Final campaign push a day before Japanese vote

TOKYO (AP) — Candidates made final impassioned appeals Saturday to voters a day before Japanese parliamentary elections that are likely to hand power back to a conservative party that ruled the country for most of the post-war era.

Polls suggest that voters will dump Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's ruling Democratic Party of Japan three years after it swept to power amid sweeping promises for change.

The DPJ's inability to deliver on a string of promises and Noda's push to double the sales tax have turned off voters, who appear to be turning back to the Liberal Democratic Party. The LDP ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 until it lost badly to the DPJ in 2009.

If the LDP wins on Sunday, it would give the hawkish Shinzo Abe, who was prime minister from 2006-2007, the top job again, raising questions about how that might affect ties with rival China amid a territorial dispute over a cluster of tiny islands claimed by both countries.

"This isn't for the LDP. We want to restore a Japan where children are proud to have been born here. Please give us your hand," Abe, who would be Japan's seventh prime minister in 6 1/2 years, declared from the top of a van at a campaign stop in Wako, a city northwest of Tokyo.

The LDP has called for more public works spending to revive the long-stagnant economy and is generally more supportive of nuclear energy even though most Japanese want atomic energy phased out following last year's disaster at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.

Surveys this past week showed about 40 percent of people were undecided, reflecting the widespread disenchantment toward both the DPJ and the LDP, as well as confusion over the emergence of several fledgling parties that have popped up in recent months espousing a wide range of views.

The nationalistic, populist Restoration Party of Japan, led by ex-Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto — both outspoken, colorful politicians — is calling for a more assertive Japan, particularly in its dealings with China.

The anti-nuclear Tomorrow Party, formed just two weeks ago, is led by Yukiko Kada, an environmental expert and the governor of Shiga prefecture. But the party's image has taken a hit after she joined forces with a small DPJ breakaway party led by Ichiro Ozawa, a veteran power broker who has a negative reputation among many voters.

Major Japanese newspapers are projecting that the LDP will win a majority of seats in the 480-seat lower chamber of parliament, meaning it could rule alone or perhaps form a coalition with the closely allied Komeito, a party backed by a large Buddhist lay organization.

Those newspaper predictions were based on telephone polls, educated guesswork from reporters in voting districts across the country and analysis of past voting patterns. While such projections have generally been accurate in the past, some experts have cautioned that the actual results may be quite different, especially since so many are undecided.

Read More..

Games top App Store revenue in 2012

Read More..

Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company's records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company's only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm's planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino's legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino's plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer's brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn't know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company's operations manager "with the expertise."

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren't immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

"It was huge," Hawkins said Thursday. "This was an international smuggling group."

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

"Castoro cooperated for years," she said. "We put hundreds of people in jail."

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation's cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino's attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client "bringing money into the United States without declaring it."

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was "used to smuggle drugs."

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

"The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes," Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes' log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino's troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood's records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity's relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico's most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son's former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

"We don't comment on matters involving clients," he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

___

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Read More..

Fewer health care options for illegal immigrants

ALAMO, Texas (AP) — For years, Sonia Limas would drag her daughters to the emergency room whenever they fell sick. As an illegal immigrant, she had no health insurance, and the only place she knew to seek treatment was the hospital — the most expensive setting for those covering the cost.

The family's options improved somewhat a decade ago with the expansion of community health clinics, which offered free or low-cost care with help from the federal government. But President Barack Obama's health care overhaul threatens to roll back some of those services if clinics and hospitals are overwhelmed with newly insured patients and can't afford to care for as many poor families.

To be clear, Obama's law was never intended to help Limas and an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants like her. Instead, it envisions that 32 million uninsured Americans will get access to coverage by 2019. Because that should mean fewer uninsured patients showing up at hospitals, the Obama program slashed the federal reimbursement for uncompensated care.

But in states with large illegal immigrant populations, the math may not work, especially if lawmakers don't expand Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor and disabled.

When the reform has been fully implemented, illegal immigrants will make up the nation's second-largest population of uninsured, or about 25 percent. The only larger group will be people who qualify for insurance but fail to enroll, according to a 2012 study by the Washington-based Urban Institute.

And since about two-thirds of illegal immigrants live in just eight states, those areas will have a disproportionate share of the uninsured to care for.

