An insider told the Daily News that NBC flew Hoda Kotb to London over the weekend to take part in the “Today” show's Olympic coverage because audiences weren’t digging Curry's replacement, Savannah Guthrie.
The show source said that the beloved Kotb, who co-hosts the wine-filled, fourth hour of “Today” with Kathie Lee Gifford, received a call from the network on Thursday after a pre-Olympics broadcast fell short in the ratings department against the network's rival, ABC's “Good Morning America.”
Executives wanted Kotb to join Guthrie, co-hosts Matt Lauer, Natalie Morales and Al Roker, who were already in London.
READ MORE: LIVE COVERAGE FROM THE OLYMPICS
Guthrie, the show's co-hosts, and special prime-time Olympic correspondents, Meredith Vieira and Ryan Seacrest have all had their beats established for months, the source said.
But "they're just shoehorning her into the show to help bring it alive," the source added. “They called Hoda on Thursday begging her to go to London because they said it wasn’t working like they thought.”
Kotb was set to start a two-week hiatus from the show for vacation, but she cheerfully joined the NBC gaggle in London.
“Packing my bags and heading to London this weekend — thx for all the story suggestions. You know I will do them!” the 47-year-old cheerfully tweeted on Friday after completing her show.
PHOTOS: THE HOTTEST OLYMPIANS OF 2012
The Kathie Lee & Hoda blog currently says the show is “on Olympic hiatus for a little while.”
Kotb was once rumored to be the forerunner for Curry's position around the time of the former “Today” show anchor's teary June 28 departure. When asked at the time if she was interested in Curry's role she reportedly said, “I'm actually joyful where I am.”
The 40-year-old Guthrie was promoted from host of the 9 a.m. hour.
Since Guthrie filled Curry's role on July 9, “Today” has not beaten “Good Morning America” in the ratings even once.
NBC has the exclusive rights to televise the Olympics in the United States, so the source said the network was hoping to for a quick change.
PHOTOS: SOME OF THE BEST OLYMPIC MOMENTS IN HISTORY
During the Olympics, on average, “Today’s” audience increases approximately 30 percent, reportedly.
But when Thursday's pre-Olympics coverage didn't beat out “Good Morning America,” it was Hoda to the rescue - literally.
“She didn't hesitate in saying yes,” said the insider.
NBC insisted Tuesday morning that it had always planned to send Kotb to London and pointed to a July 17 on-air announcement by co-host Kathie Lee Gifford and to a blog post on July 20 saying she was definitely going.
"It is well-know that Hoda was traveling to London to participate in the TODAY show's Olympic coverage because we announced it on our show three weeks ago," said "Today" show spokeswoman Megan Kopf.
"She planned to spend a few days in London covering fun Olympic stories, and she talked about it on the show several times," Kopf said. "In fact, we started a well-publicized Facebook campaign on July 9 asking viewers for suggestions on what types of stories she should do at the Games."
The July 9 Facebook page actually asks whether Kopt should go: "Do you think Hoda should go to the Olympics? If you do, what do you think she should see, do, visit or tackle in London?"
And while NBC did say she'd be going July 20, our network insider maintains that Kotb's actual departure was up in the air and that Thursday's call came because of the sub-par ratings for the pre-Olympics coverage against the "Today" show's rival.
NBC asked Kotb to become "much more involved in the show than initially planned," the source said.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Turkish military tries to dispel speculation over downed jet
(Reuters) - The Turkish military on Friday tried to damp down speculation about the loss of one of its warplanes last month, repeating its assertion the jet was shot down by Syria and by something other than anti-aircraft fire.
Speculation in Turkey has been mounting since the armed forces released a written statement on Wednesday that appeared to contradict previous official accounts of the June 22 incident and suggested the military may be revising its initial stance.
In that statement, the General Staff referred to the aircraft which "Syrian official authorities subsequently claimed to have shot down". The use of the word 'claimed', absent from previous accounts, aroused confusion over an incident which many Turks had initially feared could lead to a war.
Further adding to uncertainty over the plane's fate, the armed forces statement declared no traces of "petroleum-based, combustible or fire accelerant substances, organic and inorganic explosive substance residues, or any kind of ammunition" were found on debris from the wreckage floating on the sea's surface.
The lack of any further explanation in the statement prompted a flurry of speculation in the Turkish media over what had caused the F-4 reconnaissance jet to crash off the coast of Syria and whether it had even been shot down at all.
However, in another written statement on Friday, the military reasserted its position the jet had been brought down by Syria and said it had tried to make this clear to the public in all its previous statements.
It said the findings from examinations of the flotsam referred to in Wednesday's statement meant the possibility of the plane being shot down by anti-aircraft fire "as Syria claims" had "disappeared".
RAISED TENSIONS
The loss of the plane raised tensions between Syria and Turkey, which has been harboring Syrian rebel forces and refugees on its territory and has called for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey dispatched its own air defense systems to its long frontier with Syria days after the incident.
While Syria said hours after it crashed into the Mediterranean that it had shot down the F-4 jet, official accounts from Ankara and Damascus differ over where and with what the jet was brought down.
Syria says it shot the F-4 jet in self-defense and without knowing that it was a Turkish aircraft. It says it shot the plane at close range with anti-aircraft fire after it flew into its air space at high speed and low altitude.
Turkey has said it violated Syrian air space accidentally for a few minutes but maintains its plane was shot down by a missile without warning, 13 nautical miles off the Syrian coast in international air space. It says all its identification systems were open.
