SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Zynga Inc‘s chief financial officer, David Wehner, will leave the company for an executive position at Facebook Inc, the gaming company announced Tuesday as it reshuffled its upper ranks.
David Ko, chief mobile officer, has been elevated to become Zynga‘s new chief operations officer.
Mark Vranesh, Zynga’s top accounting executive, will replace Wehner as CFO, Zynga said.
(Reporting By Gerry Shih; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News
President Obama has faith in Gen. John R. Allen, the top American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, the White House spokesman said on Tuesday, after it was disclosed that the general was under investigation for what the Pentagon called “inappropriate communication” with the woman whose complaint to the F.B.I. set off the scandal involving David H. Petraeus’s extramarital affair.
“The president thinks very highly of General Allen,” the spokesman, Jay Carney, said at a White House news briefing. “He has faith in General Allen,” and believes that he has done “an excellent job” as commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Carney added. General Allen’s recent nomination to become the supreme allied commander in Europe, Mr. Carney said, is delayed at the request of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta pending the investigation’s outcome.
Mr. Panetta and other officials disclosed overnight the investigation into General Allen’s e-mails with Jill Kelley, the woman in Tampa, Fla., who was seen by Paula Broadwell, Mr. Petraeus’s lover, as a rival for his attentions.
Mr. Petraeus’s affair led to his resignation as head of the C.I.A. on Friday, and the F.B.I.’s investigations into e-mails in the matter apparently led in turn to General Allen’s correspondence.
In a statement released to reporters on his plane en route to Australia early Tuesday, Mr. Panetta said the F.B.I. on Sunday had referred “a matter involving” General Allen to the Pentagon.
Mr. Panetta turned the matter over to the Pentagon’s inspector general to conduct an investigation into what a defense official said were thousands of pages of documents, many of them e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley.
A senior law enforcement official in Washington said on Tuesday that F.B.I. investigators, looking into Ms. Kelley’s complaint about anonymous e-mails she had received, examined all of her e-mails as a routine step.
“When you get involved in a cybercase like this, you have to look at everything,” the official said, suggesting that Ms. Kelley may not have considered that possibility when she filed the complaint. “The real question is why someone decided to open this can of worms.”
The official would not describe the content of the e-mails between General Allen and Ms. Kelley or say specifically why F.B.I. officials had decided to pass them on to the Defense Department. “Generally, the nature of the e-mails warranted providing them to D.O.D.,” he said.
Under military law, adultery can be a crime.
The defense official on Mr. Panetta’s plane said that General Allen, who is also married, told Pentagon officials that he had done nothing wrong. Neither he nor Ms. Kelley, who is also married with children, could be reached for comment early Tuesday. Mr. Panetta’s statement praised General Allen for his leadership in Afghanistan and said, “He is entitled to due process in this matter.”
A senior Defense Department official said General Allen had denied having an extramarital affair with Ms. Kelley. But the official said the content of some of the e-mails “was of a flirtatious nature.”
“Some were of an affectionate nature,” the official said, adding that it was unclear whether the flirtatiousness expressed was from General Allen to Ms. Kelley, from Ms. Kelley to General Allen, or mutual.
“That is what makes the e-mails potentially inappropriate,” he said.
The official said that he had not read the e-mails, but had been briefed on the content, and that they did not contain anything inappropriate regarding operations or security.
But there were conflicting assessments of the content of the e-mails. Associates of General Allen said that the e-mails were of an innocuous nature. Some of the e-mails, these associates said, used terms of endearment, but not in a flirtatious way.
Pentagon officials cautioned against making too much of the number of documents, since some might be from e-mail chains, or brief messages printed out on a whole page.
The Pentagon inspector general’s investigation opens up what could be a widening scandal into two of the most prominent generals of their generation: Mr. Petraeus, who was the top commander in Iraq and Afghanistan before he retired from the military and became director of the C.I.A., only to resign on Friday because of the affair, and General Allen, who also served in Iraq and now commands 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
Although General Allen will remain the commander in Afghanistan, Mr. Panetta said that he had asked President Obama to delay the general’s nomination to be the commander of American forces in Europe and the supreme allied commander of NATO, two positions he was to move into after what was expected to be easy confirmation by the Senate. Mr. Panetta said in his statement that Mr. Obama agreed with his request.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Ben Roethlisberger left Heinz Field on Monday night with his sprained right shoulder in a sling. When he walks back in ready to play is anybody's guess.