In communities "where the number of undocumented immigrants is greatest, the strain has reached the breaking point," Rich Umbdenstock, president of the American Hospital Association, wrote last year in a letter to Obama, asking him to keep in mind the uncompensated care hospitals gave to that group. "In response, many hospitals have had to curtail services, delay implementing services, or close beds."

The federal government has offered to expand Medicaid, but states must decide whether to take the deal. And in some of those eight states — including Texas, Florida and New Jersey — hospitals are scrambling to determine whether they will still have enough money to treat the remaining uninsured.

Without a Medicaid expansion, the influx of new patients and the looming cuts in federal funding could inflict "a double whammy" in Texas, said David Lopez, CEO of the Harris Health System in Houston, which spends 10 to 15 percent of its $1.2 billion annual budget to care for illegal immigrants.

Realistically, taxpayers are already paying for some of the treatment provided to illegal immigrants because hospitals are required by law to stabilize and treat any patients that arrive in an emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay. The money to cover the costs typically comes from federal, state and local taxes.

A solid accounting of money spent treating illegal immigrants is elusive because most hospitals do not ask for immigration status. But some states have tried.

California, which is home to the nation's largest population of illegal immigrants, spent an estimated $1.2 billion last year through Medicaid to care for 822,500 illegal immigrants.

The New Jersey Hospital Association in 2010 estimated that it cost between $600 million and $650 million annually to treat 550,000 illegal immigrants.

And in Texas, a 2010 analysis by the Health and Human Services Commission found that the agency had provided $96 million in benefits to illegal immigrants, up from $81 million two years earlier. The state's public hospital districts spent an additional $717 million in uncompensated care to treat that population.

If large states such as Florida and Texas make good on their intention to forgo federal money to expand Medicaid, the decision "basically eviscerates" the effects of the health care overhaul in those areas because of "who lives there and what they're eligible for," said Lisa Clemans-Cope, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute.

Seeking to curb expenses, hospitals might change what qualifies as an emergency or cap the number of uninsured patients they treat. And although it's believed states with the most illegal immigrants will face a smaller cut, they will still lose money.

The potential impacts of reform are a hot topic at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In addition to offering its own charity care, some MD Anderson oncologists volunteer at a county-funded clinic at Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital that largely treats the uninsured.

"In a sense we've been in the worst-case scenario in Texas for a long time," said Lewis Foxhall, MD Anderson's vice president of health policy in Houston. "The large number of uninsured and the large low-income population creates a very difficult problem for us."

Community clinics are a key part of the reform plan and were supposed to take up some of the slack for hospitals. Clinics received $11 billion in new funding over five years so they could expand to help care for a swell of newly insured who might otherwise overwhelm doctors' offices. But in the first year, $600 million was cut from the centers' usual allocation, leaving many to use the money to fill gaps rather than expand.

There is concern that clinics could themselves be inundated with newly insured patients, forcing many illegal immigrants back to emergency rooms.

Limas, 44, moved to the border town of Alamo 13 years ago with her husband and three daughters. Now single, she supports the family by teaching a citizenship class in Spanish at the local community center and selling cookies and cakes she whips up in her trailer. Soon, she hopes to seek a work permit of her own.

For now, the clinic helps with basic health care needs. If necessary, Limas will return to the emergency room, where the attendants help her fill out paperwork to ensure the government covers the bills she cannot afford.

"They always attended to me," she said, "even though it's slow."

___

Sherman can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/chrisshermanAP .

Plushnick-Masti can be followed on Twitter at https://twitter.com/RamitMastiAP .

Read More..

'Evil visited this community today': 20 children killed in shooting

Twenty children died today when a heavily armed man invaded a Newtown,
Conn., elementary school and sprayed staff and students with bullets.

The gunman, identified as Adam Lanza, 20, was found dead in the school.

Lt. Paul Vance said 18 children died in the school and two more died
later in a hospital. Six adults were also slain, bringing the total to
26.

In addition to the casualties at the school, Lanza's mother Nancy Lanza
was killed in her home, federal and state sources told ABC News.

According to sources, Lanza shot his mother in the face, then left his
house armed with at least two semi automatic handguns, a Glock and a Sig
Sauer, and a semi automatic rifle. He was also wearing a bullet proof
vest.