According to international law, a country's sovereign airspace extends 12 nautical miles from a nation's coastline. Anti-aircraft fire is only effective up to a maximum 2.5 miles.
Speculation in Turkey has been mounting since the armed forces released a written statement on Wednesday that appeared to contradict previous official accounts of the June 22 incident and suggested the military may be revising its initial stance.
In that statement, the General Staff referred to the aircraft which "Syrian official authorities subsequently claimed to have shot down". The use of the word 'claimed', absent from previous accounts, aroused confusion over an incident which many Turks had initially feared could lead to a war.
Further adding to uncertainty over the plane's fate, the armed forces statement declared no traces of "petroleum-based, combustible or fire accelerant substances, organic and inorganic explosive substance residues, or any kind of ammunition" were found on debris from the wreckage floating on the sea's surface.
The lack of any further explanation in the statement prompted a flurry of speculation in the Turkish media over what had caused the F-4 reconnaissance jet to crash off the coast of Syria and whether it had even been shot down at all.
However, in another written statement on Friday, the military reasserted its position the jet had been brought down by Syria and said it had tried to make this clear to the public in all its previous statements.
It said the findings from examinations of the flotsam referred to in Wednesday's statement meant the possibility of the plane being shot down by anti-aircraft fire "as Syria claims" had "disappeared".
RAISED TENSIONS
The loss of the plane raised tensions between Syria and Turkey, which has been harboring Syrian rebel forces and refugees on its territory and has called for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad. Turkey dispatched its own air defense systems to its long frontier with Syria days after the incident.
While Syria said hours after it crashed into the Mediterranean that it had shot down the F-4 jet, official accounts from Ankara and Damascus differ over where and with what the jet was brought down.
Syria says it shot the F-4 jet in self-defense and without knowing that it was a Turkish aircraft. It says it shot the plane at close range with anti-aircraft fire after it flew into its air space at high speed and low altitude.
Turkey has said it violated Syrian air space accidentally for a few minutes but maintains its plane was shot down by a missile without warning, 13 nautical miles off the Syrian coast in international air space. It says all its identification systems were open.
According to international law, a country's sovereign airspace extends 12 nautical miles from a nation's coastline. Anti-aircraft fire is only effective up to a maximum 2.5 miles.
Thursday, July 12, 2012
Massacre Reported in Syria as Security Council Meets
Syrian opposition activists said nearly 200 people were killed in a Sunni village on Thursday by government forces using tanks and helicopters, which, if confirmed, would be the worst in a series of massacres that have convulsed Syria’s increasingly sectarian uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian government also reported a mass killing in the village but said it was committed by armed terrorist groups, the official description for Mr. Assad’s opponents. It said at least 50 people were killed.
The site of the reported massacre, the village of Tremseh near the city of Hama, an epicenter of the 17-month-old uprising, was the first mass killing since United Nations cease-fire monitors were forced to suspend their work in Syria a month ago because conditions were too dangerous for them.
Activists in Hama posted a video on Youtube accusing the government of “ethnic cleansing in Hama,” and said the killings in Tremseh were “unlike any massacre that has previously occurred in Syria.” Tremseh is a Sunni-populated village surrounded by villages whose residents are of Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect.
Initial sketchy reports of a large number of casualties in Tremseh, first conveyed in a flood of Twitter postings, came as Security Council diplomats were meeting in closed session at the United Nations on drafting a new resolution to force Mr. Assad’s government and its armed antagonists to honor a cease-fire, allow the monitors to resume their work, and implement a peace plan by Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy. That plan has been ignored despite repeated personal pleas by Mr. Annan to President Assad.
Reports by the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad group in Syria, said many Tremseh victims were shot as they tried to escape the bombardments, and the group put the death toll at nearly 200. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group with contacts in Syria, said that government troops “bombarded the village using tanks and helicopters” and that the total deaths exceeded 100.
Syria’s state television ran a serious of urgent bulletins across its screen attributing the high toll to clashes between the security forces and "terrorists," the government’s longstanding description of all opposition to President Assad. It said that security forces had arrested a number of suspects in the town along and seized significant weapons caches and that the weapons included some from Israel, another standard government accusation meant to imply that the violence is an Israeli plot.
Word of the Tremseh killings came as new fractures opened in Mr. Assad’s hierarchy. The first Syrian ambassador to break with him since the uprising began exhorted his countrymen to join the revolution, and he urged the armed forces to turn their weapons on what he called Mr. Assad’s criminal gang.
The statement by the ambassador, Nawaf Fares, who defected on Wednesday from his post in Baghdad and is now believed to be in Qatar, came as the Syrian government announced that he had been summarily dismissed and could face prosecution for actions that contradicted his duties to defend Syria. That was essentially a confirmation that Mr. Fares had joined Mr. Assad’s growing ranks of political enemies.
Mr. Fares was the second prominent figure in Mr. Assad’s government to abandon him in less than a week and the first to go public with a scathing denunciation. Manaf Tlass, a general in the elite Republican Guard, fled Syria a week ago but has not surfaced publicly, and it was unclear whether he had yet reached out — or would reach out — to Mr. Assad’s opposition.
“I declare that I have joined, from this moment, the ranks of the revolution of the Syrian people,” Mr. Fares said. “I ask the members of the military to join the revolution and to defend the country and the citizens. Turn your guns on the criminals from this regime.”
