Kangaroo Gets Loose at Melbourne Airport

People Pets

01/08/2013 at 08:00 PM EST

Travelers passing through Australia's Melbourne Airport on Monday may have been greeted by an unexpected baggage handler.

At around 7 a.m., a 3-year-old eastern gray kangaroo was spotted in the airport's parking garage, where it hopped around for almost two hours, giving security officers the slip in the process.

Wildlife officer Manfred Zabinskas was then called in to catch the young animal, who was tranquilized in order to be transported to safety. Analyzing the critter, Zabinskas noted he had been away from his natural habitat for some time, and that the romp through the parking garage had done some damage to his feet. Prior to being re-released into the wild, the kangaroo will be looked at by a veterinarian.

This is the second time a kangaroo has paid a visit to the Melbourne Airport. Last October, another marsupial made its way up to the fifth floor of the parking garage before being spotted.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Asian shares rise as earnings eyed

TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares rose on Wednesday after rounds of profit taking from a sharp rally at the start of the new year subsided, while investors waited warily for corporate earnings season to kick off in full force.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus> rose 0.4 percent, with Australian shares <.axjo> among the outperformers with a 0.4 percent gain to break a three-day losing streak. Hong Kong shares <.hsi> also climbed 0.4 percent.

South Korean shares <.ks11> were virtually flat. Shares in tech heavyweight Samsung Electronics Co Ltd were also flat despite announcing on Tuesday a better-than-expected estimated fourth-quarter operating profit.

"The main (Seoul) index is trading nearly flat after falling steadily since last week's rapid gains, due to concerns about lackluster fourth-quarter earnings outlooks," said Park Jung-sup, an analyst at Daishin Securities.

He said overall market outlooks for fourth-quarter corporate results have been revised down considerably, but worries for earnings shocks remain.

Global shares fell and bond prices rose on Tuesday, with investors cautious ahead of a U.S. earnings season expected to show sluggish growth in quarterly corporate profits.

The U.S. earnings season began on Tuesday with Alcoa Inc , the largest aluminum producer in the U.S., with customers in a wide range of industries, reporting a fourth-quarter profit of $242 million, in line with expectations.

U.S. corporate profits are expected to be higher than the third quarter's lackluster results, but analysts' estimates are down sharply from where they were in October.

Credit Suisse said in a research note that Asian equity market price indices may start to catch up with earnings estimates which had been outperforming market prices, suggesting further upside scope for Asian share prices.

The consensus earnings forecast so far is flat in January, following virtually flat revisions in December, it said.

"It was the persistent EPS downgrades that led to the gap between equity market price indices and EPS. These flat revisions could act as a catalyst for equity market price indices to converge with EPS," Credit Suisse said.

Data flows were light with Australian retail sales showing a surprise softness, falling 0.1 percent in November from October, undershooting forecasts for a 0.3 percent rise on the month and sending the Australian dollar down to session lows of $1.0486 from $1.0517 before the data was released.

China will release its trade data on Thursday, which includes initial estimates for metals imports and exports.

Australian retail sales: http://link.reuters.com/zew92t

China exports graphic: http://link.reuters.com/kun94t

Euro zone retail sales: http://link.reuters.com/tyb25s

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YEN STAYS WEAK

Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock average <.n225> erased earlier losses to crawl up 0.5 percent as the yen's rebound against the dollar lost steam. Investors had been taking profits from the dollar's steady and sharp rally against the yen of about 12 percent over the past two months. The Nikkei had risen about 21 percent in the same period. <.t/>

The dollar was up 0.5 percent to 87.43 yen, recovering from the day's low of 86.825. It scaled its highest since July 2010 at 88.48 on Friday. The euro also steadied against the yen at 114.35, off the day lows of 113.55. The euro last week hit 115.995 yen, its highest since July 2011.

The Bank of Japan will consider easing monetary policy again at its January 21-22 meeting, by likely boosting buying of government bonds and treasury discount bills, while considering a doubling of its inflation target to 2 percent.

Expectations of much bolder monetary easing from the BOJ to help Japan beat deflation under new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have encouraged investors to sell the yen.

But as trading resumed from year-end holidays, analysts and traders said markets were ripe for position adjustments.

"After a good run in risk assets since December, we entered in a phase of consolidation which is moving from Japanese equities to short JPY positions," said Sebastien Galy, FX strategist at Societe Generale in New York, in a note, adding that the dollar could consolidate to 85 yen but must first take out the first Fibonacci retracement at 85.75 yen.

