TORONTO, Feb 20 (Reuters) - Canada's Rebecca Marino, a rising star in women's tennis, stepped away from the sport in search of a normal life on Wednesday, weary of battling depression and cyber-bullies. Ranked number 38 in the world two years ago, the 22-year-old admitted she had long suffered from depression and was no longer willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach the top. "After thinking long and hard, I do not have the passion or enjoyment to drive myself to the level I would like to be at in professional tennis," Marino explained in a conference call. ...
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Bulgarian government resigns amid growing protests
Label: WorldSOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's government resigned on Wednesday after violent nationwide protests against high power prices, joining a long list of European administrations felled by austerity during Europe's debt crisis.
Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, a former bodyguard who swept to power in 2009 on pledges to root out corruption and raise living standards in the European Union's poorest member, now faces a tough task to prop up eroding support ahead of a probable early election.
Wage and pension freezes and tax hikes have bitten deep in a country where living standards are less than half the EU average and tens of thousands of Bulgarians have rallied in protests that have turned violent, chanting "Mafia" and "Resign".
On Tuesday, 11 people were hospitalized - including one man bleeding heavily from the head - and 11 arrested after protesters threw flares at police, who fought demonstrators with shields and truncheons.
"I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people," Borisov, who began his career guarding the Black Sea state's communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, said as he announced his resignation on Wednesday.
Parliament is expected to accept the resignation later in the day.
The spark for the protests was high electricity bills, after the government raised prices by 13 percent last July. But it quickly spilled over into wider frustration with Borisov's domineering manner and unpredictable decision making.
The prime minister made sacrifices in an attempt to cling on, sacking his finance minister, cutting power prices and risking a diplomatic row with the Czech Republic by punishing foreign-owned companies, a move that conflicted with EU norms on protection of investors and due process.
Borisov's rightist GERB party is the dominant faction in parliament but will not take part in talks to form a new government, Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said, indicating that an election planned for July will now be held early.
"He made my day," student Borislav Hadzhiev, 21, in central Sofia said, commenting on Borisov's resignation. "The truth is that we're living in an extremely poor country."
IRE
GERB's popularity has held up well and it still leads, just, in the polls, largely because budget cutbacks have been relatively mild compared with those in many other European countries. Salaries and pensions were frozen rather than cut.
But the last opinion poll, taken before protests grew last weekend already showed the opposition Socialists were nearly tied with the ruling party and analysts said the protests had boosted the Socialists' chances.
Unemployment in the country of 7.3 million is far from the highs hit in the decade after the end of communism but remains at 11.9 percent and average salaries are stuck at around 800 levs ($550) a month.
Millions have emigrated in search of a better life, leaving swathes of the country depopulated and little hope for those who remain.
The measures announced this week has also put the country on a collision course with the EU and financial investors without easing the tension at home.
Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas demanded an explanation from Bulgaria and accused it of "politicizing" the power sector by threatening to revoke the electricity distribution license of central Europe's largest listed company CEZ, 70 percent of which is owned by the Czech state.
There have also been fines for another Czech company, Energo-Pro and Austria's EVN.
The precedent is unlikely to encourage other foreign investors, who already have to navigate complicated bureaucracy and widespread corruption and organized crime if they want to take advantage of Bulgaria's 16-percent flat tax rate.
"The resignation is the only responsible move," said Kantcho Stoychev, an analyst with pollster Gallup International. "It also gives Borisov some legitimacy to stay in political life in the future, despite the violent police actions last night."
(Additional reporting by Angel Krasimirov; editing by Patrick Graham)
Oscar Pistorius's House Had Testosterone & Needles, Say Police
Label: Lifestyle
Breaking News
Oscar Pistorius
Herman Verwey/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty
As a bail hearing continued Wednesday in the murder case of South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, new details have emerged as prosecutors outline their charges that he is guilty of shooting his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp.
Police testified that they discovered testosterone and needles inside the "Blade Runner" Olympian's home, The New York Times reports.
But his defense lawyers said the Olympian took no banned performance-enhancing drugs, describing the substances found as herbal. The athletes, according to the International Paralympic Committee, tested drug-free as late as last September.
Pistorius, 26, has claimed the shooting was a case of mistaken identity.
