US video game sales drop 25 percent in October

NEW YORK (AP) — A research firm says U.S. retail sales of new video game hardware, software and accessories fell 25 percent in October.

The drop marks the 11th straight month of declining sales for physical game products. Many gamers are waiting for big holiday releases such as Activision Blizzard Inc.‘s “Call of Duty: Black Ops II.”

The NPD Group said Thursday that sales fell to $ 755.5 million from $ 1 billion a year earlier.

Sales of video games themselves, excluding PC titles, fell 25 percent to $ 432.6 million. Sales of hardware such as Microsoft’s Xbox 360 fell 37 percent to $ 187.3 million. Sales of accessories, meanwhile, grew 5 percent to $ 135.6 million.

NPD estimates that retail sales account for about half of all video game spending. The rest is downloads, apps and the like.

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Myanmar says Obama to visit later this month

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — President Barack Obama will make a groundbreaking visit later this month to Myanmar, an official said Thursday, following through with his policy of rapprochement to encourage democracy in the Southeast Asian nation.

The Myanmar official speaking from the capital, Naypyitaw, said Thursday that security for a visit on Nov. 18 or 19 had been prepared, but the schedule was not final. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to give information to the media.

The official said Obama would meet with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as government officials including reformist President Thein Sein.

It would be the first-ever visit to Myanmar by an American president. U.S. officials have not yet announced any plans for a visit, which would come less than two weeks after Obama’s election to a second term.

Obama’s administration has sought to encourage the recent democratic progress under Thein Sein by easing sanctions applied against Myanmar’s previous military regime.

Officials in nearby Thailand and Cambodia have already informally announced plans for visits by Obama that same week. Cambodia is hosting a summit meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Thailand is a longtime close U.S. ally.

The visit to Myanmar, also known as Burma, would be the culmination of a dramatic turnaround in relations with Washington as the country has shifted from five decades of ruinous military rule and shaken off the pariah status it had earned through its bloody suppression of democracy.

Obama’s ending of the long-standing U.S. isolation of Myanmar’s generals has played a part in coaxing them into political reforms that have unfolded with surprising speed in the past year. The U.S. has appointed a full ambassador and suspended sanctions to reward Myanmar for political prisoner releases and the election of Nobel laureate Suu Kyi to parliament.

From Myanmar’s point of view, the lifting of sanctions is essential for boosting a lagging economy that was hurt not only by sanctions that curbed exports and foreign investment, but also by what had been a protectionist, centralized approach. Thein Sein’s government has initiated major economic reforms in addition to political ones.

A procession of senior diplomats and world leaders have traveled to Myanmar, stopping both in the remote, opulent capital city, which was built by the former ruling junta, and at Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakeside villa in the main city of Yangon, where she spent 15 years under house arrest. New Zealand announced Thursday that Prime Minister John Key would visit Myanmar after attending the regional meetings in Cambodia.

The most senior U.S. official to visit was Hillary Rodham Clinton, who last December became the first U.S. secretary of state to travel to Myanmar in 56 years.

The Obama administration regards the political changes in Myanmar as a marquee achievement in its foreign policy, and one that could dilute the influence of China in a country that has a strategic location between South and Southeast Asia, regions of growing economic importance.

But exiled Myanmar activists and human rights groups are likely to criticize an Obama visit as premature, rewarding Thein Sein before his political and economic reforms have truly taken root. The military — still dominant and implicated in rights abuses — has failed to prevent vicious outbreaks of communal violence in the west of the country that have left scores dead.

Asia News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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“Twilight” fans camp out days ahead of “Breaking Dawn-Part 2″

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Dozens of excited “Twilight” fans set up tents in Los Angeles on Thursday ahead of next week’s world premiere of the last film in the vampire romance franchise.

Some 2,200 people from all over the world have registered to camp on a concrete plaza outside a downtown Los Angeles movie theater, movie studio Summit Entertainment said.

