLEAN, Va. (AP) — Wars and video games seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. But those games usually involve tanks and machine guns and Tet offensives; not horses, bayonets and Bunker Hill.

Now, though, one of the biggest game releases of the upcoming holiday season is immersing players in the Revolutionary War, with key cameos from George Washington, Ben Franklin and other Founding Fathers.

Assassin’s Creed III is due for release Tuesday, immersing players in Colonial America and the Revolutionary War.

In some ways, the game is meticulous with historical accuracy. Great attention was paid to research to recreate the cities of New York and Boston on a one-third scale. History professors were brought in as consultants.

In other ways, the game takes liberties with history. It integrates the Revolutionary War into the overarching story of Assassin’s Creed, in which the secret society of the Knights Templar fills the role as the game’s overarching villain.

Game creators were reluctant to reveal too many details in advance of the game’s release. Review copies were not available in advance.

The game’s creative director, Alex Hutchinson, said the ability to explore a historical era that has been largely left untouched by the gaming world was one of the most exciting aspects of the project.

As for Washington himself, Hutchinson said he wanted the game to portray the fact that for the man who would become the nation’s first president, it was far from certain that America would win the war.

“He wasn’t sure he was going to win,” Hutchinson said. “When you read their letters, they were very uncertain for much of their time” how the war would turn out.

Francois Furstenberg, a history professor at the University of Montreal, who has written about the iconography that surrounds Washington, served as a consultant and said he was interested less in making sure names and dates were perfect, but more in the game’s overarching narrative. He said the game’s creators shared his desire to depict the war in a nuanced way that avoided portraying one side as the good guys and vice versa.

“Anything that complicates the narrative is a good thing,” he said. “If anything I think they were more interested in sort of a muckraking account” of the revolution, something that agreed with Furstenberg.

The game’s protagonist — Connor, half American Indian, Half British and not aligned with either side — served as a good vehicle for exploring the era in a way that avoids patriotic cliches, Hutchinson said.

The game’s international fan base also demands an even-handed approach to the Revolution, said Hutchinson, who is frequently questioned by skeptical fans who worry the game will be too pro-American.

Not to worry, said Hutchinson, who jokes that he’s an Australian living in Canada making a game about the American Revolution for a French software company.

Even where it sought to be realistic, the game’s creators took a few liberties. Washington, for instance, is first introduced as a young officer serving under General Braddock in the French and Indian war. The game makers took great care to show the youthful Washington accurately, as a redhead. Looking at the finished product, though, they felt they ought to add a touch of gray to Washington‘s hair, to more closely match the iconic image of Washington held by the public.

“We did not know how odd it is to see a red-headed George Washington,” Hutchinson said. “It was one of those instances where the fiction felt more right than the real version.”

Ubisoft takes far greater liberties in a downloadable add-on game that will be available to Assassin’s Creed players a few months after the games release. In “The Tyranny of King Washington,” players confront a scenario where Washington, rather than yielding power to civil authority, parlays his power and popularity and establishes himself as a new monarch.

At George Washington‘s Mount Vernon estate, curators are happy that the game will introduce so many kids to Washington and the Founding Fathers and hopefully get them thinking about history.

“I would love for people to focus on exactly the incredible choice Washington made to relinquish power,” said Carol Cadou, senior curator at Mount Vernon, even if the vehicle for prompting that discussion is a game that contorts and creates an alternate reality.

Historical figures certainly make appearances in some video games, but rarely from historical eras and rarely in a setting devoted to realism. The popular game “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” for instance, features John F. Kennedy, Fidel Castro, Richard Nixon and former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. But in the game, the four of them team up to defeat an onslaught of zombies at the Pentagon.

Cadou says that Washington has so often been portrayed so heroically that he becomes unrelatable.

“Washington is almost so good he becomes bland,” she said. “Even if he’s depicted in a negative way, it gives us an opportunity to explore” his life that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

The Mount Vernon estate has focused in recent years on piercing the stodgy image of Washington on the dollar bill and sought to emphasize his military daring and action-hero aspects of his life story.

Mount Vernon even looked at producing its own educational video game featuring Washington, but ultimately concluded that such a game would be “a little more violent than we had the appetite for.”

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Taylor Swift to co-host Grammy nominations in Nashville

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Country-pop star Taylor Swift will co-host the Grammy nominations live on television from Nashville, the capital of country music, the Recording Academy said on Monday.

Swift, 22, who has won six Grammy awards, will join rapper-actor LL Cool J to announce nominees in some of the major categories during a one-hour live telecast on December 5, featuring performances from country artist Luke Bryan and pop-rockers Maroon 5.

The singer is currently on a touring blitz to promote her latest album, “Red”, and has become an awards show favorite, most recently premiering her new single at the MTV Video Music Awards in September.

