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DEAR ABBY: I was taken away from my parents at 13 and placed into foster care, where I stayed until I aged out at 21. My biological mother is a drug addict who abandoned me to my father when I was 11. She never tried to contact me while I was in care.I am now 24 and she won't leave me alone. She sends Facebook messages that alternate between begging me to let her get to know me, and condemning me for being vindictive and not having forgiveness in my heart. Abby, this woman exposed me to drugs and all manner of seedy people and situations. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-sony-others-said-no-interest-facebook-home-191046814.html

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Stuntwoman sues News Corp. over alleged phone hack

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A woman who worked as a stunt double for Angelina Jolie sued Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in Los Angeles on Tuesday, claiming she's a victim of a phone hacking scheme to obtain information about the actress.

Eunice Huthart, of Liverpool, England, is the first person to sue the media company in the U.S.

Her New York attorney, Norman Siegel, said, "This is the beginning and we're going to go one step at a time." He said the suit speaks for itself on the reasons it was filed in Los Angeles. It claimed Huthart's phone was hacked while she was working with Jolie on Hollywood films including "Mr. & Mrs. Smith."

She said that was how the Sun newspaper learned that Jolie and Brad Pitt were "an item." A News Corp. spokesman declined to comment.

Huthart, who became a close friend of Jolie and is the godmother to her first biological child, said she was unaware that she was a victim of the phone hackers until British police came to see her last year.

She said the intrusion which removed messages from her cellphone caused distress in her family life and caused her to miss calls from Jolie.

The lawsuit cited numerous references to the United Kingdom phone hacking scandal involving News Corp. companies and claims numerous grounds for damages. A monetary figure was not specified, but it asked that the companies be assessed damages based on the profits they made from the stories on Jolie. It also seeks punitive damages.

The lawsuit also names as defendants News Corp. entities News International Ltd. and News Group Newspapers Ltd., and unidentified private investigators and journalists.

The case is the first hacking-related lawsuit against News Corp. in the U.S. and is the culmination of a lengthy search for a plaintiff who would take on the company in a U.S. court room.

Siegel, Huthart's lead lawyer, has been on the hunt for evidence of News Corp. hacking on U.S. soil since the scandal broke in July 2011. Siegel, who has represented Sept. 11 victims' families in civil cases, sent a letter nearly two years ago to the FBI demanding an inquiry into whether 9/11 victims' phones had been hacked by News Corp. journalists.

Siegel was later retained by British attorney Mark Lewis, who has represented hacking victims in the U.K.

Since the scandal broke in the summer of 2011, News Corp. has spent $388 million in settlements, legal fees, and other costs associated with ongoing investigations in the U.K. Last year, the company settled 36 lawsuits by hacking victims including actor Jude Law and soccer player Ashley Cole.

The federal suit claims Huthart began missing telephone messages in 2004 from family, friends and others, causing damage to relationships with her daughter and husband. She said her husband began to think she was having an affair because she didn't answer her voicemail messages.

She said she was particularly distressed over failing to receive messages from her young daughter who "called several times to report that she was being bullied in school in Liverpool, England," the suit said.

"Plaintiff did not receive those messages and could not console her daughter," said the suit, adding that Huthart "was despondent and believed she had failed as a parent."

During the filming of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith," Huthart said she lived at a home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles with Jolie and her assistant and they became close friends. On occasion, she said Jolie would leave her messages with code names for hotels and individuals and details of times they would be meeting. The suit said she often did not get Jolie's messages because they were being intercepted by investigator Glenn Mulcaire and his alleged co- conspirators. Mulcaire was imprisoned for six months in 2007 for hacking phones on behalf of the now defunct News of The World.

The suit said that it was through hacking the stunt double's phone that the Sun newspaper learned that Pitt and Jolie were "an item."

The paper reported it had exclusively learned that the couple checked into a hotel posing as a married couple while plugging their movie.

Once, Huthart said she missed a message from Jolie confiding that she was registered at a hotel under the name "Pocohontas," and Huthart had trouble locating her.

The latest case comes at a sensitive time for the media giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch, which will spin off its publishing and newspaper arm from its more profitable TV and movie unit by the end of the month. On Friday, Murdoch also filed for divorce from his wife since 1999, Wendi Deng Murdoch.

News Corp. has said that the stronger entertainment side of the company, to be called 21st Century Fox, will bear any further legal costs or civil claims related to hacking after the split, while the publishing company, to retain the name News Corp., will be liable for any criminal penalties if they arise.

21st Century Fox would also be responsible for any civil settlement involving a U.S. law that aims to prevent bribery overseas called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

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AP Business Writer Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stuntwoman-sues-news-corp-over-alleged-phone-hack-163008561.html

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EU to approve ICE's $8.2 billion NYSE buy without conditions - sources

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) is set to win unconditional EU approval for its $8.2 billion (5.2 billion pounds) bid for NYSE Euronext after antitrust regulators found no competition concerns, two people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

The deal will give ICE control of Liffe, Europe's second-largest derivatives market, and boost its presence in the interest rate futures business.

