GOP race turns to new terrain in Florida

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, greets supporters at a campaign rally in Coral Springs, Fla. Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Steve Mitchell)

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, greets supporters at a campaign rally in Coral Springs, Fla. Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Steve Mitchell)

Republican presidential candidate former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, right, is joined by wife Ann, following his speech during the South Carolina Primary night rally Saturday, Jan. 21, 2012, in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is greeted by supporters after Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington Sunday, Jan. 22, 2012. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) ? Now it's Florida's turn.

And Republican presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have just 10 days to navigate a state unlike any they've competed in so far. Florida is six times larger than New Hampshire, has almost five times more Hispanics than Iowa, and, with numerous media markets, is much more expensive for candidates than South Carolina. That's where Gingrich trounced Romney on Saturday night, suddenly scrambling the GOP presidential race ahead of Florida's Jan. 31 primary.

"It's been fascinating spectator sport so far," Beth Schiller, 48, said inside Buddy Brew Coffee shop the next morning. "But it's coming here now. They're all coming."

Indeed, the remaining candidates in a shrunken field ? Romney, Gingrich, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and Texas Rep. Ron Paul ? planned to be in the state Monday for the first of two presidential debates this week.

All eyes were certain to be on what's essentially a two-man race.

After a crushing South Carolina defeat, Romney no longer faces the prospect of wrapping up the nomination quickly and now is forced to regroup. He has spent months planning for the Florida campaign, essentially building a firewall in the state. He has the largest organization of any candidate. And he and his allies combined have had the TV airwaves all to themselves for weeks, already spending roughly $6 million combined. The former Massachusetts governor's areas of strength in the diverse state may be with the transplanted Northeasterners and snowbirds along the Gold Coast.

But now there are doubts about whether he can knit together the broad cross-section of Republican voters he'd need to win in this state, much less the nomination.

"I'm looking forward to a long campaign," Romney said on "Fox News Sunday," an acknowledgment that he wouldn't sew up the nomination with a Florida victory as aides once had hoped.

Gingrich, for his part, will work to keep his momentum going despite continued division among tea party and religious activists who, to a certain degree, continue to divide their support between him and Santorum. The state's conservative panhandle may be fertile ground for the former Georgia lawmaker who talks of his Southern roots often. His team also is working hard to court evangelicals, who vote in droves in the state's GOP primaries and who tend to look skeptically on Romney.

He dramatically trails Romney in fundraising and organization in the state, underscored by his launching of an online "money bomb" Saturday night to try to raise $1 million to help fund his efforts in Florida.

"My job in Florida is to convince people that I am the one candidate who can clearly defeat Obama in a series of debates and the one candidate who has big enough solutions that they would really get America back on track," Gingrich told CNN's "State of the Union."

His South Carolina victory is certain to change the dynamics in a state where Romney has led in polls for weeks.

"People want to get behind a winner," said Tom Gaitens, co-founder of the Tampa Tea Party and state director for the conservative organization FreedomWorks. "People will be drawn to Newt like a magnet."

Florida's size and diversity creates challenges for all the candidates. And the issues may be far different than those in the previous states.

There are 10 distinct media markets in Florida, which helps explain the tremendous cost of running a statewide campaign here.

And the voters are anything but homogenous.

Northern Florida along the panhandle is as close to the South as the state offers. It's the least populated and considered the most culturally conservative. Southeastern Florida, including the Miami area, is traditionally not as conservative as the rest of the state, offering a large Latino population and many Northeastern transplants and Jewish voters. The bulk of the state's Republicans, including a significant collection of evangelicals, live along central Florida's Interstate 4 corridor, including Tampa and Orlando.

Exit polling from the 2008 GOP primary shows that approximately 39 percent of voters identified themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. That's a significant voting bloc Gingrich has been targeting. He won evangelicals soundly in South Carolina, where they constituted roughly 65 percent of the electorate.

Hispanics are also key.

Romney is already on television running an advertisement in Spanish. Gingrich plans to do the same. The Gingrich team is based in the Miami area, the epicenter of the state's considerable Cuban population. Cubans make up roughly a third of the state's Hispanic population and figure to play prominently.

Romney's team is based in Tampa, and it has spent weeks working to woo the 200,000 people who already have cast ballots through absentee and early voting.

Like everywhere else, the economy is certain to dominate the race in Florida. The unemployment rate here is 10 percent, much higher than the national 8.5 percent jobless figure. And more than 2 percent of all Florida housing units were involved in foreclosure last year, according to the RealtyTrac foreclosure listing service. Florida also is third in the number of homes with "upside down" mortgages, at 44 percent of all mortgaged properties, according to the CoreLogic real estate data firm.

