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KENOSHA, Wis. –  the leading Democratic candidates in the race to take on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in a historic recall election made their final pitches to voters Monday, touting their records while steering clear of any last-minute attacks on each other or the first-term Republican governor.

Walker, who faces only token opposition in Tuesday’s primary, wasn’t campaigning on Monday. he had a full slate of events on Tuesday, culminating with a speech to party faithful in a Republican stronghold near Milwaukee.

Walker has emerged as a national conservative hero since his successful push to end nearly all collective bargaining rights for most state workers. so far, the Democratic primary has been mostly devoid of internal attacks, with the candidates, led by front-runner Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, instead looking ahead to Walker and the June 5 general election.

It’s only the third gubernatorial recall election in U.S. history. Governors were recalled from office in North Dakota in 1921 and in California in 2003.

Polls, including one from Marquette University released just last week, have consistently shown Barrett in the lead in the Democratic primary over Kathleen Falk, the former Dane County executive. Walker himself released a new television ad Monday directed solely at Barrett.

Barrett stopped at diners in Sheboygan and Kenosha on Monday, where he shook hands with customers and urged them to vote for him. At the Gateway Cafe in Kenosha, Barrett made small talk with patrons.

“Don’t forget to vote tomorrow,” he told Marcia Christenbury, 70, a retired assembly worker.

“I already voted for you” by absentee ballot, she replied with a smile. “Good luck!”

Though Barrett has led in polls and has backing from leading Democrats, Falk has been the favored candidate of the major unions that spurred the recall against Walker, including the statewide teachers union and the AFL-CIO.

Falk campaigned Monday in Barrett’s backyard, shaking hands with students eating lunch at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She stuck to her core campaign themes that she has the best record to go up against Walker and has the grass-roots movement to deliver the votes.

“I’ve got that big coalition that it takes to go to get the job done in the next 28 days,” she told reporters.

For his part, Walker has shattered Wisconsin campaign finance records, raising $25 million as he tries to keep his job. about two-thirds of what Walker raised came from outside the state.

While the union fight spurred the recall, the campaign has been much broader and focused largely on Wisconsin’s economy, including Walker’s 2010 campaign pledge to create 250,000 jobs over four years. though the state’s unemployment rate is at its lowest level since 2008, Wisconsin lost more jobs than any other state between March 2011 and March 2012. since Walker took office 16 months ago, only 5,900 private sector jobs have been created.

Barrett, who lost to Walker by 5 points in 2010, is hoping for a chance at a rematch.

Two other Democrats in the race, Secretary of State Doug La Follette and state Sen. Kathleen Vinehout, ran much more low-profile campaigns and failed to gain traction with voters. La Follette said he was spending Monday posting messages on Facebook urging people to vote for him.

“I am relying on the people who stood in the cold and rain and made this recall possible for their support,” La Follette wrote.

Vinehout planned a get-out-the-vote drive in the tiny village of Hixton, Wis., not far from the Minnesota border.

Walker faces token opposition in the primary from Arthur Kohl-Riggs, a Walker opponent who says he is running as a Republican in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Bob La Follette.

Gladys Huber, a Republican, is also on the ballot on the Democratic side.

Turnout for the primary was predicted at between 30 percent and 35 percent of eligible voters, which would be the highest for a primary in a governor’s race since 38.9 percent in 1952.

Erik Dahlberg, a 51-year-old investment adviser from Beloit, called the recall process a “sham” and said he planned to vote for Walker. if people don’t like Walker’s policies, they should vote him out in 2014, Dahlberg said.

“He deserves the four years he earned,” Dahlberg said of Walker. “We run the guy out of office for doing what he said he’d do? he didn’t rob a bank. … Be reasonable. I just think the political process should be allowed to work.”

Associated Press writer Todd Richmond contributed to this report from Janesville, Wis. Bauer reported from Madison, Wis.

A new study suggests that treatable infections cause cancer in 1 of 6 cases.