Lanza drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School and continued his rampage,
killing 26 people, authorities said. He was found dead at the school. It
appears that he died from what is believed to be a self inflicted
gunshot wound. The rifle was found in his car.

In the early confusion surrounding the investigation, federal sources
initially identified the suspect as Adam's older brother Ryan Lanza, 24.
He is being questioned by police.

LIVE UPDATES: Newtown, Conn., School Shooting

"Evil visited this community today," Gov. Dan Malloy said at a news conference this evening.

First grade teacher Kaitlin Roig, 29, locked her 14 students in a class bathroom and listened to "tons of shooting" until police came to help.

"It was horrific," Roig said. "I thought we were going to die."

She said that the terrified kids were saying, "I just want Christmas…I don't want to die. I just want to have Christmas."

A tearful President Obama said there's "not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."

The president had to pause to compose himself after saying these were
"beautiful little kids between the ages of 5 and 10." As he continued
with his statement, Obama wiped away tears from each eye.

He has ordered flags flown as half staff.

CLICK HERE for more photos from the scene.

The alert at the school ended when Vance announced, "The shooter is deceased inside the building. The public is not in danger."

The massacre prompted the town of Newtown to lock down all its schools
and draw SWAT teams to the school, authorities said today. Authorities
initially believed that there were two gunmen and were searching cars
around the school, but authorities do not appear to be looking for
another gunman.

It is the second worst mass shooting in U.S. history, exceeded only by
the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 when 32 were killed before the
shooter turned the gun on himself. Today's carnage exceeds the 1999
Columbine High School shooting in which 13 died and 24 were injured.

The Newtown shooting comes three days after masked gunman Jacob Roberts
opened fire in a busy Oregon mall, killing two before turning the gun
on himself.

Today's shooting occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, which
includes 450 students in grades K-4. The town is located about 12 miles
east of Danbury.

State Police received the first 911 call at 9:41 a.m. and immediately
began sending emergency units from the western part of the state.
Initial 911 calls stated that multiple students were trapped in a
classroom, possibly with a gunman, according to a Connecticut State
Police source.

Lt. Paul Vance said that on-duty and off-duty officers swarmed to the
school and quickly checked "every door, every crack, every crevice" in
the building looking for the gunman and evacuating children.

A photo from the scene shows a line of distressed children being led out of the school.

Three patients have been taken to Danbury Hospital, which is also on lockdown, according to the hospital's Facebook page.

"Out of abundance of caution and not because of any direct threat
Danbury Hospital is under lockdown," the statement said. "This allows us
simply to focus on the important work at hand."

Newtown Public School District secretary of superintendent Kathy June
said in a statement that the district's schools were locked down because
of the report of a shooting. "The district is taking preventive
measures by putting all schools in lockdown until we ensure the safety
of all students and staff," she said.

State police sent SWAT team units to Newtown.

All public and private schools in the town were on lockdown.

"We have increased our police presence at all Danbury Public Schools due
to the events in Newtown. Pray for the victims," Newtown Mayor Boughton
tweeted.

State emergency management officials said ambulances and other units were also en route and staging near the school.

A message on the school district website says that all afternoon
kindergarten is cancelled today and there will be no midday bus runs.

Also Read

Read More..

NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — Only eight months after a very public rocket launch failure and less than a year on the job, North Korea's young leader took a very big gamble this week.

It paid off, at least in the short term, projecting Kim Jong Un to his people as powerful, capable and determined. On the other hand it will increase his country's international isolation and could stregthen the hands of the only entity that poses a threat to his rule: the military.

North Koreans gathered en masse Friday in a staged demonstration, partly to glorify Kim and partly to celebrate the launch of the rocket, which Pyongyang says put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. The rest of the world saw it as a thinly-disguised test of banned long-range missile technology.

The launch's success, 14 years after North Korea's first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

"North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader" who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

North Korean state media said Kim himself issued the order to fire the rocket Wednesday despite the prospect of another failure and condemnation from abroad. Kim was praised for boldly carrying out his father and former leader Kim Jong Il's last wish before his Dec. 17, 2011, death.

Kim Jong Il had made development of missiles and nuclear weapons a priority despite international opposition and his nation's crushing poverty.

His son's success is likely to help him consolidate his power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

But what is unclear is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions against a country with what the United Nations calls a serious hunger problem.

"Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige," said Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the "Machievellian argument" that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — "the only real threat to his rule."

