Most of the blazes were started on automobiles

On Saturday night, firefighters rushed to multiple fires, quickly extinguishing a vehicle fire in a Hollywood carport and responding to another in the massive parking structure at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue. Those blazes followed at least 38 other suspicious fires between Thursday night and Saturday morning with cheap burberry, making it the worst wave of arson since the 1992 riots. "Whoever is doing this is really messing with people's lives," said Los Angeles Fire Capt. Jamie Moore. Most of the blazes were started on automobiles, but some spread to homes and apartments. The attacks ranged from the Westside to Hollywood and from the San Fernando Valley south to Lennox. By Saturday night, the Los Angeles police and fire departments were leading a multi-agency campaign across the county. "We're pulling out all the stops," Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said. "We're hoping that the person or people responsible will be brought to swift and complete justice." Extra firefighters were reporting to stations across Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Burbank and Glendale, while investigators set up a telephone hotline, interviewed witnesses and ran down tips. Officials announced at least $35,000 in rewards for information leading to a conviction in the case. "We've reassigned detectives from Major Crimes Division and Robbery-Homicide, exclusively to find who's doing this," said LAPD Cmdr. Andrew Smith. "We've got dozens of detectives working around the clock." Police arrested two people Friday on suspicion of lighting fires, but said they were not suspects in the arson rampage. Based on witness interviews, authorities said they were searching for a man driving a white and tan mid-1990s Lexus ES300. However, the large number of fires sparked over the two-day period led law enforcement sources to speculate that more than one arsonist was at large. The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case was open, said it's possible some of the blazes were the work of copycats. The fires occurred when many people were enjoying the holidays with friends and family. Sidni Appleseed Myles, 42, said she heard an explosion in the carport underneath her North Hollywood apartment about 2 a.m. Saturday. Seeing the flames out the window, Myles ran outside in her nightgown with an out-of-town guest and her two teenage daughters, screaming, "Fire!" The tenants dashed out to find four cars engulfed in flames that then reached to the balcony and ignited an outer wall of Myles' apartment on Colfax Avenue. "You can't believe the inferno that was there. It was incredible," said her friend, Ray Carroll, a teacher from New Jersey. "I'm just glad to be alive," said Myles who loves cheap burberry outlet 2012. Carl Lybecker, 32, who lived next door to the Colfax apartments, said it was sheer luck that no one was injured. "The scary part is being so vulnerable in the middle of the night," he said. "These people woke up. But what if they were sleeping? What if they had been taking sleep medication?" A few blocks away in Valley Village, Josh Mills and his wife were alarmed about the fires in their old West Hollywood neighborhood as they watched the news Friday evening. "I can't believe this," Mills said. Then, as they slept around 2 a.m., someone pounded on their door and yelled, "Your car's on fire!" At first, Mills thought it might be a ruse for a home-invasion robbery. But his wife looked out the window and saw flames under his BMW sedan parked on the street.

Its shares slipped 3 cents to $21.61 in aftermarket trading

Friday's announcement from the Food and Drug Administration that it has approved Pfizer Inc.'s best-selling Prevnar 13 vaccine for such use was widely anticipated. It comes moncler jackets a little more than a month after a panel of federal health experts voted overwhelmingly to recommend Prevnar 13 as a safe and effective vaccine to prevent the bacterial infections in adults. Prevnar 13 protects against 13 strains of pneumococcal bacteria, which cause meningitis, pneumonia and ear infections. It's already a standard vaccination for infants and young children, who are most vulnerable to infection. But the FDA said 300,000 adults 50 or older are hospitalized every year for pneumococcal pneumonia. "The FDA approval of Prevnar 13 for these adults offers the potential to contribute to the moncler vest health of millions of aging Americans," Ian Read, Pfizer's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. Some 5,000 older adults succumb to the disease annually, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prevnar, which was first approved in 2000, is a conjugated vaccine, which means it contains pneumococcal bacteria bound to a protein. The addition of the protein helps the body's immune system recognize the bacteria, especially in babies. The drug also has received approval for adults 50 and older in the European Union, Australia, Mexico and more than 10 other countries, Pfizer said.Moncler jackets for women, cheap moncler women down jackets on sale. Pfizer is based in New York. Its shares slipped 3 cents to $21.61 in aftermarket trading. The stock ended the regular session down 7 cents at $21.64.

Consumer and patient groups have criticized the two companies

But to this day, none exists for the world's largest healthcare market, which often serves as a global model for regulatory practice. Some individual countries in Europe have made their own attempts but with only limited success, and there is no continent-wide registry. In the wake of the current scandal moncler jackets surrounding France's Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), which used industrial grade silicone instead of medical grade silicone in implants placed surgically in some 300,000 women worldwide, advocates for a registry are again pushing the idea. The French government has advised the 30,000 women in France who bought the implants to have them removed and governments in several other countries, such as Britain and Brazil, have asked women to visit their doctors for checks. "If we had had registries, we would have known years ago if it's true that PIP implants break sooner," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families. "We would have known if Mentor ones break sooner or later than Allergan's," she said, referring to the two largest makers of breast implants. There were almost 400,000 breast enlargement or reconstruction procedures in the United States in 2010, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. That includes silicone and saline implants. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has relied on company-funded efforts to track the safety of implants since allowing the silicone versions back on the market in 2006. It had banned silicone implants in 1992 after some U.S. women said the devices leaked and made them chronically ill. FAILED TO MEET GOALS The approval given to Allergan and Johnson & Johnson's Mentor unit was conditional on the companies each following 40,000 women who received the implants for 10 years, as well as extending smaller pre-approval studies. In August, Allergan said it had only collected two-year data for 60 percent of participants, while Mentor only had three-year data for 21 percent. Consumer and patient groups have criticized the two companies for failing to meet the goals. They have asked the FDA to revoke Mentor's marketing approval and to force Allergan to conduct further studies. In addressing low response rates, representatives of both companies said the studies may have tried to keep track of too many patients and included overly cumbersome requirements, such as filling out a 27-page questionnaire each year. Allergan offered patients $20 to participate cheap moncler vest in the study, and $100 for each office visit, while doctors were paid $200 for enrolling each patient. Mentor did not offer any cash incentives to patients but gave doctors $100 for each participant. In August, Mentor attributed its low response rate to a switch in policy. While it initially required patients to participate in the study if they wanted to buy an implant, it later made that participation voluntary. Mentor and Allergan both expressed support for a registry at the FDA's meeting in August. But the companies, physicians and regulators have so far failed to reach an agreement over who will pay for it, how information will remain private and whether participation will be mandatory. The concept of a registry is a good one, but carrying it out is complicated, said Allergan spokeswoman Caroline Van Hove. "There has been already plenty of discussion with the FDA to really logistically figure out how you would do this," she said. There has been no agreement on a methodology and a system that would work for all implants and all patients, Van Hove added. Mentor said it is committed to working with the FDA to monitor implant safety, through registries or clinical studies. So far, the companies' studies have found similar rates of complications such as rupture and hardening of the device, and no apparent link between silicone implants and connective tissue disease, breast cancer or reproductive problems - though the FDA said the low level of participation meant this wasn't conclusive. LITTLE INCENTIVE TO KEEP TRACK The FDA said enrolling patients in follow-up studies was a challenge, and that the agency would work to involve different groups, including advocacy groups and physicians, to make sure patients understand the benefits of sharing information. The agency said the implants were safe enough to stay on the market. "You can have the most well-meaning company, but if the patients don't want to participate in the study, that's out of their control," said Dr William Maisel, deputy director of the FDA's devices division, at the time. Some critics say that companies cannot be relied on to track this data, and that a more systematic effort is needed, especially as the FDA itself says women are likely to need to replace their implants every 10 years due to the risk of complications. "They have fiddled around with this issue (of registries) for over 20 years, and nothing has been done," said Sybil Niden Goldrich, a consumer advocate on breast implants. "We still don't have an accurate rupture rate on these products." In the late 1980s, Goldrich's own silicone implants, used to reconstruct her breasts after a mastectomy, ruptured and migrated to different locations on her body. She campaigned for the FDA to require implant manufacturers to conduct clinical trials and since 1988, has called for a registry to be created. REGISTRY MODELS The FDA and other groups have proposed different models for registries that can track all medical devices, from following patients through their insurance company to allowing patients to voluntarily report complications via an online database. Patients can currently report problems with implants to the FDA's MedWatch program, a system for keeping track of complaints about drugs and devices, which the agency can theoretically use to detect problems. But many are not aware it exists. At the FDA meeting in August, the vast majority of the dozens of women who testified on problems with breast implants had not reported their complaints to MedWatch. Manufacturers and facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes are required to tell the agency of device-related deaths. Reports of serious injuries from devices only have to go to the manufacturer, who then decides what to report to the FDA within a 30-day period. EUROPE'S EXPERIENCE Denmark set up a registry in 1999, and data from the first 1,600 women has been used for studies that look at implants' safety. France has no registry for implants. In Britain, a registry to track breast implant issues was set up in 1993, funded by the government. Reporting was voluntary on the part of the patient, surgeon and hospital. But few women were willing to take part, and after funding dried up, the registry was shut down in March 2006. An independent review group had previously recommended that the registry be compulsory. Surgeons and campaigners are now keen to restart it, though they say a better solution would be to have a database that tracks all implants in Europe. "If we could have a register that was European-wide that would be wonderful," said Douglas McGeorge, a consultant plastic surgeon and a former president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons. "It would mean that wherever in Europe you were treated, you could always get access to your information." A European registry may be bolstered by government-run health systems in many countries. But in the U.S., it may not be a panacea, as many implants are not covered by insurance.Moncler shoes for men, cheap moncler men shoes 2011 sale, free shipping. U.S. patients and their doctors may not have enough incentives to stay in studies, especially if they have to fill out lengthy questionnaires every year, or do expensive tests to see if their implant has ruptured. Given those disincentives, Dr. Caroline Glicksman, a New Jersey-based surgeon, said a registry should be mandatory. "I cannot get women to come back (for follow-up) when everything is fine," said Glicksman, who is now conducting research on Allergan implants. "A registry is valuable. When an implant deflates or things go wrong, it's very important to have because these are not life-long devices."

