THURSDAY, Dec. 29 (HealthDay News) -- Overcrowding in emergency rooms appears to keep children with broken arms and legs from getting pain relief in a timely manner, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine said their findings are significant since these injuries, known as long bone fractures, are common among children and very painful.
"Pain associated with long bone fractures can be pretty severe," study author Dr. Marion Sills said in a university news release. "But crowded emergency departments are impacting the delivery of care on many levels, including the delivery of pain medication."
In conducting the study, published in the December issue of the journal Academic Emergency Medicine, researchers examined 1,229 children treated in an ER over the course of one year. They found the children were 4 percent to 47 percent less likely to receive treatment in a timely fashion when the ER was very crowded (at the 90th percentile) than when it was less crowded (at the 10th percentile). The researchers also found the children were 3 percent to 17 percent less likely to receive effective care in these crowded conditions.
"The relationship between emergency department crowding and pain treatment is not unexpected," noted Sills. "When the emergency department gets busier, staff may be less responsive to the needs of individual patients and, as a result, patients have a higher likelihood of non-treatment and delays in treatment."
The authors said delays happen in some cases when only doctors are permitted to provide certain pain medications to patients.
"The expensive way to mitigate crowding is to hire more staff. Another way is to leverage the staff you have," Sills said. "Institutions can use techniques like protocols for pain management with standing orders for nurses, and computer- or phone-based alerts to call attention to under-treated pain."
Crowding is a serious issue, said Sills. "It is caused by a variety of things, from patients who too readily use emergency departments to federal policies that exacerbate the problem," she noted. "We as a nation need to get serious about this. Crowding needs to be a policy priority at every level."
More information
The U.S. National Institutes of Health provides more information on pain relievers.
Obama says he is the 4th best prez in the history of the USA.
Better than George Washington. Better than James Madison. Better than Theodore Roosevelt. Better than John F. Kennedy. Better than Ronald Reagan.
That's Barack Obama's opinion of his accomplishments during the first couple years of the eight years he plans to be president.
The revelation about Obama's opinion of his own presence in the Oval Office came during an interview for "60 Minutes," where the network reported Obama described himself as a "good captain" of the ship of state.
But the aired footage of the comments that his own accomplishments surpass those of every president ? with only a couple of exceptions ? did not reach the airwaves and were available on the online video.
That prompted several pundits, including P.J. Gladnick of NewsBusters to write:
"Such was the laughably absurd claim of President Obama on 60 Minutes last Sunday. What? You didn't see it? That was because 60 Minutes conveniently left it out of its broadcast. If you want to see Obama engage in this latest bit of over the top braggadocio you can only see it at the online 60 Minutes Overtime which has a video of the entire interview. You can catch Obama's excessive praise of himself at the tail end of the interview starting with Steve Kroft's question just before the 55 minute mark."
Yale scientist wins inaugural ASBMB award for her work on regulation of gene expressionPublic release date: 28-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Geoff Hunt ghunt@asbmb.org 240-283-6626 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Alice and C.C. Wang award carries $35,000 purse, award lecture at Experimental Biology 2012
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 22, 2011 The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has named Elisabetta Ullu, professor of internal medicine and cell biology at the Yale University School of Medicine, the winner of the society's inaugural Alice and C.C. Wang award.
Ullu received the award, named after an internationally recognized researcher in parasitology, for her laboratory's work with the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, to uncover a novel mechanism of gene silencing known as RNA interference.
While working on RNA synthesis and processing pathways in T. brucei, Ullu hit upon the phenomenon of RNA interference (RNAi), in which small, noncoding RNA molecules, rather than proteins, regulate gene expression. Ullu's discovery of RNAi "made a revolution in the ability to investigate the function of genes in parasites," said Shulamit Michaeli from the Israel Science Foundation in supporting her nomination. The importance of RNAi as a biological phenomenon was cemented in 2006, when the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for describing the process in roundworm nematodes.