There is also the question whether Kim, after thumbing his nose at the world by firing the rocket, will continue to ignore the universal wisdom that "North Korea's only hope for escaping economic implosion is for the country to open up economically," said Robert Hathaway, Asia director at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington.

As a cold wave lifted, tens of thousands of people gathered at the snowy Kim Il Sung Square on Friday, some dancing in the plaza before the rally began, continuing beer-filled street celebrations that had started on Wednesday.

Top officials told the people the critics abroad were characterizing the launch as a missile test. Denying the claims, they urged North Koreans to stand defiant in the face of outside condemnation.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

A missile program is built on decades of systematic, intricate testing, something extremely difficult for economically struggling Pyongyang, which faces guaranteed sanctions and world disapproval each time it stages an expensive launch.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

Successfully firing a rocket, however, was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed the April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul said.

The launch success "consolidates his image as true successor of his father's songun (military-first) leadership, but it will also deepen his country's economic isolation because sanctions will get tougher. That will hurt his image as an economically savvy leader and undermine his legitimacy for the next two to three years," Kim said.

The next big question is how the outside world will react. U.N. Security Council condemnation has already come; more sanctions may follow, both from the U.N. and individual countries.

Scott Snyder, a Koreas specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that the launch and North Korea's nuclear ambitions should inspire cooperation between the often wary U.S. and China, and South Korea and Japan.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation "it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger," Snyder said.

___(equals)

AP writers Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

Read More..

Microsoft plots living room domination with 43 new entertainment apps for Xbox 360

Game consoles are no longer simply for video games, as evidenced by last week’s announcement that the PlayStation 3 is the top Netflix (NFLX) streaming device of the year. Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief marketing officer for its Interactive Entertainment Division, said this past March that Xbox 360 owners were spending more hours watching online entertainment than playing online games. And now, in a bid to bolster its efforts to conquer the living room, Microsoft Director of Programming for Xbox Live Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb announced in a blog post that 43 new entertainment apps (mostly video) will launch between now and spring of 2013 in various regions. Ten new apps including ARTE, CinemaNow, CNET, Karaoke, Maxim, Napster, SkyDrive, SPORT1, VEVO and Zattoo will arrive this week. Microsoft’s full list of upcoming apps follows below.

1. All3M (United Kingdom, United States)
2. Ameba TV (Canada, United States)
3. ARTE (Germany, France)
4. Azteca (Mexico)
5. Canalplay Infinity (France)
6. CBC’s Hockey Night (Canada)
7. CrunchyRoll (Majority of LIVE Regions)
8. Deezer (Majority of LIVE Regions)
9. Eredivisie Live (Netherlands)
10. Fightbox (Austria, Germany, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, United Kingdom)
11. Flixster (United States)
12. GameTrailers (Australia, Canada, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Japan, Mexico, United Kingdom, United States)
13. Globosat Muu (Brazil)
14. Gulli Replay (France)
15. HBO Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
16. IndieFlix (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States)
17. Livesport.tv (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom)
18. Machinima (Majority of LIVE Regions)
19. Maxim (United States)
20. MTV (United States)
21. MyTF1 (France)
22. MyTF1VOD (France)
23. Napster (Germany, United Kingdom)
24. Pathe Thuis (Netherlands)
25. PBS (United States)
26. PopcornFlix (United States)
27. Rai TV (Italy)
28. Sainsbury (United Kingdom)
29. Saraiva (Brazil)
30. SBS (Netherlands)
31. SF Anytime (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
32. Slacker Radio (Canada, United States)
33. SPORT1 (Austria, Germany)
34. The CW Network (United States)
35. Televisa (Mexico)
36. TV3 (Spain)
37. Viaplay (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden)
38. Vidéo à la Demande d’Orange (France)
39. Vimeo (United States)
40. VIVO Play (Brazil)
41. Watchever (Austria, Germany)
42. Zattoo (Germany)
43. Ziggo (Netherlands)

Get more from BGR.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook

Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Sitar maker: Ravi Shankar's legacy inspires others

NEW DELHI (AP) — The walls of Sanjay Sharma's music shop are lined with gleaming string instruments and old photographs of legendary musicians.

Beatles George Harrison, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Indian classicial musicians Zakir Hussain, Shiv Kumar Sharma and Vishwamohan Bhatt. And the man who brought these two very different musical worlds together: Ravi Shankar.

