Omega-3s may not protect against faulty heart rhythm

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Sorry, Charlie, but fish oil supplements did not prevent atrial fibrillation in patients who had already experienced episodes of the heart rhythm malfunction, a new clinical trial has found.

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, adds to a growing pool of disappointing evidence regarding the protective effects of omega-3 fatty acids on heart health.

“The results for atrial fibrillation are important negative findings, answering key clinical and research questions,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an omega-3 expert at the Harvard School of Public Health, who was not involved in the current study.

The new research, combined with other trials, “indicates that short-term fish oil use is unlikely to prevent recurrent atrial fibrillation,” he said.

But if the supplements don’t prevent heart rhythm problems, they don’t appear to be dangerous, either. “In all these studies, fish oil was safe and well-tolerated, with no evidence for increased bleeding,” Mozaffarian told Reuters Health.

Atrial fibrillation, in which the heart’s upper chambers beat out of step with those below, affects nearly one in 10 Americans in their 80s. The condition is linked to potentially life-threatening strokes and heart failure.

Although doctors prescribe certain medications to treat the condition, none to date has proven particularly effective. As a result, most drug treatment focuses on preventing strokes by administering blood thinners to dissolve clots caused by the fibrillation.

Some evidence suggests that omega-3 fatty acids, found in oily fish like sardines and tuna, might reduce the risk of atrial fibrillation, although exactly how they would produce their effect is not clear.

A study published earlier this year in Circulation, for example, found that people with the most omega-3s in their blood had a 30 percent lower chance of developing an irregular heart beat than those with the lowest concentrations of the substances (see Reuters Health story of February 1, 2012).

That 30 percent difference would work out to eight fewer cases of atrial fibrillation per 100 people – which would be a meaningful benefit if it could be enjoyed by those with fibrillation or at risk for it, just by consuming more omega 3s.

But the latest study suggests that it probably can’t. The trial included 586 men and women with a history of atrial fibrillation who were given a gram a day of fish oil or dummy capsules for a year. Participants also were allowed to take other drugs to control their heart rhythms, as prescribed by their doctors.

At the end of the study period, about 24 percent of the people who took fish oil, and 20 percent of those who did not, had experienced a recurrence of atrial fibrillation – a difference so small, statistically, it was likely due to chance.

The supplements also did not appear to reduce the risk of other cardiovascular ailments – including stroke, heart attack, heart failure – or death from any cause.

The findings on atrial fibrillation echo results from a study led by Mozaffarian published in November, of patients recovering from heart surgery.

Even so, Dr. Alejandro Macchia, a cardiologist at the GESICA Foundation in Buenos Aires, who led the current study and collaborated with Mozaffarian on the previous one, said fish oil may still prove beneficial for heart health, at least in some patients.

“I am not sure the story is over,” Dr. Macchia told Reuters Health. “I think we have enough evidence to say that there is no role of (omega-3 fatty acids) for the prevention of atrial fibrillation” in patients with a history of the condition, he said. “However in the context of primary prevention – those people who had never had a previous episode of atrial fibrillation – there is a reasonable room for a well-designed and very large clinical trial.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/VrTKiY Journal of the American College of Cardiology, online December 19, 2012.

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House faces test on ‘fiscal cliff’ deal

Vice President Joe Biden gives two thumbs up following a Senate Democratic caucus meeting about the fiscal cliff …The Republican-held House of Representatives faced a tough vote Tuesday on a last-minute “fiscal cliff” compromise to cut taxes on all but the richest Americans and stall some painful spending cuts.  The deal, cut in secret weekend talks and passed by the Senate by a lopsided 89-9 margin shortly after 2 a.m. New Year's Day, could face stiff opposition from conservatives who hoped it would contain more spending cuts and liberals who wanted to raise more taxes.

Financial markets were closed for the holiday, but lawmakers were keenly aware of the potential impact of failing to address the so-called cliff, which some experts warned could plunge the still-fragile economy into a new recession.

Vice President Joe Biden, who took the lead for Democrats in negotiating the deal over the weekend with Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, was scheduled to join House Democrats at a behind-closed-doors meeting at 12:15 p.m. Biden paid a similar call on Senate Democrats late Monday.