Yen crosses which had been bought the most, including the yen/Korean won, are the most exposed to the correction.

"Such a washout in JPY crosses is the opportunity many long-term investors will be waiting for to continue their switch into strategic short yen positions," he said.

The euro held steady against the dollar at $1.3075.

With no major economic data this week, the euro was seen staying in a range ahead of Thursday's European Central Bank policy meeting and Spanish and Italian bond auctions toward the end of the week.

U.S. crude was nearly flat at $93.17 a barrel, after the annual rebalancing of the S&P GSCI commodity index, which increased its weighting for Brent and reduced its share of U.S. WTI crude. Brent was also little changed at $111.90.

Sentiment turned cautious in Asian credit markets, with the spread on the iTraxx Asia ex-Japan investment-grade index widening slightly by 1 basis point.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee in Seoul; Editing by Eric Meijer)

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World Briefing | Americas: Colombia: Former President’s Ties to Militia Under Investigation

Colombia’s chief prosecutor’s office has opened a preliminary criminal investigation into former President Álvaro Uribe over allegations he sponsored a deadly far-right militia as a regional governor in the 1990s. The inquiry ordered last Wednesday was made public Tuesday by Mr. Uribe’s lawyer, Jaime Granados. Mr. Uribe denounced it on Twitter as defamation based on the testimony of “manipulated prisoners.” The case stems from 2011 accusations by a leftist congressman, Ivan Cepeda, that a far-right militia that killed suspected rebel sympathizers operated from a ranch owned by Mr. Uribe and his brother Santiago. The prosecutor in charge of the case is Martha Lucia Zamora and she says it is based on the testimony of former militia members. Mr. Granados says it is built on lies. Mr. Uribe was president from 2002 to 2010.

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The next CIA’s director’s challenges

qWhat John Brennan faces after confirmation

I see no reason why the Senate won’t confirm John Brennan, President Obama‘s chief counter-terrorism adviser, to be the next director of the CIA. There will be pro forma inquiries into his past entanglements with the NSA’s domestic surveillance program and his knowledge and approval of the CIA’s “Greystone” torture protocols, but he will have ready answers for the questions and he will say plenty in private to sooth the concerns of those whose concerns need to be soothed.

Assuming Brennan becomes the DCIA, as he will thenceforth be acronymed, he’ll inherit a powerful spy agency facing a set of tough questions. Actually, every CIA director since the advent of the age of Al Qaeda has more or less dealt with these same issues. The daily demands of the job require tactical thinking and leave little room for attention to the bigger picture.

SEE MORE: Why Django is better than Lincoln

# Is the CIA a paramilitary force? Should it go back to its roots as a source of intelligence and warning?  You see this question phrased as such a lot, but it ignores virtually all of the CIA’s history, except for a period in the 1990s when the “Peace Dividend” and director John Deutch pulled back significantly on the agency’s ambit. The CIA has always been both and will always be both. From the start, the agency has very broadly and probably (in an affront to the original understanding of the National Security Act of 1947) interpreted its mandate to do stuff to further American interests abroad, even and often to the point of violence, as Adam Elkus reminds us today. The question really is one of authorities and chains of command: how are American resources properly allocated? Are the mechanisms of accountability sufficient? Is there really anything better than an ad hoc framework for determining whether combined CIA-military operations are really CIA operations or military operations?

# There is no such thing as secrecy anymore, at least not in the way that the CIA has understood the term. We live in an era of open source everything, which means that the agency’s crown jewels have very short lifespans and that public interest in what the CIA does is bound to increase exponentially. The agency has to figure out a posture on the New Secrecy that satisfies its mission while accepting the Open Source reality. Younger analysts have different expectations of how to gather and collect information and are less satisfied with the complicated and fairly broken traditional secrecy rules.

# Similarly, it is exceedingly difficult for would-be spies to come to the CIA without significant social media trails, and it is very hard for them to work in the world without leaving electromagnetic detritus for everyone to exploit and discover. How can the CIA’s case officers maintain their cover identities? Is the era of fully-fledged cover identities over? Will the CIA continue to rely (and over-rely) on foreign intelligence services for critical human intelligence operations? 

# The same Open Source world that hinders CIA secrecy also provides the agency with far more data than it ever imagined having. The CIA will never face a problem of not having enough intelligence. It will face the problem of having too much and not knowing what it has or how to use it.