Award namesake C.C. Wang praised Ullu's selection. "I think Elisabetta is a fantastic choice and an ideal recipient of the award from the eyes of my wife Alice and myself," he said.
The society's president, Suzanne Pfeffer, concurred. "Elisabetta Ullu is exactly the kind of recipient the society had in mind when this award was established by Alice and C. C. Wang. Her work has made, and will continue to make, extraordinary contributions to the fundamental principles of molecular parasitology."
A native of Italy, Ullu received her Ph.D. from the University of Rome in 1973. She continued worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, before taking a position at Yale University in 1984, where she has been ever since.
Ullu will receive her award during the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego, where she will deliver an award lecture. The presentation will take place at 3:45 p.m. April 22 in the San Diego Convention Center.
The Alice and C.C. Wang award aims to recognize established investigators who are making seminal contributions to the field of molecular parasitology, focusing in particular on novel and significant discoveries on the biology of parasitic organisms. The award's namesake, Ching Chung "C.C." Wang, is a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Professor Wang has made key contributions to the understanding of the biology of many pathogenic protozoa. The award consists of $35,000 for use by the recipient's research laboratory, a plaque and travel expenses for the recipient to attend and speak at the ASBMB annual meeting at EB2012.
###
About the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The ASBMB is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization with more than 12,000 members worldwide. Most members teach and conduct research at colleges and universities. Others conduct research in various government laboratories, at nonprofit research institutions and in industry. The Society's student members attend undergraduate or graduate institutions. For more information about ASBMB, visit www.asbmb.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Yale scientist wins inaugural ASBMB award for her work on regulation of gene expressionPublic release date: 28-Dec-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Geoff Hunt ghunt@asbmb.org 240-283-6626 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Alice and C.C. Wang award carries $35,000 purse, award lecture at Experimental Biology 2012
ROCKVILLE, Md., Dec. 22, 2011 The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology has named Elisabetta Ullu, professor of internal medicine and cell biology at the Yale University School of Medicine, the winner of the society's inaugural Alice and C.C. Wang award.
Ullu received the award, named after an internationally recognized researcher in parasitology, for her laboratory's work with the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, to uncover a novel mechanism of gene silencing known as RNA interference.
While working on RNA synthesis and processing pathways in T. brucei, Ullu hit upon the phenomenon of RNA interference (RNAi), in which small, noncoding RNA molecules, rather than proteins, regulate gene expression. Ullu's discovery of RNAi "made a revolution in the ability to investigate the function of genes in parasites," said Shulamit Michaeli from the Israel Science Foundation in supporting her nomination. The importance of RNAi as a biological phenomenon was cemented in 2006, when the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Andrew Fire and Craig Mello for describing the process in roundworm nematodes.
Award namesake C.C. Wang praised Ullu's selection. "I think Elisabetta is a fantastic choice and an ideal recipient of the award from the eyes of my wife Alice and myself," he said.
The society's president, Suzanne Pfeffer, concurred. "Elisabetta Ullu is exactly the kind of recipient the society had in mind when this award was established by Alice and C. C. Wang. Her work has made, and will continue to make, extraordinary contributions to the fundamental principles of molecular parasitology."
A native of Italy, Ullu received her Ph.D. from the University of Rome in 1973. She continued worked at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, before taking a position at Yale University in 1984, where she has been ever since.
Ullu will receive her award during the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego, where she will deliver an award lecture. The presentation will take place at 3:45 p.m. April 22 in the San Diego Convention Center.
The Alice and C.C. Wang award aims to recognize established investigators who are making seminal contributions to the field of molecular parasitology, focusing in particular on novel and significant discoveries on the biology of parasitic organisms. The award's namesake, Ching Chung "C.C." Wang, is a professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at the University of California, San Francisco. Professor Wang has made key contributions to the understanding of the biology of many pathogenic protozoa. The award consists of $35,000 for use by the recipient's research laboratory, a plaque and travel expenses for the recipient to attend and speak at the ASBMB annual meeting at EB2012.
