What could be better than the Indiana Jones film Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX 3-D? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark in real life? New York City-based prank collective Improv Everywhere brought the film's famous boulder scene to Central Park -- and you have to see the chaos (and hilarity) that ensued! Check out the clip below:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republicans' clear defeat in the budget-debt brawl has widened the rift between the Grand Old Party and the blossoming tea party movement that helped revive it.
Implored by House Speaker John Boehner to unite and "fight another day" against President Barack Obama and Democrats, Republicans instead intensified attacks on one another, an ominous sign in advance of more difficult policy fights and the 2014 midterm elections.
The tea party movement spawned by the passage of Obama's health care overhaul three years ago put the GOP back in charge of the House and in hot pursuit of the law's repeal. The effort hit a wall this month in the budget and debt fight, but tea partyers promised to keep up the effort.
Whatever the future of the troubled law, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell vowed he would not permit another government shutdown.
"I think we have now fully acquainted our new members with what a losing strategy that is," McConnell said in an interview with The Hill newspaper.
Tea party Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told ABC News he wouldn't rule out using the tactic again, when the same budget and debt questions come up next year.
"I will continue to do anything I can to stop the train wreck that is Obamacare," Cruz said.
That divide defined the warring Republican factions ahead of the midterm elections, when 35 seats in the Democratic-controlled Senate and all 435 seats in the Republican-dominated House will be on the ballot. In the nearer term, difficult debates over immigration and farm policy loom, along with another round of budget and debt talks.
The animosity only intensified as lawmakers fled Washington this week for a few days' rest.
The Twitterverse crackled with threats, insults and the names of the 27 GOP senators and 87 GOP House members who voted for the leadership's agreement that reopened the government and raised the nation's borrowing limit. Republicans got none of their demands, keeping only the spending cuts they had won in 2011.
Within hours, TeaParty.net tweeted a link to the 114 lawmakers, tagging each as a Republican in name only who should be turned out of office: "Your 2014 #RINO hunting list!"
"We shouldn't have to put up with fake conservatives like Mitch McConnell," read a fundraising letter Thursday from the Tea Party Victory Fund Inc.
Another group, the Senate Conservatives Fund, announced it was endorsing McConnell's GOP opponent, Louisville, Ky., businessman Matt Bevin.
"Mitch McConnell has the support of the entire Washington establishment and he will do anything to hold on to power," the group, which raised nearly $2 million for tea party candidates in last year's elections, announced. "But if people in Kentucky and all across the country rise up and demand something better, we're confident Matt Bevin can win this race."
The same group pivoted to the Mississippi Senate race, where Republican Thad Cochran is weighing whether to seek a seventh term. Cochran voted for the McConnell-Reid deal, so the Senate Conservatives Fund endorsed a primary opponent, state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a private attorney the group says "will fight to stop Obamacare," ''is not part of the Washington establishment" and "has the courage to stand up to the big spenders in both parties."
There were more tea party targets: Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and Lamar Alexander in Tennessee also are seeking re-election.
To her Facebook friends, vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin posted: "We're going to shake things up in 2014. Rest well tonight, for soon we must focus on important House and Senate races. Let's start with Kentucky — which happens to be awfully close to South Carolina, Tennessee and Mississippi."
Opponents of the tea party strategy to make "Obamacare" the centerpiece of the budget fight seethed over what they said was an exercise in self destruction. Many clamored for Boehner and McConnell, the nation's highest-ranking Republicans, to impose some discipline, pointing to polls that showed public approval of Congress plummeting to historic lows and that most Americans blamed Republicans for the government shutdown.
A Pew Research Center poll released this week showed public favorability for the Tea Party dropped to its lowest level since driving the Republican takeover of the House in the 2010 elections. An AP-Gfk poll showed that 70 percent now hold unfavorable views of the Tea Party.
And yet, House Republican leaders tried again and again to resolve the standoff the tea party's way — by demanding limits on Obamacare in exchange for reopening the government — until they ran of options and accepted the bipartisan deal.
"When your strategy doesn't work, or your tactic doesn't work, you lose credibility in your conference," said Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., referring to the tea partyers' tactics. "Clearly the leadership followed certain members' tactics, certain members' strategies, and they proved not to be all that successful. So I would hope that we learn from the past."
"I do believe the outside groups have really put us in this position," said Rep. Renee Ellmers, R-N.C., referring to the Heritage Foundation's political campaign arm and other organizations demanding fealty to their ideology. Those groups "have worked in conjunction with members of Congress and with Tea Party groups pushing a strategy that was never going to work."
Tea partyers hold a contrary view. Boehner, they say, solidified his standing as the GOP's leader by holding the line against compromise as long as he did. And the standoff, they add, has increased their movement's clout.
"I think it builds credibility, because I think Democrats did not think that we would press this," said Rep. John Fleming, R-La. "And now they know that we will, and that we might do it again."
Attendees line up to enter the Google I/O developers conference at the Moscone Center on May 15, 2013 in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Attendees line up to enter the Google I/O developers conference at the Moscone Center on May 15, 2013 in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Google's stock closed at $1,011.41 today, joining an exclusive, over-$1,000 club that includes Priceline.com and Seaboard Corp., which produces turkey and hogs.
The rally for the world's largest search engine, Bloomberg reports, comes on the heels of optimism about the company's advertising offerings.
"Google is expanding its advertising in other ways, including working with direct rivals such as Facebook. Customers of its DoubleClick Bid Manager, which helps companies quickly buy ads across the Internet, will soon get access to the Facebook Exchange, Google said today. The feature, available to Google clients in the next few months, will let marketers target Facebook users based on their browsing.
"The campaigns and other initiatives should help average ad prices recover in the next year or so, according to Victor Anthony, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets Inc.
"'The results clearly demonstrate that Google remains kind of the best of breed, best of class in the online advertising space, really within the Internet space itself,' Anthony said."
The New York Times reports much of the growth in advertising sales for Google comes from mobile devices. Clicks on desktops have remained flat, while phone clicks doubled and tablet clicks were up 63 percent.
