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Kevin McHale’s Daughter Dies of Lupus Complications

Kevin McHale’s Daughter Dies of Lupus Complications

Alexandra “Sasha” McHale, 23, was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus last year.

Married Cancer Researchers Both Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

Married Cancer Researchers Both Diagnosed with Breast Cancer

Dr. Oliver Bogler and his wife, Dr. Irene Bogler, were diagnosed at the same age.

Bouncy Houses Bring 200 Child Injuries Each Week: Study

Bouncy Houses Bring 200 Child Injuries Each Week: Study

Officials analyzed emergency-room data from across the country to learn of popular product’s risks.

Ultrasound Scans Catch Fetal Yawns

Ultrasound Scans Catch Fetal Yawns

Study suggests yawns result from fatigue.

Thanksgiving Inspiration: Bone Marrow Donation Stories

Thanksgiving Inspiration: Bone Marrow Donation Stories

Robin Roberts inspires others to give the gift of life.

Understanding Autism: Genetic, Environmental Factors

Understanding Autism: Genetic, Environmental Factors

Dr. Jennifer Ashton discusses the latest research on the disease.

Kelly Preston Ties Son’s Autism to Chemicals

Kelly Preston Ties Son’s Autism to Chemicals

Actress discusses what she believes were contributing factors to Jett Travolta’s autism.

Instant Index: Turkey Pardon; Recipes Make Top Google Searches

Instant Index: Turkey Pardon; Recipes Make Top Google Searches

David Muir reports news stories that have people talking.

Baby With Outside Heart Saved by Surgeons

Baby With Outside Heart Saved by Surgeons

Doctors in Houston reconstructed Audrina’s chest to make room for her heart.

A Day in the Life of Immigration Equality

A Day in the Life of Immigration Equality

Organization provides LGBT immigrants and asylum seekers with legal counsel and advocates for reform.

Teen Gymnast Paralyzed During Practice

Teen Gymnast Paralyzed During Practice

Jacoby Miles, 15, lost feeling from the chest down after landing on her neck at practice.

Great Apes Also Get the Mid-Life Crisis

Great Apes Also Get the Mid-Life Crisis

New research shows getting older is not so great for apes either.

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Fiscal Cliff notes: A study aid for budget talks

By Walter Shapiro

It was the political equivalent of discovering more Americans were secretly watching British snooker telecasts than pro football. According to a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center, more Americans claimed to be very closely following the budget negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff than were engrossed in the soap opera that forced CIA director David Petraeus to resign.

A few possible explanations for these anomalous poll results:

1) A sex scandal involving a revered four-star general is inherently boring. 2) Americans mistakenly assume that the fiscal cliff is part of an extreme skateboarding competition, not shorthand for the looming expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and possible across-the-board spending cuts. 3) Voters have been panicked into believing that the president and Congress must solve the country’s financial problems by the Dec. 31 or we instantly become an international basket case.

In truth, the fiscal cliff is nothing more than an arbitrary deadline created by Congress to be replaced with a dramatic flourish and, yes, another arbitrary deadline set a bit further in the future. It’s a shell game created by political con men who have come to believe their own cons.

So, relax about the over-hyped New Year’s Eve countdown for budget negotiations. Results matter, not the timetable. But even without the Petraeus-related distractions, it’s hard to separate the real from the fake, the legitimate fiscal issues from the political posturing.

So here is my version of Fiscal Cliff Notes:

Fact: All comparisons to Greece, Spain, the Roman Empire or the Duchy of Grand Fenwick are ludicrously exaggerated.

“The Road to Greece” might have been the title of a Mitt Romney campaign biopic since the former GOP presidential hopeful used the imagery so often. And during an interview Sunday with ABC’s “This Week,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham used the same rhetorical excess about the American economy reduced to offering budget tours of the Acropolis.

In fact, the European fiscal crisis is far different from what the U.S. faces.

Debtor nations like Greece and Spain do not fully control their economies because they are lashed to German austerity policies through the common currency, the Euro. That means those countries do not have their own currencies to devalue, which would spur exports. Nor do they have a central bank like the U.S. Federal Reserve which would provide liquidity for their banking systems.