But other topics also will dominate.

Florida is a retirement mecca, so expect discussion about Social Security. It's also home to a number of environmentalists working to protect the coastline and fight drilling, so those topics are all but certain to be touched on. And with a heavy influx of Hispanics, immigration is certain to be raised.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/apdefault/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-22-GOP%20Campaign-Florida's%20Turn/id-d50956d6d09e4f479637d05692211fda

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Living la vita hacker: PS3 firmware exploit expands Vita Remote Play options

Those gosh-darned hackers just refuse to get off Sony's lawn, serving up yet another exploit for the outfit's latest baby, the PlayStation Vita. Well, sort of -- the Vita's own code hasn't been breached, but it sure plays nice with PlayStation 3 custom firmware 3.55. The PS3 tweak apparently recognizes the Vita as a mobile phone, which somehow allows it to Remote Play a wider assortment of PS3 games than normal. It's not all unicorns and double rainbows, however, as input lag appears to be an issue -- but it should help tide over enterprising Vita owners until Sony officially expands its list of Remote Play-compatible titles. In the meantime, those on the straight and narrow can console themselves with the Vita's recently updated 3G data plan. Hit the break to see the trick cram Battlefield 3 onto the small screen.

Continue reading Living la vita hacker: PS3 firmware exploit expands Vita Remote Play options

Living la vita hacker: PS3 firmware exploit expands Vita Remote Play options originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/24/living-la-vita-hacker-ps3-firmware-exploit-expands-vita-remote/

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Lawmakers ponder major repairs to UK's Parliament (AP)

LONDON ? British lawmakers are considering whether they will need to abandon the House of Commons for the first time since World War II.

Legislators were meeting Monday to discuss if future maintenance work to the Palace of Westminster ? home to the Commons and the House of Lords ? would need the two chambers to briefly move out.

Between 1940 and 1941, both Houses of Parliament met in London's Church House, after bombs destroyed the Commons chamber and damaged the Lords.

Consideration of possible repairs follows the disclosure in October that Parliament's clock tower ? known as Big Ben ? is nearly 18 inches (nearly half a meter) out of line.

The palace, which was rebuilt in the mid-19th Century, is expected to need major repairs in the coming years.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/europe/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120123/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_parliament

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Poorest smokers face toughest odds for kicking the habit

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Quitting smoking is never easy. However, when you're poor and uneducated, kicking the habit for good is doubly hard, according to a new study by a tobacco dependence researcher at The City College of New York (CCNY).

Christine Sheffer, associate medical professor at CCNY's Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, tracked smokers from different socioeconomic backgrounds after they had completed a statewide smoking cessation program in Arkansas.

Whether rich or poor, participants managed to quit at about the same rate upon completing a program of cognitive behavioral therapy, either with or without nicotine patches. But as time went on, a disparity between the groups appeared and widened.

Those with the fewest social and financial resources had the hardest time staving off cravings over the long run. "The poorer they are, the worse it gets," said Professor Sheffer, who directed the program and was an assistant professor with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences at the time.

She found that smokers on the lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder were 55 percent more likely than those at the upper end to start smoking again three months after treatment. By six months post-quitting, the probability of their going back to cigarettes jumped to two-and-a-half times that of the more affluent smokers. The research will be published in the March 2012 issue of the American Journal of Public Health and will appear ahead-of-print online under the journal's "First Look" section.

In their study, Professor Sheffer and her colleagues noted that overall, Americans with household incomes of $15,000 or less smoke at nearly three times the rate of those with incomes of $50,000 or greater. The consequences are bleak. "Smoking is still the greatest cause of preventable death and disease in the United States today," noted Professor Sheffer. "And it's a growing problem in developing countries."

Harder to Stay Away

Professor Sheffer suggested reasons it may be harder for some to give up tobacco forever.

Smoking relieves stress for those fighting nicotine addiction, so it is life's difficulties that often make them reach for the cigarette pack again. Unfortunately, those on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale suffer more hardships than those at the top ? in the form of financial difficulties, discrimination, and job insecurity, to name a few. And for those smokers who started as teenagers, they may have never learned other ways to manage stress, said Professor Sheffer.

For people with lower socioeconomic status (SES), it can be tougher to avoid temptation as well. "Lower SES groups, with lower paying jobs, aren't as protected by smoke-free laws," said Sheffer, so individuals who have quit can find themselves back at work and surrounded by smokers. Also fewer of them have no-smoking policies in their homes.