"Much of the growth in mobile was initially in the developed world, where ad prices are generally higher," the Times reports. "As the use of smartphones and tablets spreads into developing economies, the revenue per user is likely to drop, affecting overall profits unless Google can grow even faster in these markets."
The Cupertino City Council unanimously approves the 2.8-million-square-foot building, and demolition on the property will begin at the end of this year.
Apple's "spaceship" headquarters has, for all intents and purposes, been cleared for construction.
The Cupertino City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the 2.8-million-square-foot building. Although the Council must meet one more time on November 15 to hold a final vote on the Apple Campus 2 project, that is essentially a formality. Apple now plans to begin demolishing building on the site by the end of this year.
Apple CEO Tim Cook was so happy about the news that he paid a rare visit to his Tweet button. This morning, Cook tweeted: "Our home for innovation and creativity for decades to come. Cupertino City Council Gives Unanimous Approval for Apple's New Campus."
The ringlike "spaceship" design was the apple of Steve Jobs' eye, a place the Apple co-founder hoped would reflect his company's product design ideas. The massive facility will be four stories high and feature curved glass. Apple expects the facility to be able to accommodate over 14,000 employees, more than five times the number Apple's current headquarters can fit.
Elsbeth Tascioni is making a return trip to The Good Wife.
The endearing yet scatter-brained lawyer, played by Emmy winner Carrie Preston, has been a fixture in the Lockhart/Gardner offices and in the courtroom since the first season. But when Elsbeth comes back to the CBS legal drama this time around, change is looming at the firm with Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Cary (Matt Czuchry) planning their exit and Diane (Christine Baranski) moving forward with her judgeship. In the Oct. 20 episode, "Outside the Bubble," Lockhart/Gardner hires Elsbeth to represent them in a sexual harassment suit brought on by an employee.
In a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Preston previews Sunday's episode, treadmill desks and discusses the end of True Blood.
In what context does Elsbeth return to the Lockhart/Gardner firm?
She's brought in because there's an employee that's suing the firm and she's brought in to represent the firm. She's usually representing individuals throughout the seasons, but her tactics remain the same. Very mercurial and unexpected and mysterious at times. That remains the same. Once again the writers have given me obstacles and activities. The first moment you see me, I'm on a treadmill desk.
I was like, "What?!" They actually make these. They are treadmills with a desk at them so that you can be walking and doing your work at the same time. That seems like it was designed for Elsbeth Tascioni. (Laughs.) Of course Elsbeth would have to try that.
Elsbeth is coming in at an interesting point in time for Lockhart/Gardner, with Diane's judgeship and Cary/Alicia's plans to leave.
Her case is pretty self-contained. I think the writers brought her in to bring some levity. The calm before the storm. Or the fun before the storm maybe. Her storyline is not a part of all that.
What can we expect to see with Elsbeth in the courtroom?
She squares off with Rita Wilson's character [Viola Walsh], which is quite fun. We haven't seen Rita Wilson's character in a while and these are two very different -- albeit smart -- women. It's fun to see how they go head to head. That was satisfying to shoot. I had not met Rita before but she's wonderful. That's what I'm most curious to see how it came together.
Any particular favorites to shoot?
It was pretty fun shooting that treadmill scene. We couldn't stop laughing, while we were doing it. (Laughs.) I'm definitely someone who enjoys a little physical comedy. If you give me something like that I'm gonna definitely going to make the most of it.
Congratulations on your Emmy win earlier this year. How surprised were you?
It was surprising getting nominated and when they called my name as the winner, I was completely shocked. I don't know who was driving that bus to get me up onstage and give that speech, but it wasn't me. (Laughs.) I barely remember it. I went offstage and about collapsed. You know that phrase, "Your feet don't touch the ground?" I felt that.
Switching gears to True Blood, which is ending its run after the seventh season. What are you hoping for in that final push?
I think that the writers have positioned it to really come back around to its origins, which is a show about relationships, whether the characters are human or supernatural. We certainly got that in season six and I hope the writers will continue on that trajectory. I'm really just as excited as the fans to see where they take us. We're in good hands and I feel like it's the right thing to do to end the show when the stories are really strong still and really put all of our energies into making it the best season that we've ever had and go out on a high instead of trailing along like a lot of shows do just to keep it going.
Do you have any desires for how you want Arlene's story to end?
I think it was great how they let her take the bar over. I don't think that surprised anybody but at the same time, it was great to see Arlene get a little bit of power in this world and I'm hoping she'll find solace in that. I hope they don't pair her up with somebody. I'd like to see her be a strong woman and be OK in the world as a mom and an owner of a business and not be someone who doesn't feel complete if she doesn't have a man. This would be a nice evolution for her.
NEW YORK (AP) — Thomas Pynchon, Jhumpa Lahiri and George Saunders were among the finalists Wednesday for the National Book Awards.
A month after releasing long-lists of 10 in each of the four competitive categories, the National Book Foundation announced the five remaining writers for fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.
Winners receive $10,000 and will be announced at a dinner ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 20.
All five fiction nominees are well established, from Pynchon, whose "Bleeding Edge" is set in Manhattan around the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; to Lahiri, whose "The Lowland" was a Booker finalist; to Saunders, whose "Tenth of December" was the rare short-story collection to make-best seller lists. The other finalists are Rachel Kushner, nominated for her highly praised "The Flamethrowers," and James McBride, known to millions for "The Color of Water" and a finalist for "The Good Lord Bird."
The nonfiction list features three books by New Yorker staff writers: Lawrence Wright's Scientology investigation "Going Clear"; George Packer's dire account of contemporary America, "The Unwinding"; and Jill Lepore's biography of Benjamin Franklin's sister, Jane Franklin, "The Book of Ages." Also nominated for nonfiction are Wendy Lower's "Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields" and Alan Taylor's "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832."
For poetry, the finalists are Frank Bidart's "Metaphysical Dog," Lucie Brock-Broido's "Stay, Illusion," Adrian Matejka's "The Big Smoke," Matt Rasmussen's "Black Aperture" and Mary Szybist's "Incarnadine."