WEDNESDAY, May 9 (HealthDay News) — One in six cancers worldwide is caused by preventable or treatable infections, a new study finds.

Infections cause about 2 million cancer cases a year, and 80 percent of those cases occur in less developed areas of the world, according to the study, which was published online May 8 in The Lancet Oncology. Of the 7.5 million cancer deaths worldwide in 2008, about 1.5 million were due to potentially preventable or treatable infections.

[Read: Cancer Cells in Bloodstream show great Diversity.]

"Infections with certain viruses, bacteria and parasites are one of the biggest and most preventable causes of cancer worldwide," lead authors Catherine de Martel and Martyn Plummer, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, said in a journal news release. "Application of existing public-health methods for infection prevention — such as vaccination, safer injection practice or antimicrobial treatments — could have a substantial effect on future burden of cancer worldwide."

The researchers examined data on 27 cancers in 184 countries and calculated that about 16 percent of all cancers in 2008 were infection-related. The rate of infection-related cancers was 23 percent in developing countries and 7 percent in developed countries.

Rates of infection-related cancers ranged from 3 percent in Australia and New Zealand to 33 percent in sub-Saharan Africa.

"many infection-related cancers are preventable, particularly those associated with human papillomavirus (HPV), Helicobacter pylori, and hepatitis B and hepatitis C viruses," the researchers said.

[Read: many Breast Cancer Patients in Their 40s Aren't 'High-Risk.']

In 2008, these four main infections together caused 1.9 million cancers, mostly of the stomach, liver and cervix. Cervical cancer accounted for about half of infection-related cancers in women, and liver and gastric cancers accounted for more than 80 percent of infection-related cancers in men.

The study findings "show the potential for preventive and therapeutic programs in less developed countries to significantly reduce the global burden of cancer and the vast disparities across regions and countries," Goodarz Danaei, of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

"since effective and relatively low-cost vaccines for HPV and [hepatitis B] are available, increasing coverage should be a priority for health systems in high-burden countries," Danaei added.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute offers an overview of cancer prevention.

Copyright © 2012 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

From the department of impulsive yet compelling conclusions drawn from dubious data comes this one: the adultery-enabling Web site Ashley Madison says that Park Slope, Brooklyn, is home to more cheating spouses than any other neighborhood in new York City.

Ashley Madison is not exactly a prime source for scientific data, but it does create another opportunity to bash a community frequently mocked for its supposed placenta-eating, sling-wearing, Bugaboo-pushing, hovering herd of procreating ex-Manhattanites. The numbers gave Jezebel’s Hugo Schwyzer the chance to put together a narrative, “The Cheating Dads of Brooklyn.” Children, he wrote:

are often correlated with a shifting of women’s attention away from their husbands or boyfriends. That’s hardly the fault of new moms; babies demand a colossal level of attention. and while more and more fathers are actively parenting, plenty more may resent being displaced as the number one focus of a new mom’s energy.

Since “the notoriously perfectionistic parenting ethos of the community elevates child-rearing to the sine qua non of marriage,” this displacement is taken to extremes. so, along with affluence (which mr. Schwyzer says is correlated with “lower ethical behavior”) “the more conspicuous the care that’s lavished on the children, the greater the opportunity to rationalize stepping out on the marriage.”

The news here is not that people cheat. The news is that we can see more clearly than ever that male infidelity is correlated with the conjunction of affluence and hypercompetitive parenting.

Really? That’s a fantastic line, but a long way to go based on Ashley Madison’s data collecting and our always entertaining, but not necessarily scientifically supported, assumptions about Park Slope parents. and although mr. Schwyzer is clear that he does not believe that women are responsible for male infidelity, one has to wonder who’s running that hypercompetitive parenting show, especially while the dads juggle their supposed double lives. Sounds like an excuse for a backhanded attack on “overinvolved” mothers to me.

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Byrne stepped down from the post he's held since December 2002.
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Now that Jessica Simpson has given birth to Maxwell Drew, she is preparing to shed the pounds she gained during her pregnancy. What is her weight loss plan?

