McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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#OccupyCheerios: A Facebook Revolt

It wasn’t an obvious forum for an anti-GMO protest.

A YouTube video posted on Cheerio’s Facebook page depicts an elderly woman leaning over the highchair of her infant grandchild, cooing about family and the holidays, drawing a map with pieces of cereal representing relative’s far-flung houses. “But don’t you worry,” the grandmother says, pushing two Cheerios together, “we’ll always be together for Christmas.”

More than 1,200 users have commented on the vintage Cheerios commercial since it was posted last week, expressing outrage over the General Mills-owned brand’s use of genetically modified ingredients. Commenters have also been critical—like heavy-exclamation-points-use critical—of General Mills’ significant financial support of Prop. 37, California’s defeated GMO-labeling ballot initiative

Comments like “Can you please inform the public exactly why it is that General Mills spent $ 1.2 million to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs????” and “Nostalgic old commercials are no substitute for healthy ingredients. I won’t buy Cheerios until they are GMO-free” are a far cry from the stories of spending holidays with family—and perhaps a bit of Cheerios nostalgia—the post was surely intended to elicit.

The protest campaign was stoked by GMO Inside, an organization born of the failed Yes on 37 campaign. The group also called on people to comment-bomb a Cheerios app, which has since been removed from the company’s Facebook page. But beyond that, Cheerios’ response to the criticism has been . . . nothing. Anti-GMO comments are still piling up on the post, and no new material has been added to page in order to bury the video in the timeline.

Do 1,256 comments (and counting) cancel out $ 1.2 million of anti-Prop. 37 funding? Of course not. But just as the Occupy-style tactics being employed by protesters at Cooper Union and the Michigan State Capitol exhibit, showing up and voicing an opinion can be a powerful gesture, even if it’s not overpowering. 

Similar stories on TakePart

• Will GMOs Spell the End of Mexican Maize?

• Kellogg Recalls 2.8 Million Boxes of Cereal Due to Hazardous Metallic ‘Surprise’

• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Nude Protests, Stripped Down

---

Willy Blackmore is the food editor at TakePart. He has also written about food, art, and agriculture for such publications as Los Angeles Magazine, The Awl, GOOD, LA Weekly, The New Inquiry, and BlackBook. Email Willy | TakePart.com

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Singer feared dead in Mexican plane crash

MONTERREY, Mexico (AP) — Mexico’s music world mourned Jenni Rivera, the U.S.-born singer presumed killed in a plane crash whose soulful voice and openness about her personal troubles had made her a Mexican-American superstar.

Authorities have not confirmed her death, but Rivera’s relatives in the U.S. say they have few doubts that she was on the Learjet 25 that disintegrated on impact Sunday in rugged territory in Nuevo Leon state in northern Mexico.

“My son Lupillo told me that effectively it was Jenni’s plane that crashed and that everyone on board died,” her father, Pedro Rivera told dozens of reporters gathered in front of his Los Angeles-area home. “I believe my daughter’s body is unrecognizable.”

He said that his son would fly to Monterrey early Monday to identify her presumed remains

Messages of condolence poured in from fellow musicians and celebrities.

Mexican songstress and actress Lucero wrote on her Twitter account: “What terrible news! Rest in peace … My deepest condolences for her family and friends.” Rivera’s colleague on the Mexican show “The Voice of Mexico,” pop star Paulina Rubio, said on her Twitter account: “My friend! Why? There is no consolation. God, please help me!”

Born in Long Beach, California, Rivera was at the peak of her career as perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated regional style influenced by the norteno, cumbia and ranchero styles.

A 43-year-old mother of five children and grandmother of two, the woman known as the “Diva de la Banda” was known for her frank talk about her struggles to give a good life to her children despite a series of setbacks.

She was recently divorced from her third husband, was once detained at a Mexico City airport with tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and she publicly apologized after her brother assaulted a drunken fan who verbally attacked her in 2011.

Her openness about her personal troubles endeared her to millions in the U.S. and Mexico.

“I am the same as the public, as my fans,” she told The Associated Press in an interview last March.

Rivera sold 15 million records, and recently won two Billboard Mexican Music Awards: Female Artist of the Year and Banda Album of the Year for “Joyas prestadas: Banda.” She was nominated for Latin Grammys in 2002, 2008 and 2011.

Transportation and Communications Minister Gerardo Ruiz Esparza said “everything points toward” the wreckage belonging to the plane carrying Rivera and six other people to Toluca, outside Mexico City, from Monterrey, where the singer had just given a concert.