There are rumors based on nothing

Under the line, “Life, Camera, Action,” the poster — created by graphic designer Anthony Goldschmidt and Mark and Karen Crawford of the design firm Blood & Chocolate — features the Oscar statue next to posters from “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “Casablanca” (1943), “Giant” (1956), “The Sound of Music” (1965), “The Godfather” (1972), “Driving Miss Daisy” (1989), “Forrest Gump” (1994) moncler jackets and “Gladiator” (2000). Seven of the films won Best Picture, except for “Giant,” which earned George Stevens a Best Director statue. The tagline on the poster is, “Celebrate the movies in all of us.” “Whether it’s a first date or a holiday gathering with friends or family, movies are a big part of our memory,” Tom Sherka, Academy President, said in a statement released on Wednesday morning. “The Academy Awards not only honor the excellence of these movies, but also celebrate what they mean to us as a culture and to each of us individually.” The 84th Academy Awards nominations will be announced live on Tuesday, January 24, 2012, at 5:30 AM PST in the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater.T he Academy Awards, hosted by Billy Crystal, will air on Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 7 PM EST/4 PM PST on ABC. There are rumors based on nothing, rumors based on curious sets of circumstances and rumors that wind up being facts. For the time being, this rumor should be considered a potentially logical solution drawn from a curious set of circumstances, most notably that Katy Perry and Russell Brand spent Christmas apart. The newlyweds were reportedly planning to escort her parents to London to see where the comedian grew up. Unfortunately, that bonding experience never happened. Moncler outlet 2011, cheap moncler jackets and down vest, winter boots online sale.She spent the holiday in Hawaii, and he spent it in England. The question is why. A source told US Weekly that a fight filled with loads of f-bombs and plenty of frustration culminated in her saying she may as well do her own thing and his flying to London. Unfortunately, as the source was of the anonymous variety, it’s difficult to ascertain how credible he or she might be, just as it’s difficult to know even if the fight happened what it might mean. A couple married twenty years spending Christmas apart is likely to lead to divorce, but a couple who’s been married a wink spending Christmas apart could potentially be laughed off as a newlywed fight. I’m not saying I condone that behavior or that it’s not reckless, but some younger people operate that way. If the rumors are to be believed, the bickering was precipitated by how he treats her parents and friends, which strikes me as a very logical reason for people to fight.Cheap moncler scarves caps, 2011 moncler accessories for sale. Regardless of why it happened, Perry was photographed without her wedding ring, but since she spent much of the vacation on the beach, it’s possible it was simply removed for safety. Let’s hope that’s the case. Pop Blend wishes a whole lot for Katy Perry and Russell Brand’s marriage, most of all that they’d want to spend Christmas together next year.

But no one foresaw the season unfolding the way it did

The balls whizzed through the air as wide receivers coach Mike McQueary shouted at his players to run crisp routes and the freshmen lagged behind, carrying cones and footballs from moncler jackets one drill to another. Near 90-degree heat seemed to be their biggest concern as Joe Paterno sat with his leg propped up in a golf cart, his broken pelvis still ailing. Players spoke of winning a Big Ten title and, as usual, a crack at a national championship topped their wish list. With four captains leading the way and a rotation of Rob Bolden and Matt McGloin under center, the team believed it had enough leadership to work through anything that came its way. But no one foresaw the season unfolding the way it did. The child sex-abuse scandal that resulted in Paterno's firing and the termination of several university officials changed the focus of the season. Football became an afterthought. McQueary remains on administrative leave. Former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky faces more than 50 counts of child sexual abuse. "Nobody could've predicted it. No one could've scripted it," senior right tackle Chima Okoli said. "This is better than prime-time TV." Those same seniors who spoke of capping their careers on a high note, now remember their final season for something other than football. They remember countless squad meetings, TV cameras swarming campus watching their every move and a coaching staff that probably won't see another autumn in Happy Valley. "I don't think anybody else in this country, or in the history of college football, had to go through what this school had to go through and what this team had to go through," senior co-captain Devon Still said. "For us to stay together and just keep on going out there and playing our hearts out, I think that's what's going to stick out." The Lions have one more game, a TicketCity Bowl clash Monday with Houston, to conclude a most trying season . No matter the one game that separated the Lions from a berth in the inaugural Big Ten title game, this team will forever be linked with the off-field saga. "There's so much stuff that happened," senior wide receiver and co-captain Derek Moye said. "I would like to say (I'd remember) stuff on the field, but honestly it will probably be a lot of the stuff that happened off the field." Arguably, no four captains have been tested more than Still, Moye, Drew Astorino and Quinn Barham. Elected by teammates at the conclusion of camp, the four sat in interim head coach Tom Bradley's office hours after Paterno's firing to discuss how to move forward. As approximately 2,000 students flooded the streets in downtown State College, the captains communicated with teammates and immediately dismissed rumors that they wouldn't play against Nebraska. The captains opted to walk out of the tunnel and into Beaver Stadium for the first game after the scandal side by side with arms linked. It was a show of solidarity, something the captains preached well before news of the scandal, and their seven-game moncler sale winning streak, came to a halt. They stuck together when the quarterback position rotated series by series, when the red zone struggles mounted so heavily that fans booed Bolden just for stepping on the field. Even the loss of the team's top linebacker to a season-ending knee injury during the fourth game of the season seems minuscule compared to everything that's happened since Nov. 9. "A lot of things have happened this year, but I think we've done a great job of staying together as a team." Barham said. "The coaches did a great job of just focusing on this team when they could've been trying to move on." Even a locker room fight between McGloin and wide receiver Curtis Drake that left McGloin with a seizure and concussion during the team's final week of practice in State College won't be the final straw, sophomore running back Silas Redd said. "It has been difficult for everyone, just not the upperclassmen," the team's leading rusher said. "The whole team has gone through it. We're sticking with each other; we believe in each other. We know we have a great fan base. That's all we really can do is rally behind one another to show how resilient we are." Contact with Paterno has been limited as he goes through treatments for lung cancer, but the senior class still speaks as if the 85-year-old is watching their every move. They are the last group of players to have Paterno coach them for nearly their entire careers, and Okoli said the life lessons Paterno preached and the discipline he demonstrated with them won't soon be forgotten. A win Monday would give Penn State 10 victories, a testament to what this team has overcome, Okoli said. For a group of players who repeatedly said since August it was "the closest team they've ever been a part of," that camaraderie helped to heal wounds and dry tears in the weeks after the scandal changed their lives. The closeness was the biggest positive for the team to take out of the season, and years from now, they hope they will be remembered for being more than the senior class that played during the scandal.Moncler vest for men, buy cheap moncler mens vests online. "At this point, nothing really fazes us," Okoli said. "It's just like keep trucking, keep pushing through it. We can't really be broken down by anything that can possibly happen. … (We're) a group of guys who got thrown into the fire and came out stronger."