Like his grandfather and father before him, Sharma built, tuned and repaired instruments for the sitar virtuoso, who introduced Westerners to Indian classical music, and through his friendship with Harrison became a mainstay of the 1960s counterculture scene.

From his tiny shop tucked into the crowded lanes of central Delhi's Bhagat Singh market, Sharma traveled the world with Shankar. Late in the maestro's life, as his health and strength flagged, he even designed a smaller version of the instrument that allowed him to keep playing.

Shankar, who died Tuesday at age 92, was "a saint, an emperor and lord of music," Sharma says in a tribute posted to the website of his sought-after shop, Rikhi Ram's Music.

"When I opened my eyes there was him," says Sharma, 44, surrounded by display cases full of sitars, sarangis (a stringed instrument played with a violin-like bow), guitars, tabla drums and sarods, a deeply resonating instrument played by plucking the strings.

Shankar "was music and music was him," he says.

Sharma's grandfather started the business in 1920 in the northern city of Lahore, now in Pakistan. He met a young Ravi Shankar at a concert there in the 1940s. Following the India-Pakistan partition and the relocation of the shop to New Delhi, the family began making sitars for Shankar in the 1950s.

By then, the musician was already famous in India and beginning to collaborate with some of the greats of Western music, including violinist Yehudi Menuhin and jazz saxophonist John Coltrane.

The Beatles visited in 1966 and bought instruments, memorialized in some of the many photographs that line the shop's walls. Another shows Shankar's daughter and the heir of his sitar legacy, Anoushka Shankar. But there is no picture of another Shankar daughter, American singer Norah Jones, who was estranged from her father.

Sharma's own father succeeded his grandfather as the supplier of Shankar's sitars. And then Sharma himself in the 1980s.

The bedroom-sized shop has two counters, one for conducting business and one for working on instruments under the beam of a large work lamp. Wood shavings and dust cover the floor of a workshop at the back.

As he chatted with visiting Associated Press journalists on Thursday, Sharma worked on a sitar, peering through his glasses as he used a mallet to hammer in a new fret. He plucked the strings, and as the sound resonated around the room, he leaned close in to the instrument and listened intently to the vibrations. Satisfied with the results, he moved on to the next fret.

It takes 15 months for a sitar to be ready for use. The actual crafting of the instrument from red cedar and hollowed-out, dried pumpkins takes three months. Then, it is left untouched to go through what is called "Delhi seasoning," in which the extremes of New Delhi's climate — blistering summer, followed by a brief monsoon, and a near-freezing, three-month winter — work their magic.

In 2005, a serious bout of pneumonia left Shankar with a frozen left shoulder.

"He was growing old and he wanted to experiment and change the instrument" so he could continue playing, Sharma says.

Sharma, a large, balding man, created what he calls the "studio sitar," a smaller version of the instrument. But holding it was still difficult. So Sharma went to a Home Depot near Shankar's San Diego, California-area home and bought some supplies to build a detachable stand.

The musician was thrilled. Sharma says Shankar told him, "Your father was a brilliant sitar maker, but you are a genius."

Shankar was performing in public until a month before his death. Despite ill health, he appeared re-energized by the music, Sharma said.

Now, as Sharma mourns the giant of Indian music, he also worries about the future of the art itself. He sees traditional Indian instruments gradually losing their place in their own country to zippy, electronic Bollywood music.

"We are losing the originality and the core of our Indian music," says Shankar, himself a trained Hindustani classical musician who plays the sitar and tabla, the Indian pair-drums.

At the same time, Shankar's work as a global ambassador of music has borne fruit, Sharma says: "Because the music has gone to the West, we're getting lots of new musical aspirants from the Western countries."

When jazz artist Herbie Hancock was in New Delhi a few years ago, he stopped by Sharma's shop to buy a sitar.

And in one of the shop's display windows gleams a newly crafted sitar made of teak.

"That," Sharma said, "is for Bill Gates."

Read More..

Study: People worldwide living longer, but sicker

LONDON (AP) — Nearly everywhere around the world, people are living longer and fewer children are dying. But increasingly, people are grappling with the diseases and disabilities of modern life, according to the most expansive global look so far at life expectancy and the biggest health threats.

