Source: www.nytimes.com --- Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Analysts say higher global demand and possible supply problems from Iran could keep the price for a barrel of Oil in the triple digits. ...
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=9dad88068662f626fe7c2f6e0b37a232
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Source: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2011/12/27/baz-luhrmann-injured-on-great-gatsby-set/
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ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2011) ? Mutations in the ATM gene may increase the hereditary risk for pancreatic cancer, according to data published in Cancer Discovery, the newest journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most morbid cancers, with less than 5 percent of those diagnosed with the disease surviving to five years. Approximately 10 percent of patients come from families with multiple cases of pancreatic cancer.
"There was significant reason to believe this clustering was due to genetics, but we had not, to this point, been able to find the causative genes that explained the cluster of pancreatic cancer for a majority of these families," said lead author Alison Klein, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins and director of the National Familial Pancreas Tumor Registry.
Klein and colleagues used next-generation sequencing, including whole genome and whole exome analyses, and identified ATM gene mutations in two kindreds with familial pancreatic cancer.
When these initial findings were examined in a large series for patients, ATM mutations were present in four of 166 subjects with pancreatic cancer but were absent in 190 spousal control subsets.
Klein said that knowledge of the presence of the ATM gene could lead to better screening for pancreatic cancer, the fourth most common cause of cancer-related death. However, there are currently no recommended screening tests.
Many doctors use endoscopy as a screening tool for pancreatic cancer, but researchers are still evaluating this technique in clinical trials.
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/M_sa0LEQ6ag/111229091834.htm
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EU plans to levy an emissions tax on airlines are valid, according to the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The decision means all airlines flying to and from the 27 states of the European Union will face a tax on emissions from 1 January.
US, Canadian and other carriers argue the charges violate climate change and aviation pacts.
Four Chinese airlines have also opposed the scheme which they say could cost them 95m euros ($124m, ?79m).
American carriers argue that the taxes contravene the Open Skies Agreement, which allows airlines to fly between any EU country and any point in the US.
The US House of Representatives passed a measure two months ago directing the US transport secretary to prohibit US carriers from participating in the scheme if it were to come into force.
On Friday, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said America would respond with "appropriate action" if the scheme went ahead, although she did not elaborate on any specific measures.
No delayAirlines will now be subject to the Emissions Trading System (ETS), used to charge industries such as oil refineries, power stations and steel works for CO2 emissions, as part of Europe's efforts to combat climate change.
"Application of the emissions trading scheme to aviation infringes neither the principles of customary international law at issue nor the Open Skies Agreement" across the Atlantic, the court decided.
"It is only if the operators of such aircraft choose to operate a commercial air route arriving at or departing from an airport situated in the EU that they are subject to the emissions trading scheme," it added.
As a result of this choice, the EU system "infringes neither the principle of territoriality nor the sovereignty of third states, since the scheme is applicable to the operators only when their aircraft are physically in the territory of one of the member states of the EU".
The EU has made it clear that it will not bow to US pressure following Wednesday's decision.
"We will neither abandon nor delay [the Emissions Trading System]. The measure will fully enter force on 1 January 2012," said the spokesman for EU climate change commissioner, Connie Hedegaard.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/business-16282692
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NEW ORLEANS ? Cameron International, the maker of the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer that failed to stop last year's massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, has agreed to pay $250 million to BP under a legal settlement, BP said Friday.
BP said it was "in their mutual best interests, and the agreement is not an admission of liability by either party." The companies are dropping all claims against one another, they said.
The settlement comes in advance of a federal trial over the catastrophic Gulf oil spill. The non-jury trial is slated to begin in February and determine fault in the April 20, 2010, explosion and subsequent oil spill off the Louisiana coast of more than 200 million gallons of oil.
The settlement with Cameron does not end the legal fighting over the blowout of the Macondo well, which was owned by London-based BP and two partners, MOEX and Anadarko. BP has already settled claims with those two companies and a third company, Weatherford, the maker of a part used in the well.
"Today's settlement allows BP and Cameron to put our legal issues behind us and move forward to improve safety in the drilling industry," said Bob Dudley, BP group chief executive.
"Unfortunately, other companies persist in refusing to accept responsibility for their roles in the accident and for contributing to restoration efforts," Dudley said in a swipe at Halliburton Corp. and Transocean Ltd. Halliburton supplied critical cement to seal the well and Transocean was the company drilling the well.
Probes of the Deepwater Horizon explosion by the federal government and independent scientists and engineers have found all three companies were at fault for a series of decisions and actions that led to the Macondo well blowout, the nation's largest offshore oil spill.
BP is engaged in an intense legal fight with Halliburton Corp. and Transocean. Earlier this month, BP went so far as to accuse Halliburton employees of covering up damaging evidence about a cement mixture Halliburton used in drilling the well.
BP said it would use the $250 million from Cameron to pay for the cost of cleaning up from the spill and paying individual damages claims by people, businesses and government entities hurt by the spill. BP said it has spent about $7.5 billion so far of those claims. But the British company faces billions of dollars in additional damages and fines.
Under the agreement, BP said Houston-based Cameron is no longer responsible for any additional cleanup costs related to the spill. But BP said the agreement does not cover civil, criminal and administrative fines and other penalties that might arise out of the court proceedings.
Jack Moore, the chairman and CEO Cameron, said the agreement with BP "removes uncertainty facing Cameron" as litigation intensifies over the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
"This eliminates all significant exposure to historical and future claims related to this incident," Moore said.
Moore said Cameron does not expect to have to pay much for possible court fines and penalties. "We do not consider these items to represent a significant risk to Cameron," he said.
Cameron said its insurers were expected to fund at least $170 million of the $250 million payment the company agreed to make to BP.
BP and Cameron also pledged to "improve safety in the drilling industry" and do more to improve blowout preventers.
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IBM on Thursday announced an agreement to acquire a leader in the cloud and on-premise analytics software field. IBM will take over Emptoris for an undisclosed amount.
