Justin Bartha Is Dating Trainer Lia Smith















01/07/2013 at 07:00 PM EST







Lia and Justin in Hawaii New Years Day


Pacific Coast News


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

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

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

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

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Report: Death rates from cancer still inching down


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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Ex-governor in North Korea with Google chief; seeks American's release


SEOUL (Reuters) - Former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt began a controversial private mission to North Korea on Monday that will include an effort to secure the release of an imprisoned American.


The trip comes after North Korea carried out a long-range rocket test last month and as, according to satellite imagery, the reclusive state continues work on its nuclear testing facilities, potentially paving the way for a third nuclear bomb test.


Footage from North Korean state television showed Richardson and Schmidt at the Pyongyang airport on Monday evening.


"We are going to ask about the American who's been detained. A humanitarian private visit." Richardson said.


Richardson's efforts to seek the release of Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American tour guide who was detained last year will mark the latest in a series of high-profile visits over the years to free Americans detained by Pyongyang.


The delegation comprised Schmidt, his daughter, Richardson and Google executive Jared Cohen, according to South Korean news media and it arrived in Pyongyang on a flight from the Chinese capital, Beijing.


The mission has been criticized by the United States due to the sensitivity of the timing. The United States does not have diplomatic relations with North Korea and the isolated and impoverished state remains technically at war with U.S. ally South Korea.


"We continue to think the trip is ill-advised," U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in Washington. Last week she said the main U.S. objection was that the trip came so soon after North Korea's much-criticized December 12 rocket launch.


South Korea is in the midst of a transition to a new president who will take office in February, while Japan, another major U.S. ally in the region, has a new prime minister.


A U.S. official said the trip's timing was particularly bad from the Obama administration's point of view because it comes as the U.N. Security Council ponders how to respond to the North Korean missile launch.


"We are in kind of a classical provocation period with North Korea. Usually, their missile launches are followed by nuclear tests," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.


"During these periods, it's very important that the international community come together, certainly at the level of the U.N. Security Council, to demonstrate to North Korea that they pay a price for not living up to their obligations."


Richardson, a former ambassador to the United Nations, has made numerous trips to North Korea in the past that have included efforts to free detained Americans. The reasons for Schmidt's involvement in the trip are not clear, though Google characterized it as "personal" travel.


Schmidt did not respond to requests for comment.


Richardson told CBS television last Friday that he had been contacted by Bae's family and that he would raise the issue while in North Korea.


Pyongyang's most notable success was securing a visit from former President Bill Clinton in 2009 to win the release of two American journalists.


Last year, Jared and Schmidt met defectors from North Korea, a state that ranks bottom in an annual survey of Internet and press freedom by Reporters Without Borders.


Media reports and think tanks say that officials from the North Korean government went to Google's headquarters in 2011, something the U.S. technology giant declined to comment on.


(Additional reporting by Cho Meeyoung and WASHINGTON Bureau; Editing by Michael Perry, Ron Popeski and David Brunnstrom)



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Alleged Ohio rapists may not get fair trial: defendant’s lawyer






(Reuters) – Two Ohio high-school football players accused of raping a teenage girl may not get a fair trial after a photo and video allegedly associated with the case were posted on the Internet by the computer hacking group Anonymous, a lawyer for one of the accused said on Friday.


Ma’lik Richmond and Trenton Mays, both 16 and members of the Steubenville High School football team, are charged with raping a 16-year-old fellow student last August, according to statements from their attorneys to local and national media.






Their juvenile court trial is scheduled for February in Steubenville, a city of 19,000 about 40 miles west of Pittsburgh.


The case shot to national prominence this week when Anonymous activists made public a picture allegedly of the rape victim, being carried by her wrists and ankles by two young men, and of a video that showed several other young men joking about an alleged assault.


Richmond’s lawyer, Walter Madison, said on CNN that his client was one of the young men in the photograph, but does not appear in the video.


But the picture “is out of context,” Madison said. “That young lady is not unconscious,” as has been widely reported.


“A right to a fair trial for these young men has been hijacked,” Madison said, adding that social media episodes such as this have become a major threat to a criminal defendant’s right to a fair trial.


“It’s very, very serious and fairness is essential to getting the right decision here,” he said.


Mays’ attorney Adam Nemann could not immediately be reached for comment on Friday. In an interview on Thursday with Columbus, Ohio, broadcaster WBNS-10TV, Nemann raised concerns about the effect the Anonymous postings could have on potential witnesses in the case.


“This media has become so astronomically ingrained on the Internet and within that society, I am concerned witnesses might not want to come forward at this point. I would be surprised now, if there weren’t witnesses now who might want to start taking the Fifth Amendment,” Nemann told the station.


The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offers protection against self-incrimination in criminal proceedings.


The case has also been a challenge for local officials because of conflicts of interest. Both the local prosecutor and police have close ties to the school that the defendants attend.