House Republicans were also slated to huddle behind the scenes to discuss what to do about the Senate-passed measure. The anti-tax Club for Growth warned lawmakers to oppose the compromise because “this bill raises taxes immediately with the promise of cutting spending later.”

Under the compromise arrangement approved by the Senate, taxes would rise on income above $400,000 for  individuals and $450,000 for households, while exemptions and deductions the wealthiest Americans use to reduce their tax bill would face new limits. The accord would also raise the taxes paid on large inheritances from 35% to 40% for estates over $5 million. And it would extend by one year unemployment benefits for some two million Americans. It would also prevent cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients and spare tens of millions of Americans who otherwise would have been hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The middle class will still see its taxes go up: The final deal did not include an extension of the payroll tax holiday. And the overall package will deepen the deficit by an estimated $3.9 trillion dollars by extending the overwhelming majority of the Bush tax cuts. Many Democrats had opposed those measures in 2001 and 2003. Obama agreed to extend them in 2010.

Efforts to modify the first installment of $1.2 trillion in cuts to domestic and defense programs over 10 years -- the other portion of the “fiscal cliff,” known as sequestration -- had proved a sticking point late in the game. Democrats had sought a year-long freeze but ultimately caved to Republican pressure and signed on to just a two-month delay while broader deficit-reduction talks continue.

That would put the next major battle over spending cuts right around the time that the White House and its Republican foes are battling it out over whether to raise the country's debt limit. Republicans have vowed to push for more spending cuts, equivalent to the amount of new borrowing.

Obama has vowed not to negotiate as he did in 2011, when a bruising fight threatened the first-ever default on America's obligations and resulted in the first-ever downgrade of the country's credit rating. Biden sent that message to Democrats in Congress, two senators said.

“This agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” President Barack Obama said in a written statement shortly after the Senate vote.

There were signs that the 2016 presidential race shaped the outcome in the Senate. Republican Senator Marco Rubio, widely thought to have his eye on his party’s nomination, voted no. Republican Senator Rand Paul, who could take up the libertarian mantle of his father Ron Paul, did as well. Observers were watching to see how Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, the Budget Committee chairman and his party's failed vice presidential nominee in 2012, would vote Tuesday.

In remarks just before the Senate adopted the compromise, McConnell repeatedly called the agreement “imperfect” but said it beat allowing income tax rates rise across the board.

“I know I can speak for my entire conference when I say we don’t think taxes should be going up on anyone, but we all knew that if we did nothing they’d be going up on everyone today,” he said. “We weren’t going to let that happen.”

“Our most important priority was to protect middle-class families. This legislation does that,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. But Reid cautioned that “passing this agreement does not mean negotiations halt. Far from it.”

The House’s Republican leaders, including Speaker John Boehner, hinted in an unusual joint statement that they might amend anything that clears the Senate – a step that could kill the deal.

“Decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members -- and the American people -- have been able to review the legislation,” they said.

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Canadian job creation seen sharply lower in December

OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada‘s job market is expected to slow markedly in December to reflect the sluggish economy and employers’ fears about the U.S. fiscal crisis following outsized gains of over 50,000 jobs in two of the previous three months.

The median forecast in a Reuters poll is for the economy to add just 5,000 jobs in the month, with forecasts ranging from a loss of 20,000 positions to a gain of 21,000.

The forecast compares with employment growth of 59,600 in November, 1,800 in October and 52,100 in September.

The unemployment rate is seen ticking higher in the final month of the year to 7.3 percent from 7.2 percent.

Derek Holt, vice president of economics at Scotiabank, said he’s been surprised by the strength of job growth which he estimates to be the equivalent in the United States of about 1.5 million non-farm payroll jobs over the last three months.

“Here we are with the conundrum where we have zero growth in the Canadian economy, long predating the appearance of the greatest fiscal-cliff risks and yet we’re heaping on jobs like there’s no tomorrow,” Holt said.

Unlike the United States, Canada has long recovered all the jobs lost during the 2008-09 recession but the pace of hiring in 2012 was unsteady.