“There is nothing recognizable, neither material nor human” in the wreckage found in the state of Nuevo Leon, Ruiz Esparza said. The impact was so powerful that the remains of the plane “are scattered over an area of 250 to 300 meters. It is almost unrecognizable.”

A mangled California driver’s license with Rivera’s name and picture was found in the crash site debris.

No cause was given for the plane’s crash, but its wreckage was found near the town of Iturbide in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Oriental, where the terrain is very rough.

The Learjet 25, number N345MC, took off from Monterrey at 3:30 a.m. local time and was reported missing about 10 minutes later. It was registered to Starwood Management of Las Vegas, Nevada, according to FAA records. It was built in 1969 and had a current registration through 2015.

Also believed aboard the plane were her publicist, Arturo Rivera, her lawyer, makeup artist and the flight crew.

Though drug trafficking was the theme of some of her songs, she was not considered a singer of “narco corridos,” or ballads glorifying drug lords like other groups, such as Los Tigres del Norte. She was better known for singing about her troubles in love and disdain for men.

Her parents were Mexicans who had migrated to the United States. Two of her five brothers, Lupillo and Juan Rivera, are also well-known singers of grupero music.

She studied business administration and formally debuted on the music scene in 1995 with the release of her album “Chacalosa”. Due to its success, she recorded two more independent albums, “We Are Rivera” and “Farewell to Selena,” a tribute album to slain singer Selena that helped expand her following.

At the end of the 1990s, Rivera was signed by Sony Music and released two more albums. But widespread success came for her when she joined Fonovisa and released her 2005 album titled “Partier, Rebellious and Daring.”

Besides being a singer, she is also a businesswoman and actress, appearing in the indie film Filly Brown, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, as the incarcerated mother of Filly Brown.

She was filming the third season of “I love Jenni,” which followed her as she shared special moments with her children and as she toured through Mexico and the United States. She also has the reality shows: “Jenni Rivera Presents: Chiquis and Raq-C” and her daughter’s “Chiquis ‘n Control.”

In 2009, she was detained at the Mexico City airport when she declared $ 20,000 in cash but was really carrying $ 52,167. She was taken into custody. She said it was an innocent mistake and authorities gave her the benefit of the doubt and released her.

In 2011, her brother Juan assaulted a drunken fan at a popular fair in Guanajuato. In the face of heavy criticism among her fans and on social networks, Rivera publicly apologized for the incident during a concert in Mexico City, telling her fans: “Thank you for accepting me as I am, with my virtues and defects.”

On Saturday night, Rivera had given a concert before thousands of fans in Monterrey. After the concert she gave a press conference during which she spoke of her emotional state following her recent divorce from former Major League Baseball pitcher Esteban Loaiza, who played for teams including the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.

“I can’t get caught up in the negative because that destroys you. Perhaps trying to move away from my problems and focus on the positive is the best I can do. I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other woman,” she said Saturday night. “The number of times I have fallen down is the number of times I have gotten up.”

Rivera had announced in October that she was divorcing Loaiza after two years of marriage.

There have been several high-profile crashes involving Learjets, known as swift, longer-distance passenger aircraft popular with corporate executives, entertainers and government officials.

A Learjet carrying pro-golfer Payne Stewart and five others crashed in northeastern South Dakota in 1999. Investigators said the plane lost cabin pressure and all on board died after losing consciousness for lack of oxygen. The aircraft flew for several hours on autopilot before running out of fuel and crashing in a corn field.

Former Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker was severely injured in a 2008 Learjet crash in South Carolina that killed four people.

That same year, a Learjet slammed into rush-hour traffic in a posh Mexico City neighborhood, killing Mexico’s No. 2 government official, Interior Secretary Juan Camilo Mourino, and eight others on the plane, plus five people on the ground.

___

Associated Press Writer Galia Garcia-Palafox and Olga R. Rodriguez contributed to this report from Mexico City.

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Britain launches genome database to improve patient care

LONDON (Reuters) – Up to 100,000 Britons suffering from cancer and rare diseases are to have their genetic codes fully sequenced and mapped as part of government efforts to boost drug development and improve treatment.

Britain will be the first country to introduce a database of genetic sequences into a mainstream health service, officials say, giving doctors a more advanced understanding of a patient’s illness and what drugs and other treatments they need.

It could significantly reduce the number of premature deaths from cancer within a generation, Prime Minister David Cameron‘s office said in a statement.

“By unlocking the power of DNA data, the NHS (National Health Service) will lead the global race for better tests, better drugs and above all better care,” Cameron said on Monday.