The United States does have long-term fiscal challenges and years of unsustainable trillion-dollar budget deficits. But our problems are largely due to the fact that we are still groping our way out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Slow but persistent economic growth (the White House projects that unemployment will not drop below 6 percent until 2017) will reduce many budgetary problems.

Global confidence in the American economy is reflected in the near record low interest rates available on 10-year and 30-year Treasury bonds. Investors around the world are willing to tie up their money for 30 years in Treasuries for the paltry interest rate of 2.8 percent.

Fact: Even if all the Bush tax cuts expire on Jan. 1, no one will instantly be paying higher income tax rates.

The Wall Street Journal ran a story the other day titled “Most Households Face Fiscal Cliff,” suggesting almost every American family would pay more if the Bush tax cuts expired. As an example, the Journal pointed to a married couple making about $25,000 a year whose annual income tax bill would leap from zero to about $1,400.

While the tax calculations are accurate, the likelihood of this happening is about on par with an asteroid destroying the Capitol. No one in government wants the Bush tax cuts to expire for anyone earning less than $250,000 a year, so a hypothetical family scraping by on $25,000 a year would not pay a penny more in income taxes under anyone’s plan.

But what if Congress misses the Dec. 31 deadline to extend the Bush tax cuts?

This is the part of the shell game. The Treasury Department has wide discretion in the pace by which it instructs employers to adjust their income-tax withholding rates. Chances are Treasury would do nothing in January to change the rates for anyone earning less than $250,000, meaning a temporary tax increase for those wage earners would be a fiscal abstraction rather than a real-world wallet pinch. And when Congress and the president cut the inevitable tax deal, the new, lower rates would be retroactive to January 1.

Make no mistake: Some people will see their taxes increase. For the past two years, most Americans have benefited from a 2 percent reduction in their payroll taxes – a cut designed to stimulate the economy in a period of high unemployment. But the payroll tax cut was always supposed to be temporary rather than a permanent rate adjustment. While nothing is certain, chances are payroll taxes will revert to their normal levels next year.

Then there is the so-called “sequester” that is supposed to slash $100 billion from the budget if lawmakers do not reach an epic Grand Bargain on the deficit. For all the alarmist talk that this will reduce the U.S. Navy to bathtub levels and shred the social safety net, the sequester is another easily disarmed fiscal booby-trap.

In fact, Congress will (shocking revelation ahead) probably extend the deadline. And even if lawmakers temporize, don’t expect to see generals and admirals on the unemployment line. The automatic cuts are evenly divided between the Pentagon budget and domestic spending for a total of about $8 billion per month and every federal agency has been preparing for these potential cuts.

Across-the-board cuts, to be sure, are a foolish way to impose budgetary discipline since there is no rational case to reduce funding for embassy security after the Benghazi raid or slash FEMA spending in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. But it is hard to believe that even a delay of a month or two will ultimately matter except at the margins.

Fact: There is no $4 trillion magic number that the president and Congress must hit to prove their long-term deficit reduction plan is credible.

Somehow $4 trillion has become the gold standard to measure deficit hawk seriousness. That was the rough number in the 2010 Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan and it carried over into President Obama’s abortive 2011 negotiations with Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama talked about his own $4 trillion “balanced plan.” But that was partly sleight of hand: The Obama road map includes $1 trillion in savings from a 2011 congressional deal and another mythical $848 billion from the end of the Iraqi and Afghan wars. In short, his plan reflected previous agreements and military spending that had already been discontinued.

Fact: Everyone in Washington wants credit for tackling the deficit but no one wants to be blamed for causing pain.

As recounted by Bob Woodward in “The Price of Politics,” a dramatic moment in the 2011 Obama-Boehner negotiations came when the two men battled over boosting the age to qualify for Medicare. Boehner wanted the age change to take effect in 2017 while Obama wanted to hold out until 2022. 

That is Washington in a nutshell – both men wanted to postpone the pain until after they retired from office. They wanted to bask in the glory of reaching a Grand Bargain on the deficit with all the complications reserved for a future president and House speaker.

In a sense, it is budgetary arithmetic as seen through the prism of Lewis Carroll. In Through the Looking-Glass, the White Queen promised Alice jam every other day. “The rule is,” the Queen explained, “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”

Just like budget cuts and tax increases – always tomorrow and yesterday.

