Raging fire guts Kabul market

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Firefighters battled through the night to contain a raging fire that swept through a market in the Afghan capital.

No injuries were reported, but the blaze destroyed hundreds of stores and millions of dollars worth of merchandise, Afghan police and firefighters said at the scene. 

Dealers at the neighboring currency exchange, the city’s largest, said they evacuated cash, computer equipment and records from their shops as the flames approached during the night. But in the morning, the market was jammed with people haggling over thick stacks of notes as smoke billowed overhead.

Col. Mohammed Qasem, general director of the Kabul fire department, said he suspected an electrical short was to blame for the fire. 

Gas canisters used to heat the stores propelled the flames, along with the cloth and clothing sold by many of the vendors, Qasem said. “It made it very big in a short time.”

Firefighters from the Afghan defense department and NATO forces were sent to assist. But the city’s notorious traffic and the market’s narrow lanes made it difficult for responders to maneuver their vehicles, Qasem said.

Abdulrahman, who like many Afghans has only one name, squatted near a fire truck with his head in his hands  as responders aimed a hose at the blackened ruins of a building still smoldering at noon Sunday, more than 12 hours after the fire broke out.

He said the building had contained three shops that he owned and a warehouse full of glassware, crockery and kitchen utensils. 

“I lost everything,” he said.

Shirali Khan complained that police hadn't allowed him to remove the goods from his four clothing stores.

“They thought we were all robbers,” he said.  “There’s only ashes left.”

ALSO:

Pope pardons former butler convicted of theft

Bombing kills local official, 7 other people in Pakistan

Tensions high as vote on proposed Egyptian constitution continues

Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash contributed to this report.

Read More..

'Hobbit' extends No. 1 journey with $36.7 million

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins is running circles around some of the biggest names in Hollywood.

Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" took in $36.7 million to remain No. 1 at the box office for the second-straight weekend, easily beating a rush of top-name holiday newcomers.

Part one of Jackson's prelude to his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the Warner Bros. release raised its domestic total to $149.9 million after 10 days. The film added $91 million overseas to bring its international total to $284 million and its worldwide haul to $434 million.

"The Hobbit" took a steep 57 percent drop from its domestic $84.6 million opening weekend, but business was soft in general as many people skipped movies in favor of last-minute Christmas preparations.

"The real winner this weekend might be holiday shopping," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.

Tom Cruise's action thriller "Jack Reacher" debuted in second-place with a modest $15.6 million debut, according to studio estimates Sunday. Based on the Lee Child best-seller "One Shot," the Paramount Pictures release stars Cruise as a lone-wolf ex-military investigator tracking a sniper conspiracy.

Opening at No. 3 with $12 million was Judd Apatow's marital comedy "This Is 40," a Universal Pictures film featuring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann reprising their roles from the director's 2007 hit "Knocked Up."

Paramount's road-trip romp "The Guilt Trip," featuring "Knocked Up" star Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand, debuted weakly at No. 6 with $5.4 million over the weekend and $7.4 million since it opened Wednesday. Playing in narrower release, Paramount's acrobatic fantasy "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away" debuted at No. 11 with $2.1 million.

A 3-D version of Disney's 2001 animated blockbuster "Monsters, Inc." also had a modest start at No. 7 with $5 million over the weekend and $6.5 million since opening Wednesday.

Domestic business was off for the first time in nearly two months. Overall revenues totaled $112 million, down 12.6 percent from the same weekend last year, when Cruise's "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" debuted with $29.6 million, according to Hollywood.com.

Cruise's "Jack Reacher" opened at barely half the level as "Ghost Protocol," but with a $60 million budget, the new flick cost about $100 million less to make.

Starting on Christmas, Hollywood expects a big week of movie-going with schools out through New Year's Day and many adults taking time off. So Paramount and other studios are counting on strong business for films that started slowly this weekend.

"'Jack Reacher' will end up in a very good place. The movie will be profitable for Paramount," said Don Harris, the studio's head of distribution. "The first time I saw the movie I saw dollar signs. It certainly wasn't intended to be compared to a 'Mission: Impossible,' though."