###
About the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The ASBMB is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization with more than 12,000 members worldwide. Most members teach and conduct research at colleges and universities. Others conduct research in various government laboratories, at nonprofit research institutions and in industry. The Society's student members attend undergraduate or graduate institutions. For more information about ASBMB, visit www.asbmb.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Kmart and Sears closing will effect 120 stores nationwide. But these Sears closings might not save the company, says one analyst.
Sears' decision to?close?up to 120 Sears and Kmart stores shows a retailer struggling to draw shoppers at a time of increasing competition, Credit Suisse retail analyst Gary Balter told CNBC.
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"I don't know how they're going to turn it around," he said Tuesday. "This was a company making $3.6 billion in?Ebitda?four years ago," compared to $400 million this year "at a time when others are turning things around."
Balter, with a $20 price target and "underperform" rating on the stock, said Sears?has been losing market share to?Home Depot?and?Lowe's?on sales of power tools, and?Wal-Mart?and?Target?on drawing shoppers seeking discounts.
Home Depot?and Lowe's?in particular stand to benefit from Sears closing stores because they've already been aggressively pricing appliances, which make up about 7 percent of Home Depot sales and 10 percent at Lowe's. Those who won't benefit are Sears suppliers, such as?Whirlpool, one of the companies that makes Sears' Kenmore appliance.
"They?ve done a very nice job online," Balter said of Sears' website, "but they can?t get people into the stores, and that?s where most of their asset base is."
He said Chairman Eddie Lampert has limited choices. Land's End, which Sears bought in 2002, is a well-managed subsidiary with $1.5 billion to $2 billion in sales that can "be easily separated from Sears," Balter said. After that, however, the problem is "how do you separate the other assets without destroying the franchise?"
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Additional Views: Cramer's Play on Retail and Housing
A eye-opening year for Illinois' 5 GOP freshmen in U.S. House
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?|?December 27, 2011
Group of conservative lawmakers learn that not all battles with Democrats will go their way, with some facing primary election contests for 2nd terms U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of five Republican freshmen from the state in the House, calls them "The Boys from Illinois." But after almost a year in...
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Google may have finally found a solution to the social networking problem that has eluded them for years ? Google Plus is populated by 62 million users and will hit 400 million by the end of 2012, according to self-proclaimed ?unofficial statistician? Paul Allen (no, not that Paul Allen).
The last official figure we got was 40 million users, but that was way back in October. Allen?s estimates put the growth rate of Google Plus at 625,000 new users per day. At this rate, Google Plus will hit the 100 million users mark before the end of February and 200 million in August.
By end of the 2012 that number grows to 293 million. But Paul Allen bets the number of newcomers per day will increase, so Google Plus will actually have 400 million users by the end of next year.
Now, Allen may have a tendency to overestimate the number of users ? for example, he reported 50 million users at the end of September, then in October Google came out with an official number of 40 million.
Still, if Google manages to attract even just 200 million users to its social network in less than two years, it will be an amazing feat. It took Facebook about 4 years to hit that mark in April 2009 (though they?ve grown to 800 million since then).
LESTER, AL (RNN) - For eight months, Patty Bullion has made it her full time job to reunite victims of the April Southeastern tornado outbreak with their memories.
Her Facebook page "Pictures and Documents found after the April 27, 2011 Tornadoes" became a gathering place for people to post pictures they found in the aftermath in the storm, as well as for victims to reclaim photos ripped from their homes, sometimes thrown hundreds of miles away.
Now that many of the victims have moved on from that day, she says it's time for her to move on, too.
Bullion will be shutting the page down in the next few weeks because she says pictures are no longer being claimed. She also says a lot of her emails have bounced back? and that she's no longer able to get in touch with many of the people who have posted pictures.
"Somebody asked 'Why not leave it up?' I don't feel like it should be left up forever. These people's lives don't need to be forever displayed as a tornado victim," she said.
"I just feel like, for privacy reasons and to let people move on, those pictures don't need to stay out there forever. I wouldn't want something of mine out there for forever."
