Longtime editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint leaving
Label: LifestylePHILADELPHIA (AP) — DC Entertainment says its executive editor and senior vice president of Vertigo — a groundbreaking imprint whose titles have included “Hellblazer,” ”DMZ” and “Sandman” — is leaving early next year.
Karen Berger will step down in March after nearly 20 years at the helm, saying in a statement released by DC late Monday that she is ready for a professional change.
During her tenure at Vertigo, the imprint saw a wide range of writers and artists — Neil Gaiman, Jill Thompson, Becky Cloonan and Brian Wood, among them — who produced titles beyond the traditional superhero and villain archetype.
Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance and writer of “The Umbrella Academy” tweeted that Berger gave “us weird kids in high school a Sub Pop Records for comics.”
___
Online:
http://www.vertigocomics.com
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Julie Bowen and the Danger of Allergies
Label: HealthWhat are the odds a child will be exposed to two powerful allergens at the same time? It happened to ” Modern Family” actress Julie Bowen’s son. He was stung by a bee – at the same time he was eating a peanut butter sandwich.
The toddler immediately went into anaphylactic shock. His entire face swelled up, including his eyes and lips, and his breathing became labored.
“We took him to the ER, where he was treated with epinephrine, and ever since then we’ve been vigilant about keeping him safe,” the Emmy-winning Bowen told the Los Angeles Times.
Bowen told the paper she’s speaking about the experience publicly because one in 13 children have food allergies and she wants to educate parents about the dangers.
According to Dr. Brian Schroer, a pediatric allergist with the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, childhood allergies can indeed be serious business. Parents need to know what to watch out for.
“When introducing a new food to a young child, especially a common allergen, watch closely for signs of distress,” he said.
The most common food allergy symptoms are itchiness in the mouth, a rash on the face, the body or both, coughing, wheezing and vomiting.
If a child’s allergy is severe, as in the case of Bowen’s son, there will also be facial swelling, difficulty breathing and low blood pressure. Schroer said the Bowens did the right thing by rushing their son to the emergency room.
“Parents can also give their kids some Benadryl to help symptoms but should still seek urgent care,” he said. “For a child really in distress, call 911.”
Children may not have a reaction the first time they’re exposed to an allergen. Initial reactions can range from mild to severe, with the most profound reactions generally triggered by peanuts, tree nuts and shellfish. Insect strings also tend to produce strong reactions. However, even a mild symptom like itchiness or a light skin rash can portend more serious reactions in the future.
At the first sign of any allergy symptoms, Schroer recommended checking in with a pediatrician or allergist.
“They can take a complete medical history and conduct simple skin challenge tests to determine the cause,” he said.”If there is an allergy, parents should work with their doctor to create a food allergy action plan.”
Once a plan is in place, make sure everyone who cares for your child, including teachers, babysitters and after-school providers, are familiar with it. Schroer said sometimes that means giving a stern lecture to well-meaning grandparents who may not quite believe the child has an issue until they see it for themselves. And any child who is at risk for anaphylaxis should carry an epi-pen and other medications at all times, including school, play dates and vacation.
Bowen hopes there won’t be any more “P Bee and J” situations for her son. But if there are, she said she’s prepared. As she told the L.A. Times, “It’s pretty straightforward. I don’t need to know everything that happens during an anaphylactic reaction; it’s enough for me to know as a parent that it can kill you.”
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Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Officials: NATO to decide on missiles for Turkey
Label: WorldBRUSSELS (AP) — NATO foreign ministers are expected to approve Turkey‘s request for Patriot anti-missile systems to bolster its defense against possible strikes from neighboring Syria.
NATO foreign ministers are meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. Parliaments in both nations must approve the deployment, which would also involve several hundred soldiers.
Ankara, which has been highly supportive of the Syrian opposition, wants the Patriots to defend against possible retaliatory attacks by Syrian missiles carrying chemical warheads. NATO leaders have repeatedly said they would provide any assistance Turkey needs.
Europe News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Obama Is Taking Himself and #My2K to Twitter This Afternoon
Label: TechnologyWhat a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff. A @WhiteHouse tweet with the distincitive “-bo” signature, announced not long ago that the big guy himself will be taking questions online, starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.
Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo
— The White House (@whitehouse) December 3, 2012
Unfortunately, he’s sticking with the troublesome #My2K hashtag that conservatives have already seized upon in a back-and-forth battle for messaging. Trying to mobilize your supporters through social media is all well and good, but the problem with any genuinely open town hall, is that anyone can invite themselves—even those who disagree with you and might be louder than your friends. (Plus, any reasonably popular hashtag moves much to fast for anyone to follow it or have an actual conversation on Twitter anyway.)
RELATED: Don’t Expect Too Much From Social Media Town Halls
But ask away! Maybe you’ll get luck and get RT’d by the President himself. And then find yourself becoming the next conservative meme as soon as the hashtag-averse pundits start making fun of your question. Should be a fun afternoon.
Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News
A bachelorette no more: Ashley Herbert weds beau
Label: LifestyleNEW YORK (AP) — Ashley Hebert (AY’-behr) is no longer a “Bachelorette.”
