Athletes lose medals; Armstrong decision pending

LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) — Eight years after winning Olympic medals in Athens, four track and field athletes from eastern Europe were ordered to hand them back Wednesday because of positive doping tests, while Lance Armstrong can hold onto his bronze medal from the 2000 Sydney Games a little while longer.

The International Olympic Committee executive board disqualified four athletes whose 2004 Athens doping samples were retested this year and came back positive for steroids, including shot put gold medalist Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine.

Also stripped of medals were hammer throw silver medalist Ivan Tskikhan of Belarus and two bronze medalists — women's shot putter Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia and discus thrower Irina Yatchenko of Belarus.

The IOC held off stripping Armstrong of the bronze he won 12 years ago in the cycling road time trial in Sydney, citing procedural reasons for the delay.

IOC leaders want Armstrong's medal back after the damning U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report that painted Armstrong as a systematic drug cheat. The International Cycling Union recently stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles from 1999-2005.

But the IOC said it must wait for UCI, the cycling's governing body, to formally notify Armstrong of the loss of all his results since August 1998. The IOC wants to avoid any legal problems in connection with the eight-year statute of limitations in the Olympic rules.

"The IOC today will not move," IOC President Jacques Rogge said at a news conference following a two-day board meeting in Lausanne. "We need to have the situation whereby the UCI notifies officially Mr. Armstrong of the fact that he will be disqualified, declared ineligible and that he should hand over his medal.

"This is a legal obligation not for the IOC but for the International Cycling Union. When he will be notified, Mr. Armstrong will have 21 days to launch an appeal if he wishes. It is only after this period of 21 days that the IOC can legally take action."

The case of a fifth bronze medalist, weightlifter Oleg Perepechenov of Russia, is pending.

The IOC said it will ask the International Association of Athletics Federations to get the four medals back and readjust the results and rankings from the Athens Games.

Until then, no decision will be taken on reallocating the medals. Adam Nelson of the United States finished second in the shot put in Athens behind Bilonog and would stand to move up to gold.

The intention of the IOC to wipe Armstrong from the Olympic record books remains clear.

"Absolutely," IOC vice president Craig Reedie of Britain told The Associated Press. "If the UCI have the ability to remove all these titles, we should have the ability to remove a bronze medal. Once they go through their procedures, then we'll go through ours."

Armstrong finished behind winner and U.S. Postal Service teammate Vyacheslav Ekimov of Russia and Jan Ullrich of Germany in Sydney. The IOC has no plans to reallocate Armstrong's bronze medal, just as the UCI decided not to declare any winners for the Tour titles once held by the American.

In August, the IOC stripped Tyler Hamilton, a former Armstrong teammate, of his time-trial gold medal from the 2004 Athens Olympics after he admitted to doping.

The Athens Games were already considered the dirtiest on record, producing 26 doping cases and catching six medalists — including two gold winners — at the time. The retroactive tests bring the number of Athens cases to 31, including 11 medal winners and three gold medalists.

Since Athens, the IOC has been storing doping samples from each Olympics for eight years to allow for retesting when new detection methods become available. Last year, under prodding from the World Anti-Doping Agency, the IOC reanalyzed about 100 samples from Athens.

The IOC said Bilonog and Krivelyova tested positive for oxandrolone, while the samples from Tsikhan and Yatchenko were positive for methandienone.

Bilonog's disqualification means that both shot put winners in Athens have been disqualified for doping: Women's champion Irina Korzhanenko of Russia was stripped of gold at the games after testing positive for stanozolol.

The IAAF held the 2004 shot put competition in Ancient Olympia, in what had been intended as a symbolic and uplifting return to the birthplace of the Olympics.

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Study Raises Questions on Coating of Aspirin

While aspirin may prevent heart attacks and strokes, a commonly used coating to protect the stomach may obscure the benefits, leading doctors to prescribe more expensive prescription drugs, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Circulation.

The conclusion about coated aspirin was only one finding in the study, whose main goal was to test the hotly disputed idea that aspirin does not help prevent heart attacks or stroke in some people.