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Justin Bartha Is Dating Trainer Lia Smith

01/07/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Lia and Justin in Hawaii New Years Day

Pacific Coast News

Justin Bartha's "mystery woman" is in fact his girlfriend, trainer Lia Smith, a source reveals to PEOPLE.

The pair recently enjoyed a cozy trip to Smith's native Hawaii and were snapped basking in the sun on Maui on New Year's Day, which got people buzzing about her identity.

"They were very cute with each other," says an eyewitness. "They had their arms around each other and were kissing."

The couple also spent time with Smith's parents on Oahu. Bartha, who currently stars on The New Normal, was previously linked to Scarlett Johansson and dated Ashley Olsen for two years before breaking up in 2011.

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Death rates from cancer are continuing to inch down, researchers reported Monday.

Now the question is how to hold onto those gains, and do even better, even as the population gets older and fatter, both risks for developing cancer.

"There has been clear progress," said Dr. Otis Brawley of the American Cancer Society, which compiled the annual cancer report with government and cancer advocacy groups.

But bad diets, lack of physical activity and obesity together wield "incredible forces against this decline in mortality," Brawley said. He warned that over the next decade, that trio could surpass tobacco as the leading cause of cancer in the U.S.

Overall, deaths from cancer began slowly dropping in the 1990s, and Monday's report shows the trend holding. Among men, cancer death rates dropped by 1.8 percent a year between 2000 and 2009, and by 1.4 percent a year among women. The drops are thanks mostly to gains against some of the leading types — lung, colorectal, breast and prostate cancers — because of treatment advances and better screening.

The news isn't all good. Deaths still are rising for certain cancer types including liver, pancreatic and, among men, melanoma, the most serious kind of skin cancer.

Preventing cancer is better than treating it, but when it comes to new cases of cancer, the picture is more complicated.

Cancer incidence is dropping slightly among men, by just over half a percent a year, said the report published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers all saw declines.

But for women, earlier drops have leveled off, the report found. That may be due in part to breast cancer. There were decreases in new breast cancer cases about a decade ago, as many women quit using hormone therapy after menopause. Since then, overall breast cancer incidence has plateaued, and rates have increased among black women.

Another problem area: Oral and anal cancers caused by HPV, the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus, are on the rise among both genders. HPV is better known for causing cervical cancer, and a protective vaccine is available. Government figures show just 32 percent of teen girls have received all three doses, fewer than in Canada, Britain and Australia. The vaccine was recommended for U.S. boys about a year ago.

Among children, overall cancer death rates are dropping by 1.8 percent a year, but incidence is continuing to increase by just over half a percent a year. Brawley said it's not clear why.

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Japan’s Cleanup After a Nuclear Accident Is Denounced

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

NARAHA, Japan — The decontamination crews at a deserted elementary school here are at the forefront of what Japan says is the most ambitious radiological cleanup the world has seen, one that promised to draw on cutting-edge technology from across the globe.

Ko Sasaki for The New York Times

Workers reflected in the glass of the Naraha-Minami Elementary School

But much of the work at the Naraha-Minami Elementary School, about 12 miles away from the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, tells another story. For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha’s landscape like funeral mounds.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan’s post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

Local businesses that responded to a government call to research and develop decontamination methods have found themselves largely left out. American and other foreign companies with proven expertise in environmental remediation, invited to Japan in June to show off their technologies, have similarly found little scope to participate.

Recent reports in the local media of cleanup crews dumping contaminated soil and leaves into rivers has focused attention on the sloppiness of the cleanup.

“What’s happening on the ground is a disgrace,” said Masafumi Shiga, president of Shiga Toso, a refurbishing company based in Iwaki, Fukushima. The company developed a more effective and safer way to remove cesium from concrete without using water, which could repollute the environment. “We’ve been ready to help for ages, but they say they’ve got their own way of cleaning up,” he said.

Shiga Toso’s technology was tested and identified by government scientists as “fit to deploy immediately,” but it has been used only at two small locations, including a concrete drain at the Naraha-Minami school.

Instead, both the central and local governments have handed over much of the 1 trillion yen decontamination effort to Japan’s largest construction companies. The politically connected companies have little radiological cleanup expertise and critics say they have cut corners to employ primitive — even potentially hazardous — techniques.