The young people's literature nominees are Kathi Appelt's "The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp," Cynthia Kadohata's "The Thing About Luck," Tom McNeal's "Far Far Away," Meg Rosoff's "Picture Me Gone" and Gene Luen Yang's "Boxers & Saints," a two-volume graphic novel.
Four of the fiction finalists were published by imprints of the recently merged Penguin Random House, which released 10 of the 20 nominees overall.
The long-lists were started this year as part of an effort to increase awareness of the awards and lead to more sales. New York publishers, several of whom are represented on the foundation's board, have complained that fiction nominees in recent years have been too obscure and have cited Britain's Man Booker Prize as a model. Besides establishing long-lists, the foundation has expanded the pool of judges, once exclusively fellow writers, to include journalists, booksellers and librarians.
The foundation would likely settle for the success of the National Book Award fiction winner from 2012, Louise Erdrich's "The Round House," which has sold more than 300,000 copies. Erdrich's publisher, HarperCollins, gave much of the credit to the award.
Honorary winners include Maya Angelou, whose medal will be presented by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, and E.L. Doctorow, who will be introduced by the publisher emeritus of The Nation and former National Book Award winner Victor Navasky.
The National Book Foundation, which presents the awards, is a nonprofit organization that sponsors numerous writing and educational events and programs.
How the love of jazz pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable between races and classes in upper crust British society -- and how loyalties are easy to suss out when things go sideways.
Airdate
Saturday, 10 p.m., Starz
Cast
Chiwetel Ejiofor, Matthew Goode, Janet Montgomery, Jacqueline Bisset, John Goodman, Joanna Vanderham, Angel Coulby, Wunmi Mosaku, Tom Hughes
Creator-writer-director
Stephen Poliakoff
Stephen Poliakoff has been of Britain’s great dramatists since the late 1970s, a master of making compelling movies and miniseries for the small screen, including The Lost Prince (three Emmys including best miniseries), Friends and Crocodiles and Gideon’s Daughter (two Golden Globes and a Peabody).
He’s one of those writers and directors that British critics seem to tire of at some point because, who knows, maybe because he’s not American. But his latest miniseries, Dancing on the Edge (premiering Oct. 19, 10 p.m., Starz), is a compelling look at race, class and jazz music in England during the 1930s.
It’s a lusciously shot, brilliantly written and acted account of how the British aristocracy and progressives in high society fell in love with what can best be described as the tantalizing edginess of jazz music and the sense of exploration and wonder it brought to those who heard it even though society at the time was not ready to accept what it all implied.
Poliakoff has written that his research into The Lost Prince led him to some surprising discoveries that, as a dramatist and a Brit, he couldn’t ignore. In a note to critics, he explained the fascination that eventually led to the creation of Dancing on the Edge:
"Ten years ago, I made my drama, The Lost Prince about Johnnie, the youngest son of George V and Queen Mary. While researching the show, I became very intrigued by Johnnie’s brother, Prince George, a rebellious and musical child, who grew up to be George, the Duke of Kent: a playboy prince with an absolute passion for jazz music. I discovered that he used to patrol the clubs in London with his eldest brother, David, the Prince of Wales, exploring the music of different bands. The two princes were thrilled by what was an entirely new sound to them and found themselves irresistibly drawn to towards the charged atmosphere of the clubs. They mixed with the musicians and singers, some of whom they befriended and invited into their homes.”
In truth, what moved Poliakoff is the idea that in tough times for race and class, British royalty was enamored with Duke Ellington and his band and how close associations (including affairs) were far ahead of actual social change. (Louis Armstrong was also a particular favorite of the royals.)
In Dancing on the Edge, Poliakoff constructs the fictional Louis Lester Band, led by British citizen Lester (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who is championed by an aggressively driven and well-connected critic named Stanley Mitchell (Matthew Goode), who is more than a bit of a hustler. Mitchell has been hired on the side to beef up the slagging fortunes of a high-end hotel and he uses Louis Lester to achieve that goal, all the while writing positive reviews in his fledgling magazine.
Having the royals pay attention is a surprise, of course, as is the interest shown by Masterson (John Goodman), a wealthy and eccentric businessman with a love for jazz and some truly distasteful private desires.
Dancing on the Edge has a strong cast, including Janet Montgomery as Sarah, a photographer and fashionista who pals around with the sister-brother socialites Pamela (Joanna Vanderham) and Julian (Tom Hughes), whose love of jazz and the next popular thing connects England’s elite to England’s cutting edge. Jacqueline Bisset plays a reclusive but progressive English aristocrat named Lady Cremone, who lives at the hotel where the Louis Lester Band burst onto the scene and becomes instrumental in moving them forward. Anthony Head also plays an upper-crust jazz lover whose advice to Louis – get a singer – ends up with the band having best friends Jessie (Angel Coulby) and Carla (Wunmi Mosaku) join the group and propel them to more fame and larger audiences.
Dancing on the Edge is a thing of beauty to watch, as the scenes of noirish late-night jazz discoveries in 1930s England are so wonderful to behold.
In the five part series, Poliakoff is trying to tell a number of stories. He’s of course fascinated with how high society and the royals went all hipster jazz – who wouldn’t be? It speaks to the power of the music to transcend society and traverse the culture. But you can’t tell that story without getting into race and class, which Poliakoff is keenly interested in but doesn’t bludgeon the viewer with incessantly. It is, however, the key element to Dancing on the Edge because the skyrocketing fame of the Louis Lester Band – by its association with the upper crust, allowing blacks and white to live like they couldn’t in “real” society – spirals when a series of events conspire to make the band the primary target of a crime.
What happens when a controversial association goes sideways – the truth happens, as Dancing on the Edge tries to suggest. As the Louis Lester Band gets tainted, its famous friends begin to shrink bank.
Poliakoff never seems to be in much of a hurry to tell a story – which ultimately dings Dancing on the Edge. It’s very atmospheric as it unfolds the almost inconceivable, meteoric rise of a band in a cross-cultural fashion, only to find the unwanted attention and crime allegations just the thing to send the rich and privileged into hiding and denial as their black “friends” come under questioning.