Mr. Fares also said that “every Syrian man has to join the revolution to remove this nightmare and this gang.”
His remarks, broadcast by Al Jazeera in a video statement and an interview, also denounced Iran, Mr. Assad’s only friend in the region. He echoed Western criticism of the Iranians for providing Mr. Assad with military and economic support.
“Iran is contributing to the problem, it is a cause of the problem, so how can it be part of the solution?” he said.
Castigating Iran’s religious hierarchy, Mr. Fares said: “Iran as a Muslim state should not at all stand with a dictator that massacres its people, no matter what its interests are. The interest of the Iranians is with the people and not with the regime.” Mr. Assad, he said, will eventually be gone, “but the people will remain there.”
In its statement about Mr. Fares, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the ambassador had “made press statements that contradict the duties of his position of defending the country’s stances and issues, which demands legal and behavioral accountability.” It also accused him of leaving his embassy in Baghdad without prior permission.
Confirmation of his defection coincided with other reports of violence engulfing parts of Syria on Thursday, including what opposition activists in Damascus were calling the first government artillery bombardments of the suburbs of Kafar Sousseh and Qadam, and a relentless shelling of the city of Rastan, a rebel bastion where only 3,000 residents remain out of an initial population of 60,000.
Antigovernment activists also posted videos online claiming that Syrian forces had added unguided cluster bombs, an indiscriminate weapon designed to maximize damage and casualties, to their arsenal of attack helicopters, artillery and tanks.
The videos, posted earlier in the week and first highlighted by a blogger who uses the pseudonym Brown Moses, showed a pile of Soviet-era cluster bomblets lying on the ground with a canister used to deploy them. The videos were said to have been taken in the mountainous region near Hama, but the location could not be independently confirmed.
“These videos show identifiable cluster bombs and submunitions,” said Steve Goose, the arms division director at Human Rights Watch in a statement. “If confirmed, this would be the first documented use of these highly dangerous weapons by the Syrian armed forces during the conflict.”
Another video surfaced recently claiming to show a cluster-bomb strike this week around the southern city of Dara’a, the birthplace of the anti-Assad uprising in March 2011, but its location and timing could not be independently confirmed.
The new Security Council maneuvering for a resolution on Syria came a day after Mr. Annan, the special envoy whose peace plan for ending the conflict is paralyzed and at risk of complete collapse, had asked the Council to threaten the Syrian government and the rebels with consequences for failure to halt the escalating violence. He did not specifically ask for Chapter 7 sanctions, however.
Mr. Annan, who spoke to the Council by video link from his Geneva office after having visited Syria, Iran and Iraq, also said that Mr. Assad was open to the idea of an interlocutor between himself and the political opposition. An interlocutor presumably would allow a dialogue without the two sides having to talk to each other directly, laying the groundwork for a political transition as specified in Mr. Annan’s peace plan.
But a number of opposition leaders rejected that idea on Thursday. “Our position is clear, there can be no dialogue or negotiations, direct or indirect; there can be no transitional government until Assad leaves,” said Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition umbrella group. “We cannot dialogue with a criminal.”
Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by J. David Goodman from New York, Alan Cowell from London, Dalal Mawad from Beirut and Hwaida Saad from Antakya, Turkey..
The Syrian government also reported a mass killing in the village but said it was committed by armed terrorist groups, the official description for Mr. Assad’s opponents. It said at least 50 people were killed.
The site of the reported massacre, the village of Tremseh near the city of Hama, an epicenter of the 17-month-old uprising, was the first mass killing since United Nations cease-fire monitors were forced to suspend their work in Syria a month ago because conditions were too dangerous for them.
Activists in Hama posted a video on Youtube accusing the government of “ethnic cleansing in Hama,” and said the killings in Tremseh were “unlike any massacre that has previously occurred in Syria.” Tremseh is a Sunni-populated village surrounded by villages whose residents are of Mr. Assad’s Alawite sect.
Initial sketchy reports of a large number of casualties in Tremseh, first conveyed in a flood of Twitter postings, came as Security Council diplomats were meeting in closed session at the United Nations on drafting a new resolution to force Mr. Assad’s government and its armed antagonists to honor a cease-fire, allow the monitors to resume their work, and implement a peace plan by Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy. That plan has been ignored despite repeated personal pleas by Mr. Annan to President Assad.
Reports by the Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad group in Syria, said many Tremseh victims were shot as they tried to escape the bombardments, and the group put the death toll at nearly 200. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group with contacts in Syria, said that government troops “bombarded the village using tanks and helicopters” and that the total deaths exceeded 100.
Syria’s state television ran a serious of urgent bulletins across its screen attributing the high toll to clashes between the security forces and "terrorists," the government’s longstanding description of all opposition to President Assad. It said that security forces had arrested a number of suspects in the town along and seized significant weapons caches and that the weapons included some from Israel, another standard government accusation meant to imply that the violence is an Israeli plot.
Word of the Tremseh killings came as new fractures opened in Mr. Assad’s hierarchy. The first Syrian ambassador to break with him since the uprising began exhorted his countrymen to join the revolution, and he urged the armed forces to turn their weapons on what he called Mr. Assad’s criminal gang.
