US wants effective Alzheimer's treatment by 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The government is setting what it calls an ambitious goal for Alzheimer's disease: Development of effective ways to treat and prevent the mind-destroying illness by 2025.

The Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer's Plan to find better treatments for the disease and offer better day-to-day care for those afflicted.

A newly released draft of the overall goals sets the 2025 deadline, but doesn't provide details of how to fund the necessary research to meet that target date. Today's treatments only temporarily ease some dementia symptoms, and work to find better ones has been frustratingly slow.

A committee of Alzheimer's experts begins a two-day meeting Tuesday to help advise the government on how to finalize the plan.

An estimated 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer's or similar dementias. It's the sixth-leading killer, and is steadily growing as the population rapidly ages. By 2050, 13 million to 16 million Americans are projected to have Alzheimer's, costing $1 trillion in medical and nursing home expenditures.

The national plan is supposed to tackle both the medical and social aspects of dementia, and advocacy groups had urged that it set a deadline for progress.

Among the draft's other goals:

?Improve timely diagnosis. A recent report found as many as half of today's Alzheimer's sufferers haven't been formally diagnosed, in part because of stigma and the belief that nothing can be done. Symptomatic treatment aside, a diagnosis lets families plan, and catching the disease earlier would be crucial if scientists ever find ways to slow the disease's progress.

?Improve support and training for families so they know what resources are available for patients and what to expect as dementia worsens.

Alzheimer's sufferers gradually lose the ability to do the simplest activities of daily life and can survive that way for a decade or more. In meetings around the country last summer and fall, families urged federal health officials to make sure the national plan addresses how to help patients live their last years at home without ruining their caregivers' own health and finances.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-17-Alzheimer's%20Plan/id-8ebf5cc1e8cd4fedb4699cfbb0212f01

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Romney, Santorum square off over felons voting

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at the Florence Civic Center in Florence, S.C., Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigns at the Florence Civic Center in Florence, S.C., Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Republican presidential candidate, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum speaks on the USS Yorktown, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012, in Mount Pleasant, S.C. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Republican presidential candidateTexas Gov. Rick Perry speaks during the South Carolina Republican presidential candidate debate Monday, Jan. 16, 2012, in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

FLORENCE, S.C. (AP) ? Seeking to protect his standing here, Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney on Tuesday assailed challenger Rick Santorum's record on voting rights for felons, an issue that resonates strongly with conservatives. Santorum separately argued that the former Massachusetts governor "promotes lies" as the two intensified their dispute from the previous night's GOP debate.

"We have a candidate who's not going to stand up and tell the truth," Santorum told reporters in Charleston, complaining that Romney refuses to condemn TV ads run by his supporters. "That leads to real serious questions about whether that man can be trusted to tell the truth on a variety of things."

But Romney, speaking separately in Florence, defended the accuracy of the ads in question, although he maintains he has no control over the negative commercials by outside groups that are flooding South Carolina in the days leading to Saturday's Republican primary.

"I hear that Rick Santorum is very animated that the super PAC ad says that he is very in favor of felons voting," Romney said. "Well, he is! That's his position."

While Santorum complained about the negative commercials during Monday's debate, Romney's three other challengers also tried a host of other attacks in hopes of knocking the former Massachusetts governor off stride.

They kept the spotlight on the multimillionaire's wealth and business dealings by pressing him to release his income tax returns. Romney hesitated but eventually said he might make them public in April. By then, he hopes to have the presidential nomination in the bag.

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Romney seemed to qualify that even farther, suggesting that he would release just one year of his tax returns ? not the six previous years that President Obama released or even the two years that John McCain released in 2008. "People will want to see the most recent year," Romney said.

Romney also came under heavy pressure in the debate on the issue of his job-creation record at his former private equity firm Bain Capital, and his evolving views on abortion. Blamed for the tide of negative commercials, Romney stressed the independence of the super PACs that have been running ads in his behalf against Santorum, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and other rivals.

On Tuesday, Santorum said that by refusing to condemn the ads, Romney "supports lies, promotes lies and stands behind those lies."

