DETROIT ? Aaron Rodgers threw two touchdown passes and the Green Bay Packers built a big lead in the third quarter, taking advantage of Ndamukong Suh's ejection and beating the Detroit Lions 27-15 Thursday.
The defending champion Packers (11-0) have won 17 straight, including the playoffs. They passed what was expected to be one of their toughest tests toward joining the 2007 New England Patriots as the NFL's only teams to have 16-0 regular seasons.
Detroit (7-4) has lost a franchise-record eight straight on Thanksgiving and added to its misery in ugly fashion.
Suh was tossed for stepping on Evan Dietrich-Smith's arm and Matthew Stafford threw three interceptions.
The Packers turned Stafford's interceptions into two TDs and a field goal.
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. ? Arkansas' football team was in mourning Sunday following the death of backup tight end Garrett Uekman.
The university said Uekman was pronounced dead at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville on Sunday.
The cause of death wasn't immediately known, but the university said Uekman was found unconscious and unresponsive in his dorm room on campus at approximately 11:15 a.m. Sunday. He was last seen playing video games by a roommate approximately an hour earlier.
When emergency services personnel arrived, Uekman was in cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 12:10 p.m.
"Garrett Uekman was a special member of our family, and we are all saddened by his passing," Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino said in a statement. "His loss is a terrible shock, and it makes you realize how precious life is."
University police Lt. Mat Mills said there were no suspicious circumstances about Uekman's death, and his body will be sent to the state medical examiner for an autopsy.
Petrino spoke briefly Sunday night, fighting back tears as he read from a statement. He noted that Uekman's final game, Arkansas' 44-17 victory over Mississippi State on Saturday, was in Little Rock's War Memorial Stadium ? where he played his high school games while at Little Rock Catholic.
Arkansas athletic director Jeff Long also spoke and said the university wasn't aware of any pre-existing medical condition with Uekman. He said the Razorbacks' players showed "shock and dismay" when told of Uekman's death at an afternoon team meeting.
Long also said the school would hold a candlelight vigil Monday night in honor of Uekman and said his family had expressed the desire for the No. 3 Razorbacks to play Friday's game at No. 1 LSU as scheduled.
"Certainly the feelings of Garrett's family (are) that football and the University of Arkansas and the Razorbacks were very important to him," Long said. "And that he would want us to continue to complete."
The 19-year-old Uekman redshirted last season for the Razorbacks and played in nine games this season. He was majoring in applied exercise science.
Uekman's parents, Danny and Michelle, released a statement through the university.
"Our son was living his dream of going to the U of A and playing football for the Razorbacks," the statement read. "He loved his school, his coaches, and his teammates and classmates, and was an influence and inspiration to so many people. We ask for your love and prayers for Garrett, our family and his friends as we all cope with this heavy and painful loss."
David Estes, the football coach at Little Rock Catholic where Uekman played in high school, said he was told by Arkansas running backs coach Tim Horton that Uekman had been found by his roommate in his dorm room on campus. Estes said he watched Uekman play and was "beaming from ear to ear" Saturday night in War Memorial Stadium as the Razorbacks beat Mississippi State.
"Garrett was any parent or coach's dream," Estes said. "He was one of those special kids and had a passion for everything. He loved Catholic High, loves UA and wanted to be a Razorback forever.
Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, left, speaks as Mitt Romney, listens during the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
Republican presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, left, speaks as Mitt Romney, listens during the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
Republican presidential candidates Herman Cain, left, speaks as Mitt Romney, looks on during the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
Republican presidential candidates Jon Huntsman, left, speaks as Michele Bachmann, looks on during the the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
From left, Republican presidential candidates, Jon Huntsman, Former Governor of Utah, Michele Bachmann, U.S. Representative from Minnesota, Ron Paul, U.S. Representative from Texas, Herman Cain, Businessman, Mitt Romney, Former Governor of Massachusetts, Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of House, Rick Perry, Texas Governor, and Rick Santorum, Former U.S. Senator, prepare to speak at the CBS News/National Journal foreign policy debate at the Benjamin Johnson Arena, Saturday, Nov. 12, 2011 in Spartanburg, S.C. (AP Photo/Richard Shiro)
El aspirante presidencial republicano Rick Perry, gobernador de Texas, habla durante el debate sobre pol?tica exterior auspiciado por CBS News/National Journal en el Benjamin Johnson Arena, el s?bado 12 de noviembre de 2011 en Spartanburg, Carolina del Sur. Perry brome? durante el debate acerca de su lapsus en un debate previo, cuando olvid? la tercera agencia gubernamental que eliminar?a si fuera elegido presidente. (AP foto/Richard Shiro)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Herman Cain contradicted himself on torture, Mitt Romney offered a prescription for challenging China that didn't add up and Newt Gingrich seemed to forget about crucial help by Pakistani intelligence in running down terrorists.
Factual missteps in the latest Republican presidential debate suggested that on some the knottiest foreign policy and national security issues of the time, contenders were out of their comfort zone. Several raised the prospect of an eventual war with Iran that the U.S., by any current measure, is ill-prepared to start.
A look at some of those claims Saturday night and how they compare with the facts:
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ROMNEY on President Barack Obama and Iran: "What he should have done is speak out when dissidents took the streets and say, 'America is with you.' And work on a covert basis to encourage the dissidents."
GINGRICH: "First of all, as maximum covert operations ? to block and disrupt the Iranian (nuclear) program, including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable. "
THE FACTS: It is widely believed that the Obama administration has been covertly attacking the Iranian nuclear program. By definition, covert action is not publicly acknowledged, so criticizing Obama for not doing something that he might very well be doing adds little to the debate. On just one front, there are strong suspicions the Obama administration either unleashed the sophisticated Stuxnet computer worm on Iran's nuclear program or supported Israel in that effort. The attack infected systems at the Bushehr power plant and set back Iran's nuclear development.
It is also believed the administration has provided secret help to Iranian dissidents, even if to little effect so far. Romney, Gingrich and most other contenders do not know what the U.S. is doing, and not doing, covertly. Michele Bachmann, as a member of the House intelligence Committee, might. If so, she's legally barred from talking about it.
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ROMNEY on China: "On Day One, it's acknowledging something which everyone knows, they're a currency manipulator. And on that basis, we also go before the WTO and bring an action against them as a currency manipulator. And that allows us to apply, selectively, tariffs where we believe they are stealing our intellectual property, hacking into our computers, or artificially lowering their prices and killing American jobs. We can't just sit back and let China run all over us."
