Watch Live: Spectacular Total Solar Eclipse Over Australia

A total solar eclipse will darken the Southern Hemisphere today. Though it will only be visible from a small, remote area of Australia, you can still watch via the internet with our selection of live feeds.

A total solar eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the Earth and sun, casting a shadow across the planet. Today’s eclipse will become darkest over Cairns, Australia (where the viewing camera feeds are located) at around 12:45 p.m PST (3:45 EST) and will last about two minutes. But a partial eclipse will stretch from 11:45 a.m. to 1:35 p.m PST (2:45 to 4:35 EST), blocking part of the sun and creating an eerie twilight in what would otherwise be the early morning.

The top feed has a pre-game starting at 11:00 a.m. PST (2:00 p.m. EST) and officially starts half an hour after that. It comes from the Slooh Space Camera, which has a three-person crew near Cairns to film the celestial event and broadcast it to the world. Photographer Anjali Bermain, Astronomy magazine’s Bob Berman, and astro-imager Matt Francis of the Prescott Observatory in Arizona will discuss the eclipse from Australia. They will be joined by a team of experts during a live Google+ hangout, including heliophysicist Lucie Green from Mullard Space Science Laboratory and Slooh president Patrick Paolucci. Viewers can ask questions on Slooh’s homepage and snap live pictures using a Pinterest account.

Broadcasting live with Ustream

A second feed starts at 11 a.m. PST (2 p.m. EST) and comes from the Cairns Eclipse 2012 Ustream channel, a tourism promotion group. The feed is co-sponsored by the Astronomical Association of Queensland, NASA, and several other partners.

Finally, the Cairns City Webcam will be snapping shots every minute and uploading them to the internet. It is located in the marina and will be pointed just above the city’s trinity inlet where the sun and moon are expected to come in line with the Earth at 12:39 p.m. PST (3:39 p.m. EST), as totality happens over Cairns.

Adam is a Wired reporter and freelance journalist. He lives in Oakland, Ca near a lake and enjoys space, physics, and other sciency things.

Read more by Adam Mann

Follow @adamspacemann on Twitter.

Read More..

Comcast’s NBCUniversal unit lays off 500 employees: source

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Comcast Corp‘s NBCUniversal entertainment unit is laying off about 500 employees at cable channels, Jay Leno‘s late-night TV show and the Universal Pictures movie studio, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Monday.

The cuts add up to about 1.5 percent of the company’s workforce of 30,000 employees, the source said.

A large portion of the layoffs occurred at the G4 cable channel, a network about video games and the gaming culture, the source said. Two of the network’s shows were recently canceled.

Other layoffs occurred about two months ago at “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” which cut about two dozen crew members.

The company’s movie studio, Universal Pictures, also eliminated about 20 jobs, including some at the home entertainment division. Home entertainment sales have suffered across the industry as traditional DVDs fall from favor with consumers.

Other job cuts are expected at NBC News group and the company’s cable channels, which include USA, Bravo and E!, the source said.

Comcast bought a 51 percent controlling stake in NBC Universal in January 2011.

(Reporting By Ronald Grover; Writing by Lisa Richwine; Editing by Peter Lauria and Paul Tait)

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

The Neediest Cases: Single Mother Battling Breast Cancer Takes Strength From Her Children

She had not expected her fingernails to feel as if they had been hollowed out.

Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

Josmery Batista, 34, with her children: Analisse, 4, left; Erika, 10; and Jeremy, 1. Ms. Batista is receiving chemotherapy treatment.

For the past 100 years, The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund has provided direct assistance to children, families and the elderly in New York. To celebrate the 101st campaign, an article will appear daily through Jan. 25. Each profile will illustrate the difference that even a modest amount of money can make in easing the struggles of the poor.

Last year donors contributed $7,003,854, which was distributed to those in need through seven New York charities.

Josmery Batista, 34, had braced herself for many of the side effects that would result from her palliative chemotherapy treatment. She knew about the dizzy spells, the head pain and the body aches, just as she knew about the fatigue, which weakens her so much at times that she is unable to bathe her infant son or even to hold him.

But when her nails became so brittle that she could not properly wash dishes, a development as alarming as it was discouraging, she sought comfort and reassurance from one of her new friends walking the same path.