These factors are rarely addressed in standard treatment programs. "The evidence-based treatments that are around have been developed for middle-class patients," Professor Sheffer pointed out. "So (in therapy) we talk about middle-class problems."

Further research would help determine how the standard six sessions of therapy might be altered or augmented to help. "Our next plan is to take the results of this and other studies and apply what we learned to revise the approach, in order to better meet the needs of poor folks," she said. "Maybe there is a better arrangement, like giving 'booster sessions'. Not everybody can predict in six weeks all the stresses they will have later on down the road."

"Some people say [quitting] is the most difficult thing in their life to do," said Sheffer. "If we better prepare people with more limited resources to manage the types of stress they have in their lives, we'd get better results. "

###

City College of New York: http://www2.ccny.cuny.edu

Thanks to City College of New York for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/116914/Poorest_smokers_face_toughest_odds_for_kicking_the_habit

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Libya could fall into 'bottomless pit', leader warns

By msnbc.com staff and news services

Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, warned on Sunday the country could be heading towards a "bottomless pit" after protesters stormed a government office in Benghazi when he was inside.

A crowd demanding the resignation of the Libyan government smashed windows and forced their way into the NTC's local headquarters late on Saturday, in the most serious show of anger at the new authorities since Moammar Gadhafi was ousted.

---

The NTC has the support of the Western powers that?helped force out Gadhafi in a nine-month conflict, but it is unelected, has been slow to restore basic public services, and some Libyans say too many of its members are tarnished by ties to Gadhafi.

Abdul-Jalil later?suspended the six representatives to the NTC?from Benghazi, the main city in eastern Libya. They can continue to serve only if approved by the local city council.?

He also?said he appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gadhafi regime.

The body's deputy head, Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, resigned in protest over the suspensions. Ghoga, known for his polished language and expensive suits, was a prominent spokesman during the eight-month civil war that ended with Gadhafi's capture and killing in October.

Another delegate, Fathi Baja, called the move "illegitimate" and said he would stand down only if the people of Benghazi asked him to. Baja, a well known critic of Gadhafi even before the uprising, also criticized the appointment of religious leaders, saying that when he was criticizing Gadhafi, "they were calling on people to obey the leader."

Also Sunday, the head of the committee tasked with preparing the country's election law said its release would be delayed for one week. The final law, which was set to be announced Sunday, will be made public on Jan. 28, said Othman al-Mugherhi.

The committee published a draft law earlier this month and said it would solicit comments from Libyans. Al-Mugherhi said the delay will allow the committee to consider these comments while drafting the final law.

The law will spell out how Libyans will elect the 200-members national congress, which will oversee the drafting of a constitution. The body is supposed to be elected before June 23.

Al-Mugherhi also announced the formation of a 17-member electoral commission to oversee the vote. The body contains professors, judges, lawyers and men and women representing non-governmental organizations, he said.

Under Gadhafi's rule, Libya had no working parliament for four decades.

Abdul-Jalil warned the protests risked undermining the country's already fragile stability.

"We are going through a political movement that can take the country to a bottomless pit," he said. "There is something behind these protests that is not for the good of the country."

"The people have not given the government enough time and the government does not have enough money. Maybe there are delays, but the government has only been working for two months. Give them a chance, at least two months."

More from msnbc.com and NBC News:

Reuters, The Associated Press?and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

Source: http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/22/10210037-libya-could-fall-into-bottomless-pit-leader-warns

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New Genetic Clues to Breast Cancer? - iVillage

SUNDAY, Jan. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified three new genomic regions they believe are linked with breast cancer that may help explain why some women develop the disease.

All three newly identified areas "contain interesting genes that open up new avenues for biological and clinical research," said researcher Douglas Easton, a professor of genetic epidemiology at the University of Cambridge in England.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women, with about 1 million new cases annually worldwide and more than 400,000 deaths a year.

Scientists conducting genome-wide association studies -- research that looks at the association between genetic factors and disease to pinpoint possible causes -- had already identified 22 breast cancer susceptibility loci. Locus is the physical location of a gene or DNA sequence on a chromosome.

"The three [newly identified] loci take the number of common susceptibility loci from 22 to 25," said Easton.

However, the three new susceptibility loci might explain only about 0.7 percent of the familial risks of breast cancer, bringing the total contribution to about 9 percent, the researchers said.

Michael Melner, scientific program director for the American Cancer Society, said this current research adds some important new clues to existing evidence, but he agreed that the number of cases likely associated with these three variants is probably low.

"So the total impact in terms of patients would be fairly small," Melner said.

The study is published online Jan. 22 in Nature Genetics.