His government has set aside 100 million pounds ($ 160 million) for the project in the taxpayer-funded NHS over the next three to five years.

Harpal Kumar, chief executive of the charity Cancer Research UK, said the work would uncover new information from which doctors and scientists will learn about the biology of cancers and develop new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat them.

He said some targeted, or personalized, cancer treatments such as Novartis’ Gleevec, or imatinib – a drug for chronic myeloid leukemia – are already helping to treat patients more effectively.

Some critics of the project, known as the “UK genome plan”, have voiced concerns about how the data will be used and shared with third parties, including with commercial organizations such as drug companies.

Genewatch, a campaign group fighting for genetic science and technologies to be used in the public interest, has said anyone with access to the database could use the genetic codes to identify and track every individual on it and their relatives.

Cameron’s office said the genome sequencing would be entirely voluntary and patients would be able to opt out without affecting their NHS care. It said the data would be made anonymous before it is stored.

($ 1 = 0.6242 British pounds)

(Reporting by Kate Kelland; Editing by Stephen Powell and Tom Pfeiffer)

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Obama, Boehner meet face-to-face on 'fiscal cliff'

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face Sunday at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."

Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks ago, said he likes what he's hearing.

"Any time you have two guys in there tangoing, you have a chance to get it done," Bowles said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The White House afternoon talks, conducted without cameras or any announcement until they were over, came as some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president's demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff -- a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.

"Let's face it. He does have the upper hand on taxes. You have to pass something to keep it from happening," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on "FOX News Sunday."

This comes after the White House moderated one of its demands about tax rate increases for the wealthy.

The administration was demanding the rate return to its former level of 39.6 percent on income above $250,000. The so-called Bush tax cut set that rate at 35 percent. But Friday, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that rate could be negotiable, somewhere between the two.

"So will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems? Yes," said Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn on ABC's "This Week."

The problems the senator was referring to are the country's entitlement programs. And there was some progress on that front, too.

A leading Democrat said means testing for Medicare recipients could be a way to cut costs to the government health insurance program. Those who make more money would be required to pay more for Medicare.

"I do believe there should be means testing, and those of us with higher income and retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

But Durbin said he would not favor raising the eligibility age from 65 years old to 67 years old, as many Republicans have suggested.

The White House and the speaker's office released the exact same statement about the negotiating session. Some will see that as a sign of progress, that neither side is talking about what was said behind closed doors.

Also Read

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#OccupyCheerios: A Facebook Revolt

It wasn’t an obvious forum for an anti-GMO protest.

A YouTube video posted on Cheerio’s Facebook page depicts an elderly woman leaning over the highchair of her infant grandchild, cooing about family and the holidays, drawing a map with pieces of cereal representing relative’s far-flung houses. “But don’t you worry,” the grandmother says, pushing two Cheerios together, “we’ll always be together for Christmas.”

More than 1,200 users have commented on the vintage Cheerios commercial since it was posted last week, expressing outrage over the General Mills-owned brand’s use of genetically modified ingredients. Commenters have also been critical—like heavy-exclamation-points-use critical—of General Mills’ significant financial support of Prop. 37, California’s defeated GMO-labeling ballot initiative

Comments like “Can you please inform the public exactly why it is that General Mills spent $ 1.2 million to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs????” and “Nostalgic old commercials are no substitute for healthy ingredients. I won’t buy Cheerios until they are GMO-free” are a far cry from the stories of spending holidays with family—and perhaps a bit of Cheerios nostalgia—the post was surely intended to elicit.

The protest campaign was stoked by GMO Inside, an organization born of the failed Yes on 37 campaign. The group also called on people to comment-bomb a Cheerios app, which has since been removed from the company’s Facebook page. But beyond that, Cheerios’ response to the criticism has been . . . nothing. Anti-GMO comments are still piling up on the post, and no new material has been added to page in order to bury the video in the timeline.

Do 1,256 comments (and counting) cancel out $ 1.2 million of anti-Prop. 37 funding? Of course not. But just as the Occupy-style tactics being employed by protesters at Cooper Union and the Michigan State Capitol exhibit, showing up and voicing an opinion can be a powerful gesture, even if it’s not overpowering. 

Similar stories on TakePart

• Will GMOs Spell the End of Mexican Maize?