Tomlin called Pittsburgh's franchise quarterback "questionable" but otherwise offered little detail Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Roethlisberger was pounded into the ground by Kansas City Chiefs linebackers Tamba Hali and Justin Houston in the third quarter of Pittsburgh's 16-13 overtime victory.
"He is being evaluated," Tomlin said. "Obviously this injury puts his participation in the questionable category for this week."
Roethlisberger left the game and went to the hospital to for an MRI-exam. He underwent more tests on Tuesday to determine the severity of the sprain to the sternoclavicular (SC) joint in his throwing shoulder.
The SC joint connects the collarbone to the sternum. Treatment can range from a few days of rest and ice to as much as 4-6 weeks according to Dr. Victor Khabie, chief of sports medicine at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
"You could tape it, you could do that stuff but the reality is those ligaments just have to heal," Khabie said. "If you go throwing, you slow down the healing process."
Roethlisberger was scrambling in the pocket to buy time on Pittsburgh's first possession of the second half when Houston wrapped up Roethlisberger's legs and Hali slammed into him, driving the quarterback's right side into the damp Heinz Field turf. Roethlisberger didn't appear to be hurt walking off the field but quickly made his way to the locker room before leaving the stadium with the game still in progress.
"It didn't seem like a tough hit ... but he came to the sideline and next thing you know he was gone," Pittsburgh left tackle Max Starks said. "I'm hoping it was nothing serious. Honestly it didn't seem like it."
If Roethlisberger can't play, the Steelers (6-3) will turn veteran backup Byron Leftwich, who completed 7 of 14 passes for 73 yards in relief as Pittsburgh won its fourth straight game thanks to Shaun Suisham's 23-yard field goal 51 seconds into the extra period.
The 32-year-old Leftwich hasn't started a game since 2009, when he went 0-3 for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His last victory came on Oct. 8, 2006 when the Jacksonville Jaguars beat the New York Jets 41-0.
The former first round pick has spent most of the last six years as a backup while dealing with a series of significant injuries. He missed all of last season after breaking his arm in a preseason game and threw seven regular season passes in 2010 after hurting his knee at the end of training camp.
Though there was a bit of rust after getting pressed into service, Leftwich did guide the Steelers to a go-ahead field goal in the fourth quarter.
"I try to prepare as if I am the starter every week," Leftwich said. "Nothing will change. I wish Ben the best. I hope he is healthy. Other than that I will be ready to go."
Leftwich insists he has mastered offensive coordinator Todd Haley's playbook and Leftwich's teammates are hardly concerned if he's under center on Sunday.
"We don't have a true rookie back there that's never taken a snap before," Starks said. "We feel good about who we have back there if it is Byron. We'll move forward and wait Ben's return if that's the case."
Roethlisberger isn't the only big name that could be out on Sunday. Safety Troy Polamalu continues to be plagued by a right calf injury and Tomlin described him "doubtful" to play against the Ravens. Safety Ryan Clark sustained a concussion for the second time in three games when he took a knee to the head from Kansas City wide receiver Dwayne Bowe, though Tomlin said it appears Clark is fine.
Maybe, but it's not exactly the way the Steelers wanted to be heading into a crucial three-game stretch that includes two games against the hated Ravens in three weeks.
Baltimore (7-2) appeared ready to run away with the division after Pittsburgh stumbled to a 2-3 start. The Steelers have ripped off four straight to draw within a game and can take firm control of the AFC North at home on Sunday.
The prospect of doing it without their two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback makes that task more difficult, but not impossible.
"B-Left has been here a long time," defensive end Brett Keisel said. "If he's in there, we expect to keep rolling."
___
Online: http://pro32.ap.org/poll and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL
In her mid-20s, Yetunde Felix-Ukwu wore a Fentanyl patch that delivered enough narcotic to knock most adults out cold. Yet it barely kept her pain, caused by sickle cell disease, tolerable.
Even with the patch, she was hospitalized almost every month for the pain, which she said was “like being hit with a hammer, searing, throbbing, you name it.”