The 28-year-old Maine native got hitched over the weekend in Pasadena, Calif., to 35-year-old J.P. Rosenbaum of Long Island, who proposed to her on the seventh season of the ABC dating reality show “The Bachelorette.” Hebert tweeted that “12/1/12 goes down in history as the best day of my life!!”
Natalia Desrosiers, spokeswoman for Warner Bros. Television, which produces the show, said the wedding will be aired on Dec. 16 on ABC.
Hebert, who also competed on the 15th season of “The Bachelor,” grew up in Madawaska, Maine, and is a dentist. The couple now resides in the New York City area.
Only one other couple that met on the TV show has married. Bachelorette Trista Rehn married Vail, Colo., firefighter Ryan Sutter in 2003.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Estudio asocia método de relajación con la disminución de los sofocos
Label: HealthNUEVA YORK (Reuters Health) – Aunque los estudios sobre los
efectos de las técnicas de relajación en los síntomas de la
menopausia dieron resultados contradictorios, un ensayo de
Suecia se define a favor del enfoque como una alternativa a la
terapia hormonal.
Un grupo de mujeres postmenopáusicas entrenadas para
relajarse antes y durante la aparición de los sofocos pudo
reducir a la mitad la frecuencia de esos síntomas durante los
tres meses que duró el ensayo, comparado con un grupo que no
recibió tratamiento alguno.
“Los resultados dicen que el enfoque daría resultado”, dijo
Kim Innes, de West Virginia University y que no participó del
estudio. “Fue un estudio sobre una muestra mediana que dio un
resultado promisorio, aunque no definitivo, sobre la efectividad
de la técnica utilizada”.
En una revisión de más de una docena de estudios previos
sobre la meditación, el yoga y el Tai Chi, Innes había observado
que esas técnicas podrían aliviar los síntomas de la menopausia,
pero que era muy pronto para confirmarlo.
Ahora, el equipo de Lotta Lindh-Åstrand, de la Universidad
de Linköping, analizó los efectos de un método de relajación
desarrollado en Suecia en los años 80 a partir de la terapia
cognitiva conductual.
Para eso, reunió a 60 mujeres suecas saludables: algo más de
la mitad realizó el método de relajación, mientras que el resto
no recibió tratamiento alguno (grupo control). La mayoría de las
participantes tenían más de 50, habían dejado de menstruar hacía
un año o más, pero todas sentían sofocos y sudoración nocturna.
Las 33 mujeres tratadas con relajación aprendieron a
concentrarse en la respiración y a liberar la tensión muscular
antes y durante los sofocos.
En la primera semana, las participantes registraron las
sensaciones antes y durante los sofocos u otros síntomas
menopáusicos. Luego, se las alentó a dedicar 15 minutos dos
veces por día a tensar y relajar los músculos de cabeza a pies.
De a poco, aprendieron a reducir el tiempo necesario para
relajarse con el control de la respiración y sin tensar los
músculos.
Al final del estudio, se les pidió que practicaran la
relajación 20 veces por día, durante 30 segundos cada vez. En el
ejercicio final, las mujeres debían poder aplicar esas
habilidades respiratorias y de relajación durante un sofoco.
Al inicio del estudio, todas las participantes tenían unos
10 sofocos por día. A los tres meses, según publica Menopause,
el grupo tratado con relajación padecía unos cuatro sofocos por
día, versus ocho sofoco el grupo control.
El equipo halló también una mejoría leve de la calidad de
vida, incluidos los trastornos del sueño y los dolores, en las
mujeres tratadas con relajación.
Para Innes y otros investigadores, el mecanismo detrás de
las terapias mente-cuerpo y sus efectos en los síntomas
menopáusicos podría estar asociado con el sistema nervioso
simpático, que controla la respuesta de “lucha y huída” y
funciones básicas como la frecuencia cardiaca, la presión y la
sudoración.
Por eso, el equipo señaló que los resultados no son finales
y que se necesitan más estudios.
“El próximo paso -dijo Innes- debería ser un estudio
aleatorizado” con un grupo control activo y entre, por ejemplo,
las técnicas de relajación y el ejercicio.
Lindh-Åstrand recordó que las técnicas de relajación no son
para todas las mujeres, en especial para aquellas con depresión
grave o ansiedad. Estas mujeres, paradójicamente, se sentirían
más tensas.
FUENTE: Menopause, 12 de noviembre del 2012.
Seniors/Aging News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Weight Watchers’ Big Fat Marketing Dilemma
Label: BusinessJessica Simpson isn’t getting fat. She’s just pregnant again. (Of course, she hasn’t yet confirmed the happy news, but her statement to People—”I’m not going to comment on this speculation”—is, in celebrity baby talk, the equivalent of posting a sonogram on her Facebook (FB) page.)
Either way, it’s a potential problem for Weight Watchers (WTW), which signed up Simpson as a spokeswoman less than a year ago. The endorsement deal, worth an estimated $ 3 million, wasn’t supposed to pay out in full until Simpson reached her weight goal. This fall, she was noticeably slimmer, rocking a pair of Daisy Dukes for the paparazzi in L.A.