Emptoris makes software that works to add intelligence to procurement and supply-chain operations with spend, supplier and contract management. The acquisition is the latest addition to IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative the company launched earlier this year. The initiative aims to help companies respond to shifting customer buying patterns.
"Procurement officers need to manage the full engagement, integrating suppliers with key internal systems, and have the capability and visibility to manage compliance and mitigate supply risk," said Patrick Quirk, CEO of Emptoris. "That is the value we bring to the procurement organization."
Emptoris in Action
With the Emptoris acquisition, IBM builds on its capabilities in what it calls the "buy" aspect of Smarter Commerce, while also extending it to a new line of C-suite executives -- chief procurement officers. This growing list of decision makers includes chief information officers, chief financial officers, chief supply chain officers and chief marketing officers.
As IBM sees it, procurement and sourcing professionals increasingly need better supplier management, spend analysis and contract management solutions to lower sourcing costs and risks. Emptoris helps execs drive these benefits by automating vendor selection, negotiation, management and compliance.
Here's an example of Emptoris in action: A large global oil and gas company established a centralized sourcing network across its entire enterprise operating in more than 80 countries. The network allowed the firm to focus on the most strategic, highest-cost, frequently-purchased items. This brought speed, transparency and simplification to the sourcing process.
As a result, the company runs thousands of sourcing events per year, managing more than 15,000 suppliers in 10 languages, achieving more than 9 percent reduction on managed categories of goods.
IT's New Bar
"IBM is demonstrating that by moving forward in a very orderly and measured way, it is not only creating a large number of solutions that its customers can use to drive profits, but that it understands its customers' businesses in a very tangible, if not intimate way," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That's the base of the Smarter Commerce strategy but it also creates a new bar for computing IT vendors to be able to meet."
King argued that it's no longer enough for IT vendors to sell hardware or databases or productivity software anymore. Rather, business organizations need IT vendors that understand the mechanics of their business and how technology can help them work better, smarter and faster.
"The world has become an increasingly competitive place, and the laggards get left behind and plowed over. Vendors like IBM in particular understand that. How many of the company's competitors understand that is open to speculation," King said.
"When we see this kind of strategy that IBM is pursuing in commerce, you can see how the company could take the basic template of what they are doing in commerce and extend it into almost any other industry. And that's precisely what I expect IBM to do in the coming months and years."
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/enterprise/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111215/bs_nf/81399
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Facebook this week began rolling out its new Timeline interface, which transforms the traditional Facebook profile, with its standard issue info and news feed, into something more akin to a scrap book ? a "chronological, visual story of your life," in the formulation of one blogger.?
Skip to next paragraph"Timeline gives you an easy way to rediscover the things you shared, and collect your most important moments," Facebook's Paul McDonald wrote on the company blog today. "It also lets you share new experiences, like the music you listen to or the miles you run."?
Think of the new Timeline as a static presentation, as opposed to the update-centric look of the current profile. With the Timeline, you choose a "cover image," which dominates the profile; meanwhile, your "likes," as McDonald hinted, are pulled to the forefront of the display, along with your friend circles. It's a change of pace, to be sure. Early?reviews of the functionality have been mostly positive.?
"I must admit that I liked playing with Facebook Timeline a lot more than I liked filling in standard profile information, but it can also quickly feel overwhelming," Jill Duffy of PC Mag?writes?in a review today. "With your profile, you only fill in as much as you want. With Timeline, you face a huge swath of data that you've already created, and now you're tasked with making sure it's all appropriate and what you want the world to see."
So do you have a choice? Well, not exactly. Your profile will be timelined eventually, whether you like it or not. Facebook has, however, instituted a 7-day "review period," wherein you can sign onto the site, and choose how your timeline will appear, and what information gets displayed. After that "review period," Facebook will just timeline-ify everything anyway, so you might as well take advantage of the option.?
Right now, the Timeline is only for individuals. But as Facebook hinted today, a business- and brand-centric timeline functionality may be forthcoming. ?"We are currently focused on Timeline for individuals and will consider how to make consistent experiences for Pages," a Facebook rep told Mashable, "but we have nothing to announce at this time."?
For more tech news, follow us on?Twitter @venturenaut. And don?t forget to sign up for the weekly?BizTech newsletter.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ukPaZKX1ppQ/Facebook-rolls-out-new-Timeline-profiles
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WASHINGTON ? Republicans yielded on policy affecting communist Cuba and Democrats gave way on new energy standards for light bulbs to seal an agreement Thursday evening on a massive $1 trillion-plus year-end spending package in time avert a possible government shutdown this weekend.
Under pressure from White House veto threats, House Republicans agreed to drop restrictions on people who visit and send money to relatives in Cuba, while Democrats conceded defeat on a GOP demand to delay energy efficiency standards that critics argued could effectively ban inexpensive incandescent light bulbs. In late stage talks, Democrats also agreed to ban the District of Columbia's government from funding abortions.
These policy issues held up a final agreement on the must-do spending measure for most of the day. It came barely a day after Republicans said they planned to push the 1,200-plus-page legislation through the House with only GOP votes, which seemed like a bluff considering tea party opposition to the measure.
The measure funds 10 Cabinet agencies, awarding a slight increase to the Pentagon and veterans' programs while trimming most other domestic agencies. It drops most policy provisions sought by GOP conservatives.
Thursday's legislation implements the details of cost caps set under the August debt and budget accord between Republicans and President Barack Obama and adds to earlier agency savings enacted in April. It pays for programs ranging from border security to flood control to combating AIDS and famine in Africa.
The measure has bipartisan backing but is likely to encounter resistance from conservative tea party lawmakers seeking far more significant cuts to government agencies.
Days after saying that the measure was wrapped up, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Harold Rogers, R-Ky., acknowledged that talks had been reopened, as power lawmakers quarreled over the Cuba provisions and other unresolved issues.
The bill chips away at the Pentagon budget, foreign aid and environmental spending but boosts funding for veterans programs. The Securities and Exchange Commission, responsible for enforcing new regulations under last year's financial overhaul, won a 10 percent budget increase, even as the tax-collecting IRS absorbs more than a 3 percent cut to its budget.