Likewise, Warner Bros. is looking for steady crowds for "The Hobbit" over the next week, despite the debut of two huge newcomers — the musical "Les Miserables" and the action movie "Django Unchained" — on Christmas Day.

"We haven't reached the key holiday play time yet," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. "It explodes on Tuesday and goes right through the end of the year."

In limited release, Kathryn Bigelow's Osama bin Laden manhunt saga "Zero Dark Thirty" played to packed houses with $410,000 in just five theaters, averaging a huge $82,000 a cinema.

That compares to a $4,654 average in 3,352 theaters for "Jack Reacher" and a $4,130 average in 2,913 cinemas for "This Is 40." ''The Guilt Trip" averaged $2,217 in 2,431 locations, and "Monsters, Inc." averaged $1,925 in 2,618 cinemas. Playing just one matinee and one evening show a day at 840 theaters, "Cirque du Soleil" averaged $2,542.

Since opening Wednesday, "Zero Dark Thirty" has taken in $639,000. Distributor Sony plans to expand the acclaimed film to nationwide release Jan. 11, amid film honors and nominations leading up to the Feb. 24 Academy Awards.

Opening in 15 theaters from Lionsgate banner Summit Entertainment, Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor's tsunami-survival drama "The Impossible" took in $138,750 for an average of $9,250.

A fourth new release from Paramount, "The Sopranos" creator David Chase's 1960s rock 'n' roll tale "Not Fade Away," debuted with $19,000 in three theaters, averaging $6,333.

Universal's "Les Miserables" got a head-start on its domestic release with a $4.2 million debut in Japan.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $36.7 million ($91 million international).

2. "Jack Reacher," $15.6 million ($2.5 million international).

3. "This Is 40," $12 million.

4. "Rise of the Guardians," $5.9 million ($13.7 million international).

5. "Lincoln," $5.6 million.

6. "The Guilt Trip," $5.4 million.

7. "Monsters, Inc." in 3-D, $5 million.

8. "Skyfall," $4.7 million ($9 million international),

9. "Life of Pi," $3.8 million ($23.2 million international).

10. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," $2.6 million ($6.6 million international).

___

Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:

1. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," $91 million.

2. "Life of Pi," $23.2 million.

3. "Rise of the Guardians," $13.7 million.

4. "Skyfall," $9 million.

5. "Wreck-It Ralph," $7.3 million.

6. "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2," $6.6 million.

7. "Pitch Perfect," $6 million.

8. "Les Miserables," $4.2 million.

9. "Love 911," $3.2 million.

10. "De L'autre Cote du Periph," $3.1 million.

___

Online:

http://www.hollywood.com

http://www.rentrak.com

___

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.

Read More..

N.Y.U. and Others Offer Shorter Courses Through Medical School

Training to become a doctor takes so long that just the time invested has become, to many, emblematic of the gravity and prestige of the profession.

But now one of the nation’s premier medical schools, New York University, and a few others around the United States are challenging that equation by offering a small percentage of students the chance to finish early, in three years instead of the traditional four.

Administrators at N.Y.U. say they can make the change without compromising quality, by eliminating redundancies in their science curriculum, getting students into clinical training more quickly and adding some extra class time in the summer.

Not only, they say, will those doctors be able to hang out their shingles to practice earlier, but they will save a quarter of the cost of medical school — $49,560 a year in tuition and fees at N.Y.U., and even more when room, board, books, supplies and other expenses are added in.

“We’re confident that our three-year students are going to get the same depth and core knowledge, that we’re not going to turn it into a trade school,” said Dr. Steven Abramson, vice dean for education, faculty and academic affairs at N.Y.U. School of Medicine.

At this point, the effort involves a small number of students at three medical schools: about 16 incoming students at N.Y.U., or about 10 percent of next year’s entering class; 9 at Texas Tech Health Science Center School of Medicine; and even fewer, for now, at Mercer University School of Medicine’s campus in Savannah, Ga. A similar trial at Louisiana State University has been delayed because of budget constraints.