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UN climate talks open in Qatar

DOHA, Qatar (AP) — U.N. talks on a new climate pact resumed Monday in oil and gas-rich Qatar, where negotiators from nearly 200 countries will discuss fighting global warming and helping poor nations adapt to it.

The two-decade-old talks have not fulfilled their main purpose: reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet.

Attempts to create a new climate treaty failed in Copenhagen three years ago but countries agreed last year to try again, giving themselves a deadline of 2015 to adopt a new treaty.

A host of issues need to be resolved by then, including how to spread the burden of emissions cuts between rich and poor countries. That’s unlikely to be decided in the Qatari capital of Doha, where negotiators will focus on extending the Kyoto Protocol, an emissions deal for industrialized countries, and trying to raise billions of dollars to help developing countries adapt to a shifting climate.

“We all realize why we are here, why we keep coming back year and after year,” said South Africa Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, who led last year’s talks in Durban, South Africa. “We owe it to our people, the global citizenry. We owe it to our children to give them a safer future than what they are currently facing.”

The U.N. process is often criticized, even ridiculed, both by climate activists who say the talks are too slow, and by those who challenge the scientific near-consensus that the global temperature rise is at least partly caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil.

The concentration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide has jumped 20 percent since 2000, according to a U.N. report released last week.

A recent projection by the World Bank showed temperatures are on track to increase by up to 4 degrees C (7.2 F) this century, compared with pre-industrial times, overshooting the 2-degree target that has been the goal of the U.N. talks.

Middle East News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Rolling Stones turn back clock with hit-filled comeback

LONDON (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones turned back the clock in style on Sunday with their first concert in five years, strutting and swaggering their way through hit after familiar hit to celebrate 50 years in business.

Before a packed crowd of 20,000 at London‘s O2 Arena, they banished doubts that age may have slowed down one of the world’s greatest rock and roll bands, as lead singer Mick Jagger launched into “I Wanna Be Your Man”.

More than two hours of high-octane, blues-infused rock later, and they were still going strong with an impressive encore comprising “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”.

In between there were guest appearances from American R&B singer-songwriter Mary J. Blige, who delivered a rousing duet with Jagger on “Gimme Shelter” and guitarist Jeff Beck who provided the power chords for “I’m Going Down”.

Former Rolling Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor were also back in the fold, performing with the regular quartet of Jagger, Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards on guitar and Charlie Watts on drums for the first time in 20 years.

“It took us 50 years to get from Dartford to Greenwich!” said Jagger, referring to their roots just a few miles from the venue in southeast London. “But you know, we made it. What’s even more amazing is that you’re still coming to see us…we can’t thank you enough.”

The Sunday night gig was the first of two at the O2 Arena before the band crosses the Atlantic to play three dates in the United States.

The mini-tour is the culmination of a busy few months of events, rehearsals and recordings to mark 50 years since the rockers first took to the stage at the Marquee Club on London‘s Oxford Street in July, 1962.

There has been a photo album, two new songs, a music video, a documentary film, a blitz of media appearances and a handful of warm-up gigs in Paris.

“STYLE AND PANACHE”

The reunion nearly did not happen. One factor behind the long break since their record-breaking “A Bigger Bang” tour in 2007 has been Wood’s struggle with alcohol addiction, while Jagger and Richards also fell out over comments the guitarist made about the singer in a 2010 autobiography.

But they eventually buried the hatchet, and Richards joked in a recent interview: “We can’t get divorced – we’re doing it for the kids!”

Critics were fulsome in their praise of the first comeback gig.

“Keith Richards has said that the beauty of rock and roll is that every night a different band might be the world’s greatest. Well, last night at the O2 Arena, it was the turn of the Rolling Stones themselves to lay claim to the title they invented,” wrote Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph.

“And they did it with some style and panache.”

The big question on every fan’s lips is whether the five concerts lead to a world tour and even new material. The Stones sang their two new tracks “Doom and Gloom” and “One More Shot”, which appeared on their latest greatest hits album “GRRR!”.

Richards has hinted that the five concerts ending at the Newark Prudential Center in the United States on December 15 would not be the last.

“Once the juggernaut starts rolling, it ain’t gonna stop,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “So without sort of saying definitely yes – yeah. We ain’t doing all this for four gigs!”