Existing products combine the drug with nonaddictive painkillers

Four companies have begun patient testing on the pills which contain a pure version of the highly addictive painkiller hydrocodone, and one of them - Zogenix of San Diego - plans to apply early next year to begin marketing its product, Zohydro. If approved, it would mark the first time patients moncler jackets could legally buy pure hydrocodone. Existing products combine the drug with nonaddictive painkillers such as acetaminophen. Hydrocodone belongs to family of drugs known as opiates or opioids because they are chemically similar to opium. They include morphine, heroin, oxycodone, codeine, and methadone. Critics are especially worried about Zohydro, a timed-release drug meant for managing moderate to severe pain, because abusers could crush it for an intense, immediate high. "I have a big concern that this could be the next OxyContin," said April Rovero, president of the National Coalition Against Prescription Drug Abuse. "We just don't need this on the market." OxyContin, introduced in 1995 by Purdue Pharma of Stamford, Conn., was designed to manage pain with a formula that dribbled one dose of oxycodone over many hours. Abusers quickly discovered they could defeat the timed-release feature by crushing the pills. Purdue Pharma changed the formula to make the pill more tamper-resistant, but addicts have moved onto generic oxycodone and other drugs that are not time-released. Oxycodone is now the most-abused medicine in the U.S., with hydrocodone second, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. The latest drug studies come as more pharmaceutical companies are getting into the $10 billion-a-year legal market for powerful yet highly addictive opioid narcotics. "It's like the wild west," said Peter Jackson, co-founder of Advocates for the Reform of Prescription Opioids. Moncler jackets for kids, buy cheap moncler 2011 kids down jackets."The whole supply-side system is set up to perpetuate this massive unloading of opioid narcotics on the American public." Pharmaceutical companies say the new drugs give doctors another tool to help patients in legitimate pain. "Sometimes you circulate a patient between various opioids, and some may have a better effect than others," said Karsten Lindhardt, chief executive of Denmark-based Egalet, which is testing its own pure hydrocodone product. Pure hydrocodone pills would avoid liver problems linked to high doses of acetaminophen, an ingredient in products like Vicodin, according to the drug companies. They also say patients will be more closely supervised because they will have to return to their doctors each time they need more pills. Prescriptions for the weaker, hydrocodone-acetaminophen products can be refilled up to five times. Zogenix has completed three rounds of patient testing, and last week it announced it had held a final meeting with FDA officials to talk about its upcoming drug application. It plans to file the application in early 2012 and have Zohydro on the market by early 2013. Purdue Pharma and Cephalon, a Frazer, Pa.-based unit of Israel-based Teva Pharmaceuticals, are conducting late-stage trials of their own hydrocodone drugs, according to documents filed with federal regulators. In May, Purdue Pharma received a patent applying extended-release technology to hydrocodone. Egalet has finished the most preliminary stages of safety testing and could have a product on the market as early as 2015 but wants to see how the other companies fare with the FDA before deciding whether to move forward, Lindhardt said. Critics are troubled because a new narcotic painkiller can lead to more murders, pharmacy robberies, and millions of dollars lost by hospitals to treat overdose victims. Thousands of legitimate pain patients are becoming addicted to powerful prescription painkillers, they say, in addition to the thousands more who abuse them illegally. The CDC said last month that prescription painkillers caused 15,000 U.S. deaths in 2008, more than triple the 4,000 deaths in 1999. Emergency room visits related to hydrocodone abuse have shot from 19,221 in 2000 to 86,258 in 2009, according to the DEA. In Florida alone, hydrocodone caused 910 deaths and contributed to 1,803 others between 2003 and 2007. Opiates block pain but also unleash intense feelings of well-being and can create physical dependence. Withdrawal symptoms can be intense, causing cramps, diarrhea, muddled thinking, nausea and vomiting. After a while, opiates stop working, forcing users to take stronger doses. "You've got a person on your product for life, cheap moncler winter boots 2011 new style blue purple and a doctor's got a patient who's never going to miss an appointment, because if they did and they didn't get their prescription, they would feel very sick," said Andrew Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. "It's a terrific business model, and that's what these companies want to get in on."

It came as Patrick Baraf, a plastic surgeon in Paris

Interpol is searching for Jean-Claude Mas, the 72-year-old founder of Poly Implant Prothese, which sold implants full of industrial silicone to women all over the world –moncler jackets including some 40,000 in the UK. Detectives in Costa Rica revealed that Mas was facing prison for driving under the influence of alcohol last year, but said he absconded before his trial. A police spokesman added: ‘It was a very serious offence, but we cannot provide any more details at this stage.’ It came as Patrick Baraf, a plastic surgeon in Paris, disclosed further details of Mas’s career. ‘He was a butcher and then he started making breast implants in [the French city of] Toulon,’ said Mr Baraf. ‘He effectively stopped his work as a butcher in 1991 to set up his laboratory.’ PIP went on to become the third biggest company in the global trade in breast implants.Cheap moncler women vest for sale, buy 2011 new style women moncler vest. Mr Baraf, who said he frequently met Mas at plastic surgery conferences around Europe, described PIP’s prices for implants as ‘unbeatable’. Investigators said the firm saved almost £1million a year by using industrial silicone instead of medical silicone in its implants. There are fears that the implants could cause health problems if they burst or leak, and the French government has offered to pay for women to have them removed. However, the Government’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies said: ‘Women with PIP implants should not be unduly worried. We have no evidence of a link to cancer or an increased risk of rupture.’ Mas also spent a few years as a wine merchant and was well-known as a poker player, but had been banned from a number of casinos. Mas’s lawyer, Yves Haddad, said his client was ‘devastated by cheap moncler moka sub-gloss black long jackets outlet the pain of the victims and the magnitude of the case’ but insisted Mas remained ‘confident that his product is not dangerous'.

Robyn Moore did not list a date in her April 2009 divorce filing

The judgment entered by Superior Court Judge Mark Juhas keeps virtually all details of the pair’s split confidential. Neither Gibson nor his ex-wife, whose name is being restored to Robyn Moore, attended Friday’s proceedings. It does not indicate an official date for moncler jackets the former couple’s separation. Robyn Moore did not list a date in her April 2009 divorce filing, although Gibson indicated they had been living apart since 2006. The former couple have seven children together, but only their 12-year-old son is a minor and subject to a custody agreement. The Gibsons’ divorce has been more dramatically more low-key than Gibson’s custody battle with Russian musician Oksana Grigorieva, who the “Braveheart” star agreed in August to pay $750,000 to settle a bitter dispute and split custody of their young daughter. Recordings that sounded distinctly like the Oscar winning director engaged in a racist and sexist tirade were leaked during the couple’s dispute. Grigorieva accused Gibson of domestic violence and he pleaded no contest, although admitted no fault, to a misdemeanor battery count earlier in March. Robyn Moore came to her estranged husband’s defense, filing a brief declaration in the Grigorieva case stating that Gibson had never physically abused her or their children. Attorneys handling the divorce have moncler kids 2011 winter coats blue worked for months to reach a settlement in the case and records show Robyn Moore signed the final judgment last week. Gibson signed it Wednesday, records show. In this Oct. 14, 2011 file photo, Mel Gibson poses at the 25th American Cinematheque Award benefit gala honoring actor Robert Downey Jr., in Beverly Hills, Calif. Gibson has finalized his divorce from his wife of 28 years. Attorneys for the Oscar winner and his ex-wife appeared briefly in a Los Angeles courthouse Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, to submit a proposed judgment, which a judge signed hours later. Robyn Gibson filed for divorce in April 2009, just months before Gibson’s then-girlfriend gave birth to a daughter. The “Braveheart” star indicated in his own court filings that the couple separated in 2006. A judge finalized the actor-director’s divorce on Friday from his wife Robyn, who was married to Gibson during his acting heyday and his more recent public downfall. Madison County Coroner Steve Nunn said Friday that an autopsy revealed no physical evidence of infection in the Illinois child. But he wants additional lab tests “in view of recent public health reports concerning the possibility of infant formula contamination.” At least five national retailers have cheap moncler jackets pulled a batch of powdered Enfamil Newborn formula with the lot number ZP1K7G after Sunday’s death of a 10-day-old Missouri boy. Preliminary hospital tests indicate the boy died of a rare infection caused by a bacteria sometimes found in dried milk and powdered formula. Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

I think it’s 99 percent the end of the story

The journal’s editors “lost confidence” in the study after at least a dozen attempts to replicate the finding failed, wrote editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts in a retraction notice to be published Friday. Further, the study’s authors “omitted moncler jackets important information” from some of the figures in the paper, Alberts wrote. The retraction formally removes the study from the scientific record. “I think it’s 99 percent the end of the story,” said John Coffin, a virologist at Tufts University who worked on a team that could not replicate the original study. Published in October 2009, the retracted study generated a wave of hope among chronic fatigue patients that a cause of their illness had finally been found. Led by scientists at the privately-funded Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nev., the study reported a bizarre virus, xenotrophic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV), in the blood of 68 of 101 chronic fatigue patients. But as laboratories worldwide failed to replicate the discovery, criticism of the original report mounted. In May, two reports detailed how XMRV was likely a lab-borne contaminant, not a blood-borne virus. The case further unraveled in September, when nine laboratories tested for the virus in 15 people previously found to carry it. Only two of the labs found the virus in the supposedly infected individuals. The labs also reported conflicting results from the blood of 15 healthy individuals. “As far as virologists go, the story ended a long time ago,” said Vincent Racaniello, a virologist at Columbia University, referring to the September report. “There’s no evidence at the moment that any virus is associated with chronic fatigue syndrome.” The story took a bizarre turn in November, when the scientist at the center of the controversy, Judy Mikovits, was jailed in California. Mikovits was an author on the retracted report and a chief champion of the notion that XMRV or a similar virus is linked to chronic fatigue.Moncler jackets for women, cheap moncler women down jackets on sale. She was fired from the Whittemore Peterson Institute in September for insubordination. The institute then accused Mikovits of stealing laptop computers, flash drives and laboratory notebooks. On Nov. 18, Ventura County, Calif., sheriffs arrested Mikovits on a felony “fugitive from justice” charge stemming from the allegedly stolen materials. Audrey Young, a spokeswoman for the Whittemore Peterson Institute, said Thursday that Mikovits, now out of jail, “did turn over some of the materials, including a laptop which she had wiped clean. She did not turn over all of the material, and that’s an enormous problem.” A civil lawsuit filed by the Whittemore Peterson Institute is requesting the return of all of the lab materials. Mikovits could not be reached for comment Thursday. One prominent patient advocate said the saga has been been a “roller coaster ride.” But most patients have now “moved on,” said Kim McCleary, president and chief executive of the CFIDS Association of America. “They’re certainly disappointed and discouraged that this did not pan out the way it was initially promoted. But they understand there’s no point in pursuing a dead end.” Last year, the original study prompted the American Red Cross to ban blood donations from chronic fatigue patients. On Thursday, a Red Cross spokeswoman said the group’s policy remained unchanged. “If somebody tells us they have chronic fatigue syndrome, we will continue to defer them,” said Stephanie Millian, although not because of fears of XMRV transmitting through the blood supply. Rather, Millian said, the Red Cross was “following the lead” of patient advocacy groups that advise ill patients not to donate blood. Between 1 million and 4 million Americans are thought to have chronic fatigue syndrome, a mysterious disorder that causes prolonged and severe fatigue, body aches and other symptoms. While the retraction removes the original study from the scientific record, it can’t undo two years of expensive sleuthing, including a $2.3 million National Institutes of Health study now underway. That study is searching for XMRV in 150 patients and 150 healthy subjects. The scientist leading it,moncler 2011 winter special offer for men big promotion Columbia University’s Ian Lipkin, said in an e-mail that it was important to finish the study to “rigorously address the controversy.” The NIH will continue to support the study through its conclusion next year, said a spokeswoman for the NIH branch funding the study, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