A debilitating genetic disorder, sickle-cell disease causes blood cells to be shaped like sickles, or crescents, and to be rigid, not pliable. Rather than squeezing in and out of capillaries and blood vessels as normal cells do, the sickle cells jam up, depriving tissues throughout the body of blood and oxygen. That can cause severe organ damage, stroke, blindness and unimaginable pain.
“Imagine heart attack pain all over the body,” said Dr. Robert A. Brodsky, director of the division of hematology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Many patients don’t live past 50.
A bone marrow transplant could help. The problem is, most patients, including Ms. Felix-Ukwu, cannot get a bone marrow transplant because they don’t have a perfect genetic match. Like a vast majority of others who have sickle cell disease, Ms. Felix-Ukwu is African-American, and the chance of an African-American finding a donor in bone marrow registries is about 10 percent, compared with a 60 to 70 percent chance for Caucasians, Dr. Brodsky said.
Dr. Brodsky and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins, however, began a bone marrow transplant trial using so-called half-match donors. The trial has found that the procedure can cure sickle cell, replacing defective stem cells that produce sickle-shaped cells with normal stem cells that churn out plump, pliable blood cells.
Since almost everyone with a sibling, a parent or a child has a genetic half match, the procedure could make bone marrow transplants available to more than 90 percent of candidates.
“It opens the opportunity for a cure for thousands of adults with the disease who previously had not had any hope of a cure,” said Dr. Michael DeBaun, director of the Center for Excellence in Sickle Cell Disease at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Dr. DeBaun was not involved with the half-match trial.
Beginning in high school, Ms. Felix-Ukwu, now 30, had undergone regular transfusions to dilute and temporarily replace the sickle cells in her blood, but the transfusions stopped helping. Half-match donors have been used for about a decade in bone marrow transplants for leukemia and lymphoma patients, and the doctors believed it was now safe enough to use in sickle cell patients.
Ms. Felix-Ukwu, who lives in Lanham, Md., enrolled in the Johns Hopkins study, and her younger sister, Woma Felix-Ukwu, became her half-matched bone marrow donor.
Ms. Felix-Ukwu had to undergo a grueling course of chemotherapy, radiation and immunosuppresants before receiving the transplant.
“Those three days of chemo were the hardest days of my life, including all the pain I had been through with sickle cell,” she said. But it worked. Her body started producing normal blood cells. She continued to have some pain for another 18 months or so, for reasons that are not entirely clear, but now, three years after the transplant, Ms. Felix-Ukwu is disease-free and off all of her pain medications.
“It’s absolutely amazing,” says Dr. Brodsky, who published the study this month in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. Of the 14 patients in the study who received half-matched transplants, six were cured, meaning that their bone marrow is made up entirely of the donor’s and they are no longer producing sickle cells.
Two additional patients are still taking immunosuppressive drugs, meaning that the donor’s bone marrow took, but they still have some of their own marrow. They still have a chance of being cured.
In a half-match transplant, known medically as haploidentical transplant, only 50 percent of the pertinent genes have to match up. Testing for a bone marrow match entails looking for genes in the human leukocyte antigen, or H.L.A., system, the part of the immune system that recognizes self and not self.
In a full match, 8 to 10 H.L.A. genes need to match between donor and recipient.
“If you have disparities in the H.L.A. system and you transplant stem cells that recognize the patient as foreign, the new immune system will start attacking the patient,” said Dr. Brodsky. In half-match transplants, only half of these H.L.A. genes need to match.
But half-match transplants carry the risk that the donor’s immune cells will attack the host, a potentially deadly complication called graft-versus-host disease.
To reduce this risk, patients receive the chemotherapeutic drug cyclophosphamide after the bone marrow is transplanted. This drug kills the donor’s lymphocytes that would normally attack the recipient, but it spares the donor stem cells, which have an enzyme that makes them immune to it. The stem cells then produce new lymphocytes.
“What happens is that the new cells that are generated become tolerant to the host and will not attack it,” says Dr. Javier Bolaños-Meade, the lead author on the study and associate professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins.
“The biggest paradigm shift was the post-treatment chemo,” added Dr. Brodsky.
The other shift was the trend toward a gentler pre-treatment. In a traditional bone marrow transplant to treat cancer, patients receive high-dose chemotherapy and radiation before the transplant, not only to suppress the immune system but to kill off every last cancer cell in the body. But in sickle cell, the chemotherapy just has to suppress the immune system, so doctors can use a less intense regimen.