For more than a decade, cardiologists and drug researchers have posited that anywhere from 5 to 40 percent of the population is “aspirin resistant,” as the debated condition is known. But some prominent doctors say that the prevalence of the condition has been exaggerated by companies and drug makers with a commercial interest in proving that aspirin — a relatively inexpensive, over-the-counter drug whose heart benefits have been known since the 1950s — does not always work.

The authors of the new study, from the University of Pennsylvania, claim that they did not find a single case of true aspirin resistance in any of the 400 healthy people who were examined. Instead, they claim, the coating on aspirin interfered with the way that the drug entered the body, making it appear in tests that the drug was not working.

The study was partly financed by Bayer, the world’s largest manufacturer of brand-name aspirin, much of which is coated.

Aside from whether coating aspirin conceals its effects in some people, there is little evidence that it protects the stomach better than uncoated aspirin, said Dr. Garret FitzGerald, chairman of pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the study’s authors.

“These studies question the value of coated, low-dose aspirin,” he said in a statement accompanying the article. “This product adds cost to treatment, without any clear benefit. Indeed, it may lead to the false diagnosis of aspirin resistance and the failure to provide patients with an effective therapy.”

In a statement, Bayer took issue with some of the study’s conclusions and methods and said previous studies of coated aspirin, also called enteric-coated aspirin, have been shown to stop blood platelets from sticking together — which can help prevent heart attacks and stroke — at levels comparable to uncoated aspirin. Bayer also noted that the price difference between its coated and uncoated aspirin was negligible, although Dr. FitzGerald argued there was no reason patients should use anything other than uncoated generic aspirin, which is cheaper.

“When used as directed,” the company said, “both enteric and nonenteric coated aspirin provides meaningful benefits, is safe and effective and is infrequently associated with clinically significant side effects.”

Although researchers had long observed that, as is true with most drugs, aspirin’s effects varied among patients, the existence of “aspirin resistance” gained currency in the 1990s and early 2000s. One often-cited study, published in 2003, found that about 5 percent of cardiovascular patients were aspirin-resistant and that that group was more than three times as likely as those not aspirin-resistant to suffer a major event like a heart attack.

But some said the popularity of aspirin resistance got a boost in part because of the development of urine and blood tests to measure it and the arrival on the market of drugs like Plavix, a more expensive prescription drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb that also thins the blood.

In the most recent study, the patients who initially tested positive for aspirin resistance later tested negative for it and by the end of the study, Dr. FitzGerald said, none of the patients showed true resistance. “Nobody had a stable pattern of resistance that was specific to coated aspirin,” he said. If resistance to aspirin exists, he said, “I think that the incidence is vanishingly small.”

Dr. Eric Topol, one of the authors of the 2003 study, said he strongly disagreed with Dr. FitzGerald’s conclusions, noting that it looked only at healthy volunteers, “which is very different than studying people who actually have heart disease or other chronic illnesses who are taking various medications.” Those conditions or medications could affect the way aspirin works in the body, he said.

But Dr. Topol and Dr. FitzGerald did agree that there was little value in testing for whether someone was aspirin-resistant, in part because there was little evidence that knowing someone is resistant to aspirin will prevent a heart attack or stroke.

Representatives for Accumetrics, which sells a blood test, and Corgenix, which sells a urine test, maintained that there was value in determining how well aspirin worked in individual patients, and said more recent research on the issue has moved away from a stark determination of whether someone is resistant to aspirin. “This whole concept of drug resistance has moved past that term and moved into the level of response that someone has,” said Brian Bartolomeo, market development manager at Accumetrics.

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State of the Art: Reviewing All-in-One Luxury PCs From Vizio, H.P. and Apple - State of the Art

Try this simple test at home: What’s the name of Dell’s best-selling PC? Anybody? Anybody?

Right. Nobody knows.

And nobody cares. Today, it’s all about phones and tablets, baby. Nobody buzzes about the PC anymore. Innovation is dead. Sales are down, right?