Popular education initiatives for special-needs children and disadvantaged schools were basically frozen and Obama's cherished "Race to the Top" initiative, which provides grants to better-performing schools, would absorb more than a 20 percent cut. The maximum Pell grant for low-income college students would remain at $5,550, but only after major cost-cutting moves that would limit the number of semesters the grants may be received and make income eligibility standards more strict.
Environmentalists scored clear wins in stopping virtually every significant GOP initiative to roll back Environmental Protection Agency rules. Most importantly, industry forces seeking to block new greenhouse gas and clean air rules, as well as a new clean water regulation opposed by mountaintop removal mining interests, were denied. But Republicans succeeded in blocking new energy efficiency standards for light bulbs and won delays to a new Labor Department rule requiring a reduction of coal dust responsible for black lung disease.
Drafted behind closed doors, the proposed bill would provide $115 billion for overseas security operations in Afghanistan and Iraq but give the Pentagon just a 1 percent boost in annual spending not directly related to the wars, though creative accounting such as mixing war funds with the core Defense Department budget is allowing billions of dollars more into Pentagon coffers.
The Environmental Protection Agency's budget would be cut by 3.5 percent. Foreign aid spending would drop and House lawmakers would absorb a 6 percent cut to their office budgets.
And with tensions plain in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, counterinsurgency aid for Pakistan would be cut to $850 million from Obama's $1.1 billion request. All told, $11.2 billion in emergency foreign aid funding would be provided for counterterrorism, humanitarian aid and training of Iraqi security forces, among other anti-terror activities.
The measure generally consists of relatively small adjustments to thousands of individual programs. Agencies like the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will get a boost within the Homeland Security Department, while GOP defense hawks won additional funding to modernize the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The troubled, over-budget, next-generation F-35 fighter plane program would be largely protected.
Social conservatives won a ban on government-funded abortions in Washington, D.C., and restored a longstanding ban on funding for needle exchange programs used to prevent the spread of HIV. But efforts to take away federal funding for Planned Parenthood failed, as expected.
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Session 1: Market Development of EVs, HEVs, and their Batteries ? Wednesday February 8, 2:00 pm
Session Chairman:
Dr. Menahem Anderman, President, Advanced Automotive Batteries
The first mass-produced EV and PHEV, respectively the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, entered the market last year and have only achieved mediocre sales volumes so far, in spite of heavy subsidies. At the same time, the U.S. have signed into law a set of new, radically more stringent, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAF?) standards that can barely be achieved without significant vehicle hybridization. In this session, independent industry observers and representatives of governments and carmakers will assess the various market-growth scenarios and sift through the proposed electrified-vehicle configurations to discuss the likely direction of the advanced-vehicle market and the impact on the advanced automotive battery industry.
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Session 2: Batteries for Hybrid Electric Vehicles ? Thursday February 9, 9:00 am
Session Chairman:
Ted J. Miller, Senior Manager of Energy Storage Strategy and Research, Ford
Lithium Ion has recently been introduced into small-volume hybrid-vehicle offerings, yet all high-volume producers are still offering their vehicles with NiMH batteries. How fast will Lithium-Ion penetrate the market and which cell and pack design will provide the best cost-performance trade-off and still guarantee reliability and safety? These crucial issues will be addressed in this session by major automakers as well as Li-Ion developers.
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Session 3: Advances in PHEV and EV Batteries ? Thursday February 9, 2:00 pm
Session Chairman:
Elmar Hockgeiger, Department Manager Electrical Storage Systems, BMW Group
There is only one significant obstacle to widespread commercialization of plug-in hybrids and all-electric vehicles: the energy-storage device known as the battery. In this session we will review the latest progress in PHEV and EV-battery technology as well as the cost, logistics, and infrastructure aspects of vehicle electrification to assess how close EV/PHEV technology is to offering acceptable value to the market.
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Session 4: Battery Pack Components and Integration for Electrified Vehicles ? Friday February 10, 9:00 am
Session Chairman:
Michael Keller, Leader Energy Storage, Volkswagen AG
Electrical management is crucial to ensure the reliability and safety of automotive batteries in the field. In this session, developers of battery-management electronics and pack integration hardware will discuss requirements, challenges, and solutions for a cost-effective integration of energy-storage packs into electrified vehicles.
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Session 5: Battery Technology for Heavy-Duty and Commercial Hybrids ? Friday February 10, 1:15 pm
Session Chairman:
Kevin D. Beaty, Manager, Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing Hybrid Power Systems Division, Eaton Corporation
Commercial and heavy-duty vehicles entail additional challenges but also unique opportunities for vehicle hybridization and electrification. In this session we will review progress with the electrification of larger and specialty vehicles and analyze current and proposed energy-storage solutions for these vehicles.
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BEIJING (AP) ? China's government is trying to defuse a revolt in a small fishing village, offering to investigate the land seizures that touched off the rebellion and vowing to punish leaders of the uprising.
The village of Wukan has for months been the site of simmering protests by locals who say officials sold farmland to developers without their consent. Protests against official misconduct are increasingly common in fast-developing China, but the residents of Wukan have taken things a step further, erecting barricades over the weekend to keep police out and posing a challenge to the authoritarian government.
On Wednesday, the mayor of Shanwei city ? which oversees Wukan, a village of 20,000 ? threatened to take strong measures against those who instigated others to create trouble and damage public property, the official China News Service said.
At the same time, Mayor Wu Zili promised to investigate local officials for wrongdoing and impose a temporary freeze on one farmland development project until a majority of villagers are satisfied with the conditions of the land transfer.
The government frequently deploys such carrot-and-stick tactics to deal with protests. But while successful in ending confrontations, the approach does not often produce fair deals for protesters ? and leaders of the protesting Wukan villagers expressed skepticism.
"It's all a pretense. That's only a small part of the problem," said Huang Hancan, a fisherman who is one of the village's representatives in the land dispute, referring to the mayor's promises of an investigation and a freeze of the development deal.