This could potentially open it up to many more adults. Bone marrow transplants have largely been offered to children with sickle cell, not adults, who were often too weak or debilitated to endure the more intense pre-treatments.
The half-match transplant is still experimental, and because of its toxicity, it is recommended only for those with advanced disease. It was successful in only about 50 percent of patients.
“You’re putting people through a lot, and to have half of the transplants not take must be heartbreaking,” said Dr. Jane Little, director of the adult sickle cell program at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “It’s exposing patients to risk you can’t take away. But it also really expands the pool of potential recipients.”
The team at Johns Hopkins is tweaking the procedure to improve the success rate without increasing the toxicity, said Dr. Bolaños-Meade. “We are working on transplanting with a higher number of stem cells to help overcome rejection,” he said.
“Clearly it doesn’t cure everyone, but in those patients in which it works, it’s a huge, huge thing,” Dr. Bolaños-Meade said.
This August, Ms. Felix-Ukwu celebrated a year without being in the hospital. She plans to go back to law school next September.
“When I look back, I wonder how I ever made it through all that pain,” she said. “Now I feel like I’m on vacation. I finally have the freedom to be able to live my life.”
Jason Hirschfeld/Associated Press
Hurricane Sandy pounding the coastline last month in Virginia Beach, Va. The state is the new epicenter of efforts by energy companies to get a toehold in the potentially vast resources hidden beneath the Atlantic.
WASHINGTON — When Doug Domenech looks out at the Atlantic Ocean, he sees oil and natural gas and jobs and revenue. Standing between him and those prizes are President Barack Obama, the U.S. Navy and the whales.
Mr. Domenech, Virginia’s secretary of natural resources, is undeterred. He and the state’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, have teamed up with Virginia’s two Democratic senators to try to do a run around the president and put Virginia’s coast on the energy map through an act of Congress.
The state is making efforts to restore a lease sale for energy exploration that was canceled in 2010 after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico followed an explosion on a drilling rig that was connected to a well owned by BP. The efforts have made Virginia the new epicenter of efforts by energy companies to get a toehold in the potentially vast resources hidden beneath the Atlantic.
“The administration not only took away our sale, but they didn’t reinstate it into the next five-year plan. They booted us off to 2017,” Mr. Domenech said. “That’s what made us start pursuing other avenues in Congress.”
Oil companies and government officials believe there is oil and natural gas off the East Coast of the United States. Exploration, however, has been blocked for more than 30 years after a devastating spill off the coast of California turned public opinion against offshore drilling.
That political environment changed in the past decade as oil prices soared and the American public and politicians weighed their fears of offshore drilling against the geopolitical threat of being dependent on oil from hostile nations or unstable regions.
Now seven companies, including Houston-based Global Geo Services and Western Geco, a subsidiary of Schlumberger, have applied for permission to conduct seismic studies along the East Coast from New Jersey all the way to Florida. Efforts are focusing on Virginia because the public, politicians in both parties and energy companies all favor opening the waters to drilling.
To proceed, the would-be explorers will need to bypass the vocal opposition of advocates who say that even the preliminary survey work would harm endangered whales and the U.S. Navy, which uses the waters off Virginia as training grounds for its Norfolk base.
“It’s an important frontier, and it’s right next to a large market,” said Joe Gagliardi, vice president of marine programs at Ion Geophysical Corp., a Houston-based company that has applied to spend six months conducting two-dimensional seismic surveys from New Jersey to Florida. “The Eastern seaboard market is huge.”
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates that there are 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil on the Atlantic’s outer continental shelf and another 31.3 trillion cubic feet, or 886.3 million cubic meters, of natural gas. The estimates are based on two-dimensional seismic surveys that were done in the early 1980s.
While they are careful to say that they have no idea what energy resources might be hidden beneath the Atlantic, energy industry executives believe that the B.O.E.M.’s estimates are low, noting the industry's history in the Gulf of Mexico..
“Initial estimates in the Gulf were five billion barrels of oil,” said Andy Radford, senior policy adviser at the American Petroleum Institute. “We’ve already produced over 20 billion, and current estimates are that there are 48 billion more.”
There are other indicators that drilling there could lead to big discoveries.