Ms. Batista, a single mother of three, knows that she is blessed to have found a support group of others, like her, who are undergoing cancer treatment, and she gains additional courage from the memory of friends who did not survive. She also knows how blessed she is to have sisters to lean on for help.

But friends and siblings alone are not what fortify her will to survive.

“My children give me the strength to fight this illness, this disease,” Ms. Batista said. “My support system has been a great help. But what keeps me going is my kids.”

Five months into her pregnancy with her son, Jeremy Tavarez, now 1, Ms. Batista began to experience excruciating pain from her neck to her midsection. She had no idea what was wrong. When she sought help, examinations ruled out ailments like arthritis or liver problems. Tests for cancer would have involved radiation and, thus, potential harm to the baby, so Ms. Batista waited until after the birth to be tested further. Last November, one month after her son’s birth, Ms. Batista was told she had Stage 4 breast cancer. The disease has since spread to her liver and her bones.

She receives chemotherapy treatment every 21 days at Elmhurst Hospital Center, near her home in Flushing, Queens, and is then required to take pills for the next 14 days. The side effects of that medication are the cause of much of her discomfort.

Petite yet resilient, Ms. Batista is driven to take Tylenol instead of a nap. She will weather the lethargy and endure the pain to ensure that her son and her other two children, Erika, 10, and Analisse Tavarez, 4, can have as normal a life as possible. Whenever she is able to, she plays with her children, accompanies them to school or helps them with homework.

“Even though she’s battling every day, going to the hospital and stuff like that, she doesn’t let her kids fully know, and they’re happy,” said Ms. Batista’s sister Dalisa Batista, who assists with child care.

Josmery Batista, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1998, had been employed for 13 years as a jewelry sample maker in Manhattan. She has been unable to work since her treatment began and is living month to month as a result.

She receives $450 a month in food stamps and collects $868 monthly in workers’ compensation, a payment that is set to expire in January. Ms. Batista says her children’s father also provides $400 a month in child support. Her rent is $1,100 a month.

With her finances tight, Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens, one of the agencies supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, granted Ms. Batista $500 from the fund in September to cover five weeks of child care when she is at treatment and her relatives are unavailable. The agency also supplies the family with food from the Queens North Community Center pantry, which is affiliated with Catholic Charities.

“She stays very strong,” said Dalisa, who describes her sister as an inspiration. “I never really see her crying at home. She doesn’t cry in front of the kids.” Dalisa added that her niece Erika, who is still too young to fully grasp the severity of her mother’s situation, boosted morale with a child’s innocent honesty.

“Her daughter always gives her strength because she always tells her, ‘You’re beautiful with no hair,’ ” Dalisa said. “She tells her stuff like ‘I don’t want you to wear wigs. You’re beautiful to me.’ ”

The future holds many questions, but estimates are that Josmery Batista will be receiving treatments for at least the next six months. She says she will continue to do what she has been doing all along, basking in the love of those around her.

“I live my life as normal as possible, and I push myself to do the things I need to do,” Ms. Batista said. “I’m not going to allow the illness to dictate how I’m going to carry my life and what I need to do as a mother.”

Read More..

I.H.T. Special Report | Oil & Money: After Years of Waiting, Virginia Wants to Make Its Name in Oil

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.

Read More..

U.S. to become world's largest oil producer before 2020, IEA says

This post has been corrected. See below for details.

The U.S. will become the world’s top producer of oil within five years, a net exporter of the fuel around 2030 and nearly self-sufficient in energy by 2035, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency.

It’s a bold set of predictions for a nation that currently imports some 20% of its energy needs.

Recently, however, an “energy renaissance” in the U.S. has caused a boost in oil, shale gas and bio-energy production due to new technologies such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fuel efficiency has improved in the transportation sector. The clean energy industry has seen an influx of solar and wind efforts.

Quiz: Why are California gas prices so high? 

By 2015, U.S. oil production is expected to rise to 10 million barrels per day before increasing to 11.1 million bpd by 2020, overtaking second-place Russia and front-runner Saudi Arabia. The U.S. will export more oil than it brings into the country in 2030.