Yes, Dancing on the Edge can seem like a slow go at times and can also seem obvious and prone to social lectures, but it keeps up the illusion of people – even the most powerful of people – intermingling without judgment until they are all tested. Their reactions are depressing but not unexpected.
Ejiofer is magnificent here and Goode keeps creative pace with him (not easy to do), while any number of performances stand out. The miniseries probably doesn’t say anything surprising or new, and at times it seems to slog a bit in its storytelling, but Poliakoff understands how to bring people and story together strikingly, so his superb contributions to the small screen continue after all these years.
UnitedHealth Group Inc.'s third-quarter earnings inched up 1 percent in a rare performance that failed to trump Wall Street expectations.
The nation's largest health insurer also gave a less-than-reassuring vibe to investors by narrowing its 2013 forecast instead of raising it.
The Minnetonka, Minn.,-based company on Thursday raised the bottom end of its previous forecast for 2013 earnings by a nickel to $5.40 to $5.50 per share. UnitedHealth hasn't changed the top end of that forecast since it made its first prediction last November. It normally raises the range a few times during the course of a year.
Analysts polled by FactSet expect $5.52 per share for 2013.
Shares of UnitedHealth, which investors sent to a record high last month, dropped nearly 3 percent, or $2.19, to $73 about 45 minutes before the market opening.
UnitedHealth earned $1.57 billion, or $1.53 per share, in the quarter that ended Sept. 30. That's up from $1.56 billion, or $1.50 per share, a year ago. Revenue jumped 12 percent to $30.62 billion.
Analysts expected earnings of $1.53 per share on $30.86 billion in revenue.
The insurer's largest expense, medical costs, rose 13 percent to $22 billion in the quarter, due in part to cuts in Medicare Advantage funding.
UnitedHealth is the nation's largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, which offer government-subsidized coverage for elderly and disabled people. The insurer has nearly 2.9 million people enrolled in the plans, and they brought in about 20 percent of its revenue last year.
UnitedHealth executives have been warning for several quarters now that that funding cuts to this program will pressure their business. Medicare Advantage plans took a hit earlier this year when federal budget cuts took away money after insurers had set rates for the year.
These plans also face more cuts to help fund the federal health care overhaul, which aims to provide insurance coverage for millions of uninsured people.
UnitedHealth also took a balance sheet hit in this year's quarter because it recorded a lower gain of $290 million when leftover insurance claims came in lower than it expected. That allowed the insurer to release money held in reserve, and it compares to a $390 million gain recorded last year.
The lower total basically means actual claims came in closer to what the insurer projected.
Health insurance is UnitedHealth's largest business, but it also provides information technology services and pharmacy benefits management through it its Optum segment. Total revenue from that segment jumped 33 percent in the third quarter to $9.6 billion.
UnitedHealth is the largest health insurer based on revenue and enrollment and the first health insurer to report earnings every quarter. Many see it as a bellwether for other insurers.
Its stock had climbed more than 38 percent so far this year as of Wednesday, and the shares reached a new, all-time high price of $75.88 on Sept. 16.
Strong quarterly performances and dividend payouts have drawn investors to UnitedHealth and other insurers that also have done well this year. Analysts say investors also have steadily gained more confidence in the sector as they realized that the health care overhaul won't hurt the industry as much as some originally worried.
Citi analyst Carl McDonald said in a Thursday morning research note that UnitedHealth "didn't have a terrible quarter by any means." But the high stock price means the bar for a good performance has risen the past couple of years.
Contact: Dr. Sibylle Kohlstadt s.kohlstaedt@dkfz.de German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ)
Parvoviruses cause no harm in humans, but they can attack and kill cancer cells. Since 1992, scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been studying these viruses with the aim of developing a viral therapy to treat glioblastomas, a type of aggressively growing brain cancer. A clinical trial has been conducted since 2011 at the Heidelberg University Neurosurgery Hospital to test the safety of treating cancer patients with the parvovirus H-1.
"We obtained impressive results in preclinical trials with parvovirus H-1 in brain tumors," says Dr. Antonio Marchini, a virologist at DKFZ. "However, the oncolytic effect of the viruses is weaker in other cancers. Therefore, we are searching for ways to increase the therapeutic potential of the viruses."
In doing so, the virologists also tested valproic acid, a drug belonging to a group of drugs called HDAC inhibitors. The effect of these inhibitors is to raise the transcription of many genes that have been chemically silenced. Valproic acid is commonly used to treat epilepsy and has also proven effective in treating specific types of cancer.
The researchers initially used a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid to treat tumor cells that had been obtained from cervical and pancreatic carcinomas and raised in the culture dish. In both types of cancer, the drug raised the rate of virus-induced cell death; in some cases, the cancer cells were even completely eliminated.
The encouraging results obtained in cultured cells were confirmed in cervical and pancreatic tumors that had been transplanted to rats. After the animals were treated with a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid, in some cases the tumors regressed completely and animals remained free of recurrences over a one-year period. In contrast, animals treated with the same virus dose without the drug displayed no regression, not even when a 20-times higher dose of viruses was administered.
The virologists were also able to unravel the molecular mechanism by which valproic acid assists parvoviruses in fighting cancer: Treatment with the drug activates a viral protein called NS1, which is toxic. This helps the viruses replicate more rapidly and kill cancer cells more effectively.
The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) with its more than 2,500 employees is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany. At DKFZ, more than 1,000 scientists investigate how cancer develops, identify cancer risk factors and endeavor to find new strategies to prevent people from getting cancer. They develop novel approaches to make tumor diagnosis more precise and treatment of cancer patients more successful. The staff of the Cancer Information Service (KID) offers information about the widespread disease of cancer for patients, their families, and the general public. Jointly with Heidelberg University Hospital, DKFZ has established the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, where promising approaches from cancer research are translated into the clinic. In the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), one of six German Centers for Health Research, DKFZ maintains translational centers at seven university partnering sites. Combining excellent university hospitals with high-profile research at a Helmholtz Center is an important contribution to improving the chances of cancer patients. DKFZ is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers, with ninety percent of its funding coming from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the remaining ten percent from the State of Baden-Wrttemberg.