Prosecution lawyers, questioning a police witness, said shots fired through the bathroom door that night countered Pistorius's claims that he was not wearing his prosthetic legs when he thought he heard an intruder inside his house and fired with a 9 mm handgun through the door.
Steenkamp, 30, was struck three times, in the head, arm and hip. She was buried on Tuesday amid an outpouring of national support and emotional family tributes.
A police detective testified Wednesday that Pistorius had accidentally fired a weapon at a restaurant in January and urged a friend to take responsibility for the shooting, The Times reports. The detective also testified that Pistorius threatened violence over a woman in another altercation.
Pistorius had claimed to investigators that his house was dark at the time he thought an intruder was inside but a witness who testified for the prosecution Wednesday said a light was switched on when the first shots were fired.
That witness said a gunshot rang out, then a woman's screams were heard, the more shots continued. Pistorius's lawyer, however, said that witness, a neighbor, lived 600 yards away.
The emotional Pistorius continued to proclaim his innocence. "I fail to understand how I could be charged with murder, let alone premeditated," Pistorius told the court in an affidavit read by his defense counsel Barry Roux. "I had no intention to kill my girlfriend."
The prosecution, however, was resolute, that this was not an accident but a premeditated act of violence. If convicted, Pistorius would receive life in prison.
Drug overdose deaths up for 11th consecutive year
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Drug overdose deaths rose for the 11th straight year, federal data show, and most of them were accidents involving addictive painkillers despite growing attention to risks from these medicines.
"The big picture is that this is a big problem that has gotten much worse quickly," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which gathered and analyzed the data.
In 2010, the CDC reported, there were 38,329 drug overdose deaths nationwide. Medicines, mostly prescription drugs, were involved in nearly 60 percent of overdose deaths that year, overshadowing deaths from illicit narcotics.
The report appears in Tuesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
It details which drugs were at play in most of the fatalities. As in previous recent years, opioid drugs — which include OxyContin and Vicodin — were the biggest problem, contributing to 3 out of 4 medication overdose deaths.
Frieden said many doctors and patients don't realize how addictive these drugs can be, and that they're too often prescribed for pain that can be managed with less risky drugs.
They're useful for cancer, "but if you've got terrible back pain or terrible migraines," using these addictive drugs can be dangerous, he said.
Medication-related deaths accounted for 22,134 of the drug overdose deaths in 2010.
Anti-anxiety drugs including Valium were among common causes of medication-related deaths, involved in almost 30 percent of them. Among the medication-related deaths, 17 percent were suicides.
The report's data came from death certificates, which aren't always clear on whether a death was a suicide or a tragic attempt at getting high. But it does seem like most serious painkiller overdoses were accidental, said Dr. Rich Zane, chair of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado School of Medicine.
The study's findings are no surprise, he added. "The results are consistent with what we experience" in ERs, he said, adding that the statistics no doubt have gotten worse since 2010.
Some experts believe these deaths will level off. "Right now, there's a general belief that because these are pharmaceutical drugs, they're safer than street drugs like heroin," said Don Des Jarlais, director of the chemical dependency institute at New York City's Beth Israel Medical Center.
"But at some point, people using these drugs are going to become more aware of the dangers," he said.
Frieden said the data show a need for more prescription drug monitoring programs at the state level, and more laws shutting down "pill mills" — doctor offices and pharmacies that over-prescribe addictive medicines.
Last month, a federal panel of drug safety specialists recommended that Vicodin and dozens of other medicines be subjected to the same restrictions as other narcotic drugs like oxycodone and morphine. Meanwhile, more and more hospitals have been establishing tougher restrictions on painkiller prescriptions and refills.
One example: The University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora is considering a rule that would ban emergency doctors from prescribing more medicine for patients who say they lost their pain meds, Zane said.
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Stobbe reported from Atlanta.
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Online:
JAMA: http://www.jama.ama-assn.org
CDC: http://www.cdc.gov
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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com
Venezuela's Maduro would win if Chavez goes: poll
Label: WorldCARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro would comfortably win a presidential election should his boss Hugo Chavez's cancer force him out of power, according to an opinion poll.