People lined up for hours to kneel and bring flowers

Once, he was one of them. As a 20-year-old student at Pyongyang's prestigious Kim Il Sung University in 1994, when North Korea's founder and the school's namesake died, Chu and his fellow students were used to illustrate the nation's grief. Television cameras were rolling when the students moncler jackets were ushered into an auditorium to be told the news. And though most were genuinely overcome, those who weren't knew enough to sob on cue. "I just bowed my head so nobody could see I wasn't crying," recalled Chu, who now lives in Seoul and works as a journalist. "There were cameras on campus and I knew I would be caught on television." If anything, this time around there will be more faking, more crocodile tears and perhaps some well-concealed smiles. Kim Il Sung was by most accounts genuinely beloved; uri abogi, he was called, the same Korean honorific used to indicate "our father" or "our lord." His son, whose death was announced Monday, was a more problematic figure who presided over years of famine and hardship. "There aren't the same tears for Kim Jong Il after all the deaths and all the refugees. The people abandoned him in their hearts long ago," said Yoo Sang-jun, 48, a defector from North Hamgyong province whose wife and young son were among an estimated 2 million North Koreans to die of hunger. Now, as in 1994, there is a 10-day mourning period in which a demonstration of grief is a patriotic obligation. In the case of Kim Il Sung's death, the rituals took place in front of the tens of thousands of statues of him erected around the country. People lined up for hours to kneel and bring flowers. Kim Jong Il was referred to as the "Dear Leader," but he declined to have statues set up in his honor, believing his late father made for a better figurehead. Instead, people are mourning in front of large portraits in meeting halls and public squares. North Korean news reports said Wednesday that 5 million people, about a fifth of the population, had participated in the rituals. The events have followed the template set at Kim Il Sung's death. In both cases, the deaths were announced at noon, when most people would be with their work units and under control. The same black-clad weeping anchorwoman who announced Kim Il Sung's death appeared on television Monday to announce the death of his son. If the past is any guide, there will be a histrionic quality to the grieving as people compete for who can sob the loudest and who can look the most distraught. A former North Korean kindergarten teacher from the northeastern city of Chongjin recalled that she had to lead her pupils twice a day to a 25-foot-tall statue of Kim Il Sung. "I saw some of the kids putting saliva on their face to make it look like they were crying," said the teacher, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They would take measure of what the other kids were doing to do the same. I was shocked that children so young would behave that way." The teacher said she thought that Kim Jong Il's death would elicit less true emotion. "People follow Kim Jong Il out of fear and oppression, but Kim Il Sung moncler women 2011 new jackets ABC army green seemed to work with sincerity for the people," she said Wednesday. For North Koreans, the death of Kim Il Sung was stamped as vividly in the psyche as Sept. 11, 2001, for Americans. Although Kim was 82 and in poor health, the propaganda was so overwhelming that he seemed immortal. Even those who were skeptical about the regime found themselves in shock over the death of the only leader the country had ever known. At one point, mass hysteria overpowered even the doubters. "If everyone else is crying, you start to cry too. That is the psychology of the crowd," said Chu, the journalist. "When a camera points at you, you feel that you are being tested and you have to perform to demonstrate the utmost sadness," said Kim Heung-gwang, a former computer science professor from North Korea, recalling the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The pressure was also rooted in pragmatism. North Koreans are rated through a system called songbun, designed by Kim Il Sung in the 1950s to measure loyalty. At the bottom of the heap is the "hostile class." In the middle, the "wavering class." The most loyal North Koreans are part of the "core class," who are eligible for membership in the ruling Workers' Party and can be assigned homes and jobs in Pyongyang, the capital. "There was a rumor during the mourning period for Kim Il Sung that we were being graded in how we showed our grief. If you didn't go out to mourn with the others, you would be in disfavor and that would count against you in the future," said Yoo, the defector whose wife and son died. "Especially for the people in Pyongyang, they had to show they were the most faithful." Other defectors say that people were punished or received downgrades of their status for wearing makeup or nice clothing, drinking or appearing to be in good spirits during the mourning period. "You were supposed to look like you were sad," the kindergarten teacher said. Demonstrative grieving is not unique to North Korea. Older Chinese remember being under the same kind of pressure to perform in 1976, when China's founder, Mao Tse-tung, died. "It is very similar to what happened in China when Mao died," said Zhou Xiaozheng, a sociologist at People's University of China in Beijing. "It is hard to say now whether people are faking the crying or not because many people do have the mentality of being obedient citizens and might really feel that Kim Jong Il is like God. That's the sign of their inability to distinguish reality." In fact, Kim Jong Il, in the 1970s and '80s was a moncler 2011 winter special offer for men big promotion key figure in the North Korean propaganda system, overseeing the creation of a mythology surrounding his father and, to a lesser extent, himself. There is some evidence that Kim was realistic about the true feelings of the North Korean people. The South Korean film director Shin Sang Ok, in a memoir about his eight years in North Korea, recalled an incident in which Kim grew irritated with a singing troupe that was chanting, "Long Live the Dear Leader."

The Vatican decided Jake's recovery was a miracle

Monsignor Paul A. Lenz, the vice postulator for the cause of Blessed Kateri, confirmed on Monday, Dec. 19, the link to Jake Finkbonner. Doctors who treated Jake, as well as a committee of doctors at the Vatican, came to the same conclusion, Lenz said. "They didn't think any of their medical expertise was the cure," he explained. "They thought every night he was going to die." As Jake lay near death, the Rev. Tim Sauer, a longtime family friend, advised his mom and dad, Elsa and Donny Finkbonner, to pray to Blessed Kateri, who is the patroness for American Indians, for her intercession. That is akin to asking Blessed Kateri to pray to God to perform a miracle on Jake's behalf. The boy is of Lummi descent. The Vatican decided Jake's recovery was a miracle that is beyond the explanation of medicine and that could be attributed moncler jackets to the intercession on his behalf by Blessed Kateri, who was born in 1656. To his family members, who are devout Catholics, there's no question that a miracle occurred. "In my heart, in all of us, we've always found that Jake's recovery, his healing and his survival truly was a miracle. As far as Blessed Kateri becoming a saint, it's honorable to be a part of that process," Elsa Finkbonner said. She said Jake, now a sixth-grader at Assumption Catholic School in Bellingham, was excited by the news and also the opportunity to attend a ceremony for the canonization. "He's excited to meet the pope. I think that's going to be the icing on the cake for him," Elsa Finkbonner said. For American Indian Catholics, Blessed Kateri's canonization was a cause for celebration. "It's been a long time coming for the Indians across the country. A lot of people are happy today. ... It's something that we've all been waiting for," said Henry Cagey, a former Lummi tribal chairman who is active at St. Joachim Catholic Church on the Lummi Reservation. Sauer echoed those views on Monday. "I'm happy today for the Finkbonners. I'm happy today for Native American Catholics, especially. It's a celebration of faith. God continues to work in our lives and the world today. God continues to work miracles," said Sauer, who is now the pastor at St. Bridget Church in Seattle. Jake's fight for his life began after he fell and bumped his mouth in the closing moments of a basketball game on Feb. 11, 2006. Necrotizing fasciitis, or Strep A, invaded his body and bloodstream through that small cut, and the aggressive bacteria raced across his cheeks, eyelids, scalp and chest as doctors worked desperately to stop its spread. To save him, they surgically removed his damaged flesh each day. And every day for two weeks, they put the boy, who was then in kindergarten, in a hyperbaric chamber at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle to deliver oxygen to his body to help quell the infection's progression. Jake spent nine weeks at Seattle Children's hospital, where doctors prepared the family several times for what they believed to be the boy's impending death. Sauer was at that time pastor of three Catholic churches in Whatcom County, Wash.: St. Joseph in Ferndale, where he baptized Jake and where the deeply faithful Finkbonners attend, St. Anne in Blaine cheap moncler jackets for women and St. Joachim on the Lummi Reservation. As Jake fought, parishioners also were urged to ask Blessed Kateri for her help. Some months after Jake recovered in 2006, Sauer sent a letter to the Archbishop in Seattle about a possible miraculous occurrence. After Sauer wrote the letter, investigators from the Catholic Church interviewed people including the priest, Jake's family and others who testified that they prayed for her intercession. Elsa Finkbonner submitted information in 2006 about what happened to her son; the Catholic Church also was given his medical records. Elsa kept Jake's doctors aware of the process. "It's quite an extensive legal process that deals with both the theological nature of the cause for sainthood and also with the scientific, medical nature of the miracle," said Greg Magnoni, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Seattle. Magnoni said the process is akin to a civil trial, with one side arguing for the cause of Blessed Kateri and another side arguing against it. "It's a very rigorous process. It receives very serious scrutiny," he said. Nearly six years after that fateful fall on a basketball court, Jake bears still the scars from that fight for his survival. They are on his face and neck, across his scalp from ear to ear, and across his chest from shoulder to shoulder. He has undergone 29 surgeries, but the 11-year-old boy is otherwise healthy. "He's very normal. He still likes to play video games like any 11-year-old boy," Elsa Finkbonner said, adding that her son still plays basketball "with passion and drive." But there's been a change. "He has a sense of wisdom about him that your typical 11 year old most likely wouldn't have because he has been robbed of that sense of invincibility," she said. As for Blessed Kateri, she was born to an Algonquin mother and Mohawk father in 1656 near what is today Auriesville, N.Y. When she was 4, smallpox killed her parents and her brother, scarred her face and damaged her eyesight. She was baptized into the faith in 1676, a conversion that led to persecution by tribal members, according to reports. In 1679, she took a vow of chastity. She died on April 17, 1680, near moncler jackets for women what is today Montreal, Canada, and eyewitnesses claimed that her scars disappeared soon after. Known as the Lily of the Mohawks, she was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, becoming the first American Indian to be so honored.