JON HUNTSMAN: "I don't think, Mitt, you can take China to the WTO on currency-related issues."
THE FACTS: As Huntsman, former ambassador to China, said, the World Trade Organization has no specified mandate to adjudicate allegations that a country is manipulating its currency to gain an unfair trade advantage. But using currency in a trade dispute hasn't been tried, so it's unclear how that might play out in practice.
Even if the international trade panel does take the case, any remedy would come long after Day One. As a highly political case, it would drag out. For example, the U.S. and European Union have been litigating a dispute over alleged subsidies to Boeing and Airbus since 2004, with no resolution in sight.
Nor is it clear how a currency case could address the theft of U.S. intellectual property, an issue unrelated to the price of Chinese exports.
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CAIN: "I will trust the judgment of our military leaders to determine what is torture and what is not torture. That is the critical consideration."
CAIN: "I would return to that policy (waterboarding). I don't see it as torture. I see it as an enhanced interrogation technique."
THE FACTS: Cain's conclusion that waterboarding is a legitimate means of interrogation contradicts the judgment of military leaders ? and his own statement that he would be guided by them. The Army Field Manual prohibits waterboarding. It was the CIA, with the approval of the White House and Justice Department that conducted waterboarding, not the armed forces. As president, Cain could certainly decide that interrogators need not be constrained by the Army Field Manual rules. But if he did so, he would not be letting military leaders determine the tactics.
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GINGRICH: "We don't have a reliable intelligence service. We don't have independent intelligence in places like Pakistan. We rely on our supposed friends for intelligence. They may or may not be our friends. And the amount of information we might or might not have, might or might not be reliable."
THE FACTS: U.S. killing of a succession of al-Qaida figures in Pakistan, none more prized by America than Osama bin Laden, demonstrates that the United States indeed gets vital and reliable intelligence out of Pakistan. While it may have been true when Gingrich left government in 1999 that the CIA's spy network was limited, since 2001 the agency has dramatically expanded its on-the-ground operations worldwide. The CIA station in Islamabad is now one of the most important in the world and officers there are responsible for building sources and helping select targets for the long and successful campaign of drone attacks.
Gingrich is right that Pakistan's intelligence agency is an often-unreliable U.S. partner and elements of the country's power structure have supported U.S. terrorist enemies. But as the bin Laden raid shows, the CIA is hardly impotent in its ability to operate alone in Pakistan.
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ROMNEY: "The president should have built (a) credible threat of military action, and made it very clear that the United States of America is willing, in the final analysis, if necessary, to take military action to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon."
GINGRICH: "Every possible aspect short of war of breaking the regime and bringing it down. And I agree entirely with Governor Romney. If, in the end, despite all of those things, the dictatorship persists, you have to take whatever steps are necessary to break its capacity to have a nuclear weapon."
CAIN: "I would not entertain military opposition.... We could deploy our ballistic missile defense ... warships strategically in that part of the world. We have the biggest fleet of those warships in the world. And we could use them strategically in the event that they were able to fire a ballistic missile."
THE FACTS: It is an open question whether the U.S., stretched thin by two long wars and a massive debt, is in a position to make a credible threat of war against Iran right now.
As it stands, U.S. plans to put additional forces in the Middle East, including in Kuwait, are part of a military hedge against Iran. So is a program to put missile defense radars and interceptors at sites around Europe and the region. The threat of U.S. attack might become more credible in time, whether from Obama or the next president.
Meantime, Obama, like George W. Bush before him, has not ruled out military action against Iran as a final resort.
The U.S. certainly has military force readily at hand to destroy Iran's known nuclear development sites in short order. This is highly unlikely, however, because of the strategic calculation that an attack would be counterproductive and ultimately ineffective, spawning retaliation against U.S. allies and forces in the region, and merely delaying eventual nuclear weapons development.
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GINGRICH: "You're giving some country $7 billion a year. So you start off ? or, or, in the case of Egypt, $3 billion a year. So you start off every year and say, 'Here's your $3 billion, now I'll start thinking'? You ought to start off at zero and say, 'Explain to me why I should give you a penny.'"
THE FACTS: In supporting Rick Perry's proposal to make every recipient of U.S. foreign aid justify the money before it is approved, Gingrich exaggerated the amount of aid the U.S. gives to Egypt. The Congressional Research Service says total aid to Egypt is about $1.5 billion annually.
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BACHMANN: "Now President Obama has made a very fatal decision in Afghanistan. He's made the decision that by next September, our troops will be withdrawn. "
THE FACTS: By September 2012, Obama is only planning to withdraw the additional forces he sent in. Once the 33,000 "surge" troops are gone, 68,000 will be left. They are to be pulled out gradually and won't be gone until the end of 2014, barring some change in the drawdown of troops.
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RICK PERRY: "This country can sanction the Iranian central bank right now and shut down that country's economy. And that's what this president needs to do, and the American people need to stand up and force him to make that stand today."
THE FACTS: Perry is right that sanctions have stopped short of tough action against Iran's central bank, which handles the country's massive oil commerce around the world. The debate moved on without the pros and cons of that step being explored. The option of banning U.S. and European dealings with the bank is being considered by Western powers and their allies, even if it is a stretch to expect such a move would shut Iran's economy as Perry suggested. The downside risk is significant: Isolating the bank could drive up oil prices and imperil the fragile world economy.
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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Robert Burns, Jim Drinkard, Bradley Klapper, Lolita C. Baldor and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
LOS ANGELES ? The gods of ancient Greece have extended their rule to the weekend box office with a No. 1 debut for the action tale "Immortals."
The story of Greek hero Theseus took in $32 million domestically, while Adam Sandler's comedy "Jack and Jill" opened at No. 2 with $26 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The new movies bumped the animated hit "Puss in Boots" to the No. 3 spot after two weekends at the top. "Puss in Boots" earned $25.5 million, raising its domestic total to $108.8 million.
Director Clint Eastwood's "J. Edgar," a film biography starring Leonardo DiCaprio as longtime FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover, played in narrower release and opened at No. 5 with $11.5 million.
Released by Relativity Media, "Immortals" stars Henry Cavill and Freida Pinto in a tale of human heroes battling an evil king (Mickey Rourke) who aims to bring down the Olympian gods.