"The synergistic effect of a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid enables us to deliver both the viruses and the drug at low doses, which prevents severe side effects," Marchini explains. "The results are encouraging us to carry out further tests of this combination therapy. We believe it has the potential to arrest tumor growth in severe cases of cancer."
###
Junwei Li, Serena Bonifati, Georgi Hristov, Tiina Marttila, Severine Valmary-Degano,Sven Stanzel, Martina Schnlzer, Christiane Mougin, Marc Aprahamian, Svitlana P. Grekova, Zahari Raykov, Jean Rommelaere and Antonio Marchini: Synergistic combination of valproic acid and oncolytic parvovirus H-1PV as a potential therapy against cervical and pancreatic carcinomas. EMBO Molecular Medicine 2013, DOI: 10.1002/emmm.201302796
Caption: Computer-generated representation of parvovirus H-1, Antonio Marchini, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
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Drug activates virus against cancer
Public release date: 15-Oct-2013 [
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Contact: Dr. Sibylle Kohlstadt s.kohlstaedt@dkfz.de German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ)
Parvoviruses cause no harm in humans, but they can attack and kill cancer cells. Since 1992, scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have been studying these viruses with the aim of developing a viral therapy to treat glioblastomas, a type of aggressively growing brain cancer. A clinical trial has been conducted since 2011 at the Heidelberg University Neurosurgery Hospital to test the safety of treating cancer patients with the parvovirus H-1.
"We obtained impressive results in preclinical trials with parvovirus H-1 in brain tumors," says Dr. Antonio Marchini, a virologist at DKFZ. "However, the oncolytic effect of the viruses is weaker in other cancers. Therefore, we are searching for ways to increase the therapeutic potential of the viruses."
In doing so, the virologists also tested valproic acid, a drug belonging to a group of drugs called HDAC inhibitors. The effect of these inhibitors is to raise the transcription of many genes that have been chemically silenced. Valproic acid is commonly used to treat epilepsy and has also proven effective in treating specific types of cancer.
The researchers initially used a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid to treat tumor cells that had been obtained from cervical and pancreatic carcinomas and raised in the culture dish. In both types of cancer, the drug raised the rate of virus-induced cell death; in some cases, the cancer cells were even completely eliminated.
The encouraging results obtained in cultured cells were confirmed in cervical and pancreatic tumors that had been transplanted to rats. After the animals were treated with a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid, in some cases the tumors regressed completely and animals remained free of recurrences over a one-year period. In contrast, animals treated with the same virus dose without the drug displayed no regression, not even when a 20-times higher dose of viruses was administered.
The virologists were also able to unravel the molecular mechanism by which valproic acid assists parvoviruses in fighting cancer: Treatment with the drug activates a viral protein called NS1, which is toxic. This helps the viruses replicate more rapidly and kill cancer cells more effectively.
The German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) with its more than 2,500 employees is the largest biomedical research institute in Germany. At DKFZ, more than 1,000 scientists investigate how cancer develops, identify cancer risk factors and endeavor to find new strategies to prevent people from getting cancer. They develop novel approaches to make tumor diagnosis more precise and treatment of cancer patients more successful. The staff of the Cancer Information Service (KID) offers information about the widespread disease of cancer for patients, their families, and the general public. Jointly with Heidelberg University Hospital, DKFZ has established the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, where promising approaches from cancer research are translated into the clinic. In the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK), one of six German Centers for Health Research, DKFZ maintains translational centers at seven university partnering sites. Combining excellent university hospitals with high-profile research at a Helmholtz Center is an important contribution to improving the chances of cancer patients. DKFZ is a member of the Helmholtz Association of National Research Centers, with ninety percent of its funding coming from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the remaining ten percent from the State of Baden-Wrttemberg.
"The synergistic effect of a combination of parvoviruses and valproic acid enables us to deliver both the viruses and the drug at low doses, which prevents severe side effects," Marchini explains. "The results are encouraging us to carry out further tests of this combination therapy. We believe it has the potential to arrest tumor growth in severe cases of cancer."
###
Junwei Li, Serena Bonifati, Georgi Hristov, Tiina Marttila, Severine Valmary-Degano,Sven Stanzel, Martina Schnlzer, Christiane Mougin, Marc Aprahamian, Svitlana P. Grekova, Zahari Raykov, Jean Rommelaere and Antonio Marchini: Synergistic combination of valproic acid and oncolytic parvovirus H-1PV as a potential therapy against cervical and pancreatic carcinomas. EMBO Molecular Medicine 2013, DOI: 10.1002/emmm.201302796
Caption: Computer-generated representation of parvovirus H-1, Antonio Marchini, German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Veteran character actor Ed Lauter, whose long, angular face and stern bearing made him an instantly recognizable figure in scores of movies and TV shows during a career that stretched across five decades, died Wednesday. He was 74.
Lauter died of mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer most commonly caused by asbestos exposure, said his publicist, Edward Lozzi.
Whether he was an irascible authority figure, a brutal thug or a conniving con man, Lauter's presence made him all but impossible to miss in any film he was in. That was so even on those occasions when he was playing a character more bumbling than menacing, although menacing was clearly his forte.
He was the brutal prison guard who was Burt Reynolds' nemesis in the 1974 comedy-drama "The Longest Yard" and the sleazy gas station attendant in Alfred Hitchcock's last film, "The Family Plot." In "Death Wish 3," he was the violent cop who teams with Charles Bronson's vigilante to rid New York City's streets of criminals, not by incarcerating them but by killing them.
More recently he was the butler to Berenice Bejo's French ingenue in the 2011 Oscar-winning film "The Artist."
Lauter described himself in a 2010 interview with Cinema Shock magazine as a "turn" actor, someone who shows up at some point in the film and suddenly turns the plot in a different direction.
He credited the cast of real-life characters he grew up observing in his native Long Beach, New York, as inspiring many of the characters he would go on to portray.
He laughed at being someone frequently recognized in public for his roles.
"But sometimes people don't know my name," he said. "They'll say, 'Oh, yeah! There's that guy! You were in ... you were in ... ."