"The bigger problem is that we want to get our land back. We want to re-elect our village officials because the current corrupt officials were not elected ... and we want those detained to be released," Huang said by phone.
Locals like Huang have essentially taken over the village after officials either fled from earlier protests, absconded with the money from land sales or were fired, according to various accounts from villagers and Chinese media.
Problems in Wukan date back to September, when hundreds of villagers smashed buildings and clashed with police in protest against the sale of their farmland without their consent. In the months that followed, villagers have submitted petitions and sought meetings with higher level officials without success.
Last Friday, police entered the village and took away several key representatives and when police tried to come back the next day, villagers blockaded the roads with tree trunks and barriers to prevent them from entering. Huang said police fired tear gas and water cannons at the villagers, who had armed themselves with sticks, clubs, hoes and other farming tools.
"If we didn't have hoes and sticks in hand, they might have taken more of us," Huang said.
Police then retreated and set up blockades on the main roads into Wukan, preventing villagers from entering and leaving and food from being transported in, villagers reached by phone have said.
Anger boiled over on Sunday after Xue Jinbo, one of the key representatives from the village, died in police custody. Family members and supporters suspected he was beaten. Chinese media reported that local police and provincial authorities said Xue died of cardiac failure.
With a booming economy, demand for land to build factories and housing complexes in China has soared. Land disputes have grown apace, becoming one of the leading causes of the tens of thousands of large-scale protests that hit China every year.
Around Wukan village and in much of the rest of Guangdong province, conflicts have been intense because the area is among China's most economically developed, pushing up land prices.
In announcing the freeze on the development project, the Shanwei mayor said the government would ensure that it would only proceed when a majority of villagers consent to the terms of the deal.
But local officials often put heavy pressure on villagers to force them to agree to conditions less favorable to them, said Sally Sargeson, an expert on Chinese rural issues at the Australian National University.
In one village she visited for research, Sargeson said, the heads of households were rounded up, taken into town and kept in separate rooms without any food or water until they agreed to approve a land deal. In the meantime, she said, their families back in the village were surrounded by police vehicles.
"So, they exert the most terrible pressure," Sargeson said. "By law, they're not allowed to coerce people to sign off on these things, but of course it happens all the time."
In a separate case, villagers in the eastern province of Zhejiang province have described similar tactics by their local officials who attempted to get them to agree to sell their land to build a state-owned power plant. The Zhaiqiao village leader who opposed the land deal was later found crushed by a large truck last Christmas in what authorities called an accident.
___
Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong
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CAPTION CORRECTION CORRECTS THE NAME OF PHOTOGRAPHER - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with the emblem of the United Russia party in the background, visits the United Russia party headquarters in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 4, 2011. Exit polls cited by Russian state television showed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party with less than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's parliamentary elections, a significant drop reflecting Russians' growing weariness with his rule. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Pool)
CAPTION CORRECTION CORRECTS THE NAME OF PHOTOGRAPHER - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, with the emblem of the United Russia party in the background, visits the United Russia party headquarters in Moscow, Saturday, Dec. 4, 2011. Exit polls cited by Russian state television showed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party with less than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday's parliamentary elections, a significant drop reflecting Russians' growing weariness with his rule. (AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Pool)
Elizaveta Semenova is helped by her daughter to fill in a ballot paper at her home in the village of Oster, 380 km (237 miles) west of Moscow, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. The ballot box has a sign reading: "Election" and the Smolensk region emblem. Russians cast their ballots with muted enthusiasm in national parliamentary elections Sunday, a vote that opinion polls indicate could water down the strength of the party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, despite the government's relentless marginalization of opposition groups. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)
Russian soldiers stand in line at a polling station in Moscow, Russia, on Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. Russians cast their ballots with muted enthusiasm in national parliamentary elections Sunday, a vote that opinion polls indicate could water down the strength of the party led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, despite the government's relentless marginalization of opposition groups. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr)
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin casts his ballot at a polling station in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. Russians cast their ballots with muted enthusiasm in national parliament elections on Sunday, a vote that opinion polls indicate could water down the strength of the country's dominant party. (AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin greets journalists after voting at a polling station in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Dec. 4, 2011. Russians cast their ballots with muted enthusiasm in national parliament elections on Sunday, a vote that opinion polls indicate could water down the strength of the country's dominant party.(AP Photo/RIA Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Pool)
MOSCOW (AP) ? Several thousand people protested Monday night against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party, which won the largest share of a parliamentary election that observers said was rigged.
It was perhaps the largest opposition rally in years and ended with police detaining some of the activists. A group of several hundred marched toward the Central Elections Commission near the Kremlin, but were stopped by riot police and taken away in buses. The total number of those detained was not immediately available.
Estimates of the number of protesters at the rally ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. They chanted "Russia without Putin" and accused his United Russia party of stealing votes.
United Russia took about 50 percent of Sunday's vote, a result that opposition politicians and election monitors said was inflated because of ballot stuffing and other vote fraud. It was a significant drop from the last election, when the party took 64 percent.
Pragmatically, the loss of seats in parliament appears to mean little; two of the three other parties winning seats have been reliable supporters of government legislation. But, it is a substantial symbolic blow to a party that had become virtually indistinguishable from the state itself.
It has also energized the opposition and poses a humbling challenge to the country's dominant figure in his drive to return to the presidency. Putin, who became prime minister in 2008 because of presidential term limits, will run for a third term in March and some opposition leaders saw the parliamentary election as a game-changer for what had been presumed to be Putin's easy stroll back to the Kremlin.
Also Monday, more than 400 Communist supporters gathered to express their indignation over the election, which some called the dirtiest in modern Russian history. The Communist Party finished second with about 20 percent of the vote.
"Even compared to the 2007 elections, violations by the authorities and the government bodies that actually control the work of all election organizations at all levels, from local to central, were so obvious and so brazen," said Yevgeny Dorovin, a member of the party's central committee.
Putin appeared subdued and glum even as he insisted at a Cabinet meeting Monday that the result "gives United Russia the possibility to work calmly and smoothly."