The first survey on such a scenario, by local pollster Hinterlaces, gave Maduro a potential 50 percent of votes, compared to 36 percent for opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Chavez returned to Venezuela on Monday after a long stay in Cuba to continue treatment at home for the disease that is jeopardizing his 14-year socialist rule of the South American OPEC nation.
He has named 50-year-old former bus driver and union activist Maduro as his preferred successor. But Capriles, 40, a center-left state governor who lost to Chavez in a presidential vote last year, would likely run again.
Chavez still has not said a word in public since his December 11 operation in Cuba, and Venezuelans were debating on Tuesday the various possible scenarios after his homecoming - from full recovery, to resignation, or even death from the cancer.
Should Chavez be forced out, Venezuela's constitution stipulates an election must be held within 30 days.
Capriles, who crossed swords with Hinterlaces at various points during the presidential election, again mocked its director, Oscar Schemel, as being biased against him.
"That man is not a pollster, he's on the government's payroll," Capriles told local TV.
"He said in December I would lose the Miranda governorship," he added, referring to his defeat of government heavyweight Elias Jaua, now foreign minister, in that local race.
Opinion surveys are notoriously controversial and divergent in Venezuela, with both sides routinely accusing pollsters of being in the pocket of the other.
Hinterlaces surveyed 1,230 people between January 30-February 9.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
Kate Looks Great at First Official Outing Since Babymoon
Label: LifestyleMaking her first official public appearance since her Caribbean babymoon, a tanned and healthy-looking Duchess of Cambridge showed off her blooming baby bump Tuesday morning during a visit to a residential treatment center run by one of her patronages, Action on Addiction.
Just back from a winter break in Mustique, Kate, 31, chose a gray MaxMara Studio dress paired with pearl drop earrings.
"She looked really relaxed and rested after her break. She could have worn a coat, but she looked happy to show off her bump," says Judy Wade, the royals writer for the Observer.
"It's nice to be back," Kate said as she greeted Action on Addiction's chief executive, Nick Barton. "It's a lovely day for it."
Kate also acknowledged how she felt about having a baby as she chatted with those at the center.
Said Lisa, 34, a mother of three: "I asked her if she was nervous about having a child, and she said it would unnatural if she wasn't. It's just human, isn't it?"
Another woman, Natalie, 28, is carrying a baby due in late July, and said after speaking to Kate, "She was saying she had been feeling unwell but was feeling better now."
Next month, the Palace is set to make an announcement on another group of charities and interests that Kate will support.
Hip implants a bit more likely to fail in women
Label: HealthCHICAGO (AP) — Hip replacements are slightly more likely to fail in women than in men, according to one of the largest studies of its kind in U.S. patients. The risk of the implants failing is low, but women were 29 percent more likely than men to need a repeat surgery within the first three years.
The message for women considering hip replacement surgery remains unclear. It's not known which models of hip implants perform best in women, even though women make up the majority of the more than 400,000 Americans who have full or partial hip replacements each year to ease the pain and loss of mobility caused by arthritis or injuries.
"This is the first step in what has to be a much longer-term research strategy to figure out why women have worse experiences," said Diana Zuckerman, president of the nonprofit National Research Center for Women & Families. "Research in this area could save billions of dollars" and prevent patients from experiencing the pain and inconvenience of surgeries to fix hip implants that go wrong.
Researchers looked at more than 35,000 surgeries at 46 hospitals in the Kaiser Permanente health system. The research, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, was funded by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
After an average of three years, 2.3 percent of the women and 1.9 percent of the men had undergone revision surgery to fix a problem with the original hip replacement. Problems included instability, infection, broken bones and loosening.
"There is an increased risk of failure in women compared to men," said lead author Maria Inacio, an epidemiologist at Southern California Permanente Medical Group in San Diego. "This is still a very small number of failures."
Women tend to have smaller joints and bones than men, and so they tend to need smaller artificial hips. Devices with smaller femoral heads — the ball-shaped part of the ball-and-socket joint in an artificial hip — are more likely to dislocate and require a surgical repair.
That explained some, but not all, of the difference between women and men in the study. It's not clear what else may have contributed to the gap. Co-author Dr. Monti Khatod, an orthopedic surgeon in Los Angeles, speculated that one factor may be a greater loss of bone density in women.