The statement by the ambassador, Nawaf Fares, who defected on Wednesday from his post in Baghdad and is now believed to be in Qatar, came as the Syrian government announced that he had been summarily dismissed and could face prosecution for actions that contradicted his duties to defend Syria. That was essentially a confirmation that Mr. Fares had joined Mr. Assad’s growing ranks of political enemies.
Mr. Fares was the second prominent figure in Mr. Assad’s government to abandon him in less than a week and the first to go public with a scathing denunciation. Manaf Tlass, a general in the elite Republican Guard, fled Syria a week ago but has not surfaced publicly, and it was unclear whether he had yet reached out — or would reach out — to Mr. Assad’s opposition.
“I declare that I have joined, from this moment, the ranks of the revolution of the Syrian people,” Mr. Fares said. “I ask the members of the military to join the revolution and to defend the country and the citizens. Turn your guns on the criminals from this regime.”
Mr. Fares also said that “every Syrian man has to join the revolution to remove this nightmare and this gang.”
His remarks, broadcast by Al Jazeera in a video statement and an interview, also denounced Iran, Mr. Assad’s only friend in the region. He echoed Western criticism of the Iranians for providing Mr. Assad with military and economic support.
“Iran is contributing to the problem, it is a cause of the problem, so how can it be part of the solution?” he said.
Castigating Iran’s religious hierarchy, Mr. Fares said: “Iran as a Muslim state should not at all stand with a dictator that massacres its people, no matter what its interests are. The interest of the Iranians is with the people and not with the regime.” Mr. Assad, he said, will eventually be gone, “but the people will remain there.”
In its statement about Mr. Fares, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said the ambassador had “made press statements that contradict the duties of his position of defending the country’s stances and issues, which demands legal and behavioral accountability.” It also accused him of leaving his embassy in Baghdad without prior permission.
Confirmation of his defection coincided with other reports of violence engulfing parts of Syria on Thursday, including what opposition activists in Damascus were calling the first government artillery bombardments of the suburbs of Kafar Sousseh and Qadam, and a relentless shelling of the city of Rastan, a rebel bastion where only 3,000 residents remain out of an initial population of 60,000.
Antigovernment activists also posted videos online claiming that Syrian forces had added unguided cluster bombs, an indiscriminate weapon designed to maximize damage and casualties, to their arsenal of attack helicopters, artillery and tanks.
The videos, posted earlier in the week and first highlighted by a blogger who uses the pseudonym Brown Moses, showed a pile of Soviet-era cluster bomblets lying on the ground with a canister used to deploy them. The videos were said to have been taken in the mountainous region near Hama, but the location could not be independently confirmed.
“These videos show identifiable cluster bombs and submunitions,” said Steve Goose, the arms division director at Human Rights Watch in a statement. “If confirmed, this would be the first documented use of these highly dangerous weapons by the Syrian armed forces during the conflict.”
Another video surfaced recently claiming to show a cluster-bomb strike this week around the southern city of Dara’a, the birthplace of the anti-Assad uprising in March 2011, but its location and timing could not be independently confirmed.
The new Security Council maneuvering for a resolution on Syria came a day after Mr. Annan, the special envoy whose peace plan for ending the conflict is paralyzed and at risk of complete collapse, had asked the Council to threaten the Syrian government and the rebels with consequences for failure to halt the escalating violence. He did not specifically ask for Chapter 7 sanctions, however.
Mr. Annan, who spoke to the Council by video link from his Geneva office after having visited Syria, Iran and Iraq, also said that Mr. Assad was open to the idea of an interlocutor between himself and the political opposition. An interlocutor presumably would allow a dialogue without the two sides having to talk to each other directly, laying the groundwork for a political transition as specified in Mr. Annan’s peace plan.
But a number of opposition leaders rejected that idea on Thursday. “Our position is clear, there can be no dialogue or negotiations, direct or indirect; there can be no transitional government until Assad leaves,” said Samir Nachar, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition umbrella group. “We cannot dialogue with a criminal.”
Rick Gladstone reported from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by J. David Goodman from New York, Alan Cowell from London, Dalal Mawad from Beirut and Hwaida Saad from Antakya, Turkey..
Health unit supports indoor tanning ban for teens
Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph Public Health has sent letters in support of Bill 74, Quebec’s Skin Cancer Prevention Act, to local MPPs, Premier Dalton McGuinty and the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, Deb Matthews.
A 2007 study found that 60 per cent of tanning salons in Toronto did not ask young clients their age, nor prohibit them from tanning.
Bill 74, passed last month by the Quebec National Assembly will ban indoor tanning services to anyone under 18, and follows other provinces that have implemented similar legislation.
In Canada, Nova Scotia has banned tanning services to teens and British Columbia expects to do so this fall.
Brazil and New South Wales in Australia have banned the use of all tanning equipment unless for medical purposes; while California, all of Australia, and at least 12 countries in Europe, including Germany and most of the UK, have banned use of tanning facilities to youth under 18.
Dr. Mercer, Medical Officer of Health, said “Indoor tanning equipment greatly increases young people’s risk of developing the most dangerous form of skin cancer, melanoma, by 75 percent when indoor tanning equipment use begins before the age of 30.”
The health unit is also encouraging community members and health professionals to support Bill 74 by going to www.take action.cancer.ca.
The site will send a message to an individual’s MPP as well as the Premier, the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, and the MPP Health Critics via email or Facebook.
A 2007 study found that 60 per cent of tanning salons in Toronto did not ask young clients their age, nor prohibit them from tanning.