Although the sharp decline for United Russia could lead Putin and the party to try to portray the election as genuinely democratic, the wide reports of violations have undermined that attempt at spin.
Boris Nemtsov, a prominent figure among Russia's beleaguered liberal opposition, declared that the vote spelled the end of Putin's "honeymoon" with the nation and predicted that his rule will soon "collapse like a house of cards."
"He needs to hold an honest presidential election and allow opposition candidates to register for the race, if he doesn't want to be booed from Kamchatka to Kaliningrad," Nemtsov said on Ekho Moskvy radio.
Many Russians came to despise United Russia, seeing it as the engine of endemic corruption. The election showed voters that they have power despite what election monitors called a dishonest count.
"Yesterday, it was proven by these voters that not everything was fixed, that the result really matters," said Tiny Kox of the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly, part of an international election observer mission.
Other analysts suggested the vote was a wake-up call to Putin that he had lost touch with the country. In the early period of his presidency, Putin's appeal came largely from his man-of-the-people image: candid, decisive and without ostentatious tastes.
But, he seemed to lose some of the common touch, appearing in well-staged but increasingly preposterous heroic photo opportunities ? hunting a whale with a crossbow, fishing while bare-chested, and purportedly discovering ancient Greek artifacts while scuba-diving. And Russians grew angry at his apparent disregard ? and even encouragement ? of the country's corruption and massive income gap.
"People want Putin to go back to what he was in his first term ? decisive, dynamic, tough on oligarchs and sensitive to the agenda formed by society," said Sergei Markov, a prominent United Russia Duma member.
The vote "was a normal reaction of the population to the worsening social situation," once Kremlin-connected political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Only seven parties were allowed to field candidates for parliament this year, while the most vocal opposition groups were barred from the race. International monitors said the election administration lacked independence, most media were biased and state authorities interfered unduly at different levels.
"To me, this election was like a game in which only some players are allowed to compete," Heidi Tagliavini, the head of the observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said.
Tagliavini said that of the 150 polling stations where the counting was observed, "34 were assessed to be very bad."
Other than the Communist Party, the socialist Just Russia and the Liberal Democratic Party led by mercurial nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky are also expected to increase their representation in the Duma; both have generally voted with United Russia, and the Communists pose only token opposition.
Two liberal parties were in the running, but neither got the 7 percent of the national vote needed to win seats. Nemtsov's People's Freedom Party, one of the most prominent liberal parties, was denied participation for alleged violations in the required 45,000 signatures the party had submitted with its registration application.
About 60 percent of Russia's 110 million registered voters cast ballots, down from 64 percent four years ago.
Social media were flooded with messages reporting violations. Many people reported seeing buses deliver groups of people to polling stations, with some of the buses carrying young men who looked like football fans, who often are associated with violent nationalism.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. has "serious concerns" about the elections.
Russia's only independent election monitoring group, Golos, which is funded by U.S. and European grants, has come under heavy official pressure in the past week. Golos' website was incapacitated by hackers on Sunday, and its director Lilya Shibanova and her deputy had their cell phone numbers, email and social media accounts hacked.
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Associated Press writers Vladimir Isachenkov and Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.
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(Reuters) - A rogue surgeon injects stem cells from a fetus into a sick man's brain. The cells morph and form body parts. When the man dies, the pathologist finds cartilage, skin and bone clumped in his brain.
The scene is not from a horror movie; it happened to Max Truex, a former Olympic runner who suffered from Parkinson's disease. The case sent a chill through the scientific community when it came to light 15 years ago and typifies some of the hurdles researchers have faced while trying to bring stem cell therapies to the market.
Now, it appears, their efforts are closer than ever to paying off.
Dozens of adult stem cell treatments are moving through clinical trials and showing early success, raising hopes that some could reach the market within five years.
"It will only take a few successes to really change the field," said Gil Van Bokkelen, chief executive of Athersys Inc and chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. "As you see things getting closer and closer to that tipping point, you're going to see a frenzy of activity take place."
Many of the trials focus on heart disease and inflammatory conditions, some of the biggest markets in medicine. The cells used are derived from adult tissue such as fat, or bone marrow, thereby circumventing the ethical concerns raised by the use of cells derived from embryos.
Data for the most part remains early, but as more results emerge, pharmaceutical companies are beginning to take note.
"A lot of big companies are looking to place bets on some Phase II products once that data has been confirmed," said Paul Schmitt, managing partner at venture capital firm Novitas Capital. "Even now they're attending all the medical meetings and talking to all the stem cell companies."
Venture funds like Novitas are taking different approaches to playing the emerging field. Novitas invested $4 million in Amorcyte Inc, a company recently acquired by NeoStem Inc that is developing a treatment for heart disease. It is sticking to that investment for now.
By contrast, Aspire Capital Partners LLC is investing more broadly in the hope that one success will offset the inevitable failures.
"My philosophy in the stem cell space is that it's very difficult at this point to pick the winners and losers," said Steven Martin, managing member at Aspire. "We believe that over time there will be some very significant clinical progress, and valuations will improve, but we're still a long way from an approved therapy."
In the meantime, he said, "we are willing to be patient because we think the upside is tremendous."
GROWING INTEREST
Aastrom Biosciences Inc recently presented promising results from a mid-stage trial of its treatment for patients with critical limb ischemia, a disease in which blood flow to the extremities is restricted, at the American Heart Association's annual meeting. A mid-stage trial from Australia's Mesoblast Ltd showed its stem cell product reduced the rate of heart attacks and the need for artery clearing procedures by 78 percent.
"We're actually developing products now," said Timothy Mayleben, chief executive of Aastrom, which is using cells derived from a patient's own bone marrow to develop treatments for cardiovascular disease. "For the first time you are starting to see data being presented at major medical meetings."
Mesoblast has attracted more interest from investors than most. In late 2010, Cephalon Inc took a 20 percent stake in the company, which now has a market value of $2 billion -- far greater than any other pure play company in the space. Cephalon was bought this year by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd..