Benjamin Reitzes, economist at BMO Capital Markets, said if the 5,000-job forecast was accurate, it would put 2012 job growth at just 1.1 percent, “the weakest non-recession year since 1996.”

Canadian employers have faced uncertainty in one form or another during the recovery and are now fretting about the U.S. fiscal cliff, a set of tax hikes and spending cuts that will automatically take effect and could throw the United States into recession unless the White House and Congress reach an alternative agreement.

“For as long as Washington cannot agree on the new tax rules and spending focus, they’re not going to give business the confidence to go out and hire and engage in capital spending projects and that’s going to impede the pace of recovery until we get more clarity,” said Holt.

With the Canadian economy now expected to grow by far less in the fourth quarter than the Bank of Canada‘s projection of 2.5 percent, annualized, the blockbuster jobs growth of recent months looks suspect. The six-month trend shows more sustainable gains of about 21,000 a month.

The moderation means the Bank of Canada will be in no hurry to raise its benchmark interest rate, which it has held at 1.0 percent since September 2010.

Market players surveyed by Reuters in late November predicted the bank would resume hiking rates in the fourth quarter of 2013.

(Reporting by Louise Egan; Editing by Kenneth Barry)

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Angry Birds, YouTube among top apps of 2012

TORONTO (Reuters) – Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook continued to be among the most downloaded apps of the year but rising stars also earned coveted spots on smartphones and tablets.

This year consumers spent on average two hours each day using mobile applications, an increase of 35 percent over last year, according to analytics firm Flurry. The number is expected to continue growing in 2013.

“2012 was a transformative tipping point in the way consumers use apps,” said Craig Palli, a vice president at mobile marketing company Fiksu, adding that the biggest shift is in consumers’ eagerness to turn to apps for a broad range of day-to-day tasks.

Categories such as social networking, media and entertainment, photo editing, and games, continued to captivate consumer interest, with YouTube and Angry Birds being the top free and paid apps respectively at Apple’s App Store.

Meanwhile, several apps released this year quickly joined the ranks of the top downloaded and revenue grossing apps of the year.

The game Draw Something for iPhone and Android quickly gained widespread popularity when it was released in February, and despite dropping off, is still the second most downloaded paid app of the year Android and Apple devices.

“It had a big run and other multi-player puzzle-oriented games like newcomers LetterPress and ScrambleWithFriends proved popular, too,” Palli said. “But in many respects these titles were inspired by the more revolutionary Words With Friends.”

Songza, a music-discovery app for iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire, saw significant growth in both the United States and Canada, where it is now one of the top free apps on the App Store.

Paper, a sketchbook app for the iPad, is estimated to be one of the top grossing apps released this year according to Distimo, an app analytics company. It was named by Apple as the iPad app of the year.

But the real revolution, according to Palli, is among consumers who are eager to turn to apps for their day-to-day tasks, such as finding a taxi or hotel, following current events or increasingly, making payments.

“It is really consumers who are turning to apps first and traditional methods second,” said Palli.

Uber and Hailo, which allow users to book limos and taxis, and AirBnB and HotelTonight, for finding accommodations, began to move mainstream in 2012, Palli said.

Payment apps such as Square, and Apple’s introduction of the Passbook has further positioned the smartphone as a digital wallet.

This year, during major events such as the Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the U.S. presidential election, the top apps on the App Store reflected those events, said Palli, showing the demand for keeping up with current events through apps.

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)

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Lake Superior State’s 38th list of banished words

DETROIT (AP) — Lake Superior State University‘s 38th annual list of banished words:

— fiscal cliff

— kick the can down the road

— double down

— job creators/creation

— passion/passionate

— YOLO

— spoiler alert

— bucket list

— trending

— superfood

— boneless wings

— guru

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U.S. approves J&J drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment

(Reuters) – U.S. health regulators have approved a new Johnson & Johnson drug for patients with tuberculosis who do not respond to other treatments, the company said.

The drug is the first in 40 years to tackle the disease using a new mechanism of action, according to J&J. The drug blocks an energy-producing enzyme that tuberculosis bacteria need to survive.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, chemically known as bedaquiline and to be marketed as Sirturo, on Monday following a positive review by an advisory panel last month.