The page returned more than 2,000 pictures to their owners or, sometimes, family members of people who died in the tornado outbreak.
Bullion found and re-united the family of Maxine Chism with a picture of her and her late husband that hung in a frame on the wall of her home. Chism was thrown from the home during the tornado that touched down in Smithville, MS. She died from her injuries on May 20.
While the page is coming down, her mission to get people's pictures back to them will continue for a little while. In the next few months, she plans to personally travel to Phil Campbell, AL and Hackleburg, AL, some of the hardest hit areas, to let locals look through what's left of the pictures.
"I want to do that one last push because I have a large box of pictures and I want to do everything I can to get them home," she said.
The stories that have emerged and the people she's "met" through the page have interwoven themselves in to the fabric of her heart. She says the page has been a "huge success" and that she's met some lifelong friends through the project that she's poured days, weeks, and months of her life into.
"It went so much further than I ever thought it would. It's been a blessing," she said.
"I have put a lot of hours into it but it's been a labor of love and I have loved every minute of it. I was very blessed to have been a part of this."
Copyright 2011 Raycom News Network. All rights reserved.
Today was the last day that you could submit signatures to appear on the ballot in the Virginia primaries. It's not an easy process. You need to collect 10,000 valid signatures, including at least 400 from each of Virginia's eleven congressional districts. Rick Perry tried, but failed, to get 10,000. Newt Gingrich submitted over 11,000, but must now pray that enough of them are from actual voters to get him over the hump. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney had no trouble and were certified. Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and whoever else is pretending to run for president, didn't even submit any signatures. In other words, in one of the swingiest of swing-states, we could see a ballot featuring only Romney and Paul. In any case, it will have no more than three candidates to choose from.
May I submit that you can't seriously hope to be the leader of the free world if you can't even get your crap together to get your name on the ballot? No one should take you seriously in Iowa if we know you're not even going to be on the ballot in Virginia. This would be a good opportunity for the media to start ignoring everything Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, and Hunstman have to say.
Look at this comedy:
Jerry Kilgore, former attorney general and chairman of Perry?s campaign in Virginia, said in an interview Friday night he did not know how many signatures were submitted. He said he was disappointed, but that qualifying for the Virginia ballot is a ?daunting task.?
?Hopefully, he will do better in other states,?? he said. ?He can focus on other states.?
Yes, candidates can focus on campaigning in states where they will actually appear on the ballot. That is very good advice.
We have a crazy electoral system. But you have to be able to master it to have any hope of mastering the federal government. Consider the fact that the Clintons screwed up their campaign by not understanding how delegates were allocated until it was too late. And they ran the government for eight years and basically created the process set up by their DNC. It's not a simple thing to run a presidential campaign. It takes a lot of brain power. You've got Rick Perry failing to qualify for the ballot in Virginia and Mitt Romney operating with one office and three staffers in all of South Carolina. These people are amateurs, and they've going to get their heads handed to them.
SHANGHAI (Reuters) ? China has arrested former executives at two brokerages on charges of insider trading, the securities watchdog said, as part of a crackdown on market malpractice that the new head of the agency has said will be one of his top priorities.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) detailed on its website four cases of market manipulation and insider trading that it has investigated, including two that led to the arrests of former executives at Southwest Securities Co Ltd (600369.SS) and Northeast Securities Co Ltd (000686.SZ).
The cases are the latest in an increasingly high-profile campaign by CSRC chief Guo Shuqing to stamp out rampant wrongdoing in the country's stock market, which has languished despite the country's nearly double-digit economic growth.
In one case, Qin Xuan, a Northeast Securities manager who advised on the restructuring of a Shenzhen-listed pharmaceutical firm, used the information he obtained in that process to trade the company's stock, and also leaked the information to a friend.
In another case, Ji Minbo, former vice president at Southwest Securities, gained 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) by using information that was not publicly disclosed to trade more than 40 stocks from 2009 to 2011, the CSRC said.