The band has come in for criticism from fans about the high price of tickets to the shows – they ranged from around 95 pounds ($ 150) to up to 950 pounds for a VIP seat.

The flamboyant veterans, whose average age is 68, have defended the costs, saying the shows were expensive to put on, although specialist music publication Billboard reported the band would earn $ 25 million from the four shows initially announced. A fifth was added later.

“Everybody all right there in the cheap seats,” Jagger asked pointedly as he looked high to his left at the arena. “They’re not really cheap though are they? That’s the trouble.”

Among the biggest cheers on the night were for classics including “Wild Horses”, “It’s Only Rock and Roll” and “Start Me Up”.

There was even time for the odd reference to their advancing years.

“Good to see you all,” said Richards with a mischievous grin. “Good to see anybody.”

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Saudi telco regulator suspends Mobily prepaid sim sales

(Reuters) – Saudi Arabia‘s No.2 telecom operator Etihad Etisalat Co (Mobily) has been suspended from selling pre-paid sim cards by the industry regulator, the firm said in a statement to the kingdom’s bourse on Sunday.

Mobily’s sales of pre-paid, or pay-as-you-go, sim cards will remain halted until the company “fully meets the prepaid service provisioning requirements,” the telco said in the statement.

These requirements include a September order from regulator, Communication and Information Technology Commission (CITC). This states all pre-paid sim users must enter a personal identification number when recharging their accounts and that this number must be the same as the one registered with their mobile operator when the sim card was bought, according to a statement on the CITC website.

This measure is designed to ensure customer account details are kept up to date, the CITC said.

Mobily said the financial impact of the CITC’s decision would be “insignificant”, claiming data, corporate and postpaid revenues would meet its main growth drivers.

The firm, which competes with Saudi Telecom Co (STC) and Zain Saudi, reported a 23 percent rise in third-quarter profit in October, beating forecasts.

Prepaid mobile subscriptions are typically more popular among middle and lower income groups, with telecom operators pushing customers to shift to monthly contracts that include a data allowance.

Customers on monthly, or postpaid, contracts are also less likely to switch provider, but the bulk of customers remain on pre-paid accounts.

Mobily shares were trading down 1.4 percent at 0820 GMT on the Saudi bourse.

(Reporting by Matt Smith; Editing by Dinesh Nair)

Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Detecting Cancer…With a Cellphone?

Smartphone technology is often seen as much of nuisance as it is a convenience, but having that kind of communicative power at our fingertips has a surprising advantage; it’s serving as a bridge, bringing  healthcare to third world countries that had previously been too remote and too costly to reach.

The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is spearheading one use of smartphone technology in a way that’s surprisingly simple, but could end up saving thousands of women’s lives.

Armed with screening kits, treatment tools and cellphones, teams of non-physician medical workers will visit remote locations in rural Tanzania to screen women for cervical cancer. Instead of the swab method used in the typical Pap smear, workers will use their cellphones to photograph a patient’s cervix, text the image to a physician and then receive back a diagnosis and treatment recommendation.

But can it really be that simple? Dr. Karen Yeates of Queen’s University, who is the lead investigator of the project, told CNN, “That’s the beauty of it — for early grade cancers, those will be able to be treated right in the field, right in the rural area.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), rates of cervical cancer in Africa are up to ten times those in developed countries, and among those diagnosed, about 50,000 women die from it annually.

Though cervical cancer has very low mortality rates in developed countries like the U.S., that’s generally due to regular screenings which catch the disease in its earliest and most treatable incarnations. However, in countries like Tanzania, women in remote villages obviously don’t have access to those types of preventative measures. Subsequently, the WHO estimates that by the time most African women are diagnosed with the disease, they’ve already advanced into its latest fatal stages. But regular screenings could put a stop to that. 

In addition to addressing reproductive healthcare, cellphones are as of late becoming facilitators of cardiac care in developing countries as well. Earlier this year, high school student Catherine Wong discovered how to turn her cellphone into a portable ECG machine, bringing heart monitoring capabilities to the most remote locations with results that could be beamed to doctors no matter how far away.