Bill 74, passed last month by the Quebec National Assembly will ban indoor tanning services to anyone under 18, and follows other provinces that have implemented similar legislation.
In Canada, Nova Scotia has banned tanning services to teens and British Columbia expects to do so this fall.
Brazil and New South Wales in Australia have banned the use of all tanning equipment unless for medical purposes; while California, all of Australia, and at least 12 countries in Europe, including Germany and most of the UK, have banned use of tanning facilities to youth under 18.
Dr. Mercer, Medical Officer of Health, said “Indoor tanning equipment greatly increases young people’s risk of developing the most dangerous form of skin cancer, melanoma, by 75 percent when indoor tanning equipment use begins before the age of 30.”
The health unit is also encouraging community members and health professionals to support Bill 74 by going to www.take action.cancer.ca.
The site will send a message to an individual’s MPP as well as the Premier, the Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, and the MPP Health Critics via email or Facebook.
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
FDA Finalizes Opioid Painkiller Education Plan
Companies that manufacture powerful, long-acting opioid painkillers will have to sponsor education programs about how to appropriately prescribe their drugs, according to the FDA.
In the final version of the agency's risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for extended-release and long-acting opioids, such as OxyContin, it states that the education will follow a blueprint drafted by FDA and the drugmakers and will be created by medical education companies.
The strategy, which affects 20 manufacturers and 30 products, also stipulates a patient-education brochure and regular audits to make sure the physician education is having a wide enough impact.
"The FDA's goal is to ensure that healthcare professionals have the education they need to prescribe opioids and that patients have the know-how to safely use these drugs," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said during a press call.
Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.
But critics cite a number of problems with the guidance, including its reliance on industry sponsorship of education, even with middle-man medical education companies. Also, extended-release and long-acting opioid analgesics training will not be mandatory for prescribers.
Finally, the program will not cover powerful short-acting opioids such as hydrocodone (Vicodin) that have an equally high potential for abuse.
"These educational programs are likely going to do more harm than good," said Andrew Kolodny, MD, chair of psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. "Nowhere does it say that prescribers should tell patients these drugs are addictive. And these programs give the implied message that there's evidence for using opioids in long-term, noncancer chronic pain."
Kolodny noted that the final REMS is the same version that the advisory panel voted down 2 years ago, and called it a "jackpot for the medical education companies (MECs)." He said there are about five MECs that currently handle much of the industry-sponsored education for opioids.
Instead, Kolodny said, a better option is mandatory education that's either tied to DEA licensure or has a certification process similar to that for buprenorphine (Suboxone), an opiate and addiction treatment that requires completing an 8-hour class before physicians can prescribe it.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy who was also on the press call, said that several pieces of legislation seek to make physician education mandatory for this class of drugs and that his office will "continue to work with Congress on this issue."
The physician education courses under the new REMS would last about 2 to 3 hours, according to John Jenkins, MD, director of the office of new drugs at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). They would cover how to weigh the risks and benefits of opioid therapy and how to recognize the potential for abuse and addiction.
The first courses are scheduled to be put in place by March 1, 2013, FDA said.
The REMS also involves a single-page patient medication guide that talks about safe use of the drugs as well as their proper storage and disposal.
In the final version of the agency's risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for extended-release and long-acting opioids, such as OxyContin, it states that the education will follow a blueprint drafted by FDA and the drugmakers and will be created by medical education companies.
The strategy, which affects 20 manufacturers and 30 products, also stipulates a patient-education brochure and regular audits to make sure the physician education is having a wide enough impact.
"The FDA's goal is to ensure that healthcare professionals have the education they need to prescribe opioids and that patients have the know-how to safely use these drugs," FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said during a press call.
Read this story on www.medpagetoday.com.
But critics cite a number of problems with the guidance, including its reliance on industry sponsorship of education, even with middle-man medical education companies. Also, extended-release and long-acting opioid analgesics training will not be mandatory for prescribers.
Finally, the program will not cover powerful short-acting opioids such as hydrocodone (Vicodin) that have an equally high potential for abuse.
"These educational programs are likely going to do more harm than good," said Andrew Kolodny, MD, chair of psychiatry at Maimonides Medical Center in New York City. "Nowhere does it say that prescribers should tell patients these drugs are addictive. And these programs give the implied message that there's evidence for using opioids in long-term, noncancer chronic pain."
Kolodny noted that the final REMS is the same version that the advisory panel voted down 2 years ago, and called it a "jackpot for the medical education companies (MECs)." He said there are about five MECs that currently handle much of the industry-sponsored education for opioids.
Instead, Kolodny said, a better option is mandatory education that's either tied to DEA licensure or has a certification process similar to that for buprenorphine (Suboxone), an opiate and addiction treatment that requires completing an 8-hour class before physicians can prescribe it.
Gil Kerlikowske, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy who was also on the press call, said that several pieces of legislation seek to make physician education mandatory for this class of drugs and that his office will "continue to work with Congress on this issue."
The physician education courses under the new REMS would last about 2 to 3 hours, according to John Jenkins, MD, director of the office of new drugs at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER). They would cover how to weigh the risks and benefits of opioid therapy and how to recognize the potential for abuse and addiction.
The first courses are scheduled to be put in place by March 1, 2013, FDA said.
The REMS also involves a single-page patient medication guide that talks about safe use of the drugs as well as their proper storage and disposal.