"Mesoblast gets this out-sized valuation by being a standard bearer in a risky field that everyone feels has a lot of promise," said Raghuram Selvaraju, an analyst at Morgan Joseph TriArtisan.
Shire Plc said in May it planned to establish a new regenerative medicine business, and kick-started it with the $750 million purchase of Advanced BioHealing Inc, which makes a skin substitute for treating diabetic foot ulcers.
Pfizer Inc, Johnson & Johnson and Roche Holding AG are members of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, a nonprofit group that promotes awareness of the field. Pfizer has a regenerative medicine unit and a partnership with Athersys. But their projects are small.
"Big pharma companies will be more interested in investing once they see data in hundreds of patients," said Schmitt.
Once that happens, there will be a land rush, he said, just as there was with monoclonal antibodies, genetically engineered molecules such as Roche's breast cancer drug Herceptin and Abbott Laboratories' rheumatoid arthritis drug Humira.
"Monoclonal antibodies were a missionary effort for many years, all through the eighties and nineties," Schmitt said. "They were called silver bullets, and eventually those bullets turned to gold."
According to GBI Research, the market for monoclonal antibodies was worth $15.6 billion in 2010 and is expected to reach $31.7 billion by 2017.
Stem cell therapy, which once promised to deliver cures for everything from Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's to spinal cord injury, has followed a similar path of enthusiasm followed by disappointment.
"There was a lot of hype around the industry early on and the industry failed to live up to that hype," said Aastrom's Mayleben.
Now stem cell therapy is gaining credibility again as real clinical data begins to emerge.
"From an investor standpoint, the time lines are long, but the opportunity to transform medicine and science is unlike anything else out there," said Aspire's Martin.
MASTER CELLS
The promise of stem cells, which have been used for 40 years in bone marrow transplants, lies in their ability to repair tissue, reduce inflammation, regulate the immune system, and respond to calls for help from multiple places inside the body. Stem cells are the body's master cells - blank slates that renew themselves and mature into specific cell types in the heart, muscle and other organs.
Embryonic stem cells are uniquely capable of differentiating into every type of mature cell in the body, and were long viewed as the most promising for regenerating tissue.
But harvesting stem cells from embryos requires the destruction of the embryo itself, a process opposed by conservative Christian groups. Moreover, their endless capacity to divide can lead to the formation of teratomas, or stem cell cancers.
Recently, Geron Corp, the world's leading embryonic stem cell company, said it could no longer fund its stem cell work and would focus on developing cancer drugs. It closed its trial for spinal cord injury.
Unlike embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells have a more limited capacity to differentiate, but appear able to reduce inflammation and promote blood vessel formation. Furthermore, they can respond to damage in the body in a flexible and dynamic way, offering advantages over traditional drugs.
"They seem to be preprogrammed to act some way in tissue repair, not to form an organ or a tissue," said Douglas Losordo, head of stem cell research at Baxter International Inc, which is developing cell therapies for heart disease. "The cells that we use are very effective at stimulating the formation of new blood vessels, but if I wanted to make a brain cell out of those cells they would not be very good at it."
These are the type of stem cell treatments, delivered by infusion, injection or catheter, that are being developed today.
Some companies, such as Celgene Corp, Pluristem Therapeutics Inc, Athersys and Mesoblast are developing so-called allogeneic products designed to be sold with the ease and scale of a traditional pharmaceutical. Cells are taken from a single donor, expanded, frozen and shipped for use in thousands of people.
"We wanted to create a product that everyone could receive and not have to match every donor to every recipient," said Robert Hariri, chief executive of Celgene's Cellular Therapeutics unit.
Aastrom, Baxter, NeoStem and Cytori Therapeutics Inc use cells taken from a patient's own body in what is known as an autologous transfer. This personalized approach eliminates the risk that the cells will be rejected.
"There are going to be dividing lines in the industry between autologous and allogeneic and there are some indications where one will be better than the other," said Jason Kolbert, head of business development at NeoStem.
"It may be that immediately following a heart attack you would want to use an allogeneic therapy to limit the damage in those first few hours, and then follow up after day five with an autologous product like ours."
Different types of stem cell are being used for different diseases. Cytori is developing a heart disease product derived from fat cells, for example, while Celgene is using placental cells for Crohn's disease and rheumatoid arthritis therapies.
Fetal cells are also being explored. Neuralstem Inc, for example, is developing treatments for neurological disorders from an aborted fetus and is in the early stages of testing a treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known also as Lou Gehrig's disease.
"I think Neuralstem is one to watch," said Aspire's Martin.
CHALLENGES AHEAD
As cell therapies move further through clinical trials, companies will need more money, and funding is scarce. Aastrom's shares have fallen 37 percent since reaching a year high of $3.47 in June as investors brace for another dilutive capital-raising effort.
Companies with credible partners will likely have an advantage. Athersys has a partnership with Pfizer; Cytori has a partnership with General Electric Co; Pluristem has a partnership with United Therapeutics Corp. Celgene, which makes cancer drug Revlimid, has resources of its own.
Yet even if companies remain afloat long enough to bring a product through late-stage clinical trials, it is unclear what regulators like the Food and Drug Administration will require in order to approve them.
Some believe the regulatory hurdles for treatments derived from a patient's own cells will be lower than those where the cells come from donors, since there is less risk of cell rejection. However, no clear pathway has yet been established.
"We need a clear, consistent and rigorous regulatory framework," said Athersys's Van Bokkelen "The FDA is actually willing to provide lots of guidance and assistance to sponsors, if you just ask them."
(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Boston and Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Edward Tobin and Tim Dobbyn)
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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) ? A Maine man who accused former Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of molesting him is admitting to The Associated Press that he molested a boy in Maine.
Zach Tomaselli of Lewiston said Monday that he sexually abused a 13-year-old boy he met at a camp where he was serving as a counselor. The boy is now 14.
Tomaselli has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges but told the AP he anticipates that he'll plead guilty. He said he's "sick of hiding behind" his attorney.