Chang Song Taek is a very savvy operator

The young Kim's grip on power, however, may be shakier than the committee wants its people to believe, experts say. Despite Kim Jong Il's clear anointing of his 20-something son three years ago, North Korea may become embroiled in a violent power struggle, Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow said. The son "has had little time to establish himself," he said. "There are several potential claimants to supreme authority moncler jackets in the North, and the military may play kingmaker." Christopher Hill, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said Kim Jong Il did not do enough to secure his son's position. Kim Jon Il's father, Kim Il Sung, spent two decades grooming him for leadership and preparing the country for the shift in power, said Hill, who was chief negotiator for the United States in talks on North Korea's nuclear program. "Kim Jong Il has done that for about a year-and-a-half" with his son, Hill said. "The North Korean public hardly knows the guy." The younger Kim spent some of his youth at the International School of Berne and completed his education at Kim Il Sung Military University. A former personal chef to Kim Jong Il who wrote a book about the family under a pseudonym calls Kim Jong Un "a chip off the old block" who resembles his father physically and in demeanor. As Kim Jong Il became increasingly unwell, he took steps to position his youngest son, born to his third wife in either January 1983 or 1984, to seize power. By late 2009, North Korean contacts told U.S. diplomats in Seoul that Kim Jong Il had sent money to beautify and modernize the port city of Wonsan, Kim Jong Un's possible birthplace. Wonsan "needs to become a great village before he takes power," a U.S. diplomat wrote in a confidential cable published by the group WikiLeaks. His father promoted him to the Workers' Party cheap moncler jackets finder Central Committee, North Korea's governing Cabinet, at a party convention in September 2010. Soon after, his father elevated him to the rank of general in the army, according to Global Security. Kim Jong Un began accompanying his father on ribbon-cuttings and official visits. Thursday, the pair visited a music center and opened a new department store, the country's official news agency reported. "Under the leadership of Kim Jong Un, we should turn our sorrow into strength and courage and overcome the present difficulties and work harder for fresh, great victory of the Juche revolution," an announcement from the news agency said. "All the party members, servicepersons and people should remain loyal to the guidance of respected Kim Jong Un and firmly protect and further cement the single-minded unity of the party, the army and the people." Military leaders will surround the son, including the high-profile adviser Chang Song Taek, Kim Jong Il's brother-in-law and the vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, Hill said. It is unclear how the military will behave as power shifts, he said. "Chang Song Taek is a very savvy operator, and there will be some efforts from him to help ease Kim Jong Un's hands on the reins," Hill said. Hill never met Kim Jong Un but said Chinese officials who have met the son were unimpressed with his preparation for leadership. "That said, he's at least been overseas. He's flown in an airplane or two, and may have a greater worldview than his father or grandfather," Hill said. "But I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence to support an optimistic view on the guy." Until Kim Jong Un's position is secure,moncler jackets for women the nuclear talks are unlikely to resume, Hill said. If Kim Jong Un can hold power, experts expect little change in the country's policies. "It appears unlikely that he will be a transformative figure for the country," said Sarah McDowell, a senior analyst and Asia-Pacific desk head for IHS, a global information company.

He later arranged for the Plastic People to play

The son of a wealthy developer who toiled as a lab assistant and lowly brewery worker after being denied a higher education, Havel's works earned him five years in communist jails, where the chain smoking writer fell ill with chronic lung problems that eventually contributed to his death on Sunday at 75. A playwright whose work was banned following moncler jackets the 1968 Soviet invasion of then-Czechoslovakia, he rose from political prisoner to become a president-philosopher who continued to fight for human rights until the end of his life. Friends say he was an unfailingly polite, humble man who was not cowed by the threat of imprisonment. "Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance," he wrote in a letter to Czechoslovak President Alexander Dubcek in 1968. Jailed in the 1970's for criticizing the government's human rights record and twice later, he eventually led some 300,000 protesters to topple it in the Velvet Revolution. DENIED FUTURE Denied the further education he wanted by the communists because of his bourgeois origin, he completed his studies in night classes after leaving school at 15. He began writing literary criticism in 1955. His first play debuted in 1963 and he married his first wife Olga a year later. Known as a freedom supporter, he was fired from a theatre where he worked following the Soviet invasion and became a dissident, organizing people who did not support the regime. In perhaps his most famous work, the essay "Power of the Powerless," Havel explained why. "You do not become a "dissident" just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances," he wrote in 1978. "You are cast out of the existing moncler structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society." Havel's contemporaries said he played a big role in underground newspaper "tvar," which set off the dissident movement in the 1960s, but not only because of his literary prowess. "He was the only one among us who owned a car, which obviously helped a lot," said fellow dissident Bohumil Dolezal. In 1976, there was a crackdown on the rock group The Plastic People. That triggered the Charter 77 movement, which criticized the government for failing to uphold human rights. Havel's wife Olga began organizing gatherings at their weekend house north of Prague, where bands played in the barn, and police erected an observation point in a neighboring plot. According to Dolezal, he and Havel parted ways after 1968 because of diverging of views, but they met again in October 1988, when they had both been arrested and held for four days. "There we were," he said. "Everything confiscated from us, including shoe laces, so that we would not commit suicide, and we talked about politics, which we probably otherwise would not have had a chance to do." EAGER ROCKER, RELUCTANT LEADER Friend and fellow Charter 77 member Petruska Sustrova recalled how Havel usually had the last word on what they published but refused to acknowledge his influence. That unassuming nature came to the fore when it became clear he would be president. "He did not want to be a president," she said. "Ideally, he wanted to sit in a pub and reconcile quarrels. He was not very keen to enter politics, he thought it would cut him off from the normal world." Havel brought his love of music and counter-culture straight into Prague Castle. Finding it too vast to negotiate on foot, he used a scooter to get around its halls and he invited rocker Frank Zappa to be a cultural advisor in 1990. He later arranged for the Plastic People to play with his friend Lou Reed at the White House in front of Bill Clinton, whom he had earlier coaxed into playing saxophone at a smoky jazz club in gritty, post-communist Prague. And he invited the Rolling Stones to the castle and later to play in a Prague park. No one had money to pay them, but for Havel they played for free and put on a show that many Czechs still remember today as definitive confirmation that communism was over. He was also close to the Dalai Lama, who visited him earlier this month and together signed a declaration supporting dissidents in China, North Korea, Syria, and other countries. Many Czechs still remember Havel's 1990 New Year's speech, which again showed a stark departure from the four decades of rhetoric and propaganda feed to them under communism. "For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this date in various forms the same thing: how our country flourishes... how happy we all are," he said. "I suppose you have not nominated me for this office so that I lie to you too." The coming years would win him fame abroad but he repeatedly clashed with his main rival, Vaclav Klaus, a right-wing economist whose government Havel criticized for an economic transition rife with murky deals and corruption. When the Klaus government was forced to moncler jackets for women quit in 1997 over a party financing scandal, Havel bemoaned the absence of the democratic "civil society" sought by many dissidents. "If I blame those who are now resigning...it's not so much for any concrete flaw...(but) an apathetic, almost hostile attitude toward everything that bears even a distant resemblance to a civil society," he said at the time. But many Czechs saw this statement as too critical and his image also suffered when he married his second wife Dagmar, an attractive blonde film actress, a year after the death of his first wife Olga.

