How Can Professional Santas Avoid the Flu?

A lot of kids must sit on Santa’s lap before he can hop in his sleigh on Christmas Eve, but Santa has to be extra careful during flu season if he wants to stay healthy into the New Year.

John Sullivan, a professional Santa Claus in Chicago, said he never turns down a child, even if the child’s nose is runny.

“I’ll see him. I’ll talk to him,” Sullivan said. “That’s just a risk that frankly comes with the job … Santa can’t go around wearing a surgical mask!”

Since children actually exhale more flu virus than adults because their immune systems are immature, Santa and other people who work with children are at greater risk for coming down with the flu, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.

“Of course, Santa is leaning over the child and listening carefully. He’s in the breathing zone of all these children,” Schaffner said. “They come into very close contact with a myriad of children, and children are the great distributor of respiratory viruses.”

Not only do children exhale more of the virus in each breath than adults do, but they also exhale it longer: 24 hours before they start feeling sick until after they feel better.

“It is likely because children are experiencing these viruses probably for the first time, and that their immune systems are not trained to combat the viruses and shut down the virus production mechanism quickly,” Schaffner said.

Schaffner said it’s important for professional Santa performers like Sullivan to get their flu shots, keep up their fluids and get enough sleep and exercise during the holiday season so that their bodies can fight the flu if they come in contact with it.

Sullivan has been Santa Claus every holiday season for more than two decades, and he never misses a flu shot, he said. He started in malls and now does private events at homes, offices and daycares.

“A lot of times when you pick up a baby, you can feel in their lungs that there’s congestion,” he said. “I’ll tell the parent the baby has cold … Frankly, if I’m Santa, I never reject a child.”

He said he’s gotten mild colds, but nothing serious, and he’s always mindful to avoid getting other people sick if he’s not feeling well.

Near Orlando, Greg Thompson runs The Santa Company, which has seven Santas, including Thompson himself, who has been dressing as Santa since he was 14. (“I’d discovered Santa’s secret, so I decided I wanted to be him.”) That first year, Thompson was 129 lbs., so his grandmother helped him stuff a pillow under his puffy jacket to complete the costume.

Although Thompson’s size may have been a problem, the flu wasn’t, he said. In fact, The Santa Company hasn’t had anyone call out sick since it was founded in 1999.

“We have not had it happen yet – knock on wood – but if someone were to come in and say, ‘Greg, I’m just sick and I can’t come in,’ we’d make sure to have a Santa for him,” Thompson said. “We’re more concerned about people bringing their kids to us. If a kid is obviously sick, you can look at him and tell, sometimes.”

Of the 80 appearances The Santa Company does each year, Thompson does about a quarter of them. When a child approaches Thompson-as-Santa with a runny nose and red eyes, Thompson said he will ask the child to sit down in front of him instead of on his lap.

“I’ll be happy to speak with him,” he said.

Thompson added that his Santas always wear clean gloves as part of the classic red suit with white trim, and they cough only into their elbows.

But Schaffner said gloves can quickly become contaminated, and probably don’t offer much protection against the virus as Santa touches a child and strokes his beard or touches his nose. Even surgeons are taught to wash their hands after they remove gloves, he said.

“They are at risk. There’s no doubt about it,” Schaffner said. “But maybe Santa’s beard and mustache can act like a filter and keep the virus out,” he joked with a laugh.

Santa is magical, after all.

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'Constant reminder': Newtown holds third day of funerals

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — For a third straight day Wednesday, funeral processions rolled through a grieving Connecticut town trying to make sense of the massacre of 20 first-graders and six adults in an elementary school less than two weeks before Christmas.

Dr. Joseph Young, an optometrist, said he has already been to one funeral and plans to attend two or three more.

"The first few days, all you heard was helicopters and now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day," he said. "It's difficult. It's just a constant reminder."

Most students in Newtown went back to school Tuesday except those from Sandy Hook Elementary, where a gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle slaughtered the children and six teachers and administrators Friday. He also killed his mother at her home. If police know why, they have not said.