• Kellogg Recalls 2.8 Million Boxes of Cereal Due to Hazardous Metallic ‘Surprise’

• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Nude Protests, Stripped Down

---

Willy Blackmore is the food editor at TakePart. He has also written about food, art, and agriculture for such publications as Los Angeles Magazine, The Awl, GOOD, LA Weekly, The New Inquiry, and BlackBook. Email Willy | TakePart.com

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McAfee wants to return to US, ‘normal life’

BACALAR, Mexico (AP) — Software company founder John McAfee said Sunday he wants to return to the United States and “settle down to whatever normal life” he can.

In a live-stream Internet broadcast from the Guatemalan detention center where he is fighting a government order that he be returned to Belize, the 67-year-old said “I simply would like to live comfortably day by day, fish, swim, enjoy my declining years.”

Police in neighboring Belize want to question McAfee in the fatal shooting of a U.S. expatriate who lived near his home on a Belizean island in November.

The creator of the McAfee antivirus program again denied involvement in the killing during the Sunday Internet video hook-up, during which he answered what he said were reporters’ questions.

His comments were sometimes contradictory. McAfee is an acknowledged practical joker who has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and the production of herbal medications.

The British-born McAfee first said that returning to the United States “is my only hope now.” But he later added, “I would be happy to go to England, I have dual citizenship.”

He was emphatic that “I cannot ever return to Belize …. there is no hope for my life if I am ever returned to Belize.”

“If I am returned,” he said, “bad things will clearly happen to me.”

He descibed the health problems that had him briefly hospitalized earlier this week after Guatemalan authorities detained him for entering the country illegally. He apparently snuck in across a rural, unguarded spot along the border.

“I did not eat for two days, I drank very little liquids, and for the first time in many years I’ve been smoking almost non-stop,” he said. “I stood up, passed out hit my head on the wall, came to,” though he now said he was feeling better.

McAfee praised the role his 20-year-old Belizean girlfriend, Samantha Vanegas, played in his escape from Belize, where he claims he is being persecuted by corrupt politicians. Authorities in Belize deny that they are persecuting him and have questioned his mental state.

“Sam saved the day many times” during their escape, he said, and suggested he would take her with him to the United States if he is allowed to go there.

He confirmed that journalists from Vice magazine who accompanied him on his escape after weeks of hiding in Belize had unwittingly posted photos with embedded data that revealed his exact location.

“It was an error anyone could make,” he said, noting they were under a lot of pressure at the time.

McAfee has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $ 4 million of his $ 100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as describing that claim as “not very accurate at all.”

McAfee’s Guatemalan attorney, Telesforo Guerra, says that he has filed three separate legal appeals in the hope that his client can stay in Guatemala, where his political asylum request was rejected.

Guerra said he filed an appeal for a judge to make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected, an appeal against the asylum denial and a petition with immigration officials to allow his client to stay in this Central American country indefinitely.

The appeals could take several days to resolve, Guerra said. He added that he could still use several other legal resources but wouldn’t give any other details.

Fredy Viana, a spokesman for the Immigration Department, said that before the agency looks into the request to allow McAfee to stay in Guatemala, a judge must first deal with the appeal asking that authorities make sure McAfee’s physical integrity is protected.

“We won’t look into (allowing him to stay) until the other appeal is resolved,” Viana said. “The law gives me 30 days to resolve the issue.”

McAfee went on the run last month after Belizean officials tried to question him about the killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull. Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound in Ambergris Caye, off Belize’s Caribbean coast.

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Iron may prevent behavioral issues in small babies

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Iron supplements may help boost brain development and ward off behavioral problems in babies who are born a bit on the small side, a new study from Sweden suggests.

Low birth-weight babies are more likely to end up iron deficient, researchers said. They need more of the nutrient for catch-up growth and haven’t stored as much as other babies if they’re also born premature.

For that reason, very early-term and very small babies are often put on iron – but less research has looked at babies born just shy of normal weight, to see if they are also at risk.

“I think this further solidifies the evidence that it’s a very good idea to give these (marginally low birth-weight) children iron supplements,” said Dr. Magnus Domellof, from Umea University, who worked on the study.

The research was led by his colleague, Dr. Staffan Berglund. Their team followed 285 infants born between 4 pounds, 7 ounces and 5 pounds, 8 ounces.

When the babies were six weeks old, the researchers randomly assigned them to get iron drops – either one or two milligrams per kilogram of body weight – or iron-free placebo drops each day until their six-month birthday.

Then at age three and a half, Domellof’s team brought the kids back for IQ tests and surveyed parents about their behavioral issues. The researchers compared kids in the iron- and placebo-drop study groups with another 95 children who were born at normal weight.

There were no IQ differences based on whether the smaller-than-average babies had been put on an iron regimen. All three low birth-weight groups had average scores between 104 and 105. (“Cognitive impairment” in this study was considered an IQ under 85.)