“We know there are oil seeps all along the East Coast of the U.S.,” Mr. Gagliardi said. “Naturally the earth is leaking oil on a daily basis. There’s a natural petroleum system out there.”
The Eastern Seaboard of the United States was once connected to the coast of West Africa before the continent split in two and the pieces drifted apart, creating the Atlantic Ocean. Nigeria alone has more than 37 billion barrels of proven reserves, much of it off the coast in deep water.
Tullow Oil, a company working on the same theory, struck oil last year off the coast of French Guiana. The company, which is London-based, said it had begun exploring in the area because it believed the geology mirrored its earlier successful discoveries across the ocean off the coast of West Africa.
I am happy to share that HP Cloud Compute now supports Microsoft Windows Server 2008 instances in addition to the variety of Linux distributions that are already available. Windows Server instances can now be launched in our US-West region. Since HP Cloud Compute is in public beta, all customers receive a 50% discount (see pricing below).
It is a priority for us to provide the tools that enable developers to quickly build, test, deploy and scale their applications in the cloud. That is why we created our CLI for Windows so that developers working in a Windows Server environment can quickly launch and manage their instances using the command line.
The three Windows Server images available are the Enterprise Editions of Windows Server 2008 SP2 (32 bit), Windows Server 2008 SP2 (64 bit) and Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit). All Windows Server instances are created with a randomly generated password, which is then encrypted. You can create and manage your Windows Server instances from our console, UNIX CLI and Windows CLI. For information about how to access your Windows Server instances using Remote Desktop (RDP), please review our documentation here.
The licenses for a Windows Server instance are included in the hourly rate for your instance, so you can spin up a server and get started without needing to worry about any additional licensing concerns. Please see the table below for details about the hourly fees for both standard HP Cloud Compute Linux Instances and HP Cloud Compute Windows Server Instances. While HP Cloud Compute continues in public beta, all customers receive a 50% discount off the prices listed below.
| HP Cloud Compute Instance Types | Linux (per hour) | Windows (per hour) |
| Extra Small (1GB RAM, 1 core, 30GB disk) | $ 0.04 | $ 0.06 |
| Small (2GB RAM, 2 cores, 60GB disk) | $ 0.08 | $ 0.12 |
| Medium (4GB RAM, 2 cores, 120GB disk) | $ 0.16 | $ 0.24 |
| Large (8GB RAM, 4 cores, 240GB disk) | $ 0.32 | $ 0.48 |
| Extra Large (16GB RAM, 4 cores, 480GB disk) | $ 0.64 | $ 0.96 |
| Double Extra Large (32GB RAM, 8 cores, 960GB disk) | $ 1.28 | $ 1.92 |
Our team has been working hard to ensure that we are able to support all of your public cloud needs and appreciate all those that participated in our private and public betas. We are very excited about the launch of Windows Server instances. Stay tuned as we plan to launch support for additional versions of Windows Server including Windows Server 2012 in the coming months. As always, feel free to leave a comment, connect with us on chat or email or find us on twitter (@hpcloud) if you have any questions.
Linux/Open Source News Headlines – Yahoo! News
GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syria pulled both Turkey and Israel closer to military entanglements in its civil war on Monday, bombing a rebel-held Syrian village a few yards from the Turkish border in a deadly aerial assault and provoking Israeli tank commanders in the disputed Golan Heights into blasting mobile Syrian artillery units across their own armistice line.
The escalations, which threatened once again to draw in two of Syria’s most powerful neighbors, came hours after the fractious Syrian opposition announced a broad new unity pact that elicited praise from the big foreign powers backing their effort to topple President Bashar al-Assad.
“It is a big day for the Syrian opposition,” wrote Joshua Landis, an expert on Syrian political history and the author of the widely followed Syria Comment blog. Mr. Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, wrote that the “Assad regime must be worried, as it has survived for 42 years thanks to Syria’s fragmentation.”
There has been speculation that Mr. Assad, feeling increasingly threatened, may deliberately seek to widen the conflict that has consumed much of his own country for the past 20 months and left roughly 40,000 people dead. Although there is no indication that Mr. Assad has decided to try to lure Israel into the fight, any Israeli involvement could rally his failing support and frustrate the efforts of his Arab adversaries.