It was far from the eye-popping jump

Zynga Inc., the online game developer behind “FarmVille,” “Mafia Wars” and other popular time killers on Facebook, raised at least $1 billion in its initial public offering of stock moncler jackets, the largest for a U.S. Internet company since Google’s $1.4 billion IPO in 2004. But by Friday afternoon, Zynga’s stock fell 50 cents, or 5 percent, to close at $9.50. The stock priced at $10 on Thursday, at the high end of its expected range. It traded as high as $11.50 on Friday before heading into a downward spiral on the Nasdaq Stock Market. It was far from the eye-popping jump that has been the trend this year for freshly public Internet darlings such as LinkedIn Corp., which saw its stock double on its first trading day. Zynga’s opening — with a ticker symbol of “ZNGA” — was supposed to be big. After all, unlike many others with IPOs, the company is profitable, with more than 220 million people playing its games on Facebook each month. What this all means for Facebook’s IPO, expected sometime after April, is hard to say. One thing is clear, though. “A hot IPO is not guaranteed,” said Kathleen Smith, principal of IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. Despite the big-name public offerings this year, the IPO market is not in good health. Buyers are skittish and concerned about the high volatility of freshly public stocks, Smith said. Big name or not, investors don’t want to pay sky-high prices for stocks, especially not before a company has proven itself with good earnings reports and analyst ratings. Seventy percent of the 125 companies that went public this year are now trading below their IPO price, according to Renaissance Capital. While Friday’s drop doesn’t look good, it’s not devastating for Zynga. Its CEO, Mark Pincus, said the company’s focus is on “delivering great products” that expand audience for social games over the next few years — and not on the next trading day. “We didn’t have any expectations coming into this whole process,” he said in an interview. “We decided to go public a long time ago.” Pincus rang the Nasdaq’s opening bell in San Francisco, a first in the city for a freshly public company. The company’s roughly 1,700 San Francisco employees woke up at the crack of down to celebrate with cinnamon buns and hot cocoa. Zynga also delivered video of the opening ceremony over the Internet to its offices around the world moncler jackets for women. Thursday’s pricing gives Zynga a market value of about $7 billion. That’s roughly half of the value of online deals site Groupon, which began trading in early November. Zynga, though, sold a much bigger chunk of its available shares, 14.3 percent compared with Groupon’s 5.5 percent. It’s an issue of supply and demand — selling more shares means investors don’t have to scramble to get their hands on them. Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said stocks trade based on supply and demand on the first day. In Zynga’s case, he believes the IPO’s underwriters placed more shares with investors who were going to “flip” the stock — that is, buy a hot stock and quickly sell it to make a profit instead of holding on to it for the long run. All that selling tempered the stock’s price, and other nervous investors started selling, too. Sterne Agee’s Arvind Bhatia said the issue came down to valuation — what people are willing to pay. “You might like a company but not its valuation,” said Bhatia, who took the unusual step of starting coverage of Zynga’s stock before it went public, giving it an “Underperform” rating and a price target of $7. With its huge player base and a few loyal spenders, Zynga had net income of $90.6 million in 2010, an unusual pre-IPO money-maker in the sector. Cowen & Co. analyst Doug Creutz, however, initiated coverage Friday with a “Neutral” rating on the stock. Although Zynga is the leader in Facebook gaming, he’s concerned that it won’t be able to grow fast enough to justify its stock price. Growth in Facebook gaming has slowed, and Zynga’s market share has declined from 50 percent to 38 percent of daily active users cheap moncler jackets, he wrote. He’s also concerned that Zynga’s famously aggressive and hard-charging culture may not be the best field to grow good games in. Others have raised concerns that the focus on deadlines and profits might be squeezing out creativity and talent.

The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal

Senate negotiators agreed to the two-month extension after failing to reach an agreement on extending the tax cut for another year, CBS News Capitol Hill producer John Nolen reports. A vote is expected Saturday on the measure, moncler jackets the last in a highly contentious year of divided government. Any deal would also require House passage before it could reach Mr. Obama's desk. A senior administration official said on condition of anonymity that the president would sign the measure but almost certainly refuse to grant a permit for the oil pipeline project. The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the deal. Pipeline still a sticking point in payroll talks Racing to adjourn for the year, lawmakers moved quickly to clear separate legislation avoiding a partial government shutdown threatened for midnight. There was no immediate response to the compromise from the White House, which a few hours earlier had backed away from Mr. Obama's threat to veto any bill that linked the payroll tax cut extension with a Republican demand for a speedy decision on the 1,700-mile Keystone XL oil pipeline proposed from Canada to Texas. Republican senators leaving a closed-door meeting put the price tag of the two-month package at between $30 billion and $40 billion said the cost would be covered through a fee on mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The legislation would also provide a 60-day reprieve from a scheduled 27 percent cut in the fees paid to doctors who treat Medicare patients. Several officials said it would require a decision within 60 days on the pipeline, with the president required to authorize construction unless he determined that would not be in the national interest. Mr. Obama recently announced he was moncler postponing a decision until after the 2012 elections on the much-studied proposal. Environmentalists oppose the project, but several unions support it, putting the president in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between customary political allies. Senators in both parties hastened to claim credit. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., issued a statement that said the compromise included legislation he authored "that forces President Obama to make a decision" on the pipeline. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said he had "brokered a final deal by bringing lawmakers from both parties together to support jobs." Officials said that in private talks, the two sides had hoped to reach agreement on the full one-year extension of payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits that Mr. Obama had made the centerpiece of the jobs program he submitted to Congress last fall. Those efforts failed when the two sides could not agree on enough offsetting cuts to make sure the deficit wouldn't rise. "We'll be back discussing the same issues in a couple of months, but from our point of view, we think the keystone pipeline is a very important job-creating measure in the private sector that doesn't cost the government a penny," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. There was no immediate reaction from House Speaker John Boehner. Neither he nor his aides participated in the negotiations, although McConnell said he was optimistic about the measure's chances for final approval. Hours earlier, McConnell challenged Mr. Obama to give ground. "Let's not just pass a bill that helps people on the benefits side, let's also include something that actually helps the private sector create the jobs Americans need for the long term," he said. In a political jab, he added, "Here's an opportunity for the president to say he's not going to let a few radical environmentalists stand in the way of a project that would create thousands of jobs and make America more secure at the same time." Mr. Obama said on Dec. 7 that "any effort to try to tie Keystone to the payroll tax cut I will reject. So everybody should be on notice." More recently, a veto threat issued Tuesday against the House-passed version of the bill cited the introduction of "ideological issues into what should be a simple debate about cutting taxes for the middle class." Senior administration officials later told reporters that was a reference to the pipeline. The State Department, cheap moncler vest for women in an analysis released this summer, said the project would create up to 6,000 jobs during construction, while developer TransCanada put the total at 20,000 in direct employment. The 1,700-mile pipeline would carry oil from western Canada to Texas Gulf Coast refineries, passing through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The team of scientists noted that the telescopes recorded oxygen

NASA scientists announced Wednesday that they have captured a series of images of a colossal detonation in the Pinwheel galaxy, 21 million light years away. The team of astronomers said the image was taken within hours of the burst of light from the explosion reaching Earth, the soonest an image has been snapped after the cosmic explosion. The images are thought moncler jackets to the be the first such images captured by the space agency, and astronomers say they represent a “supernova of a generation.” “We caught the supernova just 11 hours after it exploded, so soon that we were later able to calculate the actual moment of the explosion to within 20 minutes,” said Peter Nugent at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab in California. Mr. Nugent, who led the study, said the space agency employed the use of three powerful Earth-based telescopes and the American space agency NASA’s Swift orbital observatory. Scientists say the results produced a wealth of data, including showing in unprecedented detail how heavier elements, such as oxygen and iron, emerged from the supernova explosion. The study examined the light of the explosion, which reached the brightness of 2.5 billion suns, then slowly faded. The group of scientists then worked backward to determine exactly when the supernova occurred. NASA officials noted that the supernova is the closest one to our planet in 25 years. The team of scientists noted that the telescopes recorded oxygen, magnesium, silicon, calcium and iron, which extended at the rate of 16,000 kilometres a second, around 5 percent of the speed of light. NASA officials say the discovery will allow astronomers to better understand how elements ejected by supernovas mixed into the universe. “Understanding how these giant explosions create and mix materials is important because supernovae are where we get most of the elements that make up the Earth and even our own bodies moncler – for instance, these supernovae are a major source of iron in the universe,” said Mark Sullivan of Oxford. “So we are all made of bits of exploding stars.” In the Nugent paper, published on Thursday, the speed of the discovery is widely considered the single more important factor in the study. The team discovered the supernova only 11 hours after it exploded, allowing for the first estimate of the size of the star when it blew up. “Not only is this the closest Type Ia supernova in the last 25 years, it is the youngest and brightest ever discovered in the digital age,” said Mr. Nugent. “Observations with ground- and space-based telescopes from the radio through X-ray wavelengths have provided unprecedented constraints on how the supernova exploded.” The scientists noted that these rapid observations were not due to luck; they were possible because the Palomar 48-inch telescope, which was used to discover the supernova, is effectively a robot. The telescope observes all night long without a human driving it, allowing scientists to examine data that otherwise might be lost.moncler jackets for women. The data are then automatically processed by computers, and new potential supernovae are presented to the discovery team when they wake up. “This event might have been missed or not detected right away–maybe even a week later, if we only relied on human eyes to do the search,” said Nugent. “No one has done this type of search on this scale before, and as new astronomical surveys come online in the next few years, this framework for extracting novel science from large amounts of data will become increasingly important.”