He was in "Trouble With the Curve" in 2011 with Clint Eastwood and in "Born on the Fourth of July" with Tom Cruise. He was also in "The New Centurions" with George C. Scott and in "My Blue Heaven," "Revenge of the Nerds 2" and "Not Another Teenage Movie," among many other films.
TV appearances included "The Office," "ER," "Murder, She Wrote" and "The Rockford Files."
Among his favorite roles, he said in 2010, was "The Longest Yard."
He recalled that director Robert Aldrich told him he didn't have to read for the part but would have to accompany Aldrich to a nearby park so the director could ensure that he could throw a football like a quarterback would. When he hit former NFL receiver Pat Studstill, who was a stuntman in the movie, right in his jersey number with the first pass, Lauter said Aldrich told him he had the job.
Lauter, who continued to work until a few months ago, had completed roles in several films still to be released.
Citing information from "people familiar with the situation," the Journal reported that supplier Pegatron was told that 5C orders would be trimmed by less than 20 percent. Hon Hai, aka Foxconn, was informed that orders would be reduced by a third. Pegatron assembles around two-thirds of 5C units, according to analysts, with Foxconn accounting for the rest.
So, does this latest item signal doom and gloom for Apple? Not really.
To be sure, the 5C isn't exactly heating up the consumer market. Apple dashed hopes of a truly low-cost phone that could compete internationally when it revealed that the nonsubsidized price of the 5C would be $550. Even at a subsidized cost of $99 with a two-year contract, the 5C has undergone price chops from Walmart, Target, and other retailers.
But the 5C order cuts don't necessarily translate directly into feeble consumer demand. Apple has in the past trimmed orders from suppliers for different reasons. And at the same time Apple plans to reduce 5C orders, it will raise them for the higher-end and more profitable 5S this quarter, according to Foxconn executives.
Managing its way nimbly through times of economic sluggishness, IBM reported a 6 percent increase in profit for the third quarter even as its revenue declined.
IBM's third-quarter profit was $4.0 billion, compared to $3.8 billion in the third quarter of 2012, the company announced Wednesday. Revenue was $23.7 billion, compared to $24.7 billion in the year prior.
"In the third-quarter we continued to expand operating margins and increased earnings per share, but fell short on revenue," said Ginni Rometty, IBM chairman, president and CEO, in a statement.
Revenue from IBM's Systems and Technology segment generated $3.2 billion in revenue, down 17 percent from the third quarter in 2012. System x revenue fell by 18 percent, Power Systems revenue fell by 38 percent and storage system revenue fell by 11 percent.
Much of the hardware decline stemmed from China, CFO Mark Loughridge said in a webcast. The Chinese government is preparing a new and comprehensive economic policy, due to be implemented in November. As a result, government agencies are delaying procurements, which hit IBM's hardware particularly hard.
As a result, IBM's business overall in China was down by 22 percent, and IBM hardware sales fell by 44 percent, Loughridge said. While China's new economic plan aims to reduce its reliance on foreign suppliers, IBM doesn't see the downturn as permanent: Sales in China should resume by early 2014, Loughridge said.
Revenue from the Americas, totalling $10.3 billion, decreased 1 percent from the same quarter a year ago. Revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa increased 1 percent to $7.3 billion, while revenue from the Asia-Pacific region declined 15 percent to $5.5 billion.
The services divisions produced middling results for the company. Revenue from the Global Technology Services segment decreased 4 percent to $9.5 billion for the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, while revenue from the Global Business Services segment was flat at $4.6 billion.
Revenue from IBM's software segment climbed modestly to $5.8 billion, up 1 percent from the same quarter a year ago.
Purchasing SoftLayer "significantly improved our capabilities in public and hybrid cloud," according to Loughridge. IBM's cloud revenue was up 70 percent from the same quarter a year ago, the company said. "For the first time, we delivered over a billion dollars in cloud revenue," Loughridge said.
Joab Jackson , IDG News Service
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for the IDG News Service. More by Joab Jackson
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Marty Lederhandler/AP
Forty years ago this week, the U.S. was hit by an oil shock that reverberates until this day.
Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S. to protest American military support for Israel in its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. This brought soaring gas prices and long lines at filling stations, and it contributed to a major economic downturn in the U.S.
The embargo made the U.S. feel heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which in turn led the U.S. to focus on instability in that region, which has since included multiple wars and other U.S. military interventions.
"The oil crisis set off an upheaval in global politics and the world economy. It also challenged America's position in the world, polarized its politics at home and shook the country's confidence," author and oil analyst Daniel Yergin wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
While these concerns linger, the world energy market has changed dramatically over the past four decades. U.S. energy production is rising. Less than 10 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Middle East. Global prices are relatively stable.
All this has spurred debate about whether the U.S. is too focused on the Middle East and its oil when it does not appear to pose much of an economic threat to America. We won't try to answer that question today, but we did want to point out things that were very different back in the fall of 1973:
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
AP
Saudi Arabia was a leading proponent of the 1973 embargo. For many Americans, Saudi Arabia was the symbol of the wealthy Arab monarchies that were inflicting so much pain on the U.S. Yet today, Saudi Arabia is one of the closest U.S. allies in the region and is currently pumping oil at high levels to keep world markets stable and offset lower production in places like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria.
Iran and the U.S. were allies. Under the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran kept on producing and exporting throughout the six-month embargo that lasted until March 1974. After the shah was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. and Iran became sworn rivals, a confrontation that has lasted more than three decades. Iran is now the target of Western sanctions that took effect last year and have cut the Islamic Republic's oil exports by half, from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.2 million.
In response to the oil shock, Congress passed fuel economy standards. That 1975 measure required automakers to raise mileage from 13.5 miles per gallon to 27 mpg. Last year, the standards were again doubled, and vehicles must average 54 mpg by 2025. As a result, Americans are driving more without increasing the amount of gas they are using.
Soaring oil prices remade the global energy industry. As oil prices skyrocketed in the 1970s, producers were willing to travel to more remote and difficult places to drill, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian oil sands. World oil production today is 50 percent higher than it was in 1973. Also, the crisis prompted efforts to find and develop other power sources, from natural gas to wind to solar.