Around the same time, however, Saudi Arabia will be producing some 11.4 million bpd of oil, outpacing the 10.2 million from the U.S. In 2035, U.S. production will slip to 9.2 million bpd, far behind the Middle Eastern nation’s 12.3 million bpd. Iraq will exceed Russia to become the world’s second largest oil exporter.

At that point, real oil prices will reach $125 a barrel. By then, however, the U.S. won’t be relying much on foreign energy, according to the IEA’s World Energy Outlook.

Globally, the energy economy will undergo a “sea change,” according to the report, with nearly 90% of Middle Eastern oil exports redirecting toward Asia.

“No country is an energy ‘island,’ and the interactions between different fuels, markets and prices are intensifying,” according to the report.

And what of energy efficiency efforts?

Fossil fuels, which enjoyed a 30% jump in subsidies last year to $523 billion worldwide, will still surpass renewable energy sources, according to IEA. But so-called green power will become the world’s second-largest form of generation within three years and will threaten coal’s supremacy by 2035.

That progression, however, “hinges critically on continued subsidies” for wind, solar and bio-fuel technologies, which last year amounted to some $88 billion and needs to reach $4.8 trillion through 2035, according to IEA.

Even then, however, “the world is still failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path,” according to the report.

Quiz: Test your knowledge of business news

Global energy demand will boom by more than a third by 2035, rising to 99.7 million barrels a day from 87.4 million last year. China’s demand will rise 60% over the period; India’s will more than double. Demand in developed countries will increase just 3%, with the desire for oil and coal losing share in the overall energy mix.

Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions will creep up, causing a long-term average temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Celsius. Energy production will continue to suck at the world’s water resources – it already accounts for 15% of total water use.

[10:15 a.m.: A previous version of this post gave an incorrect conversion of the temperature increase in Fahrenheit. The correct Fahrenheit increase is 6.5 degrees.]

ALSO:

IMF warns of 'alarmingly high' risk of deep global slowdown

Like Feinstein, Boxer urges federal inqury into high gas prices

Iraq oil output will nearly triple by 2035, says 'landmark study'

Read More..

Gmail Location Data Led FBI to Uncover Top Spy's Affair

Every year careless hackers, cyberstalkers and others are undone by the digital trails they leave behind for law enforcement to collect and trace back to them.

But who would have thought the nation’s top spy chief would be undone so easily by digital footprints left behind in Gmail?

In the irony of ironies, the distinguished career of CIA Director and former Afghanistan war commander David Petraeus appears to have come unhinged after authorities traced the location of the sender of threatening e-mails that were written from an anonymous Gmail account and sent to a woman in Florida.

Authorities say the location data connected to the e-mails and the Gmail account from which they were sent, helped them identify the sender as Petraeus’ biographer, Paula Broadwell. This helped them search other Gmail accounts owned by Broadwell, which led them to the affair with Petraeus, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The case shows just how easy it is to discover the personal connections that can unmask anonymous parties. But the Petraeus affair is as much an outlier as an exemplar. The FBI rarely, if ever, gets involved when one person is harassing another online.

“I’m not aware of any case when the FBI has gotten involved in a case of online harassment,” Justin Patchin, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said. ”The FBI definitely wouldn’t get involved in your Joe Schmoe love triangle.”

The affair began to unravel after the Florida woman, Jill Kelley, contacted an FBI friend after receiving threatening and harassing e-mails from an anonymous person who accused her of flirting with a man who was not identified in the e-mails. Kelley is a volunteer social planner for events at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, which is home to the military’s Central Command. Petraeus was commander of CENTCOM from 2008 to 2010, when he left to take his position as head of the CIA.

The e-mails, between 5 and 10 of them, began arriving last May, and reportedly told Kelley to “back off” and “stay away” from the unnamed man.

Kelley’s FBI friend launched an investigation to determine if the threatening e-mails constituted a cybercrime.

FBI investigators determined that the anonymous account from which the e-mails were sent belonged to Broadwell and her husband, who live in North Carolina. Reports are unclear about how they did this, but they say investigators were able to determine what other e-mail accounts had been accessed from the same computer address as the one that sent the harassing e-mails, which may have led them to Broadwell or her husband.