The attack on the Turkish border, by what Syrian witnesses identified as a Syrian MIG-25 warplane, demolished at least 15 buildings and killed at least 20 people in the town of Ras al-Ain, the scene of heavy fighting for days and an impromptu crossing point for thousands of Syrian refugees clambering for safety into Turkey.
“The plane appeared in seconds, dropped a bomb and killed children,” said Nezir Alan, a doctor who witnessed the bombing. “Here is total chaos.” In a telephone interview from Ras al-Ain, he said the bombing wounded at least 70 people, 50 of them critically. Turkish television stations reported that ambulances were rushing victims into Ceylanpinar, Turkey, just across the border.
Windows of shops and houses in Ceylanpinar were shattered by the force of the bombing, and Turkish television showed people on both sides of the border running in panic, while military vehicles raced down streets as a huge cloud of smoke hung over the area.
There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries in Ceylanpinar. But the Turkish authorities, increasingly angered by what they view as Syrian provocations, have deployed troops and artillery units along the 550-mile border with Syria and have raised the idea of installing Patriot missile batteries that could deter Syrian military aircraft.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, sent a diplomatic note to Syria on Monday to protest the Ras al-Ain bombing, the semiofficial Anatolian News Agency reported.
Civilians in southern Turkey’s provinces of Hatay, Sanliurfa and Gaziantep, where the government has erected camps for Syrian refugees, have been advised not to travel close to the border.
In Israel, the military said Israeli tanks that are deployed in the Golan Heights, which the Israelis seized from Syria in the 1967 war, had made a direct hit on Syrian artillery units on Monday after consecutive days of erratic mortar fire coming from the Syrian side of the armistice line. The Syrian mortar shells caused no damage or casualties, the military said.
Military officials and analysts in Israel said that they viewed the Syrian shelling as unintentional spillover from the civil war and that Israel has no desire to get involved in the Syria conflict. But the Israelis have expressed increasing concern that after four decades of relative stability in the Golan area, the Assad government may be trying to push them into a fight that could galvanize Arab hostility toward Israel and distract attention from its own problems.
If an errant Syrian shell hit a school filled with children on the Israeli side, said Prof. Moshe Maoz at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, a strong Israeli response would be all but guaranteed. “Assad knows very well that Israel does not have a sense of humor here and can retaliate very heavily.”
The United Nations, which monitors an armistice agreement between Israel and Syria in force since the 1973 war, has said it fears that Golan violence could jeopardize the cease-fire.
In Doha, Qatar, where Syrian opposition figures had been meeting since last week, the agreement reached Sunday on forming a new umbrella organization, which could become the basis for a provisional government, was welcomed by participants and the effort’s foreign backers, including Turkey, the United States, the European Union and the Arab League. There were expectations that the new group, called the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, would be permitted to take Syria’s seat at the Arab League, which had expelled Mr. Assad’s representative.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry released a statement saying that the agreement “would add momentum to efforts in completing the democratic transition process in line with the legitimate expectations of the people.”
In the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, a focal point of the conflict since this summer, civilians who have been living under the threat of constant shelling by the Syrian Army welcomed the opposition unity agreement and expressed hope that it signaled a turning point.
“We have been waiting for this for a very very long time,” said Abu al-Hasan, an anti-Assad activist in Aleppo who was reached by telephone. “Even if it is not perfect yet, it will save us.” But he also warned that “people do not believe this will stop the shelling like a miracle.”
There was no sign that the violence was abating elsewhere inside Syria. Activist groups said warplanes were dropping bombs in Damascus suburbs and that army snipers had taken up positions in areas where bombs had been dropped. The mayhem surrounding central Damascus made residents in that part of the capital feel increasingly isolated.
“The inside of the city is like a big prison now,” said Alexia Jade, a media activist contacted inside Damascus. “The checkpoints have increased and the lines of cars waiting to be searched are getting longer.”
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Los Angeles Lakers hired Mike D'Antoni late Sunday night, signing the former coach of the Suns and Knicks to replace Mike Brown.
The Lakers and D'Antoni's agent, Warren LeGarie, confirmed the deal two days after the Lakers fired Brown five games into the season.
D'Antoni agreed to a three-year deal worth $12 million, with a team option for a fourth season.
D'Antoni got the high-profile job running the 16-time NBA champions only after the club's top brass extensively discussed the job with former Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
The 11-time NBA champion coach met with Lakers owners Jerry and Jim Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak on Saturday to weigh a return for a third stint on Los Angeles' bench.