Santorum was upset about an ad that says he "even voted to let convicted felons vote." Santorum complained that the TV spot, while referring to "felons," shows someone in an orange prison jumpsuit, suggesting Santorum would allow felons to vote while still incarcerated. Santorum has supported voting rights only for those who have served their sentences and been released.

But Romney noted that "people who have been released from prison are still called felons if they've committed felonies."

Meanwhile, Gingrich picked up the support of South Carolina Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, who appeared with him in Florence, calling the former U.S. House speaker the smartest and toughest candidate. Romney already has the more coveted endorsement of Gov. Nikki Haley, a tea party favorite, however.

Monday's night's debate was as fiery as any of the more than dozen that preceded it. Romney, the man to beat after back-to-back wins in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, took heat not only from Gingrich and Santorum, but also from Rick Perry and Ron Paul.

The five will meet again in debate in Charleston Thursday night, the last time they will share a stage before the primary two days later.

Monday night, Romney said that while he might be willing to release his tax returns, he wouldn't do so until tax filing time. The multimillionaire former businessman didn't get much gratitude from his rivals, who want him to release the information in time to influence South Carolina voters going to the polls on Saturday.

Gingrich was quick to suggest Romney wouldn't delay for months if he had nothing to hide and that his hesitation wouldn't sit well with voters. "Last night weakened him," Gingrich told CBS' "This Morning" on Tuesday.

Romney seemed hesitant when confronted with the tax issue on stage. He at first sidestepped calls from his rivals to release his returns, then said later that he'd follow the lead of previous presidential candidates.

"I have nothing in them that suggests there's any problem and I'm happy to do so," he said. "I sort of feel like we're showing a lot of exposure at this point," he added.

The first Southern primary could prove decisive in the volatile contest. Gingrich has virtually conceded that a victory for Romney in South Carolina would assure his nomination as Democratic President Barack Obama's Republican rival in the fall, and none of the other remaining contenders has challenged that conclusion.

That only elevated the stakes for Monday night's debate, where the attacks on Romney often were couched in anti-Obama rhetoric.

"We need to satisfy the country that whoever we nominate has a record that can stand up to Barack Obama in a very effective way," said Gingrich.

The five men on stage also sought to outdo one another in calling for lower taxes. Texas Rep. Ron Paul won that competition handily, saying he thought the top personal tax rate should be zero.

In South Carolina, a state with a heavy military presence, the debate took on a martial tone at times.

Gingrich drew strong applause when he said: "Andrew Jackson had a pretty clear idea about America's enemies. Kill them."

Perry won favor from the crowd when he said the Obama administration had overreacted in its criticism of the four Marines who were videotaped urinating on corpses in Afghanistan.

Gingrich and Perry led the assault against Romney's record at Bain Capital, a private equity firm that bought companies and sought to remake them into more competitive enterprises, with uneven results.

"There was a pattern in some companies ... of leaving them with enormous debt and then within a year or two or three having them go broke," Gingrich said. "I think that's something he ought to answer."

Perry referred to a steel mill in Georgetown, S.C., where, he said, "Bain swept in, they picked that company over and a lot of people lost jobs there."

Romney said the steel industry was battered by unfair competition from China. As for other firms, he said, "Four of the companies that we invested in ... ended up today having some 120,000 jobs." And he acknowledged, "Some of the businesses we invested in were not successful and lost jobs."

It was Perry who challenged Romney to release his income tax returns. The Texas governor said he has already done so, and Gingrich has said he will do likewise later in the week.

"Mitt, we need for you to release your income tax so the people of this country can see how you made your money. ... We cannot fire our nominee in September. We need to know now," Perry said.

Later, a debate moderator pressed Romney on releasing his tax returns. His response meandered.

"If that's been the tradition I'm not opposed to doing that," Romney said. "Time will tell. But I anticipate that most likely I'm going to get asked to do that in the April time period and I'll keep that open."

Prodded again, he said, "If I become our nominee ... what's happened in history is people have released them in about April of the coming year, and that's probably what I'd do."

April is long after the South Carolina primary and the Republican nomination could easily be all but decided by then, following Super Tuesday contests around the country in March.