Way before her baby name controversy, Jessica Simpson signed on to lose weight with Weight Watchers for $3 million. After her major pregnancy weight gain, the fashion mogul has plenty to lose, which should make her weight loss plan attractive to others who are struggling to lose their post pregnancy pounds.

Obviously once she is back on her feet, Simpson will want to lose weight not only for the money, but also because of her wedding to her fiancé Eric Johnson. she has plenty of motivation to snap back into shape, and if she is like other Hollywood moms, she likely will end up losing the weight fairly quickly.

It seems that the new mom will use Weight Watchers and its point counting program to shed those pregnancy pounds within a year, which will line up with her wedding plans. Jessica Simpson seemed to have a great time gaining her pregnancy weight, and hopefully she enjoys taking it off with her weight loss plan.

How did you lose your pregnancy weight? If Simpson has success would you be more likely to try Weight Watchers?

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By Noelle E. Fox

One of the most important services financial professionals offer their investors may be a well-structured and sustainable retirement income strategy.

Considering the many methods for structuring such a strategy, this process may be overwhelming to retirees and financial professionals alike.

The risks in retirement are different from the risks an investor may have faced while accumulating retirement assets, and often a retiree needs help to thoroughly understand and evaluate these differences. a financial professional’s guidance can be of great help throughout this process.

One approach to developing a retirement income plan is the bucket strategy. a bucket strategy segments retirement assets by certain categories. Categories may be based on the risk level of the assets, the needs or expenses these assets are expected to cover or the period of time in retirement when the assets are expected to generate income. The most widely used bucket strategy is the time-segmentation approach, which is used by almost one-third (28%) of financial professionals, according to the Financial Planning Association.

This approach assigns each bucket to a defined time period in retirement, based upon the retiree’s risk tolerance and time horizon. it anticipates that the allocation will shift over time to traditionally more conservative asset classes as the retirement savings are drawn down.

This article analyzes the potential advantages and shortfalls of the time-segmented bucket strategy, which we refer to here as simply the bucket strategy, by comparing it to the most common strategy in use—systematic withdrawals. The two strategies are compared based on the psychological and economic benefits they can offer a retiree.

While the bucket strategy will have buckets of funds designated for use in specific retirement time periods, there are other attributes that will create differences among particular strategies. Depending on the preference of the investor, the funds may be redistributed among buckets more or less frequently.

Generally, most bucket strategies also have a target for how much cash and short-term investments to keep on hand for current spending needs—the basis for this target may differ by method.

To better understand the bucket strategy, we demonstrate it with an example that utilizes three buckets. when initially established, the first bucket contains cash and cash equivalents and is intended to be utilized and contain sufficient funds to meet spending over the first five years of retirement.

The second bucket is intended to meet spending needs in years 6 to 15 of retirement. it contains mostly fixed-income securities, which are likely to experience greater volatility than cash, but, because they are in the second bucket, the retiree has a longer time period to ride out market swings.

The third bucket contains mostly equities, a traditionally more risky and volatile asset class. it is intended to meet expenses in the years beyond the 15th year of retirement, again providing opportunity to ride out swings with the intention of reaping the potential rewards.

HAIFA, Israel, May 7, 2012 — /PRNewswire/ –

The BEMOSA consortium, a Europe-wide research project aimed at improving security in airports, will hold a special workshop for airport safety managers in Brussels on May 15, 2012.

The half-day event will focus on the findings and implications of extensive research conducted in European airports. the workshop will discuss the implications of the human factor on daily airport management and training programs to enhance security decisions by airport employees.

“From BEMOSA’s research, it has become clear that the human factor will prove to be more decisive than technology in airport security and even the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recognizes that,” said the Technion Israel’s Prof. Alan Kirschenbaum, a world expert in disaster management and BEMOSA’s initiator and coordinator.

“It is here that the wide range of human nature, background, past behaviors and characteristics will play a key role in the decisions made,” he added.