"No matter how concealed illegal practices are, inside traders will eventually be punished by law," the CSRC said in the statement that detailed Qin's case.
The other two cases on which the agency published details involved securities consultants using commentators, research reports and media to talk up stocks they own before selling the securities to make a profit.
China has been stepping up its crackdown against illegal trading activities and tightening supervision against fund managers, brokerages, consultants and executives of listed companies in a bid to build confidence in a stock market where illegal trading activities have been rampant.
In August, former stock analyst Wang Jianzhong was sentenced to seven years in prison and fined 125 million yuan, on top of having illicit earnings of the same amount confiscated, becoming China's first convicted stock market manipulator.
Guo, the former China Construction Bank chairman who became CSRC chief in late October, said in a speech in early December that the regulator would adamantly crack down on accounting fraud, insider trading and other illegal activities.
Earlier this month, the agency exposed the country's biggest-ever case of stock market manipulation that involved an investment company, Guangdong Zhonghengxin, orchestrating "pump-and-dump" schemes related to 552 stocks, out of which it made 426 million yuan.
The CSRC has also recently published rules that would require listed companies to keep records on anyone who may have access to price-sensitive information.
($1 = 6.3364 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Samuel Shen and Jason Subler; Editing by Kazunori Takada)
To lift the lid on the lives of turkeys, naturalist Joe Hutto became a full-time "mother" to a brood of poults. What did he learn?
You lived with wild turkeys in rural Florida for over a year. How did it all begin? I had been experimenting with the imprinting phenomenon - in which young animals become attached to the first moving object they encounter - for years, with many types of birds and mammals. Wild turkeys are difficult to come by, so when I lucked upon some wild turkey eggs I decided: OK, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
These turkeys regarded you as their mother. Was that a lot of responsibility? It was, because wild turkeys are precocial - they are born fully alert and ambulatory and don't stay in the nest. They have to imprint at birth so they know who mum is, and they can't be left alone at all. I realised that if I was going to do this project then it was going to be a 24-hour-a-day commitment, which I was willing to do.
What did being their mother mean in practice? I had to be with them before daylight so that when they flew down from the roost their mother was there waiting, and I had to remain with them until after dark. If I tried to leave before it was completely dark they would fly down and try to follow me, and then they were left on the ground, where they were vulnerable to snakes or weasels.
Was your research scientific? It started out as a science project but it became more than that to me. I found it impossible to avoid a very personal involvement, so a certain scientific empiricism and detachment was immediately lost in the process.
Were there any specific skills you had to teach the turkey poults? Not at all. Their innate understanding of ecology was complete. They knew everything from birth, and the knowledge is very specific. That was one of the most surprising things about the study. From birth they knew exactly which insect they could eat and which was dangerous. I didn't have to intervene and say: "No, no, don't try to eat that wasp." They knew not to eat the wasp.
Did you learn to talk "turkey"? They sort of taught me their language. Researchers had identified 25 to 30 calls in wild turkeys that I was familiar with. But I learned that wild turkey vocabulary was much more complex than I had realised - within each of their calls were different inflexions that had specific meanings. For example, they had an alarm call for dangerous reptiles, but what I learned was that in that call there were specific inflexions that would identify a species of snake. Eventually when I heard a certain vocalisation I knew without question they had found a rattlesnake.
So turkeys are not as stupid as their reputation suggests? No. But I think the first thing we do when we domesticate an animal is breed the fine evolutionary edge out of them. They lose that well-honed razor's edge of survival that causes them to be clever, independent and a survivor. In some sense we breed the brains out of them.
Profile
Joe Hutto is an ethologist. As well as turkeys, he has studied Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep and has spent the past six years living with mule deer. My Life As A Turkey, a documentary on his time with turkeys, came out on DVD last month
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Modern mice, what with their sleek lines and ergonomic designs, make it easy to stay online for hours. Thankfully, mousing comfort wasn't always a concern, and after 15 minutes with this retro mouse you'll be too sore to surf. More »
BAGHDAD (Reuters) ? Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki summoned all Iraq's parties to talks in the coming days but was promptly rebuffed on Wednesday by the main Sunni bloc, as a sectarian crisis in his power-sharing coalition deepened.