Tuberculosis is an air-spread infection that usually attacks the lungs but it can also affect the brain, the spine and the kidneys.

In 2011, nearly 9 million people around the world became sick with TB, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and there were 1.4 million TB-related deaths. The disease requires six to nine months of drug treatment.

TB is more prevalent now than at any time in history, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg wrote in a blog on the FDA website. This drug will help treat and cure patients who are putting themselves and others at serious health risk, she said.

The drug itself has significant potential risks, she wrote, and will carry a warning about an increased rate of death observed in patients who received it.

Her comments followed those of the FDA advisers who found the drug to be effective, though they noted that more deaths were seen in the group of patients who took bedaquiline in combination with standard treatments than in the group that took standard drugs alone.

Doctors Without Borders said that the drug was a “potential game changer” against drug-resistant forms of the disease and an important milestone in fighting TB.

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis is caused by strains of the bacterium that have become resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampin, the two most potent drugs for TB.

Support has not been unanimous. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen earlier this month said it had written to the FDA because of the risks of death asking it not to approve of the drug, which received a fast approval.

DETAILS FROM TRIAL

Chrispin Kambili, medical affairs leader for bedaquiline at J&J’s Janssen Therapeutics unit, said in a recent interview that the company is studying the difference in death rates but has so far seen no common pattern.

Almost every death was due to a different cause, including a motor vehicle accident. What was unusual, he said, was the low rate of death in the placebo group.

Advisers to the FDA expressed concern that a greater number of patients had elevated liver enzymes, a potential sign of liver toxicity, and elongated QT levels, an electrical irregularity in the heart that can cause sudden death.

But Kambili said none of the patients died due to serious QT prolongation and there was no unifying findings in the data.

Kambili said J&J’s drug is designed for a relatively small portion of patients – some 650,000 – who do not respond to existing therapies.

And while investment analysts at Cowen and Co have forecast peak annual sales of the product at a relatively modest $ 300 million, the drug is important from a public health standpoint, Kambili said.

J&J shares were 0.1 percent higher to $ 69.56 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Additional reporting by Ransdell Pierson and Caroline Humer; Editing by John Wallace, Jeffrey Benkoe and Tim Dobbyn)

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Harkin: 'No deal is better than a bad deal'

Vice President Joe Biden looks on as President Barack Obama announces the nomination of Senator John Kerry as Secretary …Merry Cliffmas Eve?

Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday pursued behind-closed-doors efforts to avoid the “fiscal cliff” with just hours to halt painful automatic income tax hikes from biting into American paychecks.

McConnell announced on Sunday that he had reached out to Biden to help “jump-start” stalled negotiations with Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The two veteran Washington deal-makers spoke at 12:45 a.m. and again at 6:30 a.m., a McConnell aide said.

“The Leader and the VP continued their discussion late into the evening and will continue to work toward a solution,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told reporters by email on Monday, promising “more information as it becomes available.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sounded a cautious note Monday morning while noting the urgency of the situation.

“We really are running out of time,” Reid said shortly after 11 a.m. as lawmakers began a highly unusual New Year’s Eve session. “There are a number of issues on which the two sides are still apart, but negotiations are continuing as I speak.”

The two sides were wrangling over how to extend massive tax cuts adopted in 2001 and 2003 and expiring at midnight. President Barack Obama campaigned on letting tax rates rise on income above $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for households, but any final deal is expected to set the threshold considerably higher.

“I hope we can keep in mind – and I know we will – that our single most-important goal is to protect middle class families,” said Reid. “Whether or not we reach an agreement in the short time we have left, we’ll need cooperation on both sides to prevent taxes from going up tomorrow for every family in America.”

But media reports that Biden and McConnell were closing in on a deal setting the threshold at $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for families faced a liberal insurrection that could threaten the final compromise’s chances.

“No deal is better than a bad deal, and this looks like a very bad deal the way this is shaping up,” Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa said in the chamber.  “So we go back to the tax system that we had under Bill Clinton. I ask: What’s so bad about that?”

Lawmakers were also battling over the estate tax paid on large inheritances. Republicans have fought to extend the current levels of what they call the “death tax” – exempting estates under $5 million and taxing transfers above that at 35%.  Absent a deal, the tax will hit estates above $1 million and impose a top tax rate of 55%.