The fans – most of them young women – will get guaranteed spots to see stars Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner walk the red carpet for the November 12 premiere of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.”

Summit has laid on special activities during the five day wait, including a marathon screening of the four other films in the blockbuster franchise, surprise appearances from some cast members, and a “Twilight”-themed workout.

“We figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for some of us. This is the last movie. We’re never going to get to do it again and we wanted to hang out with some of our friends for the last one,” Bri-Anne Glover told Reuters Television as she settled in at the camp on Thursday.

“I love ‘Breaking Dawn’ because that’s kind of where I am in my life. I’ve got the husband, I’ve got my children, and we’re getting on with our lives and having a happy life and the same with Edward and Jacob and Bella,” said fan Eryka Bradford.

The “Twilight” books by author Stephenie Meyer have been a publishing sensation and the four movies have made more than $ 2.5 billion combined at box offices worldwide.

The final film sees the bliss of newlyweds Bella (Stewart) and Edward (Pattinson) and their daughter threatened by an ancient vampire coven.

“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2″ opens in several European countries on November 14 and arrives in U.S. movie theaters on November 16.

(Reporting by Lindsay Claiborn, editing by Jill Serjeant)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Hospital guidelines not linked to readmissions: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Procedural guidelines designed to ensure patients get quality care while in the hospital are also thought to reduce the chances a patient will need to be readmitted down the line, but a new study suggests there’s little connection between the two.

“The idea was, increasing the quality of care provided by these hospitals would improve the outcomes,” said the report’s lead author Dr. Michaela S. Stefan, an academic hospitalist at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass.

In an effort to control costs, both hospitals and the federal government have been trying for some time to lower the number of patients who are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being discharged.

Starting in October, a hospital’s readmission rates are one factor the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) take into account when deciding what to pay for patient treatment.

Right now, about one in four patients will be readmitted to the hospital within 30 days, according to Stefan and her colleagues. And it’s estimated that those unplanned rehospitalizations cost Medicare $ 17.6 billion in 2004.

One approach to lowering readmissions has been the creation of quality care guidelines for specific conditions, such as heart attack or pneumonia.

CMS also reports readmission numbers for hospitals on the website Hospital Compare: http://1.usa.gov/Z7TeXy.

Still, researchers have been asking whether these approaches make a difference in readmission rates.

Another recent study suggested that many factors outside a hospital’s control can cause a patient to need rehospitalization. For example, the person’s ability to keep up with their medications at home, or to make follow-up visits to a personal physician (see Reuters Health article of October 19, 2012, here: http://reut.rs/Z7uCy9).

For the new study, Stefan and her colleagues looked at whether the degree to which a hospital followed guidelines to the letter predicted how many Medicare patients came back within 30 days of their first discharge.

Using a 2007 database of patients on the government insurance program for seniors, the researchers analyzed patient outcomes for a number of ailments and surgical procedures, including heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and stomach, heart and orthopedic surgeries.

Overall, the study included information on patients from thousands of hospitals across the U.S.

For instance, 2,773 hospitals treated 322,668 people for heart failure during the study period while 2,940 hospitals treated 328,830 people with pneumonia.

The researchers gave each hospital a score between zero and 100 percent, based on the percentage of patients who received all the recommended treatments for their condition.

For heart attack patients, these could include receiving an aspirin when they arrived at the hospital or, if appropriate, smoking cessation counseling before discharge. For pneumonia patients, prescribing the correct antibiotics and checking on a patient’s flu vaccine status are among procedures on the checklist.

Of the 117,514 heart attack patients, about 96 percent received some of the recommended treatments. However, only about 88 percent got all of them.

And about 80 percent of stomach surgery patients got some of the recommended treatments, but only about 46 percent received them all.

The researchers then looked at how many of those patients returned to the hospital within 30 days after being discharged.

Overall, they found that hospitals with the best scores for following guidelines did not have “meaningfully” lower readmissions than hospitals with the worst scores.