Days after the final withdrawal of the U.S. forces which overthrew Saddam Hussein, Maliki's Shi'ite Muslim allies have sought to arrest the country's Sunni vice president on charges of terrorism and on Wednesday Maliki demanded that leaders of the autonomous Kurdish region hand over the wanted man.
At a news conference later, Maliki said his cabinet had agreed on Tuesday to invite all the political blocs, including those which failed to win seats in last year's parliamentary election, to a meeting in the next few days with all government ministers, the president and the two vice presidents.
That would bring leaders together from the Shi'ite majority and from the Sunni and Kurdish minorities which have a share of these posts - the kind of dialogue which U.S. officials have been urging Maliki to pursue in order to calm passions provoked by the arrest warrant for Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi.
But Hashemi's Iraqiya bloc quickly issued a statement to reject Maliki's call for talks and said it was considering a no-confidence vote in parliament against the premier for breaking his oath of office and violating the constitution.
"Iraqiya refuses the invitation to dialogue by Maliki since he represents the main reason for the crisis and the problem, and he is not a positive element for a solution," said the party, which joined Maliki's coalition last year after months of negotiation. It recently began a boycott, complaining that the views of its mainly Sunni constituency were being ignored.
(Reporting by Suadad al-Salhy; Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
BEIJING ? A Chinese court sentenced a veteran democracy activist Friday to nine years' imprisonment for inciting subversion, in what appears to be the most severe punishment handed down in a crackdown on dissent this year.
Chen Wei was convicted of incitement to subversion over four essays he wrote and published online, said one of his lawyers. He was detained in February amid an extensive government crackdown in response to anonymous online calls urging Chinese to imitate protests in North Africa and the Middle East.
Attorney Liang Xiaojun said the trial at a court in the city of Suining in southwestern China lasted about two and a half hours and that the sentence was handed down 30 minutes after the trial concluded.
"We pleaded not guilty. He only wrote a few essays. We presented a full defense of the case, but we were interrupted often, and none of what we said was accepted by the court," Liang said.
Liang said that after the sentence was handed down, Chen said: "I protest, I am innocent. The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die."
Chen's wife Wang Xiaoyan denounced the punishment.
"He is innocent and the punishment was too harsh. The court did not allow him to defend himself and he was completely deprived of his right to free speech," Wang said by phone from Suining. "What's wrong with a person freely expressing his ideas?"
Chen, 42, previously served time for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing, where he was attending college. In 1994, Chen was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement," according to the court indictment for his subversion charge.
Friday's sentence handed down to Chen appears to be the heaviest penalty meted out in relation to this year's crackdown, said Wang Songlian, a researcher with the Hong Kong-based advocacy group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
"This severe punishment against an activist, caught up in the Jasmine crackdown, shows how the Chinese government's nerves are still jittery," said Wang, the Hong Kong researcher.
"All its latest moves, its attempts to control its microblogs, its crackdown on activists, show it is increasing tightening on freedom of expression and other civil liberties," she said.
Others rounded up in this year's crackdown who have been punished include Beijing activist Wang Lihong, who was sentenced to nine months in jail in September for staging a protest on behalf of other activists, and Yang Qiuyu, a Beijing activist who was sentenced to two years of re-education through labor.
___
Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter at http://twitter.com/gillianwong
It took Broncos coach John Fox a while to warm up to the unique skills of Tim Tebow.? Even though Fox apparently has decided to ignore the niceties of the traditional quarterback position and to embrace the fact that Tebow is leading his team to victory after victory in 2011, Fox isn?t ready to anoint Tebow as the team?s quarterback for 2012.