The last comprehensive study was in 1990 and the top health problem then was the death of children under 5 — more than 10 million each year. Since then, campaigns to vaccinate kids against diseases like polio and measles have reduced the number of children dying to about 7 million.

Malnutrition was once the main health threat for children. Now, everywhere except Africa, they are much more likely to overeat than to starve.

With more children surviving, chronic illnesses and disabilities that strike later in life are taking a bigger toll, the research said. High blood pressure has become the leading health risk worldwide, followed by smoking and alcohol.

"The biggest contributor to the global health burden isn't premature (deaths), but chronic diseases, injuries, mental health conditions and all the bone and joint diseases," said one of the study leaders, Christopher Murray, director of the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

In developed countries, such conditions now account for more than half of the health problems, fueled by an aging population. While life expectancy is climbing nearly everywhere, so too are the number of years people will live with things like vision or hearing loss and mental health issues like depression.

The research appears in seven papers published online Thursday by the journal Lancet. More than 480 researchers in 50 countries gathered data up to 2010 from surveys, censuses and past studies. They used statistical modeling to fill in the gaps for countries with little information. The series was mainly paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

As in 1990, Japan topped the life expectancy list in 2010, with 79 for men and 86 for women. In the U.S. that year, life expectancy for men was 76 and for women, 81.

The research found wide variations in what's killing people around the world. Some of the most striking findings highlighted by the researchers: — Homicide is the No. 3 killer of men in Latin America; it ranks 20th worldwide. In the U.S., it is the 21st cause of death in men, and in Western Europe, 57th.

— While suicide ranks globally as the 21st leading killer, it is as high as the ninth top cause of death in women across Asia's "suicide belt," from India to China. Suicide ranks 14th in North America and 15th in Western Europe.

— In people aged 15-49, diabetes is a bigger killer in Africa than in Western Europe (8.8 deaths versus 1 death per 100,000).

— Central and Southeast Asia have the highest rates of fatal stroke in young adults at about 15 cases per 100,000 deaths. In North America, the rate is about 3 per 100,000.

Globally, heart disease and stroke remain the top killers. Reflecting an older population, lung cancer moved to the 5th cause of death globally, while other cancers including those of the liver, stomach and colon are also in the top 20. AIDS jumped from the 35th cause of death in 1990 to the sixth leading cause two decades later.

While chronic diseases are killing more people nearly everywhere, the overall trend is the opposite in Africa, where illnesses like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis are still major threats. And experts warn again shifting too much of the focus away from those ailments.

"It's the nature of infectious disease epidemics that if you turn away from them, they will crop right back up," said Jennifer Cohn, a medical coordinator at Doctors Without Borders.

Still, she acknowledged the need to address the surge of other health problems across Africa. Cohn said the agency was considering ways to treat things like heart disease and diabetes. "The way we treat HIV could be a good model for chronic care," she said.

Others said more concrete information is needed before making any big changes to public health policies.

"We have to take this data with some grains of salt," said Sandy Cairncross, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

He said the information in some of the Lancet research was too thin and didn't fully consider all the relevant health risk factors.

"We're getting a better picture, but it's still incomplete," he said.

___

Online:

www.lancet.com

http://healthmetricsandevaluation.org

Read More..

With Rice withdrawing, Kerry may get call

WASHINGTON (AP) — Susan Rice, the embattled U.N. ambassador, abruptly withdrew from consideration to be the next secretary of state on Thursday after a bitter, weekslong standoff with Republican senators who declared they would fight to defeat her nomination.

The reluctant announcement makes Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry the likely choice to be the nation's next top diplomat when Hillary Rodham Clinton departs soon. Rice withdrew when it became clear her political troubles were not going away, and support inside the White House for her potential nomination had been waning in recent days, administration officials said.

In another major part of the upcoming Cabinet shake-up for President Barack Obama's second term, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska now is seen as the front-runner to be defense secretary, with official word expected as soon as next week.

For the newly re-elected president, Rice's withdrawal was a sharp political setback and a sign of the difficulties Obama faces in a time of divided and divisive government. Already, he had been privately weighing whether picking Rice would cost him political capital he would need on later votes.

When Rice ended the embarrassment by stepping aside, Obama used the occasion to criticize Republicans who were adamantly opposed to her possible nomination.

"While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice in recent weeks, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character," he said.

"I am saddened we have reached this point," Rice said.