The two sides were also struggling with the so-called sequester -- $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to domestic and defense programs over ten years. Democrats suggested Sunday that they hoped to use some of the new tax revenues to postpone some proportion of those cuts. Republicans objected, saying that only new spending cuts could be used to offset the sequester.

And there was feuding over how to spare tens of million of Americans who otherwise would find themselves paying the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), and over how to prevent cuts in payments to doctors who treat Medicare patients.

Any deal would need to clear both the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-held House of Representatives. Neither looked to be an easy effort.

And it was unlikely that the compromise would spare the country another bruising partisan battle over whether and how to raise the national debt limit. Republicans have signaled that they will hold the threat of a first-ever default as leverage to win more spending cuts from the Administration. President Barack Obama has signaled that he will not negotiate on the issue the way he did in 2011, when the partisan feuding over what had typically been a routine vote in the past led to the first-ever downgrade of America’s credit rating.

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Suspected US drone kills 3 al-Qaida men in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Three al-Qaida militants were killed in a suspected U.S. drone strike in southern Yemen, Yemeni security officials said, the fourth such attack this week and a sign attacks from unmanned aircraft are on the upswing in the country.

The officials said the three men were hit as they were riding in a Land Cruiser in el-Manaseh village on the outskirts of Radda in Bayda province. Dozens of local al-Qaida-linked fighters protested the drone strikes after traditional Islamic Friday prayers.

Earlier this week another suspected U.S. drone strike killed two militants in Radda itself, Yemeni security officials say, and seven were killed in two other strikes in the southeastern province of Hadramawt. Four suspected drone strikes a week is uncommon in Yemen.

According to statistics gathered by the Long War Journal before Saturday’s attacks, the United States “is known to have carried out 41 airstrikes” this year against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), as the group’s branch in Yemen is known. That makes for an average of around three to four strikes per month.

The Journal, a product of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies that was founded by former U.S. officials, says that since December 2009, the CIA and the US military’s Joint Special Operations Command are known to have conducted at least 54 air and missile strikes inside Yemen, excluding Saturday’s suspected attack.

AQAP overran entire towns and villages — including Radda — last year by taking advantage of a security lapse during nationwide protests that eventually ousted the country’s longtime ruler. Backed by the U.S. military, Yemen’s army was able to regain control of the southern region but al-Qaida militants continue to launch deadly attacks on security forces that have killed hundreds.

Also on Saturday, two gunmen on a motorbike shot and killed an intelligence officer in the southeast, security officials said. They said that the officer, Mutea Baqutian, was on his way to work in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province, when the men stopped his car, gunned him down, and fled.

The government has blamed al-Qaida militants for similar assassinations of several senior military and intelligence officials this year. The bullet-riddled body of Major al-Numeiry Abdo al-Oudi, deputy director of the security department of al-Qitten in Hadramawt, was found in the town’s suburbs last week. He had been kidnapped earlier in the month.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity according to regulations.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Ahmed Seif, who is commander of Yemen’s central military region, said the Defense Ministry has deployed an infantry brigade in the northeastern province of Marib to stop armed tribesmen who maintain cordial ties with al-Qaida from attacking oil pipelines and power generating stations, as well as to counter al-Qaida militants.

State TV meanwhile aired a meeting between President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and eight Yemeni sailors who were rescued last week by forces of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region after being held for nearly three years by Somali pirates.

The Puntland government says that its forces captured the hijacked Panama-flagged MV Iceberg 1 on Sunday after a siege that lasted two weeks. They freed the eight Yemeni sailors together with five Indians, two Pakistanis, four Ghanaians, two Sudanese and a Filipino. The ship was hijacked March 29, 2010.

Hadi congratulated the eight sailors for their safety and ordered the government to compensate them for their suffering.

Eqbal Yassin, a relative of one of the freed sailors, told The Associated Press that the hijackers had allowed some sailors to phone their relatives and convey the pirates’ demand for $ 5 million ransom. He said he was told by his relative that the hijackers killed a Yemeni sailor who tried to escape. He gave no further details.