The information contained in the metadata of e-mail headers varies. But it generally only includes the IP address and domains of the servers through which the e-mail was sent, as well as ones it passed through in transit to the recipient’s inbox. Authorities would have had to contact Google to obtain information about the IP address that was used to log into the anonymous account and any other accounts that were accessed from the same address.

Agents considered that the anonymous Gmail account used to send the harassing e-mails might have been hacked by someone else who was sending the e-mails to Kelley. But they eventually were able to match the locations from which the e-mails were sent to the same locations, including hotels, where Broadwell was known to have been during the times the correspondence was set to Kelley, according to the Journal.

Based on these connections, investigators obtained a warrant to monitor other e-mail accounts Broadwell used.

In examining these other accounts, agents uncovered sexually explicit e-mails that Broadwell exchanged with another party who also used a Gmail account. Investigators were not able to immediately identify Petraeus as the other party, however, because he’d set up his Gmail account using a pseudonym.

Investigators determined sometime during mid-summer that it belonged to Petraeus and that the two were having an affair. The reports do not say how investigators made that connection. According to the New York Times it’s not known if the FBI gained access to Petraeus’ personal e-mail account, or if its investigation relied solely on e-mails found in Broadwell’s account.

Broadwell’s affair with Patraeus reportedly began two months after he took over the CIA and ended about four months ago, around the same time the FBI discovered the affair, according to Col. Steven Boylan, who spoke to ABC News.

After the FBI contacted Broadwell the week of Oct. 21, she acknowledged the affair and provided authorities with her computer. The agents discovered several classified documents on the computer, which raised concerns that Petraeus had given them to her, but agents ultimately determined this was not the case. Petraeus admitted to the affair but said he had not given any classified documents to her.

Though Petraeus is not believed to have broken any laws, he resigned from his position with the CIA last Friday, expressing regret for hurting his family and at his lapse in judgment in conducting the affair.

Broadwell will now become part of the statistics that Gmail reports in its next semi-annual transparency report on government data requests.

The e-mail provider and search giant releases a so-called Transparency Report every six months, to provide users with generic statistics about government requests for data and takedowns. The last 2011 report showed that U.S. government agencies sought user data from Google 6,321 times for the six months ending December 2011, which was up from 5,950 during the first six months of 2011. The requests targeted 12,243 Google accounts in the latter half of that year, and 11,057 in the six months prior.

Google, which offers e-mail, cloud storage, a blogging platform, web search, and other services, provides government agencies with e-mail communications, documents, browsing activity, IP addresses used to create an account and other data when asked.

It’s not known how many of these requests are accompanied by a warrant, however, since Google doesn’t disclose this in its report, and U.S. laws are unclear on when a warrant is required. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, for example, allows warrantless access to electronically stored data without warrants.

Additional reporting by Robert Beckhusen

Read More..

U2′s Bono to urge U.S. politicians not to cut aid programs

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Irish rocker and anti-poverty campaigner Bono will appeal to Democrats and Republicans during a visit to Washington this week to spare U.S. development assistance programs from cuts as Congress tries to avert the looming “fiscal cliff” of tax hikes and spending reductions early next year.

The U2 lead singer’s visit comes as the Obama administration and congressional leaders try to forge a deal in coming weeks to avoid the economy hitting the “fiscal cliff” – tax increases and spending cuts worth $ 600 billion starting in January if Congress does not act.

Analysts say the absence of a deal could shock the United States, the world’s biggest economy, back into recession.

Kathy McKiernan, spokeswoman for the ONE Campaign, said Bono will hold talks with congressional lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials during the November 12-14 visit.

During meetings he will stress the effectiveness of U.S. foreign assistance programs and the need to preserve them to avoid putting at risk progress made in fighting HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, she said.

Bono, a long-time advocate for the poor, will argue that U.S. government-funded schemes that support life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS sufferers, nutrition programs for malnourished children, and emergency food aid make up just 1 percent of the U.S. government budget but are helping to save tens of millions of lives in impoverished nations.

The One Campaign would not elaborate which lawmakers and senior Obama administration officials Bono will meet.

On Monday, Bono will discuss the power of social movements with students at Georgetown University. He will also meet new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim for a web cast discussion on Wednesday on the challenges of eradicating poverty.