The U.S. is less dependent on the Middle East today. In the years that followed the 1973 embargo, a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil was regarded as a grave national threat.
Here's President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
In reality, Middle Eastern oil has never been a huge part of the overall U.S. supply. Imports from the Middle East never accounted for more than 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply and now they account for only about 9 percent.
The U.S. now imports more oil from Canada than anywhere else. Saudi Arabia is the only Middle Eastern nation among the top five nations sending oil to America.
By limiting supply, OPEC was able to cause oil price spikes in the 1970s and '80s. But it has much less power today, and a number of top producers, such as Saudi Arabia, work to stabilize prices rather than disrupt the market.
"For the last four decades, Washington's energy policy has been based on the faulty conclusion that the country could solve all its energy woes by reducing its reliance on Middle Eastern oil," Gal Luft and Anne Korin write in Foreign Affairs.
"The crux of the United States' energy vulnerability was its inability to keep the price of oil under control, given the Arab oil kingdoms' stranglehold on the global petroleum supply," the authors write.
So the oil industry is a very different place. But not everything has changed:
The Israelis and the Arabs are still feuding. The 1973 Middle East war was essentially a draw, and Israel and Egypt then made peace before the decade was over. Israel also has a peace treaty with Jordan, but it is still at odds with its other immediate neighbors, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria. And Israel considers its biggest threat to be Iran, arguing that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
Geneva (AFP) - World powers and Iran have agreed to hold a new round of talks on Tehran's controversial nuclear programme on November 7 and 8, EU foreign policy chiefCatherine Ashton said Wednesday.
"It was decided to convene the next meeting in Geneva on November 7 and 8," Ashton told reporters after two days of negotiations with Iran.
Ashton underlined that she was reading from what was an unprecedented joint statement agreed with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and herself as chair of the international negotiating team.
The European Union is at the helm of the so-called P5+1 group -- Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany -- who have spent years trying to reach a deal with Iran.
MARYVILLE, Mo. (AP) — A woman who says her family was forced to move from a northwest Missouri town after her 14-year-old daughter was plied with alcohol and sexually assaulted nearly two years ago disputed authorities' claims that she and her daughter stopped cooperating with investigators.
Melinda Coleman said Tuesday that justice was denied when Nodaway County's prosecutor dropped felony charges against two 17-year-old Maryville High School students in March 2012, two months after she found her daughter passed out on the family's front porch in below-freezing temperatures.
Nodaway County prosecutor Robert Rice issued a statement saying there wasn't enough evidence to pursue the charges because the accusers had stopped cooperating and asserted their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. In an interview, Sheriff Darren White backed up Rice's statement.
The case has drawn new attention since The Kansas City Star published the results Sunday of a seven-month investigation into the allegations. The Star's story described a town where many appeared to be closing ranks around the accused and suggesting the girls were somehow responsible for the incident. In April, after the family had moved, the family's home in Maryville was damaged in a fire, though a cause has not been determined.
Robert Sundell, an attorney who represented the teen accused of assaulting Daisy Coleman, said in a written statement that while many may find his former client's behavior "reprehensible," the legal issue is whether a crime occurred. He said the investigation raised questions about whether the 14-year-old was "incapacitated during the encounter." He also said the charges were dropped after the accusers' stories changed during depositions.
Sundell said his former client would not talk to the media.
Coleman says her 14-year-old daughter was given alcohol in January 2012 and raped by a 17-year-old acquaintance. The girl's 13-year-old friend says she was forced to have sex with a 15-year-old at the same house, while another 17-year-old allegedly recorded the incident on a cellphone.
The daughter acknowledged she and the friend left her house to meet the boys but said they gave her alcohol and she doesn't remember much of what happened next. The boys said the sex was consensual.
The two 17-year-old boys were charged as adults, but Rice dropped felony counts against them several months later. A misdemeanor count against the teen accused of assaulting Daisy was dropped subsequently. The prosecutor cited a lack of evidence and the Colemans' refusal to cooperate. The 15-year-old was charged in juvenile court.
The Associated Press does not generally name victims of sexual assault but is naming Coleman because she and her mother have been granting public interviews about the case. The AP is not naming the boys because there is no longer an active criminal case against them.
Coleman, a veterinarian who moved her family back to Albany, about 40 miles east of Maryville, because of backlash from the community over the girls' accusations, said suggestions that she and her daughter were uncooperative are lies.
"How do you think we didn't want to cooperate?" Coleman asked. "We went to get a rape kit done. I wrote a statement, and my daughter gave a statement to the police."
Coleman said that no depositions were conducted before the felony charges were dropped. She said she was asked but refused to invoke the Fifth Amendment before a planned May 31, 2012, deposition.
Sundell said his former client's accusers did invoke the Fifth Amendment right at the May hearing.
Rice has declined to discuss the case beyond a news release sent by his office Tuesday that noted that in Missouri, dismissed cases are sealed and he was not at liberty to discuss them.
White, the sheriff, said he never understood the Colemans' reasoning and that authorities weren't considering charges against the 14-year-old girl.
"They stonewalled the case all by themselves," he said.
Now that the family is saying they will cooperate, he wasn't sure whether that would make a difference.
"They wouldn't cooperate and then they said they would cooperate. And then they wouldn't cooperate. And then they went back and forth," White said. "I'm guessing, and this is just speculation, but I'm guessing that the prosecutor would be a little gun shy to believe that they would be willing to cooperate at this time."
He said authorities have had dealings with the suspects before and prosecuted them. Online court records show that the teen accused of assaulting Daisy had been on probation for a DWI.
"It's not that he's afraid of these boys and their families or anything like that. It's just that he was left with no alternatives," White said.
The case has drawn comparisons to one in Steubenville, Ohio, where two 17-year-old high school football players were convicted of raping a West Virginia girl after an alcohol-fueled party in 2012. The case was furiously debated online and led to allegations of a cover-up to protect the city's celebrated football team.