___

Associated Press writers David Espo and Shannon McCaffrey in South Carolina and Connie Cass in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Shannon McCaffrey on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/smccaffrey13

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2012-01-17-GOP%20Campaign/id-b2ce5543bcdd47b38fa5514f3cd27fb4

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Martin's 25 lead Rockets over Wizards (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Kevin Martin scored 25 points, Samuel Dalembert added 20 and the Houston Rockets broke away in the third quarter Monday to beat John Wall and the Washington Wizards 114-106.

Wall scored a career-high 38 points on 13 of 22 shooting. He began the game making under 35 percent this season.

Luis Scola had 18 and Kyle Lowry had 16 for the Rockets in their highest-scoring game of the season.

Houston outscored the Wizards 25-6 during an eight-minute stretch in the third quarter. Dalembert hit all six of his shots in the period.

The Rockets made 25 of 26 foul shots in winning their third straight game.

Washington fell to 1-12 despite its highest point total of the season. Jordan Crawford had 17 points.

After the Rockets took a 19-point lead late in the third quarter, Washington closed to 101-96 on Wall's jumper with 4:47 to play. Wall scored 18 in the fourth quarter.

Crawford ended the first quarter with a 38-foot 3-point shot to give Washington a 28-27 lead. In the second quarter, Houston went on a 17-4 run to take a 52-44 lead with 3:32 remaining in the second quarter.

JaVale McGee scored the first two baskets of the second half to tie it at 58. That's when Houston pulled away, making it 83-64 with 3:56 left in the third quarter. One of the few Wizards' highlights came when McGee tossed the ball off the backboard during a breakaway and dunked.

After that dunk, which cut Houston's lead to 64-60, the Rockets outscored Washington 19-4.

NOTES: Washington F Andray Blatche, who missed three games with a sprained right shoulder, returned and had 11 points and 12 rebounds. Blatche and Wall were assessed with technical fouls within a minute in the third quarter. ... Wizards F Rashard Lewis was out with sore knees. ... Rockets swingman Courtney Lee missed his eighth straight game with a strained right calf. ... Houston coach Kevin McHale fired Washington's Flip Saunders when he was general manager of the Minnesota Timberwolves in February 2005. It was their first on-court meeting as NBA coaches. ... The Rockets have held double-digit leads in their last six games. Last year, they never had double-digit leads in more than five straight.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/sports/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120116/ap_on_sp_bk_ga_su/bkn_rockets_wizards

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Russian space probe crashes into Pacific (AP)

MOSCOW ? A Russian space probe designed to boost the nation's pride on a bold mission to a moon of Mars came down in flames Sunday, showering fragments into the south Pacific west of Chile's coast, officials said.

Pieces from the Phobos-Ground, which had become stuck in Earth's orbit, landed in water 1,250 kilometers (775 miles) west of Wellington Island in Chile's south, the Russian military Air and Space Defense Forces said in a statement carried by the country's news agencies.

The military space tracking facilities were monitoring the probe's crash, its spokesman Col. Alexei Zolotukhin said. Zolotukhin said the deserted ocean area is where Russia guides its discarded space cargo ships serving the International Space Station.

RIA Novosti news agency, however, cited Russian ballistic experts who said the fragments fell over a broader patch of Earth's surface, spreading from the Atlantic and including the territory of Brazil. It said the midpoint of the crash zone was located in the Brazilian state of Goias.

The $170 million craft was one of the heaviest and most toxic pieces of space junk ever to crash to Earth, but space officials and experts said the risks posed by its crash were minimal because the toxic rocket fuel on board and most of the craft's structure would burn up in the atmosphere high above the ground anyway.

The Phobos-Ground was designed to travel to one of Mars' twin moons, Phobos, land on it, collect soil samples and fly them back to Earth in 2014 in one of the most daunting interplanetary missions ever. It got stranded in Earth's orbit after its Nov. 9 launch, and efforts by Russian and European Space Agency experts to bring it back to life failed.

Prof. Heiner Klinkrad, Head of The European Space Agency's Space Debris Office that was monitoring the probe's descent, said the craft didn't pose any significant risks.