The Lakers instead went with D'Antoni, a respected offensive strategist who coached Lakers point guard Steve Nash in Phoenix during the best years of their respective careers. D'Antoni was less successful during four seasons in New York, but at least restored the once-moribund Knicks to competence before resigning last March.
"Dr. (Jerry) Buss, Jim Buss and Mitch Kupchak unanimously agreed that Mike was the best coach for this roster at this time," Lakers spokesman John Black said.
The 61-year-old D'Antoni underwent knee replacement surgery earlier this month, and could be physically limited early in his tenure. Black said the Lakers aren't certain when D'Antoni will travel to Los Angeles to begin work.
Interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff will continue running the Lakers until D'Antoni arrives. Los Angeles beat Sacramento 103-90 on Sunday night, improving to 2-0 under Bickerstaff after a 1-4 start under Brown.
The Lakers' next game is Tuesday night against San Antonio at Staples Center.
After Brown's dismissal, Nash and Kobe Bryant both expressed enthusiasm about the prospect of playing for D'Antoni, although Bryant also campaigned eagerly for Jackson.
Bryant idolized D'Antoni while growing up in Italy, where D'Antoni was a star player for Olimpia Milano in the Italian pro league. D'Antoni also has been an assistant coach on various U.S. national teams featuring Bryant, including the gold medal-winning squad at the London Olympics.
Nash won two MVP awards while running D'Antoni's signature up-tempo offense for the final four seasons of the coach's five-year tenure with the Suns.
Nash and D'Antoni won at least 54 games each season and reached two Western Conference finals — and they eliminated Bryant's Lakers from the first round of the playoffs in 2006 and 2007, still the only first-round exits of Kobe's 17-year career.
D'Antoni then coached New York to just one playoff appearance and no postseason victories. He also coached the Denver Nuggets during the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season.
But his NBA accomplishments can't measure up to Jackson, who won five titles and reached seven NBA finals during two stints totaling 11 seasons with Los Angeles.
Jackson walked away from the club 18 months ago after a second-round playoff sweep by Dallas, and Brown led Los Angeles to a 41-25 mark followed by another second-round playoff defeat last summer.
The Lakers then traded for Nash and Dwight Howard, setting up a season of enormous expectations for Brown — but the Lakers struggled to learn his new, Princeton-influenced offense while playing mediocre defense.
After the Lakers stumbled out of the gate while Howard and Bryant missed preseason games to preserve their health, Nash incurred a small fracture in his leg during the Lakers' second regular-season game, keeping him out of the lineup for their past five games and for at least another week.
The Lakers have improved to 3-4 under Bickerstaff after following up their winless preseason with four losses in their first five regular-season games, the club's worst start since 1993.
Despite his reputation for offensive acumen, D'Antoni's NBA teams typically have played fairly solid defense, statistically speaking — and they never had the imposing Howard or defensive stopper Metta World Peace in their lineups.
Nash had his best NBA seasons as the versatile quarterback of the Suns' offense under D'Antoni, and point guard Jeremy Lin became a star on the Knicks last season while filling much the same role.
D'Antoni resigned late last season following a six-game losing streak, surprising many observers, and former assistant coach Mike Woodson led the Knicks to the playoffs.
Phoenix visits Staples Center on Friday.
To the Editor:
“Reassessing Flu Shots as the Season Draws Near” (The Consumer, Nov. 6) implies that since the flu vaccine does not as work as well as expected — preventing one case for dozens of patients injected — we should not be as aggressive in promoting it. I disagree.
By that logic, one might conclude that treating blood pressure in diabetics is not a good idea because it prevents just one stroke for every 210 patients. Yes, I am disappointed the vaccine does not perform better, but it does work and the risks and costs are low.
David A. Nardone, , M.D.
Hillsboro, Ore.
Charlie Riedel/Associated Press
A pump jack near Greensburg, Kan. Increased oil production and new policies to improve energy efficiency mean that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in energy in about two decades, the International Energy Agency predicted.
The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, according to a new report released on Monday by the International Energy Agency.
That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades — a “dramatic reversal of the trend” in most developed countries, the report says.