Students at Sandy Hook, which serves kindergarten through fourth grade, will resume classes in a formerly shuttered school in a neighboring community in January.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday pressed Congress to reinstate an assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004. He also called for stricter background checks for people who seek to purchase weapons and limited high capacity clips.

"This time, the words need to lead to action," said Obama, who set a January deadline for the recommendations.

In the meantime, mourners overlapped at back-to-back funerals that started Monday and will continue all week.

The first of Wednesday's funerals in Newtown was for 7-year-old Daniel Barden, a gap-toothed redhead and the youngest of three children whose family described him as "always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly affectionate, fair and so thoughtful towards others, imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in conversation: in all, a constant source of laughter and joy."

Hundreds of firefighters formed a long blue line outside St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church as bells sounded and bagpipes played. Daniel wanted to join their ranks one day, and many came from New York, where his family has relatives who are firefighters.

Family friend Laura Stamberg of New Paltz, N.Y., whose husband plays in a band with Daniel's father, Mark, said Daniel was a thoughtful boy who held doors for people and would sit with another child if he saw one sitting alone.

She said that on the morning of the shooting, Mark Barden played a game with his son and taught him a Christmas song on the piano.

"They played foosball and then he taught him the song and then he walked him to the bus and that was their last morning together," Stamberg said.

At the same time, in the town of Stratford, family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who has been hailed as a hero for dying while trying to shield her students, some of whom managed to escape.

"She had the perfect job. She loved her job," said Vicky Ruiz, a friend of Soto's since first grade. Every year, she said, Soto described her students the same way. "They were always good kids. They were always angels," even if, like typical first-graders, they might not always listen, Ruiz said.

Students Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi were to be laid to rest later Wednesday, and calling hours were being held for popular 47-year-old principal Dawn Hochsprung. She and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives.

The massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control.

Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday it plans to sell its stake in Freedom Group, maker of the Bushmaster rifle, following the school shootings. In Pittsburgh, Dick's Sporting Goods said it is suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the shooting. The company also said it's removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown.

Lawmakers who have joined the call to consider gun control as part of a comprehensive, anti-violence effort next year included 10-term House Republican Jack Kingston, a Georgia lawmaker elected with strong National Rifle Association backing.

The National Rifle Association, silent since the shootings, said in a statement that it was "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." It gave no indication what that might entail.

And no indication has been made publicly about the motive of 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who, clad all in black, broke into Sandy Hook Elementary and opened fire on students and staff.

Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, at their home, and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school.

Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.

___

Zezima reported from Stratford. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Helen O'Neill, John Christoffersen and Pat Eaton-Robb in Newtown; Michael Melia in Hartford; Larry Margasak in Washington and AP Business Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis.

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'Constant reminder': Newtown holds third day of funerals

NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) — For a third straight day Wednesday, funeral processions rolled through a grieving Connecticut town trying to make sense of the massacre of 20 first-graders and six adults in an elementary school less than two weeks before Christmas.

Dr. Joseph Young, an optometrist, said he has already been to one funeral and plans to attend two or three more.

"The first few days, all you heard was helicopters and now at my office all I hear is the rumble of motorcycle escorts and funeral processions going back and forth throughout the day," he said. "It's difficult. It's just a constant reminder."

Most students in Newtown went back to school Tuesday except those from Sandy Hook Elementary, where a gunman armed with a military-style assault rifle slaughtered the children and six teachers and administrators Friday. He also killed his mother at her home. If police know why, they have not said.

Students at Sandy Hook, which serves kindergarten through fourth grade, will resume classes in a formerly shuttered school in a neighboring community in January.

In the meantime, mourners overlapped at back-to-back funerals that started Monday and will continue all week.

The first of Wednesday's funerals in Newtown was for 7-year-old Daniel Barden, a gap-toothed redhead and the youngest of three children whose family described him as "always smiling, unfailingly polite, incredibly affectionate, fair and so thoughtful towards others, imaginative in play, both intelligent and articulate in conversation: in all, a constant source of laughter and joy."