"This one is way, way down in the ranking," he said in a telephone interview from his office in Berlin, adding that booster rockets contain more solid segments that may survive fiery re-entries.

Thousands of pieces of derelict space vehicles orbit Earth, occasionally posing danger to astronauts and satellites in orbit, but as far as is known, no one has ever been hurt by falling space debris.

Russia's space agency Roscosmos predicted that only between 20 and 30 fragments of the Phobos probe with a total weight of up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds) would survive the re-entry and plummet to Earth.

Klinkrad agreed with that assessment, adding that about 100 metric tons of space junk fall on Earth every year. "This is 200 kilograms out of these 100 tons," he said.

The Phobos-Ground weighed 13.5 metric tons (14.9 tons), and that included a load of 11 metric tons (12 tons) of highly toxic rocket fuel intended for the long journey to the Martian moon of Phobos and left unused as the probe got stranded in orbit around Earth.

Roscosmos said that all of the fuel will burn up on re-entry, a forecast Klinkrad said was supported by calculations done by NASA and the ESA. He said the craft's tanks are made of aluminum alloy that has a very low melting temperature, and they will burst at an altitude of more than 100 kilometers (60 miles).

The space era has seen far larger spacecraft crash. NASA's Skylab space station that went down in 1979 weighed 77 metric tons (85 tons) and Russia's Mir space station that de-orbited in 2001 weighed about 130 metric tons (143 tons). Their descent fueled fears around the world, but the wreckage of both fell far away from populated areas.

The Phobos-Ground was Russia's most expensive and the most ambitious space mission since Soviet times. Its mission to the crater-dented, potato-shaped Martian moon was to give scientists precious materials that could shed more light on the genesis of the solar system.

Russia's space chief has acknowledged the Phobos-Ground mission was ill-prepared, but said that Roscosmos had to give it the go-ahead so as not to miss the limited Earth-to-Mars launch window.

Its predecessor, Mars-96, which was built by the same Moscow-based NPO Lavochkin company, experienced an engine failure and crashed shortly after its launch in 1996. Its crash drew strong international fears because of around 200 grams of plutonium onboard. The craft eventually showered its fragments over the Chile-Bolivia border in the Andes Mountains, and the pieces were never recovered.

The worst ever radiation spill from a derelict space vehicle came in January 1978 when the nuclear-powered Cosmos 954 satellite crashed over northwestern Canada. The Soviets claimed the craft completely burned up on re-entry, but a massive recovery effort by Canadian authorities recovered a dozen fragments, most of which were radioactive.

The Phobos-Ground also contained a tiny quantity of the radioactive metal Cobalt-57 in one of its instruments, but Roscosmos said it poses no threat of radioactive contamination.

The spacecraft also carried a small cylinder with a collection of microbes as part of an experiment by the Pasadena, California-based Planetary Society that designed to explore whether they can survive interplanetary travel. The cylinder is attached to a capsule that was supposed to deliver Phobos ground samples back to Earth.

Igor Marinin, the editor of Russia's Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine, said on Russia's NTV television that it would likely be destroyed.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/science/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120115/ap_on_sc/eu_russia_falling_spacecraft

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World stocks up after successful Europe bond issue (AP)

BANGKOK ? World stock markets rose Friday, driven higher by a successful bond issue in Europe that eased worries over the continent's sovereign debt crisis.

Benchmark oil rose to nearly $100 per barrel and the dollar fell against the euro and the yen.

European shares rose in early trading. Britain's FTSE 100 advanced 0.6 percent to 5,694.38. Germany's DAX gained 0.7 percent to 6,221.96 and the CAC-40 in Paris gained 0.9 percent 3,229.17. Wall Street, too, was set to open higher, with Dow Jones industrial futures up 0.1 percent to 12,424. S&P 500 futures rose 0.1 percent at 1,293.

Asian shares were mostly higher. Japan's Nikkei 225 index rose 1.4 percent to close at 8,500.02 and South Korea's Kospi index moved 0.6 percent at 1,875.68. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index vacillated before closing in positive territory, up 0.6 percent to 19,204.42.

Australia's S&P ASX 200 was 0.4 percent higher at 4,195.90. Benchmarks in Singapore, Indonesia, India and Malaysia also rose.