(Editing by W Simon)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Personal Best: Quitting Smoking for Good

Few smokers would claim that it’s easy to quit. The addiction to nicotine is strong and repeatedly reinforced by circumstances that prompt smokers to light up.

Yet the millions who have successfully quit are proof that a smoke-free life is achievable, even by those who have been regular, even heavy, smokers for decades.

Today, 19 percent of American adults smoke, down from more than 42 percent half a century ago, when Luther Terry, the United States surgeon general, formed a committee to produce the first official report on the health effects of smoking. Ever-increasing restrictions on where people can smoke have helped to swell the ranks of former smokers.

Now, however, as we approach the American Cancer Society’s 37th Great American Smokeout on Thursday, the decline in adult smoking has stalled despite the economic downturn and the soaring price of cigarettes.

Currently, 45 million Americans are regular smokers who, if they remain smokers, can on average expect to live 10 fewer years. Half will die of a tobacco-related disease, and many others will suffer for years with smoking-caused illness. Smoking adds $96 billion to the annual cost of medical care in this country, Dr. Nancy A. Rigotti wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month. Even as some adult smokers quit, their ranks are being swelled by the 800,000 teenagers who become regular smokers each year and by young adults who, through advertising and giveaways, are now the prime targets of the tobacco industry.

People ages 18 to 25 now have the nation’s highest smoking rate: 40 percent. I had to hold my breath the other day as dozens of 20-somethings streamed out of art gallery openings and lighted up. Do they not know how easy it is to get hooked on nicotine and how challenging it can be to escape this addiction?

Challenging, yes, but by no means impossible. On the Web you can download a “Guide to Quitting Smoking,” with detailed descriptions of all the tools and tips to help you become an ex-smoker once and for all.

Or consult the new book by Dr. Richard Brunswick, a retired family physician in Northampton, Mass., who says he’s helped hundreds of people escape the clutches of nicotine and smoking. (The printable parts of the book’s provocative title are “Can’t Quit? You Can Stop Smoking.”)

“There is no magic pill or formula for beating back nicotine addiction,” Dr. Brunswick said. “However, with a better understanding of why you smoke and the different tools you can use to control the urge to light up, you can stop being a slave to your cigarettes.”

Addiction and Withdrawal

Nicotine beats a direct path to the brain, where it provides both relaxation and a small energy boost. But few smokers realize that the stress and lethargy they are trying to relieve are a result of nicotine withdrawal, not some underlying distress. Break the addiction, and the ill feelings are likely to dissipate.

Physical withdrawal from nicotine is short-lived. Four days without it and the worst is over, with remaining symptoms gone within a month, Dr. Brunswick said. But emotional and circumstantial tugs to smoke can last much longer.

Depending on when and why you smoke, cues can include needing a break from work, having to focus on a challenging task, drinking coffee or alcohol, being with other people who smoke or in places you associate with smoking, finishing a meal or sexual activity, and feeling depressed or upset.

To break such links, you must first identify them and then replace them with other activities, like taking a walk, chewing sugar-free gum or taking deep breaths. These can help you control cravings until the urge passes.

If you’ve failed at quitting before, try to identify what went wrong and do things differently this time, Dr. Brunswick suggests. Most smokers need several attempts before they can become permanent ex-smokers.

Perhaps most important is to be sure you are serious about quitting; if not, wait until you are. Motivation is half the battle. Also, should you slip and have a cigarette after days or weeks of not smoking, don’t assume you’ve failed and give up. Just go right back to not smoking.

Aids for Quitting

Many if not most smokers need two kinds of assistance to become lasting ex-smokers: psychological support and medicinal aids. Only about 4 percent to 7 percent of people are able to quit smoking on any given attempt without help, the cancer society says.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have free telephone-based support programs that connect would-be quitters to trained counselors. Together, you can plan a stop-smoking method that suits your smoking pattern and helps you avoid common pitfalls.

Online support groups and Nicotine Anonymous can help as well. To find a group, ask a local hospital or call the cancer society at (800) 227-2345. Consider telling relatives and friends about your intention to quit, and plan to spend time in smoke-free settings.

More than a dozen treatments can help you break the physical addiction to tobacco. Most popular is nicotine replacement therapy, sold both with and without a prescription. The Food and Drug Administration has approved five types: nicotine patches of varying strengths, gums, sprays, inhalers and lozenges that can curb withdrawal symptoms and help you gradually reduce your dependence on nicotine.