?We get that question a lot, whether it?s John Elway or myself,? Fox told Jim Rome on Friday.? ?We?re both his biggest fans.? I mean, we love him.? How would you not at 7-1?? I think right now, all our focus is, let?s get this season done.
?We love him, he?s great, we?re pulling for him, and you know, we?ll make those decisions when this season is over and not worry about next season at this point.?
That?s fine, but what does the guy need to do to show that he?s the team?s quarterback of the future?? Plenty of quarterbacks with far lower winning percentages than Tebow have locked down the year-in, year-out starting jobs with their teams.
So why not Tebow?? As quarterbacks go, the Broncos could do a hell of a lot worse, and plenty of teams would surely pounce on the opportunity to make the until-further-notice starter a guy who has won games, elevated his team, generated unprecedented excitement among the fan base, and provided an anti-Hurd role model to the youth of America.
Maybe Fox is worried that it?s all a fluke.? Or maybe he?s concerned that Tebow won?t play as well without the added motivation of constantly having to prove himself.? Regardless, Tebow provides a solid foundation around which to build the team for the next decade.
If the Broncos won?t realize that, some other team will.
WASHINGTON ? The last American prisoner in Iraq, a Hezbollah commander linked to the kidnapping deaths of four U.S. soldiers, was turned over to the Iraqi government Friday, the White House said.
U.S. officials have long feared that such a transfer would lead to Ali Mussa Daqduq's release from prison. But his case became enmeshed in both international diplomacy and the Washington political debate over how best to prosecute suspected terrorists.
Under President George W. Bush, prosecutors had planned to someday charge Daqduq in a U.S. criminal court. But those plans were scrapped after Obama took office and lawmakers began restricting the president's ability to bring terrorist suspects into the United States for trial.
Many Republicans had wanted Daqduq prosecuted before a military tribunal at the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba. The Obama administration had hoped a compromise would be to prosecute Daqduq in a first-of-its-kind military commission on U.S. soil.
But the Iraqi government would not let the United States take Daqduq out of the country for trial, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
"We have sought and received assurances that he will be tried for his crimes," Vietor said Friday.
It was not immediately clear what charges he could face. The U.S. has said he was part of a brazen raid in which four American soldiers were abducted and killed in the Iraqi holy city of Karbala in 2007.
Iraq has had a shoddy record on detainee security. Last year, just a week after the U.S. turned more than 1,000 detainees at its Camp Cropper prison over to Iraqi control, four al-Qaida-linked detainees escaped. An investigation showed that the detainees had inside help.
That had lawmakers worried that Daqduq would return to Hezbollah soon after his transfer. Shortly before the White House announcement, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., was gathering signatures on a letter to Obama.
"Daqduq's Iranian paymasters would like nothing more than to see him transferred to Iraqi custody, where they could effectively pressure for his escape or release," Kirk wrote. "We truly hope you will not let that happen."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, fumed over the release of Daqduq.
"Rather than ensure justice for five American soldiers killed by Hezbollah terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq, the administration turned him over to Iraq, once again completely abdicating its responsibility to hold on to deadly terrorists. Given Iraq's history of releasing detainees, I expect it is only a matter of time before this terrorist will be back on the battlefield."
Vietor said a trial at Guantanamo Bay was never an option, either for the Iraqis or for the administration.
"The policy of this administration, because we believe it's in our national security interest, is to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, not add to the population," he said.
Two Iraqi officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said Daqduq was in the custody of Iraqi judiciary authorities in Baghdad. Daqduq will stand before an Iraq investigative judge, one official said. Investigative judges decide whether there is enough evidence for a trial and recommend specific charges, somewhat like a grand jury does in the U.S. system.
___
Associated Press writers Adam Goldman and Donna Cassata in Washington and Qassim Abdul Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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Public release date: 28-Dec-2011
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PatDollard 
thetecheye 
SPORTSbyBROOKS 
is breed the fine evolutionary edge out of them. They lose that well-honed razor's edge of survival that causes them to be clever, independent and a survivor. In some sense we breed the brains out of them.