But mainland Chinese shares fell as investors continued to cash in on recent gains. The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.3 percent to 2,244.58, while the Shenzhen Composite Index dropped 3.5 percent to 845.93.

"The market will be volatile for the next one or two weeks after this correction, since there is just no support for the market to rise in the long term," said Xu Xiaoyu, an analyst at China Investment Securities, based in Beijing.

PetroChina, the country's biggest oil and gas company and the Shanghai benchmark's biggest component, gained 1.4 percent as oil prices rose to near $100 a barrel in Asia on Friday on worries over supply tightness.

Elsewhere, raw materials and industrial companies advanced, following their U.S. counterparts higher. Japanese heavy equipment maker Komatsu Ltd. jumped 4.1 percent and Hitachi Construction Machinery gained 3.8 percent.

Energy Resources of Australia soared 6 percent and Paladin Energy Ltd., an Australian uranium miner, gained 3.1 percent. But shares in Australia's QBE Insurance group dropped 3.1 percent, after the company warned its earnings could halve following a spate of natural disasters in 2011.

South Korean tech shares advanced, with Samsung Electronics Co., the country's largest company, up 1.8 percent and Hynix Semiconductor, a global leader in chip-making, surging 4.1 percent. Its largest banking group, Woori Financial Holdings Co., jumped 3.9 percent.

Strong bond auctions in Italy and Spain on Thursday pushed stocks higher. Italy was able to sell one-year bonds at a rate of just 2.735 percent, less than half the 5.95 percent rate it had to pay last month. Spain was able to raise double the amount of money it had sought to raise in its own bond sale as demand for its debt was strong.

Investors have been worried that Italy and Spain might get dragged into the region's debt crisis. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have been forced to get relief from their lenders after their borrowing costs spiked to levels the countries could no longer afford.

Benchmark oil for February delivery rose 78 cents to $99.88 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract tumbled $2 to finish at $99.10 per barrel in New York on Thursday.

In currency trading, the euro rose to $1.2843 from $1.2827 late Thursday in New York. The dollar was slightly down at 76.73 yen from 76.76 yen.

___

AP researcher Fu Ting contributed from Shanghai.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/stocks/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120113/ap_on_re_as/world_markets

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Drone strike in NW Pakistan kills six militants (Reuters)

MIRANSHAH, Pakistan (Reuters) ? A second drone strike in two days killed six militants in North Waziristan in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border on Thursday, intelligence officials said, further marking the resumption of the U.S. campaign paused for almost two months.

The suspected U.S. drone fired two missiles at two cars in the Dogga area of North Waziristan tribal region, killing six.

"The missiles hit two cars that were heading towards the border. Several foreigners were in the cars, but we have no information on their nationalities yet," an intelligence source told Reuters. The source said there might be more casualties.

The strike comes two days after a similar attack killed four militants in North Waziristan, marking the resumption of the unacknowledged U.S. drone campaign, paused after a November 26 NATO cross-border attack killed 24 Pakistani troops. The last drone strike before Tuesday's was on November 17.

Such attacks have been used increasingly in recent years in the fight against insurgents in Pakistan's largely lawless Pashtun tribal areas in the west and northwest who fuel violence across the border in Afghanistan.

Drones armed with missiles have played a significant role in U.S. counter-terrorism operations as the Obama administration winds down the war in Afghanistan and Washington's focus expands to militant havens in countries including Pakistan.

The Obama administration contends that drone strikes have helped weaken the central leadership of al Qaeda and put associated militant groups on the defensive. Others say the lull since mid-November allowed militants to regroup.

U.S. officials denied the drop-off in attacks was part of a deliberate moratorium on such flights linked to the political and diplomatic uproar over the November air strike.

Officials maintained that strikes were based on the availability of targeting intelligence and suggested that such intelligence had been in short supply recently.

(Additional reporting by Saud Mehsud in DERA ISMAIL KHAN, and Jibran Ahmad in PESHAWAR; Writing by Chris Allbritton and Qasim Nauman; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/asia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120112/wl_nm/us_pakistan_drone

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