Hundreds of firefighters formed a long blue line outside St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church as bells sounded and bagpipes played. Daniel wanted to join their ranks one day, and many came from New York, where his family has relatives who are firefighters.

Family friend Laura Stamberg of New Paltz, N.Y., whose husband plays in a band with Daniel's father, Mark, said Daniel was a thoughtful boy who held doors for people and would sit with another child if he saw one sitting alone.

She said that on the morning of the shooting, Mark Barden played a game with his son and taught him a Christmas song on the piano.

"They played foosball and then he taught him the song and then he walked him to the bus and that was their last morning together," Stamberg said.

At the same time, in the town of Stratford, family and friends gathered to say goodbye to Victoria Soto, a 27-year-old teacher who has been hailed as a hero for dying while trying to shield her students, some of whom managed to escape.

"She had the perfect job. She loved her job," said Vicky Ruiz, a friend of Soto's since first grade. Every year, she said, Soto described her students the same way. "They were always good kids. They were always angels," even if, like typical first-graders, they might not always listen, Ruiz said.

Students Charlotte Bacon and Caroline Previdi were to be laid to rest later Wednesday, and calling hours were being held for popular 47-year-old principal Dawn Hochsprung. She and school psychologist Mary Sherlach rushed toward Lanza in an attempt to stop him and paid with their lives.

The massacre continued to reverberate around America as citizens and lawmakers debated whether Newtown might be a turning point in the often-polarizing national discussion over gun control.

Private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management announced Tuesday it plans to sell its stake in Freedom Group, maker of the Bushmaster rifle, following the school shootings. In Pittsburgh, Dick's Sporting Goods said it is suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the shooting. The company also said it's removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown.

Lawmakers who have joined the call to consider gun control as part of a comprehensive, anti-violence effort next year included 10-term House Republican Jack Kingston, a Georgia lawmaker elected with strong National Rifle Association backing.

President Barack Obama was "actively supportive" of a plan by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce legislation to reinstate an assault weapons ban, White House spokesman Jay Carney said. While Obama has long supported a ban, he did little to get it passed during his first term.

The National Rifle Association, silent since the shootings, said in a statement that it was "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again." It gave no indication what that might entail.

And no indication has been made publicly about the motive of 20-year-old Adam Lanza, who, clad all in black, broke into Sandy Hook Elementary and opened fire on students and staff.

Authorities say the horrific events of Friday began when Lanza shot his mother, Nancy, at their home, and then took her car and some of her guns to the nearby school.

Investigators have found no letters or diaries that could explain the attack.

___

Zezima reported from Stratford. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Allen G. Breed, Helen O'Neill, John Christoffersen and Pat Eaton-Robb in Newtown; Michael Melia in Hartford; Larry Margasak in Washington and AP Business Writer Joshua Freed in Minneapolis.

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Shooting renews argument over video-game violence

WASHINGTON (AP) — In the days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a shell-shocked nation has looked for reasons. The list of culprits include easy access to guns, a strained mental-health system and the “culture of violence” — the entertainment industry’s embrace of violence in movies, TV shows and, especially, video games.

“The violence in the entertainment culture — particularly, with the extraordinary realism to video games, movies now, et cetera — does cause vulnerable young men to be more violent,” Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said.

“There might well be some direct connection between people who have some mental instability and when they go over the edge — they transport themselves, they become part of one of those video games,” said Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, where 12 people were killed in a movie theater shooting in July.

White House adviser David Axelrod tweeted, “But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”

And Donald Trump weighed in, tweeting, “Video game violence & glorification must be stopped — it is creating monsters!”

There have been unconfirmed media reports that 20-year-old Newtown shooter Adam Lanza enjoyed a range of video games, from the bloody “Call of Duty” series to the innocuous “Dance Dance Revolution.” But the same could be said for about 80 percent of Americans in Lanza’s age group, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Law enforcement officials haven’t made any connection between Lanza’s possible motives and his interest in games.