With males making up 60 percent of its audience, "Immortals" has a chance to corner much of the action market through Thanksgiving weekend and beyond, a period likely to be dominated by family movies such as "Happy Feet 2," "The Muppets," "Hugo" and "Arthur Christmas."
"The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn ? Part 1" does open Friday, but that blockbuster action fantasy franchise mainly draws female crowds, typically a smaller segment of the action audience.
"There's really not another action movie until you approach the Christmas holidays," said Kyle Davies, head of distribution for Relativity. "Over the next few weeks, there's no real competition for us."
"Immortals" added $36 million in 35 overseas markets, bringing its worldwide total to $68 million.
Sandler plays dual roles in "Jack and Jill," portraying a sturdy family man and his needy sister, who comes to visit for Thanksgiving.
"Jack and Jill" got off to a solid start but came in on the low end for Sandler, whose comedies typically open in the $30 million to $40 million range. Still, it continues Sandler's virtually unbroken string of strong openings for his broad comedies dating back to the late 1990s.
"A big part of his success is just that sort of Everyman appeal he has, whether it be the guys going out to have a beer or girls thinking he's just as charming as all hell," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony, which released "Jack and Jill."
"J. Edgar" played in 1,910 theaters, compared with more than 3,000 for the rest of the top-five movies. It was the weekend's grown-up choice, with 66 percent of viewers over age 50, according to distributor Warner Bros.
Like "Immortals" with action crowds, "J. Edgar" has the prospect to dominate among older viewers through Thanksgiving weekend, one of the busiest times of the year for movie theaters.
"We're the adult choice," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner. "We feel we have really good play time ahead of us going into the holiday."
"J. Edgar" will join a parade of potential Academy Awards contenders arriving before year's end as Hollywood rolls into its most diverse season, when drama, comedy, action and family films share screen time.
"This was one of the first weekends we've seen in a while that had a nice combination of films that gave us a really solid weekend," said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. "To me, this is what the holiday season is all about, having films like `Immortals' in the mix in the top-five with a drama like `J. Edgar.'"
The variety clicked with audiences this weekend. Overall revenues came in at $137 million, up 13 percent from the same weekend last year, when "Megamind" led with $29.1 million, according to Hollywood.com.
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Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. "Immortals," $32 million ($36 million international).
2. "Jack and Jill," $26 million ($2.7 million international).
3. "Puss in Boots," $25.5 million ($4.5 million international).
4. "Tower Heist," $13.2 million ($7.6 million international).
5. "J. Edgar," $11.5 million.
6. "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas," $5.9 million.
7. "In Time," $4.2 million ($8.5 million international).
8. "Paranormal Activity 3," $3.6 million ($7.1 million international).
9. "Footloose," $2.7 million.
10. "Real Steel," $2 million ($12 million international).
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Estimated weekend ticket sales at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada) for films distributed overseas by Hollywood studios, according to Rentrak:
1. "Immortals," $36 million.
2. "The Adventures of Tintin," $26.7 million.
3. "Real Steel," $12 million.
4. "In Time," $8.5 million.
5. "Tower Heist," $7.6 million.
6. "Paranormal Activity 3," $7.1 million.
7. "Contagion," $6.8 million.
8. "The Lion King," $4.8 million.
9. "Puss in Boots," $4.5 million.
10. "Moneyball," $4.2 million.
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Online:
http://www.hollywood.com
http://www.rentrak.com
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Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings, a subsidiary of Cablevision Systems Corp.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
FILE - In this Monday, March 3, 2003 file photo UNICEF goodwill ambassador and British actress Vanessa Redgrave listens to questions at a UNICEF press conference in Berlin. Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London. Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career on Sunday Nov. 13, 2011. A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism. The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia." (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
FILE - In this Monday, March 3, 2003 file photo UNICEF goodwill ambassador and British actress Vanessa Redgrave listens to questions at a UNICEF press conference in Berlin. Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London. Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career on Sunday Nov. 13, 2011. A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism. The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia." (AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
FILE -- In this Thursday, Jan. 24, 2008 file photo actress Vanessa Redgrave acknowledges the applause for her Hall of Fame prize during the distribution of the DIVA Entertainment Awards 2008 in Munich, southern Germany. Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London. Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career on Sunday Nov. 13, 2011. A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism. The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia." (AP Photo/Diether Endlicher)
FILE In this March 24, 1968 file photo actress Vanessa Redgrave and her brother Corin, right, are seen during an anti-Vietnam War rally held in Trafalgar Square, London. Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London. Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career on Sunday Nov. 13, 2011. A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism. The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia." (AP Photo)
LONDON (AP) ? Hollywood's film academy is honoring acting icon Vanessa Redgrave at a star-studded ceremony in London.
Meryl Streep, Ralph Fiennes and James Earl Jones are scheduled to join Sunday's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences tribute to Redgrave's 50-year career.
A member of a famous British acting dynasty, Redgrave is also known for her left-wing political activism.
The 74-year-old actress has been nominated for six Oscars and won for her supporting role as an anti-Nazi activist in 1977's "Julia."
In her acceptance speech, she praised the academy for not bowing to "Zionist hoodlums" who had objected to the nomination because of her support for the Palestinian cause.
She is currently starring in London's West End alongside Jones in "Driving Miss Daisy."
THURSDAY, Nov. 10 (HealthDay News) -- A program that helps elementary school students develop cooking skills while learning subjects such as geography, math, science and cultural studies may be one way to fight the growing problem of childhood obesity in the United States.
In a new study, researchers assessed an experimental food-and-nutrition education program called Cooking with Kids, in which students explore, prepare and enjoy fresh, affordable foods from a number of cultures. The program also teaches students the social skills of working together to prepare a meal and then enjoying it together.
The study included 178 fourth-grade students and their teachers who were interviewed before and after a series of cooking-plus-tasting or tasting-only classes that were integrated into the normal school curriculum.
Teachers and students who took part in both types of food classes found it to be a positive experience, and those who had the cooking classes said it gave them opportunities to improve their social skills.
Students who had the cooking-plus-tasting classes did not regard cooking-related tasks at home as chores, unlike those who had the tasting-only classes or those who had neither type of food class, the University of Colorado researchers said.
The study appears in the November/December issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior.