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Hot spots draw believers, but not doomsday

As the sun rose from time zone to time zone across the world on Friday, there was still no sign of the world’s end — but that didn’t stop those convinced that a 5,125-year Mayan calendar predicts the apocalypse from gathering at some of the world’s purported survival hot spots.

Many of the esoterically inclined expected a new age of consciousness — others wanted a party. But, in some places said to offer salvation from the end, fewer people showed up than officials had predicted — much to the disappointment of vendors hoping to sell souvenirs.

Here are some key places being marked by the fascination over doomsday rumors:

MEXICO

In an area of Mexico that was once the ancient Mayan heartland, spiritualists gathered in the darkness before dawn on Friday to prepare white clothes, drums, conch shells and incense. They believed the sunrise would herald the birth of a new and better age as a vast cycle in the Mayan calendar comes to an end.

Many people who came to Yucatan for the occasion were already calling it “a new sun” and “a new era.”

FRANCE

According to one rumor, a rocky mountain in the French Pyrenees will be the sole place on Earth to escape destruction. A giant UFO and aliens are said to be waiting under the mountain, ready to burst through and spirit those nearby to safety. But there is bad news for those seeking salvation: French gendarmes, some on horseback, blocked outsiders from reaching the Bugarach peak and its village of some 200 people.

Eric Freysselinard, head of local government, said the security forces had “partially stopped the new age enthusiasts as well as curious people from coming to the area.”

Meanwhile, some Bugarach residents dressed up like aliens, with tinfoil costumes and funnels and fake antenna on their heads, strolling around their village Friday to make light of the rumored UFO prophecy.

RUSSIA

Doomsday rumors have prompted some people across Russia to stock up on candles, water, canned foods and other non-perishable foods. The apocalypse has proven a good business, with some shops selling survival aid packages that include soap and vodka.

In Moscow, salvation has also been promised in the underground bunker for the former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin — with a 50 percent refund if nothing happens. An underground stay was originally priced at 50,000 rubles ($ 1,625) but dropped to 15,000 ($ 490) a week ahead of the feared end.

The bunker, located 65 meters (210 feet) below ground, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Now home to a small museum, it has an independent electricity supply, water and food — but no more room, because the museum has already sold out all 1,000 tickets.

BRITAIN

Hundreds of people have converged on Stonehenge for an “End of the World” party that coincides with the Winter Solstice.

Arthur Uther Pendragon, Britain’s best-known druid, said he was anticipating a much larger crowd than usual at Stonehenge this year. But he doesn’t agree that the world is ending, noting that he and fellow druids believe that things happen in cycles.

“We’re looking at it more as a new beginning than an end,” he said. “We’re looking at new hope.”

Meanwhile, end-of-days parties will be held across London on Friday. One event billed as a “last supper club” is offering a three-course meal served inside an “ark.”

SERBIA

Some Serbs are saying to forget that sacred mountain in the French Pyrenees. The place to be Friday is Mount Rtanj, a pyramid-shaped peak in Serbia already drawing cultists.

According to legend, the mountain once swallowed an evil sorcerer who will be released on doomsday in a ball of fire that will hit the mountain top. The inside of the mountain will then open up, becoming a safe place to hide as the sorcerer goes on to destroy the rest of the world. In the meantime, some old coal mine shafts have been opened up as safe rooms.

On Friday a New Age group called “The Spirit of Rtanj” was holding a conference there. Participants, however, said they expect not the end of time but the start of a new time cycle. Locals turned out to sell brandy and herbs.

“There will be no tragedy, no doomsday,” said resident Dalibor Jovic. “It was supposed to happen at 12:12 and I think that time has passed. So, we can now go on with our lives and be happy to be alive.”

TURKEY

A small Turkish village known for its wines, Sirince, has also been touted as the only place after Bugarach that would escape the world’s end. But on Friday journalists and security officials outnumbered cultists. This outcome disappointed local business people who had prepared a range of doomsday products to sell, including a specially labeled Doomsday wine and Turkish delight candy whose “best before” date was Dec. 21, 2012. One restaurant prepared a special “last meal” menu that included a “heaven kebab” and “forbidden fruit dessert.”