The construction companies have the great advantage of available manpower. Here in Naraha, about 1,500 cleanup workers are deployed every day to power-spray buildings, scrape soil off fields, and remove fallen leaves and undergrowth from forests and mountains, according to an official at the Maeda Corporation, which is in charge of the cleanup.

That number, the official said, will soon rise to 2,000, a large deployment rarely seen on even large-sale projects like dams and bridges.

The construction companies suggest new technologies may work, but are not necessarily cost-effective.

“In such a big undertaking, cost-effectiveness becomes very important,” said Takeshi Nishikawa, an executive based in Fukushima for the Kajima Corporation, Japan’s largest construction company. The company is in charge of the cleanup in the city of Tamura, a part of which lies within the 12-mile exclusion zone. “We bring skills and expertise to the project,” Mr. Nishikawa said.

Kajima also built the reactor buildings for all six reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, leading some critics to question why control of the cleanup effort has been left to companies with deep ties to the nuclear industry.

Also worrying, industry experts say, are cleanup methods used by the construction companies that create loose contamination that can become airborne or enter the water.

At many sites, contaminated runoff from cleanup projects is not fully recovered and is being released into the environment, multiple people involved in the decontamination work said.

Makiko Inoue contributed reporting from Tokyo.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: January 8, 2013

Earlier versions of this article misspelled the name of the construction company in charge of the cleanup of the city of Tamura. It is the Kajima Corporation, not Kashima.

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181,354 People on Twitter Think They’re Experts at Twitter

Do you tweet a lot? Do you post everything on Facebook? Do you #hashtag #complete #sentences #like #this? Do you describe yourself, variously, as a social media “maven”, “master”, “guru”, “freak”, “warrior”, “evangelist” or “veteran”? (Yes, a social media veteran. As if Tumblr were a deadly war you narrowly survived.) Well: you’ve got company! There are more than 181,000 such individuals on Twitter, people who adorn their profiles with credentials like “social media freak” and “social media wonk” and “social media authority.”

RELATED: Teens Hacking Their Friends’s Twitter Accounts Is All the Rage

B.L. Ochman at Advertising Age, whose heroic research produced the final tally, first noted the trend three years ago — when she recorded, among other distinctions, 68 “social media stars” and 79 “social media ninjas” on Twitter alone — and has been keeping track ever since. This isn’t just the stuff of legitimate Twitter news-breakers like Anthony DeRosa and Andy Carvin — Ohman provides a helpful breakdown of the terms she looked for — you know, like “social media warrior.” (We’re tempted to argue that such diligence makes Ochman something of a social media warrior herself.) Ochman also warns of using “guru” — a Sanskrit term — to describe oneself:

While a great many of these self-appointed gurus are no doubt taking the title with tongue firmly planted in cheek, the fact remains: a guru is something someone else calls you, not something you call yourself. Scratch that: let’s save “guru” (Sanskrit for “teacher”) for religious figures or at least people with real unique knowledge.

I’d argue, in fact, that “social media” and “guru” should never appear in the same sentence.

Whatever the term, social media seems to be a growth industry: there were only 15,740 “mavens” (or whatever) in 2009 — less than a tenth of those represented today.

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Jordana Brewster Is 'Enamored' with the Idea of Having Twins

01/06/2013 at 05:00 PM EST

Jordana Brewster has babies on the brain – yes, you read that right: plural.

The Dallas star, 32, who has been married to movie producer Andrew Form since 2007, tells Latina she "definitely" wants two kids and is "enamored" by the idea of having twins.

"My dad was a twin, so it runs in the family," she explains. "Fingers crossed. We're thinking about having kids but I don't know when it'll happen. I feel very ready now."

When the couple does eventually expand their family, the children will be raised in a loving home.

"We FaceTime all of the time," Brewster says, of keeping the romance alive long distance. "We love that. There are times when I just say, 'I need to see you now.' And so we FaceTime a lot, or I surprise him and visit him or he does the same. It's super important … Couples shouldn't be apart for too long. We've been married for five years now and we know how important that is because otherwise you just lose touch with each other."

A big part of their bond has come from the way Form inspires his wife on a professional level.

"It's so amazing to have a husband in the business who can challenge me and we can talk about his work and my work and understand each other in that way," Brewster says. "I love getting his feedback and he likes getting mine. And of course, that has pushed me more to consider producing in the future."

And she's not just talking about babies!

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