Actually, there’s one pocket of surging sales and innovation in PC land: the luxury all-in-one computer, of the type made famous by the iMac.

I took a look at three silver, high-design, screen-on-a-stalk competitors: Apple’s new iMac ($1,300 and up), Hewlett-Packard’s SpectreOne ($1,300 and up), and the Vizio All-in-One Touch PC ($1,000 and up). (Lenovo, Dell, Samsung and Acer also offer, or soon will offer, very similar all-in-ones.)

What characterizes these computers? First, a tremendous emphasis on looks. They’re shiny, sleek, futuristic, uncluttered and cordless (they come with Bluetooth wireless keyboard and trackpad or mouse). They’re sculpture. In your kitchen or on your desk, they contribute to the décor even when they’re turned off.

The usual box of innards is missing. In the iMac, the guts are concealed behind the screen. In the Vizio, they’re in the foot of the monitor. In the H.P., they’re inside the stalk that supports the screen.

The second common trait is state-of-the-art components. These computers offer gorgeous, vivid, high-definition screens. And they’re fast; they’re powered by the latest Intel chips and lots of memory.

Third characteristic: no DVD drive.

What? Do these companies really think that the era of the disc is over? That nobody will ever again want to digitize music from a CD? Or burn some files to a disc to hand to a colleague? Or borrow a DVD from the library?

Apple, H.P. and Vizio seem to believe that everything is online now. Well, it’s not. Want to rent an Indiana Jones movie, “Jurassic Park” or “Schindler’s List”? How about “Star Wars,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” or “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”? Too bad; they’re not available to rent online.

You can, of course, buy an external DVD drive. But aren’t these called “all in ones”? An external drive just looks stupid.

Now, on a laptop, eliminating the DVD drive is understandable. You carry laptops. Weight matters. Bulk matters. But why eliminate DVD drives on computers that stay in one place?

All right, end of rant.

The new iMac, clad in its traditional aluminum, is stunning. The stand is still a thin, curved L of metal — but now, the screen appears to be just as thin (0. 2 inches). Where are the guts?

Turns out it’s a trick — an illusion. Behind the screen, you see a substantial bulge; Apple tapered the aluminum as it approaches the screen, so that from front angles it seems that the whole screen is razor thin.

Apple has also eliminated much of the glare that has long dogged today’s glossy screens. Viewed side-by-side with its rivals, the iMac is a lot less reflective.

There are two iMac sizes: 21.5 and 27 inches. The $1,300 and $1,800 base models come with a 1-terabyte hard drive, 8 gigabytes of memory and an i5 Intel processor. Each has four USB 3.0 jacks, two Thunderbolt jacks (for video input or output or external hard drives), and camera memory-card slot, awkwardly positioned on the back. Apple has ditched the FireWire jack it spent so many years promoting.

On the 21.5-incher, you can’t upgrade the memory yourself; what you buy is what you’ll have forever, unless you take it into the shop.

On the 27-inch model, you can install as much as 32 gigabytes yourself, through an easily opened door. (That, for the record, is about 262,144 times the memory as the original Macintosh.) Online, you can order your iMac with a 3-terabyte hard drive, 32 gigabytes of memory, a 768-gigabyte flash-memory drive and a $3,700 invoice.

Vizio isn’t a company you expect to be in the PC business; it made its mark selling high-quality, low-price TV sets. And sure enough, by far the best part of the All-in-One Touch PC is its lovely touch screen, available in 24- and 27-inch versions. .

A nontouch version is also available, but the Vizio comes with Windows 8, which is far more pleasant to use with a touch screen.

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Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany Opens Campaign for a Third Term

BERLIN — Angela Merkel began her campaign for re-election on Tuesday with a display of the down-to-earth pragmatism that has helped make her immensely popular among Germans and well positioned to win a third term as chancellor next year.

Wielding two bouquets of bright orange flowers after delegates in her center-right Christian Democratic Union elected her to a seventh term as their party leader with a record 97.9 percent of the votes, Ms. Merkel took the podium and thanked the cheering crowd.