As a result, the case is being investigated and prosecuted by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office.


Interviewed on CNN on Friday, DeWine said it was not unusual for his office to prosecute or investigate cases in small towns where close ties within the community caused conflicts of interest to arise.


He also voiced concern about how social media may affect the case.


“This case needs to be tried not in the media, not in social media,” DeWine said.


He said Anonymous’ attempt to shame the alleged attackers had actually harmed the victim.


Not only is the victim hurt by the initial crime, but “every time something goes up on the Internet, the victim is victimized again,” DeWine said.


(Reporting by Dan Burns and Peter Rudegeair; Editing by Bernadette Baum)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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















01/06/2013 at 05:00 PM EST



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she's not just talking about babies!

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Asian shares drift, Basel ruling supports banks

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Asian stocks drifted on Monday as investors booked profits from a New Year rally that had pushed markets to multi-month highs, but financial stocks gained after global regulators decided to relax draft plans for tough new bank liquidity rules.


Commodity prices mostly held firm, supported by data showing the U.S. economy continuing on a path of slow but steady recovery that propelled Wall Street stocks to a five-year high.


The dollar sat close to a two-and-a-half-year high against the yen as investors adjusted to the possibility of more monetary stimulus in 2013 from the Bank of Japan and less from the U.S. Federal Reserve.


MSCI's broadest index of Asia Pacific shares outside Japan <.miapj0000pus>, which had reached its highest level since August 2011 on Thursday, was flat, while Tokyo's Nikkei share average <.n225> retreated after touching a 23-month high in early trade to stand down 0.2 percent. <.t/>


"Investors have been carefully waiting for the timing to take profits as they believed the market can't keep rising," said Yutaka Miura, a senior technical analyst at Mizuho Securities.


CASH BUFFERS


The MSCI benchmark's financial sector sub-index <.miapjfn00pus> gained 0.5 percent after the Basel Committee of banking supervisors agreed on Sunday to give banks four more years and greater flexibility to build up cash buffers so they can use some of their reserves to help struggling economies.


HSBC Holdings Hong Kong shares rose 1.3 percent, while Australia and New Zealand Banking Corp gained 0.6 percent. <.hk><.ax/>


Shares in Japanese exporters were supported by a weaker yen, which traded around 88.05 to the dollar, a little firmer on the day, after the U.S. currency rose as far as 88.40 yen, its highest in nearly two-and-a-half years, on Friday.


The dollar posted a gain of around 2.7 percent against the yen last week, its biggest weekly rise in more than a year. Its gains had accelerated after minutes from the Federal Reserve's December meeting showed some policymakers has mulled ending the Fed's bond-buying program as early as this year.


By contrast, many investors are now betting that Japan's new government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will push to weaken the yen and drive through aggressive fiscal stimulus, and pressure the Bank of Japan to do the same on the monetary side.


The dollar ticked up slightly against the euro, which traded around $1.3060.


The U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index <.spx> closed at its highest level since December 2007 on Friday after data showed a steady pace of jobs growth and brisk expansion of the services sector in the world's biggest economy.


That offered support to growth-sensitive commodities, with copper edging up 0.2 percent to around $8,100 a tonne, while Brent crude oil gained 0.2 percent to around $111.50 a barrel and U.S. crude stood flat just above $93.


(Editing by Eric Meijer)



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Activists wary as India rushes to justice after gang rape


NEW DELHI (Reuters) - It's no surprise the Indian street wants faster, harsher justice for sexual crimes after a horrific gang rape that rocked the nation, but some activists worry the government will trample fundamental rights in its rush to be in tune with popular rage.


Last month's rape of a physiotherapy student on a moving bus and her death on December 28 in hospital triggered a national debate about how to better protect women in India, where official data shows one rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.


Many women's rights groups are cautiously hopeful the protests and outrage that followed the crime can be channeled into real change - fast-track courts for sexual offences and a plan to hire 2,500 new women police in Delhi are measures already in the works.


But legal experts and some feminists are worried that calls to make rape punishable with death and other draconian penalties will cramp civil liberties and are unconstitutional. They say India needs better policing and prosecutions, not new laws.


"If there are not enough convictions, it is not because of an insufficiency of law, but it is the insufficiency of material to base the conviction on," said retired Delhi High Court judge R.S. Sodhi.


Five men have been charged with the student's rape and murder and will appear before a New Delhi court later on Monday. They are due to be tried in a newly formed fast-track court in the next few weeks. A teenager also accused will likely be tried in a juvenile court.


Ahead of Monday's court appearance the five still had no defense lawyers - despite extensive interrogations by the police, who have said they have recorded confessions - after members of the bar association in the South Delhi district where the case is being heard vowed not to represent them.


GROUNDS FOR APPEAL


The men will be assigned lawyers by the court before the trial begins, but their lack of representation so far could give grounds for appeal later should they be found guilty - similar cases have resulted in acquittals years after convictions.