"The deal is expected to be approved by the European Commission without any conditions," said one of the people, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.

ICE's announcement in March that it would cap its trading fees for Liffe soft commodities such as coffee, cocoa and sugar for five years and put product committees in place, if the merger was approved, helped ease possible competition concerns, the person said.

The promise came before the EU antitrust authority started its scrutiny of the deal.

The Commission, the EU executive which acts as pan-European competition regulator, is scheduled to decide on the deal by June 24. Antoine Colombani, commission spokesman for competition policy, declined to comment.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Adrian Croft)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-eu-approve-ices-8-2-billion-nyse-131155090.html

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New lungs buy time but don't cure cystic fibrosis

Chart shows the number of people on the waiting list for an organ transplant

Chart shows the number of people on the waiting list for an organ transplant

FILE - In this May 30, 2013 file photo provided by the Murnaghan family, Sarah Murnaghan, center, celebrates the 100th day of her stay in Children's Hospital of Philadelphia with her father, Fran, left, and mother, Janet. The 10-year-old suburban Philadelphia girl received a lung transplant there Wednesday, June 12, 2013, her family said. (AP Photo/Murnaghan Family, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The 10-year-old Pennsylvania girl who fought for a lung transplant has a difficult journey ahead. The transplant isn't a cure for her cystic fibrosis, and new lungs don't tend to last as long as other transplanted organs.

But it can extend life by years, buying some time.

"You're keeping them alive and hopefully well, hoping that something else will come along that will make the big difference," said Dr. Anastassios Koumbourlis, pulmonary chief at Children's National Medical Center in the nation's capital.

Sarah Murnaghan, who is recovering from Wednesday's operation at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, made headlines as her parents challenged national policy over how children under 12 are placed on the waiting list for donated lungs.

Lost in the debate over how to give out scarce organs was this broader question: How well do children with cystic fibrosis fare when they do get a new set of lungs?

Fortunately, few children get sick enough anymore to need transplants, said Dr. Stuart Sweet, pediatric lung transplant chief at Washington University in St. Louis. Treatments for the genetic disease have improved so much over the past decade that patients live much longer before their lungs start to wear out.

About 30,000 Americans live with cystic fibrosis, which causes sticky mucus to build up in the lungs, leading to life-threatening infections in the lungs and problems in other organs. Only a few decades ago, children with the disease seldom survived elementary school. Now the typical life expectancy is about 37 years and growing.

A 2007 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine prompted major controversy over whether lung transplants offered enough survival benefit to be used for cystic fibrosis. Ultimately, doctors decided it did, for the right patient who is out of options.

Since then, about 150 to 200 people with the disease, mostly teens and adults, have gotten lung transplants every year, according to a patient registry run by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Over 80 percent of patients who get new lungs survive a year, and over 50 percent are alive after five years, the registry shows.

That's a sobering statistic, although some people survive much longer. For comparison, well over 90 percent of people who receive a kidney transplant survive five years.

"We expect it will be a long road, but we're not going for easy, we're going for possible," Sarah's family said in a statement after her surgery.

Sweet said the issue isn't the cystic fibrosis but that lungs simply are difficult to transplant, no matter what the underlying disease.

"The reality is that lung transplantation is not a perfect solution," Sweet said.

After all, "this is the only organ we transplant that's in contact with the outside world," added Dr. Karen McCoy, pulmonology chief at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

For cystic fibrosis patients, the donated lungs don't contain the defective gene that caused their own lungs to clog ? so they won't fill with mucus again. Cystic fibrosis will continue to damage their pancreas, intestines and other parts of the body, requiring ongoing treatment to deal with nutritional problems and other symptoms.

But patients may be at higher risk of post-transplant lung infections for a different reason: Some of the antibiotic-resistant germs that infected their old lungs can still be lurking in their sinuses. They can travel to the new lungs as patients begin taking the immune-suppressing drugs necessary to prevent organ rejection, McCoy said.

Eventually, many transplant recipients suffer lung failure as some of the tiniest airways in the lungs break down, in part due to infections. Some qualify for another transplant, but second transplants aren't as successful.

Another threat for lung recipients, regardless of the underlying disease: The teen years. That's when young patients assume more responsibility for their anti-rejection medicines, and may skip doses to be "normal" like their friends ? one reason survival dips for adolescents

Stay tuned: Treatments that target the specific gene defect behind most cases of cystic fibrosis are being researched. If they pan out, eventually fewer patients may need transplants.

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Online:

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation: http://www.cff.org/

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-06-13-Lung%20Transplant-Cystic%20Fibrosis/id-fb3cd8d805394ab0841980a94dd62c6d

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