“Those who know me know that I’m overwhelmed and touched,” she said. “And now, let’s get to work. We have a lot to do.”

With overall approval ratings close to 70 percent, Ms. Merkel, a 58-year-old daughter of a Lutheran pastor who grew up in East Germany, is viewed as being at the height of her powers. Surveys show her comfortably ahead of her closest rival, Peer Steinbrück of the center-left Social Democrats, before parliamentary elections next September.

Analysts point to her combination of pragmatism and readiness to compromise the driving force behind her popularity. Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at the Free University of Berlin, said Ms. Merkel had succeeded in shifting her party away from its traditionalist ideology, making it more attractive to mainstream Germans. In addition, she has shepherded her country through Europe’s worst economic crisis in recent history and into a leadership role.

“During Ms. Merkel’s tenure, she has led Germany into a position of greater strength than it has ever known,” Mr. Diederich said. “Ms. Merkel has shown people that we have nothing to hide.”

That confidence was on display in the chancellor’s speech to delegates, who gathered on Tuesday for a two-day congress in the central city of Hanover. She praised her government as the country’s most successful since its postwar reunification in 1990, despite the challenges it faces.

“These are turbulent times, and sometimes we find ourselves in stormy waters,” Ms. Merkel said. She went on to highlight her government’s successes, including low unemployment and economic stability in the face of the economic crisis crippling much of the rest of Europe.

“In such times, no other government could lead the country as successfully as our conservative-liberal coalition,” Ms. Merkel told members.

In spite of the fact that the chancellor is personally popular, her government — an alliance of her own conservative Christian Democratic Union with the sister party for the state of Bavaria, the Christian Social Union, and the pro-business Free Democrats — is not.

Recent months have seen the Free Democrats bleeding support, opening the discussion for other possible alliances, with a so-called grand coalition of Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats — a combination that Ms. Merkel governed during her first term as chancellor, from 2005 to 2009.

Increasingly the talk has been about whether the country’s traditional conservative party would form an alliance with the more left-leaning and environmentalist Green party, which earned about 15 percent support in a survey released Tuesday by the polling group Insa.

Ms. Merkel’s conservatives earned 35 percent, placing them in the strongest position, but requiring they find a coalition partner, according to the poll published in the Bild newspaper.

For the first time in weeks, the poll showed the Free Democrats earning 5 percent support, enough to secure representation in Parliament, making them available to form a coalition.

Nevertheless, the chancellor is keeping her options open. In a playful dig at her coalition partner, Ms. Merkel drew laughs from the crowd by citing a recent satire as saying, “Perhaps God created the F.D.P. only to test us.”

Compared with all other possible constellations from Germany’s political scene, Ms. Merkel said nevertheless that the current government of conservatives and economic liberals had the most in common.

“We share common values and principles,” she said. “And these are the values and principles that we need to successfully overcome today’s challenges.”

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China goes crazy for iPhone 5: Preorders hit 100,000 units in under 24 hours

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Chiefs' LB mentioned other 'girlfriend' to police

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Police say Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher spent some of his final hours sleeping in his car outside the home of another woman whom he described as his "girlfriend."

Police spokesman Darin Snapp said Tuesday that the woman's apartment complex was about 10 miles from the home where Belcher shot and killed the mother of his 3-month-old daughter, 22-year-old Kasandra Perkins. Belcher then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and killed himself in front of team officials.

Snapp says the officers who found Belcher sleeping in his car around 2:50 a.m. Saturday determined that he didn't have any outstanding warrants. He says Belcher made a phone call and that a woman let him into the building a few minutes later.

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Sign Language Researchers Broaden Science Lexicon

Imagine trying to learn biology without ever using the word “organism.” Or studying to become a botanist when the only way of referring to photosynthesis is to spell the word out, letter by painstaking letter.