The Kilimanjaro Cervical Screening Project is gaining some notoriety because it’s recently become one of the 68 finalists in Canada’s Grand Challenges, a fund awarded to medical innovators who’ve invented new systems or products to bring healthcare to the poorest parts of the world. As a finalist, the Kilimanjaro Project has been granted $ 100,000, allowing it to begin its initial trials.

So much of good healthcare rests on the early detection of illness and now that geography and cost aren’t the impediments they once were, patients in developing countries have real opportunities to survive illnesses once believed to be fatal. 

Do you expect that “mobile healthcare” may eventually become the standard method of care in countries like the U.S. as well? Let us know what you think about it in the Comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Student Athletes Shouldn’t Be Dying

• That Figures: Life-Saving CPR                   

• Cardiac Arrest? An iPhone App Might Save Your Life

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A Bay Area native, Andri Antoniades previously worked as a fashion industry journalist and medical writer.  In addition to reporting the weekend news on TakePart, she volunteers as a web editor for locally-based nonprofits and works as a freelance feature writer for TimeOutLA.com. Email Andri | @andritweets | TakePart.com

Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Black Friday sales slip as shoppers opt for Thursday ‘doorbusters’

Security guards break up a fight between shoppers outside a Bowling Green, Ky., Target, Nov. 22, 2012. (AP)

Black Friday, the official kickoff to the holiday shopping season, saw more foot traffic than ever before, according to estimates. But it appears so-called "doorbuster" deals offered the day before dinged sales.

According to ShopperTrak, which tracks retail foot traffic, there were more than 307 million store visits on Friday, up 3.5 percent. But Black Friday shoppers spent an estimated $11.2 billion, down 1.8 percent over 2011, when consumers spent $11.4 billion.

And for once, the sluggish economy is not to blame.

"It is all Black Thursday's fault," ZeroHedge.com said.

[Slideshow: Black Friday madness]

Shopping malls were "less hectic" on Black Friday this year, Bloomberg.com reported, as retailers "have turned Black Friday, once a one-day event after Thanksgiving, into a week's worth of deals and discounts."

And Thursday's deals "attracted some of the spending that's usually meant for Friday," ShopperTrak said.

Big box stores like Wal-Mart and Target were open on Thanksgiving night, drawing crowds that were--in some cases--rowdy. (Thankfully, it was nothing like the dystopian version of shopping hell recently envisioned by "Saturday Night Live.")

Another reason for the Black Friday dip: people skipped lines and shopped online. According to comScore, Black Friday online sales topped $1 billion for the first time, jumping 26 percent to $1.04 billion, compared to $816 million last year.

And according to IBM Benchmark, online sales rose 17 percent on Thanksgiving and 21 percent on Black Friday.

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Egypt’s Mursi faces judicial revolt over decree

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi faced a rebellion from judges who accused him on Saturday of expanding his powers at their expense, deepening a crisis that has triggered violence in the street and exposed the country’s deep divisions.

The Judges’ Club, a body representing judges across Egypt, called for a strike during a meeting interrupted with chants demanding the “downfall of the regime” – the rallying cry in the uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak last year.

Mursi’s political opponents and supporters, representing the divide between newly empowered Islamists and their critics, called for rival demonstrations on Tuesday over a decree that has triggered concern in the West.

Issued late on Thursday, it marks an effort by Mursi to consolidate his influence after he successfully sidelined Mubarak-era generals in August. The decree defends from judicial review decisions taken by Mursi until a new parliament is elected in a vote expected early next year.

It also shields the Islamist-dominated assembly writing Egypt’s new constitution from a raft of legal challenges that have threatened the body with dissolution, and offers the same protection to the Islamist-controlled upper house of parliament.

Egypt’s highest judicial authority, the Supreme Judicial Council, said the decree was an “unprecedented attack” on the independence of the judiciary. The Judges’ Club, meeting in Cairo, called on Mursi to rescind it.

That demand was echoed by prominent opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei. “There is no room for dialogue when a dictator imposes the most oppressive, abhorrent measures and then says ‘let us split the difference’,” he said.

“I am waiting to see, I hope soon, a very strong statement of condemnation by the U.S., by Europe and by everybody who really cares about human dignity,” he said in an interview with Reuters and the Associated Press.

More than 300 people were injured on Friday as protests against the decree turned violent. There were attacks on at least three offices belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mursi to power.