Two prescription drugs are also effective: an extended-release form of the antidepressant bupropion (Zyban or Wellbutrin), which reduces nicotine cravings, and varenicline (Chantix), which blocks nicotine receptors in the brain, reducing both the pleasurable effects of smoking and the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Combining a nicotine replacement with one of these drugs is often more effective than either approach alone.

Other suggested techniques, like hypnosis and acupuncture, have helped some people quit but lack strong proof of their effectiveness. Tobacco lozenges and pouches and nicotine lollipops and lip balms lack evidence as quitting aids, and no clinical trials have been published showing that electronic cigarettes can help people quit.

The cancer society suggests picking a “quit day”; ridding your home, car and workplace of smoking paraphernalia; choosing a stop-smoking plan, and stocking up on whatever aids you may need.

On the chosen day, keep active; drink lots of water and juices; use a nicotine replacement; change your routine if possible; and avoid alcohol, situations you associate with smoking and people who are smoking.

Read More..

Report Sees U.S. as Top Oil Producer, Overtaking Saudi Arabia, in 5 Years

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press

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. Above, an oil rig near Greensburg, Kan.

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 consequences are “potentially far reaching” for global energy markets and trade, the report said.

Mr. 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 after the 1974 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.

Mr. Birol said the agency’s prediction of American self-sufficiency assumed 55 percent more oil production as well as large improvements in energy efficiency and the wider use of biofuels. 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 Fukishima disaster.

The new energy sources will help the United States economy, Mr. 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 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.”

Read More..

Times investigation: Legal drugs, deadly outcomes

Terry Smith collapsed face-down in a pool of his own vomit.

Lynn Blunt snored loudly as her lungs slowly filled with fluid.

Summer Ann Burdette was midway through a pear when she stopped breathing.

Larry Carmichael knocked over a lamp as he fell to the floor.

Jennifer Thurber was curled up in bed, pale and still, when her father found her.

Karl Finnila sat down on a curb to rest and never got up.

These six people died of drug overdoses within a span of 18 months.

But according to coroners' records, that was not all they had in common. Bottles of prescription medications found at the scene of each death bore the name of the same doctor: Van H. Vu.

After Finnila died, coroner's investigators called Vu to learn about his patient's medical history and why he had given him prescriptions for powerful medications, including the painkiller hydrocodone.

Investigators left half a dozen messages. Vu never called back, coroner's records state.

Over the next four years, 10 more of his patients died of overdoses, the records show. In nine of those cases, painkillers Vu had prescribed for them were found at the scene.

Vu, a pain specialist in Huntington Beach, described himself as a conscientious, caring physician. He declined to comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality laws, but he said he treats many "very, very difficult patients" whose chronic pain is sometimes complicated by substance abuse and depression, anxiety or other mental illness.

"Every single day, I try to do the best I can for every single patient," he said in an interview. "I can't control what they do once they leave my office."

Prescription drug overdoses now claim more lives than heroin and cocaine combined, fueling a doubling of drug-related deaths in the United States over the last decade.

Health and law enforcement officials seeking to curb the epidemic have focused on how OxyContin, Vicodin, Xanax and other potent pain and anxiety medications are obtained illegally, such as through pharmacy robberies or when teenagers raid their parents' medicine cabinets. Authorities have failed to recognize how often people overdose on medications prescribed for them by their doctors.

A Los Angeles Times investigation has found that in nearly half of the accidental deaths from prescription drugs in four Southern California counties, the deceased had a doctor's prescription for at least one drug that caused or contributed to the death.

Reporters identified a total of 3,733 deaths from prescription drugs from 2006 through 2011 in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura and San Diego counties.

An examination of coroners' records found that:

In 1,762 of those cases — 47%— drugs for which the deceased had a prescription were the sole cause or a contributing cause of death.

A small cadre of doctors was associated with a disproportionate number of those fatal overdoses. Seventy-one — 0.1% of all practicing doctors in the four counties — wrote prescriptions for drugs that caused or contributed to 298 deaths. That is 17% of the total linked to doctors' prescriptions.

Read More..