“Even when the associations were statistically significant, the differences in the readmission rates of high and low-performing hospitals were small,” the team writes in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

The researchers add that some possible reasons for the lack of association between the two measures could be that these guidelines have “little impact on the risk of readmission” or that the guidelines are too broadly defined.

The study itself did have limitations too, they acknowledge.

For example, it only looked at Medicare patients over 66 years old, so the findings may not apply to younger people. Also, the data are only from a single year and were based on what was reported to Medicare from the hospital records, so the information may not be complete.

Nevertheless, the researchers conclude that encouraging hospitals to report these guideline data to the public, such as on Hospital Compare, will do little to lower readmission rates.

Still, it’s good information to provide to patients, Stefan said.

“It’s important to know that the Hospital Compare site exists. Unfortunately, the public accesses Hospital Compare very little,” she added.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/SxsNpQ Journal of General Internal Medicine, online October 16, 2012.

Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Obama breaks down while speaking to staff, volunteers

The morning after he won re-election, an emotional President Barack Obama credited his youthful staff of several hundred with running a campaign that will "go on in the annals of history."

"What you guys have accomplished will go on in the annals of history and they will read about it and they'll marvel about it," said Obama told his team Wednesday morning inside the Chicago campaign headquarters, tears streaming down his face.

"The most important thing you need to know is that your journey's just beginning. You're just starting. And whatever good we do over the next four years will pale in comparison to whatever you guys end up accomplishing in the years and years to come," he said.

The moment, captured by the Obama campaign's cameras and posted online, offers a rare glimpse at the president unplugged and emotional. During the first four years of his presidency, Obama has never been seen publicly crying.

He first came to Chicago, he told the campaign staff, "knowing that somehow I wanted to make sure that my life attached itself to helping kids get a great education or helping people living in poverty to get decent jobs and be able to work and have dignity. And to make sure that people didn't have to go to the emergency room to get health care."

"The work that I did in those communities changed me much more than I changed those communities because it taught me the hopes and aspirations and the grit and resilience of ordinary people," he said, as senior strategist David Axelrod and campaign manager Jim Messina looked on. "And it taught me the fact that under the surface differences, we all have common hopes and we all have common dreams. And it taught me something about how I handle disappointment and what it meant to work hard on a common endeavor, and I grew up."

"So when I come here and I look at all of you, what comes to mind is, it's not that you guys remind me of myself, it's the fact that you are so much better than I was in so many ways. You're smarter, you're so better organized, you're more effective," he said.

Obama said he expected many of those who helped to re-elect him will assume new roles in progressive politics, calling that prospect a "source of my strength and inspiration."

Senior campaign officials said Thursday that the Obama campaign infrastructure - the field offices and network of hundreds of thousands of volunteers - would undergo a period of transition in the coming weeks to determine how to remain sustainable and influential.

"We have remarkable staff, and the campaign that Jim [Messina] put together, you know, is the best in history," said senior Obama adviser David Plouffe. "But the reason those people got involved was because they believed in Barack Obama. It was the relationship between them and our candidate."

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Siemens aims to save 6 billion euros by 2014

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Merkel says Germany, Britain must work together on EU

LONDON (Reuters) – Germany and Britain must cooperate to work round their differences on the European Union‘s long-term spending plans, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday.

“Despite differences that we have it is very important for me that the UK and Germany work together,” Merkel said through a translator before a meeting in London with Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss the EU‘s 2014-2020 budget.

“We always have to do something that will stand up to public opinion back home. Not all of the expenditure that has been earmarked has been used with great efficiency … We need to address that,” she said.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on November 22-23 to try to secure a seven-year budget for the 27-nation bloc amid signs of differences of opinion over what action should be taken.

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Andrew Osborn)

Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Country duo Civil Wars cancel tour, cite discord

LONDON (Reuters) – Grammy Award-winning country-folk duo The Civil Wars have cancelled their British tour dates, citing “irreconcilable differences” via Twitter and Facebook.