The failure of metal-on-metal hips was almost twice as high for women than in men. The once-popular models were promoted by manufacturers as being more durable than standard plastic or ceramic joints, but several high-profile recalls have led to a decrease in their use in recent years.
"Don't be fooled by hype about a new hip product," said Zuckerman, who wrote an accompanying commentary in the medical journal. "I would not choose the latest, greatest hip implant if I were a woman patient. ... At least if it's been for sale for a few years, there's more evidence for how well it's working."
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Online:
Journal: http://www.jamainternalmed.com
Stock futures rise on deals, extend seven-week rally
Label: BusinessNEW YORK (Reuters) - Stock index futures advanced on Tuesday, indicating the S&P 500 will build on its seven-week winning streak on optimism about M&A activity and before data on the housing market.
The S&P 500 <.spx> has risen for seven straight weeks, its longest streak since January 2011, and is up 6.6 percent for the year.
The strong start to the year was fueled by legislators in Washington temporarily averting a series of automatic spending cuts and tax hikes as well as better-than-expected earnings and economic data. The Federal Reserve's stimulus policy has also been a major factor.
But further gains for the benchmark S&P index have been a struggle as investors look for new catalysts to lift the index, which hovers near five-year highs.
The compromise by lawmakers on across-the-board spending cuts, known as sequestration, only postponed until March 1 a resolution to the congressional budget fight.
The uptick in merger and acquisition activity, a sign of optimism about the outlook on Wall Street, has resulted in more than $158 billion in deals announced so far in 2013.
"The firm market tone continues, fueled by a lack of negative surprises as well as an increase in M&A activity, adding confidence to market valuations," said Andre Bakhos, director of market analytics at Lek Securities in New York.
"The market has been able to shrug off minor negatives as it looks ahead to a potential bigger hurdle in the sequestration -until then, the situation looks stable."
Office Depot Inc
Economic data on tap includes the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index on housing sales for February at 10 a.m. (1500 GMT). Economists in a Reuters survey expect a reading of 48 compared with 47 in January.
Improving housing data has been cited by analysts as one of the key factors in the stock market rally.
S&P 500 futures rose 3.1 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures gained 22 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 5.75 points.
Computer maker Dell
According to the Thomson Reuters data through Friday, of the 388 companies in the S&P 500 that have reported results, 69.8 percent have exceeded analysts' expectations, compared with a 62 percent average since 1994 and 65 percent over the past four quarters.
Fourth-quarter earnings for S&P 500 companies are estimated to have risen 5.6 percent, according to the data, above a 1.9 percent forecast at the start of the earnings season.
European shares rose on Tuesday, lifted by gains at food group Danone
Philippine and Australian shares scaled new heights, but other Asian shares were mixed, with worries about an inconclusive outcome in Italy's election and U.S. budget talks.
(Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Kenneth Barry)
U.N. says has list of Syrian war crimes suspects
Label: WorldGENEVA (Reuters) - Syrians in "leadership positions" who may be responsible for war crimes have been identified, along with units accused of perpetrating them, United Nations investigators said on Monday.
Both government forces and armed rebels are committing war crimes, including killings and torture, spreading terror among civilians in a nearly two-year-old conflict, they said.
The investigators' latest report, covering the six months to mid-January, was based on 445 interviews conducted abroad with victims and witnesses, as they have not been allowed into Syria.
The independent team, led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro, called on the U.N. Security Council to "act urgently to ensure accountability" for grave violations, possibly by referring the violators to the International Criminal Court for prosecution.
"The ICC is the appropriate institution for the fight against impunity in Syria. As an established, broadly supported structure, it could immediately initiate investigations against authors of serious crimes in Syria," the 131-page report said.
It added: "Individuals may also bear criminal responsibility for perpetuating the crimes identified in the present report. Where possible, individuals in leadership positions who may be responsible were identified alongside those who physically carried out the acts."
Karen Konig AbuZayd, one of the four commissioners on the team of some two dozen experts, told Reuters: "We have information suggesting people who have given instructions and are responsible for government policy. People who are in the leadership of the military, for example."
"It is the first time we have mentioned the ICC directly. The Security Council needs to come together and decide whether or not to refer the case to the ICC. I am not optimistic."
But its third list of suspects, building on lists drawn up in the past year, remains secret. It will be entrusted to U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, upon expiry of its current mandate at the end of March, the report said.