ITALY

Another spot said to be spared: Cisternino, a beautiful small town in southern Italy in an area of trulli, traditional dry stone huts with conical roofs. The notion that Cisternino could be a safe haven at world’s end derives from an Indian guru, Babaji, who said “Cisternino will become an island” at world’s end. His followers built a community in Cisternino centered on an ashram built in 1979. Hotel bookings are up this weekend.

Mayor Donato Baccaro told the AP that the beauty of the place has inspired many foreigners to live there. “This confirms that this place has a special energy,” he said.

CHINA

A fringe Christian group has been spreading rumors about the world’s impending end, prompting Chinese authorities to detain more than 500 people this week and seize leaflets, video discs, books and other material.

Those detained are reported to be members of the group Almighty God, also called Eastern Lightning, which preaches that Jesus has reappeared as a woman in central China. Authorities in the province of Qinghai say they are waging a “severe crackdown” on the group, accusing it of attacking the Communist Party and the government.

U.S.

Dozens of Michigan schools canceled classes for thousands of students to cool off rumored threats of violence and problems related to doomsday. The fears were exacerbated by the recent shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which “changed all of us,” the school system in Genesee County said. “Canceling school is the right thing to do.”

___

Associated Press writers Florent Bajrami in Bugarach, France; Mansur Mirovalev in Moscow; Peppino Ciraci in Cisternino, Italy; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Paisley Dodds in London; and Dejan Mladenovic in Mount Rtanj, Serbia, contributed to this report.

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Year in Review: Meningitis Outbreak Still a Challenge

As part of the Year in Review series, MedPage Today reporters are revisiting major news stories and following up with an analysis of the impact of the original report, as well as subsequent news on the topic. Here’s what’s happened with the fungal meningitis outbreak since we published our first report.

The fungal meningitis outbreak that made headlines in the fall was “unprecedented,” in the words of the of the clinicians at the eye of the storm.

What’s more, “we’re not out of the woods yet,” said Tom Chiller, MD, deputy director of the CDC’s mycotic diseases branch.

The outbreak was unprecedented for its size, for the spectrum of disease, for the clinical challenges that faced doctors, and for the way the pattern of illness has changed since the outbreak began, Chiller told MedPage Today.

It also has enormous implications for patients, their families, hospitals, and insurers, said Carol Kauffman, MD, a fungal infections expert at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Mich.

“The extent and repercussions of this outbreak, in comparison to other smaller outbreaks, are really amazing,” Kauffman told MedPage Today. “The huge morbidity and, for some, mortality, is enormous.”

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The outbreak, which has been linked to an injectable drug widely used to control chronic pain, has also seen the FDA under attack for not doing more to monitor so-called “compounding pharmacies.”

And the FDA has responded by saying it did not have clear authority to intervene, even though worries about the pharmacy in question, the New England Compounding Center (NECC) of Framingham, Mass., date back to at least 2002.

The agency is now asking for its authority to be clarified, although an organization representing compounding pharmacies has told lawmakers the FDA had all the power it needed, but just dropped the ball.

The bottom line from a public health standpoint is that as of Dec. 17, the CDC had recorded 620 cases of disease and 39 deaths. And more are likely, according to Chiller: “We’re still in the middle of this thing.”

Compounding Out of Bounds

The outbreak can be said to have started in the summer, when NECC made 17,675 vials of preservative-free methylprednisolone acetate, an injectable steroid, and shipped them to 76 healthcare facilities in 23 states.

That was problematic in itself: The company was licensed as a compounding pharmacy, meaning in principle it was allowed only to make up small quantities of specialized drugs, after getting a prescription from a doctor for an individual patient.

Instead, it was acting more like a large-scale drug manufacturer, and had been for some years, according to Massachusetts officials, which should have placed it under the FDA’s authority.

The manufacturing scale played a key role in what ensued: more than 13,000 people were exposed to the drug when they got injections – mainly into the spine – to control chronic pain.

They were also exposed to a fungal contaminant in the steroid vials, later found to be a black mold called Exserohilum rostratum, which only rarely causes human disease.

Oddly, the index case for the outbreak, reported to health authorities on Sept. 18, was a 56-year-old man in Nashville who had a case of meningitis apparently associated with the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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