"The accused has a right to a lawyer from point of arrest - the investigations are going on, statements being taken, it is totally illegal," said Colin Gonsalves, a senior Supreme Court advocate and director of Delhi's Human Rights Law Network.


Senior leaders of most states on Friday came out in support of a plan to lower to 16 the age that minors can be tried as adults - in response to fury that the maximum penalty the accused youth could face is three years detention.


A government panel is considering suggestions to make the death penalty mandatory for rape and introducing forms of chemical castration for the guilty. It is due to make its recommendations by January 23.


"The more you strengthen the powers of the state against the people, the more the possibility you create a draconian regime," said Sehjo Singh, Programme and Policy Director with ActionAid in India and an expert on Indian women's social movements.


"We want to raise the bar of human rights in India, we want to raise the standards, not lower them."


The Indian Express newspaper warned against "knee-jerk" reaction and said any change to the juvenile law "must come after rigorous and considered debate. It cannot be a reaction to a fraught moment".


Courts are swamped with a backlog of cases in the country of 1.2 billion people and trials often take more than five years to complete, so the launch by Chief Justice Altamas Kabir of six fast-track courts in the capital to deal with sexual offences was widely greeted as a welcome move.


Several other states including Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra are now looking at following Delhi's example.


But Gonsalves says while the courts are a good idea on paper, similar tribunals in the past delivered dubious verdicts and put financial pressure on the rest of the justice system.


FAST TRACK COURTS


India set up 1,700 fast-track courts in 2004, but stopped funding them last year because they turned out to be costly. The courts typically work six days a week and try to reduce adjournments that lead to long delays in cases.


"The record of the fast-track courts is mixed," Gonsalves said. Conviction rates rose, he said, but due process was sometimes rushed, leading to convictions being overturned.


"Fast-track courts were in many ways were fast-track injustice," he said.


The real problem lie with bad policing and a shortage of judges, Gonsalves said. India has about a fifth of the number of judges per capita that the United States has.


Indian police are often poorly trained and underpaid, and have sometimes been implicated in organized crime. Rights groups complain the mostly male officers are insensitive to victims of sexual crimes.


Resources for, and expertise in, forensic science is limited in most of the country's police forces and confessions are often extracted under duress. The judiciary complains it is hard to convict offenders because of faulty evidence.


Human Rights Watch said reforms to laws and procedures covering rape and other sexual crimes should focus on protection of witnesses and modernizing support for victims at police stations and hospitals.


The rights organization has documented the continued use of archaic practices such as the "finger test" used by some doctors on rape victims to allegedly determine if they had regular sex.


"Reforms in the rape laws - these are needed. But not in terms of enhancing punishment," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia Director of Human Rights Watch.


"Why they are not investigated, why there are not enough convictions, those are the things that need to be addressed."


(Additional reporting by Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Shashank Chouhan and Annie Banerji; Editing by Alex Richardson)



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We Salute the First Baby Senator






We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:


RELATED: Claire McCaskill and How to Attack the Opponent You’re Rooting For






Here’s our suggestion to improve the (already pretty hilarious) swearing-in process for U.S. Senators: Each new member of Congress must bring a cute baby.


RELATED: Rand Paul Doesn’t Want You to Go to Jail for Smoking Pot


RELATED: Larry David’s Two-Minute Guide to Etiquette


Apparently the BBC has decided to market a line of lunch boxes specifically made for hungry polar bears. They are still working out the kinks: 


RELATED: Homer Simpson, Fox News Pundit; Books After Dark


RELATED: Bo Obama Stays On Message; Sarah Palin Can See HBO in Her House


The Golden Globes will be bittersweet this year. Don’t get us wrong — we’re really excited to watch Amy Poehler and Tina Fey entertain us. But we’ll also be also really sad when this thing is over because it means the end of these promos:


And finally, it’s Friday. And it’s time to dance. Enjoy your weekend. 


Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Bethenny Frankel Divorcing Jason Hoppy















01/05/2013 at 05:00 PM EST







Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy


Albert Michael/Startraks


It's official – Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy's marriage is over.

Having announced a separation over the holidays, the reality star began the divorce process by filing earlier this week in New York, TMZ reports.

"It brings me great sadness to say that Jason and I are separating," Frankel, 42, had said in a statement Dec. 23. "This was an extremely difficult decision that as a woman and a mother, I have to accept as the best choice for our family."

The split comes after months of rumors that the pair – who married in 2010 and are parents to daughter Bryn, 2½ – were on the rocks.

"Bethenny is devastated," a friend tells PEOPLE.

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FDA: New rules will make food safer


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.


The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.


The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.


Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.


Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.


In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.


Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.


"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.


The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.


The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.


The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.


Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.


In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."


The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.


FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.


The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.


Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.


"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.


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