"This study describes student and teacher perceptions about the integration of nutrition education programs with academic curriculum topics, which is essential in justifying nutrition education's continued place in the school curriculum. It documents the importance of including cooking in school curriculum as it is a practical mechanism to promote health, social and educational skills to better prepare students for adulthood." said Leslie Cunningham-Sabo, an assistant professor at Colorado State University, in a journal news release.
Childhood obesity in the United States has tripled over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the release noted.
More information
The American Academy of Pediatrics has more about childhood obesity.
TAMPA, Fla. ? The attorney for the estranged father of actress Lindsay Lohan says he entered a not guilty plea stemming from domestic violence charges against his client.
Michael Lohan was supposed to appear before Judge Walter Heinrich in Tampa on Wednesday afternoon.
The Tampa Tribune ( http://bit.ly/uyoUcH) reports a bond hearing is scheduled for Nov. 16.
The 51-year-old Lohan was first arrested on Oct. 25. His bail was set at $5,000. A judge warned him not to make any contact with Kate Major, his on-and-off girlfriend. Two days later, he was accused of violating the terms of his release by making a harassing phone call to her.
In an unrelated matter, Los Angeles authorities say Major was arrested Monday after committing battery at Los Angeles International Airport.
Patients who swear, spit, hit and choke are an everyday hazard for many emergency nurses, according to an ongoing survey that found that 53 percent reported verbal assaults and 13 percent experienced physical attacks at work.
JOHANNESBURG ? Repression by Congo's government ahead of this month's critical presidential election could lead to even more violence in the Central African nation struggling after decades of dictatorship and civil war, the United Nations warned Wednesday.
The report from the U.N. Joint Human Rights Office in Geneva said people have been beaten and arrested just for wearing opposition party T-shirts. One man has been jailed since March for selling a newspaper that questioned President Joseph Kabila's nationality.
The U.N. said security is in the hands of "heavily underpaid, and poorly trained and equipped" security forces and police.
"The continued repression of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the pre-electoral period may increase the likelihood of individuals and political parties resorting to violent means, endanger the democratic process and lead to post-electoral violence," the report says.
The Nov. 28 presidential vote will be only the country's second democratic election in a half century. The first one in 2006 was largely organized and secured by the massive U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo. Even so, it was marred by deadly clashes between soldiers supporting Kabila and those backing his most powerful rival, Jean-Pierre Bemba.
This time around Kabila is widely expected to win after he changed the electoral system from two rounds of voting to a first-past-the-post single round. The plethora of opposition candidates note this assures Kabila of victory unless they unite behind a single a candidate, but they have been unable to overcome their egos and political ambitions to agree on one candidate.
Already there are signs of growing tensions with the vote still weeks away. Several people already have been killed and injured. Over the weekend, 16 were wounded in the southeast mining center of Lubumbashi during fighting between supporters of two rival opposition candidates.
A U.N. Security Council resolution back in June urged the Congolese government and all relevant parties to "ensure an environment conducive to a free, fair, credible, inclusive, transparent, peaceful, and timely electoral process."
Radio and TV stations supporting the opposition have been suspended, and opposition parties are not given equal access to state-controlled media.
Some political rallies have been banned, others forcefully dispersed by police. The report says there has been some improvement in the behavior of police, who earlier this year attacked unarmed and peaceful opposition protesters with batons, tear gas and firing live rounds into the air.
Opposition party members discussing the political situation in a barber shop were detained by the owner, who happened to be a soldier. They were illegally held at a military camp where they were beaten and ill-treated, the report said.
The report says there is particular concern for eastern Congo, where numerous militias and foreign rebels continue to terrorize the population. It said Rwandan-led rebels have threatened to destabilize the elections and in September started destroying voters' cards in two villages of North Kivu province to prevent people from taking part in the elections.
The report said the 188 violations it has documented in the year leading up to elections form "only a portion" of all the human rights violations committed against political opponents, human rights activists and journalists. Most are blamed on the government.
Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders vary widely across clinicsPublic release date: 9-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Takla Boujaoude tab2016@med.cornell.edu 212-821-0560 New York- Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College
Archives of General Psychiatry study suggests common diagnostic subcategories like asperger syndrome are flawed and provides questionable value
NEW YORK (Nov. 9, 2011) -- To diagnose autism spectrum disorders, clinicians typically administer a variety of tests or scales and use information from observations and parent interviews to classify individuals into subcategories listed in standard psychiatric diagnostic manuals. This process of forming "best-estimate clinical diagnoses" has long been considered the gold standard, but a new study demonstrates that these diagnoses are widely variable across centers, suggesting that this may not be the best method for making diagnoses.
"Clinicians at one center may use a label like Asperger syndrome to describe a set of symptoms, while those at another center may use an entirely different label for the same symptoms. This is not a good way to make a diagnosis," says the study's lead investigator, Dr. Catherine Lord, director of the Institute for Brain Development, a partnership of Weill Cornell Medical College, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center. "Autism spectrum disorders are just that -- a spectrum of disorders. Instead of using subcategories, it would be better to simply report the results from agreed-upon tests and scales. This approach would provide more consistent and accurate information about individual patients."
The new study, published on Nov. 7 in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, adds to previous evidence that standardized diagnostic instruments accurately predict who has autism and will continue to have it over time. It is also in line with recent skepticism about the value of categorical groupings of autism spectrum disorders in standard diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV text revision (DSM-IV-TR) and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases. "There has been a lot of controversy about whether there should be separate diagnoses for autism spectrum disorder, especially Asperger syndrome," Dr. Lord says. "Most of the research has suggested that Asperger syndrome really isn't different from other autism spectrum disorders."
In the new study, Dr. Lord and co-author Dr. Eva Petkova, a biostatistician at NYU, studied about 2,100 people between the ages of 4 and 18 who were given a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder by clinicians at 12 university-based centers. The participants were recruited from the Simons Simplex Collection, a multi-site project aimed at studying de novo genetic variations in families affected by autism spectrum disorders. The clinicians, who are experts in autism spectrum disorders, received training on how to administer and score the same set of cognitive tests and standardized instruments assessing social and communication skills and repetitive behavior, including the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and the Autism Diagnostic Interview -- Revised (ADI-R). However, they received no specific training in making best-estimate clinical diagnoses. They used the DSM-IV-TR to classify individuals into three categories of varying severity: autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder -- not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and Asperger syndrome.