President Obama's Mondale-esque call for higher taxes
Republicans like to talk about President Obama as if he were Jimmy Carter, but sometimes he
sounds more like Carter's erstwhile vice president, Walter Mondale -- the guy who promised
voters in 1984 that he would raise their taxes if he were elected.
Obama doesn't put his fiscal plan in those terms, naturally. Instead, he talks about
raising taxes on Americans who make more than $250,000 (for couples; for individuals, the
cutoff is $200,000), while maintaining the current rates on everybody else. The president
revisited that topic Monday, calling on Congress to renew the Bush-era tax cuts for middle-
and lower-income Americans for another year while postponing the decision on "the wealthy"
until after the election.
The point was to remind voters that presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney isn't the only one
calling for tax cuts. Obama also was trying to defend himself against a meme advanced by
the GOP and its conservative allies that the president was leading the country toward "one
of the biggest tax increases in history" -- the expiration in January of the Bush-era tax
cuts, the temporary reduction in payroll taxes and an assortment of other pending changes
in tax law.
VIDEO: Obama says election will decide economic fate
His proposal would eliminate about $1.2 trillion in tax increases over 10 years. Yet
because it would allow some of the Bush-era breaks to lapse, it would result in a tax
increase of about $700 billion compared with current law. That's the revenue projected from
not renewing the Bush-era cuts for the top two tax brackets, a level reached by less than
2% of those who file income tax returns.
In other words, every time Obama talks about his plans for the Bush-era cuts, he reminds
voters that he would raise taxes if reelected. Those increases are in addition to the ones
Congress adopted as part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which
upped the Medicare taxes on those earning more than $200,000 and imposed new levies on drug
makers, insurers, medical device manufacturers and indoor tanning salons.
Polls show that most people like the idea of raising taxes on someone else, i.e., the
wealthy, so perhaps Obama's approach is the right one politically. Granted, in high-cost
states such as California and New York, someone who makes $200,000 may not feel wealthy --
that's why some congressional Democrats have pushed to hold taxes steady for anyone making
less than $1 million. But the burgeoning federal deficit makes it easier to argue that the
country can't afford to renew all of the Bush-era cuts, and those with high taxable incomes
are better able to pay than the middle and lower classes.
And yet, there's the example set by Mondale, who took a near-historic electoral beatdown at
the hands of incumbent Ronald Reagan despite a less-than-robust economy. Mondale's pledge
to raise taxes to reduce a large (at the time) federal deficit wasn't the only factor in
his defeat, but it certainly didn't help.
Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy also comes in the context of narrowing the
federal deficit, and it's hard to come up with a credible plan to shrink the deficit that
doesn't involve collecting more revenue. After all, the recession dropped federal revenue
to the lowest level (as a percentage of GDP) in nearly 60 years. The question is whether
the government can raise taxes now without slowing the economy, which would only exacerbate
the fiscal problems.
That, too, was a problem for Mondale, who called for higher taxes while the U.S. economy
was still recovering from a recession. But there's another element to Obama's position on
taxes that has nothing to do with deficit reduction. In Obama's view, the Bush-era cuts
contributed to the increasing income gap between the rich and average Americans. That's why
the president talks about having the wealthy shoulder a "fair share" of the tax burden.
Here's how he put it Monday:
"At the beginning of the last decade, Congress passed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that
benefited the wealthiest Americans more than anybody else. And we were told that it would
lead to more jobs and higher incomes for everybody, and that prosperity would start at the
top but then trickle down.
"And what happened? The wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled. Instead of
creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. Instead of widespread
prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall. And in just a few years, we went from
record surpluses under Bill Clinton to record deficits that we are now still struggling to
pay off today.
"So we don’t need more top-down economics."
To Republicans, those are the words of class warfare. Never mind that those earning more
than $200,000 collected almost one-fourth of the savings from the Bush-era cuts in 2010,
even though they make up a small fraction of the taxpaying public. The top 1% pay more than
20% of the federal taxes collected, so broad-based tax cuts would naturally result in more
dollars flowing to them than anyone else.
Romney has called for reducing tax rates by one-fifth across the board, while narrowing or
eliminating enough (as yet unspecified) deductions, exemptions and credits to offset any
loss in revenue. It's an intriguing idea -- the wealthy benefit most from tax breaks, so
they'd arguably benefit the least from Romney's plan -- but it's quixotic to believe
Congress could actually eliminate enough of those breaks to keep the plan from exacerbating
the deficit.
All the same, it would be far better for lawmakers to craft a plan to radically overhaul
and simplify the loophole-ridden tax code than to stick to the current framework. Both
Obama and Romney say they're in favor of tax reform, but they want to postpone any
discussion of the details until after the election. At least Obama's proposal for just a
temporary extension of the middle- and working-class tax cuts will keep the pressure on for
a more fundamental reworking of the tax code. If anything's going to drive that sort of
change, it would be the threat of raising taxes on all Americans.
sounds more like Carter's erstwhile vice president, Walter Mondale -- the guy who promised
voters in 1984 that he would raise their taxes if he were elected.
Obama doesn't put his fiscal plan in those terms, naturally. Instead, he talks about
raising taxes on Americans who make more than $250,000 (for couples; for individuals, the
cutoff is $200,000), while maintaining the current rates on everybody else. The president
revisited that topic Monday, calling on Congress to renew the Bush-era tax cuts for middle-
and lower-income Americans for another year while postponing the decision on "the wealthy"
until after the election.