Romney went on the offensive

Throughout the campaign, Romney hasn't responded to his Republican rivals - and instead kept his focus on President Obama. But he's now taking aim at former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. Special report: Election 2012 In an interview with CBS News correspondent Jan Crawford Wednesday,moncler jackets Romney said: "Newt Gingrich has been an unreliable leader in the conservative movement." Republicans doubting Romney's conservative credentials have recently turned to Gingrich as the true conservative. Romney went on the offensive, saying "I think people get to know that an individual like myself who has been a governor, served, has a record is a person who has the kind of consistency of conservative principles that distinguish me from someone like our Speaker, Speaker Gingrich. Who has taken extraordinarily unusual positions with regards to calling the Medicare reform plan a right-wing social engineering plan, suicide he's called it - this a person who's had a very questionable record when it comes to leading conservative principles." Full CBS News coverage: Newt Gingrich "How would you be different as president," Crawford asked. "I think government is way too large," Romney replied. "What do you think Speaker Gingrich thinks?" "I think Speaker Gingrich has lived in Washington for the last 30 years. He went to Washington to do good and he stayed to do well." Romney is referring cheap moncler jackets to the millions Gingrich made advising companies including Mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Full CBS News coverage: Mitt Romney "He's a wealthy man, a very wealthy man," Romney said of Gingrich. "If you have a half-a-million-dollar purchase from Tiffany's, you're not a middle class American." Romney has said Gingrich should give the $1.6 million he made advising Freddie Mac back to the taxpayers. That prompted Gingrich on Monday to take a shot at Romney for his work at the investment firm Bain Capital. "If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain, then I would be glad to listen to him. " Romney: Gingrich a "very wealthy" man "Doesn't the Speaker understand that not all businesses succeed," Romney asked. "Fortunately, most of them were able to be successful and we were able to collectively create tens of thousands of jobs in the enterprises we invested in, so I'm proud of that record. And frankly very surprised that he would attack conservatism, moncler 2012 he would attack free enterprise, he would attack capitalism. This is a party that believes in free enterprise." "Is he in the wrong party," Crawford asked. "Well it depends on the day," Romney replied. "I just think he's been unreliable in his support of conservative principles."

University of North Carolina at Greensboro clarified

Analyzing data starting in 1991 and spanning more than a decade, from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, lead author Cheryl Buehler, PhD, professor of human development and family studies, at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro clarified that : "In all cases with significant differences in maternal well-being,moncler jackets such as conflict between work and family or parenting, the comparison favored part-time work over full-time or not working .... However, in many cases the well-being of moms working part time was no different from moms working full time." The article, published in the December 2011 issue of APA's Journal of Family Psychology, included nearly 1,500 mothers who were interviewed after their child was born and in follow ups over the next 10+ years. Mothers employed part time appeared to have better overall health and less depression than stay at home moms, while general health and depressive symptoms were essentially the same in both full time and part time working mothers. Interestingly, mothers employed part time had the highest level of sensitivity to their preschool children, spending time and providing opportunities for them to learn and grow. Obviously full-time employment curtailed a certain amount of attention to the children, but part time and stay at home mothers came in equal in terms of their involvement with their children. Perhaps the time away from the children gave the part time working mothers more appreciation of the time they did spend with them. Part time work is clearly beneficial to the family unit and the study co-author Marion O'Brien, PhD, professor of human development and family studies, also of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, put forward the point that part time employees rarely receive the same benefits as full-time workers, and put forward the case that employers should consider offering similar benefits to part time workers in terms of health insurance, training and career advancement: "Since part-time work seems to contribute to the strength and well-being of families, it would be beneficial to employers if they provide fringe benefits, at least proportionally, to part-time employees as well as offer them career ladders through training and promotion." The mothers who were involved with the study included : 10 different locations in the US Nearly a quarter who were categorized as part of ethnic minorities 1 percent with no high school degree 14 percent single parents On balance 25 percent were part time employed (individual work habits varied but the overall number remained balanced) Part-Time work was classified as between one and thirty two hours per week The researchers recommended that in the future, more depth is required in the research to look at factors such as professional status, scheduling flexibility, work commitment and shift schedules. Caring for small children seven days a week can be very demanding, and it would seem logical that moms who get out of the house and into a more adult environment some hours per week and enjoy some level of job satisfaction, whilst obtaining a certain level of financial freedom for themselves, are likely to feel better about their situation and be able to pass a certain amount of that onto their children. Actress Jessica Alba said in an interview with María Salas of TerraTV : "I think [balancing work and family] is something that most women in this country can relate to. It's tough. It's a tough balance, trying to be the best mom. And obviously my family is my priority.cheap moncler jackets And then also, I love what I do, and I love that I get to have a job that I enjoy so much and gives me the freedom to spend a lot of time with my daughter, frankly, and travel and everything else. But it is hard not to spend every second with her." While another actress Maggie Gyllenhaal said in an interview with Celebrity Baby Scoop : "Growing up in Los Angeles, I was surrounded by plenty of working moms, including my grandmother, a pediatrician, and my mother, a writer and producer. This seemed very natural to me. I just thought, Well, that's what moms do. They work and raise their kids. I was brought up to believe I could do anything I wanted professionally and, of course, be a mother at the same time ... but I'm finding that it's complicated. It requires a lot of thought and planning, and I haven't figured it out yet." Obviously women who get back to work after giving birth fit more into their lives and feel the benefit of that. Of course, its a little unfair to make comparisons with millionaire actresses that have flexible schedules, nannies and a team of production staff to help them while they are working, but none-the-less, it seems even with all their advantages, they struggle to get the balance between motherhood and career perfect. An article in salary.com pegged the compensation for a stay at home mom based on 2007 wage levels at nearly $135,000 per annum. It doesn't always boil down purely to money, but perhaps if stay at home mothers were valued in society this highly, they might find more job satisfaction. Bill Coleman, senior vice president at Salary.com, said in a statement : Mom works multiple jobs and rarely moncler 2012 gets a break from the action, working an average of 52 hours of overtime." According to the Salary.com survey, stay-at-home moms work a 92-hour week, with more than half the workweek spent in overtime. You have to wonder how many husbands compensate their baby mama's at that level, even if they can afford it in the first place. Under that kind of pressure, its not surprising they feel happier and healthier handing the kids over to day care and enjoying a more down to earth day job.

Del Negro said some parts of the Paul deal didn't make sense for the Clippers

The Clippers on Monday rejected a proposed deal by the New Orleans Hornets for the All-Star guard because the team felt "the cost was just too high," general manager Neil Olshey said. Whether the deal is altogether dead, though,moncler jackets remains to be seen. The Clippers later claimed five-time All-Star Chauncey Billups off waivers. The 35-year-old point guard was waived by the New York Knicks last weekend. "Everything's over until it's reborn again," Olshey said. "New Orleans made a fair offer on their end. We didn't think that it was something that we wanted to pursue at this point." Olshey declined to identify whom the Clippers had offered in exchange for Paul but their package reportedly included center Chris Kaman, reserve guard Eric Bledsoe, forward Al-Farouq Aminu and their No. 1 pick in the 2012 NBA draft. Reports suggested the Hornets also wanted guard Eric Gordon included. "There wasn't one piece or another piece that killed this deal," Olshey said. "The aggregate compensation that we were going to have to convey to them was just too much and it was going to hamstring our franchise in the long term." It's the second time in five days that a deal moving Paul to Los Angeles fell apart. Last week, cheap moncler jackets NBA Commissioner David Stern nixed a three-team trade by the league-owned Hornets, Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets that would have sent Paul to the Lakers. "This is a superstar player that is obviously in a delicate situation with his current franchise," Olshey said. "We just felt right now we're just not going to be able to meet where we're equally satisfied with the outcome." Billups averaged 16.8 points, 5.4 assists and 2.6 rebounds in 72 games with Denver and the Knicks last season. He was traded to New York in February. He helped lead Detroit to the 2004 championship and was the MVP of the NBA finals. Olshey and coach Vinny Del Negro met with Blake Griffin and the rest of the team before practice Monday to tell them about the Hornets' proposal and the $42.7 million, four-year offer sheet from the Golden State Warriors for DeAndre Jordan, a restricted free agent. Later in the day, the Clippers re-signed Jordan and matched the Warriors' offer sheet. The 23-year-old center appeared in a career-high 80 games last season, averaging 7.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.78 blocks while making 66 starts. Olshey said the team would turn its attention to discussions involving signing Gordon to a contract extension. Del Negro said some parts of the Paul deal didn't make sense for the Clippers. "It's over," he said. "Our decision is final right now.giubbotti moncler Things always have the ability to change, but as of right now I feel very confident in the direction we're going. I think guys are feeling good about where we are right now." The Clippers signed Caron Butler to a $24 million, three-year deal Friday, giving them a boost at small forward.