For deaf students, this game of scientific Password has long been the daily classroom and laboratory experience. Words like “organism” and “photosynthesis” — to say nothing of more obscure and harder-to-spell terms — have no single widely accepted equivalent in sign language. This means that deaf students and their teachers and interpreters must improvise, making it that much harder for the students to excel in science and pursue careers in it.

“Often times, it would involve a lot of finger-spelling and a lot of improvisation,” said Matthew Schwerin, a physicist with the Food and Drug Administration who is deaf, of his years in school. “For the majority of scientific terms,” Mr. Schwerin and his interpreter for the day would “try to find a correct sign for the term, and if nothing was pre-existing, we would come up with a sign that was agreeable with both parties.”

Now thanks to the Internet — particularly the boom in online video — resources for deaf students seeking science-related signs are easier to find and share. Crowdsourcing projects in both American Sign Language and British Sign Language are under way at several universities, enabling people who are deaf to coalesce around signs for commonly used terms.

This year, one of those resources, the Scottish Sensory Centre’s British Sign Language Glossary Project, added 116 new signs for physics and engineering terms, including signs for “light-year,”  (hold one hand up and spread the fingers downward for “light,” then bring both hands together in front of your chest and slowly move them apart for “year”), “mass” and “X-ray” (form an X with your index fingers, then, with the index finger on the right hand, point outward). 

The signs were developed by a team of researchers at the center, a division of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland that develops learning tools for students with visual and auditory impairments. The researchers spent more than a year soliciting ideas from deaf science workers, circulating lists of potential signs and ultimately gathering for “an intense weekend” of final voting, said Audrey Cameron, science adviser for the project. (Dr. Cameron is also deaf, and like all non-hearing people interviewed for this article, answered questions via e-mail.)

Whether the Scottish Sensory Centre’s signs will take hold among its audience remains to be seen. “Some will be adopted, and some will probably never be accepted,” Dr. Cameron said. “We’ll have to wait and see what happens.”

Ideally, the standardization of signs will make it easier for deaf students to keep pace with their hearing classmates during lectures. “I can only choose to look at one thing at a time,” said Mr. Schwerin of the F.D.A., recalling his science education, “and it often meant choosing between the interpreter, the blackboard/screen/material, or taking notes. It was like, pick one, and lose out on the others.”

The problem doesn’t end at graduation. In fact, it only intensifies as new discoveries add unfamiliar terms to the scientific lexicon. “I’ve had numerous meetings where I couldn’t participate properly because the interpreters were not able to understand the jargon and they did not know any scientific signs,” Dr. Cameron said.

One general complaint about efforts to standardize signs for technical terms is the idea that, much like spoken language, sign language should be allowed to develop organically rather than be dictated from above.

“Signs that are developed naturally — i.e., that are tested and refined in everyday conversation — are more likely to be accepted quickly by the community,” said Derek Braun, director of the molecular genetics laboratory at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., which he said was the first biological laboratory designed and administered by deaf scientists.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the origin of the ASL-STEM Forum.  It was developed by researchers at the University of Washington, not Gallaudet University.  Researchers at Gallaudet and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology work with the University of Washington to provide content and help the forum grow.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 4, 2012

An earlier version of a correction with this article misstated the name of an institute that works on the ASL-STEM Forum. It is the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology not the National Institute for the Deaf. 

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DealBook: UBS Described as Near Deal With U.S. and Britain on Rate Rigging

UBS, the Swiss banking giant, is close to reaching settlements with American and British authorities over the manipulation of interest rates, the latest case in a multiyear investigation that has rattled the financial industry and spurred a public outcry for broad reform.

UBS is expected to pay more than $450 million to settle claims that some employees reported false rates to increase the bank’s profit, according to officials briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

If the bank agrees to the deals with various authorities, the collective penalties would yield the largest total fines to date related to the rate-rigging inquiry and would increase the likelihood that other financial institutions would face stiff penalties. Authorities dealt their first blow in the rate-rigging case in June when the British bank Barclays agreed to a $450 million settlement.