The researchers found that diagnoses of specific categories of autism spectrum disorder varied dramatically from site to site across the country. For instance, clinicians at one site gave only a diagnosis of autistic disorder, while clinicians at other sites gave that diagnosis to fewer than half of the participants. The proportion of individuals receiving a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome ranged from zero to nearly 21 percent across sites. These site differences were the second most important factor accounting for variation in the diagnoses (after social and communication deficits). However, the individuals with autism spectrum disorders did not vary significantly across sites in terms of their demographic information or developmental and behavioral characteristics, as measured by standardized instruments.
"The labels are pretty meaningless, because people are using the same general terms as if they mean the same thing, when they really don't," Dr. Lord says. "Because clinicians may not be using labels appropriately or diagnosing accurately, they may not be getting a sense of children's strengths and weaknesses and what therapy is best for them."
Clinicians across centers varied in how they weighed different factors and in the thresholds they set to make diagnoses. Although verbal IQ strongly influenced diagnoses at most centers, there were striking differences in the cutoff points used at each site to classify individuals into specific categories. The effect of age on diagnoses, and the specific age cutoff points, also varied dramatically across sites. "This doesn't make sense. You don't want to be told that you have a cold if you're 7 and a bacterial infection if you're 12, when you present with identical symptoms," Dr. Lord says.
The variability in clinical diagnoses could reflect regional differences, Dr. Lord says. For instance, services in some regions may be available only to children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder, but this same diagnosis may be stigmatizing or limit school options in other regions. Clinicians may also vary in how they take into account an individual's level of irritability and hyperactivity when judging the severity of autism spectrum disorder, Dr. Lord adds.
Because of the inconsistencies in best-estimate clinical diagnoses, the use of standard diagnostic manuals to classify individuals into subcategories of autism spectrum disorder should be reconsidered, Dr. Lord says. "It's very important for clinicians to use information from dimensions that directly relate to autism spectrum disorders, in addition to verbal IQ and the level of irritability and hyperactivity," she says. "The take-home message is that there really should be just a general category of autism spectrum disorder, and then clinicians should be able to describe a child's severity on these separate dimensions."
"This is an extremely important paper regarding our understanding of the various components of autism spectrum disorder from a group that has been crucial in defining the features of autism over many years," says Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, scientific director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. "They call attention to quantifiable traits rather than existing diagnostic categories. We are proud to have funded this project and to have gathered the Simons Simplex Collection on which this study is based under Dr. Lord's leadership."
In future research, Dr. Lord will work on improving diagnostic instruments --making them shorter, easier to use, and more appropriate for a wider variety of patients -- and assessing whether certain dimensions are really distinct from one another. This work will build on her previous pioneering efforts in developing these commonly used scales.
###
Additional collaborating institutions include Columbia University Medical Center in New York City; the Simons Foundation in New York City; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga.; Emory University School of Medicine and Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Ga.; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; the University of Washington in Seattle; Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.; Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.; the University of California, Los Angeles; Montreal Children's Hospital in Quebec, Canada; the University of Missouri in Columbia; Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas; the University of Illinois at Chicago; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio; the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and Indiana University in Bloomington.
This research was funded by the Simons Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The Medical Center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is now among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and state and one of the largest in the United States. For more information, please visit www.cumc.columbia.edu.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, based in New York City, is the nation's largest not-for-profit, non-sectarian hospital, with 2,409 beds. The Hospital has nearly 2 million inpatient and outpatient visits in a year, including 12,797 deliveries and 195,294 visits to its emergency departments. NewYork-Presbyterian's 6,144 affiliated physicians and 19,376 staff provide state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine at five major centers: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division. One of the most comprehensive health care institutions in the world, the Hospital is committed to excellence in patient care, research, education and community service. NewYork-Presbyterian is the #1 hospital in the New York metropolitan area and is consistently ranked among the best academic medical institutions in the nation, according to U.S.News & World Report. The Hospital has academic affiliations with two of the nation's leading medical colleges: Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For more information, visit www.nyp.org.
Weill Cornell Medical College
Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University's medical school located in New York City, is committed to excellence in research, teaching, patient care and the advancement of the art and science of medicine, locally, nationally and globally. Physicians and scientists of Weill Cornell Medical College are engaged in cutting-edge research from bench to bedside, aimed at unlocking mysteries of the human body in health and sickness and toward developing new treatments and prevention strategies. In its commitment to global health and education, Weill Cornell has a strong presence in places such as Qatar, Tanzania, Haiti, Brazil, Austria and Turkey. Through the historic Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the Medical College is the first in the U.S. to offer its M.D. degree overseas. Weill Cornell is the birthplace of many medical advances -- including the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer, the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, and most recently, the world's first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally conscious brain-injured patient. Weill Cornell Medical College is affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where its faculty provides comprehensive patient care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The Medical College is also affiliated with the Methodist Hospital in Houston. For more information, visit weill.cornell.edu.
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Diagnoses of autism spectrum disorders vary widely across clinicsPublic release date: 9-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Takla Boujaoude tab2016@med.cornell.edu 212-821-0560 New York- Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center/Weill Cornell Medical College
Archives of General Psychiatry study suggests common diagnostic subcategories like asperger syndrome are flawed and provides questionable value
NEW YORK (Nov. 9, 2011) -- To diagnose autism spectrum disorders, clinicians typically administer a variety of tests or scales and use information from observations and parent interviews to classify individuals into subcategories listed in standard psychiatric diagnostic manuals. This process of forming "best-estimate clinical diagnoses" has long been considered the gold standard, but a new study demonstrates that these diagnoses are widely variable across centers, suggesting that this may not be the best method for making diagnoses.
"Clinicians at one center may use a label like Asperger syndrome to describe a set of symptoms, while those at another center may use an entirely different label for the same symptoms. This is not a good way to make a diagnosis," says the study's lead investigator, Dr. Catherine Lord, director of the Institute for Brain Development, a partnership of Weill Cornell Medical College, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Medical Center. "Autism spectrum disorders are just that -- a spectrum of disorders. Instead of using subcategories, it would be better to simply report the results from agreed-upon tests and scales. This approach would provide more consistent and accurate information about individual patients."