Swift’s addition to the roster is part of the Grammy organization’s celebration of country music this year, moving the nominations concert from Los Angeles to Nashville, home to the Grand Ole Opry and dozens of recording studios that have spawned artists such as Swift, Carrie Underwood and Lady Antebellum.

Organizers began televising the nominations in a live show five years ago in a bid to boost TV viewership for the annual Grammy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles in February. This year, 39.9 million viewers tuned in to see British singer Adele sweep the awards with six major wins.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Dale Hudson)

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Hurricane Sandy: Tips to Make Tap Water Safe for Drinking

Oct 29, 2012 7:10pm

If water supply becomes contaminated, you can either boil water for one minute or make water safe with bleach.

Here is how:

If tap water is clear:

1. Add eight drops of household unscented liquid bleach to one gallon of water.

2. Mix well and wait 30 minutes or more before drinking.

If tap water is cloudy:

1. Add 16 drops of unscented household liquid bleach to one gallon of water.

2. Mix well and wait 30 minutes or more before drinking.

In addition:

• Never mix bleach with ammonia or other cleaners.


• Open windows and doors to get fresh air when you use bleach.

For more information, go to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website.

SHOWS: World News

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Steve Jobs’ ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ Is Out at Apple

Apple (AAPL) today announced the departure of Scott Forstall, the company’s senior vice president of its mobile operating system, iOS. The departure was abrupt, but perhaps not entirely unexpected. Forstall had been a longtime and talented member of Apple’s executive team, but as Bloomberg Businessweek reported in a cover story last year, he was also a polarizing figure within the company. He was not without internal rivals and enemies: As we said in our 2011 article, Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief, and Bob Mansfield, the company’s head of technology, would rarely take meetings with him unless the Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, was also present.

Forstall is a talented, able performer at various who brought a tremendous amount of energy to many product rollouts at Apple. Which is why his absence from the recent iPad Mini announcement raised some eyebrows. At any major release of a new iOS device, Forstall would have been expected to speak to journalists who gathered in San Jose last week.

Overseeing iOS put Forstall in a tremendous position of power, as Apple’s mobile operating system has increasingly been where the action is in new Apple products and services, but his tenure had plenty of speed bumps. The company’s rollout of iCloud has been better than the previous attempts with Mobile Me and .Mac—iCloud has generated complaints about how hard it is to configure. Forstall was an early supporter of Apple’s purchase of Siri, which led to the voice-activated assistant of the same name—Siri’s been criticized for reliability issues. Add to that the recent Maps issue, in which CEO Cook had to release an apology to Apple customers. It’s quite possible that Forstall, for all his agreed-upon talent and dedication to the company, had little to defend himself with when an reorganization was proposed and he had few friends in the executive suite in Cupertino.

Being demanding or prickly is fine when you’re doing everything right (or, in Steve Jobs’s case, when it’s your company). But if things start to go south on you, it can leave you awfully exposed, with few people leaping to your defense or aid (ask A-Rod). Maybe nice guys finish last, but at least they finish.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Pole gets 30 years for killing 6 on Channel Island

LONDON (AP) — A Polish builder who killed six people, including his wife and children, on the British Channel Island of Jersey has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Damian Rzeszowski, 31, carried out the knife attack in August 2011 at his home. He was said to have become depressed after his wife admitted to an affair.

Rzeszowski was convicted of six counts of manslaughter but cleared of murder. On Monday, Judge Michael Birt sentenced him to 30 years in jail for each victim, but the sentences are to run concurrently.

Rzeszowski’s victims were his wife Izabela Rzeszowska, 30; 5-year-old daughter, Kinga; 2-year-old son, Kacper; father-in-law, Marek Gartska, 56; his wife’s friend Marta De La Haye, 34; and her 5-year-old daughter, Julia.

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Apple software, retail chiefs out in sweeping overhaul

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Apple Inc Chief Executive Tim Cook on Monday replaced the heads of its software and retail units in the company’s most sweeping executive shake-up in a decade following embarrassing problems with its new mapping program and unpopular store-related decisions.

Software chief Scott Forstall, who oversaw the launch of the flawed mapping software and much criticized Siri voice-enabled assistant, will leave Apple next year and serve as an advisor to Cook in the meantime.

Forstall, seen as a polarizing figure inside Apple, had been billed as one of the future candidates to take the top job at Apple. He was the executive behind the panned Apple Maps app that the company announced with much fanfare in summer.

The moves, which come a little more than a year into Cook’s tenure as CEO, were described by Apple as a way to increase “collaboration” across its hardware, software and services business.

“These changes show that Tim Cook is stamping his authority on the business,” Ben Wood, analyst with CCS Insight, said. “Perhaps disappointed with the Maps issues, Forstall became the scapegoat.”

Critics of the maps debacle, which led Cook to apologize to customers, had been calling for Forstall’s head. “Does Apple have a Scott Forstall problem?” Fortune editor Philip Elmer Dewitt wrote on Sept 29.