But Dr. Steven Berk, the dean at Texas Tech, said that 10 or 15 other schools across the country had expressed interest in what his university was doing, and the deans of all three schools say that if the approach works, they will extend the option to larger numbers of students.

“You’re going to see this kind of three-year pathway become very prominent across the country,” Dr. Abramson predicted.

The deans say that getting students out the door more quickly will accomplish several goals. By speeding up the production of physicians, they say, it could eventually dampen a looming doctor shortage, although the number of doctors would not increase unless the schools admitted more students in the future.

The three-year program would also curtail student debt, which now averages $150,000 by graduation, and by doing so, persuade more students to go into shortage areas like pediatrics and internal medicine, rather than more lucrative specialties like dermatology.

The idea was supported by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former health adviser to President Obama, and a colleague, Victor R. Fuchs. In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, they said there was “substantial waste” in the nation’s medical education. “Years of training have been added without evidence that they enhance clinical skills or the quality of care,” they wrote. They suggested that the 14 years of college, medical school, residency and fellowship that it now takes to train a subspecialty physician could be reduced by 30 percent, to 10 years.

That opinion, however, is not universally held. Other experts say that a three-year medical program would deprive students of the time they need to delve deeply into their subjects, to consolidate their learning and to reach the level of maturity they need to begin practicing, while adding even more pressure to a stressful academic environment.

“The downside is that you are really tired,” said Dr. Dan Hunt, co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, the accrediting agency for medical schools in the United States and Canada. But because accreditation standards do not dictate the fine points of curriculum, the committee has approved N.Y.U.’s proposal, which exceeds by five weeks its requirement that schools provide at least 130 weeks of medical education.

The medical school is going ahead with its three-year program despite the damage from Hurricane Sandy, which forced NYU Langone Medical Center to evacuate more than 300 patients at the height of the storm and temporarily shut down three of its four main teaching hospitals.

Dr. Abramson of N.Y.U. said that postgraduate training, which typically includes three years in a hospital residency, and often fellowships after that, made it unnecessary to try to cram everything into the medical school years. Students in the three-year program will have to take eight weeks of class before entering medical school, and stay in the top half of their class academically. Those who do not meet the standards will revert to the four-year program.

Read More..

TSA testing faster passenger screening program

To ease delays at airport security checkpoints, the Transportation Security Administration has launched a pilot program that lets average travelers speed to their planes without having to remove shoes, belts and coats or take laptops and liquids out of carry-on bags.

But there are a couple of drawbacks: You first have to get the OK from an explosive-sniffing dog and a TSA agent who is specially trained to detect suspicious behavior.

The program, dubbed Managed Inclusion, is being tested at the Indianapolis and Tampa international airports. TSA Administrator John Pistole said he hopes to expand the program next year. But no word yet on when it might come to a Southern California airport.

The TSA currently operates PreCheck security lines in 35 airports. The lines are reserved for pre-screened travelers who are members of an airline or hotel loyalty program or have paid $100 to enroll in a screening program through U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The PreCheck lines move much faster than regular security lines because passengers don't have to remove shoes, belts or coats and can leave their computers and liquid containers in their carry-on bags.

Under the new pilot program, regular travelers who do not qualify for the PreCheck program can be invited to use the faster PreCheck lines but only if they pass inspection from the dog and an officer who will ask questions to look for suspicious behavior.

"What managed inclusion means is … if there's not many people going through the PreCheck lane and there's a long line at the regular queue, can we somehow identify those people as being lower risk and offer them the opportunity to go through PreCheck?" Pistole said.

Taxes go beyond government coffers

If you check into a hotel in Charlotte, N.C., consider visiting the NASCAR Hall of Fame. After all, 2% of the taxes you pay for your hotel room support the facility.

Across the country, taxes charged on hotel, car rental and restaurant bills go to a variety of causes besides filling local government coffers, according to a review of travel-related taxes by the travel planning website Away.com.

