Giuliana Rancic Undergoes Double Mastectomy, Comes Through in Great Spirits

E! News and Fashion Police staple Giuliana Rancic has undergone a double mastectomy and is already recovering, even cracking jokes, according to her husband Bill.

Her double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery took place last night as she battles breast cancer, and "G is doing really well," Bill Rancic told E! News Wednesday.

"Her surgery lasted about four hours; the doctors were very pleased with the result."

"She had a little bit of pain through the night but is feeling much better this morning and was cracking jokes," said Rancic of his wife, who we're all pulling for.

G had her own message to share, as well.

"I want to thank all the viewers and fans for their support and prayers," she says. "All the tweets and notes have not gone unnoticed. I am very grateful."

Just get well soon, G. That is all THG asks. The celebrity news and celebrity fashion worlds will go on without you, but they're certainly not the same.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/giuliana-rancic-undergoes-double-mastectomy-comes-through-in-gre/

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Jury mulls death penalty a second day in Connecticut case (Reuters)

NEW HAVEN (Reuters) ? A Connecticut jury began deliberating a second day on Tuesday whether a man convicted of killing a mother and her two daughters in a gruesome home invasion should be executed for his crimes.

The same 12-person panel convicted Joshua Komisarjevsky, 31, in October of the 2007 murders of Jennifer Hawke-Petit, 48, and her two daughters Hayley Petit, 17, and Michaela Petit, 11. The girls' father was the sole survivor of the attack.

Komisarjevsky's accomplice, Steven Hayes, was convicted separately of similar charges and has been sentenced to death.

The jury in New Haven Superior Court began deliberations on Monday and ended for the day after slightly less than two hours. It began deliberating again on Tuesday.

The jury that sentenced Hayes to death deliberated for 17 hours over four days before reaching its unanimous decision.

Komisarjevsky and Hayes were convicted of an attack that began after Komisarjevsky spotted Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her younger daughter in a supermarket and followed them to their home in Cheshire, Connecticut.

For several hours, the pair held the family captive, although at one point Hawke-Petit was forced to drive to a bank and withdraw $15,000.

After she returned, she was raped and strangled. The girls, tied to their beds, died of smoke inhalation as the home was set on fire. The younger girl was sexually assaulted.

The sole survivor of the attack, Dr. William Petit, was badly beaten and tied up in the basement but managed to escape as the house went up in flames.

Petit has attended the trials of both men.

Connecticut has only executed one person, in 2005, since the death penalty was reinstated in the United States in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Ten men, including Hayes, are on the state's death row, according to the Center.

The jury can sentence Komisarjevsky, who was convicted of 17 charges including murder, kidnapping, arson and sexual assault, to life in prison without the possibility of parole or to die by lethal injection.

During six weeks of the sentencing phase of the case, the defense said Komisarjevsky was molested as a child and that his extremely religious parents relied on prayer and failed to get him clinical help for his troubled behavior.

The defense presented a list of more than 40 mitigating factors arguing against a death sentence, which the jury must weigh against aggravating factors cited by prosecutors.

The defense attorneys also argued that Komisarjevsky's role in the home invasion was smaller than that of Hayes.

(Editing by Ellen Wulfhorst and Greg McCune)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/us/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111206/us_nm/us_crime_homeinvasion

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Experts: Iran capture of stealth drone no worry (AP)

WASHINGTON ? U.S. military officials said Monday they are concerned that Tehran may have an opportunity to acquire information about the classified surveillance drone program after one of the stealthy aircraft crashed in Iran while patrolling in western Afghanistan.

But experts suggested that even if the Iranians have found parts of the unmanned spy plane, they can probably glean little from it. Because it likely fell from a high altitude, there may be very few large pieces to examine.

The RQ-170 ? known as the Sentinel ? has been used in Afghanistan, particularly along the border, for several years. The U.S. Air Force has just "a handful" of them, said defense analyst Loren Thompson, with the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.

"I think we're always concerned when there's an aircraft, whether it's manned or unmanned, that we lose, particularly in a place where we're not able to get to it," Navy Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters Monday.

U.S. officials have acknowledged that the military lost control of one of the stealthy drones while it was flying a mission over western Afghanistan. Iran's official IRNA news agency has said that Iran's armed forces shot it down.