POLARISATION

Liberal, leftist and socialist parties called a big protest for Tuesday to force Mursi to row back on a move they say has exposed the autocratic impulses of a man once jailed by Mubarak.

In a sign of the polarization in the country, the Muslim Brotherhood called its own protests that day to support the president’s decree.

Mursi also assigned himself new authority to sack the prosecutor general, who was appointed during the Mubarak era, and appoint a new one. The dismissed prosecutor general, Abdel Maguid Mahmoud, was given a hero’s welcome at the Judges’ Club.

In open defiance of Mursi, Ahmed al-Zind, head of the club, introduced Mahmoud by his old title.

The Mursi administration has defended the decree on the grounds that it aims to speed up a protracted transition from Mubarak’s rule to a new system of democratic government.

Analysts say it reflects the Brotherhood’s suspicion towards sections of a judiciary unreformed from Mubarak’s days.

“It aims to sideline Mursi’s enemies in the judiciary and ultimately to impose and head off any legal challenges to the constitution,” said Elijah Zarwan, a fellow with The European Council on Foreign Relations.

“We are in a situation now where both sides are escalating and its getting harder and harder to see how either side can gracefully climb down.”

ADVISOR TO MURSI QUITS

Following a day of violence in Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez, the smell of tear gas hung over the capital’s Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011 and the stage for more protests on Friday.

Youths clashed sporadically with police near the square, where activists camped out for a second day on Saturday, setting up makeshift barricades to keep out traffic.

Al-Masry Al-Youm, one of Egypt’s most widely read dailies, hailed Friday’s protest as “The November 23 Intifada”, invoking the Arabic word for uprising.

But the ultra-orthodox Salafi Islamist groups that have been pushing for tighter application of Islamic law in the new constitution have rallied behind Mursi’s decree.

The Nour Party, one such group, stated its support for the Mursi decree. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, which carried arms against the state in the 1990s, said it would save the revolution from what it described as remnants of the Mubarak regime.

Samir Morkos, a Christian assistant to Mursi, had told the president he wanted to resign, said Yasser Ali, Mursi’s spokesman. Speaking to the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Morkos said: “I refuse to continue in the shadow of republican decisions that obstruct the democratic transition”.

Mursi’s decree has been criticized by Western states that earlier this week were full of praise for his role in mediating an end to the eight-day war between Israel and Palestinians.

“The decisions and declarations announced on November 22 raise concerns for many Egyptians and for the international community,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

The European Union urged Mursi to respect the democratic process.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy, Marwa Awad, Edmund Blair and Shaimaa Fayed and Reuters TV; Editing by Jon Hemming)

World News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video becomes YouTube’s most viewed

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – South Korean rap star Psy‘s music video “Gangnam Style” on Saturday became the most watched item ever posted to YouTube with more than 800 million views, edging past Canadian teen star Justin Bieber‘s 2-year-old video for his song “Baby.”

The milestone was the latest pop culture victory for Psy, 34, a portly rap singer known for his slicked-back hair and comic dance style who has become one of the most unlikely global stars of 2012.

Psy succeeded with a video that generated countless parodies and became a media sensation. He gained more fame outside his native country than the more polished singers in South Korea‘s so-called K-Pop style who have sought to win international audiences.

YouTube, in a post on its Trends blog, said “Gangnam Style” on Saturday surpassed the site’s previous record holder, Bieber’s 2010 music video “Baby,” and by mid-day “Gangnam Style” had reached 805 million views, compared to 803 million for “Baby.” Within a few hours, “Gangnam Style” had gone up to more than 809 million views.

“Gangnam Style” was first posted to YouTube in July, and by the following month it began to show huge popularity on YouTube with audiences outside of South Korea.

“It’s been a massive hit at a global level unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” said the YouTube blog.

The blog also said the “velocity” of the video’s popularity has been unprecedented for YouTube.

In his “Gangnam Style” video the outlandishly dressed, sunglass-wearing Psy raps in Korean and dances in the style of an upper-crust person riding an invisible horse.

The song is named after the affluent Gangnam District of Seoul and it mocks the rampant consumerism of that suburb. Psy, whose real name is Park Jai-sang, is no stranger to wealth as his father is chairman of a South Korean semiconductor company.