In Tampa, 0.5% of hotel taxes and 0.5% of car rental taxes are used to help the homeless.

In Indianapolis, 10% of hotel taxes are used to support the Indiana Stadium and the Convention Building Authority, which built the stadium used by the NFL's Indianapolis Colts.

In Seattle, 2% of the taxes you pay on a car rental and 0.5% of restaurant taxes support various causes, including paying off bonds for Mariners stadium, a convention center expansion and low-income housing.

But Kate Chandler, the senior editor at Away.com, said most taxes support the city or a local tourism effort.

Los Angeles, for example, collects a 14.5% tax on hotel guests — 14% of which goes to the city's general fund and the rest goes to the state's tourism board.

George Takei petitions for FAA rule change

If you get frustrated when flight attendants make you shut down your electronic tablet or digital reading device during takeoff and landing, George Takei has got your back.

The actor who portrayed Hikaru Sulu in the "Star Trek" television series and films is so fed up with having to turn off his gadgets on flights that he launched a petition this month on the website Change.org, calling on federal officials to reconsider the policy.

"I suspect I'm not alone in feeling put off," Takei said in his petition letter.

He's right. The petition has already collected nearly 17,000 signatures.

But the Federal Aviation Administration is already talking about lifting the ban on the use of personal electronic devices during takeoffs and landings. In August, the agency announced that it was forming a committee to study when such devices could be used.

One person who signed the petition commented: "This has been a pet peeve of mine. Let's get this rule changed."

hugo.martin@latimes.com

Read More..

Meat company owner sues USDA for right to slaughter horses

Rick de los Santos wants to reopen an animal slaughter business that's been banned in the U.S. for years. Along the way, he's also opened a can of worms.

The Roswell, N.M., meat company owner sued the federal government last week, alleging that officials ignored his application to resume domestic horse slaughter for food because the practice had become an emotional political issue throughout the West.

After waiting a year for permits, De los Santos, 52, says he's using the courts to force the U.S. Department of Agriculture to resume inspections necessary to open what would be the nation's first new horse slaughterhouse since 2007.

"I've submitted all the paperwork and have been told all along 'Oh, it won't be long now,'" said De los Santos, who owns Valley Meat Co. "I followed all their guidelines. I put more than $100,000 in upgrades and additions on my facilities to handle equine slaughter. And then the government comes back and tells me, 'We can't give you the permits. This horse issue has turned into a political game.'

"So what else do you do? I figured it was time to go to court."

The slaughterhouse owner, whose business had been slaughtering cattle, is also suing the Humane Society of the United States, Front Range Equine Rescue and Animal Protection of New Mexico, accusing those groups of defamation and causing loss of income during the dispute.

The dispute over killing horses has raged for years. Equine advocates have accused the Bureau of Land Management of failing to protect tens of thousands of mustangs that wander government-owned land in 10 Western states. Many of the animals are corralled each year and sent to long-term holding facilities. And reports surfaced this fall that the BLM was knowingly selling wild horses for slaughter, an outcome banned annually by Congress. The agency is investigating the claim.

In 2007, the last three domestic slaughterhouses in the United States were closed. Since then, unwanted domestic animals have been shipped to Mexico and Canada for slaughter.

Many animal protection groups and public officials were outraged at the idea of resuming domestic horse slaughter, including New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, who has opposed the plan.

Many animal advocates says horse slaughter has no business in the U.S.

"Everything is wrong with this idea," said Sally Summers, founder of Horse Power, a Nevada-based equine advocacy group. "The economy has done just fine without this type of slaughter. And these plants are toxic to the community. They hurt these towns; they don't help them."

Summers said that many of the drugs that U.S. owners give their horses to ensure longevity and peak performance are carcinogenic. "This stuff gets into the water table through the drains," she said. "It's a nightmare. This man is smoking a pipe and I don't know what's in it."

The USDA declined to comment last week on the pending litigation. The agency has until January to respond to the suit, filed in federal court in late October.

De los Santos says his lawsuit will show that a recent "marked change in cooperation" by the USDA is due to pressure the government is receiving on the horse issue.