At the workshop, specific case studies will be provided together with their implications for airport security operations and aviation regulation in general, and false alarms and manager-employee relations in particular.

The workshop is specifically designed to meet the needs of airport security professionals, airport management officials, human resources and operations personnel, providers of airport security services and technology, providers of airport security training services, public officials and policy makers.

The workshop will be held in the offices of DG Research of the European Commission in Rue du Champs de Mars 21 in Brussels. the event is free of charge, but registration is obligatory.

BEMOSA (Behaviour Modelling for Security in Airports) is a Europe-wide research project aimed at improving security in airports through enhancing the capability of airport authority personnel to correctly detect potential security hazards and reduce false alarms.

Co-funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, BEMOSA is developing a behavior model that aims to illustrate how people make security decisions in the face of reality during “normal routine” and crisis situations. this is expected to result in increased security, reduced false alarms and increased profitability.

For more information about BEMOSA and to register for the workshop, visit http://www.bemosa.eu.

Contact

Simon van DamProject ManagerBEMOSA+972-54-4563384bemosa@bemosa.eu

SOURCE the BEMOSA consortium

Published on Wednesday 9 May 2012 06:34

A DRUNKEN man shot his own cousin dead – by firing a gun over his shoulder into a crowd of revellers as they tried to usher him out of a birthday party, a court heard.

Abdi Omar, aged 25, killed his 18-year-old cousin Deeq Ali at a bash at Spital Hill Plaza, Burngreave, Sheffield.

Paul Watson QC, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court: “As he was being escorted out, he pulled out a shotgun from his trousers, put it over his shoulder, and shot by pulling the trigger at people behind him.

“One of the men ushering him out, Deeq Ali, received massive gunshot injuries to his head and died.

“Mr Omar says it was an accident. the prosecution say he might not have meant to specifically harm the man who was shot, but it was anything but an accident.”

Omar, of Lopham Street, Burngreave, denies murder.

He also denies possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of unlawful violence in an earlier incident the same night, by pulling out the gun and threatening to kill a man named Nabil Naji.

Mr Watson said Deeq, of Catherine Road, Burngreave, was killed at the 24th birthday party of a young woman called Rosalin Roberts.

Omar was described by witnesses as being ‘angry and aggressive’ and partygoer Soloman Gebremesekel, who had earlier denied entry to a group of Somali youths including Omar, suspected he was carrying a weapon.

“Mr Gebremeskel went up to him and grabbed him,” Mr Watson said. “He could tell Omar had something like a gun under his trousers.

“At that point a number of others appeared and told Mr Gebremeskel to leave him alone – one of those was the victim, Mr Ali.

“They were telling Omar to leave and pushing him towards the door.

“Deeq was telling Omar to ‘chill out’ but he didn’t.”

After being shot Mr Ali was rushed to the Northern General Hospital but was pronounced dead at 3.28am.

Mr Watson said: “There was a great deal of confusion and hysteria within the Plaza. People were terrified, crying and screaming.”

Police arrested Omar shortly afterwards in nearby Andover Street. Mr Watson said he was in ‘a state of heavy drunkenness’ three times the drink drive limit.

The gun was retrieved from bushes near Omar’s home and, when officers searched his address, they found gunshot residue on the clothes he was wearing, which were soaking in a bucket of water.

Omar told police he’d been given the gun to look after by an unknown man, and put it down his trousers. he claimed he was worried it would go off while he was being pushed and pulled, so he took it out and it went off by accident.

But Mr Watson said: “In drunken anger or frustration about being made unwelcome at the party and being ejected, he deliberately chose to teach those behind him a lesson and fired this gun in their direction.

“We say if you fire a weapon into a group of people from no more than a matter of inches away, at least one of them is going to be seriously hurt.

“He knew very well firing a gun at close range like that was going to have those consequences.”