The video game industry has been mostly silent since Friday’s attack, in which 20 children and six adults were killed. The Entertainment Software Association, which represents game publishers in Washington, has yet to respond to politicians’ criticisms. Hal Halpin, president of the nonprofit Entertainment Consumers Association, said, “I’d simply and respectfully point to the lack of evidence to support any causal link.”

It’s unlikely that lawmakers will pursue legislation to regulate the sales of video games; such efforts were rejected again and again in a series of court cases over the last decade. Indeed, the industry seemed to have moved beyond the entire issue last year, when the Supreme Court revoked a California law criminalizing the sale of violent games to minors.

The Supreme Court decision focused on First Amendment concerns; in the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that games “are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature.” Scalia also agreed with the ESA’s argument that researchers haven’t established a link between media violence and real-life violence. “Psychological studies purporting to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children do not prove that such exposure causes minors to act aggressively,” Scalia wrote.

Still, that doesn’t make games impervious to criticism, or even some soul-searching within the gaming community. At this year’s E3 — the Electronic Entertainment Expo, the industry’s largest U.S. gathering — some attendees were stunned by the intensity of violence on display. A demo for Sony’s “The Last of Us” ended with a villain taking a shotgun blast to the face. A scene from Ubisoft’s “Splinter Cell: Blacklist” showed the hero torturing an enemy. A trailer for Square Enix’s “Hitman: Absolution” showed the protagonist slaughtering a team of lingerie-clad assassins disguised as nuns.

“The ultraviolence has to stop,” designer Warren Spector told the GamesIndustry website after E3. “I do believe that we are fetishizing violence, and now in some cases actually combining it with an adolescent approach to sexuality. I just think it’s in bad taste. Ultimately I think it will cause us trouble.”

“The violence of these games can be off-putting,” Brian Crecente, news editor for the gaming website Polygon, said Monday. “The video-game industry is wrestling with the same issues as movies and TV. There’s this tension between violent games that sell really well and games like ‘Journey,’ a beautiful, artistic creation that was well received by critics but didn’t sell much.”

During November, typically the peak month for pre-holiday game releases, the two best sellers were the military shooters “Call of Duty: Black Ops II,” from Activision, and “Halo 4,” from Microsoft. But even with the dominance of the genre, Crecente said, “There has been a feeling that some of the sameness of war games is grating on people.”

Critic John Peter Grant said, “I’ve also sensed a growing degree of fatigue with ultra-violent games, but not necessarily because of the violence per se.”

The problem, Grant said, “is that violence as a mechanic gets old really fast. Games are amazing possibility spaces! And if the chief way I can interact with them is by destroying and killing? That seems like such a waste of potential.”

There are some hints of a sneaking self-awareness creeping into the gaming community. One gamer — Antwand Pearman, editor of the website GamerFitNation — has called for other players to join in a “Day of Cease-Fire for Online Shooters” this Friday, one week after the massacre.

“We are simply making a statement,” Pearman said, “that we as gamers are not going to sit back and ignore the lives that were lost.”

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Two cups of milk daily enough for most kids: study

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Two cups of cow’s milk per day may be enough for most kids to have the recommended amount of vitamin D in their blood while maintaining a healthy iron level, suggests a new study.

“One of the common questions I get from parents when their kids become toddlers is, ‘how much milk should they be drinking?’ But we didn’t have a good answer,” said Dr. Jonathon Maguire, the study’s lead author from Toronto’s TARGet Kids! Collaboration.

One reason for the confusion, according to the researchers, is the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends children between 2 and 8 years old drink two cups of milk per day, but in another guideline, the organization also says children need supplemental vitamin D if they drink less than four cups per day.

The researchers write in the journal Pediatrics that previous studies showed cow’s milk increases the amount of vitamin D in a child’s blood while also reducing iron levels. Iron, which the body can get from meats and beans, is important for developing brains and protecting against anemia.

Vitamin D, which is naturally produced in the body during sun exposure, helps the body absorb calcium and prevents the bone-softening disease rickets. People also get the vitamin by eating fortified foods, such as milk and fatty fish.

Maguire, a pediatrician at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital, and his colleagues surveyed the parents of 1,311 children, who were between 2 and 5 years old and at pediatricians’ offices in the Toronto area between December 2008 and December 2010. They also took blood samples from the children.