Some support a return to domestic horse slaughter. The American Quarter Horse Assn. says a 2011 report from the federal Government Accountability Office shows horse abuse and abandonment have been increasing since Congress essentially banned horse slaughter by cutting funding for USDA inspection programs in 2006.

The number of U.S. horses sent to other countries for slaughter has nearly tripled since domestic horse slaughter ceased. Most animal advocacy groups agree that some of the worst abuse occurs in the slaughter pipeline that often takes horses to inhumane facilities in Mexico.

Last year, 68,429 horses were shipped to Mexico and 64,652 to Canada, according to USDA statistics compiled by the Equine Welfare Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to ending horse slaughter. That compares with total exports of 37,884 of the animals in 2006.

De los Santos says he is tired of sitting in southern New Mexico and watching countless truckloads of horses en route to Mexico for slaughter.

"I've seen 130,000 horses a year on their way to Mexico — they go right through our backyard — and I wanted to tap into the market," he said. "I could have hired 100 people by now. Everyone in our community agrees we need this type of service. And I'm tired of waiting."

De los Santos says he is ready to start killing horses humanely.

"Everything that has four legs that walks can be slaughtered the same way, but we're ready to do this humanely," he said. "We've upgraded our knocking chutes for giving them that lethal hit."

He says he can't understand why everyone is so upset. Americans kill cows; why not horses?

"My wife says horse is on the menu all over Europe, but the moment you mention horse slaughter in the U.S., you've got a problem," he says.

john.glionna@latimes.com

Read More..

Facebook Poke App Is Frustrating as Hell

Facebook Poke: Startup Screen

Poke, the new iPhone app from Facebook, lets you send short messages, photos and videos to friends that automatically self destruct after a few seconds. If you have the Facebook app on your phone already, logging in is effortless.

Click here to view this gallery.

[More from Mashable: 2012′s Biggest Winners and Losers]

I was never a big poker on Facebook. When I joined the social network in 2007, giving someone a “poke” was still pretty common. It was a connection that stopped short of an actual friend request, a way to test the waters of a reconnection with, say, an ex.

The new app, Facebook Poke (as it’s listed in the App Store), doesn’t have much in common with poking of old. It’s essentially a clone of other texting apps where all the messages have a built-in self-destruct. It’s ideal for clandestine activities, shall we say.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Introduces Snapchat Competitor, Poke]

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you have a sudden urge to send one of your Facebook friends a photo of a, er, cucumber. But you don’t want to just send them a cucumber pic that they could post and re-share to the world. Poke lets you send the pic, but the recipient will only have 1, 3, 5 or 10 seconds to view your majestic vegetable. And they need to press and hold the screen while viewing, or the pic goes away.

You can send photos, videos or text messages via Poke, although you can’t use it for anything too elaborate since the message content lasts 10 seconds maximum. After that, boom. The message, whatever it was, is gone forever. There isn’t even a record on the sender’s phone (although a log of who you’ve poked and who’s poked you still remains).

Poke is pretty unforgiving. The recipient must press and hold the notification to see the content. Once you touch, the countdown starts, and there’s no going back — even if you let go. Videos just stop, with no chance of re-watching. You slip, and you’re done.

I suspect Poke will engender a lot of frustration because of this limitation. You feel as if it should at least pause the countdown when you remove your finger.

The app also lets you just “poke” people — meaning send a message with no content — about the only way the app is similar to the old act of poking. Those are just simple notifications, and don’t expire.

It gets more annoying: All your poke recipients need to download the app to see them. Poking only works on mobile right now, and Facebook’s been careful to ensure notifications for incoming pokes only appear in its mobile apps.

Checking out your profile on the web won’t reveal any trace of poking. On a smartphone, a note appears that encourages pokees to download the app.

What if someone does a screengrab of your poke, turning it into something more permanent? There’s nothing you can do, but the app will inform you if someone does that, with a “flash” icon beside their name in your feed. If you see your ephemeral wild moment appear on Tumblr the next day, at least you’ll know who to blame.