A spokeswoman for UBS declined to comment. The agencies leading the UBS investigation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Department and Britain’s Financial Services Authority, also declined to comment.

The UBS case will provide a window into systemic problems in the rate-setting process, which affects how consumers and companies borrow money around the world. After reviewing thousands of internal bank e-mails and interviewing dozens of employees, the authorities have uncovered patterns of abuse at the major banks that help set benchmark interest rates.

Libor Explained

The sprawling investigation is focused on benchmarks like the London interbank offered rate, or Libor. The rate, a measure of how much banks charge each other for loans, is used to determine the costs of trillions of dollars of mortgages, credit card charges and student loans.

The authorities claim that UBS traders colluded with rival banks to influence rates in an effort to bolster their profits, according to officials briefed on the matter. Some traders at UBS were suspended this year over the matter.

Given the scope of the case, the UBS settlement is expected to heighten calls for a reform of the Libor system. Lawmakers are pushing to change the way banks report rates, providing more transparency to consumers, companies and investors that rely on the benchmark.

The reform movement gained momentum after global authorities secured the settlement with Barclays. Regulators had accused Barclays of reporting false rates, a scandal that prompted the resignation of the chief executive and other top officials at the bank.

Global authorities are now moving forward with civil and criminal cases, setting up the potential for major fines and regulatory sanctions. Some banks are in advanced settlement talks, including UBS and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The Royal Bank said it expected to disclose penalties before the firm’s next earnings release in February. Deutsche Bank said last month that it had set aside money to cover potential fines, although it was too early to predict the size.

American authorities are hoping to complete a deal with UBS by the middle of the month, according to officials briefed on the matter. The officials noted that the discussions could spill into next year. The talks could also break down, in which case the authorities would file a lawsuit against the bank.

It is unclear whether global authorities will act in tandem on the UBS case. The bank and the regulators would prefer to strike a deal together, but the agencies are proceeding at different speeds.

Investigators say the broader Libor case could go on for years.

Canadian, Swiss and Asian authorities as well as the Justice Department, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Britain’s Financial Services Authority are investigating the actions of more than a dozen banks. Along with UBS, the futures commission is focused on potential wrongdoing at two American banks, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, the officials said. HSBC is also under scrutiny.

In addition to the regulatory cases, the Justice Department has identified potential criminal wrongdoing by traders at Barclays and other banks. The banks also face private lawsuits from large investors like local governments, which claim to have suffered losses as a result of interest rate manipulation. The New York attorney general has subpoenaed 16 banks over their role in the scandal, an action that could foreshadow civil lawsuits. Analysts predict the financial industry could face penalties of up to $20 billion.

“The evidence that comes out of any future settlement is likely to be enormously helpful for our claims,” said David E. Kovel, a partner at the law firm Kirby McInerney who is representing clients in a potential class-action suit related to Libor.

For UBS, the Libor case comes at a difficult time.

It has faced a series of legal problems since the financial crisis. In 2009, the bank agreed to pay $780 million to settle accusations by American authorities that it helped wealthy clients avoid taxes.

In 2011, it announced a $2.3 billion loss prompted by a rogue trader, Kweku M. Adoboli, who received a seven-year jail sentence for fraud last month. The firm agreed to pay a $47.5 million penalty to the British authorities in connection with the trading loss.

In the Libor case, UBS has been eager to cooperate. It has already reached a conditional immunity deal with the antitrust arm of the Justice Department, which could protect the bank from criminal prosecution under certain conditions. It is also cooperating with Canadian antitrust authorities by handing over e-mails and other documents implicating other banks.

But it did acknowledge publicly that such deals would not shield the bank from potential penalties from other regulators. The Justice Department’s criminal unit, for instance, could still take action against the bank.

UBS disclosed last year that it was the subject of investigations related to Libor, saying it had received subpoenas from American and Japanese authorities. Swiss and British regulators have joined the UBS investigation, which involves a number of currencies in the Libor system.

The timing of the Libor cases against UBS depends in large part on cooperation among regulators.