The researchers found one cup (250 milliliters) of milk was tied to a 5 nanomoles per liter (nmol/L) increase of vitamin D in the children’s blood, and a small decrease in iron levels.

The Canadian Pediatric Society suggests children maintain a vitamin D level in their blood of at least 75 nmol/L. On average, the children were drinking just under two cups of milk per day, and were exceeding their recommended vitamin D level.

The researchers concluded that two glasses of cow’s milk per day is enough to keep most kids at the suggested vitamin D levels while also maintaining a healthy amount of iron.

SUPPLEMENTS AND OTHER SOURCES

That’s not a blanket suggestion for all children, however.

Maguire and his colleagues say darker skinned children may need 3 to 4 cups of milk per day during the winter, when their bodies produce less vitamin D naturally from sun exposure.

Maguire told Reuters Health that the findings seem consistent with previous recommendations.

“I don’t think there is too much cause for concern. I think this is probably old news for some parents,” he said.

Patsy Brannon, a professor of nutritional sciences at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, said the finding of 2 cups of milk is consistent with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for two and three year olds, but said older children need 2.5 cups.

Also, she points out, the U.S. Institutes of Medicine and AAP recommend a vitamin D level in children of at least 50 nmol/L, which is lower than the Canadian society’s suggestion.

Currently, the AAP recommends infants, children and teens get 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day. The average cup of milk has about 100 IU of vitamin D.

Brannon recommends taking a daily vitamin D supplement to reach that recommendation, but adds that people can also get the vitamin from fortified cereals, grains and other foods.

“There are other sources of vitamin D in the diet besides what comes from milk. We have to be concerned about excessive milk consumption in this age group,” she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/T568Dc Pediatrics, online December 17, 2012.

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Canada serial killer inquiry finds “systemic bias” by police

(Reuters) – Police made critical errors in pursuing Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton partly because of “systemic bias” against his victims, sex trade workers from a rough Vancouver neighborhood, according to the final report from a public inquiry released on Monday.

Commissioner Wally Oppal was asked by the British Columbia government to investigate, in effect, why Pickton was not caught sooner. Women disappeared from the Downtown Eastside neighborhood for more than a decade before the pig farmer’s 2002 arrest.

“The investigations of missing and murdered women were characterized by blatant police failures, and by public indifference,” Oppal said at a press conference in Vancouver that was frequently interrupted by protesters.

Pickton was convicted of six murders, but prosecutors believe he killed many more – 20 other charges were stayed after he received the maximum possible sentence.

Oppal outlined a string of police errors, from failing to take proper reports when women went missing and communicate adequately with families, to ineffective coordination across jurisdictions. He called his more than 1,200-page report, which is based on eight months of hearings, “Forsaken”.

“After reviewing the evidence of the investigations, I have come to the conclusion that there was systemic bias by the police,” he said.

Oppal recommended that the provincial government establish a compensation fund for the children of the victims and consider creating a regional police force for Vancouver, instead of the patchwork of jurisdictions currently in place.

After Oppal’s announcement, B.C. Minister of Justice Shirley Bond wiped away tears as she spoke to victims’ families.

“I want you to know that, however inadequate these words sound, we are sorry for your loss,” she said. “We will work hard to prevent these circumstances from being repeated in our province.”

She announced the appointment of a former lieutenant governor, Steven Point, to serve as the report’s “champion”, guiding implementation. Bond said the government would immediately give new funding to WISH, a drop-in center for women who work in the Downtown Eastside’s sex trade.

POLICE RESPOND

The Vancouver Police Department said in a short statement that it is committed to learning from its mistakes and will study the report.

“We know that nothing can ever truly heal the wounds of grief and loss but if we can, we want to assure the families that the Vancouver Police Department deeply regrets anything we did that may have delayed the eventual solving of these murders,” it said.

Deputy Commissioner Craig Callens, who commands the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in British Columbia, said in a statement that his force will review the report.