Poke isn’t that intuitive. It displays some basic instructions when you first log in, but would benefit greatly from one of those tutorial overlays that have become ubiquitous among iOS apps. Also, I find it odd that your front-facing camera isn’t selected by default. But maybe my expectation for the subject material of most pokes is off the mark.

You can add text and colored line drawings to any pics you send. That’s helpful to get the attention on the thing in the photo you really want the person to look at in those three seconds of poke life.

At first I found it frustrating that Poke doesn’t let you take horizontal photos or videos. But that’s actually a good idea. If you think about it, if the only people seeing this content are people glancing at their phones for a few seconds, so vertical pics make total sense. In the time it took a person to turn their phone and the accelerometer to react, the message will probably be gone. If you want masterpieces, try Flickr.

Bottom line: Poke is an annoying app, but it probably has more to do with the nature of what it’s trying to do than any design flaws. How do you like Poke? Let us know in the comments.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, jcsmily

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Title Post: Facebook Poke App Is Frustrating as Hell
Rating:
100%

based on 99998 ratings.
5 user reviews.
Author: Fluser SeoLink
Thanks for visiting the blog, If any criticism and suggestions please leave a comment

Read More..

Ashton Kutcher files for divorce from Demi Moore

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Ashton Kutcher filed court papers Friday to end his seven-year marriage to actress Demi Moore.

The actor's divorce petition cites irreconcilable differences and does not list a date that the couple separated. Moore announced last year that she was ending her marriage to the actor 15 years her junior, but she never filed a petition.

Kutcher's filing does not indicate that the couple has a prenuptial agreement. The filing states Kutcher signed the document Friday, hours before it was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Kutcher and Moore married in September 2005 and until recently kept their relationship very public, communicating with each other and fans on the social networking site Twitter. After their breakup, Moore changed her name on the site from (at)mrskutcher to (at)justdemi.

Kutcher currently stars on CBS' "Two and a Half Men."

Messages sent to Kutcher's and Moore's publicists were not immediately returned Friday.

Moore, 50, and Kutcher, 34, created the DNA Foundation, also known as the Demi and Ashton Foundation, in 2010 to combat the organized sexual exploitation of girls around the globe. They later lent their support to the United Nations' efforts to fight human trafficking, a scourge the international organization estimates affects about 2.5 million people worldwide.

Moore was previously married to actor Bruce Willis for 13 years. They had three daughters together — Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle — before divorcing in 2000. Willis later married model-actress Emma Heming in an intimate 2009 ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks and Caicos Islands that attended by their children, as well as Moore and Kutcher.

Kutcher has been dating former "That '70s Show" co-star Mila Kunis.

The divorce filing was first reported Friday by People magazine.

___

Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP.

Read More..

Genetic Gamble : Drugs Aim to Make Several Types of Cancer Self-Destruct

C.J. Gunther for The New York Times

Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.

For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.

Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.

No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.

And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”

At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.

Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.

“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.

The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.

The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”

Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.

Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.

The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?

In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.

But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.

Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.

At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.

The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.

Read More..

Naomi Gleit helps keep Facebook growing

The gig: As senior director of Facebook Inc.'s growth, engagement and mobile team, Naomi Gleit helps grow the social network's 1-billion-plus user base.

Facebook employee No. 29: Few people outside Facebook have heard of Gleit, but she's the second-longest-serving Facebook employee, after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Gleit, 29, talked her way into a job at Facebook on July 18, 2005 — her birthday. She was Facebook's 29th employee, coming on board shortly after the company hit 1 million users and before anyone had an inkling of the colossus it would become.

Dogged spirit: Unlike most other early employees who eventually dispersed to seek new fortunes, Gleit says she has no intention of leaving Facebook. She gets that tenacity from her "tiger mom," a computer programmer who ferried her to ballet, piano, karate and Chinese lessons, and her Jewish father, an immigration lawyer who took her to Hebrew school, she said. "I know it sounds completely irrational, but I had no doubt in 2005 that Facebook would be something incredible in the future," she said.