To find the new clues, Easton's team worked with genetic information on about 57,000 breast cancer patients and 58,000 healthy women obtained from two genome-wide association studies.

The investigators zeroed in on 72 different single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A SNP -- pronounced "snip" -- is a change in which a single base in the DNA differs from the usual base. The human genome has millions of SNPs, some linked with disease, while others are normal variations.

The researchers focused on three SNPs -- on chromosomes 12p11, 12q24 and 21q21.

Easton's team found that the variant on the 12p11 chromosome is linked with both estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer (which needs estrogen to grow) and estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. The other two variants are only linked with ER-positive cancers, they said.

One of the newly identified variants is in an area with a gene that has a role in the development of mammary glands and bones. Easton said it was already known that mammary gland development in puberty is an important period in terms of determining later cancer risk. "But these are the first susceptibility genes to be shown to be involved in this process," he said.

One of the other SNPs is in an area that can affect estrogen receptor signaling, the researchers found.

Melner, noting some of the research is "fine tuning" of other work, said in his view the new understanding of the signaling pathways and their genetic links is the most important finding.

"When you delineate a pathway, you bring up new potential targets for therapy," he said. "The more targets you have, you open up the potential for having multiple drugs and attacking a cancer more easily, without it becoming more resistant."

Overall, Melner added, the results underscore the complexity of the different mechanisms involved in breast cancer development.

More information

For more about the genetics of breast cancer, visit the American Cancer Society.

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/new-genetic-clues-breast-cancer/4-a-421078

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Melissa Rivers to mom Joan: Time for 'skintervention' (Reuters)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) ? In the second season premiere of WE TV's reality program "Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best?," Melissa Rivers tries to persuade her 78-year-old comedian mother Joan not to undergo another cosmetic surgery procedure by staging a "skintervention."

Melissa, 44, calls in the pair's circle of friends and employees -- one and the same in the Rivers' world -- but before long Joan has won over the room and is handing out cosmetic procedures like party favors.

"It's like I'm the teacher from Charlie Brown, 'womp, womp, womp,'" Melissa complains in the episode. But her protests may not have gone completely ignored. Joan tweeted on Saturday, "The next time I go under the knife is for my autopsy."

"Joan & Melissa," which returns Tuesday, January 24, follows the day-to-day life of the famously close Rivers duo as they live and work together in California.

Joan moved in with Melissa after the September 2010 launch of "Fashion Police," a comedy program critiquing celebrity fashion, which Joan hosts and Melissa produces. The E! television network announced this month that "Fashion Police" would be extended from 30 minutes to a full hour in March.

New Yorker Joan took over the basement of the Los Angeles home Melissa shared with her 10-year-old son, Cooper, and then-boyfriend Jason Zimmerman, although Joan likes to tell Melissa that she isn't actually living with her but rather "just staying with you four to five nights a week."

After an early screening of their show in New York, the Rivers said they agreed early on that very little of their private lives would be off-limits to the TV cameras, which catch a tear-filled, heart-to-heart conversation between mother and daughter in Tuesday's premiere episode.

"If it's going to be reality, it's got to be the truth," Joan said after the screening. "You can't just show one side."

Joan even expressed delight that the cameras were there at a tough time for her daughter.

"Wait 'til you see Melissa's breakup," said Joan. "So lucky the cameras were in the house when it was happening. We could've been on hiatus."

JOAN GETS INKED

This season will see Joan getting a tattoo to celebrate her 78th birthday and relieving stress by smoking marijuana. The notoriously raunchy comic's words were bleeped out several times during the premiere episode.

Danny Salles, executive producer of "Joan & Melissa," said Joan's colorful language causes "a fair amount" of footage to end up on the cutting-room floor but insists that "if we put the bridle on and say, 'Don't talk like yourself,' then you don't get the reality. So, we figure say it all and we'll figure it out in the edit room. "

Most of the program's drama takes place at home. According to Melissa, it's home life with her mother, not work, that's a challenge.

"Being her daughter is much harder than being her executive producer because she's a really good talent to work with. She's very prepared, she comes in on time, she delivers the goods every week," Melissa said.

Those who saw the 2010 documentary "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work" are used to the elder Rivers' language and mystifying work ethic. That film, about her continuous efforts to stay relevant as an entertainer, as well as her 2009 win on TV reality contest "Celebrity Apprentice," marked the beginning of an upswing for Rivers, whose career has seen many highs and lows.

"I've never stopped performing," Joan said. "Every week when I'm here in New York I perform at a place called the West Bank. I do concerts all over the world, every weekend."

(Editing By Bob Tourtellotte)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/tv/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120122/tv_nm/us_joanrivers

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