Oppal said many individual police officers were diligent, and he commended several by name. But he said that as a system, the authorities failed because of bias against Pickton’s victims, many of whom were poor and addicted to drugs.

“Would the reaction of the police and the public have been any different if the missing women had come from Vancouver’s (more affluent) west side? The answer is obvious,” he said.

Aboriginal women were overrepresented among the victims, and Oppal repeatedly referred to the broader “marginalization” of aboriginal people in Canada.

“There has to be community responsibility for what has taken place,” he said, highlighting poverty and the conditions on the Downtown Eastside. “The social reality is that racism and gender bias are prevalent within Canadian society, and we must do something to eradicate those.”

Victims’ families and activists were on hand for Oppal’s press conference, and he stopped speaking several times as audience members shouted criticism, chanted and played drums.

The provincial government did not offer funding to a number of community organizations that said they needed support to participate in the lengthy and complex inquiry. In protest, other groups boycotted the process.

In November, several organizations, including the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, released their own report, criticizing the inquiry for, among other things, excluding too many aboriginal women, sex trade workers and drug users.

Bond, the justice minister, said she did not regret the decision not to fund those groups, but said she saw them participating in the future. “I think going forward this is room for us to include other voices.” (Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Eric Beech)

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“Best Funeral Ever” premiere delayed after Newtown school shootings

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Fans of death-centric reality TV will have to wait a little longer to dig into TLC‘s “Best Funeral Ever.”

TLC has pushed back the premiere of the special to January 6 at 10/9c in light of the school shootings in Newtown, Conn. last week.

“Best Funeral Ever” was initially scheduled to premiere on December 26 at 8/7c.

“Best Funeral Ever” centers around the Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas, which specializes in elaborate specialty funerals catering to the deceased’s interest. In the special, a doo-wop singer famous for his rib-sauce jingle receives a barbecue-themed sendoff, while a disabled man who was unable to ride roller coasters in mortal life receives a State Fair-themed funeral.

Since last Friday’s horrific shootings, a number of programs and other entertainment-related events have been moved out of sensitivity. Syfy, for one, decided not to air its scheduled episode of “Haven” on Friday night, because it contained elements of fictionalized school violence.

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Syrian rebels take control of Damascus Palestinian camp

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian rebels took full control of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp on Monday after fighting raged for days in the district on the southern edge of President Bashar al-Assad‘s Damascus powerbase, rebel and Palestinian sources said.

The battle had pitted rebels, backed by some Palestinians, against Palestinian fighters of the pro-Assad Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC). Many PFLP-GC fighters defected to the rebel side and their leader Ahmed Jibril left the camp two days ago, rebel sources said.

“All of the camp is under the control of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army,” said a Palestinian activist in Yarmouk. He said clashes had stopped and the remaining PFLP fighters retreated to join Assad‘s forces massed on the northern edge of the camp.

The battle in Yarmouk is one of a series of conflicts on the southern fringes of Assad’s capital, as rebels try to choke the power of the 47-year-old leader after a 21-month-old uprising in which 40,000 people have been killed.

Government forces have used jets and artillery to try to dislodge the fighters but the violence has crept into the heart of the city and activists say rebels overran three army stations in a new offensive in the central province of Hama on Monday.

On the border with Lebanon, hundreds of Palestinian families fled across the frontier following the weekend violence in Yarmouk, a Reuters witness said.

Syria hosts half a million Palestinian refugees, most living in Yarmouk, descendants of those admitted after the creation of Israel in 1948, and has always cast itself as a champion of the Palestinian struggle, sponsoring several guerrilla factions.

Both Assad’s government and the mainly Sunni Muslim Syrian rebels have enlisted and armed divided Palestinian factions as the uprising has developed into a civil war.

“NEITHER SIDE CAN WIN”

Syrian Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa said in a newspaper interview published on Monday that neither Assad’s forces nor rebels seeking to overthrow him can win the war.

Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim in a power structure dominated by Assad’s Alawite minority, has rarely been seen since the revolt erupted in March 2011 and is not part of the president’s inner circle directing the fight against Sunni rebels. But he is the most prominent figure to say in public that Assad will not win.