Rival social networks: Her passion for Facebook began before she was hired, when she was a Stanford undergraduate studying science, technology and society, an interdisciplinary major. She wrote her senior thesis on why Facebook beat out rival college social networking site Club Nexus at Stanford. (Club Nexus was started by Stanford student and Turkish software engineer Orkut Büyükkökten, who went on to create Orkut, Google's first attempt at a social network.) Getting in on the ground floor at Facebook made her feel like she was taking part in something bigger than herself, the same feeling she got volunteering for six months in a refugee camp in Botswana, she said.

Growing with Facebook: Gleit helped Facebook push beyond colleges to high schools and eventually to everyone. In late 2007, when the torrid growth pace temporarily cooled, Zuckerberg tapped a team of five to reignite it and asked Gleit to lead product management. It fell to the growth team to identify the obstacles to the company's momentum. In a company ruled by engineers, Gleit, who never studied programming, earned respect with her analytical approach and intuitive understanding of people. "I always believed that growth was the most important thing, the most important way to impact the company," she said. There are now more than 150 people on the team. "It's been an incredible learning experience," she said. "Each year is different."

That magic moment: Those who work closely with Gleit say part of her success early on was her ability to seize on the "magic moment" that makes users fall in love with Facebook. She made it simpler to sign up, and she helped people find friends as soon as they joined. She also helped Facebook spread quickly to new countries by enlisting users to translate the service into more than 80 languages. Gleit helps her team parachute into new markets and traverse less-familiar languages and cultures. It's something that comes from her own passion to see the world and have new experiences. She has taught on a Navajo reservation and lived in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand.

One billion users: Around noon Sept. 14, Zuckerberg gathered with Gleit and dozens of employees in front of a big screen as the number of Facebook users crossed 1 billion. "The scale was insane," she said. "But that is not the goal. When Mark talks about his vision for Facebook, he talks about being able to connect everyone in the world to the people that they care about and provide some value for them every single day."

A problem solver: Zuckerberg calls on Gleit for high-profile projects. In May 2010, when Facebook was under siege because of how it was handling users' personal information, he put Gleit in charge of simplifying privacy settings. Last year she worked on a popular feature that lets users subscribe to a News Feed without having to become Facebook friends.

Betting on mobile: Now Gleit is focused on the future: mobile devices and how they can unlock emerging markets. Gleit knew back in 2011 that people would begin to log on to Facebook from mobile devices in greater numbers than from desktops, particularly in the developing world. So she traveled to Tel Aviv to buy Snaptu, which makes software that helps people on low-tech phones access Facebook, and she brought the whole team back to Silicon Valley with her. Now Facebook is surging in popularity on mobile devices in Tokyo and Nairobi, Kenya. "I have always been interested in technology and how it can be used to improve lives," Gleit said.

jessica.guynn@latimes.com

Read More..

Flawed data stall California's 911 upgrades

A three-year effort by California to improve 911 emergency service has been stymied by flawed data and aging computers at local fire departments and rescue agencies across the state, a Times investigation has found.

Since 2009, the state Emergency Medical Services Authority has been seeking to centralize reports on millions of emergency medical responses, a project that officials see as critical to improving life-saving practices.

State officials hoped to capture information from the moment dispatchers answer a call until the victim is transferred to a hospital. The program would for the first time give public officials, medical researchers and regulators the ability to compare response times and patient treatment across local jurisdictions.

But the project has floundered because many fire departments and ambulance operations have been unable to provide usable information.

One problem is that fire departments report basic information inconsistently, including how long it takes them to reach victims. Some begin counting the second a 911 call is answered. Others, including the Los Angeles Fire Department, have started the clock when rescue crews are alerted at fire stations.

Moreover, nearly half of the state's 32 regional emergency medical agencies have failed to contribute reports to the system, officials said. And many of those who do file reports use paper records.

The shortcomings, officials and experts said, underscore how fire agencies lag behind police departments and the private sector in using technology to better manage and evaluate their performance.