The point was to remind voters that presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney isn't the only one
calling for tax cuts. Obama also was trying to defend himself against a meme advanced by
the GOP and its conservative allies that the president was leading the country toward "one
of the biggest tax increases in history" -- the expiration in January of the Bush-era tax
cuts, the temporary reduction in payroll taxes and an assortment of other pending changes
in tax law.
VIDEO: Obama says election will decide economic fate
His proposal would eliminate about $1.2 trillion in tax increases over 10 years. Yet
because it would allow some of the Bush-era breaks to lapse, it would result in a tax
increase of about $700 billion compared with current law. That's the revenue projected from
not renewing the Bush-era cuts for the top two tax brackets, a level reached by less than
2% of those who file income tax returns.
In other words, every time Obama talks about his plans for the Bush-era cuts, he reminds
voters that he would raise taxes if reelected. Those increases are in addition to the ones
Congress adopted as part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which
upped the Medicare taxes on those earning more than $200,000 and imposed new levies on drug
makers, insurers, medical device manufacturers and indoor tanning salons.
Polls show that most people like the idea of raising taxes on someone else, i.e., the
wealthy, so perhaps Obama's approach is the right one politically. Granted, in high-cost
states such as California and New York, someone who makes $200,000 may not feel wealthy --
that's why some congressional Democrats have pushed to hold taxes steady for anyone making
less than $1 million. But the burgeoning federal deficit makes it easier to argue that the
country can't afford to renew all of the Bush-era cuts, and those with high taxable incomes
are better able to pay than the middle and lower classes.
And yet, there's the example set by Mondale, who took a near-historic electoral beatdown at
the hands of incumbent Ronald Reagan despite a less-than-robust economy. Mondale's pledge
to raise taxes to reduce a large (at the time) federal deficit wasn't the only factor in
his defeat, but it certainly didn't help.
Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy also comes in the context of narrowing the
federal deficit, and it's hard to come up with a credible plan to shrink the deficit that
doesn't involve collecting more revenue. After all, the recession dropped federal revenue
to the lowest level (as a percentage of GDP) in nearly 60 years. The question is whether
the government can raise taxes now without slowing the economy, which would only exacerbate
the fiscal problems.
That, too, was a problem for Mondale, who called for higher taxes while the U.S. economy
was still recovering from a recession. But there's another element to Obama's position on
taxes that has nothing to do with deficit reduction. In Obama's view, the Bush-era cuts
contributed to the increasing income gap between the rich and average Americans. That's why
the president talks about having the wealthy shoulder a "fair share" of the tax burden.
Here's how he put it Monday:
"At the beginning of the last decade, Congress passed trillions of dollars in tax cuts that
benefited the wealthiest Americans more than anybody else. And we were told that it would
lead to more jobs and higher incomes for everybody, and that prosperity would start at the
top but then trickle down.
"And what happened? The wealthy got wealthier, but most Americans struggled. Instead of
creating more jobs, we had the slowest job growth in half a century. Instead of widespread
prosperity, the typical family saw its income fall. And in just a few years, we went from
record surpluses under Bill Clinton to record deficits that we are now still struggling to
pay off today.
"So we don’t need more top-down economics."
To Republicans, those are the words of class warfare. Never mind that those earning more
than $200,000 collected almost one-fourth of the savings from the Bush-era cuts in 2010,
even though they make up a small fraction of the taxpaying public. The top 1% pay more than
20% of the federal taxes collected, so broad-based tax cuts would naturally result in more
dollars flowing to them than anyone else.
Romney has called for reducing tax rates by one-fifth across the board, while narrowing or
eliminating enough (as yet unspecified) deductions, exemptions and credits to offset any
loss in revenue. It's an intriguing idea -- the wealthy benefit most from tax breaks, so
they'd arguably benefit the least from Romney's plan -- but it's quixotic to believe
Congress could actually eliminate enough of those breaks to keep the plan from exacerbating
the deficit.
All the same, it would be far better for lawmakers to craft a plan to radically overhaul
and simplify the loophole-ridden tax code than to stick to the current framework. Both
Obama and Romney say they're in favor of tax reform, but they want to postpone any
discussion of the details until after the election. At least Obama's proposal for just a
temporary extension of the middle- and working-class tax cuts will keep the pressure on for
a more fundamental reworking of the tax code. If anything's going to drive that sort of
change, it would be the threat of raising taxes on all Americans.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Top 10 Best July 4th Fireworks Displays
“The 4th of July audience does not require much,” notes Fireworks by Grucci CEO Philip Butler, whose Long Island–based family-owned company has spanned five generations. “You can put fireworks of any kind in the sky and they’re happy.” But that hasn’t stopped cities and towns across the nation from pulling out all the stops—and all the cash—when it comes to orchestrating their annual July 4th pyrotechnics displays. The latest in fireworks technology, choreography to live music, spectacular settings, and lengthy shows (20 to 30 minutes of explosions) carrying hefty budgets ($100,000 and up) all contributed to this year’s top Independence Day players, which include New York, Boston and Washington, D.C.
But shows in some smaller towns are also forces to be reckoned with. Kaboom Town! in the Dallas suburb of Addison, Texas, for example, is a well-known spectacular offering a 30-minute display, choreographed to pop music and following an air show; it has a price tag of $220,000 this year. It’s an annual favorite of the American Pyrotechnics Association, says Julie Heckman, especially because, she explains, “I don’t think people would necessarily think of it as being among the top shows.” Though Addison has a population of only 15,000, its spectacle draws half a million spectators from the Dallas region.