His parents sent him to business school in the United States but he confesses that he bought musical instruments with his tuition money. He later graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and won fame in South Korea with his 2001 debut album.

The viral success of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube also has translated into strong record sales. In late September, the song jumped to the top of the British pop charts and it also has sold well in other countries.

Popular parodies of the “Gangnam Style” video included one featuring the University of Oregon’s duck mascot, and another done in the “Star Trek” language Klingon.

The official YouTube view count for Gangnam Style represents only the figure for the original video posted to the site, but copycat versions, parodies and videos by people commenting on the song have been posted to the site and elsewhere on the Web.

Counting all those different versions, “Gangnam Style” and its related videos have more than 2.2 billion views across the Internet, said Matt Fiorentino, spokesman for the online video tracking firm Visible Measures.

“Without the dance, I don’t think it would have been as big as it is,” Fiorentino said. “And the other thing is, Psy has a unique sense of humor which comes through in the video. He doesn’t take himself too seriously.”

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Bill Trott)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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6 ways to tweet yourself out of a job

Hate your job? Want to leave without giving two weeks notice? Thanks to Twitter, it’s never been easier to get fired, says Rob Lammie at Mental Floss

Step 1: Drunk tweet
As any Spring Break partier knows, drinking impairs your judgment. It seems to have also impaired the judgment of Major League pitcher-turned-sports-radio-host Mike Bacsik, who put on quite a show during a San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks NBA game in April 2010. While watching the game, Bacsik bragged that he was “About 12 deep and some shots.” He proceeded to unleash a string of insults aimed at NBA commissioner David Stern, accused the refs of fixing the game, and even threatened to blow up the NBA’s offices. But the one that really got people riled up came after the Mavericks lost the game, when Bacsik tweeted: 

SEE MORE: Why popular kids make more money as adults

@MikeBacsik: “Congrats to all the dirty mexicans in San Antonio.”

After sobering up, Bacsik deleted the offending tweets and issued an apology. But it was too little, too late. Numerous people complained to his radio station, which first suspended Bacsik and later fired him. After his dismissal, he told ESPN Dallas, “When you tweet like that, it’s not a playful, harmless thing… I’m very sorry and will try my best for my actions to speak louder than my tweets.”

Step 2: Break the law (or just anger your governor)
Twitter has become a great tool for politicians to connect to the voting public. Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, for one, has really embraced the technology as a way to share his opinions and views. For example, in December 2009, he sent out a tweet saying:

 @HaleyBarbour: “Glad the Legislature recognizes our dire fiscal situation. Look forward to hearing their ideas on how to trim expenses.”

Jennifer Carter, one of his Twitter followers who worked for the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMC), read this message and offered up a suggestion on how Governor Barbour could personally save the taxpayers money:

“Schedule regular medical exams like everyone else instead of paying UMC employees overtime to do it when clinics are usually closed.” 

This “Oh, snap!” moment referred to an incident that had occurred three years earlier, when the governor requested the medical center open on a Saturday, when they were normally closed, and bring in a staff of 15-20 people who were paid overtime to administer his annual check-up. This happened before Carter worked for UMC and she was simply repeating what she had been told by other employees. 

SEE MORE: Does a shaved head give you an advantage in corporate America?

The governor’s office tracked down Carter and made a formal complaint to UMC, saying Carter had violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, a privacy law that states no employee of a medical facility can reveal any information about a person’s “protected health information.” Some argued that Carter didn’t violate HIPAA, since she didn’t actually give out any information about the health of the governor. However, others believe that simply saying the governor had even visited a doctor is a violation. 

Semantics aside, UMC administrators said it was a violation, so they suspended Carter for three days without pay and strongly suggested she resign to avoid further disciplinary action, which she did.

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Step 3: Have an NSFW lifestyle
St. Louis-based blogger “The Beautiful Kind” had been writing online about her polyamorous sex life for years. Knowing that not everyone would agree with her chosen lifestyle, she was always very careful about maintaining her anonymity, especially when it came to the workplace. So when she signed up for Twitter, she wanted to be anonymous there as well. She thought that, thanks to the similarities between the two, it was like signing up for an online message board — you supplied your real name to the website privately, but could choose to be known publicly by your username only. But when she logged in for the first time and saw that, not only did it show her username (@TBK365), but also her real name on her profile, she immediately went back and removed it. 