This event is an opportunity for people with special needs to enjoy the day fishing for trout at Hibernia County Park's pond. various schools and special-needs organizations from across Chester County, including Devereux schools and the Chester County …
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When you need the best care medicine has to offer, chances are you can find someone with the required skills in the United States. Whether it involves repairing a sick heart or blasting a cancerous clump of cells deep within the brain with a precisely targeted beam of radiation, advanced care is so widely available that America’s health system long claimed bragging rights for providing the best care on Earth.

Then came a scathing report, now 13 years old, from the Institute of Medicine, a quasi-government think-tank known for tackling some of the toughest issues in healthcare. it charged that errors and unsafe practices in U.S. hospitals may kill nearly 50,000 patients a year, possibly even twice that number. A flurry of studies released since then show that the hazards in U.S. healthcare persist today—nasty bugs passed on to patients in hospitals and clinics, unneeded and risky tests and procedures, medications that hurt more than help, treatment guidelines that are overlooked or ignored, doctors who base treatment decisions on instinct rather than evidence, computerized health information technology that should make care safer and more efficient but too often does the opposite—and the list is still growing.

[See: When a Hospital is Bad for You]

The question, then, is: how can you take advantage of the strengths of the U.S. healthcare system and not be harmed by its weaknesses? the answer, in six words: get only the healthcare you need.

The less you put yourself at the mercy of doctors and hospitals, the less likely you will be harmed. That means staying healthy. it means getting the right kind and right amount of preventive care, not too much and not too little. it means—and this isn’t easy—not overreacting to information that sounds alarming. it also means getting a second opinion when you need one, preferably from a doctor who can be objective and doesn’t have a stake in the outcome of your case.

"Be skeptical, ask questions, get information from different sources. Be more assertive and inquisitive," says David Goodman, a principal investigator at the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, a research project that has shown, among other things, that patients don’t necessarily fare better in places where doctors and hospitals are more aggressive, and that far too often they do much worse.

[See: 9 Signs you should fire your Doctor]

What does the right amount of preventive care mean? That depends on the state of a person’s health, along with age, sex, and family history. Not everyone needs an annual physical exam, as long as he or she is healthy and without a family history of premature disease. "One basic principle," Goodman says, "is that if you’re living well and feeling healthy, don’t go looking for trouble." unless you’re overweight, you should get your blood pressure checked every two years after the age of 18, and more often once you turn 40. Most women don’t need annual Pap smears. the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPTF) says it’s okay to hold off for up to three years. Keeping vaccinations current is a valuable way to stave off a list of preventable illnesses, from flu to cervical cancer (through human papilloma virus vaccine). Flu and pneumonia shots are especially important for people 65 and older, both to avoid the diseases and their potentially dangerous complications. take your doctor seriously when she talks about good and bad fats in the diet and the value of dropping even a few pounds. Colonoscopy, unpleasant as it is, can be a life-saver. It’s recommended at least once every five years for people 50 and older, because colonoscopy reduces the risk of dying from colon cancer by as much as 77 percent. Each year, a million people are diagnosed with colon cancer worldwide, and 500,000 of them die.

Too much of the wrong kind of preventive care can actually get you in trouble. Examples abound in a system that punishes doctors for omitting tests, rewards them for ordering unnecessary ones, and creates dubious borderline conditions such as osteopenia—a step short of osteoporosis—that too often lead to treatment with expensive drugs. and while the test itself may not seem so bad, especially if it’s an imaging test that isn’t invasive, the consequences of an unnecessary test can be profound, even life threatening. Steven Nissen, chief of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic, tells of one such case, involving a 52-year-old nurse who agreed to a routine imaging test as added reassurance that her heart was healthy. Tests, for cholesterol, artery inflammation, and rhythm disturbances were normal. But her doctor suggested she undergo an extra test, called catheterization, which would allow doctors to flood her coronary arteries with a dye that reveals blockages. the tube delivering the dye tore one of the heart’s main arteries, causing a massive heart attack. A bypass operation to repair the damage ultimately failed. the nurse ended up needing a heart transplant. "I have five more cases like it," Nissen says.