The new study, published on Nov. 7 in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, adds to previous evidence that standardized diagnostic instruments accurately predict who has autism and will continue to have it over time. It is also in line with recent skepticism about the value of categorical groupings of autism spectrum disorders in standard diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV text revision (DSM-IV-TR) and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases. "There has been a lot of controversy about whether there should be separate diagnoses for autism spectrum disorder, especially Asperger syndrome," Dr. Lord says. "Most of the research has suggested that Asperger syndrome really isn't different from other autism spectrum disorders."
In the new study, Dr. Lord and co-author Dr. Eva Petkova, a biostatistician at NYU, studied about 2,100 people between the ages of 4 and 18 who were given a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder by clinicians at 12 university-based centers. The participants were recruited from the Simons Simplex Collection, a multi-site project aimed at studying de novo genetic variations in families affected by autism spectrum disorders. The clinicians, who are experts in autism spectrum disorders, received training on how to administer and score the same set of cognitive tests and standardized instruments assessing social and communication skills and repetitive behavior, including the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) and the Autism Diagnostic Interview -- Revised (ADI-R). However, they received no specific training in making best-estimate clinical diagnoses. They used the DSM-IV-TR to classify individuals into three categories of varying severity: autistic disorder, pervasive developmental disorder -- not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), and Asperger syndrome.
The researchers found that diagnoses of specific categories of autism spectrum disorder varied dramatically from site to site across the country. For instance, clinicians at one site gave only a diagnosis of autistic disorder, while clinicians at other sites gave that diagnosis to fewer than half of the participants. The proportion of individuals receiving a diagnosis of Asperger syndrome ranged from zero to nearly 21 percent across sites. These site differences were the second most important factor accounting for variation in the diagnoses (after social and communication deficits). However, the individuals with autism spectrum disorders did not vary significantly across sites in terms of their demographic information or developmental and behavioral characteristics, as measured by standardized instruments.
"The labels are pretty meaningless, because people are using the same general terms as if they mean the same thing, when they really don't," Dr. Lord says. "Because clinicians may not be using labels appropriately or diagnosing accurately, they may not be getting a sense of children's strengths and weaknesses and what therapy is best for them."
Clinicians across centers varied in how they weighed different factors and in the thresholds they set to make diagnoses. Although verbal IQ strongly influenced diagnoses at most centers, there were striking differences in the cutoff points used at each site to classify individuals into specific categories. The effect of age on diagnoses, and the specific age cutoff points, also varied dramatically across sites. "This doesn't make sense. You don't want to be told that you have a cold if you're 7 and a bacterial infection if you're 12, when you present with identical symptoms," Dr. Lord says.
The variability in clinical diagnoses could reflect regional differences, Dr. Lord says. For instance, services in some regions may be available only to children with a diagnosis of autistic disorder, but this same diagnosis may be stigmatizing or limit school options in other regions. Clinicians may also vary in how they take into account an individual's level of irritability and hyperactivity when judging the severity of autism spectrum disorder, Dr. Lord adds.
Because of the inconsistencies in best-estimate clinical diagnoses, the use of standard diagnostic manuals to classify individuals into subcategories of autism spectrum disorder should be reconsidered, Dr. Lord says. "It's very important for clinicians to use information from dimensions that directly relate to autism spectrum disorders, in addition to verbal IQ and the level of irritability and hyperactivity," she says. "The take-home message is that there really should be just a general category of autism spectrum disorder, and then clinicians should be able to describe a child's severity on these separate dimensions."
"This is an extremely important paper regarding our understanding of the various components of autism spectrum disorder from a group that has been crucial in defining the features of autism over many years," says Dr. Gerald D. Fischbach, scientific director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. "They call attention to quantifiable traits rather than existing diagnostic categories. We are proud to have funded this project and to have gathered the Simons Simplex Collection on which this study is based under Dr. Lord's leadership."
In future research, Dr. Lord will work on improving diagnostic instruments --making them shorter, easier to use, and more appropriate for a wider variety of patients -- and assessing whether certain dimensions are really distinct from one another. This work will build on her previous pioneering efforts in developing these commonly used scales.
###
Additional collaborating institutions include Columbia University Medical Center in New York City; the Simons Foundation in New York City; the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, Ga.; Emory University School of Medicine and Marcus Autism Center, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Ga.; Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania; the University of Washington in Seattle; Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.; Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.; the University of California, Los Angeles; Montreal Children's Hospital in Quebec, Canada; the University of Missouri in Columbia; Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas; the University of Illinois at Chicago; Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center in Ohio; the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis; and Indiana University in Bloomington.
This research was funded by the Simons Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health.
Columbia University Medical Center
Columbia University Medical Center provides international leadership in basic, pre-clinical and clinical research, in medical and health sciences education, and in patient care. The Medical Center trains future leaders and includes the dedicated work of many physicians, scientists, public health professionals, dentists, and nurses at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, the Mailman School of Public Health, the College of Dental Medicine, the School of Nursing, the biomedical departments of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and allied research centers and institutions. Established in 1767, Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons was the first institution in the country to grant the M.D. degree and is now among the most selective medical schools in the country. Columbia University Medical Center is home to the largest medical research enterprise in New York City and state and one of the largest in the United States. For more information, please visit www.cumc.columbia.edu.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, based in New York City, is the nation's largest not-for-profit, non-sectarian hospital, with 2,409 beds. The Hospital has nearly 2 million inpatient and outpatient visits in a year, including 12,797 deliveries and 195,294 visits to its emergency departments. NewYork-Presbyterian's 6,144 affiliated physicians and 19,376 staff provide state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine at five major centers: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, NewYork-Presbyterian/Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, NewYork-Presbyterian/The Allen Hospital and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division. One of the most comprehensive health care institutions in the world, the Hospital is committed to excellence in patient care, research, education and community service. NewYork-Presbyterian is the #1 hospital in the New York metropolitan area and is consistently ranked among the best academic medical institutions in the nation, according to U.S.News & World Report. The Hospital has academic affiliations with two of the nation's leading medical colleges: Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For more information, visit www.nyp.org.