Pillay, a former judge at the ICC, said on Saturday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad should be probed for war crimes and called for immediate action by the international community, including possible military intervention.
"The evidence collected sits in the safe in the office of the High Commissioner against the day it might be referred to a court and evidence would be examined by a prosecutor," said a European diplomat.
The death toll in Syria is likely approaching 70,000 people, Pillay told the Security Council last week in a fresh appeal for it to refer Syria to the ICC, the Hague-based war crimes court.
Government forces have carried out shelling and aerial bombardment across Syria including Aleppo, Damascus, Deraa, Homs and Idlib, the independent U.N. investigators said, citing corroborating evidence gathered from satellite images.
"In some incidents, such as in the assault on Harak, indiscriminate shelling was followed by ground operations during which government forces perpetrated mass killing," it said, referring to a town in the southern province of Deraa where residents told them that 500 civilians were killed in August.
"SPREADING TERROR"
"Government forces and affiliated militias have committed extra-judicial executions, breaching international human rights law. This conduct also constitutes the war crime of murder. Where murder was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, with knowledge of that attack, it is a crime against humanity," the U.N. report said.
They have targeted queues at bakeries and funeral processions, in violence aimed at "spreading terror among the civilian population", it said.
"Syrian armed forces have implemented a strategy that uses shelling and sniper fire to kill, maim, wound and terrorize the civilian inhabitants of areas that have fallen under anti-government armed group control," the report said.
Government forces had used cluster bombs, it said, but it found no credible evidence of either side using chemical arms.
Rebel forces fighting to topple Assad in the protracted and increasingly sectarian conflict have committed war crimes include murder, torture, hostage-taking and using children under age 15 in hostilities, the U.N. report said.
"They continue to endanger the civilian population by positioning military objectives inside civilian areas," it said. Rebel snipers had caused "considerable civilian casualties".
"The violations and abuses committed by anti-government armed groups did not, however, reach the intensity and scale of those committed by government forces and affiliated militia."
Foreign fighters, many of them from Libya, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt, have radicalized the rebels and helped detonate deadly improvised explosive devices, it said.
The two other commissioners are former chief ICC prosecutor Carla del Ponte and Vitit Muntarbhorn of Thailand.
"It is an investigative mechanism and its evidence can be given to relevant judicial authorities when the time comes. In the interim, it is the one piece of U.N.-approved machinery shining a light on abuses," the European diplomat said.
Referring to del Ponte, who joined in September, the diplomat said: "She brings a harder-edged prosecutorial lens so when they are looking at the evidence she is very well placed to know what sort of evidence would assist a later judicial process."
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alistair Lyon)
Mindy McCready's Ex 'Not Shocked' by Her Suicide
Label: LifestyleMindy McCready's ex-boyfriend and the father of her 6-year-old son said Monday morning that he wasn't surprised when he heard that the troubled country singer had apparently taken her own life.
"As sad as it is, it didn't come as a major shock," Billy McKnight told the Today show. "She's just been battling demons for so long."
He added, "I was around her when she attempted suicide twice, so I knew it was in her."
Cleburne County, Arkansas, sheriff's deputies responded to a report of gunshots Sunday at 3:31 p.m. and discovered McCready's body on the front porch of her Heber Springs house. Neighbors reportedly had heard two shots, and the deputies found dead at the scene McCready's dog and the singer herself.
"The demons that she hasn't beaten were there," McKnight said of McCready, 37, who had battled substance abuse.
Following last month's death of her fiancé David Wilson, which is currently under investigation as either a suicide or a murder, the courts ordered McCready to be institutionalized.
Asked on Today if she might have been released too early, McKnight said he knew McCready could talk her way out of anything.
"I feel for her mother and her family and especially my son," said McKnight, whose boy, Zander, was the subject of a bitter and prolonged custody battle with McCready.
After the death of Wilson, Zander and his 10-month-old half-brother, Zayne, whose father was Wilson, were placed in foster care, where they remain. McKnight said that he wants his son returned to him: "He needs to come home."
As for the other child, "I don't know what is going to happen to Zayne," he said.
Zander and Billy McKnight, summer 2011
Courtesy Billy McKnight
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