U.S. officials have rejected that claim, saying there are no indications the Sentinel was shot down. In either case, officials said this would be the first Sentinel lost by the U.S.

Analysts, however, played down any serious impact of the drone ? or pieces of it ? falling into Iranian hands.

"This is an aircraft that evades radar because of its shape and because of the special material used," said Thompson. "It won't enable the Iranians to build a stealthy unmanned aircraft."

Analysts said that stealth technologies ? primarily the low-observable shape and the materials used ? are fairly well known, but often hard to replicate. The Sentinel, made by Lockheed Martin, has a swept-wing shape, much like the B-2 stealth bomber. And it's been called the "Beast of Kandahar" because of its use in Afghanistan.

"They were designed to be silver bullets that could go places that other manned or unmanned aircraft would not be able to go. It specifically is designed to be very difficult for enemies to track and target," said Thompson. "This is a high-flying unmanned aircraft that malfunctioned and then fell to earth. It's likely to be broken up into hundreds of pieces."

John Pike of the Globalsecurity.org think tank said the Iranians already have all the data on the drone's external shape, "and there is nothing particularly unique about this configuration."

He said the key to America's success with the stealthy aircraft is the fuel efficient engines, which give it the ability to stay aloft for days rather than hours.

"Are we going to stop flying them? No. Was it a secret we were flying them? No," said Pike. "Did Iran shoot it down? Probably not. Because Iranian air defenses are not very good, and it is a good stealth vehicle. And did Iranian hackers hack into it and bring it down? No. It's just too hard to do."

The Sentinel gained notoriety earlier this year when officials disclosed that one was used to keep watch on Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan as the raid that killed him was taking place.

____

Associated Press broadcast reporter Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111205/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_iran_drone

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Expelled Iran diplomats leave Britain (Reuters)

TEHRAN/LONDON (Reuters) ? All Iranian diplomats left Britain on Friday, expelled in response to protesters storming the British embassy in Tehran, hardening a confrontation between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program.

In Iran, crowds chanted "Death to Britain" at Tehran University, and a militia linked to the storming of the embassy prepared to greet the returning diplomats as heroes. A hardline cleric denounced the U.N. Security Council and European Union for backing Britain following the embassy storming.

But President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei remained silent, perhaps reflecting unease within the faction-riven leadership about an incident likely to deepen Iran's international isolation.

Protesters stormed two British diplomatic compounds on Tuesday, smashing windows, torching a car and burning the British flag in protest against new sanctions imposed by London.

The incident followed accusations from Washington of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador and a report from the U.N. nuclear watchdog suggesting Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons, all contributing to increased diplomatic isolation for Tehran in recent months.

"I can confirm that, earlier this afternoon, all diplomatic staff of the Iranian Embassy in London took off from Heathrow airport," a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

After the embassy storming, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that Britain was closing its embassy in Tehran, ordered the closure of the Iranian embassy in London and gave all Iranian diplomats 48 hours to leave Britain.

Hague said the assault could not have happened without the consent of Iranian authorities.

The Iranian diplomats slipped away quietly. The green, white and red Iranian flag still flew over the Iranian embassy in west London that was the scene of a dramatic six-day siege in 1980 when gunmen seized 21 hostages, two of whom they killed.

Across the street, a dozen protesters opposed to Iran's government chanted "Free Iran" and urged "terrorists" to go home. A few police officers stood guard.

Western powers suspect Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons but Iran insists its program is peaceful.

Diplomacy has come to a boil after a report in November by the U.N. watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency suggested Iran has worked on a nuclear bomb program. The United States and Israel have not ruled out military strikes.

REMORSE

Britain's Ambassador to Iran, Dominick Chilcott, said hardliners in the Iranian establishment may have thought confrontation would rally Iranians, but miscalculated how strong the response to the embassy storming would be.

"They probably didn't expect us to send home the Iranian embassy in London and, reading between the lines, you can see in the way they have responded to that move, some remorse in having provoked it," Chilcott told the BBC.

The closure of the embassies, by cutting off a channel of communication between Britain and Iran, complicates the search for a diplomatic solution to the nuclear dispute.

"Having this tension between Iran and Europe will make those negotiations a lot harder," said Adam Hug, policy director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a London think-tank. "It does make the risk of conflict slightly more plausible."