Weill Cornell Medical College
Weill Cornell Medical College, Cornell University's medical school located in New York City, is committed to excellence in research, teaching, patient care and the advancement of the art and science of medicine, locally, nationally and globally. Physicians and scientists of Weill Cornell Medical College are engaged in cutting-edge research from bench to bedside, aimed at unlocking mysteries of the human body in health and sickness and toward developing new treatments and prevention strategies. In its commitment to global health and education, Weill Cornell has a strong presence in places such as Qatar, Tanzania, Haiti, Brazil, Austria and Turkey. Through the historic Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar, the Medical College is the first in the U.S. to offer its M.D. degree overseas. Weill Cornell is the birthplace of many medical advances -- including the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer, the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, and most recently, the world's first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally conscious brain-injured patient. Weill Cornell Medical College is affiliated with NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where its faculty provides comprehensive patient care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. The Medical College is also affiliated with the Methodist Hospital in Houston. For more information, visit weill.cornell.edu.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The Asus ET2410-06 ($899.99 list at Best Buy) could've been a contender. It has a fast Core i3 dual-core processor, a responsive touch screen, wireless keyboard and mouse, and future proofed ports, like HDMI and USB 3.0. However its bouncy screen and lack of Wi-Fi are both considered necessities in a touchscreen all-in-one PC. This system is one of the few that are not recommended.
Design and Features
The ET2410-06 is quite attractive, and shows that Asus has come a long way since its Eee Top PCs, like the Asus Eee Top 1602 ($599 list, 3.5 stars). The Eee Top line was one of the first inexpensive systems to challenge the Apple iMac's dominance of the all-in-one PC market, but its design is clunky compared with today's all-in-one PCs.
The ET2410-06 follows the current conventional design for all-in-ones: a stand with a single pivot for tilting the screen, recessed two-finger touchscreen with IR-sensing technology, and a side-mounted tray-loading DVD drive. There are some drawbacks to using this design on a touch-screen PC, however?the screen bounces. If you tap the screen quickly, as if you were dismissing a dialog box, the screen continues to shake for a few more seconds. This shows that the ET2410-06' screen itself is poorly damped, since the screen of other competitors give a little when touched but quickly stop moving shortly after you finish touching the screen. Other touch-screen systems like the HP TouchSmart 610-1150y ($1,199.99 list, 4.5 stars), Toshiba DX735-D3201 ($899.99 list, 3.5 stars), and Dell Inspiron One 2305 (IO2305-4400ELS) ($799.99 list, 3 stars) do not exhibit extra screen bouncing during normal operation.
The ET2410-06 is well equipped. It has two USB 3.0 ports and a combo eSATA/USB 2.0 port on the left side, three more USB 2.0 ports in back, HDMI-in, HDMI-out, and VGA-in. HDMI-in and VGA-in are important, since they can be used to stretch the usable life of the monitor by using the system's display when the internal components become obsolete. You can also hook up devices like a DVR or Apple TV via the HDMI-in port as well. The system has a wireless keyboard and mouse, which are almost a must have on all-in-one systems, and the keyboard easily slots below the screen for storage.
But there's huge feature missing that's a deal-breaker?Wi-Fi. The ET2410-06 has none, so you're limited to wired Ethernet networking only. This omission is inexcusable on a system that's meant to be placed anywhere in your house or office, possibly, away from the cable modem or router. Why have a wireless keyboard and mouse, then have to connect an ugly wire to the back so you can surf the Internet? It's counter intuitive. The majority of households aren't wired with networking cables: some laptops and most mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets use Wi-Fi exclusively. Sure, you could add W-Fi via a USB adapter, but its clunky looking, adds unneeded complexity, and should not be an extra expense for a $900 system. Lack of Wi-Fi is a fatal flaw for anything but a bare bones entry-level tower desktop, since all of the ET2410-06's competitors from HP, Dell, Toshiba, and other PC manufacturers include Wi-Fi as standard equipment.
The system comes with a 1TB hard drive and a DVD burner, though a Blu-ray drive would be nicer to show off the 23-inch 1,920-by-1,080 resolution (1080p HD) screen. The system is free of bloatware, thanks to the inclusion of Best Buy's PC app. The Best Buy app is an online store for buying and downloading programs, that way you can pick and choose the programs you want instead of having them forced on you. The system comes with the usual Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, plus Microsoft's Touch Pack for Windows 7 and Trend Micro Titanium Anti-Virus (60-day trial). Asus has very little in the way of pre-loaded touch apps, so you'll have to find your own reasons to use the (wobbly) touch screen.
Performance
The disappointment doesn't extend to the ET2410-06's performance, however. Its Intel Core i3-2120 processor and 4GB of memory helped the system return good scores on multimedia and day-to-day productivity tests. The ET2410-06 finished encoding a video in Handbrake in 1 minute 38 seconds, and ran through Photoshop CS5 in 3:37. Both are very good for an all-in-one PC: the ET2410-06 was faster than the Toshiba DX735-D3201 (1:52 Handbrake, 4:05 CS5) and Dell Inspiron One 2305 (IO2305-4400ELS) (1:47 Handbrake; 3:54 CS5).
It also turned in a decent score on the PCMark7 (2,614 points), which measures the system's day-to-day performance. The Toshiba DX735-D3201 yielded faster results (2,690), while the Dell 2305 (2,331) was slower. Needless to say, none of the systems will be very good at high-end 3D gaming, since all use low powered integrated graphics?none of which could run 3DMark 11.
It's hard to compare the Asus ET2410-06 to the competition on anything but price, since the other systems don't have the ET2410-06's fatal weakness (lack of Wi-Fi). The current touchscreen all-in-one Editors' Choice, the HP TouchSmart 610-1150y ($1,199.99 list, 4.5 stars) is one of the best touchscreen all-in-ones available, with the most intelligent ergonomics and a fast quad-core PC, it has all the bells and whistles that justify the higher price tag. Even the lower-priced systems, like the Toshiba DX735-D3201 and Dell Inspiron One 2305, are more stable than the ET2410-06during touch operations, and though the ET2410-06 is a decent performer on our benchmark tests, the Dell 2305 and Toshiba DX735-D3201 are close, and simply have necessary features, like more memory and Wi-Fi. It's hard to recommend the Asus ET2410-06 to anyone except those who absolutely know they have easy access to wired Ethernet.
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE Compare the Asus ET2410-06 with several other desktops side by side.
More desktop reviews: ??? Sony VAIO VPC-L231FX/W ??? Asus ET2410-06 ??? HP TouchSmart 320-1030 ??? HP Pavilion p7-1126s ??? Lenovo H420 (7752-1YU) ?? more
LONDON?? A huge crash involving 34 vehicles on a highway in southwestern England killed at least seven people and injured 51, British police said Saturday.