“The foundations of the global energy systems are shifting,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based organization, which produces the annual World Energy Outlook, in an interview before the release. The agency, which advises industrialized nations on energy issues, had previously predicted that Saudi Arabia would be the leading producer until 2035.
The report also predicted that global energy demand would grow by 35 percent to 46 percent between 2010 and 2035, depending on whether policies that have been proposed are actually put in place. Most of that growth will come from China, India and the Middle East, where the consuming class is growing rapidly. The consequences are “potentially far reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.
Dr. Birol noted, for example, that Middle Eastern oil once bound for the United States would probably be rerouted to China. American-mined coal, facing declining demand in its home market, is already heading to Europe and China instead.
There are several components of the sudden shift in the world’s energy supply, but the prime mover is a resurgence of oil and gas production in the United States, particularly the unlocking of new reserves of oil and gas found in shale rock. The widespread adoption of techniques such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has made those reserves much more accessible, and in the case of natural gas, resulted in a vast glut that has sent prices plunging.
The report predicted that the United States would overtake Russia as the leading producer of natural gas in 2015.
The strong statements and specific predictions by the energy agency lend new weight to trends that have become increasingly apparent in the last year.
“This striking conclusion confirms a lot of recent projections,” said Michael Levi, senior fellow for energy and environment at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Formed in 1974 after the oil crisis by a group of oil-importing nations, including the United States, the International Energy Agency monitors and analyzes global energy trends to insure safe and sustainable supply.
Mr. Levi said that the I.E.A. report was generally “good news” for the United States because it highlights the nation’s new sources of energy. But he cautioned that being self-sufficient did not mean that the country would be insulated from seesawing energy prices, since those oil prices are set by global markets.
“You may be somewhat less vulnerable to price shocks and the U.S. may be slightly more protected, but it doesn’t give you the energy independence some people claim,” he said.
Also, he noted, the agency’s projection of United States self-sufficiency assumed that the country would push ahead with improving gas mileage in cars and energy efficiency in homes and appliances. “It’s supply and demand together that adds up to this striking conclusion,” Mr. Levi said.
Dr. Birol said the agency’s prediction of increasing American self-sufficiency was 55 percent a reflection of more oil production and 45 percent a reflection of improving energy efficiency in the United States, primarily from the Obama administration’s new fuel economy standards for cars. He added that even stronger policies to promote energy efficiency were needed in the United States and many other countries.
The report said that several other factors could also have a large impact on world energy markets over the next few years. These include the recovery of the Iraqi oil industry, which would lead to new supply, and the decision by some countries, notably Germany and Japan, to move away from nuclear energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
The new energy sources will help the United States economy, Dr. Birol said, providing continued cheap energy relative to the rest of the world. The I.E.A. estimates that electricity prices will be about 50 percent cheaper in the United States than in Europe, largely because of a rise in the number of power plants fueled by cheap natural gas, helping American industries and consumers.
But the message is more sobering for the planet, in terms of climate change. Although natural gas is frequently promoted for being relatively low in carbon emissions compared to oil or coal, the new global energy market could make it even harder to prevent dangerous levels of warming.
The United States’ reduced reliance on coal will just mean that coal moves to other places, the report says. And the use of coal, now the dirtiest fuel, continues to rise elsewhere. China’s coal demand will peak around 2020 and then stay steady until 2035, the report predicted, and in 2025, India will overtake the United States as the world’s second-largest coal user.
The report warns that no more than one-third of the proven reserves of fossil fuels should be used by 2050 to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, as many scientists recommend.
Such restraint is extremely unlikely without a binding international treaty by 2017 that requires countries to limit the growth of their emissions, Dr. Birol said. He added that pushing ahead with technologies that could capture and store carbon dioxide was also crucial.
“The report confirms that, given the current policies, we will blow past every safe target for emissions,” Mr. Levi said. “This should put to rest the idea that the boom in natural gas will save us from that.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 12, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the International Energy Agency’s prediction of American self-sufficiency in energy production. The agency said 55 percent of the improvement would come from more oil production and 45 percent from improvements in energy efficiency. It did not say that domestic oil production would rise 55 percent. Also, an earlier version of a photo caption with this article misidentified the equipment shown in use in an oil field in Greensburg, Kan. It is a pump jack, not an oil rig.
Copyright © News Trickery. All rights reserved.
Design 