The pair made the announcement shortly after performing at the Roundhouse in north London late on Tuesday, but they added that they hoped to record together soon.

“We sincerely apologize for the canceling of all of our tour dates,” said the band, which comprises Joy Williams and John Paul White.

“It is something we deeply regret. However, due to internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition we are unable to continue as a touring entity at this time … Our sincere hope is to have new music for you in 2013.”

The band said it would “do its best” to reimburse fans who had made travel reservations to see them.

The Civil Wars released their debut studio album “Barton Hollow” last year and went on to scoop two Grammy Awards – the highest prize in music – for best folk album and best country duo/group performance.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Nor’easter Threatens Sandy Victims

As those facing the devastation left in the wake of Sandy continue to seek shelter, meteorologists point to a new threat — a nor’easter heading for devastated areas.

The storm could pack 50-mile-per-hour gusts in coastal areas, 1 to 3 inches of rain from New York to Boston and a continuation of the frigid temperatures that followed last week’s superstorm.

It’s a situation that has some doctors worried that many of those affected by Sandy could face a life-threatening situation in the form of hypothermia.

“Many left without power and heat will be at risk of hypothermia as the Nor’easter is scheduled to hit the New York City and New Jersey area,” said Dr. Sharon Horesh Bergquist, assistant professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.

The strong wind and rain is expected to hit the New Jersey and New York coast early Wednesday morning. Worse, some models are predicting a 40-50 percent chance of snow in the metro New York area by Wednesday night, and winds up to 40 miles per hour are expected to continue into Thursday.

The Red Cross is increasing efforts in New York, offering shelter to roughly 9,000 people and handing out an additional 80,000 blankets Monday night — a clear indication of where the organization’s concerns lie when it comes to those without heat or shelter.

“Certainly one of our biggest concerns is the cold, because you have people without power,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Melanie Pipkin. “We’re ramping up our efforts so these people have even more blankets, more hand warmers. We really want to make sure everyone stays warm.”

Hypothermia occurs when the body’s temperature falls below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. This puts people at risk to develop serious lung, heart, or nervous system problems, sometimes leading to death.

Symptoms of hypothermia include appearing confused or intoxicated or shivering, although shivering actually stops at severely cold body temperatures.

“As people get colder, they actually stop shivering, losing their ability to retain any heat,” said Dr. Darria Gillespie, emergency physician at Harvard Medical School in Boston. “They may also almost appear intoxicated, with confusion, clumsiness, slurred speech, and fatigue.”

In the most serious of cases, the potential complications from hypothermia can be severe, even fatal.

“The complications can range from minor cold related illness to death from prolonged exposure or complications from prolonged exposure,” said Dr. Henderson McGinnis, emergency physician at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.

The very young and very old may be at the highest risk.

“The elderly often have difficulty with thermoregulation and infants have a relatively larger body surface area thus are at increase heat loss risk,” said Dr. Christopher Russi, emergency physician at the Mayo Clinic.

As for preventative measures, seeking shelter and warm clothes is the overwhelmingly popular recommendation.

“Those without heat need to find a place with it as the temperatures fall these next few nights, dressing in layers and wearing a hat and avoiding alcohol are key factors to prevent it as well,” said Dr. Robert McNamara, chair of emergency medicine at Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

The Red Cross’ Pipkin says it is “hard to speculate” as to what the worst case scenario would be in terms of the nor’easter’s impact on those affected by Sandy. But she says that it would be unwise to underestimate the approaching storm.

“We always try to prepare for the worst,” she said.

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How did America become so polarized?

WASHINGTON (AP) — The election laid bare a dual — and dueling — nation, politically speaking, jaggedly split down the middle on the presidency and torn over much else. It seems you can please only half of the people nearly all of the time.

Americans retained the fractious balance of power in re-electing President Barack Obama, a Republican House and a Democratic Senate, altogether serving as guarantors of the gridlock that voters say they despise. Slender percentages separated winner and loser from battleground to battleground, and people in exit polls said yea and nay in roughly equal measure to some of the big issues of the day.