Now the company has a quandary. No company can control when its spokespeople eat, work out, or procreate, a fact that creates special pitfalls for Weight Watchers and other companies selling the promise of weight loss. Kirstie Alley, star of Fat Actress, starred in commercials for Jenny Craig, only to regain the pounds she’d shed. Even Jared, who slimmed down at Subway, was snapped looking chubby several years after he rose to skinny fame. Weight Watchers declined to comment for this story.
If signing on famous people to lose weight is so unreliable, why do diet companies do it? It certainly would be easier (and cheaper) for Weight Watchers to find a more predictable spokesperson—say, a cartoon character they could slim down at will—or to abandon the spokesperson model entirely.
Grant Johnson, chief executive of Brookfield (Wisc.) marketing agency Johnson Direct, says a company such as Weight Watchers benefits from a recognizable, believable, aspirational person. And Simpson’s $ 3 million deal was small relative to the $ 292 million the company says it spent on marketing in 2011.
Still, there’s maybe a better reason for diet companies to abandon stars: They may not be shining so brightly. Ask the average person to name a favorite Weight Watchers spokesperson—Jessica Simpson, Kirstie Alley, or Marie Osmond—and Johnson doubts any of them would know that Alley sold Jenny Craig, while Osmond repped NutriSystem (NTRI). “It just creates more confusion in the category,” says Johnson.
Even Weight Watchers spokesman Charles Barkley has expressed doubts about being a spokesperson. Earlier this year, the “round mound of rebound” got caught disparaging his endorsement deal on air during a Hawks-Heat basketball game when he thought the microphone was off. “I thought this was the greatest scam going—getting paid for watching sports—this Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam,” he said. Still, Barkley, who ballooned to 350 pounds and reportedly has a target weight of 270 pounds, remains a spokesperson and had lost 50 pounds by April. And so far, no one has confused him with Marie Osmond.
Businessweek.com — Top News
Gunmen assassinate peasant leader in Paraguay
Label: WorldASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) — Gunmen murdered one of the surviving leaders of a peasant movement whose land dispute with a powerful politician prompted the end of Fernando Lugo‘s presidency last June.
Vidal Vega, 48, was hit four times early Saturday by bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and a .38-caliber revolver fired by two unidentified men who sped away on a motorcycle, according to an official report prepared at the police headquarters in the provincial capital of Curuguaty.
A friend, Mario Espinola, told The Associated Press that Vega was shot down when he stepped outside to feed his farm animals.
Vega was among the public faces of a commission of landless peasants from the settlement of Yby Pyta, which means Red Dirt in their native Guarani language.
He had lobbied the government for many years to redistribute some of the ranchland that Colorado Party Sen. Blas Riquelme began occupying in the 1960s.
By last May, the peasants finally lost patience and moved onto the land. A firefight during their eviction on June 15 killed 11 peasants and six police officers, prompting the Colorado Party and other leading parties to vote Lugo out of office for allegedly mismanaging the dispute.
Twelve suspects, nearly all of them peasants from Yby Pyta, have been jailed without formal charges since then on suspicion of murdering the officers, seizing property and resisting authority. The prosecutor had six months to develop the case and will present his findings Dec. 16.
Vega was expected to be a witness at the criminal trial, since he was among the few leaders who weren’t killed in the clash or jailed afterward.
He wasn’t charged because he was away getting supplies when the violence erupted at the settlement erected by the peasants inside Riquelme’s ranch, the Naranjaty Commission’s secretary, Martina Paredes, told the AP.
“We think he was assassinated by hit men who were sent, we don’t know by whom, perhaps to frighten us and frustrate our fight to recover the state lands that were illegally taken by Riquelme,” she said.
Riquelme, who died of natural causes about a month after the battle in June, occupied the land during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, whose government gave away land for free to anyone willing to put it to productive use.
A local court in Curuguaty upheld Riquelme’s claim to the land years later. Lugo’s government later sought to overturn the decision, but the case remains tied up in court.
Latin America News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Apple to sell new iPads, iPhone 5 in China in Dec.
Label: TechnologyCUPERTINO, Calif. (AP) — Apple Inc. on Friday said its latest iPad models will go on sale in China on Dec. 7, followed by the iPhone 5 a week later.
China is one of Apple‘s largest and fastest-growing markets. Analyst Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets said iPhone 5 is launching roughly when he expected it, but he hadn’t expected the iPad mini and the fourth-generation, full-size iPad to go on sale in China this year.
“Our conversations during our meetings and casual consumer interactions during our China trips tell us that the iPad Mini will take off like wildfire in China,” White wrote in a research report Friday morning. “The smaller form factor and lower price point, we believe Apple will be able to sell the iPad mini in meaningful volumes.”
White said uptake of the iPhone 4S was relatively slow in China, because the signature new feature, voice-recognition-powered virtual assistant Siri, did not understand Mandarin Chinese. With this year’s software update, Siri now does understand the language, which should encourage upgrades, he said.
Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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