He said he abused the boy in the same way he claims he was abused by Fine and by his own father.
Both men deny those claims.
Tomaselli said the Maine teen has suffered from the way he abused and controlled him.
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News reports are confirming the rumor we told you about weeks ago. The Queen of Pop, Madonna, is going to be the halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl XLVI.
Prince, U2, Black Eyed Peas, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, The Who and Janet Jackson have done the honors of late.
According to a joint statement by the NFL and NBC, which will air the game, Madonna will perform with help on the field by Cirque du Soleil and Jamie King February 5.
The Black Eyed Peas halftime show this year was kind of bad, so Madonna takes the stage to find the bar set relatively low for such a mammoth TV spectacle.
Taking place at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the title game coincides with Madge's new album release - her first effort since 2008 - around that time.
Her new single, "Give Me All Your Love" leaked recently, before being pulled by the singer's label. It generated serious buzz and generally positive reviews.
Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/madonna-confirmed-as-super-bowl-halftime-show-headliner/
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WASHINGTON ? The unemployment rate, which has refused to budge from the 9 percent neighborhood for two and a half frustrating years, suddenly dropped in November, driven in part by small businesses that finally see reason to hope and hire.
Economists said there was a long way to go but liked what they saw.
The rate fell to 8.6 percent, the lowest since March 2009, two months after President Barack Obama took office. Unemployment passed 9 percent that spring and had stayed there or higher for all but two months since then.
The country added 120,000 jobs in November, the Labor Department said Friday. The economy has generated 100,000 or more jobs five months in a row ? the first time that has happened since April 2006, well before the Great Recession.
"Something good is stirring in the U.S. economy," Ian Shepherdson, an economist at High Frequency Economics, said in a note to clients.
It clinched one of the best weeks in stock market history. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 37 points and 825 for the week. The only better week was in October 2008, when stocks lurched higher and lower during the financial crisis.
The report showed that September and October were stronger months for the job market than first estimated. For four months in a row, the government has revised job growth figures higher for previous months.
Unemployment peaked at 10.1 percent in October 2009, four months after the Great Recession ended. It dipped to 8.9 percent last February and 8.8 percent last March but otherwise was at or above 9 percent.
Obama, who faces a re-election vote in less than a year and a presidential campaign that will turn on the economy, seized on the decline to argue for expanding a cut in the tax that workers pay toward Social Security.
The tax cut reaches 160 million Americans and will give most households $1,000 to $2,000 this year. It will expire Dec. 31 unless Congress acts. Republicans and Democrats have supported an extension but differ on how to pay for it.
The Senate on Thursday defeated plans from both parties. Republicans had proposed paying for the cut by freezing the pay of federal workers through 2015. Democrats wanted to raise taxes on people making $1 million or more a year.
"Now is not the time to slam the brakes on the recovery, right now it's time to step on the gas," Obama said Friday.
Inside the unemployment report, one of the most closely watched indicators of the economy's health, were signs of improvement for small businesses, which account for one of every two jobs in the private sector.
The government uses a survey of mostly large companies and government agencies to determine how many jobs were added or lost each month. It uses a separate survey of households to determine the unemployment rate.
The household survey picks up hiring by companies of all sizes, including small businesses and companies just getting off the ground. It also includes farm workers and the self-employed, who aren't included in the survey of companies.
The household survey has shown an average of 321,000 jobs created per month since July, compared with an average of 13,000 the first seven months of the year.
When the economy is improving or slipping into recession, many economists say, the household survey does the better job of picking up the shift because it is more likely to detect small business hiring.
"We might finally be seeing new business creation expand again, which is critical to the sustainability of the recovery," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial, a financial services company.
The National Federation of Independent Business, a small business group, said Friday that its own survey of small companies shows that more of them are planning to add workers than at any time since September 2008, when the financial crisis struck.
LogicBoost, a Washington, D.C., software consulting firm with 19 employees, has hired a sales worker and a marketing worker in the past three months and planned to post an opening for a software engineer Friday.
"Business is going gangbusters," CEO Jonathan Cogley said. "It would be great if the economy were stronger. I think we'd be growing even faster."
Outside Detroit, Grace Dersa opened the Frank Street Bakery this week with her husband. They took the $60,000 gamble after seeing signs that the local economy is improving. They, too, plan to add a worker soon.
"When we go to a restaurant here, there's a 30-minute to two-hour wait. Homes are selling in this area," Dersa said. "People are spending."
Indeed, Americans dropped a record $52.4 billion over the Thanksgiving weekend, according to the National Retail Federation, a trade group. A separate report from MasterCard found spending was up almost 9 percent from last year.
The unemployment report was the latest encouraging indicator for the economy. Other reports this week have shown that factories are producing more, construction is growing, and people are buying more cars.
The accelerating debt crisis in Europe has loomed over the economy for months. An economic collapse there would hammer sales of American exports. And if the crisis causes banks to stop lending money, the world economy would suffer.
But there are signs that Europe is moving toward a solution. Earlier this week, six central banks around the world made it easier for commercial banks overseas to borrow American dollars to do business. The coordinated action calmed financial markets and bought time for politicians to work something out.
The leaders of Germany and France appear to be pushing for stronger rules to make sure European governments are responsible with their budgets, an approach designed to save the euro currency from collapse.
European leaders meet next Friday for a crucial summit on the matter.
In the United States, about 13.3 million people are counted as unemployed. Private employers added 140,000 jobs in November, while governments shed 20,000. Governments at all level have cut almost a half-million jobs this year.
More than half the jobs added last month were by retailers, restaurants and bars. Professional and business services also rose. Those tend to be higher-paying jobs ? engineers, accountants and high-tech workers.
Still, more than 300,000 people stopped their job searches last month, so they were no longer officially counted as unemployed. That accounts for some of the drop in the unemployment rate.
The so-called underemployment rate, which counts people who have given up looking and people who are working part-time but want full-time jobs, did fall ? to 15.6 percent from 16.2 percent.