The moves hand over substantially more responsibility to Cue, the head of Internet Software and Services who helped create the iTunes music store and App Store. The 23-year Apple veteran already is in charge of Cloud services and will take on Apple Maps and Siri.

Apple said a search is underway for a new retail chief to replace John Browett and that the retail team would report directly to Cook. Browett had riled up the retail store staff when he decided to reduce the number of retail employees.

Browett took over as head of Apple’s retail stores earlier this year, replacing Ron Johnson, who went on to become the CEO of JC Penney.

Last week Apple delivered a second straight quarter of disappointing financial results, and iPad sales fell short of Wall Street’s targets, marring its record of consistently blowing past investors’ expectations.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang)

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Reports: UK rocker arrested as part of Savile case

LONDON (AP) — Police investigating child sex abuse allegations against the late BBC television host Jimmy Savile arrested former glam rock star and convicted sex offender Gary Glitter on Sunday, British media reported, raising further questions about whether Savile was at the center of a broader pedophile ring.

Police would not directly identify the suspect arrested Sunday, but media including the BBC and Press Association reported he was the 68-year-old Glitter.

The musician, whose real name is Paul Gadd, made it big with the crowd-pleasing hit “Rock & Roll (Part 2),” a mostly instrumental anthem that has been a staple at American sporting events, thanks to its catchy “hey” chorus. But he fell into disgrace after being convicted on child abuse charges in Vietnam.

Sunday’s arrest was the first in a widening scandal over Savile’s alleged sex crimes, which started garnering attention earlier this month when a television documentary showed several women claiming that Savile abused them when they were teenagers. Hundreds of potential victims have since come forward to report similar claims to police against Savile, a much-loved children’s TV presenter and disc jockey who died at the age of 84 last year.

Most have alleged abuse by Savile, but some said they were abused by Savile and others. Most claimed they were assaulted in their early teens.

The scandal has raised questions about whether the BBC, the publicly funded and trusted broadcaster, had ignored crimes it suspected over several decades. Its executives have apologized and vowed to uncover the true scale of the alleged abuse.

“The BBC’s reputation is on the line,” Chris Patten, the chairman of the BBC Trust, wrote in The Mail on Sunday newspaper. “The BBC risks squandering public trust because one of its stars over three decades was apparently a sexual criminal … and because others — BBC employees and hangers-on — may also have been involved.”

On Sunday, the BBC and Sky News showed footage of Glitter, who wore a hat, a dark coat and sunglasses, being taken from his home by officers and driven away.

Police would not directly identify the suspect, but when asked about Glitter a spokesman said the force arrested a man in his 60s early Sunday morning in London on suspicion of sexual offenses in connection with the Savile probe. He was released later Sunday and was due to return to a London police station in December for further questioning, police said. British police do not generally identify suspects under arrest by name until they are charged.

Glitter, known for his shiny jumpsuits and bouffant wigs, was jailed in Britain in 1999 for possessing child pornography, and convicted in 2006 in Vietnam of committing “obscene acts with children” — offenses involving girls aged 10 and 11. He was deported back to Britain in 2008.

In 2006, the NFL advised its football teams not to use the Glitter version of “Rock and Roll (Part 2)” at games.

One witness recently told a BBC-TV show that she once saw Glitter having sex with a schoolgirl in Savile’s dressing room at the broadcaster’s TV center in the 1970s. Glitter has denied the allegations.

Police have said that though the majority of cases it is investigating relate to Savile alone, some involve the entertainer and other unidentified suspects. In addition, some potential victims who reported abuse by Savile also told police about separate allegations against unidentified men that did not involve the BBC host.

The scandal has horrified Britain with revelations that Savile, the longtime host of the popular BBC shows “Top of the Pops” and “Jim will Fix It,” allegedly cajoled and coerced vulnerable teens into having sex with him in his car, his camper van, and even in dingy dressing rooms on BBC premises. Police describe him as one of the worst sex offenders in recent history.

The BBC has set up an independent inquiry into the corporation’s culture and practices in the years Savile worked there. It also launched a separate inquiry into why its managers shelved an investigation into the allegations.

But the scandal continues to put the broadcaster under pressure, and it seems likely that more people — either outside or inside the corporation — could be implicated.

“It could be the beginning of other high-profile arrests,” Roy Greenslade, a journalism professor at London’s City University, said in an interview with The Associated Press on Sunday.

Max Clifford, a prominent public relations guru, claimed that dozens of celebrities from the 1960s and 1970s have approached him to express fear that they could be drawn into to the scandal and criticized for their hedonistic behavior in the past.

Greenslade said that while Glitter’s arrest must be a huge concern to the BBC, it is too early to say that the broadcaster’s reputation is in crisis.

“If any BBC employee is shown to be involved, then there would be a nosedive in public trust,” he said. “But nothing at the moment has been proven.”

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