"There's been a lot of benign neglect in the fire service as far as collecting data," said Robert Upson, a Connecticut fire marshal who has analyzed data for a nationwide group that sets performance standards for fire departments.

"There's so much sloppiness in recording data. It's just built into the system."

Similar troubles have fueled a months-long controversy over faulty response time data at the Los Angeles Fire Department. In March, top commanders admitted that the department had repeatedly published reports overstating how fast rescuers reached victims in need of help. The flawed reports have been blamed on the use of unqualified firefighters to analyze data and outdated computer systems.

In an effort to improve such data, California officials launched their program to collect rich, comparable details on medical emergencies statewide. Incident reports were to be gathered by regional regulatory agencies and forwarded to the state.

But three years and about $1.6 million later, the voluntary project is plagued by lack of participation, money problems and inconsistent information. The root of the problem is that some agencies rely on outmoded, "home-brewed" computer systems, said Tom McGinnis, the state official overseeing the project.

"We can't compare apples to apples. We compare apples to oranges and peaches," McGinnis said.

The state isn't forcing cash-strapped local agencies to participate because doing so would require many to replace computer systems, McGinnis said. "Really what it comes down to is money," he said.

Some experts say the state program won't be able to deliver on its promise until reporting standards are clarified and participation is mandatory.

"It should become a requirement tomorrow," said Bruce Wagner, the top administrator for the emergency medical services agency in Sacramento County.

His agency is among those that have not provided data to the state. That's because fire departments and ambulance firms under his jurisdiction are hesitant to spend time and money gathering records if they are not required to do so, Wagner said.

"It's hard for us to tell them they are going to incur additional costs if it's not mandated," he told The Times.

Los Angeles County, where a third of the state's 911 medical rescues take place, is a year behind in processing performance information because 28 of the county's 31 fire departments submit paper reports, said Cathy Chidester, the local oversight agency's top executive. Voluminous pages of information must be individually scanned into electronic files or manually typed into a county computer system.

"It's like sweeping sand off the beach," Chidester said.

Of the county's three largest fire departments — Los Angeles city, Los Angeles County and Long Beach — only the LAFD collects medical records electronically.

The county Fire Department has not filed reports on more than 300,000 incidents over the last two years because budget cuts eliminated employees working on the records, officials said. Next year, the agency is launching a test program in which paramedics will use iPads to create electronic reports, Chief Deputy Mike Metro said.

The state data project, known as CEMSIS, short for California Emergency Medical Services Information System, has also struggled for funding. It began as a $240,000-a-year demonstration project using federal grants and philanthropic donations. But no permanent funding has been secured.

Where possible, officials are attempting to use the partial records they have compiled for research. But thus far, they haven't been able to answer fundamental questions, including how different agencies' 911 response times compare, McGinnis said.

Ideally, McGinnis said, regulators could use the database to compare "the entire spectrum" of emergency medical care in California. "I want everybody to participate and see what we're doing statewide," he said.

Detailed data could improve understanding of what works best in the field. For example, researchers could examine how often rescuers are able to restore heartbeats after arriving on the scene, a key step in increasing cardiac-arrest survival rates, said Dr. Marc Eckstein, the medical director for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

"You have to really drill down to make sure we are talking about the right things," he said.

Slipping response times at the LAFD were only documented when outside experts, the city controller and The Times dug into the department's data. A series of Times reports found breakdowns and delays in processing 911 calls, dispatching units and summoning the nearest medical rescuers from neighboring jurisdictions.

Los Angeles Fire Commissioner Alan Skobin, who is overseeing a task force charged with overhauling the LAFD's data management, said programs such as California's fledgling 911 records system could help his agency compare its performance to other departments and improve service.

"There's a benefit to looking outside," Skobin said. "That's something the LAFD has to do."

Full coverage: Life on the line, 911 breakdowns at LAFD

Map: How fast is LAFD where you live?

Download: Open-source maps of California's emergency medical agencies

ben.welsh@latimes.com

robert.lopez@latimes.com

Read More..