However, significantly more babies given placebo drops had behavioral problems, as reported by their parents. The issues included problems managing emotional reactions, anxiety and depression, as well as sleep and attention problems.

Almost 13 percent of the placebo-group babies scored above the cutoff for clinical behavior problems, versus about 3 percent of kids who’d taken iron drops and kids from the normal-weight comparison group.

That suggests iron deficiency in infancy may be a direct cause of behavioral problems later in childhood, the researchers wrote Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

They are continuing to monitor the same group of kids as they get older, to see if new cognitive or behavioral problems develop or old ones get better as the children head into grade school.

Domellof said he and his colleagues didn’t see any extra stomach problems in kids or delayed growth linked to the use of iron drops. Some research has suggested giving excessive iron to young kids who aren’t deficient may stunt their development.

But, “I would not be afraid of recommending this to all children (born) below 2,500 grams (5 pounds, 8 ounces) at this dose,” Domellof told Reuters Health.

“Here’s where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said Dr. Michael Georgieff, a child development researcher at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis who had reviewed the study as part of Berglund’s dissertation committee.

He told Reuters Health that it’s important for all parents to know their baby’s iron requirements when they leave the hospital.

“The issue with these marginally low birth-weight infants is, people really haven’t paid a lot of attention to them, but the evidence is accumulating that they are at risk for behavioral problems and less than ideal cognitive function,” said Dr. Betsy Lozoff, who studies the effects of iron deficiency in infants at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

For most babies in the United States, extra iron is recommended starting at four to six months, either through supplements if the mother is breastfeeding or through formula. Very small or premature babies typically have their iron monitored from birth.

But Lozoff, who wasn’t involved in the new research, said that in many places, there are no recommendations for how to treat babies who are just below a normal birth weight.

“This would suggest that it should just be a routine supplementation, and it can be at a low level of iron,” she told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online December 10, 2012.

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Gabrielle Aplin tops UK charts with Power of Love

LONDON (Reuters) – English singer Gabrielle Aplin scored her first British number one on Sunday with a cover of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood hit “The Power of Love”, the Official Charts Company said.

Aplin climbed to number one from sixth place with the song, which first entered the charts in 1984 and is the theme for a Christmas television advert for British retailer John Lewis.

In the album charts, Olly Murs, a former runner-up in television’s X-Factor talent contest, held on to the top spot with his release “Right Place Right Time”, but saw his “Troublemaker” slip to third place in the singles ranks.

American singer Pink was the week’s highest climber in the singles top ten, jumping to eighth place from number 26 with “Try”.

(Reporting by Tim Castle; editing by Jason Webb)

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Obama, Boehner meet face-to-face on 'fiscal cliff'

For the first time in more than three weeks, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met face-to-face Sunday at the White House to talk about avoiding the fiscal cliff.

White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest would offer no details saying only, "The lines of communication remain open."

Erskine Bowles, the co-creator of a debt reducing plan, who was pessimistic a couple weeks ago, said he likes what he's hearing.

"Any time you have two guys in there tangoing, you have a chance to get it done," Bowles said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

The White House afternoon talks, conducted without cameras or any announcement until they were over, came as some Republicans were showing more flexibility about approving higher tax rates for the wealthy, one of the president's demands to keep the country from the so-called fiscal cliff -- a mixture of across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that many economists say would send the country back into recession.

"Let's face it. He does have the upper hand on taxes. You have to pass something to keep it from happening," Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee said on "FOX News Sunday."

This comes after the White House moderated one of its demands about tax rate increases for the wealthy.

The administration was demanding the rate return to its former level of 39.6 percent on income above $250,000. The so-called Bush tax cut set that rate at 35 percent. But Friday, Vice President Joe Biden signaled that rate could be negotiable, somewhere between the two.

"So will I accept a tax increase as a part of a deal to actually solve our problems? Yes," said Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn on ABC's "This Week."

The problems the senator was referring to are the country's entitlement programs. And there was some progress on that front, too.

A leading Democrat said means testing for Medicare recipients could be a way to cut costs to the government health insurance program. Those who make more money would be required to pay more for Medicare.

"I do believe there should be means testing, and those of us with higher income and retirement should pay more. That could be part of the solution," Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

But Durbin said he would not favor raising the eligibility age from 65 years old to 67 years old, as many Republicans have suggested.

The White House and the speaker's office released the exact same statement about the negotiating session. Some will see that as a sign of progress, that neither side is talking about what was said behind closed doors.

Also Read

Read More..