Surgeon infected patients during heart procedure, Cedars-Sinai admits

A heart surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center unwittingly infected five patients during valve replacement surgeries earlier...

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15 Agonizing Automotive Atrocities

Yugo.There, we got it out of the way. When you read the headline, of course an image of a tiny Cold War-era hatchback popped into your head. We bet you also shuddered at the thought of a Pontiac Aztek.We love to poke fun at failure, and no failure made a punchline better than the Yugo. We found that out while talking with Jason Vuic, author of The Yugo: The Rise and...

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Reinhold Weege, creator of “Night Court,” dies at 63

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Reinhold Weege, the creator of the hit NBC sitcom “Night Court,” has died, a spokeswoman for the family told TheWrap. He was 63 years old.He also wrote for other notable television shows, including “Barney Miller” and “M*A*S*H.”However, it was “Night Court,” a show that poked gentle fun at bureaucratic absurdity, that would become his signature work. The series centered...

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7.3 quake off Japan prompts tsunami warning

TOKYO— ...

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Apple Builds a New Home on Facebook's Back Porch

We knew that Apple was building a pair of new data centers close to Facebook’s operation in Prineville, Oregon. But we didn’t realize just how close they were until we spent a plane over Oregonian high desert.The notoriously secretive Apple is especially secretive about its data centers. So while Google and Facebook have opened up their doors to Wired reporters over the past year, Apple has...

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Deportation looms for tech guru McAfee after heart drama

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Software guru John McAfee, fighting deportation to Belize, was rushed to a hospital in Guatemala on Thursday shortly after his asylum request was rejected, but a suspected heart attack turned out to be stress in a fresh twist to the saga.The 67-year-old U.S. computer software pioneer was taken swiftly from a hospital in a police car out of the sight of media, after earlier...

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Economix Blog: Uwe E. Reinhardt: How Medicare Is Misrepresented

Uwe E. Reinhardt is an economics professor at Princeton. He has some financial interests in the health care field.A common phrase in the current debate over the so-called fiscal cliff is “Medicare needs to be restructured.” The term serves as code for policies unlikely to be appealing to voters, a term that can mean everything and, thus, nothing.The question is what problem restructuring is to solve...

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Baca shifts course on compliance with deportation program

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has reversed his support for a controversial deportation program, announcing Wednesday that...

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Step to the Beat

Going out for a run used to just be about lacing up your sneakers. Now when you head out, you can feel like you’re drowning in tech: GPS watches, sports bands, sweat-proof earbuds, smartphone apps with cadence-matching playlists. And that’s before we even talk about what’s on your feet.But we wouldn’t subject ourselves to this mountain of gadgetry if it didn’t really help. As our goals become...

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UK’s Kate leaves hospital after morning sickness

LONDON (Reuters) – Prince William‘s pregnant wife Kate left the King Edward VII hospital in central London on Thursday where she had spent four days being treated for acute morning sickness.Accompanied by her husband, Kate, 30, appeared at the steps of the hospital smiling and holding a bouquet of yellow flowers. Neither she nor William spoke to waiting reporters before being driven way.Kate, who...

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The New Old Age Blog: How the 'Death With Dignity' Law Failed in Massachusetts

On election night, Jim Carberry and others who had worked to put a “Death With Dignity” law on the Massachusetts ballot gathered in the back room of a Waltham restaurant and watched their effort go down to narrow defeat.“We were disheartened,” Mr. Carberry recalled. “For a lot of us, it was personal.”His wife Margie, diagnosed with a rare brain tumor in 1995, had sought aggressive treatment for years...

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California's gay-conversion ban up in air after 2 judges disagree

SACRAMENTO — The fate of the state's new law banning gay-conversion therapy for underage Californians is uncertain after a federal...

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Machine Gun Expo Is Down-Home Americana Gone Ballistic

There are thousands of gun shows in America each year, but machine gun shows are a rare spectacle. At the two-day hands-on shootfest that is the Oklahoma Full Auto Shoot & Trade Show (OFASTS) exhibitors rent out fully automatic weapons to the public so that they may annihilate refrigerators, ovens and other household appliances.Photojournalist Pete Muller recently...

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“Family Guy” executive producer lands animated cop series with Fox

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Despite – or perhaps because of – a robust cartoon slate that includes “The Simpsons,” “American Dad” and “Family Guy,” Fox apparently feels that it’s just not animated enough.The network has given a 13-episode order to a new animated series, “Murder Police,” from “Family Guy” executive producer David Goodman and Jason Ruiz, Fox said Tuesday.The series, which will be produced...

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The New Old Age Blog: For the Old, Less Sense of Whom to Trust

There’s a reason so many older people fall for financial scams, new research suggests. They don’t respond as readily to visual cues that suggest a person might be untrustworthy, and their brains don’t send out as many warning signals that ignite a danger ahead gut response.The research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to show that older adults’...

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Los Angeles and Long Beach Ports to Reopen After Strike

LOS ANGELES — After an eight-day strike that crippled the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, clerical workers from a local office of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union on Tuesday night agreed to a new contract with the terminal operators at the ports. Union members will return to work Wednesday morning. Nick Ut/Associated PressTrucks waited in long lines to load at the...

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Chino Hills seeks to close home used by pregnant Chinese women

A Chino Hills residence allegedly housing women from China who want to give birth to U.S.-citizen children is on the verge of...

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Meet the Dancing Otter That Helped Obama Win the Presidency

It would happen a couple of times each month at the Obama campaign headquarters in Chicago. Ben Hagen would giggle and then send out a web link to his coworkers, the geeks who ran the technology operation for the Obama reelection campaign.Soon, the sound of Kenny Loggins’ inspirational 1979 hit “This Is It” would fill the office, and the dancing Otter would pop up on machine after machine....

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Kutcher’s Steve Jobs, Gordon-Levitt among Sundance premieres

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ashton Kutcher‘s turn as Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s directorial debut about a modern day Don Juan are leading a slew of star-studded premieres unveiled Monday for the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.Kutcher stars in “Jobs,” a biographical look at the career rise of Jobs from wayward hippie to charismatic inventor and entrepreneur, which Sundance said...

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The New Old Age Blog: On the Alert for Fraud

Unlike some forms of elder abuse, financial exploitation leaves no visible scars. It is under-reported and hard to prosecute. Adding to the tangled dynamics, the abuser is frequently a family member, increasing the victim’s humiliation and denial.Better by far to try to prevent financial abuse before it wipes out an older person’s assets and hopes for a secure retirement. Though this has proved easier...

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San Diego mayor leaves office with his legacy intact

SAN DIEGO — On his last full day as mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders did something Sunday that took him back four decades.He...

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Winter Is Coming — What's In Your 'Go-Bag?'

A go-bag is a duffle bag, backpack or very well-stocked purse that’s pre-packed with the basic necessities for a particular activity. Snowboarding, surfing, childbirth, zombie apocalypse, DEA raid — whatever the activity, you can be prepared to hit the road at a moment’s notice if you keep a well-stocked satchel at the ready. Skiing and snowboarding are perfect examples...

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Letterman, Hoffman, Zeppelin honored by Obama

WASHINGTON (AP) — David Letterman‘s “stupid human tricks” and Top 10 lists vaulted into the ranks of cultural acclaim Sunday night as the late-night comedian received this year’s Kennedy Center Honors with rock band Led Zeppelin, an actor, a ballerina and a bluesman.Stars from New York, Hollywood and the music world joined President Barack Obama at the White House on Sunday night to salute the honorees,...

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