Sharaa said the situation in Syria was deteriorating and a “historic settlement” was needed to end the conflict, involving regional powers and the U.N. Security Council and the formation of a national unity government “with broad powers”.

“With every passing day the political and military solutions are becoming more distant. We should be in a position defending the existence of Syria. We are not in a battle for an individual or a regime,” Sharaa was quoted as telling Al-Akhbar newspaper.

“The opposition cannot decisively settle the battle and what the security forces and army units are doing will not achieve a decisive settlement,” he said, adding that insurgents fighting to topple Syria’s leadership could plunge it into “anarchy and an unending spiral of violence”.

Sources close to the Syrian government say Sharaa had pushed for dialogue with the opposition and objected to the military response to an uprising that began peacefully.

In a veiled criticism of the crackdown, he said there was a difference between the state’s duty to provide security to its citizens, and “pursuing a security solution to the crisis”.

He said even Assad could not be certain where events in Syria were leading, but that anyone who met him would hear that “this is a long struggle…and he does not hide his desire to settle matters militarily to reach a final solution.”

In Hama province, rebels and the army clashed in a new campaign launched on Sunday by rebels to block off the country’s north, activists said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked violence monitor, said fighting raged through the provincial towns of Karnaz, Kafar Weeta, Halfayeh and Mahardeh.

It said there were no clashes reported in Hama city, which lies on the main north-south highway connecting the capital with Aleppo, Syria’s second city.

Qassem Saadeddine, a member of the newly established rebel military command, said on Sunday fighters had been ordered to surround and attack army positions across the province. He said Assad’s forces were given 48 hours to surrender or be killed.

In 1982 Hafez al-Assad, father of the current ruler, crushed an uprising in Hama city, killing up to 30,000 civilians.

Qatiba al-Naasan, a rebel from Hama, said the offensive would bring retaliatory air strikes from the government but that the situation is “already getting miserable”.

(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes, Erika Solomon and Dominic Evans in Beirut, Afif Diab at Masnaa, Lebanon; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

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HBO making “Game of Thrones”-themed beer

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Winter is coming – and so is a new line of beers based on HBO‘s fantasy drama “Game of Thrones.” Presumably, all will boast a full, robust head, perhaps resting on top of a spike.

HBO is teaming with Cooperstown, N.Y. brewery Ommegang for a line of brews centered around the series, the New York Times reports. The first beer, Iron Throne Blonde Ale, is slated to go on sale in March, in time for the March 31 premiere of the show’s third season.

It sounds like the perfect libation for watching the premiere from the comfort of your $ 30,000 Iron Throne replica.

A second “GoT”-themed beer will go on sale in fall 2013, with two more varieties expected to go on sale in conjunction with new seasons of the series.

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Merck, GE to collaborate on Alzheimer’s drug development

(Reuters) – Merck & Co and General Electric Co‘s healthcare unit have agreed to collaborate on an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease, the companies said on Tuesday.

GE Healthcare will supply Flutemetamol, an investigational imaging agent, to Merck for use with its experimental Alzheimer’s disease drug MK-8931.

The companies hope GE’s imaging agent will help identify patients who might benefit from a therapy such as Merck’s, which targets beta amyloid, a protein that can clump together and form plaques in the brain. Such plaques have been found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

MK-8931 is Merck’s lead Alzheimer’s drug candidate and is designed to modify progression of the disease as well as improve symptoms. Alzheimer’s robs patients of their memory and can cause other cognitive disturbances.

Based on promising results from an early-stage clinical trial of MK-8931, Merck plans to move forward with a larger trial, called EPOCH, at multiple sites around the world.

Flutemetamol is a positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agent that has been able, in clinical trials, to detect beta amyloid in the brain.

GE Healthcare will supply Flutemetamol to help select patients for clinical trials and evaluate the agent as a companion diagnostic tool. Financial and other terms of the agreement between the companies were not disclosed.

(Reporting By Toni Clarke; editing by John Wallace)

Diseases/Conditions News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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