Obama made clear she would remain in his inner circle, saying he was grateful she would stay as "our ambassador at the United Nations and a key member of my Cabinet and national security team." Rice, too, said in her letter she would be staying.

Clinton, in a brief statement, said that Rice had "been an indispensable partner over the past four years" and that she was confident "that she will continue to represent the United States with strength and skill."

Rice had become the face of the bungled administration account of what happened in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012 when four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, were killed in what is now known to have been a terrorist attack.

Obama had defiantly declared he would chose her for secretary of state regardless of the political criticism, if he wanted, but such a choice could have gotten his second term off to a turbulent start with Capitol Hill.

In a letter to Obama, Rice said she was convinced the confirmation process would be "lengthy, disruptive and costly." The letter was part of a media rollout aimed at upholding her reputation. It included an NBC News interview in which she said her withdrawal "was the best thing for our country."

"Those of you who know me know that I'm a fighter, but not at the cost of what's right for our country," she tweeted later.

Rice may end up close to Obama's side in another way, as his national security adviser should Tom Donilon move on to another position, though that is not expected imminently. The security adviser position would not require Senate confirmation.

Rice would have faced strong opposition from Senate Republicans who challenged her much-maligned televised comments about the cause of the deadly raid on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

Her efforts to satisfy Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and Susan Collins in unusual, private sessions on Capitol Hill fell short. The Republicans emerged from the meetings still expressing doubts about her qualifications.

"The position of secretary of state should never be politicized," Rice said. "As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship and as a sitting U.S national security official who has served in two U.S. administrations, I am saddened that we have reached this point."

Attention now shifts to Kerry, who came close to winning the presidency in 2004 and has been seen as desiring the State job. In a statement, he made no mention of his own candidacy but praised Rice, who was an adviser to him his in his presidential bid.

Kerry was an early backer of Obama and was under consideration to become his first secretary of state. Obama has dispatched Kerry to foreign hot spots on his behalf. Kerry played the role of Republican Mitt Romney during Obama's presidential debate preparations this year.

The longtime senator would be almost certain to be easily confirmed by his colleagues on Capitol Hill.

If Obama taps Kerry for State, the president will create a potential problem for Democrats by opening a Senate seat — one that recently defeated Republican Sen. Scott Brown is eyeing. Brown had been elected as Massachusetts' other senator in January 2010 after Democrat Ted Kennedy died, stunning the political world as he took the seat held by Kennedy for decades. Brown lost that seat in the November election.

House Democratic women had cast the criticism of Rice as sexist and racist — she is African-American — and some expressed disappointment with the news.

"If judged fairly based solely on her qualifications for the job, she would've made an extraordinary secretary of state," said Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rice did not have a strong relationship with members of the Senate. Graham, who is the top Republican on the Appropriations subcommittee that handles foreign aid and the State Department, said he barely knew her.

In a brief statement, a spokesman for McCain said the senator "thanks Ambassador Rice for her service to the country and wishes her well. He will continue to seek all the facts surrounding the attack on our consulate in Benghazi."

Rice's decision comes ahead of the anticipated release next week of a report by an Accountability Review Board into the attack on the Benghazi mission. The report ordered by Clinton, focuses on the run-up to and the actual attack and is not expected to mention Rice's role in its aftermath.

Clinton is to testify about the report before Congress next Thursday.

At issue is the explanation Rice offered in a series of talk show appearances five days after the attack in Libya.

Rice has conceded in private meetings with lawmakers that her initial account — that a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim video produced in the U.S. triggered the attack — was wrong, but she has insisted she was not trying to mislead the American people. Information for her account was provided by intelligence officials.

She reasserted that position in an opinion piece published late Thursday on The Washington Post's website, adding, "In recent weeks, new lines of attack have been raised to malign my character and my career. Even before I was nominated for any new position, a steady drip of manufactured charges painted a wholly false picture of me. This has interfered increasingly with my work on behalf of the United States at the United Nations and with America's agenda."

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, is a Vietnam veteran, served two terms in the Senate and was a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Obama and Hagel became close while they served in the Senate and traveled overseas together. Hagel has been critical of his party since leaving the Senate in 2008, saying the GOP had moved too far right.

___

Associated Press writers Donna Cassata, Ken Thomas, Matthew Lee and Matthew Daly contributed to this story.

Read More..