Thinking she was now safely anonymous, she used Twitter to promote her blog and to discuss sexually explicit topics with her followers. However, when her boss at the non-profit group where she worked was told by upper management to do a Google search of all employees, TBK’s Twitter account information — with her real name still associated — came up on the Twitter tracking site topsy.com.

The next day, TBK was called into her boss’ office and fired on the spot. Afterwards, her former boss sent her a letter saying, “While I know you are a good worker and an intelligent person, I hope you try to understand that our employees are held to a different standard. When it comes to private matters, such as one’s sexual explorations and preferences, our employees must keep their affairs private.” Because Missouri is an at-will employment state, meaning employers can fire someone for just about any reason, TBK was SOL.

Step 4: Question company policy
When California Pizza Kitchen (CPK) traded in their standard white shirts for black ones, employee Tim Chantarangsu wasn’t happy with the change. So he tweeted @calpizzakitchen his opinion:

@traphik: “black button ups are the lamest s**t ever!!!”

He didn’t expect anyone to notice or care, but the next day he received a direct message from corporate asking what restaurant he worked for. He knew better than to respond, but they tracked him down anyway and he was fired. They not only referenced his tweet about the shirts, but also an earlier one where he had said he was getting ready to work at “Calipornia Skeetza Kitchen.” 

Little did they know that Chantarangsu is kind of a big deal on another social website, YouTube. Under the name TimothyDeLaGhetto2, Chantarangsu has hundreds of thousands of subscribers, accounting for over 10,500,000 views of his videos at the time. Of course he made a YouTube video telling his Twitter story and it has been viewed well more than 100,000 times. Shortly after the incident, he asked his followers to bombard CPK’s Twitter account with RTs (re-tweets) of his offending message, which they were more than happy to oblige.

Step 5: Make a celebrity look bad
During his five years on the job, Jon Barrett-Ingels had served a lot of celebrities as a waiter at Barney Greengrass, an upscale restaurant in Beverly Hills. One day, Jane Adams, star of the HBO series Hung, came in and had lunch to the tune of $ 13.44. Unfortunately, when the bill came, Adams realized she had left her wallet in the car. Ingels knew who she was, so he told her she could run out and grab it and come back. The actress left, but didn’t return. Instead, someone from her agency called the next day and paid the bill. However, they didn’t leave a tip. Ingels had recently signed up for Twitter and so, his sixth tweet to his 40 followers said:

@PapaBarrett: Jane Adams, star of HBO series “Hung” skipped out on a $ 13.44 check. Her agent called and payed the following day. NO TIP!!!” 

Over the next few weeks, Ingels started using Twitter to send out a few harmless observations about celebrities that came in to eat — mainly what they ordered or what they looked like that day. Then, out of the blue, Jane Adams came back to the restaurant. According to Ingels’ blog, she was clearly upset and begrudgingly slapped $ 3 on the bar for Ingels as a tip. Surprised, Ingels told the actress she really didn’t have to do that, but her gesture was appreciated. She allegedly replied with, “My friend read about it on Twitter!” before storming off. Adams complained about the tweet to management, so someone from Barney’s corporate started following Ingels on Twitter to see what he was up to. After reading his celebrity tweets, it didn’t take long before they gave him the boot.

Step 6: Don’t get hired in the first place
If you’ve followed steps 1 – 5 and you still have a job, here’s the ultimate way to make sure Twitter will keep you from gainful employment.

When recent college grad Skye Riley heard back from Cisco, the computer networking giant, about her job application, one of her first instincts was to tweet about it. Unfortunately, this is what she tweeted:

@theconnor: Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The unfortunate part? An employee of Cisco, Tim Levad, came across her post while doing a Twitter search for Cisco. He replied to her by saying:

@timmylevad: Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Riley’s story was the tweet heard round the world. It became a hot topic on tech blogs for weeks afterwards, with writers calling it the “Cisco Fatty” incident. She later claimed that the tweet was taken out of context — that part of her message was referring to a well-paid internship she had turned down — but it appears the damage had already been done. While only she and Cisco know what really happened, according to her online resume, she has never worked for the company.

 — Rob Lammie

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