The Financial Services Authority in Britain has worked closely with its American counterparts. In total, the British regulator has about 160 people working on its various cases against banks, which are at different stages of development.

As the top watchdog of London’s financial services industry, the British regulator has positioned itself as a conduit for document requests from international regulators regarding Libor, which is set daily by banks in London. The agency also organizes interviews for its American counterparts with London-based bankers involved in the inquiries, according to an official with direct knowledge of the matter.

British regulators had been ready to move against UBS a month after officials announced a settlement with Barclays, the person added. The settlement has been delayed, however, as global authorities have tried to pursue a joint agreement with the bank.

“We’ve been going at the pace of the slowest regulator,” the official said.

A version of this article appeared in print on 12/03/2012, on page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Ubs Is Reported To Be Near Deal On Rate Rigging.

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Obama Is Taking Himself and #My2K to Twitter This Afternoon

What a day for Twitter! First the Pope, then the Royal Baby, and now President Obama will come online to answer questions about the fiscal cliff. A @WhiteHouse tweet with the distincitive “-bo” signature, announced not long ago that the big guy himself will be taking questions online, starting at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Good to see lots of folks on twitter speaking out on extending middle class tax cuts. I’ll answer some Qs on that at 2ET. Ask w/ #My2k –bo

— The White House (@whitehouse) December 3, 2012

Unfortunately, he’s sticking with the troublesome #My2K hashtag that conservatives have already seized upon in a back-and-forth battle for messaging. Trying to mobilize your supporters through social media is all well and good, but the problem with any genuinely open town hall, is that anyone can invite themselves—even those who disagree with you and might be louder than your friends. (Plus, any reasonably popular hashtag moves much to fast for anyone to follow it or have an actual conversation on Twitter anyway.)

RELATED: Don’t Expect Too Much From Social Media Town Halls

But ask away! Maybe you’ll get luck and get RT’d by the President himself. And then find yourself becoming the next conservative meme as soon as the hashtag-averse pundits start making fun of your question. Should be a fun afternoon.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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A-Rod needs hip surgery, will miss season's start

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Alex Rodriguez will have surgery on his left hip and will miss the start of the season and possibly the entire first half.

Rodriguez has a torn labrum, bone impingement and a cyst, the Yankees said Monday. The third baseman will need to follow a pre-surgery program over the next four-to-six weeks, and the team anticipates he will be sidelined four-to-six months after the operation. That timetable projects to a return between the start of May and mid-July.

A-Rod had right hip surgery on March 9, 2009, and returned that May 8. The Yankees said this operation will be "similar but not identical."

Rodriguez, who turns 38 in July, complained of pain in his right hip the night Raul Ibanez pinch hit for him — and hit a tying ninth-inning home run — against Baltimore during the AL division series in October. He went to a hospital and was checked out then.

His left hip injury was detected last month during an exam by Dr. Marc Philippon, who operated on Rodriguez three years ago. A-Rod then got a second opinion from Dr. Bryan Kelly, who will repair the latest injury at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

"Both doctors believe that there is a very strong possibility that Rodriguez's hip condition may have had a negative effect on his performance during the latter stages of the season and the playoffs," the Yankees said.

Rodriguez was benched in three of nine postseason games and pinch hit for in three others. He hit .120 (3 for 25) with no RBIs in the playoffs, including 0 for 18 with 12 strikeouts against right-handed pitchers.

A-Rod broke his left hand when he was hit by a pitch from Seattle's Felix Hernandez on July 24. He returned Sept. 3 and hit .195 with two homers and six RBIs over the final month of the regular season.

This will be Rodriguez's sixth trip to the disabled list in six seasons. He had a strained quadriceps in 2008, the hip surgery in 2009, a strained calf in 2010, knee surgery in 2011 and the broken hand this year.

Signed to a record $275 million, 10-year contract after the 2007 season, Rodriguez is owed $114 million by New York over the next five years.

Fifth on the career list with 647 home runs, he had just 34 the last two seasons.

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