The crash on Friday night involved explosions, and cars and tractor trailers burning "literally to the ground," Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham told reporters. Police expect the death toll to rise and they fear they may find more bodies in the wreckage, Bangham said.
Video footage shown on British news channels showed large balls of fire consuming trucks, and billowing smoke at the scene.
It was not immediately clear what caused the collision on the M5 highway, but police said foggy conditions and wet road surfaces were partly to blame. Road accidents of this scale are rare in Britain, and rescuers have described the pile-up as one of the worst in living memory.
The affected section of the busy highway has been closed in both directions as police remove all vehicles for forensic examination. The highway will not be reopened until Sunday at the earliest, police said.
Paul Slaven, a fire department official from the region, told the BBC earlier that the pile-up Friday evening on the M5 highway involved 20 cars and six trucks. He said the incident was the "worst road traffic collision anyone can remember" in the area.
Police said a section of the M5 highway would remain closed for at least 24 hours, and released a hotline number for people concerned about friends or family who may have been involved in the accident.
Tom Hamill, of Wells, who witnessed the accident, told BBC: "I'd slowed right down and had veered into the central reservation and I think that saved our lives ? the fog lifted and I saw utter carnage.
"The thing that made me realize how bad it was, was you could hear the thud of cars hitting into lorries: One car overtook us going at about 60 or 70 miles an hour and just crashed straight into a lorry.
"I could hear people screaming and shouting. One woman who was carrying a baby and child was desperate ? I helped the child over the central reservation and we all just tried to get as far away from the fire as possible."
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Confirming rumors earlier reported by Bloomberg, mobile carrier France T?l?com-Orange and advertising juggernaut Publicis Groupe have teamed up to launch a venture capital fund. The companies have committed to jointly put in 150 million euros (presumably split 50/50), and are seeking outside investors to double the size of the fund, which will focus on backing budding entrepreneurs building digital companies in France and the rest of Europe. Bloomberg pegged the size of the fund at 'more than 100 million euros'. If enough investors line up to back the new fund, it will reach its actual target size of 300 million euros ($411.5 million).
Worcester, Mass. ? The stereotype of a disaffected youth finding solace in an underground movement might not be that far off in the case of a Massachusetts man appearing in court Friday for charges of attempting to bomb key government buildings to support Al Qaeda?s cause, say some terrorism experts.
By many accounts, 26-year-old Rezwan Ferdaus lived a good life. He played drums in a band in high school. After graduating from the private, secular Northeastern University, he lived in the basement of his family?s whitewashed home in an upper-class suburb west of Boston.
But at Mr. Ferdaus's court appearance last month, his mother, surrounded by a large contingent of friends and extended family, sobbed in the benches as guards walked her son in handcuffed, his tired but calm eyes meeting hers. Ferdaus is charged with six counts related to plotting to kill US soldiers in Iraq and to bomb the Pentagon and US Capitol with explosives carried by model airplanes. Facing more than 80 years in prison, he pleaded not guilty to all counts. He is slated to be back in federal court Friday afternoon in Worcester, Mass., for a bail hearing, where prosecutors plan to ask he be held without bail.
IN PICTURES: American jihadis
Terrorism experts say Ferdaus fits the bill for a typical Al Qaeda recruit.
?He seems like a classic case,? says Michael Ryan, a terrorism expert for the Middle East Institute who has spent the past two years researching radical jihadist Internet material for his next book.
Al Qaeda Internet magazines can be frank about the kinds of people they seek: isolated, oftentimes those who feel humiliated by society and, surprisingly, people who are not knowledgeable about Islam, Mr. Ryan says.
This last point, he says, ?is counterintuitive to what you usually get in American news.? Al Qaeda believes Muslim clerics have sold out to governments and institutions, so longtime practitioners of the religion aren?t helpful to Al Qaeda?s cause. The people who don?t understand Islam very well, perhaps because they lack a religious education or are recent converts, tend to be the ones who jump at Al Qaeda?s romanticized version of the religion, Ryan says.
It is not known whether Ferdaus grew up as a Muslim or converted on his own. But court documents written by FBI agents who monitored Ferdaus paint the picture of a man who turned radical after being inspired by right-wing religious websites and videos he began browsing more than a year ago.
?He realized ?how evil? America is and that jihad is the solution,? wrote an FBI agent in an affidavit, quoting Ferdaus.
Ryan says Al Qaeda recruiters also look for young men with no prior criminal record or previous affiliation with radical groups. Except for a prank he pulled with his friends in high school, Ferdaus fits that model, as well. And his Internet browsing seems to be his first contact with the organized right-wing.
Ferdaus, who studied physics, also matches patterns of other would-be bombers in the US. They often have some kind of technical education and feel disconnected from wider society, Ryan says.
Al Qaeda preys on that detachment and acts ???as secret friends??
Cambridge-based Jessica Stern, a terrorism expert who has served on the staff of the National Security Council, agrees with that assessment of most young, American Al Qaeda sympathizers.
???The typical recruit, the one thing we can say they share, is that they are seeking an identity different from what they???re getting in their suburban town,??
Ms. Stern goes so far as to call the recent increase in terrorist plots by Americans of all radical beliefs ?a fad.?
?It?s a fad-ish way to express alienation or dissatisfaction,? she says.
A modern education, suburbia, and an untraceable sense of loneliness: There?s an aspect of this case that rings true for many people.
?Anyone who?s ever been in adolescence, there were moments we thought, ?Maybe there isn?t a place for me in all of this,? ? Ryan says.
For Ferdaus, joining jihad may have quelled those doubts.
?And then [Al Qaeda] just comes in here on a magic carpet,? Ryan says, ?trying to give meaning to somebody?s life.?
RECOMMENDED: Osama bin Laden: 7 books that offer insight into the man and his actions
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Public release date: 9-Nov-2011
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The disappointment doesn't extend to the ET2410-06's performance, however. Its Intel Core i3-2120 processor and 4GB of memory helped the system return good scores on multimedia and day-to-day productivity tests. The ET2410-06 finished encoding a video in Handbrake in 1 minute 38 seconds, and ran through Photoshop CS5 in 3:37. Both are very good for an all-in-one PC: the ET2410-06 was faster than the Toshiba DX735-D3201 (1:52 Handbrake, 4:05 CS5) and Dell Inspiron One 2305 (IO2305-4400ELS) (1:47 Handbrake; 3:54 CS5). 
Confirming rumors earlier reported by