Past gene therapy experiments on hemophiliacs improved blood-clotting for only a few weeks

The study was preliminary and involved only six patients, and other promising early attempts to use gene therapy against hemophilia ultimately failed. But a single infusion using the new treatment worked in some patients for more than a year, boosting their clotting ability significantly. "I think this is a terrific advance for the field. It's a good lesson in terms of don't give up on good ideas," said Dr. Ronald Crystal, chairman moncler jackets of genetic medicine at New York City's Weill Cornell Medical College, It's "truly a landmark study," said Dr. Katherine Ponder, a Washington University School of Medicine physician. She praised the research in an editorial that accompanies the study's publication in the New England Journal of Medicine. The research also was being presented Saturday at an American Society of Hematology conference in San Diego. Hemophilia is an inherited, potentially life-threatening disorder affecting an estimated 20,000 Americans, almost all of them males. Their blood doesn't clot properly because of a faulty gene. In severe cases, they can spontaneously start bleeding internally, even in the brain. Internal bleeding in the joints leads to debilitating movement problems and intense pain. Past gene therapy experiments on hemophiliacs cheap moncler jackets improved blood-clotting for only a few weeks. "We couldn't make it last," said Val Bias, chief executive of the National Hemophilia Foundation. Experts said the new method needs to be tested on many more patients to confirm it's effective and prove there are no risks. Even if all goes right, it's still several years away from being available to most patients. Since the late 1960s, doctors have given hemophiliacs infusions of clotting proteins. It's been a success, increasing their average lifespan to 63. But for severe cases, treatment can involve two or three infusions every week and cost more than $250,000 annually. The new study was led by researchers at the University College London Cancer Institute and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn. All six of the patients in the study were men seen in London who had severe forms of type B hemophilia. The six men each got a single, 20-minute infusion of healthy genetic material delivered by a virus found in monkeys. Viruses are often used to transport DNA into cells.Giubbotti moncler - moncler uomo, moncler donna, piumini moncler outlet 2012. Each saw the amount of clotting proteins in their blood increase from less than 1 percent of normal levels to at least 2 percent, and in one case as much as 11 percent. That may not seem like a lot, but it was enough to allow all the men to ease back on the number of regular treatments they needed, and four stopped conventional treatment altogether.

The threshold most often quoted for a civil war

In November, when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said moncler 2012 the violence in Syria was beginning to resemble a civil war, it was viewed by some as a tactic to protect Moscow's Arab ally from any possibility of foreign intervention. But a day later, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the concern. Last week, Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said the conflict amounted to a civil war. As violence continues in Syria’s nine-month uprising, the label “civil war” appears to be replacing the previous characterization of a repression or crackdown by President Bashar Assad's regime. This despite the lack of full-fledged fighting between government forces and rebels, as was recently seen in Libya. The threshold most often quoted for a civil war is 1,000 killed with at least 100 dead on each side. With the recent handful of attacks by the opposition Free Syrian Army on government and military targets, the strict definition might fit, but whether it actually is one is more complicated. Beyond the definition favored by political scientists, the accepted concept of a civil war is based on the idea that it is two-sided. But it remains unclear just how two-sided the violence in Syria is. “It’s a kind of a civil war,” said Andrew Tabler, a Middle East fellow with the Washington Institute. “I think it just gets to a point of, what else can you call it?” The regime’s use of shabiha -- militia forces predominantly composed of Alawites, the sect from which Assad draws most of his support –- to crack down on protesters in the majority Sunni country has set the stage for a sectarian civil war, Tabler said. “The U.N. is using it as a way of saying this could get a lot worse,” said James Fearon, a professor of political science at Stanford University who studies civil wars. The dire prediction is a way of underscoring the urgency for action by regional players, including the Arab League, he said. But calling it a civil war could complicate things in the future moncler outlet. Intervention based on the need to protect civilians would have far more legitimacy than if the conflict escalated into a sectarian one and outside forces helped one side over another, Tabler said. “There is a tradition of civil war implying that intervention is not legitimate or legal,” he said. Most recently the issue came up in the debate over intervention in Libya’s conflict –- which some continued to label a revolution and not a civil war –- despite mass defections and a well-armed opposition. But unlike Libya, the sectarian fissures in Syria make it ripe for a civil war. “What we’re seeing is growing sectarian killings in the region of Homs, and that is very troubling because it could be an indication of something more horrible to come,” said Joshua Landis, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “But to say it’s a civil war is a bit alarmist at this point.” He termed it more of a “small-scale insurgency,” but one that could quickly grow. As of now the armed opposition by the Free Syrian Army, whose ranks are made up of defected soldiers, is relegated mostly to small pockets of the country. And it is not clear exactly how organized they are. Their operations so far have consisted of small, hit-and-run attacks. In a news briefing last week, U.S. State Department spokesman cheap moncler jackets Mark Toner disagreed with Pillay’s characterization and at the same time distanced the administration from Clinton's comments weeks earlier.

Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger said in a statement

Virginia State Police on Friday identified Ross Truett Ashley, 22, as the man who killed Virginia Tech Police Officer Deriek Crouse and then himself about 30 minutes later. A part-time student at Radford University, moncler jackets 15 miles southwest of Blacksburg, Ashley had no connection to or contact with Crouse before Thursday's shooting, according to a news release from state police. "State police investigators are continuing their work to establish a motive in the killing and to re-create Ashley's movements in the days and hours leading up to the murder-suicide," police said. Ashley entered a real estate office in Radford with a handgun Wednesday and demanded the keys to a white 2011 Mercedes SUV, according to police. He drove off in the car, which was found the next day on the Virginia Tech campus. That's where and when Ashley and Crouse were found dead, about a quarter mile away from each other. Ballistics evidence shows that both were fatally shot with the same gun, state police said Friday. Police have said they believe Ashley matches the description of the man who shot the officer. Thursday's double shooting conjured memories from April 16, 2007, when student Seung-Hui Cho killed 33 people at Virginia Tech in a mass shooting. "Once again, the campus and the community that we love so well have been visited by senseless violence and tragic loss," Virginia Tech President Charles W. Steger said in a statement. "Tragedy again struck Virginia Tech in a wanton act of violence where our police officer, Deriek Crouse, was murdered during a routine traffic stop." The scale and facts of Thursday's shooting differ significantly from the incident four years ago. Still, it served as a test of the policies the school has implemented since that tragedy. The latest incident began about 12:15 p.m. Thursday, when Crouse, who had been a Virginia Tech officer for four years, pulled over someone during a routine traffic stop in the Cassell Coliseum parking lot near McComas Hall. Cassell Coliseum houses athletic facilities. McComas Hall houses exercise facilities. Shortly before 12:30 p.m., police received their first call from a person who said he'd seen the suspect -- not the driver of the car that had been pulled over -- approach the officer's vehicle and open fire. The shooter ran from the area. Police said that, Moncler jackets for women, cheap moncler women down jackets on sale.at the Virginia Tech greenhouses, Ashley changed out of his wool cap and pullover and put them in a backpack. A Montgomery County deputy sheriff who was on-site because of the first shooting eventually spotted a man who was walking toward the on-campus "Cage" parking lot. The deputy sheriff temporarily lost sight of this man as he drove toward him, according to the state police chronicle of events released Friday. "When the deputy finally reached the subject, the man was on the ground and deceased from a self-inflicted gunshot wound," police said. This person didn't have any identification on him and was wearing clothing different from that worn by the person who had shot Crouse, police added. But that clothing was recovered later Thursday in the backpack Ashley had left behind. Maj. Rick Jenkins of the Virginia State Police said a videocamera mounted inside the slain officer's car captured footage of a man with a weapon who matched the description of the man they'd found dead. Officer's death a 'tremendous loss' In addition to the law enforcement activity, Virginia Tech's updated communications efforts -- which received criticism in 2007, for not letting students know quickly or extensively enough what was happening then -- were also put in focus during Thursday's incident. Campus officials put out six alerts to students and faculty about the shooting. On Thursday, law enforcement and school officials said the alert system put in place in recent years worked well, from technological and communications standpoints. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose daughter attends Virginia Tech, lauded the communications effort. McDonnell said his daughter was confined to a basement classroom during the four-hour episode. "Like so many parents who had children on the Virginia Tech campus, I felt a lot of that angst and uncertainty," he said. "Again, I want to express my gratitude to law enforcement for making sure that they kept the faculty (and) parents regularly informed." Crouse, 39, joined the Virginia Tech police force six months after the 2007 mass shooting, according to a release on the school's website. A U.S. Army veteran who had worked at the New River Valley jail and with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department, the Christiansburg resident is survived by his wife, Men - moncler jackets as well as five children and stepchildren. Radford University said Friday in a statement that Ashley, the man who shot Crouse, was a business management major at the school. Citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the university said "no additional information on Mr. Ashley can be provided." Radford President Penny Kyle said counseling would be made available to that university's students, akin to services offered at Virginia Tech. Already, members of the Virginia Tech community have come together since the shootings. For instance, scores of people came together on the Blacksburg campus for a candlelight vigil on Thursday night, one day after a similar, smaller event was held.