Missouri expanded its rape, sodomy and sexual abuse laws, effective Aug. 28, to cover cases of sexual contact when a person is incapacitated or incapable of giving consent. Those crimes previously had required "forcible compulsion." State Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, who had supported that change, said Tuesday that it was prompted at least partly by the Steubenville case.
Prominent Missouri Republicans have called on Attorney General Chris Koster, a Democrat, to intervene. However, a spokeswoman for Koster's office said Tuesday that it had no authority under state law to reopen the investigation on its own.
Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder called on Koster to ask that a grand jury be convened, and House Speaker Tim Jones said the attorney general should consider intervening. Jones disagreed with suggestions that Koster was prohibited from doing so.
___
Reporter Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Mo., contributed to this report.
Samsung has found plenty of inspiration in devices launched by rival smartphone makers, but the South Korean electronics giant has also done plenty of innovating itself. Samsung’s new Galaxy Round is one example, albeit an awful one. The phablet category exists as it does today solely because of Samsung though, and now the company is reportedly working on some exciting new wireless charging technology for its upcoming phones.
According to Korean-language news agency ET News, Samsung is working with News Zealand startup PowerbyProxi to bring a new kind of wireless charging tech to its smartphones. The startup, which Samsung has invested in, is developing a magnetic resonance charging solution that is different from the various solutions that are widely available today.
Whereas wireless charging solutions currently utilized by Nokia and other smartphone vendors require that a device be properly positioned on a special pad in order to charge wirelessly, magnetic resonance is capable of charging devices even when only a portion of the device is touching the charging base. Devices that utilize magnetic resonance charging can also be charged when there is an obstruction between the charger and the device, or even when the device is held a few centimeters off of the charging pad.
Samsung handsets that incorporate this new magnetic resonance technology could hit the market as soon as the second half next year, according to the report.
More from BGR: iOS 7 takes a beating in extensive user experience review
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Tuesday the frantic stop-and-go effort in Congress to avoid a debt default and end a government shutdown is "a mess" as a gloomy mood descended over the White House with time running out to a Thursday deadline.
Obama, who is to meet Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Wednesday, and his Democratic backers stressed there is still time to avoid a historic default even as efforts to reach a deal in Congress floundered on Capitol Hill.
"My expectation is that it does get solved, but we don't have a lot of time," Obama told WABC in New York. "So what I'm suggesting to congressional leaders is, let's not do any posturing, let's not try to save face, let's not worry about politics, do what's right."
The president seemed hopeful in television interviews he gave in late morning, but those hopes were dashed later in the day when Republicans who control the House of Representatives failed to muster support for alternatives to a Senate plan that had bipartisan support.
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, emerging from White House talks with Obama, looked glum, as did other House Democratic leaders Steny Hoyer and James Clyburn, speaking in dire tones about the potential for a default.
Americans will pay higher interest rates on student loans, car payments and credit card bills, Pelosi said.
"This is what is at stake here," she said.
Obama's public schedule has been pared down to only events pointing up the need to reopen the government after a shutdown of 15 days and counting. Monday he visited a charity food pantry where furloughed workers are volunteering and helped make sandwiches.
In recent days Obama has tamped down some of his more harsher partisan rhetoric, dropping the "gun to the head" metaphors, in an apparent effort to encourage some semblance of goodwill.
He is still making a point of blaming the shutdown and threat of a debt default on his opponents, saying conservative Tea Party Republicans made "a very extreme decision to use very extreme tactics" that moderate Republicans are struggling to overcome.
"And what we've seen as a result is the kind of mess that we're seeing today," Obama told WABC.
Of trying to work out a compromise with House of Representative Speaker John Boehner, the top U.S. Republican, Obama stated the obvious: That the more conservatives see Boehner working with him, the worse it is for the speaker among his Republican caucus.
"It weakens him," Obama said. "So there have been repeated situations where we have agreements, then he goes back and it turns out that he can't control his caucus. So the challenge here is can you deliver on agreements that are made."
Behind the scenes, White House officials have talked to both sides in the political battle but insist Obama is not negotiating even though he appeared to be giving their blessing to a Senate plan that contained small changes to Obama's signature healthcare law.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, pressed on the issue at his daily briefing for reporters, said Obama has remained firm in his position of not making concessions in exchange for raising the U.S. debt limit.
"It depends on what you mean by 'negotiate,'" said Carney. "He's been having conversations with lawmakers. What he will not do ... is give the Tea Party its ideological agenda in exchange for Congress opening the government or Congress raising the debt ceiling so that the United States doesn't default."
Obama has seen his own public approval ratings take a hit during the current fiscal stalemate but what he and his aides are most concerned about is the potential damage to the U.S. economy, with Fitch Ratings warning it could cut the U.S. credit rating from AAA.
"I'm holding out hope that we can get this done in the next couple of days," Obama told Univision's Los Angeles affiliate. "We need to because over the next several days we're going to lose the capacity to pay our bills and our borrowing. And that could affect our credit rating and have all kinds of adverse impact on our economy."
(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler and Jackie Frank)
The reality star and new mom, 32, posted an Instagram photo on Monday, standing beside American Dad character cutouts to promote her upcoming cameo on the Fox animated comedy.
The mom of 4-month-old North West continued to show off her post-baby body, this time in a black, slimming, short-sleeved jumpsuit. She paired her outfit with nude pumps and Ecaille locks, this season’s hot, new salon trend.
“Guess what guys!!!! I’m going to be on American Dad!” she wrote on her blog with the image. “You have to tune in to see what my character is!”
Kanye West’s love, however, hints at the plot line as she poses beside a cutout of the Smith family¹s resident alien, Roger, in the photo. Kardashian voices an alien who reportedly lands on Earth and develops an out-of-this-world-sized crush on the beguiling and crude Roger.
Celebrities who've previously made guest appearances on the Seth MacFarlane-produced comedy include Patton Oswalt, Zooey Deschanel and Olivia Wilde.
As for Kardashian, this isn’t her first time dabbling in the dramatic arts – or stepping into a role involving relationships. Back in 2012, she guest-starred as a relationship guru in a multi-episode arc of Lifetime’s Drop Dead Diva; she also has played a matchmaker in Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.
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