To form this year’s list of top fireworks displays in the nation, we weighed the recommendations of the American Pyrotechnics Association, as well as the most elaborate events by some of the country’s biggest fireworks providers (as they noted) including Grucci, Pyro Spectaculars by Souza and Pyro Shows. Getting the list down to 10 was no easy feat, and many cities not on it—including Philadelphia and Atlantic City—deserve major honorable mentions.
“As with most events, it’s not just one component that puts something over the top,” notes Lansden Hill, Jr., CEO of Pyro Shows, based in LaFollette, Tennessee. “It’s the spirit of the holiday, and the venue, or backdrop. The budget of the show certainly has a big bearing, as do the type of fireworks, and how they’re being presented. You can put $100,000 of fireworks into the hands of a lot of people, and all will do something different with them.”
Pyro Shows is behind the display in Washington, D.C.—where, he says, the attraction is “the fact that it’s being shot on the National Mall.”
“The making of a great show is the ambiance,” concurs Jim Souza, CEO of Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, the Rialto-California–based company producing the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks, “Ignite the Night,” in New York City. This year’s show, the 36th annual, will use more than 40,000 shells and pyrotechnic effects shot from a total of four barges in the Hudson River and choreographed to a score of pop favorites—plus live performances by Katy Perry and Kenny Chesney. “Macy’s is the grandaddy of them all,” says Heckman.
Also at play this year are a slew of brand-new fireworks shells, discovered by pyrotechnics companies who scour the globe from Europe to China seeking out the best new explosives. “The Macy’s show takes a year in preparation,” says Jim Souza of Pyro Spectaculars, who travels the world for new products, then has them fired in a California testing facility. Among this year’s finds: the Transformer, which has half shells opening in one color followed by another and another and another for a brightly hued, 8-second wow factor. Yet another bursts into the shape of a wagon wheel. A Pyro Shows favorite, meanwhile, is the Big Kamuro, which is a massive exploding gold willow with a long duration, says Lansden. Grucci has its signature Gold Split Comet, which leaves a vividly sparkling trail.
Of course, some cities have cut or drastically reduced their July 4th fireworks displays because of financial constraints—Chicago and Detroit among them. But those that have lowered their budgets are still hoping for big thrills—which, says Heckman, is certainly possible. “Every show is unique,” she says. “Even the smallest community show can be spectacular.”
But shows in some smaller towns are also forces to be reckoned with. Kaboom Town! in the Dallas suburb of Addison, Texas, for example, is a well-known spectacular offering a 30-minute display, choreographed to pop music and following an air show; it has a price tag of $220,000 this year. It’s an annual favorite of the American Pyrotechnics Association, says Julie Heckman, especially because, she explains, “I don’t think people would necessarily think of it as being among the top shows.” Though Addison has a population of only 15,000, its spectacle draws half a million spectators from the Dallas region.
To form this year’s list of top fireworks displays in the nation, we weighed the recommendations of the American Pyrotechnics Association, as well as the most elaborate events by some of the country’s biggest fireworks providers (as they noted) including Grucci, Pyro Spectaculars by Souza and Pyro Shows. Getting the list down to 10 was no easy feat, and many cities not on it—including Philadelphia and Atlantic City—deserve major honorable mentions.
“As with most events, it’s not just one component that puts something over the top,” notes Lansden Hill, Jr., CEO of Pyro Shows, based in LaFollette, Tennessee. “It’s the spirit of the holiday, and the venue, or backdrop. The budget of the show certainly has a big bearing, as do the type of fireworks, and how they’re being presented. You can put $100,000 of fireworks into the hands of a lot of people, and all will do something different with them.”
Pyro Shows is behind the display in Washington, D.C.—where, he says, the attraction is “the fact that it’s being shot on the National Mall.”
“The making of a great show is the ambiance,” concurs Jim Souza, CEO of Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, the Rialto-California–based company producing the Macy’s Fourth of July Fireworks, “Ignite the Night,” in New York City. This year’s show, the 36th annual, will use more than 40,000 shells and pyrotechnic effects shot from a total of four barges in the Hudson River and choreographed to a score of pop favorites—plus live performances by Katy Perry and Kenny Chesney. “Macy’s is the grandaddy of them all,” says Heckman.
Also at play this year are a slew of brand-new fireworks shells, discovered by pyrotechnics companies who scour the globe from Europe to China seeking out the best new explosives. “The Macy’s show takes a year in preparation,” says Jim Souza of Pyro Spectaculars, who travels the world for new products, then has them fired in a California testing facility. Among this year’s finds: the Transformer, which has half shells opening in one color followed by another and another and another for a brightly hued, 8-second wow factor. Yet another bursts into the shape of a wagon wheel. A Pyro Shows favorite, meanwhile, is the Big Kamuro, which is a massive exploding gold willow with a long duration, says Lansden. Grucci has its signature Gold Split Comet, which leaves a vividly sparkling trail.
Of course, some cities have cut or drastically reduced their July 4th fireworks displays because of financial constraints—Chicago and Detroit among them. But those that have lowered their budgets are still hoping for big thrills—which, says Heckman, is certainly possible. “Every show is unique,” she says. “Even the smallest community show can be spectacular.”
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