But even with the recent gains, the economy isn't close to replacing the jobs lost in the recession. Employers began shedding workers in February 2008 and cut nearly 8.7 million jobs for the next 25 months. The economy has regained about 2.5 million.
And most people aren't getting raises. Average hourly pay slipped 2 cents last month to $23.18. In the past year, wages have risen 1.8 percent, but inflation has risen twice as fast, eroding buying power.
It had appeared that Obama would face voters next fall with the highest unemployment of any sitting president seeking re-election since World War II. That was the 7.8 percent faced by Gerald Ford when he ran and lost in 1976.
Getting unemployment down to that level would take stronger and consistent job growth. It takes about 125,000 new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth.
Ronald Reagan faced 7.2 percent unemployment in 1984 and trounced Walter Mondale. Unemployment was 7.8 percent when Obama took office in January 2009.
The economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in July, August and September. Paul Ashworth, an economist at Capital Economics, estimates growth will speed up to 2.5 percent in the last three months of the year, but slow to 1.5 percent in 2012.
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AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.
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NEW YORK ? The crush of presidential campaign ads is here.
Less than five weeks before voting begins in the 2012 presidential contest, the Republican candidates are stepping up their presence over the TV airwaves and online. Super PACs have been running ads, and the Democratic National Committee is doing its best to try to weaken a leading GOP contender, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
President Barack Obama has even tiptoed into the fray with a limited ad buy soliciting volunteers for his campaign.
"We've been waiting for it to start, and it's been a little slower in Iowa and New Hampshire than we expected. But that doesn't say anything about what's going to happen next, and in the coming year," said Ken Goldstein, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks ad spending.
The new, more aggressive advertising phase comes as the Republican field remains deeply unsettled before the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3. The New Hampshire primary follows on Jan. 10.
The field may become more volatile still. After months of training their attacks primarily on Obama, a Democrat seeking his second term, the Republicans are beginning to assail one another.
This emerging ad crush poses particular challenges for Romney, who polls at or near the top of the field in the early states but has failed to consolidate support behind his candidacy. While he's tried to run a general election strategy focused on beating Obama, he's been the target of attacks from both his GOP rivals and the DNC.
Romney's campaign began running its first TV ad just last week, in New Hampshire, and it immediately drew criticism.
The ad criticizes Obama's handling of the economy and appears to quote the president from the 2008 campaign saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." But the quote is misleading ? Obama was paraphrasing a comment from an aide to then-Republican rival John McCain. Romney has stood by the ad, saying the quote is fair game.
Romney's campaign announced Thursday it would begin running ads in Iowa, signaling he has decided to compete fully in the state after steering clear of it for much of the campaign. Romney spent about $10 million in Iowa in 2008 only to lose the caucuses to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Romney's rivals, meanwhile, have sharpened their attacks on him.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry released a new ad Friday in Iowa that gently knocks Romney. "I'm not ashamed to talk about my faith," Perry says in the ad ? a contrast to Romney, who has refrained from much discussion of his Mormon belief on the campaign. Many Republicans who participate in the Iowa caucuses are evangelical Christians, some of whom regard Mormonism with suspicion.
Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman has launched a tough Web ad against Romney, using a tense interview Romney gave with Fox News earlier this week as a pretext to renew criticism of the former Massachusetts governor as a flip-flopper on key issues. Our Destiny, a super PAC supporting Huntsman, has spent $650,000 on an ad in New Hampshire indirectly hitting Romney. Huntsman, the ad promises, won't be a "phony who tells me one thing and you another."
The DNC has also gotten in the game, producing a TV spot likening Romney's shifting positions to "two men trapped in one body." The ad is being aired in a handful of swing states, and it garnered considerable publicity in national news outlets.
But Romney isn't the only target.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has surged to the top of many recent polls, has come under withering attack from rival Ron Paul. The Texas congressman released a scathing Web video painting Gingrich as a shape-shifting mercenary who has changed position on key issues because of lucrative consulting contracts with the housing giant Freddie Mac, the health care industry and others.
Romney gently pokes Gingrich in his new Iowa ad, which closes with a shot of Romney and his wife of 42 years, Ann, walking through a corn field and holding hands. It's a not-so-subtle contrast with Gingrich, who has been married three times and has acknowledged infidelity in his first two marriages.
Gingrich hasn't aired commercials yet but his rising popularity has fueled a burst of fundraising success that could pay for some advertising in the coming weeks, campaign officials said.
Perry has devoted more resources to TV advertising than anyone in the field. His campaign took the unusual step of buying ads on the national Fox News Network, an expensive gamble aimed at boosting his credibility with conservatives following several weak debate performances. The campaign has also spent more than $2 million on television in Iowa, including a special "one-time only" ad making light of Perry's recent flub of which Cabinet departments he'd eliminate. The ad was paired with Perry's appearance Thursday on NBC's "The Tonight Show."
A pro-Perry super PAC, Make Us Great Again, has spent nearly $900,000 to run ads in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, another early voting state.
The ad blitz hasn't done much to boost Perry's standing in the race. Most polls show him trailing many rivals in the early states, including Romney, Gingrich, Paul and businessman Herman Cain.
Cain, who briefly topped many polls until he was hit with sexual harassment allegations last month, released a new ad promoting his business credentials Thursday in part to insist his campaign remains on track. But it's unclear whether the ad is actually airing anywhere. A Georgia woman came forward this week claiming to have had a 13-year affair with Cain, and while he has denied the allegations, he has said campaign contributions have dried up and he's reassessing whether to stay in the race.
Obama, meanwhile, has appeared in two new re-election ads urging people to volunteer for his campaign. "Don't sit this one out," the president says, apparently trying to counter the expectation that the intense grassroots interest in his candidacy in 2008 has abated this time. Campaign aides said the ad is airing lightly on satellite television and only as a test to see whether TV is an effective way to recruit volunteers.
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Associated Press writers Steve Peoples in New Hampshire, and Jim Davenport and Philip Elliott in South Carolina contributed to this report.
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Follow Beth Fouhy on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/bfouhy