Democracy doesn't care if you win big, only that you win. Tuesday was a day of decision as firmly as if Obama had run away with the race. Democrats are ebullient and, after a campaign notable for its raw smackdowns, words of conciliation are coming from leaders on both sides, starting with the plea from defeated Republican rival Mitt Romney that his crestfallen supporters pray for the president.

But after the most ideologically polarized election in years, Obama's assertion Wednesday morning that America is "more than a collection of red states and blue states" was more of an aspiration than a snapshot of where the country stands.

"It's going to take a while for this thing to heal," said Ron Bella, 59, a Cincinnati lawyer who lives in Alexandria, Ky. He is relieved Obama won, but some of his co-workers are in a "sour mood" about it.

"They feel like the vast majority of the country wanted Romney, and the East and the West coasts wanted Obama," he said. "I'm not sure exactly why that is, but there just seems to be such hatred for Obama out there."

Compromise was a popular notion in the hours after Obama's victory and an unavoidable one, given the reality of divided government. But the familiar contours of partisan Washington were also in evidence, especially the notion that compromise means you do things my way.

As Democratic Rep. Steve Israel of New York put it, "If you refuse to compromise, we are going to beat you." Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said the election showed "if you are an extremist tea party Republican, you are going to lose."

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said pointedly that Republicans will meet Obama halfway "to the extent he wants to move to the political center" and propose solutions "that actually have a chance of passing."

In New York's bustling Times Square, hope, skepticism and the usual polarities were all to be found when people talked about the president. "He may not have done a great job in my mind but I kinda trust him," said Jerry Shul. "I have faith he will get with the Republicans and get something done."

A less-flattering George Dallemand called this "a moment of truth" for the country. "I guess we have to wish for the best now, but I still think he is socialism."

In Miami, Karen Fitzgerald, 55, wore a black dress and said she was in mourning over Romney's defeat.

"It's an upsetting day," she said. But she took some comfort from her Democratic friends on Facebook, who have stopped chiding the other side in their posts. "Now they're all saying we need to work together and be united," she said. "Maybe we can."

In Springfield, Ohio, an "elated" Frank Hocker, 67, hoped Republicans would get the message to get out of Obama's way. "There was a backlash," he said. "For this obstructionist House and those tea party people, I hope they learned their lesson. I hope they learned their lesson: Don't stop the progress of this country."

In Chicago, Obama supporter Scherita Parrish, 56, predicted the president will reach out to Republicans but may not get much back.

"But the people have spoken," she said. "They need to lick their wounds, get on with it and start working with the president."

Unity is a challenge not just for Obama but for the Republicans, who won less than 30 percent of the growing Hispanic vote and not even one in 10 black voters. Obama built a strong Electoral College majority, if only a narrow advantage in the popular vote, despite losing every age group of non-Hispanic white voters.

Surveys of voters found Obama's health care law to be as divisive as ever, with just under 50 percent wanting it repealed in whole or part, and 44 percent liking it as is or wanting more of it.

But democracy doesn't care about exit polls, either, and the election almost certainly means Republicans can forget about trying to roll it back now.

In reaffirming divided government, though, Americans all but ensured colossal fights are ahead over the shape of government and Obama's agenda. He is out to break a wall of Republican opposition to tax increases on the wealthy — a move that about half the voters in exit polls thought was a good idea. And extraordinarily difficult negotiations are imminent as the president and Congress try to make a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff" — steep spending cuts and a variety of tax increases in January.

In the end, voters split about equally on whether Obama or Romney would be better at handling the economy.

Then again, they were divided down the middle on whether Obama or his predecessor, George W. Bush, deserves most of the blame for the economy's problems.

So it goes in the 50-50 nation, give or take.

___

Associated Press writers Christine Armario in Miami, Michael Tarm in Chicago, David Martin in New York, Amanda Myers in Cincinnati and Ann Sanner in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

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