France, Germany and the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors from Tehran for consultations as a protest against the storming of the British compounds.

The EU added 180 Iranian people and entities to its sanctions list on Thursday and laid out plans for a possible embargo on Iranian oil, the lifeblood of the Iranian economy.

The United Nations Security Council said it "condemned in the strongest terms" the attack, although veto-wielder Russia made clear it saw no need for more sanctions.

ROTTEN ROPE

In Tehran, cleric Ahmad Khatami denounced the EU and Security Council to worshippers who chanted "Death to Britain."

"If you have just a bit of wisdom, you won't tie your rope to the rotten rope of Britain," he said.

Increasing tensions with the world's fifth biggest oil exporter pushed up global oil prices despite concerns of an economic downturn in the West. Brent crude rose towards $110 a barrel on Friday from a Thursday close of $108.99.

Iran's culture ministry banned foreign media from covering anti-British pro-government protests in Tehran, especially rallies "in front of the British Embassy and the Qolhak compound unless authorized in advance," the ministry said in a statement.

Witnesses reported a heavy presence of police at Ferdowsi square, where the British embassy is located.

"Life is normal in the area but there are many police officers in the area," said a witness who asked not to be named.

The 135-year-old embassy residence was severely damaged in the onslaught. The ornate building at the centre of the complex has changed little since it hosted a dinner between Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Britain's Winston Churchill during the 1943 Tehran conference.

One Western diplomat who visited it on Thursday said priceless oil paintings had been slashed and protesters had cut out the face of a portrait of Queen Victoria. There were no reports of harm to staff.

The semi-official Fars news agency reported on Wednesday that 11 hardline protesters detained for storming the British compounds had been released.

Iranian diplomats expelled from London were due to arrive in Tehran in the early hours of Saturday and the hardline Basij militia said it would have a welcoming committee for them at the International Imam Khomeini Airport outside the capital.

Iran's Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the embassy invasion, which it said was a spontaneous overflowing of anger during a peaceful protest by students. Britain says there must have been at least tacit approval by the ruling establishment.

The Iranian reformist website Sahamnews issued a statement by a group of students at the Islamic Azad university condemning the attack and saying the conservative hardliners did not represent the view of most young Iranians.

"Misusing the name of student is something we cannot easily let pass. There is no connection between what these people did and the honorable and sensible Iranian students," it said.

Parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, a long-time rival to Ahmadinejad, condemned the U.N. Security Council reaction to the embassy storming as "hasty" and "devious."

(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Parisa Hafezi and Robin Pomeroy; Editing by Peter Graff and Jon Hemming)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/world/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111202/wl_nm/us_iran_britain

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Detroit police search for girl, 2, in carjacking (Providence Journal)

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Attorney: Eddie Long's wife proceeds with divorce (AP)

DECATUR, Ga. ? An attorney for the wife of Bishop Eddie Long says she is moving forward with plans to end her 21-year marriage to the embattled Georgia megachurch pastor.

In a statement issued late Friday, Vanessa Long's attorney says "she has determined that dismissal of her divorce petition is not appropriate at this time." Earlier Friday, she said in a statement released through Eddie Long's New Birth Missionary Baptist Church that she loves her husband and planned to withdraw her petition.

According to the divorce petition filed Thursday in DeKalb Superior Court, the couple is "currently living in a bona fide state of separation." The split comes more than a year after allegations that Eddie Long used his lavish lifestyle and position of spiritual authority to lure four young men into sexual relationships. Eddie Long settled the cases but has never admitted to any wrongdoing.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111203/ap_on_re_us/us_georgia_megachurch_pastor

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$50 Million MergerTech Capital Fund Established For Healthcare IT Investment

The healthcare industry is in the middle of a number of crises, not the least of which is the modernization of its internal infrastructure. Having worked in the industry myself, I can attest that the amount of faxing, carbon copies, and redundancy are mind blowing, especially at overworked, underfunded hospitals. We've seen a lot of health startups over the last two years, though naturally many of the ones we've covered are more user-facing, like Disrupt finalist Cake Health. But the backend is just as important, and a new $50M fund has just been established by MergerTech specifically for investment in that sector.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/F6rw88P1lGs/

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